This is something that I wrote when I was on a short course with Writers’ HQ. Recently named one of the top 100 online resources for writers, you really should check them out. Boot camp for your drafts; chicken soup for your muse.

Mid-way through the course ‘Seven Days, Seven Ideas’ we were challenged to select one of four photographs and see where it led us. Here’s the photo that I chose to use:

No context was provided. I’m guessing… Brighton. While I’m fascinated by the sculpture in the distance that makes it look as if the old man is holding a cast iron balloon, it’s the installation with the kisses on it that led to the story that follows.

Business as Usual
by Nathan Delling It had been a bit blowy overnight, but the rain had held off. They were in one of their usual spots. Perhaps Harry would offer Shirley a cuppa in a bit. Or a Choc-ice. Hot or cold, either was fine on this indeterminate September day. He seldom asked for anything in particular. People remarked upon how ludicrously easy-going he was. He never raised his voice; never got angry. Tea of coffee? It was always “whatever you’re having.” This had been the pattern for so much of Harry’s life. No point changing now. In nine months he’d be dead. “May he rest in peace,” they would say, but when Dave gave the eulogy, he’d say that Harry was a man who had lived in peace. A gentle man as well as a gentleman. Harry had insisted on just one thing in over fifty years of marriage: that they must live by the sea. So they did. Shirley would have preferred to live in Cirencester, close to her sister, but this was not to be: could not be. She felt no real resentment. This was Harold. You couldn’t expect the sea to come to the Cotswolds. Perhaps Harry felt that he had expended a life’s worth of goodwill, though – because he never asked for anything else: not even if you asked him, “What shall I cook you for your birthday, dad?” Whatever you like. Harry had married Shirley when he came back from the War. She had waited for him, so he married her. Of course: in that first year of peace it was practically a law of nature. Everybody got married. It wasn’t love. Not exactly – although it grew to be something that he imagined must be what love meant. For other people. You came back from the War and you found a job. Got married. Had a family. Harry had played his part. Done his bit. The cancer didn’t frighten him. Nothing frightened unflappable, easy-going Harry. Nothing since that night in November 1940. A night for rash promises and a frantic see-sawing between relief and despair. They’d installed an auxiliary fuel tank in the navigator/observer’s position on each of the Swordfish. Harry had been ashamed at the relief he’d felt. They didn’t want him on this deathride, after all. Then the briefing: observers were to occupy the wireless operator/air gunner’s position. It was the gunners who were spared. The observers were for the chop. The pilots as well, of course, but at least they would be busy. They would feel as if they had some kind of control. Harry was facing backwards as they roared away from the deck of Illustrious. When they reached Taranto, he went into action facing backwards. There were no enemy fighters: Harry never fired a shot. Harry observed, and what he observed was horrifying. Tracer from a hundred guns reached for them. Heavier guns coughed flak that buffeted the ridiculous canvas biplanes; punched holes through-and-through. Dear God, just bring me safe through this and I’ll never ask for anything again, he prayed. He came through, in the hands of his pilot and the hands of God. They did good work that night, and five years later – five years – he was able to come home. If Denis had survived the war, would Harry still have come home, and meekly married? Might he and Denis have dared to explore the feelings they shared? No. Of course not. Harry had wept quietly when he read that the Sexual Offences Act had been passed, but that was in 1967 and Denis had died in ’43. “Sometimes,” Harry observed, “you just have to put your life in the hands of another, and trust.”

ENDS