- This topic has 10 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I am attending a gathering of sorts next week and am aware that when the attendees leave they will have different thoughts and emotions. The event will evoke different memories for them.
In 500 words or less please write a piece entitled ‘After the Gathering’. With the exception of the title and the number of words there are no restrictions.
Entries close at midnight on 30th September. I hope you enjoy this.
After the Gathering
I shan’t go next year.
I mean, Tom wasn’t there. Jackie spent the whole evening talking to Spence and nobody can get a word in with those two. And Pete. That was a shock. Pete’s joined the choir eternal. Playing three-card brag with St Peter more like.
‘So you don’t have to.’ That was his thing. I remember when he broke his arm playing rugby at school. They were loading him into a car to take him to hospital and he said to me, ‘I’ve broken my arm, so you don’t have to.’
After that, he said it for just about everything.
Bloody Covid. I expect he told the nurse, ‘I’m going onto this respirator, so you don’t have to.’
I’ll miss the old sod. So much we shared and nobody better to ask, ‘Do you remember when…?’
Kath wasn’t there either. Yeah, I know school reunions aren’t her thing. Not all of us think it was the best days of our lives. But some of it was good, surely? Kath was the best part of it for me. And the worst, to start with. My God, but I was in love with her. She hardly saw me at first. Didn’t acknowledge I existed until just before we left. It was such a short time we were together. Then she went to Edinburgh and I went to Exeter. I was so looking forward to the Christmas holiday, and then she was in Portugal with her family and then—. And then, and then, and then it sort of faded away.
I barely spoke to her at the reunion, three years ago? No four. That was the last time I saw her. They say there’s no fool like an old fool. I’m both, it seems. Old and still a fool in love.
They’re all on Facebook. I have an account, I think, but I’ve never been able to manage it. I can barely manage email and I only do that because nobody writes letters anymore. It was bloody irritating this year. They all seemed to know what was going on already, so how can I ask what people have been doing for the last ten years when they’re all talking about last weekend?
I expect Kath’s on Facebook. Jen said she’s single now. Split up with Kenny years back. Nice girl, Jen. Spence’s little sister, apparently. She was a couple of years below us although I can’t say I remember her much. Jackie said she had a huge crush on me back then. I was going to ask for the gory details but Spence turned up and Jackie shushed me.
Talked to Jen for a while after that. She’s a widow. Gave me her email address and I gave her mine. She said she’d contact me and have a chat about using Facebook, or Instagram or something. One or the other.
When I left, she said, ‘See you soon, or next year anyway.’
But I might not go next year.
500 excluding title
After the Gathering
There was never an invitation. No surprise email in your inbox, no speculative phone call while your mouth was full of the last of the chocolate brownies, and no snatched conversation as you unloaded your shopping in the supermarket queue.
‘Have you heard? Amelia’s having another one of her get-togethers this weekend. It seems like ages since the last one. We can’t not go, that would be rude.’ Or ‘There’s a dress in Madison’s window that would be perfect for dinner at Amelia’s. How’s about we engage in some retail therapy and then do lunch. When are you free?’
No, there was never anything so mundane. Instead, there was a curious quiver of your heartstrings as you cracked eggs into a bowl for a solitary tea, or a tug on your soul that made you gasp out loud as you folded the washing. You would be out of the kitchen door, down the back steps and halfway along the road before you realised you were wearing odd socks and you hadn’t brushed your hair. And on the way, you’d converge with others, similarly unprepared, but propelled by the same sense of anticipation; Henry Johnson with a mud mask on his face and Elspeth Pettigrew wearing Winnie the Pooh pyjamas.
‘Oh, my goodness! I haven’t seen you in ages! How’re the girls? Is Robin still working at the garage?’ Out words would tumble, wise and wilful, salient and self-assured, until we swept into the clearing at the base of the mountain and onto Amelia’s land.
Her property had a temperate micro-climate all of its own, where a lilac watercolour sunset gave way to a sky of purple velvet embroidered with crystal constellations.
Afterwards, in the grey, spiderweb softness of early dawn, we drifted home, footsore from dancing, cheeks aching with laughter, and hearts eased. We stepped lightly on a path fitted with pine-needle carpet, satiated and happy, but with no clear recollection of what food we’d eaten or how we’d slaked our thirst, which music had made our hearts soar or who we’d laughed with.
Only Amelia knew and Amelia was never there.
Not quite fulfilling the brief but it’s this or nothing.
The post-gathering I should most like to write the aftermath of, did time and ability permit is the one which took place following the reading of the will of Thomas Hutchinson Goodfellow, my husband’s great-grandfather, following his death in Tottenham in 1891, age 73.
That it was disputatious is evidenced by the fact that his three eldest sons (one of which is referred to as “reputed son”), named as trustees, were challenged about their handling of the conditions the will, the rest of the family bringing a case to be heard in the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division against them.In Birmingham, he’d established himself as an Electro Plate Manufacturer; when he moved to London his address was given as Hatton Garden where he employed sixteen and was at times described as “silversmith”.
The will begins conventionally enough, suggesting “all my jewels trinkets plate linen china glass books pictures prints wines liquors furniture and other household effects” be shared amongst his eight children as equally as possible. Shares in the family business were to be similarly divided.
But when it comes to the rest of his estate, he gives the trustees the power to delay the sale of his large portfolio of London properties should they deem the money necessary for the running of the business. Understandably, his married daughters, whose husbands were not employed in the family business were reluctant to have the receipt of their portion in the hands of the three eldest sons, and I imagine that post the reading, once the implications had sunk in, conversation might have got heated.In the end, the trustees lost their case, and the properties were ordered to be auctioned at the Wood Green. Assembly Rooms, High Road, Wood Green, in the county of Middlesex, on Wednesday and Thursday, the 5th and 6th June, 1912, at 7 o’clock each evening, in 51 lots.
I’d love to find the time to research – and the imagination to write the drawing room conversations; daughters urging their husbands to act, and the joy of success. 9342 words)<p style=”text-align: center;”>After the Gathering</p>
Ask any of us CD players and we will tell you the worst punishment is the dumpster. But after the gathering, I knew better.The dark room where they stuck us reeked of decaying cardboard and strawberry gum. We called it, The Gathering Room. Employees labelled it a mortuary for CD players. You could understand why we opted for christening it The Gathering Room.
We’d been stacked in shelves in this chilly room for about the last decade. Forgive me for the lack of precision, but after a while the days bleed into years.
About a year ago, more of us started getting pulled off the shelves.
“They’re making a comeback!” an employee yanked another one of my lucky CD player friends from the shelf.
No matter how much they dusted me, shifted me, popped a CD in me, I was never chosen.
A pang of guilt snapped at me when I recalled laughing at cassette players. I quit laughing when digital music spread like acid leaking from a corroded battery.
Tacky downloads with no liner notes. No clever covers of a baby chasing a dollar bill. Just a touch of a cheap button and the music was there like a whore in your car at two in the morning. Don’t ask me how I know of such things, I can’t help where I’ve been.
“We can’t keep all these CD players around,” said an employee. “We need room for stock. Let’s send some to the dumpster.”
What stock could be so important that we would be hauled off to our death even though we worked? That morning they put a CD in me, I blasted Audioslave and startled the employee. I didn’t deserve the dumpster.
Sticky fingers lifted me off the shelf. He held one of my CD player friends in his other hand. He inspected us.
Please pick me. I worked every time my last owner needed me. For every candlelit dinner with her husband, she would select the smooth strums of Jewel. I played without fail. For every romp with a stranger when her husband was out of town, she would choose the raucous riffs of Justin Hawkins. I played without fail. You can judge her if you want, I was made to play music and that’s what I did.
“I’ll take this one,” the teenager looked at me. He placed my poor friend back on the shelf and walked out The Gathering Room with me.
Freedom!
He placed a Mineral-Zed CD inside me. Followed by another Mineral-Zed CD. I begged for anything but Mineral-Zed and their bland pop music. Mineral-Zed had no instruments, just computerized noise. I prayed he would knock me off the bed by accident. But I was out of good fortune.
A month later, Mineral-Zed disbanded. Relief, surely? No. He played them more.
For the next year, I would play nothing but Mineral-Zed and pop music. It was then, after the gathering, I learnt there were worse punishments than the dumpster.
Word Count: 498 words
After a hectic few hours, it was lovely to sit down and read these entries. Thank you all for taking the time to enter.
Athelstone – I felt very close to your character. When I finished reading I felt very sad.
Seagreen – I thoroughly enjoyed this. The final paragraph was lovely to read. Who is Ameilia I wonder?
Sandra – I found this very interesting and with so many possibilities. I hope if you write the drawing room scene perhaps you can share it.
Alex –I really enjoyed the way you set the hope and anticipation of freedom, the delight at being chosen then the realisation that the future was in fact bleak. A good read.
And the winner is Athelstone. Congratulations.
Well deserved, Athelstone, and thank you Clebs for the topic which at least sent me back to the primary sources to size up the task again. Thanks to all entrants for a feast of post gathering events.
Well done, Ath. Great voice (as always!) And thanks, Clebs, for prompting me to write something (anything!) even though I had no idea where I was going with it 🙂 (The only thing I was sure about was that whoever Amelia is, she’s no benevolent being).
Sandra, I’d like to see more of yours if you develop it and Alex, good job on taking the unexpected route.
Thanks for a wonderful prompt Clebs. I thoroughly enjoyed writing my piece and it feels as though it might develop a bit. Plus, you got a pretty wonderful bunch of other entries. Well done all.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.