What had finally broken the ice was when he knocked a book on to the hallowed floor of the reading room , causing a resounding ripple wave of noise to circulate . This made her jump and she let out a little scream . Only a little one mind , but enough to cause murmurs of disapproval growing as a wave in the opposite direction . There wasn 't much money between them and so they managed to rent a small studio apartment on the Holloway Road . He took several jobs , one of which was cleaning at the British Library during the night . He would come home , sleep for three hours and then rush off to work in a small company in the east of London . Either life is random or it is not . Perhaps when your time is up , it is up , or maybe it is just a freak incident after all . Either way , the morning of the day of the end was just like any other . He got up and walked down Holloway Road towards the Tube station . Perhaps if he had known this was his last day , he would have looked more closely at the little things : the faces of people , the flowers in a window , or the child who smiled at him . We are never so lucky to have that luxury , so when he crossed the road , there was a million things on his mind other than the London bus which killed him . She remembered the young police woman who came to the door . She had a sergeant with her . The woman had asked her to sit and she sat down and watched their lips move . The person who stood up a few hours later as the room was growing dark was never going to be the same person again . It was from him . An anniversary card to say how much he loved her and how much he looked forward to growing old with her . For a moment she had almost forgotten he was gone . It was like that every morning , a few seconds of happiness before the reality kicked her in the face . And on this card , he told a small story of his life before and after meeting her . There was another book reference at the end this card . In all he had left messages in twenty books and together they made up a story of his life with her . She walked up Euston Road , and the sunshine bleached her heart a little . If life was random , she decided , then anything was possible . And she smiled at that . Share this : TwitterLinkedInGoogleFacebookTelegramWhatsAppMoreTumblrPinterestRedditLike this : Like Loading . . . Featured Post # bobbystevenson , # BritishLibrary , # lovestory , British LibraryLeave a comment # SciFi , Being Human , Being Loved , love story , RobotThe Tin Can That Loved What happened to her and why she was there , would always be a mystery . Sadie , on the other hand , could remember everything about her time in the house . When Sadie had found the child , she had been wrapped in an old sweater , and had been placed on a step at the front door . She didn 't cry at all - the baby only smiled and gurgled . Sadie could remember all of that exactly . In the past , Sadie 's role had been to look after her families , to cook for them , to clean for them , and babysit the younger humans . It always ended up being more complex than that . Humans were complex , their lives even more so . With this little baby , Sadie saw it as a chance to become one of them , to raise the baby as her own . She called the infant ' Tiny ' , as she 'd heard one of the humans referring to a doll with that name . She had the name stored in her memory for the day she might need it . Although the baby had been placed at the door for someone or something to look after her , Sadie , herself , had been forgotten about . Like any old hardware , she had been left at the house when the family had moved on . For several years , she had kept the living space tidy , and when parts fell from it , she would repair them . Her wish had always been to nurture , to be a mother , just like the humans . So when Tiny was left at her door , she felt that whatever God had been listening , had answered her prayers . Two lonely souls abandoned in a cold universe . As Tiny grew taller and stronger , Sadie never aged - not that it worried Tiny . Except at school , when comments were made about how her mother never seemed a day older - not like their mothers . Sometimes Sadie would disguise her face a little with a scarf so as not to make it so obvious that she was not like them . Tommy lived in a town where you had to be one thing or another . That was the way it was , that was the way it had probably always been . There was no room for neutrals , no room at all . Katie and her sister came as a pair . They were born almost a year apart . They ended up in the same class in school when Irene ( the elder of the two ) was kept back and made to repeat a year . It was in Katie 's 70th year , and Irene 's 71st , when the younger girl noticed the changes in her sister . Irene began to forget things , ( as did Katie ) but it sometimes meant Irene leaving a stove or a kettle burning away . Then Irene started to imagine things and people ( and they were things that Katie wasn 't able to see and share ) . Then Irene started to walk about at night and sometimes leave the house which meant that Katie had to go out into the dark and follow her , finally bringing her sister home . The doctor grew concerned about Irene and told Katie that she must be prepared for Irene to go into hospital . So one night , on Irene 's final night in the house . Katie dressed up as one of Irene 's imaginary friends and she laid a pot of tea out on the table and Irene served sandwiches to everyone . Then in the dark they went for a walk , with Irene and all her friends . Irene and Katie sat at the edge of the forest watching the sun come up and Katie watched Irene have her final sleep on the outside . The fail - safe attachment had severed . He had no idea why . As soon as they noticed he was gone they would sound the ' man - overboard ' alarm . As Henry fell to the ground , he could see the blood - and felt satisfied that all his worrying hadn 't been in vain . And as the darkness came over him , he could feel a kind of warmth and freedom in his dying . He had nothing left to worry about now and that was just dandy . I knew what they were , they were magic and that 's all I needed to know . One day when I was fishing at Gracey Hollow , I was in the process of pulling a trout out but if that fish didn 't want to fight to the very last . As I was easing the hook from its mouth , it gave one last fight and managed to drop back in the pool . The little creature ripped my finger open with the hook and the red of my blood was colouring the water . I ripped a part of my shirt and wrapped it around the finger , praying that as long as God didn 't let my finger fall off , I would keep going to the church on a Sunday . As I got back to the border of town , I stopped to get some rocks out of my shoes . I rested my bleeding hand on the Vagabond Saints just to steady me like when all of a sudden a big beautiful warmth flooded through my body and the old bloody finger healed up . Like it was good as new . An autumn came and went , along with a winter and soon it was Spring again - the thing that happened at Vagabond Saints had been long forgotten . Until the day me and Jake who was my younger brother went into the Yellow Hills to try to see a wild cat . There wasn 't too much happening up in those hills so we called it a day a couple of hours before sundown . As we descended Lawyer Pike , Jake slipped and I run to grab him but he fell a good 30 feet or more . My head flashed a million stories and none of them were good . I knew I was going to climb down there and find my only brother dead and gone . There were even crazy thoughts about how I was going to explain it to my parents . Like that mattered . When I got there he was lying face down and moaning like he was somewhere else . I know that doesn 't make too much sense but that 's the way it felt that he wasn 't occupying his body at that time . I didn 't want to move him but it was going to get dark soon and the wild things would be sure to get him . So I flung him over my shoulder and I started to walk towards town hoping that I wasn 't causing too much damage even although he kept moaning . At Vagabond Saints I sat for no more than a minute , as I lay Jake to rest a while . The funny thing was , he wasn 't moaning as much and that didn 't feel good to me . The next thing I must have fallen asleep and suddenly I was being slapped on the face and someone 's calling " Wake up " . It was Jake saying he was cold and that we 'd better get a move on . Then one day the world opened up and swallowed my whole , my son , my love , the apple of my eye was sick . I would have laid my life down there and then if it would take away his pain but there seemed to be nothing that I or anyone could do . They were talking a few months at most , so you 're already ahead of me here , I guess . I took my boy to my home town . I pushed him in a wheel chair around the streets , showing him where I grew up and where I skinned my knees and then we finally stopped at the Vagabond Saints and I told him to touch the stones and he did and he smiled . From that moment on , he just kept getting stronger and stronger . The doctors thought it was a miracle but I knew better , I knew he 'd been cured by the Vagabond Stones . Then I began to wonder what do you do with something like that ? Do I tell every sick kid in the area ? Do I go to the press or the television people ? My boy and his girl came back to town a few years later to get married - he just loved the place although we never talked about the rocks . One balmy night , a few days after the wedding I went walking out to the stones , alone . There was a clear sky and a bright moon and I felt as if I could have walked forever . Nancy had never really seen D . C . as a city , to her it was just another small town where everyone knew everyone else . She had worked in administration at William and Mary College in Williamsburg but when her mother remarried and moved out , Nancy needed more money and took a job at Georgetown University . It was a bit more traveling but boy was it worth it . Although Washington had always been on her doorstep , it was only when she started working there that she appreciated how beautiful the place was . Her father had been employed in the tax offices on Pennsylvania Avenue and at weekends the last thing he wanted to do was take the family back into the city . So for a long time she remained ignorant of what it had to offer . Her father was many years older than her mother and died when Nancy was still relatively young . Eventually her mother married another government official and moved a few miles away to Great Falls , a more upmarket estate on the edge of the Potomac . Nancy very rarely visited her mother until her second husband also passed away and then she found herself visiting on a weekly basis . Nancy and her mother grew closer during those years , walking in the Great Falls Park everyday and watching the great and the good of Washington riding their horses through the woods . When her mother began to lose her battle with ill - health , Nancy sold own her flat and moved in with her . She eventually gave up her job to nurse her mother full - time and over the next three and a half years she did so , until her mother quietly passed away . Nancy found herself with no family to speak of , no partner , no job and very few friends who weren 't married - in fact nothing but a huge empty house overlooking a river . It was then that the idea came to her to sell up and travel the world . There would be enough money from the sale to keep her comfortable for a few years . The folks in the office were mostly from back home and would socialize on occasion ; the 4th of July , Christmas holidays , Hanukkah and New Years . She had hooked up with a couple of boyfriends but nothing to make her stay . If she was being honest with herself , she had been already thinking of moving on to Paris or to Prague . She had been to check out both places over several weekends and liked what she saw . Air travel within Europe was so cheap these days that almost anywhere was within easy and inexpensive reach . She 'd developed an odd little hobby , one that she would most definitely keep to herself . In D . C . there were never that many interesting buildings with elevators , at least not ones which were open to the public . So when she came to London she was fascinated with riding in lifts , something she had loved since she was a kid . Nancy felt that if something was meant to be then it would happen , so when she discovered an interesting building with a lift , she would take it and get out on the top floor . On this particular day she was in her favorite bookshop , at the far end of Piccadilly , looking at nothing in particular yet at the same time watching the British at leisure . She noticed something she had never seen before - a lift over in a dark corner of the shop . There was no point in resisting as she was determined to find out what on the floors above . She pressed the call button and when the doors opened , she stepped inside discovering it was empty . She then selected the highest number - ten - and pressed it . Sometimes it was nothing more than the administration floor full of accountants and managers and on those occasions she would make her excuses and take the stairs down . Even under these circumstances she would find forgotten floors . The doors opened at the top and delivered her into the most charming of tea rooms , one that was open to the public but , by the looks of it , was a well - kept secret . This was a place for those who knew . The tables by the window had the most marvelous views of Westminster , Pall Mall and the parks . Some sat at tables reading their latest purchases , some wrote on computers , some talked to lovers while holding hands . Nancy couldn 't understand why in all the months she had been working in London no one had told her of this place . Perhaps if you stumbled upon the tea rooms it was because you felt it was meant and there was no need to make its existence widely known to those who were not so deserving of such a prize . Nancy took the last table for two beside the window and ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea and two scones . These arrived at her table very quickly and were delivered with a glass of water which she appreciated . She looked around the room and saw contentment on the faces of her fellow tea drinkers and made a mental note that she too would keep this place a secret . As she bit into the crumbling scone she realized just how British she was becoming . She had loved the first scone but didn 't dare lift the second until his also had arrived . People couldn 't help it and were usually unaware of it but when only one person was eating , the other one at the table normally watched as their companion ate every mouthful . It was what we humans did . When his tea and scones arrived they both got stuck in . Nancy told that him this was all part of her world tour , that was if she ever left London . He told her that his name was Alfred and that he worked in public relations . " Sometimes I just walk away for a shirt while , when it all gets too much . I find this a nice place to think , to get things clear in my head . " He said . Share this : TwitterLinkedInGoogleFacebookTelegramWhatsAppMoreTumblrPinterestRedditLike this : Like Loading . . . 23 Jan 201723 Jan 2017 # bobbystevenson , # lovestory , British , London , RoyaltyLeave a comment # Dreams , # hope , # love , # Movie Pitch , 1950s , Loneliness , love story , Magical , mystery , Short Story , StorytellingThe Last of England … . . the beginning Chapter 1 The beginning - Aldeburgh Beach , April 1958 . The sky was blood - red . Stanley had been edgy all that day . Or at least , it had seemed that way to Alice ever since she had suggested a picnic on the beach . Now she , Stanley and their seven - year - old daughter , Claire were sitting shivering under a sky that would have delighted any photograph . They had wanted some privacy - at least that was the way that Stanley had put it , and so they had moved along the beach towards Thorpeness . It was all shingles and stones , but they did love this part of the country and the sea was performing for them with all its heart . Alice had laid a tea that her mother would have approved of , while Stanley and Claire searched under rocks for crabs . She called them a few times but the wind seemed to carry her voice off somewhere out to sea . The gulls , which cried overhead , had probably heard her voice more times that day than her family . But she was happy , or at least content in a very British way . It had been thirteen years since the war and the country was now getting back on its feet . She had a small but important job helping organise the Aldeburgh Festival and Stanley had been teaching at various colleges in Suffolk and Norfolk . Claire , after a few health scares , was now growing into a beautiful young girl . So why did Alice feel so empty in her stomach ? Her mother had always been a victim of depression but had tended to keep out the way of the family during those particularly bad episodes . To Alice 's mother , depression hadn 't been a very British thing to suffer from in public . Sometimes , when Alice pressed her ear against her mother 's bedroom door , she could hear her mother praying or at least talking to God in her own West London style . Her mother would put on a very upper class voice when she was talking to someone she considered to be important . Alice remembered that it was something her mother had failed to do when she had first met Stanley . Yet , despite everything that had happened , she still missed her mother . The mother she could talk to any time of the day . She missed that woman more than she could ever tell Stanley . He had woken Alice in the middle of the night , telling her that her mother had gone . He had then turned over and had gone back to sleep . Having just woken , Alice had wondered , at first , where her mother had gone to exactly . Morocco , perhaps ? Istanbul ? Those were some of her mother 's favourite haunts and ones , which were considered to be very daring for a widow in the 1950s . But then her mother had been all that and more ; she had always been adventurous . Alice felt that her mother had been a little disappointed that Alice hadn 't been more like her . When Alice had woken properly the night of the ' phone call , she had realised what Stanley had meant - that her mother had gone for good . Afterwards she had heard Stanley snoring and she wasn 't going to wake him up again to talk about how she was feeling . He was down to teach a class in Ipswich later that morning and that would have meant an early start . He had been a scientist or something similar , yet he 'd never really told the family what it was he had done . It was while her father was working at some camp in Berkshire that he had met Stanley and brought him home to meet the family . Alice was sure that her father had approved of Stanley and had probably intended him to ask his daughter out . This he had done , and soon they were married . If not in haste , at least in a very short space of time . Love had nothing to do with it , although she had grown accustomed to him and would always miss him when he was away . But this wasn 't really love , not the Wuthering Heights kind . This was a very British marriage where it was better to say nothing and suffocate than bring shame to the family . Alice had said ' yes ' very quickly , too quickly , perhaps , in case no one else asked her . She had held her breath for so long now that it seemed impossible to remember what fresh air tasted like . Alice looked up and could see Stanley and Claire heading back . She waved , and her beautiful little daughter waved back with all her might . Claire was a fighter , she had to fight to stay in the world and nothing was going to take her . Stanley had seen Alice waving but had dropped his head , something he had been doing more frequently . By the time her family had made it back to the picnic , the wind was whipping up the white horses and causing them to crash onto the shore . The napkins were being blown about and two of them disappeared over the sandbank at the back . They drank their tea in silence , a behaviour that Stanley had always insisted upon , while they ate the perfectly cut sandwiches filled with cucumber from their own garden . Any normal person would have mentioned the ship 's distress but not Stanley . He had simply wiped the crumbs from his face , stood up and climbed over the sandbank for a better view or that is what Alice had assumed , and it was another thing she had told the police . The last time she saw Stanley , he had his hands sheltering his eyes from the harsh wind - eyes , which she believed were following the schooner . Claire helped her mother pack up and it was just as Alice was about to ask Stanley to help her with the basket - one that she always found difficult to negotiate - that she noticed he had gone . So had the schooner . Alice asked Claire to run over to the sandbank and fetch her father but he wasn 't there . From the sandbank , a person could see all the way to Thorpeness , back to Aldeburgh and even a mile or two inland but Stanley had simply vanished off the face of the Earth . " You sure it was that sudden ? " The policeman with the notebook had asked her later and she was absolutely certain that it had been . The police had searched the beaches and land for several days , the locals had all taken their boats out to help but nothing was found of Stanley . He had simply gone . What scared Alice was that she felt relieved , at least at first . Maybe he had wanted to disappear . The policeman , Inspector Whitstable , had asked her about their life together and by that , Alice had assumed he was meaning their love life . To her , that meant sex on a Saturday evening and sometimes during the week when they were on holiday . At first she couldn 't understand what Whitstable was getting at , but it soon became apparent . Did he have something troubling him ? And by that , the policeman had meant another woman . Or man . She hadn 't even considered that possibility that Stanley was a queer . If wasn 't sex that was troubling Stanley , then maybe there was money worries . But as she had told the police , her mother had left them comfortable for the rest of their lives . No , he wasn 't suicidal either . If anything , he disapproved of such nonsense . Stanley was conservative through and through and knew one day in his heart that he would have to account to God for his behaviour . When the Inspector asked about Stanley 's work , Alice had to admit it was beyond her . She neither knew , nor cared what he did as long as he was a good father to Claire and a good husband to her . She didn 't tell the police that his office at the back of the house was always locked . Alice , the devoted and loving wife , had even been a suspect in his disappearance and her fingerprints taken , but the suggestion was preposterous . She had a witness in the shape of her beautiful - their beautiful daughter . How quickly Alice seemed to want him dead and buried . He didn 't deserve those thoughts , and Alice quickly brightened up . She would do all it took to find him . If he had run away , there must have been a reason . Perhaps she was the reason . Perhaps she hadn 't been a good enough wife . Yet hadn 't there always been a meal on the table when he had come home ? Hadn 't she always listened to his problems ? Hadn 't she always allowed him to lie on top of her when he wanted ? What more could a wife do ? She had surprised herself how quickly she had gotten her life back into some sort of normality . Between looking after her daughter and helping with the Aldeburgh festival , her days were always full of things to do . When she passed folks in the street , or in the grocers , they would either drop their eyes or pat her arm at her bravery in the face of her phantom widowhood . Stanley was neither dead nor alive , but Alice was growing more and more accustomed to this state of affairs and a little part of her hoped he wouldn 't return . Claire was almost sleeping by the time they entered the Regal , and as an extra treat , Alice had bought them both a box of chocolates and paid for the more expensive seats in the Circle . Alice looked around , and pleased that there was no one close by , slipped off her shoes and wiggled her toes . Stanley would have disapproved of such behaviour but then Stanley wasn 't here . Claire was sleeping on Alice 's shoulder when the adverts came on , then she stretched her toes and laid against her daughter as the newsreel started . She smiled to herself as wonder how long it had been since she 'd never felt so happy . Perhaps Stanley had disappeared through wishful thinking . She had another chocolate and smiled again . The newsreel was discussing the latest fashions , what the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh were up to , and then it happened . It was only a fleeting glance but she was one hundred percent sure of what she had seen . It had been a story on the changing face of the English seaside and the trouble that was being caused by riots on the beach at Brighton . It all worried Alice - because England , Britain even , was changing and not necessarily for the better . Then she saw him , he was standing at the back of the crowd on Brighton beach , he looked straight at the newsreel camera and then turned away . She would swear on her daughter 's life it was him . She didn 't wait for the Disney , instead she helped put her fast asleep daughter in the back of the car and drove back to Aldeburgh . What should she do ? The police would think she was one of those potty women one reads about in the Sunday newspapers . She would have to check her facts and that would mean going back to Felixstowe . Between the festival and looking after her daughter , she didn 't manage to get to the cinema until three days later and as luck would have it , the newsreel had changed . She had concocted some story about a long - lost relative when she approached the cinema manager . A nice man , by the name of Eric , had told her that the films had been sent back on the Monday to an address in London . Perhaps she had just imagined it . Perhaps she was conjuring him up through the guilt of her caring little if he was ever found again . But what if it was him ? How could she go on with her life wondering if any minute he could be standing at her door ? She noticed that she 'd thought of it as ' her door ' and not ' theirs ' , and wondered if she was possibly the worst wife in the country . The manager , Eric had scrawled the address in London for the newsreel and one Friday when Alice had a little time off she had taken the train to London . The film company receptionist , Irene from Upminster , had been as nice as nine - pence and had told Alice , that although they usually charged for a private viewing , seeing as it was her long - lost brother , and the fact that all the big guns were out at a meeting , Alice could view the film for nothing . A bored projectionist smoked about three cigarettes at the back of the room , and Alice had to shake him to waken him up when she got to the bit she wanted to see . He played it over several times and when she asked the bored man to freeze the picture , he managed to do it but it vibrated a little . So she had to narrow her eyes to be sure of what she was seeing . " Is that him ? " Asked the projectionist . Alice nearly jumped out of her skin , wondering if the man knew what was going through her head . " Your brother , is that him ? " " I think so , " she said , but not in the way that finding a long - lost brother would make someone react . Puzzled , the projectionist just lit another cigarette and thought about the girl he was meeting that night . By the time she got back to Aldeburgh , Alice was sure it was him and wondered what she should do next . Stanley was alive and well and standing on a beach in Brighton . Or at least he had been when they made the film There was something else at the back of her mind about the day of Stanley 's disappearance and that thought had been refreshed by seeing the sea at Brighton in the newsreel . Stanley had received a postcard on the day he had vanished and she was sure he 'd stuffed it in a book . She opened all of his favourite books and then out of one fell the postcard . It was addressed to Stanley and the message said ' Time ' . On the other side was a painting , one they both knew and loved - it was of a couple and child leaving on a ship to start a life in a new land . The painting was by Ford Maddox Brown and was called ' The Last of England ' . And that , my friends , just about sums up where we are at the moment . In the first half of the twenty - first century technology had accelerated away into places never dreamed of . Computers were now biological , space travel had been available to many . Some preferred to stay behind on Earth - since it was all they knew or ever wanted to know . The conclusive discovery of dark matter in that spring of 2019 had changed the whole scientific outlook . A million things were now possible , and time - travel ( within a limited physical area ) was also possible . There had been failures - sheep which had been sent into the past had returned in woeful conditions ; most of them dead , and many of them mutilated . Andy Forest was the first man to ever attempt a trip back in time - admittedly it was only as far as the day before and then he was to return . Which he did , remarkably intact . Although there was one flaw , Andy had been told to leave a note in a specific area writing down the date and time of when he was there . Andy did so and returned to us successfully , but the note never showed up . Doctor Phillius , our main man on the project , suggested that perhaps the past was in another dimension and that , the next day wasn 't just the ' same place , a little later ' - one wag suggested that perhaps a cleaner had found the paper and got rid of it . Perhaps when you went into the past , you disrupted the universe and caused a slip into a parallel one . The fact that you could come back to the future was because that was where you and your particles belonged . Anyway , I know I 'm losing you here so I 'll stop with all the conjecture . Suffice to say that there wasn 't going to be a future to come back to shortly and that we all needed to decide pretty sharpish where we wanted to go . Some went in pairs , some went in large groups . Me ? I went on my own because I knew where I was going to travel back to - was going to be pretty personal .