October 2023 – Whittlesey Wordsmiths

With Halloween fast approaching the Whittlesey Wordsmiths offer you this timely story from Henry:

Emily’s Story by Henry Curry

I approached the house with some trepidation. In the distance, the Gothic arches and dark windows lent an air of gloom about the place that only made my depression worse. Shadows were already deepening as I reached the forbidding gates and a bell tolled in the distance, as if warning me away. But I knew I had to go forward, go into that place. I gripped the letter.

Emily had been insistent; her words came to me again and again. She had sounded so firm and final the last time we had met. We were friends, no more than friends. She made that clear. As I kissed her on the cheek and turned to leave I saw her smile, but there was no happiness about her countenance. No, there was something else. I had wanted to say so much, reveal my feelings for her. My true feelings. But she had seemed so resolute, and my courage had left me. Now, an unhappy year had passed.

I paused. A breeze shook the trees, dragging the last few leaves away to their autumnal rest. The letter seemed to weigh so heavily. I longed to stop and read it again, to ponder each word, looking behind each phrase for another meaning. But instead, I resolved to continue. My footsteps made the gravel crunch generously, a sound which had the effect of raising my spirits a little. I stepped forward, even strode, along that long drive; I even began to whistle a tune, one that Emily used to sing, my pace in time with the music, holding my emotions back, concentrating on walking, walking. Then the house was in front of me and I was at the great front door. I tugged sharply on the bell-pull, but heard no sound. A crow called mournfully as it rowed its way across the sky, its outstretched wing-tips like fingers against the twilight. I was about to try again when there was the sound of a bolt being drawn, and the door slowly opened.

‘You are expected. Follow me, sir.’ The servant had a faded air about him, as if he had been too long in a dust-filled room. His skin was as pale as the stone of the building, and he shuffled with a peculiar gait suggestive of some illness.

‘Thank you.’ I followed him into the warm hallway and immediately began to cough, I assumed as a result of the stale, stagnant air. Light seemed to penetrate but feebly, as if an unwelcome guest, hiding from all but the middle of the floor. As my eyes became accustomed to the faint gleam from the candle borne by my guide I became aware of a number of doors and a large staircase disappearing into the reddening gloom.

‘The lady will see you in here sir.’ I was shown into a room which I thought was the study, or perhaps the library. It was hard to discern the purpose of this room due to the darkness. I could see a grand desk commanding the middle, with a large high-backed chair of very old design, I fancied, given the detailed carving on its back. In the wavering shadows I could just make out tapestries on my left, and to the right a wall of what appeared to be bookshelves. At this point the ageing servant turned to leave, and as he did so he lit candles in each of the sconces by a great mantelpiece. The light now picked out a fine long case clock to one side of the fireplace. I resolved to examine the timepiece as far as I could, but as I moved towards it, someone else entered the room.

‘Hello Jeremy.’ It was Emily, my Emily. But it was not her. The voice I heard was harsh and broken, as if emanating from a dying volcano. I turned in happy expectations, but drew back sharply at the face before me. Her eyes!

‘Emily.’ My voice came in a hoarse croaking sound. I held out the letter. My words failed me. She stared blankly and spoke mechanically, in a distant way.

‘I knew you’d come. But many things have changed. I… I am to be married.’ The red-rimmed eyes held my gaze. There was no pleasure in her voice, only a sense of resignation. ‘You should not have come here. Please go now.’ I was shocked, but tried to remain calm, measured.

‘You seem unhappy Emily. Can’t we talk further? As friends? I can’t leave you this way, having come so far.’ I hoped she understood that I meant so much more than just my journey.

‘Then stay at the Inn tonight if you wish. Come again tomorrow, in the morning, in the daylight.’ With these words she turned and walked away before I could speak.

I spent an unhappy night at the old Inn in the town. Restful sleep would not come to me. In my dreams I saw only vague shapes and a shadowy figure with glaring red eyes drifting through a vast library. The books were falling towards me, and there was a smell that made me choke – I was trying to speak but no sound would emanate from my throat, and the figure crackled with an eerie laughter. Another figure seemed to be present, but I couldn’t see who it was. I felt hot, fearful, in a wild panic, but I didn’t know why.

I woke early but felt both disturbed and tired, being unrefreshed by my troubled sleep. Washing and dressing, I saw my face in the mirror – I was distressed at how old I appeared. I resolved to make light of the last night, to enjoy a good breakfast and a brisk walk back to the house. I didn’t want Emily to see me looking as haggard as I felt.

There seemed to be a thick morning fog settled over the valley, so my view of the house was temporarily obscured. As I turned onto the drive a vague outline of the old walls gradually materialised. But then my heart raced – something was wrong, very wrong! I quickened my pace, breaking into a trot, then a full blown run. Smoke was lazily drifting up from the broken walls and crumbling ruin – a great conflagration must have taken the house! There was no roof, only charred walls and beams. Without realising, I had started shouting as I ran. I was shouting, shouting, calling Emily’s name over and over.

‘Terrible. A terrible tragedy.’ A bewhiskered man in a tweed jacket was looking up at the building and calling a cocker spaniel back to him. ‘Here, Jack, here boy!’ I roughly grabbed this chap by the coat lapels, shouting at him.

‘Where is she? What happened to Emily? Is she safe?’ He pulled back, placing his hands on my shoulders.

‘Now then, now then. Calm yourself. I’m sure all that could be done was done, young fellow.’ The dog returned with a piece of paper in its mouth. ‘The blaze just took hold very quickly, very quickly. Started in the library, by all accounts. It was burning for three days.’ These last words seemed bizarre, barely registering.

‘But what happened to the people – to the lady, Emily? Where are they?’ Blood was bursting up my neck and into my head, pounding into my ears. ‘Where are they?’

‘Ah, now, you obviously knew the incumbents; well’ he looked wearily at me,’sadly no-one survived. They found the three souls yesterday, but all had perished. The lady, her husband-to-be, and the servant. All gone.’ He gave a wistful look up at the ruins. ‘I am so very sorry.’

‘But… but I was here yesterday. Yesterday evening. I saw them. I spoke to them. I was here. There was no fire – they were all alive!’

He leaned closely towards me and returned a puzzled, old-fashioned look.

‘I can’t dispute what you say you saw or might have thought you saw my friend. The house and all its occupants, such a tragic business, were destroyed three days ago. If you were here, as you say you were, last night…’ He tailed off, frowning. Jack the spaniel, snuffled at my feet, dropping Emily’s letter.

If you would like to read more of Henry’s work find him on Amazon by clicking on the link:

Henry Curry

**Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com**

This is Rita’s blog post, a well argued point of view.

Is a woman’s place still in the home?

I took a special interest in a debate on the subject of: A women’s place is in the home, in high school in the 1970s. And fifty years or so later, I believe that little has changed for women.

Our class tutor, Father Chira, was inspirational and sparked our imagination by encouraging regular debates on contentious subjects. He was an extraordinary personality, being a Catholic priest from Ceylon (now Shri Lanka) who travelled worldwide to teach in third world countries. He encouraged us to question, challenge, debate, be analytical and negotiate – behaviours that were controversial for women in my little backwater country, Guyana, where women knew that their place was at home and men went out to work and have fun.

This particular debating session on ‘Women’s place is in the home’ stuck in my mind because I held strong opinions on the subject and infuriated the boys of my class with my arguments against. The girls of my class won the debate and the boys walked out in protest.

“That Budhram girl is trouble. She cheats by reading books on the subject and her ideas contradict our culture,” they hissed in chorus and glowered at me as they walked out.

Father Chira saved the day in his cheery tones, “Young lady, you will be an advocate for others,” and we ignored the

boys. They returned to the classroom shortly, sulkily muttering apologies.

The boys argued that women’s brains were smaller, and therefore, they were less intelligent and they were physically weaker than men. This excluded them from work involving a high level of intelligence and strength and traditionally they stayed at home doing the house work and the caring.

Some of the girls were hoodwinked into believing the boys’ arguments. But where was the evidence that women were less intelligent, I questioned. No evidence was presented and I put forward the cases of Indira Ghandi, Queen Elizabeth, Goldameir, Madame Curie, very influential and intelligent women – to name a few. Yes, women were physically weaker but technological advances made it possible for women to take on jobs that were predominantly done by men in the past.

**Rosalind Franklin a woman with a larger brain?**

During the War years, women proved that they were more than capable to do men’s work by doubling their duties as breadwinners (taking on men’s work) and caring for the family. However, after the War, the WHO commissioned John Bowlby (psychologist) to do studies (Childcare and the Growth of Love, 1953) on how children could be affected by maternal deprivation. He concluded that a mother’s place was at home caring for children. That was a blow for women’s liberation from the kitchen sink and the government used it as an excuse for giving the jobs back to the returning soldiers. Bowlby’s studies were later found to be flawed.

When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Guyana was rooted in patriarchal norms and tradition, and misogyny and sexism flourished. I didn’t think it was a fair society for women. My mother’s work was never finished – with ten children and an absent-minded husband, she never had a break. My father, on the other hand, had the opportunity to do as he liked. It was a man’s world. I thought that I was leaving behind a primitive society when I came to the UK to do nurse training in the 1970s.

I was wrong to believe that the UK was an egalitarian society at that time. Gender imbalance was alive and thriving in British households. Many working women were in part-time low-paid jobs – flexible to accommodate family needs. In the midst of an imbalance society, sexism, misogyny, sexual discrimination, and other abuses flourish. Male nurse, Ian, was lazy and lascivious and he boasted that he was earning a third more than us (female nurses of the same grade). “Come to the cinema with me, Rita. I’ll pay for you,” he sneeringly condescended. “Shame on you! You are a married man,” I declined in disgust. “It’s OK for me to do whatever I want because I am a man,” he boasted with a permanent smirk on his ugly face. Dr Mandel was no better. “Come to my room, I will cook you sicken (chicken) curry” was his chatline for finding a date among the young trainee nurses. We would ignore him and run away because he had wandering hands. Lurking in the background was his wife and several children. Sexual predatory behaviour was normalised at that time and the media fuelled it further by churning out films, books, TV plays, etc that showed women in submissive and subservient roles in society.

I thought I might find equal partnership in marriage but convention dictated otherwise. I was left chained to the kitchen sink with two screaming toddlers while my husband enjoyed a bachelor’s lifestyle. “You cannot stop him from going to the pub and meeting up with his mates. That’s how we do things here in the East End,” the mother-in-law rebuked when I tried to get some sympathy. My dreams of equal partnership were dashed. All around me women were juggling childcare, housework and flexible part-time work for ‘pin money’ while their menfolk seemed oblivious of their plights.

Several decades after my debate at school, little has changed for women. Although more women were employed in paid work than before, they continued to do the lion’s share of childcare and housework. I believed that life is more stressful for women than it was in the 1970s because they they took on the breadwinner role (Both husband and wife are expected to be in paid work in order to survive in this modern society) as well as childcare and housework. I have seen the struggles of my younger midwife colleagues juggling childcare, housework and a career that is not flexible to accommodate their family needs.

Recently progress in gender gap has slowed down or stalled due to the pandemic and poor economic growth. Progress may require increases in men’s participation in household and care work, governmental provision of childcare and employer’s policies that reduce gender discrimination and help man and women combine jobs with family care responsibilities. Fifty years hence, women’s place is still in the home and also in the workplace as breadwinners.

Month: October 2023

Emily’s Letter by Henry Curry, a story for Halloween.

Is a woman’s place still in the home? By Rita Skeats