Wednesday's Words on a Friday

 

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.

This month the words/prompts are supplied by River and can be found here

This week's words/prompts are: 

1.herring  2.detectives  3.beer  4.mask  5.peaches

Not included is Charlotte's colour of the month: St Patrick's Green.

Here is my story: continued from and a bit longer than last week:

“Claudia Johansson, we meet again, but I don’t believe I know your lovely young friend?”

My jaw dropped open. “You remember me? But it’s been twenty years!” Rosie’s jaw was also hanging open. “You two know each other?” she squeaked. “Of course,” said the gorgeous young God, “we met when Claudia was in my grandfather’s peach tree, stealing peaches. He had recently died and I was inspecting the house he had left me. Came out to sit on the patio and have a beer and spotted the little thief just before the branch broke, I raced over just as she landed on her feet. I asked her name and she gave it right before leaping over the short section of the fence and running away. And you would be a little sister perhaps?”

“Cousin, visiting before school starts again,” said Rosie. “Roslyn Johansson.” “Christopher James Landsdowne.” They shook hands as I tried to gather my thoughts. It wasn’t easy. As a skinny twelve year old, I had instantly fallen in love, but as the years passed I put it down to infatuation and cheap romance novels and almost succeeded in forgetting him.

“I see you are walking your dog,” said Christopher, noticing (of course) that I was yet unable to form coherent words. “He seems to be very interested in my bacon sandwich.” “He does love bacon,” I managed to say, “that’s what drew him to your gate.” “We had no idea anyone was here,” said Rosie, “thought we might have to call the police in case you were a squatter.” “No need for that now is there,” said Christopher as he handed Buddy half the bacon sandwich. “I’ll leave you to your walk, but perhaps you might like to come back later and see the house? I’m sure my dog Zorro would love to meet Buddy. Bring your parents, we are neighbours after all.”

We agreed on a time and he turned to go back up the path to his front door. Rosie was ecstatic, “We get to see inside this gorgeous house!” I couldn’t answer, realizing that it hadn’t been infatuation at all, and I was still in love. How on earth was I going to get through an entire evening in his presence? Later that day as I helped clear away the dinner dishes, I confided in Mum regarding my worries. “Claudia, you are no longer a dithering teenager,” she reminded me. “You’re both adults now and I am sure you will cope just fine. Although this does sort of explain why you have broken up with so many boyfriends. Call your Father please, let him know we are ready.

I called Dad in from the patio and went to see if Rosie was also ready. She had put on her prettiest summer dress, but wore flat shoes in case we were shown around the grounds as well. “In the dark?” I said. “There’s a full moon,” she replied.  We locked up the house and walked the short distance to the Landsdowne estate gates, surprised to find them open, with lamps set along the path to light our way. Christopher met us at the solid oak front door and ushered us inside, shaking hands all around. I noticed he held mine a touch too long and had the crazy notion that it was on purpose.

Soon we were all seated in a huge living room, beers in hand for the men, soft drinks for the rest of us. Mum rarely drank alcohol anyway and wanted to be clear-headed if we were to take the full tour of the house. “There’s a couple of rooms I can’t show you,” said Christopher. “I’ve been removing what seems to be excessive from several rooms and shoving it all into two rooms beyond the dining room.” He handed around a tray of tiny dessert cakes, then left it within our reach as he settled in a leather chair by the fireplace, one of a matched pair, with my Father sitting in the other one. Dad began the conversation by asking Christopher where he had been for the last twenty years and what had he been doing. “Start with your favourite memory,” said Dad. They settled back in their chairs, already firm friends in the way that men often are.

“My favourite?” said Christopher. “And please, just call me Chris, all of you. My best memories are the three seasons I spent in the North Sea on a fishing boat. We were fishing for herring, using a purse-seine style net, there are autumn and spring gathering seasons and I did two spring and one autumn, I would have done a second autumn, but when we returned with our catch after the second spring, we were held out to sea by coast guards and boarded by detectives searching for drugs being smuggled. Our boat was clean of course, but it did look remarkably like another old fishing trawler which was eventually caught and that’s where two thousand packed bricks of heroin were found. I didn’t much feel like sticking around for another season after that.”

“Sounds exciting,” said Dad, who knew a fair bit about trawling himself. Granddad had been a fisherman in his youth.  A whine came from the hallway and a dog poked his nose into the room as if asking permission to come in. “Hey, Zorro,” said Chris, “come in and meet the folks.” Zorro sniffed us all in turn and we remarked how well his name suited him. He was black and white, with a large black patch over his back looking somewhat like a cloak and a black mask around his eyes, similar to the Zorro I remembered from childhood TV watching. At this point Christopher thought it was best to show us over the house, a mansion really, before it got too dark as some of the rooms upstairs didn’t have lights yet.