Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  “No, I was married.”

  “Oh right,” Craig gawped, his response of surprise delivered unchecked. “Wasn’t expecting that,” he covered.

  “Well, us divorcees don’t tend to get branded and dragged through town these days,” she joked incredulously.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just when you first meet someone you kind of fill in the blanks yourself a bit.”

  “Hence, the nun and the international drug running?”

  “Exactly,” Craig nodded sagely.

  “I was a local government worker. Probation services.”

  “So is your marriage the skeleton in your closet then?”

  Kelly shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

  “Didn’t go too well then?”

  “The divorce bit gave me away didn’t it?” Her mood sobered. “Well, things were good at the start. I guess they always are though. I met Ian about nine years ago. We fell in love. Started sharing our life together. Wanted all the same things together, marriage, house, travelling, babies. Pretty typical stuff. Things were perfect for quite a while.” It was surprisingly easy to talk; she eyed her glass of wine, suspicious of its influence on her tongue. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Yes, the uni girl but on reflection I am pretty sure it was unrequited.”

  “Unrequited,” Kelly mulled the word over in her mind. “I can understand how that feels!”

  “But, you were married?” Craig questioned, as if love and marriage were symbiotic. She wasn’t sure that that was her experience.

  “I know. I don’t know whether my feelings were unrequited, or he just got lazy, he just seemed to give up on ‘us’ as a couple. He lost interest in building our home together; I practically decorated the home all by myself. All the aspirations he had for work, the promotion he had worked towards (the whole reason we had moved away from our home-town of Southend to Romford was for his career) – he just gave up on it all and didn’t go for the positions when they came up. All without any explanation or discussion. He didn’t want to travel, go on holiday or even want to get away for a day trip even. He had stopped telling me how he felt…”

  “What changed?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure I know.” Kelly threw a hand up in dismay. The confusion and despair was still emotive in her memory. “I never got any answers. We got on well, were able to have a laugh when the issues in our relationship weren’t choking us. We were still good mates right up until the end. But that seemed like all we were: mates. He even stopped demonstrating how he felt…”

  “Oh.” Craig exclaimed as they both stepped around the insinuated conversational landmine of sex.

  “Yeah,” Kelly played with the base of her glass, uncomfortably considering how to phrase the continuation of her sentence without straying onto a subject too intimate to be comfortable. She remembered the shame of wanting a satisfying love-life. “We had been passionate for each other at the beginning. Enthusiastic companions – really connected, then we got married and it was like he just switched off emotionally.” Kelly felt her face colour with her disclosure.

  “People change, people grow apart.”

  She agreed but it was too simplistic a truth to explain something so heart-breaking. Kelly breezed on with a flippancy she hoped would ease any awkwardness. “I know about ruts, I know you can expect relationships to lose their intensity over time, but we had always wanted a family of our own – and let’s just say – that was not going to happen without some kind of miracle,” Kelly arched her eyebrows theatrically, masking her discomfort.

  “Did he still want kids?”

  “He said he still did, but he avoided talking about the details, eventually he admitted he had changed his mind and wanted to leave it until we were older and make the most of our time alone together. I’m not sure what we would have done with that time as we didn’t exactly have any plans left at that point. We had always wanted a young family and he had changed his mind without even telling me!”

  “Harsh.”

  “Yeah. I can accept people changing, I guess, but he made a decision about our life – my life without even telling me.” It had felt like a betrayal. “That was a catalyst for my decision to leave him.”

  “But it wasn’t what ended it?”

  “No he said he still wanted a family, so I hung on in there. I convinced myself that in a way I understood his decision even though I did not like the way he had made it without talking it through with me. Yet with his lack of affection and the complete absence of any intimacy I couldn’t see it happening at all…” Ian’s abstinence had already defused the spark and the tingling thrill from his touch. “I didn’t want to wait until we decided to start our family before we… you know?”

  “Exactly. It’s not a means to an end!”

  Kelly nodded in agreement, she hadn’t wanted biology she had wanted passion. “I just got more and more unhappy; one night I had prepared a big night in for our anniversary. Three course meal…”

  “How did your microwave cope?”

  Kelly winced a smile at him. “Made from scratch. I bought a killer dress.” Although Ian didn’t see the point of Christmas, birthdays or anniversaries as they could afford to buy the things they wanted throughout the year, she had clung to celebrations as confirmation of his love for her. She had hoped that a bottle of champagne and his favourite wine might aide in him opening up to her about who he was now and what he wanted – to seducing him; even though such attempts had failed in the past. She needn’t have worried because when he eventually stumbled in from work she could smell the cloud of alcohol and smoke that clung to him from the bar he had been in since he had finished his shift. A residual atmosphere of good times he had had while she had been waiting; waiting and sinking into a depression.

  “He had completely forgotten about our anniversary. I know most couples moan about things like that,” she laughed but her humour hung weakly on her lips. “He was apologetic enough,” she remembered how his slurring words had washed over her in potent waves of alcohol as he held her. She had been the only one working to maintain their relationship, and she didn’t have the strength to do it any longer. “I just knew then that I couldn’t be with him anymore.” Kelly often wondered if Ian had read her resignation in her face and the reluctance in her share of their embrace, for he changed in that moment and held her at arms length studying her face.

  “I told him I wanted out.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “Oh, swimmingly. He rushed up stairs, dragged our suitcases out from under the bed, threw our clothes at them told me to go and book a last minute deal on the internet for a holiday, charged into the third bedroom, which I had been decorating, cracked open a pot of paint and threw it up the wall, said that he was decorating now, and was I happy?”

  “Oh my god. He lost the plot.”

  “He was drunk. Fed up with what he saw as nagging.” She had fled from him at that point, scared he might slip further out of character and get violent, he had caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs and then Ian had taken their relationship beyond the point of no return and beyond the comfort zone of disclosure with Craig. Despite the physical tussles and taunting she had encountered through work, Kelly was still jarred and shaken by the memory of Ian’s fluid but brutal clutch at her dress that broke the stitching of its seams as he yanked it from her shoulders in a cruel parody of her fantasies. ‘You want sex? You want to be fucked? It’s all you fucking care about isn’t it?’ He snapped from shouting hatefully, to kissing her roughly and spitefully pawing her naked flesh through her destroyed dress, transferring his self-loathing for his own inadequacies and failure in maintaining the relationship he had always longed for.

  His violence had been out of character, he had never raised his voice before, but the decay of their relationship had created a festering resentment within both of them and Ian had realised he had missed his chance to change. There was no physical intention in his attack and Kelly had easily
fought him off with a simple shove. “When I told him I couldn’t be with him anymore he cried, but said or did nothing to persuade me otherwise.”

  “Was he gay and depressed or something?”

  Kelly broke into a brief laugh. “No. I think that he needed the security of someone in his life – a companion – a safety net for his insecurities, I don’t know. The Ian I met, and the magic I fell for was just a lure, a way to get what he wanted. Maybe when he got someone that wanted him and needed him he got comfortable and relaxed his efforts.”

  “And now you’re here?”

  “Yup. My mum died a few years before I married, I wasn’t very close to my dad, and I lost touch with my friends before and after Ian and I moved from Southend to Romford for his job, so I didn’t have much left after we broke up. I felt – isolated. I needed a sense of belonging. So here I am with my TV dinners, cheap wine, a library of books and a very unpopular public position.” Kelly had emerged from her relationship disillusioned and alone. She had been neglected, and she felt she had been betrayed, but some nights when she was alone she regretted her decision and worried that maybe she had had unrealistic demands and expectations from love and life.

  “Hmmm, you beat up men with your truncheon don’t you?”

  Kelly grinned and the serious air around her lifted. She leaned forward for the bottle of wine and wiggled it, sloshing the last of the liquid around to tempt Craig. He offered up his glass and she filled it. “Well, I headed into the police, mainly because I felt a huge hole in my life and I needed a focus. And I guess I have an admission to make… I also like the uniform,” she smirked and held up a warning finger to shut Craig up. Enrolling in the police, living and breathing the police for seventeen weeks at the halls of residence at the Peel centre in Hendon, had been like being re-born. “People tend to notice the uniform before they notice you. Actually they see the uniform and most people avoid even looking in your direction!” Kelly took a sip. “I know it must seem like I have hidden myself away, but it wasn’t an easy route. I had to work hard to get where I am with my job and…”

  “You don’t need to convince me! I’ve just heard your back-story. You had it rough. It’s sad.”

  “It was, but it’s just a relationship break-up story. Not as bad as some people’s stories,” Kelly thought of the missing twins. “So, you have heard everything about me…” she said quickly before the conversation could darken. “No skeletons in your cupboard then? You’re lucky; must be nice having nothing to haunt you in the small hours.”

  Kelly watched the last flicker of his twinkling blue eyes give way to a dark contemplation that drained the last of the brightness and youth from his face.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Craig swam through the blank black void of sleep that pressed itself against his conscious self in a cloying mire. It seemed hopeless to escape the green light. It had grown from a diluted patch in the dark to a brilliant luminance that threatened to overwhelm him. It was useless to resist. He was lost in his dreams and he couldn’t surface. The colour consumed the darkness until everything was green. He would have to endure the tormenting visions that would come with the light. The light washed over him and left the image of a room in his mind.

  In the gloom Craig could make out that it was a bedroom, a man lay prostrate in bed, sleeping. Craig’s heart thudded in his chest, his mind raced, desperate not to be discovered in this stranger’s room, yet he could not turn away from the sleeping man. The room was lit up briefly by lightning storming beyond his window. He could see the man more clearly; he appeared to be middle-aged, his face rough dark and wrinkled, weathered by sun and life. Thick black stubble reached high up his cheeks joining the close-cropped fuzz of his hair, glittering grey and silver strands caught the flickering light. Craig suddenly realised that the details were easier to see as he was now suddenly closer to the man, his panic increased, unsure how or why he would act against his instinct to get out of the room and actually move closer to him. His movement hadn’t disturbed him, the man did not move, he slept peacefully enough except for the twitching ticks that played across his face. A nightmare? Craig wondered if the man dreamt of Craig approaching him in his sleep. The sheets, valance and top sheet, were creased and untucked so that they barely covered his body and legs, exposing his sweat drenched tee-shirt and shorts. The covers were clenched in the man’s fist, it looked as if at some point he had wrestled with something in his dreams. Craig thought he recognised him as a random face from the flats, he could picture him in a labourers fluorescents, his dark tan, thick limbs and stout body suggestive of outdoors heavy manual work.

  Craig was startled from his observation by the man’s eyes flicking open. Craig’s instinct was to run to the door he was sure was behind him, but he couldn’t move. The man’s eyes found Craig in the dark. How would he explain being there to the man? How would he explain watching the man sleep? The man’s eyes fixed upon him, they sharpened, then widened in terror. Craig was distracted by movement at his side. A hand reached past him. A cruel twisted and decayed hand, its emaciated fingers wrapped round the handle of a vicious looking saw.

  Craig turned sharply, his position in the room shifted unnaturally, as if he had changed vantage points and the arm and its owner were further away from him. He glimpsed a figure standing tall and as black as the shadows, a relief in the dark, the creatures face was grey skeletal and ragged. Its eyes, black holes in the shadow of its top hat, were on Craig.

  In a moment the room changed and the figure was crouching at the bed, the man was writhing and screaming silently, the sheets dark and glossy with blood, the saw stained and snagged with gristly morsels of glistening flesh. The creature snapped its head sharply towards the man, its rotting skeletal face lurching into clarity with the white light flaring through the window, its jaw dropped open in a silent mocking laugh. Its other hand held up the man’s severed left leg like a trophy.

  Craig awoke to the sound of screaming He realised it was his voice and stopped himself. His breathing was heavy, his blood racing. Lightning flickered and lit up his room for the briefest of seconds, he knew it should be an irrational connection to make, but realising there was a storm tearing up the night just like in his nightmare he knew that somewhere in the building a man was being dismantled in his bed. Who and where Craig couldn’t know. He couldn’t rush to his aide, and a call to the police would only be treated as a crank call. All Craig could do would be to spend the last few hours of the night convincing himself it was just a nightmare.

  Mary Korben reached for the butcher’s knife. The seconds of the clock over the archway to the lounge clacked towards 8am. Any moment Roger, dressed smartly in trousers, shirt and tie, would take his seat at the dining table in the lounge as was routine. She smiled as she heard the dining chair scuffing the carpet as it was moved out from the table and he took his seat to wait for his breakfast with a comforting predictability. Twenty-two years of marriage and life followed the same path today as it did yesterday and almost every preceding day.

  Mary had woken and been strangely distracted by thoughts of her environment. Community spirit had dissolved. Friendly conversation had fallen into suspicious and fearful whispers, while casual nods and smiles of recognition had become wary glances and false gestures of friendly acknowledgement. The older generation no longer lingered on the hall in the hope of conversation, and the sounds of children playing or the bravado of teenagers in the grounds or the stairwells no longer rode the breeze or lashed at the quiet summer air. However, she found comfort in the rituals and routines of their marriage as she always did when something outside of their relationship troubled her.

  For her and Roger the honeymoon elation and mutual promises to each other had never faded and they lived to share, nurture and enhance each other’s lives. Even down to the little things, like chores, they shared them equally. They spoiled each other with gifts and attention, but equally they had made it through some financially limited times when Roger had been off wor
k. They enjoyed mutual friends as well as their own. They were close but didn’t live in each other’s pockets, both free to go out when they wanted without any pettiness or jealousy. Even old flames and temptations hadn’t caused them tension. There was trust and with that: Security. Mary knew it was pride, but she couldn’t escape comparing their marriage to her friend’s relationships where she just hadn’t seen such openness and co-operation.

  Even when the storm had awoken her in the night from a nightmare she couldn’t remember, and she had felt as scared of the dark and of storms as she had as a child, thinking about Roger and their relationship had helped her slip back to sleep. Mary cleaved a grapefruit in two and the sound of the slicing blade rang out in the quiet of the flat with an abruptness and noise that startled her even though it had been caused through her action. The juice glistened in the bright morning light that angled through the window and she found her gaze lingering curiously, as if the fruit in her firm grip was the intense focus for some art house short film. She was brought back to real time by Roger’s paper rustling.

  Mary took the two halves of fruit and served them to Roger and he smiled back at her and pushed his paper to one side. She returned to the kitchen and reached for her own grapefruit from the bowl. Sliding the knife from the worktop, the metal sang in her ears in a protracted note that resonated with an unnatural lingering of detail. She glanced at the clock: 8.04 am. On time – as always, except for those mornings where passion delayed them. She heard the rattle of his spoon and plate as he worked at the fruit.

  The only things they kept from each other were their own thoughts.

  A cold film of sweat formed on her forehead, under her arms and breasts. Was that her thought? Why did it matter that they had separate unreadable thoughts? You could never know someone completely – she had no reason to doubt him. She did know him completely! Why was she thinking like this? She cleaved the Grapefruit sharply, frustrated with herself and her sour turn of thoughts. No one could ever know what makes a person tick – Did that mean she didn’t truly understand him? That her comfortable security could be on the verge of destruction and she would be completely unaware? She chastised herself, almost in disbelief of her paranoid line of thought. It was uncharacteristic of her. She bit her lip in guilty punishment for her negative thoughts. It was possessive nonsense! There was no way to get inside someone, to see how a person worked.