Saturday Sample: Clara's Story by Gill James, tea with lemon

 

8 October 1918, Berlin: The end of a phase

Clara shuddered. It was one of those strange uncontrollable little movements. Her mother used to say it meant someone was walking over your grave. What did that mean, actually though? They were walking over where you were going to be buried? How would you know now? It was nonsense really but she had no better or even any other explanation for it. It wasn’t as if it was cold in the kitchen: the Kackelofen was lit and the sun was streaming through the window.

She put the rest of yesterday’s birthday cake away. Ernst had insisted she should celebrate her birthday despite his illness. She’d baked one of her special cheesecakes but nobody had had much appetite for it. It would keep a few days, she guessed. Perhaps when he was feeling better they would all appreciate it more.

 She looked at the clock. He should have called for his tea by now. It was half an hour past the normal time. She’d looked in on him earlier. He’d been sound asleep. Doctor Friedrich had said it was good to let him sleep. Perhaps she should go and look in on him again.

The doctor hadn’t really given a clear diagnosis. “It’s a combination of things, Frau Lehrs,” he’d said. “His worry about this war has weakened him. The rickets has got worse. And now this chest infection…”

“That shouldn’t kill a man, though, should it, Herr Doctor? He will recover won’t he?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say. He’s still quite young but you know this terrible war has taken its toll. It’s made men even younger than him want to give up. I’m sorry I can’t give you any better news.”

Damn men and their wars.  Clara made her way towards her husband’s room. So many men killed on both sides and so many left with half-lives. And now they were all so poor. It wasn’t so bad for them as for some of the people who worked in Ernst’s factory. But they had had to cut Imelda’s hours in order to pay for the nurse.

The door to Ernst’s room was flung open. Schwester Adelberg rushed out. “Frau Lehrs, you must come quickly,” she cried.

Clara hurried into the bedroom.

Ernst’s breathing was laboured. His chest was rattling.

“Should we send for the doctor?” said Clara. But she could tell from the look on the nurse’s face that it was too late.

“You must say your goodbyes,” Schwester Adelberg whispered guiding her gently towards the bed.

Clara knelt down beside her husband and put her face next to his. She took his hand. He was trying to speak but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Yellow bile streamed from his nose and seeped from the corners of his mouth and his eyes. He tried to push the sheets and blankets away.

“Does he have a fever?”

“It’s the blood rushing to his vital organs, trying to save them. His lungs are filling. That sound you hear is them working to expel the fluid but it has gone too far now.”

“Is – is he in pain?”

“He’s probably not comfortable and he’s very likely afraid and lonely. Talk to him.”

“Ernst – Ernst, my love. Don’t leave me yet. It’s too soon.”

Schwester Adelberg touched her shoulder. “There’s nothing more we can do,” she whispered. “Try to comfort him.”

Clara stroked his arm. “I’m here my darling. It will be all right. Sleep gently. You’ll soon have no more pain.”

He looked at once like a child and a man forty years older. Her father had not looked this frail when he’d died. Ernst’s poor body was a twisted wreck. But it had been like that all of his life and he’d done so much despite his disability. She stroked his hair.

He relaxed a little. He took one final breath and the rattle in his chest stopped. His faced changed and he looked peaceful. Yet at the same time he looked like a piece of paper. His lips and cheeks were grey. Yes, the life had gone out of him. That wasn’t her Ernst anymore. Even so she leant over and kissed his forehead. “Goodbye, sweetheart,” she whispered.

She knelt for a few more minutes holding his hand and then she stood up. “We’d better get the doctor here to sign a death certificate,” she said.

“I’m happy to stay and lay him out properly after the doctor’s visit,” said Schwester Adelberg.

“Thank you.”

“And would you like me to help with the arrangements?”

“That would be very kind. Now, I’d better go and let the children know.”

As Clara made her way down the stairs she realised that another phase of her life had ended. 

Find you copy here 

About the author

Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown.  

She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation.

She teaches Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.    

http://www.gilljameswriter.com  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B001KMQRKE

https://twitter.com/GillJames

 

 

The Woman Who Looked As If She Might Break by Gill James, latte

Liverpool Street Station looked familiar. It seemed years since she'd been here yet it was only a few months. It was definitely odd being in London again. Alicia and Tom had been living in the countryside since before Bobbie was born. She’d forgotten the greyness and the lack of colour. She could smell the city now. She could even taste it. This wasn't where she wanted to be.

People were beginning to get up out of their seats. She would wait until they'd all got out. Bobbie's fold-up pushchair and two bags of her clothes were on the rack above. The rucksack containing a couple of bottles and nappy changes were still on Alicia's lap. She didn't want to hold people up while they got off.

The train was late getting into the station. She could already see a crowd waiting on the platform.

How had it come to this? It had been Tom's suggestion that she and Bobbie should go back to her mother's.

"This just isn't working out," he said. "I'm going to have to get a normal job and then we'd better look for somewhere to rent. I think we'd better sell-up."

She'd left him that morning in the ramshackle cottage he'd inherited from his uncle. The field where they'd tried to grow enough vegetables to be self-sufficient was flooded. Bobbie had a bad cough. There was nothing left to eat.

So here she was. Off to her mother's cramped little terraced house in Wandsworth. Where was Bobbie going to be able to play there?

At least they would be warm. It didn't take much to heat her mother's home. She had thought of meeting up with some of her old friends but then she dismissed that idea; it would mean having to admit the experiment had failed.     

Everyone else was now queueing by the door. She pushed Bobbie into the aisle.  "Stand there like a good girl," she said, "while I get our things down."

Bobbie stood there chewing her thumb and frowning. It must have been quite overwhelming for her. She was just not used to the noise of the city.

Alicia hefted the rucksack on to her back, tucked the pushchair under her arm and grabbed the two bags with one hand, gently pushing Bobbie with the other.

The door behind them swished open.

Bobbie screamed and ran towards the door that opened on to the platform. 

"Wait for Mummy," Alicia cried.

Bobbie wasn't listening. She was about to jump out of the train. "Stop!" shouted Alicia, dropping the two bags.

Bobbie didn't stop.

Alicia wanted to scream but she couldn't. She rushed towards Bobbie and tried to grab her from behind. It was too late; Bobbie was going to go down between the train and the platform.

"Hey, steady on there." A woman about the same age as Alicia dropped what look like a full cup of coffee and a lap-top and caught Bobbie.

Bobbie started howling.

"Oh, thank you so much," said Alicia. "I'm so sorry about your coffee."

"No problem," said the young woman, picking up her lap-top case and getting on to the train.

Something about the woman haunted Alicia. She was so thin and pale. She had just a fine covering of hair on her head, a little bit like Bobbie's had been just after she was born. She looked as if she was about to break. Yet she'd managed to catch Bobbie and hold her firmly. 

By now quite a crowd had gathered. Bobbie stopped howling and started whimpering. As Alicia strapped her into her pushchair a grey-haired man handed her down the two bags she'd dropped inside the train.

"You're not going to try and carry on on the Tube are you?" asked an older woman. "You should get a taxi."

"I can't afford it really." Should she phone her mother and ask her to meet her there?

"I don't think you can afford not to, do you?" The woman walked away.

The woman was right. She would have to spend her last thirty pounds on a taxi. She would have nothing to offer her mother.              

    

   

"Well, cheers, then," said Tom.

They had just picked up their keys to their new flat in the Docklands. They'd managed to sell the cottage quite quickly, offering a generous deposit on the new property. Tom had gone back to accounting and she'd got a part-time teaching job. That had enabled them to get a good mortgage. Her mother was baby-sitting tonight.

Alicia held up her glass and muttered "Cheers."

"Hey, what's up? You ought to be happier than this."

"I am but I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"About that young woman. The one who caught Bobbie when she fell from the train."

"She jumped. She didn't fall. She was being naughty. You've got to stop blaming yourself. It could have happened to anyone."

"She was scared by the noise from the door behind. So, not naughty exactly. But it's not just that. That woman. She looked so fragile. As if she might break."

"She obviously wasn't all that fragile."

"I just keep wondering. I've looked out for her a few times when I've been at Liverpool Street Station. I'd recognise her. I’m sure I would. I never thanked her properly."

"I'm sure she understood. Is that why you were staring into the distance just then?"

Alicia sighed. "Yes, every time I see someone with very short wispy hair, I think it might be her."

"You've got to stop obsessing. Come on, drink up."

Alicia pursed her lips and nodded.        

 

She didn't stop though. The very next Tuesday found her at Liverpool Station again. It had been a Tuesday when she and Bobbie had arrived. Their train became the 11.35. And so here she was waiting for the 11.35 to go out. That was a strange time for a commuter, actually. It rather suggested that the young woman had some sort of consultancy job. Perhaps her office was nowhere near here and she'd just been out to see a client. Maybe she'd go and see that client again?

Alicia watched the crowds making their way to and from the trains. If it was like this now what must it be like in the rush hour? She ought to be glad that she didn't have to come here often. She was lucky; she could cycle to the private infant school where she now worked. But something kept bringing her back to this place. She had this compulsion to look for the young woman.

What about that one over there, with the very short blond hair? No, she didn't look fragile enough. That girl with the red hair? Too young. The one rushing along the next platform looked delicate enough but she was too tall. And anyway, it was the wrong platform.

Would she really recognise her again if she did see her?       

 

The months passed by. Alicia gradually became busy with school and then with Bobbie's attendance at the local Kindergarten. Her weekly trips to Liverpool Street stopped. Even so, whenever she had an occasion to go into the city she would keep her eyes open as she crossed the busy commuter station. She still kept spotting look-alikes.

One day during the summer holidays she was taking Bobbie to an event for younger children on the South Bank. Bobbie refused her pushchair most of the time now and preferred to toddle along on a set of reins. She suddenly started pulling on them.

"Lady," she muttered. "Lady."

She was pointing to a woman with long red hair who was striding along the concourse, a paper cup in one hand and a lap-top in the other.

Bobbie was pulling really hard now and she began whimpering. "Lady! Lady!

Before Alicia could stop her she'd bumped into the woman who dropped her cup, spilling what looked like a latte on the floor.

"Hey you," said the woman, chuckling. "Are you determined to make me spill my drink every time I see you?"

The woman turned to face Alicia. "Nice to see you again and I'm glad that neither of you are the worse for your ordeal."

Alicia at once recognised the pale delicate face.

"You probably didn't realise it was me," said the woman, pulling what turned out to be a wig off her head. And there she was again, looking as if you could break her into two just by touching her.               

"Let me get you another coffee," said Alicia. "It's the least I can do. Especially as we didn't get to thank you properly."

"There was nothing to thank me for. Anybody would have done the same. Anyway, you did me a favour really."

"We did?"

"Let's go over there where we can sit down and I'll explain." The woman nodded towards Starbucks. "My train's been cancelled. The next one isn't for an hour. That is, if you're not in a hurry?"

It would be fine. The pirate show was going on all day and in any case Bobbie seemed fascinated by the young woman.

A few moments later, Alicia and the young woman, whose name she found out was Sheila Hamilton, were sipping coffee and Bobbie was drinking an orange juice.

"You're probably wondering about the wig," said Sheila. "I've had chemo and the hair never did grow back properly. I got the wig because I was fed up of people treating me as if I'd break."

"I'm sorry," said Alicia.

"Don't be," said Sheila. "I'm absolutely fine now. It's just the hair that's playing up. But I wasn't so fine that day this young lady tried to jump off a train." She stroked Bobbie's head. "I was a wreck. I couldn't react properly to anything. But then when I saw her about to slip down between the doorway and the platform I stopped feeling sorry for myself and responded. It was the wake-up call I needed."

She still looked delicate to Alicia. She was so thin and her skin was so pale. And now that she'd taken her wig off her hair still looked like a baby's. Yet she must be quite strong. She was obviously working and that lap-top and another big bag she was carrying looked quite cumbersome.

"I can't have any children, I'm afraid. It was ovarian cancer and it was spreading rapidly. So I've had a full hysterectomy and they've taken out a lot of other bits and pieces as well." She patted her tummy. "No baby-making bits left." 

"I'm so sorry."

"Again, don't be. I never wanted children. But I did rather want that to be my choice than have it forced upon me." She smiled down at Bobbie. "And this little one could almost make me change my mind."             

Bobbie started tugging at Alicia. She pointed to Sheila. "Pratt!" she mumbled.  

Sheila chuckled. "I guess I am one, really, opting to miss out on all of this."

"Bobbie, where did you learn that word?" Alicia felt her cheeks going red. That Kindergarten, really. 

Bobbie stated rummaging in Alicia's bag. She pulled out the pirate hat that Alicia had bought for her. "Lady. Pratt," she said offering it to Sheila.

"Oh goodness," said Alicia. "I think she wants you to come to the pirate show with us. I'm so sorry if she sounded rude. And actually, I guess we ought to get going before we miss all the big events."

Sheila pulled her wig back on and the hat on top of it. "Well, then what do you think, me hearties?"

Bobbie giggled.

"We'd better leave Sheila in peace now. Come on." Alicia started gathering up Bobbie's things.

"You know what," said Sheila. "I'd love to come with you if you'll have me. I was on my way home and I was going to work remotely this afternoon but all of that can wait."

"You'd be very welcome."

Alicia wondered for a moment whether Sheila was just being polite but as they made their way down to the Tube it was clear that the other woman was really enjoying her daughter's company.

"Now you just make sure you hold on tightly to me or your mummy when we're getting on and off the trains," said Sheila.

Alicia had a thought. Both she and Tom were only children. They were a bit short of family. Would Sheila be willing to be an adopted aunt? She would see how the pirate event went and ask her before they parted.

They arrived at the platform and seconds later the train rumbled into the station. Sheila grabbed Bobbie's hand. "Shall we join our vessel, young ship mate?" she said.

Alicia laughed. Yes, she would certainly ask her later.   

About the author

Gill James is published by The Red Telephone, Butterfly and Chapeltown.  

She edits CafeLit and writes for the online community news magazine: Talking About My Generation.

She teaches Creative Writing and has an MA in Writing for Children and PhD in Creative and Critical Writing.    

http://www.gilljameswriter.com  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B001KMQRKE

           https://twitter.com/GillJames   

 

 

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The Lady Who Loved Books by S. Nadja Zajdman, coffee strong and black

In the nightmare world of the Warsaw Ghetto there was a half-starved orphan so in love with literature that when the German occupiers banned the act of reading, she became a courier in a clandestine network calling itself a walking library.  Risking her life, Renata delivered books to readers.  Sometimes she received a tip in the form of a piece of bread, but her payment was that she had access to the books.  Literature, always loved, became her weapon against despair.  In the ghetto, eerily, Renata read Franz Werfel’s Forty Days of Musa Dagh, his account of the Armenian genocide.  Crouched in a corner of the room she shared with a myriad of relatives, Renata began to read Emile Zola’s Nana; the story of a French prostitute who is the ruin of every man who pursues her.  Her older brother pulled the novel out of her hands.  “You’re too young to read that.  You can read it when you’re eighteen.”  Matter-of-factly the hollow-eyed youngster replied, “I won’t live to be eighteen.”

          Surprising herself, the Jewish girl with the name meaning ‘reborn,” survived.  In time she married, and then became a mother.  Mine.  When I was a little girl, my mother encouraged and guided my reading, gladly feeding my appetite for books.  It was with great solemnity that one frosty afternoon after school, my mother presented me with Anne of Green Gables.  “When I was your age, I read this book in translation.  This book introduced me to Canada.  My vision of Canada then was of a faraway, peaceful land filled with snow.  I could never have dreamed that one day my very own daughter would be Canadian-born and I would be giving her this book in the original English.”  The entire Anne series had been on my mother’s walking library list.  Anne of Green Gables was her gift to both of us.

         My brother’s eldest daughter surmounted a learning disability, and became a passionate reader.  She would prop up her novels at the lunch table, read by flashlight in bed, hide with her books in corners of a large family home, and evade visitors in order to escape into the pages of her latest literary voyage.

          The evening after my mother turned eighty, we attended my (now) eighteen-year-old niece’s high school commencement.  Sitting in a gymnasium, witnessing the celebration of carefree teenagers in the serene land of Anne-with-an-E, tears streamed down the cheeks of my niece’s “Nana.”

          Familiar with the interior of my mother’s apartment, the concierge of the building in which she lived dubbed her “The Lady Who Loves Books.”  The cancer my mother lived with slowed her down, so she didn’t get to the libraries as often as she would have liked. When I moved into my mother’s neighbourhood in order to be quickly accessible to her, and for her, I became my mother’s walking library.

Mum would e-mail to me lists of books she wanted to read, I would fill the orders at our neighbourhood library and deliver them to her apartment.  No matter how treacherous the weather, I always delivered. 

My mother clung tenaciously to life because she didn’t want to leave me, but cancer finally killed her.  I have her glass-encased bookcase now, which holds a blend of her personal library, and mine.  Zola’s Nana leans against Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward.  The Lady Who Loved Books never read it, to the end.  

 

About the author

S. Nadja Zajdman is a Canadian author. In 2022 she published the story collection The Memory Keeper (Bridgehouse Publishing, Manchester) as well as the memoir I Want You To Be Free (Hobart Books, Oxford) In 2023 Zajdman published a second memoir, Daddy's Remains (MacKenzie Publishing, Nova Scotia, Canada) 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)