Lines in the Sand

Katherine gunned the eager sunflower Elise. Puppy keen to overtake, it cornered like a house fly although at times she was uncomfortably aware how near her leather trousered bottom was to the ever more potholed road. She laced through the rumbling military convoys, thankful the waves of the troops from the back of their open troops seemed good natured for the most part. It was all a bit of a blur at this speed but she didn't recognise their insignia or even their flag. She knew the sleek, cheap Lotus was an anachronism in this day and age but the lack of other traffic made it tricky to judge if it was ahead of or before her time. She floored the accelerator again to make full use of a rare strip of good tarmac. The hazier the destination in her mind the more important it seemed that she get there on time.

"You need to get out, best to err on the safe side."
Jet biplane bombers filled the sky. The port began to pop with geysers of spray. The Italians were bombing their own navy now. The few remaining windows in the old convent rattled in their black lead frames.
"There's a safe side?" She was momentarily tempted.


Polite applause rippled around the sun dappled Hove County Ground. Sat on her rough wooden bench, Ljósadís licked her new fangled vanilla cornet. She didn't understand much of what was going on around her but was gamely determined to enjoy the incidentals as best she could. Katherine smiled beside her, twirling her parasol, they had that in common at least. Ranji, cutting a more portly figure than the dashing prince she remembered, turned another ball from Schofield Haigh to leg and he and Fry crossed for the single. Ljósadís clapped briefly, mimicking Katherine's dutiful applause although missing the tempo. Rhodes, as dour as ever, toiled away from the sea end and her attention wavered. Several of the members were still resplendent in their black top hats an hour after tea. She was glad to see that standards were being maintained. With the battle as good as lost it seemed to her ever more important to keep up appearances. She passed Ljósadís the opera glasses. All the bonbons were gone.

She wrestled the freezing controls in the cockpit of the Dakota. She'd always thought it one of the most beautiful of planes, as fine as the Spitfire in its way. Form followed function here as anywhere. She tried not to glance at the fuel gauge. She'd been running on fumes and there was no sign of land. The radio was a failing hiss of static. Behind her, still trussed in the salt rimmed trunk, the princess began to thump in panic. There wasn't long to go now, either way. The clouds were looking decidedly odd now. All in all, she decided to climb.

The first thing she did was reach into her shoulder bag of soft, embossed Spanish leather and gather the handful of cheap fountain pens she'd purchased at the peeling port station. Her fingertips brushed the composite barrel of her Glock and found it still uncomfortably warm, like a toilet seat in a busy train station. She tossed the pens around the dismal hotel room. With its narrow iron bed, dusty still lives and chipped jug and bowl on the washstand she could have been back in Eastbourne, except for the limp ceiling fan and incessant seethe of tetse flies. Over the next several weeks the pens disappeared mysterious into the darker corners, like jeweled tropical fish in an abandoned aquarium, as she filled the hotel stationary, strips of hard toilet paper and then even the pale slats of the blinds with her notes. Times, places, dates, she tried hard to remember, if not make sense, of them all. Recording something for posterity was, at this late juncture, absurd of course but it helped her keep a tenuous hold on events. Every day at six in the morning and four in the afternoon she waited on the jetty for the incoming ferry. She didn't know who she was waiting for and no-one ever came. Her beauty and then, at length, the increasingly disheveled state of her hair and only dress drew similar amounts of attention from the gentlemen and muttered disapproving comments from the ladies. She smiled hopefully at everyone who disembarked from the mainland. The hills, still forest clad in this remote region, chattered and clattered with snakes and monkeys and heavy winged parrots fleeing the trappers long poles. When her money ran out she lived off crusts from the cafe she'd frequented during happier afternoons. The bills from the hotel management began to pile up but, as their only guest now in a twenty two room establishment, Mrs Tu Yan was loathe to throw her out on the street. They took green tea by the koi pond. Two identical oriental children ran past them laughing, in silk tunics of cerise and scarlet. The tumour in her pancreas sent her insulin haywire. The lizards waited for her on the sun dusted wall. She had nothing now. Most people accumulated possessions on their travels, she sloughed them off like layers off skin. Mrs Tu Yan was lamenting what she termed a growing lack of manners amid the more common elements in Shanghai. There was, she noted in her affected Manderin, a certain want of chivalry in the world these days. Katherine nodded, more with tiredness than agreement, and watched an alien green fly struggle in her lukewarm tea. Chivalry, it was as good a word as any. She rescued the insect with a careful finger then flicked it to the waiting carp. Like her it would have to take its chances.

She opened her hymnal on page 65 in the dim Methodist chapel. Despite the dour nature of her surroundings and the sharply inclement April outside, it was always fun to attend her own funeral. Words in several hymns had been underlined in pencil, other verses crossed out in what seemed like the same hand. The paper was thin enough to roll reefer. The muddy organ churned out the same introduction it did every time and Katherine found herself joining in lustily. She might join the Salvation Army. It seemed a good way to meet men.


Chunky good hearted girls thumped around the field playing rumbustious hockey. They clashed their sticks in the bully off like Kendo fighting Samurai. A girl in black rimmed glasses practised riffs on her trumpet while a friend turned the pages of her music book and thought about boys. Their straw boaters hung on their backs like familiars. The trumpet might have been made of gold, catching gleams of the drowsy sun between the lime trees. House martins swooped and glided with precise joy around the eves of the main dormitory. Two girls lingered in the changing rooms after tennis to share a pilfered woodbine. Miss Barley had taught her for two terms now, French and Geography and whatever came to hand. The unusual circumstances of her arrival had long been overlooked by the headmistress who had come to rely on her academic and administrative skills more completely than she'd care to mention. Rolls had been declining recently, what with the recent unpleasantness in the east, but Miss Barley had proved uniformly popular with the girls. She also knew, unlike some others, where the boundaries lay. Katherine clutched a slim volume of Keats to her breast. She had permission to take six of the more trusted girls to the music hall on Friday night. A special treat. After dinner she played a little piano in the deserted assembly hall. Liszt's 'Consolation' was a particular favourite, if slightly beyond her rusty fingers. She couldn't remember when she'd last been able to practise, or indeed had learned to play at all. She looked around the dim chamber. Improving banners hung like medieval tapestries in a Baron's banqueting all. There was no-one about. She chanced 'After the Rain' by Eric Satie, then a little Philip Glass. All the girls loved her and she loved them back. She was happy here. She turned down the piano and picked up her gas mask. She'd better get to bed. Her form were up at six to man the Anti Zeppelin guns.

"Have you ever been in love?" It was as good a question as any.
She shrugged, then smiled, then shrugged off the smile. "I suppose, in my time."
She reached for her hand, suddenly.
"Don't leave me."
"I won't, I couldn't bear it."
They were both lying, however much, in other circumstances, they might have wished otherwise.

Radiation burns bloomed on the backs of her hand. Her cheek would always be scarred now. She didn't really mind. She'd always wanted to feel more like a pirate.