STORIES FROM RORY No.19

 

Time waits for no one

I have just finished reading my book. I’m sat in the bay window, and I gaze up to see a shooting star. It isn’t quite dark, and this puzzled me. I walk across the room, and switch the radio on. The music’s exciting. I dance around the living room, and I’m really getting into it when my husband returned from a day’s work.

“Wow, Jean, I wish I had your energy.”

He slumped down into his chair removing his shoes and tie.

“Looks like you’ve had a rough day, sweetheart,” I commented.

“Whew! You can say that again, darling, it’s been manic all day. Sorry love, but I’ve brought my sandwiches home as I haven’t had time to eat them.”

I’m really cross as everyone’s entitled to a break.

“Liam! For goodness’ sake! You must be starving. I’ll put dinner out while you freshen up.”

Liam’s mobile rang and he answered it. The cheeky blighters ask him to go back into work. He said, “I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had dinner.” Liam sighed. “I don’t believe it; I have to go back in. Can I have a clean shirt, sweetheart?”

I went upstairs to get a clean shirt for him. I got to the top of the stairs and blew my cheeks out. I feel puffed out. I glanced out of our bedroom window at the block of flats across the road. I noticed someone looking out, and it must be my imagination as she seems to be looking at us.

Then I can hear the fire engine, I look out again, and flames and black smoke are belching out of the windows where the woman is. I wondered if she’s alright and then wondered if she has family in there. Liam quickly ate his dinner and put his clean shirt on ready to go back to work.

“Don’t let them keep you for too long, Liam, as you look done in.” (I’m worried for him.)

“I really hate doing this, Jean, when I’m home, I should be home.”

I could see he needed to sleep, or at least put his feet up.

I walk back to the window to see what’s happening at the flats across the road. I heard a screech of brakes, and Liam almost had an accident with one of the Police cars. I ran out to see if he’s okay, but he’s gone by the time I get there. A young Police man is just about to get back into his patrol car.

He asked, “Are you alright, Madam?”

I answered and said, “I wondered if my husband is okay, as he almost had an accident out here. “Oh,” he said “that’s your husband, I almost hit him as I was rushing to the scene of the fire.”

I dryly replied,“Yes, he’s in a hurry too, as they have called him back into work. I would sooner he’d said no to them, and he’s had a horrible day.”

He replied with a grin, “Six of one, half dozen of the other, we’re both to blame.” He said his goodbyes and commented, “Oh well, fire waits for no man, I’d better crack on.”

I came back inside and went to the window again. Firemen were doing their best to put out the fire; however it’s well and truly out of control. I stood there looking across the road for some time.

I began to feel very tired, and I hadn’t washed up the dinner things yet. I turned to go back into the kitchen and put the liquid soap into the bowl ready to wash up. I thought I heard a noise outside of our front door. I went to investigate, but there’s no one there. I went to the back door and placed the key into the key hole, and locked it, in case someone’s in here. I check downstairs, but never searched upstairs. I go back into the living room and switch the TV on. It was the news, and all about what’s happening in the block of flats. I’d calmed my fears, and put my feet up. The news reporter has said that all of the tenants in the flats have to be evacuated, until they can get control over the fire. Liam phoned and asked if I’m to be moved out of our home?

“Well no, no one has said for me to leave.”

While he’s talking, I thought I’d heard a noise again. I mentioned to Liam that I’d heard the noise earlier, and that I’d checked around, but could find nothing amiss.

“I’m on my way home now, love, so have a rest. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

I felt relieved as I knew he shouldn’t have gone back to work. I did say a prayer that he would get home safely, as I know he’s extremely tired. I sat down on the sofa and rattled the dice that’s in the little cup that’s sitting on top of the game on our table. I scored a six. Liam and I often share a game when he gets home from work, it relaxes him. I had no one to play with. I lay down, and must have dozed off. I hadn’t seen anyone indoors.

However, there is someone there and they are helping themselves to our jewels and watches, plus any money that they can find, upstairs. They must have seen my sleeping face, and tried hard not to wake me. Shame for them, as Liam came home as they are about to leave, and he caught them red-handed.

I’m woken by the thumps and shouting. The Policeman that had almost collided with Liam came onto the scene. He booked the three young men. These devils have been robbing folk around here for a few weeks. It’s sheer luck that the officer is checking around our neighbours’ houses, checking the area, in case they’d got up to their tricks while the Police are busy.

Liam is just glad to get home, and he and the young Policeman shook hands, and he said to Liam, “Looks like we’ve both had a hell of a day, and it’s bad news for across the road. These lads we’ve just nicked have burgled them, and then set light to their flats, to take the Police’s attention away from their criminal acts. And this left them free to steal from people’s houses. We’ve wondered down at the station, why there have been so many fires around this particular area.”

I made us all a cup of tea and then Liam said, “Good news, Jean, I’ve got the next seven days off work, and this is why they wanted me back, to clear everything. I’m glad, as I’m dead beat.”

The young Policeman looked up and said, “Is that a confession, Sir?” Liam looked shocked. The Police officer began to laugh. He finished his tea and then got to his feet.

“I must get going, thanks for the tea and chat. He added, “They say time waits for no one, however this isn’t true, as time is waiting for these three thugs.”

Josie Smith

The Masked Dance (continued)

Jacqui picked herself up and muttered, “Thank you,” to Tomas. She followed John out of the restaurant and they got in their Ford Fiesta and John drove them home. Jacqui felt very confused and unhappy with John’s behaviour that seemed, to her, quite out of character. The fact that he was driving after two glasses of wine was not like him either.

As they arrived home and were walking up the path Jacqui saw a shooting star and crossed her fingers, hoping it would be a good luck omen. She was of the type of person who does not believe in omens and superstitions but gives in to the ideas ‘just in case’.

Their house was old and listed and had a large wooden front door with a big keyhole. John took out his key and, as he went to insert it in the lock, they both noticed a piece of card half tucked under the worn lip at the bottom of the door. John opened the door and picked up the card, slipping it into his pocket.

Jacqui couldn’t be bothered to ask what it was, with her feelings running so high after the evening’s events. Once inside, John went over to the drinks cabinet which was part of a dresser they had bought at the local Auction.

“Would you like a brandy?” he asked. “I know this has not been a good evening for you.”She was visibly shaking. She sat down on the big green velvet second hand sofa and looked at the things they had chosen together, making a comfortable relaxing home. ‘What had suddenly changed?’

“Yes, please. With lemonade, not soda. What I would really like is an explanation for your attitude tonight. Whatever got into you? There is more to all this than a mild jealousy!”

John sighed and walked over to the small oval table in the corner where he had an open book. He glanced down at the book then went back to pour himself a drink. He remained standing at the end of the sofa.

“I am really sorry about tonight. It was not so much a concern about Marten as the connection between him and Tomas. He, Tomas, is a really bad person. I can’t explain everything but I have a work connection with him. I did not know before the Ball that he and Marten were very close but now that is obvious it makes something bothering me much worse. He has a sort of hold over me, connected to my job as a Junior Surveyor.”

“It still doesn’t explain your interrogation about boy friends etc. We do need to have a talk about everything that is troubling you, John. I’m not sure I even know you. Anyway, I’m tired. I’m off to bed.”

Jacqui went upstairs and didn’t even shower, she was so tired. John followed and they were both lying facing away from each other. Jacqui fell asleep immediately but woke after a couple of hours and wondered, for a moment, if the memory of the evening was just a bad dream. John was asleep, snoring slightly, which she had previously found endearing, but tonight just annoyed her. She went downstairs to make a milky drink and looked at the book on the table. It was all about building regulations and there was a loose sheet in the middle showing the drawing of a tower block of flats with an address putting it in the outer area of Greater Manchester. She sat and slowly drank her hot chocolate with her mind churning.

Going back upstairs she sought out the card John had slipped in his trousers.

It had a picture of dice and somebody had written, ‘gamble wisely’. On the other side there was an advertisement for ‘The Fire Tree Club’ with a picture that looked like someone’s hand in an inferno. Jacqui did not put the card back. She would confront him when he woke up!

Linda Dalzell

NUMBERS

His wife was asleep, bless her. But he was awake, and didn’t want to disturb. So he slipped out of bed, gently, from under the quilt, turning on his stomach, one foot on the floor, one hand on the floor, second hand, second foot. Pause, to make sure he made no noise. Push with the arms to squatting position, hand on the radiator to help him rise. Once, he might have sprung to his feet – but those days were past, like so many other days, and so many things. Gone – except from his mind and his memory. Good, in the present situation. The sudden movement, the stirring of the air, would have roused her, and she needed her sleep. So, of course, did he, but not all welcome guests came when they were invited. In their absence, you amused yourself.

He padded soundlessly over the thick carpet to the door. Not a friend of modern things, he had to admit they had their uses. In this apartment, on whatever floor it might be of their tall tower, the doors opened discreetly. No need to grease hinges, no clicking latches the way there had been in their cottage – but the cottage had been too far from the help they had needed, sometimes inaccessible in winter… They were better off here, as far as their bodies were concerned, and as for their souls… they carried sustenance in their memories. Or so he hoped. And hoped that it would last.

And that was why, as he went from the bedroom, into his study, he resolved that it was time to begin writing his memoirs.

He had put it off, dismissed the whole project, because it seemed to be putting an end to new experience, twisting the head round on the neck to look backwards instead of forwards… but now, suddenly, perhaps this very moment, he had begun to see it in a new light. Perhaps, he thought, it was this insight that had woken him early. Poems, stories, would often come unbidden into his head in the small hours just before daylight, like snow-covered travellers begging for shelter, or brightly-coloured broad-winged butterflies, fleeing a summer downpour, fluttering in through the open doors of the conservatory, just avoiding the spiders’ webs, and perching, folded, on the tropical plants. This was just such an idea.

Friends had advised him that it was time, and done mathematics to prove it… But he resisted the logic of numbers. Numbers, he said, were everywhere. They were inflexible. You could not persuade them. They were incapable of showing mercy, or making exceptions. They reduced our capacity for perception. His friends pointed to the nature of statistical analysis, revealing trends and truths that might otherwise have remained invisible, and he, mischievously, reminded them of the key-pad that gave admittance to his fine new apartment. Once, he said, there would have been a key-hole, and through that key-hole you could have peeped, and seen what was going on, or bent an ear to it, and listened, and known whether you should have interrupted… Now, instead of remembering to take his key, which was simple enough if you had a copy on a string sewn into the pocket of every pair of trousers you possessed, he had to recall a string of digits…

They mocked him, of course, but he pointed out that there was a real difference between remembering important things, such as how his wife’s hair had smelt on their wedding-night, and the taste of what they had eaten and drunk on their honeymoon, or the sound of their baby’s first spoken word, and a date, which one could always look up, if one needed to.

These were the things that pressed against the doors of the big cupboard in his head in which he stored his impressions and his perceptions. He had never kept a diary. Let memory be the sieve, he had said, that separates the wheat from the chaff. What I remember is what is worth remembering, what has made me what I am. But, he reflected, as the screen blossomed into light, mocking the laggard day outside the window still wrapped in grey bed-sheets, the wobbling piles and tumbled heaps that filled the walk-in closet of his past with colourful disorder, at the risk of overflowing or inflicting mutual damage, deserved better, deserved at least to be looked at again, and appreciated, and then, perhaps, put back more economically, so as to make space for the storage of new experiences…

Unless, of course, this engagement with his past, which he had never before undertaken in any way, except to plunder it for small pieces of truth with which to spice and patch his fictions and his verse, or anecdotes to amuse or console his friends, was to be the new experience that lay before him, the exploration of a country with which he believed himself to be familiar, but which might turn out to be, in fact, unknown territory.

The screen glowed steadily in front of him, inviting, demanding his response. The pretend piece of paper, white on a grey background, was ready to turn the actions of his fingers into neatly shaped black letters in sequence. Above it, numbers defined margins he could not cross, below it numbers were alert to chart his progress.

Numbers, he thought, always numbers. Should he begin systematically, and conform to them? Establish a chronology of his life, by years and months and days and times? Or follow some other kind of thread through the labyrinth? Tastes and smells? Places and views and buildings? Staircases?

Even that thought brought him up short. There was a staircase in the tower, there must be one, for the sake of safety. But he had never found where it was. Doors were anonymous – no, don’t be silly! They all had numbers, didn’t they? But which one on his particular floor led to the staircase, and not into some other apartment, he didn’t in fact know! He got into the lift, and he pressed the number for his floor, and was taken there… He felt, he now realised, some deep reluctance to interrupt that journey. What would he find, if he got out on some other floor? Doors, with numbers on, which were not a clue to what you would find inside. Not like a house-name! The apartments were, naturally, all the same – but of course they were not all the same, because different people lived in them, with different pasts, different possessions, different habits… Numbers didn’t make them all the same… but they made him feel that they might be…

And yet… when he thought about his past… what difference might numbers have made? That girl he had given his phone-number to, after that wonderful afternoon on the mountain… suppose he had made a mistake, or she had made a mistake writing it down? And she had wanted to see him again, and never been able to?

The one he had wanted to send flowers to… and he might have given them the wrong credit-card number… and they’d never been delivered… he didn’t bother to check his bills in those days… didn’t keep them, either, they wouldn’t be stored in any real-life Cupboard of the Past, it was his wife who had made him more cautious, shown him that he had responsibility…

For a moment, he began to imagine the other paths his life might have taken. He closed his eyes, and called up the face of the girl on the mountain. He could hear her laugh, the way her head turned away, to avoid his clumsy kiss, the way it turned back, so that she could kiss him when she wanted to… so many feelings began to well up in him… he imagined what her face would look like now, given the years that had passed, what it would be like to go back into the bedroom and see her head on the pillow, to stroke her soft, downy skin and watch her eyes open…

Suppose that writing about it could make it happen?

The screen in front of him suddenly went blank.

Of course, he thought, that’s what happens when you don’t interact with it! It gets fed up, and decides to save its energy… it’s not a reproach, it’s not a warning, it’s just what the numbers tell it to do, go into sleep mode after a certain number of seconds have elapsed. And as for that… fantasy – well, that’s all it is, because that girl is no longer that girl, she’s a different one, she became a different one after we parted at the bottom of the ski-lift that summer, just as the flowers we walked through bloomed, and set seed, and died… the flowers the following summer may have looked the same, but they weren’t the same… wanting to have her there in bed to go back to is just like the sculptor Pygmalion begging the goddess Aphrodite to make his statue, Galatea, come alive… A fantasy you ought to consign to the flames, as sophistry and illusion… It’s the kind of thing you can make a story out of, but not a life…

And so, of course, that was what he did… it’ll be coming out next autumn. Wonderful where inspiration comes from, like a star falling out of the sky!

And when he’d written the first five hundred words, the start, with the writer waking early on the umpteenth floor and so on, and made notes for the continuation (which I’m not going to tell you about, otherwise you won’t have to buy the book, and you should) he sat for a while, as the computer went back to sleep, and he wondered whether he should, and he fiddled around in the drawer of his desk, and found a couple of dice that he’d once tried to use for plotting random events in a longer novel, but the story itself had taken over, and he began to look closely at one of them and realised something, which he should have known years ago (isn’t that always the way?): that things even out – because the opposite sides will always add up to seven, the wonderful six will be balanced by the miserable one, and so on.

And that made him laugh, and his laugh was so loud that his wife called to him from next door, “What’s so funny? Don’t you want to share it?” And he did, so he got up to go and do just that, but as he rose he noticed the contrast between the blank grey sleeping screen of the computer and the wide view out of the window, with the river curling, and the mist on it curling, and the houses down below and the roads in the middle distance, and the other towers, and beyond them the hills with woods on, going away to the horizon and beyond it, where numberless possibilities lived… and then he went next door, to his reality.

Mike Rogers