I beg your pardon. I fear I have lost my appetite for spy stories and war games. The James Bond appeal seems from a bygone dream 

so I shall dream another dream 

somewhere else

“Don’t evade the question, Bran. Why now after so much time?”

but he doesn’t answer for awhile. 

we fall silent. 

Then he says after a long sigh,

“I don’t know.”

“Rather ….answer me this, why did you go back to Clair? Why did you really? I never asked you and you never explained it to me and at the time I just assumed you just didn’t really love me….didn’t love me enough….just didn’t love me, it was just a wild fling, then, wasn’t it?”

“No—that’s not it,” he says in that dry voice  

“Oh it doesn’t matter —only why do you worry if —I don’t matter, not enough—not to actually have you make room in your life for me….”

“It was not that—it was me….Beth, if you must know, it was because I was just a coward.”

He calls

“Are you ok?” he asks me

“No,” I say

“I know. I can still sense things like this about you,” he says

“Why?” I ask him “and why now after so much time?”

“Because I worry about you. Someone has to,” he says 

“What are you doing for money these days?” he asks me

“Just the usual.”

“I don’t want you depending on that spy—you need money….Commission me six new images,” he says 

I have wondered often when reading through history, (disregarding our current headlines) what was it like for the every day, common people who lived during times of historical political stress under Napoleon, for instance, or King Henry VIII, Attila the Hun, Caligula etc etc and written about thoughts of Rouen with images of King John. Thought of the stifled lives. Shuttered behind the neat architecture. Throughout all times, the people born into lives they never asked for 

I think of

especially now

Lord of the Flies 

story from a window view