Hook and Ladder Dreams

By Caroline Cressey

Hook and Ladder Dreams is a story of the lengths a person will go to in order to realise their love, the tragedy of love, and one man's dream and sacrifice for the woman he loves. The hero, Colin Saywood, tells his story of the love he feels for Jane, a woman betrayed and abused within her marriage and by her own family. Finally, when Colin give

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Book Bureau
• Release date: Dec 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960548337

Caroline Cressey

Caroline Cressey has been passionate about books and writing since childhood and first began writing seriously when in her 20’s. She emigrated from the United Kingdom with her then husband in 1983, and has since studied general and psychiatric nursing. She currently works in a private hospital in Brisbane as a registered psychiatric nurse.

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Copyright © 2023 Caroline Cressey

All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including as photocopies or scanned-in or other electronic copies, or utilized by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the copyright owner.

Interior Design by The Book Bureau

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN:     978-1-960548-32-0 (paperback)

               978-1-960548-33-7 (ebook)

Contents

Part One: Past Present

Part Two: Present Indicative

Part Three: Future Hopeful

This is the story of my love. I have tried to tell it as honestly as I can from what I knew and from what I was told, especially by Jane herself. True also, that it is suffused with my own subjective feelings and interpretation, but I do not think it has significantly warped the whole.

The events remain the same when all is told, when all is said and done.

It is quite humiliating to bare myself to you thus, and to lay down these words, but in the end, only what Jane remembers and thought matters.

Jane, I hope you don’t mind, I hope that you will forgive me for this, your story, from my eyes and my viewpoint.

Colin Saywood

With your stomach pump and hook and ladder dreams,

We should get together for some scenes.

—Neil Young, singer songwriter, Ambulance Blues

Part One:

Past Present

Back, way back, in the thrush-like pool of sun-plopping sunshine, Jane sat upon the porch of her parents’ first home. Above her from the road, its latticed windows glittered diamonds, tinseling the tree-studded avenue with the bright hope born of a young, vibrant family.

Its newest member, Elizabeth, Jane’s younger sister, lay sleeping peacefully as she always did at this time of day in her pram. She was a long and thin baby without grace or beauty, an exaggeratedly domed pixie head, and double-jointed limbs. Her beauty would not be evident for some time yet, but when it came, she would be doomed to a fate of lover-fraught tribulations.

Jane, of course, did not know this as she crossed the cool green fork-pronged grass devoid of daisies and eyed solemnly her sister from the lip of the pram. Elizabeth’s eerie features were drawn to the agape of her sleeping mouth as she straddled her limbs like a skeletal doll. Light fell like prickling darts to pinpoint areas of heat upon her pixie head: strange how this sister, who could turmoil the house with her crying, should lie petrified and sleep-struck this past hour.

And Jane had watched all the while: her shorts-clad legs had only then just arisen from the cardinal polished tiles where they had held the needle rawness of her eczematous elbows, lower limbs had run emaciated to the support of her vacant drooling jaw, the entire angular network like a steel flotation bridge that could topple card-like upon the failure of a single member, to dishevelment on the ground.

Picture the idyll of the scene: the child dappled peaceably down looking, gravely surveying the ugliness, surpassing her own, of a sister. Pity rose sadly to her heart—for Mother would never love anything so ugly.

It was only eight thirty. The milkman’s horse had only just passed. Jane had watched him come inevitably up the road, watched the horse stop at each house as its master walked the endless series of short parallel paths to place one, two, three pints on the varying doorsteps, bowled by children threatening to be late for school. She watched as opposite the twins had been safely installed in their double pram on the pocket handkerchief of a front lawn; watched as the ginger-haired girl had emerged, plump with curls and pretty in her blue checked gingham dress, proud as she showed off with double twirls of her skipping rope, brown leather shoes spanking the pavement, blue ribbons bobbing in her hair, the rope whipping the air as an affront to Jane’s onlooking eyes.

The shire, with a jangle of its bit had clopped off, nose-bagged, shaking off the first of the day’s flies from its infested eyes. Barely fifty yards past their house would he break into the trot that marked the end of his day’s deliveries, down toward the un-inhabitation of Thorn hill and the wooded grounds of the boys college.

Having solemnly surveyed the marred beauty of her sister, Jane stoically repaired back to the porch, and the resumption of her thoughtful posture of the A-framed legs and lower arms, while her eyes went back to piercing with milk hazel the evaporating lawn. Her hair hung thin to match her body, streaked with flaxen, bronzed spectrum filter, freckles pitted and softened with mottle her face; her limbs became abstract, surreal, tattooed. Her body unleashed itself into tranquil summer sun, yet slowly, like the uncoiling of a spring. Her mind splintered to the warm cushioning of heat, scalding the skin of her lower legs as a warning to later blistering.

A cloud had covered the sun. It became a white flattened sphere haloed with grayness stenciling the vapor along its edges; a chill suddenly swept the front lawn, wavered across the gravel drive. Jane, who had momentarily downcast her eyes in dreamy thought, looked up in protest, rubbing her suddenly goose-fleshed arms, cocked her head at the skies, before lowering them once more to the sights of the road.

A small boy was looking straight at her.

They watched each other for several minutes, until the sun reddened and bathed the trees and then the grass once more, though the boy’s silhouette remained mysteriously in shadow.

Nothing could warm Jane now. Uncomfortable beneath the unknown glitter of those eyes, Jane bowed her head, sweeping up the discarded cardigan from where its pinkness clashed with the rusty shine of the tiles.

It seemed a long time to when she next looked up, but that was only because the boy had covered a lot of ground since his stance centered in the driveway, just beyond trespass, and his fingers too had been remarkably deft, for from the pocket of his trousers he had withdrawn a box of matches and was now methodically striking them, dropping them one by one upon the sponged pillow on which Elizabeth’s head lay.

Elizabeth had begun to cry.

The potential consequences did not reflex Jane into action—rather, they froze her to the spot. Her proximity to the boy terrified her—size she could cope with, yet not the madness, and the same madness, it seemed to Jane, caused the match box to fly from the evil of his hands, caused his feet to fly like winged messages across the last of the early morning dew grass.

Then Jane was galvanized into action. Scooping up the box, Jane saw on tiptoe the charred holes and burning fire pockets of Elizabeth’s pillow, amassed and haloing her head.

Elizabeth was crying quite lustily now.

From the porch, Barbara, the mother, saw—saw the arms that flapped to smother or fan the flames or even smite the infant. Then she saw the matches. Diving across the grass in soon-soaked slippers, she whisked her daughter Jane about in a pivot and slapped her smartly across the cheeks, once, twice, thrice. Then submerging Elizabeth with endearments, she shot over her shoulder reproaches and swept away her daughter with her anger.

That mother, believed her capable of such things, was to hurt Jane forever.

They moved to their great uncle’s house when Jane was ten years old. It was a small farm of seven acres or so, hardly a farm really, though it boasted five hundred chickens, seven cows, and a vegetable garden superintended by a grumpy, cantankerous seventy-year-old gardener by the name of Mr. Cannon, who kept the best of the vegetables for himself and his equally lean wife, dumping the rest on the drainer in the kitchen.

Humphrey, their father, sacked him in the first weeks they moved in, another day of sunshine summer, of picnicking in the countryside with Barbara, while the move was in progress. It was as an era all on its own, that day to Jane. It marked the day when she first plucked up courage to go down the big slide, her mother blackmailing her with sweets at the bottom, and Patricia, her eldest sister, scoffing at her; it was a day of introduction to the world of ponies, wild-eyed and neglected, inhabiting the moors; a day of driving past mile upon mile of conifer enclosures, heathered scrub, marsh tracts, and greens where touristy people flew their model airplanes, children their kites; days of eating cucumber sandwiches until you burped loudly under the huge spreading oak; of the sounds of bees and the smell of horse dung, larks, and pewits, cotton-clouded heavens and azure skies that kaleidoscope and made you dizzy as you lay on your back and gazed; of days passing through aimless villages, the quaintness of tea rooms, hoards milling around gift shops; multi-colored people all doing nothing in particular except getting hot and bothered, buying picture postcards of the things they would never get around to seeing. It was a day of rattling away toward their new home in the black box of their ford, giggling, with her sisters in the back, fingers and faces sticky from the lavishment of chocolate bars.

They arrived via a roundabout route, in the evening, sweet soporific, unable to eat a hasty distracted supper, growing ever wilder-eyed at the massive rambling of the imposing farmhouse. They were bundled quickly into bed in vests and pants with a sleeping bag, kept awake by Father Humphrey banging back together the banisters that had to be dismantled to get the furniture upstairs. In the end, the ominous sounds of sawing marked Humphrey’s defeat—the stairway never looked right again.

Elder sister Patricia, a loud brash important girl of fourteen, got the corner room with the two wide bay windows, the one looking on to lush green fields to the stream, thence on to the horizon of hill known as hot cross bun, so named because of the crisscrossing of its paths, the other window looking out on to the adjoining eighteen-acre paddock that belonged to the riding school.

Elizabeth’s room was next to Barbara and Humphrey’s, the prettiest room as far as its coral walls and rose curtains were concerned. In time, Lucy, the next child, would have this smallest room, on the other side to her parents—it had its own wash basin, which was handy for the night-time nappy change but

Couldn’t I have it for now? Jane had asked.

Instead, Jane was given the room with the airing cupboard in it. The warmest room in the house in winter, true enough, but now, with its only window sticking fast, it was like a hot house, complete with burning water pipes along the skirting. The view from the only window looked out on to a gully between two steeply inclining roof ridges, thence on to the yard, the cowsheds beyond. It was a view that was flat, dry, and uninteresting.

To add to its uncertain charms, it seemed to perch over the wide, drafty hallway below, seemingly with no support.

But it’s been there nearly fifty years, ever since the house was built, Humphrey reassured with a hug. So it’s not going to fall down now.

Two years later, Jane was crouched on her knees, peering between the wires, into the muggy uncertain depth of the rabbit hutch. Normally, she would have seen the bulk of straw heaving with life, seen a pair of timid, fluorescent eyes, if she was lucky.

Yet she saw nothing. There was no movement in the balmy still evening air. The mother rabbit snoozed outside in a corner of the run, her bodily fur fluffed out in a neck frill, sleepy eyes only half open, nose quivering, lazily noting Jane’s apprehension. Had she killed them? the child Jane wondered. Everything appeared so normal, save the un-rustling of straw. She would get a torch.

Humphrey was poised in the far corner of the garden, ready to swing his golf club. This was his latest craze; proving expensive in equipment, arguments regarding this abounded on still summer nights in the lounge room of the farmhouse. Later, he would get out the putter, but really the lawn, together with its violations of molehills, was eminently unsuitable. Still, he was happy and whistled through his pipe as Jane approached.

Daddy, I think the weasel has threatened the babies and frightened the mother. I think she might have killed them.

Do you, darling? Humphrey was concerned. Let’s have a look.

At this point, a shrill voice sounded from an upstairs window.

Jane? I want you in here, now.

What do you want her for? Humphrey called up.

To bathe Lucy.

We’re just going to have a look and see if the baby rabbits are all right.

Jane wastes more time with those blessed rabbits than I know any child on anything. I am beginning to regret the day I ever allowed you to buy the mother for her!

Leave her alone tonight, Barbara, she’s upset. She can’t see the babies moving under the straw anymore. She thinks the mother might have smothered them.

Barbara slammed the window noisily.

All right, let’s go and have a look, said Humphrey.

They made their way over the swampy grass together, Jane casting a backward glance at the bedroom window, hoping that Barbara would not store up too much anger against her, and feeling guilty about the fact that she seemed to cause so much dissension between her parents.

At the cage side, nervously she stood back, wishing she could flee the place. Shutting her eyes against the struggle the mother put up at this intrusion on her privacy. If she was wrong and the babies were still alive, then their actions now would probably result in the mother smothering the babies anyway. Catch twenty-two and Jane knew all about catch twenty-two. Later, mercifully, she did not see the little pink-skinned bodies, six of them, as they were withdrawn, all mangled and mashed into the straw, not a single one spared.

You, you, you, I hate you! Jane screamed through clenched teeth, the tendons below her bottom jaw taut, bottom lip revealing her teeth, wishing she could grasp the mother and shake the life from her. Humphrey was meanwhile carrying the bodies across to the bonfire, passing Barbara en route, the latter having emerged from the house, apron strings flying, striding out across the lawn.

Jane, I want you indoors to bathe Lucy, now!

Jane went in and bathed Lucy. Tucking Lucy in and standing now at the window of the bedroom she had so much wanted if only temporarily, she saw that Humphrey had gone back to swinging his golf clubs, only he swung them crazily, disjointedly, lunging at something a short way off the ground. Opening the window out on to the sunset, Jane heard the chattering of vicious teeth and finally saw the sleek brown body as it advanced with manic courage upon its gigantic predator. Twice the club whistled through the air, whipping up fury in the angry, valiant little beast. Upon the third swing, Humphrey was able to hold him triumphantly aloft, one of the beast’s eyes hanging out on stalks.

That night, sleep again evaded Jane as she laid miserably on her back, listening to the long, drawn out, agitated voices of her parents, her mother’s voice rising to a crescendo of hatred from time to time, her father’s voice trying to keep its equitable humor.

She knew they were arguing about her of course. They always did. Her mother did not love her, and that was not surprising, seeing as Barbara was an unashamed lover of beauty, and Jane was the only one of her children not blessed in that direction. Jane accepted this without question, as she also accepted the fact that her father did, despite Barbara (or because of this), but her father’s love of her was destroying her parents’ marriage and her father, who loved all people, was suffering, and Jane could not bear it.

It didn’t matter about the rabbits. She wished now she had kept quiet about what had happened, furtively disposed of the bodies herself, and told Humphrey of it all after the deed was done. Her rabbit would have other babies, and there was now no weasel to disquiet the mother. How foolish of her to have said anything. She should have realized the consequences of her actions, the pain it would cause her father to inspect the bleeding edges of the rift within his family.

Her absence might close the wound.

It’s funny, but Jane’s memory, normally so good about the events in her childhood, was hazy about this one, and I had to get the details from her father. Jane had not woken up as was normal on a Saturday morning, and when Humphrey went to check on her at ten o’clock, he found her still motionless, a quiet green trickle of bile at the corner of her mouth. Jane had taken her mother’s Mogadon from the top shelf of her wardrobe in the bedroom and swallowed about ten tablets.

In the ambulance, Humphrey surveyed his daughter as she sadly flopped and juddered like a rag doll on the thin hard pallet. It was the usual scenario, the doctors said—a childhood crisis of some kind, not to worry, she would get over it. Stomach pump job and a night in hospital to sleep it off, then she would be fine.

At thirteen, Jane cut herself on glass and bled into her pants. It wasn’t like normal blood. It smelt strange and furtive, it was mixed with other things, and the cuts did not sting, rather it was her stomach that ached like constipation. Jane told Barbara who smiled with curled lips and told Jane that the bleeding represented Jane: getting rid of her sins and that it would stop as soon as she had atoned for them.

The bleeding did not stop. It wasn’t very much, but it dragged on, week after week, only stopping for a few days here and there. It played around with Jane’s feelings of guilt and wrestled within her heart. She would breathe a sigh of relief, believing that the dirt of her sins had gone, that she had paid for her sins, only for the bleeding to return shortly thereafter.

Though she did not know for how long she should bleed, Jane thought she must be a very bad person.

Over the weeks, sleep began to evade her; as the warm stickiness continued to ooze from her body, it slowly drained her energy. She became alarmed—surely no single person could be guilty of so much sin that so much filth could continue to drain away from her body! Anxiety thumped away at her heart, especially at night when all had retired and Jane was left alone with her terror.

She had begun bleeding away the multitude of her sins in November; now it was February, and still it continued. She was bang in the middle of examinations. She lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the house gradually die away. Barbara and Humphrey mounted the stairs with low voices of inconsequence. Soon the house would be silent, and somehow she would become even more alone with the vileness that continued to escape from her and evaporate around the room. Then it came to her that this blood, so much of it, was eating away her insides, as her sins were eating away her soul and sullied spirit. Her temples thumped. Panic rose inside of her. Light and life would soon no longer light up the house below her, and it felt as though protection from evil would become extinguished with the last light. Then, evil spirits could rampage freely.

Humphrey was in the bathroom, noisily cleaning his teeth; Mother was checking baby Lucy, now nearly two years old. She crooned over her for a while. Now it was Barbara in the bathroom, and Humphrey was probably sitting up in bed with his library books, reading. Barbara would be cleansing her face, smearing cold cream over staling make-up, cleaning off cherry nail varnish, and possibly shaving her legs.

All too quickly, they were finishing their night-time routine. The lavatory chain was pulled, and Jane heard the window being closed, and the last of the precious lights were being extinguished. The long vigil of the night hours was beginning.

Jane’s heart started to beat alarmingly, faltering blood through her veins, surging and then flagging, until the panic rose to her mouth; then she cried. It would have been nice to have run down the landing and burst weeping into her parents’ room to be comforted, but she was too big for this and would not be comforted by Barbara anyway, and in any case, how could she explain the vile things that were happening to her?

So she cried to herself, spurting tears as an offering to the godless ceiling and beyond that the starless sky, a blurred luminous black. Blood beat ever with more force in her chest, choking up toward the base of her throat.

The first hour had passed, since the silencing of the house, an hour of darkness in which the devilish spirits preyed. It was now midnight. Jane could stand it no more; she thought it safe to leave the dungeon of her room. She turned on the light and went and sat at the top of the stairs, hands forlornly supporting her chin, the image of the child on the porch seven years before.

What is it, can’t you sleep?

How glad she was to see him there, not quite sleep tousled, scratching his head!

My heart is thumping really hard in my chest, and Jane tried hard not to sob.

I should hope it is! and Humphrey laughed. He sat down by her side, imitating her posture. I can’t sleep either. Let me listen—you don’t mind, do you?

Jane shook her head, and Humphrey put his head against her chest.

It is beating rather hard, he admitted. Why, I can actually see it beating! he said with sudden surprise.

And sure enough, as Jane herself looked down, she saw, through the gaping of her night dress, between the spaces of her tiny breast, that the flesh flickered and tremored in time with her heart.

Your heart shouldn’t beat that hard you know, tell me, is it just tonight?

No, Jane admitted, it’s been happening for quite some time.

Worse at night, eh?

Jane nodded.

How long have you not been able to sleep?

Oh, I don’t know, about three months I suppose.

I think you should stay at home tomorrow. I’ll get Barbara to call out the doctor.

But I have an Algebra exam tomorrow.

I don’t think you, personally, are going to mind missing that, are you?

Jane grinned ruefully. She was hopeless at all forms of mathematics, especially Algebra—she would fail anyway.

Don’t worry. I shall sort out Barbara. I don’t want you going to school until we have sorted out what is wrong with you. Come on, I shall make us both some cocoa, and we shall drink it together.

So Humphrey made the cocoa, and he and