What starts as a search for a missing husband soon develops into an unbelievable story of treachery, lies, and incredible riches.
…
It was meant to remain buried long enough for the dust to settle on what was once an unpalatable truth, when enough time had passed, and those who had been willing to wait could reap the rewards.
The problem was, no one knew where that treasure was hidden or the location of the logbook that held the secret.
At stake, billions of dollars’ worth of stolen Nazi loot brought to the United States in an anonymous tramp steamer and hidden in a specially constructed vault under a specifically owned plot of land on the once docklands of New York.
It may have remained hidden and unknown to only a few, if it had not been for a mere obscure detail being overheard …
… by our intrepid, newly minted private detective, Harry Walthenson …
… and it would have remained buried.
Now, through a series of unrelated events, or are they, that well-kept secret is out there, and Harry will not stop until the whole truth is uncovered.
Writing Exercise – Change the plot using these words: dormant, stoop, and maelstrom
…
Secrets, by their very nature, are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually.
I was told right from day one that no one, no matter who they were, or how many Bibles they swore an oath on, would always give that secret up. And when they least likely expected it.
Mt family dealt in secrets. Our own. Secrets were sworn from the day we were able to understand what giving your word meant, that we would never tell anyone ever what we knew.
Secrets that were passed down from generation to generation, since time immemorial. And those secrets could only change hands if there was no successor to the family.
There were four such families, in different parts of the world, who only knew their quarter of the puzzle. None was known to the other, and wouldn’t unless a certain event happened.
Until then, it lay dormant within the minds of the keepers. All they knew when the time came, they would receive instructions.
…
The day I turned thirty, I began having dreams.
Well, dreams might not be the right word, but over time, a little more would be revealed.
I was in a schoolroom, or what looked like a schoolroom, with a dozen other boys of the same age, and for some weird reason. looked like me. Every day, we had to write down a sentence. Some were long, some were short, none made any sense. They were in a language that I didn’t understand.
The day I turned forty, the dreams stopped, and I went about my life as if nothing had happened.
The thing is, I had other secrets I was supposed to keep, secrets that went with my job, national secrets that other people, if they knew I held them, would try to extract them. It was coincidental that I finished up in a position that required such knowledge.
And the part of the whole situation which was ironic, if it could be said it was anything. Someone else had a secret that pointed to me holding a secret, which wasn’t the secret that mattered. Except if it fell into the hands of the wrong people.
Confused?
Not for long. Like I said, secrets by their very nature are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually. It just took the right person to unlock it.
Jack Moreno was a tough kid, and then an even tougher grown-up. All he ever wanted to be was an agent who had some small part in saving the world. I had known Jack from grade school, and we came from the same neighbourhood. We both did Military training at school, a stint in the National Guard, a few tours in the Army with foreign deployment, and when we returned, he stayed on, and I went into the intelligence branch and drove a desk.
I’d seen enough death and mayhem as a soldier; I didn’t want to see more as an agent of some ultra-secret squad who undertook black ops wherever and whenever it was required. We crossed paths from time to time, when he was on deployment, and I was on holiday, but the last time had been three years, and I had heard he’d died, but it was never confirmed, and I’d thought no more of it.
Then, while I was having a coffee and watching the Trevi fountain, or more to the point, the bustling crowds trying to catch a glimpse of it, I thought I saw him, or someone who looked like him. I shrugged, maybe not, and went back to watching people casting a coin and making a wish. I made a wish earlier, one I knew would never come true.
That’s when the brash American and what looked like his girlfriend strolled past, he happened to look in my direction, and he seemed to recognise me. Not that recognising me made any difference, it was just that I preferred anonymity.
But, in the seconds that followed, something else happened. The girl he was with looked at me and our eyes met, and in that moment, I had a vision of her and me very close together, under a stoop, watching the total and instant destruction of everything in front of us.
And then it was gone.
“As I live and breathe, Rex Barnard. Amy, this is Rex, my oldest friend.”
I shook my head and opened my eyes. Jack Moreno. The man who was supposed to be dead.
“You seem well for…”
“… a man going through a new lease of life, of course. I call it the Amy effect.”
Clearly, he didn’t want any mention of the fact that he was supposed to be dead, which I gathered equally as quickly as he was on a black op. Good thing, then, I didn’t use his name.
She smiled. “You give me credit where none is due Rich.” The look she gave me was one of momentary surprise, then it just disappeared.
I wondered briefly if she knew who I was, and then dismissed the thought.
“Care for a coffee?”
“We would, but we have to be somewhere, you know, the life of a celebrity is never his own. We’ll catch up, you’ve got my number?”
“Of course. Great to see you, Rich.”
“You too.” He waved, and they disappeared into the crowd.
He could have just wandered past and ignored me, but he didn’t. That charade was for a reason. Long enough head start, I got out of the chair and went in the same direction.
…
The day was hot, the typical midsummer day in Rome, where the temperature was high and the breeze non-existent. I had toured the ruins near the Colosseum the day before, and I had nearly melted. How the Romans, thousands of years ago, handled the heat was anyone’s guess, but then there were buildings, not ruins, and they were probably cool. I know I sought relief inside the Colosseum, where it was shady.
I’d almost made it to the Spanish Steps before I saw them again. Anyone would have mistaken them for a couple on their honeymoon. Until one minute they were together, and the next, both had disappeared. It was not possible because I was staring straight at them.
I moved forward slowly, trying to reacquire the targets, without success.
Suddenly, I felt a shiver go through me, then a voice in my ear, speaking in a language I had only heard in my dreams, “You are one, are you not?”
The girl was behind me, leaning against the wall. Rex was nowhere to be seen.
“He is not here. He does not know.”
She was not speaking; she was communicating without talking.
“I understand the language, if that means anything.”
“You were called here.”
That might have been true. I woke up three days ago, and Rome was in my mind, and the idea of going there was so strong that I went to the airport and got on a plane. “Yes.”
“Then it is going to happen. The other two will be here, somewhere.”
“The other two?”
“We are four. Direct descendants of the Roman Gods. Why, I don’t know, but I think we’ll find out soon enough.”
It didn’t surprise me that there were more. Nor did it surprise me that I knew my way around the Roman ruins, or that I’d been drawn to them.
“An attack, from the sky.”
“You saw it too?”
“Did you recognise where?”
“I think it was the ruins near the Colosseum. I was there two days ago and had some very vivid images in my head.”
“Then that’s where we need to be.”
…
Perhaps one of my foibles that others didn’t understand was my obsession with flying saucers, in fact, the whole concept of there being aliens in outer space. It was not as if it was something i picked up reading comic books, or watched all the documentaries that purported to say there was evidence of visits over the centuries.
After all, we had to come from somewhere, and I wasn’t buying the idea we came from the apes. Or that the evolution of man back when the unexplainable buildings and technology were built, and we still couldn’t replicate it.
The only answer I could attribute it to was the fact that aliens from outer space, people who had evolved much further than we had, even now, had come and left behind the beginnings of humankind, only to be struck down by weather events and asteroids, causing life extinction, and the remains of wonderous ruins hinting at how more clever they were than us.
Or other aliens came and killed off those on the planet, and seeded it with their version of humans. It was not a theory I told anyone else, nor of my obsession, I tried that once and nearly got locked up in an asylum.
It took time to get to the Colosseum, time to have a conversation, which was odd since we were not communicating in the normal manner, all while having short spasms of shivering, which i think we finally agreed was a warning.
For what?
From a day that started without a cloud in the sky, by the time we arrived at the Colosseum, there was no blue sky to be seen, but it was no cooler; if anything, it was hotter.
Then, suddenly, the clouds started swirling, and a very strange sound came from the sky.
Two more voices were in my head, and I looked sideways to see another man and a girl. Four of us. There were no introductions; we just joined hands.
“What now?” we all said in unison.
“Each of you has an incantation. Say it now.” It was another voice, not one of us.
As we did, out of the maelstrom above us were the first signs of a very large spacecraft, slowly hovering. It was slowly moving over us as we spoke the lines we had taken ten years to learn, and when we’d finished, all at the same time, a huge bolt of something emanated from the ground near us and went straight up to the craft and sent crazy lightning strikes through it.
This lasted for a few minutes, and suddenly, as quickly as the craft came, it left, taking the clouds with it.
After that, I remembered nothing until I woke, sitting in the chair back at the Trevi fountain, everything as it had been before I had seen Rex and Amy.
In fact, I was not sure what had happened, only that I had got up to follow them, and it was obvious I hadn’t. Perhaps it was just my imagination.
I heard the scraping of a chair and looked sideways. A woman my age, obviously American sat down. “This chair is free, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Thanks. I need it. Just tossed a coin in and made a wish. It came true, I was wishing for a free seat to rest my weary bones. Janice Walker, weary visitor.” She held out her hand.
I shook it, and got a tingle, along with an image. Amy. Then it was gone.
“I think we are going to be very good friends,” she said. “One of those feelings. You have those, too?”
Writing Exercise – Change the plot using these words: dormant, stoop, and maelstrom
…
Secrets, by their very nature, are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually.
I was told right from day one that no one, no matter who they were, or how many Bibles they swore an oath on, would always give that secret up. And when they least likely expected it.
Mt family dealt in secrets. Our own. Secrets were sworn from the day we were able to understand what giving your word meant, that we would never tell anyone ever what we knew.
Secrets that were passed down from generation to generation, since time immemorial. And those secrets could only change hands if there was no successor to the family.
There were four such families, in different parts of the world, who only knew their quarter of the puzzle. None was known to the other, and wouldn’t unless a certain event happened.
Until then, it lay dormant within the minds of the keepers. All they knew when the time came, they would receive instructions.
…
The day I turned thirty, I began having dreams.
Well, dreams might not be the right word, but over time, a little more would be revealed.
I was in a schoolroom, or what looked like a schoolroom, with a dozen other boys of the same age, and for some weird reason. looked like me. Every day, we had to write down a sentence. Some were long, some were short, none made any sense. They were in a language that I didn’t understand.
The day I turned forty, the dreams stopped, and I went about my life as if nothing had happened.
The thing is, I had other secrets I was supposed to keep, secrets that went with my job, national secrets that other people, if they knew I held them, would try to extract them. It was coincidental that I finished up in a position that required such knowledge.
And the part of the whole situation which was ironic, if it could be said it was anything. Someone else had a secret that pointed to me holding a secret, which wasn’t the secret that mattered. Except if it fell into the hands of the wrong people.
Confused?
Not for long. Like I said, secrets by their very nature are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually. It just took the right person to unlock it.
Jack Moreno was a tough kid, and then an even tougher grown-up. All he ever wanted to be was an agent who had some small part in saving the world. I had known Jack from grade school, and we came from the same neighbourhood. We both did Military training at school, a stint in the National Guard, a few tours in the Army with foreign deployment, and when we returned, he stayed on, and I went into the intelligence branch and drove a desk.
I’d seen enough death and mayhem as a soldier; I didn’t want to see more as an agent of some ultra-secret squad who undertook black ops wherever and whenever it was required. We crossed paths from time to time, when he was on deployment, and I was on holiday, but the last time had been three years, and I had heard he’d died, but it was never confirmed, and I’d thought no more of it.
Then, while I was having a coffee and watching the Trevi fountain, or more to the point, the bustling crowds trying to catch a glimpse of it, I thought I saw him, or someone who looked like him. I shrugged, maybe not, and went back to watching people casting a coin and making a wish. I made a wish earlier, one I knew would never come true.
That’s when the brash American and what looked like his girlfriend strolled past, he happened to look in my direction, and he seemed to recognise me. Not that recognising me made any difference, it was just that I preferred anonymity.
But, in the seconds that followed, something else happened. The girl he was with looked at me and our eyes met, and in that moment, I had a vision of her and me very close together, under a stoop, watching the total and instant destruction of everything in front of us.
And then it was gone.
“As I live and breathe, Rex Barnard. Amy, this is Rex, my oldest friend.”
I shook my head and opened my eyes. Jack Moreno. The man who was supposed to be dead.
“You seem well for…”
“… a man going through a new lease of life, of course. I call it the Amy effect.”
Clearly, he didn’t want any mention of the fact that he was supposed to be dead, which I gathered equally as quickly as he was on a black op. Good thing, then, I didn’t use his name.
She smiled. “You give me credit where none is due Rich.” The look she gave me was one of momentary surprise, then it just disappeared.
I wondered briefly if she knew who I was, and then dismissed the thought.
“Care for a coffee?”
“We would, but we have to be somewhere, you know, the life of a celebrity is never his own. We’ll catch up, you’ve got my number?”
“Of course. Great to see you, Rich.”
“You too.” He waved, and they disappeared into the crowd.
He could have just wandered past and ignored me, but he didn’t. That charade was for a reason. Long enough head start, I got out of the chair and went in the same direction.
…
The day was hot, the typical midsummer day in Rome, where the temperature was high and the breeze non-existent. I had toured the ruins near the Colosseum the day before, and I had nearly melted. How the Romans, thousands of years ago, handled the heat was anyone’s guess, but then there were buildings, not ruins, and they were probably cool. I know I sought relief inside the Colosseum, where it was shady.
I’d almost made it to the Spanish Steps before I saw them again. Anyone would have mistaken them for a couple on their honeymoon. Until one minute they were together, and the next, both had disappeared. It was not possible because I was staring straight at them.
I moved forward slowly, trying to reacquire the targets, without success.
Suddenly, I felt a shiver go through me, then a voice in my ear, speaking in a language I had only heard in my dreams, “You are one, are you not?”
The girl was behind me, leaning against the wall. Rex was nowhere to be seen.
“He is not here. He does not know.”
She was not speaking; she was communicating without talking.
“I understand the language, if that means anything.”
“You were called here.”
That might have been true. I woke up three days ago, and Rome was in my mind, and the idea of going there was so strong that I went to the airport and got on a plane. “Yes.”
“Then it is going to happen. The other two will be here, somewhere.”
“The other two?”
“We are four. Direct descendants of the Roman Gods. Why, I don’t know, but I think we’ll find out soon enough.”
It didn’t surprise me that there were more. Nor did it surprise me that I knew my way around the Roman ruins, or that I’d been drawn to them.
“An attack, from the sky.”
“You saw it too?”
“Did you recognise where?”
“I think it was the ruins near the Colosseum. I was there two days ago and had some very vivid images in my head.”
“Then that’s where we need to be.”
…
Perhaps one of my foibles that others didn’t understand was my obsession with flying saucers, in fact, the whole concept of there being aliens in outer space. It was not as if it was something i picked up reading comic books, or watched all the documentaries that purported to say there was evidence of visits over the centuries.
After all, we had to come from somewhere, and I wasn’t buying the idea we came from the apes. Or that the evolution of man back when the unexplainable buildings and technology were built, and we still couldn’t replicate it.
The only answer I could attribute it to was the fact that aliens from outer space, people who had evolved much further than we had, even now, had come and left behind the beginnings of humankind, only to be struck down by weather events and asteroids, causing life extinction, and the remains of wonderous ruins hinting at how more clever they were than us.
Or other aliens came and killed off those on the planet, and seeded it with their version of humans. It was not a theory I told anyone else, nor of my obsession, I tried that once and nearly got locked up in an asylum.
It took time to get to the Colosseum, time to have a conversation, which was odd since we were not communicating in the normal manner, all while having short spasms of shivering, which i think we finally agreed was a warning.
For what?
From a day that started without a cloud in the sky, by the time we arrived at the Colosseum, there was no blue sky to be seen, but it was no cooler; if anything, it was hotter.
Then, suddenly, the clouds started swirling, and a very strange sound came from the sky.
Two more voices were in my head, and I looked sideways to see another man and a girl. Four of us. There were no introductions; we just joined hands.
“What now?” we all said in unison.
“Each of you has an incantation. Say it now.” It was another voice, not one of us.
As we did, out of the maelstrom above us were the first signs of a very large spacecraft, slowly hovering. It was slowly moving over us as we spoke the lines we had taken ten years to learn, and when we’d finished, all at the same time, a huge bolt of something emanated from the ground near us and went straight up to the craft and sent crazy lightning strikes through it.
This lasted for a few minutes, and suddenly, as quickly as the craft came, it left, taking the clouds with it.
After that, I remembered nothing until I woke, sitting in the chair back at the Trevi fountain, everything as it had been before I had seen Rex and Amy.
In fact, I was not sure what had happened, only that I had got up to follow them, and it was obvious I hadn’t. Perhaps it was just my imagination.
I heard the scraping of a chair and looked sideways. A woman my age, obviously American sat down. “This chair is free, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Thanks. I need it. Just tossed a coin in and made a wish. It came true, I was wishing for a free seat to rest my weary bones. Janice Walker, weary visitor.” She held out her hand.
I shook it, and got a tingle, along with an image. Amy. Then it was gone.
“I think we are going to be very good friends,” she said. “One of those feelings. You have those, too?”
The reason why this story has spent so much time on the back burner is that I have never quite captured the ending. That is to say, I was not sure how it was going to end for all of the characters.
My trouble is, as it always is, is coming up with an idea that has a ripple effect going back in time and requiring changes to earlier material.
You can’t have things happening without the reader having at least one earlier hook to say, when he or she gets there, they had an inkling it was going to happen.
Whilst in stories, random events just turning up without explanation is not a good idea. Making the character suddenly arrive, die or worse, can be confusing because there always had to be a backstory and that needs to be told.
Nothing worse than reading a story, and then asking, When did that happen?
The previous new ending to this story was about 45 pages long and didn’t quite make sense. Now it is about 80 and does make sense, but it seems a bit long.
Then I thought, why not have Book 1 and Book 2 and make them independent of each other, but loosely linked?
The point is, the end didn’t make sense because we didn’t really know who was aggrieved and who was causing all the problems.
Now, everyone’s side of the story is there, leading up to a single event after which who, what and why become clear.
Does anyone get revenge?
Is there really anything like revenge to get?
And is it true that when you seek revenge, first dig two graves?
You will only know when the book is published. Soon.
The reason why this story has spent so much time on the back burner is that I have never quite captured the ending. That is to say, I was not sure how it was going to end for all of the characters.
My trouble is, as it always is, is coming up with an idea that has a ripple effect going back in time and requiring changes to earlier material.
You can’t have things happening without the reader having at least one earlier hook to say, when he or she gets there, they had an inkling it was going to happen.
Whilst in stories, random events just turning up without explanation is not a good idea. Making the character suddenly arrive, die or worse, can be confusing because there always had to be a backstory and that needs to be told.
Nothing worse than reading a story, and then asking, When did that happen?
The previous new ending to this story was about 45 pages long and didn’t quite make sense. Now it is about 80 and does make sense, but it seems a bit long.
Then I thought, why not have Book 1 and Book 2 and make them independent of each other, but loosely linked?
The point is, the end didn’t make sense because we didn’t really know who was aggrieved and who was causing all the problems.
Now, everyone’s side of the story is there, leading up to a single event after which who, what and why become clear.
Does anyone get revenge?
Is there really anything like revenge to get?
And is it true that when you seek revenge, first dig two graves?
You will only know when the book is published. Soon.
This story has been ongoing since I was seventeen, and just to let you know, I’m 71 this year.
Yes, it’s taken a long time to get it done.
Why, you might ask.
Well, I never gave it much interest because I started writing it after a small incident when I was 17, and working as a book packer for a book distributor in Melbourne
At the end of my first year, at Christmas, the employer had a Christmas party, and that year, it was at a venue in St Kilda.
I wasn’t going to go because at that age, I was an ordinary boy who was very introverted and basically scared of his own shadow and terrified by girls.
Back then, I would cross the street to avoid them
Also, other members of the staff in the shipping department were rough and ready types who were not backwards in telling me what happened, and being naive, perhaps they knew I’d be either shocked or intrigued.
I was both adamant I wasn’t coming and then got roped in on a dare.
Damn!
So, back then, in the early 70s, people looked the other way when it came to drinking, and of course, Dutch courage always takes away the concerns, especially when normally you wouldn’t do half the stuff you wouldn’t in a million years
I made it to the end, not as drunk and stupid as I thought I might be, and St Kilda being a salacious place if you knew where to look, my new friends decided to give me a surprise.
It didn’t take long to realise these men were ‘men about town’ as they kept saying, and we went on an odyssey. Yes, those backstreet brothels where one could, I was told, have anything they could imagine.
Let me tell you, large quantities of alcohol and imagination were a very bad mix.
So, the odyssey in ‘The things we do’ was based on that, and then the encounter with Diana. Well, let’s just say I learned a great deal about girls that night.
Firstly, not all girls are nasty and spiteful, which seemed to be the case whenever I met one. There was a way to approach, greet, talk to, and behave.
It was also true that I could have had anything I wanted, but I decided what was in my imagination could stay there. She was amused that all I wanted was to talk, but it was my money, and I could spend it how I liked.
And like any 17-year-old naive fool, I fell in love with her and had all these foolish notions. Months later, I went back, but she had moved on, to where no one was saying or knew.
Needless to say, I was heartbroken and had to get over that first loss, which, like any 17-year-old, was like the end of the world.
But it was the best hour I’d ever spent in my life and would remain so until I met the woman I have been married to for the last 48 years.
As Henry, he was in part based on a rebel, the son of rich parents who despised them and their wealth, and he used to regale anyone who would listen about how they had messed up his life
If only I’d come from such a background!
And yes, I was only a run away from climbing up the stairs to get on board a ship, acting as a purser.
I worked for a shipping company and they gave their junior staff members an opportunity to spend a year at sea working as a purser on a cargo ship that sailed between Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart in Australia.
One of the other junior staff members’ turn came, and I would visit him on board when he would tell me stories about life on board, the officers, the crew, and other events. These stories, which sounded incredible to someone so impressionable, were a delight to hear.
Alas, by that time, I had tired of office work and moved on to be a tradesman at the place where my father worked.
It proved to be the right move, as that is where I met my wife. Diana had been right; love would find me when I least expected it.
Trunk stories – those stories you never seem to finish
…
Yes, the ones that end up in a dark corner of the writing room, if you have one, simply because the ideas ran out, or the next move wasn’t clear.
I have stories like that, quite a few actually, and every now and then I rummage, find one, and make the centre of my next NaNoWriMo project. And since NaNoWriMo comes around twice a year, it means two have done stories come in from the cold.
But, this idea of picking up a story you wrote a long while ago but never finished, mainly because something was missing, is a good one, and recently while I was away, and trying not to work on a new project i found this story I write about thirty years ago, and actually did get to the end, but it wasn;t end I wanted.
So, each night I read a few chapters and made notes.
Then, at the end of the story, I could see what the problem was; it needed to have closure with another event that was overshadowing the life of the protagonist. I had at some point written in a new character, and hadn’t quite got the details right.
There was a hint of a resolution at the end, but it had been hastily put together, or if I knew the me back then, I had written the end long before I got to it, and failed to maintain the plotlines to support it.
Or maybe it just meant that the story had been running around inside my head for the intervening thirty years and now I knew what to write, or how I was going to get to that end.
It needed a lot of rewriting, and in the end, it virtually ends up as two stories, related but independent of each other.
Yes, I have piles of trunk stories, and yes, I do go back a little earlier than thirty years, and yes, some of them become projects that are completed to the first or second draft.
It was the first time in almost a week that I made the short walk to the cafe alone. It was early, and the chill of the morning was still in the air. In summer, it was the best time of the day. When Susan came with me, it was usually much later, when the day was much warmer and less tolerable.
On the morning of the third day of her visit, Susan said she was missing the hustle and bustle of London, and by the end of the fourth she said, in not so many words, she was over being away from ‘civilisation’. This was a side of her I had not seen before, and it surprised me.
She hadn’t complained, but it was making her irritable. The Susan that morning was vastly different to the Susan on the first day. So much, I thought, for her wanting to ‘reconnect’, the word she had used as the reason for coming to Greve unannounced.
It was also the first morning I had time to reflect on her visit and what my feelings were towards her. It was the reason I’d come to Greve: to soak up the peace and quiet and think about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
I sat in my usual corner. Maria, one of two waitresses, came out, stopped, and there was no mistaking the relief in her manner. There was an air of tension between Susan and Maria I didn’t understand, and it seemed to emanate from Susan rather than the other way around. I could understand her attitude if it was towards Alisha, but not Maria. All she did was serve coffee and cake.
When Maria recovered from the momentary surprise, she said, smiling, “You are by yourself?” She gave a quick glance in the direction of my villa, just to be sure.
“I am this morning. I’m afraid the heat, for one who is not used to it, can be quite debilitating. I’m also afraid it has had a bad effect on her manners, for which I apologise. I cannot explain why she has been so rude to you.”
“You do not have to apologise for her, David, but it is of no consequence to me. I have had a lot worse. I think she is simply jealous.”
It had crossed my mind, but there was no reason for her to be. “Why?”
“She is a woman, I am a woman, she thinks because you and I are friends, there is something between us.”
It made sense, even if it was not true. “Perhaps if I explained…”
Maria shook her head. “If there is a hole in the boat, you should not keep bailing but try to plug the hole. My grandfather had many expressions, David. If I may give you one piece of advice, as much as it is none of my business, you need to make your feelings known, and if they are not as they once were, and I think they are not, you need to tell her. Before she goes home.”
Interesting advice. Not only a purveyor of excellent coffee, but Maria was also a psychiatrist who had astutely worked out my dilemma. What was that expression, ‘not just a pretty face’?
“Is she leaving soon?” I asked, thinking Maria knew more about Susan’s movements than I did.
“You would disappoint me if you had not suspected as much. Susan was having coffee and talking to someone in her office on a cell phone. It was an intense conversation. I should not eavesdrop, but she said being here was like being stuck in hell. It is a pity she does not share your love for our little piece of paradise, is it not?”
“It is indeed. And you’re right. She said she didn’t have a phone, but I know she has one. She just doesn’t value the idea of getting away from the office. Perhaps her role doesn’t afford her that luxury.”
And perhaps Alisha was right about Maria, that I should be more careful. She had liked Maria the moment she saw her. We had sat at this very table, the first day I arrived. I would have travelled alone, but Prendergast, my old boss, liked to know where ex-employees of the Department were, and what they were doing.
She sighed. “I am glad I am just a waitress. Your usual coffee and cake?”
“Yes, please.”
Several months had passed since we had rescued Susan from her despotic father; she had recovered faster than we had thought, and settled into her role as the new Lady Featherington, though she preferred not to use that title, but go by the name of Lady Susan Cheney.
I didn’t get to be a Lord, or have any title, not that I was expecting one. What I had expected was that Susan, once she found her footing as head of what seemed to be a commercial empire, would not have time for details like husbands, particularly when our agreement made before the wedding gave either of us the right to end it.
There was a moment when I visited her recovering in the hospital, where I was going to give her the out, but I didn’t, and she had not invoked it. We were still married, just not living together.
This visit was one where she wanted to ‘reconnect’ as she called it, and invite me to come home with her. She saw no reason why we could not resume our relationship, conveniently forgetting she indirectly had me arrested for her murder, charges both her mother and Lucy vigorously pursued, and had the clone not returned to save me, I might still be in jail.
It was not something I would forgive or forget any time soon.
There were other reasons why I was reluctant to stay with her, like forgetting small details, an irregularity in her character I found odd. She looked the same, she sounded the same, she basically acted the same, but my mind was telling me something was not right. It was not the Susan I first met, even allowing for the ordeal she had been subjected to.
But, despite those misgivings, there was no question in my mind that I still loved her, and her clandestine arrival had brought back all those feelings. But as the days passed, I began to get the impression my feelings were one-sided and she was just going through the motions.
Which brought me to the last argument, earlier, where I said if I went with her, it would be business meetings, social obligations, and quite simply her ‘celebrity’ status that would keep us apart. I reminded her that I had said from the outset I didn’t like the idea of being in the spotlight, and when I reiterated it, she simply brushed it off as just part of the job, adding rather strangely that I always looked good in a suit. The flippancy of that comment was the last straw, and I left before I said something I would regret.
I knew I was not a priority. Maybe somewhere inside me, I had wanted to be a priority, and I was disappointed when I was not.
And finally, there was Alisha. Susan, at the height of the argument, had intimated she believed I had an affair with her, but that elephant was always in the room whenever Alisha was around. It was no surprise when I learned Susan had asked Prendergast to reassign her to other duties.
At least I knew what my feelings for Alisha were, and there were times when I had to remember she was persona non grata. Perhaps that was why Susan had her banished, but, again, a small detail; jealousy was not one of Susan’s traits when I first knew her.
Perhaps it was time to set Susan free.
When I swung around to look in the direction of the lane where my villa was, I saw Susan. She was formally dressed, not in her ‘tourist’ clothes, which she had bought from one of the local clothing stores. We had fun that day, shopping for clothes, a chore I’d always hated. It had been followed by a leisurely lunch, lots of wine and soul searching.
It was the reason why I sat in this corner; old habits die hard. I could see trouble coming from all directions, not that Susan was trouble or at least I hoped not, but it allowed me the time to watch her walking towards the cafe in what appeared to be short, angry steps; perhaps the culmination of the heat wave and our last argument.
She glared at me as she sat, dropping her bag beside her on the ground, where I could see the cell phone sitting on top. She followed my glance down, and then she looked unrepentant back at me.
Maria came back at the exact moment she was going to speak. I noticed Maria hesitate for a second when she saw Susan, then put her smile in place to deliver my coffee.
Neither spoke nor looked at each other. I said, “Susan will have what I’m having, thanks.”
Maria nodded and left.
“Now,” I said, leaning back in my seat, “I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why you didn’t tell me about the phone, but that first time you disappeared, I’d guessed you needed to keep in touch with your business interests. I thought it somewhat unwisethat you should come out when the board of one of your companies was trying to remove you, because of what was it, an unexplained absence? All you had to do was tell me there were problems and you needed to remain at home to resolve them.”
My comment elicited a sideways look, with a touch of surprise.
“It was unfortunate timing on their behalf, and I didn’t want you to think everything else was more important than us. There were issues before I came, and I thought the people at home would be able to manage without me for at least a week, but I was wrong.”
“Why come at all. A phone call would have sufficed.”
“I had to see you, talk to you. At least we have had a chance to do that. I’m sorry about yesterday. I once told you I would not become my mother, but I’m afraid I sounded just like her. I misjudged just how much this role would affect me, and truly, I’m sorry.”
An apology was the last thing I expected.
“You have a lot of work to do catching up after being away, and of course, in replacing your mother and gaining the requisite respect as the new Lady Featherington. I think it would be for the best if I were not another distraction. We have plenty of time to reacquaint ourselves when you get past all these teething issues.”
“You’re not coming with me?” She sounded disappointed.
“I think it would be for the best if I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“It should come as no surprise to you that I’ve been keeping an eye on your progress. You are so much better doing your job without me. I told your mother once that when the time came I would not like the responsibilities of being your husband. Now that I have seen what it could possibly entail, I like it even less. You might also want to reconsider our arrangement, after all, we only had a marriage of convenience, and now that those obligations have been fulfilled, we both have the option of terminating it. I won’t make things difficult for you if that’s what you want.”
It was yet another anomaly, I thought; she should look distressed, and I would raise the matter of that arrangement. Perhaps she had forgotten the finer points. I, on the other hand, had always known we would not last forever. The perplexed expression, to me, was a sign she might have forgotten.
Then, her expression changed. “Is that what you want?”
“I wasn’t madly in love with you when we made that arrangement, so it was easy to agree to your terms, but inexplicably, since then, my feelings for you changed, and I would be sad if we parted ways. But the truth is, I can’t see how this is going to work.”
“In saying that, do you think I don’t care for you?”
That was exactly what I was thinking, but I wasn’t going to voice that opinion out loud. “You spent a lot of time finding new ways to make my life miserable, Susan. You and that wretched friend of yours, Lucy. While your attitude improved after we were married, that was because you were going to use me when you went to see your father, and then almost let me go to prison for your murder.”
“I had nothing to do with that, other than to leave, and I didn’t agree with Lucy that you should be made responsible for my disappearance. I cannot be held responsible for the actions of my mother. She hated you; Lucy didn’t understand you, and Millie told me I was stupid for not loving you in return, and she was right. Why do you think I gave you such a hard time? You made it impossible not to fall in love with you, and it nearly changed my mind about everything I’d been planning so meticulously. But perhaps there was a more subliminal reason why I did because after I left, I wanted to believe, if anything went wrong, you would come and find me.”
“How could you possibly know that I’d even consider doing something like that, given what you knew about me?”
“Prendergast made a passing comment when my mother asked him about you; he told us you were very good at finding people and even better at fixing problems.”
“And yet here we are, one argument away from ending it.”
I could see Maria hovering, waiting for the right moment to deliver her coffee, then go back and find Gianna, the café owner, instead. Gianna was more abrupt and, for that reason, was rarely seen serving the customers. Today, she was particularly cantankerous, banging the cake dish on the table and frowning at Susan before returning to her kitchen. Gianna didn’t like Susan either.
Behind me, I heard a car stop, and when she looked up, I knew it was for her. She had arrived with nothing, and she was leaving with nothing.
She stood. “Last chance.”
“Forever?”
She hesitated and then shook away the look of annoyance on her face. “Of course not. I wanted you to come back with me so we could continue working on our relationship. I agree there are problems, but it’s nothing we can’t resolve if we try.”
I had been trying. “It’s too soon for both of us, Susan. I need to be able to trust you, and given the circumstances, and all that water under the bridge, I’m not sure if I can yet.”
She frowned at me. “As you wish.” She took an envelope out of her bag and put it on the table. “When you are ready, it’s an open ticket home. Please make it sooner rather than later. Despite what you think of me, I have missed you, and I have no intention of ending it between us.”
That said, she glared at me for a minute, shook her head, then walked to the car. I watched her get in and the car drive slowly away.
In Beijing Hutongs are formed by lines of traditional courtyard residences, called siheyuan. Neighborhoods were formed by joining many hutongs together. These siheyuan are the traditional residences, usually occupied by a single or extended family, signifying wealth, and prosperity.
Over 500 of these still exist.Many of these hutongs have been demolished, but recently they have become protected places as a means of preserving some Chinese cultural history. They were first established in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)Many of these Hutongs had their main buildings and gates built facing south, and lanes connecting them to other hutongs also ran north to south.
Many hutongs, some several hundred years old, in the vicinity of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower and Shichahai Lake are preserved and abound with tourists, many of which tour the quarter in pedicabs.
The optional tour also includes a visit to Shichahai, a historic scenic area consisting of three lakes (Qianhai, meaning Front Sea; Houhai, meaning Back Sea and Xihai, meaning West Sea), surrounding places of historic interest and scenic beauty and remnants of old-style local residences, Hutong and Courtyard.
First, we had a short walk through the more modern part of the Hutong area and given some free time for shopping, but we prefer just to meander by the canal.
There is a lake, and if we had the time, there were boats you could take.
With some time to spare, we take a quick walk down one of the alleyways where on the ground level are small shops, and above, living quarters.
Then we go to the bell and drum towers before walking through some more alleys was to where the rickshaws were waiting. The Bell tower
And the Drum tower. Both still working today.
The rickshaw ride took us through some more back streets where it was clear renovations were being made so that the area could apply for world heritage listing. Seeing inside some of the houses shows that they may look dumpy outside but that’s not the case inside.
The rickshaw ride ends outside the house where dinner will be served, and is a not so typical hose but does have all the elements of how the Chinese live, the boy’s room, the girl’s room, the parent’s room, the living area, and the North-south feng shui.
Shortly after we arrive, the cricket man, apparently someone quite famous in Beijing arrives and tells us all about crickets and then grasshoppers, then about cricket racing. He is animated and clearly enjoys entertaining us westerners.
I’m sorry but the cricket stuff just didn’t interest me. Or the grasshoppers.
As for dinner, it was finally a treat to eat what the typical Chinese family eats, and everything was delicious, and the endless beer was a nice touch.
And the last surprise, the food was cooked by a man.
Trunk stories – those stories you never seem to finish
…
Yes, the ones that end up in a dark corner of the writing room, if you have one, simply because the ideas ran out, or the next move wasn’t clear.
I have stories like that, quite a few actually, and every now and then I rummage, find one, and make the centre of my next NaNoWriMo project. And since NaNoWriMo comes around twice a year, it means two have done stories come in from the cold.
But, this idea of picking up a story you wrote a long while ago but never finished, mainly because something was missing, is a good one, and recently while I was away, and trying not to work on a new project i found this story I write about thirty years ago, and actually did get to the end, but it wasn;t end I wanted.
So, each night I read a few chapters and made notes.
Then, at the end of the story, I could see what the problem was; it needed to have closure with another event that was overshadowing the life of the protagonist. I had at some point written in a new character, and hadn’t quite got the details right.
There was a hint of a resolution at the end, but it had been hastily put together, or if I knew the me back then, I had written the end long before I got to it, and failed to maintain the plotlines to support it.
Or maybe it just meant that the story had been running around inside my head for the intervening thirty years and now I knew what to write, or how I was going to get to that end.
It needed a lot of rewriting, and in the end, it virtually ends up as two stories, related but independent of each other.
Yes, I have piles of trunk stories, and yes, I do go back a little earlier than thirty years, and yes, some of them become projects that are completed to the first or second draft.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 