A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  ‘Get away from me…’

  He’s crawling, whimpering, but there’s no strength in him left and he sinks back to the grave, exhausted, acquiescent. Let him sleep now, and dream no more.

  A fox barks as he drifts away… an owl hoots as if in farewell… a blast of wind sets the yew rustling, lulling him to sleep… and then a suddener wind gusts his face, and another voice calls through the closing dark.

  ‘Jack…’

  The voice that he loves.

  ‘I say, Jack…’

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  His heart beats again with remembered hope and, as he opens his eyes, the clouds break and the moon appears. Full moon, looming large over the church. He gazes up at the still, calm face and sees her at last. The woman in the moon, calling him home.

  *

  Why is there a bicycle propped up in the hall? Why a suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, and a stranger’s coat hanging on the newel post? And whose are the voices singing upstairs?

  ‘All right, my darling?’

  ‘Oh, bless.’

  And that rumbling sound like the crack of doom?

  ‘Grab hold of her legs whilst I hoist her up.’

  ‘God Almighty, how thin she is.’

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you. Skin and bone, that’s what she is.’

  ‘It can’t go on.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying, it can’t go on.’

  ‘Oh, shame…’

  A coven of witches, plotting his downfall. And Eva? Where’s Eva? Why so silent? Why so meekly accepting their ministrations? And he not there to protect her?

  He tries to call out, but his voice won’t come.

  Eva?

  He staggers to the bottom of the stairs, lurching from side to side against the walls like a drunken man, clutching at the banister, clinging on for dear life. Why won’t his legs do as he tells them? Why is his knee shouting with pain? And why is the grandfather clock swaying at the top of the stairs? Three clocks swimming on the landing, ticking out of time. And those witches again.

  ‘Where the devil’s he got to?’

  I’m here.

  ‘Could be anywhere.’

  No, here I am.

  ‘Could be anything happened, what with that knee of his.’

  ‘Oh, bless.’

  ‘Ring the police, if I was you.’

  ‘My boyfriend’s a Special.’

  ‘Not that you’ll get them out on a Sunday.’

  ‘I’ll text him if you like.’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid.’

  ‘I was only saying.’

  ‘Don’t say anything, just fetch the commode.’

  ‘Shall we all calm down and get her to bed?’

  Bed.

  B is for Bed. Beautiful Bed. A bed, a bed, my kingdom for a bed. But not yet. He has things to do: a suitcase to dispose of, a bundle of letters. And first, a bladder that’s bursting for relief.

  *

  The woman in the moon sails up high in a clear winter sky, watching the world with a coldly eye, lighting mountains and streams, forest and pasture, cities and towns, and hangs for a while over a small, sorry yard at the back of a shop in an unremarkable market town called Castlebridge. A place much like any other, where people are born and die, their insignificant lives leaving not even a footnote in history. Where an old man, a bedraggled old man who’s decidedly muddy and frayed at the edges, whose knee hurts and who’s tired to his bones, is trying, without much success, to set light to a bonfire. The cat from next door, the one that reminds him of Bob, sits on the wall, staring inscrutably, swishing its tail.

  The incinerator is rusty with disuse, clogged with ancient ash, but he persists until, by means of a dried-up copy of The Castlebridge Gazette and a faded snapshot of a man and a woman at a market stall, he achieves a fine blaze. To which he adds some long-forgotten school reports and exercise books, a bundle of love letters, some ribbons and bows, fripperies, fropperies and a scrap of torn silk that shrivels to nothing. A suitcase, a life.

  And now for the letters. Those insidious letters that only a few hours ago had threatened to destroy him but have no power left in them now. They are nothing but pieces of paper, recording in faded ink the guilty dreams of a man long dead whose sin, if sin it was, was to love very unwisely and far too well.

  He yips with delight as the flames leap at the letters and swallow them greedily.

  ‘Yee hah!’

  Shouts with joy as the fire munches its meal and emits a gratified belch of smoke.

  ‘Yahoo!’

  A sudden shaft of light spills out from an upstairs window and a rebarbative voice rings out over the yard.

  ‘Jack? Is that you?’

  ‘Ho-di-ho!’ he yells, cutting a precarious jig.

  ‘What the devil are you doing?’

  ‘Worshipping fire!’

  ‘You want to be careful, Mr C.’ Margaret replaces Dodie at the window, unfolding a incontinence pad in front of her face like a yashmak. ‘We don’t want the firemen out on top of everything else.’

  ‘Oh, but we do! Fetch the police, bring out the brigade, summon the troops! Let’s have a party tonight!’

  Is it the smoke that brings tears to his eyes? Is it the last spark dying away that brings him such a sense of peace? As if a great burden of guilt has lifted at last and he is reborn, innocent, sinless, nothing to atone for, no more to fear.

  The cat closes its eyes in a slow blink, gathers its haunches and leaps away. And the woman in the moon smiles with ineffable sweetness and sails away into the night, shedding her light on other small dramas in other small yards.

  The witches are waiting in the kitchen. Dodie at the cooker, stirring her cauldron. Margaret casting spells at the washing machine. An unidentified young woman chanting incantations into her mobile phone.

  ‘Evenin’ all.’ He salutes them briskly, dipping his knees. Ooh, ouch, that was a mistake. ‘PC Plod reporting for duty.’

  Dodie slams the lid on her cauldron. Margaret bangs the door of the washing machine and sets it to go. The girl splutters laughter into her mobile phone.

  ‘Oh, ho, hody ho,’ Eva sings to the baby alarm.

  ‘Juice?’ says Dodie.

  ‘Fridge,’ says Margaret.

  Dodie purses her lips and fetches a plastic beaker.

  ‘Aha. Exhibit number one, the poisoned chalice.’

  For a miraculous moment it looks as though Dodie is actually going to crack a smile but through long habit she changes her mind, elbows him out of the way and chivvies the girl out into the hall.

  ‘All right, Mr C.’ Margaret picks up her clipboard. ‘You’ve had your bit of fun, now you can get those muddy clothes off.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He salutes again. ‘Better sign your time sheet first.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dottie’s done it.’

  ‘Dottie? Who the devil’s Dottie?’ Margaret doesn’t exactly blush but she looks decidedly sheepish. ‘No, don’t tell me. Your new best friend.’

  Margaret shoulders her jacket on. ‘I had to do it, Mr C.’

  ‘Of course you did.’

  ‘I mean, there’s Health and Safety for a start, and then I’ve got Mr Sameer to answer to.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Agency Manager.’

  ‘Good heavens, what happened to Miss Nitwit?’

  ‘She’s been suspended.’

  ‘No…’

  ‘You’ll have had a letter.’

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘I expect you only went and not opened it.’

  ‘I expect I only went and didn’t.’

  ‘Between you, me and the proverbial, Mr C,’ Margaret whispers behind her hand, ‘she’s been cooking the books.’

  ‘No!’

 
‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Well, she goes up in my estimation. She must have learned a lesson from me and the nutrition chart.’

  ‘Oh, honestly, Mr, C, what are you like?’ She edges past him on her way out to the hall, on her way off to the next client, to the next poor, dependent old fool who resents her, can’t manage without her, and looks forward to her coming.

  ‘Margaret…’

  She stops.

  ‘I just wanted to say…’

  She bristles.

  ‘Nothing really. I just wanted to say, well, cheerio, Margaret. Go careful.’

  She beams. ‘And you, Mr C.’ She pats his arm. ‘And you.’

  A storeroom. A table. A chair. Where a boy used to sit with his head down, legs dangling, chewing the end of his pencil.

  ‘What will you be when you are grown? A shopkeeper, I suppose, like Mr Pride?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir, I shall be a writer. A famous writer, the same as you.’

  ‘A writer, by God!’

  Here sits a man in his pyjamas and dressing gown, tucking into a bowl of stew. Same table, same chair, same little boy grown blunted with years, and so tired he can scarcely think. But oh, how hungry he is, and the stew is the most delicious meal he’s tasted since… since those post communion breakfasts so long ago.

  Dodie sits at the other end of the table looking rather pleased with herself (as well she might, she’s a fine cook), except that a troubled frown disarranges her face as if she has an unpleasant duty to perform that she doesn’t much relish. So that the man’s pleasure in his meal is spoiled by the sink of his heart as he waits for the inquisition to start. When it comes, however, she takes a tack that he isn’t expecting.

  ‘We were in Kent during the Blitz. You could hear the bombers before they came, screaming up from the coast. We didn’t know what was happening the first time, ran out from the barn in our night things, the old farmer hitching up his pyjamas and his wife in her curlers. Juggins, his name was, Mr and Mrs Juggins. We made it a party after that, night after night, all of us jumping up and down, yelling and cursing, old Juggins waving his pitchfork, “Just let they buggers land here, I’ll have ’em up the arse, so I will.” Golly, I was shocked, I’d never heard such language before. Eva wasn’t, she was used to much worse from her father.’

  Eva. She’d called her Eva. Is that significant? Is she conceding her claim at last? Giving her back?

  ‘Hmmm…’ Eva’s voice hums through the baby alarm in the kitchen. He thinks of her upstairs in bed and swallows an envious yawn with his last mouthful of stew. Oh, bed, bed, my kingdom for a bed.

  ‘She didn’t come out after that first night, she stayed in the barn with her eyes closed, muttering to herself. I thought she was frightened, but I was wrong. She told me much later after the war, when she was back at home looking after her father, that she’d been praying – the same thing, over and over: Let it be him, now, tonight, let this be the night they kill him. Only they didn’t, they got her mother instead.’

  ‘Maah.’ Such a plaintive cry from the baby alarm.

  ‘Oh, golly…’ Dodie struggles to her feet.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ says Jack. ‘She’s all right, just bored.’

  He’s used to Eva’s cries for attention but Dodie isn’t. She goes through to the kitchen, hanging on to corners of the table, to the arm of his chair, flapping his proffered arm out of the way, bends to the baby alarm, speaking slowly and clearly, like an amateur radio ham. ‘All right, darling, we’ll be up in a minute.’

  We? What does she mean by we?

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘She can’t hear you,’ he says, smug and sorry at the same time. ‘There’s a switch thing, two-way switch.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have to switch it.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She bends to the machine again, suspiciously. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s Dodie, darling. Dodie here.’

  ‘Buddy Bodie,’ says Eva.

  Dodie comes back to the storeroom and collects his bowl. ‘She keeps saying that. Buddy Bodie. What does she mean?’

  ‘No idea.’

  She lumbers back to the kitchen, still talking. ‘You never knew her father, did you.’ Dodie doesn’t ask questions, she makes statements that don’t require answers. ‘I felt sorry for him to start with because he was injured in the war, the first one, shrapnel, I think, or shellshock, I don’t know; and then his wife being killed and so on. I soon learned what he was like, though. He was pretty muddled by then, some sort of dementia, but you could tell what a bully he was. I never understood why she went home to look after him until she told me about the prayers. She blamed herself for her mother’s death and this was her penance. She didn’t believe in God, but she believed in retribution.’

  He listens to her clattering about in the kitchen, knows he should be out there helping her, but he’s having trouble staying awake and the effort of getting up from the table is beyond him.

  ‘Funny the way things work out. I always knew I’d never get married. Eva said she wouldn’t either, she hated men, but it was only her father she meant. And anyway, then she met you.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Her voice swims in and out of his ken.

  ‘Inevitable…’

  A sea of sound, ebbing and flowing, lulling him gently…

  ‘The first man she knew who…’

  A word here and there, a phrase or two, washing into his mind…

  ‘Gentle and kind…’

  Like pebbles…

  ‘Quite wrong, of course…’

  Pebbles in the sand.

  ‘Passivity… cowardice… impotence… tyranny… tyranny all of its own… Jack… Jack?’

  He jerks awake to find her standing over him with her jacket on, armed with her bag and stick. ‘Sorry, what was the question?’

  ‘I said I’m going now.’

  ‘You can’t drive home at this time of night.’ He tries and fails to get up. ‘I’ll make up the bed in the living room.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’ve booked into the George.’

  The George Inn, second floor, room three.

  They stop in the doorway, he hanging on to the doorjamb, she leaning heavily on her stick, both of them exhausted. The night is turning cold and clear, Dodie’s car beginning to glisten with frost. The gallery window is in darkness, the sculpted figures within just dimly visible by the light of the street lamp across the way, their embrace seeming not threatening now but rather beautiful.

  ‘What was it that chap wanted earlier on?’

  ‘What chap?’

  ‘The chap from the gallery.’

  ‘Oh, some drivel about the state of your paintwork. He’s got an opening tomorrow or some such thing.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I told him where to get off.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They exchange tentative smiles, and it occurs to him that maybe, if they had met in another place at another time, they might have been friends.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she says. Gentleness doesn’t sit kindly with Dodie but she’s doing her best.

  ‘Yes. Tired, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. God knows what you were up to, but you were out for hours. You were in a frightful state.’ She’s searching her jacket pockets, in a muddle with her stick.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I was.’

  He relieves her of the stick.

  ‘I read the letters.’

  Letters? What letters?

  ‘Well, some of them. That Bob of yours didn’t do you any favours.’

  Oh. Those letters.

  ‘Funny really, I always thought you were… what is it they call us these days? ‘Gay’. Ridiculous word.’

  Us? What does she mean
by ‘us’?

  They go out to the pavement.

  ‘Now, listen, Jack, I know what you’ve been through these last few years, it hasn’t been easy, but it’s time to stop. Evie needs more than you can give.’

  Evie. Huh, that didn’t last long.

  ‘Eva. Her name’s Eva. And I’m not putting her in a home. I told you Margaret was being alarmist.’

  ‘It’s not her she’s worried about.’

  She starts to say something else, thinks better of it, gives a little stab at his chest with her car key instead. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gets into the car, ungainly, impatient, fumbling her seat belt. She starts the engine, winds down the window.

  ‘By the way, that girl with Margaret just now, Shirley or something?’

  It comes back to him suddenly. ‘Sharleen.’

  ‘Silly name. Silly girl. Still, quite a coincidence. Is she any relation?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That frightful man at the library.’

  What man? What library?

  ‘That fellow Baines. The child’s father.’

  Baines.

  Baines.

  ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know?’

  Of course he knew. How could it have been anyone else?

  *

  Reginald Arthur Baines was Chief Librarian of Castlebridge District Library. His was an important post, one under whose weight a lesser man might have buckled. But Mr Baines, though narrow of shoulder, bore his responsibilities with fortitude, one might even say courage.

  Mr Baines was a person of note in the town. His stature was small but his standing was large: he was a proud and privileged member of the Order of Free and Accepted Masons, Pledged to Brotherliness and Mutual Aid; a staunch supporter of the Castlebridge Branch of the Royal Order of Moose; a regular speaker at the Townswomen’s Guild; and a recently appointed Justice of the Peace. Added to which, he had an inconspicuous but estimable war record as Subaltern Baines of the Dorsetshire Regiment.

  All of which might have led anyone to suppose that Mr Baines was held in some regard by the good people of Castlebridge. But one would be quite mistaken in this assumption. Poor Mr Baines was an object, at best, of pity, at worst, of derision, for although Mrs Baines paid public lip service to her husband (she had a habit of rebuking him with a deprecating smile, of dipping her head as if in submission, of consulting his opinion and winking at the answer), it was common knowledge that, behind the closed doors of their domestic establishment (a pleasant villa in the suburbs of the town constructed in mock-Elizabethan style shortly before the war, financed by means of Mrs Baines’s grandfather’s interest in the tea trade), that she was master of the house while Mr Baines was merely the servant of her every whim. Even his children treated him with contempt.