chuckled drily to himself in mockery.
‘Leave the girl alone,’ snapped the old skipper. The man scowled, but he let her be.
Curl heard the women beside her talking amongst themselves.
‘Where are we going?’ asked the youngest.
‘The Free Ports,’ replied the oldest. ‘They are free, still. And they are not so hostile to refugees as Zanzahar.’
Refugees. Curl tried the word against her tongue. So that was what she was now. She thought it was a small word for all that it meant.
Curl looked back at the island of Lagos, a mere smudge on the horizon now. In her hand she clutched the piece of wood that was her ally, rubbing it with her thumb as the lean wind cut through her body, piercing her to the heart.
‘Enough of that, now. I don’t want the children hearing you.’ Rosa spoke in an exaggerated hush, and bustled to the kitchen door to close it before she returned to folding the children’s clothing on the table.
‘What?’ exclaimed Curl, sitting across from her and watching the woman work. Exasperated, she glanced through the open window at some of the half-wild urchins in the backyard, where they were enacting street robberies for play.
Rosa’s movements were stiff and angry. The table rocked whenever the woman leaned any weight on it, so that its legs clattered against the wooden floor and transmitted the urgency of her frustrations. They were alone together. Breakfast had been served long ago, shortly after dawn, and the assorted lodgers had eaten their small portions of gruel with the sound of the guns on the nearby Lansway fuelling their talk of invasion and war. Even now, across the room, the main dining table squatted in silent accusation at Curl. She eyed it with distaste, the filthy oil-cloth that was never removed from it, not even when eating, the debris of used bowls and platters and cutlery of the lodgers. It was Curl’s turn this morning to clean up after them all. Try as she might, she couldn’t rouse herself to start it.
‘I’m only telling you what I’ve heard,’ she said.
‘Well, whether we know of these things or not, it won’t make a bit of difference to what’s happening. We’ll know it soon enough if those monsters come tearing over the walls for us. Until then, please, give it a rest. Let us live in some peace while we still can.’
Curl plucked at a loose thread on her linen blouse and held her tongue. It wasn’t easy, though, when her blood was still humming from the tail-end of her high, and her mouth wanted nothing more than to flap away in idle chatter.
‘I’ve half a mind to go and volunteer myself.’
A roar of laughter burst from the woman. ‘Oh Curl, you do make me laugh!’
Curl found her face flushing red. ‘What? I don’t mean to fight. But they need people for other things. Cooks and . . . such.’
Rosa stopped laughing and threw a folded nightshirt into the basket on the floor. She picked up the last of the freshly washed nightshirts, her breathing loud. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you today, my girl. You’d better not go saying anything like that to the children. I’ll clip you one, I truly will. You’ll have the poor things heartbroken with all your talk.’
The door to the kitchen burst open and Misha and Neese came running in. ‘Out, out!’ shouted Rosa. ‘You’re trailing dirt all over the place!’ But the girls were brave enough to ignore her for a moment, and they stopped before Curl, and opened their mouths and widened their eyes in feigned surprise, and let out a chorus of screams at the sight of her prominent hair.
‘Out!’ shouted Rosa as they ran back outside again, hollering all the way.
‘Very funny, girls,’ Curl shouted after them.
Pea was standing in the doorway, her nose running and a thumb held in her mouth. She was new to the house, and still hadn’t learned to take Rosa’s barks for what they were.
The girl was holding a hand to her small belly. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said.
‘You’ll just have to wait,’ Rosa told her. ‘Now run along, little one.’
As the girl wandered away, Rosa sighed and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. She stood there framed in the light of the window with her other hand on her hip, looking out at the children in the yard with tender consternation in her eyes.
It softened Curl too to see her like that. She had grown deeply fond of