No Heaven, No Hell

by J. T. Brindle

  ‘Let her be,’ Jack said when his wife expressed the intention to go after her. ‘She’ll be home when she’s ready.’

  ‘She’s been far too quiet for my liking,’ Liz replied. Since the awful accident she had hardly slept, afraid to dream, afraid of her own dark suspicions. For the sake of her sanity, and her family, she dared not let herself think too deeply about the events of these past few days. With immense effort, she deliberately closed her mind to the gruesome fate of Miss Warren.

  ‘Give her space to breathe, Liz,’ Jack pleaded. ‘It’s been a terrible shock.’

  ‘All the more reason why we should deal with it as a family.’ She blew into her hands before putting on her woollen mittens. There was something about Ginny she couldn’t forgive, and yet there was no reason why she should feel that way towards her own daughter. It was obvious that Jack adored his eldest child. Was that the reason? Was it nothing more than jealousy? She couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that of herself. ‘It’s been a shock for all of us,’ she muttered. ‘She shouldn’t shut us out.’

  Jack thought she was being a little harsh. ‘I know that,’ he patiently conceded. ‘But Ginny was there. We weren’t, thank God.’

  Addressing Lianne, who had her own suspicions about the incident at the swimming pool, he suggested, ‘Go after your sister. Watch her. You know how impulsive she can be.’ He felt out of his depth. Just as he had felt out of his depth all those years ago.

  Lianne chased up the street after Ginny. ‘Wait for me!’ she called. But that only made Ginny walk faster. She didn’t want anyone with her just now, least of all Lianne. Lianne had a conscience. That was a dangerous, pitiful thing.

  Undeterred, Lianne pursued her. ‘You might as well wait for me,’ she cried, ‘because you know I’ll find you anyway.’ She had followed her beloved sister too many times not to know her every hiding place.

  ‘I’ve never known two sisters to be so different.’ Mr Clayton was the history teacher, and had been a close confidant of Miss Warren’s. His gaze lingered on Lianne’s departing figure. ‘She has a delightful nature, that one,’ he murmured, almost as though to himself.

  Jack took offence. ‘Are you implying that Ginny doesn’t have a delightful nature?’ Even as he spoke he knew what the answer, was. ‘I’m sorry,’ he added. ‘That wasn’t a fair assumption.’

  Mr Clayton shrugged his shoulders. ‘I meant no offence,’ he assured him. ‘Ginny has a different nature, that’s all. She’s far more confident and outspoken than her sister. They’re both intelligent, capable human beings. Ginny though is highly perceptive and bristling with ambition, while Lianne is more content, more approachable, if you know what I mean.’ He gave a little wry smile. ‘Of course you know your own daughters better than anyone. In my experience no two people are alike. We each have our own strengths and weaknesses, and we each want different things from life. Which is just as well, don’t you think?’

  ‘I expect so.’ Jack glanced at his wife. Seeing her shiver with cold, he put a protective hand on her shoulder. ‘If you’ll excuse us?’ he apologised, gently propelling Liz away.

  ‘Of course. It’s too bitter cold to hang about chatting.’

  Mr Clayton didn’t immediately return to his colleagues, who had sought each other’s company inside the school building. Instead he watched Jack and Liz walk away. ‘Far be it from me to say,’ he muttered, ‘but your eldest daughter has the makings of a monster.’ He hunched his shoulders against the biting wind, thrust his hands deep into the cavernous pockets of his overcoat, and returned to the confines of the assembly hall. Like Miss Warren, he had a sneaking dislike for Ginny Lucas. But he was professional enough not to let his personal feelings spill over. He had learned to keep his opinions to himself. That was his way, and so far it had kept him out of trouble.

  As they walked away, neither Jack nor Liz was aware that Mr Clayton was regarding them with interest.

  ‘You go on,’ Liz said as they came on to the lane. ‘I need to stop off at the grocer’s.’ Threading her arm through his she pressed close. The breeze was whipping up and it was bitterly cold. ‘Lianne used up the last of the marmalade this morning. I can’t abide my toast without marmalade.’

  ‘Can’t you get it in the morning?’

  ‘No. It’s Saturday.’

  Giving her a curious glance he remarked, ‘I know that, sweetheart, but they are open on Saturdays, aren’t they?’

  She nodded but didn’t look up. Her gaze was fixed to the ground, drawn by the fresh snowfall, so white and virginal. In a short time it would be smudged with dirt, violated by the footprints that ground it down.

  ‘Right. And they sell marmalade, don’t they?’

  She looked up. ‘What?’

  He groaned, then smiled, and his smile lit the morning. ‘The shop… on Saturday… they sell marmalade, don’t they?’

  Snuggling closer she arched her back against the cutting breeze. ‘’Course they sell marmalade!’ she answered indignantly. ‘It wouldn’t be much of a grocer’s if they didn’t.’

  ‘So! Why can’t you get your marmalade in the morning?’

  She tightened her grip and gave him a squeeze. ‘I’m not getting into all that. It only gives you an excuse to argue.’ With wise eyes she gazed up at him. ‘Anyway, you’re only a man,’ she said beaming. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  He shook his head with frustration. ‘Try me.’

  She looked up into his green smiling eyes and as always he triggered off a need in her. ‘What? Right here and now?’ she laughed suggestively.

  Bending his head he kissed her on the mouth, a long lingering kiss that chased out the cold and fired their blood. ‘Slag!’ he muttered. ‘I believe you would.’

  She grimaced. ‘I don’t think so.’

  He glanced down the lane. It was deserted, almost as though they were the only two people left alive in the whole world. ‘You don’t think so, eh? Might I ask why not?’

  ‘Because there’s a foot of snow on the ground and my arse will freeze.’

  Laughing, he kissed her again. ‘I suppose that’s as good an excuse as any.’

  ‘Have you ever known me make an excuse?’

  ‘What about last New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Not fair! If I remember rightly, I’d just spent two hours having my hair done for the dance. We were about to go out the door, half an hour late as I recall, and I was dressed in a skintight dress that took me ages to pour myself into.’

  ‘It was the skintight dress that did it.’ He winked mischievously, his handsome features crinkling into a boyish grin.

  ‘You get your marmalade,’ he said, ‘and I’ll drop in on the workforce… make certain they’re not wasting my time and money.’

  ‘Slave driver.’

  ‘Pays for the marmalade.’

  Before they parted company he reminded her, ‘You never said why you couldn’t go to the grocer’s in the morning.’

  ‘Because the village shop is always packed on a Saturday morning and everyone wants to stand and talk. Besides, Martha Knowles has just got a job on the cheese counter and you know how she gossips. It will take me half an hour just to get away from her! It’s all very well, but I can’t spare the time. I need to go into Leighton Buzzard market to get some material.’

  ‘I thought you got that last week?’

  ‘I did, only, well, when I got it home I didn’t like it, so I’m taking it back.’

  ‘That’s the second time, isn’t it?’

  ‘The third. I do so want the curtains to blend with the settee, and it isn’t easy getting the match.’

  ‘Why not snip a piece of material off the settee covers?’

  ‘You must be mad!’

  He gave a beleaguered smile. ‘Like you so rightly pointed out, sweetheart. I’m only a man.’

  ‘See you at the bakery?’

  ‘No, darling. It’s best if you go straight home. I don’t know how long I’ll be.’

  ‘I’ll have something w
aiting to warm you up,’ she answered.

  ‘That sounds tempting.’

  Her laughter lifted his heart. ‘I meant a cup of tea.’ Casually blowing a kiss she pushed open the door of the grocer’s shop and was instantly waylaid by the dreaded Martha Knowles.

  Still chuckling to himself, Jack strode on up the lane and into the alley where his bakery was situated. ‘If I live to be a hundred I’ll never fathom the mind of a woman,’ he sighed.

  Suddenly he was made to think of another woman, and his flesh crawled.

  The bakery was over a hundred years old, a big square red brick building with long narrow windows and big wooden doors. When he bought the premises some years back, they were run down. The business was sadly neglected, and the ovens had given up the ghost. It took a frightening bank loan, a lot of guts and an iron determination to build it up into the thriving prosperous concern it was today. Jack and his family got a good living from the bakery, and with the fair wages set by Jack, so did the four hand-picked men who now worked for him.

  ‘Morning, Jack.’ Fred Stacey’s cheerful voice emerged from the bowels of the earth. ‘Come to check up on us, have you?’

  Lurching round, Jack peered across to where one of the vast oven doors was swung open. Sprawled beneath it was a man of senior years, his two arms reaching inside the huge oven and his round familiar face looking up, grinning as usual, displaying a unique pair of wide pink gums. Fred was proud to declare they were ‘all my own’.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing down there?’

  ‘The bugger’s playing up again.’ Getting off his knees and groaning, he explained, ‘Spoiled a batch of bread this morning, she did.’ Above the smutty face his thin grey hair stood on end. His overalls were covered in flakes of burned segments. ‘I’ve had it to pieces and for the life o’ me I can’t see where the trouble is.’

  ‘I expect the flue’s blocked up.’ Jack glanced down the room, along the stone walls and down towards the other men: Arnie was drawing a dozen loaves of bread out of the far oven; Tony was putting the finishing touches to his latest creation – wedding cakes were his speciality – and John was busy loading the pallets with freshly baked currant buns. The pallets were almost ready to be loaded into the van and delivered to the local shops.

  ‘A hive of industry,’ Fred observed proudly, taking up a place beside his boss. ‘The business is growing all the time.’

  Jack frowned. ‘As long as it doesn’t grow bigger than the men who run it.’

  The older man stared at him. ‘I can’t understand you, Jack. You could have the biggest bakeries in Bedfordshire, yet you’re happy enough with what you’ve got.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘By! If I were you, I’d not be satisfied.’

  Jack’s mood darkened. ‘Don’t ache for what you can’t have, Fred,’ he advised. He knew from experience that money didn’t necessarily bring happiness.

  ‘Don’t you want to be a millionaire, then?’

  ‘It’s not one of my priorities, no.’

  Fred displayed his pink gums in a grimace. ‘Being wealthy can keep a lot o’ nasty fellas from the door. Only last week the bailiff called at a neighbour’s house and took away all his furniture because he hadn’t paid his wife’s maintenance.’ He chuckled. ‘Mind you, it were a real surprise to me. He never said he were married.’

  ‘Wealthy people have skeletons in their cupboards too.’

  Fred wasn’t listening. He was dreaming of being a millionaire, lying on the beach with a bikini-clad beauty and having a yacht moored in the harbour. ‘You don’t want too much out of life d’you, Jack?’

  ‘Not too much.’

  He looked at him then, curious, not understanding. ‘A man like you… still young, and with a shrewd business head on your shoulders. What do you want, then?’

  ‘The need to survive in a mad world.’

  So profound and unexpected was the answer to his question, and given in such a soft intimate whisper, that Fred was momentarily struck silent. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, thoughtful manner. ‘How did it go this morning?’

  Jack mentally shook himself. He was letting his thoughts wander. That was a dangerous thing to do. ‘It was just as you might expect,’ he answered, being suddenly more attentive to the old man’s chatter. ‘She was well thought of, that was obvious.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘By! That were a bad thing. A real bad thing.’ He took off his cap and scratched his head, then rubbed his old eyes and put his cap back on again. ‘The filings from inside the oven are the very devil,’ he explained. ‘They get everywhere.’

  Jack was sympathetic. ‘It’s Friday. The others can cope. You take yourself off home.’ He smiled at him, thinking what a poor old sod the other man was. His hair was fast receding, his teeth had dropped out one after the other. Last year his wife upped and left him for a man half her age and lately he had begun talking to himself. But he was a man of the old breed, a worker who earned every penny of his pay packet. Jack valued him more than he would ever know. ‘I’ll not stop your pay if that’s what’s worrying you,’ he promised.

  Fred was indignant. ‘I weren’t thinking that.’

  ‘Go on then. Get off home. Take your old dog for its daily constitutional, then put your feet up for the evening.’

  ‘You’re a good ’un.’

  ‘I know that.’ Jack’s grin reassured the old fellow. ‘Now get out before I change my mind and ask you to strip that oven down to the bone.’

  ‘I will if you want?’

  ‘I don’t. We’ll call Dickens in tomorrow. What he doesn’t know about big ovens isn’t worth knowing.’

  ‘I’m off then.’ He waited, as though for some new instruction. When none came he went away, merrily whistling, and wondering how long he could go on working. He was coming up seventy after all. Jack had kept him on as long as he could, but there must come a time when it all had to end. It was a sobering thought.

  An hour later, the old fellow was walking his dog through the woods. ‘The snow can’t get in here,’ he told the scabby old terrier. ‘The trees are too tall, and the branches act like an umbrella, d’you see?’ He pointed up, where the watery sun was trying to filter through, silhouetting the veins in the leaves and creating beautiful spidery patterns.

  He followed his usual route, along the bracken path and down by the disused RAF barracks. ‘See that?’ Pausing, he brought the mongrel’s attention to the long Nissen huts. ‘At one time them huts were bustling with activity.’ His memories took him back over forty years. ‘I were a soldier then, fighting for life and country. These ’ere woods might seem peaceful enough now, but during the war they were alive with Air Force personnel.’ His old eyes grew moist. ‘There were a lot o’ good lads lost in the war, God bless ’em.’ Feeling suddenly old and useless, he tugged on the mongrel’s lead. ‘Come on, you bugger,’ he said sharply. ‘Best not to linger.’

  Inside the Nissen hut Ginny lay still as a mouse on the grimy stone floor. ‘Has he gone?’ she whispered to her companion.

  Easing himself away from her warm body, Stuart Dickens peered through a crack in the wall. ‘It’s all right,’ he answered with a sigh of relief. ‘He’s out of sight now.’ A slim, hard young man with wonderfully straight shoulders and a shock of blond hair any woman would be proud to own, he laid himself over her again. ‘Christ, Ginny! What if he’d come in here and seen us?’ He was hot and bothered, staring at her through astonished blue eyes, and bitterly frustrated at being interrupted just when he was about to climax. ‘It’s put me right off,’ he groaned.

  He was ready to leave it for another day, but Ginny had other ideas. Clinging to him, she clutched his small round buttocks in the palms of her hands. Reaching her tongue inside the pinkness of his mouth she whispered softly. ‘Love me.’

  And he did. With all the fire and exuberance of youth, he pushed himself inside her. Again and again with increasing force, bruising and delighting her, while she tore at his back with sharp fingernails, moani
ng and whispering, urging him on, firing his every sense until he thought he would go insane.

  Afterwards, they lay together exhausted, their naked bodies welded by sweat, a grotesque shape that rose and fell with every frantic breath. Suddenly Ginny started giggling. The giggling erupted into a crescendo of laughter.

  ‘Shut up, you bloody idiot!’ He slapped his hand over her mouth, but the laughter crept out between his fingers, a weird muffled sound that made him afraid. ‘I said shut up!’

  She stopped then, her furious dark eyes looking over his fingertips. He took his hand away and her smile was magnificent, alluring. ‘I want you to do it again,’ she whispered.

  ‘Can’t.’ He was embarrassed.

  Her hands slid down, caressing the used penis. In her hands it was soft and pliable, empty now, momentarily contented. ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘I have to get home… got a hockey match tonight.’

  She didn’t answer. Instead she continued to stroke the tip of his hardening penis. Opening her legs she took hold of his hand and guided it to the inside of her thighs. ‘I won’t let you go,’ she softly threatened. ‘I wasn’t satisfied.’

  His blue eyes flickered. ‘Liar!’

  ‘Once then. You know that’s never enough.’

  There was no resisting her now. He gazed at her breasts. In the half-light they were like two perfect fruits. ‘You’ll be the death of me,’ he moaned. But when he slid into the warm inviting crevice he was beyond all reason.

  Lianne had lost sight of her sister, but she knew where to find her. Pushing through the undergrowth she paused and looked around. The long dark shape of the Nissen hut was straight ahead. ‘You sod, Ginny Lucas!’ she grumbled, going towards it. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easy.’

  As she approached, a noise coming from inside the hut stopped her in her tracks. It was a cry of sorts, but not a cry of pain. Anger surged through her. ‘I know you’re in there!’ she cried, rushing through the door. ‘If you’re trying to frighten me, it won’t work.’ But she was frightened. The noise was high pitched, like the moan of a ghost.