Category: blogging

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: Fourth

When you realize you are the fourth child, you are really hoping that the split is two boys and three girls.  Woe betide you if you are a boy and you have three sisters.  It could also be as interesting, notice I didn’t say intolerable) if you are a girl with three brothers.

Hang on, I know someone who was in that exact same situation.  Fortunately, being a girl and the youngest, she could do no wrong in the eyes of her father.

But I digress (as usual)

The meaning of fourth is self-evident, just count to four and it’s the fourth number, perhaps better explained by the fact it is one after the third in a series

Then we use it with other words like,

Fourth-gear, usually reserved for the highway where one expects to geta clear run.  Of course, with more and more cars on the road, sometimes it’s difficult to get out of second.

The fourth estate, no, not what a rich person owns, along with a lot more one guesses, but another name for the press.

One fourth, your share of an estate, if of course, you have three other siblings.  And, in murder mysteries, usually those fourths seem to die mysteriously, and your fourth becomes a third, a half, and then you go to jail.

in fourth place, where it seems all the horse I back run

And,

This is not to be confused with the word forth, which sounds the same but means something entirely different, like

I’m sure we’ve all been told to go forth and be something or other, which means to go forward or come out of hiding

It is also a Scottish river, one notably called the Firth of Forth, and if it sounds odd, so do a lot things in Scotland

You could also place back and forth, much the same as you would in a hospital waiting for the birth of your first child.

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 refinement of an old idea

I write about spies, washed out, worn out, or thrown out.

It’s always in the back of my mind, sometimes fuelled by a piece in the paper that has a sense of conspiracy about it, and from there, an idea starts turning into words that need to find their way to paper.

Then, if that’s the extent of the first draft, sometimes it goes into the ‘I will come back to this later’ folder and, sometimes, it’s gone and forgotten.

Until I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, an old story with a new idea fills my head, and I must get it down.

Then, it will bother me over the next few days, until I give it the attention it’s calling out for.  This will often lead to more writing, but planning will lead to a synopsis.

The first sentence of a novel is always the hardest. Like I guess many others, I sit and ponder what I’m going to write, whether it will be relevant, whether it will pull the reader into my world, and cause them to read on.

And that’s the objective, to capture the reader’s imagination and want to see what’s going to happen next.

The problem is, we have to set the scene.

Or do we?

Do we need to cover the who, what, where, and when criteria in that first sentence? Can we just start with the edge-of-the-seat suspense, like,

…

The first bullet hit the concrete wall about six inches above my head with a resounding thwack that scared the living daylights out of me. The second, sent on its way within a fraction of a second of the first found its mark, the edge of my shoulder, slicing through the material, and creasing skin and flesh. There was blood and then panic.

Milliseconds later my brain registered the near-miss and sent the instruction: get down you idiot.

I hit the ground just as another bullet slammed into the concrete where my head had just been.

…

It can use some more work, fewer commas, and perhaps shorter, sharper sentences to convey the urgency and danger.

Perhaps we could paint a picture of the main character.

He tentatively has the name Jackson Galsworthy. He has always aspired to be a ‘secret agent’ or ‘spy’ and but through luck more than anything else, he was given his opportunity. The problem is he failed his first test and failure means washing out of the program.

What had ‘they’ said? When the shit hits the fan, you need to be calm, cool, and collected. He’d been anything but.

Maybe we’ll flesh the character out as we go along.

OK, I just had another thought for an opening,

…

Light snow was still falling, past the stage where each flake dissolved as it hit the ground, and now starting to gather in white patches.

It was cold, very cold, and even with the three layers I still shivered.

What surprised me was the silence, but, of course, it was a graveyard beside an ancient church, and everyone who had attended the funeral service had left.

It was a short service for the few that came, and a shorter burial. No one seemed keen to hang around, not with the evening darkness and the snow setting in.

I stood, not far from the filled grave looking at it, but not looking at it. Was I expecting it’s occupant to rise again? Was I expecting forgiveness? I certainly didn’t deserve it.

The truth is, I was responsible for this person’s death, making a mistake a more seasoned professional might not, and the reason why I was shown the door. I had been given very simple instructions; protect this man at all costs.

It was going to be a simple extraction, go in, get the target, and get out before anyone noticed.

A pity that I was the only one who got that memo.

…

It’s a start, but with the TV going on in the background, Chester complaining about something, and the weeds in the yard getting higher, there’s too much else going to consider this even a start.

It’s an idea.  Perhaps I can expand on it later.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2024

Memories of the Conversations with my cat – 24

As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some years ago.

Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.

For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits, I will run the series again from Episode 1

These are the memories of our time together…

20160922_162022

This is Chester.  I’ve just told him we will be going away for a few days.

What, again?  You do nothing but go away these days!  That look of disdain is meant to move me, but, sorry, it doesn’t.

It is retirement, you know, I say.  I’ve waited for 65 years so that I can do what I want.

Poor you!  Any idea how old you think I am?

15, mate, and lucky to have lived that long, despite the fact you’ve tried to escape.

That’s a matter of opinion, but not cat years, fool, human years.

I’d never quite worked that out.  We had a dog once, and I know that for every dog year it’s seven human years, so it was, in human terms, rather old.

But cats?

I’ll look it up on the internet.

Interesting.  The first two years are worth 24 human years and 4 years for each successive year.  That makes you, wow, 76.

A smug expression takes over.  Old, he says, you don’t know what it is to be old.

Except at your age, you’re too old to be travelling.

He wanders off, the tail indicating his annoyance.  I don’t think it was what he wanted to hear.

 

“Trouble in Store” – Short Stories My Way:  The re-write – Part 7

Now that I’ve gone through the story and made quite a few changes, it’s time to look at the story

…

Jack exchanged a look with the shopkeeper, who in return gave him a slight shrug as if to say he ‘we tried and failed’.

And she was clearly scared of something, and it looked to him like it might be the shopkeeper.  He had no idea what happened before he burst into the shop, but from the tenseness in the air, it had nothing to do with the boy on the floor.

He could see the girl was not strung out on drugs, in fact, she did not like a user at all.  If she had been, Jack was positive they’d both be on the floor, dead, or almost dead.

Another rumour just came back to him, this was apparently not the first time the store had been robbed, but by the time the police arrived, the would-be robbers were gone.

What was different this time?

Was it the fact the girl was just the unfortunate partner of a boy who was on drugs and had found herself in a dangerous position, one that couldn’t be dealt with or explained away to the advantage of the shopkeeper?

Beth, his wife, had told him she didn’t like nor trust the shopkeeper and that her friend in the same apartment block had told her he had been seen selling drugs to youths who hung around just before he closed.  She had warned him it would not be safe, but he had ignored her.

It was a bit late to tell her she might be right.

He took a half step towards the door, judging the distance and time it would take to open the door and get out.

Too far, and he would be too slow, and his reward for running would be a bullet in the back.

Perhaps another half step when she wasn’t looking.

…

© Charles Heath 2016-2024

Writing a book in 365 days – 186/187

Days 186 and 187

Writing exercise – about something other than the book I’m writing –

…

I had worked very hard to improve my position from fact checker to my ultimate role, editor. It took years of dedication and application, doing everything that was asked of me, and more.

And now, after seven years, I believed my time had come, an email from the chief editor to discuss my role moving forward.

It had been the same every year but those were reviews of my work, and I knew it took time before the review became an interview for promotion.  It was my turn.

10 AM:  Montgomery Montague’s office, 45th floor, the executive level, one above editorial, the department I aspired to work for.

Chester, my recalcitrant cat, raised his head as I came into the kitchen, and gave me his usual look of disdain.  This morning, he was not going to get off as easily.

“This is my day,” I said.  “You can rejoice in my success, or you can mope.”

A meow told me he did not give one jot what was happening in my world, just get the food in the bowl now.  Yes, that look was almost one of malice.

“Not today mister.”  I selected a tin of some sort of fish, removed the lid and scooped it into the bowl. 

Before I could move the bowl to the floor he had jumped up onto the counter, sniffed it, and looked at me.  Yes, that was the ‘you gave me that yesterday’ look, and that momentary thrill of tricking him, passed.

Of course, I hadn’t.  He looked at me and meowed twice.  The rebuke.

“No,” I said.  “You eat it, or you starve.  I’m going to work now.”

I stared him down.  “You cannot rain on my parade.” Another few seconds, he turned back to the bowl and took a tentative bite.  “I’ll be back with the good news.”

Good things happened in threes, my mother used to say.  That was number one.

The train was late, a holdup over a signal failure, or that’s what I thought I heard, but to Montgomery Montague, that was not an excuse.

Despite the minor setback, I forgoed my usual early morning coffee and went straight to the office, and weas only five minutes late.

When I reached his outer office where his personal assistant sat I saw her coming out of his office, and she gave me the ‘look’.  Everyone knew it, it was not a good day.

Had an event I had no control over ruined my chance.  She sat and I took a seat.

She was going to make me wait.

And panic.

Then she looked up and smiled.  “You are very lucky I was detained in his office.  I’ll tell him you’re here.”

She called, then nodded, assent to enter the inner sanctum.  It would be the third time I had bene in his office, the first my interview for the job, the second a discussion over some facts that were in dispute. And this time. Hopefully, my promotion.

I knocked on the door, waited for the terse ‘enter’ then went in, softly closing the door behind me.

Then it was past the meeting table. The coffee table the lounge chairs, the open space, the stop at the desk.

There was always the right number of chairs for those invited.  The uncomfortable chairs so you didn’t linger longer than necessary.

“Have a seat.”

The question was, which one?  Someone said once there was a right choice and a wrong choice, and I just realised there were two seats.  Was there another person about to join the interview?

I sat in the left seat.

There was just a hint of a smile on his face.  “The pilot’s seat.  Good choice, Ben.”

He gave me the serious look, the one that rattled everyone who sat opposite his desk, from new employees to the seasoned editors, those who had been here for years.

“Do you write?”

It was an unexpected question, and perhaps a little superfluous.  Why work at a publisher if you didn’t write?  I was going to say that, but was it a trick question?

“Yes, I do.”

“And read?”

“Avidly.  Writers must read.”  It was almost a mantra in this place.

“Of course, they do.  What type of stories do you write?”

“Thrillers, espionage, but at the moment historical fiction.”

“Busy then?”

“I keep myself amused in my spare time, and Chester more so.”

“Chester?”

“My cat, and harshest critic.  I read him parts of the story, and if he complains, it’s a rewrite.”

He made a face; one I didn’t decipher.  Someone once said, don’t embellish.  “What makes you think you can edit?”

“I’ve read a great many books to learn style and composition.  Ui can see errors in manuscripts that I’ve been given to fact check and often check later what I found with the end product, and I’ve had successes.”

“Editing is more than just grammar and spelling.  It’s continuity, missing links, slight changes in titles, descriptions, and other errors that authors routinely make.  We do not want to be checking your work.  You are the final word.  But…”

And here it comes, all my hopes and dreams were about to be shattered.

“I need you to do a test case for me before I make the final decision.”

He leaned forward and opened a drawer in front of him and pulled out a folder, looked at it then put it on the desk.  It was quite thick, but old, and quite discoloured.  The front had several coffee cup stains.

“This novel has been here for at least thirty years, and so far, no one has been able to turn it into something worth reading.  We call it Pandora’s Box.  You never know what’s inside.  A word to the wise, the last 25 recipients of this manuscript failed and didn’t get to become an editor here.  I have high hopes that you will not join them.  You have three weeks.”

He pushed the file across the desk towards me.  The interview, such as it was, was over.

Good things come in threes. Let’s call the outcome of this meeting a possible second.

Clutching the folder close, I took the elevator back down to my floor.  I assumed I was not yet a fully-fledged editor, so I could not move to the editorial floor five above, where I currently worked with nine other fact-checkers.

We worked in pairs, and my pair was Josie, a graduate with more degrees than I had, and I often wondered why she was not a rocket scientist.  She certainly knew enough about them, and space.

I had been considering asking her on a date, but after hearing about her last one, I decided she was not going to be interested in someone like me.

She saw me come out of the elevator and then went back to her work until I sat down.  In the fact-checking department, a year longer than me, and having no desire to become an editor, she had this dream of the cottage, the country garden, the picket fence, the husband who came home the same time every day, and the 2.4 children.  I was not sure the last part was possible; it had to be either 2 or 3.

“How did the interview go?”

I had told her I was going to see Montague and High Hopes.  She didn’t try to dash them, having seen her fair share of hopefuls’ crash and burn, but I could see the lack of confidence in her eyes when I told her of my ambition.  All she told me was to not fly too close to the sun.

“I have a task, a test.”

“Pandora’s Box?”

“You know?”

“Everyone knows.  No one speaks of it.”

“It’s not the first time he’s brought it out?”

“No.”

“And no one has made it work?”

“They couldn’t.  It’s gibberish.  He’s reputed to have written it himself as a means to squash budding hopefuls.”

“No one?”

“None that I’ve heard of over the last 10 years.  They come, they get the call to his office, he gives them Pandora’s Box, they fail, and then they leave.”

“Why?”

“Because they know he will never promote them to editor.”

I shrugged.  “There’s always a first time.”

“Have you read any of it?”

“No.”

“Then take it home and read it to Chester.  If he turns up his nose, then you have a problem.  If not, well, there may be hope.”

That said, she returned to the pile of manuscripts, each about some aspect of space.

I put the file in my backpack along with my laptop computer and, at precisely 6:05 pm, left the office.

I thought of asking Josie if she wanted to drop into a bar that was on both our ways home.  Sometimes when she wanted a sounding board, we would drop into a quaint bar and have a drink or two and sometimes a snack.  They were not dates, even though in my imagination they were.

She had come from a small town in the Midwest, and I came from upstate, New York.  Her family were ranchers, mine bankers, so we had little in common.

This time we parted at the door, with a promise I’d tell her what my reaction was to the story.  She had only heard about it, and nothing good.

Chester was waiting, curled up on the lounge where he was not supposed to be, but then, he never listened to me.

I glared at him as I closed the door, crossed to the kitchen bench where I put dinner from the Deli up the road, and the backpack.  I thought about taking the file out, but left it.  Dinner for Chester, then dinner for me, first.

An hour later and after cleaning up. I dragged the folder out and extracted the manuscript.  It was about three hundred pages of double-spaced type, done on an old-world manual typewriter with a cloth ribbon that had seen a lot of use.  The unevenness of the typeface told me some keys were stiffer to push than others, typed by a hunter and pecker, not an accomplished typist.

Errors we xxed out, and there were handwritten notes in red ink, whether put there by the author or a hapless would-be editor.

The title:  A Continental Mystery.

No author, the sheets were yellowing and darkening around the paper edges.  All of the pages had the look and feel of being thumbed through many times.  There were dog-eared pages scattered throughout the manuscript.  I looked, but there was no reason behind any of them, and one had a coffee cup stain.

It was hardly the sort of manuscript the company would accept.  I knew their requested requirements for submissions, and they were very high.  This would never have made the cut.

So…

I had to ask myself what Montague’s game was here?

Perhaps if I read the first page…

I made myself comfortable on the lounge chair, put my feet up on the ottoman and after a few minutes, Chester came and sat next to me.

“Would you like me to read you this story?” I said, looking at him.

His expression said ‘No’.

Good.  I was not in the mood to spare him.

It was a dark early morning; the moon had disappeared behind clouds that suggested an imminent downpour.  James quickened his pace to get to King’s Cross station before the skies above him opened.

It was not the only reason he was in a hurry; he had promised Matilda, the girl he was intending to ask to marry him, that he would be at the station a half hour before the train was to depart, and she did not like tardiness.

They were taking the train to Edinburgh, where they would be collected and taken to Matilda’s family home, Barkworth Manor.  For him, it was an opportunity to travel on the latest night Scotsman service, just upgraded to rival any luxury train in the world.

“Well,” I said to Chester, who seemed to have an expression of interest.  “A girl who belongs to a wealthy family, living in such a salubrious residence to be named Barkworth Manor, in Scotland no less.”

Chester turned away and yawned.  Rich girls living in posh manor houses obviously didn’t impress him.  I shrugged.  It had my attention.  Was she an heiress?  And who was this James?

Read on…

James considered himself the luckiest man in London and had to believe he had been in the right place at the right time.  A chance meeting outside the Savoy Hotel, an awkward conversation that led to coffee and cake, which in turn led to dinner.

It seemed serendipitous; they were both down from Oxford, both studying Archaeology, and could have equally accidentally met in Oxford as in London.  It led to a semester of chance meetings, which led to study time in the Bodleian Library, which led to dinner, and then an invitation for him to spend the weekend in Scotland with her parents.

In normal circumstances, he visited his mother in Cornwall, or sometimes a weekend with his academic acquaintances.  That had all changed as his friendship with Matilda slowly became something more.

I dragged the notebook computer over and started a new document, and typed a note, ‘the start needs work’.  A better definition of the protagonists was needed.

But in my imagination, I could visualise London at night, dark clouds swirling, rain imminent, as it had rained every time I had visited England myself and then I tried to remember what Kings Cross looked like.

The year, if I was assuming correctly, was about 1928, and I remembered seeing a steam train documentary not long ago.  I would have been as excited as James, just seeing the train, let alone travelling on it.

The fact-checking part of me then went looking for information on the night trains to Edinburgh.  There was the Flying Scotsman, the overnight train from London to Edinburgh, selecting the date 1928.  There was, however, another train, the Night Scotsman, that had started in May of that year, left London at 10:35 pm and arrived in Edinburgh about eight and a half hours later.  Photos showed the locomotive, the carriages, and plans of the sleepers, first and third class.  It was between the wars, and a bustling time, but there might be a lead into the great depression, so there was going to be historical context.

Then I realised I was getting ahead of myself and needed to read more.  It wasn’t badly written, it just needed a few changes, making the characters more relatable, and whether they were on equal footing.

Or perhaps I wasn’t.

The reader always needs to know the basics.  Firstly, who was going to be the main protagonist? That was James.  Male, early twenties, perhaps the accepted age for a prospective graduate, and given the cost of his studies, perhaps reasonably wealthy parents were funding him.

Certainly, the girl, of similar age, was being funded by her parents, though at that time it might have been less acceptable for her to be studying rather than getting married.  Social mores were very different then, but times were changing, albeit slowly.  It wasn’t long after the suffragettes.

I scanned through the pages for more information on the boy.

James McArthur, the third son of Sir William McArthur, banker, the son being 24 years old.  His mother, Lady Allison McArthur, nee Benton, was a writer, not overly successful but enough to be in a circle of similar ladies, who cross all sections of the Arts.  James had been 14 at the end of the Great War, and had lost two of his brothers to it, leaving him, a younger brother and two older sisters.

Then, the girl. 

Matilda Carterville was one of four daughters and two sons of Lord and Lady Carterville, landowner and shipping magnate, whose personal Empire was as vast as the British Empire of the day.  Matilda’s mother had not been from the aristocracy, and had caught the eye of the Lord, before he became a Lord, when she was a Shakespearean actress.  For him, it had been love at first sight; for her, it had been an amusing interlude until she discovered who he was, and it ended up all over the society pages.

Several hours passed as I constructed a family tree from the first 100 pages.  I wondered if this was what other Editors did, trying to get a handle on the characters, their associations, and be ready for whatever the author threw at them. I felt, by the end of it, that I knew James and Matilda.

It was interesting to discover that James’s mother lived in a house that was described as a cottage, it also had a name, and to me sounded like it had a hundred rooms, a dozen servants who all lived in, and grounds the size of a municipal park.

That paled to insignificance when it came to the castle Matilda came from.  Yes, an actual castle, once described as sprawling, a place where one could get lost, that was described as cold and draughty, with towers, and everything made of stone.  It had a banquet hall, a dining hall, and countless other rooms and staff, a place that would cost a fortune to keep in good repair and run.

Oh, yes, it had grounds to go hunting and shooting, fox hunting, and a lake to go fishing.  Surrounding it was farmland with cattle, sheep, and various crops, and produce used in the castle kitchen.  It was hard to imagine such places still existed, especially the class divisions that I had read about, which were virtually swept away after the Second World War.  Still, I did see mention of butlers, maids, ground staff, chauffeurs and countless others.

It was a world I could only imagine existed, once upon a time.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025

Searching for locations: The Silk Factory, Suzhou, China

China is renowned for its exquisite silk, so naturally, a visit to the Silk Spinning Factory is part of today’s tour.

After that, we will be heading downtown to an unspecified location where we’re getting a boat ride, walk through a typical Chinese shopping experience, and coffee at a coffee shop that is doubling as the meeting place, after we soak up the local atmosphere.

The problem with that is that if the entire collective trip a deal tourists take this route then the savvy shopkeepers will jack up their prices tenfold because we’re tourists with money.  It’ll be interesting to see how expensive everything is.

So…

Before we reach the silk factory, we are told that Suzhou is the main silk area of China, and we will be visiting a nearly 100 years old, Suzhou No 1 Silk Mill, established in 1926.  Suzhou has a 4,700-year history of making silk products.  It is located at No. 94, Nanmen Road, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.

Then we arrive at the Silk Factory, another government-owned establishment with a castiron guarantee of quality and satisfaction.

The look and feel of the doona cover certainly backs up that claim

And the colors and variety is amazing (as is the cost of those exquisite sets)

We get to see the silk cocoon stretched beyond imagination, and see how the silk thread is extracted, then off to the showroom for the sales pitch.

It isn’t a hard sell, and the sheets, doonas, pillows, and pillowcases, are reasonably priced, and come with their own suitcase (for free) so you can take them with you, or free shipping, by slow boat, if you prefer not to take the goods with you.

We opt for the second choice, as there’s no room left in our baggage after packing the Chinese Medicine.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 84

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new installment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

Nadia reappears

…

There was no fanfare when I walked out of the hospital lobby and out into the cool afternoon.  After the heat, we were due some rain, and looking up to the sky, it was imminent.

I hadn’t organized a ride and was hoping to get a taxi.  It was probably the wrong time of the day.  Standing in the curb, I noticed a black SUV pulling into the drive-through, distinguishable by the reflective windows.  FBI or the state’s equivalent?

It stopped in front of me, and I stepped back, expecting a couple of Feds to get out.  Instead, the passenger door window opened and I could see a woman at the wheels.

When she turned to look at me, I recognized the face instantly.  Nadia.

“Get in.”

No hello, how are you, beg your pardon.

I climbed in, and we were moving almost before I shut the door.  The forward momentum did that.

“Is there a reason for this cloak and dagger approach?  It’s good to see you, and all that, by the way.”

“I’m trying to keep under the radar.  The sheriff seems to think I know more than I told them, which was nothing.  I hope you did the same.”

“What would be the point?  Alex and your brother took control of the narrative, days before we were found.”

“They did.  Deceitful lying little…”

It was clear that just talking about them made her extremely angry, so I figured I should change the subject.

“When are you going back to Italy?”

It didn’t take long to realize she was heading towards The Grove, and we were not far from the Mall.  I wondered if there was still a hold on the demolition.

“Soon.  I have a few jobs to attend to before then.”

I was going to ask what jobs, but then decided I was better off not knowing.

“How did you know I was leaving the hospital?”

“I called, pretending to be your mother.  She seems to spend a lot of time with Benderby.”

A sidelong glance at the girl I hardly knew, to say it was odd that she was interested in what my mother was doing was an understatement.  I thought I had some understanding of the girl I’d come to like a lit more than I should, but now I wasn’t so sure.

“Does it matter?”

“You can see what Benderby is doing, can’t you?”

“Take me out of the equation, of course.  Shiny new promotion and all, at work.  She’s going to be disappointed all round I guess when I leave town.”

“You thought about going to Italy with me?”

“Anywhere but here.  I don’t think Boggs’s death has sunk in yet.  Mad as he might have been he didn’t deserve what he got.”

“You don’t believe he slipped and fell?”

“Nor does Charlene.”

“Charlene is naive.”

Charlene still believed the world wasn’t a corrupt place, and that the law was the same for everyone.  The job was going to destroy her in the end.

“Or she might just find a way to bring Alex and Vince down, that is if you still think Vince needs to be taught the error of his ways.  I didn’t think he would have the temerity to attach his own sister.”

“Neither did I, but my suspicion there was something wrong with him mentally was right.  He crossed a line, Sam, and in my book, you cried that line, you don’t come back.”

Instead of heading straight on, where I thought she was heading for her beachside shack, we took the side road to the mall and the rear carpark.

The whole site was abandoned now, with the demolition halted.  Even the security guards had abandoned the place, their demountable office closed, and in darkness.

She parked the car some distance from the side door we used on our last visit, behind the overgrown tree line that separated the staff carpark from the customer’s.  The question was, what were we doing there.

As they say, the silence was deafening.

I didn’t know what to think.  After everything that happened in such a short space of time, my head was still reeling. 

I guess I should have been pleased that I worked put where the treasure once was and that we had solved the mysterious disappearances of Boggs senior and Ormiston.  I wanted to tell the respective families, but given the threat of both Alex and Vince, and no doubt Benderby himself, made it difficult.

There was also the possibility no one would believe me since the evidence had been removed.

And there was no doubt the near-death experience had crystallized my desire to change my life, and definitely get away from this place which now seemed more like a prison than a home.

Then, there was Nadia. 

I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams actually being in the same room as Nadia, let alone stealing a kiss.  Just a touch of hands had the effect of sending an electric charge through me, and the thought of doing anything else almost made me weak at the knees.

I wondered if she had any idea of the effect she had on me. 

A stolen glance showed her sitting relaxed, eyes closed, the hint of a smile on her face.  What was she thinking?

A few seconds later I felt her hand touch mine, and it was like getting an electric shock.  Almost instinctively our fingers intertwined.  She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me.

“I had a lot of time, back in the cave, to think about stuff I never really thought about before.  You think you have all the time in the world, but the truth is, you don’t.  Everything can be taken away from you in an instant, and all those things you said you’d do one day, never happen.”

“All part of the near-death experience.  It got me thinking too.  Everything I was going to do, one day.  And for a little while there, I honestly believed I’d wasted my whole life.”

“It’s funny, or rather not funny, what you think was important, and really isn’t.  We shared something nearly everyone else won’t or could, Sam.”

She held up her hand in mine.  “Like this.  A month ago, this would not have happened, you and I, not a possibility.  I was too wrapped up in who and what I was, that overdose of self-importance and ego, when the reality was I am nothing more than just another speck on the landscape.”

“You’re more than that, Nadia.”

“To you, yes.  To everyone else, no.  I was brought up to believe the family was everything, but, in the end, it counted for nothing.”  She sighed.  “To them, I’ll be nothing but a girl.  I can’t tell how disappointed I was, or repeat what I said to my father, or that which I now refuse to call my mother.”

I wondered what I could say that would make her feel better, but there was nothing in my word armory.

“If it’s any consolation, I want to go to Italy with you, and explore the possibilities.”

She smiled.  “Summers are magic, you wake up, the early morning sun caressing warmth on your body, the tactile feel of the person lying next to you.  It’s hard not to imagine those feelings coursing through you.”

Did that mean she had a boyfriend back in Italy?  My have must have expressed my thoughts.

“You are the one in my thoughts, Sam.  It’s you there beside me and has been since getting out of the cave.  I know you feel the same about me.”

My heart missed a beat, or three.  I could see us there, together, bodies entwined.

“Now hold that thought.  We have one last job to do, and I think you’ll appreciate it.”

I hadn’t realized I’d stopped breathing and let out a long breath.  If it were up to me, I’d be on the next plane to Rome.

Instead, it looked like we were going to make a final visit to the mall.

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

Searching for locations: From Zhengzhou to Suzhou by train, and the Snowy Sea Hotel, Suzhou, China

For the first time on this trip, we encounter problems with Chinese officialdom at the railway station, though we were warned that this might occur.

We had a major problem with the security staff when they pulled everyone over with aerosols and confiscated them. We lost styling mousse, others lost hair spray, and the men, their shaving cream.  But, to her credit, the tour guide did warn us they were stricter here, but her suggestion to be angry they were taking our stuff was probably not the right thing to do.

As with previous train bookings, the Chinese method of placing people in seats didn’t quite manage to keep couples traveling together, together on the train.  It was an odd peculiarity which few of the passengers understood, nor did they conform, swapping seat allocations.

This train ride did not seem the same as the last two and I don’t think we had the same type of high-speed train type that we had for the last two.  The carriages were different, there was only one toilet per carriage, and I don’t think we were going as fast.

But aside from that, we had 753 kilometers to travel with six stops before ours, two of which were very large cities, and then our stop, about four and a half hours later.  With two minutes this time, to get the baggage off the team managed it in 40 seconds, a new record.

After slight disorientation getting off the train, we locate our guide, easily found by looking for the Trip-A-Deal flag.  From there it’s a matter of getting into our respective groups and finding the bus.

As usual, the trip to the hotel was a long one, but we were traveling through a much brighter, and well lit, city.

As for our guide, we have him from now until the end of the tour.  There are no more train rides, we will be taking the bus from city to city until we reach Shanghai.  Good thing then that the bus is brand new, with that new car smell.  Only issue, no USB charging point.

The Snowy Sea hotel.  

It is finally a joy to get a room that is nothing short of great.  It has a bathroom and thus privacy.

Everyone had to go find a supermarket to purchase replacements for the confiscated items.  Luckily there was a huge supermarket just up from the hotel that had everything but the kitchen sink.

But, unlike where we live, the carpark is more of a scooter park!

It is also a small microcosm of Chinese life for the new more capitalistic oriented Chinese.

The next morning we get some idea of the scope of high-density living, though here, the buildings are not 30 stories tall, but still just as impressive.

These look like the medium density houses, but to the right of these are much larger buildings

The remarkable thing about this is those buildings stretch as far as the eye can see.