The first weeks of the crèche were wearying for Priya, though somewhat tempering. She had grown to like Rosa and Briney - she learned that they were content women with reserves of cheer greater than she had ever known, and quickly changed the opinion she formerly had of them, their happiness wasn’t a mask veiling exasperation, they truly did enjoy their lot.
The children wore her to the bone, especially Edith’s ear-biting fetish, and while they drove her to distraction and covered her in glues, doughs and bodily excretions, she found herself thinking of them fondly after hours, and bored Selina by regaling her with anecdotes of their doings.
She would find herself falling to sleep and comparing her new life with that of her old one. The last three years had been insane, she thought to herself as sleep coaxed her, and no one in the world could have predicted this outcome.
Who would have ever guessed I'd be looking after children? She would think, reminding herself of former associates. They would never believe it. Priya with children? Never, they would say. She’s too hard. Devoid of all emotion. She lives in the now and doesn't think of the future.
It was true, and she had always known it. She had lived for her career and striven for her family, had taken the life out of life and had wound up in the sea almost drowned.
She had often idled with the idea of starting her own family, though only to disregard the thought as inappropriate. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel the urge for a child, she felt the tug at her stomach that reminded her almost daily she was equipped for such a thing, but she would put the thoughts to the back of her mind and harden.
The crèche was somewhat of a spanner in the mechanics of that process. She found the sensation in her stomach spreading into her chest when she just sat and watched the children. She was able to resist it and push it back down at will, though the fact it was there at all bothered her. She didn’t want children. Especially in Mortehoe. Who would be her suitor?
‘One of the Briar twins? George Porter? Sean Colt?’ Rosa and Briney would present her with potential matches for her to consistently scoff at. They would laugh at all her reasons for dismissing them all. Too narcissistic, too short, shoulders too broad, nostrils too hairy, she could find anything to criticise and enflame out of proportion to justify their being unfit for purpose.
She knew they were running out of options and jested with them to not even search the bottom of the barrel by offering her Semilion or, heaven forfend, Baron.
‘Good strong lad, is Baron.’ Rosa said, perplexed. ‘Whatever’s wrong with him?’
Priya shared a look with Briney and they both started laughing.
‘What?’ Rosa demanded.
‘Oh, Rosa,’ Briney replied, ‘have you ever spoken to him?’
‘Not exactly. I’ve been served by him.’
‘He’s a tool-box minus the tools!’
‘Tool is the right word.’ Priya added.
‘He’s nice enough to me!’ Rosa said indignantly, and ended the conversation.
‘In all seriousness,’ Briney said, holding one of the boys tight as he tried to thump another, ‘why don’t you try and get yourself a bit more involved? It would make your transition here more comfortable. You spend so much time with Selina, you drink with her, you go home with her… people will start to talk.’
It was said with a smirk but Priya wondered if anything had been said before. It came to her mind that she and Selina flirted with one another in the Smuggler’s Rest, but it was just for fun. Maybe it wasn’t taken that way by the villagers. Maybe they thought that she and Selina were lesbians!
‘Oh God,’ she laughed to herself, thinking of when she and Selina had drank long into the night. ‘I’m sorry honey,’ she had said as Betty looked on, unimpressed, ‘I’m a giver not a taker.’ Had Betty put it about that she and Selina were lovers?
She smiled and shook her head at the notion.
‘Briney, do people talk already? Do they say that Selina and me are, you know? Together?’
Briney flushed. ‘Well, some do. Maybe. I don’t know.’
Priya took a piece of chalk from Edith’s mouth and told her to behave. ‘Come on, Bri, I think you do.’
‘It’s just that you’re from the outside, you know? Everything’s so bright and dazzling out there in the old-world. Women from your world are together like it’s natural.’
‘It is natural.’ Priya replied defensively, though she didn’t know why. ‘I mean, I’m not defending it, but there’s nothing wrong with it, if that’s what people choose to do.’
Briney wrinkled her nose. ‘Don’t. It’s not right. My view is if animals don't do it then it isn’t natural.’
‘Eat off the floor, do you?’ Priya said angrily. ‘Shit out in the open?’
‘Priya!’
‘This place is so backwards. The old-world might have gone to shit but at least we held on to some enlightened views.’
Briney looked blankly at her, then sighed and let her be.