Ring-a-Ring o' Roses

By Chris Marr

Ten stories ranging from the moving to the macabre, the mundane and the mystical. A romantic novelist with seven children keeps getting interrupted while she is working. A wife returns from the dead to pass judgement on her husband’s new lover. A businessman is surprised one evening when he is paid a visit by the devil. Marr creates a mena

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Marr
• Release date: Nov 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781911079071

Chris Marr

Chris Marr was born in 1964 and went to school in Hertfordshire. After reading history at the University of Southampton he became a qualified librarian, worked full-time as an IT system administrator at The Times, before devoting himself to bringing up two children.

Book preview

A WALK IN THE PARK

Nothing would have happened without Benny, our black poodle. When we first brought him home, my sons were 18, 13 and 6. My eldest son, Marc, was about to start university and I suppose I wanted to make up the numbers inside the house. I had grown up with a dog as part of the family and my two youngest boys, Christian and Adam, were as keen on getting one as I was. To begin with, Benny and I went for walks to the local common, but then, for the sake of variety, we experimented with walks further afield.

It was either the third or fourth time we’d visited Darley Park, an area of heathland and woods on the edge of the South Downs, that I encountered Simon and his old brown-and-white springer spaniel, Arthur. The two dogs took an instant liking to each other. Arthur’s tail wagged furiously and he walked around Benny, sniffing.

‘Love at first sight,’ said Simon, beaming.

Because only a week earlier I had been accosted at a cashpoint – the man grabbing my arm forwardly to say that I had forgotten my receipt – I resolved to mention my husband as soon as possible. Simon, in truth, did not look the type to pose a threat. A strange-looking chap, really. Skinny, the same height as me, if not shorter with buck teeth and ears that stuck out.

‘How old is your little one?’ he asked.

I said that he was three months old and that the whole family, even my husband, were in love with him. After a few minutes of chitchat – I can’t remember what about – he said, ‘Well, it was nice talking to you,’ and wandered off.

I didn’t see him after that for a couple of weeks. Then, when we did bump into each other, he had to rush off immediately. He taught history and games at a nearby school and would pop home at lunchtimes to take Arthur for a walk. Every so often he would throw a tennis ball and Arthur, in a frenzy of excitement, would chase after it.

By the time I saw Simon and Arthur again, Benny was six months old and had grown almost to adult size. I encountered them at the highest point of Darley Park. Simon was sitting on a bench in the shade of a chestnut tree from where one could view the playing fields in the distance and the nearest houses.

‘Hello, Benny,’ he said, stroking him in a friendly fashion. ‘Is that your body or is it all fluff?’

‘You remembered his name.’

‘I’m a genius at remembering names.’

He laughed. He had infectious laugh with a kind of ‘hic hic hic’ at the end.

It was October or November and a cold wind was blowing. His dog, Arthur, did indeed look ecstatic to see his little canine friend, who was not so little any more. It is well-known that dogs look like their owners and it struck me that Simon resembled Arthur not only in his expression, hopeful and friendly, but in his hair, which sprouted out of the sides of his head.

I sat down. I reasoned that we would be talking only a matter of minutes and then probably not see each other again. No doubt it was big-headed to assume that Simon was attracted to me, but I grew up with a mother who was always telling me that men weren’t to be trusted and some of her advice must have rubbed off. My father left my mother for another woman when I was 15, and I don’t think she ever recovered.

‘Benny Hill, the comedian,’ said Simon. ‘That’s how I remembered your dog’s name. He was struggling up a hill when I saw him. I’m a genius at remembering dates as well.’

And again he reproduced his strange laugh, ending in a ‘hic hic hic’, which made you want to laugh along too. He wasn’t lying about being good with dates, as I was to learn later. His system involved associating numbers with pictures, or something like that. I remember in that conversation we talked about our families and I trotted out another reference to my husband (although Simon, with his memory, probably didn’t need reminding). In spite of my reservations about talking to strangers, and men in particular, he gained my interest by saying that he had a 13-year-old son with Down’s syndrome. I said that life must be very hard for him and his family. It certainly wasn’t easy, he admitted. In fact, if he was going to be honest, his wife suffered from depression. Julia had once been a high flyer in the City, but these days stayed at home, having given up her job to devote herself to David, their son.

I was taken aback by his openness. He told me that he had formerly been a teacher in a mainstream school but, as a result of David’s condition, had taken a greater interest in special needs issues and now worked for a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

‘Uh-oh,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘I have to go. I’m late.’

And he and his jolly little dog headed off.

That evening I mentioned to my husband that I had got talking to another dog owner.

‘He has a son with Down’s syndrome who’s the same age as Christian.’

Ray did not turn his head away from the TV.

‘His life was turned upside-down when his son was born. His wife suffers from depression.’

Still no response. This wasn’t so unusual. Ray had never, for example, shown much interest in my job – a cake decorating business that I had started two years earlier – but I did think that I was bringing up a subject that would interest most people. Perhaps we had a typical 19-year-old marriage in which most communication was redundant. He was watching some football match, as were Christian and Adam, and doubtless it was a crucial game. (Aren’t they all?) At such times I missed Marc, the only other member of my family not into sport.

‘Penalty!’

Christian – Chrissy – had dark hair and handsome features and was already nearly as tall as his father. He played football for his school team and had been picked for trials at Brighton and Hove Albion.

‘The father,’ I continued, ‘works in a school for disabled children.’

Ray turned to me, annoyed.

‘What father?’

‘The chap I was talking to in the park.’

‘Was he trying to chat you up?’

‘No.’

And after a shake of the head he went back to watching the TV.

‘Ten minutes left, plus injury time,’ said Chrissy.

To what? The end of my marriage?

Ray decided what to watch on the TV and if I, or one of the boys, wanted to watch something else, we had to go into another room. Along with sports, Ray’s other main viewing interests were the news and the weather forecast, the observation of this last-mentioned item treated almost as a religious occasion. When watching, or studying, the TV, his face would assume a stern expression, his thin lips pressed together, and woe betide anyone who interrupted his thoughts.

Who was this person I was married to? On paper, he was my husband, but at times he felt more like a brother or a room-mate. At 42, he was still handsome, heavier now and without so much hair, particularly at the front, but I could imagine that many women would still find him attractive. When we first met, he had reminded me of an actor that I was keen on. And he was funny. (It took me a while to realize that his humour was often at the expense of other people.) I think I was flattered that he wanted to talk to me; in those days I was quite giggly and immature. For his part, he was confident and appeared interested in my life. I had thought, on top of our mutual attraction, that we had a lot in common.

The following day I returned to Darley Park. Ray’s question, ‘Was he trying to chat you up?’ struck me as crass even for him.

Yes, Ray, of course he was trying to chat me up! That was why he had mentioned his wife and his disabled son!

I did my usual walk and, because I did not see Simon, completed another circuit, during which I was happy to find him sitting in the same place as before. Luckily, I had arrived just ahead of an old couple who looked as if they might have designs on the bench.

‘Hello, Arthur,’ I said, patting the little spaniel.

The old couple passed on their way and I said in a quiet voice, ‘I think they were hoping to sit here.’

‘Do you know that they’ve been together for thirty-seven years?’

‘Do you know them?’

‘Alan and Margaret? Yes, I know them quite well. Alan is a retired quantity surveyor and Margaret works, or used to, for a market research company. You see that they’re holding hands? Sweet, isn’t it? Unfortunately,’ he added in a sad voice, ‘they both suffer from arthritis. It’s crippling, especially in Margaret’s case. That’s why they take every opportunity they can to sit down.’

‘You’re joking!’

It was too late to rush after them and surprisingly, considering their condition, they were already some distance away.

‘Yes, I’m joking,’ he said, ending his laugh with a ‘hic hic hic’.

I slapped him playfully on the arm.

‘How could you! Do you know them at all?’

‘I’ve never seen them before in my life. They look like a nice couple, though, don’t they? Have you ever played that game where you guess what’s going on in other people’s lives?’

I said that I hadn’t. Perhaps I lack imagination in that way.

‘I do it all the time. Take these two girls to our right. What do you think is happening in their lives?’

I glanced over my shoulder to see two teenage girls, one wearing a black leather jacket and the other a purple hoodie. They were some way away and out of earshot.

‘They’re skipping school.’ I was pleased with this pronouncement, which, now that I thought about it, might even be true. ‘The one with the hoodie has told the school that she’s ill and persuaded the other one, her best friend, to do the same. They’re off to meet the hoodie’s boyfriend.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Oh, he’s very bad news. He left school early last year, doesn’t have a job, and has a tattoo covering most of his right arm. Recently, he and the hoodie started having sex and she’s petrified that she might be pregnant.’

Well done, me! Perhaps, I thought, my imagination wasn’t so bad after all!

By the time I had finished talking, the two girls were quite near and we waited while they passed by. One of them was saying, ‘I know! It was so embarrassing, I could have died!’ Bizarrely, I had got so wrapped up in my story that I was almost inclined to believe what I had been saying, feeling sorry for the hoodie who, as I saw it, might be pregnant.

‘Not a bad guess,’ he said, as they walked away from us, giggling.

‘Do you know them as well?’ I asked, cynically.

‘As a matter of fact, I know the parents of one of them. I can’t say I blame their daughter for not recognizing me. What staggers me is how you knew about the guy with the tattoo. His name is Lee – Lee McPherson, to be precise. I’m wondering if you have ESP, even if the tattoo you mentioned covers most of his left arm rather than the right. Incidentally, he’s the brother, not the lover, of the girl with the purple hoodie. He’s currently in prison. He tried to rob a post office and got caught on CCTV. It was in the local papers.’

‘This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had!’

‘Another point is that the girls aren’t skipping school. They’re on study leave, supposedly revising for their mock A-levels. Would you believe me if I said that one of them was a lesbian?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘You’re quite right. They’re both lesbians and very much in love.’

Coincidentally, both girls burst out laughing at that point.

‘What rubbish. Now if anyone’s gay…’

I was referring under my breath to a man who was approaching us with a distinctive sway of his hips. He was in his early twenties, clean-cut, and wearing a blue fitted suit. His brown shoes were an unusual fashion choice, but what particularly stood out, and what decided me about his sexuality, was the manbag he was carrying.

‘If anyone’s gay,’ Simon repeated, finishing my sentence, ‘you would think that it’s him. However, he’s had quite enough of insinuations along those lines and that’s why…’ Simon let the sentence peter out as the man walked past. ‘And that’s why,’ he resumed quietly, ‘he’s carrying a gun in his bag. He’s on his way to kill his chief tormentor who’s been bullying him for years.’

‘Darley Park certainly has its fair share of characters this lunchtime,’ I remarked.

He agreed, hic-hicking away in his customary fashion.

And then, unfortunately, he had to return to school. Both dogs were disappointed and, to my surprise, so was I. I had been hoping to ask him, in as diplomatic a fashion as I could muster, about his son.

I did not see him on my next visit to the park. Or the next.

‘Oh, hello!’

I was opening the back of the car to let Benny out at the same time as Simon and Arthur were entering through the main gate.

‘Mind if I tag along?’ I suggested. ‘I know Benny will be happy to hang out with Arthur.’

‘And vice-versa. I think Arthur has been missing Benny. I’ve been hobbling about for the past week with a sprained ankle and only taking him for a walk around the block.’

‘Does your ankle still hurt?’

He adopted a mock-serious expression. ‘I dismiss the pain.’

‘That’s very manly of you.’

‘There aren’t many of us true men around,’ he said, struggling to climb a small ridge and wincing as Arthur bumped into him. ‘We’re a dying breed.’

‘You and the guy with the manbag we saw the other day.’

I don’t know if this could be categorized as funny. In any event, he burst out laughing, which made me feel as if I was some great wit. I tried to imagine how Ray would have reacted if I had implied that he was effeminate. He probably would have sworn loudly and stormed off. At least Simon played football, rather than just watched it, if that could be considered manly. And, anyway, who was I to scoff? I have never been into any sporting activity; a walk in the park is about as much as I can manage.

‘Are you mainly a games teacher or a history teacher?’

‘History. I never forget a date. When’s your birthday?’

‘April fifteenth.’

‘The day that Abraham Lincoln died.’

I enquired about his morning and he told me about a boy of 12 who had thrown a chair at another teacher. Obviously, as Simon pointed out, this boy needed to understand that his actions were wrong, but at the same time the school needed to bear in mind that he had had an awful upbringing. At seven, he had witnessed his biological father shoot his stepfather dead. I could hardly believe that this terrible episode had happened (although Simon assured me that it was true). This boy was currently staying in a children’s home at the weekends and spending the rest of his time boarding at the school.

‘Every child I teach has had a difficult upbringing.’

I wanted to ask him a million questions about his job, but he surprised me by asking me about my children. I found myself somewhat tongue-tied. I am used to standing outside the school gates of Adam’s primary school and moaning about all sorts of trivial matters to the other parents. Yet the issues that he had to deal with were obviously of a different magnitude.

I gave him the names and ages of my boys.

‘We’re very lucky,’ I heard myself saying. ‘The occasional health scare, but nothing serious. At one point we thought that Adam might be dyslexic.’

I did not tell him that Ray and I had had a huge argument over Adam’s reading ability. Ray had maintained that there was nothing to worry about and, although this had eventually proved to be the case, his complacency had irritated me so much that we had not talked for 48 hours.

Simon and I entered the wooded section of Darley Park. He asked me about my husband and what he did for a living.

‘He’s a builder.’

I mentioned how Ray was struggling financially in the recession, and Simon said, very sweetly, that if anything needed to be done on his house, he would employ Ray. His wife, he said, would love to have a builder for a husband to do all the odd jobs at home. (I did not point out that Ray did virtually no work outside of his working hours.) Simon seemed to really care for his wife, even though they led difficult lives. After David’s birth, Julia had started hitting the bottle, which had exacerbated her depression.

‘It’s a real shame. She can be such a laugh when she’s happy.’

By this point we had found our way back to the car park.

‘Well, here we are,’ he sighed. ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.’

It was mid-December and his remark seemed to assume that we wouldn’t see each other for a couple of weeks.

‘School broke up this lunchtime,’ he explained.

But that didn’t mean, did it, that he would stop going to the park? I was tempted to ask for his address so that we could exchange Christmas cards, but wondered if that might seem too forward.

As he walked away, I noticed that he was limping. He hadn’t complained once about his ankle, even though I had probably dragged him out of his way and covered a much greater distance than he wanted.

What was wrong with me? Why did he occupy so much of my thoughts?

I had, I realized, never had a close platonic relationship with a man. Ray and I did talk, obviously, but the only meaningful conversations we had were about the children. Having said that, Ray did, for the most part, fit the description of what I was looking for in a husband. (And I’m sure, if asked, he would have had a few things to say about me!) Without question, he loved our boys. When Marc came home at Christmas, Ray hugged him, a gesture that I think surprised Marc as much as myself. Marc had met a girl at university, Petra, and every day they spent hours talking to each other on the phone. Perhaps Ray felt, as I did, that we were losing Marc to someone else.

Looking in the mirror in that week before Christmas, I got a shock. It’s peculiar how the years catch up with you. I could see lines developing around my eyes and the odd grey hair forming at my parting. I resolved the next day to go to the hairdresser’s and also buy myself a new outfit. This happened to be a Saturday and, with Marc looking after Christian and Adam at home, I met up with Ray after my visit to the hairdresser’s to finish the Christmas shopping in town.

Did it occur to me that I might bump into Simon? Probably. I had said to Ray that we ought to pop into town and so there was always a possibility that we might see him. We were in Marks & Spencer when I noticed Simon about thirty yards away on the other side of the store. He was standing beside a woman – Julia, presumably. I was surprised (I don’t know why) to see that she was beautiful, slim with short blonde hair, dressed in a white blouse with a metallic blue scarf and black slacks. Simon looked across and smiled. Then he glanced at Ray before raising his hand as if to scratch his cheek, but giving me a baby wave instead. This all happened in an instant, after which he was lost to view, taking the escalator to an upper floor.

‘When are we leaving?’

Ray’s patience was running out, as it always did when we went shopping. At least I was pleased with the way I looked. As for Ray, he was wearing an old pair of jeans and a simple granddad shirt. Why this should bother me so much, I don’t know. I wanted to follow Simon and ascertain if the woman I had seen was the mysterious Julia. Not that I could do any such thing under the circumstances. I would just have to wait until the next time we met up to discover the answer to the question. Since our last chat, I had gone back to Darley Park twice without seeing him on either occasion.

Later that evening Ray and I sat up in bed while he fiddled characteristically with his mobile phone. If I had asked him what I was wearing, or what I had worn earlier in the day, he probably would have been unable to tell me.

‘Do you remember the man that I met with the Down’s syndrome child?’

I was feeling in a peculiar mood. Perhaps it was the run-up to Christmas and the stress of the preparations. We had invited both my family and Ray’s over and it was to be a big occasion.

‘I bumped into him again,’ I went on. ‘We were guessing what was happening in the lives of the people in the park.’

‘Fascinating,’ he murmured sarcastically.

‘How would you feel about us meeting up with him and his wife?’

He finished doing whatever he was doing with his phone. I wasn’t serious about meeting up with Simon and his wife – Julia probably wouldn’t approve – but wanted to test Ray’s reaction.

‘Good-looking, is he?’

‘No.’

‘But you played a guessing game?’

‘It was fun. You and I should try it sometime.’

‘Hmm.’ He regarded me with a cynical expression.

‘What does hmm mean?’ I said, already annoyed. ‘He’s married. He wasn’t trying to chat me up.’

There was a short silence. Ray flicked at his ear, a trait he probably wasn’t aware of and which I interpreted as the psychological equivalent of brushing away a flea.

‘I don’t need any more friends.’

‘We have very few as it is.’

‘We’ve got Joe and Miriam.’

‘And Neil and Jenny. But why not someone else? You might hit it off with Simon.’

I knew instantly that it had been a mistake to mention his name.

‘It’s odd’ – he laid emphasis on the word – ‘that this Simon character should talk to you out of the blue. Did he ask for your number?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. Well, wait until next time.’

Upon which he went back to his phone. The Oracle had spoken.

Good! I thought sardonically. He might not want to meet up with Simon, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t. What were the chances, anyway, that Ray and Simon would get on? Simon wasn’t a man’s man and his laugh would doubtless get on Ray’s nerves. I could imagine Ray, with his cruel sense of humour, doing an