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

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’.

Writing a book in 365 days – 63

Day 63

A writing exercise

…

She was so ruthless in her pursuit that soon she forgot why she had started.

It was the only way I could describe the actions of Evelyn Johnson, a mild-mannered young lady who at first sight seemed to be the type of person who anyone would give a second glance; totally out of character.

i remembered that day well because it shook up the working environment that had taken our section head nearly a year to get settled. The right staff with the right qualifications, with the right amount of experience, and able to do their designated jobs.

It was a rare place indeed.

And then the department head arrived one morning and told Kendra, the section head, that there was a new officer starting and she was to be shown all of the processes in turn. That new officer, Evelyn Johnson, recently from Chicago, a big city girl moving to small-town America, in the Midwest. It was the proverbial doubly whammy.

No explanation was given, but the Department Head did have a curious expression on his face when he introduced her. Kendra just shook her head.

This was not the first time it happened. Jeffrey Quirke, the Department Head, had introduced three other young ladies into our department with varying consequences. What we learned afterwards, they were his ‘special projects’, and they didn’t last too long.

Evelyn seemed different, and to me, she looked vaguely familiar, in stature and manner.

Jeffrey Quirke’s expression remained the same, and so we assumed she was going to be another transient ‘special project’.

….

A month later, it was my turn to spend a week introducing her to my specialisation, filing and cataloguing. We used computers, everything passed through a system and was stored in particular places, with a cross index so that there were often four or five categories in the index for a single document.

Before submitting their files for storage the authors had to use several keywords. Of course, most of them didn’t, not because they couldn’t but more they were lazy and knew we would do it for them.

By the time Evelyn got to me, the others had made up their minds about her, she was not who she said she was, certainly she had never been to university, or if she had, not taken anything in, and that she did;t seem to understand the concept of work. She was always late, and had extended lunch hours and disappeared before the official going home time.

She did not attend any of our staff gatherings and didn’t come to the Friday night drinks, our way of winding down so that we could enjoy the weekend. Kendra said she was going to give her the lecture, despite the fact she might go straight to Quirke, but I said I would talk to her first.

“I don’t think you are her type, Joshua,” she said, and she was probably right.

Any time I had tried to talk to her, she simply ignored me. Except if it was work-related. It was going to be a challenge.

Once again she was late, this time an improvement, only ten minutes, and I watched her hasten from the door to the staff room, then emerge a minute or two later and head straight for my desk. she brought herself, and her cell phone. She didn’t take notes. It was not possible she could remember everything we had told her.

After she said, there was no apology, and the smile was thin and annoying.

“You seem to have a problem with time.”

“I’m sorry? What business is it of yours.”

“We all make the effort to get here on time. The section’s performance is measured and a report is compiled, and we were the best in the building, and no we’re not. You may not care, but that performance report is the basis for our productivity bonus. You might ask what business it is of mine, it is very much our business when you are letting the team down.”

“It’s not deliberate.”

“I think it is. You could take an earlier train or bus, or get whoever it is who brings you to leave earlier or find some other way. Unless, of course, you think you are more privileged than we are, or you hail from very rich parents who indulge your every whim and you don’t need the mon ey like everyone else here.”

OK, I think I’d finally stepped over the line, but, if I had, we would find out very soon who she really was.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“Then enlighten me so I can understand.”

She sighed. “Just show me what you have to show me and I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“To learn about the systems and the processes.”

“You don’t take notes.”

“Photographic memory. Don’t need to.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

She frowned, the took me through the system, from the specifications of the computer server system, the workstations, the filing system, the operating system, the administrative role and tasks, the whole box and dice. The last time I read about the system, before I sat down with it, was reading the system manually, which was 2,000 pages long. My bailiwick was only 150 pages or so.

She concluded about thirty-three minutes later. “So far, collectively between you, you have misquoted the system procedures forty-seven times. My report will make interesting reading for someone…”

There was no mistaking who that someone was in her supercilious tone.

I guess she had proverbially put me in my place.

….

Friday couldn’t come soon enough, and I had managed to get through my part of the system without, I believed, making too many mistakes. The system had varied a little from the manual in places, but by and large, we were still dependent on the manual for guidance.

This Friday was odd, Evelyn was still at work long after she usually left, and it was just after the last employee left, telling me that she would see me at the bar, and not to be too long. The company did not pay overtime and any extra time we spent there was on us. Routinely the only people still in the building after knock-off time was management.

I wondered if she was waiting for Quirke, and they would be on their way to dinner and… I tried not to go there in my mind. Quirke was not what I would call an attractive proposition.

I had gone to the breakout area to put my coffee cup in the dishwasher while she was processing a sample files, and indexing it. When I came back, she had a list of files on the screen. There should only be the one she had just filed.

“What are you doing?” I had to ask, because bringing up files, any files in the system, left an imprint of your login and the date.

Just before she cleared the screen I did see one name of interest, Jocelyn Trent. It was a name I hadn’t heard or seen in at least five years, and quite oddly, one of the first of Quirke’s so-called ‘special projects’.

“I created a few cross-indexes and filed it, and when I did, it brought up all these other files, obviously with the same index keywords. I had no idea that would happen. I didn’t mean for it to.”

Her excuse seemed just a little too pat for my liking. Someone would have to know those keywords to get those files, and there was no way they could be randomly guessed. And now that I thought about it, I had seen her scanning lists of available keywords to use, as if she was looking for something.”

“Who are you really? We all think you’re Quirke’s special project, but I’m beginning to think you’re something else entirely. How do you know Jocelyn Trent?”

“Who?” She tried to look innocent, but I wasn’t buying it.

“don;t play dumb. To get those files you needed to know the secret code.”

“How do you know there’s a secret code?”

“I work in filing and cataloguing. It’d be a bit strange if I didn’t know the system inside out for when the idiots out there forget where they put their documents. But you, you haven;t been here long enough, and those codes are not in any manual. Again, who are you?”

There were two choices here, she was a spy from another company trying to see how we’d improved the system, or she was from the company that supplied the software, a company that was displeased with us because we were locked in a battle over the latest round of licencing fees, after an update that we had all but financed. Then there was how she got past Quirke, though that needed very little imagination.

It just surprised me that she would.

“I’m not sure I like the tone when you call me a special project.”

“You obviously are in tight with Quirke.”

“You are prone to making the wildest of assumptions, aren’t you?”

“Either that and you’re a spy, in which case I will have to call security. And they are not the most pleasant of fellows.

They were not. We all thought they were ex-mercenaries, and then people were escorted from the building we all believed they would never be seen again. I had personally seen Jocelyn Trent escorted from the building, and she was never seen again. Kendra said she heard a rumour she got pregnant with Quirke’s child and he sent her to the other side of the country. A rational explanation rather than the rumour mill conspiracy theory. I preferred the latter.

“I’m no one, Joshua, believe me. Certainly not a spy, and definitely not Quirke’s whore.”

Well, that was pretty definitive, and when she pronounced Quirke’s name there was a very dangerous undertone to it. She hated him.

Then, in the light, daylight giving over to the overhead lighting the way she moved her head, the profile, was exactly the same as Jocelyn Trent. The hair would have been the same if it had been much longer and several shades darker. This girl was much thinner, but if I was to hazard a guess, she was either her twin or younger sister though by only a year.

I tried to remember the conversation Jocelyn and I had about her family. She had been as tight-lipped at this one. We had been friends until something happened, and then I saw her escorted from the building. I tried to find out but there was nothing, and she couldn’t be found.

I’d also tried to find the documents that Evelyn had just brought up and hadn’t because I didn’t know the special code. It was obvious Evelyn did.

“You’re not Evelyn, your real name is Whilomena Trent, isn’t it, Willie for short. Jocelyn said, once, she had a younger sister who hated her name and used her second name which I can’t remember for the moment, but looking at you, I believe you are her twin, and in that younger boy a few minutes.”

She had that look that said she was going to deny it, but then she shrugged. She looked around but there was no one else in the room.

“She liked you Josh.”

Josh was her special name for me. When we were friends.

“She said if I was ever here that I should look you up, but when she left and didn’t come home, I sort of forgot about this place, and everyone in it.”

“Why are you here?”

“I believe she was murdered.”

“By Quirke?”

“He got her pregnant.”

“You know that for sure?”

“That was the last thing she told me while being escorted out of the building. She said she had to clear her things at the apartment and she would be coming home. It was what she told me from the apartment that night. The next day her stuff, phone, everything, was found scattered all over the apartment, apparently tossed by someone who didn’t find what they were looking for. There was a police search for her that lasted a month. Then we got a postcard from her, telling us she had moved to California, and they arrived every few months. It was her writing, and her manner, and she told us she would be home soon, she just had to work through some stuff. I figured she was going to have the baby, adopt it out, then come home. Then she wrote a letter, she’d found a nice Englishman and moved to England, and when she was settled she would send us invites to come and see her. Three months ago, when she was living in California, a man walking his dog came across some bones. Those bones were identified as Jocelyn’s. The police there are trying to piece together her movements, but so much time has passed, they may never solve the crime.”

“And you think there are answers here?”

“I know the answers are here.” She pulled an envelope out of her handbag and gave it to me.

It was addressed to Willie Trent. I took out the single sheet and unfolded it. There was a single line witten in capital letters, “Jeffrey Quirke killed Jocelyn Trent. I saw him do it.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2025



Searching for locations: Vancouver, Canada – 4

Staying at Hampton Inn and Suites downtown, whatever that means because it looks like we are in the middle of nowhere.

But, judging by the crowd in the breakfast room, it’s a popular hotel.  Of course, it is Sunday morning so this could be the weekend escape people.

Two things I remember about staying in Hampton Inns is firstly the waffles and whipped butter.  It’s been five years but nothing has changed, they are as delicious as ever.  The other, its where I discovered vanilla flavored milk for coffee, and it, too, is addictive.

They also used to have flat burgers that were made out of sausage meat which was delicious, but on the first day, they were not on the menu.

Nevertheless, it was still a very yummy breakfast.

After some research into where we might find this pixmi unicorn, it appears that it is available at a ‘toys are us’ store in one of the suburbs of Vancouver.  So, resuming the quest, we took a taxi to West Broadway, the street the store is located.

A quick search of the store finds where the toys we’re looking for are, after asking one of the sales staff, and we find there are at least a dozen of them.  Apparently, they are not as popular in Canada as the might be in America.  Cheaper too, because the exchange rate for Canadian dollars is much better than for American dollars.  Still, 70 dollars for a stuffed toy is a lot of money.

We also get some slime, stuff that our middle granddaughter seems to like playing with.

After shopping we set off down West Broadway, the way we had come, looking for a taxi to return us to the hotel.  There’s no question of walking back to the hotel.

A few hours later we walk to the observation tower, which was not very far from the hotel,

a place where we could get a 360-degree view of the city of Vancouver although it was very difficult to see any of the old buildings because they were hidden by the newer buildings, nor could we see the distant mountains because of the haze.

After leaving the tower we walked down Water Street to see the steam clock and the old world charm of a cobbled street and old buildings

We stopped at the Spaghetti Factory Italian restaurant for dinner and is so popular that we have to wait, 10 minutes to start with.  It doesn’t take all that long to order and have the food delivered to the table.  Inside the restaurant, there is an actual cable car but we didn’t get to sit in it.

I have steak, rare, mushrooms, and spaghetti with marinara sauce.  No, marinara doesn’t mean seafood sauce but a very tasty tomato-based sauce.  The steak was absolutely delicious and extremely tender which made it more difficult to cut with a steak knife.

The write up for the marinara sauce is, ‘it tastes so fresh because it is made directly from vine-ripened tomatoes, not from concentrate, packed within 6 hours of harvest.  We combine them with fresh, high-quality ingredients such as caramelised onions, roasted garlic and extra virgin olive oil’.

Oh, and did I mention they have a streetcar right there in the middle of the restaurant

I’m definitely going to try and make this when we get home.

After dinner, we return to the observation tower,  the ticket allowing us to go back more than once, and see the sights at night time.  I can’t say it was all that spectacular.

Another day has gone, we are heading home tomorrow.

In a word: bath

Everyone knows that Bath is a city in England where the rich and pampered used to ‘take the waters’, whatever that meant.  I’ve been to Bath, and it has many terrace houses built in a crescent shape.

I’ve been to the baths, too, which is another use of the word bath, a place where you clean yourself, or just soak away the troubles of the day, usually with a glass or three of champagne.

Apparently, the Bath baths have been there since Roman times and having been there and seen how old they look, I can attest to that fact.

We had a bath before we had a shower, and these days, a bathtub is usually a garden bed full of flowers rather than a body.

Being given a bath sometimes means you were comprehensively beaten in a game, like football.

Throwing the baby out with the bath water is a rather quaint expression that means nothing like it literally does but describes a wife or husband cleaning up a spouse’s space without due regard to what she or he might want to keep—that is, throwing everything out.

If you take a bath, yes, you might get wet, but in another sense, it might be when you take a large hit financially.  And, these days, it doesn’t take much for super funds to suddenly have negative growth.

A bathhouse could be a place where there might be a swimming pool, not just a bath, where people gather.  A notable one was seen in the movie ‘Gorky Park’.

“The Devil You Don’t”, she was the girl you would not take home to your mother!

Now only $0.99 at https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.

Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.

If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.

At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.

That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.

Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

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The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 10

It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Nor does it help when his old mentor walks through the door.

 

I don’t like surprises.  This dislike had started with a surprise birthday party about 10 years ago and since then I’ve assiduously tried to avoid them.

Of course, there are also surprises you have no control over, and I liked them even less.

Bluff and bravado would only carry me so far.  These people whoever they were would not accept that I knew nothing about what had just happened.

Which I didn’t.

It was not the A interrogation team with a chest full of torture tools and dressed in hazmat suits, but when the harbinger of my fate walked into the room, it was something a lot scarier.

A man I knew well or thought I did until he walked in the door, I had the utmost respected for.

Colonel Bamfield.  My first Commanding Officer, the man who cut me some slack, and made me into a soldier.

Now, all I had was questions, but I was on the wrong side of the table.

The first, what the hell was going on here?

My first inclination was to stand and salute a superior officer, but he was not wearing the uniform, not the proper uniform I was used to seeing him in.  My second inclination was to ask him what he was doing in that room with me, but I didn’t.

Speak when spoken to, and don’t volunteer information.

He too tried the silent treatment, or maybe it was that he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

Then, still standing behind the table, looking down on me, he said, “That was some jump you made from a moving helicopter.”  Was there a touch of admiration in his tone?

“Life or death.  Anyone one else is that situation would do the same.”

“Less than you’d think.”

Establishing camaraderie.  Or trying to.  I waited for the next question.

It wasn’t a question but a statement, “We have a problem Alan, and it’s not just with you.”

 

© Charles Heath 2019

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 10

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

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

And, so, it continues…

…

We walked slowly towards the end of the passage, each time I passed a cell I had a look in, and noted if it had a prisoner or not.  By the end of the passage, I counted six prisoners, and one was a woman.’

She just looked at me sullenly, and I guess if it was light enough, that look would be with pleading eyes.  Sadly, I couldn’t save her, or the other five.

At the end of the corridor, we retraced our steps towards the hall, along the passage where I counted another three prisoners, then up the stairs to the ground level.  We came out into a better-lit alcove with arches leading in three directions.

Straight ahead was the hall.

We turned to the left.  Along another passage that seemed to run the length of the wall, what I thought was the stone battlement that made up one side of the castle, looking out over fields, with a village in the distance.

What I thought was the opposite side to the guard tower I’d been in earlier.

I tried to figure out if that’s where we were, and if my memory served me correctly, we were heading towards the wall that was built into the mountainside, in which case we’d go up another set of stairs, at the top of which would be an exit, or turning right, to a room that once served as the guards quarters, now used for kitchen supplies.

What else was here?  My mind was blank.

Up the steps, so far I was right, ahead of a thick wooden door, locked, so we turned right and passed a small room.  I’d forgotten it, but it was the radio room, wires leading out a small arrow slit window to the aerial.   The man in front stumbled, then regained his gait.

I could hear the man behind me shaking his head.

“Halt,” the man behind me barked. 

The man in front stopped dead, and I crashed into him.  I felt rather than saw the fist come towards me; it was not for me, but the other guard, who, preoccupied with not falling, never saw it coming.

He went down like the proverbial ask of potatoes, no idea what happened.

My turn?

A hand landed on my shoulder, thrusting me towards the door to the storeroom.  “Go, now.  The door on the other side is open, head down to the creek and follow it.  Someone will meet you.”

I half turned, “Who…”

“No time.  Go.  And shut the door behind you.”  I felt him thrust a gun in my hand.  “Hit me.”

I hesitated.

“Do it, or I’ll be shot.”

I shrugged and hit him.  He slowly slid to the floor.  A second glance, no, I didn’t know who he was, the headed for the back of the storeroom.  The door was open.  A cautious look before stepping out, I  saw no one but heard breathing.  Jack.  How did the dog know I’d be here?

I closed the door behind me and heard the lock engage, then after a pat on Jack’s head, he led the way.

© Charles Heath 2019

“Knowledge can be dangerous…” – A short story

It was, perhaps, the saddest week of my life.

It started with a phone call, and then a visit by two police officers.  It was about my parents, but the news could not be imparted over the phone, only in person.  That statement alone told me it was very bad news, so I assumed the worst.

The two police officers, standing at the front door, with grim expressions on their faces, completed the picture.  The news, my parents were dead, killed in a freak car accident.

At first, it didn’t sink in.  They were on their way back from another of their extensive holidays, one of many since my father had retired.  I’d seen them probably six months out of the last five years, and the only reason they were returning this time was that my mother needed an operation.

They hadn’t told me why, not that they ever told me very much any time since the day I’d been born, but that was who they were.  I thought them eccentric, being older when I’d come along, and others thought them, well, eccentric.

And being an only child, they packed me off to boarding school, then university, and then found me a job in London, and set me up so that I would only see them weekends if they were home.

I had once wondered if they ever cared about me, keeping me at arm’s length, but my mother some time ago had taken me aside and explained why.  It was my father’s family tradition.  The only part I’d missed was a nanny.

It most likely explained why I didn’t feel their passing as much as I should.

A week later, after a strange funeral where a great many people I’d never met before, and oddly who knew about me, I found myself sitting in the sunroom, a glass of scotch in one hand, and an envelope with my name on it, in the other.

The solicitor, a man I’d never met before, had given it to me at the funeral.   We had, as far as I knew an elderly fellow, one of my father’s old school friends, as the family solicitor, but he hadn’t shown at the funeral and wasn’t at home when I called in on my way home.

It was all very odd.

I refilled the glass and took another look at the envelope.  It was not new, in fact, it had the yellow tinge of age, with discolouration where the flap was.  The writing was almost a scrawl, but identifiable as my father’s handwriting, perhaps an early version as it was now definitely an illegible scrawl.

I’d compared it with the note he’d left me before they had embarked on their last adventure, everything I had to do while caretaking their house.  The last paragraph was the most interesting, instructing me to be present when the cleaning lady came, he’d all but accused her of stealing the candlesticks.

To be honest, I hadn’t realized there were candlesticks to steal, but there they were, on the mantlepiece over the fire in the dining room.  The whole house was almost like being in an adventure park, with stairs going up to an array of rooms, mostly no longer used, and a staircase to the attic, and then another going down to the cellar.  The attic was locked and had been for as long as I could remember, and the cellar was dank and draughty.

Much like the whole house, but not surprisingly, it was over 200 years old.

And perhaps it was now mine.  The solicitor, a man by the name of Sir Percival Algernon Bridgewater, had intimated that it might be the last will and testament and had asked me to tell him if it was.  I was surprised that Sir Percival didn’t have the document in question.

And equally. so that the man I knew as his solicitor, Lawerence Wellingham, didn’t have a copy of my father’s last will and testament either.

I finished the drink, picked up the envelope, and opened it.

It contained two sheets of paper, the will, and a letter.  A very short letter.

“If you are reading this I have died before my time.  You will need to find Albert Stritching, and ask him to help you find the murderer.”

Even the tenor of that letter didn’t faze me as it should have, because at this point nothing would surprise me.  In fact, as I  unfolded the document that proclaimed it was the will, I was ready for it to say that the whole of his estate and belongings were to be left to some charity, and I would get an annual stipend of a thousand pounds.

In fact, it didn’t.  The whole of his estate was left to my mother should she outlive him, or in the event of her prior decease, to me.

I had to put all of those surprises on hold to answer a knock on the door.

Lawerence Wellingham.

I stood to one side, let him pass, closed the door, and followed him into the front room, the one my mother called the ‘drawing room’ though I never knew why.

He sat in one of the large, comfortable lounge chairs.  I sat in the other.

I showed him the will.  I kept the other back, not knowing what to make of it.

“No surprise there,” Wellingham said.

“Did you have any idea what my father used to do, beyond being, as he put it, a freelance diplomat?”

I thought it a rather odd description but it was better than one he once proffered, ‘I do odd jobs for the government’.

“I didn’t ask.  Knowledge can be dangerous, particularly when associated with your father.  Most of us prefer not to know, but one thing I can tell you.  If anyone tries to tell you what happened to your parents was not an accident, ignore them.  Go live your life, and keep those memories you have of them in the past, and don’t look back.  They were good people, Ken, remember them as such.”

We reminisced for the next hour, making a dent in the scotch, one of my father’s favourite, and he left.

Alone again, the thoughts went back to the second note from my father.  That’s when the house phone rang.

Before I could answer it, a voice said, “My name is Stritching.  Your father might have mentioned me?  We need to talk.”

—-

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

Writing a book in 365 days – 62

Day 62

Editing – 1

The message I’m getting from the inspirational piece is quite bluntly telling you, the author, to be ruthless.

But, is it as much about cutting words, as it is rearranging those you have better?

There are writers who write chapters instead of paragraphs, paragraphs instead of sentences, and end up with a book the size of War and Peace. That is not to say Tolstoy should have taken a blue pencil to his work and made it 250 pages. It would not have made sense.

A friend of mine once told me that Harold Robbins was one of those writers who needed to be concise rather than verbose. I didn’t agree with him. I read all of Robbins’ books and loved them.

But…

It is always suggested that first, you write the story. Just get it all down of paper, or in a file on your computer. However long it takes to get it there. One of mine came in at 85,000 words. At the time, I was told the optimum size was around 50 to 60,000 words.

So, it came time for the first edit. I reduced it to around 45,000 words by tasking out what I first deemed unnecessary verbosity. Then I sent it to the editor who told me there were gaps, gaps that ruined the continuity. He then asked for the missing pages.

I then made the second edit and it came back at 78,000 words.

Three visits to the editor and four rewrites, the story now has 85,000 words again, but it reads much, much better. It was in fact a story I wrote originally about 50 years ago, at a time when love was new to me, and I didn’t understand girls or the myriad of mistakes you could make, and I think what I did back then was chronicle the path I took.

If I was hoping it would make it easier I was wrong. It was not a revelation to discover that all women are different.

But I digress…

Editing can be about ruthless cutting, but it can also be about adding for clarity and continuity or to make a part of the story clearer by using context or backstory.