Filth- Another WC Contribution

The first thing that struck the residents of the village as being queer, was that nobody seemed to want to talk about the fire. Elderly Ms Alder, always smacking her lips over cheap dairy toffees behind the counter of the Post Office and always so keen to part with her opinion on whatever scandal beset the front page of the local daily rag, pursed her lips and remarked upon the weather instead that morning as the queue seemed longer than ever. Everyone was curious, in their own quiet way, but nobody wanted to talk about the old house, lest their voiced opinion bring the Ayers’ own particular brand of bad luck with the November winds, and the ashes not quite settled yet to coat everything in a muffled, reverent silence.

Nobody whispered at their breakfast tables over their bread and butter –“or jam, Annie, we’re too poor for both!” –that was Mother’s only reproach that morning, a casual reference to their impending poverty, since the strikes, and Father, who had defected for a time, only to join the men on the picket lines who would never call him 'mate' or even ‘comrade’ again, and to plunge them all into making do and mending. When there was nothing left to mend, Mother sent Annie, the prettiest of her two girls, out to the vegetable market to beg scraps and bring home whatever she could find that may be of use to the family. She often came home with a coin or two and a set jaw, a look that went right through you when she handed it over to her mother, without a word of where it had come from. She had unwittingly become the breadwinner of the family, the youngest, a role she had not envisioned taking on for a good few years yet, but resigned herself to uncomplainingly, considering herself the man about the house and adopting a stance and swagger of her own to complement her imagined role, if only she could rid herself of that damned plait her mother made her wear halfway down her back, and have her shiny hair cropped and neat like her friend. She had suggested it to Mother, who had boxed her about the ears for her impudence, horrified her daughter might turn out to be one of those toms there was rumour of in the bigger towns. Girls that went about with other girls; fancy! Annie bit her lip as she remembered the stinging slap, she had found her own methods of survival these days, now Father brought nothing home but colds and complaints from standing on the picket line, and the odd bruise or swollen jaw from a man or two seeking to remind him of 'the cause'. It was just her and that girl from the bigger house just up the road, Bab. Mother used to complain about her association with Bab, but since they had worked quite a double act distracting the butcher and baker with childish enthusiasm and seemingly accidental knocking-over of stalls and displays, and come back with a string of sausages, or a fresh, warm loaf every now and again, Mother welcomed the friendship and Bab into the parlour for a cup of hot water. At least once a week, they could eat something that wasn’t a broth of watery scraps, no matter how much Mother disapproved of stealing, her rumbling, swollen stomach was willing to make an exception in this case, and put morals and class differences firmly aside for the satisfaction of a hot sausage sandwich or two.

Nobody had expected it, not at Arlington, and still, nobody discussed it among themselves. They had not been well liked, the Ayers, and the old reverence of not speaking ill of the dead had seemed to have left nobody with anything to say at all.

Annie thought this queer, sitting at the bottom of a staircase that desperately needed a good sweeping, leaving its traces of pale grey dust about her skirts like an Uncle at a Christmas gathering with over-friendly fingers and crumbs in his whiskers. The servants bells in the entrance hall had not been rung for as long as she could remember, and now it was only her, Elsie, Mother, Father and Aunt Maud, who was no more a real Aunt than Annie was St Nick, but had lived in the annexe with them for all of Annie’s short lifetime. Annie turned the rag in her hand- once a smart summer frock, and now cut into strips for dusting and polishing, wiping the filthy cotton across her filthy forehead, ingraining different coloured dirts into her skin. She was the first awake in the household this morning, as she was every morning, rolling carefully out of the bed she shared with Elsie, who wrapped the blankets around herself most nights and left Annie at the cold edge of the mattress. The small house was silent, and chilly- she pulled a tattered shawl around herself- and although the animals had all been sold off long ago to richer folk with bigger yards and an income, the unmistakeable smells of manure, sour milk, and failed attempts at thick, rich butter still tantalised her imagination in the early hours, with all the scent of promises of adventure that a new day and dew on the blades of grass, wetting her feet and her appetite, could tempt a young mind with. The sun wasn’t yet out of his own bed, the front door lay open to let the day creep in, and the sky slumbering in its shades of navy and grey. Annie took a thin candle from the drawer in the hall, and rolled it between her grubby hands, not daring to light it, as there were only a few left, and Mother would surely smack her ears for the waste. Mother smacked her ears for everything, these days.

And later, looking back, she would not have been able to explain what had made her take the long road to the butchers, or to give Babs the slip through the Post Office with its two exits, or to carry her feet across the fields, to stand outside the black and fragile looking old house. She would not have been able to explain what had made her press her nose to the surprisingly intact ashen window, or to push open the scrappy remains of a barn door, or how she had managed to compose herself when the light cast through the shattered window fell upon the blackening body of Mr Ayers, still swinging slowly from the rafters. She had not screamed, merely tiptoed over to have a good look. Except for her father, she’d never seen a grown man so close up, let alone one that given up and given it all to the Lord. Closest she had come to death before now was when the family sheepdog had collapsed a few summers ago. She had been distraught then, burying her fingers into her long, matted fur and sobbing, wailing, screaming when her parents had tried to prise her away as her dog went chill beneath typically filthy hands. Now, she reached up the same hand, without a thought for what might be considered proper or respectful, as she was a curious child, to take one of Mr Ayers’ own, and shivered slightly as it appeared to creak in her hand. Too illiterate to be able to read the local news, and having heard no word of a rumour among the usually-gossipy market folk, it was left to her own colourful imagination to wonder at what had happened to him. Perhaps he was set upon by robbers and bandits, and fancy, in his own home. She imagined the shame of a man not being able to protect his family and possessions, weakened, perhaps, by a lack of pork and sausages; for not a week before, Mr Ayers had stood on the picket lines beside her own father, blacking his eye for daring to be a scab, as his own family grew gaunt and grey before his eyes. Her eyes darted about her, resting on the tools propped against the wall, the bales of hay tied up and burned down to the ground; if it had been robbers and bandits, surely these things would have been gone. She frowned; there must have been something else. She withdrew her hand from Mr Ayers’, who could not tell her now, and it was sticky with a dark black syrup that clumped in his palm, that at an exploratory sniff, revealed itself to be not syrup at all. Mr Ayers’ body gave a violent swing as the barn door slammed shut in the wind, and she fell on her rump, startled, as his feet kicked towards her face. She had screamed then, scrambling to her feet, and bolted, her dark plait falling loose from her bonnet and her shaking fingers barely able to work the key in the burned barn door. She had not glanced back behind her once, but run all the way home, quite forgetting her errand and receiving a sharp box around the ears for returning empty handed, to find Bab in the parlour, wringing her hands through her page-boy crop of hair, and launching upon her in a relieved embrace.

“Miss Annie!” she had squealed. “I thought the will o the wisp had got yer, or the ghosts from the old burned out farmhouse!” At this, Father had coughed, Mother had looked aghast, and Elsie put the glasses she had been carrying down with a clatter. There was silence, broken by Father clearing his throat, and Bab carrying on regardless; “Anyway Miss Annie, I got yer ma this, it’s still good, would do to add somethin’ to that pot of muck she got bubblin’ away on the stove there, it’s a wonder yours keep goin’, an’ all that housework she makes yer do an’ all, need some meat on yer bones my girl, an’ Elsie too, else she’ll never be no-one’s sweetheart. That Eddie, that stable-hand-“ here she nodded at a now-blushing Elsie, “-well, he won’t take one glance at you if your skin’s all hangin’ off yer bones, not with all them creamy-skinned fat little milkmaids what swan all round ‘im all prissy like an’ tuggin’ their dresses down to their tits for so much as a smile, liftin’ their skirts fer allsorts o’ promises. You ‘as a figure once makes me sick as like you was spoon-fed peaches an’ steak instead o’ yer ma’s milk as a wain, an’ now look at yer, tatty old girl yer become, an’ fer shame Else!”

At these words of wisdom, which amused everyone but Elsie, who looked furiously at the outspoken little wretch in her parlour tattling like a fisherman’s wife, Bab produced a large joint of steak from her skirts and slapped it triumphantly onto the table. “Well!” She grinned toothlessly at the incredulous faces, and carried on; “If the wisps and the ghoulies HAD got yer Annie, no point in you lot mourning for her on empty stomachs!” She slid off her stool, tucking her cumbersome skirts into her drawers; a hand-me-down from her mother, the hems were full of holes where she tripped on them, and it’s not as though she went anywhere nice these days anyway, she had mumbled defiantly, sticking out her sticky, fifteen-year old chin.

Babs mother never called on Annie’s mother, they used to be uppity folk, before the strikes, and still quite proud, although what they had to be proud about now was anybody's guess. Babs father was a drunk and a preacher, and Babs unsure of what she hated more of the two. Neither family approved of the girls friendship all that much. Bab’s ma thought Annie’s folk were gutter-people, a reputation as filthy as Annie’s own knuckles since Father had returned to work to earn something to feed his family with, only to be beaten back onto the picket and thrust a placard ‘for the cause’; and Annie’s ma thought Bab, for all her family’s graces and fancy airs, was a wild child, and even twice a week with a piggy-eyed governess to teach her writing and sing church hymns in her loud, bawdy tones, could not make her into any sort of young lady. Annie’s mother grinned now, to see her own daughter stuffing her skirts into her drawers to imitate her friend, and bit her lip at how thin and streaked with dirt their young, slender thighs were, and how rough the skin on their heels, and the scabs falling from their knees. They used to make lavender water, and pastes of herbs, all their own cosmetics, when they cared for it, but such things were seen as luxuries now, and she could barely summon the energy to boil a pan to clean their tatty frocks in, lest add fancy allsorts to it. People would only talk, she sighed, fingering the ill-gotten steak, of the scab’s family giving themselves lavender-scented underclothes, in such times. Annie had left a syrupy black smudge on the kitchen table, like treacle, and Mother picked at it absently as she remembered simple pleasures like picking lavender from the garden. Perhaps tomorrow, and to blow with what the neighbours thought. It was bad enough being hungry and shameful, she thought, without resigning oneself to having nothing nice at all.

Once they had got outside, into the still-wet grass that soaked their bare feet, Bab had tugged Annie to the ground and tussled, pulling her plait back and laughing, demanding to know where she’d slipped off to that morning. “Yer got yerself a feller, int yer, Annie-May!” She had shrieked, and Annie, hearing her secret nickname that Bab and only Bab could call her by, forgot to be cross and merely grinned at the absurdity. “My Lord alaive! You ‘aven’t, in yah?” Bab thought lads and courting a waste, and she far too young for all that stuff and nonsense. Her mother enrolled that hateful governess to teach her useful things, like sewing, and how to lay a table, in order that she may make a wife to someone yet, but Bab paid little mind and preferred to strut about the village, thumbs tucked into the top of her smock like the dandy lads would pose in their cravats and waist-coats, and chew on tobacco whipped from some back pocket in a crowd, and trade bawdy jokes with the lads on the stalls. No, Bab wasn’t interested in fellers, swapping swigs of hops and dregs rather than kisses and flirtations, and had thought Miss Annie much the same, until now. She tugged the plait again. “I thought we was friends, Miss Annie, and friends tell each other these things! And lads! Such a waste of a talented picker like you! One of them'll turn yer head and yeh'll get soft, an' grow up, an' there'll be me left, takin' from the rich and givin' to us poor, a right little Robin Hood while you get yerself a feller an' a wain an' a pair o' apron-strings!” Bab pouted, still sitting on her friend’s stomach, and jerked her bony knees hard into her sides to emphasise the feigned hurt. Annie laughed again, throwing her off, and took to her heels and ran away, laughing.

“You won’t believe me if I tell you!” she shrieked. “You’ll tell me I tell you lies!” Bab ran after her, breathless, begging her to slow down, begging her to tell her who he was. “I went to see Mr Ayers, up at the old farm! An’ he was a right state!” Bab stopped in her tracks, agape, and Annie ran back to face her, hands on hips. “Right mess they made of that place, all smashed windows, and oh Bab, the dirt! But it gave me the creeps, to see 'im there so cold and rotten, so I left ‘im there.”

“Is it true what they say, that his head’s in the parlour and his legs in the yard?” Annie pulled a face.

"Miss Bab! No it certainly ent!”

“Is it true what they say, that his skull bin shot to pieces, that Mrs Ayers found him in not even his underclothes, in his chamber with the youngest of the old servant-girls, an' she took his hunter to 'is 'ead? Clattered 'im she did, one, two, three with the butt of 'is rifle, an' shot 'em both in the eyes!”

“No! Miss Bab, you really do have the wickedest mind! An' your daddy a preacher an' all!”

“It’s them books me mam reads, I borrer them at night, full of allsorts what men and women get up to. Says it's much more int'restin' than the stories in Father's books, an' she's right! Ugh, least that Mrs Pig-Face teachin’ me readin’ keeps me occupied at night in that house, else I’d surely die of loneliness. You should come see me up there Miss Annie, you should. I think it’s wicked of yer to leave me all alone up there. Is it true what they say, that he strangled ‘em all in a fit, and then hooked himself up there, from the barn roof, to hang by the neck until dead?”

Annie paused. It certainly was true, that Mr Ayers had hung by the neck until dead, but Babs wild guess was only a half-truth, or speculation, as there was no evidence of the rest of the family having been interfered with in any way, but then-

“I dunno Babby, I only made it as far as the barn. Mr Ayers certainly was hanging from the rafters, but as for the rest of them, I dunno, and nobody’s talkin’ about it, so I dunno.” She shrugged.

“Well! I reckon we best go ‘ave a look about the place. Unless…. Unless you’re a scaredy-cat…. I’ll go by myself if yer chicken!” she teased.

“Chicken?! I’m dying for a look about the place, if you’re game!”

And the girls linked arms and strolled, fearlessly chattering and speculating, towards the charred remains of the old Hall.

Wood.

It certainly was high tide, mid-afternoon, but at the time, Anna didn’t associate the crashing storms in her consciousness with any popular song, and least of all by Paul Weller. The first track on the CD that Eleanor ever made for her, in fact the first CD that anyone had ever made for her, warned her that she had to find her way out, of the wild wild wood. She thought that that was what Eleanor was doing, when she took her hand outside the Irish bar several hours later and Anna thought she might have finally found that dream that she could whisper and press her cheek to as the nights started to grow lighter again. Of course, it wasn’t to be. Anna started to feel that it never would be, resigning herself as she walked back past the same high tide a year later to just drifting along like a forgotten piece of timber, perhaps once a part of something majestic, perhaps intended to be tacked onto something, but now just drifting along on the rarely-still, rarely-glinting ocean, tossed and broken and blown any which way by whatever the weather seemed to want to do with her.

Of course, there was no Eleanor now. Unless Anna counted the faded blue ink that spattered her handwriting over various picture postcards pinned up and hidden away. She certainly did fly by in the traffics boom, a casual reminder of which crackled at her from her now-retro Walkman, that she had painstakingly copied the CD onto, in order to preserve it, in order to preserve what they once had. Or thought they had. Anna didn’t know any more, and there was nobody left to ask who would have been able to tell her.

Past the seafront café she walked, where they had shared coffee and copies of the Independent and the Guardian and whatever else headlines had caught their eye that morning, wrapped up in matching stripey scarves and keeping a respectable distance of a few inches between hands that delighted one another; just not here. That’s what she had always said. Not here. In case. In case of what, Anna never found out, but Eleanor was certainly afraid of something out there by the waves. Perhaps feeling. Perhaps consciousness. Perhaps of finding her way out of the wild wild wood. Or running deeper into it. There is a saying, Anna pulled a face as she remembered, that you can only run halfway into the woods, as after halfway, you are running out again. She must be running in circles then, as the thickets and brambles in her imagination in now way felt like any form of escape.

Past the multicoloured yachts they used to talk feverishly about owning, of being members of the prestigious yacht club that would sneer as they didn’t have Ugg boots and tiny pet poodles to put in their handbags; they were all churchgoers and town councillors and far too good to mingle with the populace. Anna smiled again, Eleanor never had high aspirations. Happy to trudge about in wellies walking the dog, happy to throw a clump of sand at her head and interrupt a good walk with a laugh and a splosh through the sea; that was Eleanor.

The tree at the corner of the green, that depressingly, had a car park sign tacked to the front of it now, concealing initials carved with a spoon, an A and an E, childishly, hacked into the trunk. They had posed for photographs next to that scrawled declaration of their love, fingers as intertwined as the scrolling script was, in a rare public display of affection.

Climbing, forever trying.. Sitting in a tree grinning like an idiot, holding Eleanor’s bobble hat out of her reach. She wasn’t built for climbing, unlike Anna, who was small and wiry and laughing at the memory of Elle pretending to be cross with her and storm away, only to have rotten apples hurled at her head by a laughing Anna, who didn’t laugh now as she remembered, only ached inside with an emptiness, a longing to hear that laugh again in a place where it didn’t cound different every time, like an old cassette tape being played over and over, dust and age grinding down the quality until only a ghost of what was once real and true remains.

Paul Weller had told them then, that day by day their world would fade away. Anna sat down now, wishing she could stop thinking, and scuffed the woodchips with her trainers as she swung on the child’s swing in the playground. Grief overwhelms a person, she thought, kicking her legs out to take herself higher and pulling her knees in to draw back into herself. It cannot be too good to grieve, despite what they say; to purge ones soul of happiness. It certainly felt that way. People told her to cry, people who smiled as though they understood, and told her it would be better with time. Time. Funny thing, time. They used to spend time, listening to Paul Weller, reading poetry to one another; she remembered Elle whispering to her as she fell asleep most nights, poetry about night trains and eiderdowns and forests and charms. And stories. There were always plenty of those. Stories of days gone by, before Anna and Eleanor were Anna and Eleanor, memories to while ones time away to, stories to dream together by a well-cliched and well stoked fire.

Fresh air, they all suggested now, and cups of tea. With lots of sugar, for shock. The British answer to everything. Car crashes, divorces, til death us do part, sit down, go for a walk, have a cup of tea.

High tide, mid afternoon, and all the songs in the world wouldn’t bring her back now.

--another writer's circle assignment, whipped up in 20 minutes and serving to suitably depress most people in the room. Hoorah.

Nasty Endings

The young man with his hood pulled up, loitering menacingly by the bus stop at the corner of my street, was only waiting for a bus. And the jogger, giving me sidelong glances, surprisingly jogged on by and didn’t cross the street to attack and molest and dispose of me horribly. In all, an uneventful walk home, save my own morbid fear of the dark and an overactive imagination. Nasty endings; I waste the spare minutes in my day envisioning my horrible and untimely death. Getting my foot stuck between the train and the elusive gap in the platform as hordes of oh-so-busy commuters trample off the train to their oh-so-important destinations, without a thought for the young girl they will unduly slaughter before 9am.

Or tumbling off the train platform as the 0803 to Liverpool Street approaches of a morning. I’m not entirely sure how. Curiosity, perhaps, or a gust of wind. Or another one of the devils in grey suits with grey faces, desperate and eager to charge into their grey days.

I could be strangled by the telephone cord as I sit at my desk at work, or slip down the spiral staircase, all four floors, and crack my head on the tacky statue at the bottom of it. At least the claret and brains pouring out of my skull would match the red, grey and cream colour scheme in the building. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind the mess too much if it co-ordinated.

Given that there are so many very plausible ways in which I could die in my working day, it’s a wonder I ever leave the house, and return to it, every single day without fail.

I was almost hit by a bus once. I was fifteen, and rushing out of school with my brother and his friends. Charged out into the road, whoosh! Bus! It braked, the driver got off and shouted and swore at me, and I was so shocked I fell over and grazed my knee. Not particularly exciting, as far as near-death experiences go, but my closest shave to date. I’d had my tetanus injection and everything, and as much as I picked the scab, it refused to bleed me to death.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in the least suicidal. Or one of these death fanatics that watches TV programmes entitled ‘1000 Strange Ways To Die’. I’m just scared of the dark. And walking to work in the mornings, with all the hazards it brings (crossing roads, deep puddles, a sea crashing over the sea wall, strangers with dishonourable intentions) and walking home in the dark, with just a headlight to warn of oncoming HGVs, dressed all in black, and not fit enough to run for my life if required, I spend a good hour of my day gripped by a mortal fear that I’m going to die, in some headline-grabbing way.

I don’t eat cheese before bedtime, but I do worry that I might suffocate in my sleep if I close my bedroom door. All that stale air being re-respired again, and again, and again; I imagine it would be something akin to being in an aeroplane on a long distance flight. And we all know how that ends. Crash, bang, wallop.

Apparently you can die from a build-up of propane and butane in the blood, absorbed through the skin. You might think you’re okay because you don’t work in a chemical laboratory, but actually both of these are found in aerosol deodorants. I could die from my deodorant. It wouldn’t be a particularly nasty ending, but it would certainly be an odd one.

Death of course can happen at any time. No one could function if they spent their time worrying about it. Hence we learn to ignore this ugly possibility as much as possible. However, accidental death usually occurs out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s just plain bad luck. Sometimes it’s incredible stupidity. But my reasoning seems to be, not that I’ve paid it much mind before, that if I worry about it, if I expect it, then it just won’t happen to me.

--written spontaneously, half fictitiously, for writer's circle this evening. And yes, my friends now worry about my state of mind.