Short fiction: Remembered Time

The past is a dangerous place

“The tape turned my bowels to water,” said Peter.

Jake had been at the window, looking out at the glass-and-steel canyons of Docklands. He turned towards Peter, noting how boring lawyers look when not in court. “What?” he said.

“I think you’d better see it.”

“Don’t be a drama queen,” said Jake.

“I’m not,” said Peter. “I’m a legal advisor to this newspaper. And I think you should see the tape.”

David Iliff/Creative Commons

Something in his voice gave Jake pause. “All right,” he said at length. “Tell Michelle to set it up. But bugger off for now, I need to see tomorrow’s feature layouts.”

Peter turned to go. He paused in the doorway.

“What,” said Jake again.

“I do not think you understand the gravity of the situation,” said Peter. “Stella’s husband may sue.”

“Good. Think of the column inches,” said Jake.

The other shrugged and went off across the newsroom. He was ignored by the subs, who were in the white heat of their day – that time in the late afternoon when all the copy must be made ready so the layout people can start casting off and asking for a cut here, a subhead there.  

Jake looked at his desk. It should be clear now, ready for the first mock-ups of tomorrow’s Daily Morning News front page. But there were several large sheets on it, mostly pen-and-ink drawings of a caricature weasel. The weasel was accompanied in some frames by a stoat and an otter. Across one was scrawled: Proposed comic strip. Mike and the Mustelids. They were a submission from some art-school hopeful.  The art director had brought them in for Jake’s opinion (which was brief and clear) and then neglected to take them away. He sighed. “Michelle,” he yelled. His assistant swayed in on six-inch heels. “Michelle, get these back to Derek, would you. He’d forget his balls if they weren’t in a bag.”

“Yes Jake,” she replied. “Is ten tomorrow OK for the tape viewing?”

“I suppose so.”

“Who’d you want there? Peter says it’s sort of sensitive.”

“Who did Pete say?”

“Him. And William Bristow.”

“What, Bill the Brief? In person?” Bristow was a barrister. “That’s a bit heavy. No-one else?”

“Peter says it’s all a bit grave and we don’t want gossip, like.” She looked at her phone. ”He wants one other person in on it, says you’ll need their advice. Dr Amery.”

“Who’s Dr Amery when he’s at home?”

“She’s a clinical psychologist,” said Michelle.

“Oh,” he said. He was about to ask why the Daily Morning News needed a clinical psychologist but not for the first time that day, a voice inside told him to shut up. He watched Michelle, not without pleasure, as she swayed out of his office. Then he noticed the latest edition of Private Eye, no longer masked by mustelids. It was folded back at the Street of Shame column.

The Daily Moron News has a problem. Where’s its star columnist, Saucy Stella the Fleet Street Slag? (Or Stella Boggs, to use her proper name.) Her column’s been absent for three weeks now. Moron insiders say something’s gone very wrong. Saucy Stell went off to the backwoods of Birmingham to write an exposé of alleged fraudulent hypnotherapist Arnold Merriweather. It’s a change from her usual headlines. Workshy scroungers! Benefits! Palestinian victimhood! Woke councils! All grist to her mill. Trouble is, she’s now in hospital, gabbling incoherently [what’s new – Ed.]. The sinister Merriweather put her under then stole her sooooul…

He tossed Private Eye back on his desk. “We’ll sue the buggers,” he muttered, but something felt wrong.

He swivelled back towards the window. I do miss Fleet Street, he thought, remembering his visits as a spotty teenager fifty years ago, watching his compositor father work the Linotype machine, the slugs cast in the hot metal, the clatter of the keyboards, the men assembling the formes and finding themselves a word over and yelling for a sub to come and edit on the stone. Then off for a pint in the cool plain upper room of the Printer’s Devil in Fetter Lane, gone now, torn down years ago to make way for some plastic palace. And a walk later to the Embankment, across Fleet Street, past El Vino, which would be heaving with barristers and journalists; and down Bouverie Street, seeing the lorries drawn up with the huge bales of newsprint that were hauled up by ropes on beams that stuck out across the road and worked in through the huge doors way above the street.

Colin Smith/Creative Commons

All gone now. But we haven’t changed, thought Jake. All the news that’s unfit to print and sue us if you dare.

*

“Actually a few people are after this hypnotherapist chap,” said Peter.

“Arnold Merriweather?” said Jake. “Yes, I believe so. That’s why I sent Stella to look into him.”

“From now on say it was her own idea,” said Peter. “It might be safer if we go to court.”

They were seated round the table at one end of Jake’s large office. At the other end of the room was a 65-inch TV mounted on the wall. There were several others on the other walls though not on Jake’s desk. There was little else in the office. (“Would you like bookcases?” Michelle had asked when it was fitted out. “What for?” he had asked, puzzled.) The sole adornments were facsimiles of some of his favourite front pages and a picture of Jake with the proprietor and his wife. The latter had, at the time, just had her boobs done and the sun cast shadows in her cleavage like the Grand Canyon at dawn.

“There are a couple of cases.” Bill the Brief shifted in his seat. He was a lengthy cadaverous figure in his 60s with a hawk-like beak of a nose and bushy eyebrows. Jake couldn’t look at him without the urge to say “M’Lud” and stick his thumbs in his lapels. “A Midland cleaning contractor is suing him.”

“That’s that Featherstone bloke, isn’t it,” said Jake. “Wasn’t he in dispute with his workforce or something?”

“The union were after him,” said Bill the Brief. “They said his cleaners were working 60-70 hours a week. The law says 48 hours. Featherstone said they’d all opted out of the limit, which is legal but voluntary and he was denying shifts to guys who wouldn’t opt out. Someone grassed him up to the union.”

“Seems he was underpaying people as well,” said Peter. “Entering them on the books as apprentices so he didn’t have to pay the full minimum wage. Some of ’em were asylum seekers without permission to work.”

“Oh, and there were a couple who got sick from the cleaning fluids,” said Bill the Brief. “Mixing ammonia-based cleaners with bleach, apparently. And descaling agents. The union alleged breathing problems, chemical burns and other fun things. He claims the victims weren’t working for him. The union says they were.”

“What a nice chap,” said Jake. “Can’t see as that’s got anything to do with this hypnotherapy business though.”

“His daughter bought him a hypnotherapy session with Merriweather for Christmas,” said Peter. “She thought it could help him give up smoking. Apparently Merriweather regressed him to the 1840s and he found himself working in a coal mine as a 12-year-old, which distressed him greatly. He has decided to sue.”

He picked up a piece of paper. “This is a transcript of the session supplied in evidence. Featherstone is talking under hypnosis – Merriweather prompted him with questions now and then but we’ve edited that out for clarity.

“My name is Percy Armstrong and I am 12 years old. I have worked in the pit since I was about six, first as a trapper but now I be a hurrier. We pull the corves from the face where the hewers cut the coal. There is a leather belt around my waist, gurl belt we calls it and a chain goes back to the corve and sometimes a girl behind pushes, thrusters we call them. The passage is low so she’ll push with her head. It hurts my knees to crawl through it, it is so low. You ask the weight of the corves, well I don’t rightly know but they say two hundred pounds maybe.”

Peter looked up from his paper. “At length Featherstone became very distressed. It seems he ‘remembered’ being badly burned when a candle ignited some fire-damp and then ‘remembered’ dying in great pain not long afterwards. We have tried to check this but parish records are often incomplete, and we can’t be sure of the exact date or location.”

“You’re not suggesting that the man was really remembering a past life, are you?” said Jake. “How would he have any case against Merriweather?”

“They’ll argue that it’s a case of cryptomnesia,” said Peter. “That’s when someone sees something that appears real under hypnosis but has actually read or seen it somewhere in real life and has forgotten it. In the case of Featherstone, much detail on child labour in the mines was collected as testimony to a Royal Commission chaired by the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1842. It may be that Featherstone had seen this, perhaps at school. If the regression sparked an episode of cryptomnesia and distressed the subject, it may be that Merriweather should not have regressed him.”

“Jesus,” said Jake. “Is there anything in this hypnotherapy lark, or is it all bullshit?”

“Oh no, hypnotherapy is quite legitimate,” said Dr Amery. She was a grey-haired woman of maybe 50, a little severe but not unfriendly. “It’s used to treat certain conditions or help people break harmful habits. The National Health Service accepts that. But it doesn’t pay for it, and warns you should select a hypnotherapist with care. Also hypnotherapy is contraindicated if you have psychosis or some types of personality disorder.”

“So maybe Featherstone should not have been ‘put under’ at all?” said Jake.

“No, perhaps not, if Merriweather was not sure of his medical history,” she replied. “In particular, past-life regression is a specific form of hypnotherapy that seeks to uncover the causes of trauma or behaviours, which it is thought may lie in previous lifetimes. But past-life regression is not recognised by all hypnotherapy professionals. It can worsen certain psychological conditions and because someone under hypnosis is suggestible, it can implant false ‘memories’ and distress the patient.”

“Wasn’t there a Welsh chap who made a splash regressing subjects? There was a TV programme,” said Peter.

“That’s right. Back in the 1970s,” said Dr Amery. “It was something of a sensation at the time. He was a serious hypnotherapist who wanted to treat people. But many critics ascribed the tapes to cryptomnesia.”

Peter looked at his notes. “Featherstone isn’t the only patient of Merriweather’s who’s been talking of suing. There was that bloke who runs a chain of wholesale butchers.”

“Ah yes,” said Bill the Brief. “Charlie Mayhew. Charlie’s Country Meats. Big supplier to the supermarkets. I defended him a few years ago. Multiple animal welfare violations. Alleged, I should say. What was he doing at a hypnotherapist’s, anyway?”

“He hoped Merriweather would help him stop drinking,” said Peter. “Hypnotherapy’s often used for things like that. You look into people’s lives under hypnosis and find where the negative behaviours come from. Except it didn’t work, did it. Because he reckoned he’d been regressed as a worker in a 19th-century Chicago slaughterhouse. He says he woke up screaming ‘The blood! The blood!’ and he can’t eat meat anymore.”

“Didn’t Upton Sinclair write a famous novel set in the Chicago stockyards?” said Bill the Brief. “Maybe Mayhew had read it and forgotten he’d done so? Cryptomnesia again.”

“That’s the suspicion.” Dr Amery frowned. “But hard to prove. What about the Brighton case?”

“We’re not acting for them,” said Peter. “They won’t talk to us. But we heard about it. In that case the subject ‘remembered’ under hypnosis being beaten to death by ‘her’ husband. But in waking life she was a he and had recently been divorced by his wife, who alleged assault. And quite serious injuries, as I recall.”

“There’s a pattern building up here, isn’t there?” Dr Amery looked thoughtful.

“Still, it all looks like cryptomnesia,” said Peter. “But whatever. If this comes to court, it will be alleged that Stella the Fleet Street Slag, sorry Ms Boggs, has had a psychiatric episode as a result of being regressed for the newspaper. There may be legal implications.”

“This is all a bit weird for me,” said Jake. “Besides, even if I did send Stella to expose this bloke, that doesn’t make us liable, does it? You’d have to prove she suffered harm as a result. Where’s the evidence?”

“The fact that she’s lying in a hospital bed, moaning and gibbering,” said Bill the Brief.

“Jesus,” said Jake.

“And this,” said Peter.

He clicked the remote and the video started to run on the large screen. They saw Stella, lying on a couch, shot from above so that her face was straight to camera; then there was a voice from someone out of shot, presumably Merriweather. It was an old man’s voice, low, soothing, foody.

“Stella, you are descending a staircase,” said the Voice. “At its foot is a place of peace. Relax yourself, and let the world… wash… over you…”

“This is new-age woke bollocks,” said Jake.

“Drift,” said the Voice. “Drift upon the sea.”

Stella’s eyelids fluttered; bit by bit they closed. At length:

“What can you see?” asked the Voice.

Stella, eyes still closed, replied in a strange language.

“Stop here,” said Jake. “Have we run that past anyone? What language is it?”

“We don’t know,” said Peter. “My office sent a clip to a linguist but he didn’t recognise it and sent it on to a philologist.”

“A what?”

“A bloke who studies the origins of, and links between, languages. He reckoned it sounded like Carib, or an archaic Arawakan language from northern South America.”

“Or just Stella having a laugh,” said Jake.

“No. He was sure it was a real dialect of some kind.”

“Well that’s not cryptom-whatsit then, that’s for sure,” said Jake. “’Cos our Stell wouldn’t know an obscure foreign language. She has enough probs just with English normally, be honest with you.”

“Ssh, something’s happening to her,” said Dr Amery. They turned back to the screen. Stella was becoming agitated. She started to moan, and then to shout, and to squirm on the couch. The Voice spoke quietly, his words indistinct. After a while she calmed.

“Come back,” said the Voice, “when you are ready. I shall count to five and you will awake, refreshed.”

She did awake but her eyes were staring, and she was sweating.

“What did you see?” asked Merriweather. He sounded concerned for the first time.

“I was at the water’s edge, where the jungle comes down to the sea. The sand was brilliant white and the water deep blue and the trees were full of birds – macaws, parrots? – parakeets.” She blinked. “I was with others. We weren’t wearing much. We did not need to. It was warm.”

“Were you happy?”

“I think so. We were busy. We planted vegetables and yuca, and fished, and the men hunted. We had enough to eat. But then things went wrong.”

“What went wrong?”

Columbus greeted by Arawak Indians (Theodor de Bry/Library of Congress)

“The strange canoe came. With the big cross on its sails. And these odd men waded to the beach and one fell to his knees and waved a smaller cross.” She was silent for a moment. “They came to see us. They took some people away. The men they made to work and the women…” She was silent for a moment, and seemed to be breathing heavily. Then: “They wanted gold. Sometimes cloth. Then the sickness came. Fever. We were exhausted and could hardly move. Our heads hurt, and our backs. Vomit. Then red spots. Then blisters full of pus. We died.”

Eyes wide, she was looking at the camera yet did not see it. Then she screamed. The sound pierced the room. Bill the Brief sat ramrod-straight, rigid; Peter covered his ears; Dr Amery her eyes. The screams continued. Merriweather could be heard trying to calm her.

“Stop it! Stop the tape now!” yelled Jake. He grabbed the remote from Peter but instead of stop, he pressed pause and Stella’s frozen face filled the enormous screen, a distorted rictus of horror and terror. After a moment Dr Amery took the remote and put the screen to sleep.

“Smallpox,” she said. “Stella described smallpox.”

*

The next morning, the weekly editorial conference was underway around the same table.

“Dammit, we need fresh new features pages,” Jake was saying. “I need ideas from you buggers.”

“Wildlife?” ventured someone. “Cute creatures?”

“We could tag an otter and follow it week by week,” said someone else.

“You can’t interview an otter,” said Jake, who’d had enough mustelids for one week. “Can’t we uncover people-smuggling in Parliament or something?”

“When’s Stella the Slag back?” asked the art editor.

“God knows,” said Jake. He looked troubled. Then he brightened.

“I got it, guys. I got it. This past-life regression thing. Why don’t we put someone through it every week?”

“Great,” said the chief sub. “But you’re gonna need volunteers.”

Michelle swayed in with Jake’s coffee.

“Michelle,” said Jake. “Would you like a reporting assignment?”

“Oh yeah!” Her eyes opened wide. She nearly spilled the coffee.

“Jake,” said the art editor, “are you sure this is a good idea?”

When they’d all gone Jake paused to drink his coffee. On the table was a proof from the previous week, a double-page spread with Stella’s last feature. There was a picture of an expensive SUV outside a hotel in some African city and another of two elegant Nigerian fashion models. Third World, Stop Your Whining, read the headline. Colonialism did you no harm. Your Countries Are Fine.

Stella, thought Jake, you were the best.

Hypnotherapy is a legitimate form of treatment that can be helpful to some individuals. Not all patients are suitable and in Britain the NHS warns against it if you have psychosis or some types of personality disorder. It also recommends selecting a hypnotherapist with care through a body such as the National Counselling & Psychotherapy Society (NCPS) or the National Hypnotherapy Society (HS). Past-life regression is a specific form of hypnotherapy and Is not recognised by all professionals. For further information, see Willin, M. (2016): Past Life Regression in Psi Encyclopedia  (London: The Society for Psychical Research). It is available online here.

More short fiction from Mike:

A Train Journey When one's sister comes to visit

Time after Time When you have to tell the children

Fashion Subversion. With style

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

A Man For All Seasons Net zero.The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike is now also on Substack at https://mikerobbinswrites.substack.com/

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: Cold

Everything is cold here 

“Dammit.”

“What?”

“This form. It wants her place of birth.”

He was a compact man of 30 with slicked-back hair and wore a white silk shirt bought, at some expense, in Jermyn Street; the stripes of his tie were a little bright.

A.Dombrowski/Creative Commons

“You could leave it for now,” said his wife, fingering her pearl necklace. 

She glanced at the window, admiring her reflection. There was a windy wet squall outside and a spray of rain hit the pane and glistened briefly in the light from the gas fire across the room. She turned towards it; Great-Aunt Lisa was hidden by her armchair, the back of which was towards her. But she could see the old lady’s hand on the armrest, the skin pale and mottled and papery with age.

“I can’t leave it. We must get the power of attorney and sort out the will,” he replied.

“Darling, that sounds awfully mercenary.” She mauled her pearls.

“It’s not mercenary,” he said. “Everything is ours really. We don’t want her leaving it all to that wretched Thai maid or something.”

She looked across at the maid, who was sitting on the footstool in front of Great-Aunt Lisa. She was reading aloud from the local paper; every now and then she looked at the old lady and smiled.

“I don’t think Maria’s Thai,” she said. “I think she’s a Filipina.”

“For God’s sake, it’s the same thing.” He leant back in his chair. “Where the hell was she born? Not Maria. Great-Aunt Lisa. I’m sure she told us once.”

“She said in the east somewhere, I think.”

“Oh God, somewhere turgid like Norwich or Ipswich or Harwich I suppose.”

“Harwich,” said Great-Aunt Lisa, quite suddenly.

“I am sorry?” asked Maria. She looked over the top of the paper.

“I’ll put Harwich then,” he said, after a moment.

Great-Aunt Lisa had been listening to Maria read an item on the toilets being refurbished in the Market Square. But now she looked from side to side and nodded slowly.

“Harwich,” she repeated. “It was Harwich.”

Maria put down the paper. “Would you like to go to bed now?” she asked.

“Yes. Yes, time for bed.” She smiled back, a little vaguely.

*

Later, Maria straightened the coverlet and made to turn out the bedside light. As she did so her phone chirruped.

“See who that is, dear,” said Great-Aunt Lisa. “Maybe it’s your mother.”

“I will call her later, in the night. The time difference…”

“Yes.” Great-Aunt Lisa looked back at her, suddenly focused. “Are you ever sad, dear? Are you angry?”

“Why, madam?”

“Leaving your family. On the other side of the world. Leaving your mother to care for someone else’s. Isn’t it sad?”

Maria felt her employer’s gaze. Every now and then she would be lucid like this and you could see what had been – sharp, kind, shrewd.

“Yes,” she said. “But it is what we do.”

Great-Aunt Lisa nodded.

“People are cold here, aren’t they,” she said. “Everything is cold.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Maria, surprised. She blinked once or twice and sat slowly down on the bed. Great-Aunt Lisa was looking past her, straight ahead.

“My parents. They were on the platform waving. I was nine. My little brother Willy, he was four. She held him up so he could wave. Bye, Liese, they were shouting out, good luck. It took hours and hours in the train and I was seasick and then I came to Harwich. Port of Arrival, it said on the card. Harwich. There were all these ladies on the quay and they gave us tea from a big beige urn and it tasted funny. And this horrid cardboard box. You had to carry that all the time. I never opened it though. It had my gas mask in it and it looked so evil. Like a horrible insect.”

She looked at Maria. “Do you see people again when you pass over? Are they waiting?”

“We think so in our church,” said Maria.

Great-Aunt Lisa closed her eyes. “I’ll sleep now,” she said.

Maria pulled the counterpane up so that it would cover the old lady’s shoulders. She picked up the empty glass and cup from the bedside stand and turned down the light. As she did so Great-Aunt Lisa murmured:

“I never saw them again, you see. Mutti and Vati and Willy. I thought they would follow. But it was the last train.”

“Oh,” said Maria. She waited a moment, but the old lady said nothing more; after a while she fell asleep, her breathing regular. Maria went down to the kitchen. From the living room came the sound of voices.

“We must make sure the will is correct,” he was saying. “After all, we are family.”

“Yes,” his wife replied. “Of course. How funny that she was born in Harwich.”

Maria looked through the kitchen window. Another brief gust scattered raindrops on the window. Yes, she thought, it is cold here.

Harwich Memorial: Safe Haven,

by Ian Wolter

More flash fiction from Mike

Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place

A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit

Time After Time When you have to warn the children

Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike is now also on Substack at https://mikerobbinswrites.substack.com/

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: Belonging

Do you belong? Where?

Frank ended the call.

He looked straight ahead through the windscreen. She looked across at him. “I hate automatic wipers,” he said. “There’s not enough rain for them. Look, they’re smearing.”

She didn’t reply for a moment.

“He shouldn’t have rung you,” she said finally. “You’re not at work today. And he wasn’t very polite.”

“Paul never is. I’ve never liked him.”

“It’s always like this then?”

“Yes, Sue. He’s always like this.”

“Tell him to stuff his job.”

“I can’t retire, not yet. Got to get the boys through Uni first. And” – he tapped the BMW’s steering wheel – “we’d have to replace this thing.”

“You hate it though. The job I mean. Please, Frank. It’s – it’s… It’s gnawing at you.”

He didn’t answer. She glanced across at him again, but his face was closed.

“Well he can sod off today,” she said, “because this is our Sentimental Journey.”

He chuckled. “Gonna take a sentimental journey,” he warbled. “Gonna set my heart at ease. …Who the hell sang that, anyway?”

“Doris Day,” she said. “Before she was a virgin. Darling, I think this is the turn into Farm Avenue.”

“It doesn’t look familiar.” They were passing through a modern suburb; a health centre passed on the right, a small row of shops on the left. “There was nothing here. 40 years ago, was there.” But he swung left. “Hang on. This is it, dammit. Our turning’s down round the bend, isn’t it?”

“It was number 47.”

“So it was.” He slowed right down. It was raining more heavily now. The houses were unfamiliar, all modern detached buildings with garages and big drives; now and then there was a small car and a large SUV parked in them together.

“These houses are all wrong. This can’t be it,” he said.

“It is,” she said. “But what have they done? Where’s your house? It was just after the bend.”

He stopped. “Can’t be it,” he said. “It was one of those postwar council houses, wasn’t it. Semi with an alley up the side. I kept my bike up there and I had to remember to tuck my trousers in my socks before I rode away. I remember I forgot once when I came courting you, and I fell off. True love, that was; you try riding a bike in flares.” He squinted at the new house. “It’s gone. That’s where it was, where that horrid modern detached house is with the Audi.“

“You sure this was it?”

“Yes. Look, there’s that post-box. And the litter bin, still there.”

“Good Lord, so it is.”

“Our poor house is gone,” said Frank. “Our poor little house. Dad painted that. He got on a ladder and he painted it and we all laughed because it rained straight after and he said I’ll do it again, and he was so proud. He had roses in the front.” He thought for a minute. “Mind you he was a crap gardener.”

“I wonder if our oak tree is still there? You know, the one on that patch of waste ground where we tried to carve our initials and your penknife broke.”

It wasn’t there. The waste ground had been built on and there was a bank of council bins where the tree had been.

“But there’s the river, Frank, where we swam.”

“It was a ditch really, not a river.” He put the gar in gear and they glided away. “The cows used to wade in that muddy patch. I suppose we were swimming in cowshit.”

He drove two or three miles; neither spoke. At length he drew up on a bridge. To their left was a low meadow adjoining a small river. There were machines on it now, behind chain-link fences; as it was Sunday they were not working, but there were placards on sticks advertising Riverbanks, a new development with 3- and 4-bedroom homes.

“Looks like the cows have gone,” he said. “But for God’s sake, it’s a flood plain.”

“Ha! Yes. …Frank, there’s not much left of our world, is there?”

“Shall we see if Mrs Carey’s shop is still there?” He drove up the hill on the other side of the river and up to a T-junction where there had been a small shop and a petrol station. Both had gone, replaced by a Tesco Metro.

He pulled up in the car park beside it.

“Looks like Mrs Carey’s Liquorice Allsorts are no more, Sue.” He stretched and sat still.

His stomach rumbled.

Andrew Bell/Wikimedia Commons

“I’ll get us some pasties or something,” she said. “Tesco Metro has its uses. It’s about lunchtime, anyway.” She came back a few minutes later with some sausage rolls and two scotch eggs. They ate them cold, The World This Weekend on the radio.

“They could have left something. Something.”

She turned towards him, taken aback by the savagery in his voice. He bit into his sausage roll. “There’s nothing left. Nothing,” he said. “We don’t belong here anymore. We don’t belong anywhere, do we? Because that’s it, that’s all there is. England in the 21st century. We must have come from somewhere, but this is our world now. The supermarket checkout, cardboard fries, motorways, and the smell of petrol in the rain.”

He screwed up the wrapper and crushed it in his fist.

“And Pauls. Lots of effing Pauls. And I don’t effing belong anywhere.”

“Yes you do.” She stared back. “You belong where I am, you silly sausage.”

It was still raining. Her face was soft in the diffused grey light from the wet windscreen.

“We’ll manage, you know. We can downsize. We shan’t need the space with the boys gone. And we don’t need a car like this. Call him now.”

“What, Paul?”

“No, Princess Diana, you idiot. Yes, Paul. Do it now and tell him to sod off.”

He leaned towards the touchscreen, selected his phone and hesitated a moment; then he pressed dial. “Seven, that's the time we leave, at seven,” he muttered. I'll be waitin' up for Heaven.”

As he waited for Paul to answer, he felt her hand close round his.

More flash fiction from Mike

Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place

A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit

Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala

A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro
Cold Everything is cold here

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike is now also on Substack at https://mikerobbinswrites.substack.com/

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.

Flash fiction: Leaving Home

I haven't posted fiction on this blog; I haven’t written many short pieces that would be suitable. But I have just completed a short story for a writing group. The set title was Leaving Home. 

My contribution was prompted by a recent house move. My new home was built in 1888, and I have been thinking of those who were here before and what became of them. Hence this story. I noticed today’s date, and thought I’d share it.

Leaving home

I wish he wouldn’t make that bloody row, thought Priscilla as Martin dropped one tool on another in the bedroom across the hall. She winced at the clang and tried to refocus on her screen. The rain streaked the window behind her monitor; grey clouds scudded past outside.

Martin let out an exclamation.

Dammit, how am I supposed to mark a bunch of crappy first-year essays with this old clown working next door.

She stood up and crossed the corridor. The fitted carpet in the bedroom was peeled back so Martin could get at the broken floorboard; it was just beside her bed so she always stepped on it in the night. He had pulled up the broken board, but was now squatting on his haunches, the claw hammer on the carpet beside him.

“I wish you’d make less noise,” she said. She regretted it at once; her voice sounded tense, uptight.

Martin seemed not to hear. He held a small square piece of paper.

“I found something,” he said. “Old photo. Under the floorboard.”

He passed it to her. It was rather small.

“Why print a picture that size?” she said, puzzled.

 “It’s a contact print from an old-fashioned negative,” he said. “Six centimetres square, I think. I have a friend who likes mucking about with old cameras and he makes those.”

She turned it over in her hands. It was brownish and faded and showed a youth in his late teens and a girl who looked a little younger. The girl wore a dress with a rather prim collar. Her hair had been done with care and was formed in a high roll above her forehead. The youth wore uniform; he had a narrow cap without a peak that came to a point at the front, rather like a ship’s stem.

“Why are they sticking their tongues out at the camera?” asked Priscilla. She frowned.

Martin chuckled. “I reckon their mum and dad made them go and have their portrait done,” he said. “And they didn’t fancy that much and they took the piss out of the photographer.” He looked over her shoulder at the little square of photographic paper. “Look, it’s got PROOF embossed on it. I reckon that’s how they did it then – the studio gave you a load of contact prints and you chose which one to have enlarged.” He turned it over. “Look, there you go. It’s the studio’s stamp. Pringle’s, 31 The Broad. I remember them, just. Where MacDonald’s is now. They closed when I was a nipper, back in the 70s.”

“What on earth has she done to her hair?” asked Priscilla.

“Victory Rolls, they called them,” said Martin. “The Hollywood stars had them apparently.” He peered at the picture. “Royal Air Force,” he said presently. “Not an officer I don’t think. Look, he’s got a half-wing.” He pointed to the man’s breast. “Air gunner or navigator maybe.”

 

“Oh.” She handed the picture back to him. “I wonder who they were. Anyway, you can pop it in the rubbish I suppose.”

He frowned. “I think I’ll keep it,” he said. “Someone might know something. My mate Josh, he likes local history, he’s one of those blokes digging up the old City Station up near Halfords. He knows how to look at the old census returns and he can see who lived here.”

“Please yourself,” said Priscilla. “I have 20 essays to mark before lunch.”

She went out. Martin looked at the picture then up at her retreating back. And stuck his tongue out. Then he chuckled, tucked the picture away in his jacket and went back to work.

Priscilla went back to her study. She did not hear the front door close or feel the faint breeze as a middle-aged woman in an apron and sensible shoes descended the stairs behind her.

In the front room a man with a pipe and cardigan looked up from the Daily Sketch as his son and daughter came in.

“Did they get the proofs?” called his wife as she turned into the kitchen at the back of the house. “Ted, Sarah, is that you?” She went on into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on the range. “I’ll make a cup of tea.”

“Don’t make tea if we haven’t the coal,” her son called out. “You’re spoiling me, Mum, but you’ll need it when I’m gone.”

“Don’t worry, Ted. We’ve got a hundredweight in hand, and we’re allowed more on the first of the month.” She came into the front room, wiping her hands on her apron. “Let’s see these pictures then. Oh, they’re lovely, aren’t they?”

“They’re not bad, eh?” Her husband smiled up at her. “And old Pringle on his own now, with his son in for the duration, as they say.”

“He’s back on leave,” said Ted. “Mr Pringle told me. He’s been in Egypt, he said.”

“We’re not supposed to say where people are,” his father said.

“I don’t think as we’re going to lose because someone knows where young Pringle is, Bill.” She took the proofs from him and leafed through this one, then stopped. “Oy! What’s happening here!”

“It was Ted,” said the girl. “He sticks his tongue out and before I know it I’m sticking mine out as well. Let’s get Pringle’s to blow that one up.” She giggled.

 “Oh no we won’t. You can have that one, you cheeky monkey,” her mother said, and handed her the proof. “Dad and I’ll choose one for the mantelpiece. Ted, you must get ready, you’re off in half an hour.”

“I’ll help him pack his kitbag,” said Sarah. “He’ll scrunch up his shirts otherwise. Boys are so messy.”

They rushed up the narrow stairway of the small house and their footsteps could be heard from the master bedroom, where Sarah had laid out her brother’s clothes ready for folding.

“I reckon this is the one we’ll get blown up,” said Bill, and looked up at his wife, who looked at him then tried to dry her eyes on her apron but couldn’t because it was tied at the waist so she untied it, sniffing and laughing at the same time. “Oh, I am silly,” she said.

“Try and hide it, my dear. It won’t make it easier for him, you know. And he’s left home before. Remember he went off to basic training, then the Isle of Man, and now he’s just going off for more training.”

“Oh, I know. It’s just that I have a bad feeling about this,” she said. “As if he’s leaving home for the last time.”

“Well he probably isn’t,” said her husband, a little shortly. He was silent for a moment, then said: “Don’t fret. Sit down and let’s listen to the news, eh?”

He got up and twisted the Bakelite knob on the wireless. The dial took on a soft, old-gold glow and the sound started, softly at first then growing louder as the set warmed up. The Home Service filled the room, an emollient voice reading the six o’clock news.

Upstairs, Ted sat on his parents’ bed and watched as his sister folded his shirts.

“I want to do something too,” she said. “I’m going to join the Women’s Land Army.”

“Not yet you’re not,” he said. “You’re only 17.”

“I’ll be 18 at Christmas,” she said.

“But you have to be 20, don’t you? Anyway, you’d be dead useless shovelling manure. Or catching rats. Imagine you catching rats. They’d take one look at you and you’d scream your silly head off.”

She gave his leg a pretend slap with the back of her hand. She went back to folding and smoothing the shirts. He watched her deft movements as she said: “Dad says you’re going for more training.”

“Yes,” he said. “Well, sort of. I’m posted to No. 12 OTU at Chipping Warden in the Midlands. It’s near Banbury I think. An OTU is an Operational Training Unit.”

“Does Operational mean what I think it does?”

“Yes. But it shan’t be much. Just minelaying off the coast and stuff I expect. You mustn’t worry.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Do you remember when I was 10 and Roy from No. 6 pulled my pigtails?”

“No, I don’t,” he replied. “Did he really? What a rotter.”

“Yes, and you boxed his ears.”

“Oh, I think I do remember. Did I box his ears? I thought I gave him a Chinese burn.”

She sat still, looking down at the shirt. A silence grew heavy.

“Look, we all have to do it,” he said. “Everyone’s leaving home. Dad did last time. Roy’s gone, come to that.” He paused. “Have you got that proof Mum gave you? Give it here.”

She did, and he knelt down where there was a creaky floorboard, just beside the bed so their mother always stepped on it in the night. He pushed the small square of paper down between the cracks.

“There,” he said. “When it’s all over and I’m home, we’ll pull that floorboard up and get that picture, and we’ll have a giggle about it and I do think I’ll go down to Pringle and get it blown up.”

“And if you don’t come back, I’ll leave it there,” she said. “And maybe in 70 or 80 years’ time, someone’ll find it and wonder who we were.”

“That’s it. But I’ll be back.”

“Hope so.” She looked at him.

“Ted,” his father called up the stairs. “It’s 6.30. You ready? Where you going from anyway, City Station or Thorpe?”

“Thorpe,” he said. “They bombed City Station.”

His sister finished folding shirts and he clattered down the stairs with it and took his greatcoat and gas-mask case from the coathooks.

“I can go with you,” said Sarah.

“Don’t,” he said. “Station’ll be bedlam. So many trains going now. ’Spect I’ll get a cuppa on the platform though, the WVS ladies have a canteen there when it’s busy.”

“I’ll come some of the way with you though.”

“Just to the corner, all right? We can say goodbye there.”

Her father was looking at her as she put her coat on. He leaned towards her. “Leave him at the end of the road, my dear. Let him be. They need to be alone with their own thoughts a bit when they go,” he whispered.

She nodded and waited while her brother gave his mother a peck on the cheek and shook hands with his father; then they went out into the street. It was nearly dark. The blackout was complete, but the moon was nearly full and a bright light caught the beginnings of a frost on the pavement. She walked with him to the end of the street, where it joined The Avenues. To the left the road ran downhill, in a straight line; then it climbed to a junction about a quarter of a mile away. There the road joined another and swung round to the right. They didn’t say anything, but he paused a moment and grasped her shoulder and squeezed it with his hand, and seemed to want to say something but didn’t; then he turned abruptly and trudged away. She watched him for several minutes, the moon making a stark figure of him, standing out against the glitter of the frosted pavement. Then he rounded the bend at the top of the hill. He paused for a moment and she thought he looked back, the moonlight catching his face; but he was too far away to see really, and then he was gone.

___________________________________________

More flash fiction from Mike

Remembered Time The past is a dangerous place

A Train Journey One's sister comes to visit

Time After Time When you have to warn the children

Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style

A Time of Darkness It doesn't repeat. But it rhymes

Another Time A tear in the fabric

Evolution The world is turning

When Time Stands Still A hurricane lashes Pershing Square

Parallel Worlds Heat pumps and lentils. And a nice glass of Marsala

A Man for All Seasons Net zero. The Stranger's Bar. And a three-line whip

A History Lesson Why do we study it?

The Creatives Meeting a tech bro
Cold Everything is cold here

Homecoming A sort of love story

Solitude A Cold War memory

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps A question of social geography

Hiraeth A yearning…

Strange Places A spirit in the sky 

A Sideways Journey Things might have been different

Displaced Encounter on E94th Street

Belonging Do you? Where?
Leaving Home A house has memories

Mike is now also on Substack at https://mikerobbinswrites.substack.com/

Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now 

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.