17. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

A sex-starved Inspector and a congfused old ldy...

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

17. Daddy’s Resting Place

“Can I have a quick word please, Constable?” asked Inspector Greengage nervously as he cornered the delectable Felicia Ruby on her way out of the police station at the end of a ong day’s shift. He had one or two things on his mind and they weren’t what he thought he ought to be thinking but he couldn’t help it. He, too, had endured a tedious long day but his had been filled with contradictions.

He had a problem and although it wasn’t with her he decided to blame her because he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge his own weakness.. She was young, twenty-something though if he closed his eyes he saw her as a fifteen year-old ravishing creature out to ensnare him with her innocent virginity. He didn’t really have anything he ought to say to her, nothing official anyway, but he still wanted her to pause what she was doing or where she was going and listen to him.

“Yes sir,” she said, and an idea descended onto him as though from the Heavens themselves and he knew what he was going to say.

“The suspect,” he began, trying not to frown. Winifred Winterbotham was still a suspect in his mind even though evidence might suggest she was nothing of the sort, but he wasn’t a slave to evidence because he had instinct, and that jewel of his ego condemned her.

“Suspect, sir?” she asked, frowning.

“The woman from the derelict cottage. That woman.”

“Oh, the poor old thing,” she smiled, “not much of a life for an old lady,” she added in order that the Inspector might get a clue as to where she was coming from, “all on her own, you know, and not even having much in the way of memories to bask in. And winter’s coming on...”

“I know,” he growled. This tart was blind, he thought. She might have legs a man would die to touch, to stroke, to run his hands up until they reached a magic kingdom, but she was blind when it cae to genuine police instincts. Then he came out with it. “Would you like to go under cover?” he asked.

“Under cover, sir?”

“Yes, constable. In Brumpton Woods. Keep an eye on that cottage. Make sure the dear old lady doesn’t come to any harm at the hands of vagabonds and thieves,” he grated.

“Vagabonds and thieves, sir?” She was genuinely puzzled even though the light in his older eyes gave her a suspicion that there was something amiss with his reasoning.

“All on her own out there and as you say with winter coming on…” His voice trailed to a standstill because even he knew what he was saying had nothing to do with his true motive, which was to find a reason in which he could be on his own with this charming young Constable miles from other people and teach her a thing or two about policing his way. And he swallowed when he imagined what her underwear might look like. Was it little more than a wisp of lace? He hoped not...

But he knew his thoughts were perverted and that consequently and by definition it meant that he must be a pervert. He might have hated himself at that moment had it not been for the gentle fragrance that drifted from Felicia’s hair and filled him with… he’d forgotten what it was but he liked it.

“I like the scent of your hair,” he mumbled, knowing he must sound like an old fool and aware that Felicia must be thinking something along the lines of there’s no fool like an old fool. He suddenly found that he disliked himself and needed to cover something up, though he wasn’t quite sure what that might be. Confusion lay on him like silken layers on a virgin’s bed… there he goes again, he thought, what must this sweet young Felicia be thinking of me… can I tell by the way she’s looking at me?

He needed to drop hos bombshell, needed to diffuse something in his own head.

“My wife went to see her, sort of undercover,” he ventured.

“Your wife, sir?”

“Yes. Went into the woods. It was in the rain too, and she got quite wet, but Deirdre can stand a bit of water! She doesn’t mind the rain, you know, Constable… how are you in the rain, when it’s running like angels’ tears down your cheeks?

Why on Earth did I say Angel’s tears? I’m losing control of what I say… my mouth opens and shuts and all sorts of nonsense starts coming out…

“Angels’ tears, sir?” she asked, seeing confusion in his eyes and more than, that, in his words, and finding it faintly amusing

“If I saw you in the woods, Constable, you need have no fear of me!” he decided to say, and the words, meant to diffuse a situation that didn’t exist but only served to make her say,

“Sir, I must go now, I’ve got a lad coming round tonight and I was in such a rush this morning I’ve not made my bed yet so if I’m not home first there’s no knowing what he might get up to…”

“Of course, Constable,” he mumbled, “I’m so sorry to have delayed you. It was nothing. Nothing much.”

He might have gone on to elaborate what was nothing, but she was skedaddling off as quickly as decency and polite manners would allow.

“What was that all about?” she wondered, “and did he say he wanted me to go undercover in some trees? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”.

Meanwhile in the cottage in the woods Winifred Winterbotham cut herself rather badly when she was opening a can of beans and sausages. The tin opener was ancient, it was even a little rusty, and she wasn’t paying attention, the little wheel meant to slice into the can had long since fragmented. Struggling with it, she let it slip and cut one of her fingers too deeply for it not to bleed and bleed and bleed.

It was time for tears.

She’d seen her mother cry when the man she called daddy had, what had mother said he’d done? Died? Mother had cried until she could cry no more, and then knew who to blame, who had caused this vast chasm to open up in her life. It was the Nazis. That’s who mother had blamed for daddy’s death, though at the time Winifred had not known what death was. How could she? Death was a stranger in another world, a sound that had about it the feel of ending even when the speaker was still very much there. But the message sunk home when she tried to make him move and talk and laugh with her, and he wouldn’t. And she had tickled him exactly where he liked it, under his arms so she could see the hapiness on his face, and he had just collapsed to one side, his skin cold, his eyes without their sparkle.

It had been like an ending.

She’d helped mother dig the grave, not that they called it a grave. Mother called it daddy’s resting place, and it was then that she showed Winifred the places in the small cottage garden where others were resting, mounds of overgrown weeds that for some reason she had tended over the years since she had created them.

“My mother, Winifred,” she pointed to one of the almost levelled mounds in the soil outside in the garden, little mounds that might always have been there. “And her man,” she added standing and gazing at a second almost invisible swelling of the untended soil. So mother had owned a man. Like she wanted to if she cared to acknowledge a hope deep inside her that one day in fantasy a man with a beard and a smile would come to her trhough the woodlands...

Winifred stood there, her damaged hand bleeding and drops of her red life dripping into the resting place they had both dug for daddy. And it was at that moment that Winifred thought she understood. Everything has an ending, and daddy had ended. In this hole, but the Nazis had taken him away, which was a big evil. His hole, his resting place, was empty, a void in the world that shouldn’t be there.

Suddenly she knew that she understood death. It wasn’t another country vut something to be afraid of. It was a stillness that thpse still capable of movement interred in the soil, and in that moment of revelation she knew exactly what ending meant.

A few more splashes of her blood trickled down from the wound on her hand and splattered into the earth where daddy had slept for so long. Or had he not slept? Had he just lain there? A man at his ending until all the woods around, the trees and the berries, had their ending too?

Had his own red blood dripped into this hole? Is that how it was done? It presented itself to her as a kind of sensible answer to all sorts of questions. And the final answer was in the words this is it.

She looked furtively towards the trees of brumpton Woods. There was nothing, nobody, around, though she couldn’t see far. A split in the tin of beans and sausages made when the opener had slipped in her hand made the sauce drain out, drip, drip, drip onto the back door step. So this was the meaning of life, of everything, and she had just herself to arrange eternity. Nobody to help her on her way.

Slowly, she stooped by daddy’s grave. Slowly, in a kind of unnatural slow motion, she let one foot slide from where she was standing until it was in the empty space that daddy had rested in before the Nazi stormtroopers had taken him away.

Then the other foot.

“Goodbye, kettle and burning wood stove and big wide world,” she whispered, and she rather fancied she heard it reply goodbye Winifred.

That’s what they always called me, Winifred, and I’m ending. She thought as she slowly lay down in daddy’s grave and closed her eyes.

“I can’t see her, Ant,” came a voice from nowhere, but she thought she could hear it, “she must have gone out.”

“Where?” asked the boy

“I dunno. The clearing where Google Earth caught sight of her? The shop where Mr What’s-his-name gives her tins?” came the girl’s voice.

Winifred pretended they weren’t there because they hadn’t been when she’d looked around, had they?. She closed her eyes and told herself she’d sleep in daddy’s resting place. That was the right thing to do.

“I’ll take a look around,” decided the girl, “she might have fallen and hurt herself.”

“Okay,” replied the boy, “but I’ll wait here. I need to do something.”

“What?” asked the lovely voice of the girl.

“Wait and see,” he teased, and she went though the old gate that led to the kitchen door, and glanced in the hole the police had left after removing something dreadful, like a skeleton.

And she screamed.

© Peter Rogerson 02.02.23

...