(Author’s Note: This was written originally as the assessment piece for a creative writing course I went on at Teesside University. The final submitted piece was somewhat truncated so as to fit the word count, but I decided to post this extended version for the blog to leave all the meant-to-be-amusing asides with minor characters in. The inspiration for this piece was a couple of exercises in class where we had to describe a favourite place- in my case, Aysgarth Falls in the Yorkshire Dales, a noted local beauty spot and favourite place to visit when I was a kid. The other, in which we had to take an object from a collage and have a dialogue between two characters concerning it. Needless to say I picked something from one of my flights of fancy- namely, Laura and Michael previously featured in ‘A Not-So-Brief Encounter’, but at a much younger age, when they are just starting to realise their feelings for each other. So whilst the setting is real and no doubt familiar to some of you, as was the event of the famous 1976 heatwave, the characters and their insertion into the story is not. I don’t know to what extent I’ve got 1976 “right”, either, since I wasn’t born then, but I’ve tried my best. I can put that down to it being an alternate world. This story might eventually find its way into that unfinished work, perhaps as a flashback. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy!)
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Aysgarth Falls, North Yorkshire, England
Sometime in the summer of ’76
“Well, this is impressive,” said Laura as she turned to Mike, scowl on her face. “We come all the way down to a viewpoint to see a waterfall which has hardly any water falling in it! Really exciting.”
Mike, not entirely sure what to say to this, turned briefly aside to look across at the view of what should have been the Middle Falls. Well, the edifice of bare limestone in front of him certainly looked impressive, but that was it. Perhaps he should have known better, to come down here in one of the worst heatwaves ever, but really, it wasn’t so much the waterfall he had come to see, but her.
“I suppose it isn’t really up to much,” he murmured in agreement. Turning back to his friend, she still looked distinctly unimpressed with the whole situation, with him, and there was an awkward silence. Mike wondered what he could do to break that silence. He was pretty sure that wittering on about Turner sketching this scene wasn’t going to go down too well with her.
“You know that sign telling you not to go beyond that barrier ‘cos it’s too unsafe on the other side?” he eventually piped up, gesturing to it.
“What about it?”
“You know, I always wondered what it would be like if I ignored it and climbed over. I mean would it really…”
“Don’t even think about it,” she insisted. “I’m not fishing your body out of the river.”
“What river?” he replied.
They looked at each other intently for a moment, before breaking out into fits of laughter.
“Come on, let’s go,” she insisted, tugging on his shirt. “We might as well catch up with the others.”
Mike tried to hide his disappointment, but followed her lead.
As they turned to walk back up the steps, Mike felt his hayfever getting the better of him and, ready to sneeze, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. Something small and rectangular fell out of it. Laura picked it up, dusted it off on her shorts and looked at it.
Mize sneezed violently, barely taking it in.
“Are you alright?” asked Laura, looking concerned.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Mike sniffled and tried to regain his composure, wiping his nose with the handkerchief and putting it back in his pocket. “It comes and goes.”
“What’s this thing here?” she asked, holding up the strange item, puzzled. “A little piece of card that says ‘Joker’ on it. It’s got some funny little fellow in a silly costume.”
“That? Oh, that’s some English playing card Uncle George gave me when I was a kid. He let me have it because apparently nobody really plays the joker in most games.”
“Maybe he was trying to tell you something,” Laura pointed out in that ‘you-know-what-I-mean’ tone she always made when trying to make fun of him.
“Yeah, I suppose I am a bit of one,” was all he could say to that.
“Why’d you keep it anyway?”
“Some sort of good luck charm, I think.”
“What, you keep a good luck charm? I thought you didn’t believe in all that ‘superstitious nonsense’?”
“I don’t. Well, maybe it’s just to remind me…”
“Of what?”
“Of what you said, I guess…”
“So you admit it?”
“I suppose…”
They reached the top and carried on a little way up the main path through Freeholders’ Wood to where the others were sitting on a wooden bench, mostly looking distinctly bored and trying hard not to talk to each other. Mike’s slightly older brother James had his arm around current girlfriend Lihanna, who was resting her head up against his chest. Their mutual friend Jake, idly humming the bass part for a song they had written for the band they were all part of, was sat between them and Cousin Paul (there only at Uncle George’s insistence), who was trying to avoid their gaze except to shoot a dirty look in Lihanna’s direction which she ignored but her boyfriend distinctly did not, returning him an awkward stare. Upon seeing the other two, they parted their embrace and sat upright, almost as if embarrassed.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” asked James.
“Yeah,” added Lihanna, “no fun sitting here waiting for you two, especially in this heat.”
“I thought they’d have taken longer than that, if you know what I mean,” Paul said, smirk on his face.
“Don’t be disgusting, Paul,” shot back James angrily.
“Don’t worry, we weren’t… you know…” piped up Mike, before beginning to sneeze again.
Laura, who’d been biting her lip and pretending not to understand what the others were saying, put her hand on his shoulder and asked him, in her native Lyniezian, if he was alright.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” he told her again, in the same language.
“So, what’re we going to do next?” Paul asked. “You want to go down and see the Lower Falls, or go straight to Castle Bolton?”
“I want to go to the river,” piped up Jake. “Mike said there are those craters in the rock that make it look like the surface of the moon. That would be really cool.”
“I just want to go on,” said Lihanna in frustration. “You already said there would be nothing worth seeing down there.”
“Whatever you want, minliena[1],” James told her with a smile. “Where you go, I follow.” (She smiled back and kissed him.)
“What about you, Mike?” continued Paul. “Seen enough waterfalls for one day? Or maybe should we just leave you and your lady-friend to your own devices?”
“What do you want to do?” Mike asked Laura, still trying to catch his breath.
“Not really sure, though ideally wherever your weirdo cousin isn’t,” she replied. “Even if it means going down to the river again. Maybe I’ll set off now and let you know when we get there…” (She winked at him.)
“But you don’t know the way!”
“I’m sure I’ll manage somehow!” (She winked at him again.)
Laura set off down the path before anyone else could stop her. It was typical of her, once she had put her mind to something. Despite that, even Mike couldn’t figure her out sometimes.
“Where’s she going?” asked Paul, angry. “We hadn’t even finished discussing where we want to go. What did she say?”
“Oh, let her go, she’s just being Laura,” replied a resigned Mike.
At length, they set off. James, holding onto a bored and mooching Lihanna with one hand, was having a spirited argument with Jake about how Castle Bolton was actually a village and the castle itself was Bolton Castle. Jake just didn’t get why there was a difference and after some back and forth, they both ended up agreeing that the English were weird when Lihanna told them both to shut up as they were giving her a headache. This left the remaining two young men to go on ahead, Mike trying not to discuss anything with Paul but his cousin was having none of it.
“So, you and Laura, you two haven’t done it yet?” Paul asked, smirking all the while.
“Shove off, Paul.”
“Haven’t you even learned to say fuck yet? I mean, the old mater and pater aren’t around now, and you aren’t a snotty little brat like back when you were ten…”
“English isn’t my first language, and all that. Anyway, no, we’re just friends, really. Very good friends. Known her since back when I was a snotty little brat, even though I wasn’t.”
“Yes you were!”
“Was not!”
“Yes you were. Anyway, don’t give me that crap. Boys and girls can’t ‘just be friends’. Everyone who knows anything knows that. I mean, you must have at least kissed her, right? Have at least some feelings for her?”
“I told you, we’re just…”
“…friends, yes, who are you trying to kid? I’ve seen how you look at her. How much she looks at you. How much you keep going on about her year after year. I’ve seen how you behave. Everyone knows it…”
“Well, maybe we Lynies do things differently to you andlii[2], ‘tis all.”
“Give over! It’s the human condition, old boy. We’re all just the same at the end of the day.”
“Maybe you can just… fu-“
At this point thy reached the edge of the woods, opening out onto an open area onto which the sun was shining hard on the yellowed, dried-out grass, fenced off and accessible via means of a kissing-gate, besides which Laura was leaning, tapping her fingers impatiently, waiting for the others to catch up.
“Erm…” muttered Mike, too embarrassed to swear in front of her.
“Still haven’t made my mind up,” she told him. “Your move.” Leaning in closer, she whispered to him: “You were supposed to follow me, you know.”
“Was I…?” he began to whisper back, before he was cut off.
“What did she say?” asked Paul.
“Nothing important,” replied Mike. “It’s just her turn to play the joker…”
“Eh?”
“Never mind.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of the other three, still arguing, this time over the deeper meaning of some Yes song, before Paul managed to prize out of them where they really wanted to go.
“How ‘bout you two?” Paul asked Mike, motioning to Laura.
“I’ll just have a word with her,” Mike replied. “Though ideally I’d prefer to go where you aren’t.”
“Well if you’re going down to the Falls perhaps I’d better come with you, I mean, that path is steep and you might slip, I promised Dad…”
“I think I’ll be fine,” said Mike, determined. “After all I’m not a snotty little brat anymore. You said so…”
“OK, fine. I’ll go on ahead with Jamie and whatshername. Just be sure to tell Laura what Mum used to say about the kissing gate.”
As they set off, Mike and Laura just managed to catch Lihanna moaning at Paul about how English men were just a bunch of male chauvinists and couldn’t even remember girls’ names. “It’s all darling, bird, love…” she went on.
“She’s right you know,” Laura pointed out.
“Don’t get me started,” replied Mike, knowingly.
“What was that he said about the ‘kissing gate’, though?”
“Oh, this,” he said as he gestured to it. “Just what my aunt used to do when we came up here. She told us this was called a ‘kissing gate’ because you were supposed to swing on it can kiss someone you liked. Used to give us great fun when we were little but now…”
“You could try it with me.”
“What?”
“I’ll swing on it and you can kiss me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. At least as long as you don’t sneeze on me, of course.”
“But I didn’t think… you liked me… like that…”
“Just because your cousin’s a pig doesn’t mean he isn’t right. I heard what you were arguing about. Just because he thinks I don’t understand him doesn’t mean you have to pretend I don’t.”
“But why did you never say anything?”
“You were always too busy playing the joker to ask.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Maybe I was too, really.”
Cautiously, as both looked each other in the eyes, Mike drew Laura closer to him, and she reciprocated. Their lips touched, and as they did, came the sudden rush of excitement, the brief stopping of time, as if things long hoped for had suddenly reached glorious fulfilment in that one moment.
“Ey! Ey!” came a sudden interruption which turned out to be from Jake, shouting across the field. “You two done yet, or should I just go down by myself?”
Mike and Laura, suddenly parted for a moment by such a rude interruption, simply turned to each other, smiled, and laughed. Things would never be the same again, each realised, and yet, disappointingly, the same.
[1]‘My lady’
[2] ‘English’
Tales of Lyniezia 