Howard picked up the phone. It was his father. He broke
the news that the investigators of the gas explosion that killed Granny Grail
had reached a verdict of misadventure. After all, gas cylinders and an old,
mad woman were a volatile combination.
'Quite right, obviously,' burbled his father. 'Talk about
sticks of gunpowder tied to a lit fuse! Accident just waiting to happen,
truth be told.'
Upon learning that the inquest recorded a verdict of accidental
death, Howard felt little relief that he had apparently escaped suspicion.
He presumed that the verdict was a smokescreen and that the police were secretly
conducting a murder investigation.
For the entire week Howard felt miserable to the point of
paralysis. When the day of Granny Grail's funeral arrived he stepped into
his Maxi and set off down the main Chillington Road. The Maxi was a whale
of a car: Its 1750cc engine propelled it responsively, despite its bulk and
limited aerodynamic virtue. Yet even this hulking machine was buffeted by
the gale. The squeaking windscreen wipers fought a frigid battle against
the driving sleet. Visibility was incorrigible yet he drove even more recklessly
than usual. He had not given himself enough time for the trip. He had not
wanted to attend Granny Grail's funeral in the first place but his mother
had insisted. He thrust his way over the moors, fighting for control over
corners taken too quickly. The throes of winter assaulted him.
Late and feeling exhausted he parked at the church. Outside,
huddled in groups, his relatives gossiped. Their black garments flapped in
the wind. Howard threw away a cigarette end, stepped onto the muddy asphalt
and approached his aunts, uncles and cousins.
'Nowt will see 'er gold, nowt but her sister: Only
Granny Grolgoth left now!' cautioned one of Howard's Aunts in austere
timbres.
'Poor Granny Grolgoth!' whispered a second aunt, 'how dreadful
to have your own sibling perish and leave you behind in this world! Though
she doesn't look very sad, just scary and all.'
'To my mind Granny Grolgoth doesn't know sad, just
like her dear departed sister. They only know menacing if you ask me.'
'Why should she be sad?' an uncle pitched in, chuckling,
'She can keep in touch with her dear departed sister over the Spirit
World hotline. Give it a few séances and it will be just like old times. Cold
blade of death does not stop them sisters you know!'
'Come hither, young man!' hissed an ancient, croaky voice,
as chilling as the breath of a spectre.
Sensing the address was directed at him, Howard turned and
beheld the fearsome sight of Granny Grolgoth herself, who was surprisingly
distant compared with the proximity he imagined from the presence of her voice.
Granny Grolgoth was of a likeness to her unfortunate sister, Granny Grail.
If anything, her frame was more bent; her expression more haggard; her nose
more hooked and her fingers more twisted. She leaned on a gnarled walking
stick. Her creased, frightening eyes glared. It was too late to escape. Granny
Grolgoth summoned him with a crooked finger. Howard did not dare defy the
old hag's beckoning and walked over to her.
'I do hear each word they do say, I curse the lot of them!'
rasped his great aunt.
Howard tried to smile, but only a frown would form. He said
nothing.
'My sister bequeathed a message for thee, a communication
from the dead!' hissed Granny Grolgoth.
He panicked at the notion that Granny Grail had spoken to
Granny Grolgoth from beyond the grave. He did not believe in life after death,
but his paranoia led him to consider as plausible any phenomenon that
endangered his security. Did this crone know he had killed Granny Grail?
'It was not the want of my departed sister for thee to hear,
but I do now say to thee her words,' the hag breathed.
Howard wanted to run, he did not want this conversation
but he felt himself rooted to the ground.
'Well, Granny Grail was right,' he blurted. 'I have not
a flicker of interest in her affairs, especially now she is murdered, I mean,
dead.' He froze in terror and cursed himself.
The old spinster did not seem to be listening.
'She holds for thee a forewarning, an omen from the
Spirit World!'
'Well?' asked Howard, failing to disguise his nerves.
'She said thy fate is death. Thy fate is death! She
really didn't want thee to learn that.'
'I do know that! The Grim Reaper dances his jig
of death for us all, you know. You must think I still believe in Father bloody
Christmas!' said Howard, edging away as if anticipating a blow from his great
aunt's bony fist.
''Tis true we will all be claimed by the grip of death,
but thee shalt listen. Let these words be spoke. She, who is with her forefathers,
foretold your fate.'
Howard did not know what held is desire to flee.
'So Granny Grail told you when I will meet my fate?
Tell me when and I will make for the hospital that day. Or, on second
thoughts, I won't. Hospitals are where you go to die!'
Granny Grolgoth's eyes screwed up with excitement. She seemed
to enter a trance. Her foul voice sounded remarkably like Granny Grail's,
yet more so than usual. It became indistinguishable.
'A fair wench shalt die not once. A fair wench shalt
die twice! A wench shalt die twice, it shalt be so! It shalt be wise to beware
for this is prophesy!'
In his confusion Howard felt suddenly belligerent.
'A wench? Die twice? What utter gobbledygook you old crones
like to gibber! Prophesies of doom from the dead indeed! This is the twentieth
century, not the age of miracles! Nobody has prophecies anymore and they
never will! And nobody has them beyond the grave. The bookies would go bust.
If I have to wait for some stupid prophesy to come true then I am destined
to live to a ripe old age indeed!'
'Folk do foretell, even in this unlearned
age. A lesser while ago when the moon was-'
'Yeah. Well. Thanks anyway. Sorry about Granny Grail. Goodbye!'
interjected Howard.
'Alas, now I do ken wherefore she wished thee be not warned,
rest her soul in darkness. Fare ye well, rude child!' Granny Grolgoth put
her bony hands to her desiccated lips and gazed meditatively ahead at the
assembled throng.
Spying his parents, Howard pulled away from Granny Grolgoth
and greeted them. His mother looked shaken and bemused, her eyes glowed red
with grief and she looked strangely withered. For the first time he saw Granny
Grail in his mother's countenance. She was growing wrinkled. He shuddered
and was unable to look her in the eye. In contrast his father seemed barely
able to conceal his good cheer. For the first time Howard saw his father
seem at ease with life and at peace with himself, like an ancient mariner
that had drifted into waters free from both albatrosses and curses.
His mother gave Howard a hug and smiled emotionally at him.
'So, Howard, how are you? How is university treating you?'
'Fine,' mumbled Howard. He stared at the ground.
The relatives were ushered into the church. Howard sat
alone on the second row, behind his parents.
Howard's father turned to face him.
'Truth be told, we instructed the vicar that we are not
folk of a religious bent. More of a fishing bent actually.'
The vicar was old and grizzled. He did not seem at first
sight to be an approachable man. He paused and smiled grimly. He looked at
everyone in turn and then spoke. He began with a short eulogy. Then he told
a brief anecdote about Christ being a fisherman. Howard noticed his father
seemed to perk up and nod with approval. Then the Vicar returned to the subject
of the funeral. Howard had expected to be bored by the monologue, but to his
surprise the vicar's voice seemed to engender great wisdom and power and he
listened intently. Because their focus was the spiteful Granny Grail, the
vicar's kindly words of love and loss sounded incongruous, indeed they were
ludicrously inappropriate. Howard's perception changed. The vicar seemed
to speak to him personally and he spoke not of Granny Grail but of Jacintha
and of his love for her and of her death.
'Of all the beauty in God's Earth there will never again
be the quite the same beauty that was in her heart,' emoted the vicar in his
warm, sonorous tones. The lilts and rhythms of the speech were so effective
that to Howard they had the compassion of an orchestra and choir performing
a sweet requiem. 'How fragile is the human body that it is forbidden to last;
but memories shall be forever. One day we shall all come to bear the loss
and the sadness and we shall remember. After our heartbreaking remembrances
we at last shall smile and we at last shall be fulfilled for having been blessed
with such a wonderful and tender life.'
For Howard, the vicar's rich voice became unbearable. This
spiritual man sharpened his despair of Jacintha's tragedy. Usually he fought
his emotions, but the regret was too excruciating to control. As the vicar's
musical voice rose and ebbed Howard's emotions were torn. His stomach contracted
and ached. He cried.
Behind him he heard his Uncle murmur, 'It's a sad shame.
Sad shame to lose the dear old lady.' His quietly spoken words
articulated a misery absent when he had in casual merriment joked about her
before the service began.
His cousin, a young child, crossed the isle and sat next
to him.
'Elenor,' a motherly voice softy pleaded. She didn't
comply. Her tiny fingers took a small object from the palm of his hand.
'A butterfly! His wings are all sparkly.'
Howard, both his voice and spirit crippled, simply nodded
in agreement. His eyes fixated on Jacintha's brooch.
An uneasy stir filled the room. Howard looked up. Granny
Grolgoth paced up the isle to towards the altar. The vicar gazed at her with
a polite raised eyebrow. She pushed him away from his pulpit.
'My sister is in the next world,' she hissed threateningly.
'Yet I need a room in this one!' Howard's great aunt gazed expectantly at
the audience. 'Which of ye will grant me shelter?'
There followed a deathly silence. Granny Grolgoth gazed
at her audience with glaring, accusing eyes. Howard noticed his father shrink
down into his seat as if trying to hide. People alternately glanced up at
the arced ceiling and down at their watches as if seeking a deliverance by
appealing to both Heaven and Hell, they didn't care which. Someone muttered
that they were late for a hospital appointment. Others nodded and whispered
that they had better be leaving as well. People scrambled from their pews.
Howard watched his relatives take flight from the holy place. They moved towards
the smarting light outside with the harried urgency of maidens fleeing vampires.
'I must make tracks too,' he told his horrified mother.
Without awaiting a reply he joined the exodus.
Howard tortured his car down the twisty road over the moors to Redater. His
guilt had multiplied after his visit to the
church. The vicar's moving words condemned
him. He felt ashamed. Maybe Granny Grolgoth's
was right, Jacintha had died twice:
once physically and once in his heart. And
now he too would die as young as she. It would
be his punishment, a welcome punishment. That
was his fate and he would wilfully fulfil
it: let the vicar would have another difficult
funeral on his hands. He pushed his foot down
hard on the accelerator. The Maxi growled
with rage.
 | | | | |
| From: |
JGR | Subject: | 2002-09-21 21:22:48 |
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| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2002-10-23 10:31:50 |
| | | | |
| From: |
Knoeier | Subject: | 2002-12-08 11:00:10 |
| | | | |
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