Flashing On the Riviera

by Elizabeth Ducie

  Gran would tip all the cards out onto the table and I would pick one at random for her.

  ‘That's the one left by the Duke of Brighton,’ she said once, ‘he used to call every week. Begged me to marry him, he did.’

  ‘And why didn't you, Gran’

  ‘Nasty manners he had, poppet. Always had dirty finger nails and never said “thank you” when anyone passed him a cup of tea or a plate of sandwiches.’

  Then another time, it was the card from someone she thought she loved dearly, but her father didn't approve of. ‘So he didn't come back, but I managed to hide his card and put it in my collection.’

  But my favourite, and the one I picked out three times out of four, was the large cream-coloured one with the wavy edges.

  ‘Tell me about this one, Gran,’ I would say, knowing already what I was going to hear.

  ‘That's your grandfather's card,’ she would say, her eyes taking on a far-away look. ‘He was so handsome; all the girls wanted him to call on them. They were so jealous when they realised it was me he wanted.’ She would run her fingers over the card, hold it to her lips and kiss it briefly. ‘This is the very card he used, the day he called on my father and asked for my hand in marriage.

  ‘His manners were perfect; he always said “please” and “thank you”, he was never seen in public untidy or badly groomed. He made me realise how important it was to be well brought up.

  ‘And that's how I brought up your father, after your grandfather was taken from us,’ she would break off and look expectantly at me:

  ‘And that's how he's brought me up too,’ I would finish for her and we would laugh together.

  I've never forgotten my grandmother's collection of visiting cards or her views on good manners. My hands, and especially my nails, are always clean, I always say “please” and “thank you”, I am always smartly dressed in public.

  And when I was old enough, I had my own cards printed. Gentleman Jim: Jewellery Expert they say. And I always leave one behind, every time I visit a great lady's house.

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  Cows

  All night, sounds of kicking hooves echo through the darkness. At dawn we catch our first sight of massive heads slowly nodding as jaws chew. Today the picture’s not quite right. Dark shapes are outside the cowshed and the gate to the road is wide open.

  I walk across the bridge towards the gate. Cold clutches at my fingers and my breath clouds the air. The tractor ruts, frozen in mud, press upwards through thin slipper soles. Clumps of oily wool lie in the mud, remnants of earlier seasons and other animals.

  The stream chuckles its way over stones and mud, but the laughter is hollow. Dried sweet pea stems rustle in the wind; in the distance a pheasant cackles.

  Frost outlines the leaves on brambles and crusts the splinters on the gate, icy roughness to touch. Maybe twenty huge beasts stand in a row, uncertain what to do with their hard-won freedom. Their woolly, cream- coloured faces and milk-chocolate coats shine in the weak winter sunshine. In the air hangs the sweet smell of digesting hay.

  As I try to lift the gate, badly maintained and sunk in the mud, the first animal moves forward.

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  Snapshots from Kazakhstan

  On the flight from Almaty, I fall asleep above a river winding across green terrain at the foot of snow-capped mountains. I awake to a brown expanse, striped alternately light and dark. It looks like some parts are cultivated and others not. The patches are huge—much bigger than any fields in Europe. My neighbour tells me they are mountains. There must be a translation problem. There are no such regular mountain formations anywhere on earth.

  My host meets me at the airport and invites me to partake of the local delicacy—sheep's head. I murmur my thanks and hope I don’t disgrace myself.

  Dinner is most enjoyable, with not a sign of a sheep's head. We put the world to rights over copious vodkas. He tells me Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world and we try, unsuccessfully, to compile the list of the other eight. Driving back to the hotel, snow gently ripples across the road. It may be spring in Almaty, but Pavlodar is more than five hundred miles north.

  Typically Soviet in some ways—same designs of buildings, same pale blue grills on the windows, same impetuous drivers—in other ways, Kazakhstan is softer. The people are more oriental, everything much gentler.

  Next morning, we head off in brilliant sunshine, but when we stop to stretch our legs, I find the sun deceptive. There's an icy wind blowing across the steppe.

  The only words to describe the two hundred miles drive from Pavlodar to Semipalatinsk are flat and straight. As boring journeys go, it's right up there with Moscow to Kostroma (5 hours of single track road through a pine forest) or that bit of the M11 between the M25 and the A14. We see miles of scrubland, the occasional frozen stream—and little else. In the middle of nowhere, the road bends slightly to the left for no discernible reason. After a couple of miles, it straightens out. I fantasize on the campaign by locals to save the habitat of rare newts or other steppe creatures, but there is probably a more prosaic answer.

  On my last evening in town, I walk in the twilight along the bank of the river. Late winter has given way to early summer, with barely a passing nod to spring. At nine thirty at night, it is warm enough for shirt sleeves.

  I find a graveyard of statues, relics of a former age. Every second statue is Lenin; the remainder are faces I don’t recognise, although no doubt very familiar to Kazaks. The area is dominated by one statue of Lenin, so large it looks at first like a tall thin building. It is at least a hundred feet high. From the sole of his boot to the bottom of his tailcoat is almost twice the height of a man. I find myself wondering how it got there, and where it was originally located. It is a fitting reminder that this country, large in itself, was just twenty years before also part of an empire stretching across half the globe.

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  Noises in the Dark

  She listens in the darkness. A gentle hissing intake of breath and a quick snort. A groan and a mumble as he breathes out. A quiet moment, then the pattern is repeated. Sometimes it’s barely audible. Other times, after one too many glasses of Pinot Noir, the pillows vibrate and she hears him in her dreams.

  She puts in her ear-plugs, knowing sleep will soon come. She smiles, glad she made this recording before it was too late. Over fifty years she’s learned to cope with the snoring. It’s the silence she can’t stand.

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  Liquid Plastic Sea

  They come in ones or twos at first. A trickle becomes a flood then stops. They capture territory, on rugs or chairs, with food and beer. Barbeque wood-smoke scents the air. Children and dogs roam free as daylight fades.

  The sea is liquid plastic. Yachts are cornflake packet models. A ferry hugs the coast, shy of entering port. The distant coastline glitters with fairground lights beneath the orange-striped horizon.

  Flares hit the sky. The sea begins to boil. The liquid plastic ignites in rainbows, shooting skywards, before dropping back on anchored boats. Smeaton’s Tower blazes through the smoke. Palm-trees bloom golden then fade away.

  Faces turned towards the sky, they gaze with children’s eyes, wide open, smiling, in awe. They’ve seen this spectacle six or sixty times, but still it’s like the first. Their murmured praises lost beneath the waves of sound, they reach out and trace the glowing trails across the sky.

  A faint smell of cordite lingers on the breeze. Ears are stunned by explosions, the bangs and whines of igniting dreams. The after-image burns upon their eyes.

  They leave in ones or twos at first. A trickle becomes a flood—then stops.

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  Vasily’s Choice

  His thoughts chase each other inconclusively around his head. Today he leaves the city, but in which direction?

  He pushes his hands deep into the pockets of his greatcoat and stamps his fee
t. The April sunshine melts the last vestiges of snow, but the pavement still holds the winter chill, seeping through the soles of his boots.

  When he opened his eyes that first morning, gentle fingers sponged dried blood from his face. The early-morning light formed a halo around her head and he wondered if he’d died on the train journey from the Eastern Front.

  ‘Welcome back, Captain,’ she said, ‘my name is Sveta.’ She stayed with him until his disorientation faded and, although she didn’t always work on his ward, came to visit to him whenever she was on duty. Their love started slowly, before springing forth fully formed, like the chestnut blossoms in the Petrograd parks when the winter ice disappears overnight.

  His old school-friend Igor arrived at the hospital weeks later. With his bandaged eyes, he sat on Vasily’s bed for hours every day.

  ‘It’s our time,’ he said repeatedly. ‘Remember we used to talk at school about the cruelty of the Tsar and how we would change things when we grew up?’ Vasily did remember—and his heart sang at the changes in great Mother Russia.

  One week before he was discharged, he had two visits within an hour. Sveta came first, trembling and blushing as she took his hand.

  ‘I’m leaving Russia,’ she said. ‘Without the Tsar, life will be terrible. My parents are already in Finland, and begged me to join them. But then I met you. Now my grandfather is leaving and I must accompany him. Come with me, my love. We can start a new life together in safety.’ Vasily was saddened she didn’t welcome the new regime as he did. ‘Meet me at the station next Wednesday at 3pm,’ were Sveta’s final words as she left his bedside for the last time.

  Igor arrived soon afterwards. His sight was recovered and he was being discharged.

  ‘Vasily, I’m going to Moscow,’ he shouted as soon as he came into view. ‘Vladimir Ilyich needs comrades like us.’ Vasily’s head reeled as his friend urged him to go too. ‘Meet me at the station next Wednesday at 3pm,’ were Igor’s final words.

  Now, as the hands on the clock crawl around to 3pm, Vasily ponders his choices one final time: due west to Moscow with Igor for excitement, adventure and the fulfilment of their boyhood dreams as a new era dawns in the history of this great nation; or north-west with Sveta to safety and a loving family, but exiled, possibly forever, from the land of his birth.

  Finally he decides. He will let fate choose. He will accompany whoever arrives first—and live with the consequences.

  Vasily hears a voice call his name and watches as a familiar figure walks down the street towards him. His decision is made. His journey begins.

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  If you enjoyed reading my flash fiction, maybe you would like my novels too. Here, as a taster, are the opening sections of Counterfeit! and Gorgito’s Ice Rink.

  Counterfeit!

  Prologue: Zambia, December 2003

  Kabwe Mazoka walks up the hill, scuffing his feet in the rutted and baked red earth. It’s been dry for months, but today thick clouds mask the sun and when the rains come, this will be a water course, pouring mud and stinking filth into the main street below. He turns through a broken-down gate and walks across the yard. A mangy dog, tied with rope to a ring on the fence, jumps to its feet yelping, before sinking back on its haunches, eyeing him warily.

  The building was painted white once. Pale flakes cluster around rusty lines where the reinforcing bars are breaking through the pitted concrete. In the single row of windows running below the flat roof, most of the panes of glass are missing.

  A line of women sit in the dirt against the wall, taking advantage of the shade from the over-hanging roof. As Kabwe unlocks the shiny new padlock on the door, they rise and slowly follow him into the building. The first raindrops splash into the dust.

  The downpour hits the corrugated iron roof like stones from an angry crowd. Kabwe uses a metal pole to stir the thick, creamy liquid in the cleaned-out oil drum.

  The men were coming back today, bringing brightly coloured labels and delivery instructions. They would be cross if the bottles weren’t filled ready for labelling and packing. He didn’t want them to be cross again.

  They’d been cross when he suggested testing the ingredients before making the medicine. They showed him pieces of paper with green stickers and words in another language. They told him to ‘just get on with it.’ So he did.

  When Kabwe ran out of the glycerol used to sweeten the cough medicines, they brought him drums in a battered lorry and told him to ‘get them unloaded and stored in the lock-up.’ The drums were different from the ones he’d had previously. These were red. Last time they were blue. The name was different too, longer. They told him it was just the chemical name for the same material. He pointed to the place where warning symbols and storage conditions were usually printed. The labels had been scratched and scraped; none of the words were legible. The men laughed at him and told him to ‘just get on with it.’ So he did.

  Today, the men arrive just as the last of the brown bottles is being filled. They’d been pleased with Kabwe when he managed to source these from the local glass plant. For eleven months each year, the plant makes beer bottles, then the mechanics switch the moulds and they make medicine bottles, a year’s supply in just four weeks. They need a lot more beer bottles than medicine bottles in Africa.

  These bottles are rejects, slightly misshapen, no good for an automated bottling line. But Kabwe’s filling team holds bottles under a tap, one at a time, operating the pump with a foot-pedal. He was able to negotiate a good price for them—and the bottling plant was able to hide the true reject rate, so everyone gained.

  The perfect bottles would be sold to the reputable companies, the subsidiaries of multinationals or local companies working under licence to one of the well-known names. Kabwe’s father’s company had been one of those. For more than twenty years, they made cough syrups with someone else’s name and logo on them. Once a year, auditors would fly in from London, talk to all the managers and some of the staff, check through a couple of batch documents—and confirm the renewal of their licence.

  Then, five years ago, in a meeting far away, a decision was made and a take-over launched; two companies became one and thousands of lives were changed forever. With a super-sized factory in South Africa supplying the entire region, there was no need for licensees producing their cough syrups. Kabwe’s father lost the contract and, with it, his factory. Within six months, he was dead and Kabwe was head of the family. Two months later, the men came to visit for the first time.

  The new labels are pink and blue with white writing. The company name—this time an American one with an address in Milwaukee—is printed in small letters at the bottom. The picture of a mother and child looks comforting, although Kabwe wonders why they always use white people as models.

  Just before the men drive away, they hand Kabwe an envelope, stuffed with stained and greasy bank-notes. Now he’ll be able to pay the filling team. Now he’ll be able to buy supplies on the way home. Now his mother will be able to keep her appointment at the clinic.

  The vans drive off into the night, heading for unprotected borders, to meet other vehicles driven by other desperate men trying to earn enough to feed their families. Kabwe sits slumped in his office, too tired to move, and tries to still the doubts flying around his head.

  The men had told him the American company wouldn’t mind. ‘They sell medicines all over the world,’ they said. ‘They won’t miss a few sales in Africa,’ they said. ‘You’re helping people get hold of medicines they couldn’t normally afford,’ they said. ‘It’s a public service really,’ they said.

  Kabwe glances at the dispatch instructions for the latest batches of cough syrup. There are six names on the list: three government purchase houses; two regional hospitals; and a large distributor. They are spread across Angola, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. He is relieved, as always, to see his own country missing from the list. Not his people, not this time. But one day, he knows, it will be their turn.

>   [Counterfeit! is my new novel, published in July 2016. It won third prize in the Literature Works First Page prize in 2015. You can find the rest of the book by clicking here.]

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  Gorgito’s Ice Rink

  Prologue: Moscow, April 2005

  Emma Chambers slipped between the oak doors into the hushed interior. The air, thick with incense, grabbed at her throat and threatened to bring back the tears she'd been fighting all morning.

  From a hidden room in the corner of the church, male voices undulated in Gregorian chant. Emma studied the icons on the walls and pillars. This was one of the new Moscow churches, built with donations from Russian émigrés in America. No dark wood or smoke-blackened surfaces here. Walls glowed with sour-cream paint and the icons were sparkling confections of enamel and glass.

  Emma gazed up at the gold-encrusted cupola where pale April sunlight struggled to enter through tiny windows. She glanced around at the other people in the congregation. Several nodded when they saw her looking their way; a couple of the women smiled and gave little waves.

  Finally, she took a deep breath and turned to look at the sight she’d been avoiding since she entered the building. The ornate urn surrounded by flowers looked so alone, resting on a table in front of the altar screen. To one side a large photograph was propped on an easel and across the bottom ran the words: GORGITO EVGENYVICH TABATADZE, 1940 to 2005.

  The man in the picture seemed to be looking straight at her. The hairline receded more than she remembered, but the curls and bushy moustache were still jet black. The eyes mirrored the slight smile on his lips. They signalled a private joke—or maybe something amusing just behind the photographer’s shoulder.