Tales of Worrow
VOL II
The short stories of
Darren Worrow
Tales of Worrow
Volume II
©2014 Copyright is respectfully retained by the author.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of “Tales of Worrow volume 2” may be reproduced or transmitted or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
No similarity between any of the names, characters, institutions, persons or substances in “Kelly” and those of any persons living or dead is intended and any such similarity is purely coincidental.
1st Edition published 2014 by Toonedelic Press.
For more information on Darren Worrow:
www.darrenworrow.webs.com
These stories will blow your socks clean off, send them to the washing machine, wash them, hang them up to dry and promptly fold them nice and neatly back in your drawer.
There might be an odd one in there though……….
Contents
Crying
Remarkableman
One Man and His Beast
Hide and Seek
The 52nd State of America
CRYING
1.
Without doubt the best thing about Granma’s house had to be the layout. It was a large house as I recall, even larger when you are knee high to a grasshopper. As you entered the front door into the hallway there was a door to your left that led into the living room. The stairs were on the right hand side of that. Then in front of you was a short walk into the kitchen. The kitchen had a backdoor to the garden, Gran loved her gardening and it was virtually overflowing with plants, so much so that my big brother and I were forbidden to play football out there. To the right of the kitchen there was another door which led into a grand looking dining room and from that room’s right was an opening back into the living room. This meant that the ground floor had a circuit; you could run around it perpetually leaving the living room into the hallway and back around to the living room again, or visa-versa. That one simple difference that other houses we lived in or visited spelled endless fun to us children who would take full advantage of it until an adult shouted at us to stop running around the house.
I recall my second cousins finally cutting me off in the hallway by taking an alternative route each and pinning me down to put my long 1970s styled hair into pigtails. I tried to resist but not that hard, it was nice to have the girl’s attention.
Some things in the house though were not so much fun. Although Gran would bring down an old cardboard box of toys of which I liked the big blue car the most, our attention spans would soon wear thin with that and my brother and I would go off upstairs to explore. While most of the adults stayed downstairs only one would occupy the majority of their time upstairs. In a small box room with a television and a hard backed chair, a wardrobe and a rather scary looking wooden plaque on the musky orange wallpapered walls depicting a Native American Indian chief with his headdress on, there stayed my Great Grandfather who, due to a shrapnel wound from the First World War had lost his leg and would only struggle down the stairs once a day to have his dinner.
When we would arrive dinner would be nearly ready and he would have already made the massive journey to the dining room. We would, more or less, be ordered to go and say hello and I recall his smirk when he saw my innocent face nervously beaming a fake smile at him. Slowly but routinely enough his bony fingers would begin to move towards me as his smirk grew bigger. Then I would tense myself up as tight as I could until he struck me with a tickle and I would fall to the ground laughing. It was a compulsory part of the greeting when we arrived at Gran’s house. He would giggle, ask me what was in my ear to which I would say nothing but, like magic he pulled a fifty pence piece out of it and handed it to me. I was instructed by Mum to say thank you but I never really knew why, it was my 50p in the first place, it was in my ear.
I don’t know where my Great Grandfather was when my brother dared me to go into his room. He told me he was not there and as much as I wanted to believe him I was always sceptical of his little games. He lived to torment his younger sibling, to harass, bully and make fun of me. Still, I carried out his orders blindly, naïve to the fact he always had a sinister plan far smarter than I could fathom up his sleeve.
There was, according to my big brother, sweets in his wardrobe and so this was an opportunity not to be missed. I figured my brother was a “scaredy-cat,” for keeping his distance from the door as I crept in stealthily. On hands and knees I exceeded the carpet holder and the pattern on the floor had changed to the one I knew was Great Grandfather’s room, I had made it this far, there was no going back. It was such a rare thing for him not to be there I hesitated and shot a quick glance up to his hard old chair expecting him to be sitting there with that smirk on his face and his hands ready to reach out and grab me with those bony fingers. But he wasn’t there, my brother was right; now nothing was between me and the wardrobe with those sweets inside. I scrambled for my life over to the corner of the room, it was now or never. I raised myself up to my knees but I could not reach the worn brass handle. I realised that I would have to stand, this would have to be done in one swift manoeuvre before an adult coming up the stairs spotted me. It would be a serious crime to be in Great Grandfather’s room without permission. I had to stand, grab the handle and pull as hard as I could then, the sweets would be mine and seeing as my listless brother had no contribution to this theft he therefore would not share in the spoils.
I carried out my plan masterfully, I stood up and as I did I grasped the handle. I yanked it open and with eyes bulging expecting the sweets to just fall out I was shocked. For there was no sweets at all, at least I did not get time to fully check. What I did see though, and I guess my brother was fully aware by the sound of his giggling as he ran down the stairs was my Great Grandfather’s spare wooden leg hanging on a clothes hanger by the braces and as I gave the wardrobe such force to open it the leg had naturally started swinging towards me.
I was locked in fear as I saw the shoe and a black painted sock on the end of it. No noise could come out of my mouth at all to express my fear and I stood petrified by the appearance of this object. What happened next I cannot recall. I guess I shut the door as fast as I could but I know that for the rest of the day I was seriously disturbed and upset.
When I was upset at Gran’s house she would pick me up and take me to a painting in the living room. The picture was of a little boy just like me with blond hair and a chubby face and he was crying too. Gran would sing me song, “Bimbo, Bimbo, What you going to do ee-oo,” and this would calm me. She would even go as far as telling me that I was the little boy in the picture, I was Bimbo and as a toddler, well, you believe stuff you are told from your Gran don’t you? She did this regularly enough for it to impact in my mind and leave quite a vivid memory of it. I used to like the attention, perhaps performing an act of dismay in order for her to do it. Although the more I thought back to this happening something I could not put my finger on, something unusual gave me an eerie feeling in the very pit of my stomach. It was sturdier uneasy feeling than the anxiety I felt when I thought of that wooden leg swinging in the wardrobe but its reasoning was way beyond any memory that could be located in my mind.
As I searched the very depths of my mind in that silent room, sitting at that the table with the only light coming from the laptop’s backlight and the only sound was the whirring of the fan inside it, I was lost in a dream of my life back then, picking at the shards of reminiscence and hoping that one would
cast off and catch what the reason for the eerie sensation was. It was there, I am sure it was coming when suddenly and without warning I felt a warm hand touch my shoulder. I jumped, higher than necessary as the bubble of my dream popped like a balloon. A voice followed it, a recognisable voice, soft, gentle and loving; “Hey you, can I check my email if you’re not using that?” It asked.
Reality checked in, I turned my head to face the interruption, “Oh,” I stumbled, “I was just….”
She giggled, oh how I love that giggle, how it set reality back into a role that was tranquil. She interjected my excuse, “…..you were just staring blankly at the screen,” she pointed out and I knew at that point she was indeed correct. “For the past half hour,” she added, maybe slightly exaggerating but I could not be sure; perhaps it had been that long.
“Yeah,” I groaned, rubbing my chin as she moved away to throw herself on the sofa behind us and bend over the side of it to flick the lamp on. The room spilled with light instantly, flushing the dreams out of my head and allowing me to move back to the modern day with the splinter of something still uneasy, “of course you can. I was, well….”
“Are you ok?” she asked, “look a bit pale,” she answered her own question long before I could have possibly assessed the situation myself as she grabbed for her book and fumbled with her book mark. I knew she would rather be checking her emails and this was a subtle hint for me to give up my session online. I stood, a bit wobbly but nothing to write home about, just a manoeuvre too quickly I guess. A few paces across our lounge were all it took to hand her the computer, it was a small room within an equally small apartment but it was our love-nest, our home. It had a contemporary, chic look about it; I often favoured a more traditional décor but she liked it like this and I had learned never to go against women when it came to interior design, it was an argument that simply could not be won.
She smirked when she whizzed her book back to the floor it came from and held her hands out to except the laptop. The top of her nose kind creased ever so delicately and eyes shone directly into my own; she knew I melted when she did this. She flicked it back open and went to open an internet page, started talking about someone that had written something on Facebook about the neighbour’s dog barking all night, I was trying to pay attention but deep in my mind that song was still ringing; “Bimbo, Bimbo what you going to do e-ooh!” It was trash absolute trash; of course I know that now; though still it needed to be considered.
“Is the interview bugging you?” she asked in passing, before the social network would link her to the wonders of the outside world and all the gossip one could dream of.
I shirked, “Shall we get a Chinese, cannot be arsed to cook?”
“If you want to honey, so, is the interview bugging you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “I don’t know why. It’s just one question they are going to ask, it got my mind wandering. I mean, they ask what your first introduction to music was, what was the first song you can remember? That could be interpreted in so many ways. My first record was Absolutely by Madness; quite apt really you know, reflects my influences quite well….”
“So say that then,” she proposed, casually scanning her home page and slowly fading the importance of this conversation.
“Well I could I suppose,” I pondered, then decided to at least air my judgments on mentioning the song that was ringing in my head even if she was now immersed in the world of Facebook. “However, it’s not really the first song I came across is it? Not by far. There was all the singles I bought before it, songs on the radio through the 1970s…”
She sighed, wondering why I was making a big deal about all this, “If mentioning the crap music you liked as a little kid is going to ruin your rep with Melody Maker fans then why mentions them at all?” She pointed out and I had to admit she did have a point.
I paced the room considering this; go with the Madness long player. I treasured that album; I ran my hands over its shiny cover so many times. The Nutty Boys crowded tightly outside Chalk Farm Station with their Crombie coats and Kix Thompson in the middle, that legendary saxophonist with his bowler hat, shades and baggy trousers. The two-tone ska roots of my band harks back to these people and the clear influence they had on our musical style it is surly fitting and right to say that this was my “introduction” to music. Although, in the back of my mind I wanted to go deeper, even if I did not mention this at the interview the song that my Gran would sing to me must have some credit, it would have been, as the question asks ‘ your first introduction to music’ after all.
Still though, I had to consider her point, it would be incredibly sad to go down this route and make reference to such pathetic songs. Everyone liked slushy and catchy tunes when they were a toddler, we all grew out of it. So I suggested she was right, she was locked into writing her posts and updating her status anyway. I whimpered out that I was thinking about a song my Gran used to sing me when I was upset. “Oh yeah?” she suddenly perked up, “how did it go?”
I cleared my voice, I knew it was pitiable but I sang what I could remember of the song, surprising myself as to how much I retained from memory; “Bimbo, Bimbo, where ya gonna go-e-o, Bimbo, Bimbo, whatcha gonna do-e-o, Bimbo, Bimbo, does your mommy know, That you're goin' down the road to see a little girl-e-o!”
A cold silence spread across the room as she gawked at me standing there recalling the song. Then snappishly she exploded in laughter with a force that would throw the laptop in the air and I jumped forward to catch it. By this time she was literally on the carpet roaring with a fit of giggles. My paranoia broke, I couldn’t keep up the serious look on my face with her in this state and I lobbed the computer on the sofa and leapt down to her on the floor, “how dare you?” I jested, ticking her ribs.
“Get off, you sad sack of shit!” she muffled through her giggles, “Bimbo, what you gonna do-e-o! My god, they will crucify you if you go there!” And of course, she was right too. However after the merriment of the event had died down my thoughts returned to a more sober reflection of the memory, it was deeper than that. I wanted to know more about this song; who sang it, when was it recorded but mostly, why, oh why did it give me heebie jeebies every time I think about it?
2.
My Gran was the kind of lady who collected illustrated tea-towels of all the places she visited on holiday. In order to see how well travelled she was you only had to check the drawer next to the kitchen sink. Today we would be wiping up the dishes from the draining board with a Great Yarmouth one. Although many of the illustrations were beginning to fade with age, this one you could still see a picture of the pier on it.
After dinner at our house we would run off outside, leaving my Dad to wash the dishes. I guess he kind of saw it as his duty, he couldn’t cook an omelette and so after my mum had prepared the food it was now his turn to contribute. However at my Gran’s house the children were expected to help in this laborious task no matter how much we protested. I tried to think back as I held my head in embarrassment at being made to wipe the cutlery and the dishes. She would sing to me then too if I recall, telling me how it would speed the process up if we enjoyed ourselves. In a way she was right, singing was my life, my escapism and even if the nature of the song I sang, the genre of the tune was so vastly different from that of the songs my Gran sang to me I could see now the importance of what she had said reflecting in my own life.
Just when things were looking up for the band Daniel was becoming distant; it had been a long time coming but now could it be the end? Had we burned out before the fire got going? Was our manager to blame? The decades of pubs and clubs, so many I fear to count them. The highs and lows, the times we thought it was going to happen and the times we knew it just wouldn’t. For all our merriments, our hedonism and for the times that the drugs were just too much and we collapsed from mental exhaustion, they all led up to this one thing; a break. Now, matured and professional we stumbled unexpectedly across a recording contract a few years ago and we
wasted no time. The single came out, the album got into production and for some strange reason the timing was right. Two-Tone Ska would never in a million years make a comeback to the mainstream but in this time of electronic cliché the kids want to skank in just the same way we did when we were young. The fact that Melody Maker was interviewing us had to mean something important.
I say it was important, it certainly was for me but for Daniel, our manager things didn’t seem so important, he rarely turned up for band practises. He was elusive most of the time and I had to ask if he was as dedicated as he once was. He was young for a manager though, maybe he lost interest.
I thought about this, if I had the fame back in the days when we started out could I have really handled it all? I smirked to myself, no chance. But looking back at the beginnings, I mean the very beginnings, Gran, well she was rocking; rocking her way through that washing up!
Her song, I was giving it the old Google action. According to the ever reliable Wikipedia it was written in either 1948 or 49 by Glenn O'Dell, but credited to a man called Rodney Morris or "Pee Wee" King. Gene Autry originally recorded the song, released on 78rpm in 1954 and on an album of country hits for children. However I strongly suspect that the version my Gran would play me would have been the Jim Reeves cover, recorded in 1953. I know she liked him. His recording became his second No. 1 song on the Billboard magazine country chart in January 1954, and according to this website, it helped him pave the way to superstardom.
As I read further into it there were many versions of the song, one sung by Suzi Miller that was played on the BBC radio station's Children's Favourites show during the 1950s or 1960s another by Ruby Wright's which made number 7 in the UK Singles Chart in April 1954. Thinking about it though, I can recall it defiantly being a male vocal so my betting is on Jimmy. A quick YouTube clip bought it all crashing back into my mind as vivid as if it happened yesterday. I was glad to have found it, my mind hopefully settled about it now although I was positive about not really mentioning it at the interview I was glad that I gave my Gran’s influence a little bit of time. I could be at ease now; no girlfriend to hassle me about my time spent researching such minor details online; she had gone out for the evening. I pushed back in my chair, smiling at the screen as Jim Reeves sang his little heart out. What a fucking poncy song! I chuckled to myself. Content that I had solved the riddle then I span the chair around away from the computer. It was dark, I liked to surf the net in total darkness save the light from its screen as it gave it total control. The light was on in the kitchen across the hall though and my eyes focussed on it.
Tales of Worrow Volume II Page 1
