homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

Thanks for the PM Fittop.

One rather blurry morning our slightly drink befuddled pal Dux found himself (literally FOUND himself)in an unfamiliar flat. He had staggered around a corner looking for the loo and there he was. He was staring at one of those three part, full length mirrors. At first the word doppelganger crossed his enfeebled brain but before he could get his thickly coated tongue around that rather lengthy German word he realized what he had encountered was only his mirrored image. Putting down his fists, the battle hardened fighting man that he was, Dux only spent the next five minutes or so preening. After that he became consumed with trying to figure out just where the devil he was and how in blazes he had got there.

Searching about his unfamiliar surroundings, they were found to be rather shabby in comparison to what he was used to. And yet, in the next room he discovered there was everything he needed at the moment. That is, there was a full bottle of 100 proof liquor and a questionably clean glass sitting on a small, wooden table by a dirty window that was just visible through a jagged hole in a thin, ragged curtain. The curtain had once been red. The window had once had more unbroken panes in it. A simple, straight backed, well worn wooden chair completed the sparse decor. Dux pulled the chair to the table and he sat down.

Just as he was pouring himself a stiff drink, Dux heard someone opening the front door. Into the room came a rather pretty young woman with long, black hair and equally dark eyes. She was fashionably dressed, Dux thought, if it were several years ago before the war. A big smile crossed her face as she saw Dux smiling back at her. It had all come flooding back to him now. The party of the night before. The singing, the dancing, the drinking. OH, the drinking. Dux winced remembering all the drinking. He even remembered the girl.

She had been a celebrated Olympic woman's cricket player before the war. There had been great promise for her, she had told him. That was before a freak accident sidelined her at a critical moment in the 1939 games held in Germany. She had been struck in the head by a poor (some said intentional) pitch. There was a concussion and more permanent damage as well. Nearly a year was spent in hospital, first in Germany and then back in Britain. The prognosis in the end was that she could never recover completely. Isabel Ringing would certainly never again play cricket. It appeared that her mental faculties had also been compromised.

As a result of the accident Isabel sometimes heard ringing sounds and commanding voices too. Voices telling her to do things, sometimes very strange things. These sounds could not be heard by others. They could not be explained by the battery of doctors she had consulted. The girl bravely fought the ghostly voices for a long time but eventually she had just given in.

You may have read in the Times about a young woman who took off her clothes, painted herself red, white and blue and climbed the Nelson monument at Trafalgar Square? That was Isabel. Did you read about the lady who crashed the Gillies Ball dressed as Guy Fawkes and danced with Queen Mary? That too was Isabel. It is not true however that a stag was shot right out from under her by the King at Sandringham. It was proven she was naked doing the backstroke in the Thames under London Bridge at the time of the stag incident.

Dux continued seeing the sadly afflicted Isabel for some time. Like most of his affairs, it ended when an apoplectic Olga found out about it. When Dux was released from the hospital he bravely went back to Isabel's shabby flat. She was gone. Before the war ended Isabel returned to the news when it was uncovered that she had been the victim of a dastardly German mind experiment. While in hospital in Germany her already damaged mind had been subjected to several foul alterations in an attempt to gain control and use her as a spy. This had failed but left her a mental cripple.

The whole sorry affair came to light when Isabel inexplicably attempted to run for Parliament under the banner of the Swastika. Thrown in jail for her protection and then placed in a mental institution what had happened to her was soon unraveled under hypnosis. A year of convalescent care and intensive psychotherapy brought her back to her prewar condition. Well almost. She played cricket successfully again. She married and had children. But every now and then she might do something... well something just a bit odd. Not anything much really. She once was raking leaves in her back garden and fell out of the tree. Things like that.