by Anton Palmer
*
The half-three bell sounded its monotonous percussion as corridors and stairwells swarmed with the rushing, chattering throng of demob-happy schoolkids, fighting their way towards doorways all over the school. The double doors of the red-brick retiree flew open as pupils exploded out onto the pavement before sprinting through the rain to the sweet shop on the corner for a confectionary celebration.
Within ten minutes, Chillingworth House was deserted, teachers and students alike all eager to be away. Its interior reverberated to an unbearable din of silence; an unwanted calm after a lifelong storm; an empty table after a hearty feast.
*
Through windows streaked with running rivers of tears, it watched the last remaining children pick a hop-scotch route around puddles in the rain-soaked street as they gave up sheltering in shop doorways and bus shelters and took the plunge to venture home.
For the first time in a century it felt completely alone, completely empty – trapped in its prison of bricks and mortar.
2
“Here you are…white with two sugars.”
Roger Davies lifted the delicate china cup to his lips and took a cautious sip of the hot tea. “Perfect!” he exclaimed, smiling at the elderly lady who stood over him. She held a blue glass sugar bowl in her wrinkled hands in case the tea wasn’t quite sweet enough. Satisfied, she placed the sugar bowl on the table beside her then shuffled across to the sofa to seat herself opposite her visitor. Roger watched her frail frame, her floral print dress hanging from her bones. He felt guilty about letting her make the tea, but she insisted he be seated and to let her get on with it.
He studied her as she fidgeted, making herself comfortable: the thin, wispy white hair; the pale, watery eyes; the desiccated skin on her hands and face dappled with liver-spots.
How old is she?
She must be ninety if she’s a day…
Roger took another sip of his tea before leaning forward to place the cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of him. As he settled back again, propping himself against a cushion, he picked up a smoker’s pipe from the arm of the chair and began to explore its surface with his fingertips. The elderly woman leant forward, scrutinising his every movement, her hands visibly trembling. The room was silent save for the slow ticking of a clock.
Roger shut his eyes. His fingers roved over every inch of the pipe, detecting every discernible detail of the wood grain around the bowl and stem. His facial muscles twitched spasmodically, eyes flicking back and forth beneath his closed lids as if in a state of dreaming as he attempted to tease out whatever secrets were held in the microscopic ridges of the wood. His pulse and breathing rate increased alarmingly as his mind’s eye finally tuned into the images he sought.
*
A haze of blue-grey, tobacco scented smoke curled through the air, its misty movements highlighted by the flickering of a television set. On its glowing screen, a scruffy old man was being chased down a flight of steps by a broomstick-wielding woman in wrinkled stockings.
Guffaws of laughter boomed around the room, followed by a thick hacking cough that sent cathode ray bathed particles of smoke spiralling up to the ceiling.
“You alright, Charlie?”
“Aye, aye,” came the croaked reply. Charlie thumped his breastbone as another spasm gripped his lungs. He pulled a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the ejected phlegm from his mouth, conscious not to look at it as he folded the handkerchief away; too scared to look in case the blood red tinge he had spotted in his tissue that morning had not just been a trick of the light.
He turned, offering a weak smile to his wife. “Plenty of life in these old lungs yet, you know…”
“You want to cut down on that smoking, Charlie. It’s doing you no good.”
“It’s not the smoking that does it, it's them daft buggers on there.” He waved his pipe towards the flickering screen.
“If you say so.”
“You what?”
“Nothing. You just get back to watching your programme.”
Charlie snorted and let slip another, health confirming cough.
*
Roger’s eyes blinked open, his vision blurring for a second before focussing on the expectant face of Mrs Jessop. He coughed, the taste of pipe tobacco still strong in his mouth.
“D...did you see anything, Mr Davies? Did you see my Charlie?” The elderly woman stammered with excitement.
“Oh yes,” Roger beamed at her, “I saw him.”
Mrs Jessop clasped her gnarled fingers together with delight. “Is he alright?”
“He’s fine. Charlies…”
The woman could hardly contain herself and interrupted her guest with a barrage of questions:
“Does he miss me?”
“Is he in Heaven?”
“Oh my goodness! What is it like?”
Smiling again, Roger moved across the room to sit beside his client. Taking her frail hands in his, he looked into her pale, tear-filled eyes, “Charlie’s perfectly well, Mrs Jessop. He is in Heaven and…yes, he misses you very much. Although he also says he misses ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ as well…”
The old woman’s eyes lit up, tears coursing over the furrows of her smiling face as if this last remark confirmed the truth of everything Roger had told her.
“Oh yes. We always watched that together, it was Charlie’s favourite.”
He took her hands again. “Charlie said he often watches over you…to make sure you’re alright…and…hmmm-” Roger paused for a second. “I’m afraid this is a little delicate, Mrs Jessop - Charlie said that you must go and see the doctor…about your bowels.”
The woman put her hands up to her face, her cheeks flushed. She was not a woman who was used to talking about her bodily functions with strangers.
“I do hope I haven’t offended you, Mrs Jessop, it’s just that…well - that’s what he said.”
The woman lowered her hands from her mouth. “No, no…its fine, Mr Davies. To tell the truth…” her pale face flushed once more, “I have been having a bit of trouble in that department lately. I was hoping it would just sort itself out…but if my Charlie says I must go to the doctor - then I will.” Fresh tears started to fall from her eyes and she stepped into the small kitchen to grab a piece of tissue. “Look at me starting again with the waterworks…you must think I’m a silly old bird.”
“Not at all, Mrs Jessop.” Roger followed her through to the kitchen. “Not at all.”
She sniffed and finished wiping her tears, plopping the damp tissue into a bin. “Well, I’ve kept you long enough, Mr Davies. You’ll be wanting to get home to your family.”
Roger frowned and shook his head.
“No family? No wife?”
“Afraid not.” A rueful smile, a hint of sadness in his eyes. At thirty-five, he still considered himself a decent looking man. A few wrinkles were beginning to form around his eyes, sure, his hairline was receding, but only slowly. He kept himself in reasonable shape, although, if he was being honest, too much time spent propping up bars was taking its toll a little. Women showed an interest often enough to stroke his ego but Roger kept his distance. He wasn’t gay – he just knew that the relationship he wanted, he couldn’t have. It was destined never to be.
“A good looking young man like you?” She touched his arm, “If I was ten years younger I’d marry you myself!” She suddenly looked taken aback. “I shouldn’t say things like that, should I? Not with my Charlie watching…”
Roger shuddered a little at the thought and hoped his face had not betrayed him.
“I’m only teasing.” She chuckled and took a white envelope from the kitchen counter, handing it to him. “It’s all there Mr Davies. And worth every penny. Thank you.”
3
The nearside front tyre of the Ford Transit clipped the roadside verge, the van banging and knocking as the wheel crunched over frozen mud and stones before swerving back onto the tarmac. A blonde haired woman in the passen
ger seat snatched a cigarette from between her glossy red lips.
“For Christ’s sake, Dan! I’ve told you once already – slow down!”
“Jesus, woman. Will you shut up!”
Her husband turned to face her, “Whose driving – me or you?”
“Well that’s exactly the bloody point -” the woman almost choked on her cigarette smoke, “You’re driving! Driving like a bloody idiot as per bloody usual.”
“Say ‘bloody’ some more, mum, why don’t you?”
The sarcasm came from the back of the van and the woman turned to her ten-year-old daughter, Sam. “Shut it, or you’ll get a bloody slap.”
She turned back to her husband. “It’s minus six out there tonight, there could be black ice. If you can’t drive slower, stop the van, get out and I’ll bloody well drive!”
*
Roger Davies looked right, left and then right again.
All clear.
He pulled out of the junction, gradually accelerating up through the gears. It was just past ten o’clock so he pushed the button to turn on the radio in the hope of catching the news bulletin. As sound filled his speakers, he swore under his breath: he had clearly just missed the news and his ears were now being assaulted by an annoying ad for some carpet warehouse. By the time he had finished cursing the irritating jingle had faded away and the DJ of the hour launched into the first track of his ‘Artist of the Day’ back catalogue. Roger gave the music a chance but decided it wasn’t for him, turning the volume down low, the song playing quietly in the background, providing some small degree of company as he drove the few miles to his home.
He drove steadily, aware of the freezing temperature and the danger of hidden ice. As his eyes scanned from side to side, he admired the ethereal beauty of the frost-coated grass banks, glinting like diamonds in the beam of his car’s headlights. The muted melodies from the stereo soothed his tired mind and he felt his memory drifting back to the expression on Mrs Jessop’s face when he told her that her long-dead husband was still with her, still watching over her. She’d looked as if all her past sorrow and grief had been sucked out through the pores of her age-withered flesh, leaving her in a present bathed with warmth and a future she no longer feared.
*
Roger’s ‘gift’ had first breathed life when he was a boy of fifteen.
It had been no earth-shattering experience at first - no all-singing-all-dancing pictures flickering across the retina of his mind’s eye with his heart hammering at his ribs and his breath rasping, hot and dry, in his throat. His gift had begun life as nothing more than a smell: the sooty odour of an open fire, fuelled by lumps of damp coal and wood, carried on a cool draft from a frosted window. The scent plucked at strands of memories, fingering and twisting them in his consciousness. These threads of reminiscence soon developed into something not unlike Deja vu – a feeling akin to a memory that dangled just beyond the stretch of his mental grasp. Muddy sediments were stirred up in his brain, settling all too soon, before he had a chance to swim amongst these re-lived experiences. But he instinctively knew that these memories were not his. These moments, long since deceased, were not memories from his short, centrally-heated and double-glazed past, but images from his late grandmother’s life. Seconds later, when the experience had all but faded, he realised he had been holding his grandmother’s wedding ring that she had bequeathed to his mother just days before her death.
As the weeks and months passed by, Roger learned how to develop his gift further. With each manifestation, his ability to reach out and grasp the images became more powerful until, eventually, in addition to the mental pictures and smells, he began to tune into the senses of taste, touch and sound; these new sensations seeping in at the edges of his mind before flooding his consciousness, as if some cerebral lock-gate had been suddenly opened, allowing him to wallow in a depth of sensation where, up until now, it seemed he had been merely paddling in the shallow end.
Almost a year after the first manifestation of his ability, the final piece of the jigsaw of senses slotted into place. With his technique for picking up sight, sound, smell, touch and taste perfected, the suite was complete when he started homing in on emotions: the innermost feelings of people who had been associated with an object in the past, their joys and sorrows, locked away in atoms and molecules, were now being released. It was as if the objects wanted their stories to be told – and told in their fullest glory.
For the next few months, Roger exploited his talents to the maximum, running his fingers over any object he thought might have had close associations with a person in the past. Personal items such as watches and rings; anything that might have been in contact with someone long enough to have absorbed extracts from their lives. He read these tales like Braille to the blind. His classmates at school entertained themselves at his expense, bringing items into the classroom for their secrets to be revealed. His gift granted him a minor celebrity status amongst his peers and his popularity soared to the point where he almost found himself thanking God for blessing him so.
And then he met Rachel…
The town’s main car-park was no longer just a place for shoppers to leave their vehicles: it was a garden of noise, colour and smells; blooming with rides and attractions, all waiting to be fertilised by the rich compost of financial outlay.
Roger met Rachel at the entrance to the fun-fair. She stood alone, bathed in a stroboscopic rainbow, her midnight hair shining. She smiled as she watched him stride with counterfeit purpose towards her, doing his best to cover the nerves which threatened to empty his bladder at any moment. As he drew closer, he noticed her eyes shone with a radiance that seemed to momentarily outstrip even the glare of the strobe-lights behind her.
“Alright?”
“Uh-huh.”
Rachel slipped her arm through his and dragged Roger into the chaotic throng…
At ten-thirty the fairground closed, the colourful blooms withering into the night.
Roger walked Rachel home, the couple strolling slowly, meandering along the pavement, holding hands. He gently caressed her fingers with his own, every touch of her skin sensually intense. It had been the same at the fair – the centrifugal forces of the spinning rides pressing their bodies together, the pressure of Rachel’s firm flank against his sending a surge of excitement-drenched hormones through his veins.
Rachel was sixteen, but only just and, although a good six months younger than Roger, she was the one who had asked him out, had made all the arrangements for his first ever date. While Roger was a bag of nerves, Rachel was cool and collected, quickly soothing his anxieties with her easy charm, but at the same time sending the butterflies in his stomach into turmoil with her beauty and obvious sexuality.
It was a good twenty-minute walk to Rachel’s house under normal circumstances but tonight the journey took almost twice that long, Roger trying to drag out the pleasure of her company as long as he could. When they eventually reached Rachel’s gate, its recent coat of creosote scenting the warm night air, the pair turned to face each other. Gazing deep into Rachel’s eyes, Roger fidgeted anxiously, shifting from foot to foot as if in desperate need of a toilet.
She expected him to kiss her…
He’d never kissed a girl before. Rachel was beautiful, charming and sexy. He wanted to kiss her (he wanted to do far more than kiss her); shit - he’d barely known her but a few hours and already, he was in love.
He didn’t know what to do; how to behave.
If he didn’t kiss her would she think he didn’t like her?
If he kissed her badly would she dump him?
If the kiss was alright but he tried to cop a feel, would she scream and slap him?
If he didn’t try to take things further would she think him less of a man?
He felt sick, dizzy; his mind was an emotional maelstrom. His chest tightened. His heart felt like it was filling with blood, set to burst at any second. He couldn’t breathe. His lips were dry…
Rac
hel seemed to sense his dilemma, his trembling anxiety and gently grabbed the back of his head, pulling him towards her, planting her mouth on his. Roger’s whole body stiffened momentarily like a rabbit in the headlights, but, as he felt the moist heat of her tongue probing at his lips his tension dissipated and he opened up to her, responding in kind, dragging her firm body tight against his own.
The next few weeks were a heavenly daze.
Lovesick.
That’s what his friends called him.
His schoolwork suffered as he spent his lessons gazing out of classroom windows - his mind far away from the scribbling of chalk on blackboards. His homework was abandoned as he discarded his books in favour of burning CDs of sloppy, romantic songs. He spent his pocket money on cuddly toys draped with love hearts and cards festooned with teddy bears and sentimental poems. His last thoughts at night and first thoughts on waking were of Rachel. His life had become wholly consumed by her: thoughts of kissing her; of places he wanted to take her; thoughts of making love to her – when the time was right, of course – she was only just sixteen and he wanted to take things slow, not pressurise her if she wasn’t ready; thoughts of marriage - a big white wedding and then whisking her away to some tropical paradise for their honeymoon.
He was completely and utterly smitten.
She was perfect in every way…
“Do you want to come in?”
Rachel grabbed Roger’s hand, pulling him towards the door. “My parents are having dinner with some friends, they won’t be back for a few hours yet.”