The Stone

by Graham Adams

  ‘Look Gary, we’ve talked and talked about it, and I know that you can’t see any of my arguments, but I need to stay here a while to get my life sorted, can’t you see that?’

  ‘You mean about that bloody Stone?’ he blurted out, clearly losing his composure.

  She ran to the door, picked up her overcoat, slipped on her boots and ran outside slamming the door behind her rushing into the night.

  ‘Ellie! Ellie!’ He shouted, but there was no reply.

  The cold night cleared her head, especially from the pressure of trying to get her point of view into Gary’s head. It felt as if he had a head made of stone! ‘Stone, stone! She remembered that she had to ring Rowena. Such a lot had happened since she shot over a quick text to her to say that she couldn’t make the trip to Bath, but forgot to ask about the clasp for the chain.

  ‘Hi Ro.’ Ellie’s mobile had rung for quite a while before Rowena answered.

  ‘Ellie, Do you know what time it is? What’s up?’

  Ellie looked at her wristwatch 12.20am. ‘I’m really sorry Ro, I just wanted to hear your voice. Gary is being so exasperating right now, so I’m outside cooling off.’

  ‘Look it’s late; too late to get here, can you go home tonight and come over tomorrow?’ Rowena asked.

  ‘Thanks Ro, I really need someone to talk to, I just need to get away from here for a bit.’ Ellie seemed calmer, ‘I’ll ring in to work, and get a day’s holiday, and it should be OK, thanks.’

  ‘Listen, go on home and get some sleep, if you can, and we’ll have a heart to heart when you get here, I’ll clear the day and we’ll sort something out. And, hey, there’s something waiting here for you.’ Rowena reminded her.

  Suddenly all the tension had left Ellie and she looked towards home. Although she had been out for an hour, she hadn’t walked that far and quickly reached the front door. Gary had left the porch light on; she was just about to look for the key as Gary opened the door for her. He smiled warmly and stood aside as she passed by him into the warm room. He took her coat.

  ‘I had to ring them, time had run out.’

  ‘I suppose you didn’t mention to the ‘head honcho’ that I wasn’t happy?’ Ellie asked

  ‘I think they guessed that it was a difficult decision, so it was easy to wring out a concession from him. We will not have to move there for six months in order to give time for everyone to get used to the changes.’ He explained.

  She looked up at him, but tiredness took over and she went up to bed without any response. All she could feel was defeated and deflated. He’d won this battle, but what about the war? That would perhaps be a different kettle of fish’ she thought.

  After a restless night for both of them, the morning light greeted them tense and not really sparking. Ellie finally decided to make the effort, and fortunately there were enough ingredients to make him a real cooked breakfast with his favourite HP sauce.

  She was right, the tension had finally broken, and they got to talk about the timings that the change entailed, starting from that morning. His smile at her helped her to say what she had been thinking all night.

  ‘Gary, I’m not angry with you, really I’m not, and I do want you to understand that I am prepared to make sacrifices so that you can get the job offer of your dreams. I really don’t want to stand in your way, but I do want you to realise that there are things in this job that you cannot possibly foresee. I’m just praying that you take this job with your eyes fully open. It does sound like they are aware of the cataclysmic changes in the whole substance of our lives. Please promise me that you will keep your feet on the ground and don’t say yes to anything without thinking about it, and if we can, talk to each other. Darling, all I really want is the best for you, and us.’

  She looked deep into his eyes; he was full up with emotion.

  ’I promise’ he said to her.

  ‘I arranged to see Ro today, I’ve fixed a days’ holiday with work, she’s finished the clasp and I’m looking forward to seeing that. Will you be home tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m booked on a flight to Belfast at lunchtime, should be back for the weekend.’ She looked a bit downcast, and so as an afterthought he said, ‘but I’ll ring you at nine tonight, OK?’

  She wasn’t surprised, and showed little emotion outwardly, but inwardly she knew this day was the beginning of a huge change in their relationship. To him, career will be the big part, to her, well who knows? She looked back at him, smiled, picked up her coat, and opened the door.

  ‘Till tonight then.’ She whispered.

  Rowena’s advice about going home that night was very good. Who knows what could have happened if she had left Gary to brood over night. Quite possibly he would have made decisions without any consideration for her feelings and things today may have gone beyond any chance of repair in their relationship.

  She slid into the driving seat of the Polo turned the ignition and didn’t look back. He, on the other hand watched through the front window as she disappeared around the corner, he thought to himself.

  ‘How strong she is, stronger than me.’

  6: Cottage Thoughts

  Central Park

  As Edmund lived alone in the cottage, one of the most important things to do was to maintain a strong daily routine. Even the most mundane of routines take on a special significance. If they were missed, there was no one else that can be relied on to do them for you. Some things are not seasonal, like stocks of non-perishable goods when winter was starting to draw in. Buying in bulk became easier now that a major supermarket had opened twenty-four hours, and was only a short drive away in Lymington. Edmund however was still loyal to the local shops for everyday things in repayment for their loyalty with any post or messages he collected.

  The thought about post, reminded him that he hadn’t opened the mail that he had picked up a few days ago, especially that there was an airmail letter with a New York franking mark on it. Smiling to himself, he knew that was from Paul. He had moved to the USA in the late eighties. The acting career had never taken off in the UK, and with an offer of work in Los Angeles, he just couldn’t turn it down. Several moves within the States later he finally settled in the Big Apple, strangely in the Dakota building, on the same floor level where John Lennon had lived, before his sad assassination.

  Many of Paul’s letters described the small park situated within Central Park, dedicated to John’s memory called ‘Strawberry Fields’, a song that will be forever in both of their memories from when they lived in Kent.

  Edmund opened the letter, Paul started as usual with all the famous, and not so famous, names of people he had met, dined with or simply screwed. ‘Oh yeh!’ he smiled to himself. Paul was closer to him than his own brother, and he knew that Paul could not resist the temptation to bend the truth a little, just for effect. The letter ended as usual with a fervent invitation to go over there and visit him, and finally the usual words:

  ‘You just don’t know what you’re missing in the Big Apple!’

  ‘Oh, but I do my old mate,’ he smiled to himself.

  Edmund never usually replied to any of the letters. Basically he felt contentment in his life, and he knew that trying to describe it to Paul would be a waste of paper. He also knew that Paul would not have been too upset with the lack of response either. Even at 66, he was just too busy to worry about it.

  Having no mains electricity in the cottage was not a problem for Edmund. A recent investment in a wind up radio gave him all the companionship and up to date news that he needed. If he switched it on, it was usually tuned into Solent, the local news was dealt with well and any music programs included much of what he could recognise.

  Switching on he found himself in the middle of Dave Cash’s programme, a selection of hits from the past. Tonight it was 1964, the Kinks were blaring out ‘You really got me!’ As he dozed off in the chair, he went back to that momentous time in his life, a time when the whole world was changing, his whole world.

 
7: French Adventures

  Golden Arrow boat train to France

  The winter of 63/4 was a very hard one; it took until May to finally break. The construction industry was hit the hardest in Edmund’s area. The snow had remained over the ground up to the end of April. Even when it melted, it quickly froze over again, creating a thick layer of perma frost well over ten feet deep in the ground. Buildings due to be started were held up because even the most powerful diggers could not penetrate it, in order to dig out the foundations.

  By the summer of ’64 Edmund had indeed left the Coke Ovens plant for nearly a year. Money and working conditions were the main reasons, but after three years, there was no hope of career improvements. The Head Office was over a mile away, and the only prospect of promotion was to get in those central offices and away from the outpost he was currently in. His pay had moved from £3.10s per week in 1960 to £4.2s.6d in 3 years. He had to get out of there, and decided to move out of office work into factory work very easily. A new factory had been built to house a new operation assembling TV cabinets for the latest Decca model. At that time it was the state of the art, and after his training he was paid the princely sum of £15 per week. An amazing hike, he just couldn’t believe it! The only thing he regretted was that he didn’t finish his studies and get his qualification. But he knew there would be time later for that.

  So, by June ’64, Edmund and Paul had become firm friends, Paul had also found work in the Decca factory. For a year they enjoyed the trappings of a good income at the time when young people were finding new freedoms. By this time they had done nothing but discuss the ways and means of making their escape from the uninspiring environment they were living in. The sixties had exploded around them so for young twenty year olds the time had come to make a decision. The old rulebook of life was to be thrown away, and replaced with a new rule, that was a life based on no rules at all.

  France beckoned, and there was no one to stop them! For them, one of the greatest influences was from the then banned film, The Wild Ones starring, in their opinion the greatest actor of them all, Marlon Brando. From that film there was a quote that stuck with them. It was in the scene where the young girl at the bar asks Johnny the question, ‘what are you rebelling against?’ Back came the reply from Johnny, ‘Whaddya gat?’ The whole idea of rebelling about everything, and everyone appealed greatly to them.

  Another character that struck a chord was Albert Finney’s character ‘Arthur’ in the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. This was filmed much closer to home, in and around Nottingham. Most of, if not the entire, supporting cast played roles that depicted the narrow minded, short sighted, and safety conscious attitudes that abounded in the locality, the types that they dearly wanted to escape from.

  Clutching their new passports and battered suitcases they walked down the hill to the bus stop to the station in Nottingham, within no time were boarding the boat train at Victoria. They were doing the most exciting thing together, in the whole of their twenty years of life; they were on their way to Paris! They were breaking free!

  Paris Gare du Nord was as far away from them, a week ago, as the surface of the planet Mars, and an hour after they had alighted from the train, they were walking along the Champs Elysee. Edmund was floating on air, drinking in the atmosphere.

  No one gave them any advice on how to survive in this engagingly beautiful city. They just had to fly by the seat of their pants. Half of their savings were gone in just a few days. The only foreign language that they knew between them was Edmund’s schoolboy French, which in this great city was less than useless for them to get by. However, as luck would have it they had fallen into a friendship with a group of German teenagers who were on holiday, just travelling around France. The great benefit of teaming up with this group was patently obvious, that their command of French was very useful, and what’s more, their command of English was even better! In some way it made Edmund feel a bit inferior but only for a while.

  In their favour, just being English in the sixties was a great advantage. No other country in Europe had the great asset of being the hotbed of the revolution in pop music. The girls in the German group were just mad for that music and Paul just had to take as much advantage of that fact as possible! They quickly found out that the Germans were leaving Paris for the Cote d’Azure the next day, so they quickly decided to join them.

  The train journey was long and tedious, taking over twenty four hours, not so bad for Paul, he having wiled his way into the arms of the best looking girl as usual. They decided to get off the train at St Raphael a lesser-known resort, quite small and with lots of leaf beaches to wander on. Two of the German group’s girls decided to explore the town with the two ‘Englisher’ men, and waved off the rest of the group, promising to meet up again in Nice. Money was getting tight, but with the help of the two girls, they were able to rent a room over a Bouillabaisse cafe, in a backstreet. To Paul’s dismay they didn’t want to stay and try out the bed, but instead they wanted to rejoin their group in Nice.

  As soon as the locals found out that they were English, it seemed to lower the temperature. There seemed to be a universal prejudice against them, especially from the older generation. Edmund just couldn’t understand it at all. This weighed heavily on them both, enough to make them quite unhappy, and creeping into their conversation was the idea that they might have to return home, as the money was running out. Heavy hearted, they called in at the nearest beach cafe for perhaps their last drink before packing. On the next table a group of four guys in sailor uniforms were talking in loud American English.

  ‘Hey buddy, you speaky da English?’ He was looking at Edmund, probably thinking he was French.

  ‘I am English’ he said with his best English accent.

  ‘What are you Limeys doing here?’ He shouted. The other three sailors looked over. One of them, as big and wide as the door butted in, ‘can you find us some cold cans of coke Mr Limey?’

  As quick as a flash, Paul got up from his seat. ‘Yes we know where to get your drinks pal’

  ‘OK Pal’ he answered a bit threateningly. ‘Go and fetch us a six pack,’ passing a twenty-dollar bill over to Paul. Paul was a bit stunned; he was not good with money. Edmund snatched it off him and ran down the street, not knowing where the hell he was going. He asked a dozen people in his broken French, most just shook their heads some just ignored him. Finally a friendly face,

  ‘What are you looking for sir?’ Once again a German, speaking perfect English, rescued him.

  ‘Thanks, yes I’m looking for somewhere I can buy some Coca Cola for some friends, and where they might change this for me’ Edmund asked. The German took Edmund to a small bar only two streets away from the cafe where the Yanks were. The very kind German translated to the owner and even made sure that the French shopkeeper didn’t screw him. Before he went back with his booty, Edmund made sure that he got the German’s name, Hans, and where he lived, so that they both could thank him properly later.

  He had in fact bought twelve small bottles of Pepsi from the bar for the princely sum of five dollars and he had fifteen in change, ten for the Yanks, and five for going, stuffed in his back pocket. When he got back to the cafe the yanks roared in approval, and were also amazed to get ten bucks back. The sailor closest to Edmund shot out a huge hand and nearly broke Edmund’s as well as just about shook his arm off.

  Edmund signalled to Paul that they were leaving, not without a huge amount of good-natured back slapping from the four sailors. They also told Edmund that they were passing on to their fellow shipmates about them and hoping to see them again. As they walked back to their room, Edmund stopped and looked at Paul’s puzzled face. ‘Listen Paul, we have found an opening at last’

  ‘Opening, what do you mean?’ Paul looked puzzled.

  Edmund pulled out of his back pocket the five-dollar bill. ‘This is the payment for our trouble, and they were happy to get their cokes and ten dollars change, weren’t they?’

  A
smile filled Pauls face as he now could see a chance to make some money at last. Edmund also explained that without the help of another German none of this could have happened.

  ‘Who won the war again?’ Edmund asked with a smile, they both laughed, more in relief than anything else.

  For once Paul could see the benefit of Edmund’s education. Before today, he thought that the only way was using his charm and looks. But in a hostile environment such as this one, Edmund had seized the opportunity offered to him with both hands, and here was the result; five dollars. Gone was that attitude of Paul; that in the past, he would always take the lead, now there had been a change. Edmund had made it very clear to Paul that although the situation with the American sailors could be a money-spinning one; he saw it only as a short-term solution.

  ‘Why do think that Eddie?’ he asked.

  With his newly acquired confidence, he explained that the American fleet would only be visiting the area for a short time. He had overheard one of the sailors say about two weeks. He also said that the locals wouldn’t let them take any money-making opportunity from them for long, and that he wouldn’t be surprised if they had already spotted what was going on.