Chapter Five
Deeta
I jump at the sound of Tom’s voice, and listen as he pulls himself upright from the doorjamb he’s leaning against. He comes to kneel next to me by Tarri’s bed.
“Don’t worry, Tarri. I always come back, don’t I?” He reaches out to tweak one of her dusky curls, smiling at her gently. “Come on, it’s time short people were asleep.”
He pulls the covers back around her and kisses her cheek.
“Night, Uncle Tom and Aunty Deet.”
“Night, mush,” replies Tom. He pulls me up from my sitting position on the floor, his hand warm on my arm.
“You’re freezing, Deeta, you’d better sit by the fire for a bit. I’ve got something to tell you.”
Tom hands me one of his jumpers, and I pull it on thankfully as he picks up his mug of tea. He waits, leaning on the back of Uncle Jep's chair, for me to settle myself comfortably.
I don’t tell him that it’s not just the cool air that is making me shiver. It’s the thought of my father, Tom, Pip, and Nella not coming back that’s to blame for my trembling.
“I had a little talk with Jamie. Apparently he is aware of Ralph’s feelings for Nell, and he’s trying to help.”
“I kind of thought that was what he was trying to tell me, after I considered it for a while.”
“Yes, well. Jamie, being something of a hands on man, showed a spectacular lack of tact. I told him it might help more if he didn’t try, but allowed nature to take its own course.”
“You’re right.” I nod. “He would only succeed in making Nell dislike him more.”
I look around the room toward the clock and, after taking in the time, manage to feign surprise.
“If that’s the time, I’d better go.” I stand up and kiss Uncle Jep goodnight, but as I turn to Tom he shakes his head.
“I’ll see you down.”
He opens the door and, as I pass through, says something in polish to Professor Jepsjon. We have navigated the first flight of stairs before Tom, taking hold of my arm, pulls me to a stop.
“What’s wrong, Deeta? Why did you want to get away?”
Knowing that if I talk about my fears I’ll cry, I pull away.
“I’m tired, that’s all. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He makes no move to touch me again, but looks at me for a long moment.
“You don’t have to tell me, Deeta, but don’t fob me off with a load of rubbish.”
I think I stand there looking up at him miserably for a whole minute before I start to cry. Even then he makes no move to touch me, to comfort me, because he offered once and was refused. If I want his sympathy now I’ll have to ask for it.
“What if you, Dad, Pip, and Nell don’t come back Tom? What then?”
I lean my head against his shoulder, feeling his arms move around me. we stand like that for a while before he releases me and speaks again.
“Hanky, Deeta?”
A search through my pockets turns up nothing, so Tom gives me his own. He keeps one arm flung loosely around my shoulders as we walk the rest of the way to my door.
“Get inside and get some sleep. Didn’t you hear what I told Tarri? Short people should be in bed by now, that goes for you too.”
His grin is full of camaraderie, and he pats my cheek like Uncle Jep does.
“I promise you, Deeta, we’ll all come home safe and sound.”
-------
Tom has left when I go up to make breakfast the next morning, and the children are unusually subdued. I have greenhouse duty again today, and Professor Jepsjon school to teach this morning which all the children will be attending.
So it happens that I pass the morning quite lonely, and have the uncomfortable luxury of plenty of time to dwell on my own thoughts. Despite Tom’s promise I’m still uneasy. With Nell it’s not so bad, as a woman she will be given more protection.
Tom will not.
In fact, I have an uncomfortable feeling that he will take the most dangerous assignments himself, simply as a matter of course.
The first day of Tom’s absence passes quietly. By the second day the children have recovered their bounce, and the house is rowdy until they leave to pursue more scholarly activities in the classroom. Spending most of the night worrying about the others who are ‘out’ has taken its toll on me. Before eleven o’clock is reached, I have what promises to be a blinding headache.
Having already tidied the house, washed the bedding, and baked enough food for the five thousand, I sit in Tom’s armchair with a cup of tea. The vain hope that a moment’s rest and the drink will scare my headache off is not strong, but nevertheless I pursue it.
I’m not sure how it happens, but the next thing I’m aware of is the faintly groggy feeling you get when you’ve been woken from sleep quickly. A glance at the clock tells me that forty minutes have gone by. Yet the room is still silent, with no noise to rouse me from what had obviously been a deep sleep. I stand up and meet my own eyes in the mirror above the fire place. I’m staring at myself in a dazed kind of way, when I realise that mine is not the only figure reflected in its polished surface.
I suppose it must have been the second time he walked through the room, and the first time he didn’t notice me curled up in the depths of the large arm chair. He seems quite as shocked as I am to find he’s not alone.
A full second elapses before I utter a strangled scream and leg it through the door and into the passage way. The first thing I come across is another camouflaged figure and my panic ratchets up a notch. I think of the children who, in about fifteen minutes time, will joyfully be free of the shackles of their lessons. The only way to go is up, as the two soldiers are behind me, so I run up the stairs. All the time the knowledge that I am leading the intruders towards the children, rings in my head. With the sound of pursuit hideously loud in the stairwell, coherent thought is proving difficult. I’m half way up the forth flight when I hear Dec’s jubilant voice proclaiming himself the winner of some unseen race.
“Dec, run!” My voice cracks and my throat, already sore, tightens.
Dec’s voice exclaiming above my head is cut short as he sees my pursuers. I hear the door onto the stairwell open and close above me, and a moment later something hits the floor behind me with a dull thud. A cheer reverberates around the walls.
Dec, bless him, hadn’t run away when I told him to. Instead he’d brought a large book from the school room above, and hurled it at one of my attackers. As that soldier is, at this very moment, out cold on the steps, I guess his aim must have been pretty accurate.
The last of the men is felled by some sort of encyclopaedia, this time lobbed by Roydon. I reach the landing they are standing on, completely out of breath. Roydon and Dec seize a hand each, and drag me after Ricky. Ricky has Tarri in his arms and Carris’ hand is tucked in his.
From the direction in which they are going I think their destination is Ralph’s house. Unfortunately we keep running into the strangers that have breached the building, and our efforts bring us almost full circle. We come to a standstill in one of the rooms with a connecting door, and pause breathlessly.
“Who are they?” whispers Roydon.
“I don’t know, but they have some pretty neat kit,” answers Ricky. He relinquishes Tarri into Carris’s arms, and places his ear to the door. “Ssh — someone’s coming!”
Ricky steps back a little from the door, and we all wait expectantly. Sure enough it begins to open slowly. Ricky waits until it is almost half way open before he kicks it shut with all his might. We turn and run though the connecting door, in to the room on the other side, and through to the corridor beyond. We’re so tantalisingly close to Ralph’s house.
How it happens I hardly know, but as Dec passes the school room he’s dragged kicking and screaming through the door by unseen hands. I scream and pull on the handle but it won’t move. I realise they must have locked it behind them. Ralph’s door is just a little further on, an
d I grab Ricky’s arm.
“Ricky, take the children to Ralph and stay with him.”
“But…”
I don’t know what he had been going to say, but he stops abruptly and nods.
As I turn and run down the hallway I hear the children banging on the Clark’s door.
There is no sign of Dec when I enter the school room, but from the knocked over chairs it’s obvious that there has been a struggle. I run through the next two rooms desperately and hear, in the distance, Dec’s voice raised in protest. I burst into the corridor to find him struggling madly with one of the camouflaged soldiers. Picking up a stool from the room I’ve just come through, I use it to hit the man around the head. He sinks to the floor moaning, and I take Dec’s hand. We run down the passage, around the corner and up the steps, slap bang into more of the soldiers.
Instinctively I push Dec behind me. Below their visors I see derision in the men’s smirks, and when they step forwards they pull us apart easily. Trying to tear away from the vice like grip on my arm, I pull my knee up into the soldier’s stomach. His smirk changes quickly to a snarl of pain, and my struggles become more desperate. I manage to free an arm long enough to punch him in the face. I must admit to a feeling of gratification as blood begins to trickle from his nose.
There is blinding pain as his fist connects with my face, slapping it sharply sideways and causing me to lurch backwards. I fall to the floor, and it’s only Dec screaming my name that brings me groggily to my feet. I am rewarded by a merciless grip on my arm, forcing it behind me and well up my back as the soldier drives me heavily into the wall. I slip to the floor weakly, again hearing Dec’s voice calling to me. The sound grows gradually fainter, until my eyes close and I hear nothing.
------
My first conscious thought is that my head might split in two. Someone immeasurably kind is bathing my face with cold water. The nausea brought on by its fiery hotness fades a little, and I open my eyes experimentally. Uncle Jep sits next to me, and over his shoulder I can see Ralph. He is holding Tarri in his arms, and Carris clings tightly to his leg. Both girls have been crying.
“Be still, little one.”
“Uncle Jep, Dec...”
Professor Jepsjon shakes his head.
“You must be silent, Deetina. We could not find Dec: did you?”
Tears well up in my eyes, and I feel them spilling over in scalding droplets down my cheeks.
“They took him, Uncle Jep… I couldn’t stop them, I tried...”
“Ssh, Deetina. If you did not stop them, neither did we.”
“The other kids?”
“Ralph kept them safe.”
I close my eyes.
Dec gone… It doesn’t seem possible, yet I’d seen it with my own eyes. What did they want with him? If only Tom were here…
Tom.
What would he say when he came home and found Dec gone? The nausea that had receded comes back in full force.
“She looks too pale.”
My mother’s voice is quiet, she’s obviously talking to Uncle Jep. I hadn’t noticed her presence in the room, but the knowledge that she’s here is a comfort. I feel a warm blanket spread over me, and realise that I’m shivering.
“Perhaps something stronger than tea?” asks the professor.
“I think so,” returns my mother softly. “How do you feel, darling?”
I can’t really think of anything but the fact that Dec is gone, yet I’m aware that my face is bruised and swollen, and that I can’t move my right arm.
“I hurt.”
“If I ever lay my hands on the swine that did this… ” Her voice, filled with suppressed fury, is suspended with tears.
“What else did they take?” I ask.
My mother doesn’t answer. When I shift my head painfully to look at her, it’s to see a worried frown has settled on her features.
“They didn’t take anything else.”
My mind dumbly seems unable to except this fact, and dwells on it stupidly without really taking it in.
They came for Dec… why?
My mother is talking soothingly in the background, but her words don’t penetrate the fog around my brain.
Why?
The question, neon lit and flashing, pushes all other thoughts from my brain. I must ask out loud as Ralph answers my question, his voice rough with emotion.
“I don’t know, Deet, I just don’t know.”
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Deeta, not now. You need to sleep… no don’t argue with me. I know it will be hard, but you have to be brave.”
Uncle Jep arrives with a steaming cup.
“Come, Deetina, my precious one. I have made you a hot toddy; I know how much you dislike drinking whisky neat.”
He slips his arm around me, pulling me upright so that I can rest my head on his shoulder. Carefully avoiding my hurt arm, he holds the mug to my lips. Fire courses down my throat, and straight into my veins.
“Uncle Jep,” I gasp hoarsely. “That must have been five parts whisky to water!”
“But in a moment you will feel much better, my dear.”
He turns to my mother.
“You will leave her with me, will you not? It would be a pity to move her.”
My mother agrees after a few moments that it would be the most sensible option, even though it makes it impossible for her to stay with me.
“I wish my husband were here.”
“If it comes to that, I wish that my boy were here,” answers Uncle Jep.
The whisky is beginning to take effect, and I feel my eyelids drooping. As I hear this whispered confidence, I struggle and mutter tiredly.
“Tom will be so angry with me…”
The next second I have fallen into a fitful sleep.
-------
I wake up next to hear the pleasant sound of the fire crackling merrily in the fire place. The room is in darkness except for its orange glow, shadows flickering in and out of focus. My face, which has been steadily throbbing, is even more achy than ever. I stir restlessly and find that my arm is no longer numb; it has come painfully to life. I moan softly.
“Are you in much pain, Deetina?”
Uncle Jep materialises from the shadows to stand at my side. I take his proffered hand gratefully and hold on to it tight.
“Uncle Jep.”
Somehow I can’t say any more and, though it is immeasurably painful, I find myself crying again. With his free hand he brings a cool cloth against the burning heat of my face. It brings blissful relief and I tell him so. He stays silent for a long time before hesitantly speaking.
“You are worried that Tomasz will blame you for what happened to Dec, aren’t you, Deeta?” His voice holds a worried inflection. “He would not be so unjust, how could you think that of him?”
“But, Uncle Jep, I was there… I saw it all and I still couldn’t stop them!”
“Deetina, that is precisely why he will never blame you. One cannot do the impossible; you could not have saved Dec any more than he could save himself.”
The cool cloth is again pressed gently against my face, and Uncle Jep's other hand strokes my hair lightly.
“You wish to tell me of it?”
“There isn’t much to tell, all I remember is hazy. I know that there were a lot of them; we kept bumping into them as we tried to run away. I don’t think… wait! Dec and Roydon knocked two out in the stairwell!” I remember.
“Yes, Roydon said, but they were not there when we searched for them.”
“Who do you think they were?”
“It is not for me to say,” answers Uncle Jep.
No, I suppose it’s not for anyone to say. I watch the firelight casting dancing lights over the ceiling. More than anything I wish that Tom were here. If he was I know that things wouldn’t seem so desperate; Tom would think of something. Yet I can’t help thinking that it’s unfair to expect him to fix everything, it seems far too broken for that.
/>
I thought that things could not get worse; that in losing Dec I had reached a low that could not be surpassed.
I was wrong.
Tom didn’t come home that night, as he had been scheduled to do. The Guard didn’t return to the compound the next night, or the night after that. Those empty days brought anxiety and new fear. Perhaps Dec was lost forever, and somehow my father, Nell, Tom, Philip, and the others had been lost too.
Clare was a curiously absent figure from my bedside, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me the reason why. My own mind was tortured by the same thoughts that were torturing her. I, however, could only imagine the despair she must be feeling at the thought that she had lost the man with whom she was to spend her life.