This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.
And so it begins…
…
So close I can taste it
…
Or something like that, it’s a rather interesting expression I had to look up.
There’s more than one meaning, perhaps referring to being near the ocean and tasting the salt in the air, or the fact that your objecting is so close to attainment, it is assured.
But I once again digress…
49,042 words, Day 22, 8 more days to go, 1,000 odd words to make the magic 50,000.
This novel, though, is not going to be within the 50,000-word limit, it is going to be more like 60,000 words.
Currently, I’m working on the new, new, new ‘surprise’ ending…
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
In the current times, the word needle is very polarising.
Will you have the vaccine, or not. Is one of the reasons simply because you hate needles?
I know I do and have a fear factor of 100%. Fortunately, I got very sick a few years ago and spent 10 days in the hospital, and was forced to have multiple needles every day.
Now it’s not so hard
But, I digress.
A needle is one of those things used in the medical profession mainly to deliver vaccines and medicine. It is a very small cylinder.
A needle can be used to sew up a garment or make repairs. This is a smallish piece of metal with an eyelet.
A needle can also be used to stitch up wounds, though it’s best you have a local anesthetic first.
Another way of using needles is to describe tiny icicles which hurt when they hit your face or your eyes. It is called a needle effect.
Then, another use of the word, is to needle someone, that is to say, bombard them with questions, or annoy them.
It’s a pointer on a dial, like that of a fuel gauge, which for me, always seems to hover just above empty. It can also be on a compass, where heading north is not always clear especially where magnets are nearby.
A fir tree’s leaves are more like needles.
You need one to play a record on a gramophone, not that they exist anymore.
Paradoxically it can also be used to describe a pointy rock or an obelisk-like “Cleopatra’s Needle”
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
Cecelia leaned against the door to close it. I was about three steps in front of her. Juliet had moved to stand behind the two women, each standing to the side and back far enough that if they were not deadly accurate, if they pulled the trigger, the bullets could go anywhere.
I put my hands out. No point looking threatening.
“Well,” I said, “This is about as good as it gets.”
The countess looked at me. “How so?”
“My brief.” I nodded towards Cecelia. “Our brief was to find you. We’ve found you. That’s it. We can go back to our lives now. You have no idea how much that pleases me.”
“And me,” Cecelia added. “I much preferred working in Venice. Why couldn’t you have gone to Venice, or Paris, or Athens? It’s time to go.” She put her hand on the door handle and started to open the door.
Vittoria was watching us the whole time, and her expression was getting more incredulous. “Not so fast. What are you talking about?”
“Vittoria, I presume,” I said to her. “You might want to put the guns down. We’re not here to hurt you, or take you away, or do anything, other than find you so I can tell my boss everything’s fine. Well, not you exactly, but the countess.”
“How do you know I want to be found,” the countess said, a look of surprise on her face also.
“That makes things a bit difficult now that we have. I must tell Mrs Rodby because she’s adamant something’s happened to you.”
I could hear the door close again and Cecelia took her hand off the handle. She might be a little confused but knew well enough to run with me. I wasn’t expecting the countess or guns. Nor had there been any pushback from Juliet against us coming to her flat, and she had to know her mother was waiting. Perhaps she didn’t know about the countess.
“She can be a busybody.” The countess sighed.
I felt a vibration in my pocket, the organisation’s standard-issued cell phone, supposedly untraceable. Supposedly. “Just give me a second.”
I pulled it out and swiped the screen. Alfie. ‘Is she there?’
So much for being untraceable. That being the case, I had the impression he could not hear anything, so we had a slight advantage, though he would be nearby, and he would know we had met up with Juliet. I typed in, ‘Hold your horses, outside the door!!!’. I hoped he got the inference, that barging through doors could be dangerous.
And it alerted me to a new problem. Rodby didn’t trust me to tell him, and that meant he had been hiding something from us.
“Alfie?” Cecelia asked.
“He knows we’re here.”
“How?”
“How, exactly.”
“Damn. You sure know how to give a girl a good time.” She pulled out her cell phone and was about the dismantle it when she saw me shake my head.
“What is…” the countess started to say.
I put my finger up to my lips as a sign for her not to talk.
I called him. “Something else Rodby forgot to tell me about, you becoming our shadow.”
“What can I say, Rodby knows you sometimes go off book, and this is Juliet.”
“Does he think I still have a thing for her? After Venice? The man has rocks in his head. You might want to remind him the next time you speak to him that I didn’t want to go on this rabbit hunt in the first place. My life was fine without a countess in it.”
The expressions on all three of the women’s faces were past incredulous, wondering what was going on.
“Is she there?”
“I’ll ask Cecelia, she just got back. She thought she saw both Juliet and the countess, but it’s dark and the lighting in the building isn’t that great. I’m in the flat now, and I’m sure the countess was here. I remember her perfume”.
Cecelia chimed in. “They got away. It was the countess. She’s fine though I don’t know why they would run from us. What are you not telling us.”
When I didn’t hear a response, I saw that he had hung up.
The countess lowered her weapon and turned to Vittoria. “Lower the gun. He’s not here to cause problems.”
“You know who he is?” She lowered the weapon but not so far that she couldn’t use it if I became a threat. She’d been around guns which made it a curious skill for a once servant girl.
“Yes. He escorted me to the opera. I suspected you might be one of Rodby’s agents.”
“Ex. He seems to think I want to do this search and rescue instead of retiring. He’s wrong. Retirement suits me. Right now, I’m, missing out on salmon fishing in Scotland. Oh, and going on a whiskey trail. But for the moment that’s the least of our concerns.” I looked at Juliet. “Do you have another way out of this place?”
“What do you think. You’re not the only one who thrives on paranoia.”
The first order of business, once Bryson arrived back in the office, was to call Richard Hollingsworth. At 6:30 pm where he was, it would be about that in the morning. Bright and early, just the time to catch people off guard.
He dialled the number.
It took twelve rings, almost to the point where the answering service kicked in, but a sleepy Hollingsworth answered, “Yes?”
“Richard Hollingsworth?”
“Who is this, and do you realise what time it is?”
“My name is Detective Bryson from the NYPD. I’m calling to advise you if you do not already know, that your employer, James Bergman died as a result of a gunshot wound yesterday. I am sorry for your loss.”
“Gunshot wound? Dead? This is not a prank, is it?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Crank calls at the office. Bergman wasn’t exactly a well-loved person. And, to be candid, I’m not surprised.”
A sentiment held by nearly all those who worked with him or were close to him. This Bergman seems to be a bad piece of work with a lot of enemies.
“May I ask a few routine questions so we can get an idea about the man and his business?”
“It’s early, but I’m awake now. Go ahead.”
“What is your role in the company?”
“He makes the deals with the suppliers, and I go and fill the orders in person, and arrange for the shipping. Can’t trust these people to do anything correctly, or economically.”
“The office PA says you are in Manila?”
“Yes. Been here for a week, and it’s driving me up the wall. I’m due to return in two days’ time. I’m not sure what I’ll be returning to.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The company is all but bankrupt. Stacy, my sister, has been taking funds from the accounts and basically left very little for operating expenses. No doubt you are aware she is divorcing him. It’s very acrimonious. What she’s been doing had to be illegal.”
A note, Stacy has been embezzling funds, with the hope of destroying the business?
Can you think of anyone who would want to kill him?
“Just about every husband on the planet. And a few business rivals.”
That sounded like what he had heard from the PA and he had to wonder f she hadn’t called him the moment he walked out of the office so they could get their stories straight.
“Do you know what he was doing the last few days?”
“No. He doesn’t tell me anything unless it impacts what I’m doing.”
“Was he due to go on a break or holiday?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Have you spoken to Ann in the office yet? She had access to his diary, though he doesn’t always write stuff down because I think he conducts some of his personal business during the day.”
“When you say personal business, you mean liaisons with women?”
“Not for me to say, but one time when I rang him, he was definitely not at work?”
“Would you know the name of his current girlfriend?”
“Ask my sister. She put a tribe of private detectives on his tail to see what he’s up to and she has reams of reports and dozens of photographs. She’s obsessed with taking him down, one way or another.”
“Would she kill him?”
A brief moment of silence. If he has to think about it, Bryson thought, then he must think she might be capable.
“Yes, but she wouldn’t use a gun. After all isn’t a woman’s method of murder, poison. she’d definitely poison him. But, in this instance, no. She needs him alive to suffer the humiliation she was planning to put him through. Him and his latest unknown woman. Like I said, ask her. She knows everything.”
“One last item. You say the company is bankrupt.”
“All but. He was in the process of getting Chapter 11. You might want to talk to his lawyer. Ann will have it. Is that all?”
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, 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.
Chasing leads, maybe
Jan hailed a taxi and had it drop us off a block from her building. It was agreed that we would not just arrive out the front and trust to luck that everything would be fine.
I had a feeling that Nobbin would have come to the same conclusion I had, that it was possible the USB might be in the neighbor’s flat. I’m sure Josephine hadn’t thought of that possibility. Severin had, but I suspect he might not know of the cat.
Nor would Nobbin.
We did a circuit of the building before going in. There were no suspicious cars, nr anyone lurking in the shadows. If we had surveillance, it was really good, or there was none. I preferred to think the latter option was right. After all, neither Nobbin nor Severin knew exactly where I was.
Jan unlicked the front door and we went into the brightly lit foyer.
During the day there was a concierge sitting at the desk. At night, it was empty. The building manager couldn’t afford 24-hour security, beyond the bright lights, and camera in each quadrant recording the comings and goings of residents. I’m not sure how Josephine got in, but I would have like to have the time to go through the old footage to check on O’Connell in the past, and Josephine, if she came through the front door, recently.
I glanced at the monitor, at present on screen saver mode, then followed Jan to the elevator lobby.
She pressed the button to go up, and the doors to the left-hand elevator opened. We stepped in, she pressed the floor button, the doors closed, and we slowly went up.
It hesitated at the floor, jerked up about an inch or two, then a click signified it was level and the doors opened.
I could see her door from the elevator. As we got closer, I could see it was open, ajar by about half an inch. There was no tell-tale strip of light behind the opening so it could mean someone was in her flat searching by torchlight, or there was no one there.
After a minute waiting to see if there was a moving light somewhere in the flat, it remained dark.
Standing behind me, I could see she had pulled a gun out of her handbag and had it in one hand ready to use. She could have used it any time since we first met, but she hadn’t.
I pushed the door open slowly, and thankfully it didn’t make a creaking sound. Wide enough to walk in, I took a few tentative steps into the first room. There was little light, and my eyes took a while to adjust to the darkness.
I could feel her going past me, further into the room, and with the gun raised and in two hands to steady the shot. She took more steps, slowly towards the passage leading to her bedroom, I assumed, as it was a reverse copy of that next door, O’Connell’s.
There was no one in this part of the flat, and she had disappeared up the corridor and into her room. Nothing there either.
“Clear,” she called out.
I stepped back to close and lock the door. At the same time, she switched on the main room light and for a second it was almost blinding.
When my sight cleared, I could see the signs of a search, furniture tipped over, books dragged from the shelves, other items tossed on the floor, one of which was a vase, now broken into a number of pieces.
“Looks like they were in a hurry,” she said.
“Or frustrated.” I could see clear marks of an item that had been thrown against the wall and dented the plasterwork. The broken shards of the ornament were on the ground beneath the indentation.
I heard her sigh when she saw the broken pieces.
“Not the best way to treat a genuine Wedgewood antique.”
She disappeared into the bedroom again, and I could hear her calling the cat, Tibbles. Interesting name for a cat.
I didn’t hear it answer back. It was probably traumatized after the breaking and the smashing of crockery.
I had a quick look in places I thought the cat might hide, but it was not in any of them. And, oddly enough, no traces of cat hair. Usually, cats left fur wherever they lay down. At least one cat I knew did that.
She came back empty-handed.
“I think it’s done a runner,” she said. “He’s not in the usual place he hides, nor under the bed, or under the covers, as he sometimes does, usually when I’m trying to sleep.”
“Well, it was a good idea. We might have to search outside. The cat was allowed to go outside?”
“He’d escape, yes, but no. O’Connell thought if he got out, he’d get run over. It’s a reasonably busy road outside.”
“Better out there than in here, though. Open windows?”
She did a quick check, but none were open.
“Did O’Connell ever come in here?”
“Once or twice, but he only dropped in if he was going away to ask if I would look after the cat, or when he came back. Never further than the front door.”
“Knowing who is was, now, do you think he might have come in and hidden the USB in here?”
“He might, but there isn’t anywhere I could think he could put it.”
“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t.”
Both of us heard the scratching sound at the front door, not the sort made by a cat trying to get in, but by someone using a tool to unlock the door.
The Kingston Flyer was a vintage train that ran about 14km to Fairlight from Kingston, at the southern end of Lake Wakatipu, and back.
This tourist service was suspended in December 2012 because of locomotive issues.
However, before that, we managed to go on one of the tours, and it was a memorable trip. Trying to drink a cup of tea from the restaurant car was very difficult, given how much the carriages moved around on the tracks.
The original Kingston Flyer ran between Kingston, Gore, Invercargill, and sometimes Dunedin, from the 1890s through to 1957.
There are two steam locomotives used for the Kingston Flyer service, the AB778 starting service in 1925, and the AB795 which started service in 1927.
The AB class locomotive was a 4-6-2 Pacific steam locomotive with a Vanderbilt tender, of which 141 were built between 1915 and 1927 some of which by New Zealand Railways Addington Workshops.
No 235 is the builder’s number for the AB778
There were seven wooden bodied passenger carriages, three passenger coaches, one passenger/refreshments carriage and two car/vans. The is also a Birdcage gallery coach. Each of the rolling stock was built between 1900 and 1923. They were built at either of Addington, Petone, or Hillside.
I suspect the 2 on the side means second class
The passenger coach we traveled in was very comfortable.
This is one of the guard’s vans, and for transporting cargo.
The Kingston Railway Station
and cafe.
A poster sign advertising the Kingston Flyer
The running times for the tourist services, when it was running.
I started out by saying I didn’t want to be a lone voice in the wilderness.
Apparently, I am, still.
Well, that might be a little harsh in the circumstances, but the monkey on my shoulder is telling me I should start writing something that someone might want to read.
I guess the trials and tribulations of a writer who basically is a lone voice in the wilderness is as boring as everyday life.
I mean, who wants to read about someone’s miserable, or, on rare occasions, good, day.
Yet, if I were to pick up any book written in the 18th and 19th centuries, all it seems to be about is everyday life, but what makes it interesting is the fact we never lived it, nor realized how hard it was for some, and how good it could be for others.
Best not to be born poor.
So, I was wondering, in 200 years when someone sits down to read about the vicissitudes of my life, will it be interesting to know what it was like back in the ‘old days’ that is really today for me?
Interesting how a change in time frame makes something interesting, and ‘classic’ literature.
But one difference between then and now is the fact we, today, can write about science fiction, spies and all manner of events that come out of recent inventions. Odd too, that people are still the same, those who tell the truth, those who are pure of heart, those who are as evil as the devil himself.
