To See The Light Return. Sophie Galleymore Bird
got to be joking, I’ve only just finished breakfast!’
‘Too bad, got to make your quota and you’ve only a couple more days to go.’
Wearily, Primrose heaved herself up on her elbows and tried to get comfortable, pulling limply at pillows.
‘Hear, you let me do that, you concentrate on them calories.’ Dorcas shoved her forward, or as far forward as her belly would allow, and fussed with the pillows. Once she was satisfied they were flumped enough, Primrose was pushed back and the tray table wheeled over her lap. ‘Now girl, you get stuck in.’
Primrose sighed, picked up the fork and stared glumly at the pile of glistening off-cuts from pork chops, bacon fat, remnants from slices of white bread, burger chunks, bits of pasta and left-over curry that filled the basin. Cunningly hidden were a few of the things Dorcas knew she loved; roast potatoes, sausages, nubs of cheese.
Dorcas saw her expression and wheedled, ‘Get that lot down and I’ll bring you some chocolate with your bedtime pudding and hot milk.’
Chocolate. Creamy, sweet, melting chocolate.
Primrose shovelled a bit of pork fat onto her fork and into her mouth. Dorcas poured out a drink from the bottle on the bedside table and handed it to her. Sweet fizz bubbled up and made everything taste the same.
On the other side of the room, Alise belched.
‘What about when one of them dies?’
‘Ever heard of foie gras?’ Primrose could almost hear Dorcas’s sly wink. ‘It’ll go down a storm across the water.’ Shrieks of laughter met this remark, and cries of, ‘You are terrible.’
A shudder rippled slowly across her body and made the old bedsprings creak. They thought she couldn’t hear them joking, Dorcas and Ivy, the new girl taken on to help look after them, folding sheets in the corridor outside the room. Or – and the thought made Primrose sweat more than the food she was failing to digest or the humid air in the room – they knew and didn’t care. Who cares if the livestock can hear the farmer whetting the knife?
Well, she cared.
It hadn’t been like this when she first came to the farm. She was more mobile then and wouldn’t have stood for it. Now standing for anything had become a struggle and she had to lie down all the time, rolled from side to side to have her sores treated. On a good day. If Dorcas was busy she forgot, and Primrose was left in a peculiar state of numb agony from the places where her arse and back rubbed against rough sheets.
When she first arrived, she was served actual meals, served up as separate courses, on different plates, like in some fancy hotel from an old magazine. But as demand grew and Dorcas took on more ‘guests’, she started to complain about all the washing up, and began serving their food in basins, then the larger washing up bowls, everything thrown in together like swill. On days Primrose really couldn’t eat any more, when her system backed up and she vomited helplessly over herself and the bedclothes, Dorcas screamed about the mess, but mostly about the waste of good food, threatening that she should make her eat it again. If Primrose cried, Dorcas said she should let her starve, her family as well. Once she calmed down, she brought extra helpings of gritty ice cream to soothe Primrose’s throat, patted her on the head.
That night, after Alise finished masturbating and lay snoring and grunting in her sleep, Primrose had violent spasms of indigestion. She cried out for Dorcas, who was either out or downstairs in the kitchen with the CD player on, or just pretending she couldn’t hear. Primrose had heard Dorcas through the door, complaining about it, so she knew some of the others would let go in the bed sometimes, the effort of getting to the bathroom or onto a pot just too much for them. I’m not quite there yet, thought Primrose, I can’t lie here and shit myself.
She peered over the side of the bed, leaning as far as she dared without tipping out, but couldn’t see the pot. Agnes or Ivy hadn’t brought it back. She would have to go to the bathroom, three doors down.
It had been over a week since she left her room, and the last time she got properly out of bed was to sit in the chair while Dorcas stripped the sheets and sprayed the mattress with disinfectant: ‘Just in case.’ For a moment, remembering that, the girl felt like shitting herself just to spite the old cow; a flood of anger gave her the energy to move, slow and lumbering, inching across the mattress to the side of the bed and heaving herself over it, onto feet and knees and hips that protested at the strain.
After putting in a handful of sawdust and replacing the lid over the stinking contents of the communal bucket, Primrose shuffled back out into the corridor in her worn slippers, and along to the head of the stairs. The house was silent, not even a sound from the kitchen where the night nurses – guards really – could usually be heard complaining about their luck at cards as Dorcas quietly and expertly stacked the deck.
It wasn’t until Primrose was making her slow way back to bed that the thought occurred to her, a thought that had tried to surface before, that fear had pushed down before it could emerge fully. She didn’t have to stay here. Some of the others had signed contracts but she had been too young when she first arrived, and Dorcas had neglected the paperwork when she turned sixteen; legally, Primrose could leave. She stood at the top of the stairs, let the idea take shape.
It was terrifying. What would she do then? Where could she go? Her parents wouldn’t take her back, they would return her to Dorcas for the sake of their weekly stipend and their pride in doing their bit. She wobbled, literally, and had to hang on to the banister for support.
But she hated it here. Not just the force feeding and farming, but the boredom, the lack of privacy. The loneliness, the discomfort; the knowledge there would never be anything else other than maybe a new book or magazine for her to read. An ex-librarian, reading was about the only occupation Dorcas encouraged besides jigsaw puzzles or cards, reasoning that it was unlikely to consume too many calories. Her library had been the last in Devon, closing when Dorcas became farm Matron. Most others shut down before Devolution, victim of austerity cuts according to her old teacher, Mrs Prendaghast. Just another thing from history to Primrose’s generation; another thing they couldn’t have.
Much of what she read mystified her, particularly the pre-Devolution magazines. The ‘real-life’ stories were so shocking; lurid and violent. Was that really how people behaved back then? And the apparently famous people in the pictures looked so odd: both sexes with shiny faces that looked like they had been inflated, the women with skinny bodies and huge boobs or bottoms. Or they were fat, like her, in which case they were ashamed, or ‘fighting the flab’, or ridiculed for not being ashamed.
Which made Primrose feel really bad, like she should feel guilty about her weight, though she had no control over it. She realised not much had changed. The staff, the occasional visitors, all looked at her like there was something wrong with her.
It could be like that, out there, if she left. Should she take the chance?
If she stood here much longer she would either unnerve herself completely, or else a night guard would come and bully her back to bed. Once there it would be too hard to climb out again and she would stay, getting fatter and fatter until she couldn’t move if she wanted to. One day they would cart her out on a stretcher that would need six men to carry it, for disposal, like she’d seen happen before.
She had to go now, while she almost had the nerve. There was no point going back to her room to get anything, she’d worn nothing but voluminous gowns or nightdresses for years, and luckily today was a nightdress day so at least her bum wouldn’t be hanging out of a hospital gown. She’d just have to hope her slippers would hold up, and her fat would keep her insulated if it was cold tonight.
Gripping the banister, she carefully lowered herself onto the next step, then one more, making it down to the ground floor in only a few minutes, her heart palpitating so her breath came high and thready and she had to rest at the bottom. Now there was only the hallway and the front door between her and freedom.
For one horrible moment, she thought the front door was locked, but