13. AN ESCAPE FROM THE LOVERS

Elaine has a glimpse of the future.

Elaine didn’t actually have eyes to open, but she opened them anyway as if old habits are hard to forget.

It wasn’t easy to see what was going on, perched as she seemed to be somewhere near the top of the wardrobe in a half-forgotten room.

I kept my knickers in here, she thought, white ones.

Two people were in the room, sitting on the edge of a double bed, a man and a woman that she had never seen before. They were fully dressed and the woman looked troubled.

“It was horrible,” the woman said, “seeing those bones sitting on that chair. So why did we buy this place after witnessing that gruesome shock?”

“For mum and dad,” Ian reminded her. “When they heard about the skeleton they didn’t fancy coming here, but something about the place, its age, the stories that must be hidden in its walls, captured our hearts, both of us, remember, and now it’s ours. The bones have gone. They belonged to a woman called Elaine Blockley, and according to her diary she hid down in that cellar for fear of being blasted to kingdom come by the bomb if it fell anywhere near her.”

From her height above the two on the bed she remembered how she’d felt back then. It had been the nineteen sixties and every news broadcast warned them that there could be war at any moment, and if there was there would almost certainly be nuclear weapons involved. So she had done the logical thing and hidden in the cellar. She’d stand a chance down there. Not much of a chance, but anything is worth more than no chance at all.

That would have been all right, but William came along and bricked her in one night when she was sleeping on a rug in the corner. She hadn’t heard what he was doing, hadn’t guessed what he had on his mind, and hadn’t even known which night he’d done it until she discovered a brick wall where a door ought to be. Hence her hiding place had become her prison.

But who were these people?

And how long had elapsed since she had yielded, in hunger and thirst, to the inevitable, and chosen death in the darkness. And it had been dark once her torch batteries had given up the ghost. So she had quietly lowered herself into that wooden chair and waited to die. Already thirsty, very thirsty, it hadn’t taken long even though every minute had seemed like an age. But she had died, preferring the quietness of the cellar to nuclear destruction.

Now from her place on top (or near the top) of a wardrobe she could see what must be the cottage’s future occupants. They looked all right, a young couple. Sitting close enough to each other on the edge of the bed for her to know how they felt.

And then he was taking his trousers off.

William had done that in this same room before he had decided to kill her. Taken his trousers off and glared at her. He hadn’t wanted her, not then on their wedding night, and not since. She had died a virgin.

“Bed time, Sue,” said the man.

“I am tired,” she told him, “aren’t you, Ian?”

“You can say that again,” he murmured, grinning at her, “I wonder if that Elaine skeleton would still be alive if she hadn’t died in the cellar?”

“And living here? With the old man who they reckon caused her death all those years ago?”

How many years? wondered Elaine from near the ceiling.

“Sixty-odd,” murmured Ian, “she’d be an old woan by now. Probably better off dead!”.

So that’s how long it’s been in the land of the living since I died in that cellar? Sixty or more years, and there[s been no bomb? I was so sure, so convinced, that the planet would be blasted to kingdom come when the titans clashed, the yanks and the reds… but no, it never happened and the cottage I called home is still here with people living in it…

“How about you and me starting a family?” asked Ian.

“Trust a man to think that when all I want to do is sleep!” mocked Sue, “give your hormones a break, Ian, and let me catch up on my sleep.”

But sixty Earth years! Sixty years when it might have been me thinking of starting a family … but not with that swine William… the only person he could think about was himself … and maybe David when it was convenient to David to be thought about at all.

”Just a little cuddle, Sue, for the good times.”

“You and your hormones! Well, if you must, but try not to wake me! And I am on the pill, you know, so don’t expect the toddle of little feet yet awhile.”

Elaine would have closed her eyes had she any eyes to close, but instead she absorbed the scene being slowly and rhythmically enacted below her until she’d seen enough and slipped in an instant back to The Past.

“It’s a mistake, you know,” said T***y.

T***y was always there, always ready to advise, and Elaine couldn’t help experiencing as much affection for her as the dead can summon up.

“What is?” she asked.

“Going through a whole heap of tomorrows and seeing what the future might have held if you’d lived,” said T***y, “I had dreams, you know. I wasn’t always going to be a slab of meat for men’s hormones to be satisfied by. I had hopes and dreams. I wanted to have a family, the sort with a man, the same man and not a whole parade of the creatures, in my life, and children, a pretty girl and a smiling boy filled with mischief. And a cooker. I wanted to have a cooker so that I could make them their meals and feed their spirits.”

“And instead you died.”

If she had a head to nod T***y would have nodded it. “Instead I was killed,” she whispered or shouted or beat on a drum, “instead my future was stolen, and here I am. No offspring, nopretty girl or handsome happy boy… just an eternity of nobody.”

“And I’m an eternal virgin,” sighed Elaine.

“You are? Crikey, I knew you were an innocent, but that innocent?”

“That’s enough of that kind of talk!” grinned Elaine, in her absent head sounding very much like her own mother.

“It’s what life for the living was all about,” T***y told her, “girls and boys go out to play, and then there are three, then four… and without them going our to play eventually there’d be none.”

“And this Past?” asked Elaine.

“Would flicker out. Would go. We’ve been alive but now we’re dead, and without a thread to a living world we’re nothing. Nobody. Like Gassy over there, a thought without a hope, a dream without awakening, memories of hell…”

“That’s sad,” miffed Elaine.

“But it’s there,” smiled T***y, “did I hear you think that you might love me?”

“I do,” confirmed Elaine.

“That’s so nice. And I think I love you. Shame there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Like the couple in the bed… yes, it is a shame. But I guess death is like that,” mused Elaine, “ultimately pointless.”

© Peter Rogerson 05.09.21

...