Meridian

By Derek Mortimer

Meridian is about time. Time, the past. Time, the present. Time, the future.
A woman sits in a cafe which has a clock with only one hand and reflects how she tried to cheat time to save the life of her daughter and son-in-law.
Two young brothers test each others’ courage as they stand by a flickering fire in a dark room, looking into a mirror, waiting in fear for the devil.
Time is running out for a man waiting anxiously at a secret rendezvous for his illicit lover.
A woman balances on the edge of a balcony a noose around her neck, preparing to jump.
Elderly brothers from opposite ends of the world meet after decades of separation and talk of what they won, what they lost.
A young and homesick immigrant tries to find his way in a new world.
A couple visiting Cambodia’s famous Angkor ruins come face to face with the country’s more recent violent history in a shock confrontation.
An aspiring author meets one of his literary heroes, then waits and hopes for an answer to his “What if?” moment of fantasy.
These are some of the stories that span half a century and half a world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derek Mortimer
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514864968

Derek Mortimer

I live in Sydney, Australia, and grew up in Bradford, Yorkshire, the then, industrial north of England, a place of mills, mines and muck. But, beyond the cities were sweeping moors that seemed to go on forever, an exciting landscape for a boy to explore. Which is probably why when I moved to Australia I fell in love with the great open spaces of the Snowy Mountains – and the sea. I love ocean swimming, and ocean swimming is also a journey across space.I’m lucky in the sense that I am at home in two countries; in one I am an immigrant, in the other an emigrant. Some of my stories reflect this duality, the immigrant’s life, and the days of childhood in another country. I have an Australian wife, two daughters who were born in England but grew up in Australia, two Australian-born granddaughters, and countless members of an extended family on both sides of the world.

Book preview

MERIDIAN

14 SHORT STORIES

Derek Mortimer

Meridian

Copyright © 2015 by Derek Mortimer

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, or events used in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, alive or deceased, events or locales is completely coincidental.

Print ISBN-13: 978-1514864968

Print ISBN-10: 1514864967

Cover design by Jeanine Henning

www.jeaninehenning.com

Book design by Maureen Cutajar

www.gopublished.com

Contents

MERIDIAN

THE RENDEZVOUS

THE WISH

ON THE EDGE

GIRL AT THE WINDOW

THE VISITORS

TUNNEL TIGER

CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

A COLD DAY IN JUNE

RUNAWAYS

FRUIT OF THE VINE

THE BOXER

THE BLACK PRINCE

BRUSH WITH FAME

MERIDIAN

Although she knew it was a joke it still disturbed Dorothy – this clock with only a minute hand. It hung on the wall of the café, mocking time, suspending it forever between one hour and the next. The single hand clicked round and round, pointing to the twelve sets of Roman numerals on the grey, time-faded clock face in a ludicrous journey to nowhere.

It had been hanging on the same wall when Dorothy and Howard had come here as they fled what they couldn’t flee thirty years ago. Howard had been dead ten months now. Or was it eleven? Hard to keep track these days.

Maybe the clock had been donated as a joke from the railway museum across the road – a comment on the unreliability of the state’s railways. For some reason it reminded her of the street game What’s the time, Mr Wolf?

Their two children, Susan and Mark, had played the game outside the front of the house with their friends when they were little. Innocent fun, a game in which one of them would be Mr Wolf with their back to the others, who kept up a chant of What’s the time, Mr Wolf? as they crept closer and closer until finally Mr Wolf spun round, chased, caught and ate one of them, the one who got too close, the one who was the most daring. A symbolic game of life and death.

Both the clock and the game were linked forever in her mind to that horrendous time three decades ago, ten thousand nine hundred and fifty days.

The café – an old stationmaster’s cottage, aptly named the Whistlestop – was empty so early in the morning and a little chilly. Since her last visit with Howard, sliding glass doors had been added to one section. This provided easier access to the garden and tables set under the trees. It all looked very pleasant in the early morning autumn sun.

The proprietor, a thin, smiling, blonde woman in her forties, a tree-changer probably, brought her a pot of tea and scones. The woman said she’d found the one-handed clock a bit weird when she’d bought the place ten years ago but kept it because it gave customers something to remember the place by, and hopefully to come again.

Your first time here? the woman asked.

Dorothy smiled up at her. Yes.

You should go to the railway museum. It’s the best in Australia. They run a steam train of a weekend and holidays. Just a few kilometres down the track and back. People love it. Particularly kids – and older people. You should give it a go. Bring back memories of the old days.

Dorothy smiled and nodded. She wanted to tell her to go away. But she didn’t.

If Howard had been here he would be explaining to the woman that they had been before, and why. Then he’d have launched into the full story, chapter and verse. That had been the difference between her and him. Howard unburdened himself onto anyone, strangers waiting for a train or a tram, anyone in the diocese who would listen. She didn’t like sharing family grief. Howard drove her nearly mad at times with his constant retelling of the story to a horrified audience. At times she hated him for it, but she held her peace. Everyone has different ways of coping. She locked her feelings in a little box inside her, hidden from family and strangers alike.

Hope you enjoy your food, the woman said and finally left her in peace.

It was ridiculous, driving almost to Sydney, just to sit eating scones and thinking. Nearly a thousand kilometres along the same escape route she had taken with Howard such a long time ago. Increasing the distance from the place it happened solved nothing. If that was all that was needed she could have flown to Europe or America, stretched out the pain until it was so thin it was no longer perceptible.

She hadn’t told either Mark or his wife, Linda, what she was doing, just left a message on their voice mail saying she was going to stay with a friend for a few days. Dorothy knew she was causing them concern and she felt bad about that. They had dropped more than one hint over recent years that a woman in her late seventies should not be driving, particularly long distances. But Dorothy stood her ground. The car was her independence and she was hanging on to it.

She would text Mark when she got back to the motel. Linda was more than a little on the aloof side but Dorothy knew her daughter-in-law felt a responsibility towards her, affection even.

**

As a child, Susan had always been cautious. Dorothy liked to think it was mostly a Howard trait. Susan was vivacious, even as a little girl, and right from the beginning a people-person, but cautious. She didn’t climb a tree without first testing the branches. Which had made it something of a surprise when she married David, until Dorothy thought about it. David was as reckless as Susan was cautious. He was always pushing boundaries, living on the edge, the child in the street game who got the closest to Mr Wolf, and was the fleetest of foot when Mr Wolf spun around and chased. This was probably the reason he was a commercial pilot. Up there in the sky with no firm ground beneath. Susan was attracted to him because he was so different to anyone in the family, or her close circle of friends around church. The Yin and Yang.

With their usual abundance of youthful enthusiasm Susan and David had urged Dorothy and Howard to go to New Zealand where Mark was doing a physiology PhD at the University of Auckland. Howard needed to take a break from parish responsibility, they argued. When Dorothy wondered whether a visit would interfere with Mark’s studies he had pooh-poohed the idea.

New Zealand is awesome. Mountains, forest, fiords, glaciers. Go while you can, Susan had coaxed, as though she and Howard knew nothing about the place.

Howard, as usual, had been reluctant to hand over the church to someone else, even so he could have a much-deserved holiday, but some of his parishioners had urged him on. We’ll survive without you, they’d joked.

So Dorothy and Howard went. And Susan was right; New Zealand was awesome. The land was green and wet and lush, particularly after a scorching Melbourne summer and a drought that had extended beyond summer into autumn.

Mark was happy to show his parents around Auckland before their planned tour of the South Island.

Susan rang them every day, or they rang her, juggling the time difference, asking the ritual questions: What’s the weather like? Is everything OK?

Don’t forget to water the garden. If you don’t keep it alive you’ll be in big trouble when I get back, Dorothy joked to Susan.

Howard even stopped worrying about the church for a while.

**

A family came into the café – mum, dad and a small boy. They were laughing and joking together. Dorothy smiled at them and the parents nodded in response. Dorothy thought, as she often did, how she would probably have been a grandmother to not only Mark and Linda’s family, but to Susan and David’s too. Maybe even a great-grandmother. It was something she and Howard never discussed.

The father pointed out the one-handed clock to the small boy. What’s the time? he asked.

Dorothy wondered what sort of life the boy had before him. Long and trouble free, as far as that was possible? Or beset by trouble? Would it be short? Or long?

The boy went up close and peered up at the clock, trying to see if there was another hand behind the single one.

It’s weird, he said, and his parents laughed.

Weird. Yes, time is weird, Dorothy thought, particularly when you try to cheat it. Time goes in one direction only. There is the moment, and there is the memory of the moment.

**

Mark had booked Dorothy and Howard into a pleasant little B & B close to his little two-room flat near the uni. He would collect them at 9.30 Sunday morning to take them to church.

But shortly after midnight there was a frantic knocking on their door. Dorothy clambered out of bed, half asleep. It was Mark. He stumbled into the room without speaking and grabbed her. He held her so tight she could hardly breathe. His body convulsed with shudders.

Howard’s bulky form appeared by their side. He put his arms around Mark’s shoulders. What is it? Mark! His calm and deliberate voice masked the growing unease in the pit of his stomach.

Mark still could not speak. The three stood, locked together between the open door and a rumpled bed, Mark’s anguish passing through them like the tremors of an earthquake.

Howard steered his son to the edge of the bed and propped him up. Mark? Mark?

Mark. Mark! Tell us, Dorothy pleaded as she knelt by his side.

Mark shook his head backwards and forwards so violently