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sᴛᴏʀʏ 1

December 1986

It’s a cold clear afternoon in Keldy Forest where Ben is lighting a wood-burning stove in an A-frame chalet he’s hired for a long weekend away with his newly pregnant wife, Frankie. Ben wants the chalet to be toasty when he returns from Malton railway station with her. Wife and husband are elated about the coming birth of their first child. Suddenly he’s overcome with emotion; choking back his tears, he makes a vow: Frankie, whatever comes to pass I will always love you. He laughs at himself for being so maudlin. 

When Ben leaves for Malton, stars sparkle in the night sky. He wraps himself up warm, and rolls back the 2CV’s canvas roof; he loves driving under the stars and he’s euphoric as he thinks of becoming a dad. He inserts a cassette of Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’, into the player and presses play. On the third attempt, Betsy, the 2CV, coughs into life. Paul Simon sings, “These are the days of miracle and wonder”. They sure are, Ben laughs.

It’s below zero and the bumpy road is deserted. Lights from the car’s headlights bounce against the forest. Looking up through the open roof he gasps as a tawny owl almost crashes into the car. God, I love this, Ben shouts into the night.

Ben sings along with Paul Simon, “People say I’m crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes”. The blind corner is sharper that he expects. A large deer stands in the middle of the narrow back road. Shit! he roars, stamping on the brakes. The car corkscrews round the icy corner and rockets into a stack of pointed fence posts that rip through the car’s body and into Ben. 

At Malton station Frankie waits for Ben. She’s not worried; she knows how temperamental Betsy can be. After an hour she gets a taxi. On the road to Keldy the taxi driver slows; fence posts are strewn over the road. Frankie screams, Stop! That’s our car. Oh, god, where’s Ben? 

December 2022

In the same A-frame cabin in Keldy Forest that Ben hired in 1986, Frankie and her son, Sam, sit each side of the wood-burning stove. In the background Paul Simon sings, “People say I’m crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes.”

It’s like a religious service, Sam says. This song Dad was playing when he crashed and it stopped in the middle – it’s like a hymn.

I suppose it is. 

When did you start coming here, Mum?

The year you were born.

I wish I’d known dad.

Me too. I prayed that one day you would. 

But I never have, Mum. I suppose it’s because I never met him.

Why have you kept coming year after year?

So you’re not alone.

I’m not alone. He’s here with me.

Maybe it’s time to move on.

She’s not crazy, Sam, a male voice says. I’d miss her if she wasn’t here every year.

Dad?

Some love never dies.

sᴛᴏʀʏ2

It’s All Hallows’ Eve. The moon is new and the stars are bright on a cold clear night. Trick and Treaters are long asleep in bed. For a bet, Lucien, slightly drunk, is spending the night alone at the end of the pier. He’s not superstitious, but the stories of the haunted pier on this night of nights have left him on edge. He drinks from a whisky flask.

The tide is out and a vast expanse of glistening mud stretches beyond the end of the Victorian pier to the mouth of the estuary. For the first time, Lucien sees that the mud flats are not flat but full of ridges, hummocks and rills running with streaming water into gullies deep in the mud. He’s astounded that the moonlight is so bright and the mud is beautiful.

The centre of a nearby hummock shifts as the mud disgorges a ***** man. Oh shit! Lucien gasps. The man’s body is as white as sun-bleached bone; his skin bears no trace of mud. He walks without sinking. Oh Christ, Lucien whispers as other figures rise up from the mud: a little girl in a floral dress with flowers in her hair, a Scotty dog, two uniformed sailors and the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

God, she’s so beautiful. She can haunt me any day. Who is she? He wonders.

The mud man says, She’s Princess Perpetua.

Jesus, he can hear me thinking. Why are you all dressed differently, not including you, of course? he laughs, made brave by too much whisky.

The mud man replies, We are as we were when we drowned and the mud sucked us down. 

How long has the princess been under the mud? 

Nearly two hundred years.

Lucien realises that he’s clenched his fists so hard that the palms of his hands are bleeding. He wipes them on his trousers and takes a large swig of whisky. He sees the princess walking across the mud to the steps leading up to where he stands. Moments later, she’s beside him, as he shakes with fear and gasps for air. The sound of a harmonium playing a waltz fills the air.

Shall we dance, Perpetua asks.

Lucien can’t speak.

She takes his hand and leads him down to the edge of the mud. 

I can’t go on that. I’ll sink, he stammers.

I’ll keep you safe.

They dance further and further out across the mud. 

The music stops. Lucien stares at Perpetua as flesh falls from her face to reveal her skull. Help me back, he begs.

Too late, too late, you’re mine.

 Lucien screams and struggles to break her embrace. As she lets him go, he sinks into the stinking mud. With his mouth and nose filling with the ooze, his final scream is nothing but a muted gurgle.

At dawn his friends arrive at the pier to see if he’s won the bet. All that remains is an empty whisky flask alongside muddy footprints.

sᴛᴏʀʏ 3

David, in his early seventies, is finally preparing his mother’s home for sale. It’s a great sadness to him that he never managed to persuade her to move to a smaller property rather than her large Victorian house. She’d been alone in it for fifty years since his father’s death until her own recent death in her nineties. Her loss still feels raw. No matter how hard David tried, she refused to move; there was always a good reason or an excuse that allowed a further postponement. David finds it ironic that he’s now in the same situation; his children are pressing him and their mother to downsize. He wonders if they know that the familiar makes life more comfortable. 

David is clearing the garage that’s been used as a dump for all those things no longer needed or of sentimental value or that might, one day, be useful. He laughs as he sees a pile of broken deckchairs. How many times did Mum say she’d repair them? As he moves the last deckchair, his laughter dies as he discovers his father’s wheelchair. God, I can see him hunched in this bloody chair like a prisoner; the image in my head is indelible, as if man and chair were fused into a single entity. Why is it still here? Sweeping aside the dust and cobwebs, he sees that the chair is as mundane as when it was purchased. The chair was cheap because Edward believed he would recover and walk again. It’s heavy and could only be pushed. The seat was padded red leatherette, now ripped and stained, and the back was canvas, now threadbare with age.

As David stares at the chair, his emotions move from sadness and regret to the rage and frustration he’d experienced as a young man. I didn’t understand why Dad was so optimistic that he’d get better; but Mum said it was true, so that was it. I didn’t realise that back then, the patient was often the last to know, or understand, what was wrong with them. Mum was given, in private, a different, more realistic prognosis, but was asked to keep the secret that Dad was dying because it would depress him. It’s hard to believe that such a plea was made and accepted. Mum’s heart was broken; she lived a lie and never told Dad the truth. It was only after his death that I understood what had been going on between them.

David wants to sit in the chair but is irrationally afraid that somehow he’ll be contaminated, harmed by some lingering disease. Finally lowering himself into the chair he weeps, tears rolling down his cheeks, and he gasps for breath. Mum and Dad were lying to each other for all those wasted years; they must have known that it was all pretence. Does love allow a lover to lie to protect their loved one from the truth? I don’t know.