|
"Curing the Chameleon"
A story set sometime in the 1960's
White kid stilettos and black Fen earth are not a marriage made in heaven.
Chloe Butcher sunk one heel into a splurge of mud and cursed. She stopped to rescue her shoe now neatly buried. She plucked it from the muck and hopped to the river side and gingerly leaning over, she swished it in the murky water to rinse off the sticky soil and scattering some ducks loitering at the waters edge.
She could see her obscure reflection and noticed a much larger one that had joined hers. Realising she was not alone, she stood up and spun around, a little startled. A man dressed in a trench-coat, waders, and a dogtooth cap glared from under the peak.
He had a side-by-side broken at his elbow, and blew his nose into a grubby handkerchief with his other hand, before he spoke. He had long sideburns that ran down and across his drawn, leathery cheeks. His long tufts of stubble were patchy and grey and then met under his nose like a swathe of cobweb. He was in his fifties and the broken veins on his face told a story of love for arable land and ale.
It was Mr Ivan Mazeppa the landlord from the "Pickled Skittle" pub across from the footbridge to the Sedge Fen marina. His parents were Polish immigrants and came to this country after the second war working as labourers until they bought their first farm.
Ivan had grown potatoes all his life. When he was just nine, he was sent around the local pubs by his caustic Father with a sack barrow to sell them for two shillings and sixpence a hundred weight. Now the 'Mazzeppa' variety were exported all over the world and Ivan had 170 acres of prime Fen yielding 25 tonnes an acre of the best spuds money could buy. His wife. A very quiet woman and astonishingly beautiful was Taiwanese. He had picked her from a dating catalogue a year ago for 'ready to order' 'takeaway' oriental wives. Chloe knew her as a customer to her holistic practice.
He took his well thumbed cap off and taking out a pack of rolling tobacco from inside put it back on and slowly built a cigarette massaging the thread of weed inside a Rizla. He towered over the woman and closed one eye as he spoke.
"You know your dog has been at my chickens, miss?" A deep and curious accent that was neither, local or Polish, came from a mouth followed by a thick tongue that licked the edge of the skinny cigarette. His bony hands were thick with grime and dirty keens that seemed to be there more deliberately than by accident. She noticed a black thumbnail and momentarily thought how very sore it looked. He had a yellow complexion with a pair of smoky grey eyes that were sat in bloodshot whites. Dark rings hung under them, aubergine in colour. He spoke with a snakelike twist to his mouth and his nose was large and badly bent.
Chloe relieved, yet still unnerved at recognising the man, without answering, smiled her most bewitching and sarcastic smile. Then, with a quick change of expression, ignoring him completely, lifted her head, and panned the flatlands like a spooked Meercat, looked for her border collie, Rosie. In a fraction of a second, she spotted her delinquent dog closely following a brace of signets into the water a few hundred yards away. She twirled around on one leg wrestling to get the sodden shoe back on her foot.
"Excuse me" She stumbled, trying to wiggle her tiny toes into an even tinier shoe, and as she did so, grabbed the man's huge shoulder unintentionally to regain her balance. He took hold of her wrist with ever tightening strength and scowled, pulling her closer, while he lit the readymade cigarette, effortlessly. He hissed through stained teeth at her.
"I don't know what you're filling Cookie's head with, but since she has been going to your little 'therapy studio' she's acting queer."
Chloe looked deep into his eyes defiantly, and spat back.
"Well, who can blame her for wanting to be a lesbian… being married to you." She, with the aggression of a rabid hyena bit his wrist until her teeth met, and struggled free. She scrabbled away tearing her leg on some bracken in the direction of Rosie who was now drenched and bedraggled running towards her.
The man grunted with pain and sucked his wound, then, in a burst of temper snapped the gun straight, pulling back both hammers, planted the stock of his twelve bore into the ball of his shoulder.
He drew his aim at the scampering pair . . . . . .
to be continued ...
|
