by Penny Thomas
After a while, frustrated with the main road and its slow procession of coaches and dusty pickup trucks, he took a side road and found himself driving through dense olive groves. The light changed. Filtered in through a mesh of silver green foliage, it made for patterns on the tarmac, for a dance of light and shade among the trees. He slowed the car. The trees were old, ancient even. No two the same. Gnarled trunks and branches twisted into contortions of woody limbs locked in embrace. Or battle. He shivered in the air conditioning and drove on.
At the end of the olive groves he drove out onto a hillside. Way down, below the level of the road he could see a village. No signs to give a name or direction, only a track, not quite overgrown, heading towards it. He turned the car. The closer he came, the more it became obvious the place was deserted, buildings shuttered, windows barred or broken. A small church with a rounded dome and a bell tower stood just beyond the houses. He parked beneath the branches of a large eucalyptus and opened the door. Even in the generous shade, the heat hit him like a body blow. The church would be cool. If it was open. From the tangle of wild thistles and blood red poppies crowding the graveyard, Dan suspected no one had been here for quite a time. In the top corners of the few gravestones just visible above the tall grass were faded photographs of the buried, a youthful moment captured, shining black hair, red lips, smiles full of life. Not as they would have looked in their deaths or in their dying. He’d had enough of death and dying. Flashbacks and nightmares were not things Dan suffered from, not in the way some of his colleagues, or most of the patients he’d ever treated did. He dealt with shattered limbs and shot away flesh much as a skilled carpenter might repair a broken chair. But still. Sometimes, he thought of things.
The church was locked. It had one window, barred with heavy iron rods. If he balanced on a rock and stretched to his full height, he could hang on to a narrow sill and just about see through the bars. Whatever was inside was obscured by a film over the glass, clouding it, like the milky sheen of a cataract. It was like looking into the eyes of a blind person. He stepped back to level ground and took a long swallow from his water bottle. Water, he thought. A simple thing. Clean and clear. Uncomplicated. He took one more swallow and turned to go.
Although Dan’s business was mending bodies not fighting them, the basic combat training he’d been put through had taught him the art of awareness, how to focus on one thing, the sewing up of an abdomen, the drawing up of morphine, at the same time as being acutely aware of what else was going on around him. Being alert to the subtle signs of danger could be a life saver. And right at that moment, Dan felt the skin on the back of his neck tingle. He was being watched. He was sure of it. He took off his sunglasses and scanned the surroundings, the church, the graves, the blank faces of the empty houses. Nothing moved; the light shone unnaturally bright in the intense heat. Of course, there would be snakes here and feral cats, he thought. Lizards. Buzzards. Naturally, he would be observed. Nonetheless, he walked back to the car quickly, his footsteps moving up a gear, resisting the impulse to look upwards to the bell tower. Only when he was inside the car with the ignition and the air-conditioning turned on, did he look back over his shoulder at the rounded dome shining in the sunlight. He allowed himself a laugh. Too many films. Too many nights in the mess tent watching old westerns. What was he expecting? A de-frocked priest at the bell tower. A man with a gun? He drove back to the base. He was almost there when he realised he’d left his sun glasses behind.
That evening the Wing Commander invited him round for a supper party.
‘Never mind post trauma debriefing’ he said. ‘A good shindig is what you need.’
The Wing Commander’s bungalow was already buzzing with people when Dan arrived with his bottle of red wine. It was clear that the Wing Commander and his wife took their entertainment duties seriously and thoroughly enjoyed this side of the job. The other side of the job was managing the running of the hospital and the carrying out of reconstructive facial surgery. Dan understood this; he got it completely, the necessity of hard play, to counter the long hours of work, keeping the balance. He could fling himself into the swing of a party as much as anyone. The food was good but the wine provided by the Wing Commander was better. None of it was local. It arrived on the Hercules from the UK. A swap the Wing Commander said for the cargoes of recharged personnel.
The Wing Commander’s wife was called Alice and she made a point of looking after Dan.
‘Come on, you’ll be needing a top up,’ she said refilling the glass which had been emptied and refilled more times than he could remember. The supper guests spread themselves around the house as the evening wore on; some in the kitchen talked about the football results from home, some sprawled on the deep sofas in the Wing Commander’s lounge discussing the education of their children, yet more sat around outside on the veranda, braving the mosquitoes and the cockroaches and laughing loudly about everything and anything. No one spoke about where they’d just been or about the things they’d seen.
The music Alice put on gave her age away. Dance music from the eighties.
‘Dance with me,’ she instructed. And he did, badly, stumbling a little and causing her to giggle like a girl. He didn’t mind. It seemed an age since he’d danced with a woman. Trish and Pip were still half a continent away. The Wing Commander was on the veranda with the mosquitoes and two Americans. Dan allowed his arm to slide around Alice’s waist and his hand to move upwards towards her breast. She stepped aside quickly.
‘Please, don’t,’ she said, sharply, and he blinked. Before he could apologise, she slipped away to top up the glasses of the people on the sofas.
‘Try this,’ he heard her say. And the room swam very slightly out of focus.
The next day Dan drove back to the deserted village to find his sunglasses. It wasn’t as easy as he’d supposed. So many olive groves. So hard to remember which one. All the roads looked the same. He pulled up outside a tourist shop at the side of the road and asked an old and heavily wrinkled woman in a black dress where he might find an abandoned village with a domed church and was told in good English that there were many abandoned villages here. Some had been made too dangerous by floods and landslides, others deserted during the war, the one way back in 1974. She pointed in the general direction of north and said to take a left turn about two kilometres further on.
He found it, his road through the olive trees. It was familiar, as if he’d always known it. Ah, he thought, here you are. Leaving his car beneath the eucalyptus tree he walked back to the church. There were his glasses lying on the stone beneath the barred window. He picked them up and then, thinking to have one last look, stepped up onto the stone and peered inside. Kneeling at the altar was a woman praying. He went around to the big wooden door and turned the handle. The door opened. Air, colder by some degrees than the air conditioning in the car rushed out to meet him. He stepped inside and was instantly in another world, a cold world, flooded by the sudden influx of the daylight that followed him in. The space was cluttered, crammed with objects, wooden benches, plastic chairs, a table covered in a faded lace table cloth, vases and long dead flowers. It resembled more the living room of an old lady who liked lace and bric a brac. Lace was everywhere, over the backs of the chairs, hanging off the plaster saints. The altar space was curtained with it.
At first the woman was oblivious of his presence. She remained at the foot of the altar, hands clasped, face tilted towards a crucifix on the wall. He gave a little cough to let her know he was there. She turned. Even in the strange half-light he could see she was beautiful. An oval face framed in a lace headscarf that couldn’t disguise the shining black hair beneath. Full red lips, slightly parted, eyes that would have been lovely had it not been for the terror that shone in them. He stepped back; hands raised, palms outwards.
‘Don’t worry,’ he called. ‘I’m just visiting. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m so sorry.’ The woman, or was she just a girl, he couldn’t tell because she’d fallen
back on her haunches and lifted her hands to cover her face. He could have turned around and walked away. He could have stepped back into his car and driven off, back to his life. But he couldn’t leave her like this. How could he be the cause of such terror? He moved forwards, crooning, it’s all right, I won’t hurt you. The woman, the girl, or was it a child, it was hard to tell in the half light, was making soft, high pitched sounds. He’d heard a rabbit make such sounds once when it had been corned by his dog.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay.’
She was speaking now, in a language he couldn’t understand, and then she took her hands away from her face and said in clear but broken English, ‘Please don’t, please don’t…’
He imagined her stare was directed at him, but then he realised it wasn’t. Her eyes were fixed on something or someone behind him. He felt the air move in a cold rush at his back and he turned quickly to see who or what had come in through the open door. There was nothing, only the table with the dead flowers, the clutter of chairs and their lacy covers, and then the door slammed shut and the only light remaining was the thin stream filtered through the lace at the window. He swore and stumbled towards the door, pulled on it, turned the handle, pulled on it again. It wouldn’t shift. He turned back to where the woman was and she’d gone. Nothing. No sign that anyone had been here, no dent in the cushion before the altar, no footprints in the dust on the floor. Only the sound, soft and desolate, of whimpering.
It took Dan all of five minutes stumbling in the semi dark to discover the steps leading to the bell tower. It took several more to realise there was no other way out. Below him the olive trees stretched away, a silver green sea, moving in invisible currents of air. It was some time before he understood that the sounds he could hear were not coming from the deep belly of the church.
The people boarding the aircraft bound for Brize Norton early on a bright morning clutched their kitbags and their mobile phones. Dan was given a seat at the front where there would be plenty of room for his extended leg and the plaster cast on his broken ankle. He’d spoken on the phone to Trish and briefly to Pip. ‘Daddy’s coming home.’
The plane’s engines roared and the world outside the window began to blur.
Moments later they were flying high above the clouds. Way below, the blue sea sparkling, the olive groves dark shadows on the hillsides. Dan looked along the row of young airmen, some with arms in slings, others sitting back, eyes tight shut and wondered how many of them could hear it too?
Caretakers
Jo Mazelis
‘Human beings are 70 per cent water. The brain is roughly 85 per cent water…’
She is gazing at the lecturer, trying to fight back a yawn. She is so tired her eyes are tearing up. She searches her bag, but no pen. Just a dried up electric lime highlighter. She looks around at the students near her, mouths the word ‘pen’, makes a squiggle in the air to signify her want. Cold eyes study her, frown, then dismiss her as if she is merely a clown, a puppeteer whose hand is suddenly naked and meaningless.
She leans forward in her chair and stretches out to tap Lolly’s shoulder. As he turns, she catches, from beneath her armpit, the strong scent of sweat. Lowers her arm quickly.
‘Pen,’ she whispers urgently.
Lolly raises his eyebrows, turns back, riffles in his bag then produces a biro. She has to lean over to take it. Her sweat is greasy smelling, like pork and onions.
When the lecture finishes just before lunch, she does not follow the other students to the refectory, but goes home to shower.
Last night she couldn’t sleep. All because of the wet footprints she saw, running in a line from the bathroom to the fireplace in her bedroom. The footprints were far smaller than her own. Child-sized naked heel and toe marks, damp on the floorboards and carpet, quickly evaporating to nothing.
The other houses on her street are a mixture of 1930s mock Tudor semis, new apartment blocks and terraced cottages. Hers is the oldest, a Georgian landowner’s pile, double-fronted, whitewashed, tall sash windows and six bedrooms. She lives here alone, half ashamed of her good luck in possessing such a house, half afraid that it will somehow be taken from her, invaded, despoiled. She has lived here for over four months. Since September, when she moved in, disbelieving, everything she owned in an old suitcase and a black bin bag. Everything she owned – not forgetting the house and all its contents: the antique furniture, the mahogany and horsehair, the ivory and silks and ormolu, the oil paintings and watercolours, the butler’s pantry with its silverware, its cut glass and Clarice Cliff tea sets.
The house was left to her by her great uncle. It was a slap in the face to his children and five grandsons, her own parents and his housekeeper (who may or may not have been his mistress for the preceding fifty years).
‘Don’t go and live in that awful house,’ her mother said. ‘Just sell it.’ But it was near to the college and she felt compelled somehow, duty-bound.
She puts her bag on the rosewood table in the hall and hangs her jacket on the coat-stand with its carved menagerie of real and mythical creatures, a stag, a unicorn, frogs and lizards with inlaid eyes of ebony, amber and jet. Kicks off her shoes at the base of the stairs and goes up, two steps at a time.
On the landing she stops and searches the floor for signs of footprints. Nothing. She draws closer and kneels to inspect the area for the barest trace of a dark or water-beaded mark.
She glances into her bedroom. Nothing there. Then goes into the bathroom and locks it before disrobing. Turns on the ancient shower and steps under its spluttering, thundering waters. Washes herself, then stands, turning this way and that, luxuriating in the liquid heat. She feels at peace. Cleansed and transcendent. Not reborn, but returned to the womb, to the state of being where there are no edges or boundaries. She lingers, eyes closed, hair plastered flat against her skull, down her back.
She does not go back to college that day. Or the day after that, a Friday. Spends hours curled up on the sofa, the TV on. Thinks that she could go on like this. Forever and forever. If she wasn’t so lonely.
On Monday she goes back to college. No one has noticed her absence. They ignore her as before.
After the seminar, she goes to the refectory and does not, as she has in the past, attempt to sit at a table with her fellow students. But they, as bad luck would have it, occupy the table behind her. She can hear every tedious word of their conversation. None of which she wants to hear. Until…
‘Did you hear about Lolly?’
‘No. What?’
‘He’s just like, totally broke.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. His father’s supposed to pay his rent. But he hasn’t, so Lolly’s being chucked out.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘So he owes like nearly a thousand, but his father won’t help him and he can’t go home.’
‘What’s he going to do?’
There is no audible answer to this, perhaps the speaker merely shrugged.
They change the subject. She stops listening. Finishes her food, gets up and walks away, very deliberately not looking at them. Someone laughs, perhaps at her.
She sees Lolly crossing the big hall, weaving between tables packed with students. He has a plate of chips and a white plastic cup of water. Nothing else. Lolly is a big guy, tall, broad-shouldered, but also overweight. His lumberjack shirt is crumpled and he looks like he needs a shave. Tucked away, near the fire exit is a narrow corridor with three small tables, he heads there and she follows. At one of the tables, sitting on the chair as if waiting for a companion is a large nylon rucksack, on the floor beside it are two carrier bags, and a sleeping bag. Lolly slumps into the seat opposite.
She pulls over a chair and sits.
‘Lolly,’ she says.
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘But everyone…’
‘My name is Lawrence.’
He averts his gaze and begins eating.
‘So… Someone said you
were looking for a place…’
‘Oh yeah? Well someone is talking out of their ass. Ok?’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I heard that…and then here you are with your rucksack and this bag and…’
He looks her in the eye; his expression is flat, guarded. She waits. He says nothing.
‘I was going to say. You know, if you’re stuck. Between places? Then you could stay at mine. For a while. If you want…’
‘For real? Are you for real?’ A grin is starting to break out all over his face. He’s handsome when he smiles.
‘Yeah, for real.’
When their last lecture finished at three she and Lolly lingered until the rest of the class had drifted away, before setting off together – him almost a giant made even larger by his huge rucksack. She, at least a head and a half shorter, had to run every few paces to keep up with him.
They didn’t talk. There was no conversational opening which wouldn’t have been painful for either; he didn’t want to talk about the situation with his father, she was ashamed of owning a big Georgian house set in an acre of land, he did consistently well at college, she was scraping along most of the time. Everybody at college liked him, though he seemed to make no effort to be liked, while she tried desperately to charm and ingratiate herself, but got nowhere.
The Lolly/Lawrence thing was interesting, she thought as they turned into her street, he hated being called Lolly but said nothing. The man they all liked, Lolly, Big Loll, Lolls who was big and a tad overweight, but handsome and affable, was their own invention. The jolly giant, he was safe, good at walking home girls too drunk to look after themselves.
In a similar fashion they must have created a version of her that bore little resemblance to reality. This person was spiky and mean, jealous of the other girls.
Maybe as she and Lawrence got to know one another better they would have a conversation about this and then, understanding everything about her, he would become her envoy, making others see her in a whole new light.