Great Short Stories

by Stan Mason

  As the meeting came to an end, total calm settled over them and each member underwent a complete character change.

  ‘Are you coming to tea tomorrow, Jessica?’ asked Masters in a calm manner.

  ‘Of course, John,’ she replied amiably. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Three o’clock all right?’

  Quint caught hold of Barbara Mackie’s arm and turned her towards him. ‘Fancy a drink, Barbara?’ he asked charmingly.

  ‘Yes, I don’t mind if I do,’ she answered pleasantly.

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you don’t mind,’ intruded Kate Devenish amiably.

  ‘Of course,’ said Quint with a smile on his face.

  ‘By the way,’ Gary Gibbons told Beverley as they reached the door. ‘I’ll start on your conservatory next Monday.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ stated the shop-keeper pleased to hear the news. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  Indeed, the committee meetings were hilarious. They were the same every time. Every single one of them. But then, who can dispute the democratic process in a democracy!

  Non-Stop

  ‘Hi there, I’m Olga Olicia Obsiovitch. I know it’s a mouthful but that’s my name and I’m stuck with it for the rest of my life. I understand it’s possible to change it by Deed Poll but what could I change it to, you tell me that? I mean if it was Olga Goldberg I could change it to Olive Gold or something similar, but Olga Obsiovitch... no, it’s impossible. But it has the advantage of its own distinction. You see, I’m the only person I know in the whole wide world who can boast they’ve got the initials of three zeros. As it so happens, my grandfather... on my father’s side... was born in Minsk in Russia and he emigrated to Britain when he was twenty-five. This was about twenty years before the Russian revolution. Now I come to think of it, that was about five years before the twentieth century began, over a hundred years ago. My goodness, that sounds ancient! The family’s history there went back to the year dot but it’s all been lost in time because no one ever told me much about it. Apparently, things were getting pretty bad in Russia at the time with Minsk being White Russian and the rest of the country being Red. There was lots of talk about revolution which would have meant annihilation for the people of Belorussia in which Minsk was the main city. My grandfather’s brother had already sailed to America, with his wife, to start a new life there which means I have relatives in the United States although I haven’t the faintest idea where they are at the present time. Perhaps one day I’ll travel there and find them. Anyhow, back in the homeland, the people in Minsk were saving very hard to buy steamship tickets to sail to the United States which was actually welcoming people into the country at the time. As I said, my uncle and his wife sold everything they possessed to buy a passage and they sailed off to New York. My grandfather was five years younger and he was so poor he didn’t have anything to sell. There was nothing for him but to work hard to save up and he almost starved himself to death in this endeavour. Eventually he managed to accumulate enough money and, armed with the address of his brother and sister-in-law in New York, he bought a steamship ticket with a view to join them there. But it was his misfortune to be a terribly bad sailor and he suffered so much on board from sea sickness that the captain of the ship refused to take him any further than Britain. Consequently, he found himself standing on foreign soil in a strange country holding a small battered brown suitcase, unable to speak the language, with no money, no shelter, no friends, nothing. But all was not lost because a businessman had come from London to collect a number of immigrants to work in his sweat-shop factory in the East End of London. It was his good fortune to find my grandfather who was always a very conscientious hard worker. He took him back to London, gave him lodgings, some money and a few clothes, and he taught him how to cut cloth for ladies fashions... mainly overcoats and dresses. In gratitude, my grandfather worked for the same man, in the same factory, for the rest of his life. It was like that in those days. A person could be employed for the whole of his life and feel secure. If he did his job there was no question of redundancy. Sadly, it’s a way of life which has long gone.

  My father’s mother, my grandmother, came from Yus in Romania. That’s the country which used to be called Transylvania. If it doesn’t spring to your mind readily, it’s the place is where Bram Stoker’s Dracula is located. Count Dracula, cruel as history portrays him to be, was actually a lord who controlled the area many centuries ago and word has it that my grandmother actually descended from that family. Naturally, they weren’t vampires, that’s only the theme in Bram Stoker’s book, but she did claim to have some royal blood in her veins. My grandmother was one of five sisters, all daughters of a peasant who worked for a pittance in the fields. Indeed, they were extremely poor. Subsequently, each one of them sought to leave the primitive cottage they lived in at Yus to try and find something better for themselves in the big world outside. One sister went to Sweden, one to Croatia, one to Bulgaria, one to Germany, but my grandmother went even further... she came to Britain. One fine day, she found herself at St. Katherine’s Dock in the East End of London without a sou in her pocket and no knowledge of the language. Like my grandfather, she too had no home, no friends, nothing. Fortunately, she was picked up by a woman who ran a newsagents/confectionery near the Tower of London. Although my grandmother couldn’t speak a word of English she soon learned the language, albeit the accent never left her in the whole of her lifetime. Anyhow, the story goes that one day, during his lunch hour, my grandfather went into the shop to buy some tobacco for his pipe and shazzam... he looked at my grandmother and fell in love with her at first sight. They got married shortly afterwards and had eight children... five boys and three girls. As you can imagine, every one of them was christened with a Russian name so it was not surprising that the same accolade was passed on to me which in some ways I regret because people tend to stare at me strangely when they read my name on an application form or if they ask me what I’m called. My birth certificate states that I am Olga Olicia Obsiovitch, and I’m sure I’m the only girl in the world with three zeros for initials.

  Well let me tell you a bit about myself. I’m eighteen years old and a little bit overweight because I like to attack the refrigerator at different times of the day and evening. This hasn’t affected my reasonably good looks, for which I thank my mother, because without my assault on the kitchen I would look skinny with a haunting Slavonic expression on my face. Only two weeks ago, I finished all my academic studies at school and college. Sadly, I didn’t do very well because I’m not an academic or clever in any sense of the word. I’m just an ordinary person... no more, no less... with an average intelligence. I have no idea how people can become MENSA brilliants but then it’s beyond me how anything really works in life, whether it’s mechanical or emotional. What the end of my studies mean is that I’m out of college, out of work, out of junior time but I’m still a teenager. I can vote but can’t take office as a councillor. It seems to me that I’ve been in an awkward phase for the whole of my life from the time before I was five years of age, then from five to eleven, continuing from twelve to sixteen, and seventeen to now. When does it all end? When will I become sufficiently adult to be able to do exactly what I want? My parents are very concerned if I go out at night. They believe something awful is going to happen to me. If I decide to venture into the street in the evening, especially when it’s dark, I become subject to a prior interrogation as to where I’m going, with whom I’m going, what are we going to do, and why, ending up with a time at which they insist I return home. They positive that someone out there is going to rape me. I know my parents are very concerned people and they don’t want anything to happen to me but where does caution and concern end. Not only that, but where does fun and enjoyment begin and end? I did go out with a young man by the name of Mark when I was sixteen. My parents went absolutely mad! He was five years older than me, had all his hair cut off, wore two large rings in b
oth ears and one in his eyebrow. I fancied him and he really looked something to me at the time. My parents, however, took an entirely different view. They considered him to be a layabout because he didn’t have a job and lived on state benefits and they became really worried about the consequences of my being with him. Each time I came home they bombarded me with questions. What was my relationship with him? Were we serious? Did I realise I was only sixteen? What good could come of it especially as he was five years older? How could I be so blind as to go out with a layabout who wore rings in his ears and one in his eyebrow? Why could they see it was just a bit of juvenile fun? Mark was a really nice person. He wouldn’t have hurt me for the world. We were simply enjoying each other’s company... and kissing each other passionately occasionally like young people do. Well, perhaps there was a little bit of petting too, but nothing very serious... only experimental as teenagers like to do when they’re young. Not like Alice Briggs, my old classmate at college. Now her parents had reason to worry although I don’t think they ever got a single grey hair over her antics. She was a character who was totally over-sexed for her age. Her hormones must have been jumping about inside her like a posse of kangaroos on the run. Whenever she sighted a good-looking man or boy, regardless of his age, she went after him with a vengeance to do what men and women do with each other. She often boasted how intimate she became with many of them and I believed her every word. One day, she was caught in the recreation room of the college by a passing teacher and hauled up before the headmaster. The indictment related to an incident where she was discovered on top of one of the senior prefects, neither of them having any clothes on, whereby they were performing an act of the greatest intimacy. How she had the nerve to do such a thing in the recreation room of the school... and with no clothes on... on shall never know but, as I said, her hormones were way in advance of her age. By that time, I’m quite certain she had become a mistress of the art. It was of no surprise to anyone to learn that she had been expelled and the stories which circulated the college embellished the story to make her a heroine or a whore in the eyes of every student. Worst of all was the fact that her parents actually laughed when they heard what had happened. They couldn’t care a fig! Well she went to work in a packing factory and earns pretty good money. And here am I, a virgin with no sexual experience whatsoever, unemployed and broke. So who was the wisest one in the end, you tell me that? Mind you, I had the ‘hots’ for our form lecturer in the last year of college. Every time he looked at me I felt the colour rise in my cheeks and my legs go to jelly. He was everything I sought in a man. How he invaded my thoughts at night! I often dreamt that he and I were on a desert island all alone where he would take me in his arms and pledge his undying love for me. Then he would kiss me fiercely on the lips so that I could hardly breathe. It was wonderful and sometimes I wished that the dream would go on and on for ever. But it was all schoolgirl stuff of course. I don’t whether he ever noticed me except during assignments in class when he called out my name together with many others. On one occasion, when he saw me dreaming at my desk at the back of the class, he called out in his silky smooth calm voice: ‘Now my little Russian Cossack, would you kindly explain Pythagoras’s Theory?’ At the time, I got to my feet and started to utter something completely unintelligible because I failed to be able to concentrate when speaking to him. When I had finished and sat down, he took up the baton to offer the correct answer. ‘You can always recall the Theory,’ he said, ‘by thinking about the Red Indian Chief who had three wives each of which were pregnant by him. The first lay on an elk skin, the second on a hippopotamus skin, and the third on a bear skin. The first squaw gave birth to a boy, the second had twins, both boys, and the third also had a boy. This proves that the sons of the squaws of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.’ Everyone laughed except for me. I still didn’t understand the Theory or what he was talking about. I mean, I was deeply in love with the man. All I could think of was to rest in his arms under some tree in a wooded valley on a fine summer’s day with only love in mind. Not surprisingly, nothing ever came of it and by the end of the last term he had been relegated out of my mind altogether. Suddenly, I couldn’t see anything in the man and wondered how I could have deluded myself. You see, by that time, I was head-over-heels in love with a boy in my group. Subsequently, there was a swift transference of love from the lecturer, which faded quickly into infinity, in favour of the youth. However, when the last term ended everyone in the class went in different directions to start their lives anew. The young man managed to get a place at a distant university and that was the last I ever saw of him. My destiny was far less exciting.

  Since I was two years old, my parents have always tended to avoid me. I found this very annoying after a while but I can’t say that I really blame them. You see, I am one of those children who learned to talk at a very early age... in my case, from two years of age. From that time onwards my mouth has never stopped moving except whenever I eat or sleep and often it’s not affected by the former. When I was three, my father started to lose patience when in my company for more than ten minutes because of my constant chatter and he even held my mouth together once when he lost patience with me. ‘For God’s sake, shut up!’ he often yelled at the top of his voice which caused me to halt momentarily. But then my mind began to operate again in conjunction with my mouth and away I went again. I’ve tried to analyse my problem, which caused me no end of trouble at school and at college especially with colleagues who could never get a word in edgeways. Except for the time when I was in love with the lecturer, which was only a couple of weeks, I continued to interrupt one teacher after another and was regularly sent out of the class for constantly talking. It always seemed natural for me to do so. My mind thinks of so many things and they work their way through to my mouth instantly. I fear that if I were struck dumb, my mind would seize up with frustration and I would die. However, that’s a problem I have to live with despite the fact that few people can stand me for very long because of my constant prattling. I really don’t know where it came from, nor do my parents. No one else in the family has the same problem. Most young people are shy and hardly ever say a word. I’m completely different. My father thinks it’s a curse although he never says anything to me about it any more. He just hides behind a newspaper or leaves the room. My mother never offers an opinion. I think the reason is that she loves me too much.

  I don’t believe I mentioned anything about my mother’s side of the family. Her father, who was my other grandfather, came from Lisbon in Portugal. He was a dark-haired swarthy man who came to England but he never ventured to tell anyone the reason why and no one dared to ask him. Some members of the family considered that he might have committed a crime of some kind and escaped after being hunted by the police. It was interesting to me to believe that he was a man with a past. It gave the family a certain kind of character, evil though it might be. Other family members took little interest in the reason considering that he simply decided that the streets of London were paved with gold and emigrated to find it. Whatever he did in Portugal, if indeed he did anything against the law, it was all in the past. I mean, he seemed to be a decent man thereafter and was a law-abiding citizen for the rest of his life to say the least. However, I used to look at him in a different light to the rest of the family, allowing my imagination some times to run riot when in his company. To my mind, he was a swashbuckling smuggler who had been rooted out by excisemen and had escaped to Britain to lead a new life. His wife, my other grandmother, was born in Amsterdam and came to England when she was sixteen years old. The story went that she arrived in the country to visit an aunt and liked it here so much that she stayed for the rest of her life. She and my grandfather met at a celebration of the beginning of the twentieth century. There was a dance hall which threw a major party on New Year’s Eve in the year nineteen hundred. Although they didn’t know each other at the time, he asked her to dance and the story goes that t
hey danced the night away. Apparently, things were much more flamboyant in those days than they are now and celebrations were three notches higher in terms of fun and excitement. It’s probably because they never had radio, television, foreign holidays, and major sporting events. After that, they dated each other, went out together a few more times and then decided to get married. People talk about the virility of Latin lovers. Well she had sixteen children, four of whom died at birth. Subsequently, when I examine my family tree, all I can see are uncles and aunts all over the place... twelve uncles and eight aunts from both my father’s and my mother’s side. However, I won’t go into their personal life stories right now. So much has happened with practically every one of them, it would take far too long.

  Like most other teenage sons and daughters, I don’t think my parents understand me. There’s a distinct generation gap. My father’s a man who’s very proud of his ancestry relating to Russia. He’s not a Communist or anything like that. In fact, I don’t think he has any political beliefs at all and he doesn’t follow any major cause. He keeps intruding into conversations with the comment that ‘there’s an old Russian story which goes’... and out would come something outrageous which is supposed to make everyone sit back thoughtfully like “the only part of the road worth driving on is in the middle - each of the extremes is in the gutter” or “a worried man who cannot sleep because he has promised payment of a debt the following day and cannot keep it should tell the lender and let him have a sleepless night worrying about it.” He also tells jokes about the Poles exactly the same way the British tell stories about the Irish like the one which goes: “What’s two hundred yards long and eats cabbage? A queue outside a food shop in Warsaw.” I should imagine that every nation picks on a lesser one making fun of them for no apparent reason at all. I know for a fact that he adores a large photograph of my grandfather which hangs in prime position over the mantelshelf of the hearth in our home. It was taken shortly after my grandfather landed in England. The original was photographed with a group of work colleagues outside the East End factory but my father had it enlarged and framed and he often stares at it lovingly. He a fanatic when it comes to collecting Russian artefacts and icons. The house is absolutely full of them but my mother doesn’t seem to mind at all. She encourages him although I think it’s become a kind of fetiche, an obsession. I mean, grandfather left Russia because he couldn’t stand the life there any longer. He was in danger of being murdered and was certainly glad to get away. So why should any of us glorify the place or our origins. Even my grandfather’s brother and sister-in-law sailed for America to get away from the old country. It must have been pretty bad there for all kinds of reasons. So it seems idiotic to me to be obsessed by it, but that’s my dad for you.