City Stories, Page 2

Twilight was less than an hour distant when Valerian Kornblum arrived at the Mersey Terrace Apartments. He idled his Toyota van near the underground garage entrance and gazed upward at the old brick structure looming five floors above street level. These historical warehouses, now converted to fashionable living spaces, were clustered about the Ropewalks district. They resembled medieval fortresses, he imagined, at least from the exterior. Solid, imposing structures, built to last, so different from the ubiquitous, shabbily constructed glass and aluminium buildings that dominated contemporary architecture. Many of these vintage warehouses had lasted centuries; their modern neighbours were being demolished and replaced after a few decades. He and his family could be safe here; perhaps their wandering had found an end.

  Valerian turned his van onto the entrance ramp, descended into the garage, and proceeded along the rows of parked cars to the designated space that had been reserved for his vehicle. Exiting the van, he nodded at the other passengers, his wife Bertha, their daughters Molly and Hazel, indicating that they should collect their belongings and follow him to their new home. Each of them carried an overloaded backpack. To an observer, they might have appeared as a family departing for a holiday in the wilderness. But the van had been emptied; they carried their only possessions. They had arrived without any furniture, household appliances, or even groceries. Inexpensive furniture for a two-bedroom apartment would be delivered during the next few days. It was a standard rental agreement. They would pay a monthly fee for a year, after which they would own the pieces outright. Similar transactions had been arranged at each of their previous addresses, but they never stayed long enough to take possession of the furniture. Other household items could be purchased locally as needed; food, except for a modest selection of vegetables, was unnecessary.

  Forming a single line, they trooped through the garage to the rear wall, where a door led to the remaining original basement area. Only half of the underground structure had been converted for parking; the rest of the basement had been preserved in its historical configuration. Rows of enormous, stacked wooden spools lined most of the available space. These were once storage receptacles for many yards of manufactured rope. Grooved tracks that facilitated the rolling of spools from one location to another had been chiselled in the oak floors, lending the basement a railroad freight yard appearance; but manufacturing, at least in this facility, had ended thirty years ago, and none of the spools had been moved since. It was less a matter of neglect than economy: each spool, even without coils of rope, weighed hundreds of pounds.

  Along one interior wall, space had been allocated for several small two-bedroom apartments, reserved for the families of Mersey Terrace employees who were expected to remain on site for extended periods. Several days earlier, Valerian had learned of an unexpected vacancy on the Terrace staff, and he had applied for the position of Director of Maintenance, a grandiose title, but in practice he would be directing only himself and an unskilled assistant to do any electrical, plumping, masonry, or carpentry repairs - wide spectrum of construction trades, indeed - across the entire complex. He also supposed, so far correctly, that given the urgency of the situation, his references would not be checked carefully; accordingly, he manufactured a credible working history for the written application and was not surprised when he was hired immediately after a cursory interview.

  The apartment they had been assigned was as small as they expected and resembled many of their prior living units; it had a prefabricated, hastily erected character: the interior had been assembled from thin sheets of wallboard, and all of the kitchen and bathroom fixtures were lowest-grade quality. Even so, no one was disappointed. Of course, the girls would have to share a bedroom, but their new home, though empty, was clean and with a little effort, could be made cosy and inviting.

  From all outward appearances, the Kornblums were not exceptional. The girls, Molly, age 17, and Hazel, age 13, were attractive teenagers; Bertha, now 51 and only slightly overweight, was enjoying her middle age years, and Valerian, at 62, was leading a robust and vigorous life. None of these ages were definitive; none of the family members knew them with certainty; they were estimates that had been adopted to correspond approximately to their physical appearances.

  Life proceeded peacefully during the next few weeks. Bertha was transforming their barren living space into a comfortable home while Molly and Hazel were settling into their new school environment and occupying their leisure hours exploring the Terrace apartment complex and sampling some of the excitements available in Liverpool City Centre. Valerian, for his part, plunged into the work that had accumulated during the foregoing vacancy; he was being kept very busy but had managed to establish a casual friendship with Brian the evening concierge, who shared his passion for chess. Derek, the young man who served as concierge during the earlier shift, was another matter entirely. He enjoyed flirting with Molly and on one occasion asked her to accompany him to the popular Cream Club downtown. She was flattered, no doubt, but Bertha quickly aborted the relationship before it could develop further. At 28, Derek was apparently too old for her daughter; but that was the least of her concerns; she worried more about Molly’s self-control and preserving the fellow’s well being.

  “We will feed on the roof,” Valerian explained, and several times a week he would lead his family to the communal rooftop seating area where they would lounge sleepily in the warm sunlight and nibble on a selection of fresh vegetables. Other tenants thought the practice not unusual, except perhaps for vegetables being preferred to sweets or pastries. “The Kornblums aren’t so strange; they’re simply organic-loving sun-worshipers,” one tenant, a young software engineer, declared authoritatively if not unhumorously.

  Now, the tenants of the Mersey Terrace Apartments were typical of the Ropewalks population, in general. Genders were equally represented, but the range of ages was weighted toward the young. The district was considered an attractive area in which to live, and the high rents prevalent were designed to maintain that prestige. Residents were predominately entrance-level professionals newly embarking upon financially successful careers. A majority of them were unmarried, though perhaps entangled in a web of relationships; but usually these had not progressed to the point of producing children. Potential chums for Molly and Hazel, consequently, were not plentiful, and in fact, for a while, they were the only children in the complex. Then the Warwicks, a middle-age couple with a teenage son, moved in, and some blameless administrator rented them the apartment directly above the Kornblums. That changed everything.

  The pounding began several days after the Warwicks established themselves in their new home. As with so many of their kind, the Kornblums had poor vision but scorned eyeglasses; why, they reasoned, give others gratuitous clues to their identity? But perhaps in compensation for that deficit, their other sensory receptors were endowed with extraordinary sensitivity, especially their ability to identify odours suffused over expansive areas and hear sounds across a wide frequency. Unfortunately, these gifts came with a penalty: loudness levels were amplified and painful.

  “What is that bloody commotion?” Valerian barked at Derek the following day.

  “Relax, Mister K. It’s just Duncan, the Warwicks’ kid, practicing his football headers. He uses the wall for rebounding.”

  With this information in hand, Valerian marched to the Warwicks’ front door and began a pounding of his own.

  “Would you please discipline your child and ask him to practice somewhere else,” he implored the attractive, coiffed, blond-haired woman who answered the front door, asking as politely as possible while straining mightily to keep his anger in check.

  “Oh, for God's sake, Mister Kornblum, he’s just an active kid. Have a little tolerance why don’t you? Is this your first time living in an apartment?”

  And with these words, she shut the door and ended the audience. It was time, Valerian decided, for another family meeting.

  A few hours
later as darkness began to descend upon Liverpool, the Kornblums assembled around the deserted communal roof seating area.

  Valerian looked quietly across the railing at the River Mersey, then turned and remarked to the others as calmly as possible, “I’m very much afraid that we shall have to kill them.”

  His announcement caused neither shock nor alarm. The Kornblums, after all, were not really the Kornblums of Liverpool, nor the Herringtons of Swansea, nor the Gilberts of Bristol, nor any of the other dozen or so families spread across Wales and central England who had mysteriously vanished in the wake of this family’s nomadic flight from justice.

  “No! There’s been enough of that!” young Hazel cried. “Has everyone forgotten our Laws. . . thou shall not cause pain to be inflicted upon human flesh. . .?”

  It was true, Valerian sadly agreed; they had forgotten. What was once an agonizing decision desperately made, one without any reasonable alternative, had become a reflexive response to the slightest provocation, the smallest annoyance.

  “Yes, Hazel is perfectly right. We have to stop, but we shall also have to leave. If we stay and somehow tolerate the noise, it will surely happen again; we’ll find another excuse.”

  Once, millions of their kind roamed the earth. Now at most, they numbered in the tens of thousands. No one knew for certain how many were left; most were hidden; only the maskers, the relative few who could psychologically disguise their appearances, even to themselves and each other, could live openly among humans undetected. Among the Kornblums, only Molly had accidentally glimpsed her true form. She was in the shower, the bathroom enveloped with steam, when she chanced to look over her shoulder and saw for the first time the blurry image in the mirror: the folded wings, the glittering scales, the pointed, flared nostrils. They never used the word dragons with one another. It was forbidden, for everyone’s safety.

  They left later that night without notice, rushing through the underground tunnels that once carried giant spools of rope toward the dockside. They left as they arrived, their few possessions stuffed into large backpacks, everything else left behind.

  Several days afterward, a party of four burly young men, casually dressed, arrived at Mersey Terrace and made inquiries about the Kornblums, their present whereabouts. No one could help; the family had simply disappeared, without giving notice, without even collecting Valerian’s pay cheque. The strangers received this news without comment and returned to their cars. They drove northward; the scent was still fresh.

  Hours later, the Kornblums were motoring along the M74, crossing the Scottish border in an older model Renault; the van had been abandoned in its parking space at the Terrace. Glasgow would be their final stop in Britain, Valerian decided. If they were unable to find refuge in that bustling city, they would make their way to the United States, preferably by sea. A country of that size would offer many opportunities to blend in with the local population.

  While the children gossiped animatedly in the rear seat, repeatedly interrupting each other with laughter, Bertha gazed out the side window and reconsidered their present circumstances. She felt a stirring of pride as she remembered Hazel reciting the Law their last night in Mersey Terrace. “. . . Thou shall not cause pain to be inflicted upon human flesh . . .” But there was another clause their daughter had omitted. “. . .Nor harm another of our kind nor any of our cousins the vampyr race. . .” They were being followed, everyone knew, eventually to be held accountable for their crimes. She glanced at Valerian. A group of three females travelling alone would have better chances of evading their pursuers than a couple fleeing with two children. How many times had they ignored the Law in the past? Could one more occurrence be that egregious?

  *******

  My Liverpool Flat

  By

  Caroline Hubbard

  Oh my, oh my

  A brand new home in the sky

  I step through the door

  A magnificent staircase and a marbled floor

  I step again for a closer look

  I stand awestruck.

  The concierge dressed in brown

  In the lift he comments “Up or down?”

  “Floor 5” I aptly say

  I smile “Just looking today.”

  “This way Madam” as he points towards my door.

  Briskly I walk along the corridor.

  In I go towards the light,

  I glance outside, what a beautiful sight

  The river gracefully flowing looking grand

  The Mersey ferry ready to land.

  People milling around below

  “My oh my” what a beautiful show.

  I glance around at my new place

  This is going to be my base

  Out the door towards the top

  Up the stairs and then I stop

  Somewhere to sit, look out and see.

  Somewhere I really want to be

  Cars speeding, people running around

  Me up here them on the ground.

  The Liver Birds silhouetted against the city sky,

  Poised gracefully, ready to fly.

  ‘Paddy's Wigwam’ across the way.

  I know this is where I want to stay

  The crown standing tall a shining light

  A beacon of hope of what is right.

  The old cathedral in all its glory

  Every picture tells a story

  A grand building, a symbol of pride

  Liverpool's got nothing to hide.

  I look again across Liverpool bay

  I struggle to find words to say

  My proud home for many a year

  I quietly stand and shed a tear.

  *******

  Gladys

  By

  Carol Hubbard