Dear Mam

by Ginny Hartman

In 2019 a box was found in the attic of a house which had been owned by a lady who now lives in a care home, suffering from dementia.In the box were photographs, press cuttings and memorabilia which showed a great journey had been made in 1934 by a Mr and Mrs Fuller, who had travelled from their home on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border to the Sahara Desert in a Chevrolet Eccles motor home, taking their maid, Mary with them, providing her with a tent to sleep in, outside the motor home. Nothing more is known about Mr and Mrs Fuller or Mary the maid. Sadly the lady who owned the house now has no memory.According to the press cuttings, the Fullers trekked through Europe to Algeria, with their maid sleeping under the stars in a tent all the way. They completed their journey and then travelled back to the Midlands with a live monkey in their caravan as a souvenir.However, no mention is made of Mary returning from the desert with her employers and their pet monkey! This 17 year old girl who had been in service to Mr and Mrs Fuller since she had left school at 14 and had never been further than Derby all her life and had found herself trekking and camping halfway across the world at her employers bidding. Whatever had happened to her in the Sahara desert! Did she get home unscathed? Or not?

30 pages, Paperback

Published August 27, 2020

Reviews

[Phil Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written with charm

This novella is a quick read and has its own charm as the writer creates fictional letters from a naive maid called Mary who is invited on a travel adventure from Derbyshire to the desserts in Algiers. It would be great to be given a longer storyline with more travel and personal perspective detail from the maid's POV. The characters of Mr and Mrs Fuller are well imagined and humorous in respect of Mrs Fuller's booze consumption.

[Jo Fountain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it!!!

What a lovely short story, how I wish it could have been longer. I hoped Mary would meet a nice young man in Gibraltar or France and continue her adventures, instead of going back to bad tempered Ron!