Midnight Delivery

Written in response to a cool image
I saw on Bushboy’s World.
Thanks for letting me use it, Brian!

The gas lamps of Ballarat’s main street had long since dimmed when young Ellis Keating eased the Steven Thomas & Co. cargo trike out of the laneway, its spoked wheels whispering across the damp cobblestones.

The wooden box was heavier than usual tonight. Not with bread or bolts of cloth or ironmongery but with pamphlets …. three hundred of them, freshly pressed, still smelling of ink and consequences. Votes for Women. The Time is Now.

Ellis had no particular interest in politics himself. He was seventeen, mostly interested in whether he could coax more speed from the penny-farthing his employer kept chained in the back shed. But Clementine Marsh had asked him …. Clementine Marsh, with her dark eyes and her fearless way of looking at constables …. and so here he was.

The trike handled beautifully, truth be told. Four wheels steady as a cart horse on the rutted road, the great wooden cargo box hiding its contraband perfectly behind the cheerful lettering of the firm’s name. Who would stop a delivery boy?

Nobody, as it turned out.

By three in the morning, pamphlets had been slipped under the doors of every draper’s shop, milliner, and dressmaker from Lydiard to Dana Streets. Ellis coasted back through the pre-dawn quiet, breathless and grinning.

Clementine was waiting at the laneway entrance. She pressed a sixpence into his palm.

He handed it back, grinning in his most charming way.

“Consider it a contribution …. to the cause!”

NAR© 2026

This is “Suffragette City” by David Bowie

Your dinner will be here soon

^{Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}