One of those little snippets that I like to get out of my head.
Algernon Beauxregard was a man who had grown up under the weight of his name and found himself flattened. A slight man, standing five foot six in his stockinged feet. His receding hair was combed neatly to one side and laid in place from dawn to dusk. As a child his parents had kindly shorten his name to Nonnie which, whilst bad was not, in his mind, as bad as Algernon itself or the other diminutive. A name that reminded him of frog spawn. There was nothing he could do about his surname. It frequently baffled him that there were so many vowels when a simple O would suffice and words failed him when he contemplated the random X flaunting itself unnecessarily in the middle.
His wife chose to go by Ven to the distress of her more romantic mother. Ven had spent a childhood despairing of a name more suited to a Hollywood film star than a Norfolk dumpling. Her mother had been beyond thrilled when little Heaven-sent met Algernon Beauxregard. Ven had nearly called the whole thing off when she discovered his surname, but it was too late. Their first date had been a triumph in as much as either party would use the word triumph, but in each other, they found a fellow sufferer but more importantly, an immediate and abiding love. Ven was a little shorter and a little wider than her husband and in all other ways matched him in being physically unremarkable. She kept her hair tied back in a bun and wore a slap of lipstick and a brush of mascara and felt that was enough.
It was a shame, therefore, that such a reticent couple should be the first on the scene when the 11:52 from Peterborough careered off its tracks and ploughed through the holding sheds and onto Little Brunswick Street. Ven would dearly loved to have left the area at great haste, but her cardigan had become entangled in a flung open carriage door and she was dragged along the pavement as the train came to a shuddering halt. She was alarmed to discover that not only was her cardigan ruined but the heels on the back of her new shoes were irreparably scuffed. This was nearly as distressing a sight as the trail of bodies spilling out along the stream from the back of the torn train.
Freeing herself, she looked around for Nonnie, catching his eye, she crossed herself and then the two of them limped towards the casualties and began to save what lives they could.