Flash fiction: Cold

Everything is cold here 

“Dammit.”

“What?”

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

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

A.Dombrowski/Creative Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

“Why, madam?”

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

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

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

Great-Aunt Lisa nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harwich Memorial: Safe Haven,

by Ian Wolter

More flash fiction:

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

available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.