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    In Search of a Story
    In Search of a Story
    In Search of a Story
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    In Search of a Story

    By Daphne de Jong

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The story waits in the shadows. The writer has a deadline and the story wants to be told, but the story has patience. It is in no hurry.

    The writer gets up from the computer and goes for a walk, hoping the story will emerge and show itself, or at least give some hint of its being—a scent, a slight stirring, a restless rustling or a small anticipatory shiver.

     

    Award winning writer Daphne de Jong opens up the files to deliver this final collection of short stories. In this collection Daphne explores life, death, love and relationships. Each story shows a twist of the muse that hooks the reader and stays with them long after the story finishes.

    Daphne de Jong was born in Dargaville. Her first published story was written at sixteen and she went on to write over eighty romance novels and achieve national and international success in this genre.

    Literary Prizes include the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award (1981) and the Lilian Ida Smith (PEN NZ) Award for short non-fiction (1986).

    Her poems and short stories have been published in magazines and broadcast both in New Zealand and overseas. Stories have been included in anthologies by Oxford University Press, New Women's Press, in collaborative collections with other prizewinning authors and a previous solo collection, Crossing the Bar.

    Published by Marmac Media 118pgs

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMarmac Media
    Release dateSep 14, 2023
    ISBN9781991185471
    In Search of a Story

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      Book preview

      In Search of a Story - Daphne de Jong

      In Search

      of a Story

      Short stories

      by

      Daphne de Jong

      COPYRIGHT © 2023 BY Daphne de Jong

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

      distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior

      written permission.

      Marmac Media

      29 Randwick Crescent

      Lower Hutt, Wellington. 5010

      www.marmacmedia.com

      Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

      Book layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

      In Search of a Story / Daphne de Jong – 1st ed.

      ISBN 978-0-1-99-118546-4 paperback

      ISBN 978-0-1-99-118547-1 epub

      Contents

      An Honourable Man

      Bougainvillea

      Stray

      The Writer in Search of a Story

      Perfect Love

      Forty Times Three Hundred and Sixty Five

      Rooster

      Yelling in the Dark

      Going Home

      The Tadpole, the Dragonfly and the Snakeskin Dress

      When Did You Last Sleep Underwater?

      Tea in Tibet

      About the Author

      AN HONOURABLE MAN

      J ack’s dead. Colin glanced over his newspaper.

      On the other side of the table Marie looked up briefly, then finished spreading Marmite onto her toast.

      You remember Jack.

      Of course I remember him. Marie cut the toast precisely in half.

      The Dutchie that used to be at the factory with me.

      I told you I remember. His name wasn’t really Jack. It was something long and Dutch. But he’d been Jack since he came to New Zealand and was sent to work alongside Colin at the local dairy factory.

      There’s no family mentioned.

      None? Surprised, Marie put down the knife. You sure it’s him?

      Colin chuckled. With that tongue-tangling name and ‘Jack’ in brackets? Got to be him.

      Marie imagined a service with no one there, a lone coffin. We should go.

      Go...?

      To the funeral.

      Colin was reading again, down the list of deaths. These days it was the first page he looked at.

      Marie got up to put on the jug and take down the coffee from the cupboard. I’d like to know what happened to him.

      The church was a Catholic one, quite large and more than half full. The coffin was dark, polished wood with silver handles, one white lily lying on the closed lid. No other flowers. The death notice had suggested donations to the Cancer Society.

      Colin gazed about and nudged Marie. There’s Dick. Dick Blake, the foreman. Used to give old Jack a hard time for his accent.

      I know. Jack hadn’t been old then, but a young man with a fresh, innocent face, and far away from home. She remembered a staff party with wives and partners, the foreman telling a story about Jack getting some English word wrong and shocking the boss’s secretary, and everyone had laughed. Jack had laughed too in a slightly bewildered way, and his fair complexion reddened. He’s blushing! Dick roared with glee, and clapped the younger man on the back, then poured more beer into Jack’s glass, promising, We’ll make a Kiwi of you yet.

      Is that what you want? Marie asked Jack a little later, standing next to him at the supper table. To be a Kiwi?

      Yes, Jack said earnestly. I would like to be a natural-ised citizen of New Zealand. That is my ambition. And to speak good English, like Dick and your husband...Colin?

      Yes, Colin Sykes. And I’m Marie.

      Jack is my name, he told her, and offered his hand. When she put hers in it, he gripped it firmly.

      Marie smiled. But is that your real name?

      He shook his head, letting go of her hand. Jack is my New Zealand name. I am going to be a New Zealander. A Kiwi. Please, I can fetch for you a cup of tea?

      But she’d already sent Colin off to get her one.

      On the way home after the party Marie said, You should invite Jack around sometime.

      Colin teased, Fancy him, do you?

      Don’t be silly. Not that Jack wasn’t good-looking, with his innocent blue eyes and sandy curls. He had to be over twenty-one, but seemed younger.

      Marie and Colin had been married only a couple of years and she had just stopped suffering from morning sickness with her first pregnancy. We should be nice to him. He must be lonely.

      Yeah, all right. I’ll ask him if he wants to come for tea one night, if you like.

      Jack came to tea, sat stiffly at the table and politely answered questions about his family and the Netherlands and what he thought of New Zealand. Afterwards he insisted on helping Marie with the dishes, although he didn’t seem particularly good at it. She asked if he did the dishes back home and he looked guilty and confessed, No, my sisters did them. He’d come from a farming background, and had helped his father on the farm until he’d emigrated. He had three sisters, and an older brother who would inherit the farm.

      The next time he visited he brought photographs: his brother, his sisters, his mother and father, and the old thatched farmhouse. Colin shuffled through them quickly with a pretence of interest, but Marie was fascinated by the solid brick house with a thatched roof, and by Jack’s description of the sleeping arrangements. His sisters had slept in cupboard beds in the living room where the big fireplace was, while Jack and his brother shared an attic under the thatch.

      The service began and the priest announced that they were here to give thanks for Jack’s life. He said the congregation’s thoughts were with Jack’s remaining family in the Netherlands, who had not been able to make the trip to his funeral. And that Jack had gone to join his brother who had died some years ago in their homeland.

      Marie imagined a midnight call to Jack from the other side of the world, a tinny voice announcing that his brother was dead. Had there been anyone to comfort him? Were his sisters alive? Had they kept in touch with him? He’d said on their first meeting that he was the youngest. "Very much younger. The...the later overweging," he told her, looking frustrated. She’d tried not to giggle, but Jack had laughed too, really laughed.

      I’m sorry, Marie said.

      No, not sorry.

      You were an afterthought? she guessed. A surprise.

      I think. After...thought. Ah! That is funny, yes?

      They were both giggling when Colin came back with her tea.

      The priest said, And our sympathy also goes out to Thelma and Don Adler and their family, who have lost their very good friend and neighbour, and to all his other friends gathered here today.

      When they got to the eulogy given by the long-time neighbour, Marie learned that after moving away, Jack had worked as a salesman in a hardware shop, then as a head storeman until he was made redundant. Unemployed, he’d spent his time doing volunteer work with young people, and continued that in later years. Jack never had a family of his own, Don Adler said. He never married. But he loved kids.

      In the front pew with Mr and Mrs Adler a young woman with a baby in her arms sobbed, and the man sitting beside her put an arm about her shoulders, murmuring into her ear.

      Yes. When he’d noticed Marie was pregnant, Jack had said nothing, but as she went to lift a basket of washing out of the way so she could set the table he’d rushed to take it from her, and the next time he came to tea he brought a huge pink teddy bear wrapped in cellophane.

      But, he said anxiously, the boys at work told me pink is for a girl. Is wrong?

      Touched, Marie assured him that the baby wouldn’t care. Then she grimaced and put a hand to her stomach and he gave her a worried look. You have pain?

      The baby’s kicking, she told him, and laughed. I think I’ve got a little All Black in there.

      He laughed too, and looked at her stomach. One day I would like to have a little All Black. A real Kiwi baby.

      I’m sure you will, she told him. A whole team maybe—if you can persuade your wife.

      I think she might not like that. In the Netherlands we have big families, but my wife will be a Kiwi.

      Have you met someone? Marie asked him.

      Not yet. I have not enough money now. Later.

      "Well, I hope you find a really nice Kiwi

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