“Dad's dead, got stuck in the baling machine. George was working close by and stopped the machine before it did too much damage. We all thought dad would be okay but he had a heart attack on the operating table. He never woke up and mom had just finished making dinner.” Jane broke down into wretched tears. I moved to comfort her receiving a cold response.
“Dad's dead and we have to hide out here away from mother and George. I want you to be part of the family. Do you understand? Part of the family! I'm going to straighten you out if it's the last thing I ever do because nobody else will help you!” I think she saw me as a wounded animal, somebody who needed veterinary treatment. Perhaps I was a wounded animal. I was going to respond but everything faded out so I don't know where our conversation went after that.
Once again I was outside in the biting dark cold fog. I could smell smoke and see it rising through the strange glow in the distance. This cloud of blackness seemed to be an indication, a signpost saying some strange terrible occurrence had happened here. It was like a funeral pyre with death its only reason for existence.
I was drawn towards the source of this blackness, this harbinger of evil. What greeted me was the strangest of scenes. It was a German manufactured baling machine blazing away to destruction, engulfed in flames supported by a large amount of diesel oil. Next to it, with apparent madness on their soot streaked faces were my aunties, Beatrix and Violet. Both completely blackened by smoke, wearing their aprons from the farmhouse, and what appeared to be muddy carpet slippers on their feet. They appeared riveted by the spectacle of the inferno, watching the flames engulf the machine for reasons I now fully understood. I didn't attempt to approach them. I was too ashamed.
I crept off into a cold empty farmhouse with uneaten dinners on its large Victorian table, shamefully to hide an old OXO tin under my mother's no longer marital bed.
I was stunned, not because dad was dead, I already knew that from my conversation with George in August 1973, but the fact he was distracted from his work by my involvement with the drug dealing. The fight had probably been on his mind. My father was quite a tough guy, but when it came to things in the family it was different. Mother was ill once and he fretted for weeks even after she was better. Now I could imagine him totally distracted from his work running the fight scenario through his head, what he'd done wrong, not what I'd done wrong.
He shouldn't have been working with a damaged right arm. He was probably slow moving, or using his left arm to operate things normally done instinctively with the other limb. I knew that damaged limb would slow his movement, and I was to blame for his injuries.
Whatever? Inside that bubble I felt completely responsible for the tragic death of my father.
I'd killed my own father!
I was back in the black of that damned briefcase. The hand I had use the pop the bubble was on fire, and the pain was excruciating. It was as if my hand was being held in naked flame, and subjected to the biting tongues of fire. I stared at the smoking flesh turning a purulent pink colour, bubbling, and dropping off the bone. I was melting away. The hand that burst the terrible grey bubble was dissolving in a way I did not understand until the pixie gleefully explained.
“It's an acid bubble, it's an acid bubble! Yes, it's an acid bubble! All the grey ones with the real interesting stuff are!”
Then I understood the full significance of the fireman's suit. She had produced a hosepipe out of the blackness. It was an old-style hose, a canvas grey pipe with a marvellous ornate brass nozzle formed like the mouth of a large fish. Sadly for me it was only dripping a small amount of water. She was smiling at me, holding this useless fire fighting device, and not attempting to use it.
“Use the bloody hosepipe! Get on with it. Use the damn thing!” I screamed.
Pixie reached up to the helmet and removed it from her head, placing it on the floor in front of her. She then proceeded to stare at it. All this time I was suffering terrible agony, a terrifying, biting, mind-numbing cacophony of pain. I was about to scream something extremely rude at her when she held up a hand. This was a caution for me not to say anything. She was counting and looking at the helmet which I realised had an ornate clock built into the badge. So the fire crew identification badge was a timepiece. The brass numbers were counting down, 16, 15, 14, it was all happening very slowly. I couldn't take this incredible agony much longer. I had to scream out for her to use the hose.
Just as I was about to plead with her she opened up the hosepipe on to me with a terrific blast of the incredible icy water. Even though the jet was over my entire body, the water only affected the parts on fire with the acid. Everywhere else was dry. The water continued for about a minute, I suppose, before she turned it off. I looked at my hand. It was normal, not burnt, no scarring, just normal, as if all that melting burning pain had not existed at all. I still remember it with a profound agony inside my head, and if I think about it a little too much it returns.
“You have to suffer if you pop a grey bubble. If you pop nice bubbles they're not acid, but nice. All the interesting bubbles are all made of acid, interesting stuff, and you pay in proportion,” pixie explained with that captivating smile on her face. Was she a sadist?
I was just about to reply to this rather sadistic, beautiful pixie, when I felt two soft, fine hands close around my eyes from behind my head. Was this some other pixie inside the briefcase, another subtle torture to remind me of a distant past, to give me my education? I was worried these hands were going to put heavy pressure on my eye sockets and gouge my eyes.
Suddenly I was in the warmth of the pub garden again, feeling joyous throughout what seemed to be every molecule of my body. Jennifer released her hands pulling me round by one shoulder. As I turned to face her I had a strange feeling something would not be quite right, that the pain and scarring inside the bag would carry over into this beautiful universe. I was wrong.
She was as perfect and as beautiful as she had always been. The scarring, that was mine alone, and for some reason I could see she understood what I'd learnt from the dull grey viscose orb. Jennifer stroking my face as if taking tears away from my eyes, though there were no tears. I was joyous to be with her. She then suggested that we go for a walk in the nearby woodland to discover a little bit more about nature.
As we walked very slowly in beautiful sun dappled daylight I talked about my experience with the pixie. She listened with patience but I understood on some level she already knew. Jennifer assured me this was the learning process. I was surprised when she confided something to me. I had been assigned as her student and against all the strict rules she was becoming too close to me. I was pondering what she meant by too close, was she starting to feel the same way about me as I felt about her? It was then I noticed she didn't have a briefcase with her.
“Where's the briefcase? You haven't got it,” I said.
She just laughed in the infectious soft way I was starting to adore. She told me some character called O'Duke had the briefcase with him. I was on the very verge of asking her who O'Duke is when I heard the distinct sound of footfalls crunching through the old leaves on the forest floor. These were coming from behind us, a disturbing sensation. I was quick to turn my head, and to my great surprise saw a huge Irish wolfhound trotting along behind us in the most benign manner with a briefcase, now closed and locked in his mouth. Jennifer explained to me the Irish wolfhound, O'Duke, was a guard dog to prevent the briefcase from falling into the wrong hands â mine! What constituted the wrong hands was explained to me. I had to learn all the lessons from this mysterious past other life. People with a large amount of grey bubbles were known to steal briefcases and throw them into dark places â rivers, down wells â anywhere they couldn't be recovered from, even fires. All these actions are forbidden by the access codes, the Lylybel population.
Without any doubt, as a group of creatures the Lylybel were dead set against any tampering with history, so the wolfhound and I don't know if he was called Oh! Duke or O'Duke was sent by the glorious grand mysterious mighty Lylybel to stop me destroying the evidence of some strange past life I seemed to have lived. I explained to Jennifer that I didn't want to destroy the briefcase. If the price I had to pay to be with her was to learn the very painful truths about some distant past life, so be it. I knew instinctively I had to be with this special woman, and not destroying the case was part of the price. What could be that bad?
O'Duke stopped behind us. For some stupid reason I have no idea why I put my hand towards him, well above the briefcase handle, and attempted to stroke his head. He didn't growl, he didn't bark, he didn't move, and he let me stroke his head during which he made the strangest almost musical purring sounds. All I could think of was the sound of a big cat more than a dog. With this growing confidence I decided to see if I could touch the handle of the briefcase. Was this madness?
I could swear the dog rolled his eyes as if to say, “What an eejit”! However, he seemed to understand I didn't want to take it from him. A brief glimpse of his huge teeth, plus the immutable fact that he was enormous, with intense watchful eyes was enough to discourage anyone but the most foolhardy. He knew I wouldn't dare try. I knew I was never going to!
We continued our walk and existed as one reacting with every molecule in the woodland. In many ways it was more. The sensation of vastness running through my body gave me a perception of a great endless forest. Endless and timeless was better description of the vast arena of dappled shade filled with wonderful aromas, and populated with the most vivid strange creatures you could ever imagine, or never imagine. For my human sensibilities this was almost an overload, too much colour and movement saturating every sense in my body.
The dog slept in the long grass with his head resting on his front legs. Both were crossed over the briefcase.
I fell out of the dream and into the real world where I was sick, broken, very tired and vomiting. Despite the horrors of the real world I was entranced by the last moments in the other universe.
In these last moments I'd fallen asleep with Jennifer held tight in my arms, so tired after she'd shown me a bit more about nature.
I was back in my 1973 post-amnesia headless chicken period. And I was going to waste more time looking around my own flat for the particularly cunning place I'd hidden £10,000 and a large amount of acid. I didn't have any idea what the acid looked like, but I knew what money looked like so that's where I focused my efforts. After I'd arrived at my flat, the first job was to firmly close the door, wedging it with a large sofa. This made it difficult to search the sofa, but I was past caring. My investigation of the sofa started with a kitchen knife, slashing it apart. Tattered material was everywhere, along with bits of foam, and when the sofa was quite dead my spirits were in a pretty similar state. There was nothing in there. That's a lie. There was one 50p piece, a 5p coin and an old biro. Perhaps I could give the 50p to John Smith as a down payment? Or poke him in the eye with the Biro?
I spent the next hour engaged in a frantic search of my flat discovering along the way all types of interesting electronic equipment, small amounts of money tucked away in drawers, nothing significant just a few pounds here and there, an amazing selection of clothes including things I would never consider wearing; but obviously did! I looked absolutely everywhere, even under the fridge, not knowing this is where I'd stashed father's nest egg. The only thing I turned up was a small bag containing about two dozen very tiny white pills. I didn't know what these were. If it was acid how could I test them? And they certainly weren't the several thousand tabs John Smith insisted I possessed. I flushed them down the toilet.
Even though it was raining outside on this August Sunday afternoon it was quite warm. I was wringing wet from head to foot with sweat. Whether this was from the effort of turning over my flat, or through pure fear I couldn't guess. I was certain my lack of “the stuff” would lead to a bludgeoning by John Smith, or the malevolent smile of the black-eyed Millicent. If I was going to visit Samantha's house, I would have to change into something fresh. After my sexual wrestling match with Vicky I discovered I had a key, one of the only positives from our post âlovemaking' conversation. If nobody was there I could let myself in and search in peace. I was beginning to believe this was the obvious hiding place, perhaps inside the pool table where I'd played cosy games, who knows?
I was standing in the shower beneath a jet of very hot water trying to get my thoughts together and despairing because, looking around the bathroom, I realised I could have placed the money behind the tiling, or slipped it under some object that appeared to be immobile. The more I looked round the bathroom, the more I realised that if I'd hidden everything with great cunning, short of knocking the flat into a thousand pieces, I would never find it.
I wondered if Samantha knew more than I originally thought about the lost goods. But then if she didn't, going in and saying, “Hi, Sam, do you know where I have hidden all the money and the dangerous drugs?” didn't seem the best course of action.
I was slipping on some nice clothes and listening to songs I'd never heard playing on the radio. It was obvious being top of the Pops didn't rely on musical quality. It relied on something mysterious. Most I had never heard before, and some like Clive Dunn and Ray Stevens I never wanted to hear again, or perhaps hearing them again would be a good option. It would mean I would still be alive!
*
Why was I going round on Sunday afternoon? Of course! I was visiting the house to see if I could catch up with my fiancée, Vicky, the girl I didn't like too much. She seemed to like me, and I wondered if it was because I was giving her a low rent version of a jet set life style. Or it might have been something else, something I had been but now definitely wasn't. As I arrived I could see there were no cars in the driveway so it was obvious everybody was out on a Sunday trip â the golf club, some old aunty, who knew? I would be able to conduct a careful search at my leisure, it was important not to disturb anything that could arouse suspicion.
Using my key I let myself in, slipped off my handmade shoes to protect the light coloured carpets, I didn't want to leave wet footprints all over the house. The starting place, I decided, would be the games room with its little bar, pool table, and dartboard. The bar seemed an obvious place, and going on a hunch of reverse psychology perhaps the obvious was where I should look. I started with the fastidious search through all the nooks and crannies of the elaborate construction of bricks, wood and apparently old pieces of ceramic drainpipe, all illuminated by a smaller ersatz version of the light hanging above the pool table. Perhaps the whole setup looked better after a few drinks.
The pool table was another matter. It was a full-sized version constructed from a very heavy hardwood. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, real quality. I couldn't destroy this. The damn thing weighed an enormous amount and was extremely difficult to move. Its complexity to dismantle convinced me this wouldn't be where I'd have hidden the money.
Ten thousand pounds in five pound notes is 2000 notes, quite a large bundle. Had I split it up into smaller amounts, spreading the risk so to speak, or would it be in one big fat pile? I investigated behind the radiators which were covered in ornate grilled box-type structures, a good possibility when it came to hiding money in a hurry: I came across four copies of Playboy magazine. I searched the whole room applying a twisted logic. Where would I hide things quickly, but safe? This thought kept running through my head as I move urgently from room to room, looking into drawers, searching beneath objects, looking around in the back of wardrobes, all this time vigilant not disturbing anything, while at the same time desperately wanting to rip the whole place apart!
In Vicky's room I noticed large amount of cuddly toys, teddy bears, rabbits, strange non- world creatures, all kinds of large stuffed animals. Was I responsible for giving Vicky one of these monstrosities, and did any of them have zippers at the back like a large hot water bottle case? One by one of these creatures were carefully probed to see if deep in all that fluff there was something substantial. I was paying special attention to a rather large frog which proved to be completely vacant when I heard footfalls on the stairs. Somebody was in the house. Should I pretend to be sleeping on the bed, resting my eyes?
I'd dragged the cuddly toys down from the dresser in the order. Now I had to put them all back in seconds. It was a panicked rush. Vicky put her head round the door, eyes open wide in surprise, and taken aback by me holding two of her largest teddy bears, one under each arm. How do you explain this one? I took a dive off the high board asking, “Which one of these did I get you first?”
Vicky looked at me for some while. I thought I'd said something wrong, but after what seemed an age she responded, “Capt Snuggles.” She was pointing at the chubby brown bear under my right arm, the one with the zip, the one I hadn't yet got round to giving an internal examination. So I threw him back on the bed and placed the other on the dresser. Vicky was still giving me a perplexed look.
“What's wrong with you, Peter? Yesterday afternoon you paid me no attention, and now you're positively weird,” Vicky enquired.
I was very fazed not noticing Vicky was wearing the strangest white outfit including pink socks with little bobbles of fluff at the back. It was almost as if I'd never seen an outfit like this before with its white pleated skirt, and very stretchy top, revealing a slim braless torso and small firm breasts. I suppose I was staring her up and down like some kind of moron before the final click inside my brain notched it all together. She was wearing tennis gear. She played tennis. I knew I hated tennis, in fact I was very poor at all ball games apart from the ones played on flat surfaces indoors. So I wasn't going to be talking tennis with her. What did we have in common?
I didn't know what Vicky expected of me. I wondered if we had any meaningful conversations at all. For all I knew we might have a totally silent, hot sex-only relationship. I had to do something. I couldn't ask her questions like some police interrogation. I moved forwards taking her in my arms and kissed her with hot passion that was mostly fakery. She wasn't my thing. I had no mental desire for this girl, and she only inspired my base animal lust because of her lithe physical beauty. She was responding to my faked desire by pulling at my clothes, tugging her tennis outfit from her body, all the time demanding I make love to her, or something like. “Fuck me hard until I come. Go on, Peter, make me suffer!”
We made enthusiastic and at times very noisy love, she screamed, she clawed, she swore like a trooper. I cannot lie. I enjoyed most of the performance, but that's what it was from me, a performance. I experienced intense physical pleasure, and my gasps of ecstasy weren't all faked. However throughout I was thinking of someone else. Something seemed perversely criminal in the way I was thinking of Samantha and using Vicky's body to satiate my carnal lust for the very woman who'd given birth to her. Thinking of Samantha made me a better lover, so this was a strange form of proxy lovemaking and it should be illegal. Or should screwing your girlfriend's mother be illegal?
Vicky went off to take a shower. I went straight to Captain Snuggles ripping into his soft underbelly. I discovered he was very wealthy for a bear containing a sum of money that had me gasping for breath! Inside he was guarding a pair of five pound notes and nothing more unless, of course, you include a plastic bag with about 500 pills inside, all very tiny innocent white pills. I even thought about slipping one in my mouth to try it for content, not that I knew what to expect during an acid trip.
The number of pills wasn't sufficient to satisfy the demands of the businessmen, and I came to the conclusion they were probably a side issue, a little private percentage for me, not the real deal. Perhaps I ought to slip Vicky one? Oh, I already had! I don't know why I had this thought, but somehow her presence irritated me. I needed to search.
She was coming back from the shower, very naked, quite lovely, in the same sense as a nude in the National Gallery can be quite lovely. I knew I was seeing her to gain access to the house, and one of its hidden treasures. I just wanted her to go so I could continue my room to room search, possibly a fruitless task, but I couldn't rest until I'd covered every possibility, even the garage. They didn't park their cars in the garage, so it could be the usual mess of million items, providing me with a nice hiding place. The garage could be the breakthrough!
Vicky announced she was leaving. She'd been playing tennis with some friends at an undercover tennis court, one that I had a membership for. I was a member? She'd come home to get changed before meeting her parents over at her grandmother's house. I couldn't even ask where grandma lived, because for all I knew I might be the apple of the old lady's eye. God, this amnesia was awful. Rushing downstairs Vicky asked if I'd be round later. I had no idea so I vaguely said, “Yeah, I suppose.”
“Don't be so bloody enthusiastic! What the hell has got in to you? You're like some kind of mental case,” she said.
“I'm just not feeling my old self at the moment, must be a little bit tired. Do you mind if I rest here?” I was pointing at the bed. She tossed her shoulders back, threw me a puzzled look and went downstairs shouting back, “Suit yourself!”
I was left to search the rest of the house including sticking my head up in the loft. The roof space revealed nothing of any significance, a few reminders of Vicky's childhood, old rocking horses, toys, dolls and all manner of board games. Nothing I could give to Harry or John. Of course I did come across a large amount of money, so much money it could've solved all my problems. The unfortunate thing was, though the money was in large denominations I don't think I could interest Harry in a hotel on Park Lane.
Only Samantha's room remained. Would I have left anything with the lovely Sam? I was starting to search the room with the same fevered correctness I'd given the rest of the property. My unreliable gut instincts were telling me what I was looking for was in this house. Now I suspecting the integral garage but had to satisfy my curiosity and finish my room to room search.
This room felt right, this place was giving me strong vibes, but of what? I'd completed a thorough search of the en suite bathroom and the lavish wardrobe system in the dressing room⦠nothing! It was down to the last room, the master bedroom, a place where nothing was ever hidden, or, with luck, everything.
I started searching in the top drawer of the dresser next to the bed, not the small bedside tables. This was a much larger unit standing next to the en suite doorway. It contained Samantha's underwear arranged with almost military precision drawer by drawer from top to bottom. The top contained nothing but beautifully manufactured diaphanous knickers in all their variety. In the next drawer down were more knickers, still of the same fine quality but more for everyday wear.
The two drawers below were arranged with very neat dividers, these containing bras, everything arranged in a similar system. Top for the bedroom, bottom the street. The fifth and bottom drawer of the dresser contained suspenders and boxes of stockings. I gave it a quick rummage, pulled the drawer physically out of its rails to look into the empty space below, nothing. I fed it back into the rails with trembling fingers driven by such strange desires. I closed it shutting the vision of stockings and suspenders away from my hungry eyes. Such provocative contents sent messages to my brain flashing into life desires driven by pure instinct.
I asked myself would a large bungle of money be in there, and I think the answer was no. Despite this I started the careful examination at the top drawer. I was now concentrating intently, careful not to disturb the neatly laid out lingerie. I wanted to leave no trace of my rifling through Samantha's beautiful gossamer-thin lace objects of desire. The whole drawer had an intoxicating subtle smell to it. Just the faintest hint of her perfume and I was soaking it in. My concentration drifted away from the desperate search for the hidden money. Now I was trying to recall lost memories, emotions brought alive by heady scent. Without thinking my body moved into a kneeling position in front of the draw. My whole being was soaking in the aroma. By now I was resting my face on the top layer of knickers. My mind was searching for lost ecstasy, driving me to bury my face very gently in the erotic contents.