The Word Cloud

The Remembered

By Dan Stathers

The sun had long since set behind the hills. A tide of shadows had filled the town with dark places and a graphite moon squinted through the embers of a smoked mackerel sky. The workers had trudged home and now sat in-front of television screens, sipping tea and thumbing newspapers. Upstairs the children slept on full bellies, dreaming of toppling play-ground bullies and first kisses. 

            On the estuary, the boats snoozed on oily waters, dimly lit by the parade of blue lights along the promenade. The daffodils had shrunk into their ruffs and the tulips rested easy after a day spent pouting and posing. Down in the mud and murk of the estuary bed, claws and tentacles felt their way through the gloom, while the seaweed clung to the old tidal wall, beckoning the dark with gout-ridden fingers.

             The estuary rat stood upright on the bottom of the ferry-boat steps, pawing his twitching pinky nose while hatching his plans for tonight’s moonlit raids. At the end of the slip-way, mother duck slept with one eye open and beak under wing, ruffled only by the mullets as they jumped with mud in their gizzards, sending ripples over the black marbled water.

            The town clock rang out a lonely chime. The landlord had polished the last of his glasses and the laughter about days gone by had long since departed the inn on the end of the harbour. All was quiet. The only things stirring were memories and mice.   

            A vagrant mist had shrouded the estuary like a widow’s veil and as the eerie procession passed, even time appeared to stand still to pay its respects. It was then and only then, that they appeared. Some dressed in their Sunday best, others in uniform. Some walked in stony silence while others consoled their crying eyes with gentle finger tips. All of them had their names remembered on benches and beneath trees and saplings along the promenade.

            ‘Has anyone seen my Jack?’ said the woman in the flat shouldered jacket. ‘I’m running late, but I need to tell him something important, so if you see him, be sure to tell him I’m here, won’t you.’

            Her hair was full of Victoria curls and her face glowed like roses. She seated herself on the bench where Jack sits every Sunday afternoon.

            ‘If I find out he’s in the pub again, I’ll have his guts for garters,’ she said, tapping her wrist watch again before bursting into tears. ‘Oh Jack, please hurry up,’ she whimpered, ‘it’s getting late.’

            Further down the path stood a broad shouldered man with swept back grey hair and a square chin. He wore a brown cardigan over a shirt buttoned to the collar and stood before the weeping branches of a silver birch.  The flowers on his plaque had aged like old newspaper under floor-boards but he saw the petals as though they had never been picked.

            ‘It didn’t quite turn out the way we planned did it my love,’ he said with a throaty gruffness. ‘That boiler still needs looking at, don’t think I’ve forgotten.’

            His widow smiles in her sleep.

            ‘I’ll call someone about it tomorrow,’ she says, ‘I promise.’

            Beneath the statue of hope the fallen ones had gathered to sit, resting on elbows as they talk, sharing cigarettes and playing cards. One of them writes a letter he’ll never finish, while another tunes a gargling wireless for news of home. These were the good old boys who had downed tools and kissed their sweethearts goodbye with a promise of return, while adventure tugged at their cuffs.

            ‘That’s three of a kind,’ said the handsome Tommy through a woodbine cigarette. ‘I told you I was feeling lucky tonight.’ 

            ‘I hope you bring that luck with us tomorrow,’ said his pal. ‘We’ll need it for the big heave-ho.’

            Tonight they rested under the anchor of Saint Philomena in a town they saluted all those years ago.

            The ghostly figures whispered and talked as the mist began to suck and draw, then, in a wink of the night, they were gone. Memories of their departed souls chiseled and etched on wood and in stone; names longing to be spoken aloud once more. The promenade was still again, the only thing to be heard were the aching joints of the old estuary wall as it wobbled and leaned to and fro.

The End