Wonderful Short Stories

by Stan Mason

  ‘She won the junior writing contest run by the Defendant and, at the function at which the trophies and cheques were to be awarded to the winners and runners-up, she walked on to the stage to receive her award only to be denied. The Editor refused to give her either the trophy or the cheque and five days later the Plaintiff received a letter to say she had been disqualified. There were no grounds or details as to the reason for disqualification. The Plaintiff asks this Court to hold in her favour that she won the competition, and for the Defendant to award her the trophy and the cheque for one thousand pounds.’

  He sat down and the barrister employed by the Daily Globe, a Mr. Wilshire, stood up to defend the action. He stood quite still for a moment as if to gather his thoughts and then he burst into action. ‘We have here a case of sheer obstinacy,’ he ranted harshly. ‘Sheer obstinacy! No one’s denying that any person born on the twenty-ninth of February has a distinct problem in life regarding their birthday each year but it is a minor one to say the least. Most people adapt by changing the date to the first day of March which is reasonable considering that the only time the twenty-ninth of February comes around is during leap years which are four years apart. But to insist that one is only twelve years old after living for forty-eight years on this Earth is incomprehensible. Even more obstinate is the fact that the Plaintiff sought to compete against juniors in a writing competition and was actually prepared to accept the major prize awarded to those of sixteen years of age and under. Not only is such action reprehensible but it is extremely unfair. I suggest it has to be unfair for a forty-eight year old woman to pretend to be only twelve years old in a competition related to junior competitors of sixteen years of age and under. In fact, if this Court holds that she is only twelve years old and can compete against juniors four times younger than her, there is no telling how many ridiculous cases of malpractice will come to law because it will set a major precedent. The Defendant had every right to disqualify the Plaintiff in that competition and this Court is asked to uphold that decision.’ After that tirade, he sat down and rustled his silks without looking at anyone.

  ‘Are there any witnesses in this case?’ asked the Judge, hopeful that if there were they would be few in number.

  ‘No,’ replied Collins quickly. ‘There are none for the Plaintiff. We stand on merit.’

  ‘Mr. Wilshire?’ requested the Judge becoming more pleased by the minute that the case would run its course swiftly.

  ‘The only witnesses are those at the award ceremony and the panel who judged the matter at the Daily Globe. However, as there are no witnesses on the Plaintiff’s side, I cannot see how any of them can provide any material evidence to assist you in this matter.’

  ‘Good!’ retorted the Judge summarily, pausing for a moment to think. ‘This case dwells on whether one accepts that the Plaintiff is twelve years old or forty-eight years old,’ he began. ‘I can readily understand the predicament of being born on the twenty-ninth day of February and I have every sympathy with the Plaintiff in having to wait four years for that day to come around in order to celebrate her birthday. However, I regard that matter to be too altruistic. It is no fault of the Plaintiff to have to wait four years for that actual day to arrive however I agree with Mr. Wilshire that it is a case of sheer obstinacy to adhere to it. I am unable to see how a person can defy time in the face of adversity, albeit such adversity is not very challenging to say the least. In my opinion, the years spent on this planet are conditional to the life of each individual. They are determined with a measurement which is constant and which everyone understands. While the Plaintiff may regard herself to be twelve, I cannot concede this to be the true situation and therefore I find for the Defendant.’

  ‘The costs to be paid by the Plaintiff?’ cut in Wilshire urgently as the Judge folded his papers in front of him.

  ‘Indeed. The costs to the Plaintiff.’

  Davina was devastated. It had been such a short case and, despite the way she felt about the issue, her action had been summarily dismissed..

  ‘Don’t take it to heart,’ advised her solicitor. ‘We can go to appeal if you want, although the cost will be considerable.’

  ‘Yes,’ she told him point-blank. ‘Take it to appeal. I want to get those bastards for doing me out of my prize and my cheque, and for humiliating me in Court!’

  Despite the decision in his favour, Flannery was not a happy man. In fact he soon became quite agitated after he learned from Collins that the matter was being taken to the Court of Appeal. If the Daily Globe lost the case on appeal, the cost to the newspaper would be considerable. How could they placate the woman. He set up a meeting again with the senior staff and they all sat around a table for discussion.

  ‘I’m very concerned that Davina Wickham should take this to the Court of Appeal,’ he began earnestly.

  ‘I don’t care where she takes it,’ snarled Elsa Ramone acidly, ‘we’ll win every time. Someone’s got to tell this woman where she gets off!’

  ‘I still think we ought to give her a trophy and possibly a cheque for a thousand pounds,’ riposted Parry sympathetically. ‘It’s the cheapest way out of this situation, I assure you.’

  ‘But if we do that we open the gates,’ rattled Elsa, her blood-pressure rising all the time.

  ‘I know, I know,’ continued Parry tiredly. ‘But, let’s face it, she’s not going to go away. What difference does it make if we give tell her that she won the competition? We won’t record anything in the newspaper. No one will ever know.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ claimed the Editor, ‘however your suggestion does find a certain amount of favour with me.’

  ‘You can’t be serious!’ snapped Elsa sharply. ‘Are you honestly going to give in to her? I wouldn’t be intimidated if I were you. What can she do to us? She’s not asking for damages or interest on the thousand pounds. We may as well run with the problem until it hits the dirt. And when it’s over, she’ll find herself in deep water with the cost of it all.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ stated the sub-editor. ‘I don’t like it. She could muddy the water.’

  ‘Only if we give in,’ Elsa went on. ‘If we gave way now, she would blast it all over the newspapers... all over the media... all over the world. How ridiculous it would appear to the public if they found out we’d given first place in a junior competition to a woman aged forty-eight. We’d be made to look fools... a laughing-stock! People would call the Daily Globe a comic!’

  Flannery screwed up his face in a wry expression and nodded. ‘I get your point,’ he said finally. ‘We would look very foolish. In view of the circumstances, perhaps it’s better to run with it as you say.’

  Parry shrugged his shoulders disappointedly. ‘You’ll be sorry,’ he told his boss. ‘These things have a way of coming back at you when you least expect it.’

  However, Flannery broke up the meeting and that remained their final decision.

  The decision from the Court of Appeal took three months to emerge. There was little for Collins to do as it rested on the evidence given at the original trial and, as that was extremely sparse, it was simply a matter of whether the Appeal Court was willing to accept the Judge’s decision. After receiving the result, Collins called her to his office one day with a sad expression on his face.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ she ventured when she saw him. ‘They turned me down again.’

  ‘You’d better sit down,’ he suggested quietly. ‘I’m afraid there’s no way of softening the blow. They rejected the appeal for pretty much the same reasons.

  ‘What did they actually say?’ she asked, inhaling deeply in an attempt to overcome her disappointment.

  He looked down at the papers and began to read. ‘It is the opinion of the Appeal Court that the Judge in the earlier case was correct in his decision. We consider it unreasonable that any person should regard their age to be at a lower or
higher level regardless of the circumstances. The matter is regulated by science itself in that the turning of the Earth on a yearly basis determines the age of people on whatever day their birthday falls. Consequently, their age increases year by year and are known by that age as it progresses. If a person happens to be born on an unusual date, such as the twenty-ninth of February, it is only reasonable to accept they will change that date to the following day to encompass the progress of their age. Naturally, they may celebrate their true birthday every fourth year but that does not detract from the fact that they have accelerated in age by four years when that birthday arrives. Therefore, the appeal is denied.’

  ‘That’s their opinion!’ snapped Davina angrily.

  ‘Unfortunately, it’s the opinion that counts,’ countered Collins sadly. ‘And I’m afraid all the costs and expenses are to be paid by you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not finished yet,’ she told him trying to maintain control of her temper. ‘I want you to take this case to the European Court of Human Rights. That’s where I’ll get a fair hearing, and then the English Court will have to change its mind and its rules in this matter. Will you do that for me, please? Don’t worry, I’ll pay all the costs and fees.’

  Collins stared hard at the woman taking the view that the barrister, Wilshire, was right when he had told the Judge that she was obstinate. In fact it had clearly become an obsession with her to win the point, one way or another. ‘It’ll take some time but I’ll do my best,’ he told her helpfully. It meant he would earn more fees for a simple presentation.

  After hearing the result from the Court of Appeal, the executives and staff of the Daily Globe met in the conference room to celebrate the decision with a number of bottles of champagne. They were finally off the hook. Flannery put his arm affectionately around Elsa Ramone’s shoulders with a broad smile on his face.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you,’ he told her triumphantly, raising his glass in front of him. ‘You supported me all the way and I won’t forget it in a hurry.’

  ‘Well it was only a matter of course really,’ she returned modestly. ‘She didn’t stand a chance. That much was obvious. She was never going to be allowed to get away with it!’

  ‘It was your confidence that inspired me,’ said the Editor moving to his sub-editor. ‘Well Desmond,’ he said sagely, ‘no more competitions, especially those for juniors and seniors.’

  ‘I hear she’s taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights,’ returned Parry softly.

  ‘You’re joking!’ retorted the Editor quickly. ‘Why the hell doesn’t the woman give up? I mean, it’s only a trophy and a thousand pounds which she never had a chance of winning... not as a twelve year old!’

  ‘Well there you are,’ added the sub-editor. ‘She has a perfect right to do so. I honestly think you should have followed my suggestion and given her the trophy and the money. Then she would have been out of our hair for good.’

  ‘I still think Elsa’s right,’ returned Flannery. ‘She hasn’t got a hope in hell, so let her go ahead and find out the hard way. We’ve nothing to worry about.’ However, a small warning light glowed at the back of his mind, sufficient to worry him about the final outcome. What a thing to happen from an innocuous short story competition! No one else in the world who ran one had this sort of trouble!

  Six months passed by before Collins contacted Davina again. ‘I think a decision will be made very shortly,’ he told her excitedly. ‘I have information they’ll make their decision tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know what happens.

  Needless to say, she was unable to sleep that night. Dates rolled round and round in her brain and she kept waking up every half hour fighting with Morpheus. Eventually, she fell into a very deep sleep and overslept by a long shot. It was the ringing of the telephone which brought her back to reality. She rose from her bed to discover that her husband had gone to work and the children were at school. The caller was Collins. The tone of his voice was sombre and her heart dropped as she heard it. However, after the initial greeting his voice lifted to tell her the news.

  ‘I think you’re going to be delighted,’ he conveyed victoriously. ‘They decided in your favour. There’s a long missive on their discussion but I’ll read you the short version of their findings.’ He paused and she heard a rustle on paper on the line. ‘The European Court of Human Rights has considered the case of Davina Williams in great detail. It establishes that her claim to being twelve years old is justified by the fact that her birthday comes every four years. It cannot be changed because that was the day on which she was born and it is necessary to wait four years before it returns in a leap year. Therefore the Court unequivocably substantiates her claim. Although it is unusual in the normal run of age, it is consider that she has a just cause. Her rights by the English Court have been undermined by their refusal to conform.’ He paused again for her to absorb the information.

  ‘Does this mean we can return to the English Court and force them to change their mind... and the law?’ she asked urgently.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ responded the solicitor. ‘I think you have a tremendous chance of winning that trophy and getting the cheque.’

  They returned to the English Court and, in due course, had the original decision and the appeal rejection overturned. Davina made certain that the news reached the major newspapers in the country and she contacted the radio and television media giving interviews on both of them. She was indeed twelve years old. It was now final and the Editor and the staff of the Daily Globe were made to look foolish. After she had been presented with the trophy and the cheque for one thousand pounds, in front of a volley of television cameras and a group of newspaper reporters, Elsa Ramone resigned. However, with regard to the age of someone born on the twenty-ninth of February, as Mr. Bumble declared in Dickens’s Oliver Twist: “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass... a idiot!” Davina Wickham would probably agree with that statement! Well perhaps not entirely!

  A Little Bit Of Rough

  Dexter had been a tramp for as long as he could remember. Since the death of his young wife just over fifteen years earlier, he had lost his job, his home, and all his money to become a beggar on the streets of London, scrounging, stealing and lying. However, he recognised that life was beginning to catch up with him in his middle years. He dwelt on the matter often but it was not possible for him in his mendicant state to form any conclusion. He strolled down the Embankment along the Thames in the capital one evening, pulling an old rag cap down over his eyes to protect them from the street lights which he considered were too harsh without any thoughts of the present and even less idea about the future. His reputation had long gone before him. Over the many years, he had become one of the regular vagrants who sauntered up and down the Embankment every morning, evening and night. In the minds of most people who continually met him day by day, he was simply a street beggar to be avoided like the plague. But in reality he was no different to any of the other tramps in the area... a man who held out his hand to the people coming or going to work each day asking them, almost incoherently, for money to buy a cup of coffee. If anyone was fool enough to offer him a handout, and some people did because they either pitied him or they suffered a conscience for the plight of the poor, he would visit the nearest chemist to buy a bottle of methylated spirits to imbibe at leisure. The liquid was much rougher in taste than whisky or gin but at least he was able to afford it.

  His regular daily chore was to search through the bins of the local restaurants looking for food which had been thrown away the night before. Most of it was edible and reasonably fresh. Dexter felt indignantly that he had a better right to it than the pigs to whom it was normally fed. Then he would go to the water fountain located near the Temple underground station to quench his thirst. Following that he would go the rear entrance of some of the hotels and drain the dregs out of the wine bottles. If he ran shor
t of drink, he always had his bottle of methylated spirits in his pocket. However, he never ate or drank very much. He had conditioned himself to the rigours of life in a strictly Spartan role. He was a survivor albeit with no comforts whatsoever. In fact he could hardly remember the last time he enjoyed a bath, or shaved, or felt decent in a pair of clean underclothes, or outer clothing. None of it seemed to matter. Everything simply hung off him in rags although he found some tape in a dustbin one day and made a vain attempt to patch the rough parts together.

  Nonetheless, he regarded every day to be special. He woke up usually in a cardboard box somewhere close to the law courts, pleased to be alive, considering himself to be a free agent, without shackles or fetters, able to do anything he wanted to do in life. There was no millstone around his neck of a heavy mortgage or any other debts, no wife to nag him, no relatives to have to visit, no children making demands. He could roam the streets at will and talk to anyone he wanted, or not if he felt like it. When summer arrived, he cast off most of his clothes because of the heat in the city. In winter, however, he managed to obtain suitable warm clothes and even found a pair of mittens in the previous December which someone had unwittingly left on the parapet of the Embankment. On some cold days, he would sit by a blazing brazier lit by one of the stall-holders who had set up nearby and pass the time by talking to others who came to warm themselves. Life was pretty good, especially for someone who didn’t expect anything from it. His only problem was the police which he regarded was a minor one. They tended to leave him alone for most of the time but occasionally a nasty constable would tell him to move on and threaten to arrest him if he failed to do so. Dexter didn’t mind being arrested. They took him to the local police station, housed him overnight and fed him reasonably well. It made a change, after all!

  On this particular night, he felt extremely tired and lifted himself on to the stone parapet of the Embankment not far from Cleopatra’s Needle, contemplating the efforts of his non- committal day. His eyelids began to flicker as the toxins of fatigue spread throughout his body and he decided this would be the place to rest until members of the public awoke him on their way to work early next morning. He lay there for a while in a dreamy state without a care in the world. Then, suddenly, he heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up at the edge of the pavement. Turning his head slowly, he noticed that a Rolls-Royce had stopped there. The chauffeur alighted, moving to the rear door of the car which he opened carefully. To his astonishment, an attractive woman about thirty years of age emerged from the vehicle and stared at him laying on the stone parapet of the Embankment. She was a complete vision, dressed in a beautiful white low-cut gown, covered with a mink fur around her shoulders, and brightly-shining white patent leather shoes on her shapely feet. She wore a small veil held tight by a diamond tiara on her head to hide the features of her face while her hands were encased in pure white leather gloves. As she stood there on the wide pavement, her appearance was absolutely stunning. Then, as though having made up her mind, she turned smartly to her chauffeur to issue an order.