Sergeant Gordon's Private War by Vernice Bacon-Darnley

“You can’t be!”  He said this with such definite knowledge, such force that she felt he could see all the way through to her womb, through her apron and dress, through her underwear, corset and knickers, skin, fat and muscle, to deep inside her core, her very being, in denial of their foetus. 

She felt damned as a liar by his emphatic exclamation, but she knew she was right.  She had waited such a long time before telling him.

She had no idea of the form of it.  Of how her egg had been invaded by her husband’s sperm, as his penis had her body, of how its head had pierced her ovum’s walled defences, burrowing into the softest part of it until seeking out and finding her own chromosome it had coiled itself around, fusing with it, changing it ‘til no longer her, as her life, fused to him had changed.

She did not know that this product of his male invasion had divided and divided again until the even numbered clump of cells, half him, half her but different, had taken shape and form until at five weeks it looked like some alien creature, bug eyed and square headed, its tail curled towards its belly looking no different to the foetus of a rabbit, chicken or dog.

She did not know that at seven weeks her foetus, could feel pain, and at thirteen looked vaguely human with hands, eyes, nose, mouth, limbs that twitched and fingers and toes with nails and fingerprints.  Nor did she know that at twenty six weeks nestled in her womb, it could react to Violet’s happiness, or misery.  Could respond to music, recognise its mother’s heartbeat, could recoil at harsh sounds. 

She knew none of this.  She only knew she loved it.  Loved it formlessly, mindlessly with an almost spiritual belief in the rightness of that most visceral love of all, a love for something she could not see or feel, but knew grew within her.

She was already a mother twice over with two girls that she would say she adored.  Too thin, her skin almost transparent, her deep blue eyes large in a tiny face, ringed by black lashes and framed by thin arched brows, she had hair that was a luscious red-brown which belied her fragility.  Abundant and glossy she wore it in the latest style of Marlene Dietrich, her favourite movie star.

At twenty three, she’d never been to the pictures as she called them, but she’d seen the posters on the cinema walls and would devour them with those large blue eyes as she lingered outside for once oblivious to the biting winds (for she was always cold), which in the winter would whip full blast and pointed round the corner and cut her flesh deep with its scimitars of ice.  No one could stand for long on that corner in winter without moving and stamping their feet, hugging their coats to them in an effort to stop Heat running away from that vicious fiend Cold, but Violet could.  When she stood in front of that poster of Marlene Dietrich, who was for her so distant, so contained, so exotically foreign she felt nothing, not wind, not cold.  She was transported and in awe.

Her husband Geoffrey, she thought, looked like a film star.  He was so handsome. Violet doted on him, was obsessed by him.  She frightened herself sometimes by the depth of her obsessive love for him thinking that the deep passion she felt, the spiritual shift towards wanting to melt into him, be one person with him, no longer herself, should be felt only for God.  Yet somehow Geoffrey usurped God by gathering her love, her life force into him. She had no resistance, her acquiescence to the giving of her soul to him a foregone conclusion.

She wasn’t a bad mother.  Not a good one either, her psyche so deeply entwined with her husband’s, her mind so delicate that her children hovered on the horizon.  She loved them, truly loved them, fed and clothed them as best she could, but never had the strength, energy or will to bring them up and they ran wild.  Little gypsies of six and three they wore odd socks, or none, ate jam from the jar and did what they wanted. 

Baby Peggy was happy enough, often perched on Violet’s knee, being vaguely rocked or bounced as Violet sang snatches of song, or stuffed fingers of bread soaked in milk into her grinning birdie mouth, but Edith wanted, needed more.  Much more.

**

She could see the door, black painted and scarred with steps going up to it and a basement below. 

He prodded her gently up the steps to the door and waited for her to knock on it.  The knocker, a great curved black tongue lolled lewdly towards her out of the paintwork and rested on a fat round metal knob that sat like a boil on the woodwork.  She was afraid to touch it, disgusted by it and drew back.

“Come on, we agreed.” Urging, silky, “You know we did. We just can’t have another one love.  You know that.”

She turned and looked at him, her big blue eyes wide and moist with fear and disappointment.  She didn’t want this, but did not know how to stop the events that were rolling over her, flattening her, squeezing the breath and tears from her slight body.

“Come on Vi, we talked about this.” His voice was low and sexy in her ear, a voice he used to persuade and cajole.  He knew she would melt.  But still she stood there at the top of the steps.

He reached over her slight shoulder in its powder blue costume jacket and lifted the black tongue.  It looked gross in his hand.  He let it fall with a crash.  Violet flinched.  The whole door, to her seemed to shudder.

A long time passed it seemed.  The door opened.  He gently prodded her in.

There was a plump middle aged woman wearing a pretty blue flowered apron. 

A wintry smile of greeting.

A long passage.

A room. 

A stove with pots on. 

Potatoes boiling. 

A kitchen table. 

Money changed hands, a lot of money and then he was pushing her towards the table, pushing her down on it.

Struggling, she resisted as he pulled at her knees. “Come on Vi, for me.” Urgently, “Do it for me, there’s a good girl.”

She was crying, pushing his hands down. Away. Begging.   

Heavy hard hands.

Cruel hands. 

A knitting needle. 

Excruciating pain. 

Nothing. 

And then he was helping her down the steps as the black door with its dirty, rude tongue shut behind them the tongue bouncing mockingly on its metal knob, and they walked slowly to the bus stop.

They said nothing to each other. 

This is the first chapter of my new book Sergeant Gordon's Private War.  Both myself and the book are currently looking for a publisher.  I hope you like it.