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The watermill

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The watermill stood at the end of a quiet lane that wound along the valley side through the trees. One came round a corner and up a little rise, and saw it, red brick against the green hill. I first saw it a child, when I’d been taken there on holiday. In the back seat of the car, bare legs against the hot vinyl bench seat, I’d bumped and jolted along that road – no more than a dirt track in those days. When we got round that corner, I saw it, and like my parents before me, I was transfixed. I’d loved that place ever since.  I brought my wife there and introduced her to it, and later, our kids too.

We’d stayed near there on holiday several times in all the ensuing years, growing to love that sweet, familiar little land.  The steep, secret valleys, the winding roads through the woods. The lichen and the stone walls.

I’d stood and listened to the somehow tamed and domesticated sound of the river as it poured over the weir into the mill race. I’d watched as the water poured over the ancient paddles, listened as the tired old wheel creaked round, squeaking and grumbling with age. As if it were saying, Go away! leave me in peace, leave me to sleep in the afternoon sunshine…

And we’d been delighted when someone brought that mill into life and made it work again, turning  it into a tourist attraction.  It actually ground wheat into flour. Again and again we’d returned to this place in the rounded hills, to the secret watermill. We’d smelt the flour being ground, the dust sharp in our nostrils. We’d bought that flour and carried it away with us, baked bread with it as soon as we could, on the Sunday after getting back home from holiday. We’d tasted that bread, made from flour we’d seen being ground ourselves. We’d seen the wheat, we’d watched it poured out, and we’d heard the flour ground out. We’d heard the rumbling rollers, the grinding grey stones. Almost like it was our own.

And then the chance came to own the mill. In the afternoon of our lives, the means to do as we’d always wished, coincided with the opportunity to do so as well. We could buy the mill. And so we did; we bought it and we went to live there.  We went down the quiet lane by the river, to sit and listen to the grinding stones and the weir, at the brick mill under the green hills.

Glinda

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The car swerved towards him; his moped skidded and slipped out from under him. And then he was down on the tarmac with sudden and frightening violence. He came to a stop and somehow, got up, running and limping away.  He found himself running desperately along a side-street he’d never been down before, his crash helmet abandoned somewhere.  He didn’t know where he was, nor how he got there.  He was limping just as fast as he could manage, breathing in desperate ragged gasps.  They would be after him, his pursuers from the other gang.  They would not let up until they got him. They could not; there was no escape; no way out, no rescue.

Four or five doors down the street was a café, with a big window.  The window had a dark green frame. Peering in the window he could see tables and chairs inside, and napkins, tablecloths, glasses and plates. There were chequered tablecloths of white and brightest egg-yolk yellow.  He became aware that he was cold and hungry.  Inside, he could see a lady, perhaps a waitress or a cook, busying herself with her work. The lady turned toward the window, and with a start, he recognised her.  It was his reception teacher, Mrs Burke!  She saw him. She made a movement of her head that was not a suggestion but a command – that he should come along inside. All of a sudden he felt about four years old; he was in reception class.  He was being chased by the school bully.  He pushed the door open and went inside. A bell gave a little jangle.   

His eyes darted around looking for a place to hide.  In only a few seconds they would be upon him.  They would burst in here and finish off what they had started. Mrs Burke looked at him, arms on hips.

“Round the back”, she said. “Quick”.  He dashed past a serving counter into a sort of private area behind. Here they could not be seen from the street. She followed him, looking at him sternly, and yet somehow kindly.  He remembered her well; she looked almost the same as she did years ago when he was in school. She had been the nicest and friendliest of all the teachers.   

“What are you like? What on earth have you been up to?” she asked. “Look at you! You’re in a right state!”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.

“Someone’s after you.  Don’t worry – they won’t get you.  You’re safe here.  But look at you” she repeated, “your clothes are torn and filthy.  You’ve been fighting, haven’t you?  Sit there, and we’ll see to you.”

He slumped into a chair, all of a sudden drained of strength.  Mrs Burke turned away and left the room for a few moments.  She returned with a shiny green box, and a glass of lemonade.  The big green box had a white cross on it – it was a first aid kit. The glass of lemonade had ice and leaves in it.  He looked askance at the leaves as he took the proferred glass. 

“Some of the leaves are mint” she said. “You don’t have to eat it. Drink round it. It makes the drink taste fresher. You’ll like it. Drink it up.  Some of the leaves are not mint; they are very special, with healing properties.”

As he gulped at the lemonade, Mrs Burke dabbed with cotton wool and ointment, at his grazes and cuts. There was an odd sensation in his head; almost as if everything was slowing down or unwinding.  It was if a single moment was going on, and on, and on. It was like a clockwork toy running down.

“Now, in a minute, go into our bathroom – through there – and get yourself tidied up.  There will be some clothes laid out for you. Wear the new clothes instead of your dirty clothes.  Just leave the dirty clothes on the floor. Have a proper bath with bubbles. There’s plenty of time. If you come out to soon, I’ll send you back in again to do a proper job! Now git! Take your lemonade with you.”

He got up and went further back into the rear of the café, to the door indicated by Mrs Burke.  Through it was a tiny space with two doors, one for boys and men,  the other, for the girls. He went through into the men’s bathroom. There was a tiled floor; it was warm, heated. There was a bath with big old-fashioned taps. There was a dressing table with a mirror. Various grown-up lotions and potions stood on the dressing table. He looked at a few of them and sniffed at them. Grown up perfumes. Body lotion.  Eau de cologne. Shower gel. He had never in his life seen so many toiletries, never had he smelt so many nice smells in one place at one time.

There was a big frosted glass window…there was a big frosted glass window, and there was sunshine streaming in through it.  There was a big frosted glass window, and there was sunshine streaming in through it…but it had been a dull and rainy day only moments ago when he came into the cafe. He peered closely at it, trying to look through, pressing his nose against the cold glass, but he could make out nothing through it other than light.  There was no way to open the window. 

He put the plug in and started the bath.  He poured in a great deal of a green substance with a nice smell.  He hoped it was bubble bath.  It started to make bubbles. It took him quite a bit of fiddling with the hot and cold taps to make the water just right. While the bath was filling, he took his clothes off.  Over a towel rail were laid some jeans and a sweatshirt, socks and underwear.  Bemused, he picked up the sweater and jeans and looked at them, felt the material in his hands, and then put them down again.  He looked through the various jars and bottles on the dressing table. There was a jar of some brightly coloured crystals labelled “bath salts”. He’d heard they were good for baths, so poured them all into the foaming water. He’d not had many baths.  They’d had no bath in the flat on the tower block where’d been with his mum, when he was a little boy.

It was all so fine and grand. All this grown-up posh stuff to use.  There was a bath mat that felt like fur on his bare feet. There was a stack of towels, white like snow or perhaps like clouds against the blue sky of mid-morning.  He took one out and it was so big it wrapped around him a number of times. It too felt soft and luxurious to the touch.  On a little bench he discovered a pile of magazines. “Sick!” he said to himself. They were new and glossy, with pictures. Some were car magazines; another had pictures of scenery and people from different places in the world.  A third was about different pop stars.  Another was about engines and motors.

He climbed into the bath, wincing as the hot water touched the grazes on this legs.  This was nice.  He looked through some of the magazines, and just lay back in the hot soapy water.  When his fingers looked shrivelled, after quite a while, he got out.  He was feeling quite hungry now.  He put the clothes on, and went back out into the kitchen, where Mrs Burke was busy.  She turned as she heard the noise of the door opening.

“Ah. Good lad. Let’s have a look at you now”. She came across to see him, her sleeves rolled up. There was flour on her fingers.  She peered at him short-sightedly, as if over the top of reading glasses she was not actually wearing.

“You’ve drunk some of my very special lemonade with bits in it. That’ll make you feel a lot better.  You’ve had a bath in my bathroom and that will have done you the world of good too. And you’re looking very smart in some new clothes.”

“How did you know my size? You can’t have known I was coming…and…what about the sunshine?” He moved a little to look out of the door into the main part of the café; outside the big window, there was grey afternoon, rain.  He looked sharply at Mrs Burke and went back into the bathroom.   Sunshine was still streaming in through the frosted glass. He came out again, back into the presence of Mrs Burke, in the café, a shelter in the world from the rain, a place to hide from the other gang, who sought to end him. Their knives were out for him, but he was OK here with Mrs Burke.

“They won’t get you; you’re quite safe here, and when you do leave, you will be safer still.  They cannot harm you now.  Now: sit down here and have some supper. It’s OK; people outside cannot see you.”

He sat down, no longer capable of worrying, just wanting to eat something.

Mrs Burke appeared with a little notepad and a pen, poised to write.

“Are you ready to order, sir?” she asked.

He read slowly through the menu and noticed that nearly everything on it was his favourite food. He ordered pizza with pepperoni and hot chilli sauce, and a coke, and then some ice-cream. It seemed strange to him that the café had no other guests.  Perhaps it opened in the evening only, just for grown-ups. It did not seem strange to him that Mrs Burke was in charge.  He was in a strange kind of place where strange things could happen, and he was not at all bothered by it. 

When he’d almost finished eating his ice-cream, Mrs Burke came to sit down opposite him.

“Nice?” she asked. “You’ve seen our special bathroom; by now you’ll be very much aware that this is an unusual cafe. It’s not anywhere. Not everyone can come here. You can’t even see it on the street.  You could walk by it and not notice it.  But the people that do notice us, well, they always come in, and they always feel very much better for it.  I’m really pleased to see you.  You’re going to be OK now.  You’ll be able to do great things by yourself.  You’ll be going back to the place they can get you: but they won’t get you.  But you need to change yourself.  You’ve to turn to the future, turn away from the past.  You’ve to stop all those dodgy deals I know you’ve done, and get on the straight and narrow. You’ve got greatness ahead of you, believe me, young man.  Even if you had not been here, you would have been able to do great things.  But people who have been washed in our bathroom here, find it difficult to get into trouble later. You will – you must – go on.  You must get back to college. But the very first step is the hardest.  You’ll walk out that door, and then take that step.”

“Have a look in the mirror in the bathroom” she said.  He went into the bathroom and looked at himself.  He seemed unchanged, though perhaps a little pink and clean from the bath he’d had, and from the effect of the new clothes.  As he left the bathroom and went through the anteroom, he noticed that the tiled floor had a spiral of yellow tiles starting in the middle, getting bigger, spiralling out to the door into the café.  He went through the door one last time to see Mrs Burke waiting for him.

“On your way then, young man”, said Mrs Burke.

“Will I be OK?” he asked.

“Believe me when I say, you will be fine.”

And with that, he opened the door – which tinkled again – and walked out into the afternoon.  Hours must have passed: the rain had stopped and late afternoon sunshine was breaking through.  As he walked away from the café, three men suddenly burst round the corner on the opposite side of the street. One of them glanced across the street at him, for an instant, before ignoring him and running on. The other two men did not even notice him. They ran on down the street away from him, past the café, and disappeared.  He came to the end of the street and saw the street name: Lorien Street.

In the next street, there was a crowd at the scene of an accident. A youth on a moped had been hit by a car.  Police were there, and paramedics in green were tending to the badly injured youth.  As if from an immense distance, he saw the youth being lifted on a stretcher into an ambulance. He had an odd head-spinning moment of disorientation, as he became aware that the youth on the stretcher was him.

Specks of unfallenness

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“There was now no place on earth left where there was a memory of a time without evil” (Tolkien).

What if that was not quite true?

What if there’s unfallenness
In little flecks and specks?
Little bits of Eden.
Resonance of bliss.

What if there was space and time,
Where the fall just hadn’t happened?
Where illness needn’t blight our lives,
And all might live like Adam?

So ill was David, he had to be trundled to the aircraft in a wheelchair, and helped from the air bridge to his seat by his wife Ruth, with the assistance of solicitous cabin crew. It was just possible that the wasting disease, the creeping illness that struck him down at random, could be treated with a rare new procedure only available on the other side of the world.  In the times since his illness had struck, Ruth’s world had focussed and shrank down to almost nothing.  There was only caring for her husband, looking after his welfare, keeping him clean in body and mind and spirit – keeping his spirits up.  Neither of them were young anymore; their children had long since departed into the wider world and had themselves become parents.  Ruth was worn down with care, and grey-faced with exhaustion. She did not look forward to the 12 hour flight to London, even in business class. As for David, she was not even clear that he was compos mentis at all; the  drugs he needed to stay the pain had been augmented by additional drugs to allow him to fly.  This was a last ditch attempt to find a cure, to find relief.

She was so constituted as to have no concept of doing anything other than her duty.  She barely even thought about it: in sickness and in health. No resentment at her lot troubled her.  She was unworried by bitterness or any sense of the unfairness of life.  In this she was lucky; her yoke was easy.  All she had to deal with was ever-present tiredness, with which she had to do battle daily, even hourly.  The last few years had been a quick but nonetheless arduous journey, a terrible path from the full health of the late afternoon of life, to the place there were now: a gathering evening storm, from which perhaps, there was no shelter. Thirty-odd short months, and now twelve eternally long hours, and then onwards: to meet with consultants, urbane sun-tanned clinicians half the age of her husband, polite, distant, ever so slightly but unintentionally patronising.

And all after an insect bite. Her David had been bitten by some insect, while they were on holiday in Namibia. He had swatted it away, thought nothing of it. Later, the itchy bite, the scratching, the cream.  Months later, like a betrayal, like a sudden unlooked-for defeat, the intense pain: to hospital, to discover that there was the dread infection of a mysterious wasting disease.

David: I need to hang in there and be good.  This really hurts now and even with these amazing tablets, I’m not really coping. I can’t be showing how weak I am; not because I’m tough – because I’m not.  I want to stay strong for my wife. I don’t want to let her down or discourage her, my dear darling wife of all these thirty-odd years. What a star she is; silver and gold to me, she has been. It’s not just the pain; it’s the dizziness, the nausea.  I hate nausea. To feel sick is to feel like death. I don’t want to wish I was dead: that’s God’s timing, not mine.  But there have been times when it’s been all too easy to wish just that. I wished I was dead. It’s like a panic rising up in me; like bile in my throat. I have to make constant efforts to push down the urge to panic, resist the urge to let my mind get out of control.

He thought again of that damned insect: he remembered it so well, the bite on his neck, the raised hand, the swatting away. Some kind of goddamn horse-fly. He grimaced at the thought. And afterwards, pain and itching.  But it was only an insect bite.  Soon enough forgotten.  Months later, back at home, he’d woken up with a fever one night with terrible sweats. Mopping his brow, drinking plenty of fluids. By morning he’d had a headache like an angle-grinder shrieking and whining away in front of him, the sparks going on his forehead and in his eyes. He’d gone to the doctor; the doctor had just taken a look at him and prescribed more painkillers and rest. He’d gone home again and followed the doctor’s instructions.  Two days later he collapsed.  The next thing he knew, it was a week later in hospital, him coming out of a coma with the worried face of his Ruth looking down at him.

The aircraft taxied out, turned onto the runway, and started it’s lumbering roll toward London. At least the noise and vibration weren’t too bad.  Course set, cruising altitude reached, and the long haul along the length of Africa began.

II

“Did you hear about that aircraft that nearly crashed, and everyone on board was somehow healed of all kinds of diseases?”

“When was this?”

“Couple of weeks ago. There was a short piece on the news, but it disappeared soon enough. I remember seeing it in the news at the time and it piqued my interest, because the flight was off course and had flying much lower than usual across some desolate stretch of African jungle.  Can’t say I understood or believed all the accounts of what happened in terms of healing.  But I came across it again the other day, and believe me…”

“Oh yes?”

“A patient was referred to me from South Africa. A gentleman had contracted some kind of an infection from an insect bite, and he had developed some very odd, very rare, and very terminal disease or syndrome of diseases arising from that infection.  I have all the notes; dreadful; a most unpleasant and horrible business, believe me.  It made Bilharzia look a cold in the nose, believe me. This guy and his missus were on that flight. I saw them a few days ago, and there can be no doubt in my mind that he was completely clear of any infection. He was going to die hard, and now, it’s like he’s thirty years younger. It’s just completely impossible, if I hadn’t seen the guy, checked him out as a doctor, and done the tests, I wouldn’t believe it.  I still don’t believe it, but the evidence is walking round the streets of this great city of ours.”

A number of factors conspired to a significant change of course for this particular flight. One, was a storm of unprecedented violence and tenacity right in the intended path of the aircraft. This, of itself, was manageable and, whilst unusual, did happen from time to time.  Controllers and crew had a range of alternatives from which to choose – different slight variations in vector, all intended to keep their passengers from getting bumped out of their seats.  The other, was ongoing civil war in a central African country right under some of the proposed new flight paths.  Whilst this did not pose a threat to the aircraft as such, it was company policy not to overfly this country if it could be avoided at all.  The “Swiss Cheese” Model of safety theory tells us that accidents happen when holes (as in slices of a Swiss Cheese) in a number of different layers or slices of prevention, all line up, allowing an accident to slip through.  Normally, the holes in these layers are all in different places, and because they never line up, accidents don’t happen. The barriers are in place.  But if by some malign mischance they do line up, then the defences are down, and accidents can happen.

The huge lumbering liner banked to port and began to lose height, all according to plan.  What was not according to plan was more – and very severe – clear air turbulence which took everyone by surprise. The aircraft dropped like a stone; loose equipment was flung about and people walking around the cabin or who were not strapped in were sent flying into the air. At least one passenger was killed instantly, his neck broken from being slammed into the ceiling of the cabin.  In economy, a trolley was lifted into the air weightless and landed on several passengers, causing some dreadful injuries. There was for some time, rank terror in the cabin, shrieks of panic and dismay, before order, such as it was, could be restored, first aid given, and an attempt at tidying up could be made.  The captain, grim-faced, heard the reports from his cabin crew in silence. Arrangements were made to descend and land, at a coastal city in a country not normally served by this airline. For some time, the captain found his aircraft to be flying through airspace not normally used by civil aircraft, with darkest green jungle and mountain far beneath.

Ruth thought, this turbulence has been going on for too long.  Bouncy bouncy and I could do with another drink. She glanced up at the lit up “seatbelt” sign. As she did so, she sensed and felt the aircraft start to bank deeply to the left.  To do so whilst circling to land in a big city, was usual, but to do so out in the wilds of Africa, was unusual. What was happening?  And her heart and her stomach all of a sudden were in her mouth; the aircraft was falling; she was weightless. She felt herself rise hard against her seatbelt. Her book and reading glasses flew into the air. She automatically looked across at David in the next seat; his eyes came open from a drowse and caught hers. Even in this time, even in this pain, they were unreadable. Or so he thought.  She knew what they were saying. Unreadable meant something: David’s face, his eyes, she’d always been able to read: he was never a poker player or any kind of an actor, at least not until this disease had struck and the shutters had had to come down.  Another jolt: a violent tug upwards and then a jink downwards.  All around, shrieks and moans as the passengers felt the aircraft judder and sway around them.  The sound of small objects: cups and glasses, books, pens, tablets, being thrown around the cabin.  A dust of loose objects rattling around inside a cylindrical steel can, faraway over the jungle.

After this in-flight catastrophe, the aircraft made it’s way down to an airfield serving a city in a country that was wild and undeveloped even by the standards of west Africa.  Yet, land they must, and address the casualties amongst the passengers, attend to first aid and check that nothing was damaged on the aircraft. There was one rather odd experience common to all the passengers, as the aircraft descended.  It was as after the aircraft had come down through the clouds. Deep in the clouds, all of a sudden, there was a few brief seconds when it seemed as if the aircraft was lit up by golden sunshine. Perhaps, some of the more practical passengers reported, long afterwards, there had been some form of voltage surge to cause all the cabin lights to briefly brighten up.  Problem was, the records and the evidence in the computer systems of the aircraft, found no evidence of any such surge. But every passenger reported that they had felt suddenly as if the cabin had been lit up by sunshine. There was no report of lightning or of any explosion or anything of that sort.

David: The Bounce woke me up from a light slumber. I was reasonably tightly strapped in, so I didn’t move very far.  Books and various other things went lying into the air, including my all wife’s things.  After the Bounce I was no longer asleep or even drowsy; I was wide awake. After the chaos and panic was addressed, the aircraft began to descend; the Captain had announced what had happened and what was going to happen, how we were going to make an unscheduled landing at the city of Noula.  Even though I was already awake at the time of the sudden flash of sunshine, it felt as if I was woken up by it.  I suddenly came awake or was somehow revived.  I never saw it as such even though I was awake.

Ruth: My life is divided into before that flash of light, and after.  I’ll never see things the same way again. I was so tired.  Came that flash, that sudden burst of light, and it was as if someone had mopped my brow with Ambrosia. I can’t put it any other way. I felt renewed and refreshed; it felt like I’d been asleep for a hundred years, and awoke on a late summer’s morn. All my weariness was gone: my mind was cast back over thirty years to my youth, to those golden moments, those shining hours of youth.

Much delayed, after a certain amount of trouble in Noula, the airliner took off again and made its way to London, whence it arrived nearly eight hours late. 

Bright Brandelhow

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Outside, in the July evening, the round grey pebbles of the lake shore were still warm from the hot summer sunshine. The sky across the water was turning to pink, but he was comfortable outdoors in only shorts and T-shirt. Gathering handfuls of sticks, he prepared a little fire on the shingle a few yards from where he’d pitched the tent. He no purpose but leisure, and no food to cook. He had the ancient desire to look into the heart of the fire.

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He’d been brought to the Newlands Valley, to this western shore of Derwent Water, as a boy. In that single week he had lost his heart. He loved it all: the tree-clad islands, the rounded fells, the delicate peace-drenched light at evening and early morn. As the dry sticks caught fire and began to burn, he recalled the smell of woodsmoke. This little place, this nook of old England, this quiet corner of the Lake District, was to him, a kind of spiritual centre, a place of pilgrimage.

Behind the little tent on the tree-fringed meadow by the lake, the land rose up in waves to the high tops, even at this hour, crested in sunshine. In the stillness, the sound of sheep high on the fell could be heard.

Dark Brandelhow

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Two nights ago, he and the others had escaped from Force Crag Mine. They’d made their way across the grain of the country, through trackless valleys and overgrown fields, through the dark and the storm, travelling at night, hiding up in the daytime.  They’d got here late on the second night, drenched, cold and shivering, and had holed up in the ruins of an old outdoor centre.  They’d no means to light a fire, and nothing to cook even if they could. The ever-present risk of being caught, weighed heavy upon them like their cold, wet clothes.

Their pickup was to be by boat, on the lake that had been called Derwent Water. There was a jetty in these overgrown woods, near a place they’d heard was called Brandlehow.  An old jetty from better times, when there had still been such a thing as tourism. But now, these once busy woods, these unkempt fields, all the land about, were drear from decades of neglect.

Only the trees moved, roaring and bending, creaking in the wind. The rain dripped from the leaves of Autumn, and where there was no shelter, it came down endlessly, an unstoppable grey noise.

Hope ebbed away as the grey daylight grew stronger. Sheets of rain obscuring the mountainside became visible. Dark clouds were down on the high tops. Wind was whipping the water into a frenzy. Even on this lake, there were substantial white-horsed waves thrashing the stones of the shore. The wind was like a solid noise in the tree tops; the rain, relentless, dispiriting. Despair and defeat was an actual taste in the mouth. It seemed to be over. They would be stuck here, and stuck here, they would be caught.

As the daylight thickened, the weather, if it were possible, grew worse. Nothing animal or man was out and about or moving in this weather. Small furry creatures were hidden away in their burrows and holes, hiding from the storm. Such people as were left in this remote part of the country would likewise be in their homes. It was all wet leaves, mud, sodden clothes, wet hair, wet and cold feet. Hunger gnawed at them, weak as they already were from working in the mine. They were paralyzed with defeat and exhaustion, hunkered down in the woods, sheltering in long collapsed ruins, buildings that had been derelict for decades.

The crunching sound of footsteps…what was that? His heart hammered. A man appeared from around the corner of the ruined building, wearing a rain-soaked outdoor jacket made in the previous century, and a leather hat. Rainwater dripped from the rim. He had a straggly beard, and missing front teeth. He looked silently at the fugitives for a few moments, saying nothing, and yawned hugely. The three of them struggled tiredly to their feet. The stranger did not speak. He just indicated with a jerk of his head, in a voiceless movement, that they should follow him, and almost as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.  One after the other, the three fugitives limped back out into the rain and wind, their feet squelching, wet socks, wet shoes, blisters. Their footwear was light prison issue work shoes, not really appropriate for walking in wild country in heavy weather.

Following the stranger down through the dripping woods, they came to what looked like a derelict landing stage.  A rather odd-looking boat was alongside.  The boat was somehow, difficult to see. It was certainly grey. It sat very low in the wave-strewn water. Or was it grey? Was it bigger than it appeared to be? The three of them climbed onto the landing stage, each casting dubious and fearful glance at the violence and malevolent passion of the waters beneath, and thence, following the man in the hat, down onto the strange grey boat. Close-up, it looked like a launch of some kind. As soon as the men were aboard, the boat jerked violently astern, and, rocking violently, turned away from the shore. 

Fidelis ad ultimum

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1.

After lunch, Mrs Smith prepared to go out. She was going to have to leave her dog behind. Her dog was a little terrier, very intelligent, but not great at being left alone for a long time. The dog was prone to what some people called “separation anxiety”. She talked to the dog as she prepared herself, telling him what was happening, informing him why she could not take him along. It wouldn’t be strictly true to say that the dog frowned, but you could see that he knew that something was going to happen that he would not like. In his doggy mind, he formed the impression that he would be taken to the vet – the worst possible thing he could think of.

Mrs Smith was in fact going to a hospice to visit the husband of her dearest friend. The poor man was dying of cancer and was not long for this world. Mrs Smith would be going to meet her friend at her house, and together, they would drive to the hospice.

As Mrs Smith put her coat on it finally dawned on little Fido that he was going to be left behind, and he started to whine.

“Stop that!!, said Mrs Smith. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ll have to put up with being on your own for a few hours.”

Stooping down, she said “C’mere”, and the little dog ran, tail wagging, to be petted and fussed over. The terrier calmed down somewhat, and Mrs Smith got back to her feet – slowly, for she was no longer a young woman. She did it slowly mainly to avoid dizziness and seeing stars.

The dog stood in the hall, quite still, as Mrs Smith left the house. The front door closed with the distinctive click peculiar to that particular door. Not for the first time, Mrs Smith reflected that no two doors shutting ever sounded alike – each door was different. That caused a moment of reminiscence as she remembered the sound of the shutting of the front door of her home when she was a little girl. Mrs Smith had a walk of perhaps a mile to her friend’s house. It was a bright fresh morning in October. Cold – but not too cold. As she walked along the street she saw the postman and waved to him, as she always did. This postman was the most cheerful and helpful man imaginable, and bore a close resemblance to a popular TV personality.

Mrs Smith and her friend were very close, and had known each other for a long time. They drove to the hospice to visit with her friend’s husband, who was terminally ill. He had been ill for some years. It is of course never easy to deal with a loved one dying in this way. Mrs Smith’s friend sometimes wondered if she was responding in an inappropriate way to the impending death of her husband of forty years. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him deeply, or that they had not had a wonderful life or deeply satisfying marriage – although with all the ups and downs you might expect of any marriage. She sometimes felt that the younger generation tended to wear their hearts on their sleeves in such matters. She was of an older, perhaps more emotionally continent generation. Her own mother had been born during the Second World War and had recounted to her harrowing stories of living through that conflict as a little girl in a family with no breadwinner.

Mrs Smith and her friend managed to have a short conversation with the dear dying man who had been so important to them both for so much of their lives. Towards the end of the conversation, he fell asleep. It was clear to them both that he was in a good deal of pain so this was perhaps a good thing. Though no perceptible signal passed between the two friends, they got up to leave at exactly the same moment. No word was spoken; none was necessary.

When Mrs Smith got back home, she knew something was wrong almost the instant the key slid into the lock. One distinctive noise, normally followed seconds later by another – the exciting yapping of her terrier as he bounded towards her in greeting. Except the second sound never came. She went into the house and shut the door behind her. Nothing seemed out of place; there was no shredded newspaper on the hall floor. No coats had been pulled from the coat rack. There were no deep scratches in the newel post at the foot of the stairs. But the dog was not there. There was quite literally no trace of him. His basket was there, but it had been there when she left after lunch. She looked all around the downstairs of her house; she checked that the doors were all locked. Fido was quite clever enough – though neither strong enough nor big enough – to trip the handles of doors and thus make his escape from a room. She checked upstairs; she checked downstairs. She checked upstairs again, looking under the beds. There was no doubt about it – the dog was gone.

Could her one of her sons have arrived unannounced and taken him for a walk? This was unlikely. Both of them lived hundreds of miles away and both had families and worked full time. Both were unlikely to come to her house alone or without giving her some notice beforehand. Could the dog have got through a door she had missed and left unlocked? No. She had left every door locked. Could a thief have stolen him? No – realistically, why would they steal such a dog? But in any case, there was no sign of breaking and entering, no sign of any disturbance of any kind whatsoever. But the dog was gone. It seemed beyond belief. She wondered for a moment, whilst absent-mindedly putting the kettle on, if she was losing it. Could she herself be struggling with dementia or memory loss issues? It was possible; since the death of her own husband some years previously she had wondered if she should remain on her own in this big old house. A wave of self-doubt and uncertainty swept over her as she waited for the kettle to boil.

But the dog was gone. She should at the very least, report it to the police and to the RSPCA.

2.

In my dream I was on holiday, sat at a little table outdoors. The table was one of two or three on a terrace at the rear of a large villa. Behind the villa are gentle wooded hills. The terrace was made of light-coloured flagstones, and at the edge, there were two small carved stone lions, worn and old, barely recognisable as lions. They were made of a darker red sandstone, quite different from the flags of the terrace and the low wall supporting them. From between the lions a few steps descended to a path through some scrubby, grassy dunes to a beach. The curve of a bay was visible; in the distance, a headland. It was a glorious summery evening in a hot country. The sky was a vault of the clearest blue, with the promise of sunset.

A waiter, wearing a cream dinner jacket and a black bow tie, appeared from the house, carrying a tray. He looked to be of Mediterranean descent. On the tray, a jug of water, a bottle of red wine, glasses, and a bowl of bread. The waiter set the tray down with professional aplomb and delivered these items onto the table, saying nothing as he did so. I looked closely at the waiter, for he seemed somehow familiar. No flicker of recognition came as he opened and poured out the wine. He nodded with grave professional courtesy, and smiled, saying, “enjoy”. And then he disappeared, walking back up to the house as unobtrusively as he had appeared.

I settled into my chair, sipping a very good Malbec, and nibbling at the bread. A tremendous burden seemed to have lifted from my shoulders; a huge task of work was now complete. I could relax. I was almost too tired to think, and quite content to just sit and look at the dunes and the beach, and the occasional wheeling sea birds, and enjoy the sunshine.

Sometime later, as the sun neared the horizon, I spied movement on the beach. People were there, of course, sunbathing and walking and relaxing, and they were moving about, but this movement stood out against that pattern as unusual. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an unusual pattern. A hidden part of my mind noticed something odd. A large brown dog was making it’s way purposefully along the beach. The dog seemed to know where it was going, quite content to trot along past various people, with no obvious sign of a master or an owner. The dog was not wandering aimlessly with nose to the ground, as dogs do.

It came up the steps and crossed the terrace towards me, and greeted me, licking my hand briefly and allowing me to stroke him. It was a big German Shepherd, and it seemed somehow familiar. This was odd, because I’ve never owned a dog or known such a dog. But then again, this is a dream.

The dog turned around a few times, and lay down to doze. Occasionally it twitched in its sleep and thumped its tail. Time passed; evening fell, the light faded and the sunset was glorious upon the sky. By and by, the red wine was finished, and it was night. I decided to get up and go indoors. The promise of a chill was in the air – not the chill itself, just the hint of what might come later. So I got up and stretched, creaking and stiff after so long sat down. I made my way up the villa, leaving the wine glass and bottle on the table. The dog, sensing me move, likewise got up, shook itself, followed me across the terrace and into the house.

Inside the house there were a few dim lights. There was no-one about, in what seemed to be a small hotel of some kind. I went up the stairs to the first floor, and the dog followed me up the stairs. Some way along a musty and ill-lit corridor, I pulled a key from my pocket, unlocked the door to one of the rooms, and went in. The dog was at my heels, so I held the door open, and the hound went ahead of me into the room. There was a bed, a chair and a washbasin, and a simple desk. An elegant antique wardrobe stood in one corner.

Deeply tired now, and with a pleasantly buzzing head from having drunk a full bottle of good red wine, I prepared myself for bed. I did so by the simple expedient of taking my clothes off and laying them over the chair. After washing my face and drinking water straight from the tap, I was into bed, which was just sheets, after the fashion of a hot country. The dog, after checking things and looking round the room and sniffing for a few moments, found himself a place and lay down, making that curious circling round that dogs sometimes do when laying down. Lying in bed, I was happy to be able to relax, grateful for the rest and peace. It seemed again as if some great task, some mighty or immense work, some tremendous effort, was behind me now. It was accomplished. Glad I was to have been sitting in the sunset and sipping good red wine. Soon enough, I slept.

3.

And I dreamed again, a dream within a dream. I was walking my dog in what seemed to be the North Downs, something like the quiet, secret chalk valleys around Woldingham. I knew it was a dream because I don’t have a dog. I’ve never had a dog. I admire well-behaved, aristocratic, classy dogs. I like clever dogs and I like working dogs – sheep dogs for example – but I never owned a dog myself. But here, in this dream, I have a dog. This does not seem odd. This is a dream. Anything can happen, but in another sense, everything that happens will make perfect sense. I’ve always valued dreams. In my youth I wrote them all down, trying to remember them from year to year. Some classics have stayed with me all my life; others I can remember only because I wrote them down. I can remember only that I once must have dreamed that dream, but cannot recall the dream itself. I have found that the great God above sometimes speaks to us mortals through dreams and visions.

The dog was deriving immense pleasure from being required to fetch sticks. This can be tiresome after a while, but today I too was satisfied with hurling the stick into the distance. The dog watched carefully to see which way the stick would go, and then bounded off joyfully, and with endless enthusiasm and energy, to fetch the stick back. With the stick grasped firmly in his jaws, the dog crouched down, eying me, playing a kind of teasing game, not releasing the stick until it wants to.

I spied a man crossing the hillside, dressed in a Barbour jacket and wellingtons. He had the look and dress of a landowner about him. My dog bounded up to him to say hello, and he squatted down to make a fuss of the hound. He glanced up at me and I was somehow not surprised to see that the man appeared to be the waiter that served my wine last night. Or was it on a hotel terrace in Italy many years ago? And yet also, he seemed to be someone I should know.

“You’ll forgive me”, I said, “but I’m sure I know you from somewhere, but I’ve forgotten your name.”

“No, that’s fine.” He replied. “I know a lot of people and I do have a very good head for faces. I’ve known you for years, and we have met once or twice, but you may not have recognised me when we met.” He said this with a little smile.

I was nonplussed. I knew him from somewhere, that’s for sure. “Are you the owner of this land or the farmer or the estate factor?” I asked.

He gave me an odd glance before replying. “Yees, I suppose I am something of that sort. It’d certainly be true to say that I’m familiar with the country round here, and isn’t it beautiful?”

He had an odd accent that I could not for the life of me pin down or place. I’ve always loved language and accents, even to the extent of trying to understand accents in different languages. A German speaking in an Essen accent; the French of a person from Algeria; Russian spoken by a Muscovite.

“On a day like this, for sure. On any day, in fact. You’d hardly believe that London Bridge and the Square Mile is only twenty miles from this place. What I like here is that you can barely even hear the M25. I used to live in the north of England and I could do lots more visiting places like the Lakes and the Yorkshire Dales. I sometimes miss those places terribly, lovely though it is here. I remember driving through the Lake District years ago and having that feeling of returning home. I had to pull over; I was in tears.”

“Mmmm. It’s a strange thing to miss a place you once loved, isn’t it?” he observed. “Like you’re a stranger in a strange land, a country not your own. I think we’re all in exile to an extent, and that somewhere else there is a true home for us all. I guess you’re retired now?”

“Well yes, as such. I haven’t been well lately, and to be honest it’s nice to be able to get out in the fresh air. I was an engineer for years, working all over the world, and after that I had a desk job, but I stopped that years ago. Nice to do something different”. I told him about church, about being the church warden and a lay preacher, and about working with the Rotary Club, and he listened politely, nodding at intervals.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I learned my trade as a joiner, working with my dad. I worked with him fifteen years until he died, and I took over his business. Bit of general building work. Nice to work with your hands. But the opportunity to do something different came up. As I said, I look after all kinds of things now, and this land is only a small part of what I do. I do get about it a bit, travel a lot, and it’s nice, as you say, to be out in the fields and fresh air, meeting people”.

We spoke more, of my wife and our children and their families, their hopes and dreams. We spoke of the church and of the young people; we spoke of the political situation. He was quite the most remarkably courteous fellow; he never interrupted or got hot under the collar about politics, as the English often are. That accent of his was niggling me; this pleasant and well-mannered fellow was no Englishman, however well he seemed to know the North Downs. I never got around to asking him where he was from. So delightful a listener was he that the time just flew by and it was me talking, talking all the time. And yet that seemed right. I was not bending his ear, nor was he just putting up with me out of politeness. Without seeming to be too interested in me, he had the knack of giving me his full and complete attention. I know – over the years I’ve seen enough of the signs of boredom, and tried not to express them myself. The cocktail eyes, the surreptitious glance at the clock on the wall, the edginess. I remember being in an interview with a very clever and very observant priest and making every effort not to look at my watch at all – but at the end this priest said, “I know you want to get on…I’ll let you go now”. He knew, he knew all along how shallow were my attempts to be courteous. But this gentleman’s courtesy was whole-hearted. It was if the whole of his attention, the entirety of his being, was given over to courtesy and politeness.

“You’ve been wondering about my accent…”

I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out.

“It’s Syrian. My name is Maran. Maran Atha. I was bought up in the Middle East; I came here after the Syrian Civil War. It’s been good talking with you, but I think your dog” – he said this with a sidelong glance at the dog – “wants to get on with stick throwing.”

The dog was bored with all this conversation and was whining. He wanted attention. I waved him towards me and he came to me, licking my hand as I fussed over him.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again, and quite soon”, said Mr Maran Atha, looking at me with that same little smile. And I woke up.

I was back in the hotel room and the brown dog was licking my hand. The dog was whining, trying to tell me something; insistent, it would not give up. I’d no clock or watch, but bladder pressure seemed to tell me that it was later in the night than earlier. The dog continued with its whining. Coming back from using the bathroom, I peered out the window but it faced northwest and I could see nothing of dawn.

I became aware that I was still dreaming. This was somewhat confusing because I’ve just woken up from a dream of speaking to a man on a chalky hillside in southern England. A very few times in my life I’ve been in a dream within a dream – woken up from a dream to find that I am still dreaming. Though on those occasions it was only afterwards when I woke up fully that I became aware of this. Remember the old film “Inception”? I thought I’d best get out of bed, and run with what was happening.

The dog waited patiently for me to fling on some clothes. The two of us left the room, went down the stairs, through the hall and out onto the terrace. The house was quiet and dark, with the strange smells of a house not your own, and the strange unfamiliar shapes of night time. There was no night porter or concierge; all was quiet, and the door out onto the terrace was not locked. Once outside, it was clear that it was very early morning, and sunrise was at hand. The dog and I walked around the side of the house to find the eastern sky ablaze with the promise of sunrise, above the tree-clad hills. The dog trotted off ahead, and I followed along an ancient track, up the hill behind the house, towards the sunrise. It seemed to know the way. The path led through the gloom under trees and shrubs, past an old and decayed shed, unused for decades. As we climbed, the view of the bay opened out behind me, and the pre-dawn light grew stronger as the minutes passed. The dog and I climbed on for a while, sometimes steeply uphill, sometimes level and in the valleys of little streams, always through trees. Somehow it was always still just before dawn. In due course, we reached a hilltop, and the trees came to an end. Here was a flatter place, a kind of terrace. A stone wall marked the edge of the woods.

All of a sudden, in that way that occurs only in dreams, there was an odd and disorienting kind of shift, one of those strange and unexplained changes of circumstance, rather like when you find yourself running in treacle or getting onto the train dressed in your pyjamas. I had become a downed airman in enemy territory, and here was a guide from the resistance, to lead me across a frontier from a war zone into a peaceful country. A man was waiting for us, by the stone wall. He resembled a friendly waiter I’d once met, but I couldn’t be sure. The dog had disappeared.

“Hallo, my friend.” he said, “I will be your guide, anbd we shall make this last stage of your journey together. You’ll need my help”.

“Why?” I asked.

“At the frontier there is a deep and fast-running river to cross. You cannot cross it alone or without a guide to help you.” With this he looked right at me and I knew him for the man in my dream last night, when I’d dreamt of being on the North Downs.

And with no further word, the man who was to be my guide turned away and set off, and I followed him towards the rising sun.

5.

In the early morning, the phone rang, and Mrs Smith was instantly awake. She was a light sleeper in these times, the more so since the disappearance of her dog the other day. Dawn was in the air; there was light behind the curtains. Even as she reached out for the telephone, she knew who it was and what would be said. The call was from her dear friend whose husband was dying. In a few words, Mrs Smith’s friend passed on the news that her husband had died only a few minutes before, not long after sunrise.

“It was a remarkable thing,” she said. “I spoke to him last night, and he said was so very tired. But right at the end he seemed very relaxed and peaceful, after everything he’d been through.”

Mrs Smith thanked her friend and she rang off. They would meet later.

She got up out of bed, and started to go downstairs. About half-way down the stairs, she had an odd moment of disorientation when she heard the click of her dogs paws on the wooden floor of the hall. It was disorienting because it was quite impossible – her dog was gone these few days. She’d reported the loss, and had had a telephone conversation with a nice lady from the police, who in the end, was no help at all, however nice she’d been to talk to. Mrs Smith wondered once again if she was losing her senses. Not a great feeling to have when coming down the stairs at 7 o’clock in the morning in your seventies.

But no, there he was, the cheeky and intelligent little terrier, looking up the stairs at her, waiting patiently for her to get to the bottom of the stairs, as if he’d never been gone.

All the landscape was the mill

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A crowd of ladies from a faraway land, each dressed in brightly coloured fabrics, would come chattering past the house each day. They would sweep along every morning and evening, their conversations bright, adult, and quite incomprehensible in some unknown language. The little boy asks, who are those ladies? His mother tells him that they all work in the mill at the bottom of the street.

The boy learned a lesson young: who you are and what you are can be seen from where you’re going – and when. The direction you’re walking, and the time of day, tells us something about who you are.

At the bottom of the street, a crossroads. Go left into a quiet lane past the allotments to the edge of town. Go right past a bowling green smooth like a billiard table, to a sweet shop. Straight on, to the park, to school, to Cubs. The crossroads of our lives – turn each way for different lives, different paths. People will know where you are going, when you walk through these streets. Here, brick and tarmac, there, woods and quiet shrubs and grasses. Straight on – for play, and for learning.

The sepia stains of history lie on these streets, or at least it seems so, to the boy and to the man he became. Here, a grandfather swam in an outdoor pool. There, a street where an unsmiling lady stood in a crowd of joy and cheers, struggling to see the good in VE Day. Over there, the flats, and the outlines of vanished streets. The streets are gone, but the memories remain, thick like dust, easy to discern if you’re the right sort. Listen carefully, even today, and you can hear the treble drone of bombers, or the wretched tears of poverty, the grinding life of the urban poor.

He came back to those streets in a kind of pilgrimage, thinking somehow to reconnect with the past, with the feeling of those early days. If he could represent his childhood. all the carefree years of boyhood, as an icon, that icon would be a little image of the mill at the bottom of the street. He walked past that mill every day for years uncounted, it seemed to him when he was young. Endless weeks, he went past that mill, morning, afternoon, evening. And he never went inside it, in all his life.

As a young man, he’d sat with this father watching old Laurel and Hardy movies. They were amusing; there were wry smiles. But even as he watched them, he found that they were just not as funny as they had been when he was a small boy. He’d mentioned this to his father, who’d shook his head with the greybeard wisdom of ages. “The boy who rolled around laughing on the floor at these movies, no longer exists”, he said. The boy became the man, the young man became the older man.

Could these streets ignite a kind of holy nostalgia? Could they form a harbour into which a pilgrim might sail, to sojourn briefly in the past – a visit only. Not to remain. The mill was still there; the streets were still there. The crossroads by the bowling green was unchanged. The municipal lines of alternating plane trees and lime trees in the park – still there, save for a few gaps caused by storms of old.

Walking in past the park, he’d noticed that no single youngster was out playing. It was 4.30pm on a spring weekday afternoon. The roundabouts were siezed and rusted, the swings abandoned, it seemed. Where was everybody? Where were they all? He knew, really. No Marie Celeste mystery here. Just the modern world, risk averse, focussed on itself, with smartphones, tablets and unwillingness to be out of doors.

The mill was the fixed point – all the landscape was the mill. But there was no river of bodies pouring down the street to find work there. That river had dried up long ago. Here had been a future for hands of skill. No longer. That much had changed even in his own youth. What remained now, was clearly foreseeable even back then – if you could read the writing on the wall. What had been a mill making clothes, was now a university department. It was a department covering such matters as textiles and art, so there remained a tenuous connection with what had been. On the river of time, you cannot paddle upstream. That river flows only in one direction.

He walked up the street, remembering the red and blue bricks in the pavement. He recalled cycling down the street on a baking hot day, trying to keep in the shade. The baleful sunlight of reality was upon him now, beating mercilessly on his head. No golden light of evening, nor delicate pink at dawn, but scorching tropical sunshine at noon. A sunshine, as Kipling wrote, that sometimes strikes men dead.

Yet, though saddened, he knew things had to change. There is no going back. There’s no returning to those places of golden childhood. Nostalgia is a hip-flask from which we can allow ourselves no more than a discreet sip, every now and then. If we look back, we must look in thankfulness, not in nostalgia.

Treading his way up what he thought was a dried up riverbed, he noticed that there was a new river of bodies making their way to the mill, young people, people learning. people looking to the future. And reassured somewhat, he left that harbour and sailed away back home.

Victoria

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I sat in the bar on the mezzanine level, looking down at the jostling throng. There were crowds of people, rivers of humanity, rushing streams and babbling brooks of concerns: work, life, holiday, family, health. The people flowed back and forth across the concourse, each intent on their own business.

And it seemed to me as I sat in the bar, nursing my beer, that amongst the swirling crowds, that sea of people, just a few of them stood out. Across space and time, I saw a handful of people crossing this station concourse.

A man – two men – in morning suits appeared as from the pages of history. It was 1957. Britain was only slowly recovering from the austerity of rationing. There was a greyness, a grim and drab feel to the station. These two young men were rushing, desperate to catch their train to Dorking. For it was a special day for them both. One was a Best Man; the other, the Groom. They had been in what seemed like an endless queue, and somehow, they had convinced the staff of the railway company to let them jump the queue and get on. Now, at least, they were almost on the platform and on their way.

I took a pull at my pint, and when I looked down again, the scene had changed. Soldiers streamed across the station. Orderly ranks, serried columns. Rifles, rucsacs, the harsh shouts of sergeants. These men were entraining for Dover, bound for Flanders field. The hopes and fears of a generation of young men are hidden on a thousand faces. Here is a young subaltern, pink of voice and cheek, bravely concealing his worry, doing his best, biting his lip. His men may have to depend on him being strong.

Back in the present, I see a young lady, a refugee from war, crossing the station carrying everything she owns in one immense suitcase. Three young children accompany her, silent, scared, intimidated by the noise and crowds. Their mother knows only a few words of the language; she holds little or no currency. But she and her kids are in a better place by far than where they were before. .

Here is a youth in his eary twenties, visiting the big city for the first time. perhaps. He’s crossed by tube from one of the great northern terminii, and must now make his way to a small town in Kent, for a job interview. Days before, a mighty storm leveled trees all aross the south of England. He will soon travel by bus through all that chaos of fallen branches and broken limbs, from a town whose very name has been rendered a lie by the storm.

The scene changes again and I see a man carrying a small grip crossing the station. The crowds have all disappeared and the grey light of early morning can be seen in the glass roof. He has come up from the underground to find it pouring with rain. He pauses for a moment to take in the scene. Rain cascades from the gutters. The tarmac gleams wet in the reflected street lights. He crosses the forecourt, taking in the calm of early morning. The rain, the sound of the rain, calming his nerves, as he makes his way to the airport train and the other side of the world.

The interview

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The interviewer glanced sharply at Igor. Whilst she did not actually move her eyebrows, he had the impression that she did not approve of him.  Negativity and discouragement seemed to come off her in waves.  He made a conscious decision to gather up his courage, taking it up about him as if it were an actual cloak; with an effort, which he hoped was concealed, he held her gaze steadily.  He’d been through battle, through fire and storm; he had no need to be afraid of such as she – and yet, he was. But where had she been at Yekatarinburg? Had she attained to battlefield promotion? Had she seen what he’d seen, done what he’d had to do? Yet, he knew in his heart the answer to all those questions.  The interviewer was an air force officer and very much senior to him. She was a combat veteran – we all were. She would have seen as much action as he, if not more than he.

She took a short intake of breath, as a precursor to speaking.  Ages passed in an instant.  All time seemed to him to stand still in that single moment between her little intake of breath and the words that he knew would follow.

“OK, Major. Thank you for time and for joining us today. The panel will consider your application and we will let you know in due course.”

And that was that.  He had hoped against all hope that he would know in the interview itself, though he should have known better. He would have to wait. He arranged his face in what he knew would appear as a grave and formal military mask, and thanked his interviewer.  He pushed back his chair, rose to his feet, and saluted the officers of the panel. And he left the room.

“What does the Group Captain think?” asked one of the other two members of the panel, once Igor had left the room.

“He’s easily the strongest and most able candidate we’ve seen so far. A definite.  I don’t want him thinking he’s God’s gift to Mother Russia though, so I had to take a stern line with him in the interview. If he has a weakness, it’s that he will tend to see things in black and white.”

“That could be his downfall” replied the Army officer to her left.

“Indeed.  In these times, the need is for balance and nuance, for political nouse, for treading carefully through the post-war wreckage and taking forward what is right, but letting go what is not right, whilst not condemning it overtly.”

“Letting the old, bad ways wither on the branch”, put in the Army officer.

“Tochna” replied the third officer, heretofore silent. Precisely. “Much is at stake.  Stray but a little to the left or to the right, and our new-found strength will snap in our hands.  We would not wish to return to the past.  Russia has moved a long way during and after the war.”

There’s a new young man at Tony’s

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There’s a new young man behind the counter at Tony’s coffee shop.  Young, good looking and Italian – of course Italian.  As Italian as they come.  Thick black hair, olive skin, white teeth, lots of gesticulation.

I once knew an old man who spoke perfect Italian.  As a soldier in the war, he’d been set to be a translator, during the Italian campaign.  He told me once that he’d grabbed an Italian officer by the hands.  He’d took hold of both the guy’s hands, and held them still.  And the poor chap was speechless.  Literally.  You ever met an Italian man who could say anything without moving his hands? I reckon this new chap behind the counter at Tony’s will be like that.  I saw him talking – no, gesturing – to one of the waitresses.  He’s very energetic and outgoing.  Cram full of energy, like Tony used to be.

“Issa good job amma fromma Sardinia” Tony once said.

These days, Tony looks a little careworn.  Particularly so, since his mother died – you know what Italian men are like with their mothers.  Tony’s black hair is edged with grey.  Look closely at his eyes, and you see care.  You see concern.  Tony has a kind word for everybody.  An older man’s friendly kiss for every young mum.  A hug and a chuck under the chin for every baby. A handshake for every man. Tony knows everybody’s name.  And now he has a new man behind the counter.  A new generation is coming, taking up the mantle, ready to continue in his footsteps.

 

 

The tools

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From underneath the coffee table, he drew a heavy wooden box, opened it, and showed me some of the tools inside.

“These chisels belonged to my grandfather”, he said.  “I cleaned them up, put these new handles on, and then I sharpened them”.

The thickness of history was upon the box.  He showed me the contents with the reverence of a man who had a deep love for things.

“This belonged to my dad”, he said, showing me one tool. I could not guess what it might be used for.

“What’s it do?” I asked.

“It’s for creating straight edges and angles”, he said, holding the tool in his scarred craftsman’s hands with a satisfaction that was almost palpable. Here, I was in the presence of greatness.  It was for him to speak, and for me, to listen.

“These here”, he continued, unrolling an old leather bundle of a dozen or more wooden-handled metal tools, “are wood-carving tools.  It was a set like this I gave to Andy.  These are much nicer, though.”

“What would they cost today?” I prompted, knowing that he would have something  to say about it.  He thought for a moment.

“Sixty, eighty quid each? But you can’t get tools like this any more.  These are real quality.  They are from before the first world war.”

The Treaty of Seattle

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(loosely and colloquially translated from the original Russish)

About that time, there was Treaty of Seattle, which marked end of long and bitter war, between Chinese on one side, and almost everyone else, on other side.  Some called it third world war.  Was last world war.  Major nations of world fought alongside our ancestors against China.  Long term effect of war was to re-ignite democracy in Russia and strengthen weakening culture in rest of world in last decades before start of Diaspora.

Though nuclear weapons were used, and some cities were destroyed, war was never “apocalypse” predicted in the literature and media of the world at that time.  It began some fifteen years earlier after aggressive and sudden Chinese moves into Russian territory.

At same time, Chinese miliary moved south towards continent of Australia.  Were very heavy losses at first – in first six weeks of war, ancient city state of Singapore had fallen, and all Russia east of Lake Baikal was in Chinese hands.  But all that ground was taken back over course of war.

Advance of Chinese brought political chaos across all earth, collapsing political unions and causing other minor wars.  Recent work by historians shows that discoveries in Antarctica, and what happened as a result (see Yekatarinburg offensive, Libby-Sheffield engines, Antarctic Discoveries) were rather more important to victory than once thought.

Human cost of Russo-Chinese War was over 4 million Russian and alliance dead, 30 million Chinese dead, and destruction of some Russian and Chinese cities. Also, Chinese Confucian culture was destroyed forever.

Following war, came launch of Russian starship Yekatarina Velikaya.  Exact date we can no longer be sure of, due to small differences between Standard years and Earth years.  But we believe this was around one hundred years after first man in space Yuri Gagarin.

Rekningen

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Rising from the table, he walked through the almost deserted dining room, intending to return to his room.  There were huge oil paintings on the walls, scenes of fjords and mountains, fishermen mending their nets, simple farming folk.  In winter, this hotel was the biggest and most famous of a provincial ski resort.  Now, in autumn, before the snows, it was as  good as deserted.  His route to his room took him through a little glassed over area, formerly a little courtyard.

“Outside in the distance, a wild cat did howl…” the words from Dylan’s song came unbidden and unwanted to his mind – an earworm, he’d heard this called by his kids.  Rain was beating down on the glass roof, gusts of wind driving frenzies of rain against the glass.  The cold, driving, strength-sapping rain of late  October.  No night to be outdoors – a good night to be warm and in shelter.

Tomorrow, he would complete the deal.  In so doing, he would gain access to a whole new market; he would sell more than his competitors, and start to gain an edge over the last few hold-outs that refused to trade with him.  He would show them all, the naysayers, those who did not believe in him.  He cast his mind back to a lecture he had given years ago to a group of beginners in his trade.

You want to see what the world’s greatest salesman looks like? You’re looking at him.

Not long after he’d made that assertion, his boss had walked in, interrupted him, and introduced himself to the students.  Clearly somebody else senior, sitting incognito at the back of the room, had tipped his boss off.  But he’d shown them.  A word in the right ear at the right time, and his boss hadn’t lasted much longer.  He himself had taken his bosses’ job.  Eventually, he’d even found out the name of the guy who had grassed him up.  Soon enough, that one was on his way too.  It was easy enough if you knew what to say, whose ear to plan the seed in; whom to whisper the quiet accusations to.  Now, he was unstoppable.  He was at the top of his game.  At the head of the table.

From the foyer, two sets of stairs.  He decided to walk rather than take the lift, which, in this antique wooden building, was rather slow.  He’d always taken pride in his fitness.  But this old hotel rambled on and on.  It was a number of buildings combined, connected together with funky little open courtyards and cobbled alleyways that used to be outside but now had settees and bookcases in them. It had the feel of a caravanserai.  He walked up to the first floor, and along round a corner, past a picture of a mountain at sunset, very much like Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.

Very good use of light.  Like Joseph Wright.

He touched a metal bannister and got a static shock. The weather? The carpet? His shoes? Up to the second floor, and onto the third. And on up to the fourth floor – the top floor – where the best rooms were.  The doors opened outward, which to him, seemed strange.  The rooms were all different; there was no standard room here in this timber building.  His own was right up in the eaves of the building, but it was spacious enough.  It lay along a corridor with the roof sloping down one side.  Windows were set into this roof, and rain was thrashing against them.  The windows looked like washing machines, so much water was hitting  them.  He walked along the corridor, looking at the room numbers.  432.  433. 434.  And that was it.  No 435.  He must surely have gone the wrong way.

How odd…I’ll retrace my steps.

He turned on his heel, walking back along the corridor, down the stairs and past the picture of the mountain, to the foyer.  The receptionist glanced up at him from behind her counter, and gave a friendly little smile.

The other stairs.  These led up the side of one of the open alleyways to the first floor.  Then along a corridor, past a folded up travel cot in an alcove.  And onto the second floor.  As he went, he thought of hotels, back over the years.  Some hotels seemed to be all the same; others were very unusual and different.  The Oriental Palace Hotel in Tunis, where he’d had lamb and couscous with a colleague, and afterwards, some interesting cigarettes.  He remembered the gaff not because of that but chiefly because that particular colleague didn’t last much longer either.  A hotel at a seedy port in Italy – could it have been Brindisi? – where another colleague had got so drunk that he’d snapped the key to his room off in the lock when trying to open the door.  The Agadir Beach Club Hotel where walking along the corridors felt a bit like one was walking through a computer game – as if at any moment a monster or an armed man might appear from around the corner.  The Okumu Palace Hotel in Libreville where he and a number of his colleagues had tormented and insulted some little Frenchman who they took a dislike to.

The third floor…or was it the fourth floor? And then he found himself at a kind of dead end, in what felt something like a tower.  There were what looked like old servants rooms, and shelves of towels, sheets and cleaning materials.  How had he got here?

Turn back again.  This is getting a bit silly. Back down to the foyer.

He turned around and went back down the stairs to reception.  The girl on the desk noticed him and asked brightly, in Norwegian, “Are you lost?”.  This confused him to silence, though he knew much more Norwegian that he let on.  She asked again in English. “Have you lost your way?”

“Can’t find my room” he mumbled, “but I’ll be fine. I’ll use the lift”.  He hated asking for directions or admitting he was wrong, especially to women or people young enough to be his kids.  He entered the lift and punched the button for the fourth floor.

Remember that time when you put that young chap in the picture whilst in the lift? He’d given a piece of his mind to some cocky smart-ass young hotshot straight out of university, when a crowd of them were in the lift on the way down to dinner one night at a conference.  Some big hotel in the Middle East.  This young hotshot thought he knew it all; the youth had been banging on about this or that, he couldn’t for the life of him remember now what he was on about.

But I surely let rip and told it like it was.  Called a spade a spade. Put him well and in the picture.

“Christ, your diplomatic pin must have fallen out”, a colleague had said, as they made their way to their table, some minutes later.  “That was a bit harsh”, another had said.

Maybe so. But it was hardly my fault the boy killed himself a few months later.

Up to the fourth floor and out of the lift.  Ah – here was familiar territory.  The corridor with the sloping roof.  The rain drumming down; the wind shrieking round the corners.  Room 432.  Room 433.  Room 434.  As he walked past Room 434, another guest walked past him and stared right at him in an astonished and hostile way, as if perhaps he did not belong here.

How rude.

But that was it – there was no Room 435.  Room 434, a fire door, and then a landing leading to some stairs back down.  He went through the fire door and started down the stairs.  Puzzled, frowning, he was going down these stairs when he passed a maid on the way up.  A maid?  At 9p.m? And dressed like she was out of the period drama.  Strange.

Down to reception again but by the stairs.   As he walked into reception, he noted that literally minutes ago there must have been a shift change, for there was now a different person on the counter.  The pretty smiling Norwegian girl had gone.  In her place, a cold and formal looking older lady.

“Kan du Engelsk?” he began. She nodded. “Can you help me find my way back to my room? I can’t seem to find my way in this ancient hotel. It’s all strange corridors and mystery stairways”

“Of course, sir” she replied, with only a hint of a Norwegian accent. “What room is it?”

“435.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly in the way that told him that she was about to say something disappointing or negative.

“We have no Room 435.  There’s never been a room 435. Perhaps 434 or 335, you meant?”

“No. I checked into Room 435.  All my stuff is in Room 435.  I put my dinner on-“

He’d been about to say that he’d put his dinner on the room bill, to be paid when he checked out.  But then he’d recalled that there’d been a problem and he’d actually paid in cash.  He produced the key, which was an electronic key card, and offered it to the lady.  She looked at it blankly, making no attempt to take it.  At that moment, a door to an office behind reception opened, and a man came out, perhaps the night manager or someone more senior than the receptionist.  It seemed odd for there to be a night manager at such relatively small provincial hotel.  He was formally and anciently dressed, as if going to a re-enactment  of Edwardian times.

The night manager looked at him, professional concern on his face.

“I can’t find Room 435”, he said to the manager, holding up the key to his room between two fingers. All of a sudden he was minded of the time years ago that his hotel room had been inadvertently rented to someone else.  Had the stranger got into his room, he would have lost all he had in his room – more than just clothes and a bit of money.  That would have caused some problems; he would have had some trouble explaining that. He’d left his key at reception that day.   Arriving back from work, he’d asked for his key, and it could not be found.  It was Friday night.  A stag do was going to take place. The hotel was nearly full.  Together with a member of staff he’d walked towards his room, when a clearly drunken man had lurched up to this member of staff and said where is room 116? Holding up the key to his room – the room with all the stuff stashed in it.   A wave of cold fear ran down his back as he leaned forward and neatly snatched the key from the drunken fool’s fingers. “That’s my room, thank you”.

“These are our keys”, the lady receptionist put in, holding up a heavily varnished slice of wood embossed with the hotel’s name, attached to which was an actual key.  He stared, somewhat bewildered, looking between the proffered physical key and the key card in his hand.

“What is your name?” asked the night manager, kindly and slowly, pronouncing each word carefully, pronouncing “what” with a distinct “v” sound.  Vat. Is. Your. Name?

He gave his name and the night manager and the receptionist together started to look through a register on the desk. There seemed to be no sign of a computer.  Mind, he had not been paying attention when he checked in.  Who does?

After searching through the register for a minute or so, the manager looked up. “I’m sorry sir, we have no-one of that name registered at the hotel tonight.  Are you sure you gave us the correct name?”

He gave his name again, and spelt it out.  Again the manager looked in his book, coming back up to shake his head.

“No, I’m afraid we have no-one of that name booked here in the hotel tonight.  And there is no room 435.  There’s never been a room 435.”

The voyage of the Vanguard

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Most of us learned in school that the first interstellar crossing was made by the “New Frontiers”. Our very calendar is based on this; the Galactic calendar starts from the year of her return to Earth after her 74 year journey. But what is not so widely known, is that the “New Frontiers” was not the first human starship.  Another vessel had set out from Earth a century or so earlier.  This vessel was ostensibly lost in space – it was never heard from again.  Until now.

This presentation to the annual seminar of the Ancient History Society of New Rome, brings news of that long-lost earlier vessel. Her name was “Vanguard”. She was discovered about a century ago by an Iskandrian naval vessel, patrolling the depths of space between Iskander and Fatima. Because the fastest means of transmitting information from one place to another is by star ship, it has taken 105 years for the news to reach us here on Secundus.

The presentation is multi-disciplinary in topic and scope. It will cover the strange chance by which the Vanguard was detected at all; it covers the unusual engineering techniques used to slow her down, and it addresses the archaeological issues involved in getting aboard and then accessing her computer records.  Finally, it reveals the exciting discoveries that were made from those records, regarding what happened to the ship and the crew.

For when her route was plotted, it could be shown that the Vanguard had passed a planet centuries before.  When the Iskandrians visited that remote and uncharted world, they discovered it to be inhabited by humans – but not from the Diaspora. They were savage and intractable cannibals, but they were very intelligent savage and intractable cannibals.  They were shown by genetic study to be descendants of the Vanguard’s original crew.

(After a short passge in R.A Heinlein’s “Time enough for love“, where Galahad, over dinner, recounts to the table the story of this discovery,  causing something of a shock to Lazarus.)

Ebb

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Kenning was ahead, his sledge making a hissing sound as he pulled it over the ice, his red arctic wear bright against the white of the snow and the almost unbearable blue of the sky. The mountains reared to our left, the exposed rock predominantly brown in the sunshine, the snow vaulting gracefully upwards in smooth curves. To the right there was nothing – only the ice-shelf, almost flat out to the horizon, like solid light in the punishing glare of the sun.

A mighty wall of rock was exposed; the lowest ice levels in centuries, prompted by the highest temperatures, had melted so much ice that there was more of the bare rock of Antarctica visible than at any previous time in history. The mountain range curved round, only a part of it visible as the two men trudged towards it.  The shadows of seracs and pillars of ice showed black against the brown of the rock in the light of the sun. And there Kenning’s eye caught an anomalous shadow, a shadow bigger than the ice that caused it. It was still distant; John frowned under his goggles. After three weeks he was tired – and patient. Whatever it was could wait until they were closer. More steady footsteps, pulling hard against the heavy harness, straining against the wide straps that connected him to his sledge. His feet crunched against the ice and snow underfoot. His breath rasped in his ears, his heart beat thundering. The path lay slightly uphill, and the two men slowed down as the slope increased. As the incline leveled off again, Kenning stopped and leaned heavily on his sticks. He glanced around at his companion, and then back at the rock wall. The strange shaped shadow was some form of enormous cave entrance or depression, he thought. It was still a good five kilometres distant.

As they drew nearer to the rock wall, drawn automatically by the strange cave exposed by the retreating ice, something quite appalling started to dawn on them. For as their comprehension of the approaching cliff face grew better, they realised that this depression in it was quite artificial.  It appeared to be the entrance to a tunnel, perfectly round in shape, though half buried in ice. It was clearly enormous, the roof perhaps thirty metres above the surface of the ice, and even then the ice filled half of what was a large round shaft bored directly into the mountain.

Phil Keynes stared into the blackness of the tunnel. Ice filled over half of the wide bore, a ribbon of silver and grey disappearing into the gloom, colouring from white into grey as the light faded. He looked up at the sides, taking in the smoothness of the finish, the grey colour of something that looked like concrete contrasting with the light brown of the surrounding rock. This tunnel entrance had lain buried and concealed in the ice for millennia, brought to light only by the changes in climate that had started at the end of the last century. That it was not natural was beyond any shadow of a doubt; it must have been built in dizzying antiquity, perhaps even before the Antarctic ice cap had come into existence. It clearly predated all of human civilisation. Such a structure might be twenty thousand years old – or a hundred million. A very strange and ancient feeling arose deep inside Phil Keynes, not exactly terror, not exactly excitement. Here there was something awesome, maybe something great, perhaps something horrible beyond human comprehension. The stygian gloom of the tunnel as it disappeared into the rock of the mountain seemed to contain every kind of childhood bogeyman that ever existed. The atavistic fear of the dark that lies hidden even in the strongest men arose in Phil. And against himself, a Royal Marine and experienced soldier who had thought he had seen everything, he shivered.