The Los Angeles Olympics look like being a lot more up-beat and way-out than the Paris effort. We couldn't take our eyes off the pizzaz this morning as the torch was handed on to the city which will host the 2028 event. And it took Tom Cruise and Dr Dre and any number of 'important' artists to make sure it was handed over with the maximum amount of ... something. We're getting too old for all of this.
I wrote The Return Journey in 2021 having been challenged to write a love story.
THE RETURN JOURNEY OCTOBER 1, 2021
Barbara often looked back on her life and, on this morning of her 67th birthday, as she contemplated retirement, she wondered about the circumstances which had brought her to this point. She felt that she had been drifting all this time, at the mercy of the vagaries of fate, accepting whatever happened to her with resignation. A line from Tennyson occurred to her: ‘like petals from blown roses on the grass’. Is that what she was, a petal from a blown rose, carried by the wind from one corner of the yard to another, until the time came that she would be absorbed back into the soil of the garden and forgotten?
She lived alone, not by choice but, again, by circumstance. She told her workmates and family that she didn’t have time for a husband but, in reality, she had never been asked, and rarely been kissed, if the truth be known. She must have been reasonably attractive as a teenager because one or two boys had asked her out on a date but she was seldom asked twice by the same boy. Somehow, she found herself in her thirties, single with no prospects. “You’ve missed the boat, love,” said her mother, still as English as the day she left the old country for the new world.
That was a great event in Barbara’s memory, that ship’s voyage with her family, from Liverpool, through the Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean to opportunities in Australia. Had she made the most of those opportunities, she wondered? Brought up to believe that her purpose in life was to support a husband who would be the provider and protector of the family, she didn’t work hard at school. In her imagination, she assumed she would leave school at fifteen, work for a few years before marrying and devote the rest of her life to supporting her husband and two or three children. That’s where her destiny lay.
But the years passed, and marriage eluded her. The dead-end job she took when she left school - as a clerk-typist in a government office – had to become much more than a fill-in until marriage rescued her. She studied hard, gained qualifications and rose in the hierarchy of the public service. She was now on the cusp of retirement with a generous pension and enough put aside to indulge any fantasy she might envisage.
But Barbara was not one for fantasies. She had but one ambition: to make a return journey to England, to relive some of the memories she had of that exciting voyage more than half a century before. Her travel agent assured her that it was possible, that several cruise lines made round-the-world journeys and she could choose one which might revisit some of the ports she remembered. She would make the trip alone, even though there were acquaintances, single and widowed, who would have been happy to accompany her.
Short-term tenants were found for her house and Barbara joined the ship at Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour where she remembered arriving all those years ago. Barbara had indulged herself and booked a comfortable cabin on an upper deck. She had a balcony but was determined not to isolate herself by sitting there too often. Every day, she made a point of checking the daily schedule and booking in to every event possible. In between organised events, she sat in one or other of the many bars and meeting areas, chatting with other passengers. She told herself she was just being sociable but, deep down, she wondered whether she might, by chance, meet someone who could become more than a passing acquaintance. What would he be like, she thought: tall, of course, and well-dressed. In her imagination, he was a retired seaman, somewhat weather-beaten, with a devil-may-care attitude, ready to sweep her off her feet.
Barbara did meet a man on that voyage. It happened on the fourth day when she was starting to wonder whether every man on the ship was married or gay. She was sitting on the Promenade Deck watching a lone albatross circling the ship’s funnel, when a quiet voice murmured, “Is this seat taken?” He was a small man, balding and diffident in his manner. He wore shorts and sandals with socks, and his accent was definitely English. Barbara politely invited him to sit, and went back to reading her book.
She saw him again at the next table during dinner and, walking around the deck the following morning. Was he stalking her, she wondered? That thought gave her a little frisson of excitement.
They were soon meeting up for coffee and they arranged to attend the captain’s Cocktail Party together. They agreed to meet up on the shore excursion in Rome and, by the time they arrived in London, Barbara was looking forward to visiting his family home in Hampshire.
They say that romance can come to anyone at any time. Barbara didn’t know if what she was experiencing was romance but was enjoying it nevertheless. The rest of Barbara’s story remains to be written but the later chapters look like being a lot more interesting than the earlier ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment