Lost and Found
- Lincolnshirelass
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Lost and Found
For all that, he was an observant child in some ways, and he was the one who had first seen the tickets, lying on the pavement. He could just about read and write his own name, and words like 'Cat' and 'Dog' and 'Betty', but the stylised, official looking print on them was beyond him. All the same, some innate instinct told him they might be IMPORTANT and not the 'rubbish' Betty hated him picking up. 'Oh, Toby, don't dawdle,' she chided him, gently, 'We have to go to market, you know, Mrs Lamont hates it when we're not back in time for cook to see to supper for the - guests ....'
'But our Betty, these - aren't rubbish, honest they aren't!' he exclaimed. 'At least have a look, won't you!'
Betty sighed, but gave in, realising it would probably be quicker. And in any case, her curiosity was pricked. The minute she looked more closely she stopped in her tracks so suddenly she nearly knocked an irate-looking gentleman in a bowler hat and tweed suit flying. 'Sorry, sir,' she muttered.
'Blasted ragamuffin,' he said, with a look of contempt. Betty didn't care. She'd been called worse. And she had other things on her mind. This was like a miracle or something from a fairy-story, and it was the twentieth century now - and anyway, her life had not seen anything resembling a miracle or a fairy-story lately. Though she tried to be a good Christian girl she didn't believe in the former, and had never had much time for the latter.
'They are important, aren't they, Betty?' he asked, turning his trusting brown eyes on her. 'Tell me what they are!'
Never had a couple of seconds seemed so long to Betty. It was as if two voices were in conflict in her mind. One of them said 'Forget it. At least you have an income now, and a place where they're alright with Toby. It would just be sheer madness and wicked to give all that up to chase a dream that would almost certainly end badly'. But that other voice told her that, in happier days, her Mum had once told her that you should follow your dreams, or at any rate, not give up on them, and that there was most definitely what she called 'Providence'. Oh, Mum, thought Betty, blinking back the tears that still came as she saw that sweet, patient face, remembering it before it was drained by grief and sickness and poverty. What would you do? What would you tell US to do? She wondered if she should even tell Toby what he had found, or try to fob him off with another explanation - he would believe her, anyway. He has absolute trust in 'Our Betty'.
The words were out before she realised it, in a rush. At first she wondered if he would even understand. But he understood, and it was as if the early spring sunshine had filtered down into his eyes. 'Oh, our Betty, it's - it's bloody good!'
'Don't swear,' she corrected him automatically, though she knew he did not have words like wonderful or marvellous in his vocabulary. 'We can, can't we?' he pleaded.
'But it's such a risk, Toby,' she said. 'And it's not really so bad where we are, is it now?'
In that instant, though, it was as if a side of Betty that had been dormant and suppressed since her Mother's death suddenly surged up again, like a flame rekindled from what seemed like cold ashes in a neglected morning hearth. She had had enough of 'not really so bad'.
She wanted better. She wanted to at least try for something better, and perhaps it WAS providence.
'Listen, Toby,' she said, putting her hands on his shoulders - he was already taller than she was, a perpetual child in a body rapidly becoming a man's. 'You do know this could all end very badly, don't you? That it's a foolish thing to do.'
'Mum would have called it - pro - providence!' Somehow, that was what decided it for Betty. She had no notion that Toby was aware of the meaning of the word, and his proud remembering of it was like an omen.
They did not have much time to make their plans. Perhaps that was as well, Betty thought. On the morning of their departure, she felt, strangely, both older and younger. She clutched the tickets like the Holy Grail.
But Betty, though she was wiry and a hard worker, was still only small and slight, and no match for the two burly, bearded strangers who had been tailing her and Toby as she was lost in thought and Toby was already planning his adventures. 'Well, now, look what these kiddies have!' one of the strangers said in a voice like honey coated with lye. 'Too young to be setting off on your own, aren't you!' She fought bravely, but was wrested to the ground and knocked out, spraining her ankle as she fell. 'Betty, Betty, wake up!' Toby yelled, flailing gallantly and in vain at their attackers as they made off with their precious tickets and their escape from their dreary existence.
Thirty years afterwards, as the world was ravaged by war and Betty (who had done well for herself and married a kindly local shopkeeper who was very good to Toby, though, tragically, he had died of a fever when he was only in his twenties) praying for the safe homecoming of her only son, Jeremy, who was in the heat of the desert, she found comfort reminding herself - and her much-loved daughter in law Barbara, that there WAS such a thing as providence. There had to be. Even if it sometimes manifested itself in strange ways that seemed like just the opposite at the time.
Providence could be cloaked in the guise of heartless assailants, who stole their tickets for the Titanic ......
Mahatma Gandhi
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- Pinkyrosy090
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never give up on it
Feel very motivated reading this
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- DATo
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You are multi-talented Lassie. Just as I have grown accustomed to your wonderful poetry I now learn that you are also a very good short story writer. You probably know from my own stories that I love a twist ending and you penned a doosie here. LOVED IT!!!!
Please excuse the lateness of this reply and accept my sincere compliments on this excellent story!
― Steven Wright
- ikegabeike 555
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