The Rare Medium

He’d been gone a whole month now and still it was no better.  The very idea of never seeing Garry on screen again made June feel sick. No-one was able to console her.  The only time that she felt happy was when she climbed into her unchanged bed and began to drift off to sleep.  Then she could settle into her regular dreams, the ones where Garry was alive and well and visiting Rotherham on a promotional tour.  He would visit the cinema where she worked, clap eyes on her as she sold him an ice cream…and never take his eyes off her again.  He would lead her into the projection room and…and…well never mind, she’d usually nodded off by this stage.

Alexandra Haseldown-Smith.  The stars’ chosen Medium.

The advertisement was bold, confident, assertive.  June decided that there must be some substance to her claim or she wouldn’t place it in a national newspaper.

In regular contact with stars of stage and screen whom have passed over.  Seances held regularly in theatres and studios at the request of several well-known directors and actors.

If anyone could help her to make contact with Garry, it would be Alexandra Haseldown-Smith.  June hadn’t got much money, only what she’d saved for her bottom drawer.  But it looked like she’d never need that.  No other man could ever live up to Garry.  Especially in Rotherham.  Sod marriage, now that Garry hadn’t much else to do, he might talk to her, advise her in some way.  Tell her he would wait until she joined him.   June went out and bought the most spiritual looking notepaper that she could find (blue with faint lines).  She cleared the pots and pans off the kitchen table and sat down to write.

“Dear Miss Haseldown-Smith.  I need you to help me make contact with an actor that passed over recently.  I believe that he might have something to tell me.  Please can you help me?  I have a few pounds and can come to London if you need me to.  My future and my happiness depend on it.  I enclose a stamped addressed envelope.”

Cat in a Bag

As she tells me that she’s in trouble, she looks at me in the same way that a kitten might. She wants me to pick her up and pet her. Tell her that I’m going to keep her. But every bit of me wants to bundle her up in a sack and drop her in the deepest part of the Thames.

She’s been trailing me ever since I got back on my 48 hour pass from the base. I thought she was just hungry for some more of what she had last time, but there was never going to be any of that. Poor, innocent little kitten, doesn’t she know there’s a war on? Everything’s temporary these days. But now she’s telling me that there’s something lingering after that regrettable whiskey fumble. She’s telling me about reputations. Apparently I should be making hers my business.

But I’ve got another idea. Didn’t I once hear about a quack fellow in Soho who took care of these problems? It’s just persuading her. She’ll be hard work. I can see the reflection of the wedding flowers in her tiresome tears.

I regret my curiosity. I only wanted to be sure that all that kind of thing wasn’t for me. A test.  Now I know for sure that girls are just not my thing. The sooner I’m rid of this one… Then I can get to the boys on the base and the frisson of the smell of their sweat in the huts. There’s going to be some nice new raw recruits joining us tomorrow.

She’s stopped her jabbering now. She’s waiting for me to speak. I take out my wallet and offer her crumpled notes. She throws them back at me, and, oh Lord here we go, she begins to wail. The air raid siren starts up in sympathy. I turn her around and push her towards the tube station steps. The steep, steep staircase delves down into the ground before us. The place begins to get crowded. A stumble into the depths would be easy to engineer in the dark and the rush...all I have to do is prise those little claws out of my jacket sleeve.

Some People Use War as an Excuse for Everything

Mrs Bagshaw lived for disapproval.  Not that she wanted anyone to disapprove of her.  Her behaviour was of course exemplary.  Otherwise she wouldn’t be qualified to offer out her opinions on the way that other people ran their lives.  Everyone else was doing it wrong.  But Mrs Bagshaw had a husband, two children, a full washing line and front doorstep that gleamed, even on a foggy day.  Of course she was doing everything right.  But her across the road at number 12, well!  She was a different kettle of fish altogether.

It was in the war when her at number 12 went wrong.  Women of her sort used the war as an excuse for all sorts of ridiculous behaviour.  First of all she married that pilot.  She went silly over the uniform.  And if anybody was going to get themselves killed it was a pilot.  The marriage didn’t last a year before he went down in the North Sea.  And what had she done in the meantime?  Got herself pregnant.  Talk about setting yourself up for sorrow.  So, there she was – no husband, a kiddy that won’t stop crying because it’s got an unfit mother and no food in the cupboard.  No time to grow anything she said – even though she’d a lovely patch of soil round the back.  So, she fetched round the ARP warden to see about growing some potatoes – and ends up growing much more into the bargain.  Another baby no less.  The ARP Warden went running back to his wife, saying that there was no proof that the blighter was his.

But the real disapproval started at the end of the war, when young Peter Bagshaw turned 19.  Just the day after his birthday, he was caught sneaking out of number 12 at 1 o’clock in the morning.  Peter got a red ear but he never lost his grin.  Local opinion was divided on whether number 12 had done it out of spite to Mrs Bagshaw, or because she just genuinely couldn’t resist a strapping young lad.  Either way, when there’s a war on, you take your pleasure where you find it.

*Title inspired by a line from Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

Empathy on the Bus

The child continued to scream even after the mother had paid the fare and settled down gratefully into a seat.  The child remained in its pushchair, but the brake had to be applied, so rocking was not possible.  A gentle push to and fro is what usually sends them off.  Instead, the mother hoped that the burr of the engine would soothe her child to sleep.  One or two older people tutted as the precise pitch of the screaming was delivered straight into their eardrums by their hearing aids.  One woman ostentatiously turned hers off.  Another offered a solution under her breath – “take the damn thing out of its pram.”

But the mother was determined to remain firm.  Sleep time means no cuddles, no matter how loud you scream.  I’m all out of cuddles just now.  She leaned forward and in a compromise to appease other passengers, took her child’s fist in her hand and began to stroke it with her worn out, steriliser-raw thumb.

A woman in the adjacent seat looked over at the mother; too distracted from her book to read anymore.  She wasn’t annoyed, like those whose child rearing days were long past.  She simply felt relief that the child wasn’t hers.  That her children were safely in school and that she would be able to walk away from that heartbreaking sound.  Those days were not so long ago, when she felt just like this mother looked.  Exhausted not even strong enough a word.  She remembered the nights sat on the landing, sobbing because her child wouldn’t sleep and her office desk awaited her in 4 hours time.  That determination that normal life must continue, even in the face of a tyrant who communicates only through nuances of top volume.  She wanted to tell her that it would end one day.  Sooner than she knew.  But the bus stop loomed. And the child began to mew dozily.  Instead, she gave a conspiratorial smile and walked on.

In a Waiting Room, 8th October 1952

It’s busy in here.  This fog’s a proper pea-souper.  It’s coming under the doors and down the chimney.  Usually with a fog like this I struggle to breathe but I don’t feel so bad today.  I haven’t coughed since the train either.  The train.  I was on the train.  So what am I doing in a waiting room again?  Where has George gone, I wonder.  Oh, I feel a bit sleepy.

Here’s some more people.  I’d better shuffle up and make room.  At least these seats are comfortable.  Must be first class.  Hang on, here’s some people with uniforms on.  He’s a driver, surely.  That’s not done, letting engine staff into a first class waiting room.  I’ll have to write a letter to the Stationmaster when I get home.  If I ever get home.  What on earth is going on?  Yet more people?  This really is a disgrace, and no-one here to give us any information.

Ah! Now here’s someone who looks like they’re going to take charge of the situation.  Those buttons on his waistcoat are awfully shiny.  That’s very reassuring.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?  We are so sorry to keep you waiting, we weren’t expecting so many of you at once.  Please be assured that we will deal with each of you in order of your time of arrival.’

How does he know which one of us was here first?  Extraordinary.

‘Mrs Barnes?  This way please.’

Mrs Barnes and the man with shiny buttons disappeared into the fog.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy

They live near the hospital, the two of them.  They will continue to live there, together, until the day that one of them doesn’t return.  When she’s not hungry, she prefers to stay with her things.  She likes to see them glitter in the sunshine, to know that they are hers.  But he likes to get out and about, he’s the social one.  He pops up here and there, he likes to watch people go by, and he rattles out a harsh laugh at their foolish antics.  He doesn’t mind that she doesn’t come out with him much.  Because, for some reason, those people are even more entertaining when he’s on his own.  When she’s there, they might look and smile, but then they move on.  But when he’s alone, they stare at him and take notice.  Sometimes they talk to him, sometimes they wave their hands up to their heads.  He likes to think that it’s because they admire him so.  That he’s at his sleeky and glossy best.  He holds his head up and laughs at them.  But he also knows that when he’s alone, he seems to have some mysterious hold on their nerves.  Are they worshipping him?  It’s possible.  He is the most superb of beings.  When he returns to her, he tells her about them.  Then they laugh together, share the joke and a worm.  He doesn’t know about sorrow, he doesn’t know about much at all.  That’s what makes him so joyous.

Just Getting it off My Chest

It’s harvest time.  We reap as we sow, so we are told.  But it’s not quite true is it? Sometimes we reap what others have sown, and the taste is bitter.  Sometimes we reap those things that have grown naturally, without our input.  Biology asserts itself.

Someone set a seedling in my neighbourhood.  We didn’t like it, it was ugly, but he delighted in it like a child.  He tended the seed and it grew a little.  Until now.  Now, its loathsome tentacles have reached out and grabbed us by the throat.  Its rude demeanour offends those who see it and they would cut it down along with those of us held in its grip.  They think that we are part of it.  But we are not, we suffer more than the offended as the grip increases.  There is no life in the soil around it.  It must go.

If only we knew how the plant can die.  It appears so robust.   Will be ever know the end? Will this become an anecdote or the cul de sac?  The grip must loosen.  Biology will eventually re-assert and people will turn away from the sight of a near dead parasite.  But we must move away in case of those things that lie dormant , waiting to spring back to life.

Memories of Jamie

Fresh from academia I began work in a primary school.  A new bite at reality.  The school served a big inter-war estate, built with optimism that couldn’t be sustained 60 years on.  Every morning the playground was cleared of drug paraphernalia.  The pupils looked on with eyes that had seen more in their nine years than I had seen in my 22.

Jamie had seen trouble.  But still I did daily battle with his exuberance in order to try and teach him literacy. There were obstacles.  He liked the band Pulp, and was prone to sudden outbursts of their songs.

‘Ok, then Jamie.  Let’s read Mog.  Mog lives with Debbie.’

‘YER NAME IS DEBORAH, DEBOARAH, IT NEVER SUITED YER!’

One problem with this was that I kind of wanted to join in.  Later on he would catch me humming the tune of his latest song-burst, and laugh happily.  I could see his point.  My own infantile sense of humour matched Jamie’s.  How many of my guffaws were muffled in the stock cupboard, under cover of looking for paper.

One evening after work, I stood in the car park, head in my hands.  Jamie ambled up, flouting the rules.

‘What’s up, Miss?’

‘I think I’ve locked my keys in the car.’

‘Do you want me to break into it for you?  I know how to do it.’  He rolled up his sleeves.

I had no doubt that he could do it.  But a renewed search found the keys in the lining of my coat. He walked on, disappointed at not being my rescuer.  I think he liked me and we made progress that year.

‘Shall we do some work, Jamie?’

‘Alreet.  Being as it’s you, miss.’

All of this has come back to me after seeing his name in the paper.  I wondered if I would see his name in the court roundup – the city’s most charming TWOC-er.  So I’m pleased that it’s not in that section, but the entertainment pages.  His comedy night at The Troc is so successful that it’s going to two nights a week.  I might go along and watch.  This time I can laugh out loud without setting a bad example.

In a Layby Near Stowmarket

The sign on the A14 indicated that there were services ahead.  Martha pulled off the main road; thinking of shops, conveniences and hot food.  What she found was merely a petrol station with a patch of hard-standing.  There had been a café once, but it looked like it had served its last bacon butty before the turn of the century.  The windows were thick with the dust kicked up by a constant convoy of container lorries.  Martha felt much the same herself, like she could scrape the dirt of her journey off her body with a sharp edged implement.  She must stop though, at least wipe her hands and find a cool drink.  She turned off the engine and looked around.  The midday sun glinted off the petrol price list .  Two van drivers in shorts took long swigs from cans and exchanged comments about the roadworks near Cambridge.

The van drivers glanced over at Martha as she got out of the car.  It was a car that attracted people’s attention and they were always curious to see the driver.  It could work against her, people might remember seeing the sleek white coupe gliding along the fast lane.  But, then again, the cameras.  She’d be picked up wherever she went, no matter what the car.  At least this one could go fast, nip between lanes of traffic. 

The pre-occupied woman in the petrol station shop served her with little care and pointed out the toilets as if she had done so a thousand times already that day.  Martha returned to her car, wiping her hands thoroughly with a wipe, and then rubbing in anti-bacterial lotion.  She worked it in between her fingers and up her wrists.  She turned on the engine and left. No need for petrol.  Soon she would be in Harwich with its big anonymous car park and boats to the continent.

Into the Estuary

His job was important.  He knew it was. Nobody had ever said otherwise.  That, and his little ‘episodes’, as his mother called them, meant that there was no chance of him going away to fight.  He was to stay here in the fields forever.  Never leaving the county that he was born in, or the people who knew him.  His mother was grateful.  At least one of her sons would survive it all, and not be remembered on the town memorial like her Father had been.  Although there was always the chance that an episode would lead to a bang on the head or a fall into the river.  But despite all this he would like to see some action, something more than the back end of a horse and a neatly ploughed field.

Dusk brought the drone of the bombers, heading out to the sea.  As the last of the light drained out of the sky he turned out of the field and stepped into the lane.  A new sound replaced the heavy hum from the sky.  More waspish, angry.  A dogfight.  He stood and gazed at the two planes as they wheeled around each other and cackled gunfire, like a pair of giddy gulls.  Finally, a blast of smoke, a new engine pitch and a graceful dive into the estuary.  He didn’t know about planes, he didn’t know if it was one of theirs or one of ours.  Just another body to be washed up on the beach and another name on some town’s memorial.

He walked on into the unlit village and found the blacked-out back door of his mother’s cottage.

‘Did you see the dogfight?’ she asked, as she carefully sliced the last of his cheese ration.

He nodded ‘Right over my head, mother, could’ve crashed into Top Field, easily.’

‘I’m glad you’re safe.’  She said ‘Glad you’re home.’