Old Man in Hyde Park
The moment is his, surrounded on all sides by pigeons, the sun shining for him in a clear sky. He holds a brown paper bag of breadcrumbs in one hand and scatters them with his other. The pigeons’ feathers are dark and he wears a dark coat to match theirs. He takes comfort in their company because it is the only company he can find. Age has defined him, and he finds solace in the grounded pigeons who are really only there for the breadcrumbs, taking what they can get.
Two Musicians Under a Bridge
I heard them before I saw them. That’s what they were to me at first: a violin and a cello, acoustically magnified in what I can only describe as half-tunnel, half-bridge.
The violinist was tall. Thin. He moved as though the violin were playing him, its strings moving his hands, his body, in motion with the ups and downs of the melody. The bow made a dip and the violinist dipped his head accordingly.
The cello player sat on a three-legged stool. He was plump. His fingers plucked the living instrument not only in perfect harmony with its violin counterpart, but in notes that stood on their own.
He wore polished leather shoes. The violinist had a Burberry scarf draped loosely around his neck.
The cello case laid open on the ground in front of them. In it were a number of coins: pence pieces, mostly, a few pounds.
Woman in an Art Gallery
She moves from painting to painting with a sketchbook in hand and pauses in front of each one just long enough to sketch, in pencil, its general shapes and lines. She loses interest quickly, though, so that before she knows it, she has already been around the entire room, has already recaptured all the paintings. The room is one of many housing the impressionist collection. Monet is next door. Van Gogh is not here. These are lesser known works so she, by principal, gives them less time and pushes open the door to where Renoir resides and turns her sketchbook to a new page.
Three Brothers in a Pub
They all have a large glass of beer in front of them. A tall glass – half a liter, give or take. They are sitting at a square table, two on one side facing the other, conversing.
Let me begin with the eldest.
He claims his own side of the table, facing his two younger brothers. The beer in the glass before him is steadily diminishing, but I don’t see how, for there is no break in his speech to provide time for taking a whisk. He is the smooth-talker, I can tell, by the way he smiles at the waitress, the way he leans back in his chair nodding at each of his brothers in turn, explaining to them the ins and outs of life.
The middle brother has blue eyes and an honest expression. His hair is curly, unlike the other two, and he listens. He gives every word some thought and never argues, always an agreeable look on his face. And whenever someone talks, he turns to look at him with respectful attention.
The youngest of the three is shy, perhaps made that way by virtue of having two older brothers who take care of the talking, the charming, the answering of questions for him. He is looking down at his hands now, as his eldest brother carries on about politics or love, and wishes perhaps that the pretty waitress would address him, this time, when she asks for a second round of drinks.
Brittany’s Gran
“Milk. We need milk for the tea.” She got up again to retrieve the tiny silver pitcher of milk, set it on a dish, and place it on the table. At 88, she was really going. She had spent two hours this morning washing her hair and fixing it in curlers and now sported a reasonably well-styled mane for her guests. Every teacup had its gold-rimmed saucer and every saucer had its teaspoon. She shuffled back into her chair and looked around the table to see how everyone was getting on. Finally satisfied, she poured herself a cup of tea with milk and sugar, took a sip, proclaimed it to be too cold, and got up to boil more hot water.
Stranger on the White Cliffs of Dover
It is windy, so of course his long grey overcoat is flapping in the wind. He stands close to the edge of the white cliffs – close but not dangerously close, staring out to sea. He thinks he can just make out France in the distance, but the sky is grey and overcast and he is not sure whether it is low clouds or a land mass that he is seeing. He is alone here, or if there are other people, they are very far away, observing him from a distance as a lone grey figure flapping in the wind. He is looking for the bluebirds of the song but all that is here are the seagulls flying low under the grey clouds.
On The Airplane
She has been flying for over two years now so she knows what she’s doing. As soon as the plane finished its take-off ascent and leveled, she pulled off her black pumps and replaced them with her black loafers with cushioned insoles. Comfortable now, she approaches the passenger who has pushed his Call Attendant light. She smiles politely down at him and nods as he makes his requests. When he is done, she turns to perform her duty, listing off her errands on her fingers as she makes her way down the aisle.
One-Scene, Two-Sentence Story in which Three of These Characters Meet
The old woman got up from the table and bumped it as she did so, knocking the teacup from its gold-rimmed saucer and shattering it on the tiled floor. “Leave it,” her daughter said, pulling out her leather-bound sketchbook and her tin pencil case of newly sharpened charcoal pencils, beginning to sketch the fragments of china on the ground, ignoring her mother’s protests and getting angry when she began to clean up the mess and ruin her still life portrait, and getting angrier still when her boyfriend, who already had his violin out of its case, picked it up and began to play the melody of their argument.
