Incident on the Gosport Ferry , livre ebook

Andrews UK - David Gary

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

96 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

It all started, weeks ago, when the vicar's cheap sherry - liberally dispensed after the service - went to their heads. Their little group discovered they were angry and frustrated about so many aspects of their everyday lives as pensioners. What they needed was an outlet for all these frustrations before they boiled over. As they gazed at the Gosport Ferry, plying back and forth across the harbour, the idea came to them for a protest that would really make people sit up and take notice. Hardy was happy to take the lead: it was just what he needed to show Joyce, his domineering wife, that he wasn't ready to be written off just yet. But even simple plans have a way of tying themselves up in knots ...

Sujets

Humour

Informations

Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	08 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781911105602
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

An Incident on the Gosport Ferry
David Gary

First published in 2020 by
Chaplin Books
5 Carlton Way
Gosport PO12 1LN
www.chaplinbooks.co.uk
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2020 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2020 David Gary
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder for which application should be addressed in the first instance to the publishers. No liability shall be attached to the author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage of any nature suffered as a result of the reliance on the reproduction of any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in the contents.
This is a work of fiction. Although the novel uses real locations, its characters and events are solely the invention of the author and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Front cover illustration: Wendy Saunders

Introduction
‘Portsmouth’ is exactly that - it’s the mouth of a rather large port, and to get from one side to the other in years past has always been tedious and nowadays to go by road is a traffic nightmare. Gosport is on a peninsular, possessing in reality only two roads to transfer the frustrated traveller on and off. Most people have to leave the peninsular to work and now, since the closure of the military hospital at Haslar, also to attend hospital appointments over in Portsmouth. There is only a small cottage-style hospital now left serving the town. Gosport is also the largest town in Britain without a railway station.
The residents have a choice of going to Fareham to catch trains, or across to Portsmouth Harbour station for trains to Waterloo and other stations on the south coast. A ferry to Portsmouth from Gosport has always been a good idea and so, for as far back as we can trace, there have been ferry boats crossing the mouth of Portsmouth Harbour transporting people from the town of Gosport to the city of Portsmouth and vice versa.
Nowadays, the crossing is comfortable, but that was not always the case. In days gone by the travellers were tough, braving open decks in all weathers. Today, however, there is plenty of accommodation in lounges and viewing decks. The ferries are able to deal with disabled people and those of us that are older can now travel in comfort. There is even a discount for pensioners, on tickets used after peak travelling times, so it never comes as a surprise to see groups of pensioners congregating either on the pontoon or in the gardens on the Gosport side, awaiting that magic time when they can travel for less.
Unlike the bus pass scheme, however, it is not free to pensioners at any time. At the time of writing, the ferry service is owned by a private company called FIH, which is short for Falkland Island Holdings, and it needs to make a profit. Whilst it is a short journey across the water, costs are high, and falling passenger numbers have resulted in a need for almost an annual increase. Should a person or couple need to cross regularly, it can become a burden financially and in particular, to those groups of people with a fixed income.
This novel follows on from my previous book, ‘Going Over the Water’ about the history of the Gosport Ferry as told by lots of people of Gosport.
David Gary
September 2020

Chapter 1
The girl could have been no more than twenty, and she wore a pair of shorts that left very little to the imagination regarding her rear. Hardy could not take his eyes off her, especially when she went up for Communion and knelt at the altar. It did have its plus points coming to church, he thought. Joyce, his wife, was thinking something quite different and was irritated by Hardy appearing to worship something other than the God they were meant to be worshiping in this place.
There were about twenty at the most in the congregation. The singing had been painful – it always seemed to be, despite the volume coming from the six people in the choir. The congregation was lucky in some respects inasmuch as they still had an organist, albeit limited by his repertoire of some twelve hymns. Praise my Soul the King of Heaven was well-practised now by everyone, and his rendition of Holy Holy Holy was considered by some in the congregation to have lost its impact.
Joyce told herself she really had to face reality; these Sunday morning services were getting to the point whereby the majority of the congregation might just as well remain in church to save money on transporting them back there for their own funerals. It was probably, she thought, the same in every church up and down the country.
At long last they were approaching the end of the service. She had done her bit, she had said ‘hello’ to her God and praised him: surely she would get inside the gates when she had suffered every Sunday like this. Today the church was cool, and at that time of the year a blessed relief from the hot weather outside, but of course in winter it was quite the opposite. The old building had never been designed for comfort and the central heating system was totally inadequate to heat the place on a Sunday in January. In common with many church buildings, this one suffered from the ability to swallow money in large quantities, so the heating system was run on a miserly level. Joyce could not remember a time when there was not an appeal taking place to raise cash for some currently failing fabric of the building.
“Go in peace, and serve the Lord,” the vicar announced in his clipped English accent. This appeal signalled they were near to the end of the service, an end to the numb backsides, and the pins and needles in the legs. Soon they would be able to move and walk; a blessed relief, she always thought, for those now seized-up joints crying out for some lubrication. He was a portly vicar, ex-Services like most around the Gosport and Portsmouth area were. His hair was jet black, and in an old-fashioned way, thought Joyce, he still relied on some form of hair grease to keep it swept backwards, firmly following the shape of the skull. If Joyce had anything to do with him, she would place him on a diet and insist that he gave himself a good scrub. In her eyes the vicar always looked grubby and this was backed by a sort of stale aroma that surrounded him.
“In the name of Christ, Amen,” was the response from the congregation.
“Now let us put an arm around the people that surround us in a show of unity and love.” The vicar was enthusiastic on this issue. The church is, after all, about ‘love’ he would proffer.
At this point, however, Joyce reached the limit of her Christianity as preached and understood by this vicar. She did not like this sort of touchy feely stuff that had worked its way into some Church of England services. We are not like this, she thought – we have always been reserved and frankly that was the way she liked it. Not in her seventy years had she ever hugged a stranger she had not even spoken to, and no way was she about to start. She was certainly not hugging her husband Hardy, who was of course standing next to her.
Not unusually, she had had enough of him that particular Sunday morning with his constant moaning that bits of his body didn’t work any more, and his constant visits to the toilet. In fact, she thought, their life was now governed by the toilet. He knew of every toilet in the town, he knew where service stations were on the M3, and for all she knew he had probably obtained a map of toilets all over the country, or even Europe.
She had told him to either go to the doctor about it or shut up. That was her view. She had told him so many times, each occasion sparking yet another row, because Hardy saw it as another attack by her upon his manhood. He believed she would often be thinking “Where was the man I married?” He even wondered that himself sometimes.
The outing to the church service had followed another humiliating tirade from Joyce regarding the whereabouts of his cufflinks. Even Hardy had no expectation that she would ever turn to him for a hug, albeit in the name of Christ. Hardy imagined that Joyce was in cahoots with Christ and had obtained an exemption clause in her contract with him. This meant she was able to leave Hardy out of any love and affection. Instead, she turned to the elderly little round guy to her right. He stood with the aid of a walking stick. She knew him quite well: his name was Bert. She gently put her arm around his shoulder, and he turned to her and awkwardly put his hand on her shoulder. It lasted seconds. But it was long enough, as there had been a waft of something quite stale coming from Bert’s suit. This agonising duty had been completed by Joyce; she had given into peer pressure, and whilst her actions could only be marginally described as a hug, it was more than sufficient in her mind. Meanwhile, Hardy had turned to his left and found nobody, so no need for any ‘activity’ there.
The ‘old’ were differentiated by both their demeanour and their dress. The few of the younger generations that had turned up seemed not to dress for church, pitching up in jeans, T-shirts and even shorts, a trend that both Joyce and Hardy, unusually for them, found common ground in disliking. “But if you want ‘the young’ to attend anything these days, it has to be done on their terms,” the vicar had explained a few months ago when the subject had come up in conversation.
So the one pew occupied by a group of twenty-somethings had to be tolerated and their excessive hugging equally so. They were at the other side