Jack switched the TV off. He knew the tanks that were approaching the city would arrive eventually; he didn’t need to watch the action unfold on a rolling news channel.
He was worried. Would being a Brit make him more of a target it the army found out he was here?
His thoughts were interrupted by the door buzzer. Uneasily, he walked across the living room of his second floor flat.
“Hello”.
“Jack, it’s me.”
He had been pretty certain it would be Nick, but in these unstable times Jack feared the worst at every opportunity. His first job in a British embassy abroad and he’d certainly been thrown in at the deep end, dispatched to a country in such a volatile political situation. He knew they were there to do a job, but he was also aware of the potential danger that lay ahead.
Nick on the other hand was a ‘been there, seen it, done it’ sort of bloke, not in the least bit phased by the fact that all foreign residents except for absolutely essential workers such as they, had long since left the city.
“Things don’t look good do they,” Jack commented as Nick entered his living room.
“They’ve been better,” he conceded with a shrug. “The folks at home certainly think it’s bad enough to insist all Brits leave town, which is why the likes of you and I have a busy few days ahead of us. The army aren’t far away now and things could get pretty lively round these parts.”
To Jack’s amazement, Nick followed this by suggesting they go out for some dinner.
“I know a great little place a couple of minutes walk from here.”
Then, bringing the tone back to the present situation he added. “If the tanks are backed up with planes, we don’t want to be two floors up.”
The streets of the city were, unsurprisingly, deserted. Jack thought it was a surreal sight for this place was usually so vibrant at all hours.
The small side street restaurant they were heading for looked for all the world to be as shut as everywhere else, but Nick knew the area well, and as they approached Jack picked up the smell of food.
There were only three other people inside as they entered, one waiter and a couple, who turned out to be American.
“Ah! Mr Johnson,” the waiter beamed, welcoming Nick as if it was just a regular evening.
“This is Jack, a colleague of mine.”
The waiter shook Jack warmly by the hand. It was all just so; Jack couldn’t put his finger on how he felt the others were behaving, blinkered, complacent?
“How come you’re open when everywhere else is preparing for the inevitable?” he asked.
“A man’s got to earn a living after all,” replied the waiter, who it quickly became apparent was also the chef. “Plus, you people want to eat don’t you?”
There was no menu, but bowls of rice, vegetables and fish were appearing on the tables of both Jack and Nick, and the Americans.
Just as it seemed the evening was going to pass like any other, Jack suddenly stopped eating and gestured for the others to break their conversation.
”Listen.”
Which they did, and they all heard the sound of gunfire, sounding like it was some distance off, but they knew the city was under attack.
The waiter, still seemingly more concerned with being hospitable than impending danger, pointed to a roulette wheel in the corner of the room. A restaurant off the beaten track, in addition to alcohol being freely available, gambling was a fixture of meal times.
“See this? I say we play. Red we live, and we know no matter what they throw at us everything will be OK. And if it’s black, we have enough time to pray so we go to a better place when the army come.”
If Jack had been in any doubt this man was a nutter before, he knew for certain he was now. Nick however was all for passing the time with the idea of gambling on their very survival. One of those, good at anything competitive types, it was no surprise that as the ball began to lose it’s momentum, it seemed instinctively to know it’s role in proceedings was to head for red.
No sooner had the waiter proposed opening a second bottle of wine to celebrate the long and fruitful lives that lay ahead of all of them, there was more gunfire, and this time, much closer, and accompanied by the roar of engines over head.
“Quick, under the tables,” Nick shouted, “we’ll be safer there.”
There was a huge explosion, shattering the windows. Then, weakened by the force of the bomb that had been dropped nearby, the front wall started to give way, in turn causing part of the ceiling to cave in. Nick’s suggestion they’d be better off in a single story building rather than a block of flats turning out to be proved correct.
Jack remained motionless. As the nearest to the back of the room, he had been the one in the least amount of danger as the building started to collapse. He daren’t move though, what if the enemy were close by? What if he disturbed a part of the building just waiting for an opportunity to fall?
After what seemed like a lifetime, he heard Nick’s voice asking “is everybody OK?”
Jack crawled out from under the table and stood up. He heard first a female, then male voice, confirming that both their American companions were alive at least.
The waiter, so confident when the roulette wheel produced red, hadn’t been so lucky.
Task: this was the final homework piece. We had to write something, between 800 and 900 words, based on the narative structure of a piece we read in class. For what it's worth, what I've written is a almost exact retelling of a dream I had a couple of days before the homework was due in.
Tutor comment: you have departed from the original to the point where the influence is undetectable. This is fine. It did the trick of getting a piece written. The central episode - the roulette wheel at the restaurant - is very promsiign, but the writing at times is a little muffled by cliches: "thrown in at the deep end", "not in the least bit phased", "couldn't put his finger on". Given more space to develop the story, you could have gone into more detail about the
psychological impact of such an extreme situation on these characters.
Well done on what has been a very good term's work.
