MRS JENKINS' REFUSAL - a 100 word seasonal story

MRS JENKINS’ REFUSAL

“Mrs Jenkins refuses to go to bed!”

The Care Home manager soothed Hyacinth. “I should have told you – she always sits up on Christmas Eve.”

.......

Alone at last, Edna sank into cherished memories of a youth spent roaming the moors, doing her best to fulfil her father’s predictions of a ruined reputation.

Gnarled fingers twisted her wedding band. She’d had to settle down eventually, but she’d always yearned for her lost freedom.

A sound alerted her. He had come every Christmas without fail for sixty years – her gypsy lover with his string of horses.

This time she would leave with him.

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Thanks to Rochelle for the atmospheric photograph and for hosting Friday Fictioneers on her blog  https://rochellewisofffields.wordpress.com/  from whence you can follow the link to read how other authors interpreted the photo prompt.

GYPSY, GEORGE AND GUAZA MAN

   GYPSY When Albie’s mother abandons him she calls him a “gypsy brat” and tells him that her latest man friend doesn’t want him around. From that moment Albie is determined to find out if this was just another jibe or if he really does have Romany blood in his veins.

In the early 1900s the hop-fields and fruit farms of Kent, where my novel Helter-Skelter is set, are rich in travelling folk who, although they are still regarded with suspicion by the locals, are a necessary part of the labour force.

Meanwhile GEORGE & DOT SMITH become Albie’s parents by taking him into their home. George is a big, working class man – a patient grandfather who takes pity on the young waif Albie, and Dot is strong-willed but kind and motherly. She is a typical housewife of her era, who wears a wrap-over pinny all day, makes nourishing meals on very little money, and can’t stand bad behaviour. Come to think of it, she’s not unlike me – except for the apron!




As we drive home from Las Galletas, the fishing village a few kilometres away where we do our shopping and drink cafe con leche, we pass through GUAZA, where the mountain looks so like a recumbent figure that he is known as GUAZA MAN.