Friday, July 24, 2009

Face Value by Sir Thomas Barnard, Bt.

First:

Upon meeting Mary for the first time he had memorized her face and voice, her stance and features, not so much their appearance as his perception, if he thought her face pretty or striking or out of proportion, her voice too low or too high; because he knew that with time and accustoming he would not see her face, hear her voice in exactly the same way, could not recapture his original thought of her unless he now made a point of imprinting in his mind those features he thought especially memorable.

. . . . . .

Last:

Just before she slammed the door for, as it turned out, the last time, Mary pointed a shaking finger at him and said, with as much composure as she could manage, “You’ve missed it completely all these years, Edward; I don’t think you’ve known me, really known me, or ever cared to.”

About the (fictitious) author:

Thomas Rynshaw was born in 1879 in Basingstoke, to a family of shop-keepers. In 1909 he changed his surname to Barnard at the request of his father-in-law, the railroad magnate Montgomery Barnard, Bt., who had no sons of his own, as a condition of inheriting fifty thousand pounds and the baronetcy. Although taken into his wife’s family’s business, Bernard showed no aptitude for it and spent the remaining years of his life writing fiction. After an unsuccessful first novel (Face Value), he journeyed to America where he composed a series of seventeen wild-west novels featuring a Tom “Hot Gun” Rynshaw. These novels, also, were unsuccessful. It is believed that he was buried somewhere in Idaho, or Arizona.

The real author’s short bio: Terence Kuch is an information technology consultant, avid hiker, and world traveler. His checkered publication/acceptance career includes Commonweal, Dissent, Marginalia, New York magazine, North American Review, Slow Trains, Timber Creek Review, etc. He has studied at the Writers Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and is a member of the Arlington (Virginia) Writers Group and the Dark Fiction Guild. He has asked not to be buried in Idaho, or Arizona.