27. THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

The last two words give it away. THE END!

THE COTTAGE IN THE WOODS

27.Bricks and Mortar

“I’m not going to school today,” Emma told Anthony “there’s a storm that’s supposed to be on the way, it’s been all over the tele, the Beast from the East they’re calling it, and look, the skies are blacker than I’ve ever seen them, like black ink almost, and mum says it could be dangerous.”

“Then I won’t go either,” grinned Anthony, “I rather like being alone with you, and my folks won’t know any different, what with a baby on the way back home and all.”

The all he referred to, in his house across the road, was a large family of younger children with their too-loving parents, the youngsters all bright and noisily active most of the time. He much preferred the quiet of Emma’s peaceful home and her more disciplined parents.

“So we’ll stay here. Did you download that new game onto your laptop?” he asked.

“Of course I did, but first I want to see if I can find out anything more about Winifred Winterbotham. She’s quite old, yet there’s hardly a trace of her on the internet,” Emma told him, and added “though there was a bit about their cottage being condemned as dangerous, but nothing was done about it.”

“Probably nobody’s business. I hope the poor old soul’s safe enough in it.”

“Especially if that storm’s going to be as bad as they say it might be.”

“Billy said they’re likely to do her for murder,” said Anthony, “but as I see it, if she did murder anyone it was so long ago it’s hard to see how punishing her now would achieve anything.”

“It’s rotten,” she agreed, “makes this country seem more like a police state than ever!”

Meanwhile, and unknown to the two teenagers, Winifred had been released on police bail and allowed to return to her cottage, and she chose to be accompanied by Herman Schmidt, her half-brother. Something, probably related to kinship, had developed between them in next to no time, and even though he was from another country she trusted him more than she had trusted anyone for more hyears than she could remember. After all, she saw the police officers who had destroyed her precious memories buried in her garden not at British coppers but as Nazi bullies even though she had no idea who Nazis really were. To her they were part of today, living and breathing under the same skies as she did, and a shapeless horror.

“There’s going to be a storm,” he muttered when a flash of lightning scarred the day from the east. They were in the duty solicitor’s car, almost back at the cottage, Magnus Swift having offered to take them rather than expect them to walk on a day like that was turning out to be.

“Maybe rain,” she agreed, and they were both relieved when they arrived back at the cottage that she had called home for all of her life. And she was right. Several large drops of rain spattered down as they made their way as quickly as they could down the path to the back door and she fumbled with her key. Meanwhile, Magnus Swift took one very brief look at the place and then drove away, hoping to beat the coming storm to his own home.

She led him into the front room in which all her possessions could be seen. They were few and far between and gave the room a somewhat spartan as well as neglected appearance. There were even signs that she sometimes slept on an old settee, with tatty old blankets draped over its back.

A flash of lightning followed on its heels by a crashing of thunder seconds later indicated that the storm was probably almost overhead.

“Did you tell that Inspector everything?” he asked, casually, “I mean, about when you were twelve and having a baby?

“I told him what I knew, and I never knew any numbers bigger than twelve so I told him I was twelve. It was either that or a hundred!” she grinned, “Me not stupid. Not learned much, but not stupid!”

“I can see that,” he assured her with a brotherly smile.

“Anyway, it not important,” she said wistfully, “Baby never breathed, never cried, so in arms of Mother’s parent. In garden.”

“I’ve seen the little that’s left of it,” he murmured sadly, “tiny bones and a tiny skull. It must have upset you.”

“It upset Mother, not me,” she shook her head. “It not my baby.”

“But you told the policeman…” he said, shocked.

“I told Commandant, Nazi bully, what he wanted me to tell him. I told him why I took gun and shot daddy. Daddy playing games with Mother, my games, games he played with me. That true and he made me happy. And baby made it real to Commandant’s silly head!”

“That’s very naughty of you, Winnie,” he said, smiling, “the Inspector’s not as clever as he thinks he is and may want to accuse you of murder!”

“What’s murder?” she asked.

“Killing, Winnie, taking a life.”

“Daddy said never trust Nazis and he afraid of them. Said he kept gun by him always, in case they came for him, because he knew they would. He told me lots of stuff. Like he flew like angel away from Nazis...and said whenever trust man like commandant.”

“But you shot him, Winnie!”

“I never knew gun would bite! I just going to tap his head, tell him to stop playing games with mummy, and finger got caught in it and it went louder than thunder!”

As if to confirm her words another crash of thunder seemed ti make the room shake.

“Closer,” muttered Herman, looking fearfully around him as if he expected the walls around him to start falling in.

“Then I frightened. Mother dead too. Wouldn’t wake up when I slapped her. Hard, just in case. So I dug garden, made a bed for daddy. And the hard job of taking him to lie in it. One, two days I struggled, bit by bit, and then I rolled him into his bed and covered him up with good soil to keep him warm over winter nights.”

“And your mother?”

“I took one of the little shiny things out of daddy’s gun and made her eat it! Pushed it down her throat! She played my games with daddy, and that was bad, so I made her eat it!”

“You forced a bullet down her throat?”

“Is that the name? Bullet? Me remember that now! Then me locked her bed door, keep her in her bed, not let her out. Soon her room smell bad. Very bad.

“So you lived with a decaying corpse in the same house… and just you, dear Winnie,” he whispered, and the fullest extent of her wretched loneliness brought tears to his eyes.”

“And not know I have brother… flesh of my flesh, of my daddy’s flesh.”

“And I never suspected that I had a sister,” he sighed. “All those years and I never even dreamed it.”

A third crash of thunder made her squeal and he covered his ears.

“I’ve no idea how you Brits cope with weather like this!” he muttered as the sound died down.

But it didn’t die down altogether. A new sound, that of bricks sliding and crunching against bricks, replaced it.

“Come on!” he shouted, “outside! We must get out of this place before it falls down onto us and buries us!

“Me not go anywhere. Nazis everywhere,” she decided.

He went up to her and grabbed her by one arm and tugged it, but she was obstinate.

“Nazis make noise!” she screamed, “make lpoud noise, hurt ears.”

“No, Winnie, it’s the weather! It’s thunder!” he urged her, “nobody causes it. It’s Just the weather!”

But she wouldn’t moved…

Meanwhile the chimney, weakened by decades of neglect as bricks started crumbling and mortar fell away, finally gave up the ghost as a finger of lightning sought it out, and pushed the crumbling thing until it crashed onto the roof, which had been noticed several times as being on its last legs. Then, with a shrieking protest as woodwork and plaster yielded to the inevitable, it began to move. One wall joined in the march of chaos and gave up the ghost, and within far too short a time the little cottage in the woods was no more than a burial mound for a brother and sister who might have got to know each other better, given a little more time.