Pebbles from a Northern Shore

THE HAND

  It puzzled him. The hand lay inert at the edge of his field of vision, a withered, fleshless thing, almost like the foot of some great bird except that instead of gracefully curved and pointed talons, it ended in broken and distorted fingernails. He could not understand what it was doing there, nor why he was completely unable to move his head and trace the wrist, arm and shoulder to which it was presumably attached. Or was it? He remembered something of that old horror story, 'The beast with five fingers', about the severed but murderously-animated hand sent for reasons he could not recall to someone who must have mortally offended its original owner.

  This hand however showed no such inclination, but rested placidly on the bed cover. Why had he not noticed its arrival? Of course, he had been asleep. Not only asleep, but dreaming, and for once he could remember vividly quite a lot of the dream.

  He was back in his late teens, rejoicing in being allowed to look after a motorcycle belonging to his mate Arthur, who was doing time after an affray in which someone in a rival gang had been all but killed. Obviously he had to make sure it was kept in good running order, and he did so more conscientiously than Arthur would have approved had he known. It gave him an opportunity to impress Janice next door, whom he had fancied for months without the slightest encouragement. Now she almost jumped at the chance when one Saturday he suggested a run out for a bar lunch at a pub he knew in the countryside.

  It was a beautiful spring day, and on the way they stopped in a forested area at a lay-by well screened from the road by trees. Traffic noise was still annoying so they moved further back from it into a small clearing. Janice was amused by a group of chaffinches, evidently used to being fed, loudly demanding their usual tribute, but he had nothing to give them. She found the spare leathers uncomfortably hot in the sun and took off the top; then she practically invited more familiarities than he would have dared to hope.

  That put a good deal more oomph into his riding when, rather later than he had intended, they set off again. He was showing off, and knew it, but over the meal could not resist drinking a little more than he really should, and afterwards riding considerably faster. He knew the road and was confident of negotiating all its hazards. Janice was exhilarated at first and that moved him to show off even more, to the extent that she tried to urge a little caution on him, but he took no notice; none, that is, until a large car pulled out of a side turning directly in front of him. He was thrown into a hedge and came off fairly lightly, but the bike was a write-off. So was Janice.

  That was the dream. In reality Janice had survived, but hopelessly crippled, and spent the remaining dozen years of her life in one institution or another. Technically it was not his fault, but he knew perfectly well that if he had been less reckless, he could at least have mitigated the crash and probably avoided it altogether. The guilt of that knowledge made him by far the most boring driver among his acquaintance, once he had regained the nerve to contemplate driving at all. As for motorcycles, he now abhorred them.

  Nevertheless, something had clicked in his mind when a particularly obnoxious great-nephew, who knew the story and had recently acquired a machine of his own, taunted him with his timidity and offered a derisive bet that he couldn't even balance the thing now. He was damned if he was going to stand for that sort of cheek, and to the lad's horrified astonishment accepted the challenge. It was utterly stupid, of course, and he had come to grief; hence all the strapping round his chest, the plaster on his arm and the neck-brace that prevented him from tilting his head forward.

  A female voice interrupted his recollections. "Come along, Mr. Armstrong ..." (what an absurdly inappropriate name in the circumstances!) "... time for your medication." Why on earth did he have to be bothered with such things? He didn't need medication. A penalty for his own folly, he supposed however, and tried to comply. At last, as it moved feebly, he recognised that claw-like hand on the bed cover. It was his own.

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