Open Windows

OPEN WINDOWS

I used to enjoy walks on Stanmore Common. But not anymore. Not after what happened that night.

The Common is a great place to walk the dog. Mine’s a cocker spaniel, name of Bernard. Droopy ears, wet nose, a tail that never stops wagging. I got him as a pup, and I’ve grown very fond of him. So, one fine afternoon, Bernard was taking me for a walk. He enjoys pulling me along in his eagerness to sniff out the next aromatic delicacy hidden among the autumn leaves. 

When we reach the woods, I normally let him off the lead. Spotting a rabbit sends him into a frenzy and he imagines he is a hunting dog. But the truth is, he doesn’t stand a hope in hell of catching one. The rabbits know it too. 

That October evening was not long after the clocks had gone back, so darkness came earlier than usual. As we headed for home, patches of mist had started to spread outwards from the pond. We approached the road, and that’s when it happened. A faint rumbling. Barely perceptible at first, it kept growing louder. By then we were almost at the crossroad, not far from the Alpine restaurant, once a country inn and the last dwelling on the road to Watford when all this was just forest. We had passed that way a hundred times, but this time Bernard started whining and tugging at his lead. 

“What’s the matter, boy?”

He looked at me with startled eyes and his normally floppy ears pointed upwards. The faint sound of a man singing now accompanied the rumbling. It all seemed weird, and I tried to hurry Bernard on but almost at the crossroads he stood stock still, looking up at the sky, barking. There was a ghastly smell, like a dead rat, only ten times worse. The rumbling was almost upon us and the clatter of hooves confirmed the sound as a coach and horses. The singing stopped abruptly, and a man’s voice exclaimed “Gawd almighty!” but peering into the misty gloom I still saw nothing. Yet I sensed that the coach was just a few feet away as it trundled past. Then the noise faded into the mist.

……………………..

The coach pulled out of the Blackbird Inn rest stop in Edgware and began to pick up speed. Refreshed, the five passengers settled down to the next leg of their journey. Two of them were children, a small boy and his younger sister, and their mother’s arms around them was comforting. Mrs Watson was taking them to join her husband in the market town of Watford where he had found a position as a master brewer. They were looking forward to their new life in the country after the East-London grime of Shoreditch. The boy looked alert. At the rest stop, his sharp ears had picked up talk of highway robbery. 

“Will we be stopped by robbers, Mother?”

“Hush child.” Mrs Watson drew him closer. “The good Lord will keep us safe.” 

The man sitting across from them lowered The London Gazette he had already read twice since leaving Kings Cross. A weakness for venison and port had bestowed him with a comfortable roundness and a rosy complexion. Smiling indulgently, he peered at the boy over the spectacles perched on his nose.

“Fear not young sir,” he said, trying to be kind. “The days of highwaymen are past now that they have caught and tried Turpin.”

“What’s that you say?” piped up the thin man in the other corner. An unkempt brown wig sought escape from the confines of his tricorn hat, his lean pointed nose stabbing the air as he exclaimed “Turpin you say? Dick Turpin, the highwayman?”

“The very same. Hanged he was, in York last week. Not for highway robbery though, but for horse theft, no less.” 

“Either way, he won’t be 'Stand and deliver’n' no more, robbing innocent folk going about their business.”

“Not just robbing.” The bespectacled gentleman was warming to his subject. “Deer poaching, sheep stealing, violent burglary and murder." His voice dropped to a hoarse croak as he savored the word. "They entered the house of a widow in Essex and tortured her until she told them where her money was hid. And another, a farmer right here in Edgware, only last year.”

“Such villainy!” exclaimed Pointy Nose.

Mrs Watson was silent, her lips clamped tightly at all this talk about robbery and torture.

“Most of his gang has been rounded up, one by one. Two went to the gallows at Tyburn last month and their bodies hung somewhere hereabouts as an example for those inclined to lawlessness.” 

Mrs Watson could tolerate it no longer. She glared at Spectacles.

“Sir, I would be obliged if you can cease this sort of talk. You are scaring my children.”

“Yes Ma’am. Humble apologies. I was not thinking clearly.” He raised his Gazette, but more to hide the bloom that was spreading over his well-rounded cheeks, since it was getting too dark to read.

They rode in silence until the coachman’s voice rose in song, more to render him courage than out of good cheer. They were in Stanmore Forest and until the lights of Watford came into sight there was always the risk of highway robbery. Inside the coach they heard his singing stop abruptly followed by a loud exclamation. Mrs Watson instinctively covered the eyes of her children to prevent them seeing out of the coach window, in the fading twilight, the two decomposed bodies hanging from gibbets. Eye sockets empty, pecked out by crows, rotting lips curled back over grinning teeth. Beneath the dangling bodies, a hooded figure in a strange red garment gazed in puzzlement towards them as they rolled past. A small dog barked up at the corpses.

……………………..

As the rumble faded into the distance Bernard stopped barking. A cold shiver made me pull my red hooded anorak closer. 

“Come on boy. Time we were home. Dinner’s waiting.” But back home my appetite was obliterated by the memory of that ghastly smell. I lit the scented candle inside the carved-out Halloween pumpkin on the sideboard, but that didn’t help. 

Six months on, I’m still haunted by that smell!

The End

Brian Macfarland