STEPHEN AND ROSIE JONES

It's an old story none the worse for being retold

By the time he reached eleven years of age Stephen found himself to be truly confused, and it was all down to a girl that he knew.

She lived next door and for the past several years he had found her to be a very good friend indeed. They found, as they left the infants school and entered juniors, that they had a lot in common. He was interested in all sorts of things, mostly space and rockets and the planets that you can’t easily see but read all about in simple children’s books, and she was interested in fortune telling, which quite often involved the same things when it didn’t involve tea leaves in tea cups or tarot cards. So they would find themselves chattering about the things their apparently different interests had in common, small minutiae that had no real significance in the real world, when Rosie Jones, the girl next door, came out with it.

“Venus is to do with love,” she told him.

Now, he knew a little bit about love. It’s what his mum called him when he’d done something particularly good, which was quite often, and what his dad called his mum when he encouraged her up the stairs long before it was bed time and there was something on the telly that would keep their son occupied without him needing to sneak up behind them. And he, being sensible, stayed watching the television even when it turned boring. It was better than bed!

Then, in religious lessons at school he was told that God was love, but he dismissed that by the time he was nine because he knew how absolutely gigantic and stupendous the Universe was and worked out that if the God in the bible operated at the speed of light with his love, which is as fast as anything can operate, and if he was somwhere outside the Universe in a cloudy castle surrended by roses and lots of green in a place called Heaven, perhaps, then it would take thousands of years for anything he did on earth to be conveyed to that deity above the sky.

So he said to Rosie, “If Venus is to do with love, then what is God?”

And she replied that God was everything and he thought for a moment and said that everything was atoms because he’d read it, and she decided that he was talking nonsense, and told him so.

“And Mars is for war,” she added, just to ram her point home.

“My dad says wars are quite wrong and no sensible way to solve a problem between countries,” Stephen told her, “he said that young men who were schoolboys only yesterday are forced to go and fight qith guns and stuff, and throw bombs at each other and do trukly rotten things while the old men who want the wars sit behind big wooden desks miles away from all the shooting and masticate.”

“What’s masticate?” she asked.

“Eating and chew delicious things,” he said. “They’ve got waitresses that bring them sweet stuff because it’s very difficult for them to fight in wars.”

“Behind desks?” she queried.

“I suppose they feel sad about the hundreds of young blokes who die,” he said, “and dad’s worried in case in a few years I have to go to a war and get killed. Getting killed is being made dead, and being dead means you don’t exist any longer.”

“I don’t want that to happen to you, Stephen,” she said, and he could tell that she didn’t. In a way it comforted him.

“Neither do I,” he mumbled.

“So it’s a good thing that Venus is about love and not war then,” she told him. “Venus is nearer the sun, I think, and the sun warms it and makes it all cuddly.”

“It makes it too hot for us,” he expostulated, “if we went there we’d probably be burned to a crisp!”

“Like in a war?” she queried.

“Or worse,” he told her.

And by then it was time for him to go in for supper and bed so he grinned at her and said “I’ll try not to fight in a war tonight then, Rosie!” And Rosie Jones said “G’night, love…”

But it got him to thinking, all the things he and Rosie had said, and he was so worried about wars that he just had to ask his dad all about them.

“They’re evil, son,” said his dad, “and it just seems ridiculous that we can’t do anything to stop them! One old man gets an idea in the twilight of his years, maybe that he wants a bit more land, and he arranges for his army to attack another country so he can have their land. And that other country’s old man leader orders his own army to attack back, and before you know what’s happening you’ve got piles of dead bodies, all young men with their lives shattered. And that’s plain wrong.”

“Now then, dad, you’ll frighten the boy. He is only eleven, you know!” put in Stephen’s mum.

“He ought to be aware. Maybe when he’s a bit older he’ll get a really good idea that will stop the madness that is wars that have always been around,” replied dad.

“Like making them illegal?” asked Stephen.

“That might work,” agreed his dad.

oo0oo

It was ten years later and Stephen was at war, on the front line, gritting his teeth and wondering what the hell he was doing there.

He turned his head and looked at Andrew, his mate since he’d been called up and done a minimum of training before being shipped to the battle front.

There was a pause in the firing, which had been deafening since dawn and it must by then be time for elevenses at home.

“What the hell are we doing here?” he asked.

“It’s a war. There’s always been wars and I’ll bet there always will be,” replied Andrew.

“But why?” asked Stephen.

“Don’t you know?” grinned Andrew. “It’s down to money. The rich want to get richer and there’s money in armaments and weapons. You know, Stephen mate, even back in the old days when men fought with bows and arrows it was just the same. The you’s and me’s of back then were punctured by arrows so that the rich men could get richer. And, you know, no matter what the masses say it’ll always be the same.”

Stephen nodded.

Just in time for a stray bullet to find his neck under his helmet and end up finding its way into his brain.

Andrew shook his head and muttered “at least you know why, mate,” he mumbled, and ducked as another bullet came his way, and only just missed.

Oo0oo

The letter, when it arrived on Stephen’s wife’s doorstep, bordered in black, simply said that he died doing his duty for his country and was in God’s grace.

“What the f**k is God’s grace? And where in the name of goodness was Venus?” wept Rosie, his loving wife.

A lot of men had perished this last week, and the next day she was called up because there weren’t so many young men left. She was to be a reserve just in case. She might have to fight a vicious foe hat really didn’t want to fight at all, but had to.

© Peter Rogerson 22.08.22

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