FREIGHTED BY FRIGHTS ....
by Gordon Lewis and D.F.Lewis.
There was something about the cut of the man that struck a chord of memory, harkening back to a brotherhood that some called warfare. Even the back of the man’s head looked familiar. Walking some 25 yards behind the man in question, Kevin reasoned it couldn’t be who he thought it was. Not only did they originate from different parts of the British Isles, Kevin had heard Sam Morrison had emigrated to Canada soon after his discharge from the army.
Over twenty years had passed since he had seen the back of Sam’s head on the parade ground of an Aldershot barracks at the beginning of National Service. Not a complete waste of time for Kevin, since gaining experience in the Royal Corps of Signals, had been instrumental in placing him in a very good job with a major telecommunications company.
Kevin was sure his memory wasn’t playing tricks as he increased his pace so to catch up with man, who he was sure was his old mate Sam. Reaching his side he tapped him on the shoulder to say:
“Hello Sam you old devil, where have you sprung from?”
It was indeed Sam Morrison that turned to see Kevin — but had he only seen his face from a distance, he would have passed him by as a stranger. But at close range it was the eyes, there was something about the eyes that told Kevin he hadn’t been wrong. But the face had altered. It was weatherbeaten, etched with worry lines as well those of premature aging.
For a suspended moment of time they stared at each other until Kevin spoke again:
“It is me, Sam...Kevin... Kevin Courtland, surely you remember Aldershot twenty years ago, we were in the same squad... Infantry training… you remember...”
Sudden recognition dawned on Sam’s face... “Kevin... Ginger Courtland that ever was. Is it really you?” The worry lines disappeared as his face lit up at the sight of an old mate from his past life.
“If I had one wish Sam, it would be to meet you at this precise moment. I am a stranger here and in desperate need to speak to someone like you. My father died recently — they say he took his own life, something I am convinced he would never do, there has to be some other reason for his death… again I say he would not have committed suicide, never in a million years.” Kevin spoke these words quietly in measured tones. Amost like an automaton.
The death of Kevin’s father was in fact the reason for his presence in this strange town — off the beaten track in a part of the country sparsely populated by smallholders. The connection was tenuous but Kevin felt drawn here...
“Hey! ‘Kevin’ seems more natural than ‘Ginger’.” Sam laughed, the lines on his face returning, but this time as laughter ones. “Well, your hair’s more grey than ginger. One should not fight Middle Age, but embrace it...”
Kevin laughed in tune with the rather insulting comment as soon as he realised his old National Service pal was still the same carefree bloke, albeit scarred by time’s passing.
Shoulder to shoulder, they headed for the nearest pub. Then esconced in the chimney corner of a rather old-fashioned pub, with two bottles of lager being rather youthfully drunk from the necks, Sam asked:
“You say your father killed himself, Ginger?”
“So they say. That was the Coroner’s verdict, But I have my doubts.”
“It’s obviously draining you, because it’s the first thing you actually mentioned to me after meeting up after all these years!”
“Yes, I suppose it is strange, Sam, me blurting that out, even before we had chance to exchange pleasantries.”
“It was almost as if you expected to meet me here and you had your statement prepared...”
“Blimey! You’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m not even sure what I’m doing in this part of the country. Dad had a cousin a few miles from here who ran a vegetable farm and a retail outlet. I think my father spent some of his school holidays there.”
“You’re not sure?”
“No. But that’s enough about my tale of woe, Sam. What’s been happening to you since we last met? I thought you’d left the country.”
Kevin studied Sam’s eyes. They told a thousand stories. But only one of them would turn out to be important.
“It doesn’t seem like twenty years since we parted company, Kevin — though when I think of my experiences since our days in the army, I suppose quite a lot has happened. There’s not a lot to tell that is exciting enough. I did leave the country, I tried my luck in Canada for a number of years, it was too bloody cold for my liking, especially after our tour in the Middle East. I stuck it out though, there was nothing much I could do about it really. Then fate took a hand, I had to return to England for family reasons. My father died, but not in circumstances such as yours. He had made me his sole heir, and I have to say his legacy surprised me somewhat. But there was a proviso — I had to carry on the business he left and take responsibility for my mother’s well being. He had had some luck with investments, sank his money in a business venture which flourished somewhat. It runs itself — more or less. I leave it all to an excellent manager and a small staff of good workers — though I keep a watchful eye on the business, the reins are in my hands, so to speak... Agricultural supplies is our main source of business, though I personally dabble in stocks and shares — successfully I might add, following in my Dad’s footsteps I suppose. Apart from that I live a quiet life, I never married, though I’ve had my moments — seems most of the women I met didn’t quite come up to my expectations. But that’s enough about me too, it seems the pressing business is the suspicions you have about your father’s death... Do you think somebody had a hand in his death? Anything I can do to help? Time and money mean nothing. I know this locality like the back of my hand. What exactly do you intend to do whilst you are here?”
“Thanks Sam,” said Kevin. “Perhaps you know my Dad’s cousin. His name is Courtland too — Tom Courtland, as far as I know he used to grow horticultural items… sold the results of his labour in a farm shop adjoining his land.”
“I never thought to connect you with that scallywag, wouldn’t trust him with anything, dropped him off our customer list years ago. He still has the place though, must get his supplies from somewhere I guess. His holdings are near here, a few miles to the West, near a village called Furness. I’ll give you a lift out there if you like, my car is in a nearby car-park — just around the corner. I’d better not have any more of this strong lager though, a bit of all right isn’t it? I hope we have time later to continue with our reunion. Come drink up, I’ll drive you out to old Courtland’s place, though I’m sure he won’t be very pleased to see me... or you perhaps...?”
Both Sam and Kevin were silent for a while. The strangely stilted conversation had lasted for a long time but only certain aspects of it would be remembered, those sections which carried suspicions and freighted frights. These emotions, however, at that stage in the pub, were not even sown let alone reaped... when empty beer bottles were collected by a ginger-headed barmaid. She was called Moose — a pet name given to her by her grandfather because of the outlandish hair-style sticking up (he said) like antlers! Moose watched the two men leave and she shrugged. All she’d overheard were the pleasantries and small talk rather than a story about suspicious frights. Had she heard more, she may have interrupted with additional information of her own: legends in the town which had done the rounds in her infancy but later told to her by the same grandfather who had laughed at her hair-style.
The sun was low as clouds drifted towards it from the sky’s zenith, creating a curdled egg yolk of dusk. The land was stubbled with meaningless hedgerows, meaningless because they seemed to divide nothing from nothing, except derelict hen-runs. Here and there were farmhouses, some dully lit where the shutters were not pulled sufficiently tight, others with yawning gaps where roof met gutters. The wind soughed, tugging at the flickering top-knots of two dark shapes as they strode southwards towards a destination which both seemed to hope would stay at its due distance… judging by their zig-zagging route. Mumbles could be heard, but nothing of any possible meaning could be gleaned from between the sounds of night creatures hooting and braying.
Then, suddenly, given the best vantage point, one could glimpse, just above their shoulders, a more substantial outhouse, flanked by thatched stables, with light shafting out to carve a path for any who should dare approach it. They only half-noticed these buildings, since the lagers Sam and Kevin had imbibed had further loosened the tongues of these two recently united friends. Yet their conversation was even less memorable, less likely even to tease let alone scare.
The drive from the small market town of Bluntstone had been taken leisurely, stopping on occasion to take in the scenery that really needed to be looked at, not simply as passing landscape. Sam stopped the car finally in a small lay-by some hundred yards or so from the large village of Furness for a more lengthy tete-a-tete. During this discourse Sam told Kevin that he was not really the biological son of the father he spoke about. It wasn’t until the death of the man who adopted him, giving him his name of Samuel Morrison, did the truth emerge about his true origin. Not that there was a lot to tell except that he was a foundling child left on the steps of the vicarage back in Bluntstone. Though Sam had tried to find his true biological parents, all his efforts had been doomed to failure. The scrap of humanity in a cardboard box was all there was, not a shred of evidence to go further back… in the end Sam had just accepted that his parents were the Morrisons.
They left the car to walk the short distance to the village, by this time it was late afternoon, a gathering dusk was spreading over the land. What were they doing there? They felt as if they were walking in circles There was no real reason to suppose that Tom Courtland could shed light on the mysterious death of his cousin, Kevin’s father... Kevin was clutching at straws, this visit to a distant relation was to tidy up loose ends. He had to find out if his father had visited his cousin prior to his body being found dead at the foot of the cliffs some miles up the coast from Furness, his broken body identified by papers he carried, but nothing to give reason to his flinging himself to the rocks below the cliff.
Kevin and Sam eventually arrived again at the track leading to Tom Courtland’s run down old farmhouse until they came to the side road where once stood a farm shop... now just blank windows met their gaze. The outhouse looked in a high state of disrepair with no sign of life. This time the thatched stables gave out bleating noises not unlike a cross between creatures of feather and fur.
It seemed as if they were on a fool’s errand, and Kevin said to his friend, “I thought you implied that Tom Courtland was still trading, we are not going to find any thing out here. Even his stables have been taken over by wild animals and squawking chickens by the sound of it!”
Sam stood there, immobile for a while, then he turned to the house, he muttered with a conspiratorial whisper:
“I’ve got a feeling we are being watched, I’m sure I caught sight of someone up at the bedroom window of the house.”
Inheritances and legacies were things that were in the blood as well as in solid objects of value. Both Sam and Kevin felt this — but not in so many words — as the face behind the crazed pane was younger than Tom Courtland could possibly be imagined to be — with a bestial cast that anyone should try and conceal if they wish to be considered of human stock. It was Tom, but equally, it was not Tom at all. The bright ginger hair should have turned grey by now. The eyes sparkled, the nose was a ploughshare. And all this was actually seen in deepening dusk and amid the distances of the flat scrubland! Sight was now so sharp-edged.
No cliffs around here for an easy escape from life, thought Kevin.
Except the sheer sides of the universal mind, echoed a thought Sam could not prevent himself from thinking.
Sam put his arm round Kevin’s shoulder, as if to comfort him. And the vision of the windowface vanished. Tom Courtland must be dead himself, they both surmised. They did not even bother to explore further. The stables, too, would hide forever what they might have contained.
Sam and Kevin indulged in crazy pub talk — so as to avoid concerns both felt. They stared eyeball to eyeball over two more bottlenecks. There was a resonance between them beyond friendship, even beyond kinship.
Moose shuffled over and smiled cutely, then a wicked smile beneath her outlandish ginger thatch of hair. And both men did not need to wonder whether she was a Courtland, too… dyed though her hair was now seemed to be.
Inheritances and legacies were evidently mysteries beyond even procreation. Any permutations of a thousand, nay, a million stories, making one.
Foundlings, changelings and other hybrids of paternity eventually crystallised into mutual brotherhoods that were more than just fighting shoulder to shoulder in those wars humanity managed, in its wisdom, to populate with a mock common enemy. Moose’s departing smile was mistaken for a wince; the two men, now nameless, smiled, too, their eyes glistening...
Arm in arm, they left the pub, singing:-
“Frights and feathers and fathers and fur,
Nights that brothers’ bloods do blur...
Their songs echoed off into the distance as Moose slipped the latch, ready for bed, to dream of Red Indians and other non-sequiturs. She knew, however, that the Universal Father was a changeling Himself. Or at least a supicion.
THE END.
