The Rope Slider's Wife, by Graham Attenborough

He was a fool for flight. It was, she knew, his true love and always would be.

His father had taken him to the heights when Robert was but a small boy; he had told her how scared he had been at first but fear was soon replaced by rapture.

As a boy, Robert had taken to the towers and spires with such enthusiasm that his steeple jack father's initial delight had soon been replaced with foreboding. A healthy respect for danger and a clear awareness of certain death, if mistakes were made, was essential for such a trade. Young Robert seemed oblivious to his father's concerns and was soon performing daring tricks for the people who aways stood watching in the churchyards below. He would sit or lie on the edge of the curtain walls of the tower tops waving. He would stand on one leg, dance, pretend to lose his footing and cling precariously with one hand from weathercocks. Gradually, he became famous for these antics and money quickly came his way. Encouraged, his father gave up admonishing his son and began to assist him, devising ways for Robert to delight the growing crowds whilst, at the same time, doing so in relative safety.

Ironically, it was his father and not Robert who lost his life in a needless fall. It was on the day that young Robert Cadman married his sweetheart Lucy. Thanks to Robert, the family had prospered. They had bought a fine house in Candle Lane Shrewsbury and, on the the day of the wedding, the elder Cadman decided to hang celebratory bunting from the upper casements. Full of ale, he had climbed out onto the sill, the better to sing and banter with his neighbours in the street. He lost his footing, fell, dashing out his brains on the cobbles below.

His heartbroken widow soon followed her husband to the grave and it fell to the pragmatist Lucy to take charge. Lucy had been a serving-girl at The Lion. Like everyone in the town she knew of its famous son Robert Cadman and had watched the rope slider perform his tricks up on the steeples. When first she met him, whilst walking beside the river on summer evenings, she discovered a young man who lived for the thrill of the moment, a man bursting with enthusiasm to please others, a loving and loveable man but one without an ounce of business sense.

Lucy took control. She it was who designed and made his costume. She who had bills and posters printed well in advance of a performance, and she it was who worked the crowds with her winning smile and a large hat within which she collected the monies due, just reward for the risks her husband took for the pleasure of others.        

They did well. They had a child. A girl whom they christened Susan. They extended their property, became known and well respected about the town. They owned their own wagon and two fine mares who pulled them around the countryside. They traveled far and wide.

And then... And then Robert set up his act to fly across the frozen river Severn from St. Mary's spire into the Gay Meadow; a performance he had given many times before.

The frost fair was in full swing on the morning of the 2nd of February 1740 and the crowds began to swell as Robert walked up the rope from the meadow performing daredevil tricks as he went. Lucy worked the crowd collecting money and explaining that, once at the steeples summit, her husband would slid back down at such speed that the friction would cause his wooden breastplate to heat up and billow out smoke behind him. Within the hour he had reached the top of the steeple and begun his descent. He had even fired off his pistols but something was clearly wrong because he began to signal that the rope was pulled too taut. Lucy stiffened as she watched. Suddenly the crowd gasped and she saw Robert fall away. The rope sprang out across St. Mary's Friars its snapped end aglow with flame. Even from the opposite bank of the river she heard the collective scream from the horrified onlookers as Robert's body hit the iron-hard ground below.

As Lucy Cadman began to run wildly down the bank towards the frozen river she dropped her hat, almost full of money, upon the frosty grass where eagle-eyed beggar boys quickly swooped to claim their share.

The rope sliders wife saw nothing of this. As she ran, she disappeared from history.

Robert Cadman was twenty eight years old.

The rope sliders wife's name is not recorded. Her existence remains a short footnote in her husbands story.

Copyright Graham Attenborough (2014).

Ruminant, by Carol Caffrey

Janan sheltered underneath his father’s stall, swatting the flies off the meat.  The earth was cool there.  He hoped the caravan would come soon.  Would Mirzal’s voice have deepened in the past year, like his own?   Music blared from his father’s radio.   It was the best radio in the village; his uncle had been to Jalalabad to buy it. 

Last night he thought he’d heard the clink of the camels’ harness and the hushed voices of the tribesmen but the morning revealed no sign of them.  It must have been something else.

The approaching waves of dust made Janan sit up but it was just the American trucks.  The caravan was probably waiting for the soldiers to pass, as the camels wouldn’t like the noise.   The biggest one, the one Mirzal called Genghis, would look down his nose at the clatter they made.  The camels had seen many travellers, many warring tribes, in their long lives.  Did not Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great pass this way?  Some said even the Buddha himself had travelled this road. 

The trucks bounced towards the village, rolling through the potholes and craters.  “Hey, kid! Catch.”  The soldier, walking ahead of the trucks, threw him a bag of sweets.  Janan wondered if Genghis would like Yankee candy. 

As the patrol disappeared over the hill the boy heard the sounds he’d been waiting for.  He ran up to his nomad friends, carrying some sweets in his hand.

“Mirzal, welcome! I have something for Genghis.  May I?”

“Hello, brother.  Well, let us try one.”

The beast scooped the offering from Janan’s palm with his lips.  When the explosion erupted, darkening the sky, Genghis closed his eyes against the dust.  He continued chewing, his great jaw moving from side to side in the fleeting silence.