very short stories

HANDS

The hands were broad, square. They were the hands of a craftsman: her father. She watched how they put toast on her plate, milk into her mug. She wanted them to stop, so that she could crawl inside and be safe forever and ever, pillowed on skin that smelt of wood-shavings and soap. But these hands were always busy: they had a job to do.

That’s what he said about the War, too, “Just had a job to do,” but he had won a medal for bravery. He had shown her, once, making her breathless when she saw the silver on red velvet. He read out, “For Heroic Deeds on the Field of Battle.” Her throat closed at the memory.

She asked to get down and ran to the workshop, with its strong, resiny smell. It always made her feel dizzy, this approach to the heart of her father. She quietly opened a drawer and took out the small blue box. She wanted to see again what it said, now that she could read. Her fingers traced the letters of her father’s name, JOHN WARNER, and underneath it said, “This child has been awarded the Lifebuoy Medal for Clean Hands.”

SUIT

The reflection in the mirror wasn’t mine. I had seen the face before, in a dream when Bill first went to sea. It had the same features as mine but now I stood in my brown suit, looking in the glass, and seeing a sad-faced woman in black. The colour was all wrong and not one I wanted to see. I moved the glass around the room, now in the pale winter sun, now in the dim dark next to the big walnut wardrobe: always black. I kept it to myself. We were worried enough, all the adults.

Tom was waiting for me in the kitchen, my shy brother, who never married. Too shy to ask a girl out. My older sister, Kate, lived with us and looked after the children. Bill and I had two boys and two girls. The girls weren’t born when war broke out. They were under the table now, playing with the cat, Whiffle, while Kate sat shelling peas. The cat gave me that look and tried to catch my legs as I passed.

“Is this suit all right?” I asked her.

“What do you mean? It’s your brown suit,” she said. The bright green peas pinged into a white china bowl. I saw that her thumb nail was a darker green from the shelling.

“We’d better get to the station,” said Tom.

The girls were more interested in the cat than me, so we left almost at once. The telegram had said to come urgently, that Bill was in hospital in Chatham. He should have been coming home. The Navy had discharged him, couldn’t wait despite his medal, didn’t want wages to pay, and he was to go back into the Dockyard here, where he had always worked with Tom. The wind drilled my cheeks as we walked to the station. I was glad that we saw no one we knew. The lights from a pub lit Tom’s face as we passed and I saw red veins on his cheeks and nose that I had not noticed before. All three of us getting older. Some men were singing inside, smoky laughter, the warm beery smell of happiness that the war to end all wars was over. Bill lying in a cold white hospital bed.

We missed our connection at Cardiff and it was the last that night. We had no money for a hotel but Tom remembered that one of Bill’s aunts, Auntie Bec, lived in the city.

“I hardly know her,” I said. “I’ve only seen her once since our wedding.”

“She’s family,” said Tom. I knew he hated to be travelling, dealing with strangers, not snug in his own home, safe. I knew the way to her house. Our breath steamed white against the dark privet hedges. On her front door, the brass gleamed and the step was polished white stone. We knocked. Steps approached on the tiled hall floor beyond, coming fast. Auntie Bec would be shocked to see us, especially at this hour.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “I knew you’d come. I know something is terribly wrong with Bill.” There was no possible way she could know anything, I told myself. Upstairs, in the frigid blue air of her guest bedroom, I looked in the mirror. My suit was brown. Still, I did not sleep that night.

We caught the first train to London the next morning, before it was light. Auntie Bec had cried but I kept my composure. The train was freezing and we had only had some bread and butter for breakfast and a pot of tea. I wished Bill were here, to keep me warm, I wished he would stay alive long enough for me to say goodbye.

“Do you think it’s the Spanish ‘flu’?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Tom patiently. Perhaps I had asked him many times. “We would have heard if he’d been injured. He got through the war all right, he’ll get through whatever this is. Don’t worry.” But I could always read him like a book.

Whatever would I do with just a widow’s pension and the pennies Tom gave me for housekeeping, to keep a deaf sister and four children, two growing boys? The eldest was called William, after his father.

I fainted at the station. No drama, I simply crumpled outside and Tom got me into a Lyons Corner House and made me eat. It looked to everyone, I’m sure, as though he were looking after me.

By the time we got to Chatham, of course, it was too late. I knew it was going to be from the moment I had seen myself dressed in black. Tom left me alone with him. I sat for a while, looking at his stretched grey skin that felt like cold wax. Bill was long gone; this corpse was a stranger who looked something like him.

His medal arrived six months later, but no money.