No Tomorrow

NO TOMORROW

Peter's mother had never come back. She was gone when he came into his
house from the neighbour's car after school one day. Then his Granny
had come to take him away to her home near Plymouth, only for a
holiday, they said. Her house was near the sea and the wind brought
with it the sharp-salt seaweed smell and sometimes the oily fishy mixed
up odours of the harbour. Gulls wheeled and crowded overhead early in
the morning, waking him with their shrill, piercing cries. He slept in
his own tiny room under the slope of the roof and his father had packed
his favourite toys in his grey school shoe-bag. He sat on the low
window-seat and watched and waited, with his battered toy bear in his
arms. Ben the Bear had been blue once, but his mother had washed him
and dried him in the sun so many times that he was faded to no
particular colour. She had mended both ears and one arm with neat
strong, stronger than the rest of him, except for his black button
eyes. Peter told Ben all his thoughts and they wondered together, they
wondered what was happening in the grown-up world.

Days and weeks were unclear to him. Food was eaten, walks were taken,
he bathed and dressed, slept and woke, while the summer passed.
Sometimes there were trips to the beach, or the to the harbour, or to
the grassy cliffs of the Hoe, where men and women in white clothes
played bowls. He
began to sense a change in the air, leaves turning colour, the whiff of
smoke from bonfires in the parks. It felt like school term again, but
no one talked to him. No one explained to him why he was on such a long
holiday. Once in a while, his father telephoned and said a few words to
him in his special, Sunday best clothes voice, sounding strange and far
away. As for his mother, no one spoke about her. He never spoke about
her or asked about her either. He was afraid of making them cross, of
being called a nuisance. It seemed best to keep quiet and, as long as
he did that, everyone praised him for being a good boy. Peter liked
being
a good boy more than sweets on Saturday, or even going to the
cinema.

One breakfast time, just when he had finished eating his boiled egg and
had pushed a big hole through the bottom of the empty shell, so that no
one he loved could sail away in it, the doorbell rang. It was his
father in his second best, go to market trousers and his not quite old
yet brown jacket, smelling of hay and grain from the barn. His father
picked him up and held him in his arms. He breathed in the close soapy
cleanness of his father's neck and clung very tightly, without a word.
His father carried him to the old green farm van and tucked him into a
blanket on the passenger seat with short, gruff, comforting words.
Peter watched his case and his shoe-bag being put into the back of the
van. His father looked at him, the corners of his eyes going crinkly as
he handed Ben Bear over to be company. The boy loved his father very,
very much for doing that, although he had no words to say so. He
snuggled down and began to croon an endless, tuneless, going home song
into Ben's mended ear, while his father drove. Soon he was asleep in
his blanket, Ben still pressed fast against his cheek.

He thought at first that his mother would come back, but the neighbour
women from the three nearest farms came in to cook and clean, each on a
different day. His father managed Sundays, with his help of course.
When they said he was six, three of his friends from school and two
neighbour children came to tea and Edna's mother baked a chocolate cake
for them. Edna was his best friend. She was nearly seven, but she had
been away from school a lot last year, so she was in his class. He
liked her, she would always talk to him and she knew everything about
everything. Edna's mother and father and two big brothers lived as near
to next door as farms came on the high moors. He went to school in
their car with Edna.

He talked about his mother with Edna. Edna suggested that she might
have gone to live with Jesus in heaven. Peter was surprised, but Edna
explained that grown-ups said that when people had died, because they
found it difficult to talk about dying, especially to children. Peter
thought about his mother often, although he found it hard to remember
exactly how she looked. When he closed his eyes and pushed his
fingertips against his eyelids with anger, then the pictures came back
of his mother, cooking, mending, ironing, feeding the hens. Warm tears
came with the pictures of his mother. In them, his mother had brown
feathery hair and bright, toffee coloured eyes, like a robin or a wren.
She was always busy, arms full of things, sorting, folding, arranging,
putting eggs in boxes or fruit in racks or clothes in cupboards. Peter
wanted to ask someone if Edna was right and his mother had died and
gone to Jesus, but the only person he could ask was his father. Peter
was sure his father would be cross with him. He thought and thought and
then he did ask his father.

His father lifted him up into the old, flowery armchair by the kitchen
range, sat himself on the low footstool beside the chair and very
softly, in his goodnight story voice, talked to him. His father
explained that his mother had gone to live in a big town a long way
away from the farm, with a friend of hers. She had not been happy in
the country, the work was hard and she had not been born to it. Peter
nodded. Peter understood. He knew his mother had cried when the
chickens were killed, when the lambs and calves went to market and most
of all when they killed a pig in the lean-to at the back of the
shippen.

The man watched his son's reaction, realising with relief that there
would be no more questions. He wondered whether he should have talked
to the boy before, but somehow it had been hard to know where to start
or when to find the right moment. Now it had all been said. He lifted
Peter out of the armchair and helped him to tuck his trousers into his
boots to go and feed the pigs. The boy liked helping around the farm,
which was a stroke of luck under the circumstances. There surely was
little time to play, so sharing the work took the place of toys and
games and gave them time together,

The rain and snow of winter was interrupted by going to Granny's house
for Christmas. Peter spent many hours in his room with Ben Bear in his
arms. He was careful not to do anything to upset the grown-ups. His
father was very quiet, but the television was on most of the time, so
the visit ended without any fuss. It was not like Christmas for Peter,
or his father, or his Granny.

Peter grew with year, as the countrymen say, and became more and more
useful about the farm. He learned to do many jobs well and neatly. His
hands strengthened. Now he could muck out, milk, herd, feed, saddle up
and groom. People said his father worked him too hard, but he was happy
being busy, helping his father, being told how good he was. He became
happier still when spring softened the harsh outline of the high tor
behind the farmhouse, bringing new grass and star-flowers, silvered
with the fine rain the wind seemed always to carry on its breath at
that time of year.

Then the painted woman came to tea. She had bright yellow hair and blue
eyelids and lips like blood. His father put on his Sunday suit and
shiny shoes, shirt and tie. He smelled soapy and clean. He made Peter
change into all clean clothes, wash his face, brush his hair and scrub
his hands, even though they weren't dirty. When tea was over, his
father told him to leave the table in a voice that meant he should
disappear for a while, so he did. Under the stairs was a cupboard. In
the cupboard were his toys, some cardboard boxes, his bicycle, old
wooden bricks and his train set, as well as cases of grown-up stuff.
There was just room for him to crawl in and close the triangular door.
Light filtered in through a little window in that door and Peter felt
safe shut in there, especially when Ben Bear was with him. He sat on
the floor and rocked himself to-and-fro, to-and-fro, to-and-fro,
humming a tuneless song to Ben, his eyes getting used to the dim,
shadowy space.

His father found him asleep in the cupboard. He had already searched
everywhere else on the farm, the barn, the shippen, the pig-house, the
yard and all the outhouses. Anxiety made him angry with the boy, but
his son's tousled, dusty head, his face pressed to the faded bear and
his sleep-swollen eyes caught him unawares. Gently he picked up his
drowsy child and carried him upstairs, filled with love and pity as he
settled Peter to sleep in his own cool narrow bed.

Peter was afraid of the painted woman. She came to visit them often.
She laughed like a nightjar, a harsh forced sound. Sometimes she stayed
late. On those evenings he went to bed while she was still sitting in
the kitchen with his father. When she came to tea, he left the table as
soon as she could and went out. If it was raining he crawled into his
cupboard under the stairs and rocked himself to sleep. Then he decided
to talk to Edna about the painted woman, when they were sitting in the
barn one afternoon. Edna said she was probably a witch. She looked like
a witch and she sounded like a witch. Peter listened very carefully to
what Edna had to say. Edna knew so much more than he did about
everything. He asked Edna if witches were dangerous. Edna looked at him
with her most serious face, her mouth turned down, unsmiling. She
whispered a warning. If a witch kisses a person, that person is under a
spell, and witch spells can kill.

Peter blinked because his eyes were prickling and felt sick inside.
Edna watched him carefully. She was pleased to see Peter believed her
completely. Under a kissing spell, a person might die she assured him,
if it was really a witch who kissed him. Peter swallowed hard, his
mouth dry with fear, his insides aching. He was thinking about his
father. Was the painted woman a witch? Had she kissed his father? How
could he tell his father about her? How could he keep his father safe
from her kissing spell? Edna ran off home to tea. Peter worried all the
way home and went in through the back porch. The long sharp pig-knife
was lying there, all clean and shiny. Peter knew he must never touch
it. His father only used it for killing pigs and it was worn thin and
narrow with being sharpened. Peter pushed open the back door and sat on
the step to pull off his boots.

He ran into the kitchen, silent in his socks. No one was there. He went
into the hallway. He heard voices. His father's voice. And her voice.
The witch woman's laugh, high and shrill. Peter went cold all over. He
stood still, shivering. His father came out of the parlour and the
witch woman was just behind him. His father was smiling. The witch
woman came close to Peter and bent down towards him. She smiled at him.
Peter saw her bright red mouth and her pointed white teeth, like a fox
or a ferret. She had to be a witch. Peter backed away, frightened. The
witch woman straightened up and gave a small shrill laugh, like a
gull's cry. She put her arms around his father and he put his arms
around her. Peter was breathless with panic. She was going to kiss his
father. She was, he was sure. He turned and ran back to the porch. He
snatched up the pig-knife. His heart was bumping and thumping in his
chest. It was hard to breathe. He loved his father, he loved his father
so much. He must save his father.

The witch woman had walked into the kitchen. His father was safe for
now, but she bent down to Peter again and smiled her animal smile,
crying like a gull as she laughed. His father put his hands on her
shoulders. She knelt down and reached out for Peter. He had the knife
hidden behind his back. She caught him and he tightened all his muscles
to pull away. She was going to kiss him. She was going to put a spell
on him. He would die of it. Then she would put a spell on his father
and he would die, too.

Peter held the knife in front of him in both his hands. With fury of
despair and the strength of desperation he slashed and slashed and cut
and cut. She screamed and the blood came. Just like with a pig. His
father grabbed for him and Peter pushed the knife into the witch woman
as far and as hard as he could. She crumpled into a heap on the
stone-flagged floor and her fall pulled the knife out of Peter's
grip.

"The witch won't hurt you now, Dad! She can't hurt you now. She won't
put her spell on you. You're safe, Dad - you're safe!" The room spun
into blackness and Peter collapsed onto the cold floor. His father
stood stunned, unbelieving, everything destroyed.

? Lindy McNaughton Jordan, 2002 (2,375 words)