I Dream of Lavender

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I Dream of Lavender

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 2166 12349 Church of Scotland 102 24 15165 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

I Dream of Lavender

 

Harry thought, for a brief instant, that he’d been attacked.

One second he was wondering whether to select the Cranberry or whether to treat himself to some of the Huntsman’s, and the next he was flat on his back, looking up at a rainbow coloured sea of bodies, all with the same anxious ‘O’ in the middle of their faces.

He assumed he’d been hit with a hammer, the pain had been so sudden and so intense. He had no idea why anyone would choose to wallop a pensioner in the cheese aisle in Waitrose, but then, you read about such unprovoked attacks in the tabloids almost every day.

Harry tried to stand, but was conscious of being held down on the cold floor. Something warm but strangely rough was shoved under his head, and then taken away again as his good Samaritan obviously wondered whether that was the ‘right thing’ to do.

He thought he heard a distant siren. Shame flooded over him. Again he tried to struggle to his feet, but the crowd, now apparently being shooed away by someone in a business suit, was still too close, milling about like sheep in a pen.

He grew strangely comfortable, there, on the floor. A warmth crept through his body and he moved his legs to get into a better position to sleep. It had been a long time since he’d slept well. At least three years – since Edna…

Another man, dressed in green, took charge and bent over Harry, forcing him into wakefulness again. Harry knew he was speaking to him but his words drifted in and out of his consciousness. Harry was upset. He felt he wasn’t being terribly helpful, but part of him just didn’t care at this precise time. It was all terribly strange. Harry didn’t like people who were deliberately rude to others.

The next two days passed in a blur for Harry.

It was lunchtime on the third day that he finally began to make sense of the comings and goings on the ward. Mornings were busy, afternoons, not so much. Visitors would come in, in ones and twos (usually ones - an elderly gent or lady making their slow way up the length of the ward to sit by a bed and hold a flaccid hand for an hour, a hard toffee clacking as it knocked against dentures passing for conversation) and then depart again, creaking back out of the doors until the same routine would be repeated next day.

No visitors for him though.

Edna had never been blessed with children and though, for a while, it had been a topic they avoided, over time they grew to accept it and the empty place in their lives was filled, for the next 15 years, by a bouncy black and white collie they called ‘Bob’ after the cartoon character of the time.

When Edna had gone, leaving his life and his bed, he had thought his heart would break, and lived in the full expectation of death for the next six months. When it didn’t claim him he reckoned there must be a reason he was obliged to soldier on, and settled down to his new, quieter life. His one indulgence, apart from a wedge of a tasty cheese every week, was a fresh bunch of lavender, to be displayed on the sideboard in the hall by the door, its scent the last thing that he smelled when he left the house and the first thing to greet him whenever he opened the door. It had been Edna’s favourite flower and the deep, heavy bouquet was completely and utterly linked to her in his mind.

The ward was run by Nurse Stevens, a stickler for attention with a heart of gold. She seemed to have a nursing trainee called Pamela constantly in her not inconsiderable wake. Harry liked to watch the two women working; Stevens in charge and the younger Pamela simply and efficiently in awe. Other women (and one man) moved in and out of Harry’s line of sight from time to time but it was Stevens and Pamela that were the constants. He wondered if they ever slept.

During the long, low-lit nights when Harry sometimes lay awake counting the minutes before the early morning shift was due to come on duty, he fancied he could hear Stevens humming gently over by the nurses’ station, and from time to time, Pamela would walk by, see his eyes glittering in the semi-light, and ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. The tea was generally cool, and served in a closed mug with a straw, testament to the current poor muscle tone in his hands. Often he simply shook his head, preferring to lie and watch the world go by.

It was during one of these nights that he heard the dog. A sharp clatter of canine claws on the lino. A retriever, golden and sleek, passed the bottom of his bed and settled by the bedside of the man to his left.

Harry hadn’t paid much attention to his neighbour. The man seemed to sleep a great deal, and when he was awake he didn’t seem interested in anyone or anything. Harry watched as the dog raised its big head and then eased itself on to its back legs, using its muzzle to root around the sheets for the man’s hand. When it found the slender fingers, its long pink tongue coiled around them until the fingers responded, first tentatively, then with enthusiasm, fondling the velvet muzzle, searching the head, exploring the dog’s face.

The man moaned and dragged himself up on to an elbow.

“Chancer!” he said, tears sparking from his eyes. The dog responded immediately, it’s huge tail flapping from side to side enthusiastically. Its front paws were scrabbling over the man’s body now, and he was hugging the beast to his chest, pressing his head into its neck. Chancer pulled free and dropped to the floor. It turned to the door. Harry watched as the man snatched at the creature’s collar to prevent it leaving.

“You’re going nowhere,” he told it. “Not without me. Sit!” Chancer sat.

The old guy dragged his scrawny body out of the smooth sheets and placed his bare feet on the cold lino. He grasped the leather collar firmly and made a forward movement with his hand.

“Home!” The command was firm and Chancer bounded to his feet. The man had to trot to keep up initially, but the dog quickly fell in with his pace. They made it past the nurses’ station without drawing attention, and Harry watched as the ward doors swung closed behind them. He was still smiling as he fell asleep.

Next morning when he awoke, the first thing he did was check to see if his neighbour had come back yet, but the curtains were drawn round the bed. He dozed off again. When he woke next, the bed was occupied by a different man, younger and livelier. That afternoon, Harry got his first visitor.

It was Edna. He was surprised when she walked into the ward, but his happiness knew no bounds. She looked exactly the same as she had when she left the house that last time, the yellow top with the flowers and the brown skirt. Her dark red coat was open and she was carrying the brown shopper she always took on a Tuesday.

“Hello Harry,” she said, her smile spreading across her face like sunshine over a garden.

He thought she had the kindest eyes he had ever seen, and he felt a tear roll down his face at the sight of the woman he had loved for nearly sixty years.

“Edna,” he said. “You’ve come back.”

“Only for a short time, Harry. Just to see how you are. Are they treating you well?”

He tried to lift his hand to stroke her face, but he couldn’t. “Well,” he said. “They’re kind, they’re gentle. They seem to know what they’re doing. How are you?”

“I’m fine Harry. Better than fine. I miss you.”

“Then come back.”

“You know I can’t.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue. She leaned over, releasing the lavender smell he loved so much, and wiped his face.

“I need to go now, my love.” She murmured, breathing a gentle kiss onto his forehead. “Come and see me again,” he urged, trying to grab her arm, but unable to muster the energy or the strength to close his fingers.

“I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

He watched through a veil of tears as she left the ward as quietly as she’d come in. For the rest of the day he was inconsolable. He cried on and off for hours and even Pamela’s ministrations could not stem the flood.

In the early evening, Stevens came to his bed, made copious notes on his papers, smiled and left.

Late that night he was awakened by a man singing.

“I’ve got a coupon. A jolly little coupon, I’ve got a coupon to last me all my days. A coat and a vest, and as for the rest, my coupon will see me through always.”

Digger Harris. Harry strained to look but the darkness was unrelenting. There was a light in the hall outside, and he thought he could make out a helmet moving around, the corridor light glancing off the dull metal, but his logical mind pulled him back.

Digger was long gone. A shell in 1942 had robbed the world of that mine of dreadful puns and worse singing.

“Son of Digger then,” Harry thought, as he drifted off again.

Next morning, during rounds, Harry woke to find a vase of flowers by his bed. A collection of hyacinths in a faux crystal vase was now perched on his bedside cabinet. Their scent was pleasant and happily distinguishable in among the more clinical ward odours.

Stevens was watching him from her place at the nurses’ station. He tried to smile his thanks, but had a feeling that his face was as crooked as a bent three-penny, and wondered what she would make of the grimace.

She resumed writing and he fell asleep again.

He woke from time to time, once when a new nurse was clumsy when she changed a tube towards the bottom of his bed, and another time when a doctor’s hand poked and prodded his back. He felt the stethoscope, but couldn’t make out what was being said. He was tired. He needed a good sleep, and he just wished they would leave him alone.

The ward was its usual hive of activity, all the more so today because he thought he picked up the word ‘consultant’ being whispered in reverential tones, and he understood they were being visited from on high.

He tried to laugh as Nurse Steven popped the plants into the bottom shelf of his bedside unit and winked at him before heading off again, and he made an attempt to lie still and behave properly when the consultant, a small man in a business suit with a bevy of white coated doctors hanging on his every word, swung by the bed, turned his back on Harry to talk to the others, replaced the notes over the foot of the bed and then sailed on serenely to his next patient, taking the hushed entourage with him.

Harry felt another nap coming on and hoped his snoring would not disturb the efficient ambience of the ward. Edna was forever complaining about his snoring, and used to waken him regularly with a gentle poke in his ribs. As she had aged, and her hearing had lost its keenness, the digs had lessened, and finally, when she was able to take her hearing aid out at night, had disappeared entirely. Harry had no doubt that he continued to snore. There was just no one around to hear him anymore.

When he next drifted clear of sleep, the flowers were back, replaced at some point in the day. Pity it wasn’t lavender. He smiled, breathed in the cloying scent, and slept again.

He heard the clatter of the tea dishes as the ward was cleared in preparation for the night shift coming on, and the busy questioning of the nurses as they exchanged the ‘hand-over’ notes. A catheter here. A bolus there. The words didn’t mean much to Harry, but the nurses made notes on their pads, nodded in the right places and looked towards a prone figure as a name or update in condition was mentioned. Stevens and Pamela were on again. He was glad. There was something comforting about having them around, and he’d grown fond of the women.

Harry watched as the lights on the ward were turned down low in preparation for another night. He was lonely and tired. He felt another tear trickle down his face and wished Edna were here to kiss it away.

Instead, Stevens walked up to him and used a tissue to catch the droplet. He hadn’t noticed her easing him into a different position so that he would not get bed sores, and then tucking the starched sheets around him.

He looked up at her large, kindly face, and was embarrassed as another drop forced its way between his lashes and out onto his wrinkled face. She smiled and gently scooped that one up too. Then she took a stem of pink hyacinth and placed it gently on his pillow. She stroked his hair and stood upright again, then quietly pulled the curtains on each side of his bed, affording him some peace and privacy to sleep.

He was not surprised when she checked him again a short time later, rearranged his limbs and smoothed the bedclothes.

A little later again, he felt the weight by his feet, and wondered why she was leaning so heavily on his legs.

Then he heard a strange, urgent whine. Opening his eyes he was astonished to see, not the blue eyes of the diligent nurse, but a quite different set of amber eyes staring intently at him.

He sat upright in bed, shucking the neatly arranged sheets off his chest and using his fluttery hands to push himself into a more upright position.

“BOB!”

The collie, almost completely black with a white flash on his chest and over his nose fairly danced on the bed, turning tight, excited circles by Harry’s feet.

The man laughed with delight, and grabbed at the glossy coat as it slinked first in, then out, of his grasp.

“Bob! You’re going to get me into so much trouble with Nurse Stevens there!”

Bob didn’t appear to care, and thrust his face up into Harry’s, breaking all the hospital hygiene rules in an instant, licking and pawing and licking again, as much of Harry’s hands and face as he could reach.

Harry held the dog close to his chest. More tears escaped him – this time tears of complete joy.

“Bob. I’m so glad it’s you. Come on, lad. Let’s go for walkies.”

The dog bounded off the bed and Harry swung his legs out, tentative at first, then faster as he felt the strength flood into them. Bob half crouched, bracing his front legs, tail wagging, and Harry laughed. “Still a clown I see,” Harry whispered, and bent down to lay a kiss on the dark fur.

“Let’s go then.” He smiled, and skittered along the floor, racing to keep up as the happy dog galloped on ahead.

He was not aware when Nurse Stevens next checked him, reaching into the sheets to feel for a pulse in his cold arm, and then checking to see if she could detect the one that ought to have been in his neck.

She stroked the hair again, and pressed the button at the side of the bed. She lifted the short sprig of lavender from his pillow and replaced it in the vase. She frowned as she looked at the flowers. A glorious swelling of lavender was crammed into the vase, its strong, peaceful scent lingering round the bed. She understood that the sense of smell was reckoned to be the last sense to go when someone is in his final stages. She always tried to give the gentlemen something nice to take away the smell of the ward, even though she would never know whether they noticed or not.

She pulled the curtain round the bottom of the bed, a last act of courtesy.

“Goodnight, Mr Lawrence.” She whispered, as she walked over to the nurses’ station, to write up the notes.

 

I Dream of Lavender

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 2166 12349 Church of Scotland 102 24 15165 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

I Dream of Lavender

 

Harry thought, for a brief instant, that he’d been attacked.

One second he was wondering whether to select the Cranberry or whether to treat himself to some of the Huntsman’s, and the next he was flat on his back, looking up at a rainbow coloured sea of bodies, all with the same anxious ‘O’ in the middle of their faces.

He assumed he’d been hit with a hammer, the pain had been so sudden and so intense. He had no idea why anyone would choose to wallop a pensioner in the cheese aisle in Waitrose, but then, you read about such unprovoked attacks in the tabloids almost every day.

Harry tried to stand, but was conscious of being held down on the cold floor. Something warm but strangely rough was shoved under his head, and then taken away again as his good Samaritan obviously wondered whether that was the ‘right thing’ to do.

He thought he heard a distant siren. Shame flooded over him. Again he tried to struggle to his feet, but the crowd, now apparently being shooed away by someone in a business suit, was still too close, milling about like sheep in a pen.

He grew strangely comfortable, there, on the floor. A warmth crept through his body and he moved his legs to get into a better position to sleep. It had been a long time since he’d slept well. At least three years – since Edna…

Another man, dressed in green, took charge and bent over Harry, forcing him into wakefulness again. Harry knew he was speaking to him but his words drifted in and out of his consciousness. Harry was upset. He felt he wasn’t being terribly helpful, but part of him just didn’t care at this precise time. It was all terribly strange. Harry didn’t like people who were deliberately rude to others.

The next two days passed in a blur for Harry.

It was lunchtime on the third day that he finally began to make sense of the comings and goings on the ward. Mornings were busy, afternoons, not so much. Visitors would come in, in ones and twos (usually ones - an elderly gent or lady making their slow way up the length of the ward to sit by a bed and hold a flaccid hand for an hour, a hard toffee clacking as it knocked against dentures passing for conversation) and then depart again, creaking back out of the doors until the same routine would be repeated next day.

No visitors for him though.

Edna had never been blessed with children and though, for a while, it had been a topic they avoided, over time they grew to accept it and the empty place in their lives was filled, for the next 15 years, by a bouncy black and white collie they called ‘Bob’ after the cartoon character of the time.

When Edna had gone, leaving his life and his bed, he had thought his heart would break, and lived in the full expectation of death for the next six months. When it didn’t claim him he reckoned there must be a reason he was obliged to soldier on, and settled down to his new, quieter life. His one indulgence, apart from a wedge of a tasty cheese every week, was a fresh bunch of lavender, to be displayed on the sideboard in the hall by the door, its scent the last thing that he smelled when he left the house and the first thing to greet him whenever he opened the door. It had been Edna’s favourite flower and the deep, heavy bouquet was completely and utterly linked to her in his mind.

The ward was run by Nurse Stevens, a stickler for attention with a heart of gold. She seemed to have a nursing trainee called Pamela constantly in her not inconsiderable wake. Harry liked to watch the two women working; Stevens in charge and the younger Pamela simply and efficiently in awe. Other women (and one man) moved in and out of Harry’s line of sight from time to time but it was Stevens and Pamela that were the constants. He wondered if they ever slept.

During the long, low-lit nights when Harry sometimes lay awake counting the minutes before the early morning shift was due to come on duty, he fancied he could hear Stevens humming gently over by the nurses’ station, and from time to time, Pamela would walk by, see his eyes glittering in the semi-light, and ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. The tea was generally cool, and served in a closed mug with a straw, testament to the current poor muscle tone in his hands. Often he simply shook his head, preferring to lie and watch the world go by.

It was during one of these nights that he heard the dog. A sharp clatter of canine claws on the lino. A retriever, golden and sleek, passed the bottom of his bed and settled by the bedside of the man to his left.

Harry hadn’t paid much attention to his neighbour. The man seemed to sleep a great deal, and when he was awake he didn’t seem interested in anyone or anything. Harry watched as the dog raised its big head and then eased itself on to its back legs, using its muzzle to root around the sheets for the man’s hand. When it found the slender fingers, its long pink tongue coiled around them until the fingers responded, first tentatively, then with enthusiasm, fondling the velvet muzzle, searching the head, exploring the dog’s face.

The man moaned and dragged himself up on to an elbow.

“Chancer!” he said, tears sparking from his eyes. The dog responded immediately, it’s huge tail flapping from side to side enthusiastically. Its front paws were scrabbling over the man’s body now, and he was hugging the beast to his chest, pressing his head into its neck. Chancer pulled free and dropped to the floor. It turned to the door. Harry watched as the man snatched at the creature’s collar to prevent it leaving.

“You’re going nowhere,” he told it. “Not without me. Sit!” Chancer sat.

The old guy dragged his scrawny body out of the smooth sheets and placed his bare feet on the cold lino. He grasped the leather collar firmly and made a forward movement with his hand.

“Home!” The command was firm and Chancer bounded to his feet. The man had to trot to keep up initially, but the dog quickly fell in with his pace. They made it past the nurses’ station without drawing attention, and Harry watched as the ward doors swung closed behind them. He was still smiling as he fell asleep.

Next morning when he awoke, the first thing he did was check to see if his neighbour had come back yet, but the curtains were drawn round the bed. He dozed off again. When he woke next, the bed was occupied by a different man, younger and livelier. That afternoon, Harry got his first visitor.

It was Edna. He was surprised when she walked into the ward, but his happiness knew no bounds. She looked exactly the same as she had when she left the house that last time, the yellow top with the flowers and the brown skirt. Her dark red coat was open and she was carrying the brown shopper she always took on a Tuesday.

“Hello Harry,” she said, her smile spreading across her face like sunshine over a garden.

He thought she had the kindest eyes he had ever seen, and he felt a tear roll down his face at the sight of the woman he had loved for nearly sixty years.

“Edna,” he said. “You’ve come back.”

“Only for a short time, Harry. Just to see how you are. Are they treating you well?”

He tried to lift his hand to stroke her face, but he couldn’t. “Well,” he said. “They’re kind, they’re gentle. They seem to know what they’re doing. How are you?”

“I’m fine Harry. Better than fine. I miss you.”

“Then come back.”

“You know I can’t.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue. She leaned over, releasing the lavender smell he loved so much, and wiped his face.

“I need to go now, my love.” She murmured, breathing a gentle kiss onto his forehead. “Come and see me again,” he urged, trying to grab her arm, but unable to muster the energy or the strength to close his fingers.

“I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

He watched through a veil of tears as she left the ward as quietly as she’d come in. For the rest of the day he was inconsolable. He cried on and off for hours and even Pamela’s ministrations could not stem the flood.

In the early evening, Stevens came to his bed, made copious notes on his papers, smiled and left.

Late that night he was awakened by a man singing.

“I’ve got a coupon. A jolly little coupon, I’ve got a coupon to last me all my days. A coat and a vest, and as for the rest, my coupon will see me through always.”

Digger Harris. Harry strained to look but the darkness was unrelenting. There was a light in the hall outside, and he thought he could make out a helmet moving around, the corridor light glancing off the dull metal, but his logical mind pulled him back.

Digger was long gone. A shell in 1942 had robbed the world of that mine of dreadful puns and worse singing.

“Son of Digger then,” Harry thought, as he drifted off again.

Next morning, during rounds, Harry woke to find a vase of flowers by his bed. A collection of hyacinths in a faux crystal vase was now perched on his bedside cabinet. Their scent was pleasant and happily distinguishable in among the more clinical ward odours.

Stevens was watching him from her place at the nurses’ station. He tried to smile his thanks, but had a feeling that his face was as crooked as a bent three-penny, and wondered what she would make of the grimace.

She resumed writing and he fell asleep again.

He woke from time to time, once when a new nurse was clumsy when she changed a tube towards the bottom of his bed, and another time when a doctor’s hand poked and prodded his back. He felt the stethoscope, but couldn’t make out what was being said. He was tired. He needed a good sleep, and he just wished they would leave him alone.

The ward was its usual hive of activity, all the more so today because he thought he picked up the word ‘consultant’ being whispered in reverential tones, and he understood they were being visited from on high.

He tried to laugh as Nurse Steven popped the plants into the bottom shelf of his bedside unit and winked at him before heading off again, and he made an attempt to lie still and behave properly when the consultant, a small man in a business suit with a bevy of white coated doctors hanging on his every word, swung by the bed, turned his back on Harry to talk to the others, replaced the notes over the foot of the bed and then sailed on serenely to his next patient, taking the hushed entourage with him.

Harry felt another nap coming on and hoped his snoring would not disturb the efficient ambience of the ward. Edna was forever complaining about his snoring, and used to waken him regularly with a gentle poke in his ribs. As she had aged, and her hearing had lost its keenness, the digs had lessened, and finally, when she was able to take her hearing aid out at night, had disappeared entirely. Harry had no doubt that he continued to snore. There was just no one around to hear him anymore.

When he next drifted clear of sleep, the flowers were back, replaced at some point in the day. Pity it wasn’t lavender. He smiled, breathed in the cloying scent, and slept again.

He heard the clatter of the tea dishes as the ward was cleared in preparation for the night shift coming on, and the busy questioning of the nurses as they exchanged the ‘hand-over’ notes. A catheter here. A bolus there. The words didn’t mean much to Harry, but the nurses made notes on their pads, nodded in the right places and looked towards a prone figure as a name or update in condition was mentioned. Stevens and Pamela were on again. He was glad. There was something comforting about having them around, and he’d grown fond of the women.

Harry watched as the lights on the ward were turned down low in preparation for another night. He was lonely and tired. He felt another tear trickle down his face and wished Edna were here to kiss it away.

Instead, Stevens walked up to him and used a tissue to catch the droplet. He hadn’t noticed her easing him into a different position so that he would not get bed sores, and then tucking the starched sheets around him.

He looked up at her large, kindly face, and was embarrassed as another drop forced its way between his lashes and out onto his wrinkled face. She smiled and gently scooped that one up too. Then she took a stem of pink hyacinth and placed it gently on his pillow. She stroked his hair and stood upright again, then quietly pulled the curtains on each side of his bed, affording him some peace and privacy to sleep.

He was not surprised when she checked him again a short time later, rearranged his limbs and smoothed the bedclothes.

A little later again, he felt the weight by his feet, and wondered why she was leaning so heavily on his legs.

Then he heard a strange, urgent whine. Opening his eyes he was astonished to see, not the blue eyes of the diligent nurse, but a quite different set of amber eyes staring intently at him.

He sat upright in bed, shucking the neatly arranged sheets off his chest and using his fluttery hands to push himself into a more upright position.

“BOB!”

The collie, almost completely black with a white flash on his chest and over his nose fairly danced on the bed, turning tight, excited circles by Harry’s feet.

The man laughed with delight, and grabbed at the glossy coat as it slinked first in, then out, of his grasp.

“Bob! You’re going to get me into so much trouble with Nurse Stevens there!”

Bob didn’t appear to care, and thrust his face up into Harry’s, breaking all the hospital hygiene rules in an instant, licking and pawing and licking again, as much of Harry’s hands and face as he could reach.

Harry held the dog close to his chest. More tears escaped him – this time tears of complete joy.

“Bob. I’m so glad it’s you. Come on, lad. Let’s go for walkies.”

The dog bounded off the bed and Harry swung his legs out, tentative at first, then faster as he felt the strength flood into them. Bob half crouched, bracing his front legs, tail wagging, and Harry laughed. “Still a clown I see,” Harry whispered, and bent down to lay a kiss on the dark fur.

“Let’s go then.” He smiled, and skittered along the floor, racing to keep up as the happy dog galloped on ahead.

He was not aware when Nurse Stevens next checked him, reaching into the sheets to feel for a pulse in his cold arm, and then checking to see if she could detect the one that ought to have been in his neck.

She stroked the hair again, and pressed the button at the side of the bed. She lifted the short sprig of lavender from his pillow and replaced it in the vase. She frowned as she looked at the flowers. A glorious swelling of lavender was crammed into the vase, its strong, peaceful scent lingering round the bed. She understood that the sense of smell was reckoned to be the last sense to go when someone is in his final stages. She always tried to give the gentlemen something nice to take away the smell of the ward, even though she would never know whether they noticed or not.

She pulled the curtain round the bottom of the bed, a last act of courtesy.

“Goodnight, Mr Lawrence.” She whispered, as she walked over to the nurses’ station, to write up the notes.

Personal Studies

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Personal Studies

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 1679 9571 Church of Scotland 79 19 11753 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

 

The car kicked as Paula forced it into first and eased into the street. She spotted David round about the same time as he saw her. He raised a hand to wave his acknowledgment and smiled. Three of his mates were lurking around with him, and they half turned their backs as she stopped the car beside them.

He nodded a muted ‘bye’ to them and stubbed his cigarette out on the brickwork behind him. “Gotta go….” He laughed, and with one easy movement hoisted himself into the open top Ka.

 

She gunned the engine, listening to the whoops of the guys, and pushed out into the steady traffic. Her blonde hair was caught in the breeze and played gently round her shoulders.

He took a strand of it in his hand and twisted it round his fingers. “Where are we going for lunch then?”

She concentrated hard on the dashboard and the traffic, checking the rear view mirror regularly until they had left the street far behind. “We could have some sandwiches at my place for a change.”

He withdrew his hand quickly, then cautiously replaced it on her shoulders.

“Will there be pot?”

“There could be.”

“Then sandwiches sound good.”

She briefly touched his hand with her neck and then drew her own across the front of his shirt, pushing the tie to the side. His body was slim, hard, toned. His free hand reached over and slid her fingers through the gap between the buttons. She forced herself to pull free and grip the wheel again as she guided the car expertly through the traffic.

“How far?” David asked. “I can stretch to an hour and a half, but after that I’ll be missed. And I’m getting very peckish…”

 

Five minutes later, they were pulling in to a reserved space outside a block of newly built flats on the west of the city.

 

David again left the car without using the door. Showing off, she reckoned, but she swirled her keys and he fell into line just behind her, like a faithful puppy.

Her flat was modern, trendy. There were not many large pieces of furniture around but he liked it. The walls were pale, perhaps magnolia, and the surrounds were white. It looked clean, functional but homely. He decided that he could live here, and settled on to the settee. Paula was in the compact kitchen. He could hear the clink of glasses. She called out to him, ‘red wine or white?”

He wasn’t sure. “White I think.”

“Great,” she answered. “The pot is in the jar by the TV. Help yourself to a joint. Don’t be greedy though. We both have to get back to work this afternoon.”

“Cool,” he said, and had a look for the biggest one he could find. He spotted the matches in a long glass dish by the side of the gas fire and lit one. He drew the perfumed smoke down into his lungs, held it for as long as he could, then exhaled, too quickly, and ended the moment with a racking cough.

“Shit, this is good...shit!” he gasped.

 

Paula swung through from the kitchen, her hips sleek in the silky robe she’d slipped in to.

“Wow!” he said, taking the glass of wine and handing her the joint. “Fuck me!”

“Oh, I intend to,” she oozed, and snaked her free arm round his supple waist. She smiled as she felt the smooth skin under her palm. “Get undressed.”

He tore his jacket off and was about to undo his tie when she stopped him. “Keep the tie, I like it.” She took both ends of it and pulled him towards her. “It could come in useful.” Then, before he could protest, she began to kiss him, his face, his body. She felt her nipples harden with excitement and anticipation.

He wasn’t sure how he got out of his shirt with her hand still gripping his tie, but he managed. It fell in a crisp, white heap onto the pale brown carpet.

Her hand was tearing at the buttons on his trousers now, and he took another suck at the heady dope. His head began to swim and he laughed at the effect. He could feel himself stiffening as she slid her hand round the back of his buttocks and pulled his body towards her.

He grabbed her hair in his free hand and thrust her head towards his groin. Sensing his thoughts, she pushed him onto the settee and as he flapped, trying to regain some balance, she went down on him, stroking him with her tongue, fondling him with practiced fingers until she could feel he was almost ready.

He was groaning with pleasure and trying to hold her head down, but she held his hands off her and slid onto him, clenching and holding to maximise her pleasure.

As they came, she yelled and collapsed forward onto him. He was laughing now and holding her body, touching her breasts carefully and slowly, until she was moaning and purring beside him.

“Shit, that was good…well everything.” He gasped.

“Oh yeah,” she said, and nuzzled the small curls behind his ears. “And we’ve still got 40 minutes left before I have to get you back.”

He glanced at his wristwatch. She was right.

The joint was nearly gone. “Can I have more? Pretty please?” he asked, holding up the stump.

“No,” she said. “It’s too strong. You’d be caught. But have some more wine. I hate opening a bottle and not finishing it.”

 

He drank the cold wine, sipping the sharp, pale yellow liquid. He realised he was still nearly naked, and pulled a fluffy cushion over himself to cover the remnants of his erection.

“Have you got any music?” he asked, looking for a diversion so he could pull his trousers back up.

“Of course. What do you think I am? Some ancient old bag who doesn’t know her Red Hot Chilli Peppers from her Coldplay?”

“Coldplay. They’re a bit lame.” He said, and saw her face drop. “Of course, I quite like them.”

He reckoned he’d covered that one quite well…

 

She rooted through her CD collection until she found the one she wanted. He watched her as she slipped the CD into the Bose player. Her feet were flattish and she had a bunion coming at the base of her big toes. He’d read that wearing high heels for too long could do that to a woman’s feet, but he hadn’t seen it before. The slight misshape fascinated him, and he found he was barely listening to Coldplay as they sang ‘Violet Hill’.

“What else have you got there?” he asked, walking over behind her and stroking her rump through the silk.

Before she could stop him he’d reached past her, his long, lithe arm snaking over her shoulder to the case.

“Blondie,” he read. “Depeche Mode. Who the fuck is that?” He couldn’t help laughing at the weird names. He wasn’t even sure if he was saying them right, what with all the drugs and the booze.

 

She pushed him away roughly, and poured the last of the wine into his glass.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Why not just listen to the fucking music?”

 

He got the distinct impression he’d messed up. He grabbed for her arm, but she pulled free and slammed the door to the hall behind her.

 

‘Come on, “ he yelled at the door. “I was just kidding. I know them. They did that one about the aeroplane, the one that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Noel Gray. That one.”

 

He sat down hard on the couch and drank more of the wine. It didn’t taste so nasty now, he noticed. He thought he should maybe get dressed and grabbed his shirt up from the floor. He slipped his tie off and pulled the shirt over his shoulders.  His left one was itchy today. He’d need to get some of that cream for the spots again. He tucked the shirt in as he fastened the grey trousers and put the tie round his neck. He tried three times to do up the Windsor knot before he gave up. It had always given him issues and now with the plonk and the pot, the simple task was well beyond him. He looked around the flat once more, taking in the photographs for the first time.

He wandered over to the unit they were on and peered at the happy, smiley faces looking back at him.

A young girl of about nine, her smile a bit gappy, but the hair the same, unmistakable shade of blonde.  And a boy, about 14 years old, smiling beside her. His hair was dark.

Must have taken after his Dad, David thought. Wonder where they are now?

 

He was aware the door to the room was opening, and guiltily jumped back over to the couch again. She came in, fully dressed.

She had been crying, her face puffed and her make up slightly blurred.

“I’m sorry.” She said. “I overreacted.”

“I’m sorry too,” he said, leaning over and wiping a tiny clump of mascara from her cheek. It made a small black streak along her skin.

She smiled up at him. “And by the way you ass, it was Enola Gay, not whatever you said.”

They giggled together, the pot still in their systems, and sat back down on the settee.

 

“I guess we don’t have any more time left.” He said. He looked at his watch again. “I really have to be going.”

“I know,” she said. “But we had a good time, didn’t we?”

“Sure did,” he replied. “But I need to get back.”

“Don’t keep saying that,” she replied, irritated. “You’re like a broken record.”

“Vinyl,” he said. “It’s vinyl now.”

“If you carry on like this you can walk back.” She snarled, and she grabbed her coat off the back of the door. “Get your jacket on.”

 

He picked it off the back of the chair where he’d thrown it as they came in, and brushed a long hair off the crest on the pocket.

“Aren’t you going to do up your tie then?” she asked, noticing the long ends swinging against his shirt.

“Can’t,” he mumbled, and hung his head. “My mum usually does it for me.”

“You cretin,” she said, and grabbed him, pulling him towards her and roughly tugging the material into the required shape. She patted it once it was done.

 

Together, they walked out of the flat into the stairwell, her heels clicking on the shiny stone, and made their way in silence down the stairs and back out to where the little red car still sat.

 

This time David waited until she’d put the key in the lock and opened the door, before sliding into the passenger side and doing up the seat belt over his body.

She drove without speaking, her face harder in the glare of the sun and she squinted from time to time, trying to see properly. He could see lines and maybe even some wrinkles he hadn’t noticed before.

“Under the dash, there – my dark glasses.” He took them out of their case and handed them to her obediently. She snapped them on.

 

“You kids,” she said. “You’re all the same. Hot bodies, teasing all the time. Looking for action. And when you get action you don’t know what to do with it. Asses.”

The words peppered him like grape shot. He shifted uncomfortably in the chair, unsure what the correct come back should be in this situation.

She pulled up at the wide iron gates again. This time there was no one about. Classes were in.

 

“Well thanks, I guess.” He said, looking over at the school and making sure he wouldn’t be seen. So far he’d only missed personal studies, but math started in ten minutes and his absence would be noticed there. After that was a break, and his mates would be keen to get all the gory details. Sure she was a bit older than he’d prefer – but hey, she had pot, booze, and she was just giving it away.

 

She waited until he was standing on the pavement again, his hands in his pockets as he scuffed his foot against the kerb. She kept the engine turning over in case a warden appeared. She was idling on the zig-zags after all.

She looked at him again. He was a fine looking kid, maybe 16. Maybe not. In a couple of years time he’d be a great catch.

She’d been harsh. She needed to let him know she was still available. He’d been a great ride after all.

“The pleasure was all mine.” She said. “But if you wait for me again tomorrow, maybe we’ll take it a little slower next time.”

He nodded and turned towards the gates. She watched until he slipped inside the glass doors before driving away.

“First love.” She said to no one in particular. “What a bitch.”

 

 

 

Simon Sees

 

I’m a hero, I am. You should all be thanking me. But no one will ever know my name. It’s safer that way.

As he wrote the words in his notebook, Simon looked them over, and thought long and hard about committing his thoughts to paper.

His scrawl was barely legible, but to him, the words stood out as clear as any typewritten script.

He fingered the silver metal ring on his middle finger. Its cold, lightning bolt symbol stood out against his pale flesh. He ran his other hand over it and clasped it to his scrawny chest.

He knew that the fate of mankind rested on his too thin shoulders, and he sighed. It was a burden he just had to carry. He had been chosen. From the moment his weak and frail frame was pushed out of his mother’s ample body, some 17 years ago now, he had been destined to look after the world. His every decision changed the life of someone, somewhere, on the earth.

He knew this, completely and utterly, and it had been proved to him time and time again over the last two months. Ever since he had found the ring.

He thought back to that day with a mixture of pride, relief and horror.

He’d been going to go to school. He really had been. But as he’d passed the sign to the park, two streets before the turn off for the school, he’d spotted the dog. It looked like Colin, a dog he’d had many years ago. He’d been told that Colin had run off, and Simon had spent many, many fruitless hours combing the neighbourhood streets, dog biscuits in his pockets and hope in his voice.

Three years ago his mother confessed that Colin had been run over by a car while Simon was at school. Simon had been devastated. He’d always secretly nurtured the hope that Colin might come back in the door again, and lie down in his usual spot at the foot of Simon’s bed.

He knew that Colin would be a very old dog by now, but still, he kept that hope alive, a spluttering flame deep in his chest.

When he saw the brown mutt that morning, he’d tentatively called out, “Colin?”

The cur hadn’t responded, but had continued sniffing at some unseen mark on the wall. It had allowed the boy to come closer, but had trotted off to the next corner at the very last minute.

Simon had followed, desperate to get closer to the mangy creature. If his mother had lied for years about Colin having run away, he reasoned, might she not also have lied about the dog having died?

Any thoughts of school disappeared with the dogs continued exploration of the long wall that led towards the entrance to the park, and Simon found himself in hot pursuit. It rounded the corner and trotted into the piece of scrubby greenery. Simon was only a few strides behind but when he rounded the end of the wall, the dog was nowhere in sight.

He stopped, and examined the area carefully, poking his feet into the overgrown bushes and even, at one point, pulling himself up into a tree the better to scan the area. That’s when he’d spotted the slightest flash in the crook of the branches. His grubby fingers pushed the moss aside – and brought out the ring.

He’d never seen any ring like it before. He had always considered himself a manly man, and had been of the opinion that rings were for girls. But this ring drew his eyes like no ring had ever done in the past. It consisted of a plain silver band that, instead of meeting, drew itself into a jagged lightning flash at either end, the result being a double flash giving (he fancied) a 3D effect. This was clearly a man’s ring, and he slipped it on to the middle finger on his right hand, the only one it would fit.

He held his hand out at a distance, the better to admire the ring, and eased himself down onto the ground again. The dog was clearly gone – but he knew that Colin had come back from doggy heaven just to lead him to discover the ring.

He was too late for school now – he’d heard the flat tone of the bell as he’d been rooting around looking for the dog - so he decided that the best thing to do would be to have a day to himself and examine his new found treasure.

If he gave it half an hour, he could slip in back home. His mum would have left for her shift at the supermarket and he’d have a few hours with the telly before she got back in. He might even make her some beans on toast, as a treat when she arrived home. That’d sweeten the old bat.

On the way home, Simon realised he could curse people. An old man pushed past him in his haste to reach the bus stop, and Simon had sworn at him. Seconds later, the elderly man had tripped on a paving stone and tumbled full length onto the pavement. Simon stood, his mouth agape, as a couple of passing mothers stopped in their paths and helped the old chap back to his feet, dusting him off and picking up his stick.

Simon knew it was his words that had caused the man to fall.

For some time now he’d felt he had a special power. Sometimes he could see things that other people couldn’t.

He’d once spotted two pirates engaged in a deadly duel, cutlasses crashing together with considerable force – and noise - in the school playground, while he’d been in English. It was Shakespeare, and he was bored. He’d happened to glance out of the window – and seen the pair, going at it as if they were auditioning for the next Pirates of the Caribbean film. The fight ended when the tall thin one missed a thrust, and the shorter but heavier man, parried the sword and stuck a thin knife right into the other mans guts. Simon was surprised that there wasn’t more blood, but when he looked round quickly to see if anyone else had spotted them, they disappeared. He hadn’t been frightened, more puzzled. During the next school interval, he estimated where the pair had had their struggle to the death and carefully examined the spot on the gravel where he thought they’d been, but there were no signs of anything out of the ordinary. Some of the other boys, curious about what he was up to as he lay on the playground and peered closely for any traces of blood, began to call out at him. One or two gave him a quick kick in the legs, just for fun.

“Simple Simon” and “Simon Strange”. The jeers were familiar to him and he found it easy to ignore them.

Eventually he concluded that the pirates had probably fallen through some inter-dimensional wormhole, and had disappeared back into their own reality when he turned away momentarily.

But, as he saw the old guy hobble over to the by now, empty, bus stop, he wondered if it had been simply the power of his mind that had held them in place, had dragged them through the porthole, and kept them prisoners here, until he’d broken eye contact and looked away, allowing them to escape again.

About a fortnight after the ‘pirates incident’ as he liked to call it, he’d been browsing the internet during an IT lesson and had spotted a photograph of a crashed passenger jet. With a start, he realised that that was exactly what he’d dreamed about the night before. He could remember it all now, the scream of the engines, the wail of the fire engines as they raced across the tarmac, the smell of burning aviation fuel. Plainly his wild, dream-state ramblings had caused the plane to crash – and the deaths of thirty three passengers.

Since then he’d become increasingly aware that he was different from the other youngsters around him. He was gifted, special, and in a way no one could suspect.

 

He tried to limit the amount of time he spent asleep, so as not to cause any more plane crashes. There was a train collision in China, he noticed, but he couldn’t remember dreaming about that and anyway, no one was killed, so perhaps he’d managed to change the dream to have a less violent conclusion. Forewarned is forearmed, he reckoned.

The ring, he knew instinctively, had something to do with his gift. Why else would Colin have led him to it?

He vowed to be careful what he said in future – the old guy had been lucky. Say Simon had shouted something really final, like ‘Drop dead!’ He would have been a goner.

Simon swayed a little. To have so much power was dizzying. But he knew he had to control it, otherwise, like so many of his comic book heroes, it would end up controlling him. He would use it for good – to protect people.

As he’d walked home that day, one street from his house, he’d seen a drain cover move. There was a dark stain to one side and he felt it needed investigation. As he got closer, he realised that what he had taken to be a stain, was in fact, a hand. A nasty, troll-like hand, clawing its way up from the bowels of the city.

Quickly, he did the only thing he could think of, and jumped, with all his weight, on top of the cover. There was a ghastly muted scream from inside the hole as the creature desperately tried to pull its hand in again.

Smiling grimly, he stamped even harder on the metal lid. “Don’t you ever, EVER think about coming up topside again!” he yelled at the drain cover. He didn’t care that he was shouting out loud – the beast had to be stopped, and taught a lesson.

He noticed people staring, but that was nothing new. He was way past caring about a few looks or sideways glances now and again. He stared intently at the ground by the cover, and was satisfied that the dark mark there was now just the scratches left behind as it scrabbled to pull its hand below again, and a small, dark patch of troll blood left behind as the skin scraped on the metal edge.

Another job well done, he thought, as he walked off the cover and carried on along the street. On the window-sill of a flat above a newsagent, he spotted a canary in a cage. It was a beautiful shade of yellow, he thought. The bird looked at him, it’s beady black eyes fixed on his pale face.

“You can see them now.” It sang.

Simon thought he must be hearing things, but as he looked at the bird, it spoke again.

“The ring gives you the power to see them now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked it. In for a penny, he thought.

“I can’t say too much,” it trilled, its head darting from side to side. “But you can see them now. The ring has given you that power. It’s in their eyes. Watch their eyes.”

 

Its message came to an abrupt halt as a hand emerged from the open window and lifted the small cage back in. A middle aged woman glanced out at the strange young man having a conversation with her bird, and watched as he walked on again, past her house.

She shook her head slightly and then closed the window again. Just Simon, she thought. He was an odd lad.

Simon was aware she had been looking at him. The ring was bringing all his senses, all his latent powers, to the surface. He could feel the pavement beneath his feet. He could hear every car engine as it sagged along the road. He could even hear the voices of all the people that were brushing past him in the street. Anger, dissatisfaction, envy. Their thoughts were all ridiculously the same. No one was happy any more. The faces told a million stories of lives half lived and lessons never learned.

He smiled at them as they went by. They should be happy. He was here now, protecting them. They were lucky and they didn’t know it.

When he’d reached his home, he’d spent the afternoon examining the ring further – without taking it off, of course. It glinted in the gathering darkness of his house and the flash seemed to be alive with energy. He poured some beans into a pan and heated them on the stove until they were warm all through. Then, when he heard the gate at the foot of the path squeak, he shoved two slices of white into the toaster.

When his mother trudged wearily into the living room, he was ready there, plate of hot food in hand.

“Oh thank you, Simon.” She said. “What a lovely treat. Shove on the telly, son.”

She pulled off her coat and dropped it over the back of the sofa. Dropping into the sagging cushions, she kicked off her shoes, the better to ease her feet with her lumpy hands.

Then, comfier, she turned round to Simon, and reached out for the plate, another smile lighting up her doughy face. “You’re a good lad when you want to be.”

Simon smiled at her, pleased to have been praised. The smile froze on his lips as he looked at her.

It’s in their eyes….

The words had come flooding back in that moment as he looked into his mother’s face, and, in the dancing light thrown by the TV he saw what the bird had meant.

His mother’s eyes were not those of a normal person. The pupils, instead of being round, were slits in the colour, like those of a sheep. He’d seen weird eyes before – David Bowie had a big pupil and a normal one, the result, so it was said, of an accident when he was a child – but none like these.

 

Of course, the logic was instant.

They’d known all about him, known how special he was, right from the start. They’d replaced his mother with one of their own, all the better to watch him.

Play it cool, Simon, he thought. Don’t let them know you’re on to them.

“No problem,” he said, handing her the plate and watching carefully as she hungrily thrust the soggy meal into her mouth.

Now, two months later, he felt he was playing a waiting game. He watched his mother, no, the creature that was passing itself off as his mother, go about ‘her’ normal business. He kept a careful note of everything in his notebook. He kept it hidden under the mattress of his bed. It had been a long time since she had come into his room, and he was sure it would be safe. He began to draw up his plans. If he was the only one who could see them, then it would have to be him that dealt with them.

He went to school – usually – and kept an eye on the newspapers. All the time he was learning how to use his powers, and just how strong they were. He learned to live with the numbing pain when he read of another car crash or fire, where people were hurt. He learned that if he snapped a book shut in a temper, a tornado would hit a small town in Kansas. He realised that if he shouted at someone, then very soon after, some mishap would befall them. He could not discern a pattern to the ‘crime’ or the ‘punishment’ – some of the most serious ‘offences’ seemed to draw the least significant pay-back, but he took consolation in the fact that there were at least some consequences.

Days passed.

His mother had remarked, once or twice, about his new ring, but had accepted his explanation that it was a tribute to a new pop group he was keen on.

Life became a quiet desperation for him, as, no matter how well he tried to behave, disasters kept happening. It seemed that somewhere in the world, someone died because of something he did.

 

He found it almost impossible to sleep and as a result was ratty much of the time, which caused him to lose his temper and act out. Every time he did, he would groan inwardly. There goes another family somewhere, he’d constantly remind himself as another mood swing took him, and the newspapers would confirm his theory. A fire here. A drowning there. And when he was excluded from school for refusing to leave the cloakroom after he stood on a spider, a whole ferry went down off Thailand….

It was on his head. He had to get away, leave the crowded city and the life he had known behind. Step out into the world where no one knew him.

The ring was a curse, and a gift. With power came responsibility indeed.

He had spent the afternoon packing a small rucksack. Everything he’d need on his journey. His mother had been angry when the school informed her that he’d been excluded but he had kept his cool, been unmoved by her temper. He had to. The fate of the world depended on him.

Her slit eyes flashed at him and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from blurting out that he knew what kind of monster she really was. Inwardly he wept for the loss of his real mother. He had never felt particularly loved, but at least she had been his. He could not tell them he could see them. Who knew what they would do if they knew his abilities had been awakened?

He had promised his mother he would study at home and set out his books accordingly, genuinely meaning to, but he became distracted by a chat show on the TV and the books lay unopened, unlooked at.

Half an hour before she was due home, he began the process of preparing her evening meal. This time he opened a can of mini sausages and beans as well as doing up the toast. She’d like that.

When he heard the familiar squeak outside, he pushed the handle of the toaster down and waited for it to pop.

She clumped in to the living room, dumped her heavy coat over the settee and eased her shoes off. Her familiar routine.

Simon was ready with her tray and offered it to her, watched, pleased, as she took it gratefully, and began to eat.

“Simon,” she said. “This is lovely, A real treat. But you’ve forgotten the tomato sauce.”

“Sorry Mum,” he said, and hauled himself off the settee and into the kitchen.

He found the sauce bottle in the pantry and the boning knife in the drawer. He walked through to the small room, lit only by the light from the screen in the corner.

“Who’s that on the telly?” he asked, handing the bottle from behind her.

She looked up, squinting to try to make out the presenter of the quiz show.

“Oh, that’s……”

She got no further as the razor sharp blade sliced through arteries and voice box in a single, strong cut.

Simon pushed her neck down towards her chest and watched in fascination as the blood heaved and gurgled down her body. The tray crashed to the floor as she writhed, tomato sauce glancing off the TV screen and mixing with the blood splattering the glass.

He held her head firmly and soon the limbs lost their power, began jerking spasmodically.

Within a minute, she was dead.

At least I can kill them, he thought, as he washed his hands in the kitchen sink. He’d done his research properly. The beauty about a forward projection of arterial blood was that anyone behind the body would not be sprayed.

 

“All you had to do was bring back my mum,” he said to the corpse, pale and unmoving, still staring at the ever-chattering TV.

He slept soundly that night, and as far as he knew, did not even dream once.

Next morning he pulled on his jacket and left the house, carefully closing the door behind him. His school uniform lay abandoned in his wardrobe. He checked in on his mother, but she was still exactly as he’d left her the night before. Good, he thought. No zombie-like resurrection then.

He wasn’t sure if killing one of them would count as a good or bad deed, but if it counted against him, then a major conflict would surely break out somewhere.

He allowed his feet to choose his path, and after twenty minutes, found himself back at the park where it had all begun. It seemed like a lifetime ago now.

He looked at the tree and eased himself back up into the branches again, the better to take in the view.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the park making the most of the modest light it was offered.

As he looked round, wondering what to do next, a small bird landed a short way from his head and caught his attention.

“It’s too much for one person to bear.” It said to him, holding his gaze with its small black eye.

“I tried, I really did.” He told it, a tear pushing its way out from under his long lashes. “I got one of them.”

“I know,” said the bird, pulling a berry from the twig it was sitting on. “One is better than none. But maybe now that you’ve killed one, the rest will come to you. You don’t have to look any more. Just sit still and play their game, then kill them when you get the chance. You’ll see I’m right.”

With that, it twitched its wings and drove off into the sky, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

He was still there that night, when the police found him. They had a pair of male nurses with them. The men helped him from the tree and eased him into an ambulance, where one left to drive while the other stayed with him.

He noticed, with interest, that the man had slits instead of pupils.

Simon smiled.

 

 

 

I Dream of Lavander

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 2167 12357 Church of Scotland 102 24 15175 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

 

Harry thought, for a brief instant, that he’d been attacked.

One second he was wondering whether to select the Cranberry or whether to treat himself to some of the Huntsman’s, and the next he was flat on his back, looking up at a rainbow coloured sea of bodies, all with the same anxious ‘O’ in the middle of their faces.

He assumed he’d been hit with a hammer, the pain had been so sudden and so intense. He had no idea why anyone would choose to wallop a pensioner in the cheese aisle in Waitrose, but then, you read about such unprovoked attacks in the tabloids almost every day.

Harry tried to stand, but was conscious of being held down on the cold floor. Something warm but strangely rough was shoved under his head, and then taken away again as his good Samaritan obviously wondered whether that was the ‘right thing’ to do.

He thought he heard a distant siren. Shame flooded over him. Again he tried to struggle to his feet, but the crowd, now apparently being shooed away by someone in a business suit, was still too close, milling about like sheep in a pen.

He grew strangely comfortable, there, on the floor. A warmth crept through his body and he moved his legs to get into a better position to sleep. It had been a long time since he’d slept well. At least three years – since Edna…

Another man, dressed in green, took charge and bent over Harry, forcing him into wakefulness again. Harry knew he was speaking to him but his words drifted in and out of his consciousness. Harry was upset. He felt he wasn’t being terribly helpful, but part of him just didn’t care at this precise time. It was all terribly strange. Harry didn’t like people who were deliberately rude to others.

The next two days passed in a blur for Harry.

It was lunchtime on the third day that he finally began to make sense of the comings and goings on the ward. Mornings were busy, afternoons, not so much. Visitors would come in, in ones and twos (usually ones - an elderly gent or lady making their slow way up the length of the ward to sit by a bed and hold a flaccid hand for an hour, a hard toffee clacking as it knocked against dentures passing for conversation) and then depart again, creaking back out of the doors until the same routine would be repeated next day.

No visitors for him though.

Edna had never been blessed with children and though, for a while, it had been a topic they avoided, over time they grew to accept it and the empty place in their lives was filled, for the next 15 years, by a bouncy black and white collie they called ‘Bob’ after the cartoon character of the time.

When Edna had gone, leaving his life and his bed, he had thought his heart would break, and lived in the full expectation of death for the next six months. When it didn’t claim him he reckoned there must be a reason he was obliged to soldier on, and settled down to his new, quieter life. His one indulgence, apart from a wedge of a tasty cheese every week, was a fresh bunch of lavender, to be displayed on the sideboard in the hall by the door, its scent the last thing that he smelled when he left the house and the first thing to greet him whenever he opened the door. It had been Edna’s favourite flower and the deep, heavy bouquet was completely and utterly linked to her in his mind.

The ward was run by Nurse Stevens, a stickler for attention with a heart of gold. She seemed to have a nursing trainee called Pamela constantly in her not inconsiderable wake. Harry liked to watch the two women working; Stevens in charge and the younger Pamela simply and efficiently in awe. Other women (and one man) moved in and out of Harry’s line of sight from time to time but it was Stevens and Pamela that were the constants. He wondered if they ever slept.

During the long, low-lit nights when Harry sometimes lay awake counting the minutes before the early morning shift was due to come on duty, he fancied he could hear Stevens humming gently over by the nurses’ station, and from time to time, Pamela would walk by, see his eyes glittering in the semi-light, and ask him if he wanted a cup of tea. The tea was generally cool, and served in a closed mug with a straw, testament to the current poor muscle tone in his hands. Often he simply shook his head, preferring to lie and watch the world go by.

It was during one of these nights that he heard the dog. A sharp clatter of canine claws on the lino. A retriever, golden and sleek, passed the bottom of his bed and settled by the bedside of the man to his left.

Harry hadn’t paid much attention to his neighbour. The man seemed to sleep a great deal, and when he was awake he didn’t seem interested in anyone or anything. Harry watched as the dog raised its big head and then eased itself on to its back legs, using its muzzle to root around the sheets for the man’s hand. When it found the slender fingers, its long pink tongue coiled around them until the fingers responded, first tentatively, then with enthusiasm, fondling the velvet muzzle, searching the head, exploring the dog’s face.

The man moaned and dragged himself up on to an elbow.

“Chancer!” he said, tears sparking from his eyes. The dog responded immediately, it’s huge tail flapping from side to side enthusiastically. Its front paws were scrabbling over the man’s body now, and he was hugging the beast to his chest, pressing his head into its neck. Chancer pulled free and dropped to the floor. It turned to the door. Harry watched as the man snatched at the creature’s collar to prevent it leaving.

“You’re going nowhere,” he told it. “Not without me. Sit!” Chancer sat.

The old guy dragged his scrawny body out of the smooth sheets and placed his bare feet on the cold lino. He grasped the leather collar firmly and made a forward movement with his hand.

“Home!” The command was firm and Chancer bounded to his feet. The man had to trot to keep up initially, but the dog quickly fell in with his pace. They made it past the nurses’ station without drawing attention, and Harry watched as the ward doors swung closed behind them. He was still smiling as he fell asleep.

Next morning when he awoke, the first thing he did was check to see if his neighbour had come back yet, but the curtains were drawn round the bed. He dozed off again. When he woke next, the bed was occupied by a different man, younger and livelier. That afternoon, Harry got his first visitor.

It was Edna. He was surprised when she walked into the ward, but his happiness knew no bounds. She looked exactly the same as she had when she left the house that last time, the yellow top with the flowers and the brown skirt. Her dark red coat was open and she was carrying the brown shopper she always took on a Tuesday.

“Hello Harry,” she said, her smile spreading across her face like sunshine over a garden.

He thought she had the kindest eyes he had ever seen, and he felt a tear roll down his face at the sight of the woman he had loved for nearly sixty years.

“Edna,” he said. “You’ve come back.”

“Only for a short time, Harry. Just to see how you are. Are they treating you well?”

He tried to lift his hand to stroke her face, but he couldn’t. “Well,” he said. “They’re kind, they’re gentle. They seem to know what they’re doing. How are you?”

“I’m fine Harry. Better than fine. I miss you.”

“Then come back.”

“You know I can’t.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue. She leaned over, releasing the lavender smell he loved so much, and wiped his face.

“I need to go now, my love.” She murmured, breathing a gentle kiss onto his forehead. “Come and see me again,” he urged, trying to grab her arm, but unable to muster the energy or the strength to close his fingers.

“I’ll see you again soon, I promise.”

He watched through a veil of tears as she left the ward as quietly as she’d come in. For the rest of the day he was inconsolable. He cried on and off for hours and even Pamela’s ministrations could not stem the flood.

In the early evening, Stevens came to his bed, made copious notes on his papers, smiled and left.

Late that night he was awakened by a man singing.

“I’ve got a coupon. A jolly little coupon, I’ve got a coupon to last me all my days. A coat and a vest, and as for the rest, my coupon will see me through always.”

Digger Harris. Harry strained to look but the darkness was unrelenting. There was a light in the hall outside, and he thought he could make out a helmet moving around, the corridor light glancing off the dull metal, but his logical mind pulled him back.

Digger was long gone. A shell in 1942 had robbed the world of that mine of dreadful puns and worse singing.

“Son of Digger then,” Harry thought, as he drifted off again.

Next morning, during rounds, Harry woke to find a vase of flowers by his bed. A collection of hyacinths in a faux crystal vase was now perched on his bedside cabinet. Their scent was pleasant and happily distinguishable in among the more clinical ward odours.

Stevens was watching him from her place at the nurses’ station. He tried to smile his thanks, but had a feeling that his face was as crooked as a bent three-penny, and wondered what she would make of the grimace.

She resumed writing and he fell asleep again.

He woke from time to time, once when a new nurse was clumsy when she changed a tube towards the bottom of his bed, and another time when a doctor’s hand poked and prodded his back. He felt the stethoscope, but couldn’t make out what was being said. He was tired. He needed a good sleep, and he just wished they would leave him alone.

The ward was its usual hive of activity, all the more so today because he thought he picked up the word ‘consultant’ being whispered in reverential tones, and he understood they were being visited from on high.

He tried to laugh as Nurse Steven popped the plants into the bottom shelf of his bedside unit and winked at him before heading off again, and he made an attempt to lie still and behave properly when the consultant, a small man in a business suit with a bevy of white coated doctors hanging on his every word, swung by the bed, turned his back on Harry to talk to the others, replaced the notes over the foot of the bed and then sailed on serenely to his next patient, taking the hushed entourage with him.

Harry felt another nap coming on and hoped his snoring would not disturb the efficient ambience of the ward. Edna was forever complaining about his snoring, and used to waken him regularly with a gentle poke in his ribs. As she had aged, and her hearing had lost its keenness, the digs had lessened, and finally, when she was able to take her hearing aid out at night, had disappeared entirely. Harry had no doubt that he continued to snore. There was just no one around to hear him anymore.

When he next drifted clear of sleep, the flowers were back, replaced at some point in the day. Pity it wasn’t lavender. He smiled, breathed in the cloying scent, and slept again.

He heard the clatter of the tea dishes as the ward was cleared in preparation for the night shift coming on, and the busy questioning of the nurses as they exchanged the ‘hand-over’ notes. A catheter here. A bolus there. The words didn’t mean much to Harry, but the nurses made notes on their pads, nodded in the right places and looked towards a prone figure as a name or update in condition was mentioned. Stevens and Pamela were on again. He was glad. There was something comforting about having them around, and he’d grown fond of the women.

Harry watched as the lights on the ward were turned down low in preparation for another night. He was lonely and tired. He felt another tear trickle down his face and wished Edna were here to kiss it away.

Instead, Stevens walked up to him and used a tissue to catch the droplet. He hadn’t noticed her easing him into a different position so that he would not get bed sores, and then tucking the starched sheets around him.

He looked up at her large, kindly face, and was embarrassed as another drop forced its way between his lashes and out onto his wrinkled face. She smiled and gently scooped that one up too. Then she took a stem of pink hyacinth and placed it gently on his pillow. She stroked his hair and stood upright again, then quietly pulled the curtains on each side of his bed, affording him some peace and privacy to sleep.

He was not surprised when she checked him again a short time later, rearranged his limbs and smoothed the bedclothes.

A little later again, he felt the weight by his feet, and wondered why she was leaning so heavily on his legs.

Then he heard a strange, urgent whine. Opening his eyes he was astonished to see, not the blue eyes of the diligent nurse, but a quite different set of amber eyes staring intently at him.

He sat upright in bed, shucking the neatly arranged sheets off his chest and using his fluttery hands to push himself into a more upright position.

“BOB!”

The collie, almost completely black with a white flash on his chest and over his nose fairly danced on the bed, turning tight, excited circles by Harry’s feet.

The man laughed with delight, and grabbed at the glossy coat as it slinked first in, then out, of his grasp.

“Bob! You’re going to get me into so much trouble with Nurse Stevens there!”

Bob didn’t appear to care, and thrust his face up into Harry’s, breaking all the hospital hygiene rules in an instant, licking and pawing and licking again, as much of Harry’s hands and face as he could reach.

Harry held the dog close to his chest. More tears escaped him – this time tears of complete joy.

“Bob. I’m so glad it’s you. Come on, lad. Let’s go for walkies.”

The dog bounded off the bed and Harry swung his legs out, tentative at first, then faster as he felt the strength flood into them. Bob half crouched, bracing his front legs, tail wagging, and Harry laughed. “Still a clown I see,” Harry whispered, and bent down to lay a kiss on the dark fur.

“Let’s go then.” He smiled, and skittered along the floor, racing to keep up as the happy dog galloped on ahead.

He was not aware when Nurse Stevens next checked him, reaching into the sheets to feel for a pulse in his cold arm, and then checking to see if she could detect the one that ought to have been in his neck.

She stroked the hair again, and pressed the button at the side of the bed. She lifted the short sprig of lavender from his pillow and replaced it in the vase. She frowned as she looked at the flowers. A glorious swelling of lavender was crammed into the vase, its strong, peaceful scent lingering round the bed. She understood that the sense of smell was reckoned to be the last sense to go when someone is in his final stages. She always tried to give the gentlemen something nice to take away the smell of the ward, even though she would never know whether they noticed or not.

She pulled the curtain round the bottom of the bed, a last act of courtesy.

“Goodnight, Mr Lawrence.” She whispered, as she walked over to the nurses’ station, to write up the notes.