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Slow Poison - Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

By David Philip IrelandPublished 3 years ago 16 min read
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...little sparks in the dark...

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

The poster Selotaped to Doreen’s steamy window announced news of the annual village pantomime in childish crayon and mimeographed typescript.

“The Tinder Box - words and music by Susan Clement”

“Entertainment for all the family!”

There were dates and times and prices and, among the details; ‘Cor de ballet - Miss Butt’s Babies.’ Hardly.

The posters were all over town. In Mawhood’s windows, in O’Dowd’s waiting room, and on the notice board in the Community Centre car park. The bleak, sour milk aura of the canteen had been transformed in the first few weeks of the New Year. The stage, where Parish Council and Flitch alike held court, groaned under the weight of plywood caverns and Ivanhoe walls, and the cardboard chests of copper, silver and gold. In this, the final week of preparation, each group of actors, musicians, dancers and helpers were coming together for the first time. There were to be three dress rehearsals. Costume and choreography was complete. And in the darkness; eyes as big as saucers, eyes as big as tea trays, eyes as big as man-hole covers. Mrs. Lewis, the director, was beginning to doubt her judgement. Miss Butt’s Babies were terrified of the eyes. But the songs were bright enough. Cathy’s father was playing the tea-tray dog, which should have helped allay any fears.

The girls looked forward to their cave scene, tripping on-stage with sparklers aloft, singing their little song; Sparks in the Dark.

‘We are little sparks in the dark,

We are little lights in the night,

We are little stars in the sky,

We are here your way to light.’

Above Doreen’s the group of four and five year olds were ranged along the wall in their duffel coats and anoraks. Miss Butt, mummified in hand-knits, called them to order.

“Now girls, I want you to follow me two by two, just like the animals in Noah’s Ark. You all remember our little Ark dance? The one we did for Saint Swithun’s day. That’s the one. Now, we are going to walk to the Community Centre for the rehearsal. Do you all have your costumes?”

They all had their costumes. Each child held up her home-made ballet bag, initialled in chain stitch.

“Right. Off we go then! And keep well away from the kerb!”

Down the stairs and into the lamp-lit street they marched. Two by two. Down past the police station and the dairy, across the road at Wilcox the Chemist, close to the wall in the Woolpack car park and down the dank narrow alley, past the Ladies” past the Gents’ both long boarded up, and out into the safety of the No-Through-Road with the Centre at its end. The twelve girls giggled and chattered their way to the Centre, set at the edge of the playing fields, snatches of song blending with the swish of the traffic along the slush covered High Street.

“We are little sparks in the dark.

The Post Office clock rubbed its hands past five and the rush hour traffic began to fill the roads. Stroud one way, Gloucester the other. Snow drifted down in a fine powder, raising the level of the fall imperceptibly.

“Ah - the Babies! Mrs. Lewis bellowed in greeting. ”Come in, girls, come in!”

The girls backed away shyly, legs brushing the cold iron radiators along the glass windowed wall. Sarah giggled.

“She looks like one of they dogs.”

Mrs. Lewis peered at them through thick pebbles of glass. The girls giggled along the radiator.

“Calm down, girls. Come on, now. Get out of your coats. Mrs. Lewis is going to put you through your paces.”

Mrs. Lewis was almost sixty, was tall and imposing and wore her thick-rimmed spectacles like a weapon, eyes as big as saucers. She examined the row of giggling girls, snorting cold blasts of mint in their direction.

“Miss, Miss! When can we have the sparklers!”

“Yes Miss. please Miss. can we have the sparklers!”

Miss Butt looked across at Mrs. Lewis apologetically.

“They’re so enthusiastic, aren’t they?”

One of the dogs came bounding across. Tea-trays.

“RUFF RUFF!” it growled, sending the little girls scattering to the many crannies of the hall.

“Mister Brennan. PLEASE!”  Mrs. Lewis boomed.

The dog removed its head and a grinning ruddy human head appeared.

“Cath. Cath. It’s all right. It’s only me.” He shouted.

“Daddy. You’re horrible. Geraway!”

And off they went again, squealing and cowering in the corners.

“Girls. Girls. Can we have you over here. Mister Brennan, really .you are incorrigible. Girls. GIRLS!”

 

 

 

The King’s Arms, Babworth.

Lying awake in the King’s Arms, Becky began to think of Fred. Sifting through the residue of his life had remained beyond her, the gritty silt hardening to a crust among the envelopes and handkerchiefs and dog-eared magazines in his cheap case, impervious to her tears. She did not posses the strength to break through into the core and face the heat of musty memories fanned into being.

Below her she could hear the low drone of the bar as the last orders were taken. She could feel Alan’s arm around her, soft hairs caressing her belly with the rise and fall of his breathing. How different it had been. How slight his weight above her. How sweet the surprise in his eyes as he came within her. His kisses tasted of plums. The scent of his sweat filled the bed with musk.

When the decision had been made, Becky had given herself freely. All the months of longing and yearning and need pouring over this man she had spent her days with, driving up and down between the mellow dry stone walls up on the Cotswold Hills. There had been too many nights spent alone with nothing but the soulless throb of the alarm clock and the tear stained pages filled with his childish scrawl. Now everything was in the past. Moments or years, weeks before. Always a then and a now. Alan was now. And then. Just then. Breathing his breath, thrusting with him, his delicate fingers kneading gently her breasts, his sandy moustache brushing the nipples that rose to meet his lips, teasing her between her thighs with his tongue, his supple buttocks under her hands as she pulled him into her, climaxing with a blanket of Cotswold snow all around them, muffling the hills and ill-defined roads, stifling her moans and doubt. Then and now.

Night. There was no sun. There was no moon, were no stars showing through the dense cloud. There was a railway carriage glow under the door, nothing more. Where did they go from here? Nowhere. Not to the landing. Not yet. In dressing gown and slippers along the threadbare pathway to the bathroom, facing the light might have been easier. But there had been no premeditation, just the clothes they stood up in, now lying dishevelled around the room, collecting dust from the hard cold linoleum floor. There was nowhere to go. No reason to move. Sarah was safe - safe in the mousetrap bed that Janet had unfolded at the foot of their bed.

There was a delicate point of balance. Spirit level bubbles at rest. Equilibrium. The non-existent point between then and now, now and then. A no-man’s land. The fulcrum point of Becky’s life pivoted at the warm touch of Alan’s arm, encircling her, weighing her down. To move was to confront. To speak, to think. The coverlet hung heavy like the Cotswold snow that cosseted them with its deceptive cotton-wool cosiness, all the while dragging the tatters around the bleached bones of the trees in a makeshift shroud, crystallising time, playing statues with their lives.

There was no chance of clearing all thought from her mind. To have possessed pages as white and unsullied as the snow covered wheat fields was like a distant daydream seen from the far side of fifty-five - looking back. To not regret - was that conceivable? So there were thoughts, drifting down and settling, spreading out and dissolving into a wide grey mass of unease and fear.

Alan had held himself back until this night had offered itself up to them, the snow building impenetrable walls around the village. Six found them far from the valley, string out through the billowing snowflakes that the windscreen wipers could do little to remove. The 4x4 brought them as far as the King’s Arms.

“I’m sorry, Becky, I thought we would escape the worst of it. You’d better give your friend a call.”

Alan pushed open the door to the bar and they were met with a warm blast of welcoming pub air. A few locals had braved the snow to trudge the lane to the warm lounge bar.

“Evening, George!”

“Stoopid auld biddy reckons I be mad cummin yer.”

The bent old man shook his cap of snow, cleared his throat and spat through the open doorway.

“Usual is it, George?”

“Oi. Help I thaw out. Mind you, I’d rather be stuck up yer than snowed in with the auld woman.”

“Bad un is it George?”

“Like Farty-Seven it be.”

The door opened and three other men entered the bar, all similar in outward appearance; caps and overcoats. They shed their thick outer layers of damp clothing and left flakes of slush on the worn carpet.

“Evening squire!” one of them threw at Alan. “Is that your wagon?”

Alan nodded.

“I reckons you be up yer for a spell. It’s like bloody Farty-Seven.”

The local men laughed and withdrew to a large alcove at the other end of the steamy bar. Alan and Becky sat quietly at their corner table basking in the glow of the roaring fire. Alan poked the logs from time to time, sending bright sparks crackling into the black void of the chimney. There was gammon and salad and jacket potatoes. Sweet cider. They were drowsy and aglow at nine. The bar was quite full. Becky was the only woman in the place.

“Do you mind if I go up?” she asked Alan. ‘I’ll find the room, you stay by the fire.”

“ I’m turning in, too. I don’t want to spend the entire night discussing ‘Farty-Seven’. I’ll show you the way.”

They both laughed. Becky followed Alan. The stairs and corridors were familiar to him.

Then the goodnight kiss spiralled into infinity. He had been surprised when she had reciprocated his daring, lingering caress. Plums. Under the amber hall lights he had pulled her closer to him and had felt her breasts flatten against his chest, her nipples hard in the cold of the hall, or hard in the heat of desire. His own desire was wakening, and, though he avoided the thrust that would betray him, she knew.

With a kiss denying words he drew her into his room. So cold. Oh, English bedroom, your linoleum floors so cruel a test for hidden passion. Their desire was enough to withstand the unaired room, the moist caress of the damp quilt as she lifted her blouse, the groan of the indiscreet bed as he sat beside her, gently touching her breasts, bringing forth a sigh that sent little clouds into the bedroom. Alan covered the clouds with a kiss as they made love for the first time. There were no words. There hung between them a quiet complicity. The act was sweet and poignant, whispered in the folds of dark shadows. Yet beyond the windows the fields were brilliant and bright, the moon bleaching the snow whiter still.

Alan stirred, moaned something low. He stretched and snuggled into her. He opened his eyes and kissed her hair. He lifted himself on to one elbow and Becky returned his kiss. There were words to say, but neither of them dared.

“What time is it? ”

“About four. I couldn’t sleep. The quiet.”

Becky rolled over and faced Alan, studying his face in the moonlight. She traced her finger over his moustache, sending signals to his nerve ends, bringing him awake, threading the ribbons of arousal throughout his entire being with the speed of light.

“Oh, Alan!”

He silenced her once more with his kisses, and love began again, falling as gently as the snow that billowed down around them.

  

 

The Cotswold Cottage.

The diary.

March 11 1972. I hear myself sobbing convulsively and the sudden release after all of those abstinent years find no dam wall to hold back the rivers of sorrow, no dike to hold back the ocean. I scream for all of you, scream the pain and anguish, the sadness and loneliness, and the hardness I feel is for you. That now, in these waning years, in the arthritic confines of my withered body, that my deepest emotions should manifest themselves in the most basic and brutal act, saddens me. But it is here in the warmth of myself that my soul finds peace, the regeneration of hope, of new life beyond the camp walls. Genesis. The two of you through me, in me.

Trim tapped out the numbers on the phone, lay the receiver down like a beetle on its back. Trapped, destined to die in torment. The creature lay inert, croaking in an empty house.

“Damn you! Pick up the phone!”

The silence around the cottage was almost deafening, sealing the rooms within with hermetic welds of soundless gristle. The scar burned, driving pain through him like a hot wire. Trim pulled his knees up to his chin and rocked gently to and fro on the Berber rug. His skin gleamed with a greenish tinge in the moonlight. His eyes were rimmed with red as though he had been crying. He might have been Lenny’s twin. The ringing of the phone changed from its insistent pulse into a twittering vibrato. Anything was better than the silence. No music fitted this mood. He thought suddenly of sleep. The idea shocked him. Original thought, as though he had discovered some startling new drug to clear the world of cancerous cells. Sleep. SLEEP. Yes. But for Trim, sleep was more elusive than the fine white powder. Sleep. Sleep avoided him more readily than a nightmare, hid more skilfully than love, died more surely than salvation. Sleep.

He gripped the phone and threw it against the rough stone wall. It fell short, saved by its spiralling lead, stretched taut across the flags.

“GODVERDOMME! ” he yelled, scraping the walls of his lungs with chilled air. His voice echoed through the rooms. As the sound faded he caught the frail ragged edge of a sound. The distant barking of a dog. There was life. Somewhere there was life. With this knowledge, maybe sleep would cover him, secure in the white grave, knowing he would not fade into nothingness with the narcotic pounding of his own heart dragging him deeper into the vacuum. Sleep.

 

 The Kings Arms

Alan was dressed and looking out at the snow. The lane had been ploughed and there was enough space to drive. Becky was towelling her hair dry. Both of them had been unprepared for the overnight stay. They wore yesterday’s clothes, and Alan was unshaven. Becky was unaccustomed to seeing him less than scrubbed and shining, let alone naked. She giggled.

“What is it?” he asked, smiling.

“Oh, nothing. Shall we go down?”

“You first.” he laughed.

Becky blushed, but went down ahead and waited five more minutes for Alan to reappear. His chair scraped the floor. The breakfast corner of the bar was free of the smell of stale beer and cigarettes that pervaded most of the ground floor.

“Lane’s clear!” said George cheerfully, leaning on the bar counter, surprising them. “I reckons you’ll be all right for Cheltnum if you don’t leaves it too late.”

He came around from behind the bar and set down the breakfast crockery with a clatter.

Breakfast arrived five minutes later. They buttered toast, scratched at the scorched doorsteps. The aroma of the coffee took her to somewhere else and she sat thoughtful, not speaking. Real coffee well made.

“I’ve often tried to imagine how things must be for you.”

Becky looked up at Alan.

“Have you?”

He took a sip of black coffee and tried to gauge her mood.

“It can’t be easy.”

She had avoided his other attempts at this depth of conversation. This went much deeper than discussion about Inigo Jones or Charles Rennie Mackintosh. But there had been a change. They sat together, at breakfast, lovers. What could she say to him? What couldn’t she say to him? A lover.

The landlord clattered about out of sight behind the bar.

“Our Dot heard there be more snow on the way. You best be making tracks, unless you fancy stoppin’ yer for the wick!”

He cleared their breakfast things away and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Becky...”

But Becky put her finger to his lips to quieten him. He took her hand and kissed her palm.

“Maybe we should stay.” he whispered.

 

Stonehouse

The old man looked out onto the white wilderness of Park Estate, shivering with the cold. The boy had promised he would come, but there had been no sign. Meals on Wheels had brought him his cooked dinner, and the Mother, but he had wanted the boy. The boy had promised to look for the diary again. It might be in the box, but he was sure he had looked there. It might be in the gas meter cupboard. He wanted to read again. His own words. He looked down at the book of Ilya’s poems lying open on his lap.

“Oh, Giselle.”

In those days he had been cold, quite cold, but not as cold as the others. No one could be as cold as the others had been. His small cell had glowed like an ember in a gutted forest, warm, his fingers pink and clean, setting him apart. He owned a candle. And a pen. He was a marked man. His name known by few. But survival meant revenge. Whatever the cost. He must seize the chance.

“I’m not sure I can do this. What it is you ask of me? I am not sure.”

“Are you speaking technically or morally? ”

A laugh. A brief pause for thought. The Camp Commandant continued.

“If you refuse, you will be dead before I reach the end of the corridor.”

An eternity. Then he continued, enunciating every word to underline their precise meaning.    

“You will be supplied with all the materials that you require. Watermarked paper, inks and dyes - everything. This will be your ultimate assignment.”

“I am not a counterfeiter. I am an illustrator.”

“Before I reach the end of the corridor.”

He held out a pack of American cigarettes. Isaacs struggled with himself, but took one all the same. The Commandant went on.

“Caravaggio, Da Vinci, Manet - they all had their price. We have set your price. We have made it so simple for you. You will never get a better offer.”

He lit the cigarette and took one himself.

“You will be treated well. You will be clothed and fed. Kept warm. There will be no vermin. We will keep you well away from the others.”

He paused to draw in smoke.

“You will produce the documents we require. No one will ever know. Your signature would be your own death warrant. Do not attempt to trick us. Alive, dead; the distance between the two is short.”

He took a small gold pocket watch from his jacket pocket. The hollow ticking filled the small brown office. As he opened the case to read the time, the lid sent bright arcs of light across the floor, across the mirror surface of the Commandant’s boots. He looked at the small watch, its owner newly dead. He held the watch close to Isaac’s ear.

“Listen! It has such a fine movement. Tick. Tick. Tick. You have a child. Listen - tick, tick, tick. She could be spared the pain, Jew. There are ways to bring her here. Listen, one tick alive, the next.” 

He snapped the lid shut with a sharp report. Isaacs started at the sudden noise.

He stared down at his arthritic hands and could not control the tears that splashed down, trickling over the page, over her sweet face.

“Oh, Giselle.”

And now he sat within his frail frame, weak and ineffectual. Where was his vengeance? Where was the sweet taste of revenge? He should have died back there with the others. There was no god. There was nothing. There never had been.

 

fiction
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About the Creator

David Philip Ireland

David Philip Ireland was born in Cheltenham in 1949

David has published work in music, novels and poetry.

To discover David’s back catalogue, visit: linktr.ee/davidirelandmusic

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