Duty and Delusion

by Shawna Lewis

“It’s Clement again,” she told Grant.

  “What’s he up to this time?”

  She smirked.“Using his mobility scooter in a threatening manner… again.”

  “We’ve got to go to another incident now, Dorothy.” Grant tried to convey the seriousness of the situation.

  “Take yourself home and have a cup of tea. Don’t get upset, but you can’t just approach children and start shouting at them nowadays. There’s child protection to think of.”

  “Protection? That’s what I’m trying to do. Protect them from sin and keep them safe with Jesus. They need to know that God loves them all!” Her defence reached only Belinda’s ears.

  She leaned across the passenger seat and called out,

  “Would you like a lift home?”

  What are you doing? asked Bel’s voice.

  Belinda was feeling guilty about the malevolent mantras and the old woman’s place near the top of the list. Dorothy hadn’t been doing any harm, after all.

  The demonstrator nodded and dabbed her eyes with a hankie while Belinda climbed down, helped her into the passenger seat and laid the placard in the back of the van.

  The hold-up had cleared, leaving several squashed beet on the tarmac, and the vehicle continued along the road to Sallby. Dorothy was feeling both relieved and frustrated, not to mention intimidated. After all, she’d only spoken to this young woman once, even though she’d been keeping watch since the day Belinda was born.

  Moving up into third gear at last, the Safari Supremo passed the jumble of Truetrust Academy’s flat roofs in the distance. It flashed past the ornate new gates, then braked sharply as four young teenagers in sloppy school uniform stepped into the road, shouting over their shoulders at an old man in flat cap and muffler.

  The old chap’s mobility scooter followed close behind the youths, nipping at their heels, swerving left and right as he herded his truanting descendants up to school.

  The Safari Supremo had stalled with the emergency stop. Belinda pressed the ignition and moved off, turning left off the main road to follow signs to Densfield and Sallby.

  “I don’t live out this way.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s something I need to do before we can be on our way.” Bel’s tone was civil rather than compassionate.

  “I don’t do very well on buses.” The older woman was beginning to feel a bit queasy, and very warm. “Fancy calling the police on me like that… a woman of my age.”

  Visibly upset, she took a clean handkerchief from her pocket, using it to wipe her nose and dab her eyes. She unfastened her coat, her taupe cardigan and the top button of her acrylic blouse.

  On reaching Sallby Belinda swung past the boarded-up pub, which now carried a To Let as well as two For Sale signs, and headed for the field beside the village hall.

  “I just need to check on something.” She jumped down and disappeared from view. Dorothy sat listening to the birds in the hedgerows and wondering if the constant plea in her prayers – that someone should offer her loving kindness – had at last been answered. Over her shoulder she eyed her placard. It had taken her an hour to make, using her grandson’s felt pen and coloured card, and left her own sweeping brush without a handle.

  Also over her shoulder she spotted the two suitcases. They gave her pause for thought, but she knew she’d not be able to make it back home from this field on her own. She’d left her handbag at home to free up her hands for the placard and had only her bus pass in her pocket. Few buses ran through Sallby.

  There were no other vehicles in the car park. Good. Bel breathed deeply, calming herself as she surveyed the building. The stripped roof was damp from several hours of fine drizzle but she refused to contemplate the implications.

  She wiggled the key right, then left, as always. It turned. Almost timidly, she slipped into the hall and pulled the door to.

  Quite tidy.The tea towels were grubby, but she let that pass. Her footsteps echoed as she crossed the sprung planking, eyes lifted in search of cobwebs. She spotted a few and left them to the spiders.

  The smallest key opened the padlock on the cleaner’s cupboard. The room was tiny –full of half-used tins of paint, toilet and kitchen rolls, stepladder, brushes, mops and buckets.

  Bel grabbed a handful of paper towels; spotted a near-empty bottle of turps on the top shelf and reached it down. She dumped everything in a flip-top bin by the back door.

  She looked under the bar for the battered cardboard box where globe-shaped tea-light holders were stored. A few still had gobbets of wax at the bottom from the last time they were used. She tossed them into the bin and pushed the box tidily back in place.

  Once more she sat in Drago’s chair. There was no smell of him now.

  The cupboard was still unlocked. Returning, she took a small box from the cluttered window ledge, closed the door and clicked the padlock shut.

  She would leave by the back door; stepped out; hesitated, and set one foot back inside. She took the box from her pocket, used it, and dropped the flaming match into the bin. The door blew shut as she walked away.

  In the loft, Hamid Duric lay very still. His cousin had warned him about this woman, the one he had spied on as she walked beneath the crack in the loft floor.

  In the bin by the door, the match smouldered between the paper towels and the plastic bottle.

  *

  Sitting quietly in the passenger seat, Dorothy lost her bearings as the motorhome wound its way along the country lanes, but ten minutes after leaving Sallby Village Hall it became clear that the vehicle was not travelling towards Denswick. There was no conversation; the old woman was beginning to feel humiliated by the silence. That feeling turned to fear when the Safari Supremo swung onto the motorway sliproad, following signs to Huddersfield, Manchester and the North West.

  Her throat dried. Efforts to point out the driver’s mistake came out in a croak.

  “Not this way… Want to go home…”

  No response, though Bel gripped the steering wheel tighter and hunched further forward, eyes flicking between the rear view mirror and the thundering traffic in search of a gap large enough to slide into. She found one between a coach taking pensioners on holiday to Rhyl and a small white Aygo, whose elderly driver’s choice of speed was evoking much frustration in the vehicles behind.

  Settled into the gap, Bel sat back and exhaled slowly.

  “Taking you for a little run,” she said. “Bit of a treat.”

  Still she did not glance to her left. She stared ahead, alert to the swervers and the road bullies, her heart pounding, excitement and uncertainty swamping Belinda’s silent inner protests.

  “Erm… I don’t travel well. I get sick.”

  “Suck a mint.” Bel pointed to her handbag in the foot well. “There’s a packet in there.”

  Dorothy did as she was told with a whimper. Her protests silenced, she sucked on the white peppermint, which offered some comfort and stilled her tongue. Bel put her foot down as the motorway climbed higher.

  Dorothy had stopped whining, deterred by the warning flash in the younger woman’s eye that forbade argument. The scenery sped by: the cooling towers of ageing power stations; warehouse-sized furniture outlets; in the distance, housing estates teetering on steep, bleak fellsides, until the road left behind the cities and remnants of industry and rose over the Pennines. The Supremo slipped effortlessly between the juggernauts’ thundering wheels to the outside lane. Bel sat back, revelling in the power under her control.

  From time to time, a whimper was suppressed between crunches on the peppermint. The old woman’s countryside jaunts hitherto had been limited to rural parks and, on special occasions, the grounds of stately homes. Lamb was something she bought at the butcher’s. Now, she found herself counting the sturdy, black-faced creatures which gambolled alongside their grubbier, more stolid mothers cropping the turf and heat
her on the bulbous moors.

  Bel’s airways opened and, her spirits soaring at last, she began to sing.

  “And did those feet in ancient time

  Walk upon England’s mountains green…”

  Mutual suspicion faded away. They exchanged a glance and wary smiles.

  “And was the holy Lamb of God

  On England’s pleasant pastures seen?”

  They both knew all the words and improvised the concluding set of chords in unison. The two women were briefly united in spirit and travelled on in companionable silence until eventually, Dorothy dozed.

  *

  As they approached a sign for Hartshead Moor Services, the old woman opened her eyes and chanced a question.

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Nope.”

  “Please tell me where…”

  “Mystery Tour! Pensioners like them, don’t they? I’m giving you this one free. Thought you’d be pleased.”

  The driver’s eyes narrowed unnervingly. Dorothy kept quiet. The coach in front struggled as the road climbed even higher, slowing down the Safari Supremo. The lull prompted a question from Bel.

  “Why have you been stalking me for the last thirty-odd years?”

  Dorothy was stunned.

  “Stalking you? What do you mean?”

  “Ever since I was ten. Wherever I go, you’re there, peering at me like some creepy voyeur.”

  Forget the hymn singing. Bel had dropped any pretence of kindness.

  “Did you have an affair with my father?”

  “I’ve never had an affair with anyone. I’m a God-fearing woman, and in my day people didn’t run around with other people’s husbands like they do now.” Dorothy was not enjoying this mystery tour at all. “I’d like to go home now, please.” She flapped her hand in front of her face to cool her emotions.

  “Tough. I’m not letting you out of this van until you explain why you’re fixated with me.” Anger was coursing through Bel’s veins, the end-product manufactured by months of malevolent mantras.

  “I’m not fixated.” Tears flooded the faded grey eyes. “I love you as if you were my own child.” The voice was a whispered sob.

  “Why? Why me? What right have you got to intrude on my life?”

  “I’ve never intruded! It’s just not true. I’m just interested in you because I had a daughter, but she died.”

  Belinda checked herself, briefly. “Lots of women lose babies.” Bel’s granite heart had not softened.

  “My little girl was born on the same day as you.”

  That was baloney.

  “How do you know when I was born?”

  “I was in the next bed to your mother in the maternity hospital. We were friends.”

  The tears coursed freely down the faded cheeks.

  “What was she called?” The tone was seething.

  “The same as you.”

  This was spooky. Definitely sick.

  “But we gave you different second names. Yours is Flora, isn’t it?”

  Belinda nodded.

  “My little girl’s was Dawn.”

  There could be some truth in the story, Bel had to admit. Few people knew she was a Flora.

  The Aygo having fallen behind, an articulated juggernaut forced its way into the gap and kept pace with the Safari Supremo, just two metres from the rear bumper. The truck’s windscreen and the driver’s gesticulating fingers behind it filled Bel’s rear-view mirror. Her head thumped; her ears rumbled with the rotation of the thundering tyres. The pounding in her chest was getting stronger. She could feel her own hysteria mounting.

  Taking her eyes off the Rhyl-bound coach, she glared at the weeping old woman beside her.

  Dorothy was thinking that at least with their David she knew what to expect. Perhaps a daughter would have been just as harsh. They drove in silence for a while, with Dorothy emitting deep sighs and dabbing at her lip.

  “I really am feeling quite queasy,” she admitted eventually. “I think you need to stop the bus.”

  “It’s not a bus. Have another mint.” The driver offered no sympathy. “So who was your baby’s father? Was it my dad?”

  “No, no, of course not! I got married when I was twenty-eight. Met a chap on the dodgems at Densfield fair – Wilf. He was a miner. Big. Strong. Could look after himself. But he was very possessive. A difficult man to live with.”

  Dorothy’s face was sad, disillusioned, a fleeting flashback to the dawning of this insight in the early years of her marriage. “Then I had our David a couple of years later. We wanted more children but it never happened. I never had another little girl.”

  Her breathing was more laboured now; anxiety was turning to distress.

  “I need one of my pills.”

  “Take one then.”

  “I haven’t got them with me. I never expected to be going on a bus ride!” She was desperate for air. “Please take me home.”

  The voice was starting to whine and the driver found it irritating.

  “Pull yourself together. I can’t just turn round on a motorway.”

  “Oh.” More dabs with the hankie: across the forehead; round the temples, along the upper lip. She continued her story.

  “Our antenatal appointments always seemed to be at the same time, so we got to be friends. We’d chat away and imagine what our babies would be like. There was none of this knowing the sex before it was born in those days. Your mam and me, we used to joke that if one of us had a girl and the other a boy, maybe they’d get married one day.” Her tone was gentle now, the impending sobs building up in her chest. “But Wilf didn’t like me to have friends.”

  Bel was sceptical. How come she’d never heard of this so-called friend of her mother’s?

  “Then, after my baby was born, they wheeled me into a ward, and later they put Gwen in the bed next to me, both of us with our baby girls in those little plastic cots by the bed, born fourteen hours apart. It was a lovely coincidence, we thought.”

  A deep sob reverberated against the windscreen.

  “We made a pact. Every year, on their birthday, we’d meet up, just us and the babies. I knew I’d have to keep it quiet from Wilf. He’d never have agreed to it.”

  The old woman was playing for sympathy. The story was probably a pack of lies.

  “Then on the fifth day, I woke up to feed my baby, and she was dead. Stone cold in the cot by my bed.” It was years since she had wept like this. “Wilf, he blamed me. Said I can’t have been looking after her properly. The doctors said it was a cot death. No explanation. She just stopped breathing.”

  Bel was fighting hard against her own emotions. She was a mother, after all. She did have some empathy, but no way was she going to give in to compassion.

  “Your mum and dad were very kind. After a few weeks they brought you round to our house, let me hold you and give you a cuddle – but Wilf sent them packing. Told them to keep away. So I’d lost my baby and I’d lost my only friend.” She gasped back a sob.

  How come Mum and Dad had never spoken of the dead baby? This had been her moment, her time, her escape, yet somehow this creepy old crone had inveigled a way into her life once again, made her feel guilty. As if she was to blame.

  “I’ve got palpitations.” The whining voice started again. “I need my angina spray.”

  “I suppose that’s at home as well?”

  “Mmm.” Her breathing was more laboured now.

  Belinda could sense panic overwhelming Dorothy’s common sense.

  “Keep calm. We’ll sort it out.”

  The concern in her voice was forced. Bel pushed consideration aside. Time to recalculate. Time to ditch the bitch. By the time they reached the services, Plan B had taken shape.

  *

  Out of the motorhome, Belinda ushered Doro
thy between the parked vehicles and sat her down at a table in the self-service café.

  “Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea, please.”

  “Wait here.”

  Dorothy waited, a little cooler now, calmer away from the thunderous traffic. She fiddled with the plasticised menu cards falling from their stand, her mind back in 1969 with its joy, hope, sorrow, and the pain which still endured.

  Belinda put the mugs of tea on the table.

  “So why did I see my father coming out of your house when I was ten?” The ring of truth in Dorothy’s tale did not answer the big question.

  “I didn’t know you had.” Dorothy thought for a while. “He only ever came once. It must have been then.

  “In spite of everything, your parents sent a birthday card for my Belinda every year. I thought it was very kind of them and it helped keep her alive in my heart. Usually, I got to the post before Wilf did. One year though, it must have been on her tenth birthday, he opened it. Carried on something awful – about interfering busybodies gloating over our dead baby. It was nothing like that, I knew.

  “I cried a lot and it all calmed down, or so I thought. Then one day, around four o’clock, your dad knocked on the door. He’d come to apologise. Apparently, Wilf had gone round to the factory and called him outside. Threatened to have him beaten up if either he or Gwen came near our house or sent a card again. Your dad was scared – he’s not a big chap like Wilf – but he had the guts to come and explain in person why there’d be no more cards for little Belinda Dawn.” She paused. “No one else ever sent one.”

  The tea was sipped in silence. Belinda was forced to acknowledge her misconception. Maybe Dorothy wasn’t as bad as she’d believed. Yet the fulfilment of her own transformation, the goal of her malevolent mantras, was so close… she couldn’t back out now. One sign of weakness and it would all have been in vain. She’d be back to meek, little, put-upon Belinda, with a hussy for a daughter, a modelling stepfather for a son and a grandkid on the way, not to mention a village hall going bankrupt… and burning down!

  No. Bel would have to see this through.

  “I need the toilet.” The statement broke what had become an awkward silence. Bel thought quickly.