Month: August 2022

In a word: Nobody

This is sometimes how we must feel when overlooked or ignored, like a nobody.

And some people will treat you like a nobody, i.e someone who is just not important.

That’s just one use of the word.

Another might be…

Who did that to your room?

‘Nobody’ is the plaintiff reply.  The infamous Mr. Nobody.  We’ve never met him, but he’s always there.  And, what’s more, he seems to be able to be in more than one place at a time.

Then there’s that time when there’s nobody in the room, nobody agreed with me, hell, that happens all the time, and when I rang your phone nobody answered.

Nobody?  Was I expecting Mr. Nobody to answer?  Surely the response should have been, ‘and you didn’t answer’.

Of course, let’s not delve too deep here, lest we might find out something we didn’t want to know.

I went to your house last night, but nobody was home.

How is it we refer to the people whom we know live in that house as ‘nobody’.  Shouldn’t we be saying, ‘none of you was at home’?

It seems nobody is one of those words we often use in vain.

In a word: Blank

Yes, I’m drawing a blank, which means I have no idea

It seems that I do this a lot these days, perhaps one of the perils of being a writer

But…

Using blank in a story doesn’t necessarily convey the antagonist is clueless, more likely he or she just used one in a gun, put there by a person who didn’t want to get shot.

No, still drawing a blank on this one.

A blank space means there’s nothing in it, and you see a lot of these in crosswords and sudoku, even when the user has been toiling for hours

I’m thinking anyone who met me might misinterpret my blank expression, well, it’s not too expressive in the first place

Perhaps before the coin becomes a coin; it is a piece of blank metal to begin with.  How good would it be to get a one-sided coin, that’d be worth a lot?

And the very worst description of blank; having a blank piece of paper in front of you, and you really are drawing a blank!

Searching for Locations: Waitomo caves house, North Island, New Zealand

A relatively unassuming lane leads to what could be described as a grand hotel, called Waitomo Caves Hotel.

The original hotel was built in 1908, and it was later extended in 1928.  Part of it is ‘Victorian’, based on an eastern Europe mountain chalet, and part of it is ‘Art Deco’, the concrete wing, and a feature, if it could be called that, is none of the four corners are the same.

Views from the balcony show part of the surrounding gardens
 

and the town of Waitomo in the distance.
 

In gloomy weather, it does look rather spooky, and I suspect there may be a ghost or two lurking somewhere in the buildings.
 

 
But…
 

This a a very interesting, and the words of one of my younger grand daughters, a very creepy place. It would make an excellent base for paranormal activity, and there could very well be ghosts walking the corridors of this hotel.

It has the long darkish passageways that lead in all directions and to almost hidden rooms, a creepy nighttime aspect, and the creaky woodwork.

I know when we were exploring, it was easy to lose your bearings, if not get lost, trying to find certain places, and once found, hard to find your way back.

All in all, it was one of the best stays in a very old place going through the throes of modernisation.

And looking at it from the outside at night, I’ll leave you with that thought…

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 16

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

The message I sent to Forster, in London, was short and to the point,

‘Castle in hands of Germans led by Thompson, others, and a further 12 soldiers parachuted in.  Defectors, our original soldiers? and villagers held captive in dungeons.  Resistance limited to five plus self.  Available resources cannot retake castle and will have difficulty in intercepting incoming package.  Suggestions?’

Marina read it and added her name before it was sent.  Now, all we could do was wait for a reply, though I was not sure what Forster would make of my request for suggestions.  I was supposed to make decisions in the field, but that was when we had a full complement of resistance fighters.  What I’d discovered was the worst-case scenario, and everyone in London was hoping that would not be the case.

I wondered what happened to the two men who had been following me, hoping I would lead them to what were now the remaining resistance members.

“Did you see the two men from the castle that had been following me?  I told the two who had captured me, a man and a woman, though the man emphatically denied he worked for the resistance, about them before the woman shot me with a tranquilizer gun.”

Martina looked puzzled.  It was obvious the two hadn’t mentioned anything about my situation to her.

“That did not come up in the debriefing.  The man is, in fact, a farmer, Leonardo, who doesn’t advertise his involvement, and only works with us if we need him.  Chiara tends to shoot first and ask questions later.  You were lucky her gun wasn’t loaded with bullets.  What is this story of yours, then?”

“One of the guards released me from my cell, and then set me free with the intention of following, not too close, to see if I led them to you.  I was hiding from them when they passed by, shortly before you people turned up.  They would have had to see them if they came from the village.”

The implications of what I just said only dawned on me after I said it.

“That might mean…” I said.

She put her hand up, not wanting me to continue.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but I will have to talk to them.  If anything, they would have avoided them or ignored them.  We don’t use that track from the village to the castle for the simple reason we might run into any of them.  Whether they were originally our allies, or not, we never trusted them.”

“Did they bring me here?”

“No.  We have a separate meeting point for intercepts like yourself and the defectors.  Then, if we think it’s safe to do so, we bring them here.  Only three of us know about this place, and two of us are here now.”

“The third?”

“You’ll meet him later when he brings some food and wine.  His name is Carlo.  He used to be a gardener at the castle, and his mother was the cook.  The Germans killed her the first time they were here, and now he hates Germans.”

Good for us, very bad for anyone at the castle, particularly if they are German.

“Pity we didn’t know about that earlier so we could organise a trap for them  We could do with two fewer adversaries, and quite possibly we might get some information out of them.  They might be still in the village.”

She stood, and put on her coat, and put a gun in the coat pocket where she could easily reach it.  “I’m going to have a word with Chiara, and warn Carlo that you’re here.  He’s a little trigger happy too.  Nothing much is going to happen until we hear back from the Colonel.  I suggest you get some rest, we have a few long days ahead.”

Carlo was a surprise.  Six foot ten, over 250 pounds, and carrying a sten gun over his shoulder, not a man to become an enemy of.  He came into the room without warning, and it was clear he was expecting to see me, and equally that I might be the enemy.

It was clear that he knew how to use the weapon, and had it ready in case he had to use it.

“You this Anderson character?”

He was more English than Italian, but could certainly pass for an Italian.

“I am.”

“From up yon castle?”

“Escaped?”

“How?”

“The lower level, where there are a few storerooms turned into cells.  The passage ran alongside the outer wall to a room that had a door to the outside.  Not one you’d easily pick.”

“Neat the communications room?”

“Probably above there.”

“You know the castle?”

“A little.  I used to be an archaeologist before this war came along, and had been to the castle before the war.  I’m familiar with the above-ground parts, but not so much below.  You were, I was told, a gardener?”

“Once.”

“Then you’d know your way around?”

“Possibly.  Why?”

“Because at some point we’re going to have to retake the place, and it would be good to have someone who knows their way around.  At least, better than I do.”

“Taking prisoners?”

“No.    We will be assuming anyone there whose not a prisoner is hostile.”

“Good.  Count me in.”

He dropped a basket he’d brought with him on the table in the corner.  “Dinner.”  Marina will be back shortly.

“You’re not staying?”

“Guard duty.  So you can eat in peace.”

With that, he was gone.  A large man, but a very quiet one.  I didn’t hear him arrive, and it was very nearly the same when he left.  A useful man in a fight indeed.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to see the planets – Episode 50

A discussion with the Princess

…

I had the Princess put in one of the VIP guests’ rooms, quarters that were about four times the size of a junior officer’s room.

It was self-sufficient.

She had asked for an assistant which by her tone told me she really wanted a servant, a request I turned down because in our culture we did not believe in having servants.  We had long since removed subservience, though pockets of it still existed, labelled as something more palatable.

Instead, I assigned one of the medical staff as an assistant with strict instructions that firstly she was not there to take orders, secondly, she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to and thirdly to observe, and by any means possible within reason, find out more about their physiology and thought processes.

I called ahead of the visit to ensure it was convenient.  We had spoken briefly, but I had told her I would need to speak more comprehensively at a later time.  Like the other alien, she had a considerable comprehension of us and our language.

It just reinforced how insignificant we were in the universe, contrary to a lot of thinking back home who believed we were the centre of that same universe.

It was going to be a jolt to a lot of people back yo to realise we were not a superior race of beings.

Nurse Jolene Richardson was just leaving when I arrived at the door. 

“Everything going alright,” I asked.

“As well as it can.  It’s still quite difficult to wrap my head around the fact there are other people, other than us, though I have to say I never believed we were the only people in the universe.”

“I’m not sure what I believed, but that’s what we’re out here for.  You are one of the privileged few.  So far.  Done for now?”

“Time for a break.  She is very polite, but I get the impression she is lost.  If I was to make a guess, going home might be more stressful due to how long she had been away.  She wouldn’t tell me, but I suspect there might be some difficulties.”

“Thanks.”

Jolene continued on her way and I stepped into the room and the door closed behind me.

The princess was on the far side of the room, sitting comfortably on a settee, now dressed in a borrowed uniform, reading from a computer tablet.  Ancient technology to them perhaps.

“Captain.”  I waited until she looked up.

“Princess.”

“I’d rather you called me Elizabeth.  It’s not my real name, but it is an earth representation of it. Please sit.”  She waved at a chair opposite her, and I sat.  “You have questions?”

“I have an interest in where we are going, and what I might find there.  So far, we’ve met with hostility, but that, I fear, was due to some of my fellow humans doing the wrong thing, and, to a certain extent, our own lack of knowledge of local customs and protocols.  I hope to avoid that when we get to your home world.  As with the person we dealt with on the other world, you seem to know a little about us.”

“We know a lot about every world within our sphere of space travel simply because we have to.  Not all species are peaceful.  Your people, for instance, have spent centuries going to war with each other, and even now, still cannot put a combined mission together for a common cause.  That does not speak highly of your people.”

“We’ve come a long way in the last 50 years, but, as you say, not quite far enough. This mission’s parameters are to present a united front of many different people from our world.  The other ship belongs to a more avaricious group whose ideals are not the same as ours.  Unfortunately, I suspect these same traits are in your own people too.”

“We have, to use a word of yours, factions too.  We are not immune to internal struggles for leadership, and division of wealth, no matter how enlightened we become.”

And that might mean they have a little human in them.  In fact, I had always suspected that the human genome would be present in other galaxies like this, even if the people looked vastly different to us. 

In talking to the Astro physicists and anthropologists some of whom we had on board, they quite literally couldn’t predict what we might find, but the notion some of the people would be like us had been discussed.

So had the subject of robotics and the fact we might find very lifelike robots or androids.  In any case, it seemed we were predicting that the lifeforms would be far more advanced than us, and at no time have we considered they would be more primitive.

“In that, I guess we are not unlike.  But one question I have, are you like the others, a consciousness in a manufactured body?”

“I am not.  But we have developed a means of preserving our outer shells.  For instance, I am roughly 280 of your earth years old, though, in my own world, I am very young.  Our elders are roughly 1,000 of your earth years, and some of whom have transferred their consciousness mind to a more sustainable body.”

“How did you end up on the planet we rescued you from?”

“Hundreds of your years ago we were at war, not only with M but half a dozen others.  I was on a communications and transit outpost with a dozen other families when an enemy ship came, killed all the adult people and kidnapped me and twenty other children, taking us back to their world to be sold.  I have been gone a long time and I’m unsure if anyone related to me will still be very alive.”

“You see a princess.”

“A long time ago.  I went home once and it was a place I didn’t recognise.  My world had Bern conquered several times over time, and very few of my people were still alive then.  I suspect there are fewer now.”

“Then this will hardly be much of a homecoming for you.”

“But I will be home, such as it is.  I might have to beg your indulgence for a short time until I get settled.  You might also take the opportunity to talk to other new people.”

Well, I wasn’t thinking of dumping her and running, but I had to wonder if the current leadership might be equally hostile to us as the others. 

“I hope so.  I can see you’re tired.  We’ll pick this up later.”

“As you wish.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2022

An excerpt from “The Devil You Don’t”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

 

By the time I returned to the Savoie, the rain had finally stopped, and there was a streak of blue sky to offer some hope the day would improve.

The ship was not crowded, the possibility of bad weather perhaps holding back potential passengers.  Of those I saw, a number of them would be aboard for the lunch by Phillippe Chevrier.  I thought about it, but the Concierge had told me about several restaurants in Yvoire and had given me a hand-drawn map of the village.  I think he came from the area because he spoke with the pride and knowledge of a resident.

I was looking down from the upper deck observing the last of the boarding passengers when I saw a woman, notable for her red coat and matching shoes, making a last-minute dash to get on board just before the gangway was removed.  In fact, her ungainly manner of boarding had also captured a few of the other passenger’s attention.  Now they would have something else to talk about, other than the possibility of further rain.

I saw her smile at the deckhand, but he did not smile back.  He was not impressed with her bravado, perhaps because of possible injury.  He looked at her ticket then nodded dismissively, and went back to his duties in getting the ship underway.  I was going to check the departure time, but I, like the other passengers, had my attention diverted to the woman in red.

From what I could see there was something about her.  It struck me when the light caught her as she turned to look down the deck, giving me a perfect profile.  I was going to say she looked foreign, but here, as in almost anywhere in Europe, that described just about everyone.  Perhaps I was just comparing her to Phillipa, so definitively British, whereas this woman was very definitely not.

She was perhaps in her 30’s, slim or perhaps the word I’d use was lissom, and had the look and manner of a model.  I say that because Phillipa had dragged me to most of the showings, whether in Milan, Rome, New York, London, or Paris.  The clothes were familiar, and in the back of my mind, I had a feeling I’d seen her before.

Or perhaps, to me, all models looked the same.

She looked up in my direction, and before I could divert my eyes, she locked on.  I could feel her gaze boring into me, and then it was gone as if she had been looking straight through me.  I remained out on deck as the ship got underway, watching her disappear inside the cabin.  My curiosity was piqued, so I decided to keep an eye out for her.

I could feel the coolness of the air as the ship picked up speed, not that it was going to be very fast.  With stops, the trip would take nearly two hours to get to my destination.  It would turn back almost immediately, but I was going to stay until the evening when it returned at about half eight.  It would give me enough time to sample the local fare, and take a tour of the medieval village.

Few other passengers ventured out on the deck, most staying inside or going to lunch.  After a short time, I came back down to the main deck and headed forward.  I wanted to clear my head by concentrating on the movement of the vessel through the water, breathing in the crisp, clean air, and let the peacefulness of the surroundings envelope me.

It didn’t work.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I started thinking about why things hadn’t worked, and what part I played in it.  And the usual question that came to mind when something didn’t work out.  What was wrong with me?

I usually blamed it on my upbringing.

I had one of those so-called privileged lives, a nanny till I was old enough to go to boarding school, then sent to the best schools in the land.  There I learned everything I needed to be the son of a Duke, or, as my father called it in one of his lighter moments, nobility in waiting.

Had this been five or six hundred years ago, I would need to have sword and jousting skills, or if it had been a few hundred years later a keen military mind.  If nothing else I could ride a horse, and go on hunts, or did until they became not the thing to do.

I learned six languages, and everything I needed to become a diplomat in the far-flung British Empire, except the Empire had become the Commonwealth, and then, when no-one was looking, Britain’s influence in the world finally disappeared.  I was a man without a cause, without a vocation, and no place to go.

Computers were the new vogue and I had an aptitude for programming.  I guess that went hand in hand with mathematics, which although I hated the subject, I excelled in.  Both I and another noble outcast used to toss ideas around in school, but when it came to the end of our education, he chose to enter the public service, and I took a few of those ideas we had mulled over and turned them into a company.

About a year ago, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse.  There were so many zeroes on the end of it I just said yes, put the money into a very grateful bank, and was still trying to come to terms with it.

Sadly, I still had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  My parents had asked me to come back home and help manage the estate, and I did for a few weeks.  It was as long as it took for my parents to drive me insane.

Back in the city, I spent a few months looking for a mundane job, but there were very few that suited the qualifications I had, and the rest, I think I intimidated the interviewer simply because of who I was.  In that time I’d also featured on the cover of the Economist, and through my well-meaning accountant, started involving myself with various charities, earning the title ‘philanthropist’.

And despite all of this exposure, even making one of those ubiquitous ‘eligible bachelor’ lists, I still could not find ‘the one’, the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  Phillipa seemed to fit the bill, but in time she proved to be a troubled soul with ‘Daddy’ issues.  I knew that in building a relationship compromise was necessary, but with her, in the end, everything was a compromise and what had happened was always going to be the end result.

It was perhaps a by-product of the whole nobility thing.  There was a certain expectation I had to fulfill, to my peers, contemporaries, parents and family, and those who either liked or hated what it represented.  The problem was, I didn’t feel like I belonged.  Not like my friend from schooldays, and now obscure acquaintance, Sebastian.  He had been elevated to his Dukedom early when his father died when he was in his twenties.  He had managed to fade from the limelight and was rarely mentioned either in the papers or the gossip columns.  He was one of the lucky ones.

I had managed to keep a similarly low profile until I met Phillipa.  From that moment, my obscurity disappeared.  It was, I could see now, part of a plan put in place by Phillipa’s father, a man who hogged the limelight with his daughter, to raise the profile of the family name and through it their businesses.  He was nothing if not the consummate self-advertisement.

Perhaps I was supposed to be the last piece of the puzzle, the attachment to the establishment, that link with a class of people he would not normally get in the front door.  There was nothing refined about him or his family, and more than once I’d noticed my contemporaries cringe at the mention of his name, or any reference of my association with him.

Yet could I truthfully say I really wanted to go back to the obscurity I had before Phillipa?  For all her faults, there were times when she had been fun to be with, particularly when I first met her when she had a certain air of unpredictability.  That had slowly disappeared as she became part of her father’s plan for the future.  She just failed to see how much he was using her.

Or perhaps, over time, I had become cynical.

I thought about calling her.  It was one of those moments of weakness when I felt alone, more alone than usual.

I diverted my attention back to my surroundings and the shoreline.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman in the red coat, making a move.  The red coat was like a beacon, a sort of fire engine red.  It was not the sort of coat most of the women I knew would wear, but on her, it looked terrific.  In fact, her sublime beauty was the one other attribute that was distinctly noticeable, along with the fact her hair was short, rather than long, and jet black.

I had to wrench my attention away from her.

A few minutes later several other passengers came out of the cabin for a walk around the deck, perhaps to get some exercise, perhaps checking up on me, or perhaps I was being paranoid.  I waited till they passed on their way forward, and I turned and headed aft.

I watched the wake sluicing out from under the stern for a few minutes, before retracing my steps to the front of the ship and there I stood against the railing, watching the bow carve its way through the water.  It was almost mesmerizing.  There, I emptied my mind of thoughts about Phillipa, and thoughts about the woman in the red coat.

Until a female voice behind me said, “Having a bad day?”

I started, caught by surprise, and slowly turned.  The woman in the red coat had somehow got very close me without my realizing it.  How did she do that?  I was so surprised I couldn’t answer immediately.

“I do hope you are not contemplating jumping.  I hear the water is very cold.”

Closer up, I could see what I’d missed when I saw her on the main deck.  There was a slight hint of Chinese, or Oriental, in her particularly around the eyes, and of her hair which was jet black.  An ancestor twice or more removed had left their mark, not in a dominant way, but more subtle, and easily missed except from a very short distance away, like now.

Other than that, she was quite possibly Eastern European, perhaps Russian, though that covered a lot of territory.  The incongruity of it was that she spoke with an American accent, and fluent enough for me to believe English was her first language.

Usually, I could ‘read’ people, but she was a clean slate.  Her expression was one of amusement, but with cold eyes.  My first thought, then, was to be careful.

“No.  Not yet.”  I coughed to clear my throat because I could hardly speak.  And blushed, because that was what I did when confronted by a woman, beautiful or otherwise.

The amusement gave way to a hint of a smile that brightened her demeanor as a little warmth reached her eyes.  “So that’s a maybe.  Should I change into my lifesaving gear, just in case?”

It conjured up a rather interesting image in my mind until I reluctantly dismissed it.

“Perhaps I should move away from the edge,” I said, moving sideways until I was back on the main deck, a few feet further away.  Her eyes had followed me, and when I stopped she turned to face me again.  She did not move closer.

I realized then she had removed her beret and it was in her left side coat pocket.  “Thanks for your concern …?”

“Zoe.”

“Thanks for your concern, Zoe.  By the way, my name is John.”

She smiled again, perhaps in an attempt to put me at ease.  “I saw you earlier, you looked so sad, I thought …”

“I might throw myself overboard?”

“An idiotic notion I admit, but it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Then she tilted her head to one side then the other, looking intently at me.  “You seem to be familiar.  Do I know you?”

I tried to think of where I may have seen her before, but all I could remember was what I’d thought earlier when I first saw her; she was a model and had been at one of the showings.  If she was, it would be more likely she would remember Phillipa, not me.  Phillipa always had to sit in the front row.

“Probably not.”  I also didn’t mention the fact she may have seen my picture in the society pages of several tabloid newspapers because she didn’t look the sort of woman who needed a daily dose of the comings and goings, and, more often than not, scandal associated with so-called celebrities.

She gave me a look, one that told me she had just realized who I was.  “Yes, I remember now.  You made the front cover of the Economist.  You sold your company for a small fortune.”

Of course.  She was not the first who had recognized me from that cover.  It had raised my profile considerably, but not the Sternhaven’s.  That article had not mentioned Phillipa or her family.  I suspect Grandmother had something to do with that, and it was, now I thought about it, another nail in the coffin that was my relationship with Phillipa.

“I wouldn’t say it was a fortune, small or otherwise, just fortunate.”  Each time, I found myself playing down the wealth aspect of the business deal.

“Perhaps then, as the journalist wrote, you were lucky.  It is not, I think, a good time for internet-based companies.”

The latter statement was an interesting fact, one she read in the Financial Times which had made that exact comment recently.

“But I am boring you.”  She smiled again.  “I should be minding my own business and leaving you to your thoughts.  I am sorry.”

She turned to leave and took a few steps towards the main cabin.

“You’re not boring me,” I said, thinking I was letting my paranoia get the better of me.  It had been Sebastian on learning of my good fortune, who had warned me against ‘a certain element here and abroad’ whose sole aim would be to separate me from my money.  He was not very subtle when he described their methods.

But I knew he was right.  I should have let her walk away.

She stopped and turned around.  “You seem nothing like the man I read about in the Economist.”

A sudden and awful thought popped into my head.  Those words were part of a very familiar opening gambit.  “Are you a reporter?”

I was not sure if she looked surprised, or amused.  “Do I look like one?”

I silently cursed myself for speaking before thinking, and then immediately ignored my own admonishment.  “People rarely look like what they are.”

I saw the subtle shake of the head and expected her to take her leave.  Instead she astonished me.

“I fear we have got off on the wrong foot.  To be honest, I’m not usually this forward, but you seemed like you needed cheering up when probably the opposite is true.  Aside from the fact this excursion was probably a bad idea.  And,” she added with a little shrug, “perhaps I talk too much.”

I was not sure what I thought of her after that extraordinary admission. It was not something I would do, but it was an interesting way to approach someone and have them ignoring their natural instinct.  I would let Sebastian whisper in my ear for a little longer and see where this was going.

“Oddly enough, I was thinking the same thing.  I was supposed to be traveling with my prospective bride.  I think you can imagine how that turned out.”

“She’s not here?”

“No.”

“She’s in the cabin?”  Her eyes strayed in that direction for a moment then came back to me.  She seemed surprised I might be traveling with someone.

“No.  She is back in England, and the wedding is off.  So is the relationship.  She dumped me by text.”

OK, why was I sharing this humiliating piece of information with her?  I still couldn’t be sure she was not a reporter.

She motioned to an empty seat, back from the edge.  No walking the plank today.  She moved towards it and sat down.  She showed no signs of being cold, nor interested in the breeze upsetting her hair.  Phillipa would be having a tantrum about now, being kept outside, and freaking out over what the breeze might be doing to her appearance.

I wondered, if only for a few seconds if she used this approach with anyone else.  I guess I was a little different, a seemingly rich businessman alone on a ferry on Lake Geneva, contemplating the way his life had gone so completely off track.

She watched as I sat at the other end of the bench, leaving about a yard between us.  After I leaned back and made myself as comfortable as I could, she said, “I have also experienced something similar, though not by text message.  It is difficult, the first few days.”

“I saw it coming.”

“I did not.”  She frowned, a sort of lifeless expression taking over, perhaps brought on by the memory of what had happened to her.  “But it is done, and I moved on.  Was she the love of your life?”

OK, that was unexpected.

When I didn’t answer, she said, “I am sorry.  Sometimes I ask personal questions without realizing what I’m doing.  It is none of my business.”  She shivered.  “Perhaps we should go back inside.”

She stood, and held out her hand.  Should I take it and be drawn into her web?  I thought of Sebastian.  What would he do in this situation?

I took her hand in mine and let her pull me gently to my feet.  “Wise choice,” she said, looking up at the sky.

It just started to rain.

 

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

newdevilcvr6

I should have paid more attention…

When I was back in school in what seems like a lifetime ago, I realise I should have paid more attention.

Why?

Because for some odd reason, we were taught more about American and English history than that of out own country, Australia.

WE cannot use the excuse that we haven’t been around all that long, because we have, something like 1770, which led to settlement by the English in 1788 or so, but the first landing was in 1606 by a Dutchman.

Of course, these are vague memories of a social studies lesson that briefly touched on our origins, but only to re-affirm our allegiances to Britain. While it wasn’t the Empire when I was in school, it was the Commonwealth, and our atlases still had the ‘wherever the map is red is where the British claimed as theirs’, and there were quite a lot red countries.

But, hey, that pales into insignificance the stuff we learned about England, from the time of William the Conqueror in 1066 through to the modern day. I could at one stage of my life relate from memory all of the kings and queens of England.

I know all about the industrial revolution, travel between Australia and England from the days of sail, right through to the Airbus A380.

It’s why I have a preference reading the English classics of Jane Austen and others of that golden era, and watching period TV, recreated so lavishly by the BBC and ITV in England.

And of course, we were brought up on a steady diet of American TV shows, and films, like out country never existed, and was notorious for producing laughable TV shows of the poorest quality, despite the actors who tried very hard to make it seem believable.

I could not name one Australian prime minister, and have trouble telling who is the current prime minister. Well maybe not, this Covid thing has had his face on the TV every day for nearly a year, but he’s the first. I couldn’t tell you who he took over from, nor who the leader of the opposition is.

It’s probably the reason why over the years people have often said we should become one of the states of the US.

Nowadays we’re trying to put a wall between us and them so China might not see us as an outpost of the US, and come in an attack us. The trouble is 28 million people versus 1.6 billion doesn’t give us any leverage. Come to think of it, the 360 million Americans wouldn’t stand a chance against an invasion of 1.6 billion either.

I’m not sure why it matters any more, because we’ll soon be back to the heady heights of the cold war days in the 50s and 60s, where the only deterrant to perceived enemies was the threat of nuclear annihilation.

It’s the one option where 360 million people could defeat an enemy of 16. billion.

But … there’s only one small problem …

We’ll all be dead.

AS horrifying as that might sound, there is one other problem than might just do the same but not destroy any infrastructure. A pandemic. A virus that can’t be cured, a virus that can mutate and adapt so there is not effective vaccine.

Dystopian? It’s sure a great idea for a story. There’s been a few, but those always have a few survivors, ready willing an able to get along and rebuild the world having learned the lessons of past failures.

This time? I don’t think the next story will have a happy ending. In it though, the aggressors are not going to be better off than the rest, because they forget to build in a fail safe, or couldn’t. Or it just got out before they finished perfecting it, and synthesizing an antidote.

That’s something else we learned a lot about. Nuclear holocausts, and their effect. It reminds me of the day our class was taken to see a movie about the effects of a nuclear war. Was it to scare us, or prepare us? Back then, a nuclear war was more likely than a change of government in this country.

If it was to educate my generation of people who are now the in the government and positions of power, they failed.

So, if I had my time over, I would insist on leaning about my country, the people who have inhabited for tens of thousands of years, without the need for cars, houses, cigarettes and booze, and definitely without the need for nuclear weapons and ideals of aggression towards other countries.

Now, where’s that pesky time machine…

An excerpt from “If Only” – a work in progress

Investigation of crimes doesn’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.

That was particularly true in my case.  The murderer was incredibly careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rule out whether it was a male or a female.

At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me.  I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.

The officer in charge was Detective First Grade Gabrielle Walters.  She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions like, when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.

Routine was the word she used.

Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible.  I could sense the raging violence within him.  Fortunately, common sense prevailed.

Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.

After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.

But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.

The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.

For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.

They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts.  Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.

No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.

She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be an awfully bad boy.  Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution.  Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.

It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down.  I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess.  Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.

What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again.  It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.

And it had.

Since then, we saw each about once a month in a cafe.   I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.

We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee.  It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.

She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.

I wondered if this text message was in that category.  I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, about whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.

I reached for the phone then put it back down again.  I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.

© Charles Heath 2018-2020

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 9

…

I remeber once being told that if you shoot for the moon, you’ll land in the clouds, if you shoot for the tree tops, you’ll finish up back where you started from.

It was a silly analogy, but I always remembered it when I looked up at the sky and saw clouds.

That was back in those hazy carefree days just after you were finished with school and you had your whole life in front of you. Your parents were there as the safety net, and were still proud of your scholastic achievements, and were not in too much of a hurry to hustle you out of the house.

But what happened when there’s a recession that came upon everyone without any warning.

Stocks plummeted, people lost their life’s savings, those with mortgages and loans suddenly finding that along with unemployment came no income, no ability to pay the bills, and therefore lost everything.

Although I never said it, I was thinking what good was an education when the whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket.

Two things I remember from back then, which in the context of disaster, wasn’t all that long ago. Firstly, my father making us children go camping from before we could walk, and with it, to survive with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and our wits.

It had happened to him, as a member of am expedition in Africa in his younger days, thinking that he might become the next great explorer, or archeologist, and finishing up getting lost, even though he asserted the other members had deliberately left him behind.

And secondly, that it was essential that we forge working relationships with any and all those who were like minded, such as those who wanted to be saved, not those who expected everyone else to so the work. It was obvious he had met a lot of those type of people too.

It served us well.

When nations began turning on each other, when essential resources like electricity and fuel stopped being distributed and rationed, when food suddenly became scarce, that’s when the real trouble started. My father said, at the outset, what would happen, and was glad our mother was not there to see it.

Then, when neighbours attacked neighbours once food became scarce, it was time to leave. The pity of it was, he died defending us, even after offering up some of the food we had stored away, but that had not appeased a hungry or angry mob.

His last words, “Go to where we said we would go, and remember everything I’ve taught you” were etched in my brain, and my brother and I did as he asked.

But, even knowing where we had to go, and how to get there, a plan of action made many years before, and trialled in recent years with success, nothing in the past could have prepared us for the journey.

It was, literally, time to shoot for the moon.

—

© Charles Heath 2021

“The Things We Do For Love” – Coming soon

Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?

For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself.  It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.

Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.  

Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.

A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone.  To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.

But can love conquer all?

It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.

The cover, at the moment, looks like this:

lovecoverfinal1