Friday 10th July, 201* , S*******
Maybe I should start at the very beginning then perhaps
if someone finds this, it will all make more sense. That is, if what has just
happened can make sense - to anyone.
I live (lived) in a beautiful village in the south-east
of England. I don’t want to be any more exact than that, just in case they find
this.
A week ago, we had the village fete, with all its usual
sunshine, and games and I remember thinking to myself what a perfect place to
live. Old misery-guts ran the whole show, moaning, as he usually did, about
everything. Yet the fete always seemed to take place and, in the end, would
always manage to be better than the year before.
The village has one great pub, called The Winston
Churchill, which supplies the drinks on the day of the fete. There’s a stall
for strawberries, one selling flowers, another for support of the local drama
society and one where Mrs Laud tells peoples’ fortunes for a small donation to
the church. Oh, yes and there’s a church which you’ll see is very important –
but I’ll get to that.
It’s a friendly little place where everyone knows
everyone else, and where everyone knows secrets (or say they do) about the rest
of the village. I think the village works on the premise that everyone has at
least one secret they would rather keep to themselves. If people don’t know
what it is, the kind folks of the village will make one up. Not much different,
I would imagine, from anywhere else in this glorious land.
I think I am going to use this notebook to record two things.
The first is to record what is happening right now to the place where I live
and the second is to recall stories about the great, the good and the downright
stupid who have lived in the place since I came to stay here – which must be
about 20 years ago; time flies.
I discovered it by accident. I just happened to be
driving along the high road when I saw a sign for the village and fell in love
with the place immediately. It’s that type of place – the kind of village you
only find once in a lifetime.
The first sign of anything unusual was the ‘phones going
dead – any and every ‘phone, it seemed. Sometimes this happened in a small
village. Sometimes it snowed and we’d be cut off for a day or two. I mean, it’s
only 20 miles from London but you can still be isolated down here.
I had gone down to the Winston to see if anyone else had
the same problem. The owner, Annie, told one of her staff to turn on the
television to see if there was any news. And guess what? That was only showing
a blank screen with the odd spark every so often.
“Maybe some transmitter’s down,” said Annie in her usual
re-assuring way.
“What transmitter?” Asked old Jake, who questioned
everyone and everything.
“How should I know, Jake, just sit there and sup your
beer,” she scolded which was quickly followed by a smile.
“It’s them Russians,” scowled Jake. “Probably marched
through Ukraine all the way to London, like as not.”
The rest of us gave Jake a smile, the way we always gave
Jake a smile.
It was just before seven that someone mentioned they
hadn’t heard any trains that afternoon and I quickly realised they were
correct, I couldn’t recall hearing the London train pass either.
“Maybe someone should ring the church bells, let the
village folks know that it’s seven o’clock,” said Annie.
I mentioned that people could just look at their watches
or clocks but as Jake pointed out, they had all stopped, too.
So when the rest of them in the Winston looked at me, I
knew I had been volunteered to go and ring the bells. I had messed about with
bell-ringing once upon a time.
I walked into a beautiful summer’s evening. The village
has no street lighting (although that’s common around these parts and won’t
give a clue as to where we are) – and as I walked up the street I could see through
windows families sitting down together, maybe for the first time without the
television invading their evening meals.
As I crossed the street to go through the church gate, I
noticed the last house suddenly go dark inside. At the time I didn’t think much
about it, until I tried the switches in the church hall and all of them failed
to work.
I had climbed up to the church tower many a time to look
at the bells (eight in all) – so accomplishing this in the dark wasn’t a
hardship.
I pulled my way carefully up the iron-rung ladders and
balanced my way across the narrow beam which took me to a small platform on the
other side of the tower. There was only enough room for one man or woman up
there. The bells were looking okay and standing up, so I thought I’d go down a
start ringing down one of them.
That was when I heard the noise. I wasn’t sure who or
what it was, but it sounded like a train on the rails was in trouble. Then I
heard men shouting. Perhaps a train had crashed into a transmitter or something
and knocked everything out.
I climbed the last ladder (which took a person up to the
very top of the church tower) to have a better look. I don’t know what made me
hesitate - most probably my fear of heights - but I decided not to stand but
look through one of the holes in the brick which let rain water out.
I remember once, when I was making a parachute jump up
in Scotland, my brain had decided to take a back seat – it’s the only way I can
describe it – and it felt as I plummeted to the ground, that I was watching a
movie and all this wasn’t happening to me.
This was the same feeling, as I looked through the hole
in the church tower, I could see tanks – the military sort – followed by
soldiers with guns. I could just make out their shouting and it wasn’t any
language I had heard before.
The village was being invaded. I could see from the
tower, the same uniformed men coming in from both sides of the High Street.
As the tanks turned the corner into the street below the
church, several of the soldiers broke off and ran to the doors of the houses,
kicking them in.
I saw the Smith family, who lived in the first cottage,
being dragged out and made to kneel in the middle of the road.
That was when I felt my world changed on its axis. The
Smith’s eldest son got up to challenge one of the soldiers and another of them
shot the boy dead.
I fell back on to the floor of the tower and started to
shake. Maybe they were making a television programme? Something I hadn’t heard
about. When I had pulled myself together a little I had another look. The rest
of the Smiths were being marched at gun point down the street, Mrs Smith was
being forcibly removed from the body of her dead son.
My next thought was that maybe the Smiths were
terrorists but that too was cut short when I saw more families being forced
onto their knees in the street.
What the hell was happening to my world? This group of
people, whoever they were, were rounding up the whole village. I heard some of
them kick in the church door below me. There was more shouting in this strange
language as they knocked over furniture in the church.
I could hear someone try to climb the iron ladders –
they were coming up for me. I made myself as small as possible and pushed my
body into the corner of the tower.
It sounded as if one of the soldiers was helping the
other up the ladder. I waited on them finding me.
Suddenly the soldier fell from the ladder and must have
landed on the other because I could hear them argue – whatever the language
was.
This must have deterred them because I saw them run out
of the church and back on to the street. I stayed hidden until the sky was
pitch black and only the stars above me.
I was desperate for some water and decided as I hadn’t
heard anything for a long time that I might try to find something to drink.
I held my breath and lowered myself down to the middle
platform – I put my ear to the floor but I could hear nothing. I descended into
the church and it was totally black, although I could feel chairs and tables
lying upside down.
I knew the bell ringers kept some bottled water at the
back of the church and guessing where I was, I crawled towards the rear wall.
I located the cabinet and found three bottles of the
stuff. I drank that first bottle in one go and it was just as I wiped the
corner of my mouth that I heard the church door open.
bobby stevenson 2014
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