Room 2D

By Johnny Chesham from Janus 34 You’d hardly have noticed it in the foggy winter night — a small brass name-plate reading  The Correction Club  in elegant italics. A tall man in a black cape and topper pulled energetically on the ornate Edwardian bell as a shaft of eerie gaslight fell across his features and the departing hansom cab rattled away, soon swallowed in the omnipresent silence. Slowly the door opened. ‘Good evening, Major,’ a solemn butler in black tails intoned. ‘Evening, Hodges!’ the man rapped and strode briskly into the hall. With a swirl he removed his cape which he thrust at the servant with his black silk hat. Curiously he retained a shiny black cane which had passed unnoticed in the voluminous folds. ‘The members are in the club-room, sir,’ Hodges announced and retired with a deep bow. The Major tapped his cane solidly into his left palm with a smart crack. Then with sudden vigour he mounted...

Story from Janus 49 by R.P. Forrester The past is another country . L.P. Hartley? Yes. And certainly that idyllic spot, that little village set in the sparkling mountains that I wandered into as a young man is another country. A country which then had not known the ravages of war and post-war; a country now only of my mind. It was just before the war, 1938 I think, but as yet in that remote mountain-ringed region of Central Europe there was no hint of what was shortly to come. I was walking, with a rucksack, occasionally taking a lift on one of the rare vehicles, studying the language (or telling myself I was) which was a dialect of German (I suppose now it is Russian they have to speak). At any rate English travellers, indeed any travellers, seemed to be very rare birds and perhaps that is why I was treated with such friendliness. And allowed such intimate insights in that household. I simply wandered in along the dusty road one sunlit autumn afternoon. I stayed for fou...