I only turned away for a moment.......

I only turned away for a moment.......  was a prompt offered at a recent writers group meeting.  As usual, it evoked quite different responses from the individuals present.  You can see another one here - Musings from the Mountains

I only turned away for a moment, to check that all the guests were happy, their glasses full, and that the buffet held no empty trays.  Even as I turned back to answer Evelyn's latest witty remark with a light hearted bon mot of my own, I felt the ripples of silence race across the function room.

Evelyn's face was before me, but no longer the centre point of my vision.  Evelyn's waiting smile faltered and her gaze flickered from side to side as she began to register the change in the conversational tone.  The mood had gone from exuberant to expectant in the blink of an eye.

I tried to smooth my own expression but it was too late.  She had noticed that my own focus was no longer on her gorgeous face, but had shifted onto a line that passed just over her left shoulder.  For a second or two she looked annoyed, then a brief look of confusion preceded one of open-mouthed shock as her eyes focused on the mirror behind me, and she saw what I had been staring at.

Genevieve D'Amoretto, my famously missing, presumed-dead-in-a-boating-explosion fiancé Genevieve, was standing just within the main arch.  Her eyes locked onto mine.  She smiled, or, at least, the left side of her face smiled – I could not tell what the right side was doing behind the bejewelled mask that concealed it.  The gems in her green evening gown highlighted the flawless skin on her left shoulder as well as the burn scars on her right.

Genevieve strode at me through the crowd like a shark through herring as suited men spread out along the walls to either side of the entry arch.  Four such men flanked her father, Armand D'Amoretto, as he prowled towards me in Genevieve's wake.  He was not smiling, and I knew that Genevieve's version of that fateful night had not matched the woeful tale of loss I had offered the police and media after I'd been pulled from a sea full of charred, floating wreckage.  I wondered if I would live long enough to find out how she had survived.

Imaginary Worlds

Fantasy and the fantastic feature in quite different ways in two books that I have enjoyed recently. A book by Fredrik Backman - My Grandmother sends her regards and apologises - is a wonderful blend of whimsy and gritty reality.

At its core is the fantasy world woven by a loving grandmother for her very special, almost eight year old grand-daughter.  Elsa, who is 7 but about to turn 8, is precocious, perceptive, and pedantic, and not terribly popular with her schoolmates.  Her family life is complicated, and is about to become even more so.  The fantasies her grandmother created to help her cope will turn out to interact with the real world in ways that neither Elsa nor the reader can possibly predict.  This is one that I will be reading again.

(Speaking of Grandparenting matters, and recognising the brilliant efforts put in by Parents who write or otherwise create, how does anyone get anything done - such as a blog entry - while trying to keep an eye on the wellbeing of a small tribe of under tens)

Another book worth keeping close at hand - 15 short stories by some great writers - is Old Mars, and it is another of those wonderful compilations edited by George R R Martin and Gardner Dozois.  Do you miss the wonderful solar system our science fiction writers inhabited in the century or two before humanity launched its robot invasion of Mars?  Yes?  Does Barsoom call to you across the gulf of space?  Well, this one is a must read - many of the stories have twists that will take you completely by surprise, and the various versions of Mars that these writers have come up with are compelling and richly detailed, despite most of the stories being only thirty or so pages.

On the other hand, have you ever seen a glossy new cover, emblazoned with the name of one of your favourite authors, and raced home with it, only to discover that while the concept described in the blurb is new and interesting, and the execution leaves you flat?  One such shiny new item caught my eye a couple of days ago, on the SF and Fantasy shelves. It was the first book in Scalzi's new series "The Collapsing Empire".  As I was checking it out, one of my colleagues, also a fan of John Scalzi, asked me to hand it over so she could place a reservation on it for herself.

Well, if you are reading this blog, EJ, I am not sure what I can say to you - the style is so different to his usual intense, descriptive, clever writing.  In fact, it seemed rushed, and sometimes summarised rather than showed.  Was I disappointed because it is so different, or am I right to think it lacks a lot of the delicate touches I have come to associate with Scalzi?  I still read it through to the end, to see where he was taking the characters, but was able to skim across the pages, rather than having to take note of every word - as a good writer should make the reader do.

The Road Trip

A recent trip north was slowed to a crawl by the flashing lights of a number of police cars.  Traffic was funnelled into a single lane and allowed to crawl past the scene of an accident that had, it seemed, injured nothing except, perhaps, the pride of a driver.  A man and a woman - older, and well dressed, were standing with some police, while tow truck drivers began the task of righting and recovering a very nice four wheel drive, and an overturned caravan.  They seemed so calm and stoic, and I couldn't help wondering what they were thinking.

That wondering simmered and fermented for a few days before producing the following - if one of my readers should turn out to be the couple I observed, please accept my apologies if I have imputed thoughts or feelings that were not truly yours.  Otherwise, please enjoy.....

THE ROAD TRIP

Richard Slade

July, 2017

Liz stepped back a few paces when the young policewoman began questioning Neville.  He had his arms folded, his shoulders back, chin up, and back straight.  It was that look that she had mistaken, forty five years ago, for manly determination and courage.

Was it that long ago?  Forty five years of of wifely duties – of raising children, hosting dinner parties for his work colleagues, running the household (as best she could, given Neville's tight reign on all matters financial), and supporting him during his relentless climb up the various corporate ladders he had latched onto.

Somehow, the forty five years did not seem as long as the first six months of Neville's retirement.   

What would two years of travelling round Australia with him feel like – a century?  It would have to be two years, at the least.  That's how long a lease they had granted the new occupants of their lovely, tree-shaded, St Ives home.  Two years, minus the two long days since they had driven away from it.  She could still see the smiles on the faces of their tenants, as they directed the removalists and savoured the gardens.

Now, home was an eight metre long caravan,  The caravan was luxurious, as was the brand new Landcruiser that Neville had purchased to tow it with.

Had that policewoman noticed the way Liz's head had jerked up, and her raised eyebrows, as Neville wove a detailed description of the fast moving, non-descript, silver sedan that had cut in front of him, forcing the evasive manoeuvre that had caused their sudden departure from that tight bend in the highway?  A very badly made bend, in Neville's opinion; one that shared the blame equally, along with the miscreant driver – now long gone from the scene of his crime – for what had happened next.

Neville, she was sure, had not noticed anything.  Chin jutting, gazing into the distance, Neville, as ever, noticed nothing that Liz said or did.  The policewoman slipped a few more glances at Liz, even as she kept jotting Neville's utterances in her notebook.  Did she suspect?  What would Liz say if the constable decided to question her?

Liz rolled her eyes and looked at the caravan.  It was on its side in the long grass between the north and south-bound lanes of the highway.  The tow-truck driver had connected a steel cable somewhere under the front of the Cruiser, which was, miraculously, still upright, though pointing the wrong way.  He had shaken his head when Neville had declared that vehicle and van would be "right as rain in no time at all"

The driver had tried to explain just how badly damaged both vehicles were, but his words had fallen into the well of silence, while Neville droned on.

He thought she had been asleep when the crash had happened, but she had only closed her right eye.  Neville's confidence in his own driving skills was not shared by Liz, who had, for decades, done all the driving, whether of children to sport, school, or events, or of a tipsy Neville, coming home from another corporate function.  So Liz kept one eye open, hoping she would see the end coming and have time to offer up one final, brief prayer.  In this case, she had time for quite a bit of praying before the Cruiser and van finished sliding across the wet grass, but all the came out were a handful of expletives she had not realised she knew.  Neville chastised her for her language, several times, before the police arrived.

She smiled, just a little, and clutched her handbag tightly to her aching ribs.  It contained something that she had never before owned; a card that gave her access to their bank account – his account. 

Neville had agreed to provide her with one just before their departure, swayed by her vivid evocation of what might happen to him if he suffered a medical emergency in some far outback place, and she was unable to access the finances they might need for the provision of quality care.

She smiled again.  Taree would have the right brand of bank, and an airport, or a train station.  It might take days before Neville realised that she was gone, and weeks more for him to believe it.

The day I was hit by a chicken

Fossicking through my files for inspiration, I came across a story written in response to a writers group prompt from a couple of years ago.  The title of the story is the prompt as it was offered, and the story that tumbled from my pen over the next fifteen minutes is a tangle of truth and fiction.  Which parts are true, and which are untrue?  Not telling.

The day I was hit by a chicken

When I was 15, most people in their thirties or forties seemed old to me.  But not my parents - my mother was slender, with a girlish face and voice, and the same curly blonde hair I'd seen in her photos from the war years; she was "grown up" but not old.

Until one day, when I looked sideways from the sink, where my recently developed sense of responsibility had me washing dishes, to the adjacent kitchen bench where mum was preparing the Sunday baked dinner.  She was stuffing  bread, onions, and herbs into a chicken that was to be the centrepiece of the meal.

A glint in her hair, above and ahead of her ear, caught my eye.  Had I just seen silver hair amongst the blonde?  Could my mother be growing old?  As I sponged and rinsed the plates and bowls, I snuck more glances at the side of her bent head.  Images scrolled through my mind of a full head of grey curls, and blue eyes peering at me from a field of wrinkles.  Would her voice get old too?  How long would it be before she was ancient?  Until a few moments earlier, it had seemed inconceivable.

The images and thoughts swirled around my head for what seemed like ages, before distilling themselves into a sentence that just charged out of my mouth of its own accord.

"I can't imagine you as a grandmother," I said, just as she straightened and began to turn towards the baking dish.

She shrieked and jerked back around towards me, eyes wild and mouth open.  The chicken flew out of her hands and hit me in the chest.

"What are you trying to tell me? You don't even have a girlfriend" she screamed, as the slippery chook bounced off my chest and skidded across the lino floor.

I wasn't sure what I was trying to tell her, but it wasn't that I was about to become a father.  That was the first time I was ever hit with a chicken.  Turned out not to be my last – but that's a story for another day, along with the flying choko artwork, and the macaroni incident.