Sport Is Character-Forming

A migration through a muddy stream

The narrow river had carved a shallow valley; on either side the ground rose 200ft or so. The valley sides were not that steep, but would cause a tractor to lean rather; one could see the remains of furrows where the land girls had ploughed them during the war, but they were now rough pasture once more. On one side of the stream, however, there was a flat water meadow that ran a hundred yards or so back from the stream. On this stood a middle-aged man, moustached, a little stout, his nose criss-crossed with small red veins; he was clad in tweeds and had a hat to match.

He pulled his jacket closer against the damp wind, and glanced at his watch. It was not quite half-past three, but it was still late January and the light was beginning to fade. They should be here by now, he thought, and looked up at the rim of the hill on the other side of the other side of the valley, beyond the river. The winter sky was a mixture of high, light-grey clouds and darker, lower ones that drifted below them; it was quite bright, and hurt his eyes a little, but as they focused he could see a slender female figure motionless on the crest of the hill, three hundred yards or so away, outlined against the sharp grey light. Its features were in shadow and it was somewhat uncanny, a spirit of some sort, come to claim some debt or other. Beside her sat a large dog, turning its head this way and that.

“I do believe that’s Dr Powell,” he thought. “Damn.”

He glanced at his watch, looked up and saw that a white thread had appeared on the top of the hill opposite. It grew in width, and passed the motionless figure and its dog; it widened into a white and black river, flowing down the slope, and resolved itself into a phalanx of 70 or 80 youths aged perhaps 14 to 16, in black shorts and white singlets, their legs spattered with mud.

“Come on, boys!” he yelled. “You’re almost halfway. Cross the stream! Come on!”

They approached the river, panting, some looking grimly determined, others exhausted, their hair matted from the rain, some bent forward, others with their heads thrown back and panting for air. “This way! This way!” he shouted, and they dropped off the meadow onto a shallow muddy gradient that led into the river; it was churned by cows and scattered with dung. The impact of their feet on the mud was clearly audible. They surged into the water in a mass migration, zebras, gazelles and wildebeest breasting the waters of a crocodile-infested Mara River in search of grazing, knowing the leopard or lion awaited those who were slow, old or weak. The water reached their waists or, if they were small, their chests. They clambered onto the bank opposite, gasping for breath; some bent down for a moment, hands on knees, but he urged them on, and they began to run slowly up the path to the crest of the hill on this side of the river. One or two seemed to hesitate in the current. “Come on, Grigson! Come on, Pettifer!” he bellowed. The latter, a short slim boy of 15 or so, struggled to reach the bank and he strode forward and grasped the boy’s shirt, yanking him onto the bank.

“Come ON, Pettifer!” he bellowed. “Dammit, boy, you’re being left behind!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the boy. He stood and began, half-heartedly, to half-trot towards the hill.

He watched the boy go, then began to follow him.

“Mr GUNTER!”

He paused, and turned round. The voice was from the silhouette atop the hill on the other side of the river; it did not appear to have moved.

“You have just made the boys run through a river. They will be soaked from head to toe!” she called.

“Indeed. What of it?” he shouted. “The College ethos is quite clear. Sport is character-forming.”

“I daresay, but really,” she shouted back. “It is the ’flu season! For crying out loud. How many of those boys will I see on my rounds later this week?”

He stared, and was about to make a rather sharp reply; then he thought better of it and turned and resumed his slow walk up the muddy path.

Across the river, Dr Powell also turned, and strode off in the opposite direction. “Buster. Come,” she barked. The Labrador had been sniffing a damp pile of cow-dung . He left it with regret and trotted in front of her. A light drizzle had begun. How bleak the English countryside is in winter, she thought, grey and dull and lifeless – a sort of meanness. She thought of the boys as they ran past her, their hair matted with the drizzle, their faces frozen in endurance.

Ahead of them was a small barn. It was in poor repair and appeared unused. Buster was passing it when he stopped, raised his head and looked towards it; then he went over to it. I suppose he’s found something appalling to roll in, she thought, and quickened her pace, her wellington boots squishing on the muddy track.

But Buster had not found more cow-dung. He was sniffing excitedly at a boy who was crouched in the lee of the barn. The dog’s tail was wagging. The boy reached out to stroke him.

“What are you doing here?” asked Dr Powell. “The other boys passed ten minutes ago.”

“Please, Miss,” the boy said, “I couldn’t go on.”

He was rather small and had spots.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“I don’t feel very well,” he said.

She bent down and felt his forehead.

“Have you been feeling unwell for long?”

“Since yesterday,” he replied.

“Did you go and see Nurse Critchley?”

“Yes.”

“Did she take your temperature?”

“Yes. But I’d been drinking tea.”

“To raise the temperature in your mouth so she’d sign you off sick?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“That was silly, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t reply to this.

“What did she say?”

“She told me to pull myself together.”

“Ah. Well, come with me,” she said.

He stood up, but looked a bit unsteady. He really was rather small.

“How old are you?”

“Fourteen, Miss.”

She set off at her usual brisk pace then realised that the boy could not keep up. They walked slowly to a gate onto the lane where her Ford Consul was parked. She opened the door; Buster jumped in and onto the front bench but she ushered the boy in beside him. She climbed in behind the wheel. Buster rested his head on her thigh.

She drove down the lane to a main road and turned towards the nearest village. It was, in fact, almost a small town. As they came into it, a tall Victorian building gloomed above the road. It had spires and a clock; it was a boarding school, but it always reminded Dr Powell of a wicked witch’s castle in a fairy story. She turned the Consul into the school’s front yard and stopped by the main door.

“Go straight to the dispensary,” she said, “and tell Nurse Critchley that I sent you. I shall be in to do my rounds in the evening and I shall see you then.”

He climbed out and moved to close the car door.

“Mind the dog’s tail,” said Dr Powell. She leaned over and tucked Buster’s tail in behind his legs. The door clanged shut.

She put the Consul in gear and drove the 10 minutes or so to a smaller village, where there was a row of cottages that included her own. Buster snaked in ahead of her. “Sit!” she commanded. He sat. She rubbed his coat with a rough old towel. “Mucky pup,” she muttered. She left her wellingtons in the porch and put on her ladies’ brogues. Mrs Potts had left a fire burning in the grate. Dr Powell pulled back the spark guard and poked at the coal with the poker, then made herself tea. Mrs Potts had also left her a lamb casserole on the sideboard, to heat up a little later. The Times waited on the low table in front of the chintz sofa. Dr Powell opened it at the second page, after the small advertisements that filled the front. "Mr. Kennedy Calls on East and West to Begin Anew the Quest for Peace," read the headline. The story went on to describe the wintry inauguration in Washington; the hatless President, the elderly poet and his address, the many guests, the freezing cold. She put the paper down and looked at the fire, then at the framed photograph on the mantelpiece of a man in battledress and beret, his arm through hers; she looked very young.

She became aware that she had been staring at the picture for several minutes.

Buster laid his head on her knee.

“I suppose you want your dinner,” she said. She fed him, and turned on the six o’clock news on the Home Service; the dial glowed a soft gold-yellow as the radio warmed up. Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

She heated up the lamb casserole and ate half of it. It was good, flavoured with herbs that Mr Potts grew behind their cottage. But she did not feel hungry.

When she had finished eating she jabbed the fire with a poker and put up the spark guard, then took her scarf and coat, and put on her stout brown shoes. She sensed the weather changing even as she left the house; it was colder, and the rain from earlier had changed to light snow flurries. She dusted the snowflakes from the Consul’s windscreen and drove the ten minutes or so to the school, parking where she had dropped the boy earlier. 

She walked through the tiled corridors of the Gothic building. The walls were whitewashed and glaring – and empty, for it was the hour of evening service and when she passed the stairs that led to the school chapel, she heard the sound of a hymn – Onward Christian Soldiers, a little ragged and thin. There was a noticeboard scattered with bits of paper and drawing-pins. Sunday dress to be worn at all times during exeat, read one notice. The following boys to report for detention after Chapel, read another. At length she reached the door to the sick bay, a long, narrow room, also white, with bright bulbs that lit it harshly.

The thin figure of Nurse Critchley greeted her at the doorway. “Good evening, Doctor,” she said with a slight incline of the head.

“Good evening, Nurse Critchley,” said Dr Powell. She noted a younger, plump woman walking between the beds. The junior matron from the Main House. “I am about to leave, but Miss Clowes will be on duty overnight.” She indicated the beds. “Collins and Jeffries, ’flu. Also this boy who I believe you sent down here this afternoon.”

“Yes, I did,” said Dr Powell. For the most part, Nurse Critchley’s parched rectitude did not worry her; but tonight it was an irritant. “I will see Collins and Jeffries first.”

“Very good, Doctor. I will go now, if I may.” She stalked out of the sick bay and disappeared up the corridor towards the Chapel, her heels clicking on the worn, rounded Victorian tiles.

Miss Clowes smiled. “Would you like a cup of tea, Doctor?” she asked. “I’ll make a pot. The boys can have some too.”

“That would be lovely. Thank you.”

Miss Clowes went into the pantry and busied herself with the tea caddy and a big brown teapot. At length the kettle whistled on the hob.

“We have been lucky so far this year,” said Miss Clowes. She handed the doctor a cup and saucer. “I thought we might have more ’flu. These lads will be all right in a day or two.” She dropped her voice, and nodded towards the 14-year-old in the corner. “But this little chap doesn’t seem very well.”

Dr Powell asked the two older boys a few questions and took their temperatures; both were still a little high. But they were both feeling better. Thy admitted it with reluctance.

“Do you feel nearly ready to go back to the Big House?” she asked Collins. 

“I suppose so, Doctor,” he said.

“Surely you do not want to stay in here.”

“it isn’t so bad really,” the boy replied. She looked at his bedside stand. It was stacked high with books; The Brides of Fu Manchu, a Bulldog Drummond story, but also (she noted with relief) a Sherlock Holmes. Jeffries had a Sanders of the River book, The Ghost Stories of M.R. James and a copy of The Boy’s Own Paper.

“You two really are quite happy in here, aren’t you,” she said. “Don’t you want to go out and go to lessons and see your friends and everything?”

“No. They really don’t,” said Miss Clowes said from the other side of the room. She was fiddling with a very large old Bush radio that sat on the table near the door, looking for the Light Programme. At length The Saturday Night Show issued forth.

Dr Powell chuckled.

“Back to work with you on Monday, both of you,” she said.

“Would they really rather stay in here?” she asked Miss Clowes quietly.

“Yes,” said the other.

“But only when you’re in charge?”

“No,” said Miss Clowes. “All the time. They dread going back out.”

Dr Powell frowned. She went to the bed of the younger boy. His eyes had been closed but he opened them, uncertain; his eyes looked from side to side. She took out her thermometer.

“I’ll pop this under your tongue, now,” she said. “Hold it there. Keep still.” She looked across the room at Miss Clowes. “What was it earlier?”

“103 when we put him to bed.”

At length Dr Powell took the thermometer out, examined it and then shook it. “Unbutton your pyjamas,” she said, and listened to his chest with her stethoscope.

“He’s just over 104,” she called out. “A bit high but it always is, in the evening.” She took her cup and saucer over to the pantry, where Miss Clowes was washing the teapot. “If it goes much higher though, ring me at home. And also if he gets very chesty. That could mean a secondary infection. But if that doesn’t happen, he’ll be on the mend in a couple of days.”

“Good. The usual I suppose, keep him warm, plenty of fluids.”

“Yes.”

She left Miss Clowes in the pantry and went back to the boy’s bed. The radio was playing jazz, quite softly. Miss Clowes had switched off the main lights, and the boy’s bed was in shadow. She sat down on it. He blinked at her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Dexter.”

“No, your Christian name.”

“Oh,” he said. Then: “Timothy.”

“Where do your parents live, Timothy?”

“Dorking. They were in Africa. They came home last year.”

“Now they’re home, could they have you at home too?”

“Oh no.” The boy shook his head. “Dad came here as a boy, you see. Anyway, he says it’s good for me. Character-forming, he says.” He looked away, puzzled, then turned back to her. “Do you have children?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you want them?”

The question startled her.

“My husband was killed early on D-Day,” she said.

“Oh – I’m sorry – I’m very sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She was silent for a moment. “He dropped by parachute. They had a lot of heavy equipment, you see, and some of them landed in the River Orne, and the Caen Canal. He was found much later.”

For a moment neither of them said anything, then she said: “We wanted children. We were going to have them, after the war.” She smiled. “We wanted three. He wanted boys. I wanted a girl as well.”

“If you had had them, would you have sent them here? To a boarding school? Like this?”

Once again, she was taken aback. Then she said:

“I think – if I had children – I would keep them with me. I would want them with me.”

They looked at each other.

“You must get your temperature down,” she said. “Sleep now.” She watched as he turned onto his side. She pulled up the counterpane so that it covered his shoulder.

Then, to her own surprise, she leaned down and kissed him on the brow.

She stood and walked quickly to the door of the sick-bay. Miss Clowes was still in the pantry, tidying up. “Good night,” she called to her. “Ring if there is a problem.” She heard a cheery “goodnight” in return. She walked rapidly down the corridor. As she came to the stairs to the Chapel, knots of boys clattered down towards her and dispersed; the Padre came down too, his sermon notes under his arm, and they nodded briefly to each other. She quickened her pace. Outside a front had passed. The drizzle of the afternoon had gone and there were stars in the sky, and a crispness in the air and signs of frost. She fumbled with the door-lock of the Consul, but at length it opened and she slid behind the wheel, pushing Buster’s rug out of her way. She put the key in the ignition, pulled out the choke and was about to start the engine. Then the tears welled up and she rested her face on the wheel.

_______________________________

 

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

The Man Who Lost the Plot When the character you write is cardboard
The Long Road from the Black Death A history lecturer retires
Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now
A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth
Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story
In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer
A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
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 History doesn't repeat itself. 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? So we can spot it happening
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 Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
Follow Mike on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Short fiction: The Man Who Lost the Plot

 A cardboard character

“Actually yes, my father did teach me something,” said Bernard.

Diana sat up in her chair. “He did?”

“Yes,” he replied. He looked at her, but his gaze was unfocused. He turned away, towards the Mediterranean that washed the cliffs 100 feet or so below the stone balustrade of the terrace; its surface glittered in the afternoon sun.

He was in his 70s, and rather thin; his beard was grey, his flyaway hair patchy, his eyes a very pale blue. He was slumped back in his chair, but the latter was high-backed and capacious, with thick armrests that kept him upright despite the amount he had drunk. He wore a faded Hawaiian shirt in orange-and-lemon hues, and a gold chain around his neck that rested on the white chest hair visible at the shirt’s open neck. We must seem an odd couple to the other diners on the terrace, thought Diana. This louche being Bernard, and herself – a trim blonde in her late 30s, dressed for the London office she had left early that morning; a smart green cord blazer and white blouse that flattered her figure and a dark skirt that ended not too far above the knee.

Delfi de la Rua/Wikimedia Commons

“What did he teach you?” she asked. She glanced at her recording device to make sure it was working.

“It was a problem,” said Bernard. “That he had with Dexter.”

“Really?” asked Diana. Dexter’s Sacrifice. The novel that had nearly won the Booker. Though she had never quite been convinced by the ending. But the world had disagreed, and the book had brought Sir John Coulter the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel committee had talked of “the profound humanity… of his depiction of the ultimate sacrifice by a man driven by the nobility of the human spirit.”

I think there is a story here after all, she thought, and the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

*

“You’ll get nothing from his son,” the Arts Editor had told her the day before as they sat in his glass-and-steel office in Canary Wharf. “Remember, his own books were not well received. Compared with his father, Bernard has been a failure.”

“I shall try flattery,” said Diana.

“He’ll see straight through it. He must know what a flop his own career was in comparison.”

“Well, I should try,” said Diana. “We must mark Coulter senior’s 100th. How is he seen, 30 years after his death? Is he still read, and all that? – yes, we know he is. What does his son remember?”

“Also you get a trip to Italy… er, what’s the name of the place where he lives?”

She told him. He chuckled.

“That’s where aristocratic German perverts went in the 1890s, to take pictures of bronzed naked teenage boys,” he said.

“So it was. Well, if I don’t get anything out of Bernard, I can always do a feature on its history, and we can illustrate it with a tasteful selection of filthy daguerrotypes.”

“I wonder if that might pull in more punters, actually,” said the Arts Editor.

*

“So what was the problem he had with Dexter’s Sacrifice?” she asked.

She wasn’t sure he had heard, but after a moment he began to speak.

“I was about 16,” he said. “We were living in Hampstead. Dad wasn’t an enfant terrible any more, you see. He’d made some money by then. And he had this paper job as an advisor to the Arts Council.”

“That’s right,” said Diana. “Surprising for a rebel.”

“Not really,” said Bernard. “That is the way the Establishment does it in England, isn’t it? If you tilt at windmills too often, they give you one of your own to shut you up.”

“I suppose so.”

“Anyway,” said Bernard, “my father was in his 50s then. He wrote in an office that had French windows onto the garden. It was early summer and they were open. My stepmother was out somewhere, as she usually was; actually she was shagging a Tory MP but I didn’t know that at the time, though I expect Father did. I was sitting on the patio, revising for my French O-level. I failed it of course. He was very angry about that…. It was mid-morning and he was writing. He had this rule. Always write at least 500 words before lunch. He knew he wouldn’t after lunch, you see. Because by then he drank.”

You would know about that, thought Diana. Before lunch, they had gone through a bottle of Lacryma Christi, which Bernard appeared to drink as an aperitif. During lunch they had dispatched a bottle of Aglianico de Vulture. (“Vulture goes well with grey meat,” he had quipped, nodding towards her plate of vitello tonnato.) Bernard had drunk most of this; he had now drunk several Avernas. Diana drank little while working. She now cradled a limoncello.

He seemed to drift off, and Diana prompted him.

“So what happened about Dexter’s Sacrifice?” she asked. He seemed to jerk back to life.

“I suddenly heard my father roar out: ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ And he came through the French doors almost violently. ‘Dexter does not work! He does not work! He would not do it!’ And he stood there on the patio, looking down the garden. He took no notice of me.” Bernard hesitated for a moment. “But then, he never really did.”

That is what his biographers say, thought Diana. Out loud she said:

“And did he say anything else?”

“Not at first. But after a moment I said, ‘Father, why doesn’t Dexter work?’ And he looked around as if he had just noticed me and said: ‘Dexter is to perform this supreme sacrifice, this monstrous act of self-abnegation. But he would not do it. I am writing a book about an unselfish act by a selfish man; an act of redemption. It is supposed to warm the cockles of the reader’s heart. But damn it all, the man is a shit. I know that he would not do it. Do you hear?’ And he unclenched his fists and looked down at the grass and said, ‘He would not do it. We would not do it. We are all shits.’

“And then he turned and strode back through the French doors.”

“He wrote it that way anyway,” said Diana.

“Yes,” he replied.

“I asked you if he ever taught you anything, any piece of wisdom that has helped you write yourself,” she said, “and you said yes.”

“He taught me two things that day,” said Bernard. “First, that a character in a narrative must behave in character. Otherwise, they are cardboard. The book probably won him the Nobel. But it never worked, you see. It never worked.”

“I know,” she said. “I read it for A-Level English. It didn’t work.”

“The character lost the plot, you see,” he said.

“Actually,” said Diana, “it was the other way round. What was the second thing you learned that day?”

“That we are all venal,” said Bernard. “He needed to finish the book. It did not work. But his publisher was waiting. So that must not be allowed to matter.”

DCRJSR/Wikimedia Commons

He looked at her, his eyes unfocused.

“But he was better than me,” he said. “I was never any bloody good, was I?”

“People read your books.”

“For form’s sake, to see if I was like him.”

“Do you still write?” asked Diana.

“No.”

“What do you do, day to day?”

“I collect daguerrotypes,” said Bernard. “Have you heard of Wilhelm Freiherr von Westofen?”

“Was he one of the aristocratic perv – er, photographers who came here in the late 19th century?” asked Diana.

“Yes,” replied Bernard. “Although everyone calls these old pictures daguerrotypes, by then they were using glass negatives and paper prints.”

“Weren’t some of these guys …dodgy?”

“Judge for yourself,” he said, and took out his phone. He jabbed it a few times then handed it to her, saying: ”Here. Scroll down.”

So she did. She looked up at him.

“These boys look very young. Didn’t the locals object?”

“No. He was far too wealthy,” said Bernard. “And he paid off the local men of honour. Wouldn’t work now. Anyway, most of these pictures were thought lost. Destroyed, you see. By Fascists and priests. In a fit of morality.”

Diana looked at the pictures and wondered if the priests and Fascists might have had a point. She handed back the phone.

“You’ve got your story now, haven’t you,” he said.

“What?”

“You came to get something on my father. You didn’t really come to see me. But I can be a story too, can’t I? I’m a failed writer and a pervert who collects dirty pictures of boys. In the name of art history, naturally.”

He took a gulp of Averna.

“Why don’t you do that?” He continued. “Poignant story of famous writer’s failed son. The son who lost the plot.”

He was looking at her with what she suddenly realised was pure, unalloyed hatred.

“Why would I wish to do that to you?” she said.

“Because you do. Because you all do.” His eyes glowed with malevolence.

And then he cried.

It was a quiet time of the afternoon but a few tables were, like theirs, still occupied from lunch. One or two people looked their way. She looked her bag for a tissue and found she hadn’t one.

Then he fell asleep.

She sat with him for five minutes or so, wondering if he would wake. He didn’t, and she looked around at the sea, now sparkling against the sun as it swung round to the west. At length she stood and went inside, where she found the head waiter and asked for the bill. She paid, then took a €50 note from her purse. “I wonder if you might do something for me?” she asked.

The head waiter nodded politely.

“When Mr Coulter wakes up, would you arrange for a taxi and ensure that he returns home safely?”

“Yes, of course, Signora.” He took the note. “I have done so before. I shall call his housekeeper; she is my cousin.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Thank you.”

She walked back to her hotel through a series of small, shady streets and piazzas; most Italians were resting at this hour in summer, and there was almost no-one about, the shutters drawn across many windows. The occasional motorino hummed past and that was all.

At the hotel she sat at the small round table on her veranda and began to type her story. By seven o’clock she had it, at least in outline. Coulter Knew Dexter “Did Not Work”, read the headline. Knew Nobel book was flawed, says son.

She listened to Bernard’s last rant on her earpiece.

At length she pressed the Save button and took a Peroni beer from the minibar. The sun was sinking over the sea. She watched it for a few minutes, then took out her phone and composed a text.

Please report on status of joint projects

She smiled, and put the phone down. A moment later it buzzed in reply.

First joint project dormant

She replied: Good. Second joint project?

Bedtime strop earlier. Is now brushing teeth in compliance with project management

She chuckled.

How trip? How Bernard? 

Has lost plot very sad

Oh. Sorry

Hate job sometimes

Understand. Large gin waiting here

😊😊😊Love to joint projects

She put her phone down. No, she thought. I shan’t write about Bernard.

She swallowed some beer, and watched as the rim of the sun sank below the horizon and the sea began to darken.

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

The Long Road from the Black Death A history lecturer retires

Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now

A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth

Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story

In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer

A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
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 History doesn't repeat itself. 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? So we can spot it happening
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 Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
Follow Mike on Twitter and Facebook.

Short fiction: The Long Road from the Black Death

 It was quite a day. I suppose. I mean, it’s not every day you retire, is it? Especially if you’re like me and you give a big lecture at 5 o’clock and the Vice-Chancellor turns up and the most important history professors in the country are piped in on Zoom and MS Teams and scholars in European history from Humboldt and Leiden and Columbia and Monash and the Sorbonne and God knows where else. 

And of course the whole faculty are there and all the postgrads too. But you know they’re feeling the same, let’s get through to the end of the old cow’s valedictory lecture then we can get to the cheap warm white wine and the finger food that’s been sweating in the summer heat, and after a decent interval we can slip home in time for a cold beer with Channel 4 News.

I mean, none of them like me, do they.

I don’t blame them. I’m not very nice. “Horrid desiccated mean old bitch,” I heard someone say after a faculty meeting once. She didn’t know I heard her. Or maybe she did. And when I was young …the Fellowships not renewed, the exile from Cambridge…

A big day today though.

Yet I sort of drifted off. I was sitting on the stage and the Vice-Chancellor was on his hind legs introducing me. (His hind legs are short though. He must have a hard time using his antlers in the rutting season.) As always with him, his words sort of coalesced into a damp wet cloud that rolled out over the room leaving everyone looking slightly depressed.

“Outstanding contribution,” he mumbled. “Deepened understanding. The rural workforce. Plague. Enclosures. How we have become – the scars on the land…”

I thought of Pietro. I hadn’t for years. Well, that’s not quite true; now and then he snuck into my mind but I wouldn’t let him stay there. I shoved him firmly out.

“…And it is my honour to present – our dear friend and colleague, Helena Carstairs – distinguished Bardsley Professor of English History…”

Thank God he didn’t go on about the Bardsley Professorship, I thought. The chair had been endowed by a drunken Tory newspaper magnate, baronet, ultra-patriot and noted appeaser whose divorce left the nation deliciously appalled for some weeks as the war-clouds gathered. In time he repaired to Antibes, where he drank himself to death in the company of various beautiful young boys. He died long before I assumed the Chair, which was as well as I am sure he hoped the incumbent would write reams on the glory of England, its cuisine, Empire and Morris dancers.

“…And her final lecture as a regular member of the faculty. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Helena Carstairs presents her Valedictory Lecture, The Long Road from the Black Death.”

I stood up. As always, before I spoke, I paused for effect. Well partly for effect, but also to see who was in the audience. Know your enemy. There was Professor Headley from Rutland University. How furious he’d been when I beat him to the Bardsley Chair. Oh, what fun when he reviewed my book a few months later. Unhinged. More vitriol than the Acid Bath Murderer. And Jake Carter from Evil College, Oxford, the noted expert in medieval malaria whose hands wandered in tutorials. Oh, there’s that ghastly undergraduate with acne, the one who keeps complaining about his marks. It’s not fair! It’s not fair! Thank God I’m retiring, I’ll never have another “snotfair” to deal with.

“Good evening, everyone,” I begin. “I am delighted to see you all, those here in person and those of you online. There are so many of you I love and respect, and whose intellectual stimulation I will miss… so much.

“I would like, tonight, to take you on a journey. A journey that changed England through a thousand years of struggle. For there was no Merrie England. There was no midsummer night’s dream, no rural idyll. The powerful seized the common lands and the poor died in droves. We know from the pioneer 19th-century demographer, John Rickman, that the England of Elizabeth was a savage place. Rural parishes had a high surplus of births over deaths; but towns had a high surplus of deaths over births. The poor were driven off the land as they were born. They went to the towns and died there. And then, in the 1690s, came Newcomen’s steam engine. And emigration. And it is written across our landscape, as in a huge book. In my work, I have sought to help us read it.”

Just for a moment I can see Pietro’s face. My voice wavers a little, and then I continue. And when I finish, I give a little bow and everyone applauds dutifully. There are no questions taken from the audience; instead we troop into the hall outside and I am awfully polite to everyone.

“You were generous in your tributes and acknowledgements,” said Professor Carter from Evil. “I was most humbled.”

“As was I ,” said Professor Headley. “I am glad so many of us have helped you along the way.” He sleazed a smile, then frowned. “It was a stellar list of the best in our discipline, but one name I did not recognize – that foreign character – Pietro someone?”

“Pietro Mancini?”

“Yes. Who was he?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

The white wine was cheap and warm and would itself have dissolved a body. There were crackers with prawns that had been baking in the heat, and the cocktail sausages were as slimy as a rock pool in summer.

*

“Nana’s lecture was jolly good,” said Maggie.

“Nana’s lecture’s good! Good! Good!” said Chrissie, and she danced around the garden, hands clasped above her head.

The teenage baby-sitter smiled at Maggie. “I’ll drop you at home, dear,” Maggie said, and I watched Chrissie as she rolled around on the grass. When Maggie came back she put her to bed, then sat down opposite me in the garden, working the cork out of a Prosecco bottle. I looked at her face as she did it, pleased that she did not look like her father. I had left him when he hit me once too often. I was happier after that.

For a long time we said little but sipped wine together, enjoying the deep blue of the gathering dusk as the flitting swallows were replaced by the odd bat.

“I heard Professor Dickhead ask you about Pietro Mancini,” said Maggie.

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“It’s a long story.”

“No,” said Maggie, “no, don’t just say that.” She smiled, then frowned when she saw my face.

“Mum?”

“I was 17,” I said slowly. “I was doing my A-Levels. I didn’t know if I would get into university, or what I would do there if I did. But I knew I would soon have to make up my mind. Aunty Carol was about to go. Mum and Dad invited an exchange student for a month. From Rome. And your Aunty Carol went over there. They were both history students. And they were both in their second year.”

“Did Aunty Carol have enormous tits even then?” asked Maggie. She giggled. “He must have thought he was in paradise.”

“Not really,” I said. “It was too hot in Rome and there was too much wine. I think she got horrendously pissed.”

“Italians don’t like that. Rather bruta figura.”

“Yes and I don’t think Carol was very nice to him anyway. He was very good-looking, actually, but I don’t think he was her type. She rather neglected him when he came over, and he spent most of his time with my parents. His English was excellent, and he was ever so polite.” I thought for a moment.  “He even pretended to like baked beans and sausages and mash. And greasy lamb chops. God knows how. And he was nice to me. Though I wasn’t exciting. I was flat-chested and had spots. Anyway, Mum and Dad were afraid he was bored. It was his last few days. I had just passed my driving test, so one day they told me to take him up into the fells to see the countryside and get some fresh air.”

I closed my eyes.

*

We’d had a cold, snowy winter, but the summer that followed wasn’t bad. It was August and the very best of the season was over. But that day was mostly bright, the odd bank of white cloud passing across the sun. 

I’d been working that summer and saved some money; I had £125 and spent it on a very old Mini. It cost £200, but Dad gave me the difference, and paid for the insurance. It didn’t last long; it failed its MoT a few months later because the subframe mounts were completely rotten and I’m lucky I didn’t go through the floor, but I didn’t know that then. I called it Minou, which was what I’d heard French people called sweet little kittens. It can mean something else too, but I didn’t know that either at the time.

Pietro was quite tall. He coiled himself into the passenger seat and tried to open the window; it took him a moment or two to work out the Mini’s sliding arrangement. The seat creaked. I watched him get comfortable and noticed that his eyes were deep blue and the lashes very long. I hadn’t seen those things before, though I had  noticed his deep brown wavy hair. I opened my own window and we drove off, though not before I had struggled to get into first, feeling for the slot with the long, slack gear-lever. Second to third needed a second attempt too, the first attempt engaging first instead; there was a loud graunching sound. The second attempt was more successful. At length I was in top and the Mini scurried along the windy B-road that led up into the valley that dug into the fells.

“I think you drive very well, ’Elena,” said Pietro.

“No I don’t,” I said. A country bus came towards us and I veered towards the left-hand hedge, hearing a scraping sound as the brambles scratched the paintwork.

At length I turned off into a country lane and followed it to a small car-park from which one could walk up into the hills. We took our rucksacks with water and sandwiches and tramped for an hour or so up a green lane, saying little yet oddly relaxed in each other’s company. Once we crossed an overgrown track along which ran a line of stones set across the track and parallel to each other. I had seen this track many times and did not remark upon it. But Pietro stopped, and looked fascinated.

“That is – what? Almost like a …primitive railway,” he said.

“I forgot – you’re a history student, aren’t you?”

He chuckled. “I am history student, yes. Look. Is that not a railway track to you?”

“Dad says it’s something to do with the old mines on the side of the fell,” I said. “They had horse-drawn carts and the used them to bring coal down to the coast. In time they opened bigger mines on the coast itself and colliers could load there, so these mines were abandoned.”

“What date?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “About 1720 I think.”

“Look,” he said. “The holes, where there must have been fastening for the rails. Were they wood?”

“Our teacher said they were wood,” I said. “But later they were replaced with iron.”

“That,” said Pietro, “is history.”

He was more animated than I had seen him before and I laughed. “Pietro, you are from Rome,” I said. “You have history coming out of your ears there. Really, ours can’t be very interesting.”

“But it is,” he said. He pointed to the row of stones. “You are mining coal. The rails are of wood. But then they are of iron and then of steel and they carry the coal to the coast where it fuels the furnaces where the first machines are forged and one day someone builds a machine that can pull the wagons in place of horses, and that machine links cities together and the modern world is born. Look! There it is happening before our very eyes! And you speak of Rome. All they did was whip their slaves and gorge themselves on lingua alaudae and garum.”

“On what?” I was laughing.

“The tongues of larks,” he said. “And garum was fish sauce. That they made with fermented fish innards.”

“That sounds quite disgusting.” I wrinkled my nose.

He was laughing too now. “Of course it was. The Romans, they were disgusting. But your coal and steel took you across the seas and built the modern world. And there it is.” He pointed to the stones again. “Forget the fish innards and pervert emperors …Did you see the field we passed, with the ridges still here from ancient furrows? Did you wonder who farmed there, and what became of them?”

“The Black Death?” I suggested.

“Maybe. Or maybe there were just too many people and the soil could not support them. It happened. Italy too. You may take the train from Roma to Sperlonga and you will see it; kilometre after kilometre of abandoned, dusty terraces. Where did they go? What happened when they got there?”

“I think the landscape speaks to you, Pietro,” I said.

“Speak to me? It will not shut up,” he replied.

We smiled at each other. And as we walked away, he took my hand. It was a surprise, and at first I was taken aback; then I realised I was pleased.

“Do you like Carol?” I asked.

“She is fine,” he said.

To this day I don’t know why I said it, but I did:

“She has awfully big breasts,” I said.

“So has my mother,” he replied.

We both burst out laughing, and I felt his warmth and his laughter. And then he kissed me. I’d been kissed before, but this was different; not a furtive fumbly sort of kiss that smelled of baked beans or breakfast cereal, but something gentle and nice, and now I’m crying, and Maggie is kneeling in front of me, anxious, holding both my hands.

*

So Maggie pours me a big glass of wine then sits down on the grass beside my chair.

“Silly old cow,” I say, and sniff.

“No,” she says.

We’re silent for a minute.

“What happened? I mean, with you and Pietro?”

“Nothing.” Another snivel. “We were never alone together again and three days later he went back to Italy. But we wrote each other. His letters never mentioned romance. But they were warm and chatty and nice. He talked about us meeting again. I think he wanted to. Then two years later the letters stopped. I wrote several times more, then I got a letter from his father. It was in Italian but I worked out what it said. In the summer Pietro had gone up to the north of Italy to see friends from university. On the way back he had to change trains in Bologna. It was the day of the bomb in the station there. They planted it in the waiting room. His father said he must have died at once.”

“Oh,” said Maggie. “Oh.”

She gazed up at me. “Mum, were you in love?”

“Yes,” I said.

I looked back at her.

“I’m not a bad person,” I said. “I just find it hard sometimes …to be…”

“It’s all right,” she said.

She sat beside my chair until the need to sleep crept up on me, and I felt at peace.

 

Pietro Mancini is a fictional character and no-one of that name died in the Bologna station bombing; I was careful to check. However, 85 very real people did die in the explosion, on August 2 1980. It is usually ascribed to an extreme right-wing revolutionary group, and was one of the nastier terrorist atrocities of my lifetime. The dead are commemorated on a plaque in the Bologna Centrale station, where it happened.

More short fiction from Mike Robbins

Who Killed Walter Williams? Don't ask, even now

A Difficult Life When the world dislikes your birth

Come and See the Chickens A rather English love story

In Search of a Plot  Be careful. Elspeth may put you in a bacon slicer

A Question of Character Pity the nation...
The End A gun on a brownstone roof
The Last Time A figure skater leaves the ice
After the Flood An end? Or a beginning?
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 History doesn't repeat itself. 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? So we can spot it happening
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 Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books. They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
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