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“Exit, pursued by a bear” one of the most memorable stage directions in the Shakespearean canon appears in The Winter’s Tale. The fact that my mother’s name was Hermione was probably just a coincidence and why she named me Perdita, much the same.
Nevertheless, that particular winter when my parents split up was a tragi-comedy, if not a farce! I can’t claim to be the child of a broken family since the year it happened I was close to forty, happily married with two children and a dog.
So, Leontes, (sorry – Leo, as my father is called), came round for supper one evening when my mother was rehearsing her next play. My mother, rather late in life, had developed an interest in amateur dramatics, and this was her first starring role. Well, although it was news to me, I didn’t think it was something much to worry about until his pronouncement was delivered in a dramatically anguished tone:
” I’m convinced your mother is having an affair with her leading man!”
At this point, I didn’t ask what his name was; it would just have been too surreal if he were called Polixenes, so I enquired calmly as why he thought this was the case.
“She just can’t stop mentioning his name, and she’s wearing much more makeup than she has done for years.”
We were in the kitchen at the time of this revelation. My father was helping me load the dishwasher, and in his distress managed to drop a plate which smashed to pieces on the tiled kitchen floor. Well, I hoped it was an accident and not a fit of jealous rage, as he sat down at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. I cleared up the shattered pieces from the floor as I tried to calm him down, whilst struggling to keep an excited golden retriever from hurting his paws. My husband, David, accompanied by two children stuck their heads round the kitchen door, but retreated when I shooed them away.
I must admit, from what my father had said so far, the evidence seemed flimsy, and it was a couple of months later when I finally caught my mother on her own. She was “busy with rehearsals” and was somewhat difficult to pin down. We met for coffee at a small hotel in town. Mum joined me at the table, looking unusually happy and terribly chic; her makeup immaculate and her outfit brand new. This raised alarm bells but as yet no serious cause for concern. She drank her coffee and chattered in an animated tone, about rehearsals and Polixenes (sorry – Peter, her leading man). I listened, mesmerised by her somewhat theatrical hand gestures, her expressive face, and her eyes alive with a passion and enthusiasm I couldn’t remember having seen in my dear old mum. After another coffee, I finally sensed her winding down and dived in when I saw a gap:
“Mum”, I said lightly, aiming for a slightly amused tone, “Dad seems to think you may be sharing more than the stage with Peter.”
Her reaction was unexpected, her expression almost smug, as she gleefully responded:
“Darling, it serves him right, he’s taken me for granted all these years. Is he jealous, do you think? “.
I nodded, raised one eyebrow, and said gently:
“Mother, Dad seems really distressed. Couldn’t you just…
“Don’t worry”, she interrupted, “your father will survive, he’s just grown too complacent and he needs to learn a lesson or two. I know what I’m doing. It will all work out fine.”
I came to the conclusion that this was all a game but I had a funny feeling it was going to end in tears. I paid the bill, followed her out of the hotel as we almost collided with my very dapper looking father with a young blonde on his arm. He had a triumphantly smug expression on his face! I also noticed he was wearing a black tie, and the blonde was in a nicely tailored black suit. He greeted me as my mother brushed past them and disappeared without saying a word.
At this point, I couldn’t decide if it was a Comedy of Errors, Much Ado about Nothing, or The Winter’s Tale, as a change of address card from Mum dropped through the letterbox the following week. The final denouement, as it gradually emerged, more closely resembled a Brian Rix farce! Apparently, a row of epic proportions resulted in Mum stomping out in frustration after packing an overnight bag.
My father then panicked, asked my husband, a lawyer, to sort it all out. A tangled web of misunderstandings, misdirection, and lies emerged as David cross questioned my parents and tried to keep a straight face. Mum had left the script for the play lying on the coffee table open at the page of a passionate embrace between the two leading players. Then she had bumped into Dad and his secretary on the way to the funeral of the senior partner of his company. Bitter accusations of infidelity were flying around! Finally David made them see sense, and both of them smiled sheepishly as he jokingly enquired to whom should he send the bill.
So Christmas with my parents went very well, with Mum back in the family home. And the Boxing Day panto was a roaring success. The children loved it and my father was very proud, Mum looked wonderful in a wig and a fairy tale dress. The leading man was in his late seventies, and according to David, my mother had described him as having bad breath and a dodgy hip. So the passionate embrace turned into a brief peck on the cheek. There was one brief moment of alarm when the bear was a bit too enthusiastic and the leading man tripped just as he exited stage left!
The topic for December/January 2021 Short Story Competition was A Winters Tale.
My most vivid and happy memories of my childhood were woven around my grandmother and her house. My mother died shortly after I was born. And my father for many years was just a hazy and often distant figure. As I grew older, I understood a great deal more, but in those early days I thrived, happy basking in the bottomless, unconditional love of my grandmother.
Of course the endless summers were not the only things I remembered; there must have been grey days lurking somewhere. Gran loved to embroider, and I used sit on the rug to lean against her knees, reading one of my favourite books she must have heard a million times.
On my sixth birthday, she gave me a white handkerchief embroidered with tiny red roses and my initials in one corner. I loved it, and carried it everywhere.. At bedtime I placed it folded on my pillow and inhaled its faint scent of lavender. It smelt just like Gran as she kissed me goodnight.
I lost it, of course, on one of my walks in the meadow, following the bank of the river. I retraced my steps each day for a week. I cried myself to sleep every night but never found any trace of my hanky. Gran knew I was sad and eventually I confessed what had happened when I was helping her pick some strawberries.
“It was special”, I sobbed, “it reminded me of you. I should have taken better care of it.”
“My dear child”, Gran said, holding me close, “as we go through life we all lose things we hold dear. You don’t remember your Mama but I remember her every day. I close my eyes and I see her face, so like yours, when she was the same age. She’s in my heart and my memories, just as you will always be.”
I cheered up, as she knew I would, when we ate the strawberries with cream in the kitchen. That night, I went to bed, and after she kissed me goodnight she smoothed my curls gently. She plumped up my pillows as always and I buried my head in the clean linen. It smelt of Gran. I felt under the pillow and there was a heart shaped cotton sachet of lavender.
All those memories flooded back on the long journey back to the house I grew up in. I was in Africa when my father called to tell me my grandmother was dying. I had to ask for an early replacement, wait for an arrival schedule, and then booked a seat on the outward bound flight. In any case, I was due to return home the following week, as I badly needed a break from the clinic.
Dad met me at the airport and we both talked about days gone by. We grew closer as I grew older but he still travelled extensively and buried himself in his work as always. I am the same; I have no doubt I inherited a certain wanderlust from him, and certainly not from my mother. I thought of the last time I saw Gran. It was a warm summer evening the night before I left for the airport. and she was sitting in her chair unpicking the stitches on my lavender sachet and refilling it from the buds she had cut and dried earlier. I never travelled anywhere without it.
Both my father and I still spent most of our time here in England at Gran’s house, although my father had always owned a house in London. I was still single with no plans to change that status and this house was still my home. She had been ill for some time now, but in her typical fashion, because she didn’t want me to worry, my father had been instructed not to tell me it was terminal.
As it happened, despite the rush from the airport, we didn’t arrive in time. Since I’d become a doctor, death was no stranger, but it’s different when it’s someone close. Her GP, a familiar figure, and her nurse companion, Catherine, met us at the door.
It’s all a bit of blur, as these things often are. My father and I said our goodbyes to Gran, and Catherine then cooked us supper. I sat for a while alone on the terrace looking over the lavender and roses Gran loved. I read the letter she had left with a copy of her will, trying to absorb the fact that I was now the owner of her house. I was emotional drained and exhausted after the journey, the loss of Gran, and at least a couple of glasses of wine. I dragged myself up the stairs to my room. I turned down the covers and there on the pillow was a white linen handkerchief identical to the one I’d lost. I sobbed for a while, thought of Gran sitting in her chair, then fell asleep comforted by the familiar scent of lavender.
Chrissie for Dan
“It was not my choice that you and I should mesh.
You crept in slowly and your presence grew;
With every day that you came close,
A gradual understanding of my need gained
Trust.A new dimension seemed to open wide,
Beliefs were questioned, where before was bleak
Hopelessness and hurt, long harboured,
Slowly banished by your gentle calm; came
Hope.”
Dan for himself
“In the end how do we ever really know those whom we love? I fell in love with Anne all those years ago, and my love in the beginning was an expression of faith. We once visited this place where I now sit alone looking at the magnificent view. I would just try to see it through her eyes. Did we both see the same things in the same way? I wanted to be able to read her thoughts and spend the rest of our relationship trying to make Anne understand why this was what I imagined love really was. It transcended mortality, and a true meeting of minds could only be achieved after death.
It ended badly, of course, but two years was something of a record for me, which is why she held a special place in my memory. It was my first serious relationship, full of promises and hope, but it failed in the end. She wasn’t prepared to take the final step. Our romance ended here on this island where the Troodos mountains meet the sea. In this secluded villa on the edge of the point with nothing else for miles, she said no. I had been too young then to know why she ended it all. I’d been to this villa many times over the years since my parents bought it for our family holidays. The name, they say, is a rough translation from the Greek – The Villa at the Edge of the World It seemed to be then more like the villa at the end of my world. “
Years later at the villa, in the heat of the afternoon, Chrissie is lying in the shade at the edge of the pool watching our daughter swimming laps. She is obviously in charge of counting so I just re-fill her glass without distracting her and settle down beside her to wait. I watch Alice as she does a steady crawl from one end of the pool to the other. She’s wearing a T-shirt over her swimsuit to stop her shoulders and back from burning. Alice stops at twenty five laps.
The sun is setting, Chrissie is with our daughter on the rocky beach. Alice snorkeling in the deep pools filled by the waves from rough winter seas as I open my laptop and re-read what I’d written earlier when my wife and daughter were looking for lizards in the scrub at the end of the pool. Thinking of the last nine years with Chrissie, it sounded like some sort of adolescent indulgence now so I close it down and have a cool shower.
We drive the few miles to our local taverna. We eat the dish of the day, Alice the fried Halloumi and courgettes. We decide on an early night. Alice is yawning. We drive back on the empty road looking at the moonlight reflecting off the sea. Sitting outside by the pool once Alice is asleep we have our usual Metaxa brandy, chatting amiably, listening to the sounds of the waves below.
“Are you the one?” I ask Chrissie casually.
She snorts with laughter.
“I’m the only one who agreed to marry you, Dan, so yes, I probably am. I’m the one who wrote you a poem, and I’m the one with the commitment phobia but you wore me down in the end. You are infuriatingly persistent and you never give up. ”
“You’re the one who indeed wrote me a poem,” I reply in a reasonable tone, ignoring the criticism, “talking of which, what exactly did you mean when you wrote the last stanza?”
And I quote:
“Patiently you weaved and welded ties which
Bound me closer, though with hindsight felt
Less gossamer, more steel and chafed at times.
We’re worlds apart but joined for now by
Love”
“It doesn’t sound very committed does it?” I add.
The temperature drops and it is nothing to do with the weather. She’s very easy to tease, and she hates it sometimes that I am so calm.
She snaps, somewhat sarcastically, “Darling, we’ve only been married two weeks and you were the one who insisted on bringing our daughter along on our honeymoon. My mother was perfectly happy to have her, not to mention you have been here before with another woman.”
“Well which bit of our relationship “chafed “exactly? “I asked, pouring myself another drink without pouring one for her. She notices. She thinks I think she’s had too much.
“God knows, you can be extraordinarily selfish at times, you remind me of my ex-husband but….”
Luckily she stopped there, and burst into helpless giggles, as she saw the grin on my face.
“Right, But I didn’t marry you for your dreadful poetry did I? I’ll love you for ever and beyond. You will never be hurt again.”
“I’ll love you more. You and Alice are my world – my anchor and my heart. You’ll do, anyway. ”
She sounds just like Alice, who every time I say I love her, responds with “love you more, Daddy.”
Chrissie rises, only slightly unsteadily, from the chair.
She carefully picks up the bottle. I pick up the glasses and she leads me again into our Villa at the Edge of the World.
Authors note:
The story is set in Cyprus at a villa on Pomos point about four miles from the Turkish border. We stayed there in the 1980’s. You may be interested in another poem I wrote about this trip which you can read here
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“Courage is the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. Bravery is the quality that allows someone to do things that are dangerous or frightening.”
So wrote Lady Lucy Fanshaw in her diary which she left for her sons to discover in the library at the manor house near Norwich. In the proceeding years before her death, she was obliged to make many decisions which tested her bravery and her courage. To seek a haven of safety where few existed, to remind herself that it was her duty to protect their lives, their freedoms, and their honour. The estate, and her diary, were passed on to future generations.
Lucy was raised in the country. Aged just seventeen on her first visit to London she was impressionable, eager to marry the handsome and well-connected young man her parents had chosen.
After the wedding, all illusions shattered by her brief few months at court, she welcomed an excuse to leave. After the birth of his son, George, her husband, was more than happy to leave her to her country life, while returning to his mistress in London. After the birth of her second son she rarely saw him. Free from his attentions and the spiteful gossip at court, she was happy and fulfilled.
On this occasion, her return to court was at the insistence of her husband, to demonstrate her loyalty to the crown.
Lucy sighed and not for the first time. Seated in her usual quiet corner near to the window, she took her eyes away from the splendid gardens, and tried once more to concentrate on her embroidery. She was distracted by the chatter of others surrounding the King. She felt like a fish out of water, a mouse surrounded by sleek and cunning cats. Their claws unsheathed and ready to strike. Their success, and that of their family, depended on favours from a god-like monarch. This country cousin, unused to the intrigue, the gossip and sycophancy, knew not how to play these games. She left this to her husband. She just wanted to go home to their small country estate which was part of her dowry. There, she raised her small sons, tended her garden. She prayed in the simple, unadorned small church and studied the texts of protestant reformers. She hated the extravagance of the court surroundings, her inability to express these feelings and follow the dictates of her conscience. These were dangerous times and in this court to express any such thoughts would be disloyalty to the crown; treason, imprisonment or death would follow
She stood, and was aware of her husband’s attention as she smoothed the unfamiliar velvet fabric of her gown. His latest mistress stood by his side, her arm resting on his shoulder, her fashionably low cut bodice displaying her breasts. Isabelle’s husband, somewhat inebriated, had been helped to his accommodation earlier in the evening. Her approach was swift, cutting off Lucy’s retreat. Lucy tensed as they approached.
“And how is your brother, Lucy, enjoying his enforced rest from Parliament, I trust?”
All heads turned to towards them as she tried not to show her alarm and fear at the public reminder of her family’s divided loyalties.
Lucy inclined her head politely “Isabelle, how kind of you to enquire. He is in good health, tending to his estate, the title to which was generously granted by his majesty for services rendered some years ago. Convey my best wishes to your husband. I wish him a speedy recovery from what ails him. I recommend heartsease or mercury. My apologies, I must leave early on the morrow, a family emergency. ”
Lucy saw the smile on the King’s face and the following ripple of laughter which spread through the room.
There was sharp intake of breath from her tormentor and she saw the look of horror cross her husband’s face as she mentioned two favoured cures for the pox commonly caught from consorting with prostitutes.
She inclined her head to them both, curtsied in the direction of the King and swept from the room.
It wasn’t until she she returned to her room that her bravery fled, trembling and tearful, as she tried to remove the hated gown, and ostentatious jewellery. Idleness did not suit her so she organised her belongings for an early start at daybreak. As she knew, by her response, she had gained the King’s approval, and his permission to leave. But she needed to depart swiftly before the tide turned against her once more.
May 2020 TCWG Short Story Competition
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“Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.”
Emily Dickinson
Arthur Bliss was intrigued by the prospect of immortality so he devoted a huge slice of his accumulated wealth on funding research into Cryonics. With advancements in medical science transforming the world, his primary strategy for living through the 22nd century and beyond, was not to die. Should this happen his back up plan was to buy a Cryonics company which theoretically ensured that some time in the future his frozen remains could be defrosted and brought back to life.
A week after the company, renamed Eternal Bliss, had been acquired, his personal transporter crashed on one of his routine trips to the moon. His remains, unfortunately scattered across the crash site, were problematic to retrieve but his head luckily remained largely intact. It was dispatched to Eternal Bliss according to his wishes, and placed in the freezer. Arthur was aged 70. His only living relative, his niece Mildred, inherited his fortune.
Arthur awoke naked in a strange bed, feeling somewhat chilly and confused. Sitting up gingerly he raised an arm to discover the skin was slightly tanned, free from any blemishes and well muscled. Quite unlike the one he remembered, and he noticed his personal communicator was missing from his wrist. The rest of his body also looked pleasingly youthful.
Slipping on a garment draped over the end the bed, he glanced in the nearby mirror and gazed at the face of a stranger. He then remembered the last frantic seconds in his transporter. Then nothing. Was this then the headquarters of his company Eternal Bliss?
“Where am I,” he croaked, his vocal chords rusty, “or more to the point, what is the date?”
A screen appeared on the far wall. On it a brief message:
“Welcome Arthur. Make yourself at home. It is the year 3535. We will explain later”
Later, discovered Arthur, seemed to have a different meaning in this millenium. Some fifty years had passed before he had any communication with another human being. A form of artificial intelligence saw to his needs and life was comfortable. Meanwhile he explored, used the screen for entertainment and was inexplicably led, due to the absence of any other topics, to the study of physics, quantum mechanics, and ultimately the Multiverse. It reminded him of Mildred, his cousin, an expert in this field. He missed her wit and intelligence. Lonely at first he found the need for human companionship faded with time. The world, though empty, was beautiful but he was always drawn home to return to his studies.
Then one day his screen flashed a message:
“Incoming holo from Mary. Will you accept?”
After fifty years, Arthur was hardly going to refuse, as he gestured his acceptance. His excitement levels rose, as with a barely perceptible shimmer, Mary’s image appeared in his sitting room just in front of the window. He instinctively moved towards her before stopping as a slight grimace of distaste crossed her otherwise distant and rather lovely face. He retreated to the sofa and she visibly relaxed. She relayed her information in a business like manner. He was the last to arrive and since he had made good progress in his studies, he now had clearance to access all the files and data accumulated by the small community.
Mary explained after centuries of research, those who had arrived from the past had pieced together a plausible theory of the nature of what had happened. Pin pointing which random event had triggered such catastrophic consequences. In this instance Mildred, his niece, was the Butterfly who flapped her wings, destroying most of humanity. Having delivered her message Mary’s image shimmered once more and faded from view.
In short, this mission sounded ridiculously simple. He didn’t have to kill Mildred, thank heavens. He just needed to change his will thereby depriving Mildred of the funds to further her research which somehow caused the disastrous imbalance in the Multiverse. The tricky bit was find a way back to the 22nd Century, travelling through time and space in order to do it.
In search of an answer he widened his search. He now had access to all the accumulated knowledge of mankind. Philosophy, religion, history, myth and so much more. Centuries passed in a flash. This small community numbering less than three thousand pooled their resources. This was their only purpose. They didn’t meet, they had no need or the means to reproduce. Arthur doubted they were even human anymore. Gaining immortality had meant stagnation, and the loss of almost everything that made them human. But still they searched for answers.
There was no pressure, theoretically, eternity stretched before them in this infinitesimally small version of an infinite number of possible worlds.
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Melissa, of course, thinks this is abnormal. We are humans and this is not living. It’s a travesty. I find her ideas dangerous, but almost seductively so. But wrong. Human progress depends on science and rational thinking. Emotions lead us in the wrong direction. Melissa snorts scornfully as usual when we have this discussion.
The baby cries, so looking at me defiantly, she picks him up and holds him closely, rocking him gently. I try to forgive her. She’s so young and her hormones are spiking so soon after the birth of the baby. Her first. But then this is Melissa and she doesn’t back down.
As ever, she argues, she coaxes, she needles and somehow she’s got under my skin. I find her baffling, mysterious, and sometimes terrifying. She’s a distraction, a joy and yet, I’m finding it hard to cope with the forbidden emotions she provokes. Underneath my calm exterior, I feel I’m not in control.
I address her calmly but firmly.
“The baby must go to The Nursery tomorrow. ”
Then holding the sleeping baby, Melissa looks at me directly. Her large dark eyes are projecting a look of torment and anguish. It hits me like a laser beam. The layers of conditioning, the drugs, the rational part of me all collapse as though they were walls of straw. I gasp for breath as the pain hits me. I have never felt like this in my entire life. I realise this is not quite true. I remember my brother. His rebellion against the Brotherhood nearly condemned him to genetic reprogramming. I have repressed the memory of that time until now. It all floods back and I am drowning.
Her voice full of misery but absolute determination she says firmly:
“I will not give up my son. He needs me. I am his mother, and I would rather die than be separated from him.”
I believe every word she says. Death would be a better option than the fate she faced. I make a decision.
I smuggled Melissa and the baby out that night following the route I had taken with my brother all those years ago. Life in the other community was hard but with more individual freedom. I hope their ways do not lead them to make the mistakes which caused humanity to find a new home in the past.
I left them with my brother. I trusted him to keep them safe. The joy and sorrow of that brief meeting and the loss of Melissa and my son left a feeling of anguish which has not lessened, but the joy of the memory of them both is a comfort of sorts.
I have never forgotten Melissa. I miss her company. I long for her touch, She was different. Some would call her eccentric, but her value as a brilliant geneticist protected her from harsher criticism. She was selected to be my partner by the usual method, that is, genetic compatibility. When the first settlers arrived the group was split in two, so the gene pool was too small not to select partners by this method. It still continues as we rely on genetic engineering in an attempt to create purely rational human being. Hormone suppressants in the water, removing babies soon after birth: all these things Melissa detests.
I now have the benefit of age, the memories of subsequent partners and their off-spring have faded over the years. But now, although part of the Brotherhood, I’m less convinced that our way is the the best course for humanity.
I’m the Chief Historian by profession; supposedly dispassionate and rationally analysing past mistakes to avoid another catastrophe which almost destroyed us.
But over the generations we have lost so much of what makes us human. We have lost our drive, our curiosity, our sense of adventure. No art, no science no love or joy. We live in a prison of our own making. No physical barriers separate us from what is happening outside but we have little contact with nature and no desire to leave our city. I realise that I’m lonely. I live alone now as most of us do as we age. There is little in the way of contact with others. I now devote my time to persuading the others that we must dramatically alter our regime before it is too late.
Should I fail, I am determined to join Melissa, my son and my brother. Should I succeed the two groups will be in contact sharing ideas which will, I hope, enable humanity to regain what we have thrown away. And I will hopefully have a chance to see my family before I die.
936 words
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