A Windfall of Secrets

By Paul Harland

Eric Middletons outward life is comfortable, mundane, safe and not going anywhere important. For much of his working day he attempts to cope with the twentieth century. He thinks himself into wild imaginations, drifts into reflective abstractions and tries out intricate daydreams and trips of fantasy. He seems to occupy two lives, two minds.
When he wins a huge amount of money, a breathtaking opportunity confronts him; a parallel life, an alternative life, a different life.
The plan to keep his wealth a secret leads him into new experiences which challenge his intrinsic weaknesses. He embarks on a cathartic and disastrous path towards his own chaos, and his Faustian failings lead to catastrophe and a shocking climax to his journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491894415

Paul Harland

PAUL HARLAND (1960-2003) sleet zijn jeugd in een klein dorpje aan de westkust van Nederland en doorliep daarna een reeks van kostwinnende activiteiten: copywriting, muziek en fotografie. Als fotograaf woonde hij lange tijd in Groot Brittannië. Buiten schrijven hield hij zich graag bezig met koken, musiceren, meubelmaken en het houden van katten.Zijn eerste verhaal verscheen in 1979. Sindsdien won hij drie maal de King Kong Award, de hoogste onderscheiding voor het Nederlandstalige SF-verhaal. Onderscheiden verhalen zijn onder meer ‘De Wintertuin’ en ‘Retrometheus’ (met Mike Jansen)In 1993 verscheen zijn eerste verhalenbundel Remote Control uit, gevolgd door de door Dante geïnspireerde roman Water tot IJs (1995), een samen met Tais Teng geschreven griezelroman Computercode Cthulhu (2005) en een (Engelstalige) toekomstthriller The Hand That Takes (2003). Eveneens in het Engels verscheen een verhalenbundel in samenwerking met Paul Evenblij, Systems of Romance (1995)

Book preview

1

The garden gate looked exactly as it had done the day before. Eric Middleton expected nothing else. The vaguely bleak sky above him threatened a possible drizzling with its pale pewter promise of imminent rain. As usual, he thought about quickly returning to the house for a raincoat or umbrella, but, with his usual perverse consistency, he didn’t. This was another day; and it would lose itself amongst all the others.

The journey to his place of work, a rather anonymous office on the edge of central London, would be as uneventful as he had learnt to expect. Minor hold-ups provided a brief sense of tension surrounding the remote possibility he could be late. But Eric was rarely late. His punctuality was a fixture of abject normality in his life, and the erstwhile adventures of his colleagues on some mornings left him with a curious mixture of scepticism and slight envy. Anecdotes of missed buses, traffic accidents, burst water mains, domestic crises, and other unexpected incidents seemed to produce a web of intriguing reasons why other people were sometimes late, but never himself. It had been ordained, apparently, that Eric would always be excluded from such frivolous, distracted or diversionary activity. The edges of grey hair were testimony to the largely passive experience of his former years, the innocent brown eyes were perhaps evidence of his naïve sense of bewilderment. A vague boyishness was generally discernible in his demeanour, reminiscent of that school colleague whose name you never remembered, but you recalled being slightly cleverer than yourself, but could not clearly recall any particular contribution he made to the history or folk-lore of your school life.

Time spent at work was meant to be safe and predictable. This appeared to suit Eric and he reluctantly maintained a reputation for rock steady reliability.

The current day stretched out like a recently-arrived corpse on a slab awaiting a routine identification; a succession of hours tied together with the tight rope of unrelenting pattern. The safe repetition of practice engulfed him as he walked the familiar route to the bus stop. Well-rehearsed movements around uneven parts of the pavement brought Eric to the usual dance of daily awareness. The barely acknowledged hopscotch had become a latent element of everyday procedure. Stains on individual flagstones could be recognised and given the same speculations as on many other previous occasions. Yesterday’s litter lingered, lying everywhere; along the well-worn kerbs, by doorways and gateways, lazily around the waste bins, trodden, trampled or tripping through the air as he followed the automatic pathway which unfolded predictably before him. His regular sojourn was underway and his thoughts slid into a sad battle between resignation and escape.

The purchase of his daily newspaper and his weekly lottery ticket beckoned. Eric fumbled for change in his trouser pocket. Reaching for the paper from the familiar shelf he began the process of choosing his lottery numbers. The routine he had adopted was not to choose the same numbers each week. Despite denying he was superstitious, Eric would often look for significant signs around him as he stood at the blue plastic stand filling in the pale pink ticket. The numbers came from clues provided by fate, designed to bring a light touch to the serious business of trying to win millions of pounds. Numbers from newspaper headlines were always a likely candidate, as were well-displayed price labels. Essentially, it was the lack of a system which appealed to Eric’s constrained imagination.

Moments later, he was unfolding the paper as he reached the end of the short loose queue at his regular bus stop. Standing, slightly apart from the other people, he flapped the broadsheet, against the growing breeze, into an easier shape and began to read a headline which failed to inspire his interest or curiosity. He sighed and realised that his daily purchase of a newspaper was one of habit rather than preference. Frequently, he didn’t really have the stomach for yesterday’s news. Abstractedly, Eric folded the newspaper and slipped it under his arm for later, preferring not to engage in an unseemly struggle with the flirting wind. A general hum of traffic covered the roads and pavements with an early morning aural haze and the colour of the sound was grey. Stark and sudden sounds punctuated the air with exclamation marks of annoyance. He tried to retreat into an inner sanctum of quietude, and allow himself some moment of time for clear thought and some calmness of mood and space.

The harsh tones of a chubby teenage girl on her mobile phone broke into his soft circle of silence. Her two companions, sporting track suits, chewed in unison and belched out foul comments and giggled derisively, deliberately in the background. Aggressive words and disdainful laughter filtered into the morning air like a raucous attack on his sensibilities. Gratuitous curses blurted out towards him and the girls’ noise stood out like a verbal relief work with its own three-dimensional vulgarity. The half conversation continued to soil the atmosphere as the girl, wearing a grubby, once-white, quilted jacket, rattled on, oblivious to, or not bothered about, the impact of her public performance, or maybe it was all for the benefit of the other two girls, her main intended audience.

Diesel fumes drifted from the road, heralding the arrival of Eric’s usual bus and the individual bodies of the queue shuffled forward and climbed aboard in an anonymous parade of strict routine. As he edged his way inside the bus he noticed the three grubby girls had vanished, presumably taking themselves and their shrapnel-hard words, to the top deck. He found the seat he usually occupied awaited him, empty. This fact gave him a certain sense of satisfaction. This feeling of familiarity began to concern him as he saw it as an emerging sign of middle-age. He found himself beginning to develop something like a grumpy disposition. Just how trivial and small-minded had his consciousness become? Were the other passengers, his fellow travellers, also aware of such insignificant happenings and did any of it really matter? The planned monotony and familiarity of the bus journey became the new focus, as the outside world was left behind.

Above them all, the sky refused to budge from its stubborn misery.

2

Eight-fifteen arrived with Eric sitting at his desk, as was his custom. His reliability was assured. The view from the window was also assured. He peered, hopefully, at the morning panorama, taking in the distant banks of glowering clouds and the drab area of urban intensity which spread like an ugly blemish below his vantage point on the third floor. A handful of random steeples pricked the air above the otherwise bland city skyline. His side of the building looked away from the centre of London, so was missing the absorbing view of the recognised architectural highlights, even at a distance. The rooftops lay dormant, expressing a fixed view of the world, unsmiling and assertively benign. These were not the rooftops of Peter Pan or Santa Claus, he mused. They were the rooftops of yesterday, today and tomorrow. They were the rooftops of stasis and inertia.

His daydreaming speculations of architectural revolution slowly filled him with a warm sense of delight as he saw, in his mind’s eye, a cityscape of excitement and inspiration. He borrowed from a memory bank of images. Pictures and photographs from travel guides of the great cities, and illustrations from books about the great cultures papered the walls of his imagination. This became another world, which Eric frequently escaped into. With all of these thoughts swirling across a mental palette, he painted canvasses of rich beauty, colour and variety, vast pageants of design and detail, all played out inside his own head. A sweet romanticised series of visions filled him with a boyish nostalgia for childhood picture books and Christmas card vistas which presented fabulous fairytale landscapes of Bohemian towns with castles and huddled homes. He could lock himself into this glorious exhibition very comfortably if he commanded the right amount of concentration. This was a favourite escape and Eric treasured it. Without it, Eric had frequently convinced himself, he would go insane.

Each workday seemed to begin in the same way. The externals never changed and the internals never changed. And so the pattern was perpetuated across the wilderness of Eric’s working life.

These precious minutes before eight-thirty were a sweet and salutary experience Eric indulged in every weekday until his work commenced, and then his focus was captured and shackled until lunchtime. The files he checked, the screens he peered at, the telephones he answered would endlessly jostle for his attention through the hours ahead. This was his working day. Any real thoughts of changing job had long since disappeared. He felt there was an inevitability to his sedentary vocation which precluded any idea of freedom or flexibility. There was a palpable sense of resignation about his personality as he sat in his chair. He had half-heartedly, on occasions, browsed the local papers and newsagents’ windows for other work but excuses for inaction were strong and resilient. So, he remained, stuck in a mundane position in an unexceptional office, struck by his inability to change it. Eric’s dilemma was made worse by an unreasonable feeling of guilt, based on the fact that he clearly knew he was better off than millions of other people across the globe, so how could he justify the ingratitude. Besides, his home life was very satisfactory and, if he was honest, it was that which made the drab daytime all worthwhile. Eric had all the components of the socially-stable family; a wife and children, all in good health, a modest mortgage, a modest car, a steady income and a reasonable holiday most years.

The general background stirrings of the office began to encroach on his thinking and the atmosphere moved closer to the business-like ethos preferred by the management. Other people around him seemed to slur or drift into action, about their own office business, cranking up to their own responsibilities and gradually launching themselves into the long day ahead. Computers clicked and pinged, drawers of filing cabinets rattled and clanged and the process of meaningful activity started. The abrupt ring of the telephone erupted from near his elbow and he reached over to lift up the receiver and took his first call of the day.

3

The blue sky which greeted him at 12.32 p.m. was most welcome. Eric wondered what had happened to the threatening clouds from earlier in the day. It seemed that no rain had materialised and the awkward breeze had departed. In front of him was a rather pleasant lunch hour. Eric never stayed in the office for lunch; he always left the building even in bad weather. On those days he would make quick dashes into a nearby coffee shop. With today’s bright prospects the favourite option was to stay outside and simply enjoy the fine fresh air he always craved for. The warmth in the air suggested a walk towards the heath where the park lay, in a pleasing splendour, which appealed to Eric’s appreciation of nature. He would pick up something tasty from the bakers on his way.

Ten minutes later, carrying his baker’s bag and a small bottle of water, he was homing in on an isolated wooden bench, facing a boating lake with an absence of boats. Perhaps the boating season hadn’t started yet. Eric suddenly felt guilty about the fact that he could not recall if he had ever taken his children on the boats. In fact he was certain he had not. This was a shame, he thought. His own childhood had been filled with the regular and real physical adventures of cycling, climbing trees, messing about in boats and a range of other miscellaneous activities which often defied the more modern predilection for caution and safety. So now, Eric mused, how did he stand up to scrutiny as a parent? Was hardy adventure a priority in his relationship with his offspring? Or the comfort of safety? The world had clearly moved on since his own youth and the emphasis of safety and caution was now seen as paramount and therefore the norm. The random rashness of raw adventure was frowned on by too many people in today’s world and judgements about the suitability of some pastimes would be different across the cavern of passing time and changing attitudes.

Had his own two children the benefit of a sound upbringing? Had they had a full and happy childhood? Had he been a good father? Well, they may have missed out on the boats, but he felt satisfied that his contributions to family life were truly positive and had led to the general satisfaction of all. He pondered on the gap between contentment and complacency.

Reaching the bench, Eric checked its cleanliness then sat down to eat his lunch.

Signs of spring were everywhere in the park. The early green of the trees by the lake was beginning to show, and faint shimmers of snowdrops lay, some way off by the side of a copse, like a dusting of icing sugar. The grass by his feet was thickening up to warrant a cutting within a week or two. He was sure there were more ducks visible than on the last time he visited. As he looked towards the far side of the lake he convinced himself that the bobbing shapes on the shoreline were new ducklings. They dotted the edge of the water in brief flotillas of order.

Daffodils and crocuses waited in the wings hoping for a more dramatic entrance, and the air filled him with ideas of holidays. He often thought about the firm idea he had that he was, on one hand, readily prepared for the outdoor life, while resigning himself to the fact that heavy physical work had little appeal to him. The result of this apparent mismatch was the strong determination he had for day trips and holidays. His appeal for exertion was on a part-time basis. Reinforcing these speculations was the ever-present influence of the weather on his mood and mental well-being. Eric drifted, languidly in his thoughts, towards one of his Great Reveries of Nostalgia. He was in his lunch hour and he was therefore on holiday.

Above the park the sun silently sizzled a wistful warmth throughout the lunch hour and beyond. This was springtime trying out the mantle of summer and swishing its skirts in a flurry of seduction. Eric imagined himself slipping into a brief sleep and waking, healthily tanned for his return to work. Pipe dreams for someone who didn’t smoke a pipe.

Eric gathered together the remnants of his picnic lunch and carried them to a nearby waste bin and dropped them in. He turned slowly, taking a last look at the lake and the pattern of pathways, and headed towards the black iron gates, which guarded the entrance to the park. The steps he took now were partly refreshed but partly resigned as he walked onwards to his office, his desk, his burden, the lunch hour rapidly drawing to a close.

4

The blast of a car horn ripped the early evening air in the street outside Eric’s office block. A brief series of indignant echoes followed from other cars. Heads turned to acknowledge the culprits as if some visual clue could be left on the air to signify who and where they were. Heavy traffic had built up as the early evening exodus got underway. Crawling lines of vehicles filled all the streets in the vicinity, and the fumes from the rows of idling engines added an unpleasant mugginess to the atmosphere. It was dim and dusky now and a slight chill hung above the pavement, reminding people that spring evenings weren’t always heated affairs.

Eric always had time to spare before catching his bus home. This was due to a distinct lack of coordination between his employers and the local bus company. He also resisted the possibility of the customary dash from the office of other members of the workforce to catch a bus at all costs. Much as he disliked the office, he was not of a mind to demean himself with some undignified rush to reach the bus stop, knowing that regularly he would fail to get there in time. A more civilised end to the working day was his preference. Besides, he was used to his amblings and ramblings around the shops to fill in the time and therefore had no particular concern about missing buses. There were times when it was very convenient for him. Buying presents for members of his family had never really been problematical, because these times were free for him to browse, consider, compare and finally purchase whatever took his fancy. Tonight was not one of those occasions. It was time for an amble.

Across the road from where he was standing was a variety of shops, stretched along the roadway for some distance. Familiar shop fronts with friendly fascias greeted him, and a calmness filled him with a quiet confidence. He had an idea of popping into the large newsagent’s store which he occasionally patronised to browse through the magazines. He might even splash out and buy one as he sometimes did before his bus journey home. Just inside the door there was a melee of customers earnestly buying quick purchases and dashing out for buses, scrambling towards the exit stuffing items into pockets and bags and purses. It was the sort of rush and dash he actively avoided at all times, but particularly at this time of day. Winding down from the stresses and strains of the day could not be best achieved by stepping up another gear of speed.

Eric found himself behind a group of three young women who giggled and laughed at some shared joke as they moved away from the cash-out. There was a general hubbub of noise and a bustle of movement as customers came and went in all directions. Only a few metres away, he noticed something flimsy fall to the ground. One of the women had dropped a piece of paper. She had been struggling with a purse and Eric expected the paper to be a bank note or maybe a receipt. He called out and bent to pick the item up. Straightening up he immediately realised that the women were no longer in sight. They had vanished into the dense body of people around the shop doorway and beyond. He stepped forward and peered out, across the street, vainly trying to discern any indication of the women’s whereabouts. Eric stepped further into the crowd and perused the pavements up and down, but there was no sign of any of the three women. Not one of them could be seen. What had they been wearing? He couldn’t really remember. Did they all have dark hair? Perhaps. It hardly mattered now. A sigh escaped from his lips and he peered at the object, now half crumpled due to the pressure of his hand. It was a newly-bought lottery ticket.

His familiarity with Sod’s Law told him that if he lost a lottery ticket, it would become a winner. This was someone else’s ticket. It was also a Lucky Dip. This meant that the person who bought it would not know the numbers to check later. At least they would be spared the potential heartache of knowing they had missed out on a win. But, for Eric it was a curious ‘lucky dip’ which doubled his chances. He would have an extra number to check, and an extra chance to win. The desperate nature of wanting to win caught him feeling a little embarrassed and sad for himself. He stuffed the ticket into his inside pocket.

Later, on the bus, he watched the drifting sights of the outside evening as the twilight descended and brought reflections of his own image back to himself as the window next to him became a looking glass, a mirror. The motion of the bus rocked him slightly from side to side and the interior of the vehicle seemed quieter than usual. He glanced around and estimated that there were fewer passengers than was usual. His mind wandered, backwards and forwards, over the day. Another routine day was slipping away and he found it hard to focus on anything in particular.

So, he thought, I shall need to check both tickets on the coming Saturday evening. The unexpected, and extra, chance to win had given a shot in the arm to his excitement. Something for the weekend.

The rest of his journey was filled with a customary fantasy about outrageous winnings and a planned spectacular lifestyle which he had spent months, maybe even years, trying to perfect down to the last detail. Like so many people in their reveries of enthused optimism, he produced the childish checklist of choices born out of inspired imagination. The nature of his sensational new house, or houses, a whole range of extravagant possessions and exotic locations had been dreamt up many times previously, and his narrative had always ended with his whole family living the proverbial life of Riley.

Whole conversations were played out inside his head, silently, with vague and subtle changes to his facial expression as he experienced a variety of emotions on his way forward in his new life. He was generating an internal movie with himself as the hero. An observer would have been intrigued by the subtle and capricious movements of Eric’s mouth, head, eyebrows, and jaw as the internal dialogue he indulged in abstractedly reached a number of dramatic counterpoints which brought him to an almost breathless form of composure as his familiar destination loomed into view. The reluctant focus on reality came back to him as he alighted from the chugging bus. The short walk to his house was accompanied, reluctantly, by more practical considerations, as well as the constraints of the more mundane features of everyday life. He had finished daydreaming.

5

During the course of the evening Eric and his wife Isabel spent some time loosely planning the family summer holiday. A wish list emerged and a visit to a travel agent was pencilled in for the next day after Eric had finished work. He would collect whatever brochures he deemed suitable and bring them home for a weekend summit with the kids and Isabel. This excitement would carry him through the whole of the next day, Friday. It would continue over the two day break from work, as he rode on a growing wave of earnest anticipation, feeling a burst of schoolboy enthusiasm for the months ahead.

Isabel Middleton was a slim woman of thirty-six who seemed to convey a sense of purpose in everything she did. Even when relaxing she looked as if she was thinking of something important and might come out with a full plan of action at a moment’s notice. Her dark, almost gipsy eyes held a calmness throughout the day but responded with a captured passion as the light slipped from the sky. Dark hair hung in natural waves above her narrow shoulders, weightily confirming her hint of mystery, but she was just as likely to have it tied up loosely in a variety of ways, reflecting a dissatisfaction with her current choice of style. On this evening, her hair hung loosely and her dark eyes shone with that mix of contentment and controlled passion which had captured Eric many years earlier.

After clearing the dinner table later in the evening, Isabel announced, I’m phoning Joyce in five minutes and we’ll be chatting for an hour or so. Are you staying in or… .

No, I’ll take a walk to the Bull’s Head if it’s all the same to you.

That’s fine, said Isabel, I’m looking forward to a long chat. She brought the phone a little closer to her armchair.

Eric gave her a brief kiss and picked up his jacket and stepped into the hallway. Faint slices of distant streetlights sloped in tired shafts through the glass panel of the front door. Eric made his way towards it as he slipped his jacket on. Isabel’s voice accompanied him through the door.

Don’t forget your key.

Outside, the night was glossy black and streetlights fought the stars for attention. The clear sky brought a jewelled chill and shards of light populated the vastness overhead and seemed to push the faint remnants of clouds towards the horizon. Eric responded briskly and strode purposefully in the direction of the Bull’s Head, two streets away. The chill reminded him of the earlier ideas of the evening; the warm backdrops of their proposed holiday. Having this goal in mind gave him a pleasant focus for his thoughts as he strode purposefully towards a relaxing drink.

Once through the doors of the pub, Eric was reminded of the reasons why he didn’t always appreciate his visits here. The smoke generated by half a dozen cigarettes drifted into his eyes immediately. He almost turned on his heels to go back through the door, but he saw that the smoke was clearly lingering in the one spot and it was just his bad luck that he had caught a lungful with his first step through the