Selden Village Stories

D Knight K

Description

Within the pages of this unorthodox work lurk craziness and concept. The novel is constructed in short stories that involve religion, politics, time travel and even the unedifying spectacle of old people having sex - each chapter subjected to the idiosyncratic storytelling of the author. It is hoped - no more so - that Rathbone, Wayne Hackett, Phillip Hickey, Cornelia Bonham and others will be recalled and debated long after the final punctuation mark. But not derided - though even that is preferable to the criticism of being considered forgettable. By the same author: "Going To The Last" and "Less Is More".

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 22 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843960478
• Langue: English

Extrait

SELDEN
VILLAGE
STORIES



K D Knight





MODEST PUBLISHING
Published by Modest Publishing

Copyright © 2013 K D Knight

K D Knight has asserted his
right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified
as the author of this work.

ISBN-13 978-1-84396-139-0

A CIP catalogue record for
this ebook edition is available
from the British Library.

ePub ebook production
www.ebookversions.com

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic,
photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without
the prior written permission
of the publisher. Any person who
does any unauthorised act in
relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution
Contents


Copyright Credits
Title Page

Rathbone and the Woman Who Paints the Night
Wayne and the Two-Hundred-Year-Old Storm
Luke Walker Talks Devil Talk
The Collared Bar-Fly and the Pussyfoot
Leopold Speiglemeister: Inventor of the Hygiene 4000A
The Big White House which Possibly Does Not Exist
A Surprise Appearance at the Sea Lodge Hotel
To Change Not Only Britan But The World
Rathbone and the Death of Dorothy Linfield
On the Campaign Trail
The Woman Who Lives in a Regency World
The Bates Method of Improving Eyesight and Other Revelations
The Woman Who Lives in a Regency World (continued)
A Fledgling Gumshoe
Cornelia and the Water Spirit
A Knock at Rathbone s Door
Rathbone and
the Woman Who Paints
the Night


There was a time when Sally would be in the shop preparing for the day ahead when Rathbone arrived at five-fifteen to start his paper round. If he was late for any reason, she would bring in the papers and unbundle and sort them, a kindness which saved time and, though he would not think it possible, got him from under her feet. It remains a disappointment to begin the day without the exchange of gossip, unable to woo her with love s innuendo. On occasion her friendliness seemed honed especially to excite his expectations and he left the shop to drive into the dark morning persuaded he was lowering her defences, a lascivious smile incubating with the slow fortitude of bacteria under the surface of his whiskery curmudgeonly face. But these days she leaves it to him to open up and he rarely sees her until he has finished his round when in the company of customers and other employees there is no opportunity to present himself as the man who could fill the voids in her life.
Rathbone is an opportunist, a fantasist; a man for whom love is an accumulation of unrequited lust; a man for whom sex and love have hopelessly intertwined: a man manipulated not by the will of God but the unseen hand of Satan.
Even as he sorts the newspapers he imagines what he might say to Sally later in the morning, as if in visualising his dreams he might manifest them into reality. His eye has twinkled in her direction since she inherited the shop from her mother, his employer for twelve years. Then the twenty year age gap - a chasm which seemingly widens rather than shortens as they become older - did not seem unbridgeable. He was upright and only fifty-eight; unreferred to as elderly, his pension book laughingly a long way off. Sally was not yet forty, her figure uncorrupted by readily available chocolate bars and locally made cake. Time has ravaged them both. But in his mind s eye he can still imagine himself satisfying her; in his dreams he is the Adonis of every woman s desires.
As he stacks the papers in reverse order of delivery he hums snatches of romantic songs, in his head sounding like Michael Buble, Sally s favourite, his eye lingering over immodest front cover pictures of celebrity women, his lingering eye straying into covetous images of what he would like to get up to with Sally or indeed any inventive, creative or desperate woman. All his life he has been in the category of man who must sow his oats whenever and with whom he can. He is not a lonely and despicable man without good reason.
Setting the shop alarm and securing the door he hastens to his van. Bluejacket Parade is unilluminated and a thin rain falls from a fatalistic sky. Without street lights Selden waterfront resembles the days of yore when only nature supplied the world with light. It was dangerous territory then, with working boats at anchor in the estuary. It is eerie still to the imaginative and easily frightened; perfect undercover conditions for someone as unprincipled as Rathbone to go about his business.
The blazing lights of the shipyard on the opposite shoreline cast slithering pennants on the water to draw the eye, to bring into focus the sailboats which bob on the rising tide, a reminder for him to get a move on so as not to be impeded if the creek at Lasborough floods the road down to the Riverside Cafe. The tender hearted aesthetic would stand a while to edify the imagination with the shadowed and other-worldly sounds of the dark and mysterious nature. But that is not who Rathbone is; he is not in the least bit malleable or sensitive; he is stoic, unchanging and apathetic toward the incorporeal and ethereal. He is a Midweek and Weekend Sport reader. He can have more than enough of the view across the river when the newspapers are late and he must stand around waiting for their arrival.
Although a man of selfish projection Rathbone prides himself on his efficiency. He turns off the radio in fear of its distractions and turns up the setting on the heater to prevent the windscreen misting. He is a veteran paper-boy; he knows how easily it is to make the silliest of errors. He worked for Sally s mother for twelve years and he has worked for Sally for eight, the only job he has ever held down for any length of time. At sixty-six he could retire but cannot imagine life without its daily contact with Sally.
He sets off, cussing the weather and the necessity for him to be out and about when others sleep or sip tea in their dressing gowns, eager to be getting on, to being done. The Smugglers Inn, Daily Telegraph, Catherine Court, Mr.Elks, Daily Mail. The Blythe Spirit Rest Home, Daily Mirror. And so on. In and out of his van, industry tinged with histrionic cloak and dagger: Rathbone at work, keeping his head above water. His customers are names and titles of newspapers: their deliverer as unknown to the majority as the elves that assemble toys for Santa Claus.
As he turns into Judges Drive, flicking his car lights to full beam, he wonders, as he always wonders at this point of his day, if he will see the mysterious occupant of number five. As he delivers Mr.Furlong s Express he glances up the street, even though he cannot see the Seed s house from where he stands on the path of number one. The thin rain continues to fall in its relentless quest to soak him through to his skin, with the dawn many miles up the road.
He must deliver a Racing Post to the Grandins at number four but as he pulls to a halt he is thinking about the mysterious woman, picturing her in his mind s eye as he usually sees her, with a brush in her hand, her eyes fixed assuredly on the canvas, a picture of study and contemplation, transferring imagery into art. It is a long walk for an old paperboy to the box at the back door of the Grandins house, forcing him away from whatever titillating tableau may be viewed in the glazed balcony of number five. When he glanced up after getting out of the van it fractionally broke his spirit not to see her, always thinking of himself as Romeo and the woman as an unconventional Juliet. It is the highpoint of his round, now that he no longer has Sally to lust over first thing in the morning, to glimpse the woman painting the night, as naked as a Saga Holidays centrefold.
Occasionally, when he is ahead of himself, he has left the van outside the Furlongs house and walked up to the Grandins and the Seeds, hoping to gain a better view, a longer view, of the pleasurable and nonconformist artist at work but she has always managed to step away from the window to render his anticipation to mush.
The Seeds take both the Daily Mail and the Guardian, and as he walks up the steep path to the front door, the newspapers tucked inside his coat, he cannot prevent himself from glancing upward. The woman works under strong light which should aid the roving, lascivious eye but which somehow surrounds the woman with a camouflage of reflection and glare, distorting his perception of her figure and age. He has delivered to number five for three years and not once has he come face to face with anyone who lives at the house and in the lighter mornings of spring and summer the balcony is unfailingly, frustratingly, empty, with not even a naked easel on display.
As he pulls the two newspapers from the protection of his coat, popping open the letterbox with his free hand, he notices something unusual. Whereas the balcony is usually awash with brilliant light, the rest of the house is normally in darkness. This morning the hallway too is brightly lit.
To the uninitiated it might seem an easy task to extricate a newspaper from inside a wet coat and insert it without imperfection into a highly-sprung letterbox. It is not; it is fraught with the little annoyances of life: paper and moisture are only a hair s breath away from papier-mache. Rathbone has executed the technique for twenty years but even he must work at it with thoroughness and precision and the lighted hallway is a distraction of variable possibilities. The Guardian is a solid newspaper but the Mail is printed on the thinnest paper, with the front page almost ingrained with the intention to fall away from the main body of the newspaper. As he lets go, he loses control of the letterbox, causing the Mail to hang from its weakest extremity. Quickly he flicks open the letterbox, not wanting the papers to separate and fall into th