The Carhullan Army

their clothing, seeing them undressed, showering, or defecating near the foxholes we had dug. I felt as unselfconscious around them as I ever had. I knew them intimately, elementally, almost as well as I knew myself. And I understood that my life would depend on them when we attacked Rith.
    We walked towards the tarn, ran a circuit of its glinting granite edges, and then followed the dry-stone walls as they descended into the valley, keeping a distance from each other, communicating with hand gestures. Scouting with them had become second nature and I was used to this procedure, but it had not been vested with immediate purpose or consequence until that day. It felt different. It felt essential and important. The adrenalin made me tense and sharp, and I was glad to have something other than Shruti’s absence to think about. I knew that after months of training, we were finally being mobilised and activated. It was sudden and it was a difficult prospect, not how we had expected to commence with the plan, but we were all keener and quicker over the rough ground because of it.
    There was no sign of the couple anywhere. They had several hours’ head start and were perhaps as far as the reservoir if they had been heading to Blackrigg in search of someone to contact, or were following the overgrown tarmac roads further into the district. We continued down into Vaughsteele. The village was almost submerged by bushes, creepers and rhododendron. Wild dog roses were out already, vying for space in the earth. After the barren expanses of the fells, the landscape of heathers and bracken, the valley’s green interior looked overdressed. The birds flitting between the forked twigs were red-beaked and unrecognisable. I checked each abandoned cottage, forcing the doors and windows if they were locked, and moving rapidly through the damp musty rooms. In each of the houses I put my hand into the grate of the fireplace to feel for heat, smuts still alive from a fire the previous night. They were all cold.
    Part of me could not blame them for trying to get away. Jackie had offered us few choices within her scheme, and Chloe did not have the stomach for conflict. Nor did she want to leave the fells. It was obvious that Martyn would have been happy to remain in the mountains, eking out an existence; catching fish, growing turnips and cutting firewood, living like a pauper, and remaining independent and Unofficial until that status too was revoked. I was not without sympathy. But in my gut I knew what they had done was small-minded, and inexcusable. I knew they had failed to see the importance of Jackie’s operation.
    We circled the village a final time and made our way back to Carhullan via the long southern route. We found the two of them sitting behind a small hummock, leaning close together. One of Chloe’s boots had been taken off. Martyn had his arm around her. She was weeping softly. He looked up as we approached. ‘She’s twisted her ankle,’ he said. ‘She can’t walk any further.’ His eyes were glassy and disconnected. I could see that any determination he had had was spent. Corinne and Nnenna left to find Jackie while I waited with Lillian. Martyn crooned to Chloe, soothing her, and after a few minutes she became quiet and seemed to be asleep on his shoulder. Nobody spoke. On the banks of the grassland all around us were small orange flowers. I stared down at Chloe’s white foot, thrust out in front of her, until it looked like something other. Until it was abhorrent, and did not seem human.
    An hour later I heard the dull thump of hooves. Jackie rode up behind us. The pony was lathered with sweat and looked exhausted. She wheeled it round on the spot and then dismounted. ‘Go back to the farm,’ she said to us. ‘I need to speak to them alone. Go on now.’ Chloe was crying again, and cowered against her husband. Lillian hung back but I walked off, and after a few moments she followed me.
    As we were neared the ridge, I heard two gunshots. The sound echoed at a distance, the rip of its tail left long around the hills, but it was unmistakable. Lillian had stopped dead, and was rooted to the spot. Her hands were linked at the back of her head, her elbows almost touching in front of her face, and I could not make out the cast of her features. I walked on again. By the time we returned to the compound she was composed, but for the rest of that day there was a short lag between what was said to her and her responses.