Deathwatch - Final (17 page)

I do, he said. I like you that much--and more. He jiggled her fingers in his. C'mon then--what about Nell, or Nellie?

Ugh! Makes me sound like a fat old washwoman, she giggled.

Ellie? would you like me to call you Ellie sometimes?

Ellie, she nodded, squeezing his hand hard. We have a secret, now, she said--just like real lovers. Tom saw the color high on her cheekbones, her eyes glinting with tears.

He remembered the last day, the way her blue eyes shone, the way her voice made him tremble inside. Then sitting cross-legged on his narrow bed, Tom wrote the same words she’d spoken in the kitchen as tribute for her.

You're sweet. I love you.

Hesitating, he nibbled the tip of the pen, then added,

I have your secret now--just like a real lover.

He looked down at the flyleaf and frowned. Somehow, there ought to be more. A man, he told himself, would write more. But what more? Hard as he tried, he couldn't think what else Ellen might want to have written in her book. Maybe, sometimes it's all right to say or do the simple thing, he thought. It was an odd grown up kind of notion, but it seemed right.

He closed the book. The ink had smudged, but he was sure Ellen wouldn't mind. She wasn't a one for scolding over trifles.

He lay back, his mind churning until he was content with his plan to memorialize her. He meant to sit by Ellen's side, hold her hand and watch her sleep. When the two of them--he and Ellen--were alone, he would slip the red book in the pocket of her dress. He wanted to lean over her still form, stroke her baby yellow hair, and kiss her lips once, lightly, before they sealed the lid.

An innocent goodbye, a last farewell--but they couldn't even have that--all because Margaret made a show of her grief.

Now standing by the gravesite, listening to the useless words of the somber priest, his throat felt tight, his mouth filled with a sour taste. He watched three black rooks sitting on a tree limb, preening themselves.

The first shovelful of wet heavy dirt struck the coffin with a thump. The sound was so final, he thought; no, he amended inwardly, if you thought about it, it was no more final than the farmer's knock at the door. Both sounds heralded death.

Goodbye Ellie, he whispered into the wind. I love you. He felt the release of tears.

He looked up. Rose's mouth was working, her eyes greedily following the sexton's progress as if she herself was being filled instead of Ellen's grave. His mother's face was dark with a strange grim satisfaction. She shuffled her handkerchief from hand to hand, anxious, he guessed, to get back to her work. His Aunt May buried her face against Cedric's shoulder and cried a long wailing note.

Ellen was gone and he was left with all that hate. The thin red leather diary was still inside his shirt front, pressing heavily--an unbearable weight--against his chest.

- 3 -

"
S
he's rotting, boy, don't you think?" Rose Smith sat by the fire, her feet in a bucket of hot water, her knobby arms and chest wrapped in a heavy shawl.

Tom didn't answer the old woman, he gave the smoldering peat a sharp stab with the iron poker. The turf tumbled downward and began to smoke; it would certainly go out, if he let it be, he hoped it would.

Since Ellen died the year before, his grandmother was thriving. She was stronger, less prone to maundering. She made sense when she talked--at least around him. The rest of the family still thought she was dotty, but Rose was as lucid as the clearest stream when she spoke to Tom. He sighed--that was part of the problem--she spoke to him often, everyday.

Somehow taking caring of her turned into his job. He tried to fob it off on Delia, but his mother put an immediate stop to it. No, Delia was going to help Margaret in the kitchen, be a kind of cook's apprentice. He maintained Winston, the youngest--now five--could look after a woman in a chair, bring her tea, fetch and carry. Winston, his mother declared was going to be in charge of the hens. Everyone else was older and stronger and needed for the heavy work in the fields.

"Must be tight, lying there all day, day in and day out, the wood pressing down on your face." Rose turned bright malicious eyes on him. "Ever think about it?"

"Think about what?" Tom opened a small closet to the left of the mantel and shook out a cloth. He began polishing the low brass fender. She might fall asleep if he moved quietly.

"Death, you ninny."

He didn't look up from where he stooped, but he heard the water slosh in the bucket. "Get me a towel," Rose said. He handed her a clean rag from the closet. She grunted.

"Good enough for me, eh?" She began drying her feet.

He shrugged.

Rose laughed. "Think it rains in on ’er? Cedric was never much of a carpenter. Yer brothers are no better, nor May's boys."

"Her name is Ellen."

"You mean was." Rose scuffled to the rocker and eased herself down. "Sure," she began swaying in the chair, "it's probably a regular Brighton beach in there, tides comin’ and goin’. Bet she gets flooded regular like."

Tom tried not to listen, but the image of Ellen laying in her grave with water rising made him ill. He clenched his fist. He had to say something. "Ellen's dead. She can't feel--"

"How do you know?"

Tom averted his eyes. The old hag was right, of course, how did he know? Maybe Ellen was suffering in the cramped cold space. He hated to think she was suffering.

"Course you see her in your mind's eye," she tapped her temple, "tucked in like she was sleeping--"

It was true, he hadn't let himself think of the changes--

"Not the way, she is: eyes sunken in, lank hair spouting from the skull. There's not much to her," Rose said. "The flesh running off, the bones rising through."

"Stop," he whispered.

 Rose leaned forward in the rocking chair. "Cedric's still hangin’ on to his idiot dreams of being a gentleman farmer an’ breeding race horses; but I told ’im he's only fit for one thing--writing." She nodded sharply, and Tom saw the loose flesh on her throat quiver. "Maybe if you help me, I'll help you," she said.

He looked at her, puzzled for a second. It hit him all at once. The night noises had begun again.

"Your Aunt Margaret," Rose said. "Not the best choice, to be sure, but the only available one."

Her hands gripped the arms of the rocker. Tom saw the lawn and sky behind her through the window. He stood by the mantel, and toyed with a lacquered box his father had given Noreen for Christmas.

"You haven't forgotten our little talk that night?"

He swallowed. "Mother burned the manuscript."

Rose chuckled. "Did she? What's paper? It's words that matter."

He thought of Cedric's vagueness. "He'd never remember all."

"Maybe, maybe not," she shrugged. "But a book is a thing with a life of its own. It grows in secret." She grinned at him. "Go upstairs and see. It's all there; some's under the mattress, some's in the closet, some's tucked behind the eaves." 

He hesitated, on the verge of going. "The desk is gone. And when does he write? I've never seen him, since--" he looked down, unable to say it, afraid he might see Ellen weeping on his shoulder in the kitchen.

"When do you dream?"

He was tired of her questions, confused. "What difference does it make?"

Rose began to laugh. "What difference does it make? Oh, you really are a fool." She sat forward. "We're all in that book; unless he finishes it, we'll be gone forever."

"That doesn't make sense."

"No?" She fixed her dark eyes on him. "You just mull on this: as soon as the last person dies who remembers you, you die again." She whispered, "I'm old, but I don't want to die. Help me, and I'll help you." She looked out the window, toward the burying ground, and when she turned toward him again, Tom saw she was smiling. "I'll bring her back. You'd like that wouldn't you?"

He shook his head. Things had gotten out of control. He closed his eyes and a low whine came out of his throat.

"You would like it. I know."

Tom opened his eyes and saw Rose perched on the edge of the chair like some ravening bird. Her eyes glittered, her face was shrunken, her hair wild.

"Ellen," he said her name. No sound came out of his lips.

"You can swiv her this time," Rose hissed.

Tom knocked the lacquered box to the floor and ran out the front door.

***

"Why doesn't he finish? You said it was all there. Why doesn't he finish it?" He was sick of hearing her talk about Cedric's book.

It was summer now, and Rose clamored for fresh air. She was in the short padded chair with wheels that Bob made for her. Tom pushed it across the lawn. She could shuffle after a fashion and get around the house, but more and more she made Tom steer the chair. The chair was a botched thing, uneven and difficult to maneuver. After a rain, the wheels left ruts in the thick grass. He often thought about dumping it over, but he was afraid to try.

She badgered him almost every day, and she crept into his dreams at night and he saw her wrinkled sneering face and heard her cracked voice taunting him even in his sleep.

He begged Noreen to let him off. He offered to do anything, he threatened to run away, but Noreen's mind was made up: Tom would look after his grandmother.

He wanted to scream in his mother's face, she's a witch! But something in his mother's eyes stopped him. He began to think Noreen kept him at the task for that very reason, that she wanted Tom to keep Rose in check somehow.

"He hasn't finished because she's not with child," Rose said. He knew she meant Aunt May.

Cedric had bought Rose a set of false teeth, and she clicked them. The sound made him grimace.

"You hear them, boy, don't you? Cedric and Margaret straining in the night?" she laughed.

He struggled with the chair up a slight incline. He dug in and pushed. Rose wanted to go to the top of the rise.

"Noreen doesn't hear them, but you do." She clicked her teeth again. "Does it make your little twig tremble?" she asked. "Does it make you think of her?"

"Shut up." Tom stood still.

"Noreen doesn't want to hear them, but you do, eh?" Her grizzled brows arched upward.

"My mother knows what you are." Tom crossed his arms.

"Not like you, though, eh?" she said.

Rose licked her finger and wet her lips, rubbing them in a slow circle, her eyes fixed on him.

Tom moaned. He felt the old woman's finger tracings on his own lips. She was working some peculiar spell. It was like kissing Ellen all over again. He would have sworn Ellen stood that close, her soft lips touching his. He felt her tongue. He smelled clean hair, closed his eyes. He felt himself stiffen and turned away, humiliated. Oh Lord, what if he--the sensation stopped.

"Help me, and you can have her again. See there." She pointed to the west. "There's a church. Outside the door is a kind of crude carving, a sheila na gig. You get it and bring it here. Know what it is?"

"No, and I don't care."

She giggled, and Tom saw her hands twitch down to her lap. He suddenly felt slim delicate fingers probe gently near the buttons of his trousers. He groaned. He was in the grip of a vision so powerful he lost track of whether his eyes were opened or closed. Oh God, the smell of her warm, clean skin. He felt himself falling, and then he was lying on the damp grass on his back drowning with Ellen.

***

Her blouse was spread out on the turf where she'd tossed it. Ellen straddled him. Her small breasts plumped against his chest. Her fingers moved like butterflies and nudged his shirt up. Her flesh touched his. She experimented with her tongue and teeth and nipped one of his small flat breasts. She rubbed her chin against his.

"So smooth," she murmured. She sat up and unfastened the waist of her skirt. She drew it upwards, skimming it over her arms, shoulders, head.

She had nothing on underneath, and the sight of her, the feel of her firm thighs clamping his thin chest made him nearly lose control. He bit his lip.

"Slow, my sweet." She touched one finger to his lips.

Tom fumbled, and tried to push his trousers down. Ellen moved aside and helped. The sound of the sliding cloth was maddening. She touched the light ginger froth of hair on his legs. He shivered at the sensation.

"Ah, my love." She kissed his knee. He saw her eyes focus on the pale reddish thatch in his groin. He shut his eyes, the sun burned through his lids. He felt her hair dangle against his loins. Oh God, oh God.

His lids fluttered, and he saw her lips move toward him in a perfect O.

"Ellen, no."

She giggled and stuck her tongue out, laughing. He felt her crawl forward gently and then she was on him, hips moving in a way he would never have believed possible. She arched her back, and he saw the joy on her face and he was inside her, briefly, too briefly, and it was over.

She stretched her legs and lay on his chest, her yellow hair spreading in a flood over his chin and throat. He stroked her narrow back, his hand found the wider curves below it. She smiled and he squeezed her tightly. He kissed her mouth and she sighed.

He and Ellen--his Ellie--had shared love at last.

***

He opened his eyes. Rose sat in her chair, laughing quietly. He sat up. He would never have believed there could be so much grief. Such sorrow. He felt like something terrible had been taken from him. Ellen was there, not  there. It was more than he could bear. He looked down. A wet stain was spread across his trouser front.

"There's more. I can make it real. You can have her."

Anger and shame welled up in him. Who was she to think she could violate him this way? How dare she? It was too much, the pain, the sweetness, the grief.

He lost control of himself, his vision misted, he didn't know what he thought anymore, didn't know what was happening. There was only the blood red cloud of anger that burst inside him.