Month: March 2018

Small Cuts (8) Genevieve Continues

~ Meg ~ 7 Comments

To find links to all parts of the story, please visit Small Cuts: A Work In Progress. Here is what Genevieve is thinking….

I had trouble falling asleep but not for the usual reason. I had hope. There might be a light at the end of the tunnel and for once, it wasn’t an oncoming train. Maybe having James for a friend was just what I needed. Losing my job made my social isolation even more apparent. I felt less of a person because of it. It was more than just a blow to my confidence or self esteem, it was as if without this job, these duties, I was ceasing to exist. I anxiously awaited the day when I would wake up next to Ollie and he wouldn’t realize I was there.

In a sense, the same thing had happened with my girlfriends from school. Over time, as we moved forward with our careers and our marriages, moved from one place to another, and yes, gotten pregnant —or in my case, remained childless— I faded from the circle. I had dutifully attended the baby showers, listened to the women speak in a language I didn’t understand, watched them coo and sigh over tiny little shoes and socks, stuffed bears and miniature bedding and blankets. With each one, I began to be less and less of a presence. No longer was I asked to help with the planning or decoration. Next, I was seated further from the piles of presents, grouped with the distant family members only invited out of obligation. I would sneak out early and no one ever noticed. My exclusion from the ‘mother club’ rendered me invisible.

I longed to be significant to someone else and at the same time, resisted it. Without that validation, it was as if I was no one at all. I had struggled to find that importance in my own family —as the middle child, I was left to fend for myself mostly. My parents had been absorbed in my older brother and my younger sister to the point that I needed to misbehave in order to garner their attention. Frankly, I didn’t have it in me to rebel too terribly much and as a result, was largely ignored as a child. So I found myself identified as Allison’s sister, Craig’s sister, Josephine and Steven’s daughter and now, Oliver’s wife. Who was the woman I looked at in the mirror every morning? Genevieve might exist in the mirror but she did not reside within this flesh. She was a vague, ephemeral force that flitted in and out of existence as she was seen and defined by the rest of the people who intermittently stepped into the same space, the same time that the force happened to simultaneously occupy. When the moment passed, when they moved on, she was gone…

If I had a baby, if I bore a child, I would become ‘baby’s mother’ —even less of a woman, a being, a self, than I already struggled to be.

Where was I? James. Yes, I had lost my train of thought.

A friend —that was what I needed. An independent source of acknowledgement, substantiation, confirmation that I was legitimate, valid, solid, real. And important on a different level than I was accustomed to. Men and women interacted with each other so much differently than women did with other women. There would be no competition, no judgment, no comparison to an ideal I couldn’t possibly achieve. I believed that James had the potential to ‘see’ me and not as the Genevieve in the mirror. I finally drifted off to sleep with that thought in mind —James would bring me back to life.

By the morning, however, I began to doubt. I awoke to Oliver’s soft snoring in the half light of dawn. He was sleeping on his back, one arm thrown back over the top of his head. I reached over and laid my hand on his chest. He didn’t move, didn’t shift, didn’t break the rhythm of his breathing. I had no effect whatsoever. The specter that was Genevieve did not penetrate his dreams. What would the waking Oliver find? Was this the day Gen would fade away for good?

I pulled my robe on and slipped from the bedroom. It was 6:15 am —too early for anyone in the neighborhood to be up and about, save for the religious and maybe the dedicated athlete. I made coffee and stared out the window as it brewed. Across the roofs of the houses, a trio of vultures circled. A dead thing in the field below. Were they waiting for the predators to finish their meal before swooping in and gleaning from the corpse? Or was there a sort of protocol they followed for claiming the residue of a kill? I didn’t know. I stared at them on their invisible, mid-heaven carousel. I blinked. They were gone.

The coffee maker had shut itself off. I had lost time. It was nearly 9:00 according to the clock on the stove. The house was as silent as a tomb. I hurried back to the bedroom and found it deserted. The bathroom was warm and humid from the residual steam of the shower. Oliver’s towel was damp and the scent of his aftershave lingered on the air.

“Ollie?” I called, knowing there would be no answer.

“Oliver!” I shouted as I raced to the garage and confirmed what I already knew. His car was gone. He was gone. And I wondered if he forgotten to say goodbye or if he had finally forgotten about me altogether.

Header image ~ The Mirror’s Eye, by Meg Sorick

Research Notes – The Great War (7) The British Expeditionary Force

~ Meg ~ 27 Comments

I’m researching The Great War for my current work in progress: a historical novel set during that time. To write the period accurately, I’ve been reading and studying the war and the surrounding events. I hope you find these bits of information as interesting as I do. ~ Meg

At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914, the British were an unknown quantity. Their Liberal government was horrified at the prospect of war. The Germans were counting on that queasiness to overrule the British commitment to uphold Belgian neutrality as promised under the London Treaty of 1839. The German invasion of France, as dictated by The Schlieffen Plan, depended on the armies being able to swing south through Belgium. On August 2, 1914, Germany demanded right of passage for their troops to march through Belgium. The Belgians refused. The Germans came anyway and Belgium found itself at war.

The British responded by delivering an ultimatum. Germany ignored it. They had delivered their own ultimatum to Belgium, in which they promised to leave their territory upon cessation of hostilities and to make reparations for any damage caused by the troops. No one believed that for a minute. Belgian Premier Charles de Broqueville said, “If Germany is victorious, Belgium, whatever her attitude, will be annexed to the German Empire.”

German troops entered Belgium on August 3, 1914 and Britain declared war on August 4th. Britain would enter a war in which she had not been directly affronted. German Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke knew the British would enter the war with or without Belgian violation. He said, “[England] … fears German hegemony and true to her policy of maintaining a balance of power will do all she can to check the increase of German power.”

The B.E.F. – British Expeditionary Force had first been organized in 1907. Behind the scenes, an inner circle of the British government had made greater commitments to France in case of war than was widely known to the public. Nevertheless, the commitment to the cause was to be rather small: four infantry divisions plus cavalry and artillery; no more than 100,000 men. Compared to the 2 million invading Germans, this was a drop in the bucket. However, in the beginning, British involvement was as important for what it symbolized -allegiance with France- as for what it actually contributed. When asked the minimum number of British troops with which France would be content, the politician Georges Clemenceau famously replied, “One, and we shall take good care to get him killed.” The British plan largely consisted of falling in on the French left flank and following their lead.

By the time the B.E.F. reached position in Mauberge on August 20, the fighting was well under way. France’s offensive in Lorraine was in trouble and Belgium was being destroyed.