Storm Warnings

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Charles placed both photographs on the mantelpiece, one each side of the clock. He wound the clock last thing every Sunday night, ready for the week.

  It was extraordinary how Margaret’s leaving left no hole in the house. No unfilled space. He looked at their wedding photograph now and again, peering closely at her face, wondering who she had been. He congratulated himself on his inner strength when he did not miss her at all.

  Then, on another Sunday, as he wound the clock, he experienced discomfort in his chest. Unthinking, he called for Margaret and was surprised and a little hurt that she did not come.

  The heart attack was followed by a succession of small strokes which left Charles unable to live on his own. The house was sold by an estate agent with an excellent reputation and Charles moved into a well-established home, The Willows, where he was allocated a quiet room on the ground floor overlooking the gardens. His own bed was brought, together with three photographs, the two of himself as a boy and his wedding portrait, all of which he placed on the bedside table, next to his medals. Most of his day was then spent sitting up in bed looking out over the lawns, across to where the eponymous willow trees framed a rose bed.

  After a week or so, the matron, a thin grey-haired woman who smelt to him of dead air in filing cabinets, put her head round the door.

  ‘You have a visitor, Mr Maitland. A John Anderson.’

  The name John Anderson meant nothing to Charles. He requested more information before giving permission for a stranger to see him in his sick bed. The matron left, returning a few moments later.

  ‘Mr John Anderson from Glebe House, Edgehill Drive.’

  Of course. The neat man who wore cashmere sweaters, who stopped to talk about Alvis cars when he was doing the front garden. The old tile-hung house next to the church, leaded panes and old roses. Intelligent person. Nice name for the house; a sense of place, history, depth. Mr Anderson stayed no longer than was right, and said several friends wished to visit Charles. Charles couldn’t think who they might be.

  A couple of days later, just after lunch, when Charles had inadvertently spilled a little oxtail soup on his sheet, a Cynthia Drinkwater asked to see him. He couldn’t picture a Cynthia Drinkwater.

  ‘Where does she live?’ he asked, tucking the stain out of sight.

  The woman lived at Chaffinches, Merrilees Avenue. This was not good. Merilees Avenue comprised two rows of identical houses, all named after something ornithological. He had always thought naming a property either directly or indirectly after wildlife was poor taste, but of course, that may not have been the fault of Cynthia Drinkwater, whoever she was. But then she, or they, might have had the sense of tradition to change the name, like he and Margaret had. Choosing to live in a house where you could go next door and not have to ask where the cloakroom was, that was too much. He uncovered the stain, for it seemed not to matter any more, and pleaded fatigue.

  The matron returned with a bunch of sweet peas, which she placed in a cut glass vase on the windowsill. Their scent drifted persistently about the room, such that Charles was discomforted for the rest of the day. And when the low evening sun caused the cut glass to flash alarmingly, quite distracting him from his book, he asked for the flowers to be removed to one of the public areas, where, no doubt, other residents might enjoy their rather overpowering, unsubtle scent.

  The matron learned to ask where potential visitors resided before announcing their presence to Charles, who was becoming clumsier about his feeding, much to his embarrassment. He dripped morning tea from his feeding cup down his pyjama jacket, and a little butter and honey often slid from his toast down his chin and onto the sheet. He might attempt to drink his coffee at eleven lying too flat, and it would spill from the left hand side of his mouth, staining the pillow. The meat, at lunchtime, no matter how neatly the staff cut it, would never pick up enough sauce, or too much, as he swilled the fork around the plate. Later, the plate was replaced with a bowl for ease of purchase, but Charles always managed to distribute some sauce on the blankets: parsley sauce, gravy, white wine and mushroom, tomato. The Willows was renowned for the standard of its food.

  Visitors continued to arrive.

  Eric Loveday, from Barley House, Meadow View. Large, quality residences on the edge of the village, always maintained to a high standard. Unbroken views of cornfields rolling away to the hills. It was a measure of success by anyone’s book to have Meadow View as an address. Eric stayed twenty-five minutes, suggested a game of chess, but Charles did not feel he knew him well enough to accept.

  Samuel Kettering, Number Sixteen, The Drive. There was something worrying about people who hid behind numbers. Impersonal. Or perhaps lacking the insight needed to give their home a name which said something. Anyway, Charles was waiting for a change of bedding, having had an accident that was nothing to do with food or drink. Whoever Samuel Kettering was, he went away unseen, leaving a tape recorder and several audio books, which surprisingly were completely to Charles’s taste.

  With each accident, whether food, drink or inadvertent bodily misdemeanour, Charles found himself apologising to the photographs on his bedside table, and to his medals. He had the oddest notion that the young Margaret was shooting a glance directly at him through time, a look that went straight through him and continued out into space, where it dissolved in some distant galaxy, but pinned him twisting like a moth on a pin as it passed. He thought the hand in the blue sleeve would reach out, grasp his pyjama jacket and shake him. He thought the blurred figure of his father might tomorrow not be there at all, having given up and walked out of the memory, leaving the photograph for a better past, or a future he would have preferred.

  Stanley Grimes, Bentleys, Ardmore Terrace. The dissonance of terraced housing and luxury vehicle. Wasn’t Grimes a clerk from the office? What would he want seeing his old clerk? He wasn’t of a level. Charles would never visit Bentleys, Ardmore Villas. Grimes . . . couldn’t recall exactly what he looked like. The matron brought a card through. A cheap corner-shop card, not even sealed down, second-class effort. Charles put the card unopened on the bedside table. He didn’t want to see the words ‘Get Well Soon’.

  Anne Cartwright, Little Acorns, Bramber Road. There was something unutterably twee about calling a home ‘little’ anything. Charles had never met the woman who had played bridge with Margaret; quite a handsome person in her early seventies, but with a hint of North Country in her accent. He felt it said more about Margaret that she had never mentioned this, and he found it hard turning down the home-made Battenberg cake Anne Cartwright brought with her. She retreated, leaving some cloying perfume in the air. Charles called to have the window opened.

  ‘It is a little chilly this evening, Mr Maitland,’ the matron said. ‘Maybe reconsider the window?’ But Charles would not reconsider. He wanted to clear the air . . . and in any event, wasn’t it his mother who had said fresh air was good for one?

  That night, Charles had to sleep in sheets stained with red jelly and custard, which had slopped off his spoon at supper as his good hand shook. This was a shame. The normal chef was ill, but they had promised to have a quality replacement by tomorrow. He felt child-like, smelling the chemical red of the jelly, and he drifted to sleep thinking of Battenberg cake . . . pink and yellow squares like windows into his own past. He dreamed of himself at five, six, seven, growing and changing, his cheeks losing their roundness, eight, nine, ten, his brow furrowing, his eyes dulling, hardening, eleven, twelve, morphing, his jaw squaring up to something unseen, nails bitten, thirteen, fourteen, shoulders sloping, lip darkening, chin darkening, fast forward, fast forward, cold air playing on his chest in a tent in Wales, cold water shock as he fell into a stream, desks, books and HB pencils, carbon paper and the clatter of typewriters behind closed doors, cold brown earth and a coffinlid lowering into the dark, white veils, flowers, a trumpet, apologetic fumblings, Sunday roasts, tea, milk in first, it had mattered. It had all
mattered. Hadn’t it?

  His medals? He couldn’t remember what they were for, just now.

  Red Sandals

  I’M ON A TRAIN going to the sea.

  I don’t know where Mother is. She said we were going to the sea, so I put my red sandals on. I saw in a book at school about the sea, and my Grandfather told me too. There’s sand and you walk into the sea, which is so huge you can’t see where it ends, it is so big, and it tastes of salt. Real salt. You can put your finger in the water and lick your finger and it is salt! But Mother isn’t here. Or Grandfather. They went to another train, and before he went he told me I must not forget I was going to the sea. Then they took him away. I shouted about my red shoes and he shouted back, ‘Lovely girl, you wear what shoes you want.’

  It is a train taking us to the sea. I think there are too many people here, and why would they all want to go swimming? Old people don’t want to swim, do they? I lost my bag too. It had ‘Liesl’ written in white paint. And ‘Kinder’. And a number. It was a good bag, a real suitcase, with leather corners, and Mother had a headache and said I must pack myself. Then she changed her mind and took out all the things I packed. I wanted to take all my toys and my party dress, but she said not this time. She put in my toothbrush. And my heavy brown shoes. But I took them out again and I put on my red sandals.

  Aren’t they fine? Look, there’s a little heel, on the pavement they clop like a pony! At the sea I will have to take them off before I walk into the water, but I will be very careful. I will tie the straps together and hide them or someone will want them.

  I didn’t know I wouldn’t mind about so many things.

  I didn’t know I wouldn’t mind about not sleeping in a bed, but on the floor of a train, with my head in the lap of a woman I don’t know.

  I didn’t know I wouldn’t really mind about the smell in here because I can forget it. Look. All I have to do is shut my eyes and think of almonds. Cake. Candles. But I mustn’t think too much about that or I will feel sad, and I will not let myself feel sad.

  I don’t mind about going to the lavatory in the bucket. It is black, the bucket, and it smells very, very bad. I haven’t been properly yet. There is a lady who stands over the bucket when ladies or girls have to go, and she opens her black skirts like a big curtain. But I just can’t go. If Mother was here she would give me some medicine from the brown bottle. But I’m glad she can’t give me that stuff because I can’t stop going then and it’s horrid!

  I am thirsty. But I try not to think about being thirsty. I think about the sea and how I know I won’t be able to drink salt water, and it stops me being thirsty. I can get near the side here. And sometimes, if the train goes fast, and if the wind blows this way not that, I can smell grass outside. I smelt cows last night when we stopped.

  I thought we would be getting off, and that we had got to the sea, but we hadn’t. I can clean my shoes with spit on my finger. They were dusty. And the straw on the floor was dusty. But now it is very, very dirty. I am glad Grandfather is not here because he is a doctor and he says that’s where germs grow, in dirt, he wouldn’t like it. But he also says salt is good. So the sea will be good, wont it?

  Maybe when we get there Mother and Grandfather will be on the sand and they will smile and say, ‘Liesl! It’s you! We lost you . . .’

  And we will all tie our shoes together and put them with our clothes where we can find them later, and walk into the sea holding hands.

  Large Capacity, Severe Abuse

  LUTHER FRANKLIN LIVEs down in the basement of Berkeley Apartments. He moved in a few weeks back, the week after the interview. There weren’t many candidates. Their first choice wasn’t at the address he’d given them.

  Luther is a quiet man, well behaved, seemed shy at the interview; found it hard to raise his head and look at them. Stammered a bit when he ran through the maintenance work he could do, assured them, ‘I h-have r-r-ref-f-fer-rences.’ Nothing wrong with that.

  Didn’t have much luggage when he moved in: one suitcase, one bag of books and one sandbag he wouldn’t let anyone touch. ‘S-souven-n-nir from the war.’ He wears a beanie all day; seems he has scars on his head from some incident back in ’Nam — and he gets to wear a boiler suit and a badge saying ‘Caretaker’. He limps.

  Luther has to use the doorway down the alley, get into his basement down five stone steps. Not to be seen in Reception, not to worry the ladies with their furs and the gents with their suits — mostly retired military. To get on running the caretaking and laundry services for the apartments, out of sight.

  He has two rooms. A bedsit with facilities in one corner, and a small window below pavement level, always dusty, and the laundry and maintenance room, with phone numbers for emergency services scrawled on the wall next to the machines. Industrial washer and dryer. Both General Electric. Large capacity, severe-abuse textiles cleaning. He calls the washer Lola. Keeps the sandbag on the floor next to Lola, sits on it, watching the sheets and towels churning, churning. Listening to the rush and the roar of Lola and her dryer working in synch.

  Today the walls of the basement are silent. Lola’s broken down with one bag of sheets to go. She’s shorted the lights. Rattled Luther. He can’t take the dark.

  Luther pulls his knees to his chest, sitting in the dark like this basement is a cell and the door will crash open sometime soon. Like they’ll pull a hood stinking of iron filings, puke and tar over his head. Like this floor is another floor made mud with his own piss. Earth he’ll suck for water, sometime soon.

  He hears a thud in the room above, shudders. Like they’ll bring Charlie back, dragging him under the arms, head lolling, blood, teeth and bone from his jaw spatting the earth floor, his feet dragging two trenches in the mud. He feels for the sandbag. It’s there, by his hand. Half empty now.

  Some job for a decorated veteran, this. Pulling the laundry out the chutes, feeding Lola. Sheets smelling of talcum, bags of matching socks pinned in pairs with little plastic clips no bigger than a grenade pin. Shirts. All retired senior officers. Names embroidered on their laundry bags, all retaining their ranks. Names like Lieut. Col. LP Schumaker.

  Captain LP Schumaker, back then, long time back. Luther’s commanding officer. His and Charlie’s.

  Luther tried to understand why LP never came to fetch them out, him and Charlie, when that action went badly wrong; Charlie with his smashed leg. LP just pulled out, ‘Hold on, I’ll be back, trust me.’ And they did.

  Just left Luther and Charlie behind to be captured, questioned. Name rank number. Name rank number. Never enough.

  Franklin. Private First Class, 9963442.

  Broken shins. Two fingers each severed with a razor. Pulled teeth. Luther runs his tongue across the unevenness of his gums. Hair set alight. Pulls the beanie down tight. Name rank number. Name rank number.

  Squatting in the dark, Luther pats Lola. ‘Nemmind there girl. Nearly done the job.’

  Remembers Charlie speaking through blood and bone-shards. ‘He’ll be coming for the bastards, Luth. LP’ll be coming. Good ol’ LP. Won’t let us down.’

  Luther replying. Not believing, not now. It’d been a month. ‘Sure. Sure. LP won’t let us down.’

  Jimbo, whispering: ‘You’ll take care of me, huh? Won’t leave me out here?’

  Luther, after a while: ‘Whatever happens, I’ll get you home. Back home, I promise’. And promising himself he’d see to it LP didn’t sleep easy.

  Lola is silent. Ticking as she cools. Luther on the floor, one hand on the half-empty sandbag waiting alongside. ‘Nearly done the job, girl.’

  Nearly done the job. Lieut. Col. LP Schumaker (Retired) and Mrs Schumaker and all the other retired military brass making Luther wash all their sheets again like they do every week.

  ‘God only knows what you’ve done to these sheets, Franklin. You’ll do them until they are right, man.’ So Luther complied. Lola washed th
em again and again.

  Luther knows he should never have gotten decorated. Should never have accepted the medals. Before another unit got them out, Luther’d squealed.

  He squeezes his eyes shut but can’t block out the pictures. Charlie tied across two oil barrels, grenade on his stomach to make Luther talk. Pin pulled. And Luther squealed like a stuck pig then — told them what he could. Watched the earth where Jimbo died dark and wet. Darker than the rest, weeks later.

  ‘You OK, soldier?’ they’d said. The other unit. Not LP. And he’d said yes, but wouldn’t go until he’d collected Charlie’s dark earth into a bag. Kept it with him, wouldn’t let it out of his sight. Sent home in the end, a psychiatric case.

  Luther sits in the dark, sandbag next to him on the floor. Half empty. Knows he wouldn’t have lasted long in this job. There’ve been complaints to the Berkeley Apartments’ management about the standard of laundry under this new caretaker. Grit in the towels, sheets. Nightmare. Lieut. Col. LP Schumaker (Retired) hasn’t slept in days.

  But Luther and Charlie were almost finished anyway.

  ‘God only knows what you’ve done to these sheets, Franklin. Rough as hell. Gritty. Must be that infernal machine.’

  Yeah, sure.

  The Ale-Heretic

  HE BURNS SOON. The big man, the good man, the brewer. He burns and the smell of his burning will soon come down to this cell. If I have the strength I will grasp the hem of my shirt and tear it. I will press it to my face so as not to smell his burning. I will breathe my own stink in its stead, for have I not worn this shirt seven months in Newgate?