Winter Queen (Roger Taylor fanfic)

16. ...it was on the Christmas day

Josie thought about Roger's optimism and the sentence about her own life, when she was in the tiny flat in Plymouth on December twenty fourth. She was helping her mom Jana with a potato salad, when the phone rang. Josie jumped up from the chair, but her father Josef was faster.

"That's for you." He frowned and handed her the receiver. She grabbed it and said her name to it.

"Merry Christmas." Roger wished her. She hadn't heard his voice for four days and missed it so much. She smiled and noticed her parents are watching her. She turned her face towards the wall.

"How are you?"

"Good, very good. We're making dinner." she replied. She would give up anything, just to be with him now, with his family. She knew how impertinent and ungrateful that is, but all she wanted for Christmas was to look him in the eyes.

"Who was that?" Jana asked, when Josie hung up. Josie, actually Josefína in this flat, returned to Czech language.

"Roger."

"The name sounds british. And his accent." Her father noticed.

"Yes, dad, he is British."

"A he's you friend?" Jana asked.

"Yes. Something like that."

"Something like that."

"We are.... pretty close. I can't really specify it."

"Pepi, you aren't about to fall in love with some English guy?" her father asked, using the czech nickname for her name.

"No, we just... Why would it be so bad?" She bristled up out of the blue.

"Honey, there are tons of Czech men living here. Do you think you'd lure him back to Czech? What would he do there."

"Dad, I don't want to lure Roger anywhere, I don't want to lure anyone anywhere. We can't go to Czech, we don't know when and if ever we will be allowed to. I studied here, I have a job, my friends, my life. I don't want to go back."

"You don't know what you're talking about. Your grandparents are there, your friends, your roots. It's clear you fall in love now..."

Josie felt tears in her eyes.

"And if I did?"

"You can't expect our blessing, if you want to marry some English guy. They see a burdain in us."

"Am I supposed to wait for miracle to happen in Czechoslovakia? Many of those who voted for the communists would vote for them again, dad! And what about the pilots, they came home and how did it work for them?"

"Josefíno, Czechoslovakia was and will be a free country."

"That was forty years ago, dad! Am I supposed to wait for another forty years and hope to fall in love back there? For many generations, the people there will be twisted by to communism, even if that miracle would ever happen!" Josie's voice was full of desperation. She realized she pronounced the word communism with english pronounciation. Her father pressed lips together.

"Many emmigrants live here and they are helping Czechoslovakia to freedom from here. With your languages, you could help them enormously, but instead you are trying to run away from the community as far as possible, and, perhaps deliberately, you're using anglicisms instead of czech words."

"That's not an anglicism, dad, I just unintentionally used english pronounciation." she said apologeticly. "I speak English all the time in London, it just slipped."

"And the czech community in London is actually quite wide, you could start meeting with them." Josef told her.

"But I don't want to, dad, don't you get it? I don't want to be in touch with somebody only because they were born in the same area of the Earth as I was. It's just a sheer chance, who is born where. I want to be in touch with people I'm compatible with, with the people I love."

"So you love him." Josef made face.

"Stop it, it's Christmas, Pepi wasn't here for a half year." Jana calmed them down.

"And know we now why."

Josie rested her head in her heads, she was tempted to start speaking English, simply out of spite.

"Blood is thicker than water. You'll be sorry, if you close the door to your home only because some guy."

"Excuse me?" She raised her head with astonishment.

"We came here because of you, for your better future, better one than you'd had in a country without a freedom. But we didn't came here for you to throw away your past."

"So what, if I won't marry some random guy, with eyebrows like Brezhnev and poor English, you forbid me to come here? Disinherit me?"

"Pepi..." Jana tried to warn her.

"How can you hate your own nation so much? You are Slavic, no matter the politics. You'll always be something inferior for this people."

"It's the nation's fault, they caused it! People actually vote for the communists after the war, dad!"

"You don't know how the war was, how it was after it." Josef shook his head.

"No, I don't, dad, but I don't want to live in a past. To wait for a miracle. I want to live, here and now. I just want to be happy and I am, where I am now."

"Well, as long as you take these western values as your own, just don't come." Josef shouted.

She quickly grabbed her stuff, got dressed and put on her shoes. She looked at her mother, but she looked down to the pot with potatoes. Josie turned on her heel and ran out, before she began to cry. She looked through her wallet, she had only some change and ticket to London. She went to the station, but there were no more departing trains today. The tears frozed on her cheeks, she needed to blow her nose. She flicked through the pages of her address book, but couldn't find Roger's mother's number. She called Mary and only hoped, she leaves to her parents in the morning, like she said before.