Wonderful Short Stories Read online

  ‘Looks like you’re in a heap o’ trouble,’ said the Geordie before taking another swig from the bottle.

  Another hostess climbed on the conveyor belt to retrieve the suitcase and its contents and she motioned Emily to one side.

  ‘You’ll have to come with me to the Search Room to try and sort it out,’ she said flatly.

  ‘What happens with my luggage now?’ asked Emily point-blank.

  ‘It’s not possible to load this suitcase onto the aircraft,’ she was informed. ‘We haven’t a spare one so you’re left with two options. One, you can leave it here and collect it on your way back or, two, if you need some of these clothes on your trip you might consider wearing them now.’ She picked up a pair of old-fashioned knickerbockers with a hole in the rear and the expression on her face showed her feelings. ‘When you’ve made up your mind, contact me at Desk Number Two.’

  Ten minutes later, Emily left the Search Room looking as though she had put on three stone in weight. She was wearing a whole host of blouses, jumpers and skirts she considered that she definitely needed on her holiday. When she went through the metal detector, loud bells began to jingle. The security officer invited her to empty her pockets and go through again but the bells rang again. A female security officer took her to a private room and asked her to undress.

  ‘Thank Heavens!’ stated Emily, her face quite flushed. ‘I’m boiling over with all these on me!’ She removed a plethora of clothes to the utter amazement of the security officer who then ran a portable metal device over her body. The bleeper remained silent until she placed it between Emily’s legs.

  ‘Is there anything you wish to tell me?’ asked the woman believing that something might be hidden there.

  ‘Yes,’ advanced Emily saucily. ‘I may be sixty-five years old but it’s still thrilling when you do that.’

  ‘Are you hiding any metal instruments between your legs?’ This time the question was much more demanding.

  ‘I suffered a severe fracture of the pelvis in a car accident some years ago and two metal plates were inserted.’

  ‘Hm,’ muttered the security officer. ‘Very well. You’d better get dressed.’

  ‘Do I have to?’ asked Emily in despair as she viewed the clothing she had just taken off. Left alone, she put on all the clothes and returned to the security area. However, when she arrived there, she stared at the senior officer in despair. ‘Where are my bags?’ she asked pointing at the security box where a security officer examines the contents of all hand-luggage on a monitor. ‘I put them into this sausage machine and never saw them again.’ She passed through the metal detector again and bells began to ring but the security officer simply shook her head to let her leave.

  ‘If you go into the airport lounge, I’ll find them for you,’ she told her calmly.

  Emily complied with the order and sat in the airport lounge looking at the aircraft outside through the large windows.

  ‘Life’s a real giggle, isn’t it?’ claimed a middle-aged man sitting near her. ‘Did you hear the one about the woman with two cases at airport reception. ‘I’m off to Benidorm,’ she told the air hostess. ‘I want that case to go to Frankfurt and that one to Hawaii.’ ‘But that’s impossible!’ said the airline hostess. ‘Why?’ returned the woman. ‘You did it last year!’’ He roared with laughter at his own joke. ‘What about the two Irishmen up in a four-engine plane, after three of them had caught fire. ‘Patrick,’ says one of them. ‘If that fourth engine catches fire we’ll never get down!’ He slapped his thigh and roared with laughter again.

  At that moment, the Geordie entered the lounge and went up to her. ‘I hear you had more trouble at security,’ he said incomprehensibly, removing the bottle of whiskey from his pocket and taking a long swig at it. He looked at her up and down. ‘My,’ he said, ‘you’ve put on some weight since I last saw you. It must be the air-conditioning.’

  He walked off and she moved to the next aisle and sat down. The last thing she wanted to hear was a string of jokes by the self-styled comedian or have to listen to an incomprehensible Geordie. She didn’t realise it at the time but she found a seat next to two men who were holding hands.

  ‘My name’s Brucie,’ announced the one sitting nearest to her, ‘and this is my first holiday abroad.’

  ‘Mine too,’ returned Emily candidly, staring at their hands.

  ‘He loves me... and so do I,’ declared Brucie amorously noticing her glance.

  ‘How nice,’ she responded not knowing what to say.

  ‘We may even get married this year. It’ll only be a blessing of course but it’ll be nice for the two of us.’

  ‘I’m Terry,’ declared the other man. ‘Yes, it will be nice. It’s all in the mind, you know. All in the mind.’

  Emily pretended to look around the room for someone she knew. ‘Excuse me,’ she told them. ‘I’m looking for my friend. I think she’s over there.’ She rose and moved some distance away from them before sitting down out of their sight. However, as soon as she had done so, she realised that Mr. & Mrs. Grant were behind her.

  ‘You can’t do anything right, can you?’ insisted Mrs. Grant, continuing to henpeck her poor husband. ‘You go through security with all your keys in your pocket. Of course the bells are going to ring. You know that from old.’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ he responded quietly.

  ‘What a silly man you are. If only you could take a good look at yourself!’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’

  ‘I suppose you’ve mislaid the newspaper and magazines too!’

  Bored with the conversation, Emily rose again to face the toffee-nosed couple who had accompanied her in the taxi-cab. On seeing them, she moved directly towards the shop. She stared at the stacks of cartons of cigarettes and the variety of bottles of liquor and suddenly turned around when she thought she heard someone call her name. There was an enormous crash as she knocked down a whole stack of whisky bottles which lay at her feet. Fortunately for her, none of had broken.

  ‘Good Lord!’ she exclaimed as the assistant came over to recover the situation. ‘Why does it always happen to me?’ At the back of her mind, she heard the voice of Mr. Grant saying: ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ She reeled at her imagination. ‘Heavens!’ she thought. ‘I’m going out of my mind!’

  Suddenly, the announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker with a message. ‘Will Mrs. Gordon... Mrs. Emily Gordon... please go immediately to the Security Area. I repeat. Will Mrs. Emily Gordon please go immediately to the Security Area.’

  The whole room turned to stare at her as she stood up. Mr. & Mrs. Grant, the Geordie who took another long swig from the bottle in his hand, the comedian, the toffee-nosed couple, and Brucie and Terry. As she got there, the security officer held out the bags she had lost.

  ‘They came through the sausage machine all right then?’ said Emily, grateful for their return as she moved back through the metal detector. Bells started to ring again and the security officers’ faces changed to wry expressions until she finally left. She returned to the airport lounge puffing and blowing as the heat from the extra clothing began to get on top of her. However, she had only just sat down when the voice of the announcer came over the loudspeaker again.

  ‘Will Mrs. Emily Gordon please report to the Security Area again. I repeat. Will Mrs. Emily Gordon please report immediately to the Security Area again.’

  The same faces watched her departure for the second time and she could only assume what was going through their minds. As she approached the area, she saw the female security officer holding up a white brassiere.

  ‘I think this belongs to you,’ the woman told her.

  ‘Oh dear. How embarrassing!’ retorted Emily taking the garment from her.

  The male security officer began to snigger but the cold stare of the female off
icer quickly cut him dead. ‘You’d better get back,’ she advised . ‘You’ll be boarding shortly.’

  Emily hid the brassiere inside her clothing and returned to the airport lounge. It was getting hotter and hotter and she felt that steam would soon be pouring out from her ears. The announcer’s voice was heard once again over the loudspeaker.

  ‘Baggage must not be left unattended in the airport. Any baggage found will be removed and destroyed. Thank you!’

  ‘You’ve already destroyed one of mine!’ shouted Emily, standing up in front of one of the loudspeakers as if to reproach the announcer.

  The whole room turned to stare at her. To her dismay, Brucie and Terry walked over to her hand in hand with a serious expressions on their faces. ‘You seem to have lost your friend again,’ he observed. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Alicante,’ she told him. ‘That’s my destination.’

  ‘Oh, Terry and I are going to Benidorm.,’ he said amiably. Terry provided a very weak smile.

  ‘Heavens!’ thought Emily. ‘I’m going to Benidorm as well. I thought he meant the airport.’

  ‘Shame!’ said Brucie sadly. ‘We could have been together.’

  ‘Brucie, you’re holding my hand too tightly!’ winced Terry.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ uttered Brucie, staring into the other man’s eyes. ‘It’s a symbol of my deep devotion for you.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Emily, rising from her seat ostensibly nauseated by the pair. ‘I must find my friend!’ Without looking at either of them, she hurried off to another part of the airport lounge.

  ‘She has a very elusive friend,’ commented Brucie.

  ‘It’s all in the mind,’ related Terry philosophically. ‘All in the mind!’

  Emily stood by one of the great windows watching an aeroplane come in to land. ‘It looks so small to carry all these people,’ she thought to herself. ‘Come to think of it, there hasn’t been a plane crash in months. There’s bound to be one soon. I hope it’s not this one.’

  ‘There hasn’t been a plane crash in months,’ said the comedian who had moved beside her. ‘I hope it’s not this one.’

  ‘I swear I just thought the same thing,’ declared Emily to herself. ‘I must be losing my mind.’

  The announcer then called out the final instructions. ‘Will passengers travelling to Alicante on flight GTW eight-nine-three please proceed to Gate Number Seven. Please have your boarding passes ready.’

  She looked up at the flashing signal to realise she was standing in the right place and turned to find Brucie and Terry behind her.

  ‘Have you found your friend yet?’ asked Brucie with concern.

  ‘My friend?’ repeated Emily. ‘Oh, no, not yet.’

  ‘You can hold my other hand if you want to,’ he ventured.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she thought. ‘What have I got myself into. It’ll be just my luck they’re at the same hotel in Benidorm. Pray that they’re not! Pray!’

  ‘It looks like we’re on our way and there’s no delays at all,’ said the Geordie incomprehensibly. ‘All we need now is sunshine at the other end and we’re in Paradise.’ He removed the bottle from his pocket and took a long swig.

  The passengers thronged on to the tarmac where there stood three buses.

  ‘They’re here to take us to the aircraft,’ stated the comedian. ‘Hey, did you hear the one about the... ’

  Emily deliberately moved away. She felt that she could take no more of the man’s idiotic patter.

  The first bus filled up very quickly, the second was practically full but Emily held back and then decided to ride on the third bus which was completely empty. At least she would have the advantage of sitting in comfort on her way to the aeroplane.

  ‘There we are,’ she told herself., ‘Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can go wrong.’

  The doors of the vehicle hissed as they closed and the driver began the journey. She settled down to look out of the window and eventually became concerned when she lost sight of the other two buses. She became even more alarmed when she realised that she couldn’t see any aircraft at all. By this time, the bus was steaming out of the airport and cruising along at fifty-five miles per hour on the main road. There was something terribly wrong here. It took her almost five minutes to attract the attention of the driver who slowed the vehicle down as she spoke to him.

  ‘Why aren’t you taking me to the aeroplane like all the others? she demanded angrily.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, madam,’ retorted the driver, ‘but this bus goes to Heathrow Airport from Gatwick. We’re not going to any aeroplanes.’ Fifteen minutes later she felt like screaming as she saw an aeroplane taking off in the distance. It was probably flight GTW eight-nine-three to Alicante but she couldn’t be certain!

  The Red Shirt

  There are some people who make things happen, some who watch things happen, and others who ask: ‘What happened?’ That adage is typical of the extent of the diversity of human nature in life. It exemplifies it in a nutshell. The fact is that every person is imbued with his or her own personality from a very young age which is impressed inside them like words running through a stick of seaside rock. They cannot wish it away, or shake it off, or make it disappear... it stays with them throughout their lives. Yet there are still some people who optimistically believe that leopards can change their spots. On occasion, they may be correct but such cases rarely occur in nature. The truth is that people follow the same pattern all their lives. It is very seldom that an individual finds it possible to actually alter his or her nature. Nonetheless, so many people try to enforce such changes in one form or another. For example, parents try to instil basic rules on their children preventing imagination from running its true course so that they may style their offspring in the way they want to see them running their lives. A wife may henpeck her husband, attempting to change his personality to suit her own. Equally, a husband may browbeat his wife in the same way. An employer may turn the screw on an employee inhibiting him or her from being inventive, restricting the employee’s activity and subsequently their enthusiasm and morale. And there is even life itself whereby imposing authorities will attempt to change the personality of a criminal by confining him or her in jail so that they may become a person reasonable to release into society. It is true to say that such changes may be possible over a period of time or they may occur through some form of stress or distress. However, regardless of the pressures under which people are placed, the personality of most human-beings is usually formed by the age of three and it generally remains with them until they pass on to the next world. Let’s face it, no stubborn resistant dominant personality is going to turn into a caring loving tenderly creature... not in a million years! For the reasons set out above, life contains a wide spectrum of differing personalities. At one end of the scale, there are caring sensitive people who become volunteers to help others, giving of themselves freely and willingly, while spawned at the other end are hard-bitten business men and women who fight like devils against each other to increase their personal wealth in one form or another often not caring a fig for anyone else as they try to climb the ladder to success. Therefore how could a man like Norman Carrington change in nature so quickly from a henpecked husband into a person of eminence and sagacity... and then back again? It seemed so utterly incredible at the time!

  Norman Desmond Carrington was a very dull character who kept very much to himself. He had married Helen almost twenty-five years earlier and life ran on with boring banality as his interest in her waned a score of years earlier. They had no children and continued to live platonically following their own pursuits. Eventually, he began to take an unhealthy interest in visiting car-boot sales and charity shops, searching for items which he didn’t really need. The penchant was not a passing phase because he genuinely became interested in seeking out bargains which might be of so
me use to him. In fact, as time passed by, he became quite a collector. Of course he recognised only too well the old adage that most purchases from such places were merely shifting items from the stalls into the loft of one’s house, untouched and unused, however, scouring the areas and shops became his popular past-time and he pursued it with panache. After all, such purchases in moderation cost very little and often the funds were passed on to a good cause such as cancer research, the heart foundation, for the benefit of children, or for the support of animals. Gradually, his garage became filled with the most unusual items, all of which he considered were very precious to him. Norman was a medium-sized man whose hair was thinning and his frame was very slender. He had reached the age of forty-eight in a very uninspiring career without ambition or fuss. He boasted thirty years of service as an office clerk in Wanderley & Partners, a local accountancy firm, and despite the fact that they had increased their staff from twenty-seven to almost three hundred people in an expansion-led progression over the years, he still remained a clerk earning little more than he did ten years earlier with no promotion in sight. The reason for this was his adverse personality. Not that he was ebullient or resentful in any way. Quite the contrary. He was the kind of man that no one ever noticed. He spoke very little, always acted in moderation, did his job satisfactorily without making waves, never asked for overtime, didn’t come into conflict with anyone other employee, and was practically invisible to almost everyone in the firm. He was dull old Norman Carrington, a completely isolated man, who came to work at five to nine each working day, sat at his desk at lunchtime eating the sandwiches he brought with him without ever making friends with anyone else or even talking to them, and then left at five past five. In the eyes of his employer and fellow workmates, he was a complete nonentity!

  His home life was hardly any different. He never spoke to his wife, Helen, at breakfast. He would leave each morning, giving her a passionless kiss on one side of her cheek, returning to perform the same act at five thirty. Then he would take a shower, eat his dinner and sit in his armchair watching television until ten forty-five when he went to bed. From Helen’s point of view, life was a complete drudge. She was a warm-hearted woman yearning for love and passion but she received neither from a dull boring husband who hardly every spoke to her. Over the years, he had changed her somewhat into a shrew who nagged him without response day after day in the hope of getting some personal attention. But it never happened! She was left wanting on all counts.