The Carhullan Army

healer. I realised that in her years at the farm Lorry must have dealt with every kind of female complaint, every kind of harm to the body. I did not have to explain myself to her or inch in to a difficult topic. I did not have to try to justify my discomfort, as I had to Andrew.
    Since the regulator had been fitted I’d felt a sense of minor but constant embarrassment about myself, debilitation almost, as if the thing were an ugly birthmark. I knew others around me were fitted too, and on the surface they seemed unchanged and able to accommodate the intrusion. Now, in Lorry’s company, the device felt exactly as it was: an alien implant, an invader in my body, something that had been rejected all but physically. It was like a spelk under the skin; it had stopped pricking, but I had not for one day forgotten it. And I was not wrong to hate it.
    ‘I want it gone,’ I told her. ‘Really, I don’t care how much it hurts. Just get it out.’ I rubbed my arm above the blanket. There was so much more to say. I wanted to talk to her, wanted to tell her how bad it really was, all that had been done to me. I managed a short outburst. ‘There are fourteen-year-olds with these things in, you know. And grandmothers. What right have they got to violate them?’
    Lorry sighed and clapped her hands on her thighs, squeezing the meat of them with her fingers. ‘Yes, I know. Listen, don’t worry. It’ll be fine. I can’t promise you a wonderful time while I’m down there, but I think you’ll cope.’
    As she stood I noticed a kink in the way she raised herself, a favouring of one hip. I had guessed her to be in her fifties perhaps, but now I was not sure that she wasn’t older. ‘I’ll go and get ready,’ she said. ‘We might as well get on with it and get it over. You just sit tight.’ She paused at the end of the bed, then took hold of the folded yellow cloth and shook it out. It was one of the tunics I had seen the Carhullan stallholders wearing all those years ago. ‘Ha! Just like old times!’ she said. ‘It’s going to be good to see someone wearing this again. You know what, I’m looking forward to it. What we need is some of the old passion back.’
    *

    It was not until the next day that I finally made it downstairs, into the massive kitchen of Carhullan. I was sore from what Lorry had done to release the hook and the wire, still bleeding and cramping a little. Up in the room she had given me a draught of something sweet and syrupy which made me drowsy and thick headed, apologising when she handed it to me for the homespun nature of the sedative and explaining the difficult choices necessary when dispensing their meagre store of painkillers and anaesthetics. She apologised again, and said she hoped I wouldn’t suffer too much. Last year she’d had to remove a finger on one woman’s hand after an accident at the oat mill – it was mostly gone anyway, crushed to hell – and even that call had been a tough one. In the end the woman had gone without. They used the old wooden-spoon method a lot. Teeth got pulled that way too, she said. But that was the nature of things at Carhullan. Supplies were limited.
    Then Lorry had set to work. She’d been quick and determined about me, forcing my knees apart when I tensed and resisted, and she’d given me a soft rag to put in my underwear to absorb the flow afterwards. But still I felt stretched and scoured. I had tried to sleep for the rest of the day. She’d left another draught beside me on the dresser and sometime during the night I’d woken with a deep griping in my belly and I’d taken it and it had knocked me back out. In the morning there had been dark brown blood on the sheets. I’d bundled them up and gone down to the bathroom to clean myself, and I’d put the stained cottons in the old copper bath to soak. In the mirror opposite the tub I had looked deathly pale. It was odd to see my reflection after days of not looking. I almost did not recognise myself.
    Towards midday Lorry had checked me out again, given me new presses. ‘You’ll do, but take things easy, OK?’ she said. ‘Let yourself heal. And I don’t just mean physically.’ I had tried to get her to stay on a while and talk to me, but she’d excused herself, saying she was really busy; a couple of the ponies needed looking over, and she had a sow to dispatch. She was also the farm’s vet and butcher.
    I did not want to remain confined much longer upstairs. I had begun to feel