Never Too Old

The air was crisp to the point of freezing, the kind of day when the atmosphere was so still and cold that it seemed as if the smallest noise would bring the whole edifice of the day tumbling down like so much shattered glass. Streaks of pale cloud flitted high across a water-blue sky, seemingly afraid to venture closer to the ground whose coldness crept insidiously through the soles of the man's shoes. He stood immobile, incapable of anything save the essential task of being there.

A thrush sang on the winter-weeping branch of a birch tree, and the man felt a despair bordering on anger well within him that this creature could be so free, so happy, when the world had ended.

He looked to the sky through tear-glazed eyes and sniffed not so much as a result of the cold, but in a desperate battle not to utterly humiliate himself by breaking down in public.

The minister’s words and the quiet rattle of soil on a coffin lid caused a thickening in his throat so complete that he felt as if he would never breathe again, a situation which appealed to him just at that moment.

Walking away from the grave, the leaves crackling in their frosty coats under his feet the last thing he needed, wanted, was comfort, but he accepted his mother's arm more for the form of the thing, her embrace and her shoulder (offered as unconditionally as a mother's always are) for his tears.

You are never too old.

By Penny Dreadful

Poor Little Rich Girl

… never been good enough for you, has it? Everything I gave up, everything I did…. Oh that voice. It just goes on and on. I can try to tune it out, sure. But it’s at a pitch that penetrates, like a mosquito lodged in your ear. Bzzzzzzz…

I can’t believe I married her, really. I look at her back, broad – well, broad is an understatement, let’s be honest, here – and white in the hot sun, shoulders bobbing in time with her words as she keeps on talking. Doesn’t matter that she’s not facing me. Doesn’t matter that she’s head first in the rhododendrons, she just keeps on talking, shoulders keep on bobbing. Yabber yabber yabber. What’s left of dark red hair, now all frizzed up in that ridiculous style and under that equally ridiculous hat she wears. She looks like a toadstool.

Where did she go, the slim-hipped, white-skinned girl that I first saw in the bank window all those years ago? Daddy’s little girl, for sure, a family of high stature. It didn’t matter then that I was the lowly son of a farmer. That my riches were earth, soil and sun. She loved me, she said, and of course, I lusted in return. Who could not be smitten by the dark hair, the fine cut of clothes showing that slender body, luscious breasts, ready for picking…

Her father was against us from the start. He did what he could to stop the marriage. Right down to removing her dowry. Completely. “You’ll not get a penny from me, son”, he said. Who needed his pennies when we had love? We knew he would come around eventually. Until then, well, my family made us a home in the loft on our family farm. It was only temporary, we knew that. It wasn’t long before she started complaining. The bed was too lumpy. The cows smelled. There were tics in the straw. Her hands were dry. Her clothes were old. Those cows and tics and clothes were good enough for my daddy and ma, they were good enough for then, surely? Love would get us through.

But now, forty years later…. I wonder what it will take, to get peace. Without that incessant yapping, the garden would be so peaceful. Yabber yabber yabber.

Never mind. I push the shovel into the soft earth, turning over new, fresh soil, the heady smell warm, welcoming, ready for new plants to nurture and grow in the soil.

This is my land now, or what I have of it. She made me sell the farm, once my parents died. All that work, generations of land living, gone. She had to have better things, she said. She was used to better things, she said. She complained all the time – living off the land, the house, old as it was, was always too hot, too cold, too drafty. She was used to servants, not cooking. She was used to housekeepers, not dusting. After 10 years, and the death of my parents, she made sure that she did not have to spend one more day on the farm.

The shoulders continue to bob. Yabber yabber yabber.

How easy would it be, I wonder, to just keep digging until the hole is wide enough – say – for a body? My mind wanders to a life of quiet, no voice nagging, no relentless yapping, just me, the garden… the earth, the soil… I make the hole just a little wider.

Bob, bob, bob… yabber, yabber, yabber…

How funny, now that her family was gone, just as my retirement looms. Daddy’s little girl, remembered in the will. We stand to receive thousands of pounds – well she does. I am sure she will make short work of most of it, with her frippery and dreams, but some of that is going to go to buy my farm back. I am certain of that – you’ll see. I am the man. I am the head of the house – and I want my land back. Besides, I can work the fields again, somewhere to hide from that never ending whiney wheeze, and she can flap about ordering staff around until the cows come home. Literally!

God, she’s still going. Bloody woman. She thinks she gave up her life. Her! Gave up! She gave up nothing other than a spoiled little rich girl’s life. She gave nothing to me, of that you can be sure. Even that luscious body, with its secrets and promises of things to come was a letdown. Barren, too. Although how something so stiff and unyielding would even manage to think about producing a child is ridiculous. Not like the earth… the earth so rich and sweet and fertile, asks nothing more than love and a tender touch… now there is a promise I should have stayed with.

Yabber, yabber, yabber. I make the hole just a little longer. It looks like a gravesite. Big enough for a new rhododendron bush. Or maybe… maybe…

All of a sudden, my head feels like it is exploding. Hundreds, millions of stars swim before my eyes. I can’t grab my breath, what the hell… ?

As I fall into the hole, I can smell the sweet scent of that mother earth, welcoming me. Light fades to dark; I put together the snatches of words behind those bobbing shoulders. I strain to look up through fading light and feel the soft splatter of warm dirt begin to fall on my face. “You never listen to me, do you, Harold?” She said.

By Penny Dreadful

Retribution

Brenda Roper sits alone in her family pew, her silver predator’s eyes focused on me. I feel their rage searing my heart. Each pierce, bangs in my ears as I ignore her vindictiveness. A church must give no sanctuary to a Jezebel who preys on the innocence of men.

Damn. I am condemned. As we rise to do our final duty for Alvin Bishop I respond to her sinful allure, to the Magdalene who dared to tempt our lord. I hide my shame behind the casket as we carry it to its final resting place.
She stands as we pass. The grey gauze of her sleeve darts across the coffin. A flash of steel as she snips a bud from the family spray and sticks it in my buttonhole with the familiarity of my wife. She knows my torment and smiles her acknowledgment of my disgrace. She places Bishop’s death at my door like her own in an accident I don’t remember.

I’m without blame. They brought it on themselves by their actions, not mine. He died of a heart attack, not by my hand. His wife requested I be a pallbearer when we stood by his bedside as Bishop passed. I forgave him for his presumption to tell me how to conduct my business. The old goat sought to alter my course when I was chosen by my peers to oversee the finances of the church.

People are packed around the walls; the vestibule is so crowded it is difficult for the procession to pass. Outside the sun dances off the spectacles of old fools, like Bishop, blinding me as they stand with uncovered heads while we proceed down the walk to the burial yard.

I stagger to my car when the interminable internment ceases and the crowd opens before me. She has the audacity to hide her wicked self in the backseat of my car. I can see her sitting there when I pull away as if I am her chauffeur. Her slate-colored eyes on my neck send streams of icy sweat down my back, soaking my fresh shirt.

I must get home where I’ll be protected from her provocative glare. I look straight ahead. I will not recognize this interloper from my youth who refuses to know she is not tolerated. She doesn’t blink when the damn teenager blows his horn as we cross the intersection.

My steering wheel jumps as a tire bounces in a chuckhole in my driveway. The city should make the repairs. My car could be damaged from their negligence.

I leave her sitting in the car and rush to the backdoor. The phone is ringing, but the lock will not remain in one place for me to insert the key. Mary should be here to open the door for me. I told her to oil the lock before I left to do my duty.

Her gloved hand covers mine and I shrink in disgust, but she sets the key in the cylinder. Her touch is like lifting a block of ice making my fingers tingle. I slam the door in her face and shoot the dead bolt. The phone shrills in my ear.

"Who are you?"

"I didn’t run over your dog. Don’t be a fool."

I bang down the receiver. The phone begins to ring again. To silence it I pull the cord from the wall and seek the medicine cabinet. The woman’s vulgarity has given me indigestion. I must find Mary’s Tums.

She is standing outside the window, but she can’t get to me with her evil ways. I cannot open the Tums. I need a hammer. Where does Mary keep her tools?

What am I doing on the floor? It’s dark outside. Why hasn’t Mary come home?

I get my hand on the leg of the chair to pull myself up, but my arm is numb. A vise is crimping my chest. The pain is squeezing the breath from me while my knees wobble, refusing to support my weight.

The harlot is standing by the sink. She is smiling when she hands me the phone. The dirge from Bishop’s funeral pounds in my ear as I dial 9…1…

By Penny Dreadful