Bohemia Village Voice

A Good Innings

“The committee has considered your request, and I regret to say that  . . .” I stared at the fat face of Dennis Wilcox. I couldn’t believe it. The Cricket Club, our Dad’s raison d’etre, was turning him down. Turning me and brother Simon down.
The rest of the committee wouldn’t look at us. They always did what Wilcox said – after all, he’d paid to rebuild the pavilion. But sometimes they felt uneasy, and this was one of those times.
“It would create a precedent,” one muttered.
“If you do it for one . . .” said another one, lacking the courage to finish his trite remark.
“It was his wish. It’s our wish. The family . . .” Simon was getting angry. I could feel him trembling with tension.
“Sorry lads. There it is.” Wilcox spread chubby hands wide.
We’d been at the breakfast table when Dad opened the letter marked ‘NHS’. The three of us, with Mum’s place laid up as usual, but never used. We’d been expecting the letter, dreading it, because Dad had told us what would be in it. Confirmation of what the Oncology Centre had already told him.
Dad took out the cricket ball he kept in his jacket pocket. Automatically he spun it from one hand to the other, spinning it so fast it whizzed audibly as it hit his palm.
Then predictably – no, inevitably – he said: ‘Well, lads, I’ve had a good innings’.
We turned to leave the pavilion – committee meetings were always held in the pavilion, the beer was cheaper – and Wilcox had the nerve to see us to the door.
He put a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t take on, lads. After all. Think. It might spoil the wicket. Your Dad wouldn’t have wanted that, now would he?”
Outside, I wanted to go back in and hit him. Simon wanted to go back in and hit him. We talked each other out of it.
That was the thing, the wicket.
Dad had not only played for the cricket club for 40 years, he’d been grounds-man, and he’d created a dream of a cricket wicket. Hard, straight, true . . . Ironically, it didn’t take spin. Yet Dad was a spin bowler. He got most of his wickets playing away.
“Why don’t you give yourself a chance Dad?”
“I like to see batsmen bat. That’s what cricket’s all about.”
Wilcox gave the eulogy, his tones heavy with insincerity. ‘Ted was a great sportsman, we’re all going to miss him . . .’ He went on for too long, and then Dad slid through the curtains and into the fire. Soon he was ashes. In an urn. A cricketing image he would have anticipated, and enjoyed.
I should have said something myself. But I knew I wouldn’t get past the first sentence. Simon’s not one for words.
We went home with the urn. Then we went down the pub. We each drank four pints of bitter. Dutch courage. Only it wasn’t ‘Courage’, it was ‘Harvey’s’.
Then we said ‘To hell with it!’ We collected the urn, and walked up to the field in the dark. No-one saw us. We walked out to the square, bounded by its flimsy rope barrier.
And there, under the stars, like two demented elves with a pot of fairy dust, we scattered Dad in great handfuls. He was a big chap, Dad, he made lots of ashes. We spread them widely over the square, particularly on a good length. It rained later that night, and everything soaked in.
Today that wicket takes spin. It spins like crazy. It’s a wicked wicket. Dad would love it.

Clive Asks To Be Forgiven

There she was. He could see her in his wing mirror. There was no mistaking that flash of short blonde hair, the way she stood and held herself, in those long jeans and high heels. Something about her, something almost arrogant yet graceful.
Clive watched as she joined the other yummy mummies milling around the school gates. It was only a short walk from her flat to the school, and as usual she was dead on time. Soon her six-year-old, Andy, would come trotting out, soon they would make their way home. As usual. Only this time, today, Clive was finally going to speak to her.
‘Forgive me, but . . .’ Those would be his first words. They always were, when he approached women for the first time. ‘Forgive me, but . . . haven’t I seen you in the second-hand book shop?’
Say something like that, smile, and most women respond. He wondered why he felt nervous. He’d done this on a regular basis for the past 40 years. Was this time so different?
Well perhaps it was. But the old magic should serve him well. Even at 58 he still looked good, dressed well, stood tall at six feet two. He still knew when to smile, when to look warm and serious . . . No, finding women to talk to him, to trust him, to love him, that had never been a problem.
He watched her in the wing mirror. Over the weeks he had come to know so much about her. Her name was Claudia. She was 25, a single mother, she worked at home as a book-keeper, she also designed fabrics which were beginning to make in-roads in some major stores. And something else. Her husband died on the M25, and now there were no men in her life.
Yes, he admitted to himself, he’d been stalking her. But she didn’t know, she wouldn’t recognise him. Even today he had parked well away from the school gates, facing the opposite direction.
‘Forgive me, but . . .’ he rehearsed the words in his head. But would she? Would she forgive this intrusion into her life?
There was movement up at the school gates. The first children were emerging. And yes, there was the small blond head of Andy, bobbing amongst the others.
Time to move.
Clive climbed out of the BMW, carefully shook out his cavalry twill trousers, adjusted the expensive leather jacket on his shoulders, and walked quickly across the road and down a small street which would take him around the block. Then he would meet her as she came in the opposite direction. Slow down, he told himself. Be yourself.
Again the familiar lines ran through his head.
‘Forgive me, but . . . didn’t we meet at the opening of the Art Gallery?’
‘Forgive me, but . . . haven’t I seen you at the Fitness Centre?’
‘Forgive me, but . . .’
Round the last corner. His timing was perfect. She and Andy were 20 yards away, Andy chirping happily to her about something or other from his day at school.
Fifteen yards . . . ten . . . Clive moved into her line of sight. He could hear his heart. Five yards . . .
She looked at him. Her eyes flashed – and it hit him like a hammer blow. My God, she knew! She knew why he was there! She knew him!
Yet he had to say it, he had to say the words. They stopped, almost face to face. And he couldn’t speak.
And then he could. A little hesitant, but with all the truth and hope in his heart.
“Forgive me, but . . . I think you may be my daughter.”

Coffee Break

“Say you’ll come back. Please . . . ” For a moment he thought she might reach across the café table and take his hand. Instinctively he pulled back.
“Please . . . ”
Behind the counter the thin red-haired girl was examining her nails.
“What about those coffees?” he called.
“Coming.”
They had the best table. In the window. They were the only customers. It was too early for the lunchtime rush. If there was a lunchtime rush.
“It’ll be better this time. I promise.”
“Why?” He was reluctant to look at her. “Why should it be better this time?”
“I’ll try harder. We’ll both try harder.”
He looked out of the steamy window, polishing it with the back of his hand. The wind from the sea was whipping the spring rain up the road.
“Two coffees . . . ” The red-haired girl put two white mugs on the table, sniffed, and went away.
“Look, please, can we at least talk about it?”
“I thought you’d found someone else.”
“Oh him – he was hopeless.”
“And I bet you told him so.”
“I did. You know me.”
“I ought to.”
A pause, then . . . “What about you? Have you . . .?”
“Life has to go on.” Got round that one, he thought. She doesn’t need to know the truth about the last few months.
He sipped his coffee. Weak. More than that. Nasty. ‘The cheapest bulk-bought instant’, he thought. And yet there was a state of the art coffee machine behind the counter. Typical.
“It’s not the same without you, you know.”
“I should hope not.” He couldn’t help grinning as he said it, and she responded immediately.
“I miss you. I even miss your jokes. Please . . . Can’t we make up, try again? Give it another go?”
There was movement outside the window. A mum – a single one no doubt – had stopped in the meagre shelter of the café awning to adjust the hoods of her double push-chair. She was wearing a miniscule skirt, and her legs were blue. It was an awful day. Better to be here, to be inside in the warm, he admitted to himself.
“Look . . . ” He knew what he was going to say was the first step down the primrose path, but he had to say it anyway. “Look . . . there would have to be . . . conditions.”
“Well . . .” She bridled a little. Still had her pride, he noted. “Let’s say there would be . . . compromise.”
“All right. Compromise.”
He tried the coffee again. “God, this coffee is . . .”
“Yes . . .” A shrug in the direction of the red-haired girl. “Useless . . . Anyway. Compromise, yes. For instance . . . I won’t pretend I’m perfect, not this time round. I know I was . . . difficult. You got to remember, it was my first . . . real commitment.”
“Okay.”
“And you – you have to compromise.”
“How? I was perfect.” He was teasing her now.
“You know very well. All that pernickety business. This has got to be like that, that has got to be like this . . . Fusspot!”
“Who, me?”
They were laughing now.
“So you will come back?”
“Well . . . if you really want me . . .”
“Of course I do. Wait here. I’ve got something for you.”
She slipped out of her seat, went across to the counter, leaned over it, and found what she was looking for.
She returned and handed it to him almost with reverence.
“Listen” he asked, “what does your hubby think about me coming back?”
“He’s all for it. Go on, put it on.”
He unfolded the carefully starched white chef’s hat, and placed it carefully on his head.
“You know, if I’m going to be chef again, there’s one thing I have to change. Right away.”
“What?”
“This bloody awful coffee.”

Moving Mary

Mary decided to start at the top of the house, and work down. As she was always saying to her son Malcolm, ‘When you do a job, always do the difficult bit first, and the easy bit second’. That’s why she climbed up the two flights of stairs, dragging her bucket of cleaning stuff behind her . . .
‘Those stairs will be the death of you . . .’ That was something Malcolm was always saying to her. Malcolm who never did anything that required an effort, either first or second. ‘That’s another reason why you should sell up.’ She didn’t need another reason, she didn’t need a reason at all.
The top bedroom at the back had been hers as a girl. Back in the Fifties. She stopped cleaning to look at the view. It never changed. The allotments . . . You’d think you could see the sea from up here, but you couldn’t. Funny, to live by the sea, but not be able to see it.
And there was that crack, in the pane at the top left. She’d done that. Throwing a doll at a spider when she was eight.
‘That’ll come out of your pocket money, girl!’ And it did. Her father docked her sixpence a week for seven weeks. The crack was still there. Mary knew what he’d done with the three and sixpence. Beer.
Top floor done. Mary started down the stairs with her cleaning bucket. She took her time. There was a rip in the stair carpet.
‘One day you’ll have a fall. Then where will you be? Living here on your own . . .’
‘Oh Malcolm! Why should I fall? I’ve walked around this house for sixty years.’
Mary did fall, once, but Malcolm never knew. She just got up and got on.
The main bedroom, first floor front. This was where Mum and Dad slept, where Mum died. Dad got lucky and died in hospital. Then she and Terry had moved in. Ten months later Malcolm was born, and two months after that Terry moved out.
Good riddance. Mary disinfected the lavatory, and flushed it away, flushed away the memory of Terry.
‘You’ll like your new flat, Mum,’ Malcolm told her. Several times.
‘Can you see the sea?’
‘Of course you can see the bloody sea . . .’ He was so easy to wind up. ‘It’s called Sea View, for heaven’s . . .’
‘Well, yes but that could mean you can see the flat from the sea, but not the sea from the flat. Couldn’t it?’
So he’d taken her to see Sea View, and there was so much mist that day you could see sweet fanny adams.
Then Malcolm had shown her the bit in the paper. It wasn’t only him saying she should move out of the old house. Now the Government was saying it. Apparently such a big place could house three families. Young people.
She was polishing the genuine brass letter box when Malcolm arrived. He helped with her cases. His car was waiting. Mary stopped at the garden gate, turned, looked back at the house.
Malcolm put an arm around her. Something he never did.
“Mum . . . I’m sorry. You must feel sad, to leave the old place . . .”
“What?” Mary stared at him as if he was mad. She felt the mischief bubbling inside her.
“Sorry? To leave this old dump? Don’t be ridiculous, damp old ruin, smells of rats. Come on, I want to move in to Sea View.”
She clambered into the car. Malcolm slammed the boot lid with quite unnecessary violence.
‘Tomorrow,’ Mary thought, ‘I’ll get up in the morning and see the sea.’

The Old Man and the Bookshop

Some people believe in personal angels, guiding them towards heaven . . .
“I’m sorry. That’s private,” said Jonathan, the second-hand bookshop man.
The little man turned away from the door in the back corner of the shop, his arms full of books chosen at random. Autumn sunshine through the window only made his face seem more pale.
“But there are books in there . . .?”
Jonathan shook his head. “It’s private. And locked.”
His customer nodded in acquiescence. He was a regular, and a strange one. He chose books at random, wandering vaguely from shelf to shelf until he had five or six volumes in the crook of his left arm.
Jonathan knew he had been wondering what lay behind the door. He was a shabby little man, although it was a shabbiness that came from wearing the same quality clothes for too many years. His leather shoes had bleached along the seams, and his Austin Reed raincoat fell wearily away from his shoulders. He walked slowly and coughed. Jonathan liked him.
June at the Co-op didn’t like him.
“He’s creepy,” she announced, “and he must be dead poor. Only buys cheap offers. Lord knows what he spends his pension on.”
Mrs Mason, who was the regular recipient of June’s gossip, much to the annoyance of waiting customers, knew.
“Books,” she told June. “His landlady. Mrs Cable, she told me. Books.”
Mrs Cable rented the little man her studio flat, and she couldn’t get in there for books. Not that she had any business going in there, but . . .
Everybody knew where he got his books. That second-hand book shop, the one in Crown Street. Nobody local ever went in. Who wants to buy other people’s books? But they say some weirdos come from miles.
Winter arrived, grim and treacherous. The little man’s visits to the bookshop became, if anything, more frequent. He looked frail. The bitter wind off the sea seemed to eviscerate him. He never mentioned the forbidden door again. But Jonathan often caught him staring at it, in longing, almost in wonder.
A spring morning. Jonathan totalled the little man’s purchases, “Seven pounds . . .”
His customer suppressed a wheezy cough, and paid.
Jonathan sensed it was time to speak. He asked: “You choose books at random. Why?”
The customer smiled. “Why not? Every book is an adventure. Every book holds its own treasure, every book its own world.”
“There’s more to life than books, surely.”
“Nothing worthwhile. Failure. Loss of loved ones. Terror of pain and death. I want no more of it. Just . . . books. All I have left.”
Jonathan looked at him. Then smiled, with terrible understanding.
“Would you like to see the books behind the door?”
“Yes . . .” Almost a whisper.
“Then go ahead.”
“It’s locked . . .”
“Not to you.” And it wasn’t.
The little old man was not missed. June at the Co-op said “Good riddance!” Mrs Cable told Mrs Mason that she couldn’t wait for ever, re-let the room, and gave all the books to Oxfam.
The little man sensed the door close behind him. He would not go back. How could he? Books . . . avenues of books, acres of books, eons of books, stretched ahead of him. Leather bound, cloth bound, manuscripts, pamphlets . . . all welcomed him into their world.
He felt his raincoat fall away, his shoes split, his lungs cease to ache. There was no need to breathe. Just to read. Books came to his hands, opened under his eyes, and eased him into his own paradise.
Some people believe that angels are everywhere. You just have to find yours.

Walking the Dog

It all began one afternoon when – the highlight of my day! – She clipped the tartan lead onto my collar, and we set out for our walk. We usually went to the park. Sometimes the sea front. But I preferred the park. Better smells.
Now, this is a bit embarrassing, but . . . in due course, about 200 yards into the park, I did my business. After all, that’s what we were there for. She did her usual with the plastic glove, all was disposed of, and we set off again.
Only . . . I don’t know whether this has ever happened to you. Probably not. Or then again . . . Anyway, there was nothing for it. I had to go again. And did.
And She didn’t have another plastic glove.
Well, she stood there and made these whining noises at me, but then, after a moment, She tugged at the lead and we walked off. And then all hell broke loose.
This wire-haired terrier came bounding up, with a man on the end of his lead, running. And this man started barking at her something awful. And She was squeaking back at him, and I thought for a moment we might be in for a good old-fashioned people-fight.
But they settled down, the way people do. Some say they communicate just like dogs. Believe that if you like. But anyway, I had the opportunity to meet the terrier. He said his name was Rolf, and I told him I was Charmaine. He seemed nice.
Next day – what do you know? – there we are back in the park, and there’s Rolf and his chap again. And this time those two got on a lot better, and Rolf and I got our leads tangled up, it was all a bit of a giggle, really. From then on we seemed to meet every day. We sort of became a foursome. Amazing what one dump at the wrong moment can do, isn’t it!
And then one day, a really hot one, we all got in his car, and went up to the East Cliffs. Well, you know what it’s like up there. Secluded paths. Shady nooks. Hideaway places. And that’s exactly what we found. A really private spot, no-one else around.
She’d brought a rug, and He’d brought a basket with a bottle in it and paper cups, and they settled down together, talking and giggling and taking no notice of us. And then they started rolling around together on the rug, and that’s when we both realised that we were off the lead. And could wander off together without anyone taking the slightest notice.
Now I don’t know what those two got up to that day. And I don’t want to. All I will say is, there in the bushes something wonderful happened between Rolf and me. Something beautiful . . .
And then, after a month or two, we went down to the park one day, and Rolf and his chap didn’t turn up. We stood around a bit, it was raining, I seem to remember, and then we went home. Same again the next three days.
And something else was going on. She was snappy. Off her food. And now, just today, after pacing around the place like She’s got fleas, She gets on the phone. There’s a lot of yapping, and then She puts the phone down and starts tidying up.
So it’s obvious! He is coming round. And something tells me that She’s Got Something To Tell Him!
I hope He brings Rolf. Because I think I’ve Got Something To Tell Him, too.