Why Me?

The old man was sitting on a garden chair under the shade of a tree, his chin resting on the top of a walking stick planted between his feet. He was vaguely watching his two grandsons playing badminton on the lawn. On the cast metal table alongside him was a flying model aeroplane which he and the boys had been constructing. They had given it its final coat of ‘dope’ just before lunch and the scent of pear drops was still in the air, as was the delicate smell of fine oil from the lubricant on the looped bundle of elastic which would provide the power to the little plastic propeller.

The gardener had just finished cutting the lawn and was now in the process of cleaning it down with a final wipe-over with a petrol-soaked rag.

After a light lunch he had been walking down the grass path between the south-facing flower beds when he spotted some annuals which had gone over and couldn't resist pulling some of them out. As so often happens in a garden a task once started demands to be finished and he spent a full half hour pulling out the plants bent over, since the original intention had not required the kneeling pad. He was painfully reminded of how much he had done when he straightened up.

He made his laborious way to the comfort of the chair unable to ignore the little voice inside repeating what he knew  June would have said had she seen or heard him - 'serves you right' - but in a way that could not disguise genuine affection.

In fact Clive was 79, coming up to 80, in that millennium summer of 2000. Of course he was getting aches and pains and people he talked  to seemed to mumble more than they used to but his mind was as sharp as ever, well maybe not as fast - but then what was the rush?

At this moment Clive's mind was not so much wandering as wallowing, he was absorbing the smell of the new-mown grass and the petrol fumes and somewhere in his sub-conscious he accepted that they were somehow natural partners.

And so it was that a set of influences, haphazard but almost complete, enveloped him. He had just flopped into a chair, tired and relieved to have made it, shaded from the late August afternoon sun, he could hear the activities of others around him without the inclination or compulsion to react to them and that combination of  pear drops, fine oil, new-mown grass and petrol, familiar and yet vaguely unsettling.

Quietly at first a sound was added to the mixture, it was coming from the sky inland from them. The boys heard it first, and spotted its source before Clive was aware of it, and began to make their way towards him walking slowly backwards trying not to loose sight of the object in the sky. When it penetrated Clive's consciousness it was the last link needed to complete the sequence and it literally took his breath away - it was worse than just not breathing it was as if any breath that he already had had been taken away.

The sound was that of a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, more specifically that engine was in the airframe of a solitary Supermarine Spitfire, no doubt on its way to an air display along that holiday coast. It made a gentle diving turn over the sea to the west and straightened up almost over them before heading east up the coast.

When the boys reached him tears were welling up in his eyes and he didn't have the breath to reply to their pressing questioning seeking confirmation that it was what they thought it was. They were both getting alarmed when the tears did not stop and no words came out. Martin, the older one, sent his brother to fetch Nanny - fast.

When she arrived he was calmer but still could not trust himself to speak. To her simple question of 'whatever’s the matter?' he could only wave his hand vaguely at the sky - which was now empty when she looked up but Martin chipped in with 'there was a Spitfire going over'. Martin recognised it from a plastic model which he and Granddad had made together after last Christmas.

Clive looked at June, his eyes still wet with tears and embarrassedly shrugged his shoulders.

She recognised the gesture because something similar had happened before, only once to her knowledge and a long time ago early in their marriage. It had disturbed her deeply at the time because it had come out of the blue, apparently, and she had no way of understanding the force of the cause. He had been embarrassed then and she suspected it had surprised and disturbed him as well. It was never discussed because either he couldn't or wouldn't refer to it again.

That particular group of sensual influences had combined in that unguarded moment when he was in a relaxed and vulnerable state and it had triggered the recall of memories deliberately and deeply buried more than half a century ago. When they hit him the impact was worse than it had been when the events originally occurred, as if in their long incarceration they had shed any ‘wrappings’ leaving only the concentrated malign essences. To make things worse instead of accumulating over a couple of months, as they had originally, they arrived in just one moment.

Clive Peterson was suddenly and brutally forced to face feelings that he hadn’t felt able to face fifty-odd years ago and now here they were, demanding his attention all at the same time and with no warning. His body started putting up its defences, as it naturally does in times of stress, by closing down the volume of the nervous system around the centres of pain, but one feeling remained undiminished now as it had then - guilt.

Formats

Softcover

$15.49

Hardcover

$25.99

E-Book

$4.99

Softcover

$15.49