Wintershelm

I couldn’t help but think that I was leaving the concrete jungle behind me for the farmland and fields. Just as my dad drove me through the bumpy and busy streets of London to the train station with the windows cracked open, it was like -5°C outside – raining and ice-cold. This time of the year, the sky was hidden by a dingy grey blanket that lay across the city. I wore my favourite black-and-red chequered pattern hoodie. I was wearing it as a thank you for taking me to the train station. I knew it would be some time before seeing him again. He was going on a long-awaited around-the-world cruise with his new friend Sharon. I felt happy for him as it had been some time; I think my mum was the last woman he had seen.
I took a second to contemplate the decisions that had led me to this moment and the path that now lay before me as I looked up at the train timetable board, all lit up like a Christmas tree. My eyes fell upon my home for the foreseeable future, Wintershelm. A small and secluded little village down on the south coast of England with a population of about fifteen thousand; a place where it is miserable, raining and nothing ever happens – a village where the only excitement was that it nearly flooded one year – a place that had one of the smallest colleges in the country: Wintershelm College.
The last time I saw Maggie, I was two years old. She and my dad had divorced quite abruptly. Since then, I had little contact with her over the years. There was an odd birthday card here and there or a random Christmas present. I hated that town. It was boring. I loved London; the people and the electricity of the city were infectious. I had to leave because, as my dad puts it, I cannot be trusted on my own and am a liability.
“Sam,” my dad, Joe, shouted from the car window, leaning out with his big bald head and tattooed arms. “Are you sure that you want to do this, son?” He knew full well that I hate the town.
Looking into his blue eyes, I knew this was a trip he had been planning for years, possibly for all the years he looked after me and got me through school. I owed it to him to go. Anyway, who wouldn’t want to spend a couple of years surviving a delusional, carrot-munching hippie who has convinced the townsfolk that she is some kind of reiki healer? I’m not sure that waving a bit of sage around classifies you as a healer, but hell, what do I know?
“No, Dad, I want to go,” I said. “You and Sharon have fun together. I’m quite looking forward to it.” I knew full well that I just lied, but I’d done so much of that recently that it was becoming instinctive. I mean, why tell the truth when a harmless lie can do just as well?
“Well, tell Maggie that I said ‘hi’,” my dad said. “And listen, if you need me, just call and I will come right home.”
“I will,” I replied, the sacrifice and love strained upon my face. “Love you, Dad,” I shouted back at the car as I entered the train station. The train journey would take me about six hours and then it would be followed by a forty-five-minute cab ride to the village.
Time does not bother me; it was a journey that I had chosen without knowing when I was going home, and that uncertainty made the whole situation very disturbing. The forty-five-minute cab journey was something that I was not looking forward to, as the train station only operated a small taxi fleet. All the drivers were on a first-name basis with everybody. Still, for all my mother’s faults, I had to give her credit that she had arranged a college place for me and promised me a car. Still, I knew she would be a little confused by my decision to stay in Wintershelm for the near future. Maybe because I had not hidden my disdain for the place in the past.
The wind and the rain from outside were battering the carriage’s windows, and I knew we had arrived at our destination. As I exited the train carriage alone, not another soul could be seen on the platform. There was just the beating sound of the rain hammering on the ground. It was some kind of evil omen, and I was being secretly punished for my choice.
I grabbed my backpack and slowly left the station, using the platform’s covers as much as I could. In the distance, I could see a car parked outside with its lights on. The more I got closer to the car, the more I was overcome with the realisation. The driver looked a lot like my mother, and not the taxi that I was expecting. The car window started to come down; it was not smooth, as the car was relatively old. I was greeted bit by bit as the window was hand-cranked down, with the sight of my mother in all her glory, smiling back at me.
“Well, get in,” she said, opening the door tentatively. I was well aware that my mum did not drive. I found the situation odd – that either she had recently passed her driving test or stolen the car. Neither scenario filled me with hope or enthusiasm, as I was about to endure a forty-five-minute car ride not only with my mother but in a car that really shouldn’t be on the road. I put my backpack on the back seat of the Woodstock-looking Beetle and got in the passenger side, strapping myself into the death-trap on wheels. At the start, the journey was quite pleasant, with both of us keeping the talking to a minimum.
“So, how’s your father?” she asked, with an underlying sarcasm in her voice.
“Yeah, he is good,” I replied, not divulging any more information than I needed to.
“Good, good. It’s nice to hear that he is doing well,” she said. “And Sharon?” she tagged on, slowly trying to address the issue.
“Don’t, just don’t, Mum,” I replied sternly.
“What? I’m simply curious. Besides, if this woman is going to be spending time around my son, then I want to know who she is,” she said.
“Oh, I’m your son, now, am I?” I said angrily.
“That’s uncalled for, Samuel,” she replied, using my name.
I guessed I was in trouble. “Sorry, Mum,” I said.
“You could never understand my reasons for leaving, and I’m sure that your dad had his.”
“You know he has never bad-mouthed you over the years,” I replied to her surprise.
“So, how are you planning to get to college?” she asked.
“Don’t know. Walk, bus, why?” I replied.
“Well, it was going to be a surprise, but I’ve bought you a…” I desperately wanted to hear the word ‘car’, but nothing was ever simple with Maggie. “… bike,” she said.
I desperately tried to hide the disappointment on my face. “Wow, thank you, Mum,” I said, seeing that she was trying.
That seemed to bring a short but gleeful smile to her cracked and withered face, and for the remainder of the car journey, the silence was the day’s order. We both just sat there, staring forward, each of us hoping that the other wasn’t going to say something. As we slowly reached our destination, it was undeniable that it was beautiful; the bright green trees were covered in moss, their branches covering the skyline like some green canopy. The ferns lay their green leaves on the forest floor. Some might say it was green on green, yet there was something mystical and magical about it. Maggie still lived in the small two-bedroom cottage that she had bought with my father in the early days of their marriage. From the outside, the house looked snug and comfortable. It was built with tan stones and wooden mahogany decorations. Tall, rounded windows allowed enough light to enter the home and had been added symmetrically.
The house was equipped with a vast kitchen and one small bathroom; it also had a comfortable living room, two bedrooms, a large dining room and an excellent garage. The building was shaped like a squared-off S. The two extensions extended into overhanging wooden panels, circling half the house. The second floor was smaller than the first, allowing for several balconies on the house’s sides. This floor had a slightly more distinctive style than the one below.
The brown roof tiles roof was low and pyramid-shaped. Two small chimneys sat on either side of the house, and several long, thin windows let in plenty of light to the rooms below the roof. The house was surrounded by a well-kept garden with a grass field and flower patches at the edges.
There, parked on the street outside of the house that never changed, was my new bike, black and filthy with two flat tyres and in need of some tender loving care. I loved it, to my intense surprise, and it seemed to be a robust piece of machinery – the type of bike that could cause more damage to a car than the car would cause to the bike.
“Wow, Mum, I love it, thank you,” I said, as we parked outside the house.
“Right, you know where you are going, yeah?” Maggie said.
Oh, I knew exactly where I was going – through the red, dishevelled-looking front door and up the wooden stairs into my old room. To my surprise, it was just how I left it all those years ago, with blue walls, a horrible, old, tatty blue bedspread, and blue curtains. Still, one thing I could never forget was the old wooden floorboards. It would wake up the entire house and the old couple next door with the slightest movement.
Yet, as I unpacked my backpack, something was comforting and safe about the house and its environment. The only change that Maggie had made was to add a desk so that I could do my college work. Then I realised that I would have to share a bathroom with Maggie, which I wasn’t looking forward to. One of the best things about Maggie was that she let me be. She was never one to get involved or nag me. She would simply leave me with my thoughts and me.
As I sat there on the bed typing out a single message to my dad that read, ‘I’m here, I’m good. X’, the rain outside shook the single glass pane in the window, and the wind whistled around the cottage. It was nice not to have to make small talk or look interested every second. I could be on my own with my thoughts as I stared out of the window, hoping that the rain would stop by tomorrow – otherwise, it was going to be a very wet first day at college.
Wintershelm had a frighteningly small number of students: one hundred and thirty. Well, tomorrow it would have one hundred and thirty-one. There were over seven hundred kids at my school back in London. All the one hundred and thirty here grew up and probably went through the preschool, nursery and secondary school together, and there was me, not knowing anyone. I would be the new boy from the big city, a strange outsider, not a local. How could I use this to my advantage? How could I use this? To be honest, I’ve never struggled to fit in. I’ve never been sporty or particularly academic. Still, I suppose something about me is just likeable, but I will be darned if I know what it is. Maybe it was my complexion. You see, I was pale, the kind of pale where it looked like I had grown up in a cave and had never become exposed. To be honest, it was a look that suited me, with my short blond hair and blue eyes. I had never seemed good at forming friendships wherever I had been; my only friend that I had ever had was my dad. I was never one to get too close to people. I suppose I had learnt my lesson from watching the breakup of my mother and father. Was I to blame?
When I had finished unpacking my bag in the wardrobe, I went to the bathroom to clean up after a long day’s worth of travelling. Facing my image in the mirror staring back at me, I could not help but think, What have I done? Something that seemed such a promising idea now seemed not well thought out at all. What did I hope to achieve? I’ve been told that I am special my whole life and that I see things differently in my eyes than most people. At school, this got me shoved into a class for… shall we say, learning-challenged people? There weren’t many of us. Still, it was easier for the school to label me than to deal with me. Well, that was my theory.
That night, the rain did not give up. It pounded the windows as the wind shook the cottage. Well, I blame the weather. Still, the fact was that in the morning, I would embark on a new chapter of my life, a life that I hoped would only be a footnote, not the main event. It was nearly morning when I finally got to sleep. Still, by then, the light of day had crept up to the windows and through the old, worn curtains.
As I creaked my way down the stairs, lined with photographs from the past, some people in the photographs I remembered, but there were many that I did not. Still, as I reached the bottom of the stairs, there was one photograph I remembered seeing before. It was my mother and father on the day I was born, at the hospital. They looked so happy. Was I the cause of their unhappiness and their pain? I don’t know. I suppose I would never know. As I looked around the corner into the poorly lit kitchen, with its bright yellow walls, stained wooden floor and white kitchen cupboards, I realised that this was something that should have stayed in the 1970s. I was met with a sight that I didn’t expect this morning: three people were sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea. One was of my mother, Maggie Blackwood. The second was a woman who looked strangely familiar, as if from a distant memory – or maybe it was the lack of sleep. The third was a girl with long red hair, brown eyes and what could only be described as a brightly coloured dress sense. It was too early to process what she was wearing, or who they were.
“Ah, Samuel, did you sleep okay?” Maggie asked, dazzling and awake, as the three of them turned to face me.
“No, not really. Every time I moved, it seemed that the whole house was going to collapse,” I replied, which brought a smile to the girl’s face.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” the girl asked.
“No, I’m sorry. I’m Samuel,” I proclaimed, as I walked over to the girl.
“You remember Agnes Sanderson.” Maggie placed her hand on the woman sitting at the table. “And this is her daughter, Gwen,” she added, as the girl stood up from the table.
“Gwen?” I replied, trying frantically to access the part of my brain that held the relevant information.
“We used to play in the woods and pick the elderberries when we were small,” Gwen said, trying to jog my memory.
“I remember. It was down at Helm’s Hollow. That’s where we used to play,” I replied. “So, will I be seeing you at college today?” I asked.
“No, I don’t go to college, but maybe later I will pop by,” she replied, with a smile on her face.
“Anyway, nice meeting you, Mrs Sanderson, Gwen.” I did not want to be too early for college, but I needed the fresh air and could no longer stay in the cottage. I threw on my hoodie, clipped on my wallet, grabbed my backpack and headed out into the morning, thinking to myself, Thank God it isn’t raining any more. I was met by the state that was my bike, as I realised my wheels were still flat and the brakes were still broken. Still, luckily, I knew it was only a short walk through the town to the college, but unfortunately, that meant that I had to interact with the townsfolk. As I was an outsider, this was not something that I was looking forward to.
Maggie looked on from the front door, desperately hoping that I had a good day. Well, that was what I hoped, but to be honest, who knew? As I walked down the cobbled path into the local churchyard into the town, I could not help but think that my life was heading in a similar trajectory. Wintershelm, town, graveyard. It all seemed too surreal.
“Hello there.” A man’s voice broke through the awkward morning atmosphere.
I looked over to where the voice came from, to see an older man appearing from the church door and making his way towards me. I changed course to meet him, as I might as well say hello; manners don’t cost anything, I was always told. As the older man got closer, I saw that he was the parish vicar, dressed in black with his white collar.
“Hello, young man,” he said, as he put out his hand to shake mine. “I don’t believe we have met. I’m Father Wayland Randall.”
“We met once, a long time ago, maybe,” I replied, shaking his hand.
“You’re not Joe and Maggie’s boy?” he said, a little taken aback by the sight of me.
“Hi, I’m Samuel Blackwood,” I proclaimed.
“Well, well, my boy. The last time I saw you was about sixteen years ago. I think you must have been about two,” he replied.
“Correct. I was two when I left this place,” I said.
“And now you’re home?” he asked. “Your mother must be so happy.”
“To be honest, I haven’t seen that much of her, so far,” I said.
“That sounds like Maggie. Rarely do I see her at Sunday mass, but maybe I will see you this Sunday, hey?” he replied, filled with enthusiasm.
“I will see what I can do. I have to go now. I’ve got college,” I replied.
“Of course, my boy,” he said as I made my way to the churchyard’s entrance and into the town.
Finding the college was easy, although I had never been there before. The college was, like most other things, found within the town itself.