The Window

The village of Steepdale, June 19th 1941

"I aint imagining it Jack! I’m telling you there is someone outside; someone is walking about in our garden. If you can manage to peel your fat arse off that mattress for just a minute why don’t you wobble over here so you can see for yourself?"

Scowling away Betty is standing in her nightdress by the bedroom window, her worn face and hair curlers lighting up a reddy orange every few seconds as she drags deeply on her woodbine cigarette.

"Bullshit!" growls Jack as he sits himself up in the warm bed "You mad cow. I know you won’t let me get a frigging minutes sleep until I look out that bloody window." A deep cough then flies out his mouth as all the crap that’s built up on his lungs needs flushing out. As soon as the rasping stops he grabs his glasses off the bedside cabinet and perches them on his bulbous nose.

"Out of the way you nutter" he screams at his long suffering wife as he drags his weary bones over to the sash window. Grabbing the heavy blackout curtains he angrily pulls them wide apart; not satisfied with the tiny opening Betty had made. "What the hell am I supposed to be looking at then? You can’t see a bloody thing outside, there aint any light coming from anywhere." He scans the vague silhouettes of the rest of the houses in the blacked out village "Those lucky sods are still asleep, no doubt because they don’t have a crazy wife!"

"Shut Up!" screams back Betty "All you have done for the past forty years is just moan and moan at me, it’s like a living hell, I hate you!. I despise every bone in your body!"

"Oh shut up yourself, I will tell you what hell is- it’s waking up to your bloody face every morning. Now that’s a frigging nightmare."

Lighting up another cigarette Betty doesn’t stop staring out the window "Oi! Watch out with those matches" Jack shouts "don’t forget the bombers have been flying over every night this week. They don’t need much help."

Betty spits back "And you had better keep your trap shut, the pilots will be able to hear your whinging voice even at 10,000 feet up."

A minute later they both hear the whistling noise.

* * * * *

"I am sure I saw someone up at that window Steve" Janet asks as she and her fiancé walk around the ruins. He grabs her by the hand "Don’t worry it can’t be anyone, no one has lived here for nearly sixty years darling. The whole village was wiped out by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Every house was hit, about a hundred people died here that night."

"I still don’t understand why did they bomb a small country village? What benefit was there in that?"

Shrugging his shoulders he replies "Nobody really knows for sure; it must have been an accident. The best guess is that there must have been some light showing, one of the pilots must have saw it and they mistook here for somewhere else."

Janet keeps being drawn to the window "How sad, a simple mistake that leads to the deaths of so many. At least they died with their loved ones. I can’t help but think there is something romantic about the thought of spending eternity together."

As they start to walk away she’s sure she can still see a small orange glow come and go from inside the derelict window.