Published 'Not One Of Us' 1995
I was a stranger. The street I walked was lit only by the windows of terraced houses stretching interminably either side of me. All were curtained across, some with swish, home-tailored fabrics, printed with every combination of colourful abstracts, flowers and stripes. Others were dowdy and tawdry, no doubt hanging in textures of dust. A few showed straggly hems, threadbare patches, frays, tears, nicks and, yes, sickening stains. One passing window, much to my bewilderment, was completely uncurtained. I could see a single bare bulb flexing from a crumbling rose in the ceiling and shining out with glowing quilts of yellow light across the glistening pavement.
I pulled the coat collar tighter over the adam's apple, since the wind had taken a renewed tug upon me, mixed with sleety rain and gnawing bonechills. I stopped, walked back, peered over the squat garden wall into the empty window. I had often wondered what really went on in this town after dark. If curtains are drawn together, there must be a good reason for so doing. If undrawn, there may be a reason, too.
Within my over-large wellington boots, I stood on tiptoes, but still could not see much beyond the bulb, the peeling blistered wallpaper and a tallboy chest with what looked like rags hanging out of the ill-fitting drawers. There were some miniatures on the wall, which were too far away to make out. The large carriage clock below them on the chipped baroque mantelpiece told a time which seemed to have stopped for more years than it had stood there.
The longer I loitered and stared, the more details of the interior emerged. There was actually someone standing by the mantelpiece, leaning upon it, cigarette smoke disfiguring his face. He was evidently sounding off to a person sitting under the window inside the room.
Then the words themselves could be heard, as the man by the fireplace pitched his voice further into the street.
"You slut! A daughter or mine dressed ... like that! I can very nearly see every bit of your body which God gave you to hide. I'll tell you again, you're not going out, till you've changed into your something decent."
I crawled over the sodden front garden and cowered under the window-sill to hear the girl's response:
"All my friends dress like this to go to the dance band... And... And... You only say what you do because you're jealous - your eyes are always all over me. No wonder Mum has taken to her bed..."
There was a crunch and, then, silence.
Desperately trying to scurry back on hands and knees to the pavement, I must have missed the most significant part for, eventually, I saw that the carriage clock had disappeared and worms of smoke crawled along the mantelpiece.
And a girl's face gradually slid like a red sunrise over the glass of the window, with all the clockwork of her head hanging out with springs of blood...
I shrugged since I was nothing but a stranger.
