59. THE COLD, COLD FLESH

Part the last.

“It’s good,” said Ursula to Greendale, “that the television people are repeating some of the stuff we liked years ago.”

“Like Midsummer Murders, you mean?” grinned her husband, “who would have believed it, a peace-loving creature like yourself fascinated by the world of death and cruelty...”

“Not cruelty,” interrupted Ursula, “I can’t stand cruelty in any of its shapes, real or in storyland.”

“I know,” he smiled at her, “and neither can I. Come on, darling, we’ve had our fill of solving insoluble murders and it might as well be bed time.”

“You won’t ravish me tonight, will you?” she asked, cheekily.

“Don’t you want me to?”

“I think, maybe, our goodnight sex has been no more than a goodnight kiss since we got married,” she sighed. “And that’s quite enough for me.”

“Maybe next year?” he joked, “a ninety-nine year old bout of carnal lust?”

“I find it hard to believe that I’ve lived so long, sweetheart,” she sighed. Ninety-nine years! Born in 1920! Just think of the changes we’ve seen.”

He nodded his head. “The world’s a different place,” he murmured, “the telly we watched tonight, big colour picture on a flat screen that takes up hardly any space… and I remember the first television I bought for us way back soon after the war… a great big box with a magical but tiny black-and-white screen, and white dots spread across the picture every time a car went past.”

“And the repairman every few weeks,” she added.

“Come on, darling, let’s go and reminisce about the good old days before we go to sleep...”

“Good old days… were they so good?” she asked.

“In some ways,” he said, “but in other ways we’re fine now.”

“I was never a student of politics,” she said quietly as the two of themselves very gently made their way up the stairs to their bedroom, “but it’s politics that seems to have started to rule the world rather than be ruled by it. I don’t like the way things are going … but we’re the wrong generation to be too worried about it.”

“Too true,” he sighed as he helped her up the last step. “We will have to have that dining room converted into a bedroom before we’re too feeble to climb the stairs,” he added.

“Maybe it’s too late,” she sighed.

“Don’t say that, my love,” he said, but he knew that maybe she was right.

When they were in bed they did as they’d said they would do and gently, lovingly, kissed each other goodnight. Then Ursula turned over and her eyes drifted halfway to being closed.

“Those early days were fun, though,” she said quietly, I remember my early schooldays, it hardly ever seemed to rain and the teachers were all like wonderful favourite aunts, kindly and helpful...”

“Were they?” he whispered back.

“And I had friends, real friends, as small as me, and as alive! During the holidays we’d play all day long together, across Farmer Bismuth’s fields, rolling in the hay until he chased us off...”

In reply, Greendale snored.

“You always could sleep on a clothes line,” she whispered, “but it’s nice. Sometimes, to go back over the years in my mind and revisit the good old days, maybe for a last time, who can tell...”

Then the whispers turned to thoughts in her mind as she closed her eyes and her head sunk into her pillow.

I remember Snootnose behind the hedges of the farmer’s fields when he thought no-one could see him, she thought, he’d stand there thinking himself invisible, with his trousers round his ankles and I’d be there, unbelieving, not really knowing what I was looking at as he, what did they call it? Abused himself… I wonder if it did him any harm? Did it turn him blind like the folks said it would? Was that why he had that dreadful squint?

Next to her, Greendale was silent and still.

“I wish I could sleep like you, my love,” she whispered, and her thoughts carried on.

And I remember Jane when she told me she was in the family way, scared, she was, and that might have been the end for her back in those days when it was thought by some that a lass who allowed herself to be made pregnant must have something wrong in her head … and the lads who did it, casting their wild oats on whatever lass passed them by, they were manly and strong and their seed good… It really wasn’t fair in those days.

Her mind cleared for a moment, and then an inner scene moved on, like an old length of film and hard to tell whether the images she was seeing were monochrome or emblazoned with colour. She sighed, and Greendale lay still next to her, breathing, it seemed, so quietly that she couldn’t hear it.

He always could sleep like that, mused Ursula, and I remember when Old Aunty Emmett gave me a job in that lovely little shop of hers, how grateful I was not to have to go to the Manor in service for the Snootnoses. I would have hated that, up at the crack of dawn and working away until nightfall, scrubbing and cleaning fire grates and polishing silver. Servants weren’t people, they were slaves by another name.

And then Old Aunty Emmett grew weak and frail, and her arthritis kept her in her room above the shop where she had nothing to do but sleep and listen to the wireless. That’s what we called the radio in those days, the wireless, which was odd seeing as how ours had a very long wire poking out of the back and coiled round the room behind a dado rail. But she came down one last time. I remember her sitting on that old stool behind the counter with a secret to tell me … and the Squire barged into the shop and started berating her over nothing, but she had passed away…

And I remember when Greendale came into my life, with papers for me to sign when I inherited the shop from the dear old soul. I remember the light that came into my life that day, a light brought about by the solicitor’s office boy, my Greendale…

She sighed again.

“It was you, Greendale, that day,” she whispered, and nudged him gently, but she knew he wouldn’t stir.

The war came along, but the two of us made our Primrose before your balls got neutered by the conflict, she thought. And then, when you were back and we couldn’t give Primrose a brother or a sister you blamed me for sleeping around and said someone else must have sired our daughter. But you were confused, my love, and nobody else had. But for a while, because of doubt and accusation, we drifted apart…

And then there was Cardew. A good man, was Cardew, and I loved him until he came to a terrible end in a sudden hailstorm. And the cruelty of it was he died because he, who was weak, protected me, who was strong, with his body.

She saw it in her mind, saw the way he fell, and then, like the chaos of a lost film being broken and rejoined in quite the wrong order, she saw his funeral, her parents’ funerals, Jude and his madness, his goodness and his insanity and his fondness for spiritual matters when they were in a bottle.

I have seen the good and the bad in the world, the sweet and the sour, the happy and the sad, have rejoiced and mourned over the years, have held a new born infant in my arms and buried more than one dead old soul in the Earth. I had thought the future might be better than the past, torn as it was by bloodbaths in the name of wars that only the politicians properly understood but hardly ever died in themselves, why should they when young men can be taught how to kill? But now I don’t know … times they might be changing again and maybe it could be the moment to step away and leave hopes and dreams to others...

And the images grew fainter as her mind succumbed to the deepest of sleeps, and then, in the early hours of the morning, flickered out altogether.

And all the while Greendale lay silent next to her, and still, and he slowly grew colder and colder as the night slowly gave way to a brand new dawn.

It might have troubled Ursula, but waking up seemed to be such a troublesome thing to do that if she thought at all she didn’t think it worth bothering with, and she lay there just as still and silent and cold as the one she loved.

And the little village of Swanspottle stirred, its people slowly woke and climbed out of their various beds, and some of them smiled and others grumbled as they got on with another day in their lives.

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 07.09.18

Reviews

[barleygirl]

WOW! Before I got to the end, I was thinking how full of interesting tidbits your story is, making it very compelling, even tho it's really just a little fart of a storyline -- two old folks going to bed. I was admiring how you embellished this snippet of a storyline so that it felt like a fulsome story, but not overdone. I was amazed at how your doddering dialogue is realistic for two old folks whose discourse is not often linear. Just a good wholesome story . . . until the old fart started to get cold and colder! GEEZ! That took me by surprise! You have an amazing imagination to constantly rip out these stories like you do! (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie