DEREK AND DAISY by Guy Pratt,Cappuccino Coffee

 

Derek Walker worked as a draughtsman and designer for a general construction company that undertook anything from home extensions to small housing developments. Their offices were located on the edge of town and most of the white-collar staff were located in a large open plan area on the second floor where movable screens separated design and planning from accounts, typing and clerical personnel.

Derek was dark and handsome, though he never seemed to realise it. A little blonde filing clerk made a habit of always bringing him coffee whenever he needed it, but it never occurred to him that her head was filled with wild fantasies about him. He was so shy and reserved that neither did it cross his mind that Irene, the shapely brunette in the typing pool was always trying to attract his attention too. When his thoughts wandered from his work, they were usually focussed on the team’s prospects in their next fixture, he played both cricket and football for local sides, or where he might take his next hiking holiday or what the ending might be of the latest thriller he was in the middle of reading.

Daisy had straw coloured hair and a sprinkling of freckles around her slightly turned up nose. Her hair was usually tied back in a pony tail and she seemed to be permanently dressed in jeans and baggy woollen sweaters. I don’t suppose you will be surprised when I tell you she had recently completed her studies as an art student and was now struggling to establish herself as an artist.

Daisy’s uncle, Ernie Smith, was a second-hand dealer who cleared the homes of the deceased and bought almost anything he thought could be sold for profit. A little way from the main shopping street he owned a store proclaiming itself Ernie’s Emporium Old Furniture and Bric-a-Brac. To assist his niece to get started on her career Ernie had taken on Daisy for a low wage to mind the store while he was out regularly attending auction sales and clearing houses. Ernie’s wife Freda would usually pop into the shop around lunchtime to give her a break. So, Daisy was usually sat at a desk at the front of the store sometimes reading a paperback off the second-hand bookshelf, but frequently surreptitiously sketching customers, unbeknown to them, as they browsed the shelves of bric-a-brac.

At lunchtimes Derek preferred to get away from the office. Rather than use the canteen, he would take a stroll round the town, drop into a café for a coffee and sandwich, read a bit of his latest novel, then gaze in shop windows as he made his way back.

It was on a day like this that he stopped to gaze into the window of Ernie’s Emporium and was stunned by the sight of Daisy sitting at her desk. Her hair, the freckles reminded him of an old film he’d seen in which Doris Day starred as Calamity Jane. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, until she suddenly looked up and straight at him. He quickly averted his stare and continued back to the office.

From then on when his thoughts wandered, it was no longer to next Saturday’s match or the plot in his novel, but to the vision in the window of Ernie’s Emporium. He was to be drawn back to it like a pin to magnet. How could he overcome his shyness and speak to her. He would have to go in and buy something and converse with her and hopefully make a date.

Next day at lunchtime he entered the shop and Daisy looked up and smiled at him thinking “I’m sure that’s the handsome fellow who gazed at me through the window yesterday.” He smiled shyly and said “Do you mind if I browse?”. She replied cheerily “Feel free, shout if anything isn’t priced.”

The shop was large, with old furniture stacked up in the centre, sofas and armchairs and tables with dining chairs stood on top. Around the walls the shelves were packed crockery, ornaments, discarded holiday souvenirs and all the sorts of nicknacks one finds in such establishments. Derek proceeded round the shelves stopping now and then to pick up something and examine it more closely. Occasionally he would steal a glance across the room through the maze of chairs on dining tables to the object of his growing desire, until she looked up at him and he quickly returned his attention to what he was holding.

After a while Daisy called across to him “Have you found anything you like?”

Startled Derek responded “Er! Yes, I think I’ll take this please.” Then looking down at what he was holding realised it was a large red, chipped, enamelled teapot and wondered what on earth he was going to do with it.

He walked across to the desk in the window and Daisy looked at the price tag “One pound fifty, but it is rather chipped, I think I can knock the fifty pence of for you and call it a pound.”

Derek fished a pound out of his pocket and handed it over to Daisy, noticing as he did so that a long bookcase full assorted books and paperbacks stood next to the desk. He walked out into the street thinking he would look a bit silly going back into the office with a large red chipped teapot and wondered what to do with it.

On her way home that evening Daisy smiled when she saw a large red, chipped, enamel teapot in the window of a charity shop. It must be the same one, she thought, it can’t be coincidence. He did seem shy, but he was very handsome. If he came in again, perhaps she’d try and get him talking, but maybe she’d sketch him first.

A couple of days later Derek returned to the shop determined this time that he would browse the bookshelves which were close to the desk where Daisy sat. He could probably find a book he could read and not leave with a white elephant this time, and hopefully he might pluck up courage to start a conversation.

As he browsed the upper shelves of the bookcase occasionally pulling down a paperback and reading the blurb he’d steal a sideways glance at Daisy. Each time she seemed to be looking intently at him, smiling then scribbling something in a notebook.

Each was about to open conversation when the door opened and she greeted the woman entering. “Hallo Auntie Freda, you’re early today.”

“Yes” replied Freda “Now off you go and grab a sandwich and coffee and don’t be too long I’ve an appointment this afternoon.”

Daisy disappeared and Aunt Freda stationed herself behind the desk. Derek lingered and lingered hoping Daisy would return soon. Then glancing at his watch, he realised he was going to be late back to the office. Panicking he grabbed a couple of paperbacks, which were offered at 75p each or two for a £1, and put them down on the desk in front of Mrs Smith and pulled out his coin.

Mrs Smith looked down at the books planted in front of her “A Manual of Breast Feeding and the Kama Sutra” she exclaimed and looking up with raised eyebrows added “Amazing what you young men read these days”.

Derek’s face reddened as he looked down at the books “Oh dear! I’ve picked up the wrong two”. He stammered and hastily returned them to the shelf and grabbed a couple of Ian Fleming’s titles and placed them on the desk. Mrs Smith looked down at them and up at Derek again “Are you sure you want two copies of Diamonds Are Forever?”

Derek picked one up took it back to the bookcase and returned with a copy of Octopussy, apologising for being a nuisance. “Sorry, I’d forgotten what the time was and I should be back at work.”

Mrs Smith laughed and said to him “I think you must have something else on your mind today. You’re like a young man who has just fallen in love.”

A flustered, red-faced Derek exited the shop just as Daisy was returning. He courteously held the door open for her to enter and tried to return a smile as Daisy thanked him.

Before Freda Smith left the shop, she turned over Daisy’s sketchpad on the desk and asked “Daisy were you drawing that young man when I came in this morning?”

“Well, you must agree, he is rather good looking.” Responded Daisy, blushing a little.

“He seems a little shy and nervous, try chatting to him next time he comes in” advised Freda, giving Daisy a wink “I have a feeling he’s going to return and wants to say something too, with a little encouragement.” She left for her appointment and Daisy gazed dreamily at the open page in her sketchbook.

It has been said that a man chases a woman until she catches him. Sure enough, Derek was back two days later. This time Daisy was quick to open the conversation, introducing herself and as the ice broke up, they were quickly learning a lot about each other. Soon they started sharing their lunch breaks at a café in the town. Daisy went along to watch Derek at football and cricket matches and taking her sketching pad with her, she soon found a ready market for individual illustrations of the players in action. As often the case with draughtsmen, Derek liked to do some architectural and landscape sketching. They would go on long hikes together taking their sketchbooks. While Derek focussed on the scenery and buildings, Daisy drew birds and animals and flowers in close up.

When the day came to visit the vicarage to arrange for the banns to be read, Daisy had spent half the morning helping her uncle clear a house. It had been left for months gathering dust, awaiting a solicitor’s go ahead for clearance after the legal formalities had been completed.  She arrived to meet Derek on the vicar’s doorstep with a smudge of dirt on her forehead and traces of dust all over her baggy sweater and jeans.

When the vicar asked how they met, without much thought Derek replied “I found her behind a desk in Ernie Smith’s second-hand shop.”

“It looks like it” thought the vicar, though he didn’t express it, and they all laughed anyway.

Today Derek still works as a draughtsman designer for the same firm. Daisy established herself as a portrait artist and has a small studio attached to their home where they are bringing up their two children.

Occasionally they will combine and produce a picture in which Derek has painted the background scene and Daisy added the foreground figures. These pictures have an almost 3- dimensional effect and are becoming quite sought after. If you look out for them Daisy always initials them D & D W and for some peculiar reason always adds a little red teapot beside the initials.  

About the author 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

uy Pratt is a retired octogenarian second hand bookseller who enjoys gardening, long walks with his dog and travel. He gravitated into the book trade after earlier years in farming, the army Intelligence Corps and the civil service. Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the author the other half goes to expenses e.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

Green Around the Gills by : Peter Lingard, lime juice

Green Around the Gills

 I hate spinach, yet my wife serves it regularly. When I leave it on my plate, she complains. It happened again today. ‘I went to the trouble of cooking that for you, so you should eat it!’

‘You already know I can’t stand the stuff, so why do you cook it?’

‘I like it. Most people do!’

‘That’s fine. You can eat it by the bucketload but don’t expect me to do the same.’

‘You could eat it every now and then.’

‘Do you watch football every now and then?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How?’

‘Spinach is good for you.’

‘Football is good for me.’ Stupid! I wanted to strike the words, but it was too late.

‘Football is good for you?’ Her eyes widened and her eyebrows headed north. ‘Pray tell how football is good for you.’

I opened my mouth to say it calms me but managed to stifle the words before they got out. “It takes my mind off spinach.’ That’ll put an end to the argument.

Except she’d seen my mouth open before I changed course. “I can understand that. Football is so boring, it’d chase everything from anyone’s mind.’

I let her words go. ‘Look, can’t I just exist without spinach ever appearing on my plate?’

‘It’s good for you. I’m trying to look after you.’

‘And I appreciate it. I would prefer it though if you could look after me without the involvement of spinach.’

‘How about Brussel sprouts? Would you vote for them instead’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Cauliflower? How about a vote for cauliflower?’ I shook my head vigorously. ‘No? Cabbage?’

‘No way.’ Then I figured out how to resolve the argument. ‘Look, we’re just going around in a circle here. You know I like spinach in a salad and cabbage in coleslaw. Isn’t that enough of the stuff to keep me healthy? I surely don’t have to eat every dish ever invented using those vegies. Eating them raw must be healthier, especially as none of the goodness has been stewed out of them.’

 

About the author

Peter Lingard,, born a Brit, served in the Royal Marines, was an accountant, a barman and a farm worker. He once lived in the US where he owned a freight forwarding business. An Aussie now because the sun frequently shines and the natives communicate in English.

  Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the author the other half goes to expenses e.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

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Saturda Samplwe:From Light to Dark and Back Again, by Allison Symes

JOB VACANCY

Wanted:  Wizard’s Assistant. Must not meddle with equipment, books or anything that replicates, especially cleaning materials. The right candidate will enjoy a generous salary, interesting travel and a long, healthy life. Candidates must apply to Brankaresh c/o the Creepy Mansion on the Hill at Hanging in the Oaks.

This time, Brankaresh thought, I’ll get an assistant who doesn’t skimp on the cleaning by using magic. The castle took weeks to dry out properly last time. And I’d like to stop having to clear up the mess caused by blasting impudent idiots apart… 

Why should I have the bad name?

find your copy here 

 

Allison Symes loves reading and writing quirky fiction. She discovered flash fiction thanks to a CafeLit challenge and has been hooked on the form ever since.

In this follow-up to her From Light to Dark and Back Again, Allison will take you back in time, into some truly criminal minds, into fantasy worlds, and show you how motherhood looks from the viewpoint of a dragon!

Enjoy the journey!

 

 

Sowing Seeds by Keith David Robert McKibbin, Ice cold tea

We only saw the Malcomsons twice a year and I dreaded each visit. There was Boxing Day at ours with my presents on display, then the return visit to their detached house with the big back garden on the far side of Belfast. Our visit was always in early August, when they would regale us about the splendours of their recent continental holiday. Only two days out of three hundred and sixty-five. 
It felt like a lot more.
The summer one was the easier of the two. Dad’s dislike of driving through the city in the dark meant that there was a blessed time limit and you could keep your eye on the magic eight. Easier also because our dismal little caravan week in Portrush couldn’t in any way compete with the icing sugar sands of the Seychelles or wherever else they had been (Wendy’s husband Eric had a great job in the Civil Service). No comparison – so it was just a simple case of listening and nodding in all the right places and not spilling your lemonade on the new suite. Their living room was spacious, and when they visited us their elbows were always tight to their sides, a slightly concerned look, as if they feared our pokey little house was about to swallow them. 
Mum had known Wendy Malcomson for thirty years. They had danced round the lampposts, played squash to a high county level, then gone to teaching college together. It was Mum’s slight edge on the squash court that had sown the seeds of competition in their relationship down through the years. Mum got engaged to Dad two whole years before Eric dropped to his knee – and there’s a candid photo of Wendy at the engagement party looking like she’s chewing on a slug. Wendy’s ring, when it eventually arrived, was twice the size of Mum’s and had so many carats that Dad used to say, “What’s up, Doc?” every time the thing was mentioned.
I suppose it was inevitable that Julian, her son, should inherit some of her competitive fervour.
Losing a game of any sort was something beyond Julian’s realm. He simply could not contemplate it, and so he would blatantly cheat. I remember a board game called Operations where you have to extract parts of the body with metal tweezers without touching the sides and activating the buzz. It would be his turn, and there he’d be with his tongue between his teeth, and it would be – zzzz…zzzz…zzzz – and not a flicker of shame on the bastard’s face.
Dad knew the score and the devil in him bought two identical 500 piece Disney jigsaws which he revealed for the first time an hour after one of their visits. I can remember it in vivid detail. Mickey front and centre with his eight fingers in pristine white gloves, Minnie all coy by his side, Donald looking exasperated as others clambered into the frame. I had practised on it for so long on Christmas Day I could have done it handcuffed and blindfolded. I started slow, making a big show of not being able to find the corners, watching the twinkle of glee on Julian’s face as he streaked ahead. I let him click Goofy’s gormless grin into place before I made my charge. Oh, the thrill and pleasure of it! But what really sold it – what really pissed him off – was Dad, seemingly oblivious to the drama, making intermittent quacking noises from the far side of the room. 
After that there was no direct hand to hand combat. Instead, Julian would take delight in playing with my presents and then (subtlety, I’ll give him that, he had been brought up genteelly) denouncing them in favour of his own. Yet, oddly, my toys – albeit superior versions – would often feature in his birthday celebrations in early February. Dad would wink at me when Mum gave us the rundown after one of their phone calls.
“I’ve no doubt he’ll one day win the Nobel Prize to go along with his Oscar,” Dad chuckled. “But our boy’s the puppeteer, is he not?” and he made us laugh with a Pinocchio style walk, whilst yodelling, “High on a hill was a lonely goat, olayee olayee olayee – ee ee!” My dad could be a funny bugger sometimes. 
The two thousand piece domino set I received one Christmas caused him considerable consternation. The obvious response was to giggle at his dad’s banter about cloth caps and beer soaked tables. But there was a method in my own Dad’s madness. We had recently seen an episode of Record Breakers that was dedicated to domino toppling – hundreds of thousands of the things. These beardy types had spent ages meticulously setting them up in a huge sports hall – big ones, small ones, multicolours, up and down and round and round, dozens of different designs and patterns. It was strangely impressive in a dorky, milk bottle glasses kind of way. Norris McWhirter was there with his clipboard and stop-watch. Roy Castle sang a song about it with his trumpet. Pompity pomp.
I knew Julian wouldn’t have the patience for any kind of set-up, so after they had had their little giggle we took them up to my room to show them the lay-out. The whole floor had been cleared of toys and clothes and me and Dad had spent hours positioning them and praying that the province wouldn’t suffer a freak earthquake. 
I’ll never forget the shadow that crossed Julian’s face when he looked down upon the display. It was weird. Like he thought he’d been hoodwinked.
“Who would like to do the honours?” I asked, and all the grown-ups laughed at my pronouncement, but it was kind laughter and I didn’t mind. I think I must have remembered the phrase from Upstairs, Downstairs. Then, the coup de grâce. “Julian, would you like to? Just a gentle little prod …” 
And then to see them all topple and splay out exactly in the fashion me and Dad had designed. That wonderful whirring, rippling effect. The feeling was electric. Every single one of them flattened. They all burst into spontaneous applause – even Julian, but only because he knew how churlish it would look if he didn’t.
Shortly after his next birthday, Wendy breathlessly reported that him and his Dad had successfully toppled all six thousand dominoes (three boxes of them) stretching from his room, all the way down the stairs, and into the new kitchen with the mahogany centre island with the special built in storage. 
Boxing Day 1980 marked the last ever visit. After that it was just Christmas and birthday cards and the occasional phone-call. Families can grow apart like that sometimes. 
It was my best present ever: the Evel Knievel stunt bike.
Mum had been warned not to leak anything down the phone in the weeks before Christmas. I might add, in case you have never heard of him, that Evel Knievel was an iconic America stunt rider of the 1970s. Rock star crowds gathered to watch him fly his Harley Davidson over London double decker buses. They’d run the tape in slow motion and you’d see his stars and stripes cape fly behind him like a super hero. Julian and his dad were heavily into motorbikes. He was always yammering on about a Kawasaki Z1000 he was going to get when he was older. If you showed the slightest interest, and even if you didn’t, he would start on about its air-cooled four-cylinder engine and the horsepower it could produce. Apparently, it could reach speeds of up to 130mph.
They arrived around noon baring wine, selection boxes and Wendy’s famous Christmas pudding – which to be fair was delicious. Julian was annoyed because he had wanted to bring his brand new Grifter bike to show us. A Raleigh Grifter was a bike to be coveted. They had proper mud guards and three speed gears that were controlled by a handlebar mounted twist grip. They were as close to an actual motorbike as you could get. I would have killed for one, but knowing Mum and Dad’s financial situation I hadn’t even bothered to ask.  
Julian clearly wasn’t overawed by the Evel Knievel stunt cycle toy. He did at least show a polite interest in the box which promised Top Speed Jumps, Wheelies, Crashes, and Much More – and so there was nothing else for it. I set up the jumping and landing ramps – Blue Peter and Grange Hill annuals – and attached him to the plastic red energiser. Then it was just a matter of turning the crank to wind up the back wheel and letting him rip.
“Very impressive!” Eric said, sounding not very impressed at all. But then another thought occurred to him and he perked up. “I wonder what percentage the man himself gets for each unit, you know, for each doll.”
Everyone pretended to think about this for a moment before moving back to the living-room. Everyone except me. I didn’t care how much he made on each one. The way I looked at it, if you broke every bone in your body jumping over buses and cars you deserved a few fringe benefits. What I did think about, quite a lot, was the shared smile that had passed between Eric and Julian at the mention of the word doll.
“You’re so lucky where you live,” I said to Julian in the back garden, far out of earshot of any adults.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, because of the hills; it’s flat as anything around here. When I get my Grifter, you know what I’m gonna do?” I gestured for him to lean forward and whispered fervently into his ear. “I’m gonna be the first to do it. What do you think of that?”
He threw back a shrug; but I noticed that his eyes were bright and eager.
About a month later Mum took a phone-call in the hallway and Dad held his hand up for silence when he heard the strange pitch in her voice. We both scrutinised her through the obscure glass, unnaturally hunched over, cradling the receiver to her face with both hands as if she was listening for its heartbeat. 
Julian had broken his neck.
Apparently, he had taken the Grifter up to the top of the Cavehill Road and then flown down it as fast as he could. It was as if he was trying to set some kind of speed record. Eric later tried unsuccessfully to sue Raleigh but the brakes were found to be in perfect working order and it all came to nothing. The problem had been at the bottom of the hill when he had run over a rotten old plank – a sort of a ramp I suppose – lost control and landed on his head. These were in the days before cyclists wore helmets.
Mum and Dad visited him in the Royal Victoria Hospital but I never saw him again. Our pokey little house, with its narrow hallway and bulky electrical sockets, wasn’t wheelchair friendly, and there was therefore no reason for the reciprocal visit. 
That was a long time ago. If he’s still alive, I wish him well. 
Sometimes I think of the Grifter I never had as a boy – but I have no regrets. 
Last month I treated myself to a present that had my teenage daughters in fits of laughter – cracking midlife crisis jokes and making Easy Rider references. It’s a vintage Kawasaki Z1000. A beautiful machine. Apparently, it can reach speeds of up to 130 mph! 
Not that I’ll ever know. I’m always very careful on her.

 Keith McKibbin is an English teacher working in Glasgow. He is married with four daughters and two beautiful granddaughters. His favourite short story writers are O. Henry and Raymond Carver. He has been published in both the Bath and Edinburgh short story competitions.

 Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the author the other half goes to expenses e.g. Maintaining the web site and setting up The Best of Café Lit book each year.

Fried Eggs and Leather Belts by Keith Mckibbin ,ice cold te

My sister cried all day long, and I had never been so happy.

That is no exaggeration. All day long. The very picture of misery she was. Sometimes her body would need a break or she would momentarily forget herself. I recall my fascination as she caught a song on the radio – I think it was Get up and Boogie, pumped up loud by Mum as a distraction – and how she began to mouth the lyrics and bop her head, before remembering where she was and hiccupping herself into another bout, face folding into that constipated gurn, that made you want to both laugh and then punch a dent in the side of the caravan.

            “Sure, you’re going to dehydrate yourself,” Dad said. “Like an Ethiopian. God, Doreen, does your mother not realise the damage she does?”

            Mum shot him daggers but said nothing. She lit another Embassy and had it down to the filter in two or three drags, then over at Miranda, her scabby knees up under her chin; opened her mouth to suggest something, then clamped it shut and stabbed her cigarette out with a grunt.

            The summer of ‘76 was the hottest July ever recorded. All the windows in all of the caravans were cranked wide begging for the tiniest breath of wind. Car bonnets were hot to the touch. My friend Philip Pelan tried to fry an egg on his granddad’s Morris Marina. He had seen it in a movie. It kind of worked, although it took a while and none of us wanted any part of tasting it. We figured that no matter how clean he kept his car, he was still frying an egg where a seagull must have shat. And the old boy wasn’t impressed when he found out. I can still remember his whiskery leer as he beckoned him with a crooked finger, whilst slowly, with great deliberation, unbuckling his thick leather belt. You could do things like that back then.  

            Jesus sake, Miranda, give it a rest. Are we going to have to listen to this all day?

            Dad had bought the caravan the year before for seven hundred pounds (Mum later told us that his hand had been shaking as he signed the cheque) and he was rewarded by two glorious summers which saw us all roasted on the beach like lobsters. Like most of the other Irish mothers, Mum was unaware that the newly bought sun lotion had to be reapplied after each sea visit. My slug hite six year old back blistered and peeled; I had to sleep on my stomach at night and every time, every time, I would roll over onto my back and scream myself awake.

            Miranda was two years older than me and we had a kind of telepathic connection that might have had a more positive application, but was used instead to deride and undermine me at every opportunity, whilst skilfully operating under the radar of Mum and Dad. I had to have my meals with her at Granny’s. She only had a little table so Mum and Dad got served before us. Mincemeat, potatoes and carrots. Miranda would look disdainfully at me as I heaped it up and forked it into my mouth.

            A flick of the eyes, then: “Granny, we were learning about snakes the other day in school.”

            “Oh, I hate snakes, Miranda – horrible things. Thank God for Saint Patrick.”

            “But they’re really interesting. Did you know that a lot of them can dislocate their jaws to get more food into their mouths?”

            “They can do what?”

            She was happy to demonstrate by yawning her mouth wide. “Can you imagine how disgusting that must look? Greedy, fat things.” The eyes and the smile again; but then she added something new to the mix, just to further highlight my gluttony and underscore her victory: a quiet, barely audible double snort, like a happy little piglet contemplating the trough. She was so smitten by this sound effect that it was added to her repertoire, not just when I was at the table, but sometimes apropos of nothing, just to remind me of my place – and always so subtle that only I would get it. Oink oink.

            Miranda, this is ridiculous behaviour – there are people dying in the world.

            Our next-door neighbour at the caravan site, Mister Mackie, was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little brother. Sometimes you would see him lifting dumbbells just for the fun of it. He had a UDA tattoo on his left bicep – which was about the same size as my dad’s left calf. Friendly enough though, in a gruff beer can crushing way. He and Dad had spoken for the first time a couple of days before the glorious twelfth.

            “He wanted to know if we’d be at the parades,” he told Mum over the fish and chips. “He plays the Lambeg for the North Down Lodg.”

            “What did you tell him?”

            “That we’d look out for his sash and his great big drum.”

            If you’ve only ever seen a Twelfth of July orange parade on the television you haven’t really lived it. It doesn’t matter how high you have the volume, it’s just not the same. You can have the ornaments dancing on the mantelpiece and you still won’t get it all. You need to drown in it. The buzz of camaraderie; a thousand little Union Jacks clutched in chubby, ice-cream hands; seagulls squawking greedily above fat chips; orange everywhere; red, hite and blue.

            And the anticipation of it.

            Shush, shush, listen.

          A massive cheer as they strode into view, banners aloft. There was Good King Billy on his hite charger, off to stomp on the Catholic hordes. Scores of spruce Protestant men with lips pursed and trousers perfectly creased. Marching and blowing. Flawless notes, and the little chap at the front twirling and somersaulting his stick fifty feet in the air – always managing to catch it.

            The magic was that the music never completely dissipated. It grew fainter but always loitered, waiting to pass the baton on to the next band. Thus, with the flute music still in the air you could begin to hear the accordions and a roar would emerge as they rounded the corner, all sash and splendour, squeezing the life out of their instruments.

“There he is Dad! Mister Mackie, over here!”

He was working up a sweat with his Lambeg drum, leaning backwards, walloping the bejesus out of it – and when he saw us, he jerked his jaw in acknowledgement of our support and shared Protestantism. Long after he had passed we could still feel the blood thumping in our ears.  The trace of its resonance would follow you into your dreams, where it grew bigger and bigger, dwarfing first the drummer, then the street – a drum that only a folk giant might play, its thunder heard and felt around the world.

I swear to God, Miranda, if you don’t quit it now I’m going to walk into sea just to get a bit of bloody peace.

After the parades the only thing we had left to look forward to were the visits to Granny.

We each had a week (she only had one spare room) and the attention she lavished was something you just never got at home. It was like you were the most important person in the world. You got the T.V (a lovely big Ferguson in its own laminate cabinet) all to yourself and could watch whatever you wanted provided there wasn’t a Howard Keel or Yul Bruner movie playing. She would take you out into the city on the top of the bus (this was long before her angina kicked in) to the big shops, then the snugness of a café for buttery scones that melted in the mouth like snowballs in a frying pan. Grandad had dropped dead of a heart attack when Mum was only wee, and I remember hearing her tell Dad that the royal treatment was an over compensation for her own austere upbringing. Granny, as a single mother struggling on a widow’s pension, had been a cold fish back in the day, too exhausted from night shifts to address anything beyond the basic needs of Mum and Uncle Graham. I can hardly remember her smiling, Mum said, and she never hugged me.

 She was never done hugging me. She’d sweep you up into her great bosom, and the delicious smell of her – the rosy cheeks and mint imperials, the shock of her lovely hite hair.

            And it was my turn next week. That’s what was really eating Miranda. She was missing all the attention – you always felt an aching sort of homesickness after a week with her – but the real cause of her angst and misery, and the source of my barely suppressed glee, was the knowledge that I was about to enjoy what she was mourning the loss of. For the telepathy thing worked both ways. Thus, whilst I had been careful not to openly crow and had, in fact, presented as sympathetic and sorrowful, I’d made sure that she caught me drumming my fingers at lunch and, a little later, whistling a happy little tune to myself.

            But the devil comes to visit you in all guises, and when you least expect him.

            We were getting ready for bed, Miranda red eyed and hoarse from snivelling, me on the other pull out bed, giddy with anticipation for my week and hoping that her misery would continue indefinitely. I watched her glance over at me, take a huge breath, then with renewed vigour and gusto begin a high-pitched keening, like a shawled famine mother at the graves of her children.  

“In the name of Christ, Miranda, would you give it a fucking rest!”

His language managed to penetrate the wall of noise and she shuddered to a stop; but the look on her face said it all. This respite was only temporary. She was in it for the long haul.

“Look, pet,” Mum’s tone was placatory. “I know you really miss her. Here’s an idea. If you can make it through tomorrow without crying, you can spend another week with her. How’s that sound?”

Say what now!?

Mr Mackie was in my head thumping the shit out of his Lambeg drum.

Mum avoided my eye (the bitch); Dad had the good grace to throw me a tortured look of helpless apology.

It was obscene.  The greatest injustice ever perpetrated in the history of civilisation.  A fucking joke, it was.  I wanted to say all of these things but I didn’t, I couldn’t. I was only six, and I was scared of my sister.

“I suppose that might help,” Miranda allowed, wiping her eyes then slipping into her sleeping bag, her bronzed shoulders accentuated against the hiteness of her pillow. A flaking network of spent sunburn was clustered at the cleft of her neck, and I wondered what it would be like to pour battery acid over her during the night. The portable black and hite T.V ran off a car battery. Dad watched the news on it, but I figured he could just as easily listen to the radio.

“Good night, son,” Dad said, somehow managing to communicate, within these three mournful syllables, his deep regret and the promise of reparations at a future date.

I lay on my stomach for the next hour or more, the heat of my blistered back pulsating, imagining her smiling up into the darkness. She knew I was awake, of course, and as I listened to the sounds of the night time – my parents breathing, the crunch of a car on the gravelled pathway, the call of a dog – I heard her sniff one last time before allowing herself to sleep.

Actually, not a sniff at all. More of a double snort.

             Like a little fat piglet on his approach to the trough.

about the author

Keith Mckibbin is an English teacher working in Glasgow. He is married with four daughters and two beautiful granddaughters. His favourite short story writers are O.Henry and Raymond Carver. He has been published in both the Bath and Edinburgh short story competitions. 

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