I haven't posted fiction on this blog; I haven’t written many short pieces that would be suitable. But I have
just completed a short story for a writing group. The set title was Leaving
Home.
My contribution was prompted by a recent house move. My new home was built in 1888, and I have been thinking of those who were here
before and what became of them. Hence this story. I noticed today’s date, and
thought I’d share it.
Leaving home
I wish he
wouldn’t make that bloody row, thought Priscilla as Martin dropped one tool on
another in the bedroom across the hall. She winced at the clang and tried to
refocus on her screen. The rain streaked the window behind her monitor; grey
clouds scudded past outside.
Martin let
out an exclamation.
Dammit, how
am I supposed to mark a bunch of crappy first-year essays with this old clown
working next door.
She stood
up and crossed the corridor. The fitted carpet in the bedroom was peeled back
so Martin could get at the broken floorboard; it was just beside her bed so she
always stepped on it in the night. He had pulled up the broken board, but was
now squatting on his haunches, the claw hammer on the carpet beside him.
“I wish
you’d make less noise,” she said. She regretted it at once; her voice sounded
tense, uptight.
Martin
seemed not to hear. He held a small square piece of paper.
“I found
something,” he said. “Old photo. Under the floorboard.”
He passed
it to her. It was rather small.
“Why print
a picture that size?” she said, puzzled.
“It’s a contact print from an old-fashioned
negative,” he said. “Six centimetres square, I think. I have a friend who likes
mucking about with old cameras and he makes those.”
She turned
it over in her hands. It was brownish and faded and showed a youth in his late
teens and a girl who looked a little younger. The girl wore a dress with a rather
prim collar. Her hair had been done with care and was formed in a high roll
above her forehead. The youth wore uniform; he had a narrow cap without a peak
that came to a point at the front, rather like a ship’s stem.
“Why are
they sticking their tongues out at the camera?” asked Priscilla. She frowned.
Martin
chuckled. “I reckon their mum and dad made them go and have their portrait
done,” he said. “And they didn’t fancy that much and they took the piss out of
the photographer.” He looked over her shoulder at the little square of
photographic paper. “Look, it’s got PROOF embossed on it. I reckon that’s how
they did it then – the studio gave you a load of contact prints and you chose
which one to have enlarged.” He turned it over. “Look, there you go. It’s the
studio’s stamp. Pringle’s, 31 The Broad. I remember them, just. Where
MacDonald’s is now. They closed when I was a nipper, back in the 70s.”
“What on
earth has she done to her hair?” asked Priscilla.
“Victory
Rolls, they called them,” said Martin. “The Hollywood stars had them
apparently.” He peered at the picture. “Royal Air Force,” he said presently.
“Not an officer I don’t think. Look, he’s got a half-wing.” He pointed to the
man’s breast. “Air gunner or navigator maybe.”
“Oh.” She handed the picture back to him. “I
wonder who they were. Anyway, you can pop it in the rubbish I suppose.”
He frowned. “I think
I’ll keep it,” he said. “Someone might know something. My mate Josh, he
likes local history, he’s one of those blokes digging up the old City Station
up near Halfords. He knows how to look at the old census returns and he can see
who lived here.”
“Please
yourself,” said Priscilla. “I have 20 essays to mark before lunch.”
She went
out. Martin looked at the picture then up at her retreating back. And stuck his
tongue out. Then he chuckled, tucked the picture away in his jacket and went
back to work.
Priscilla
went back to her study. She did not hear the front door close or feel the faint
breeze as a middle-aged woman in an apron and sensible shoes descended the
stairs behind her.
In the
front room a man with a pipe and cardigan looked up from the Daily Sketch
as his son and daughter came in.
“Did they
get the proofs?” called his wife as she turned into the kitchen at the back of
the house. “Ted, Sarah, is that you?” She went on into the kitchen, filled the
kettle and put it on the range. “I’ll make a cup of tea.”
“Don’t make
tea if we haven’t the coal,” her son called out. “You’re spoiling me, Mum, but
you’ll need it when I’m gone.”
“Don’t
worry, Ted. We’ve got a hundredweight in hand, and we’re allowed more on the
first of the month.” She came into the front room, wiping her hands on her
apron. “Let’s see these pictures then. Oh, they’re lovely, aren’t they?”
“They’re
not bad, eh?” Her husband smiled up at her. “And old Pringle on his own now,
with his son in for the duration, as they say.”
“He’s back
on leave,” said Ted. “Mr Pringle told me. He’s been in Egypt, he said.”
“We’re not
supposed to say where people are,” his father said.
“I don’t
think as we’re going to lose because someone knows where young Pringle is, Bill.”
She took the proofs from him and leafed through this one, then stopped. “Oy!
What’s happening here!”
“It was
Ted,” said the girl. “He sticks his tongue out and before I know it I’m
sticking mine out as well. Let’s get Pringle’s to blow that one up.” She
giggled.
“Oh no we won’t. You can have that one, you
cheeky monkey,” her mother said, and handed her the proof. “Dad and I’ll choose
one for the mantelpiece. Ted, you must get ready, you’re off in half an hour.”
“I’ll help
him pack his kitbag,” said Sarah. “He’ll scrunch up his shirts otherwise. Boys
are so messy.”
They rushed
up the narrow stairway of the small house and their footsteps could be heard from
the master bedroom, where Sarah had laid out her brother’s clothes ready for
folding.
“I reckon
this is the one we’ll get blown up,” said Bill, and looked up at his wife, who
looked at him then tried
to dry her eyes on her apron but couldn’t because it was tied at the waist so
she untied it, sniffing and laughing at the same time. “Oh, I am silly,” she
said.
“Try and
hide it, my dear. It won’t make it easier for him, you know. And he’s left home
before. Remember he went off to basic training, then the Isle of Man, and now he’s just going off for more training.”
“Oh, I
know. It’s just that I have a bad feeling about this,” she said. “As if he’s
leaving home for the last time.”
“Well he
probably isn’t,” said her husband, a little shortly. He was silent for a
moment, then said: “Don’t fret. Sit down and let’s listen to the news, eh?”
He got up
and twisted the Bakelite knob on the wireless. The dial took on a soft,
old-gold glow and the sound started, softly at first then growing louder as the
set warmed up. The Home Service filled the room, an emollient voice reading the
six o’clock news.
Upstairs, Ted
sat on his parents’ bed and watched as his sister folded his shirts.
“I want to
do something too,” she said. “I’m going to join the Women’s Land Army.”
“Not yet
you’re not,” he said. “You’re only 17.”
“I’ll be 18
at Christmas,” she said.
“But you
have to be 20, don’t you? Anyway, you’d be dead useless shovelling manure. Or
catching rats. Imagine you catching rats. They’d take one look at you and you’d
scream your silly head off.”
She gave
his leg a pretend slap with the back of her hand. She went back to folding and
smoothing the shirts. He watched her deft movements as she said: “Dad says
you’re going for more training.”
“Yes,” he
said. “Well, sort of. I’m posted to No. 12 OTU at Chipping Warden in the
Midlands. It’s near Banbury I think. An OTU is an Operational Training Unit.”
“Does
Operational mean what I think it does?”
“Yes. But
it shan’t be much. Just minelaying off the coast and stuff I expect. You
mustn’t worry.”
“Oh.” She
thought for a moment. “Do you remember when I was 10 and Roy from No. 6 pulled
my pigtails?”
“No, I
don’t,” he replied. “Did he really? What a rotter.”
“Yes, and
you boxed his ears.”
“Oh, I
think I do remember. Did I box his ears? I thought I gave him a Chinese burn.”
She sat
still, looking down at the shirt. A silence grew heavy.
“Look, we
all have to do it,” he said. “Everyone’s leaving home. Dad did last time. Roy’s
gone, come to that.” He paused. “Have you got that proof Mum gave you? Give it
here.”
She did,
and he knelt down where there was a creaky floorboard, just beside the bed so
their mother always stepped on it in the night. He pushed the small square of
paper down between the cracks.
“There,” he
said. “When it’s all over and I’m home, we’ll pull that floorboard up and get
that picture, and we’ll have a giggle about it and I do think I’ll go down to
Pringle and get it blown up.”
“And if you
don’t come back, I’ll leave it there,” she said. “And maybe in 70 or 80 years’
time, someone’ll find it and wonder who we were.”
“That’s it.
But I’ll be back.”
“Hope so.”
She looked at him.
“Ted,” his
father called up the stairs. “It’s 6.30. You ready? Where you going from
anyway, City Station or Thorpe?”
“Thorpe,”
he said. “They bombed City Station.”
His sister
finished folding shirts and he clattered down the stairs with it and took his
greatcoat and gas-mask case from the coathooks.
“I can go
with you,” said Sarah.
“Don’t,” he
said. “Station’ll be bedlam. So many trains going now. ’Spect I’ll get a cuppa
on the platform though, the WVS ladies have a canteen there when it’s busy.”
“I’ll come some
of the way with you though.”
“Just to
the corner, all right? We can say goodbye there.”
Her father
was looking at her as she put her coat on. He leaned towards her. “Leave him at
the end of the road, my dear. Let him be. They need to be alone with their own thoughts
a bit when they go,” he whispered.
She nodded
and waited while her brother gave his mother a peck on the cheek and shook
hands with his father; then they went out into the street. It was nearly dark.
The blackout was complete, but the moon was nearly full and a bright light
caught the beginnings of a frost on the pavement. She walked with him to the
end of the street, where it joined The Avenues. To the left the road ran
downhill, in a straight line; then it climbed to a junction about a quarter of
a mile away. There the road joined another and swung round to the right. They
didn’t say anything, but he paused a moment and grasped her shoulder and
squeezed it with his hand, and seemed to want to say something but didn’t; then
he turned abruptly and trudged away. She watched him for several minutes, the
moon making a stark figure of him, standing out against the glitter of the
frosted pavement. Then he rounded the bend at the top of the hill. He paused
for a moment and she thought he looked back, the moonlight catching his face;
but he was too far away to see really, and then he was gone.
___________________________________________
More flash fiction
Cold
Everything is cold here
Displaced
Encounter on E94th Street
Mike Robbins’s latest book, On the Rim of the Sea, is now
available as a paperback or ebook. More details here.
