Story Code: M/F, MM/F, Public sex, Incest, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism, Sex Slave
*****
I was working in my back garden, it was time to raise the soil on my potatoes to keep them covered and prevent them turning green, I was listening to the thrum of village life going on around me. City folk who visited always remarked on the quietness of the village but what they really meant was that they couldn't hear the growl of car and truck engines, the screaming sirens of police, ambulance and fire engines, the thunder of passing trains, the rumble of the underground below and the incessant music from houses, flats and cars.
I could hear the noises of village life, in the long meadow, three men were working and I could hear them chatter as they worked. Claire from the corner house was cooing at her new baby, a tractor was working the cabbage field at Hill Top Farm and the nursery school were singing the alphabet together at the other end of the village. I could even track the flight of the bees as they flew endless trips from the hive to the flowers in village gardens.
To me the village was a very noisy place but suddenly there was another sound, a rhythmic, 'Bang...tap...bang...tap...bang'. It was the beginning of a message being broadcast across our valley.
'Tap...bang...bang...tap'. I stood up and held my breath, silencing my body as much as I could to be sure of what I'd heard. 'Tap...bang'. 'Bang...tap'. I was right, I had heard correctly, the first sequence of sounds from the village drums was a 'P' followed by 'A' and then 'N'. The drum sequence was being repeated, it would be repeated at least three times, 'PAN-PAN-PAN'. Pay Attention Now...Possible Assistance Needed...Pay Attention Now'.
The village had really fallen silent now, the workers in the long meadow had stopped talking, the engine of the tractor in the cabbage field at Hill Top Farm had fallen silent and Claire had stopped cooing at her baby, even the toddlers in the infant school had stopped singing their alphabet song, the only sound left apart from the echo of the drums was the sound from the bees, they didn't care about human problems, just so long as we keep planting flowers for them to gather pollen from...they were happy.
The sequence of drum beats changed, 'Tap...tap...tap'. 'Bang'. I gasped, the message seemed to have become more urgent, the 'PAN' sounded like it had changed to S.O.S. I strained to try and hear the missing two bangs from the 'O' but instead of two bangs I heard, 'Tap...bang...tap'.
I thought, 'Not an 'O', it was 'S...T...R'.
'Tap...bang'. 'Bang...tap'. 'Bang...bang...tap'. 'Tap'. 'Tap...bang.tap'.
I followed the rhythm in my head, 'A...N...G...E...R. Stranger!'
Page 1
There was a stranger in the village, that wasn't unusual, we got ten or twelve strangers in our village every year but usually a stranger would be accompanied by a villager who would usually show a visitor around the village, introduce them to the pub landlord, to the shop keeper and to the priest at the church. This stranger was unaccompanied, I followed the message carefully in my head, a black man was in the village; that was enough to raise suspicions of the people that had seen him.
My telephone rang, the sound of the bell made me jump because I was concentrating so hard on the drums.
"Hello, six...two..."
"Vicky..."
"Oh, hi Colin, what can I do for you?"
"There's a man in the village shop..."
"I've just been listening to the drums...a black man in the shop."
"But that's not why I'm calling you. I'm calling because he's asking if anyone knows Victoria Porter!"
I gasped...that was a name that I hadn't heard in almost twenty years, ever since I married Johnny Clarke.
"Why is he looking for me?"
"I didn't ask...I just said that I thought that the Porters lived in the next village, suggested that he call in the church over there but he said that he'd started out there and they suggested that he widened his search to the other villages in the area."
I thanked Colin for calling me and I changed my wellingtons for trainers, washed my hands and dried them. I left the house and walked to the village shop to buy a pint of milk...buy milk that I didn't really need, milk that my father in law had actually produced and sold to the shop in the first place but I was curious as to why a black man wanted to find me.
I saw him, he was talking to Elizabeth Walker, the chairwoman of the church flower committee, Elizabeth did the flowers at my wedding so she knew my maiden name but I saw her shaking her head and she was directing the man toward the road leaving the village, her hand movements were directing the man to the next village. He turned and I saw his face, he had an immature goatee beard, and fluffy stubble on the rest of his face, he was young, hardly a man, he looked more like seventeen or eighteen years old, he had dreadlocks that were about ten inches long that flopped over his eyes, suddenly he pulled the dreadlocks to one side.
He was looking at me now, his eyes widened, he thanked the woman and headed in my direction. I entered the shop, Mr Roberts welcomed me and nodded towards the road, "There's a black man looking for you Mrs Clarke, I didn't tell him anything...look out, he's coming over here again."
I thanked Mr Roberts and left the shop without buying anything, in the street I was about ten feet from the man, "Victoria...I'd know you anywhere!"
Page 2
I stopped in my tracks, "I'm sorry...do I know you?"
I knew that I didn't know him, I didn't know any black men and certainly not one with a goatee beard and dreadlocks.
"No...you don't know me...but you know my father."
I was about to say that I didn't know any black men but I realised, he wasn't Asian, he was a mixed race, half Afro-Caribbean and half white so I stopped myself, "Who is your father?"
"Was...unfortunately rather than is...my father shared your face and colouring, he was your brother...Simon."
"Victoria...Victoria...are you okay?"
Mr Roberts was kneeling at my side, he had a vile of smelling salts under my nose and I had a bump on my head.
"I saw you go down like a sack of spuds, what happened?"
I started to come to my senses, I was mumbling, "My brother...my brother Simon!" over and over again.
"You don't have a brother do you Mrs Clarke?"
"I did, Simon ran away from home when I was twelve years old, he was only sixteen and I never saw or heard of him again after that."
The black man knelt at my other side, "Of course...I never realised that you might be married, that you might not be Victoria Porter any more...all my father ever told me was that he had a little sister, in my mind you were still the young girl in the photograph that my father kept in his wallet all the time...no wonder no one in the area knew you."
I was sitting up now, the bump on my head was forming a trickle of blood down my cheek now that I was upright, Mr Robinson was fussing around me with his first aid box, he was trying to clean the gravel out of my wound and stop the blood reaching my T-shirt. I looked at the young man, there was a look of concern on his face.
I managed to clear the fog from my mind, "Why are you here...what do you want?"
"I was at my father's side Aunty Victoria...at his side when he died. He wrote you a letter and he made me promise to come to England and give his letter to you, he wanted me to put his words in your hand and tell you that he regretted having to leave you behind when he left."
In my kitchen, My Nephew Simon, named after his father, insisted that I sat down while he made me a cup of tea. He looked around my kitchen, he gestured to a cupboard. "Did you design this kitchen aunty?"
I nodded my head but had to stop quickly as the bump on my head was now making its presence known loud and clear. He smiled at me, "My kitchen at home is laid out in exactly the same way, my father made his living on Saint Martin fitting kitchens and building furniture...he kept the tea in this cupboard."
Page 3
He opened the door to the cupboard and looked over his shoulder and grinned at me, "Everything in here is exactly the same as at home, same stuff, just different brands."
I sipped at my tea and he handed me a letter from my brother to me. I caught the acrid smell of body odour from Simon and he stepped back, "I'm sorry, I must smell like a skunk, I only had enough money for my flight from Saint Martin, I've been sleeping rough and walking everywhere to try and find you."
I was about to open the letter but stopped, "How long have you been here...how long have you been sleeping rough?"
"Only two weeks."
"You found me in just two weeks, that's impressive!"
"Not really, I had a good starting point, I found my grandparents..." a shiver ran through my body at the mention of my parents, "...I didn't tell them who I was or that my father had passed away...I'm sorry by the way for the way I dropped that news on you...I guess that I've had so long to get used to it, we had two years warning that his cancer was terminal."
"Two years!"
"My father would have come to England to find you himself but he needed constant medical attention and wouldn't have survived a long flight. He asked several cruise companies if he could book passage with them to England but he couldn't get insurance."
"You need a shower!"
"Yes, I don't think they'll be happy to allow me back on the aircraft smelling like this."
"When are you going back home?"