9. AN ESCAPE FROM A SCHOOLGIRL

Elaine decides to pay her husband a second visit.

“If I never experienced Deja Vu before then I’m experiencing it now,” Elaine murmured or shouted or wrote on the nearest wall, it wasn’t easy to tell which.

William was in the garden and she could tell from the blue of his boxer shorts that he was urinating against the far wall. It was something she never did, not because of the colour of underwear it advertised but because it was unnecessary and quite possibly disgusting.

After all, they had a perfectly serviceable outside toilet. Once it had been the only toilet possessed by the cottage, but since those dreadful olden days a now deceased owner had installed a better one upstairs in what had been a bedroom. He’d put a shower in there too, and a pretty pink sink and called it the bathroom.

But William in his crude way was urinating against an outside wall and ignoring both available toilets.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, as if it wasn’t perfectly obvious what he was doing.

Now one thing must be made obvious. She wasn’t exactly on the same plane as him because he was a living person with a fullish bladder and she was best described as a ghost with no bladder at all, not that this is a ghost story rather than a series of experiences Elaine enjoyed in what was called The Past, where she found herself after her life on Earth had sadly become extinct in a dark and sealed off coal cellar.

He heard her though. But the young schoolgirl who happened to be with him with him probably didn’t. Elaine had discovered she could be truly selective who heard her and who didn’t, which made her afterlife fun.

She recognised the schoolgirl. Belinda (she’d always thought it a rather odd name,) Allsop lived down the street, daughter of a schoolmistress with a reputation for cruelty whenever she could exercise it and a postman who was best described as bullied at home. But Belinda was the apple of her unpleasant mother’s eye and as a consequence she received all the kindness that woman could muster, which, in all honesty, wasn’t very much at all.

In addition to that, Belinda was only thirteen at best, and possibly still twelve. Yet there she was, watching William as he urinated against the garden wall and turned ever so slightly so that she could get a glimpse of his pride and joy.

Elaine, though, had never seen either pride or joy in it, but that’s besides the point.

“Letting schoolgirls into your life, William?” she asked, conversationally.

He turned to face her with his trousers still undone, and he scowled as he dribbled down them.

“Best do that up before she sees what she’s far too young to see,” observed Elaine.

“Get away! I don’t want anything to do with you, you foul b***h!” screeched William, who only ever resorted to screeching when he was afraid of something.

“Why, Billy, what have I done?” asked a shocked Belinda.

“Not you, silly girl, her!” And William pointed directly at where Elaine was standing. Or floating. She may well have been floating with her feet comfortably off the ground. Or they would have been had she been in possession of any.

“Who?” asked Belinda, staring at nothing, trying to see someone who so far as she was concerned wasn’t there.

“Her!” shouted William.

“Poor William,” simpered Elaine, “so she calls you Billy, does she? I thought of that but decided not to because it’s really too friendly a name to use for a piece of work like you.”

“You married me, you daft tart!” screeched William.

“Me?” demanded Belinda, “now how can you say that, Billy, you know my mum wouldn’t let me marry anyone until I’m twenty-one and that’s eight years off!” protested the schoolgirl.

“Poor William, in need of a bed-fellow and this one’s too young as well as the wrong gender for your prefernce?” teased Elaine, “you know what they do to fellows like you William, don’t you: exposing yourself in front of little girls. It’s not the done thing, you know, not the done thing at all, and when they discover all about you in prison they’ll make their thoughts quite plain. The other prisoners, I mean.”

“I’m not a prisoner!” snapped William, though Elaine knew that his eyes held the dimming light of fear when he looked at her.

“Remember Lisa?” asked Elaine, smiling, “the girl you did for? And me in my cellar? Remember your crimes, you scumbag!”

“I’m not staying here! You’ve gone mad!” screamed Belinda.

“You promised to stay and … talk to me!” screeched William, still in screeching mode.

“I didn’t know you were a madman who spoke rubbish standing there with your you-know-what hanging out as if you were talking to someone who understands you! And prisoner… you’re going to be a prisoner?”

“He should be,” Elaine whispered or shouted, though Belinda couldn’t hear it whichever it was, “he’s done murder, he has, and if you hang on long enough he’ll do murder to you as well, and you’re too young for such a thing to happened to you. You’ve got your whole innocent life in front of you…”

“Innocent, be jiggered!” shouted William, “she’s no innocent, I tell you Elaine! She might be only a kid but she knows stuff I’m struggling to understand!”

“Who’s Elaine? I know: she was your wife, wasn’t she, the woman who disappeared and was never seen again? I’ve heard what people say…” stammered Belinda.

“And what’s that?” raged (instead of screeched) William.

“They say she got away before you did her in! My mum’s sight about you! She’d kill me if she knew I was here and I’m going!” shouted Belinda.

“That’s the sensible thing to do,” murmured or hollered Elaine, “and leave the murderous slob out of any plans you may have for the future.”

“Don’t go, pretty Belly,” begged William.

“Then put your bits and pieces back in your pants and do your buttons up!” begged Belinda, “and explain to me what all this has been about. Why were you talking about being a prisoner? Why did you call me the things you did call me?”

“I was having a turn,” pleaded William, “I get turns, but I’m not normally like it.”

“No, you’re usually ten times more stupid,” put in Elaine.

“That I am not!” he retorted, almost screeching.

“That’s it! I’m going. And you can’t stop me!” decided Belinda and she made for the gate in order to get back on the street, and her home.

“But you wore your school uniform for me, and it’s a Saturday!” pleaded William.

“I wondered why you said I should dress in this awful thing!” shouted Belinda from the gate, “and now I know. It’s because you’re mad as a hatter!”

“Woah! What have we got here?” said a fresh voice.

“David,” sighed Elaine, and to William, “here’s the true love of your life,” she said, “have a smooch with him while I explain to this sweet girl exactly why you’re no good for her.”

“Don’t you bloody dared!” threatened William, though he must have been aware that there was nothing he could do to stop her doing or saying anything to anyone.

“Temper temper, lover boy,” croaked David.

“And don’t you call me that!”

“So that’s what it is,” decided Belinda, “it’s sickening.”

“It isn’t what it seems…” protested William.

“Oh, but it is,” Elaine told him, “why else would David here risk everything, his freedom and good name, helping you brick me up in the cellar?”

“Get off! Go on, go back to whatever zone from Hell you’ve come from!” shouted William.

“All right I will,” said David and he turned and trounced off. “You’ve not been the same since she left you! I reckon you’re mental!”

“He is,” Elaine said or shouted or whispered or, yes, wrote on a wall, “and he’s not seen the last of me!”

And in a flash she was gone, hoping to catch T***y for a chat about nothing at all before time ended.

© Peter Rogerson 01.09.21

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