The theme for the writing group this time was "Belonging". The others wrote some rather nice poems. I'm a lousy poet so I wrote this.
It's quite deeply felt.
Belonging
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.”
“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.”
“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 |
“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
Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A question of human geography
Hiraeth
A yearning…
Strange Places
A spirit in the sky
A Sideways Journey
Things might have been different
Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street
Leaving Home
A house has memories
