Chapter 1
Message in a bottle.
‘There he is on the beach again, him and his bottles.’
‘Who? Oh, old George. He’ll find it one day.’
Bobbing up and down, swirling in an eddy, came the first bottle in weeks. It clonked and scraped against the rocks, just too far for him to reach, to risk his new titanium hip scrambling over the green weed smeared tide pools. Just one bigger wave should do it. Here she comes.
There!
Yes! Corked tight but he couldn’t see any furled note, the bottle was scoured opaque by its travels. He shook it. Heard the pleasing sound of something thudding up and down inside. He almost hugged himself.
When he started his hobby George was not so old and prone to speculation about his mental health. It took years before he realised it was not just the notes inside he should treasure but the vehicles themselves.
The invariably green bottle which survived the waves and storms, battled through weather that meant life rafts, lifeboats and helicopters for more robust vessels. Even a watery grave for some unlucky sailors..
He would groan and make his strange ach-ach-ach sound when he remembered how many bottles he threw back in. Threw back in or left lying on the beach or just dropped into the municipal waste bin on his way home or on the way to the pub.
He kept saying he would write his book but it was ’one of those things.’ Middle Son Joseph could do it. Give him something to do when he had his first heart attack from his job at the – what did he do again? Hedge Fund something. Mum had thought he was into topiary but she was always adrift of a buzz word. Like Old Nan with her – ‘Rock and Pop’ band – the Roller Skates. Daft women.
Back at the house he went down the side path past the kitchen. Mum was there in her yellow marigolds at the sink, defusing a greasy carbon encrusted something. He waved the bottle at her and carried on down to his bottle museum, down the garden behind the garage.
She put the kettle on. A new one, a present from Joseph, it had a filter and lit up blue like a space ship ‘from them Space Wars films’, or so George said. She’d never got round to watching one and she wasn’t keen on the new ‘VDV’ especially as she’d just got used to the ‘VRC’.
Middle son Joseph. He looked after his old Mum and Dad. Youngest son Darren never amounted to much, always in trouble with the Police. Living in a caravan on the Norfolk coast. Oldest son Gerry; their firstborn. She sighed. Maybe he’d settle down one day. Where was he now? In the Middle East somewhere. His latest wife; was it number four? Or five? Chinese, Dad had said “Oldest trade in the world that one” and went no further; wouldn’t be drawn. She’d asked Mrs Pickett down at the Post office; even now she blushed at the thought.
The kettle boiled. She pressed the button that would buzz in George’s shed.
George’s bottle museum was cunningly disguised as a garden shed with a grey felt roof.. He was proud of it and, to a newcomer, even Mum could build it up.
“The Taj Mahal among museums,” she said. Joseph’s visiting friends were always dragged to see it.
‘But it’s a garden shed, George, and the Taj Mahal is not a museum…’
But, when the door was opened and the old bakelite light switch flicked on with its crusty sparking effect, they would widen their eyes and do the quick mental arithmetic of measuring the external dimensions and comparing them with those of the inside.
‘Taj Mahal! I see – she meant TARDIS, ha-ha…’
‘That’s right – these bottles and messages have travelled through time and space..’ said George.
‘Well I suppose they have, philosophically…’ one of Joseph’s posh friends had said, the one with the silver ‘Porch’, as Mum called it.
‘Never mind philoso – philosophockily, they’ve travelled across the sea – a big space.’
‘And Time?’
’Took ’em a long time to get ‘ere…’
Today, he didn’t bother with the green under car fluorescent lighting, bought from the Discount Superstore for £3.99. “As sene on The Fast and The Furius” (sic) the box had read. He’d considered putting them under his car for a laugh but his hip wasn’t up to it and Joseph said he wasn’t “good with tools, Dad, you know that.”
So he put them behind the myriad of bottles.
When lit , the glow cast an eerie light behind the bottles and added to the extra dimensional effect.
He opened today’s prize carefully; ach-ach-ach, at the before times he’d bludgeoned them open with hammers and vice grips. ‘Out you come my beauty,’ as he inserted the long forceps and spiralled the note round and round until it slid easily out through the neck. Good, it was dry. Badly faded though.
Without reading it, he laid it on the scanner plate and carefully lowered the lid. He wiped his salty hands down himself and fished out the black A4 card from a drawer. Lifting the lid again he laid the black card over the note.
Another of Joseph’s friends had give him the tip. ‘If you put something black behind a photocopy, the writing comes out so much more defined and clear…’
He switched on the expensive laptop Joseph had given him. ‘It’s OK Dad. I get a new one every three months, they go out of fashion in no time…’
’Ach-ach-ach, no wonder we’re bankrupt,’ thought George as it booted up in ten seconds. He clicked on the scanner icon.
He loved the travelling light as the scanner ran its course. ‘Wish I was born in this generation – all these lovely gadgets. Star Wars, I tell her. Star Wars, not Space Wars, but will she listen?’
He mimicked.
“Yes, dear, yes George. Mrs Pickett from the post office is coming round to program the V-VD, now I don’t want you there making her nervous…”
The message was up now on the 17” screen.
" Whoever finds this, enjoy the money here inside. We were on honeymoon in Monaco and he won the money at that casino and never got home until 4 in the morning. Next night - hah! I caught him messing around with that croupier girl….bitch! ”
George turned back to the bottle. He peered with one eye down the neck hole. Oho! The money! He probed and tugged but the envelope was too swollen and unwieldy. No problem; he had tools ready for such emergencies. The buzzer sounded. He walked back up to the kitchen to get his tea.
Twenty minutes later he had his patient reward laid out before him – 40,000 French Francs.
Pulling out a newspaper from last week’s pile, he looked at the exchange rates. France – Euro…
Daft women, he thought and put the notes on the scanner. He read the note again. Monaco? Didn’t our Gerry have his honeymoon there? One of them anyway. His thoughts drifted across the years and miles writing here…
Much like one of his bottles, now he thought about it.
*
