“We’re Having a Heatwave” (part 4)

As the fourth heatwave of the summer looks to arrive tomorrow, and every flavour of ice cream has already been selected, tasted, and speedily devoured. We’ve also mulled the latest hosepipe restrictions, watched our runner beans shrivel in the sunshine plus, all the strawberries have gone and there are literally wasps everywhere! There are, of course, some of us who are looking hopefully for a cooling autumnal breeze on the horizon. Perhaps next week? Next month? Who can tell?

We do hope you’ve enjoyed the Summer though, storing up a wealth of warm images and creative experiences to use in your writing during the darker months when both sunshine and ice cream seem like a dream of a far away land.

Non-Fiction Competition Now Closed

Thank you to everyone who submitted an entry to our Non-Fiction competition this year. All the entries are with our judge, Dr Alan Bilton and the results will be announced in October.

As a small note of housekeeping for future competitions, we would like to remind everyone that with each of our competitions the rules may vary slightly. We urge all entrants to make sure they read and follow the rules before submitting.

Our non-fiction competition asked for one entry per person. Sending additional entries means an increase in email correspondence and arranging refunds. Our lovely and busy Competition Secretary, Margaret, does a wonderful job and your consideration is always greatly appreciated.

A Short Story by Michael Eisele

Peter

Sleep having eluded me, I sat in the darkened living room of my daughter’s home, staring sightlessly at the curtained rectangles of the open windows, dimly lit by the  moonlight. Occasionally an errant breeze would disturb the lightweight fabric but for the most part the night was still enough to hear the lonely cry of some nocturnal bird from the nearby woods.

The day before had been clear, the trees rich with the subtle yellows and russet browns of an English Autumn, but today’s dawn was still some hours off. I had heard that the authorities always tried to schedule removing children from their homes in the early hours so that they and their parents would be too fogged with sleep to make trouble.

To distract myself from such thoughts I was remembering another such night on the Greek island of Thassos, where I had taken my daughter Daphne to recover from her most recent miscarriage. Her last three pregnancies had terminated after only a few weeks and Daphne was, I thought, near to the breaking point emotionally.

The sun had been just coming over the horizon when I saw my daughter coming back from the sacred grove, the sleeping bag draped over one shoulder. Thassos is a beautiful and peaceful island in the Aegean group and our cottage is in the hills overlooking the sea on the western side, far enough away from the public beaches to give a measure of solitude and an unobstructed view over the Aegean below. It is a place where one can sense the spirit of the past and almost smell the burnt offerings to the old gods. I had thought it just the setting for Daphne to come to terms with the loss of yet another child.

As she came nearer I was struck by the quiet happiness on her face. The lines of strain and worry seemed to have smoothed out and although part of the effect might have been due to the early morning sunlight, I was hopeful that this trip had had indeed been a good idea.

I turned around at the sound of clinking china to see old Melania approaching with the breakfast things. As she set down the teapot I saw she was watching Daphne closely as she approached. She turned to me, her deep set black eyes gleaming. Melania had been with us as long as my late wife and I had been coming here. Her family managed some large olive groves on Thassos and she looked after our small cottage as well as helping out when we were here on holiday. Now she smiled in satisfaction, and indicated my daughter with a lift of her chin.

‘You see, her sleep in the grove has been good for her.’

I had been a bit taken aback earlier when Melania had suggested the idea. Ever since Daphne had arrived she had taken my daughter under her wing and in short order had wormed out of her what had occurred. A woman who could not have children? Adianóitos!

Near the cottage was a grove of Mountain Pines which looked to be ancient. All of the trees were twisted and bent into fantastic shapes and in their centre was an open space with a plain flat stone in the middle. ‘Time out of mind,’ Melania had said to me once, ‘a woman whose womb would not bear would sleep for a night there, and wait upon the god.’

‘Which god is that?’ I had asked, because most of the islands had some shrine dedicated to one of the Greek gods. 

Melania smiled and put a finger to her lips. ‘Ah, sir, it is one whose name it is best not to say.’

She must have been very persuasive in her conversations with my daughter, for Daphne came to me one evening as I was watching the colours of the sky reflected in the flat sheen of the sea below and announced her intention to sleep that night in the grove among the pines. I was surprised at first but remembering that she had been an avid camper before her marriage I thought it could do her no harm. And who knew? The unconscious is a curious thing. I found her an old sleeping bag left by some previous guest and off she went, carrying a tiny LED torch to light her way.                                                                                                        

That night sleep eluded me. Like any father I worried about my daughter’s safety but it was more than that.  I found myself staring out the window at the hunched silhouettes of the pines and imagining that they were moving, although the night was still and there was no wind. Then a little breeze did begin and softly into the silence I seemed to hear the notes of a flute, like the music the young goat herders play at night on their primitive instruments to calm the herd. The melody rose and fell and gradually my apprehension stilled and I found my eyes getting heavy and presently I must have dropped off because I was awakened by the first rays of the sunrise.

In days that followed I found to my relief that Daphne had recovered something of her normal high spirits and  seemed to have put her grief aside. Instead of brooding indoors as she had done in the beginning she spent the rest of the holiday sunbathing and walking the hills. She ate voraciously the meals Melania provided and by the end of our stay seemed to have actually put on a little weight.

At the end of the month we set out for home. Well, my daughter went back to her husband of course, and I on an inspection trip to the new oil pipelines. I had meant to retire that year, but for some reason management still seemed to value my opinion.

The weeks went by and one day I received a call from Daphne to say that she was pregnant. She seemed totally optimistic and positive and I congratulated her while mentally crossing my fingers, remembering that she had miscarried her first three pregnancies within weeks.  After a two months had gone by, however, I began to feel more confident. Daphne would call and merrily relate how the pregnancy was progressing. ‘Really, Dad, everything’s going great! I’m even starting to have cravings.’

‘What sort of cravings?’ I asked mildly curious.

‘Well, raw vegetables, for one thing, and lately it’s been, well, grass! Imagine!’

That did sound a bit odd, but I knew that during pregnancy women could want all kinds of things and everything else did seem to be going well.

The months passed with frequent updates, and the news that my daughter was planning on a home birth. That surprised me, I have to say. I couldn’t imagine George, her husband, agreeing to such a thing. He was an eminent barrister and had always struck me as too rigid and controlling, but this time Daphne’s determination seemed to have won out. When I mentioned it, though, Daphne informed me that he had left. Just packed his bags and moved out. ‘He seems to have gotten the idea that it isn’t his baby, of all the silly things.’ She didn’t sound very upset about it and to be truthful I had never liked the fellow much anyway. I promised Daphne I would cover all expenses until he came to his senses, if ever.

I was in Ecuador when I heard the news. The baby had been born, nearly a month early. I was aghast, but Daphne didn’t sound at all concerned. ‘He’s a beautiful boy,’ she said, ‘and thank God he doesn’t look a bit like George. I’m calling him Peter.’

The project I was overseeing meant that I couldn’t get away for several months but I kept in touch and everything seemed fine. Two months passed without incident. Daphne was, I supposed, like all new mothers, devoted to little Peter who in spite of being premature seemed to be developing rapidly. I was shocked, however, when in mid June my daughter called with the news that he was walking. Walking after two months, when a baby of that age shouldn’t even be able to crawl? Something was seriously wrong and I called the head office and told them to send a replacement ASAP, citing a family emergency.

In the event it was almost another three weeks before I could get away, and I worried every minute it took to book a flight out of that godforsaken country. As soon as I arrived at the airport I got on the first train to Woking and telephoned Daphne to tell her I was on my way to see her. She sounded fine, as though she didn’t have a care in the world. ‘We’re in that park down the road from the house, why don’t you meet us there?’

It didn’t take long to find her. She was sitting on a bench overlooking the play area where a group of children were milling around. After the usual hugs and greetings, she shaded her eyes and said, ‘And there’s Peter, over there. Isn’t he beautiful?’

I agreed, not knowing what else to say, while my mind was racing trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There was a little fellow not much bigger than a toddler, dressed in baggy white trousers and wearing an incongruous sun hat. He was not only walking but skipping around a group of older children who were playing some sort of game. At that moment two of the boys in the group came up behind Peter and pulled his trousers down to the accompaniment of loud laughter. Peter seemed not at all discomfited and in fact leaped out of the baggy trousers and butted one of the boys in the stomach. This dislodged the floppy hat and then I saw for the first time what my daughter had given birth to. His legs were hairy and jointed like a sheep or a goat’s, ending in tiny black hooves. On his head as he danced around his fallen victim I could see two conical bumps like emerging horns. In shock I turned to Daphne who was watching the scene with amusement untouched by the least concern.  She shook her head. ‘Those boys,’ she said, ‘I’ll have to have a word with their mothers, picking on Peter like that.’

Meanwhile the boy on the ground was crying and other adults were running forward and I saw two of them holding phones aloft obviously filming the scene. I looked a my daughter’s face, which was concerned but not in the least upset and all I could think was, For the love of heaven, she doesn’t know.

What followed had the quality of nightmare. I managed to get Daphne and Peter home, Peter dressed once more in his concealing outfit. Seen close to he looked even less like a toddler. His hair was brown and curly and his ears slightly pointed and the two bumps on his forehead looked even more like emerging horns on close inspection. His complexion was swarthy and his eyes were large and liquid and nearly all iris with a colour like pale amber. He looked up at me calmly and silently, the small mouth set in a gentle smile.

My daughter seemed amused by my evident concern. ‘Dad, it was only some children playing. You know how they are.’ Further questioning revealed that she thought Peter was  perhaps a little advanced for his age but what was wrong with that?

The answer was not long in coming. The videos taken by the other parents were posted on social media and caused an immediate sensation. Few it seemed had connected what had seemed to be a badly deformed child with Daphne but her estranged husband was predictably enraged. One morning two representatives of Social Services appeared on the doorstep enquiring if they could ask my daughter ‘a few questions’. It seemed that George had used his connections to push through a court ruling that Daphne was an unfit mother and that Peter should be taken away and put into his care.

The two social workers departed with much shaking of heads and were succeeded by an order for my daughter to be examined by a court appointed psychiatrist. At this point I phoned George on his private line and demanded to know what he was thought he was doing. He coldly informed me that he had no intention of having his reputation besmirched by his wife’s having given birth to such a monstrosity. I asked him how he could be so certain that the child was not his. ‘I never went near her after that last failure to conceive,’ he responded acidly. Then what, I asked baffled, could he possibly want with a child which was not his and deformed to boot?’ 

‘I’m going to have him surgically altered to look more normal,’ he said. ‘I know a surgeon who has assured me that it would be possible after a series of operations.’ There was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice. It was as if by punishing Peter he could at the same time take out his anger at what he must have viewed as my daughter’s infidelity.

Now I waited in the darkness for I knew not what. Early tomorrow morning the representatives of the Social Services would arrive to remove little Peter to the custody of his legal guardian. I had tried by every means to protest but there was nothing I could do against the power of the court; the law was clearly on George’s side.  Daphne was deep in a sedated sleep and from Peter’s room there came not a sound.

Then softly as if it had been that same night in Thassos I heard the music of a flute again. I sat entranced, listening, and then his bedroom door opened and Peter came out. He had discarded his concealing clothing and with them any trace of the small boy he should by rights have been. Softly he stepped across the floor, his little hooves making no sound on the deep pile carpet. One glance he gave me, his large amber eyes full of sorrow and a kind of wonder. Then the notes of the flute rose higher, peremptory, and he walked to the back door, opened it and was gone into the surrounding woods.