The Word Cloud

Apologies in advance that this is over-long (I shan't do it again). It's another of the short stories I'm writing and it's had very little revision, so there's pretty well bound to be passages that stand out as over-written or telling too much or whatever. I'd be delighted if any of these could be highlighted, or just for any other general thoughts or criticism - bad or good.

The Path.

I suppose that the path was about fifty yards long, no more, but in my memory it was an endless, magical, alleyway, linking my home, my domain, by some wonderful accident of nature, to that other realm where my friend Charley lived. The path was a cutting through the trees and brambles between two roads. In summer it was warm and welcoming, with sunlight penetrating in pools and patches, lighting up the wings of quick birds, the haphazard flight of moths and butterflies. And it was the sunlight that pointed out the hidden side paths, guiding my eager feet as I pushed through packed leaves and branches, clambering over the springy roots of the floor.

In winter it was cold and menacing. The exit at the far end could just be glimpsed as I stood on the pavement along from my house. It challenged me to test my courage and run through. Winter was for tales of derring-do as Charley and I tried to surpass each other with wild exaggerations, accounts of the blood-curdling screams we had heard as we ran along the path; of mysterious and terrifying forms emerging behind us and pursuing us to the exit at the far end. Even in winter, though, the knowledge that this path led somewhere that I wanted to go was enough to see me scurrying down it, with desperate but ineffective efforts to avoid the slippery muddy puddles that sent icy water into my shoes and over my socks.

But, it is the path in summer that leaps up in my mind as I think back: the path in all its glorious colour and texture, the chatter of a thousand tiny animals, the hot smell of mint and nettles. Most of all, I remember one fierce summer when I was eleven: the long holiday before Charley and I were due to start at big school. On the first morning of the holiday, I ran down the path straight after breakfast, without a care in the world; or rather, I had one care that I intended to discuss with Charley: Coleen McArthur.

Coleen was nineteen. She worked in the office of the school we were both leaving. She wasn’t a nurse and she wasn’t a secretary. Neither was she a teacher. She was something quite special, although we weren’t sure what. It was to Coleen that we were sent with our temperatures and our bruises. It was Coleen who telephoned our parents at work when we were sick, or who dabbed our grazed knees with water made cloudy by pungent disinfectant.

I was in love with Coleen, as, I imagine, were most of the boys in my year. Coleen was beautiful and kind: heartbreakingly beautiful. She had that look about her face that let you know a smile was hovering just out of sight at the corner of her mouth. Her eyes held out the promise that maybe, just maybe, she would be prepared to wait while an eleven-year-old boy grew up to be a man.

So, that day, as I arrived, breathless, to find Charley sat on his garden wall, drumming against it with his heels, I managed to gasp, ‘What are we going to do without Coleen?’

We were, both of us, old enough to realise that we were young. That is to say we knew full well that the doings of two eleven-year-old boys would have little impact on an adult in matters of the heart. However, we were both young enough to carry out our plans anyway. In Charley’s world, the world at the other end of the path, Coleen McArthur lived a mere two streets away. We would, we decided, go and loiter outside her house, so that when she came out she would see us, and we would see her. And then? That was where our plan stopped, but as we had nothing better, it is what we decided to do.

The houses in Charley’s neighbourhood were larger than in mine; I noted this uncomprehendingly, silently pitying the owners for not living in the perfect street where I lived. At the same time, I was deeply jealous of their easy access to the home of Coleen McArthur. As we approached, I looked around in wonderment. I could hardly credit the empty road and vacant front gardens. How could it be that they were not all up and about waiting to catch a glimpse of her?

I suppose we thought that we would settle down and that after five minutes or so, out she would step. Perhaps she would have a shopping bag with her. She would see us and ask us to go with her, maybe ask us to carry the bag. Then she would ask us in for tea. In the event, there was no sign of her after half an hour and we were beginning to shift our weight from side to side as our backsides became uncomfortable on the unyielding pavement.

Charley jumped up and pulled out his cards. I pulled out mine as well. We both had a good selection of the latest set: war planes of the world, with pictures of the planes such as the Mirage III, the BAC Lightning, and the Buccaneer. This was, we agreed, a good set of cards – far better than birds of the U.K. which had finished a few weeks ago. And so began a game of knocksy-downsy.

The rules were simple, but boys become engrossed in simple games with little effort, and it is quite possible that another hour passed with no sign of activity around us. Then, suddenly, a door clicked shut across the road. In an instant, our cards were scooped up and we were peering towards Coleen’s house. But it wasn’t her. Instead, another boy was coming towards us. We knew he was a boy, because we recognised him straight away as one of the crowd from the big school who regularly hung around in the park, laughing and smoking, but he must have nearly finished there because he was tall and muscular and had sideburns like an adult.

He strode up to us, and I thought he looked shifty, because as he came, he was giving casual glances up and down the road, as though he didn’t want us to notice him doing it. Then he spoke, sharply, crossly, ‘What are you doing here? I’ve seen you hanging around all morning!’

Charley shot back, ‘Nothing! We’ve been playing cards is all.’

The boy’s eyes swivelled menacingly towards Charley.

‘Don’t give me that! I’ve seen you staring at Coleen McArthur’s house. So what is it: are you planning to break in or are you a pair of Peeping-Toms?’

‘Charley’s mouth ran away with him, ‘We aren’t doing anything. Anyway, you were over there in her house, so what were you up to?’

The boy went white. Without warning he hit Charley. It was a proper man’s punch, right in his stomach. Charley dropped to the ground, his mouth stretched into a vast circle. His eyes, were lines, creases shut tight against the world. He rocked gently on his back, his arms around himself and his knees drawn up. Then the boy turned to me, his eyes cold and unswerving.

‘If you’re here when I get back, there’s more of the same for both of you.’

He was a good ten paces down the road before Charley managed to draw breath, an awful gasping cry. Then, some time later, he screamed and cried uncontrollably. I knelt down and rested his head on my knees until his sobbing ended. I helped him up.

‘I’ve wet myself,’ he gasped, still not in control of his shaky voice. He had, indeed, wet himself, a large dark patch down the inside of both trouser legs. When I asked if he wanted to go home, he shook his head violently. In the end, we retraced our steps past Charley’s house and set off down the path again. About half way along we pushed through the bushes and wriggled into a secluded clearing next to a rickety fence made of old timber and corrugated iron. Facing us, over the fence, was the top of an overgrown garden, and close to the fence were six beehives, all spongy wood and peeling yellow paint.

We had discovered this secret place two years before. The garden and a small house, out of sight beyond some trees, belonged to an old lady. Sometimes she turned up dressed in her overalls and veiled hat to tend to her bees and collect honeycomb. Mainly she ignored us, but once, when she was opening a hive, busy with her curious little smoking tin, she said, ‘Stand back, or you’ll be stung.’

We went to the clearing now, to decide what to do. And there she was, almost as though she was expecting us. We must have looked a sight, with our frightened faces, and poor Charley all red-eyed and puffy from crying. Plus, of course, there was the embarrassing matter of his soaking wet trousers. She pulled off her hat and stared at us. We stared at her as well. She looked severe and not especially friendly, but when she spoke, her voice wasn’t at all cross.

‘What’s the matter then?’ she asked.

Usually, Charley was the brave one who piped up first, but this time he was tongue-tied, so I replied, ‘Charley got punched by a big boy, and he’s wet himself, and he doesn’t want to go home.’

She looked at us for a while, as though taking this in and summing us up, and then she said, ‘Of course he doesn’t want to go home. Wait there!’ She turned and walked away past the trees. A couple of minutes later, we saw her returning with two old tin buckets filled with water. One was hot and soapy and the other was cold. She passed them over the fence.

‘Trousers and pants in the hot water. Mind you give them a good wash now – at least five minutes. Then wring them out and rinse them in the cold water. When you’ve done hang them over the fence. A sunny day like today they’ll be dry in no time. Here,’ she passed me a paper bag, ‘I make this with my honey.’

She left, giving Charley some privacy while he peeled off his wet clothes. He was still shaken and it took him quite a while, so in the end I washed and rinsed his things while he sat disconsolately by saying, ‘sorry,’ from time to time. When I’d finished and was hanging his clothes on the fence, he used some of the hot water to wash himself as best he could. While his clothes were drying, we sat and ate the lightest, crispiest honeycomb sweets we had ever had: great chunks that melted in the mouth. Charley was dead set against telling anybody else what had happened. I disagreed with him, because I thought it was bullying pure and simple, but in the end I promised Charley to keep quiet about it.

When he was dressed again and feeling a bit more comfortable, we emptied the buckets and put them back over the fence. Then we messed around on the path for a while, hiding, climbing as high as we dared up the bigger trees, eating blackberries from the brambles. But we didn’t want to visit Coleen MacArthur’s house again; not that day anyway, so in the end, we went along the path the other way, back past my house and on towards the outskirts of town where the recreation ground lay. There we met Josh, and Billy. It had been Billy’s birthday a couple of days earlier and today he had his new fishing rod with him. He was keen to give it a try and we all headed off to the water meadows where our own little tributary of the Thames wound its twisty way. Of course, we only agreed after Billy had promised to let everybody have a go.

And so the day played out. We didn’t catch any fish, but nobody seemed to mind, and we all had so much fun that before we knew it, it was time to head home again for tea.

Charley and I walked slowly back. We had decided to leave it for a couple of days before taking up our pursuit of Coleen McArthur. Josh and Billy were going fishing again tomorrow and we had decided to go as well. I was going to take my tent over to the water meadows. We’d take sandwiches and gather some blackberries from the path; make a day of it. At Charley’s end of the path there was an apple tree which grew out from somebody’s garden. Charley’s dad said that if an apple tree grew from your neighbour’s garden over yours, you could take the fruit, so we reckoned the apples in the path belonged to everybody. We’d take some of those on our picnic as well.

We arrived at the main road by the foot of the hill leading up to my house. It was getting late and Charley said he’d better go along the road and cut up to his house that way rather than walk up to my house and then along the path, as it was quicker. So we said ‘See you!’ to each other and parted company. When he was almost out of sight, Charley shouted, ‘Remember what you promised – don’t tell,’ and a bit later I heard him call out, ‘and don’t forget your tent!’

As I turned into my road, I could see something was up. All our neighbours were out in their gardens or on the pavement. They looked at me as I went by. I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong, but you can never be certain, so it was worrying. Then I saw there was an ambulance right down at the end, and a policeman. That explained it; it must be old Mrs. Preston at number nineteen. I liked Mrs. Preston; she gave all the children in the road a present at Christmas; I hoped she wasn’t too ill. But then I spotted her standing in her doorway and she looked fine. Then, strangest of all, I saw another policeman standing on the pavement by the entrance to the path, sort of blocking it, and there was a strand of yellow tape right across it as well.

When I got up to my house, Mum and Dad were there and I could hear Peg barking inside because they’d shut her in. Mum came rushing up, which she never did, and she grabbed me, in front of everybody, which she knew I hated. This was too much; her cheeks were all wet – everybody was crying today. She finally let me go after what seemed like ages. I wanted to ask what was going on, but with everybody milling around and my mum behaving so oddly, it seemed like it must be one of those times when children are supposed to keep quiet.

Anyway, I didn’t have to wait too long to find out, because Dad said something to Mum that sounded like, ‘We should tell him,’ and after a second or two she nodded. Dad said, ‘Who’s that secretary at your school, your old school. Not Mrs. Burke, I mean the young one who’s only been there a year or so?’

‘Do you mean Miss McArthur?’ I wanted to correct him – she wasn’t a secretary, she had a different title, only I couldn’t remember what it was right now.

‘Yes, that’s her. Well, there’s been an accident. They’ve found her lying in the cutting over there.’

‘What, the path? Is she badly hurt?’ This was the strangest thing. I’d only been outside her house that morning, discussing her with Charley. Now when I found out that she’d been hurt, all I felt was a sort of curiosity.

‘I’m afraid so. The thing is, we saw the ambulance-men carry a stretcher out about half an hour ago, and the person on the stretcher was covered over completely. And, well, the ambulance is still there. They haven’t rushed her to hospital or anything. I’m sorry; I think she might be dead.’

But this was stupid. Coleen McArthur couldn’t have had an accident and been killed in our path. It was a wonderful place. People didn’t die there. Without thinking, I blurted out, ‘That can’t be right. Charley and me were round by her house only this morning!’

Mum and dad both looked at me and dad asked, ‘When were you there?’ After that, of course, it all came out. I could see this wasn’t the time to keep quiet after all, so I told them about going round, playing with our cards, the boy from the big school, and even about the bee-lady.

Dad went over to the policeman by the ambulance and spoke to him for a while. The policeman went round to the back of the ambulance and after about a minute he came back with another man I hadn’t seen before. This man wasn’t wearing a uniform but the policeman saluted him after they’d spoken for a while. The man and my Dad came over to Mum and me. We all went indoors and sat in the front sitting-room and the man, who said he was Inspector Mason, asked me all the same stuff I’d just told Mum and Dad. He was very nice, and he made it clear that I hadn’t done anything wrong. At the end, after I’d told him everything I could think of about what happened that day, and quite a few other things as well, he said, ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask me?’ Well, I wasn’t ready for that and I just asked what was on my mind right at that moment.

‘Is she dead? Coleen McArthur; is she dead?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid she is.’

I wish I could say that I felt a sense of loss, or maybe some grief. I was sad in a way – I certainly didn’t want her dead – but if I’m truthful, I didn’t really know what I was feeling. One thing dawned on me very quickly though: I had lost the path. That is, Charley and me had both lost it. It was still there. The sun still shone, and after only a few weeks, evidence of the cutting back of bushes, and the trampling of the police and the curious, had all but vanished. We were, eventually, allowed to use it again, providing we didn’t loiter. But it was different. It wasn’t ours anymore.

Most of the rest of the holiday was spent with Josh and Billy over by the water meadows and at the weekends, Mum and Dad made a big thing about taking me on trips out to all sorts of places in the area. Sometimes Charley came as well. Towards the end of the holiday, we talked all the time about what it was going to be like at the big school. Josh was really happy; he had been supposed to go to St. Mark’s, a school out of town, as a border, but something had happened to his Dad’s job and now he was going to be at the same school as all of us.

Then one day, as Charley and me were heading to our usual spot by the river, Josh and Billy came running to meet us. Josh was waving his Dad’s newspaper which he thrust into my hands. Before Charley and me had a chance to see what they were so excited about, they started shouting together, ‘Jack Matthews! They’ve arrested Jack Matthews for killing Coleen McArthur.’

‘Who’s Jack Matthews?’ Charley asked, tugging at the paper I was holding so that he could see it too. There on the crumpled front page was a blurry black and white photograph of the boy we had seen coming out of Coleen McArthur’s house: the boy who had punched Charley. We dropped down on the grass and read the article. Coleen had been killed by repeated blows to the head. It didn’t make much sense beyond saying that he had admitted it and that he had been arrested in Leicester. We looked at the map in the back of Billy’s diary to see where Leicester was, and marvelled at the distance he had managed to get without being caught. None of us could grasp why he would have done it though. Josh said he must be one of those nutters, or, homos; names we screamed at each other every day in the playground without really understanding them.

And that was that. His case wasn’t heard in court until nearly a year had gone by. He pleaded guilty so Charley and me didn’t have to give evidence. There was muttering that he should be hung for it, but he had only been seventeen at the time, so they gave him life imprisonment instead. We had a brief moment of celebrity at school having been attacked by a murderer on the day of his crime, but celebrity is even briefer at school than in the world outside. I read all the newspaper articles I could find about it. They had what the papers called a love-affair. Apparently Coleen had wanted to end it and told him that day. I explained this, knowledgably, to some of my class when they asked me about it, but, had I been truthful, how something called a love-affair could end in murder, was a mystery to me.

How fast years go by. Everybody agrees but nobody believes it – when they are young. School went, then university, a job, a marriage, children. I don’t suppose I thought of poor Coleen more than half a dozen times. Then, one week, I was working away from home and I realised that my route took me within a mile or two of where I used to live, so I decided on a small detour to see what the place looked like now. I was quite excited by the prospect, but when I got there it was oddly disappointing. I recognised it alright, but it had new windows and a different garden. It actually looked like any one of a multitude of dull little family houses.

I walked past it looking for the path, but that wasn’t there at all. Instead, there was a bungalow, and beyond that another. I stood for some time trying to get my bearings and after a while I suddenly recognised two trees to the side of the nearer of the two new buildings. They were different to my recollection of them, but the way they grew close to each other about fifteen feet from the ground was very distinctive, and they gave me a bearing. I took a walk with my mind’s eye, but it was hopeless. I knew where the landmarks had been but there was nothing left, no brambles, no hidden places, no bee-lady. Even the twin trees, my starting point, were now features in somebody’s garden.

Then I had an incongruous thought that rose up, unwanted: there was no way through to Charley’s place now. Alongside came another realisation: there was no way back to Coleen either. And for the first time in over forty years I shed tears for her. And some of tears were for me too, for my guilt at abandoning her in that place she could never escape from: the past. I cried for never really knowing her, for the innocent selfishness of my love, for only showing her my path at the cost of her life.

I wiped my eyes and walked back to my car.

This is a darn good read, Athelstone. I'm going to let it sit for a bit and then come back to read it again before I comment more fully.

Yip yip. Very good. No comments really. It's decent.

I was curiously drawn into this. At first I thought where's the pace, where's the action, but then I became glad about the leisurely progress which allows diversions, for instance, to the bee woman or dad's advice on what apples can be picked. It's these semi-irrelevant bits that actually make the story. (They'll also make it very difficult to edit - what do you leave in and what do you chop out?)

I think the charm of these extras is that they give the true feel of childhood. Indeed, the less relevant they are, the better they are - in a way.

Then, of course, the sudden zoom into the present is very effective and well handled - moving but not overdone.

One problem (for me) - I couldn't work out how the narrator had shown her the path. Did I miss something? I flipped back, scanned again, but couldn't see what I'd missed. Easily solved, though, I imagine.

You did well to keep me reading. My stamina nowadays is crap (too much schoolteaching - cooked the brain) so to hook me to the end was an achievement.

I think that Gerry has pretty much nailed it with his comments. I love the ramble around a child's mind and think that the scenes with Charley and the bee lady are beautifully written. I too wasn't sure how Coleen knew about the path - maybe we need to have it spelled out a bit more. The hop between the Summer path and the Winter path in the first two paragraphs also felt a little abrupt - does the reference to 'blood-curdling screams' relate to Coleen's murder? If so, maybe that is a little too obscure. I think that this is very good writing - but with a few tweaks it could be better. I was waiting for the 'eureka' moment at the end and never quite got there.

Thank you very much for your comments. I'm glad that it came across in a mainly positive way, I find that some days when I read my stuff it feels clunky and contrived, other days I can enjoy it. I posted it on a clunky day, so I was a bit apprehensive.

So what I've done at the end is to trim so much fat off the metaphor that it doesn't make sense any more. Which goes to show that what I intended is nothing like as important as what I wrote. The narrator didn't invite Coleen to the path. His tears are because he feels guilty she only 'went' to his favourite place when her ex-lover murdered her and dumped her there. He's also crying for what has been lost, for what won't ever be, and because this is the first time he ever really greaved for her. It's very much an adult reaction to childhood events.

I have a strating point for the edit.

Mm, but how about the title? It deserves better than Doom and Gloom (if you ever seriously considered it). It might be one of those that gets labelled after a passing irrelevance - honeycomb sweets - something like that.

That's odd - could have sworn I'd posted a reply.

The story is actually called the Path. Doom and Gloom is just a working title for the whole group of short stories.

Hello Athelstone,

This piece made me feel quite emotional, which I think was the point so very well done there. It didn't feel contrived at all - It sounded very much like one of your own reminiscences.

The conversation seemed to flow well and none of the words sounded out of place.

I only skimmed through it to be honest, as I'm still at work, so I can't add much more without giving it more attention. However, even skipping over some of the description and a few minor scenes left me feeling satisfied.

Oop! Back to work... here comes the boss...

J

Hi Athelstone, just read this and the previous comments and agree with many of them.I thought it was a really sensitive piece and not at all clunky.

I really liked the little observations that were evocative of being an 11 year old boy (hot smell of nettles, nutters and homos) and I liked the realisation that they boys had lost their path too - that was sad. I was drawn to picture Coleen's mouth by 'smile just out of sight', I liked that a lot.

There were a couple of places where less words would have worked for me - but only a couple of places really. e.g. wet himself...he had indeed wet himself. And I found myself questioning when it was set once or twice. Saluting policemen, derring do - suggested it was set years ago. Yellow police tape seemed modern and before that I was asking myself would an 11 year old take his trousers off in front of a stranger. It was clear by the end - still not sure about the yellow tape.

Only other thought was whether the murderer would have approached the boys and thus drawn attention to himself or would he have reacted violently to being asked unwelcome questions instead?

A really nice read though; quite gentle and then a punch, gentle again and then a murder. Liked it.

Cheers

M

Hi Jaxx - glad you liked it. Yes there was a lot of reminiscence in there, although I was never in love with exactly this Coleen, there were dozens of others. There were definitely cards, and watery disinfectant, and an excellent supply of grazed knees.

Thanks Mark - that's exactly what I'm after. I agree the line about the trousers is over-explaining and probably won't survive revision. There are some others too. The story is set in 1967 - so you're right about the tape too. That would be a piece of rope, possibly a hurdle, or most likely, nothing other than the policeman.

Yes this story did have an emotional feeling. You captured the boys' innocence well. So much so, it was a pity it couldn't have remained in that era - encapsulating thirty years of thoughts later, somehow took the edge off for me.

kind regards
stephen

Thanks for that Stephen. There will always be different views of how things can end. I take your point about how the leap into the present can detract. This section is in need of a rewrite anyway and a number of people have had issues with it. This is one of a series of stories with the general theme (although not the exclusive theme) of reunions taking place within a group of former friends after the passage of around 35 years or longer and it's important for their overall cohesion that there is an element of the present. The one I'm working on, involves a present-day meeting between Charley, from this story, and a new character called Jennifer over lunch. in conversation they discover something unusual about a third character, the murderer in another story I posted here, which has blighted their lives since they were teenagers.

I'm impressed. This is a lovely evocative piece about childhood many summers ago and it certainly stirred up some memories for me - all those "secret passages" which, when revisited now have lost their magic.

Hello Athelstone. I found this to be an effective, nostalgic piece. I found myself reminiscing about my own childhood as I read your story - about my friend Gary Saunders and how I could hear him play his trumpet from his house on the other side of the brook; about my teacher Miss Paige who changed her name when she got married (which made me very jealous) and about my mum calling out for me when it was time for tea! If that was the effect you wanted then you don't need to cut out anything. Thanks for posting it. Ron.

Thank you very much for that SecretSpi. I absolutely agree that it can do with a bit of polishing.

Ron, you've got me bang to rights. I was after that feeling because that's what was on my mind at the time. As for posting it: you're welcome, I gained a lot.