The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  But the river path was under water. Albert paused to watch the fascinating way in which the river lapped onto the side of the field. Lord, that happened quick, he thought. He looked across the river to the moorings and saw that the lifebuoy that sat all year round at the top of its post was already half-submerged. In the dim light he could see branches that had been swept off the banks by the risen tide from where they had come to rest in the autumn downfall now forming irregular looking rafts on the rushing swell of the water. Even in the half-light he could see the dangerous swirl of the current. Many had lost their lives in that vicious eddy during his nine decades, more than even he could remember. Clive Coleman, a boy in his class at school- a very long time ago- had slipped and fallen while fishing off the weir and, before his older brother realised what was happening, he had gone. It never stopped us though, he mused. Death was something that happened to someone else when you were a boy. It wasn't until the world started catching up with you that you began to realize that it was with you from the day you first drew breath and as the years rolled by, with the real worries that choked you every time your own kids went near the road or didn't come in when they were called, it became a shadow behind the positive thrust of each days efforts to make bread. By the time you saw in your ninetieth year death was little more than a friend that was expected- a little late- but sure to arrive soon. That was for sure, as sure as this river that he had looked at every morning all of his life with the exception of his time served away in the Far East and occasional weekends in Weston-Super-Mare.

  It was the young that didn't see the river for what it really was- teeming with life but a constant reminder of impending tragedy. It was a dark river, his father had always said; all the more dark because, in the summer time it looked so peaceful. In Albert's mind, the river and the town were the same. It made sense really. The only reason there was a town at all was because of the river and the insane ranting of some shepherd lad, half-mad with loneliness. The Abbey had come and with it a town. It was a constant source of irony to Albert that the town had been built on the foundations of Christ- a good man- but encompassed within its narrow borders so much of what was wrong with humanity. Perhaps all towns were the same. He didn't know about that; all he knew was this town and its people and after ninety years, he knew enough about both to fully understand what the good people of Measton were capable of doing. He had seen it all.

  The Jap in '64. Nineteen years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Slash his fucking throat, the slit-eyed bastard.

  He had thought about the death of the Jap more and more over the last thirty odd years. More than the deaths of his three wives combined. Did that make him a bad man? He had thought long and hard about that when his arthritis wouldn't let him get off to sleep. The nearest thing to a justification he could ever find was the fact that, given the natural- if not, painfully protracted in Peg's case- deaths of his wives, the death of the little, yellow man was different. Very different.

  He heard old Freddie March's voice drifting down the corridor of years since 1964: "Do you know what they did to my boy?"

  Albert had taken his last drink that night. He had vowed to his wife- Wendy, then- that he would no longer be visiting the pub for his evening gallon but staying home and counting his blessings. Wendy had looked up at him from her sewing and seen his face. She opened her mouth to ask him what had happened to provoke such a decision but had stopped, mindful of the dangerous look in her husband's eyes. His volatility went hand-in-hand with his drinking. She simply nodded and returned to her darning. There had been times when he had wanted to tell her what had occurred on that dreadful September night in 1964 and in the years that followed he had also wanted to share it with Peg but he could never do it. It was secret, as secret as the killer under current of that river that they could almost smell through the open bedroom windows when the dog days of summer caused the water mark to drop further than at any other time of the year. Those where the times when the truth was closest to the surface; those were the times when he dreamt of the foreigner the most.

  The water had already turned the meadow into thick swampy mud making his progress slow until, for the first time in years he stopped with the Old Bridge still out of sight and considered turning back towards his house and the warmth of his fire.

  "Silly old bastard," he muttered grimly. "Getting old."

  Albert sensed movement in the field to his right.

  In the twenty minutes it had taken him to get this far, the sky had lightened from night to dark grey and, despite the continual slither of the rain, Albert could see well enough to discern the two figures running through the meadow. Both wore white sheets like children pretending to be ghosts and- as one of the phantoms skidded on the moisture of the field- he could have sworn they were both bare-footed.

  He stopped and watched them glide out of sight.

  Albert turned back towards his house and began to walk. By the time he had covered half of Common Meadow, he was almost running.

  *

  4

  One of the most terrifying moments of her childhood had occurred only weeks before Grant had died and Grant, by turns her protector, hero, tormentor and tyrant had been solely responsible.

  He had coaxed her to look at a spider in the coal bunker.

  There were many of these relics still in use at that time; concrete monoliths that became obsolete with the advent of gas boilers. Their bunker had remained while many in their street had been removed. In the jungle of weeds that was their garden it skulked, disregarded. Grant sat cross-legged examining something carefully. His concentration was such that she approached him without the usual wariness; even at such a young age, she had been made painfully aware of her big brother's dark streak.

  "Come and see the spider, Maresy," he crooned. "It's huge. I've never seen one so big."

  She shook her head. "It'll get me," she said. Grant smiled winningly.

  "Of course it won't. I won't let it. I promise."

  Her doubts assuaged the infant Mary had reached up and allowed her brother to pull her onto the bunker. She kneeled over the square hole and peered into the darkness. Sure enough, there it was, fat of body with long, black legs. It perched on the lip of the hole absolutely still. Grant poked at it with a twig and it disappeared into the blackness of the bunker. Mary giggled and leaned over further to see where it had gone. That was when Grant had grabbed her under the arms and lowered her into the hole.

  She had kicked her legs, barking her shins and scraping her knees on the sharp edge of the hole. Despite her immediate hysteria, Grant lowered her all the way in to bunker. She had begged him to get her out but Grant only looked at her gravely. Then he moved away from the hole. He was going to leave her; she looked around her in the darkness, desperately trying to see where that spider had gone. She screamed and cried until she heard her brother's Wellington boots scuffing against the side of the bunker walls again. He was coming to get her. Her relief lasted only until she realized that the scraping noise above was the sound of Grant closing the heavy concrete lid. In the darkness she’d felt warm urine trickle down her leg and she screamed as she felt something scurry across her face. Then Madman had come and effortlessly tossed the heavy lid into the grass where it remained until they had moved out of that house and to the shop that would become her father’s legacy to her. She also recalled the beating Grant had taken for that and the way that he had looked at his father defiantly, refusing to apologise and refusing to give in to tears. By the time the punishment was done, she had begged her father to leave Grant alone.

  That was then, this was now and this time there was no John “Madman” Moran to come to her rescue. The rain drummed onto the bunker.

  In the absolute darkness of the coal bunker, Mary could not move. The ferry man had secured her at the wrists, the knees and the ankles. He had then wrapped tape around her head several times tightly sealing her mouth shut.

  She had no idea how he had moved her from th
e shop to his house on The Lane and had regained consciousness only as he lowered her into the black hole of the bunker. She had struggled then but it was too late and pointless given the way she had been bound; he dropped her onto the remnants of his fuel supply, jagged points of what she imagined to be lumps of coal painfully cutting into her knees as she landed. She looked up helplessly as the night sky was obscured; he slid the heavy concrete lid back over her head.

  The darkness was total.

  She began to cry as she heard the grating of heavy objects on top of the bunker to ensure that she could not get out. She heard the crunch of his feet on gravel recede as he walked away. She allowed herself to cry for a few minutes. Then she began to breathe steadily through her nose until she could begin to think clearly.

  She managed to push herself into a more comfortable position alleviating the pain in her knees. After a few minutes, she began to think. She knew that she could quite easily remove the tape from her mouth; the ferry boy was not very bright and obviously failed to realize that she could manage to pull at the tape even though her wrists were bound together. Then she could call for help. No. He would hear and come back and who knew what he would do then? Still, she would be better able to breath. She picked at the tape over her face, found purchase and pulled at the makeshift gag. It tore away from her lips painfully actually drawing blood from her bottom lip but she could breath properly again. The soreness of her upper lip also meant she wouldn't need a moustache wax again for a while.

  Okay. What now? Mary remembered her lighter. Oh, the joys of being a smoker. If she had joined the ranks of the ex-smoker, she would not have had a Zippo tucked away in her trouser pocket. A slow, lingering cancerous death maybe but- hey!- at least she always had a light. She knew it was there; she could feel it digging into her leg. With some difficulty, she managed to hook the small finger on each bound hand into her pocket. After only two attempts she pulled it out of the pocket and promptly dropped it.

  "Shit!"

  She felt for it on the floor, teeth clenched, dreading what she might touch there. She felt its slick, metallic surface, held it tightly in her right hand and kissed it. She expertly flicked the lid and spun the wheel immediately illuminating the bunker with its petrol-blue flame.

  She looked to her left and screamed.

  Teddy's dead mother stared at her with bulging eyes, the rope that he had strangled her with still tightly noosed about her neck.

  The scream reverberated around the hollow bunker. She stared wide-eyed at the corpse and hyperventilated. She struggled against the ropes binding her wrists, causing them to chafe painfully. The Zippo's light flickered as she did so causing shadows to dance across the old woman's dead face making it come alive with a secret amusement. Mary could not take her eyes from the woman. Her eyes were unnaturally flecked with blood. Vessels burst from when he-

  Her hand began to burn; the heat of the metal casing became unbearable. She carefully placed it on the concreted floor to her side so that she could continue to work at the ropes. The changed angle of the flame placed the dead woman's upper half in shadow obscuring that terrible death mask; only the woman's legs were visible. Mary stared at the woman's checked slippers and flesh-coloured tights as she twisted her wrists rhythmically. She imagined the woman's face pop-eyed in the darkness and then saw in her mind's eye the woman's face contort into a malevolent grin. She felt another scream welling up within her and gritted her teeth against it. Comeoncomeoncomeon- the self-encouragement became an internal chant until she thought the ropes were loosening.

  The Zippo flame flickered, sputtered and went out leaving her in complete darkness once more.

  *

  Interlude

  The River(3)

  The Jap in '64

  Don was just a young boy when he went to fight the war

  He said he’d give his life for his country

  So his country took it all

  He’d seen the spitfires in the sky, heroes in the night

  And every thing they’d taught him made him want to join the fight

  Go and join the fight

  Go and join the fight

  These home were made for heroes

  Don’t let your family down

  Go and join the fight

  Homes for Heroes

  "Injun summer," Don Graham announced to no-one in particular. Dave St. John

  rubbed absently at a handled pint glass with a towel that he should have replaced for a clean one long before. The tinkling of whisky glasses on the shelf above the optics signified the departure of the 8.45 off towards Birmingham; it was a comfortable vibration, a sensation that was unique to The Railway Inn that set it apart from the other eighteen pubs in the town as a result of its location across the road from the one line train station. The assortment of regulars hardly noticed it anymore. Tom Phillips drained his brown ale and slid the glass towards Dave who faithfully knocked the top off another bottle of brown and artfully slid the dark liquid into the glass, filling it to perfection and completing the task with a neat half-inch frothy head nudging at the lip of the glass. He took the proffered coins and dropped them into the till.

  "Good 'ealth," Tom muttered and drained a third of the glass in one go before returning his attention to the racing pages at the back of The Daily Mirror. On the front page there was a picture of a young man called John Lennon. All of the kids were going berserk over Lennon and fellow long haired louts from Liverpool. Tom couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Bloody racket they made. Bloody scousers- couldn't trust a single one of them. His silly bloody daughter was only one step away from those silly bloody girls on the television screaming over them. Bloody ridiculous, he thought followed by the refrain that seemed ever present in his mind just lately: Is this what we fought for? The date beneath the newspaper's banner read September 22nd, 1964. He glanced over his paper to where old Freddy March sat at the bar- his big shoulders slumped forward, staring into his beer. When Tom had entered the pub for his evening three or four, Dave St. John had passed his brown ale across the bar, jerked his head at Freddy and mouthed: His son's anniversary. Tom had nodded, saying nothing. Old Freddy wasn't alone in his grief. There was a whole country of solemn anniversaries out there- a whole nation of mothers and fathers, old before their time, mourning the untimely deaths of their sons and brothers.

  The bloody war, ever present in their lives despite the two decades that had passed as, he supposed, it would be for decades to come. There were signs of it everywhere. War films were still being churned out with obsessive regularity and everyone remembered the harshness of rationing. For Tom and his peers there was more though. Despite the fact that they rarely, if ever, talked about it, it was in their dreams, sleeping and waking. Sights and sounds that no boy should ever see, indelibly etched onto young minds in the name of freedom and homes fit for heroes. The bloody war that they never talked about.

  Tom took another bitter mouthful of ale and glanced at Freddy. The old man had still not moved. It wasn't that they were doing something noble and brave by not talking about what they had seen, Tom thought. It was more likely due to the fact that people did not expect you to talk; they didn't really want to know. What a bloody life, he reflected. A generation of innocent young men- those that were fortunate enough to get out with their lives- old before their time, the weight of what they had seen pulling them into early graves. Discharged in an ill-fitting suit and sent home to wives, mothers, fathers and children with those nightmares very much alive in their minds.

  But they weren't supposed to talk about it, were they?

  No. It wasn’t the English way. The good old English Tommy was expected to walk away from the atrocities of war, whistling A Long Way to Tipperary and looking forward to a nice cup of tea. The truth of it was very different. A generation of Al Pinchins and Freddie Marchs who dealt with their ghosts in the only way that they could, a way that was passed down from fathers and grandfathers before them: brooding silence and drinking. Poor old
dad had a terrible time in the war, you know? But he never talks about it, never. No. Up close it wasn't noble. It wasn't a heroic pact of silence.

  They didn't talk about it because they didn't know how.

  Nothing in their education had prepared them for anything other than the idea that they give everything in the name of King and Country; they were, after all, the sons of men that had gone to France in 1914. The Somme was as much their heritage as Dunkirk, North Africa and Burma.

  Tom shook his head and tried to focus on the racing news. He always started to think like this around Freddie and Al. Lousy bloody drunks. Too pissed to stagger home to their wives. Again the old refrain: is this really what we fought for? Is this freedom? Men imprisoned by their memories and bad dreams affecting everyone that loved them for the rest of their miserable, blighted existences? We fought for our children, he would tell himself. We did it for the liberty of our future generations.

  Except all the kids wanted to do was dance their obscene dances and listen to that bloody electronic noise from the- what were they being called? - the bloody Fab Four. It was enough to make a man bitter. Al Pinchin settled himself on the barstool in between Tom and Freddy, having visited the Gents. Half-pissed-up already Tom thought and shook his head slightly.