Coming Home - short fiction

This was a story I wrote in the middle of writing a series of 10-minute plays dealing with Post Traumatic Stress. I wondered about a sort of "behind the scenes" idea and came up with this. I'm interested in how life moves, how it takes us into places we don't expect, how we humans push back sometimes (most times, really) and realise that the harder we push the more likely we are not to get what we want.


It was late, the train that was bringing her father back to her. She shivered a little as a gust of chill air scurried along the platform, its bite reinforcing the unease she felt. Tina had not seen her father for a couple of years and had decided that it was time for her to spend some time with him. How long, she didn’t know.

She turned her head again towards the west from which the train would come but saw no approaching light so she decided to return to the relative warmth of the station waiting room. A number of people had gathered there. One of them was her son. Josh sat by himself, earphones in, phone in his hand. He was not aware that his mother had returned; his attention was focused on manipulating the playlist, head down, straight black hair hanging from under the grey hoodie.

Tina found herself staring. Her son was a tangible reminder of her long-dead marriage and he looked as absorbed and lost as she had been then. Why is he always so quiet and withdrawn, she asked herself. Like the absent train, no answer came to her. Josh was in his final year of secondary school and not far from sitting his final exams. His interests lay in the Arts and English but he had never quite reached the heights that she had expected from him given his results in the junior years. Like many of his peers, he had applied to go to university the following year but Tina had deep misgivings about that plan.

“You have to have a Plan B,” she had told him. “What if things don’t work out? What would you do?” She had been sitting with him at the kitchen table.

“Mum, it’s okay. I’ll just decide when it happens,” he had replied, not sounding convinced himself.

She had let that ride then. They had spoken about his decision-making process before but she had not been able to shift his impassivity. There was something in him that she couldn’t reach. A bit like his grandfather, actually. He never had a plan a let alone an alternative.

A two-toned bell sounded, followed by an announcement. Good, she thought. At last.

“May I have your attention please, ladies and gentlemen. The six-oh-five passenger service from Melbourne has been delayed.” A collective groan went up. “A number of cows have found their way onto the tracks.” This piece of news was greeted with a mixture of laughter and half-audible swearing. Josh hadn’t heard, the confused look on his face indicating that he might not even have cared.

“We expect the train to arrive at the station at approximately six forty-seven. We apologise for the inconvenience.” Ding-dong.

Tina walked over and sat beside her son.

She touched his arm. “You want something to eat, buddy?”

Josh pulled at the earphones and dislodged them. “Just a couple of potato-cakes,” he said, answering her questioning face, and replacing the earphones.

She sighed quietly, got up slowly and went to the eatery next door. Dad is like this, never giving much away, not talking much, hiding. She wondered how she would cope with his presence after so long.



Twenty minutes later, the pair were standing on the bleak platform as the train came to a halt. Tina scanned the disembarking passengers and became increasingly anxious when she couldn’t see her father.

“Hi, Pa,” said Josh to a stranger who had come to stand next to them. Tina was completely taken aback. Was this her father? He was quite neatly dressed: jeans, jumper, warm jacket, short grey hair, smart glasses, what looked like a new scarf and pulling a large, hard, grey suitcase. By this time, Josh and his grandfather had each other in a bear hug. This surprised Tina even more. Josh never hugged anyone and Tina couldn’t remember the last time her father had really hugged her. The last shock was when he did that as well.

“Hello dad,” she eventually got out. “How are you?”

“Great, Teens. Great. Good to be here at last.” He held her at arm’s length. “You look great, too.”

“Well, thanks dad.” She paused, and in that time her father was able to take her arm and lead her back in through the sliding doors, with Josh easily tugging the suitcase behind them. The bitterness in the wind had become a memory.



“The room is great, Tina. I feel like I’ve lived here for much longer than a week.” They were on the back patio, sharing a wine before dinner. “I feel like I’m at home.”

“Dad, I still can’t get over how much you’ve changed. You used to be so quiet and, well, sort of …”

“Pushy? That’s what you want to say, isn’t it?”

“Actually, not quite.” She smiled. “More like demanding.”

His laughter in reply was easy and free, without pretence and Tina found herself warming more and more to the man she had known as distant and uninvolved. They clinked glasses again and Alby swallowed his in one gulp. He held his glass out for another refill. 

"The army does that to a person. In there, asking didn't get me anywhere so I learned to insist. Eventually it became a habit. Demanding seemed the way to get things done around there - and around here. You're right, Teens. I should have apologised a long time ago."

"Maybe that's true, Dad, but I had some responsibility as well." Tina became quiet, her body drawn in a little. In a small voice, almost girlish, she added: "I saw your behaviour as a sort of cancer, gnawing at our family. I even blamed you for mum taking ... for her death."

Her father took a breath and covered his mouth with his hands, slowly drawing them down to intertwine his fingers in a sort of prayer-arch. His forehead came to rest there.

"It doesn't matter anymore, Tina. Karma always brings its own reward. Life is as it is and can't be any different. Trying to make it something other than what it is only brings grief." Alby laughed a quiet chuckle and took a slow sip.



Josh could see no other course of action. His exams were over. He would not be going to any parties. Waste of money and time. Besides, his grandfather was here and life was too short. He wanted to spend as much time with him as he could. He took his seat on the bus, plugged himself in to The Animators and went to meet him.



Gone to meet Pa, the note on the bench told her. Tina wondered briefly where that would be but the two of them had been spending quality time and she was grateful for that. Her son had begun to open up under Alby’s new-found carefree attitude. She realised that she still hadn’t prized out of him what had caused the change and she made a mental note not to let him avoid it next time she asked.



“Pa, how did it go?”

“Well, Joshie, there’s that old saying. You make your bed, you gotta lie in it.”

They were sitting across from each other in the hospital canteen drinking coffee. This time Alby wasn’t smiling.

“Yeah, but what did they say?”

“I’ve got about six months, best-case scenario. Two years worst-case.”

“Don’t you mean the other way ‘round?”

The older man looked at his grandson. He saw the hurt and confusion, the pain and determination not to believe him and he felt a sudden, deep sadness.

“I don’t want to waste away on chemo and all that shit. They say it makes you feel worse and stuffs up your immune system. I’ve thought a bit about this, son. I want to live the rest of my life on my own terms, not the needle’s.”



The red light slowly receded, growing smaller and fainter until it winked out in the distance. Still Tina could not look away. How had she not recognised it? But she knew the answer already. As usual she hadn’t let her mind open itself to the whole picture. As usual, she had been drawn to the fact that her father and her son had really connected. As usual, she had assumed that this was all there was to it. Wrong answer. She was jealous. Right answer. She was relieved and pleased nevertheless. Right again.

Josh was on his way to Melbourne to begin his apprenticeship to a well-known chef. This had been her father’s dream but he seemed never to be able to act on it. Now her son was learning from his mentor of all of four months.

She was surprised to feel stinging tears.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered to herself. “you could have told me.”

The suddenness of Alby’s death had stunned her. One minute he was walking and the next he was in intensive care and leaving his life. She sat the hours by his bedside, devastated. He couldn’t hear her and two days later he was dead. She had not even heard him speak.

A bitter wind circled her ankles, despite the March warmth. She had to learn the truth from Josh and even he hadn’t told her the complete story. The darkness pushed at her as she walked home from the station, slowing her steps.

“You don’t want the truth, mum,” he had told her, “not really. That’s why Pa didn’t want to tell you. He wanted to end life on his own terms, just for himself, not killed like grandma in that car.”

He had paused before getting into the carriage, thinking. She wanted to hug him.

“You have to start living your life, Alby says. I love you.”

And he was gone.

She pushed back into the dark wind, head bowed, lost in thought. A deep realisation that she’d been slowly dying all these years since the accident swam up through her gut and into her heart. She chuckled softly but it was like an ache at the realisation.

She didn’t see the speeding car.

         In an explosion of sound, bone and flesh, Tina died full of hope.