Ten Sorry Tales

by Mick Jackson

  Contents

  Title Page

  1 The Pearce sisters

  2 The boy who fell asleep

  3 A row-boat in the cellar

  4 The lepidoctor

  5 Hermit wanted

  6 Alien abduction

  7 The girl who collected bones

  8 Neither hide nor hair

  9 Crossing the river

  10 The button thief

  Author biography

  Copyright

  Ten Sorry Tales

  The Pearce sisters

  Lol and Edna Pearce liked to keep their own company, which was just as well as their nearest neighbour lived nine miles away. Their tired old shack clung to the rocks right down by the shingle. Every room rattled with its own individual draughts and breezes and at high tide the waves came knocking at the door. But every now and again the sun cracked through the clouds, the rain abated and the wind would drop to a Force 5 or 6. Then the sisters would hike down the beach in search of driftwood and drag it back, to feed the stove and generally patch up their cabin where bits had fallen off.

  They did their best to scrape a living from the sea’s secret bounty. Six days a week they’d take their boat out and lift their nets to see what’d fetched up in them. Most of what they caught they ate; the rest they hung up in their smokehouse. After a few days in that black place, even the whitest flesh would turn an oily yellow and begin to take on the rich, sweet reek of tar. And once a fortnight the Pearce sisters would wrap their kippers and smoked mackerel and Finny haddock in old newspaper and head into town, to try and raise enough money to pay for one or two of life’s little luxuries, such as bread or salt or tea.

  One cold, wet Wednesday, Lol was up on the roof, nailing a scrap of wood over a hole where the rain had been making a nuisance and Edna was round the back, gutting and cleaning that morning’s catch. Lol hammered the last nail into place, turned to make her way back to the ladder and happened to glance across the bay. It was a rare day when there was a single thing between the shore and the horizon but on that cold, wet Wednesday she thought she caught a glimpse of something out among the waves. She stopped and waited for the sea to flex its muscles. And after a while she saw for certain what she’d only glimpsed a moment before – a thirty-footer on its side, with some poor fellow clinging to it for all he was worth.

  ‘Edna,’ she called down to her sister, ‘get the boat.’

  Lol and Edna were tough old birds – used to lugging buckets and lobster pots up and down the place – and in a matter of minutes they had their boat down the beach and out on the water and their big, strong hands were hauling back the oars.

  Lol kept an eye on the stricken boat over her shoulder as it swung in and out of view.

  ‘You think he’s drowned yet?’ called out Edna.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Lol.

  They cleared the top of that last wave just as the boat went under and began slowly rolling towards its watery grave. Its exhausted owner wasn’t far behind. He’d gone down twice and was about to go down a third time – had kicked and thrashed all the life right out of him. His eyes rolled back in his head, his mouth fell open and with one last kick and punch he sank beneath the waves.

  The Pearces reached the spot where they’d last seen him and Lol thrust her arm down into the sea and had a root about. She shook her head at Edna and rolled her sleeve right up to her shoulder. Then she delved back in, dug down even deeper and when she finally sat back and pulled her arm out of the water she had the half-drowned man by the scruff of the neck.

  They got him ashore, dropped him down on the pebbles and started pumping. They must have pumped the best part of a gallon of seawater out of him. Then Lol picked him up, threw him over her shoulder and all three of them went indoors.

  On the whole, they thought him quite a reasonable-looking fellow, with all his own teeth and a fine head of dark-brown hair. In short, he was the kind of man the Pearce sisters rarely got to see at such close quarters, so they made the most of him being unconscious and had a good strong look at him. They hung his sodden clothes by the fire and rubbed him down with an old rag of a towel. Then they wrapped him up in Edna’s pink dressing gown and pulled a pair of Lol’s old socks on him to keep him warm.

  They mopped his brow as he lay stretched out on their sofa. Combed his hair, just as if he was a doll. And they were both still right up close and looking him over when he suddenly coughed and opened his eyes.

  Now, there’s no denying that Lol and Edna Pearce had passed their prime a few years earlier. The sisters had lived a long and arduous life. Their cheeks were blasted by the sea and wind, their hands were rough, their hair was matted. Their clothes were creased and greased from all the fish they’d rubbed up against. So when the half-drowned man opened his eyes it must have come as quite a shock to have both Pearces peering at him, when, to be fair, either one would have been more than enough.

  ‘We had to pump you,’ said Edna, and gave him a toothless smile.

  The fellow’s eyes darted to left and right. He was like a cornered animal – like a rabbit caught in a trap. He looked down and saw how he had been clad in Edna’s old dressing gown. He looked back up at the sisters and let out a high-pitched scream.

  In his defence, he was probably still a little disorientated – still had the odd pint of saltwater sloshing round his head. He leapt off the sofa, headed for the door and almost ripped it off its hinges. Then he was off – out on to the beach and weaving down the shingle, tripping and stumbling in his haste to get away.

  The sisters stood and watched from their doorstep, quite bewildered. And that may well have been that, had the fellow not stopped at what he wrongly considered to be a safe distance and, still wearing Edna’s dressing gown, raised an accusatory finger at the women who had just saved his life. A stream of insults came pouring out of him – a bilious rant, so crude and lewd that all the seagulls (not exactly known for their modesty) hung their heads in shame. Then the fellow turned and went back to stumbling down the beach.

  Not surprisingly, Lol and Edna Pearce were a bit put out by the young man’s behaviour, but Lol took extra umbrage as she’d been the one to spot him and the one to pull him out. She felt her chest fill up with righteous indignation. She adjusted her cardigan and set off after him.

  He must have heard her footsteps in the shingle. Must have heard her closing in on him. He may even have had time to regret his little outburst. Certainly, old Lol Pearce was better at making her way across the pebbles and in a matter of minutes she was on him. She grabbed his shoulder, spun him round and lamped him. He went down and showed no immediate signs of getting up again.

  Lol stood over him like a champion boxer and called out to her sister.

  ‘Get the boat,’ she said.

  They threw him back almost exactly where they found him. Then rowed the quarter mile or so back to the shore. And, in truth, they thought no more about it, until a day or two later, when they were combing the beach for driftwood and found him lying in the wash, with Edna’s old dressing gown spread all about him and still buttoned under his chin. They stopped and looked at him for a minute. He seemed quite peaceful. There was never any debate as to what to do with him. They simply dropped their driftwood, picked him up by his arms and ankles and carefully carried him back to their shack.

  For a couple of hours he sat in one of the chairs out on the verandah, as if he’d just nodded off after a heavy lunch. Then Lol suggested they bring him inside, in case somebody happened to see him. And from that point on he became a permanent fixture. Something they wouldn’t have swapped for all the tea in China or all the fish in the sea.

  They found the clothes he’d left behind on his previous visit and dressed him up in them. Then they sat him in a
n easy chair. He looked perfectly happy gazing into the fire, and Lol and Edna agreed that when he wasn’t running up and down and generally causing a commotion he was the very model of good company.

  A day or two passed. The sisters went about their business. And in the evenings all three of them sat before the fire. Edna said how nice it was to have a man around the house. Lol agreed, but said that if they hoped to keep him they’d better consider how to stop him going off.

  They removed his clothes again, carried him round the back and laid him out on the same stone slab on which they prepared their haddock and mackerel. Edna sharpened her knife, cut him up the middle and Lol helped to take his insides out. They took the twine they used to mend their nets and sewed him back together. Then they hung him in the smokehouse for a week or so, looking in on him now and again, to see how he was doing, until they were certain he was done all the way through.

  For the first couple of weeks they sat him in the armchair. Then they perched him on a stool, with his hands on the keys of the old upright piano their mother used to play when she was still alive. It had long since seized up from all the salty air but they were both very fond of it and liked it even more with him sitting at it, as if he was about to launch into some old song from the music hall.

  The first fellow to join him was some chap from the local council who came knocking on the door to ask if they had the proper planning permission for all the sheds and home-made extensions they’d added to their house. Lol and Edna took the fellow out in their boat to show him how things looked from a distance and with one little push he was over the side. Sure enough, a day or so later, they found him washed up, not a hundred yards from where the first one came in. His spectacles were missing but his suit was more or less intact.

  Their third guest was a plain old nosey parker who just happened to come across their cottage and strode down the path to have a snoop about. He didn’t even get to have the trip out into the bay before visiting the smokehouse. He’d crept up to the shack and had his nose pressed up against the kitchen window when it suddenly flew open. Lol grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, dragged him in and dunked him in the washing-up. For a man who’d held such sway in his own household it was a most undignified way to go.

  The fourth victim was a blameless rambler who made the fatal error of knocking on the Pearces’ door to ask for directions. He had a little beard, which the sisters were not particularly keen on, but they were desperate to find one more man, to complete the set. They led him down to the sea to point out the path that he was after, and as the two of them stood up to their thighs in water and held him under, they watched his Ordnance Survey map slowly flap and tumble down the beach.

  They gave him a shave before they smoked him. Now he sits in the Pearces’ parlour, with the other three. They read their books, play cards and sit at the piano, like exhibits in a strange museum. Four drowned men, all nice and quiet, biding their time with Lol and Edna Pearce.

  The boy who fell asleep

  He’d always been known as a bit of a sleepy-head, which is the kind of reputation that can follow a boy around. It would take him an age to wake up in the morning and he was forever nodding off in the afternoon. He would just be staring out of the classroom window and feel his eyes getting heavy and the next thing he’d be conked-out, with his head on his desk, which didn’t go down at all well with his teacher – a bald, old coot called Mister Winter, who took great pleasure in throwing chalk at any child not paying proper attention to what he had to say.

  It wasn’t as if he was especially fond of sleeping. Nodding off, in his experience, could be a most uncomfortable business, like a tug-of-war between staying awake and falling asleep. He just had the sort of mind that liked to wander and, once it got wandering, always seemed to lead him into unconsciousness.

  He was lucky enough not to have any brothers or sisters, which meant there was no one constantly bossing him about the place or getting under his feet. There was just his father, who was either out at work or slumped in an armchair reading his newspaper and his mother, who never seemed to sit still for two minutes at a time.

  The first real sign that there was anything the matter was when he went to bed at eight o’clock one Friday evening and was still fast asleep at half-past ten the following day. His mother had to sit him up and splash his face with cold water before getting any sense out of him. When he eventually came around he muttered something about being on a boat on a winding river. An oarless boat that had just been drifting, drifting all night long.

  The following week he fell asleep in mid-geography. Mister Winter was pointing at a map of the world and talking about far-away places – the sort of talk which can easily exhaust a boy – when he felt his mind begin to wander and sleep to work its charms on him. By the time old man Winter noticed he was asleep there was no retrieving him. The chalk just bounced right off his head. And in the end, four classmates had to carry him home on a blackboard, like some casualty from sleep’s battlefront.

  His parents put him to bed and watched anxiously over him. Two full days went by before he finally surfaced – a bit groggy, but otherwise right as rain. He had a bath and a large fried breakfast and on the Monday morning was back at school, with a note from his mother apologizing for his behaviour and saying how he’d been a bit under the weather but was now most definitely on the mend.

  His father went back to reading his paper. His mother returned to her chores. But their son’s new habit of slipping into unwakeable sleep so worried his parents they became reluctant to get him to close his eyes at bedtime, when they had no way of knowing when he was going to open them up again.

  One Thursday evening a couple of weeks later he sat and yawned by the fire for half an hour, before finally getting to his feet and shuffling off up the stairs. As soon as his head hit the pillow he knew that the most potent sort of sleep was moving in on him. He could feel its heavy tide tug at his very bones. He had no choice but to surrender to it. His body seemed to sink just like a stone. And as he went under he briefly wondered how long he’d be gone this time.

  The moment his mother woke the following morning she knew something was wrong and that her son had slipped from her grasp. She rushed into his room and found him lying with the sheets all neat and flat around him, just the same as when she’d tucked him in the night before. She put her palm against his forehead – sleepy-warm. His breath was sleepy-sweet. She turned and called out to her husband.

  ‘John,’ she cried, ‘he’s gone again.’

  Lunchtime came and went with not the slightest prospect of him stirring. In the afternoon they called the doctor out. He checked the boy’s pulse and opened up both eyelids, but found no sign of life in either one. In the doctor’s opinion there were only two possible explanations. Either the boy had caught sleeping sickness (which was not very likely, as it is a Tropical Disease normally spread by the dreaded tsetse fly, which lives in the sort of far-away places Mister Winter had been pointing out on his map a few weeks before) or the boy was simply sound asleep, in which case the doctor thought it best just to keep an eye on him and let the sleep run its natural course.

  For the first couple of weeks there was a steady stream of visitors. Aunts and uncles came by to have a look and to comfort his mother. Neighbours knocked on the door to see if there was any news. And one Monday, a school inspector paid a visit to make sure his missing pupil wasn’t lounging around and generally enjoying himself when he could be stuck at school, staring out of the window and having Mister Winter throw chalk at him.

  After a month his parents had to accept that this was not just some passing fancy and began to develop a little routine for their sleeping child. In the morning they rolled him on to his left side and in the afternoon they rolled him on to his right. Twice a week they changed his sheets and washed his pyjamas and every evening opened up the window to let some fresh air in. They sat him up, to wash his lifeless body and to spoon some soup into him. And, one way or another, they to
ok care of all his other bodily functions which, for the sake of decency, we shall not go into here.

  His mother and father made sure that either one of them was always within earshot, in case he suddenly woke up and called out to them. And at the end of each day they sat by his bed and talked, just like any normal family, as if he might open his eyes and join in at any time.

  As the years crept by the legend of the sleeping boy spread right across the country and two or three times a week some stranger would turn up on the doorstep asking to have a peek at him or present some home-made remedy which, they assured his parents, would have him back on his feet in no time at all.

  But only two people ever found their way into the boy’s company without being invited. One Sunday evening the young twins from down the road managed to shimmy up the drainpipe and slip into his bedroom when his mother was busy downstairs. The twins were quite convinced that he wasn’t really sleeping and both had brought a pin to prove their point. They stood at the foot of the bed and watched his chest slowly rising and falling. They pulled the bedclothes back and gazed at his two pale feet. They nodded to one another. Then they pushed their pins into him.

  They expected him to leap up, with his eyes wide open, but the sleeping boy didn’t even flinch. When they removed their pins, two beads of blood crept out and trickled down his footsoles. Then the twins were suddenly horrified at what they’d done and how deeply the boy was sleeping and they both went charging down the stairs and out into the street.

  For ten long years the sleeping boy never left his bedroom. Every morning his parents rolled him on to his left side and every afternoon they rolled him on to his right. They fed and bathed him, trimmed his hair and did their best to draw him into conversation. Christmas Days and birthdays crept quietly by. And in all that time the only thing that ever found its way through to him was his mother’s voice – just a few words now and again, which sounded muffled and dreadfully distant, as if he was deep inside a whale.