Keppelberg

by Stan Mason

  ‘Well there are countries where there is no war and everything is pleasant. There are many places tourists go to.’

  ‘What are tourists?’ she asked becoming further confused.

  I could see that I was out of my depth. Modern terminology and situations were completely lost here. ‘Well all I can say is that I served in the British army and enjoyed the camaraderie of comrades who served with me. We’ll never be able to establish democracy there despite what the politicians want to believe...’

  ‘Democracy?’ She questioned almost at the end of her tether. She regretted having started the conversation because it was so outrageous in her peaceful mind.

  ‘It’s a political term. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘You clearly feel very strongly about it.’

  ‘So would you if your friends and colleagues were injured or killed in the gunfire,’ I snorted changing the subject as her expression indicated her displeasure. ‘So you won’t be travelling abroad to another country.’

  ‘Firstly, I understand it would need money to do so. I haven’t any. Secondly it’s against the policy of the village to allow any of us to leave for any reason whatsoever especially as...’ She tailed off in mid-flow preventing me from learning the secret the villagers kept to themselves.

  ‘Especially what?’ I enquired as calmly as I could.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she replied as though I was about to wrest the secret away from her.

  ‘So there’s a constitution which you all follow,’ I went on intending to press her more firmly.

  ‘You’ll have to ask Mr. Townsend about it,’ she told me adamantly. ‘I’m sure he’ll answer that question for you.’

  I was beginning to hate the sound of the Chairman’s name. ‘Is it available in the library?’

  ‘Don’t ask me!’ She retorted almost buckling under the pressure. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. You must realise that I was brought up in the village. The only things I know were passed down to me by my parents, friends and the committee.’

  I relented somewhat, softening my approach. ‘You have to realise, darling, I’m a newcomer feeling my way into your society. That’s the reason why I ask so many questions. I want to learn more so that I can integrate into your society much better. I love you and want to live here with you but everyone refuses to answer the questions I ask. They hold back on me which is very frustrating.’

  She moved towards me and put her arms around my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she cooed. ‘I understand how difficult it is for you. But, as I told you before, you have to be patient. You’ll know everything about the village and the people here in time. You will... I promise you.’

  I huffed and puffed for a few moments before kissing her gently on the lips. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ I suggested knowing her reply in advance and she jumped at the idea, her eyes lighting up at the pleasure anticipated.

  We went upstairs to the bedroom and undressed until we were standing facing each other in the nude. I pushed her gently on to the bed and started to kiss her cheeks and her neck. I began to feel her wilt as I ran my hands all over her body. My fingers trickled over her nipples and I began to smother her all over with a plethora of kisses before moving my hand between her legs. This was the moment when her ecstasy began and I moved my finger gently and very rapidly at the mouth of her vagina. In the past, our love-making was romantic and sensuous where we were both aroused and our emotions were heightened by the ultimate sexual act with a great deal of lust coupled with tenderness. On this occasion, angry with the frustration at being denied the information I wanted to know, I allowed my feelings to overcome me and I became rough with the woman. After ten minutes of foreplay, where she became fully aroused and extremely moist, I pressed myself inside her forcibly and repeatedly, causing her elements of pain. However, despite the roughness employed by me in the intimate sexual act, it seemed to excite her even more and she did not appear to mind. As we merged together, moving up and down in harmony, my mind drifted to the questions that remained unanswered rather than to the love and tenderness I needed to offer to the woman. My hands ran over her breasts until the nipples became sore and I believed that I had injured her slightly between the legs by the force exerted. Eventually, when we were both satisfied, I noticed the pain she was suffering as she went from the bed to the bathroom. When she returned, she looked at me thoughtfully.

  ‘It was different this time,’ she said, although her tone was such that it was not a reproach. ‘You were a little rough.’

  I hung my head with shame. ‘I’m sorry, I let my feelings get the better of me.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ she returned smiling. ‘I liked it. It was really good!’

  She sat on the bed gingerly, wincing at the soreness between her legs, and I put my arms around her, touching her breasts lightly, noticing that she winced again at the soreness of her nipples. Yet she claimed that she had enjoyed it so there was no reason for me to feel guilty. However, I blamed myself for having lost something in the experience and I made myself a promise not to be so rough with her again. I loved this woman... the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt her.

  * * *

  Bridget, Robert and myself were having breakfast the following morning when Robert pushed his bowl of cereal aside and looked directly at me which he did not do normally.

  ‘I think you’d better come to the school today,’ he rendered before turning away again.

  ‘Why should I do that?’ I enquired puzzled. He had never wanted me to go anywhere near to the school before.

  ‘There may be trouble,’ he went on, ‘and as you’re the security officer for the village you ought to be there.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Bridget, with a frown appeared on her face. The classes had always been peaceful with the children extremely attentive.

  ‘It’s not for me to say but someone ought to be there,’ the boy continued seriously.

  ‘Is someone bullying you? Has anyone threatened you?’ Bridget was quite concerned.

  ‘It’s nothing like that,’ stated the lad, standing up to collect his satchel. ‘I consider it to be far worse.’

  ‘You’ll have to be more specific, Robert,’ I told him. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  He failed to answer, walking towards the door and looking back at me with an element of audacity in his eyes before leaving. I looked at Bridget who simply shrugged her shoulders aimlessly and shook her head, helpless to clarify the situation.

  ‘You know what boys are like,’ she uttered slowly. ‘They make up all kinds of stories.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I countered thoughtfully. ‘He’s never said anything like this before. Why today? Why the school? Do you think I should go there to check it out?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ she said flatly. ‘He’s just making it up to get our attention.’

  I took her at her word for it and went to the entrance of the village once more to undertake the security role handed out to me. The morning passed by without incident. I sat on the stub of a tree waiting for strangers to try to get into the village but nobody came. It was at lunchtime when I went to the cafeteria only to meet the Secretary again. She was truly a beautiful woman but she didn’t like me and she released all her inhibitions upon me the moment she came near.

  ‘You’re the security guard supposed to be guarding the village!’ She accused unreasonably. ‘Why aren’t you at the school today?’

  ‘What’s going on there?’ I asked with concern that something might have happened to Robert. The boy had warned me of trouble but Bridget had discounted the idea as a tale.

  ‘A riot’s going on,’ stated the woman bluntly. ‘All the children in every class have started to riot.’

  ‘All the children,’ I thought vaguely. What the hell was going on?

&nbs
p; ‘No one knows why they’re doing it but the Headmaster’s at his wits end. They smashed up the chairs and the desks... vandals every single one of them!’

  ‘Really,’ I managed to say. ‘All the chairs and the desks!’

  ‘And where were you?’ She snarled angrily. ‘Sitting on your backside at the entrance to the village where nothing was happening... wasting your time!’

  ‘It’s my job!’ I countered defensively. ‘I’m employed to be there to stop strangers coming in!’

  She snorted angrily and swept out of the cafeteria in disgust. I followed her out to go back home. It was my intention to find out from Robert what really was going on. However the house was empty. I pressed on to the school to discover dozens of children in the playground chanting at the top of their voices.

  ‘We want our freedom... freedom is our aim,’ they shouted time and time again, some of them doing so from the roof of the building,

  I had known many children who had hated school in my early days and who tried every trick in the book to avoid going there but I had never seen anything quite like this. They were fervent in their appeal, raising their fists in the air in anger as they chanted, and not one of the teachers was able to bring them under control. They milled to and fro and one of the girls on the roof slipped and broke her arm as she fell to the ground requiring someone to take her to the surgery for treatment. I managed to catch the sleeve of one young boy and pulled him aside.

  ‘What are you after? What do you want?’ I demanded urgently. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘You’re the stranger,’ he retorted. ‘I’m not allowed to speak to you!’

  He tore himself away from my grasp and raced away to join the rest of the children who continued to chant. I could see Townsend at the other end of the school yard talking to the Headmaster but he seemed to be taking no notice of the riot. It was presumably his intention to allow the children to wear themselves out and redress the situation on the following day.

  In due course, I found Robert and took hold of his arm. He struggled for a while and then gave up.

  ‘I warned you this morning,’ he stated firmly. ‘But you won’t understand why we’re taking this action.’

  His words were so prefect, his elocution so good, that I wondered how a small boy could make such a statement. Then I remembered that he had told me he was forty-two years of age. Although he had the appearance of an eleven year old, he acted and sounded like a middle-aged man. It was most uncanny.

  The riot broke up eventually and I walked home with Robert. He refused to take my hand and he wouldn’t give me an explanation, so we walked back in silence. As we entered the house, he turned to me and grabbed my arm.

  ‘I like you,’ he told me. ‘I like you a lot but I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand it if I explained it to you. So let’s forget it, shall we?’

  I was too stunned to comment and, anyway, his mother entered the house at that moment, asking what was going on at the school. I felt annoyed that everyone was treating me like a child, telling me that I wouldn’t understand. Surely someone could have explained what was going on. I would have been able to take it!

  Ten minutes later, I returned to the cafeteria for lunch although I had lost my appetite. I wasn’t suffering pain... it was more like a malaise as though I had eaten something that disagreed with me and I had noticed early in the morning that my eyes had become slightly jaundiced. I took it that the tablets I had been taking were having an effect, reducing the amount of iron in my blood.

  There were a few people sitting at the tables eating and drinking and their main topic of conversation was the riot at the school. They rambled on gossiping about the incident although none of them had been there to witness what was happening. Then, after a short while, one of the women leaned across to my table inquisitively.

  ‘What happened at the school today, Mr. Security man?’ She asked politely.

  ‘There was a riot by the children,’ I told her flatly. ‘Apparently they smashed up the chairs and desks chanting ‘We want freedom... freedom is our aim’. But it’s all over now. The children have returned home.’

  ‘Was anyone injured?

  ‘Only one. A girl broke her arm when she fell off the roof,’ I explained briefly.

  ‘Did they say why they were rioting, other than shouting ‘freedom’.’

  ‘No.’ I returned smartly. ‘That’s all there was to it.’

  I ordered my favourite steak, chips and peas only this time the woman behind the counter smiled at me in a strange way showing her approval.

  ‘I had a word with Bridget,’ she told me eagerly as she took my order. ‘She says you two are getting along fine... real fine!’ The smile on her face led me to believe that Bridget had been quite free with the news of our intimate relationship.

  ‘Yes we are,’ I returned with the element of a smile on my face. ‘Real fine!’

  The woman burst into laughter as she turned to prepare my lunch. It was quite evident that she knew much more about Bridget and myself than was necessary. However it had made me another friend in the village and there were few of those at the present time. The only person I could never get on my side was the Secretary... not in a hundred years!

  That evening I was reading Westward Ho! While Bridget was reading the poems of Tennyson. We broke away from the books to have some tea and I decided to broach a different subject to her.

  ‘You say you’ve never been out of the village in your whole life,’ I advanced. ‘Why don’t you come with me to meet my sister? She doesn’t live far from here. It’ll be like an adventure.’

  She stopped in her tracks to think about the suggestion before replying. ‘I don’t think they’ll allow either of us to leave the village,’ she told me earnestly. ‘Anyone who wants to do so must get dispensation first and permission is impossible to achieve.’

  ‘Don’t you want to meet my sister?’ I asked wondering whether she wanted to or not.

  ‘I would love to meet her,’ she replied, ‘but you’ll have to ask Mr. Townsend for permission. You can’t simply walk out of here.’

  I shrugged my shoulders aimlessly angry that I would have to approach the Chairman for permission. I knew exactly what he would say, ‘Let me do it on my own at first,’ I suggested. ‘There’s a detective in the jail who’s been chasing me to leave the village. My brother-in-law sent him to get me out of here. If I visit my sister, I can put her mind at rest. Why not come with me?’

  She tossed the idea around in her mind for a few moments. ‘We’ll go and see Mr. Townsend tomorrow for his dispensation and then we have to go to the police station for their permission.’

  ‘Do we really have to go through all that rigmarole just to leave here?’ I was completely puzzled by the complicated procedure for someone wanting to leave the village.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she replied. ‘If you think it’s going to be easy you’re wrong.’

  ‘Your parents did so, You told me that!’

  ‘That’s right and I haven’t heard of them since.’

  ‘Do you mean that someone here did something to them?’

  ‘I can’t say. But they never contacted me again.’

  I lay awake in the bed that night knowing that I would dream about the impossible task of going out into the real world. I twisted and turned between the sheets as I tried, in my sleep, to unfold a maze of secrets. Eventually, I fell into a deep slumber seeing Townsend shaking his head vigorously as he refused to grant me permission and the Desk Sergeant doing exactly the same thing, slamming the day book closed and leading me to one of the cells, locking the door behind me. Later, during the night, I sat up in bed wide awake from the terrible nightmare shouting at the top of my voice. I was drenched in perspiration and so were the sheets. Bridget who had been disturbed by my tossing and turning burst into laughte
r as I stared bleakly at the wall. The ordeal of leaving the village had already started... before I had spoken to anyone about it!

  * * *

  I was called to the police station by a young messenger the following day. Wayne was being released and the Desk Sergeant read him the Riot Act, turning to me when he had finished.

  ‘This is the man you said you know. We’re releasing him today on his solemn promise that he won’t return. I’d like you to escort him off the premises before we take further action against him’ His terminology was so intimidating that Wayne’s legs almost gave way beneath him.

  ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t,’ I told him, taking Wayne by the arm and leading him outside. ‘Look, Wayne!’ I warned him. ‘Don’t let me catch you here again or you’re life will be forfeit. Tell Mary I’m going to visit her shortly. I want to set her mind at rest but there’s no point in you chasing me here. Is that understood?’

  He nodded his head as though he was a broken man, full of fear, unfit for any further detective work with my brother-in-law. I led him along the main path out of the village and bade him farewell for the last time. There was no doubt that he would never return to the village again. His problem was to determine where he would go from here. But it was his problem... not mine!

  At lunchtime, I picked up Bridget and we went to find Townsend. He was at the village hall preparing for a committee meeting, examining some papers he intended to use, when we entered.

  ‘Mr. Townsend,’ began Bridget in her dulcet tone of voice. ‘We’d like dispensation to leave the village for three days.’

  He looked up, his lips twisting as he thought about her request. Clearly it was unusual for anyone to ask to leave the village and his body language led me to believe it.

  ‘Out of the question!’ He retorted sharply. ‘Why do you want to leave?’

  ‘I want Bridget to meet my sister and brother-in-law,’ I intervened quickly hoping to relieve her of the pressure.