Following David & Other Stories

By Graham Sloper

Following David - a contemporary British novella - tells the story of Matthew Lockwood, a gentle and diligent man, who is about to retire from his job as a housemaster at a small public school, when he is contacted by an old school friend desperate for his help.

What unfolds is a story about the ferocity that children can unleash on each other and the tragic consequences that can follow. But it is also about friendship and love, and whether it is possible to reconcile tragic events over fifty years later.

The fifteen short stories that accompany Following David take the reader on a journey from Hollywood to Stalingrad via Africa, France, Scotland and Cornwall, giving a fascinating insight into a range of characters and situations that are tragic, funny and poignant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graham Sloper
• Release date: Aug 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370743360

Graham Sloper

Graham Sloper began writing at the age of sixty-three and has written over a hundred short stories and poems since then, covering a wide range of subjects. He describes taking up writing as one of the most satisfying turns his life has taken. Based in Northamptonshire, Graham is the chair of the Northampton Writers Group and a member of the Rugby University of the Third Age creative writing group.

Book preview

Following David

and

Other Stories

A collection of one

contemporary British novella

and 15 shorter stories

Graham Sloper

Copyright 2017 © Graham Sloper

Cover Drawing by Jayne Simkins

Editing and publishing by Morgen Bailey

You may not reproduce, adapt, modify, communicate to the public, reproduce or otherwise use any part of this book (in particular for commercial purposes) except as set out below, or otherwise with the express written permission from the author.

You may make limited copies of the content contained within this book in accordance with the fair dealing and fair use provisions of the Copyright Act 1968, including copies for research, study, criticism, review or news reporting.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

Author’s Note

Before I joined my local U3A Creative Writing Group in 2013, I had not written any work of fiction since I was at school, almost fifty years earlier. Like most people, the idea of trying to write was lurking somewhere in the back of my brain but work, raising a family, and life generally all seemed to intervene to prevent anything actually getting written.

Once I started writing short stories and poems, I found that I loved it and later also joined the Northampton Writers Group. This contained a number of published authors and after three years of prevarication, I decided that the time had come to put together some of the pieces to make a collection of short stories.

With the exception of ‘Following David’, the stories are mainly ones that I have written for our monthly topics. For this reason they are quite an eclectic mix, but hopefully no less enjoyable for that.

I am very grateful to the members of both groups for their supportive comments and helpful criticism over the last few years and have generally taken their advice and comments on board after the meetings.

Also, thanks to my wife and mother who read most of what I write and are always positive and understanding when I take myself off to write for hours on end!

Table of Contents

1. Following David

2. The Ringo Kid meets Gary Cooper

3. Assassination

4. A Small Romance

5. Gregory's Summer

6. The Lesson

7. Love in the East

8. Prairie Stop

9. Benjamin’s Light

10. Secrets are Hard to Keep

11. Marcel’s Bike

12. Stealth

13. Seamus Slattery’s Casting Couch

14. The End of the Gravy Train

15. The Blue Brooch

16. Jezza and Jamo’s Present

Following David

The answering machine was flashing as Matthew Lockwood took off his soaking coat and wiped his face with a tissue. He pressed the retrieve button and sat on the edge of the armchair to listen.

Matthew, hi, this is Suresh. Sorry to bother you but I just had a rather strange call from that woman Rachel Fox, the lady you met up with back in July last year. She wanted to make a reservation at the B&B for a weekend at the end of January. Why would she do that? Then she asked if I knew if you would be around then. I thought you’d got all that stuff about her brother sorted out, hadn’t you? Anyway, I felt I had to say yes, so she’s coming in a fortnight or so. Give me or Jen a call back.

Matthew walked into the kitchen and sat at the small pine table. His mind was racing with different emotions. What else could Rachel want from him? Why would she want to stay at his sister and brother-in-law’s bed and breakfast? In some ways, Matthew was excited to hear from Rachel, she was an attractive woman, after all, but that old feeling of guilt also rushed over him. He wanted to see her again, he knew that, but his measured life had been severely disrupted by her over the last few months and he was just beginning to regain some equilibrium. He flicked the switch on the kettle and went back into the lounge to call Suresh.

Six months earlier

The clock in the courtyard finished chiming nine as Matthew turned over the last essay and stacked it with the others in a pile on his desk. They were the usual collection: Walters and Simpkins showed a good grasp of the causes of the English Civil War, as he would have expected, while it was clearly a mystery to Peters and Weatherley, both of whom demonstrated very little insight into the question. The rest of the fourth year class ranged in between, with the occasional comical misunderstanding thrown in. Perhaps he would keep these if he ever decided to write a book about his life as a teacher.

Matthew sat back in his chair and wondered whether he would miss marking these essays. Of course it was a tiresome chore, particularly at the end of a busy day, but he also enjoyed seeing how much of what he had taught had gone in. On balance, he decided a life without papers to mark would be an improvement but he knew that it was part of a life-change that he would be facing in three weeks when term ended and he left Ashbourne House for the final time.

As he pondered this, the summer evening sun stretched into the room, picking out the colours in the faded carpet and lighting up the mahogany fire surround with its collection of photographs packed along the top ledge. Dust mites floated in the air, picked up in the rays, fascinating Matthew momentarily, before he swivelled round in his captain’s chair, taking in the room that had served as his study, living-room, and refuge for the last fifteen years. He was struck by the fact that its familiarity prevented him from seeing it for what it was, how shabby and dated it had become. He knew that the unchanging nature of the room, like the whole school in fact, was comforting, both to him and the boys, something solid for them to hold on to in this home away from home. Should it be changed, he wondered? He didn’t know, but he was glad that he wouldn’t have to make that decision.

He turned on the table lamp and sat on the sofa, removing his jacket as he did so. Nick Rawlings would be here shortly to deliver his end of day briefing, once all the boys were settled. He had been deputy housemaster for the last seven years and was a diligent if rather dull incumbent, always reliable but not much liked by the boys who preferred Aiden Armstrong, the young German teacher who was Ashbourne’s third in command.

Matthew got up and walked across to the dresser where a tray was laid for his evening cup of coffee. As he switched on the kettle there was a rap on the door and Rawlings entered without waiting to be invited. He was a tall man in his mid-thirties, slimly built with light brown hair, cut short at the sides, and falling lankly from a crisp parting. He was dressed in grey trousers and a blazer which always suggested to Matthew that Rawlings had taken the route of many at Ashbourne; public school followed by university, and then back to school again.

I think Henderson and Needham have got it in for Callum Jeffries, Rawlings said, moving towards the fireplace as he spoke. He had a lightly disguised Midlands accent which became more obvious if he was ever agitated or upset about something. Matthew always felt that Rawlings was trying to conceal his roots, an idea that he found rather strange.

Is Callum all right? he asked.

Yes, I think so. I asked Creaton to tell the other prefects to keep an eye on things so they should be able to nip it in the bud if it starts to get out of hand. Otherwise everything seems fine. Knight is still pretty cut up about his parents separating but he’s popular with the other boys and they seem to be jollying him along. Creaton’s keeping an eye on that too.

Is everything set for the staff-against-boys cricket match tomorrow? enquired Matthew, knowing that Rawlings would have left most of the organising to Armstrong. The match was an annual event that marked the start of the gradual winding up of the summer term once exams were finished. Each of the six houses played the staff team over a three-week period and this year, Ashbourne was first to go.

I think so, replied Rawlings. Aiden’s picked the team and sorted out the tea. I think there should be about fifty parents and staff partners coming so we’ve catered for sixty to be on the safe side. It’ll be a chance for some of the parents to thank you personally, Matthew — I’m sure many of them will want to.

The idea that parents, or anyone else, should wish to thank him for doing his job had not occurred to Matthew who, thus far, had been almost wholly concerned with planning his own future after retirement. It wasn’t that he was excessively modest by nature — in fact, he had that streak of vanity that made him enjoy praise, but he had never thought that there was anything exceptional in how he carried out his work. He liked the boys, even those who had occasionally challenged him, he had always had a fairly good staff team, and the life of a teacher in a provincial public school suited his generally mellow personality. There had been few, if any, situations over the years when he had felt stressed by being a housemaster. In almost all respects it seemed to be a job that suited him perfectly.

Rawlings carried on talking, giving more details about the next day’s match and reminding him that one of the sixth formers had special leave coming up to attend the funeral of his aunt. Matthew was only half-listening, one of Rawlings failings was that he had little idea of brevity, and eventually Matthew cut him short, thanked him for the information and wished him goodnight.

Matthew made his cup of coffee and returned to his desk where he switched on the computer to check his emails. Unlike some of his colleagues, he had no problem with new technology and was happy to use it in any way he found beneficial. However he had no interest in it beyond that, and generally found that working from seven in the morning to midnight allowed little time to use the machine during the day. If pressed he still preferred to write letters using one of his cherished fountain pens, but he knew that this was becoming increasingly anachronistic.

There were several internal emails which he scanned and replied to where necessary. Junk mail he deleted as he went through and anything that looked as if it might actually be of interest he left until the end. He read three messages from parents which he printed off and moved to a ‘need to reply’ folder. He always liked to talk to staff before writing back so he was sure of his facts. He would deal with these in the morning.

This left the last two emails, one from his sister Jennifer, and the other from a name he not seen or heard of for nearly forty years. Trevor Edwards had been at school with him and they had met on a few occasions at university, Trevor at York, and Matthew in Bristol. Their association had not been a comfortable one since David Hamblyn’s death and seeing Trevor’s name brought back mainly unwelcome memories.

He decided to put off opening Trevor’s email and instead looked at Jennifer’s. She was eighteen months younger than him and his only sibling. For the last ten years she had lived in Southwold in a large Victorian house that she ran as a bed and breakfast with her husband Suresh, a retired solicitor. They had four children, all of whom, apart from the youngest, had long since left home. Only Advik retained a bedroom in his parents’ house, coming back to them intermittently from Cambridge where he was slowly working his way towards a PhD in Natural Sciences.

Friends who knew Matthew and Jennifer as children were always amazed at how different they were. While he was quiet and studious, Jennifer was gregarious, funny, and almost without fear. At the age of seventeen she had taken herself off to London with no job, little money and armed only with the address of a ‘friend of a friend’, whom she was sure would put her up for a few days. Within two months, she was working in the stockroom at Selfridges, had found a flat to share in Putney, and had developed a network of friends. Within three years, she was in charge of the shoe department in Harvey Nichols and engaged to Suresh whom she met when he came in to complain about a faulty pair of black brogues that he had purchased the week before. She had succeeded in calming him down, offered him a good discount on an alternative pair and by the end of their discussion, got him to the point where it was he who was apologising to her for his behaviour and thanking her for her help. A week later, he came back into the shop, ostensibly to look at a pair of casual shoes. At his next visit, he invited her to dinner and things proceeded from there.

The engagement and marriage had not been easy for either of them. Suresh’s family were opposed to him becoming engaged to a white girl and Jennifer’s father was completely against it. They also often suffered verbal abuse when they were out together, such were the prevailing attitudes of 1971. Gradually though, the families were won over and they eventually married three years later. Suresh, Matthew reflected, had proved to be a fantastic husband to Jennifer, a good provider to his family and an excellent father to their four children. He was also one of Matthew’s closest friends.

Jennifer’s emails were usually full of news, poorly punctuated and littered with jokey asides and exclamation marks. It was as if she was in the room talking to you, Matthew always felt. This one, though, was short by her normal standards and conveyed a slight feeling of apprehension.

Dearest Matty, she wrote. "I hope you are well and everything at Ashbourne is swimming along. Not long ‘til you retire. I can’t wait until you are back at Hawthorn Cottage. It will be such bliss to have you down the road in Orford. Suresh is really looking forward to it as well. He has all sorts of outings lined up for the two of you.

‘Yesterday while S was out for his constitutional and I was at Pilates, we had a message on the answerphone from Susan Redwood (do you remember her? She was a great pal of Trevor Edwards’s sister. I seldom see her but we exchange Christmas cards). She said that Trevor wanted to talk to you but as you are not on any social media sites he couldn’t track you down (you old luddite!). She sounded rather serious so I called her back and she wheedled your email address out of me. Sorry love, hope it isn’t a pain. I know he’s not your favourite person. By the way we are coming to your daft old cricket match tomorrow, last chance to see you playing at house mastering with all those doting parents sucking