This is a simple gentle story. If you want violence, rape, incest or such stuff please look elsewhere.
This story is set in the same village as another of my stories, 'The Chair in the Corner', but is in no way a sequel. I hope that it stands up on its own, as they say.
I hope you like it. If you do, I'd like to know. If you don't, then I'd also like to know why, so that I can do better next time.
Our house is next door to the Running Fox, one of the village pubs. In fact, in the past, it had been a part of the pub. We don't have the records, but it looks as if a row of old outbuildings were repaired and made habitable in order to provide extra rooms in the days of the coaching trade. Then, with the decline of coaching they were split off again into a separate house, long and low, but warm and comfortable. In layout, it was just a series of rooms joined by a corridor, much as a hotel corridor might be nowadays.
At one end the room had been converted into a kitchen, and the next into a living room. Then there are two bedrooms, what is now a bathroom, then a store that I use as an office, and then two more bedrooms. The doors to the outside are in the kitchen, and at the further end of the corridor. The last bedroom differs from the others. The walls are rougher, and the window is smaller. We suspect that it was used to accommodate the servants of those staying in the other rooms.
When the twins were younger this was their playroom.
It was lunchtime. The house felt empty. So unlike yesterday.
By yesterday evening we had been in the pub. I was looking across the room at the twins, Liz and Dave. They were both a little drunk, but gloriously happy. Liz had just got married. We were all in the Fox. We raised our glasses, and by we I mean all our families and friends, and half of the rest of the village, to the happy couple.
Liz picked up her now husband's hand in a rather peculiar way. She stroked his palm. He had blushed, and she led him outside, and next door, to raucous cheers.
I had heard a quiet voice. No, I couldn't have heard it in that row, but I thought I heard someone, a woman, say, "He's a goodun, and she knows what she's about. They'll be happy enough"
I had looked round, but I was surrounded by most of the village football team. Was it my imagination, and perhaps the odd beer and chaser. But I had recognised that voice from somewhere.
A shame their mother wasn't there, I thought for the umpteenth time that day.
Their Mum, my darling Libby, died a couple of years ago. She got an infection soon after we were married, and it affected her heart. We were told that the strain of having children might be too much for her, but Libby wanted kids. It happened, but having the twins, we were then told, would almost certainly be too much. But there they were, as fine a pair of kids, no make that young adults, as you could hope for.
It's just a shame she hadn't been there to see it.
And we had almost lost Liz as well.
They were four or five. They were playing together in their play room when Dave had rushed through to Libby, crying,
"She says she's very ill, Mummy, she says that you have to get help."
Libby had rushed through. Liz was lying on the spare bed in there, she was feverish, her skin was blotchy. Libby rang the Doctor, and only minutes later she was in an ambulance. They had said that is was one of the fastest and most severe cases of meningitis that they had seen. That if we had waited a few more minutes we might have lost her. They warned us about possible severe side-effects, but Liz had recovered completely.
An only child will sometimes have an imaginary friend. But with twins, it is not so common. Stranger still, Liz and Dave did not have one friend each, they shared her between them. They had said her name was Feebee. It was only much later that they learned the correct spelling, Phoebe. They said that their friend Feebee looked after them.
I remembered first time that Dave got drunk. He was in the football team, yes, with the rabble that was surrounding me, and they had actually won a match, a real rarity.
He was more or less carried home from the pub -- not the Fox, the other one, and I sat him in the kitchen with some water and a bowl. Then he started talking.
"It's true what they said, isn't it, Liz might have died."
He paused.
"I wasn't the hero, you know."
Another pause. I tried to persuade him to drink some of the water.
"It was Phoebe you know. She told me to get help."
"Yes mate. Now drink up. You'll feel better in the ... "
But not now. He got most of it in the bowl. I soon had him cleaned up a bit and in bed with the bowl beside him.
How many years? Ten? No nearer fifteen. He still remembered their imaginary friend.
What had brought this to mind? The sight of Dave supping beer? Perhaps.
The Bride and Groom leaving meant that the others started to drift away. A minibus arrived to take folk home. I didn't want to go home just then. I wanted to let the newly-weds have a bit of time to themselves before I rolled in.
I'm not suggesting that last night would have been their first time for anything. They had been living together, in the room that had been a play room, for a couple of years. It was that it was their first time as man and wife.
If only Libby had been there as well.
As Libby had got weaker, she needed a special bed, and it was not a double. When she was strong we used to use the playroom bed for our gentle love making -- as much as we could. But mostly I would try to sleep on a mattress on the floor beside her bed -- until she complained that my snoring kept her awake, and I started to sleep in the play room. I rigged up the old baby alarm so that she could get me if she needed anything.
The first night or two I got no sleep. I was so worried that she would not be able to wake me. I lay listening to the tiny sounds that she made that were transmitted through the wire.
Then one night, I lay there. I must have snoozed. I dreamt.
A woman was standing beside me. I knew where I was, I was on the playroom bed, but there she was. She had picked up my hand, and was carefully and gently smoothing my palm. She took a tiny bottle from a pocket in her gown, and let a drop of something touch my lips. It was the last drop in the bottle. She was whispering something. In my dream, I licked my lips and tasted ... tasted fruit, apples, but more than that, there was the fire of a whisky or rum. I relaxed, and fell into deep refreshing sleep. I awoke, mostly revived, the next morning.
There, in the emptying bar, I remembered that dream.
I had other dreams in that bed.
I thought that it was the drugs that Libby had been given. I thought she had been hallucinating.
"Darling, I know we can't do much together, now. If you ever want to, you know, have ... relief ... it would be fine."
I heard what she said, but assured her that it was not likely to happen.
"A lady came to see me. She said that she would be very happy to -- entertain you."
Libby hadn't had any visitors for a few days.
"Please think about it Darling." Libby was quite insistent.
As I have already said, I had other dreams in that bed.
It was after Libby's suggestion that it started. The dream lady came to me and offered herself to me. I could not reject her offer, but I did not feel I could accept, dream or no dream. I think that I said "Too soon," or "Not now, " or some such delaying message.
Libby had raised the subject of sex again, encouraging me, I remembered.
In time, I accepted the lady's offers. She would slide into my dream bed, take my hand, and stroke it. Then we would kiss and cuddle, we would tweak and fondle. Sometimes I just lay there while she pleasured me with mouth and breasts and with her sweet sweet cunny. Other times she would demand more from me and we would writhe and plunge, I would lick and suck and bite and slide and sweat.
The pub was almost empty by now. I emerged from my thoughts, feeling somewhat in need of some cold night air, and I decided that it was late enough for me to go home, but then Sid, the Landlord came and stood by my side.
"Here mate, taste this."
He gave me a tiny shot glass. The contents were warm and deep brown. I sniffed it and knew it. It was the same brew that the lady gave me that one last drop of, but with hot water diluting it.
"Make it last. This is the last bottle I've got. Perhaps the last bottle anywhere -- and it's nearly empty."
He held up an old green glass bottle. It looked hand blown. There was less than half an inch of liquid left in the bottom.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Some sort of cider brandy. An old family recipe I think. My grandfather said that he had been left three bottles, my father two, and now just this."
I sipped. Apples, yes, but autumn leaves and spice and spring flowers as well.
"Its not every day that you give your child away. Its our family tradition. Having a drop of this at a wedding."
Sid had three married daughters.
