Month: March 2025

An excerpt from “Sunday in New York”

Now available on Amazon at:  https://amzn.to/2H7ALs8

…

Williams’ Restaurant, East 65th Street, New York, Saturday, 8:00 p.m.

We met the Blaine’s at Williams’, a rather upmarket restaurant that the Blaine’s frequently visited, and had recommended.

Of course, during the taxi ride there, Alison reminded me that with my new job, we would be able to go to many more places like Williams’.  It was, at worst, more emotional blackmail, because as far as Alison was concerned, we were well on our way to posh restaurants, the Trump Tower Apartments, and the trappings of the ‘executive set’.

It would be a miracle if I didn’t strangle Elaine before the night was over.  It was she who had filled Alison’s head with all this stuff and nonsense.

Aside from the half frown half-smile, Alison was looking stunning.  It was months since she had last dressed up, and she was especially wearing the dress I’d bought her for our 5th anniversary that cost a month’s salary.  On her, it was worth it, and I would have paid more if I had to.  She had adored it, and me, for a week or so after.

For tonight, I think I was close to getting back on that pedestal.

She had the looks and figure to draw attention, the sort movie stars got on the red carpet, and when we walked into the restaurant, I swear there were at least five seconds silence, and many more gasps.

Even I had a sudden loss of breath earlier in the evening when she came out of the dressing room.  Once more I was reminded of how lucky I was that she had agreed to marry me.  Amid all those self-doubts, I couldn’t believe she had loved me when there were so many others ‘out there’ who were more appealing.

Elaine was out of her seat and came over just as the Head Waiter hovered into sight.  She personally escorted Alison to the table, allowing me to follow like the Queen’s consort, while she and Alison basked in the admiring glances of the other patrons.

More than once I heard the muted question, “Who is she?”

Jimmy stood, we shook hands, and then we sat together.  It was not the usual boy, girl, boy, girl seating arrangement.  Jimmy and I on one side and Elaine and Alison on the other.

The battle lines were drawn.

Jimmy was looking fashionable, with the permanent blade one beard, unkempt hair, and designer dinner suit that looked like he’d slept in it.  Alison insisted I wear a tuxedo, and I looked like the proverbial penguin or just a thinner version of Alfred Hitchcock.

The bow tie had been slightly crooked, but just before we stepped out she had straightened it.  And took the moment to look deeply into my soul.  It was one of those moments when words were not necessary.

Then it was gone.

I relived it briefly as I sat and she looked at me.  A penetrating look that told me to ‘behave’.

When we were settled, Elaine said, in that breathless, enthusiastic manner of hers when she was excited, “So, Harry, you are finally moving up.”  It was not a question, but a statement.

I was not sure what she meant by ‘finally’ but I accepted it with good grace.  Sometimes Elaine was prone to using figures of speech I didn’t understand.  I guessed she was talking about the new job.  “It was supposed to be a secret.”

She smiled widely.  “There are no secrets between Al and I, are there Al?”

I looked at ‘Al’ and saw a brief look of consternation.

I was not sure Alison liked the idea of being called Al.  I tried it once and was admonished.  But it was interesting her ‘best friend forever’ was allowed that distinction when I was not.  It was, perhaps, another indicator of how far I’d slipped in her estimation.

Perhaps, I thought, it was a necessary evil.  As I understood it, the Blaine’s were our mentors at the Trump Tower, because they didn’t just let ‘anyone’ in.  I didn’t ask if the Blaine’s thought we were just ‘anyone’ before I got the job offer.

And then there was that look between Alison and Elaine, quickly stolen before Alison realized I was looking at both of them.  I was out of my depth, in a place I didn’t belong, with people I didn’t understand.  And yet, apparently, Alison did.  I must have missed the memo.

“No,” Alison said softly, stealing a glance in my direction, “No secrets between friends.”

No secrets.  Her look conveyed something else entirely.

The waiter brought champagne, Krug, and poured glasses for each of us.  It was not the cheap stuff, and I was glad I brought a couple of thousand dollars with me.  We were going to need it.

Then, a toast.

To a new job and a new life.

“When did you decide?”  Elaine was effusive at the best of times, but with the champagne, it was worse.

Alison had a strange expression on her face.  It was obvious she had told Elaine it was a done deal, even before I’d made up my mind.  Perhaps she’d assumed I might be ‘refreshingly honest’ in front of Elaine, but it could also mean she didn’t really care what I might say or do.

Instead of consternation, she looked happy, and I realized it would be churlish, even silly if I made a scene.  I knew what I wanted to say.  I also knew that it would serve little purpose provoking Elaine, or upsetting Alison.  This was not the time or the place.  Alison had been looking forward to coming here, and I was not going to spoil it.

Instead, I said, smiling, “When I woke up this morning and found Alison missing.  If she had been there, I would not have noticed the water stain on the roof above our bed, and decide there and then how much I hated the place.” I used my reassuring smile, the one I used with the customers when all hell was breaking loose, and the forest fire was out of control.  “It’s the little things.  They all add up until one day …”  I shrugged.  “I guess that one day was today.”

I saw an incredulous look pass between Elaine and Alison, a non-verbal question; perhaps, is he for real?  Or; I told you he’d come around.

I had no idea the two were so close.

“How quaint,” Elaine said, which just about summed up her feelings towards me.  I think, at that moment, I lost some brownie points.  It was all I could come up with at short notice.

“Yes,” I added, with a little more emphasis than I wanted.  “Alison was off to get some study in with one of her friends.”

“Weren’t the two of you off to the Hamptons, a weekend with some friends?” Jimmy piped up, and immediately got the ‘shut up you fool’ look, that cut that line of conversation dead.  Someone forgot to feed Jimmy his lines.

It was followed by the condescending smile from Elaine, and “I need to powder my nose.  Care to join me, Al?”

A frown, then a forced smile for her new best friend.  “Yes.”

I watched them leave the table and head in the direction of the restroom, looking like they were in earnest conversation.  I thought ‘Al’ looked annoyed, but I could be wrong.

I had to say Jimmy looked more surprised than I did.

There was that odd moment of silence between us, Jimmy still smarting from his death stare, and for me, the Alison and Elaine show.  I was quite literally gob-smacked.

I drained my champagne glass gathering some courage and turned to him.  “By the way, we were going to have a weekend away, but this legal tutorial thing came up.  You know Alison is doing her law degree.”

He looked startled when he realized I had spoken.  He was looking intently at a woman several tables over from us, one who’d obviously forgotten some basic garments when getting dressed.  Or perhaps it was deliberate.  She’d definitely had some enhancements done.

He dragged his eyes back to me.  “Yes.  Elaine said something or other about it.  But I thought she said the tutor was out of town and it had been postponed until next week.  Perhaps I got it wrong.  I usually do.”

“Perhaps I’ve got it wrong.”  I shrugged, as the dark thoughts started swirling in my head again.  “This week or next, what does it matter?”

Of course, it mattered to me, and I digested what he said with a sinking heart.  It showed there was another problem between Alison and me; it was possible she was now telling me lies.  If what he said was true and I had no reason to doubt him, where was she going tomorrow morning, and had she really been with a friend studying today?

We poured some more champagne, had a drink, then he asked, “This promotion thing, what’s it worth?”

“Trouble, I suspect.  Definitely more money, but less time at home.”

“Oh,” raised eyebrows.  Obviously, the women had not talked about the job in front of him, or, at least, not all the details.  “You sure you want to do that?”

At last the voice of reason.  “Me?  No.”

“Yet you accepted the job.”

I sucked in a breath or two while I considered whether I could trust him.  Even if I couldn’t, I could see my ship was sinking, so it wouldn’t matter what I told him, or what Elaine might find out from him.  “Jimmy, between you and me I haven’t as yet decided one way or another.  To be honest, I won’t know until I go up to Barclay’s office and he asks me the question.”

“Barclay?”

“My boss.”

“Elaine’s doing a job for a Barclay that recently moved in the tower a block down from us.  I thought I recognized the name.”

“How did Elaine get the job?”

“Oh, Alison put him onto her.”

“When?”

“A couple of months ago.  Why?”

I shrugged and tried to keep a straight face, while my insides were churning up like the wake of a supertanker.  I felt sick, faint, and wanting to die all at the same moment.  “Perhaps she said something about it, but it didn’t connect at the time.  Too busy with work I expect.  I think I seriously need to get away for a while.”

I could hardly breathe, my throat was constricted and I knew I had to keep it together.  I could see Elaine and Alison coming back, so I had to calm down.  I sucked in some deep breaths, and put my ‘manage a complete and utter disaster’ look on my face.

And I had to change the subject, quickly, so I said, “Jimmy, Elaine told Alison, who told me, you were something of a guru of the cause and effects of the global economic meltdown.  Now, I have a couple of friends who have been expounding this theory …”

Like flicking a switch, I launched into the well-worn practice of ‘running a distraction’, like at work when we needed to keep the customer from discovering the truth.  It was one of the things I was good at, taking over a conversation and pushing it in a different direction.  It was salvaging a good result from an utter disaster, and if ever there was a time that it was required, it was right here, right now.

When Alison sat down and looked at me, she knew something had happened between Jimmy and I.  I might have looked pale or red-faced, or angry or disappointed, it didn’t matter.  If that didn’t seal the deal for her, the fact I took over the dining engagement did.  She knew well enough the only time I did that was when everything was about to go to hell in a handbasket.  She’d seen me in action before and had been suitably astonished.

But I got into gear, kept the champagne flowing and steered the conversation, as much as one could from a seasoned professional like Elaine, and, I think, in Jimmy’s eyes, he saw the battle lines and knew who took the crown on points.  Neither Elaine nor Jimmy suspected anything, and if the truth be told, I had improved my stocks with Elaine.  She was at times both surprised and interested, even willing to take a back seat.

Alison, on the other hand, tried poking around the edges, and, once when Elaine and Jimmy had got up to have a cigarette outside, questioned me directly.  I chose to ignore her, and pretend nothing had happened, instead of telling her how much I was enjoying the evening.

She had her ‘secrets’.  I had mine.

At the end of the evening, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I was physically sick from the pent up tension and the implications of what Jimmy had told me.  It took a while for me to pull myself together; so long, in fact, Jimmy came looking for me.  I told him I’d drunk too much champagne, and he seemed satisfied with that excuse.  When I returned, both Alison and Elaine noticed how pale I was but neither made any comment.

It was a sad way to end what was supposed to be a delightful evening, which to a large degree it was for the other three.  But I had achieved what I set out to do, and that was to play them at their own game, watching the deception, once I knew there was a deception, as warily as a cat watches its prey.

I had also discovered Jimmy’s real calling; a professor of economics at the same University Alison was doing her law degree.  It was no surprise in the end, on a night where surprises abounded, that the world could really be that small.

We parted in the early hours of the morning, a taxi whisking us back to the Lower East Side, another taking the Blaine’s back to the Upper West Side.  But, in our case, as Alison reminded me, it would not be for much longer.  She showed concern for my health, asked me what was wrong.  It took all the courage I could muster to tell her it was most likely something I ate and the champagne, and that I would be fine in the morning.

She could see quite plainly it was anything other than what I told her, but she didn’t pursue it.  Perhaps she just didn’t care what I was playing at.

And yet, after everything that had happened, once inside our ‘palace’, the events of the evening were discarded, like her clothing, and she again reminded me of what we had together in the early years before the problems had set in.

It left me confused and lost.

I couldn’t sleep because my mind had now gone down that irreversible path that told me I was losing her, that she had found someone else, and that our marriage was in its last death throes.

And now I knew it had something to do with Barclay.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

Sunday In New York

In a word: Meat

…

We all know what meat is, the flesh of an animal like cattle, pigs, sheep, even goats.

It can be used to describe a pie, such as a meat pie, but the odd thing is that it doesn’t have to have 100% meat in it.

It can be used in the context of humans, depending on when you eat certain types of food that will put meat on your bones.

Meat can also be used to describe the fleshy part of nuts, fruit, or eggs.

Then there’s the meat of the matter, which is the crux or basis of the argument or message you want to get across.

And a rather interesting if not obscure meaning is to describe a favorite occupation or activity.

…

Another form of the word is meet; what we do at a coffee shop, on a date, at a pub, or any number of different places.

We can gather together for a meeting, such as a board of directors or a committee.

It can be used to describe an athletic or swimming carnival.

How about you meet me halfway, in a negotiation, not on a long road trip

…

To dole out or allot something like punishment, is to mete it out.

Good thing then, we don’t live in the dark ages, all manner of bad punishments were meted put to the serfs.

Skeletons in the closet, and doppelgangers

A story called “Mistaken Identity”

…

How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.

In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.

I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.

Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.

There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.

Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.

It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.

For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!

And a great idea for a story.

That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.

The Cinema of My Dreams – It ended in Sorrento – Episode 63

Time to find a missing person

…

I turned slowly, wondering just what the hell her game was, when I realised it was not her, but another man holding a shotgun and looking very aggravated.

“What do you think you’re doing?”  At least that’s what I translated his Italian version into.

And I put my hands out where he could see them, noting at the same time that not only was Juliet missing, so was my gun.

“No Italian, I’m sorry.  Should you be brandishing that gun?”

As I turned, he moved back.  He correctly interpreted that I was going to disarm him, if /I could distract him with my not understanding Italian.  He was smarter than that.

“Move.”

He had a word of English.  The motioning of the gun in the direction of the back door was all he needed.  It was not the first time he’d approached an intruder.

I moved slowly towards the door, opened it, and went in.

The grisly scene of the woman on the floor with blood everywhere was confronting.  The man with the gun swore.

“What the hell have you done?”  Not an exact translation but near enough.  He was shocked.

And distracted.

But I think there was no threat from either of them.  Dicostini was almost in shock, kneeling beside the woman, trying to shake her awake.

The other man put down the gun and went over to check for any sign of life.  First a finger at her neck, then her writ, then hear if she was still breathing.

The gunman looked at Dicostini, “How did this happen?”

Dicostini shrugged.

“He hit her,” I said.  “I saw it happen through the window.  They were arguing.”

That’s when Dicostini saw me.  “Who are you?”

“A private investigator hired to find the real countess.  The thing is, I’m not overly worried about her, it’s the woman you took with her that’s your biggest problem?”

“What woman?”

“The countess’s sister.  You snatched the two of them if you didn’t, the clowns you employed to do the job did.  Her sister is the wife of the Chief of British Intelligence, and he’s about to unleash the wrath of the Gods on you.  I came here to do you a favour.  Tell me where they are, and I’ll walk away.  No questions asked, no interest in what happened here.  This is a one-time offer, and it’s about to expire.”

“What are you talking about?  This is the countess’s sister.”

It was certainly not Mrs Robdy, but now in the pale light shining on that lifeless face, I could see the resemblance to the countess.  It was definitely the woman I’d gone to the opera with, and later taken back to the hotel.

I could see how easily it would be to mistake the fake for the real countess … they must be twins.  The thing was, no one had picked up on it, and I thought our researchers were supposed to be the best.

“How is that possible?” I had to ask. 

“They were twins, separated at birth, and the mother was never told.  Angelina was sent north to stay with a distant aunt who treated her as her own child, and she was never told of her true mother.  I would not have known either unless my own mother told me of the deception on her deathbed.”

“So, what was this charade supposed to prove?”

“That she gets some recognition, and some of the Von Burkehardt spoils.  That cow that is the countess, she has no interest in anyone but herself.  Not for the traditions of this country, the people, the area, the vineyards, the wine, anything.”

“Where is she?”

“Dead, I hope. I told them I didn’t want to see her again.  They did not tell me they had taken anyone else with her.  It is done, over.  I have no idea where they were being held.  Now go.  I have enough to deal with.”

I had to agree with him.  How was he going to explain any of this?

I waited until I was some distance from the house, then pulled out my phone and dialled Anthony’s number.

He answered after the seventh ring.  I was worried he might not.

“Two urgent matters.  Tell Rodby to take the woman who’s with him into custody.  Don’t ask why, just do it, now.  Second, how quickly can you flood the Italian media with a missing person poster?”

“Quickly.  Why?”

“Get a wanted poster together with Mrs Rodby’s face on it and a finder’s fee of a million Euros, more if you like.  And put my phone number on it.  Mrs Rody still carries Rodby’s VC in her handbag for good luck still?”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m good at my job.  Do both those requests, then call me back in an hour or so.  It’s imperative you get the missing persons poster out as soon as possible but only to two people.  The lawyer fellow in Rome, I’ll send you his details if you don’t already have them, and to the Burkehardt’.  All of them.”

“Only those people?”

“Yes.  If I’m wrong, you’re going to find me a hiding spot somewhere in the middle of the north pole, preferably a mile or more under the ice.”

© Charles Heath 2023

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 64

This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.

The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Things are about to get complicated…

There were so many pieces to this puzzle that most of it defied logic.

According to Quigley/O’Connell, Severin and Maury were the security guards at the lab where the USB secrets originated.  Their job had been to make sure the data wasn’t stolen and failed miserably.  But the inference was made that they had helped the person smuggle the data out.

At that time the data was stolen by a male scientist and put on the USB.  That scientist had a wife, Anna. Sometime after the data removal, the male scientist was murdered, and Anna, his wife, got a hold of the USB.

Quigley/O’Connell also asserted that he believed Severin and Maury helped her smuggle the data out of the facility.  Was it possible she was having an affair with one or the other, possibly Severin.  He seemed the more potential candidate.

So fact: data is stolen, data finds its way to Anna, and Severin let her leave the complex with the data.

The next question:  when did the data go up for sale, or, as Quigley/O’Connell said, become available for the newspapers to bid on?  And, following that, when did Dobbin find out, and use O’Connell to arrange for the purchase and delivery of the data.

That then led to when Severin and Maury realised that Anna had double-crossed them because that would be the only reason why they would set up an oversight surveillance team to follow the man they assumed was going to buy the data from Anna.

Why was there a six-month hiatus?  Was it because Anna had to stay in hiding until the ruckus about the theft blew over.  Did the owners of the lab actually tell anyone what had happened?  No, it seems.

So, need to find out why it took six months to seal the deal.

Next fact, Severin’s surveillance operation swings into action when O’Connell; goes to pick up the data.  The date was specific because it had been on Severin’s calendar at the training facility.

The surveillance goes awry.

The café where the meeting is to take place explodes when a bomb goes off.  O’Connell did not go in and was spared.  Whoever was in the café was thought to be killed and the USB was lost.  Later analysis of the CCTV footage at the time showed Anna rising from the ashes.  She still has the USB.

But…

Everyone believed because O’Connell survived the explosion, he had obtained the USB and became the focus of their attention.  And forces the continuation of the surveillance operation, when I tracked him to an alley where he was shot and killed.

Question:  How did the sniper know to be at that alley for the shot?

It is at this point that O’Connell advises he is working for Dobbin.  Thus, Dobbin knows about the USB and the history of it.  Dobbin had arranged to meet O’Connell at that alley, and had he been killed by the sniper or not, was taking him away.  Dobbin no doubt discovers at this point there is no USB in O’Connell’s hands.

Inference:  Dobbin was tracking O’Connell.  He had to be, to know where he was and for his squad to get there so quickly.

New Twist:  O’Connell discovered something about Dobbin, and disappears, presumably to re-hook up with Anna, who is now Josephine.  Dobbin employs me to find O’Connell and the USB but doesn’t say why O’Connell had gone rogue.

Assumption:  Josephine/Anna kills both Severin and Maury.  Why then does she torture Maury before killing him.  He doesn’t have the USB or any information useful to her.

Fact:  Dobbin has Jan on secondment from MI6.  Why, and for what purpose.  Jan is also working with Severin.  Why?  Dobbin says she is using initiative, but what is she after?

Supposition, did Jan kill Severin and Maury.  Based on what I saw at the park when I went to see him, it looked like Jan, but when we caught her, she furiously denied the accusation.  A good act or the truth? 

And if it wasn’t her, then who did kill them, and then more recently O’Connell, and why?

Fact:  Anna still had both the USBs and was running.

Fact:  O’Connell was with Anna up to the point where he was killed.  Logically it had to be Anna, not wanting to share the five million.  Greed trumps common sense.

What was left out of all of this was Monica and what she knew of and was party to, along with her operative, Joanne.  She had always been lurking on the fringe of my investigation, but I was beginning to think I’d been tiled by Joanne the whole time.

They were not in the room, so I had only the people in front of me to fill in the gaps.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2023

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 1

We think of tropical Queensland having pristine white beaches and azure sparkling seas.

Not necessarily so.

This used to be a mangrove swamp.

Perhaps this is what happens when you mess with the natural environment, you’re left with something that’s not very nice.

There’s no beach, no sand, and sometimes not a very pleasant odor.

We can imagine what this might have looked like before man turned up to urbanize the area. In the background, there is an inlet and on either side lush vegetation.

It must have looked very inviting once upon a time. Now the shoreline is completely built on, the vegetation that was once there completely cleared, and the inlet leads to a marina.

Perhaps the story here might be about greedy destructive property developers who care not for anything but profits.  But in their quest to destroy, there is always someone else aiding and abetting, someone in government.

But what if there was an even darker secret hiding just below the surface, and about to be uncovered.  How far would someone go to preserve that secret?

Writing a book in 365 days – 49

Day 49

A writing exercise – starting with:

…

The day he sold the house on Mulberry Lane where he had laid his head to sleep every night of his life was, he thought, the happiest he had ever been.

It was not as if it started out as a house of horrors, in fact, from the moment he could remember the house, about six or seven, it had been an idyllic refuge. That was what his mother had told him, before he went to boarding school, before she remarried, before that man who told him the first day they met he was going to send him away, as far away as possible.

Those days before his world was turned upside down…

…

He stood in from of the cottage, now almost resumed by the forest it had been nestled in. He just just barely see the window on the second floor, a special room his first father had built into the roof, a room with a view of the valley and the small stream that ran through it, of the fields with the cattle and sheep, or crops, and then grass as far as they could see.

It was his playground, the play hide and seek, to go down to the stream and swin on hot days in the summer, or pretend that he was a pirate on the high seas.

And then after dinner, a story from his mother, he lay his head on the pillow and dreamed of the adventures he would have when he grew up.

Then, on a cold stormy night that world changed a little. His father had been in an accident and he was not coming home. it was just going to be them, and that life would not change.

For what seemed a long time, it didn’t. Then another man came, a man who seemed to make his mother happy, but there was something about him. He didn’t like him, and he soon discovered the man didn’t like him.

There was a wedding, and they went away, leaving him with his Aunt, a rather severe woman who lived in Scotland, a long way away from his house in the forest. He was there for what seemed a long time, then hos mother returned alone and told him that his new father wanted to travel, and that she was going to travel with him and he would be going to a special school for children with parents that travelled.

He asked why he couldn’t go with them, but she said was that he was better off in the special school. He would live there, and get a special education, one that if he stay with them, he wouldn’t. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone.

…

He did not know that it would be the last time he would see her. He did not know that his mother had left responsibility for him with his Aunt. He was upset when she didn’t visit him at the school, or come get him during the holidays. Those times he went to Scotland to stay with his aunt.

He did not know until he left the school that his mother had died that first year in boarding school, or that his new father had murdered he and stole her fortune and his inheritance.

And now, standing in front of that house where he had been happiest, he tried very hard to remember his father and his mother, but not remember either of them. Only that horrid man who had stolen everything from them.

That man he had buried at the back of the house down the bottom of the well.

He spend six years tracking him down, and when he made an appointment to see him, the man had not recognised him. It took a week to assume his identity and take everything back. What was left of the fortune, the inheritance which hadn’t been touched, and the house which he discovered the man had not visited or maintained. The man had perpetrated the same evil of a dozen other women, and he took all of that too.

Then he told the man what he’d done and told him if he wanted it back to come to the cottage in the forest. He was surprised the man agreed.

He had advertised the property, and had a single buyer contact him. The original owner of the property. The offer was acceptable, they shok hands on the deal, and after a final look, and a lot of memories returning briefly, he left.

Those memories were of his childhood, and now that chapter had closed, he could finally get on with his life.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Searching for locations – Coramba – Lowanna, New South Wales, Australia

Once a bustling railway

When You pick up a document that describes tourist attractions in Coffs Harbour, there’s one about the Orara Valley, and what caught my eye was firstly the Lowanna Railway Station.

To get there, you pass through Coramba, which has a railway line running through it, but any attempt to find the railway station will be met with disappointment.

But …

That’s not the railway story, that is the Glenreagh to Dorrigo line, first mooted in 1906, but not getting started until 1910, then halted because of the First World War and not completed until December 1924, and ran until October 1972.

However, back to Coramba…

The North Coast railway (the primary rail route in the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales) passes through Coramba, which had a now-closed railway station from 1922.  An attempt to find the station took us to a private residence, which obviously was once the station.

And then to the right historic station, in Lowanna…

Lowanna was the largest of the intermediate stations. It was an attended station, with a crossing loop and siding. Most of the timber was loaded at this location. 

Opened  23-Dec-1924 and Closed 20-Sep-1975

What we were really looking for was the Lowanna Railway Station, which, when we put it in the GPS almost got us lost.  We eventually found the refurbished station, and a rather run down platform, and rail tracks.

Lowanna was on the Dorrigo branch and lies on the north coast of NSW.  It branches off the North Coast Line at Glenreagh and climbs up to the Dorrigo Plateau.

The Dorrigo area was settled in the early 1900s by pastoralists and tree fellers. Due to the steep terrain, it was decided to build a railway to allow products to be brought to nearby port towns. Several routes were surveyed, with the route from Glenreagh eventually chosen. The line climbs 664m over a length of 69km.

Apart from the endpoints of Dorrigo and Glenreagh, the station on this line was very small, often consisting of a short platform with a small shelter. The major traffic on this line was timber.

What did it mean, “Being ‘undead’ isn’t being alive”

I remember one day many, many years ago seeing a piece of graffiti in a railway tunnel:  “Being undead isn’t being alive”.

It was the ’70s right after a turbulent ’60s when everything changed, where only the young, as I was at the time, didn’t recognise what had changed.

Of course, this is the problem down through the generations, where the older generation witnesses the changes, too fast, too sudden, and too radical, and the young, they adopt them without thinking.

And that piece of graffiti was more than likely a cry for help that would never come.

After all, the older generation never knew what had happened, and there was no means of coping.  Words were not enough, and it was the beginning of a breakdown in discipline and a lot more that didn’t manifest itself for a generation.

But that sign lived on, through the ’80s and the ’90s.  I first saw it as a child, it was still there when I was going to and from work on the train.  It made me wonder often during those years what the graffitist was trying to tell the world.

Being undead?  What sort of expression is that?

I think he or she was alluding to the fact that being alive was more than just drawing breath, eating and sleeping.

Those early years of youthful emancipation brought on all sorts of maladies and drugs.  We were never warned about them, not like they are now in schools, and it seemed everyone knew someone who knew where to get them.

I never tried them.  Not for the usual reasons, it was just I never found myself in a situation where I could get them, or try them to see what all the fuss was about.

Perhaps I should be glad it worked out that way.

Of course, I would never find out what the graffitist meant, but I suspect it could have been one of those moments of rare clarity, in a drug-induced haze, or the depths of despair from not having had the next ‘fix’.

Or was it something simple, like he or she had just broken up with a long-term partner, that painful time when one or other calls it quits? Or that time after an argument with one of your parents, or a best friend, and it seemed there was no path back?  Or is it like that feeling of being betrayed, that awful feeling when you discover your partner is cheating on you, and inevitably everyone else knows, but you’re the last to find out?

No, the message wasn’t that simple, especially because of the psychedelic manner in which it was presented on that wall, I doubt the perpetrator had an artistic talent they wanted to show off.  That artistic bent was fuelled by something else, perhaps a dream or a vision.

Or, instead, there was no real reason, and it was the culmination of having the freedom you always wanted, and yet being left with an emptiness that cannot be filled no matter how many drugs you take.  Was that why so many people back then died from an overdose?

I’ll never know who it was that put that sign on the wall, whether they lived or died, or whether they found what they were looking for.  Nor will I ever know what it was like to be in their shoes.

Perhaps I was one of the lucky people, who knows?

An excerpt from “Amnesia”, a work in progress

I remembered a bang.

I remembered the car slewing sideways.

I remember another bang, and then it was lights out.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw the sky.

Or I could be underwater.

Everything was blurred.

I tried to focus but I couldn’t. My eyes were full of water.

What happened?

Why was I lying down?

Where was I?

I cast my mind back, trying to remember.

It was a blank.

What, when, who, why and where, are questions I should easily be able to answer. These are questions any normal person could answer.

I tried to move. Bad, bad mistake.

I did not realise the scream I heard was my own. Just before my body shut down.

“My God! What happened?”

I could hear, not see. I was moving, lying down, looking up.

I was blind. Everything was black.

“Car accident; hit a tree, sent the passenger flying through the windscreen. Pity to poor bastard didn’t get the message that seat belts save lives.”

Was I that poor bastard?

“Report?” A new voice, male, authoritative.

“Multiple lacerations, broken collar bone, broken arm in three places, both legs broken below the knees, one badly. We are not sure of internal injuries, but ruptured spleen, cracked ribs and pierced right lung are fairly evident, x-rays will confirm that and anything else.”

“What isn’t broken?”

“His neck.”

“Then I would have to say we are looking at the luckiest man on the planet.”

I heard the shuffling of pages.

“OR1 ready?”

“Yes. On standby since we were first advised.”

“Good. Let’s see if we can weave some magic.”

Magic.

It was the first word that popped into my head when I surfaced from the bottom of the lake. That first breath, after holding it for so long, was sublime, and, in reality, agonising.

Magic, because it seemed like I’d spent a long time underwater.

Or somewhere.

I tried to speak but couldn’t. The words were just in my head.

Was it night or was it day?

Was it hot, or was it cold?

Where was I?

Around me, it felt cool.

It was incredibly quiet. No noise except for the hissing of air through an air-conditioning vent. Or that was the sound of pure silence.  And with it the revelation that silence was not silent. It was noisy.

I didn’t try to move.

Instinctively, somehow, I knew not to.

A previous unpleasant experience?

I heard what sounded like a door opening, and noticeably quiet footsteps slowly came into the room. They stopped. I could hear breathing, slightly laboured, a sound I’d heard before.

My grandfather.

He had smoked all his life until he was diagnosed with lung cancer. But for years before that he had emphysema. The person in the room was on their way, down the same path. I could smell the smoke.

I wanted to tell whoever it was the hazards of smoking.

I couldn’t.

I heard a metallic clanging sound from the end of the bed. A moment later the clicking of a pen, then writing.

“You are in a hospital.” A female voice suddenly said. “You’ve been in a bad accident. You cannot talk, or move, all you can do, for the moment, is listen to me. I am a nurse. You have been here for 45 days and just came out of a medically induced coma. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

She had a very soothing voice.

Her fingers stroked the back of my hand.

“Everything is fine.”

Define fine, I thought. I wanted to ask her what ‘fine’ meant.

“Just count backwards from 10.”

Why?

I didn’t reach seven.

Over the next ten days, that voice became my lifeline to sanity. Every morning, I longed to hear it, if only for the few moments she was in the room, those few waking moments when I believed she, and someone else who never spoke, were doing tests. I knew it had to be someone else because I could smell the essence of lavender. My grandmother had worn a similar scent.

It rose above the disinfectant.

She was another doctor, not the one who had been there the day I arrived. Not the one who had used some ‘magic’ and kept me alive.

It was then, in those moments before she put me under again, that I thought, what if I was paralysed? It would explain a lot. A chill went through me.

The next morning, she was back.

“My name is Winifred. We don’t know what your name is, not yet. In a few days, you will be better, and you will be able to ask us questions. You were in an accident, and you were very severely injured, but I can assure you there will be no lasting damage.”

More tests, and then when I expected the lights to go out, they didn’t. Not for a few minutes more. This was how I would be integrated back into the world. A little bit at a time.

The next morning, she came later than usual, and I’d been awake for a few minutes. “You have bandages over your eyes and face. You had bad lacerations to your face, and glass in your eyes. We will know more when the bandages come off in a few days. Your face will take longer to heal. It was necessary to do some plastic surgery.”

Lacerations, glass in my eyes, car accidents, plastic surgery. By logical deduction, I knew I was the poor bastard thrown through the windscreen. It was a fleeting memory from the day I was admitted.

How could that happen?

That was the first of many startling revelations. The second was the fact I could not remember the crash. Equally shocking, in that same moment was the fact I could not remember before the crash either, or only vague memories after.

But the most shattering of all these revelations was the one where I realised, I could not remember my name.

I tried to calm down, sensing a rising panic.

I was just disoriented, I told myself. After 45 days in an induced coma, it had messed with my mind, and it was only a temporary lapse. Yes, that’s what it was, a temporary lapse. I will remember tomorrow. Or the next day.

Sleep was a blessed relief.

The next day I didn’t wake up feeling nauseous. I think they’d lowered the pain medication. I’d heard that morphine could have that effect. Then, how could I know that but not who I am?

Now I knew Winifred the nurse was preparing me for something unbelievably bad. She was upbeat, and soothing, giving me a new piece of information each morning. This morning, “You do not need to be afraid. Everything is going to be fine. The doctor tells me you are going to recover with little scarring. You will need some physiotherapy to recover from your physical injuries, but that’s in the future. We need to let you mend a little bit more before then.”

So, I was not going to be able to leap out of bed and walk out of the hospital any time soon. I don’t suppose I’d ever leapt out of bed, except as a young boy. I suspect I’d sustained a few broken bones. I guess learning to walk again was the least of my problems.

But there was something else. I picked it up in the timbre of her voice, a hesitation, or reluctance. It sent another chill through me.

This time I was left awake for an hour before she returned.

This time sleep was restless.

Scenes were playing in my mind, nothing I recognised, and nothing lasting longer than a glimpse. Me. Others, people I didn’t know. Or I knew them and couldn’t remember them.

Until they disappeared, slowly like the glowing dot in the centre of the computer screen, before finally fading to black.

The morning the bandages were to come off she came in early and woke me. I had another restless night, the images becoming clearer, but nothing recognisable.

“This morning the doctor will be removing the bandages over your eyes. Don’t expect an immediate effect. Your sight may come back quickly, or it may come back slowly, but we believe it will come back.”

I wanted to believe I was not expecting anything, but I was. It was human nature. I did not want to be blind as well as paralysed. I had to have at least one reason to live.

I dozed again until I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I could smell the lavender; the other doctor was back. And I knew the hand on my shoulder was Winifred’s. She told me not to be frightened.

I was amazed to realise at that moment, I wasn’t.

I heard the scissors cutting the bandages.

I felt the bandage being removed, and the pressure coming off my eyes. I could feel the pads covering both eyes.

Then a moment when nothing happened.

Then the pads are gently lifted and removed.

Nothing.

I blinked my eyes, once, twice. Nothing.

“Just hold on a moment,” Winifred said. A few seconds later I could feel a cool towel wiping my face, and then gently wiping my eyes. There was ointment or something else in them.

Then a flash. Well, not a flash, but like when a light is turned on and off. A moment later, it was brighter, not the inky blackness of before, but a shade of grey.

She wiped my eyes again.

I blinked a few more times, and then the light returned, and it was like looking through water, at distorted and blurry objects in the distance.

I blinked again, and she wiped my eyes again.

Blurry objects took shape. A face looking down on me, an elderly lady with a kindly face, surely Winifred, who was smiling. And on the opposite side of the bed, the doctor, a Chinese woman of indescribable beauty.

I nodded.

“You can see?”

I nodded again.

“Clearly?”

I nodded.

“Very good. We will just draw the curtains now. We don’t want to overdo it. Tomorrow we will be taking off the bandages on your face. Then, it will be the next milestone. Talking.”

I couldn’t wait.

When morning came, I found myself afraid. Winifred had mentioned scarring, there were bandages on my face. I knew, but wasn’t quite sure how I knew, I wasn’t the most handsome of men before the accident, so this might be an improvement.

I was not sure why I didn’t think it would be the case.

They came at mid-morning, the nurse, Winifred, and the doctor, the exquisite Chinese. She was the distraction, taking my mind off the reality of what I was about to see.

Another doctor came into the room before the bandages were removed, and he was introduced as the plastic surgeon who had ‘repaired’ the ravages of the accident. It had been no easy job, but, with a degree of egotism, he did say he was one of the best in the world.

I found it hard to believe, if he were, that he would be at a small country hospital.

“Now just remember, what you might see now is not how you will look in a few months.”

Warning enough.

The Chinese doctor started removing the bandages. She did it slowly and made sure it did not hurt. My skin was very tender, and I suspect still bruised, either from the accident or the surgery, I didn’t know.

Then it was done.

The plastic surgeon gave his work a thorough examination and seemed pleased with his work. “Coming along nicely,” he said to the other doctor. He issued some instructions on how to manage the skin, nodded to me, and I thanked him before he left.

I noticed Winifred had a mirror in her hand and was reticent in using it. “As I said,” she said noticing me looking at the mirror, “what you see now will not be the result. The doctor said it was going to heal with little scarring. You have been extremely fortunate he was available. Are you ready?”

I nodded.

She showed me.

I tried not to be reviled at the red and purple mess that used to be my face. At a guess, I would have to say he had to put it all back together again, but not knowing what I looked like before, I had no benchmark. All I had was a snippet of memory that told me I was not the tall, dark, and handsome type.

And I still could not talk. There was a reason, he had worked in that area too. Just breathing hurt. I think I would save up anything I had to say for another day. I could not even smile. Or frown. Or grimace.

“We’ll leave you for a while. Everyone needs a little time to get used to the change. I suspect you are not sure if there has been an improvement in last year’s model. Well, time will tell.”

A new face?

I could not remember the old one.

My memory still hadn’t returned.

…

©  Charles Heath  2024