TRAVELLING

One day our race will learn, too late maybe, that wars tarnish everything...

TRAVELLING

The wretched old hag, wrinkles so deep you'd need a bridge to cross them and voice so wavery you'd need an interpreter, stared at the child from her seat on the park.

“Nasty brat,” she tried to say, but it came out more like “ashty bart”.

“I ain't done nothing wrong,” said the child indignantly. “I was being nice.” The emphasis on that last word was far from accidental. The child (girl, aged tennish, school uniform smart and clean, white socks, longish hair, typical of her genre, the world is full of them) scowled to accompany its monosyllable.

The hag sighed.

The brat is on a journey, she thought. She's at the very beginning of a journey and I, sod it, am near the end of the self same expedition. That's why I hate her! I mean, look at her: antiseptic, you might say, shining eyes, you might notice, all the things I wanted to be back in the day when I was at the start of my journey, you might say.

“I meant to wish you happy Christmas,” continued the child. “I wanted to sing you a song about Mary and Joseph and all that stuff. I'm not a nasty brat!”

And she wasn't. Just look at her and you can tell how nice she is!

“I meant...” began the hag, but sorry isn't an easy word to say.

I might say I'm repentant, ran through the hag's mind, and I know that I am. I'm so very repentant, but it ain't been fair. I were young once, and I were scruffy and I stank! I know that I stank because everyone stank. The kids next door stank. My folks stank. Bombs were falling all around and there weren't no way we could be anything but stinky! I got splinters in me, splinters of hard steel, and they hurt! And they turned septic. They turned real bad, and they said as I nearly died … at the start of my journey, I nearly died...

“Nearly died,” she forced through gnarled lips at the child.

“Nearly died?” asked the child, shocked. “Who nearly died? I never did " was it you that nearly died?”

Then she knew, the hag, that the story needed telling. Tomorrow or this afternoon or in an hour might be too late. Even in a minute might be too late. It could be seconds counted as more than decades might to the child.

“We're travelling...” she began, then forced her mouth to convey her thoughts to the child. “We're travelling … a journey, born, growing …. dying.”

Despite that feeble voice the child heard every word.

“A journey,” she agreed, “travelling, me and you...”

“Wars,” complained the feeble old voice, “wars, fought with bl... bloody violence, 'scuse the language.”

“'S alright,” nodded the child.

But it was never alright! That bl...bloody war ended well nigh seventy years ago an' it's still in my blood, like poison...And all the years since then the life I've been travelling with has been tarnished by old bullets and bombs and all the rot of men of violence...

She forced wild thoughts to her mouth. It was such an effort, but she managed, somehow she managed.

“Don't … let … them … fight...” she whimpered, and at the last violent word her brain exploded into silence.

The pretty child took a step backwards.

“Dead,” she wept, tears suddenly flowing... “dead...”

“Come and play!” shouted her brother from behind her. “Come and play! I'll be the enemy if you like, and you can shoot me!”