Short story: Seasoned by Matthew G. Rees

Matthew G. Rees

The Government Minister tapped the case of the barometer on his study wall.

To his frustration, the instrument’s hand held fast in its arrow to a rather ghastly engraving of a goblin-like Jack Frost.

In the Minister’s mind, the image seemed to leer at him, as if in a taunt, from beneath the glass.

What was more, as the old politico stood and stared, the dial’s steel wand seemed to alter quite awfully, so that it resembled first a stiletto-like icicle and, then, the skeletal forefinger of a human hand.

He shrank from the case.

Dismissing after a moment what his eyes seemed to have seen, he wandered to a window. Through its panes, he watched the snow falling in the afternoon’s ghost-grey light.

In the world outside, white crusts clung to railings; steps were all but hidden; drifts that had settled against walls and in courtyards had the look of being knee-deep… at least.

A sudden knocking roused him from his preoccupation with the weather. The head of young Tryck, his ‘special adviser’ (for something or other – the Minister could never remember quite what) appeared around the door.

‘Yes?’ said the Minister. ‘What is it?’

‘Your Winter Fuel Allowance,’ Tryck announced. ‘It’s arrived. Shall I have it brought in?’

‘What?’ said the Minister (as if still unsettled by his barometer’s strange behaviour… wrong-footed in the manner of an awkward question from across the political aisle). ‘Oh, yes. Yes. Bring it in,’ he said (more abruptly now, as if suddenly aware of the crypt-like coolness of his room).

Tryck opened the study’s twin doors to their full extent.

‘I think you’ll find this fits the bill,’ Tryck breezed. ‘Economic. Plentiful. Renewable. And, above all, not a fossil fuel…’ – his voice petered – ‘… unless we’re talking in the pejorative sense.’

‘Well,’ said the Minister, beginning to engage more fluently with his underling, ‘those are the watchwords these days. And it’s incumbent on those of us who are in positions of power to practise what we preach.’

In the hallway, through the opened doors, the Minister saw two workmen bearing a weight. They wore long, tan-coloured coats of the kind associated with those who did the heavy lifting when it came to household removals and the sale of paintings and furniture at auction rooms. The men – and their load – were ushered in by Tryck.

‘Felled only yesterday,’ Tryck continued, keenly. ‘Transported here by train last night.’ This remark saw the Minister raise his eyebrows. ‘Services are pretty-much back to normal,’ Tryck explained, ‘since we gave the drivers their rise. Fifty-one percent of trains ran to time this morning. A “clear majority” is how we’re spinning it to the Press. Almost certainly won’t last. Not in this weather. Frozen points, wrong kind of snowflakes, directives on minimum working temperatures – all of that’s “coming down the line”.’

‘Hmm,’ said the Minister, in a manner suggesting scepticism of the offering that was being presented to him. ‘Felled yesterday, you say?  Makes it a bit… fresh, doesn’t it?’

‘Well, perhaps found is the better word,’ encouraged Tryck. ‘Ninety years old, I believe. And, therefore, “seasoned” timber. Edge of an old pit village, somewhere in Wales.’

‘Really?’ said the Minister, as if recalling a past campaign: a constituency dinner of the “rubber chicken” variety… in a village of old Valleys attitudes and ways.

Tryck returned to his theme. ‘It’s had plenty of time to dry out… mature,’ he said (confidently) as if promoting a farmhouse cheese, or a flitch of bacon (while, in fact, lacking any knowledge of either).

‘Not much on it,’ the Minister countered, inspecting its length, held as it was by the carriers at each end.

‘The brittler the bark, the better the burn – I think you’ll find,’ said Tryck.

‘Oh, well, get on with it, then,’ said his master. ‘I fancy it’s turned rather chilly in here.’

The workmen laid the fuel in the fireplace. Tryck waved them from the room.

‘Put a match to it,’ said the Minister. ‘You can use those things for lighters.’ He nodded to some questionnaires whose interrogations (for others than him) were rumoured to exceed 200 queries on the subject of qualification and why the sender’s application was being made…

In the quiet of the study, flames began to lick at the trunk and limbs that now occupied the large, stone fireplace (which was meant to be redundant, but which had been re-commissioned because of “events”).

‘There… that seems to have “taken” nicely,’ said Tryck. ‘Just the job,’ he added, admiring his handiwork. ‘Let me know when you’re ready for another.’

The Minister grunted and returned to his desk.

‘I thought I might finish early today… given the weather,’ said the official, sensing the opportunity to pocket some reward. ‘And tomorrow, if it’s all the same, I thought it might be best if I… worked from home.’

‘Hah! Slogging-away in the saloon bar of The Rat and Ferret?! Unhappily “snowed-in”?!’ snorted the Minister, without looking up from some papers that were on his desk.

Tryck held his tongue.

The Minister lifted his head, glanced at the window… the snow, and then at Tryck. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said. ‘I suppose we can manage without you. The sky won’t fall in. Allowances must be made in this kind of weather. Morale of the troops – and all that.’

The Minister went back to his work – a PR piece he was penning about Government policy (for one of the more obliging media outlets).

Tryck tiptoed from the room.

Beyond the Minister’s window, the snow continued to fall, and the daylight died to nothing. A blush from the fire quivered on the walls and ceiling of his study. That special hush of the sort brought by a heavy snowfall descended on the city.

At times, the politico, snug in his cocoon, seemed to hear a certain cracking of the type that a more concerned listener might have likened to the snapping of old bones, and a particular splitting that was – in its sound – like the splitting and spitting of nails; not nails that had been hammered into, say, the lid of a coffin but human nails… furnace-roasted… on fingers and toes.

In addition, there came, in his comfortable chamber, a fizzing and a flaring that evoked the passage of fire through hair… human hair… the snow-white locks of an old widow (if such cruelty can be imagined).

And, more disturbing still, albeit not to the Minister (who had – he told himself – more pressing matters on his mind), an uneasy twitching and even a shifting – like the roll of a well-lit log – of whatever it was that, for his parliamentary privilege, lay lengthways… burning… in his fireplace – quite possibly still alive.

Copyright Matthew G. Rees, 2024

Matthew G. Rees received the 2023-2024 Rhys Davies Award, Wales’s national prize for the short story, for his tale ‘Harvest’ about a Welsh cockle-picker. His most recent book is The Snow Leopard of Moscow & Other Stories which can be found here.