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Competition Showcase –
The Tortoiseshell Comb by Malcolm Welshman |
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Today.
Exactly one hundred years ago. With a long drive home ahead of them,
they turned in early. Lucy spent some time carefully preparing herself.
A long, hot bath, immersed in bubbles scented with lilies - my wife’s
favourite flowers; a clean white night dress; and her hair, windswept
from the moorland breezes teased out with the tortoiseshell comb that
cavorted through her locks like a nubile nymph.
Paul read for a bit before switching off the bedside light with a
sleepy ‘Good night’ and a peck on her cheek. She lay awake,
listening, waiting, every so often glancing at the mirror which tilted,
reflected the moon light pouring in through the open-curtained window,
bathing the room in a sea of silver.
She dozed off, only to be woken by my words as I glided towards her
- a grey, commanding figure, dark curly hair, mutton chop whiskers.
’Darling,’ she murmured sleepily as I eased myself into
her open arms and she ran her fingers through my curls.
‘My love… ’ I crooned in my soft Somerset brogue.
‘ It’s been a long time. Such a long…long time.’
It doesn’t seem as if seven months have passed. The icy winds
of early March are with us now. But Lucy has only to pick up my wife’s |
tortoiseshell comb to relive the warmth of that August night. Those
whispered words. My sonnet of love:
To seek a maiden fair as thee
I roamed the land and sailed the sea.
Now having found you, lie with me.
And you shall have my baby.
With a contented smile, she lets the comb glide through her hair.
It crackles with static, charged with life. As does our baby who stirs
within her.
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Judging Comment: The brief for this competition was to write
a ghost story with a summer setting. So Malcolm Welshman took his
two characters, Paul and Lucy, off to Exmoor for a holiday, and we
learn that the holiday was to help Lucy to get over the premature
loss of her baby. It is made clear to us, right from the opening of
the story, that neither Paul nor Lucy are the narrators in this story:
'They found my wife's comb,' says the narrator. Gradually we come
to realise that the narrator is Frank Wainright, who had died back
in 1906. Our narrator is the ghost of Malcolm Welshman's ghost story.
The stories of these two parallel sets of lives, separated by a hundred
years, are then slowly revealed to us in a well paced and gripping
story – right up to its chilling end when we discover that Lucy
is pregnant with a ghost's baby.
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