The Fold
Mick brings another bucket in from the coal house and shovels coal onto the fire, reducing the flames to smoke. He throws on another lot of coal. ‘Do you think you’ll be alright with that?’ he asks.
‘Bit more I think. Bit more,’ she says. He goes back out and fills the half empty bucket again. He comes back and puts it by the fire in the inglenook fireplace. Helga rocks in her chair and he pats her on the shoulder. ‘Good night then, Helga. See you in the morning.’
‘Good night,’ she says, sitting by the window. He gets back into his silver 4×4 for the short drive down the drover’s road to the farmhouse by the railway.
Helga puts on her jacket and picks up her stick as the birdcalls begin to subside. The moorland beyond the blossoms is black. Ramshaw Burn trickles in a silver curve past Brookside. Helga opens the back door and pulls it half closed behind her. The metal stick gives a little clink before her every step forward on the drover’s road. Brenda is not in her kitchen. Helga walks down the hill to Mick’s. He dries dishes in the kitchen. She carries on down the hill towards Brookside and stands on the moonlit lane as rabbits run past her in the darkness. The train for Newcastle goes by and Helga waves at the white faces. The conductor stares from the window. Helga stands in the moonlight and listens to the whistle near the station. She walks back up the hill, the little clinks of her stick further apart this time. Mick’s kitchen light is off now. There’s a light on in the living room and Mick sits in the glow of the television. Helga passes the Bastle House. Two lights are on upstairs. The moonlight shines over Willimoteswick. She carries on past the Cruk barn and the Bastle barn in the darkness. There’s the black rush of a cat across the drover’s road. The old creamery stands in the darkness. She pushes through the half open door of her house. She sits in the rocking chair without taking off her coat. The coals glow brightly in the fire and she can feel the heat on her knees.
The moon shines in across her as the fire begins to fade. She reaches for her stick, and pushing down on it rises from the rocking chair. She shovels coal onto the fire and listens to it crackling. Then she goes out onto the moonlit street. Streetlights cast a little orange on the pavements. She stands outside the house. The black outline of the rocking chair sits in the window. She walks down the street, a tiny clink before every stride. Water passes through pipes below the road and she stands there listening to it.
A white haulage wagon passes along the A69, and then a moped comes down the old road, the tiny engine seeming to rise in volume. Helga waves at the young lad in a white helmet who increases his speed. She stands there and listens as the moped continues through Tow House and passes Henshaw School. Helga stands below the streetlight, orange shining on her stick as she listens to the moped fading beyond Melkridge. She turns right and walks down the drive of The Fold. She can hear blackbirds nesting in a bush. She continues slowly down the drive towards the door at the side. In the black window the moonlight shines on her stick. She knocks on the back door of The Fold. She waits. Then she turns the handle and opens the door and wanders into the kitchen. The sink is empty. There are empty wine bottles lined on the floor. The stick taps more softly on the hall carpet. She makes her way up the stairs, step by step. At the top she sits down in a chair on the landing. Her knees are black. She presses down on the stick and gets up from the chair. She goes into a bedroom. There’s a double bed and one shape huddled there. She tries another bedroom, where there are two beds in the gloom and a small lump in each of those little beds. Helga stands there. There’s movement in one of the beds.
‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’ says Helga. ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch?’
Neil Campbell was born in Manchester but now lives in Hexham. He is studying for a PHD at Northumbria University. Two collections of stories, Broken Doll, and Pictures from Hopper published by Salt. Two poetry chapbooks, Birds, and Bugsworth Diary published by Knives, Forks and Spoons. Recent stories in Best British Short Stories 2012, Tears in the Fence and Short Fiction Journal.