Never a Cross Word
A short story submitted to the Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award 2023. Inevitably, during the process of transferring the words to our website, mistakes were spotted (and corrected, sadly too late for the competition). Other errors undoubtedly remain; something to learn from
He marched along the estate road. There was nothing to rush for, but he moved smartly, purposefully, and as quickly as his old boots would allow. The soles were worn these days, barely clinging to the uppers. But the toecaps still shone like they did that last day when he marched off the parade square.
Walking, briskly. One of the voices in his head is the Sergeant-Major’s. “Shoulders back, lad”. Some things never leave you. Like the silence in the immediate aftermath. Ears ringing in the momentary quietness before all hell breaks loose.
Pacing it up, he strides away from the screams.
He kept keeps his mind busy. Or does his mind keep him busy? Who’s asking? He’s always had a curious side, questioning everything. But they didn’t always welcome that, so sometimes it is better to keep stuff to yourself. It’s easier when you have no no-one to talk to. Easier to keep your own counsel. Ask yourself the questions. That’s allowed. Questioning everything. But what about the answers?
Moving more urgently now. Maybe today is the day.
Through the deserted precinct and past the two shops that cling on. Nothing much to linger for. Minding his steps on paving slabs slippery with the green hue of moss, strangely verdant in this concrete jungle. On past the recruiting office, long since closed having sated its voracious appetite for disaffected and aimless men like him. Hurrying on through the underpass, immune now to the filth they spray on the walls and the smell of human waste. No pride anymore. But was there ever? The estate is abandoned by all but the kids who hang about waiting for shady gangster types to beckon them into houses with windows curtained with aluminium foil. The kids don’t bother him because he’s disappeared into the background. Getting old does that.
The high street is busy, so he passes through anonymously. An old man heading to … who cares? Even the Christians on the corner don’t bother him anymore. Word must have got around. He had attended church as a youngster, religiously, you might say. But he learned to suppress it. Not something you shared with your mates. Now there were dark days when the Devil inside his head spoke the loudest and the other voices were hushed by the evil He encouraged. Those were the days when his own fears spoke up, strange fragments of unexpected realisations. He tried to piece it together, waiting for it all to make sense somehow. He needed to learn what they wanted from him. He stayed alert, always prepared.
The clues came to him when he least expected them.
Perhaps today is the day.
He nears his destination. The clues always appeared there.
The smell greets him as he slips in the side door, the engraved glass guiding him to the public bar. Not that he needs directions. This is a regular haunt and there’s a stale familiarity to it. There’s a welcome in the nod he always receives from the butcher’s lad who takes his breakfast breaks here after pre-dawn shifts at Smithfield Market. But if the apprentice is mid-shift his bloodstained apron triggers unwelcome memories, resurrecting the silent screams in the old man’s head. The pub extends its own specific welcome with the swift arrival of a strong black coffee and a nip of Jameson’s on this cold morning. It is good to feel known. No words, but that’s not what he wants.
She brought the drinks over to his usual table. Quietly. Respectfully. She’s different from those kids on the estate. Working hard, doing something with her life. He nodded. As she headed back towards the bar, she turned.
“He was here again”.
The voice in his head told him to stay calm.
“You said to tell you. He was here this morning, unexpected, like”.
The voice in his head asks why young people don’t talk properly anymore. Like what?
“He done it again”.
Did it again, the voice says.
“He left it like you said he would. I’ll get it from the back”.
Waiting, impatiently. Playing it cool. Tossing back the shot, sharpening his thoughts, stilling the voice, that voice. The insidious, creeping whisper of doubt even as she laid the paper in front of him. The newspaper rustled as he unfolded it, opening it onto the tacky surface of the old table, a sorry memorial to wasted drinks and wasted lives. He felt his breath shortening. Knowing instinctively how many pages to bunch up, to accelerate past the trivialities.
Perhaps today is the day, the day it will reveal itself.
Word games, number puzzles, quizzes and there, towards the bottom of the crumpled page, the crosswords. The cryptic? No way was he getting his brain wrapped around one of them. As he smoothed the page, careful not to smudge the pencil strokes, he quickly studied it. Simple clues, easy answers, designed to be polished off with a quick brew. Not today though. It’s mostly completed.
One clue left to solve. 8 down … 10 letters. Oranges and lemons – London church.
His pulse quickens. He knows this. He looks up, suddenly conscious of his knowledge, the clarity of the realisation. The voice answering the crossword clue; it was in his head, wasn’t it? Worrying that he said it out loud. That man over there, when did he come in? Not seen him before. He closes the paper, trying not to draw attention to himself. A voice in his head telling him to calm down; take your time fella.
Thinking back to the other clues. The signs.
Reading about the shadowy group, preparing himself for it, and waiting. Waiting for the right moment. Learning about codes and ciphers and how to spot the clues. Knowing that they did the watching. Realising that they would gather the right people. Knowing too that he was the right sort of person.
The voices reassured him, telling him to hold his tongue. No problem with that; there was no one to share it with. Just him. He was good at secrets. Be patient, the voices said. Perhaps today is the day.
Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clement’s
It must be the place. The contact he has been waiting for. Patience paying off. Twenty minutes away, perched on an island. It all made sense. But when? Today, of course, but when? The archaic clock above the bar ticked steadily in the silence of the old city pub. Just him now. And the stranger. Quarter to eleven on a cold Autumn morning. His coffee is going cold while he listens intently to the voices in his head, searching for the one with the answer.
He knows where. But when?
The stranger looked over – stay calm, the voice said, give nothing away – the man’s half-smile adds to the unease the old man was feeling. He looked down quickly as the stranger rose. The man gathered his briefcase and wrapped a scarf around his thick neck. Too late, the old man noticed the tattoo poking out above the tight-fitting collar of the younger man’s white shirt but he had no time to make out what it represented.
Stay calm, the voice said again, he’ll be gone soon.
He looked down at the table, its surface dulled by tidal flows of spilled lager. A shadow fell over him. “Are you finished with that paper? I was hoping to have a go at the crossword”.
Stay calm, the voice murmurs.
“It’s already mostly done”, he muttered, conscious of the crackling roughness of an ageing voice, rarely used.
Damn, said the voice in his head, you didn’t want to say that.
“No worries, mate, have a good one”, and with that, the stranger was gone.
The voice in his head sounds anxious. What were you thinking? He knows you know. He’s not one of us. He’s one of them, always watching, always hunting us out.
His thoughts race. His mouth feels dry. He reaches for the whisky glass and realises he’s already drained it. The peaty aroma has sharpened as it always does when the pleasure of the fragrant first hit fades. But he mustn’t have another. He needs his wits about him. Focus, man.
His chair scrapes, the noise of it magnified by the silence of the now-deserted bar. She looks up from the phone screen, her obvious and scornful dismissal anointing him with the anonymity he craved, blessing him with her indifference. But it’s not her he’s bothered about. It is them. It was stupid of him to let his guard down.
Sharpen up, fella, says the voice wrestling its way to the front of his thoughts, drowning out the cacophony of murmurings unsettling his confused mind. Sharpen up.
The unexpected warmth of the sun belies the stiff breeze, which forced him to turn up his collar. He sinks into the coat, self-consciously trying to make himself less visible to a casual observer, or to anyone with more deliberate intent. Increasingly his brain registers nagging doubts voiced by the strident caution that forces itself into his every waking moment.
They’re watching, using you to do their work. Be careful. Give nothing away.
He presses clammy hands against his throbbing temples. The dull ache that greeted the start of every day was insistent now, a painful clamouring for attention between thoughts both random and confusingly specific. In his mind’s eye, he can see the pews, the white interior, the gilding.
Keeping his head down, he sets off.
The side streets around the pub are quiet. Too quiet? His eyes flicker from doorway to doorway, down angled slipways into overpriced underground parking. He is trying to observe the observers before they set eyes on him., Before they sense where he is bound for. For a moment, the voices are stilled, quietened by conflicting sounds. The rumble of a heavily-laden trolley being manoeuvred from the back of a delivery lorry to an expectant small business owner. The holler of a drayman man to the publican in his cellar. The rattle of a roller shutter signalling the urgency of a shop assistant who is running late again.
There is no one to see, but he sees them everywhere. Lounging on street corners and emerging from side streets. Circling slowly in the revolving door that guards the nondescript office building. He knows they are there, but what do they know?
Quicker now. He has to get there first, that’s what the voice is telling him.
On to Fleet Street, the only nod to its past can be seen in the bold headlines of newsprint long since abandoned by the commuters who blindly reach for half-truths between lines intended to manipulate minds. Hearing what they want to hear, he thinks. That’s why his role matters. There is more to know. More to learn. He scurries on, pushing against the detritus blown towards him by the ill wind.
As the door closes, a hush envelops him. An unexpected comfort wraps itself around him. The orderly pews, the calming whitewash of the painted walls. Silence. Hushed, too, for a blessed moment, are the voices. He sits there for a long time. In silence. All the voices are stilled. Had they whispered to him, they might have spoken of a building with the same name, another place of worship not much more than a mile away. The voices might have told him of a man who waits impatiently in a pew 8 down from the door he had pushed open about an hour previously. The persistent voice, the one that dominated his thoughts would, perhaps, have mentioned the tattoo that couldn’t be contained by the starched collar of the crisp white shirt the broad-shouldered man was squeezed into.
But the voices are quiet. They stayed silent in the place of worship where the old man sits, bent over as if in prayer, his eyes fixed on the shine of his toecaps.
As the bells rang out with the familiar refrain of a childish rhyme, he thought to himself, perhaps tomorrow.
