Bron-6

Continued from Chapter 5: Bron-5 | ABCtales

Chapter 6

The lounge in the Maryfield Senior Home was dark, save for a small pool of light from a small table lamp fixed to one of the light-blue high-backed armchairs. Mary Hinds wasn’t a great one for sleeping; her mind was too active, even if her body was at last starting to betray her. A figure loomed out of the darkness. Fernandez, an orderly, the one she liked. He was clutching a laptop computer, its screen glowing in the dark, bright blues and yellows.

“Don’t try and show me that darned machine again, Fernandez! You know I too old for all that newfangled malarkey!”

Fernandez cleared his throat. “Actually, Miss Hinds, there’s something on here that might interest you. It’s from the Maryfield Sun-Herald website…”

“Ain’t nothing in that damned rag to interest me, hasn’t been, never will be…”

“Shall I read it to you?”

“Go on, Fernandez – amaze me!”

He cleared his throat again. “A British film company in London, England has embarked on the task…”

“Always said that paper was written by a bunch of monkeys with typewriters…”

“…of creating a movie about the career of pioneer US aviator Lieutenant Jennie Hinds. Lieutenant Hinds, now 95, who now resides at the Maryfield Senior Home, was the first female pilot to fly a combat jet in the 1940s. She…”

“Let me have that infernal machine, Fernandez! Can read for myself, don’t you know…”

She read the piece through to the end, then re-read it, faintly mouthing the words with pale lips. “It says here there’s pictures…can you show them me?”

“Sure.”

There were just two, the producer Chris, evidently taken on one of his bad hair days, and the female star, Bronwyn Jones.

“My, my, my. Well, if I’d been as purty as that there young English gal, perhaps they’d have wanted to help me, not let me crash into that darned ocean. Took ‘em long enough for them to come and fish me out, too … You know, Fernandez, I didn’t look a bit like her; not one bit. That little thing’d be too small to see out of the cockpit, for starters…”

“I think it’s called artistic licence, Miss Hinds…”

“Damned well oughta have their license revoked, if you ask me…”

To be continued in Chapter 7 Bron 7 | ABCtales