Belonging

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same, in a manner of speaking.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect paint not to flake, and shingles not to fall, if a place had been uninhabited for almost a quarter of a century – but the building still stood, erect and proud, on the top of the hill, and a lot of the way inside it, with a labyrinth of corridors that ran crosswise, and, for safety reasons, had cleverly designed exits in all four points of the compass, albeit at different levels.

Now, all she had to do was lay claim to it.

Her papers were in order, and she was the spitting image of many of the women in the portraits that hung along the walls of the Great Hall, deviated septum and all. But she didn’t even have to present them.

The members of the de facto Committee were surprised, but delighted, to see her. Some of the old ones remembered her as a child.

They still told stories of the Ancient Line, but with all communications down and the telephone systems and the Internet just hazy memories, there was no way they could contact her… save by a semblance of a Smoke Signal Morse Code, First Nation Style, which they could only do whenever the air was not dank and heavy with pollution…

As it happened, she returned of her own volition – a tall, lean, 38-year-old with a gorgeous mane of chestnut hair… and large feet; an older version of the 14-year-old who had fled with her family when the news that there would be a coup d’état had reached them on the grapevine.

That is where the hillside exits had come in useful. The family and the staff had concerted the evacuation flight simultaneously from all four, also including the front door, to give a fighting chance to as many of them as possible. 

As could have been expected, only those who had drawn the short straws, that is, the sacrificial lambs who had fled through the main entrance of the compound, had been murdered. 

Later on, they had mustered at the house of an ally, who arranged for them to leave the country, one by one so as not to attract attention, as tinkers, tailors, soldiers, sailors… you get the picture. 

But her sense of duty, and her yearning for what used to be, would not let her be.

No one knew who had planted the bomb that killed all the Members of the New Government when they were in Session. The country was in a dire state because they had destroyed all mod. Cons., as the estate agents say, deeming it “of the devil”, and this included technology.

No one was ready, willing, and able to take their place – so each village, town, city and hamlet had become stand-alone entities, scratching a living from the land and trying to salvage what they could of the Pre-Coup existence. 

News from the home-town had been sporadic. But a lone traveller had described a place such as “hers”, and that had ignited her homesickness.

And now, she was back, the equivalent of a Monarch of All She Surveys!

People don’t realise that the smallest and best storage space is their brain. But she knew that.

She had thought long and hard about whether she ought to be returning to her roots and take possession of what was rightfully hers. She had learned skills that would come in useful if she had to lead her people – foraging for edible grasses, roots, and fruits, hunting with a slingshot, distilling water, making soap, igniting fire… So, she could either remain where she was, or journey back to her homestead.

She knew that there would be persons who knew all these things, but she had the nous to co-ordinate things, and rooms that could be used to manufacture and storage, more efficiently.

She swished her cloak with a flourish worthy of Batman, pushed aside the curtain of cobwebs, saying “Sorry!” to the spiders that scurried away. She put the key in the lock, remembering to turn it anti-clockwise (the Matriarchs of the family had been left-handed for generations, and it was easier for them that way).

She ran in and out of the rooms she remembered, exclaiming at the details she recalled – the mural in the dining room; the piles of books in the salon. She was lithe and nimble, despite the tiring journey.

Her entourage and the townsfolk remained outside. They knew that unless she invited them in, it was bad form to follow her, until she finished her tour. 

She pirouetted in the middle of the dancehall, and then made a beeline to the library – the walls were lined with shelves groaning under the weight of thousands of books.

There, in the corner, was the big jade armchair where she used to cuddle up with granny, to hear her read from books about dinosaurs and technology, her two favourite topics.

Later on, she would spend hours there, lost in a world of her own, writing science fiction stories that her Tutor encouraged her to publish. “Not now!” she’d say… and then came The Overthrow… and her book never came to be.  

She looked forward to a life where she could trade her skills, and not just be the equiavlent of the Lady of the Manor.

She would cure people and fix the still so that she could distil the water for all the village.

It was a sure sign of respect that the townsfolk had not entered the house in her absence. Nothing had been ‘borrowed’. It was as if the mansion was in a state of suspended animation, waiting for the click of her key in the lock, for everything to fall into place again.

She realised that The Force had been at work; the rest of the insurgents had not dared enter the compound because the first eight of them who tried had died as soon as they stepped on the front lawn. The Force sensed evil, and destroyed it instantly. 

She knew that the townspeople, and the Five Trusted Persons who had returned with her, would clean the house, fix the roof, clear the garden, and till the fields in no time, now that she was back and could give them permission to do so.

She would barter, as The Family had always done – to charge people for her services, especially in the conditions obtaining, would be profiteering; everyone would be able to have enough food and water for their needs.

In the short time since her arrival, she had not noticed any children. Later, she would ask whether the women had become infertile, or whether they were afraid to procreate because of the present circumstances

Her people would be able to read the books, and use the kitchens, the looms, and the soap-vats. In return, they would cook for her, do her laundry, and keep the house clean.

It was only a matter of time before the town rose to the glory of yore.

Later, the Committee would tell her that even after all those years, there were devastated areas that somehow still smelled of acrid smoke.

However, she was Home - and that was all that mattered.