Reflections

Marie Fullerton

Reflections

Hot Chocolate with Cream and Marshmallows

The skies opened and I ran into the museum for shelter from the sudden downpour.

               I glanced around furtively as I hunted through my pockets with wet hands in search of a tissue. I hoped that anyone watching me would not think it was anything more than just the rain that ran the length of my nose, gathered into a huge diamond droplet on the tip and dripped down the front of my jacket.

               The familiar wax polish smell in the musty warmth of the entrance hall welcomed me. As a child, I’d spent many an hour exploring here during the long school holidays, a good few years ago now. My best friend and I had laughed as we flirted with the boys from the grammar school, hiding in corners and stifling giggles behind our hands; made up stories about the crowns, gowns and robes that how hung lifeless in dusty corners. We’d held hands and cried over broken relationships in the darkened quiet seats as teenagers and spent hours at the study tables trying to put together essays that were different enough to look as though we hadn’t worked together while at college. Just before Anna had moved abroad with her family we’d both bought the same necklace from the souvenir shop and sworn never to take them off as a token of our friendship. Then, in spite of the promise to keep in touch no matter what,

we’d lost contact with each other as the years passed. Ah, the memories that clung tightly to that smell.

It looked like the rain wasn’t going to ease off for I while and I decided to walk round before going upstairs for a coffee in the café. Although the smell hadn’t changed, the exhibits had. A dinosaur exhibition that had housed rows of bones and artefacts had grown and now also had screens that allowed me to see the creatures they came from at the touch of a button. History documentaries played on monitors close to each exhibit. I remembered the dinosaur story we had written one afternoon for a project on evolution our first year in senior school. The ammonite fossil caught my eye; captured in what looked like an old granite kerbstone, the curled shell nestled tightly inside a quartz casing. More tiny pieces of quartz were glistening between the folds and I smiled as I thought how much like life was this ancient creature; how much like my life!

I walked up to the café, bought myself a cream cake and a latte coffee and sat by the window looking down onto the street below. Rivulets of water joined together as they ran races to the frame at the bottom of the window. I reflected on the ammonite. Such a beautiful shell incarcerated in a coffin of grey stone, taunted by the sparkling of reflected light on its prison walls. I sighed and looked outside. Large droplets of rain clung to the window, little images of people in the street below drifted through each drop. The vibrant, magnified colours of their clothing faded away to the grey of the pavement once they had passed and left me with just my broken reflection. I wondered where the years had gone, where Anna was now, if she still thought of me. I sipped my coffee.

               ‘Lorna?’ A voice broke into my daydreams. ‘Lorna, I don’t believe this, it

is you.’

               ‘Anna?’ My heart leapt. It couldn’t be, could it?

               ‘Lorna, have you any idea how I have missed you?’

               As I stood up her arms embraced me and I held her tight.

               ‘Oh Anna!’

               I was speechlessly gazing into her eyes as she brushed my face with her

thumb.

               ‘You old silly, I knew we would find each other again. I just moved back

and…’ She paused for a second. ‘It’s funny; I sort of knew I would find you here.’

               She removed her coat, shook it and hung it on the back of a chair. I watched her graceful movements; she hadn't changed a bit.

               ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ I said, ‘hot chocolate with cream and

marshmallows?’

               ‘You remembered!’

               She smiled and pulled the damp, silk scarf from around her neck. A tiny silver ammonite pendant nestled between her breasts.

               ‘I think we both did, didn’t we?’

               She laughed as she caught my arm before I left the table and pulled me toward her. Slowly she undid the top button of my blouse, ran her finger down the chain and touched my pendant. Our eyes met.              

               ‘Did you put it on especially?’

               I kissed her hand. How could I have known, how could she? I smiled at her and hugged her again.

               ‘No Anna, I never took it off.’

About the Author

Marie Fullerton is a retired lecturer, she has eight grown up children and she has wanted to be a writer forever.  She also started painting twenty-one years ago and is completely self-taught. At fifty she was proud of her 2.1 BA degree for English language, literary history and creative writing at UCC and has since had several poems published in anthologies and short stories in E-zines. She is currently working on two novels. Although she has sold many paintings she has only recently tried her hand at illustrating. You can see her artwork on her Facebook page using the following link here: LINK

Blog pages: http://wordangell.wordpress.com/

                     http://mariesimaginings.blogspot.com/

The Dawning

 Marie Fullerton 

Single Americano - hold the cream

Jan looked around the Bistro; little vases of white and yellow flowers in the centre of each table stood out against the pristine, green tablecloths. She had seen the same cream walls and dark wood beams in a small bar she had visited in France. The canopy above the window outside sheltered most of the diners from the glaring sun but on one small table in the window corner, the sunshine streamed in. Jan took her cup and sat down there. She allowed the sun to play on her face as she watched tiny particles of dust dancing in the light through the window. Her mind wandered aimlessly. Enjoying the break, she sipped her coffee slowly.

“Hello Jan, this is a surprise.”

Jan jumped at the familiar voice and looked up to see Mark standing in the doorway; he held his arms wide as if to welcome her. She stood up and smiled weakly. He hadn’t changed, the same old Mark.

“Mmm, not forgiven me yet I see?”

“What do you expect?” She allowed her coldness to confirm his suspicions but her hands trembled as she watched him saunter across the floor and join her at the table.

“Let me buy you a fresh coffee; this place is new, I’ve not seen it before?”

“Yes, fairly new,” she smiled as she added, “ I hear the food’s good.”

A family with two small children came in noisily and joined another couple already seated at a large table at the back of the room.

“Excuse me,” Mark twisted round on his chair and called the waitress without seeming not to notice them.

“Two coffees and two Welsh Rarebits, please love.”

As she came across to take the order, Jan widened her eyes and looked directly at her over Mark’s shoulder, shaking her head with the smallest of movements, she fleetingly touched her lips with a forefinger.

Mark turned back round to face her.

“I can’t eat alone, you must eat with me.”

Jan checked her watch,

“I only have half an hour. I’m not hungry, a coffee will do fine.” 

Ignoring her statement, he asked, “Now, what have you been up to?”

“Since you walked out on me you mean?” she cut in coldly.

“Ah, come on Jan, we agreed to a trial separation.”

He leaned across and picked a hair from her lapel and watched as it drifted to the floor. She was beginning to get irritable as she relived all the emotions that Mark had unleashed in her on his leaving. But then, she had done all right for herself. OK, she was still single but she liked it that way and she’d done a lot that she wouldn’t otherwise have done; she’d gone to college for instance.

“So where did you go?” she asked.

“I was in Australia for two and a half years and then…”

“You mean you went … on your own!” Realising she had raised her voice, she dropped it again and whispered, “Why, after all our plans, why?”

“I’m sorry, please forgive me?”

Mark looked down and brushed imaginary dust from the tablecloth.

“I dunno, I guess it had all been getting too much, I, I really don’t know. I nearly wrote to you several times but, you know how it is!”

“I do?”

“Two Welsh Rarebit and two coffees.”

Jan smiled and nodded her head at the waitress. “ Thanks, Emma.”

“Ah,” said Mark triumphantly, “still eating out I see, not learnt to cook yet then?”

“Meaning precisely what?” His assumptions tangled in her stomach.

“Well, you were always pretty hopeless at cooking, you have to admit it. Even that dog wouldn’t eat it, remember?”

Jan recalled the picnic; how the sun played on the river’s surface. A small dog that she had thrown a stick for had jumped in and scattered the sparkling water. They’d fed it a sandwich and Mark had given it some of her quiche. He’d cut a small piece and, unknown to her until they’d got back home, had smothered it in pepper before throwing it for the dog to catch. How he’d laughed as it ran away sneezing. He’d laughed for days afterward every time it came to mind, ‘it’s only a joke about your cooking.’ he’d said.

“Long time ago now, come on, eat up.”

He picked up his knife and sliced the toast in half, in half again and again until he had eight little slices on his plate, he then picked each piece up with his finger and thumb before eating them noisily. Jan watched and sipped her coffee in silence.

“Eat up,” he repeated.

“I did say I didn’t want anything.”

“You didn’t mean it, come on, eat with me.”

Mark was insistent.

“If you want it you have it, I’m not hungry.” She watched as he slid her slice onto his plate and proceeded with the cutting ritual as before.

“I went through Italy, had some really good food there. Mmm, love this.” He added and stuffed another slice into his mouth.

The mocking voices of insufferable people echoed through Jan’s thoughts. The warm smell of toast materialized the tiny kitchen of their flat, friends sat around chatting, Mark’s friends. Geoff had said something and she turned to listen. The toast she was making for everyone caught fire under the grill. Someone laughed and from that point on it had been a standing joke. ‘Visiting Mark and Jan, we’d better bring a take-away.’ Mark had laughed too.

“Pity you never learned to cook, you never know, I might not have had to go so far for a decent meal.” Mark was laughing at his insinuation.

His voice scattered the images.

“Mark, look, I have to go, I’m sorry, I’m working.”

He finished the last slice of Jan’s Rarebit and felt in his coat for his wallet.

“Oh damn! I’ve left my wallet…”

“It’s OK, have this one on me, I owe you that much.” Jan got up and walked across to Emma, she whispered something and they laughed. As she turned to leave, Mark held his arm out for her but she brushed him aside and chose instead to walk before him. Outside the door she turned.

“When will we meet again?”

His arrogant, self assured face smiled at her and the knot in her stomach untied. Jan leant across, gently kissed his cheek and smiled back at him.

“Actually we won’t; I won’t, and by the way, I’m OK and doing very nicely, thank you for asking”.

Mark opened his mouth to speak. Jan gestured with her eyes to the sign above the door, held up her hands in front of her, winked, and walked back into her Bistro.

Bio:

Marie Fullerton writes short stories, children’s stories and poetry and has had poetry and short stories published in anthologies and e-zines. Since gaining an English degree six years ago she has been working on her first novel.

Marie has painted since she was a child; it wasn’t until she was in her thirties that she began to sell her watercolour paintings. Marie has edited and illustrated school magazines as well as designing the artwork for the school badge and headed notepaper. Since retiring from teaching, Marie now sells her acrylic and watercolour paintings and her illustrations have been published in children’s books written by Trevor Forest.

         

         

Writer’s Block

Writer’s Block

 

Marie Fullerton

 

Strong black coffee (and plenty of it!)

 

 

 

Writer’s block, procrastination, what’s the difference?

Well I suppose one is deliberate or otherwise … yeah…. delaying tactics and the other is…. well, writer’s block!

 

****

 

‘Here she goes again. I just get excited and, well I mean, how often do you get written? Let me tell you, it’s a once in a lifetime thing. And after all, it isn’t as if there’s a shortage of storylines, is there? I do my best to shove things under her nose then something just drifts into her head and I’m history… again! Totally unreasonable I say, and before you start harping on about writer’s block spare a thought for me for a change. I mean, I’m the story, have you any idea what it’s like not to make it to thought level?

 

****

 

Now this is a new challenge for me, bit of an oxymoronic situation here – me?  Write about writer’s block when I am the queen of it. Thank you to those that made the suggestion.

OK, I’m gonna get serious. Take an image …say… a bath…. ask questions. Is it full, empty, new, old, plastic, ceramic, chipped?  Who is running it? Why? Is she going to pamper herself soaking in hot bubbles with candles around the bath? Or is he planning to drown the kittens? What if the floor gives way and the bath is upstairs? What if…. he wants to be romantic and share the bath… but she slams his head against the tiles and knocks him unconscious before letting him slip, or pushing him, under the water – ‘ He slipped when we were, you know ….. I couldn’t hold him, sob, by the time the water had drained (and I had put my robe on and smoked a cigarette.) he wasn’t breathing, I tried to hold him above water but I …. I feel so awful, I killed him didn’t I? I couldn’t help him!

                                                                       

****

 

‘Hooray! She’s got one, now I am real! In existence! I can relax while she gets on with it.’

 

****

Hmmm, trouble is that’s been done before …. There is one thing that has always fascinated me though. Where do all the shoes on the motorway come from? They always seem to be men’s, you know, trainers. There must be a story there. He he, that reminds me of a time when I was scrounging a lift from a neighbour, her small son decided he didn’t want to go to school that day and so proceeded to extricate himself from his clothes and attempt to sling them out of the window. Until his mother closed the window that is. By the time he had arrived at this posh public school, he was down to his underpants. Don’t know how I didn’t laugh. We managed to retrieve the majority of them, well minus his cap and I left them to go and explain why they were late to the ….

 

****

 

‘What! What the hell is this? I turn my back thinking I am going to be a delightful murder mystery and she starts rambling on about some delinquent kid next door… Sheesh!’

 

****

 

This is hopeless. My head is buzzing trying to conjure up this story, I can’t decide.

‘Mum!’ a voice escalates from downstairs.

‘What’s for breakfast?’

At seventeen, Tabitha is old enough to sort herself out. I take a deep breath and let out a long sigh before I answer.

‘I am getting ready for work, you’ll have to get your own.’

‘I’m gonna be late, I have to be at Hannah’s or I’ll have to walk.’

The cupboard door slams and a cup falls off the rack smashing into tiny fragments on the tiled floor.

‘Now look what you made me do!’

I resist yelling, refusing to be dragged into her mood.

‘Just sweep it into the corner and I’ll sort it out later – you look in the fridge and decide for yourself what you want for breakfast.’

I finish my make-up and join my daughter downstairs, not daring to look at the state of the kitchen. It will still be there when I get home, I am sure.

‘Did you find something?’ I ask.

I really cannot believe this child - rice pudding on toast! Ah well, at least she’s eaten something and seems happy. By seven am we have left the house and she’s on her way to college and I am waiting to catch the ferry across the harbour.

People are bustling and rushing around, I wonder if they have even noticed the sunrise behind the tower? Two or three gulls silhouette against the bright pink streaks that melt across the last of the night sky. The ferry is rocky this morning and the sea is rising and falling with some force but every so often it stills. The wind whips the waves and the surface looks as if a million cats are lapping at the surface. Oh look, there in the middle of it all, a solitary leaf. What on earth is a sycamore leaf doing floating in the ocean?

 

****

 

Well, that’s it! She’s lost it now – let me get this straight. I start out as a bath, right? Then a murder in the bath, then somehow I end up as an abandoned trainer on a motorway followed by a brat child that de-robes in a car on the way to school. Then, she’s off on one of her daydreams to escape from the breakfast carry on and I end up as a soggy end of some rice pudding on toast in a sea of lapping cats round part of a bloody tree in the ocean! Great! Writer’s block! Where does that leave me? I mean, I just want to be a story.

 

 

Bio:

 

Marie Fullerton is a retired lecturer, she has eight grown up children and she has wanted to be a writer forever.  She also started painting 21 years ago and is completely self-taught. At 50 she was proud of her 2.1 BA degree for English language, literary history and creative writing at UCC and has since had several poems published in anthologies and short stories in E-zines. She is currently working on two novels. Although she has sold many paintings she has only recently tried her hand at illustrating. You can see her artwork on her Facebook page using the following link here

Blog pages:        http://wordangell.wordpress.com/

                         http://mariesimaginings.blogspot.com/

The Second Valentine's Day Massacre

By Trevor Belshaw
Double Espresso with Whiskey Chaser

I climbed out of the model A Ford, closed the door behind me and tapped on the side of the car to signal Jimmy to pull away. We chose the Ford deliberately, a car so common that no one would remember. I would have liked to have travelled in style but we couldn’t risk Luigi’s Cadillac, someone would be sure to notice it.

I turned up my collar against the biting wind, pulled my hat down over my eyes and crossed the slush-covered street. It was quiet, but I was still wary. I looked around to check that I wasn’t being followed. I needn’t have worried, only a few people had braved the cold February night. I rapped on a glass panelled door and it was opened almost immediately by a guy wearing greasy trousers and a vest. He was sweating profusely, even though it was freezing cold in the hallway. He noticed my quizzical expression.

‘Laundry,’ he muttered. ‘We have a laundry at the back.’

I grunted and followed him upstairs to a room overlooking the street. My host nodded to the window and turned to leave, but before he reached the door I’d slipped the cheese wire round this throat. He died a minute or so later.

The dirty, single curtain was pulled across, so I stood to the side of the window and inched it open. Whoever had selected the vantage point had chosen well, I had a clear, unhindered view of the restaurant over the road. I pulled up a chair, lit a cigarette, checked my pocket watch and waited for Mary to signal.

At 8.30 I saw the light in the room at the side of the restaurant flick on and off twice. My audience had arrived, it was time to get the show on the road.

I took the stairs two at a time, then stood for a moment to give the adrenalin time to settle. Satisfied, I let myself out, checked the street as I crossed, then walked down the alley at the side of the restaurant.

Mary was at the back door with a smile on her lips and a glint in her eye. She looked good, even in her waitress clothes. She leaned forward and our lips touched. Her scent took me straight back to her bedroom, to one of the many nights we had spent together over the past few weeks. My eyes dropped to that wonderful chest, I felt the sap rise, I wanted her there and then, on the cold floor tiles.

Mary sensed what was going through my mind. ‘Easy Tiger.’

I nodded and forced my mind back to the job in hand.

‘They all here now?’

‘Yep. Frankie arrived through the back about ten minutes ago. He’s at the table with the others.’

‘No one else here?’

‘Only the cook, and he’s drunk.’

I eased open the door to the restaurant and peered in. They were sat in the centre, laughing, drinking the last whiskey they would ever drink.

‘Where is it?’ I whispered.

Mary dragged a case from under the worktable. I opened it and pulled out the Tommy gun. I pushed in a magazine, flicked off the safety catch and smiled at her.

‘OK, Honeybunch. Let’s get this thing done.’

Mary nodded and stood by the door. I winked and she threw it open.

I took a deep breath, stepped into the room and opened fire. The four diners were dead before they had a chance to turn their heads. I fired off another volley to make sure, then turned and hurried back to the prep room.

Mary was by the worktable, a Valentine card in her hand.

‘For you,’ she said.

I took the card and pushed it into my pocket, then pointed the gun at Mary.

‘Marco, no...’

I took in that look, the fear in those baby blue eyes and felt a sharp pang of regret, but pulled the trigger anyway. Mary was thrown across the room, almost cut in two by the hail of bullets.

The cook staggered in from the kitchen, a bottle of hooch in his right hand. I opened up and let him have it too. No witnesses, that’s just how it should be.

I stepped smartly out of the back door and walked further down the alley. I could hear raised voices coming from the front of the restaurant.

At the end of the alley I checked the street, then ran to the Ford where Jimmy was waiting, engine running. We drove to a quiet place by the Chicago river where I shot Jimmy in the back and tossed both him and the gun into the icy water.

I got back into the car, drove to a call box and rang Carla.

‘Hi, Carla, it’s done.’

‘You got them all.’

‘Every single one.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘Well, let’s just say there’s no one left to clean up.’

‘Great, Honey. Come over tonight. As it’s Valentine’s day, and you’ve been such a good boy, I have a nice little something for you.’

It was the way she emphasised the ‘little something.’ I grinned, as my hormones kicked in and visions of a long steamy night filled my head.

‘Give me an hour,’ I croaked.

Carla laughed. ‘You can have all night, baby.’

I put down the phone and hurried home. I needed to change my suit, get the smell of gunfire out of my nose.

I pulled off my jacket, took the card from my pocket and flipped it open. ‘Who loves ya baby,’ it read. I tossed it onto the table. It might come in useful later.

I ran a bath and thought about Carla. Sweet Carla, the best thing I’d ever seen on two legs. She only had to look at me to get me going. She had brains too, a broad didn’t get that far up the chain of command in Bugs Malone’s organisation without having brains. She was a tough cookie though, failure was punished hard. There were four or five guys wearing concrete under the new highway because they didn’t carry out her instructions to the letter.

Bugs wanted revenge for last year’s Valentine’s Day massacre, when most of his top people were butchered. It was down to Carla to make sure he got it.

I dried my hair on a towel and sprayed on some of the cologne that Mary gave me for Christmas. This was my big chance. I had proved myself as an asset, now I would have the chance to prove myself as a lover.

I stuffed Mary’s card into my pocket and hailed a cab to Carla’s place. She lived above one of the better speakeasies in the flash part of town. There was a lot of activity around the front of the building so I slipped round the back and climbed the iron staircase. The fire escape was open. I stopped on the top step when I heard voices.

‘You up for this?’ It was Carla.

‘Sure, baby, I’m ready.’

‘No mistakes, Greggo, take Mickey with you. Waste him, then drop him in the river. We need to clean up all the crap tonight.’

I cursed under my breath as I realised what Carla meant by ‘a little something.’ I took Mary’s card, tore it up and threw the pieces into the cold night, then pulled the pistol from my inside pocket and flicked off the safety.

I took a deep breath and stepped through the open door.

‘Who loves ya Baby,’ I roared.

Information about the author:

Tracy's Hot Mail Ebook, available now on Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34169
Kindle: http://amzn.to/hiSgDc

Peggy Larkins War Ebook, available now. Kindle http://amzn.to/eLVydS

Short stories available at Http://www.etherbooks.com via Iphone app.

Website: www.trevorbelshaw.com
Wordpress Blog: www.trevorbelshaw.com/blog
Twitter @tbelshaw
Facebook Trevor Belshaw http://www.facebook.com/trevor.belshaw

The artist:

Marie Fullerton is a retired lecturer, with eight grown up children. She started painting 21 years ago and is completely self-taught. She has sold many paintings but has only recently tried illustrating. You can see her artwork on her Facebookpage.  

Blog pages…  http://wordangell.wordpress.com/

                         http://mariesimaginings.blogspot.com/

Shells

Bill Haddow-Allen



Mint tea

‘We’ve been here before.’

Mary was sure she recognised the voice. She was alone. On the beach of the remote bay. Alone. And yet, above the sound of the ocean, she heard the distinct voice. She was used to the changing voice of the sea in its various moods, its eternal, incomplete rhythm. Sometimes she wondered if the voices were from the sea. Or maybe just memories; as if the sea made her hear them. She searched her mind for a face or a name for the voice but was frustrated by the curious nature of memory, the tippytongue-ness, the way the mouth begins to articulate a name but the names and faces float just out of reach…

A dark clothed stranger stood high on the dunes at the far end of the bay.

…and she had that unsettling feeling of déjà vu, as if she hadn’t been here before; but she lived here, in the big white house overlooking the bay, had fallen in love with the bay and the house on the cliff when she had spent her summers here as a child and had known then that this is where she would live. She walked the beach every day because she loved the mystery, the spiritual-ness of the shore

High on the dunes the stranger saw the lighthouse flash and remembered the last time he had seen it. Forty odd years of time collapsed into an interval between blinks. As a child he had counted and was thrilled when...eleven…twelve…thirteen always coincided with another blink from the lighthouse, thirteen intense seconds when time was the prisoner of the child. He had gone to sea in his yearning youth and had been drawn back to the bay by a longing, a compulsion to plant his feet here where he had spent so many happy summers as a child. Then he saw something blue - and a big hat - the figure of a woman in the distance. He watched her stroll along the shore in his direction.

Mary meandered over the patches of dark and light on the washed smooth shore. She could see where the to-ing fro-ing sea had made ridges, like a map of mountains with valleys of dry sand.
The past became the present for a fleeting moment when she suddenly experienced the gritty taste of sand in egg sandwiches and smiled at the memory of her picnicking parents in past picture-postcard days watching her play at the sea‘s edge.
She eyed the stranger. The high exposed planes of the dunes always made her think it was as if the land had broken off and fallen into the sea, and she watched him descend them in a sliding lope, leaving elongated troughs down the pyramid of silvery sand onto the beach, watched him walking, stopping, walking, getting nearer to her.

Memories inhabited the air for the returning seaman as if they had been waiting for him. He remembered a little girl. He tried to remember more...yes...we would be about ten.
He watched the woman wading at the sea’s edge picking up shells - scampering when odd waves raced further up the beach. He could see now that her big hat was made of straw and tied under her chin.

In that first childhood summer a boy had ‘rescued’ Mary when she was lying on the beach near to the sea. The boy had thought that she was dead, or ill, or had fallen asleep and in danger of drowning. She was just hugging the earth. They had laughed about it. He, too, spent summers here, and they spent blissfully happy days exploring together, summer after summer, and he talked of how he would go to sea and...

Waves pitched and toppled in the retreating foam of the seaman’s recollections...they had left notes for each other in their favourite cave…

…and Mary was remembering how she had held on to the boy’s hand in the caves because she had been scared. What was his name? She remembered the briny smell inside the frightening caverns, and the flotsam left by the sea every day, like presents for them to find...

...the boy had taken her deep into a cave once and run away and now, above the sea, the seaman heard her echoing scream and felt a pang of guilt.

Mary ambled along the beach, getting closer to him, this intruder visiting her shore. She stood still; listened to the sea and to the screeching terns, and watched a long unbroken roller prowling out to sea, the slate sea like taut skin on muscle as if it was alive.
She hadn’t thought of her ’rescuer’ for many years. They had spent every summer here until ...
Before the memory of that day could flood her mind she remembered that their first real date had been on the bus up the coast to the harbour...

…He remembered the girl - how pretty she was - but couldn’t remember her name, but felt now in this moment the warmth of her hand in his when he had pulled her away from the shrieking gulls clamouring in the harbour, some swooping to snatch hot battered fish from her newspaper…

... she remembered how she had squealed when she saw the silver glitter of twitching fish spilling from nets onto the quayside near to her feet…

Mary watched the stranger throwing stones - watched them arc-ing and kissing the sea, arc-ing and kissing and arc-ing...

...for the stranger time stretched during each soaring arc and in these moments he was at sea again, remembering how ships would pass a mile to starboard full of anonymous people unaware that other souls were skimming briefly into their existence.

Mary thought again of the primary colour summers of her childhood which had lasted for ever, but seemed now to have gone in a blink; and that last summer - that summer as a lipsticked teenager. The roller that had transfixed her smashed onto the sand in front of her with a violent thump, and for a moment she shared the sea’s simmering anger.

The seaman remembered how his little girl of all the summers before was suddenly grown up in that last summer. He wandered along the shore toward the woman and they were very close now, these two strangers on the great expanse of this remote bay.

Mary caressed the bladders of the seaweed in her fingers and remembered the sandcastles the boy had built for her - and how sometimes she had stamped on them in a fit of pique ...

At his feet, a section of tree from an unknown forest had been deposited on the shining wet sand. Two branches had grown side by side like thighs and countless caresses of the sea had smoothed and shaped them...

...and the tang of seaweed always reminded her…of sex…

… a wave came and licked and lapped and swirled around the trunk’s erotic curves and he remembered the warmth and shape of her body - that first exhilarating experience of longing youth…

Mary strolled a small semi circle around the stranger, not too near nor too far, giving him space, thinking that if she caught his eye he might speak. Handsome, she thought, sneaking him a look as she walked by. She lingered, hitching up her long dress and wading into the rippling skirt of the sea.

...the reverie of his first love was still warm in the stranger’s mind when he looked to where the woman was and met her enquiring gaze. He counted between the blinks from the lighthouse…one… two…three...mmm, trim - like the cut of her jib...eight, nine...good looking...ten...wonder if she will speak...twelve… thirteen.

They each turned away and walked.

For a few years Mary had wondered if her seaman would ever return. The day before their last day they had gone to their cave, that echoing cavern of childhood awe, and lovers’ tryst. She had worn her mother’s make-up. And he had looked suddenly so grown up. They had smoked cigarettes and drunk wine, and he had groped and fumbled and she had given in to his pleas.

After that first sexual experience in their cave they had walked along this same light and dark beach, many waves ago.
I must come earlier tomorrow, thought Mary, remembering their last few hours. They had watched the huge red ball rise out of the sea and hover, and it had bled like wet watercolour paint into the sinless white soul of the day and they were so happy in that moment, before they had to say goodbye.
I hope he is happy. He got what he wanted, the sea.

The seaman looked back as he walked to the dunes. The woman was writing in the wet sand near the sea’s edge, behind her the arc of the earth a single thick brush stroke of inky violet on the horizon.

Mary had remembered something else they used to do, she and that little boy. She waited for that odd wave - the seventh, or tenth, she could never remember - that odd wave that rushes further up the beach than the others, and when it came it washed away the letters she had carved with her finger.
She saw the stranger on the dunes.

The seaman waved. He listened to the sea and the gulls for a moment and thought he heard the shrieking of happy children. He took one last look.
At the beach.
At the woman.
At the lighthouse.
Blink.



Bio:

Bill has poetry published, and two short pieces in Daily Flash anthology, as well as numerous stories on various web sites. In everyday matter of fact situations bill sees in the dark beam - the flickers therein, the mystery and depth of the unspoken.
You can contact him at shamfer@googlemail.com

Art work: Marie Fullerton