Simple short story in English Free Download – The Girl with Green Eyes

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Chapter one

‘Of course,’ the man in the brown hat said, ‘there are good policemen and there are bad policemen, you know.’

‘You’re right,’ the young man said.  ‘Yes. That’s very true. Isn’t it, Julie?’

He looked at the young woman next to him. Julie didn’t answer and looked bored. She closed her eyes.

‘Julie’s my wife,’ the young man told the man in the brown hat.  ‘She doesn’t like trains.  She always feels ill on trains.’

‘Oh yes?’ the man in the brown hat said. ‘Now my wife – she doesn’t like buses. She nearly had an accident on a bus once. It was last year… No, no, it wasn’t. It was two years ago.  I remember now. It was in Manchester.’  He told a long, boring story about his wife and a bus in Manchester.

It was a hot day and the train was slow.  There were seven people in the carriage.  There was the man in the brown hat; the young man and his wife, Julie; a mother and two children; and a tall dark man in an expensive suit.

The Girl with Green Eyes-Chapter one

The young man’s name was Bill. He had short brown hair and a happy smile.  His wife, Julie, had long red hair and very green eyes – the colour of sea water.

They were very beautiful eyes.

The man in the brown hat talked and talked. He had a big red face and a loud voice.  He talked to Bill because Bill liked to talk too. The man in the brown hat laughed a lot, and when he laughed, Bill laughed too. Bill liked talking and laughing with people. The two children were hot and bored. They didn’t want to sit down.  They   wanted to be noisy and run up and down the train.

‘Now sit down and be quiet,’ their mother said.

She was a small woman with a tired face and a tired voice.

‘I don’t want to sit down,’ the little boy said. ‘I’m thirsty.’

‘Here.  Have an orange,’ his mother said. 

She took an orange out of her bag and gave it to him.

‘I want an orange too, ‘ the little girl said loudly.

‘All right. Here you are,’ said her mother. ‘Eat it nicely, now.’

The children ate their oranges and were quiet for a minute.

Then the little boy said, ‘I want a drink.  I’m thirsty.’

The tall dark man took out his newspaper and began to read. Julie opened her eyes and looked at the back page of his newspaper. She read about the weather in Budapest and about the football in Liverpool. She wasn’t interested in Budapest and she didn’t like football, but she didn’t want to listen to Bill and the man in the brown hat. 

‘Talk, talk, talk,’ she thought. ‘Bill never stops talking.’

Then suddenly she saw the tall man’s eyes over the top of his newspaper.  She could not see his mouth, but there was a smile in his eyes.  Quickly, she looked down at the newspaper and read about the weather in Budapest again.

The train stopped at Dawlish station and people got on and got off.  There was a  lot of  noise.

‘Is this our station?’ the little girl asked. She went to the window and looked out.

‘No, it isn’t. Now sit down,’ her mother said.

‘We’re going to Penzance,’ the little girl told Bill.

‘For our holidays.’ ‘Yes,’ her mother said.  ‘My sister’s got a little hotel by the sea.  We’re staying there. It’s cheap, you see.’

‘Yes,’ the man in the brown hat said.  ‘It’s a nice town. I know a man there.  He’s got a restaurant in King Street. A lot of holiday people go there. He makes a lot of money in the summer.’  He laughed loudly.  ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘You can have a nice  holiday  in  Penzance.’

‘We’re going to St Austell,’ Bill. said. ‘Me and Julie. It’s our first holiday.  Julie wanted  to  go  to  Spain,  but  I  like St Austell.  I always go there for my holidays.  It’s nice in August.  You can  have  a  good  time  there  too.’

Julie  looked  out  of the  window. ‘Where is  Budapest?’ she thought.  ‘I  want to go there.  I  want to go to Vienna, to Paris, to Rome, to Athens.’ Her green eyes were bored and  angry. Through the  window  she  watched  the  little villages  and  hills  of England.

The  man  in  the  brown  hat  looked  at  Julie.  ‘You’re right,’  he  said  to  Bill.  ‘You  can  have  a  good  time  on holiday in England. We always go to Brighton, me and the wife.  But  the  weather!  We  went  one  year,  and  it  rained every  day. 

Morning,  afternoon,  and  night.  It’s  true.  It never  stopped  raining.’  He  laughed  loudly.  ‘We  nearly went  home  after  the  first  week.’

Bill laughed too. ‘What did you do all day, then?’ he asked.

Julie  read  about the  weather  in  Budapest for  the  third time.  Then she looked at the tall man’s hands. They were long, brown hands, very clean. ‘Nice hands,’ she thought. He  wore  a  very  expensive  Japanese  watch.

 ‘Japan,’  she thought.  ‘I’d like to go to Japan.’  She looked up and saw the man’s  eyes  again  over the top of his  newspaper.  This time she did not look away.  Green eyes looked into dark brown  eyes  for  a  long,  slow  minute.

After  Newton  Abbot  station  the  guard  came  into  the carriage  to  look  at  their  tickets.  ‘Now  then,’  he  said, ‘where  are  we  all  going?’

‘This  train’s  late,’  the  man  in  the  brown  hat  said. ‘Twenty minutes  late,  by  my  watch.’

Julie opened her eyes and looked at the hack page of the 
tall dark mans newspaper.

‘Ten minutes,’ the guard said. ‘That’s all.’ He smiled at Julie. The  tall  dark  man put his  newspaper  down,  found  his ticket,  and  gave  it to  the  guard.  The guard  looked  at  it.

‘You’re  all  right,  sir,’  he  said.  ‘The  boat doesn’t  leave Plymouth  before  six  o’clock.  You’ve  got  lots  of time.’

The tall  man  smiled,  put his  ticket  back  in  his  pocket and  opened  his  newspaper  again. Julie  didn’t  look  at  him.  ‘A  boat,’  she  thought.  ‘He’s taking  a boat  from  Plymouth.  Where’s  he  going?’  She looked  at  him  again  with  her  long  green  eyes.

He  read  his  newspaper  and  didn’t look  at her.  But his eyes  smiled. The  train  stopped  at  Totnes  station  and  more  people got  on  and  off.

‘Everybody’s  going on  holiday,’  Bill  said.  He laughed.

‘It’s going to  be wonderful.  No work for two weeks.  It’s a nice,  quiet town,  St Austell.  We can  stay in  bed  in the mornings,  and  sit and talk in the  afternoons,  and  have  a drink or two in the evenings.  Eh, Julie?’ He looked  at his wife.  ‘Are  you  all  right,  Julie?’

‘Yes, Bill,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m OK.’ She looked out of the window again. The train went more quickly now, and it began to rain. Bill and the man in the brown hat talked and talked. Bill told a long story about two men and a dog, and  the  man  in  the  brown  hat  laughed  very  loudly.

Green eyes looked into dark brown eyes 
for a long, slow minute.

‘That’s a good story,’ he said.  ‘I like that. You tell it very well. Do you know the story about. .  .’ And he told Bill a story about a Frenchman and a bicycle.

‘Why do people laugh at these stories?’  Julie thought.

‘They’re so boring!’

But Bill liked it.  Then he told a story about an old woman and a  cat,  and  the  man  in  the  brown  hat  laughed again.  ‘That’s good, too.  I don’t know.  How do you remember them all?’

‘Because’, Julie thought, ‘he tells them every day.’

‘I don’t understand,’ the little girl said suddenly.  She looked at Bill.  ‘Why did the cat die?’

‘Shhh.  Be quiet,’ her mother said.  ‘Come and eat your sandwiches now.’

T h a t ‘ s all right,’ Bill said.  ‘I like children.’

The man in the brown hat looked at the children’s sandwiches.  ‘Mmm, I’m hungry, too,’ he said.  ‘You can get sandwiches in the restaurant on this train.’  He looked at Bill

‘Let’s go down to the restaurant, eh?  I need a drink too.’

Bill laughed. ‘You’re right. It’s thirsty work, telling stories.’

The two men stood up and left the carriage. The little girl ate her sandwich and looked at Julie.  ‘But why did the cat die?’  she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Julie said.  ‘Perhaps it wanted to die.’

The little girl came and sat next to Julie.  ‘I like your hair,’ she said.  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Julie looked down at her and smiled. For some minutes it was quiet in the carriage.  Then the tall dark man opened his bag and took out a book. He put it on the seat next to him, and looked at Julie with a smile.

Julie looked back at him, and then down at the  book. Famous towns of Italy, she read. Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples. She looked away again, out of the window at the rain.  Two weeks in  St  Austell,’  she thought.  ‘With Bill-In the  rain.’ After half an  hour  the  two  men  came  back  to  the carriage. ‘There are a lot of people on this train,’ Bill said. ‘Do you want a sandwich,  Julie?’

‘No,’  she  said.  ‘I’m  not  hungry.  You  eat  them.’

The train was nearly at Plymouth.  Doors opened and people began to move.  ‘A lot of people get on here,’ the man in the brown hat said.

The tall dark man stood up and put his book and his newspaper in his bag.  Then he picked up his bag and left the carriage. The train stopped at the station.  A lot of people got on the train, and two women and an old man came into thecarriage. They had a lot of bags with them.

Bill and the man in the brown hat stood up and helped them. One of the women had a big bag of apples. The bag broke and the apples went all over the carriage.

‘Oh damn!’  she said.

Everybody laughed, and helped her to find the apples. The train moved away from Plymouth station.

The man in the brown hat laughed very loudly.

After a minute or two everybody sat down and the woman gave some apples to the children.

‘Where’s Julie?’  Bill said suddenly.  ‘She’s not here.’

‘Perhaps she went to the restaurant,’ the man in the brown hat  said.

‘But she wasn’t hungry,’ Bill said.  ‘She told me.’

The little girl looked at Bill.  ‘She got off the train at Plymouth,’ she said. ‘With the tall dark man. I saw them.’

‘Of course she didn’t!’ Bill said. ‘She’s on this train. She didn’t get off.’

‘Yes, she did,’ the children’s mother said suddenly.  ‘I saw her too. The tall man waited for her on the platform.’

‘He waited for her?’ Bill’s mouth was open. ‘But… But he read his newspaper all the time. He didn’t talk to Julie.

Famous towns of Italy, Julie read, Venice, Florence, Rome, 
Naples.

And she never talked to him.  They didn’t say a word.’

‘People don’t always need words, young man,’ the children’s mother said.

‘But she’s my wife!’  Bill’s face was red and angry.  ‘She can’t do that!’  he said loudly.  He stood up.  ‘I’m going to stop the train,’ Everybody looked at him and the two children laughed.

‘No,’ the man in the brown hat said, ‘no, you don’t want to do that.  Sit down and eat your sandwiches, my friend.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why did she go? What am I going to do?’ Bill’s face was very unhappy. After a second or two he sat down again.  ‘What am I going to do?’ he said again.

‘Nothing,’ the man in the brown hat said. He ate his sandwich slowly.  ‘Go and have your holiday in St Austell. You can have a good time there. Forget about Julie. Those green eyes, now.’ He took out a second sandwich and began to eat it.  ‘I knew a woman once with green eyes. She gave me a very bad time.  No, you want to forget about Julie.’

'She  got  off the  train  at  Plymouth.  With  the  tall  dark  man.'

-THE END –

Learn English through story

Source: sarahbsd.com

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