THOSE AWAKE...

 THOSE AWAKE... By Tessa Harvey "Well now then," he boomed in what was for him a sonic whisper, "arguing with truck drivers, are you?"      Despite her tension, Yvonne laughed. "I'm not the patient! Err.....Imelda. Sorry, just getting to know her name." She turned to gesture towards the older lady, but then paused in shock. Imelda lay white and still.     Immediately, despite his girth, the doctor was by her side, checking his patient. The twinkle had gone. "Call the ambulance, Grayson," the man called authoritatively.     Imelda awoke to white walls and curtains of a vague cream colour around the bed. Her arm was tightly bound, strapped in a sling. She tried to move her head and felt nauseating pain.     Sickness was despicable. Imelda felt ashamed. The bed was stained, she had been unable to move to the side of the bed. The smell made her feel worse and tears of weakness and pain poured down her cheeks.

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey     Outside Gray's flat, a young woman with a small child watched from across the road. The traffic was particularly heavy but Yvonne had found out Grayson was due home today. She felt on edge and uncertain. Why had she come?     Another woman, older and of foreign appearance also stood near his door. Yvonne's heart sank. He had another woman. Turning to leave, heavy-hearted and sad, Gray suddenly appeared around the corner.     He seemed fraught and sad to her. Perhaps he had missed her after all.     Yvonne paused and at that moment, a little girl's voice called "Daddy, oh my daddy!" She slipped from Yvonne's grasp and darted across the busy road. At once, Yvonne tried to follow her, weaving between cars stopped at the corner lights.     Tears ran down her cheeks. Her precious child was too small to be clearly seen. A truck hurtled by, trying to catch the lights as they changed. Grabbing Alison, Yv...

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey A strong feminine voice soared over the cries and panic.     "Friends," she cried, "let us all calm down. As the crew have advised, put your oxygen masks on first, then onto your children. For the moment, we are safe." Her voice was confident and full of power. "It is time to pray. Whether you believe in God or not, could we ask God to keep us safe, to land perfectly wherever the pilot is able. Pray for his control. Pray for the children. Let them see Your peace and calm. Father God, our times are in Your hands."     Gray looked around. The panic had died down. People were responding to the cabin crew, no longer solely focused on themselves. Even the children were calmer. Baby bottles were handed to screaming infants and some young mothers even discretely and calmly nursed their infants.     The plane banked lower. Gray caught a glimpse of the sea and fear began to grip him, but then he saw land and the lights of an aer...

THOSE AWAKE...  By Tessa Harvey      Grayson Holmes was feeling so exhilarated as his plane soared over silver clouds shot through with sunlight. All his meetings had gone far better than expected. He had been made several offers to transfer to different firms - promising salaries, but more important to him, great potential for developing some of his designer ideas and even one or two of his innovative and creative inventions for different business settings.     He felt his spirits soar as the sunlight bounced off the silver wings. Suddenly the plane hit air pockets. It jerked and descended swiftly. Calming voices came from the cockpit. Directions for seat belts to be fastened, oxygen masks for those who felt themselves to be panicking. Air hostesses moved smoothly and calmly along the aisles.     Gray felt no panic at all, but he thought: This is life! Never ups without downs, the shadow of COVID blighting the world; climate change advocates tell...

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey      The next week night, Imelda read the 23rd psalm before she went to sleep. Determined to focus on God, she set her mind on things above. She did not want to be a prisoner of self. When she slept her dreams were peaceful, of green pastures and pleasant streams with peaceful pools where sheep would safely graze.     Then she heard a Voice she knew at once was the Lord's. "Be still and know that I am God." There was a pause and she felt an inner certainty that God was with her, that the battle was the Lord's.     Puzzled, Imelda left for work the next morning and was cleaning an empty room when she felt certain that she was being watched. Unsettled, the woman turned around and observed Lady Rosie watching her. "I hear your man friend has been away for a few days now." The refined voice was slightly mocking. "Well, why should he be in touch?" she answered somewhat sharply. "We are only slight friends after all....

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey She was standing in a country she knew very well. It was evening. The heat was oppressive. The dirt was dusty and red. No one was around.     Then a woman slowly made her way to the steps of a nearby building. Imelda recognised it as a small hospital. A young boy was helping the woman who was clearly ill and in great pain. With a shock, Imelda recognised her own mother and older brother, though only part of her face showed through her dark heavy Muslim garments.     She had read about this incident in a book. Now it was being enacted before her very eyes. She longed to move forward, to help, but was held in place. It was her dream.     A group of soldiers came around the corner.     "You, boy, go home. Woman, do not bother this young man with your woman problems." The boy moved away at once, but not very far. He crept into a dark doorway, beyond their vision.     The men beat the woman, knocking her ...

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey Suddenly the phone jangled, and with and apologetic look, Grayson answered. It seemed to be a long technical conversation, so waving discreetly, Imelda gathered her belongings and quietly left. Gray looked a little sad, but returned her wave, concentrating on his call.     Once outside, Imelda hugged her jacket closer. Night had come quietly and a cold wind had sprung up. Quickly she made her way to her lodgings, glancing occasionally at the beautiful starry sky. She paused, looking at the wonderful majesty of the Southern Cross, then finding her key, opened the door.     At once, a tread sounded in the passage. "Oh, it's you," grumbled an older woman. She peered around her suspiciously. "Alone are you?" "Yes, Mrs. Clarkson." Imelda kept her voice pleasant and polite and hurried towards the stairs leading to her room.     "You don't want a hot drink nor nothing?" queried the landlady hopefully. But Imelda ...

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey Drifting back in time, Imelda recalled a story her mother had told her.     "My mother's dad was Italian and my mother was christened Stephanie Maria Carmella Carnivalli."     Grayson tried not to smile, so as not to interrupt the flow of the story, but Imelda laughed aloud. "Yes, a bit of a mouthful, but they were very proud of their first child - and, as it turned out - their last."     "Sylvie," as they called her for short remembers slipping out of her room at night. She would check on her little brother, sleeping diagonally opposite. The flyscreens were old and badly fitting. In this strange new city of Adelaide, the mosquitoes swarmed in every evening. For some reason they stayed motionless on the old ceiling far above Alfredo's bed     Anxiously, Sylvie would try to stay awake to protect him from the threatening insects. But sometimes she removed the flimsy flyscreen and and crept outside, carefully rep...

THOSE AWAKE...  By Tessa Harvey Gradually, almost imperceptibly the two became acquaintances and then, finally, friends.     Grayson invited Imelda up to his home. Though he knew she was at least a decade older, he respected her caution.     Because her flat was tiny, and her landlady understandably strict about guests of either sex in these so-called progressive times, Imelda could not invite him to her own dreary room.     When she arrived, dressed demurely but, surprisingly brightly, he smiled. His smile was rare, but changed his habitual sullen moodiness into an attractive personality.     Encouraged, Imelda entered, but it was clear she disliked the characterless bleak surroundings. Politely, the woman found the view to admire.     Gray laughed. "I know it's awful, isn't it?" Imelda regarded him, head slanted, watching him. He thought of a bright robin he had once loved long ago in his childhood.     He prepared drink...

THOSE AWAKE...   By Tessa Harvey Everyone had assumed he had been fully vaccinated. He was a modern young person, pliable, part of the crowd. No problem there surely!     He rubbed his sweaty palms, surreptitiously down his trousers. Suddenly he saw the cleaning lady beckon to him. He hesitated. It would soon be his stop. Still he found himself moving down the dusty crowded carriage.     She leaned forward. "I am Imelda. You do not leap anymore to get on the train!" Her eyes were sparkling with humour.      "So, what do you do?" she continued. "You see my overalls, you see my head covering and you see a cleaning lady. But who am I inside? Do you wonder?"     Intrigued, Gray leaned closer, then realised it was time to go. "Talk tomorrow," he promised, smiling for the first time in months.     Perhaps she could help him understand his letter. It was as though light danced around her. Who was she?

THOSE AWAKE... By Tessa Harvey Months later, Grayson was a changed man. COVID had finally invaded his island paradise, but he still went to work along with other masked residents on the suburban train.     It was much more silent. It was hard to be happy wearing a mask. Gray had finally noticed the quiet cleaner. He had seen her barely restrained panic, trying to breathe. Even hearing that beer drinking had to be done while wearing masks. How ridiculous!     Children herded without parents into stadiums and forcibly injected with a so-called vaccine, causing three to die, others to be hospitalised. He thought of his own lost daughter...the room full of toys, her clothes pretty and sparkly, scattered on her bed with a battered toy dog. The photos, the memories, the anguish....the why?     This letter from his father had hit him like an unseen blow.     Of course, had had not read any of the Bible. What was the point? How could old words help? But h...

THOSE AWAKE   By Tessa Harvey Clutching a battered teddy bear, she had run happily to join them. She had stumbled in her haste. "Steady on, Camilla Rosemary," her father had laughed. They had swung her high between them, clasping her arms. Dad had held Humphrey, her bear, she recalled.     "Do you love church, Rosie?" her mother had smiled. "I love Jesus and you and daddy," her little voice echoed down the years...     "Well," the CEO continued, "I could get someone else to do your job, though you are honest and hard-working. But why do you persist in this silly belief in God. It could cost you."      Imelda's eyes suddenly filled with tears. "It has already cost me," she said. "My whole family were murdered for being Christians. They would not deny Jesus and neither will I. My aunt took me and ran and brought me to this country. Do you want me to leave?"     Weary, Rosie dismissed her cleaner, silently wishing s...

THOSE AWAKE  By Tessa Harvey Disgusted at himself, Gray stood up, and loosening his tie, he went to find one of his TV dinners, but suddenly something on the floor caught his eye.     A grey envelope had fallen out of the crumbled Bible.... Lady Camilla surveyed her cleaner with disdain. The cleaner met her employer's gaze steadily which unnerved Rosie slightly. Most subordinates were much more servile, afraid of losing their position in HER workforce.     "Well, Imelda, do you know why you are here?" "No, ma'am," was the polite, clear response. A faultless reply, but where was the fear she had expected to see, enjoyed seeing in fact?     The man Gray, or Grayson had flustered her also. Of course, she could not help him. The will could not be contested. It had been expertly made, totally watertight, as they say. He had stormed off, clutching that ridiculous Bible, full of archaic fairy stories, which brought her gaze back to the cleaner.     ...