Sleeping Dogs Lie

Arthur

Joe sat in front of the unlit fireplace of Elsie's parlor in a stiff armchair with white lace arm covers that had turned ivory with age. Digger lay at his feet, his nose between his paws but his eyes and ears alert. The door was closed but Joe could hear Elsie, across the hall in the Dining room. She was pottering about, making everything ready for the evening's guests. They had settled into an easy routine for this now. Joe would come up to the house half an hour before the séance began and sit in the parlor to 'focus his psychic energies'. Elsie would greet the guests and seat them in the dining room. When they'd all paid their contribution for the evening's entertainment, Joe would make a grand entrance.

Normally, Joe would make a good show of meditating in case Elsie looked in but he was too jittery that evening. It was dark outside, the night quickened by rain clouds. Their gentle raindrops rattled against the window behind the closed curtains. A dim, overhead light illuminated the room, washing it in grays, browns and yellows. This room was a reflection of Elsie's life; the furniture, the décor, the sepia photos on the bookcase, all of it, stuck somewhere in the fifties. Joe felt it, the weight of decades and an old woman's loneliness. As his eyes wandered the walls and surfaces, he took in the details. The path in the old carpet, worn to the thread underneath by the passage of Elise's feet for all those years. The edge of a side table polished to a bright sheen where she continually brushed against it. How long did it take for that to happen? he asked himself, years or decades? The sofa and the other chair were barely used since the day they were bought here but the chair he sat in was Elsie's; the fabric was worn so smooth and thin on the arms that she had to put covers on them. It was the same with the rest of the house; he could follow the pattern of the old lady's life by the pattern of wear on the old farmhouse.

"Always falling for a hard luck story, aren't I Digger? Always picking up strays?" Joe remarked to the dog, whose ears flicked up at the mention of his name. Joe had found the mutt in a motorway lay-by one rainy November evening. He'd pulled over to relieve himself and as he stood there, hidden behind his caravan and pickup truck from the passing cars as they rushed by, he'd heard a quiet whimper. At first he'd been startled, thinking someone was there watching him but then he'd spotted the bedraggled dog a few yards away. Digger was soaked through and shivering, tied up with a bit of string to the crash barrier. Joe had taken the cold, wet dog and put him in his truck, intending to take him to an animal shelter or home. He never got around it, even though it would probably be better for Digger than life with him in the cold, leaky caravan.

Elsie was another stray that Joe had adopted.

Joe knew why she'd got so stuck in her life, like a needle stuck in the groove of one of the old seventy-eight records he could see piled up next to a gramophone in the corner. Arthur and Elsie had grown up together, during the war. They'd married as soon as their families would let them and moved into the farmhouse ready to start their own life together. One winter's evening soon after they'd moved in, Arthur didn't come home. By morning he'd been found dead beside the single track country lane, struck by a passing car or lorry. Whoever was driving hadn't stopped and there were no witnesses. That was it for Arthur; dead in a ditch, end of story. End of story for Elsie too. Who knew what the family thought but she didn't move on or move out. She just kept on as she had before, day in, day out, and all those long, empty years since. Like one of the old seventy-eights in the corner, played over and over until the groove was worn out and the needle dull. She had been a modern day Miss Havisham until Joe had come by last spring.

He'd only been looking for a place to stop for the night. Lost and not looking to be found, he'd pulled into the field and knocked on the farm house door. Elsie had answered it, shy and suspicious but a good enough natured soul. She'd let him and Digger stay. It was only going to be for a day, a week, a month. And as the days grew warmer they had warmed to each other, the tinker and the old widow. The ghost of Arthur was so strong around Elsie that Joe couldn't keep it to himself. He thought that if he told Elsie about Arthur, that Arthur was always there, always around her, it would give her some comfort, here and now at the end of her days. The first time that Joe told Elise about Arthur, the old girl's eyes had shone and tears had poured down her face. He'd swear, in that moment, he'd almost seen the young girl she'd once been shining like bones through the soft, wrinkled skin of the old lady that she was.

So they had come to a good arrangement; Elsie let Joe camp in her muddy, old field and Joe brought Arthur alive for her again. Of course, it didn't stay like that for long. Soon there were other old ladies and old boys stopping by, asking about long dead relatives and lovers. And Joe, the sucker for a sob story that he was, obliged them. Then people from further afield started showing up. Soon it became a regular thing, three nights a week, and an opportunity for Joe to earn some money. Not much, not ripping anyone off, just enough to buy food for him and the dog and get diesel for the truck. Still, it mounted up and now there was fair amount of cash in the old tea tin under the driver's seat of the pickup. The problem was that things were snowballing now; random elements were making it spin out of control. Random elements like Miss Smith and her inquisitive nose for a story.

Someone knocked on the front door and Elsie went to answer it. Joe settled back into the chair and closed his eyes. He could hear the mumble of greetings and conversation through the closed parlor door. Not enough to make out the words, just enough to hear the rhythm and rhyme of it.

He didn't concentrate, it didn't work like that. He just had to let the other voices in, the silent voices, the ones that were always there underneath. They didn't speak directly to him but he could hear them, like the murmur of quiet conversations in a crowded theatre while the main show was on the stage. He had to focus to pick out the individual threads and even then it could be hard to make them out. 

Another knock on the front door came. More people, more voices in his head. Soon it would be time to get the show on the road.