A Coin for the Hangman

by Spurrier, Ralph

  Without looking down he turned and walked to the edge of the platform where he stopped and glanced back at the station. The whole place had been empty for some time judging by the dilapidated state of the paintwork and he wondered what had happened to the people who had worked here and where all the travellers who used this little station had gone. Beneath the trees there were some small carriages covered with green tarpaulins, their wheels rusty, sitting on dull tracks which now sprouted weeds between the sleepers. He stepped down onto the rails, his eye following the tracks of the rusted lines as they crossed the points at the end of the platform before disappearing around the corner into the woods. Nobody came and nobody went and, apart from the faintest of breezes flapping the leaves, there was utter silence. The two collared doves that had been on the roof of the station had now settled onto the tracks and were pecking at the ground as they turned and turned, ever watchful, ever frightened.

  And by and by on that beautiful late summer’s day, on the deserted platform step of the abandoned station and by the quiet waters of Chiemsee Lake with its solitary wader, George Tanner sat down and wept.

  Bradford on Avon

  1945–6

  Henry, Madeleine & Mavis

  As the war moved from faltering start through the darkest days and then onwards to its exhausted end, Henry grew from an introspective boy into a young man with no meaningful friendships outside the home. There was, seemingly, no let up in his growth, either upwards or outwards. His classmates, prone to make fun of him in earlier years, now tended to keep a wide berth, especially as Henry, now sixteen, was over six foot and close to fourteen stone.

  On the last day of school he had walked with Madeleine and her friends through the town towards the station. He wanted desperately to say something to Madeleine but there was no opportunity with the gaggle of girls around her. She had remained a year behind him throughout the secondary years and wasn’t due to leave until the following summer. Their closeness in the first year had dissipated partly through the school separation but mostly by the arrival of the evacuees from London. He had seen Madeleine grow in confidence as she mixed with the new boys and girls. By the time Madeleine had joined the senior school she had formed a new set of friends and seemed actively to avoid him. With the war over, enquiries were being made as to her parents’ whereabouts but, as yet, no news had come through. Henry had felt a growing unease during the final days of June. He had little idea what he wanted to do as a career and the one time he had mentioned to the others that he wouldn’t mind working in a bookshop it had been met with derision. Since then he had just shrugged whenever the question came up, leaving others to expand enthusiastically, if a little fantastically, on their future life in films or on the football field. Even with his mother he had been evasive, turning the conversation away from the subject. Now after the very last day of school, sauntering through the pathways between the houses down towards the town centre, Henry felt increasingly unsure and anxious about the immediate future.

  The conversation of the girls that afternoon seemed frivolous and light-hearted and he could see no moment when he could get Madeleine to himself. He desperately wanted to tell her how he felt about her but she either didn’t catch his eye or studiously avoided being close to him. As they walked over the small footbridge across the river close by the town centre, Madeleine turned and said: “I must go and catch the bus. I’ll miss it otherwise. Bye, Henry.”

  And with that she ran off, quickly followed by a couple of others. The last he saw of Madeleine was the flapping pink cardigan on her arm as she rounded the corner and was gone. Henry felt a wholly new emotion suddenly overwhelm him. Stunned, he turned to Vicky who had remained behind: “Where’s she gone? Where’s she gone?” He slumped down on the steps of the footbridge, his heart beating wildly and the tears starting in his eyes. Covering his face with his cap he felt Vicky’s hand on his head.

  “Don’t worry, Henry. I’m sure you’ll see her again sometime.” Vicky hesitated. Her bus was due in five minutes and there was something about the sight of this large young man crying so publicly that unnerved her. “Look, I’ve got to go now otherwise I’ll miss my bus. You’ll be alright?”

  Henry didn’t look up. He heard her retreating footsteps and then he was alone. Sitting there for some minutes listening to the quiet flow of the stream beneath the bridge, Henry stared at the rushes anchored to the riverbed. Driven by the stream, their tops strained to be carried away with the flow, their bases held fast in the mud. Ducks, restlessly paddling back and forth, dappled their beaks at the edges of the reeds while a frightened moorhen darted across the river and into the bushes at the water’s edge. The scene and the warmth of the afternoon sun reminded him of the summer before the war when he and Madeleine had built a camp in the fields outside the town and everything was perfect and unspoilt. Now everything was different.

  He got up and walked back across the bridge – back towards the shop. As he climbed up the street, nearing the shop he could see a sign-writer putting the finishing touches to a new name written in flowing golden script above the shop window – “M. Eastman and Son.”

  His mother had spotted him standing on the pavement and came out of the shop to join him. “Like it, son?”

  Henry’s emotions suddenly overflowed and he smiled glowingly at his mother. “Oh, that’s marvellous. What a surprise! Thanks, Mum!” He threw his arms around her and put his face next to hers. The tears came easily and they were for Madeleine but they transferred their wetness to his mother’s cheek. She pulled away slowly and looked up lovingly at his creased face.

  “Come on, let’s go in and see what can be done to spice things up inside.” She took his hand and together they went into the shop. The front door tipped the small bell that hung on a bracket and sent a light peal echoing around the half-empty store. The war rationing had meant that more and more items became unavailable or were in short supply. Wherever a gap opened up Mavis had placed a colourful card or metal plate advert to try and give the impression of a shop fuller than it actually was. The rows of glass jars that, before the war, had been colourfully packed with every sugared shape still sat in tiered shelves behind the counter in a display right up to the ceiling. Now, only every third jar contained sweets. On the counter itself small display boxes of mints, farthing chews, sherbet dips and liquorice whirls presented the small children with a limited array of choice and colours. Below the counter, and in sliding trays, used to be the more expensive chocolates, individually chosen and carefully wrapped. Now, apart from a few plainer sweets such as marshmallows and sugar mice, the trays lay empty. Mavis had realized fairly early on that she needed to diversify much more and, accordingly, one whole side of the shop had been converted to tobacco products which had been more plentiful during the war. Snuff pots, cigarette packets, cigars – although these had become scarcer – lighters, pipes, matches and all the other paraphernalia were tiered in an attractive display.

  Henry moved behind the counter and stood with his hands face down on the glass top. With the knowledge that his name – albeit just as “son” – was over the front door, Henry realized that his life was now effectively mapped out. A profound bitter-sweet contentedness descended on him, easing more tears from his eyes. Head bent over the glass counter, Henry stared at the marshmallow trays, arrayed in their pristine dustiness on the shelf underneath. One by one the tears dropped, dappling the glass surface.

  Rationing of bread, coal, clothes, food and sweets continued, and the winter of 1945–6 was the worst Mavis could ever remember. The cold and snow that arrived just before Christmas hung on for weeks with many of the roads blocked by drifts. Even though Henry religiously cleared the pavement outside the shop of snow or frost each morning, there were very few customers prepared to brave the icy weather. The few that did drop in found very little other than cigarettes on the shelves. The sweets had all but disappeared and the meagre quantities that did arrive from the wholesaler each week were soon snapped up. Henr
y would try and keep himself busy by polishing and tidying the empty jars and rearranging them on the shelves, but most afternoons in that winter he would sit behind the counter, reading, undisturbed by customers. By 4 o’clock each day he would put up the Closed sign and retreat to the back of the house where his mother would have the one room warmed with wood collected from the country side.

  One evening in February, as the two of them sat by the fire – Henry reading a book and Mavis unpicking one of Albert’s old jumpers – something made Mavis look up. She was startled to see tears rolling down Henry’s cheeks.

  “Oh, son, whatever’s the matter? What is it?”

  Henry rummaged desperately in his pocket for a handkerchief and unable to find one wiped his face on the back of his sleeve and hid his eyes. The book he had been reading dropped off his lap on to the threadbare carpet.

  “I don’t know, Mum, I don’t know. I feel… It just seems… I’m – we’re – all alone. I can’t get warm most days and hardly anyone comes into the shop any more. When’s it going to get better?” He stifled a sob but the tears kept rolling down. “War’s been over for nearly a year now.”

  Mavis got out of her chair, bent over her son from behind and put her arms round his neck: “We’ve got each other, love. It won’t go on forever like this. Spring’ll be here soon and it’ll be better. You’ll see.” Mavis stroked the tears from Henry’s face. “Don’t cry my love, don’t cry”.

  But she could feel his tears continue. There was something about the deep sorrow that touched Mavis. The sight of her boy, her solid lumpen angel, so sad, so alone, upset the carefully controlled emotions that she had subdued since Albert died. Together they had come through what she had thought were the hard times, but now she realized that this sense of fruitlessness was something she had also begun to feel.

  “I’m too fat to get a girlfriend,” Henry blurted out. “Look at me.”

  He laid his head back against the comfort of his mother’s soft, woollen cardigan and looked up into his mother’s eyes. “Look at me,” he whispered. “I’m just a big, fat oaf.”

  The chair in which he sat had been his father’s favourite, but Henry’s size meant that he looked out of place, as if he was sitting in a seat designed for a child. Mavis could feel her son’s suppressed sobs through her chest and she lowered her face into the thick mop of dark hair on the crown of his head, kissing him softly.

  “Oh, my sweet, don’t cry, don’t cry. Somebody will come along just right for you. There’s somebody for everybody in this world. You’ll see.”

  She continued to stroke his hair. Henry’s crying had subsided and he now picked at the loose skin around the base of his fingernails.

  “You know, Mum… its odd…” his voice faltered. He lifted his hand to touch his mother’s arm around his neck. “Somehow I feel as if I don’t fit in. I don’t mean because I’m fat or big – or perhaps I do a bit – but I feel as if I’m looking at things which are happening all around me but it’s as if I’m not part of them. At all. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not sure I do, sweet.”

  Mavis moved from behind Henry and back to her chair but slid it closer to him so she could hold his hands in hers. Henry enveloped his mother’s delicate fingers with his and he moved his thumbs backwards and forwards across the back of her hands. A log on the fire suddenly cracked and sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. They both stared at the fire, watching as the flames licked around the newly opened gash of the split log singeing the cream interior. Outside the first faint flakes of a new snowfall began to flutter past the window and a chill wind suddenly rattled the frame.

  “Try and explain, love.” Mavis looked at the dark fringe of hair that fell over his forehead and she recalled the shock of the birth and the arrival of her boy with that full head of hair that had all the mothers in the maternity ward “oooing” and “aaahing”.

  “I watch people go by the window of the shop,” Henry stared as if he was seeing them there in front of him, “and I wonder what kind of lives they have. Are they happy? Are they just going through the motions? Some of them I see at more or less the same time every day. How can their day be so parcelled up like that? It’s so strange, so strange.”

  Henry leant forward towards his mother with his head almost touching hers. His voice lowered almost to a whisper: “I can’t explain it very well, Mum. I just feel odd. Outside of normal things. I just want something to happen that will make me feel free of all of this…” His voice trailed away.

  Mavis’s eyes filled up, suddenly shocked by the thought that Henry was thinking of leaving: “Where would you go?”

  “I don’t really mean I want to leave here…” Henry’s voice faltered as if he was desperately trying to find the words to describe his feelings. “It’s more wanting to be something different, something real. Something more than those people who pass the window everyday.”

  Not fully understanding, Mavis gave Henry’s hands a squeeze as a rejuvenating token. “You will make something of yourself. You will. There’s nothing to stop you, Henry.”

  For ever afterwards Mavis was to wonder at the look Henry gave her as she stood up to go towards the piano. There was something about it that made her realize, possibly for the first time in her life, that you never really understood how people thought – even those closest to you. Without saying any more, Mavis pulled out the stool from under the piano and opened up the seat. Leafing through the sheet music she found what she was looking for. Now seated, she lifted up the piano lid, pulled down the music stand and spread the sheet out. Taking a moment to check the key of the music, she began to play. The tune was one that both she and Henry knew well – The Lake Island. The sounds flowed out and around the small living room, enveloping both player and listener in a world of delicately lapping water and soft summer winds.

  1946

  Henry, Mavis & George

  A sudden thaw in March cleared the snow from the streets and the surrounding countryside, but the river, unable to cope with all the water running off the frozen land, burst its banks. The subsequent flooding of the town centre, although it didn’t directly affect Eastman’s shop, meant that business didn’t really begin to pick up until April. By the time summer arrived the business was barely limping along, and Mavis was thinking of closing the shop completely, although she didn’t share her thoughts with Henry. His mood had changed little since that February evening and often Mavis would catch him staring for long periods out of the shop window.

  It was late in September that Henry excitedly came home from the church youth club with the news that he had a date fixed with Madeleine from Trowbridge.

  “You remember her, don’t you, Mum? She’d come round to tea here before the war.” Mavis looked at the glow in her son’s eyes and felt a lurch in her own heart. Henry babbled on: “I haven’t seen her for over a year. It’d be good to meet her again. I wonder what she looks like now?”

  “Yes, I remember her. Such a sweet little girl, too. I always wondered why you didn’t stay friends after the war.” Mavis flicked the cloth and let it billow out over the table before smoothing it out to the corners. “She’ll be a fine young woman by now, is my guess. And you, a fine, big lad!” She ran her hand across her son’s shoulders, excited for him, pleased at his new enthusiasm.

  He told her that a couple of the lads he had known from school had bumped into him in the town and said that a girl called Madeleine wanted to meet up with him again. Flattered and excited, Henry told the lads to pass the message back that he would meet her off the No. 33 bus down at the station next Friday evening.

  Mavis had been delighted and proud when Henry walked off down Silver Street that evening, spruced up in his best suit and carrying a small bunch of flowers. Henry had told her that he and Madeleine would probably go to the flicks to see Brief Encounter and then have some chips afterwards. When Henry returned an hour later, alone and with the flowers still in his hand, Mavis could sense his despair. Madeleine hadn�
��t arrived and there were no other buses coming from Trowbridge that evening.

  The next morning he told his mother that perhaps he had the day wrong and that he should go down to the town that evening. And when nothing came of that, or the next day, he had finally returned without the flowers, thrown in the bin by the bus stop. Although he was to say nothing more about the snub, Mavis knew that Henry had been deeply upset and she marked that event as the moment that he began to turn inwards and away from the world. In truth, Mavis was only partly correct. While Madeleine’s snub was to remain an ache that troubled Henry to the end of his days, it was the events of the very next day that, tragically for both Mavis and Henry, were to isolate her son.