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.