We didn’t pay to go into Wells Cathedral, instead gazed up at the rows of blank-faced, wind-eroded sculptures. Upright saints and seated monarchs, half angels. We walked through Penniless Porch, found a street of branded outlets and crowded teashops. You asked, is that all there is? Like in Peggy Lee’s smoky song.
Nearing the car, you said Wells was too small for us, or too big (you’re always thinking about moving somewhere else). We’d parked in a lucky free space alongside Cathedral Green. Behind us, a white camper van decorated with slogans – An Adventure Before Dementia, Spending the Kids’ Inheritance.
Same van again in Cheddar. But we lost them on a roundabout near Burnham-on-Sea. I liked their ebullience but you frowned, thinking of your adult children.
We’d booked a static caravan on a Haven site, aiming for a cheap holiday. But because I snore, we needed two bedrooms. And having studied the map in the catalogue, I’d chosen a gated lakeside area. Each caravan – park home, really – had its own wooden deck. So, not that cheap.
We’d swapped rooms because of the double’s poor light and insecure window, so now you were in one of the twin beds. Finding it uncomfortable.
All night the security gates kept clashing as they rose and fell, like the ignorant armies in the Matthew Arnold poem. Ah, love.
Author's Note:
We live in a trafficky urban area, but down the road is a lovely park (Haden Hill Park) with bunches of flowers tied to memorial benches and up-and-down shady paths where wild garlic flourishes in springtime. Below the park is a nature reserve that used to be a golf course and here I sometimes meet a fox, who only appears when I’m thinking about something else entirely. The fox stares at me and I stare back, then s/he turns tail and vanishes.
Frances Gapper’s flashes and micros have been published in four Best Microfiction anthologies and online in places including the South Florida Poetry Journal, Splonk, Forge, Twin Pies, Wigleaf, trampset, 100 Word Story, New Flash Fiction Review, Fictive Dream. She lives in the UK’s Black Country.
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