Short Story “Under Aletsch”

January 18, 2009 at 8:18 pm (Short Stories) (, , , , , , , , )

A strange piece inspired by a genuine event.

 

Under Aletsch

 

So that was how it happened was it? An oddly quiet way to go. I always imagined you’d leave the world kicking and screaming, like we entered it. It’s suitably dramatic, I suppose. Always knew you’d end early and it wouldn’t be in a nice way.

What did it feel like, Dawn? Was it like going to sleep from the feet up…?

You weren’t destined to last. Even Mum knew it. You could see it in the way she looked at you. Her eyes would go distant and hard, like they were freezing over. Did you never notice? Like the time she found you disembowelling the hedgehog on the lawn to see the roots of the spines from the inside.

I knew you were dead. There was no way you would have left me in peace for thirty-three years if you weren’t.

The first few years you were gone I was afraid you’d show up again, that it was all too good to be true. I half expected you to turn up at my wedding. In fact, I remember now, I stood at the front of the church sweating and shaking. Dad had patted my shoulder with a wise grin across his face, said my cold feet would warm up again soon enough. But I was thinking about how you’d wait until the suitably dramatic moment, just as Marian was pacing down the aisle, a vision encased in the floating ice of veils and rose petals, and then rise from one of the pews in a black hat to laugh and point and screech everything into the church air.

But you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. That was 1983. You’d already been lying still and solid for two years by then, each cell meticulously stiffened and saved from rot.

Marian. My Marian.

That year I found Marian and a house with a little lawn at the back. There were clumps of daisies in the summer, small white islands amongst the grass like icebergs on a green sea. There was a tree and a shed to keep the mower in. Space for a swing set, Marian said, smiling. I smiled back and kissed her, I remember, though I knew there would never be any swings.

 

I’m supposed to go and see you. They’ve sent me the plane ticket here: SWISS International Air Lines. Business Class. Leaves a week from now. They’ll pay for the hotel, too.

Marian thinks you’re an old flame, you know. She heard the voice message they left on the machine. I couldn’t find the words to explain. I don’t think the words exist. I saw her swallow tears and move to the hall cupboard to fetch a suitcase.

Old flame. I fire that burned once and has since been cooled to zero.

I’ll ring her later. I’ll find some plain, ordinary words that’ll parcel it all up simply. She’ll believe me. She will. Why wouldn’t she? I can make it sound like a perfectly normal story. Why have I never mentioned you? Why, indeed? Were we close? Can one half of you be close to the other, or are you all the same thing?

‘We fell out’; that ought to do it. It’s true, after all. We fell out of whatever we were in. Then you disappeared, like you’d never been there, except for the ache at the back of my head, like a scar inside my skull.

It’s easy to ignore an ache that’s always been there. That’s what the sting of your presence faded to, Dawn: an old wound finally allowed to close a little.

The logo of the airline is the Swiss flag, the white cross on the red, red, red. The same red, unforgiving and artificial, as the dye you used to put in your hair. A chemist down the road sold your favourite colour, unrelenting and plastic, nothing like blood or roses, hedgehog guts or dying sunsets. You’d spend hours perfecting your acrylic face-frame of hair and I’d watch from behind a magazine, each pin-point twitch with your expert fingers arranging it ever so slightly more perfectly. Then you looked at me through your lashes as you blew me a kiss and I had to look away.

You strayed from the path and froze on a glacier. You left the house and got on a plane and flew to Switzerland to wander off the path. Why Switzerland, Dawn? Why on earth…? Did you go on SWISS air?

Most likely it was Switzerland simply because it will have been the first flight out. You will have eyed the clerk up and down, flashed your streetlight smile and said ‘anywhere’ in that voice that is nearly all.

I’m going to go. Of course I am. I was a fool to think I could live without you. I’ll ring the man again in the morning, say I’ll be joining him next week. I’ll make a formal identification.

Mum died in your room, did you know that? She was hoovering it, though no one’s touched the damn place except her in years. That cranky old hoover that weighs a bloody tonne. Dragging it up the stairs and heaving it around the room finished off her little heart.

 

I hate planes. Always have. And buses and trains. Long, thin people-boxes, one of the most efficient ways possible I can think of to kill off a group of people in one go. Even in Business Class you’re still a billion bloody feet off the ground and the air tastes like it’s come out of a bottle and you have to duck and edge around and purposefully look away from dozens of strange people.

            Every single thing I see levers up another paving slab in my mind. All these people breathing the same box of air is like when we snuck onto a train to Manchester in the middle of summer. Mum believed me when I said we were going to a friend’s to study. We’d laughed the whole way and you produced a six-pack of cider that you’d got by smiling at the man in the off-license. Everyone stared at the noise we made but even if we’d been quiet as a pair of curtains they would have stared anyway. We were used to it. We’d come to accept we were unusual, exotic, enticing, two versions of the same thing. You dyed your hair but it just made it look more. When you cut it short like mine and started dressing like me even I found it hard to tell where I ended and you began.

Mum once told me looking at us was like standing at the very point when two rivers meet only to hurtle over a cliff. I copied you when you laughed at that, though I wasn’t sure I liked it the way you did.

You saw a man watching from across the train so you drew me in and kissed me, tongue and teeth and the taste of cider. I could feel his eyes on us as surely as I felt your eyes back at him, even with my own shut.

The police brought us both home the next day, having spent the night in a Manchester cell because you’d screamed and wouldn’t let me tell them where we lived. You’d gone hoarse by the morning whilst I’d lain curled in the corner all night with vomit in my hair and I’d told the policeman the name of our village.

The frozen face, do you remember it? You must have seen it that time, the way the flesh of Mum’s jaw tightened and stuck as the policeman told her what we’d done.

I remember the sting ebbing to an ache. Six months, a year, you still didn’t turn up and it faded and faded even as Mum cried in the evening before she went to sleep. She’d heard our argument, she must have. If I pretend I can say I’ve forgotten all the things I said to you. It was over thirty years ago and I’ve spent all that time forgetting so it’s a believable lie, even to myself. I meant it all, at the time and I’ve spent the rest of my life telling myself you deserved it.

A low, spreading ache. I bathed in its throbbing pulse and as time went on and on, still no word, it spread over all my skin and then down through my mouth and into my guts until it was all of me. When I looked in the mirror and didn’t see you, that’s when I knew you were gone.

I met Marian that very night. She had brown eyes and a soft, soft smile and she knew how to make hotpot and wanted to be a teacher. I sighed out a kind of last breath and settled against her warm breasts and let her lead me somewhere where love wasn’t torture.

You’d have hated Marian. You’d enjoy telling me that she was dull, grey. A cardigan in human form, that’s what you would have said. She’d hate you too, no question, although there’s very little capacity in her for such things. She would have managed it for you, I think. But then she would look from you to me and she’d see the red hair and the lips and eyes and she’d have seen us as one and she’d never be able to look at me again.

But who knows, you might still win. Because here you are again and now Marian knows about you. I might have known you’d find some way to intrude, scratching your way in like claws through a net curtain. Because you never really died, did you? You’ve just been hiding under a thick layer of rocks and ice in my brain.

I haven’t heard you laugh for a lifetime but I can hear it again now, in my mind, ice-clear and fiery. It was the laugh you let fly at Mum when she caught us behind the shed at our thirteenth birthday party. It was the laugh you threw at me when I said I didn’t want to.

You found it so funny that I didn’t want to run away with you.

“Run away? What from?”

“From here, of course.”

“To where?”

“Fucking anywhere.”

 

You’re not an aunt, by the way. I worked and earned and built and bought Marian everything she wanted to try and make up for what she really wanted from me but that I wouldn’t give. Just think, she said once, just think, a little bit of you, alive with us. But I know two of me is too many. I’ve spent a lifetime pretending, a lifetime’s dedication bent towards burying everything I really am, everything that you personified. A second’s lapsed control and I would feel again in my heart and mind and skin everything I shouldn’t when I looked at you and thought you were beautiful.

I ended up shouting at Marian that day and I caught my face in the mirror, wide mouth open and brow dark and our insane red hair dishevelled. That’s what you must have seen the night you ran away.

Marian never brought it up again, though I saw it in her face sometimes: a melting when we walked past play parks and front gardens in the summer, teeming with sprinklers and happy faces and tiny limbs.

 

Formally identify the body. Anything and everything and nothing and all of what had been before coming and going, clawing up through rocks and ice to swirl like a blizzard inside my head, parcelled up neatly in four little words.

Yes, that’s Dawn. Look how red the hair is.

Sign the paper, accept the patted back, back to the hotel and, thank God, a mini-bar. Fly home tomorrow. Home to Marian. She’s bringing the Alfa and she’ll meet me at Birmingham International. She won’t say anything, just gather me to her like a child and hold me. I’ll breathe in her smell of violets and ease myself into the familiar shape of her and then I can begin laying a whole new patio in my head.

But that’s tomorrow. Tonight it’s just you and me, again. I’ve come and I’ve disturbed your sleep, just when you thought you’d got rid of me. Just one more night, Dawn, then I’ll spend the rest of the years left to me laying you to rest. I owe you that much.

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Chapter 5 of ‘Hoodwin’

October 13, 2008 at 1:28 pm ('Hoodwin' - original novel, Uncategorized) (, , , , , , , , , , , , )

Sorry again for the gap in posting. But here is the fifth and last of the presently completed chapters. It will give me the incentive to finish off the novel. I might manage to post a few more up, though maybe in a rougher state than these ones have been, but the rest of it will, hopefully, be available to buy in the shops! I will be seeking publication once I have finished writing it and aim to be done with my manuscript by early next year. Wish me luck!

I will keep my progress updated here and I wish to give a massive thanks to everyone that has taken the time to read and work with me up until now. It is all of you that will get this book written, even more than me!

Chapter 5

The moody silence that took over Lewis for the rest of the day was not enough to lessen the brightness filling me as more and more of the attic room was emptied. We had to stop when the light failed but I could already feel and see the stretching expanse of the attic, filling with light and air. Sinclare folded away from either window in the greying evening and my fingers itched for pencils.

When I finally went to bed it felt like some of the heaviness of the house had been lifted. Turning out the light, I lay down in the dark. Even the smell of my room seemed fresher. I breathed it in and out and felt the tiredness etch itself over my muscles and behind my eyes. I lay still, feeling the exhaustion soaking through me, but sleep wouldn’t come. Lying still and looking into the dark, my mind started pasting images onto the night. I scrunched my eyes tight against the pictures rising in front of them, sketchy, grainy pictures with lots of shading and very strong outlines.

It was a group portrait, up on Stonehill. A shadowy palette, but here and there specks of stark colour picked out in torchlight. There was a delicate blue, expertly mixed and touched into Evelyn’s eyes with the finest of fine brushes. The red of Theo’s overcoat seemed to hold a heat. The scruffy mop of my hair as a torch shone at me was not much different from the night surrounding the stones. Tiny, fire-points of cigarette ends glowed in the dark and reflected in Eve’s eyes.

She sat next to me, cigarette smoke twisting from her mouth. Theo leant against one of the tall stones, staring off into the dark, his torch beam an idle angle of light shining on the crispy grass. “Wouldn’t it be great if we never had to go back home?” His smile was white and wreathed with smoke in the torchlight.

I laughed. “What, never?”

“Yeah, never.” He crouched down, grabbed my knees. “Let’s never go back. We wouldn’t have to listen to our parents ever again or sit any bloody exams.”

“That would be great.” Eve sighed, her eyes shadowed blotches when she looked away from the light. “I’m going to do shit at them anyway. Don’t know why I bother trying.”

“It’s worth a try…” I rubbed her chilled hand between mine. She had problems with her circulation and I kept urging her to wear gloves but she never listened. “It’ll give us a chance to get away.”

“Get away?” Even in the dark I could see her frown was heavy.

“Away…” I said carefully. “To the mainland, like Lewis…college, university. Getting a job somewhere away from here. I always thought…”

Eve chuckled. Theo crouched quietly.

“Theo’s pulling your leg, you silly sod,” Eve said, shaking her head. “We’re not going anywhere. We can’t.” Eve pulled her hand back to ruffle her hair. “It’s too much hassle. Dad’s already said he’ll pay me to help him run the Witch. I won’t even have to move out.”

“But I thought you’d want to,” I said quietly, questioningly, the cold of the night seeping a little deeper into me. “I always thought we were all going to try and…you know…”

Eve stubbed out her cigarette in the grass, took a box out of my pocket to get another. “I know we laugh about it, but I never meant it for real. I can earn what I need at the pub. Theo doesn’t even have to worry about a job. He can mooch off Daddy Marcus in the big house the rest of his life.”

“No, no, no!” Theo got to his feet with a flourish, his torch beam swiping through the dark air. “Let’s all leave. We’ll get a ship and sail away. Somewhere hot. Let’s just fuck off. Goodbye to Dad and goodbye to Sinclare.”

Eve was laughing. I sat in silence.

“It’ll be easy,” he repeated, grinning. “We’ll fix up the Jenny. It’s only been rusting there for like fifty years, right? It’ll be a doddle. We’ll catch fish to eat and find buried treasure to trade for beer. It’ll be great.”

Theo’s voice echoed in my head. I opened my eyes again on the blank of my room and sighed. I’d daydreamed about the three of us sailing off together more and more as I saw less and less of them.

I thought about Eve’s naked eyes from yesterday, pale and silent like a windswept hill. And Theo. Theodore. Lewis had seen him. He was back, had been living again in the big house outside Hoodwin since he turned twenty-one. Three of us had wanted to escape. Three of us were here again.

I held up my hands in the air as if trying to feel Theo’s presence in the night. I wondered if he still laughed the same. I tried to imagine him living in Sinclare House all alone, wondering listlessly from room to room in silence, staring up at the high ceilings.

Refusing to think, I got out of bed, pulled on jumper and trousers and shoes without socks and crept downstairs. Pulling on Lewis’s coat I headed out the door, torch in hand.

The night air chewed at the exposed flesh of my face. I kept my head down and my pace up and crunched along the drive and hurried down the road and was soon crossing the cobbles of Hoodwin, shoes clicking. It was again still as death, the cobbles bathed in little snow-caps of white streetlight like dozens of tiny hills. The square and its light faded behind me as I paced along the north road out of the village. Clouds blotted out the stars. My breaths wheezed into the silence and I clicked the torch on, not trusting my memory on this road.

My torch picked out a battered wooden sign nailed to a post in the verge, partially hidden by the hedge: Sinclare House and an arrow off to my left. I turned off the road and felt frozen mud under my shoes. A slight breeze blew up from the great emptiness on either side of me. The meagre light of my torch picked out the track but the house itself stood shrouded in shadows far ahead.

Off to the left a white scrap of a lighted window sat glowing in the blackness. The smell of wood smoke was on the air, despite the hour. The light disappeared and then reappeared as invisible trees passed between it and me. I swallowed. David Braithwaite used to watch us from those windows in summer, when we still played on the banks of Ercall Pool. I pressed on, deliberately not thinking of the pool that lay in the quiet and the dark just beyond the square of light. I wondered how Theo could bare to look out of his windows and see the pool where his father died every day.

The mud gave way to gravel under my shoes and the dim circle of my torch shone on broad, stone steps. Tilting it higher I could see the great wooden doors, shut tight. Urns of overgrown, evergreen shrubs stood on either side of it. I cast the beam further up and the house piled up above me, all white stone and blank windows. The breeze had dropped again and the silence was smothering.

The guttering above the front door was hanging off the wall, a rusty bleed smeared down the stone from its end. The paint was coming away on some of the window frames. Ivy had begun to twine up a drainpipe and the gravel from the drive lay strewn across the barren flowerbeds and the front step.

Very aware of the noise my feet were making, I went towards the door. I laid my numb hand flat on the wood, like Theo’s presence would make them hum. They were still and chilled. Taking a deep breath, I banged my fist, three times. The noise cracked the silence around me and I heard it throb through the wide entrance hall on the other side. I stood with my breath misting. I counted to sixty, banged again and pushed on the little button of the doorbell but still nothing.

Swallowing, I stepped back onto the gravel, casting the beam of light up again at the house. I felt Theo’s name on my lips but no sound came out. I went to one of the windows. The light of the torch showed the backs of heavy curtains. I tried the next window along. The same. I went round the whole house, checking every ground-floor window. I wanted to see something, anything, but every window was blank with backs of curtains and blinds.

I was shivering violently by now. I sighed, about to give up when something whispered out of the dark nearby. I slow, quiet crunch, like a foot carefully stepping on gravel. Not knowing why, I shut off my torch and held my breath. It came again, once. The night was an unrelieved black blanket around my eyes. No more sound reached my ears except the tiniest breath of breeze in the tops of nearby trees.

Still holding my breath, I began to edge back round the building toward the drive, one hand out against the wall of the house, the other held just in front of me. I felt the corner of the house under my fingertips and took a tentative step out from it, stood still. Still nothing. Calmed, I switched on the torch.

“Hoi!” A gruff yell off to my right, a rapid crunching of feet running towards me. A spark of panic. I ran, clumsily, feet shifting on the gravel and a hand grabbed my coat. “Just stop there, you. What do you think you’re doing?”

Another torch flicked on, shone in my face.

“I…I was just calling at the house.” I blinked into the light, held my hands up to shade my eyes. The grip on the shoulder of my coat was iron.

“At this time of night?” The voice was dark, anger giving it a heated edge. “I should call the police…wait, hang on. Mr. Stefan?” I stammered, tried to bring my own torch up but his arm was in the way. “What on earth are you doing here?”

The grip disappeared. I lifted my light and David Braithwaite was staring at me with watery eyes. “I…” I blinked, lowered my torch out of his eyes. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” I mumbled stupidly. “I’m here to see Theo.”

“At four o’clock in the morning?”

A shaky laugh escaped me. “I wasn’t really thinking.”

“Well, I must say you’re the last person I expected to see.” His voice was thin and it cracked slightly but I could still hear the resonance that had used to make my neck-hair stand on end. His moustache still held some brown but from the temples outwards he was white. His face sagged a little more around the smile, which was still broad but slightly yellow. He was a lot smaller than I remembered and stooped, like he was hanging off his frame. I had an idea he’d been at Dad’s funeral but had been kind enough not to try and speak to me

“I came to see Theo,” I repeated, hearing how stupid the words sounded. “I’ve just found out he’s here and couldn’t get it out of my head so I…well, but anyway. He doesn’t seem to be answering so maybe I’ll come back tomorrow.”

His face had fallen out of its smile, brows drawing together slightly. “You came to see Master Warren?”

I frowned. We berated Theo endlessly about the fact his father called himself ‘Master Warren’. Theo had laughed along with us.

“Dad likes playing the Lord of the Manor,” Theo’s tone would arch into high English. “Master this and Sir that – when we all know he’s just a bloody farmhand playing it up in the big house. Still got shit under his nails, for Christ’s sake, whilst getting his tea served in the drawing room. Such a joke.”

As little as the title had suited Marcus, I couldn’t imagine it suiting Theo at all. “Master Warren?” I repeated, carefully. I was shivering so violently the words came out in bites. “I’m after Theodore. Marcus Warren’s son?”

David nodded, face still blank. “Indeed. Yes. But…dear Lord, we’re both shivering here. Let’s get into the warm.” He turned back in the direction of his cottage.

“No, really,” I said. “I should be heading back.”

“You should get warm first,” he said. “You should know better than to come out without gloves and scarf at this time of year. Come on, come and have a cup of tea.”

Cold and embarrassed, I wanted to get home, but the thought of hot tea and a warm room was too much to turn down. And if anyone knew what kind of life Theo had now, his groundskeeper would.

Shivering and clutching myself, I followed the shape of Braithwaite a little way down the frozen drive. He soon turned off onto a narrow, well-trodden track leading down the hill. The only sound apart from our feet in the frozen grass was the rasping of my breath. The ground levelled out. A few paces further and we were moving in through a little wooden gate in a low brick wall. I followed him up a neat garden path and then heard him fiddling with keys.

I shone the torch down the path behind me. The thin beam picked out the garden wall and some grey grass beyond. The grass stopped a few feet from the gate and the light died beyond it. I couldn’t see the water; Ercall Pool was just a still blackness past the grass.

“Here we go.”

I turned back to a rush of warmth sweeping from the opening door. I hurried in after him and felt my limbs melt in relief in the close, quiet warmth. The smell of burning wood hung in the air.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you properly, Stefan.” He was shrugging out of his thick overcoat. “I remember how your brother used to visit me, often. That was a long time ago, too. But all significant times are long ago, don’t you find? What is history but another time a long way away from now.”

I nodded. “Yes, Mr. Braithwaite – ”

“David, please.”

“David.”

“What brings you back to Sinclare then? Thought we’d seen the last of you many years ago.” He smiled at me, took my coat and hung it next to his.

“I’m sorting Dad’s house.”

“Oh yes, of course.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, watery eyes looked into mine. “I am sorry, Stefan. Elliot was a good man.”

I nodded whilst staring at the carpet.

He motioned me through to the kitchen. “How does it feel being back? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“It feels good.” I listened to the words and decided it was true. “I’m moving back.”

“Really? Well, that would be wonderful. It’s always good to support the community that brought you up.”

. The kitchen had a curious, sharp smell that hung under the smell of old cooking and wood. It snagged in my mind. The floor was flagged in heavy stones the colour of rust. An aga dominated one side. The walls were bare brick but crowded with dozens of pictures. It brought the Witch back to mind along with the claustrophobic feeling of being watched by dozens of frozen eyes. They were strange pictures of strange things, mermaids and silkies and hinkey-punks and then portraits of people with faces full of stories and landscapes that made me wonder what was just outside the frame. I frowned as Braithwaite moved about the kitchen amongst them all. I stiffened slightly when, again and again, what was clearly the mermaid of Ercall Pool appeared with hands reached out toward me.

“I don’t sleep too well these days, I’m afraid. The cold affects me badly,” he prattled on in a low voice, like he was talking to himself. “I keep my curtains open to watch for the dawn, so couldn’t help but spot your light…”

His voice was so different now. I remembered him shouting. Always shouting. Stefan Bridgeman, your father shall hear of this, waving his cane as I scuttled back into the trees with Theo, clutching something pulled from his garden.

It hadn’t just been his voice. His shoulders, his height, the big coats and boots he wore, not to mention the whispers that he did hit people with that stick. We’d constantly dared each other into his front garden and around the back of his cottage, sniggering in the trees. He’ll set the witch on you. If spotted, we ran fast and weren’t able to laugh about it until hours later.

He chattered on about the weather and the harvest and tourists from Oldport and my gaze landed on the kitchen table. I recognised the notebook from the logo stamped in the corner of it.

“Mr. Braithwaite,” I began, reaching out for the notebook, but he came forward and stood in between me and the table.

“Yes, a young girl came calling, asking for information. Research, I think. She left that by mistake but I’m sure she’ll be back when she realises. Why don’t we move through to the sitting room?” He handed me a steaming mug that smelt tangy and bitter but tasted deliciously warm and smooth. “A little recipe of my own invention. Perfect for winter. Warms you up and should help you sleep. Come, it’s just through here.” He led me back out of the kitchen and across the hall, into the lighted living room. Pictures hung everywhere, dozens of doors to different places and times. The dim light of a few mismatched lamps threw strange shadows around the frames and amongst the jumble of worn and over-sized furniture that crowded the little room.

A large fireplace was set in the middle of one wall, a pile of embers pulsing in the grate. The mantle held a large carriage clock that filled the room with its soft clicking. Above the mantle hung the largest of the paintings. Biblical Eve and her serpent twisted in a frozen dance. The gloom of the shadows and the firelight spread darkness across its corners and Eve’s eyes hung heavy in her face. Even in that light I could see it was laid out in fine, fine oils, so fleshy I could almost taste her. There was something in the moulding of the flesh, in the use of shadow and in the gaze…

“Who painted that one, Mr Braithwaite?” I tried to keep my voice steady.

“You like that one, do you? It’s not one of my favourites, but it is one of the oldest in my little collection. A Sinclare painter, that. Arthur Bulmer. Was quite famous in his day.”

“Who was he?”

Braithwaite eased himself into a massive, battered chair and seemed to shrink as he sat. “He worked a lot on commission for the Sinclare family in the 1700s, when Bartholomew rose the family to status and success and renamed the island. He’s rumoured to have painted many of the family’s portraits but so few of them survive to this day.”

“Was there a Charlotte Sinclare around that time?”

Braithwaite blinked his watery eyes. “Yes, as a matter of fact. Barthlomew’s daughter by his first wife. But she died in infancy. That’s a very obscure bit of knowledge, Stefan. Where did you hear it?”

I was staring hard into the eyes of the painted Eve and he had to ask me again before I heard him. “I found…” I began, but then noticed the way he was looking at me. I swallowed and said, “I found a book. In Dad’s attic. I saw the name when I flicked through it.”

“Do you remember the name of this book?” He was now focussing on the tea in his cup and wouldn’t look at me.

I could feel myself blushing. “Um, no. I don’t remember. I threw it away.”

“Pity.”

I sat on the edge of a high-backed wooden chair and sipped at my drink. Everything started to fuzz pleasantly at the edges and I suppressed a yawn. My gaze kept returning to Eve and shining snake, writhing as they did in their stone-still-motion under a tree laden with unidentifiable fruit, on grass so lush-looking I half-expected it to sway in the heat rising from the fire. “He had an incredible talent.”

Braithwaite nodded heavily, looked up from his cup, one eyebrow lifted. “That he did.” He examined me for a minute or so before turning his head back toward the picture above the mantle. “There were of course, as with anything from that time, wild tales and superstitions floating around the nature of his extraordinary skill. It’s amazing what people will say to deliberately mislead about such things, isn’t it, Stefan?”

I swallowed some tea, taking my eyes off the painting. “It’s an…impressive…collection.”

“Thank you. Sinclare can’t seem to help but inspire artists, though not a lot of the work is widely known. This is only some of my collection. I donated some to the Water Witch when they were refurbishing. Makes you feel safe, somehow, doesn’t it? All this great beings watching over you.” Watching him look around I saw him sink a little further into the chair, a slight smile around the edges of his mouth. “Although I do wish they had changed the pub’s name to The Mermaid,” he continued. “Much nicer. And, obviously, more true to the actual myth.”

He took a long swallow of tea and I did the same. I felt my eyes drooping. The pictures around me throbbed in and out of focus. I rubbed at them, forcing my mind back on track. “So, Mr. Braith – sorry, David. Theo…”

“Ah, yes, yes.” He shuffled, leaning forward to me. “Master Warren. You came to see him?”

“Well, my brother told me he’d moved back. About five years ago? I only found out yesterday…”

“Well, yes, that’s true, he did. He moved back into Sinclare House when it defaulted to him at twenty-one. He was living there quite happily it seemed to me.” He was frowning. “I’m surprised you didn’t know already. I remember you two being very close. Both your fathers commented on it frequently.”

I was too sleepy to fully decide whether there was anything implied in the way he said it. “No, I haven’t spoken to him since Marcus’s…the late Master Warren’s funeral. Theo was moved away a few days later. I was hoping to see him again. I know I picked an odd time to visit, but…”

Braithwaite shook his large head, rather sadly. “You won’t find him at the house at any time.”

“Sorry?”

“No one’s seen or heard from him months.”

“He’s shut himself away?”

He shook his head again, frown deepening. “No. He’s not there at all. I noticed the curtains hadn’t been opened in a few days and went to check but no one was in.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughed a little, a laugh like the creaking of an old tree. “I’m the groundskeeper, Stefan. I have spare keys to everything for just this kind of situation. He wasn’t in the house and it looked like some of his clothes were gone.”

“Didn’t anyone look for him?”

He sighed, leant back in the chair, drained the rest of his mug. “Master Warren’s his own man, Stefan. None of our business should he choose to lift off and leave, for whatever reason.”

Something slumped in me. “Do you know if he’s coming back?”

Another cracking laugh. “I’m not his father, young Stefan. I’m his groundskeeper, certainly, but the Sinclare House Foundation pays me, not him. We keep ourselves to ourselves, me and Master Warren. I was close to the late Master Warren, it’s true. But not Theodore. He never tells me anything, I’m afraid. He could return any second, or never. It’s his house. If he wants to let it fall in on itself and rot away that’s his affair, as much as I would rather it were different.”

I followed his heavy stare out the window, off in the direction of the hill and the house.


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Chapter 4 of ‘Hoodwin’

September 12, 2008 at 9:50 pm ('Hoodwin' - original novel) (, , , , , , , , , , , )

Sorry there’s been such a gap since the last posting. But here’s Chapter 4!

Chapter 4

Lewis helped me light the massive wood burner in the front room. The wood caught easily and the room, so suddenly, smelt and felt different. I closed my eyes and I could almost hear Dad’s knees creak and crack as he straightened from the hearthrug and the soft clapping as he dusted ash from his large hands.

The kitchen had taken most of the previous afternoon after we got back from the Witch. Grendel watched everything from a distance, skittering away whenever Lewis tried to stroke him. He watched us pile bin bags outside the back door, filled to bursting with ageing food, tins, crockery, cookware, books, pens, kettles, irons. They were all things that had sat in their places for years. The kitchen looked strange and cavernous without them but I kept reminding myself that this was my house now. That’s what Dad wanted, surely.

I ventured into the front room early the next morning, the night only just starting to give up to the day. I’d spent the night concentrating on not thinking about Theo. I’d stopped myself at six in the morning, one hand on the front door handle, about to march out to Sinclare House.

The door to the living room was very stiff and the room was pitch and stuffy, the drapes pulled tight against the last night Dad saw. I wrestled them open, coughing in the dust. The morning rising outside, weak and white as it was, was clean and alive and unmistakably winter. So much of the house had always been shut behind doors or curtains that were rarely ever opened. I wanted it to breathe a little.

Lewis joined me, fresh and awake, as I was half way through packing Mum’s books, faded and neatly sorted by author, into boxes. He didn’t say anything as he came beside me and started helping.

We lit the fire to stop our teeth chattering and worked on in silence. I rubbed at my eyes, damp and sore with lack of sleep and floating dust. The only reason I was aware of time passing was the voice of the clock on the mantle, steadily ticking away the seconds. The room gradually emptied itself into boxes and bags, space gathering on shelves and in cupboards.

“Stefan, look,” Lewis said. It might have been five minutes or two hours later. He was stood by the mantle, holding something out something to me. “I found it behind the clock.”

I took it from him, laid it flat on my palm. A small key, old, quite heavy for its size. “What’s it for?”

Lewis leaned over and looked at it. “For the attic, I think. I never knew where Dad kept it. Trust him to keep it right here under our noses.”

“The attic?” I closed my hand over the little bit of metal and made for the stairs. The floorboards of the landing creaked loudly the further down I went. I had to duck through the low doorway at the end, into the darkened room. I blinked in the gloom, felt my way to another pair of heavy curtains that hung across the window. I opened them and spluttered in another great flurry of dust. I grabbed a chair from under the window and dragged it underneath the hatch in the ceiling. Lewis stood with his arms folded, watching me. I stared up at it. “What do you think is up there?” I squeezed the key tighter in my hand.

“Junk, Stef. Another massive room of junk. I don’t understand why you’re so excited.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

Lewis’s face had once again fallen into a heavy frown. “I was done with this house a long time ago. I thought you were too.”

“So did I. Running away didn’t achieve anything though, did it? And I’m tired of being angry with this place.”

Breathing deeply, I stepped up onto the creaky chair and reached up. It was an awkward angle to turn the key from. Finally, the lock clicked and the weight of the door pushed down. I lowered it gently and thick clots of wood dust billowed down. After I’d finished coughing and wiping at my eyes I reached up and grabbed the end of a battered collapsible ladder. I juggled it down, the old metal screeching in protest, the feet fitting into faint grooves in the carpet. I shook it and it held. With one more deep breath I started up into the black mouth.

Coming up out of the light, the darkness seemed complete. The air had a stale taste. The light shining up from below died weakly around me, falling on wooden flooring. I tested it with my foot and stepped off the top rung of the ladder, the floor creaking quietly. I bounced a little, cautiously.

“Well?” Lewis’s face tilted up below me.

“Is there a light?”

“I don’t know, do I? I – ” He cut off. Looking down I saw he was staring off back down the corridor.

“What?”

“Nothing…”

I frowned. “Did you hear something?”

He didn’t answer. I shook my head and tried a few more steps into the dark. My toes cracked against something solid. “Wasn’t there a light up here? I’m sure I’ve seen Dad turn on a light. Lewis?”

I peered back down the ladder but he was gone.

As I blinked my eyes into adjusting to the dark, shapes began to form in the gloom, large and hunkered like giant, misshapen beetles. Feeling about along the closest wall I found a switch that produced a click but nothing else. Peering around again, I saw the room on my right was somehow lighter than the rest. I stumbled forwards and found a slice of thin daylight falling across the far end of the room, disturbed flecks drifting in and out of the beam. The end of the beam fell across the middle of one of the heavy mounds and two eyes, wide and black, stared right through me from the strip of light. I flailed, stumbled back but came up short against a pile of junk.

Breathing heavily, I saw the eyes weren’t moving. Fumbling my way towards it, I reached out and my fingertips brushed against rough canvas. The painted eyes gazed up between my fingers. I felt the outline of a frame and pulled it out of its pile, angled it in the light. I saw bits of dark hair, a silver necklace, a white neck.

With one hand clutching the painting and the other outstretched I edged my way across the crowded and creaking floor, towards the source of the thin finger of daylight. After a few more crashes and some dusty dead ends I laid my fingers on what I’d thought would be nailed shutters but found were curtains. They were extremely thick and heavy, even slightly velvety and, of course, belched out great clouds of dust when I heaved them apart. The white winter sun flooded the room.

She stared up out of her wooden frame with silent, black eyes. There was no smile on her mouth and her chin was tilted up slightly, to look me right in the eye. Her black hair was pulled back tight from her brow, held down with a jewelled pin that the artist had expertly pricked out with light and shadow. The silver necklace was rendered in the same exquisite detail. It was draped delicately under the tsiff collar of her plain dress. Charlotte swirled in black lettering across the solid pendent.

I searched the corners and the shadows of the picture but couldn’t find an artist’s signature. She was in eighteenth century costume, but the style was of no artist I was aware of from that time. She was almost a photograph, but warmer. I felt that if I reached out and touched it I would feel the soft black of her hair and the heat of her expertly-blushed skin. Even holding it right to my face I found it hard to see actual brushstrokes.

“Lewis,” I called, my voice deadened by the silent mounds and dust floating around me. “Lewis, come and look at this.”

He didn’t answer. I called again, starting to clamber back but still nothing. Only now did I look up and around at the rest of the room. I stopped and stared. One pathetic, dead bulb hung from the angle in the ceiling but even when it worked I couldn’t imagine it would have been able to light the whole room. It stretched out in front of me, under the whole length of the roof. At the other end I could just make out in the remaining shadows another window behind drawn curtains.

Carefully propping the painting on the windowsill I scrambled across the length of the room to the other window and threw open the curtains. The icy winter sun flooded the whole place. The window frame had been painted over but with some creaks and splinters I shouldered it open, let the cold freshness come tumbling in to ease the thick and mouldering air. Leaning out I could see further out across the island than from any of the bedroom windows. The drive stretched away from the house on one side under its thin elms. The fields spread out from it on either side, grey under their skin of frost. The finger of the church spire down in Hoodwin clawed black against the backdrop of pale hills. Leaning out still further and squinting I thought I could see the top of Stonehill. I fancied I could even pick out the black fragments of the ring of standing stones on its top.

I didn’t understand how either of my parents could bare to have this room shut up and curtained off. A quick bitterness rose in me. I might have understood Dad locking it away, but not Mum. With the large windows opening up onto the sky like this I felt I was at the top of the whole of the island. The pieces I could have produced from up here…

I pushed the habitual regret away. I was letting go of all that. Lewis was wrong. It was all gone, the bitterness and fear. It was another time. The only way it would spoil anything else was if I let it. After all, Theo had come back. And he had it worse than the rest of us.

I leaned out as far as I dared to see if I could see Sinclare House, perched on its hill north of Hoodwin. I could make out the north road but it disappeared off into trees.

A shiver rippled my skin from the outside air and I was just ducking back in when a movement caught my eye. I leaned out again and squinted at the end of the drive just in time to see a figure duck away behind the hedges of the road. I frowned. The person had definitely been on the drive, not just passing in the road. I hung there until my fingers were numbing but they didn’t come back.

Shaking my head I turned back into the room, rubbing my arms and teeth chattering. The sheeted mounds lay silent around me in the pale light. I felt my excitement wither a little as I took in the sheer expanse of it. I was just trying to decide where on earth to start sorting it all when there was a metallic creaking from the direction of the obscured entrance hatch.

“Where on earth have you been?”

Lewis ascended, coughing in the dust and looking pale in the wan winter light. “Nowhere, I just thought I heard something.”

“Did someone come to the door?”

“What? No.” He gazed around the room, dusting his hands. “It was Grendel. He’d knocked over a pile of books in the living room.”

“I thought I saw someone on the drive.”

He shook his head, not looking at me. “A lost tourist, maybe.” He stared around at the room with his hands on his hips but it didn’t look like he was seeing any of it. “I’m going to get some bin bags,” he said, turning back to the ladder.

“Was he ok?”

“Who?”

“Grendel,” I prompted.

“Oh. Yes, of course he was.” He disappeared and I chewed my lip, watching the space where he’d gone.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the room and started pulling the dustsheets off everything. There were wooden chests, pieces of old furniture, more chairs of more different types than I had though imaginable in various stages of disrepair. Piles of folded and unidentifiable linen, holed by moths and mice. Chests and buckets, piles and piles of boxes, wooden, plastic, cardboard, locked and open, brimming and bursting with anything and everything people collect over their lifetimes. Books, pictures, toys, stacks of newspapers and magazines, long-unused brewing barrels that, even now, smelt of moss and malt. Photo albums with crumbling spines and records packed away in paper sleeves and the broken record player next to them.

“Most of it’ll burn,” I said to Lewis’s worried look when he came back up with bin bags. “And there’s a skip coming from Oldport tomorrow.”

“You’re more organised than I thought.” I didn’t like the way he said it but couldn’t think of any way to reply. I ignored him and bent to start loading magazines into a bin bag.

“What’s that?”

I looked up and followed Lewis’s gaze. Charlotte stared back at him impassively from where I’d propped her. “I found it near the window.”

“What, it was up here?” He looked pale again.

I nodded. “I don’t recognise the artist. It’s old. She must have belonged to Mum.”

“Why?” The word came out bluntly.

I shrugged. “I…I don’t know. I thought Mum must have got it from her mainland family. Why?”

Lewis shrugged deliberately. “Nothing…it’s probably worth a fair amount, right?”

“I imagine so…”

“I know a good auctioneer for that kind of thing. On the mainland. No one around here would be interested.” He was almost glaring.

“Well, I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet.” He ignored me and tore a bin bag from the roll. “Have you seen it before?”

“Of course not.” He began shoving old linen into the bag. “I’ve never been up here before, have I?”

I frowned, first at my brother and then at the picture. “Do you not like it because it looks a bit like Mum?”

Lewis’s movements took on a more deliberate force. “It would raise a fair whack, Stef,” he reiterated. “I wouldn’t want to pass that up, especially if I wasn’t selling the house.”

“Look, Lewis. You got his savings, I got his house. I’m just choosing to spend my inheritance in a different way. Why is that such a problem to you?”

He paused. I could see him breathing. He clutched at the bin bag but didn’t look up. “I really thought you’d managed it, Stef. Left this bloody place behind. Like me. But it looks like it’s too late for you as well as Dad.”


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Chapter 3 of ‘Hoodwin’

August 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm ('Hoodwin' - original novel) (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , )

Thanks once more for all the kind, encouraging comments but most of all taking the time to read my story! The most exciting thing of all for me is that you seem to be genuinely intrigued and interested by it. I plan to post all five of the complete chapters up steadily. Here’s chapter 3 for now and I hope it continues to interest you!

Chapter 3

The dust made me sneeze. Wilting herbs strung up in the kitchen, half-gone soap in grimy dishes and curtains hanging half-shut painted an image of a house in an unpleasant denial. I itched to start sorting. The loss of the previous day grated on me.

The steam from the shower curling against the bathroom ceiling became smoke in my mind’s eye, throbbing from a bonfire at the bottom of the orchard, a great, hot fire roaring up from battered wardrobes, linen boxes, bedsteads, Mum’s dressing table…

“Come on, Stef,” Lewis’s voice floated up from downstairs. “I’m hungry.”

I sighed, climbed out of the shower and made my way down the corridor to my room. Light poured in the hall windows, the day rising grey outside. I stepped past the shut door of Dad’s room.

Lewis’s door was open. His travel bag lay on the bed and he’d balanced his keys, wallet, passport and bits of paper awkwardly on the bedside table amidst a couple of dusty old matchbox cars and a run-down alarm clock. Through the window I could see more of the allotment that spread out behind the house. An ancient greenhouse, rotting and cracked, teetered at the bottom. The end of the large brewing house shouldered up against the edge of the view. There were trees beyond and then hills and then the inevitable sea, looking like a trick of the light.

I moved to return to my own room, wondering whether Lewis would finally throw out the things he left behind, when I caught sight of the bedside table again. Lewis’s ferry ticket lay in a pile of crumpled papers and under a packet of chewing gum. I frowned at it. My fingers tightened on the towel.

“Stefan Bridgeman,” I heard Lewis’s footsteps, “will you hurry up?” I straightened and left the room just as he reached the top of the stairs. “What were you doing?”

My skin was rippling with goosebumps and my hair dripped down my neck but I stood up straight, looked at him. “Nothing. Wanted to see the view.”

He frowned and I turned and headed back to my own room, past the stairs, past more shut doors. When I got there I dressed hurriedly.

Lewis was waiting in the hall, expensive overcoat buttoned up to the top and a cashmere scarf woven tightly around his neck. “Right, shall we go?”

“What time did you get into Oldport this morning?” I kept my voice flat.

“What?” He looked at me quickly then away. “About nine. I know, early. It was a smooth crossing.” He headed to the front door.

“It’s just your ferry ticket’s stamped with yesterday’s date.”

He stopped and turned back to me. His frown was heavy. “Have you been going through my things? Thought you’d have grown out of that by now.” I just looked at him, a patter of nervousness fluttering in my stomach. His frown melted and he shrugged. “Stef, the conductor let me use the same ticket. He stamped it with yesterday’s date so he wouldn’t get into trouble when they saw it on the return journey. Satisfied?”

I dropped my gaze, grabbed my jacket. Lewis laughed, a little louder than I thought necessary. I felt a hot blush creep up my neck as I climbed into my coat. We stepped out into the pale light and I breathed the breezy winter in deep. It was fresh and lively and stripped at my skin, making me feel pleasantly raw. Fingers already stinging, I turned the key in the front door behind us. My breath silvered out and vanished. I stepped out onto the gravel and looked about.

“Ah, there you are,” Lewis said, looking above my head. I followed his gaze and saw Grendel perched above the door. His yellow eyes peered, unblinking and the end of his tail twitched. “I wondered where you’d got to.” Lewis stretched up but Grendel skipped out of reach. “He looks good.”

“I fed him last night,” I said as I rubbed my hands together, “but he must have been looking after himself before I got here.”

Grendel turned away, trotted along the guttering before jumping off into a tree and disappearing around the other side of it.

Lewis walked past his car, crouched like a black beetle against the gravel, and set off down the drive, his feet crunching.

“So we’re not going to Oldport then?” I said, skipping to catch up.

He shook his head. “Long way to go for lunch when the Witch is just at the bottom of the hill.”

A hot flush rippled up from my belly. “Can’t we go somewhere else?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why?”

The breeze picked up, tugged at my damp hair and made me shiver. “The Witch…” I looked at him, raised my eyebrows. He just shrugged. I let out an exasperated noise. “Eve, Lewis.”

“So?”

I frowned. “You know so. It’s not unreasonable. I’d just rather not see her.”

He chuckled. “If all that is in another lifetime like you say it is, then it shouldn’t bother you.”

I held his gaze coolly then turned and looked ahead to the road. Ignore the memories, I told myself. Let them stiffen, wilt and crumble like plants caught in the snow.

We stepped onto the tarmac of the road. Lewis moved on at a clipped pace, the white light shining in his dark hair. I ran a hand through mine, tucked the straying ends behind my ears and wished once again I’d taken the time to shave. The village crept closer. The church spire poked up against the sky at the bottom of the road. The slate roof of the Water Witch piled up on the opposite side. The square spread out beyond the pub, almost as still and silent as it was last night. The daylight showed the patchwork stone of the shops and buildings, leaning and jumbled together. A few human shapes, small and mismatched as the buildings, ambled about in big coats amongst the grocer’s, butcher’s and the Post Office. The newsagent was the only one with a new sign that I could see.

The girl, Melanie, appeared from the grocer’s, scribbling something in her notebook. The grocer came to his door to watch her walk across the square and into the Post Office.

The sign of the Witch creaked above us in a slight, salty wind. It had been repainted at some point in the last decade but I still found it hard to look at. The artist had muted his pallet, all greys and blues. The Water Witch sat on a rock, one corner of her grey mouth smiling. The yawning waters of Ercall Pool were daubed in blacks and blues behind her. The look on the witch’s (or the mermaid, depending on which legend you preferred) face was hungry, narrow and the water behind her was rippled and angry-looking.

Lewis led the way in, ducking under the low lintel. I felt my muscles and joints loosen as we were wrapped in a close, thick warmth. I blinked in the gloom, trying to figure out what I was actually looking at. The stained red carpet had been replaced by a wooden floor, some years ago by the look of the scratches of stools and feet in the varnish. What little of the walls was visible from in between crowds of framed pictures was now a dark blue. All the exposed timbers in the ceiling had been done over in black and the bar was polished pine. A large fire burned in the same big grate but the mantle was a light wood and was crowded with yet more pictures.

There was a single human shape propped against the bar. He looked back over his shoulder at us, a slow, creaking movement like an old oak in the wind. I could feel his gaze rake up and down me before he went back to his glass, turning his hunched shoulders and elbowing himself further onto the bar. There was something in his shape and movements that I recognised but could put no name to. An aging ghost from another life.

There were clanks and chatter from the kitchen and the smells of cooking hung heavy in the air but no one was serving. No Evelyn. I let go a breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding and the smell of food made me realise how hungry I was. Lewis might have brought me down here to try and remind me of some of the things I had run away from, but I stood up straight and smiled inwardly, neatly packing thoughts of Evelyn away and wandered up to the chalkboard menu, stomach grumbling. It was only after I’d decided on the steak sandwich that I realised Lewis hadn’t moved. He was staring at the walls and had gone very pale. I frowned, followed his gaze.

Every single one of the pictures was Ercall Pool, some with and some without the figure of the witch. Different sizes, shapes, styles from different times, different artists. Some looked more like the real thing than others, but all were dark, black, gaping mouths. I swallowed, feeling the blood drain from my own face.

Lewis shook himself and came to my side, eyes still wide and twitching, though he pretended to look at the menu. “What are you going to have then?” His voice had an edge he tried to hide.

“Lewis,” I kept my voice low. The man at the bar continued sitting still, part of the woodwork. “Don’t pretend.”

“I know.” He shrugged, stiffer than before. “They obviously had a refurbish for the tourists; revisited the history and all that.”

“Yes, but…the new pictures. Don’t you think it’s a bit tasteless? After what happened to Theo’s dad?”

Lewis hushed me, whiter than ever. “Quiet, Stef. People drown all over the place all the time. Doesn’t stop people owning pictures of rivers and ponds and whatever. Besides, that was over a decade ago, like you said. Now, come on, choose. I’m hungry and I want to get back. This heat’s making me dizzy.”

“I wonder what Theo would think,” I said, glancing round, aware of a coldness under my stomach.

“Come on, will you.”

We stood at the bar in silence, staring straight ahead. I was still hungry and the smell that drifted over from the lone man’s glass made me ache for an ale but I felt the walls watching me and wanted to get back out into the light. I tried to concentrate on the idea of food and the afternoon’s work but my mind wasn’t listening.

In yet another lifetime we stalked the thin woods around Ercall Pool, daring each other closer to the water. Even in the summer the peaty soil made the water still and opaque as treacle. The reflection of David Braithwaite’s cottage was always perfectly copied in the waters, down to the smoke pulsing from the chimney.

Then they weren’t games any more. Adults began gathering at the pool’s edges with dry sticks and old books. I went to a Branch Burning with Lewis and the water of Ercall danced in shapes of reflected fire. Sinclare House watched from on top of the hill but Theo never came down for the Burnings.

Theo Warren. Wild hair, an echoing laugh. The widest smile I knew. Invincible. I rubbed my eyes against the image of him stooped and drawn at his father’s funeral. At the wake, Eve stood as far away from me as she could.

I shook my head, staring into the whorls of the bar surface. Pine now, not battered redwood. Redwood was from another time. A dead time. I shook my head and straightened myself, concentrated on my rumbling stomach.

The door into the kitchen opened and smells, sounds and a person dressed in black came out, talking over her shoulder and wiping long hands on a tea towel.

“Hello there, how can I help you?” She threw the towel over her shoulder and smiled. She was thinner. Her cheekbones were almost violent angles in her face. Her hair was chopped short and symmetrical, framing her face and making it look like a mask.

“Hello, Evelyn.” It was Lewis who said that, not me. My throat was very dry. Lewis beamed at her and there was a different edge to it, an edge I felt but couldn’t bring to the surface.

Evelyn blinked. I remembered how she used to line her eyes thickly in black. They stared naked from her face now, looking even paler for the lack of paint. She started to speak, shaking her head then stared at him, recognition washing over her face. “Holy Christ. Lewis?”

“In the flesh.”

“My God,” she swore again looking at me. “And Stef.”

The cold that had been lying under my belly was now swamped with a heat that flooded up my body into my face. I pushed at it, pushed it all down. “Hello, Eve,” I managed. “Long time.”

She nodded very slightly. I’d never been able to read her eyes terribly well and the years had hardened their surface further. The tiniest of smiles tugged at the corners of her mouth and I wondered what particular memories were being pulled to the front of her mind. “What brings you here, then?” She asked it quietly but there seemed to be a whole weight of volume riding in it. Or maybe not. I couldn’t tell if it was my mind putting it there.

For once in his life, Lewis was quiet. I looked to him but he just smiled again, rather nastily and gestured for me to carry on. I coughed. “Just for lunch. We’re sorting Dad’s house.”

She nodded again, looking away. “Of course. I’m…yes. What would you like?”

Lewis ordered our food and two pints of Dad’s ale. She pulled our pints in silence and disappeared out the back without looking up.

We chose a table against the very furthest wall. I stared into the darkness of my drink, willing the food to hurry so I could get back out and away. I refused to leave now, as much as I wanted to, because I would not let Lewis be proved right. As soon as I was back outside the wind and the air would scrub away the heat of anxiety in me and I could re-bury things like Ercall Pool, Branch Burnings and Eve.

A couple more people drifted in, bringing in the fresh of outside. Evelyn appearing again to serve and I stared into the darkness of my drink. It smelt like the cellar and the brewing house. I took a sip, willing it to help. It tasted of summers and winters with wind and grass. It tasted like ten years ago. It was a lonely taste, of stinking barrels in the darkened outbuildings and of the moss from the salty standing stones and the wide, naked air of another time.

“So you haven’t seen Theo, then?”

Lewis’s question cut in through my musings as we trudged back up the hill, bellies full and my nerves and mind pleasantly fogged with ale. The fresh air was already beginning to calm me. My mind was wandering in more pleasant directions so Lewis had to repeat the question.

“Theo? You haven’t seen him? I thought that would be one of the first things you did.”

“Talk sense, Lewis. I haven’t seen Theo since Marcus’s funeral. He lives on the mainland somewhere.”

“Not any more. He moved back when he graduated university.”

“He did?” I tried to keep my voice neutral.

“Didn’t he tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Dad told me. Sinclaire House passed to him when he turned twenty-one. I saw him about a couple of times when I visited.”

I found that I’d stopped walking. “Theo’s here?” I saw Lewis nod out the corner of my eye but I was staring at the road.

“I invited him to Dad’s funeral,” he said, “but he didn’t reply.”

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Chapter 2 of ‘Hoodwin’

August 2, 2008 at 2:05 pm ('Hoodwin' - original novel) (, , , , , , , , , , )

I want to thank everyone for the time they’ve taken to read Chapter 1 and thank them even more for all the kind and encouraging comments. There is still obviously alot of work to be done (like writing the rest of the book) but have interest expressed at this early stage is most encouraging. After all, I’m writing it to be read and if people are wanting to read more that can only be a good thing!

In that vein, here is Chapter 2.

Chapter 2

Lewis came bowling in through the back door a little before ten the next morning. He brought a wash of November air with him that raised the hairs on my neck.

“You’re up, then.”

“Barely.” I blinked at him through sleep-crunched eyes. He was pink-cheeked, black hair a stylish muss from the wind and the smell of winter clung to his long, thick overcoat. “You’re early,” I said stupidly. “I thought the ferry didn’t dock until ten?”

He shrugged. “It made good time today. Bloody hell, coming back here is always so strange. Christ.” He shook his head, staring at nothing. “What a rough few months. Still we’re here now, the beginning of the end. Has that kettle just boiled? Good God, it’s frigid out there. Forget how bloody cold it gets around here.”

I ducked out of his way and he went about mixing himself a drink and I stood watching him, rubbing one eye with the heel of my hand.

“No milk? Black will do for now. So, this is all a bit strange isn’t it?” He turned around, dark eyes scanning the kitchen. Agreeing quietly, I took another gulp of my coffee, hoping it would help anchor my mind. “Strange,” Lewis repeated, leaning back and nodding around the room. “You keep imagining Dad’s going to walk in any second, don’t you?”

I winced, wrapped my fingers tighter around the mug and stared into the coffee.

“So…” He shrugged himself out of the black coat and clapped his hands together, rubbing them. “No reason not to start right away. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem getting rid of all this. Most of it’s not worth keeping. I might take some of the pictures and maybe the piano?”

I stared at him as he bustled around the kitchen, eyes lively, running fingers along the spines of cookery books and fingering pens in a jar on the windowsill. “Well, yes. If you want it.”

He flashed his straight, white grin at me. “Well you were never that keen on the piano, Stef. And I always loved the way that one sounded. I can get it shipped to the mainland somehow, I’m sure. As for the rest of the furniture…auction and bonfire will just about do it.”

I frowned at him. “Well – ”

“We have to be realistic, Stef. I can try and make you money on some of it but most is not the sort that’ll sell. It’s all too bloody old and battered. But anyway, the price we’ll get for whatever furniture’s still in one piece will be pence beside the amount you’ll get for the house itself.”

“I want some of it,” I said, rubbing my eyes, willing myself to wake up. “But the house, Lewis – ”

“Well, of course, some,” he carried on, rolling his eyes. “But we mustn’t get too sentimental. Most of this would never fit in your bedsit, anyway. Don’t worry.” He smiled at the look on my face. “I’ll help you. It’ll be easy, I promise. Like pulling off a plaster: you just need to get it done. Dad would have wanted it that way. Hey up – ”

An echoing banging of the iron doorknocker rattled down the hall.

“Well, go on,” Lewis urged, making a shooing motion. “It’s your house. For now, anyway.” He laughed and started pulling open cupboards.

“Lewis – ”

But the banging came again and Lewis was shoulders-deep in the pan cupboard, clanking about. The caller was knocking a third time by the time I got to the door. The handful of key turned in the lock stiffly. The door swung open with a groan I sympathised with and winter breathed in on me. “Yes?” My teeth were chattering and my eyes fought to focus in the sudden light.

“Hello.” The voice was bright and cheerful. “I’m sorry if this is a bad time…”

I felt myself blushing and folded my arms over my shabby pullover and felt the cold seep through my pyjamas trousers from my feet upwards.

“My name’s Melanie.” The girl held out a hand and I took it briefly. She looked like a sparrow, shining eyes, shining smile, shining hair. I curled my toes inside my patched slippers and pulled my hair out of my face with twitchy fingers. “I’m just doing some research into the island,” she continued, “the history, folklore and traditions. Could ask you some questions?”

“I’m sorry,” I babbled. “I’m not really the right person to talk to. I haven’t lived here for ten years.”

“Oh, ok,” she chirped. “But you have lived here at some point?”

“Well, yes, until I was sixteen. But, really, you’re best off trying in the village if you want to know anything like that.”

“Hoodwin?”

“That’s right. Not much further down the road.” I looked back over my shoulder. I could hear Lewis banging about in the kitchen.

“I’m on my way there. I saw your house from the road. It’s the first house for miles, coming from Oldport. Thought I’d try me luck.” Her smile was stitched back into place. “Thank you for your time, I’ll try in the village. Can I just ask your name?”

I eyed her and she smiled wider, pen poised. She wore gloves and jeans and fairly battered-looking trainers. There was a tiny logo of a mainland university stamped onto the corner of her notebook. “Stefan,” I said. “Stefan Bridgeman.”

She gave a clipped nod, made a note in her book. “Bridgeman? That’s an old name on Sinclare, isn’t it?”

I pushed at the flesh of my forehead with my fingertips. “I think so, I don’t know. I’m really not the one to talk to. Sorry…”

“If you do think of anything that might be interesting, no matter what it is…” She fished out a small card from her pocket and handed it to me. I nodded, already starting to shut the door. “Thank you.” And the door was shut. I secured it with numb fingers and scuttled back through to the kitchen. Lewis was filling bin bags. Grendel was sat on the bookshelf, calm and coiled as a shadow, watching him. There were bits and pieces of mismatched crockery gathering on one sideboard and he was sweeping crumbs out of a now empty cupboard onto the floor. “Who was that then?”

I pushed a bin bag out of my way. “Someone doing research.”

“What?” His hands worked quickly, shutting that cupboard, opening the next.

I waved my hand. “Sinclare history or something. Look, Lewis…”

“Jesus…” He paused, looking over my shoulder down the corridor. “Hope you warned him off.”

“It was a her.”

“Well, her, then.” He turned back to the cupboard, pulling out jars. “If she’s asking about Sinclare traditions she’ll have that David Braithwaite character roping her into the Branch Burning and all that.

“I thought you liked all that? You researched it enough when we were kids.”

“Which is exactly why I know it’s best to stay the hell away from it all. Look, Stef, stop gabbing and grab a bin bag. There’s tonnes to be done before the place is fit to sell and I’m only here a week.”

I shook my head frustrated. “Lewis, wait one second. About that whole selling-the-house business…”

“I’ve done a bit of research over the last few weeks.” He had his head back in a cupboard. “It’s pretty impressive. Seems mainlanders have taken to idealising island life. They’ll learn soon enough but long after we’ve got the cheque and left them to it.”

“Lewis, stop.” He stopped and frowned around the cupboard door at me. “Lewis…” I snapped his name, held up my hands, trying to figure out where to start. “Lewis,” calmer, “why do you think I asked you here?”

“Well…to help you sort out the house, like you said.”

“Yes, but…” I felt myself getting hot in the face. “When I said sort out, I meant just…you know…tidy up, make space. For me.”

“For you?” He put down an ancient tin of treacle, so old there was rusting around the rim.

“Yes, for me. For me to live. Here.”

He was looking at me, face crumpled, scratching his temple. “Let me get this straight,” he said, expression darkening. “You’re moving back?”

I nodded, slowly. I could see the thoughts flying around behind his eyes. “It was all a long time ago, Lewis.”

“Dad’s death isn’t,” he snapped. “He died here, Stef. Right here. In this room.”

“Lewis.” I frowned at him.

“It’s true. Completely alone, he was, too. The Witch collected his ale from him once a quarter and that was virtually all the company he had. A week, the doctors said. Seven days he’d been lying here, alone and forgotten. This damn place…”

“It wasn’t the village’s fault, Lewis,” I rubbed my eyes. “Dad had shut himself off from everyone by the end. Hell, he barely even spoke to either of us.”

He leant back against the counter, crossed his arms and stared at me. “It was this damn village that he shut himself off from, Stef. We were lucky enough to get out when we did, make lives somewhere else. Dad couldn’t, he’d been here too long, knew no different.”

“You don’t need to tell me what it was like.” My voice was low. “That last year here convinced me I wanted to be anywhere but here. But we were so young, Lewis. We never really gave it a chance.”

“Dad gave it too many chances, if you ask me.” He continued pointedly shoving food into the bin bag. “Didn’t do him any good in the end.”

“Lewis, that wasn’t Hoodwin that did that to him. That was living without Mum. You’d left by that point, you didn’t see. Those last few years…he just…couldn’t cope. He didn’t even want me around by the end.”

He was looking at me. Dark eyes, so certain. Everything about him was certain, his expensive clothes, his neat haircut. He’d gone to college on the mainland, like most young people from Sinclaire, but had done well, better than most. Like me, he had the passion to not return. He got his degree, job, promotion. His own house, fiancée, his own life. Even Dad had seen what he’d achieved and was proud of it. He was less enthusiastic about the root I took a few years later, but it got me away and that’s all I’d cared about. At least, it was then.

“Lewis, when you come back to Sinclare, can you honestly tell me that it doesn’t…do something to you? Forget the people, forget the Branch Burnings and May and David Braithwaite and all that. Just the place.”

His face softened slightly. “You know I can’t say no. And you’re like Mum with the art and everything. It must mean something more, this weird wildness it has. But it’s not enough to make me forget. Jesus, Stef, I still have nightmares about the things David used to tell me. Theo’s dad died here…” He went pale. “And, well…now our dad.”

I swallowed, glanced quickly around the chilly, dusty kitchen. But then I looked out the window and saw the grass, trees and the hills, all under the skin of glassy frost and not a single person or another house in sight. “I don’t care. There’s a life for me to live here.”

Lewis sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. The further away we are from this place, the better. It’s messed up. People say things, do things. We never fit in with the mechanics of this place.”

“I don’t have to,” I poured myself another coffee with my back to him and all the time felt my mind making itself up. “It’s the land and the sea that’s me, not the people.”

“You’ll end up like Dad.”

I glared at him. That was a low shot, even for him. “Why are you so bothered anyway, Lewis? It’s not like you have to live here with me.”

“I’m just worried about you.” He patted my arm and almost managed to look sincere. “After all that happened to you the year you left school. And the practicalities of it all. How are you going to earn a living?”

“Pictures can be sent through the post, you know.” I now picked up a bin bag and started sorting through what junk was left. “And online, now Angela’s got her website running. I can visit clients if I need to, but this is where I want to be.”

I looked over at him chewing his thumbnail and staring at the floor. “I still think you’re making a big mistake.” He said it slowly and didn’t look at me as he did.

“Well,” I threw my hands up in exasperation. “If I change my mind I’ll give you a ring and you can gloat, ok?”

He stared at the floor, still chewing. His eyes were wide and strange. “Lets go out for an early lunch,” he said, one half of his mouth smiling. “We’ll get some good food down us before we start sorting the house.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re not going to change my mind, Lewis.”

“I may not try to.”

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Chapter 1 of ‘Hoodwin’

July 22, 2008 at 8:08 pm ('Hoodwin' - original novel) (, , , , , , , , , , , )

At the moment I am working on my portfolio for my MA in Creative Writing which is due in on the first of September. The first few chapters of my full-length project ‘Hoodwin’ are going into this portfolio and so are now edited and polished. (NB: I intend to make a short post with a synopsis and a few more details about the project in the near future for anyone who wants to know a little more about it before they start reading: will keep you informed) The rest of the book is on-going but over the coming weeks I intend to publish the first few chapters as they are now.

Here is Chapter 1 and I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Hoodwin

 

 

Chapter 1

 

My fingers itched to sketch the whole shipwreck. I could bring up the spread of the wind-battered hills and scrublands with my eyes closed. The pencil pulled the land from the paper without me needing to look up. The circle of stone stood around me in silence, watching. The only real problem was scale. How could any of Sinclare Island ever fit on a piece of paper?

I had only seen the whole of the wreck of the Jennifer Green once before. I peered off to the west, narrowing me eyes in the watery November sunlight. The battered skin of the hills stretched for miles before shouldering down into the sea. The water was just visible, a slate smudge beneath the ice sky. The very top of the ship’s rusted spires clawed against the horizon, beyond the furthest hill. The last thing between the land and the sea. I needed to knife the pencil to a needle-point to detail the far-off fingers into the picture.

The next gust of wind brought the broad smell of the coast: wet, ageless. Salt and damp and weed and rust. Scratching stubborn, three-day-old stubble, I chewed my pencil and squinted at the distant point. They never fenced the wreck off or shut the cove. Never campaigned to have her removed.  People just told children ‘ward away’. ‘Ward away from the Jenny’, ‘ward away from the cliffs’, ‘ward away from Ercall Pool’.

The one time I had been down to Lovers’ Cove and seen her, impossibly propped against the cliff, her skin of rust only just holding her together and the breeze pulling about the tang of dying iron, the warning had been ringing in my mind. Theo had dared me to climb with him and we made up a story about tripping on old fencing to explain the ragged cuts on our arms and fingers.

            The cove was two hours hike from Stonehill. I decided that by the time I got there the light would be too poor for any sketching. The winter evening drew in quickly, shading in the pale sky with broad strokes of cloud. A shiver rippled over my skin and I stood, dusting grass and moss from my damp trouser seat. The lights of Hoodwin poked holes in the shadow of the next hill. Tucking my sketchbook under one arm I set off through the watching stones. I found it hard to look at them now.

            My feet found the sheep track even in the dying light and settled into a steady rhythm, taking me down into the thicker evening clinging between the trees. Even here, surrounded by frosting leaf mould and peeling bark, the smell of the ocean laced itself about me. It felt good against my skin and in my lungs, this air, scrubbed clean by the sea.

With the stones retreating behind me it was easier to ignore the scraps of memory being blown about like leaves in my brain. When I let them go, being back here was like breathing again for the first time after being stuffed into a windowless room for years. In the silence of the gathering night, in the wild air between the trees, my blood pumped and my lungs pulled in the fresh tastes. With Lewis’s help, the house could be sorted in a few determined days. Just a few days and the house would feel like mine.

That was assuming Lewis turned up. It was too dark to see my watch and my phone was back at the house (on the windowsill of my old bedroom, the only place there was reception), so I didn’t know exactly what time it was but I knew he was late. Hours late.

            The earth started rising gently beneath my feet. Turning sharp left and ducking through a gap in a hedge, I stepped up onto tarmac. I tottered along at the very edge of the road, the darkness gathering thicker around me. Small, stone houses shut up tight against the night passed on either side, tiny front gardens pruned bald against the winter. A car’s headlights spilled my shadow out in front of me. It rumbled past and into the village and out of sight and all was silent again. The road opened out into the broad square, stout buildings facing inwards onto cobbles. Off to my right, between the church and the pub, the cobbles died again and the tarmac road rose out beyond the streetlight. I’d have to walk right past the Water Witch, now with its curtains and door open and lights falling out in pools.

            I stood in the shadow of the statue of Bartholomew Sinclare, watching. It took until I was numb nearly all over before I worked up the courage to move. I passed in and out of the lights from the windows of the Witch, heard the chatter and music. I hurried on, head down. As soon as I was away from the last streetlight I breathed again and slowed my pace. I carried on up through the dark, the last of the evening falling into pitchy night around me. My nose and throat ached with the cold but my blood was bright and fresh, enjoying the chill.

            I sensed the break in the tall hedge and turned down it, gravel crunching beneath my feet. The shape of the house was hunched ahead, above the shadows of its surrounding trees, a stain under the stars. No lights were on.

            No Lewis, then.

            A spark of annoyance. He said he’d be catching the midday ferry and would arrive that afternoon. He promised. It would all have to be put off now. One day lost.

            Something clutched onto my elbow in the dark, sending a burst of pulse up my throat that almost choked me. I gibbered, pulling away.

            “Hush yourself, silly boy.”

A torch clicked on, shone right in my face.

            I swore. “What the…? Jesus Christ, you scared the hell out of me.”

            “Don’t be stupid, lad. I’m not going to hurt you, am I?” She lowered the light, let go of my elbow. “Just wanted to see you.”

I smelled her more than I could see her. The stale bitterness of different sorts of smoke, spices, unwashed hair and the shockingly familiar odour of her ancient, patchwork coat. With the light lowered I could make out some of the coat’s patches, the basket she carried on one elbow and some of her face. Bristling hair was pulled into a plait over one shoulder and there was a very toothy smile under a blank shadow where her eyes hid.

            I couldn’t find anything to say, hoped she wouldn’t speak but just couldn’t find the balls to turn and leave her in the lane.

            “Ten years?” Her voice was the same, though she kept it low.

            I blinked. “About that.”

            “A long time. The island’s missed you.”

“Has it, now.” I nervously glanced up the drive.

“Oh, yes. And you’ve missed it. Though not it’s people. Don’t blame you.” She gave a strange noise, like a hiss.

            “Did you want me for something, May? It’s very cold and getting late…”

            She laughed, one single, sharp note. “Saw you head off towards Stonehill earlier, lad. Knew you’d be coming back this way. I’m out for acorns anyways. Just wanted to see your face, like I said. See how you turned out. You need a shave but you still look like your mum. Nothing of your dad in you. Good.” I frowned into the blank of her face. “It’s safe for you to move back now, lad. The water’s just about clean. All the Sinclares are gone, finally.”

            “I think you should go home, May.” I managed to turn away and hurry off, shaking my head.

“I’ll come again, lad,” I heard her mutter. I continued up the drive and with a wash of relief I didn’t hear her follow. The light vanished. She needed a torch around here even less than I did. Her footsteps crunched away.

            My fingers were marble-stiff with cold as I shouldered the door shut behind me, jamming it into its warped frame, throwing home every bolt, locking the night away. Grendel separated from the gloom and rubbed himself between my legs, purring. Staggering over him, I dropped my sketchbook on the table and switched on the kitchen light Dust motes swirled under the bulb in great swarms, making me sneeze. I had switched the kettle on and was just pulling myself out of my ragged jacket when I heard my mobile whining from upstairs. Grendel glowered at me as I left him in the kitchen by his bowl.

I just managed to get to the phone before it stopped ringing. “Hello? Lewis? Where the hell are you?”

“I’m sorry, Stefan,” Lewis’s voice was tinny and tired. “I’ve been delayed.”

“I’d gathered that.”

“There was a big accident. The roads were jammed, I missed the ferry. I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. I’ll pitch up in this harbour hotel for the night, get the eight o’clock ferry tomorrow morning, ok?”

I made an effort to suppress the frustration. “Fine, fine. How long have you got?”

“I took a week’s leave. I’ll be with you until Saturday.”

“Good. Thank you,” I added as an afterthought.

“No worries. Good to get it all done in one go. Bumped into anyone?”

“No, I’ve been way out in the hills all day. Oh, I did see May.”

“What?”

“It was strange.” I frowned out into the night beyond my bedroom window. “She was lurking about on the drive, waiting for me. Properly frightened me.” I shut the curtains against the dark.

“What did she want?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. What does she ever want? She was babbling some nonsense about wanting to see what I looked like.”

“Did she say anything else?” Lewis’s voice was a bit thin.

“I can’t remember. Does it really matter?” I was still shivering and I could hear the kettle click downstairs and Grendel’s yowling.

“Just wondering,” he stated. “I can’t believe she’s still allowed to just wander about.”

I told him I’d see him tomorrow and rang off. It was silent again. Grendel had come to the top of the stairs to stare at me. I made my way back down behind him. I watched my hand find the smears on the paint of fingertips forever having been put out for balance against the wall. The bare wood creaked with the same voices I remembered. From frames hung above the banister, my parents and my grandparents smiled at me. They had been little more that coloured patches in the paint to me for years, but now I looked at them knowing none of the people in them were alive.

Lewis and I weren’t pictured until further down the hall: gummy, fat babies and then gap-toothed and grinning in posed infant school photos. Lewis grinned out of his graduation photo, his back straight and his perfect smile wide and white.

Grendel mewed and pawed at my trouser leg. I shook my head and turned away. I managed to find a single tin of cat food in the back of one of the cupboards that was still within its use-by dates. I spooned some out into a clean saucer, having thrown the unwashed cat bowl away, and Grendel went at it, mouthing at great chunks and purring as he ate.

My own belly had started to rumble. I opened cupboard after cupboard in despair. The kitchen was a jumble of occupation, as if Dad had just this second left to go to bed, except that almost everything was out of date. The house had stood empty for weeks but it was still Dad’s house, filled with his things, arranged how he’d always had them. I swallowed at a lump in my throat.

If Lewis had inherited the place it would all be sorted and sold by now. The whole mess of solicitors, funeral arrangements, death duties and all the reams and reams of forms and certificates had sent my last few weeks into a spiral of time distortion and myopia. Lewis had taken the lion’s share of the paperwork but there was naturally a lot that needed us both. The whole thing had made my head spin in on itself and back and forth.

I still hadn’t entirely decided how I felt but finally, weeks later, I’d managed to cobble together a plan of my own, sparked solely from a dream of an idea of a fantasy that had misted through my mind when I’d stepped off the ferry into Oldport on the east coast and smelt the air of Sinclare. I came for the funeral but left still feeling I wanted something more from the island. It owed me.

So I had a sort of plan, more of an instinct. I was still working on not thinking about it too hard.

It was the postman that found him, on the kitchen floor. The door was open and the paper had been left from the week before.

I tried to busy myself with baked beans and some tinned peaches, but I was more than ever aware of the quiet. Different to the wood; this was an empty, dead quiet. A closer look showed a fine layer of dust on the counters and everything fresh had succumbed to mould, giving the whole kitchen a fuggy edge, like a rubbish bin. It was like the house was grieving, silent and still and letting itself decay. All the things that were Dad and could only be Dad had to be laid to rest, including what he’d kept of Mum. Once that was done, I might be able to feel at home again.

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Short Story – ‘Wayward Farm’

April 22, 2008 at 8:47 pm (Short Stories) (, , , , , , , , , )

This is actually the original story which I am expanding into my first novel. In the longer form it is very different but I hope to keep the tone and tension that this one has, as well as the characters and a similar setting. It is one of my personal favourites from all the stuff I’ve done.

Wayward Farm

Gerard dumped the body behind the crumbling greenhouse with glass cracked as old skin, murky with grime and lichen. The plants inside had long since succumbed to weeds and rot and brambles grew thick against the outside. He kicked some loose dirt over the blank face and lolling hands, dulling the pale skin that gleamed even in the rapidly fading light.

His breath silvered in front of him, whisking past his face as he hurried back through barren allotment. He rubbed his hands together, the painful numbness of the greying air soaking through to the bone, cursing the loss of his gloves.  He buried his hands in his armpits and reminded himself that he would either have to find some or buy a coat with pockets.

He closed the rickety front door firmly and clicked all the locks home, stuffing rags into the gaps to try and keep any drafts from creeping in around the warped frame. Teeth chattering, he moved through to the sitting room. The fire had died low, throbbed out little but welcome heat. Gerard coaxed it back to life with a grubby poker and some fresh wood and knelt close until his fingers started to sting back with feeling. He would really, really have to try harder to save up next summer. He could not bare the thought of going through another winter without central heating.

His blood finally moving through him with a little more enthusiasm, he shed his shabby coat and pulled off his grubby trainers. The night closed in around the house like fog. Gerard managed to convince himself to turn on one more lamp to chase away the shadows, even though he was painfully aware that electricity did not come for free.

He warmed some milk on the ancient aga in the kitchen and pottered around, picking up the pieces of a broken milk bottle and disposing of them carefully, wrapped in newspaper. He quickly wiped down the cracked tiled floor, straightened up the kitchen chairs and washed up a mug for his cocoa.

Returning to the dingy lounge, he knelt once again in front of the fire with his hands curled around the steaming mug just like he’d done when he was a child. There was even a worn part on the rug where he and his brother used to sit and listen to Dad’s ghost stories before they’d got a TV.

He sipped at the cocoa, hot and thick and alive as blood and felt it restoring feeling to the very tips of his toes. He sighed deeply and relaxed his shoulders, his muscles unfurling slowly in the delicious warmth.

“Gee?” The old back door rattled and a gust of cold made the hair on Gerard’s arms prickle.

“In here, Lewis,” he called. “For the love of everything holy, shut the door. You’re letting all the heat out.”

A slam and Lewis barrelled through into the living room, smelling like frost, flushed and breathing heavily. Gerard grumbled a little internally, seeing his brother’s thick, expensive overcoat and matching scarf and gloves.

A grin spread itself over his Lewis’s face.

“What?” Gerard snapped.

“You look exactly like you did when you were, like, ten.” Lewis shouldered himself out of the long coat and draped it over the back of their dad’s scuffed leather armchair and glanced around. “Jesus, Gee, you’ve got it like a bloody cave in here. Why don’t you switch some more lights on?”

Gerard ignored him, looked back into the dancing flames. “Did you find him?”

“No,” Lewis collapsed in the leather chair, not quite filling it, “but I knew he wouldn’t be there. Dom hates the Crown on a Friday; it’s when all the kids are in.”

“He used to go with you on a Friday.”

“Yeah, when we were the kids,” Lewis replied with a grin. “It’s really weird though. It’s not like him to just disappear off like this without telling anyone. If he’d gone home to nurse his hangover, fair enough, but he would have told someone. He doesn’t just piss off at lunch time, even to the Crown.”

Gerard snorted into his mug. “I don’t like that place.”

Lewis sighed. “You never like anywhere.”

Gerard shot him a look. “It’s alright for you. You got their savings. I got the damn house. Do you have any idea how much money has gone into keeping this bloody place standing up? How much more needs to be done?”

Lewis shrugged. “It’s an old house, Gee.” He frowned a little. “We grew up here, Dad grew up here. You were born here. That’s why they left it to you, it’s priceless.”

“So are the repairs,” Gerard grumbled.

“So get a better job.”

“Living here is a fucking full time job.”

“Steady,” Lewis’s eyes were a little sharp.

Gerard sighed. “It got easier with Victor moving in,” he said a little wistfully. “It really helps when I’ve got someone else around.”

Lewis snarled. “Don’t mention him around me, Gee. Really don’t.”

Gerard shrugged again, idly gazing at the flames reflected in the window. “He’s just been a help.”

“He’s been a creep, Gerard. Always was,” Lewis spat. “Even when we were little and he made us call him Uncle Vick. I didn’t like the way grinned at you, even then…”

The synthetic tone of Lewis’s mobile stung the air, making Gerard jump.

“Damn crappy reception,” Lewis growled. “Always miss calls up here.” He frowned as he listened to the voicemail. Gerard wiped cooling cocoa spots off his already stained trousers.

“It’s from Dom’s girlfriend.”

“Has he turned up then?”

Lewis shook his head. “She’s just got home, he’s not there. But she says he left a message on their machine. Apparently he was heading around here at lunch, to see you.”

Gerard blinked, drank deep from his cocoa and looked back at the fire. “I haven’t seen him.”

There was a silence and Gerard could feel his brother peering at him.

“What did he say to you last night, Gee?”

Gerard ground his teeth but didn’t look up.

“Seriously, I saw you storm out.” The leather armchair creaked as Lewis sat forward, trying to look his brother in the eyes. “Heaven knows it took enough to get you to come out in the first place but you didn’t have to walk home on your own. It was bloody freezing outside.”

“I noticed.” Gerard shook his limp hair out of his eyes and drained the last of the cocoa. He blinked at the shadows quivering in the air outside the window. The wind picked up, groaning through the timbers of the old house. The night danced behind the reflected flames in the windows, the shadows twitching in the restless air.

“Come on,” Lewis persisted, “Dom’s a nice guy. I know he can be a bit narrow-minded, but he’s essentially harmless.”

“He shouldn’t have said it, Lewis,” Gerard ground his teeth. “I don’t care if he was drunk, he shouldn’t have said it at all.”

“Said what?”

Gerard made an irritated noise, clasped his arms around himself and hunkered closer to the fire. He felt his face beginning to flush with the heat but still felt a feathery cold deep in his bones.

“He laughed at me,” Gerard snarled. “Said no wonder I got loaded with this dump since Dad must have hated me.”

“What?”

Gerard looked at Lewis. “He knows Dad wasn’t…well, you know, my father. My natural father. I don’t know how he knows, hell, we only found out just before Dad died, but Dom thought it was hilarious. A big joke.”

Lewis blinked, mouth open. Gerard felt his blood thunder hot in his ears and clenched his fists, fingernails almost splitting palm skin. Lewis blinked a bit more, made a strangled noise but Gerard looked away, back towards the window.

Ice shot up his spine. Something at the window. A flash of pale against the shadows; something moving. He swallowed and rubbed his eyes and looked back, but there was nothing there.

“Gerard,” Lewis finally managed to stammer. “I’m sorry…I…Jesus. I know Dom’s a bit of a prick about this sort of thing, but seriously, if I knew he was going to say…I swear I didn’t tell him, I…he was very, very drunk.”

Gerard tore his eyes from the window. His brother’s face under the expensive haircut was mortified; he scratched his chin, blinked, stammered.

Gerard didn’t say anything, shifted on the rug slightly, fed the fire some more wood.

“You’re right, he shouldn’t have said anything.”

Gerard met his brother’s eyes. “No, he shouldn’t. But he won’t say it again. I let him know…”

There, something, definitely something, outside the window behind Lewis’s chair. Shadows moved against the wind, leant forward. A white hand flicked into the light bleeding from the house. Then it was gone.

Gerard shut his eyes, rubbed his temples, breathed deep. He needed sleep, that’s all. Just sleep. He’d been sat in Dad’s ghost story spot too long.

“Well I’m not surprised he’s reluctant to show his face,” Lewis said, “but this message definitely has Angela saying he was coming round here to apologise. He never arrived? Gerard?”

Gerard looked back to Lewis, eyes wide. “Huh?”

“Dom hasn’t been around this afternoon?”

Gerard swallowed, the cocoa aftertaste bitter on his tongue. He concentrated on not looking out the windows. “No.” He took a breath and another until his heart slowed down. Lewis was giving him a searching look. Gerard met it, scowled. “Victor would be able to find him.”

“Gee,” Lewis raised his hands, quivering ever so slightly. “I’m serious. I hate the way you talk about that freak so casually. I hate the way you don’t see how creepy it is that he’s been sniffing around you ever since you were, like, a child.”

Gerard laughed. “Maybe he’s my real dad.”

Lewis’s anger blazed clear in his eyes for a second and Gerard smiled inwardly. “He’d find Dom, is all I’m saying. He was working the woods around here before we were born. Not that the prick deserves to be found, ever.”

“Aww, Gee,” Lewis softened. “I’m sorry about what Dom said, really I am, but he did intend to apologise. That takes some guts.”

Gerard felt his muscles clench up. He stood, took his cocoa mug through to the kitchen.

“So you think he might be lost?” Lewis followed him. “If he found you weren’t here and then tried to walk back on his own, he could be lost in the wood somewhere.”

“He’s not been round,” Gerard said firmly.

Lewis was silent for a moment behind him. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Gerard shivered as the chilly washing up water gnawed at his hands. “What, you think I’d lie? Or do you think I twatted him with a kitchen chair and then dumped him behind the greenhouse?”

“That’s not funny, Gee.”

Gerard shrugged, drying the mug and turning round from the sink. “It’s a little funny.”

Lewis shook his head. “It’s just so weird for him to disappear. I hope he hasn’t got hit by a car or something…”

Gerard grinned.

Lewis scowled at him. “Don’t.”

Gerard just grinned wider, glanced out the kitchen window. His mug shattered on the tiles with a noise like splintering bone.

“What?”

Gerard covered his eyes. “No, it’s not there, it’s not, it’s not.”

“What?” Lewis sounded a little tense, turned to look out the window. “Gerard, there’s nothing there…”

Gerard peeked out from between his fingers, his skin prickling and his teeth chattering. There was nothing at the window. Lewis was staring at him. He took a few breaths, steadied himself against the counter, peered into the shapeless mass of shadows past the glass.

“What did you see?”

Gerard shook his head. “Nothing.”

“You’re shaking.” He came closer. “What’s going on?”

Gerard screamed. Lewis wheeled back round. The pale figure knocked on the glass twice then disappeared.

“Was that…?” Lewis tried to calm his near hysterical brother. “Gerard, get a grip, keep still, you’ll tread on the broken…Gerard!” He grabbed him by the shoulders.

The handle of the back door rattled and shivered.

“Gerard,” Lewis cried. “Calm down, calm down! It’s only Dom…”

The door opened and Dom walked in with a howl of wind. His hood was pulled up, his eyes were bruised pits in its shadow. His lips were blue, his hands white.

Gerard clutched at his brother and let out a cry. “Oh, thank God.” Nervous laughter shuddered from his chest.

“Jesus, Dom,” Lewis muttered. “Could you have announced yourself in a more traditional manner? You gave us the fright of our lives.”

“Would help if there was a fucking doorbell on this bloody museum piece,” Dom muttered as he closed the back door. “Christ, it’s cold out there. Jesus, Allah, Buddha, is your fire lit?”

Gerard gestured limply through the other room. They trudged through. Dom stood by the fire, shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, blushing slightly despite his shivers. He’d pulled his hood off and his hair was wild and tangled, his eyes bloodshot and there appeared to be straw behind his ear.

“Where’ve you been?” Lewis asked.

Gerard, nearly recovered, froze himself up and glared.

“Yeah, about that,” Dom turned to face Gerard, but didn’t meet his eyes. He scratched his head, blinked blearily at the rug. “I came round, you know…to say sorry. I really am, man…” he laughed nervously. “Yeah, I was sat at my desk feeling like death…shouldn’t have drank gin, man. Should never drink gin. Anyway, I suddenly remembered and…fuck…I was a complete tosser last night and I know it. I don’t really think you should forgive me, but I thought I should at least come round and…you know.”

Gerard eyed him up and down but didn’t say anything.

“I came round at, like, lunch, but Victor told me you weren’t in and sent me away. I couldn’t face finding my way back to town so I sort of…passed out in your hay barn. Not that it helped, my head’s still fucking killing me. I woke up and it was getting dark and couldn’t find the way into the house.”

“Angela’s been calling everywhere, looking for you.”

“Oh man,” Dom rubbed his eyes. “I’m in the shit, seriously. I was supposed to be taking her and her parents to dinner tonight. Look,” he looked back at Gerard. “I really have to rush off, but I think I really need to say sorry properly, so I was wondering, I don’t know, if you want to get a drink at the Crown sometime?”

Gerard crossed his arms. “I don’t like the Crown.”

Lewis frowned at him. “Gee…”

Gerard shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”

Dom smiled, nodded. “Great, I’ll give you a ring sometime. See you at work, Lewis.”

One more eager gust of chill as the back door opened then shut behind him. Gerard shivered and moaned inwardly as more of the precious heat was swallowed by the winter night.

“See?” Lewis said, absurdly pleased with himself. “He can be alright.”

Gerard didn’t answer, knelt and tried to persuade the fire to once again renew its efforts.

“Why did you skitz out, anyway?” Lewis asked. “I’ve never seen you so freaked.”

Gerard blushed. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “I saw him outside, trying to find the way in and, I don’t know…something lurking outside the house at night…it’s creepy.”

“What, you didn’t think…?”

Gerard said nothing.

Lewis laughed. “Oh my God, you thought it was Victor, didn’t you? You thought he’d come back to life, wondered back from the greenhouse to leer at you through the windows, didn’t you?”

“No,” Gerard mumbled. “No, I didn’t…”

Lewis was laughing hysterically. “Oh my God, Gee. That’s priceless. Didn’t you see the mess I made of his skull? That guy’s not coming back.”

Gerard sighed. “It’s going to be hell running this place on my own again. You haven’t half screwed up this time.”

“I’ll help out more, I promise,” Lewis said. “But honestly, Gee, if you’d heard the things he was saying about you, like he owned you. You’re my brother. Mine. He’s not even family. If you’d seen the way he was smiling.”

“You shouldn’t have come in then,” Gerard replied. “Victor told you I was out. No one forced you to come in.”

“I was going to wait for you, I needed to see if you’d seen Dom. That creep didn’t want me in here, either. In this house, our house – it’s never been anything to do with him. And then to stand there by our kitchen table and talk about us when we were kids and about how you were still doing everything he told you to…”

Gerard paused. He chewed his lip, rose up, tightening his grip on the poker. “Lewis…”

“Hmm?”

Gerard met his brother’s eyes. “What if he saw?”

“What if who saw what?”

“Dom was here all afternoon, in the hay barn…has been trying to get into the house since it was just getting dark…what if he heard? Or saw me going out to the greenhouse? At the very least, he knows that Victor was in this afternoon…”

Lewis’s face went blank. The wind had dropped. The fire’s splintery cracks were the only sounds to break the air.

Without a word Lewis put on his overcoat, scarf and gloves, then was gone through the back door. Gerard sighed and went on another search for his own gloves. He was damned if he was going to do another trip down to the greenhouse without them.

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Featured Poem – ‘A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford’ by Derek Mahon

April 11, 2008 at 6:05 pm (Featured Poetry (other artists)) (, , , , , , , , , , )

My tutor, Paul Farley (Prize-Winning poet with successful collections published, such as ‘The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You’ and ‘The Ice Age’) read this poem out as part of his interesting extended musings on the ambiguous idea that ‘Modern Poetry is Rubbish’. I was enchanted by the sounds and shapes of it instantly and then reading it over again and again induces it to take on more life. It grows, just like the subjects at its heart. I think it is a beautiful poem and that the construction of the language and the ebb and flow of the meaning and emphasis makes it a wonderful piece of reading.

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford

Let them not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels
Seferis — ‘Mythistorema’

For J.G. Farrell

Even now there are places where a thought might grow —
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped forever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rainbarrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something —
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door growing strong —
‘Elbow room! Elbow room!’
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken flower-pots, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.

A half century, without visitors, in the dark —
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges. Magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flashbulb firing squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
‘Save us, save us,’ they seem to say,
‘Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naive labours have been in vain!’

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BRAND NEW Short Story: ‘Off-Buttons’

February 28, 2008 at 5:30 pm (Short Stories) (, , , , , , , )

Literally still-steaming hot off the press (wrote it this afternoon) a new short story. Have tried to return to some of my old ideals whilst moving forward with technique and style. What is it that makes someone who they are and act as they do? And what would they do if they were given a way to change it?

Off-buttons

 

Fuck it. Just fuck it. What a pile of shit. I don’t know why I bloody bother. Piece of crap. Where’s the black? God, I need a drink. Where’s that goddamn black gone.

            Oh, for God’s sake. Typical. Bloody typical. Why do I always run out of black? It’s the one I use the most, for God’s sake. Should buy twice as much of the shitting stuff.

            This light is terrible. This blind always catches. Come on, open you piece of…there. That’s no bloody good either. It’s lighter, but that just means I can see the damn thing better.

            Seriously, why am I bothering? That’s the wrong type of blue, completely. It looks like a gay-assed postcard. Bloody Bournemouth or something. Piece of rubbish. Where is that bleeding black? It needs more black. And some white, some white up there.

            Oh for fuck’s sake. Less light. And, what? What? Better blue?

This radio station is awful. Where’s the machine. Where is it? It’s polluting my brain, turn it off, turn it off.

Too bloody quiet now, but fuck it.

            More white, more white down here. More…no, too much. Bleeding bloody hell. Is there an extra can of black in the back of that old drawer…? Probably be completely the wrong type. Jet my ass. Looks more like onyx to me. No wonder I shoved it back here.

            Maybe a touch up here…where’s that pallet. Mix it with some of this ghastly blue…

            Christ, this is awful. This is easily the worst piece of dross I’ve ever done. But they only ever seem to buy ‘em when they’re crap anyway. Might fetch something. Not that it bloody should. I wouldn’t want it on my wall.

            Ruth’ll sell it. She always does. There’s always someone that wants one, the worse the better apparently.

I’m not going to meet the bloody buyer again, though. She can stuff that. Worst idea she ever had. Dinner and cocktails with the pillock gullible enough to buy it. What a fucking joke. Not that I care that they’re idiots. I get their money, keeps me in paint and takeaway. I’d just rather not meet them.

That prick had two. Two. Two of worst as well. As bad as they were on their own he couldn’t even see that those two, out of any of them, shouldn’t ever be seen together, let alone hung on the same bloody wall. Rhapsody together with Red Bedlam. You think the titles would’ve at least given him a clue.

            I behaved myself, somehow. Ruth was there, shooting me looks like she does. I kept my mouth shut and everyone had a wonderful time. What on earth was that shit they served for dinner? Some lump of green stuff in the middle of a huge, empty plate. I order a takeaway as soon as I got home.

            I need better black. This is just making everything worse. There has to be some more somewhere. Somewhere. Come on, please. This place is such a tip. Fucking hell, there’s so much of it, there’s got to be another, newer black.

I’m sick of the sight of that sky, shut that blind again. Stay shut. Stay shut. Fine, do that. Where’s that heavy thing…the thing. The thing I keep paperclips in, weighs a tonne. There’s the bugger. That’ll keep the blind down.

            Nope. No more black. Typical. Only this bloody onyx shit. Too oily. Looks like I’m painting with chip fat.

Great, need a new paintbrush now too. If I was going to lose my temper and snap something, couldn’t it have been one of the crap paintbrushes? This one cost forty quid or something stupid.

Can’t stop now. The thing needs more…more black, more white…more depth in this corner, less in this one. It needs more…why did I snap that bleeding paintbrush. It was the last one.

God. I don’t want to out. Why do I always ending up having to go outside? My food gets delivered, why can’t my paints?

Well, Ruth found that one company that would deliver stuff but their materials were even crapper than my usual ones. Of course, the work sold for thousands because of that. Ruth wanted me to carry on using them. A recognised brand, she said. They’ll sponsor, help with marketing and things.

Bugger that.

Is it cold out there? Probably is. I’ve had to turn the heating up to six to keep it right in here. I need it hot. Cold slows everything down, gets me edgy and work gets worse.

I’ll need a coat, then. Two.

I hate the cold, I hate it. I hate outside. Christ, it’s freezing. And naked. The air moves too much. Winter or summer, the air is always loose and moving. Not natural.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. The sky is a vast, blank wound. No roof, no solid layer anywhere. Empty, open. Oh God, stop shaking. Get to the shop, get the stuff, get back.

I can’t breathe properly out here, this damn empty air. And noise. The whole bloody world rattles. Hands clenched around bars, incessantly shaking. Even the ground is rocking, lorries rumbling past.

Stare at the pavement, count the cracks. It’s full of cracks. Everything falls apart out here, eroding and breaking up under the immense pressure of the gaping sky an air.

Count the cracks, don’t look up. The earth is shuddering far above the blank blue. I might fall off at any moment, tumble off into the atmosphere and just fall forever. Careening through the great blue-blackness, suffocating.

Stop, stop…just one second. Need to breathe but…no, I must keep moving. Keep going, get back indoors. Quickly, quickly. Come the fuck on, where is that shop? Has it always been so far away?

I’ll take some of this with me…see if I can just catch the colour of this day’s outside. It’ll go into the paint. The inside outside. Imprison it all in the edges of a frame. I’ll try again to get it right.

It never works. This fucking wide gasp of nothing doesn’t fit into the paint. I keep trying. I know if one day I manage to make it fit, it’ll all suddenly be easy and I can hold the idea of outside safely in the frame of my head and I’ll be able to go out whenever and stand still and look up and not fall.

The sooner I get to the shop the sooner I’ll be back home. Fuck, why do I bother. I already know it’s not going to happen today. The piece is awful. It’s not working. Even going out into out and maybe bringing some of it back is not going to help me try and capture it. I’ve failed again.

But…more black, some better blue. It won’t work, but it has to be finished.

The door is creaky, fitted with a high-pitched bell and the interior smells like too much cleaning product. It’s the brown-eyed girl behind the counter.

A thousand dabs of colour, bald squares dabbed on bottles and tubes. Ultra-marine, azure, cobalt, aqua, lapis-lazuli, ocean, sapphire, indigo, navy, teal, turquoise. Such pompous names. Sky. The sky has never been that colour, I refuse to believe it.

Jet, obsidian, onyx (again), slate, raven, charcoal, ebony, ink, pitch. Just the jet. The rest is just jet with other crap in it. And a paintbrush…where the fuck are they? This place must be a hundred times more organised than mine but still it’s impossible to find the bloody things.

That one. The same one again. Why not? I’m only trying to paint the same thing. Fucking expensive it all is too. Lucky the shit sells, really.

And, back outside, the air is still rattling, rattling right through to my bones. How can anyone stand this? My feet are only staying on the ground through sheer force of will. This is too much, I should have waited. Phoned Ruth. Got her to get me the paint and brushes. I couldn’t wait though. I can never wait.

Home is still so far.

The noise and wind. Stealing breath. Stealing balance. Shouts. Machines everywhere, people everywhere. Yawning hole above me, sucking at me. Fucking hell, I just want to be back inside. Christ, give me a roof. Box me in away from this.

Oh God, I’m going to throw up.

Mustn’t stop moving. Another corner, just one more corner. Swallow it, swallow.

Key-scrabble. Get in, you fuck. Open, damn it. Open.

Thank sweet Christ. Calm, still air. Quiet. Warm. Lock the fucking door. Bolts and everything, I don’t care. Lock it away.

            The carpet doesn’t move. It is still, like land after a rough ocean. Noises still filter through the brick and the windows but they’re all safely walled off. Carpet is scratchy on my cheek. Cling to it, catch my breath. Rub my face on it.

            I can hear again, the hammering in my ears fading. Sickness leaving. I can breathe. I can smell paint.

            They gave me medication for this. I tiny bottle of pills, supposed to make all this go away. Behaviour modifiers. Sedatives. I wasn’t listening, I didn’t give a shit. I was only there because the police told me to go. I put them in the cupboard in the bathroom that I never open.

No way could something like that make this go away. Tiny, round, rattling things. They can’t possibly wipe out a whole world. ‘Sufferer’ he called me. Like it was a disease. Me? A sufferer? Hardly fucking think so. It only ever matters if I need paint. Food gets delivered. What more do you want? No one gives a shit if I’m skinny or pale. Like it bloody matters. Bloody doctors.

Knew I should’ve thrown the clinking, white fuckers away. They look like eyes, peering out of the neck of the bottle. They might as well have smiles painted on them, smiles like the one the doctor wore.

Unnatural.

Have to paint it. Have to put the whole world into paint. Then it won’t be too big anymore. It needs to be a wide, skewed spread across canvas, controlled by me. Not controlled by little white buttons in a bottle.

*

An hour’s drive? An hour? Outside, in a car? Those tin cans don’t hold back the pressure of the sky, especially since they fill the damn things with glass so you can always see out. Why in hell do I have to go to an exhibition of my own work? I’ve seen it all before, haven’t I? I bloody well painted it. It’ll be full of stiff people holding wine, making up words. It’ll be inside, thank God, but an hour away.

Bloody Ruth. Why do I even have an agent? The crapping things sell themselves. Although I’d have to go out, talk to even more people.

Fucking Ruth. She uses stupid words like networking, personality image, opportunity. Like I care.

And it’s an hour away…

No way to get out of it. Already tried. The next level, contracts, the big money. I wish I didn’t have to care about money. But I need canvas. I need paint. Gallons of it. And take-away and delivery services. I need money.

Do I take one? Or is it two? I can’t read this label, it’s too bloody small. What do these people think I am? A frigging beetle or something? How can anyone read this? Two? No, three. Three times a day after meals.

What if you have only one meal? Or five? Depends on the day, doesn’t it. Idiots. Eat when you’re hungry, piss when you need to. I bet these people have pissing schedules too. Four times a day, after drinks.

Fuck it. I’ll have one when I wake up, one half way through and one before I pass out again.

If I have to go to this pretentious suck-fest, then will do it without throwing up or collapsing.

I need a drink. I swear I had some beer. Come on, something to wash this silly white pill down with. Vodka? Is that all I’ve got left? Cat-piss. Typical.

*

The blinds go from black to grey. Pill. I get hungry, order some Chinese. Pill. I drink and yawn and drink. Pill. Pass out.

*

It was fine. The drive was fine. The exhibition was fine. The wine was fine. Nothing special. How long ago was it anyway? A week? Two?

This house smells funny. It’s bloody dark too. Can I get these blinds open? Most have been shut for so long, some of the mechanisms have rusted still.

Pins. Blu-tak, sellotape. That’ll hold them open, if they can’t do it themselves.

The place really does stink. Paint and rubbish. It smells of dank inside and dust. It must have always reeked of paint, but this stale, dust-smell is a new. Opening the windows has eased some of the acid paint stench but it’s lifting the dust up in the air and shifting it about.

These paint tins are like magnets for the stuff. Look, leave the things alone for two weeks (or is it three?) and they’re all covered in it. I need some tissue from all the sneezing.

I need another pill…

The ceiling stares back at me. My breath tastes cool in myself. I wonder if chewing on the end of this paintbrush is sharpening or dulling my teeth…some animals chew on wood don’t they? And it’s good for them. Good for their teeth. Keeps them sharp? No, keeps them worn down. Rabbits and beavers and things. They’re teeth need to be kept worn down. Ah, worn down. It will be wearing my teeth then. Better stop.

For once the cool is nice. I suck it in. Everything feels still. My insides are hidden. I can’t feel the ebb and rush I vaguely remember that came whenever I was moving around, losing things, moving things, thinking about having to go outside.

The outside is in now, isn’t it? I’ve opened the windows anyway. I’ve never done that before. It’s let in the sounds and the smells, but it’s not shaking at my mind-cage.

The ceiling stares back. It’s really rather low. This whole room is really rather small. Strange, I’ve never noticed.

I thought I was going to stop chewing. Stop chewing, start painting. Been lying here all morning. Barely touched the new paints Ruth got for free from someone or other last week. The ten new canvases in the corner smell of clean, even from here.

But it is rather comfy here. I’ll have some food in a minute. Indian? Nah, had enough of that. Had Chinese all last week. Pizza?

There’s a new pizza place, in town. The flier is somewhere in the hall. It popped though…sometime…last week. I usually chuck restaurant fliers straight away. I keep the takeaways with free delivery fliers pinned in the kitchen. This one is still lying in the hall where it fell, I think. At least I think it was there when I went to the bathroom for my second piss. It doesn’t deliver, this new pizza place. Pain.

Where are my pills? Bathroom cupboard. Take them with me. Yeah. Take the bottle with me, wander out to the new restaurant, have one with my pizza, have some wine or something, wander back. Should kill a few hours.

I’m quite tall, I think. Never realised I could see over people’s heads in a queue for the zebra crossing.

I wonder if Ruth will take me along to another exhibition soon. I’d like to have something to do. An evening out of the house. Free drink and they usually they take up the whole evening. I’ll get in past two, drunk, take a pill, pass out.

I should get a TV for the house. How do I not have a TV? Everyone else in the world does. That’s how they fill the hours. I can ignore the blank canvas staring at me.

People slide by me, the pavement slides by underneath me, cars and lorries slide past me on the road. Everything slides past like I was covered in a layer of oil. It all slips past, in a dream, without touching. My eyes are heavy again. I’ve already had two naps today, how am I tired again? I could go home, fall asleep on that couch in the studio that’s so comfy. I used to use it to stack paints on. Can’t believe I never sat on it before.

No. I want my pizza. Get to the place, eat and then wander back. It’ll all slide past slowly, on the outside of this weird, sleepy bubble.

If I try, I might be able to make this trip out last until it gets dark. The restaurant’s on the other side of town. Must be almost an hour’s walk away. Yeah, get in when it’s gone dark and then I can say the light’s too bad to paint.

One little white stone swallowed with a glass of house white. Posh pizza, this. Posh place. Olives? On a pizza? Parma ham rather than just chunks of pink salt? The restaurant is loaded with smells. Smells of…what? My brain is fuzzy. Stuff…foody stuff.

It all slides down easy enough. One bite, two bites. Each slice about six bites, six slices. A nice symmetry there. Thirty six bites, it should it. Works out closer to forty but…never mind…didn’t factor in…

What was I thinking about? Pizza?

Another pill. Or did I already have one? One with meal. This is a meal. I’ll take one, just in case.

Just a few loose ones in the bottom of the bottle. Will need more very soon. How did I get them in the first place? Did Ruth give them to me?

 No…doctor. The doctor will give me more. I must have the phone number somewhere. Ruth’ll know it.

*

No pills left, Ruth. Need more. You said the appointment was on Tuesday. No? Next Tuesday? Well then, when? The ninth? But I’ll run out. I’ve only got enough left for tonight. No, Ruth I need more. It feels weird if I’m even late with one. Things start buzzing. What? What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Well the doctor’s wrong. There wasn’t two month’s worth in that bottle. And I’m running out of money. Where’s all my money? I usually have more than this. Well, no, nothing new yet. I’m still thinking. Hello?

I’m tired anyway. The air in the house is cool on my hot cheeks. I’ve left the windows open again. I don’t care. Bed’s too far away. The couch in the studio is closer.

Eyes so heavy, limbs so heavy, lungs…so heavy. No, I need another pill…before I fall asleep. One more little button, the calm button that I push and then everything’s flat and easy.

One more…the last one.

*

Buzzing, buzzing. Noises clawing at skin and lungs and the inside of my head. Where are the noises coming from? I can’t see. Violent shivers in thin, loose limbs. The buzzing.

 I need a pill. I remember the empty bottle. No, I need one…everything’s moving. No, there’s none left.

Wake up, you idiot. Wake up. No, it’s all coming back, all the ups and downs. The flatness is quaking. It’s all coming back, crowding up behind my eyes.

Blinding, buzzing. Breath tastes sharp. Get up, get up from the floor. No, can’t move. Shivering. Breathe, once, twice, three times. Light. Too much light. The air is fucking moving around me. Help, Christ, help. It’s all moving, the light, the air, the sounds, the smells. Outside, it’s like lying outside…I’ll fall off, I’ll fall off into the sky. I can feel it pulling everyway. Everything’s moving, everything’s moving. Stomach rocking. Shit, going to be sick.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Why didn’t I hold it? Just two most steps and I’d’ve been in the toilet. Fucking hell, this stinks worst of all.

Christ, it’s so cold. Shut these fucking windows. The wind’s getting in, the noise is getting in. It’s shaking everything. Shut it away, shut it away. And the blinds. Too bloody bright.

Bloody hell. What time is it? What fucking day is it? Can’t stop shaking. Breathe, you idiot. It’s all shut away now. Gotta turn the heating up, quick. What? I turned it right down to two? When did I do that? Might as well live outside.

Christ, outside. I let it in. The door’s not even locked. The kitchen curtains are open. All the fucking windows were open. What the hell, why on earth did I do all this?

My skin feels really raw, like it’s buzzing, like I’ve been scratching at it without feeling it.

Christ, I’m hungry. Indian, something hot, magma-hot. To deliver, please. There’s a tenner in my trousers, that’ll be enough.

Where’s the red paint? I need the red. The really bright one. I’ll mix it with a bit of that ochre, it’ll make it all fiery. The sky was fiery. It was burning me this morning when I woke up. Got into the house and was burning me. Must make it burn in the paint.

No, no, that’s fucking crimson. Bloody shit-twee colour of fucking valentines roses. Disguting. Scarlet, where’s the scarlet. And the ochre. And the paintbrushes.

Why the hell is everything in here? I never keep stuff in the paint cupboard. Fucking stupid place to keep stuff. It all needs to be out and about, to hand, grab-able.

Quick, quick. Need to mix it. The fire’s still burning behind my eyelids. Need to get the colour right, get it down. A big sweep of it, a blinding sweep all across the top and down the right edge. Yes. It needs to be brighter. Canary. Fucking gay colour. Mix some white in it, no. Needs some black.

Shite, this is utter shite. Have to keep going, have to make it work. Can’t believe I opened the windows. I might have been sucked out, pulled out into the vaccum. Scary shit. The pills pushed it all away behind that weird, oily layre but it was still there and here it is again.

Must put it in the paint, must get it down, contain it. It’s shut away now, behind the blinds, but I can still feel it in me and I have to get it out. Continue to get it out, pour it out, over and over, over and over.

Yes Ruth, there are some new ones. No, they’re fucking shit. Of course they’re shit. Yes they’ll bloody sell. What? What appointment? Cancel it, for fuck’s sake. The hell I’m going outside for anything.

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Bookline & Thinker Novel Writing Competition

February 2, 2008 at 12:30 pm (Log) (, , , , , , )

Well I’ve done it! I’ve entered a novel writing competition with Hoodwin, the big project I’m working on at the moment. I’m fairly nervous. I think it was a really good excercise, whatever the outcome, since I had to write a synopsis which meant I had to sit down and figure what is actually going to happen. Plus I had to vigorously edit the first 10,000 words of the story (it currently stands about 20,000 – in terms of your average novel I should be a quarter of the way though the story now) for the submission.

The first prize is an actual publishing contract. This would, of course, be absolutely wonderful. The only drawback is that if I do win (massive, massive ‘if’) then the final draft of the novel has to be in in June. That would mean putting a bit of a rush on it.

But I shall cross that incredibly unlikely bridge should I ever wander up to it.

Fingers crossed in the mean time.

I should post some of the big project on here soon; I would be pleased to know what everyone thinks.

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