Followers

Monday 13 February 2017

Just before a thunderstorm

Angie's story:

It had been a long hot summer. The fields so verdant in late spring were now parched and drained of colour. The trees, though not yet ready to lose their leaves, seemed to have an air of abandonment as if they no longer cared whether or not their branches offered shade to passing weary travellers, and drooping in an effort to reach the ground below.

The girl heaved herself up from the rocking chair where she had been idly sitting, on the veranda, watching a cat cleaning itself meticulously before it too, rose languidly and padded off to find a cooler spot in which to sleep.

How much easier she thought to be an animal, governed entirely by instinct, without the mixed blessing of reason and emotion to affect its choices in life. They took what came to them, happily if those things were to their advantage and if not, driven on by a primal urge to survive, they fought or submitted to their fate.
Anxiety, regret, longing, hate, indecision , they knew nothing of.

The girl now stood looking out across the parched land ahead of her and gently rubbed her swollen belly. Her time was nearly here she knew. Not that she had any experience of this terrifying thing, but the steady growth in the strength of kicks inside her and the dragging feeling in her lower abdomen told her that soon she would have to do what animals the world over do, with no understanding of risk, fear of pain or loathing of the act that caused this new life to be created.

As she stood musing she was aware of the sky becoming darker and the light changing to an eery and unnatural fluorescence. The storm, threatened for days, was finally on its way. She watched, a little mesmerised, as one or two large drops fell onto the dusty planks of the steps in front of her.

With a strange synchronisation, at the same moment, she felt a warmth trickling down her leg and liquid slowly surrounded her bare feet.

This she somehow knew was it, the final conclusion to all those months of endless waiting, enduring, self tormenting misery.
The raindrops were falling harder now and the first rumblings of thunder grumbled miles away.
She turned and walked towards the makeshift bed and lay awkwardly and uncomfortably while the first contraction gripped her and took her breath away with its ferocity.
Not quite as much pain as she had endured with the conception of this creature she thought - but close.

A sudden flash of lightening lit up the now dark and ominous sky, while on the bed almost in harmony, a pain ripped through her body. She curled into a foetal position hoping somehow to avoid the horrors to come. None of this was of her choosing, yet here she was, locked into a force of nature while the storm echoed her agony.

For several hours the storm raged, rain fell in torrents, thunder cracked and a tree, caught in the lightening path, crashed and cracked its way to the ground.
On the bed, the girl, glistening with sweat and often crying out
with an unearthly roar, fought to rid herself of this unwanted invader.

Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the storm abated. Water dripped from trees no longer parched. The light changed and a weak sun caught prisms of colour in the rain drops.
On the bed the girl lay still, apparently unmoving, soundless, deathly pale. Then a movement, beneath her arm a tiny form, wriggling its body to get a firmer grip on the life giving milk it's mouth had found. Red wrinkled fingers clutching the firm young breast now swollen and blue veined.

She turns her head and looks down at this new life. All thoughts of abandonment vanish, as if they never were.
She sees only beauty, perfection, helplessness and dependency. It is hers, of her, a part of her and she would kill to protect it.

The cat reappears, treading lightly through the puddles. Behind her, following her closely, her two kittens. She sees the girl and turns instinctively to check her off spring.

The girl sees her and understands. We are united in this one instinct she thinks and puts her lips tenderly on the tiny head cradled in her arms.


Jackie's poem:
When I was small
 And sat on my wall
too tall
To sit in a sprawl

I heard the first roar
Out on the moor
Clouds scudding - a lot of thudding
A  flash and a clash
My word what flooding

Such a clap and a tap
Then a snap like a strap
Earth and thunder trapped
Like Grandad’s kneecap - poor chap

A bolt of lightening
The sky  dark and heightening
Eerie and  frightening
Made my hair all a whitening

I sat counting the distances
And there were no persistences
Nothing could resist
The force of nature existences

I so small on a wall
Began to brawl
Downfall of drops fell on our “hops”
Breaking in half nature's crops

Then ………….
It stops………
Shone light so bright
What a sight
I on my wall
Had had such a fright



Annemarie's Story

Just Before the Thunderstorm
He left just before the thunderstorm.
" I'll take a walk over the top and get a bottle of really good wine before the shop closes - it's such a glorious evening.."
Ten years earlier Josie and Logan had literally bumped into one another at an art exhibition. It was the prelude to a magical, passionate relationship compacted into a single week together each year. Impossible to consider anything else - Josie's marriage was no great love affair - a question of a decent man marrying his pregnant girlfriend -  but they had raised two adored children who, certainly whilst young, bound them together. Logan on the other hand was happily married but to an invalid wife increasingly unable to look after herself.
Both honourable people, Josie and Logan did not allow their affair to encroach on their everyday lives - there was no discussion about each other's family, no meetings, no contact except on the eve of the one special week in order to finalise train times. Their affair was conducted as though  in a bubble, ethereal and precious not touching each other's daily lives.
As ever, driving to pick Logan up from the low whitewashed Welsh station, Josie imagined what life would be like if Logan were free, her children old enough to understand were she to divorce their father, but that was just a dream. This was her week for painting; her husband had his week of sailing with like-minded friends and she - well a week away to indulge in her painting hobby, uninterrupted by family.
One precious week, always towards the end of Autumn, in the same little cottage nestled in a dip on a blustery headland in west Wales reached by a winding, potholed lane leading from the village; no telephone, no mobile signal, no television - just the two of them.
Logan was just exiting the station when she arrived but flitting across his face an expression she did not recognise. He seemed somewhat subdued as he put his case on the back seat, climbed in beside her and turned to embrace her. Puzzled she set off.
The poplar trees lining the road stood black and bare, almost spare of leaves, their tops shimmering in the autumnal evening as though angels had passed in the night sprinkling gold dust. Logan broke the silence and speaking haltingly he began:
"Josie, my wife...she died about four months ago..." Josie took in a swift intake of breath.
"Oh Logan, I'm so sorry."
"Well we had wonderful times together before she became ill and quite honestly it was a release for both of us, I think. She was in great pain, bedridden and unable to do anything for herself. It made my heart break to see her like that. The end came very gently." Josie reached out to hold his hand, to clasp it comfortingly, yet the two of them were silent each with their own solitary thoughts as they drew up outside the converted stone cowshed, its one large window reflecting the trees and the evening sun.
The cottage was bathed in a crepuscular copper glow, the sitting room as though bathed in warmed honey.  
Logan had brought some logs in before leaving for the shop and Josie set a fire for later, then washed and peeled some potatoes, battered out some slices of pork fillet, all the time a fluttering in her heart; she felt like a butterfly newly emerging from its pupa, waiting for her wings to strengthen and unfold. Here was hope for a future, a future for herself and Logan together. The children were adult now, no longer needing her and she was sure she and Peter could settle for an amicable divorce.
In a reveri stepped outside to pick some herbs, delicious aromas of rosemary and thyme wafting in the breeze.Looking up from the dainty purple blossoms Josie noticed the belt of louring pewter cloud, dark and threatening hovering over the village.  Once indoors she busied herself getting her art materials ready. A fresh canvas on the easel, tubes unctuous colours on the paint bespattered table and brushes laid out in a regimental row. First they would take their usual bracing walk over the headland down to the hidden cove where the western waves shuddered their briny foam on to the pebble-strewn beach.
A sudden flash of lightening illuminated the room, thunder in the distance followed by a steady pattering of raindrops against the window. She hoped Logan had taken refuge somewhere, the pub perhaps, until the thunderstorm was over. She put the meal on hold and began to sketch out some ideas for her new piece of art.
The storm continued unabated for several hours, hammering the tin roof over the kitchen, running in rivulets down the window accompanied by sheets of lightening. Gusts of wind rattled the old oak door and howled down the chimney , the flames in the fire leaping and dying like some dervish dance.
When she fell asleep, Josie had no idea but a constant loud hammering on the door
Woke her abruptly. Logan - he must have forgotten his keys. Rubbing her eyes she opened the door. Before her against a calm, cloudless azure sky and standing in inches of muddy rainwater was her son.
"Michael, what on earth are you doing here? How did you find me?  Is something wrong? Come in, come in."
"Oh mum, we have trying to reach you since yesterday. We had no idea where the cottage was and no mobile signal. Eventually I got in touch with your editor and she passed on the address." Michael was shaking, his face white and drawn.
"Please sit down, mum. I have something to tell you - yesterday at work Dad had a massive heart attack. It was totally unexpected and he died in the ambulance." Michael was sobbing as he held his mother close.
"After his office contacted me I came as soon as I had your address but what with the sudden thunderstorm last night and the rain it took much longer. Then just out of the village before you turn  off for here the police were setting up a roadblock. It seems some chap was the victim of a hit and run in last night's storm. They were just carrying the body into the ambulance when I got there. You could still see  a smashed bottle of wine where he had lain." 













 




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