24. Back Home Again.

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME - Part 24

   The smoke and the grime swirled around the almost pitch black night as they stood looking about them in an old cemetery. There was an uncanny stillness in the graveyard that went beyond understanding, yet from far off were the distant sounds of life being lived, like whispers on the air.

“Apple!” shrieked May, but there was no response.

“Frodo!” yelled Roger, but there was still no response.

“Apple! Frodo!” they shouted together. Still the only response was the ghostly sounds of a baby still crying and a dog still barking.

A sudden billowing smog more dense and acrid than the air around them descended in a cloud of pungency upon them, blotting out the arrogant police constable, obliterating the crumbling church and filling their lungs as if it was an impenetrable wind from nowhere.

“I’m here,” mumbled Oliver Twist, and he grabbed May by one hand, “I’m scared, misses,” he added lamely, as if him being scared was a crime worse than murder.

But May was more concerned about her own two children to be too bothered by a trembling Victorian boy and his fears.

“Apple” she shrieked, and then, faint on the rotten air as though separated by an untellable distance she heard the reply “mum… where are you... mum.”

“Did you hear that, Roger?” she whispered. “It’s her: I know it is, I’d recognise her voice anywhere.”

“Frodo!” hailed her husband.

“Dad… dad… dad…” Again that whisper through the smog, a whisper that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, but Roger knew where to find it, or thought he did.

“This way, darling,” he urged May, and half-dragged her towards the grave that the boy Oliver had been waiting next to, bidding a loney orphan’s adieu to a mother who had been dead the last twelve months like he did, secretly and alone, most days.

What happened next could have been one of two things. It could have been what it appeared to be, the spirit of a haggard woman rising from the mound of Earth that covered her grave, her mouth wide open and silent, or it could have been no more than a shape forming in the thick smoggy air, the shape of a crone, shouting and crazed, who was to soon blow away on the stagnant air when a breeze from nowhere touched her.

But the boy Oliver, still holding May’s hand, knew what it was all right.

“I’m all right now, ma,” he said in a choking sort of voice, “I’m safe an’ sound, an’ wiv friends.”

Then the spirit or the shape of filthy air dissipated, for a few precious moments the moon above their heads struggled to penetrate through the gloom enough for them to see, and where the wooden cross marking a pauper’s grave stood like a black shadow on the night it seemed that a way opened, not a door, not a pathway, just a sort of hollow on the night air, a nothing or a something, who could tell?

“Mum!” shrieked Apple, nearer now.

“Dad!” echoed Frodo.

“We’re coming!” assured Roger, and taking May’s hand so firmly in his own that she feared that her fingers might be crushed, he dragged her forwards. From the pathway he veered, and trod on the Twist woman’s grave as if that was the most natural way for a man to drag his wife.

And after a step or two the way he went took a sharp turn downwards. Through the Earth itself it seemed to go leaving the acrid smokey smog behind, and it led them past grinning skills and shattered bones sleeping the long dreamless sleep of the long dead, soon deep down below where Oliver’s mother rotted quietly away, until they emerged into the clean air outside the front door of number 10, Portland Crescent.

And Apple and Frodo were there, standing on the doorstep, shivering. Never were any parents happier to see their children than were Roger and May at that moment.

“I thought we’d lost you, daddy,” whimpered Frodo, “it all went so horrid and dark.”

“I’m cold,” added Apple, more practically. “Open the door, dad, it’s locked and I want to go into the warm.”

“The key!” gasped Roger, “it’s in the lock, on the other side of the door!”

“Now what are you doing out here on a cold Christmas night?” asked Grosvenor Crumpet, one of their smiling neighbours who had seemingly appeared from nowhere, “I was wondering what all the shouting was about just now!”

“The kids lost us for a moment,” explained May, not daring to go into the where and why and how of the last half hour, largely because she wasn’t sure herself. The memory of Mrs Glump and her bottomless gin bottle was already fading as if it had been as insubstantial as a dream.

“And we seem to be locked out,” added Roger.

“You should do what I do in the event of such circumstances and keep a spare key under a plant pot,” cackled Grosvenor, “most people round here do that and it’s a good job the burglars don’t know.”

“Ah. Good idea!” laughed Roger, because he kept a spare key under a plant pot as well, not that he ever expected to lose anything as important as a key, but he was wise enough to know that May might.

He picked a plant pot up and there, underneath and possibly getting tarnished due to never being used, was the spare key.

“Thanks for reminding me, Grosvenor,” he said, “It’s been years since I put this here.”

“Merry Christmas then, May and Roger,” laughed Grosvenor, “I’m only happy that I came by to remind you or you might have been sending for a locksmith on Christmas day, and maybe you’d not find one willing to turn out!”

He returned into his home next door and Roger opened the door to their own house.

“Thank goodness for home,” he said, “I wonder if that film’s finished?”

“Hours ago, I shouldn’t wonder,” replied May, “come on, I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Blow the kettle,” grinned Roger, “I’m more for a drop of Christmas cheer out of a bottle.”

“And some pop,” put in Apple. “I want some pop. Lots of it, to keep me awake in case any more strangers call from the past to see us.”

“An’ me. What about me?” asked Oliver Twist, “I’m here, an’ I never want to go nowhere else, not today and not tomorrow and not ever!”

© Peter Rogerson 15.12.20