I Am Margaret (34 page)

From then on my spare time was spent lying on my bunk, notebook in hand, thinking. I ran through scenario after scenario, jotting deliberately indecipherable notes, spending hours bouncing them off Jon, groaning as he picked holes and pointed out fatal flaws. Page after page went down the trash hatch, and we both watched the guards as much as possible, where they went, how they behaved, jotting down a coded record of their shifts, going around smiley and cheerful and striking up as many conversations with them as we could.

“
It’s easy to see how it
could
be done, just like that, unplanned,” said Jon, “like in a film. But only IF absolutely everything went right. And we’re up against a load of human beings with free will, not a bunch of actors following a convenient script.”

“We have to take the camera room and two of the towers. That’s the bottom line.”

“Yeah, but we’ve got to make sure no one knows we’ve taken them until we’re clean away.”

“Well, that’s why Bane’s diversion is so important, isn’t it? They won’t have time to worry that they can’t contact the camera room if they think the Resistance are about to come over the walls.”

“Let’s hope they’re not,” said Jon dryly.

“What?”

“Well, I’ve the feeling you’re expecting Bane to arrange some sufficiently large diversion all by his lonesome. Well, pardon me if I’m a little skeptical. It’s going to be more than a one- or even two-man job.”

“He seemed confident about the diversion part.”

“Good. Because without it, I don’t think we’re going to pull this off.”

“No,” I said slowly, “neither do I.”

“Margaret Verrall,” I told the guard handing out the post, trying to smile.

The first of June—if all had gone according to plan, Fox and Wilson now had the manuscript. Bane hadn’t written to me in my Friday letter, so presumably he’d been too busy arranging it. Or he’d changed his mind and decided, for the first time in his life, to break a promise to me.
Yes
, squeaked a cowardly little voice from deep inside me, as I took the letter.
Let it be that!
I shoved the voice down as hard as I could, collected my breakfast and went to sit beside Jon.

The tension was too much, and after spooning down my cereals untasted, I opened my letter immediately. There was a front and back page of what at a glance appeared to be space filler from Mum, and just a short bit from Bane in the middle.

Hi Margo. I’m sorry I didn’t write last time, I was so busy. You’ll never guess where I was on Friday! London! I went all the way there with a friend of mine, he’s a reporter, incidentally. (BTW, did you know trains are much more comfortable on the
inside
?) London was quite something, I can tell you! Though, I’m not sure I actually liked it very much there. But I wish you’d been with us.

We delivered that thing for you while we were down there, no problems. I told my reporter friend that if he made any inappropriate jokes about it I’d kill him and I don’t think he thought I was joking, which is good, ‘cause I’m not so sure I was. I do hope you’re all right, everything’s going fine for me. I’ll try and write a bit more next time but your parents have to get this to the RWB office to catch the post. Love you, Bane.

Right. On reflection, Bane must’ve been dissatisfied with our precautions for ensuring proof of ownership. So he’d gone one better and taken a well-placed friend into his confidence. An older friend. Resistance? He must be very sure he could trust him to keep his mouth shut.

And the manuscript had gone in. It had definitely, indisputably, irrecoverably gone in. I couldn’t torture myself with the hope-fear it’d been lost in the post; that it hadn’t got there in time. Bane had put it through the letterbox of the publishing house with his own two hands, with the reporter watching for good measure. The point of no return had passed, all right.

There could be no keeping quiet and letting the book pass into history as Sue’s work of fiction. With a story that could make his career, the Salperton reporter would only hold his tongue until it was actually published—and would make the biggest news. And there’d never
really
been any chance of that particular cowardice, had there? There were plenty of people in Salperton who would read that book and realize it was no novel. Perhaps we’d been worrying about how to prove my authorship for nothing. Still, better safe than sorry.

Safe
.

Lord, give me strength
, what a joke! The only thing that could save me now, other than an early dismantling or some other freak occurrence, was an escape plan: details-yet-to-be-finalized. Because escaping was so easy. People did it all the time.
Not
.

My limbs were dissolving, that damn shaking again, and my stomach heaved. I lurched up from my seat and ran for the door, but the washrooms were far too far, and then I was down on my knees, throwing up my breakfast on the floor. Unfortunately I tasted it this time.

“Margo?”

“Margo?”

“Are you all right?”

Someone handed me a tissue and I wiped my mouth, sitting back on the cold linoleum.
Get yourself together, Margo, get yourself together, you’re being silly
… but the room and the sea of anxious faces swung echoingly around me and I buried my face against my knees, sobs escaping at last.

“Margo…?” Jon’s hand touched my shoulder and I tried again to get myself together, but it was too late. Too late.

“Move aside, move aside. What’s the matter, now?”

Watkins was approaching. I folded the letter small with trembling fingers and slipped it into Jon’s hand.

“Margo’s ill,” Rebecca was telling Watkins. “She’s been sick and she’s all white and shaky. I think she’d better see the d…” Bless her, she hesitated on doctor just in time, replacing it with, “the nurse. I think she should see the nurse.”

“Margaret? What seems to be the trouble?”

I raised my head and found Watkins peering down at me.

“I’m fine,” I managed. “Really.”

“You don’t look fine, missie. I think you’d better go have a lie down in sickbay. Get up on your feet now, if you can. Give her a hand, girls. Brandon, you come with me; Dwight, stay here.”

One of the guards who’d been dishing out the breakfast came through from the kitchen to join Watkins, which would leave his colleague on the other side of the hatch and Dwight in the cafeteria, both in sight of one another. I don’t think Watkins—or any of the guards—thought I’d been lying about Finchley, but they knew it paid to stick to the rules.

I was annoyingly wobbly in the legs, but managed to walk to the sickbay under my own steam, though

Watkins and Brandon hovered as though I might keel over at any moment. The nurse examined me, pricked my finger to check my blood sugar, took my blood pressure and temperature, and since none of them were desperately low, concluded we’d have to wait and see if I was coming down with something or if it was just a blip.

She made me lie down until lunchtime, then had me returned to the dorm, though under an injunction against attending afternoon exercise. Reassuring and fending off my crowd of wellwishers, I let Jon put his arm around me, feeling like the world’s largest cowardly custard.

“Margo?” It was Jane. She stood at the end of the bunk, where she’d been standing since I was brought back in. Waiting.

“Yes?”

“Just wondering what you’ve done with that useful art case of yours?”

“Oh. That.” I bludgeoned my brain into action. “I had to give it back, you know.”

“Shame. It was useful, wasn’t it? You wrote an awful lot of stories on it.”

“Umm,” I agreed, trying to look wan and sick.

“And where are they, Margo?”

“Where’s what, Jane?”

“That huge heap of stories you wrote? They’re not in Jon’s chest any more, are they?”

I glanced at Jon, wondering how he’d let her get a look.

“
Sarah was upset about you being taken off, so Rebecca said she’d read her a story if she could find one,” he said emotionlessly. “Sarah thought they were in my chest and had a look.”
Before I could stop her
, I heard the silent addition.

“But not a page in sight,” said Jane too sweetly. Had she even put Sarah up to it? “So she tried your chest, Margo, but they’re not there either. I thought you’d written us a… a lifetime supply,” she said blackly. “But now there’s just a little pile of the ones you’ve read us already. Sarah was very disappointed.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, Margo?”

“Well, what, Jane?”

“Where are the stories?”

“They’re gone,” I said bluntly. “We won’t be seeing them again, I’m afraid.”

“Did you destroy them? Or give them away?”

“I really don’t see it’s any of your business what I did with them,” I retorted, and buried my face in Jon’s hair.

“Well, perhaps I think it is!” snapped Jane, undeterred. “You work and work on all those stories for two months like you’re obsessed, secretive as anything, won’t let anyone read them, keep telling us to be patient, and then the entire stack disappears overnight. I reckon the stories have gone to the same place as the typing machine and I’m very curious to know why!”

“Leave her alone, Jane,” said Jon coldly. “She’s got more important things to think about than your cat-like curiosity.”

“Like what?”

“
I
think
you’ve discussed such things before and I
think
you’d be advised to leave her to it! Lest she
leave
you ...to it!”

Jane’s mouth clicked shut and she stared at Jon and me for another few moments, but most of the anger had gone out of her glower. Finally she turned and went back to her own bunk.

“Are you feeling better?” murmured Jon.

“Yes. I’m so embarrassed.”

“Is Bane okay?” From the way he said it, he’d been waiting to ask ever since I’d been brought back. Oh… he hadn’t heard my letter yet.

“
Oh,
yes
. Goodness, yes. It’s not that. I was just being… just being incredibly spineless. Bane’s handed the manuscript in, y’see. It’s done.”

His arm tightened convulsively around my shoulders.

“
Libera nos, Domine
,” he breathed in my ear. “I’d say it’s just beginning.”

I wound my hands into his top and buried my face deeper in his hair. He smelt of peppermint; his parents had slipped sweets into his letter again.

“Jon, I’m so frightened,” I whispered, unable to hold it back any longer.

“
Oh. Of course you are.” He folded me tightly in his arms. “Of
course
you are. You’re going to be fine, Margo. You’re so brave. And Bane will do his part and we’ll do ours.”

“But what if the worst happens?” My voice would’ve been inaudible to anyone else, but he caught my words. “And what if they break me?”

“Our Lord came to forgive, didn’t He? So you’ll be covered either way.”

His lips brushed the top of my head, then he just held me for a long, long time.

***+***

23

THE SILENT CROCODILE

It was only when I drew away from him of my own accord that he picked up the two halves of his stick, lying unnoticed beside him, and held them out to me. I took them, my heart sinking. Both the long splintered ends were snapped off, one gone completely, the other hanging by a few strands of wood.

I shot a look at his tense face. No wonder he’d got mad at Jane so easily.

“Um, this could be… difficult.”

He sighed and closed his eyes tight.

“You mean impossible, right?”

“Um…” I laid the pieces beside one another, this way and that. “Not… quite, but… Well, if I bind them back together, it’s going to be far too short… Perhaps we could replace the missing section with some rulers or something… What happened to it?”

“Just one of those things,” he said, slightly too casually.

“
What happened?
I
didn’t do it as I dashed off, did I?”

“No, no. It wasn’t your fault. It happened in the crush, that’s all. It hardly got knocked at all, it was just so delicate. So it was the boys’ fault, really.”