All the Young Dudes

Ellie Russell

Description

Question: What do you get when you cross a not-so-lovable rogue with an uptight lawyer and throw a little Elvis into the mix? Answer: A thoroughly ripping page-turner of a yarn and a permanent residency in Heartbreak Hotel. Ellie Russell could certainly be forgiven for thinking somebody up there doesn't like her. Laugh with her, cry with her - be very glad you're not her!

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528962162
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

All the Young Dudes
Ellie Russell
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-05-31
All the Young Dudes About the Author About the Book Dedication Copyright Information © Chapter 1 Starman Chapter 2 Baby Driver Chapter 3 Burning Love Chapter 4 Romeo and Juliet Chapter 5 Run, Run, Run Chapter 6 Truth No. 2 Chapter 7 Blue Turk Chapter 8 Do You Want to Know a Secret? Chapter 9 More than Words Chapter 10 Perfect Day Chapter 11 Friday on My Mind Chapter 12 Spanish Stroll Chapter 13 Die Another Day Chapter 14 The Power of Love Chapter 15 Fool You’ve Landed Chapter 16 Everybody’s Changing Chapter 17 Comfortably Numb Chapter 18 All the Madmen Chapter 19 Don’t Speak Chapter 20 Didn’t We Almost Have It All Chapter 21 Nevermore Chapter 22 Hide in Your Shell Chapter 23 Here Comes the Sun
About the Author
Ellie Russell lives in Lee-on-the-Solent on the south coast. She loves music, cookery, nature and is passionate about history. This is her first book.
About the Book
Question: What do you get when you cross a not-so-lovable rogue with an uptight lawyer and throw a little Elvis into the mix?
Answer: A thoroughly ripping page-turner of a yarn and a permanent residency in Heartbreak Hotel. Ellie Russell could certainly be forgiven for thinking somebody up there doesn’t like her. Laugh with her, cry with her – be very glad you’re not her!
Dedication
F T D O F W S F Y
D Y F F M
Copyright Information ©
Ellie Russell (2019)
The right of Ellie Russell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528920018 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528962162 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter 1

Starman
I will begin my story with the time when I first fell in love. My sexual awakening, as it were. The year was 1972 and I was twelve. I lived with my mother and stepfather, two sisters and brother, in a large three-storey house, in a small town on the south coast called Lee-on-the-Solent. My elder sister, Sarah, and I both went to the local grammar school. I was in the last year to sit the Eleven-plus. My brother, James, was seven and my other sister, Annie, was six.
Before we moved to Lee-on-the-Solent, we lived in a rented cottage in a small village called Isfield, in Sussex. James and Annie were born there. The cottage had no bathroom and no indoor toilet; we used a galvanised iron bath and a portable chemical loo. My stepfather had the unenviable task of regularly emptying this into a cesspit, which was located at the far end of the garden. Sarah and I loved sharing the bath in front of the fire. It can’t have been much fun for the adults though. There was an outside toilet, but it was rarely used. It was a long way from the cottage and it stank. It had a large square wooden seat and was full of huge black cobwebs. Some of the spiders were as big as your head.
Sarah and I attended the local primary school. There were only two years, with about six pupils in each class. We could both read by the time we went to school and having such small classes gave us an excellent start. In those days, we used to be given little bottles of milk at morning break and I distinctly remember that in winter it would freeze solid in the bottles. In summer, the milk became unpleasantly warm, and the cream on top would congeal. Another vivid memory was marching in a line round and round the classroom whenever we sang Onward Christian Soldiers which, needless to say, was a firm favourite. I remember getting up at the crack of dawn to hunt for mushrooms on the village green, finding a dead snake (someone had decapitated it) in the lane behind our house and remember nearly killing my sister. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but she was badly hurt and it did entail a trip to the hospital. We were on the see-saw in the park, which was merely a long plank of wood balanced on a central support made of iron. There were little iron handles to hold on to. Although well weathered, the wood was untreated and we often came away with splinters which mother had to dig out with a needle. The whole play area was concrete. There was no soft rubber matting or thickly spread woodchip. Anyway, Sarah was up, and I was down when I suddenly thought it would be a splendid idea to jump off, which I did. She came crashing down, and the fall split her chin open. You have never seen so much blood; chins can sure bleed. She had to have several stitches and still has a scar. For days afterwards, you could clearly see the trail of blood leading from the park to our cottage.
My stepfather’s mother and older brother lived just up the road from us. There was only one road running right through the village. They were simple country folk. There was always a dead rabbit or a brace of pheasant hanging from a hook outside the back door. My uncle was a man of very few words. He loved his allotment and grew masses of fruit and vegetables. He also kept chickens for eggs. I remember walking with him round the garden. He would point things out to me, patiently answering my never-ending questions and proudly showing me the plants in his greenhouse. He had a huge nose, like the beak of a parrot. He smoked a pipe and always wore dog-tooth check jackets with leather buttons and leather patches on the elbows. He was rather like Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor to look at, only with a much bigger nose. Unlike Edward, he never found his Wallis. Apparently, he was engaged once—for 10 years! She obviously got tired of waiting or didn’t like veg.
Every weekend, we used to make the long trek up the road for Sunday afternoon tea and a ‘proper’ bath. We ate in the cosy living room where there was a small black range fuelled by coal which provided what little heat there was in the house and in which Nan cooked their meals. There was a larger sitting room or parlour, but it was only used for wakes, important visitors like the doctor or at Christmas. It was very cold and full of over-stuffed chairs with chintz covers. A large ornate clock ticked loudly on the mantle and chimed every hour on the hour, making us all jump. Upstairs were four large equally cold bedrooms. The beds all had huge feather pillows and each was covered with a plump eiderdown. Underneath every bed was a china chamber pot. Tea never varied. It was always salad with cold ham. In those days, salad consisted of lettuce (the floppy kind), cucumber and tomato. Invariably, you also got a slug and a good spattering of greenfly, sometimes a caterpillar. If you crunched on something, you had got a snail. There were none of the fancy salad leaves available now and no salad dressings. We used to sprinkle a little vinegar over the lettuce. There was no garlic to make a French dressing and olive oil was only available in tiny glass bottles from the Chemist. It was never used for cooking. Mother always had it handy for earaches. She would pour copious amounts into our ears and then plug them with a golf-ball size wad of cotton wool to prevent the oil from running out. To go with the ham, there was Pan Yan pickle (which you can still buy today). It was proper ham, lean and dry with an orange breadcrumb rind. The accompanying bread was homemade with a thick crust and was yeasty and delicious. Afterwards, there would be cake, also homemade, and tea poured from a large teapot into little china cups with saucers. I hated having a bath there. Nan was merciless with the soap and flannel. She would scrub us nearly raw paying particular attention to our ears which may go a long way to explain our frequent bouts of earache. She always had large bars of green Palmolive soap. The towels were thin and really rough, which removed a further layer of skin. The bathroom was absolutely freezing. All bathrooms were cold back then. There was no heating, unless you had a paraffin stove. Then you would be nice and warm but had to be a bit lively with your bath, lest you be overcome by the fumes. But all in all, they were halcyon days.
Sarah and I were born in Canada. Mother was a professional ice skater when she met and married my father. He was working for an insurance company. He was Jewish and was born in Czechoslovakia. At the beginning of WW2, the German army marched into Czechoslovakia and established a Slovakian Protectorate. My father and grandmother were interned at Sered, a forced labour camp about 60 km from Bratislava. He was seventeen. At some point, my father and a number of other male prisoners broke out and lived as partisans in the forest. It must have been truly awful for him having to leave his mother behind. Near the end of WW2, she was transported to Auschwitz and killed. It’s poignant to see footage of old film, of Jews being herded into cattle trucks and peering through the barbed wire of concentration camp fences, clips we have all seen a thousand times and knowing that one of those women could be my actual grandmother. I don’t know what happened to my grandfather, he may have survived the war. I do know that he was a doctor.
My parents’ marriage was only ever going to fail. My mother was a spoilt rich kid brought up in a large house with a maid and a tennis court in a green and pleasant land and my father had seen hell up close and personal. When they separated, mother came back to England with my sister and me and moved to Sussex where my nan and gramps owned and ran T