the last blog post certainly seemed to do the trick. one day I'm depressed into immobility and publicly castigating myself in print for my lack of productivity, the next, I'm a whirl of activity, put-off phone calls are made, business is done, pictures are drawn, photographs taken, (and posted), and damn my eyes if I don't write a short story as well! -a good one too. - and not porn or gender melding stuff either- a real evolutionary piece. just to show you I'm going to post it here in a minute. -that'll set the cat among the magpies!
THE VISIT
Banfield paused at the door and looked in. Mrs Verra was, as usual, fixated the low-mounted murmur of the flat- screen television on the lace covered table centred in her small room. She spent the largest proportion of her days doing that, appearing in public only at mealtimes, when she would direct the same beady eyed concentration onto a non -specific area on the far side of her table. More than once her attention had been interpreted as an acquisitive interest in her opposite numbers food and a outbreak of bickering had resulted. On one occasion the bickering had grown loud and acrimonious. Beef stroganoff had been thrown. Somehow, sago pudding had found its way onto the “Stipplcrete” ceiling.
It wasn’t surprising really. Beef stroganoff was universally unpopular with the patients and, Banfield had noticed over the years of his tenure at Husselton almost as likely to be used as ammunition or simply dropped on the floor as eaten.
The thought of dinner dragged Banfield back to the present. he had, after all. been on his way down to the dining hall for the evening meal; not to eat though; God forbid, but to supervise. Well, to be more accurate, to supervise the nursing staff as they supervised the patients.
Mrs Verra looked up at him. Her eyes glinted glassily in the reflected corpse-like glow from the television. Banfield heard the tinny jingle of a carpet supply chain from her headphones.
“Hello doctor Banfield” Banfield almost jumped.
In their many long months of mutual incarceration at Husselton this was the first time that Mrs Verra had directly acknowledged his existence. More than that though, she had apparently learnt his name, and what was more remembered it. Now, for some reason, Mrs Verra was in the mood to talk. She picked up her Styrofoam cup of tea and sipped at it, daintily avoiding the dangling tag. The white material of the cup Banfield noted, was already heavily stained with the coral purple lipstick Mrs Verra slathered her lips with case some with Mrs Verra looked about the room, and, in a flash of fuddled hospitality offered the cup, with its contents of still steaming tea to Banfield. Banfield refused politely enough hoping to preserve the illusion that their chance meeting was social rather than professional. Mrs Verra put the cup back on the small cream melamine tray on the crowded lace table cloth that covered the table that the television flickered away on. Her movement blocked the light to the small highly-polished brass Dresden shepherdess that held pride of place. The direct reflection of the room light vanished as she put he cup down, then returned as she withdrew her arm and returned her attention to Banfield. Her eyes were suddenly very bright
“My husband was in Spearwings, during the war. do you know about Spearwings?” Banfield nodded.
Everyone knew about them. After all, everyone watched documentaries. What position did he fly in? There was more than a flicker of boyish interest in this question. After all. planes were boyish dreams before they mutated into adult nightmares. She shook her shook her head;
“I don’t know, he couldn’t tell me” Secrecy you know”. But her eyes flicked to the left and examined the area over his shoulder. Something responsible then.
“Where did he go? During the war?” Banfield kept the question light, social, as unimportant as the weather that pressed inwards against the windows and made runnels of condensation drip down the misted glass
“I don’t know. I had no way of finding out, you know, afterwards.” This last was believable enough, but her eyes weren’t. They lost focus, looked through Banfield. She knew then, and wherever it was it was somewhere important. After all. Who would waste a 500 megaton bomb on a rural telephone box anyway?
Mmrs Verras’s eyes were a study in pain.
”Do you think we were right to do it?” Doctor Banfield?
The raw need in Mrs Verra’s eyes was imposing. Banfield had to think for a second. There was the cheap, easy answer that might possibly set the woman’s mind at rest at the expense of her feeling that she had been fobbed off in some way. It would be easy enough “yes of course we were right Mrs Vera, after all, remember, they started it.” Easy enough to say; easy enough perhaps even to believe, unless you were a half-mad old lady on whom responsibility hung heavily and uncomfortably askew. But the truth was as always rather more complicated and cold comfort on a night when the fog pressed its fingers into the cracks between the stones of the walls and scrabbled the dessicated putty sealant out from around the glass of the window
The truth it would be then. He took Adele by her hands and looked directly into her face
“Mrs Adele Verra I am sorry to have to inform you that your husband, Kumar Amit Verra passed away this morning in the medical facility at Mottram Base. I have been in contact with the medical staff officer at the base and he has asked me to inform you that your husband’s passing was peaceful and painless. He asked me to apologise that arrangements could not be made in time for you to be at your husbands bedside, but by the time the seriousness of his condition had become clear and you had been located, the weather had closed in and travel had become impossible”
It was hard to keep the military cadences out of his voice, Old habits, it seemed, died hard.
“No. Oh No.” The strength seemed to leave Mrs Verra’s knees. She sank away from him, to the chair behind her. Banfield heard air sighing out of the eyelets in the vinyl seat cushion underneath her. The sound stopped quickly. Mrs Verra was a very small woman.
Alex Rieneck April 2012
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Copyright Alex Rieneck. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this story may be reproduced, re-engineered as an ebook, hosted on a pay per view site or offered for sale in any way without prior written permission from the author.
