Ella's Holiday

Ella's Holiday

Charlie Britten

(Quick Cup of Nescafe Made in Unwashed Cup in Staffroom)

Ella wished they'd stop talking. Dirty grey drifts lingered at the perimeter of the school playground, without even a budding snowdrop to mock them, but already the other teachers in the staffroom were discussing summer holidays. At the next desk, where Debbie was surfing the internet, Ella glimpsed whitewashed villas, purple bougainvillea, and an impossibly turquoise swimming pool. With an effort, she picked up her pen and continued marking.

            ‘This is where we’re going, in Tenerife,’ said Debbie, swivelling the screen around, just as Ella was settling back into 10B’s essays on Dickens. ‘The children are going to love it. Be in the pool all day.’

 ‘Sounds lovely,’ said Ella, without looking up.

 ‘It gets up to twenty-five degrees in July.’ Debbie hugged her skinny chest with her folded arms, crushing the raw linen top everyone had admired that morning. ‘I'm so cold in here.’

 Ella, wearing two jumpers and other – unmentionable – layers underneath, felt just right.

 ‘Turn the heater on, will you, Antonia? Antonia!’ Stretching over her, Debbie flicked the heater switch on the wall.

 Bracing herself for a blast of hot air, Ella edged her chair sideways.

 ‘Sorry. What did you say?’ Antonia clicked off her CD player and lifted her headphones from her ears. ‘I'm trying to learn Russian. Did I tell you we’re going to Russia in July?’ 

 Yes, you did, several times, thought Ella. In fact, over the last few days, Antonia had given them a running commentary on the booking of her holiday and now she was doing it again. Ella anticipated every word. After Moscow, it was the Trans-Siberian Railway to Ekaterinburg… where the Tsars were murdered, you know… then on to the Hermitage in St Petersburg. In a minute, her colleague would list the works of art on view there. Ella considered buying a device with headphones for herself, an iPod perhaps.

 ‘I couldn't be doing what you’re doing,’ said Debbie, picking up Antonia’s CD. ‘It says on here that you should be speaking ‘travellers’ Russian’ in six weeks. Everyone in Tenerife knows English. That’s one of the reasons why we keep going there.’

 ‘Russian’s a beautiful language,’ said Antonia. ‘And how else do you absorb the culture?’ 

 ‘You can't do culture with teenagers,’ said Debbie.

 ‘Of course you can.’

 ‘No, you can't.’

‘We took our children to Florence when they were six and seven. They went round all the museums and churches with us. And they thoroughly enjoyed it. It depends what you want from a holiday, Debbie.’ 

 Debbie opened her mouth to answer but Antonia had rendered herself incommunicado again by replacing her headphones. Ella corrected a pupil’s spelling of ‘receive’. ‘I before E except after C’, as Barbara used to say. If she had still been here, they would have exchanged raised eyebrows, with Barbara intoning ‘miaow’ in an undertone. No one expected Ella to hold a view, even though she was about to take sixty Year Nines to London in a coach to see The Mousetrap next week. She carried on marking, with just the usual staffroom sounds burbling in the background, the gentle hum of voices, the clatter of cups upon the tea tray and the clunk-clunk of the fridge being opened and shut.

 All too soon, the bell rang for the beginning of afternoon school. The teachers made for the door with pupils’ work piled high in the cardboard lids of printer paper boxes, which they used for filing trays. Picking up her pencil case, a class set of handouts and a tatty cardboard wallet on which she had written ‘Hamlet Worksheet 1’ in small, neat handwriting, Ella sneaked a glance at her holdall under her desk. Inside it a bright pink cover glowed through its flimsy plastic W H Smith carrier. She took two steps from her desk. She halted. She went back. She reached under her desk and zipped up her holdall, before rushing out the staffroom with the others. Miss Pritchard was never late for class.

 ‘Actually you might like Tenerife, Ella,’ said Debbie, as they climbed the stairs amidst the hurly-burly of children texting on mobiles and playing hand-held games consoles. ‘There are parts of it which are very quiet.’

 Ella smiled.

***

As she was getting into her car at the end of the school day, Ella’s mobile rang. Weary, thinking of what she could eat tonight, which wouldn't take too long to prepare, she almost pretended she hadn’t heard.

 ‘Ella, it’s me. Did you call earlier I’ve just been for an amazing walk across the fields in the snow.’

 ‘Oh… hello, Barbara.’

 ‘Now… did you manage to buy the ordinance survey map?’

 ‘Oh yes.’  It scorched a pink hole in her bag. As she struggled through the afternoon traffic, Ella asked herself why she had rushed out and to buy a map in her free period when Barbara, who was retired, had been rambling across the country for pleasure.

***

Winter melted into spring – crocuses, daffodils, tulips. Over Easter, both Debbie and Antonia visited France and returned with the inevitable photographs, Debbie in front of the Eiffel Tower, Antonia against a backdrop of rippling blue water. ‘That’s the Lake, Ella,’ Antonia said. ‘Lake Geneva.’

 ‘As if I’d never seen such a thing before,’ Ella said to Barbara, as they drove to book club that evening.

 Her friend groaned. ‘I know, dear.’

‘Then she explained that she had taken the photo in a place called ‘Thonon Les Bains’... She pronounced it very slowly. It’s a town, Barbara… in France. Poor, pathetic Miss Pritchard couldn't be expected to know where France was, now could she?’

 ‘Don't let them get to you.’

 ‘Oh no. Known them too long. They’re all right really. Do you want to see my new Kindle?’

***

Spring became summer – alyssum, cornflowers, sweet peas, then at last the roses, their heavy scents wafting in through the open windows of the staffroom. Exams invigilated and marking done, just the paperwork remained. Ella entered her results on to a spreadsheet while Antonia tidied her desk, chucking out dog-eared pieces of work by pupils who were about to leave. The ‘learn Russian’ CD slipped out of a pile of old handouts about Henry VIII and on to the floor. As she stared down at the sleeve, Antonia’s mouth curled and her shoulders heaved themselves into a tight shrug. ‘Too late now. We’re flying on Saturday.’ She threw the CD away, the plastic case hitting the metal bin so hard that it wobbled and shifted backwards.

 Debbie burst into the staffroom, her phone clasped against her ear. ‘No, darling, it’s not going to be boring. We’ve got the pool, haven’t we?’ She switched on the kettle as she spoke. ‘But you like swimming.’ The furrows on her face deepened as she wrestled, one-handed, with the brown plastic cap on her Nescafe jar. ‘No, you can't stay at home. Hang on—’ She shoved her phone in front of her eyes, her glare bouncing against the tiny screen. ‘The little madam’s hung up on me.’ She stomped over to her desk in four large, straight-legged strides. ‘She doesn't want to go. My daughter is refusing to go on holiday with us.’

 ‘Well, you know, Debbie, she’s fifteen now,’ said Antonia. ‘Not a child anymore.’

 ‘I do know how old my own daughter is, thank you very much, Antonia.’

 Silence. Other teachers listened and watched, with lowered heads, pretending not to. After a moment Ella stood up, walked across the staffroom, finished making Debbie’s coffee and handed it to her.

 ‘Thanks,’ she said, gripping her mug so hard that her knuckles became white. Tears spilled from her glistening eyes, rolling down her cheeks. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry.’

 ‘She’ll enjoy it when she gets there,’ Ella said, passing over the tissue box which they kept for pupils who turned on the waterworks. ‘She’s doing what teenagers do, testing the boundaries. She’d be scared if you did let her stay at home.’

 Debbie gave the tiniest of nods.

 ‘You’ll have a wonderful holiday in Tenerife,’ Ella said.

 ‘Of course, you will,’ said Antonia, joining them.

 ‘And you’ll have a great time in Russia,’ Ella added. ‘Don't worry about not knowing the language. How could you possibly learn it when you’re teaching full time, and doing all the wretched paper-work? You’ll have a tour guide. He or she will show you around.’

 Antonia rolled her eyes. ‘Stout ladies from Intourist, ex-KGB, saying, ‘This is where the Socialist comrades shot the Imperialist Romanoffs. Look now, please.’’

‘It’ll be very interesting,’ said Ella.

 ‘Where are you going, Ella?’ asked Debbie, sniffing and wiping her face. ‘Somewhere nice, I hope.’

 ‘Oh yes.’

***

The morning after the end of term Ella had a lie-in, even though the sun poured through her curtains making criss-cross patterns on her light summer duvet. The only thing that did take her downstairs was wanting a cup of tea, which she drank watching the feathery ears of corn fluttering in the field opposite. She listened to the radio as she did her chores. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she murmured on hearing that traffic on all motorways to Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted was gridlocked. The phone rang while she was opening the fridge to survey what remained inside it. ‘Hello there,’ said Barbara. ‘Free at last, eh?’

 ‘Oh yes.’

 ‘We need to talk about tomorrow, dear. I'm going to pick you up at eight.’

 ‘That’s fine.’

 ‘Now, have you got sun cream?’

 ‘Oh yes.’

 ‘Factor Fifteen?’

 ‘Factor Twenty-five.’

 ‘And your cap with the sun visor?’

 ‘Oh yes.’ Ella made her breakfast and ate it, with her phone pressed against her ear.

 ‘Better let you go,’ Barbara said at last. ‘Have a nice relaxing day.’

 ‘I'm going for a walk.’

 ‘Don't wear yourself out, dear. You and I will be doing enough walking next week.’

Half an hour later, Ella closed the front door of her little terraced house and made her way down the main street of her village, pausing at the church, as she always did, to enjoy the blues, pinks and yellows of the flowers in the churchyard. No gardener, she didn't know what they were, but she recognised their sweet fragrance, which, for years now, she had called the ‘end of term smell’. She climbed up the hill, alongside a field of wispy barley, over a wooden stile and through set-aside land dotted with white and yellow daisies and dandelions.

 Stopping at last by a big oak tree, she laid her checked travelling rug at the foot of its trunk and sat down, leaning against its soft corky trunk. She took out her Kindle and read a novel which was not on any school English syllabus. In the distance, she could just about make out the sound of cars, a soft drone above the rustling of the wind through the grass and the hum of insects.

 Next week she and Barbara would walk Hadrian’s Wall; like Debbie’s daughter in Tenerife, she would enjoy it when she got there. But today she would watch the furry bees as they crept into purple bells of wild foxgloves, their rotating wings rippling through the air like tiny propellers, and a frumpy brown mother duck, with six downy chicks, waddling by the river.

 Ella’s holiday had begun.

About the Author

Charlie Britten lives in southern England with her husband and cat. She writes because she enjoys it. Her work has been published in Mslexia, Long Short Story, Every Day Fiction,Alfie Dog, The Copperfield Review and Radgepacket and other places as well. In real life, she lectures in IT at a college of further education. Charlie’s blog, ‘Write On’, is at http://charliebritten.wordpress.com/. 

Visiting My Penfriend

Charlie Britten

Visiting My Penfriend

Tea in a Glass with a Slice of Lemon

When I asked him for directions, he flinched as if I'd hit him. Seeing as he was wearing blue workman’s overalls and was in the act of sticking up a poster, I’d presumed him to be a railway employee. Abba blond, I rated him ‘ten’ on the ‘drop-dead gorgeous’ scale. 

               ‘Over there,’ he said, jerking his head to the right and without meeting my eye. In an instant, he was gone. 

               I’d arranged to meet my cousin, Dominik, at the main entrance. For fifteen minutes I’d been pacing up and down the concourse beneath Gdansk Glowny Station looking for it, my pink, plastic flip-flops, purchased from Colchester Woolworths three weeks ago, chafing between my toes. My first impressions of Gdansk, seen from the train window, weren’t good: tower blocks looming like oversized tombstones, skeletal cranes lunging from the skyline, grimy pipes running alongside the track, and blackened industrial buildings with chimneys belching acrid smoke which irritated my nostrils, even from inside my carriage. 

               I wasn't supposed to be in Gdansk.

***

Dad, who’d fled Krakow in 1939, had done everything to dissuade me from taking a holiday in Poland.

               ‘But Dad, it’s 1980,’ I protested.

               ‘Poland still Communist,’ he said. 

               ‘But I'll be all right staying with Aunt Magda in the Tatra Mountains.’

               ‘For sure, Tatra Mountains very beautiful.’

               He agreed eventually. I’d spent the last fortnight with my mother’s sister, in the south, the nice area of the country. Dad knew nothing of my Polish penfriend. My mates did, but, coming from a school of ‘Janets’ and ‘Janices’, they presumed my ‘Jan’ to be like their French ‘correspondantes’, a foreign replica of themselves, into ‘Blondie’, ‘Fleetwood

Mac’ and maxi dresses.

               Only the Estonian girl, Eeva, guessed. ‘He’s a boy. Right?’ she said.

               We never got on, Eeva and I, both of us children of World War Two refugees, with one foot in England and one further east. Driven by our families, and from within ourselves, to achieve everything, we trampled over each other, to be in the choir, orchestra, hockey team, tennis, chess team … and, oh yes, of course … for academic awards. Now, at the end of our school careers, the greatest prizes were boyfriends. I supposed she thought I'd got one up on her.

               Wrong there, Eeva, although you were right about one thing. In Poland, ‘Jans’ are male, as is probably the way in Estonia. Did Eeva wonder, as I did, about what was in her blood and how her different life might have been? I never used to – until Polish John Paul II became Pope eighteen months ago.

Last Christmas, hungry for contact with the real Poland, I asked my cousin, Dominik, to write to me. ‘Sorry,’ he wrote back, ‘Useless at letters. Too lazy. But my flatmate, Jan, he’ll do it. He loves the music of the Rolling Stones. He wants to know if you can send him records.’ 

               It was all innocent. Honestly. I had a Stones LP for him in my pack, bound with sellotape in layers and layers of brown paper. Dad didn’t know about Jan, of course. Or my being here in Gdansk. He’d have got the wrong idea too. 

When my father vocalised ‘Communism’, the word curdled the air. 

               ‘There must be dissidents,’ I’d said to him many times.

               ‘In USSR and in Czechoslovakia,’ he replied. ‘Not in Poland. Polish Army put down Prague Spring.’

***

Now in Gdansk I’d found proper dissident. I devoured what he’d left behind. Plain and monochrome, the poster cried ‘Solidarnosc’ with ink blotches inside the Ss and Os.  It told of crane driver, Anna Walentynowicz, sacked for distributing pamphlets, and a planned strike by the Gdansk Shipyard workers calling for her reinstatement. Tomorrow. Dad didn't approve of strikes either, something we’d seen a lot of in Britain during the past few years. 

               ‘Communists,’ he’d say, shaking his head at the television.

***

‘Marya?’

               ‘Dominik?’ Although I’d never met him before, I recognised his face from family photographs on our mantelpiece. When he kissed my cheeks three times, I felt like a proper Pole. 

               We chatted for several minutes about the weather; I'd expected Poland to be cold but this summer was unexpectedly warm.

               ‘We must find Jan,’ he said at last. ‘I told him I’d meet him at 17:00 hours.’

               ‘Oh … yes … I suppose.’ 

Casting one last glance at the spot where my dissident had stood, I followed Dominik’s confident step through the labyrinthine concourse to the station exit. Red and white trams hurtled along the wide street, alongside pavements thronged with workers in blue overalls, their heads and shoulders bobbing up and down as they walked. 

               Then I saw a ray of gold, the summer sun catching his Abba blond hair. My dissident again, stepping towards us and carrying a pink rose. 

               My heart leapt. Yes, it was him. Definitely. My stomach somersaulted.

               Nearer and nearer he came. But I was in Gdansk to meet – not him – but Jan, my penfriend.

               Dominik raised his arm. ‘Jan. Over here.’ 

Moments later, he stood next to us. With an old-fashioned bow, he offered the pink rose to me. 

About the author

Charlie Britten has contributed to FictionAtWork, Every Day Fiction, Mslexia, Linnet’s Wings, CafeLit, Radgepacket and the Copperfield Review. She writes because she loves doing it.

All Charlie’s work is based in reality, with a strong human interest element. Although much of her work is humorous, she has also written serious fiction, about the 7/7 Bombings in London and attitudes to education before the Second World War. 

Charlie Britten lives in southern England with her husband and cat. In real life, she is an IT lecturer at a college of further education.

Charlie’s blog, ‘Write On’, is at http://charliebritten.wordpress.com/

Cut to the End

Cut to the End

Charlie Britten

Cafe Au Lait

Earphones are an effective device for blotting out the rest of the world. My mother stands in my room, opening and shutting her mouth like a goldfish. ‘Switch that thing off,’ she says, and I wonder how I know that. Can I do telepathy now?  With my mum?  This is scary, so much so I switch off my iPod, even though I am in the middle of ‘Neutron Star Collision’ by Muse, which is truly amazing.

‘We’re on holiday, Matthew. In France. You can listen to your music at home. Now, are you ready?’ 

‘I told you. I'm not going.’

‘Come on, love. We’re all ready to set off. Dad and Steph are waiting. We’re going to have a nice family day out.’

‘At a museum?’

‘You’ll like it when you get there.’

‘Why would I want to go to a D-Day museum?  Why do you, Mum?’

‘It’ll be very interesting.’  She sits down on my unmade bed and then stands up again. ‘Come on. You can't stay here by yourself.’

‘I'm all right.’ 

‘No.’ She draws in her breath and blows it out again. ‘It’s so stuffy in here. You never open windows, do you?’  Her face has become flushed, droplets of water forming on her forehead.

The sun pours through the dusty casement; a river of sweat trickles down the cleft of my spine, making my black t-shirt cling like a damp cloth to my back and to the sticky patch on my wrist.

‘Change into something cooler, Matthew. Black absorbs the heat. I packed you a couple of light-coloured Ts.’ 

I wince at the word ‘Ts’; is that what they call them in M&S?  Anyway, black is what I wear: black T-shirts, black jeans, black hoody, black hair dye. ‘I'm all right,’ I say again.

We both hear Dad shouting outside, something about a bottle having leaked and ‘made a mess’ in the car. Mum goes out to speak to him, but my sister Steph appears in her place, as if the two are working shifts. ‘Move it, Matthew. Now. They’re waiting.’

‘You don’t want to go to this museum.’

‘I do, actually.’

‘Why?  You’re not Dad. You’re not into war films and all that death and glory stuff. I'm joining CND.’

‘Can you afford the membership fee?  You owe Mum £5 for the last gig you went to. Just get your arse into Dad’s car.’  She reaches for my hand, pushing back the cuff of my black T-shirt.

‘Leave me alone.’  Snatching my hand back, I pull my sleeve down over my wrist.

‘What have you done?’ 

Her eyes scan my room, but my safety pin lies deep in my jeans pocket.

‘I scratched myself on the brambles in the yard.’

‘Yeah, right.’  She looks straight at me but I turn away.

‘If you insist on not going and spoiling everybody’s day, I'm staying with you.’

I suppose I always knew I'd have to give in eventually. I rummage around under my bed for my trainers. ‘I don't know why you come on a family holiday. You’re a student.’

‘I haven't got any money, have I?  And Mum and Dad offered to pay for me.’

‘When I'm nineteen, I'll be on the road with my metal band.’

‘Right.’

I bump my head on the kitchen door lintel as I walk outside. It hurts. Being tall is annoying.

‘Would you like to sit in the front with me, Matthew?’ asks Dad, as he attempts to fold up the map, but the gentlest of breezes flaps it around his hands like a duvet-cover on a rotary-drier. Taking it from him, Mum smoothes it out in a few firm movements, all the time talking to Steph about how many calories there might be in pain au chocolat.

‘I don’t mind.’  I sit in the back with Steph.

‘All aboard for Arromanches and the D-Day Museum,’ says Dad as he starts the engine.

I cringe. So does Steph.

We drive along straight French roads, through pine forest, families sitting at picnic tables, children running around amongst the trees and scrambling over stumps and logs, as Steph and I used to do in England. For a moment, I feel the springy bracken under my feet, bits of bark in my shoe and dusty mud between my toes. Afterwards we would eat squashed, peanut butter sandwiches, clammy and glue-y, washed down with a little box of Sainsbury’s pure orange juice.

Having parked in one of the many car parks at Arromanches, we walk along the promenade, gulls ‘caw-caw-ing’ above our heads. Then Dad stops dead, thrusting his arm out in front of him, almost knocking off Steph’s sunglasses. ‘Look. Look. Mulberry Platforms.’  He turns to me. ‘You do realise how significant these were, don't you?’  Before I can even draw breath, he tells me - again - about Hugh Iorys Hughes building portable landing platforms so that the Allies could invade France. Blah, blah, blah.

It’s like a demolition site, lumps of rusting metal and concrete on the beach and in the sea. French families swim around them, using them as diving platforms and spreading their beach towels over them. It’s a hot day.

‘Hugh Iorys Hughes was Welsh by the way.’  Dad’s mother is from the Valleys. He bigs this up, has done ever since the World War Two craze took him over.

We have to wait in a queue to enter The D-Day Museum, alongside wall-displays of uniforms stiff with age, yellowed wartime notices in blotchy typescript, gas masks, photographs of men with round, horn-rimmed glasses and brylcremed hair, standing behind bulky pieces of equipment. ‘Fascinating, fascinating,’ says Dad, pushing his glasses down his nose. I move my weight from one foot to the other. It’s all so old, a miasma of Dad-ness. My wrist throbs under new scars. I notice that my cuff sticks to newly dried blood.

Mum and Steph stand together chatting, pointing at things and laughing. They have this joke about generals in war films moving canes over maps and saying in cut-glass accents, ‘We’re-ah here-ah. The enemy’s there-ah. And we’re going to obliterate the blight-ahs.’  It was funny the first time.

Inside the museum at last, a bald-headed Frenchman talks through the events of D-Day, pointing with a ruler at a papier-mache model of Arromanches. ‘Nous sommes ici, ici, et ici, et les Nazis, voila!’  Mum and Steph dissolve into giggles; every so often they press their lips together and look serious, but seconds later their mouths pucker again. Whose side are they on?  

I glance at Dad, but he’s so caught up in it all that he doesn't notice, which is perhaps as well. For a while I'm really pissed off with them. We’re doing this for Dad, aren’t we? It’s his thing, isn't it? But the museum goes on and on, more and more rooms and exhibits, another storey, yet another video. Dad has to see everything.

At last, lunch, open air and sunshine, cafe table legs scraping against the pavement. The waitress furrows her brow as Dad orders in English; he gets cross when she brings tiny cups of espresso, instead of what he calls ‘proper coffee’. I tighten my knuckles under the table. Mum leans across the table murmuring, ‘Grand’, but Dad shakes his head at her. ‘Bigger.’ He draws his hands apart as if he were playing the accordion. ‘And... With.... Milk.’

‘Cafe au lait,’ I say to my feet.

‘What’s that, Matthew?’ Dad turns on me, raising his eyebrows.

‘Nothing.’

‘Better not be.’  As we finish eating, he takes another brochure out of his pocket and opens it out on the table. ‘Now, the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’. It says here that ‘This circular theatre with nine screens shows the film ‘The Price of Freedom’, which mixes contemporary news-reel images from war correspondents with pictures from the present day. There is no spoken commentary, just the sounds and noise of D-Day.’’

I don’t say anything. All I do is curl my lip about a millimetre.

Dad leaps out of his chair and storms out the cafe, leaving Mum to pay. In the car park, he shouts at me, ‘What’s the matter with you?  What were you going to do this morning that was so much more interesting?’ 

Silence.

Dad’s furious eyes bore a hole into my face. ‘Well?’

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Why are you like this?  What do you want?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know!  You don’t know anything!’  I jerk my head backwards; it’s what I always do when I'm told off, even though it’s uncomfortable. ‘Get into the car!  You will see this!’

In dreadful silence we drive about a mile, to a bunker-like building half-submerged in cliff top. I wander away from the others, across the grass area which slopes down to the sea, grateful for the offshore breeze blowing on to my face. An elderly couple smile at me and say something in French. They must think I'm normal, but my wrist still smarts. I touch the safety pin in my pocket.

Inside the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’, it’s standing-room only, with metal crash barriers, like an old fashioned football ground, but our family and that elderly French couple make up the whole audience. The screen extends almost all round the auditorium, so when the lights go out, images of D-Day bear down upon us from everywhere, truly 360 degrees, soldiers in khaki and the tat-tat-tat of gunfire, buildings dissolving in smoke and fire, the view from an aircraft with the ground rising up and down. Makes you dizzy. I reach out for the metal crash barrier. Dad jerks his head round to stare at me.

They ride through a field, which changes into a modern town. Germans in grey uniforms surrender to teenage Allied soldiers, watched by ragged French villagers, who cheer and cry at the same time. In the auditorium, I hear a gulp: the elderly French couple are sobbing, easy tears flowing down their cheeks unchecked. She taps me on the arm and points to her chest, saying in stilted English, ‘Me, I... was... here.’

I nod, my father also; he draws in his breath to say something in reply but doesn't.

More images of Allied soldiers now, scared faces under their round metal helmets, dirty and exhausted. For a moment I think I recognise one of the sixth-formers at school. Seventy years ago, this is what sixth-formers looked forward to. This would have been me if I had lived in the 1940s.

My father is still watching me, but I don't care. It’s all too much, in the same way that listening to ‘The End’ by ‘The Doors’ blows your mind, because you know you can never create anything as big, never do what they do, only glimpse at something massive. With my finger, I trace the outline of that safety pin, the loop at the bottom, the rounded catch at the top. The soldiers’ faces have scratches on their faces, but they didn't do it to themselves, because they were bored, or because their family weren’t cool.

We leave the ‘Arromanches 360 Cinema’ in silence, Dad walking on ahead of us, his shoulders sagging, his head cast down. I quicken my pace, about to join him, but he doesn't look at me.

‘Let's have another coffee,’ says Mum, forcing a smile.

‘No,’ mutters Steph, ‘not that again.’ 

Nevertheless we follow her across the road to the nearest cafe. Leaving them hovering outside, I walk into the gloomy interior, pushing past wooden chairs with tired paint and bare tables with just ashtrays on them. A waiter polishes glasses behind the bar, his eyes intent on the television in the corner, watching a games show with lots of canned laughter.

‘Café du lait, s’il vous plait,’ I say. ‘Quatre.’ 

Nodding, he reaches over to the coffee machine. ‘A la table?’

‘Merci bien.’

I rejoin my family outside. Dad peruses one of the leaflets we picked up today, pages rustling as he turns them. Mum and Steph have stopped chattering; I wish they’d say something. Anything. The sound of my heart pumping blood around my body is deafening, throbbing through the scratches on my wrist, which have reached the smarting, sore stage. I pull down my sleeve.

Then Dad raises his head. Simultaneously Mum, Steph and I draw in our breath and hold it.

‘You’ve ordered?’ Dad says.

‘Yeah,’ I reply, exhaling again.

‘In French?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Well done.’  He smiles. ‘You’re a good linguist, you are.’  He holds the smile until his face muscles must've ached. He looks down at what he had been reading, then at me again. ‘What did you...? How did you...?’  He taps the brochure.

‘It was okay.’

Still smiling, he nods. ‘Yes. It was okay. Wasn't it?’

On the way back to the car, I throw the safety pin into the gutter.

Author Bio

Charlie Britten has contributed to ‘FictionAtWork’, ‘The Short Humour Site’, ‘Mslexia’, ‘Linnet’s Wings’, CafeLit, ‘Radgepacket’.  She writes because she loves doing it and belongs to two British online writing communities.

All Charlie’s work is based in reality, with a strong human interest element.  Although much of her work is humorous, she has also written serious fiction, about the 7/7 Bombings in London and attitudes to education before the Second World War. 

Charlie Britten lives in southern England with her husband and cat.  In real life, she is an IT lecturer at a college of further education.

Charlie’s blog, ‘Write On’, is at http://charliebritten.wordpress.com/

VISIONS

By Charlie Britten

 

Mocha

 

Sarah stood on a platform of nothingness, an empty stage rolling into the horizon.  As mortals do, she likened it to something she had seen before.  The floor, glowing in the bright sunlight, she supposed was marble and she knew without looking that blue and brown veins strafed the white stone.  She conjured up unending white corridors, in hospitals, at airports, in hotels, but the intense beauty before her bore no comparison.

 

She was no longer in pain. 

 

Or frightened.

 

***********************************

 

A few minutes ago, she had been driving, tearing along familiar country lanes close to her home.  A black Ferrari had nudged up behind her, edging into the centre of the road.  ‘You can't overtake here, you stupid man,’ she’d muttered.  ‘Nothing like enough room.’

 

Sarah had presumed the driver to be a man, even though she couldn't see him through his blackened windows.  He’d powered into the right hand lane, gathering speed and pushing past her, forcing her into the hedge, then cut in front of her and stopped. 

 

Her car had squashed into his like a sponge.  For a moment, she’d sat motionless in her seat, her hands still gripping the steering wheel.  She was okay, just a bit shaken, but then she’d seen smoke rising from the engine and smelt burning rubber.  She’d reached for the door-handle.  She’d supposed they would have to go through the usual exchanging-names-and-addresses thing, and she didn’t have time.  She had to catch the nine forty-five to London. 

 

As she’d reached for her handbag on the back seat, doors slammed and rapid footsteps had approached.  A man in a leather jacket had run towards her.  All manner of words denoting ‘dangerous driving’ had risen to her lips, and a younger, more impetuous Sarah would have said them all.  She had been about to utter something reasonable and civilised, when he’d produced the revolver.

 

She’d drawn in her breath and held it, her lungs bursting with unspent air.  She’d recognised him, of course, despite not having set eyes on him for three decades.  She had been expecting him for about for about three weeks.  She’d even parted her lips to say, ‘Hello, Bogdan,’ but the words hadn’t come.  She would have despised herself for showing fear, for jumping at the loud retort of his gun.  Something had touched her forehead, a tap, a sharp gush of pain which had swelled through her body.  Her hand had stretched out to the doorframe, but her fingers had slid down the window.

 

*********************************

 

Her body had spiralled upwards and inwards, irresistibly drawn towards a narrow point of light, the same light that now shone through the nothingness, dispersing the mists which she hadn’t noticed before.  On her left, a wide staircase led downwards, shallow, concrete steps, worn down in the centre. On the right, what looked like aircraft steps rose up and up forever and ever, with little lights glowing on the treads, or were they tiny jewels, possibly pearls?

 

She could see through the floor, which was transparent, not marble at all.  Below it lay the English countryside, the greens of the hedges and spinneys deepening as they did when it was about to rain.  The blue shape, wedged into white hawthorn, was the wreck of her car.  The Ferrari had disappeared. 

 

She’d have to leave her car and call the police later, after she’d seen Dave in London.  She must catch the nine forty-five.  She reached under her sleeve for her watch but her wrist was bare.  She reached down the side of her trousers for her phone, but it wasn't there, nor was her pocket.

 

‘Are you going to stay there all day?’ a voice boomed from above.

 

She looked up.  The speaker was a bearded, middle-aged man, wearing a thick, crewneck sweater and workman’s trousers, his silhouette framed by an archway studded with pinpoints of white light.  ‘Oh, hello.’  When she looked up, she needed to shield her eyes from his brightness.  ‘Do you have a phone? I need to call a taxi.  I've had an accident with my car.’

 

‘Come on, Sarah.’

 

‘Do I know you?’

 

‘I knew you when you were far off,’ he said.

 

She frowned.  ‘Have you got a phone?’

 

‘Can't hear.’

 

Sighing, she clambered up the staircase with its pretty lights.  ‘People think they know me because they see me on telly,’ she panted, as she reached the top.  ‘I'm sorry but I don't recognise you.’

 

He stretched out his hand.  ‘I’m Peter.  I'm a fisherman.’

 

‘Really nice to meet you, Peter.’  She shook his hand.  ‘But I really must get to London, to show Dave, my producer, the DVD of ‘Visions’.  That’s the working title of my latest programme.  I’ve been working on it for six months.’

 

Peter shook his head.  ‘Sarah, slow down.  None of this matters.’

 

‘Actually, it does.  I’ve got to get my programme on the air.  This... disgusting... Bogdan, this Polish man, is getting Polish girls, his own people.... to England, promising them that they’ll get good jobs and earn lots of money, then locking them in a basement and making them work as prostitutes.’

 

‘We know.’

 

‘And my DVD contained recorded interviews with girls who’ve escaped.’ 

 

‘Sarah, I said we know.  My colleague, Mary, is on the case.  She had similar experiences in the past, I'm afraid.’

 

‘Re-ally?’  Her eyes sprung wide open.  ‘Look, Peter, is there any chance I could meet Mary?  Later on, perhaps?’  Again she turned her wrist to consult the watch that wasn’t there.  ‘Oh no.  I've just thought.  The DVD’s in my car.  I’ll have to go and get it.’  She turned, putting one foot back on the stair, but Peter shook his head.  ‘I must. Look, you can see my car through the floor.  The blue one.’ 

 

Taking her hand, he led her away.  ‘No, Sarah.  You’re here now.’

 

‘Where am I exactly?’ she demanded.

 

‘You don’t know?’

 

‘No.  I'm completely lost.  How far are we from the station?  You know, I'm starting to think that what happened wasn’t an accident at all.  I mean, he had a gun.’

 

‘No, Sarah, it wasn’t.’

 

‘Oh God.’

 

Peter frowned.  ‘A friendly word, Sarah.  You don’t say ‘Oh God’ round here, unless you mean it.  Blasphemy is not liked, on high.’

 

‘Sorry.  It just slipped out.  As you can understand, I'm a bit stressed at the moment.’

 

‘No need, Sarah.  We don’t do stress here.’

 

‘Where am I?’

 

‘I think you know.’

 

‘No, I don’t.’

 

‘You will.  Another thing.  You mentioned that this Bogdan... the person you had an issue with... was Polish.  I’d just mention that I used to be Polski myself, for twenty-seven years, in fact.’

 

‘Sorry again.  I've nothing against Poland and Polish people.  I was a reporter there in the 1980s.  Lovely scenery, especially the Tatra Mountains.’

 

‘Oh yes.  I used to go skiing in the Tatra Mountains.  But I'm German now.  And before that I was Italian, for a long time.’

 

‘Oh.  Right.  You must’ve led an, er, interesting life.  I was in Germany, in Berlin, when the Wall came down in 1989, by the way.’

 

‘With your camcorder.’

 

‘It was absolutely amazing.  People taking down the bricks with their bare hands.  I never reckoned on people like Bogdan coming along afterwards.  I mean, back in the 1980s, we journos used to go drinking with him.  Wodkas, lined up on the table, down in one, all of them.  He was this really funny guy.  Polish humour.  About Commies, Russians, Solidarnosc.  Never about the Pope though.’

 

‘I should think not.’

 

‘The Poles worship the ground Pope John Paul II walked on.  They rank him higher than God himself.’

 

Peter pursed his lips as he shook his head.  ‘No.  Peter is Christ’s vicar on earth.’

 

‘Yes.  Okay.  But Bogdan’s got to be stopped.’ 

 

‘He will be.’

 

She stabbed at the transparent marble floor with her toe.  ‘Hang on.  I can't see his Ferrari down there now.’

 

‘He left the scene of your ‘accident’ several minutes ago.’

 

‘Oh no.’  She groaned, a deep, throaty groan.  ‘My DVD.  Tell me he hasn't got my DVD.’

 

His bushy eyebrows rose into the furrows of his frown.  ‘As a matter of fact, he’s destroyed it.’

 

She stared at him, her eyes fixed upon a wayward strand of his shaggy brown hair.  ‘Oh-’

 

He held up his hand.  ‘No swearing, please.’

 

‘How?  How did he destroy it?’

 

‘Well, he cut it in two with secateurs.  Does it matter?  Can’t we stop talking about Bogdan and your programme?’ 

 

‘He could’ve killed me.’

 

Peter drummed the pearly gates with his fingers.

 

‘He did kill me, didn’t he?  Oh God, oh God, oh God.’

 

‘Sarah, please-’

 

‘I'm sorry.  I really am sorry, but you’ve got to understand that this is a bit of a... blow.  I wasn't expecting it.  Oh...’  She blinked several times.  ‘So you must be...?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘And this is...?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘I don’t deserve to be here.’

 

‘None of us do, except one.  Certainly not me. Even now, I cannot bear the sound of a cock crowing.’ 

 

‘I was very bad at attending church, you know,’ she said in an almost inaudible voice.  ‘I always believed but I'm afraid I only prayed when things went wrong.  It isn’t easy when you work in the media.  Everybody’s too cool to be religious.’

 

‘Pride, the worst sin of all.  God forgives. Fortunately.’

 

‘Yes.  Yes.’  For a moment, she stared ahead, unseeing.  ‘I did a lot of investigative journalism, you know, campaigning stuff.  You see, I did love my neighbour.’ 

 

‘If he – or she - happened to be newsworthy.’ 

 

‘I so wanted to get ‘Visions’ on air.  For the girls’ sake.’

 

‘You have to leave it with us now.’  He nodded at the wide staircase leading downwards, with shallow treads, worn at the centre.  ‘Bogdan, he’ll go down there.’

 

‘Hell?’

 

Peter shuddered.  ‘Yes.’

 

‘And the girls?’

 

‘Relax, Sarah.  You can't do anymore’

 

‘But I can't rest-’

 

‘Yes, you can.  Forever.’  He waved her through the big, pearly archway and into a garden which extended as far as she could see.  She walked a few paces along a path lined with luscious green leaves and vivid blooms; in the distance, she could hear gentle trickle of living water.

 

Peter was no longer with her.  He remained by the pearly gate.

 

She ran back to him.  ‘What about the girls in the brothels?’

 

‘It’ll be sorted out, Sarah.  Through Him all things are possible, as my mate, Matthew, says.’

 

She didn’t move.

 

‘Sarah, please.’  He turned, as if about to go, but he jabbed at the transparent marble floor with his toe.  ‘Look at earth below, if you must.  Can you see your computer?’

 

‘Yes, in the study, at home.’

 

‘The ‘Visions’ programme file is backed up on your hard drive, isn't it?’

 

‘I didn’t suppose you’d be so IT literate up here.’

 

‘Of course we know about computers, and many other machines the mortals on earth won't, er, invent, for a long time.  Trust Him to get your file to the police.’

 

‘To the police?  So it’ll never get on air?’

 

‘So vain, Sarah.  Pride again.  It’s good thing we get here by grace, isn't it?  Now get yourself into Heaven.  Before I change my mind.’

Charlie Britten has contributed to ‘FictionAtWork’, ‘The Short Humour Site’, ‘Mslexia’, ‘Linnet’s Wings’, ‘Radgepacket’ and also previously had a book review published in the ‘Copperfield Review’.  She writes because she loves doing it and belongs to two British online writing communities.

 

All Charlie’s work is based in reality, with a strong human interest element.  Although much of her work is humorous, she has also written serious fiction, about the 7/7 Bombings in London and attitudes to education before the Second World War. 

 

Charlie Britten lives in southern England with her husband and cat.  In real life, she is an IT lecturer at a college of further education.

Blog: http://charliebritten.blogspot.com/