Skiddlethorpe and Other Stories

By Peter D Wilson

A long-severed connection is happily renewed in old age; called to meet a demanding associate, a traveller finds someone quite different; after an elaborate dream regressing to childhood memories, a letter in real life brings an alarming suggestion of premonition; an enterprising off-comer has a remarkable effect on an isolated rustic community; duped into an unwarranted assassination, a conscientious vigilante resolves on reparation for the death; chance encounters bring the fulfilment of a dying child’s dearest wish; past activities lead to involvement with the affairs of a Russian oligarch; the security check on a guest to the re-marriage of the Russian’s widowed daughter leads to the discharge of an onerous obligation; a persistent romantic’s disastrous history comes to a strange conclusion; the inspiration of a fantasy film-maker proves to have a surprising source; remnants from long-past conflict bring a tragic end to attempts at entertaining passengers from a stranded cruise liner; discovery of ancient cave-art in a northern valley arouses great expectations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter D Wilson
• Release date: Jan 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301516995

Peter D Wilson

Peter Wilson was born in Nottingham, England, in 1936. After education at Nottingham High School, where he changed course from classics to science because he couldn’t get on with Greek, he gained an open scholarship to St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, to be taken up after National Service (1955-57) in which he was a radio mechanic at the SHAPE military headquarters near Paris. At Oxford he gained first-class honours in chemistry, then took a PhD at Leeds University.In 1964 he was appointed to a research position at the nuclear reprocessing site at Sellafield in Cumberland (the north-western corner of England), then operated by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA) of which the relevant division became British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) in 1971. He remained there until retirement in 2001, mostly working on process chemistry development. For the last dozen years he was chiefly concerned with certain aspects of long-term waste management and related strategic issues, helping to form the company technical policy thereon and presenting its rationale in international discussions. He was also the technical member of a team representing the UK in gaining acceptance of an extension to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to cover a possible loophole. His book "The Nuclear Fuel Cycle" (Oxford University Press, 1996) has become the standard text on the subject. Following his retirement, BNFL set up and financed a "Peter Wilson Medal and Prize" for research and communication, to be awarded annually for ten years at Leeds University.He lived in Seascale, a coastal village near to the Sellafield site. His interest in amateur dramatics dated back to the 1960s and for many years he was an active member of the society based in Gosforth, the next village inland. His collection of stories, plays and film scripts along with some factual material may be found at https://peterdwilson.wixsite.com/peterwilsonscripts

Book preview

SKIDDLETHORPE

AND OTHER STORIES

by

PETER D. WILSON

Monthly entries in the 2012 Daily Telegraph competition

for pieces of up to 2000 words

Copyright Peter D. Wilson

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Disclaimer

The content of these stories is fiction, and apart from some autobiographical material adapted as background to Svetlana, any resemblance to persons, events or situations in past or present reality is coincidental.

CONTENTS

Tiger

Alpine Assignment

The Road Taken

Skiddlethorpe

Uneasy Assassin

Command Performance

Svetlana

Family Reunion

Set a Thief ...

Fantasy

A Harmless Deception

Fowler’s Cave

About the author

Cover photograph: Linn of Tummel, late summer 2012

TIGER

Tom raced down the garden, across the sunken lane and up into the meadow beyond, towards a pond where he had often fished unsuccessfully for newts and tadpoles. After a long spell of miserable weather it was a gorgeous spring day with brilliant sunshine, a few white clouds, and a breeze just strong enough to blow the cobwebs away without being uncomfortable - at least, not to a healthy, active young lad. However, a clump of gorse and hawthorn a couple of hundred yards away seemed to be blowing about more than the wind seemed to warrant, even in the stronger gusts, and he wondered why. Could there be something moving within it? He had occasionally seen a fox thereabouts, but if an animal was indeed responsible it must have been of a much bigger kind. As he went closer to look, the disturbance seemed to shift, and a moment later the puzzle resolved itself when out sprang a tiger.

What a splendid animal, he thought, not registering the oddity of the situation. It slowly surveyed the surroundings, spotted Tom and paced majestically towards him. For some reason he didn’t run. Then out came another tiger; the first looked towards it, and a silent conversation seemed to pass between them. The second turned its head, uttered a low sound, and a cub emerged cautiously from the thicket. It too looked around, then ran to its mother who tapped it gently with a paw and started to lick stray tufts of fur into place.

The cub soon had enough of this, wriggled free from the restraining paw and ran up to Tom, rubbed against his ankle and rolled over, looking up expectantly. The requirement was obvious, and Tom duly crouched to rub its chest while the parents looked on benignly. When he thought duty satisfied, he would have stood up, but the cub clasped his hand in its paws and clearly wanted more. At last the incongruity struck him: tigers don’t do this. Come to think of it, they had no business to be there at all. The wind had risen with a chilly edge, and looking up, he realised that without his noticing, the clouds had spread into a complete canopy while the older tigers were growing hazy and grey. The cub under his hand was curiously still.

A snore startled him and he jerked awake. The cat on his knee stirred lazily and yawned, stretching out a paw and turning to look directly at him with the appearance of a question; Flora had always seemed almost human. With a shock, Tom noticed for the first time how prominent among the wrinkles were the veins of the hand resting on her fur. The years that had passed over him so lightly were now taking effect, and however reluctantly, he had to recognise that he was definitely getting on. For his age he was still remarkably fit, and he gratefully recognised his good fortune there, but the signs of deterioration - increasingly frequent lapses of memory, silly mistakes in familiar activities - had already caused him some anxiety. His thoughts often ran now to possible futures, none of them very encouraging, as well as to events in the past; he sometimes wondered what might be the connections between them. What premonition or lurking memory, for instance, could have prompted that curious dream about tigers?

*****

Tom and Diana had known each other from childhood, and in their mid-teens had become quite close friends. Without being unsociable they gradually came to spend more time together, apart from the rest of their circle. They generally ignored knowing looks from the others, and if they were aware of speculation among their relations about an eventual marriage they did nothing either to encourage or squash it. Most of the time they didn’t even think about the possibility. However, this was in the early1950s and in due course Tom had to do his National Service, which apart from brief spells of leave during training kept him well away from home for two years.

Diana was not one to go into purdah and even if he had thought their relationship anything like close enough to justify it, he knew better than to suggest restricting her social life. They wrote to each other often at first, but the frequency gradually tailed off, and so he was disappointed rather than heartbroken to learn halfway through his time that she was pregnant. There was no question about the father. Tom had met him a few times and formed a good impression; George was a decent, conscientious man in his mid-twenties, who took his responsibilities seriously. Tom was not able to attend their wedding, but sent the best gift he could manage and genuinely wished them well.

He wished in vain. Julie proved to be a delicate and fractious child, impatient with the illnesses that needed much more than usual attention and greatly restricted family activities. Then George had an accident at work that left him brain-damaged and house-bound, with disastrous effects on his character. The following years were very hard for Diana, with George increasingly bitter and querulous over his disabilities, imagined slights from his diminishing circle of friends and her inadequate (in his eyes) attention to him. She felt that he might have some justification there, but could do little about it, with more than enough on her hands dealing with the child while earning enough to keep the family out of even greater difficulties.

Tom meanwhile had completed an engineering course with reasonable credit and found a good, steady if not particularly lucrative job. He discreetly did as much as he could to help, although he had to be very careful since George had become excessively jealous of other male contacts and gave more and more venomous expression to his suspicions. Often Tom could do little more than dry Diana’s tears over the latest outburst, and on finding out about it through a well-meaning neighbour’s thoughtless chatter, George angrily forbade even that. She didn’t always obey, but the deceptions involved troubled her