World is Empty

R.W. Kay

Description

R.W. Kay's fourth novel, The World is Empty, focuses on the two stories that can be told over the course of a relationship: hers and his. Mia and Mike became engaged in their twenties. Mia, an air hostess, was twenty-six while Mike was a maths graduate training to be a teacher, aged twenty-two. After a year long engagement, circumstances conspired that their relationship ended and they lost all contact with each other. They married, began families and their time together became a distant memory. They never saw each other for nigh on forty years until meeting accidentally. Very rapidly, they realised their bond had never been broken. As they reminisced, it became clear that they did not share the same memories. On their first Sunday together in 1963, Mia had forgotten she had taken Mike to morning mass. As it was his first time inside a Roman Catholic church, he remembered the occasion vividly. Later, when they sat together watching Reginald Dixon playing the organ in Blackpool's Tower Ballroom, Mike couldn't recall the event at all! As their love reignites, responsibilities, passion and morality begin to dominate their lives...

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785895487
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE WORLD IS EMPTY


R.W. KAY
Copyright © 2016 R.W. Kay

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination
or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 978 1785895 487

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
ALSO BY R W KAY:
A Nastia Game
Bin Laden’s Nemesis
Iraq’s Retribution
THANKS:
My thanks go to the many friends who helped with comments
on early drafts, but especially Julia Hamilton.
TO:
Hopeless romantics everywhere
Author’s Note
A romantic novel is about the relationship between two people, so there are two stories: hers and his. Similarly, a coin of the realm has two sides and during its time in circulation, typically forty years according to the Royal Mint, each face sees things from a different angle.
Mia and Mike were engaged when Mia was a twenty-six-year-old air hostess and Mike was a twenty-two-year-old maths graduate training to be a teacher. Their engagement lasted a year before circumstances conspired to ensure that they parted.
They never saw each other until they met by accident exactly forty years after their engagement, during which time they had married and brought up families. They rapidly realised the warmth of their bond had never cooled. As they recollect their year of courtship, their memories vary considerably. On their first Sunday alone in 1963, Mia had forgotten she had taken Mike to morning Mass. It was Mike’s first time inside a Roman Catholic church, so he remembered the occasion vividly. However, when Mia reminded him that afterwards they sat holding hands watching Reginald Dixon playing the organ in Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom , Mike could not recall the impromptu concert at all.
As their love reignites, responsibilities, passion and morality begin to dominate their lives. Mia tells her story in the first person, while Mike’s version is related in the third person. This dual approach to relating their romance is unusual and, quite possibly, unique.

R. W. Kay

Chapter 1
Tuesday, 9 th April 1963
‘Fancy a game of golf?’ Terry asked over their first pint.
A simple question, but hardly life-changing.
‘A good idea. Where?’ replied Mike.
An innocent reply, but for Mike it would be life-changing.
‘Port Erin; we could go down on your scooter and hire clubs at the pro’s shop.’
It had been a terrible winter in Britain. The average temperature in January had been the coldest on record for over two hundred years. Despite frozen pipes in his student accommodation and snow lying on the ground for months, Mike’s Postgraduate Certificate of Education course at Leicester University had gone well, apart from his lack of success with the girls. He found teacher training enjoyable, as he was a natural in the classroom. Whilst on teaching practice, his pupils took to his charismatic, somewhat eccentric style. Although many of his one hundred fellow graduates on the PGCE course had degrees as good as his own, his tutor had hinted that Mike would be in the top ten when the course finished at the end of the summer term.
He had come back to his hometown, Douglas in the Isle of Man, for the Easter break and made contact with several of his old school buddies. Many of his pals were also home from different universities while others were now in jobs or nearing completion of their five-year apprenticeships. He would regularly meet them around lunchtime in the downtown students’ pub, The Dog’s Home. Always clean and cheerful, it was run strictly according to the local licensing laws by a retired policeman. Beer was 3d a pint cheaper than elsewhere and the licensee’s wife made wonderful, cheese-and-onion ‘sand-wedges’.
The Tuesday before Easter was a beautiful, warm day. Spring had finally arrived. The sky was an azure blue. There wasn’t a breath of wind.
The Rowany Golf Club was fifteen miles away. Dressed casually, they boarded Mike’s BSA Sunbeam and roared away without a care in the world: no crash helmets or protective gear; no thought that the weather could change.
Halfway, as they were passing Ronaldsway Airport, Mike shouted over his shoulder, ‘Fancy a coffee?’
Terry nodded.

They parked and entered the terminal building that had been opened ten years earlier to replace the original Royal Naval Air Station, HMS Urley. The café upstairs overlooked the main concourse. From there you could see the movement of airline staff and passengers below.
Casually leaning on the balcony, Mike turned to Terry behind him.
‘Come and look at her.’
‘Who?’
‘Her.’
He nodded at an air hostess walking away from them across the hall below.
‘She’s a bit-of-all-right.’
She looked petite and had an hourglass figure that was enhanced by her close-fitting, navy-blue uniform. She appeared to have thick, honey-coloured hair under her pillar box hat and a walk that made him gawp at her legs: slim, fine ankles in court shoes; their colour matched her uniform. There was something about the way she walked that was different. Her slim thighs swung easily from her hips as she progressed across the concourse. The walk had its own signature.
It oozed self-confidence. Unforgettable, Mike thought.
While staring at her, Mike remembered the story of Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, and how he’d found his future wife from the way she was walking in front of him. Baden-Powell had not even seen her face. The serendipity of the coincidence would remain wasted on Mike for some time. Her upright posture gave her a bearing that demanded attention. Her deportment suggested elegance and sophistication.
‘What’s she look like from the front though?’ asked his mate.
But Mike had disappeared. Dashing down the stairs into the airport’s main hall, he manoeuvred quickly, but discreetly, around the edge to get ahead of the striking air hostess who had stopped to talk to a colleague. He looked at her face. Five features hit him: big, emerald-green eyes, impossibly high cheekbones, a large forehead, kissable lips, and a perfect chin. She hardly wore any make-up. She didn’t need to.
Weirdly, a nursery rhyme went through his head: ‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said .
He was smitten by the young lady, who was probably his own age, in her Britair uniform.
Terry was at his shoulder. ‘I think we should be going, don’t you?’ he hinted.
She hadn’t noticed Mike observing her. Disappointed, he reluctantly turned and left.
I guess I’ll never see her again .

The rest of the day was a blur. His heartbeat remained twice its usual rate and his golf, particularly his putting, suffered as he plotted how he might see her again. He decided he would get a copy of the Britair timetable on the way home, analyse the flights that had landed at Ronaldsway, and establish what her home base could be.
However, that evening his theoretical approach to tracking down the most beautiful girl he had ever seen hit a dead end. There had been three flights arriving at the airport: from Blackpool, Leeds and Gatwick. She could have been on any of one of them. Undeterred, he returned the following morning, approached the Britair desk and was told that the crews’ bases bore no relationship to their flight schedule.
‘Our crews are based as far apart as Edinburgh and Jersey,’ he was told by the disinterested receptionist. ‘The crews here yesterday could have been from anywhere.’
He was crestfallen. He’d had high hopes for a romance with an air hostess; in his eyes, easily the classiest, best-looking, female profession. He decided that he would return to the airport the following week at the same time and hope he would strike lucky. However, kismet was to intervene.

Traditionally, Saturday night was for hitting the town. The well-practised, but generally unsuccessful formula was to have a few beers with your chums, and then descend on a local dance to find a ‘bird’.
The Palace Ballroom had opened for the summer season. Built late in the 19 th century, its rectangular parquet dance floor was the largest in Europe. Halfway down the length of one side, a substantial, elevated stage could house a large dance band. Around the floor, six rows of tiered seats were arranged to accommodate onlookers. On the first floor, on three sides, a surrounding balcony, supported by decorated pillars, further allowed spectators to view the floor and stage. Used to present prizes at the motorcycle TT races in June, it was common for the ballroom to hold an audience as large as five thousand people. Its Victorian style of architecture could best be summarised as opulent. The lavish use of plaster figurines, lit by subdued lighting, and the col