Sounds - a short love story.

The sound reached her over the babble of voices and the background drone of traffic.

Funny, isn't it?  The way certain sounds can bring back poignant memories ... in just a split second, something buried deep in one's mind, springs forth vividly, triggered by a sound ... The way, even years later, we can recognize somebody's voice?  Even though we haven't seen them, and barely even thought of them for several years, their voice is unique.

She'd have known his anywhere.

Hers was not a love story with a dramatic start, nor a dramatic ending.  There was not a eureka moment, no crash of thunder, nothing of any note to it really.  Not really.  Hers was an ordinary love story, without guile or guilt.  Oh, there was passion - of course! - and there were tears - that was inevitable.  But it wasn't a story you'd think you could tell, nor one you'd think would stay in anybody's mind, let alone hers.

She barely reacted when she heard his voice.  But she knew it instantly.  She didn't raise her head.  She didn't glance round.  And if she had done so, it would have been out of simple curiosity.  What does he look like now, that man ?  Would he know me ?  Would he care ?  And anyway, what do I care ?  What do I care ?

She bent her head down to her son's shoe and tried to be interested.  He was past the age when she could choose for him.  In fact, he wasn't even interested in her opinion, in typical teenage fashion, as though she was some ancient creature from a different world who knew nothing.

Funny how they all go through that phase, isn't it?

"Ready, Ben ?" she asked.

She went over to the till and paid and, as she turned, she permitted herself a glance at the man.  She was conscious that her heart missed a beat, just momentarily.  There was the slightest hint of a tightening in her throat.  Well, she hadn't expected him to have not changed at all, she comforted herself.  Of course it was a bit of a shock.  Rick - that same thick brown hair that tumbled lazily over his forehead.  She could even see those piercingly blue eyes.  Not tall, but undeniably good-looking, he had not changed one iota.  As though he somehow made time stand still.  She could ... just for a split second ... recall his body odour, feel the warmth of him.  She recognized that posture he always adopted when standing still, one hand in his pocket, more weight on one leg than the other.  He was looking down at a small boy of about three or four.

The child, struggling with a sock, looked up and Rick then crouched down to help.  He was saying something about socks and toes, and she heard the child call him daddy.

Ben had sat down again and was replacing his old shoes with the new ones, grubby socked feet up on the bench.

"Thanks mum, these are great!" he exclaimed.

"That's OK, Ben," she replied, perhaps slightly loudly, "they look good.  Sure you want to put them on now?"

But Rick didn't react.  No, he wouldn't, would he ?  Although she would always remember him, he probably didn't remember her at all.  She calculated.  Do you know, that is twelve years ago now ?!

That was him through and through, wasn't it ?  It wasn't that he was selfish, it was more that  he just didn't register things.  He made decisions and acted on those decisions. He had forgotten her very quickly, and that was that.

She had been one of his decisions.  So had Ben.

Ben was two at the time.  The first time she saw Rick one frozen January day by the pier in Brighton.  The wind whipped in over the Channel and it was not pleasant to be out.  The sun was hidden behind thick rainless cloud, and had been for several days, and huge seagulls dipped and cried on the air streams.  For a long time afterwards she hated the sound of seagulls.  Some men were working on a steel structure of some kind just off the beach, and she stopped, thinking it might entertain Ben.  But the child was not interested and sat woodenly in his buggy, thoroughly huddled and almost immobile in anorak with yellow lambs, and several wooly things.  I'll get him home, it's too cold, she thought, and she swung the buggy round.

She didn't see the man, or him her.  Head down against the cold, the man was dashing by.  She was never certain whether he tripped over the edge of the buggy or whether she ran the buggy in to his legs ... but the buggy tipped over and the man went with it.  Later he told friends he was spread-eagled like a human sacrifice - splat! - on the pavement, but that wasn't true.  He sort-of stumbled, could have fallen, righted himself and instantly bent to right the buggy.

"You idiot!" she screeched, checking Ben for injury, worriedly looking in to the bewildered little face, "why don't you look where you are going?!!"

"I'm sorry," replied the man, "but I don't think he is hurt.  I am so sorry about that."

She saw that he held Ben's hat in his hand and she snatched it away from him and pulled it back over Ben's ears.   She calmed herself.

"Sorry," she said, "I am sorry too.  I didn't mean to yell.  I was frightened, that's all."

That was all.  There was no thunderbolt.  He apologized again and they went their separate ways.

It may have been that he had followed her.  He always denied it emphatically.  Said it was coincidence.  But such a coincidence in a city like Brighton didn't seem plausible.  But it may have been coincidence.  Who could say ?

He was standing outside her block of flats, just behind The Lanes, leaning against the door frame and reading The Times.  It was about three days later.

Their love affair was ... well, just like a love affair.  Sometimes intense and passionate, but also about getting to work on time and getting some food in.  There was Ben to take to the childminder and the dustbins to put out.  Life, with love or without it, goes on.

And she was so in love.  Total and complete love.  I love you, I love you, I love you she told him.  And he laughed and kissed the end of her nose, her nipples, her feet.  He never told her he loved her but he didn't have to - it was written all over his face.

He was remarkably good with Ben.  Said he liked kiddies.  He had a car seat installed in the back of his car and, as his flat was considerably larger, bought a rocking horse and rigged up a small bed that could be folded away.   Once she asked him if he already had a child, for he seemed such a natural - would even absently jiggle the buggy if Ben was fractious, or pick up a dropped toy.

Winter limped greyly in to spring.  The huge waves that had crashed icily on the Brighton pebbles calmed a little and scudding clouds heralded the approach of warmer days.  There was a faint smell of grass in the air and the purple shadows of winter faded in to blue.   Together they attached window boxes to the balcony windows of both their flats and planted primroses and violets.  They hung up bird feeders and Rick tried - oh, totally unsuccesfully! - to take photos of the wrens and tits as they hovered to peck out the seeds.  Starlings built their nests under the eaves of Rick's building and made such a lot of noise once the eggs were hatched.  Such a lot of noise.  That was another sound that stayed with her for a long time.

Occasionally his work took him away for a few days.  He was in banking - something complicated no doubt.  She worked in a clothes' shop.  Sometimes she feared she seemed a little daft by comparison, but if it was so he didn't show it.

"Shall we go to Corfu?" he asked suddenly one evening.

"Corfu?" she asked, "how d'you mean shall we go?"

"A holiday?"

"Oh!" she laughed, "I can't possibly afford it!"

"Well, I can," he said, and she realized then that he had already booked it.

Lovely surprise jarred against irritation at not even being consulted.  Surprise won.

Ben loved the beach.  They spent evenings on their hotel balcony, often having food delivered to the room so that Ben could sleep safely.  They strolled through the little streets.  They held hands, kissed, made love.  He bought her way too many presents.  He bought Ben way too many presents.  He was fun, laughing, indulgent.

Happiness is so huge when you are happy.  It is wide.  It covers the sky.  It encompasses you.

She told her parents about him.  She told everybody about him.

"Is he Mr Right?" asked her mother, delightfully old-fashioned.

"Yes, he is.  He is The One.  We get along brilliantly and he adores Ben.  He hasn't said anything ... I think he just assumes that we are together now and that one day we'll move in together, get a bigger place ... We just haven't started talking about it."

"It must be getting on for a year now?" her mother then said.  "Early days still!"

Summer faded off in to the faraway places and leaves trembled and started to fall.  The warmth in the sun decreased and a thin wind scuttled through The Lanes, bringing with it chilly mornings and darker evenings.   They spent more and more time together in his flat where there was an open fire.  Cosy evenings with wine and nuts and a good movie while the toddler slept.  The Christmas lights came on in the streets, and dipped and twinkled against the dark sky.  They got a tree and decorated it together.  They all went to her parents' house in Hove for Christmas lunch.  On Boxing Day they lolled by the fire in his flat.

"I'm being transferred to Tokyo," he said suddenly one evening.

It was just over a year since the buggy incident.  Rain beat against the window panes of her flat - they were in her flat.  They had popped into fetch spare clothes for Ben.  She didn't understand.  Was this another holiday coming up ?

"Tokyo?" she asked.  Sounded interesting!

"Yep, it's a great opportunity!" he grinned.

"Yes, sounds it!  Tell me more!"  Even then she didn't twig.  Well, why would she ?

"I've been waiting some time for a transfer to somewhere exciting.  They proposed Brussels to me a few months ago but I turned it down.  Pay was no better and the transfer not for another year anyway."

You know how you can think whole paragraphs in a split second ?  The way you can recall twenty conversations and forty scenarios in the blink of an eye ?  Various scenes and possibilites fled through her mind as she tried to assess what he was saying.  She needed to pack things, sell things - when were they off?  She couldn't handle this so suddenly ...  Then she looked at him.

"You mean you are going to work in Tokyo?" she asked quietly.

"Yep!"  he was pleased.

"When?"

"Within the month!"

It didn't seem to occur to him that perhaps she wasn't pleased.  But it occurred to her, with a dry creeping sensation, that she wasn't included in his plans.

"Rick," she said, "tell me this is a joke."

"A joke?  No.  Why a joke?"  A look of mild irritation crossed his face fleetingly.

"Where do I fit in to this?" she asked quietly, "where does Ben fit in?"

They stared at each other in silence.

"I'm sorry ..." he said at length, "I am ... truly ..."

"I thought we meant something to you, me and Ben?"

"You do!  Of course you do!  I shall never forget you ..."

The sound of the silence in the room.  Full, heavy silence.  The sound of the rain against the window.  Somewhere a car hooted out in the street and a man called out after a dog.  And the silence.

"Of course you've meant something to me ... you've meant a lot ... and it has been great. Really."

More silence.

"It's just that I am going to Tokyo.  That is all."

And that was all.

She had cried for months.

She looked over to where he was with his little boy.  They seemed to have chosen a pair of trainers and were heading for the till.  She didn't turn around but got out her mobile phone.  From the periphery of her vision she could see him stop suddenly as he recognized her.  He stepped forwards towards her, his arm rising to shake hands.  She allowed her eyes to glide over him as she raised the phone to her ear and simultaneously nodded to Ben to head for the door.  Rick's eyes were fixed to her.  She looked straight through him as she said something in to the phone, and then let her eyes glide off to something beyond him.  She saw him hesitate as he realized she hadn't recognized him.  He turned away.

Out on the street the sounds of the day filled her.  Cars, buses, people, seagulls.  She walked briskly as Ben got out his MP3, up the street to Costa's where Phil and Daisy were waiting.  Oddly enough, Daisy was wearing that same old anorak with the yellow lambs.

The End.

Extract from 'French Sand'

Maurice du Chazand was attracted, in his own dispassionate way, to the English woman, Melanie Hodges. He had heard that she was separated from her husband – also English, it appeared – probably for a native woman – some of these natives were very lovely – but he kept his distance for unless she was seriously separated and getting a divorce there was no point in becoming involved. He was, albeit in a passive sort of way, on the look-out for a wife. He had done six years in Africa, two in the Gilbert Islands and now had three years’ work in Noumea. After that his wish was to retire early – he would be forty-four next year – to his vineyards in the Medoc, preferably with a wife. Back in his little town of Lesparre he assumed Francine le Grand was still waiting and hoping he would marry her – and if the worst came to the worst, he would – ( but he had never really fancied those huge child-bearing hips or her jam-making mother) – for she would make a good faithful wife who would doubtless produce a couple of children, who was of good local stock (her father was Monsieur le Maire) and whom he had known since school days. In the meantime if he could meet a pretty young woman like Melanie Hodges, that would be so much better. He took it all very seriously. He most certainly didn’t want to grow old alone and – even though old age was still a long way off – all this needed careful consideration.

I am accustomed, he wrote to his brother, to an active social life, to an international entourage, to not only mixing with people from all over the world and all walks of life but also with all sorts of tastes and aspirations. I dread the thought of settling down with a woman who has no conversation and who knows nothing beyond cooking and coffee mornings. I would not be happy. Our dear Francine le Grand is most charming, very kind, but I would rather find something a little more exotic – or at least a little different.

You write, his brother replied, almost as though you are choosing a new car!

This was a coincidence for du Chazan had just had a car shipped over from France. It had cost him a small fortune for it was a new Citroen, pale beige in colour with good cream-coloured leather upholstery. It was smooth and stream-lined and after all those years in the Congo, where he drove only landrovers, and sometimes pretty rough ones at that, made a more than welcome change. On arrival in Noumea he had been disappointed to find that most cars on the island were imported from Australia, usually Holdens or sometimes big old American cars. Not that he was a car man, he told himself, but it was most satisfying to seat himself in the comfortable Citroen with its hydraulic suspension and clean lines.

So du Chazan watched the Hodges woman discreetly. He didn’t mind about the little boy – he was of no particular interest and seemed healthy and intelligent. Du Chazan made a few casual and polite enquiries here and there from the other employees of the Commission. The Hodges woman had been abandoned, which was better than an agreed separation for it put her in the “right” somehow, and there was a rumour that another child was involved, not hers.

Sitting with his coffee on the Commission verandah, du Chazan often saw Melanie flit back and forth out of Hurst’s office. Fairly small (which suited him for he was not a big man) with long dark hair back-combed in to a chignon as was the fashion, she had pretty legs and occasionally he could glimpse a centimetre or two of lace petticoat under the full starched skirt. Something about her attracted him more than any other available woman in Noumea – and there were not many – and du Chazan settled back patiently to await the outcome.

His wait was brought to an abrupt end when the Hodges man was killed.

French Sand is a novel set in the South Pacific in the 1960s.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Kindle and Amazon, or can be ordered from most big book stores and libraries. More about Catherine Broughton, to include her sketches and stories from all over the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk 

Extract from 'A Call from France'

“A Call from France” by Catherine Broughton.

“How do you say un bouc in English?” asked Debbie.

“A ram,” I replied.

“And the moutons ?” chimed in Bernie

“Sheeps,” Max told him.

“Sheep,” I corrected him, “it is sheep, whether one or several of them.”

We looked over the domaine several times, wandering through the huge, dark, empty rooms and round the dilapidated gardens. An ancient stone wall, some two metres in height, surrounded the entire plot of land – three or four acres – crumbling away in places. Ivy grew in dark green leafy strands through the broken stones and in parts the stinging nettles and brambles were so high you couldn’t see the wall at all.

“The garden was once lovely,” Euan commented.

He indicated an old stone bench hidden by overgrown shrubbery.

“Somebody once loved this place,” he said.

Here and there were the wild remains of trimmed and shaped hedges, roses, flower beds, stone urns, decorative trees and shrubs of all sorts. Lilac and forsythia spread haphazardly across what used to be lawn, and there were huge clusters of irises and even some agapanthus – which I hadn’t seen growing wild since South Africa – and all the while the sheep wandered lazily around, chumping at the grass. Most of the shutters had fallen off, or were hanging dubiously. The sturdy iron gates had rusted. The entire place was heaped with fascinating ancient features, from the wells and iron hand-pumps in the grounds, to the weedy remains of a vineyard. There were a couple of massive ancient stone sinks, dating back to the 1600s, lying in the bushes, clearly flung out during a “modernization” period before World War Two. The entire place was hugely romantic and we liked the idea of being near the sea – barely three miles away – and nearer Royan and Oleron, places that were lively if only in the summer. We both longed and longed for company and action of some kind.

“You really want to go back home,” Euan said, putting an arm over my shoulders.

“Yes, I do. I want to go home. But I don’t mind giving it one last shot. We’ve been here …” I counted, “ six years. I’d rather just pack up and go home, but if we can’t afford a house in England, this will do.”

“You could put up with a chateau in France, could you?” he asked, grinning.

I looked up at the crumbling building. The Chateau des Cypres. There was something about it that attracted us both. Only people like us could possibly take it on. There were several big old stone barns in varying forms of dereliction. Euan could turn his hand to any kind of DIY, anything at all.

Funnily enough I read an article at the hairdresser’s this morning about a house that had been renovated in Yorkshire and the writer (a woman) said “our friends thought we were mad to take it on”. Yet, by our standards, that house in Yorkshire was in perfect order.

The babes seemed happy with the move and it would also mean that they wouldn’t have to board at school because we were relatively close to Clion. We tried hard to not talk about “going home” in front of the babes, fearing it might upset them at some level. All three were so French in many ways.

“Come on, then!” Euan called out to the children, “time to go!”

“Ice-kweeem!” volunteered Bernie ..

“I expect so,” said Euan and helped him to strap himself in to the car. Debbie and Max turned away from the ram and sauntered towards us. I heard afterwards that you must never turn your back on a ram or a billy goat. He just calmly walked up behind Debbie and butted her in the back. With a cry of astonishment and alarm she fell forwards onto both knees, straight on to the stone path. I rushed forward.

“C’mon! Quick!” I grabbed her under the arms, frightened the ram was going to somehow attack. But he sauntered off back to the sheep almost as though he had his nose in the air. Debbie wailed and wailed.

“Max! Get in to the car!” I yelled, still frightened.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Euan, ever calm, came over and helped Debbie onto her feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

She wailed and wailed.

“Debbie!” I said more sternly, “we need to know if you are hurt.”

“My back! My knees!”

I turned to Euan.

“She went down with quite a whack,” I said.

Debbie hobbled between us to the car where she eased herself in to her seat, still crying loudly. We looked at her knees. She had been able to get up and move with no problem so we judged there was nothing broken. The knees weren’t even scratched.

“She’s shocked,” I said.

“C’mon Baby,” Euan cajoled her, “it’s not as bad as all that. I expect that was a nasty fright, but you’re not hurt.”

The wailing continued.

“Cry quietly,” I said to her in desperation.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  Her books are available from Amazon or Kindle or can be ordered from most big stores and libraries.  For more of Catherine’s work, to include her sketches and entertaining blogs, go to http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Extract from 'Saying Nothing'

Then an overwhelming anger consumed him.

The guests at the funeral had all gone and Prisca and one of the maids were quietly tidying things away.  Marie-Carmen lay on her bed in the darkness, too tired to cry.  Ignacio went into the garden where it was cool.  As he walked away from the house, down the path towards the little lake, as he passed the peacocks and the tall stately trees, he filled up with a fury that made him clench his fists and grind his teeth.

He had tried so hard.  He knew right from wrong; he had fought to keep a balance.  He had protected Miguel and his daughter yet had never compromised the police.  He was clever and quick, yet Miguel was dead.

The feeling of anger remained with him throughout the night, and, for the first time ever, he had no wish to make love to his wife.  The anger was still there in the morning.  It remained with him for months on end until el Mdrino’s son died.  For a few hours he had felt the euphoric satisfaction of revenge. Then he felt nothing.

But like him, Marie-Carmen didn’t want to talk about the past.  She watched the shadows flit over her husband’s face and he, in turn, saw the memories of pain and loss through her dark eyes.  He would never let her know the truth.   An involuntary shudder ran down his spine and he was for a few seconds completely unable to shake away the vision of the murder, the blood, the scream.

Marie-Carmen squeezed his hand again.

“Come on, eat!” she said with urgency in her voice.

The giant prawns were succulent and Ignacio forced the conversation onto other matters.  Marie-Carmen wanted to go shopping in Madrid; Malaga was useless, she said.  She’d got no clothes –  why do women always say they have no clothes?  And suddenly he wanted to see her without any clothes, as she was last night, dark hair spread out over the pillow, white thighs, legs open to receive him, laughing up at him.

“Watch me come!” she had said, “watch me die!”

*****

 Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle (and other e-book formats) or can be ordered from most libraries and book shops.  More about Catherine Broughton, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk