WRITTEN IN THE STARS

Cecil is a Believer in something.

Cecil Bond was sure he was going to die that night, and when he awoke next morning he was shocked to find himself still alive.

It had started with his predicted demise in the astrological column in the local paper. “Make preparations for a very important journey,” it had said, and at his age he could only think of one very important journey that he might be expected to make: the one that started in his bed and ended in Heaven. So he went to bed.

He was quite sure that Heaven was where he would end up. He’d heard of the dreadful fiery alternative ad dismissed it out of hand. He had no intention of burning for all of eternity, and he’d heard that eternity can be a very long time indeed. Hadn’t he behaved himself?

He cast his mind back over key moments in his life.

When he’d been thirteen and Josh Binkle had tried to teach him things to do with his private parts, hadn’t he refused to take any notice and beat Josh up for his cheek? That was the good thing about being him: he was big enough and strong enough to beat other boys up. That was when he’d been a kid, of course, he didn’t go around beating folk up these days, mostly because his early rapid growth had petered out by the time he was fourteen and everyone else had caught up with him. With the balance no longer in his favour he wouldn’t and couldn’t dream of beating anyone up!

But beating Josh up had been all right. He’d asked for it, with that dirty mouth of his and the way he was always fiddling inside his shorts even when people were watching. Anyway, everyone said Josh was a sewer rat and nobody except Josh minded him being beat up.

“Serve you right, you satanic scum,” he’d said to the lad’s bleeding nose. He hadn’t quite known what satanic meant, not back then when he’d been thirteen, but in subsequent years he learned he’d been quite right.

Then, a few years later, he’d met Josephine Glover. Widely reckoned to be the most beautiful girl in the neighbourhood and wearing the disgusting short skirts and frocks that were becoming all the rage, she had pranced past his home with her legs up to her bottom and her nose in the air. It was disgusting.

“That girl needs to learn a few lessons in modesty,” his mother had said to him.

“But you’ve got to admit that she’s pretty,” sighed his father.

“You’re old enough to be her granddad,” his mother told the older man, unkindly because it wasn’t true.

“I think she’ll go to hell when she dies, and serve her right,” Cecil had announced, needing to shake off a feeling that maybe he ought to be out there talking to girls like Josephine herself, laughing with her, running down the street with her, maybe even helping her out of her clothes if they got wet. That sort of thought, though, shamed him and he needed to spend a few minutes on his own somewhere to dislodge it the only way he knew how, in deep and spiritual prayer. He did quite a lot of praying and often wondered why his prayers never seemed to be specifically answered.

Like why was it so wrong to like looking at Josephine Glover. But he did, and found himself failing to avoid her when the obvious way to go was anywhere but where she was going. In later years it might have been suggested that he was stalking her.

Then one day he’d been caught out in the rain with Josephine Glover, and not just any rain but what everyone called a downpour, and she had an umbrella, a large one borrowed from her father left over from when he went out golfing.

“You can shelter under here with me, Cecil,” she had said, and it did seem the wise thing to do, so he had thanked her in a sort of impersonal and very godly way, and walked with her under that giant umbrella.

He sighed. She smelled so good. Prayers would have to be said when he got home.

They were both going into town, she to the cinema to watch a romantic and rather naughty French film and he to the chapel where he’d find a corner in which to pray. So staying under that umbrella with her was the natural thing to do, until she had said something amusing, giggled like some girls do, and rubbed her chest quite deliberately against his forearm right next to his hand.. At least, he was sure it was deliberately. It had to be, surely?

“You are a disgusting, vile and filthy w***e,” he told her, largely because the contact had set into motion a physical reaction in his own trousers, and he hated himself for it and knew that he needed one thing more than anything else, and that was immediate communication with his Lord and Saviour, and forgiveness.

“Who do you think you are, Cecil-the-queer,” she had snapped back at him, “Of all the cheek! Go on, calling me names like that, get out from under my umbrella right now!”

He thought of punching her, but there were other people around and they might not understand that he had a perfect reason for doing that, so instead he pinched her arm as viciously as he could and ran off.

“Ouch, you bully!” she had snarled at his disappearing back, “wait until I tell my dad!”

She was in her teens so it was quite likely she would tell her dad. He was a renowned wrestler who made quite a lot of money on the circuit, beating other men up and being generally hated by wrestling audiences the county over.

“Tell him, then! See if I care!” he had shouted back at her, and as chance would have it wasn’t looking where he was going when he actually and physically bumped into the gentleman in question. And that gentleman had spent years developing his stomach among other parts of his huge anatomy.

“What did you call my daughter?” boomed the wrestler who had heard everything.

“Er, nothing,” he lied because he had a natural fear of pain and could see some coming.

“He said I was a w***e, dad,” explained the delicious Josephine Glover.

“He did then, did he?” bellowed her father, and he stood as close to Cecil as his own stomach would allow and he asked, “you know what weedy little boys shouldn’t do?”

“No sir,” stammered Cecil, suddenly very much in awe of the big man.

“Upset me by telling lies about my kith and kin,” hissed the wrestler right into his face, “and if you do it again I’m afraid I’ll have to do this…”

And suddenly, without warning, he picked Cecil up and held him in the air.

“And then I’ll have to slam you down onto the pavement until every bone in your body is splintered and you hurt where you never even suspected it was possible for you to hurt!”

Then he put Cecil down, and fortunately no pain was involved, and watched him scurry off with a grin on his huge face.

The beautiful Josephine, though, had nothing to do with Cecil ever again, not that she’d had much to do with him before the incident, and when she became a female police officer and scowled at him as if he was a murderer or something equally illegal he felt as if she might arrest him for doing nothing, and get away with it. He knew she was popular at the police station. Her gorgeous legs made sure of that.

He moved house after that, into a flat where his parents wouldn’t offend him every week on a Sunday by misbehaving noisily in their bedroom. He found work in the bus depot close to his new home and dreamed most days of girls he’d never met. And for a few years all went well until he met Jane Foster.

Jane was no actual beauty. For a start, she had a hare lip and a minuscule bosom which gave her a sort of plank look. And her hair, no matter what she did to it, was spiky in a way he thought was either dirty or untidy or possibly both. But he was approaching thirty by then, single and well aware that people called him names because of it. He suspected that the spiteful w***e Josephine was spreading rumours from her position in the police force, and he would have complained to her superior officer if he had one shred of evidence to support his suspicion. But he didn’t.

Jane Foster was in her late thirties and knew that she was reaching an age beyond which her heart’s desire, a happy and beautiful little baby all of her own, would no longer be a realistic objective. So one day she accidentally-on-purpose bumped into Cecil, making sure her handbag (huge, leather but with a metal clasp) banged firmly into his trousers.

“I’m so sorry,” she lisped. That was her favoured form of speech, was lisping.

He knew where it hurt him and was tempted to rub it, but knew that rubbing himself just there was highly improper and might give rise to all manner of jocularity if he was seen doing it, so he suffered in silence.

“Let me take you for a coffee in order to make amends,” she lisped, “it probably hurts, you know, where I caught you with my bag. I know men can be delicate just there.”

So he accepted the offer with bad grace. And over the coffee (which she paid for) he told her in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of women who could mutilate a man’s genitals and think a cup of coffee might make every thing alright.

“And,” he added as an afterthought, “if I thought you did it on purpose I’d give your a sound thrashing!”

“Oh dear,” she muttered.

“And I’m a man of my word,” he added, wondering if he should loosen his belt as a warning of his sincerity.

“I tell you what,” she said when she had absorbed his invective, “in order to put things right how about marrying me? I could cook for you, iron your clothes, even sleep in the same room as you, and it would all be perfectly proper if we were married.”

And very much against his better judgement he did end up marrying her. He was single and subject to unkind rumours and she was ugly, so it seemed a fair bargain.

And they lived what might be considered to be a miserable marriage but he had a kind of irrational faith that convinced him that misery was better than nothing, so he put up with it whilst praying quite a lot. She, on the other hand, couldn’t get into her head that he didn’t find her attractive enough to want to, as she put it, breed with her, and he blamed the knock her vicious handbag had administered when they first met whenever she asked him why he didn’t have what she called normal male desires.

So the years drifted along. They hardly quarrelled because they rarely communicated. She did what she said she’d do, cook for him, iron for him, make herself available for his very desire should one put in an appearance, which it never did, possibly on account of his worrying about the interminable praying that he would be obliged to follow it up with. And anyway he did a great deal of praying, making sure that any celestial examination of his soul would find that nothing was lacking in the goodness department.

Jane died in bed when she was eighty one, and it was on that day that Cecil, in his seventies himself, read the astrology column in the newspaper and because he believed in the skills of astrologers and their interpretation of the stars he convinced himself that he was going to die that night, and be joined for eternity with a woman he had learned to despise, in a place he called Heaven.

But he woke up next morning to find himself alive, thoroughly disappointed, and when there was a knock at the door he was prepared to administer a great deal of angry insults to whoever might be there spoiling his misery.

“What do you want?” he demanded of the grinning individual bobbing up and down, not bothering to wonder why he smelt of smoke and was generating an unwholesome amount of heat.

“I’ve come to take you with me,” grinned the stranger, flicking his tail backwards and forwards, “now that you’re dead…”

© Peter Rogerson 09.08.21

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