Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Frank Baker

Author:Frank Baker [Baker, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2016-02-25T07:00:00+00:00

It was then that I put the lid on the box and tried, oh so hard, tried to forget it.

I make these breaks in the story because as I write, I falter – trying to remember; and because I write with pain and a sense of loss I cannot overcome. And once again I tell myself – I must try to stick to the facts. What happened that day?

I suppose I made breakfast – coffee, toast, marmalade, and plenty of the rich dark yellow butter which you could buy then in pound slabs from the farm above the valley. I may have read a little from the local paper, for I liked to pretend to myself that I was concerned to some extent with events around me. I wanted to feel that I was a citizen in this unknown western country, that I would be accepted as ‘one of them,’ that a man who had decided to spend his life composing music which perhaps nobody would want to hear had his right place in the world.

But whatever I did, as I sat in that room, every now and again I would look across to the window seat, half hoping that the box would not be there, and yet – in a most curious way – calmed when I saw that it was. I cannot describe adequately, or understand, this new sense of ownership that was stealing into me. As though I had found treasure and was already hoarding it.

I remember that I had planned that day to break in a triangle of land up the slope behind the cottage, where I intended to put down some gladiolus bulbs. And I refused to allow the hand to alter my plans, particularly as the sun was now fully risen into a clear sky. It would be absurd to put off what I had intended to do on so lovely a spring day.

And so I worked on the hillside, well into the late afternoon, only coming in for some bread and cheese about noon. From time to time, as I dug into the rough ground I found myself muttering ‘the Hand, the Hand,’ already giving it the honour of a capital letter. Hand. And I would look at my own hands at the spade, thinking – this isn’t the kind of work these hands are meant to do. I need to use my fingers – at the piano. Then I would dismiss these thoughts, and go on digging, beginning to hate the earth.

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