Caged Bird by Katy Morgan-Davies

Author:Katy Morgan-Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2018-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

Part Four

Enlightenment

35

I was right: I was trapped. Sarah kept her promise to call, but the comrades surrounded me when I spoke with her on the telephone, breathing down my neck, so I couldn’t say the words I wanted to – I could only repeat the phrases Dad had drummed into me, a script to keep me caged: ‘I don’t want to leave here any more. I’m going to stay.’

I doubt Sarah was suspicious of my change of heart; I believe she thought I was just a young girl who’d had a tantrum. I remember her saying, ‘You have to do what you want in life.’ That was such an empowering statement; no one had ever said such a thing to me before, it was always, ‘You have to do what you’re told to do.’ But I had no idea how to go about it.

So time passed, with no further involvement from the police. It was a week since my escape attempt, a month, a year … We moved again, into a newly built ground-floor flat in Brixton. I yearned every day to be free, but had neither the courage nor the capability to try to escape again. For I remembered all too well that disorientating journey from the house to the high road: I knew I was not equipped to survive Outside alone; not least because the move meant all the streets were new once more. So I stayed with the Collective by force of necessity, against my will, because my father had made it so that I couldn’t go. I had to put up with it, if I was not to find myself homeless, friendless and penniless.

Nor was the lack of opportunity solely driven by my stupid self. On a supernatural level, I still feared JACKIE; on a practical one, the rota swiftly changed so that I’d never have another chance to flee. My Outings in general were drastically curtailed; Dad said I didn’t deserve to go Out any more because of my ‘crime’ of running away. Cruelly, there were even birthdays of mine where he went Out but left me behind. He also refused to let me watch the movie adaptations of The Lord of the Rings – even though he did. ‘I see myself chained for life,’ I wrote dully in my diary. ‘And there’s no one, no one in the whole wide world to turn to.’

Even Peregrine McConaughey offered no salvation, now that we had moved. I kept him fed and watered in my mental nest, however, refusing to let my love for him die, even if fate had conspired to keep us apart. Though the years passed – 2005, 2006, 2007 – I kept him alive in my heart throughout, trying to nurture the relationship that, to me, represented my independence and my moral decency. But his light was fading, the talisman he proffered becoming overwhelmed by the darkness I seemed destined to endure.

Though I was still caged, I was not quiet. I appealed to Dad for clemency time and again and begged him to keep his promises.

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