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The old man’s fingers are yellow and occasionally he raises them to his face as though he is smoking. But of course, that is not allowed here. He doesn’t seem to notice there is nothing between his fingers as he presses them to his deep-lined grey lips.
Aside from the nicotine stains, everything about him is grey. His cheeks are sunken, his eyes hooded by dark shadows, and you can see the knobby protuberances of his collar bone in the open neck of his grubby shirt. His wrist joint looks grossly swollen and misshapen, but it is only an illusion caused by the thinness of his arm.
The fingers rise to his mouth again. He seems no more substantial than a puff of smoke tethered to the chair by some unfair force of life. It occurs to the work experience student, Laura, that he might be better off if it let him go so he could drift away on the breeze.
He cries. He is silent, so it took her a while to notice, but his cheeks are always moist and there are damp patches on the collar of his shirt.
“Why does he cry?” she asked the ward manager.
“Who knows?” the woman doesn’t even look up from her computer screen. Her suit is incongruous among so much soft decline, and Laura doesn’t think she even knows the patients’ names.
“Hasn’t anyone ever asked him?”
“I doubt it. He probably couldn’t tell you if you did. Some of them are just miserable bastards,” she picks up an armload of files and clicks away down the corridor in her high heels without so much as a backward glance.
***
He remembers the water beneath them, remembers that it was topped with swirling white, but can’t recall whether it was foam or ice. He remembers it was a long time ago, but he can’t remember how many years, and those he does remember seem blurred and grainy. Like an old movie with too many missing scenes to make sense of any of what is left.
He remembers there was a goose and that it landed suddenly on the water before them in a cacophony of beating wings and honking, but he can’t remember if it was the first or the last one that year. He remembers that it startled her and then she laughed, like honey trickling down his soul, but he can’t remember the last time he heard her do it.
He remembers her voice as clear as water from the spring at the top of the hill.
“Promise you’ll never leave. Promise you’ll always be near me.”
But he can’t recall her face, or the last time he saw it.
He remembers that he promised, but he knows she is far away now, although he can’t remember where or why.
He weeps for his broken promise.
Stef Hall is a country girl at heart. Born and raised in Norwich, England, she now resides in London with her musician partner, Paul, and their bonkers cats. She tries to make up for the bustle of city life by procrastinating, walking slowly, and drinking far too much tea. Since early 2007, Stef has enjoyed publication of many of her short stories in anthologies and magazines, including Twisted Tongue and La Fenetre. Her current focus is to find a home for her first completed novel while trying to write the second before the characters take over her head entirely.
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Posted on May 18, 2010 in Stories
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26 Responses to “PROMISE • by Stef Hall”
Comments
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May 18th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Fabulous stuff, Stef – a ‘country girl’ getting inside the failing mind of an old man says reams about your skill as a writer.
A very moving and poignant piece!
May 18th, 2010 at 3:36 am
A nice piece poignantly written. The second half was much better than the first. There were a few changes in tense that threw me out of the narrative. I thought the second half of this could have stood on its own, with maybe a few details thrown in about the old man to give him context. The sympathetic ingenue and the callous ward manager are just too cliché.
May 18th, 2010 at 4:32 am
Liked this, touched a chord, but as jeff said…
May 18th, 2010 at 4:44 am
What a downer. It was depressing and the end was a cliche for me.
May 18th, 2010 at 4:55 am
Made me a little tearful at the end. As previously stated, the second part is better then the first. The second paragraph in particular reads a bit clunky to me. Still very good though.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:19 am
The second section of the story could stand as a piece of literary microfiction alone, IMO. Powerful, Steph – very, very powerful.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Ooops – Stef. I’m sorry. And I hope it’s okay that I call you “Stef” in the first place, lol. I’m grossly informal.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:27 am
This is well-written and moving.
I liked the first part as well as the second, the description of the old man and the slow lead-in to his tears is engaging. The only part that jarred slightly is the ward manager could be more nuanced.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:36 am
A heartbreaking story, beautifully told. Brought me to tears.
May 18th, 2010 at 5:56 am
I agree with Jeff. I thought the first half was very stock but the second half, with the poetic “remember” repeat, was better.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:24 am
Beautiful use of the language, but the story goes nowhere. As Jeff said, not enough context for the old man, and the first half characters might as well have been furniture.
May 18th, 2010 at 6:45 am
I thoughht this was a fabulous story! Great descriptive writing, I could almost feel the sea underneath them. You created a beuatiful state of melancholy inside the old man’s head.
I thought the other characters were absolutly necessary to the plot, it shows how much our main character is not listened to by those around him.
Definitly a five!
May 18th, 2010 at 7:34 am
Very nicely done. Usually, a story this short cannot support two viewpoints but this is not a problem here. And all three characters are distinct. A very nice job indeed.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:12 am
The story. on its surface is well-written and touching BUT… speaking as an older person (much older than the other writers) I feel that the second part of the story hits every cliched perception of the old old, who are so deep within themselves that they communicate poorly, if at all, with the people who attend them. Their thoughts and memories can be vivid and intensely moving to them in a way they can’t convey. The tears can be tears of longing, of loss– or just a physiological problem caused by medication. As for the tough supervisor, her personality and response are perhaps overdrawn, a bit exaggerated, but intrinsically true of certain types, who arm themselves against too much painful compassion by toughness.
Over all,well written, tells much in a few words. I make it a 3 1/2.
May 18th, 2010 at 9:21 am
I felt Stef (since we are being informal here) left a lot on the table. There is much room to stretch out this story and show a bit more of the relationships involved. There didn’t seem to be any resolution. I would’ve at least liked to have learned more about Laura and how this ultimately affected her – seen her evolve from interaction with “the old man.” In a sense, the old man is very generic and could be applied to the generation rather than the person. The writing was done with a soft touch and didn’t overdo the geriatric aspect. A solid 4 for the writing alone.
May 18th, 2010 at 10:34 am
“and then she laughed, like honey trickling down his soul,” I loved this. Good writing.
May 18th, 2010 at 2:21 pm
Lovely piece, Stef. The structure seemed just right to me, FWIW: first the exterior and then the interior.
May 18th, 2010 at 3:14 pm
An interesting story, though it reminds me of Timothy Findley’s _Pilgrim_ (if you haven’t read it, then do so; I think, given your style of writing, that you’d love it).
May 18th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
4 ****
Analyze the aging hunh
Thats all.
I didnt really like it
BUT
I didn’t hate it either.
May 19th, 2010 at 3:28 am
descriptions are excellent, though i’d maybe lose some of them in the first part and concentrate the readers attention on the cold informality of the institution.
the contrast is the key, and overall its very good, well done 5*
Doug
May 19th, 2010 at 10:42 am
“Like honey trickling down his soul” is a phrase that will live with me for years.
May 19th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Beautiful description of the old man and his tears. However, as we are seeing him through Laura’s eyes, some sort of interaction between the two of them would have been nice instead of just observation followed by narrators privilage of hearing his silent thoughts.
May 19th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
A very unique story. I particularly liked the ending – it was moving. I found ‘work experience student’ to be an awkward descriptor, and the idea of the indifferent ward manager was a bit cliched, but the second half of the piece was very powerful.
May 20th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
The opening image of the old man smoking a phantom cigarette lodges the reader in the scene so strongly right out of the gate…well done.
May 24th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
This one makes me cry. Strong images, but oh so very sad.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:21 am
Although very very well written, I felt as if the story itself could have been much stronger. As some others have said, the story really doesn’t go anywhere does have a few cliches (the uncaring ward manager, the regretful old man). I particularly liked Laura, who bothered to question about the old man… I would have preferred that the story revolved around her rather than the old man, actually. I think it would have been more impactful, as there would have been a different view of the “promise,” and we would be given more than the fact that the old man “weeps for his promise”… because by that point, we would have already figured that out.
Overall, great prose. Just a little story tweaking?