Well done me, by Cordelia Feldman – extract

I’m sitting up in bed at my parental home, writing this on Mum’s computer.  At the moment I spend about four days per week here, and three days at my flat.  This house, where I spent the first thirty years of my life, is in Radlett in leafy Hertfordshire, just on the edge of the green belt.  My cat Spitfire, also known as the Fluffy Monster, or more recently, Precious Angel Fluffball lives here as I am too ill to look after him. 

 

At the moment, my life looks like this: personal training once a week; two regular dog walking clients, Pilates once a week, Barre Pilates twice a week.  No actual job since being sacked from my dream one at a new bookshop in Radlett.  Before that I worked part-time at an authors’ and actors’ agency for nigh on fifteen years.  Seb, the love of my life, split up with me at the end of March five years ago. We’d been together on and off over a period of eleven years.  More, no doubt much more, to come on Seb later.  My new man is called Film Chap. We will meet him soon.

 

This is the house where A Clockwork Orange was filmed. Designed by Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, it was hailed as a modernist masterpiece and Stanley Kubrick saw it whilst scouting for locations for the film and fell in love with it.  It’s the house of the writer who is injured and whose wife is raped by Alex and the Droogs.  Spitfire has just turned seven and a half.  My brother lives in Haifa in Israel.  The panther is here now.

               “What’s the point of you writing a Memoir?” the panther says, gazing at me with amber eyes.  “Who do you think is going to want to read about your life?  You don’t do anything or…”

               “It’s going to be a book about living with mental illness, living with cancer, living in recovery from addiction,” I say.  “People say that I’m brave and inspirational and…”

               “But you’re not,” the panther says.  “You’re fat, unemployed and unemployable as far as I can tell, lazy…”

               “If I write it, and it’s good they will read it,” I say, feeling unsure about this. The panther returns to grooming his flank with his sandpaper tongue.  I stroke the soft back of his neck.  He rests his enormous head on my shoulder.   His breath smells of rotting meat.

 

I used to suffer with Writer’s Block until I completed a Nanowrimo Write A Novel In a Month challenge, set up by a group of techies in San Francisco.  It’s an output challenge, the aim is to write fifty thousand words of a new novel in a month.  That first November I wrote sixty thousand words.  Ever since then, I haven’t had a problem with writer’s block.  Also: for the last few years I’ve been writing a blog.  First it was a Dating after Breast Cancer Surgery one called Scars, Tears and Training Bras, and now it’s one about exercise and my life, my Bipolar Disorder and Secondary Breast Cancer called The Rapid Cyclist.  So, I write every day.  And people read my writing every day.  As to whether it’s any good or not, I try not to worry about that.  I’ve just published my first novel “In Bloom” to rave reviews.  It’s doing really well.

 

This, though: this has to be good or no-one will publish it.  And no-one will read it.  And ever since a whole army of publishers rejected my first novel some thirteen years ago, I’ve been putting off starting another major project due to the fear of writing hundreds and thousands of words that no-one will read.  But in recent times I have been reading a lot of memoirs: Amy Liptrot’s brilliant The Outrun about her recovery from alcoholism, A A Gill’s Pour Me about overcoming alcoholism and  Bryony Gordon’s Mad Girl about her obsessive compulsive disorder.  I’ve just read the Karl Knausgaard series which begins with ‘A Death in the Family’. There’s been a thought at the back of my mind that I’m reading these memoirs for research, that perhaps a memoir rather than another novel is what I will write.  And so at last I’m starting.

 

My psychiatrist Dr Joshua Stein, who I’ve been seeing privately for nearly twenty years – put me on Librium to stop me drinking when I went into hospital for a major cancer operation on 30th August 2016, so I’ve been sober for almost five years now.  Part of me thought that it was the drinking stopping me from doing proper writing.  I no longer have that excuse: I have a clear head, space, time and writing to do. Now is the time for action.  I’m almost forty-two, I wanted to publish a book by forty and managed to publish In Bloom just a year later.

 

I’m tired, so very tired.  I’m on thirteen I think different medications for my breast cancer and my Bipolar and other things.  Let me list them:

1.     Latuda/ lurasidone: antipsychotic for my Bipolar, as a mood stabiliser.

2.     Venlafaxine: SSNRI antidepressant. I can’t take SSRIs due to the ‘manic switch’.

3.     Gemcarbo chemotherapy: gemcitabine and carboplatin.

4.     Fexofenadine: a non-drowsy antihistamine: for my allergies.

5.     Clonazepam: an anti-anxiety benzodiazepine to help me stay off alcohol.

6.     Sodium docusate: for constipation caused by the cancer drugs.

7.     Zolpidem to help me sleep.

8.     Bisphosphonate implant: to seal my bones against cancer and to strengthen them as osteoporosis is a common menopausal side effect.

9.     Colecalciferol and calcium carbonate:  Calcium and vitamin D supplement to go with the bisphosphonates.

10.  Vitamin C to guard against colds, from which I suffer due to abnormally thickened nasal passages.  The result of allergic rhinitis which I have had all my life.

 

So, the cumulative effect of all these treatments is to make me exhausted and nauseated.  Plus I do Pilates or Barre or personal training on Zoom every day.  I tend to sleep for up to three hours in the afternoon.  This book will be written in one late morning session and one early evening session every day.  I’m starting to worry about it.  And my shoulder is hurting.  But I must focus, and write.

 

When he found out that my cancer had spread to my lungs, my oncologist gave me two years.  I’ve already survived another seven years on top of that, so I’m living on borrowed time.  All the more reason to start this book.  It’s going to be tough going though: due to feeling so ill most of the time.  The medical treatment described in this book is a mixture of NHS and private: NHS Breast Care Clinic: Cancer diagnosis at Accident and Emergency; NHS chemotherapy; private surgery; private radiotherapy; ongoing check-up appointments with private oncologist and breast surgeon; private appointments with plastic surgeon, private psychiatrist for the last twenty years and later private psychologist; bisphosphonate and Gemcarbo chemotherapy administered privately  Like various other cancer patients I know, my treatment has been a mixture of some treatments available on the NHS and others – like bisphosphonates – that at the moment are just available with health insurance.

 

As I write this I’m in a period of hypomania which has been going on for six weeks.  Now my mood has come up, writing and life have become easier.  I’m going to do two thousand words of this before turning to the blog, which I have to write and post every day without fail. One second: I must find some lemon squash.  Now I don’t drink alcohol I consume vast quantities of lemon squash and fizzy water, Diet Coke and coffee.  It’s swings and roundabouts once you’re sober.

CORDELIA FELDMAN

SONY DSC

Cordelia Jade Feldman (15th May 1979-8th January 2022), completed her MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck in 2007. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, after many years of suffering and debilitating treatment, which Cordelia confronted with indefatigable courage and humour, she eventually succumbed to the illness, but not before she had published two books. In Bloom (Dandelion, 2021), Cordelia’s first book, was conceived and took shape during her MA at Birkbeck. An autobiographical novel, In Bloom is work of young adult fiction concerned with teenagers’ experiences of recreational drug use on the 90s techno and drum n bass scene, and their psychiatric consequences, depicted through the richly imagined interior life of the novel’s protagonist, Tanya.

 

Cordelia’s second book, a memoir entitled Well Done Me (Dandelion, 2021), is an intimate portrayal of the illnesses from which she suffered and the strategies she evolved to cope with them, mingling pain and humour, the stark realities and indignities of Cordelia’s everyday life and the surpassing optimism and bravery with which she confronted them, retaining always a sense of the beauty of the natural world that surrounds us, the animals and birds and flowers with which she shared her life, and in which she found solace.

Animal Husbandry, by SJ Ryan

 

“Little old ladies…they should be taken out and shot.” Flecks of saliva spat from his mouth as he banged down the discoloured telephone. “They get,” he said, testing the tip of his tongue against the gap between his lower front teeth, “technical problems.”

“So this is a man’s shop.” She stood in front of the counter, the only woman amongst the Saturday morning trade of farmers and handymen. Her right hand held the strap of her over-the-shoulder bag for support.

He lowered his head and flicked his tawny eyes at her above his trifocals, lowering his chin as he made his way down her body. He smiled briefly with one side of his mouth. “Of course it’s a man’s shop.” He leaned his weight against the counter on one elbow and placed the hand of his other arm on his hip, his belly jutting out in front of it.
 

An assistant stood up from packing shelves that lined the wall behind the counter, scratched a sandy-coloured sideburn. “You won’t be saying that when your wife gets here.”

The shopkeeper rolled his eyes and brought them to rest on her. “Well,” he growled.

“I’m looking for hooks to use in a kitchen. Something that looks old. It’s for a cottage.”

“Something that looks old.” He turned his head to one side to repeat the words for the benefit of his audience, which had gathered slightly closer. He looked up at the crudely plastered ceiling where a few rusted metal hooks, splashed with emulsion, protruded irregularly. “I’ll give you those for a hundred and twenty euro each.”

“If you take those out, the roof might cave in”, the assistant chirped from beneath his ginger moustache, looking at her.

She looked back, her face expressionless. “A hundred and twenty euros,” she mouthed, bending her neck back to gaze at the hooks. She slowly brought her head down to meet the shopkeeper’s leer. “I’ve just remembered what it was I came in for today.”

She strode the length of the counter and turned left into an alcove that led to a warehouse. She knew the walk and lie of the place. “Awwrrrgh, you’re my type”, an unshaven heckler threw to the crowd. A few crude laughs erupted. Reaching up with one hand, she stood on tiptoe in her muddy wellington boots and unhooked a calendar off the wall. Walking back to the till she held it up to one side, her arm stretched above her head. “How much for this?”

Miss May bent over a polished car bonnet, on the glossy top page, black PVC hotpants stretched across her taut buttocks. Sunlight caught the blond hair on her upper thighs. The shopkeeper inhaled slowly, his nostrils wide. “And what would you want that for?” There was a slight tremor in his jaw.

Several of the men pushed their hands deep into their trouser pockets, while craning their necks. The air in the shop became close. The shopkeeper glanced around quickly. He looked back at the calendar, screwed up his eyes and opened them slowly. He took off his trifocals, attached to a chord around his neck, and let them rest on the upper curve of his belly. He had never noticed that the picture was a hologram, its image twisting and flickering as she laid it down on the counter.

Miss May’s taut buttocks had transformed into the hindquarters of a large pink sow, light glistening off the stiff blond bristles on its back. Its hind legs balanced in stiletto sandals, scarlet ribbons wound tightly around its ankles, each tied in a neat bow. Its tail curved above the balloon-knot of its anus, below which the swollen lips of its sex organs pouted. The shopkeeper’s mouth went slack.

He turned the page to the acrobatic twins who shared the title of Miss June. They had become two Hereford cows in a lush green field, one mounting the other, its full pink udders outlined against a red vintage Zetor tractor.

Whiskers began sprouting from the shopkeeper’s cheeks. As he leaned over the counter, she noticed the outline of a tail bulge against the worn and shiny seat of his polyester trousers.

He lifted the dog-eared pages to Miss September. The nail-varnished toes of her feet gripped the base of a red satin sheet. Her wrists were tied to the head railings of a bed with a black scarf. He felt a wave of vertigo. The picture blurred momentarily before coming back into focus. An Alsatian bitch now lay on its back on the wrinkled sheet, its hind legs hanging apart. Its front paws were secured to the head railings of the bed with a black scarf. Head thrown back on a pillow covered in red satin, its eyes were closed, its large pink tongue lolling to one side of its parted jaws.

She glanced behind her. Two of the men were bending over, noses buried in each other’s buttocks. Another had his head thrown back, mouth parted to reveal the large square teeth of an ass, long hairy ears quivering and erect.

Hand shaking, the shopkeeper pawed at the pages until he reached Miss October, whose naked pelvis was framed by a pair of light blue suspenders. Her legs, in stockings of the same light blue, were hooked around velvet-covered chains supporting the silver bar of a trapeze as she hung upside down, cupping her breasts in her palms. He swallowed as she was transformed into a skinned and disembowelled carcass of lamb, suspended from a meat hook by a hindleg tendon, the unsevered fluffy white head accentuated by a distended blue tongue. The men salivated collectively. Three had grown horns and pawed the shop floor, while two clawed at each other with sharp yellow talons, their bright red combs and wattles wobbling and swaying with each swoop and hop.

Miss November was kneeling naked in a cream stetson, her body divided into sections by a thick black marker, each bearing the name of a cut of meat. She, too, became a raw carcass, the black marker clearly defining rump, hindquarter and neck, ready for the butcher’s blade.

Several of the customers jumped up against the shop counter, wagging their tails and whining, the lines of dirt under their fingernails now hidden beneath gnarled claws.

A final page was raised. Miss December, leaning against the tiled wall of a shower cubicle, aimed a jet of water from a hand-held nozzle between her parted thighs. The picture misted over and cleared to reveal a man wearing a long rubber glove, his left arm inserted past the elbow into the anus of a Fresian heifer, a long thin plastic tube in his right.

She caught a flash of reddish-brown as a bushy tail darted out through the doorway. The shopkeeper raised his leg against a lower shelf and urinated before flopping onto the floor on one hip, pointing a hindleg towards the ceiling and slobbering into his matted crotch.

The shop was raucous with the sounds of barking, braying, bellowing and crowing. She picked her way past piles of dung, curled turds and pools of urine to reach the entrance. Slipping outside into the crisp morning with its fine mist of rain she grasped the handle on the front of the shop door and pulled it firmly shut, clicking the yale lock into place.

“Soft day, Mrs Crowe.” She smiled at the postmistress passing on the opposite side of the narrow road.

“Please God.” The postmistress nodded once in her direction then sniffed. “Fierce slurry on the breeze, though.”

“The wind must have changed direction,” she said, and walked with firm and determined steps up the road that led out of the town.

 

 

SJ Ryan’s writing has been published in The Stony Thursday Book and Stinging Fly. She has written a work of historical fiction as a requirement towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She has lived in South Africa, Greece, Spain, Ireland, the Turks and Caicos Islands and Canada. She works as a lawyer in London, England.

The image is ahusbandry.jpg by Tim Bradford.

Drim, by Nick Norton

Inside the villa they are taking no note of lines. Not of lines shall they be ruled, so it was said. Dr Ignatz is saying this.

‘For a day or so,’ (they whisper).

‘Soon enough,’ (they whisper), ‘best bet. They will be putting lines back in pronto.’

The villa was a house on the outskirts of a hospital, green expanse and trees surrounding. Dr Ignatz set the scene and it was she who said no more lines. From then on big V capital letter was quickly heard and so they now lived in The Villa, no longer patients but guests. Ruled and rulers sat down together. Rulers said the ruled could be rude or whatever: their show.

Journo Jim was knocking on the door.

Dr Ignatz wafted lyric-like, said she had wonder-drim and vision pictures. Ruled look to one another with arched eyebrow and mutter.

‘Ain’t that what got us in here in first place?’

‘I have a picture of progress,’ she says, ‘of how we are lifted when our hooks intermingle.’

‘Like Velcro?’ checks Geraldine Gee.

Geraldine is now in the parlance noted as guest but still she flinches at the sound of her own voice, expecting a battering. Expected battering does not come today.

‘Yes,’ smiles Doc. ‘Like Velcro, we lift the material together when our hooks intermingle.’

Journo Jim is knocking on the door.

Villa Velcro is scribbled on a scrap of torn wallpaper and passed out through the letterbox.

‘What does this mean?’ asks Jim.

‘Spacesuits,’ is the urgent reply. ‘We must wear spacesuits.’

‘What?’

‘Gotta go.’

Following on after this phrase, with forensic fanfare and trumpet blare, Journo Jim is back at the office. He is a regular one-person band, a veritable orchestra, a strident jangle of story to be told; he sets forth the alarms and gets them running up and down all over his editor’s desk. Space suits he insists, but Harriet runs a finger down the guest list and says: GG.

‘Wha?’

‘Gotta go was a code. All the inmates are variations of GG.’

Calmer now, Journo Jim turned the paperwork around to see:

Garry Gold

Geraldine Gee

Gorgeous Govind

Genie Genitrix

‘This must. be made up,’ he hissed through teeth and whistled and scratched his head and took up his coffee cup and swilled it around.

‘Surely that’s your job,’ laughed the editor.

Harriet blacked in and buttressed all her staff output. She only drank water during office hours. And the drinking was out of a glass, always.

‘Day or two, not weeks,’ she concluded. ‘Something substantial, please.’ She is shooing her employee out of sight.

In The Villa they now wore grey jumpsuits, Velcro fastening, staff and guest alike wore the same. Ignatz alone wore a white jumpsuit. Everyone looked similar, although Garry Gold smelt very different. Garry Gold smelt as if he had filled his pants. Which indeed he had, several times over. And now it was his pleasure to walk along the building’s north corridor, up and down, shaking out a shitty trail. Gorgeous Govind was very upset about this. He lived next door and the neighbourly stench was creeping into his room, staining every part of his material existence. He washed down his mirror, polished his door handle, pushed cushions along the gap between grey carpet and blue-grey door. He returned to his mirror and practiced his tragic look before running down to the communal area and declaiming woe and begging for the convening of the council.

New thing this, the council. Gorgeous was the first to dare to convoke. It worked. Ignatz appeared as if pulled from a hat.

‘This is a drim,’ she delights, though only Ignatz herself appears comfortable in it. Others are coughing and shuffling, their eyes watering. This physical unease might be a consequence of Gold’s pervasive scent.

‘Now,’ Ignatz continued, ‘I have been busy with my Scribblings and Figurings. You remember how I shared this technique? Has anyone followed up on the Scribbling and Figuring rota? Remember, how we open to well-lit understanding and set to replay, looking in wonder at all that passes? Then, you recall, we turn up the illumination just a little, and look again at what feelings went into the review. After this we concentrate on just a little segment, a single feeling, and this forms the basis of our day’s Scribblings and Figurings.’

‘But I convoked a council, miss. This ain’t to do with any of that.’

‘All can come into the review, most surely.’

‘Then I might scratch about it tomorrow. What about today?’

‘What about today?

‘He stinks of crap. He spreads muck all up and down the north corridor. Why can’t I move to the south corridor?’

‘Can we talk to that my friends?’

‘South corridor is female only,’ points out Geraldine Gee. ‘North corridor is for all the others. Why doesn’t Garry just have a shower?’

‘Garry?’

 

‘Gold,’ he smiled. For a moment this seemed to be all the answer and the only answer he considered to be applicable. Yet he continued. ‘Gold by name, gold by nature. That is… That is to say, inner nature is gold. I just need. I need to get it out. I am waiting on true riches. Yes, waiting.’

‘Golden Goose,’ smiled Genie Genitrix,

‘All very well,’ pouted Govind, ‘only while he attempts to pass out some golden nugget, I am going to pass out from suffocation.’

He paused. He crossed his legs and arched his eyebrow, thumb lifted to touch chin, arousing the sense of canny ploy.

‘What is the line between south and north?’

‘A line between?’ Genie sensed the play.

‘Or is it a line along?’

‘The Villa has always,” repeated Geraldine, ‘always, always kept the south corridor for female residents and the north corridor for all the others.’

Govind crossed his legs in the opposite direction and lent forward, touching side of face with finger and blinking. He was trying to flutter his eyelashes, although he really had none to flutter.

Ignatz unhooked her keys and went to a door to the east of the common room. She pointed out that there are other directions apart from north and south.

‘Up and down, for instance,’ she unlocked the door and shouted upwards: ‘KARIN COULD YOU COME DOWN PLEASE!’ she shifted over to the west of the room and unlocked a second door: ‘KARL COULD YOU COME UP PLEASE!’

The council is as if cudgelled into silence, made dumb by this occurrence. What was coming to be? Footsteps, banging, shuffling – some indecision – then more footsteps. How was it that suddenly The Villa was so crowded?

Karl appeared first. His jumpsuit was grey, like theirs, but filthy; dirt rubbed smooth so as to be a graphite mirror. The room and its occupants moved as if a mirage over the rolling volumes of his legs and belly and sleeves. His hair was unkempt dreck drapery. He lifted previously chewed fingernails to his mouth and continued to masticate, a big grin creeping around the nomnomnom motion of his mouth.

‘Hello Karl,’ smiled Ignatz, ‘come and join us.’

Garry thoughtfully pulled up an extra chair.

Karin wore a white jumpsuit that had greyed with age and perpetual wear. Her hands and face were clean. Her curls were reined in by numerous clips. She walked carefully, and on surveying the meeting she stepped down the last few stairs rapidly and pulled herself a chair toward the circle. She laughed. Ignatz said it was good to hear her laugh and asked what it was that made her so happy.

‘We have not celebrated a rendezvous of this magnitude for many a moon.’

‘Many a moon,’ whispered Geraldine.

‘Ah!’ gasped Ignatz. ‘A celebration, yes!’ she clapped in a manner not to be ignored. ‘Hot chocolate please!’ And quick as you please the person who served in the kitchen hatch appeared with a trolley and on the trolley a jug of frothy hot chocolate and a wildly mismatched collection of mugs. Another cudgel blow: the occupants quietly sipped hot chocolate, and by this sugar and warmth more force fell; the shape of their world beaten and reformed beneath sweet, delicious jolts. Geraldine managed to shift around the seating to be alongside Karin. She gently allowed her knee to touch the new person’s knee. Yes, she was real.

Journo Jim was knocking.

Karl heard the thuds and, slopping chocolate on the carpet, got up and moved out the room as if to answer it. But he does not have a key Genie pointed out. And Ignatz replied that the door was not locked. This was too much for Govind. The mug he clutched, of Santa and reindeer in Bermuda shorts, sunbathing beneath the legend: Have a break. He dropped the mug. It did not break. Remnants of brown liquid spiralled out over the grey nylon expanse. Gorgeous Govind rocked back in chair, scowling. He pulled his legs up, foetal position, arms hugging his lower limbs. Ignatz took in the growing number of stains on the carpet and carefully replaced her cup back on the trolley.

‘What might it be, Govind?’

‘Doors.’

Karl came back thereabouts, large brown paper bag in his hand, stains oozing around the bottom of the bag. He dropped it on the trolley and announced he had Cut off the bastard’s head. Then he began laughing.

‘Why would you do that, Karl?’ Ignatz checked.

‘Journo, asking questions,’ spluttered Karl, immensely amused. ‘Nosey. Knew it was your birthday Doc.’

‘Did he? How lovely!’

‘And you chopped his head, for knowing that?’ checked Genie, shuffling closer to the bag but trying to keep away at the same time.

‘Yeh, yeh… Fruity fellow. Smooth white head… I did not count how many candles.’

‘That might be impolite,’ suggested Ignatz.

‘Would all the candles fit?’

‘Now you are being impolite, Karl.’ Ignatz began giggling. ‘Well, let’s share it out.’

‘Slice each,’ nodded Karin. ‘Although has anyone got a knife?’

‘YOU SEE!’ screeched Govind. ‘Doors! All evil happens at doors.

‘It looks delicious,’ Genie admitted, having overcome her dread and stood and closely looked at the contents of the bag.

Ignatz went to the kitchen hatch and returned with a bread knife and some plates. She ripped the brown paper bag apart and there was an open cardboard cakebox splodged with jam and chocolate, and in the box a cake. The white icing bore in red the word Congratulations and seven candles.

‘Four and three,’ said Geraldine.

‘Oooh,’ Karin clasped Geraldine’s hand, ‘we could not possibly presume,’ Karin’s gesture making a joke, but her fingers twisting around Geraldine’s.

‘I am not saying,’ smiled the clinician, ‘but who wants a slice?’

Jim and Ignatz looked at each other across the table. Ignatz wearing a drab institutional tunic, mark of incarceration.

‘That moment should have been our happy ending. Maybe you and I should not be speaking…’

‘Harriet would not allow anything prejudicial out into the wild, I assure you, she is ferocious.’

‘You know; I am fairly sure our paths have crossed. In my university days I attended Happenings. Body painting and bubbles, inflatables and manifestoes, that sort of thing. Harriet was there. She was pretty much instrumental in this scene.’

‘I’m speechless.’

‘Well, speechless is good.’

‘Do I speak too much?’

‘Perhaps I do. You are obviously good at research. The cake was an excellent approach. Yes, so I am sure Harriet’s history in the Happenings is not hidden. You may not have thought to look, of course.’

‘Only, we are talking about The Villa.’

‘Yes…’

‘And that day.’

‘That filthy day…yes.’

‘I met Karl.’

‘They are saying I unleashed monsters, are they not? This is outrageous. The regime had these poor creatures bolted down, terrible. Truly terrible We were not set up to either enslave or imprison.’’

‘He has chopped off heads,’ Jim checked his notes. ‘Seven.’

‘But he did not chop off your head,’ Ignatz pointed out.

‘Ah, true; only according to these timings you had not yet introduced the knife into the room.’

‘All of which is beside the point. Karl is innocent in this. It was Govind who gutted Garry.’

‘Karl escaped that day.’

‘He went for a walk.’

‘And Karin?’

‘It was love at first sight, Geraldine and Karin.’

‘Was Geraldine aware of the, um, history.’

‘They held hands. They ate cake. It was cute.’

‘Cute.’

‘Oh…well, maybe I am getting sentimental in my old age.’

‘If Govind had been allowed to move away from Garry?’

‘It was voted down in favour of Garry taking a bath.’

‘But that night he was caught straining, mm, passing out, how shall we say? Waste matter in the corridor.’

‘And Gorgeous had borrowed the knife.’

‘He is insisting that the golden egg is his now.’

‘Yes, he does so like things. Look, I know it is all a bit of a mess. My Scribbling and Figurings keep coming around to this.’

‘Coming around…to?’

‘Mess! It was, well, how shall I put it? Harriet would have approved of my little anti-hierarchical experiment, once upon a time.’

‘Who was the experiment for?’

‘That is the question, is it not? I would ask that question, very good.’

‘Who was the experiment for?’

‘This had little to do with my poor cohort. Dear sweet things, they were doing fine. Karl, he of course has a permanent chemical imbalance. Everyone else was set to resolve and move on. Karin’s hunger had abated. But the mess on the carpets? Chocolate stains, and… Honestly, it was a challenge to allow that. One does get challenged by the smallest of details, and on such occasion, one must spend a good deal of time Figuring. Drinking chocolate on the carpet and normally, of course, one does not just forget about a knife. One might suggest that aged forty three I set out to deliberately undermine myself. But let me tell you about Harriet now.’

‘I’m not sure we have time.’

‘Only, I am remembering how the cake was brought in. You collaborated with Karl on that, did you not?’

‘Collaboration is hardly the term I would use.’

‘Knowing that a cake needs a knife to cut it.’

‘Well now. If it comes to this, I must say, I was presenting the cake to you.’

‘With Karl’s help.’

‘It was not for sharing.’

‘A cake that big! Was I to eat it all by myself? Surely, one shares a cake that big.’

‘Which must perforce be cut by a knife. Anyhow…’ Jim scratched his chin, scrubbed the hair behind his ear, made a quick calculation on how calculating his interviewee may or may not be. ‘Let me just rewind the tape,’ he said. ‘I think we might start a way back here.’

‘James you are a drim, a drim and a sweetheart. Such a diligent, clean-cut young man.’

Nick Norton’s Building an Aesopic Body, a scrutiny of tale-telling, is due in February 2024 from Short Pieces That Move! Some examples of his stories can be found on-line: 3:AM, Selkie, Fatal Flaw, Fictive Dream, Punt Volat, Idle Ink. Others can be located physically in: The Happy Hypocrite -Tolstoyevsky, Shooter, Mikrokosmos & AKA: A Genealogy of the Saddle, published via Book Works. He has just completed writing a novel: Laughter at the Edge of Tears.

Not The End Of The World, by Annabel Banks

Their fight will begin after dinner, once the plates are in the dishwasher, the surfaces wiped. This is unavoidable. Desperate to stall—her heating works, his flatmates don’t—he potters about in her kitchen, musing aloud on his cooking technique, the need for sugar and salt, and is just remarking upon how burnt onions leave their taste in the air—if a taste can be in the air—when it lands on the roof with a wall-shaking thwop.

He stops, looks up to the corner. A new crack has appeared on the paintwork, thin as a pencilled line. The things seem to be coming more often now, despite the official figures, and her flat is on the top floor—but a crack in the plaster doesn’t mean the bricks are failing. ‘These blocks are made to last, you know.’ A pan scraped, his teacup rinsed. ‘Much better than the flimsy new-builds.’

She comes in behind him, dumps their plates. Says nothing.

‘I was thinking of buying myself, once this is all over.’

Another rumble across the roof, prompting a shiver from the wall, but no response from her.

‘Perhaps by the canal.’ Spoon, forks, knives away, their arrangement backwards to his drawer at home. ‘Vijay says if it’s proved they’re attracted to water, all his clients will leave. I could end up with a penthouse.’ He smiles, inviting her into this obvious fantasy. She knows about his credit cards, the consolidation loan.  

‘You told me that already.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

The seconds stretch out, and he realises that she doesn’t intend to speak again—not unprompted, anyway—and searches his mind for a new topic, one that will lead them away from this conversational quagmire, but draws a blank.

‘Would you like a hot chocolate?’

She makes a face. ‘God, no. I’m fine with the wine.’

‘Okay.’ He reaches for the kettle anyway, because she’s bound to change her mind if she sees him making one.

‘Actually, there’s not much milk left now. I’ll need it in the morning.’ She crouches, head hidden in one of the cupboards as she matches plastic boxes to their lids, so he can afford to send a scowl her way, double-affronted by the suggestion that he’d wasted her supplies by helping himself to two teas while she showered, plus the implication that she solely deserves whatever is left, leaving him no option but to have black coffee before work, which she knows gives him the shits. 

He drops his hand, frowns again at her back. The walls shake once more, misting the air between them with plaster dust, and it occurs to him that this sort of conflict might work as foreplay for some couples, but that doesn’t work for him: he’s never been attracted to the kind of woman who relished misery, preferring a sense of emotional alignment—in bed and out—and had honestly thought that she was the same. And yet earlier, when he’d talked about wanting to strangle his landlord, whose coughing bike had woken him again at six, her reply had been a murmured, ‘but then you’d go to prison’, and he’d felt flattened by this, suspecting that, by deliberately failing to recognise a joke, she was making a statement along the lines of I misunderstood you because you are too tiresome to pay proper attention to, but you are also foolish, so I must point out the obvious flaws in your thinking.

He frowns over the sink, rinsing away the bubbles. She slams the cupboard door. Through the window he sees the darkening sky, those thick purple clouds from the east come to push the sunset away. He draws the black-out blinds, then the curtains, and—once firm in the knowledge that no slice of light can escape—touches the base of the lamp.

‘Did you check the curtains?’ Even as she speaks, she’s examining his handiwork. Once, just once, he’d left a gap, and this is the result. He chooses not to reply, but the voice inside his head is strident: everyone makes mistakes, even you, darling and then his stomach squeezes—oh no—because he has said the words out loud. Not only that, but they’d emerged in that half-vocalised mutter that obliges the listener to choose between offering no response, a position of silence that either stems from absolute power—I magnanimously disregardor total defeat—I must not engage for my own safetyor, if the type to challenge, will trigger a sharp what? or the so-much-worse I’m sorry?, which every schoolchild knows is not an apology, oh no, but an order to stop, think, rephrase or back down, because shit’s about to get real.

So now he’s caught, waiting for her challenge, the demand to repeat what he thought was important enough to say, but not important enough to say properly, maybe feigning interest in his thought process as she asks him to unpack the psychic balancing act between what is worth saying aloud and what he wants to be heard. She will put her head to one side like a curious bird, an affectation of interest which is actually a sign of imminent predation, for hasn’t he just proved himself a scuttling bug, to be skewered on the beak of her correctly clear communication?

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing,’ he says brightly. ‘Just chatting to myself.’

‘Hmm.’ The tone of this hmm is suspicious yet weary. He keeps his head down, helping her adjust the curtain’s folds, reseal the velcro, and for a moment it is quiet between them, and he thinks that maybe they can start the evening again with a friendliness that might lead to the reset buttons of orgasm and sleep,  when she says, ‘Did you make any noise on your way here?’

Make any noise? She is being ridiculous, and so he tries to illustrate this. ‘Like what, exactly? Letting off fireworks? Banging a pot with a spoon?’

‘Don’t be dense.’

‘So, tell me what you mean.’

‘I mean that you don’t seem to be taking this seriously.’

‘How?’

‘By not doing what you are supposed to do. The curtain…’

That fucking curtain. Was she ever going to let it go?  ‘I said I was sorry.’

‘But it’s not only that. You don’t listen.’

‘I do.’ He stares at her, to prove that he is doing just that, right now.

‘No, you don’t. And I think you deliberately refuse to listen to me or anyone else, because’ —and here she takes a breath, as if deciding whether she wants to actually say the words in her head— ‘you’re a selfish prick who does whatever he wants.’

She’s never called him a prick before, and he feels the word trying to pierce his sense of himself, forcing him to view their conversation from an external viewpoint. Whose side would an observer take, if someone were peeking through the ceiling cracks? His, surely. He hadn’t sworn at her.

‘That’s unfair.’

‘Is it?’ Using her wrist, she pushes back the strands of hair that have fallen into her eyes. ‘You don’t think you’re doing stuff to attract them? Playing music?’ Her eyes narrow. ‘Singing?’

Oh shit. ‘There is no evidence that—’

‘Yes, there is.’ Face purpling, she hisses her words. ‘The party on that balcony. That man with the phone.’

‘That’s not evidence.’ He turns to busy himself with the table, brushing loose grains of salt into the carpet. ‘Look, I get you’re upset, but I don’t feel like it’s my fault you swallow every crazy theory out there.’

She pauses, processing this, and he can tell the exact moment she allows herself to tip over into anger, because she gets so very still everywhere except her eyes, which, oddly enough, call to mind the crackle of burning twigs.

‘So, just to be clear,’ she says, ‘my complaints, my concerns, all the stuff we’ve been talking about these last three weeks, are down to a failure in my critical faculties?’

Oh shit, he thinks again. Out loud: ‘I never said that.’

She touches the tabletop, touches her glass, and when she speaks it’s with the air and intonation of someone offering him a coffee. ‘You think I’m stupid?’

‘I certainly never said that.’

They glare at each other, and for a second he feels them teetering on the edge of a different kind of fightone that would break open this argument’s chrysalis to have it emerge new, unrecognisablewhen another of the things lands on the building with a great thud and starts rolling around on the roof.

It must be a big one, and yet the clatter of tiles shifting under its rubbery skin is not the worst sound he can hear, oh no, for that is the flobble or blobble it makes as it moves, a glooping sound that brings to mind the water balloons of his childhood, only deeper, like they were filled not with water from the tap, but with paint or unrefined oil, and not like that anyway, but quite different, and yet this is the only way he can make sense of what he is hearing. He hears other sounds too, as they roll—an excited guinea-pig’s whoops and chuckles, a washing machine with an unbalanced load, rocking and banging as it spins.

They both stare up at the ceiling.

‘Will it hold?’ she says.

‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘Vijay told me that these post-war builds were made with proper materials. Not like Bristol.’

She closes her eyes, and he regrets bringing up those images.

Another thud. More rolling, bubbling sounds, louder now. It must be overhead, squidging itself as it moves around, the part of it that touches the slate slightly flattened, as though it has a slow puncture.

The roof seems to be taking the weight. ‘Soon be gone,’ he murmurs.

‘You don’t know that.’

‘There’s no reason for it to hang around. Someone will drive past soon, and it will bounce off after the headlights.’

She throws him a look of disgust. ‘And what about the people in the car?’

He could reply that these imaginary citizens would be fine as soon as they hit ten miles an hour, but she knows that, so instead he takes her hand, the fingers cold and stiff, and kneads and warms them with his own until she draws away.

‘Just go,’ she whispers. He’s not sure if she is addressing him or the grey intruder on the roof. ‘I can’t take any more.’

He opens his mouth to rebut this, then pauses. How would he be able to tell whether she was telling the truth, or merely being theatrical? Maybe she

could

take more, but he doesn’t want to be the one to test the weight of her emotional ceiling. Deciding that she needs a moment, he picks up their wine glasses and uses his elbow to switch on the kitchen light, planning a splash more for each, and is just deciding if maybe, as he hands her the glass, he should touch the top of her head in a tender cease-fire, when the window behind him explodes inwards, showering the floor with jagged shards of glass.

They both leap, her forwards, him back, and so come to rest side-by-side, as the thing bulbs its way inside the room. ‘Get the fuck out,’ she screams, catching up the scissors that hang from a magnetic hook on the fridge to poke at the grey, stretched-silk skin. ‘Get away from here!’ And as he moves behind her in an unseen gesture of support, the smell hits him, that hot-fat smell which always reminds him of the beer garden where they went on their second date, that had looked perfect in the pictures but—disaster—had been built next to the kitchen vents, and thus reeked of thrice-fried chips and oil-dunked bean burgers, and where they had both soldiered on, neither wanting to appear an unattractive fusspot, tiresome in demands for olfactory purity wherever they dine, until an older American couple on the table next to them had exited, loudly expressing their revulsion, and he’d met her gaze with amused agreement before following them out.

‘Get back,’ he shouts, trying to take the scissors from her. Spinning, she shifts her grip and attacks the thing over-armed with a frenzied stabbing that has no effect at all, a toothpick to a tyre, until eventually it withdraws from the window and rolls completely off the corner of the block, the both of them so still as they listen to the second of silence, the gravelly crunch, and the sound of it wobbling around the corner in the direction of the main road.

‘It’s gone,’ he says, and turns in time to witness the rolling of her eyes.

‘But why did it come in the first place? The window was blacked out.’

‘It wasn’t trying to hurt us, I think. Just passing over. The glass couldn’t take the weight.’

‘Well, aren’t I lucky.’ She waves the scissors towards the mess on the floor. ‘So now there’s this. On top of all this shit, I have to find the money for a new window.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. After a moment’s hesitation, he steps forward to take her by the shoulders, with a pause just before his hands come to rest, waiting for that shake of her head. ‘I can pay half.’

But she neither rejects him, nor softens under his touch. Instead, she stands there, teeth working her bottom lip, eyes on his. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ she murmurs, and he knows the it’s my flat, my private home, you are here on sufferance, and what money have you got anyway might be unspoken, but that doesn’t stop it being real, and anyway, he abruptly realises, the broken window might only be the start of the evening’s events—he’s seen the pictures from Glasgow, the flattened school in Milan—so volunteering to pay towards the cost of any damages before he knew their true extent would be unwise. There’s nothing to do but nod, drop his hands, and move back in an almost ceremonial fashion, like the measured step of a graduate or newly arisen knight. ‘We can talk about it later.’

She shrugs.

‘Do you have anything to cover the window?’

‘Nothing dark enough.’ Another shrug. ‘A blanket, I suppose.’

‘Great. I’ll hang it over the hole and we can wedge a pillow against the bottom of the door to make sure.’

She fetches the blanket—more a quilt, it turns out: steel-grey, slippery, difficult to wrangle—and helps him loop it over the curtain rail, securing the fold with wooden pegs from under the sink. They work in darkness, her face near his armpit, her breasts at his back, and the result is clumsy but serviceable. When they have retreated into the living room, he feels safe enough to bring the conversation back to better things, and is searching his mind for a topic when she speaks.

‘Do you think it will be back?’

‘Probably not.’ She’s upset, of course. The window. The smell. ‘It’s off the building now.’

‘Okay.’ Stooping, she adjusts the pillow by the closed kitchen door. ‘As long as you’ll be safe.’

‘Safe?’ he says, before he can stop himself.

‘On your way home.’ She stands and, without looking, puts a toe over a shard of window glass, shifts her weight and crunches it underfoot, and he knows that she means it, because otherwise she would have wanted to fight for longer, raise their voices and wring the misery from each other like water from a dishcloth, more, and again, until the cloth is dry, the palms of their hands sore, and then even more still, until there was nothing left but to collapse into each other and whisper words like sorry, forgive, try.

There was none of this now, and—as surely as the thing outside would be back—he knew they were done. The realisation made his stomach lurch, but at least it was a familiar sickness, one that he knows will end. Best to start the process right away. He’ll gather the few items left here over the last months, kiss her a firm goodbye and ramble back to his grubby room, singing songs from bands he’d liked when he was still at school.

Annabel Banks’s collection, Exercises in Control, is available from Influx Press.

Dead Mouse, by Charlotte Turnbull

When we finally found it in the corner of the downstairs loo – the dead mouse – the children covered their noses with their sleeves and refused to eat breakfast in the kitchen because of an alleged lingering smell. They leaned into the drama. What child doesn’t relish revulsion and swoon? They defined themselves against something – it, or us – and found a purpose, a unity, that morning.

There are maggots, my husband said, taking rubber gloves from below the sink: he was ready to get dirty, but not too dirty. How long has there been a smell? 

A few months, maybe longer, I said, confident and complicit in our marital myth that my larger nose led to engorged nasal cavities, ergo a heightened olfactory sensitivity, along with all my other heightened sensitivities: lively digestion, easy fatigue, wet flushes.

A few months, maybe longer, he repeated, staring at my belly. 

In the kitchen, the children began to mutter – that kind of bored mutter that builds to skirmish, then civil unrest – so I led them, their plates of toast stacked up one arm, into the living room, to the TV, and closed the door on it. The smell. 

*

The children ate their breakfast but refused to leave the living room until I opened the window so they could climb straight into the garden. 

The eldest went first, then climbed back into the house seeing my husband upend a plastic bag into the rhododendrons. Retreat, she shouted. The little one backed away, accommodating and grateful not to be in charge.

We are trapped, the eldest shouted from the window at her father, our home is a mortuary. 

I was impressed with the eldest’s vocabulary, wondering if I had not spoken to her properly for a while, when the little one began to cry from a deeper sense than the rest of us about what was at stake. 

On the lawn, my husband stuck his arms out and lurched about like a zombie, delivering the wrong punchline to the right joke, and I considered whether another coffee would kick me through the rest of the day into the familiar sleepless night.

I took the little one onto my lap and kissed her forehead, but she pulled away and fell to her knees, officiating the marriage of two Sylvanian animals in one smooth, quick movement instead of putting her arms around me: instead of pulling my t-shirt to palpitate my breast.

*

If we had pretended – if my husband and I had frowned at each other, turned the corners of our mouths down, looking from side-to-side, avoiding the hard truth of the eye, the grey frame of our faces – could we not have just left it? Could we not have ignored the smell? 

I didn’t tell the children that a rotting mouse smells exactly like an old, used tampon. I didn’t want an old, used tampon to be their first experience of death.  

 

 

Charlotte’s fiction made the Galley Beggars Story Prize long-list 2023 and the Caledonia Prize long-list 2022. She is also published in Litro, The McNeese Review, New England Review, Denver Quarterly and as a chapbook with Nightjar Press..

.

Moon, by Jo Stones

For the third time this morning Mary looks through all the spaces, 

turns her head left, right, imperceptibly 

alert 

then tilts forward, bending herself in half, 

walks, folded, with tiny, quick steps, 

searching along the edge of skirting, 

the floor, 

under a wooden chair.

She pulls herself upright, stands,

sighs,

then bends herself around objects, feels pieces of furniture, cushions, 

peers inside a dusty glass vase, 

flicks books

shakes a bottle,

moves her hand along surface after surface.

Inch by inch, Mary scrutinises.

– There’s not enough time for this. 

Her left ear whistles, 

her head fills with a noise not unlike untuned radio stations, not calming. 

No.

Mary looks at the coat-hooks, feels around the last jacket she wore, her fingers digging in the pockets.

Fluff, coin,

the keys aren’t there, she knew that.

Stand, very still, collect.

Mary closes her eyes, slowly breathes in 

through her nose, 

and out through the small opening of her lips.

The key to calm is breathing,

but the key to her flat is missing.

She opens her eyes, swallows then, turning around, with miniscule movements, steps forward, looks back, forward …

And again, through the flat.

‘Retrace every step,’

from the front door and into the kitchen. 

Mary touches all the hooks that she recently screwed to the back of the door, 

a place for storing keys.

She walks from the kitchen to the sitting room. 

Mary drops her body softly to the floor and rolls over, lies on her back.

No.

Time.

Mary sits up, gets on to her knees and crawls across the room on all fours, her fingers widespread, star-like, 

sweeping across the carpet, 

windscreen wipers. 

“You’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on so tight.” 

Mary pulls herself back up to standing,  

pushes away the image of a screw-on head,

deleted from her mind. 

Not a time for an annoying turn of phrase, 

… can I pick your brains? 

Why do people say such things?

Worst of all is saying someone is ‘mad,’ as if they themselves are not …

who can measure madness versus not?  

“Retrace your steps,” 

it’s what she always says, 

said …

to Ben.  

He had loved her, or seemed to …

And then he also hated her. 

Which is why he left, or she asked him to leave, somewhere in between that mutual partition,

Ben forever angered by suggestions such as tracing steps …

“But it really does work,” Mary would say … 

and, if he wasn’t too enraged, she might carry on …

“… it’s an extra sense we have when our minds can’t remember.  Inside us we do actually know where we have put things, it’s amazing, our bodies remember everything!”

Her own advice now.

It will work, it does work.

Retrace your steps. 

Mary revisits herself arriving home yesterday, unlocking the door, 

the pockets in the clothes she wore …  

She lifts her arms out and up high, to widen her lung capacity, 

to help her breathe.

She will remember. 

She lies on her back, closes her eyes, and imagines …

walking, 

a miniature Mary, walking through a map, a set design of the flat …

“Fuck.”

She can’t see the moment.

The moment she placed the keys …

Mary pulls herself up and stands, not able to see much, no proper focus,

the veins inside her temples pump,

a sense of nausea …

actual nausea,

dry throat, tongue, teeth.

This time she’s going to fall,

fail.

Moon will be waiting at the train station, cold. 

Sweet as he is, hopeful at first …

searching the faces of disembarking people …

She lets him down.

She will not, 

not today.

That isn’t who Mary wants to be.

You’re on your own Mary. 

So was Moon. On his own. 

There was a time when he had lived like a wild man, on the edges of roads, railway tracks, in prisons, shelters. 

Moon would find his way back, like a cat, to Mary.

He would ask for money, tobacco, food …

and be off again, into the dark night.

Mary lowers herself back to her knees, eyes open, crawls like a predatory cat, across the living room carpet once more. 

Persian. 

Deepest indigo, artery red, clotted cream, a soft sky blue … touch of dusky pink on the petals of the central flower.  

Dyed, thick, hand-woven. 

Mary stretches herself out on the carpet, face down, smells the wool.

Kav and Patena gave her this carpet, 

Iranian friends, she only knew them for a year or so.

They moved cities, lost touch. 

Good, organised, generous people, they helped Mary out when she first moved into the flat.

“I have many rugs, you need a rug, please, take it,” said Patena.

It was a Saturday afternoon. Patena turned up, out of the blue, with her husband, Kav. They walked up the steps, one behind the other, straight through the door into Mary’s new flat, the huge rug, rolled up and over both their shoulders like a prize stag. 

The rug unfolded across the bare wooden floor, magic.

If Patena had a brother like Moon, she would always be on time for him, and bring him rugs.

Keys.

They must be hiding in the carpet pattern, 

They fell from her bag, yes, they are here. 

Mary urges the carpet to surrender them. 

Now’s not the time… 

and

… nothing.

“Fuck.”

She’ll miss the train.

Bad sister, did she do this on purpose?

not caring. 

Is that what Moon will think?

and his carers, they will think that.

Is that narcissism, to worry what they think? 

Does she care enough about her brother? 

or does she care what her brother’s carers will think?

A swelling sensation fills her ears, as if with too much air …

she can’t locate it,

not exactly.

Every part of her senses feels wrong … 

breathe.  

It happens, this.

Mary knows … and she can’t stop it, 

and then she can.

She’s not mad.  

No.

If Ben did ever love her, he didn’t love this.  

He would grow angry.   He would say she was mad. 

Anyway, he’s gone now. So that’s that.

Mary sits up cross-legged in the middle of the rug.

That’s all over now,

like the shift of a scene in a film, wipe.

Mary pulls herself up,

lifts her bag from the chair where she’d placed it, all packed, ready to leave an hour ago

when she was calm

before she knew she didn’t have her keys.

Already checked; the keys are not in the bag. 

Check again.

Mary tips the bag out on to the kitchen counter, willing the hard sound of brass Chubb on wood 

… if only…

She puts everything back …

the navy tissue-wrapped gift; a new phone for Moon’s birthday. 

Moon loves gadgets.

Her wallet; debit, credit, cash …  

She checks the lid is properly on a pen, drops that back in the bag,

flicks open her notebook; the keys are not hidden inside that either…

hand sanitizer, hand cream …mask.

And her mobile and charger, that’s all.

Scrunching her eyes tight, nose wrinkled, like Dorothy wishing, heel-clicking,

she psychic messages her keys …

come on!

it’s an inanimate object. 

That can work.

Mary’s done that before, 

knows there’s a cosmic possibility the keys will appear.

Moon will be upset if she’s late, there’s only one train an hour. 

He’ll think she didn’t want to come.

Did she?

Moon would never miss a train. 

Moon is reset and now lives as perfect order personified,

always on time.

Mary feels hot, clammy, pale…

Moon used to tell her that her lateness could increase his psychosis.

“My stress levels go up…” he’d say.

Mary tries not to panic, 

or cry.

That was before mobile phones and texts,

at least there is that now.

She pushes her bag across the table, lays her head on her hands.

Be there for him.

Be more.  Be the rock,

Be …

normal.

A swollen sounds fills Mary’s ears again.  

… there… it’s there, hovering in the space between her eardrums … temples, throat …

No. 

Go away.

‘Breathe,’

Mary stands, paces around the small kitchen to … 

kettle. 

A cup of tea with sugar, help …

as it would a person who’s been in a car accident.

Breathe, 

she can breathe

“Yes”

Mary fills the kettle, it boils, 

she sits at the table,

stares at the brown, incomplete circular mark from a hot cup, no coasters. 

Mary drinks the sweet tea, feels better

breathing settled, 

inner ears clear. 

No big breaths into brown paper bags, not for her.  

Restoration: Mary is a rock 

… in a forest, patterns spread across its body, 

wiggly lines of whitish, Verdigris lichen, 

fungi meeting moss, a beautiful harmonious marriage.  

Stop

…riddles.

It’s time, come on, find the keys now.

He will have prepared,

impeccably dressed, he will check his watch often.

Mary should call, tell him she’s late.

Text, that’ll be easier…

– Hi Moon, slight delay, don’t worry, I’ll sort it. 

He replies:

– Okay May

Moon started calling himself Moon and Mary ‘May’ when they were teenagers. 

It stuck, just between them. 

Outside chirrups from tits, blackbird, finches, a green parrot squeak, winter’s end. 

Cars hum from the main road.

Mary is breathing, her inner ear, free, her head clear.

She walks into the middle of her living room, the plain tree swaying outside her window, the linen curtains flow back and forth from the window to the chalk white walls.

Mary closes the window, everything settles, all seems clear.  

She hopes Moon won’t be sitting on the station platform,

Moon didn’t used to come and meet her from the train.

He’d be waiting, perhaps sitting on the wall, or standing, outside the door of his sheltered home.  He’d know what time she was due to arrive, would be looking out for her as she came up the hill from the station.  

Sometimes she’d see him stand in the middle of the road, waving his arms, huge waves, as if she was a plane that needed help landing in the fog.

Now he has his own flat. Independent living, home comforts. 

A framed poster hangs on the living room wall:

 “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” 

 “It’s a quote from John Lennon,” Moons says, almost every time she visits.

He loves that he knows this. He agrees with Lennon.

Nothing much happens for Moon except ‘life.’ 

Once a great deal happened. 

Mary was still at school. He’d run away from home, or had he been thrown out? 

He barely ever came back after that, or he wasn’t allowed.  

If he did turn up it was most often at night. He’d call up to Mary’s bedroom window to ask for money and cigarettes, then he’d disappear. And he did that for over a year, then he was missing for a long time.

Even more stick-thin than before, and extremely leather-tanned and filthy, Moon was sat on the front steps one day when Mary got home from school.

Ping-pong eyes, a shock on his face with its hollow cheeks. 

“Bath time,” Mary sang, joking nervously.

Moon followed Mary inside the house, around the kitchen, then to her room and back to the kitchen. 

He stared at her continuously.

“You’ve got a purple aura,” he said. 

His matted hair stood up; his scabbed, bare feet stank.

Maggie, their father’s girlfriend, got back from shopping. She took one look, laughed meanly at the state of him, waving the air regarding the smell. 

“Your brother’s a nutter,” she said to Mary, barely suppressing a mean smirk then,

“I’m going out, your father can deal with this,” leaving them both in the kitchen.

“What happened?” Mary asked Moon.

Moon looked like he’d cry so Mary made tea.

Hearts broke. 

Home from work, Dad was sad. 

He turned, long enough to give Mary a strained, smile.

“Michael, son, let’s go in the front room and have a chat, eh?” 

Only Mary called him Moon. Everyone else called him ‘Michael.’

Mary crawled to a place on the hall landing where she could just see through the jar of the door to the front room. 

Moon, sitting on the couch beside their dad. Awkward, sweaty, mumbling,

and then Dad’s low voice, 

“Have you taken any drugs, son?” 

Moon’s head hanging.

Bless me father for I have sinned.

Silent, enormous teardrops falling, 

Moon tears,

stunned, 

silent as night.

Mary huddled on the landing as it grew dark, endlessly sobbed into her knees.

Keys. 

Mary will find them.

She will leave, and get the next train, arrive, and smile.

What Mary really wants is not to be a rock, Mary wants a rock.  

Dad found it hard to be a rock. He wanted to be a rock, then he died.

In Moon’s clockwork life, he has rocks, paid capable, caring, calm rocks.

Mary’s not his rock. Mary is chaos and causes psychosis. 

…find the keys!

Mary was the well one … able, 

expected not to lose things like keys, to arrive on time.

It was a secret.  Moon’s breakdown. 

Moon went to hospital. Mary went to school.

She hid in a dark cupboard.

There were damp mops standing with their soggy heads up, buckets, brooms and Mary, solitary confined, crying in isolation. 

As if Moon had died. This one who looked a bit like him, is not him, where is he?

…   Come on! 

Keys, Keys. 

stop going back over tracks,

awakening pain.

Moon’s rebuilt now, 

sweet, peaceful, medicated, well. 

Where are the keys? 

Retracing, again, the steps she took the night before …this has become so boring.

Time – 9.20 am. 

Too late for the 9.27 

Mary texts Moon again:

– I’m running late, so sorry … Next train, promise!

– Okay May (thumbs up emoji) 

That’s a good sign, the thumbs up. 

Mary relaxes a little.

– Sorry Bro, just can’t find my keys.

– Don’t worry, May, life is what happens when you’re making other plans 

– Ha, yes! So it is! 

– I’ll be waiting for you, May (smiley face emoji)

– Thanks, don’t come to the station though.

–  I’m already at the station May. 

Shit!

-Okay, sorry! Mary replies.

– Don’t worry. I’m used to it by now, May. You’re always late. I’ve brought my book. I’m reading Lord of The Rings. It’s really good. I don’t mind waiting for you.

Moon speaks to her as if he’s her psychiatrist,

nods, says ‘mmm.’ 

And he uses her name, a lot. 

Mary’s in the room, her kitchen. No more panic.

She leans against the tall fridge; its magnets fall from the door.

She kneels to pick them up.

Partly obscured by the bottom of the fridge, is the Lancashire red rose keyring that once belonged to their dad. He’d bought it on a pilgrimage of his childhood, back in the eighties, she’d kept it when he died; uses it for her keys now,

her door keys. 

She picks them up.  

“You heard me.”


Jo Stones was born and grew up in Sheffield, then New Zealand and then South London.  Aside from ‘Moon’ her non-fiction story, ‘Lotus Instructions’ was published in Wasafiri magazine, 2016.  She is a graduate from Birkbeck’s MACW, as well as University of Westminster’s BA in film, where she wrote short screenplays. Before that she was in three quite dreadful bands where she wrote the songs.  She is currently working a novel, usually at the crack of dawn before starting work in her role as an archive producer for documentary films.

Sudanese Football

The Dead Good Footballer, by Tarina Marsac

The Dead Good Footballer: Audio

CAST:
Jack — Sacha Marsac
Claire, Jack’s Mum — Grace Robson
Sam, Jack’s Dad — Julian Jones
Tom, Jack’s Brother — Max Marsac
Lizzie, Jack’s Sister — Florence Marsac
Daphne Beauchamp — Alicia Marsac
Recorded by Christian Marsac at The Safe Room

Jack

30 October 2018

I love playing football. In a different life, I would have been a professional football player. In that life, I would have been good enough to be a professional football player. I would have played for Arsenal and England. However, football is not how I earn my living. I’m a delivery driver with Hermes—and let me tell you—I get a lot of abuse in my job. Customers get annoyed because they’ve waited in for hours. Don’t get me wrong; I get where they’re coming from, so I always give them a smile and a hello. But they can be bloody rude back. Still, none of that matters much because every weekend and one night a week, I get to play football. Mum and Dad are coming to watch tonight’s match. I’m going to tell them I’m getting back with Daphne Beauchamp.

I’m on fire tonight. I’ve scored two goals, one of which I’m incredibly proud of—even if I say so myself.

God, I feel a bit odd. My chest is running out of breath—which is not like me at all. I’m super fit. I eat well. I don’t over-indulge in alcohol and never do drugs. To tell the truth, I’m a bit of a body-temple kind of man. And I’ve watched some of my friends—Mark Wainwright and Robbie Higgleston in particular—their lives ruined with the stuff they’re smoking and snorting.

I carry on running. My breath will catch up with me. I just need to focus. The ball is heading my way. I run to intercept—the world has turned blurry. Everything is in slow motion.

I feel odd.

Weird.
Oddly weird.
Weirdly good.
I want to kick my leg high, and my right foot wants to point, to flick the ball toward Geoff Berkey on the left side. But I’m falling backwards. The ball passes over me. My ears are whooshing. My heart is banging in my chest.

Why am I on the ground?

I’m trying to stand up, but the weight on my belly won’t let me. I can’t open my eyes to see who is sitting on me—stopping me from playing. I wonder if it’s Brian Williamson, that six-foot-two-inch wing-back on the other team. He’s always had a beef with me.

Why can’t I open my eyes?

Something is pulling me up. I can feel breath on my face, hands on my body, pumping, and rhythmic pressure on my chest.

I feel light.
Other-worldly.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
I am not afraid.
I look down at the football pitch. People are crowding around me. I’m lying on the ground, yet I can see myself from up here. I’m shouting, but no one is listening. They can’t hear me.

I’m going up.

I can still see myself lying there. Several people are there, and someone has a defibrillator. I had training for that—along with a couple of team members—on what to do, how to use it, and when to use it—I never had to, thank goodness.

I can see it’s too late for me. Looking down there, I know I’m not going back. I can see Mum and Dad screaming. I call them to let them know I’m okay. They can’t hear me.
I can’t help them.

They’re on their own now.
I’m getting lighter.
I’m a marionette, and my puppet master is pulling my strings. Mum and Dad are disappearing, my teammates, the crowd—they are all going. I’m drifting but at speed—upwards, and everything feels good. I no longer mind that Daphne Beauchamp slept with Daniel Frost. I no longer care that Tom steals my football boots, thinking if he wears them, he’ll be as good a footballer as me. And my tooth that’s been giving me gyp for what seems like forever has stopped hurting.

I’m lighter.
I’m soaring upwards like the freest of birds.
This is amazing
I want to tell the world how amazing this feels—except I don’t care. I’m just enjoying the ride.
I am not afraid—not even a bit.

*

Claire, Jack’s Mum

30 October 2018

It’s freezing outside, and I want to stay home, change into my pyjamas, wrap up with a fleecy blanket and watch the final of the Bake-Off. But I promised Jack that his Dad and I would watch him play football tonight. After all those years of sitting on the sidelines every weekend winter morning, I feel I’ve done my bit. Still, I suppose it’s not that often he asks anything of us now. He’s almost thirty, left home a few years back, and is independent. I miss being part of his daily life.

I’m wearing layers of merino wool and cashmere blend. I’m glad I’ve still got Sally Markham’s Canada Goose coat—I must give that back to her soon. Sam is not as wrapped up as me. Why doesn’t he feel the cold?

Jack is playing his favourite position. He is good. I had forgotten just how good. Shame he didn’t make the grade as a professional. He tried so hard, trained so hard, and worked so hard. Still, at least he gets to play every week. It gives him a break from his day job—people can be rude to delivery drivers.

He scores. It’s a great goal. Even I can see that. The team gather around him, hugging him, cheering him. He looks taller. The game starts again, and he’s off like a rocket. No one can catch him, touch him. WOW! He’s only gone and scored again. I am so glad I didn’t bail out. My nose is icy and running, but I don’t care. This is so exciting. Everyone is watching Jack, including the other team. That big bugger, whats-his-name, Brian something-or-other? He’s very close to Jack—too close. The ball is flying through the air, and I can see Jack and Brian going for it.

What happened? Jack’s fallen.

I don’t think that Brian bloke pushed him, but maybe he did. The ball is still in play, but Jack is on the ground.

Why isn’t he getting up?
My heart is pounding.
Something is wrong.
I feel very hot in my layers. I undo the zip on my big coat. I throw my gloves off. My insides are shaking, not from the cold but something else, much scarier. I don’t know what it is.

Jack is still on the ground, and Coach is near him. People are pounding on Jack’s chest. I’m running. I need to get to my boy. Sam is running a few steps ahead of me, and I feel cross that he’ll get there before me. Somebody has brought a defibrillator.

Why?

There is not a sound except the roar in my ears. Only it isn’t in my ears. It’s coming from me—from deep inside me. I scream, and I scream. My knees are weak, and they stop supporting my weight. I fall next to my big, nearly thirty-year-old baby. Sam is next to me.

I’m trying to pick you up, Jack. You’re too heavy. Your Dad helps me. And we rock you, just like we did when you were a little boy and scared of the monsters hiding under your bed.

I remember pushing you out of my body Jack. Those hours of labour, how much it hurt. And the last push when you fell out of me and into the safe arms of the midwife.

I remember her placing you on my saggy belly, and you opened your eyes, looked at me, and everything in the world melted away except us. I remember your Dad crying. He was so pleased to have a son.

I remember knowing how perfect feels.
You’ve gone, Jack.
I can feel it.
I want to look up to see where you are, but I’m afraid in case I don’t see you. In case I do.

I am so afraid.

*

Sam, Jack’s Dad

30 October 2018

Jack is playing footy tonight, and the missus and I are going to watch him. It’s been a while since he wanted us on the sidelines. When I think of all the weekends we spent in the cold, it’s hard to believe where that time has gone. He’ll be 30 soon. I need to warm the car up for Claire. I’ve had a bit of trouble with the starter motor recently. It’s bloody cold tonight. I’m hoping we don’t break down. I can imagine what Claire would say, and she’s not that happy about going out tonight. The bloody Bake-Off final is on, and she’s been rooting for that Rahul bloke all along. Personally, I find him a bit sappy.

The car is running, warm enough for Claire. I wish she’d hurry up. I don’t want to be late. There is a real bite to the air tonight. I wonder if I should have worn a thicker jumper.

Oh my God! Claire looks like she’s going on an arctic expedition. Where on earth did she get that coat? Still, at least she’ll not complain about being cold!

I’m excited about tonight’s match. Jack has always been a good footballer. When he was a lad, he wanted to be a professional. He was nutty about Arsenal and England–of course. He was good too. A couple of scouts sniffed around. He trialled for various youth clubs and ended up at Crystal Palace, but he didn’t make the final cut. I’m pleased he hasn’t given up, though. It keeps him fit. And that day job of his must drive him mad, the traffic in London is awful, and some people can be very rude to Hermes drivers. What is that about? He does his job well; they get their parcels—’ get over yerselves.’

The match is going well. Jack scores the first goal. It’s a cracker of a goal, too. His teammates are proper all over him. There he goes again, flying down that field— he’s only gone and scored again! I reckon he’ll get ‘Man of the Match’.

Some of the players on the other side are big buggers, but they’re not playing too dirty. I’m glad about that. Bloody hell, the ball is flying through the air. Jack is going for it along with that 6’2 monster Brian whatever his name is. I hope he doesn’t knock ‘im down. Jack would feel that good and proper.

The ball is still in play, but Jack is on the ground.
What’s going on?
He wasn’t pushed—I’m sure of it.
Something feels off. I’m looking at Claire. Her face is off too. What is going on?

There’s a commotion all around Jack. Claire and I are running toward him. I need to get there first.

I need to protect him.
I need to protect Claire—I have to make this better.
Claire’s taken her coat off and gloves, running like the wind, but I get here first. There are loads of people here, and the Coach and someone are putting paddles on his chest. They’ve ripped his shirt. He is going to get so fucking cold.

What is the fucking matter with everyone?

Claire’s trying to pick him up, but he’s too heavy. I help her, and we hold him in our arms and rock him.

Claire is screaming, except it’s not a scream, more of a roar, like a wounded animal.

We’re here now, Jack. You’re safe now, Jack.

I remember your very first football match, Jack. Your eyes were worried when you looked at me, then you jutted out your chin, threw your shoulders back and gave me the thumbs up, and you ran toward Coach Brian. You were brave, Jack. I was so bloody proud of you, Jack.

I am so afraid.
People are pounding on your chest. I want them to stop. I know you’ve gone.
I know you’re not coming back.
I can feel you.
I close my eyes, and I see you.
I don’t want to open them. I don’t want you to go, Jack.
I am so afraid of you going.

*

Tom, Jack’s Brother

30 October 2018

Jack came around yesterday and asked if I would come to his match. I’m glad I can’t. When I watch him play, my whole insides get hot and wobbly. Don’t get me wrong; I love him and all that—I just hate knowing I’ll never be as good as him. I’d often nick his football boots when he still lived at home. I swear I played better when I wore them. He moved out quite a while ago, so I can’t ‘borrow’ them anymore.

Jack told me he’s going to ask Daphne Beauchamp out again after the match— even though she’s been shagging that Daniel Frost. I told him he was barking mad. Why would he want to go there again, especially after Daniel had? He clipped me around the ear—that hurt—and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about—Jack’s nearly 30. I am seventeen and a half. So what if he knows more than me? I still wouldn’t go there, and I’ve heard things about that Daniel Frost, not good things—if you know what I mean.

Anyway, forget Daphne, tonight I’m going to the school disco, and Sarah Freeman will be there. I’ve got to dance with her. She’s the fittest girl in Sixth Form and clever too. She wants to go to Oxford to study Astrophysics. I’m not sure I’m smart enough to get into Oxford, but I want to, especially if Sarah Freeman goes there.

Jack’s clever enough, but it was all about football for him. He worked hard when he was a kid and trained all the time. Mum and Dad took him to footy matches every weekend. Sometimes Mum would get so cold her nose would still be dripping two hours later—a bit gross. He got scouted for a youth team. But he didn’t make it to the professional club; by then, it was a bit late to worry about schoolwork. He did say that he might go to college to get his ‘A’ levels one day. He thinks his job is a bit shitty— he’s a delivery driver for Hermes. I’m not going to end up doing a job like that. But Jack plays football every week, and, what with that and thinking about Daphne Beauchamp. He’s okay.

I’m at the dance, and I feel a bit self-conscious, Jack says these jeans are a sure thing for pulling girls, but I don’t know. The music’s okay. Shame there are so many teachers here. I’m inching a bit closer to Sarah. She’s dancing with her friends, Cathy Stellar and Maisie Markham—we call her Measley Markham ‘cos she’s small and a little bit nothing. Sarah just looked at me, and I’ve gone all hot. I fiddle with my hair, trying to look casual, but I know my face has gone red. The music is getting louder.

The beat’s buzzing its way through everyone’s bodies. Sarah’s next to me now. Her eyes are closed as she is drinking the music. I fancy her so much it hurts.

My pocket is buzzing.
I ignore it.
My body feels alive, electric. Being close to Sarah Freeman has given me a semi, and I am very grateful my trousers are not so tight, and the room is dark enough that no one can see.

My damn phone again.
It’s Dad. What’s he doing phoning me? The game’s not finished yet.
My heart is pounding, and Dad’s crying. Something wrong with Jack. I can hear Mum moaning in the background. I can’t hear what Dad’s saying. I walk out of the disco hall into the bloody freezing outside—I wish I’d stopped to get my jacket.

The world is quiet except for the rushing blood in my ears and my throbbing chest. My knees buckle. The school railings stop me from falling. I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you play tonight, Jack.
You can’t be dead, Jack. You’re my brother.
You know everything. And you said you would always look out for me.
I remember you telling me to work hard because hard work always pays off. I’m sorry I nicked your boots, Jack
Where are you, Jack?
I close my eyes.
You’re there.
Inside me.
I feel a thump in my guts.
That was you, Jack, wasn’t it?
I’m sitting on the steps. I’m cold, and Sarah Freeman’s sitting right next to me.

I didn’t see her arrive. Did I tell her you died? I don’t remember. Her arm is around me, but I don’t care. I just want your arms around me now. I want to feel you.

Why didn’t I come to watch you play tonight, Jack? I am so, so sorry.

*

Lizzie, Jack’s Sister

30 October 2018

Jack asked us all to go and watch him play football tonight. Huh, I’d rather stick pins in my eyes. Luckily, I have plans. It’s bloody freezing, and the thought of spending a couple of hours on the sidelines of a footy pitch is a ‘NO THANK YOU’. My friends Sally Walsh, Lucy Freeman, Tash Markham, Alice Bicknell, and I have the evening planned. The Prosecco is in the fridge, along with a bottle of Tanqueray and several cans of posh tonic. It’s the Bake-Off final, and it will be a fab night.

I can hear the pizzicato Bake-Off music winging its way through the kitchen. Noel is chatting with Sandi. I love Noel Fielding.

This is so much more fun—and warmer than watching my brother play football. The signature bake is doughnuts. Not that impressive (though, to be fair, I have never made a doughnut in my twenty-six years of life – why would I? Greggs have delicious doughnuts at six for a pound). The technical is outside in a fire pit—so ridiculous. That Paul Hollywood is an arrogant git.

A phone is ringing.
We ignore it. It rings again—and again. My guts feel weird.
Why is Dad phoning? The game hasn’t finished yet.
I feel the blood fall out of my face, through my body, and slump against the wall—dripping down into a crumpled heap. I pull my hair. I want to be sure that this is not a dream—some awful, horrific, bad joke of a dream.

I can hear Sandi and Noel laughing in the background. I wish they’d stop. Don’t they know what’s just happened?

Sally’s rushing around. My world’s stood still and my friends are on speed. They’re talking, but I can’t hear what they are saying. Tash, Lucy and Alice are on their phones, finding a taxi or something. I don’t know.

I don’t care.
Why didn’t I go and watch you play, Jack?
I remember watching you when we were little, and I wanted to be just like you. And that time, you wrapped your strong arms around me when Tommy Sittbung (you called him Tommy Shitbum—do you remember?) broke my heart. You told me I shouldn’t be with him because we could never marry and have children with a ‘shitbum’ name. And you smoothed my hair, and you wiped away my tears, and you told me that I was an amazing girl who would one day find the person who was good enough for me.

I remember believing you.

I remember crying with you when we discovered Daphne Beauchamp was sleeping with Daniel Frost.

Why didn’t I go to the match, Jack?

My eyes hurt. I close them, and there you are, resting on the inside of my eyelids.

I hold my breath.
I feel a thud in my heart like you’ve just swept through it. I love you, Jack.
Don’t go, Jack.
I’m afraid to open my eyes.

*

Daphne Beauchamp

30 October 2018

I am so excited. Jack called this morning. He wants to talk.

I fucked up. Monumentally. I never thought I would, and when I did, I never thought he’d get past it, but he has. I really think he has.

I’ve known Jack since, like, forever. We started dating when we were 15. I used to watch him play football. He was good—like, really good. He was gutted when he didn’t get into the senior team. It was a real shame, too. He could’ve been anything he wanted—except a professional footballer—and that was what he wanted more than anything else in the world. Or so I thought. I felt a bit sidelined myself— like football was more important than me—than us. Not just more important but like it was the only thing that mattered to him. That’s when Daniel Frost and I started getting close. One thing led to another, and wham bam, and he thanked this ma’am. I don’t know what got into me. Well, I do—Daniel Frost—but I don’t know why I did it. I loved Jack—I still do. I just felt so bloody lonely and neglected.

I look back now and think I was like a proper spoilt brat. I hurt him so badly. I hurt myself so badly. I hurt his family, especially my best friend, Lizzie. The only person who didn’t get hurt was Daniel Frost. He thought he was the bee’s knees. Well, that was a couple of years ago, I have tried so hard to win back Jack’s respect, and now it looks like we might even get more. He asked me to meet him in the pub after tonight’s game.

The Bake-Off final is on. I’m a big fan. Lizzie and I used to watch with the girls. I bet they’re watching it together tonight. I wish I were with them. I miss them.

I’m putting my make-up on, not too much—I don’t want to look tarty—but enough to show I’ve made an effort. It is fricking cold outside. I shall have to rethink the outfit I was planning on wearing. I dig out thick woollen tights with my almost too- short skirt and biker boots—that’ll do.

They’re making edible landscapes on the Bake-off—nom-nom. I still can’t call who’s going to win. To be honest, I don’t mind. I like them all.

My phone is ringing, but I don’t answer it. It’s too early for Jack to be calling. The game hasn’t finished yet. They’ll call back.

Now the landline. Mum’s shouting at me to pick up the phone. My heart misses a beat.
I feel a bit weird.
It’s Alice. She’s crying, saying something about Jack.

I don’t understand.
I do not understand.
Fear is seeping through my veins, but I can’t tell which direction.
Up, down, all around.
My head is spinning, my heart is racing, and the phone falls out of my hand. I can hear a wailing, I don’t know where it is coming from.
Oh my God—it’s me.
He’s dead.
They say you were running on the pitch. They say you just fell.
What do they mean—just?
I’ll never be able to make it right with us, Jack.

You will never know how sorry I am, Jack.
Oh my God! I will never feel your arms around me again. Jack, I love you, don’t be dead.
Please, please, please don’t be dead. DO NOT BE DEAD!
I close my eyes, and there you are.
I can feel your nose touch mine, tip to tip, like an Eskimo kiss. I feel your breath on my cheek, on my neck. My heart jolts.
I feel you pass through me—taking a piece of me with you.
I don’t yet know if you left a piece of you with me.
Have you, Jack? Have you?
Can you forgive me, Jack—can you?
How can I forgive myself?
I don’t want to open my eyes.
Don’t let this be real.
I don’t want to live without you.

Tarina Marsac is a British writer who lives in South-East London. She is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

She is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend. Her biggest challenge has been to find space in her life and allow herself to take it. After years of writing from the dining table, the coffee table, a blanket-covered lap and her bed, she is now writing in a room that is sometimes her own.

mushrooms

The Monster of Invidia, by M L Hufkie

For my dear friend Lesley, who left this earth too soon.

“I’m very sorry sir. We did all we could.”

He didn’t hear much other than sorry and could. Two inescapable words that only ever sought to remind us of what cannot be undone and distant possibilities. He saw the doctor’s mouth move and felt nauseous at the smell of disinfectant emanating off him. Or maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was the walls, the floors, the air. Two words that have hovered and continue to hover over his family for the last six years. At least him and his wife.

“We will keep her for a day or two. She’s lost a lot of blood and we want to make sure she doesn’t haemorrhage. Again, I am terribly sorry. If…”

He got up and started walking away from the doctor, leaving those words to follow him down the empty hallway.

The hospital looked deserted, though he knew it wasn’t. It was just that floor. Silent, and dank, like a sepulchre. He had been seated on an uncomfortable metal chair outside the room that an hour ago his wife had been pushed into – a long, bitter hour that had a nocturnal stillness wrapped around it even though it was broad daylight. When he rushed through the doors with his wife sweaty, and panicking in his arms, there had been mayhem at the entrance. A bus accident on the N1 between Milnerton and Cape Town. Casualties yet unknown. Passengers, 59. Extent of injuries-anything from broken ribs, arms, a cracked skull, broken toes to an impaled body so badly damaged that the doctors and police were still trying to identify it. Blood everywhere. Screams and panic as doctors and nurses scurried around to comfort, inject, bandage-up, sooth, and alas push the more serious cases off down long corridors to invisible rooms from which they may never return.

He reached the exit downstairs and collided with a woman who appeared intoxicated. Covered in blood with one shoe missing and a torn dress she grabbed him by the chest, ripping a button off his shirt in the process, and mumbling incessantly about her son.

“Where is my boy? He is 7. Has anyone seen my boy? He was right next to me on the bus. Please…”

The anguish in the woman’s eyes brought tears to his own and he swallowed hard. Two orderlies in crumpled overalls appeared out of nowhere, one of them pushing a wheelchair.

“Sorry, sir. She came in with the bus people. They sedated her, but she must have wandered off.”

He nodded and walked to his car where he broke down slamming the roof, looking through tear-filled eyes at the grey façade of the hospital.

The fourth miscarriage. Eight years and four dead foetuses. After the third he had sat his wife down, talking to her earnestly. A very difficult conversation in which he felt like he was crushing her, taking her dream from her.

“My angel, perhaps we ought to stop for a while. Give your body time to fully regain its strength. We could-

“Could what!? I’m 35 years old. I am running out of time.”

This is not a fucking race! This is your life! This is my life!

He was relieved to find that he’d only thought the words biting his tongue as his wife broke down sobbing in his arms.

With each new pregnancy, it was as if they were being taunted. Each failed pregnancy lasting slightly longer than the previous one. Just enough for them to foolishly hope. The first was roughly a year and a half after their wedding. He couldn’t take his eyes off his wife, so radiant and beautiful he found her. It lasted seven weeks. Until she woke up one Saturday morning, blood oozing from between her legs, staining the summer nightdress she’d been wearing, calling his name. Preparing breakfast, he’d run from the kitchen and knew that the baby was gone before the doctor told them. The second, a few months later, lasted nine weeks before meeting the same fate as the first. The third lasted twelve weeks. He had made sure his wife was always comfortable, got domestic help to cook and clean so she could rest, and during those weeks the ghost of the previous two was slowly fading. In the evenings he would find her reading or watching TV, content and relaxed. The two of them discussing names, talking about what he or she might be like, his wife buying tiny pieces of clothing that made his chest hurt whenever she showed him a new item she had procured. And then one night, soaking in the bathtub while he was listening to music, a desperate, heart wrenching scream like that of a wounded animal. He would never forget the red of the water, the fear in her eyes, his own disbelief when he’d picked her from the tub, wrapped her in a blanket and driven her to the hospital.

And now here they were again. At a different hospital for the same thing. They had been taking an afternoon stroll by the Sea Point Promenade. The sun high, the breeze carrying that wonderful green, salty scent of Cape Town. The place was packed with runners, surfers, swimmers, and hand-holding couples. They had just sat down at a restaurant for an early dinner when her cramps started. Fierce and constant. The baby came out in pieces. In the hallway of yet another hospital he could hear his wife moan and cry, and when his own tears came, he didn’t try to stop them.

How long he sat in his car he couldn’t say, but he pulled out of the hospital car park when the noise of an approaching ambulance interrupted his thoughts. He somehow ended up on the Sea Point Promenade again, sitting on the bench they had sat on so many times before. By the time the sun set, painting the Cape Town sky a marvellous orange-yellow-purple, he had made his decision.

When he got back to the flat, the silence of it made him uncomfortable. It was cloaked in the type of quiet that spoke of the coldness of uninhabited rooms and echoed footsteps. For a wild moment he thought about driving to his parents but abandoned the idea almost immediately. Twice he picked up the phone in the kitchen, dialling their number only to replace it before anyone could answer. He showered and poured a whiskey. Sleep took hours to come, and when it did, he had nightmares about their nameless, half-formed offspring floating beneath the city; down in the sewer amongst plastic, shit, used condoms, discarded needles and other things that have lost their shape; choked by debris, their mere slits of mouths singing a disjointed chorus:

“Help us, Daddy. Daddy, please help us.”

A murderous headache roused him at the crack of dawn and after taking a shower he packed a bag for his wife and left for the hospital. It was too early, so he drove along Chapman’s Peak to Simons Town, forced himself to have breakfast at the first café he saw and then continued from there to Fish Hoek where he aimlessly browsed a few shops.

He didn’t want to try anymore. Didn’t want her to try anymore. He didn’t want to feel her desperation every time they made love. Didn’t want her clinging to him, her legs around his waist, gripping whispering “please, please my love -” tormented by the need for him to fertilize her. When he arrived at the hospital, he was taken to a hall where his sleeping wife was lying on one of ten beds. He kissed her softly on the forehead, sighing with relief. As long as her eyes were closed, he didn’t have to see the pain in them, if her mouth was quiet, he didn’t have to listen to the confusion, anger, and heartbreak. The doctor entered quietly, a white-clad spectre.

“We’ve given her a strong sleeping draught. She’ll be out for a few more hours and should be good to return home tomorrow.”

“Doctor, do you think-“

“Yes, I think so. But I also think it wise for your wife to stop trying for a little while. The medical sciences have advanced greatly in the last 50 years.”

The doctor walked away before he could contest his theory. Frankly, he was sick and tired of being told about the great advances of medical science. A science that manages to transplant organs but one that still failed to save cancer patients who died in their millions across the globe. He frowned irritably, kissed his wife again and left. He drove to the bench, staring at scavenging seagulls while playing with his wedding ring as the day bled out.

She didn’t talk much on the drive home the following day, and he knew that he would have to wait until she felt ready. And so, he waited. After that, his wife changed. Her inability to have her own child made her avoid others with children. She stopped talking to her friends, and if she did mention them, it was only to point out their shortcomings as parents.

“Did you see what she gave her child to eat? And that idiot husband of hers is going to turn his son into an emotionally stunted macho dimwit like himself.”

Her criticism reached extremes and though she never said as much to the people she was grilling, he hated having to listen to it. His wife had always been a woman with a clear sense of justice, something she’d inherited from her political activist parents, thus though he didn’t like her sharp criticism he could forgive her for it. What started bothering him was that after the last miscarriage she began retreating from everyone, including himself. One of the things that first drew him to her was her passion. Not just in bed, but her passion for life, her passion for social justice, the amount of passion she poured into everything she did. There was none of that after the loss of the fourth would-be child. She became morose and taciturn, would stiffen up when he attempted to touch her.

About three weeks after her return from the hospital he came home to find her on the floor in the nursery, cutting into tiny pieces all the clothes she’d collected for a child that never came. When she saw him, she looked at him dried-eyed, ignored him and continued her destruction. One night after they returned from a nearby restaurant after a strained dinner, he woke up in the small hours to find her sitting on the edge of the bed. At first, he thought he was dreaming but then he heard her speak.

“Anything. I would do anything. I…would…please-“

He switched on the bedside lamp, and she turned to him looking utterly dazed and entranced.

“Darling, who are you talking to? Are you alright?”

And then she started screaming, a deafening wail that reverberated off the walls in their bedroom. Their flat was located on a newly upgraded block with security and a concierge, and he knew that someone would have heard it. He took her in his arms, covering her mouth, her eyes bulging with tears streaming from them. And then, without warning she bit into his fingers hard, until he pulled his hand away cursing.

“Ouch Fuck! Darling, stop it! Don’t…

Before he could finish his sentence, she fell backwards onto the bed, her lips stained with his blood, into a deep sleep from which she arose the following afternoon. Having taken the day off work, he waited patiently for her to wake up so he could try to find out what the hell had happened the night before. But when he asked her about it, she had no memory of any of it. No matter how he approached the subject, showing her his bitten fingers, taking her back step by step, she shook her head in confusion and tearfully apologised.

He left angry and confused driving to his parents’ house in Tamboerskloof. When he got there, he found he could not talk about it and simply said that she was fine when his father politely asked about her. His wife was an orphan. Her anti-apartheid activist parents were both murdered in the early 80’s. Her mother gunned down in an alleyway after a protest rally in Johannesburg, and her father blown to pieces by letter bomb while exiled in Angola.

“Karl, are you listening son?”

Solo visits to his parents had to suffice as they had never forgiven him for marrying her and their ambivalence towards his wife always led to ferocious arguments. He didn’t stay long, getting agitated by his father’s nagging about his joining the family law firm and his mother’s subtle digs at his wife’s charity work with orphans.

On the drive home he thought he would suggest a holiday to his wife. Away from the city, familiarity, away from their losses. They had both always wanted to return to Greece where they’d spent their honeymoon and they had the money to do it. He stopped by the supermarket to pick up some wine and fresh meat from the butchers with the idea that he would cook and talk to her about it. When he got home, he could immediately tell he was alone. He could always tell; the stillness was different. What surprised him was that his wife hadn’t left the house alone in weeks, and he got an acute sense of foreboding as he entered the rooms. The fact that it was early evening and still light out didn’t quell his worries, and he called her phone a few times, only to be informed by a tin voice that she wasn’t available.

He turned on the 6 o’clock news and poured himself a whiskey. The news only darkened his mood further.

In Cape Town, reports of missing children; a desperate, abused wife lacing her husband’s favourite stew with rat poison; a prominent Cape Flats gang leader murdered by a vigilante group, who shot him, threw a petrol bomb at him, and filmed him burning alive. North of Johannesburg; the dismembered corpses of at least a dozen black men unearthed on an abandoned farm. The property belonged to a white supremacist on trial for murder. When asked about the bodies on his farm he’d apparently smiled and replied to the journalist, “Blacks aren’t people.” And then in an absurd attempt to perhaps lift the spirits of a depressed nation, news of a Sandton based plastic surgeon believed to have discovered the fountain of youth. An elixir guaranteed to turn back the clock for the rich and famous. A potion he was now looking to sell to the highest bidder- a Californian pharmaceutical giant.

An hour passed and he called again. Nothing. He muted the television and leaned back on the couch. On the screen a young pop star was on some talk show doing the xibelani, much to the delight of the audience. He fell asleep and woke up to find his wife standing at the kitchen counter chopping a cucumber while sipping red wine. The steak he bought was next to her on a plate seasoned and ready to be cooked. When she noticed him looking at her from the doorway, she smiled at him for the first time in weeks.

“Where have you been? I was worried.”

“I am sorry. I just realised my phone was dead, I was going to call you. I went to see Sanita. There was a problem at the orphanage.”

Sanita was her social worker partner who ran the orphanage with her. The two women had known each other since university and had worked together for 8 years. Tomatoes and lettuce were taken from the fridge, and she spoke as she washed them.

“One of the new, younger boys attacked one of the older ones and ended up with some serious bruises, so I took him to the hospital.” He was elated. For weeks he was worried that she would lose her interest in her work, the way she’d lost it in everything else.

“What happened? Is the boy, ok?”

She nodded reassuringly, her brown eyes sparkling.

“I think he will be. We will all be.”

He took her into his arms, holding her to his chest and his joy grew when she didn’t pull away from him. Instead, she kissed his mouth, his neck and leaned into him as his hands wandered down her back. But something bothered him. It was her smell. She didn’t have her usual, crisp, citrus, scent that he so enjoyed inhaling. She smelled of decay, rotten meat, mingled with a horrible chemical smoke.

“Darling, you smell like-“

“Yes, I know. I am sorry.”

She turned away from him to the stove and stirred chopped mushrooms that had started frying.

“I couldn’t find parking close to the hospital and I ended up passing by one of those abandoned factories on Protea Boulevard. The place used to be an abattoir and is now filled to the rafters with meth junkies.”

“The slaughter factory?! Sweetheart, please avoid that place. It gives me the creeps. After all this time it still reeks of blood and dead animals. Did they bother you?” Her back seemed to stiffen very slightly, but she kept stirring and washing his whiskey glass he helped himself to some wine instead.

“The junkies you mean. Well, a few of them approached us, but they were not doing any harm. They just wanted money, and after I gave them some, they left.”

He studied the label on the bottle. It was a delicious, full bodied Meerlust that they had bought in Stellenbosch the previous summer. Putting the holiday on the back burner he thought he might suggest to his wife they drive to Stellenbosch over the weekend. He was glad that she seemed happier and wouldn’t want to overwhelm her. Baby steps he reminded himself, cringing at the words. He’d gone to university in Stellenbosch and loved the region. It was also where he met her. She’d been one of the very few students of colour, and after seeing her at one of the bars reading in a corner one afternoon he’d fallen hopelessly in love. For months she’d given him the cold shoulder until reluctantly agreeing to a date when she found him waiting for her outside her dormitory. They had taken a walk and it was there he started learning about her life. The deaths of her parents, living with a grandmother on the Cape Flats, her love of children, her shyness, when he took her hand and held it as they walked, blissfully unaware at the looks of disapproval he got. When she turned from the stove the mushrooms now simmering in her white wine sauce her smile reminded him of why he could not stay away from her.

“Why don’t you set the table for us? I’ll go shower. I promise to smell much better afterwards.”

She giggled. Throughout the meal they talked, and when he suggested a drive to the wine region that weekend, she happily agreed. That night they made love tirelessly, only stopping when they were sweaty and exhausted. He fell asleep with his hand on the inside of her thigh and when he woke up the next morning, he found her out on the balcony, drinking a coffee and reading a book. They got ready and drove to Stellenbosch via Muizenberg, taking their time getting there.

There was still time to spare before their tasting. So, they decided to take a walk on campus, across the red square, passing the admin buildings, and then stopping to kiss outside the Ou Hoofgebou. The rest of the week his wife was insatiable, her desire for him even stronger than in their courtship days. They made love in the shower, on the kitchen floor, in their bedroom, in the car, on any available counter, panting and exuberant. It went on for days, their breathless love making reaching a crescendo the following Friday evening after a gala dinner for Cape Town lawyers. She was straddling him on the couch, riding him furiously, him taking turns to kiss her neck, her mouth, sucking on her nipples when he had looked at her and suddenly felt like he was looking at someone else. It was the unusual arch of her neck, the strange glow in her eyes, the flexing of muscles beneath her skin that for one crazy moment under his fingertips felt like something was moving inside her.

The first warning was the phone call. It came the Sunday after the gala. Sanita called her phone while she was in the shower and when he answered she was hysterical. The boy his wife had taken to the hospital had disappeared. The orphanage had been searched top to bottom. The police had searched the nearby factories, hospitals, and streets to no avail. When he told her about it, she called Sanita, trying to calm her down on the phone. All the while saying,

“I’m sure there is a good explanation for this Sanita. I will find him. We will find him.”

He held his wife in his arms until she fell asleep, and the next morning when he woke up, he found her staring at the ceiling, her eyes blank. Twice that day he called from work to check on her, see if she’d heard anything. Two evenings that week she came home later than usual explaining that some of the kids at the orphanage were uneasy about the disappearance and that she stayed to restore calm. A month passed and they had given up on finding the boy, the police had no leads and none of the junkies in the nearby abandoned factory seemed to know anything. His wife worked longer hours and one afternoon he decided to leave work early, pick her up from the orphanage and convince her to go out to dinner. He was driving up to the orphanage and passing the big park down the hill from it when caught sight of her under a tree, talking to a stranger. Slowing the car down, he pulled over to the side, his aim to get out. The first thing that struck him about the stranger was his outlandish height. Arms and legs thin and wiry attached to a body with skin so pale that from a distance he looked like a mime. And then there were his clothes. Eccentric to a point of being theatrical. Black suit, black hat, black shoes, reminiscent of a village undertaker. But that wasn’t all. Even from where he was standing, he could see his wife was upset, the tenseness in her body contrasted by the mocking smile of the stranger who looked at her through mirrored glasses concealing his eyes. He called out to her, but she didn’t seem to hear him, and walking back to his car he thought he would call her, knowing she always had her phone on her person. A car sped past him before he could cross the road and then he heard his name. Turning back, he saw his wife walking towards him. The stranger was gone.

“Who was that man?”

“Oh, he was looking for directions.”

“Directions? He seemed…

“Yes, he seems strange, I know. What brings you here?”

“I thought you could do with cheering up. How about dinner?”

When they arrived at the orphanage to collect her bag, they found Sanita talking to police officers in tears. The boy had been found. His body mangled and burnt in one of the abandoned factories on Protea Boulevard.

“They say it was a ritual, like he was some kind of offering. No arrests. All the people who lived in the factory have disappeared, and it’s hard to trace them. Oh God… oh my God… burned? An altar?”

His wife put an arm around Sanita and led her inside the building. The officers stalled and he thanked them, saw them off, and followed the women into the orphanage too shocked to entertain a coherent thought. The days dragged on; the story of the murdered orphan being swallowed up by other horrors.

He came home one evening to find his wife, made up and wearing a new dress, smiling as she cooked, humming to herself.

“You seem chirpy my darling. What’s happening?”

“I am pregnant! I found out this morning!” He froze for a moment, staring at her loosening his tie. She walked over.

“I know you are afraid. So am I. But this time, it’s going to be fine.”

“Yes, I am terrified. What if…I know I should stay positive, but can your mind and body take this again?”

She nodded reassuringly.

“It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

The first month passed. Then the second. He was so nervous and alert he started sleeping badly. Attuned to his wife’s every breath, move, tone in her voice. He started praying, something he had never done in his life. During lunch breaks he would walk into churches, speak to vicars and priests, sit down in pews, praying fervently. He would stand outside mosques, closing his eyes at the sound of the adhan. Silently hoping and praying. The third and fourth months passed, his stomach in constant knots, waiting for a scream, a phone call to tell him that this baby too was gone.

He didn’t start breathing easy until month six, when his wife’s blossoming pregnant health and beauty put him at ease.

band

I conjure up those days now with desperation and urgency, one of the only things that keeps me going. That, and hope.

Our daughter was born on a spring day, at 10 o’clock in the morning. We named her Adessa. Perfection from head to toe. The nurses handed her to us beaming, talking about her excellent health and great vitals. When we took her home, it felt like a grand circle had been completed and both my wife and I would spend hours staring at our baby in awe. My parents who very rarely came to see us, would now find any excuse to come by. Laden with gifts for mother and baby. Adessa took a particular liking to a bee stuffed rattle and as soon as her little hands were able, she would grasp and shake, our adoring eyes always on her. Some nights I would wake up to find my wife in the nursery watching Adessa in her cot or sitting with the sleeping baby in her arms, kissing her forehead.

On the day of Adessa’s six month “birthday” my parents called my office to ask us around for dinner. I immediately agreed and called my wife to let her know that I would pick her and the baby up after work. Not getting an answer I texted and continued working, telling myself to call again in an hour or so. Two hours later I still could not reach her and decided to call Sanita.

“Hello, Sanita. Yes, I am well, thank you. Have you seen-”

“No not today. I saw her yesterday. Well, not really, I mean she was in the park down the road.”

“The park?”

“Yes, she didn’t see me, but she was talking to a very strange man. He was very tall and odd looking. I thought he looked-“

Without knowing why, I felt petrified and abruptly ended the call. In all the years of driving I had never driven so fast and with such little regard for my safety or that of others. The flat was empty and when I asked the concierge if he had seen her, he said that she left with Adessa after I left for work early that morning. I called and called her phone, standing in the foyer, the concierge casting concerned looks in my direction. I called my parents to see if she had maybe taken a taxi to their house. No. I went back upstairs calling her phone every 10 minutes and waited.

By nightfall I had still heard nothing and called the police. The following morning, they came by to ask me a few questions, but I wasn’t of much help to them and got into my car driving the streets, ignoring calls from my parents, eyes peeled and heart pounding. I drove back only after dark, feeling utterly hopeless, dialling my wife’s number. Repeatedly, leaving desperate and furious voice messages. I went downstairs again, with an aim to get back into my car and comb the streets, perhaps drive to the police station. Passing the concierge, I greeted and noticed that he was drying up some water on the floor with old newspapers.

“Some idiots wet the floor and just left it. It’s dangerous,” he grumbled.

“Any news about your wife? Where could she have gone?”

I was about to answer when an article caught my attention. Bending down I pulled the newspaper sheet closer – it was the story about the boy from the orphanage on the day his body was found. A crowd amassed outside the factory, police and sniffer dogs shrouded in a halo of flashing cameras held by journalists eager to get the best angle on the tragedy. But none of those grabbed my attention. It was the man in the crowd. The pale, tall man with his mirrored glasses. Even with the grainy quality of the photo I could make out the faint smile on his face.

It has been two years. Two years of searches to no avail. I go to our bench often where I sit for hours. Waiting. Waiting for the tall man. Waiting for God. Waiting for the Devil. Waiting for whoever to bring them back to me.

M.L. HUFKIE WAS BORN IN CAPE TOWN IN 1984. HER BIRTH, DURING THE LAST DESPERATE YEARS OF SOUTH AFRICA’S APARTHEID POLICY AND SUBSEQUENT CHILDHOOD IN A COUNTRY ON THE BRINK OF CHANGE AND PLAGUED BY POLITICAL UNREST HAS LEFT A PROFOUND IMPACT ON HER. WITH A MINORITY VOICE IN THE UK, AND THE WORLD AT LARGE HER AIM IS TO CHALLENGE DOMINANT NARRATIVES FROM A MINORITY PERSPECTIVE. SHE’S CURRENTLY IN HER FINAL YEAR OF AN MFA AT BIRKBECK WORKING ON A NOVEL ENTITLED VOICES FROM THE SOUTH. READING AND WRITING ARE HER PASSIONS.
rowan_winter

Trappings, by Fiona McCulloch

Is it no terrible that wir auld neebour’s deed, an he wisna aw that auld tae?
Aye, terrible son. The pair sowel.
Aye, he hud stomach cancer. Must ha bin in agony, man.
So, I muttered.
You’re nuthin’ but a wee bastard twisted, man-hating dyke.

Hugmanay 1983 – ah’m sat oan the couch in the livin’ room. Telly’s oan an’ it’s jist me an’ ma muther an faither cos ma twa bruthers are oot wi’ their pals. Scotch an’ Wry afore some Hugmanay show comes oan efter. Ah’m hopin’ the 50p slot meter disnae run oot on oor rented TV but, then, things urnae sae uncertain noo ma muther’s workin’ night shifts as a carer at an auld folk’s hame and ma da’s goat a gairdenin’ joab at the same place. Ricky Fulton never fails tae make me greet laughin’ at his motorbike polis sketch, Last Call wi’ Rev. I.M. Jolly, Rev. Goodchild an’ aw the others. Ma favourite part o’ Hugmanay. Ma muther an’ faither ur laughin tae, an’ the cat’s curled up at the edge o’ the rug near the gas fire. She’s no’ oan the rug, mind, cos it’s new and ma muther’s warned her no’ tae lie oan it. She’s an awfy clever cat an’, efter first lyin’ oan it when it wis initially put doon, she noo kens it’s ma muther’s new pride an’ joy, so she’s tae keep tae the edge. Puir cat, she definitely didnae sit oan the mat. Still it wis a step up fae afore. She wis a stray livin’ in ma pal’s muther an’ faither’s porch cos they hud a cat o’ their ain and they didnae get alang so, when oor ither cat goat knocked doon, ah brought hame Smokey tae oor hoose. Ah wid meet her every day as ah wis gawin’ tae school an’ gie her a clap an’ a wee bit o’ fuss. She wis that guid natured and lovely – smokey grey wi’ a big white bib, belly an’ paws, a pink nose, green eyes, a splodge o’ white on her back, an’ striped racoon-like tail. Ah used tae hunch doon oan ma hunkers an’ she’d be purrin’ away an’ lovin’ the fuss. Wan day when ah crouched doon, she jumped oantie ma lap an’ that wis it, ah’d gained her trust an’ she won ma heart. Sad as it wis when oor cat went missin’ and wis found knocked doon oan the main road, ah couldnae help but be happy fur thinkin’ ah could gie Smokey a much-needed hame. But ah’d need tae bide ma time and allow a respectable amount o’ grieven.

Ma muther wis daft on oor cat. He’d wait on a car bonnet every mornin’ fur her getting aff the bus fae her nightshift in an auld folk’s hame. Then he’d run aw the way, followin’ her back hame and sleep at her feet. He wisnae that intae fuss fae the rest o’ us, though, as a swipe o’ his paw wud remind ye noo and again. Some weeks efter his demise, ma auntie and uncle wur visitin’ and ah sneaked away tae bring Smokey hame tae oor hoose. She wis delighted tae see me and aw roon’ aboot ma legs, purring away as ah clapped and clapped her. When a thoat ah’d goat her trust enough, ah lifted her intae ma erms and zipped up ma jaicket. Ah headed straight hame as she gied a mixture o’ purrs an’ low growls cos she wis feart an’ wisnae sure where ah wis takin’ her. But she decided tae trust me an’ hame we went. Ma muther wis momentarily confused wi’ the big white chest cos she thoat it wis her beloved cat alive an’ well, as though it wis his doppelganger that hud bin run ower. But then she realised it wis a different cat. ‘Where’d that come fae?’, she demanded but equally maintainin’ calm and politeness cos we still hud guests. ‘Her name’s Smokey an’ she’s a stray. Ma pal’s muther an’ faither are lettin’ her stay in their porch cos their cat disnae like her. But it’s freezin’ in the porch and she needs a hame’, ah reasoned. ‘Please can we keep her, please?’, ah pleaded. Ma muther tutted and then said, ‘Ah suppose’. ‘But she’s your cat mind, so you need tae de-flea and worm her, an’ look efter her’. ‘Ah wull, ah wull’, ah said delighted. ‘Go an’ see if there’s oani’ o’ that pate left in the fridge and gie her some’.

Smokey ate the pate gratefully and drank a wee bowl of milk – ah didnae ken back then that cats are lactose intolerant, but ah’m sure it still did her the world o’ good tae huv food, drink, shelter an’ love. She followed me aroon’ fur days and wid only go oot fur a quick toilet stoap. She wus feart she’d be flung oot oan the streets again, so ah’d keep the door open tae reassure her, and then she’d flee back in an’ up the stairs wi’ me. Safe an’ sound. We lived in a four-in-the-block upstairs coonsel flat. It hud a wee veranda at the livin’ room windae and every summer she’d lie oot there fur a bit as long as ah wis there in the livin room. Ah wid only let her if ah wis there anyway to make sure she stayed safe. When it wis agreed she could stay, ma faither helped tae groom her, getting’ rid o’ matted bits o’ fur wi’ a pair o’ scissors. Smokey took tae helpin’, pullin’ oot bits o’ matted fur hersel’ wi’ her teeth. She realised she hud a hame an’ wanted tae look her best. We took her to the vet for a general check ower, an’ she exclaimed, ‘What a beautiful cat! I’m sure she must be part Persian’. Ah beamed wi’ pride oan Smokey’s behalf. Abandoned tae the streets, wi’ a luvin hame her sheer beauty shone through. A clean bill of health, we took her hame. She slept oan ma pillow and we were inseparable, even when the ENT surgeon telt me ah should get rid o’ her. She wis ma responsibility an’ ah couldnae ever let her doon efter sich a hard life. Besides, ah loved her tae bits. She wis the first “person” ah came oot tae when ah wis a feart teenager, years afore ah actually found the nerve to tell any human ah wis a lesbian. Back in the day, they’d huv said she wis ma familiar and burnt us baith.

Haha, folk like tae impose weird rules an’ make ye conform, tae keep ye in their wee coops, tae clip yer wings and stoap ye fae hivin’ a better view as ye fly way up and beyond their shite. Tae clutch some book they’ve rote swallowed but never fuckin’ interpreted, tae trundle oot quotes they don’t understaun, withoot realisin’ concepts like fuckin’ metaphors or that language changes meanin’, dependin’ on time and place, or that things get edited, rewritten, skewed, appropriated fur dodgy patriarchal agendas. Cos, when ye get right doon tae it, folk are totally stunted an’ want tae be telt aff but, meantime, dae aw kinds o’ shit when they think naebody’s lookin’. They’re the worst o’ us. They hate nuthin’ mair than somebody who doesnae confine themselves, somebody who can see beyond their blinkered horizon and fuckin’ dare tae soar ower the rainbow. Aye, so ah confided in Smokey. Gimme a cat any day.

 

Efter Scotch and Wry finished, it wisnae faur oaf the bells. Every year ma muther laid oot Ne’er Day bun, shortbread an’ some Ritz crackers wi’ Primula soft cheese. Ah goat ginger wine. Ma faither wid buy the wee bottles o’ essence every year tae make the mix and strain it through net curtain for us weans. It wis a tradition cos ma parents wur brought up wi’ the same stuff. Magic. Ah loved how its fiery taste wis pure pleasure compared wi’ ma throat’s usual inflamed gowpin’. Efter Mons Meg booms, ma faither opens the windae tae let the aul year oot an’ the new yin in, as well as tae hear the boats’ hoarns and we wish each other Happy New Year, the door gets chapped.

First fits. Tall, dark an handsome’s antithesis, though aw that shite wis loast oan me oanyway as ma fascination wi’ Cagney and Lacey wid suggest tae the weel trained een. Oor first fits ur’ the neighbours. A man an’ wife, then later two o’ their sons join them. Ma da’s gettin’ steadily steamin’ an’ ma maw’s nursin’ a babycham. That’s aw’ she’ll huv as she’s no’ a drinker, but she huvs wan tae be polite cos it’s New Year. The man neighbour’s pourin’ straight whiskies intae ma faither’s tumbler wi’ total alacrity; his ain gless isnae refillin wi’ sich gay abandon. Hud onybody bin guagin’ the scene, it wud be apparent he has a plan worth stayin’ sober fur. His focus is elsewhere. Me. Terrifyin’ lewd comments spew intae the room, suckin oot whit little air there is wi’ aw’ the fag fumes. Talk ah’ve never heard afore. Stuck somewhere between bewildered and humiliated, ah’m no’ quite graspin’ the full meanin’ o’ whit he’s sayin’ or why naebody is throwin’ him oot oan his erse. An ineffable terror grips me as though the wurd ominous had assumed flesh an’ blood an’ crept stealthily into the livin’ room. Penetratin’ gluttonous eyes devour me like the fairy tale wolf. ‘Luck at that there. Wid ye no’ like tae rub yersel’ up an’ doon again that?’, he proffers tae wan o’ his sons, like ah wis up for auction an’ consent, let alone bein’ under age, an alien concept. The trappings o’ a family man, underneath lurked a menacin’ misogynistic sexual predator, an’ the lessons bein’ imparted to his sons paint a bleak vista for their future outlook. His son, embarrassed, utters sumthin’ aboot me bein’ too young; no’ long efter, he an’ his brothers go tae a hoose party, leavin’ their parents behind wi’ us. The wumman neighbour, apparently well acquainted wi’ her husband’s peculiar mannerisms, unfazed takes it all in her stride as though it’s aw perfectly normal friendly neighbourly chit-chat, aye nuthin’ tae see here, while steadily numbin’ herself wi’ cheap vodka.

Originatin’ fae some in-bred community in the sticks, he smacks his lips as though ready for a feast. Never comfortable in anyone’s gaze, this new kind of unsought male attention bores a hole through ma centre o’ gravity, unnervin’ whit little confidence ah huv. Bile furs ma tongue and cigarette smoke hings like graveyard smog coiled aroon’ ma tonsils, irritatin’ a ragin’ pus that anticipates an’ inevitable tonsillectomy by ma sixteenth year. By the time ah’m at university ah’ll huv an’ asthma diagnosis. Ma muther’s repression regardin’ anythin’ sexual renders her uncharacteristically mute. She probably senses too ma faither is in nae fit state tae back up oanie protest she might venture tae make. If he wis sober, she would huv let rip. An ex-amateur boxer, ma faither wis a force tae be reckoned wi’. But the night he couldnae box his ain shadow. Best tae keep things oan an’ even keel, don’t cause a scene in case it backfires. Eventually they’ll leave and we’ll aw’ forget it ever happened. Meantime ah can feel the path between his eyes an’ ma slender frame shrink as he casts glances increasingly in ma direction till the real flesh-n-blood person me disappears, replaced wi’ his sick imaginin’. Ah’m reduced tae an object he wants tae act upon, dae unspeakable things tae as ah lie immobilised wi’ terror, things ah cannae even name cos ma ain ignorance prevents me fae venturin’ intae the territory o’ his particular sicko realm o’ fantasy. A combination o’ stiflin’ stares an’ smoky staleness irritates an claws at ma larynx. Ah futilely endeavour to clear ma throat an’ discover an oppressive voicelessness.

Liftin’ Smokey an’ cuddlin her close tae me, ah head tae the shelter o’ ma room, utterin’ ma muffled goodnights and daen ma best tae evade his lecherous stare as ah navigate oot the livin’ room. Gulpin’ in the smokeless air in momentary relief, ah gently place ma cat oan the bed. She settles doon beside a Basil Brush cuddly toy ah’ve hud since ah wis three – sewn together so many times by ma muther, mustard yellow socks oan its feet serve as the last refuge tae containin’ burst stuffin’ – alongside a wee collection of teddies and other cuddly animals. Posters reassuringly look doon fae ma bedroom walls – Yazoo, Madonna, Eurythmics, Culture Club, Abba, tae name a few. Later, ah’ll add Texas, Deacon Blue, Fairground Attraction, T’Pau, Runrig, 10,000 Maniacs, and Love and Money tae ma playlist, slowly becomin’ mair conscious o’ Scottish bands. Much later still ah’ll develop an interest in Scottish Literature. But, for noo, pop music is ma poesy. Ah gulp in familiar surroundings an’ sit oan the bed, clappin’ the cat. She purrs in response. Safety only lasts a couple of minutes.

Ma room door swings open and he staggers in wi’ a sinister grin, affectation o’ an exaggerated inebriation. He carefully, quietly closes the door, a new sobriety belying his performance seconds before. Curlin’ lip reveals nicotine-yellow canines. His tongue pokes between them like he’s tastin’ the promise o’ his prey. Shiftin’ steadily towards me, ah instinctively back away and head roon’ the bed, wi’ him in close pursuit. He reeks o’ stale fags, a lingerin’ sweaty odour an’ halitosis that reaches into ma inflamed lungs an’ doon tae the depths o’ ma stomach, threatenin’ tae release ma Ne’er Day Bun an’ ginger wine fae earlier. Ah’m guessin’ he baths as often as he brushes, the mingin’ bastard. His menacin’ portentous presence has begrimed whit little fresh air the bedroom afforded, leavin’ me gaspin’ tae find oany crevice beyond his mephitic stench. He moves nearer, dangerously closin’ the gap. Instinct keeps me backin’ away since shock has lost communication with ma legs. A debilitatin’ oppressiveness bears doon oan me as ah struggle wi’ the concept o’ hope amidst the doomed endless blackness o’ this New Year’s Day’s first hours. Ma cat opens her eyes and sits up, lookin’ suspiciously at this unwanted intrusion an’ then blinkin’ at me, as though in agreement things ur faur fae okay. Hunted and trapped, ah couldnae see a way tae reach the bedroom door withoot bein’ grabbed and thrown oan tae the bed. Though sexually ignorant, ah intuitively know this lecherous specimen wants tae dae somethin’ forceful and painful against ma will. If ah falter, ma life’s axis will never realign, but remain forever oot o’ balance. Ah’m tryin no tae retch between fear, shock, an’ his distinct lack o’ hygiene. We continue daen’ this weird dance roon’ the bed as ah glimpse us baith in the mirror oan the waw opposite. It’s like watchin’ a Hammer Horror late at night wi’ some ogre, flailin’ erms stretched oot, desperately tryin’ tae grasp his pair victim. She’s trapped, trapped, trapped.

But it’s me bein’ chased by ma rapey neighbour, though the scene is too fuckin’ surreal fur me tae fully assimilate the facts o’ whits actually happenin’ here in ma bedroom in ma ain faimily hoose where ah’m meant tae be safe. Wi’ ma muther an’ faither in the fuckin’ livinroom. Oor reflection oscillates somewhere between farce and horror as we mimic some zany chase scene. Ah’m Penelope Pitstop tae his Hooded Claw. At the mirror’s coarner ah spy a bright full moon, radiatin’ a slither o’ hope an’ a promise o’ a wurld outside this stiflin’ chamber. Momentarily emboldened, ah ponder how he’d react if ah laugh pure oot loud intae his sleverin’ ugly evil fuckin’ mug. Wid it emasculate the dirty fucker so he shrivelled up in a coarner, the weight o’ his shameful actions punchin’ him full force between the eyes or, better still, the nuts? Wid it rile him and turn his lust mair violent? Wid he strangle me tae stoap me fae cryin’ oot fur help, while forcin’ his manky body ontae me tae carry oot his ill intent? Fear and absurdity have stilled ma tongue and coated it so much ah canny make a sound and ma brain is swimmin’ as ah take in the magnitude o’ eager anticipation in his determined starin’ eyes. They’re a peely-wally-bluey colour, like some washed-oot milky galaxy, his irises locked apertures weighin’ me doon, each a black hole threatenin’ tae crush me in the singularity o’ an event horizon from which ah could never return. Where naebody could ever hear ma screams fur help cos his big man haund wid be coverin’ ma wee mooth. Where ah’d be a a broken, empty shell, crushed intae masel’ in an endless abyss before ah could even enter the world. Wid he recognise himself if he stoaped fur a second tae consider whit the mirror sees? Or is this just another opportunity no’ tae miss for the dirty bastard?

Tap, tap, tap. More persistent rat-tat-tat oan the windae. Oot the coarner o’ my een a spy the Rowan tree’s branches swayin’ in oor gairden to the reckless rhythm of this increasingly blustery nicht. Is it sendin’ a message, some kinda morse code, but who’s gonna hear it apart fae me an’ the beast? Cloud seems to have concealed the moon and it momentarily stalls me. Not for long, though, as he closes the gap an’ ah speed up like a video on fast forward. He’s a fiery rogue planet whose newfound orbit circumnavigates a bright star, determined to hurl violently into its pathway, to swallow its light to stoke his own fire. The gravitational pull of his sordid desires spurs him nearer and nearer to a prized virginal destination he’s promised himself to claim. Suddenly ah feel hopelessly alone and a fragile totie wee wean, flung across space and time intae some crazy wonderland, muffled by the suffocatin’ hideous perversity of this grown man. The endless jig o’ him, lungin’ erms reachin’, nicotine-stained fingers and nails that never knew soap, an’ me backin’ away, the space between ever shrinkin’, replaced by a hideous shadow. Smokey looks increasingly agitated. She miaows then hisses at the intruder, jumps aff the bed, an’ even she’s tryin’ tae bail, scratchin’ her paw furiously at the room door. Ah can feel maself shakin’ but ah’m determined no tae greet.

Although this entire scene has only lasted a few minutes, time has stoapped an’ ah’m bein crushed, squeezed, caged in an airless vacuum. It widnae be oany weirder hivin’ stumbled doon some dense remote rabbit hole where no-one ever ventures and all logic evaporates. The tree keeps up its frenetic rhythm against the pane. Suddenly the room door pushes open an’ the cat darts oot like a bullet an’ ah feel the slightest draught fight its way into the stagnant space. Ma muther must huv realised he’d been away too long tae the toilet. Her knowledge of male predatory threats alert from his earlier coarse comments, she quickly enters the room efter side-steppin’ the cat. She’s in a controlled state of agitation, as she gusts in. Ah’d never been so relieved tae see her. It mibbe wid huv been best tae scream paedo fae the rooftops but, aware ma da wis currently in a paralytic other dimension, she humours the bastard lest his fragile ego become too damaged and he attack us baith. Ah can see her clockin’ the scene, disgust mingled with fear, an’ recognition o’ his intentions darken her brow. ‘C’moan H….., oot o’ here’, she politely but firmly ushers him oot the room afore his flustered sense of bein’ caught in the act wears aff. Only at this point do ah let maself greet as ah venture intae the hall, find Smokey and hug her close. Ah don’t remember the sequence of events efter ma muther goat the scumbag oot ma room, but she must huv managed to steer him an’ his wife doon the stairs and oot the hoose no’ long efter that. Back tae the façade o’ their faimily life, his knuckles draggin behin’ him like some descendent o’ Hyde. Daylight won’t beam benignly upon a refined Jekyll, but he’ll dae his best tae pass as decent n’ salt o’ the earth, sleekitly awaitin’ whitever opportunity comes knoackin’ fur him tae pounce oan some ither poor unsuspectin’ wee lassie. But ah’m fair warned; it’ll never be me. That Ne’er Day brought a different view fae ma usual glaikit wean look at thi world; as a lassie ah recognised somethin’ different about how the world saw me, how it measured me. It was a man’s world an’ whitever they grasped within their reach wis fur the takin’. A novel sense of no’ bein’ in charge o’ ma ain space, o’ ma ain destiny struck me; just as ah wis startin’ to look oot intae the world as a future wumman, it returned a violent admonishment that ah wid hiv restrictions and curfews and boxes, and that would make the world fur the likes o’ me less … jist less. Whit message does it send tae a fledglin’ wumman that the world disnae belang tae you, you’re jist a product? A body in service?

The next mornin’ ah’m awakened tae the sounds of eardrum-shatterin’ screechin’. She’s screamin’ at ma faither aboot it noo he’s sobered up and roarin’ aboot how he couldnae bite his ain’ finger nails he wis that pissed, so whit guid wis he tae women in danger in their ain’ fuckin’ hoose? Women? Ah’m just a wean. Later, when ah’m up an’ aboot, neither o’ them discuss it wi’ me or ask how ah’m daen, given the trauma ah suffered the night afore. Neither o’ them warn against any future hazards a teenage girl emergin’ into young womanhood might encounter. I’m twelve, nearly thirteen. Silence isnae always golden. Ignorance totally isnae fuckin’ bliss. Misplaced refinement, awkward embarrassment, parental immaturity, or fuck knows whit perpetuated a conspiracy o’ great British silence roon’ onythin’ tae dae wi’ addressin’ real human issues heid oan.

By the time ah’m aff tae uni in 1990, ah’ll feel a low life fur abandonin’ Smokey. But ma da becomes her favourite efter that, an’ he goes aboot carryin’ her like a baby when she’s in the gairden wi’ him. Ah’ll visit some weekends and holidays, but she’ll get aulder an’ die afore ah graduate and that loss will land a body blow as the last vestige of childhood security evaporates an’ a sense of hame fades.

The fuckin weirdo wid huv raped me, if muther hidnae stoaped him.
Aye, that’s true, ma muther nodded, clearly way out of her comfort zone. Repression punctuates nuclear families, like a stiflingly close humidity oblivious to thunder’s proximity.
Where wis I?, my other brother’s ego slighted, diminishing my experience in favour of his threatened machismo.

As yet unvisited skylines alter embarked paths for those who, having been scathed, teeter over life’s pitfalls and abysses, but step back stumblingly sure-footed from that void and triumphantly chart different trajectories.

Fiona McCulloch has poems in Northwords, Issue 3 and, after a 20-odd year or thereabouts hiatus, MIR Online, Lumpen: A Journal for poor and Working-Class Writers, Dreich, and Fragmented Voices. She also has a short story in Lumpen. An independent scholar, she also writes critical books and journal articles. Born and raised in Scotland, she currently lives in Manchester.
The image is Rowan (186467993).jpeg, posted to Wikimedia by Ivan under a Creative Commons Attribute licence.
Taittinger

The Roses and the Weeds, by Elinora Westfall

GILLIAN

Ollie talks.

Not that Gillian listens. She’s too absorbed in the mundane task of fastening her bra, a simple action frustrated by a twinge of back pain, a lingering stiffness in her shoulder, and her own condemning thoughts: You’re getting too old to shag in a van.

Apparently, she’s not getting too old for Ollie, though, because he keeps coming back for more; she’s continually mystified, flattered, and unable to resist. He’s too beautiful. He is too close to physical perfection.

Despite this however her interactions with him frequently disappoint. Her sexual and aesthetic experience diminishes substantially with the inevitable occurrence of one very simple thing: he speaks.

She wishes that she had kept a written record of all the epic bloody nonsense that has come out of his mouth over the years because she could have gained some kind of minor social media fame and parleyed a book deal out of it to boot: Shit My Stupid Shag Buddy Says. It occurs to her that as far as sordid shag buddies go, she has run the gamut from an Oxford graduate to this: the man who thought that when his sister was pregnant with twins, she’d be pregnant for eighteen months rather than nine. It’s her typical anti-accomplishment: from the gutter to the stars and back again.

As Ollie blathers about football he leans over to tie his trainers and this singular movement initiates a glorious symphony of muscle and flesh in stirring, magnificent counterpoint with one another. She longs to trace the perfect trapezoid muscles within reach but doesn’t, knowing that he would interpret this as an overture for a second go-round, which she’s not really up for because of the pulled muscle in her lower back and various other reasons that she won’t let herself think about.

So, she lets him go on and on about Liverpool and the proliferation of their bloody stupid fans up North.

“They’re everywhere,” he says, “everywhere! I don’t get it. I mean, there must be a Brazilian of them here.”

Gillian successfully resists the urge to bang her head on the side of the van. “Don’t you think?” He gazes up at her.

Aw, bless, he’s trying to engage her in conversation; it would be touching if it weren’t so pathetic. “A Brazilian,” she says flatly. She rubs her aching shoulder and pulls on the hideous yellow work apron; she has to give the cafe credit for picking the one colour that makes all pasty white people look like utter shite.

“Yeah. You know. Like a lot. Like more than a million?” Ollie rolls his eyes. “Know maths is not your strong suit, Gillian, but Jesus, everyone knows that.”

“It’s billion.” Gillian enunciates with a certain sarcastic slowness that immediately reminds her of Vita, and that makes her want to slam her head against the van until she is unconscious. “You mean billion. Not Brazilian.”

He’s sceptical. “You sure?”

“A Brazilian is a person. From Brazil,” she forces out the point between clenched teeth, “the country.”

The light-bulb goes off over Ollie’s handsome head, offering only a bare minimal illumination of knowledge.

“Oh. Right, right.” He nods vigorously. “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.” Slow, graceful, and lazy, he pulls on his shirt. “We doing this again next week, maybe?”

“Maybe,” she lies, and ties the apron at her back with stiff fingers, catching a hangnail on the waistline of her jeans; she wore jeans to work today and amazingly Claud didn’t call her out on it. Ollie said it was because she looked stunning in them. He rarely compliments her, so she figures it must be true. Again, she thinks of Vita, who once said – you should always wear jeans, it ought to be the law of the land – woozily stated after one nap, two orgasms, and three glasses of wine, so she was feeling uncharacteristically munificent that day. And again, she wishes she would stop thinking of Vita, at least immediately after shagging idiots.

Ollie laughs. “It’s weird. You’re really like a bloke sometimes.” He pulls a face. “Shit, that sounds really gay, doesn’t it?”

She stares at the abandoned used condom on the floor of the van — flaccid, sad, and inanimate as if it were the eviscerated hydro-skeleton of some strange jellyfish.

“Yeah. It does.” She grabs her jacket, pushes at the van’s heavy door with her good shoulder, and she’s free. For the moment, anyway.

At home, the windows are fogged up with steam from the beef stew she’s reheating on the Aga. She’s staring at her own reflection, sullied and blurry, hair all over the bloody place, curling about her jaw, slipping out from her poor excuse for a ponytail. An unremarkable colour at the best of times, but in this steam bleached reflection it is even more limp, even more of a non-colour – an insipid pale brown with a fleck of early grey. And her eyes, staring back at her like the eyes of a ghost, almost too pale to see, almost the same colour as the sky.

“What’s this?” Her dad pipes up. He’s fishing for something in the drawer of the kitchen dresser.

She turns around. “What’s what?”

He’s holding a champagne cork. “Taittinger’s? When were you drinking Taittinger’s?” He laughs, his eyes twinkle.

Oh, you — stupid slapper, stroppy trailer trash, foul-mouthed slattern. Who do you think you are? Someone worthy of fine champagne?

It’s not the kind voice of her father, but the voice of the past that fills her head so unexpectedly.

It’s been said that the past is another country; in Gillian’s case, it is more than that. It is an enemy combatant. Any object that could possibly function as a passport into this hostile territory runs the risk of emotional high treason and as such is mercilessly discarded. When she turned 30 (nine whole years ago…) she trashed or burned nearly everything sentimental. Including herself. But there were clothes, photos, keepsakes, a napkin with a heart drawn on it from a first official date, all consigned to the flames or the rubbish heap. The cork is an emissary from a different part of the past, however, and she should have got rid of it but couldn’t. Not yet anyway. The cork, the same one she absently touched to her lips that night as she stood in Room 503 of the Belgravia Hotel, fully clothed and ready to leave but unable to as she helplessly stared down at Vita, sprawled face down on the bed in a dead sleep.

Oh, you…

Gillian jams a wooden spoon into the dense, beefy glop of stew, which plops ominously like a volcano stirring from a dormancy of a thousand years.

“Don’t remember when.”

“Looks recent.” He turns the cork over in his hand.

“Bloody cork expert now, are you?” She throws him a sideways glance through the steam and he smiles at her, that sweet smile that always gets her right in the chest. You’d better not ever bloody die. She thinks. A thought so often passing through her head that it had now become a sort of mantra; something she had to think daily to save his life.

He gives a vague nod of his head, amusement behind his eyes as he places the cork carefully back into the drawer.

The front door opens, the hall floorboards creak, and for the briefest of moments she feels the gritty unevenness of those floorboards against her bloody cheek, and hears that voice in her head: God it was fun breaking you, Gillian.

“Granddad,” Ryan drops a school bag down by the leg of the dining table and claps a hand over his granddad’s shoulder.

“What’s for dinner?”

She feels his presence behind her. She wants to turn and hug him, draw him close and apologise for everything; for the stew, for the bad weather, for not knowing who his father was…for being such a disappointment.

“Thought you ate at school?” She says instead.

She hears him groan, can just about make out his reflection behind her in the window.

“Bloody salad.”

He wraps his arms around her waistline and she swats at his wrists with her free hand.

“Language.”

Her dad hums sympathetically from the corner of the room.

“What’s news?” She asks absently, glancing at him before turning to the washing up in the sink.

“The usual.” He shrugs. He’s wearing the hoody she bought him for Christmas.

“Sounds fascinating,” she says, mouth full affectionate sarcasm as she notices the holes in his cuffs.

“Actually, there is a bit of news, about our hermit next-door neighbour.”

She feels the skin just above the veins in her wrist begin to buzz and she plunges her hands into the too-hot water.

“Vita?” She doesn’t know why she’s asking; they only have one neighbour for miles around.

“So, what’s the news?” She prompts while Ryan nods through a gulp of coke from a bottle she hadn’t noticed he was holding.

“Looks like she’s got herself a girlfriend.”

Gillian is glad she’s facing the window. She waits for the sky and the land to do their usual trick of calming her, bringing her peace. She studies the thin band of clouds frosting the blue sky, the way the wind presses into the long, faded grass. She squeezes the steel wool pad in her hand. Watery brown gunk from the pot she’s been scrubbing surrenders to the drain, and she predicts by the end of the week she’ll have to take apart the pipes again to work out the clog. Didn’t expect her to remain on the market forever, did you? Despite the fact that she was a middle-aged woman…. a widow, a posh bitch, a recluse…

Put like that, Gillian asks herself, why are you so keen on her, you dozy cow?

She dries her hands with a towel and turns around. Keeping her hands busy always settles her nerves. She can tell by the way Ryan looks at her that he’s waiting for her to trot out some smart-arsed remark, some homophobic put-down.

“Good,” she says softly. She clears her throat and tries it again—this time firmer and louder, and almost convinces herself. “That’s good.”

“You met her?” Her dad asks from the dresser. He’s left the drawer open. She stares at it, unblinking, while Ryan answers.

“Briefly. She was leaving when we showed up. They were kind of giggly together. It was cute.”

Gillian twirls the limp, damp dish-towel into a sinewy rope and attempts fashioning a hangman’s noose out of it.

“She seems cool. Didn’t talk to her for long but she was funny, smart. Her name is Sacha. Works in finance or something. There was an article on her and her family in the Courier yesterday — Clarissa was telling me, God, I think even Clarissa likes her — anyway, the family’s really posh and they set up some new scholarship fund for, you know, ‘underprivileged students’.” Ryan employs the good old air quotes around the phrase — a Vita sarcasm speciality, and again Gillian suspects that he has a crush on Vita, even as she simultaneously acknowledges the fierce irrationality of her ridiculous jealousy. At this pathetic moment, she is even jealous of the Jeep Cherokee she sees parked in Vita’s drive every morning, jealous of it for its close proximity to its owner, not to mention the front seat.

Oh, Christ, you are bananas.

“Maybe you should apply,” her dad says.

“I’m not underprivileged. Right, Mum?”

Gillian hums absently.

“Mum?”

“Yeah?”

Amused, Ryan smirks. “Why are you making a noose with the dish-towel?”

Her dad propels himself from the edge of the dresser. “My cue to leave, before she gets any ideas.”

Oh, that joke isn’t funny anymore.

“I’ll join you.” Ryan follows his granddad from the room. Gillian hears the creak of the sofa as they sit down in the sitting room, a pause, then the welcome murmur of the television.

She fishes for her phone in the pocket of her jeans, flicks the screen on and hits Google…

This is what she has become… someone who stalks a former shag buddy with whom you have the grave and stupid misfortune of being in love. It’s exhausting. She yawns. After a good ten minutes, she is finally online and hopping to the Courier’s website, where the fluff piece on Vita’s new woman is found easily enough.

In Gillian’s mind, there are two types of English woman: The Roses and the Weeds. Vita, of course, is a Rose: pale and elegant, seemingly perfect, secretly thorny, and bitchily unrepentant when blood is drawn. She herself is, of course, a sturdy English Weed: tough, available, and usually trampled upon by blokes in obsessive pursuit of the Roses. Ollie alone is proof of the paradox. When they weren’t shagging, they were drinking and talking about Vita; a shared loathing of the same woman bonded them more than sex ever did.

But Jennifer Elena Sacheverell Easley Parmenter — Jesus Christ, Gillian thinks, what kind of person needs five fucking names? — is a voluptuous variation on the Weed: A bit horsey-looking but well-groomed, well-dressed, and possessing abundant dark locks a la Nigella Lawson. Not to mention big tits. No, she is not a common English Weed, this lady’s not for trampling. She’s the weed that will wrap with luxurious abandon around everything in a garden till it’s hers, that will scale the stone walls of the mansion until her wild garlands smother everything in sight. In the photo, she’s smiling handsomely, about ready to burst out of her blouse, and sandwiched between two happy teenagers and a man, whom Gillian is pretty certain she might have shagged.

Gillian reads on. Jennifer is a CEO of a digital music company. Even though she and her fucking ex-husband, a fucking barrister, both went to fucking Cambridge. Her fucking father is a fucking marquis and — here Gillian dies a little — her fucking Italian mother is a fucking “member of the distinguished, aristocratic Milanese family” that includes the filmmaker Luchino Fucking Visconti.

Defeated, she leans back in the chair. Sure, great. That’s just great. She manages one final, rallying thought: can Jennifer single-handedly replace a toilet? Plumb in a washing machine or rewire a house? Bet not. Top that, bitch. “Fucking slag.”

Gillian does not realize she’s said this aloud until Ryan calls loudly from the couch: “Who’s a fucking slag?”

“The Queen,” she shouts back.

“Too right. Always thought she was a bit tarty with all those hats.”

She scowls, realizes her mother was right so many years ago when she still had possession of at least a few marbles: someday you’ll have one of your own, and they’ll be mouthing off to you the way you do to me, and you’ll be sorry then. She is very sorry indeed. About a lot of things, but not that.

Elinora Westfall is British/Australian actress, writer and filmmaker living in the UK.
www.elinoralord.com
The image is ‘L’étiquette d’une bouteille de champagne : une cuvée « Comtes de Champagne » de la maison Taittinger, millésime 1966’, posted to Wikimedia by Trace.