God's Crusade

Part Thirty-Two

The Dark Arts

June 2041

Rob Sullivan showed Imogen the letter before they both gave it to Dee. Her stepfather was making another fuss. In his opinion, his only daughter should do her duty to the country or get married, rather than doing a job she was clearly not qualified for. He was of a mind to go to the press and claim that his child was being kept from him by a member of the government who were saying that all guardians should have a recognised training certificate and yet employed a girl who did not possess one. It was not the first such letter. In seven years he had tried the same thing twice before, and both times a generous donation to his living expenses had soothed his guilty conscience.

"Can we pay him off again?" Imogen asked as Dee sank into the sofa, suddenly pale.

"Of course I can...and happily Dee...but his timing is simply bloody lousy." Rob admitted reaching for his wine. "Radcliffe has just highlighted this issue...he is going to crack down on it if he wins the election...and right now I don't want to be handing brown sacks of cash to anyone, least of all someone who keeps threatening to go to the papers?"

"But won't there be a get out...like a chance to qualify by experience?" Imogen asked, not giving up. She fully supported her husband, but not at the expense of her oldest and dearest friend, and he knew that, better than anyone.

"Could be...the reality is he wants to stop people doing it in the future, not go back years and catch people like us who adapted to the changing situation by applying commonsense to the transitional problems. None of it is really aimed at our class, either, to be frank, so if Dee actually had a reasonable legal guardian she could easily have deferred her National Service at the time, and having been with us for so long we could certainly argue that she is capable of doing the job. But the fact is she hasn't got a reasonable legal guardian and he keeps on coming back for more. Right now, if he reported her as working without his permission, there would be a tribunal and he would look like an arse. Our lawyer would ask why he had never reported it before, especially as he implicitly gave his permission by signing Dee's deferral forms. He is implying that he wants to withdraw his permission in his latest letter, which is a slightly different problem...but there would still be a tribunal, or at least a case review in front of the Department of Employment, and we could and would argue that Dee is important to our family, loved by the children and relied upon by my dutiful wife. But right now it would still look crap for me. Even the suggestion that I have been bending the rules would cost me votes. Damn it, you both know what the party is like?"

"So what do we do?" Imogen said, looking from one to the other.

"Guys, this is my problem, not yours." Dee sighed, rubbing her eyes. "That little shit has already cost you twenty five thousand pounds and I can't expect you to keep on paying him off...it's intolerable..."

"Sod the money Dee...that is so not the problem, you have to understand that?" Rob replied angrily, slightly offended that she could think it ever would be.

"Sod everything Rob...Dee is family and without her, if we had to get a proper guardian for appearances sake, we would all suffer...our lives would never be the same again, and you fucking know it...I don't care about your leadership bid if it means losing Dee!"

۩

Sister Maria was excused work and moved to a smaller dormitory. Every girl there, all eight of them, had growing hair. They all spent their days praying and studying God's words on the duties of a good Christian wife. The keepers treated them harshly, perhaps because they were jealous of them, but Maria really did not care. She knew she was almost free. In the showers every morning and evening they were all set about by the switches, but they laughed at their keepers, because they knew they were going to leave.