Happy Place

As usual when I’m duty-bound to some tedious activity, I retire my mind to my ‘happy place’. We’ve all got one, I think — a mental image of somewhere, real or imagined, that we feel comforted and relaxed. A visualisation of a pleasant location that takes us away from painful or unpalatable situations. Some people like to picture themselves in the countryside, others in ancient castles. A friend of mine once told me his happy place was on Cliff Richards’ double-decker bus in the movie ‘Summer Holiday’.

My own happy place is an old wooden bench set down amongst dusty nettles and gorse, atop a cliff in East Yorkshire. Whenever my thoughts go there it’s sunny and warm, and the sea before me sprawls to the glaucous horizon, catching hot sunlight and throwing it about like fistfuls of glitter. It’s a quiet place in reality, and when my mind visits all I can ever hear is the high song of skylarks, the chuckles of gulls, and the whisper of waves on the beach below.

Which is why I was surprised when a woman plonked herself down on the bench beside me. She wore a floral, knee-length dress, black leggings and chunky boots. She had a pleasant face framed by dark hair with a wisp of grey at the parting.

“This your happy place?” she said.

“Um, yes, it’s mine,” I said. “Fuck off.”

“Mine, too,” she smiled, refusing entirely to fuck off. “And don’t be a dick, eh?”

“But hang on, this is my daydream. How come…”

“Clearly there’s Magic involved,” she said, making it clear that the world had a capital letter. “I find it best not to question these things.”

“OK … so, we’re in the same happy place. Weird.”

“Where are you in reality right now?” the woman said.

“In Lancaster at one of my wife’s erotic poetry recitals.” I said, making a face. “She’s currently rhyming ‘penis’ with ‘machinist’.”

“Ugh,” she said, though I could see she was stifling a giggle. “Lancaster, that’s England, right? I’m at my husband’s Screeching Karaoke Night in San Diego; it creeps the fuck out of me.”

“What the hell is ‘screeching karaoke’?”

“It’s like normal karaoke, only instead of singing you, well …”

“Screech?”

“Yes. In the rhythm of the music. At the top of your voice.”

“Jesus wept.”

“Exactly. Some sort of primal emotional release thing, apparently. Anyway, my name’s…”

And then she vanished from my thoughts, fading out from the bench beside me, leaving me alone with the waves and skylarks and a tiny, shiny green beetle on my knee. I allowed a smithereen of reality into my consciousness, enough to know that my wife was still in full flow about exploding breasts, then shut it off again. I closed my eyes and let the imaginary sun warm my face, while the imaginary wind tousled my hair and the imaginary waves calmed my inner soul. I mused on the woman’s appearance in my mind. Where on earth had she come from? I was pretty sure I hadn’t dreamt her up.

“Sorry about that.”

I opened my eyes. She was back, this time sitting cross-legged on the grass nearby. She was eating a nectarine.

“It was my turn to screech,” she said.

“What song?”

“Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’.” She made a face like a windswept graveyard.

“Crikey, you poor sausage,” I said.

“Want to hear it?” she grinned.

“Fuck, and I say this with every respect, off.” I gave her a salute. “My name’s Ben.”

“I’m Lisa,” she said. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. I imagine this meeting-in-each-other’s-heads thingy can only happen when both people use the same actual location as their happy place. Otherwise, our minds would have no references to match, to draw our thoughts together.”

“So, is this your imagination or mine?”

“Beats me.”

“And you reckon that if I had drifted off to my other happy place – a high canyon under a silver sky that doesn’t exist in reality, and is therefore unknown to you – you’re saying that you wouldn’t have popped up there because The Magic – yeah, let’s call it that – wouldn’t be able to … match us up?”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe if you described your canyon in enough detail for me to picture, our mental images would be close enough to fool The Magic, so that it could draw us together in a made-up place, the way it did here, in Filey.” Her face lit up with the most infectious grin. “Want to try?”

“Damn, yes,” I said. This was fun. More fun than poems about bottoms, anyway.

“Right, go. I’m listening.” She closed her eyes and rested her fingertips on her temples. “Give me plenty of detail.”

“Imagine the sky is silver. Not grey, silver. A rocky, craggy landscape, with vast jagged heaps of stone, but the stone is coloured grey and pink in layers, horizontally. You stand at the edge of a deep and vast canyon. There’s no fence, no bench, nothing man-made. Er, what else … the acoustics are great. I often shout random nouns into the ravine ‘cause the echoes are brilliant. Each word—”

Lisa vanished again. I wondered. Was she back screeching with her husband, or … I closed my eyes and shifted my daydream to my other happy place. To my silver-skied canyon. Lisa stood there, grinning at me.

“Bubble!” she yelled.

“Pyramid!” I bellowed.

“Earwig!”

“Trousers!”

“Steeple!” She fell into laughter. “You’re right, the acoustics are great.”

“Lisa,” I said, “I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Effie

Observations on life from a peripatetic cleaning lady, inspired by conversations with my friend Dorothy, and written when the Queen was still with us and David Cameron was Prime Minister.

Aye, you’re right. I suppose ‘cleaner’ would be less sexist, and ‘cleaning woman’ less twee, but here by Forfar in 2015, ‘cleaning lady’ is what people say, and that’s what I do, and that’s what I am. So, we’ll go with that. As for ‘peripatetic’, that just means I’ve got a tricycle.

Euphemia Gaggy, at your service. Let me know if you want me to pop round on my trike once a week to dust your doodahs and glimmer your gewgaws. Reasonable rates, Forfar area only. Yes, I’m a Gaggy. It sounds awful, doesn’t it? But it’s an ancient name, from Angus in Scotland, a diminutive from the Old French ‘gogue’, meaning enjoyment and relaxation. It was originally a nickname for someone, like me, of easy-going temperament. Gaggy first appeared in Scotland in the early 14th Century, so you see, it has a proud history, and I’m in no hurry to abandon it.

It’s Tuesday today, my busy day. I walk down my garden path, like most mornings, to the blue-painted shed by the gate. Today, it looks a bit black over Bills’ mother’s, so I’m thinking rain later. Still, I’m not made of candy floss. I won’t dissolve. My radish patch is coming on nicely. And my rhubarb is looking magnificent. I’ll pick some tomorrow, maybe make a crumble.

Today, The Colonel is curled up in my new wheelbarrow, like a soft black comma. The Colonel’s not my cat, but spends most of his time in my garden anyway, because it has shady nooks and secret crannies and sun-puddled corners. Such is the way of cats.

I love my new wheelbarrow very much. On the day I bought it, as I pushed it home, every person I passed stopped to give it an admire. “Bright red,” they’d say. “Fancy.” Or “Ooh la-la.” Or suchlike.

The barrow clearly has The Colonel’s approval too, judging from his sleepy purr. A fat splot of water, an early escapee from the lowering clouds, lands bang on his head. He shakes it, then stares up at me grumpily, as if he demands a written explanation and apology.

“Get away home, you walloper,” I say. “The heavens will open soon.” He ignores me and settles back into his dreams. No such luck for me, though, not on a Tuesday. I wrestle my trike out of the shed and set off for my first call.

Mrs. B.

Tuesday morning’s dog, ancient, deaf and farty, is not in his kennel, from where he usually greets me with a half-hearted thump of his old tail. I hope that he’s not shuffled off this mortal coil since my last visit. His indoor bed is still in the corner of the lounge, mind, so I’ll simply cross my fingers and worry.

Perhaps he’s just over having a poo in Her-Next-Door’s garden. Mind you, he has a way to go to get there: Mrs. B’s own garden is huge, with fortress fences. Somehow, though, the decrepit labrador manages, with impressive regularity, to find a way out and leave a substantial twist of steaming feculence right in the middle of Her-Next-Door’s closely manicured lawn. Mrs. B. doesn’t give a toss. She says Her-Next-Door’s all fur coat and no knickers, and can go boil her head.

My canine concern is deepened when Mrs. B. greets me with “Good morning, Effie. Would you be a dear before you start, and see if you can find my spade in the garden?”

Jings, I hope she doesn’t want me to bury the dog.

I step out of the door again and cast my eyes about. Spades are entirely C by their A. It always strikes me funny, that phrase – ‘cast your eyes about’ – as if you’re plucking the eyeballs from your head and tossing them over by the compost heap to look there.

It’s a big garden, like I said, and I try to think where she might last have been digging. She’s probably left it there. The sky’s getting darker as I cross to Mrs. B’s nearby vegetable patch, and my skin goosepimples at a slight spray of drizzle. There’ll be proper rain soon. Amongst the beautiful, healthy potatoes and cabbages lies a fluffy pink slipper, but no spade. I pick up the slipper and return to the house.

“Ah, you’ve found it!” Mrs. B. says.

“This is what you were looking for?”

“Aye, that’s why I asked you to look.”

“No, Mrs. B,” I say. “You asked me to find a spade.”

“Why would I want a spade, dear?”

I’m saved from answering by the old labrador, who emerges from behind the settee and lets rip the mother of all farts, loud and bubbly. He wags his tail hard in delight at this achievement, which also has the effect of fanning the stench through the entire room. I get started on the cleaning at once.

The sky still hasn’t broken when I leave an hour later, pedalling hard up the big hill to see to Mr. S.

Mr. S.

Mr. S. is packing to go on his holidays. He closes his case, and tells me to start on the lounge while he goes to the kitchen to nicotine up.

“Don’t come in while I have a ciggie,” he shouts through. “It’s a health hazard zone, Effie!”

“It’s likely no worse than Mrs. B’s dog that farts like a howitzer!” I yell back.

“The dog probably just eats too fast,” he calls. “Gulps down air. What she needs to do is get two bowls—”

I turn on the vacuum cleaner. So very often, when a client is in a chatty mood and I want to get on, the vacuum cleaner is my friend: “Sorry, can’t hear! Vacuum cleaner!”

This one, though, is a Sebo. Sebo vacuum cleaners – recommended by John Lewis to people who will never have to use the bloody thing themselves. It’s like lugging round a submarine. Do excuse me while I try not to kill myself on the stairs.

When I turn it off again, Mr. S. has finished both his ciggie and his arcane advice about dog farts. He has made me a cup of tea.

“No milk, Effie, just as you like it,” he says. Lovely. He has no biscuits, though. He’d be far better off eating biscuits than smoking, and I’d be a lot happier.

“Where are you off to?” I ask him.

“Railways and castles in Wales for five days,” he says, and takes a leaflet from his pocket to read. “From our base in charming Llandudno, we experience the best of North Wales. Soak up the scenery as we ride aboard historic steam railways, and travel back in time to a beautiful mountainous region, with castles dotted along the coastline.”

“Dotted castles,” I say. “That sounds bonny.”

“Hope so,” he says. “Look, I’d best be off. Lock up when you’re done and leave the key under the gnome as usual.”

After he goes I bleach everything, in a vain attempt to get rid of the mawkit nicotine smell that clings everywhere. There’s only so much a cleaner can do, mind. When I leave, the sky has come over as black as The Earl of Hell’s waistcoat

Mrs. M.

“Effie, it’s raining so hard now,” Mrs. M. greets me at her door. “Did you have to cycle today?”

How the shite else will I get to you? I almost say, but manage to bite my tongue. Honestly, some days I don’t have the patience of a gnat. I’m wet, I have earache from the cold rain, and I have old lady compassion fatigue. I’m not proud of myself.

“It’s getting really wet now, Effie! Will you not put it in the garage?”

Yes. Yes, I will. I wheel my trike into her roomy garage, peel off my cagoul and hang it to drip-dry on an old rocking horse, then go through the inside door into the house.

“Have you seen the headline in the Daily Express, Effie?” Mrs. M. says, sitting in her reclining chair. “The Queen has a sore eye. Look! But she’s still smiling. I’ve put the milk in your tea, Effie.” Nooooo! I surreptitiously tip it down the sink. Not for the first time I wonder whether all this is worth twenty quid.

“Do you take the Daily Express, Effie?”

“No, Mrs M.” Jings, no, a world of no. No to the seventh power.

“Oh, dear. Would you like mine when I’ve read it?”

“No, thank you, that’s fine.” Internal screaming.

“It’s normally very good at reporting news,” she says. “Although I don’t understand this about the Prime Minister. What did he do? Did he kill a pig?”

Oh GOD. I’ll have to tell her.

“No, Mrs. M.” I say. “He was intimate with it.”

“I don’t … what do you mean?” she says, face all creased with puzzlement. I turn on the vacuum cleaner.

“Sorry, can’t hear!” I say. “Vacuum cleaner!”

Mrs. M furiously looks through the paper, forwards and backwards, while I try not to either giggle or weep. When I finish the vacuuming, she’s still leafing through her paper.

“Look at these portraits from the award thingy,” she says. She means the National Portrait Gallery annual awards.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” I say, looking over her shoulder.

“I’d like to have my portrait painted one day,” she says, dreamily. “Always fancied that, so classy. You know, before I die.”

“Better then than after,” I say. Mrs. M. chortles.

“Although look at that one,” she says. “He’s smoking in it. Who’d want to be painted making a stink?”

“One of my clients smokes,” I say, “Though I think he’d like to stop. It is difficult, mind.”

“I stopped my Gerald smoking, easy,” she says. “At first, whenever he lit one, I’d suck it up with my Dustbuster, but he never knew what to do with his fingers without one. Do you want to know what kept his fingers busy instead?”

Jings, dare I ask? “Go on,” I say.

“Wooden clothes pegs,” she says. “You can buy a pack from the pound shop. I’d give him one of them to hold instead, and he said he found it surprisingly satisfying. He could also chew on them, and snap them under his thumb, which was extra-helpful to a simple soul like him.”

I muse on poor old Gerald, chewing on his clothes pegs, while I immerse myself in Mrs. M’s hospital corners. The things we do for love, eh? The rain has stopped by the time I finish with Mrs. M., and it’s a pleasant ride down the hedged country lanes to my last client of the day.

Mrs. H

Mrs. H. greets me with “Hello, my lovely. Ooh, you look like a drowned rat. Come in & get warm.” And with that I can breathe. Mrs. H. is on her second sherry, bless her heart. She brings me paracetamol for my earache, and offers to pour oil in. I settle for just the paracetamol.

I can’t describe how much I love Mr. and Mrs. H. They are the warmest people on this earth. Sometimes I feel bogged down by the utter drudgery of this work, and then the Mr. and Mrs. H’s of this world sit me down and remind me that my job is more about the people than the cleaning.

“You know,” Mrs. H. says, “you’d think with all this cycling you’d be as thin as a rake, but you’re not, are you, cariad?”

I look at her and her eyes twinkle knowingly.

“Where’s Mr. H?” I say.

“In the back, experimenting with oils,” she says.

“Jings,” I say, “He’s a lively one.” I wink and she grins.

“Oil paint, I mean. He’s got a sheet down and his easel up in the back room, painting a landscape from a photo. Speaking of lively ones, are you seeing your young man this weekend?”

“He’s forty-seven, Mrs. H. He’s hardly young.”

“About time we met him then, don’t you think?”

“It’s about time I got on with your cleaning,” I say.

“Oh,” she waves her hand, “I’ve done all that. Let’s just sit and have a little chat.”

Somehow Mrs. H. has remembered that it’s exactly a year since I started cleaning for her, and she wants to give me something as a small thankyou to mark the occasion.

“I was going to give you some tatties from my garden,” she says, “but they’re rubbish again. I just don’t have the knack for them. So I got you this.”

She hands me a gift wrapped in flowery paper. Bottle-shaped.

“Don’t worry!” she says. “I know you don’t drink. It’s a cocktail.”

I’m not sure where she got the idea that cocktails were non-alcoholic, but I’m touched anyway and thank her profusely. Mr. H. joins us, all tweeds and paint-spattered cheeks, and we natter away for an hour about dogs, Wales, politics and vegetables.

I get back home to a house full of dead crow. I’d left the kitchen window open, apparently. Thank you, Colonel. While I’m cleaning up his mess, I think about my day, and the people who have filled it, and I realise – they make up a daisy-chain of skills and needs, of friendly supply and demand, each able to offer help to another who needs it. Mr. S. can help Mrs. B. stop her dog farting. Mrs. M. knows how Mr. S. can stop smoking. Mr. H. can paint Mrs. M’s portrait. And Mrs. B. can help Mrs. H. with her tatties. They just need to meet each other and chat.

I sit at my bureau and take out four invitation cards. On each of them I write the following:

Ms. Euphemia Gaggy requests the pleasure of your company for AFTERNOON TEA and lovely chats

The Pattern

Margery did not like silence. In silence she could hear the clock snapping time apart into tiny splinters of quivering fear that worked themselves slowly and painfully beneath her thoughts. In silence she could hear blood race through her fragile veins, her breath tightening as she waited for a missed beat. And so, she turned on the forbidden radio, and filled the fearful hush with the tinny, wafer-thin sound of Noel Coward’s voice.

“Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans,” he sang, “when our victory is ultimately won.”

She knew it was a danger, listening to the radio, but a life without music was no life at all and the volume was turned down low. No-one outside the cottage would be able to hear.

As always, she was hungry. In the years since the occupation food had become very scarce. The shops were usually empty, and Margery was not rich enough to afford the food and clothes available on the black market. She had begun taking in washing in exchange for food.

She had at least an hour before Unterfeldwebel Fischer arrived with his laundry, and so she went outside and dug up one of the circular glass circles that lined her garden path. Kept that way, as an innocuous and attractive border, the upturned bottles of her wine stock was safe from the rapacious hands of the occupiers.

“It was just those nasty Nazis who persuaded them to fight,” Noel sang, “and their Beethoven and Bach are really far worse than their bite.”

She knew just what Noel meant. Not all Germans were Nazis. Unterfeldwebel Fischer, for example, was at heart just a decent chap forced to fight in a war that was not of his liking. The army of the Third Reich had occupied Jersey for three years now, and like all armies was a mix of regretful gentlemen and thuggish bastards. Along with the atrocities and depravations, she had also seen more than one example of kindness and generosity.

Yes, she had watched as starving slave workers, there to build new gun emplacements, fought each other over snails found on a wall and crammed them into their mouths, shells and all. But then, later the same day, she had also seen German officers giving local children sweets and toys and biscuits.

When her cats, Mickey and Ginger, had disappeared, it had been Unterfeldwebel Fischer who told her that they had been caught and eaten by the military billeted in the local hotel, but it had also been he who had brought her a new kitten … along with the recommendation to keep this one, who she named Winston, indoors. She was pretty sure he had also warned his compatriots against putting the waschfrau’s new pet into a stew.

The Unterfeldwebel had become something of a friend, and the food he brought her was more than welcome in these thin times. He was also able to carry occasional little notes between Margery and her sister, who lived at the far end of the island, where Unterfeldwebel Fischer was billeted. The messages helped to keep her spirits up as much as the food.

She began to feel calmer after the berried tongue-wash of a large glass of red. She turned off and hid the radio, emptied the rest of the wine into her glass, and returned the bottle back to its hole in the garden.

“You are gardening?” came a voice from the gate as she knelt by the path. She looked up. Unterfeldwebel Fischer, a man in his late twenties with a pleasant face, smiled at her. He swung a backpack off his shoulder and dropped it over her gate onto the path.

“Just tidying a little,” she gave him a smile back, and pushed a few stray grey hairs out of her eyes. “It doesn’t do to let things get out of hand.”

“You sound like my Mutti,” he said. “You will find some food in the bottom of the pack,” he said. “A few vegetables and…” his voice dropped to a whisper… “a jar of jam and some sausages. Also a few scraps for Winston.” He winked.

“Thank you,” she said, struggling to her feet. “Your washing will be ready for you in two days.”

“I also have a note from your sister.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his pocket. “I apologise, but you realise I have to read it.”

“Of course.”

“It is mostly about her own garden. Also, another knitting pattern, I think.” He read from the paper. “In the decrease you may have to hang the two front-crossing stitches on a crochet hook, because k2tog two previously purled stitches behind. That is knitting, yes?”

“It is,” she laughed. “I’ll be able to make you a pair of socks now, if you can get me some wool.”

“I will see what I can do,” he said, handing her the letter and turning away. “Enjoy the sausages.”

“I will. Goodbye,” she called after his retreating back, but he’d probably already forgotten the nice old lady who did his washing.

Margery lifted the heavy backpack and took it inside. The laundry could wait for a while. She sat down and finished her wine while she read the letter. Miriam’s lupins were doing well, apparently. Her knees, though, were giving her some cause for concern in the mornings. She said that she had found the enclosed knitting pattern in an old issue of Woman’s Own.

Margery took out the second radio from beneath the floorboards and tapped in her call-sign. She looked again at her sister’s letter. ‘Two front-crossing stitches on a crochet hook’ – the crochet hook was the town of Créances. K2tog meant – damn, what was it? She tried to remember the meanings that she and her sister had agreed upon as their personal secret code. K2tog, she was sure, meant cruisers. So, there was unusual air activity at Créances, and two heavy cruisers at anchor further south off purled stitches … Saint Malo.

She translated this into London’s cypher, and tapped out the information patiently, concentrating on the meaningful rhythm of her finger on the transmit key. She had no idea whether any of this would help the Allies, but at least, for a few minutes, it soothed the clock-driven anxiety that normally lived in her chest.

Sous le Ciel de Paris

Spinning, diving starlings wheel above the north-eastern end of the Pont de Bercy. As they swoop and soar they can see Paris stretch to the horizon. They see the boulevards, the estaminets, the hotels, the parks. They see the shining ribbon of the Seine that winds to the looming pile of Notre Dame, and beyond that the Eiffel Tower, majestic sentinel of the City of Light. They also see, or perhaps merely sense, the events that are about to happen. If they happen to glance downwards they will see other birds – raucous magpie and jay, tiny darting wren, chiffchaff, and the occasional treecreeper. As the starlings soar and dance to their unheard tune they may also catch sight of two tiny specks moving far below; a young couple arm-in-arming onto the bridge.

Let us descend to their level now; past the fleeting nuthatch, the blackcap, the crows and a rose-ringed parakeet that has perhaps strayed a little too far from the Jardin des Plantes. Past the red-gowned treetops, gold-glowing in the late autumn afternoon sun. Past the railway viaduct, where a Line Six train clatters along, its jaded passengers unaware of the lovers who stroll beneath their speeding feet.

The laughing girl is Margery Saunier, twenty-four, un mètre cinquante-deux, blonde hair cut in a short bob. She loves pain au chocolat, the Beatles, the colour yellow and the works of Dante Gabriel Rosetti. In addition to these, she also has a new love in her life. Take a look at the man whose arm she lightly holds. He is taller than her, just; his slightly too long hair constantly gets in his eyes, and his dark beard hides a firm chin. Handsome devil, isn’t he? That’s me, Luke Larien, Chicago-born but devoted to France and all things French, in particular to this beguiling woman who now holds both my arm and my fragile heart in her delicately curling fingers.

Hush, listen now as we cross the bridge – Margery is speaking.

“Non, non, non. Say it again. Moi j’suis d’Paname. Run the words together more. Slur more. Goodness knows an Américain should be practiced in slurring his words.”

“Mois. Je suis de Chicago. Why is Paris called Paname?”

“Your accent is atrocious. Luc, you do this on purpose!”

“I don’t,” I laugh, “I really do want to speak French. And you know that it’s Luke, with a longer and more open vowel.”

“Then I rename you Luc, for you are mine.”

“And I rename you amoureuse et commandante, for you are mine.”

She releases my arm and stamps her foot, mock-fury furrowing her brow and pouting her delicious lips. A fat pigeon, startled momentarily into flapping alarm, returns to pecking at the remains of a baguette dropped by an uncaring tourist. Laughing, we turn to walk along the Quai d’Austerlitz, admiring the spectrum of bronze and golden flame of the trees across the Seine. We do not notice that the starlings overhead cease their sweeping dance and arrow south away from the city.

We do not notice the fat pigeon clawed into a dark niche and devoured whole.

Beneath the vivid sun-butter cloud of Honey Locust trees on the Quai de la Tournelle we pause to listen to a declaiming philosopher who sits on the roof of a small boat moored here. Tiny yellow-green leaves drift down as the logician announces that the world has grown too complex, too diverse in thought and ambition, so that what rules in the stead of nature are a series of modern micro-narratives. He warns that the universe will not bear humanity’s solipsistic impudence for much longer. We laugh at his pointy grey beard moving up and down.

The Seine lulls tramps and beggars to sleep. We saunter hand in hand through a constant fall of golden leaves, gazing across the water at the tall white buildings on the island in the Seine. Myth holds that the Parisian sky is in love with the Ile Saint-Louis; when she smiles up at him he puts on his blue suit. When he rains upon Paris, it is because he is sad, and when he is resentful of the millions who also love the city he unleashes upon them his roaring thunder. The Parisian sky does not remain cruel for long, however, and asks for forgiveness with a rainbow.

From the murk beneath a sewer grating, glowing eyes the colour of arterial blood watch as I lay my arm about Margery’s shoulders and pull her close. She strokes my hip as we cross to Notre Dame.

“Je t’adore,” I murmur.

“Getting better, Américain,” she smiles, and pinches my ass, hard.

In the centuries-old shadow of the massive cathedral an accordion player and a guitarist commence an up-tempo rendition of ‘Sous le Ciel de Paris’. A small group of onlookers, encouraged by the smiling musicians, gradually begins to sing along. Margery and I join them, my atrocious French accent joining her pure voice as we sing of a melody that is born in a young man’s heart and flutters away into a Parisian sky. The dying autumn sun illumines Margery’s amber eyes with a million possibilities. I kiss her deeply as the song ends, holding her close. The small gathering bursts into applause, more for our love than for the musicians, and we join in with their laughter. Contentment fills the cooling air.

High above, perched upon an out-jutting gutter of the cathedral, an ancient stone gargoyle unwinds its grotesque tail and growls softly.

“Have you had enough?” Margery asks. “Shall we go back to the apartment? We could pick up fresh pains au chocolat at the Pâtisserie.”

I consider this. I very much want to undress her, and take her into the small bed in her tiny studio apartment near the Jardin du Luxembourg. A half hour walk beneath the lime trees that line the Boulevard St. Michel would take us there. I am fond of the Latin Quarter. Despite many modern additions, it still represents the Paris of an age gone by; the Paris of artists, writers and philosophers; bohemianism, counterculture and creativity. Picasso walked the streets of Montparnasse. Rimbaud, Matisse and Sartre bought vegetables in the Marche Mouffetard. Hemingway prowled the shaded alleys and bubbling fountains of the Jardin du Luxembourg.

This afternoon, however, I am not of a mind to succumb to the comforting embrace of history. I am inclined to prolong the exquisite anticipation of Margery’s body. This evening I wish to look to the future, to what may become of our relationship.

“I’m enjoying the river,” I say, simply. “Let’s walk along it a little further?”

“Oui, OK.” she agrees, smiling and taking my arm as we turn away from the Boulevard St. Michel to continue along the bank of the Seine. We will manage without our pastries.

Inside the pâtisserie that we have eschewed, a pool of thick blood creeps across the tiled floor, oozing around smashed glass and soaking into the scattered remains of croissants and baguettes.

The evening quietens as we amble along the gentle curve of the Left Bank. There is no birdsong now, and none fly across the plump disc of the setting sun. At the Pont Alexandre III we glance up at the gilt-bronze statues that top the seventeen metre counterbalancing columns of the bridge. The Fames, they are called, beautiful women restraining winged Pegasus, and ablaze with gold in the rays of the setting sun.

Mesmerised by their glory, we fail to notice one of the stone lions below extending its claws.

The gaunt skeleton of the Eiffel Tower welcomes us beneath its reassuring permanence as the world’s light finally dips below the skyline. The few clouds that sail in the Parisian sky move from peach, through apricot, to a blood-red. Street lamps flicker and come on, casting an ochre glow.

A crack opens in the pavement behind us. Soft, guttural snarls emerge from the darkness beneath the earth.

“Psst! Monsieur! Monsieur!” A small man, as old as wizened time and dressed in a moth-eaten overcoat and tattered sneakers, stands close by the path that leads to the ticket booth. By his feet sits a golden box, ornately carved with flowers, and what is, perhaps, an angel. I can just make out the words ‘Ultima Manet Spes’.

“Not today!” I tell the man. I do not want to allow anyone else to intrude upon our private world. I want this evening to belong to just we two. “I have no change,” I lie. The ancient narrows his eyes and licks his cracked, thin lips.

“I think I have seen such a box before,” Margery frowns, staring at the elaborately designed casket, no more than a foot square, that squats by the man’s ragged footwear. Her grip on my arm tightens.

“Where?” I smile. “What is it?”

“I do not know. It escapes my mind.”

“Shall we speak to him?” She nods, her bangs trembling. We take a step towards the gnarled, bent figure. His eyes brighten and he beckons, claw-like, eagerly and urgently.

“Le temps est venu,” he hisses, revealing yellow-grey teeth. “La fin du monde est proche.”

“What did he say?” I ask, although I understand perfectly.

“The end of the world is here,” Margery translates.

“Oh, he’s one of those,” I sigh. “Come on, I’m not in the mood for lunatics. I want to kiss you at the top of the tower.” I drag her away from the man, who continues to call after us.

“Non, partez pas! Sauvez-vous! Je suis psychopompe! S’il vous plaît, regardez dans la boîte – sauvez-vous de la catastrophe qui approche!”

He speaks so quickly that most of it is lost on me, but I can see that Margery is shaken by the encounter with the hunched little man. In the cramped elevator that carries us to the high observation platform, she shivers. I hold her close. Her warm breath tantalises the skin of my throat.

“What is it, cherie? What’s upset you?”

“I… ” she whispers, “I think I know where I have previously seen a similar box to that of the old man.” I look into eyes as clear as the autumn night. “There’s a painting by Rosetti. He painted Jane Morris, his friend’s wife, as Pandora. The box of the old man looked exactly like that held by Pandora in Rosetti’s image.”

“This bothers you? He was merely a beggar with an old box, trying to scam a euro or two.”

“Je sais pas. No. Yes. I don’t know.” She is trembling in my arms. I kiss her forehead. Her skin is cold.

“Look, if it makes you feel better we’ll speak to him when we come down.”

“Oui. Please, could we? That will settle my mind.” Her mouth curves upwards slightly, and she relaxes a little.

We step out onto the observation platform and gaze across Paris. Beautiful Paris, City of Light. The bowl of the sky is now almost completely dark, but the streets below are awash with illumination. I hold her close in front of me and nuzzle her neck as we admire the city lights that sweep iridescent to the horizon, sparkling with life, like the years I imagine unfolding in our future. Then slowly, section by section, arondissement by arondissement, the lights of Paris wink out. Even the lights of moving vehicles disappear. Margery catches her breath.

“What happens?” she gasps.

“I don’t know,” I say, holding her close against me. My chest feels tight. “Power cut?” I suggest, although I know that cannot be, for what power cut ever affected traffic?

Below us Paris is completely dark. Now that they have no competition, the stars look down on a silent black city, waiting as they have for an eternity, as if they are holding their breath. My love turns and buries her face in my sweater. I feel her heart thumping against me. One last moment of blissful peace, a deceptive tranquility, the calm before the storm.

Far, far below us, the screaming begins. Roars and primal howls echo out of the darkness, accompanied by terrified shrieks of horror and agony. We cannot stop our ears to the tortured screams of people being hunted down; men, women and children being eviscerated and torn apart. All we can do is listen to the howling, the rending snarls and the screams of the dying, and watch the darkness. Watch as the world ends, and wonder what was in that damned box.

Towton Roses

I was challenged by Dan Fairs (@danfairs) to write a story in the second person. This is the result. It was an extremely interesting exercise, thanks, Dan. The action takes place on Palm Sunday, 29th March 1461, during the Battle of Towton. You can read my blog post about the battle here.

You want a story before bed, my son? What I did in the war? Well … yes, I think you’re old enough now. Sit comfortably, then, and close your eyes.

Imagine that you stand in a frozen field on a snow-scoured morning. Your legs shake. The ice-needles in the wind stab your cheek, and you pull your snow-crusted hood further forward. The freezing blizzard, though, is not the worst thing about standing in this cursed field. Fear, like a creature made of ice, freezes your insides tight, making it difficult to suck the frozen air into your shivering lungs.

The man to your right hawks, and spits into the snow. You glance at him, and your eyes fix enviously on his sword. You regard your own sharpened broom handle, and the frost creature writhes once more in your belly. “We’ve run out,” the sword-master had told you. “No more blades. Grab one from a corpse on the field.”

You peer ahead. All you can see is thick snow, driving from left to right, but your ears are assailed by a cacophony. Even through your hood, the sounds are clear – the clamour made by the relentless approach of thousands of men. The din grows louder: the neighing of horses, bawled commands, the clank of steel, and, worst of all, a guttural, insistent chant from an army that wants you dead.

“HUH!” they thunder, followed by a double beat of military drums, swords on armour, feet stamping the ground, a sound that causes the dread in your stomach to writhe in terror. Then a cacophonous “YORK!”

“HUH – thump – thump – YORK!” over and over, louder and closer with each repetition. You want to run. Christ, you need a piss, but there’s nowhere to go.

The man beside you glances over. “Scared, lad?” You nod, afraid that speaking aloud will bring you to sobbing tears. “Don’t worry, I’ll see you alright. What’s your name?”

“Bérenger,” you manage.

“Jupp.” He spat again. “I’ll stand by you, you stand by me. Agreed? Forstandan?”

You have no time to answer, for the hounds of hell scream out of the streaming blizzard and death descends upon you. Barrelling out of the snowstorm like furious ghosts, a horde of dark warriors descends upon you, screaming, howling obscenities. Before you materialises a giant of a man, huge of beard, face painted blue.

“For Edward!” he screams, swinging a mace that will take off your head when it connects. You cannot even raise your pointed stick. The panic inside you grips your limbs tightly. You feel your thighs warmed by piss, released by terror. You feel compelled to watch the attacker’s grotesque face, twisted in a furious roar, spittle flying from his mouth, as his black mace cleaves the blizzard towards your head.

And then Jupp’s sword slices through the giant’s forearm, and the mace flies harmlessly over your head. Hot blood drenches your face and stings your tongue.

“Wake up, lad!” Jupp yells, and you startle into life. You realise, finally, that this furious army wants to kill you. They want to end your short life, now. A second man, as young as you, slips as he raises his sword and you sink your broomstick deep into his gut. He falls, taking your weapon with him. The snow blinds you for a moment, but you feel Jupp thrust a sword into your hand. And then all of hell comes upon the field.

You are caught in the middle of a horrific, bloody brawl. Your senses are assaulted – the driving, stinging blizzard, the deafening racket of arms and armour, the pleading of desperate men, screaming, strangled curses. Your nostrils flare with the stench of puke and shit and trampled entrails.

“Stay on your feet, lad!” says Jupp. “If you fall in this meat-mincer, you’re dead.”

You swing your sword violently, tears streaming from your eyes, for what feels like hours. Your blade causes some damage, but mostly you hope only to deflect any attacks coming your way. You are hit, more than once, but you stay on your feet, mindful of Jupp’s advice. The slaughter continues into the afternoon, and you drift, inch by bloody inch, across the gore-stained field, pushed along by the heaving crowd of struggling bodies. Jupp stays by your side, giving you courage, and protecting you when he can. You try to do the same for him, but you are not a very skilled fighter.

Heavy snow continues to fall upon the wounded, the maimed, and those trampling over them in order to fight. The ground is strewn with corpses and body parts, discarded armour and weapons. Everyone is exhausted. The fight looks to be slowing down, when a pulse of energy livens the enemy ranks.

“The White Boar!” one of them shouts. “Norfolk comes to our aid!” The Yorkists are suddenly full of energy again, and beat you and your comrades back, hacking and slashing. “No quarter!” cry their commanders. You turn and run, feet slipping in the red-brown slime that covers the ground. You stumble over a corpse, but Jupp grabs your arm to keep you upright.

“Make for the beck,” he says. “If we can cross we might yet reach safety.” Behind you, a new level of brutality is visited on those of your comrades who were not so quick to flee. You glance over your shoulder to see a man held by two of the enemy, while a laughing third splits his head open.

You and Jupp sprint down a slippery hill with scores of others attempting to flee the battle. Somewhere you have dropped your sword, but that does not matter. Your entire being is soaked with terror, with the need to escape. Enemy archers now pick off fleeing men easily, and horsemen weave through the ranks of panicked men, killing at will. Around you men die continuously, but you and Jupp finally make it to a naked stand of ash trees, and the beck.

A dam spans the stream, built of Lancastrian dead, the rushing waters streaming with a crimson grume. Panicked, hysterical men try to scramble across, over the carcases of the fallen. The blizzard still rages. A swarm of enemy soldiers pours down the bank and you are captured, held tightly, along with Jupp, and a dozen others.

“Strip them,” a capitayn orders. “Take anything of value, then kill them. No quarter.”

They tear the clothes from three of your comrades. One of them spits in his captor’s face, and his ears and nose are sliced off. Screaming, he dies as a mace crushes his skull. The other two are put to the sword.

Then it is your turn. Your clothes are cut away and fall to the ground. Your skin prickles in the frozen air.

“Erm, capitayn,” says the man holding you. “This one’s a woman.”

“So? No quarter. Kill her. Enjoy yourself first, if you must.”

“Are the men of York so depraved?” Jupp spoke out. “You side with the devil if you treat a woman so.”

The capitayn looked at Jupp, and sighed. “You may be right,” he said. “This day has made demons of us all. Dress her, and escort her safely from the field. The rest you can kill.”

As you are led away, along the beck, you glance back. The expression in Jupp’s eyes is one of weary resignation, but you like to think there is a spark of satisfaction that one of you, at least, will survive this terrible day. He smiles at you, then his head is shattered by a heavy axe.

Tomorrow, son, I shall take you to the battlefield. We shall walk the margin of the corn as it is ruffled by the blustering wind. We shall find wild Towton roses, that once grew snow-white, but now bear petals tinged with red, fed with blood from the slain beneath the earth.

Above us, mauve, mordant clouds will curdle and thud like bruises, bowling patches of sunlight across the rise and fall of the land. We shall walk that sombre deathscape, and feel the dread under out feet – the echo of those long-ago events, vibrating just beyond the hearing. We shall find the ash-trees where the man died that saved my life, and we shall remember him.

And now, Jupp, my son, take yourself to bed, and think on your name. I know that one day you will grow up to honour it, and the man who made your life possible.

Mirela – a short story

The angel’s head was too big, and the wings too small. Those were the first things I noticed. I had said that we should use the stonemason from Brasov, but no, Grigore had insisted that we save money by employing the village blacksmith instead. I suspected that the blacksmith had simply crept into a graveyard in dead of night and severed the head of an existing statue and the wings from a second to add to the childishly carved body and hands. Our own little angel, Mirela, had been perfect. This mawkish grotesque was nothing but an insult to her memory.

The midnight breeze chilled my back as cold as the moonlight that cast across the bare winter trees and the book held in the angel’s hands. A book, for the love of sacred God! Mirela hadn’t even started learning to read when she was murdered, her innocent soul snuffed out by an evil monster.

De mormânt, how I had wept. I had roared, I had screamed into the black heavens for God to help us, but He wasn’t listening. I had ranted at Grigore, but he was not listening either. Grigore had not allowed me to attend to any preparations for the funeral, nor even the ceremony itself that morning. He had said it was for my own sanity, but I knew I needed to see Mirela’s grave with my own eyes in order to bring peace. What the Americans call closure. I could not be certain that she was truly gone unless I saw for myself.

I felt a slight tremor through the thin soles of my slippers. It was beginning. I took a pace back, shaking with trepidation, although the prospect of seeing my baby again filled me with an exquisite agony. The freshly-dug earth shook, then poured aside as a pair of small white hands broke through the surface. The fingers clawed at the soil, but were unable to push it away.

I reached down and took the thin forearms in my hands, giving a gentle tug. With my help, my little daughter emerged from her grave, coughing out gobbets of dirt and spittle. She looked up at my face, her clear eyes seeking recognition.

“Mămică?” she whispered.

“Mirela, fiica mea prețioase,” I purred, reassuringly. The moonlight lit clearly the ugly scars on her neck, and the lengthened incisors when she smiled at me. “Te iubesc.”

I released her wrists and she reached for me. I stooped to pick up the wooden stake at my feet.

“Îmi pare rău, dragă. Fii la pace acum,” I said gently, and, tears rimming my eyes, plunged the sharpened point deep into her chest. She screamed, and a look of pure evil drenched her eyes. She clutched at her pierced torso, and ran into the shadows beyond the gravestones, still impaled on the shaft of ash that I had sharpened that afternoon.

I must have missed the heart, because she still lives. My daughter creeps, hissing, just out of my sight, in the dark shadows cast by the ranks of bitter gravestones. She is hunting me, and I do not know whether I have the courage, or the heart to hurt my little girl again.

Station To Station

Bowie, of course, in his pomp on his tenth album. The station herein is Manchester Piccadilly, where I have sat many a time nursing a coffee (or a G&T if I’m being seduced into sin by @teddy_red), watching the crowds mill about below. I can’t now remember who else was involved in our conversation, but this far-fetched idea sprang from a conversation with my lady of swans, @rosamundi. The text alert that story-Deborah uses — “You have a fax” — is actually the one I use on my own phone. It’s a sound clip from the classic noir adventure game, ‘Under A Killing Moon’, concerning ‘a humble PI trying to save the world as we know it’, Tex Murphy. This has led me to call texts ‘faxes’ from time to time, much to the amusement of the younger wombats. Enjoy.

‘You have a fax. You have a fax.’

The text alert repeated, an audio capture from an old computer game. The incongruity of the message appealed to Deborah’s Luddite love of old things, rather like the faux-wooden case that held her Kindle. She checked the phone. The text was from Chris.

“Finished work and just caught the train. It’s a bit rubbish and packed with United fans, but needs must when the devil vomits on your cornflakes. We’re running late but should be into Manchester about quarter past. Really looking forward to being at home with you and a nice glass of red.”

Good. That would give her half an hour with a hot drink and her book. She ordered a Caramel Macchiato and took it to a table on the balcony. From here she could see the platforms below. People wriggled about like tadpoles, weaving through each other in an almost Brownian motion that was quite hypnotic. A group in red and white raised a chant of “United! United!” and she smiled.

“Good luck, lads,” she murmured, and plugged in her earphones.

‘Once there were mountains on mountains, and once there were sun birds to soar with, and once I could never be down,’ Bowie sang to her.

She settled back happily to read about drug use and abuse in Nazi Germany. Her husband had always scoffed at her choices of reading. He’d been mystified as to how she could be gripped by a dry tome about the inner workings of the Enigma Machine, or the mundane diaries of a grocer’s experiences in the Air Raid Precautions service in Hythe.

She had tried to explain her fascination with the Second World War; that it all felt remarkably familiar to her, even though she had been born twenty-two years after its end. She had told him how comforting the sound of a Spitfire engine seemed, how it felt inside as if she heard it every day rather than just at the annual air-show. It was almost as if she’d been born out of her natural time, this feeling that her natural place should have been there, in the midst of that maelstrom of horror. Perhaps in a previous life she had even been a Spitfire pilot.

He had made fun of her fascination with the war, although it was the reason she had ended up in her current job. He preferred to read graphic novels about brightly-coloured heroes with impossible superpowers, and women with large breasts and highly impractical outfits with which to contain them. Still, they had more similarities than differences, and had been together now for twenty years, married for the last ten.

‘You have a fax. You have a fax.’

It was Chris again: “Just left Stockport. Battery almost dead. See you in a few minutes.” She returned a brief acknowledgement and peered down at the platforms. Platform Five was just below her. She would easily spot Chris when he emerged.

She put her Kindle back into her bag, took off her stylish forties hat and rested it on the balcony wall in front of her. The train eased into Platform Five and disgorged another cloud of tadpoles. She slid the gun from her bag, flicked the safety off, and held it easily beneath the hat. She scanned the faces of the people as they left the train, looking for the one that she’d been shown at the briefing that afternoon. Ah, there he was, approaching the end of the platform between a man of huge beard and a woman with two young children in United shirts.

She stroked the trigger. A slight phut came from beneath the hat, barely audible in the hubbub of the busy station. Down at the end of Platform Five, Chris stumbled and fell, dead before his face smashed into the platform. Journey’s end.

Endings. A sad word. Everything, good or bad, had to end. Everything changed. Not for her, though. Not yet.

Deborah dropped the gun into her bag and left the table. She put the hat back on her head as she descended the stairs from the mezzanine level and headed for the station exit. She took out her own phone and texted her husband. “Hi, Paul. Finished work. Really looking forward to being at home with you and a nice glass of red.”

She briefly considered hanging on to Chris’s wife’s phone long enough to copy that cool text alert, but then professionalism kicked in and she dropped it into the nearest bin. As she walked out into the Manchester drizzle she pulled down the wide brim of her hat.

‘Our lives are like leaves on a tree and wild is the wind’. God, she loved this album.

This story appears in my collection ‘The Museum of White Walls’

Sun Dust

A short tale for you, inspired by a rather good story by VS Pearson, itself inspired by Miranda Kate’s Midweek Flash. Sort of a chain inspiration thing going on here. You may wish to read V’s tale first, since mine weaves around it.

I watched the woman aimlessly wander the shelves, while her husband dozed in the refreshment alcove, his glass of lemonade warming, untouched, on the small table to his right. She glanced at him, smiled, and continued to entertain herself.

Our emporium is built into the cliff, and therefore offers sunbeaten tourists a cool respite from the summer sun. We have three floors of second-hand junk, curiosities, gew-gaws, knick-knacks and what-yer-call-its, along with works from local artists. This woman spent a long time poking around porcelain dolls with cracked faces, antique cameras, and dusty books. She kept stealing glances at me as I tidied the till area.

She stopped by a shelf that held a single item – a little glass bottle, full of a fine, goldish powder. It bore a label, designed to look like old parchment, that said ‘Sun Dust.’ A little gimmick, she thought, to get tourists to spend a couple of pounds on a cheap mixture of sand and glitter.

Once again, she looked at me. I lit a new incense cone. This day I was wearing my pastel-pink top and pastel-blue skirt and pastel-green trainers, and pale-yellow ribbons that held my hair in cute high bunches. I could tell what she was thinking.

“I’m exactly what you think I am,” I said, with a grin.

She hurriedly looked away, a small frown wrinkling her brow. She stared at the bottle in front of her while her mind turned, confused. The woman was wondering how I could possibly know what she was thinking? That she thought I looked like a vampire in disguise? No, that was silly … unless vampires can read minds.

“Which we can,” I said.

She took a sharp breath, hurriedly grabbed the nearest thing – the bottle of ‘Sun Dust’ – and gave me a fiver, jabbering “Keep the change.”

As she roused her husband, I felt compelled to warn her. “Do be careful to use this sparingly. It’s really potent magic.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and dragged her bewildered husband away.

That was years ago, now, and I’d honestly thought she’d taken my words to heart and hidden the bottle away, like the scarce few others I had been able to make, never to actually be opened. For after all, who wants a handful of sand and glitter when they could have a fun faux-magic bottle?

Last week, though, I think she must have opened it. You see, I wasn’t lying about the potency of ‘Sun Dust’. I made it from the dusted remains of several vampires, my sires, who were turned to ash by the direct rays of the sun. You’ve seen Buffy, right? Vampire wanders out into sunlight and POOF. Well, the dust that remains has properties if mixed with certain powdered crystals. One of those properties is that, if it gets high enough in the atmosphere, it destroys cloud-cover. That in turn heralds dawn-to-dusk sunlight and an intense heatwave. Somehow my customer must have scattered her Sun Dust far enough, high enough, maybe using a fan or something, that it took hold and its magic was unleashed.

Looking into your own mind now, dear reader, I see you wondering ‘Why on earth would a vampire want eternal sunshine?’

As I said, ‘Sun Dust’ has potent magic. Yes, it brings bright sunshine and an end to rainfall, but that’s not all it does. It also drains away the sun’s luminosity, the sun’s light, though not its heat. Have you noticed the dimming of the day yet? It’s already started. In a few weeks there will be little left, and the earth will be doomed to eternal darkness.

Now, can you think of any reason why a vampire might desire that?

Just Say When: a short timey-wimey story

“Hey, Vesper, what have you found over there?” I said, stowing a new dirt sample in the back of the Rover.

Nguyen, sixty metres away by a large upthrust of rust-coloured rock, turned to face me with that little bunny-hop bounce necessitated by the low gravity and her EVA suit. Nguyen is Vietnamese. You’re maybe having trouble pronouncing her name. That’s OK, so do I. The first time I met her, in a small Houston bar, I couldn’t get it right at all.

“That first syllable can be hard for Western tongues,” she had allowed. “Why don’t you just say ‘Wen’?”

“Just say when? Like I’m pouring you a drink?”

“Thanks, I’ll have a Vesper.”

That comment sealed our friendship immediately, and since that day I had simply called her by the name of her favourite cocktail instead. She was happy with that, even amused, and reciprocated by calling me after my own favourite tipple.

“You’ll like this, Shirley Temple,” she said, her voice crackling a little in my earpiece. “It’s a cave.”

Now, before you go getting the wrong idea, Nguyen and I are not, and have never been, a couple. Sure, we’re a team, and a good one: we work well together as colleagues, and as friends, but there’s no romance involved. Throughout training and testing we’d consistently done well, both individually and together, and when the time came we’d both been chosen for the first HEOMD manned expedition to Mars.

I double-checked the screen on the Rover’s output dash. “Geoscan shows nothing in this rock formation but, well, rock,” I said.

We had launched from the Lunar Gateway a year ago now. Nguyen won our rock-paper-scissors decider, despite her missing middle finger, the result of a childhood accident, making it more a game of rock-paper-skewer. Her victory gave her the honour of being the first human ever to set foot on Mars. I’d followed a few minutes later, the Martian Buzz Aldrin. And yes, the moon landings had been a giant leap off the doorstep, but now humankind had properly left home and walked down the road. Humanity reaching out to neighbouring worlds borrow a cup of sugar. Boots on the red planet.

“Nevertheless,” Nguyen said, “a cave there is, and it’s a biggie. Come on, Shirley, get your hairy ass over here.”

I bounced over to her, using the comedic hop-skip gait we’d developed to move safely in the weak Martian gravity. She was standing by a dark opening in the rock, a jagged crack twice my height, yet only a metre wide. I shone my helmet light into the opening. The crevice widened out just inside and ran back a fair way.

“Turn your light off,” Nguyen said.

“What?”

“You heard.”

I did as she said and looked again into the crevice. There was something in there, back in the darkness: a deep red glow, the colour of cinnabar. It pulsed gently, almost like a beating heart.

“What the slippery wiggins is that?” I said.

“I know exactly what that is,” she said. “It’s an anomaly.”

“An anomaly? What’s that? Don’t tell me; is this another Star Trek reference?” Nguyen loved her Star Trek. I’m more of a Buffy man myself.

“Yes. Generally, it means ‘We have no idea what this unexpected thing is’. You can have all sorts of anomaly – this is possibly a crystalline anomaly, a subspace anomaly, or maybe just a common-or-garden spatial anomaly.”

“Should we go inside and investigate?”

“We’re explorers, Shirley. Investigation kind of goes with the territory. To boldly go. Adventure: without it, why live?”

“I take your point. Just say when, Vesper.”

“When.”

We turned on our helmet lights and squeezed into the cave. It widened out after a couple of feet: dust had blown into the entrance a few yards, but further inside the floor was hard and even: safe for us to walk on. Ahead of us, in the dark, the ‘anomaly’ pulsed and beckoned. I watched it for a while, then closed my eyes and watched the green afterglow that remained against my eyelids.

“Fuck. Ing. Hell.” It was unlike Nguyen to swear so baldly, so I pulled my attention away from the radiance.  She was facing the side of the cave, shining her lamp towards the foot of the wall. I joined my light with hers, and when I saw what she was looking at, my sense of the universe changed forever.

“F … Sh … what?” I struggled for words.

Nesting at the foot of the wall was a pile of bones. Human bones, with a human skull and vertebrae, and arm and hand bones reaching towards the cave wall.

“It seems that I might not be the first person to walk on Mars after all.” Nguyen said.

“But … how?”

“All I’ve got is ‘fucking hell’.”

“OK. Perhaps … perhaps there were actual Martians once, humanoids like us, and this is one of them. The bone looks blackened, old.”

There was something – a scratch, a mark – at the very base of the rock wall close to the finger bones. I squatted as best I could in the confines of my suit and looked more closely. There were indeed scratches, faint and worn away by years. At first I thought they were random marks, left by the desperate clawing of a dying Martian, but as I studied them it occurred to me that they resembled three slightly overlapping letters: J, S and W.

“This thing is pulsing faster,” Nguyen said, and I looked up to see she had moved and was staring at the light, which hovered at about head-height just in front of the back wall of the cave. It was indeed pulsing more rapidly, as if excited, like a heart at the sight of a lover. Fascinated, Nguyen lifted her hand to touch it. I’ll regret to my dying day that I was too slow to stop her.

A tsunami of crimson light flooded the cave, causing my helmet faceplate to darken in automatic response, and when it cleared Nguyen was gone. She hadn’t run outside: I checked, obviously. No, she’d just vanished into thin air (quite literally given Mars’ weedy atmosphere). I stared at the space where she’d been, and the pulsing light that had apparently … I don’t know, what? Absorbed her?

What the hell was it? Would it absorb me? Probably, if I got too close. What was it that Nguyen had said about anomalies? Surely Star Trek was fiction; but then a lot of what Star Trek had predicted had come true in the years after it was broadcast, so why not these? What kind of anomaly appeared as a pulsing red light?

Eventually a thought occurred to me, and I returned to the impossible skeleton. This time I paid more attention to the bones near the wall, the outstretched hand. There were no middle-finger bones. At that moment I knew what the scratches on the wall meant, and an hour later, when I contacted Houston, I was with some confidence able to use the words ‘temporal anomaly’. Thirty minutes later their reply, delayed by distance, arrived.

“Please investigate the anomaly <beep>,” it said. “Be cautious but use camera and infra-red analysis for initial investigation. <beep> You might like to toss a rock into it. <beep>”

“Sorry, Houston, no,” I sent back. “I’m not ready to go anywhere near that thing yet.”

Thirty minutes later: “Understood, Mars One <beep>. Tell us when you are ready. <beep> Just say when.”

A Lyttell Geste of Robin Hood

Marian introduced me to sea wormwood that morning. I put a sprig in my belt, and every so often was greeted by a lovely sage and camomile smell that complemented perfectly the salt breeze from the cove. We sat on the shingle. Marian took my arm, pulled me close and laid her head against my shoulder.

“What are we to do?” she whispered. I sighed. I could see only one way ahead, and it hurt me to my core to even consider it.

“It pains me to say this,” I began, lifting a hand to stroke a wisp of hair away from her eye, “but if he will not see reas—”

“John! John!” The shout pierced the whisper of waves and set to flight screeching gulls and piping waders. Much thumped out of the nearby trees and slid to a halt, scattering fine pebbles over Marian’s boots. “He’s at it again!” he roared, his baritone bedizened with frustration. “We can’t stop him!”

“Fucksake,” Marian cursed. “I thought I told you to watch him, Much!”

“I’ve got to have a shit sometimes!” Much clenched his fists. His eyes dared her to argue with him.

Marian raised her hands apologetically, then leaned on my shoulder to push to her feet. “Come on, buggerlugs,” she said. “Let’s go see what our intrepid leader’s up to this time.”

We climbed through the trees to the camp at the top of the hill. A haunch of venison smoked over the fire, the flesh blackening. The friar, who was supposed to be turning it, was over by the big oak. There a rotund man sat on the ground, his back pressed against the ancient trunk. The rich shining cloth of his tunic was torn and dirtied, and his hose stained with moss and mud. He pressed his head back hard against the bark. Terror dwelt in the wide eyes that he fixed upon the dagger blade that thrust up against his cheek.

“Hoodwinked, weren’t ya?” spat the man standing over him. A fleck of spittle hit the terrified merchant’s forehead and trickled down the bridge of his nose. “Hood! Get it?” The man’s assailant giggled. “I don’t think he gets it, Scarlok.”

“Will’s not here, Robin,” pleaded the friar. “Why don’t you leave the silversmith alone and have some venison?”

“Venison, my arse,” Robin growled. “Hold your wind, hedge priest. Venison’s for mere kings. We can eat far better than venison. For myself I quite fancy sliced long pig. With lots of crispy crackling,” He drew the blade down his victim’s face, pulling a line of blood from the blubberous white cheeks. The merchant whimpered.

“Enough!” cried Marian, striding forward and dragging Robin away from their captive. “Robin, remember the mission!”

“There is no mission, have you not realised yet? There’s the forest, and there’s us, and there’s them.”

“We … we began this undertaking to right wrongs, to undermine unfair taxes. Wealth in this country is in the hands of a tiny few, while many more starve to pay their tithes. We banded together to correct that; to rob from the rich and give to the poor. It’s the very reason so many have joined us here in the greenwood. Not one of us signed up to slaughter innocent people. That is going a thousand steps too far. Robin, murder is against all laws; not only those of the Sherriff, but those of God, too.”

It was well argued, I thought, and passionately said. I loved Marian all the more for that. Robin, though, was not as taken by the maid’s words as I. “Laws?” he said. “Laws are as meaningless as dust to us. The Sherriff gave us that freedom when he named us outlaws. We are outside all laws, whether they be laws of man or of God. Ipso facto – pardon my Latin – that makes us gods of this forest. We can do or say whatever we like, and what I like right now is to see this fat pig’s hot fear trickle out of him from between his legs.”

“Robin, Robin …” I stepped forward. “Come, sit by the fire and we’ll have some ale.” The friar gave me a look and shrugged. Robin was getting worse; it was becoming ever harder to stay him from his increasingly frequent murderous rages. He suddenly straightened, nostrils flaring.

“Is the meat burning?” he asked, dropped his dagger onto the fallen autumn leaves and strode over to the fire to turn the spit.

“He’s getting worse, isn’t he?” the friar said quietly.

“Distract him,” I said. He nodded, and waddled over to help Robin slice portions of roast venison. Marian looked into my eyes, and understood. She picked up the dagger and cut the merchant’s bonds.

“Come with me,” I told him, taking up my quarterstaff. “And for your life, do not make a single sound.” I led him away from the camp, winding through the sun-spattered trees. He moved frustratingly slowly, but at least silently. When we were out of earshot I finally allowed myself to breathe.

“I make jewellery,” the merchant said, in between gasps for air. “Why does he want to hurt me? I have a child.”

I did not reply, continuing to lead him away from the camp. It was not the ideal path to take, but I did not think the merchant could manage a wide circle around the camp through thick undergrowth and fallen branches. This path would have to suffice.

When we reached the fallen tree, I indicated that he should cross first. He tiptoed to the edge of the crevasse and peered over the edge. Sixty feet below us the River Welland tumbled through sheer cliffs, eager to reach the sea.

“I can’t cross that,” he said, gazing in horror at the fallen tree that spanned the chasm. I could not see the problem. The span of elm was at least four feet across and cleared of branches on its upper side. Still, I could see terror in his expression. He would have to overcome it.

“Would you rather face the knife again?” I indicated the cut on his cheek. He looked again at the tree-bridge, then nodded and got down on all fours. Hesitantly he crawled onto the makeshift bridge. “I’ll be right behind you,” I said. “Don’t worry.” I followed him as he gradually inched his way over, ready to grab him if he should topple. We were almost at the far side when the arrow thudded into the back of my left shoulder. The pain sparked stars in my vision and I almost fell, but managed to steady myself with the help of my staff. I turned, grimacing in agony. I knew Robin’s arrows, and I knew the one that he had just shot into me would have to be pushed out through my shoulder to avoid the barbs ripping my flesh.

He stood at the far end of the tree trunk, another arrow notched and ready to release.

“Go!” I told the merchant. “As quickly as you can. Head straight until you see a tall silver tree. There you’ll find a path that leads to a village that will help you. And for your very life, man, make shift!”

“Thank you,” he squeaked. “How will—”

“Bugger off!” I urged. I heard him scamper away, panting heavily. Robin hadn’t moved. I knew that he could hold his longbow at the draw for hours if need be, so I tried not to move too much, though the sharp agony in my shoulder made that hard.

“John Little, you traitorous worm.” Robin said.

“You’re not well, Robin,” I told him. “You’ve been getting worse for some time.”

“Fuck off,” he said, and drew his bowstring back another half inch. The bow creaked.

“You’re no longer him, are you?” I said. “The Robin who was my friend; the Robin who I followed into the greenwood – he would never have acted like this.” The tip of his arrow dipped a little. Perhaps if I pointed out where he had gone wrong, then he would see. “That Robin – my friend – would never have tried to throttle me when I beat him in a silly archery competition. That Robin would not have casually killed the little page that caught us breaking into Gisbourne’s grain store. That Robin would take money from the rich – and then let them go with their lives.”

He lowered his bow. “That Robin was a twat,” he said. “He was blind to his true nature – my true nature. You know, I had thought that I could restore Marian to the exalted position that she was used to before she met us? Highly exalted once more, only now exalted here, in the forest. She could have been a goddess in Sherwood, if only …” He trailed off, and narrowed his eyes. “If only you hadn’t stolen her from me.”

That jibe, on top of pain that was making my eyes water, tipped me over into fury. I was done being patient.

“I stole nothing, you arrogant bastard!” I shouted. “You drove her from you with your violence, your constant antagonistic behaviour, and your persistent, egotistical rants. You frightened her, man! Can you not see what you have become?”

This was puzzling. Why was he bothering to engage in conversation? Why had he not stuck me with more arrows, so that I fell to my doom on the rocks below?

“I can,” he said quietly. He put his bow on the ground and picked up a staff. “You can keep the whore, little man. I have no need of her now. For I have become a god.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“You beat me once with the bow,” he said quietly. “The bow! My skill! I should have strangled you when I had the chance. But now I shall take my revenge. I shall best you at your skill.” He strode toward me across the elm, quarterstaff at the ready. “This is the hour of your death.”

“Robin, please do not do this. Even wounded, I—” but he reached me before I could finish the sentence, his staff blurring at my head. Of course, he had no chance of beating me, even with his arrow sticking out of my shoulder. Fighting with a quarterstaff had never been one of Robin’s strengths. He signalled every move before he made it. His arrogance now blinded him to that fact and he tried four or five times to knock me to my death. I parried each attack easily.

“Marian doesn’t love you, you know,” he grunted between blows. “She’ll open her legs for anyone. Even the hedge priest has had her. Besides, she likes a big man, Little John!”

You know, I could have simply knocked him backwards and disarmed him. I could probably have struck him unconscious and caught him before he fell. I didn’t. His callous insults of the woman I loved drew red mist into my mind and I swung hard. I heard the bone crack as my staff broke his skull, then he was spinning down through the air and splashing red across the rocks below.

***

“That’s the end of it, then,” said Much when I told the band what had happened. No one had blamed me for killing their leader, not even Scarlok. They knew the way Robin had been deteriorating over the last few months. Dickon had even told us that he and Alan had been about to leave anyway, for fear of Robin’s violent moods.

“Aye, it’s over,” said the friar. “People believe in the man, not some raggedy bunch of ne’er-do-wells, even when we do, in fact, do well. It’s Robin Hood they look up to. It’s Robin Hood that gives them hope.”

“Not any more he doesn’t,” Scarlok said, rubbing the scar across his eye that Robin had given him a seven-night ago. We looked at each other morosely.

“Why not?” said Marian, fussing about the wound in my shoulder.

“’Cause he’s cocked his clogs,” Much said.

“So what? Listen,” she said, packing damp moss into my wound. It hurt like the devil. “People believed in the man, yes. The legend of the nobleman who rejected all the luxuries and comforts he had been born into so that he could help the ordinary man and woman; the poor and downtrodden, those treated unjustly. But what did people actually see whenever we helped them?”

“Well,” I furrowed my brow. “Robin. They saw Robin, first and foremost.”

“Did they?” she asked enthusiastically, her beautiful eyes shining, fired by an idea that clearly thrilled her. My heart skipped a beat. What a woman she was.

“See,” she carried on, “I reckon that people just see a man in a green tunic and hose and wearing a green hood and say ‘That’s Robin Hood.’ I’m willing to bet that they never actually look at his face.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Robin Hood, the man, is dead. Robin Hood, the idea, lives on. We carry him, and his ideas, inside us. We are all Robin Hood.”

***

Lady Isabella laid her hand on the muscular forearm of the man in green. “Oh, Robin,” she said. “How can I ever thank you for rescuing me from the lustful advances of that horrible man?”

“No thanks are necessary,” Much said from the deep shadow of his hood, “but you could tell your friends that they have nothing to fear from Robin Hood, as long as they treat their servants and serfs fairly.”

At the same time, three miles away, a man in green carried the body of a large deer across his shoulders into the village of Wickham. He dropped it by the well on the green.

“Thank the Lord and thank you, Robin!” said a woman nearby. “My children are starving.”

“There’ll be more soon. Put it away quickly lest the Sherriff’s men see,” said Scarlok from inside his large hood, before turning and disappearing into the forest.

In the same moment, at the edge of the small town of Netherfield, Robin Hood loosed an arrow from his bow. It nicked the sleeve of the fleeing tax collector and put the fear of god into him.

“He’ll not be back quickly,” said the tall man in the hood. “Leave word for me at the Woodcock Inn if he returns.”

“We’re lucky to have the protection of Robin Hood,” the woman told her young son as the man in the green hood strode away.

“I want to be a Merry Man when I grow up!” the woman’s son said. “What was that he smelled of, Mam?”

“Sage and camomile,” she told him.