Courage- Copyright Robert Fullarton.. Taken from Our Lives as fiction

Courage

So Ajax thrust his spear into his chest in a fit of rage and a roar of desperation. So Steve felt too within himself, as if he had lost the glorious armour of the slain Achilles to the crafty and courageous Odysseus.

What you ask is this prize?

It is courage and bravery which runs like wild fire through a forest and sets ablaze a passion that breaks boundaries and ferments and solidifies human honour.

On one particular evening as the landlord came in from collecting his rent, he stood in the hallway boasting to himself and a tenant on the amount of money he could annually make and he swaggered through the hallway chuckling in folly, when suddenly he approached the old lady Mrs Daniels from room 112 at the top of the stairs on the first floor.

“Where’s my money”,

He remarked with a curt bark for attention, and showed off his ugly callous demeanour so attentively.

“I said where’s my money you stupid old woman”, he grunted ignorantly at the old woman of eighty who barley even whispered in response, so sheepish and so timid, but yet she would barely turn her face to the fierce frown of the tyrannical landlord.

“Are you deaf?”

She walked on slowly clutching a cane for balance as she went on down the old corridor and down beside the old dirty wallpaper.

The neighbours themselves perfectly understood too well what was happening out on the hall, and everyone could hear the shrieks and moans of the hysterical, over the top emotionally charged Landlord Mr. Navetti but yet no door opened, they remained shut, and not even a rat stirred (for the place was usually crawling with them).

His eyes were insatiable in their desire, he wanted his rent, but he also wanted to hurt the old woman pretty bad.

He ran up quickly and took her in surprise, grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her round in force. She faced the bull of a man, and cried out in an instance of fright, and like a flash, as quick as can be; he swung his right fist across her face in rage, and struck her hard on the temple.

The woman sunk from his clutches slowly and he in a panic grabbed her by the coat and began to drag her against the carpet, until her lifted her up and carried her on his huge and mighty muscular shoulders. He later dumped her in the utility room amongst the dirty bed linen and locked the door in a hurry, he didn’t care if she were unconscious or stone cold dead, for he had taken what rent was owed from her purse and now he wiped his forehead with a cloth, for his hair and forehead were wet with sweat and so he looked around drawing breath with pauses in between. Calmly he reassured himself that not a single soul had seen a thing, nor would anyone dare to challenge the authority of their landlord and get away with it alive. Navetti chuckled ignorantly as all pigheaded people do and decided to go off for a whiskey down in Murphy’s after the “drama” had ended.

                                                             When all was quiet and the hallways deserted completely, there upstairs on the second floor, down on his hunkers bent forward lay a tenant in silence. From the way he was positioned at the top of the stairs he would stand out as about as much as a chameleon. He had witnessed the feud and the very assault but he had only guessed to where the woman had been dumped like a sack of rotten cabbage. His body was paralyzed by the pest called fear, and his mind was scuttling two and fro with anxiety on what to do next. “I have got to do something!”

“I cant just leave her there, she’s done nothing wrong and a rotten bastard like that auld baldy must pay, he cant get away with this, I’m going to have to do something myself, he’s gone too far this time, that tyrant”, out came the words from the young fella, flying out, trying to sound bold and brass.

“Surely though, it’s only a matter of minutes before some tenant comes in through the door groceries in left hand keys in the right, and stumbles literally upon the old woman.”

“Wait what am I thinking?”

“He’s too conniving and too careful; he’s hidden her, or locked her up someplace, known him he probably left her either in the cellar, the airing cupboard or the utility room.”

Down the creaky stairwell went the young man, while silence circulated and rebounded throughout the hallway.

“Damn, rat!”

He shouted out and moved his foot frantically away from the rat trying to run up his trouser leg. Downstairs at the front porch, he could only see that the front door was wide open and the heavy Irish rain bet the pavement without mercy.

Now his heart knocked heavy and his legs were like balloons, being deflated slowly, as he slugged it out all the way to the front door.

Then in came a tenant in a dash who bowed graciously and courteously while he removed his hat and pulled in his jet black umbrella and placed it on the coat hanger where it dampened the carpet with little drips dropping down constantly.

“Hi Steve, evening’s horrible; I just couldn’t finish that assessment, oh! Heavens help me! And that brute of a German, Günter has filed sexual harassment charges against me on the secretary; all I did was whisper ever so slowly in the lift that she had a nice bottom, a nice round bottom! Can you believe it?

And now it’s monsoon season once again in the land of eternal cloud!

Oh God help me”, out came his words in a rant that usually occurs at half five on a weekday with an overly stressed, hard pressed Chartered Accountant who hates his job. “Brian, I hate the weather myself, it’s depressing but what can you do about it, its china’s pollution and America’s omissions that all wreak havoc on Ireland. Oh by the way I’m sorry to hear about you’re problems at work, I’m sure everything will work out fine in the end”, said Steve half paying attention, with little interest and half perturbed to the enigma in his mind on what had to be done. Off ran the neighbour up the stairs sighing under his breath.

Oh he wished he could have told him everything and released himself of this intense worry and strain that wrapped it’s self around his head like an anaconda tightening with every minute. He walked slowly down the hallway to the end and into a small trash ridden kitchen where he sat on a wooden stool to bask in a sore contemplation on what to do. His indecisiveness had cost him precious time already, he had indeed procrastinated his efforts for too long now. What if she were dead already?

Maybe it’s too late to call the police and maybe he’s still somewhere close and soon he’ll come back drunk as a coot, smelling of old Paddy whiskey with a temper like ole hell and brimstone and he does me in too? Thought the frightened young man trying to comprehend the cost of his efforts, was he cheap in his actions or would he pay so much to help the woman out, what would be the price to pay, to the old lady who had so kindly lent him money on numerous occasions before.

                                                                                         Night progressed and the darkness set like ink down on the sky, and soon all light was flooded with blackened die, but at least the rain had eased off. A faint echo of some thing stirring went out in the distance, quite like a clouded dream that challenges the conundrums of the mind.

Then the Landlord went down the stairs of the second floor and as he went he busied himself fixing the buttons on his polo neck rigorously while he puffed on and off his cigarette attentively. Meanwhile, out slipped Steve, in a hurry and still as hesitant as ever, he went down the stairs cautiously hoping not to face the landlord and not to fight him under any circumstances since he was a lousy fighter and absolutely afraid of a wild boar from Scilly called Navetti. After he had checked the airing cupboard on the second floor he randomly decided and most reluctantly (because he had figured out where the old woman was) to check out the utility room to see if anything lay there or if anything fit the theory in his mind to where she lay.

The door to the utility room would not budge and the handle stubbornly would not turn even after he tried with force to kick the door in.

The young man felt frustrated and this to him was failure on a titanic scale, something had to be done, why I didn’t go to the police, he asked himself inquisitively.

Oh but then approached the big bad wolf, the horrible Navetti, with his macho physique, crass behaviour and the undeniably awful signals from a man who could strangle a cat on a bad day. Steve looked left and right and all around there were closed doors and no where to run but forward into him. The room seemed to him to be like a narrow tunnel that closed in slowly with each hopeless second. What have I to fear from him? He doesn’t know that I know! So I have nothing to fear, said the young man as he tried to reassure himself confidently.

He tried to brace himself for a confrontation with the wolf himself.

“Mrs Keller I already told you twice not to be hammering and banging at all hours with that damn fat husband of yours, you go right up my nose. Hey don’t you hear me!” Then the landlord started to thump his fists faster and faster against the door in rage. However it seems as though neither were in, although the living room light could be seen through the peephole.

Meanwhile as events around grew to great capacity and ferocity on the rage of the landlord, Steve had stooped down to hide himself in the corner. It was like as though the Gorgon crafty and formidable as she is had turned this man to stone, he became shiftless, terrified and even more panic stricken in sight of him. Steve became a form without instinct.

Then thuds and bangs of something went from behind him, obviously the old lady is still alive and she must be trying to escape, he thought with lightning speed to himself. But now immediately the landlord’s attention drew to him and the noise that emanated from his direction.

“What are you doing lumbering about?”

“I went in to see Mr. Ford next door and then I decided to see if any of my laundry and old clothes which I left last month is still in the utility room, that’s all”, so said the young man with almost a half convincing story about clothes and laundry.

“No don’t go in, the room’s untidy and a horrid rat has bore many young, so no one is to enter until I have solved the problem, understand!”

“Yes, of course, but how can I retrieve my belongings then?”

“You wait till morning and I will fetch them for you and call you, alright?”

“Yes, that’s alright,” said the young man almost, revealing the tense and nervous emotions he felt within himself.

Off went the landlord down the stairs going about his business and once he had gone out of Steve’s sight, then and only then could Steve calm himself and continue to think on what had to be done.

Steve sat alone in his bedroom that night, no sounds emerged from the corridors, not even the sound of the landlord stumbling in the door stocious from Murphy’s pub which became common these days. The landlord could afford to drink since he was left everything in a will from his old powerful and affluent aunt who passed on years ago under mysterious circumstances. But soon the money spent on whiskey and other forms of pure unadulterated pleasure would run dry and he would terrorize anyone he could to borrow money to save him from debt.

                                                                              Anyway as Steve sat in the bedroom he made his mind up, finally after much debate to sneak off down the stairs and call the police. At the bottom of the stairs (which he reached post haste) in the hallway at the front door he stood waiting for someone to answer to his desperate last minute cry for help, the phone was engaged and to unfortunate circumstances the landlord came rushing in through the door with one hand clasping a bottle of scotch and the other holding out and umbrella dripping with rain.

“Ah! You’re still up so late on the phone”, he said showing a toothless and feckless grin of ignorance and drunkenness.

“I’m trying to ring mother on the phone it’s her birthday tomorrow and I promised not to forget this year,” said the young man, who was still afraid to face Navetti and now he conjured up a lie to try and avoid the confrontation that he foresaw in his mind a thousand times, which played out again and again and resulted in a single outcome, death. Navetti was a man who had bullied and bullied his way through life and here stood poor Steve, a man who never had the courage and fortitude to stand up and defend himself in a series of anecdotes that left him scared and frightened.

“Come into the kitchen for a drink, come on you might as well”, said the landlord smirking.

In his mind Steve could fight the landlord and probably lose there as well, but in his weakened state of anxiety he faced up to the daunting task of accepting the fact that he was one genuinely born without courage, he was a man naturally devoid of any action, he was pushed around from the playground to the office five days a week, he had lost the prize to which he wanted so desperately to have and now he couldn’t face his father yet again. Demoralized as ever he put the phone back on the hook ignoring the woman’s voice that called repeatedly and he embraced his father and helped him into the kitchen where he sat in collusion with his enemy and his pain and drank rather sullenly on a glass of whiskey, slowly trying to forget his past as his father grinned in laughter while his son had shrunk to a Lilliputian stature in fear.