Flash fiction: Time After Time

When you have to warn the children

John heard the clack of heels as she came down the stairs. He stood to open the wooden door at the bottom of them. “Mind your head,” he said. She ducked as she stepped out into the living room. “I’m sorry, a 17th-century cottage isn’t really practical at a time like this, is it.”

“Not terribly.”

“How are things?”

“Well, I think you know. I’ve just spoken to your daughter.” She was efficient, bloodless. “Jess is your daughter? Or daughter-in-law?”

“Daughter.” John made as if to escort her to the door, but: “I’ll see myself out, don’t worry.” She stalked down the drive to a clinical white Audi.

Jess was coming down now. “Did she say anything useful?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Not really. Just checked the IV drips and everything. She said, 48 hours at most. So it could be today. Any time really.” Her eyes had dark rings. He could hear the day nurse clumping around above.

Then an argument erupted in the dining room.

“Give it here! It’s mine!”

“No it isn’t! Nanny gave it me!”

“Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!”

She strode to the door of the dining room and he heard her yell, “Shut up! Both of you! Just SHUT UP!” She half-fell back into the living room. “God almighty, the pair of you!”

John peered into the dining-room to see the two of them sitting on the floor and staring at the door open-mouthed. The toy car they’d been arguing about was upside-down on the carpet.

He glanced outside and saw that the rain had stopped and there were cracks in the clouds.

Chris Morgan/Creative Commons

“Go and get your welly-boots,” he said. “We’ll go down to the river and give Mum some peace.”

“Thanks Dad. For pity’s sake get them out of my hair for an hour or two,” she said.

“They’ve been cooped up a bit,” he said.

“And Dad… I’ve done nothing to prepare them, really. Can you try and talk to them? I’m sorry.”

“I’ll try.”

So he chivvied them out of the house, down the street past the church hall and left into the bridleway that led down to the water meadows. The rain clouds had mostly cleared away and the patches of blue were spreading, but the ground was soft underfoot and there were lots of puddles and the children jumped in them, trying to splash each other. Soon Paul jumped into an especially deep puddle that seemed to have contained cow dung. The resulting slurry spread over his cords and his sister’s jeans. “Ow!” she cried. “You beast!” She was about to begin a run-up to a puddle of her own when John intervened. “Stop that, Ellen,” he said, his tone a little sharp. ”Don’t make more work for Mummy. Not now.”

He caught them both by the arms and pulled them towards him. “Do you know what kind of path this is?”

“Dad said once it’s called a hollow way,” said Paul.

“That’s right. Look to either side. The hedges are very high, aren’t they? And the fields are above the level of the path. Do you know why that is?”

“It’s because lots of people came down here for years and years and years,” said Ellen.

“A thousand years,” he said. “Since before the Normans. Peasants with their simple tools and later with their ponies and then with the great shire horses. We saw one of those, didn’t we? At the County Show last year.”

“It was HUGE, wasn’t it, Grandad,” said Paul. “Its hooves were like – like Mars landers.”

He thought about this. Yes, I see the analogy, he thought, then had a vision of a Suffolk Punch descending slowly to the surface of the Red Planet, whinnying quietly. Out loud he said:

“I wonder how many people have walked down this hollow way before us. Did you know that the world’s population is 8 billion? But about 117 billion of us have walked the earth? That means 109 billion people have gone before us. So for everyone alive today, 13 have passed before.”

“Wow,” said Paul. “I wonder what happened to them all?”

Geoff Charles/National Museum of Wales

“Well, they’ve died.” John paused for a moment, then said: “Do you think they’re somewhere watching us? After all, they came down here time after time after time for ten centuries or more. They marched up here to go to Waterloo, the Transvaal, Passchendaele and Agincourt. Can they really just have gone away?”

“Has Barker just gone away, Grandad?” asked Ellen.

“I think he’s in dog heaven, dear,” said her grandad. “I expect he’s chasing lots and lots of rabbits.”

“But if that’s dog heaven, isn’t it also rabbit hell?” she said, wide-eyed.

“Not if the rabbits are in on it,” said Paul. “He never caught one, anyway. Or a squirrel. Of course, we do know Barker’s dead, don’t we? I mean, we never saw his body. Dad just lifted him into the hatchback ’cos his back legs didn’t work anymore, Barkers not Dad’s, then he didn’t come back from the vet’s.” He thought for a moment. “Have you ever seen a body, Grandad?”

“Yes,” said John. “When I was in the Army.”

“Ooooh,” said Ellen. “Where was that?”

“In Northern Ireland,” he replied.

“What did it look like?” she asked.

“Not very nice,” he said. He patted her on the back. “Wars aren’t very nice, you see.”

“I bet that’s what’ll happen to Dad,” said Paul. “The doctor’ll put him in the boot and drive him off to the vet.”

“That’s horrible,” said Ellen, and started crying. She was pummelling her brother with her fists and he was laughing. “Off to the vet! Off to the vet!” he said.

“Paul,” said John, “that’s enough. Ellen, come here. Have you got a hanky? You haven’t have you?” He dabbed her tears with his own handkerchief.

“Is Nanny in heaven, then, Grandad?” asked Paul.

“Oh yes, I think so,” he said, after just a second’s hesitation. “I expect she’s sitting with Great-Aunty Mavis now, and they’re complaining about my habits. And I bet they’re drinking lots of sherry.”

“Does everyone believe in heaven though,” said Paul, frowning. “Mrs D came to tea once and said there’s no hell either and it was all silly nonsense to frighten people and make them give the Church lots of money.”

There is a hell, thought John, and it’s tea with Mrs D. Out loud he said:

“Lots of people believe in different things. Some religions believe in reincarnation.”

They had come to the end of the lane and Ellen was climbing the gate into the water meadow beyond. “Ellen, climb near the hinge,” he called out. “You’ll put less strain on it.” She dropped down onto the other side. Together they walked across the water meadow, lumpy and rough with thistles.

“Reincarnation’s when people come back as someone else, isn’t it?” said Paul.

“Sort of,” he replied. “Different faiths see it in different ways. To Buddhist people sometimes, you don’t exactly die but your spirit merges back into a big life force. Other people do believe you can come back though, and if you’ve been good you’re something nice and if you’ve been bad you might be a dung beetle.”

“Paul’ll be a dung beetle,” said Ellen. “Not that he’d smell any better.”

“I bet you’d be a rat or something,” said Paul. “A plague rat. Anyway, I shan’t be a dung beetle. I’m going to go back in time and be a Goth, and I shall sack Rome.”

“A Goth?” Ellen wrinkled up her nose. “Like Dina from the Old Rectory? With black lipstick and that funny nail through her nose.” She frowned as she tried to imagine Dina with a sword, hacking away at slaves in togas.

“Not that kind of Goth, silly.” He looked at his grandad. “They were big warriors, weren’t they, with long pigtails and lots of armour.”

John was about to answer this but his phone vibrated. He knew what the message was before he checked. He didn’t say anything for a moment.

“Grandad?” said Ellen.

“We’d better go home now,” he said.

He crouched down in front of them. “Listen, you two. The world is changing, every moment of every day, and people enter it and they leave it, and we don’t know what happens to them but we know it’s nothing bad. Those of us who stay, we feel sad but we’ll be happy tomorrow. And one day someone will walk along the hollow way and wonder who we were, and it’s all right. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Paul.

“Come on then,” he said, but before they left the water meadow he turned and looked back across the tussocky grass at the river beyond. The sky was more blue now and the sun shone between grey clouds that had brilliant white edges; the river, more a stream really, was lined with trees and the raindrops still glistened on the leaves, caught in the afternoon sun. There were oaks, and here and there a young wych elm, fighting back after the disease that had devastated them when he was a young man. I imagined we’d never see them again, he thought. I suppose everything changes; everything goes but then it comes back – yes, like people, time after time after time.

More flash fiction from Mike:

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: Fashion

Subversion. With style 

“Are you sure about this, Juliette?” said Mila. She worried her hair with one hand and bent her pencil with the other. The pencil snapped and the two halves fell on the floor. “Oh shit,” she said, and bent to retrieve them.

“Quite sure,” replied the Dean. “Let him see that we’re not a hotbed of subversion.”

“But we are,” said Brian.

“Well just for that one day, we won’t be, OK?” The Dean, Juliette, fiddled with the mouse of her laptop; there was a large TV in the corner of the Senior Common Room and she was linked to it over the WiFi, but this almost never worked first time and she was mildly surprised to see the beginning of the video she had cued up, a recording from a recent news programme on the regional BBC channel. “I suggest we take him to Mila’s class and he can see that the History of Art in Society course is taught to high standards. Then he can go to Sculpture in History and see what Brian’s students are up to.”

A TV studio appeared on screen. It was a morning chat show.

“And then we can take him to Patrick’s fashion lecture,” said Juliette.

There was a sound from the corner of the room, a sort of “Nrrrgh” followed by a grunt. Patrick was sprawled in a collapsing old armchair, his long limbs draped where they’d fallen when he sank into it at the end of the morning’s teaching.

A Girl with a Mirror, an Allegory of Profane Love (1627). 

Paulus Moreelse (1571-1638) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

“Listen to what this Headdick man says,” said Juliette.

“Are our universities and colleges serving us well?” said the presenter on the screen, her lip gloss glistening in the studio lights. “Bancaster North’s MP, Tony Headdick, doesn’t think so. He has launched an attack on Bancaster School of Art and Design for what he calls ‘woke nonsense’. Good morning, Tony.”

“Good morning,” said Headdick, frowning gravely.

“Now, Tony, what exactly is your complaint?”

“Apart from the lecturers, as well as students, with pink and green hair?” said Headdick. He was a thickset man in his 50s, not tall, with a stubbly chin and bushy eyebrows; he had a nasal rainforest. His gaze darted around the studio. “I want to understand why they teach so little that is best about Britain, and England, and encourage students to believe the worst about us all the time. And why don’t they teach good art? All this silly woke nonsense.”

“I don’t think Patrick is woke,” said Brian. “He appears to have gone to sleep.” He poked Patrick’s leg with his foot.

“I am woke,” said Patrick. “Where did they find this pillock? I hope I never meet him.”

“You’re going to,” said Juliette. “He’s visiting on Tuesday and he’s going to sit in on some of your teaching.”

“Juliette, are you sure that’s a good idea?” said Mila again. She reached for her coffee mug, missed and spilled lukewarm coffee on the carpet. “Oh shit,” she said.

*

The following Tuesday Juliette stood on the pavement at the north end of the pedestrian footbridge over the River Ban, which flowed through Bancaster’s city centre and past the Faculty building. She was waiting for Headdick, who was late. She was tired; she had been awake overnight, to cover for a carer who could not come. Her head hurt a little and her eyelids were heavy.

At length a black Range Rover drew up and disgorged Headdick. He got out of the back seat looking very much as he had on TV, although his nasal hair had grown slightly. He was followed by Councillor Clark, the leader of his party group on the City Council, a small man in a cheap suit. They saw a fairly tall, slim woman of about 40 with honey-blonde hair drawn back across her scalp to a ponytail, secured by a black velvet ribbon; she was subtly made up and wore a trim-fitting black wool suit and black strapped sandals with a moderate stiletto heel. She had a string of pearls and matching earrings.

“Bloody hell, is that the Dean,” said Clark in a stage whisper. “Phwoarr, I wouldn’t mind, eh?”

“Neither would I but she’s probably a lezzer,” said Headdick. “Anyway, better be polite, eh.” He advanced with hand outstretched. “Tony Headdick,” he grunted.

“Juliette Bouchard,” she replied, and took his hand. “I am the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design. I am delighted to meet you.”

“Bouchard?” said Headdick. “I can’t place your accent. Are you English?”

“No, I am from Montreal. My mother is anglophone; my father was a French speaker, but I studied at McGill.”

Headdick frowned. “There were no English applicants for the job?”

“I am sure there were,” she replied. “Selection boards for this type of post want a very specific skillset, and may seek it abroad. Anyway, please do come with me.”

They crossed the footbridge over the River Ban, which caught the morning sunlight; the willows hung in a rich curtain above the water and the Victorian mass of the School, a former mill, was reflected in the slow waters, along with the odd white cloud from the early-autumn sky. It was a beautiful morning but Juliette felt uneasy, and remembered, the day before, that she had walked across this bridge and seen Brian and Patrick sitting on the benches by the river in close conversation with several students. One of them was a beautiful dark-skinned young woman called Shirl. She had large breasts. Something told Juliette that this might be important.

Out loud she said: “May I take you for coffee in the Senior Common Room before we go round the classes?” Councillor Clark seemed about to accept but Headdick brusquely refused.

“Then I might as well take you to Mila’s History of Art in Society class.”

Headdick harrumphed at the word ‘Society’. He followed Juliette down the corridor, noting her long legs and slim, graceful hips.

She knocked on a studded oak door and pushed it open. Mila’s students were seated in a semicircle around her. The walls were hung with carefully spaced posters and reproductions. On one wall was a large poster advertising an exhibition called Women’s Images of Men at the Institute of Contemporary Arts some decades earlier. Mila herself stood by a large flat screen hung on the end wall. She was thirtyish, small, and pretty with a large nose stud, a cheek piercing and pink hair, and wore dungarees. Headdick stiffened at the sight of her. Clark looked at her breasts. “Hello,” she smiled, “I’m Mila Dalmaans.”

Headdick grunted. He seemed disinclined to take the hand that Mila half-offered him.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Utrecht,” she said, and smiled again.

Headdick turned to Juliette. “Do you ever recruit in England?” he asked.

“Mila is a noted writer and researcher on art and feminism,” said Juliette. “Her publications record is stellar, and fits our curriculum well. We were lucky to get her.” She turned to Mila. “Please do continue.”

Mila turned back to the screen; she had an LED pointer in her hand. She clicked on to the next slide and there was a painting of a woman in a factory, before a long machine, lifting a spool off its frame. The woman wore a long grey dress. Her face was tired and her feet were bare.

“Anyone tell me something about this picture?” she asked. There was silence for a moment and then someone said, “Gouache. It’s early 20th century, isn’t it?”

“It is. The artist may surprise you. It’s the feminist campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst,” said Mila. A wave of interest went through the room. “We do not think of her as an artist but she was; she trained at the Royal College of Art and might have pursued it as a career. From what she wrote later, she felt it would have been – how shall I put it – an indulgence to do so. Life, she felt, had a harder edge. But I wonder if she was right.” 

She waved her arm at the screen. 

“The woman is changing a bobbin in a Glasgow cotton mill. It is from a series she painted there and in the Potteries in 1907, Women Workers of England. It was done for the Women’s Social and Political Union, a suffragist and social campaigning body set up by her mother Emmeline and sister Christabel.”

Juliette sensed Headdick tensing beside her.

Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960): Glasgow Cotton
Spinning Mill: Changing the Bobbin (1907). Tate Gallery

Mila went on,  “Pankhurst would later describe ‘the almost deafening noise of the machinery and the oppressive heat’ in the Glasgow cotton mills, which was ‘so hot and airless that I fainted within an hour.’ Much later, in the late 1930s, she contributed a chapter to Margot Asquith’s anthology Myself When Young, in which a number of prominent women talked of their early lives and dreams. Remembering her journey to the Potteries in 1907, she wrote: ‘What a grey desolation, an utter neglect of human life. The elementary decencies of housing and sanitation were all defied.’” 

She turned back to the group. 

“Pankhurst could have used art as a political weapon, but she did not. The tension between art and politics remained. In Myself when Young she wrote that the First World War brought great hardship to women in the East End as their men went to war.” Mila glanced at her notes. “’Little families were rendered destitute,’ she wrote. ‘I saw starvation look at me from patient eyes. I knew then that I should never return to my art.’ It seems she never did, and today Sylvia Pankhurst is remembered as an activist, not an artist.”

Juliette became aware that Headdick was making a sort of spluttering sound, like a motor succumbing to fuel starvation. “I must protest,” he rasped. “This is nothing more than socialist propaganda.”

“It’s history, isn’t it?” said one of the students with an innocent air.

“Those men who left their families behind were damn well doing their duty, fighting for King and Country,” Headdick said, in what was not quite a shout.

“Then the poverty they left behind did not matter?”

“I did not say that.”

“Then what were you saying?” Mila turned back to the screen and raised the pointer. “Anyway, I should like to show you a picture of Sylvia. It was taken around 1911.” A sepia portrait appeared of a woman with large, liquid eyes and a commanding gaze. Clark went a little weak at the knees.

“My goodness,” he said, “she was rather beautiful.”

“You can’t say that here,” said Headdick. “They’re all woke. They’ll call you a sexist pig.”

“Well actually,” said Mila, “I too find that portrait so compelling – as a gay woman – well, actually I’m sort of bi…“

“Oooh, Mila,” said one of the students. “I didn’t know you leaned both ways. I do too.”

“Do you?” said Mila. She dropped the pointer device. ”Oh shit.”

“I’ve heard enough,” said Headdick. He pulled the door open with a savage gesture but did not realise it was spring-loaded; as he stormed through the doorway the heavy oak door sprang back and caught him a vicious blow on the shoulder. “Dammit,” he yelled and went on into the corridor without holding the door for Councillor Clark, who followed him but turned for a moment to look wistfully at the sepia face on the screen that stared back across a century with a mix of love, command, contempt and compassion.

*

Headdick was persuaded to stay. “You really must see one or two more lectures, and have a rounded view,” said Juliette. Her urbanity and warmth prevailed although she did not feel as confident as she appeared; God, she thought, I hope Brian’s not preaching sedition today.

She pushed open the door of his lecture room to find Module II, Lecture III of Sculpture in History in full swing. The large room was fairly dark; a number of reproduction sculptures stood around, mostly small. Brian was holding one and showing it to his class. “And this is the Roman one with the Bernini mattress,” he was saying. Oh, thank God, the classics, thought Juliette.

“Mr Headdick,” she said out loud, “Mr Clark, I would like you to meet Brian O’Flaherty.”

“Top of the morning to you,” said Brian. He was short, wide and muscular with a jet-black beard and piercing blue eyes.

Headdick turned to Juliette. “Do you really have no English teaching staff at all?” he demanded.

“Brian is from County Fermanagh,” she replied. “It is in the United Kingdom.”

“Though actually,” Brian began, “I’m an Ir – “

“Do please continue,” said Juliette smoothly. “We don’t want to interrupt you.”

“Indeed.” Brian turned back to his class and held up a small reproduction sculpture; a large picture of it appeared on the screen behind him. “We don’t know its origin for sure but the figure is thought to be a Roman copy of a work by the second century BCE Greek sculptor Polycles. It’s generally called the Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”

Juliette felt a chill in her stomach.

“In ancient methodology, Hermaphroditus was born a boy,” said Brian. “But as a result of an attempted rape by the nymph Salmacis, he became what was traditionally called a hermaphrodite.”

“You mean he was trans?” asked one of the students.

“Not exactly. He, or she, had sexual characteristics that defied binary gender definition. Today we would probably prefer the term intersex, as hermaphrodite is regarded as offensive by some.”

Juliette held her head in her hand for a second or two. She could feel Headdick tensing up beside her again and was sure he had growled like a mastiff. Clark was staring open-mouthed at a student with a low-cut top.

“Why am I talking of this? Well, it is a good place to start on the role of androgyny in art history,” said Brian. “It has always reflected the ambivalence that society has always had over binary sexuality. This goes back to the depiction of Queen Hatsheput, who shared the Egyptian throne in the 15th century BCE. In fact it goes further; we know that in Sumeria, the priests of the goddess Inanna adopted female roles, and we think they had sex with other men. Today’s changing gender roles are nothing new and sculpture reflects that.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” muttered Headdick. He stood up. “What are you teaching here? Subversion, sexual ambivalence?”

Brian looked at him, quite unflustered.

“Art at its best reflects the world as it is, not as we somehow feel it should be, Mr Headdick,” he replied. “It makes no judgement. It is a mirror. It tells us that gender fluidity, like so much else, is as old as the species itself.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Headdick said once again. “Ms – er – Bouchard, is there anything else you wish me to see? I must warn you that my report to the City Council will be negative.”

You’re not even on the Council, she thought. Councillor Clark was, but wasn’t listening; he was casting a backward glance at the student in the low-cut top. Then he hurried behind.

*

They joined Patrick’s lecture halfway through. He was more formal; the students sat on benches and he stood on a dais at the bottom of the theatre beside the large screen, changing the slides now and then with a laptop on the table beside him. He looked round as the door behind him opened and Juliette stepped in. Headdick looked coldly at the very tall black man with the dreadlocks.

“Where is this one from?” he asked Juliette. “Jamaica?”

“Streatham,” said Patrick. “Do sit down.” He waited a moment while the three arranged themselves in the front bench, which was empty – as everyone knows, there is a quirk of crowd dynamics that stops people from sitting at the front.

“Delighted you could join us,” he said politely. “I am teaching one of the core modules for the second-year Art and Design course. We look at fashion and how it reflects the world around us, the demands it makes upon us and the resources it consumes. Many of our students will work in the rag trade later, and it is important for them to understand all this.”

Headdick emitted a trademark grunt. Clark’s gaze was fixed on a young woman sitting near the front. She was very beautiful. Also, she had large breasts.

Juliette noticed her too. She felt uneasy.

Patrick continued his lecture. On his screen was a painting of a young woman in Edwardian dress. Her evening grown tumbled in thick layers to the carpet; an ornate fringe adorned the bust and elaborate, detailed bands encircled her waist and her hips.

“A word on the picture, or you will wonder who it is,” said Patrick. “It is from 1904 and is a lovely portrait. It is by Byam Shaw, a noted illustrator and painter who was sadly to die in the Spanish flu epidemic, still in his 40s. The subject is his sister-in-law, Isabel Codrington, who was herself an artist; in fact, one of greater importance than Shaw. But that is for another lecture.

“What I wish you to note is the very elaborate nature of her gown. What does it tell us?”

“That she didn’t wear it in the street,” said someone. ”In 1904 it would have trailed in all the horseshit.”

There was a murmur of laughter.

“She’s very pretty,” said someone else.

“She was. Ezra Pound wrote her a love poem,” said Patrick. “It was a lousy poem. But it was Ezra Pound. Anyway, back to the gown. Look at the detailing, the sheer mass of fabric, the amount of stitching that would be required for a gown to be worn perhaps twice or three times a year. She was then married to Paul Konody, an art critic and writer of some distinction and I guess some wealth.”

Isabel Codrington (1904), by
Byam Shaw (1872-1919)

“Clothes are a mark of class then,” said someone. “But didn’t it also mean cheap labour?”

“Exactly. A Lords committee in 1890 found a woman making shirts for which she was paid 7d a dozen; not a lot, even then. She earned a shilling and tuppence – about 6p  – a day; it was a 12-hour day. Every week she paid 2/6d – two shillings and sixpence – for the hire of her sewing machine. Seamstresses and dressmakers worked in poor light with poor ventilation, and often had an inadequate diet. This is what enabled the fashions that we see in a picture such as – “

“Why are you so negative?” said Headdick. The question emerged as a sort of strangled bark. He slammed his fist on the desk in front of him. “None of you have a good thing to say about us, do you? Our culture, our history, our achievements – just all this nasty sneering woke stuff is all you can serve up. And the woman is always better than the man.”

“It’s about the lives people lead, Mr Headdick,” said Patrick.

“Then. Not now. Why dredge up some rant about Victorian poverty now, in the present day?”

“The world,” said Patrick, “does not change.” And Juliette saw – Headdick did not – that he had inclined his head towards Shirl, who stood and slowly began to unbutton her blouse.

“What?” said Headdick. Councillor Clark looked on, his mouth agape; a thin string of saliva stretched between his lips.

Shirl slipped her blouse off her shoulders, revealing a very large bust in a black lacy bra. She grasped the collar of the blouse and made a show of looking at the label.

“Cambodia,” she announced.

The girl next to her was removing her T-shirt. “Bangladesh!” she yelled.

“What about the bra, Shirl?” yelled someone. “Can we undo it and see the label?”

“No you can’t, you cheeky sod,” she said.

Juliette became aware that all the students were stripping off their upper garments and peering at the labels.

“China!” a voice called.

“Vietnam!”

“India!”

“Shanghai!”

“Ethiopia!”

“Nanjing!”

“Now do you understand?” Patrick turned to his guests. “Nothing’s changed. Nothing, not since Isabel Codrington stood there in her finery. The poverty’s still there. We’ve just exported it. That’s all. Do you understand?”

“I’ve heard enough!” shouted Headdick, for the third time that morning. He stood up. The students were waving their tops around, giggling. “Come on,” he snapped at Clark, who was still gazing, transfixed, at Shirl. He marched out of the door behind the dais, Clark rushing to catch up.

Juliette hesitated, then followed them.

“Right, that’s enough,” Patrick boomed at the lecture theatre, and the noise subsided. “Well done, everyone. Good job. Shirl, thank you for deploying substantial assets to the front in this crucial battle.”

Shirl was buttoning her blouse. “I hope you’re going to buy us all a pint for this, you mean git,” she said.

“No. Yes. Well, maybe,” he said. To the room in general, he called, “You lot might as well bugger off to the Kings Head for a pint.”

“Are you coming?” asked Shirl.

“I think,” he said, “that I had better face the Dean.”

*

Juliette had followed the two men down the corridor but they had not noticed. She had nearly caught up with them when she heard Councillor Clark say:

“What a pity. Such a lovely woman.”

“What, the dark one with the big knockers?”

“No. Well, her as well. But that Juliette woman. I wouldn’t mind giving her one.”

Headdick got his phone out to summon the black Range Rover. “I wonder if anyone does,” he said. “Whether there’s a husband or a boyfriend, I mean. I reckon her husband needs to give her a good shagging more often.”

“Mr Headdick,” said a voice behind them. Startled, Headdick turned to see Juliette standing right behind him. “My husband,” she said, “had a motorcycle accident. He is a paraplegic.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she continued. “It has been so nice to meet you. I hope you have enjoyed your visit to our college.” She held her hand out and both men took it briefly. Then they turned and left the building.

She stood and watched them go for a moment, then returned to the lecture theatre. She found herself against the tide as knots of Patrick’s students, all laughing, hurried for the King’s Head. By the time she reached the theatre it was empty but for Patrick, slumped in a chair on the dais, his long limbs strewn awkwardly in front of him. She stood halfway down the theatre and looked at him.

“Why?” she said.

“What.”

“Why make mischief like that. You. Brian. Even Mila, God bless her, though she didn’t mean to.”

“You know why,” he said.

He sat up straight, thought for a moment then  said: “I’m sorry, Juliette. We weren’t trying to hurt you. Bryan is from the border. He grew up during the Troubles, wondering when the Prots would get him or beat him up, or his own side if he didn’t join ‘the boys’. I grew up in South London. When I was 12 some kids from my school cornered me on my way home and beat me with a brick. I had concussion. They were crying, ‘Hit the black kid. Hit the n******’. ‘Cos that’s what they do, see. That’s what we learned. Bullies always come back. Never kneel down or they’ll be back. You must make an ass of them. Do you see?”

They said nothing for a minute or so.

He looked at her. “How’s Don?”

“He has a chest infection. They’re drip-feeding him antibiotics. We have to move him in the night to prevent his chest from getting congested.”

She sat down on one of the benches. “He was asking after you. When he’s better, he’d love to see you. He likes to argue with you.”

Patrick smiled. “I’d like that too. I’ll come.”

She smiled back, a little uncertain.

“We’ll be all right, Juliette. They won’t be back.”

“If they are,” she said, “I’ll deal with them. As best I can.”

She stood and left the theatre. As she did so she passed under a skylight; the midday sun lit the motes of dust as she walked past, and her hair shone in its rays.

Sylvia Pankhurst, around 1911 (Library of Congress)

More flash fiction from Mike:

Time After Time When you have to warn the children

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: A Time of Darkness

It doesn’t repeat. But it rhymes

I hadn’t thought about that day for a while. But I’d never forgotten it, or what he’d said. I knew so little of him, then in a few sentences he told me everything – and just for a moment he showed affection, something he never did.

I told Mom about it and what he’d said, not then but a month or so later, when he’d left us, as we all knew he would.

“That’s quite something for your father,” she said. She emptied an ashtray and a little ash landed on her black mourning dress; she flicked it away. “Put those paper plates in the trash, please, honey. How did folks make such a mess in here, you’d think they’d be tidy after a funeral.” She picked up an empty Schlitz can. “Jesus, how many of these did your damn cousins drink?”

“Mom, we’re German,” I said. “Sausage and beer. It’s how you get through a Lutheran funeral.”

She chuckled. Then she frowned. “He never showed emotion.”

“Never?”

“Never.” She looked out the window at the tall trees and the darkening sky. “They had no tears left, you see. They shed them all early.” She turned towards me. “What did he tell you?”

“About Vinnitsa,” I said.

“Oh,” she replied.

*

So anyway.

It’s 43 years later and I ain’t 17 anymore; I’m 60 with grey hair, love handles and sagging tits, and I’m sitting in the same spot on the back deck of our house amid the wreckage of my life.

I’m a medical billing specialist. Well, that’s what I was this morning, anyway. I drove down to the office at Main and 14th like I always do – well, did – and parked on the empty lot next door, and went up to my desk on the third floor. It’s by the window. It’s the envy of the others, who work in cubicles and get no natural daylight, just the fierce glare of the striplights. “You got a great view here,” someone said once and I guess I did, right out over the carwash, Luigi’s Pizza on one side of it and the sleazy fried chicken joint on the other. Luigi’s is OK. I get takeout from it now and then. I’ve got to know the guy who owns it. “You Luigi?” I asked him once. “Nah, the name’s Vladimir,” he said. “Vlad’s Pizza ain’t got the same ring though.” I’ll give him that. The pizza was good though and they had loads of guys working in back. The chicken joint was busy too but I never went in there. “What do you get with your chicken wings in there?” I asked someone. “Salmonella,” he said. I passed. But now and then I used the carwash. Not the automatic rollers. I’d leave the car with them and three or four small, nuggety men with dark skins and high-pressure jets would fall upon it and clean it within an inch of its life and vacuum the inside and get rid of the dust and candy wrappers and empty Cheetos packets that I’m too big a slob to remove.

U.S. Customs and
Immigration Enforcement

Well, this morning I sat down at my workstation and switched on my PC and checked my phone and my email for messages. Nothing from my Ashley. I was hoping she’d come by soon, haven’t seen her for a month or two, but she’s kind of busy, she’s a single mom like I was and the father’s a useless P.O.S. just like her own was before him. I texted her. And I texted Maria. She hasn’t shown up now for two weeks and the house is a mess. I don’t know where she is.

Then I started processing a claim. Appendectomy. We have a list of cost codes and it’s just been updated. I open up on screen and start adding everything up. A day and a night in hospital, and it comes to $7,776. I gulp and go back through the figures and then I pick up the phone to my boss.

“Bob, I got an appendectomy and the wound dressings come to seven hundred bucks,” I say. “Are we kidding them?”

“Gimme the CPT code.”

I do.

“Nope,” he says. “We’re not kidding. Charge it up.”

“Is that OK? Who’s gonna pay?”

“Relax. His health plan will pay,” he says.

“Someone pays in the end,” I say.

“Yeah, I know that, you know that, all God’s chillun know that. How long you worked here, Greta?”

Too damn long, I think. I hang up. I look out the window and the sun is quite high already. I work on through the billings, checking the CPT codes, changing some here and there to lower the bills a little. Now and then I check my phone. No Maria. No Ashley. The buildings I can see through the window are a series of concrete cubes and neon signs, baking under a pale blue sky. I long for my back deck and my garden and an ice-cold beer.

I’m still looking out the window and daydreaming when a bunch of black cars pull up. Big ones, Ford F150s and Ford Explorers and a Suburban, all with tinted windows. They screech to a stop outside the car wash and Luigi’s Pizza and the Salmonella House and these guys in flak jackets and combat pants leap out and they’re armed and they’ve all got ski masks covering their faces. Jeez, they must be hot in this heat is my first thought, and then I see the letters ICE on their jackets and realise what they’re doing.

“F**k,” I yell out. Everyone looks round. Bob and several others are standing by my desk looking down at the street. “Go get ‘em, guys! Go! Go!” Bob yells. “Send ‘em to f**kin’ Salvador.”

They’re through the doors of all three places now and folks are streaming out and running, it’s like someone kicked an anthill. I see two ICE guys jump on a middle-aged woman and bring her down on the road and one’s got his knee on her back. There’s a short, thickset young man in a T-shirt and a reversed baseball cap and I see he’s the one who serves me pizza sometimes and now and then he gives me a wink and sticks on some extra topping. They’ve got him against the wall of Luigi’s. An older guy is marched to one of the SUVs, hands pinned behind his back, and kind of thrown in through the rear doors. Bob’s whooping like a lunatic. His secretary’s got her fists clenched and is punching the air and yelling Yeah! Yeah! like she was having a f**king orgasm. “You sick f**ks,” I yell but they don’t hear me. Then one of the guys from the carwash runs this way and I see him darting through the street door and the ICE men see him too late but they give chase, and two minutes later the door of the office bursts open and he’s standing there panting, looking around with his face set in a sort of rictus of horror and I remember father’s phrase from long ago, hunted – hunted and haunted, eyes blind with terror. Bob pushes past him to the door and yells down the stairwell He’s in here, come’n git him and he’s grinning and two of us shut the door and turn the catch, but the ICE agents are hammering on the other side and yelling Open up! United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement! We are a federal law enforcement agency! and the door bursts open and they grab him and drag him away. And I sink down into my seat.

“Bob,” I say, “you are a f**king creepazoid.”

*

It wasn’t going to end well, was it.

The HR lady sits me down in her office. “I gotta ask you, Ms Hauer. You called your supervisor, Mr Burdon, a – “ she mouths the profanity – “creepazoid?”

“I guess it was a bit mean to creeps, eh?” I say. She blanches a little. She’s very young, I reckon mid-20s, perfect makeup, a well-cut suit and just the right amount of jewellery, and I’m 60 with saggy boobs and sitting there in a tee shirt with my purse on my lap and I’ve just realised my stash tin’s poking out of it.

“Mr Burdon says there’s been long-standing performance issues,” she goes on.

“That’s because I won’t cover up for his crappy record keeping,” I say. “Or the way he tries to touch female staff. He has a thing for Latina girls, you know that? Trust me, he’s a major-league creep. You should get a life. How much did you pay for that suit?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When I was your age, I’d flunked out of college, got knocked up at a party and had two DUIs already,” I say.

She frowns. “DUIs. I can’t see any traffic violations those on your file.”

“Oh God,” I say, and then I lose it. I tell he to go f**k herself, then do it again but sideways, then do it on the kitchen table. She blanches a bit more and tells me my health insurance will end at midnight. She takes my ID and has security see me out the building.

*

So it’s the end of the afternoon. I’m sitting on the back deck, about where I was that warm afternoon 43 years ago. I’m looking at the garden, it’s grown over with long grasses, not as he’d have had it – my God, every flower, every twig knew its place; I swear he made them parade in the morning. But I like it more like this. I saw a possum last night and there’s a family of raccoons too, and I hear their skirring in the mornings.

Nothing from Maria. But we can guess why now, can’t we.

Nothing from Ashley.

I roll a joint. It’s a big one. It’s a very big one. I’m gonna get as baked as a damn brownie.

I’m just about to light it when the deck creaks and I look around and there she is, in her denim shorts and a bikini top with her tattoos and her piercings and her bare feet and her dirty-blonde hair tousled like she just got out of bed and I wouldn’t be surprised if she just was in bed, though who knows who with. Ashley doesn’t tell me everything.

“Seriously, Mom?”

“What?”

“That’s not a freakin’ spliff, it’s a California redwood.”

“I’m celebrating. I just got terminated.”

“Oh, Mom. What did you do this time?”

“ICE raided the pizza joint and the carwash and Burdon was dancing around with glee and I called him a f**king creepazoid and he is because he’s a nasty little MAGA piece of s**t and…” I become aware that I’m crying, and I take out my handkerchief and wipe my face and blow my nose and it’s full of tears and snot. “What are you doing here anyway?” I say. “I’ve been texting you for days. Where’s Carla?”

“Guess I sensed trouble,” she says. “I got this little switch in my brain that tells me. Momma’s f**ked up again, it says. So I thought I’d come by. I got Carla a sleepover with her friend Ellie. She’s fine.”

“Well now you’re here, you can go to the fridge and get me a f**kin’ beer,” I say.

She nods, but hesitates, just for a moment, and looks at me, and her hand seems to be reaching out towards me. Then she turns and goes into the kitchen and comes back with two ice-cold bottles of beer and we crack them open and we sit there and for a few minutes we say nothing, passing the spliff back and forward.

“I did a great job with you,” I say after a while. “I raised a slutty stoner, just like myself.”

She grins. “Nah, it’s in the genes.”

“It isn’t. You never met your Prussian grandfather.”

“Grandma said he was kind of cold. Not unkind. But not much small talk.”

“He never showed much affection,” I say. “Except – there was this one time. When I was 17. A month before he died.” I get up and walk two yards or so into the garden and turn back and look at her. “I came in about this time, six maybe? – before dinner. And he’s sitting in a folding chair, right about here.”

*

This is what I told Ashley then.  About Dad. And what he told me that afternoon, in the garden, when I was 17 and had acne.

I’d been hanging out with the gang at the mall and when I came in, Mom was busy in the kitchen and I asked to help but she said, “It’s OK, honey. Go sit with your father in the garden. He likes it when you do that.”

“Does he?”

“Yes,” she said.

It was a warm day but he was wrapped in a blanket; he was near the end and very thin, and his cheekbones stuck out and his nose was like a beak and of course he’d lost most of his hair because you do, though there were a few wisps left below the crown. I sat on the edge of the deck, waving my legs to and fro.

“Where you been?” he asked. He had this gravelly voice and his accent was still strong, after 30 years in America.

“At the mall,” I said.

“What do you do at the mall? Never do I understand,” he said.

“Hang out. With friends.”

He grunted. I figured Dad wasn’t really that interested in what I did at the mall. Then I coughed, several times, loudly. “Sorry, Dad,” I said. “It’s one of those summer colds. I guess I mustn’t give it to you.”

He smiled slightly. “I do not think it makes much difference now.”

I winced. He seemed to see that he had hurt me in some way and cast around for something to say. “I nearly coughed myself to death once,” he said. “And my lungs filled up with fluid. I had pneumonia. I survived.”

“When was that?”

He frowned and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t answer, then he said:

“The first winter after the war.  The English kept us in open-air cages. In Belgium.”

He’d never talked about the past. Somehow I’d known not to ask.

He didn’t seem like he’d say any more, so I asked him: “Were you a prisoner of war, Dad? How long did they keep you?”

“They kept me a while,” he said. “They didn’t believe my story, you see. I was a Gefreiter, a corporal, when they captured me. I was near Lübeck when the English took it. I got very sick in the cage and they moved me to a hospital. An English officer saw me there and said, he’s no corporal. He had recognised me. ‘I saw him in Heidelberg before the war,’ he said. ‘He was a student there. I am sure he is an officer. He has put on a corporal’s uniform to disguise what he has done.’ So they classified me as a C, a Nazi. And put me in a camp in the far north of Scotland. With all the Nazis.”

“Sounds like you had a blast,” I said.

I saw the ghost of a smile again.

“I got them to check my story. They transferred me to a better camp and I was even allowed out to work. Then they released me in 1947. I went back to Germany. But our home was in the East. And even in the West there was only rubble.”

“Why were you a corporal, Dad? Our family was kinda upscale, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, we had a small estate in Pomerania. Everything was lost when Germany collapsed.” He looked at me directly then, and I flinched a little, as I always did when he did that, right to the end. “I was not always a corporal. I was a lieutenant. An Oberleutnant. But I was – zum einfachen Soldaten degradiert… How do American soldiers put it?” He frowned. “Busted. Down to corporal.”

He stopped again, but I knew there was something that I needed to understand. I looked at him; he was trying to draw the blanket closer around him but his hand was thin and weak, and I did what I never did and touched him, pulling the blanket around his shoulders. I sat back on the deck.

“What happened, Dad?”

“I refused an order.” He looked at me again, and there was that faint smile. “A German does not refuse an order.”

“What was the order?”

“I should tell you, shouldn’t I.” For a moment he seemed almost to be talking to himself. “I should tell you. You must know of these things.” He seemed to be fighting for breath, then he said:

“It was near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. We caught a family of Gypsies in the woods. My comrades decided they would have some sport, and got some horses from a village they’d burned. Then they released the family in the woods and told them to run and if they escaped they could go free. And they hunted them on horseback.”

I must have looked appalled. He looked at my face and continued.

“They got the children and shot them in the woods. The mother they captured and made to dance without her clothes, then they killed her. I wouldn’t join the hunt. So when they caught the father and brought him back to our quarters, the Major told me to kill him. I refused.”

I guess I was sort of stunned. I said nothing. After a minute he said:

“I saw his eyes. Hunted – hunted and haunted, eyes blind with terror.”

We sat in silence for several minutes. The sunlight retreated behind the tall trees and I could see him shiver slightly. Then I said:

“And they busted you, Dad?”

“Yes, they busted me. They didn’t say ‘demoted for not murdering’, of course. It was said I had shown weakness in the face of the enemy.”

He seemed exhausted and I sensed he didn’t want to say anything more. Then he said:

“Go and help your mother with the dinner.”

I stood up, and started toward the kitchen, then I heard him say: “Come here.” I did, and he pulled me gently towards him and he kissed me on the cheek. He never had before. He never did again. I drew back and saw his eyes were glistening a little.

“How could they do these things, Dad?” I asked him.

“You can’t understand,” he said. “Not now. It was a time of darkness.”

*

We’re sitting on the deck still. It’s getting dark. We’ve finished the joint and Ashley has her arm around my shoulders.

The Gypsy Girl Mosaic of Zeugma

Gazientep Museum of Archaeology

More flash fiction from Mike:

Time After Time When you have to warn the children

Fashion Wokeness and subversion. With style

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.