THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

A review of a sad man's life

It seemed to have been a long night as Ben Osmon closed his eyes for the last time.

And instead of being in bed like he had been for the past six weeks he was standing in glory at the head of a road that stretched out in front of him, weaving this way and that, going up and down to follow the terrain, but always in front of him, fading to a sort of fog behind him.

He looked about and saw himself lying on his bed, incongruous in a world open to sun and showers, rain and snow, and a long, long road. But it didn’t seem so strange, not to Ben as he stood there looking about at what was familiarly unfamiliar.

“Goodbye, old friend,” he mumbled, and the him on the bed remained still, not responding by even breathing.

“I guess we’re dead then,” he murmured, and stepped away, on the road, leaving the bed and its grim occupant behind him.

All sorts of people were walking on that road, black and white, old and young, men and women, even the odd child, all walking along and all strangely familiar as if somewhere in life he might have passed their sort by.

Why did he think the phrase somewhere in life? Surly he was in life now? He must be even though the grim corpse tucked beneath the sheets of his bed and already way out of sight in the fog behind him was surely dead. But then he would have to be because sure as eggs the old cadaver was as dead as cadavers always are. A dream him, a dream of death with him sleeping the sleep of eternity.

What fun!

The familiar figure standing by a gravestone was suspiciously like himself, so suspiciously like himself that the very sight of him made Ben shiver. And the gravestone … he thought he recognised it, though it had been a few years since Alice had died and he’d had that gravestone erected to mark her last resting place. But there were the words: Alice Osman, and the dates of her passage through life.

He paused a mere moment to recall how it had been with Alice, their up and down marriage, mostly down as he recalled, and he knew that amidst the disputes that had turned friendship into animosity he had always been right. He was the man and his view of the world, his interpretation of reality, was always going to be right. Of course it was! Like father, like son and right down to the last full stop.

Wasn’t it?

The road turned and twisted, rose up and down after that, but he barely noticed because some of the people walking it with him were vaguely familiar. Like Ian. His son Ian who he hated because Ian had never seen things the same way as him. But he strode past him with barely an acknowledgement from either of them

Kids ought to walk sedately in their parents’ footsteps, oughtn’t they? Be reincarnations of an original seed? Not that he had, but then, his situation was different, and what did we have here? Another familiar gravestone? Of course: his parents, lying here this past half century, and surely that figure standing holding a bunch of half dead flowers must be very like he had looked when he had reluctantly come to pay his respects and still in possession of a full head of hair.

Not that he’d respected them. How could he? His father being the headmaster of his primary school, meaning that the rest of the teachers treated him with what amounted to deference while the other children hated him, pushed him into little corners here and there where they could punch and pinch him, unseen.

That had been his childhood, and if something came of the odd spate of bullying it would be he who got the blame and his backside that saw the tread of his father’s size nine slipper. It had been allowed in those days, beating boys with slippers.

And mother hadn’t helped much, either, with her secret stashes of bottles scattered all over the house, and she was in that grave too. Driven to distraction by a husband who never listened to her, she had taken an overdose of something more toxic than gin, and died. She had been interred in that ground first, dead whilst young enough to still have hopes and dreams, and pretty as any dead picture can be.

But the gravestone and its grim reminder together with the younger image that might have been him and his pathetic bunch of flowers were soon way behind him and he found himself running up and down a sudden ripple in the road as he passed a church. It was a small village church, it had no real antiquity and its vicar was a little too fond of the communion wine. But nevertheless it served the community as well as any small rural church can, and there was a wedding in progress. Didn’t that groom look the spitting image of a younger him, and wasn’t that bride very much like Alice when she had been both young and beautiful? They were, the two of them, so familiar it was like looking at a photograph taken fifty-odd years ago!

He’d been devoted to Alice back then, before he saw through her foibles and weaknesses to the fragile soul underneath, to the woman who had never seen how right he could be in his interpretation of life.

It was a shame, really. Things might have been a great deal happier if she’d been a little bit more than just a woman.

But the church and its happy scene together with wild flashes from the cameraman were soon merging with the foggy landscape behind him, and he walked more slowly along the road because, well, it had become a bit of a struggle and anyway one or two things that he was obliged to pass by fascinated him.

Like the school. Not the primary school where his father had slippered him but the grammar school where the history teacher had caned him on every available opportunity. Mr Parris, he had been, and he was a sadist. But then, he had trained at the same college as his father and the two had never got on, which probably explained his torture.

He had complained to his dad about what he saw as unjustified punishment and his father had told his that Mr Parris was a good historian and if he thought punishment was needed then punishment should be handed out. That, he had said, was the way of the world and he, Benjamin, should take it like a man.

“But I’m not a man, dad,” he had complained, and earned himself a thump on his head for his cheek.

Thankfully, the school and its history teacher faded into the distance as he approached a roundabout, the first roundabout on all that road.

It was chaotic, was that roundabout. He felt dizzy as he ran with legs shortened, no doubt, by so much walking, round and round it and fell suddenly into a woman’s arms.

“It’s a boy,” she said, “would you like to hold him?”

“Not yet,” said his mother, “but I’d appreciate a gin if you’ve got one there…”

And the road ended there. The long and sometimes hilly, sometimes winding road.

And when he looked back at the fog stretching back the length of the road he was suddenly very glad that he was dead, though he would have liked a pearly gate with a smiling saint Peter guarding it rather than an alcoholic mother to bid him welcome and farewell to life.

© Peter Rogerson 04.01.21

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Your storytelling is an inventive way to tell someone's life story without it seeming like a biography! It's interesting that you portray almost all the events of this guy's life as being mostly negative. I think lots of people look at life this way, as a long string of unfortunate choices & consequences . . . & yet they dread that moment of death, ending it all. That's the irony I love most about your story (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie