Are You Brave?

 RHYS BOWEN:  Yesterday we had a chat about danger. We write about it so easily. We put our heroines in awful situations, life or death situations. But that’s fiction. 

So now I wonder if we have ever been brave like our characters? Have I ever run toward danger, not flinched in the face of danger? I’ve certainly never wheeled my bicycle through occupied France. I’ve never smuggled food to a downed airman in Tuscany. And I’ve never been as brave as Lady Georgie or Molly Murphy who have faced knives, guns, being locked in dungeons or about to be thrown down an elevator shaft.

I suppose in our world we are not often called upon to be brave… except now when we decide whether to join a protest march!  I have asked myself whether I would intervene if I saw ICE grabbing a person on the street.  I have a lovely cleaning lady from El Salvador and a gardener from Mexico. Both are legal but that doesn’t seem to matter. So yes, I would fight for them. There is a number to call to alert the right people to a wrongful arrest. 

I'm sure I could have been brave to protect my kids, and now my grandkids. If I was hiding from Nazis and a soldier with a gun came in, I could probably have killed him to protect my family.  I say probably because I haven't been put to that test, thank God. But apart from small acts that required some guts: traveling alone across Europe when I was fourteen, leaving everything to move to Australia alone, I can’t think of an occasion when I swung on a rope to rescue a puppy from a river.

I was going to say that I'm not a risk taker. I'd never do rock climbing or deep see diving. But thinking it over I have taken risks: moving to a new life in Australia, coming with John to California. And I've taken risks with my writing. Just not the reckless sort of risks. No sky diving, thank you.

The only occasion I do remember with some pride that took guts was when I was fifteen. I was attending drama school in London. I rode the train up after school twice a week. It was dark and very foggy when I arrived back at Charing Cross around 7pm station only to find it shut. No explanation. Just barriers across the entrance. I went down and caught the Tube to London Bridge, station, which was also shut.  That’s when I learned there had been a horrible train crash on the line I would have taken. One train ran into the back of another in the fog, knocking down a bridge with a third train on it. Awful loss of life.

This was before cell phones but I did find a pay phone and managed to get through to my parents. The fog was far too thick for them to come and get me. I’ll try and take a bus, I said. Of course today I’d have checked into a hotel and told them my parents would pay in the morning, but I was fifteen. My brain didn’t work that way. So I waited at a bus stop with a growing crowd of people.  It became quite clear that the fog was too thick. No bus would come. So a group of us set off, walking in the right direction.  The fog was so thick that every time we came to a cross roads someone had to peer a few inches from a street sign to try and read it.

We walked on. People left when we reached their area. We came close to the site of the rail disaster. All we could hear through the fog was non-stop wail of ambulance sirens, fire engine bells. It was very frightening. One by one more people left.  I should point out that I lived fourteen miles outside London and none of this route was familiar to me.  Then finally I was on my own. I kept walking. The fog was still so thick that there were no vehicles on the road. No lighted stores. Nothing. And the area I was walking through now had fields on either side. The occasional street lights only gave a faint glow through the fog.

I finally got home at three in the morning.  My parents were frantic but had no way to contact me. So I guess if I survived that I can survive most things. But was I brave? I suppose the answer is I had no alternative, and this must be true for a lot of things we call bravery. A soldier finds himself behind enemy lines. He has to kill or be killed. It's not bravery, it's self preservation.

So I don't know if I'd ever be really brave. But I would try to rescue a puppy from a river!

How about you Reds and Reddies?

Stories of bravery to tell?