"It was not to be. Unknown to us Mark discharged himself from hospital that morning around breakfast time. I only found out when I went to visit him on my way home after work and was told by the ward sister he was no longer there. I was surprised he was able to move after the pasting he had been given. I called his home but only got his answering machine, and then I called Sue. She was not pleased to say the least.
"We were both totally worn out from the disturbances of the previous night and so, after an early dinner, we went to bed. We were sound asleep by nine o’clock and it was just after midnight when we were both woken by the insistent hammering and ringing of our front door bell. We had both been in very deep sleep and had taken some waking. Sue sensed straight away that it was Mark.
"‘No, no, no!’ she screamed and began pounding at the pillows. ‘Don’t answer it. Don’t open the door. Tell him to go away. No, Ger, no!’
"‘It may not be him,’ I answered. ‘I have to go and see who it is.’
"‘It is him,’ she shrieked. ‘It is, it is. Don’t answer it. Don’t let him in.’
"Tears were pouring down her face.
"It was Mark and as soon as I saw him I knew he had gone straight back to his drinking. He was just managing to hold himself upright on the door frame and was reeking of whisky as usual.
"‘Hello, Gerry,’ he smiled at me. ‘Sorry to trouble you but I didn’t think I would be able to make it home to my own place. Hello, Sue.’
"‘Get him out of here,’ she shouted. ‘Call the police, call Alcoholics Anonymous, call anybody but get him out of here. Get him away from here.’
"Mark stood swaying on the threshold smiling drunkenly as if pleased with himself, and even managed to look hurt by Sue’s response.
"‘Mark, you’re drunk,’ I said. ‘Stay there while I put some clothes on and I’ll drive you home.’
"‘Don’t think I can make it home,’ he slurred. ‘That’s why I came here.’
"With that, he slid down the door frame and ended up sprawled full length in the hallway. Sue looked terrified but at the same time furious enough to explode.
"‘Sorry, Sue,’ he called up to her from the floor. ‘It’s the legs. They just gave way. They always do. But this is the last time. I won’t be any more trouble, not after this, I promise. This really is the last time.’
"She stared down at him and then at me, and then on the verge of tears she stormed back into the bedroom and slammed the door very firmly behind her. I had the feeling that if she had been able to lock it and bolt it, she would have done so. I dragged Mark inside.
"‘Gerry, it’s all right. I have finished, I promise. It won’t happen again. Tell Sue it won’t happen again, won’t you?’
"I was in no mood to discuss it with him. His clothes were stinking of rotten fish where might have rolled, or been rolled, in some rubbish. The stitches holding his top lip together had split and he was bleeding down his chin. I stripped him off in the hallway, more to protect the carpets and bed linen than anything else, and dumped him on the bed in the spare room to sleep it off. I had come to the end of my patience and at that moment I could wish him very little by way of good will.
"Next morning, Sue was icy. She sipped her tea and projected the mixture of anger and fear I had come to associate with her whenever Mark was in the house. She was pale and drawn and I could see she was nearing the very end of her tether too.
"‘What are you going to do?’ she demanded exhaustedly.
"‘I’ll call Alcoholics Anonymous and get some counselling for him and hand him over to them. You were right, Sue. I can’t manage him and I have had enough too.’
"‘That won’t stop him coming round here,’ she countered.
“‘I’ll see what the counselling services say,’ I answered.”‘I have no experience in handling situations like this. He may still need the support of friends to get over it.’
"‘Ger, he is not your friend,’ she growled at me, showing the full force of her anger. ‘He is not the Mark we knew in the Mark and Janet days. When will you accept that? He has changed, he’s different, and he is dangerous.’
"I did not want to argue with her.
"‘I’ve said I will get some advice,’ I replied as patiently as I could. ‘But I don’t agree that he is not the same. Underneath, he probably is. He has just gone through a lot more than it is reasonable to ask anyone to deal with.’
"‘Stop making excuses for him, Ger,’ she shouted. ‘He’s had gangsters beat him up and dump him on our front garden. And you’ve been told he’s trouble by your police friend. What more do you need to see that he is not safe to be around? A petrol bomb through the letter box? I’m scared, Ger. I can’t explain it any better than that. I’m scared out of my life. There is something about him that scares me. I have tried to tell you, but you won’t listen.’
"She stopped and hid her face in her hands and I reached across to her.
"‘He will get over it,’ I tried to reassure her. ‘He has already told me he wants to. He told me in the hospital and again last night when he arrived that he wants this to be the last time.’
“‘He’s an alcoholic, Ger. He cannot keep a promise. He will tell you anything and go right back to being drunk the next instant. He can’t help himself any more. Let him go, Ger. He is no longer your old friend. He is danger.’”
“What did she say?” interrupted Aunt Gwendoline.
“Let him go, Ger. He is no longer your old friend. He is danger,” he repeated.
“She didn’t say ‘he is dangerous’?” she queried.
“No,” he replied. “She said ‘he is danger’. But you must remember we were both tired, so a certain sloppiness in speech was not unreasonable.”
“Perhaps,” mused Aunt Gwendoline.
Chapter 35
“I knew something had to be done,” Gerard continued. "We couldn’t live too much longer with disturbed nights and unknown, and quite possibly real, threats coming at us from out of nowhere. We had to make life go back to normal and I knew it was up to me to make it happen. But before I could say anything more the kitchen door opened and Mark was standing there.
"‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he greeted us.
"We were so intent on arguing with each other that we both jumped at the sight of him. His sudden appearance startled us, but it was how he looked that surprised both of us more than anything else. He was freshly showered and shaved with his hair neatly combed. His jacket and trousers were also clean and only mildly creased rather than crumpled and filthy, and it was difficult to imagine his shirt and tie had been dragged through the rubbish with him the previous night. His shoes did not have a high polish but they had at least been brushed free of mud and his folded raincoat which he held over his arm no longer carried the stink of rotten fish. True, he was pale and as he held out his hand it shook a little, but apart from that he looked for all the world like a normal, freshly scrubbed man popping his head round the door to say goodbye before heading off for work. He must have spent hours cleaning himself up and all without us hearing him.
"‘I know I have caused you two a bit of trouble over the past few weeks and I really cannot say how sorry I am that I did,’ he began. ‘It wasn’t easy for you, I know, and what you both did went well beyond all I could ever ask from a friendship. I want you both to know how much I appreciate it and that I could never in my dreams have wanted a pair of better friends than you two. You have been absolutely wonderful. I want you to know now that all the trouble I have caused you is now finished and that there will be no repeats of any of it in the future. I know you probably won’t believe me, what with the way I have been lately, so all I can do is ask you to give me some time and I’ll prove it to you. I won’t let you down I promise, not this time. I’ve got everything sorted out, I really have, and I can only say again that I am truly very, very sorry about the past few weeks and I hope that in a short while we can go back to being the friends we were before all this happened.’
"We could say nothing in answer to him. The whole presentation left us gaping. It was not just Mark’s words. It was also the fact that his speech was clear and free from any suggestion of a boozy night out. He was as diffident and polite as he had always been before Janet’s murder, and apart from a slightly bloodshot look about his eyes it was almost as if he had never been drunk. Of course, if we had measured his blood alcohol, we would probably have found him still running on a full tank and way over any legal limit. But we just looked at him open mouthed and said nothing.
"‘I’ll be off now,’ he ended. ‘I want to get into work early. I’ll catch a bus so don’t offer me a lift Gerry. I’ll be better off walking in any case. You finish your breakfast in peace. Thank you both once again for being such good friends. I could not have managed the last few weeks without you and I really can’t thank you enough. And I will make it up to you, I promise.’
"We heard the front door close gently as he left and we still could not say anything to each other. And that was it. It was over. He had come back to his senses, sobered up, and was ready to start living rationally again. I could not contain the feelings of relief that ran through me at that moment although I still thought it wise to reserve final judgement for at least a few days until it was clear he was not going to renege again. But I felt sure that this time he meant it and was back to normal. He had not mentioned the Craters in his little speech, or Janet or what had happened to her. All he had done was apologise and that most sincerely. I felt certain he was over his problems.
“It has now been over two months since that last drunken night and there has been no sign of him drinking since then. He is back at his chemistry bench doing well with his research, being taken seriously again by his students, and all gossip about him around the university staff club has tapered off to nothing. He has made a complete recovery. It is as if none of it had ever happened.”
“And what about your vase?” asked Aunt Gwendoline.
“Ah, yes. Aunt Alice’s vase,” Gerard smiled. “After Mark left Sue remained stony faced and disbelieving and sitting at the breakfast table. She barely said another word as we both got ready for work. I left about an hour later, leaving her finishing off her make-up, and when I got home Aunt Alice’s vase was smashed into a thousand pieces all over the hallway. She had taken out one of my golf clubs and side-swiped it off its pedestal, swinging with such force that the impact made a dent in the wall opposite. And she was gone, as were her clothes from the wardrobe and her other possessions from the cupboards and drawers. She has not been back and I have not seen her since. She has not returned any messages I’ve left, but from other people I know she is all right. She is a lovely girl and I still miss her at odd moments, but apart from that I don’t know how I feel about her or about what she did to Aunt Alice’s vase.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” agreed Aunt Gwendoline. “But it is very odd. Of all the things she might have broken as she ended your relationship, she chose my sister Alice’s vase.”
Gerard watched his elderly aunt turn over her thoughts. He was pleased to see she was looking quite recovered from her earlier dizzy spell.
“Gerard, my dear boy,” she announced at last. “You are absolutely correct. We did have a very late night last night and I do have to admit that it has left me feeling exceptionally tired. It is quite unceremonious of me I know, but I am going to bustle you on your way and take myself off to an early night. Thank you so much for telling me your story but I fear that if I do not say goodbye immediately, I shall not make it up the stairs without falling over. I do believe I have done all the thinking and listening I can manage for a long time.”
“Of course,” he smiled back to her.
He pulled on his coat and leaned over and gave her a long hug and a peck on the cheek.
“Thanks, Aunt Gwendoline. Thank you for everything. It has been good telling you about Mark and Janet and Sue and all that. You’ve no idea how much better I feel.”
“That is what great-aunts are for,” she answered.
She waved to him from the step then shut the door solidly against the failing light.
Chapter 36
“Well, Rani,” she declared. “That was an anti-climax, wasn’t it? Do you think it was worth all the effort?”
The dog sat quizzically at her mistress’ feet and wagged her tail stump in hesitant answer.
“It would appear that our Gerard’s Susan smashed our sister Alice’s vase in nothing more than a fit of pique. She wanted to leave him but he was too engrossed in the affairs of his friend to notice. So, in the end she just left, smashing the last thing she saw on her way out in frustration which just happened to be our sister Alice’s vase. I do despair sometimes at the lack of self-control displayed by the young people of today. Still, we mustn’t be too hard on them, must we? Not given the sort of escapades my younger sister Lizzie used to get up to, getting me and Alice into all sorts of trouble as she invariably did. She was nothing but a worry from the moment she was born. But at least we can now relax, the whole business is at an end.”
She nodded firmly and hauled herself off the timbers of the door frame, and the tread of her oak-cased grandfather clock sounded into the silence of the hallway and held her. She looked up into its face and searched it questioningly for a few seconds.
“Do you believe that is all there is to it, our dad?” she asked.
She listened to its unvarying, answering beat and after a few seconds sighed deeply.
“No, I don’t believe it either.”
She wandered into her sitting room.
“Janet Brinsley was murdered by Billy and George Crater, who got off scot-free at their trial,” she summarised. “Mark Brinsley threw himself into his work and then got hopelessly drunk, annoying the Craters. Finally, he sobered up and went back to his life as if nothing had happened. Then, and only after everything was back to normal, Miss Susan finally felt she was able to leave our Gerard. She smashed our sister Alice’s vase on her way out as a signal to him that their relationship was irretrievably at an end since nothing else seemed to be getting through to him. How does that sound, Rani?”
The dog showed no more enthusiasm for this version of events than her grandfather clock did for the earlier one.
“You’re quite right,” she sighed again. “It does not explain why our sleep has been disturbed by dreams of blazing Zeppelins and young pilots in biplanes buzzing us on our way back from our dad’s allotment. It is all very confusing, and yet everything does now seem back to normal. I really am too tired to worry about it anymore. Such a fuss being made over a smashed vase. It was not as if it was Ming, was it Rani?”
So chattering, she tidied the sitting room before wearily climbing the stairs to settle herself and Rani down for a much anticipated, undisturbed, long night’s sleep. It lasted until half past one.
Chapter 37
“Oh my goodness.”
Aunt Gwendoline slumped back on her pillows. She had difficulty moving in the twisted bed sheets. It was dark and her heart was racing. She was panting and sweating profusely and her roiling mind carried no cohesive thought.
“Just a moment, Rani,” she called. “Just give me a moment.”
The dog was standing whimpering with her forepaws on the bed, obedient as ever to the instruction never to jump up.
Aunt Gwendoline wrestled with the tangled bedclothes hopelessly knotted around her. After a couple of attempts she succeeded in freeing a hand and reaching out to the bedside lamp, then she rested again against the pillows while her heartbeat dropped back to somewhere near its normal rhythm and her eyes became used to the sudden brightness.
“Goodness me,” she wheezed. “The bed looks as though it has been hit by a thunder storm. I shan’t be able to get back to sleep in it like this, shall I?”
Cautiously, she lowered her legs over the side and stood up. With careful lack of haste, she collected her pillows and pulled the blankets and sheets back into some sort of order.
&n
bsp; “There, that looks better. But seeing that I am up I could really do with a cup of tea. Some Orange Pekoe I think, and while it is not usual to be eating at this hour of the morning I do think a small biscuit might be in order while I try and sort out exactly what is going on. Would you agree with that, Rani? I certainly need something.”
The dog wagged her tail stump and followed her mistress downstairs. A glare of tested patience was sent towards the slumbering aspidistra as the closed sitting room door was passed, and a few minutes later the fumes of the piping hot Orange Pekoe tea were being inhaled and savoured while the rational, if early morning, world re-established itself in the kitchen.
“It is all most odd,” Aunt Gwendoline declared shaking her head. “I thought we had dealt with the Zeppelin and its falling stars. It was nothing, a nonsense, just the ramblings of an old woman, which is what I am. Nothing happened in the end, did it? Janet Brinsley was murdered but her husband, Miss Susan and mercifully Gerard himself are all well. Even the Crater brothers are well, for which we can give no thanks to our justice system. But that is not our concern, is it? No. At the end of our Gerard’s story, the point at which Miss Susan broke our sister Alice’s vase, everyone was back to normal. So, why am I still dreaming about Zeppelins and a strange young man in a biplane buzzing us as we walk back from our dad’s allotment?”
Rani listened attentively to her mistress’ voice, trembling gently and enjoying the break of nocturnal habit. She had scored a tiny piece of biscuit.
“When the young man flew over us all those years ago, he was simply exhibiting high spirits on his way back to his home airfield,” Aunt Gwendoline reminisced. “There was no malice in him. True, he did scare Mother and we did end up in a ditch. But aeroplanes were a very rare sight in those days. Indeed, it was the first one we had ever seen. But why should I be dreaming about him now?”
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