Daddy Won't You Please Come Home?

By Robert James Sully

At 21, Sam Middlemas was haunted by a recurring dream: two little girls of distinct backgrounds beckoning him home. He tried to shake it off, but the dream persisted. It wasn’t until he saw his own daughter grow that he recognized her as one of the girls from his visions. Tragedy struck when his daughter’s life was cut short, turning his orderly world into chaos. Thrust into an unexpected journey spanning continents, Sam seeks answers. This gripping tale follows his quest to unravel the mystery of the dream, leading to a heart-stopping revelation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035832132

Robert James Sully

Robert James Sully was born and educated in Pinner, England, and emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1964, where he has lived ever since. He is a permanent resident of Australia but has retained his British citizenship. Robert has had a long career as an executive in the distribution industry and retired at the age of sixty to open a takeaway food café with his wife, Ann. He has always had an interest in writing poetry and only completed his novel during the COVID lockdown when he at last found the time he required, and there was plenty of that as Melbourne had one of the longest lockdowns in the world.

Book preview

Part One

A Chain of Events

One

Wroxall, Isle of Wight, 1930

Arthur Richard Martin sat in a chair by the bedroom window and watched a little anxiously when the rain that had started as a fine drizzle suddenly turned into a torrential downpour and began to wash the huge pile of soil next to the coal shed back down the path to the vegetable garden from whence it came. It had been eighteen years almost to the day since Arthur had first become aware of the existence of his father’s secret hiding place under the stone floor of the coal shed, and in all that time, he had never used it for anything at all. Tonight would be different; tonight, for the first time, he had the opportunity, and providing his courage did not desert him, he would at last make good use of his discovery.

The coal shed stood at the back of the house, between the kitchen vegetable garden and the now derelict stable. The shed was a stone building with a slate roof and a heavy timber door; inside, it had been divided into three equal fuel bunkers that contained the fuel supply of coal and firewood for the house. The coal shed had always been a coal shed, at least for as long as Arthur could remember. As a child, he had often been awakened from his slumbers by the sound of his father banging and thumping in the shed, when he returned from God knows where in the middle of the night. Sometimes Arthur had lain awake and listened to the sound of shovelling, followed by a dull thud. Sometimes he had watched through a chink in the bedroom curtains as his father hung the oil lamp, which he carried on a hook, over the coal shed door and struggled up or down the path to the stable with what looked like heavy boxes or wooden crates. Once and only once, his curiosity overcame his fear, and he climbed out of his bedroom window and in the darkness crept stealthily across the vegetable garden before concealing himself behind the row of blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes that grew between the vegetables and the path that led to the coal shed. From his vantage point, he had watched his father through the wide-open door, as he shovelled what little coal there was on the stone floor of the third and almost empty fuel bunker into one corner of the shed. This had not taken long, and once the task had been completed, Arthur watched as his father took the iron bar that hung on the far wall and levered up a large stone slab in the middle of the bunker to reveal a dark pit. Into that pit, his father had momentarily disappeared, only to reappear with a large wooden crate, which he carried to the stable before returning to replace the slab and cover it with coal again.

Although Arthur had been aware of the existence of this hiding place at the early age of seven, he was to wait for another seven years and the death of his father before he would finally lever up the stone slab and climb into the pit. Although for the last four of those seven years, his father had been safely locked up in prison, such was his fear of the man that it was unthinkable for him to look while he was still alive. His father was a bully with a violent and uncontrollable temper; Arthur had lived in such fear of him that an angry shout had often made him wet his pants, and on more than one occasion, the threat of a flogging with his father’s leather belt had made him shit himself. Despite this, in a strange sort of way, Arthur had loved his father. He was the lonely, confused boy’s only companion, and when he was not drunk or beating Arthur for some minor misdemeanour, Stanley Martin and his son were good friends. Stanley would take his son fishing, riding, rabbiting, and on long walks over the Downs to Ventnor. Sometimes in the early morning, they would go mushrooming, and on Sundays, Stanley would sit Arthur on a stool outside the village inn with a glass of lemonade whilst he drank inside with his so-called friends.

All of this had abruptly come to an end when Stanley Martin was convicted of armed robbery and sent to prison for fifteen years. Mabel Martin, who shared her son’s fear of her husband, could not muster the courage to sell the things belonging to Stanley that she hated the most. Instead, she forbade Arthur to use them, and sadly, Arthur was never to hunt, ride, or fish again. When his father hung himself from the roof of his prison cell, horses, fishing rods and ferrets were sold or given away, and Arthur became the prisoner. Unlike his father, he was not incarcerated behind prison walls but confined to living behind the Greystone walls of his own home.

Arthur was not a stupid boy but at best could be described as slow. At school, the village children had called him retarded, although this was not the case. He was, however, an unfortunate child, overweight for his age, shy, with a face full of freckles topped with a crop of red hair that had earned him the nickname of carrot head. This, together with the stigma that was attached to him at the age of ten when it became common knowledge that his father was a criminal, would even under ordinary circumstances have made it hard for him to make friends had he been given the chance, but he never was. After his father was sent to prison, his mother went to great lengths to avoid all contact with the people of the village and made sure Arthur did the same. He was often kept home from school, forbidden to mix with other children or make friends, and apart from his increasingly infrequent visits to the village school, and his Sunday morning walk to church with his mother, he had no contact with other people. When his father died, his mother went to work in the village, and Arthur, at the age of fourteen, was forced to stay home to cook, clean and tend the garden. There, in his domain, inside the high stone walls that surrounded the house and grounds, he lived, worked and fantasised.

Soon after his father’s death when his mother found work in the village, Arthur levered up the stone slab in the coal shed, lit the oil lamp and peered into the pit. In the seven years since he had known of the existence of the pit, his imagination had run riot. He had imagined some sort of Aladdin’s cave full of treasure, or perhaps a secret underground tunnel leading to Carisbrooke Castle a long way from the village, or even a stairway to the centre of the earth. Maturity had changed his fantasies very little, so it was with acute disappointment that he viewed the inside of the hole. It was no deeper than eight feet, about twelve feet long and eight feet wide. Stacked on one side were ten crates, which on closer inspection he found to contain twenty-four bottles of Scotch whisky each. On top of one of these crates stood a large rusty tin box; at the end of the small room was a wooden shelf on which rested a double bore shotgun and a box of cartridges. Resting on two hooks above the shelf was what appeared to be, at first glance, some kind of silver-embossed ceremonial staff, and that was all. Arthur lifted the tin box and the silver staff out of the pit, as he had no interest in the gun, ammunition, or the bottles of whisky; he left them where they were. It took him a considerable amount of time to force the lock on the tin box, which was rusty and very solid. Inside the box, he found one hundred and two five-pound notes, which he counted a dozen times before he returned them to the tin box and the box to the pit. He then spent some time inspecting the walls and floor of the pit for other hiding places and finding none carefully replaced the slab and shovelled the coal back over it. Arthur closed the shed door and took the silver staff to his bedroom, where he hid it in his wardrobe. The staff fascinated him, and on closer inspection, he had decided that it was more like a club than a staff. It was almost the thickness of his wrist and about two feet long. The top nine inches were made of some type of metal, which was badly tarnished but probably silver or pewter. The rest of the club was made of hard black wood, and every inch was minutely carved with symbols of African origin, grotesque and ugly heads of savage-looking heathens. Often at night, after his discovery, he would take the club from its hiding place in the wardrobe and sit and gaze at the carved figures. He wondered about the club’s origin and purpose as he pondered what on earth he could use his newfound wealth and secret hiding place for.

The torrential rain that had caused Arthur’s anxiety had stopped soon after it had begun, and within a short space of time, the warm summer sun was drying the damp ground. Mabel Martin seizing the opportunity folded her raincoat over her arm and walked the mile up the lane to say her last goodbyes to her friend, Mrs Walker. Friend was probably too strong a word for Mrs Walker, as Mabel had no friends and nor did she want any. Acquaintance was perhaps a better word for Joan Walker, who was her nearest neighbour and co-worker in the village store, and because their paths crossed on a daily basis, communication had been unavoidable. The rain held off, and Mabel arrived dry and a little out of breath after the brisk walk up the lane. Joan greeted her cordially, and both women sat down in the sitting room to indulge themselves with tea and cakes, small talk and local gossip.

Mabel Martin had never liked the Isle of Wight; her dislike could probably be attributed to the unhappy state of her marriage, which caused her to long for the happier times she remembered in her native county of Kent. She had come to Ventnor at the age of twenty-four to help an old school friend and her parents run a small hotel on the seafront. She met her husband, Stanley, shortly after, and in the spring of 1901, she married him and moved to live in the large Greystone house that he owned on the outskirts of the village of Wroxall. Life with Stanley had been good at first; they would often travel to the mainland, and while she visited her family in Kent, Stanley would conduct his business in London. On one occasion, they had crossed the English Channel and spent two weeks in Paris, staying in the best hotel imaginable. It was there that Stanley had promised he would take her to a different country each year until they had seen the whole world. Like everything else he promised her, this never happened. The birth of Arthur in the winter of 1905 put a stop to travelling with her husband, and from that time on, Stanley chose to travel on his own. He would go away for longer and longer periods each time and seemed to lose all interest in Mabel. The birth of Arthur had heralded the start of her unhappiness, or so it seemed to Mabel. She had never wanted children, least of all a boy. The arrival of Arthur had stopped her visits to her family in Kent and had caused her husband to leave her alone for long periods at a time. The longer the period, the more time she had to think about things. She thought for the first time about how Stanley derived his income, and the more she thought about it, the more she became sure there was something dishonest about it. She wondered why she had been fooled by his charm and wit when they first met and why she was only now beginning to notice his nasty, cruel streak that had become more and more apparent since the birth of Arthur. She soon found out that Stanley was a bully and a violent one when she was foolish enough to question him on the subject of his source of income when he returned from one of his trips, but after the beating she received, she was never foolish enough to question him again. The years passed by, and Stanley’s drinking and drunken behaviour, which had once been amusing, became violent and unpredictable. Mabel lived in constant fear of his drunken rages, so much so that when she learnt of his arrest, her initial dismay was replaced almost immediately by a feeling of relief and great joy. One would have thought that considering the circumstances she found herself in, with her son as her only companion, she would have become very close to the boy. Surprisingly, this was not the case, and Mabel bitterly resented him. She resented his affection for his father, which she could not understand; she was ashamed of his slowness and seemingly retarded manner, and his eyes so much reminded her of Stanley that sometimes when he looked at her she would shudder involuntarily.

Prior to Stanley’s imprisonment, Mabel had kept herself to herself and made few friends in the village. After the arrest, she had shut herself off entirely with the shame and the embarrassment of it all. It had only been after Stanley’s suicide that she forced herself to find a job in the village, but she made no such concessions for Arthur, and his life of solitude became complete. It may have been her unreasonable resentment of her son or the shame of her husband’s crimes that made Mabel Martin treat Arthur the way she did. But whatever the reason was for his psychological maltreatment, it was to be the cause of a chain of events that would not only result in tragedy for her but one that would destroy the lives of a number of people she would never know.

Mabel had never written to Stanley or visited him in prison on the mainland. She knew that she would have no choice but to flee the island prior to his release from prison and had started to plan her escape when his sudden death solved the problem forever. With the need to go removed, Mabel had stayed for longer than she had planned. Five years after Stanley’s death, she had tried to sell the house but to no avail, and being unable to find a purchaser, she resigned herself to a life on the island. It had only been nine months ago, just after she returned from the funeral of her sister in Herne Bay, that she had been approached by a family from Shanklin who wished to buy the house in order to be close to an elderly relative in the village. Mabel had gladly agreed to this on the condition that she could stay in the house after the sale in order to give her time to purchase a home on the mainland. Although her sister had been the last of her surviving relatives and she no longer had family or friends on the mainland, such was her desire to return to her beloved Kent that she purchased a small cottage in Westmare, a seaside town some ten miles from her place of birth and prepared to move as soon as possible. The initial reaction she got from Arthur when she broke the news of their impending move was much as expected: first shock and then resentment, but she couldn’t care less what he thought; they were going, and that was that. Therefore, it came as a great surprise to Mabel that when Arthur went into one of his dark, sulky moods that usually lasted for weeks, he almost immediately came out of it again and became as happy as the proverbial pig in shit at the idea of moving.

Mabel soon tired of the small talk and gossip she had reluctantly subjected herself to with Joan Walker and excusing herself said goodbye. Both women kissed each other coldly on the cheek and promised to write to each other regularly, a promise neither of them had any intention of keeping. Tonight was Mabel’s last night in Wroxall, and she was anxious to get home in order to prepare for her departure. She had told no one of her intention to leave in the morning, a day ahead of the removalists, in order to make the new home habitable for Arthur and herself. She told no one because she considered it to be none of their business and did not want anyone to know Arthur was alone in case they came snooping around when she was not there to keep them out. Halfway down the lane, Mabel paused for a moment to put on her raincoat as the evening air had turned cool, and then quickening her steps, she walked happily in the direction of Wroxall for the last time.

Arthur Martin had long ago decided how he could use the secret hiding place and the one hundred and two five-pound notes. It started as a fantasy—his magic daydream that allowed him to hide from reality. Arthur could not remember exactly when it ceased to be a daydream, but suddenly the thought that it need not be a dream had entered his head, and the realisation that it could be achievable struck him like a bolt of lightning. Since that time, not a day had gone by when he did not think of his plan and how he could put it into practice. Unfortunately for Arthur, his plan was incomplete; it had a missing link, a vital missing link that he would be unable to explain away, and without it, the plan would fail. Try as he might, he could find no solution, no way to explain his mother’s sudden disappearance, and as the years went by, his initial excitement and enthusiasm began to wane. He became despondent, and now, at the age of twenty-five, almost five years since he first formulated his master plan to escape from his mother, he was on the brink of giving up when she unwittingly presented him with the solution. One night after tea, completely out of the blue, she informed Arthur of her intention to sell the house and move to Kent.

With the missing link miraculously provided and the time for action imminent, Arthur carefully formulated a plan that had the cunning and criminality of his father and the just conviction that only the oppressed and the slightly insane understand. Arthur Richard Martin hated his mother with a passion that was all consuming. Whereas his mother resented Arthur for no good reason, Arthur hated her for reasons that were understandable, to say the least. He hated her for his enforced imprisonment in the house, for forbidding him to mix with other children and have friends. He hated her for dispossessing him of horses, ferrets and fishing rods. He hated her for the scorn she treated his father’s memory with at any mention of his name. Most of all, he hated her for her constant nagging and the fact that however hard he tried to please her, he was always put down and treated with a mixture of contempt and derision. Arthur lived in fear of his father, but he loved him; he hated his mother but did not fear her, at least not in a physical way. It was the unexplainable power she had over him that concerned him the most; why he obeyed her he did not know, but obey he did. Tonight, if he was to find his freedom, he would need to overcome that power forever.

Mabel Martin took off her coat and hung it on the hallstand; she walked to the kitchen and boiled a kettle on the stove to make a cup of cocoa. She noticed that Arthur did not appear to be downstairs and correctly assumed that he had retreated to his room. She stood at the bottom of the stairs and screamed at him to clean up the untidy kitchen, but received no answer. ‘Pretending he’s deaf,’ Mabel mumbled aloud and returned to the kitchen to finish her cocoa. She called out to Arthur twice more from the bottom of the stairs and getting no answer swore under her breath; she needed to talk to him tonight to issue her last instructions. Knowing it would be useless to talk to Arthur in the morning as he was not a morning person and did not come to life until after midday, she tiredly climbed the stairs to his room.

Arthur sat fully clothed on the end of the bed and listened impassively as his mother berated him for his untidiness and deliberate deafness. He only half listened to her, as he had heard it all before and was immune to her tirades. He only half listened as his instructions were issued for the next day, and that was a mistake, as when questioned on the content, he failed the test and had to listen all over again. Finally, when his mother was completely satisfied that he understood, she wished him goodnight and left the room.

Arthur took the silver and wooden club from under the bed, where he had placed it earlier that night and moved quickly and quietly on his bare feet so that he was standing directly behind his mother as she reached the top of the stairs. He raised the club in his right hand high above his head and in doing so struck the glass shade of the hall lamp, causing it to fall to the floor and smash into fragments. Mabel spun around, looked in angry disbelief at Arthur towering over her with the club in his hand, and furiously ordered him to put it down. Arthur looked into those angry eyes and instantly complied; his hand, still holding the club firmly, fell limply by his side. Mabel, who was staring into Arthur’s glazed eyes, suddenly saw not Arthur’s eyes but the hard, brutal eyes of Stanley looking at her and froze in terror. At the same time, Arthur, who was looking at his mother as if transfixed, saw her anger turn to fear. In an instant, he raised the club and smashed it down with all his might twice on the front of her skull. The second blow was unnecessary; by the time it struck her, her knees had already crumpled as her legs folded under her heavy frame. With a last look of disbelief frozen on her face, Mabel fell the six steps to the landing halfway down the stairs. It looked for a moment as if that was to become her last resting place until in a final death spasm her body jerked violently and fell down the last twenty steps to the hall below.

Arthur sat on the top step and looked through the banister rails at the body of his mother lying motionless on the polished wooden floor of the hall below. He knew she was dead; such was the power of the blows he had administered that there was no doubting the result. He sat there without moving for a very long time, and had it not been for the sound of the rain beating on the hall window, he might have sat there all night.

Arthur stood over the body of his mother, looking at the pool of blood forming on the floor near her head as if she were a stranger. He took a sheet from the linen cupboard and wound it around her head to stem the flow. Next, he rolled her body on to the large Indian rug, which was the only floor covering in the hall, and dragged it across the polished boards to the kitchen. Moving the body across the hall had been relatively easy, but dragging it across the uneven slate floor of the kitchen proved a much harder task. When Arthur finally got his mother’s body through the back door and on to the path leading to the coal shed, the task became almost impossible. Fortunately for him, the rain was only light, but the clouds that had brought it obscured the moon, and it was now pitch black. Although the nearest neighbour lived more than a mile away, Arthur would not risk lighting a lamp until he was safely inside the coal shed and made do with the dull light coming from the kitchen window. His mother had been a large, solid, heavy woman when alive; dead, she was almost immovable. With the help of two wooden stakes, he managed to half roll, half lever her body up the path until somehow he managed to drag it into the coal shed. It was well past midnight by this time, and although exhausted, he knew he had to continue. After a pause to regain his breath, he levered up the stone slab in the floor, having previously shovelled the coal to one corner earlier in the day. He removed the tin box and the crates of whisky from the pit and took them inside the house. He then dragged his mother’s body to the edge of the pit, and with the help of the same two stakes that he used to move her up the path, he managed to tip her in. Luckily for Arthur, her body fell on its back and lay almost flat on the floor of the pit; after straightening her limbs, he placed the bloodstained rug over her and climbed out of his secret hiding place. He unbolted the ladder and threw it on top of his mother’s body and returned to the house, where he carefully undid each of the brass stair rails that kept the carpet in place and dragged it outside into the garden. Once outside, he covered the path between the coal shed and the pile of soil with the carpet. So well had the seemingly retarded Arthur planned for this day, that he would not risk the sound of the metal rim of a wooden wheelbarrow wheel, bringing unwelcome attention in the middle of the night. For the next few hours, he took soil from the pile he had assembled and, being careful to keep the wheelbarrow on the carpeted path, tipped it into the pit on top of his mother’s body. The work was strenuous, and Arthur, pausing for a rest, sat on the floor of the coal shed and fell asleep.

He awoke in a panic as the sun streamed in through the open door of the shed, then immediately rushed outside into the garden expecting the worst, but all was quiet. He looked up and down the lane, but nothing moved. He rushed inside the house, but all again was quiet, and he was momentarily reassured. Bloodstained fingerprints that he had not seen in the dark now seemed to be everywhere and frightened him; they were on the walls of the hall and the kitchen, and on the floor were dark red stains that seemed to glow in the daylight. He controlled his panic and immediately went outside, rolled up the carpet and dropped it into the pit. He then spent hours tipping soil into the pit until it was full, and after locking the coal shed door, he went inside to clean up the bloodstains before it got too dark inside the house to see them. When he finished, he cooked himself a meal of bacon and eggs and went to sleep. It was dark when Arthur awoke, and after he regained his senses, he lit the oil lamp and returned to the coal shed, where he replaced the slab and covered the floor with coal. He sat on the wooden bench outside the kitchen for a while, and then extinguishing the lamp, he went to bed to await the arrival of the removalists in the morning, safe in the knowledge that his mother was dead and would be missed by no one.

Two

Westmare, Kent, 1939

The sun, now high in the midday sky, caused the tranquil waters of the English Channel to shimmer as its rays touched the glass like surface of the sea. The sea was as calm as a mill pond, and the sound of its waters gently lapping on the shingle beach of the Kentish town of Westmare could barely be heard above the shrill laughter of children paddling and the noisy chatter of the patrons of the Customs House Hotel, who sat and lunched in the garden of the pub that directly overlooked the seafront. Steven Allen Middlemas, known to all as Sam (simply because that’s the name his initials spelt), sat alone at one of the pub’s recently replaced cedar tables and sipped on a pint of bitter as he tried to focus his mind on his immediate problem. Today was to prove no different than any other day, and the more he tried to concentrate, the more his mind wandered, which was usually the case when he found himself forced to think about something unpleasant. But today, he had an excuse, or so it seemed to him, for how could anyone think of anything unpleasant for long on such a glorious day? For today was not a day for sorrow or troubled reflection but a day for relaxation and untroubled thoughts. It was one of those idyllic summer days that weather-wise was as perfect as any day could be. Although it was the kind of day seldom seen on the coast, this year it was just another of at least half a dozen that had preceded it. A day when all aspects of nature harmonised to provide the climate of paradise. This summer had been a wonderful summer so far, and although Hitler had seized Czechoslovakia and the dark clouds of war were gathering on the other side of the channel, in the garden of England, the summer of thirty-nine was looking good.

The view of the sea from the garden of the pub looked like a picture postcard, and Sam marvelled at the calmness and serenity of a body of water that only a few months ago had turned on the town like a vengeful serpent. With tremendous force, it had lifted the shingle from the beach and spat it back at all the buildings on the promenade until the fusillade of stones smashed nearly every window, allowing its cold saltwater to cascade into cellars and basements unheeded. In the very garden he now sat in, all the outdoor furniture had been destroyed as the storm smashed it into matchsticks. Who today would believe that this calm sea was such a pretender and not to be trusted? Certainly not the holidaymakers that swam in its calm waters or the visiting anglers, who now fished from boats that had been torn from their moorings and hurled into the town square. Only the tourist who stopped at the lifeboat shed and launching ramp and read the epitaphs to those brave seamen who drowned would suspect the truth, and perhaps the well-read person would know that just out there below the calm waters of the English Channel lurked the treacherous Goodwin Sands.

It occurred to Sam that he could draw an analogy between the moods of the sea and those of his wife, Janet. Janet’s summer had been a long one, much longer than the oceans, and had only been disturbed by a few small squalls that had quickly passed, allowing the idyllic weather to continue. Shortly after the birth of their daughter, winter had arrived, slowly at first with gradually increasing coolness until the frost came. With the frost came the storms that became more and more frequent and severe in their intensity until the latest storm had turned into a tempest and was threatening to destroy those caught in its path and smash his marriage onto the rocks.

Sam had met his wife in the spring of 1930, when he moved to Westmare after the death of his mother the previous year. He had accepted a job with an estate agent and first saw Janet when he was introduced to her by his boss, Ted Stevens, who was endeavouring to sell a small shop in the high street jointly owned by Janet and her father. Janet was a tall, very attractive blond woman, two years younger than Sam; she had a very haughty air about her and spoke like someone with a plumb in her mouth. Sam, on the other hand, was a down-to-earth, call a spade a spade type of person and certainly was not used to mixing with people like Janet or the circle of her friends that he was subsequently introduced to. It therefore came as a complete surprise to all who knew Janet that she hit it off so well with her newfound love. Sam was equally surprised that Janet even talked to him and never expected her to agree to go out with him, but she did, and from the time of their first date, they became almost inseparable. Sam was madly in love with Janet, and she appeared to be with him, and despite the strong dislike that her parents showed towards him, they were engaged and married within the first twelve months of their relationship.

The first few years of their marriage were very good. Despite the fact that Janet had managed to remain a virgin until the wedding night and was not a very passionate kind of woman, she embraced the sexual side of the relationship reasonably well, not perhaps to the expectations of Sam, who had dreamed of long erotic nights as they practised all the positions of the Kamasutra. This hadn’t happened, and Sam quickly realised that a dream it would always remain when after each quick encounter, Janet would kiss him on the cheek, roll over and go to sleep. Their sexual encounters gradually diminished and went from once a night to once a week, then once a week to once a month, and after the birth of their daughter, from once a month to once in a blue moon. Although Janet had said she wanted a child, Sam suspected that she only said it to please him and her parents. She showed little enthusiasm when she found out she was pregnant and even less after the birth of Julie. After the arrival of their child, it appeared to Sam that Janet was only capable of giving her attention and love to one person at a time, and that certainly wasn’t him. Unlike her younger sister Pamela, who embraced all kinds of sport and outdoor activity, Janet was not the outgoing sort; a walk along the promenade in the summer with the occasional paddle along the beach was about the limit of her outdoor activity. At first, they would take the baby for long walks together, playfully competing for whose turn it was to push the pram. When Julie was a little older and able to toddle, they would take her to the local park or to the beach in the summer and paddle and splash with her at the edge of the sea. As Julie became older, Sam found himself enjoying his daughter’s company on his own, as Janet seemed reluctant to participate in any joint activity that involved the three of them, and the only time his wife would leave the house at weekends was to visit her parents. Sam could never quite understand this as she spent most of the week visiting them, and they probably saw more of Janet and Julie than he did. Spending his weekends with his daughter did not bother him as he enjoyed the time spent with her more than anything else in the world. What did bother him was spending it alone and the void that was growing between him and Janet; the more time they spent apart, the worse it became. They hardly had a cross word during their courtship and the first few years of marriage, but in the last few years, they had made up for it. Janet would fly off the handle for no good reason and completely refuse to explain what it was that caused the sudden onslaught. Sam, who had never seen this side of Janet in the early years of their partnership, couldn’t get his head around it and didn’t know what to do to make it right, but he knew that if the current climate of hostility continued between them, any chance of returning to what was once a loving relationship would be lost forever.

Sam paused from his reflections, lit a cigarette and walked inside the pub to refill his glass and order a sandwich from the bar. He was a good-looking man, thirty-three years of age, six feet and two inches tall, with what could best be described as an olive complexion. His short, black, curly hair was thick and wiry and looked as though it had been permed. Despite Sam’s olive skin, his features were very Anglo-Saxon, looks that probably could be attributed to his mother, who came from Somerset and was reputed to be of Yeoman stock. His olive complexion came from his father’s side of the family, whose bloodline was more mysterious and included a great-grandfather who was rumoured to have been a Romany gypsy. Although a quiet, thoughtful man, Sam had a personality that most women would describe as charming, and although not a lecher, he made friends with the fairer sex far more easily than he did with those of his own gender. It was for that reason he had been happy to stand at the bar and chat with the buxom barmaid named Susan, until the landlord joining in the conversation caused him to take his sandwich and drink and move back outside into the garden. Despite the fact that Sam had left his cigarettes and matches on the table and his jacket draped over the back of his chair, the table was now occupied by a rather obese-looking woman and an insipid little man. He collected his possessions and inquired politely why it had been necessary to take his table when half a dozen still remained empty.

The fat woman replied, ‘If you want to reserve a table, you should stay at it.’ Whilst the insipid little squirt cowered and looked as if he was about to dive under the table.

‘Fat bloody cow,’ Sam muttered loud enough for her to hear as he moved to another table and wondered how such a skinny little bastard could even begin to pump her up. For a brief moment, an image of them having sex flittered across his mind and momentarily put him off both his sandwich and his beer before he hurriedly dismissed the thought. The table he had been forced to move to did not overlook the seafront but instead looked out onto the town square and bus terminal. Directly facing him, attached to the back wall of a bus shelter, was a large poster that advertised the local repertory company’s twilight rendition of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, six nights a week in the grounds of Westmare’s Castle. Sam frowned, and a troubled look came over his face as he read the poster and remembered his own dream. Inadvertently, Will Shakespeare and the local repertory company had forced him to remember thoughts that he had successfully pushed to the back