It seemed as if mentioning Anth was the ultimate conversation killer, as they made their way in silence from there on.

 

Warm air breathed out at them as they opened the main doors.  Beryl Shivered as it enveloped her and then drew her into the foyer.

The way was a long, brisk walk from the entrance, through corridors and stairwells and eventually onto the ward.

Uncle Tom was in a small room off the side of the main ward.

He was propped up at an uncomfortable looking angle, on an absolute snowdrift of hospital pillows.  He seemed as if he was asleep, but when the door opened, so did his eyes.

 

“Is that you Bel?” He asked, his voice sounded like dry stalks clattering together in a wind, low and breathy, like gravel stirred in the current.

 

“Uncle Tom” She said, horrified at the transformation in him since she had seen him last.  “Yes, It’s me.  What on Earth have you been doing to yourself?” 

She stepped up to the bed and took the withered hand lying there.

 

“Hey, life’s cruel, love.  You look pretty awful yourself, you know?”  He chuckled.  His breath rattled and he started coughing.

 

“I know” she said.

 

“That husband of yours cutting up rough, huh?”

 

“You could say that, yeah.”

 

“Yes, well.  You want to dump that animal, love.”

 

“I know.  But what about you?  Who’s been cutting up rough on you then?”

 

“It’s a lifetimes abuse of the body, I’m afraid.  It’s all caught up with me.”

 

“So, what HAS caught up with you then?”

 

“You’ll have to talk to a doctor on that one, love, I can’t understand the language.  But I didn’t ask you to come all this way just to discuss the state of my health!”  He began to cough again, great wracking, body shaking coughs that left him limp and weak, leaning back into his pillows.

 

Beryl was shocked by his frailty.  He was moving into the general, ill defined area of “old age”, but only about two years ago he had still been robust and solid, seeming more like a man of 57 than one of nearly 70.

 

But that HAD been two years ago, and something had been at work, fining down the firm flesh and eroding away the strong muscle.  The man who lay in the bed, exhausted by a bought of coughing, was the wraith of the bluff, good natured uncle of her early life.

 

She looked down on the grey face and sunken cheeks and almost submerged in a wave of sorrow, pity and revulsion at this thing that had been so vital – and yet  so swiftly tumbled from health.

 

Beryl sat down on the side of the bed, stroking the fine, dry skin of his hand, fighting to control tears too long unshed.  She almost lost the battle, but at the last moment, the corpselike creature on the bed spoke again.

 

“Around my neck” He said, in a voice like wind stirring dried leaves, “The chain – pull it out.”

 

She reached forward and eased the length of chain from where it had slid, around his neck and under his head.  On the chain was a tiny velvet bag.

 

“Take it off” he said.  “It’s yours.  Keep it near you all the time, and it will bring you your hearts desire – but don’t let that bastard husband of yours get his hands on it!”

 

“What is it?” She asked, taking the chain from his neck and weighing the tiny pouch in one hand.  It was heavy.

 

“Open it.  Take it out and have a look.”

 

She pulled open the drawstring at the neck of the pouch and spilled out into her hand a green coloured rock.  It was oddly shaped, long and lumpy about the size of an adults thumb from the tip to the first joint.  The surface was dull, and in places, rough – except for one shattered face which revealed a tiny spot of pure, lustrious green.  It looked almost like any piece of rock you could pick up on a shingle beach.

 

“It doesn’t look like much, does it?”  The thin whisper drew her attention back to the frail body on the bed.

 

“It’s worth thousands of pounds, but don’t you go trying to sell it, it’s a good luck piece.  I risked my life smuggling that back home.  Promise now, keep it to yourself.  If that animal gets hold of it, he’ll drink every penny he can get from it!”

 

The fragile old man closed his eyes, then, and slept again.  Beryl held both of her hands together against her breast and dreamed of what the money would mean to her if she sold the stone – of how it would change her life.

 

Then the full horror of life with Anthony Cartwright came crashing in on her.  He would never let her go.  No matter how far she ran, he’d still catch up with her and even if he didn’t, her fear of him would ruin all of her new found freedom.  Better to go back home and hope he didn’t notice that she’d been out.

 

She looked again at the small irregular lump in her palm and  rubbed it idly with her thumb.  What was it?  What could look so dull and downright un-special and yet be worth so much?

 

“What is it?” She asked out loud.  “What have you given me?”

 

“What?” The voice was almost silent, seeming to come from beneath the pillows rather than above them, volume filtered out by the foam.

 

“What is it?  Didn’t I tell you dear?  It’s an emerald.  A blessed uncut emerald.”

 

A nurse popped her head in through the door with a bright and breezy “Would you like me to bring you a cuppa?”

 

“Eh?.....Oh, yes please, that would be very nice.  Can you make it a bit strong, though eh?  I think I need it thick enough to lean on!”

 

“I reckon you do, you poor lass.”  The nurse thought as she walked away “you look like you could do with a few decent meals too.  Barely out of your teens, you look, and you already haunted.”

 

The nurse returned a few minutes later with a cup of tea as thick as bulls’ blood.  Beryl sipped the hot, sweet liquid, holding the cup between both hands, milking it for warmth and comfort.  Suddenly the temperature of the whole world had dropped and her thin, boney figure was not up to the task of keeping her warm.

 

She was just finishing the brew when the Rev. Rosewood returned.  He stood by the bed, at the opposite side from Beryl, hands clasped behind him, looking closely at the frail child in front of him with something slightly more than a fatherly aire.

 

“It is a great sorrow to see our loved ones thus.”  He said, with professional sympathy, settling into the role with practiced ease.  “I sometimes think that it is far easier to sea death come quickly and quietly.  It’s so sad when it lingers on and everybodies pain goes on endlessly.  Were you very close?  I mean, I know he was your uncle, but I rather felt that you hadn’t seen him for a while?”  

   

There was silence.  Although she’d heard him somehow or other, it was as if he were speaking to someone else, the question simply did not seem to apply to her.  Or maybe it did, but it didn’t fit within her perception of things.

 

“Of course, if you think I’m prying, please tell me.”

 

“What?”

 

“My question.”

 

“Oh?  Sorry.  No, you’re not prying.  I was just not with it, that’s all.”

 

“I’m sorry, it must be awful to find yourself in this situation.”

 

“It’s certainly a bit different to what I was expecting!”

 

“Unfortunately, life does that to us – quite frequently!”

 

“What IS the matter with him?  He’s aged 30 years since I last saw him.”

 

“He didn’t tell you himself?”

 

“No, he said that he didn’t understand the jargon.  I rather think that he just didn’t want to talk about it, though.  He said I should ask a doctor, but quite frankly, the effort of finding one is too much at the moment – even if it is someone else’s energy that is being spent. If you see what I mean.  Do you know what it is?”

 

“Yes, I know.”

 

“Well.”

 

“Ummmmm.”

 

“Please?  Tell me?”

 

Sitting there on the bed, so tiny and frail, she looked more like a child than a young woman.  Vulnerable, adrift and somehow very appealing.

 

He thought deeply for a moment, then walked around the bed and placed both hands on her shoulders in a protective way.

 

“Your Uncle was found in his flat early this morning when a neighbor informed the police that they hadn’t seen him for over a week.  When they broke in, they found him lying on his sofa.  When they failed to wake him, they called an ambulance and admitted him straight away.

 

“They are still waiting the results of tests to come back, but they are fairly sure that he has a cancer of the throat, and that he has had it for a considerable length of time.  It’s a mystery why he never went to his doctor with it, perhaps he was afraid to get it confirmed.”

Cancer!

 

Beryl felt all her joints and muscles loosing hold.  She felt weak and faint, like a puppet with no strings.  She was struck by the sheer horror of the thought of that creeping, insidious death eating away unseen beneath the surface, destroying her uncle without anyone knowing.  The worst part of the image was the knowledge that it had only gone so far because of her uncles fear.  To have faced that fear and gone to a doctor soon enough may have made the difference between dying here like this and his living on much longer.

 

Then she remembered something that he had said to her a few days before the wedding. Bel, he’d said, don’t ever let the doctors trap you here.  It’s far better to die when your time comes than to hang on here relying on drugs and machines, no good to any man – especially yourself.

 

He knew then, she thought, shocked and dismayed.  He already knew all that time ago, and chose to die!

 

“It’s more likely that he was more afraid of the doctors than he was of the disease.”  She said.  “He always said that he would prefer to die with dignity than get trapped in an ever escalating list of pills prescribed by a doctor.  He did not agree with that sort of stuff.”

Shaking his hands off her shoulders, she stood up and turned to face him.

 

“Are you alright?”  He asked, noticing how ill she looked herself, her shock and dismay making her look even paler and more haunted, emphasizing how thin and pale she looked, how washed out and colourless.  The depth of pain in her eyes threatened to spill out and engulf him.

 

He reached around and pulled his coat around her shoulders again, gently steering her towards the door.

 

She moved like a puppet, entirely at his volition, not her own.  He steered her down through the layers of wards and then back down that seemingly mile long corridor and out to his car.  She got in without prompting and sat if in rigid torment while he backed the car off the parking spot and drove back towards the road.

 

Behind the floodgates of those overfull eyes was an overfull reservoir of emotions.  Over the last couple of years, she had gradually lost the luxury of tears.  They were a weakness that she could not afford.  Instead, she forced them back, bottling up the tears and the emotions together.

 

Having just seen one of the pillars of her childhood years toppled so rapidly and easily to deaths door almost overwhelmed those defenses against emotion, and let loose a demon that was stirring up all those layers of stored pain.

 

She would not cry.

 

That was the sign of weakness that Anth most enjoyed to see.  Tears were taboo.  She would never give any man the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

 

In consequence, she sat like a shop window dummy for most of the journey home.  The Revd Rosewood drove in a silence born partly of concern and partly of a great helplessness in the face of such a reaction.  After all, it is a little difficult to console someone when they totally refuse to hear you.

 

They were almost outside the flat when she came back into focus.  Realising where they were, and how close she was to having to face Anth again.  This breath of fresh air had somehow made the prospect of returning to her prison so much worse – and if she did not get back before he missed her, she was in for a night that she would much rather not go through.

 

“What time is it?” she asked.

 

“Er…” a quick look at his watch told him that it was “5:30” he said.

 

“Will you come up to the flat with me please? Anth will be home by now and if he’s waiting for me, he’ll want to know where I’ve been.  It might help if you – a man of the cloth – could explain it to him.  Please?”

 

Aye, and it might well make it worse he thought, reacting to what she DIDN:T say (and the way she said it) rather than to what she DID say.  By now, he was convinced that there was something that this woman was afraid of, but somehow he couldn’t quite find the courage to ask.

 

“Of course I’ll come to the door with you” he said.  Then he noticed that she was holding something.  “What Is that that you have in your hands?” he asked.

 

She looked down and noticed with surprise the tiny velvet pouch threaded on a gold chain.  Very carefully, with hands that shook with emotion, she opened the drawstring top and slid the green stone onto her palm.

 

“Did your uncle give you that?  Is that why he wanted to see you?”

 

“Yes.  He says it was his good luck piece and if I keep it near me it will bring me good luck too.”

 

 

“That sounds a little too much like a superstition to me, but if your uncle wanted you to have it, then he must have his reasons.  Look, We’re here now, you’d better put it away.”

 

 * * * *

 

No-one answered when she knocked.  Hope surged within her, perhps she had beaten him back here after all!  She fished in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a debit card.  It was 18 months out of date and scratched and notched, but she kept hanging on to it just in case she needed it for just such an occasion.

 

Slipping it between the door frame and the lock, she pushed it and jiggled it about until it forced the lock open, then she pushed the door and stepped inside.

 

“I’m fine now, thank you” she said, with more confidence than she had shown all afternoon.  “Anth isn’t here.  If I’m quick he need never know I’ve been out.”

 

“You’re sure you’ll be alright?”

 

“I’m fine, thanks.  Thank you for taking me out there – and for walking me up here too.”

 

“That’s alright.  Look, if you’re sure that you’re alright now, I’ll go.  BUT.  If you ever need to talk about anything, or you want help for any reason, call this number.”

 

He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. 

 

“You are not, strictly speaking, one of my parishioners, but I feel sort of responsible, somehow.  I’d like to help you if I can.  Now, you hold on to that “good luck piece” and take care of yourself.  Goodbye for now.”

 

“Goodbye, and thanks again.”

 

She watched his retreating back all the way down the corridor to the stairs, then she herself retreated into the flat and shut the door.

 

She went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee and realized, with sick horror, that Anth had been home and gone out again.  The debris of his anger lay in shards across the floor.  Not a cup, dish or plate was still intact.

 

She started the kettle off and went in search of something to drink her coffee out of.

 

An old coffee jar jull of macaroni caught her eye and she dumped the contents into a biscuit tin and rinsed that out.

 

While she waited for the kettle to boil, she swept the broken crockery up and dumped it into what passed for a kitchen bin.  All the while she ws doing that, she was thinking how wonderful it would be to be able to make as much mess as she liked, then go out and leave someone else to clean it up.

 

The kettle boiled and she left the rest of the cleaning up to go and make her coffee.

 

She took the jar, handling it carefully because it was hot, into the living room and sat to the table with it.  Sitting there staring into the brown, murky fluid, she thought again about what her uncle had said when he gave her the stone.  What was it that he had said?  Oh yes, “Keep it near you and it will bring you your hearts desire.”

 

Sadly, she picked up the velvet pouch, took out the stone and rubbed it idly with her thumb.  No matter how she looked at it, it did not look like an emerald.  In the end she sighed, slipped it back onto its bag, dropped the chain over her head, drank the rest of her coffee and went to finish cleaning up.

 

By seven o’clock she was falling asleep in her chair, despite her fear.

She made her way sleepily into the bedroom, crawled into a shapeless nightdress and a candlewick dressing gown and fell into bed.  Despite her emotional turmoil she was asleep almost as soon as she had warmed the bed.

 

Midnight came and went, and Beryl slept the sleep of the innocent, deep and unwary.  She didn’t hear the click of his key in the lock, nor the nerve shaking bang as it slammed shut.  The first thing she noticed was her unexpected journey from the bed to the floor and the solid thud of a booted toe landing against her ribs.

 

 

A voice like gravel, tight with suppressed rage, said “Get up, slut.”

 

A gentleman to the end, he helped her to roll over by planting his heel solidly on her hip and pushing.

 

“Where you been?”  His voice was also thick with alcohol, slurring and barely understandable.

 

“I’m sorry Anth, I had to go.”

 

“The only place you gotta go is where I tell you.  Did I tell you to go out?”

 

“No Anth.”

 

“Then where’d you go to, whore.”

 

The blow landed at the side of her head and dazed her.  She sat there, jaw slack.

 

“Waste of time talking to you, stupid bitch.  Get off your fat lazy arse and get me some food.  I haven’t eaten since lunch, thanks to you.”

 

He yanked her to her feet and launched her towards the door.

 

“Then, when I’ve had something to eat, we can play” he shouted after her, leering.  She shuddered, knowing that when Anth wanted to play, the outcome was never good for her.

 

She walked stiffly down the hallway towards the kitchen.  Her ribs hurt as she breathed, and when she held them, sharp pains stabbed into her side. 

 

In the kitchen, she placed the chip-pan on the hot plate and went in search of frozen chips, almost falling into the small freezer when she bent over it, and the pain shot waves of nausea through her stomach.

 

Anth rolled into the kitchen, swollen with drink and anger.  One day, she thought maliciously, One day, you’ll go into a rage and burst a blood vessel.  Don’t expect any help if you do.

 

“So?” 

 

“So what?”

 

“Where have you been?”  He loomed over her, gently stroking her hair.  She daren’t flinch away, even though that was what she most wanted to do right then.

 

“I’ve been to the hospital”

 

“Liar”

 

“I have.  Uncle Tom’s ill.  He doesn’t have long to live.”

 

“Lying bitch” he spat.  “You’ve been with a man.  Frank saw you go out.  You’ve been with a man, whore.”

 

“I haven’t!  Please listen.  That was the reverend Rosewood.  He came to take me to Birmingham – that’s where Uncle Tom is, you see.”

 

Anth felt the thrill prickling up his spine.  The game was afoot and waiting to be stalked.  This was the best part of the game.  This was the part that made him feel huge and powerful.

Despite the drink roaring through his veins, blurring his vision and making him stagger, he was still enjoying this.  Trouble was that combined with his naturally jealous nature, by now he was really believing his jibe about her being seen with a man, and was working himself up into a genuine rage.

 

“Lying Bitch.  You’ve been on the game, haven’t you?  Was he any good?  Come on now, what’s it like being laid by a preacher?  Was he as good as me?”

 

“Anth, will you listen to me please?”  Terrified, she shrank into the corner, trying to make herself as small a target as possible.  Her ribs ached with every breath she took.  “Please listen.  Uncle Tom’s dying.  He wanted to see me before he died.”

 

The fat was hot now, it was making happy little chuckling noises in the pan.  Anth, however, was also making happy little chuckling noises as he moved across the kitchen towards her.

 

“Why?  If this is another lie, you know what will happen, don’t you?”

 

“I know, but it’s true.”

 

Anth’s curiosity overcame his anger.

 

“Old Tom?  What’s the old fart want YOU for?”

 

He wavered unsteadily as he tried, with the great solemnity of the very drunk, to stop the kitchen from revolving around him.

 

“He is…..”  Beryl felt sick.  As well as the pain in her side, she knew that if she told him what her uncle had wanted her for, he would take the gift from her by force.

 

“He what?”  His voice returned to the tone of gravel, tight and dangerous.  She would have to tell him.  It was all hopeless.  Far from bringing her her hearts desire, it would end in sorrow, with Anth taking it from her, and the nightmare never ending.

 

“He wanted to give me something”  she said, her tone low and resigned.

 

“What?”

 

“It was a stone, a good luck piece.”

 

“You’re lying to me, you F***ing cow.  You know what happens when you lie to me.”

 

“No, I’m not, Anth, it was an Emerald”

 

He stood there, looking at her, swaying unsteadily, and gawping like a goldfish.

 

“Where is it?  Show it to me!”

 

“Please? Don’t take it off me?”  She knew as soon as she said this that he would do it anyway – just to hurt her.

 

“Where is it, bitch?”

 

“Anth, no, not now, when you’ve had something to eat, please?”

 

"Show me the damned stone."

 

“Anth, the chipfat……….”  She was more afraid of the pan catching fire at this moment, than anything else.  Anth ignored her, he smelled fun – and by now was convinced that she had been turning tricks with the preacher and was withholding money from him.

 

He lunged for her, grabbed the front of her dressing gown and hauled her to her feet.  The effort almost pulled him off HIS feet, he was so drunk.  The dressing gown twisted open and the velvet bag slipped out.

 

Reaching for it, he over balanced and struck his head on a cupboard.  She took advantage of his temporary distraction to bolt down the kitchen and into the bedroom.  Once there, she pushed the bed in front of the door and then sat behind it to add her weight to the blockade.

 

Back in the kitchen, Anth shook his head to clear the fuzz from it, then staggered down the hall to the bedroom, where he tried the door.  Finding it blocked solid, he rattled the handle and mouthed obscenities at her.  When this didn’t work, he wove his way back down the hallway and took a run at the door.

 

He bounced off it and fell to the ground.

 

With a bellow like an enraged bull, he took another run at it.

 

The bed nudged Beryl in the ribs, grinding them together and driving her pain through the roof.

 

Again, Anth hit the door with an enormous force, making it shake in the frame and bouncing the hinges loose.

 

With a triumphant roar, he took another run at it, tripped over his own feet and smacked up against the door head first – and lay still.

When it went silent outside the door, Beryl sat quiet waiting for the assault to continue.  As time passed and nothing happened, she started to think that perhaps the drink had gotten the better of him and he had gone to sleep.

 

She got to her feet and tried to move the bed, but every attempt to move sent waves of pain through her back and chest, and she was having trouble getting enough breath into her lungs.  Finally, she just lay on the bed and drifted  into unconsciousness.

 

Back in the kitchen, heat was building up in the chip pan and before long, smoke started rising from the surface.  Then with a “Whoooomph” it caught fire. 

 

Burning fat flowed out of the pan and across the worktops, finding more things to consume.  Soon the kitchen was full of flame and fury and tendrils of thick, black oily smoke were beginning to explore the hallway, idly billowing outwards across the ceiling, slowly filling the hallway. 

 

Anth’s unconscious body gently accepted the questing smokes, drawing them deeply into his lungs where they silently and efficiently made sure that he never woke again.

 

She woke up again shortly afterwards, to find that thin tendrils of oily smoke were filtering under the door and sliding across the floor.

Like a slither of snakes winding and knotting, panic moved within her, robbing her of volition.  What should she do?  Was this a trick to flush her out?  Was Anth waiting outside for her?  But what if it was a real fire?  Shouldn’t she get out?  But Anth could still be waiting for her, even if it was a real fire!

 

Trapped in this quandary, she did not at first hear the fire engine sirens coming closer through the darkness.  When she did hear them, she knew with a sick feeling that the fire was real and that Anth had bailed and left her to die.

 

She listened in fearful silence as the sirens arranged themselves around the parking lot outside the flats and shouts and bangs echoed below the window.

 

The muffled sound of running footsteps along the balcony was followed by a fusillade of blows against the door.  Muttered voices in the hallway gave instructions and exchanged information, all of which may just as well have been in a foreigh language as far as Beryl was concerned.

 

Relief flooded through her, washing the panic away.

 

Climbing to her feet, she staggered across to the window and started screaming through it.

Beryl woke into a not quite darkness where the pale glows of night lights lit a ceiling of metallic strips and pockmarked tiles.

She lay still for a moment before exploring the sensations (and lack of same) that made her body feel so strange.  A slow moving, clumsy arm came up to sweep a lock of hair away from her cheek.  It weighed almost enough to anchor it to the bed.  With sudden shock, she realized that the hand was splinted and bandaged and that a narrow tube led out of the back of her hand and disappeared somewhere off to the right and behind her.

Her spirits sank quite suddenly into the space that her boots would have occupied if she had been standing up.

Almost as if having seen where she was had satisfied her curiosity, she slid easily back into sleep.

Rattling and chattering noises shattered her sleep.  Outside, it was still dark but in side, the lights were switched on and everywhere was bright and stark.

A tired looking nurse was moving round the beds with thermometers, gently bullying reluctant beds into giving up their occupants – when the nurse came next to her bed, she tried a bright and cheerful “Good morning Mrs Cartwright” that might have been successful eight hours earlier.

“Good……………..  Oh dear, my voice.”  Beryl said in a voice like broken crockery.

“Don’t worry about that love, there’s no damage, it’ll come right.”

“Where am I please?”

“You’re in the Princess Royal Hospital, love, you’ve been here since about 1.30am yesterday morning.”

“A whole day?”

“A whole day.”

“And I’ve been asleep all that time?”

“Yes love.”

“What about this?”  She indicated the drip by waving her hand in the air between them.

“Well, I guess that now you’re awake we’ll probably be able to take that down.  Just wait till the dr. comes around and see what he says.”

“Great. It’s kind of, um, awkward, you know.”

“Yes, I know.  Oh, and don’t go trying to rush around too much just yet.”
“I know, I’m pretty stiff.  I guess I’ve got a broken rib at least.”

"Two.  And pretty extensive bruising.  What on earth were you up to?”

For the first time since waking up, she thought about Anth.  She suddenly felt very guilty.  She hadn’t even asked how he was.  Was he in hospital too?  Or was he still at home with no-one to look after him?

“How’s Anth?”  She asked.  “Is he alright?”

“Who’s Anth?”  she asked.

“My husband.  Was he hurt?”

“I don’t know, love, he’s not on this ward so I couldn’t really say.  You’d best talk to the day staff when they come on duty, they should be able to find out for you.  Now, open your mouth and put this under your tongue.  I’d get shot if it ever came out that I’d had to guess your temperature.”  She chuckled.

The Nurse checked her pulse and blood pressure, and then checked the thermometer.

“Right,” she said, “Now if I were you, I’d close my eyes and go back to sleep.  There’s almost two hours before breakfast and they’ll pass faster if you’re asleep.”

“I’ve just spent the last 28 hours asleep – I won’t want any more for a week!”

“Well, as you wish.”

She went on to check the person in the next bed and when she turned around, Beryl was asleep again.  She smiled knowingly and shook her head.

                                                            * * * *

Around about ten o’clock in the morning, The Dr. arrived with a nurse and a trolley full of folders.  They stopped at the foot of her bed and the nurse closed the curtains around them.

The Dr. looked at the chart hanging from the foot of her bed and looked up.

“Good morning, Mrs. Cartwright, how are you feeling this morning?”

“Stiff, and sore.  What happened?”

“We were kind of hoping that you would be able to tell us that.  You were brought in here suffering from smoke inhalation, but when we examined you more closely it appears that you have several injuries that are not related to the fire.  For instance, you have two broken ribs (one of which penetrated the lung) and severe bruising.”

“Oh, I can explain that.”  Beryl said, thinking rapidly.

I just bet you can, thought the dr. I expect you have had plenty of practice.

“When I heard the chip pan woof, I ran into the bedroom to get away from the fire.  I caught my toe in the bed leg and tripped.”

“Mrs Cartwright, the injury to your ribs is not consistent with a fall.”

“That’s what happened.”

“O.K. if that’s what you want.  The Police want to talk with you later, though, so you might want to work on your story a little.” 

 

He knew better than to insist.  It didn’t take much imagination to see that this woman was covering up for someone, probably her husband.  How many women had he treated in the past year alone who had had near fatal falls that had miraculously produced injuries that looked more like the result of a thorough beating?  He didn’t know.  He didn’t WANT to know.  “Too many” was a close enough estimate for him.

“Before you go, Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Has anyone any news about Anth?

“Anth?  Is that your husband?”

“Yes, he was in the flat when the fire started, did he get out?”

“He wasn’t admitted here last night.  He could have.”

She could not work out whether she felt relief or grief.  If he got out, he was alive and he could come back and punish her for letting the flat burn.  But on the other hand, if he got out, he was still alive.

“Thank you.  And now, what about this?”  She waved her splinted hand around in the general direction of the drip.

“A nurse will be down in a few minutes” he said with a reassuring smile.   “She’ll have that plumbing out of you in one tenth of the time it took to put it in, don’t you fret.”

“Thank you Doctor.”

A few minutes later, a nurse arrived with a trolley, and miraculously, Beryl was free.

 

Shortly before lunch, she woke from another nap to find a W.P.C. standing beside her bed.  The young woman looked distinctly uncomfortable, nervous.

When she saw Beryl open her eyes, she became alert again, shaking off humanity and slipping into the professional stance again.

“Mrs Cartwright?”

“I was, last time I looked.” She said with a smile.

“Mrs Cartwright, I’m sorry to have to bother you so soon after such a traumatic experience, but we really need to get the details from you while they are still fresh in your mind.”

“O.K., but before we start, can you tell me where Anth is?  No-one here seems to know.”

“Mr. Anthony Cartwright?”

“Yes, where is he?”

“Mrs. Cartwright, I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but your husband was found in the hallway outside the bedroom.  The Bedroom door stopped a lot of the smoke from getting to you – but the hallway was full.  I’m afraid that he was already dead when the fire brigade found him.”

A strangely calm, serene look came over her face.  Behind the look, thoughts and emotions were boiling in all directions, a nest of vipers trapped together by their tails but free to writhe where they would from there up.

Her life had been ruled by fear of one man for so long that any love she had held for him at the beginning was now corroded away in fear and frustration and simmering resentment that it had rusted away to a crumbling ball of febrile hate.

But hate alone would have been overjoyed at this outcome of her venture into Birmingham, but tempering that hatred, leaning heavily each upon the other wa a near total dependency upon Anth for almost everything.  He was her only link with life, with humanity.  She knew almost no-one any more.  Her friends had long since stopped calling round – or phoning – and her only contact with anyone else in eighteen months had been during her trip to Birmingham.

She was lost, alone, afraid and through that wilderness of loss, loneliness and fear ran a thin strand of blessed relief.  The whole sensation was further complicated by a range of other emotions that came and went swiftly, flickering in and out of the overall confusion.

She was locked in an emotional stranglehold, unable to react in any way at all – able only to stare out into space and utter a dead calm, emotionless “OH, OK,” as if the policewoman had just told her that her pet dogs fleas had just died.

The poor woman had not known exactly what kind of response she was going to get, of course, but this was the last thing she would have expected, and was not at all sure how to react herself.

“We do, of course, need to ask you some questions about how the fire started.”

“Of course.”

“Do you feel up to answering them now?  We should do it as soon as possible, while it is still fresh in your mind.

“Go ahead.”

Beryl felt suspended above the scene, locked away in the back of her head where she could watch but could do nothing.  Yes, the body was reacting to stimulus from outside itself, but somehow or other her responses seemed to be rather more automatic than natural.  It was as if the intellect had bailed out of  a stricken plane and left it on autopilot to fly as far as it could get before it crashed.

The vacant gaze which Beryl directed towards – or rather past – the officer was focused on some point far in the distance (or maybe close within her skull).

“Mrs Cartwright?”

“Yes?”

“Will you tell me how the fire started?”

“I don’t know.  I didn’t see it start.  I was in the bedroom when it started.”

“What were you doing in the bedroom?”

“I was asleep.  Isn’t that what you normally do in a bedroom?”

“Is it normal for you to sleep with the bed pushed right up against the door?  Why would you need to barricade yourself in the bedroom?”

“I didn’t have the door barricaded against Anth.  I was asleep.  Why would I need to barricade the door against my own husband?”

“I don’t know why.  Would you like to tell me why?  There’s a lot of people that would like to know the answer to that one.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that you know a lot more than you are telling me.  Please believe me, Mrs. Cartwright, that we’ve known for a long time exactly what kind of person your husband was, and quite frankly, if I was married to him I would want a great deal more than just the bedroom door barricading.  Now, why don’t you just tell me what happened, right from the beginning huh?”

“OK, but just do one small thing for me will you?  Please?”

“What’s that?”

“Just stop calling me Mrs Cartwright, it makes my flesh creep.  I just want to forget all that.  My name is Beryl.”

“OK Beryl”

The far, distant, unfocused look was beginning to resolve itself as a feeling of determination was slowly filling up the space left by the knowledge of her husbands death.  The vague, out-of-this-world quality to her speech was becoming replaced by certainty.

“Well, I suppose that you could say that it all started when the phone rang.  I have to answer the phone as soon as it starts to ring, cos Anth will phone me up now and then, just to check where I am – was.  I keep forgetting that he can’t do it any more.  It wasn’t Anth, though, it was this guy from Birmingham…………………………..”

 

“…………………………….I was terrified.  I’ve seen him mad before but, God help me, I think he’d have killed me this time.  I broke most of the big rules, you see.  I had been out, I had been in the company of a man (it didn’t matter why), I’d had contact with my family and I’d been given something of value which I hadn’t given to him as soon as he came through the door – so I was keeping things from him.”

She stopped for breath, then carried on.

“I really didn’t know that the fire had started until the smoke started getting into the bedroom.  I was too scared to think of anything except stopping Anth from getting in to me.  I can only assume that it was the chippan.”

The policewomans professional mask cracked, leaving her open to Beryls intense emotional state.  Almost overwhelmed by sympathy with this young womans story, her demeanour softened.

“I can quite understand that, Beryl.” She said.  “We may have more questions to ask you later on, but I think that that will do for now.”

“Do you want to know something odd?”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’m sorry that he had to die to do it, but I guess, on the whole, that it is a relief to have him out of my life.”

“I’m not surprised!”

“What happens now?”

“Well, there will have to be an inquest to establish the circumstances of his death.  After that, there may be criminal proceedings, but IF the coroners report bears out your story, that is probably unlikely.”

“Oh.  O.K.”  The thought that someone thought her capable of murder stopped her dead in her tracks for a while.

The Policewoman left her there, staring into inner space and trying to come to grips with the conflicting emotions raging within her.  She felt as if someone had pulled the rug out from under her feet – and there was no floor there to catch her.

 

As the retreating rear of the W.P.C. disappeared around the end of the bay and out of sight, Beryl heaved a sigh.  Mixed emotions swirled within her, leading her first to one and then another, only to whisk her away to confusion again.

 

Of course there was relief.  Anth had dominated her life in a way that no one has a right to.  Then there was guilt.  Guilt for surviving when he had died and guilt for not feeling grief at his death.  But what she hadn’t expected was that tiny thread of insecurity that was sitting in the corner whispering “What now?  We have no-one to look after us, what are we going to do now?”

 

That tiny thread of fear didn’t really have free reign, though, until mid afternoon, when a short, plump, middle aged woman with short fair hair bustled up to the bed with a cheery “Good afternoon, Mrs. Cartwright, I’m Shirley  James, and I understand that you have a few little problems about getting home.”

 

Beryl just looked at her.  She had broken into a daydream and Beryl was still trying to collect her faculties and had missed most of that. 

 

“Sorry?”  She said “Sorry, I missed that.”

 

“Do you mind if I sit down?” The woman asked.  “They are particular about people sitting on the beds – but it’s easier than hunting down a chair.”

 

“Mmm?  Oh yes, help yourself, its fine.”

 

Shirley thrust out her right hand, offering it to Beryl.  Beryl shook it.

 

“I’m Shirley James.  I solve problems for people (or try to).  I’m here to try and help you when you leave the hospital.  I understand that your home was damaged in a fire and won’t be ready for when you leave here?”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Who’s your landlord and I’ll try and arrange temporary accommodation for you while it’s fixed.”

 

“I don’t know – I think Anth owned it.  He handled everything like that.”

 

“O.K.  How about clothes, money, things like that?”

 

“Nothing.  Everything I owned was in the flat, and I never had money – Anth did all that.  I never left the flat.  I wish I had never left the flat at all.”

 

THAT was the moment when she realised that she was on her own with the burden of all the little things that most people take for granted – like shopping, budgeting, taking the bus.  How was she ever going to leave her flat again?  Anth had spent so much time and effort teaching her that if she went out, something terribly bad would happen, and now she had gone out and the very worst thing had happened.

 

She deflated.  Sinking back into the pillows and shaking with sobs.

Shirley sat back quietly, mentally put back her next job an extra half hour and waited for the storm to pass.

 

Eventually, the sobs died down, Beryl calmed and looked around for a tissue.  Shirley handed her one and reached out and took hold of the back of her hand, waiting for her to gather herself together ready to talk and lending strength to her.

 

“Now then,” she said.  “What triggered that?”

 

“I dunno.  I think it was suddenly realising that I can’t go home!”

 

“That’s alright, don’t you worry about that, we’ll help you find somewhere.”

 

“No, you don’t get it, I can’t go home.  If I go anywhere, I can never leave it again.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“O.K., O.K., how can I make you understand?”

 

“Well, why don’t you tell me about it?  Where the feeling came from, how it got so strong, and why you can’t beat it.”

 

“I don’t know where it came from.  I didn’t feel this bad about it a week ago.  In fact a week ago I was climbing the walls with boredom and would have given my eye teeth to go out.”

 

“O.K. then, let’s start from there.  Why were you climbing the walls like that?”

 

“Because Anth would never allow me to go out.  If I did, then he would always find out, and make things hard for me.  It just wasn’t worth it.”

 

“He doesn’t have the right to do that to you.  How did you get into that situation?”

 

Beryl closed her eyes and thought, looking back into her short history with Anth.  He was fine while they were courting.  There was no sign of that sort of thing at all then.”  Winding the clock forward, she realised that it had started as soon as they had moved into his flat.

 

“I guess it started with small things,” she said.  “Before we were married he was the perfect gentleman.  He didn’t like it when I wore pretty clothes when we went out together, and if another man spoke to me I got hustled away, but that was about it.  Until we got married.”

 

“After that, it was almost as if someone had flipped a switch.  At first we still went out sometimes, but he got insanely jealous if anyone spoke to me, and it was always my fault.  Even if it was someone I had known from school, it was my fault for not dressing down enough, for making eye contact, for not disappearing into the background, so he stopped taking me out.”

“If he left me at home, I had to stay there.  If I didn’t answer the phone straight away when he rang, he went orbital.  I couldn’t talk to anyone else on the phone in case he called while I was doing it.  It would always have been a man, you see, and that’s when he said that if I was going to behave like a whore, seeing men behind his back, he would treat me like a whore.”

 

“I hadn’t been outside the flat in over a year until this last time.  Not even to stand on the balcony and breath some fresh air, just in case one of his mates (they live in the houses opposite our flat) saw me and told Anth.  He always thought I was displaying my wares.”

 

“I just gave up and stayed inside.  Didn’t dare have any contact with anyone.  Not even my family.  Even that would plunge him into a rage.  I think he enjoyed it – looked for excuses to hit me.”

 

Shirley was nodding gently as Beryl spoke.

 

“So what made you leave the flat this time, if you were so afraid to?”  She had heard enough to get a picture of what was going on.  Councillors got paid for listening like this, she could not afford to get too involved with it.

 

Beryl was staring up, past the ceiling into the far distant reaches of her own mind.  Her answer this time was un-emotional.  “I got a phone call.  My Uncle was very ill and wanted to see me before he died.  He was in hospital in Birmingham and someone was kind enough to come and fetch me.”

 

“So, you found the courage to go out that day.  Why are you so sure that you can’t go out again?”

 

“Uncle Tom always fascinated me.  He was exotic, strange, always full of tales of adventures and bringing us gifts from all over the world.  If I hadn’t gone, I would have lost my chance to say goodbye.  I would never have found out what he wanted.  It was a spur of the moment thing, if I’d had longer to think about it, I might not have been able to go.”

 

“I still don’t understand why you feel that you can’t leave your home now, though.”  She was beginning to lose patience with this game.  She had other jobs to do today and this one had already taken long enough.

 

“Look what happened when I did.”  She whispered.  “Look what happened.  I killed my husband and nearly died myself.  All because I broke the rules and left the flat.  How can I ever go out again?”

 

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.  From what I know about this case, it was Anths actions as much as anyone’s that caused the fire.”

 

“Everything was my fault.”  She turned away, looking towards the curtain at the other side of the bed, silent tears streaming down her face.  “Even when I wasn’t there, if it went wrong, it was my fault.”

 

That was it!  Shirley had had enough of this self pity. 

 

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do.”  She said, firmly.  “I’ll get someone from psych to come and talk to you, and in the meantime we’ll start the ball rolling to get you on your feet again.

 

She stood briskly and offered her hand again, but Beryl was still staring into the distance and didn’t respond, so she walked away, her report already written in her head, just waiting to be formalised.

 

She leaned back into the pillows and considered the implications of Anth’s death.  The feeling of freedom and relief that she had expected to feel had not materialized.  Instead there was a crushing sense of the weight of responsibility she now had to take for her own welfare and actions.

Anth was no longer there to force her to behave to suit him, making all her decisions for her, controlling her almost down to her thoughts.  How was she going to face living alone and making decisions for herself?  It didn’t matter that Anth had left her alone for hours on end – sometimes days – his very presence on earth meant that she was not “living alone”, was not free to make her own choices.

She felt somehow like someone who had spent a long time running up a hill, but had run right off the top and was now trying to run in mid air, suspended above the ground and getting no-where.

That feeling stayed with her all the time she was in hospital.  It stayed with her all through the inquest.  The verdict of death by mis-adventure added to the surreal feeling rather than detracting from it.

She had needed help applying for income support, her confidence was so badly shattered.

Their previous landlords had re-housed her in a small flat on Brookside estate, several miles from her former home.  The flat was nice enough on the inside, but the first time Beryl had seen it from the outside, her heart had dropped into her boots.  The building looked like some science fiction barracks, built all of concrete, all vertical planes and angles.

 

As she walked in through the door, she thought how dark the interior was.  The long hallway gave access to only four rooms.  At the far end, straight ahead was the kitchen, and this was her first surprise.  As she opened the door, she was greeted by a bright and airy space that was both comforting and welcoming.  The previous tenant had left it decorated in pink and grey, and she thought that something needed to be done about that, but otherwise, the kitchen alone welcomed her in and made her feel easy. 

Out of the kitchen and into the next door around on her left, she was in the living room.  The window was wide and welcomed the sun in from a southern elevation, making the room warm and welcoming, and they looked out over a small grassy area bordered with footpaths.

The bedroom was a shock, however.  The ceiling was black with stick on luminous stars scattered over it, and the walls were a deep and oppressive purple.  Nothing that a coat of paint wouldn’t fix, though, and for the first time in her life, she started to warm to the idea of being able to decorate her own home, just the way she wanted it.

The other two doors off the hallway opened into a bathroom and an airing cupboard.  All in all, the flat was smaller than the one that she had been forced to leave, but it suited her very well.  Even if the housing trust were to offer her the chance to go back to the old flat once it was repaired, she would not be able to go.  There were too many bad memories there that she would prefer to leave behind her.

She moved into the flat with only the bare minimum.  Much of what she had had at the other flat was salvageable, but she wanted to cut all ties and start again with all her own stuff.  Leave the past behind and face the future brand new.

Her doctor had her on anti-depressants to try to help her cope with not only the trauma, but also with the stress of learning to be independent again.  She was also offered counseling and a short term care person to help her to re-enter a world that she had been isolated from for so long.  This person, one Susan Morgan helped her to get out, go shopping, take walks, took her out to choose the minimal amount of equipment that she could afford, as well as the tools and materials to decorate the flat with.

Days passed and the new look to the flat was planned.  Weeks passed and the materials were assembled and the job begun.  She was perfectly capable of doing the work herself, and found that she was thoroughly enjoying it.  It kept her busy, kept her mind occupied and stopped her from dwelling on her past too much.  Months passed and the work was complete and there were never enough pastimes to keep the darkness at bay.  The pills were not helping much, and neither were the ones that replaced them.  The horrors that had stayed in the darkness now started to invade the days.

On the plus side, however, she was beginning to feel more comfortable being out and about.  She was becoming used to taking busses around the town, and eventually decided that she needed to be able to go out even when her care person was not available, so she started walking to the local shop every day, just to prove that she could.

Then the day came when her Susan said that she thought that Beryl should try taking the bus without her.  This bus did a circular tour of the south side of Telford, so she could get on the bus outside the flat and just sit there as it toured its circuit and then get off again when it returned.

When she got off, the Susan was standing there waiting for her, and she felt such a sense or achievement that she almost hugged the woman.  Tears flowed down her cheeks, curving outwards to flow around the broad grin brightening her face.  She felt empowered, ready to catch the next bus along.

A couple of days doing this and she was asked to get off the bus somewhere around the circuit and wait for the next one.  That was another milestone.  The next was to get off at the town centre and walk around there for a few minutes before catching the bus home.  Crowds were a major stumbling block for Beryl, so she had to pick a day when there were fewer people around.

Then, one day, she took the bus to the town centre without anyone telling her too, walked around to the library and browsed for the whole morning.  When she told her Susann that, the woman was delighted, said “get your coat, we’re going to celebrate – my treat”  It was still early enough in the morning for the malls at the shopping centre to be quiet as they walked up from the bus station to “The café in the garden”.  “Here’s a treat for you, the Susan said as she placed a huge foaming cupful of something decadent on the table in front of Beryl.  A cup topped off with a deep cap of foamy whipped cream and cocoa powder.

“What is it?”

“Mochachino.  Try it; it’s a little bit of heaven in a cup.”

Beryl sipped it, and was hooked.

 

More and more, the compulsion to stay indoors and wait for Anth to call and check up on her began to fade in the face of his continued absence and under the pressure of a certain tough personality that bubbled up whenever the darkness faded – as it did more and more as time passed.

Against her doctors’ advice, she began to wean herself off the anti-depressants, and as she cut down on them, she noticed that she felt better.  There was a certain degree of fog lifting away from her brain, and as it lifted she became more interested in living and in getting out and DOING things.

Before long, she was able to leave the flat without any encouragement at all.  When this happened, the Susans’ visits were toned down to one visit a week, and then the service was withdrawn altogether.

 

Towards the end of June, she received a letter from a solicitor, asking her to come into the office. 

When she read the letter, her heart dropped into her boots.  What did they want with her?  Surely Anth’s death had been all settled and all blame removed from her?

Terrified, she readied herself to go and find face the music.

Dressed in her smartest, tidiest suit, hair scraped back in a severe bun, makeup muted, she took the bus into Wellington and walked the distance to the Solicitors office, butterflies in Iron boots battering themselves against her ribcage, trying to get out.
When she got there, she only waited a few minutes, mouth dry as cotton, sweat coating her hands and her heart fluttering in her breast, before she was called in to the office.