Anton's Ideas

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/interplanet-janet/”>Interplanet Janet</a>

a new planet 

WHAT A WAY TO PLAN IT

We are very lucky having a family with seven such very imaginative children and I hope a lot of  you will have heard some of my stories about them. Well one very rainy day during half term in the Autumn of 2014 they were left with a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do. Alright, they said they had nothing to do but my wife, Francesca, assumed that homework did not count so she asked me how we could entertain them in our house on the lakeside in Geneva. I didn’t have a clue but my nine year old twins, Violetta and Lucia said they had seen something on my computer called a ‘wordpress prompt’ and this sounded quite good fun.

“David,” my wife scowled at me,”have you left the main computer un-password protected again? How many times do I have to tell you. They are aged between twelve and a half  and five and three quarters. They could read anything!”

“No they couldn’t, Cara, it’s only open at a writing competiton page I was looking at for fun. Nothing they shouldn’t see. What makes you think I’d read anything like that myself anyway?” I won’t describe the georgeously cheeky look on her face.

“Je n’en sais rien, mon amour.  But honestly David, is it a puzzle or something that the kids could do? It would pass the time.” Actually it was, so I explained it to them and they thought, to quote Giovanni,

“Sounds Ace Papa. Invent and design our own planet? Great!”

Dido, a very good, budding little artist of seven, shot her hand in the air. “Can I do the people, please papa? I do very good people.” But Maria then thought of a problem.

“Well, yes, that could be your task, Di, but first of all we would have to decide what the people on this  planet would look like. Also, Mummy, how would we know what language they spoke?”

“Children, children. Calm down. If this is going to be both fun and interesting, you might even learn something from it, I’m going to divide different aspects of your new planet up between you to work on in teams. Now firstly the twins should be split up, they do too much together. So Lucia you will work with Aeneas on the geography of your new star and be really imaginative in deciding what the landscape and towns look like. Okay?

“As the youngest, Edgardo, I want you to help Maria, the oldest, to decide the type of life that exists on your planet. This must include how the inhabitants communicate and what they look like. You get the idea? Right that leaves the whole way of life that is lived on the planet. This will need really deep and clever thought so Giovanni and Violeta can use their very unusual imaginations on this. Yes, John you do have a great imagination and Vi has a great sense of humour so you should be an ace team to use your own words.

“Then finally you, Dido, will be artist elect to the planet and do a set of drawings showing what the planet, its people, its buildings its food everything in fact would look like to a visitor from outer space who did not even know your planet existed and stumbled across it in a spaceship by accident. But you must stick to the basic descriptions the others have thought up.

She was interrupted by a question from her youngest child. “No, Eddie, you can’t have guns and swords and dead people all over the place. Incorporate that into your political history if you like, but that’s all. Ready? Okay off you go and you’ve got until dinner time at 7.00pm to finish.” She then walked over to me and gave me a loving kiss as she said, “What a great idea, David, that should help develop several aspects of their little personalities. What a good plan of yours.”  I smiled and squeezed her waist as I acknowleged my genius,

“It all comes with being a leading international diplomat, Cara, but seriously it should be great fun seeing what they come up with. Meantime, shall we just watch the rain battering down on the lake? Nothing much else to do unless the embassy calls me.” And so we left the children to six hours of what we hoped would be good fun. I had some papers to deal with for the red Cross so I decided to get them out of the way, and Francesca spent the day marking university essays she had set for her second year language students.

Ever since my work had made it necessasry for me to be based in Geneva in June 2006, when Francesca was pregnant with  Dido, we had lived in our twenty three room house just on the northern edge of the city on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was a lovely place and we spent the year’s academic weeks there to fit in with the children’s education, and the remaining almost four months in our villa on a hillside outside Lucca in Tuscany. I had been very lucky and extremely unlucky when I was sixteen years old. My parents were killed in a plane crash, but my sister Helen and I had each been left more than $15 million US dollars. By the time I met Francesca, when I was 23 at Pisa university finishing my PhD, I was worth more than US$25 million and from the time of our marriage just after the millenium we had always had plenty of money to meet our needs. Our careers, I was an ambassador to the United Nations global agencies, and Francesca a lecturer in languages at Pisa and Geneva Universities, insured that that side of our life was never a problem. Seven children, however, did keep us on our toes the whole time. We had two servants but they were almost members of the family now. The largest room of the first floor of our lakeside house was a playroom cum homework room which had a 30 foot long table down the middle with places reserved, rather like a cabinet room set up, for each of the kids. And heaven help anyone who encroached on anyone else’s space.

But today we agreed the table should be cleared so that the planet could be designed and set up on it while leaving one third of its space for writing and drawing as the various tasks demanded. I can honestly say I was astounded when I held Francesca’s hand and, as ordered, kept my eyes shut while Dido led her parents into the playroom at just after 7.00pm. What they had created surpassed all expectations. It was like entering a mock up of an exhibition room in a science museum. With the help of our chauffeur cum butler/handiman, Carlo, the lights had been dimmed and a set of blue tinted bulbs replaced the normal ones. Then we saw a huge Notice, printed in the largest possible font on the computer in alternating coloured letters,

“WELCOME   TO   THE   PLANET  TROY“

The first thing to strike us was a sort of docking station in which two rather classic earth style spaceships were displayed on stands. Two large explanatory captions were placed next to them which read.

“The first proof that life existed outside Troy was attributed to the landing of these weird machines on our planet some 234,871 miliquadriseconds and a half ago. Prof. G.Watson.”

“You will notice the two very unusual small rooms on the  inside left of these craft with strange markings on the doors. One is  ∇ and the other ∏. I am still trying to decipher these. Professoress V.Watson.” On realising the joke that Violeta had worked out Francesca went into fits of laughter.

Moving on we saw a beautiful  landscape of what looked like mountains and valleys. But the valleys were pure white and the peaks green. What looked like a road or path then led to a large building and we could open its doors and look inside. There were paintings on the wall, very obviously Dido’s work. What could have been people were depicted leaning against chairs, but not sitting on them. They had no middles, just five arms a hooped stomach, and three legs. Their heads were triangular, they had five eyes each, all looking in different directions. Two of them were talking. A cleverly rigged up audio system projected the following sounds.

“Adscripti glebae”

“Oh, mais ne me fait pas rigoler, coco. C’est pas possible”

“Ogni uno per si medesimo, a dio per tutti.”

“En boca cerrada no entra mosca.”

“Cada ovelha com sua parelha”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, old chap!”

By this stage I could see how they had got over the language problem but really did want to know whether it was Maria or Eddie. Eddie was too young to have produced the conversation I had just heard but he could have done the Italian and maybe the Spanish.  It was so clever I just looked at Maria and smiled. She couldn’t help grinning back.

The geographical and architectural side of the planet that Aeneas and Lucia had worked out reached its zenith with a building, well it looked like a building, somewhere between a church and a town hall. But what I couldn’t work out were the people, just like those in Dido’s drawing, looking glum as they went in one side and incredibly happy as they came out the other. Lucia couldn’t help whispering to me, “Papa, Aeneas said God created everything no matter where, in the universe, so all planets must have a religion too so they could know God. This depicts sinners going in one door, glum and sorry for being absolutely dreadful, and then finding God smiling at them inside, and jumping for joy as they came out. Good , isn’t it?” I looked at my second son with a definite tear in my eye. What  a wonderful proof that he really had understood what he had been taught. But understood in such a unique and spiritual way.

The whole scene included strange food, dwellings, over-imagined languages and some incredibly delicate craftsmanship in assembling the rooms, roads and rivers. As we finished our tour of the table and therefore of ‘TROY’,  we got the greatest and loveliest surprise of all. As we turned to leave the room we saw a notice on the back of the playroom door which read

DOS EST MAGNA PARENTIUM VIRTUS

Well everybody with a basic knowledge of some Latin would understand as beautiful a message as that. Francesca was in tears as she hugged them all.

Anton Wills-Eve

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/i-got-skills/”>I Got Skills</a>

                                                                   Lucy’s Last Chance

Ever since the age of six little Lucy Browning had been mad on playing the piano. Her outstanding skill was noticed at a very early stage. But sadly many people experience hard knocks in life and few find anything more of a burden than having a speech impediment. Little Lucy was such girl, her stammer disrupting everything she wanted to do from her earliest days in infants school. But she was lucky in having a very loving family who did everything they could to help her.

Her elder brother Henry, who was nineteen when she celebrated her fifteenth birthday, regularly lost his temper with people who made fun of his sister and was very worried how she was going to manage when he went to university the following September. However, she assured him she had enough friends to stop her being badly bullied.

The best of these friends was Jenny Williams, an attractive girl with long blond hair who genuinely enjoyed Lucy’s company and, although complete opposites, they got on really well together. “Well, Luce, this is the year that makes or breaks us. I’ve got to get really good GCSE exam grades in science next summer if I’m to get to a top university. But I expect you’ve already written in ‘one hundred per cent’ next to music,” and she smiled and laughed at the same time.

Lucy grinned back, her straight, brown hair adding little to her understandably shy personality. “T-t-true J-J-Jen, but that’s about a-a-all! Languages are a n-n-nightm-m-mare. I like science b-b-but school says b-b-cause I c-c-can’t say the w-w-words easily in ch-ch-chemistry and phyics, I can’t do them. And my wr-wr-written work is quite good. It’s silly!” Jenny agreed wholeheartedly but made no comment as they went into class for the first lesson of the autumn term that September.

At home Lucy’s parents, though, were more worried than Henry. They knew their little daughter was a fighter even if she was no academic genius, so they greatly encouraged her love of music. They saved all the money they could afford to engage a top class piano teacher for her. She had had two one hour lessons every week for nearly nine years when the GCSE year started. She had already won several junior prizes for her playing, including one quite prestigious piano competition for under twelves when she was only ten. Indeed, her teacher was so pleased with her that she predicted a possible outstanding future for her as a concert pianist.

The school had spent five years trying to cure or eradicate Lucy’s impediment, though with very little success. Her teachers knew how difficult life was for her, but in a school of fourteen hundred pupils aged eleven years or older there was little they could do in already over crowded classes. Her form mistress, Miss Paget, who was keen on getting the best overall average grades for her class out of the four forms that year, took Lucy aside to explain to her,

“Lucy you must realise how difficult it’s going to be for you to get good grades in most of your subjects and you will fail French and Spanish completely because you could never pass the conversation modules. We thought if you gave up half your subjects this year and concentrated on music and four other exams you could stay behind for twelve months and do the rest next year. You are a very skillful pianist so that will always be a back up for you. What do you think?”

What Lucy thought she was not able to say to the bullying woman be-littling, her because what she thought was, ‘You mean you want your average grades to be as high as possible and don’t care about my feelings at all’. What she managed to say out loud was, “M-m-my parents w-w-want me to do ten s-s-subjects, so I w-w-will! Also I w-w-want to stay with m-m-my f-f-friends.” Miss Paget was furious.

“Very well,” she retorted, “I shall recommend to the school that you only sit four exams, including music, and your parents will have to pay the entrance fee for the others.This will be doubled as I am not recommending them.”

When Lucy told her mother this after school that day the poor girl got a terrible shock. Her mother had to say, “Darling we didn’t want to worry you in such an important year, but daddy’s firm has had a lot of financial problems recently and had to lay off several of the staff, so he took a drop in salary in order to help out. If we have to pay so much for your exam fees we’ll have to cut your piano lessons to the occasional one now and then, not two a week. I am dreadfully sorry.”

Lucy was almost in tears but held them back until she went up to her room to do her homework and cried her heart out. However, beneath her emotional upheaval she felt a rising determination not to give in and still went to her next lesson as her parents had already paid for the rest of that month’s piano tuition. The following evening she told her piano teacher, Miss Marshall, she had some bad news. The teacher could see Lucy was upset and thought it was the usual malicious treatment she often experienced. But Lucy’s news was a bombshell.

“M-m-m-iss M-m-marshall, I shall have t-t-to give up m-m-my lessons b-b-because my f-father can’t afford t-t-them any m-m-more.” The teacher was stunned. Lucy was one of the two best fifteen year old pupils she had ever had and she was appalled at the thought of losing her. She knew Lucy was going through an awfully difficult time and tried to cheer her up. 

“Look you’re one of my top pupils and you don’t even have a decent piano at home so can only practice at school when the music master let’s you. But I think that if I applied to the regional music society board I might be able to get you a scholarship to carry on studying with me. I’ll see what I can do. I was hoping to enter you and John Franklin for the regional musician of the year competition, with preliminary rounds each month to the end of April and the final in July. I really think you have a chance of winning the under eighteens class.

“This carries with it a scholarship for the whole of the cost of your studies through to the end of four years at a leading university or

music academy. You would need a top grade in your GCSE music exam in the summer, but I know you could get that already! You would also need the minimum grades in seven other subjects at least for a university to take you, and three A levels as well, but I hope you can manage that.”

Lucy could not believe her ears. “ M-m-m-miss if you c-c-an get m-m-me a scholarship with y-y-you, I th-th-think, I KNOW I can!” They smiled at each other as the previous pupil was finishing his practice and got up from the piano to leave. Miss Marshall introduced them. He smiled at Lucy and she blushed in confusion. Boys usually laughed at her and she did not know how to respond. He held out his hand when Miss Marshall introduced them and she shook it timidly.

“Miss Marshall tells me you’re very good.” Then he waved goodbye and added, “Hope to see you again Lucy.” She was too shy to speak, smiling as she opened her music case. He stayed back, out of sight, for ten minutes and could not believe how well Lucy played.

The following week, it was the third in September, Miss Marshall gave her the most wonderful news. She had told the music board of Lucy’s problems and how extremely good she was, so they had given her a bursary to have free lessons twice a week with Miss Marshall until the end of the summer term. Lucy and her parents were thrilled and the young girl could not wait to tell her form mistress.

“S-s-so you see, M-m-miss Paget, I w-w-will work r-r-eally hard all year t-t-to get the g-g-grades I need!” Miss Paget was not very encouraging but did at least tell Lucy she was glad she had a goal to aim at that might also get her better exam results.

And so it was, eight months later, that a very cheerful Lucy could think of nothing else but the music finals that sunny Monday of the last week of the summer term. They were scheduled for the Friday and she was filled with excitement at the prospect of a really important achievement for the first time in her very frustrating life.

Most of her friends had concentrated on working hard at their GCSE exams hoping for good enough grades to go on to the universities they wanted. The exams finished half way through that week but Lucy’s academic ability had never been better than average. She knew her chances of university in two years time were virtually nil without her piano playing, which was now recognised as outstanding for her age. Little did she know but several top musicians who had judged the earlier rounds were already talking about her as she had come first or second in every round, good enough to progress each month. Even the school’s headmaster proudly booked a seat in the hall for the finals.

The GCSE exams had been very difficult but she had finished them all and had a piece of luck with her French and Spanish.The school had told the conversation examiners about Lucy’s serious speech problems and they agreed to mark her on what she knew, understood and was obviously trying to say; not on her accent or speed of reply. Both the French and Spanish examiners told her she had done well enough to get an overall pass if her written papers were also up to the standard needed. This encouraged her enormously as had her steady progress through the music competition.

That lovely summer morning her best friend Jenny called to her across the hot school playground as they went back into class after morning break. “Hi Luce, Only a few days to go until the last round. Well you’ve made it to the last six for the whole of the region, so go for it girl!” Jenny knew how much her friend needed encouraging.

Lucy looked at her extremely pretty companion, who attracted most of the boys in their year, but there was no envy in Lucy’s reply. Quite the opposite.

“Th-th-thanks J-J-Jen. J-j-just a few b-b-butterflies,” she smiled always feeling more hopeful when Jenny was with her. So that lunch break as Jenny was chatting to Geoff, her current boyfriend, she spotted Lucy and kindly drew her into the conversation saying to him, “Lucy is in the finals of the regional music competition at the City Theatre this Friday and is very excited. She’s an outstandingly good pianist and everyone says she has a really good chance.”

To both girls surprise the tall, popular boy showed immediate interest. “Are you one of the six finalists Lucy? Wow! You must be incredibly good. A friend of mine at Redcourt school is also one of the last six, but he’ll take some beating Luce.”

Lucy was so pleased at Geoff’s interest she could not resist asking, “R-r-really Geoff. What’s h-h-his name?” Geoff was quick to add to his first remarks about his friend. “Oh  it’s John Franklin. But his big advantage is that he studies under Emily Marshall, one of the best teachers in the county. John thinks she’s terrific.” Lucy was now even more surprised.   

“G-G-eoff, she’s m-m-my teacher too!” At this news Jenny joined in with a very upbeat comment. “Well, Luce, if you know them both there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be just as good as he is, or even better. Hey, you aren’t hiding an Adonis from us are you?”  She laughed as she asked Geoff, “Is he good looking?” 

At this poor little Lucy went crimson and Geoff could see Jenny had unintentionally hit on a very soft spot in Lucy’s teenage heart. He felt a bit sorry for her. “Well, yes, he is quite good looking, Jen, but Lucy probably only sees him on and off for lessons, eh Luce?”

“Y-y-yes G-G-Geoff, though he d-d-does smile at me and s-s-seems very nice. B-b-but he’s n-n-n-not my b-b-boyfriend or anything l-l-like that.” Lucy was almost embarrassed at having to say this.

Jenny patted her friend on the shoulder and said, “Well, stop wasting time, Luce, and try to get to know him better.”

This only made poor Lucy more confused. However, Geoff cheered up both girls by looking at Jenny and saying, with a wink that Lucy could not see, “We were wondering what to do this Friday, weren’t we Jen? Why don’t we go and watch them both?” Jenny agreed at once and Lucy could hardly believe that two of her school friends wanted to listen to her playing in the

Friday night finally came round, but oddly Lucy’s thoughts for much of the week were also on one of her competitor. All year she had occasionally thought of him until Geoff’s remarks made her realise how much she had grown to like John. As the final got nearer she almost did not want him to lose, but deep down knew how much she wanted the prize, and everything that would follow from it, very definitely for herself.

In the twenty minute recitals each musician had to play a five minute compulsory piece set by the judges and two more pieces of music of their own choice. John and Lucy were the only two pianists to reach the last stage. John was the second person to perform after a female violinist. He was followed by a clarinet player and then There was a thirty minute interval during which Geoff and Jenny had to agree that John was by far the best of the first three musicians so far, when they overheard an extraordinary conversation between two women sitting behind them.

“Margery, your son’s piano playing was really outstanding. Emily Marshall teaches him doesn’t she?”

At this the lady called Margery was about to speak when Geoff muttered to Jenny, “Heavens! It’s John’s mother behind us.” And John’s mother replied to her friend,

“Thank you. Yes, and he’s also a very thoughtful boy. John found out about one of Emily’s pupils, whom he knows slightly and who is very good indeed, but who could not afford to go on paying for lessons; do you know what he did Dorothy? He asked Adrian, you’ve met my husband haven’t you? I thought so, anyway he asked his father to sponsor her. Adrian was so touched by John’s concern for the poor girl that he arranged the sponsorship with Emily and paid all her fees for the rest of the school year. Emily assured him his money would not be wasted as she was a very promising pupil.”

Jenny and Geoff just looked at each other and gasped as they settled down for the second half. The percussionist was good but the second violinist was a young boy who really was sensational. After he had given a wonderful interpretation of a Paganini caprice everyone seemed certain he would win. Finally a petrified and shy Lucy took the stage. She began with the compulsory Chopin study set by the panel and then the audience sat up as she gave a flawless performance of a technically very difficult prelude by Rachmaninov. But Lucy had always known that to win she had to finish with something nobody would expect from a sixteen year old. 

She took the risk of her life with Liszt’s sixth Hungarian rhapsody which few people in the audience thought a sixteen year old girl could physically manage at all, let alone play really brilliantly. As she almost collapsed with exhaustion at the end of the last bar the whole theatre rose to their feet applauding and in no doubt who had won the competition.

As the clapping rose to a crescendo Geoff turned round to speak to Mrs. Franklin.She saw him first. “Oh, Geoffrey, I didn’t see you there. Wasn’t that little girl amazing?” Geoff grinned broadly as he replied,

“Not nearly as amazing as your really kind hearted son, Mrs. Franklin. She’s the ‘poor little girl’ who John so very kindly asked his father to sponsor for her tuition fees. But don’t worry, Jenny and I won’t tell anyone.” The friend, Dorothy, looked delighted at Geoff’s news but, for the first time in her life, Margery Franklin was left open mouthed and speechless.

Finally, to make her night complete, Lucy stood on the stage holding her bouquet and winner’s scroll while also tightly clutching the certificate to pay all her music education expenses for the next six years. And her heart missed a beat as John turned and kissed her on each cheek whispering, “Well done Lucy. You really were terrific! I do hope this means we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other from now on.”

Anton Wills-Eve

To Be Resolved

The whole family were over the moon when I got the letter telling me I had been offered a place at Oxford University to read Mediaeval history. It was late December 1959 and I would be starting the following September. I also knew I would be immersing myself for at least four years in my passion for Ecclesiastical History, hopefully to the level of MA by the summer of 1964. I had won an open exhibition scholarship, and it was the closest thing I could imagine to being paid to spend all my time just doing what I loved best. At the end of that December I made a new year’s resolution to work diligently and watch my finances sensibly so that within ten years time I would be settled into the life I wanted and well enough off to enjoy it to the full. By then, who knows, I might even be married with a family. But each year, until December the thirty first nineteen sixty nine, I was going to review how well I was doing on my marathon resolution.

But our world holds many twists of fate for us and it is ironic that we never expect the really important ones. In March 1960 I was not expecting my father to be hastily posted to South Africa to sort out his company’s affairs as two senior members of the staff had managed to lose control of their emotions and get themselves jailed following the Sharpeville race riot shootings. The company was ordered to stop working there but Dad did a terrific job smoothing ruffled feathers, indeed so successfully that just after returning to London in May he was told he had been appointed head of the company for Continental Europe. He would be taking up his post in mid-August and would be based in Paris for at least five years, probably longer. As with my news from Oxford, the family was once more over the moon.

Have you ever seen what is on the other side of the moon? Let me tell you. It is that world in which we never even allow our minds to wander, asleep or awake. It is, above all, a world of unimagined surprises which invariably become our strongest memories in later years. I was about to receive my first adult one.

You see our family had a problem. There were just the five of us. Dad, Mum, who was chronically and seriously ill, my sister, fifteen months my senior and the best friend I had ever had, and my only surviving grandmother. My sister and I virtually ran the household as we got older because mum was bed ridden. Add to this the fact that my ageing grandmother was sixty four when I was born and, though she did what she could to help, as you can imagine by the time I was eighteen it was not much. Dad of course had to earn enough money to make sure my sister and I were really well educated and to provide the medical extras that my mother needed. He made an incredible number of sacrifices to ensure that all of us led the life he wanted us to enjoy. So in the summer of 1960, for the first time in our lives, when he was forty six and I eighteen, he had to ask me an enormous favour.

“Edward, look this isn’t easy, but I have to see if you can help me sort out a family problem. You know we are off to France next month and you will be going to Oxford in the Autumn, well I don’t know what to do about mum. Your sister is already a year into her university course at Cambridge and we cannot interrupt that, but is there any way you could change your place at Oxford for one at University in Paris? It would make all the difference in looking after mum whenever you could if you had enough time for your studies as well.” I reeled, and honestly did not know what to answer. Everything I had wanted and worked for during the last five years had been achieved and now, at the eleventh hour, it was being snatched away. I just prayed it did not show in my face. I am sure Dad would never have asked if he had known how much Oxford meant to me, but I assumed he did not and automatically I said I would try to find out exactly what would be involved if such a change could be arranged. But most importantly I told him not to worry about mum being properly cared for. I assured him that would always come top of my priorities.

As my sister, Helen, was at home at the time I told her what Dad had asked me and she hit the roof. “You’re joking! Edward he wouldn’t ask that of anyone, and certainly not you!”

“Oh be fair, Helen. With the amount of work he does and the worries we all pile on him he probably hasn’t a clue what Oxford means to me. How could he? My only problem is that I cannot see how I could get my French up to the standard needed to do a degree in Paris when I have never studied seriously in the language. But I’ll ask my history master. He got an MA at Cambridge in History, so he must know if something can be worked out. I do hope it can, because Dad has done so much for all of us this quite enormous promotion for him is something he really deserves. We could never live with ourselves, well I certainly couldn’t, if he turned it down because of me.”

She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. Of course she saw the point and wished it was her decision to take. “Edward, I am going for a degree in history of art and only because I enjoy it, but with you it could be your whole life. I know how much you want to follow up your research into the really esoterically abstruse minutiae of mediaeval church life, and above all the hagiography that would go with it. I also know that there are few scholars of your age around who know even half as much about the subject as you do. But have you thought that the Sorbonne University might be just as useful a place to follow your subject as any British university? I can see the language problem though.” We left it there and, as it was the last week of term and of the school year, I knew the senior staff would all be around for a few more days yet.

The school’s reaction was one of shock and disbelief. We usually got four or five Oxford or Cambridge places a year, but the kudos of one was very important to the school’s reputation and the news that I might not take up my place was not well received. After four days of hectic telephone conversations and indulgence in the ‘old pals network’ of academic friends, the best solution that could be worked out for me was to do an extra first year at the Sorbonne, which was not marked academically, although I would have to study the full course from the start again in my first year. This would mean having to spend an extra first year to bring me up to the required level of academic French, and four years in total for my LèsL, the equivalent of a BA in France. However, it was also dependent on the university in Paris accepting me at an interview and this was arranged for the last week in August. But Oxford was very understanding about my circumstances and even held my place open for me until the beginning of September.

Well, to cut a long story short I just scraped through the interview and was accepted at the Sorbonne. My father’s company also gave him an increase in salary because they considered me as still being a dependent child and student, so we were not hit as badly financially as we might have been. The following five years passed really quite enjoyably with the family living in a flat on the Ile. Saint Louis, behind Notre Dame, and within a very short walk of the university which also helped me. I made quite a few friends from lots of different countries, in particular Francesca, a very pretty girl from Pisa in Italy who became a genuinely important part of my life from the age of nineteen. Then, by the August of 1964, shortly after I had gained my degree, she was very badly hurt in a car crash. Helen had joined us the previous year to work in a French art gallery after getting her degree and she could see how badly I was hit by the news of Francesca’s accident. She spent extra time looking after Mum while I took the rest of the summer break in Pisa with Francesca and her family, helping to cheer her up and suddenly realising for the first time in my life that I was quite hopelessly in love. But it was not the ‘over the moon’ moment it should have been.

Her family had a lovely house in Tuscany and it was a treat looking after her. But there is a limit to how much one can do for a girl, however beautiful and encased forever in one’s heart, when she has to be pushed everywhere in a wheelchair and can only take a few steps on crutches, and that on a good day. After four years at university I was at a loss what to do for a career. I had always thought that had I gone to Oxford I would just have stayed there if I could, but there was no way I wanted to live forever in France. The one thing about being really good at a subject as unusual as hagiography, however, was that I could not actually get a job in it. I could have taught it, I suppose, and write books on the subject, which would never have sold, but neither option appealed. So I eventually settled for an offer from a leading American newspaper, the editor had known my family for years and he knew I could write, to work as a general news correspondent in France, Italy and Switzerland with a view to eventually becoming a full time staff correspondent. It was to give Francesca this news that I had driven down to Pisa the day after the crash and my news was quite overshadowed by hers.

Although we both could manage reasonably well in English and Italian we always spoke to each other in French. It had been the language of our meeting and subsequent relationship. “Hey, Edward, don’t look so sad. You have a great opportunity ahead of you if you take it. Think, I will always be able to follow the world news and know you are somewhere in the middle of it.” Her smile was too much for me. Lying there in her room with a crushed leg, broken arm and pelvis and a scar down the left cheek of her lovely face, she seemed to want to say goodbye. I could sense it. But I could never have said goodbye to her and gone on living happily myself. I think she also knew that.

“Cara, I have to start work in Rome in three weeks, and I don’t know how long I shall be there. But I shall come back to see you every weekend that I can.” She stretched out her good hand and clasped my wrist as hard as she could. Tears trickled down her face but she could not lift her body upright to kiss me as she so badly wanted. Instead I put a hand behind her head and drew her face up to mine and kissed her with all the passion I could convey given her injuries. “I will never leave you, Francesca, never. You will get better, the doctors say so and, no matter how long I may have to wait, one day I will marry you, I promise.” I had not nursed a crippled mother all my life without knowing how to convey love, hope and happiness when deep inside me I doubted if I even believed myself. We lived like this for more than two years as she improved very slowly, but I always fearing that she would never fully recover.

Luckily the paper liked my work and, as I was unmarried and was thus dispensable, in February 1968 I was posted as one of their two correspondents to Vietnam. The salary was good, even by American standards, and I was assured that most of this could be saved as it was the easiest posting there was for living off expenses. It should have been ‘over the moon’ time again, but my employers knew little or nothing about my little Francesca. That wintry day as I told her my news she was inconsolable. “No. My lovely Edward. No. Give up your job, resign but please don’t go so very far away to die without me. Oh, my Edward. Please don’t leave me alone.”

It was a dreadful moment. The worst in my life. My lovely Francesca, so stubbornly fighting to return to being the girl I had come to adore. Making such progress, too, only to have the spectre of my putative demise rise up before her and hurt her so cruelly she finally gave in to her true feelings and begged me, if I loved her, to stay with her and we would somehow find a life together. Her scar had almost disappeared and with my help she could walk again, if slowly, and we often went for short strolls together in the beautiful countryside around her home as she clung to me for support both physical and mental. She had not wasted her time since her illness improved and had nearly finished the work to gain her doctorate in languages. But both of us did not know what to do in the new circumstances. I too had continued studying to the level of a doctorate in history at university in Rome just to please myself. My family were really pleased with the success I had made in my career in journalism, and they would have been really upset if I had turned down such a good offer. Francesca’s parents took to me almost as a son-in-law in waiting. I would have happily married my Francesca there and then but she was adamant that she could never marry until she was fully well. Then I saw the new circumstances as an opportunity to get my own way in our ongoing dispute over our future,

“Francesca,” it was only four days before I was due to leave, “I want to do a deal with you. I can no more leave you than you can carry on without me. Well I told my boss yesterday that if the Vietnam job had not come up we would have been getting married very soon. He was very understanding and told me that there would be nothing in my contract stopping me from marrying whenever I wanted to. All the newspaper insisted on was that I was not married when they selected me to go to Asia. So if you came with me and we married after I had started the posting that would be fine. But I am the one who is making marriage the condition. As far as I am concerned the fact that you still have physical difficulties moving your legs means nothing to me. I just want you as my wife because I could never be happy carrying on living without making love to you.” I had played the only card I felt I had left.

“My Edward. Si. For you, si.” Her words lit up my whole world and once again I was ‘over the moon’. But we have spoken of the moon before. I wondered what I would find on the other side of this one.

Landing in Saigon for the first time, when rockets and grenades were in the air and all the civilians on the aircraft were so calm it was hard to believe the whole experience was not a dream, was both exciting and exhilarating. My only concern was how Francesca was going to manage disembarking. On the way across the world we had spent a week in Singapore where we had been married having arranged everything before leaving Europe. We had our honeymoon on a mile long beach on the Malay coast and all my lovely wife’s fears that her injuries would make her a total disappointment as a lover were proved completely false as we each found the other everything we could have hoped for.

Most people imagine a war zone that is daily under rocket and mortar attacks is not a nice place to live. But Francesca had a wonderful idea about how to pass her time while I did my work keeping my head down as best I could. She was told about a home for blind orphans aged between eight and sixteen, who desperately needed more people to help look after them and educate them. The voluntary medical and social workers were only too glad to have Francesca’s help, limited though it was. She was able to teach the youngsters three languages as well as help them in many practical ways and the set up was both therapeutic for her as well as a help for them. We had a flat in a modern block not long built by the American army for civilian workers involved in administrative war work. Quite a lot of journalists lived in this type of dwelling and we had a small and pleasant community in which we faced the trials of war together. Then one morning in June real terror struck. An early rocket and mortar barrage flattened the building we lived in. Two of my colleagues were killed and several more badly hurt. I was one of them, but in a way nobody realised at the time.

After spending several hours helping to dig out the injured I collapsed myself with what was at first just thought to be exhaustion. Then came the trauma. After being very dizzy and dopey for about an hour I actually lost consciousness and was out cold for some twelve hours. The medics put it down to stress and fatigue but the following day I found I could not focus properly and eventually was taken to the military hospital from where I was flown, with Francesca, to Manila, the nearest main city with decent American medical facilities. There I was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and we were both flown back to the United States where the newspaper took over the cost and trouble of looking after me. My family were extremely worried and Helen flew out to Los Angeles to see me. My employers appreciated our strange situation, that is our lack of anywhere to live. We had been in Rome and Pisa before going to Asia and I had given up my flat in the Italian capital. What the paper had to decide now was where they wanted me to work as technically I was hired by head office and so I had to return to America, which of course I had, before being posted to my next assignment.

Helen, Francesca and I stayed in a very nice hotel while the company’s doctors made sure that my experience had not left any lasting damage. After a few weeks they were happy that I could return to work, but where? In the course of my years travelling round southern Europe much of what I wrote was concerned with religion, politics and sport. But it was all centred on one part of the world and obviously I was going to be of most use returning to my former stomping ground. It was now September 1968 and the paper had just recalled their main European diplomatic correspondent from London to work in Washington. After several days of discussions, about which I knew nothing at the time, thank heavens, I was delighted to be offered the job of chief political correspondent in London. The salary was extremely good and when I asked Francesca if she would like me to accept the offer she was ecstatic.

“You see, Edward. Everything is now going to be just as we both secretly wanted it to be, isn’t it?” She was more than right. This was ‘over the moon’ time with a vengeance and we celebrated that evening with Helen who had to return to Paris the next day. A week later we followed and were given two weeks to find a house to live in in England and in general settle down before I went back to work. The best part of that particular journey over the moon was the news that under the paper’s insurance rules I qualified for a handsome injury compensation package, on top of the money I had managed to save during the six months odd I had worked in Vietnam. This left me with enough to buy a lovely house on the Thames near Richmond and still have a nest egg saved to help us start a completely new life. Francesca, too, was so much better that she got a very good job teaching languages at a leading school. Everything really was turning out as well as it could. Well almost.

Sadly, just after Christmas 1968 my mother became very ill and in the following February she died. Dad was badly shaken, but had been expecting it for quite some time so managed to continue in his position in Paris where he now had a circle of close friends and colleagues, including Helen who had recently married, and was particularly happy for Francesca and me. It had been on March the twenty first, 1960, that the Sharpeville shooting started the whole sequence of events that led to my life taking the path it did. I had a good job, but I still spent a lot of time keeping up with my favourite subject, the lives of the Saints. I had written two books on the subject but not the sort of work that one would expect to sell in their millions. I enjoyed writing them much more than the modest income I got from them.

Now for the last shot at the moon that seals this circular series of events which constitute these closely linked memories concerning my resolution all those years ago. In the October of 1969 I was at a party given to raise funds for all anti racist movements throughout the world, when who should I bump into but the senior tutor who interviewed me at Oxford when I applied for a place there ten years earlier. He was fascinated by what I was doing and had kept up with my academic work, especially my books. I told him about the story of Francesca and me and he was really interested in how much we had managed to study even during our war torn years. Three days later I received a letter inviting us both to the college I would have attended where several professors and lecturers were interested in our story. So interested in fact that we were asked if we would like to give four lectures a year each on our experiences and the subjects in which we each now held Italian doctorates. We could hardly believe it. We may not have been offered ‘life for ever’ at Oxford, but regular working visits to the atmosphere we both loved could start at the beginning of the next year. That December I suddenly realised I had kept my resolution after all but by a journey I never even dreamed of. And now, in 2014 I am still giving occasional lectures at the university.

Last week I spotted our two grandchildren in the auditorium where I was giving the last pre-Christmas lecture on my subject. I got an odd thumping feeling in my heart. Francesca said it was my reward for having done the right thing and put the rest of my family, and those I loved, first in my life. But Helen only smiled and told me it was simply the wonderful feeling of being over the moon again. I really don’t know what I think. I am just grateful and happy for all God has done for my family and especially my lovely Francesca. You can guess the new year’s resolution I am carrying over into 2015.

Anton Wills-Eve

SILENCE IS WHITE

Nine year old Amanda was almost an Alice in Wonderland little girl. Only child of wealthy parents she lived in a huge house with lovely gardens and some thirty four rooms, but she suffered dreadfully from lack of friends of her own age.Her parents paid for her to go to an exclusive preparatory school where all the pupils were of her own social order, but she never really got on with them and much preferred playing in her own garden by herself.

One side of the garden bordered on a public park and although it was walled in with a nine foot high hedge and a strong wooden fence, members of the public often used to try to climb up and peep into the grounds of Amanda’s house. She would wave to them but never speak. Her mother had warned her not to talk to strangers. And people did not come stranger than Jack the unfortunate deaf and dumb sixteen year old son of a local farm labourer. He often used to climb up and wave to Amanda and she often waved back. That is until that terrible summer’s day when Jack actually scaled the hedge and got into the garden.

Amanda was more curious than scared. The well brought up rich boys at school were nice enough but she seldom played with them, so when Jack walked towards her and tried to communicate in sign language she thought nothing of it. She made similar signs back and giggled at Jack, but she never said a word. That was not allowed. The only thing she found strange about him was that he was a lot bigger than most boys she knew. That was when her nanny came running out of the house and in an apparent panic snatched her up and hurried into the house with her not heeding her cries of protest.

A few moments later her father, stick in hand, stormed into the garden and strode up to Jack shouting. “What are you doing molesting my little girl in her own garden? Eh? Eh? Well answer me boy!”

Jack tried to use his sign language to signal that he did not understand the angry gentleman. But Amanda’s father grabbed him by the arm, pulled him indoors and telephoned the police.

The magistrate that day was Dame Celia, staunch defender of women’s rights, and in the eyes of many of the men whom she had fined or imprisoned, also women’s wrongs. She had virtually found Jack guilty before the case opened. The court official read out the charge against Jack…..“and then did attempt to sexually assault the aforesaid Amanda ….”.

The case against poor Jack, unbelievably fabricated by the prejudiced prosecution lawyers, included four witness statements from people who had been coerced by various means to say what they had seen him try to do to the poor little girl, screaming in terror. But throughout the case against his client Jack’s solicitor declined to cross examine anyone. He merely sat there and smiled.

Finally it was the defence’s turn to find some mitigating reasons for Jack’s apparent behaviour because by now the whole court assumed he was very definitely guilty. He rose and, addressing Dame Celia, asked if he might first call Miss Amanda to give testimony. He was quite aware she had been primed by the prosecution and nobody could understand why he had called her. But Dame Celia had asked Amanda, as permitted given her age, before the hearing if she both understood the charges and was happy to be questioned. She answered ‘yes’ to both questions. So the solicitor began,

“Amanda could you please tell the court what the accused said to you as he approached you.” Amanda raised both arms in the air and putting her hands out before her waggled her fingers around madly for about a minute before stopping for breath. Everybody just gaped at her. The solicitor asked her if she was feeling unwell.

“Oh no, Sir. You see Jack is deaf and dumb and he could only speak in sign language. I was trying to imitate him but my own sign language is not that good yet. I’ve only been having lessons for a couple of years. It’s so I can talk to one of my deaf friends at school. I think Jack was just asking me my name, but he seemed confused by my answer. I think I got it wrong. But it was only a white lie, not like the ones told by all those awful witness people daddy paid to blacken poor Jack’s name. He never came near me!”

Gut Feeling

I  bumped into Len as I was walking down Fleet Street towards the office and he looked very glum. “Hey what’s up with you?” I asked “I’ve never seen you looking so fed up. Has Sandra ditched you?” He smiled,

“No, she’s about the only thing left in my life that I trust. I’m broke, old man, and I mean broke. I need at least £100 by tomorrow or I might as well cut my throat.” This wasn’t like Len at all so I quickly tried to cheer him up by asking him if he believed in coincidences. He shook his head, laughed and asked me why. “Well listen to this mate. The Grand National is being run this afternoon and I have a terrific tip.

“There’s a horse called Foinavon running and  I was born in a house called ‘Avon’ on the Thames. But wait. On top of that I support Glasgow Celtic at soccer as you know and the jockey is wearing Celtic colours, green and white hoops. Now Celtic have just reached the semi-final of the European cup and are having a great season. But the best is to come.

“Our house on the Thames was in Buckinghamshire and the jockey is called ‘Johnny Buckingham’. The horse must win. How could it lose?” Len fell about  grinning at my optimism and asked the key question.

“What are the odds?” I had hoped he would not go down that road but had to admit they were not very encouraging, it was expected to start at 100-1. By this time, as we turned into the bookmakers together, we both made out our slips for the race putting our money on the clear favourite Honey End ridden by Josh Gifford.

We met up again in the pub around six o’clock that evening both looking inconsolable. That day in 1967 one of the greatest turn arounds in racing history had happened when 22 horses were involved in a pile up at the 23rd fence and some even ended up carrying on in the wrong direction. But Foinavon was more than 200 yards behind the leaders when they fell and it slowly caught and passed the entire bemused field to open a 150 yard lead with four fences to jump. Gifford remounted Honey End and gave chase but Foinavon just held on to win one of the greatest Nationals in history at the staggering odds of 100-1. Len and I just looked at each other, shattered. He bought me a beer as he said,

“That’s the way my life has been going all week!”

“Well lucky you then. I nipped back into the bookies ten minutes before the race and put £20 on Foinavon for you. You can buy me another drink out of the £2,000 I’ve just won for you!”

I promised to start serialising my latest novel a chapter a day begining this month, but I shall have to delay for a week at least. So instead I shall be posting blogs, poems and stories such as this for the time being until I have my book as I want it. So those waiting for “John and Gemma” will have to hang on for a bit. I do apologise.

OVERJOYED

The whole family were Overjoyed when I got the letter telling me I had been offered a place at Oxford University to read Mediaeval history. It was late December 1959 and I would be starting the following September. And I also knew I would be immersing myself for at least four years in my passion for Ecclesiastical History, hopefully to the level of MA by the summer of 1964. I had won an open exhibition scholarship, and it was the closest thing I could imagine to being paid to spend all my time just doing what I loved most.

The world of academe, of which I so often dreamed, was at last a genuine reality and maybe for my whole life if I still wanted it to be as I grew older. But our world holds many twists of fate for us and it is ironic that we never expect the really important ones. In March 1960 I was not expecting my father to be hastily posted to South Africa to sort out his company’s affairs as two senior members of the staff had managed to lose control of their emotions and get themselves jailed following the Sharpeville race riot shootings. The company was ordered to stop working there but Dad did a terrific job smoothing ruffled feathers, indeed so successfully that just after returning to London in May he was told he had been appointed head of the company for Continental Europe. He would be taking up his post in mid-August and would be based in Paris for at least five years, probably longer. As with my news from Oxford, the family was once more Overjoyed.

Being overjoyed is being in a state of euphoric happiness much akin to the expression being ‘over the moon’. Have you ever seen what is on the other side of the moon? Let me tell you. It is that world in which we never even allow our minds to wander, asleep or awake. It is, above all, a world of unimagined surprises which invariably become our strongest memories in later years because they started as such wonderful moments of projected happiness. I was about to experience the first one of mine.

You see our family had a problem. There were just the five of us. Dad, Mum, who was chronically and seriously ill, my sister, fifteen months my senior and the best friend I had ever had, and my only surviving grandmother. My sister and I virtually ran the household as we got older because mum was bed ridden. Add to this the fact that my ageing grandmother was sixty four when I was born and, though she did what she could to help, as you can imagine by the time I was eighteen it was not much. Dad of course had to earn enough money to make sure my sister and I were really well educated and to provide the medical extras that my mother needed. He made an incredible number of sacrifices to ensure that all of us led the life he wanted us to enjoy. So in the summer of 1960, for the first time in our lives, when we were forty six and eighteen respectively, he had to ask me an enormous favour.

“James, look this isn’t easy, but I have to see if you can help me sort out a family problem. You know we are off to France next month and you will be going to Oxford in the Autumn, but I don’t know what to do about mum. Your sister is already a year into her university course at Cambridge and we cannot interrupt that, but is there any way you could change your place at Oxford for one at University in Paris? It would make all the difference if you could help looking after mum whenever you had enough time from your studies.” I reeled, and honestly did not know what to answer. Everything I had wanted and worked for during the last five years had been achieved and now, at the eleventh hour, it was being snatched away. I just prayed it did not show in my face. I am sure Dad would never have asked had he known just how much my Oxford place meant to me. I assumed he did not and automatically I said I would try to find out exactly what would be involved if such a change could be arranged. But most importantly I told him not to worry about mum being properly cared for. I assured him that would always come top of my priorities.

As my sister, Helen, was at home at the time I told her what Dad had asked me and she hit the roof. “You’re joking! James he wouldn’t ask that of anyone, and certainly not you!”

“Oh be fair, Helen. With the amount of work he does and the worries we all pile on him he probably hasn’t a clue what Oxford means to me. How could he? My only problem is that I cannot see how I could get my French up to the standard needed to do a degree in Paris when I have never studied seriously in the language. But I’ll ask my history master. He got an MA at Cambridge in History, so he must know if something can be worked out. I do hope it can, because Dad has done so much for all of us this quite enormous promotion for him is something he really deserves. We could never live with ourselves, well I certainly couldn’t, if he turned it down because of me.”

She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. Of course she saw the point and wished it was her decision to take. “James, I am going for a degree in history of art and only because I enjoy it, but with you it could be your whole life. I know how much you want to follow up your research into the really esoterically abstruse minutiae of mediaeval church life, and above all the hagiography that would go with it. I also know that there are few scholars of your age around who know even half as much about the subject as you do. But have you thought that the Sorbonne University might be just as useful a place to follow your subject as any British university? I can see the language problem though.” We left it there and, as it was the last week of term and of the school year, I knew the senior staff would all be around for a few more days yet.

The school reaction was one of shock and disbelief. We usually got four or five Oxbridge places a year, but the kudos of one was very important to the school’s reputation and the news that I might not take up my place was not well received. After four days of hectic telephone conversations and indulgence in the ‘old pals network’ of academic friends, the best solution that could be worked out for me was to do an extra first year at the Sorbonne, which was not marked academically, although I would have to study the full course from the start again in my first year. This would mean having to spend an extra first year to bring me up to the required level of academic French, and four years in total for my LèsL, a BA in France. However, it was also dependent on the university in Paris accepting me at an interview and this was arranged for the last week in August just after we arrived in France. But Oxford was very understanding about my circumstances and even held my place open for me until the beginning of September.

Well, to cut a long story short I just scraped through the interview and was accepted at the Sorbonne. Dad’s company considered me as still being a dependent student and agreed to pay my fees, so we were not hit as badly financially as we might have been. The following four years passed really quite enjoyably with the family living in a flat on the Ile. Saint Louis, behind Notre Dame, and within a very short walk of the university which also helped me. I made quite a few friends from lots of different countries, in particular Francesca, a very pretty girl from Pisa in Italy who became a genuinely important part of my life from the age of nineteen. Then, by the August of 1964, shortly after I had gained my degree, she was very badly hurt in a car crash. Helen had joined us the previous year to work in a French art gallery after getting her degree and she could see how badly I was hit by the news of Francesca’s accident. She spent a lot of time looking after Mum while I took the rest of the summer break in Pisa with Francesca and her family, helping to cheer her up and suddenly realising for the first time in my life that I was quite hopelessly in love. But it was not the ‘Overjoyed’ moment it should have been.

Her family had a lovely house in Tuscany and it was a treat looking after her. But there is a limit to how much one can do for a girl, however beautiful and encased forever in one’s heart, when she has to be pushed everywhere in a wheelchair and can take just a few steps on crutches, and that on a good day. After four years at university I was at a loss what to do for a career. I had always thought that had I gone to Oxford I would just have stayed there if I could, but there was no way I wanted to live forever in France. The one thing about being really good at a subject as unusual as hagiography, however, was that I could not actually get a job in it. I could have taught it, I suppose, and written books on the subject, which would never have sold, but neither option appealed. So I eventually settled for an offer from a leading American newspaper, the editor had known my family for years and he knew I could write, to work as a general news correspondent in France, Italy and Switzerland. It was to give Francesca this news that I had driven down to Pisa the day after the crash and my news was quite overshadowed by hers.

Although we both could manage reasonably well in English and Italian we always spoke to each other in French. It had been the language of our meeting and subsequent relationship. “Hey, James, don’t look so sad. You have a great opportunity ahead of you if you take it. Think, I will always be able to follow the world news and know you are somewhere in the middle of it.” Her smile was too much for me. Lying there in her room with a crushed leg, broken arm and pelvis and a scar down the left cheek of her lovely face, she seemed to want to say goodbye. I could sense it. But I could never have said goodbye to her and gone on living happily myself. I think she also knew that.

“Cara, I have to start work in Rome in three weeks, and I don’t know how long I shall be there. But I shall come back to see you every week if I can.” She stretched out her good hand and clasped my wrist as hard as she could. Tears trickled down her face but she could not lift her body upright to kiss me as she so badly wanted. Instead I put a hand behind her head and drew her face up to mine and kissed her with all the passion I could convey given her injuries. “I will never leave you, Francesca, never. You will get better, the doctors say so and, no matter how long I may have to wait, one day I will marry you, I promise.” I had not nursed a crippled mother all my life without knowing how to convey love, hope and happiness when deep inside me I doubted even myself. We lived like this for more than two years as she improved very slowly, but always fearing that she would never fully recover.

Luckily the paper liked my work and, as I was unmarried and was thus dispensable, in February 1968 I was posted as one of their two correspondents to Vietnam. The salary was good, even by American standards, and I was assured that most of this could be saved as it was the easiest posting there was for living off expenses. It should have been ‘Overjoyed’ time again, but my employers knew little or nothing about my little Francesca. That wintry day as I told her my news she was inconsolable. “No. My lovely James. No. Give up your job, resign but please don’t go so very far away to die without me. Oh, my James. Please don’t leave me alone.”

It was a dreadful moment. The worst in my life. My lovely Francesca, so stubbornly fighting to return to being the girl I had come to adore. Making such progress, too, only to have the spectre of my putative demise rise up before her and hurt her so cruelly she finally gave in to her true feelings and begged me, if I loved her, to stay with her and we would somehow find a life together. Her scar had almost disappeared and with my help she could walk again, if slowly, and we often went for short strolls together in the beautiful countryside around her home as she clung to me for support both physical and mental. She had not wasted her time since her illness improved and had nearly finished the work to gain her doctorate in languages. But both of us did not know what to do in the new circumstances. My family were really pleased with the success I had made in my career in journalism, and I too had continued studying to the level of D.Hist to please myself. They would have been really upset if I had turned down such a good offer. Her parents prayed regularly for her recovery and took to me almost as a son-in-law in waiting. I would have happily married my Francesca there and then but she was adamant that she could never marry until she was fully well. Then I saw the new circumstances as an opportunity to get my own way in our ongoing dispute over our future,

“Francesca,” it was only four days before I was due to leave, “I want to do a deal with you. I can no more leave you than you can carry on without me. Well I told my boss yesterday that if the Vietnam job had not come up we would have been getting married very soon. He was very understanding and told me that there would be nothing in my contract stopping me from marrying whenever I wanted to. All the newspaper insisted on was that I was not married when they sent me to Asia. So if you came with me and we married after I had started the job that would be fine. But I am the one who is making marriage the condition. As far as I am concerned the fact that you still have physical difficulties moving your legs means nothing to me. I just want you as my wife because I could never be happy carrying on living without making love to you.” I had played the only card I felt I had left.

“My James. Si. For you, si.” Her words lit up my whole world and once again I was ‘Overjoyed’. But we have spoken of the moon before. I wondered what I would find on the other side of this one.

Landing in Saigon for the first time, when rockets and grenades were in the air and all the civilians on the aircraft were so calm it was hard to believe the whole experience was not a dream, it was both so exciting and so exhilarating. My only concern was how Francesca was going to manage disembarking. On the way across the world we had spent a week in Singapore,technically my posting had started by this time, where we had been married having arranged everything before leaving Europe. We had our honeymoon on a mile long beach on the Malay coast and all my lovely wife’s fears that her injuries would make her a total disappointment as a lover were proved completely false as we each found the other everything we could have hoped for.

Most people imagine a war zone that is under daily rocket and mortar attacks is not a nice place to live. But Francesca had a wonderful idea about how to pass her time, while I did my work, keeping my head down as best I could. She was told about a home for blind orphans aged between eight and sixteen, who desperately needed more people to help look after them and educate them. The voluntary medical and social workers were only too glad to have Francesca’s help, limited though it was. She was able to teach the youngsters three languages as well as help them in many practical ways and the set up was both therapeutic for her as well as a help for them. We had a flat in a modern block not long built by the American army for civilian workers involved in administrative war work. Quite a lot of journalists lived in this type of dwelling and we had a small and pleasant community in which we faced the trials of war together. Then one morning real terror struck. An early rocket and mortar barrage flattened the building we lived in and two of my colleagues were killed and several more were badly hurt. I was one of them, but in a way nobody realised at the time.

After spending several hours helping to dig out the injured, I collapsed myself, but with what was at first just thought to be exhaustion. Then came the trauma. After being very dizzy and dopey for about an hour I actually lost consciousness and was out cold for some twelve hours. The medics put it down to stress and fatigue but the following day I found I could not focus properly and eventually was taken to the military hospital from where I was flown, with Francesca, to Manila, the nearest main city with decent American medical facilities. There I was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and we were both flown back to the United States where the newspaper took over the cost and trouble of looking after me. My family were extremely worried and Helen flew out to Los Angeles to see me. My employers appreciated our strange situation, that is our lack of anywhere to live. We had been in Rome and Pisa before going to Asia and I had given up my flat in the Italian capital. What the paper had to decide now was where they wanted me to work as technically I was hired by head office and so I had to return to America, which of course I had, before being posted to my next assignment.

Helen, Francesca and I stayed in a very nice hotel while the company’s doctors made sure that my experience had not left any lasting damage. After a couple of weeks they were happy that I could return to work, but where? In the course of my years travelling round southern Europe much of what I wrote was concerned with religion, politics and sport. But it was all centred on one part of the world and obviously I was going to be of most use returning to my former stomping ground. It was now September 1968 and the paper had just recalled their main European diplomatic correspondent from London to work in Washington. After several days of discussions, about which I knew nothing at the time, thank heavens, I was delighted to be offered the job of chief political correspondent in London. The salary was extremely good and when I asked Francesca if she would like me to accept the offer she was ecstatic.

“You see, James. Everything is now going to be just as we both secretly wanted it to be, isn’t it?” She was more than right. This was ‘Overjoyed’ time with a vengeance and we celebrated that evening with Helen who had to return to Paris the next day. A week later we followed and were given two weeks to find a house to live in in England and in general settle down before I went back to work. The best part of that particular period was receiving the news that under the paper’s insurance rules I qualified for a handsome injury compensation package, on top of the money I had managed to save during the six months odd I had worked in Vietnam. This left me with enough to buy a lovely house on the Thames in South West London and still have a nest egg saved to help us start a completely new life. Francesca, too, was so much better that everything really was turning out as well as it could. Well almost.

Sadly, just after Christmas 1968 my mother became very ill and in the following February she died. Dad was badly shaken, but had been expecting it for quite some time so managed to continue in his position in Paris where he now had a circle of close friends and colleagues, including Helen who had recently married, and was particularly happy for Francesca and me. It had been on March the twenty first, 1960, that the Sharpeville shooting started the whole sequence of events that led to my life taking the path it did. I had a good job, but I still spent a lot of time keeping up with my favourite subject, the lives of the Saints. I had written two books on the subject but not the sort of work that one would expect to sell in their millions. But I enjoyed writing them much more than the modest income I got from them.

Now for the last shot at the moon that seals this circular series of events which constitute these closely linked memories. On the tenth anniversary of Sharpeville, in 1970, I was at a party given to raise funds for all anti racist movements throughout the world when who should I bump into but the senior tutor who interviewed me at Oxford when I applied for a place there eleven years earlier. He was fascinated by what I was doing and had kept up with my work, especially my books. I told him about the story of Francesca and me and he was really interested in how much we had managed to study even during our war torn years. Three days later I received a letter inviting us both to the college where several professors and lecturers were interested in our story. So interested in fact that we were asked if we would like to give a lecture a term each on our experiences and the subjects in which we each now held Italian doctorates. We could hardly believe it. We may not have been offered ‘life for ever’ at Oxford, but regular working visits to the academic atmosphere we both loved started later that year and is still going on today.

In fact every time I spot one of our two grandchildren in the auditorium when I am lecturing I get an odd thumping feeling. Francesca says it is my reward for having done the right thing and put the rest of my family, and those I loved, first in my life.

But Helen only smiles and tells me that it is simply the wonderful feeling of being Overjoyed again. Only now I just enjoy it. I really don’t know why, but I have lost all interest in what lies on the other side of the beautiful moon of 2014. All I know is that God has been very good to all of us and I am just grateful and happy for all He has done for my family and especially my lovely wife.

———————–

The following is my short offering for November 26 . I hope it is how things really happened.

Hope Is As Hope Does

A schoolboy was sauntering along the leafy lane where his house was cosily concealed among the trees. The dreary day ahead of him, with self important pedagogues spouting their second hand drivel at him, leaving him little better informed than when he set out, held no appeal.

He dragged his heels and swung his school bag lazily as the summer sun began to warm his twelve year old frame and made him pine for a more interesting way to spend his day.

 “Hey, ho”, he sighed as he entered the timbered schoolroom.” I hope the classics and Italian classes will be interesting. If only the old fool would put some, action, passion, excitement and worthwhile meaning into the re-telling of his tales. I hope I never bore people to death with such shallow words when I can see stories could be so much better told.

 The poem for that day was the Italian original of Troilus and Cressida. As the master bored on in a monotone, the boy could see a lively, living, human tragedy unfold. If acted by players and exploring the darkest side of human nature, together with the awful consequences of mistaken identity and misplaced trust in love, exploited by an amoral excuse for a friend. It could keep the audience enthralled.

 That night at home his parents were amazed as their son spent four hours writing on blank school manuscript sheets until every candle was used up. Finally he put down his quill, murmuring to himself, “Well that should not bore them, even if I have only finished the first act”.

The next day being Sunday the boy and his parents drove over to the nearby farm where they had long been friends with the prosperous owners. Now the young boy who dreamed his way to school each day, was just at that age when girls were becoming interesting. The farmer had four daughters and the youngest, and prettiest, took up all his time when he was there. To impress her he told her what he had written.

“Have you really written such a thing?” she asked wide-eyed.”

 “Yes. I shall dedicate it to you and give you the first copy!” True to his word, when it was finished he hurried to the farm and she was overjoyed. But, as the years passed, their friendship never turned to full blown love, although they remained good friends. Thus he was not surprised when, at the age of eighteen, she told him she was going to marry someone else. But she also gave him back his first manuscript.

 Now the farmer’s eldest daughter was some nine years older than her youngest sister and could see nothing but a life of spinsterhood ahead of herself. “I do hope I don’t die an old maid”, she sighed when she attended her sister’s wedding. Then slowly a way to avoid this startedto take shape in her head. “Now why didn’t I think of that before?” she smiled, as she began to put her plan into action.

 A few days later she purposely waylaid our hero as he made his way over to the farm. She was no startling beauty but an attractive young woman of twenty seven summers. She approached him with a blushing smile upon her cheeks.

 “While my sister was unwed I could not come between you. But you must know how much I love you and have done for so long. They tell me that you are going to London soon and I was afraid I would never see you again. We know how clever you are and success could make you forget us.” All the while she was slipping her arm through his and round his waist as she gently led him towards the old tithe barn. I leave it to my reader’s imagination to guess how much an eighteen year-old boy enjoyed being seduced by an experienced lady nine years his senior.

 I have to take you forward now to a scene in London some twenty years later. The audience were still applauding the maestro’s latest work. As the author, with his wife and three children, were leaving the theatre a critic rushed up to him and asked,

“Were you pleased with your latest success, Sir?”

 “Oh, I hope I will always go on being pleased when the audience applaud me as they do,” he answered. And, turning to his wife asked, “What about you Ann?”

 She looked at her lovely family and husband and simply said, “Oh Will, you know how happy your success makes me!” Then added silently to herself, “Thank Heaven I read your first manuscript before my sister gave it back to you”.

From today I am posting a short story each day until December 1 when I shall start posting my latest novel, “John and Gemma”  a chapter a day for a couple of weeks. Should any publishing house want to publish it just contact me and we can discuss terms.  Ciao. Anton

My story for November 25th is called.

FOR JILL

The Horses were already running when I placed my bet but the bookies accepted it. Boy did I need that money. The horse was 33 to 1 which meant £340 up if it won and another £75 as it placed in the first three. Just the £75 would have left me with enough hope to place a few more bets that afternoon. I needed to come out of the betting shop with at least £500 pounds in my pocket if I was to pay off my gambling debts at the Golden Goose pub that night.

My gee-gee came in first and I coolly put £415 in my pocket. I took out my phone and rang Jill. “Hi, sweetie. It’s me. Yes me! Okay, okay so I should have been there half an hour ago but I was held up. But I’ll be at the King’s Head pub in ten minutes. Please don’t stand me up.” All she said was

“You don’t deserve it, loser, but I’ll be there.”

As I walked into the King’s Head on the main shopping street I spotted her immediately, hunched over a glass with a long straw sticking out of it touching the tip of her long, blonde hair. She wasn’t drinking, just sitting awkwardly, half forward, to lessen what seemed to be a pain in her shoulder blade. She winced as I approached her table and almost drew back, but not quite, as I kissed her cheek. Then I did a really stupid thing. I was so pleased with myself that I took the fat roll out of my pocket and slapped it down on the table in front of her.

“Loser? It’s all yours, Jillie, count it, over four hundred there and all for my only little lover.” Her eyes almost popped out of her head as she counted the twenty twenty pound notes, a tenner and a fiver.”

“For heaven’s sake put that out of sight, Henry, wherever you knicked it from. Anyone may be watching us.”

“Jillie! Didn’t you hear me, it’s yours. I just won it on ‘All for love’ at 33-1 in the two o’clock at Kempton. It came in first, and I promised you all I won today didn’t I? Look, lover, you know I don’t win twice in a day so take it for God’s sake before I change my mind!”

“Are you serious Henry? You won all that, and you really want to give it to me?”

“Let me top up your drink and we’ll go through the whole situation again. Okay?” And I ordered a double Campari and Soda for myself and another Vodka and orange mixer for her. As I put them on the table she beckoned to me to sit next to her and awkwardly turned to face me. There was a hint of tears in her eyes as she held fast to my hand in a squeeze that said and meant more to me than anything else she could have done.

“Henry, you are a darling but please don’t. You need that for tonight and the other hundred which I’ve just managed to scrape together for you.” While speaking she took £15 out of the money I had given her and added five more twenty pound notes to the rest. “Look, when we meet again I want to see you as beautiful as you are, not with your face cut open by one of Roy’s goons because you couldn’t pay your debts. Please Henry,” and she pressed the money back into my hand. “If you really, really love me pay your debts tonight and we’ll talk about the future tomorrow. Henry, for me?”

“Oh you must love me a lot to trust me with five hundred quid when the racing’s still on. Are you sure?”

“Henry, I’m as sure as you are that you will go through all the temptations in heaven and hell until you put that money in Roy’s hand tonight, but when you do you have no idea what it will feel like! Believe me, I know!” I believed her and made a really firm promise to myself that the £500 in my hand was going to Roy at 7.00pm that evening and nowhere else. I zipped it into my inside waistcoat pocket and then noticed Jill still wasn’t drinking.

“You okay, love? You’re not drinking and your shoulder seems very painful. Let me take you back to the flat and have a look at it for you.”

She almost snatched her arm away from me in agony and then slumped forward the pain was so bad. I did not want to hear any more explanations. I just led her slowly out of the pub and then drove the ten minute journey to our flat by the common. She let me help her up the steps, but was about to pass out when I literally swept her off her feet, up the stairs and then laid her on her bed.

“Jill, darling, if you’ve suffered what I think you have I have only one thing I need to do now.” And before she could reply I undid the back of her dress and bared the four inch knife wound down her shoulder blade. My first priority was to wash it, disinfect it and bandage it up, my temper rising by the second. Finally I calmed down  enough to speak sensibly.

“Was it Roy? Don’t lie to protect me. Jill was it?” She was crying now and nodded her head. “Oh Henry please don’t do anything silly. He said this was just to make sure you’d pay him somehow. He knows he and his mates could beat you to a pulp in seconds, so if you love me, please just give him the money Henry. Please. Then we’ll go away and start again. If you love me Henry, please.”

For the next half an hour I just held her close to me and kissed her. Not a word from either of us. Then I got up and smiled at my Jillie.

It was only four o’clock but I told her I needed some Dutch courage then added, “I’m off to pay Roy for you my love, you have my word of honour. I’ll be back at 7.30 as you asked. But don’t move out of this flat or open the door to anyone but me. Okay?” She smiled but did not look as though she believed me. She just wished me good luck.

The one precaution that any inveterate gambler should take once he knows how addicted he is is to set up a really good rain cheque that he can call in whenever he needs it. But the one thing he should never do is to make it a debt repayable in money. Well that is what I had done four years earlier when Micky Bowen lost a grand to me in a poker match. He couldn’t pay but I came to an agreement with him. If ever I needed two men to accompany me to pay a bet he’d provide them and no questions asked. We had remained good pals and now the time had come. I got him on his mobile and told him I had to meet Roy at the Golden Goose at 7.00pm. I asked if he and two others could meet me there at 6.55pm. He assured me he wouldn’t let me down.

I was shaking like a leaf when I entered the pub at six minutes to seven. Roy was at the bar and seemed genuinely surprised to see me. His grin stretched from ear to ugly ear.

“‘Ere look lads. The cowardly toff’ s turned up. Got the dosh, mate?”

I looked straight at him and said, “I don’t remember inviting you to address me. Kindly confine your remarks to those thick idiots you are too scared to go anywhere without to protect you.” The barman, Bill, just looked at me in despair.

“Now, now boys. No fighting inside. In the street if you must.”

“Bill I have no intention of fighting anyone so I presume you were  speaking to that fat lump and his goons.”Then I did speak to Roy. “How much do you consider I owe you?”

“That’s better, sonny. Five hundred and quick.” I smiled and took a pink 500 dollar Monopoly game note out of my pocket and made it into a toy paper plane which I then floated at him.

All I said was, “Quits, I think,”and I turned on my heel to walk out. Immediately his two minders shot forward to grab me, but they were just too late. The two men who had walked up behind me each drew out a sawn off shot gun and aimed it straight at one of the heavies. They stopped where they stood before backing off. Then I went up to Roy and seeing the naked fear in his face I removed his wallet from his pocket and took £1,500 in notes out of it.

“That is the cost of the treatment my wife will have to pay to recover from the wound you gave her. Thank you. I owe you £500, so, being a man of honour, I shall return it to you. And putting the £500 Jillie had given me back in his wallet I pocketed the rest and slowly poured the remains of his pint of beer over his head.

My two friends still held their guns pointing at Roy’s goons as I walked to the door. Then as we were leaving they both fired at the same time. The water guns soaked Roy and his minders but before they had time to move we were all out the door and away in the car Micky had waiting for us. It sped away with no number plates. We picked up Jill and made London airport just in time to catch the Rome flight she had booked us on.

Micky and his heavies from Glasgow melted into thin air, Roy was never going to find them again. It all happened so fast Jill did not have time to ask for an explanation until we were airborne. “Well darling I was glad you had a passport at the flat. I always carry mine. I kept my word completely giving Roy the exact same notes you handed me. Then I kept £1,500 from his wallet.

“After texting you to collect your things and book the flights I had one last flutter on the 4.45 and 5.15 at Kempton and 5.00 and 5.30 at Haydock. A lovely little four horse accumulator that paid 9-1, 16-1, 25-1 and 40-1, all bet with the last £5 in my pocket. I won £906,100 which should keep us going for quite a while if we give up betting!”

She could hardly believe me.

“But Henry, Henry what did you do with all that money? Where is it? You couldn’t take it in cash and you’re bankrupt in England so it can’t be in a bank!”

I smiled lovingly at her. “Well £6,100 of it is in cash in my pocket with the other £1,500 from Roy, and the rest is in an account, €1,125,000 to be exact, in your name, in Geneva. I must show you how I wrote your signature.” And I did not forget to hand her her cheque book and withdrawal slips so she could set us up to use the money as we wanted to.

“The cash in my pocket, worth €9,500 euros, will see us through a couple of weeks or more until we straighten everything out.” But Jillie was looking rather pale.

“Henry what name did you open my account in? Not my real name I hope!”

“Why not, isn’t it your name?”

“Yes, my love, since we were married three weeks ago it is, but my passport back dates our wedding by some five years!”

I could hardly stop laughing. “I hoped it might, Jillie, that’s why I’ve got our wedding certificate with me. The account’s in your maiden name!”