Not today

While Jackson Browne pined away in the background for his audience to stay, all she could think of was how to get away. These four walls had held her long enough,

How though?

A key rattling in the door shook her from her thoughts.

“Honey? Is everything OK? The kids have been asking for you….”

She rolled over, pulling the  cotton duvet closer to her chin.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she mumbled.

He sat beside her, lightly resting his hand on her cold shoulder.

“You haven’t gotten out of bed in a week, Sweetheart. I’m worried about you. The kids miss you. And WHAT is the deal with Jackson Browne here. We haven’t listened to him since we were teenagers!” He chuckled as he did, his soft laughter echoing in the empty room.

“Why don’t you stay – ay – ay….just a little bit long-ong – ger….” He crooned with the music, fake microphone in hand, before a fake audience. Her eyes remained closed.

“Sweetheart. C’mon. It’s time to get up now. Can you get up?”

Sunshine slivered through the slatted blinds in big bars of light that lit the room as if on celestial cue.

“What time is it?” she muttered.

“Time for you to get up, Sunshine,” he teased, stroking her matted curls.

“No. Seriously.”

“Noon.”

“What day?”

“Saturday. “

Already! God. It had to be today.

“I’d love some coffee,” she whispered. “Would that be OK?”

He jumped up. “Of course!! Your wish is my command, me lady,” bowing before her in exaggerated courtly style, he leapt through the door, turning the key behind him. 

She had approximately five minutes before he returned, she reckoned.

Throwing back the covers, her fully clothed body sprang up, snatching one of the blinds loose. Laying it carefully just in front of the door, she waited.

The key rattled again.

“Here you are, your High…..”

The tray went flying as he tripped over the blind, hands sprawled in front of him. Grabbing the handle, she flung the heavy wooden door open and ran wildly, blindly into the hallway, out the front door, screaming.

The sunshine blinded her as she ran into the front yard, arms flailing, legs failing. It had been so long since she had used them.

“I’m sorry,” his voice came up behind her, cold. calm. “You must forgive my wife, She hasn’t been well and her medications ran out last week.”

“Wait, wait, is someone there? Please, help! HELP! Call the polic….”

“Shhh, Sweetheart, it’s OK, honey….let’s get you back inside!” One iron arm around her waist seized her arms, while the other scooped up her legs.

“You’re going to stay with me, just a little bit longer,” he whispered. 

Jasmin Webb

Moravsky

It was, Anthony thought, perhaps a hangover from the only recently departed days of communism – as soon as you got beyond Austria there was a very noticeable shortage of vowels. Street signs and notices at the railway stations became incomprehensible conglomerations of consonants.

Probably, some inept dictator had included production of consonants in a five-year plan and simply overlooked the other letters, leaving the repressed population queuing for vowels all of each lunchbreak in some Kafkaesque nightmare for years.

‘Moravsky Krumlov’ seemed to be the exception – a placename with an almost Anglo-Saxon supply of vowels.

In the bus station at Brno (see!) Anthony deduced that the bus for Moravsky Krumlov departed from Platform 35 and that one paid the driver on boarding.

The bus wound its way through the green Moravian countryside, down narrow lanes, past villages with unpaved roads and drains down the middle of the streets, prolific garden allotments, fruit trees, wayside crosses and shrines to St John Nepomuk.

And it pulled up right outside the Hotel Jednota, Moravsky Krumlov’s tiny guesthouse.

Miming sleep and holding up two fingers was enough to convey to the pleasant woman behind the desk what he required, and he paid his 620 Kc. The room was simple but had a view up to St Florian’s on the hill.

At 9.05 the next morning Anthony was at ‘the chateau’.

 On his hike there from the hotel – through the Mittel Europe rural idyll – a truck driver had stopped to ask directions of him – Anthony, the only person from Invercargill in the whole of Moravia that day!

‘The chateau’ was old and dilapidated – faded, with plaster falling in large chunks off its walls, sizeable trees growing from the sagging guttering round the roof. Not so long before it had been used to store coal, but now inside was the great gesamtkunstwerk, the ten-year labour of Czechoslovakia’s greatest artist – the twenty giant canvases of ‘The Epic of the Slav People’ by the sublime Alphonse Mucha.

Anthony had long been a devotee but now here he finally was – a pilgrim at the tattered and glorious shrine. He paid the 40 Kc and donned the felt galoshes that were deemed necessary to protect the floors – not so long ago trod by shovel-wielding coalmen in hobnail boots – from the destructive feet of half a dozen art enthusiasts. He entered that sanctuary of art.

The next morning Anthony sat in his hotel room going through the travel guide’s inadequate Czech language section.

He wrote out what seemed to be ‘please may I book another night’s accommodation,’ and practised getting his tongue round those consonants.

There was no way he could remember this collection of sounds, so he took the paper with him to the reception area and read the phrase to the nice woman there. Her bemused look indicated that his efforts had not been successful. She took the piece of paper and read it and smiled. He paid another 310 Kc. He would stay a little bit longer.

Barnaby McBryde

The ceramic sculpture

Brother Akimitsu walked slowly down past the monastery vegetable garden and through the zelkova trees to the swampy ground beyond.

At twilight the swallows hawked over the area catching the tiny insects that rose from the marsh. The birds swooped and dived and jinked and swirled over the small swamp, perhaps thirty of them.

Unafraid they were. They would fly an arm’s length from Brother Akimitsu’s head – untouchable, free, independent, incorruptible, perfect – their scintillant blue darkening in the twilight, all the life and electric energy of the cosmos manifest in their tiny, fragile bodies.

Brother Akimitsu drew his robe tighter around his thin shoulders. He stood there transfixed with love until the tears began to drip off his chin. Then he bowed to his tiny brothers and sisters and made his way back to his studio.

The piece he was working on had come to him in a dream – he had seen it unfired and unglazed but otherwise complete. This was not unusual these days – the waking world and the world of dreams and the world beyond the world of dreams were beginning to merge.

His studio was just a small garden shed that the abbot had allowed him to use. The kiln was small and sometimes he fired things in sections and cleverly fitted them together afterwards.

He had already constructed the base of the piece – the form of an open book, tilted slightly as if it sat on someone’s knees. Now he must shape the little sparrow that would perch on the edge of the book as if it were about to peck up the words like seeds of wisdom, draw their sustenance into its tiny frame. The colours and glaze would be not entirely lifelike but would suggest the gentle greys and browns of a real sparrow.

Once it was finished, one of the younger monks would upload photos to the usual sites – he could do it himself but he preferred to avoid some parts of the world if he could – and it would quickly fly away to some rich collector.

Brother Akimitsu’s gnarled old fingers, knuckles swollen with age, worked the clay – kneading and teasing and shaping, moving like the roots of some old tree through the clay, turning it to his purpose.

He could stay a little longer but soon his brothers would lower his body into his anonymous grave. His fingers would again intertwine with clay, and the roots would weave clay and potter together into one substance.

Dhiraja

Time to go home

You would want this done right, I know that much.  You made your wishes clear.

You always said these moments are best kept simple. Not the time for fancy words; no alliteration permitted. So, I won’t say that you loved wisdom, wine, and words. I won’t say you were sustained by friends, fine food and fiction.  Occasions like these do not demand a prize-winning speech.  Cute mnemonics as an aide-memoire are unnecessary - there is no test at the conclusion.  Instead let me show not tell, as you taught your students to do.  What did you love? You loved warm tamarilloes with icecream. You loved Duruffle’s Requiem. You loved socks hung in pairs, expensive linen and the illuminating instant of a new idea.  You loved the breathless hush just before the curtain went up, the morning sun on your back as you read the newspaper. Very hot coffee, new slippers. Quiet dignity could move you to tears.

You would want me to speak the truth.  You were imperfect. You forgot birthdays, appointments, names.  You made up your mind about people quickly and it was a long road to redemption for many.  You preferred a book to a crowd and were usually the first to leave a party. How many times did I look for you in vain in the shadows of smoky flats or jostling theatre foyers, sad that you were missing the fun?  You never felt that way. Your particular form of vanity was a yearning to be recognised for your writing. You dreamed of being braver than you were. You hated the phrase ‘courageous battle’, not just because it is the worst kind of cliché but because you weren’t a fighter. You denied, you bargained, you observed your diagnosis for writing inspiration. In the end you said you were ready to go home.

And you would want me to say it straight. No preaching or proselytising. Everyone’s understanding of this mysterious thing called life is different.  True to form, you are simply the first one to leave the party.  So many times over the passage of our friendship, I wish you had stayed a little longer. This is the last.

Rosemary McBryde

May

Welcome to new writer Dhiraja who contributed for the first time in April, and welcome back to a couple of contributors who have been on a writing break for a while.  Six strangely different stories made up April's contributions and here we are with a new month. For May, the Artistic Director would like to offer "Stay a little bit longer" as our starter.

Stories to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com by 31 May. Happy writing!