Historical Fiction: Walking Away from Midnight – Sample Chapter 8

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Last Updated on June 3, 2024 by Tom Kane

Chapter Eight

A Slow Death

Catterick Garrison, England, February 1932

Jessie stood to the right side of the large bed her mother occupied. Her mother looked gaunt, worse than gaunt, she looked deathly. Her head resembled a living skull, a nightmare figure in her mother’s bed. Jessie’s thoughts went back to the time she had got lost at the Midnight Lake, and woke up with a skull staring at her. Her mother was now that skull. For a moment, she told herself it wasn’t really her mother. But of course, the nightmare was real, and it was her mother, skin sallow and sagging down her face. Her once lustrous blonde hair was now only sparsely tufted in grey patches across her scalp. Her mother was obviously ill and any croaking words she muttered were accompanied by a wheezing cough. The skeleton-in-the-bed would be gone soon, and the teenage girl left with her memories of a beautiful and loving mother.

The howling gale outside added to the macabre and surreal scene. Every gust conjured up in the fifteen-year-old a host of images of witches and ghouls and malevolent spirits flying round the house in the middle of the worst snowstorm she had experienced. Her father had not arrived home yet and so the girl was doing her best to keep her mother company, keeping up her frail spirits. She had spent so much time with her mother over the last few months, time she felt her father should have used to lift the spirits of his sick wife. But no, her father was mostly away, doing soldier things. His wife didn’t seem to matter too much to him.

The door opened quietly, and the girl looked round. Her father stood framed in the doorway, in his full military uniform of a major in the Durham Light Infantry. He had hurried from a staff meeting at the nearby Catterick Camp in North Yorkshire.

Closing the door, quietly removing his military greatcoat and cap then dropping them to the floor, the girl’s father padded across the carpeted bedroom and sat on the opposite side of the bed to his daughter, next to his wife. He gently took hold of his wife’s other hand. He knew time was running out. His wife didn’t have long.

The girl shot a glance at her mother’s face again, but immediately averted her eyes. She knew little about her mother’s illness except that it was cancer and she could tell her mother was in pain. What she didn’t want to see what was evidently written large across her mother’s ravaged face, death was but days away.

The door to the bedroom opened slowly and quietly. A younger woman, almost looking like a younger version of her mother, entered the room. The girl blessed her with a sardonic smile. The woman smiled back, not quite grasping the meaning of the girl’s smile. She was carrying a tray with medicine bottles containing pills and a hypodermic loaded with a clear liquid.

The father tuned to look at the young women. “Medicine time?”

The younger woman nodded and set the tray down on a bedside cabinet, turned and left the room.

The girl watched with what she hoped wasn’t a ghoulish fascination as her father administered the medicine in the hypodermic then two sets of pills washed down with water.

When he finished giving out the medicine, he dabbed his wife’s dry and cracked lips gently, with loving care, whispering, “I love you.”

His wife attempted a smile, which looked more like the rictus smile from the skull of a long dead human. “Ah nuv oo, oo,” she said with an effort.

To the daughter, it was an almost comical aside that in another time would have been funny. As it was, the cancerous sores in her mother’s mouth made the skeleton-in-the-bed grimace in pain, despite the obvious attempt at showing affection.

Her husband squeezed his wife’s hand gently and the little girl shed a lonely tear.

The husband waited for his wife to slide into a fitful sleep. Then he gently led his daughter away from the room and downstairs.

“Are you hungry?”

The daughter walked into the dining room and sat at the large table.

“No, I’m not. And I’m not happy either.”

Her father sighed. “What’s wrong?”

“You know what’s wrong. I’m not stupid. I know you’re having an affair with her,” she said, tapping the fingers of her right hand on the table, one after the other. Her left hand simply shook. A rage was building inside her, emotions pouring forth and she was ready to burst, to scream in defiance of her father and his lover.

“While my mother lies dying upstairs, you show good grace when she brings in medicine, water, and food. But downstairs, after I’ve gone to bed, you hold your secret assignations here, in the dining room.”

The father was stunned. “How?”

“Doors have keyholes and keyholes without keys in them make good spy holes, all to see you by.”

At that moment, the door opened and the woman who had previously entered her mother’s room with medicines, now entered with a tray of tea and biscuits. “I thought you may like something light to eat,” she said, her accent giving away her foreign origins.

“Thank you, Armel,” the man said.

The girl averted her eyes, somewhat in shame at believing this woman, her nanny, had stolen her father from her mother.

Armel sighed and placed the tray on the table and walked past where the girl sat.

“Do you want me to run a bath for you, Jessie?” She touched the back of Jessie’s head lightly. Jessie pushed her head to one side, looked up at Armel and sneered.

“No, I don’t. And I don’t want to be in the same room as you two either, but while I’m at it, tell me why you are never around. You’re always off on some mission or other, never at home to help us. Only in extreme circumstances.”

“I go where the army sends me, it’s part of the job.”

“And the army won’t give you compassionate leave?”

“I’m here, now, aren’t I.”

Jessie stood, pushing the chair back. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” She stepped to one side and pushed the dining room chair back under the table. Without another word or a look back, she left the dining room and walked up the stairs to her own room. There she threw herself onto her bed and cried herself to sleep.

***

Nev Fordham sat at the dining room table, chewing his breakfast toast and marmalade. He was alone and liking the peace and quiet so rarely visited on the Fordham household these days.

His peace of mind was disturbed when the dining room door opened and Jessie’s head popped round the door.

“Coast’s clear, Jessie. They both left earlier. Armel has gone for more medication for your mother and…”

“Don’t tell me. Duty calls for my dad. Typical.”

“Are you still angry with your father and Armel?”

Jessie sat down and stole a triangle of her uncle’s toast. “I’m always angry with them. There never seems to be a day goes by that I don’t get angry.”

Nev smiled. “Teenage angst. It happens to us all.”

Jessie smiled back at her uncle. “I can’t see you as a teenager, uncle.”

“I never was. I was one of those rare breeds of human, born with an adult brain in a baby head. The first few years were very frustrating, having adult ideas and thoughts but unable to articulate them.”

Jessie giggled at the thought.

“You know, you look so much better with a smile on your face than a scowl. Oh, here comes trouble,” Nev said.

The dining room door opened slowly, and the family pet, a black and white springer spaniel named Bounce, poked his head round the door.

The dog sniffed around until it found the source of the smell of toasted bread, butter, and marmalade. He slowly walked up to Nev, sat down, and lifted his left paw.

“Bounce, leave uncle Nev alone,” Jessie said.

“It’s fine, Jessie. He can have the crust. I’ve never liked the crust.”

“Dad said you went to jail,” Jessie blurted out.

Nev smiled once more at his precocious niece. “You’ve wanted to ask that question for a while, haven’t you?”

Jessie nodded, eager to hear the grim stories of life in a prison.

“I’ll let you into a secret, just between you and me,” Nev said, tossing the crust to a slobbering Bounce. “I was never in prison. But don’t tell your dad or Armel. It’s our secret.” Nev got up, walked to the dining room door, then stopped and turned back to Jessie. “By the way, I have some great news.”

“What?”

“Your father is being made a full colonel. He will be Military Attaché at the British Embassy, Paris.”

“France? Well, that will be useful with owning a summer house.”

“It is. But the best bit is we all get to live in France.”

“But I don’t…”

“Want to go to France. Well, I have news for you kiddo, you have no choice in the matter. So just go with the flow of life and enjoy it. And don’t worry. You’ll soon be going to university and I’ll bet that will be Cambridge, same as your parents.” Nev winked at Jessie once and walked out of the room.

Jessie let out a sigh.

Adults are so complicated.

Two days later, Ruth Fordham’s slow death ended as the grim reaper paid a visit and took the-skeleton-in-the-bed into death’s dark embrace.

***

“We are moving to France in a few weeks’ time,” Albert Fordham said at breakfast, a week after his wife’s funeral.

Nev looked up from reading his newspaper, looked at Jessie and waited for the storm front to hit.

Jessie nodded, sat back in her chair, and sighed. “At least Bounce will have somewhere to play,” she said. “Assuming we, the young ones, will be living at the Midnight Lake.”

Albert looked at Nev. Nev hid behind his newspaper.

“What?” Jessie said. “What am I missing here?” looking in Nev’s direction, who still cowered behind his newspaper.

“You will be living at the lake, along with the others. Bounce will not be living with you.”

“Well, he can’t live at the embassy,” Jessie said in a matter-of-fact way, cutting in half a slice of buttered toast. “Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s with the vet. He’s too old to travel and besides, there will be nobody to look after him.”

Jessie had the toast triangle to her mouth when the realisation hit her like a bombshell. “No,” she shouted, throwing the toast on the table, jumping up and running for the front door.

“Jessie! Jessie, it’s too late. He’s gone.”

Jessie had the front door open and was about to go round the side of the house to retrieve her bicycle. She turned and stormed back into the house and screamed at her father when she entered the dining room. “No! You can’t be so cold. He was my dog.” Her face was red with rage and warm tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Our dog,” Albert said calmly. “If you want to be technical about it, my dog. I bought him.”

Jessie glared at her father, who calmly picked up the toast she had discarded, and bit a corner off, eating slowly, locking his cold eyes on his daughter’s rage filled eyes.

Nev crumpled his newspaper and let it fall to the floor. He stood up and embraced Jessie. “Come on, let’s take a walk outside.”

Jessie wrapped her arms around her uncle and let the tears flow, screaming, and shouting into her uncle’s chest.

Nev looked at his brother.

“How could you do that to your own daughter?”

Albert shrugged. “It had to be done, Jessie. For his sake and for ours.”

“No,” Jessie shouted, muffled by her uncle’s chest.

“Yes,” Albert said. “In time, you will thank me.”

Nev, tears in his eyes, walked his niece to the dining-room door and looked back at his brother. He shook his head and left with Jessie.

The father and daughter’s life would never be the same. Not for losing a pet. Not for losing her mother, but for her father gaining a new bride in France, only three months after his first wife died.

Copyright © Tom Kane 2022

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Chapters 1-2: http://fictionbooks.online/walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapters-1-2

Chapter 3: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-3

Chapter 4: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-4

Chapter 5: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-5

Chapter 6: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-6

Chapter 7: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-7

Chapter 8: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-8

Chapter 9: http://fictionbooks.online/historical-fiction-walking-away-from-midnight-sample-chapter-9

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