CHRISTMAS NIGHT AT SYLVIE’S by Caroline D’Arcy

Christmas 2020 didn’t go with much of a swing.  Like everyone else in the country, I celebrated it in my family bubble – husband and both sons plus the youngest one’s girlfriend, who was a bit sad and depressed because she couldn’t go home to Peterborough.  We did our best but it was a poor, shadowy phantasm of Christmases past and although we dutifully played games and pulled crackers, no one’s heart was really in it.  

As Mark and I sat with a last drink on Boxing Night after the boys and Eve had gone to bed, I had a sudden, vivid and almost hallucinatory sensory flashback.  Something must have set me off, and I think it was the smell of the port my husband had poured himself, the thick sweet bouquet from a small glass of crimson liquid cradled in his hand as he drank it in one and said, “Well, here’s to next year. Can’t bloody wait”.  He never drinks port, and I never usually buy it but in the space of one inhalation I went back 55 years to the old  family home, getting ready for the Christmas Night party at my aunty Sylvie’s when I was 10 years old.

Home for me, my sister and mum and dad was a ground floor three bed council flat on a new-ish estate in Swiss Cottage with a pocket hanky sized garden. Like everyone we knew, we had Christmas dinner at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, so we could watch the Queen’s Christmas message at 3.  It was always turkey, cooked by mum in the tiny kitchen in a gale of stuffing fumes and hectic red cheeks, and my sister and I took full advantage of the one-day-a-year special treats, little glass dishes of cubed cheddar cheese, sharp vinegary gherkins and a bowl of Twiglets.  The parents dozed over the Queen, we watched the circus, and all the time we were thinking about the party at Sylvie’s house.

Sylvie was Mum’s eldest sister, and she and her husband Harry and their son, my cousin Peter, lived in Ordnance Hill, St Johns Wood, a short walk from us. Today a NW8 postcode indicates wealth, probably great wealth, but in 1965 a lot of the Wood was populated by working class families like us living in social housing.  The Eyre Estate owned and rented out great chunks of property, including the house where my maternal grandparents brought up mum and her three siblings.   My Auntie Eve still lived there at number 47 with her husband and Sylvie and Harry rented number 43, next door but one. I’ve just had a look online – number 47 changed hands last year for over three and a half million quid, something that, if I could only summon Mum and her family back from the grave, would make them all screech with disbelieving laughter. 

There was a glass roofed scullery at the end of the long narrow hall (which was always called “the passage” and never “the hall”) that leaked in the rain and led to a door into the garden, at the end of which you’d find the outside loo.  Also off the scullery (we called it  “the glass house”) was the kitchen, a room so inadequate that if you described it as shocking you’d be giving it a compliment. Baths were taken in there. Upstairs was Harry and Sylvie’s bedroom, with a chamber pot under the bed, because neither of them would trek out into the garden for a loo visit in the night, and frankly, who could blame them? Luxurious it wasn’t. But every Christmas Night for all of my childhood and indeed for a quite a while afterwards, Sylvie and Harry welcomed a large assortment of friends, relatives and neighbours into their home for a party that pretty much defined my idea of what a good night out would be for the rest of my life.

Coats were left in the middle room, halfway up the passage, which was where Peter slept. They were piled high on his bed and all other surfaces. And hats. Loads of hats. All the men wore them and most of the women too. Drinks and plates of snacks and sandwiches were in the kitchen, and the main action happened in what an estate agent might call the front reception, but we called the parlour.  Guests started arriving at about 7pm.  I remember we walked over from Swiss Cottage, about a fifteen-minute journey, all bundled up in winter coats, Dad clutching a bottle of Dimple Scotch Whiskey, which when empty I hoped would be given to me to collect sixpences in, and Mum with a bottle of port.  Both of these went on the kitchen table along with the Watney’s Party Sevens, the rum, the vodka, the sherry and more Scotch.  No wine, because wine was for posh people.  Mum and Dad helped themselves to drinks – beer for Dad, a whiskey for mum – and my sister, who was nine years older than me, got a vodka and orange and then they all disappeared into the parlour, leaving me to have a look at the soft drinks and find them wanting.

I didn’t want a fizzy orange or a Coca Cola.  I’d been drinking those all day, and now, with the grown ups  elsewhere, I was thinking about treating myself to something more interesting.  Specifically, some port.  I’d seen the adults drinking this with lemonade, and so trying not to look round guiltily and draw attention to myself, I poured a glass.  It went a nice colour, and better than that, it tasted like pop.  I drank it down. Lovely.  I poured another and then went to join the party, hiccoughing only slightly.

In the parlour, lights were blazing from the ceiling fixture and the record player was on full blast. Fats Domino was doing “Blueberry Hill” and the room was full of swaying bodies and the smell of cigarette smoke. Party hats were slung round jowly chins with elastic straps, conical shiny things looking tiny on big bald heads, some with coils of crepe paper dangling from them. The Christmas tree – a small fake one – stood at a drunken angle with its fairy clinging on tight. Uncle Harry, in a three piece pinstripe suit and a fob watch, was wearing a fez and smoking a big cigar. He looked as if he was on the verge of doing his famous Winston Churchill impersonation.  I weaved over to the corner where my parents were, but was intercepted by my cousin Robert, who grabbed me by the arm and lunged in for a kiss. 

“Hallo, it’s the baby,” he roared.  All the cousins were much older than me because Mum was the youngest sibling and hadn’t had me until she was in her 30’s, so technically I was the baby of the family, it was true, but it irritated me beyond bearing to be reminded of this. “Shut up Robert,” I said and he laughed and ruffled my hair. “Oy, Auntie Peg, the baby’s in a bad mood!” And mum rolled her eyes, and drew me away to the safety of our corner where I took another big pull of my port and lemonade and started to feel very fine indeed.  “Blueberry Hill” finished and someone put  “From A Jack To A King” on and everyone knew the words.

“From loneliness to a wedding ring,” crooned a man they all called Banana Charlie, “I played an Ace and I won a Queen….”

“….And walked away with your heart”, bawled someone else.  

“Aye aye!”, shouted Jack The Gas, “Banana Charlie’s after your wife,’Arry!”

“And he’s welcome,” Harry said, hitching up his fez and taking a puff on his cigar. “D’you hear that Sylv?”

“Gertcha!” said my Auntie Sylvie, and the music swelled again and the crowded room squeezed itself round a quarter turn. Mum and Dad had a dance together and Peter came in with a plate of ham sandwiches on soft damp bridge rolls, along with a bowl of cheesy footballs.  He knuckled my head as he went past and said, “Still taking the ugly tablets, I see” then moved on before I could think of a reply, because for some reason my thought processes were quite fuzzy. Outside in the tiny front garden I could see Dave Chennary, a retired bank robber, and his wife Kath having a row.  My port and lemonade was nearly gone, so I shouldered my way through to the passage and past a knot of people blowing smoke rings, into the glass house and then to the kitchen.  Might as well make it a large one, since I was feeling delightfully woozy by now, but most unfortunately my sister, coming in for a vodka orange refill, had spotted me.

“Is that PORT? I’m telling Mum! You can’t have that, you’re a baby!”

“It’s Tizer.”

“It flaming isn’t! Caroline, seriously, don’t drink that.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“Oh make yourself ill then, I don’t care.” And off she went down the passage as another group of guests came in on a gust of cold air.  In the parlour Harry had embarked on the Winston Churchill, and someone had turned the record player off so as I tottered back I could clearly hear him declaiming, “We shall fight them on the beaches…” which was pretty much the extent of the act.  He actually did look a little bit like Churchill, being portly and bald, and fond of a cigar, and it was his party piece at his own party, so everyone indulged him. The record player started up again, Stupid Cupid by Connie Francis. Somewhere the Beatles were huge and the summer of love was just around the corner, but here the music of the 1950’s held sway, a pile of big, fragile 78’s waiting their turn.  There was a fug of smoke hanging just below the ceiling, which was stained yellow-ish from years of nicotine, and underneath it the dancers, squashed together like a rush hour tube carriage, gyrated through the haze. I began to feel a bit ill.

“Them strides a bit tight, Colin, or what?”  This was Jim Proudfoot, one of the members of Dad’s darts team and he was talking to Colin Burnett who’d just arrived with his new girlfriend on his arm. Colin gazed down at his trousers in an affronted sort of way and said: “No they ain’t.”

“Yes they are, because I can detect that you’re so bleedin’ bandy you couldn’t stop a pig in a passage.”

And Colin, who was actually very bandy, roared with laughter and steered his girlfriend towards the kitchen to get a drink.  My mum came up the passage and gave me the maternal eye. She was a few whiskeys down herself, but she could spot a squiffy 10-year old when she saw one.

“Time we made a move I think,” she said and my Dad appeared out of the middle room with the coats. And behind my Dad, coming in the front door and respectfully wiping their boots on the mat were two enormous policemen.

“Could I have a word with the householder, please? We’ve had a complaint about the noise,” said one, adding politely, “Merry Christmas.” 

Those two coppers became family friends, and they appeared, in civvies, at most of the parties afterwards. Harry and Sylv never found out who made the complaint though.  On the walk home I stopped to be sick, and my sister grassed me up to the parents. I never from that day to this could drink port again, which is why I never buy it, so its presence at Christmas 2020 was a bit of a mystery. They say that music and smells are the two things that can transport you back in time and they – whoever they are – are right about that.  When Sylvie got ill and the parties stopped, no one took up the slack.  Christmas Night reverted to its old dull stodgy full up self.  And now Harry, Sylvie and Peter and pretty nearly all the guests are long gone, except for me and my sister. But if I get a whiff of port, or cigar smoke, or if Fats Domino comes on the radio, I’m back there in an instant and I’m sure deep in my heart that there’re all having one cracker of a knees up in the afterlife.

 

Caroline is in her mid sixties and retired from a career as a film publicist, which sounds glamorous but wasn’t really, although it had its moments. She has been writing short stories and creative non-fiction to keep herself sane during lockdown.

 

Onrabull by Aisha Phoenix

I sat chewing my fingernails at the back of the room while Courage scrawled on the chalkboard. Give dem dignity with an onrabull death. Her letters were large and unwieldy. Despite her diminutive stature and dimpled cheeks, when it came to fighting, she was the best there was, so her crimes against spelling could be forgiven.

In lime green flares and a marigold shirt that set off her conker-brown skin, she waved her arms as she described the kind of beasts into which our enemy could transform, and the best place to strike each one. If, in battle, we were faced with a mighty slate dragon, we were to gore it in the throat beneath its ear. Crocodiles and gators, straight through the eye. The battle, our ‘gift’ for turning sixteen, was a fight to the death between us and them at the burnt-out hospital that separates our land from theirs. The reward for victors was passage into adulthood. We couldn’t afford to lose. 

When Courage told us about the Minotaur, with the body of a man and head of a bull, I drifted into imagining an Onra Bull. It would be a wondrous creature as tall as two women and as wide as four with three ebony horns, sharp like shards of glass. It would stare out of dull, grey eyes, but if it laid its amber eye on you, you’d know you’d been judged and come up wanting. Your only option would be to run. The Onra Bull would paw the earth, head bowed low, blowing steam from its flared nostrils, then charge, its muscles rippling and the ground shaking as it galloped towards

“Strength’s Daughter, you’re not daydreaming in my class again!” Courage patted her afro and glared at me.

I hung my head and put out my hands, the backs resting on the table. I bit into my lip, fighting the urge to let my fingers retreat into my palms as the click of her heels grew louder.

I heard the swish of the cane before it stung my hands over and over again. When she was done, she made me crouch on a chair in the window, so anyone walking by would know that I was being punished. It wasn’t long until I had terrible cramp and a grimace to match. The spectacle attracted passers-by; even children pointed and laughed. I wished I had an Onra Bull to defend me.


There was no one at home when I got back from my classes. Strength, my mother, was still at the salon, my father passed when I was a baby, and Grandma’s faded orange armchair had sat empty for a while. I curled up on the sofa, pulled the blanket over myself and counted my breaths to soothe myself, the way Grandma had taught me. I lost count somewhere around 100 and closed my eyes. 

The living room became the derelict hospital where the battles take place. My mother held up my arm and announced, “Ruthless was victorious,” and a crowd of women of different shapes and sizes, all with Courage’s face, clapped and cheered. I was drenched in blood that wasn’t mine. On the battle ground behind me lay the limp carcass of a boy. Suddenly, my father rode in on a giant Onra Bull. He clutched its fur as it bucked like a bronco. It reared its head back, then thrust it down so fast that my father flew over the top and smacked the ground. The Onra Bull snorted, fixed me with its amber eye, and was readying itself to strike me when I woke to Mum kissing me on my forehead. 

“Let me see your hands,” she said.

I didn’t ask how she knew. Around here, news spreads fast.

She winced when she saw them. Blew kisses at each palm. I looked down at her shiny lace-up platforms, the colour of cinnamon bark, and wondered whether I would live long enough to get a pair of my own and who I would have to kill to be deemed ‘worthy’ of them. I shuddered at the image of the bloodied boy from my dream and the Onra Bull’s amber eyes.

My mother sat down beside me and sighed. “Two weeks that’s all the time you have until the battle for your life.” She couldn’t look at me. “You understand what that means?”

I nodded. 

“Give the enemy an honourable death.” She breathed in hard. “But if you can’t, let them kill you. That’s your only choice.”

My shoulders rose up and I squeezed my eyes shut.

 

In the morning, Wisdom’s Son came to knock for me. He was early and I was late, as always. As we picked our way through plastic bags oozing with filth and the dog mess that fouled our streets, I asked, “Do you think there’s honour in being killed by them?” 

“Not as much as if we were to give them an honourable death. But it’s better than the shame of…”

He couldn’t bring himself to utter the word: fleeing.

Before we even knew how to write we’d learnt that we were warriors and brave, even in the face of death. We knew we could never be cowards and bring shame on our families, our friends, our community. But as I got older, Grandma said some things that made me question what I’d been taught about us, them, and the battle. She’d promised to tell me more when I turned sixteen, but her heart had other ideas.

 

Our first class of the day was on the twelfth floor of the draughty high-rise our school shares with forgotten families, cockroaches and rodents. The lifts had been out for as long as I could remember, and the stairwell reeked of urine. I covered my face with my scarf as we climbed the relentless stairs. When we saw a furry brown rat with its long, smooth tail, Wisdom’s Son jumped behind me and clung onto my arm. Rats are among the many things he fears. I wiped the sheen off my brow as we caught our breath and waited to be admitted into the room. 

The good desks had already been taken, so we were left with the wobbly ones by the shattered windowpanes that let cold air blow down our necks. I pulled my scarf tighter around me. 

Bravery was at the front, surveying the room in washed out denim dungarees. She stood next to the blackboard on which she’d written ‘The Battle’ in large, neat, capitals. “When you see the enemy, you will feel emotion that’s so intense it will electrify you and set off your transformation.” She clapped her hands together loudly. “No one can tell you what creature you’ll become on the day.” She tossed her head so that the gold, silver and brown beads in her hair knocked together. “Maybe you’ll grow giant and squash the enemy beneath your feet. Perhaps you’ll shrink down to the size of a spider and strike with deadly venom.” She put her thumb and forefinger close together to indicate the size of a small insect. Her nails were long: red and green. “You could grow fangs and claws, spout flames, throw darts from your back like a porcupine. Whatever you become, it will be a reflection of who you truly are. And if you win, you’ll earn yourself a warrior name…Not everyone will win.” She looked at each of us. “But no one can flee.”

There was a collective shudder around the room.

“Why do we fight them?” Bravery said.

Wisdom’s Son stood; his shoulders rounded a little. 

“Because they’re the enemy.”

“Yes, but why?” Bravery pointed at Courage’s Daughter, who’d thrust her hand in the air.

“Because they want to destroy us, because of who we are.” Courage’s Daughter stood, her voice strong and confident. “Because they see us as different, less than.”

“Why?” Bravery addressed Courage’s Daughter again. “Because they’re ignorant.”

There were titters around the room and Bravery glowered at us. “Continue.”

“Because we were brought here against our will way back when. They say this land is theirs and they want rid of us.”

I sat on my hands to try and stop my fingers going numb and looked at the words of hatred about them that had been gouged into my desk.

“Strength’s Daughter, what do we think of them?”

I stared at the white chalk markings on the blackboard until they ceased to resemble words. I should have been responding to Bravery, but instead I thought back to the day I’d dared Courage’s Daughter to go across the disused railway tracks to where they lived. She’d stared me in the eye, twirled a plait around her middle finger, and said defiantly, “I’ll go, if you will.”

I gritted my teeth as we climbed the steep hill that led up to the tracks and ran through the waist-high nettles; each refusing to complain about the stings on our hands and legs. Ahead of us was a high, barbed wire-topped brick wall and to the right, the burnt-out hospital; our only route to the other side.

“We don’t have to do this,” Courage’s Daughter said. 

I closed my eyes, thought about what Grandma had said, then clenched my fists and strode towards the building. Courage’s Daughter rushed to catch up. We ran through the emergency department and forced open the doors to the atrium, where our battles would take place. It was a blackened, twisted mess, with cables hanging down from the ceiling, holes knocked into the walls and debris everywhere, except for a path leading to and from the wide, but shallow blood-stained crater that formed the battleground. We hurried through and out the other side.

I’d imagined where they lived thousands of times: their large houses with gleaming glazed windows, fragrant flower gardens and fridges filled with food; the wide, clean streets with no rubbish or dog mess in sight; the big, flashy cars. When we emerged into the sunlight and slid down the hill, we were there; only the houses, clean streets and cars were not. Before us were tower blocks with broken windows like missing teeth, just as in our blocks, the smell of sewage filled our noses and the biggest rats I’d ever seen ran along a river consisting of rotting God-knows-what. A skinny, little boy in a filthy t-shirt and shorts asked if we had any food. He had large, pleading eyes and streaks of dirt across his face. Courage and I glanced at each other and ran back the way we’d come. 

 

 I blinked the blackboard into focus. Bravery was staring at me, her arms folded. Slowly, I stood up, cleared my throat. “We think…We think they’re…” The Onra Bull snorted loudly. I couldn’t bring myself to say what she wanted to hear. All I could think of was that small, hungry boy.

“Put out your hands,” she said. The Onra Bull turned its amber eye to her.

I closed my eyes and waited for the sting of her cane.

“You should have been able to answer like that.” She clicked her fingers.

Courage’s Daughter was waving her arm in the air again and leaning forward in her seat.

“Yes,” Bravery said, turning to her.

She stood up. “They’re dead to us.” She glanced down at me, then continued. “Their ignorance, hatred and violence mean they don’t deserve to live.” The Onra Bull tensed its muscles and horned the ground. 

“Tell us about their hatred.”

“Since we came here all those generations ago, they’ve despised us. They hate that we were ‘weak’ enough to be forced to come but are too strong to be exiled.” “Well done.” Bravery turned to me. “You bring shame to your father’s memory.” The Onra Bull started to bellow. 

I could see the little boy with large eyes sunken into his dirty face. There had been hope, not hatred, when he had asked if we had any food. 

“What happened?” Wisdom’s Son whispered. 

I shrugged. “I have a headache.”

 

Mum baked me a sponge cake for my birthday, even though she couldn’t eat any. I blew out my candles and wished the Battle would be cancelled even though I knew that would never happen. It felt strange without Grandma. 

“Your father would have loved to be here, to see you turn into a woman,” Mum said, her eyes misty.

I nodded. 

“But they had to take him from us,” she said.

“They didn’t have to,” I said.

“I didn’t mean…No, they didn’t have to, and yet they did.”

I was only a baby at the time, but I knew the story. Back then there were monthly battles at the burnt-out hospital. My father was fearless and would always volunteer to fight. In his last battle he was delayed entering the atrium, trying to comfort the wife of his best friend who’d just been killed. His opponent had already turned into a beast when he stepped onto the battleground, but rather than wait for my father to transform, he lunged at my father, floored him and crushed his skull. Despite the honour with which my father always fought, he was denied an honourable death.

Tears welled in my mother’s eyes. “They’re wicked, scheming beasts. Just think, if not for them, your grandfather might have been here today too.”

I hugged my mother. When she was little she was walking home with my grandfather when a group of them seized him and started yelling that he didn’t belong there. Before her eyes they transformed into beasts and tore him apart like dogs on a rag doll. They left him strewn about the street. At first our elders managed to calm things with promises of security and patrols, but it happened again and again, until the anger was insuppressible. That’s when the first of us felt that surge of electricity that caused them to transform. It was tit for tat after that. They killed us, we killed them. No one was safe. After years of killings, families on both sides had had enough. They demanded a solution to the daily violence and that’s how the coming-of-age battles came to be.

“Do you think Granddad would have wanted me to fight in the Battle?” I said.

“If he was still here there’d be no need for the Battle,” Mum said.

“According to Grandma, he always said violence wasn’t the answer,” I said.

“And look where that got him? Come, eat your cake.”

I tried to eat it, but it was cloying, so I said I was full. Mum snatched up the cake and took it to the kitchen. I heard her clattering about in there and banging cupboard doors, so I shut myself in our room and tried to draw the Onra Bull.

 

On the day of the Battle my mother told me to strip and wrapped me in nothing more than our family’s patterned cloth; aqua, navy, and white to represent the sea and skies for my mother’s strength and father’s fearlessness. She wrapped another length of the heavy fabric around her shoulders. All of us who’d turned sixteen since the last battle made a procession through the streets to our battleground, our families, neighbours and friends following behind. We gathered in what used to be the emergency department, they congregated in the former children’s wing. As I stood there shivering, I watched Courage’s daughter force her way through the buckled emergency department doors into the atrium, wrapped in a heavy red, fabric patterned with alternating rows of orange and golden-yellow ‘v’s, representing flames of courage. I had no idea whether I’d ever see her again. 

I’d paced up and down more than fifty times when she limped back into the room, cut and bleeding. She staggered a few steps and then collapsed against her mother, who held her daughter’s arm up in the air and announced, “Fierce was victorious.” The rest of us awaiting our trials clapped and cheered for Fierce. I wondered what beast she’d turned into. I felt, somehow, that she must have become a monstrous cat with razor claws and a killer jaw. My legs were fading so I leant against the wall. 

When it was the turn of Wisdom’s Son, I reached out and touched the blossom tree prints on the fabric wrapped around his slight form. “Be brave,” I said. I thought of the way he jumped at the sight of rodents and hoped he’d be turned into something mighty to give him a fighting chance. It felt like there was a stone in my throat.

A few of the others were peering through holes in the double doors where glass used to be. I went to join them. Wisdom’s Son was mid-transformation. Fur covered half of his body, his feet became hooves and two small, curled horns sprouted from his head. Instead of a ferocious beast, he was becoming a faun – a symbol of peace and fertility. I rubbed at my eyes, hard. He’d just finished changing when his opponent turned into a wolf with a snow-coloured coat. Wisdom’s Son just cowered on the spot. I wanted to bang on the door and scream ‘fight or flee,’ but I just bit into my lip and watched as the beast leapt into the air, landed on Wisdom’s son’s back and ripped his neck open with a clap of its jaws. I staggered back and started panting as the room swirled around me. I couldn’t see for tears.

“Snap out of it. He died an onrabull death,” Courage said.

I wiped my eyes on my mother’s cloth. His death wasn’t honourable, it was nonsensical. It meant nothing. 

“It’s your turn, my only one,” my mother said. She guided me to the doors and my classmates stood back so she could push them open and propel me into the hospital’s charred atrium. “Give him an honourable death and come back to me,” she said, her voice cracking. 

Quietly, Wisdom said, “Think of my son.”.

In the centre of the atrium his body lay in a pool of blood next to the torso of one of them. I ran, gathered up his family’s cloth and covered him in it. Their families and friends and ours stared down from the balcony on the level above, as if into a great amphitheatre.

My opponent was a skinny boy wrapped in a grey blanket. It looked like his legs were shaking. I caught his eye and the look he gave me was filled with terror. As I held his gaze, I remembered what they’d done to my father, and grandfather, but sadness, not rage, surged inside me. It coursed through my body until it felt like I was being electrocuted. This was what Bravery meant by electrifying emotion. The room swirled and I was sure I was going to fall. Before I could hit the ground, I was filled with a heat that emanated from my core. I felt strength like I’d never known and smelt the scent of burning fabric. I tried to move and noticed that instead of arms I had wings the colour of autumn leaves with sunlight streaming through. I was on fire, my family cloth was ablaze. 

I heard a roar and saw a giant polar bear rising up before me. It pawed at the air, its hungry mouth wide, revealing sharp, pointy teeth. 

“Kill him, kill him,” chanted the crowds of us lining the hospital balcony.

Somewhere behind me Courage yelled, “Give him an onrabull death.”

The polar bear circled me, unsure how to negotiate my flames. I flew up into the air and hovered above the great beast. Bright embers fell like fireworks, which made his huge body flinch.

“Kill him, kill him,” my people shouted.

As I flapped my wings, flames encircled me and the polar bear retreated to escape the heat. 

“Kill him, kill him,” my people roared, stamping their feet.

I hovered where I was. I knew if I swooped down, I would kill him, but in my mind I saw the Onra Bull’s amber eye judging me. I shook my head, which caused more embers to rain down and he backed away. Behind the ferocious exterior I saw the skinny boy in the grey blanket. He’d reminded me of the hungry child who’d asked Fierce and me for food. Like Wisdom’s Son, he was just a boy. I didn’t want to kill him, but I couldn’t let myself be killed like my father and grandfather. The Onra Bull lowered its head, but kept its amber eye on me. It began to paw the earth.

The crowds on both sides worked themselves into a frenzy of shrieking and stamping. Ignoring the din and commotion I landed opposite the polar bear. My flames grew wilder as they began to devour the ground around me and a thick smoke began to spread. The polar bear backed away from the smoke and intense heat and I stood there watching him, the atrium burning around me. 

The screams began a few moments later as crowds of them and us fell over each other as they surged towards the exit. I kept my eye on the polar bear, who continued to retreat, then turned and fled. Something in the pit of my stomach told me I couldn’t follow him. I flew up and set the walls and ceiling alight and then I landed again and watched as everything around me was engulfed in flames. The Onra Bull appeared through the smoke, stared at me with its dull grey eyes and seemed to nod, then it turned and walked away. As the ceiling began to collapse I was certain of one thing, the hospital would never again be used as a battleground.

 

Aisha Phoenix is completing a speculative novel. Her collection, Bat Monkey and Other Stories, was shortlisted for the SI Leeds Literary Prize and she has been longlisted for the Guardian/4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Flash Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared, or is appearing, in: Inkandescent’s MAINSTREAM, Peepal Tree Press’s Filigree, the National Flash Fiction Day anthology, the Bath Flash Fiction anthology, Strange Horizons and Litro USA Online.

The Last of the Mohicans by John D Rutter

We knew they would come; it was only a matter of when, so we responded quickly to the alarm. I took my position at the upstairs double-glazed window – the guest bedroom at the front of the house affords a panoramic view to the west. That was one of the selling points when we bought the house five years ago, the views. Not that we’ve seen any equity growth since the troubles started.  Last year, prices fell by six percent in Galway – because of the Mohicans. 

It was early, but everyone was at their jobs. There was a lot of shouting. I wished we had spent more time putting away ornaments and pictures. With six of us I was confident we’d have enough fire power. I checked both rifles; fully loaded. I was still angry at how much we had been charged for them. The remote cameras on the gate posts aren’t very reliable, owing to the weak internet connection (it’s a semi-rural address, so the fibre broadband hasn’t reached us yet). They would usually smash them anyway. 

Danny had the machine gun downstairs. I had doubts at first about giving him the responsibility, but he does a lot of sport at university and his reactions and strength far outweigh mine. His tuition fees are a constant headache, especially with what’s going on with property prices. Susan, his girlfriend, was with him. She’s been over here for two years. Her parents keep telling her to go home to Dublin where there’s no trouble, (her father’s a barrister – you need to be, the price of houses) but she’s enjoying NUI and wants to stay with Danny. She would help protect the downstairs windows. She is also sound on communication – her degree is in Media Studies – so she would inform the authorities.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the dawn light, but I could see movement in the trees. The house is in an excellent defensive position, being on an elevated plot. The challenge is the extent of the perimeter. It must be eighty yards, and the fence is inadequate in places. That’s another investment for next year. My job was to cover the border on both sides in front of the house and the gate, which could easily be opened if one of them got inside, but offered an excellent target, being directly ahead of me. The BMW was in an exposed position on the drive. If they damage that, I thought, they deserve everything they get! It’s impossible to get an exact colour match for the metallic paint.

My other responsibility was to listen for the roof. If they got inside, we were in trouble. Maureen had two pistols in our bedroom at the back. Of all of us, Maureen is the clearest thinker. ‘If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us,’ she says. She is calm about property prices. ‘The secret is time, not timing.’ 

The one blind spot is the corner of the master bedroom. That’s where my sister comes in. Nuala couldn’t stay alone after she’d left that English eejit, and we had the space. My other sister and her family are in Cork, which hasn’t been under attack as much. Prices are growing steadily down there. With Nuala’s faith I doubted her ability to plant a bullet right between someone’s eyes, but like Maureen she is calm and intelligent and, armed with the shotgun, would soon dispatch any invaders that get into the roof space. I had a furious argument with Hooper Dolan about whether that kind of damage is covered on the insurance. Nuala also covered the back door. In hindsight, Maureen was right – we should have invested in security windows before the costs went crazy.

That leaves Brendan. He was always a friendly neighbour, if a bit of a busybody, and an extra pair of hands is useful. He had the advantage of having seen combat in the battle of the Spanish Arch back when there were hundreds of Mohicans. He claimed to have killed three himself, one face to face, but he might have been exaggerating. He was planning to go home after the last few have been rooted out and things go back to normal. His job was to patrol downstairs and watch the front door. The semi-automatic rifle is ideal for that task.

Brendan marshalled everyone when the alarm went off. There are trip wires thanks to Danny’s electrical engineering skills, but a good old-fashioned look-out is still the best defence, and the fact that they refuse to attack at night helped. He strode round the house yelling ‘Attack, Attack!’ We had all mobilised within about thirty seconds.

Six guns, six alert, focused adults. By now, Susan would have phoned the Gardaí and posted on social media, so the vigilantes knew where we were. The official response time is ten minutes, but if there is another attack elsewhere, we might need to hold out for longer. Often vigilante groups and neighbours arrive first. When Finbar Boyle’s bungalow next door was attacked at Easter, we armed ourselves and marched onto his front lawn. They scattered. Finbar and his two sons are tough old birds. They were lining up at their dormer window to lend extra firepower. They won’t come outside.

The shooting began at 6.30am, first light. I jumped when I heard the first shots from downstairs. Brendan and Danny were both shouting. Several Mohicans came swarming across the front lawn. From where my rifle was resting on the sill of the half-open window, it was an easy shot. Pop! One of them yelped and span. I shot him again as he lay wriggling. A second was heading across the lawn to try and get around the back. Two shots hit him simultaneously, one of them mine. I aimed for his head but hit him in the back. Someone downstairs shot his left thigh. He turned defiantly and got a third bullet in his belly.

Maureen and Nuala were busy at the back, too. There was one in the sycamore next to the garage, whooping and waving. His decorated face was about twenty feet away when I shot him in the eye. He fell to the ground, and as we had practiced, I gave him another for good measure. Crimson seeped out of his shapeless face. That’s going to take ages to get out of the granite flags. We only had the patio laid last year – less maintenance than decking. It would have been savage jet-washing a wooden surface.

Now, they were coming thick and fast. Danny was waiting in the dining room and let loose with the machine gun through the open window. It was worth every penny. They were torn to pieces. A group of four disintegrated in front of him. Bold lad, Danny!

I heard scuffling on the roof. I should have someone cut back those silver birches. These crafty beggars could easily remove a few tiles, and once inside, could lift the floorboards and drop into any room. I’m glad we decided against putting a Velux roof light in. You never get the value back. I yelled ‘Roof!’ Nuala appeared immediately in the doorway. Nuala followed the footsteps and calmly fired two shots through the ceiling. There was a high-pitched scream – she had caught one. The plaster went everywhere. That won’t do the carpet any good – it’s real Axminster. The insurance companies were clear; they won’t pay for damage resulting from defending property, which I think is quite unjust. The premiums have gone through the roof. 

My biggest fear was coming face-to-face with one. Okay, I’d have a pistol, and he would have a tomahawk, but it’s that moment when you see the whites of their eyes, they seem fearless. It’s a good job they refuse to use guns like the Mohawks, but these are completely different to Mohawks; everyone knows that. 

Nuala was patrolling the bedrooms listening for noise. I shouted down to find out how things were downstairs.

‘Got ’em all, I think.’ Danny shouted coolly. 

There was a volley from next door; Finbar made a couple of holes in the timber of the gate, and I was about to complain about damage (oak is so dear these days) when I saw the distinctive hair of one peep over. I picked him off easily enough, right through the skull. They won’t like that – they are superstitious creatures. By now I was wondering where the Gardaí were.

My careful aim soon stopped one more. I was quite pleased with my shooting. We had practised with hand-drawn targets. My nephews had a giggle drawing Mohican heads. They would take their time with the hair and war paint, but the faces always had goofy teeth or crossed eyes, and they exaggerated the noses. They’re becoming good shots with the air rifles I bought them last Christmas. Teach them young, I say.

I shouted to Maureen. 

‘Hit two,’ she shouted. ‘Can’t see any more.’ Nothing gets her flustered.

Normally they come in hunting parties of twenty or thirty. There are only a couple of hundred left in County Galway, so tonight’s success would be significant. By my count, we had killed a dozen.

They like a river, and Galway has been a regular haunt since the troubles started. ‘People of the flowing waters’ that’s what their name means; muh-heka-neew. There’s none flows faster than the Corrib. There was an interesting article in the Tribune. At one time there was a major encampment only a couple of miles upstream from here. They were so brazen. When they took over Menlo castle last year, you could see them across the river from the university. It took a full-blown military engagement to oust them; even then the braves almost all escaped.

Often, they send an initial attack to gauge resistance then follow up with a main assault. Brendan was moving from room to room shouting instructions about reloading. Susan appeared at the bedroom door. She was giving details on her iPhone. Surely the Army would mobilise soon. 

‘Apparently, there’s been a raid on the new flats by the docks,’ she said. ‘They got in and killed an elderly couple.’

‘Was it the same tribe?’

‘They think so. Happened about an hour ago.’ 

‘What about us?’ 

‘Lower priority, it’s only the one house. The woman said they’d send a unit as soon as they can.’

‘Marvellous! Looks like we’re on our own.’ 

The phone chirped; Finbar.

‘Are you coming round?’ I asked.

‘We’re grand here, if it’s all the same. Letting you know that was a first wave. Noel Fitzmaurice on O’Flaherty’s farm reckons he saw more than thirty.’

‘Did you hear about the docks?’

‘Aye, it’s on the telly. That should get the vigilantes out.’

The worst part was the pause. I had only been involved in one battle before. When I say involved, I was only a witness. We were in an all-inclusive five-star resort in Lisbon last summer. They suddenly started working their way up the path beside the cascading pools, attacking anyone they could reach. Fair play, the hotel staff were fearless. They came swarming out, armed to the teeth, and waded in. The Mohicans quickly dispersed, but not before half a dozen had been mown down. I wondered what we would do if they reached the restaurant. Were we meant to defend ourselves with cutlery? A couple of German tourists had their own pistols, and there were armed security guards at the front. Only fair, considering what we paid for the resort. They collected the bodies into a heap while we ate dessert. Back then, there were tribes popping up all over Europe. 

If they were going to come again today, they wouldn’t have the element of surprise. They would work out our positions and look for a weak spot. Support would get here unless they came immediately. I’m glad their superstitions prevented a night attack. It’s hard enough hitting a moving target.

I thought about disposing of the bodies. At first people let them collect their dead, but when it became more frequent, it was accepted that they could be thrown into the river. The Corrib flows so quickly it carries them out to sea. A pile of moccasins was left on the riverbank.

Whatever happens, it can’t carry on much longer. If they keep attacking this recklessly, there will be none left. And there are always recriminations. It’s hard to imagine what goes on in their minds – if they have minds at all. 

Suddenly there was more shooting. Next door! I dashed to the back bedroom. Maureen was aiming out of the window. They were clambering all over the back of Finbar’s bungalow.

‘Are we going to go and help?’ she asked.

‘Not if we can avoid it,’ I said. You don’t want to go hand to hand with these barbarians.

‘They’ve been helping us,’ she said.

‘Yes, but only from inside.’

She aimed and fired, missed. The bullet took a bite out of Finbar’s render.

‘I could take Danny and Brendan out back and come up on them from behind, I suppose.’

Danny had had the same idea and came bursting in.

‘They’re not going to be able to hold them off. We’ve got to help!’

He shows no fear, that boy.

‘Okay, you, me and Brendan,’ I said. ‘Stick close together.’

Right on cue, Brendan arrived and repeated what we’d already agreed. My heart pounded as I tied the laces on my gardening boots. I’d never actually been face to face with one before.

Danny had the machine gun poised. It’s an Uzi or something. I didn’t get involved in specifications. I do know it cost two thousand Euros; we had to postpone getting a conservatory. The Uzi has 32 rounds which allows several short bursts. I took a pistol off Maureen. Brendan took the shotgun and gave Nuala his rifle.

Susan opened the back door for us and pointed her rifle out as cover while we all rushed out. As we turned the corner, to my horror I saw the whole tribe swarming towards the back of next door, dozens of them! They weren’t even attempting to be quiet.

Before I could think about going back inside, Brendan was howling and firing, a bit carried away. 

‘Yippe-ki-yay, motherfuckers!’ he yelled and let loose with both barrels; a whole bunch of them seemed to fall back. It makes a hell of a noise, that shotgun. Danny calmly stepped forward and let a few short bursts go, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. They were collapsing in a pile. I picked off a couple, one with a raised arm about to charge forward. 

It was an uneven battle on Finbar’s back wall. Three guns were firing constantly out of the bathroom window above and Mohicans were dropping to the floor. A couple were hammering at the patio doors beneath, but the Pilkington glass was holding out against the axes. Danny showed the foresight to get alongside before letting rip so that he didn’t shoot the glass. They make an awful yelp when they are hit. 

That’s when we took our one loss of the battle. Brendan was reloading, when one was suddenly upon him. He smashed into Brendan’s head three times with his tomahawk before he was shot from above. Two more ran towards Brendan’s wriggling body, and we all fired at once. They crumpled on top of him. Too late for poor old Brendan. By now the numbers were under control. To my delight, Maureen picked one-off halfway up the wall, and the rest turned and fled. 

Right on cue, the vigilantes appeared from the footpath; a group of five, well-armed, all wearing wide-brimmed hats. They mopped up five or six that had survived the raid. When we were shifting the Mohicans’ bodies afterwards, I noticed that their moccasins had been decorated with flowers. I wondered why they would do that. A couple of vigilantes went to check on Brendan, but it was obvious he was gone. He had been brave, but foolhardy. Perhaps it was because he was alone that he was so fearless. He lost his wife to cancer the year after we moved in. I promised myself there and then I’d make sure he had a proper Christian burial. 

Sirens sounded soon after that, and there were military and Gardaí everywhere. They’d made a hames of Finbar’s garden; it wasn’t going to be helped by dozens of people trampling all over it. We’d all join in relaying the lawn. We have a real sense of community round here. I’m afraid his roses are ruined for this year.

The leader of the vigilantes, who was wearing a Clint Eastwood style poncho, wanted a debrief. I invited everyone back for drinks even though it was breakfast time; it’s only polite. I told the leader, who called himself Earp, that he couldn’t bring his cheroot inside. The usual pattern is that everyone would congregate to discuss what had happened, and that would disintegrate into a serious drinking and boasting session. With all those muddy feet it’s a good job we had the hall tiled. Maureen was keen on that Karndean wooden flooring. Thankfully, I got my way for once! She took charge of drinks; it was a good opportunity to test out the new coffee machine. Nuala led everyone in a short prayer.

There will be an enormous clean-up project; the gate, the lawn and the patio for starters, and they’ve trampled all over my dahlias. That blasted ceiling will need re-plastering. At least they didn’t damage the BMW. Property prices aren’t going to recover anytime soon. Hopefully, this will be the last of the Mohicans, and we can all get on with our lives in peace.

The last event of the morning was when Susan drew everyone’s attention to a news story on RTE. Apparently, there has been an outbreak of Sioux in Sligo.

 

John D. Rutter completed an MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and a PhD at Edge Hill University where he has taught part-time for several years. His stories have been published as chapbooks by Nightjar Press and In Short Publishing, in anthologies by Unthank Books Quinn Publication, in the Lancashire Post, and online by Holland Park Press, 1,000 Word Story, The Short Story and Synaesthesia Magazine. His first novel, Approval, will be published in 2021 by Saraband Books.

FOXGLOVES by Lyndsay Wheble

Is drinking your first alcoholic drink in two years the traditional way to celebrate your daughter’s first birthday, I wondered. My parents were encouraging me to order from the wine list, so that they could too.

I looked up at the waitress, and shrugged, ‘An Aperol Spritz?’

She wrote down my order and looked to my husband, who was bouncing our daughter on his knee.

‘A lemonade, please, I’m driving,’ he said. ‘And can we get some milk for our daughter?’

The waitress pointed out the free drinks on the children’s menu and he said something self-deprecating. My parents ordered a white wine spritzer and a pint of bitter, as they always did. As if their drinks order would have anything to do with me. 

‘Uh oh, nappy time,’ my husband said. I passed him the change bag. Better-natured than me, and less weary of baby admin, he accepted it and set off with her across the blond laminate. The floor was tutti-frutti with dropped breadsticks and colouring pencils — it was Saturday lunchtime, so child-free diners were in the minority. Our drinks arrived and I ordered his food for him. I was fed up with worrying about my postpartum figure, so, instead of a salade niçoise, I ordered a large pizza with arancini on the side.    

‘So, Grandad’s all set to move in a few weeks,’ my mother said. She looked down at the table. ‘I’m meeting the auctioneer at his house on Tuesday, to see what they might be able to sell.’

‘Wow. It’s really happening,’ I said, pensively. ‘Don’t feel bad about it, Mum. It’s actually the kind thing to do. For you, as well.’

She shrugged and traced a knot in the table with her thumb.

I took a large slurp from my drink. The sugar content smacked me on the forehead. Had alcohol always been this sweet? 

‘What’s happening to his books?’ I asked, and then cringed. Mum sighed. More gently, I elaborated, ‘There won’t be room for them in the nursing home, will there?’

‘No, no, the room is tiny. I suppose I’ll take them to the charity shop. Or, maybe your uncles will want some of them.’

Back came my husband, triumphant. Our daughter bobbed up-and-down on his shoulder, in time with the lollop of his feet. The way she gripped his shoulder told me that she was hungry.

Quickly, I said, ‘Could I have a look at the books before they go? I know it’s a pain, because we won’t be in Devon for a few weeks, but remember all those botanical compendiums that they had? Those ancient Encyclopaedia Britannica? I’d love those…’ I said, as I accepted my daughter back into my arms. She smelt better now. ‘I saved Adam’s life after reading those books, do you remember?’ I smiled at my husband, ready to recount the anecdote. Grandad’s books were key to the better version of the story. ‘Adam picked a foxglove one day, up on Dartmoor,’ I said, ‘when he was little. It was really bad.’

I left a gap for my parents to chip in.

‘Don’t you remember?’ I asked, looking at each of them in turn. Dad took a sip of his pint. Mum sighed.

Oh, it’s my imagination again. Right. I sat back in my chair. 

Clearly, they’d hoped that motherhood had put an end to all that.

#

 I had been playing shop when it happened. It was the summer of 1994 and heatwave-hot — hot enough for me to have eaten my breakfast out on our swing set that morning, dropping toast crumbs down the front of my sundress. Mum and her friend Maggie had obtained great bundles of sartorial overstock from somewhere, and they planned to sell it off in a shop space that they’d hired on a short-term lease. That day — a Saturday — was the day we would set up, ready for Monday’s grand opening. My diary entries for the preceding week were swaying fields of exclamation marks. I took the fact that they’d asked me to help them as proof of my burgeoning sophistication, which no-one else could see, because I was nine. My younger brother, Adam — childish, unsophisticated — had to stay home with Dad. 

Ha. 

We set off for the shop early, dew still twinkling on the lawn. My fairytale-loving heart exploded at the sight of the shop space: a rickety attic above a bike shop, spider and cobweb-sprinkled, and only accessible via a wrought-iron spiral staircase. Dust motes glittered in the air and I spun and spun with my arms stretched out. A haystack of bin bags towered over us, delivered the day before. I ran uphill to the tiny window and waved at the people in the tanning shop opposite. Here I am! I have a shop!

I’m the Tailor of Gloucester — come forth my little mice! 

Or Mrs. Pratchett, in her glowing sweet shop. Though I won’t be poisoning anyone.

I curled my dirty fingers around a handful of imaginary sweets. I grimaced at my customers…

‘Sweetheart, stop that. You’re here to help,’ Mum snapped. 

I pouted, chastened.

Fine.

All morning we worked to turn our witch’s tower into a viable shop. The blue zero on the till point glowed like a Catherine wheel. The telephone, with an old-fashioned dialling wheel, was plugged in, and actually worked. Polyester clothes tidal-waved across the floor, unstoppable. In my memory’s eye, all the clothes were paisley. Long skirts and blouses in whirling blues and greens, gauzy scarves with red pointillistic specks, swimsuits in fish-swim turquoise and orange. The swirling patterns seemed so hot to me, so romantic. The people who might buy these clothes, the sandy beaches they might be worn on, the perfume, the starlight, the suntanned skin… 

‘Earth to Dolly Daydream…’ my mother sang. 

I shook my head to snap out of it, desperate to be a credit to her. Should the racks be positioned here, or here, we deliberated, together. Should they be side by side, or against the walls? I placed my hands on my narrow hips, chewed my lower lip and contributed. They used one of my ideas and I nearly burst open. I began to sigh meaningfully, like my mother. 

By midday, the room was sweltering. We ate cheese and pickle sandwiches by the bottle-glass windows. Outside, the bonnets of Rovers and Escorts bowed under the sun’s glare. I imagined my friends burning themselves on the metal clasps of their seatbelts. I sweated around my hairline and under my arms. We were making good progress: Maggie, my mother and I.

Our grand opening was assured.

After lunch, Mum and Maggie started clock-watching in the deliberate manner of women with young children. It prickled me: didn’t they want to stay and enjoy this special time, in this special place? 

Did this all mean nothing to them?

‘Where have Steve and Adam gotten to?’ my Mum asked, urging my dad and brother to appear, so Dad could help with the heavy lifting. 

I don’t care, I thought, slumping in the sharp corner with my lip out, my arms crossed. They will break the spell. I never want to leave. 

I hope they never come.

Mum looked at me and sighed.

Bang, bang, bang — my father’s trainers on the rickety metal staircase. Tap, tap, tap came my brother’s feet, a little moorland pony trotting obediently behind. My father stopped at the top of the staircase to let my brother come in first.

And that’s when I saw the flower.

Long and pink, its little bells shaking — a foxglove in my brother’s hand. Panic burnt through me. I lurched forward, about to vomit. I knew all about foxgloves from Grandad’s books, from the stories.

‘You can’t bring a foxglove indoors,’ I screamed, ‘the fairies will murder us, they’ll be so angry!’

They looked at me.

‘The foxes will come for their gloves,’ I shouted, appealing to all of them in turn, ‘that’s a dead man’s finger, those are dead man’s bells! If they start ringing, Mum, we’re all dead, not just Adam. The witches—‘

But I got no further, as my mother laughed. She laughed at me. Looking me in the eye. Laughing.

My insides crumbled like a dry leaf. I ran towards Adam and lunged for the flower, keeping a sliver of space between the foxglove and my own precious skin. The physical suggestion moved no-one. They were bent over, full of mirth. I was frantic — these stories clouded the damp moorland air. My parents had given me a cloth-covered book of Dartmoor legends, just a year or two before. The tors really did look like witches—

Adam started to swish the flower through the air, like a sword.

Danger bit at the back of my throat — I shouted again, ‘It’s poisonous, he needs to throw it away!’ 

In my mind he fell dead to the floor. My breath was racing, as if I was the one who’d been poisoned: I’m asthmatic, but didn’t know it then. Mum grabbed me by the shoulders and ordered me to calm down. She smeared my fringe off my face and used nearby garments to blot my tears. Still, my brother held on tight to the foxglove. He was sobbing into Dad’s shorts, frightened by me and my histrionics.

Through my panic came a thought. No-one could ignore an expert. I pictured the foxglove page in Grandad’s book: pink, flicked-edge bells, arching green stem. Beneath it was its scientific name: digitalis purpurea.

I squeaked one word out: digitalis. 

This was an adult word, carved from Latin, so I was aware of its power. And the power of me uttering it. Stupid girls didn’t know words like that, just like stupid girls weren’t suddenly hysterical for no reason. It was the name of a drug. A genus. I felt the weight of responsibility lift off my shoulders. The carpet came back into focus. Once I had defined the problem in adult terms, I felt sure that they would act.

#

Had the foxgloves rung for me and my daughter, just a year before?

The view from the hospital’s fifth-floor had been all sixties’ flat rooftops and bandage-white sky. Not a foxglove in sight. Devon folklore still clung to me, though I’d moved away.

We stayed in hospital for two days after her birth: a catastrophic reaction to the epidural had killed us both, briefly, and then they’d whipped her out of me with a knife. Nine hours after being sliced halfway through, I was back up on my feet, smearing tar-black meconium up my arms as I struggled to change my first nappy. The woman in the curtained bay next-door spoke on her phone all night, complaining about her boyfriend, who hadn’t been in to see her, or their baby. I was shaking and my breath was coming fast. Just call him then! I screamed at her, without words. Everyone around us was crying. Every time I picked up my daughter, I soaked her in sweat. Every time I tried to feed her, she screamed in horror at my breast.

Keep her at the nipple, the midwives chanted, as they hurried from bed to bed, folding blankets. She will latch when she’s ready. Had my milk even come in? They gave us a private room to reduce the noise on the ward. Night became day became night. Forty-eight hours’ of feeding attempts later and I could barely focus on the red-haired midwife who watched us through the door’s glass panel, and then came in to suggest that we were ready for discharge. I looked at her. Her skin was back-lit by blankness. A subtle black shape swooshed by.

‘I don’t think we can go home, she’s not feeding,’ I said, amazed that I could still make sounds. She put her cold hands on my breast and squeezed. Gold-top dotted on my nipple.

‘Well, your milk is in,’ she said, Irish. ‘Let’s see your latch.’

I held my daughter horizontally across my ribcage and did an impression of mothers I’d seen breastfeeding their babies. My daughter took my nipple for two seconds, maybe three. Enough to lick the drop away.

‘She’ll feed when she’s hungry,’ the midwife said, already back on her feet. ‘I’ll go and do your paperwork.’

Somehow, my daughter’s reticence to feed became normal. She’d recently died, I reasoned — who could blame her for not being hungry? We drove home with her, through the December night.

Something black followed me into the house. Malevolence pulsated up the stairs. A creature, perhaps — I glimpsed it as I changed her, as I rocked her, as I offered my breasts again and again and was answered with apoplexy. She gripped me like a goblin, scratching at my neck. On the fourth day, we called a lactation consultant, who advised me to hand express, and to keep trying — we were only one feed away from success! She made me promise to repeat breast is best to myself in the dark moments, and I did it. Remember, breastmilk is what is best for your baby, she’d said to me. Without it, how do you expect to bond?

On the fifth day, the midwife visiting my home discovered that my daughter had lost sixteen percent of her body weight since birth. Up to ten percent is acceptable. Flustered, she gave me a print-out about breast pumps and suggested I visit the children’s centre. How can I get there, I wondered, as she picked up her leather bag and left for her next appointment. I just had a caesarean section — I can’t drive for six weeks? I hand-expressed fifteen millilitres that day, and fed it to my daughter with a Calpol syringe. She drank it and I was proud of myself for fixing the problem. (Newborn babies need one hundred and fifty millilitres per kilo of weight, per day, to survive. She was over three kilos then, just about. I learned this ratio months later.) Giddy with fear, I told my husband about the dark shadows that swooshed around the eaves of the house, the eyes that could see me, always. I might even have laughed about it.

‘Are you okay?’ my husband asked. He frowned, jittery. ‘Maybe tonight we’ll get some sleep…’

On day six, she was eighteen percent down on her birth weight. She was dying, again. Had I noticed the cessation of her scant cries? Had I? The skin on my face was a mask. We were admitted to the sixth floor of the hospital, this time. Exactly one floor up. Now, the black shapes were witches, clear-edged, crashing into me as I released her to the hospital, as they turned my limp and sunken girl into a crisis, into jagged spikes on a chart. I waited in a side room as the witches crushed me, blackening my eyes—

It was Aptamil that brought her back.

After the worst was over, the doctor sat down on the end of my bed. I’d pulled the blinds across the single-glazed window, so he and my daughter — sleeping now — were striped in lines of morning light. 

‘So, Mrs. Wheble, what do you think happened?’ he asked, the non-judgemental face of public health.

How far back should I go, I wondered. Back to our deaths, the week before? 

To the black shapes that screamed at me not to leave the hospital with her? 

To the stiff hunger of my daughter’s hands? 

To the witches? 

The foxglove?

The consultant waited, folding over the end of his silver tie. I noticed a faint paisley pattern on it. He wasn’t going to get me like this — I was old enough to know by then that people didn’t like it when I said things, without reason. 

Folklore is never the answer you give.

Into the silence, he said some words of science. 

Flushed with relief, I answered in kind. 

We spoke of tongue ties, of the shock of traumatic birth on the body, of the drugs that were administered to us both, and might still reside in her, making it difficult for her to feed. Egged on by his approval, I went further, speaking of sleep deprivation, flattened nipples, until I was, without forethought, spitting expletives of science, words that a nice girl like me shouldn’t even have known: exclusive formula feeding

microwave steam steriliser

fast flow teats. 

Thrilled by these words, he patted my hand and went off and ticked a form somewhere.

When my daughter was back up to a healthy weight, we went home.

#

My mother didn’t remember that day in the shop. She had no memory, she said, of the bags of clothing, or my hysteria, or my brother casually wandering about, clutching a poisonous flower. There was no way, she said, taking a sip of her white wine spritzer, that she and my father would need their nine-year-old daughter to tell them about Dartmoor’s toxic flowers, having lived two minutes away from it their whole lives. 

As if she’d let her son keep hold of a freshly picked foxglove.

I, in turn, took a sip of my Aperol Spritz. 

I could sense my mother thinking, fanciful child. And, is this still entertaining, at thirty-two?

But with a little probing, she did recall the bin bags of clothing and those rickety metal stairs. 

Although we weren’t selling the clothes for our own benefit, or for profit, she said. And you weren’t nine.

My daughter’s picture book clattered to the floor and I bent down to pick it up.

A second-hand clothes store in Tavistock had gone into liquidation, she said, and she had persuaded the proprietor to let her sell the bankrupt stock and keep the profit for the local playgroup. For playgroup to still have been a relevant concern, she said, my little brother would have been, at the oldest, three years old, making me a maximum of six. If I had been nine, playgroup would have been nothing more than a memory.

Our food arrived at the table, steaming. 

I used a slicer wheel to cut up my pizza as she talked.

They had used the room above the cycle shop to sell this bankrupt stock — she tilted her head to the side, with a long ‘oh yeah’ at the memory — and the summer had indeed been scorching. She’d enjoyed the experience so much that she and Maggie had enquired about taking on the permanent lease of the shop. But our children were too small at the time, my mother said, matter-of-factly, perhaps forgetting that one of the small children was me. 

‘Do you remember laughing at me?’ I asked, tender.

‘Why would I laugh at you?’ she laughed. ‘I mean. Maybe you over-reacted, but you’ve always been a clever girl,’ she sighed. ‘All that reading.’

I asked more questions, trying to pin down the details. 

She answered, variously, ‘Yes, we had an electronic till, a great clunking thing that rammed your hip if you stood too close. Why would they all be paisley? There is no way,’ she said, elongating the words for emphasis, ‘that your father would let your brother pick a foxglove. That part is ridiculous. We would never have let that happen,’ she said. 

My Dad, eating quietly, shifted in his seat. For a while, we were all occupied by our food.

Despite my mother’s focus on the implausibility of the foxglove, I wondered if it was my position in the narrative that made her reject it. I looked at my daughter, who was merrily stuffing penne bolognese into her cherub mouth. Was this foxglove story a comfort to me, because I saved a child once? Parenthood had paired the angels with the witches, after all. Bright day with dark night. Perhaps I’d needed a spell, since then, to ward off the evil that I could always see, lurking out of the corner of my eye. A charm to keep the despair at bay. I knew that bad things could happen, and do. 

In the absence of any religion, perhaps my foxglove story was it.

I pushed on with my questions, but my mother had had enough. She regarded me with good-natured side-eye. She was humouring me. Further probing exasperated her.

Come on, Lyndsay, is one of the things that she didn’t say.

Others included, are you trying to make your father and me sound negligent? 

And also, you do like to write stories about your life. 

#

Our empty plates were taken away. My daughter was getting fractious. Nap time was looming and we’d be foolish to delay. We worked together to facilitate the end of our meal: someone paid the bill, someone else tidied the table, the person with the short straw changed her nappy, again, and then we all checked under the table to be sure that nothing had been left behind. Clipped into her pram seat, she was instantly asleep. As we filed out of the restaurant, Dad said that as a child, he and his four siblings used to pick foxgloves all the time. They were allowed to bring them home and have them in their rooms because his parents — my grandparents — trusted that they knew not to eat them. They’d grown up on the moor, so they knew what was dangerous, he said. So, yes, he would have allowed my brother to pick a foxglove. 

Why not? 

He’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have eaten it.

My mother choked on her takeaway coffee. She glared at my shoulder bag, which contained my notebook, my pencil and their freely-given words; I thought about it too often not to write about it. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. The words woke up on the page. 

My Dad, a quiet man, kept talking:

‘My Mum always said that old wive’s tales kept on because they had truth in them. We used to make fun of the way she spoke, but she kept us all going, didn’t she? She could talk about things that had no reason — things that were difficult to say.’

I looked at my Dad. Mum shook her head with derision. My husband fiddled with the straps of the change bag. I burst into childish tears.

 

Lyndsay Wheble’s work has appeared in Litro, Belle Ombre, NEWMAG, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Oxford Writing Circle Anthology and elsewhere. She won the Reflex Fiction Prize Summer 2018 and has shortlisted for the HISSAC and Yeovil Prizes. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes.

Author Not Present: Sacaran Nights

Author Not Present is a podcast in which Louise Hare, Christina Carè, and Peter J Coles critique anonymous submitted pieces.

In the seventh episode, Louise, Christina, and Peter critique ‘Sacaran Nights’. Listen to find out what they liked and what they thought could be improved as they deal with structure all the way down to pedantic line-editing. They also discuss the idea of cancel culture in literature.

We highly encourage you to read the story before listening to the episode so you can follow along.

You can download the first draft of the piece here: Sacaran Nights.

If you’d like to submit your work to be workshopped, click here

Show Notes:

Got feedback? Email us at authornotpresent@gmail.com

Louise’s Bookshop.org Shop

Kazuo Ishiguro BBC Article

Nelle Andrews on Diversity Not Division

This Lovely City by Louise Hare

This Lovely City Audiobook by Louise Hare

This podcast was produced and edited by Christina Carè and Peter J Coles

Continue reading “Author Not Present: Sacaran Nights”

THIS IS THE COFFEE THAT NEV BOUGHT by Isabella Naiduki

It’s no surprise that I find myself confronting a lot of hard truths lately. These uncertain times that we find ourselves wading through on a daily basis have that effect on people, I guess. It’s the waiting around for the unexpected, with the abundance of free time making the restrictions more imposing because we suddenly find that spending the free time with the people that the powers that be, force on to us, is not as fun as we thought it would be.

 

I recently tried to purge my phone of pictures but after deleting the first 100 of the 18,000 that needed to be sorted, I got extremely overwhelmed and just scrolled right through. A once upon a time friend of mine, called it the meandering of tales yet to be told. I think in my case it might rather be a case of undiagnosed high functioning ADHD. Several requests to confirm this has been shut down by local GP’s and labelled as “just” anxiety driven by stress. Medicate, medicate, medicate being their solution to unlocking the key that will slow down the skipping and sprinting thoughts that race daily through tunnels of weaving stories and lucid dreams. Lucid dreams like when I dreamt of my mother. Not frail and sick as I had last seen her, but healthy and glowing in her prime as I remembered her from when I was a child.

We went on a journey in a red soil country. The heat heavy on our brow but not uncomfortable. It made the sweat on our forearms dance with each step. We exchanged stories and songs and there was only joy to accompany our unhurried steps.

I spoke to her about her grandchildren. The eldest who she bathed as a young toddler and bestowed kisses on her head each night before we left for the Land of Blighty. How there were tears of joy when she received her exam results the week before. The exams that I wished she had been there to see her off for. I began to tell her about her granddaughter’s plans to leave me as soon as she came of age but the skies began to darken and I immediately stopped, as if to wait for the skies to clear before I could start up again.

I told her about my middle child, the one who I believe is the universe’s way of reminding me that karma is always just an arm’s length away. I told her about the way she asks me to tell her stories about her grandmother when we would sit to brush her hair. How she would ask if her grandmother had taught me how to eyeball the ingredients to a Fijian style curry. Or if her grandmother liked to clean excessively like I do. I go quiet when she asks me this because I’m afraid I have turned into you.

And then there’s the one you never got to meet. He’s a charmer that one. Just like his father who you insisted would always be your favourite son-in-law. The youngest who has this uncanny way of tilting his head to the side and looking straight at you as if he can read everything that is going through your mind. But won’t say it out loud because he loves you too much, to expose your selfish dark thoughts. Something you used to do when I’d come up with a cock and bull story on why I needed to be at a friend’s house for the weekend. Seeing right through the default excuse of my imagined puritanical façade of attending the Sunday church service. We both knew it was more the teenage debauchery of Saturday night plans that I was really looking forward to. All this I poured out of me as we walked through my dream. I looked over at you and forced myself to memorise every detail of the side of your face that I could see because I knew in my heart of hearts that this wasn’t real and I still had so much to say before the early morning would yank me up.

And so, I trudged along despairingly. Each step getting heavier and slower, the breathing from us both becoming laboured. By this time, we had reached a place that you called the pick-up spot. I stood there with my smile stretched wide like the cat in the tree from Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t want you to know how sad I was that we were parting. Sometime during that walk, you had changed into Na who was ready to rest. I held your hand and thanked you because I realised that throughout our walk, I had done all the talking while you had listened until every word that needed to slip out of my mouth had been said. Each story safely stored in the backpack you carried on your now weary back. You turned to me at the very last second before you left and whispered, I’ll be back in 4 days.

I awakened from this dream and drifted sluggishly downstairs. Lucid dreaming tends to tire the body out even after an early night’s sleep. I made myself a coffee from the shiny coffee machine that I had convinced my Nev to get me as a birthday present the year before. The grinding of the Yirgacheffe coffee beans reminded of a stuttering car. Methodical rehearsed movements of my arms moved the milk from its container to jug then to the steamer. I stared into the chipped mug as the dark liquid swirled with the cascading steaming froth and I stirred. I took a sip and felt the chipped edge catch on the scabs of my dried lips. The coffee is cold. How long have I been standing here?

The fellow occupants of this house are stirring. These thoughts will have to go back to the dark recesses they lurk in and wait for another day to meander through these hallowed halls again.

 

Isabella Naiduki is an Indigenous Fijian scholar and writer whose interest is in the study of the Indigenous Fijian identity & diaspora identity, and its influence on traditional story-telling within contemporary society. She completed an LLB International Law & Globalisation from the University of Birmingham and is currently pursuing a postgraduate LLM International Business Law. In her free time she writes about her lived experience as an Indigenous Fijian woman living in the U.K. on her blog – Fijian In The U.K. 

The Call of Water by Katie Packman

Passing over the Ouse and through the town square, Lana reaches the heavy church door and pulls the iron handle towards her. Not knowing what she is looking for, she meanders through the church – its innards now a vintage store. The altar houses a collection of pottery from the 60s, whereas the nave, pews uprooted, contains furniture and kitchenware so out of date it has reinvented itself. Eclectic as her taste is, the 70s kitsch from Lana’s childhood lacks the style and timelessness of previous eras, so despite this impressive display, she cannot believe anyone will want orange and brown Tupperware in their kitchens again. She continues to browse the used items, even though she never buys anything. Instead, she imagines what her house will look like if she can ever afford any of these cultural leftovers.  

From across the room, the plastic phone draws her in; the bold curved shape gleaming despite its age. The yellow cradle holds a black receiver aloft. She walks over to it and admires the circular dial, also rimmed with black, its bold numbers peeking out of each hole. Her fingers reach into the gaps. Solid and real compared to the screen of her smartphone. She remembers the whirr of her mother’s less stylish beige model as the dial returned to its original place. She drags the number seven round with her delicate finger, watching and listening as it recoils. The cord, a tight black spiral, winds around the base of the old-fashioned telephone and disappears under the table.  

Lana steps deeper into the back of the store, where the lack of light drops the temperature by a couple of degrees. Angels stare down at her from the vaulted ceiling. The store, always quiet on a Monday lunchtime, is her private refuge. She avoids the weekend crowds, as sharing confined spaces with others makes her uncomfortable and somehow even lonelier. Never mind the fact he banned weekend shopping: Saturdays are for housework and Sundays for rest.

On Mondays, the owner minds his own business at the till, usually shuffling paperwork. He used to smile and offer a polite greeting. However, since she became a regular visitor, he barely looks up before catching her eye and returning to his work. He knows she won’t buy anything. The seclusion of the church makes Lana feel like Aladdin in his cave of wonders. Alone she indulges in fantasy lives. She contemplates the previous owners: imagining lonely widows. Relieved widows. Orphaned children, now adults, but always children when sorting through the remnants of their parent’s life, making unexpected discoveries, just like she had done. Her fingers drift to her mother’s eternity ring, loose on her index finger. Amongst the silence, she creates her own people to populate the displays. She gazes at the matching crockery set, evoking images of a happy family sharing a Christmas dinner; a Formica kitchen table laid for breakfast with the ugly Tupperware conjures up the bustle of children getting ready for school. The noise of families bickering fills her head. A noise she always envied as an only child. She places an elderly relative snoozing in an armchair built to last. She fills elaborate display cabinets, now empty and dusty, with family heirlooms, chipped and faded from the sun.  

The stone interior keeps the air cool. A refreshing change after the stifling heat of her office; with no windows or air-conditioning the summers drag by in a fog of sweat and body spray. The breeze picks moisture up off the Ouse and brings it in through the side door to caress her ankles. Its silty smell reaches her nostrils. Her circuit of the church complete, Lana drifts back towards the telephone.  

She leans forward, stroking the cradle with her fingertips, contemplating a purchase. It would create a focus in her hallway, a talking point, and a stark contrast to all the technology her husband has at home. Making it both more and less appealing at the same time. She lifts the handset to her ear. She expects the burr of the ring tone, but instead, the silence of the church whispers down the line. A hum reminding her of the shells she held to her ear as a child: the conch with the sound of the tide inside. How its soft sounds soothed her when she felt anxious. This telephone makes her feel the same. Comforted. She imagines it carries the sound of the Ouse inside it, the ripples of water sploshing as they lap the riverbank. Gently, Lana replaces the receiver and lets her eyes admire the chromatic design. Time feels as if it is standing still today. Her fingertips rest on the receiver, and she feels the vibration before she hears it ring.

A moment passes. Lana stares in disbelief at the ringing telephone. The tone shrill, reminiscent of a time when everyone answered the phone, not knowing who the caller would be. It feels strange to pick up a call and not know who will be on the other end of the line. She looks around for the owner. The ring of the bell continues to echo in the empty church. With no clue what else to do but with a desire for the silence of the church to be restored, she picks up the receiver.

‘Hello,’ Lana remembers the formal greeting her mother recited every time she answered the telephone and wonders if she should utter the store’s name as well, but before she can formulate the words in her mouth, a desperate voice reaches down the line.

‘Help. Help me. Please, is there someone there? Help me. I need help.’

Before her lips have chance to part, she hears the droning tone of a lost line and the sloshing of the ebbing river outside. There is nothing but the silence she longs for. Replacing the receiver slowly, Lana wonders what just happened. 

The interruption of the call unbalances her. She looks around. Nothing around her explains what she heard. She checks the phone again by holding the receiver to her ear.  The hush, hollow sound of the conch shell fills her head. The shop remains empty. Lana relishes the restfulness of this store; the halcyon atmosphere allows her to indulge in her daydreams. Pure escapism. Her husband – her overbearing husband – who began their marriage as caring and protective, soon morphed into a bully who hides behind his marital duties. Lunchtimes are her only freedom from his critical eye.  

Here, by herself, she doesn’t have to believe his snide comments. His verbal assaults, so carefully worded that any retort from her would seem petty and trite. He outwits her daily in a lexical war that she can never hope to win. But his daily victories are never enough. She gave up competing long ago and now only looks for respite, however short-lived. Her words dried up.

Lana’s thoughts drift back to the strange call. Who was asking for help? Why did they call this number? The silty smell of the river drifts through the door. Still alone, staring at the telephone, she questions her sanity first. She remembers the goosebumps. Each individual hair on the back of her neck lifting. The shudder that travelled down her spine. The call seemed as real as the telephone in front of her. 

Lana sways left, then right. The blood drains from her face. Her husband’s control paralyses her with fear so innate she cannot fight it. She doesn’t trust herself to help. She is trapped. No matter how much she hates her husband, Lana envies his power. His ability to disguise his marriage as a happy one to all who know him. Neighbours in their cul-de-sac call him the ‘nicest man in the village’: always offering them friendly advice or the loan of his latest power tools. They do not seem to mind his constant supervision. Sometimes, in public, he even manages to convince Lana with his elaborate game of charades. His talent for secret looks of menace and harm; his words like swords, each blow delivered smooth and concise, under the guise of innocent conversations. She winces, remembering vice-like grips under the table, pinching on the fleshy strip of her inner thigh, the squeeze of her sandaled toe under the heel of his boot. The whispered insults masquerading as sweet nothings.

When alone, the voice in her head is clear. Get out. Leave. Run away. But her courage always falters when she sees him. Who will believe her when she holds it all inside? She should have shared her pain sooner. Every bruise and every outburst hidden. After their wedding, she let her friends go and threw herself into marital bliss. But the honeymoon period withered, and his capacity for pleasure diminished with it. Nothing pleases him anymore. Not even sex.  

‘We’ll have sex when we want children, Lana.’

If her mother were still alive, she would only tell her marriages are tough. They need work, Lana. Not everything is a bed of roses.

How can she ask for help when other women suffer so much worse? Black eyes. Broken bones. Rape. She placates herself with his virtues: he provides for her, they own their own home, they have all the latest gadgets. No virtues ever erase the terror he fills her with. Her complaints like shallow puddles in comparison.  

She chose to marry him.  

So she keeps quiet.  

How can she help this woman if she can’t help herself?

As her lunch hour passes, Lana remains rooted to the spot, she admires the telephone again and the delicate tea set next to it. Trailing her fingers over the counter, she turns to leave the store. As always, purchasing nothing, but this time she takes with her an additional burden: the voice of the mysterious caller echoing in her head. Pleading with her for help.

The next day, the call and its anonymous voice dominate her thoughts. Like a worm, the words ‘help me’ writhe through her ear canal. Weakening her resolve. Lana resists returning to the store the next day: Tuesday means market day, and the store will be too busy. Feeling guilty, she blames her uncharitableness on self-preservation. Trapped within her marriage. Her husband’s criticisms mingle with the voice on the phone.

‘You’re useless. You’re pathetic. Your life is meaningless.’

‘Help me.’

‘You only have me. Without me, you’re nothing.’

His words ricochet around her skull, even when the distance between them extends to miles.

By the third day, she makes a decision. She may not be capable of leaving a loveless marriage and a tyrannical husband, but equally, she cannot resist the draw to help this woman. Would her will ever be her own? As lunchtime approaches, Lana grabs her handbag and leaves the office. Striding with purpose over the bridge, she stops for a moment to watch as the rowers power down the Ouse. The coach calls out from his bicycle on the river bank. The coxswain shouts orders to the rowers.

‘Spin, spin, spin, draw, length.’

Mesmerised, Lana’s eyes track the oars as they cut through the river’s glassy surface, causing a stir as the ripples slap at the bank. Each stroke of their arms propels the boat forward: forging ahead despite the pull of the current. The rowers disappear under the bridge, and Lana continues towards the church and the treasure trove of vintage homeware, which brings her such comfort.

In the passing days, the owner had moved his collection of goods around and for a split second Lana’s stomach sinks. The telephone has been sold. Frantically she scans each display, dismissing a new collection of kitchenalia she would normally be drawn to, without a second glance. Suddenly, she spots it. Set deeper into the church’s insides, right up at the altar, now displayed under an imposing gothic arch and mounted on a stylish Danish plant stand.

It sits, atop its pedestal, the iconic design resonating around the room. A ray of light breaks through the stained glass and ripples across its surface. She stares at the crucifix above it. A force pulls Lana across the church floor to stand in front of Christ. In front of this telephone.

The arrival of an Indian summer afternoon ensures the store remains deprived of custom, as locals walk the embankment instead. Lana spotted the owner sorting a box of books when she arrived, but now he is nowhere to be seen. The telephone lacks its label; with no description of its design pedigree or any details of its provenance, it seems worthless amongst the rest of the unwanted items. Everything else in the store is stamped with a price, a value – decreed by whom, Lana often wonders. She knows one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure, but somehow she feels some items must be worth more to the original owner than the meagre sum on the tag. The history, the whys and wheres of a piece, always more interesting to Lana then its design lineage. The cord, now wound up and secured with a disintegrating rubber band, sits next to the phone. A pang of disappointment hits Lana when she sees the telephone is not connected. She realises now that she hoped it would ring again. Lana seeks out the store’s new arrivals; an interesting collection of tin plate advertisements now hang on the church wall.  

Taking a deep breath, she exhales loudly. The sigh’s echo magnifying the emptiness of the room. 

Once again, just as the silence seems too intense to bear, the phone rings.  Lana watches the receiver vibrate with the trill of the bell. It emanates from the telephone right up to the rafters. Lana’s eyes immediately fall on the cord. Laid next to the phone, neatly bound into a tight coil, still trapped by the yellowing rubber band.

Lana breathes deeply and slowly, reaching the count of five before she allows herself to react. Alone, she longs for the owner to make an appearance and answer his ringing phone. Lana tries pinching her arm. The sound stills cuts through the air.

Tentatively, she raises the receiver to her ear.

This time the voice splutters down the line first, ‘Hello.’ 

‘Help,’ gurgling as if stuck underwater, the voice calls out again.

‘Save me.’

The sound of a river rushes, like rapids tumbling over rocks with the force of an ocean behind them. The cacophonous noise bursts down the telephone and into Lana’s mind.

This time she manages to formulate a response.

‘Where are you?’

Lana grips the receiver so tightly her knuckles push upwards, the bone white under her translucent skin. The desperate voice tries to sound out a word but chokes out a breathless croak. The click of a terminated call follows. Lana finds no comfort in this silence.

Calmly, placing the receiver back in its cradle, she looks around for someone to share her story with. There is no one there. The empty store makes her swallow deeply. Relief swiftly replaces disappointment. Lana knew that she would sound crazy if she tried to tell anyone. Better to keep it a secret.

Heavy footsteps resonate on the flagstone floor. The owner crosses her path.  Words sit in Lana’s mouth. Trapped. He nods a silent greeting at his regular customer and wishes that one day she would buy something.

Once back at her desk, Lana browses her screen, considering the impossible phenomenon of the calls. She vows to herself that tomorrow she will buy the telephone. How else can she help the woman on the other end? If she raids her stash of spare change that she keeps in an old bottle hidden at the back of her wardrobe, her rainy day fund, or if she was ever brave enough, a runaway fund, she’ll have enough to buy the telephone.

The following day Lana’s workload does not allow her a break. Her distracted mind, mired by decisions she does not know how to make, slows her progress through her job list.

By the fifth day, Lana can no longer ignore the voice. She breaks for lunch and starts the walk over the bridge. The bipolar weather had abruptly changed the day before. The late blast of sunshine replaced by torrential rain that washed away the last dust of summer. The river swells with its new bounty. Edges of leaves curl and colour. A few scatter her path. The autumn arriving means winter will soon follow, and Lana feels unprepared for the return of long, dark evenings alone with her husband. She pushes the fear of more time at home aside and focuses on the voice. Today she will deal with the voice. She stops on the apex of the bridge to admire the view. There are no rowers, just the sunlight illuminating the surface between each passing cloud. Lana catches sight of her reflection and sees the sadness in her face. Ruined. Resigned.

As she crosses the church’s threshold, the phone rings. Rushing with anticipation, Lana’s shoes clack loudly, announcing her arrival in the vintage store as they reverberate off the ancient flagstones and damp stone walls. Lana no longer cares who watches as her hand flies to the receiver, grabbing the telephone with an urgency she does not understand.

This time the sound of water gushes around her head, its powerful music suppressing the screams of the woman underneath it. Lana hears her anguish. Lana feels her pain.

‘I’m here,’ Lana calls down the receiver.

‘Hold on for a bit longer,’ Lana begs.

Her nails dig deep into the palm of her hand, and the receiver is pressed so hard to her ear, the sound of the swirling water makes her dizzy.

The dampness of the church begins to penetrate Lana’s skin. Cold numbs her fingers and toes first, then creeps up her limbs. The deadline still transmits the sound of rushing water. Lana’s hands drop the telephone and hang limply by her side.  

The woman’s screams subside, but a deeper cry now bellows from beyond the water. A muffled shout for help.

Lana’s chest caves in.  

Her lungs gasp for air.  

Silt clings to her lips.

 

 

Kate Packman is a creative writing MA student at Birkbeck, London. When not writing or reading, she is the head of English in a middle school and for the last three years has chaired the annual Ampthill Literary Festival.

Interview: Femi Kayode

Femi Kayode trained as a clinical psychologist in Nigeria, before starting a career in advertising. He has created and written several prime-time TV shows. He recently graduated with a distinction from the UEA Creative Writing programme and is currently a PhD candidate at Bath Spa University. Femi won the UEA/Little, Brown Award for Lightseekers when he was still writing the novel. He lives in Namibia with his wife and two sons.

 

Lightseekers follows Dr Philip Taiwo, an investigative psychologist by training, as he investigates the murder of three young students in a Nigerian university town. Their killings – and their killers – were caught on social media. The world knows who murdered them; what no one knows is why.

 

***

 

I’m not a crime writer but I’m really interested in the mechanics of crime fiction, how it has its tropes – the sidekick, marital problems, etc – and you’ve incorporated all these things so seamlessly but also built on them to write such an original novel. It would be great to hear about your writing process.

 

Lightseekers was inspired by an actual incident that happened in Nigeria. It always fascinated me how people would mete out this kind of mob justice, or vigilante justice, especially in a small town. Like do the neighbours wake up the next morning and say, that was a very good job! Yeah, we got that! Or do they just pretend it never happened? 

 

I initially planned to do Lightseekers as a non-fiction novel, but from an academic point of view there were lots of ethical issues. And I’ve always had this issue – looking at Truman Capote’s history after In Cold Blood – with the idea of profiting off misery. That made me step back and say maybe I can approach this as a fiction. 

 

I was in a crime fiction programme, so I knew the things I needed to put in to make it a crime story, but I also wanted to make it literary. I wasn’t interested in writing the next Jack Reacher… You know, that’s not fair to say about Jack Reacher because I love Jack Reacher! But I wanted to write about an everyman’s hero, because the issue that I was talking about is very common in Nigeria, and it needed this hero who is just like you and I, who can effect change without being a superhero. 

 

I had a researcher in Nigeria who is a writer and lawyer. I would research around what actually happened and then I would write alternative versions, and I’d send it to him and say, okay, what do you think, is this working, is this plausible? To control myself I generally would keep along the lines of a PEST analysis, which is the political, environmental, social, and technological dimensions of a crime. It was then easy to add the tropes to it; you know, who’s the bad guy, who’s the sidekick. Each character was really a representation of the dimensions of a PEST analysis of the crime. Does that answer your question?

 

It really does! So Lightseekers is centred on the real-life incident, the Aluu Four, where four undergraduates at the University of Port Harcourt were tortured and burnt to death by a mob, and I wondered if you would speak about what was it about this specific case that made you want to write about it.

 

I think if you Google it… you have to be made of rock not to feel something. These were four undergraduates, very popular on campus, good-looking, from middle class homes. That’s not to say that they did not commit the crime that they were accused of – no one really knows – but that’s not the point. The point is that no one deserves to die like that. 

 

But watching the video, what struck me was how a whole community can gang up against undergraduates that are the lifeblood of this community. And that it could have been me – because I also went to school in a close community, I also lived off campus. It could have been me. And I was struck by the reaction of the government. I didn’t feel that there was enough concern; there was a lot of social outreach, but not a lot of systemic outreach. What was it in the system that made this possible? So, for me that spoke to a deeper problem than the act itself, something that needed to be investigated. 

 

I also felt that this tragedy was an opportunity for the country to have a national dialogue, to ask why did this happen, and how did it happen, and how could we have prevented it. Around that time there were a lot of xenophobic attacks happening in Africa, the rise of the alt right in Europe, post-Arab Spring unrest… And then of course in the US, we had the Trump regime that was constantly pushing this anti-immigration rhetoric. Writing Lightseekers offered me an opportunity to show the world, at what’s been a very troubled time, through the lens of a Nigerian.

 

That actually leads really well onto my next question – you’re talking about seeing through the lens of a Nigerian but you’ve chosen to cast Philip, your detective figure, as a returnee, someone who’s been in America for a really long time. I thought that was such a clever choice and I wanted to ask why you did that.

 

After that incident (and a lot of similar incidents) I started feeling a certain level of angst towards my country. I live outside of Nigeria, in another African country. I studied in the US and I was doing a postgrad programme in the UK. So, using Philip was a creative choice because he represented me.

 

The second thing I needed, from a commercial point of view, was somebody that would ask the kind of question that an international audience would want answers to – Philip was asking the kind of questions that my tutors and classmates at UEA were asking. He became a sort of cameraman, and I trained his lens on the issues raised by this crime.

 

The biggest challenge I had with Philip was for him not to come across as patronising, so I had a huge collection of Nigerian early readers. Those readers made sure the book wasn’t looking at Nigeria through the ‘white gaze’, or at least, within the context of the creative writing programme at UEA, the European gaze. 

 

You mentioned the perspective of the cameraman, and I notice that you’ve had a lot of experience as a screenwriter – I felt like I could feel that influence on the book, you’re so attentive to characters’ motivations. So, it just felt like that might have influenced you?

 

Absolutely, absolutely it did. I remember my tutors would be like, why are you writing this in the present tense? and I just answered that it was because that’s what I’m used to. I really wanted to write an immersive story, I was looking for a way to make the reader be a part of the experience – you couldn’t just look away and you couldn’t flip the channel (so to speak), you literally had to be Philip. 

 

Sometimes I’d be writing in the middle of the night and my kids would come and stand behind me, and they would say, that was weird, and I’d be like, what? And, according to them, before I typed I would do something like [Femi makes a camera motion in front of his face] then I would type and then I would do it again [the same gesture] and they said it was very weird watching me from the back because I looked like a film director writing shots down. I think that proves that my screenwriting experience really came to bear on the writing, and I’m happy that people saw it. It was not planned as a subtle thing, it’s deliberate.

 

In interrogation scenes I just kept being struck by how you had Philip and Chika noticing each other’s motivations, and it felt almost like a Stanislavski exercise – my background’s in theatre so I was like, I see this! 

 

Exactly, so that’s what I was trying to do. I was blocking all the shots.

 

Yeah!

 

The initial book was about 140,000 words, so it really helped when I was editing. If you want to write a screenplay-like novel, then you need to balance what is seen and what is not very carefully, or else you will lose the audience. One of the things some of my readers used to say was, now you’re losing me, you’re giving me too much detail, you’re interrupting the action.

 

That’s a great answer. I think we’ll finish up with a light-hearted question. I’m just wondering what you were reading, watching or listening to while you were working on the book and what inspired you. Also, what’s inspiring you now, because you’re working on the sequel, I understand the film’s already been optioned… it’s mad!

 

Mad, it’s been mad… Now you have to remember this [showing his lovely office and quiet, sunlit streets outside] is in the middle of the bustling city, can you see how quiet it is?

 

Yeah, amazing!

 

So, it’s really crazy because I literally have to travel (to Nigeria) in my mind every single time I write. 

 

I’m an avid film-watcher, and while writing Lightseekers I watched a lot of Dexter, season to season. I also watched a lot of Netflix shows, detective series… One of my favourites was Collateral with Carey Mulligan. I particularly liked The Alienist because in a way, Philip reminded me of Dr Kreizler. Those shows really helped me to plan each chapter like an episode of a show. Writing each chapter like this helped to focus me, and I always asked; what’s the key information that needs to come out from this particular episode, what do you need to take away as the reader?

 

I don’t think I read anything outside of crime during that time. There were a lot of texts that were recommended for the MA programme, so this kept me busy. I truly loved The Secret History by Donna Tartt. But what am I reading now? I’m still reading The Light Between Oceans, and I’m heartbroken, I’m frustrated, and I’m irritated at the same time, so maybe it’s good? I’m almost done, and then I’ve just got my complete collection of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, so I’m starting on that one next week. 

 

I tried to read Lightseekers again when I got my finished copy, and I just couldn’t. The book is never perfect until it’s perfect…I guess. But I’m part of this exercise on a platform called  The Pigeonhole; it’s a group of readers, like an online book club, and they are reading Lightseekers now and I was invited to be a part of the discussion – so to be honest at this particular moment I’m reading Lightseekers

 

That’s great that you feel able to come back to it.

 

I wouldn’t have done it without Pigeonhole. It’s so interesting, so exciting. Because you can read the comments on every line or scene or chapter, and you’re like: they got it, they got it! Many times, I’m up in the middle of the night, reading the novel and the comments and I am like YES!

 

That’s such a good feeling when you get feedback and people are saying what you wanted them to say…

 

In real time too! Because if you read the comments on Goodreads and Amazon (my agent tells me not to, but I don’t listen!), their feedback is usually after the fact, they’ve finished the whole experience – but with Pigeonhole, they’re commenting literally on every line, and it’s just so lovely to experience. Such a wonderful initiative. I love it.

Buy a copy of the book here


CATRIONA IS A WRITER, RESEARCHER, AND SOMETIME THEATRE-MAKER FROM EAST ANGLIA. SHE IS CURRENTLY STUDYING FOR AN MA IN CREATIVE WRITING AT BIRKBECK. SHE LIVES IN A SMALL FLAT IN SOUTH EAST LONDON AND IS WORKING ON HER FIRST SHORT STORY COLLECTION.

The Baobab Tree by Zahirra Dayal

You stand transfixed, hugging the cork bark of the Baobab tree as warm liquid drips down your legs, staining your white socks yellow. You want to bend down and scratch because it’s itchy, but you are frozen to the playground. You watch them form a circle around you. The revulsion in their frowns and screwed up faces does not match the excitement in their flicking wrists.

     ‘She’s wet herself again, Ewwwww,’ shouts one of the girls, pinching her nose shut with her thumb and index finger, disgusted by a smell that has yet to arrive. The children become more animated now. They run in circles around you chanting, ‘Gross’ and ‘Disgusting.’ You have gone. Only your body is left behind. You have this ability to remove yourself from places you want to escape from; a kind of magic trick you have become very good at. When the options are fight or flight, you choose to freeze. You walk through the long corridor of your mind and find a library stocked with all the stories your grandmother told you. You reach for a book and blow the dust off, watching it fly around the dimly-lit room. It’s the story of the Baobab Tree.

     Long ago, when the gods were busy crafting shapes out of clay to make the animals, plants and people to fill up the world, they decided it would be fun to add a giant talking tree. At first, everyone in the heavens was delighted with the new tree, nurturing it with gentle rain and warms rays of sunlight. They decided to call it the Baobab tree. Now the Baobab tree talked all day and night, using each of its words to complain. When it whined about the sweltering heat, the gods sent down a cool breeze. But it soon became dissatisfied with the breeze too, saying it was much too cold. When the Baobab tree finally stopped complaining about its surroundings, it then began to moan about its own appearance. It wanted to be taller than the giraffes and prettier than the most beautiful flowers. Soon the gods were so fed up with the talking tree that they came down to earth to try and reason with it. But there was no pleasing the talking tree and so the gods were left with little choice. They pulled it out of the ground, turned it upside down and pushed it back into the ground head first. The tree could no longer say a word with its mouth filled with moist earth. 

     You feel sorry for the Baobab tree, who had to swallow all of its words, just like you have swallowed yours. Maybe that’s why you hug the tree to your chest. The sound of the school bell, ‘kong go lo lo lo, kongo lolo lolo,’ cuts through the air, bringing you back to the playground. You watch the circles of children turn and run towards the sound. They line up like soldiers outside their respective classrooms, leaving you behind. You feel the muscles in your body thaw and you wiggle your toes in wet socks. You unwrap your hands from the Baobab and squelch back in your black leather buckled shoes. You go to the bathroom to squeeze out the urine from your clothes. You splash some water onto your bottle green skirt and lift it as high as you can up to the hand dryer.

     When you get to class, everyone else is already in their seats and you avoid the eyes that follow. The teacher asks why you are late as giggles are muffled by palms throughout the room. The strong stench of urine rises up from your damp clothes and you imagine it snaking around the room, diving into the noses of your classmates and teacher.

     Your words stopped and the bedwetting started at the end of Ramadan. That was when your father’s sister, her husband and your two cousins visited from London. They stayed at your grandmother’s house for three weeks. During that time, there were many parties and dinners organised for the extended family to meet your aunt. It was the first time she’d travelled back to Africa since her arranged marriage. With so many bodies in the house, it was easy to lose count of all the running children and chattering adults. Your uncle from London was magnanimous with his gifts and compliments. He fooled them all. But you saw the hardness in his stone eyes before any of them did. Your stomach curdled when he looked in your direction and you tried to make yourself as small as you could. 

     It happened on the 27th night, the holiest day in the holiest month of the Islamic calendar. It’s called the Night of Power because it’s the very night that people believe the Quran was revealed. If you happen to be praying at the right time on this night, all your sins will be forgiven. All the adults went to the mosque for the special prayers, hoping for redemption. Your uncle said he had a migraine, pressing his temples down with his knuckles to prove how bad it was. He offered to look after the children since he wasn’t well enough to go to the mosque. The adults agreed with sympathetic eyes for the man who bought suitcases full of glossy gifts. You cried to go to the mosque, but your mother said you would get too tired and would be more comfortable at your grandmother’s house with all of your cousins.

     You remember the sound of the car tyres leaving the gravel driveway, filling your stomach with black butterflies. You were sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor of the living room when your uncle’s cold hands slid under the blanket. That was the first time you froze. You only remember it felt like there were a thousand tonnes of bricks on you and that you smelt the sourness of his heavy breath. You floated above your body on the thin mattress and saw all the other sleeping children scattered around the living room on their own mattresses. You watched their eyelashes flickering and you remembered your grandmother telling you that the angels kiss the eyelashes of sleeping children. You wondered if the angels noticed that your uncle was there with the sleeping children. You noticed the cream curtain wasn’t closed all the way and you looked out through the window to the dark outside, hoping that someone would see and come in. Nobody came and the darkness crept inside, leaving you feeling lonely and lost.

     ‘Fahima, are you listening to anything in this class,’ asks your geography teacher. You hadn’t noticed her standing over you, looking down through her glasses with round, magnified eyes.

‘Can’t understand what’s got into you these days. Your body is here, but you are clearly not! What a silly daydreamer you are becoming,’ she says disapprovingly. The class starts to laugh but her icy stare keeps them quiet. You look up at her, wanting to say something, but like the Baobab tree, your mouth is filled with black earth and no sound comes out.

 

 

Zahirra is an English language teacher with a Masters in Education. She teaches international students from all over the world and has lived in Zimbabwe, South Africa, The United Arab Emirates and the UK. She has worked at ChildLine as a volunteer counsellor. She has studied Creative Writing at the Open University and is currently editing the first draft of her first novel. Her favourite writers are Arundhati Roy, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Elif Shafak, Zadie Smith and Bernadine Evaristo.

Pink Swans By Lucy Ashe

The first time the man arrives at the ballet studio, the girls ignore him. An embarrassing father come to watch a class, probably, or a friend of Miss Maisie. In the cramped corridor of a changing room, the girls are more interested in staying warm, twisting their hair into tight knots at the base of their neck or searching for hairpins that escape silently across the concrete floor. 

 

Miss Maisie always lets the girls use the first few barre exercises to warm up – pliés, tendus, petit jeté, rond de jambe – before she nods sternly. This is the cue to remove their layers of woollen leg warmers and sweatshirts. She needs to see their legs, their hips, their shoulder blades that slide down their backs as their arms move like swans. 

 

Now the man is there too, watching, legs crossed on the stool by the piano, his foot tapping the air to the minuet. Rosie lets her eyes inch towards him, her gaze falling on his long, thin ankles that stretch out of black trousers. 

 

‘Eyes, Rosie’, Miss Maisie snaps as she walks along the row of dancers. ‘This is epaulment.’ 

 

Rosie lifts her gaze and returns her neck to the correct position. She can tell the man is watching her. His flat cap shadows his face, a high roll-neck jumper enclosing the edge of his jaw. Hands resting on his lap, his fingers dance lightly, mimicking the girls’ port de bras reaching down and up as their legs fondu.  Rosie used to do the same thing, those many years ago when her mother would bundle her into the corner of the studio, out of the way while she cleaned. Rosie’s mother arrived every day at four o’clock, dragging Rosie behind her, just as the school performed its nightly transition from a primary school into ballet studio. She would move swiftly in and out of the lavatories, classrooms and corridors while the assembly room shone with the light sweat of the dancers and the hard, familiar notes of the piano. When five-year-old Rosie had been unceremoniously dumped into the corner by the dusty box of rosin that left cream stains across her bottom, she hadn’t been able to sit still. This was magic, every dream come alive in front of her big green eyes. Miss Maisie had taken pity on her, and gradually, every week, Rosie had crept closer to the girls, until her little hand reached up to the lower barre, and she’d performed her first ever plié. 

 

In those early years, Rosie’s thoughts would drift longingly back to the ballet studio when they got home each evening. Her mother slopped baked beans onto Rosie’s plate, before turning away to curl up in front of the television, bottles lining up on the beer-stained coffee table. Rosie was left alone to read every story she could find about ballerinas: Paulina, Petrova and Posy were her sisters too as she put her ballet shoes away each evening into the pink cloth bag. She knew they listened to her through the pages of the book, her own story locked inside theirs. And every day, without fail, she turned up at the studio, Miss Maisie letting her join as many classes as she wished, until she became the studio mascot, an eternal sylph, swan, snowflake, entering the kingdom of the shades, prepared to dance to the end. Miss Maisie still terrified her, but the teacher’s severity was a solid beam that would never ignore her. 

 

The man is there again the next day, and the next, his face still hidden amongst grey, blue, black and charcoal wool that creeps up over his neck and chin. A few whispered words to Miss Maisie, and then he settles, watching the girls as they dance patterns on the floor with their feet. 

 

‘Get those heels down,’ Miss Maisie calls out to Rosie as she sautés and jetés and assemblés across the diagonal of the hall, the man’s eyes following her. On the Friday pas de deux class, the boys join them, five young men of different shapes and sizes, shared out amongst the girls. Rosie pirouettes, the boy catching her waist as she turns, and she sees a flash of his curls, then the man, then the boy, then the man as she whips her head around. Her body settles in front of the mirror, arms in first position, one leg bent up in retiré. The mirror is a new addition to the hall and it still surprises Rosie, catching her off balance. Her mind jumps, an uncontrollable jolt, to another vision in another mirror, an early memory perhaps, or something else she can’t understand. She is on the bathroom floor, cold water puddled around her thighs, and there is someone standing at the mirror, a long stream of red pooling down his face, neck, and into the sink. His torso is bare: red and brown streaks pattern his back, bruises blooming out of his ribs. 

 

The boy releases her and she ends the turn in a tight fifth position plié. 

 

Rosie is old enough to walk home alone now. She has been doing so for years, but now she is sixteen no one finds it strange anymore. Packing her pink pointe shoes into her bag and letting her hair fall around her shoulders, the kink from her bun lined across her neck, she waves goodbye to the others. The walk isn’t far, just a few minutes along the main road up to Summertown; she always takes the short cut through the alleyway to the flat where she lives alone with her mother. Her father left them before she can remember, a traitor her mother repeatedly hisses, giving them up to seek dirty money in the big city. Rosie vaguely remembers a train journey with her mother to find him, but they had returned home alone, no father collected from the shining lights of London. 

 

It is very dark on the road tonight and Rosie’s muscles ache from the cold. She walks quickly because she knows the man is following her. She doesn’t need to turn to look. She can sense him there, speeding up when she does, slowing to match her steps. He walks lightly, his head perfectly level, his shoulders held back above his proud, straight spine. When Rosie gets to the flat, she has her keys ready. But when she pauses at the door and turns back towards the black air, there is no one there. He has gone, vanishing into the night. 

 

Every evening now, Rosie plans her escape from this place. She has a list of dance schools that could save her. She wants to fly to them, a pink swan ready to take her place amongst the others. Tonight, she tries again to ask her mother. In all previous attempts, she has been ignored, her mother locked in a hazy-eyed trance that gives no space to her daughter’s needs. Her mother stopped cleaning the school several years ago, now only vaguely aware that Rosie still spends her hours at the studio, dancing, her talent spreading wide wings every day, ready to fly. Anything to get Rosie out of the way while she drinks and smokes out sweet cloud-rings from a pipe. 

 

This evening she is listening but will have nothing to do with it.

‘If you want to ruin your life with some disgusting queens prancing around in their underwear, don’t expect me to help you.’

And then something else, a new slice of knowledge, a whisper of the past that makes Rosie’s heart beat a little faster. 

‘If you want to end up like your father, don’t come crying to me.’ 

 

‘Like your father’, Rosie repeats to herself as she brushes her teeth. Behind her, in the mirror, she can see the face again, a red rip from his hair line to his eyebrow. She closes her eyes: when she opens them, he has gone. 

 

Saturday classes are in the morning which always gives the studio a fresh, clean look, light pooling in around the shadow of the oak tree that watches outside the window. The man is there again. There is something different this time. They all notice a change in the room, Miss Maisie laughing by the piano, the man smiling. The girls have started gossiping about him now: he is Miss Maisie’s lover; he is an MI6 spy come to recruit new agents; he is a casting agent for a London show; he wants to make them all famous. But then the class starts as normal, the pianist pressing the notes of the waltz with firm joviality. 

 

Rosie is aware of him watching her, making no attempt to hide the direction of his interest. The others start to notice, and they prod and poke her teasingly as they line up in the corner for grand allegro. Rosie steps out into the room: grand jeté, pas de bourée, assemblé en tournant. A spot of light meets her halfway. He is smiling today, an open smile no longer hidden by the rolls of his jumper. He wears a tight white t-shirt, his long arms strong and tanned, his wash-board flat stomach clearly visible. He taps his foot to the rhythm of the dance. In the bright light of the morning, he cannot sit still. 

 

The class ends and Rosie starts to leave with the others, but Miss Maisie calls her back. She turns and walks over to her teacher, little beads of sweat running down the back of her pink leotard. 

 

‘There is someone I want you to meet, Rosie,’ Miss Maisie says softly, drawing her towards the stool where the man waits, still watching. Her teacher looks a little nervous, uncertain, anxiously turning her long thin neck from Rosie to the man. 

 

He nods at Miss Maisie and she smiles a small smile, stage fright over. ‘Mr Croft is director of a ballet school in London. He would like to invite you to join the school, from September.’ 

 

Rosie blinks at them both. Something else is lurking behind Miss Maisie’s words.

 

‘Why?’ Rosie finds herself asking, before she can think of something else to say.

 

He stands up and raises his hand a little. He is going to speak. Before he does so, he reaches up and removes his cap. A scar line, mottled dark pink, runs from his hair line across his forehead to his left eyebrow.

 

He twists his cap in his hands, his long thin fingers winding the fabric.

 

Rosie sees through him into the wide mirror; the shattering of glass opens her memory. Her mother holding a kitchen knife. The blood is fast, a dancing firebird.

 

 

Lucy Ashe is an English teacher. She writes reviews for Playstosee.com and currently has a dystopian novel out on submission to agents. Her poetry and prose are published in Truffle Literary Magazine, 192 Poets’ Directory, One Hand Clapping, and Ink Sweat and Tears. She was a semi-finalist in the London Independent Short Story Prize.Twitter: @LSAshe1