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    The Boy In White Linen
    The Boy In White Linen
    The Boy In White Linen
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    The Boy In White Linen

    By Jon Jacks

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Visiting a troubled Jerusalem, schoolgirl Lillianne Pine (Lil) finds she’s increasingly drawn to Harry, a young British Army Captain, after meeting a mysterious boy in white linen.
    Stranger still is her sighting of a gorgeous unicorn, which passes unmolested through crowded streets as if invisible to everyone but herself and a few others.
    The recently-ended Great War has flooded the city with guns, and a clash of religious festivals previously controlled by thousands of Turkish troops is now policed by just two hundred poorly trained men.
    When Jerusalem erupts in riots lasting for days, ever-increasing numbers of Harry’s men are amongst the casualties.
    And every one of them, like Lil, had also seen the unicorn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJon Jacks
    Release dateNov 5, 2013
    ISBN9781311944566
    The Boy In White Linen
    Author

    Jon Jacks

    While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

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      Book preview

      The Boy In White Linen - Jon Jacks

      Chapter 1

      The road to Jerusalem, April Fools’ Day, 1920

      ‘A…ttishoo!’

      ‘God bless you, Miss Pine.’

      Through bleary eyes, Lillianne gratefully reached for the pristinely ironed handkerchief Captain Hilary had deftly produced from his top pocket.

      ‘It’s the dust I’m afraid; it gets everywhere.’

      Lillianne was beginning to wonder if she would have been better taking the train rather than insisting on travelling overland ‘along a route Jesus would have recognised’. It was a far more boring trip than she had expected, the land they were passing through hardly seeming to change. Worse still, even her uncle’s Rolls Royce seemed incapable of protecting her from either the worst of the bumps and jolts of the potted road or the fine red dust that seemed to coat everything.

      ‘Captain?’ The soldier chauffeuring them spoke over his shoulder as he kept his eyes on the road. ‘I think I just heard gunfire south of here.’

      ‘Drive on, Broadley; Miss Pine’s safety is our main concern today.’

      ‘Sir; it’s probably a settlement under attack!’

      Captain Hilary glanced back through the car’s rear window, through the clouds of dust, at the truck following on behind them.

      Lillianne turned to look with him, even though she knew what she would see; a truck that looked like it had served in the recent Great War, badly dented but now repainted as a police vehicle. Even through the plumes of dust their own car was throwing up behind them, Lillianne could see that the truck and its occupants were suffering even more bone-jarring jolts than they were.

      She couldn’t make out the driver, or the man or men crammed into the seat next to him. The men in the back of the truck were completely out of view, of course. But she had seen them all earlier when Captain Hilary had arrived to tell her he’d been appointed by her uncle to make sure she arrived safely in Jerusalem. They weren’t what she’d been given to expect by her uncle’s telegram promising a ‘military escort’. They were policemen, obviously recruited from the local population. Yes, they were armed, but their dress and attitude were what could only be called slovenly.

      Not that the sole British solider accompanying the captain was any more inspiring. He was better and more smartly dressed, yes, yet now and again he seemed to treat his commanding officer with a strange mix of apparently calculated ignorance and casual rudeness.

      She had been surprised by the captain’s lax attitude to the indifference of his men to his authority, as if he were resigned to it. She felt sorry for him, in a way; perhaps he had tried earlier to instil a sense of hierarchy, only to find his threats carried little or no weight. This was some form of protectorate, after all (Was that the right word? She felt sure it was), rather than a part of the Empire that the British had real control over; ‘You must realise we’re effectively only there to advise and help,’ her mother had explained, trying to dissuade her from going ahead with her trip even as she planned it.

      The captain turned around in his seat. He glared at the back of the head of the driver.

      ‘And you seriously think that getting these men involved wold help the settlement, do you?’ he said. ‘We both know full well that they’re far more likely to end up joining in the attack.’

      The driver jerked forward, slamming down hard and abruptly on the brakes. The car juddered and bumped as it slewed to a halt, throwing up even more clouds of dust.

      ‘Sidney!’ the captain yelled furiously.

      Behind them, there was a loud squeal, a cacophonic protesting of tortured metal, as the truck tried to stop. It spun aside, partially turned off the road, and swung around almost side on to the back of the car.

      ‘Get back in the car, Sidney!’

      Ignoring the captain’s command, the driver stepped out onto the dusty road.

      ‘We can’t help them!’ Flinging open his own door, the captain leapt out of the car. ‘There are hundreds of settlements scattered across Palestine! We can’t protect them all!’

      The driver was striding towards the idling truck, his only response to the captain being a dismissive cry over his shoulder.

      ‘I’m not asking you to protect them all, Harry! Just this one!’

      Harry?

      Lillianne was amazed by everything she was witnessing.

      Is this how private soldiers now addressed their commanding officers in the British army?

      ‘Sid! I’ve protected you enough from all this madness, this insubordination!’

      Quickly stepping out of the other side of the car, Lillianne watched in bemusement as the driver continued to ignore his captain. Instead, he shouted up to the men in the back of the truck, something in Arabic that she couldn’t understand. Grinning wryly, as every bit as bemused by everything as she was, the men swapped questioning glances before one of them threw down a rifle to the waiting Sidney. A box of ammunition immediately followed, which Sidney deftly caught in one hand.

      ‘The settlers don’t trust us anymore, Harry!’ Turning off the road, he strode out across the rocky ground towards the settlement, from where the sharp crack of gunfire could now be clearly heard. ‘We’re not stopping the Fedayeen from attacking them, and we’re not letting them arm themselves either!’

      ‘They’ve already got guns, Sid, you know that! The war’s just ended and there are thousands out there unaccounted for!’

      Standing on the side of the road, watching his driver walk away from him, Captain Hilary fumed impotently, a hand quivering over his holstered revolver as if he were struggling with the side of him that said he should draw it, threaten to fire, call his man back ‘or else!’

      ‘The Palestinians have lived here over a thousand years!’ he cried out instead. He was having to shout out louder now that Sidney was refusing to turn back. ‘The way they see it, the settlers should never have been allowed in! We can’t be seen to be taking sides, Sid!’

      ‘Hah! Tell that to the young Miss’s uncle and all the rest of the top brass, Harry! Pro-Arab most of ’em – and you know that!’

      Giving Lillianne a swift, apologetic look, Captain Hilary noticed at last that the men in the back of the truck, having stood up to get a better view of Sidney’s leaving, were all grinning hugely at his humiliation. With a brusque waving of an arm, an even brusquer yell in Arabic, he ordered the truck’s driver to begin backing up onto the road.

      ‘Sorry, Miss Pine,’ he said, indicating that she should get back into the car as he moved towards the driver’s door. ‘I did warn you that this was a far from ideal time for you to visit–’

      ‘…and that if I hadn’t just turned up more or less unannounced, I would have been refused permission to visit? Yes, I do remember, Captain.’

      She ducked her head, crouching slightly as she stepped back inside the Rolls Royce’s spacious interior. The captain slipped into the driver’s seat, slamming his door shut.

      ‘Shouldn’t we help them?’ Lillianne asked, taking her own seat. ‘The people being attacked, I mean. And your soldier friend?’

      ‘Help him?’ Captain Hilary started the car rolling slowly forwards. ‘God help him, Miss Pine! And yes, God help us too; we’ve got a clash of festivals – Passover, Easter, the Moslem Nebi Musa – and thousands of armed men out there who were all fighting in the Great War for differing, conflicting goals that

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