STORIES FROM RORY No. 5

 

Scarab

They say you should never try to overhear other people’s conversations but this one was irresistible.

I’d known young Timothy had taken the scarab, that strange little beetle made of some unknown (but unbelievably precious) metal, though  you just weren’t sure what.

But it was supposed to bring the owner luck, wasn’t it?

Still, who believes the old wives’ tales?  The others hadn’t noticed it was missing, so where’s the harm?  Gran wouldn’t notice because she’s dead.  Seems I’m the only one who actually recognises the truth.

But what to do?  Wouldn’t it just bring its own bad luck to the boy if I said

anything??

I won’t tell, anyway.  I’ve got too many things already that I’m ashamed of.

No.  I won’t tell.

After the funeral we went back to Gran’s old house where Auntie May had organised a meal outside by the  fountain.   The full moon had cast a bright light  over the proceedings as we settled down to talk about Gran’s childhood and youth  all that time ago and tried so hard to avoid the topic of possible inheritance.  Would the estate be divided among her relatives  or given to one of her innumerable good causes, all involving animals of some kind?  Well, we’d find out tomorrow at the reading of the will.

And so next day we gathered  round, all eager for revelation, sadness seemingly forgotten.

The process was very short.

As the youngest of the grandchildren, Timothy would receive everything.

Not entirely unexpected but still a shock.  But why?

It seems gran had felt, in all her years of growing old, that Timothy was the only one she felt would do something interesting  with her unsought-for millions.

I was still wondering as I reached my front door.  Feeling about in my pocket for my key I felt something unfamiliar.

Of course.  That bringer of good fortune.  The little scarab.

Anne Hill

Harab Scarab

I was excited to be invited to be to join the chess team.

Not that I really knew much about Chess. It would be a break from the norm, I suppose, so I agreed to take up on the invitation.

I didn’t really know what I had let myself in for, as the team were made up of tip-top champions.

It was just luck that a former member had come in, and he asked permission if he could be my guide.

It set off an argument, as he was the crème de la crème of Chess.

However, when the argument passed over, they agreed to allow him to talk me through the game.

I must say that it was unusual for this to happen. Rules is rules, but sometimes it is good to break all the rules.

He whispered to me move the tower block Behind the Queen. I did everything he asked and I actually won the game! It was only by the grace of the guide that I took the challenge, so I felt guilty about it.

Whew! I was glad when the game finished, it was quite daunting to say the least.

All’s well that ends well, and members were happy enough while sitting at the bar drinking.

My guide said to me, “Right, now I am going to give you lessons, and you will be the best chess player ever. “

The lessons were hard but I was a very keen pupil. I learned very quickly and became a member of the local chess club.

I was winning so many sittings and the club began to branch out into other parts of the world.

We had games by moonlight and we were sat underneath a waxing crescent moon.

It was quite humid, so after the game (which I had won) I had a light- bulb moment and suggested that we go for a dip in the nearby fountain to cool off.

I hadn’t realised someone was there, and eavesdropping, listening in. The police were waiting for us as we reached the fountain. I had no idea that dipping in the fountain was outlawed. Oh dear!

We were put into a very dingy cell for the night and fined a great deal of money. I kissed my winnings goodbye.

The scales of justice in this country were unbalanced. I found out, after we had left the country and got back home, that there had been someone else caught by the police – who turned out to be not Police but crooks, and they had collected quite a haul of money from the Chess players that had won.

So, Harab Scarab, the scales have now tipped the right way, and those crooked Police are sitting in jail and have had to forfeit their takings for court costs.

That will teach them to listen at the keyhole, so to speak, and I hope that person is in jail with them!

Josephine Smith

Under the Table

But where was the beetle going to?

She knelt down on the floor to see, threading her way through the rails that held the legs of the dining-chairs stiffly in place. She loved having an adventure in this way, imagining that she was in a cavern, or making her way through the roots of a fairy-tree, or –

She stopped moving, and pulled her legs up tightly behind her. The door of the dining-room had opened. She wasn’t quite sure that she should be in here, and while she believed that what wasn’t forbidden was allowed, she didn’t know if everyone else believed the same thing. Best to be quiet.

Two men. She could see their shoes. One was her father – scruffy suede, worn shiny and thin, her mother had always called them a disgrace. The other – well, his shoes were shiny, too, but deliberately so, mirror-bright, and his trousers had creases you could cut your fingers on. His voice sounded the same, scalpel-like.

“Let me understand precisely what you require of me,” he said. “Your daughter is beginning to display the kind of traits that distinguished your wife – ” He paused, as though waiting for a qualification, like late or ex, but none came, so he simply breathed and continued, “and you are hoping that the sort of education which I can give her will… divert her from that course, and lead her into a more normal path of development?”

Big words, she thought, they always use big words, because they think I don’t understand them – but I do, because I can read… and then she realised that they didn’t know she was there, which meant that they used big words anyway, probably to disguise from themselves the horrible nature of the things they were saying.

She kept still, wondering whether she’d be able to learn anything more about where her mother was, or what had happened to her, because right now she no longer believed any of the stories she’d been told, about having to nurse her grandmother, or visit her aunts, or go on a lecture-tour with book-signings…

“Yeah, that’s it, you got it,” said her father, and she felt betrayed, because he wouldn’t even take into his mouth the simple words that gave away what he intended to have happen to her.

She knew very well what those traits were that distinguished her mother. Her mother had told her how her father – from the best of motives, her mother had said, though whether she really believed that or not was never quite clear – if you love someone enough, you want to believe them, even against all reason – had tried to find a combination of drugs, measured, measured, carefully measured, grain by grain, scruple by scruple (oh, those words she had learned, that seemed to be all to do with weighing things, but meant so much more) to make her happy, to make her normal… They seemed simple, short words, but used like that they still hid so much!

Tucked up in the thicket of the dining-chair legs, she began to understand why they had left the country, why they had come to live in the city, on the fourteenth floor, behind doors that were behind doors that were behind doors – a princess in a tower! Weren’t they always put in towers, princesses? To keep them safe – well, that’s what the men said, anyway. But it wasn’t true, was it? It was just that if they were in a tower they would still look pretty, whereas if you locked them away in a dungeon they would pine and grow pale and get damp and dirty and covered with spider’s webs, and their lovely dresses would rot…

There was some scrabbling on the table above her head. Paper was being unfolded. She knew the sound of paper. She loved the sound of paper when she wrote her stories… Crinkling – the sound of writing – a contract was being signed! Promises, promises, promises in writing! Oh, no – that couldn’t end well! Contracts like that were always made with the Devil in the stories she read!

Still, still, she had to stay still – and she did, while the shoes went away, and the door clattered open and clicked shut, and she was free again.

And now the idea had to come, the light had to go on in her head, the illumination that would change everything.

Her mother had escaped from this prison, from this tower – but had not been able to take her along… She had to escape now, before that man with the mirror-shoes and the scalpel trousers cut the imagination out of her. She would have to dream of her mother, harder and longer than she had ever dreamed, it would be difficult to reach her, but she must try – she must check the phases of the moon, as her mother had always told her to do, because they were important – if she could even see the moon from here – but if not, she knew they printed the phases in diaries, like the big one her father had on his desk – she must know – she must know –

And then, for no reason she knew, all that enthusiasm drained out of her. It was, she thought, like the way they turned off the big fountain in the plaza, before winter came. One moment, the jet sprang up towards the sky, and the next it dribbled wanly, and even the pool into which it had fallen with rainbow splashes, drained down the dark holes, leaving only slimy, cracked tiles.

How could there ever be escape for her?

And that was when she noticed the beetle again. It had turned round, and was crawling back towards her: a playmate, a friend – a sign! For, encountering her outstretched hand, it had paused, unwilling to be forestalled and prevented and captured, and had unfolded what looked like a solid carapace to reveal wings – wings! And now it was fluttering round the room, up, up, out of sight, out of reach!

That, she thought, would be enough to keep her alive – despite education!

Mike Rogers

STORIES FROM RORY No.4

 

TRICK

The theatre had been closed for years. Surplus to requirements. There were already three cinemas in the town, and one of those had been bingoed. Some entrepreneur had tried to use the building for storage, turn it into a sort of warehouse, but the little twisty stairs, and the rake of the auditorium, and the dry-rot in the stage had made him give up.

The last poster was still stuck firmly on the board at the entrance, faded, rain-streaked, and beginning to tatter. Hal Preston looked at it, as the rain dripped off the brim of his top-hat and ran down his cloak, whose magic didn’t extend to being waterproof.

He hadn’t had to change his name much to follow his chosen profession – drop a letter here, alter one there – but people didn’t want magic any more – not his kind, anyway. He leant heavily on his shiny black cane, hoping it wouldn’t decide to turn into a bunch of flowers when what he needed was its everyday support. It hadn’t been deliberate, coming back to the town where he gave his last show. He hadn’t even looked at where the train was going, just got into it, to get out of the cold and wet, hoping there’d be no one to check his non-existent ticket, and he’d been right.

But he couldn’t magic away the cold and wet, and they’d knocked down the waiting-room at the station, just left the clock as a reminder of mortality, and put up the all-seeing eye of the CCTV so they could get in the security guard to move along anyone they didn’t like the look of. That was why he’d staggered and stumbled his way towards the town centre – insofar as it had a centre any more, shops boarded up, and the ones that were open and had their lights on all hair-dressers, and nail-bars, and sellers of thirty different varieties of coffee.

Time for the skill he still possessed, the one that had got him out of trunks and padlocks and chains. He knew the alleyway with the stage-door in it – but it stank now, and his feet crunched on styrofoam cups and burger boxes, and sloshed through a deep puddle where the drain was blocked by badness knew what. The paint had flaked, and the lettering was gone, but he stood on the dry step under the little awning, and let his lock-picks work their still reliable magic.

Closing the door shut out the world that had shut him out. He ignored the musty smell – most theatres smell like that, behind the scenes. There’s always a bit of rot underneath, and the scent of places where people wait, often nervously, before the bright light shines on them, to show them up and show them off.

Up the bare wooden stairs he went, to the dressing-rooms. What he wanted to try would be better done there, where the lights might work – on the darkened stage, it would be impossible.

He settled on the one with the biggest mirror, and the largest number of bulbs left round it. Looking at his image, he knew he’d been right to keep his costume, even as everything else had been sold or pawned piecemeal for little bits of food and shelter.

He closed his eyes to concentrate. The words were still there in his head – the ones he’d been taught, when he was only a lad who could do card tricks and a bit of sleight of hand, and the Great Marvo had taken him on as an assistant, to hump the trunks around and be sawn in half twice nightly.

“Be careful,” the Great Marvo had said. “Never use these unless you really have to. They are for the Last Trick. You’ll know when you need them.”

Well, he needed them now. But he still felt he had to work up to the climax, to the Great Vanishing Trick. And so he did, by doing his small ones first, the ones he loved, the ones the kids had loved. And finally, finally… he said the words that would make him vanish.

The security guard had seen him, on the CCTV, the Big Eye, that was across the road from the theatre, had seen him go up the alleyway and disappear, so, eventually, when the rain stopped, he went to investigate. He had seen light in one of the windows at the top, and used his key to get in through the stage-door, and followed the wet footsteps all the way up to where they stopped, in the dressing-room where the lights blazed round the big mirror.

On the floor, there was a bunch of flowers. As the security guard picked them up, they folded back into an elegant black cane. He laughed, and walked across to the shelf in front of the mirror, where the make-up would have been. Instead, there were three other things, the kind of things, he vaguely remembered, that people who knew how could make appear out of thin air: an apple, and a goldfish swimming in a bowl, and a hibernating tortoise.

And that was all.

Mike Rogers

And here are the cubes:

Missing

I feel distraught as my little tortoise is missing. I’ve inspected every nook and cranny in the house. I then remembered that I’d left the back door open yesterday. Oh no, if she’s got out onto the road then it’s possible she’s been knocked down.

I ran outside and checked the verges and road. And then I looked into the woodland at the back of our house. I could hear music coming from somewhere close by, and it was playing The Eye of the Tiger. I loved the song, but at this moment it is getting on my nerves. If only I could see the eye of my tortoise, I will be so happy.

I had my walking stick with me, and used it to lift the bushes to inspect if she is there. No joy, and I thought, Oh, where are you, little tortoise?

A walker came towards me and he asked me what’s wrong, also what am I looking for? I explained about my missing pet. The answer I received knocked me backwards. “Get yourself a goldfish, and then you will know where it is.”

I thought, You cheeky blighter, thanks for the help!

I gazed at the walking stick, wishing it was a magic wand; still, it’s no good wishing.

I came to a cherry tree and felt relief for the shade from the hot sun. The blossom covered the ground and the perfume is wonderful.

Feeling fed up now, I thought, I might as well give this up, as she’s gone. I put my left foot out and then my right. I began the trek back to our house and felt downhearted. What will I tell the kids when they get home?

I suppose I have to tell the truth, and this is going to be a nightmare. They will be so upset.

Perhaps the walker is right, about buying a goldfish. At least I won’t have to waste a day searching for it.

Getting home I drew myself a drink of water from the tap, as I’m parched.

The clock on the wall says it’s time to pick the kids up from school.

They came running out of school laughing and fooling around. My daughter said, “Why have you got a sad look on your face Mum.” I took a deep breath and dreaded the thought of explaining our missing tortoise. The children are so happy, how can I bring their spirits low?

It was then I saw our little tortoise, in my son’s hands.

I took a deep breath and just explained why the sad face.

“I thought we had lost her for good. Why didn’t you tell me you were going to bring her to school today?”

“Sorry, Mum, but teacher asked us if anyone has a tortoise and I said yes. And then she asked me to bring it into school for a lesson. Today we’ve been painting tortoises. It felt cool to have my own tortoise to show off to the class. The other children love her.”

Josephine Smith

My day out

On waking I decided to go for a walk, as it was such a nice day. Taking my coat off the hook in the hall, and putting on my shoes, I went out of the front door into the brilliant sunshine.

After walking for a while, I met a young lady with a sad face. I found out later that she was sad because she had just lost her pet cat. She looked me straight in the eye and asked if I knew if there was a pet shop close by. After thinking for a while, I remembered one on the high street so I said, “If you want, I will show you where it is.”

“Thank you she replied.”

So off we went. When we got to the pet shop, I opened the door for her and followed her in. She had told me on the journey that she had had a fish tank given to her and she needed something to put into it. After looking around the shop for a while she was in two minds whether to get a fish or a small turtle; deciding on a turtle, the shop keeper put it into a plastic bag with a drop of water and we left the shop.

Looking at my watch, I realised that the time was moving on, so I asked the young lady, who I found out was called Ann, if she would like a bite to eat, and when she agreed we called into a cafe that I knew did a wonderful meal.

We started going out regularly after that, and now we have been married for twelve years and have two wonderful children.

Ken Smith

The Catch

You have to pretend, don’t you?  When someone shows such enthusiasm you have to go along with it, try to look interested and even try to share his passion as far as you can.

One thing, the weather’s dry, even got a faint glimmer of sunlight creeping up over the horizon.

Of course that can change.  It generally does when it’s this early in the morning but you have to hope for the best.

The clock on the  church tower tells us it’s nearly eight o’clock.  His things are all spread out around him, his rod, of course, then his bag of bait and the keep-net, that prison which takes the little trout and confines them, hopeless and afraid, until it’s time for them to be smashed against a rock and so end their joyous lives among the streams.

I don’t wait to watch them being caught.  Don’t share his excitement as he reels in another victim.  I’ve done my share by coming.

The river bank’s familiar of course.  A mile or so along there’s an old apple tree which will reward my deviation with a few sweet bites.  It always does.

I take the walking stick to make sure the going’s a little easier.  It’s not so bad.  It’s not raining.  Not yet.  And I’m not alone, surely.  That recent footprint in the mud must mean I could meet someone a little further along.

And I’m right.  I call out.  She stops and turns.

“Gemma, is that really you?”

And so we meet and hug, my best friend from all those years ago.

How had we lost touch?  A shadow of sadness falls across her face as she tells me of her much regretted marriage and I tell her of mine. So much sadness for both of us.

We walk  up to the pub a few yards further on.

But we’ll meet again, of course we will. We can’t wait to arrange it. Only we’ll have some lunch here now.

Just not the local trout.

Anne Hill