Watch Out by Leonie Jarrett,A whiskey. Neat.

 

 

“It’s warm out tonight,” I think to myself. “It’s making me sleepy. But I can’t fall asleep. I’m on Watch on the Bridge overnight. Wake up Billy.” I pinch my cheeks gently and make myself another coffee to keep awake.

 

Hate keeping Watch. It’s so boring. There’s no one to talk to. Nothing to do. Just time. Too much time.

 

We do this same itinerary each week. We start from Port Denarau in Fiji, do a cruise around the Yasawa Islands and return to Port Denarau. I like working here. It’s fairly easy work. I even get to swim and snorkel with the guests during the day. Watch overnight is the only thing I don’t like but I have to take my turn.

 

The first night of the cruise is always at anchor here, just off Castaway Island. It’s called that because in the movie “Cast Away” Tom Hanks was marooned here. All the guests want to come here. We bring out “Wilson” and they get a kick out of playing catch with Wilson on the beach.

 

During the day, it’s idyllic. Coconut palms, white sand, crystal clear water and fringing coral reef.

 

At night, it’s all inky blackness. Sometimes I can stargaze but it’s overcast tonight so there’s nothing to see.

 

Still on Watch on the Bridge. Still feeling sleepy.

 

I try to pass the time and keep awake by measuring how many strides it takes me to cross from one side of the Bridge to the other. Yep, I’m bored. Very bored.

 

Watch drags on. I think I nod off momentarily.

 

I rouse as I hear a nasty, scraping sound that I’ve never heard before.

 

“What is that?” I wonder to myself. “It sounds like the hull scraping against the coral reef. But it can’t be. Can it?”

 

The Captain appears from nowhere. The noise has clearly woken him as he has come to the Bridge just in shorts and a t-shirt. “What was that?” he demands.

 

“Not sure Captain.”

 

The noise happens again.

 

Louder this time.

 

Adrenaline courses through me.

 

 “I think it’s the anchor dragging Captain.”

 

“Me too Billy. Stay here. I’m going to take a closer look.”

 

The Captain disappears. I don’t need to pinch my cheeks to keep awake any more.

 

“Have I caused this by drifting off and not paying attention or was it just a freak thing?”

 

“Will I get sacked?”

 

After a few minutes which seems like an age and a few more nasty scraping sounds, the Captain returns to the Bridge. I have worked with him for two years and I have never before seen this expression on his face. A mix of hyper-alert, worried and determined.

 

“Sound the alarm Billy. We’ve hit the coral reef and damaged the hull. It’s too dark for me to assess the extent of the damage. I don’t know whether we’re going to sink. We need to evacuate the ship.”

 

“Now.”

about the author 

 

Leonie Jarrett lives in Melbourne, Australia with her Husband of more than three  decades,to2 of herfour4 adult children and her 2 Golden Retrievers. Leonie loves to tell stories.

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Seeing It Her Wayby GIll james, cola,

 

Seeing It Her Way

 

"Here!" shouted Klaus.

Robert kicked the ball to him.

Klaus grabbed it and threw it down to the ground between the two piles of jackets that formed the makeshift goal post.

Twenty teenage boys and a few girls were kicking and throwing the rugby ball that belonged to the young lads they'd met outside the museum. This was exactly what they needed now. They'd been very good, all of them, both my own students and the ones from our partner school in Germany. Now, though, they needed to let off a bit of steam and that was exactly what they were doing.

A couple of times I found myself holding my breath as the ball almost went into the river.

I glanced at Sabine, my German counterpart. I really couldn't make the woman out. She was pleasant enough and she actually had good control of her students. They clearly respected and liked her. But she was frowning now and biting her lip. She certainly seemed to be an experienced teacher. So, what was worrying her so much?  

The other team then scored a goal. I looked at my watch. Ten to four. We were due back on the coach at four.

"We'd better wrap this up," I said.

Sabine nodded. Did she look relieved?

             

The next day was a trip to London. The English students accompanied their exchange partners. This involved a visit to the Thames Museum. I'd taught my students good museum etiquette. They knew to listen politely on any guided tour and ask intelligent questions at the end. After the formal part of a visit I would give them some time on their own with instructions to meet near the entrance fifteen minutes before we were actually due to depart. And I had their mobile phone numbers in case there was a problem. I'd never lost anyone and hadn't even had anyone turn up late.

The German students again seemed polite and attentive but Sabine was frowning the whole time and she kept biting her lip again.

This museum had been Greg's suggestion. He was the head of history and had come along on this trip as an extra teacher.

The students certainly enjoyed the visit, especially the foreshore tour where they were able to have a go at mud-larking.

Sabine looked at her most anxious then.

She only seemed to relax a little when the students came back from the changing rooms and got out of their muddy boots and overalls.       

 

I noticed a few minutes later that Sabine's students were all gathered round her and were talking excitedly. Sabine nodded. She saw me looking at her and smiled.

"They want to know if there'll be a chance to go shopping," she said. "They're keen to see Oxford Street."

Of course they were. But it was a bad idea. That would be the easiest way of losing one of them. Or risking one of them being robbed or worse still mugged.

We could have a look around White City, perhaps, if there was time. I doubted there would be. We were on a tight schedule. White City anyway was no different really from the shopping centres near us at home. It was just a bit bigger but it had the same chain stores. They would be better off, wouldn't they, going with their exchange partner? Wasn't it mainly the girls anyway who were interested in the shops?

"There really isn't time," I said. "And as it happens, the coach will go past Harrods. The traffic will probably be slow enough for them to get a good look at the windows."

"I think they want to spend some of their money on souvenirs from London."

"There'll be a gift shop at the Tower," I replied. I was ashamed at how harsh my voice sounded. I was sorry that the German students were so disappointed. But there was no way I would risk letting them shop on Oxford Street.        

 

The next two days passed smoothly. The German students joined their partners at school. Sabine looked relaxed now and I found that we could chat easily. 

A trip to the fun fair on the common was planned for Friday afternoon after school.

Greg decided to tag along again. I had to smile when I saw him chatting to Sabine. There was something brewing there. Why not? They were both single.

"Right," I said as we got off the bus. "Shall we take it in turns standing near the entrance so that they can find us if they need any help? And they've got our numbers on their mobiles."

"I think we should stay with them. Go round in one big group," said Sabine.

What? "They'd have to queue longer for the rides that way. And they'll be waiting for ones that they don't want to go on. Trust me. I know how this works." What was the matter with her? We'd done all of the health and safety checks hadn't we? This was far safer than shopping in Oxford Street.

Greg stepped in. "How about if you take first watch and Sabine and I'll go round with the others. Even if we do keep them together there's always the chance that someone might get separated."

Half an hour later Greg came back. "I've managed to get her to let go a bit," he said. "But she's very anxious. I'll try and find out what's eating her later."

"Oh?"

He grinned. "I've fixed up a date with her for this evening."           

 

"Hi, can I have a word?" Greg and I were in the staff room the following Monday. Sabine was in a meeting with the Headteacher. She'd invited her for a coffee and a chat. "I know what's bugging her."

"You do?"

"You see, when they were playing rugby and mud-larking, and when they were at the fair on the common, we were near water. Her brother drowned during a school activities week. Instead of going to school he'd taken himself to the local river. No one had queried it because all of the local schools were doing activities that week. The teachers at his school had just assumed he was ill. That's why she was so anxious."

That was even worse than what happened to me on a school trip to London. I became separated from my friend. When I met up again with the teachers they had to get the police involved. We eventually found Maureen. She'd been mugged and all of her money had been taken. She didn't die like Sabine's brother had but she was never the same again afterwards. And I never again liked shopping.

 

A few moments later Sabine came back from the Head's office.

"So how was old Baxter?" I asked. "I hope she didn't talk you to death."

"No. She was fine. She was very kind. She suggested another year we might try the open air museum. Where they have a lot of historic houses?"

I nodded. That would be safe. There was no water there.

"And I've been thinking; we can probably fit in a visit to a shopping centre on the London day next time." Nobody would drown at White City, would they? And it wouldn't be too difficult to keep people safe from pickpockets or worse there.

Surely we could think of lots of places that weren't near water, even though our town's near the sea.

Perhaps I'll soon get the courage to tell Sabine why I don't like shopping. Hopefully then Sabine will understand my perspective as well as I now understand hers.  

About the author 

 

    

 

Thank you for considering my work. Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown. She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation. She teaches Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.

http://www.gilljameswriter.com 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B001KMQRKE 

https://www.facebook.com/gilljameswriter 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

MAXIM REMEMBERED by S. Nadja ZajdmanHock and Seltzer

 

 MAXIM REMEMBERED

 

For reasons I feel the need to explore, I’ve been remembering Maxim Mazumdar.  I was fifteen when I first saw him on the stage of Loyola’s F.C. Smith Auditorium.  According to the theatre program, he was eighteen and with his widowed mother and older brother, had just settled in vibrant post-Expo Montreal, a recent immigrant from what was then Bombay and is now Mumbai.

To have seen Maxim once is to remember him always.  He was electric.  He was mesmerizing.  In my mind’s eye I can still see the little brown man in a white shift and enormous dark eyes, seated on the floor of the stage and delivering a soliloquy from Richard II.  I was gobsmacked.  I was smitten.  No one could’ve imagined, nor foreseen, that at the age of eighteen, Maxim’s life was already half over.

On the weekday evening I first saw Maxim onstage, there were a handful of people in the audience.  I returned home and raved about him, gushing to my mother.  From then on I went to every production he was in.  Within a year, the East Indian immigrant became the darling of the local theatre scene.  I orbited him like a satellite orbiting the sun.  I never met him personally.  I never approached.  I was a shy secret admirer.  I saw him at theatre lectures and in theatre lobbies.  Often I saw him with one of his teachers. I never saw Maxim with a girl.  I heard that he held court with a coterie of male sycophants.  I said so, to Mum.  Which is when one of my teachers broke the news to my mother.  “We’d better tell her.”  How my teacher knew, I don’t know.  But she knew.

I can’t recall whether I heard it from my teacher, or from Mum.  Likely from Mum, who was assigned to deliver the message.

Maxim Mazumdar was gay.

That’s when Mum and my brother started teasing me.  “Imagine if you brought him home; he’d start up with Michael!”

            “Why would he start up with Michael?”

            I’d walked into it.

            “Because!”  My generally laconic younger brother swished through the kitchen.  “I’m a man’s man!”  (In fairness to my brother, who matured into a pediatrician, he now wears rainbow socks in solidarity with his gay patients.)

Within the next five years Maxim would found Montreal’s now defunct Phoenix Theatre (where I was engaged for my first acting job), and invited to Stratford by its renowned leading man, William Hutt (another member of The Sisterhood.  In the 1960s and 1970s, the festival at Stratford, Ontario WAS a sisterhood) to perform the one-man show he wrote, self-directed and starred in, called Oscar Remembered.  (The story of Oscar Wilde seen through the eyes of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.)

Because of Quebec’s political climate, within the first decade of his arrival Maxim moved to Toronto and then on to Newfoundland, where he founded and became artistic director of a theatre.  Amidst this activity, he performed in New York and married a New York actress.  It was a lavender marriage contracted in order to acquire a Green Card.  Maxim’s male lover served as best man at his wedding.   The trio entered into a menage a trois.  In his will, Maxim left all his worldly goods to his male lover.  It seemed he left his legal wife nothing.

Professionally, the Indo-Canadian actor and director sprinted from strength to strength.  He couldn’t seem to fail.  He seemed unstoppable until, in 1988, my mother spied a brief article in a Montreal newspaper, announcing that this human dynamo had died of a heart attack.

At the time, my brother was a newly minted physician.  Upon hearing the news, he scoffed, “A thirty-five-year-old homosexual (precisely, at the time of his death, Maxim was thirty six), doesn’t die of a heart attack.”
           

My brother was right.  Of course, Maxim was killed by AIDS.

 

 

During a search on the net, I discovered that the obscure New York actress Maxim married died in 1990 of an undisclosed cause, at the age of thirty-five.  Perhaps Maxim left her something, after all. 

I look back at the supernova of my youth, at his spectacular talent, at his great early luck and effortless timing.  When I was coming of age, from my perspective Maxim seemed to be living the life I dreamt of.  He seemed the male version of everything I wanted to be and do.  What I have is what Maxim was denied; the gift of a long life.  I look back at the girl who admired him.  I remember her, but I can’t relate to her.   She is a dead version of myself.    

In the life I’ve been granted, I’ve performed many roles.  I’ve been actor, teacher, beloved and loving daughter, caretaker and caregiver, memory keeper, and ultimately, an author.   

Maxim and I were contemporaries who were allotted different timelines and set on different trajectories.   He may or may not have realized his full potential.  I was given enough time to fulfill mine.

About the Author

 Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. She has published the story collections Bent Branches and The Memory Keeper, the memoirs I Want You To Be Free and Daddy's Remains, and the essay collection Between Worlds. 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee?. Half of what you pay goes to the author the oher half goes to expense se.g. Maintaining hthe web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.