Here Comes Treble: The Room, Part Three
At the end of Part Two of Isabel Bradley's imaginative tale Alain, now a handsome ten-year-old, cuddled his baby sister closer. The emptiness in his heart felt, somehow, less empty, warmed, as if the sun had peeked through the clouds. Alain rocked, and rocked, with Zara in his arms...
To read the first two parts of the story, and lots more first-class writing by Isabel, please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/here_comes_treble/
A leaden rain drummed on the roof of The Room. Inside, its colours were dim, needing sunshine before they could glow.
Alain was asleep in the big green rocking chair. A book had slipped out of his long fingers and lay, face down, on the dark floor.
In his dream too, it was raining, the hard, soaking, set-in grey rain that sometimes falls in Johannesburg in late October. Behind a wire fence, grave stones stood in stolid rows, grey and dreary, giving off like a dense mist the accumulated grief of many years. An angel rose on stony wings, white against the dark sky, sheets of water cascading off his chiselled features. The shorn grass was a vivid, incandescent green, as if it had absorbed the previous day's sunlight. Trees shook dripping purple umbrellas over mauve puddles of jacaranda blooms, waving to each other in ghostly greeting. The only sounds were the sighing wind, tears of rain splashing on stones, and the hush of the uncaring traffic outside. A granite Virgin Mother aloof and serene, surveyed a gaping red hole, where a long, dark box descended amid a cluster of black-clothed, sobbing grief.
Alain woke. His throat was dry, aching with suppressed grief. Behind his eyes, he felt the pressure of tears. "Zara," he thought. "No, no, not Zara no, don't leave me!"
Seventeen years had passed, in which a bond had formed between the half-brother and his young sister.
Alain was now a young adult who worked for a large bank. His career was going well: he was being groomed for senior management. Girls idolized his tall, blonde good looks, his rather hard blue eyes, his beaky nose, the body which he honed each day in the gym. He had dated many of them. They all complained that, though he was intelligent, funny and friendly, he remained impossible to get close to. Alain knew that Zara, his sister, the dark-haired, dark-eyed, petite beauty, had filled his heart.
Yesterday evening, Zara had gone to a dance. On the way home with one of her many admirers, she had been involved in a motor accident. She lay in the hospital, broken, dying. Alain knew she was dying. The warm space, where Zara's love filled him, tingled, then grew still. The emptiness grew in his heart, the same dark, icy emptiness that had filled it when Mother died.
"Zara," he called to her, "Zara, where are you?" There was only silence. His long fingers covered his face. Tears threatened to break loose. If he once began to cry, he thought he would never stop. He listened to the emptiness, while calling to Zara in his lonely soul: "I can't make it without you, dear. Don't leave me, Zara, don't leave me again....."
Like a butterfly touch on his soul, he felt her, just for an instant, a moment of knowledge, a timeless touch which breathed of life and hope. "I'll be back," he thought he heard her whisper, "I'll be back. Don't grieve, dear, I'll be back."
Then Alain was alone with the rocking chair, the clock, the tables, the fireplace. A shaft of silver sunshine caressed a glowing tapestry hanging against the oak panelling. Zara had finished stitching it a week ago......
To be continued next time in here comes Treble!
By Isabel Bradley © Copyright Reserved
