Washing Away
Three whole days of torrential rain. November streams, swollen beyond bursting point, tried vainly to empty into rivers. By morning these had become cataracts, overtopping their banks to inundate narrow lanes leading down to the historic market square.
Saturday. In the newly opened chocolate shop, the partners toiled, battling to hold back rising waters, carrying precious stock upstairs. For a time sandbags had held. When the council’s hastily erected dam failed, the fast flowing, evil-smelling tide of storm water and raw sewage had invaded. Upstairs in the flat, modernised to let for extra income, the partners had watched, trapped above their ruined shop, until rescued by firefighters’ inflatable boats.
The clean-up had taken months. Hard labour and large dehumidifiers brought about a slow, messy, and often noisy rebirth. Insurers’ monies and friends’ loans refitted and restocked the shop. March winds came, blowing fresh hope and old paper bags around the market square.
April - Palm Sunday. For one last time, disinfectant was added to buckets of hot water: a final push to make the shop both look and smell ready for its first customers after long profitless months.
Only when floats and till rolls had been checked, serried ranks of luxury Belgian chocolates stood in their new, glass topped, refrigerated counter, and kiddies’ treats lay wrapped and priced, had the partners ventured upstairs to the flat. It must soon be sold to pay off loans and provide a fund against future catastrophe: no one would insure against flooding now. There they stood, tired, elated, gazing at spring’s green leaves, drinking sparkling water from paper cups, their private toast to tomorrow’s public reopening.
Months of toil had afforded scant opportunity for more than the occasional peck on a cheek or squeeze of a hand. Now, work done, they found good enjoy a blissful hour together. The narrow ‘put you up’ on which each had taken their turn to sleep so that dehumidifiers might be run all night, today found higher duties. Dirty clothes discarded, eager flesh sought union – at first tenderly, then a crescendo to a rich climax - the release of pent-up passions. Warm satisfied bodies separated to wash one another clean beneath the new electric shower. Now dressed, each laughed seeing themselves clad once more in their once familiar bikers’ leathers. They stole one final tender kiss, and a Belgian chocolate, before locking the shop to don helmets and mount their yellow Gullwing motorbike for the short ride, up the hill to a celebration meal with friends.
A twenty-five ton lorry knows nothing of these things as its wheels slide on the slick of spilled diesel. Only its driver’s expertise holds it to the narrow tarmac. Its trailer proves less adept, slewing out across the road, offering escape to neither bike nor riders. The Gullwing is swept away. A spark ignites petrol spilling from a ruptured tank. The inferno is short-lived but intense - a holocaust of two young bodies upon the altar of a dry-stone wall.
Hardened firemen extinguish smouldering wreckage. Paramedics confirm death, respectfully pack bodies into black plastic bags and carry them to an ambulance. Policemen take accurate measurements. The firemen’s jet of water swills their mingled blood into the stream, which murmurs a quiet requiem from within green April banks, carrying all away.
© Stephen Osborne