Slow Poison - Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

At finger’s touch the miracle is there,

The little screen, opaque, eyeless and bare,

Takes on a vision, brings the world to view,

Shows man to man, and values false and true.

(TV Annual 1956)

Muffin lay in the toolbox in the shed. The strings were tangled and the paint was peeling - flakes of lead-based enamel, revealing the alloy and scratches. Once, it had been a bright-boxed Christmas toy. A Pelham. Before the factory burned down. The clanking marionette was heavy, weighing almost seventeen ounces. Now it lay with tangled twine in the toolbox, its waxen factory string replaced by green Marling and Evans yarn. Muffin in the toolbox, folded and deformed, a crippled ghoul.

Throughout the summer Fred and Lenny trailed a line of innocents behind them into the stinking heat of their garden shed. Kids from the estate, tempted in, tethered and tied, taunted and tortured. There were oilcans and bicycle pumps, dead-legs and dressmakers’ pins and withies and Muffin. Muffin, joints snipped, clanking limbs in a flaking pile of hooves and fetlocks. Little alloy bits dangling from little tongues, little nipples, little penises.

Just the one summer while Glyn was away. The world had stopped turning, Brother Bernard came and went in the Bedford van, called away by the sound of the trumpet, sweat dripping down the insides of his thighs. And all the while, Lenny and Fred built their horrific nightmares for their little victims. For Linda Smolyachenko. For the Farmiloe boy. For Julia Butcher. For John Rickets. For John Clutterbuck. For William Perry. For Mickey Jones. For the Ryland boys. And for all the others.

Only with the beginning of the autumn term did the tortures cease. After the Norton. With one last snap of the Staverton jet to signal the end of the proceedings.

But in dreams and nightmares and marriage and childbirth and each waking moment, some thread of that summer would come snaking through, needing to be tied off and forgotten. There were so many who could never forget. And after the Norton, with the healing of the scar, came the lust for quiet vengeance.

Stonehouse, July 1956. The Old Man’s Diary

August 17, 1939. Leeuwarden. The wireless rattled its deathly sentences. Distorted sounds, ailing and alien. Involuntary reflexes stir me and we rise to leave. How could I have found words to answer you, the insightful child, if we had altered our course? How could you begin to comprehend the maniacal clenched fist compounding our fate within marble enclaves, where too the furious utterances reverberated damning close to the gilded cherubs, mockingly near the tempera Christ-child. (Destroyed after war.) Shafts of smoke-filtered sunlight formed a curtain that screened the covered platform opening, the screen quivered almost imperceptibly as each polished carriage door was slammed, a drum roll warning of the whistled departure. Our journey rocks us gently westward, safe and secure. What is there to see that had changed? Outside the mist of eleven disperses and promises August heat. We rock gently onward. Inside, nothing has changed, newspapers and clasped hands in obedient laps, farmer’s wives, nuns, old men, silence, each unspoken word another hundred meters of track. You gaze out unknowing. Who knew? Who could have guessed how terrible it would really be? Had I known would I have fled to find sanctuary farther still than even the golden cottage, engraved on the back of my mind, would I?

The old man looked up from his writing as the boy entered. The boy was breathless, excited. He leaned across the kitchen table to stroke the sleeping cat that lay precariously along the far edge.

“Did you hear the bang, Grampy?”

The old man squinted at the boy, framed in the sun-filled doorway.

“They said it was an atom bomb. Was it Grampy?”

God, it could have been. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

“No child, it was not a bomb. It was the aeroplane. They are testing the American aeroplanes.”

“But what are the bangs, Grampy?”

The old man set his pen down along the crease of the diary.

“The aeroplanes are flying a high speeds and sometimes they fly faster than the speed of sound, then come the bangs.”

“But why?”

“They fly through the sound barrier. It is like a curtain.”

“The iron curtain?”

“No. It is not the iron curtain. It is like an invisible curtain of silk and the aeroplanes tear through the fabric. The sound you hear is the tearing.”

He had lost the boy.

“What are you writing, Grampy? Can I see?”

The old man removed the pen from the crease and gently closed the book. No sound.

“This is nothing for you, child. But see, I have something for you.”

The old man reached across the table, beyond the sleeping cat. He could not reach quite far enough.

“Please give me the tin.”

The boy lifted the Willow Pattern tin and passed it over to the old man.

“See. Digestive biscuits. Chocolate. You may take one.”

The boy took two, unseen. One for now, one for the pocket. The cat stretched lazily, front paws touching the boy’s hand. The boy rubbed the taut tummy and the cat began to purr.

“Have you thought of a name for the cat yet, Grampy?”

“Not yet, child. She does well enough without one.”

The old man ran his fingers over the soft black fur of the cat and they touched the boy’s fingers and they clasped their hands together, boy and old man and the tears began to well up in the old mans eyes. The boy pulled his fingers loose and wiped a stray crumb of biscuit into his mouth, leaving chocolate smears on the back of his hand.

“Mummy says you should get a telly.”

The old man laughed.

“Me? A television? I think not.”

“Mummy says it would improve your English.”

The old man smiled.

“Are you ready to learn some of my words? If you learn well, then one day you may read my diary.”

Mummy agreed with the old man. That it was important to learn some of the old words, a foothold on the past. When Mummy was angry, or sad, some of the old words came flowing out, and now he could understand some of them, could guess at others.

“Call me Opa if you would like. That means Grandfather.” he had said.

The boy called him Grampy. He thought both the other words were silly. Anyway, he wasn’t his Opa or his Grampy. He was just an old man. But Mummy said they should show him some respect, should be kind to him. He had been though a lot and besides, he was from the old country too.

Grampy. What does ‘clabberater’ mean?”

Silence. A razor slice of time. Collaborateur. They had thrown words like that at him after the war. In the old country. What does it mean? Sticky tar and goose down. It was sometimes the small space between life and death. It could mean immortality. It was a choice with but one option.

“Where did you hear such a word, child?”

“Boys down the road. They play a game.”

“What kind of game is this?” He sounded shocked.

“They’re the soldiers and we’re the clabberaters.”

“You play this game too?”

“Yes, sometimes.”

A bite of biscuit.

“They tie us up and we have to tell them everything. They talk like you and Mummy. ‘Ve vill make you tell us effrything.’ Like that.”

The old man looked at the boy in disbelief. These were games? This angel would never have needed to play the games. Look at him. Ears that stuck out and a serrated blond fringe, freckles and pale blue eyes.

“Maybe it would be better if you did not play this game with these boys.”

The cat stretched and yawned, losing its balance on the edge of the smooth topped table. It slipped to the floor in a scrabble of fur, talons slicing through the air, searching for a foothold, cleaving a neat stinging wound of two inches, just below the shorts, just above the sock tops.

“OW!”

Trim laughed.

“She is more surprised than you.”

“She scratched me. It hurts.”

The blood was pouring from the deep wound, tears pouring from the boy’s eyes. The old man pulled a clean white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at the wound gently. Tears fell upon his hand. His hands were pink and soft, wrinkled like a baby’s skin. An old, wizened baby. His nails were amber, opaque where they left the fingertips. There was a faint film of dampness on his skin. The residue of the tears.

Kneeling as he did he could look directly into the boy’s eyes. Pale blue eyes. Cold. Watching the fine cotton turning blood red with a child’s interest. The boy shifted in his seat, the touch of the old man’s hand sending strange sudden shivers through him.

The old man held the handkerchief firmly against the boy’s calf. The boy held his gaze. The old man had seen eyes like those before. Pale blue eyes. The old man started, bones stiff and muscles jarring, nerve ends throbbing with awareness. He straightened with difficulty. He stood, slightly bowed, the blood soaked handkerchief oozing into the whorls of his fingerprints.

The cat had found a parallelogram of sunlight on the linoleum floor. It approached sleep with the dedication of a professional. The boy looked across helplessly, watching in horror as the stripped withy entered its mouth, sliding down the gullet of the choking cat. Its bound paws were useless, its talons broken. It took long agonising minutes to finally die, its fur lank with coal dust and blood. The boy felt as though his entire body had been immersed in the icy water of a deceptive December reservoir skin. Crack.

The cat woke and stretched herself. She stood and arched and slowly glided over to the watery milk in the earthenware dish by the back door. Trim looked at the boy. The boy sat rigid, afraid of what had happened. Of what might happen. Guilty. Damp. Seven years old.

“Bye, Grampy.”

Turning and running, his head reeling, he flew like a jet. Crack. Outside on the pavement, the hot asphalt sent swelters of heat to beat against his wings. Faster. All pain gone. Stomach churning with new feelings, against the backdrop of a snatch of song from an open window. The song that embarrassed him so. ‘Take me back to the Black Hills.’ The voice so friendly and familiar. What did Doris know of his feelings. ‘Whip crack away whip crack away whip crack away.’

The Bedford van roared away and the boy pulled up short, his gulps for air taking in the thin blue vapour trail. He floated, light-headed, pleasant tingles running through his whole being. He reached for the biscuit in his pocket. 

The old man watched the boy until he was out of sight. The bloody handkerchief left beetroot stains upon his palms. In the kitchen he rinsed out the cotton carefully with cold water, turning the water to a rose pink, fading like fallen petals under the twisting funnel flowing from the tap. In the cold water the handkerchief lost the blood, the hands of the old man softened, arthritis preventing the tight squeeze that would leave the cotton merely damp, the last droplets forced out. He spread the handkerchief along the metal opening bar of the window, where it hung like a dismal flag.

Those eyes. Pale. Blue. Cold. The old man reached inside the stone larder and found the bottle of milk. He poured a little into the earthenware dish and topped it up with water, giving it a greenish tinge. The diary lay where he had left it on the kitchen table. Without meaning to, he had counted the biscuits as he replaced the lid of the tin. The boy had taken two. The old man picked up his pencil and looked out of the window. The heat of the day had already loosened the folds of the handkerchief and a listless breeze moved it almost imperceptibly.

Before the war he had always written in pen and ink; beautiful copperplate, strong and even. But now his writing was in faintest pencil; hummingbird prints in the snow. He searched hard for memories. He thumbed through the pages to pick up the thread of his thoughts.

“...The Northern city loomed down on us like the threatenings of a summer squall. The first light drops of rain spitting dust like spilled mercury from a shattered thermometer, small clusters of suburbs. Then the rush for cover when earth scents rise and excite.”

He wished, sometimes, that it was not so easy to remember. Other things, things of now, the name of a neighbour, the day, the year even, these things were beyond him. Hopelessly out of reach. And yet he could recall each agonising step of the way. Names, faces, places, the wisps of smoke rising above the ovens into the clear blue sky. How could he forget?

August 17, 1939. You smile as I touch your hand. You remind me so much of her. Had I known, those years before, had I known; if Isaiah had spoken in a dream...Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence...had I known, I would have rejoiced at her passing. would have rejoiced instead of mourning. I would have rejoiced that she, at least, would be spared.

All those years on cool linen sheets, living with the void, all those silent tears and delicate shivers of sadness, when her voice, light and silvery, spun my head with its closeness (nearness), all of that would have been joy. When you slipped from me, life flowing from umbilical threads, I could have shared with you the joy of escape, of release, had I known. And yet I mourned. The miraculous fruit you would never see, so much like you.

A tear rolled down his parchment cheek and fell upon the paper, bringing out the veins and fibres, leaving a tiny stain. He longed to hear Paganini, but the sounds that crowded the summer air blew brashly over the drying handkerchief; “Bimbo, Bimbo...where you gonna go-ee-oh?” The old man stood up to close the window, but the cat was ahead of him, jumping deftly on to the ledge, defying the drop, treading the handkerchief with callused pads, talons puncturing tiny holes in the stiffening cotton. Around the kitchen sink there was still the ring of blood to remind him.

  It seemed as though the nights were never completely dark during that summer. Thin patches of dark were stretched over the sky, light showing through the open weave. Midnight was close when the wailing disturbed the roosting birds from their perches among the oak leaves. The wail, if heard, sent shivers down spines, heads under eiderdowns. There was a creature in torment in the brief luminous hours of summer night. There were withies and string and hearts as black as coal. A penknife scratched at Council gloss, scrapings falling to the Cardinal Red doorstep. The milkman’s message of rigor mortis. The bleeding bundle. The torture continuing. Never ceasing.

Once more the old man faced loneliness. The boy’s mother came at lunchtime. Was sad for him.

“Who would do such a thing? It’s terrible.”

The boy had stayed away. Morning had brought him the long grass and the poppy field and the bright taste of salt. He felt nothing but a private, nameless ecstasy. Above him the glider leader planes droned like worker bees. At noon, the Erinoid hooter drew him back to the hot pavements of Midland Road. The long day was upon him. The Norton was yet to arrive.

The old man wept alone in his silent kitchen. Fred and Lenny turned a corner, their fingers shiny with chip fat, eyes narrowed in the noon sunlight.

“Wotcher Trimmy. Wot they doin’?”

The boy eyed the brothers with suspicion. He noticed slight traces of green in the lifeline of Fred’s palm. He looked too for blood. The three of them watched the Council workers repairing the damaged door.

“Coming’ to play with us?”

“Yeah. All right.

  The bell of the Elver Man broke the spell. The swarthy estuary man with his handcart of writhing Severn bounty sent his bellowed cries echoing among the privet hedges of the estate. The Sargasso breeding grounds had hatched the eggs and the driving force of nature had sent the tiny elvers into the Bore passageway, past Weston, Newnham, bringing the Frampton folk to the riverbank, nets and scoops breaking their tireless journey, rough skinned fishermen on both banks harvesting the fruits of the seaweed maze.

The Elver Man pushed before him a gaily-painted handcart. It was decorated in similar style to the barges that had slipped slowly down the Stoudwater canal a decade before. In the cart  a number of zinc buckets jostled against the journey. At one end of the cart a primus stove belched out blue fumes. The Elver Man brought the cart to a halt opposite the tricorn patch of green that nourished the dying oak at the meeting of Midland Road and Severn Road. He lifted his battered iron frying pan from its hook and placed it on the stove. He threw in a block of white fat, which spat and bubbled and threw out clouds of sour smoke.

  ”ELVERS! ELVERS! LIVE-O! LIVE-O! ELVERS!”

He caught them all, his clients, between tea and supper. He would supply their supper this night. Into the fat the elvers flew, squirming in vain. A pennuth’s worth in a twist of Citizen. Salt and vinegar. Lovely.

No one had a car. The customers stood around in the middle of the road, savouring the treat. Conversation turned to how things used to be.

“We used to play games until it were dark, remember?”

“Weren’t no telly in them days.”

“Woh! These tiddlers be lovely.”

“Wish you could get ’em all year round.”

All the grownups came out to play. The squeamish kids shied away from the offers of greasy bites of new dead baby fish.

“UGH! I aint eating they things! Getaway!”

But Fred and Lenny whined for more. Fred and Lenny loved the elvers. They belched and giggled fishy smells, rolling their eyes with delight as the third pennuth’s worth found its way into another newspaper cone.

“Loverly grub! Get ’em down ya, me boyos!”

The Elver Man tossed generous handfuls of fish into the smoking fat, filling the streets with a bright sizzle.

“ELVERS! ELVERS! LIVE-O! LIVE-O! ELVERS!”

For days after, the new game, the worm game, kept the little children away from the hot pavements. Away from the playground and the groaning swings, away from the clutches of Fred and Lenny. Up at dawn, while the baked earth hissed with transient dew, they collected their bait. Blackbirds scurried away, chirruping their anger to the sky.

“Go on...eat ’em...they be just like elvers.”

But the news of the long day had travelled and the little ones were wary of the boys from Midland Road, of Fred and Lenny and the games in the shed.

The old man wept alone in his silent kitchen. The milkman had rung the bell. Once. Twice. Had waited, then, on receiving no reply had left the pint, had remembered, had replaced it with the half-pint bottle. He had sighed and turned back to his float, bemoaning the kids of today. The time was six-thirty seven. Soon the Erinoid hooter would jar the day, defining time, fixing unimportant routine things into the memory. He looked down at the scraps of paper on the table. The paper had been torn from an obsolete ledger. The headings were in German, gothic lettering. The marks upon the paper were in pencil, had faded to near invisibility, but the old man knew exactly what the words said.

A. May 19 1944. Dead more dead more dead than dead. If I survive - and nothing is impossible - the debt they are amassing here will be settled without mercy one day. They would not let me bury her. I will survive. There will be vengeance.