The Carhullan Army

behave theatrically before – she had once taken a turkey from the hook of the marble game table in the meat house and made Ruthie waltz with it in the courtyard before letting her resume her plucking – but I had never witnessed such flamboyancy.
    She spread her arms out, the bitten apple in one hand. ‘The King is dead!’ she announced. ‘Killed in active service – God bless his bloody bones. Long live the revolution.’ The mouths of the women fell open. It was rare to hear news of the outside world; rarer still for it to be of such magnitude. Jackie knelt and kissed the woman nearest her, almost pulling her out of her seat. I watched as she jumped down off the table and left the room, the brown apple fastened between her teeth. I followed her down the hall, and heard her laughter outside the front door. It was laughter that sounded loose and wrong. There were the fumes of whisky in the passageway; she had either been drinking through the night or early that morning.
    *

    We were stacking peat bricks when the group of men from the settlement approached; five of them, bearded, and thin about the face. Walking over the grassland in the drifting rain they looked like apparitions, the ghosts of the navvies who had walked the region decades ago, tall and slender and dishevelled. I could see immediately that they did not have the vitality of the Sisters and I wondered in what conditions they lived, whether their existence was poorer, and how much they depended on the women for their survival. As they picked their way across the bields, I wondered why, knowing they would be excluded from the mainstay, they had come to this place. I did not understand their affiliation. Even if they had followed their wives or girlfriends, to have stayed nearby, whether through love or weakness, or even habit, seemed ludicrous. But, like the rest of us, there was no turning back for them now.
    Already I had become accustomed to seeing only women, and it was strange to watch them approach our group and shake hands, and for a few couples to exchange embraces. Chloe kissed one of the men and he held her hips. Shruti introduced me to them. Their names were Ian, Richard, Calum, Dominic and Martyn. They had heard I’d arrived, they said. A few of them thought it had been a wind-up. Nobody new had ventured to the farm for years and they thought anyone trying to leave town would certainly have been picked up. I nodded but said nothing. Then, one of them, Martyn, asked if a load of peat could be spared for their fire. If so, they would take it back to their settlement. In return they would help repair the fishery nets, which had been damaged by the high water of the last month. Or honour one of their other existing arrangements.
    It was a polite request. I wasn’t sure what I had expected the men to be like or how the women would act around them, whether the tensions of the evening meetings, where there was often a storm of scorn and disapproval directed towards their gender, would translate into unease or resentment. But it was not the case. Lillian and Katrina gave them some pieces of fruit they had in their pockets. The conversation was amicable; it had an undertow of negotiation to it but it seemed there was an old alliance at work, and even some flirtation.
    In their presence, the dynamic on the fellside altered subtly. I felt as if I were watching two species of animals drinking shoulder-to-shoulder from the same stream, aware and alert to each other, but only temporarily compatible. No assistance was needed at the tarn, they were told, but the group would help them bring back the peat when they were finished for the day. The men glanced at me and agreed to come back later. Martyn leant forward and kissed Chloe again. It was a soft, intimate kiss.
    ‘You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,’ Shruti said to me as they walked away. ‘Nobody will care. And it’s a fair old slog over the pass.’ I shrugged and said I didn’t mind. I was tired, but I was curious to see where the men resided and how they lived. And I did not want to be separated from the group. I had grown used to eating meals with them, listening to their loud, exuberant conversations and mock insults. Shruti observed me for a moment with her dark placid eyes and smiled. ‘Yeah. OK then. You come too.’
    The rest of the day the women worked quietly and quickly, switching into some higher gear. At about two o’clock the men came back. They had a couple of