Far Away Places

It had been over four years since victory was declared in Europe. Since then, London, that behemoth, slowly breathed its way back to life. With every pile of rubble cleared, every man returned home, every shop opened up and every celebration, the lustre and vigour it was known for had returned. 

That wasn’t to say it was without scars - the bullet holes and missing buildings stood out like missing teeth, but with time, it was rebuilt. 

These were the thoughts of Ella Franklin as she looked out from her Westminster flat across the city. The lights from buildings and the boats on the Thames sparkled like sequins on a black dress and it filled her with warmth to feel safety and normalcy at the time of the day where she would have previously felt fear. 

It was just before 7 pm on November 5th, 1949 and she was waiting for her husband. Ted Franklin had gone back to Dorset to look after his mother who was unwell and realistically going to die soon. It was a necessary sacrifice for Ella to have to be alone for the last week - she knew that - but she couldn’t help that it brought back memories of how lonely it had been when he was fighting in France. 

She picked up a cloth and started wiping a surface that was already spotless. It wasn’t saying goodbye to him, she remembered, that was the hardest - it was the time in between. 

She thought of the letters. 

How she had sprayed a bit of her perfume in each one and hoped that by the time it got to him he might still be able to smell her. How his letters were a study in subtext, and she would try to read between the lines to figure out how he was really doing. And how every day, she would sit by the table with her coffee before her shift at the factory and wonder if today would be the day that she would find out… 

But that didn’t happen. And Ted came home. Of course, the scars from the war weren’t just physical - they were on the inside, too. She saw the change in his eyes, how they seemed colder when he got back and how she wouldn’t dream of asking him to talk about what happened.

But that was all behind them now. And the illness of his mother was difficult but after everything else, it seemed like a bump in the road they could handle. She walked around the flat and looked at her watch: 7:04. Her mind wandered to the dark places and she pushed it back. She decided some music would help to distract and went to their record player, picking up a recent Bing Crosby record she enjoyed. 

She placed it on the machine and lowered the needle, expecting the usual fuzz and instead heard a deafening boom. She ducked, her war instincts activated, thinking it was another air raid until her rationality took over - it was over, she thought. But that didn’t explain the sound. She went to the window again, expecting to see the remnants of Bonfire night fireworks but saw nothing. They must have been somewhere she couldn’t see them, she thought. 

The song started with gentle strings and Bing’s voice filled the room: 

   Those far away places 

  With strange sounding names

She smiled. She had always found his voice soothing - the depth of it was like velvet for her ears. She went to the kitchen and opened the oven to check on the beef wellington. It was done and staying warm. 

She was about to check her watch again when she heard his footsteps. They were heavy, solid steps that were like him; a firm man made of muscle and sharp edges. His steps echoed like gunshots interspersed with the crooning in the background. 

He opened the door and rushed into the flat. 

‘Sorry I’m late. Damn trains never seem to run on time.’

He sat down in a chair without giving her his overcoat. 

‘I haven’t got much time. The last train is in 90 minutes and I need to be there in the morning.’

He didn’t finish the thought but she knew what he meant - that he wasn’t the only one with not much time left. 

Ella went to the bar and poured him a scotch - one ice cube, two fingers (maybe three), just how he liked it. He took the drink and sipped it, staring into the space in front of him. After a few seconds, he looked at her. 

‘God. Look at me. A perfect fool. I haven’t even said hello to you.’ He put his glass on a side table and stood up, hugging her and holding her tight. She relished his embrace, though it had only been a week. She thought he might dance with her, but he didn’t. He just held her for a moment and sat back down, picking up his drink and sipping it again.

She looked at him, saw the strong chin and sharp cheekbones that had caught her eye many years ago, now coated in stubble. She looked into his eyes and for a split second, saw that they were green. Something inside of her flinched and she blinked - they were brown again. As they should be. A deep brown, like pools of dark chocolate that seemed to match his dark brown hair. 

She went to the kitchen to take the wellington and veggies from the oven, getting ready to serve. She brought them to the table and was getting ready to carve when another boom resounded. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ted flinch, his arms flying above him to brace himself, his eyes full of terror. She ran to the window to look again but saw no lights in the sky, and heard no phosphorous fizzle.

‘Bloody fireworks,’ he muttered as he took a deep swig of his drink, nearly draining it. He moved to the bar to refill it and sat at the table as she finished carving the wellington. Bing Crosby’s voice filled the cracks of silence left between the scraping of the knife against meat and pastry: 

They call me a dreamer 

Well, maybe I am

Everything was ready and they served themselves. 

‘Looks great, Ell,’ he said, his mouth already full. She smiled at him, took a sip of her wine and again felt that warm swell of normalcy that was contentment. A familiar silence settled around them as Far Away Places ended. She felt like she should say something but wasn’t sure where to start. It reminded her of the dinners they would have before the war. Both of them knew that it was time to start a family - by 1939, they had already been married a year. But they also knew that Ted would serve, and with that, there was uncertainty. It was an unspoken agreement that they would wait until he returned - if he returned. The result was a lot of quiet dinners, with intentions and feelings and honesty floating in the air unspoken, unrealised and unfulfilled. After the war, they had tried a few times but had no success - she knew she should go to a doctor about it, but it was just such a sensitive thing. Besides, it might be that the war had made him not want children; maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. 

He looked at her, his eyes deep and full: 

‘How was work, then?’ 

She finished chewing with a hand in front of her mouth then said: ‘Oh, fine. Same amount of work as usual now that Lizzie is back.’ She didn’t specify where Lizzie had gone but knew that he would probably infer that she was on maternity leave. He nodded, his mouth full. 

‘Shall I put on another song?’ she asked. 

He shrugged, speared a carrot that was slathered in gravy and continued to feast. She went over to the record player, removed the first record she had played and chose a song by Vic Damone called You’re Breaking My Heart. 

She prepared herself for a sound - hoped it wouldn’t be another booming, but was surprised to find out that it wasn’t anything ominous, just the wrong song. Far Away Places started to play again and Ella stood perplexed. 

‘Must have been a mistake with the making of it. This record is playing the same song as before! How odd.’ 

She sat back down, hearing the lush strings soar again before Crosby started to croon. Ted shrugged again, perhaps not sensing how strange this had seemed to her. 

He took another swig of whiskey and sat back, his plate nearly clean. He seemed lighter now, not so full of the gloom of the night that seemed to cling to him wherever he went, the darkness that had seemed to permeate his skin, his eyes, his voice, his entire being. 

‘We had a record player, you know,’ he said. ‘And every once in a while, when things were calm, we would bring it out. Have a little party.’ He laughed and it was a deep, throaty laugh. ‘There was one little lad. Couldn’t have been more than 18. Well, he looked like he was about 12. They would get Glen Miller on and we would watch that boy move around like his feet were on fire.’ His eyes, now clouded with whiskey and nostalgia, looked wistful. She smiled at his anecdote and for a second, she thought he was about to tell her about something more, one of the darker memories of his time in France. But he didn’t. He left it up to her imagination, though it wasn’t hard to imagine what would happen in battle to an 18-year-old who looked more like a boy than a man. 

‘Delicious,’ he said with a small smile. He drained his glass and stood up with a wobble before checking his watch. ‘I think I’ve got time for one more. Just need the ‘loo.’ He walked towards the toilet and she started to clear up the dinner. She scraped the remnants of food from their plates and turned on the tap and shrieked - what came out was blood. She turned to look around the flat and saw nothing, heard nothing except for Ted’s frantic fumbling and curses from the toilet. 

‘What in the devil is going on?’

Her face flushed and she said, ‘Nothing! I… I just nicked myself. Overreacted is all. Sorry dear.’ 

His face clouded and he sat down again and his shirt was untucked. ‘For God’s sake, Ella. Just be careful because I-’ 

He paused and looked into his empty drink glass. 

‘You what?’ she said before she even realised what she was saying. She put her hand over her mouth and felt her face flush. 

Ted Franklin went to the bar and poured another few fingers into a tumbler with no ice. He sipped it slowly and sat back down. 

‘Before you say anything, I just want to say I’m sorry for that. I shouldn’t have-’ 

‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Just stop. Look, the reason I don’t talk about…’ he gestured around him and towards himself, ‘is because I don’t want to include you in it.’ He leaned forward to her and his glass hung between his legs. ‘I’m in the dark here. Everywhere I look I see the dark. Every corner, every damn stairwell, I think I see a kraut coming after me.’ He paused. ‘They’re in my dreams, Ella. They are. They come after me and their eyes aren’t eyes but slits. And they want to kill me and you and all of us. I can’t even get rid of them when I close my eyes. ’ 

She reached her hand out towards him - he let her hold his hand but it was limp. 

‘I still hear them. The sounds of the dying.’ 

Ella’s body shook with these admissions from the war - it was the first time. She softened her eyes but didn’t say anything. 

‘It’s a lot quieter than you might think. More gurgling sounds than anything. Dying men don’t say much, really. But their bodies do. And that’s what you can hear.’ 

She nodded her head with sympathy.

‘You know those camps everyone was talking about? With the Jews?’ She nodded again. ‘When we got there, we could smell them before we saw them. Can you believe that? And the sight of them… Good lord. Well, I guess there can’t be a god if He would let anything like that happen.’ 

Silence descended again and somehow Far Away Places was still playing. 

Goin’ to China

Or Maybe Siam

Ella was too caught up in her husband finally opening up to her to notice. But she, and he, noticed the booming sound above them. This time, it was below them, too, and they felt the floor vibrate. 

‘Bloody hell! Those fireworks are getting out of control.’ He checked his watch. ‘I haven’t got much time left here. Only half an hour. But it sure has been nice to visit.’ 

Ella cocked her head to the side, perplexed by his response. ‘But, you’ll be back, right?’ 

‘Of course I will, what a foolish question. Let’s have dinner this weekend. I won’t be as rushed this time.’ 

She turned off the record player and went to him, perhaps feeling liberated by his openness, or feeling like time was more precious now than ever. Her fingers grazed the coarse stubble on his chin and she nestled her chin against his chest. She could feel the reverberations of his heart - its steady rhythm carrying blood and life. He tilted her head towards him and kissed her. Something more than words was expressed in that kiss and time seemed to slow down to a crawl. He led her to the bedroom and stood for a moment. 

‘I suppose we’ve got time,’ he said with a smile. He unbuttoned his shirt and her eyes were drawn to his skin - usually, she would expect his tanned complexion and the coarse hair scattered across his chest. Instead, she saw transparent skin that seemed more like a sheet of paper under a light. She thought she could even see his organs, the viscera underneath the skin outlined in dark shapes. She gasped and he laughed: ‘Has it been that long?’ She shook her head and looked back to him and his body was as it should be. But she could not shake the feeling that something was off; it all was adding up. The music, the sound, the blood, his skin - it was like someone was pulling her further away from reality. 

Ted moved towards her and put his hands on her shoulders. Ella felt a flush of excitement but again noticed that there was a vibration underfoot. 

‘Do you feel that?’ she asked. 

His hands stopped. ‘Feel what?’ 

‘The floor. It’s… vibrating.’

He looked down and looked back at her. ‘I guess so. Must be those fireworks again.’ But even as he said it, he seemed like he didn’t believe it. Then, the lights started to flicker and they could hear the music again. 

‘I thought we turned that off,’ she said quietly. It played around them now, emanating from the air in the bedroom. Neither of them tried to rationalise it. 

She said: ‘It feels like everything is just… wrong. Mixed up.’ 

He looked around the room again, at the flickering lights and then back to her. The wardrobe beside them slowly started fading, seeming to disintegrate into thin air. The clothes in the closet - the dresses and cardigans and suits and ties - started fading as well. They watched as everything else in the room started to fade, their faces blank, their voices mute. The floor itself was crumbling, abandoned to darkness, until they stood in a nebulous cloud facing each other. His face started to fade, his features eroding, his shoulders and chest caving in. She reached a hand towards him and felt nothing. He started to move downwards, down to where nothingness awaited him and neither of them spoke for they had no words. The only thing that was left was the song - she could still hear it with the clarity of a bell rung in a silent room. 

Those far away places 

With strange sounding names 

She looked down and saw that she was fading as well - her arms and legs were gone and she closed her eyes and all was dark. 

*

A dark room. The blinds are drawn and let in only a sliver of light. It falls on a photograph: a man in uniform with dark eyes. 

A frail body lies in a bed, a blanket wrapped around its gaunt shoulders. A door opens and the lights are turned on. A woman walks in briskly carrying a cart with medical equipment. 

‘Good morning, Mrs Franklin!’ She goes to the window and opens the blinds - there is a courtyard outside and people walk or sit and look at the sky or think. 

Ella Franklin sits up slowly and looks around: ‘Where am I? Who are you’ 

The woman sits on the bed and puts a hand on her shoulder: ‘I’m Loretta, dear. You’re at the St. George’s care home. I just need to do a few quick checks before breakfast.’ 

Ella looks at her with confusion: ‘Where is Ted? I just saw him. I was just there, and we had dinner and there were strange lights and sounds… Where is Ted?’ 

A look of pity from Loretta: ‘Ted died, dear. A long time ago. But his memory still lives on.’ 

Ella looks at the photograph and starts to cry - she cries for the loss of her past, for the loss of her memory, for the loss of a world so far away she will never find it again.