Disturbance of the Peace

By Miranda van der Steen

It's OK if you don't get on with your neighbours over the road. But what if you and they have some shared, unsavoury history? And what's it like when it's only your house and their house in the same deserted street?

Maybe, one day, they decide to take revenge on you. Then what?

Meet Japser and Jantine. Meet Marc and Marcella. Two lovely young couples on the surface. But the wrongs of past behaviours bubble away and eventually come to a boiling point in this harrowing tale of revenge and its aftermath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Mar 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781071593387

Book preview

SATURDAY

JASPER

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6.00

A car hooter cuts through Jasper’s dream. He leaps up, awake. The duvet falls to the floor. He wipes away the trickle of saliva on his chin. His night-drooling affliction is something that horrifies Jantine. She had made this clear to him within the first week when they moved in together, two years before. Now he sleeps with his back turned to her.

‘Jantine?’ he whispers, half turning towards her.

His girlfriend doesn’t respond but, instead, turns away and growls.

The digits on the alarm clock indicate six in the morning. The sound of a car hooter is heard sporadically in their dead-end street with its two houses. The nearest road is a few hundred meters away and any other houses even further. It’s a quiet Saturday.

Slowly he straightens up a little more.

‘Jantine,’ he says again, not really wanting to wake her up. Waking her up suddenly would be tantamount to a plea for an entire day of female fury ... of unparalleled rage. There would be deadly looks, cutting sneers and painful silences.

He feels the need to look outside. It would have been easy if he didn’t live here. The metre-high window on Jantine’s side of the bed has curtains with metal rings. He moves his gaze from Jantine to the curtains. The contact of the metal rings on the curtain rod would make a noise. Too much noise.

He doesn’t know what to do. The riskier option of getting up and having a look? Or just staying put and having peace.

Getting up?

Staying put ... .

Suppose he goes back to sleep after which they find out that something did happen outside. Jantine will get angry when he admits to having heard something. He can’t lie because he cares for her.

Suppose he goes to the window and glances outside and there’s nothing to see. The light awakens Jantine. Not to mention the curtain! Jantine is angry.

Suppose he goes downstairs and looks through the window. Jantine doesn’t wake up. Suppose he can’t see what’s happened and decides to go outside. The front door awakens Jantine. Jantine is angry.

None of the options are suitable except to snuggle up against her. To wrap his arm around her, to bury his nose in her hair and experience the mix of her sleep odour and shampoo. He likes that, he likes her, he likes their life together.

But he has to decide. He can’t snuggle!

He takes one last look at Jantine and then throws his legs over the bed. The carpet scratches his feet. Carefully he stands. The bed creaks, unavoidably. He checks over his shoulder to see if she’s still sleeping.

All’s well.

Jantine is snoring.

Those soft sounds that always help him fall asleep comfortably. Once again he has an irresistible need to snuggle up against her. But his will is strong. He resists and goes around her side of the bed. At the window he slides the thick fabric aside without moving the curtain rings. Over the road the cheerful sunbeams radiate from above the only neighbours’ house. The trees don’t move. It’s sunny and the weather is beautiful, as befits a spring or summer day in lovely June.

There’s no one to be seen on the street. But that’s quite normal. There are only four people who live in the two identical villas with their see-through living rooms and bedroom towers.

The houses do not mirror each other. Instead, each house has its own tower which acts as an axis for the overall structure. The towers are directly opposite each other. Jasper finds this hard to explain, so he finds himself using photographs when talking about his house to colleagues or acquaintances.

If there hadn’t been any curtains, he and Jantine would have been able to check out all the activities of the neighbours across the street. The neighbours also use their tower as a bedroom.

Luckily there are curtains.

Further afield on the state road, the cars seem to have become extinct. The source of the car hooter has disappeared. Nothing to be concerned about. The curtain drops back when he releases it. He places the piece of cloth over the part hanging next to it and steps back.

There was no one on the street, he repeats to himself and turns around.

Jantine grunts and rolls on her back with her arms next to her body. Her beautiful body, the body he wants to touch every day, but which she’s not always willing to share.

Her beautiful naked body.

Not a single person on the street.

The two sentences echo in his head. They have some relation with each other and yet they have nothing to do with each other.

The trees don’t move.

the sun shines brightly,

no one in the street,

except for naked bodies.

A Dadaist poem his father would have praised him for. Mad-son was his father's favourite made-up word that he said, shouted, screamed and sang every day, until he left with the northern sun.

‘This is madness, my mad-son, the title for your poem,’ he would have said. ‘Do you know that art is the benchmark for good education. Experimental art does not rhyme, but swings.’

Yes, dad, it swings. It’s all about getting the swing of things.

Naked bodies swinging it ... .

He had missed it, yet he had seen it! Not on the street, but in the sun.

This time the curtain rings fly over the rod! Metal on metal. He doesn't have to look over his shoulder to know that Jantine is waking up.

He focuses his gaze steadily on the house opposite theirs. It’s less than twelve metres between them and the neighbours. Naked bodies appear there. In the sun. Life size. Unmistakable.

‘Jantine,’ he mutters.

The bed creaks. A few seconds later and he hears her beside him, sniffing. He throws the curtain aside. ‘Mar and Mar have gone too far.’

The heavy silence that follows is loaded. Her breathing speeds up. Like that of a bull ready to attack the bullfighter.

Opposite them, behind the tower window of the neighbours' house, the bodies of Jantine and Jasper adorn life-sized photographs. Their naked bodies are revealed in compromising positions. This was from a night out, when Marcella and Marc unexpectedly took them to a swingers’ club, just across the border, where the patrons would swop partners. That’s where the photos were from. There could be no other explanation.

The pictures are so clear, so big, that everything is visible. The details are graphic enough to make the editors of The Chick and The Candy blush.

‘This has gone too far! After all they did to us. Now they’ve signed their death warrant!’ Jantine is livid. ‘I’m going over there now. Call the police. Call an ambulance!’

With pants and a shirt in her one hand and her mobile in the other, she walks towards the stairs, an opening in the floor with two gates on either side.

Now he remembers. That car hooter must have been real. Of course! He raises his hand but Jantine doesn’t see it.

‘Jantine, stop!’

She doesn’t stop, and at the top of the stairs she doesn’t turn to look at him. She stamps her feet as she descends the stairs and he races after her while trying to put on a t-shirt and trousers. In the living room he finally gets her attention. He pulls his shirt out of his pants.

‘Do you remember what Marcella shouted last week?’ he says.

Jantine gets dressed at the front door. She looks back. A strand of dark hair sticks to her forehead. Her skin glistens with warmth. Her eyes are brighter than ever and she pulls down the corners of her mouth tightly.

Walking on eggshells is nothing in comparison with what he’s facing now.

‘You're not going to find them at home,’ he says in a softer voice. Even he doesn’t want to hear what he’s about to say. ‘They’re on vacation. They just left now and even hooted.’

Very slowly, Jantine pulls her pants up, keeping her gaze on him. Finally, she stops halfway, tilting her head slightly.

‘On vacation?’ Her jaw moves back and forth, taught, frustrated. It still moves, even though she’s stopped speaking.

He nods.

There is a deep silence. For once he doesn’t know what to say. Nothing that he can say will go down well at all.

‘How are we going to solve this?’ Jantine says eventually. Her head drops diagonally in the other direction. He feels her eyes fixed on his soul.

‘Do you have an answer, Jasper?’

Shit. She’s using his name at the end of her sentences.

‘No. But let's talk about it. Shall I make coffee?’

She takes a deep breath. He’s used the magic word, coffee. Suddenly her burning gaze disappears with a quick look of reproach as she fastens her trousers.

‘Yes, please,’ she says.

That’s what he wants to hear so he heads for the kitchen. He’s never made coffee before as fast as he’s making it today. And like every other day, he hands her mug to her a little later, then flops down on the couch.

She walks from the sofa to the window and from there to the kitchen and back. On the way she takes a pack of cigarettes from the shelf in the closet. She keeps walking past him without saying anything.

‘Jantine, why not sit down for a moment?’ He pats the sofa beside him to give meaning to his words. With his other hand he reaches for her elbow but misses it as she neatly steps aside.

‘Like you’re doing now? Waiting for a solution?’ With one hand she flicks a lock of hair from her shoulder. It shines, but not the way it normally does. It has a dull layer to it. Best not to mention it!

‘No, I'd rather keep moving,’ she continues, standing a few feet away from him and the sofa. She lights a cigarette using her hand to shield the flame.

Should he tell her that she doesn’t have to shield the flame when she lights up indoors? Obviously not, he decides. The smell of her cigarette smoke suddenly hits his stomach and it feels like last night’s dinner wants to come up.

‘You’d given up smoking for nearly two years, Jantine. What a pity that you’ve started again.’

Shit. An even worse comment than the one about not having to shield the flame while lighting up indoors. But the words are out. Ruthless. Wreaking havoc. He feels like sitting in a corner with his hands over his head.

She gives him a deadly look.

‘I saved the pack of cigarette butts for times like these. Got it?’ She looks at him without moving. ‘Let's rather think in terms of solutions,’ and she continues walking. ‘Instead of creating more problems.’ With folded arms she looks out the window at the empty street and the house opposite.

Jasper gets up, opens the window near her and stands next to her. He waves his hands in an effort to drive the smoke outside. Silence looms. It will just take a single word to break it and drive it away.

‘It took nearly two months,’ Jantine says.

'What?'

'For something to happen after what we did.’

‘You mean the eggs on the windows?’

She nods. ‘That was really cool. Splat ... . Remember how they dripped down? They were frozen the next morning!’

‘A day before her birthday party,’ Jasper adds, looking at her.

She looks at him and laughs. Her eyes twinkle. He also laughs and looks outside again.

‘The time before that was also fun.’ He looks at Jantine sideways and sees a smile appear on her face.

‘Five firecrackers every 15 minutes,’ he continues. ‘All night long. From Sunday into Monday. Marcella looked awful with those bags under her eyes.’

She laughs while putting out her cigarette in