Sundown Tragedy, The

ลำดับตอนที่ #3 : Two

Reese would often sit by the window of every classroom.  He would look out to see the front fields and the old brick fence, or even farther out, at the roofs of many houses and the people who walked freely beyond the fence.  These people would at times look through the gaps of the fence and see Reese; they would stare at him for a moment, then continue to walk on and away.

            From his new classroom, Reese could not see much from the window.  The buildings beyond the fence seemed more like factories than houses.  Reese watched how the black smoke burnt from the tall stacks, and how it merged slowly into the smoggy light above. 

            But the factories, perhaps, had always existed.  These unfamiliar factories—maybe they had always been there but in camouflage.

            Miss Hawkins stood in front of the class.  The dark clothes she wore brightened as the light hit the windows.  The classroom had been very empty since morning, that eventually the boys and girls who sat in the back would exchange a little glimpse, then together, they would move closer up front.

            Reese did not move up with them.  He studied the empty desk next to him, the one that would have been Eric’s.  But Eric was not there.  Reese did not understand why, but Eric would be in Wales.  He would be miles and miles away—hours by train.  Reese thought he could never imagine.

            After football, Reese and Gus headed home on foot.  Tired, Reese felt one of his socks drooping below on his garter.  Their mother let them in with very little comment on Reese’s intolerable look.  Gus, who had sat merrily on the edge of the field watching Reese play, looked as neat as how he left in the morning, only that his shorts had picked up a bit of the wet, green colour of the grass.

            “Both in the washing,” was what Mum said.

            When night fell, the heat inside the house died away much like a falling tide.  Reese and Gus were already in their pyjamas, on a game of chess on the mat in the living room.  Their game downstairs was on a small board.  The big one was upstairs in their bedroom, where the game was that each would move a piece a day.  Reese would move his in the morning, and Gus, before bed.  That game had started a few weeks earlier—far before Eric’s leaving, or even before the rehearsals.

            Before that summer, there were games played under the light of the old sun.

            Reese remembered the atmosphere of the living room at night.  The air was good to sleep in, neither too hot nor too cold.

            Gus’ favourite chessman was the knight.  He made it obvious since he would keep his knights safe and untouched until the end of every game.

            “Boys.  Grub’s almost ready.  Can you set the table?” Mum asked.

            Called away from their game, Reese and Gus walked grudgingly across the room and towards the kitchen.  Reese stopped and looked through the windows.  The streets outside were lit by the many lamps.

            After they had set the table, Reese waited patiently back in the living room for his father to arrive.  Reese would always expect his father to be shadowed by a distinct smell of the hospital.  Like always, he would look tired.  He would remove his coat and hat, put his hand on Reese’s shoulder, and without saying much, walk towards their mother and give her a small kiss.  Behind him, there would always be a trail of that medicinal smell.

            When Reese heard the doorknob move, he quickly got on his feet to go and greet his father.  Gus followed very carefully.  He had been a collector of storybooks, and had already envisioned a dragon creeping behind that door.  The dragon—sharp teeth and jutting jaws, red, bloodshot eyes and green, rough scales—much like one of those creatures out of the pages of his storybook.

            “It could be a ghost too,” he said.

            “They don’t exist.”

            “You can’t tell.”

            “You and your cloddish thoughts,” said Reese, “It’ll be the death of you.  Oh, I promise!”

            Gus, too, smiled.

            Their father was a fair man in his forties.  He had a moustache.  And while Reese stood still to observe his father’s face, Gus had already climbed onto him.  “You’re getting heavier, my boy,” Dad said. Their father—he did not say much else.  He only smiled wearily, let Gus down and followed the boys into the dining room.

            At the table, under a dim light, their father ate very quietly.  His eyes would droop each time he chewed and swallowed his food.

            “He’s had a hard day of work, love,” Mum would often say to Reese.  Their father, he was a fine doctor, one of the only few. 

            As a child, Preston Sheffield had lived in a small house in Islington.  After the nights with the Zeppelins, as in the stories he had told Reese, his family made a decision to come to Kensington—which was where he found Irene.  Irene had always lived in Kensington.  The two had bought this house on Broad Street years before Reese was born.

            The house, though, was older.  Reese had heard of its history, how it was once too been partially hit and how it miraculously survived as the other houses next to it collapsed and burnt in envy.

            With that knowledge, Gus often spoke of the ghosts and the lost souls that wander in the neighbourhood, knowingly that the street they lived on had once been bombed flat, that many had perished.

            “If only history will repeat itself,” said Dad thoughtfully.  Reese did not understand what was meant by it.

            Back at the table, everyone still ate quietly.  Reese worked into his boiled cabbage and carrot, then into the little bit of meat that was given to him.  Reese often commented on this, and Dad would say, “Well, beggars can’t be choosers.”  Reese was very familiar with this sentence.

            “More meat, Mum?  Meat.  Meat.”

            “Crikey.  Gettin’ the thrill,” said Gus.

            This time, their father had no reply.

            Preston had long been familiar with such meals.  He had had smaller ones during the so-called rations of the Great War.  They were perhaps meatless days, just potatoes and beans.  He often remembered craving for food, that when given a bowl of gruel, he would swallow it all in three little seconds.  Those meatless days, he had not yet included into stories of war that he told Reese.

            “If only history will repeat itself,” again, he quietly said.