Flash fiction: Homecoming

 A sort of love story

“What are you doing, Tim?” his sister asked. Her voice came muffled from the kitchen.

“I’m reading the paper, Caroline,” he called back.

“No you’re not.” She appeared in the doorway, her hands and wrists white with flour; she was making pastry. “You’ve been sat there an hour.”

Albert Edelfelt, Red-Haired Model
and a Japanese fan (1879)

“Well, there’s a lot in The Times,” he replied.

“No there isn’t. Dad used to read it in 10 minutes on the loo.”

“That was before the central heating. Do you remember, you could see your breath in there in winter.”

“Don’t change the subject.” Caroline perched on the arm of the chintz sofa opposite, holding her floury hands away from the fabric. “You’ve been slumped in Mum’s old chair since lunchtime. You could go and get some fresh air.”

“It’s been raining.”

“It’s only spitting,” she said. The sun had come and gone between light-grey clouds.

“I’ve been thinking what to do about my house.”

“You know what to do about your damn house.”

“I want to keep it. I like Bracknell.”

“No-one actually likes Bracknell, you idiot. Move down here. We’ve got broadband in the village now. You don’t have to be in Bracknell to design databases.”

“But the notches in the door frame,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“We marked the kids’ heights as they grew up. Right up till Carla was 18.”

She didn’t reply for a moment. Then she said:

“Sheila wants to sell, Tim. You can’t keep half a house. Let it go. Sheila’s gone. Let her go. Let it all go.”

“I wouldn’t mind so much but she shagged my sodding boss.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“Isn’t that a good reason to start all over again?” She stood up and went back into the kitchen. “Get her right out of your life. Get the house out of your life. Come home. Paint.”

“What?”

“Paint. I don’t know why you stopped. You should never have left Central St Martins really. You could have made a living at it.” Her voice came over the kitchen clatter. “Do you know, Chloe Markham has one of your paintings. And a sketch you did at the river when you were a student.”

“Who’s Chloe Markham?”

“It’s her married name. Chloe from the Grange.”

“What, Chloe Cholmondeley-Ludicrous or whatever her name was? The posh little redhead with no friends? You mean someone actually married her?”

“That’s not very nice, Tim. Yes, her. She married an officer in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.”

“He must be bored.”

“Not really. He’s dead,” she said. She looked out from the kitchen. “He drove over an IED somewhere in Afghanistan. He got the MC.”

“Oh.” He sounded deflated.

“Her parents died years ago and she was an only, so she got the Grange. She still lives there. She’s fostered several children and she drives the minibus for shopping days and the community centre. We try recipes together sometimes and when I had COVID she got my shopping and walked Bobby every day. You should go and see her.”

“I might.”

“But first go and get some bloody exercise. Take Bobby. He’d like a walk. Labradors need exercise or they run to fat, just like younger brothers. BOBBY!”

Berthe Morisot, Little Girl at Mesnil
(1892)

So Tim went for a walk. It was quite a long walk. (Bobby was all right with this.) They walked through the centre of the village, the soft Devon air still damp from rain earlier in the day, the intermittent sunshine lighting the edges of clouds with a livid white glow. They passed the war memorial, its names clear, the stone clean and white. The road branched here, the left fork for Upper Cringeworthy and the right for Slattern. They took the road to Slattern but after a few yards Tim recognised the bridleway he had always used as a child, when he wanted to slip away up onto the moor; and he followed the stony muddy path until it started to climb past small, tussocky fields with dry-stone walls, and 10 minutes later they were at the edge of the open moor, climbing on a wide grassy sheep-track through the heather and ferns, its surface garnished with rabbit droppings and broken here and there by slabs of granite. The ferns smelled of talc.

The path narrowed, and twisted between the boulders. Above them was the grey mass of a large tor; it looked close but it was nearly an hour before they arrived. The tor was a field of scattered granite boulders and slabs. Tim sat down on one of the bigger slabs, Bobby’s lead folded in his hand..

“Well, that was good exercise,” he said. Bobby wagged his tail and snuffled at the base of some ferns. Rabbits, thought Tim. He looked out over the valley; he could see Upper and Lower Cringeworthy clearly to his right and the hamlet of Slattern to the left. The road between them was bordered by high hedges but now and then he could see the roof of a tiny car move along it, lost like a beetle in the landscape.

“I should never have married Sheila,” he said.

(“You should never have married Sheila,” Caroline said once. “Mind your own business,” he had replied.)

Then he started to think about Chloe.

*

She was very pale and had flyaway red hair and freckles. She wasn’t in the village in term-time. She was sent away to a girl’s prep school somewhere, then to Cheltenham Ladies’ College. In the holidays her parents would arrange a party for her and they would all be invited (“Lt-Gen Sir Gordon and Lady Smythe-Butler request the pleasure of

TIMOTHY’S

company… RSVP The Grange, Lower Cringeworthy).  She would greet them politely and stiffly and looked absolutely terrified. Her parents would urge her to lead them in party games and she tried; once he saw her bite her lip so hard it almost bled. When she went through the village the boys would hide on the hedges and throw dried cow-dung at her. Sometimes she bent her head and ran. He couldn’t take part. Somehow he knew that her school, too, must have been hell. As they entered their teens he saw her less and less. Then she went off to Lady Margaret Hall and he went to Central St Martins and the others in the village went to work. That was 20 years ago. The last time he had seen her was the following summer, and it had not occurred to him to think of it since. Now he remembered.

One warm day, home from Central St Martins for the long vacation, he had taken his sketch-pad down to the river that rushed through the wooded gorge below Slattern. On a bright afternoon the spray from the eddies around the rocks caught the sunlight, as did the wings of the insects; there was a fresh, damp scent from the river. He hadn’t started to sketch anything, preferring to enjoy the afternoon. Then the bushes on the opposite bank parted and a slim figure stepped between them, dressed in a simple white shift and sandals. She was only 15 feet or so away and they looked at each other in surprise.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. I do beg your pardon.”

“Why?”

“You seem to be sketching. I must have disturbed you.”

“So what? It isn’t my river.”

“I’ll leave you in peace,” she said, and lifted the branches.

“Stop,” he said, without quite knowing why. “Sit down.”

She sat on a rock just out from the bank and he picked up his sketch block. He worked quickly, glancing from the paper to his subject and back again.

“Are you drawing me?” she asked. “Do you want to? You really don’t have to.”

“I want to,” he said. “Do you know the sun is catching your hair?” 

He saw her relax; she took off her sandals, tossed them on the bank and put her feet in the cool water, then sat forward, her chin on her hands. She smiled, and he realised he’d never seen her do that before; a nervous, frightened grin perhaps, but not like this. She looked straight at him.

“Your eyes are blue,” he said. “I’d never noticed that before.”

It didn’t take him long. He held it up for her to look at, and she opened her eyes wide. “That’s too nice. I don’t look like that.”

“You do, you know.”

After a pause, he said: “You can keep it if you like.”

He tore it off the block and stood in the river, passing it carefully. She looked at it and drew in her breath sharply.

“I must go now. Mama and Papa do not like me to be late for sherry before dinner,” she said, but her eyes looked different from before.

He let her go. Later he wished he had asked her to stay. But a few weeks later he met Sheila.

*

Franciszek Żmurko, Study of a Female Head (1900)

Bobby’s muzzle was pushing at his hand. It was now early evening; the clouds had mostly cleared away and the valley had that limpid greenness you sometimes see after rain. “I suppose you want your tea,” he said. He stood up, then felt his phone buzz. “I bet it’s Sheila’s lawyers,” he thought, but it was from Caroline, so he opened it.

When are you coming home? Dinner’s ready about seven. BTW if you want to ring Chloe it’s Cringeworthy 6645.

“Yes, I’m coming home,” he muttered. He dialled the number.

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

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.

Flash fiction: Solitude

 A Cold War memory

“Nikolai Ivanovich, it is time.”

Nikolai stood, steadying himself with a hand on the luggage rack; the they were still moving a little. There was a loud hiss from the engine, a carriage ahead; a cloud of steam passed the window, lit by the dim lights from the platform and the news kiosk. On the platform was a knot of men in valenki and ushanka hats, their heavy winter coats flecked with snow. They carried machine-pistols.

“Are those necessary?” he asked.

“Yes. The other side may try to trick us. Besides, we have no reason to trust you.”

Wikimedia Commons/Sealle

“No, I suppose you don’t.” He lifted his coat and valise from the luggage rack; he had nothing else.

“Why did you do it?”

“What?” He paused and looked the other in the face. “Alexander Pavlovich, we have talked of this for so long.”

They had. The long hours in the bleak interrogation room with its single bulb; the genuine puzzlement on his boss’s face. He asked again, for the last time: “I thought I knew you so well. And you had such a life of – of privilege. We all did. Because we defend the people. So why did you betray us?”

“I didn’t,” he said quietly. “The revolution was betrayed long ago.”

Alexander said nothing for a few seconds, then nodded briskly; he was back at work.

“Leave the car by the nearest door,” he said. “They know where to take you.”

As Nikolai opened the door to the car, Alexander called out:

“Nikolai Ivanovich, you will be alone over there. No-one will love you. No-one will trust you. It is not your own soil. You will know solitude as you have never known it before.”

Nikolai turned back for a moment, then turned away and stepped down onto the platform. The guards nodded to him and indicated that he should follow them; two walked behind. They passed the enormous engine, wreathed in steam, the low electric light gleaming off its green matt paintwork, the white-rimmed wheels standing out in the gloom. It was snowing – a thin, wet, bleak veil, as if the snow itself were tired of winter; it was nearly March.

I wonder what summer is like over there, he thought, I wonder what they do; and for a moment he was back beside the Baltic in the sunshine, the sand warm underfoot, and Ekaterina was throwing bits of driftwood for Viktor, and Viktor was charging around with little barks, and he called out: “Be careful! He is a running dog! He may be a traitor!”, and she laughed and called him a bloody idiot then chased after Viktor, leaving a long line of footprints in the sand. I wonder if I will ever see Ekaterina again. I am sorry, Katyusha. Now I wish I had told you. I wonder if there is someone like that for me over there. But it won’t be her, will it. He remembered her shock when they came for him, in the early evening; when the doorbell rang she thought it was the laundry. Why are they here? What has he done? He is a good man.

The station was only really manned when a train was to cross the border, and then the passengers would pile out with their baggage and would be there for hours. Tonight it was empty. They went through the archway into the forecourt and got into a black GAZ saloon. He noticed a dent in the door, then wondered why he had noticed it. They only went a few hundred metres, past several booths, and barriers that opened for them; then a last barrier opened, but they did not drive through.

“Get out.” He did, and stood uncertain by the car. He could see the shapes of several vehicles about 400 metres away. The driver flashed his headlights several times. One of the cars opposite did the same.

“Go now. Walk straight ahead until you reach them. Do not look back.”

He did not look back. He walked steadily – not too fast, and he made no sudden movement. This was not a time or a place to confuse anyone as to one’s intentions. He built up a sort of rhythm, feeling the snow beneath his feet; it was still scrunchy, but the falling snow was getting wetter, the west wind more bitter so it stung his face. He saw a figure approaching from the other side; walking deliberately, like him, so nothing would happen suddenly. He was a tall thin man, dressed in tweeds with a Homburg hat with a long wide woollen scarf below which a white collar and dark tie were just visible; like Nikolai he carried only a valise. As he drew closer Nikolai could see that he had an angular, thin face with prominent cheekbones that stood out in the sodium lights that lit him from above.

Diamond.

Wikimedia Commons/Dödel

He knew the face; from life – but they had only met once or twice – and a hundred grainy black-and-white prints shot with telephoto lenses at discreet meetings in whatever city Diamond had been stationed as he clawed his way up through the Foreign Office, gently encouraged by Nikolai, his handler. Poor Diamond, he thought. You never knew how much of the information you gave us was garbage because London made sure it was, because they knew what you were. Because I had told them. When I was unmasked, London knew they might as well finish with you too. Oh Diamond, you silly little Cambridge man dazzled by the man in your year who went to fight in Spain, shamed by Appeasement, with a vague nagging guilt that a College servant made up your fire. Have fun in Moscow, Diamond. Enjoy our winters. I suppose you’ll miss those summer days at Wimbledon, the strawberries and cream, a colleague’s fragrant wife as company. Those afternoons loafing in the British Museum. Dinners with Labour people at the Gay Hussar, probing their weak points, seeing what they’d give us; you enjoyed that, didn’t you. Don’t worry. They’ll look after you there. A nice flat and warm winter clothes and caviar and Georgian wine and trips to Leningrad to the Kirov and to the Crimea in the winter. But you will always be alone.

They passed each other without a glance.

He walked beneath the barrier. It dropped behind him with a clank of chains and squeal of metal. There were several vehicles. A man smiled and opened the back door of a white Mercedes saloon. “Get in, out of the cold,” he said. He climbed in; there were three others in the car. He couldn’t see their faces. The man in the front passenger seat looked over his shoulder.

“Hallo, Tie-Rack,” he said. “You know who I am.” They shook hands.

“Yes," said Nikolai. “Hallo, Cobbler. We know each other well, don’t we?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “We will look after you.”

But Nikolai knew he would never know the man’s real name. And it was then that he did feel alone.

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

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.

Bite-sized fiction

Succulent chunks of fresh fiction, cooked at your table and served sizzling hot, with our special spicy sauce

Over the last few months I’ve posted bits of flash fiction on the blog. They’re usually about 500-1,500 words, and are a challenge to write; as there is little space for context, it must be presented by implication. Flash fiction has a long history, but has become more popular in recent years, driven in part by the Internet – to which it is well suited. It’s a form that I’ve got into since joining a writing group, as when we meet each member presents a piece on a theme set at the previous meeting.

A fun feature of our meetings is the 5-minute writing exercise. Someone throws out a title (we don’t know it in advance) and we each prepare a story in that time. The result is, I suppose, what is now known as micro-fiction; a purist might say that this should be exactly 100 words, but these are pieces of about 150-250 words. I set the first title (The Night of my Downfall), but the others came out of the blue. There is no time to think; one starts writing straightaway. I rather enjoy it.

I’ve been through my notebook from the meetings and deciphered my handwriting (no easy task, I tell you), and hereby present these seven succulent, bite-sized fiction chunks. I have not edited them; they’re as I wrote them, served fresh and, I hope, piquant.

Don't Look Now

"Don't look now," he said. "It's not nearly ready for you to see."

"But I'm interested in how you work," she said.

"I prefer to keep that private. It's like wanting to watch a burlesque performer make up, otherwise. You miss the effect."

She laughed. "Well, let's get on with it." She took her time returning to the chair, letting him see the way she moved. She resumed her pose perfectly, her hand draped over the arm of the chair. The grey, flat light seeped in through the studio skylight. He took up his palette, delighted with the diffuse daylight.

"It is so grey today," she said. "I shall look like Whistler's Mother."

"On the contrary. The flat light will model your features evenly." He peered over the top of his canvas. A smile was spreading from the corners of her mouth.

"My husband knows you've slept with me, by the way," she said.

His hand jerked and a swathe of blue paint ran down the image. 

"It was a sudden inspiration," he said later, when the picture had won the BP Portrait Award. "I saw blue within her and knew she could not hide it. From the public, maybe. But not from a true artist."

The interviewer nodded sagely.

The Night of my Downfall

At about 1AM, I saw Mr Smithers waddle between the tables in my direction. His chain of office glittered in the harsh fluorescent strip lights. The other four were in train behind him. Why are provincial aldermen so fat and pompous, I thought.

“I think we should declare shortly," he said. "Perhaps you might mount the platform.”

I followed the others. A hush descended on the hall, the tellers exhausted, the scrutineers too. I had watched the piles of votes as they mounted up through the night and I knew.

I knew.

Smithers sidled up to the mic and tapped it twice.

“Being the returning officer for the constituency of Much Cursing and Little Gibbon, I declare the votes cast as follows.”

I listened, numb; 20 years as an MP were at an end.

I would have to find a job.

 

Can We Skip Winter?

“Can we skip winter?” she said.

I had been about to load the dishwasher. To do this I had had to lift the cat from the back of the machine. She sneaks in there when I’m not looking; her other favourite is the washer-dryer.

“I want to skip winter,” she repeated. “Let’s go to Greece. Or Italy. Or we could go and see Uncle Sidney in Sydney.”

She was always like that. She never thought of the money.

“We have to have those roof tiles done,” I said. “And I must get Thing over to clean the patio, and there’s the boiler, we’ll have to replace it in the spring. Where is the money coming from?”

She looked up at the skylight over the kitchen; a steady rain was falling.

I looked away to grab the cat, which was trying to get back into the dishwasher.

“I want to skip winter,” she said again, and I remember now – I didn’t notice it then – that she had a faraway look in her eyes. She looked away from the rain-spattered roof and went back to scrubbing the frying-pan. I thought no more of what she had said.

“Let’s watch telly,” she said. “It’s nearly time for the news.”

And yet I know, now, that that was the moment my marriage started to end.

 

The Elephant in the Room

We didn’t discuss it at the Board meeting in January. Or February. By March my patience was exhausted, not least because I arrived late.

“Ah, Sir John,” said the Chairman. “How nice of you to put in an appearance.”

“My apologies,” I snapped. “I was delayed by an elephant.”

“A what?”

“Perhaps he was on a trunk route,” said Peters. Everyone tittered.

“An elephant,” I said, “that has been in the room at every meeting of the Board for the last year.”

I reached into my briefcase and brought forth copies of Autocar, Motor and Motoring Which. I had marked the pages. I began to read.

“The Forsyte 100 2-Litre is a fine car in many ways,” said Autocar. “But every test car we have had has had a faulty gearchange. Do Forsyte Motors not realise that their reputation rests on…”

Peters interrupted me. “As Chief Engineer I am well aware that there is a minor matter concerning our gearbox…”

“Minor!” I spluttered. “I am a Director of Forsyte Motors. I do not expect to call the AA on my way to Board meetings.”

“Peters had assured us that this is under investigation,” said the Chairman. “I propose that we proceed to Item 1 on the agenda, which is Directors’ Emoluments.”

I slumped back in my seat. “Gentlemen,” I said, “our gearbox is the elephant in the room. And we are discussing our emoluments!”

“Of course, Smithson,” said the Chairman smoothly. “Everything is under control. We are a great British car company.”

 

What Was Here Before?

During the morning session, my wife called.

I was quite glad. I offered the facilitator an apologetic shrug and slipped out.

“Darling, thank you so much,” I said. “You’ve rescued me from Advanced Diversity Training Module Seven.”

She chuckled. “What’s the Wilford Conference Centre like?”

“The usual. No smoking, digital keys, a gym and overcooked breakfasts.”

She hung up, and I decided I needed a cigarette. It had been raining, but the clouds were clearing and patches of pale blue spring sky appeared.

“Wilford,” I said out loud.

“I beg your pardon?”

I looked behind me. A pleasant middle-aged lady in an overall held mountains of washing.

“Wilford,” I said. “I am sure I heard the name when I was younger. The conference centre is quite new though. What was here before?”

Roger Cornfoot/Wikimedia Commons

“Not much in my time,” she replied. ”But in the war. I know what was here them.”

It clicked. The areas of broken concrete at the back, the remains of an old Quonsett hut.

“Of course. This is the aerodrome the secret agents flew from.”

“Yes, that’s right.” She nodded. “That’s what was here then. What are you doing here?”

“Diversity training,” I said.

She smiled, and bustled on her way.

 

Stuck

We got stuck. I knew we would. Woldejesus was good, but the Chief Driver had given me Salim for the day. Salim was OK provided A) he was sober and B) it was the dry season. Today there was a faint whiff of araki on his breath. As for B), it was in the middle of the rains, and the road to Atbara was like the Somme.

The Land Cruiser made a satisfying splat as the right side bogged down in a rut the size of the Marianas Trench. Salim tried to power out of it. This just made the car dig itself in like a terrified vole that has seen a sparrowhawk.

I left Salim to it and squelched away through the black cottonsoil. I lit a cigarette. All around me the baked-earth plain, so arid and brown, had burst into life with the rain. Green shoots were everywhere. The sky, usually an empty pale blue or white, had taken on a richer blue and the white clouds billowed across the landscape. I almost felt I was in Norfolk.

“Do you know,” I said to no-one in particular, “I’m glad we got stuck.”

 

Fun

I had my usual meeting with P.J. at 10 on Tuesday. As always, I reported the receipts and outgoings for the previous week, gave the running totals for the month and summarised the liabilities.

Meetings with P.J. were at least safe. I could walk in there in a micro-skirt and leather boots if I wanted, and he wouldn’t notice. Other men were different and I had learned not to go into the office kitchen with more than one of them.

Today was as normal. He sat there in his dark suit and subdued tie. I was answering a question on our ground rent for the next financial year when the devil took me, and I said:

“P.J., have you ever had any fun?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Mick Garratt/Wikimedia Commons

“I mean, have you ever gone on a fairground ride and enjoyed it more than the kids? Or run naked through a wood in spring, loving the bluebells?”

“Why on earth would I do that?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry. The ground rent…”

“No, I haven’t really,” he said. “Had fun, I mean.”

He had turned away and was staring out of the window. It had been raining, but the sun had come out and the leaves, bright green, glistened against the blue sky.

“No,” he said. “No, I never really have.”

 

Heartstopping

“Well now, what happens when you call the IT helpdesk?” she asked.

“I guess they usually say, have you tried switching it off and switching it on again?” I replied.

“OK. Well, that’s pretty much what we’re gonna do to your heart,” she said.

I gulped.

“Er, what if it won’t reboot?” I blinked.

“It’ll reboot,” she said. “Like, your heart, it ain’t still running on Windows 7, is it?”

“I think it’s an Apple Mac,” I said.

“Then it’s been downloading patches for the last 60 years.” She grinned. “Relax, OK? You’re gonna be just fine.”

I recounted this conversation to my wife over dinner.

“Knowing you, your heart’s probably full of viruses from porn sites,” she said. She giggled.

“Hey, give me some support here,” I said. I’m frightened.”

She stopped smiling.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I’ll be there. I love you.”

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Rhodri Hactonby's Maps
A matter 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

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.

 

Flash fiction: Rhodri’s Maps

They hanged the man and flogged the woman

who stole the goose from off the common
But let the bigger thief go loose
who stole the common from the goose.
(Anonymous, 17th century)

“Who is presenting today?”

“Rhodri Hactonby. He’s in his final year.”

“Ah, you mean Lord Hactonby.” Dr Coster chuckled. “I wonder what the connection is with Hactonby. It’s in Lincolnshire, isn’t it? Perhaps his father owns it.”

“Perhaps he does,” said Dean. “It’s a courtesy title. Rhodri is the second son of the Duke of Guntersford. As a matter of fact he was at Eton with me, though two years behind. He did rather well there. A useful batsman. And he made it into Pop – that was after my time, but I hear he had a rather splendid waistcoat made.”

“I’m afraid I know little of such matters,” said Dr Coster. “I’m just a humble Wykehamist.”

“Actually I can’t say I liked Hactonby much even then.”

“Oh,” said Coster. “By the way, I take it you circulated his presentation to the group?”

“I did.” Dean was a postgraduate and assisted Dr Coster with the Historiography course. He was likeable, if quiet; lately he had been quieter. Dr Coster noticed that he was staring into the middle distance, where a slim figure in jeans and a T-shirt was walking ahead of them towards the School of History.

“Ah. Miss Jade Smith,” he said. “Our token pleb.”

“I like her,” said Dean.

Coster looked at him. “She’s a little hard to like sometimes,” he said. Dean made no reply.

They seated themselves in the lecture room, Coster on the dais from which he would chair the seminar. Dean sat with the 15 or 16 students, next to Jade; the chair beside her had remained vacant until they came in. She was a slight figure, five foot nothing with a gaunt face and a full mouth. her eyes were dark and her skin scarred by acne.

Hactonby was presenting. He was tall with a floppy mane of blond hair; his face was pale and rather fleshy. He moved himself across the room with restless energy, waving his hands about and pointing now and then at the screen. His first slide read:  

UNCOVERING PROGRESS

THE MAPS OF GUNTERSFORD PARVA 

His next slide showed a patchwork quilt of a village, with long fingers of land divided into narrow ribbons.

“This is the parish around 1350, at the time of the Black Death,” he said. “This map is obviously not contemporaneous. It was put together by the late Professor Blanchflower from parish records and from the archaeological project that he conducted in this and a number of Midland parishes in the 1970s. It is splendid work and I commend it to you. We may observe” – he waved his hand at the image – “the land was farmed on the strip system; a peasant subsistence economy. But two hundred years later” – he clicked the remote control – “things are very different. This is the parish after an Act of Enclosure. The strip system is gone and we see larger, more efficient units, given to sheep production…. In the wake of the Black Death, a labour shortage had caused the peasants to pressure landowners for improved conditions. Their response was to enclose the land and institute less labour-intensive, more productive agriculture.”

Dean thought he heard Jade whisper something. It sounded like “Stole the common from the goose”. He glanced at her. As he did so she raised her hand.

“Yes, Jade?” said Hactonby. He looked a little put out.

“Where did the people go?” she asked.

“The people?”

“The ones who wanted better conditions.”

“Well, I imagine they went to the growing towns of Elizabethan England,” said Hactonby. He frowned. “Rural-urban migration must have eased the pressure on the countryside.”

“I wonder if it did,” said Jade. Her accent was from the West Midlands, and jarred a little in the room. “You may have read A.L. Rowse. In his The England of Elizabeth he notes that in rural parishes in the 16th century, there was a surplus of births over deaths. In urban ones there was a surplus of deaths over births. So migrating doesn’t seem to have worked out very well for them, does it?”

“Well,” said Hactonby. “One must look at the bigger picture. A country must progress.” He clicked to the next slide. “Here we see the parish in 1800, as sketched out by the Rector of Guntersford Parva, Elias Winterbottom.” He turned to the room. “A most estimable gentleman who did much for the poor of the parish. His journals are in my family’s archives.” He indicated the map. “As you will see, there is now a mill and some housing.” He clicked again. “The year 1920. The same approximate area though it is now part of the urban Borough of Guntersford. The mill buildings have been replaced by the factory complex of Grimly and Straight, boilermakers and later transmission manufacturers…” He turned to Jade. “I understand my family leased the land to the firm, and invested in its plant. One fancies that the descendants of those peasants then found productive work forging the pistons and spars for Spitfires and Hurricanes.”

“Jolly good for them,” said Jade.

Hactonby displayed the next slide. “And here is the parish in the year of our Lord 2024. I have cheated; this is from Google Maps.” The room tittered. “The manufacturing plant complex is long gone. The buildings you see now are, as far as I can establish, a call centre and an Amazon fulfilment centre.” He steepled his hands in a gesture that Dean thought theatrical, and continued:

“In maps we see the progress of a country. A subsistence economy that produces little surplus value. When it ceases to be economic, it is replaced by a form of agriculture that does. Its labour requirements are less but people will continue to breed, so a labour surplus allows us to proceed to a manufacturing economy and, when that too ceases to pay, to a services one. The evolution is, for now, complete. And the maps show it all.”

“No they don’t,” said Jade. “They show f**k all. What happened to the peasants when they left the land? What happened to the workers when the mill closed? Did the factory take them? Or were they made to bugger off?”

“Jade,” said Dr Coster, “these are fair questions but please be civil.”

“About what? About what this little shit’s family did to the likes of mine for 700 years?”

There was a mixed reaction in the room. Some groaned. Some laughed. Dr Coster sat with his mouth slightly open. Dean’s face showed a sort of pain.

“I say,” said Hactonby, ”would you like to discuss this over dinner?” He grinned.

There were snorts of laughter. Coster smiled. Jade stood and blundered to the door. It slammed behind her and she caught ironic cheers as she walked away.

“That is enough,” said Dr Coster. “Please, that is quite enough.”

Dean went to the door too. As he opened it he turned back towards Hactonby. “Rhodri,” he said, “you are a f**king peasant. You always were.”

There had been a hint of rain as they had entered, and now it had begun in earnest. Jade did not seem to notice but hurried towards the street, bent a little from the waist. Dean ran to catch up with her, calling out. He saw the rain spots joining on her T-shirt; her hair was wet.

“Jade.”

“What.”

He trotted up to her. “I don’t suppose he meant any harm,” he panted.

“Oh, he f**king did.” She glared at him. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re so different, me and him, you and me. It’s a different country for you, isn’t it? Even maps don’t say the same things for you.” She closed and opened her eyes and he realised she was crying. ”I hate it here,” she said. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I hate you all. I wish I’d never come.”

She turned and moved away, head bowed.

“Jade!” he called.

“F**k off,” she choked.

“Jade! Stop!” She turned around.

“I love you!” he yelled.

“You what?”

 A Deliveroo driver turned and looked at them, then hurried on.

“I love you,” he repeated. They stood and looked at each other, their clothes soaked, her hair matted against her face by the rain. Then they walked slowly back towards each other.

No Old Etonians or Oxbridge students were harmed during the writing of this piece.

More flash fiction:

Cold
Everything is cold here

Homecoming
A sort of love story

Solitude
A Cold War story

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.