Yes, you did read the title correctly, I've switched this week around! Basically, I haven't finished reading the 'trilogy of five' and I want this Hitchhiker's post to be as good and as well informed as it can be, so I want to finish it before I do the post. But, I wanted to post as well, so I thought it'd be better to just put this on a few days early and give myself a few more days to hitchhike.
I'm also sorry it's so late in the day, (in that it's Wednesday) I usually try to upload at about 3, but I went out for a quick drink which lasted for 5 hours. So, without further ado...
I regained control of my senses
some time later; I’d been placed on the sofa with a tea-towel under my face to
catch the blood which had now congealed and caked around my face. I still
couldn’t open my left eye and the vision in the other was fuzzy at best. I
blinked a few times and it cleared a little. I had to raise myself to a seated
position in stages, my shoulder weak from its meeting with the table leg. My
head throbbed so painfully that I thought for a moment I would either vomit or
pass out again.
I looked around the room slowly –
there were three policemen, my elderly neighbour from downstairs, and my
attacker was seated across the room with his hands cuffed behind his back. Seeing
him handcuffed when I was the true criminal made me smile, although to them it
looked like a grimace. My elderly neighbour was hovering as if there were hot
coals beneath her feet and she was wringing her ancient hands together. She
made a sympathetic noise somewhere between a groan and ‘oh, bugger it!’ and
shuffled quickly into the kitchen where she began filling the washing up bowl
with warm water. I watched as the largest of the three policemen questioning
the intruder and I grinned again. The old lady sat down next to me delicately.
She swirled around a cloth in the semi-warm water and paused as she wrung it
out.
‘I just want to clean you up a
bit, dear, I can stand you looking this way and I think you’d feel much better.
Now, tell me if I’m being too rough and I’ll do my best to be more gentle.’ She
began dabbing at my face. I flinched at first, knowing how vicious my
grandmother had seemed cleaning my wounds as a child. After three or four
strokes, I discovered she was the most compassionate and merciful people I’d
met. She poked her tongue out in concentration as if she were knitting and had
the look of a concerned mother as she cleaned my wounds. I felt a burst of
affection for her and wanted to cling onto her as if she were the mother I’d
been missing. A tear ran down my cheek and I bit my lip. She wiped replaced the
cloth in the reddening water and took hold of one of my hands. She wiped the
tear from my face and kept her hand on my cheek for a while as she lifted my
head so that my eyes met hers. I raised her hand and kissed it. She smiled and
continued her quest to cleanse my face.
After ten minutes or so, I noticed that the
policemen had converged in the centre of the room and were whispering. I began
to grow anxious again. The old woman seemed to sense my tension and squeezed my
hand – she’d been holding it since she’d taken it in hers before. The smallest
of the three policemen broke from the group and moved towards me.
Next week the ordering should be back to normal! Come back Thursday for the feature on Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series/radio show/film etc., I hope you enjoyed this bit, I think there will only be one more part after this, which, for once, is mostly written! Therefore, it may actually be uploaded at the time I intend it to be.
Have a great week and thanks for reading! Laura
xoxoxox
No comments:
Post a Comment