The Carhullan Army

again. I would not be fed anything else that stuck in my throat.
    Maybe when he woke, Andrew would guess the truth – that all the silences, all the tensions, had been leading to something like this. That it went past upset over the new rule of law, the housing conditions, the uterine regulator that had been inserted. He would remember all the arguments, just as I was thinking of them now, hearing the echo of our raised voices.
    ‘Why the hell would you want to bring a baby into all this mess anyway, even if your number came up for it?’ he would ask me, each time I scowled at the hair-thin line of wires resting between my legs and said I wished I could just pull it out and be rid of it. ‘I mean where’s the problem, really? You’re still a young woman. This won’t go on forever.’ ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ I would tell him. ‘It’s not you, is it? It’s never you.’ ‘Never me what?’ he’d ask. ‘Never men, you mean? Look, you know it’s just a practical thing! There’s no conspiracy here. Can’t you focus on what really matters? You slope around town when you could be volunteering for overtime and getting us a few more perks. Fucking hell, this country is in bits and you’re obsessing over your maternal rights! Where are your priorities?’
    I would try to explain my side, the legitimacy of my grievances, and I would fail. I felt that if I could just have some space to think clearly I would be able to find the right words, and convince him, bring him back some way from the direction he was heading. But he could not comprehend such petty complaints in the face of greater issues. And I knew in a way that he was right. There were desperate priorities. Everything was at stake. At times I began to doubt my own mind.
    Every day I’d woken and told myself to concentrate on being optimistic. But I’d felt like an animal wanting to lash out, wanting to scratch and maul. Sometimes Andrew would catch me looking his way, and then he’d ask why I hated him so much. I had no reply. In the end, past the practical exchange of timetables and supplies, we had not talked. I made no more confidences, said nothing provocative. He did not try to touch me. And we lived in a state of unhappy peace. After I was spot-checked in the cruiser, once they had finally let me go, I walked to the top of the Beacon Hill and sat through the night in the tower, holding my knees and listening to the bark and howl of the feral packs below. When I arrived home in the morning I said nothing. Andrew stood up from the chair in which he had been sitting waiting, pushed past me, and went to the refinery.
    Maybe today, I thought, some kind of intuition would tell him that our end of the building was even quieter and darker than usual, as if a genuine departure had occurred. He’d ask the family in the other quarter if they’d seen me, and they would say no. At some point he’d open my drawer in the shared bureau and it would be empty, wood-smelling, and dusty in the corners. Then he’d realise what I had done. Maybe he’d think I had gone to another house in the section. I had never talked to him about the others. Even if he had gone through my storage boxes at some stage before I’d left, and seen the old photographs and cuttings of Carhullan, he still would not associate what he saw with my leaving. He would have thought it too much of a leap for me to make.
    He would wait a day or two, in case I came home, saying nothing to anyone, and if the factory sent word to ask why I wasn’t punching in he’d say I was sick. Some old loyalty would extend that far. But then he’d have some difficult choices to make, about when to report me gone, when to move someone else into the terrace quarter with him, and when to have my name taken off the civil register, so that I would become ineligible for work, accommodation, and children. So that I would be an Unofficial.
    I stood up from the concrete stand and looked around the village. As I moved something cat-sized flashed away into the ditch next to the cottages – a fox, or a badger, I wasn’t sure which. I suddenly realised the hedgerows and trees were full of birds. They were not singing but every few moments one would flutter out of the greenery and flutter back in again. They were yellow-eyed, red-beaked. I did not recognise them. In the road ahead were two suitcases lying open on the ground. I walked over. They were empty except for the debris of leaves and dirt that