John Halkin - Squelch

‘I’ll get some insecticide in the morning.’

The hired van was parked in front of the cottage next to her own ‘battered baby’, as they had once dubbed her small Renault. Ginny helped him shut the rear doors, slipping the bar across to secure them. Before he climbed in he reached out to kiss her lips, but she turned her head, offering only a cheek. The hurt look on his face made her regret it immediately but by then it was too late.

‘You are going to be okay by yourself?’ he asked awkwardly. ‘I mean, I’ll stay if you want me to. Just for your first night.’

‘Jack — please ? You promised you’d not make it difficult.’

‘We both promised a lot of things.’ He started the engine. ‘I’ll come down next week to see how you’re getting on.’

‘You’re filming next week!’ she shouted above the noisy revving and grinding as he tried to engage reverse.

‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday!’ he called out. She was forced to jump back to safety as he went into his clumsy three-point turn over the rough ground. ‘Make it Thursday, shall we?’

‘That’s too soon!’ she yelled after him. How could she make him understand she wanted to be on her own? ‘I need time to settle in!’

In reply, he merely waved his hand. ‘I love you, Virginia Andrewes! Don’t forget!’ he sang out, then immediately roared off down the twisting lane, leaving her laughing in spite of herself.

She went back inside and began to gather up the torn pages of the Telegraph in which she’d wrapped her plates and cups for the move. A couple of months and Jack would probably have some new dolly girl twined about his neck. Some fresh young actress fishing for introductions to the right producers. When it came to recasting, actors like Jack never had any problem.

But that was no longer any of her business. She had cut herself free from all of it — from Jack, from that whole world of television, and their friends. Killed off a way of life.

For three years Ginny had done her stint as a director on that plodding tea-time soap opera. Then — at last — she’d been offered the first play in a brand-new drama series. A really great chance it had been and she’d given it all she’d got. Lived it. Dreamed it — well, Jack could bear witness to that. And that gas chamber sequence! Everyone was impressed: at last here was something to grab the audience where it hurt. Till the producer got cold feet and brought in the Head of Drama who tutted like some demented school-marm and insisted the footage had to come out. Ginny stood on her rights and appealed to the Head of Programmes, woman to woman. The ruling was not only upheld; the sourpuss demanded an additional cut as well. ‘Then it’ll go out without my name on it!’ Ginny had stormed at them furiously. They welcomed that suggestion so warmly, she felt she’d no alternative but to put in her letter of resignation the same afternoon.

Her blood still boiled when she thought about it. That had been the best scene in the play, for Chrissake! The key to the whole lousy plot!

She sat at the little round table by the cottage window and went over it all yet again in her mind. What he said… what she said… ‘Keep your head down,’ the producer had warned her before that final meeting. ‘You don’t think they worry if the scene’s good or not? They’re scared of the pressure groups: I know the signs. It’s my guess they’ve had a nod and a wink from Downing Street.’

But she hadn’t listened. God, how could she have been so stupid?

She could hold it back no longer. Her head sank forward on to her arms and her shoulders heaved as she sobbed out her unhappiness. In a fit of pique she’d ruined her career. Destroyed everything. If only she’d knuckled under she’d still be working in television, on the inside , with more chances still to come. But she’d blown all that.

After a while she blew her nose, dried her eyes and told herself not to be so futile, but that only brought the tears back again. Who cared, anyway? She was alone here in her own cottage: no need to put on a brave face any longer. No need to hide anything.

With Jack gone, there was no one to hide it from, was there?

It was almost dark when she stirred herself at last. This wouldn’t do. Time to pull herself together and get organised. She began to hunt around for the matches. After inspecting the cottage, the Electricity Board had refused to reconnect the supply until she had it completely rewired and it might take weeks before someone was free to do it. Her sister Lesley who lived on the far side of the village had come to the rescue with a couple of oil lamps she’d bought during the last miners’ strike.

Ginny found the matches and lit one of the lamps, placing it on the round table where she had been sitting. It made the room look quite cosy. Still sniffing — on her third hanky — she was starting to range the plates along the dresser shelves when she became aware of a wild squeaking sound coming from outside.

Bats?

She shuddered, visualising dark, menacing shapes swooping down to claw at her hair.

But then the squeaking came closer, until finally it seemed to enter the room itself. She pressed back against the dresser, biting her lip as she stared around apprehensively, trying to see what it could be. Quietly putting down the plate she was holding, she reached for the large wooden spoon which was the only weapon to hand.

The creature — whatever it was — flew about the room in great uneven circles. Its shadow danced around the walls, now as small as a dinner plate, now suddenly expanded like some demon magician’s cloak.

Then it stopped and hovered near the lamp as if preening itself. It was a large moth, almost the size of a blackbird. In that soft gentle light, the intricate pattern on its wings seemed like rich velvet, with varying hues of brown shading into each other and curling around brilliant pools of red and purple.

How gorgeous, she thought. How fascinating!

She returned the wooden spoon to the dresser and tiptoed to the table, not wanting to disturb it.

It began to fly again, fluttering around the lamp until she was afraid it might burn itself in the up-draught of heat from that tall glass funnel. She had a vision of those fragile wings bursting into a puff of flame, destroying it.

She reached forward and turned down the wick. For a second or two a tiny blue flame remained, dancing and spluttering; then that went out too. The room darkened, though it was still possible to see. Outside, the sky was a dull grey from which the last tinges of the sunset had already disappeared.

‘Out you go!’

She attempted to shoo the moth towards the open window, cupping her hands. It flew upwards, escaping towards the ceiling, only to reappear a moment later and sweep majestically around the room. In the gloom it had become a huge, shadowy being like — she could not repress the thought — like some disembodied soul. Ridiculous idea of course; she knew that. After all, it was only a moth: wasn’t it?

Several times it collided with the glass of the little sash window, attracted by what remained of the daylight. Then it settled on the ledge where it seemed determined to stay.

‘Okay, have it your own way,’ she shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’

As if in reply, a full Hallelujah chorus of squeaks came from the garden and she realised the air outside was thick with giant moths, wheeling and fluttering like bluebottles over a dung heap. Should she close the window? But then three or four of them were inside already. One flew close to her face, its wings lightly brushing her cheek in a passing caress. She wasn’t afraid, that was the remarkable thing about it. Normally she didn’t like creepie-crawlies, yet here she was now — completely calm, for all the world as though she were receiving visitors.