Stories and Articles

The portent ...

by Ean Lawrence

The cottage lay exposed to elemental forces in the borderland between the dunes and the sea-swept beach. The clapboard building with a shingle roof and a squat brick chimney - the footprint of which was no larger than ten paces by eight - had been bleached by the sun, seasoned by salt spray and scourged by storm-blown sand.

The front door, like the rest of the building’s elevation that confronted the prevailing weather, scoured of most of its paint, had lost the knocker it had possessed in a previous existence; now a bell, salvaged from a redundant fishing boat, hung beside the door and was used to summon the attention of the occupant of the cottage.

A wooden porch constructed from a bottomless rowing boat had been constrained to lean, like a bush that over time succumbs to the prevailing wind, at an angle to the perpendicular; for the amount of protection the porch afforded the cottage’s main entrance against the weather’s worse assaults it might as well not have been there; but, according to clichéd notions of the romantic ideal, the cottage would have looked incomplete without it.

Half a day earlier, Doctor Kearns Goodman had trudged to the cottage of Annie Micheldeavor. Through squinting eyes, it appeared to Doctor Goodman that he was walking through clouds, and the clouds were composed of sand. It was as if all the sands of Arabia were on the move and were banking in drifts against stubborn grasses and artificial barriers, such as abandoned nets and crab pots. Hindered only by a false step or two, the doctor arrived at the cottage, rang the bell and, receiving a muffled invitation from the interior, entered the cottage.

As he entered the apartment, Doctor Goodman observed the familiar objects and their disposition around the room, an arrangement that had not changed in the last thirty years. The best piece of furniture in the room was a deal table, placed against one of the walls; there was a box bed with coarse sheets, abrasive blankets and a plain counterpane; a solitary chair was positioned by the fire for the visitors that had sufficient charity to take the trouble to call; and everything was coated with a layer of fine, wind-blown sand, as if all the appointments had been dusted with granules of unrefined sugar.

Suddenly, a flash of yellow light, its source an oil lamp, appeared as the door was opened. The doctor stooped as he passed through the doorway and the light; for a fleeting moment, it looked as if the doctor had acquired an aura. He pulled the door closed behind him and the light disappeared, except where it escaped through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor of the cottage.

The doctor’s vigil was at an end: Annie lay on her bed, still and lifeless. Before leaving, the doctor had placed her rheumatic hands under the cover and had closed the lids over eyes that had still seemed bright and inquisitive. The lower part of Annie’s face had the collapsed appearance of the aged whose mouth was devoid of teeth and gave exaggerated emphasis to cheekbones that would have been described, even with a mouth that contained a full, or near full, complement of teeth, as prominent. In the furrows of her wrinkled countenance were written patience and fortitude; superscribed across the lines were later lines of suffering endured: children whose brief lives each left a fresh mark; a husband given up to a jealous sea; and of an obstinate adherence to life, however arduous that life had turned out to be.

The fire that had been fuelled by driftwood, and which had produced smoke of a peculiar fragrance, was extinct; on the mantelshelf, the clock that could be relied on to lose ten minutes in every twelve hours, that had ticked and tocked with a preternatural loudness, had fallen silent

As in every case where the quietus had been granted in defiance of all efforts, wishes and, yes, prayers, even when the patient was of an age as remarkable as Annie’s, Doctor Goodman felt it – felt it hard, like a punch to the solar plexus - as a failure on his part; no amount of rationalization could reduce - not in the first few weeks, at least – the regret and the feeling of frustration. It was this uncompromising attitude that made Doctor Goodman such a good doctor and, by common opinion, a good man.

Standing in the porch looking out upon what was now a serene sea, the swirling desolation of the previous evening was now quickly receding in the doctor’s memory. He found himself overwhelmed by the tranquillity of the scene and surrendered to what he regarded as a pathetic sentimentality. Tears rolled down his cheeks. This visit would be the last one he would make to this cottage on the beach; this was the last time that Annie would have need of his services as a respected member of the medical profession. After a few minutes of reflection, Doctor Goodman set off to return to his surgery to report Annie’s demise.

As he walked through the dunes, Doctor Goodman became increasingly aware of a presence. He looked about him but couldn’t see anyone. Then he perceived a faint glow ahead of him in the dunes; this radiance eventually resolved itself into the figure of a young woman dressed in a white shift; he followed this apparition as it moved between the mounds of sand. Whatever pace or direction the doctor adopted, the spectre, the phantom, or whatever this observable fact was, maintained the same distance from him.

Doctor Goodman’s car was found where he had left it on the landward side of the dunes. Despite an extensive search, no trace of the good doctor was ever found. Those who found Annie Micheldeavor’s body in her cottage hardly recognized her; it seemed that time had been rolled back: her face was smooth, and all trace of affliction and sorrow had been effaced.

There was, at last, a smile on Annie’s lips.