Scarecrow

By Rose of Dreams

"Like in a mousetrap. Little, skinny and frightened. What awaits her in this place? Stone arches? Dank cobbles? Rawness-greyness... Emptiness...

     Jannie stood in the hallway holding a small suitcase. They had banged the door and gone away. Now she was on her own, standing and waiting for something to happen. Above her head - stonework arches of lumped ceiling, made of grey rough-hew cobble."

 

This novel is about compassion and a true meaning of friendship and justice...

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose of Dreams
• Release date: Apr 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224148394

Rose of Dreams

I am prose writer and a poet from Haifa, writing mainly in Russian and sometimes in English... 

Book preview

Scarecrow

Part one 

*    *    *

North London...

It was noontime. A chilly wind, the harbinger of autumn, was blowing the lace curtains of a large children’s room. Plush teddy bears, robotic dolls, electronic animals, and statuettes from synthetic porcelain, all formed in accurate order, were slumbering on their shelves. A large window facing the facade was open.

She sat on the very top of the windowsill; this way it was much easier for her to watch what was going on outside. It would seem as if moving a little closer she might fall straight into the rose bushes growing under the walls of their family mansion.

A crimson flyer, with big white stripes on its wings, had softly landed into the lawn. The glassy cupola of its cabin noiselessly opened. A woman stepped out of it. She was rather young, about thirty-five years of age, not more; and a man - tall, in a beige jumper with a high golf neck. The man clasped the woman over her waist. They kissed. Then he took her hand, and they strode towards the house. The woman pulled out a key and opened its hazel door. They both walked inside.

The maid Bennett was running down the main stairs of the hall, nervously tapping with her metallic heels.

- Ma'am, ma’am! Jannie has locked herself in her room again and doesn’t want to come out. I offered her food, but she even refused her milk and biscuits!

- Shut up, Bennett! -  The woman cruelly slapped the maid on her face. The latter fell silent, and shamefully dropped her head.

-  Yes, ma'am...

The woman took off her crêpe de Chine hat and plissé scarf and hung it on the hallstand.

-  During my absence, my daughter is

under your supervision. If something happens to her, you only have yourself to blame! God, don’t stand there! Leave! I don’t need to hear your whining.

-  But, ma’am, Jannie....

-  I can deal with my daughter myself.

-  But she’s only a child...

-  GO!!

-  Yes, ma’am.

The maid retired to the kitchen.

The woman began to go upstairs. The man followed her.

-  Jannie! – The woman knocked on the door. - Jannie, do you hear me? Open the door immediately!

-  Who’s that? – Asked distrustfully a quiet girlish voice.

Jannie leaped off the windowsill and leaned her ear against the door.

-  It’s me, precious. Be a good girl. You know, you don’t want mummy to call the police.

Jannie sat dawn on the sofa and took a white teddy off the shelf; put him on her knees.

-  Is that idiot with you?

The woman turned to a man in a jumper. By voiceless gestures she asked him to come downstairs. He smiled. Little rays of wrinkles spread within the corners of his brisk eyes.

- Don’t let her dictate you.

He drew his rough palm over her cheek. Kissed, and began pacing downstairs.

-  No, - answered the woman to her daughter, - Frank’s waiting downstairs.

Five blue flyers, with an emblem of a district rescue service, hung over crimson rose bushes. One could hear a conversation through the voice transmitter.

The women went outside...

Jannie gingerly paced on the narrow windowsill. Beneath her she saw - grass, roses, a crimson patch of a helicopter. Above, cumulus clouds. Soon, the autumn will arrive.

She didn’t like autumn. Friends called her The summer girl. Cold, an itchy nose and a sick apathy. Autumn means dampness, mist, and chilly winds. Autumn brings uncomfortable thoughts with it, doubts. Autumn brings death...

Jannie made another step towards her goal.

Sun - as if its soft rays were raising her, making visible only to the warm wind of the retiring summer.

Many times she tried to commit suicide and in various ways. They rescued her. She tried to die again, crying into her pillow, cursing her Mum’s innumerable boyfriends. Every sleeping pill meant another Martin, Colin, or Josh. The odours of stylish perfumes, presents, rose bouquets, compliments, high-flown speeches, love confessions. Emptiness. Behind them nothing, but emptiness. Like a shining envelope, opening which you find nothing inside besides rustled air mingled with sugar.

Nobody ever loved her mum, not even Jannie’s father. She thought a lot of him, though didn’t know him in person. He left them for somebody else. For an elderly lady, who was much older than her mother. When he and her mother had got married, mum was not yet twenty. He was almost forty-five, but well preserved. Recently she saw him, by chance, in a park. For the first time in her deliberate life, she had met her father. He had been with her mum. They had been walking slowly along the alley, having a nice chat. She immediately recognised him. His eyes, his look, his gestures, his face contours – everything belonged to her and only her! Oh, how similar she was with him. Although, his weather-beaten, portly face, framed by slightly silvery hair, couldn’t come to any compare with the youngish one of a twelve-year old girl, one could notice a bright resemblance between beautiful, elegant nose, thin and clearly-cut lips, high aristocratic forehead and intelligent grey eyes. Only Jannie’s were larger and sad.

The girl looked down again...

-  ...Jannie, dear, you know very well how much we all love you.

Frank and me. Please, be a good girl, get down! If you get down, mummy will buy you anything you want. How’s about a new dress? Or a dolly! The most beautiful dolly!

-  I don’t need your dolls! You can choke with them! - The girl pulled a grimace of scorn.

-  Jannie! – The women yelled, overstraining her voice. – Don’t you feel any shame in front of the people around? - She barely held herself. – Get off the windowsill, immediately! Otherwise I...

-  Otherwise, what, you’ll tell Frank?

Jannie threw one of her pretty dolls with a sneer from the windowsill down on to the policemen below.

-  Oh, I can’t take it anymore...

The woman moved into the tree shadows, so her daughter wouldn’t see her.

-  I’m so tired. I can’t stand it any longer. Say, what have I done wrong?

-  Calm down, Camilla, you’re not guilty. You’ve done everything right. It’s just the way the circumstances are.

He moved his palms over her hips, devouring her with his eyes.

-  Maybe... - she inertly pushed him aside, away from her breasts. – Say, haven’t I tried to give my daughter everything that’s only possible to give? Haven’t I bought her the most expensive presents? Doesn’t she study at the most prestige school of our country? Haven’t I loved her enough? Why that should have just happened to me? God, why such a punishment! For how more should I keep on suffering!

-  Don’t talk like that... - He brought her nearer to him. – Your daughter isn’t a punishment... she just... she just has some problems. We must help her. If you want, I can test her in my clinic. You know very well, I’m a professionally qualified psychiatrist and if you need assistance... 

-  No! My daughter is perfectly healthy! She has no aberrations whatsoever; she’s been checked by a school psychologist.

Frank smiled shrewdly, parting his hands.

-  Did I say your daughter is loony? Camilla, it’s just a check-up, that’s all!

Think for a moment, all those hysterics, reiterated attempts of suicide, groundless aggression against me. You should consider it too.

Her eyes nervously twitched. Camilla doubted.

-  I want to help your daughter. Check-up would make her only good.

-  ... I don’t know, are you sure?

-  Trust me. I would proceed it myself. Take my word, - he grinned widely and seized Camilla’s hands. She uncertainly smiled in respond.

-  All right... I agree.

-  Then bring her tomorrow at three thirty to my clinic.

He tenderly kissed her lips.

-  You’ll see, everything will be just fine.

The girl glanced over the five policemen and their angular flyers, and then she saw Frank leaving, glimpsing with a creamy spot of his jumper. Perhaps, from all her mother’s ex-boyfriends he was the most devoted one. Over the measure! Forty-five, rather fine figure, solid social position, successful business, immaculate past, impeccable future. Sex...

He was tricking her mum; using her money in order to build up his clinic. Was playing and deceiving her. Actor! Buffoon! Greedy for amorous flattery. From the first meeting, he and Jannie had begun to dislike each other. Actually, he had started it all. Jannie got more love and attention from her mother, but she should have belonged just to him - all of her, includes her money. Jannie was the only obstacle on the way to his aim.

The girl saw her mother getting from behind the trees, slightly dishevelled, anxious about something. He’s left. She thought, and looked at the sky – blue, with cumulus clouds, and then leapt off...

Part two

* * *  * *

The psychiatric clinic of Dr. Frank Kegan.

-  Look, what a lovely building! What a pretty area, and such a clean air!

-  Mum, where are we? What is this place? – The girl inquiringly stared at her mother.

Camilla was nervous.

-  It’s a surprise, - her face became distorted by a wry smile. – Ah, look, a woodpecker! How lovely, a real woodpecker! 

Jannie looked up.

The woodpecker, which sat on the tree, had pecked a couple of times with its black bill over the wood, then shook its wings and flew away. Camilla glanced at her watch.

-  It’s about time. Let’s go, - She gripped her daughter’s hand and led her towards the ochre building.

Jannie threw a blaming look at her mother, and the latter understood – the daughter had guessed about what was going on. Why have you brought me here? The school counsellor said I was fine!

-  Jannie, love, I just want to make sure that...

-  You don’t want anything! You are too much in love with that posh idiot to have an opinion of your own, – snapped Jannie.

-  Don’t you ever dare call him that! Frank cares about our family! He loves you, as if you were his own daughter. He’s worried about you.

-  So, that’s the matter! I want to know, right now, where have you brought me?!

-  Jannie, dear, it is bad for you to be overexcited.

- It is his clinic, right? He thinks, I’m mad?! It was his idea, wasn’t it? – The girl looked straight into her face. – And you believed him? Mum, how could you!?

Camilla dropped her eyelids; she couldn’t stand the upbraiding glare of her daughter.

Jannie silently walked into the doctor’s cabinet. A table, a chair, a soft sofa, and a mirror, that’s all that filled this little room, the walls of which were painted in a pastel-pink shades. As the matter of fact, everything inside it was pastel, even the air. Behind a pastel table was sitting a pastel doctor in a pastel beige blazer, while his pastel-milky hand was lying on the pastel-brown computer keyboard. He was looking at her with cold grey eyes.

-  Please, sit down... - He smiled. The eyes did not. The girl sat down