Time shift

in which the narrative flits between flashback/present/flashforward in ways which could be described as chrono-illogical

He had stared, glum, hungry, lonely, miserable, hard-up, ashamed, filled with regret. His unseeing gaze did not see any thin pigs rootling through the mouldy, rotting pods, seeking any green bits from which to take nourishment.

But the feel of these lips is so welcome, as similar attention had been so many times before, but from such very different people and contrastingly motivated.

Neither did he notice the pig-farm owner, checking to see if he had stayed all night. Instead, he saw his wasted opportunity, the glittering of a spinning roulette wheel, the gleam in Georgette’s eyes, the resigned concern on his father’s face, the glint of moisture on Charlene’s lip as she savoured her champagne, the need in the faces of the beggars who were lining the streets, and the distant memory of the sparkle of early morning sunlight on the lake beyond Big Field on his father’s homestead.

Many years later he stood in his long-deceased father’s favourite spot on the farmstead rooftop, wrapped in his treasured coat, and described this season of his life as ‘reckless youth’ and himself as ‘having been a selfish fool’. But back at the start he’d been quick to seek his father’s money, very quick to take it and leave when the opportunity arose and even quicker to gather friends by a conspicuous display of prodigious wealth.

It was almost as generous as his father will soon demonstrate now he’s returned, laying on a fabulous spread of cooked meat, pastries, salads, vegetables, rice dishes, alcohol, fruit, puddings and trifles for the villagers, who will be invited to celebrate the boy’s return. ‘My son was lost, but is found; he was dead but is alive!’ the father will say if all goes according to plan, reflecting on the many days he had stood on his rooftop waiting, hoping, expecting, fearful… until this one day, while the boy is still a long way off, his son, who had encountered dancing girls, fancy restaurant dinners, casinos, famine, hunger and desertion by his new-found, soon-lost friends, stood in amazement as his father ran, undignified, to greet him.

His father will imminently order the servants to fetch a ring, a coat and shoes for his feet.

 ‘I am no longer worthy to be called your son,’ is what he planned to say, just after saying ‘Father, make me one of your hired men.’ He had come to his senses in the sty a few days previously (although he had been given the money some considerable time before), but is now being kissed, which is making his oft-rehearsed speech an irrelevance.