Feddin pulled out a thick-sheeted journal from an inside coat pocket and laid it out alongside his tutor's coffee cake plate as she nodded thanks to their waiter. The son of a rich merchant, Feddin had moved to Brytain with his parents while his father sought firmer business holds in London. Born into a family of travel and shipping business, he'd now been waylaid to a small cottage in the skirts of Abingdon with only a few servants and his tutor to attend to him on a daily basis.
A total lack of progress in his studies had brought him the ultimatum from his tutor: improve, or she would send for his parents. He knew the course well enough after that. First he'd take care of his mother, wheeling her in from the taxi to sit by the window with her d?on looking limp and cold n her lap as her husband tended quickly to ordering the servants about. Then Feddin's inadequacies would be listed out for him in the child-like voice of his father's latest attractive secretary.
'Your father says you're such a troublesome child. And looking so disrespectful when he brings company, even! Such untended hair and you've not been listening, and make those shoes shine before dinner, more of the partners are coming in for late tea.' She'd flip her gloves onto the table like the pronouncement and righteousness of a judge's gavel and smile then.
And his father would look down his nose with impatience at him before turning his back again.
"Feddin," his tutor produced a dainty set of nails as she reached for the journal he'd laid down for her, her equally dainty d?on, an iridescent moth, landed as a bracelet for her lovely wrist. "What is this?"
"That's it right there, ma'am. That's what I told you I'd do and I wrote it all out so you could see why I have trouble with learning things sometimes. I wrote it nicely, too, and it's all English, and proper, because I knew that was better. Even you must think I speak quite well."
"I do."
"But you can read that later or whenever, and I think maybe then you won't have to send for mum or dad then?" He smiled with absolute confidence at her.
"We'll see then, Feddin, I do hope you're right." She returned the smile, and her bracelet flapped in anticipation.
A small saucer scattered with crumbs and a cup devoid of tea greeted the waiter's return.
--
"Erschüterung," his tutor began.
"Well, I did lie a bit." Feddin admitted, "the title's in German, but that's all, I promise. The English language doesn't seem to have the right word for it," he frowned in thought, "it's sound isn't right."
"Quite," the tutor agreed, and tilted her head prettily to the side with a half-smile starting to cross her face. "Is there anything else of a lie in here, Feddin?" She questioned him as her eyes danced over the first few lines.
"No, ma'am. True, every bit of it."
--
Not all stories will belong to the author who claims them, but they all have meaning.