Jack Watt
That trip to the war graves in France had taken a lot out of Henry. He had for the first time in his life, visited the grave of his brother George, who had died on the battlefield over forty years previously. Though Henry was the older of the two brothers, he had feigned illness to avoid going to war. His father had said that the family tradition must be upheld, one of them will be a soldier as he had been, and his father before him. Though George was the timid one, he had no option but to join up. Their father had believed Henry’s complaints of illness, though their mother knew in her heart that Henry was the stronger one and was always suspicious of his complaints, she knew that George would not survive the war. The wrong son was being sent to do battle.
George’s death, three months after he joined up, broke his mother’s heart. The grief of losing her timid, gentle, kind youngest son, knowing that Henry, who was the stronger one, the sharper one, should have gone and would have lived, as he would have charmed his way into an office job far from the front. She also observed, without comment, how his medical problems faded with the war’s ending. She died five years after George, almost to the day. Five years of grief, as she mourned her youngest son and angst as she watched her playboy elder son excel at sport as his proud father regaled in his recovery to full health.
As Henry drove up the long tree-lined twisting driveway to his new house, he could get glimpses of its splendour through gaps in the sparse early spring foliage. The beech trees had been planted when the house was built over three hundred years ago by one of Cromwell’s cohorts. A successful man like himself, who had gone with the flow, ducked and dodged, played the game and accumulated land and wealth easily. Though always at the pain of others, too often the pain of death. The property had stayed in the same family until the last owner had squandered his inheritance and was forced to sell.
Now it was Henry’s and he was full of pride as the gold coloured Bentley, which he had purchased after he had bought the house, purred up the gravel surface. A sound he thought, similar to a troop of soldiers marching along, their feet crunching on the pebbles. Soldiers…why did that thought keep coming to his mind now. It keeps intruding into his thoughts and with it comes that excruciating pain in his head. The doctors had checked him out and said everything was alright, but he had heard that before, many times throughout his life, as friends or acquaintances had been told just before they died.
‘Damn doctors, they know nothing, this pain is real, not imagined, should never have gone on that trip to France, should have left well enough alone,’ he mused.
Now the pain in Henry’s head was getting worse, and this time it was real. Was this all the bad Karma coming to him at once? His wife had encouraged him to go, no it was more than encouragement, she had arranged everything and coerced him into going.
‘The bitch, she knew it would rake up dirt that was well left alone. While I walked around the graveyards in Normandy in cold wind and rain freezing my nuts off, she went to New York with that friend of hers whose husband died last year, leaving her a fortune, now she was spending it like a child in a sweet shop. Rumour had it he had died on the job, too much Viagra probably. That was the worst of younger women; you felt you had to perform beyond your ability, will have to watch that.’
Lately she had been putting demands on him to perform…
‘Well she won’t get the better of me, I’ve seen the rest of them down and I’ll see her down too,’ thought Henry, as he walked up the wide granite steps to the front door of his stately home.
He had achieved his life long goal, the manor house, the gentleman’s car, the trappings that go with his wealth, now they will have to respect him, admit him into the hunt, come to the parties in his stately home, they won’t snub him now. He knew they would accept him eventually into their circle; all he had to do was generously sponsor a few horsy events and make a substantial donation to the renovation of the polo club that they all revered. Their Mecca was falling apart and none of them had ready cash to donate to it, they were asset rich and cash poor, a few simple acts like this and they would be glad to accept him.
Now all he had to do was get that damn wife of his into line. He should never have married her, it suited at the time but now she did not fit into the circles he wanted to move in. She has reached the end of her use to him. It was fine to have a dolly bird when he met her; useful for networking and the social circle of that time, but that was the past, now he was moving into the final phase of his long arduous climb up the social ladder. But Vera would not fit into their world and would not be accepted by them. She would hinder his entry into the gentry class. She suited the clubbing lifestyle of the last decade but had no role to play in this phase, her dress style of trendy chic garments, her enormously expensive boobs displayed to best effect had no place in their circle, conservative country style was the order of the day now and she stuck out like a tart in a bible class. He could not change her, after all he had moulded her, paid for all that cosmetic surgery and anyway he was finished with that stage of his life, tired of the glitter, the drugs, he was even tired of the sex lately, it wasn’t burning in his loins anymore. The problem was that she was still young and up for it and she was becoming more demanding of late, she had even begun taunting him about his lack of enthusiasm. She could become an embarrassment if she looked elsewhere.
‘Yes,’ he contemplated, ‘the time has come, and it is fortuitous that it can be neatly tied in with the burning of the west wing.’
The discovery of extensive dry rot after he had purchased the property was going to cost a lot to repair and an insurance claim for fire damage would suit nicely, as Henry had successfully pulled stunts like this in the past. He would carefully put the plan together, arranging to be out of the country at the time of the fire so he could not be thought of as a suspect.
Timing was everything in these matters, he would get his secretary to book him on a flight to New York four weeks from now, say he was going to buy some paintings for the house, take a night flight, that way he would actually be in the air when it happened, impossible to be incriminated, best alibi ever …
‘No, I’ll book it myself, don’t involve anyone else, that way there will be no questions asked … a Monday flight, Vera always took two sleeping tablets and went to bed early on a Monday evening, she needed to recover from her weekends of too much alcohol and drugs. I’ll set it up with those goons at the snooker hall’.
They had worked it well before for him, and they were reliable. He would pay them well, and he would let them think it was just an insurance claim on the property, that way they would have no qualms about doing it, no need to mention the fact that Vera would be asleep upstairs, and afterwards they would have to stay quiet about it, because if it got out they would all go down for a long time. Afterwards, Henry would tell them that she was not supposed to be there, that it was a terrible accident and he is devastated but it is no one’s fault. Let them think he is doing them a favour by not blaming them.
‘At last life will be easier when it’s all over, those pains will go away for good, it’s all that stress she is putting me under,’ he thought.
*****
Henry lay on the bed, in the large bedroom in the west wing, at his right hand lay the remote control of the large flat screen television that Vera had installed when they moved into the house. He hated it but she insisted on it.
“No one ever calls to see me since we moved out here to the country, all my friends are back in the city having fun.” she would whine, and she would stay in bed all day watching stupid daytime TV.
Having sent the day nurse home, Vera had tucked him into bed, told him to sleep well, she would be back in the morning and he was not to worry if she was late, as the day nurse would be in at nine. She had told him again that she had cancelled his New York flight and chided him for booking a flight on Easter Monday. He was still confused about things, ever since that last time the pain had hit him, he had brief recalls of events … hospital …doctors and nurses around him … voices …”massive stroke” …”slow recovery “…”never fully.”
‘Easter Monday, Jesus Christ, how could I have fucked up on that, every Easter Monday I go to the races, and the party afterwards is one of the years highlights,’ thought Henry. Vera never went to the races, but she would spend the day preparing herself for the all-nighter of a party. He looked over at the phone and went to reach for it but he could not move, his body was not obeying him; all he could do was move his right hand and fingers to operate the TV remote control. He turned down the sound on the TV and listened for noises, maybe he could shout out and they might hear him, or better still they had forgotten about the date … but no; that was not likely, he chose his operators well, they would be here. Henry heard the crash of breaking glass and tried to call out but his vocal chords were not up to it, his shout was barely above a whisper. Suddenly he remembered the alarm system.
’It will go off and they will come…O Jesus no no no.’
He had arranged to have it disconnected on the pretext of renovating work starting. After a short time he could hear the crackling sound of the flames as they licked and tasted the old and rotten dry timbers of the house before engulfing them. Outside the French windows he could see the dancing light of the flame illuminating the bare branches of the trees as the fire flared up when it engulfed curtains and furnishing, the sound of glass exploding with the heat, he tried to blank it all out but he could not resist listening.
He was hoping the noise would stop, hoping the fire would stop, wishing for a miracle to happen, he could smell smoke now, it was coming in under the door and he could see it rising like a spirit up the back of the door, across the ceiling – where the leading wisps of writhing twisting smoke were like two arms moving along the ornate cornice on each side of the room, coming around, hands forming at their ends to press on the spirit head of thick black heavy smoke that had moved at a slower pace across the centre of the ceiling. The head was growing larger and coming down to him, he could clearly see its gaping mouth; a black, wide open orifice surrounded by grey twisting lips, as though a silent scream was coming from it. The eyes were empty unseeing black sockets, but it was coming to him as surely as if it were real, the arms swirling with the body almost in a rhythm, the lips moving as though saying something to him. The television had gone blank, the electric cables having melted; the room was illuminated by the light coming through the bedroom windows from the flames that consumed greedily all they touched. The fire had spread to engulf the bare branches of the trees outside. Henry could now feel the temperature in the room rising rapidly, as the paint on the bedroom door blistered from the heat of the fire outside it; the sounds were at a crescendo as air rushed in to feed the flames. The sharp cracks that came from the inferno reminded him of rifle cracks. ‘This must be what it’s like on a battlefield, was this what it was like for George before he was killed all those years ago?’
These were Henry’s last thoughts in his confused state of fear, terror and regret, as he struggled for air, choking on the thick acrid smoke.
Notes
The piece began with an extension of the tutorial characters Sue and Tom, tied into a murder plot where one of them is murdered. I was quite pleased with the story and was prepared to submit this as my assignment however, on reviewing my course material; I re-read the article by Bill Greenwell on writing short stories that is supplied by the course team. The part that struck me at this time was that there should not be too many locations, and in my submission there were three very different locations, Sue’s elegant home, a London hotel, (lobby and bedroom) and a yacht in the Mediterranean sea. The problem was not how to get my characters from place to place; I could just ‘stick them there’ as advised in Creative Writing (2009 p 96) (1). I realised that there were too many settings to describe adequately.
I decided there was no remedy for that story, though I had briefly tried a different point of view, too many changes were required to make it work, so I abandoned it. I had to write a new piece, and for this I went through my notebook and decided to develop a character from activity 6.2 whom I had called ‘Henry’. As I re-wrote that piece and expanded on it I was not sure where it was going, I felt it could go on for too long and get nowhere and I was conscious of my word count. I had a beginning that I liked, but I was unsure of the middle, I was stuck! So I thought I would try a focussed freewrite, and cluster. From these I got the bones of an end to the story. This freed my mind on the midsection and allowed me to introduce Vera and describe her character.
On further rewrites and reviewing my course material and notebook I was reminded of a comment by Andrew Cowan from CD1 Creative Writing course material. (2) ‘dialogue lets the text breathe’. I then re-wrote, introducing some dialogue and some thoughts by Henry that were previously authorial comments, or should they be called ‘internal monologues’ as Hannif Kureishi refers to them also in CD1 (ibid).
The point of view is I believe third person limited omniscient. I found that I had slipped into Henry’s and Vera’s thoughts once or twice as narrator, this was probably shifting the PV to omniscient and as this shifting PV is, generally speaking undesirable, as you point out in your commentary on tutorial one, and also referred to in Creative Writing (2009 p 119) (ibid). I re-wrote these passages as thoughts by Henry, and placed Vera’s thoughts in double quotation marks, as they were now recalled by Henry.
I mentioned the type of tree that is lining the driveway of George’s new home. It was necessary to research the type of tree used in the stately homes of the time. I used the internet to seek out the type used and had to do some extensive searching, as while numerous sites mentioned tree lined drives, none referred to the type of tree. However I did find one that referred to beech trees, I then confirmed that they were deciduous and would have bare branches in early spring, thus allowing the view of the house through them and also the illumination of the bare branches by the fire.