MY FIRST EVER ATTEMPT AT WRITING FICTION FOUND IN A FILE AFTER 13 YEARS!
THE FIRST EXERCISE EVER GIVEN TO ME IN A WEA WRITING CLASS I JOINED IN JANUARY 2011.
THE ROOTING OF PEGS
A small garden surrounded on three sides by a marled wall, crumbling in places. The garden and its four paths are overgrown in a managed kind of way. From the house you can see two men leaning back from a wrought-iron table on matching chairs with cushions, which allow one of the men to slump comfortably as they listen to a woman, her elbows on table.
Her blue and white frock floats away on the wind and hides a figure which has seen better days. Not that I agree, but I listen to her closely. Her world is local and mixed, inasmuch as her origins and activities straddle the fault-lines of provincial society in late-forties England. She reads Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer for light relief and the Daily Herald, forever an optimist.
“George you sit there, confident you are right.
And Alan, you're not much better.
How can you believe such things?
Look at us. Comfortable… time to talk and sip tea in this garden of yours.
You're the only person I know who dresses for tea.
They want better, and who can blame them for that?
And what do you want? For it to stay the same.”
“Don't be such a hypocrite” mocks George in reply.
“Where's Lucy when you need her. She'll put a stop to this”.
And right on cue she appears. More cake and tea. Everyone's mother and an unlikely lover, who beguiled and seduced both men for reasons less obvious than it first seems.
“I could see. Was Beth giving you a hard time?”
As George attempted to rise from his slouch, Lucy caught his grunt and stopped him dead. “The sprogs are away. There's just us having a genteel day. Let's keep it that way… and Beth. You and I need to compare notes. Didn't you say that Dad was coming round later?”
“I did” she replied.
“Well, let's be ready”.
'What about us?' chided Alan.
“Before a good boy now and I'll see you right later” replies Beth, with a grin spreading across her face that would have made The Cheshire Cat jealous. They both laughed and he squeezes her knee through the frock.
“Now, the tea Lucy and that cake. I'm ready for seconds”.
Who would have thought then, that balmy day, with tea in a walled garden in the most unlikely of places, that it was the beginning of something more momentous than its parts. Each would contribute. None would be fully aware of how they were about to change the world around them.
And me? Well, I'm the outsider looking on. I know Beth and Lucy far better than I do George and Alan. I am their peg man and I have made this my story to tell, even though I will never be part of it. I am their secret.
Robert Howard - 6 January 2011
A NOTE. My first ever stab at fiction in the Beeston WEA Writing Class I had joined. Our tutor asked us to write down the introduction to a story, then as a group to vote on each story. My recollection that we were all terribly polite, it being our first time together. I typed it up and placed in a file. Today (28 April 2024) is the first time I have opened that file. I was looking for an explanatory note I had written for myself after someone in the class quite early on described me as ‘a latter day Jean Racine.’ She later became my writing buddy until lockdown.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ MORE? IS THIS A STORY WORTH TELLING EVEN THOUGH, A THIS MOMENT, I KNOW NO MORE THAN YOU THE READER!