Tea Break Tales

By Eric Bray

Tea Break Tales is a collection of fictional short stories, offered in the same fashion as an Artist's Trading Card, in the hope that the reader will look further, and possibly read one of my full-length novels, which are slowly being released in e-book form
The stories range from the possibly historical, to the maybe future, via the speculative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Bray
• Release date: Dec 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466073135

Eric Bray

Born in 1950, after school,I served my country in the Royal Navy, the least said about which the better. Since then I have made plastic drain-pipes, driven a fork truck, worked as a courier in the multi-drop rip-off game, and for the last two years have watched a conveyor belt going around. I have now achieved retirement. I began writing for amusement during my lunch-breaks, and rose to the challenge of becoming published when I commented on a book I had purchased, saying something along the lines of - "I could do better than that!" - when someone said - "Go on, then!" My other hobbies are scuba-diving, designing, building, and flying radio-controlled model aircraft, ham radio, photography, and avoiding gardening.

Book preview

Tea Break Tales

Published by Eric Bray at Smashwords

copyright 2011 Eric Bray

All characters, places, and incidents that appear within these pages are entirely a figment of my imagination, and bear no intended resemblance to any person, place, or thing, whether not yet born, living, or deceased, unbuilt, built, demolished, or just doodles or scribbled notes on someone else’s piece of paper.

Any perceived slight resulting from any chance similarity is sincerely regretted.

Contents

Fighter - Chapters One, Two, Three, + Four

The Guardian

Never greet a friend

When the oil runs out

Cat

Paper Bag

For Misty

Tree

Decision time

Shall we Dance?

Chapter one.

Pilot to be.

While he was in the final year of his school-days, it all boiled up. The chosen Leader of the country across the Channel had been sabre-rattling for a while previously,and had finally done it, and invaded Spain.

It was all over in a few days, or so it seemed, and a new word was added to the Oxford Dictionary. The word was Blitzkrieg.

Everyone was talking about it, except the adults, who maintained a stony silence, a very British stiff upper lip, and flatly refused to even consider what might come next. All the boys in the class were excited by our illicit discussions, strictly forbidden by the Head, wherever we happened to gather, (usually behind the bike-shed, for a sneaked cigarette, or a usually foiled attempt at finding out why and how girls were different!)

When Italy and France fell to the onslaught as well, and the younger men began sweating on their enforced volunteering into the Armed Forces, we also began enthusing on what we would do after we were released from the final year of school. Of course, we all agreed to join up immediately, because the only thing keeping them from coming here was that narrow strip of water that the Geography Tutor called Le Manche.

The nearest to it I had ever been was from between the pages of a book, and I had no comprehension of what, where, or how big it was!

Mother, of course, was set dead against me wasting my life in such a fashion. Dad -, well, Dad had no say, as he was already ‘volunteered’, and was down south, somewhere. What few letters we received from him were so heavily edited, with black ink-outs, or holes cut in the paper, removing any words that might reveal anything of any possible use to the enemy, in the unlikely event of the letter falling into their hands, that they were virtually unreadable, having been reduced to incoherent part-sentences, or rectangles of illegible paper lace. All I knew was that Mother cried herself to sleep at night, for days, after one of these mutilated missives arrived. (I know that is poor English, but how else can it be written?)

During the last months of our schooling, Representatives of the various Armed Forces came to all of the schools in the area to lecture us on the options that were open to us. A lot of the boys from the lower grades were steered into manufacturing, going into factories to make the bullets, guns, and tanks, which the country desperately needed. Others found themselves going into the mines, where they learned, brutally quickly, how to extract the anthracite that the industries needed, to keep the first lot occupied. Many lower than them found that they were being ‘volunteered’ to begin Army training, to become what us upper level pupils churlishly and cruelly referred to as cannon fodder. We were only to learn much later how accurate our predictions had been.

I, and a few others, were steered into the Royal Air Force, because of our quick-mindedness, and ability with numbers. I was delighted, after having seen a bi-plane, once, landed in a field near to our school while the driver sought assistance for an ailing motor. The only other aircraft I had ever seen for real had been way up high, leaving trails of white smoke in the sky behind them. (I carefully forgot to think about the very few that I saw going the other way, trailing black smoke.) That was before Dunkirque, of course. After that event, we all were to see lots of aircraft, usually decorated with the black cross that identified them as being the other lot. We also saw the carnage that their passing created.

We few were sent to a place called Cranfield, loaded into the back of a truck for the journey from, appropriately enough, our old school. Our excitement was only tempered by the thought that we were leaving our home and family for the first time, and for who knows how long. Mother had packed my cardboard suitcase with my best clothes, and all my underwear. I had only one suit, the legs of which were only just long enough, as I had started growing to giraffe-like proportions. (I had no idea what one of those was, either, but that is irrelevant.) I did have a lot of handkerchiefs, so I assume that Mother thought that I might need to blow my nose a lot!

When I opened my packed lunch, carefully wrapped in a wax-paper bread-wrapper saved from a loaf that had been used over the last few days, I found that I had bread sandwiches, as she had been so excited that she had forgotten the filling! The bacon grease, used in lieu of butter, a dairy product that was almost impossible to obtain, gave the rather stale bread a flavour which is best left undescribed, but it served to fill an empty belly.

We arrived at Cranfield in the early dusk, and were invited to step down from the truck by a kindly old Gent, who led us to a wooden hut which was to become our home for the next few months, while we learned the basics of our new trade. As we followed him along the footpaths linearly aligned between carefully manicured acres of grass, he rambled garrulously on about the ‘last lot’, whatever that was, and his part in it. We arrived at our hut, and were invited to enter and find ourselves an empty bunk each, and a matching steel locker in which we should place our kit.

There were already fifty other boys in there, much to our surprise. A bigger surprise was waiting when we found that we had to bathe communally, in a large tiled room that had no dividing panels between shower-heads. The toilets were marginally better, having separate cubicles for the ‘seat’, but only half-height doors that could be looked over and under!

A short time after our arrival, and with barely enough time for the necessary ablutions following a long trip, we were walked, in a long crocodile, to another long, round-topped, corrugated hut, which proved to be the trainees’ restaurant.

We dined on bangers, mash, and a thin brown liquid that might have been either gravy or washing-up water, but we were too hungry to care, and scoffed the lot. There were no afters, just a cup of orange tea, ready mixed with milk and a hint of sugar, whether you wanted it or not!

We were walked back to our hut again, and told that the lights would be turned out at nine-thirty, because there would be – ‘An early start, Gentlemen'!

We spent the intervening hour finding out about each other, occasionally with fists, and where each of us was from. Some of our accents were almost indecipherable, which led to some more physical discussion before difficulties were ironed out or a compromise reached. At nine-thirty exactly, the room was plunged into darkness, except for a single red lamp that was left illuminated all night.

At six in the morning, we were brusquely turfed out of our restless beds, and chased off to the bathroom again, with a mere fifteen minutes to shower and dress, prior to being led to the restaurant again. (The word was – we were expected to bathe every day, not just once a week!)

Breakfast was a sausage, (left over from last night?) on a slice of bread, and a cup of the orange stuff. From there, we were led to a lecture hall, and told to find a seat, as the first class would begin shortly.

A portly man with a lot of gold braid on his hat took the dais first, bade us a good morning, then introduced a few other men to us. They were to be our main contact with the world for the next weeks, and took the form of our Class Instructor, our Course Instructor, and a few other people, who we would probably only see once, or maybe twice, during our visit, such as the Dentist, and the Doctor. It was those two Gentlemen we would begin with, but first – another man moved up each of the lines of chairs, giving the occupant of the nearest one a stack of forms to pass along to the others. They proved to be our contracts and the temporarily blank medical and educational records for each one of us. We took turns with someone’s pen, to write our name, date of birth, and home address onto the top of each, and then waited to see what would happen next.

They began with the back row, which included me, and we were taken to the Medical Centre, where we were probed and prodded as the medics sought all our defects and ailments. We were all standing there,