Beneath the Lamppost

Beneath the Lamppost


It made the street much more secretive when it was shrouded in a veil of darkness. The houses seemed more ominous, as cosy homes loomed over the grey road and up the grey pavement. Of course there weren’t many stars to be seen in London, but that being said, they were a fraction clearer from this road where the only light pollution came from the various porch lights, an occasional flurry of car lights or the one solitary lamppost at the end of the road.

The houses were anything but generic. Some were rundown others were homely, still each had its own charm. However they had the disadvantage of being adjacent to a main road, from which you could frequently hear buses drive by in a roar of anger as they turned the corner, and cars beep as they come close to crashing in the darkness. An alleyway joined this road to the next and dripped with water from the drains of parallel houses, creating a constant flow which sank into the weeds lining the cracked concrete. Down the road the houses were Victorian and still stood, even after the Blitz of World War Two, every once in a while another modern house rebuilt where the German planes left destruction, protruded out in the most vulgar manner. Through the crush of houses the darkness was denser. So black that you got the uneasy feeling that stumbling into it you might not find your way out.

It was cold outside, arctic almost. The night was deafening and walking out into it was as though you were breaking a taboo. A young blonde woman dressed in a short skirt, and covered only by a fur coat, passed under the street light. She was attempting to balance on an imaginary tight rope laid on the pavement below her, but her eyes were on the distance. The orange glow revealed her smudged makeup and torn tights. She was oblivious. From across the road a man watched with greedy eyes, as the girl plunged back into the darkness, and was lost.

The next day was like any other. The dawn rose in a flurry of bright pinks but faded again, behind the grey clouds, and the houses began to stir

“Sam wake up!!, Saaam!!”
Sam, already awake, kept his eyes tightly shut. The screams of his mother would soon turn into her tearing the sheets from him, but he remained in bed. Last night’s dream had been everything he wanted, and now waking up to the real world was like crashing back down to earth. He was frightened. Frightened because he didn’t want to face the breakfast table, frightened because he didn’t want to be walked to school today, and frightened of the grief that could wash over him at any moment, drowning him in loss.

At that moment, angry feet came clumping up the creaking staircase. As though in a reflex action, Sam threw his covers off of him. They were the ones covered with pictures of trains which his dad had bought him for Christmas when he was 7. He remembered being let down after the expectation of a Power Ranger. Dan insisted that that sort of thing was too babyish for him. He would often criticize Sam at the dinner table over a beer, “Sam’s eleven now, he needs to grow up, get some bloody balls!” His mother just shrugged, and continued to dish out the mash. To Sam however, that cover, though mundane and childish, was the only thing he remembered his dad giving him. Staying close to it made him feel warm.

Outside, the lamppost stood in the bleak snow, but couldn’t feel the cold. Under it walked a teenage boy, wrapped only in a scarf and gloves, reading his phone as he trudged slowly up the road on the way to school. A cloud of stream appeared below his rosy lips every now and then; it was the sort of thing that at a younger age he would demonstrate to his mates pretending to have a cigarette in hand, now he felt too mature for such things. The boys tie was short and shirt uniformly un-tucked. Suddenly a beeping noise reverberated from his hands. A quick click. A slow smile reached across the teenager’s face, and he began to pace quicker up the road to the bus stop on the busy road.

The sun cast out its weak arms just long enough to melt the meek snow on the ground, and leave puddles in the grey road, which reflected the once again grey sky. The dripping of drains was insistent and more frequent in the alleyway, resounding further than usual in the empty street after the bustle of rush hour.

At around midday, a car drove quickly down the road, and rode up on the pavement a short distance from the lamppost. The car was old and clearly on its last legs, arguing with the brakes as it came to a stop. Soaked mud sank into its tyres and up the frame, adding to orange rust. Underneath the weathers effects and the weathering of the metal, the bright green coat of paint was barely visible. To passers by (and to the owner in fact) it was a miracle that the car was still in one piece, as it seemed too flimsy to be as large as long and square as it was.

Inside the man seemed just as worn and aged. He took out a cigarette from the lapel of his green grey blazer, which was adorned with faded badges and medals, and lighting the cigarette purposefully, he revealed his own haggard face. In the clearer but sparser light, his wirey grey hair became prominent, growing only a few centimetres off of his head. His wrinkles were deep, and harsh. There were signs of a happiness that was lost long ago. However his mouth curved over the cigarette crudely and he continued to stew in his own fumes, not bothering to open the window to drop the ashes but allowing them to fall onto his blackened trousers.

The man sat there for longer than normal. Then he noticed two youngsters, walk underneath the lamppost and stop to talk. The girl was smiling up at the boy, who was dressed in a scarf and gloves, and was regaling her with the story of how his English teacher threw him out of class that day for calling Shakespeare ‘overrated’. He stopped and she laughed heartened by the prospect. For a brief moment they were in comfortable silence. Then the conversation started up again and the girl, whose brown hair fell in gentle curls over her face, began to play with the ends inadvertently.

From his car the old man sat in contented silence, happy at the scene, smiling slightly. Then a pang of memory and yearning and his eyes were full of tears and he couldn’t see. Wiping them, he quenched his dry skin, and able to see again he quickly put the keys in the ignition and hastily drove off leaving a wave of muddy water in his wake.

“ F***ing Hell! I mean that’s just great isn’t it!! Don’t mind where you’re driving then! Just amazing…”
Sam’s mum shrieked at the car whose driver seemed unaware. The little boy looked down at his ruined uniform. It was new, he thought to himself. His mother, clearly in a worse mood, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him, almost off of the floor. Her hand was so tightly clasped on Sam’s wrist that it would be bruised later. In a rush, she hauled him through the alleyway into the next street.

After the rain had subsided, after the uniform was ritually cursed at before being shoved in the washing machine, and after Sam had happily done his homework in his room, eager to get away from his mothers incessant shouting, the front door slammed shut and Sam’s heart fell to the floor.

What annoyed him most was that he wanted to forget his life, try at least to not be overwhelmed by the loss of his dad, and forget that his new one was worse than any he thought imaginable. Today wasn’t so bad; it was a weekday and only on rare occasions would Dan come back drunk on these nights, much less likely to smash anything, or do any damage. However the prospect of sitting down to dinner with the man, and of his mother not caring what was said over the dinner table however spiteful or ridiculing, made it all harder to bear.

“Dinnnerr!”
Sam took the staircase a step at a time, judging carefully Dan’s mood and listening to the constant outbreak of jabbering, which wasn’t all that important, and didn’t interest Sam’s mother in the slightest. Walking through the wooden doorway into the living room/dining room, Sam was annoyed to see that Dan had already tucked into his meal, even before his mother had the chance to sit down for hers.

Little things, like the football on in the background, the noisy scrape of the knife on china plates, his mother not giving a damn that her son had just walked through the door. Just little things.

Sam pulled up a chair and sat on its wide seat, proud that his legs could just about reach the floor. As the boy started to twist the spaghetti around his fork, Dan pushed away from the table got up and went to put the plate in the dishwasher. Sam was relieved, and knew he could get through the meal without having to choke back tears. Tears of anguish and tears over the sense of someone missing who should always be there: tears that had only returned after Dan moved in less than a week ago.

“Fucking hell! What’s happened to the boy’s uniform?”. Sam panicked again. The mud stain which covered the whole side of his blazer might not have come off. Footsteps sounded urgently to the doorway and Dan revealed the wet stained remains of the new school garment.
“I had to pay for this thing!! What the hell are you doing getting it bloody ruined in the first bloody week of school?” Sam sat there in dismay, unable to speak, not even to whisper, because even whispering would be enough in the close distance which stood now between both Dan and Sam’s faces.

“What then?!” He shook Sam with two grasping hands. Sam, not ready for this toppled half-way off his chair, but discovering his feet again on the floor found the vigour to run out of the room and not look back, although he could feel his mother’s shocked eyes follow him. He ran up the stairs, and into the arms of his duvet cover. He ran to the window and climbed onto the extension of the house and down the creepers in true Hollywood movie style.

Sam was running away, but he did not feel heroic or even rebellious. It was cold out again. Sam clutched to his duvet for warmth but hugged it tight to see if he could feel someone else under it. Just himself. Sam climbed over his garden fence into an alleyway and was lost in the darkness. He could hear arguing from his house, but was more frightened of the gloom that was clouding his vision. Engulfing him. Sobbing he ran, stumbled, kept running. Through the black he couldn’t see anything. He kept running, kept running. This darkness seemed to go on forever, and he was so anxious to get out of it. So fearful.

The cold night blew gusts of wind over London, but the lamppost stayed completely still, unhindered by the force. A little, boy afraid and alone, wrapped in a Thomas the Tank engine duvet, ran sobbing under the orange glow of the lamp and found solace in its light. There he was protected; there the darkness couldn’t reach him. There he knew the darkness surrounded him, but he feared nothing, safe in the embrace of his flimsy duvet.


The next day the bright green car pulled up again on the pavement. The old man, a veteran, noticed a harsh look from a mother taking her son to school. He ignored it and got out his pack of cigarettes, coughing loudly and severely as he did so.

****

The sky was turning into a palette of crimson colours on a slowly darkening canvas when the teenage boy stepped out onto the road and crossed to the other side to stand under the one lamppost on his street. He found it useful to wait there, away from any prying eyes which would come from his house, further down the road.

It always strange to him how much anticipation grew as he waited, and he drew out his phone, holding under his pale face, under the influence of his charcoal black eyes.

A car drove down the street, at the same time it always did, every day, for the sake of the drivers love for someone he had lost.

Sam leaving the house, now followed his new friend to catch the bus into town. He was able to think straight after that night under the lamppost, his mother had had the chance to think clearly too. She had quarrelled with Dan into the night before she told him to leave, and went out in search for her son. His mother still swore as she traipsed through the cold streets calling his name, but that was his mother, and when they found each other they embraced like they hadn’t seen each other properly for months, and in some ways they hadn’t.

Still watching his phone, the older boy smiled at a picture of both him and the girl. He only wrenched his eyes away when he heard a high scream from the brakes of a nearby car. Deafening. He looked up in time to see a ‘Missing’ sign for a girl, only 17, fall to the floor from a tree nearby, and then the wheels of the car spin wildly in his direction until slamming into the lamppost where he was standing and everything was dark.

Having drunk to much whisky for breakfast, and having bought too many packs of cigarettes his whole life, the old exhausted man drove down the road for the very last time. He was there to see the spot where the bomb had been dropped 60 years ago, where his wife has drawn her last breath. But now, He could feel a sawing pain in his chest like no other. He tried to keep control but suddenly it was ripping him open. Not being able to breathe, the man pushed on the brakes with a worn shoe and grabbed his chest pulling a couple of medals that fell to the car floor as he did so. He then saw the lamppost and for a moment remembered his love. He then saw the young boy and cried in despair. He was overcome before he found any words.

Coming out of the alleyway, seeing smoke and hearing screams, only confused Sam. He saw the lifeless body of a young boy, perhaps 7 years older than him, attending the same school, his neck at a strange angle against the car bonnet. The rusted green box was now crushed at the front revealing a network of metal, plunging steel into the boy’s chest. Inside Sam was sure he saw the oldest man he had ever seen, head against the driving wheel, cigarette in hand. Sam cried out for help. It seemed like an hour had passed until people came rushing out of their houses and he was stood there in silence while chaos howled around him.

After a while he noticed a very pretty girl who had brown hair as she rushed onto the road, phone still in hand, ringing her lovers number, which turned to answer phone as she began to weep uncontrollably. She dropped her bag, ran for the smoking car, and added to the screams as she witnessed the horrific carnage.

The lamppost still stood the day after next, unmoved, unbuckled, an orange glow falling over the dozens of wilting flowers below.