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A Variety of Short Stories
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WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
1
UNCLE SAUL AND THE EYE-TEST.
It is the Spring of 1948. I am ten, living with my mother in a rented house which is
also a doctor’s surgery.
I am alone in the house.
The doorbell jangles. I open the door a squidgeon. Uncle Saul forces his bulk into
our hall, saying, mysteriously, “Jamie, a wee word afore your Ma gets back.”
His slate-grey eyes try to lift a smile, but before it gets shoulder-high, he pushes me
into the living room.
“Uncle Saul,” I protest, “what are you doing?”
“You’re goin’ to help me, boy,” roars Uncle Saul. He sits down at the table where I
was doing my homework. He holds me facing him. Large hands clamp my thin arms. I
smell the oil, and then the coal-smoke of the steam-engine my uncle drives, and feel
sickish.
“It’s lucky for me your Ma’s looking after this surgery for Doctor Trent.” Uncle
Saul laughs without mirth. “He’s givin’ me the Company’s check-up Friday week.” He
looks at me through slitted eyelids. “D’ye see?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I quiver.
“It’s like this,” Uncle Saul goes on. “I’m fit as a fiddle, but having a bit of trouble
with my eyes.” He pauses, as if giving me another chance to guess what he wants.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
2
“Are you going blind?” I see him tapping round Belfast with a white stick.
“I mean,” Uncle Saul’s mouth tightens. “I want to take a look at the eye-chart that’s
hanging in his surgery.” He gives me a bit of a shake.
He tells me he wants to learn it by heart, so that when the doctor comes to examine
his eyes, there’ll be no trouble with his sight.
“That’s cheating,” I tell him, amazed that he should think of such a thing.
“Come on,” says Uncle Saul, ignoring my words. “You let me into that surgery. I’ll
copy the eye-chart.”
“It wouldn’t be right,” I say.
Uncle Saul tells me he knows more about what’s right than I do. And do I want
cousins Arthur and Joseph to starve if he loses his job? Not to mention Aunt Alice and
himself?
“But, if you’re going blind,” I begin to argue.
“Damnit, boy. I’m not goin’ blind,” explodes Uncle Saul.
“But you have to be able to see the signals clearly.” I feel all the horror of a train
crash with hundreds of people killed.
“I can see the signals,” says Uncle Saul. “I know the signals like the back of my
hand, so just let me into that surgery.” He gives me another shake.
“Can’t.” I’m glad to say. The surgery is locked and Ma has the key. It’s Uncle
Saul’s opinion that the key is hanging up somewhere, and I know where it is.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
3
“Ma keeps it in her bag.” I glance at the clock, hoping she’ll be back to rescue me.
“Ask her for it when she comes back.” My voice squeaks.
He tries again. Do I ever go into the surgery while she’s cleaning there? Yes. Well
then, there’s half-a-crown, to go and see Laurel and Hardy at the Hippodrome. Next
time she goes in to clean, write down what’s written on the eye-chart, so he can learn it
off by heart. He’ll call round for it the day after tomorrow.
“I don’t want to.” I hand him back his money. He won’t take it. He folds my hand
over it.
“Write down what’s on that chart, Jamie,” he orders, putting his face close to mine.
“I won’t do it,” I stammer. I wish he had never come.
“Do it,” says he, ice-cold, with a murderous look. “I’ll be back Thursday, and,” his
voice sinks ominously, “don’t tell your Ma.”
He goes then. I really believe he will murder me if I don’t do what he says. After
he’s gone, I cry, because I feel so alone and miserable and vulnerable. “Where are
you,” I cry out to my absentee father.
I wish my father didn’t just come home to move us from house to house, and then
go back across the water. I dry my eyes. I can still smell Uncle Saul in the room yet. I
open the window. I open the back door.
“What’s the matter with you,” Ma asks, taking the groceries through to the kitchen,
when she comes back.
“Nothin’,” I reply.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
4
“Good,” says she.
Later, sitting on the wall overlooking the back entry where all the bins are, I tell
Tom, who lives next door, about Uncle Saul and what he wants.
“Half-a-crown,” he exclaims.
I tell him I don’t want it, and I don’t want to do what Uncle Saul says I have to do.
“Give it to me then. I’ll go see the Bowery Boys in the Royal Cinema, and tell you
all about it when I get back.”
I give it to him, glad to get rid of it.
“What’s so wrong with doin’ what he wants?” Tom asks.
“It wouldn’t be right.” I wonder why I have to explain it to him. “Look, if he’s
goin’ blind, and he can’t see the signals, he might kill hundreds of people.” I shudder.
“And it would be my fault.”
“Mix up the letters a bit,” Tom says, hopping down off the wall.
“But then he’d fail the test.”
“He won’t kill nobody then.”
“He’ll get the sack.”
“Then he can keep spuds in it,” says Tom, and goes off, laughing.
I don’t sleep too well that night. I lie there, tossing and turning, and hating Uncle
Saul for what he is doing to me. When I fall asleep I dream of being chased down a
railway track by Uncle Saul in his engine.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
5
At school I can’t concentrate, and get kept in to fill three black boards with lines: “I
must pay attention in class.” By the time I get home, I’ve decided to do it. I’m too
afraid not to. I’m too afraid to mix up the letters like Tom said, even though I’d like to
do that. I’ll do it and hope that Uncle Saul’s eyesight is not as bad as I think it is.
“What kept you?” Ma asks.
I tell her and she says: “Well, you won’t do that again.”
“Have you cleaned the surgery yet?” She hasn’t. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“Wonders’ll never cease,” she remarks.
When I am struggling upstairs with the upright Hoover, my stomach is churning. I
tell myself I haven’t done anything wrong yet. That it’s not too late. I don’t have to do
it. But Uncle Saul is coming tomorrow. Ma helps me through the door with the
Hoover. She looks at me, worried.
“You all right?”
I try to look surprised that she’s asked such a question. I put the plug in the socket.
She switches on the cleaner and begins to push it busily back and forth. I take the
opportunity to note down what is written on the eye-chart hanging on the wall.
Again, I don’t sleep well that night. In my dreams, Mr Patterson, my Sunday
School teacher, who is also a policeman, keeps telling me that even if my mother
hasn’t seen me, God has. He knows I’ve done wrong.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
6
Next morning, I want to throw away the piece of paper, but I don’t. I tell myself
that it isn’t too late to get rid of it, and make some excuse to Uncle Saul when I see
him.
This time he meets me in the street, and just holds out his hand. I give him the
paper like it was a hot coal I’m glad to get rid of. He never even says thanks. Just
walks off.
“You’re sickening for something,” Ma says. “Want to tell me about it?” She sits
down, ready to listen. I’ve been kept in at school again, and have come home looking
absolutely miserable.
“Nothing’s the matter,” I lie.
She tells me my father is on his way home again.
“Will he be movin’ us again?” I am anxious to know, for if he moves us to another
house, I won’t have Tom for a friend.
“I hope not,” Ma says. She looks as worried as me.
Saturday morning Tom brings me a Superman comic, bought with Uncle Saul’s
money. I don’t want it. I still feel bad.
I trudge, next day, to Sunday School and tell Mr Patterson, the policeman. I expect
him to arrest Uncle Saul, and me as well. Next minute we’re down on our knees.
“Lord,” says he to the ceiling, “into your hands we commit Uncle Saul, the sinner. If
he’s one of your elect, call him in. If he’s not, call him off. As for wee Jamie, here.
He’s no better sense than to fear Uncle Saul, so he’s not to blame.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
7
I’m not to worry. I worry until the Friday evening Uncle Saul turns up, after work,
for his medical.
“Off by heart,” he gives me a broad grin. I hate him.
I am going upstairs when the doctor calls me into his surgery. He gives me some
notes to take down to Ma for filing. As I leave, I glance at the eye-chart.
“That’s not the right eye-chart,” I exclaim.
“Good observation, Jamie,” says the doctor. “No, that’s new. I got it today.”
Uncle Saul will never believe it. I go down to my mother.
“Doctor Trent’s got a new eye-chart,” I tell her.
“That’s nice,” says she.
“Will you tell Uncle Saul that?”
“Why?”
“He thinks the old one’s still there. He’s learned it off by heart.”
How do I know that? I tell her. She begins to laugh. “Serve him right. He’ll get a
quare gunk.” Then she says, “God works in mysterious ways.”
“You think God worked all this out?”
“God works everything out.”
“Everything?” I think of my father across the water and never at home. Of how
many times he’s moved us from house to house. I tell her that.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
8
“Well, maybe not everything. Your father had choice. God could have found him
work here as well as anywhere else.”
“Doesn’t he like being with us?”
She files the notes away, pushes the drawer closed. “Come on,” says she, “let’s take
care of your Uncle Saul.” She gets a half crown from her purse.
He’s sitting alone in the waiting room.
“Well, Saul,” Ma says. “What’s this you’ve been up to?”
“Lizzy?” he eyes her distastefully.
“I’m not offering you anything to eat,” she says. “The last food I made for you was
twenty-years ago, when you threw it down the yard because it wasn’t on the table
when you came in.”
“You’re a hard woman, Lizzy.” say he.
“No harder than yourself. Here’s your half crown, and never come into my house
again, interferin’ with what’s mine.”
She throws the money at him and he catches it deftly. There doesn’t seem to be
anything wrong with his eyes.
“By the way,” she says, sweetly, “the doctor got a new eye-chart today. The old
one’s in the bin, and the two of them aren’t the same.”
With that we leave. I see Uncle Saul’s jaw dropping, then his eyes hardening with
anger as it firms up again.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
9
After a while he clumps up the stairs to the surgery. A while after that he comes
down with a much lighter tread. He sticks his head round the door of our living room.
“You’ll be glad to know, that I’ve been given a clean bill of health. My eyesight’s
fine. I only need glasses for readin’.” His head disappears. He slams the front door.
Reading Superman, I wonder why God needs to work in mysterious ways at all.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
10
ANSWERING.
Nell ran to answer the ’phone before it rang off. If it wakened her husband...
To say she ran was an exaggeration. She was eighty-nine with congestive heart
failure and osteoporosis, so placing one foot in front of the other and proceeding
slowly in a forward direction until she had to sit down and rest, was running.
It was twelve feet from where she sat. Bright red, attached to the wall beside the
medical emergency pull-cord.
An infinity of bi-sections stretched between her and the purring instrument.
She began her journey, needing to cover the distance before her husband stirred to
awareness.
Once that happened...
The girl she had been at fourteen danced out before her, skipped effortlessly across
the floor, and down the years, and picked up the jangling candlestick telephone in one
hand, unhooking the ear-piece with the other.
She immediately heard the voice of her mistress.
“Gerald, darling. The coast is clear.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
11
Nell looked out of the window. From where she stood she didn’t think the coast
was all that clear. There seemed to be a mist, and in the mist a freighter was steaming
down the Lough. In fact you couldn’t see the other side of the Lough at all.
“Yes,” her mistress’ voice went on. “He won’t be back tonight or tomorrow night.
He’s gone again on business. Nell, the maid, goes home after six o’clock.”
A smooth male voice, “I’ll come at seven, Gloria, my sweet.”
Nell replaced the earpiece with a click, and put the ’phone down again.
She went on dusting and cleaning, and didn’t hear her mistress come down the red-
carpeted spiral staircase.
“Nell!” The hardness of the voice made her jump. “You listened in to my
conversation.”
“I didn’t Mrs Chambers. Honest I didn’t. I knocked it over.”
“Don’t lie, you stupid girl. Of course you did, I heard your breathing on the
extension.”
Nell looked at the frostbitten face.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Chambers,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”
“You can be quite sure of that,” said Mrs Chambers. “When you put on your coat to
go home tonight it will be for the last time. I’m terminating your employment.”
“Ach, Mrs. Chambers. No. Please we need the money. Da broke his spine and can’t
work.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
12
“You should have thought before you listened in.”
“I just wanted to hear what it was like. Please, I never heard a telephone before.”
“Get on with what you have to do,” said Mrs. Chambers. “Your pay will be ready
when you leave.”
Nell went into the kitchen and got down on her knees before the big cooker and
began to cry and to scrub the red-tiled floor.
What was she doing scrubbing the floor if she was sacked?
The lady wouldn’t pay her, otherwise.
She couldn’t go home empty handed.
And when she told her mother.
“It’s into the mill with you then.”
“What did I do that was so bad, Ma?”
“Such an innocent,” said her mother. “She was afraid you would have let the cat out
of the bag, sometime.”
“She has no cat, Ma.”
“Lord save us,” said her mother.
Her fourteen-year-old self came slowly back towards her, head bowed. When she
reached her, she looked up, smiled, put her hand on her arm and said, “Let me help
you.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
13
They went on, and her twenty-six year old self hurried before her towards the red
concrete and glass telephone kiosk at the corner of the street. She waited outside the
box. When the ’phone rang she went in, and lifted the heavy black receiver.
“Tommy,” she said, breathlessly into the mouthpiece. “Is that you?”
“Nell, yes. It’s me.”
There was a silence.
“I got your message,” she prompted. “You said you’d ’phone me. Well?”
He cleared his throat. “You and me,” he said.
“Yes?”
“We’ve been going steady.”
“We have?”
“Look. Listen. I want to ask you...”
“What?”
“Give me a chance.”
“Go on then.”
“I’ve got a steady job.”
He worked in the Shipyard.
“You’ve got a steady job,” she said.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
14
“Well then?”
“Well then, what?”
“What about us getting married?”
“I don’t know about that,” she said.
“Let’s meet later,” he said, giving a time and a place.
“Right. See you, then.”
Twenty-six came out of the ’phone kiosk, and walked down the street towards her.
Even in her mill overall, with a day’s dust on her turban, she looked beautiful and
radiant.
Later of course she’d said yes, but before they could be married Tommy had gone
off to Spain and all her hopes and dreams had been killed by a bomb at a place called
Guernica.
She’d married Tommy’s brother, Arthur, because he had a steady job as a porter in
the Hospital.
As her smiling 1934 self came to her, she nodded to Fourteen, and said, “I’ll take
the other arm.”
But Nell needed a rest before going on. They placed her on a chair near her drop-
leaf table. She drew breath in short, sharp sniffs, through her nose. The veins in her
neck were engorged. Her curved back was aching.
The red ’phone was ringing loudly, and the Nell of last year was on her way to
answer it. She moved faster then, than she did now. Even so, before she got to it,
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
15
Arthur, who was a year older, and had no trouble with legs or heart, came in from the
hallway and lifted the receiver.
“What do you want now?” he shouted, abruptly.
“Give me the ’phone, Arthur,” Nell said.
“You leave me alone,” Arthur shouted into the mouthpiece.
“Arthur.” Nell said, holding onto the table.
Arthur dropped the receiver and it hung spinning the coils out of its lead. He went
out again. Nell got to the phone.
“Hallo,” she said.
“Mom?”
It was Tommy who had gone to the America in 1956.
“Tommy? Yes. Is everything all right?”
“Who was that?” he asked.
“That was your father.”
“It didn’t sound like Pop. What’s the matter with him.”
“His head’s away, but apart from that, nothing’s the matter with him.”
“Are you OK?”
“I get a bit breathless from time to time, but apart from that I’m all right.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
16
Arthur came in again.
“It’s Tommy,” she said.
“Who’s he when he’s at home?”
“Our son,” she said.
“What son?”
“The one who went to America. Here, talk to him.”
He took the receiver.
“I know your tricks,” he said. “You’re not foolin’ me. You’re him. So get lost.”
Nell rescued the ’phone before he broke the connection.
“See what I’ve to put up with,” she said. “He thinks you’re the man next door
who’s blowing smoke through the wall into his bedroom. I get this every time the
phone rings.”
“That sounds too, awfully bad, Mom. What about Sylvia and Ruth, Mom. Don’t
they help?”
“Ruth helps. Sylvia’s in England and I only see her at set times.”
“I hope to come over sometime next year, Mom.”
“Bring my grandchildren, Emma, and Paul.”
Now Fourteen and Twenty-Six were bringing her forward again. Eighty-eight
turned to them.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
17
“I hate that man,” she said. “I wish I’d never married him.”
The small living room filled with her former selves from 1938 until 1969.
“There were good times as well as bad,” they told her. “He always had a job.”
“I was nothing but skivvy to him.”
1939 came forward with 1941, and 1945. They carried babes in arms. Tommy, and
Sylvia, and Ruth.
“We were happy,” they said. “Oh how happy we were.”
Eighty-eight said, “I haven’t been happy since.” And then nodding towards Sylvia
held by 1941, “She gets herself pregnant and disgraces us all. We should have had the
house to ourselves but instead, she and her husband George, and the baby, Jennifer, all
come to live with us for ten years, and me still the skivvy.”
“We coped,” said she of that time. “No-one went hungry, and eventually they left
and found a place of their own.”
Eighty-eight was not to be deflected.
“And then that man, in there, goes off his head.
“It happened so slowly,” said the 1970s to the 1990s, emerging, “that we never
noticed, until Ruth and her husband caught on.”
The ’phone stopped ringing.
Her present self, murmured, “I’d hate to put him away. The doctor says he’s
dementing, God help him. There are times he doesn’t know me, but I’d miss him.”
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
18
“Don’t cry,” said Fourteen, stroking her cheek. “Please, don’t cry.”
They reached the red ’phone and Nell lifted the receiver and dialled 1471. She was
told the number of the caller, and the time of the call and recognized it as that of Ruth
her daughter.
She dialled 3, as instructed and sat on a chair at the telephone.
Ruth answered.
“It takes me a lifetime to answer the ’phone nowadays,” Nell said.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
19
SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE.
He came blasting through the louvred batwings into the kitchen, calling her name -
Marta, and singing out - Rambling Rose Of The Wildwoods. With surprising suddeness
his legs rubberized. His knees went akimbo. His arms splayed out before him. He felt
nothing. He heard nothing. He saw the pores in the Chinese slate with which he’d paved
the kitchen. His eyes imploded in a hail of white and red sparks.
*
Marta Henry kept the chain on the door, and looked at the grizzled man on her
doorstep.
Oh, it’s you, she said. I paid my debt. I served your sentence.
Mrs. Henry, said Judge James Nesbitt. I’m dying. Invite me in. I need to sit down.
Marta looked for truth in his eyes. She slipped the bolt and opened the door wide. He
panted his way across the threshold. She closed the door and he followed her to the
kitchen. She held the batwings open for him, then seated him at a pine table. She made
them both a pot of tea, and put a plate of biscuits before him.
You’re living, again, in the same house, he said.
That surprises you?
Yes. Greatly.
I thought I’d come back.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
20
She waited for the judge to go on, but he dipped a biscuit in his tea, and sucked it into
his mouth. He repeated the motion, noisily. He had failed, considerably, from the time he
had come to see her in prison.
You’ve come to ask again why I killed him?
He looked at her with rheumy eyes.
I have, he said. This time, I hope you’ll tell me.
Nothing’s changed, Marta said. I still have the right to remain silent.
Humour a dying old man. Tell me why you killed your husband?
The police had charged her with murder. She had refused defending counsel. He had
explained to her, at the time, the difference between the charge of murder and that of
manslaughter.
I waited by the side of the door, she said, with my iron frying pan, and when he came
into the kitchen, I brought it down as hard as I could on the top of his head.
I know how you did it, said Judge Nesbitt. I want to know why you did it.
I said at the time, I was guilty as charged. It doesn’t matter now.
It keeps me awake at night puzzling about why you did it.
A dying man should be thinking of other things.
I hate mysteries, the Judge said. I’ve got to know whether or not I gave you a just
sentence. I may not be able to do anything about it now, but I have to know if I made the
right decision.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
21
I’ve never told anyone, said Marta, and I’ll go to my grave without telling anyone.
Another cup of tea before you go?
Here’s your hat, said Judge Nesbitt. What’s your hurry?
Exactly.
I never fathomed you, he said. Will you not tell me?
No.
Judge Nesbitt shook his head in bewilderment, then scratched his white thatch.
The papers bid up to a million for your story, he said.
I turned them all down, she said.
I suppose I may as well go, said the Judge, getting up, slowly.
I’m sorry you wasted your time, she said.
On the doorstep he said to her, Your sentence might have been shorter if I’d known the
circumstances.
Or longer, said Marta.
He must have done something terrible to you? Sympathetically.
Nice try, M’Lord.
Well, I’ll try again, Mrs. Henry. When an irresistible force, such as me, meets an old
immovable object, like you. Something’s got to give.
He saw her pupils constrict, and her mouth twist to one side, as she blanched.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
22
What is it? he said.
Go, she said.
She closed the door, and stood with her back to it, catching her breath. The Judge
knew nothing. How could he? It had to be pure coincidence.
She’d kept it to herself. As soon as she’d brought the pan down on the crown of his
head, and saw him lying there, spread-eagled on the floor, she knew she’d killed him.
She’d got down on her knees beside him, and cradled him in her arms, sobbing: Bring
him back, bring him back, bring him back, bring him back, bring him back.
She’d fled to the kitchen for respite, and she’d told herself: If he follows me I’ll crown
him. He’d followed her.
Had she meant to kill him? Later, during the time of taking tasteless food off tin trays,
she felt the relief of being free of his aberration.
She should have separated from him, or divorced him, but she’d stayed and suffered.
On remand, there were times when she’d been tempted to tell the priest in the prison.
She hadn’t. She knew he’d say: And for that you killed your husband? What sort of a
woman are you? After the act, the reason she did it seemed so inconsequential.
She’d pleaded guilty, and kept absolutely silent. She frustrated all attempts by Judge
Nesbitt to elicit mitigating circumstances.
During her uncomfortable, and unpleasant, years in jail, her husband’s voice and face
gradually faded from her memory.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
23
She’d come back to the house sure she was free of him. Until the Judge’s remark she’d
neither heard Matthew’s voice in her head, nor been able to visualize his face.
Now leaning against the door, she cried out:
Oh, God......
And heard his voice singing in her head:
...Our help in Ages Past.
No, she gasped. I can’t....
...Tell a walz from a tango, sang his voice.
In her mind she could see his face, smiling at her with childlike ingenuity.
She was going to say: This is more than I can stand. She got as far as: This is...
...My lovely day. It is the day...
Don’t, she yelled. She held her hands tightly against her ears but still she heard.
...you, step on my blue suede shoes.
You’re....
.... you’re driving me crazy. What can I do?
Desperately, she turned and opened the front door and fled into the street. Judge
Nesbitt was just about to get into a large black car. She called his name. He looked
towards her, and straightened up.
What is it, Mrs. Henry? he asked in genuine concern at the fear on her face.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
24
She got into the back seat of his car, and he followed her.
Tell your driver to go, she said.
Drive around, Charles, said the Judge.
The car started, and slid smoothly away from curb.
Collect yourself, my dear, said Judge Nesbitt. Then tell me what happened.
Why did you have to come? said Marta. You brought him back to me. I can hear him
again. I can see him again. I thought he was gone for good.
Who?
My husband. He’s in my mind. Interrupting me, as he always did when he was alive.
He sang at me. After every two words I spoke, he sang at me.
Was that why you killed him?
You’ve no idea what it was like. How terrible it was. I lost all my friends because of
him. Then there was only the two of us. I put up with it as long as I could.
And what was the last straw? asked Judge Nesbitt.
Nicky, our cat. I found her lying in the road one day. She’d been run over, and when
he came home from work, I said:
Matthew, something....
And he starts to sing: .... something in the way you walk.
It’s Nicky, our cat....
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
25
.... the cat came back, he sings. I thought he was a goner but the cat came back.
Matthew, I said. Listen....
.... List’ to me while I tell you, of the Spaniard who blighted my life.
Nicky is dead, I shouted. Killed in the street.
Lying there in the street where you live, he sings.
This is not funny...
....Funny, but it’s true.
That’s when I ran to the kitchen. I could stand it no longer. I told myself I’d crown him
if he came after me. I meant to crown him. He charged in calling my name - Marta, and
singing - Rambling Rose Of The Wildwoods. He always did that when he wanted to make
amends. But I crowned him anyway. Can you believe that?
I believe you, said the Judge. I believe....
.... for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows, sang Marta. She couldn’t stop
herself. She had seen the musical notation forming in her mind in slow motion, and leave
her lips like greased lightening. She looked out the window, and ahead could see the
spires of the Cathedral. Maybe if she went there and prayed. Confessed all before God.
Asked forgiveness. She reached over and touched the driver’s shoulder.
Take me...., she began.
The driver looked at her through the driving mirror, and said: Pardon me....
....if I’m sentimental when we say goodbye, she sang.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
26
It isn’t real, she thought, This can’t....
....be love, because I feel so good, she sang, interrupting her own thinking.
She reached for the door handle, but Judge Nesbitt, prevented her from opening the
door.
You can’t do that, he said. Not while the car is moving.
Moving, moving, moving. Keep those doggies moving, rawhide, she sang.
The Judge struggled to keep her wrists imprisoned, and called to Charles to drive to
the nearest hospital.
She needs a doctor, he said.
Oh, doctor I’m in trouble. Well, goodness gracious me, sang Marta.
MY MOTHER WAS NOT A SENTIMENTAL WOMAN.
My mother was not a sentimental woman. She stood on sturdy legs and had a stubborn
mindset, and it was probably this that caused my father to be absent in Scotland and
England during the time of my growing up.
He would come home from time-to-time, listen to my mother’s complaints about our
current habitation, remove us to another house and then be off again.
So it was that we were moved from a house in Great Victoria Street to a couple of
rooms in a farmhouse on the Flush Road above Legoneil. This now meant that I had to
travel to my two schools in Belfast; to my weekday school and to my Sunday school.
What I am about to tell you took place on a Sunday. I was ten years old at the time and
that would make the year 1947.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
27
From the farmhouse I walked a mile to the bus stop from where the bus took me to
Smithfield Bus Station.
There was a newsagent’s in Winetavern Street that I always looked into before going to
Sunday school. It was owned by a man named Francie and his wife and they kept a
selection of American comics; sixpence each.
If all went well that day, I thought, I’d be going home with a Superman and a Captain
Marvel, because my Sunday school teacher was giving a penny a verse for memorizing
Isaiah 53, and I knew all twelve verses off by heart.
I got my shilling and I got my comics, and I got my bus home. I sat in the long
backseat behind the cavity of the door opening. Just before the bus moved off a well-
dressed woman with a cardboard box with holes in it sat beside me.
During the journey I was distracted from my reading by mewing sounds coming from
the box. I looked towards it more than once.
“Kittens,” the woman said. “Would you like to see?”
I nodded, and she took the top off the box and I saw two tabby kittens crawling over
each other. They looked blind.
“They’re nice,” I said.
“Would you like to have them?”
“Don’t you want them?”
“We have others,” she said. “I’m just trying to find someone to give them to.”
“I’d like them,” I said.
She handed me the box and instructed me on how to look after them.
I got off the bus and walked home, from time-to-time looking in at my two kittens. I
still remember my singing heart.
It stopped singing when I showed them to my mother.
WILLIAMSON/Story Selection Three.
28
“Where’d you get these?”
I told her. My mother could “Humph” and she “Humphed”.
“They’ve got the mange,” she said. “It’s not your fault. You weren’t to know. I’ll have
to drown them.”
My protests were useless. She drowned the two kittens.
As I said, my mother was not a sentimental woman.
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