The Heretic (Shirley)

- a story by Darcy Moore

(from "Little Criminals", a collection of related stories set in a Kaspar, a small Australian town)

"Fuckin' stupid fence. Can't keep me out!" Four rusted, bristling strands to tame the wild boys and their confusing mothers, the debutantes and their jealous fathers. More than enough for all the law abiders of Kasper. Kasper was one hell of a law abiding town. She eyed the fence triumphantly; it sagged where she'd pushed through. Shirley Streeter was flushed and joyous, the joy and flush she always got from a long drinking session with Cuppa, and breaking the rules.
     She'd had to climb a steep bank to get to the railway fence, and the centre of town was so flat she stood above much of it. She didn't like Kasper, it was too complacent. The two barely tolerated each other. Coming from the tree-shrouded road she gasped at the contrast. In the strong still moonlight Kasper looked helpless, as if it could get mugged or raped and not lift a finger in self-defence. She willed excitement, something to disturb the quiet climax of another moon over the town.
     It is up to you to make something happpen. No subject is so dreary you cannot crack its brittle bones and suck its marrow. Shirely traced that back to Mr Daniels, the speech and drama and sometime English teacher in her Senior school years. A scrawny man with glasses, he loved to dress in black skivvy and jeans. He affected to worship the beat era, which he must have been too old for. Despite his age he was so passionate about language some girls would have turned to cheese for him. He was an odd ball for a catholic girls' school, and they guessed he must have been gay. What put the seal on it was the way the nuns and the lay female teachers gushed over him, as safe and sterile as Jesus. Twenty years ago, twenty bloody years ago! He could be nodding in a 'Sunset Gardens', but most likely he was dead; he was too insubstantial to boil his own jug in a bedsitter this far along in time.
     Blank your mind. Let the setting and the mood tell its own story. Don't put thought in the way of it. Don't stop anything. Associational madness, that's what we want. An analological bloodbath. Shirley tried to prop up his shade, by the rail fence; it had to be good for something. "Yes Mr Daniels." He said I had talent. "But I haven't got much to work with here Sir. Nothing much going up in Kasper. The clock tower on the town hall still sticks out like .. Swearing is a poor substitute for imagination? C'mon, Mr Daniels we all do it... Alright, if you say so. I'm a crude but obliging drunk." She looked at the clock tower, it had no protective cross.
     A line of witches across the moon, peeling off one by one , dropping down on the town hall, flying to every window kicking them in with high-heeled boots, pouring in sacks of toads, spiders, baby orangutans and headlice. It's swelling, like a balloon. It is a balloon, with brick patterning. Getting bigger, points pricking out all over it, macelike. It explodes. A shower of paper over the town - rate notices, letters of demand, regulations for walking down the street. The townspeople run out of their houses and shred the paper deliriously. They're shouting and hugging; the end of the war. Nothing left of the balloon. The witches have been circling overhead, urinating with excitement on the crowds. The urine sizzles like acid wherever it falls. Whoops! There goes Mrs Nitre, the stingy bitch on the kid's tuckshop. Now they're swooping down, grabbing people like a troop of baboons hunting monkeys. But only clerks in nightshirts with paperclip necklaces. The people on the ground are cheering. The witches have stuffed the clerks in their sacks, legs sticking out, and are flying back to the moon, for more spells, more smells. There's a crater ready, bubbling with hunger, spitting fire.
     Much closer lay the retirement village. She could make out the bars on the windows … in the firecrackers' windows. "It's coming Mr Daniels. This one's dead easy." A white figure on a verandah drops a silver heart. It clangs. A lot of clanging now. All the bins around the grounds are rocking, tumbling over. Hands are pushing off the lids, scrawny rubbery figures are coming out. The old people are on the loose. Crawling, crouching, dribbling across the lawns, down the footpaths. They're heading for homes, sniffing out daughters and sons. They've got them in the blood now, and they're picking up speed. They've got apple corers for the eyes, razor straps for the bums, and matches for the wills. Revenge. Nothing but sweet terminal fuck immortality revenge.
     "Well Mr Daniels, what do you think? A career in wishful thinking? I'll settle for some colloquial anarchy then." But she was pleased with herself, the invented bed time stories kept her wet.
     She felt soggy and looked down at herself - the left leg of her jeans was ripped from the knee to the crotch, the barbed wire catching flesh as well. The jeans stuck clammily to her flesh. She rubbed the sore, bare patch on her head, then dipped two fingers in the blood welling from a deep cut on her left arm and traced it dramatically up to the short flounced sleeve of her white shirt. Dipping again she drew it, like war paint, across her face.
     The sight of her own blood had never bothered her. As a young girl she associated it with masculinity, assaulting life fists swinging; so it seemed natural to play with boys. Menstruation provided a pain and gore she gloried in, shocking peers of both sexes. Childbirth, which she orchestrated as a public spectacle 'on the bed responsible', was her pinnacle of endurance and glory. She kept both afterbirths in large transparent jars of methylated spirits on the mantelpiece of a succession of loungerooms. When they mysteriously disappeared in transit from Bilouela to Kasper she suspected a conspiracy between husband Sam and his parents, and broke the nose of the transport driver to punish them.
     Shirley had realised by then females had the real strength. Males rode out of a relationship like the Marlboro man, with a smirk and a brand new cunt. They quickly discovered it wasn't so new, but it certainly was branded. When she saw them again years later they were confused and falling apart slowly, those who hadn't snapped completely. A male only got so much boyishness, unless he stored it up like Cliff Richards, or an unbuggered lifer. Their old castoffs died with humiliation and betrayal. But resurrection came, whether through man, woman, religion or their own resilience. Shirley believed women had the capacity to see out many men and much loneliness if they had to. The wife of Bath was her archetypal female. Although she wore them out before they could leave her; gave them no space, no juice left for anyone one else. Yes that was the trick.
     She loved men for sex and soldierly companionship, but they had no business being in charge of things. "You're hormonally incapable of protecting and preserving. You just want to stick things,. You can't help yourself, it's in your silhouette," she'd told the Shire Chairman earlier that night. He just laughed, and had another tale to add to her lore.
     She forgave men their natures, but despised women for betraying theirs. They knew what was going on, they felt the undercurrents of life and they held off. So many wore their innards like a crown of thorns, and edged along shadows, heads bent in abeyance to males. Strong intelligent women would turn tacky around an attractive male, or at the very least their eyes would slide carnally, and furtively, over him. They were deferential around a self-important one. She had no close women friends. Most females felt threatened by her, and jealous of her robust attitude to their consorts. Still, individually she loved and comforted them, when they let her. She couldn't help herself.
     "A hex on the women of this town, thus sayeth Mad Maxine." But nothing changed. No ferocious female wailing catalysed male terrors. On Monday no males would lay down their badges and titles, or flee their offices. It was beginning to piss her off that no matter what she said or did no one took her seriously anymore. No, Kasper really wasn't worth a witch's time of night. Shirley laughed at herself. "Another constipated romantic," she mumbled.
     She scrambled up chunky shale to the raised rail lines, slipping at the top. Sharp stones pressed through the tear in her jeans. The broken, tenderised flesh stung. "Shit, it's a fuckin' obstacle course". Lifting her head she saw the disorderly shapes of the buildings in Leggatt's sawmill. She sniffed, enjoying the masculine smell of sawdust, and sneezed.
     The rails, glinting with moon, disappeared in a sweep around them. The moon was almost full and squeezed her brain as much as the alcohol. She felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if her nerve ends were sparking against each other.
     Her mind fuzzed, it was hard holding thoughts together. What was she doing on the railway line? Why did it fascinate her? In the other direction the rail ran through Kasper's heart. She could see well along the line to where yards backed onto it. It was straight, then it eased into a curve; it was symmetrical and immaculate, brushing against the houses, silently. Words came with the clarity of metal spears striking shields, the staccato rattling of automatic weapons. A guerilla's path from terror to terror. A tiger's track through the town.
     I never see the tiger, til it's just about gone. It's so sudden, like wanting a man. I could have ended up anywhere in Australia. The Prince, the lover who would set like jelly; Sam, as it turned out, and he had his roots here. Too bloody many. She laughed at the idea of Sam wreaking a path through the wilds of puberty. Across the paddocks on the flood-prone side of the line a dog felt threatened and barked.
     Ten or eleven beers! She groaned under their weight. "Christ, got to have a piss."
     Shirley fumbled at the buckle on her belt, unzipped the fly and wriggled the jeans down over her knees. Slowly. A lovemaking ritual. "They're ridiculous Shirley. Too tight. It's excruciating to watch you undress. You don't know." Sam liked her large buttocks, she liked to show them off. There were lots of men around who would as soon piss on short-arsed women. Up the models. Up crisp bread.
     It was after midnight and the December air was deliciously chill on her bared rear. She breathed out slowly, in animal pleasure. "I'll bloody have you Sam, awake or asleep. You'll do your duty tonight." Marriage suited her, she didn't have to scrounge. Scrounger! She loved to bait unmarried males and females at parties, it made her feel superior and moral.
     Sam had never been a scrounger, he waited politely to get plucked off an espaliered apple tree in a genteel yard. Her ambition, much-mocked, was to marry a virgin. "So I can floor him and keep him perfect." Nobody had believed her when she claimed her fulfilment at the wedding reception. Half a dozen drinks and the correctness of the speeches had detiorated. Sam's parents played uncomfortably with their forks, and contemplated an annulment. "What do you want, bloody sheets? Or a testimonial from every bitch in Kasper?" None of her friends knew where Kasper was then. "Of course he's not going to admit to it, he's not stupid." Sam's mother watched amazed as he sat through it all grinning from ear to ear. That was when she realised her son was a male not so unlike the rest.
     But Sam worshipped his travelled bride. Shirley, although she often felt the scrounger stir in her, loved his adoration and was faithful. Except with Cuppa, whom she slipped discretely into her husband's body on the nights when his words and her blood overpowered. He was too wild to ignore, he could never be platonic. It was a small treachery, and everyone had their fantasies. Maybe even Sam though he wouldn't admit to any.
     She was proud, now, of what she had taught Sam and raspingly sang a marginal alto of their post-coital duet. It was a maudlin thing from the parlours of Victorian England. On a Sunday afternoon it would stew, then erupt, in the bedroom of their house and old Mrs Bacon, the right-handed palsied neighbour, would run to her window the better to hear it. If Shirley felt particularly effusive she would open the window nearest and, dressed in a gaudy kimono, serenade; Sam self-consciously supplied an invisible tenor. Mrs Bacon would clap, and invite them in for a cup of tea.
     "You don't think she twigs, do you Shirley," Sam would say hopefully as they walked over. He took about half an hour to stop blushing.
     "I don't know so much Sam." Her grandfather had unfailingly watered the garden after lovemaking, and she had once flatted next to a taxidermist who called to his girlfriend for a game of Scrabble "Just before he stuffs her!" she and her flatmates joked. "People can tell Sam, they can smell it."
     "I think I've had a cold most of my life." Sam only tried to make jokes when he was nervous.
     Mrs Bacon really paid to hear him, he had much the better voice. He had learnt the piano and other instruments as a child, sung in choirs, played in bands and was forever getting adorations from old folk in Kasper. Now he was a bank clerk, settled for the duration in his home town. She minded the waste much more than he did. He had learned, very early, to be frightened of the world, and had accepted his limitations in a threadbare adolescence.
     "Belt up you bloody drunk. Get off the streets, or I'll call the cops out!" The strained male voice came from one of the houses on the high side of the line, but she could see no one. She sang on challengingly, thinking about cops. The local boys knew her well, and forgave her almost anything. They were tucked up somewhere now, dreaming; about promotions, road accidents, a crazed husband waiting inside a door with a sawn-off? Poor fuckers. Who'd want it, just to look important. Anyway, to get cops in Kasper this time of night you had to go through a switch in Narwelene and wait, and wait. Indonesians soldiers could arrive by barge on the local river beating gongs, shoot the two local journos and all the leftover indigenous people, and be gone before the police were half way there. There would even be time for the prime minister to give a craven speech and shine a torch down the river for them. The subject of Indonesia was the carbuncle on Shirley's political conscience.
     Yes, Kasper past midnight was a drunk's paradise, and that thought jollied her.
     "With you I'll stay 'til my hair turns to grey
     and my last waking thoughts turn to you."
     Shirley squeezed and stretched 'you', skewering her detractor.
     In the distance a train rumbled vaguely. Shirley, squatting still and her mind momentarily dry between drenchings, soaked up the sounds like an infant. She strained eagerly, and smiled with delight at its nuances as it passed between cuttings, over bridges -continuously changing resonances. Soundwaves crowded each other in a warm, mild frenzy. The doppler effect. She couldn't remember much else from junior science. Like a magic chant the words repeated in her.
     From the high ridges to the south and west to where the east petered into the remains of a massive forest, to the undulating north, the passage of the train echoed and slipped and ran, brushing everything. To Shirley it was fairy dust, so fine it tumbled through the skull, dousing dreams.
     She saw Albie, shouting and wet with terror. Nothing, she learnt in childhood, was just a dream. "Shh, shh. Hear that!"
     He stopped gasping, but gripped her hand. "It's just a train Mummy. Mummy I don't want to go back to sleep."
     "Just a train! Are you mad? Have I went and borne a crazy milksop? That train, every night train, is full of black, bearded, ugly, rum swilling, saber-waving, treasure-hearted pirates. And what do you know about pirates?"
     "They're on my side."
     "What else?"
     "They keep the peace."
     "And?"
     "They make baddies walk the plank."
     "C'mon Albie, be more specific."
     "Oh you know Mummy. Pollies, and bullies, and monsters, and people with white teeth who smile too much .. and exutives."
     "Don't forget the judges."
     "No, and all the old men who try to look important."
     "Why do the pirates pick on them?"
     "Because they want to be free. They hate liars, and cheats, and bludgers and con men."
     "And posers and sooks," she finished. "What do they like Albie?"
     "A bloody good time, and they like to kick ass."
     Had she started something? She hoped it was a new and better Jesus. Like the catholic creed, it worked for one so young.
     "So with the power vested in my singlet I have ordered trains to run through the night. Rock-a-bye trains, darling, for the bad dreams. When you need one they pull straight into wherever you are, and you have a whole murderous crew to help. No one and nothing can stand against you then. "
     Shirley sank onto a rail. It was ice. "Shit!" She sprang up, almost tripping over her jeans, and looked full at the moon. Silver coated her eyes, it slid and tickled until she couldn't stand it. Lowering her head she set on Kasper again, glazed with silver and beautiful now, serene in a shimmering bubble. She murmured a love poem, passed around in high school.
     
     "The moon was rampant, Collette,
     nothing to be done,
     but to hold fast to a moonbeam
     and suck my thumb.
     She was milk-thighed Collette,
     with breasts of German steel
     she pointed with a silver tongue
     and I did kneel.
     I thrust into her heart Collette,
     her heart of wood
     By lip, by cheek, by breast I thought of you
     as best I could.
     
     Yes, the moon was bloody full, Gerard,
     and so was I.
     I don't remember much about him
     except I made him cry."
     
     Tracks and ground buzzed faintly now, but she was immersed in the shimmering, and the surge of her sex. She rose and looked down on the figure between the tracks, ignoring its comicality, but seeing a siren, milk-thighed, upright and resplendent, calling to trains. She watched it run a wet finger around its lips, sounding a crystal heart, and begin its song. The song infused the metal bars which, she saw from her ascendant place, wandered the continent. The song was silent, like a dog whistle, though it reverberated in her head. Restless lonely beasts, under cloud, in tempest, worming through tunnels, pushed towards her, sensing her power.
     Shirley turned over possible titles for her siren. Queen of the night. The dark lady, the lady of light. The woman in wet dreams. The last lay of the minstrel. Miss White Christmas…..
     The train's clatter beat in the tracks and the air hummed now.
     Plastic ivy and holly were worked into her jean pockets. "My little baby. My baby won." She saw eleven year old Chiffon standing in the Golf Club, crowned Christmas Elf - 1994. Chiffon returned to the table, red and green and sparkling with importance. She sat between her parents, and smiled a "Look at me" at her mother's drinking partners, all men. Chiffon was growing up quickly.
     "Don't you ever forget tonight darling. This is one to put away for the scar-faced navigator."
     "No Mum, never. What's the navigator?" Chiffon already like the idea of a scar.
     "The one who'll show you there's more to all this than meets the eye."
     "Honey she doesn't understand half what you say. I know I don't."
     "Yes I do Daddy, at least three quarters."
     "I wore her for nine months remember Sam. Chiffon's a part of me. You just come visiting. You've worn me ever since, haven't you darling."
     "Yes Mum, and I've learnt to be very tolerant."
     "How did YOU make something like that, Shirley?"
     "By working my butt off and sticking myself with needles, Joe."
     "Not the bloody costume. The angel inside it."
     "Same diff," she quipped without thinking.
     Chiffon blushed, triggering more Lolita-style fantasies among the watching men. Shirley stared sharply, admonishing each bright male eye.
     Shirley thought she'd better soften things. "By practicing til I got it right, til we got it right didn't we Sweetie." But now Sam was embarrassed; she often embarrassed him. Once, lovemaking, he confessed to liking it sometimes. That was definitely the time to draw them out. Kingdoms could change hands. Men told the most outrageous lies and meant them for the sweep of a minute hand. Not Sam though; deceit scared him more than truth.
     Shirley's stomach began to flutter as a cold eddy of air grazed her. She gripped her thighs, thinking of his. "I'll be dead before I get home, poisoned in my own fuck. Christ I'll have you Sam. Sam Streeter you're as done as a dog's dinner. For sure." Or did she mean Cuppa. Yes tonight was too pagan for Sam, he could be little more than an obliging instrument.
     Sam had taken Chiffon and Albie home with him. "'Course I'll be alright. Cuppa's here to stop me banging my head on the bar. And it's only a bloody few streets away. I could find my way in a shower of turtle shit."
     Cuppa had been touched by something about the night and he grew mellow and sad. She liked him like that, when he said the most drunkenly profound things. They sat together with the last barman shuffling around them testily, but he knew Cuppa too well to push him out. He consoled himself that this wasn't the usual watering hole.
     "Can't you do something to stop her growing up. Does she have to get like the rest of us?"
     "It's not so bad; or do you want me to kill her." Shirley shivered. Had she really said that? "Anyway you like big girls Cuppa. The more the merrier."
     "They're there because they're there. We didn't ask for it, and I can't help it."
     "Can't help what?"
     He shrugged. "Life, when you're a kid, seems so pregnant with possibilities. Ha .. did I say that. Jesus….. The reality is probable abortions, or miscarriages."
     "And what would you know about those?" she joked. "You don't know what blood or pain is. No man can, even with a bloody great empathy bag."
     "How different do you think the sexes really are Shirley? Shit, there's only a few hormones separating us. Drugs can turn us from one to the other, thinking and feeling. We're like the one creature split into two, jaggedly, trying to get back together. We're not fucking Martians or Venusians." He pulled a hair from his head. "This far apart. Might as well be at either poles for all the good it does."
     Shirley placed her hand over his. He felt the pressure in her hand and smiled. "Stick with Sam, you won't do any better. He's one what'll last the distance. Don't get conned by us breast beaters, hey?"
     "You don't need to tell me that, Cuppa."
     He laughed. "It wasn't really for your benefit. Skoll." They drained the glasses. "I'm stretching the friendship aren't I Colin?" The barman mumbled and turned off the last light as they reached the door. Shirley saw the $20 note Cuppa left on the counter. So typical of him; he really didn't care much about money.
     She refused his offer of a lift. "I'll get dizzy and sick when my head hits the pillow if I don't walk some of this off." When she kissed him she strayed onto his lips. Was it a groan? No more likely a laugh as he gripped her tightly, pulling all of her against him. For a second, she felt his full force and would have done anything. But he watered it to their old affection.
     "See you Tuesday night Shirley."
     "Yes, alright." She could barely talk.
     Cuppa was complex or, as the girls said, had soul. They detected something of the bleeding artist; hoped they might be somehow immortalised in his glow. Absentmindedly Shirley pulled up her trousers. The air was hammering now, and she poked at her ears, irritated by the stridency of the night. She heard a rooster. "Fuckin' rooster." Her mind flagged again and she began to hum Little Red Rooster. A key to another dream.
     It was a Saturday night, in the city, the flat in a grungy inner suburb where she lived when she attempted the business course. They'd knocked over a keg and the stayers were wild for something. Rogues and Hamish and me and Donny. She and the company of males yet again. So much more fun. Crazy like her.
     Hamish had found out about the old Greek who kept chickens … when out with a skirt one night. Always one for opportunities was Hamish. The coop was tucked into the back corner. Yes in Summer it was; but on a night like this, with a giddy moon.
     They were all giggling, especially Shirley.
     "I said we shouldn't have brought no women along. They can't help themselves, you can hear their blood drip."
     "You slime Hamish, you and your elevated piece of shit." Still, she bit her cheek to control it. She had to bite it until she tasted blood.
     "See, I told you she was good if you got her going."
     "Shut up Donny!" Rogues said half laughing himself.
     They looked through the wire cage and saw the birds packed tightly in together. One bird twitched, and clucked nervously.
     Shirley remembered a flock of seagulls. "Yeh you keep fuckin' quiet when we get inside Donny, I don't want any chook shit on me."
     "Then wait at the door. You be the cockatoo."
     "I haven't got a cock!"
     "Well bloody pretend. Give her yours Donny, you hardly ever use it."
     "You know you can borrow it any time Shirley."
     "Shut up Donny, you're a pussy. Got the bag."
     "Don't you pick on me too, Shirley. Course I got the bag."
     When Rogues grabbed the first bird it began to scream. They panicked, then giggled, then laughed uncontrollably. Every chicken in the shed flapped and screamed and clawed. The blood lust got them in a wave, they snatched at anything white, pushing whatever they managed to grab at Donny who stood at the door terrified by the fluttering wings.
     "Put it in the bloody bag you idiots. I've got the thing open. Here down here. Shit, Hamish not it my fucking face."
     A light switched on in the house. "Who is it? What you doing? Who is it?"
     "Where is he? I can't see the old bugger?"
     "Get out of the bloody doorway. I can't see anything now."
     "You kids get out from there, I call the police. They gonna have you any minute."
     "There he is, hanging out the window. Look at him, he's wearing a night shirt."
     "So bloody what Hamish, haven't you eaten anything but sausages and peas?"
     But Hamish got bloody-minded; he was an evil-tempered drunk. "You a wog too Shirley? Hey! You in the dress! This is Australia where you wear pyjamas." Hamish pushed his way out and approached the house. The man hurriedly slammed the window.
     "The cop's 'll be here in a minute. You crazy, Hamish! Get away from there!"
     "Every crook for himself!" yelled Rogues, between nervous laughter. "And I don't know any of you."
     They clawed over fences, dodged or kicked startled dogs and stirred a good part of the neighbourhood. And they made it, with three chickens almost defeathered.
     Donny trashed a motorcycle a year later, and most of his brain. Rogues was an engineer now, living in Sydney, with a second wife. Hamish followed a girlfriend to New Zealand where it ended badly; as it always did with him and women. But he stayed there.
     The rails vibrated fiercely and the air clattered madly; but for Shirley the floor boards shuddered under massive speakers. It went right through her body, it felt good.
     "Poor bloody Donny." Shirley began to cry. Donny loved an African band in those days. There was a song he used to play again and again until the night Hamish drank a full bottle of Bacardi rum and fixed the record to the dart board. Shirley rubbed her sleeve against her face and smiled. She sang, "We are going. Heaven's knows where we are going. We .." She stopped.
     She was on the heaving deck of a pirate ship, the sea buckling around her. The pirates crowded together on the upper deck around a broken mast, dishevelled by fierce rain. They had brutal faces, scoured by adult lives; not at all what she'd imagined for her children. Shirley shuddered. Surely she'd not set this lot upon Albie and Chiffon.
     Pirate rags turned to suits, tradesmen overalls, sports uniforms, gimmicky stage clothes, and their faces changed to the villains she knew and plotted against; the buzzards who thrived on the 1990s in the name of the latest recycled economic theory. Self-serving bullshit. Shirley tried to turn from them, but they waved frantically, looking piteous.
     The deck planks began to tear loose, and the sea rose above her, staunching the gushing splendor of the moonlight. It curled slowly over them. Then she knew she had come to their dream, to forgive and rescue them. Reaching out her hand, and reaching for the right words, she tried to wish away the storm. What were the words? She knew so many; useless trash that buried important ones. She thought of a priest, long ago. A teenage Shirley. The answer was there, somewhere. He came around to her house when she stopped going to Mass, to plead and threaten. It was the wrong approach for Shirley O'Sullivan.
     "Then if there's a god may he strike me dead right now."
     "That, Shirley, is foolishness and proves nothing. God cannot be presumed. Neither does he rise to provocation. It is written Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Nevertheless he does not forget blasphemers; for it is also written Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh."
     "I guess he's got me covered then Father. So I might as well eat, drink and be merry. But tell me Father, did he really inspire all those grimy smelly little men working up the propaganda for King James."
     Standing now on the lower desk she saw hands on the sides, pulling themselves up. Although it was wet and many years dead, she recognised his face. It grinned with self-righteousness. Shirley tried to force her way across to him, to kick him back in the water.
     The driver saw her in the train's bright beam as it rounded Legatt's sawmill but he had only enough time to put a hand on the brake. He prayed it was a ghost.
     

Do you want to read more Kaspar Stories? Click on a link below.

The Lover (Cuppa)

The Thief (Gracie)

The Mistress (Alison)