Derek Charles Goodwin. 173 Trevino Drive, Rushey Mead, Leicester. LE4-7TR. Written during the Covid Virus lock down of 2020 whilst listening to Sopor Aeternus: "In der Palästra", the music was provided by Carlos and it is recommended whilst reading the story. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was speaking with a young Greek fellow from Athens at great length, he was an interesting young man who took the trouble to smell a flower on occasion, who awoke and drank in a view of Mount Olympus each morning which he appreciated, a young man open to new thinking and of stories of old. We spoke in particular about the preservation of the history of today and how it could be lost due to instability in the storage medium of today, digital. I asked him to be sure he would write down a little of his family history, stories, legends and myths to which he said he would. So I dedicate this morsel of history to him, Inle, for giving me a few hours of his time and in the hope it will inspire him to write. A short story from my family, which is something of a believe it or not. I have no care if you find such things a nonsense, but reader beware, several members of the family have been left with questions about their sanity and indeed the very fabric of their belief structure, all this from a few lines and some Edwardian relics.... Two very troubled souls in my direct line, Walter Henry Walford of Birmingham and Charlotte Ryder of Quorn somehow managed to find each other at Cosby in Leicestershire. They began their journey in life together with a false promise on their knees before God at St Margarets church in Leicester one Saturday in 1895, it was a bigamous marriage, Walter was already married to Sarah Foster and Charlotte knew. The lie before God made by Walter and Charlotte. My Great Grand Father and Great Grand Mother gave birth to 10 children throughout a very stormy violent marriage, only three of the children would live to be old, only two would have children and one, well: one is still present. However he is present not in a form that can be recognised, its more of a form that is felt, and on occasion heard in that place behind your eyes when you cannot be sure of something. Make no mistake though, he is present. The child I speak of was named after his father, Walter Henry Walford Junior, I will call him Walter for ease. Walter was born out of wedlock in 1895, as were his two older sisters before him. However a condition of him being named after his father was marriage, so that is how the bigamous marriage came about and Walter senior had that most desired possession of men of the day, a son bearing his name. In a slightly cruel twist of fete the family were living in the shadows of petty crime, Walter Walford JNR was actually registered as Walter Walker, as were his sisters, the family was on the run. As young Walters life progressed the violence and crime continued around him, his sister died and the house was tormented with poverty and sickness. Walter was not a strong child and it was a sad place indeed for one so young and delicate as Walter. There was a glimmer of hope during late 1903, the family moved to Barrow Upon Soar where there was work to be had, the family of now eight moved into rooms on Industry Street, Walter senior got himself a gruelling but paid job casting paving slabs at the quarry and the threat of the dreaded workhouse was receded. For Christmas Walter and Charlotte would have managed to furnish meat for the table, and for Walter Jnr, something special. Two wooden toys, a painted toy soldier and a little sprung bird that waggled about if flicked, it was the best Christmas ever for the family. The drudgery and trials of their lives might have seemed to be behind them. Just after this Christmas wonder a tragedy struck, Walter was up before his mother, his father being gone for work, he went to the kitchen, this frail boy of barely nine years, he wanted the key for the door and reached above the oven for the key..... Whoosh and he was aflame, Walters nightclothes were ablaze and he ran through the house screaming, he found his way into his mother bedroom, she leapt from her bed and managed to get the flames abated, but alas poor Walter was in a dire state, all but cooked and melted and in such distress. Young Walter hung on for a few days, he succumbed to his inevitable fete and without doubt his death was a mercy to him physically. Oh how his mother would have wailed and pleaded late into the night for the darkness not to come for her son. Walters earthly body was buried at Barrow Upon Soar Cemetery in what was to become our family plot, he was the first into the ground, did he hear his mothers wails and leave his cold lonely resting place to answer her calls? Walters family divided up his things as was done, the family too poor to not. However the toys were put in a tin, with a little note that they were Walters. Time passed and the tins went to the back of the drawer, each year at Christmas the toys would be taken out by a loving mother who never forgot, once grief was satiated the toys went back from whence they came until the next year. Until 1946 when Charlotte died and was buried with young Walter. My Grandmother Caroline inherited the toys along with all Charlotte's other possessions, Charlotte had remarried, Her first husband died in the hell of the workhouse after all in 1913, Charlotte married a widower called John Cunnington and seems to have found some solace from her hard life in the end. Caroline told of the toys. She told how they would rattle in the old tin around December, and she would recount the story I have told above. She was adamant about the toys rattling, as a young man I listened to this silver haired, dewy eyed and rosy cheeked old lady tell this story on several occasions and never forgot it, the intensity of her belief has still never left me. My Grandmother Caroline died in 1974 and she passed her things onto my mother, Diane. My mother has never kept anything of sentiment, high functioning autism and ultra deep seated obsessive compulsive disorder meant she had no sentiment and had an acute awareness of anything of more than a couple of years of age being junk, I had five siblings and she has nothing of us, not a baby bootie, shawl or so much as a photograph, I lie not, this is fact. So in 2000 when my mother presented me with a rather dusty looking package I was most surprised, she handed it to me and said in one sentence without pause “I was asked to give you this and I don’t want to talk about it thank you very much.” It was pushed into my hands and my mother high tailed it off home in a sprightly manner. It was a bundle of yellowed newspapers; tied around and around with green frayed garden string, I opened it. It was an old jug and I recognised it with great surprise, it was the one used by my Grandmother Caroline to wash her hair over the sink, inside was a small package of brown paper, the sticky tape also yellowed with age. I opened it with some slight trepidation unsure what it would be, it was two toys, a painted toy soldier and a bird on a spring, I knew right away what they were and I put them back in the jug. I did look at the newspaper and it was dated 1974, I don't think my mother had unwrapped it as she was superstitious and knew the story of the toys that came alive at Christmas. I put the jug and its contents into a cupboard under my kitchen sink with great feelings of angst and unease, I pondered what to to with them. As happens with things I was taken in other directions and the jug went to the back of the cupboard and to the back of my mind. Later that year at Christmas we started to have trouble with our pipes and called in the plumber, we thought it was air trapped in them. As Mr Clements the plumber got to the back of the cupboard he brought out the jug and put it with the pots and pans on the worktop, and I began to wonder. There was nothing wrong and Mr Clements assured us it was not the plumbing. I took the jug and its contents out to my workshop and put it on a shelf, I was off work and it was the Christmas season so I was very busy in and out of my workshop fetching down trimmings from its roof space, wrapping presents in secret when I heard it rattle, the jug, I nearly soiled myself, there is no doubt the sound came from inside the jug. I grabbed it and put it in a drawer, took my leave, switched off the light and locked the door behind me, I couldn't deal with this on Christmas eve, it really disturbed and unnerved me. Christmas day 2000 was a nice one for us, we feasted and made merry, we were visited by family and we in turn visited family. We returned home full of the spirit of Christmas, as I pulled onto my driveway I noticed through the windows of my workshop the lights were on and there were shadows flitting about inside. I thought we were being robbed, however I soon found we were not, I did not know it yet but the Christmas spirit was not the only spirit visiting our home that frosty Noel evening. I grabbed my cosh from under the seat of my car and stormed over to the workshop door, I unlocked it and yanked it open, there was no one there, the light was on, the draw was open and there were two toys on the workbench, both staring at me with beady eyes that filled me with a deep fear of realising there really is truth to the story of Walter Henry Walfords toys coming alive at Christmas. You see I was not frightened of the toys, I knew they had not actually come alive, I was frightened by who had put the light on, who had opened the draw and who had moved the inanimate toys..... A picture up in the rafters of my workshop of where the toys are kept. I cleaned up those toys, and I locked them away, once a year on Christmas eve every year I unlock the place where I keep them and I close the workshop curtains and lock the door behind me, I go in on the 26 th of December each year and I put them back. In 2004, 100 years from to the day of the story I went into my garage and I opened the locked place where I keep them and the toys were gone, only I have the key. There has been no rattle since and no sign of them but I am sure I heard a little boy whisper from the shadows, “Tis surely my time for thine journey, thank you......” I took a picture of the toys and how I kept them:- I will never know where they went or how, but I feel these beady eyed things found their way six feet down in the earth at Barrow Upon Soar Cemetery....... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For life my wife Rachel is my inspiration, for other stuff I have some great friends and acquaintances on Rizon IRC in #FWB #Cheers and #NFA. So a thank you to Future, SoyLunafan, Pe’talo, Antifragilegirl, Carlos, Jaide, Yggdrasil and so many others in such numbers listing is impossible. I chose the music as an audio/visual representation the torment of the lives of these people in this story. I’ve needed inspiration to write this dark chapter and it came from an unexpected source, IRC, Inle for the reminder it needed writing and Carlos for the inspirational music. SOPOR AETERNUS: "In der Palästra" (music video) Derek Charles Goodwin. 2020 and still no sign of them.