The Eight of Swords
By Petra Kidd
Copyright Petra Kidd 2011
Published by Petra Kidd at Smashwords
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1.
When a big event happens in the world, people usually remember what they were doing, where they were, who they were with, how old they were when it happened. For many years to come, they will say, “oh yes, when the planes hit the towers, I had just arrived in Cuba for my first holiday in two years,” or “when the Queen Mother’s death was announced, the entire family were here for lunch, including Aunty Martha who we hadn’t seen since Uncle Stephen passed away.” All the little details of the moment they heard something terrible or significant happened come flooding into their mind.
It is the same with more personal events. Happenings, that in a single moment of now then permeate our thoughts and memories forever after. The day I came home to find my key wouldn’t turn in the lock, my head was full of how one of my colleagues had committed suicide, messily, under a tube train during rush hour. I can’t tell you that I had any gut feeling or intuition that day would become such a significant turning point in my life. It started like any other, my alarm went off, I pressed the ten minute snooze option, shut my eyes tight and hoped each minute would become an hour in real time. Of course this is impossible but when you hate your work, every little delay in getting there becomes a mini freedom.
I can even remember the dream I had before I woke up. It involved a tea party in the middle of a field with buttercups and dandelions, a voice said ‘don’t pick the dandelions or you will wee in your bed.’ I often wonder if that somehow signalled the events of the day and why if it did, did I get such a pointless and unhelpful warning?
I stood on the doorstep for a full ten minutes before my poor befuddled brain would take in the fact my key no longer fitted this lock. Stepping back I inspected the house to make sure that in my confused and distracted state I hadn’t mistaken someone else’s house for my own but no, the door remained red with a brass knocker in the shape of a mermaid, weeds had grown over the air vent, and rain dripped in a reluctant waterfall from the guttering. No, this was definitely my abode of the past eight years, the place I bought after my second divorce vowing I would never again share my home, my heart, my possessions with another person.
Stepping back I glanced at my watch, I don’t know why. Every evening I walked home from work, setting out from my office around sixish whatever the weather, regardless of time of year. I trudged through snow, battled wind, rain and hail, slid around on ice, squinted through fog and wore a ridiculously large hat to keep the rarely sighted sun of recent summers off my pale skinned face. Somehow, I seemed to think the time might give me the answer as to why my key wouldn’t fit the lock. Then I caught sight out of the corner of my eye, the curtain twitch open a second. It fell back again instantly.
Did I imagine that? I thought, standing there stupidly as rainwater soaked my shoulders. I leant over and tapped on the window. Nothing happened. The curtain didn’t move again. It occurred to me at this point that perhaps I should try using my back door key. I fumbled to pick it out among all the other keys on the ring: keys to my desk drawers at work, the shed key, my elderly neighbour’s key, a bicycle lock key I had ceased to use many moons ago. I began to walk round the right side of the house, across the tiny front garden, through the side gate and along the muddy path to the back door. Again I inserted the key into the lock, tried to turn it and it did not budge. I managed to stop myself from hammering on the frosted glass window of the door. How ridiculous would that be? Knocking on my own door to be let into the house where only I lived. On examination the lock looked shinier than my normal rusty edged lock, brand new in fact. My heart jigged a little, in a downward way, my legs weakened and my stomach did a back flip, panic had finally set in.
I put the keys in my coat pocket and walked slowly back to the front of the house, pondering the situation. Back at the front door I reached up and grasped the mermaid knocker firmly and thumped brass against brass three times. Nothing happened. I inspected the lock; again it appeared to be shiny and new. A couple of deep scratches and a dent I didn’t recognise were next to it. Someone had changed the locks.
I simply didn’t know what to do. Bizarrely the thought ran through my mind that somehow my colleague had faked his death, come round, broken into my house and locked me out. Why would he do that? We hadn’t been particularly friendly, or not friendly. For the past year of his appointment to my team we exchanged personal pleasantries on an irregular basis, shared a filing cabinet, made each other the odd cup of tea and displayed only cursory interest in one another beyond our work. A burglar wouldn’t have changed the locks. I had no family who would create such a prank. My parents lived abroad. My brother, a well off stockbroker lived happily in Surrey with his wife and two children. Extended family included only a very elderly aunt and a spinster cousin in Australia. My friends and acquaintances were not of the type to do this either, they were for the most part professionals, reasonably well off, fully encompassed in their own complicated lives, far too busy and harassed to decide to break into my house, change the locks and then refuse to open the door. They weren’t the kind of people who would think such an elaborate prank funny.
My mind skidded round a very short track and passed the finish line in a matter of seconds without any sensible conclusion.
I looked up and saw a light on in my bedroom. Now, suddenly anger took over from the panic, what the hell was going on? I slammed the knocker down as hard as I could, making the door shake with the force. I pummelled the wood with my fist, knuckles stinging with effort.
Without warning the door flew open and I would have fallen straight into the hall had not a large black haired man been standing there, filling the doorway with his extraordinarily wide shoulders. I stepped back in shock, clutched my handbag to my chest and gasped “what?” Other words should have come out like “who, why, how?” But my mouth gaped open silently leaving only the sound of my ragged breath in the early evening air.
The man’s top lip curled up and spread into a kind of amused snarl “what you wan’?”
For the second time, I wondered if my bewildered brain had brought me home to the wrong house. Once again I double-checked the mermaid, the weeds and the air vent. “I live here!” My voice sounded shrill and as if I disbelieved my own declaration.
“Oh?” He said this in a questioning manner and for a moment I badly wanted to punch his leering face but given his height and width immediately thought better of it. I half expected him to follow the ‘oh’ with, ‘so that’s what you think?’ Instead he pushed the door open wider to reveal a woman wearing long black plaits either side of her plump face, and a mosaic of other faces peering round her body at me.
Had I somehow had a bang on the head and lost consciousness? Surely I had forgotten something, how, for instance this family of strangers had come to be gathered in my house. Perhaps during my job as immigration official I had unwittingly invited these people to live here. Suggested they pop round, change the locks and make themselves at home. A clone of me had acted on a subconscious whim. It’s true, I often felt sorry for people I had to send back to their own country because of their lack of visas, work permits etc. No obvious explanation dropped out of the sky so I stood rooted to the spot, incredulous, clutching my handbag as if my life depended on it. They had taken my house, perhaps at any moment they would reach out for the only possession I apparently still had hold of.
The man waved his hand graciously to beckon me in. Beckon me in to my own hall.
“I am going to call the police.” I stated this uncertainly and not remotely as emphatically as I should have.
The man tilted back his head and chuckled with amusement. “No, please, come in.”
The woman unsmiling, nodded at me, and made way for me to enter.
So I did.
2.
On entry to my own house, I could see I hadn’t made any mistake. I strode past my embroidered animal pictures, inherited from my dextrous grandmother. A few paces took me into the sitting room where the wall had been knocked through before I bought the house to reveal a small but wide windowed dining room. Three figures sat at my oak carved circular dining table, chairs had been moved from the lounge to accommodate more people. A large hairy dog had taken up residence on my Persian rug, a present from my brother during his travels as a student. It glanced up at me briefly with disinterest then continued to lick its hindquarters with a huge pink tongue.
Speechless just about sums up my feelings, I am not sure at which point I clamped my mouth shut in consternation. It could have been as an elderly woman with a mouth as small and wrinkled as an anus raised a crystal glass from a set of four I’d bought in House of Fraser during a moment of rash indulgence and murmured what could have been a damning spell at me. Or it might have been when the small child near the fireplace lifted my father’s first cricket bat and whacked the dinner gong my second husband bought as a joke. They are not exactly important factors in the rude uninvited occupation of my hard earned home but stand out in my memory as clearly as if they were happening at this very moment.
I sank into a chair and stared at the unimaginable scene before me. A single lamp with a 1920’s style shade lit the room, leaving much of it in shadow. My house seemed to be full of people, young and old and a few ages in between.
The man, who had answered my own front door and let me in, appeared in my eye line. His face leaned forward into mine, his hands on his knees. “You wan’ a drink?”
I nodded, paralysed by my own incredulity. Within moments the crone at the table had filled a tumbler of red wine, passed it to the man, who pressed it firmly into my hand. “Drink!” He ordered, as if a jovial host.
I took a long gulp, then another.
“So what you wan’?” Hands on hips, the man gazed at me quizzically.
The audacity took my breath clean away; words could not form in my mouth so I took another gulp of wine.
“You wan’ something?”
I knew I should shout at them all to get out. I knew I should get angry and loud and assert myself but despite my initial fury and confusion, I couldn’t help but begin to find the situation ridiculously amusing. I actually began to laugh, out loud.
The large black haired, broad shouldered man grinned, but the hard cold penetrating stare of his eyes sobered my hilarity almost as soon as it had begun.
“So what you wan’?”
“I live here! This is my house, my home!” I took another gulp of wine, my hand shook a little, I thought about standing up but wasn’t sure my legs would stand firm beneath me after such a shock. “The question is, not what I want but what the heck you lot are doing here?”
The man drew himself upright, squared his shoulders, and fixed me with a deadly serious glare, “no, no, you no live heeere!” He drew the final word out as if to make a very valid point and waved a large knuckled hand across the room. “This belong to nobody, where we leeve.” He enunciated the words loudly and carefully as if making sure I understood. Then he moved towards me and squatted down. “You,” he jabbed a finger at my chest “are OUR guest!”
This had begun to feel like a strange game of bluff. At what point would I wake up or would one of these people suddenly shout “gotcha?” As if I had fallen for their little joke. Or big elaborate joke that involved a number of actors and the expense of changed locks. I sat and tried to make some sense of it all in my befuddled head. I took another gulp of wine and then held out my glass for more.
The crone with the anal mouth lifted the bottle in acknowledgement as if to say, you want more, come and get it. I couldn’t move so I handed the glass to the black haired man who obediently strode over and presented it for more wine to be poured. My noisy kitchen clock chimed seven o’clock. I couldn’t believe I had been here half an hour, hadn’t called the police or even for help and sat surrounded by strangers in my own home. Then I realised I could smell food cooking. Surely I would wake up in a minute and press the snooze option. After all, I needed to find out what would happen next in this strange dream.
As the man handed me back the newly filled glass he nodded, “I am Yan. I mus’ introduce my family to you. I forget my manners.” He beckoned to the woman with the plaited hair and plump face “Vadoma.” She stared at me and I stared back and not knowing quite how to respond I nodded. Yan then waved his hand toward the elderly woman who had poured my wine into one of my glasses at my dining room table. “Bunica.” I raised my glass in greeting and she parted her lips to reveal a cavernous black hole. Then he gestured to the boy who had whacked the gong with my father’s cricket bat. “Bo.” I gave him the best forbidding stare I could.