by David Ruffle
Title Page
A Twist of Lyme
David Ruffle
Publisher Information
First edition published in 2013
© Copyright 2013 David Ruffle
Digital conversion by Andrews UK Limited
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The right of David Ruffle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, apopony resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Published in the UK by MX Publishing
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Dedication
For Gill
Introduction
The months and days are the travellers of eternity.
The years that come and go are also voyagers...
Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road of Oku.
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks
about and few have seen.
Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Reflections.
Meet the Hamiltons
Michael Hamilton 40 Unemployed. Husband of below.
Judy Hamilton 38 Teaching Assistant. Wife of above. Mother of below.
Katy Hamilton 7 School pupil. Daughter of above. Sister of below.
Annabelle Hamilton 5 School pupil. Sister of above.
Formerly living: Greater London.
Now living: Lyme Regis.
Read on to learn more...
Chapter One
Present Day
The old house had always been known as the ‘old house’ apparently. There were other houses of course, some of them old, some of them even known as the old house, some of them older than the old house, but for the purposes of this story, the old house will be a reference to this old house. The house where Michael Hamilton lives with his wife, Judy and their two daughters, Katy and Annabelle. We find them in the breakfast room, only so designated because they were having their breakfast in it. Yesterday for instance it was the mud-covered boots and dirty, smelly coats room. The day before it was, “Who the hell spilled all this water?” room. Rooms in general are as transient as the people who wander through them.
“Do you think all curses are gypsy’s curses? Is it a requirement recognised by law do you think? Is it an immutable notion?” Michael asked of Judy, realising that his daughters, as so often, would have no idea what he was talking about.
“Is this about old Mr Williams again?” Judy said with a sigh audible throughout Dorset.
“Too right it is. If someone tells you your house is cursed you tend to sit up and take notice.”
“Didn’t the estate agents mention it?”
“Yes of course, don’t you remember their description of the kitchen, Jude; Spacious and fully modernised with its own curse.”
“Very funny, Mike. I think if you Google it you will find that curses died out with Macbeth’s witches and God knows why you take any notice of what he says anyway.”
“Don’t be too sure about curses dying out. I have told you how my mother was cursed by a gypsy on her very own doorstep.”
“Not her caravan?” Judy asked, lifting her eyebrows all the way to the soon to be painted ceiling in the spacious, fully modernised kitchen.
“I was referring to my mother’s doorstep as you well know. She was only twenty-five, not a particularly nice age to find yourself being cursed. Especially to be cursed with a violent death. Poor Mum.”
“For crying out loud, Mike, she died last year. She was seventy-six!”
“Even so, a curse is a curse whether it takes a year or fifty years to work.”
“I think there are more violent ways to die than in a bed surrounded by your family.”
“It does make you think though...”
“You maybe, not me.”
Judy poured some more orange juice into the jug, nominally for gravy, but happy enough to multi-task. Katy pulled a face and shivered as she took a sip, sometimes the soon to be replaced fridge took it upon itself to double as a freezer. Kitchen appliances can never be trusted entirely, not even the best of them. Mike looked intently at the juice as though he was seeing it for the first time.
“Any additives in there Judy? You know how hyper Katy can get. We don’t want her bouncing off the walls do we?”
Katy, as in response to this, placed one of her fingers into Annabelle’s boiled egg, prompting both a slap and a flood of tears from her sister.
“Katy, what are you doing?” asked her dad.
“Bouncing off the walls, Daddy.” she squealed.
“My daughter, the comedienne,” mused Michael.
Katy and Annabelle resumed their status, a state resembling sisterly love, temporary of course, but heartfelt (very) for as long as it lasted. This spirit of sibling peace and love could last as short a time as five minutes or as long as a whole week. A week was indeed their personal record aided by various bribes and sweeteners from their exasperated parents. Left to their own devices, three days of relative harmony would be as good as it could possibly get. Time alone would change that. Or not.
“What shall we do today then?” asked Judy, “A walk into town? Then onto the beach?”
“The beach, the beach,” the sisters shouted in another display of sibling harmony, short-lived though it may prove to be.
“Right then, off you go and get ready while Daddy does the washing-up.”
“Why does Daddy always wash-up?” asked Annabelle.
“That’s easy,” said her mum, “come here I will whisper it to you, it’s....because I don’t.”
The girls raced upstairs to hopefully don their best behaviour along with their clothes. Their footsteps up above echoed through the old house, the soon to be replaced carpets did absolutely nothing to deaden the sound. Only the sound of children dressing can raise the decibel level to that of heavy machinery at work. Two pairs of feet came clomping down the soon to be re-carpeted stairs. If racing down stairs ever became an Olympic sport than Katy and Annabelle Hamilton were sure to be future gold medallists. Their coats bore witness to the difficulties in matching button to button-hole, a skill that can take years to master. To be fair, they had mastered the almost mystical art of shoelace tying, a feat that even some adults can have problems with. Not that this is a reference to Michael Hamilton here, although he has a fairly unique way of tying laces that causes many an observer to burst into uncontrollable laughter. In vain does he point out the end result. In vain does he point out that his laces achieve their ultimate aim, that of being tied.
“Are we all ready?” asked Judy, surreptitiously looking at Michael’s shoelaces and suppressing a giggle. “Right, let’s link arms, best foot forward and let’s sally forth.” (Sally Forth, although no doubt an admirabl
e woman, does not figure again in these pages, so all in all I think it’s best to forget her.)
The old house, or I should say, The Old House to differentiate it from those other old houses which may or may not pop up in this story, stood and indeed still stands in Colway Lane on the eastern side of Lyme Regis. Its architecture was as unsure as its purpose in life. It was a house designed by committee, if you can imagine a committee whose individual members, none of whom would say design was their strong point, werecontinually at war with each other particularly on matters of taste. Although less than three hundred years old, it had managed to take various aspects of medieval buildings, the worst aspects mind, and incorporate them with mock-Tudor extravagances and later additions and present a rambling, confused mess to the world. Look at me it seemed to say, I am so ugly I am beautiful. As far as Michael and Judy were concerned it had one saving grace...it was cheap or what passes for cheap in Dorset by the sea.
The accommodation was ample for their needs and as we know already the kitchen is spacious and fully modernised. The rest of the house needed updating as they say and one suspects it will never be fully modernised as the spacious kitchen. The four bedrooms battled each other for space on the second floor with none of them being particularly victorious. The soon to be ripped out and re-fitted bathroom had seen better days although it was by no means certain when they were. The lounge and dining-room meandered drunkenly on the ground floor as though they were chasing each other, but without any firm idea of where they were going or who was chasing who. The kitchen, oh well, we know about the kitchen don’t we. The garden slopes down to a small stream. This is no gentle slope mind; it tumbles down in a way that would test the fitness of trainee Marines tackling their assault courses in deepest Devon. If you are thinking of the garden along the lines of neatly manicured herbaceous borders, lovingly maintained vegetable plots and lawns so fine you could play tennis on them let me dispel that myth for you. To say it was a wilderness somewhat denigrates the wild areas of our planet. This was as wild as it gets with weeds rising so high so as to be competing with each other for control of the country’s air space. To give him his due, Michael, who was not exactly born to gardening, was able to make inroads with the aid of a fagging-hook borrowed from the Willoughby’s who lived in the old house next door. There you go; another old house.
A fagging-hook for those not familiar with garden or agricultural implements is not, as you may suppose a weapon of choice used by the upper echelons of pupils in our best public schools, but a form of scythe. There is a certain amount of skill Michael found in being able to wield such a thing safely on sloping ground without toppling over at every given opportunity. If he had counted, which he hadn’t, he supposes that he fell upwards of thirty seven times in the first two days and only once did he roll all the way to the stream, It was not the first stream he had fallen into, country childhoods tend to have that effect on children, but it may well have been the coldest and muddiest.
Chapter Two
Early Days
You’ll no doubt want to know how this charming (very) Hamilton family came to be in Lyme Regis. Read on...
Michael and Judy met on one of those cold wet and blustery (very) mornings that spring tends to pitch our way with monotonous regularity. He, dashing for the train. She, dashing to the toilet, that third cup of coffee being her first mistake of the day. The second mistake although it turned out to be anything but was to use the over-sized, but frequently heavily filled shoulder bag with the rather less than reliable handles.
As they passed each other or at least attempted to pass each other on the concourse of (Platform 17 actually) Clapham Junction station one of her, as mentioned less than reliable handles, became ensnared around his man-bag resulting in a very public pratfall rather like something from a Keystone cops movie[1]. All that was missing was a banana skin. It wasn’t the first time Michael had fallen over at a station, but it was certainly the most fortuitous tumble he had ever taken.
Sharing a coffee afterwards, (he had already bought his in readiness for the journey to Waterloo, but oddly enough found now that he seemed to be wearing it) they found they had virtually nothing in common other than the sudden compulsion to spend time together. That compulsion was to be easy to act on as they discovered they lived very close to each other indeed. He in Canford Road, she in Manchuria Road; hardly a stone’s throw apart in fact assuming you had a throwing arm like that of an old Eastern bloc athlete. Or not so old even. An arrangement was quickly made to meet at The Bread and Roses that very evening, the previously mentioned compulsion being that strong. They parted to go their separate ways; he to write a review of a Lebanese breakfast (very Lebanese) at a new restaurant-diner on the South Bank, she to Chessington where she worked as a teaching assistant. Unfortunately he proved too late for the breakfast, delays at Waterloo south (faulty points if you need to know) proved to be his final undoing. He went ahead and wrote the review anyway. It was not the first time he had made up a review, but it was the first time he had done so in such a good cause.
The Bread and Roses the following evening; he, early...she, late. Michael had selected his clothes according to which items had the fewest creases and stains. Judy had selected hers with care and changed her mind often in the two hours that she had allocated to herself to get ready. Michael unaccountably decided that his pair of pale blue jeans, which may or may not have been in fashion ten years before, was still an essential part of his outfit in 2003. It could have been worse, much worse, but fortunately he jettisoned the Arran sweater; folk clubs maybe, dates never. The cravat his mother had bought him for Christmas was also briefly considered. He wisely decided that it did not quite give him the air of sophistication he was aiming for. Besides, Judy had met him.
Judy settled for a brand new pair of black skinny jeans which she struggled into in the manner of a contortionist squeezing into a matchbox. Zipped up, buttoned up and with the addition of a no nonsense, ‘I’m not that available’ t-shirt and a light, casual in the extreme, jacket she left for her as yet undiscovered future.
‘Is she abreast of current affairs’, thought Michael. ‘What will we talk about? Is the news that Roman Abravomich has bought Chelsea football club going to be of any interest to her?’ He somehow doubted it.
‘Wonder if he’s interested in football, well he is a bloke’, thought Judy. ‘I know that Russian oligarch has bought Chelsea, but he won’t want to talk about that surely.’
Their fears about that particular subject turned out to be groundless and Roman remained free to wax lyrical at Stamford Bridge about the delights real or imagined of owning Chelsea Football Club and played no part in the conversation that evening or indeed the rest of this story. Neither did or does football in general, the price of vegetables or the rise of reality TV. We can adjudge that first date a success for another one swiftly followed, then another and none of these were marred in the slightest by association football, the deplorable rises in the cost of fruit and veg or reality TV.
Rugby was another matter entirely. Initially it was the one thing they found they had in common, watching that is, not playing. And when summer ended and autumn came knocking they were to be found wrapped around each other watching Blackheath in their (usually Herculean) endeavours. A try or two (if they and Blackheath were lucky) a pie and a hot tea. A proper date in every way. Such are the small acorns a relationship grows from.
There was no proposal planned, not with Michael’s dodgy knees, but the idea that it may be something they should consider came up when in Judy’s Manchuria Road flat (without a spacious and fully modernised kitchen) listening to Now! That’s What I Call Music 55 and having Coldplay’s ‘God Put A Smile On Your Face’ on repeat. Were they really that young? Was Coldplay the pinnacle of their musical appreciation? Well, no actually, Michael was thirty and Judy, twenty-eight. And yes it was.
“I’ve been thinking,” announced Michael.
He tousled her hair playfully. She had an ability to make him laugh in a way that no-one had ever done before. As witty as she was beautiful.
“Maybe we should pool our resources.”
“Pool our resources? Is that some kind of corporate speak for living together? Or something else altogether?”
“Actually, Judy, I had marriage in mind,” he said hurriedly as though he was not sure of broaching the subject or apprehensive (very) as to Judy’s response.
“You must be sure of me to even bring the subject up, which is a good thing...er...I think. Is that an actual proposal of marriage then? Only you make it sound as though you are contemplating asking me to open a joint account with you.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“My mother warned me there would be men like you tempting me with their eloquence and honeyed words, not that I have ever come across any. My God, Mike, I don’t expect you to go down on one knee, not with your dodgy knees anyway, but have another stab at it.”
He shifted uncomfortably at his end of the soon to be replaced nominally two-seater sofa (a freebie from an admirer).Michael’s confidence was fast evaporating along with his never particularly strong will-power. He stood up, paced the room and came to a halt in front of the still expectant (not in that way) Judy. He lowered himself; one leg bent awkwardly then came back up for air. He tried it with the other leg which seemed incapable of obeying even the simplest instructions from his brain. He opted for the fall-back position of sitting on the edge of the coffee table. The load-bearing capacity of the coffee table was unequal (very) to the task of accommodating would be proposers and promptly deposited Michael back onto the sofa once more along with the remnants of a very fine Pinot Grigio.
“Mike, Mike, just ask me you silly little man.”
