Games of Aspiration

A Prologue

Prologue

A snapshot from long ago

The area around Craven Cottage field, Fulham, has long been home to many an eventful football game, and also it has had its' share of various nightly extra circular events.

This particular late autumn evening, a year after the Armistice, was no different than many of those less dissolute evenings...

A handsomely attired couple were walking along the "Green mile" her arm tucked in his.

They were coming from a formal dance that had been held in one of the large ancient stone manor houses that encircled the nearby village.

The male was in his mid-twenties, dapper in a formal tux, a solid gold pocket watch dangling from his waistcoat, and a gold ring with his family's crest shimmering from his right index finger.

Up until WWII, the man had been a struggling student, the ring he was wearing had belonged to his elder brother, who had been the one set to inherit the family fortune and title.

Then during the war, his R.A.F. elder brother, the family Scion, had his "Mossie" aircraft shot down during the Battle of Britain! Thus leaving him, the younger brother, with the family fortune, delivering him from a common man's life of barely making the ends meet on his own!

The girl with him, a head shorter, whose long hair had been recently let down, was about the same age as her escort. She belonged to a nouveau riche family with a rather inbred snobbish persuasion that one could tell she had inherited from her pouty looking demeanor!

She was deliberately, prettily attired, in a teal satin dress. Carefully selected diamonds blazed from around her throat, a wrist and from the vulgarly large engagement ring boldly worn on her left ring finger!

Now mention must be made that the man she was walking with was not the one who had asked for her hand in marriage and not the one who had given her the engagement ring she was flaunting!

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The couple automatically stopped by a tree near the river, obviously a familiar spot for them both!

Their reflection, shimmery in the dark waters, was silhouetted by the full moons' beams.

The man turned to his partner and spoke while lifting the girl's necklace with his left hand, admiring its sparkle...

I see you have acquired some new trinkets, bought, or were they a present?

"From Thomas, bought after mine were burgled that night in 3, you remember, 8 when Fulham played against Bury!"

She had admitted receiving Thomas's gifts with a rather sheepish look up into the eyes of the man she was now with!

Letting go of her necklace, he lifted her left hand, the handsome ring sparkling with a mad frenzy in the moon's light!

She turned away, not wishing to look him in the eyes as he admired the engagement ring!

"Thomas gave you this also!"

"Yes..." she finally, after a pregnant pause, admitted reluctantly to him.

She turned to face him...sobbing, her carefully applied mascara running teal coloured streaks under her sad doe wide eyes!

"But It should have been yours, If I had not been such a fool all those years ago, before the war!"

She then threw herself into his arms!