THE WICKED MOTHER-IN-LAW ISN'T ALWAYS A MYTH by Lilia Mahfouz, champagne

 

 

One Christmas Day, we had my mother-in-law over for lunch. She had been divorced twice. She taught French. Perhaps as an occupational hazard, she couldn't resist correcting people, quoting authors, or criticizing anything she didn't understand. She fancied herself a great intellectual.

After the traditional chocolate Yule log, it was time to exchange presents. Ray and I had bought her the latest novel by one of her favorite authors. A bookseller had wrapped it carefully in beautiful red paper decorated with silver stars.

My mother-in-law handed each of us a gift.

Ray opened his first. Inside was a pair of blue cotton pajamas by Le Slip Français. We avoided looking at each other. He thanked her politely.

Mine contained about a dozen kitchen towels. They were colorful, patterned with flowers, birds, and sea creatures. I genuinely loved them. I thanked her warmly, telling her the gift couldn't have come at a better time because I had been meaning to buy new kitchen towels.

My mother-in-law's face froze in surprise. A few seconds passed. At last, her lips tightening with irritation, she murmured,

"That was just a joke! That's not your real present!"

She placed a second package in front of me. It was smaller, wrapped in rather ugly gift paper, with layers of tape piled over one end. With a gesture, she urged me to open it.

Once again, I told her how pleased I was with the towels and that they would have been more than enough. Without blinking, she motioned for me to open the package.

Beneath the cheap wrapping paper, I found a plain white cardboard box with no markings. The flap was torn. Inside was a bottle of Yves Rocher perfume called Comme une Évidence. It was only three-quarters full.

Ray shot me an incredulous look. I couldn't think of anything to say except,

"Did you notice the box was torn?"

My mother-in-law answered immediately.

"Oh, that's not the original box. I bought it at the market. The man just gave me whatever he had!"

Silence settled over the room. She had bought the perfume from one of those market bins filled with old bottles—display testers and sample bottles.

I looked at my mother-in-law for a long moment before finally thanking her. Then I smiled at her. Mostly because Ray had never worn pajamas.

aboutthe th auhtor 

 

 

Lilia Mahfouz is a French author based in Paris. A laureate of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Writing Prize, her fiction has appeared in French literary journals, as well as in a wide range of American and British literary magazines. 

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“Cash Only” by Helmut Norpoth, summer ale

“

“

 

The sign posted at the door read, “Cash Only.” It was hand-written.

“I’m not sure I have enough on me,” Hal said to Elle. She was not sure, either. They had no ATM card.

A friend from the mainland had recommended the eatery on Kauai but forgotten to tell them about the cash-only policy. Or else they did not remember.

“Shall we drive back to the resort and pick up cash left in the safe?” Elle asked.

“It’s a half hour each way,” Hal said. “Why don’t we go in and see what the place is like?”

The entrance was closed but did not appear locked. Looking through a window of the door, they were not able to spot a hostess to seat customers.

“How do you get seated?” Elle asked a man standing next to them with a little girl.

“You wait until patrons leave. Then go in and find a seat.”

As a couple was leaving, the man and the girl stepped inside. After a few more left, Hal and Elle entered.

The restaurant did not provide dining tables or chairs. Customers were seated on stools around a horseshoe-shaped counter. It opened with a view of the kitchen. Posted on the wall above it was the menu along with pictures of the dishes.

Seeing the prices, Hal and Elle checked how much cash exactly they had on them.

“Guess we don’t just have to settle for the view,” Hal said. Elle nodded.

They both ordered the specialty of the house: a saimin bowl. They had never had one  before. It came with green onions, vegetables, fish cake. ham, roast pork, and wontons.

“Would you like a side dish of BBQ beef sticks with friend shrimp tempura?” the waitress asked.

“How much?”

They did a quick calculation and decided they had enough to share one. Normally they would order a beer or a glass of wine, but there was no chance that might break their budget. The place did not serve alcohol. For dessert, they considered a pastry called Pasteis de Nata (Portuguese custard tarts, they were told) but passed to have enough left for a tip.

 The saimin bowl came with an unfamiliar utensil for Hal: chop sticks. Elle tried to help but he was left-handed. A patron across from them noticed and gave him a demonstration. To the amusement of others in his group. They seemed to know each other well. More likely locals than tourists, Hal and Elle figured. From what they caught of their conversation, they could not make out the language. But they spoke Englich as well.

Hal and Elle savored their main dish, though they could not peg its origin. When Elle asked the patrons across, one said,

“It’s a blend of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino. Just like us.”  The others chuckled.

When it came time to ask for the check, the waitress told them, “Been paid already.”

They were astonished. “By whom?”

She would not say. They prodded but to no avail.

“What makes people do something like this?” Elle asked the patron sitting next to her.

“Why ask?” he said.

“You know the saying.”

About the Author

 

He has taught and written about American politics for many years.. His latest book is "Unsurpassed: The Popular Appeal of Franklin Roosevelt." He is a novice at writing fiction. He is the father of two sons with his wife who passed away in 2023. 

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

OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST FADE : Rob Molan best bitter

 

OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST FADE AWAY

It’s getting too warm in here, so I turn off one of the bars in the heater. Margaret is snoozing in the armchair opposite me with her mouth open and the moggy lying on her lap. At our age, we both need a nap in the afternoon. I’m about to doze off, when I hear the front door opening and closing.

‘It’s only us.’ Sometimes, I regret giving the grandkids a set of keys. Margaret comes round with a start and the cat jumps down and scurries under the sideboard.

Rowan is first into the room. He looks taller each time he comes round. Rebecca follows him in wearing those red Doc Martens’ boots which teenage girls like for some reason.

‘Oh, it’s you two,’ says Margaret, smiling as she puts her specs on.

‘Hi,’ says Rebecca. ‘Mum told us the news and we had to call round to congratulate you, Grandad.’  She comes over and pecks me on the cheek. ‘It’s amazing you’ve been invited to the service in Westminster Abbey in July and the march down the Mall.’

‘You must be so proud,’ adds Rowan. I notice the first signs of stubble on his chin. ‘And you might meet the Queen at the lunch in the palace!’

I keep my counsel and take a sip of my tea which is almost cold now.  Margaret leans forward and clears her throat.

‘Your Grandad has said he’s not going. Anyone else would bite their hand off.’

The kids both look at me in disbelief.

‘But surely you want to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War? You’re one of the few who - thankfully – are still alive,’ says Rebecca.

She picks up a framed photo of me from the top of the piano.

‘You looked right handsome in your uniform. Didn’t he, Gra’ She holds up the black and image of me, looking bright eyed and wearing a soft-peaked cap

‘He was wearing it the first time we met at the Palais de Danse,’ says Margaret with a hint of a smile.

‘It will be an opportunity for you to wear your medals,’ says Rowan. ‘I remember you showing them to me when I was small, especially the six-pointed star with a red, te, and green ribbon.’

They’re ganging up on me here.

‘Are you going to tell them, Jim, why you don’t want to attend?’ asks Margaret with her dark green eyes boring into me.

I take a deep breath before speaking in my defence.

‘It’s a matter of principle. The twelve survivors from the company of my old regiment who are still alive have been invited. The ones I remember were good lads but our sergeant, Stan Fairbrother, who was a right bastard, is also on the list. He was a bit older than us squaddies and thought he was superior to us because he’d been to grammar school while us oiks had grown up in the East End slums and left school at fourteen. Dirty maggots and the unwashed were two of his favourite insults.’

I almost threw a punch at him on our first parade but the bloke on my right restrained me.

‘He loved picking on me and my pal, Tommy Richards. We were confined to barracks on many occasions and had money deducted from our pay more times than I can care to remember. I was tough enough to stomach his bullying but Tommy was a gentle lad and took it very badly.’

I can still see him curled up like a ball weeping in his hammock after one of Fairbrother’s onslaughts.

‘Have you seen your sergeant since the war?’ asks Rowan.

‘He attended a reunion back in the Sixties, dressed up to the nines and telling everyone how he’d risen up the ladder in some bank. Spent most of his time talking to the former officers and barely acknowledged ex-squaddies like me.’

‘I know you’ve got bad memories of him but all sergeants were notorious back then,’ says Margaret softly. 

‘I hear what you say, love. But he was a downright bully and I’ve never had any time for such types.’

Tommy took his life not long after being demobbed. I can still recall his poor mother weeping at his graveside and having to be helped out of the churchyard by her family. I’ve never had any doubt that Fairbrother’s treatment of him was the reason for what happened.

Rebecca comes over and sits beside me.

‘I’d love to see you on the television with the other ex-soldiers.’ She looks at me with those doe eyes of hers. ‘Promise me you’ll have another think about it?’ She knows how to manipulate me.

‘Alright then. Now, go and make some fresh tea for us” Hopefully, the issue will not come up again.

 

The marquee is packed and noisy, and servers are bringing round the grub. The roast beef salad looks a treat but I need to have a drink of cold beer first as I feel sticky and am sweating buckets. Also, my left knee is giving me jip.

I’m glad I made the effort today. It would have been disrespectful to my former comrades not to attend. The service was a bit long but the Archbishop’s sermon paid a moving tribute to those who died in the field and those who survived but are no longer with us. There was an almighty roar from the Red Arrows when they flew overhead as our little band of brothers marched with pride down the Mall in the bright sunshine along with the other ex-servicemen and women, with Gerry Andrews in front pushing Fairbrother in his wheelchair. The people crowded on the pavement cheered and enthusiastically waved miniature flags, watching many of us parade for one last time before fading away into the history books.

I don’t want to speak to Fairbrother. He’s sitting at the top of our table talking to a few of the others who seem happy in his company. He has a craggy, furrowed face now with bushy, white eyebrows. I look away and chat to those at our end until Gerry comes over dressed in a smart blue blazer with the regimental badge emblazoned on it.

‘Hello, young man,’ he says with a mile-wide grin on his face.

‘Still got problems with your eyesight it seems!’

We both laugh and shake hands, and he sits down beside me. He’s still a bull of a man but looks cream crackered after his exertions.

‘You drew the short straw earlier,’ I tell him, pointing at Fairbrother.

‘I don’t begrudge him. He’s got Stage 4 cancer and not much longer to live but is still chipper. You’ve got to give him credit for that.’

‘That’s news to me.’  The memory of the young Stan lording it over us disappears from my mind as I turn my head and gaze at a dying man who can no longer do any harm.

‘By the way, I was talking to Tommy Richards’ sister at a wedding recently. Do you remember her?’

‘Yes, I met her a couple of times. I didn’t know she was still alive.’

 ‘Said she still has Tommy’s photo on her mantelpiece and was reminiscing about their teenage years. She said her family was shocked and surprised when he passed the medical test on call up because he’d had a nervous breakdown a few months beforehand and they feared that the war would take its toll on his mind.’

He never told me that but it explains a lot about his fragile state when I knew him.

In the corner of my eye, I see Stan slowly wheeling himself in our direction. I need to try and be polite.

‘Jim, it’s a pleasure to see you.’ He says in a rasping voice as he draws to a stop. ‘I recognised that ramrod back of yours as soon as I saw it in the cathedral. You’ve obviously looked after yourself.’

‘I was in the police for over thirty years and had to keep fit and these days I go for a constitutional every morning.

He nods approvingly.

‘Today reminded me how proud I was proud of you and the other lads at the final battle at the Reichswald Forest in forty-five.  I know I was hated at the time but I stand by my view that being tough on you instilled the discipline which made you stick together as a group and follow orders under fire, and kept casualties in the company to a minimum.  When I was promoted to sergeant, my superiors drummed it into me that I would not being doing my men any favours if I was too easy on them.’

My nineteen-year-old self would never have accepted that. Maybe it’s because of the beer but I can now see the sense of what he is saying. A bunch of naive lads in their late teens and early twenties would have been an easy target for the enemy without a firm hand to keep us under control.

‘It’s a pity Tommy Richards is not around to hear you say that.’

‘It was a real shame about him,” he says looking into the distance. “He fought bravely and was lucky to survive after the blast from that landmine. A few others didn’t but he was never the same man after that day.’

It’s true that he rarely said a word after being discharged from hospital.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I see a member of royalty over there.’ He moves off in the direction of another table.

The servers arrive with another round of beers and more recollections are shared and old jokes exhumed. When Stan returns, Gerry gets up and looks down the table.

‘I ask you to join me in a toast for our former sergeant.’

As the others get up, Gerry stares in my direction and I struggle to my feet. It’s time to bury the hatchet. None of us have much time left and there’s no point bearing a grudge now.

Here’s to you, Stan,” booms Gerry, lifting his glass. “Hip, hip.’

‘Hooray,’ we all shout.

About the author

 

Rob lives in Edinburgh started writing short stories during lockdown. To date, he's had several tales published by Cafe Lit and others in various anthologies. He likes to experiment with different genres and styles of writing. 

 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.

 

Who knows where the time goes?by Jenny Palmer, a glass of port

 

 Who knows where the time goes?

I’m watching an episode of ‘Michael Portillo in Portugal.’ It was a good series - one of his best. He’s covered the architecture, history, food, and culture of the country and has been to all the major cities: Porto, Aveiro, Sintra. Now he’s in Ericeira and is talking about the day the King went into exile after the Republican revolution in 1910. It suddenly dawns on me. I recognize that place, It’s the town where I spent a beach holiday with my boyfriend some fifty-five years ago; the place where I almost drowned.

On the Sunday morning after the Michael Portillo programme, I am lying in bed listening to Broadcasting House. As a feelgood item, they interview someone about his life as a surfer. He mentions a holiday in Ericeira which he took before it became a world surfing reserve. I don’t immediately recognize his voice, but the timing and the details fit. Could it be him? If so, it’s an amazing coincidence to have been thinking about the holiday the night before and to hear his voice on the radio the following day.

When these things happen, I put them down to synchronicity rather than fate. Like when I’m writing a story, I’ll be in the middle of typing a sentence and the very word that I’m typing will come up on the radio at exactly that time. It seems to happen when your consciousness is attuned to everything that is happening around you, when you’re in tune with yourself and the world. So why is that holiday in Ericeira coming back into my consciousness, I wonder?

There was one way to find out if we were talking about the same holiday. A quick search on Google could provide the answer. My ex had indeed written an article about a surfing holiday in Portugal in the 70s, when his surfboard had gone missing, and I was named as the girlfriend. I read it through a couple of times. It was him, but I barely recognised his description of me.

For a start, I was not a fluent French speaker. I could read the language well enough but struggled to make myself understood. German had been my foreign language. It was true I had long hair. Didn’t everybody? But I would hardly have called myself a hippie. I’d spent the previous six months working as a clerk in an insurance office in Gant’s Hill and was keen to find a more suitable career that fitted my qualifications. I was intent on dropping in, not dropping out. And I hardly every wore denim or used drugs, apart from the odd joint.

As for the holiday, I had no recollection of hitching to Portugal. It wasn’t that I was against hitching. The year before I had hitchhiked back from Greece on my own after an aborted holiday but how would you do that with a surfboard? Nor did I have any memory of spending the night in a park in Madrid and getting hauled off to a police station. And I was quite sure we were never spat at or had stones thrown at us. It would have put me off travelling for life. I put it down to his vivid imagination.

My own memories of the holiday were limited. It was in 1971. We were on the point of moving from London to Canterbury. He was the surfer. I, on the other hand, was a novice swimmer. We’d travelled by train to Madrid and then to Lisbon. The surfboard had gone missing somewhere in transit. Somehow or other we’d ended up in Ericeira, a small fishing port with a seaside community. Without a surfboard, there was nothing much to do but go for walks or lounge around on the beach. And I wasn’t a fan of beach holidays.

What I remembered most about the holiday was the ferocity of the Atlantic Ocean. I’d just learnt to swim and was reluctant to go into the water. I’d only ever been in the sea in Cornwall. There, the waves lapped right up onto the beach, and you could walk in slowly. Here, there was a ledge at the water’s edge and then a sudden drop into deep water. And there was an undercurrent I discovered, once I’d plunged in.

My boyfriend was back on the beach guarding our possessions. There were loads of kids swimming up and down parallel to the shore. I swam around for a while. It was when it came to getting out that my problems began. I just couldn’t get a foothold onto the ledge. The more I tried, the worse it got. The waves kept dragging me back into the ocean. I tried to hold back the panic. There was no point in shouting out for help. I couldn’t see any sign of a lifeguard.  Eventually I managed to scramble back onto dry land, staggered up the beach and collapsed onto my towel. I don’t even know if I said anything. I was too embarrassed. But I didn’t go into the sea again, at least not on that holiday. Years later, I heard tell of someone who had died on the coast of Portugal because of the Atlantic riptide. I realized then I’d had a lucky escape.

We broke up several months after the holiday and went our separate ways. He went back to his hometown in Cornwall, and I moved to Ramsgate to start my new career, teaching English to foreign students. That led on to me living and working abroad, which was something I had always wanted to do.

After reading his article, I toyed with the idea of contacting my ex. I wanted to let him know that my memories of the holiday were completely different to his. But it was such a long time ago. What would be the point? When we’d been together, we were different people. It had been a crucial time in both our lives when we’d been finding our feet. There was no point in raking it all up. The holiday had been a turning point. We were already on different paths. Perhaps we always had been.

 abou tht author

 Jenny Palmer writes short stories, poetry, memoir and family history. Her collections 'Keepsake and Other Stories.' 2018, and 'Butterflies and Other Stories,' 2024, were published by Bridge House, and are on Amazon. 'Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists,' 2022, is sold at the Pendle Heritage Centre, Barrowford. 

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 the web site and setting up The Best of CaféLit book each year.