1 The Son He Never Had

THE SANDS OF TIME Part 1

Ninety-one and still capable of walking through the grey-white sands of Quigstone Beach to where the sea had firmed them and made walking easier, Gavin Pottle smiled to himself.

He spent a lot of time smiling to himself because, well, he was old and knew he had lived a tremendously satisfying life. One thing he hadn’t done was father a son, but that had hardly been his fault. It takes two to tango, he always told himself, and the woman who had edged her way into his life and actually married him seventy years ago had been most reluctant to tango. He’d tried to make her, tried even to force her though he knew of only one guaranteed way of forcing anyone to do anything and he daren’t go so far as do that. Not back then, anyway.

He’d never particularly liked Glenda. He knew that, all right. He never quite worked out how come he had agreed to marry her but he supposed it was because he’d known back then that in order to achieve his goal in life he’d have to marry someone and Glenda was probably as good as anyone.

Not, maybe, as good a David. He blinked to himself and somehow a tear found its way from one of his ninety-one year old eyeavid all right. Still did, though it was a shame when...

“Bloody sentiment!” he snarled to himself, oblivious of the fact that he was far from being alone on Quigstone Beach. He came there often and knew he was never alone. But other people didn’t matter, did they? No more than Glenda had mattered. She’d been a b***h and he still didn’t know why he’d put up with her for so long before he put an end to her once and for all.

It had been her voice that had done it. The yowl in it when she had wanted what he just couldn’t provide her.

He could have provided it to David, all right. He had, lots of times. But to Gwen? The very idea made him want to vomit even now, and it had all been the best time of a long life time ago.

Even at work, in school where he taught history, he could have done it. Some of the boys had been so sweet and there was something about youth, some fragrance of innocence, that had warmed him as he drew a map of this or that king’s lineage on the blackboard for the class to copy. But with Glenda, never. And it was doing it that was, he believed, essential to realising his goal and having a son of his own.

Somehow he had to transfer his seed to her, but for that to happen he needed to feel at least an edge of excitement in his nether regions and her very presence, essential for his scheme to work, was the one thing that put him off.

He hated her. He hated her lovely blond hair that she allowed to hang loose and long, past her shoulders and down her back, hair that other men said they’d die for but that he hated because it was so unnecessary. And it got in the way. He wasn’t quite sure what of, but he knew that’s what it did. It impeded him when all he wanted was to be allowed to fulfil his one essential promise before she died.

And die she had. She’d had to because she couldn’t interest him one little bit. No, she did the opposite. How, he asked himself, could a man produce what was necessary for her to swell with a son inside her when she was there with that leer of her face as he tried so hard. Bed had become a torment because she wasn’t David and David wasn’t a woman.

It was the leer that had killed her. That and his fist, and even now he knew he’d done the right thing. He’d never doubted himself. She was a woman and incapable of seducing him and thus had no real function on this precious Earth. At least, not for him.

It had been too easy killing her.

He kicked the sand up and scowled at the sea and the sky.

One moment she’d been alive and the next… it had really been so very easy… “the next she’d been dead…” he said aloud.

He didn’t know why he’d said it aloud but he had: it had just slipped out like words often did these days.

“Who, squire, who had been dead?” asked a voice just behind him.

That drew him to a standstill. He hadn’t meant to ever mention Glenda and her departure from the land of the living to anyone, and here he was spilling it out loud as if it didn’t matter who knew.

“Mary Queen of Scots,” he replied, automatically, resorted to one of his favourite periods in history.

He’d loved to have been a Tudor. There was something about the manliness of the times when a man could dress like a popinjay with a huge codpiece and admire his chums in a manly way without anyone calling him names or scorning him.

“That’s daft squire,” said the voice, “a cultured man like you saying stuff like death about someone who’s been dead for hundreds of years.”

“I can say what I please!” he snapped back, and he looked to see who he was actually talking to.

It was another old cove, maybe not as old as him but bald and wrinkled, gnarled almost. But there was something familiar about him like there’s something familiar about quite a lot of things when you’re as old as he was and had seen or done most things over the years.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“Maybe,” replied the other, “and maybe not. Who can tell? So tell me: the next what and she was dead? The next second? Minute? Or maybe the next blow? Punch?”

That last part of the question made him freeze, his heart almost stilling inside his chest. All the years that had passed and he’d had a lovely, wonderful secret. Not that she was dead, that was neither lovely or wonderful or a secret, everyone knew she must be dead, gone for more than half a century and never turning up, not eve at Christmas. But that he’d solved his problem. Or at least, one of his problems. He hadn’t solved the bit about wanting a son.

No, not wanting but needing. He needed a son to love like his silly Glenda had needed this or that bit of frippery, a short skirt that was meant to make him or maybe other men desire her, but didn’t. Shoes with slender heels that were meant to shape her legs until he lost control of himself looking at them, but that didn’t work.

“I don’t remember what I said and anyway it was to myself and you were eavesdropping!” he snarled.

“It’s nearly noon and you’re on a crowded beach,” replied the other, “and you’re the kind of man who, when he talks about the dead, means it. And not Mary Queen of Scots either.”

The ice returned to Gavin Pottle’s heart and suddenly he was afraid it might still it. This man was so insolent he wished the sand would open up and swallow him like the dry summer Earth had swallowed Glenda all those years ago.

Who was this man? And what did he know?

“Who are you?” he asked weakly, “and how do you think you know me?”

“Me? Haven’t you guessed?” grinned the other, “I’m Desmond Boniface and when I was a nervous lad in short pants you just loved to thrash the living daylights out of me me in History lessons! That’s when you still could of course, before they stopped sadists like you from beating their pupils. But I haven’t forgotten. And I haven’t forgiven. So do you remember me, and my wretched stinging fingers?”

Once again his heart seemed to freeze.

“Who did you say you were? Desmond something or other? Never heard of you!” he snapped, deciding to hide in ignorance and anonymity. “Now leave me in peace! I’m mourning my son!”

“The one you always wanted and never had?” There was mockery in the other’s voice and he’d love to beat the living daylights out of him but, well, he was ninety one and frail and probably couldn’t. .

“My son…” he croaked.

© Peter Rogerson 07.03.22

...