The Guest Who Stayed

by Roger Penfound

  But he needed to talk to someone – someone who would listen and hear his pain. His mind wandered immediately to Flora. He had often thought that if Alice hadn’t asked him to propose and painted a picture of a rosy life together, he might have asked Flora to marry him. Of course, she lacked the drive and the ambition of Alice, but she was simple and loving in a completely uncomplicated way. He felt a pang of warmth and regret shoot through his body. With the pressure of building the business and the shame that he felt for not having protected Flora, he realised that he’d pushed her to the back of his mind. He wanted to be with her now and the more he thought about it the more obsessed he became with the idea. He would go now and find her. He was sure they needed each other.

  It was four o’clock by the time he’d packed up at the Maltings and set off to where Flora lived. The streets were busy with people doing final shopping before the shutters were pulled down for the evening. A surprising number of people greeted him or nodded as he passed by, lifting his spirits slightly as he felt a growing sense of belonging to this small rural community.

  He left the centre of Frampton and began retracing his steps along the route he’d taken a year earlier when he had come to rescue Flora from her zealot parents. Turning into the narrow lane that led to the cluster of cottages where the Brotherhood lived, he soon arrived at the small square. Immediately, he noticed that things had changed. Previously, the cottages had been plain but well tended. Now they looked distinctly shabby, with grey curtains hanging drunkenly at broken windows and open doors creaking threateningly in the breeze. Some cottages had clearly been deserted. He turned to face the cottage that he knew to be Flora’s home. There was a thin plume of smoke escaping from a broken chimney so Jed assumed someone still lived there.

  With some trepidation he approached the peeling front door and banged loudly. There was no sound from inside so he tried again. Still no sound. He backed away from the house, looking for other signs of habitation. Then he heard a bolt being pulled and then another and finally the door opened slowly. Standing there was an old man who Jed just recognised as Flora’s father. But he had aged considerably. His white hair now hung in thin strips down his sallow face. His eyes were sunk into their sockets and his mouth was drawn tight across his black stained teeth.

  “I know you, don’t I? Weren’t you here once before?” he enquired gruffly.

  “I’m Jed Carter. I’m a friend of Flora. I’ve come to speak to her.”

  “I don’t know no Flora. There ain’t no Flora here.”

  “Don’t be crazy, she’s your daughter, Flora Fulton. You must know where she is.”

  “This humble dwelling ain’t no place for sinners. Any sinners have been expelled and sent away. ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly’,” he shouted, his voice rising to a crescendo.

  “What have you done with her, where is she?” shouted Jed, rushing towards the old man as he tried to close the door.

  “The woman you call Flora was a fornicator, a harlot. She was with child. They’ve taken her away. You’ll not find her.” And with that he managed to shut the door and secure it with the bolts.

  Jed stood transfixed outside the house, his head spinning. If Flora was expecting a baby, did that mean that Jack was the father? There was no proof but he couldn’t imagine Flora sleeping with anyone else. What did this change – anything? Could he use it in some way against Jack? And what of Flora? Where was she? What could he do to help her? All these thoughts crowded his head and spun round like a nightmare fairground ride as he made his way reluctantly back to Hope Cottage.

  The Guest Who Stayed: Chapter 15 – October 1921

  It was agreed that Jack would take three weeks to wind up his affairs in London before joining Alice and Jed at Hope Cottage. For Jed, the intervening weeks took on a surprising normality. He and Alice spent many hours talking in the parlour as they had done so often before. By some unspoken consensus, they both avoided talking about the impending change that was about to take place in their lives. Instead, they talked of local people, events that had happened during the day and laughed at simple things. It was almost as if the present was frozen in time.

  When Alice started to get early symptoms of morning sickness, it was Jed who was there to fetch her glasses of water. It was Jed who placed a shawl around her shoulders and it was Jed who silently held her. The only reminder of what was about to happen was the almost daily arrival of letters from London. Alice would usually wait until Jed had left for work before reading them and by the time Jed returned in the evening they were nowhere to be seen – except for one day when Alice was feeling particularly sick and had spent most of the time sleeping on the couch in the sitting room. Jed came across one of the opened letters in the parlour. His curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to know how Jack and Alice talked to each other. What was so different to the way he and Alice communicated?

  He unfolded the letter and read:

  Darling Alice,

  I know these times are difficult for you but I will soon be there to hold you in my arms again. I miss you so very much and I long for that wonderful intimacy we shared. How is our baby? Have you felt him wriggling yet? Have you thought of a name for him?

  I hope that Jed isn’t making you unhappy. He’s a good man but not the one for you. I’m not sure how this arrangement is going to work with the three of us sharing the house. It seems to me it may be fraught with problems. But I’m prepared to give it a try for your sake. I think it’s very generous of you to maintain your commitment to Jed.

  It’s less than a week till I join you and I’m counting the hours.

  All my love and devotion, Jack

  Jed folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope, his hands shaking as he did so. He realised that he had been deluding himself. These past two weeks had lulled him into a false sense of security. In less than a week another man would be living in his house and sleeping with his wife. He felt sickness welling in the pit of his stomach and ran into the garden to retch.

  Jed made sure he was out working when Jack arrived five days later and it wasn’t till he returned that evening that he knew for certain that Jack had arrived. As the truck drew to a halt outside Hope Cottage, he could see that the yellow Austin was already there. He avoided going in through the front door and made his way instead to the rear of the house and let himself into the parlour. It was empty, though he could hear muted voices coming from upstairs. After a few minutes, footsteps in the hall made it clear that a confrontation was inevitable.

  “Jed, we need to talk,” said Jack as he led Alice into the room. “Look, old man, I know all this is ghastly for you and I’m really sorry. I know you must hate me. But it’s happened and we’ve got to make the best of it. Alice thinks that we can all live together as one family, you, me, Alice and the baby. Now, I’m not sure it’s going to work myself but I’m prepared to give it a try. Are you?”

  There was a long pause before Jed replied. When he did, his voice was faltering.

  “You came into my life and stole all that was precious to me. You took Alice and you gave her a baby too, something she denied to me. Not only that, you’ve tied me into a devil’s contract. I need your money to make my business work because without my business I’m nothing. So you got me trapped. I can’t throw you out and I can’t leave. And I can’t live without Alice so if that means I’ve got to live with you too, then I’ll have to do it. But don’t expect me to like you because I don’t and I never will.”

  For the first time, Jack seemed genuinely shocked. The blood drained from his face leaving a sickly white pallor.

  “I understand what you say, Jed, and I respect that. It wasn’t meant to happen like this but that’s the way it’s turned out. I hope in time you’ll hate me less and we can be friends. I know that’s going to take a while. In the meantime, the best I can do is help you make a success of this business and I hope you’ll not let this domestic situation get in the way of us workin
g together.”

  “Like I said, the business is all I have left so if the price for making that succeed is working with you then that’s what I’ll have to do. But don’t think that makes everything alright. Inside me, it’s like my soul’s been ripped out. That’s what you done to me, Jack. You’ve taken my soul.”

  Domestic arrangements were organised so that they each had their own room. Alice remained in the main bedroom and Jed moved into the second guest room. Jed was glad that when he built the house he’d taken a little extra trouble to install sinks in the guest rooms as it would reduce the chance of encountering Jack as they competed for the bathroom.

  Eating arrangements were also clearly set out. As Jed was an early starter and often away from the house by seven thirty, Alice would provide a cooked breakfast for him each morning at half past six. In the evenings, there would be a hot meal when he finished work. She and Jack would eat together later.

  The new regime began its fragile existence. After breakfast, Jed would leave the house before Jack had risen and spend the day attending to his work. When Jed returned in the evening, Jack would usually be drinking at the Fox and Hounds. This at least enabled Jed to spend some time with Alice on his own. Sometimes little was said but simply being in her presence provided Jed with some degree of comfort.

  Around about eight o’clock, Jed would hear the front door opening as Jack returned unsteadily from the pub. Unless there was business to discuss, Jed would take this as his cue to leave and seek refuge in his workshop outside. Jed had constructed the workshop in the garden to replace Dan’s premises. It looked like a small stable, with two windows set either side of a double barn door. Inside, the walls were covered with shelves which contained Jed’s tools. They were neatly arranged in racks, with the smallest at one end and the largest at the other. Jed had also installed an ancient wood burning stove on which he could heat a mug of tea and close by the stove was a large wooden rocking chair.

  Jed took to sitting here in the evening after he’d eaten his meal. From the rocking chair, he could see the back of the house quite clearly, though the interior gloom of the workshop made it difficult for Jed to be seen from the house. He would witness Jack’s return home, see Alice kiss him hungrily on the lips and watch the easy way in which Jack touched her. As twilight encroached, the sound of laughter would drift from the house and increase Jed’s growing sense of melancholy and isolation. Gradually, the pain of this nightly performance began to grow and obsess Jed. He became sulky with Alice and their earlier conversations at meal times were replaced with grudging and monosyllabic communication.

  One night, the pain became so bad as Jed sat in the workshop after his dinner that he reached for a bottle of whisky. Jed was not a drinker, especially spirits, but he found that the fiery liquid helped to relieve the pain and lull him into a restless sleep. He took to drinking regularly from the bottle and when that was empty, replaced it with another. Night after night, the ritual would be repeated as if he was watching a recurrent nightmare and night after night he would fall asleep in his chair, waking when it was dark to stagger into the house and discover oblivion in his own bed.

  As late summer turned into autumn and Alice’s pregnancy progressed, Jed found his mood beginning to change. Misery and self pity slowly began to turn to jealousy and rage. He began to spend less time thinking how unfortunate he was and found himself instead turning to ideas of revenge. These were ill conceived and impractical notions but they nevertheless marked a critical change in Jed’s persona.

  One evening, Jed returned from work early. He had been mending a roof locally and had not used the motor truck because parking in the narrow street was difficult. Instead, he used his old hand cart to transport the building materials that he needed. Now, trundling his cart slowly through Frampton, he stopped briefly to acknowledge clients and answer questions about the state of Alice’s pregnancy.

  When he arrived home he left the cart in the front yard, distracted by the fact that the front door was wide open. He had hoped to spend some time alone with Alice in an attempt to repair the fragile atmosphere but as he made his way down the corridor to the parlour he was dismayed to see that Jack was already there. Jack had his back to him and was facing the work surface. Two legs appeared to be sticking out either side of his thighs. Jed thought it was a trick – some puppet perhaps. Then he noticed that Jack’s trousers were unbuttoned, hanging loose around his buttocks. As he saw the rhythmic moving of two bodies locked together, the truth hit him with the full force of a sledge hammer.

  He let out a roar like that of a wounded animal and ran from the house to his workshop where he threw himself inside and barricaded the door. Seizing the whisky bottle, he gulped at the contents and immediately vomited.

  He sat for hours in a state of semi trance. At some point he had heard Alice’s voice outside but he remained silent and the voice went away. Somehow the reality of this situation had evaded him. He had been seduced by clever talk and brainwashing and hadn’t comprehended the degrading, gut wrenching truth of having another man having sex with his wife in the house he had built for them both to spend the rest of their lives in.

  He sat in the gloom cradling his shot gun in his arms. Normally, the gun was locked in a secure cabinet but now, resting on his lap, it helped to feed the fantasies that were flooding his mind. The shaft felt cool to the touch of his sweating palms. It was dark outside with only the light from a waning moon casting weak shadows across the garden. He lifted the gun and aimed it at Alice’s bedroom window. The curtains were open but he could see no movement. His finger gripped the trigger and he slowly pulled it, squinting through the sight at the mid point of the window. The trigger clicked and Jed quietly mimicked a shot, imagining the effect of a loaded gun.

  The whisky slid down his throat more easily now, relieving the pressure in his head and filling his mind with a false confidence. A box of cartridges lay open by his side. He lifted one out, slid the cartridge into the gun and clicked the barrel shut. Taking aim at the window again, he slowly squeezed the trigger almost to the point of firing.

  He continued to stare down the gun sight at the dimly lit window. He could see movement now, just shadows projected against the drawn curtains. He felt his anger rising and his jealousy taking hold. His head began to throb and he felt warm tears trickle down his cheek. He clutched the gun and kicked away the improvised barricade. Pushing open the door, he was hit by the coolness of the evening air. There was dampness around him and a light mist hovered over the ground.

  Jed made his way slowly to the back door. It had been left open as usual for him to go to bed. There was a single light on in the kitchen. He noticed evidence of a meal – pans stacked on the drainer and a candle which had toppled over in its tray.

  As he made his way into the hall, he began to experience a sense of nervous excitement. He was locked now into a course of action from which he could see no return. The stairs were in near darkness as he made his way slowly up. He knew every recess and bend. He had built them. He could see light escaping from under Alice’s door and thought he heard sounds.

  Now he stood outside the door. He felt totally rational. He had to show them that he had control. He couldn’t be walked over. He wasn’t always going to be the victim.

  He kicked at the door and lunged forward. The light momentarily blinded him. He swung the gun to the left where he knew the bed was positioned. There was a scream – a woman’s voice. He briefly glimpsed Alice leaping from the bed. She was naked, reaching towards him with her arm outstretched. He was struck momentarily by her beauty.

  An arm grasped him round the neck from behind. It was strong and covered in black hair. Jed was spun round roughly. He found himself facing Jack as his body continued to spin towards the floor.

  Alice came into sight once more, her hands reaching for the barrel of the gun, her breasts brushing Jed’s face as she stretched across him. The force of the gun being wrenched away caused Jed’s finger to pull on the trigger.
There was a blinding flash and a deafening roar followed by screams. Jed couldn’t tell who was screaming – perhaps it was him.

  As Jed spun further towards the floor, Jack again came into vision. He was naked too and his face was contorted. His fist was accelerating towards Jed’s chin and made splintering contact throwing him headlong onto the wooden floor.

  Only half conscious, Jed was aware of being pinned down. Alice was lying on top of him, her sweet scent invading his nightmare, her limbs entangled with his in a way he might only have dreamt of before.

  In a distant dream, snow fell from the sky and covered their bodies as they lay together.

  A final blow from Jack to the back of Jed’s head dispatched him to oblivion. Alice and Jack were both gasping as they extricated themselves from the tangle of limbs and brushed away the white plaster that was still falling from the shot–ridden ceiling.

  Jed awoke to a throbbing pain in the back of his head slowly penetrating his consciousness. He kept his eyes tightly shut and tried to order his memories. His mouth felt rancid and stale. A lingering taste of whisky clung to his pallet. Bits of dirt and hair had lodged between his teeth.

  Slowly his eyes flickered open. He didn’t immediately recognise where he was. It was dark but fingers of light creeping in from beneath a closed door penetrated the blackness. As his eyes began to focus, he saw familiar objects around him. His bike was propped against one wall. Coal was stacked at one end of the room and logs piled against another wall.

  He was in the coal house. His hands were bound but his legs were free. He pushed himself up onto his knees but the pain in his head exploded, knocking him back onto the floor.

  They must have put him here – dragged him unconscious from the bedroom.

  Jed remembered very little about the previous night’s events. He recalled being in the workshop cradling his shot gun but after that events were blurred. However, he had an overwhelming foreboding that something was dreadfully wrong.