Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     Mary had always been nervous about walking across the common after dark.

     ‘Go round by the road’, John advised with that note of exasperation in his voice which she had lately come to dread.

     To go round by the road would mean a long walk of nearly two extra miles and after a busy day at work was more than Mary could gladly tolerate.

     ‘Selfish brute!’ she fumed as she clicked the gate shut behind her and turned towards the dark mass of the common at the end of the road.  It was fine for John.  All he had to do was get into the car, turn the key in the ignition and he was away to his twice-weekly club meeting.

     Anger, hot and choking, rose in Mary’s throat as she watched the rear lights of the car disappear in the opposite direction.  She knew that a five-minute diversion from his route would take her safely to Gran’s little cottage, some half a mile distant across the common.

     Who would have guessed, she thought, as she left the last street-light behind, climbed over the stile at the edge of the common and began to walk quickly along the dark path, who would have guessed that it would come to this?  That the bright promise of their early days together would turn slowly but surely into sullen silences and unvoiced suspicions?  That even now she suspected her once caring husband of betrayal too painful to fully comprehend?

     With her thoughts skittering wildly and threatening at any moment to overwhelm her in angry tears, Mary suddenly became
aware of footsteps behind her.  She stopped, listening carefully, trying without success to still the panic which made breathing difficult and amplified her heartbeats until she was sure they must be heard by whoever was following on that dark path.

     Just ahead, the pathway rose to cross the old golf-course and Mary knew that once she reached the top of the rise she would see the lights of Gran’s cottage ahead.

     She was nearly halfway up the incline when a dreadful sound came echoing through the darkness.  She stopped again, almost paralysed by fear as she tried desperately to analyse the awful scream which rose to a crescendo then abruptly stopped.

     ‘Move!’  Mary’s voice forced its way out through dry lips.  Somehow her legs obeyed the command even as her mind registered the fact that the footsteps were now much nearer.

     Then she was at the top of the slope and beginning the long descent to the other end of the common.  On either side of the path, dark shapes loomed and were gone as she rushed headlong towards the lights ahead.  At a bend in the path she risked a swift glance behind.  Then she was off again, heedless of the reaching strands of bramble and gorse tearing at her legs as she passed.

     Only one image flooded her mind as she strove desperately to reach her goal in time.  Behind her, she knew, was the tall, dark figure of a man surrounded by a weird, blue light which flashed on and off as he moved ever nearer to his prey.

     Breathless and trembling violently, Mary at last reached the end of the path.  She fell painfully on to her knees as she clambered over the stile.  Then she was across the road and running through the garden up to Gran’s kitchen door.

     ‘Dear God, please don’t let it be locked!’ she gasped as she turned the handle.  Then she was falling, falling into a deep, dark and spinning pit and the flashing blue light was right behind her as she fainted on Gran’s kitchen floor.

     ‘You gave me quite a fright, young lady!’
      

     Mary looked across to Gran sitting by the fire in the spare bedroom of the cottage.  Was it really only a week since that dreadful night?  The night of the flashing blue lights of the police car and the ambulance called to the scene of the accident?  The accident that left her widowed and John’s deception turned into tragedy?

     They said that the other woman’s husband was distraught and too ill to leave the house.  She would go to see him after the funeral when they had both begun to accept.

     Gran was speaking again as Mary drifted in and out of sleep.
      
     ‘The gamekeepers caught old Job that night, Mary.  Poaching again.  They said his sack was filled with pheasants and rabbits.  Poor things, what a terrible way to die’.