Night Worker: an extract, by Peter Morford

He stumbled over something in the alley.  It was a man lying across his path, his head to one side, eyes open. Ben crouched down and shook him. Slapped his face; checked for pulse in wrist and neck.  No pulse, skin cold, dead.  The man looked about 50. He was wearing a dinner-jacket and his bow tie was undone. There was no sign of injury, as far as he could see.  Instinctively, naturally and professionally, he reached inside the jacket for identification.  A small wallet contained a Maestro Card in the name of Charles Spencer, credit cards for John Fortune and Henry Jessop, and a couple of £10.gambling chips. There was no driving licence and no address. Ben knew the type. The dregs of humanity.

In the other inside pocket he found a gold propelling pencil and a wad of used twenties, bound in a paper band.

What to do now? I should call the Police and ambulance, he thought. But why? This obviously suspicious character was dead; nothing could be done for him.  Ben really didn’t want the bother, not with his churning stomach and early sign of influenza. Then he did something he had never done before.   He pocketed the cash, except for a couple of £20.notes, and replaced the wallet.  He looked carefully around. He was alone and he knew there were no cameras in this alley. He walked quickly for the half-mile back to his car.    He had decided to go  home. 

After five miles he stopped on a layby because he wanted to check the cash.  Above all, he wanted to think.  The first time he counted £960.  Then it was £980.  Check again, right first time.  The dead man must have had a good night in the casino. He was probably a worthless gambler using stolen credit cards, laundering his illegal gains. Ben wasn’t to be fooled by the fancy suit and vaguely distinguished appearance.

He looked back on his own life.  He had always played to the rules.  No crook had ever succeeded in bribing him.  There had been times of course, when it would have been easy to falsify a bit of evidence or accept a favour. In that very Casino a few years ago his Inspector had mysteriously aborted a raid only to be able to take a rather expensive holiday a few weeks later.   Plenty of his colleagues had bent the rules to get their man or protect another.  But he had always played it straight. Which was, he thought, why he had retired as a sergeant when less able men had left him far behind. 

And now here he was, sitting in his car, riffling through the wad of notes, wondering why he had even thought of taking them. It’s not that I need the money, he thought.  What with the pension and the job, and Sheila’s business we do well enough. The kids are gone, the mortgage paid, this nice new car, all paid for… why do I need the best part of a K?

There was the sound of a car door slamming. He looked up and saw the car, nose to nose with his own.  A man got out, hurried over and tapped on his window.

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres, by Peter Shilston

I wrote this poem several years ago, after my first visit to the battlefields around Ypres:-  

Sanctuary Wood, Ypres: School Visits

How can they understand a war poem? How can we?
Wars were far away and long ago
And nothing seen on television ever really happened.
Now the woods are full of children
Running through the muddy trenches
Dodging round the water-filled craters
Gawping at, or completely failing to notice
The occasional unexploded shell
And squeaking when their nice new jeans
(Fashionably ragged and torn at the knee)
Are stained with filth in the communications tunnel.
Below the woods the fields are grey with mist
Shrouding the view to the sinister places
The Menin road, and up to Passchendaele,
Behind us, Messines Ridge and Plugstreet. The children
Have been told, but already they’ve forgotten
And soon they’ll be off for hamburger and chips
(They’re looking forward to their succulent Belgian chips)
And leave the trenches and the shattered stumps
The rusty barbed wire and all the iron harvest of war
And arching over all, the chestnut trees
- None more than seventy years old
But sprouting strongly, because well fertilised
By someone who in happier circumstances
Might have married my grandmother
Or yours

A SOLDIER
OF THE GREAT WAR
KNOWN UNTO GOD

.

Wind, by Maggie Wells

We parked the car on the grass verge and climbed over the stile into the woodland. There was nobody else about, since it was a blusterous sort of day, though not cold.

“Come on!” I said to Sarah, “This is one of my favourite walks!”

 “How long is it going to take?”

“Oh, less than an hour, I should think; then we’ll go to the pub for lunch”

We walked along the path through the trees, chatting about this and that. It was the first time I’d seen Sarah for quite a while. After a bit we turned a corner, and there was the little lake spread out beneath us. I thought it was a glorious view.

“What do we do now?” asked Sarah.

“Walk round the lake and then back to the car. It’s not as far as it looks”.

“Oh”. She sounded very unenthusiastic. “The path isn’t too close to the water, is it? It looks deep!”

“It’s perfectly safe: I’ve been round hundreds of times. What’s the problem?”

“I’m scared of deep water”

“Can’t you swim?”

“I’ve never swum a stroke in my life. It terrifies me: it always has done. And then there was my sister …..” her voice faded out.

“Oh yes, I heard about that somewhere. You had a younger sister who died when she was very small, didn’t you?”

“Yes; she fell into a pool and drowned. It was while we were out on a picnic”

“Where was this?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t much older myself at the time; too young to remember the details; and my parents never talked to me about it, ever. They found it much too distressing”

We started out along the shore, with me doing my best to keep between Sarah and the water whenever the path was wide enough to allow this. But we hadn’t gone very far before Sarah said, “Look, I really don’t want to go any further. You might find I’m being silly, but I don’t like this place at all; it unsettles me. And the wind’s really getting up: I think we might be in for a storm”.

“Fair enough, if that’s how you feel. Let’s just walk as far as those benches, then we’ll go back to the car”                                                                 

   There were two wooden seats near the water’s edge, which looked as though they’d been there for ages. I sat down on one of them to retie my shoelaces. Sarah remained standing, gazing out into the water. Then I heard her say, “My God!”

The wind was really howling by this time, making a fearful racket in the treetops. I wouldn’t have heard Sarah at all if she hadn’t started to shout at the top of her voice. But she wasn’t shouting to me: it was as if she’d forgotten I was there.

“My God, it was here it happened! Here! I can see it in my mind, just as it was!”

You! You! You! Said the wind.

“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t mean to push her in! It was an accident!”

You! You! Said the wind.

“It was mummy and daddy’s fault! They were too far away, and didn’t get back in time to pull her out!”

You! You! You!

“It wasn’t fair to expect me to go in and help her! They know I’m frightened of water!” Sarah collapsed in hysterical tears.

I managed to grab hold of her and led her back through the woods. I helped her into the car without a word, and we sat there for a while until she’d managed to calm down. Then I said, “Look, I really am sorry for bringing you here”

“No”, said Sarah, “You couldn’t possibly have known. I didn’t know myself until we reached that spot, and then it all came back to me. It was my fault for losing self-control like that. I’m sorry. It must have been very embarrassing for you”

There was another silence, then she said, “It was just like I heard voices by the lake there. But it was only the wind, wasn’t it?”

Rest in Peace, by David Bingham

Snow drifted into the trench Colonel Kurtz had ordered his men to excavate. He’d been puzzled by the elongated mound his occupying troops had found in the parkland near the centre of the city,

   ‘Colonel, they knew, with winter coming, they couldn’t hold out against us.’

   The colonel looked down at the creatures which had fought so bravely against him. ‘They’d been under siege for six months. I doubt if they’d have lasted for more than a couple of days anyway.’

   ‘But did they need to go this far?’

   ‘I don’t know, Major. But, in a way, I admire them. They’d rather kill themselves than be subservient.’

   ‘There’s no way we’d have done it!’

   ‘I’m not so sure. Back on earth there’s lots of examples of this kind of thing.’

   The colonel raised his hand and signalled the excavator operators to fill in the trench.

   ‘At least we can tell base the area’s safe for colonisation.’

   ‘No rush, Major; they’ll have to wait until spring before they send settlers here.’

   And in that season of fresh growth a new settlement was established which was intended to rise from the ruins of the old.

   While underneath the surface a species, waking from their winter hibernation, stretched their stiff limbs and began to move upwards from darkness into the light.

The Return, by Hannah

Swasticas on tombstones
Jackboots and a shaved head
Six million feathers
have been blown away
as have the memories of the dead
Demonstrations, manifestations
and cries of hate
freedom of peace for the world
Yet for some it has come too late.
Crosses and flowers
churches filled
joy and despair
of those who were coming
those who were leaving
and those who were never there.
Communism has fallen
Fascism holds
Democracy has risen
yet the dead still lie in their tombs.
The future has not forgiven
the past, the corpses and their wounds.
Auschwitz is covered by grass
the survivors have flown to Israel
and the coffin of racism is opened
nail by nail.

Aladdin Updated, by Peter Morford

Aladdin was feeling his age.  Not surprising really because he was crossing a parched desert which stretched for miles in every direction. He staggered step by painful step, hoping he was heading south where he thought there would be an oasis. His camel had died two – or was it three? days ago. He had drunk all his water and eaten all his figs. The merciless sun had burned his bald head and dazzled his myopic eyes. Still he plodded along, slipping in the loose sand of dunes, covering his face against the occasional dust blows.                                                                                 

            He fell heavily, face first, into the sand. He couldn’t breathe until he had pushed himself into a kneeling position. He scrabbled in the sand to push himself up.  There was something just below the surface which wasn’t sand.  He smiled for the first time that day. He recognised the shape and the texture.  It was his old lamp, lost with his good luck, many years before.   He rubbed it clean. There was a loud popping noise and a puff of smoke.

            “How can I serve you, O Master?” the genie said.

            Now Aladdin was an unselfish man.  He thought of the greater good of mankind.

            “I require three wishes,” he said.

           “That’s most irregular, O Master. I usually grant only one.  But as it’s been a long time… What is your command O Master?”

             “That all human diseases cease to be.”

         There was flash of blue lightning and a great crack of thunder.

            “It is done, O Master.”

             Aladdin felt the life returning to his limbs and he could see the distant mountains clearly. His newly-restored hair was sheltering him from the sun.

            “And your second wish, O Master?”

            “That all poverty be abolished.”

            Another flash and boom.

            “It is done, O Master”

            Aladdin felt the thickness of his wallet, now filled with hundred dollar bills, credit cards and tickets to the pantomime.

            “And your third and final wish, O Master?”

            “I want the weather to be under Man’s control, so that the deserts bloom.”

            Yet another flash and bang.

            “It is done O Master. Farewell.”

            The sky clouded over and he felt the first drops of rain.  And the second.  And the third until the downpour was a monsoon.  Green shoots miraculously appeared as water gushed down the dunes.  He was soon up to his ankles, his knees, his waist.  He climbed but the water rose faster.

Aladdin, RIP.

Witchcraft, by Kwaku Gyamfi

The problem with the outside world is that they do not understand our peculiar situation in Africa. I mean, witchcraft is very real. You need to see to understand. If you don’t understand something and you just label it as superstition it is very unfair. Yes, we believe in witchcraft but that does not mean we are dumb. Wisdom and believing in witchcraft are not mutually exclusive. I dare say we are wiser for believing in these forces of darkness because they keep us on our toes. We fast and pray to keep evil away. There are some things that are difficult for the human mind to understand. The other day I was returning from a party at dawn when I saw a man with the head of a bull. He had horns, muzzle, those cattle eyes, the entire package. I was scared to the bone. The animal-man creature was walking towards me. Boy, I almost shit on myself. You know I was from a party and as you would guess I was quite tipsy. Wee was not disallowed at the party and the smokers did not spare me from the assault of their puffs. But I was sturdy. I did not sway like the drunkard of my town does. That guy eh I am sure he gets drunk even on water. Dude is always drunk I don’t know how he does it. As I was saying earlier, the creature was coming towards me. I gathered courage and approached it. It was not that I wasn’t scared. Actually I was scared to the point that I could feel it in my fingertips, even the muscles of my stomach shook. Then I saw the creature stop. It stood straight. It did not move an inch. Boy, did I stop too. If you were there you would think I was a statue. All of a sudden, the creature was covered by a thick red cloud which was very visible in the morning night. I saw the creature going down. I don’t know how to describe what I saw. It was as if it was melting, like burnt candle wax receding to its base. The curious thing was that the apparent liquid form of the creature was blue with smoke of the same colour emanating from it. This smoke mixed with the cloud I told you about earlier to form different shades of magenta. I am not sure of what that colour is called these days. Besides, I am not good with colours. I am drifting. So I moved as silently as possible to stand beside a light pole that was nearby to guard myself against evil and watched what was going on. Then all of a sudden there was an explosion. A silent explosion of colours. Every colour of the rainbow dancing before my eyes. Every shade and hue of light perceptible to the eye. And there was nothing.

 P.S: If you think I believe in witchcraft then I must also believe there are tigers in Africa, and believe in the Sugar Candy Mountain too.