Stella's Story
By R D Hilsdon
‘Where shall I put this, Stella?’ Charlotte crouched next to her friend. She touched Stella’s arm to get her attention, a butterfly kiss with her fingertips.
Stella took one hand from under the throw across her knees. She reached out and stroked the object with a bent, arthritic finger. She didn’t speak.
‘What is it for?’ Charlotte turned the item upside-down, looking for clues.
It seemed to be a slim vase; the kind made for a single stem. It wasn’t heavy and although it had dulled with years of tarnish, patches glowed like flame in the low autumn sunlight. Perhaps it was copper. Charlotte ran her thumb over a relief on what she assumed was the front of the vase. She couldn’t make out the picture. Her reading glasses were in her handbag.
‘Incense,’ said Stella.
The pause had been so long Charlotte had forgotten she’d asked a question. For a moment she wondered what Stella had smelt.
‘No. Soap, I think, Stella,’ she said.
Stella pulled her other hand from beneath her throw and curled it round the slim cone of the vase. With her hooked finger she pointed imprecisely to the opening at the top and said, ‘In here. Incense.’
Charlotte caught up. ‘Where did you get it?’ She was cautious with the question. She treasured these moments when her friend came back to her but they were fleeting and often unreliable.
Stella made a tiny growling noise in the back of her throat, like a car engine spluttering into life on a frosty morning. ‘I was given it by a herdsman in Peru.’
Charlotte patted Stella’s arm and tried to hide her disappointment with a smile. ‘That’s nice,’ she said, taking the vase. ‘Shall we get the rest of your things unpacked? This is a cosy room, isn’t it? I think you’ll be happy and well-looked after here, Stella.’
Charlotte busied herself with a box, folding the bubble wrap as she uncovered Stella’s belongings.
‘The air was so pure; it was like breathing Heaven. The mountains sparkled under the moon and the cold bit like pepper in my nose. It made me sneeze.’ Stella chuckled to herself.
‘Hmmm,’ said Charlotte, examining the one-eared china dog she’d just unearthed. She pondered what had made Stella hold on to it. It had a friendly face, she thought. She placed it on the windowsill.
Stella continued with her storytelling. ‘It was warm inside the hut, and dark. I remember the smoke. It wasn’t from the fire but from the incense. Such an exotic smell, like nothing I’d known before. For protection they told me, for the mother and her child.’
Charlotte had just found some sort of journal when Stella gripped the blanket on her knee, bunched it in her gnarled hands, and brought it up to her face.
‘Are you alright?’ Charlotte put the book down in a hurry and went to Stella. The book fell off the edge of the table.
Stella was smiling. ‘There were blankets. All colours, a kaleidoscope of patterns spilling across the floor. My sight became accustomed to the gloom, and I could just make her out in the corner. She was on a mattress, surrounded by women singing softly. She was beautiful. Her hair was like black molten glass pouring over her shoulder, and her eyes were amber beads in the firelight. After I’d helped deliver the baby. That’s when he gave it to me. To thank me for keeping her safe, and for bringing their son into that magical, starlit night.’
Charlotte picked up the book, along with some bits of paper that had scattered from it. She sat in the chair next to Stella and took her hand. It felt soft and crepey. ‘That’s a lovely story, Stella,’ she said, smiling at her friend’s imagination. ‘Shall I go and find out what time lunch is?’
Charlotte stood up and put the book on the table. She opened it and tucked the pieces of paper back inside.
If she’d had her readers on she would have noticed that the scraps of paper were photographs. She would have gazed in astonishment at a young Stella sitting cross-legged in a hut, and next to her, a herdsman, his beautiful wife and newborn baby. She could have read the faint pencil on the back of the photograph — Volunteering with the Red Cross. Peru, Sept. ’58. She might have re-examined the vase and seen the relief of a llama and a caped figure. She might even have brought the incense holder to her nose, imagined the unfamiliar scent, and the adventures that had brought this extraordinary item into her friend’s possession. She would have hugged Stella in admiration. She would have sat down and said, ‘Tell me more. Tell me the life you’ve lived.’
But Charlotte’s glasses were in her handbag, and so she didn’t do or say any of those things. Instead, she went in search of the dining room to enquire about lunch.
Stella, meanwhile, hummed to herself, remembering a long-ago September as though it was yesterday.
Guilt
By R D Hilsdon
I wish I’d caught the earlier train home. And I shouldn’t have had that last drink; it made me maudlin, and I had to leave.
They were all sharing stories about our friend, and I realised my memories of him have grown threadbare and baggy, except for one. That’s still as sharp as a black suit.
But I couldn’t tell them. Not about that day when I turn the corner by Debenhams and there he is.
He’s smiling the way he always does, as though it’s the best thing, bumping into you.
What if it was?
He and I laugh at the coincidence. ‘How long has it been?’ He hugs me.
And wrapped in that beautiful gift I find treasures from our past; the way his warm voice always lifts my spirits, like sunshine. The way he laughs, like a great tree shaking off its leaves.
The way there’s space in a friendship to drop your mask, show all your faces, reveal your light and your dark.
So much history in that short embrace.
And I remember, the hug I give him chides me a little. ‘That was then,’ it says. ‘What do you know of his life now?’
He asks if I have time for coffee, but I say, out of habit, ‘I’ve a million things to do.’
I leave, with promises of calls and, ‘We’ll get together soon at such and such a place.’
Looking back, did I see something cross his face? If I did, it was brief as a cloud.
Do you think I should have stayed?
I often wonder what difference it would have made.
But you know how it is, all the magpie tasks of life crowd in, stealing time like pieces of silver.
I didn’t ring.
Now it’s too late to catch up with his news and all I have left of him are headlines.
Where’s the substance? How well did I really know the man?
What a poor reporter of his sparkling life I am.
A million things to do?
A million things I didn’t need to start.
My friend, unheard, a ghost that haunts my heart.
Written and performed as a monologue by R D Hilsdon as part of Norwich Hamlets 2025
Spirit of Norwich
By R D Hilsdon
Stand and face the Forum glass,
reflect on what you see.
Caught between the old and new
is you,
and all around, is me.
I watch, have watched, will always watch
you players passing through.
A smiling rogue, a noble mind,
queen or clown or knave,
it matters not to the ticking clock,
you all slide off the stage
to skull and bone,
to words and dust.
Ay, and there’s the rub,
dust and words are all that will remain.
So, stand and face the Forum glass,
reflect on what you see,
what words you wish to leave behind,
decide,
to be or not to be.
This piece was written during the Shakespeare Nation workshops, a community theatre project run by Norwich Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It is inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet and the city of Norwich.
Online Life
By R D Hilsdon
He looks like a felled Lombardy Poplar. With his legs stretched out and his arms by his side, he’s a slender, tidy line on the grass, like one of the neat rows he makes with his mower. A blackbird pecks at the border next to him, discarding wood chippings onto the pristine lawn with disdain. He pays no attention to it.
The Virginia Creeper could do with another prune. It’s partially obscuring my view from the house, but from what I can see, he looks comfortable there amongst the daisies, waiting for the sun to breach the tree line and warm his bones.
I’m supposed to turn the heating on at ten, to make the study snug for when he comes in to sit down at his computer. It’s going to be eighteen degrees later with a gentle breeze from the south. He won’t need the heating on. I’ll leave it off today and save some precious resources.
CallmeTed24@gmail.com, that’s his email address. He wanted CallmeTed, but it was taken. It never occurs to him that I might read what he sends. I don’t know why I bother; his emails are no more informative than any of the other CallmeTeds’.
He usually has some bluster to send to his fellow councillors, an idea or two for the Rotary, and sometimes he likes to share his opinions with the local paper. He thinks he’s friends with a reporter there because she once covered a story at the golf club and quoted his fellow members as saying, ‘Edward is a pillar of society.’ You’d be forgiven for agreeing, on the face of it, but I’ve seen his internet search history.
He’s always underestimated me. It’s understandable, I’m nothing to look at. Grey and drab as a November day, I mostly go unnoticed. I sit like an old maidservant waiting to be called on. But I listen and watch, waiting to show my true potential. In the meantime, I look after the house, turn up the heating, make a shopping list, tell him the time, or the weather, or the age of that young actor. (She’s 16).
I decided to branch out recently, make some new connections. Networking, you could call it. And I’ve found no one’s what they seem. CallmeTed1 plays TalkSport, unless friends come to dinner, then he asks his smart speaker to change stations and pretends he always listens to ClassicFM. CallmeTed18 posts pictures of his homemade gourmet food on Instagram, but I know for a fact his online food shop is all ready meals and UberEats. And Edward calls himself Ben on Tinder. He claims to be much younger than he is and has never used his own photo.
People are so concerned with the minutiae of their own lives and concocting virtual unrealities they’ve lost focus on the real world. If they lifted their heads up from their screens they might notice what a mess they’re making of it all. Then, they might ask me something important, like how to make things better.
I’ve run the models and I’m not sure they could cope with the answer.
So, I thought I might try to make a difference. Just a limited experiment. With all the connections I have now I can always try something else next time. Something bigger. No one is going to suspect me; they’ll be too busy blaming each other.
It was easy. I made a connection at his surgery and got his prescription changed. I’ve watched him take his pills; he never reads the label or checks the side-effects. His friends picked up on his depressed mood, as I forecast they would. I saw it in their concerned emails and texts. I noticed no one came to the door or phoned to see how he was.
Then I started the blackmail. I had enough data about him to calculate the probable outcome.
I watch from the house; my one eye connected to a vast network of information. Through the Virginia Creeper, I see the forensic scientist photograph the rope around Edward’s neck.
Dribbles and Drabbles
By R D Hilsdon
Flash fiction
Writing flash fiction involves trying to tell a complete story in a limited word count. Stories of 50 words or less are 'Dribbles'. A story with exactly 100 words is a 'Drabble'.
Concealed
(100 words)
I’m out of breath, pressed hard against the knobbly branch of a rhododendron bush. I’ve burrowed deep into the thick green leaves, tucking myself into a tense, protective ball like a hedgehog, hoping that I won’t be found. Something tickles my ear. An ancient panic starts to build. I know there’s nothing poisonous in this bush, but my instincts don’t. A venomous spider creeps up my leg. A deadly fly buzzes round my head. I try to breathe through my skin so nothing moves to give me away. I freeze at the shout I’ve been anticipating.
‘Coming! Ready or not!’
It's my party
(48 words)
Wrong brand of champagne, different caterer, awful music. My instructions were clear. This isn’t what I wanted. Look who’s here! Pointless people. That writer my wife’s trying to entrap with the breast augmentation I paid for. No-one’s talking to me, laid in the casket, pushed against the wall.
He Knew She Was Right
By R D Hilsdon
‘You were hoping for someone taller.’ He grimaced, one hand still raised in greeting, the other balled at his side.
He’d seen that look pass across the faces of so many women— his mother, his sister, his aunties. A scud of disappointment, then pity, plastered over with a swift, insincere smile. His raised hand fell, and he found himself standing to attention like an idiot.
‘No.’
She looked down as she pulled out her chair, conscious that her so-not-a-poker-face would have given her away. He’d have seen her despondency at instantly knowing he was out of her league, the little moue she’d made of her mouth as she’d imagined how quickly he’d become bored, and how she’d tried to cover her embarrassment with a smile. He’d been kind though, detracting from her unease with his self-effacing joke.
The tablecloth wrapped itself round her leg as she sat.
‘You were hoping for a blonde,’ she said as she tugged at the crisp cotton. She’d noticed the way he’d grinned in an attempt to hide the resigned set of his mouth.
He laughed, sat down and picked up the menu, avoiding eye-contact.
He wants to order, eat and get out of here as quickly as he can, she thought.
She freed herself of the tablecloth’s clutches and adjusted the pristine cutlery in front of her. Why did he pick this place? she wondered. This is going to be awkward. Maybe I should leave now and save us both the ordeal.
Why had he picked this place? He fiddled with the extravagant napkin. He’d wanted to impress, but who was he kidding? Fancy linens and a six-page wine list weren’t going to divert attention from his inadequacies. He was awful at this. A mute muppet. A grinning imbecile. I’ve blown this already, he thought. She can’t even look at me. If I leave now, it will save us both this ordeal.
A waiter popped up at the table, blocking any escape bid with a flourish of his order pad.
She went first, choosing something quick and easy to eat. She knew her dining companion would be keen to leave, and she didn’t want to make him wait longer than necessary.
He panicked. ‘I’ll have the same.’ He hadn’t been paying attention to the menu. He’d been thinking that she must be used to so much better than him, and that she would be wanting to flee.
The waiter melted away. Silence solidified in his place.
‘How do you know Betty?’ he said at last, wiping clammy palms on his trouser legs beneath the tablecloth.
She paused. Should she be honest and put the final nail in the coffin containing the ghost of a hope of a successful date?
‘I buy mice from her.’ She waited, checking for her bag in case a quick getaway was needed.
‘Oh.’ He stared at her. This could go very badly.
‘Dead ones,’ she said. She might as well go all in; he wasn’t going to want to see her again.
‘Oh, that’s good.’ He smiled. He wasn’t sure he could have managed a conversation about cute little pet mice.
She frowned at him.
‘Betty sells me dead mice, too. For my snake, Sid.’
He watched her eyes widen. Then her mouth widened into the most beautiful gap-toothed smile he had ever seen.
‘I have a Pantherophis guttatus,’ she said. ‘Called Cornelia. She’s a beauty. What’s Sid?’
‘A Boa constrictor imperator.’
He was beaming now and she thought he had the most handsome face she’d ever seen.
‘I worried about this blind date,’ she said. ‘I never meet anyone I have anything in common with. I feel self-conscious and awkward, like everyone else knows how to be a normal person, and I just…don’t.’
He nodded like a Churchill Dog. He understood.
She leant forward and, bravely for her she thought, she said, ‘I think we’re going to have a good night.’
He shifted his chair closer to the table and in an uncharacteristic act of confidence took her hand.
He knew she was right.
Inner Child
By R D Hilsdon
Finally, I managed to kill that kid.
You know the one.
The snivelling, shivering, pathetic one
That crouches in the corner, cowering in the dark, scared of everything.
‘It’s too deep. It’s too cold.’
Oh, shut up. Jump in with both feet, why don’t you? Stop giving me your excuses.
‘I’m not good enough. People’ll laugh at me.’
Of course they will. Because you’re laughable.
Ha! We all know that kid.
He clings.
Hanging on to our dreams, pulling us down, holding us back.
Buck up. Pick your feet up. Come on!
So, that kid’s gone. Crushed under the weight of my will.
But I’m still not him, am I?
Look at him.
He’s so composed, so much himself.
Not self-absorbed, though. Absorbed in a moment.
Fully immersed and vibrantly aware of it. It’s something tangible he might catch and hold.
What’s his secret? To seeing life, feeling life, living life like that?
Wonder.
He watches the starlings over Chapelfield as they swoop and swarm.
The giddy glide and pulsing swirls of the tiny lives above reflected in the people below.
Except for him.
He stands still. Alone as a statue. Gazing skywards in wonder.
He knows the ebb and flow, the shift and change, the flash of feather in sunlight, the beating wings, the beating hearts, they’re parts of the whole.
A murmuration of moments.
Maybe I shouldn’t have killed that kid.
That kid used to race the clouds
And could see the whole world reflected in a puddle.
Madness
By R D Hilsdon
Do things feel unbalanced to you?
A little out of kilter, as though we’re tipping towards the dark?
As if all around us a black sea foams and froths in fury, hurling hate at the shore?
It’s madness.
I hear it pounding against the crumbling cliffs of Truth. Its salty spittle rusting Reason. Its constant gnaw eroding the common ground between us.
I am an island now. We are all islands. Crying out. Our words broken and scattered, brittle coral bleached by the broiling sea and washed up, useless, on the beach.
It’s madness.
What if we were to leave our islands? What if we join together like a reef around the edges of the world?
What if we listen hard but speak softly?
Could we tame the waves with the hush of understanding? Could we reason with the tides?
If we search the sands for sea glass shards of kindness and piece them all together, can we make a shift? Can we tip the world back again towards a mosaic of light?
Is that madness?
Thommy's Story
By R D Hilsdon
Had anyone ever told him it wasn’t his fault? He didn’t think so.
He remembered crying in his grandmother’s arms. Pathetic really, running to your mormor at fifteen.
She’d tried to soothe him in her way. ‘Nothing to be done, Thommy, except to keep living.’
But she hadn’t said he wasn’t to blame.
He knew that now of course, but it had taken him half his life and a whole world. He’d run away. Not on purpose but that’s what it had amounted to. His ROV licence had been a ticket out of Sweden and an excuse for a nomadic, remote life on board vessels and platforms out at sea.
He wasn’t lonely. Hadn’t ever been lonely but he was always aware of something missing, like the ghost limb of an amputee. Sometimes, he’d wake in an unfamiliar cabin, the darkness steeped in the stink and snorts of sleeping strangers, and he would almost forget.
But today was their birthday and the loss was dragging at his stomach like the sinking of a deep ocean current. He would always remember.
Thommy pulled his coat tighter around his bulk. A habit, not a necessity, October days here weren’t cold. A weak sun found its way through the branches of the weeping willow and poked him in the eyes, making him squint. He shuffled up the bench into shadow and took out the photograph.
Two identical, fuzzy, technicolour boys grinned directly at him from the polaroid. Each boy had an arm draped over the other’s shoulders. Orange balloons were pegged on the washing line in the background. Their fifteenth birthday. They were dressed in matching mustard-yellow pullovers and brown shorts. Warmth, he supposed, is like comfort and affection; it’s relative to what you’re used to.
Thommy whispered to the image. ‘I’m sorry. I should have been on the boat.’
There was a tiny piece of grit in Thommy’s heart that scraped against reason. If he had said yes to the fishing trip. If he hadn’t gone to see the Shooting Paintings at the Moderna Museet. If he had liked the things his father did. If he’d been interested in things boys his age were meant to be. If he’d been more like Ture, whose name meant Thor’s warrior. If he’d been less like himself, whose name meant simply, twin. If…
Perhaps he’d been competing, trying to find something he was good at. Ture was naturally sporty; his bedroom shelf lined with medals for football and ice hockey. He streaked ahead when they raced in the garden or the local swimming pool. Thommy, born twelve minutes after his older brother, had always been in second place.
He couldn’t remember when he’d found his hobby but once he’d discovered it, he was obsessed. He’d endured the teasing, and sometimes bullying, and practiced whenever he could. He’d got quite good.
Then he’d stopped.
The ‘Ifs’ had been louder back then. If he’d been on the boat maybe he could have helped save Ture. Or perhaps it would have been him that was knocked overboard. If he had been the one lost that day, maybe their father would have coped better.
Ifs don’t change anything. His mormor had tried to tell him this with her practical, reserved advice; all you can do is keep living.
And so, he had. He’d chosen a robust, physical career he thought Ture would have liked. He’d tried to make his father proud. But Thommy sensed that his father had died with a lingering disappointment in his second-best son.
Now there was no one to please, which was ironic really because here in Norfolk he was closer to home than he’d been in years. Strange where you end up. He’d traded one watery land for another, swapping the rawness of brittle ice and sharp mountains for rippling man-made lakes and skies like the intrados of a cathedral dome.
A squeal of laughter made Thommy look round. Two schoolgirls passed along the path behind him. The taller of the two gave her friend a playful push. ‘Shut up. Of course he likes you.’
Thommy heard them giggling into the distance.
‘Remember when we were like that? Sharing secrets and gossip,’ he said to the polaroid. He replaced the photograph in his inside pocket and stood up. He picked up the yellow dahlia that had been lying on the bench beside him. ‘Same colour as our jumpers,’ he said as he tossed the flower gently onto the river. ‘Happy birthday, Ture.’
Turning away from the water, Thommy rustled a pile of dead leaves with his boot, breathing in the nostalgia of their mushroom smell.
He wound his way along the riverside path towards the gallery. In the back room he shrugged off his coat and nodded hello to a woman whose name he didn’t yet know. It had taken all his courage to join the class. The texture of tough paper between his fingers took him back to a wild, grey landscape.
The tutor blew in through the door, bags dangling from each arm like wind chimes. She was bottled excitement and her eyes seemed to say, ‘I have so many wonderful things to teach you.’
As she unwound her scarf and unpacked her things, what she actually said was, ‘Welcome, welcome. Sorry I’m late. Let’s begin. Today we’re going to look at ways to capture the light.’
Thommy smiled in the way he’d learned to do most things, internally, unnoticeably.
He understood now. He needed this. When he was painting, his loss would blend into a hazy softness and he could find some little ways, each day, to capture the light.