Grief Encounters

 

 

STUART PAWSON

Johnny Mathis could go to hell. The gag tightened and she wished she’d never heard of
Johnny-stinking
-Mathis. She couldn’t understand why she’d been singled out for this treatment. The others stood around, subdued by the guns pointing at them, as her ankles were strapped to the chair’s legs, her wrists bound behind her and the gag stuffed into her mouth.

Then the man who was obviously the leader of the gang produced the flat tin with the thin spout and held it above her. Seconds later the fumes from the lighter fluid were stinging her eyes as he doused her in it. They bulged in terror as she fought against her bindings. She couldn’t breathe, tears were streaming down her cheeks and mucus bubbled from her nose. The warmth on the back of her thighs told her that she’d wet herself.

‘Listen, you lot,’ he said, ‘and listen well. Do as you’re told and nobody gets hurt. But any funny business by any one of you and…’ he leant over the trembling girl to read the name on the badge pinned to her company-blue blouse ‘…and Gail here goes up like a Roman candle.’ He illustrated the point by striking a match, letting it flare and then shaking it out. Gail fainted, and the gathered staff of the York and Durham Bank got the message. There’d be no heroics this morning.

‘OK,’ the leader said. ‘Now start bringing the money out of the vault.’

Officially, the tradition of Wakes Week had died out in the wool and cotton towns that clung to the Pennines between Yorkshire and Lancashire, but the habit was as ingrained as the soot that adorned the remaining mill chimneys. In the middle of the nineteenth century the mill workers started taking a few days off in summer to break the crushing effort of work that would have had a slave owner vilified by his peers had he inflicted it on his charges. It wasn’t a luxury. It was brought on by the desperation of working twelve or fourteen hours a day, six days a week, in the hammering, dust-laden atmosphere of the mills. Most of all, it was something to look forward to. A goal, however distant, that made living and raising a family just about tolerable.

The mill owners weren’t happy, but began to realise that closing down completely for a week perhaps wasn’t such a bad idea. Maintenance could be done. Machines could be modified without interrupting production. Inaccessible places, where the remnants of weft and weave gathered with each year’s coagulated oil drippings, could be cleaned up without having to send a small child in amongst the whirring cogs, flapping drive belts and oscillating shafts. Children with arms and legs missing were a wasted resource, and a small embarrassment to the great and the good as they thanked God for their lot at the Sunday morning services. So, in a gesture of munificence that would have had a modern spin doctor blushing with shame, they granted all their workers one week’s holiday, every September. Unpaid.

That week the mills fell silent and there was a mass migration to places like Blackpool, Morecambe and the Lakes. The wind blew the smog away from towns that had lived in its shadow for years, and the distant hills could be seen by anyone left to walk the deserted streets. In Lancashire it was called Wakes Week, and the name was universally adopted. Then it moved to July, to fit in with school holidays, and eventually it became two weeks until, a hundred years after the practice started, it died out. Workers wanted their time off when it suited them, not their employer.

Except that in a land of fickle weather, in an area of that land where the fickleness was taken to extremes, July was as good a time as any to take a break. The majority of workers still took their holidays then. Two weeks before, they would work as much overtime as they could to bolster their pay packets. The towns still fell quiet, but now much of the exodus was towards Benidorm, Majorca, or Cornwall. People still lived in a cash society, so off they would go, wallets bulging with two weeks’ wages, plus overtime, plus what they’d drawn from the savings club that many firms operated.

It was a jolly, carefree time. It was a great time to rob a bank.

‘Pile it there,’ the leader ordered. They toiled for fifteen minutes, bringing the money out of the vault, until the huge safe was empty. The female members were then locked in the vault and the men worked with the gang, carrying the money upstairs. There were three flights, then it was through the hole in the wall, across the upstairs room of the hairdressing salon that was next door to the bank, through another hole in the wall and down the three flights of the next shop, which was empty and for sale.

When all the money was transferred the male staff were made to join their colleagues in the vault. A van painted with the name of a fictitious firm of shopfitters came up the back street behind the bank and parked two doors along, exactly as arranged. The gang members, all wearing green overalls, tossed the bags of money into the van as casually as if it were debris they’d made while redesigning the interior of the empty shop and they drove away. It was going to be a bleak Wakes Week for a lot of people.

They were an odd couple, and it wasn’t just the age difference. Plenty of men went out with women thirty-some years their junior and made brave efforts to bridge the generation gap, but in this case something had gone wrong. She was dressed in a clingy silk dress with a brief mohair jacket across her shoulders as a token protection against the evening chill; he was wearing a chain-store blue suit, with appropriate shirt and tie. She wore
slingback
sandals with heels like bayonets, he, highly polished brogues. She was all Harvey Nichols and Jean Paul Gaultier, he Marks and Spencer and Debenhams.

But his happiness was clear to see. He placed a hand in the middle of her back, steering her through the throng as they exited the cinema complex and she instinctively moved closer to him. Her perfume tantalised his senses. Then there was the feel of her body, curved and alive, like a snake slipping through his fingers, and the silkiness of that dress, all conspiring against him.

‘That was wonderful,’ he said. ‘I really enjoyed it.’

‘Judi Dench always plays a good part,’ she replied.

‘Even if I did think the foyer was a good representation of what hell must look like.’ He’d shrunk in horror as they’d entered the complex, the purple neon, strobe lights and noise battering his sensibilities. Fortunately, once inside Theatre 1, it was not too far removed from his memories of what a cinema should be.

Strolling back to the car they held hands, her fingers gently caressing his. He opened the door of his Rover Connoisseur for her and she thanked him as she sank into the seat. He walked round, slipped into the driver’s seat and checked that she’d fastened her safety belt.

‘Coffee at my place?’ he suggested as he started the engine and pulled the gear lever into D for drive. This was their sixth date, and after the last two they’d gone back to his place. They hadn’t made love, not quite, but if the progression continued, tonight could be the night.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she replied. ‘Not tonight, if you don’t mind. I’m feeling rather tired.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said, a touch of relief tempering his disappointment. ‘I’ll take you home.’ It had been a long time since his last sexual activity, and even then it had been all rather low key, more duty than passion, and he was the wrong side of sixty. As they left the complex he glanced across and saw the sign advertising the film they’d watched:
Shakespeare In Love
.

They drove in silence until they were clear of the town centre, her hand resting on his on the centre console, their fingers restlessly intertwining. Street lighting ended and the traffic thinned out. This was the more affluent side of town, where anything less than a Series 3 BMW belonged to the nanny. He indicated a right turn which would have taken them towards her home, but she said: ‘No, Edward. Go straight on.’

He cancelled the signal. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry. We should have gone for that coffee. Can we just go somewhere quiet and have a talk, please? I don’t think I want to go home, yet.’

‘Will he be there?’

‘He may be. It’s a possibility. He sometimes comes to collect things, then gets drunk and falls asleep on the settee.’

‘Will you be all right?’

‘I think so.’

‘He hasn’t been violent again?’

‘No, just that one time. I think he got the message.’

‘Well if he ever is, I want you to promise to call the police. Or me. Domestic violence is completely unacceptable.’

She glanced across at him, squeezing his fingers and smiling. ‘I promise, Edward,’ she said, then, ‘Turn in here. This should be nice and quiet.’

It was a pay-and-display car park at the entrance to the Sculpture Park. Through the day visitors came from far and wide to see the Henry Moores and Barbara Hepworths in a rural setting, but parking was free after six o’clock and the clientele at eleven-thirty were students of a more natural style of anatomy. Edward was surprised to see that there was a scattering of cars dotted about the park, lights off, windows steamed, gently rocking.

‘Gosh!’ his girlfriend exclaimed. ‘It’s busy. I thought we’d have the place to ourselves. Stop over there, under the trees.’

He did as he was told and parked in the shadows, well away from all the other cars. He killed the lights and engine and pulled the brake on.

They sat in silence for a while until she said, ‘I like being with you, Edward. You’re so comfortable. Undemanding. I can relax with you. You’re my rock.’

He reached behind her and rested his arm across her shoulders, pulling her closer. The mohair jacket fell off and he cupped her shoulder in his hand, stroking it until the strap of her dress slipped down her arm. He was confused and inexperienced, and not sure if he wanted to be regarded as comfortable. ‘I…’ he began, then stopped.

‘You what?’ she asked, gently.

‘I…I like being with you, too, Teri.’ It was only the second time he’d used her name all evening. It wasn’t a name he felt at ease with, and far more exotic than that of anyone else he knew. ‘You’ve given me a new life,’ he went on. ‘I never realised I could be this happy. If you told me that you didn’t want to see me again, I’d still always be grateful to you. You’d always have a fond place in my memories.’

‘Don’t say things like that,’ she admonished, resting her head against his shoulder. ‘I won’t leave you. Not unless you want me to.’

He pressed his face into her hair, saying: ‘I never want you to leave me, but…’

‘No buts.’ She turned her face to kiss him, then said: ‘Oh! This is in the way,’ and banged her fist on the big car’s centre console that jutted between them like a sea defence.