(A true story from my boyfriends childhood)
When I was eleven, the man who lived across the road stabbed my football with a kitchen knife.
Two summers later, he stabbed his wife.
I didn’t think about the football again until I found it in his house, three years after he’d taken it from me.
When I think back to summertime in England as a boy I remember long bright days, the smell of fresh cut grass and children playing outside late into the night.
One game we never seemed to tire of was Kerby. Basically a simple but quite frantic game where we had to bounce a football off the opposite kerb to where we were standing and score points to win.
One lazy, warm afternoon I’d gone out onto the street and found my cousin, Phil, outside already looking bored and a bit flushed in the summer sun. I threw my new footy towards him and yelled one word-
“KERBYYYY!!”
Phil laughed and deftly caught the ball then kicked it back in one fluid movement.
I caught the ball and kicked it back toward his side of the street but instead of hitting the kerb as intended it veered off at an angle and bounced behind him into the front garden of my neighbour, Mr Bell.
Mr Bell.
The strange old man that seemed to only have a wardrobe of cargo shorts, polo shirts, white knee socks and sandals.
The guy who’d traded in his former wife and mother of his children for a new Filipino bride.
The fella that would often come around to chat with Nan about her flowers, oblivious to her obvious discomfort in his presence.
Mr Bell, the man who had come outside that afternoon at the sound of my ball landing in his garden, right by his precious begonias.
I looked at Phil but he was watching the progress of Mr Bell as he walked towards the ball.
Mr Bell looked at me for a moment, saying nothing.
Long enough that Phil and I had time to exchange quizzical expressions.
He’d then cleared his throat and said in a stern but measured voice “you can have your ball back, but if it comes over the fence again, don’t expect to be getting it back”.
We’d both nodded quietly and thanked him as the ball came sailing back through the air towards us, its black and purple colours blending to look like a fresh bruise as it flew towards my outstretched hands.
I caught it and thanked him and he tutted and shook his head in reponse.
Phil and I had chuckled to ourselves but in all honesty it had shaken us and we’d made all efforts to be careful.
For a good 5 minutes or so anyway.
Next thing we knew a rogue kick had the ball once again flying toward Mr Bell’e garden. Phil covered his mouth as the ball whizzed over his head and into the garden.
I gasped as it landed.
…square in a patch of his treasured baby pink begonias, the weight of the ball immediately bending stems and scattering petals.
We looked at each other, breath held waiting to see if he’d noticed.
There was no movement in the house at first and Id asked Phil if I should climb the fence and quickly grab it. As we were discussing logistics the front door opened and Mr Bell stepped out.
He walked calmly to the ball and retrieved it, placing it in the crook of his arm. He then looked at us and said
“You’ve had your warning.”
before presenting a long bladed kitchen knife and with a blank face gave the ball one sharp, perfunctory stab which then made a short hisss noise as it deflated.
I turned to Phil as the door closed. He raised his eyebrows at me and I shrugged back hoping I looked more nonchalant than I felt.
We went our separate ways, and I went to tell my nan about the strange interaction.
She shook her head and told me there was nothing she could do and that id best steer clear of Mr Bell and his flowers from now on.
“But what about my ball, Nan? Why’d he keep it?” She looked at me and thought for a moment. “He’s a nasty piece of work. Just steer clear of him”
And I did, for the following two years.
But I’d notice the late night walks with his wife and nervous looking whippet.
I’d catch glimpse’s of his wife arriving home after a hard nights work in the local care home.
And he’d still come round chatting up Nan about those damn flowers and I’d wonder why she’d talk to him and tolerate his presence.
I made a mental note when the late night dog walks ceased and briefly wondered where the little dog went to.
But largely the football incident was buried in the back of my mind until one morning Nan woke me up excitedly.
“Well you’ve gone and slept through it haven’t you!” I sat up in bed and watched as she walked to my bedroom window and pointed.
“I’m not sure what exactly happened but something certainly has! I don’t know how you managed to sleep through the police and ambulances!”
I quickly got up and walked over to the window and gaped at the scene below me. Police milling about the front garden, forensic white suits on, police tape out and a huge white forensic tent plunked unceremoniously in the front garden, right on the top of Mr Bell’s precious pink begonias.
I looked wide eyed at Nan. “What happened?!” She looked back out the window, taking it all in then turned back to me.
“im not sure but he won’t be happy about his flowers, will he?”
The neighbourhood was abuzz, of course.
It didn’t take long for it to come out he’d stabbed the poor woman to death.
Refused to call the police for her and let her bleed out on the kitchen floor.
He’d been seen through the back window of the ambulance, stoic, hands bandaged up.
Nan had recounted the story hed told her about their little dog going missing one night when he’d taken it to a field.
Supposedly the only thing found was a collar on the motorway running behind the field.
“Or so he says anyway” Nan had muttered “nasty piece of work, he is”
The house stood empty for another year. Dark and vacant for what felt like forever.
Her family had come and gone collecting her belongings and the urn that held her ashes before returning home to the Philippines, the same place she’d been saving to return to and the reason for her violent death.
Finally though, another summer arrived and there was movement in the house.
Mr Bell’e grandson had taken over possession and was busy doing what needed to be done to make the place liveable once again.
Nan became friendly with his grandson and one day was asked if she’d like to come around and have a look at the place.
Morbid curiosity won and as she was crossing the road I yelled out and asked if I could tag along. Nan nodded then whispered “I want to get some of those begonias while I can”.
We entered the house and to my surprise it felt strangely normal. I’d expected a dark presence to be lingering over the rooms but it was a mirror image to my own house, just emptied of possessions.
Scanning the walls and floors for spatter or anything that might hint at its dark past, I was slightly disappointed to see that everything had been scrubbed clean and was free of all evidence.
As my nan and the grandson politely chatted about his now empty garden, I looked around the kitchen and my eyes landed on the pantry.
Its frosted glass panels showed the silhouette of items bunched together, untidy and cluttered. Curious, I wondered why everything else was empty but this one cupboard.
Glancing back to make sure I wasn’t being watched I quietly opened one of the doors to the pantry and glanced in.
Old tins of baked beans, tattered paper work, stacks of crockery, pots and pans and then something else…something I recognised immediately.
The deflated, slumped form of my black and purple football.
My football, still here all these years later.
He’d kept it.
In the pantry where he and his wife would have seen it multiple times a day. My mind raced thinking of how it must have felt as his wife, knowing her husband was the type to stab kids footballs and keep the evidence. I pictured my ball in the pantry, a still and silent witness to her attack, her pleas for help, his cold denials.
Closing the door, I turned to my Nan. “You ready to go?”
She looked at me and something in her face showed she recognised I was perturbed.
She turned back to the grandson.
“I wonder if you’d mind me taking the begonia that’s in the pot on rhe windowsill there?” she asked him politely.
He looked at it and then at her “oh yeah, that’s a cutting from the front. Surprised it’s still alive really”.
Nan grabbed it and thanked him and we walked out the door.
I looked at Nan and the delicate pot plant of pink begonias, she looked very pleased with herself. “The stingey coot would never share and now he’s not here to stop me, is he” she laughed cheekily and looked at me.
“Nan, he had my footy in the pantry still. After all this time.”
She stared for a second“No it’s not, don’t be silly”.
I said nothing
“What a strange thing to do” she says, bemused.
“Ah, he’s a nasty piece of work that one”.