Storm Warning
By claud
- 565 reads
The susurration of a rising wind impinged upon his sleep and caused
him to open his eyes. There had been no wind for about a week, as one
steaming day succeeded another and the ice cream man on the seafront
grew fat. Perhaps the weather was breaking at last. He hoped so. The
heat induced weakness, which he despised, whether it was in his
business opponents, customers or wife.
He sat up in bed. Perhaps he had better look in on Jenny, his wife.
Trust her to go sick when he had an important series of clients to
entertain. He had come home that evening, nursing his latest "antique
find," to discover a note on the hall table:-
"I`m sorry about the supper. I wasn`t feeling too well and I`ve gone to
bed."
He had climbed straight upstairs and pushed into her room, awakening
her. She looked at him, her dark eyes large and bleary, her black hair
spread damply over the pillow.
"What`s all this?" he had asked.
"I`m sorry Charles, I really am. I felt terrible at five o`clock -
dizzy and an awful head. I almost rang you to come home early.
At that time he had been coming out of old Morpeth`s shop, with his
parcel.
Jenny had offered to come down and cook, so as a reward he showed her
the antique barograph.
"You`ve got two barometers already," she said. "What on earth do you
want another one for?"
2.
"This isn`t just a barometer. Look, it shows the weather for a whole
week on that trace. The purple line shows the rise and fall of the
pressure. Or it would if it still worked.
"It`s pretty old. Eighteenth century old Morpeth said. Its registering
a big storm - see?"
Jenny hadn`t looked. Wearily she had pushed a plateful of steak at him
and dragged her way back to bed.
He had put the barograph in the spot once occupied by Jenny`s favourite
pot plant, which he had removed days ago. It appeared that the
diaphragm had been smashed one Sunday night when the stylus had
plummeted down in what must have been a near hurricane. The glass case
had been repaired but that was all - the brass badly needed a bit of
polishing.
Old Morpeth hadn`t said much about it.
"Came from some attic," he had said. "Got it in a job lot down Penzance
way."
The old rogue had probably picked it up along with some really good
stuff at a local auction. Morpeth specialised in bereaved people who
had little idea of the value of some of their legacies.
Charles remembered all this vaguely as he padded along the corridor.
The wind was rising to a howl, and the Victorian house seemed to be
acting as a sounding box. As he passed the landing barometer he noticed
that the needle pointed to "set fair".
Odd. He tapped the instrument but it remained rock steady.
3.
He moved on. Jenny`s room was on the leeward, quiet side of the house.
She appeared to be asleep - there was sweat on her forehead and she was
moaning softly. Charles made no attempt to wake her but decided that
the Doctor should be called in the morning. Perhaps she was really
ill.
He had a mental vision of himself standing at her graveside, grissled
and distinguished in smart black. This displeased him a little.
Although he had long since ceased to give her anything of himself, and
indeed regarded her still professed love as a sign of weakness; he
needed her to cook, keep his antique collection polished, and to grace
his table at dinner parties. He realised that she would be hard to
replace - very hard.
As he returned to the landing the light went out. He paused irresolute,
annoyed at a power system so vulnerable to the weather.
Now it was all wailing and darkness. Somewhere in the house a window
banged wildly. He stumbled downstairs to check.
The curtains of his museum like drawing room were open at the French
windows. He caught sight of a full moon flickering in a clearing sky.
The windows shook and drummed and even the curtains swayed, but all his
polished wooden treasures shone serene in the half dark.
A chance beam of moonlight flicked on to the barograph. The brass
glinted oddly considering that it still lacked polish, and the paper
trace seemed to glow a golden blue.
Then he became aware of a face outside - a bearded, heavy browed face,
brutal and greedy, but softened by a drawn look of infinite pain.
4.
The wind rose to a demented shriek and the window blew in like a split
trysail. The barograph was hurled from its place. It disintegrated at
his feet. Charles fell across it as the face in the window seemed to be
blown away like cloud wrack.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Jenny found him in the morning when she stumbled down, weak but free of
fever. He lay across the remains of his barograph, his face turned
towards the blue sky outside. In the final gust which had blown him
over a splinter of glass from the window had opened his throat like the
slash of a cutlass.
The police and the ambulance men knew nothing of the storm. Nor for
that matter did Jenny; and it was hotter than ever when a day or two
later the inquest verdict had been "death by misadventure". As Jenny
came out of the courtroom she met old Morpeth. He seemed
uncomfortable.
"Nasty piece of work that old barograph," he volunteered. "Belonged to
a wrecker you know. An evil man."
"Got his though," he went on, "in the great storm of eighteen
something. His house blew down while he waited for an East Indiaman
with the beacon dowsed. A beam fell on him and crushed him. It`s all in
the diary of a parson of them times."
"Locals said it was a judgement. Was the Sabbath you see. They said his
soul wouldn't have any rest until.-" He coughed. "I thought that it
would just do for..." he faded out.
Jenny turned away for the car which awaited her. She thought she saw
why the storm had come to them alone, and even her own fever, Charles
had become selfish and evil, not like the man she had married - the
barograph had found someone to, well take on the wrecker's
burden.
5.
Back at Jenny's house the dustmen were loading the wreckage into their
van.
"Eh! Look at that! Wonder how he managed to smash that up?" said the
Foreman, gazing at the wreckage of the barograph. Behind him, unseen,
the shape of Charles's face smiled without mirth. The Foreman would
never believe it if he had turned round!.
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