Run Away Laughing

Paul Kelly

Description

MARGARET OTTLEY FLUCK was into her forty-fist year of life, but she hadbeen thirty eight years of age for the past three years... She waswell aware the she was no oil panting, but as with most women, sheconsidered she had something in her make up and appearance that mightattract a man into her life. She knew that her name was hardlysomething that would attract anyone and she dropped the name FLUCK forobvious reasons when she became a school teacher and was in charge ofan army of five to six year old boys... and adopted the name PEGGOTYinstead of Margaret because to her that sounded much more feminine,although her greatest interest outside of her teaching was motormechanics and she proved she could master that task as well as any man.Peggoty loved all the children she taught, but there was one little boywho attracted her more than the others named BENJAMIN SCHOFIELD... Ben asshe called him and when Ben's parents were killed in a road accidentand Ben had to go into an orphanage, Peggoty took him on holidays andvisits to her cottage by the sea. She never scolded her pupils harshly,but would pat them on the bum and tell them to "run away laughing"That always did the trick.

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 16 décembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849899178
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page

RUN AWAY LAUGHING

A MURDER MYSTERY




By
Paul Kelly




Publisher Information

Run Away Laughing published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Paul Kelly

The right of Paul Kelly to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



Chapter One

Benjamin’s Story

I had Peggoty’s letter in my pocket and had decided to read it after the day’s operations were over. She wrote to me faithfully every month without fail and I did so look forward to her writings. It is strange I know, since Peggoty was three times my age, but she was the only girl friend I ever had and it kept the other lads from teasing me if I didn’t have anyone writing to me. They all had someone and I would have felt out of place if it hadn’t been for my monthly chronicles and I knew for sure that I would never have a ‘ Dear John’. My relationship with Peggoty was not that kind of a relationship at all. In fact I regarded her as my aunt, since my parents had died, although she wasn’t even a blood relative, but I had a bundle of her letters in my kit bag.
It was early in the year 1948 as I remember now when I am so much older and I think, just a little wiser, and I was spending my last few days in the Royal Army Medical Corps before I would soon become a civilian again. A convoy of army trucks would take us through the desert from Basra to Port Said in Egypt and there we would sail home to Southampton and I thought that time of sailing would never come, but as with any waiting game, no matter how important or otherwise you may think it is, it will come eventually. The journey home to England was without incident, as I recall, and I read several of Peggoty’s letters on the way home, time after time to savour the expectancy of returning to her beautiful cottage, but the journey was very much enjoyed due to the fact that as with every troopship I have ever been on, someone, somewhere can always pop up who can play the piano and our travel home on this occasion was no exception. We sang and we drank lager and then we drank lager and sang some more. It was just like that except for a few of the soldiers who were rather sea sick We were issued with new battledress and clothes that would be more suitable to the English climate, with boots that had half-inch leather soles, when we arrived HOME in England and anticipating the time when the army would require us no longer and we would be free to go…with a new civilian suit and a nice bright coloured shirt and tie, leaving the khaki behind forever
It was nice to be free of the army and all its regulations, but I remember the time I spent in Iraq ever so well and strangely enough, although it is not a country I would ever have thought to visit if I hadn’t been obliged to go there with the army, I think now it was a time in my life that served great purpose for me and for many people like me because I am convinced that I LIVED there; lived as I had never known how to live before I left England, doing what I did in the Operating Theatres of the Middle East, but especially in the Theatre of the 61st Indian General Hospital, near Basra. Yes, those times have made a great impact on my life, perhaps because I hadn’t led what many people would call an ordinary life, before I was conscripted into the army in 1945, although I would have described it more to be even less than ordinary. That may seem absurd or even trite to many who read this, but to me, Iraq and my work there was the start of one of the most important and exciting times in my hitherto mundane and considerably dull existence in the boy’s orphanage where I grew up.
Memories are truly nostalgic when I look back now.
I see myself again, sitting in the shade by the Surgical Ward where my friend Brian was working as a nursing orderly. The sun was beating down mercilessly across the Iraqi desert. The sand was dry and savage even in the shade, tearing into the skin of my face, cutting into every muscle and sinew as it blew about haphazard fashion in the strong wind. I was so young, just in my twenty-first year at that time, with my three years army medical training and hospital work, of which I was so conscientious, and so proud, under my belt especially my Operating Theatre experience of nearly two and a half years. I loved the work I was able to do in the Theatre. It was so adult to what I had previously been used to in the orphanage where setting the tables for lunch was one of the most important jobs … and better than sweeping around the house, or worse still, cleaning the toilets. I felt like an old veteran, especially as I really had specialized knowledge of the Operating Theatre, being trained as only one of three ORAs … That is ‘Operating Room Assistants’ in the whole of the Middle East at that time, although it seems like such a long time ago now when I am an old man … Well certainly in my middle age and feeling like I am a hundred at times … So much water has passed under the bridge since that time. So much that has been very pleasant, but a fair share of what I would describe as undesirable to say the least.
Colonel Harbison, an officer from Australia serving with the British Forces in Iraq, one of the surgeons in the Operating Theatre where I worked in a field hospital situated in the middle of the desert, wouldn’t even start to perform his operation unless I was there to lay out his instruments and supervise the operation, regardless of what type of operation it was, which was a great drawback, if likewise extremely complimentary to me, as it meant I had to be ‘on call’ at any time of the day or night, where I would assist at the operation and had to scrub-up … which means Colonel Harbison would do the operation and I did the last sutures and bandaging if necessary. Our relationship was close in so far as he had assisted in my Theatre training and prided himself on what I was able to do, considering I had never done anything like that in my whole life before I joined the army and to Colonel Harbison, I was just a boy … even if I was a young man to my own way of thinking and a mature young man at that . . . We all worked in underground operating theatres because of the heat, which was sometimes more often than not 120 degrees in the shade and to ensure that we were free from sandstorms which could rise up at any time, during the day or night and play havoc with open wounds. It didn’t help any soldier who had a foreskin either, I might add, as we all wore shorts and the sand was merciless. Also we had to be totally sterile and that was the reason for the scrub-up and the masks and rubber gloves together with the rubber boots. My mate and fellow soldier Brian Maloney, who came to Iraq on the same ship as I had done, was a nursing orderly on the surgical wards when I was in the Operating Theatre. Brian would escort the anaesthetized patient back to the ward on a well protected trolley, by tunnels from the underground areas where we worked after the operation was over and it was Brian and I who were reminiscing over the past few years of our army career, with us both considering the joys and the heartaches of our medical occupation, where many of the surgical operations that were carried out in that time when the war was ended, were old bayonet or gunshot wounds. These had to be left to one side when the battles were on and now when the war was over, we could readily attend to these type of operations and do quite a few circumcisions as well We were both very excited about the future, away from the discipline that we had both come to expect by our way of life, but he, more than I, when he hoped to be married in the next few months.
I was approaching my twenty -second year and had spent the last four years in the forces having been conscripted when I was eighteen, just six months before the war ended in 1945 and it seemed rather a strange and somewhat peculiar time when I looked back over those few years as I learnt little, if anything at all worthwhile in the first twelve months whilst I was in the army. It was all drill and learning how to construct various types of guns whilst being sprawled out on your belly in the firing field or saluting properly at the drop of a hat, but I found at the end of the first week, I was trying to bend the rifle like a shot gun I had when I was a little boy and saluting everyone who was in uniform, regardless of rank where I had to be corrected by a very uncouth Regimental Sergeant Major. This only served by my having a red face and no further ability to construct an ordinary every day, run-of-the-mill rifle, let alone a complicated and mysterious tool like a Bren gun. That Sergeant Major in the recruitment centre in Aldershot, the primary training centre where we were initiated before we were sent abroad, knew how to swear . . . He had a swearing vocabulary off to a fine art and informed me that I should only salute a commissioned officer in the army or any other bloody branch of the forces, but not a non-commissioned officer in any fucking service …and as for man-handling a gun, I was a total arsehole, (according to him,) and should never consider going into any regiment with firearms or I might shoot every fucker in si