Looking for something to suit my mood.
I’ve been reading the headlines and it seems that nothing else is going on except COVID 19, bar a plane crash, and residual fallout from the explosion in Beirut.
All bad news unfortunately, so I need to find something uplifting.
There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.
Is there?
What could possible happen?
Tag: creativity
I’m trying to write a period piece
Televison is a great recorder of the past, and most channels, and especially cable tv have great libraries of films that go back more than a hundred years.
And, whilst it’s possible that modern day films and television series can try to recapture the past, the English as an exception being very good at it, often it is impossible to capture it correctly.
But, if you have a film shot in the moment, then you have a visual record of what life, and what was once part of our world before you in all it’s dated glory. The pity of it is that, then, we never appreciated it.
After all, in those particular times, who had the time to figuratively stop and smell the roses. Back then as life was going on, we were all tied up with just trying to get through each day.
Years later, often on reflection, we try to remember the old days, and, maybe, remember some of what it was like, but the chances are that change came far too rapidly, and often too radical, that it erases what we thought we knew existed before.
My grandmothers house is a case in point. In it’s place is a multi lane super highway, and there’s nothing left to remind us, or anyone of it, just some old sepia photographs.
I was reminded of how volatile history really is when watching an old documentary, in black and white, and how the city I grew up in used to look.
Then, even though it seemed large to me then, it was a smaller city, with suburbs that stretched about ten or so miles in every direction, and the outer suburbs were where people moved to get a larger block, and countrified atmosphere.
Now, those outer suburbs are no longer spacious properties, the acreage subdivided and the old owners now much richer for a decision made with profit not being the motivator, and the current suburban sprawl is now out to forty or fifty miles.
The reason for the distance is no longer the thought of open spaces and cleaner air, the reason for moving now is that land further out is cheaper, and can make buying that first house more affordable.
This is where I tip my hat to the writers of historical fiction. I myself am writing a story based in the 1970s, and its difficult to find what is and isn’t time specific.
If only I had a dollar for every time I went to write the character pulling out his or her mobile phone.
What I’ve found is the necessity to research, and this has amounted to finding old films, documentaries of the day, and a more fascinating source of information, the newspapers of the day.
The latter especially has provoked a lot of memories and a lot of stuff I thought I’d forgotten, some of it by choice, but others that were poignant.
Yes, and don’t get me started on the distractions.
If only I’d started this project earlier…
A photograph from the inspirational bin – 18
On a clear day you can see forever.
Perhaps, it just depends on what you want to see.
What I first see, looking at this view, is a horizon that is so far away, I could not reach it.
Is that like the one goal in life that I have?
Or is it time to change that goal and try to reach one that is attainable?
What sacrifice does that entail?
Does it come to pass that you must make sacrifices in order to get what you want?
It’s one if those perennial questions that has an answer, mostly, that no one wants to hear, or wants to be told.
Everything has a price. It’s whether you want to pay it.
This subject, this situation, is manna from heaven for a writer.
So, for instance…
I stood on the edge of the cliff and took in the view, which on any given day could be either magnificent, or like being in hell.
Today, while being majestic, it was also like being in hell.
37 days.
I didn’t think I’d last 2. Yet here I was, having survived the worst that could be thrown at me.
The question was, did I want to go back, did I want the life that was being offered?
Or was it time to simply walk away?
That, of course, is another story, and you’ll have to wait just a little longer to find out.
© Charles Heath 2020
A photograph from the inspirational bin – 16
I thought since it is Winter here, we could do with a breath of fresh air and colour that comes with the change if season
Living in Queensland, Winter never quite seems to be as cold as it is in the southern states, which are closer to Antarctica.
We have had a relatively mild winter this year and I didn’t have to light the fire once, though we did use the reverse cycle sir conditioning.
But, from now the temperature will be rising as well as the humidity and will hang around until April next year.
Normally this would mean that a large proportion of the population would be planning their summer holidays, but with Covid restrictions, we may not be allowed to leave our state, or only visit states that have no or few cases like us, and definitely no overseas travel.
For people who like to travel, this is a bitter pill to swallow, and especially so for all those retirees who have worked all their lives, and decided to wait until retirement to see their own country and the world at large.
To me, the adage ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today’ seemed appropriate and we decided once the kids were old enough, we would travel far and wide while we could. It was a wise decision because neither of us are as agile as we used to be.
Seems we were the lucky ones.
Now we are content to see our own country which no doubt will be able to manage Covid to the extent that life might return to a form if normal sooner rather that later.
And if it doesn’t, then I have enough to amuse myself at home. I’m sure we are all familiar with the expression ‘spring cleaning’. We have decided to clean house, and do some renovating.
And it’s a surprise when cleaning out those cupboards, drawers, and boxes, the stuff you’ve accumulated over many, many years. Last I heard, we were taking about getting a large skip, so I suspect this culling is going to be savage.
But, just to be clear, no books will be thrown out!
The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 36
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.
“How long have you been working on this?”
“A week. Lying in bed is boring, so I decided to look at everything I’ve got again, and then again. There were some old maps of the coastline stored with the treasure maps, so I think my father was trying to find the actual location his treasure maps were based on and came up against the same problem. Physical landmarks on the treasure maps are no longer there, and if you didn’t know any better, I would think you were looking in the wrong place.”
“So, in actual fact, what you’re saying now is that your father had no idea where the treasure was buried, that he was just producing maps for the Cossatino’s’ to sell.”
That, of course, could be looked at from a different angle, one that I wasn’t going to suggest right then because Boggs was not ready to hear it. I think the real maps Boggs had found with eh treasure maps were the basis for the treasure maps, that is, his father had to give them real-life elements to keep the punters interested.
“No, not necessarily. I think he knew it was somewhere along this coastline give or take a hundred miles, because of its proximity to the Spanish Maine, but essentially you’re right. He probably had no idea.”
So, he hadn’t come to the same conclusion I had. Yet.
And if I could come to that conclusion, surely Cossatino also would, after all, he was the one who got Boggs senior to make the maps. Why all of a sudden did he think that there was a real treasure map. It couldn’t be simply because Boggs had said there was one. He’d have to know that anything Boggs junior found was an invention commissioned by him,
Or hadn’t Vince told his father what he was doing? Surely the father would have told the son about the treasure map scam.
As for Benderby, senior could base his assumption of the fact that he’d found some old coins off the coast nearby that could be part of the trove. Alex then may have decided to usurp his father’s search with one of his own, conveniently forgetting the treasure maps were an invention of the Cossatino’s. IT was a tangled web of lies deceit and one-upmanship, one that was going to leave a trail of human wreckage in its wake.
Boggs and I were two of the first three. We had lived to tell about it, Frobisher was the first casualty.
But what I suppose was more despairing was how taken Boggs was with the notion that the treasure was real, hidden out there somewhere, and that his father had ‘the’ map. I was loath to label him delusional, but his pathological desire to prove his father’s so-called legacy was going to not end well, especially when we found nothing.
And, yet, I had to admire the lengths he had gone to, to prove his case. Even now, looking at the overlaid maps, there was no guarantee we’d find anything, but at first look, the evidence was compelling.
Except I had a feeling Boggs had something up his sleeve. I had to ask the question. “Where did you get the idea of matching the treasure map to the real map?”
“My father’s journal. It was tossed in the bottom of a box of his other stuff. There are about ten boxes stacked in the shed, stuff my mother just couldn’t be bothered sorting through after he disappeared. Again, boredom pushed me into going through everything over and over just in case I missed something.”
He reached in under the mattress of his bed and pulled out an old leather-bound notebook. It had a strap that bound it together, and by the look of it had extra papers inserted or glued to pages, as well as papers at the start and back of the volume, making it look about twice the original size.
He handed it to me. The leather was old, cracked, and had that distinctive aroma of the hide. I loosened the strap and the top cover opened. The first page was a newspaper cutting, a small piece about some old coins being found about a hundred yards offshore by some surfers. Were these the same coins that Benderby had claimed were part to the trove?
“Benderby was getting that antiquarian that was murdered to identify some coins,” I said after a quick glance through the article.
“I spoke to one of the surfers the other day,” Boggs said. “He told me he came off his board on a big wave and as he was going down saw something glinting on the seabed. He managed to pull up three coins. There were more but he had to come up for air. When he went down again, he realized he’d been dragged away by the current.”
Tides and currents along this part of the coast were particularly bad, and the undertow, at times could get surfers and swimmers alike into a lot of trouble. I’d been caught out once in a dinghy myself, finishing up ten miles further down the coast that I expected to be.
“Then, I take it he can’t remember the exact spot so he could go back.”
“He tried, but alas no. Said he sold the coins to old man Benderby for a hundred apiece and told him approximately where he thought the others were, but nothing’s been found since.”
Not that Benderby would tell anyone if he did. But it explained where the coins came from that he gave to Frobisher.
“Except we can assume that it’s off our coastline somewhere, right?”
“Five miles of coastline to be precise. He and his mate always had a few reefers before they went out, made the ride more interesting he said. He could have been off the coast of Peru for all he knew.”
Surfers, drugs and a colorful story.
“It explains why Benderby and a team of divers have been out in his new boat,” Boggs added, “probably trying to either find the location or line up landmarks on his map from the seaward side at the same time. But he doesn’t know what we know.”
What did we know? I leafed through a few more pages of the diary, but the scrawled notes were almost illegible. I picked up various words, like a marina, underground river, dry lakebed, but none of it made any sense.
“Which map did we give to Alex?”
Boggs went over to a drawer in the wardrobe and leafed through the papers in it and pulled out one and gave it to me. Like the rest it showed the shore, the hills, the lake, and two what looked to be rivers flowing into the sea. Each of the maps had those same features but in different places.
I didn’t want to say it, but it seemed to me we were playing a very dangerous game. The maps might look different in some respects, but the chances were, if Alex was smart enough to hire an expert, that we might run across him out there, and, to be honest, he would be the last person I’d want to see.
“You do realize our paths are going to cross at some point.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
A shiver went down my spine, an omen I thought. Boggs has something up his sleeve, and I really didn’t want to know.
Not right then.
© Charles Heath 2020
Short Story Writing – Don’t try this at home! – Part 4
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
…
You’ve got the place, now you want the who.
My main characters are quite often me.
Not the real me, because I’m boring. No, those characters are what I would like to be, that imaginary superhuman that can do everything.
Until, of course, reality sets in, and the bullets start flying. When that happens, we should be looking to run or at the very least get under cover, not walk into a hail of bullets, with a huge grin, staring down the enemy.
Hang on, that never happens except in superman comics.
What’s really needed here is a little vulnerability, a little humility and a lot of understanding, qualities at times I don’t have.
So, in order to create a more believable character, I start dragging traits from others I’ve met, or know, or really don’t want to know.
In a writer’s environment, there are a plethora of people out there that you can draw on for inspiration. I once spent and afternoon at a railway station just observing people. Even now, I make observations, some of which are true, and others, wildly off course.
I once tried to convince my other half that I could pick people’s traits, and we sat at a café outside a church in Venice. I was lucky, I got more than 75% correct.
Other characters in my stories I have met along the way.
Like a piano player in a restaurant. It was not so much the playing was bad, it was the way he managed to draw people into his orbit and keep them there. The man has charisma, but sadly no talent for the instrument.
Like an aunt I met only twice in a lifetime, and who left a lasting impression. Severe, angry looking, speaking a language I didn’t understand, even though it was English. It was where I learned we came from England, and she was the closest thing I came to as an example of nineteenth-century prim and proper. And, no, she didn’t have a sense of humour or time for silly little boys.
Like one of my bosses, a man of indeterminate age, but it had to be over 100, or so it seemed to my sixteen-year-old brain, who spoke and dressed impeccably, and yes, he did once say that I would be the death of him.
I can only hope I wasn’t.
Like a Captain of a ship I once met, a man who didn’t seem to have time for the minions, and a man who reeked authority and respect. I’ve always wanted to be like him, but unfortunately, it was not in the genes.
Those are only a few, there are thousands of others over the years, a built-in library, if you will, of characters waiting to be taken off the shelf and used where necessary or appropriate. We all have one of these banks.
You just have to know when to use them.
Travelling after the pandemic – Destination Melbourne
Melbourne airport – an underwhelming experience
…
Let me sum up this experience at the start, in one word.
Terrible.
I know it’s not much past post-Covid, but tell me, what were the airport administrators doing for two years, other than lamenting the lack of plane traffic and sitting on their hands? Did they think no one was ever going to travel again?
Let me suggest what they should have been doing, getting onto every one of the retailers that had to close, and making sure that from day one of reopening, it was back to pre-Covid.
Instead, it’s a desolate nightmare. There was only one dedicated Cafe and a bar and two bookshops down the Qantas end.
And the food was basically stale sandwiches and muffins. And if you don’t like muffins…
We had to walk a mile to get to the Cafe and get a decent cup of coffee and a toastie, which the Cafe itself and coffee and food scored a ten out of ten.
If you didn’t know it was there, God only knows what you would do if you wanted something decent.
Score out of ten for the Airport Administrators – minus 5
Since scoring that I had the unhappy experience of going to the men’s restroom. It was filthy. How hard could be for someone to check every half hour to clean up the obvious mess? I’ll let you imagine how that will affect their current score.
My other bugbear about airports is the scanning of bags before getting to the gate.
Melbourne for some reason has been the worst experience in quite literally the world because it is a complete mess, particularly if one thing goes wrong.
I hate it, and it was no better today and left me shaking, which only happens when I’m extremely stressed.
I can only hope it eventually gets better, but, sorry to say this but they’ve had nearly two years to get the process right and run much smoother, but it’s clear they’ve also just sat on their hands.
Maybe one day someone might do something about it, but we’re talking government here, and it takes them ten years just to create a green discussion paper.
So, not holding my breath.
Of course, in reading about the current parlous state of air travel throughout the world, it seems we are not the only ones having problems. I guess we should spare a thought for those going to Heathrow in London. The many times we’ve been there, it’s been borderline organized chaos, and yes, once, we had to wait an hour for our baggage, but now it seems it just disappears.
Glad I’m not going there any time soon.
But, soon, we’re taking the plunge again, and going to Hobart.
I’ll let you know how that goes.
“Uncanny good luck shines upon me…” – a short story
I never did take advice very seriously. Especially when they were issued by old man Taggard, a man of some mystery that we all, adults and children alike wanted to know about.
Everyone in the street knew him as he had lived in the almost derelict mansion at the end of the cul-de-sac forever, way longer than anyone else in the neighbourhood had. In fact, it was rumoured he had owned all the land around and sold it off bit by bit over time, the reason why there were so many houses of varying age in the estate.
Ours was one of the older houses, a few doors up from it. We were close enough to observe Taggard’s habit, like sitting on the porch on an old swing chair in the afternoons, to the late-night wanderings in the street. Some said he was accompanied by the ghost of his long-dead wife, which led to stories being told of the house he lived in being haunted.
As children, we had been brought up on a diet of TV shows such as ‘The Munsters’ and ‘The Addams Family’, and had invented our own make-believe show called ‘The Taggard Mansion’, the house with ghosts, and the neighborhood center for strange goings-on.
And as children were wont to do, we had to ‘investigate’.
There was a ‘gang’ even though we didn’t refer to it as such, about seven of us who lived in nearby houses, and all of whom had very active imaginations. We also met in the cubby house out the back of our house to plan forays to find out whether the rumours were true. The thing is we never got very far as he seemed to know when we were sneaking in and scared us off, so for years, the rumours remained just that, rumours.
But as grown-ups, and by that I mean, middle teens, our plans became bolder and more sophisticated, based on a whole new breed of TV shows, where the seemingly impossible was no longer that. And Andy Boswell, my older brother’s best friend, his father was a private detective, or so he told us, and he had managed to ‘secure’ some of his father’s tools of the trade; a camera on the end of a wire that could connect to a cell phone, a listening device that could hear through walls, and in-ear communicators. We could now, if we were close enough, see under doors, and hear if anyone was in. We could all keep in touch, though I couldn’t see how this would help.
But a plan was formulated. All seven of us had a role to play. My brother Ron and Delilah, his girlfriend, were taking point, whatever that meant, Andy and I were going to take point, while Jack, Jill, and Kim were going to run distraction. The theory was, they’d make enough noise to keep the old man occupied chasing them. No one had been inside the house, ever. Andy and I were going to be the first.
Andy had drawn up a plan and it was up on the wall. He had charted the house, and had a very accurate picture of the house’s footprint, where doors and windows were, likely entrance points, including a hatchway down into what he assumed was a basement, though he preferred to call it the dungeon, and a layout of the grounds. Apparently under the undergrowth were paths and gardens, even a large fountain that once graced the grounds of the three-story mansion made of sandstone, and built sometime during the middle of the 1800s.
Andy had done some research, mostly from old newspapers, and also discovered that the old man had once been married, they had a half dozen children, three of whom had died, the others scattered around the world. It explained why no one ever visited the place.
The distraction team would be going in through the front gate, easy enough because it had come off its hinges and just needed a shove to open. The old man usually emerged from the house via the driveway, or what was once a drive where cars could enter one side of the property, stop under a huge canopy, and emerge onto the road further along. But it’s overgrown stare, the width of the pathway was now about six feet. The fact it was once an amazing feature was the roadside lights, now all but disappearing behind the undergrowth.
Andy had found a photograph in the paper of it, and it had looked magnificent, as had the gardens, the overhanging canopy, and all the lights. To think such magnificence was now lost. And having seen it for what it once was, it was not hard to imagine any number of scenarios, my favourite, rescuing a damsel in distress from the tower. Yes, it even had a tower, two, in fact, at each end of the house. My brother always said I had an overactive imagination.
Andy and I would be going in by the less-used car exit, and heading for the left side of the building where Andy said were several floor-to-ceiling windows that looked to him like French doors. Of course, none of us knew what French doors were, and my brother cut Andy short when he tried to explain.
Failing that, there was a door at the rear that seemed to be open, and we’d try that next. We would get into position, advise the distraction team, and the operation would be a go. The only debate was about what time of the day were we going to do it. My brother preferred late in the afternoon. Andy said it was better at dawn, or soon after if we were looking for maximum confusion about the target.
Dawn, confusion, tactics, target, Andy was in his element. He was going to be a spy when he grew up. My brother said he would never grow up, but then, my brother said I was a dreamer and would never amount to anything. We ignored his advice, well, we pretty much ignored everything he said.
We were going in at dawn.
At 5 a.m. on Saturday morning, we gathered at the cubby house ready for action. We all took a communicator and put it in our ears, and then had fun saying stupid stuff, and hearing it through the earpieces. It was weird but added an exciting element to the adventure. I know my heart was beating faster in anticipation. Andy was pretending to be cool and failing. I suspected my brother and Delilah had other plans when we left them alone in the cubby house. The distraction team was ready to go.
Shortly after the sun came up, it was cool and the air still. It was going to be a hot day, and in that first hour, everything was almost perfect. It seemed a waste to do anything but let the early morning serenity settle over us. Not today. Andy and I went to our position, slowly feeling our way through the bushes, taking bearings from the light poles, and every now and then seeing the guttering and what looked to be a concrete path. Beyond that was once a garden, and I tried, more than once, to imagine what it was like.
In my ear I could hear the others in the distraction team setting up at the start of the driveway, ready to go. We reached our position, about twenty feet from the so-called French windows, the view into the house blocked by curtains, but beyond that, what we could see was darkness inside the house. Taking in the whole side of the house, there were no lights on behind any of the windows. If we didn’t know better, we could have assumed the house was empty.
I heard Andy say, “Ready. Start making noise.”
A minute later we could both hear the distraction team in the distance and through the communicators. It took two minutes before we heard the old man, yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Their job done, getting him out of the house, all they had to do was retreat.
Time for Andy and I to go.
Working on the basis that no one else was at the house, and the fact we had no evidence there was, we were not overly worried about making a stealthy approach. I could hear in my earpiece, the gasping of those in the distraction team, having just made it outside the gate, and to tell us the old man had stopped them at the gate. I doubt he had been running, but his yelling was just as effective.
That had stopped, and a sort of silence fell over the area.
We were now at the French doors, and Andy produced another tool that he’d forgotten to tell us about, a lock pick. The fact it didn’t take long to unlock the door told me he was either very talented, or the lock was old and presented no problems. Either way, he opened the door and ushered me in.
I brushed the curtains aside for him to follow, then moved in as he followed, closing the door behind him.
I’d taken five steps before I heard a woman’s voice say. “Uncanny good luck shines upon me. My knights in shining armour. You’ve come to rescue me, no?”
…
© Charles Heath 2020-2023
The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 31
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 instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
Was she insinuating that Alex Benderby killed Jacob Stravinsky?
“Alex is a bully but he’s not a murderer,” I said, and wondering, at the same time, if he had finally graduated to a full-blown bad guy.
“He wouldn’t do it. Like his old man, they get others to do their dirty work. I’m sure the significance of Alex being out on his father’s boat was not lost on you. You asked the questions, and now that I’ve thought about it, it’s possible those divers could have planted the body on Rico’s boat.”
It’s one thing to come up with theories, but it was entirely another to suddenly realize they might be true. Until this point, I was happy to let Boggs have his dream that one day we might uncover a treasure trove, thinking that it was more fiction than the truth. It made a good story, one of hope for a person who had had very little of it in the past.
Now, it was becoming horribly true. What might amount to proof there might be treasure buried somewhere along this coast, an expert being interrogated and then killed, and a pair of what could only be described as gangsters about to start fighting over the spoils and not afraid of killing anyone who got in their way, these were omens, omens not to be ignored.
“Then don’t you think this is far too dangerous to get involved in? Look what happened to Boggs and I. We got off lightly if what you say is true. I’m surprised if this Stravinsky is dead, then why isn’t Boggs? He had the map, there’s no doubt Vice would assume he had made a copy. What to stop him from doing the same to Boggs and Benderby did for Stravinsky?”
“Vince is not a clever as Alex. Vince will never take over the Cossatino clan. Alex, on the other hand, is the next generation of Benderby thugs. But I suspect the older Benderby doesn’t know what’s going on. Not yet anyway.”
My bottle of beer was empty. Now I think I needed something stronger. A lot stronger.
There was a knock on the door, which caught us both by surprise.
Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, and in the next second suspected it might be Vince, and I’d been led down the garden path to a place where I really didn’t want to be.
“No.” She went over to the door and peered through the peephole.
“Damn,” she muttered.
Another, more demanding, knock.
She turned to look at me, “It’s Vince and my father. I didn’t ask them to come here, and no, I didn’t tell them anything, whatever you might be thinking.”
All I was thinking right then was the coincidence of their arrival and being very afraid.
She opened the door.
Vince barged in almost pushing the door into his sister and stopped when he saw me. At a more sedate speed, Giuliano Cossatino, Nadia’s father came into the room, and also stopped when he saw me.
There was no mistaking the malice on Vince’s face. Nadia was right. He was all muscle and no brain.
The older Cossatino spoke first. “I see you have a new friend, though I would have thought you’d have better taste in men.”
“Your days of telling me what I can do and not do were over the moment you sent me away.”
“And yet you come back, slinking about like a thief in the night. Your mother was most upset when you didn’t tell her.”
“The fact I have to, as you call it, slink back, should tell you a lot.”
“That you’re still the idiotic child you were before you went away.”
OK, now I was in the middle of a domestic family standoff. I was waiting for the order for Vince to throw me out, quite possibly over the balcony for good measure.
“I should leave,” I said standing, “and let you two work it out.”
Vince took another step forward and was now only two paces away. I’d have to go through him to leave.
“Stay,” Cossatino said. “I have nothing against you. Yet.”
“If you’re thinking this is anything but reminiscing about the old days, Mr Cossatino, then you’d be wrong. There’s nothing between your daughter and I but air. And,” mustering more bravado than I felt, “call your attack dog off.”
“Or what?”
“You don’t want to find out.” Where was this coming from? I was saying the words, but they were not my words.
“I hardly think…”
“That’s probably your biggest fault,” Nadia said, in a tone that suggested she was rapidly losing patience with her father.
It was clear to me now, she had a hard time of it as a child, not unlike the rest of us, but for different reasons. The bullying didn’t have to happen at school, but I could see why she had been like she was back then.
“You never gave me any attention except to treat e like garbage, no, worse than garbage. I can see nothing has changed.” Then she switched her attention to Vince. “And look at you, daddy’s little attack dog, as Sam says. I’d start worrying Vince, because one day someone’s going to beat the crap out of you, and then you’ll be nothing, just like me.”
Vince only had one expression, so it was difficult to tell if he was worried or not.
Back to her father, “Why are you here?”
I doubt anyone had spoken to him like Nadia just did, and he looked angry. If I hadn’t been there, I was not sure what would have happened to her.
“Your mother would like to see you.”
“You tell her to grow a backbone first, then when she does, I’ll think about it. Now get out of my room, or I’ll call the sheriff. At least he’s not in your back pocket.”
She picked up her phone and made ready to call.
A flick of his head got Vince to back up to the door and open it.
“You will regret this, young lady.”
“And don’t you forget I know where the skeletons are buried, so I’d leave now before some of them start rattling.”
A look of suffused anger flashed across his face, and he took a step forward. I was not sure what to expect, but Nadia did take a step back. She knew what he was capable of.
“We need to talk. Don’t make me wait too long or there’ll be consequences.”
A glare at me, another for his daughter along with a shake of his head, then he left closing the door quietly after him.
I sat down before I fell down. Nadia visibly wilted.
“I’m sorry about that. You might have thought twice about threatening Vince. You know he’ll come after you now.”
“Let him. I always thought you were close to your father.”
“Daddy’s girl I was not. Daddy’s biggest disappointment, maybe.”
“You didn’t ask him to come?”
“No.”
“But he didn’t come here to ask you to visit your mother. It sounded like a last-minute invention.”
“It was. My real mother is dead, and my stepmother was the reason why I was sent away. Among other things. No. He was here to tell me to get closer to Alex. It means only one thing. This treasure hunt is about to get very, very ugly.”
© Charles Heath 2019
The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 29
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 instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.
“Where is he?” I asked, hardly disguising the annoyance in my tone.
“In the toilet.”
A minor relief, but what the hell was she doing in his room?
“You do know Vince is responsible for Boggs being attacked, and me too, by the way. There was no mistaking that thug even if he was hiding behind a balaclava.
“You’re not telling me anything I didn’t know already. And it might be my fault. I told him, no, he all but beat it out of me, about the map and Boggs, and you, and Alex.”
“So, I can expect to see Alex in here sometime soon?”
“No. The Benderby’s have their own private hospital. No one will get to hear about it, except maybe when there is the retaliation. This who map and treasure thing is about to get a whole lot more problematical.”
Boggs chose to return from the bathroom and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. “How did you manage to get past the head of Gestapo, Nurse Jamieson?”
“I had an angel show me the way. How are you?”
“This is a hospital; how do you think I feel.”
The nurse was right, he looked worse than he was. The bruising was going to be very colourful in the coming days, before everything settled down.
“Vince?”
“Like I could tell who it was. Only Vince can sound like Vince even where he’s trying not to sound like Vince.”
“Did he get the map.”
“One of them, but not necessarily the right one, just a better one.”
Boggs got back onto the bed and lay back. I got the impression he was putting on a brave face for Nadia. But it didn’t explain why she was there.
“What are you doing here,” I asked, with just a shade less annoyance.
“I heard what Vince did and I cam to apologise. You were next,.” She said to me, “But, seriously guys, you were the masters of your own destinies with this map thing. You don’t even know if it’s real or just another of a host of hoaxes. Old man Cossatino reckons that Boggs’s dad created a lot of different variations, in the hope of selling them as the real thing. He was, after all, just a common con man, and not very good at it.”
The patriarch of the Cossatino’s the one she referred to as Old Man Cossatino, was Nadia’s grandfather, and although Nadia’s father was nominally in charge of the clan, everyone knew who the real leader was. And Old Man Cossatino was someone you didn’t cross, and that went for the Benderby’s too.
Boggs’s dad had worked for the Cossatino’s at one time, and it would not surprise me if it was Cossatino’s idea to create all the bogus maps, just to make money. I couldn’t see Boggs’s dad having the brains to mount a scheme such as Nadia described.
It surprised me that I had forgotten about that. Way back, when my father was still picking a side, he had said there’d been a rumour going around that a new map for the treasure had been found, and that both the Cossatino’s and the Benderby’s were in a bidding war for it, along with some other unsavoury characters.
And the rumour died as fast as it had risen, and not long after Boggs’s dad disappeared, later to turn up dead. One rumour, he had gone looking for the treasure, though no one proffered an answer as to how he might have come across the original map which he had, at one time, claimed, and another, Cossatino had him make it up, then killed him so he would never reveal the truth.
That original map had never seen the light of day, nor mentioned since.
It didn’t explain why Vince was on the warpath.
“What’s Vince up to? I thought you guys had the original map?”
She looked surprised. “First I’m hearing about it.”
I realised then she would have been as young as I was, and Boggs, which was about five or six. Precognitive memories. She might have been too young to remember. I only remembered it because my father had continually bagged Boggs’s father as a fool who should have got a real job and support his family, rather than let others do it for him, a veiled reference about the times Boggs stayed over and ate with us.
But it was not lost on Boggs.
“There’s any number of maps, yes. I found a lot of them in Dad’s stuff in the shed. I suspect those were the ones created for the Cossatino’s to sell privately, and I also think he double-crossed them and kept one particular map, the one he called ‘the map’ for himself, which may have been the original.”
That I was guessing, was the map Boggs had now. “And you’re telling me that’s the one you said you found, and…”
“I still have it. Vince has one of the half dozen that all seem to be slightly different, different enough from the original to keep him happy for a while.”
“What was the point of sending him to me?”
“I needed more time to figure out which variation to give him. I’m hoping now, if he thinks it’s the original, he’ll start looking for it. Save us a lot of time and effort if he does the groundwork. And I’m sorry about what happened to you. If it’s any consolation, I knew he wouldn’t hurt you.”
It seemed to me, judging from the expression on Nadia’s face, that discussing the fact Vince didn’t have the right may prompt her to tell him. She was a Cossatino first, after all, and had for years toed the family line.
Maybe she’d changed, but I wish Boggs was not so trusting.
“That’s nonsense Boggs,” Nadia said. “My brother doesn’t go easy on anyone.”
“How did you get in here?”
No mistaking that voice of authority. The head of the hospital Gestapo had arrived. She glared at me. “You’d better leave before I call both the hospital security staff and the police.” Then she looked at Nadia, who was getting out of the seat. “You should know better.” Much kinder voice for Nadia, suggesting they were acquainted.
She probably helped old man Cossatino with his interrogations.
“Had you told me how Boggs was, I would not be here.” I’m not sure why I decided to take a stand with her.
“Don’t be impertinent. You can see how he is, now leave while I’m in a good mood.”
I’d hate to see her when she was in a bad mood.
“Tomorrow,” Boggs said. “I’m sure they’ll let me have visitors by then.”
I waved and left. Nadia stayed back for a moment, then joined me in the passage.
“What were you really doing here,” I asked her. “It’s bot as if you had any reason to visit Boggs, other than to cause trouble.”
“I came to apologise. My brother can be a moron sometimes.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“No. And I want to keep it that way.”
“It’s Vince we’re talking about, or has he gone soft. From what I witness during our encounter, it seems he’s got worse.”
“Which is why I don’t want to see him. You want to come back to the room and have a few drinks. Maybe we could talk about old times, you know, trash Alex?”
“Sounds good to me.”
A nightcap with Nadia. I would never have thought that possible, even in my wildest dreams. Had she changed, or was she up to something?
Time would tell.
© Charles Heath 2019
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 