fiction

Visiting Jane

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On Monday we paid a long overdue visit to Jane’s house; Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire. I had always imagined the little cottage under siege by coach loads of tourists, timed tickets and queues. Perhaps a Monday school day, arriving soon after opening time, made it a simple and civilised visit that Jane would appreciate.

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We parked in the free car park as instructed on the website; all was quiet, rain threatened, but never happened. The wet winter has left the gentle Hampshire countryside lush and green.

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Jane’s friends were cheerful and welcoming, the tulips and primroses in the pretty gardens were at their best. It was a bit early to call on the Misses Austen so we roamed the gardens, looked around the bakehouse, enjoyed a moving picture of family life and admired the beautiful quilt given to Jane for her anniversary last year. Everything was seemly, nothing tawdry presented to visitors.

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We felt immediately at home when we stepped inside the red brick cottage. The Austen ladies do not own this house, but I would never let on that I knew this. What does that matter when Jane feels so at home here, at peace to write while Cassandra and their aptly named friend Martha take care of the housekeeping. Left an orphan, with just a little money I gather Martha Lloyd became part of the family long ago, not in a position to be independent or find a husband.

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The Drawing Room is newly papered in a pretty yellow pattern, Chawton Vine. It was here we met a relative of Jane’s brother Edward, Jeremy Knight, who invited us up to the Great House, as Jane calls it, for lunch later. Who could have foreseen when the Austens sent their son to be adopted by the Knight family that he would be instrumental in making sure his sister’s novels were published.

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Upstairs the floorboards creaked and Jane will not have the creaky door fixed as it is a warning of someone coming so she may hide her writing. Mrs. Austen’s room is the largest and is newly decorated with a pretty ribbon trellis pattern wallpaper. The ladies have stitched a beautiful patchwork coverlet. Every window sill had a pretty cup with a posy of spring flowers, testament to how beautifully the ladies keep the cottage.

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We didn’t stay too long, Jane’s health has not been good and like all authors she probably can’t wait for visitors to leave so she can return to her writing.

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Back outside the rain still held off and we walked up the road in Jane’s footsteps to Chawton House, the merry sound of the local children at playtime ringing in our ears as we passed their school. With fields all around one can see why Jane and Cassandra enjoy two hour walks every afternoon. Up the long driveway to the house it was very quiet, we rang the doorbell and it was quickly answered; we were welcomed inside and shown into the cosy kitchen. We only had time for a scone and tea, as we had another appointment, but promised to come again when we return to see Jane.

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Friday Flash Fiction – SixSixty

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In Good Spirits

I had hoped to get on the computer this evening to follow up my research at the local library, but my husband’s idiot friend Paul was coming round for dinner with some new update, App or whatever they call them. For all I know he could be a computer genius; as I am a technophobe who only knows how to Google I have no way of judging. Both men dispatched the meal quickly, eager to play with the grown up toy. I was only half listening to what Paul was saying with his mouth full.

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‘I’ve really done it this time, what Houdini and Arthur Connan Doyle failed to do; you two are going to be the first to try it out. You both must know some dead people.’

‘What are you talking about Paul?’ I finally asked.

‘Ouija-App, Soulbook, Ethernet; not sure what I’m going to call it yet, that doesn’t matter, the point is it works, it’s true.’

‘What is?’ asked my husband.

‘Haven’t you been listening? I started from the premise that there is nothing out there, only electricity and the radio waves living people have broadcast. Then I formulated the search on the theory that if we did survive after death we would most likely be in a form of electrical energy, after all, don’t our brains work with electrical impulses?’

‘You are no scientist, nor a doctor’ laughed my husband.

‘That’s an advantage, my ideas are fresh and unfettered.’

‘So who did you contact?’

‘Somebody I had never heard of… all the better, I could not know anything about him.’

‘No proof that he ever existed.’

‘Yes, he told me where to find his gravestone.’

‘Another computer geek is just having you on, he was their great granddad or they looked him up on the internet.’

‘No reference to him on Wikipedia, a nobody who lived and died and left nothing behind except the epitaph.’

‘Not a very interesting person to chat to on the other side’ I said.

‘On the contrary, he had fantastic ideas when he was alive, but nobody listened to him. He has been waiting for someone like me to get in touch.’

‘Pudding, coffee?’

‘Bring coffee upstairs to the computer, let’s get started.’

I felt the first misgivings. ‘Are you actually serious?’

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‘There he is, my Facebook friend Nathanial.’

Indeed, there was a black and white picture of a Dickensian character.

‘People put old photos on Facebook all the time’ said my husband.

‘But the photos don’t usually write their own comment… look.’

Hello Paul, couldn’t find a better photo than this, I see you have your two cynical friends with you.

Paul tapped at the keyboard, words appeared in the comment box.

‘Give them a chance, this is all new to them.’

A reply came back straight away.

Perhaps they would like to meet the original inhabitants of this house?

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A shiver went down my spine, we lived in an old house, I had been researching its history, but perhaps I could play Paul at his own game.

‘Let me type a comment.’

I tapped in ‘Yes I would, if they tell me their names and when they lived here.’

Words appeared instantly in the comments box.

Benjamin and Martha Helston, married 20th June 1876, took the lease on this house 5th July 1876, were blessed with a son Samuel James 8th September1877 and two daughters…

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‘Stop, this is creepy, have you been looking at my research notes Paul?’

The writing on the screen continued, while I found the paper notes I had taken at the local library just that afternoon.

…and you can see where he marked his height on his tenth birthday –  on the scullery wall where you stripped off that ghastly wallpaper recently.

My husband gasped. ‘Of course SJH, those markings prompted your interest in the history, didn’t they Love, but we haven’t shown Paul yet what we’re doing in that room…’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Flash Fiction – Fortunes

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On The Pier

I did the test that morning, it was positive. I should have been pleased, but all I could think about was last night’s Crimewatch. Of course I had no proof, just a gut feeling, so instead of phoning I went for a walk down to the sea front to clear my head. I wandered onto the pier and that’s when I had the idea.

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I stood beside the gypsy caravan and read the sign.

LET ROSA TELL YOUR FORTUNE… AND GIVE ADVICE

Nervously I climbed the two wooden steps and opened the creaky door. It was pretty and cosy inside, not scary at all. A grandmotherly figure beckoned me to sit down; her cheeks were rosy and her dark eyes sympathetic. She took my hands but did not look at them.

‘Er… do I have to pay?’

‘No dear, I would never take money from one so deeply troubled.’

My mouth was dry, I didn’t speak.

‘You will have your wish, a beautiful son; but if you want to see him grow up you know what you must do today. Go now.’

‘But I don’t understand…’ I mumbled, as she motioned me out.

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But I did understand. I climbed down the steps, closing the door behind me and reached into my bag for my mobile. I tapped in the number that was etched on my brain, the Crimewatch number.

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More flash fiction and longer stories in Someone Somewhere.

Take a peek.

 

 

 

Friday Flash Fiction Flashback

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                        In Jerusalem Tonight   

…and welcome back to In Jerusalem Tonight. We are talking to the youngest brother of a man arrested just hours ago by the authorities. He claims his older brother is completely innocent, but what about his political involvement?

No, he is interested in people not politics; that is why the crowds are drawn to him.

But what is he really like, do the public see the real man?

Yes and no. We’re just an ordinary family and I guess you’d say my brother is a chip off the old block. A real carpenter; like our father he has a feel for the wood, for the rest of us it’s just a labour. He is most like our father; strange that some gossips still say our mother tricked him into marriage, when she was carrying another man’s child. Maybe it’s because he is the eldest, but he does have the same wisdom and compassion our father had; qualities that not many people possess.

You paint a picture of a warm, loving family, why do you think your brother never married?

That’s a personal question only he could answer, but I think he knew he was never going to stay in the village. Travelling around, leaving a wife and family behind, he knew that would be wrong.

But he gets on well with women.

Yes he knows how to talk to them, as if they were equals, they appreciate that.

And yet in some ways he’s a loner.

I wouldn’t say that; he is a thinker, very deep. Most of us couldn’t take the solitary life, but he has the inner strength.

Would you describe him as highly intelligent?

Oh yes, it has always been a joke in our family that he held forth on theological matters when he was a child. But he never forgot how to talk to ordinary people. He was the perfect big brother; playing with us, making toys and of course he worships our mother.

So surely this is a man who will be able to talk his way out of this current little difficulty.

Yes, I’m sure he will see this is not the time to be humble.

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Caught on Camera

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One holiday not long ago we were on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall; a dog walker, a few sheep and a man tending a crackling bonfire in the garden of the solitary house. A strange noise made us look up into the evening sky. We zoomed in with our cameras, not a UFO, but the first drone we had ever seen. Not the sort that drops bombs luckily, but what was it doing? Watching us? Is there anywhere you can go without being seen?

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The next day we returned and drove up a road to investigate the tall mast on Caradon Hill we had seen from afar. Warning signs said Private road, access only. We walked the rest of the way up the grassy hill, veering away from the unmade road, past the gigantic guy ropes, steel cables holding up the metal tower. There was a complex of buildings, entry by security pass only, CCTV in operation. Obviously a secret facility, we were being filmed and I expected armed troops to emerge at any moment to take us in for interrogation. The signs were headed by the word Arqiva – a sinister secret organisation for sure.

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The truth was more prosaic when I looked the place up on Wickepedia.

The Caradon Hill transmitting station is a broadcasting and telecommunications facility. Built in 1961, the station includes a 237.7 metres (780 ft) guyed steel lattice mast. The mean height for the television antennas is 603 metres (1,978 ft) above sea level. It is owned and operated by Arqiva, a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure and broadcast transmission facilities in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

But perhaps that information was a cover up; we only escaped arrest because they had identified us as civilian ramblers.

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We are all being watched, all the time. CCTV cameras we know about, on buses, station platforms, in shops. We don’t know if we are being filmed or watched live. Above us are police, military and coastguard helicopters.

It is not only people who are being watched, so is your vehicle. Drive down many main roads and your journey has been recorded by ANPR – Automatic Number Plate Recognition; if the car is stolen or of interest for any reason it will be spotted. Police cars can now carry similar equipment. Writers of thrillers or crime novels have a harder time than ever helping their characters hide or escape, though in fiction and real life criminals are often one step ahead of new technology.

But writers can find new inspiration for plot ideas.

Pity the chap whose neighbour offers to give him a lift to Heathrow Airport in his mate’s car. By the time they are driving through the tunnel they have already been spotted on the spur road. Unbeknown to the occupants of the car, the neighbour’s friend is a criminal or terrorist. When the car is stopped they will have a hard time explaining who they are, by which time the flight will have been missed.

We have all seen pleas on television for missing persons or witnesses to the movements of a murder suspect. There on the screen is a CCTV picture taken inside a bus with the exact time and date. A wife spots her husband, who never uses buses and should have been at work on the other side of the city. A good starting point for a mystery.

In Brief Encounters of the Third Kind the main characters fear they are not only being observed, but controlled. There is no rational explanation for inexplicable events and when they finally reach a glimpse of the truth it is not what they expected.

 

Friday Flash Fiction Five Hundred

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                                                     Terminal State

 

‘No one will ever know,’ said my friend that day in 1959 ‘and it was an accident.’

I expect that is what lots of murderers plead, but we were only ten years old. To this day I have no idea who he was, but I’ll never forget the look of surprise on his face, then the look of terror.

‘Be careful girls’ said my mother as we set off that sunny day.

We liked to watch the aeroplanes, then we would go exploring; Stanwell Moor, Colnbrook village, farms, fields and streams. We were free to wander the western edges of London Airport as long as we didn’t go near Perry Oaks.

My aunt and uncle had lived in Heathrow Village, till they were evicted during the war, but my parents lived out their years on the farm under the flight path, wedged between the runways. Up until the last it was like living in the country except for the ranks of landing lights.

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‘Stay together, don’t talk to any strangers and be back at teatime.’

He must have been a stranger, because no one noticed he had gone. For weeks we expected the police to turn up, looking for someone’s husband or father… or an escaped convict, after all he did act strangely.

‘You two girls out on your own? Have you ever seen a water vole?’

I nudged my friend, we turned to walk away, but he followed and what he showed us wasn’t a water vole. We wanted to run, but we were trapped on the edge of a bank that descended steeply. He was blocking the footpath that led back the way we had come.

‘Count to three then rush past him’ she said.

What happened next happened so quickly; it could have been any one of the three of us that went in; did we push him or did he slip? We had strayed into the forbidden territory, Perry Oaks sludge works and as he slipped under we knew why our parents feared it.

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Looking back as a teenager, an adult, I realised he was a flasher, a harmless loner perhaps. But had he followed us? Would he have murdered us? Two missing girls and every stretch of water would have been dragged, but his body was never found. We never told a soul, we didn’t want to get into trouble for being out of bounds; or that’s what we told ourselves.

My friend’s family took her off to Australia, we lost touch. I wondered if she ever told anyone, for years I half expected a policeman to knock on the door.

Then came the planning enquiry, five long years. We prayed the development would be turned down, no one wanted the upheaval and destruction, the removal of the last farm. But that is not what I dreaded.

Digging, draining, what would they find; a body preserved like peat bog man? When Terminal Five Heathrow opened, I knew at last that no one would ever know.

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‘Terminal State’ is one of the Flash Fiction Tales featured in

Someone Somewhere.