Chapter Eighteen
Deeta
I don’t know how much later it is that we finally finish our plans. Strangely enough we didn’t even discuss the possibility of escape. We both knew we’d never make it past the great hall, and we couldn’t desert Dec. In any case; all the avenues of this mystery seem to lead here, so maybe here we’ll find the answers that have proven so elusive.
It’s strange to leave Jan and go to my own room. I’ve always shared a bedroom with at least one of my sisters; the idea of being alone is unsettling. I remember to go down stairs and lock the door, but find I needn’t have bothered. Ryder Andak has already locked us in.
As I step into the now dark bedroom, the curtains around the bed billow out towards me. I realise there must be a window open. I close it and the curtains before turning on the light, and then set off to explore the bathroom.
The only word I can think of that in anyway comes near to describing it, is opulent. In one corner there is a huge tiled shower. In the other, extending out into the bay window, is a walk in bath. Every surface is highly polished marble.
“Deeta!” Jan’s voice calls out, and we almost collide in the door way. “Did you ever see anything like it?”
“It’s pretty impressive,” I admit.
“Impressive? I could spend my entire life in that bath!”
“Well I’m not sure about that, but I fully intend to spend an hour or so in there.”
“Talking of which I’d better get back; I left the taps going. Hot water comes out of the tap, Deet, as hot is if it came from a kettle! G‘night!”
She begins to whistle as she closes the door behind her, and I smile at her renewed positivity. It amazing how much better we feel now that we have a plan; it’s as though a weight has been lifted from our shoulders.
Despite the fact that having a purpose has given us a measure of calm, both of us are strangely nervous of all the civilisation around us. Like some ancient tribe on discovering fire; we’re intrigued and fearful at the same time, half believing it’s all some form of witchcraft.
I shake my head over the whole situation, trying to push everything but the night’s rest before me out of my mind.
I feel a moment’s hesitation when I begin to fill the bath; all my life I have lived with water restrictions. Three inches of water was the absolute maximum for a bath in the Clark tribe. We had to heat every drop up in a kettle over the fire, so we were always secretly relieved to have an excuse to stop. With the realisation that it is Andak resources that I’d be wasting comes a flagrant disregard for economy. I fill the huge bath to within four inches of the top.
In the end I don’t think that I spend much more than fifteen minutes immersed in the hot water. After washing my hair and lying back, I find the battered feeling of stiffness ease away leaving me tired and limp. I begin to long for the cool sheets and comfort of bed.
There’s a toothbrush in the stand by the sink; blue with a white stripe. I hesitate knowing it must be Tom’s. After carefully searching the cupboard above the sink and not finding another, I decide that he won’t mind the imposition of me borrowing it.
Wrapped in a towel as big as a double sheet, which somewhat impedes my progress, I find myself standing in front of the wardrobe. Taking a deep breath I reach out and open the door. As I expected it’s filled with Tom’s neatly folded clothes, and I hastily grab a shirt and close the door with a bang.
I feel as though I have somehow invaded Tom’s privacy. The thought strikes me as silly because I have washed, ironed, and put Tom’s clothes away for years at home. Yet this is different. This is something that he has shut me out of. He’s never spoken of this place, and I feel as though I’m being pushed into his life here. I feel nosey somehow; that I’m encroaching on his personal business.
You do understand, don’t you? I’m worried that I’m not explaining myself properly.
“Sorry, Tom, but my need is greater than yours at the minute,” I whisper softly to myself.
The sheets of the bed are smooth and cool as I slide between them, and I pull the covers around me. Oddly I feel surrounded by the sensation of safety I always feel in Tom’s presence. It’s as though here in this room Tom has left something of himself, something familiar, strong, and reassuring. I badly need that reassurance in this place filled with strange people who I’m too scared to trust.
It’s surprisingly easy to drift off to sleep.
-------
“Deeta!”
The hoarse whisper is so close to my ear that I feel my curls stirred by her breath. I open my eyes groggily, propping myself up on my elbow.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
Jan’s hair tumbles in riotous disorder over the shoulders of the over large shirt she is wearing.
“There’s someone downstairs!”
“What!” Immediately I’m upright in bed. “Is it Ryder?”
“Not Ryder.”
I slide out of the sheets, and creep over to the door with Jan close behind me. From down stairs we hear an intermittent clattering, interspersed by long periods of quiet.
“Janny, pass me that vase.”
She picks up the heavy glass ornament and passes it to me. I feel slightly braver with it in my hand, and slowly we begin to descend the stairs. By the time we have reached the bottom step I’ve ascertained the direction that the noise is coming from.
The door of the kitchen is slightly ajar. We move towards it, our feet soundless on the tiled floor. I’m not entirely sure what we expect to find as we peep cautiously around the door, but it’s not the vision that greets our eyes.
The beautifully dressed woman pauses in her task and looks up at us, an easy and welcoming smile on her face.
“Oh, hello! I thought you would sleep longer than that; I was just making you breakfast in bed.” Her voice is soft and friendly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to help me out, Rye’s such a cad; he told me that the blond one was Deeta. Now I see why he was grinning; it doesn’t help me much does it?”
“I’m Deeta. This is Jan, my sister.”
“Well it’s very nice to meet you both.”
She smiles again, and I notice that she isn’t as young as I’d taken her for at first. I would place her somewhere in her mid forties.
“Perhaps you’d like me to take that vase, it looks heavy?”
“What? Oh, yes… sorry. Only I thought…”
“Don’t worry, dear; it’s quite plain what you thought. If you don’t mind me saying so, it shows a distinct presence of mind. My name’s Mari.”
“You’re Dec’s mother!”
I could bite my tongue the second the words are out of my mouth. Have I given away something we are supposed to be hiding? Her smile vanishes, and sadness envelops her.
“It’s okay, dear,” she assures me, seeing my consternation. ‘Rye told me everything.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“Don’t worry.” She turns from us, and walks back towards the pots on the cooker. “If you sit down I’ll pour you some coffee; your breakfast should be ready in just a moment. I was going to suggest we dine alfresco, but I don’t think that the hedges are quite high enough.”
Her smile is pointed, and looking down I remember the shirt that falls half way between my thigh and knee. Jan and I exchange embarrassed glances, and try vainly to pull them further down our legs.
Mari places our breakfast before us, and sits down in one of the vacant chairs with a cup of coffee. She’s discarded her apron, revealing a cream dress fitted to the waist and flaring out to the floor. Around the hem there is a thick band of embroidery in red, orange, and yellow hues.
“So… Ryder has asked me to take you under my wing.” She smiles at our startled faces.
“You make it sound as though we need protection,” responds Jan.
“That’s because you do. The second you came here you became fair game to any single man. If your captor doesn’t claim you, then any other unatta
ched man can. Ryder brought you here putting you under his protection; no man will try for you all the while you remain within that safety.”
“I see. Isn’t it a bit greedy; to lay claim to two women at once?” asks Jan drily.
“Very greedy, especially when the two girls in question are as beautiful as you two are. However, Ryder’s a blood Andak, so he can do what he likes. Besides, the men respect him too much to question his activities.”
“You mean that the girls that are captured are… well… kinda… shared out?” I ask.
“What a barbaric idea!” laughs Mari. “I’m saying that in our tribe men outnumber women seven to one, so they get kind of excited when new blood is brought in from outside. They’ll court and impress you just the same as any other man would; in fact they try harder to be a gentleman, knowing as they do that the girl will have the pick of the bunch.”
“That’s novel, in our tribe it was the other way round; more women than men.”
“Just as unsuitable,” declares Mari.
“Why is there such a big difference in the numbers?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s because of the army. The army was started before the crash and made up of men.”
“But the crash was thirty years ago!”
“Yes, I know. My esteemed father-in-law, Paul Andak, rounded up all the male orphans he needed in the years after the crash, and put them into training for the army. I think that it was the one and only time that he didn’t provide for all the angles. Or maybe he just didn’t care about the difficulty there would be in the future.”
It’s strange to hear Tom’s sentiments echoed by this stranger.
“Now your trouble is going to come from a different place; the women of the tribe. To be more precise; the young, unmarried women.”
“What do you mean?” There is a hint of trepidation in my voice.
“You’ve walked slap bang into a political hot bed of intrigue and string pulling.”
“Why?”
“Because every woman in this tribe is raised with a certain goal; to marry a blood Andak. They are willing to go to lengths as astonishing as they are absurd to achieve that goal. Their antics are getting more desperate because there are only six brothers left available, and it will be a few years before the next generation are old enough to chase. Two of those brothers look as though they’ve already chosen, three look as though they’ll stay bachelors forever, and the last one is never around long enough to make any impact on. Now Ryder has selected two girls and placed them in my care. To an outsider it looks as though he’s going to settle with one of you, making you two public enemy number one. Plus…”
“There’s more?”
“Well… it’s Nova. She looks on Ryder as her own personal property, and she will not take being jilted again well.”
My mind goes back to the great hall and the beautiful girl who had drooled all over Ryder. Hadn’t he called her Nova? I’m sure he had, it’s such an unusual name I can’t be mistaken.
“Nova was jilted; by whom?” I can’t help the amused, slightly catty interest I feel, even though I’m rather ashamed of it.
“Nova is the daughter of a French diplomat and a film star; in here that makes her royalty — of a kind. But there are a lot of people who are from that kind of royalty in here, I should know. My father was a famous singer and my mother a model. Both of them paid for the privilege of retreating into the safety of this compound when the crash happened. But we’re straying from the point; a few years ago Nova and Val had a thing going—”
“Who’s Val?” asks Jan.
“He’s one of Paul Andak’s children; wife number four’s eldest son. Anyway, one of the guards brought home a girl from a skirmish called Charlotte Brennan, and within six months she and Val were engaged. Needless to say Nova was livid. There hadn’t been an understanding between her and Val, but she had taken it for granted that she would be Mrs. Val Andak sometime in the near future.”
“What happened?”
I never thought that hearing the life stories of people I’ve never even heard of before could be so interesting.
“Nova threw a hissy fit. Seriously, she freaked out and turned into some sort of banshee. She made Charlotte’s life miserable. Don’t get me wrong, Val shielded her all he could, but he couldn’t be there for everything, and Nova was relentless. In the end Charlotte couldn’t take it, and she broke off the engagement.” Mari hesitates. “It changed Val, it made him… well, you’ll see soon enough.”
Mari looks sheepish suddenly, as though she only just realises that she has disclosed a lot of personal information to two people she doesn’t even know. In the uncomfortable silence that follows she smoothes her hand over her elaborate chignon. It draws my attention to her beautiful black hair.
“You see now why you need protection?” she asks at length. ”Ryder has put you in an awkward position where everyone will assume…” Her voice trails off suggestively. “You’ll have all the trouble of being courted by an Andak, with none of the advantages. Don’t blame Rye too much: his hand was forced.”
We sit in silence while we finish breakfast, and then Mari speaks again.
“After you’ve dressed we have a lot to do; I’ll take you into town.”
“Town? What for?” I ask.
“To have you fitted for some clothes, of course. You don’t want to meet up with Nova without some kind of Dutch courage.”
“I thought Dutch courage came out of a bottle?” asks Jan, her eyebrows raised.
“I thought this kind might be safer, we do want you to be able to stand upright, after all.”
“Will there be a lot of people in town?” My voice is hesitant as I remember the thriving mass of people in the great hall that we’d passed through. I’d never seen so many people all in one place before; the idea of being in a crowd that big again makes me feel nauseous.
“Yes. Oh, I see! Rye told me you were a little short on clothes, so I stopped off in town yesterday after he left me and ordered you some dresses for this morning; they’re in the sitting room.”
At first I just stare at her, wondering what she’s talking about. Then I realise that she thinks that I’m reluctant to be seen in public in my tattered old pyjamas. I shake my head. As if, at a moment like this, I could care anything for what I’m wearing! It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that there are plenty of clothes in the wardrobes upstairs, but I bite my lip.
Mari has been kind to us; I don’t want to hurt her feelings. Also she’s Dec’s mother, and if she takes a dislike to me, I might never see him again.
It’s the first time I’ve entered the sitting room, and I find it’s a very large and airy. At one end French doors lead on to a patio, and around the ceiling there is elaborate coving picked out in gold leaf. The hangings are cream and yellow with a thin gold stripe, and cream sofas with fluffy feather cushions flank a huge marble fire place. Strewn across these sofas are several boxes of various shapes and sizes.
“If we carry them upstairs you can try them on and see if they fit.”
“What about the kitchen, shouldn’t we tidy…” I begin.
“No don’t worry about that; Nan will see to it,” assures Mari breezily.
“Who’s Nan?”
“The maid, of course.” Mari pushes open the door of the bedroom I slept in last night, and spreads the parcels on the bed. With an almost child like zeal she begins opening them, starting with the two biggest boxes. From the first she pulls a powder pink dress in chiffon with a scooped neck and fitted bodice.
“This one’s for you, Jan, and this one is yours, Deeta.”
With a flourish she pulls the turquoise dress from its cocoon of tissue paper. It’s fitted to the thigh and flairs out to the floor with a train at the back. I notice that the neck is high but the back dips low, with an extra fold of material that falls in a cowl effect. It’s very beautiful and, despite my earlier thoughts, I can’t help reaching out to touch it. I can hardly bare the idea of r
uining something so lovely by wearing it; somehow it just doesn’t seem right.
Mari pushes me into the bathroom to change and I stand in the middle of the room, cradling the dress in my arms, wondering what to do. It’s of a beautiful quality and I notice that at some point it has been altered, making it a lot smaller at the waist. The thought that it must be a hand-me-down makes me feel better, and I pull it on and wrestle with the zip. A light tap on the door and Mari’s muffled voice comes from the other side.
“Do you need some help with the fastener?”
I step out into the bedroom with a word of thanks, and Mari zips me up. I’m rather surprised to find that the fit is perfect. Jan walks in from the other room, the circular skirt of her dress hiked up over one arm. From her face I can tell that she’s lamenting just how uncomfortable these clothes are.
“They fit beautifully.”
Mari admires us from all angles, giving the fabric a shake here and a smooth there.
“How did you know our sizes?” asks Jan. There is something in her voice; intrigue mixed with amusement.
“Rye told me,” answers Mari.
“How did he know?” I cross my arms over my chest in embarrassment.
“He has a good eye,” she laughs. “I’ve never known him to be wrong.”
“A man of many talents.” Jan’s voice is dry, but I detect something else hidden within its timber.
Admiration?
Exasperation?
Derision?
Maybe a little of all; it’s as though against her will she is strangely impressed.
“Yes…I suppose so.”
Mari is hesitant. I don’t think she knows quite how to take Jan; she’s unsure of her, maybe even a little wary. She looks from one to the other of us for a moment, and then clears her throat.
“Yes… well… anyway, we have to get moving; the car is outside.
-------
I’m not sure what I had expected, but travelling in the car I try to work out everything in my mind.
It’s all so strange, like a dream. Then again maybe nightmare would be a more accurate description. Yesterday morning I had been queuing in the Marshall compound for my rations, meeting Catalina, and trying to sort out the whole muddled mystery of Tom’s disappearance.
For a second my mind freezes, cold and deadened. I have to force myself to think, to move my thoughts onward away from the hurt, but when finally they do shift I wish that they hadn’t.
I can’t believe the pain. It isn’t like the pain you read about in books; it isn’t a fiery ache that threatens to burn me up. It’s different, numbing, creeping coldly over me and leaving me dazed. I feel empty and hopeless, depressed and so, so sad. It’s a grief that cannot be expressed.
I think of my father, of how much I wish he was here now to give me guidance and to tell me what to do. I wish I had him to confide in. I wish that I could tell him the things that plague me, the worries, doubts, and fears. Jan and I talk about all that’s happening, but we are both as lost as each other. Like that scripture in the Bible about blind guides. That’s how this feels; as though we’re both guiding each other through a maze of only half realised intrigue. With both of us in the dark, how can we navigate the hidden pitfalls?
Dad would tell me, he would explain and show me the things to do. He would leave nothing hidden, but would tell me all that was in his heart. He would be completely open with me.
Strange, I used to think that Tom was open with me. It’s only now that I see the truth; that it was me who was open with him, and that Tom always held most of himself in reserve from me.
I don’t know how this is happening; how can I be so far away from the people I love most? I don’t even know what has happened to them. Why is it that, even now, when I know why Tom did what he did and can attribute the noblest motives to his actions, why does it still hurt so much? Why is it that, when I know how hard it must have been for him all these years, I still have only one truly overriding emotion? A twisted, irrational and, in the grand scheme of things, totally unimportant and selfish thought.
How could he leave us?
Why could he leave us?
I don’t doubt that he is right in what he is doing; Tom always does the right thing. I just don’t understand why it was possible for him to walk away. Why wasn’t it just too much to ask of him? I feel my throat tighten, choking me, because I know the answer; I’ve known it all along. It’s because Tom is strong; physically, mentally, and emotionally tough. If something is right then he’ll do it, even if it’s hard or if it means that in some way he’ll lose out. He’ll do it, and what’s more he’ll do it with alacrity; he won’t wait around hoping the problem will just go away.
On the one hand I’m immeasurably proud of him. On the other I can’t help a tiny, half smothered, wish that he was a little weaker. It is an unworthy feeling that I’m ashamed of.
Where are you all?
What are you doing?
Are you safe?
The questions are left unspoken; there is no one to answer them.