A New Ulster 109

Issue 108 Issue 109 December 2021

A New Ulster FEATURING THE CREATIVE TALENTS OF George Freek, Paul Murgatroyd, Ana Spehar, Johnny Francis Wolf, Joseph Murphy, Clara Mcshane, Cormac Dowling and Saeed Salimi Babamiri AND EDITED BY AMOS GREIG.

A NEW ULSTER ISSUE 109 DECEMBER 2021

UPATREE PRESS

Copyright © 2020 A New Ulster – All Rights Reserved.

The artists featured in this publication have reserved their right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of their work.

ISSN 2053-6119 (Print) ISSN 2053-6127 (Online) Edited by Amos Greig Cover Design by Upatree Press Prepared for Publication by Upatree Press

CONTRIBUTORS

This edition features work by George Freek, Paul Murgatroyd, Ana Spehar, Johnny Francis Wolf, Joseph Murphy, Clara Mcshane, Cormac Dowling and Saeed Salimi Babamiri

CONTENTS Poetry George Freek Prose Paul Murgatroyd Poetry Ana Spehar Prose Johnny Francis Wolf

Page 1 Page 6 Page 10 Page 14

Poetry Joseph Murphy

Page 23

Poetry Clara McShane

Page 25

Prose Cormac Dowling

Page 30

Poetry Saeed Salimi Babarmiri Page 61 Editor’s Note

Page 64

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: George Freek George Freek's poetry has recently appeared in "The Ottawa Arts Review"; "The Lake"; "Acumen"; "The Whimsical Poet"; "Triggerfish", "Torrid Literature." And “A New Ulster”

1

OF MEN AND SQUIRRELS (After Tu Fu)

Those distant clouds will soon be overhead, bringing rain or snow.

The flowers will be dead.

The snow will disappear, but it will come again.

Flowers and squirrels are soon past their prime.

As I drink my wine, I watch the squirrels gather food for winter.

Do they know life is short?

Do they stare at the stars and think of eternity?

Are their thoughts as pointless as mine?

I think not. As nature grows harsher, they scamper frantically.

I envy them their pursuit.

They can’t stop to worry or to repine.

(George Freek)

2

A NOTE TO A FRIEND (After Chu Hsi)

A breeze rustles the leaves at the edge of the bay.

The moon and the stars make night almost as clear as day.

On the lake a loon calls, from very far away.

The lake is now a calm desert.

But tonight a strong wind will blow. Waves will beat like furious fists against the rocks. I feel this anger is more real than the calm.

It’s nature’s realm.

My friend says we must look for the good.

I find it hard to believe.

Forgive me, my friend.

I watch a worm, stranded in dead grass, struggling in agony, until it finally reaches its predetermined end.

3

I leave it alone, and I walk carefully home.

(George Freek)

4

I PONDER BY THE BLUE RIVER (After Mei Yao Chen)

A goose floats on the river, so near I can almost touch him.

In an ugly mood, he honks at me.

It’s what he has to say.

On this wind-blown day, leaves fall, denuding the trees.

I can’t see that wind, but I feel its chilling breeze.

We only know what we can see. But who sees the atoms in a cup of tea?

Life is a brief fantasy.

Fat clouds drift insouciantly, then disappear. The river wanders ambiguously, until it’s finally swallowed by a cold, impassive sea.

I gaze into it and see, with uneasy eyes, a reflection of confusion, but that is only me.

I’m just a momentary illusion.

(George Freek) 5

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Paul Murgatroyd After a long career as a professor of Classics Paul retired 5 years ago and started writing novels and short stories. 29 of the latter have been published, along with 3 poems in English, over 50 of his Latin poems and performance versions of 2 Roman tragedies. Paul has had work published in A new Ulster as well.

6

PROFESSOR JIM EVANS

Uh…wha…where…floor, on floor… bed, bedroom…not home…hotel…yeah, hotel…what am I…Conference…Got bit pissed, with John, and…John and…Welsh bloke…Passed out? No, made it to bed, woozy, swinging pit…What the-? Oh shit can’t move, or speak, stroke heart attack Jesus buggered gonna die Jan’ll be don’t want to what can I do shit nothing – calm down, calm down! Heart’s pounding, have another…whatever. Means you’re alive, still alive, not dead.

For now. At 72 not coming back from this, or crippled mind mush jelly Christ what’s gonna happen – stop it! Thinking now, bit blurry, but thinking, mind’s OK…Who was that Welsh bloke? Alun…Jones?

No. Alun…Parry. Yeah. Drank 20 pints. Impressive. Till he started bleeding from the face, pores leaking blood. There you are, remembered that, so not a vegetable yet, not a spud, escaped spudification.

Wouldn’t mind a slash...No, can’t move anything. That’s a stroke, isn’t it, not a heart attack? Not that bad, lots of people survive strokes, come back OK. Or paralysed down one side, can’t talk properly mouth twisted up, shit, end up like me dad, trapped behind frightened eyes. Please, god, don’t let me…please for Jan’s sake – Snivelling. Calm down. Important not to have another one soon.

Bollocks! How’ll I teach? Or finish the book? Christ, the bloody book! Only two chapters to go, major insights demolishing that arrogant bastard Dietrich – Teutonic twat!...That’s it. Career over, what holds it all together finished…Ah shit, take me off and shoot me now!...Like the Ceausescus. He sang the Internationale, she yelled at the firing squad: ‘Fuck you!’…Better off dead. Jan’ll be…but better than nursing a cripple, a husk…Made me will, good pension for her, house and everything all paid for. Wish we’d been able to have kids. But she’ll be better off. Can move back to England.

Still can’t move, old bugger. How did I get so old? Never felt it. Must be a mistake with the arithmetic. But feeling mortal now. What was that tag about man? Yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of ashes…Where did all the years go? Noughties just disappeared. A blur of work. Haven’t really slowed down since. Should have. Spent more time with Jan. Too late now. Probably.

That painting isn’t straight. Looks like a car crash. Christ, it is a car crash. Who puts a painting of a car crash on the wall of a hotel room? You are not going to piss! Just hold it. Think of something else. Right, so what time is it? Still darkish outside. So nobody’ll come until – shit, hung up that DO NOT DISTURB notice on the door. So I’m stuck here all on me own god knows how long. Could have another attack, all that cheese…gonna die…see me dad again, and mum, say sorry – whoa!...What about me books? No good to Jan. Have to sell them. For peanuts. Shit, what about Jill’s thesis? They’ll have to get somebody else to take over as supervisor. Hope it’s not Randy Rudi The Horizontal Hun, bloody predator. May not come to that. Modern drugs and physio, I could recover completely, or almost. If I could just get back to where I was, I’d – oh great, now I’m pissing meself.

Bugger! When -if- anybody comes in, they’ll find a senile old fool lying in a pool of his own piss.

Couldn’t help it, but still…Hope it’s not the maid, bloody embarrassing – Hey, come on. She’ll have seen worse…Like those Swedish hotels that provided free porn channels until the maids complained about having to clean sticky TV screens…

7

Look what it’s all come down to now, that big reputation as a scholar, writing all those books and articles. Which the young ones are starting to ignore anyway. What did Marilyn Monroe say? Big tits, big ass, big deal. Yeah, same thing. Oh, I’m a professor, wow! A big name in the little world of academe. In a crap university in a shitty city in Canada – a pustule on the arsehole of the world. Which is just one heavenly body among billions in our galaxy. Which is just one of billions of galaxies. So in the greater scheme of things perhaps it doesn’t add up to all that much. And it won’t make me any less dead. All quite absurd, if you’ve got a black sense of humour, enough to make a cat laugh…Yeah, laugh. Instead of whining. Where’s your famous sense of humour, Jimbo? That dark wit. Take the piss, softollies, rally…

OK. My esteemed university…Students who’d rather be taking something like Cartoons 101, or The Wit and Wisdom of Bruce Willis. The Campus Book Store has to put up that sign for them on the door: no food or drink in this store (coffee is a drink)…And my colleagues. James Little (Doctor Dolittle) with that sign on his door all year round – the essays will be handed back next week. And our esteemed Chairperson, so full of bullshit that if he turns sharply it comes slopping out of his ears, And the linguistic shock-horror of rebranding moments, transformational change and sub-optimal elephant-parking. Pillock! Mind you, the Rectum’s no better. What was that injunction about sticking to the cleared bits when it snows and not opting for short cuts?...Oh yeah. Keep to the designated walkways, do not follow the paths of desire.

Sounds like a motto for life, a very boring life. Hey, is this a five minute rant or just a two minute rant?

Five… So, Canada, with German Shepherd Week, and Police Week, when the cops reward good drivers by giving them mini chocolate bars, for god’s sake. Where the natives are so polite that they thank the ATM when it gives them their cash. Where the CBC thinks recording somebody winning a medal for diving is good radio: boing boing, silence silence silence silence, splash. Where they actually celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday, and just can’t believe that we English don’t…

OK OK, it’s not all bad. The library’s good. And I get a good salary. But that’s not enough to – who’s that? I bet it’s John, wondering where I am. Yeah, it’s light out there now, must be morning. Sorry, John, I can’t come to the phone just now. Or ever.

Don’t just give up and ring off, you bugger. Come round and see what your old mate’s up to. He’s not up to much. Actually, no, don’t come round and see me, in this state. Remember me as I was last night, laughing and joking and full of life – shit!

Hey, come on, buck up, you’re not going to die. You can’t die in Canada, in a hotel called The Dew Drop Inn. You’d be like – what was that quip? He’s the kind of person who dies of an unfashionable disease in Bulgaria. You’d be like that. You can’t die in the land of aluminum and erbs and eye-glasses and headhats. Where they eat pirogies, which look like human ears in melted cheese, and taste like human ears in melted cheese – all chewy and waxy. Where a walkie-talkie is called le talkie-walkie, and underpants are referred to as gents personal furnishings, and that pair I bought from The Bay had a sticker on the crotch saying they’d been inspected by Marilyn.

Feeling better? Cheered up a bit letting off steam? Right, now for some of the old mental jiujitsu, turn it into a good thing…Right, the big question. If -when- I recover, do I want to continue lecturing?...Really…Think about it, think…Of course…Well, actually, to be brutally honest… maybe not…

Just possibly a bit daft – being so focussed and tense, letting the job take over your life? Students worse and worse…depressing office…idle, boring colleagues…Taken something like this for me to… Sighs on a 8

Monday morning for a couple of years now. Only trouble is me research, which is valid and – no, actually, nothing to stop me from carrying on with research, with JSTOR and if I’m near a good library, finishing the book… Just be giving up crap classes and all that bloody admin…Devote mornings to research, spend the rest of the day with Jan. Yeah, enjoy meself while I can, move back to England and civilization. Proper newspapers, good bookshops, decent radio and TV, international news… Now we can finally go on that holiday in New Zealand yeah and go to places in Europe out of season yeah must see Paris again and Rome the Pantheon and the Sagrada Familia Christ yes missed out on so much yeah catch up with old friends write that campus novel great learn how to draw revive that backgammon tournament with Jan and let her win fantastic reread War And – ow oh shi

(Paul Murgatroyd)

9

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: ANA SPEHAR

Ana Spehar is from Croatia, living in Cork for last 5 years. Her work was published in A New Ulster, Boyne Berries, Solstice sounds and poetry anthologies "A Journey Called Home" and “Cork Words”. Her poetry is themed around love and her love of Ireland, her endless inspirations.

10

Love As Art

I close my eyes and I can feel The ink flowing. From your fingers, Through my skin and into my heart.

Somehow, I know that, of me, Of my poems, you will always be a part.

We’ll become immortal!

Two lovers intertwined in verses.

A love turned into art.

(Ana Spehar)

11

I Love You Ireland

I love you, the isle of emerald And the land of green I love you Ireland Because you gave me him Under your grey sky I fell in love with the blue of his eye And under the lashes of your sweet rain I am destined to forever remain Ireland, both you and him, now own my heart I can’t decide who owns the bigger part I love you Ireland, I love you emerald isle For you gave me his childish smile Now I belong to your green land Which gave me his gentle hand Ireland, from you or him, I will never be apart You have my soul, he has my heart

(Ana Spehar)

12

You Became a Poem

I’ve turned your kisses Into verses And your eyes Into rhymes From each of your breath I’ve formed a letter From your smile I’ve made words And you became a poem

(Ana Spehar)

13

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Johnny Francis Wolf

14

Johnny Francis Wolf is an Autist –– an autistic Artist.

Designer, Model, Actor, Writer, and Hustler –– Yes. That.

Worth a mention –– his Acting obelisk –– starring in the ill–famed and fated, 2006 indie film, TWO FRONT TEETH. 15

The fact that it is free to watch on YouTube might say an awful lot about its standing with the Academy.

Homeless for the better part of these past 8 years, he surfs friends’ couches, shares the offered bed, relies on the kindness of strangers –– paying when can, doing what will, performing odd jobs.

(Of late.. Ranch Hand his favorite.)

From New York to LA, Taos and Santa Fe, Mojave Desert, Coast of North Carolina, points South and South East –– considers himself blessed.

Johnny’s love of animals, boundless. Current position working on a hacienda in Florida as laborer and horse whisperer has recently come to its seasonal conclusion. Greyhound and the Jersey Shore are drawing him North.

Some of all this Bio is true –– most of Wolf’s tales as well. illusory are hung on stories told him by dear friends own brush with similar, if not exactly the same. .

16

Those or his

I

alee 17

’d not spent the prior evening in pursuit of grande and noble endeavors.

Was a madcap essay into getting laid.

The brasher aspects of my.. shall we say, ‘procurement’.. included several questionable wingman, a surfeit of unsavory locales, and numerous indelicate women who played upon our generous natures as flagons were rife and emptied.

I was nothing if not the victim.

––– And there, sun rising and aiming shivs directly at my sclerae, with sand chafing certain, erm.. ‘tender’ and commonly ‘harbored’.. areas of dermis, I found myself delirious and supine on a beach. Naked... a lady’s chiffon scarf wreathed securely about my wrists, my wallet open and chasmal but 3 feet to my starboard, toenails jungle red and sparkly, with disparate cards and donor id between each dactyl cleavage.. no doubt some sportive attempt at making the lacquer’s application more precise and tidy... my phallus still (oh dear).. ‘boastful’.. having a better recall of the evening than your author, seemingly.. spoke of good times and turgid opportunities when my own head was pounding.. not in that same good way.

––– Freeing my wrists, noticing my fingernails an unflatteringly dissimilar shade to my toes, I modestly positioned the diaphanous scarf (lovely 18

patterned floral with beryl highlights) around my buttocks as I rolled over, worried in my twilight drift that it would likely take flight.

So stuffed it, I did, well into my crack to affix it.. anchored and fast.

Fact that I was overwhelmingly, as yet, undraped everywhere else, mattered less to me at that moment.

I slept.

––– I recall flashes, trices.. twinklings, if you will.. when I roused, sputtering spew, coughing up the prior evening’s beverage of choice now mixed with both bile and the stale, smoke–filled rooms within which they were imbibed.

Muffled voices tried enter my dream.

“Are you alright, laddie? Should we send for transport?” whispered the wraiths attending my trance... as faeries deemed lower pink and blue plaid upon my lack, gathered wallet and trifling contents left nigh, and some bits of clothing not taken by wind... slipping henley and boxers under my head.. discreetly burying barf with sand.. and tucking my sundries ‘neath me and the donated wool.

––– I was finally and fully awakened by the afternoon’s light rain.

19

In the

pearl mist that dampened the shore that early Autumn, there were few strollers braving the soon–to–be steady pelt.

For me it felt good, like palliatives melting remnants of pain.

The fuzzies had gone.. leaving myself and dogs.. them licking my face, before they would race to catch up with owners expounding with fellow roaming compeers on Parliament this and Royals are that.

––– I was suddenly and singularly happy.

A foreign conceit for me. I’d not thought much of the doctrine in years.

Had resigned to live a life of verity.. the fallacy of others’ sooth.. only peppered with the occasional deviant picnic... these wanderings and junkets with friends and alone (the latter generally more satisfying) decidedly more rare of late.

And the happiness quotient involving said dalliances.. less and less with time’s forward slog as skin’s veneer and want doth crack.

Whilst those adjuvant (piffle, primary focus) of such expeditions hint evermore young, I add rumples to jaw and eye.

Today was not the same.

The salt spray left me fresher and drawn, vellum more taut.. resolved in what years managed be left.. to live more joy, whatever vestige of 20

bloom remained.

Offer more my truth.

––– And there, in the distance, a vision of Sam... colleague from my germinal years of keeping grosses and nets.. (though hardly did he fit the auditor’s boilerplate... too swarthy and buckling ever to be unduly distracted by interests accrued).

Died in his youth, victim of things he did in the dark. Someone I knew from afar... and close.

–––

Coming to meet me from out of the waves.. a baptism in reverse, ‘twould appear.. as he and I seemed wax confused.

And just like that, again asleep.. beneath the plaid...

21

was not alone.

(Johnny Francis Wolf)

22

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Joseph Murphy Joseph Murphy is 17 years old and has been writing infrequently over the past few years but since the beginning of the pandemic writing has gone from being a hobby to a passion. While he has never been published before he is excited to share his work with a wider audience.

23

Upon a Golden Shore: There is a castle there A ruin yet still fair Upon a lake shore beaten gold It sits forgotten growing old, If walls could tell of what they've seen If gloomy towers could speak of what they'd been Castle Crom would have such a story a story to tell Of invaders come and hero's felled, Of bloody hand gripping what it could not hold Of starving children and suffering untold Of a people beaten and bound Of a final reckoning come round, Without glory and without shame Crom sits broken and lame A ruin glowering in disdain,

(Joseph Murphy)

24

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Clara McShane

Clara McShane is an emerging writer from Dublin with a BA in Psychology. She has been writing for most of her life, and finds a sense of peace and balance from engaging with poetry and prose. Her work has been published in The Caterpillar Magazine and included in various community projects such as Wexford Stories.

25

Taste of Autumn Air

October air pervades the thatch wattle and daub damp with autumn’s scent children wait for Mammy to deliver Hallowe’en at last “A watched oven never bakes” she shoos and swats the ravenous urchins as they peek and poke around the glorious red brick stove a one-eyed once-loved doll thrust aside no match for this evening’s exhilaration and finally it’s here wafting and exuding its glorious cloud of sweet fruit, yeast, hunger freshly baked autumn air.

Plated and devoured in jittering anticipation for who will find the coveted ring fortelling of love, imprisoned within its crumbling walls?

Siobhán is the bashful champion, again, this year, fishing the metal from her grinning gob eruptions of jeering, “Is it Paddy O’Donavan up the road you’re wedding?”

The rain begins outside, then, wetting the hay from the stable and inviting into the home its friendly smell.

A drop of milk for each head and bed.

Through inky night their tongues recall dense, fruity, leftover ale 26

they have never felt so lucky.

(Clara McShane)

27

Poulshone Beach

For Christmas last year, I tried to find a painting of Poulshone beach for my mother online. I had the exact angle I wanted set in stone in my mind; from the summit of that short walkway, where road merges with sand and where childhood Summers had begun.

I had not been able to find such a painting anywhere online, and had proceeded to blankly stare at the Google homepage for twenty minutes straight, contemplating if it had really been as I had imagined.

These days, I visit that strand, and time and nature has obscured the view in a way which feels unsettling.

The tide has expanded drastically across the sand, creeping its way towards the jagged parapet of rocks which look duller now, less silver.

I had wanted that childhood image painted, eternally in material form, before the tide would have a chance to erode the wall of rocks I had once called my climbing frame, and sweep away the shiniest, most coveted of seashells pending collection.

We had bouldered across that jagged terrain, sandwiched between parents, bigger hands helping tinier ones to scramble along all the way to Ardamine beach. I was the smallest, and thus earned the moniker “mountain goat” for my efforts (relative to my size). The procession would reach its climax at Ardamine caravan park, where we would triumphantly inform Granny that we had successfully scaled two beaches, and would be rewarded handsomely with 7-up and Café Noir biscuits.

Sadly, that caravan has been sold in recent years, and often I wonder if the plastic green frog I had once planted under the flowery settee was ever found, and whether it knows the game of hide and seek is over now. I wonder, sometimes, if that was my memory at all, or my sister’s. I wonder if the frog was blue.

I’ll never know what Poulshone beach looked like when I was a child or whether that frog still lurks. I won’t ever know how it really was, because “was” doesn’t exist, really.

All I can be certain of, is that on those sandy days, the silver rocks were my climbing frame, and that the waves still remember the bleats of three little mountain goats finding their way.

28

Avenue of Blackberries

Avenue of blackberries encapsulated by the trees specks of wildflower, butter gorse football club cheering grows hoarse old man passes, all my life lens matures with time and strife wilting fuchsia, ballet shoes awry poppy, Summer’s bruise benches who have watched me grow silent seedling, clover glow men with babies, pebble, rock lost dog’s chew toy, white school sock buttercups are time and past tiny feet can’t walk too fast steam train singing, misty morn bramble, bramble, bramble, thorn.

Oftentimes I long to be my avenue of blackberries to cradle and to know each sole that imprints on its lifelong stroll.

(Clara McShane)

29

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: CORMAC DOWLING Cormac Dowling’s background is in television and film production and he is based in Galway.

0

CLEOPATRA

A short story by Cormac Dowling

1

July 29th, 1981 I am a television addict.

Westward on the portside the old timer watches the Queen of England smile on the steps of St. Paul’s. Topless with another steeple of stout, this is his last remaining connection to the suffering of his forefathers. The wedding unfolds until the commercial break while he holds the ghosts of another union in a black and white photograph and it brings him back to an episode of violence after his days of infiltration as an undercover.

“The entire city is a walled maximum security prison.”

In those days he wasn’t boxed in by Koreans, Mexicans and the potent miasma of foreign contempt that creeps under his door, but he responds in kind. The .38 stirs in his fingers as his eye pokes through the peephole, trying to decipher the mystery of the new tenant on the twenty-first floor. His name is Mikolaj, an immigrant bank clerk from an obscure Polish town. The landlady is from Novosibirsk, Russia and he can only speculate as to what they are discussing in the stairwell. Then he hears the keychain and returns to the spent armchair, listening to Mikolaj circle his apartment and the television points him to the changing dangers of the world. Today they are striking air-traffic controllers and a serial killer in Atlanta.

“The bridges are mined. The rivers are patrolled.”

I saw her playing a psychiatrist in The Rockford Files.

By the time he had left Los Angeles he already had two coronary scares and a suspected stroke. This is when he made plans to visit the old country and use the rest of his retirement fund to set up in the wilderness. He was just an ex-cop who chased disagreeable socialites out of Los Angeles for a living, at least those with Communist party connections or anyone who didn’t attend the meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria.

2

His grandfather raised a farm in the far reaches of Connemara and the old timer had spent a few summers there until his father handed down the coveted badge of the Los Angeles Police Department.

“And if he comes back alone, his nightmare has just begun.”

His sleep pattern has changed since the recent passing of his mother. On most days he has been waking up to the sound of her voice in a hangover of confusion. He would have liked for them all to have shared the same plot of graveyard, but she rests in an urn in California. His place would be at the back of Woodlawn Cemetery near Westbrook, for which he has already made arrangements.

“John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.”

He was never good in a crowd and even the packed streets of London on a broadcast give him a slight feeling of trepidation. He won’t toast to another damned coronation and he’s not watching it to be entertained by the bastards who savaged his homeland, but he finds himself paying attention to the detail.

Princess Diana has an uneasy look of indifference to her newfound fame, a look he recognizes from his days as a private investigator.

We are escaped fugitives.

He has locked the gun away in the cabinet and is back in his seat with a new can of Boston Beer in the time it takes for the commercial to sell him another box of Lucky Strike or for a round of bullets to comfortably unload from a Colt Single Action Army. It takes longer for a .38, but you can hide a revolver on the inside pocket of a dinner jacket or inside the strap of a woman’s thigh.

June 24th, 1963 He fumbles for the whiskey in the bottom drawer of the mahogany wood set and drinks from the bottle to calm his nerves, the proud son toasting to his roots under the Hotel Rosslyn. He packs away the cards of a 3

lonely game of solitaire and hides his Beretta strap, but he hangs a pair of tickets for the late show of Donovan’s Reef on the desk corner. He brushes the ashes from the surface cracks and listens to the familiar sound of her approaching heels, a natural stride surer than a dripping faucet.

“Have a seat.”

In her eyes he is a handyman with answers to the questions she holds in her lap. In reality he is also a fan, but the circumstances prevent any jovial request for an autograph or even a friendly conversation about her latest work. She is here to ask questions he doesn’t want to answer. Neither did Bill, who called ahead to warn him. The files bulge from her fingers with a tattered notebook on top with hand-writing on the front that he can’t make out.

“How can I help you, Ma’am?”

“I’m here about the Pellegrin case.”

He nods. “Mr. Dodd was first at the scene.”

“He said you knew the case file better than anyone.”

She offers him a smoke but he is suspicious of the game famous women like to play with older men.

She even has her own lighter with a much shinier metallic surface than his old rusty Dunhill. He had used it to light the cigar when he reached the scene of the double homicide in ‘59. How could anyone forget the murder of Jean-Luc Pellegrin and his mistress along with the death of a producer under suspicious circumstances and the collapse of an entire film studio. The demise of the Blacklist soon followed, but Kirk Douglas took all the credit.

“When did you and Bill close the case?” “’59.”

“You solved the murder in only nine weeks.”

4

He shrugs. “We got the guy.”

“Yet you both retired after the conviction.”

More an oblation. He was treated like a pariah ever since, along with anyone else who dared ask a question that didn’t fit the story the superintendant had invented for the reporters. They convicted Gerald R. Harris, the cab driver who dropped the couple home after an evening meal in Perino’s. Harris had kept the meter running like he was told while the couple were inside. A witness said Harris was smoking on the bonnet of his car when the gunshots went off, but the polite middle-aged widow of a war veteran never made it to the stand. She died in her sleep three weeks before the trial. Harris made a statement but it didn’t matter to the jury. The murder was all over the radio by the early hours and the woman’s father was a crossburning oilman out of South Carolina. He didn’t want to insult her intelligence by telling her what everyone already knew.

“Have you ever in your life held a blood soaked fedora?”

He puts his feet on the desk in a show of discontent. “No,” he fires back, blowing smoke in her direction.

“It was rose red when I found it.”

He lies back and blows more smoke into the dusty air whirring under the ceiling fan. His wife had bought him a grey fedora with a white rim for their anniversary, three months before he filed for divorce and two weeks after he handed in his papers. He kept the hat and wore it while he worked late under the lamplight of suspicion, looking for cheating husbands and Russian sympathizers. It didn’t help him discover the clues to his own wife’s infidelities, but it made him good at his job. The satisfaction of a solved case was hard to come by in a town bent by factions and bribes in the upper echelons of the force, even when the missing piece of the puzzle was sitting right in front of him. Helen O’Neill looked older in person to the celebrity he had hanging next to the gun holster in his locker on 100 West 1 st Street.

5

She pointed to the hat hanging on the back of his coat. “Is that yours?”

“Yes.” “It’s the same.”

He turns around and stands at the window, watching the humdrum of evening traffic. A Hearse is parked across the street and two Pontiacs and a Silver Streak roll by and then disappear at the T-Junction.

Above it is an unfinished job on a billboard and he can make out the left cheek and purplish blue eyes of Elizabeth Taylor fading behind a new poster of John Wayne and Lee Marvin.

“You had a different hat that day.”

“I don’t recall what I was wearing.”

“It fell off your head after you dragged me out of the fire escape.”

“It was better that you didn’t see.”

She sits forward into sunlight and in a flash he is sitting in row twenty-four on the second seat of the middle aisle at Cameo Theatre. The title card ends with an overhead shot of skyscrapers shrouded in winter fog. Two pinstripes with Tommy guns pull up in a 1916 Cadillac and enter Murphy’s Bar to hit Eddie the Butcher and three of his associates. They leave holding onto the side of the motor car, firing bullets in the direction of the Model T in pursuit. The gang will soon pay them a visit and hit key figures in their ranks, leading to the rise of the Five Points Gang in Hell’s Kitchen. In the scene of Mickey Sullivan’s assassination, the waitress in the restaurant manages to survive but not without taking bullet shrapnel to her left foot. A hired gun played by Jean-Luc Pellegrin, also the director along with a co-writing credit and Helen’s fiancé at the time, takes her in his arms and carries her to safety. Her character has crossed sides without knowing it, from Ireland to Italy in the flash of a round of bullets.

“Does this have anything to do with Herman Mankiewicz?” he asks. When she doesn’t answer he 6

reaches into the top compartment of his desk and pulls out a torn out piece of the LA Times, and the article dated February 20th, 1962: “After a few tonics at the Copacabana with Eddie Fisher, everyone in the vicinity heard Liz agree to fellatio.”

“This has nothing to do with him or Liz Taylor.”

“Not his latest work?”

“Mr. Dodd has a theory about what actually happened.”

She slams the files on his desk, all at once. He pushes them back to her until they start to fall but she stacks them up again, one after the other until they both give up in an unspoken torrent of mild slander.

Then she stops to admire the chaos in front of him. He is surrounded by a spherical wave of dust and strewn papers. He finds his cigarette crushed under his feet and he reaches for another in his pocket. She puts her lighter on the table as she watches him struggle with his empty Dunhill.

“R. R,” he murmurs. He sits up to read the initials scribbled on a file marked ‘Screenplays.’ It was an extensive case that captured the nation and Hollywood was hungry for a murder story of its own. A raped woman with multiple stab wounds and the celebrated French auteur she was sleeping with, both shot at close range. The paparazzi made a stink over his rumoured links to an Italian businessman present at the Waldorf-Astoria on November 24th, 1947, a secret meeting of the rich pointing fingers at the famous, but he and Bill never made the connection.

“Screenplays?” he asks. “There was more than one?”

“There was Ralph Redondo’s draft of the story,” she says, “and then there was Jean’s.”

“And after his murder, they gave it to Herman.”

He half-closes the blinds and turns on the lamp. Helen gathers up the mess of papers and postcards along with a tattered script covered in scribbled notes and littered with different coloured pages. He lights a 7

smoke for her and then he leaves the lighter on the desk next to the tickets. He tells himself there is still time to catch the show and then he begins the anatomy, starting with a case file he doesn’t recognize. It was only another American murder until it became a cold case with a dangerous aftertaste that all L.A. cops in the class of ‘59 knew not to swallow. It is a journey back in time to the cancerous affair Hollywood had kept buried for four years.

March 24th, 1959 THE AMERICAN MERCURY PRODUCTION OF NEW ROMAN EPIC TO RIVAL BEN-HUR BEGINS IN EUREKA VALLEY

By George L. Rockwell The story of Julius Caesar is well known to Hollywood but less is known of the man who succeeded him.

Rome was at war with the Parthian Empire and the empire’s greatest danger came from within - Marc Antony proved to be Augustus’ greatest rival and his treachery led to a naval blockade in the Bay of Actium and it was there where their battle at sea led to the rise of one of Rome’s greatest leaders.

This is the subject matter of the latest production from the studio responsible for such hits as The Infidel, Born Dangerous and Night of the She-Vamp. Speculation has been rife on who will play Augustus after James Mason dropped out of the project to shoot Alfred Hitchcock’s next picture, but the odds are on film star Howard Bradner and Leo LeBlanc in the supporting role. Both have recently been spotted in Kings Canyon.

According to insiders the story is in good hands if the director’s last picture, Manhattan Bullet, is anything to go by. Inspired by real-life members of Jack Dragna’s LA syndicate in the 1930’s, French auteur 8

Jean-Luc Pellegrin has won both acclaim and controversy for his ultraviolent portrayal of American gangsters and his documentarian style of shooting inspired by his compatriots in the French New Wave.

Much has been made of the decision to shoot the majority of the picture in Eureka Valley but Merhoff Studios has made it clear that it is time for them to make an epic to rival The Ten Commandments and the upcoming Ben-Hur, and have staked everything on the authenticity of the story, despite losses on their last two box office releases. It appears Merhoff has publicly distanced himself from the project and has let the producers call the shots. When asked why most of the picture will be shot in the desert and not in the comfort of the studio lot at Melrose Avenue along with the Battle of Actium which is set to be filmed in three months, Walter simply replied: “For the sake of historical accuracy.” LeBlanc was also asked the same question but refused to comment.

There have also been new reports of friction between Bradner and Pellegrin on the set of Manhattan Bullet and rumours of spiralling budget costs and discontent in an overworked crew. After a recent scandal involving an accusation of sexual assault against LeBlanc on the set of Born Dangerous, several publications have made claims of his rumoured affair with Kim Novak after a picture of them on a weeknight in Romanoff’s appeared in Hollywood Magazine.

Neither LeBlanc nor Bradner can risk another scandal to derail the biggest production of their careers and the biggest box office release of the winter season, not to mention the filming of the largest sea battle ever to be put on film during a state-wide water crisis. Production will wrap in the fall and the film is set for a nationwide release in theatres next year.

January 28thth, 1958 The surrounding tables were engrossed as the waiter arrived to clean yet another man-made spill. He sparred with his guest in a prolonged fist fight of polite negotiation in an attempt to make room for the next wine 9

glass while he searched the broken shards for a sign of the corkscrew. They had already set the tone of uneasy tolerance for further outbursts and they looked to his counterpart for a sign of succour. LeBlanc only shook his head in annoyance, a familiar response to the vainglory of his co-star since their time as detectives in 77 Sunset Strip back in the day of Howard’s singing career.

“Is everyone afraid of the Committee now?”

LeBlanc sat at the head of the table but they were all in the presence of Howard Bradner. Helen had yet to pay the debt for their night together in The Plaza on New Year’s Eve and they all risked humiliation at the hands of a drunk, even at a reserved table in the Chateau Marmont. Someone was always a casualty at social events and it was usually her or the many women who were brought along to dinner after the acclaim of Manhattan Bullet. Walter had fetished gold hair since the air blew under Marilyn’s dress on Lexington Avenue five years ago and sitting across from her was his date for the night, another blonde trying to Monroe her way into his next picture. She fed off any scraps that came her way but Helen was a hostage while she stayed married to the man sitting beside her. They had celebrated their first year anniversary on Wednesday.

“He is just another anti-Semite.”

“He’s a Nazi.”

“Worse,” said Howard, “he’s a journalist.”

Much had been made of her husband’s connection to the developing story in the papers. “The Writer Situation,” a term coined by George Rockwell in a recent publication of The American Mercury had frayed Walter’s relationship with financiers and helped spread the lie that he had a blacklisted writer working for him somewhere in the Chateau. Rockwell stood alone and the Hollywood Blacklist was as good as dead but the news was yet to be broadcast to the rest of Sunset Boulevard.

“We’ll take him to the Courthouse.”

10

It was a gentle reminder that anyone who had fucked Walter Merhoff in the past was dead and buried, carving out roles in B-movie horrors or selling toothpaste on trailer park billboards. It wasn’t Rockwell’s founding of the National Committee to Free America from Jewish Domination that worried the short, bearded New Yorker. It was his own rumoured connection to the Waldorf-Astoria that made him speak in hushed expletives at dinner parties, or not attend them at all. That was eleven years ago and not many thought him a Communist and no one really cared, except for George Rockwell. This was ’58, not post-war America.

“And before anyone asks, it’s not me with the mystery man in the bungalow. Whoever he is he better be writing the next masterpiece ‘cus all I know is it ain’t Biberman and I’m paying the bastard the same I paid Maltz for a first draft of The Robe. For all your fucking sakes, it better not be Dalton. That shmuck screwed me and fled to Mexico. Now throw them a bone before someone calls another private investigator.”

“It’s about Julius Caesar?”

“Augustus.”

“Who?” “Why don’t you make it a comedy?”

“Je déteste la comédie.”

“Slapstick sells, gentlemen,” said Walter. “We did The Mummy with Lou Costello.”

Jean-Luc shot a grave look at Walter and then the rest of the table studied the pair. Hollywood was eagerly awaiting its next murder after a gang shooting happened only seven blocks from Sunset Strip and no one at the table wanted to attach themselves publicly until Walter and Jean-Luc made their decision. He had been connected to a member of the Luchiano crime family in an Atlanta editorial on New Year’s Day but he

11

said his affiliation with the mafia was just good research and the press had let sleeping dogs until Rockwell’s publication. Her move with Jean-Luc to his family estate on the island of Île de Ré on the west coast of France wasn’t just their idea of an escape from Hollywood. It was a fresh start. She would keep her agent in New York while he’d prepare his passion project, Les fantômes, about resistance fighters on the run from an SS Panzer division in the countryside outside Paris on the eve of the Normandy invasion.

She was waiting for him to give them the news. No one liked the idea of following Walter and Howard down the rabbit hole, but the feeling of disappointment was palpable. As executive producer, Howard would finally have the control he craved but all that stood in his way was the director, or lack thereof. After Manhattan, he wanted Jean-Luc above anyone else despite their differences. The picture hung in the balance, but no scandal seemed as pertinent as the Writer Situation, even after the decades-long retreat of the Red Menace. Not even the murders fresh from down the street so close to Hollywood royalty.

“We’ll get Kazan,” Walter joked. “He’ll do anything nowadays.”

A voice at a nearby table drowned out all the tinkles of knives against glass. It was the heavy, excitable droll of a man too familiar to deny attention. His interruption was delicate enough to let him have his table, but it was his round, giant presence that gave him the room. The black hat hanging on the chair confirmed who he was and he fixed the cigar in his mouth, giving him time to formulate his argument. He had been quietly serenading Diane Varsi up until now, who he had under his other arm.

“So I told them, I’m not a communist. I’m a progressive.”

“Who?” “The FBI, who else? Then they asked me, what is a communist? Well, I guess it means everything you make goes to the government. So I say, I’m 86% communist, the rest is capitalist. So they ask me, can we bug your telephone? I tell them, take the telephone. I’ll testify at the committee as long as you give it back to me when it’s over. That way, you’ll get your list of collaborators and I get my holiday.”

12

The table corroborated in a round of guffaw and the others in the vicinity joined in. He waited for the rest of the room to loosen their attention, and then he spoke quietly enough for only the few to hear.

“This isn’t France, gentlemen - you have to be your own producer in this town.” His fists seized and banged the table and then he turned around to their direction. “To hell with them, Walter. Do the damn picture.”

The silence that followed reeked of both victory and defeat, depending on where you were sitting.

The blonde murmured in Walter’s ear but he was too busy shaking his head at Howard who looked restless and ready for a revealing tirade of their plans to a room full of paranoid spooks dressed for the occasion.

They waited for Orson and Diane to leave and then they all dispersed. Jean-Luc walked quickly for a man of his height and Helen always struggled to keep up with him, even though she was slightly taller. The Singer Convertible was brought to the door and then the air was blowing through her scarlet hair as they sped down the Sunset Strip. The silence was palpable, but the speed even more so. They manoeuvred through late night traffic as he muttered in quiet French and rubbed his temple until the smoke went out.

She lit him another and then took out the bulk of freshly printed paper from the glove box as they came to a stop on Doheny Drive: I, AUGUSTUS Written by Ralph Redondo.

Second Draft, December 13th 1957.

He saw it and cursed. “Je ne suis pas russe.”

She grinned. “Jean, no one gives a shit about communism.”

“Mais…”

“But what?”

13

“C’est une grande opportunité.”

He drove through the red light and complained about the opening scene of Touch of Evil and its similarities to the robbery in Manhattan Bullet until they reached the front gate in Beverly Hills. He stormed into the house shouting about how tired he was of the Americans stealing everything, but she couldn’t understand what his problem was. It was only one scene of a film yet to be released and around the time of making Bullet Welles had been his idol. Jean had played the Citizen Kane soundtrack to her on their first night together and he had used Rosebud as titillation in bed. Now the once great man cast a shadow and whether he had borrowed from Bullet or not, they were moving to France in the spring.

June 24th, 1963 Her hair is sepia to his silver and her sharp cheekbones stare back at him, unmoved. All she sees is the dust and grime of his habitat and he is starting to resent her, but it fades into the confusion of the case. Another file slams on the desk but the clues remain hidden behind stratums of detail, and yet they persist on trivialising tacenda in the zephyr of the subdued street light. Smoke bellows from his pipe and the final turn of the page creates a scioptic against all roomly reflection, and the dust never settles.

“You keep saying it was a suicide,” says Helen.

“He bankrupted himself and the studio making a big budget disaster.”

She shook her head. “But we didn’t run out of money.”

“Then who was paying for it?”

“The autopsy report said he had bruises, cigarette burns and a broken arm.”

“Answer the question.”

14

“My husband.”

“Ex-husband.” He moves the cinema tickets away from the corner of the desk as he picks up the case file marked ‘Pellegrin Homicide.’ She sees the tickets and reclines into her seat and he doesn’t detect any sign of sedated passion. He falls into a coughing fit from chronic tabacosis and instead squeezes out the question to which he already knows the answer.

“When did you file for divorce?”

Helen evades by crossing one leg over the other. It is too dark in the room to pressure her into an answer. The only light is that of the desk lamp that illuminates one side of her face and a copy of the divorce papers in front of him, dated September 14th. His fingers move through casting sheets, talent release forms and a budget with highlights of certain quantities next to lighting, water, animal control and a bank account with a New York County address. Beside ‘Talent’ is a sum for 2.3 million dollars, but it is crossed out and 4 million is written in its place. The money doesn’t add up, but it could only have come from one place once the studio ran out of cash.

“This is New York money.”

She doesn’t move, but he can see a slight nod. He doesn’t know if it’s out of fear or something else, but she gives him nothing except an uneasy silence. She cuts a frustrated figure and he treads carefully.

“Aren’t you here to get the people responsible?”

“Yes.” “Where did he get the money after the studio’s bank account dried up?”

“Brooklyn.”

He sits forward and loosens the pile until it is arranged into something less chaotic and begins by picking out the file on Gerald Harris.

15

“On September 16th Jean-Luc Pellegrin was found dead with Cynthia Randolph along with casings of .38 Smith & Wesson Special rounds and the cylinder of an Astra 680 short barrel. They were both stabbed repeatedly, five of which were in his groin area and six in her back after she was raped. The television was still on when the bodies were discovered by Gerry Harris. He had one previous criminal conviction - assault and battery on a man ten years prior. The papers said he was jealous and that in order to have his way with Mrs. Randolph, he first had to neutralize the threat but he didn’t expect them to put up such a fight. That was the prosecutor’ story and he was dosed in San Quentin a year later so who gives a shit.”

She shook her head with a cold conviction and he picked out the file on R. R. “One of the early exposés on the affair claimed Mr. Randolph had a great temper and tried to assault Jean in the parking lot of Coconut Grove late one night. They were newly married but he wanted to have another shot at being a screenwriter before they started a family. He got hired for some touch up jobs for production companies all over town, but has no official credits to speak of. He introduced Mrs. Randolph to your husband on the studio lot and after that, their marriage started to unravel. She filed for divorce but he never signed the papers and he gave up the Billy Wilder dream after the murders and took a job at a firm in Manhattan.”

“What about David Eagler?”

“If he was going to kill anyone it would be Harris.”

“He owned guns.”

He nodded. “An array of pistols including an Astra 680, two assault rifles, a sawn-off shotgun and some Confederate memorabilia. The guns were all licensed in his name, he had no criminal history and no charges were filed.”

She gets up and goes to the window as if spotting an unidentified flying object. He thinks he can 16

remember her mumble something as he wheels around on his seat. She has locked eyes with what is left of Elizabeth Taylor across the street. It is 9.41pm and Donovan’s Reef is about to begin.

“A revolver is a woman’s weapon.”

She looks at him properly for the first time, her visage broken by the violent streaks of rain starting to fall outside.

“Please explain.”

“The Astra 680 only holds six rounds and the killer had to improvise. To finish the job he used the knife the victim had just used to cut up a peach on the cutting board. It’s hard to say if he took any pleasure in it, but if he was willing to stalk his prey and kill two people on the same night he may have had a violent past or he was hanging around with the wrong people. Whether it was a hatchet job by an errand boy or just your typical crime of passion, he didn’t get the gun from any store which would explain the missing serial number.”

He ushered her over and he pointed his finger at the names on the bottom of the page from an open file. “These are copies of the intellectual property rights for the picture signed by the executive producers along with non-completion guarantees. There are over fifty documents with their signature on documents with different shareholders and companies with an option to cash out and shut the production down in the event of financial mismanagement. That’s what happened in the end but one signature doesn’t match with any of the other documents.”

“It’s a forgery?”

He nods. “And Walter Merhoff also died on September 16th.”

For an imperishable moment, their faces are metres apart.

“But the killer couldn’t be in two places at once.”

17

“No.” She pulls away before he can inhale more of her perfume and she checks the time on her shining Omega. She is mumbling again. It’s getting late, he thinks she says and then she mutters something about a theatre audition. The meeting is adjourned and they can always catch another show of Donovan’s Reef next week. If it plays as long as Cleopatra which is dominating the box office, then they have plenty of time. They can even go to see that if she can bear the similarities to her dead husband’s story. He’s already seen it twice but it wouldn’t bother him much to watch it again in the company of Helen O’Neill.

“You’ll call me if you learn anything?”

He scrambled for a pen under the scattered pages. “What’s the number?”

“You’ll find it on the cast sheet.”

“You’ve kept the same phone?”

She turns to him with a twinkle in her eye and moves to the door with a faint levity. He memorizes the sound of her footstep as she moves into the hallway and down into the street guided by the cover of the protruding signs selling peep shows and cheap hotel rooms as rain falls around her. Then she disappears into the towering shadow of the Hotel.

What do you expect me to find?

He opens an unmarked case file and his attention returns to the bedlam in front of him. Dust lingers in the lamplight as his hands sift through crime scene photos, police records and unsent correspondences.

Helen’s notebook is littered with dated entries and there is a cast photo dated August 2 nd on a day out in Aspen Springs. Everyone is smiling except for Pellegrin lighting a cigar and LeBlanc squinting in the sunlight.

He reclines into the blue lustre of the night rain and picks apart the crime scene. He rubs the dry 18

bloodstain his own finger left behind on the police record. It’s attached to a picture of the knife still lodged into the victim’s lower abdomen along with two bullet holes, one in each breast. Pellegrin is face down in damp sheets with a clear stab wound to the back of his skull and lower neck and judging by the untidy severs on his hands he put up a struggle. There is a box of .38 Smith & Wesson stored in the top drawer under his wife’s underwear with six missing rounds. Jean-Luc Pellegrin might have been shot with his own firearm.

September 15th, 1959 The rustic corridor ended with a half-opened fire escape and she listened to the sounds of gamblers. Car horns and angry complaints bled into the apartment block and the stench of old sulphur in the air masked her momentary fear of the pair of footsteps trudging up the stairwell. They stopped at the door and the woman shuffled for the key to let him inside. They hadn’t said a word to each other since he agreed to her services in the street.

Helen saw the shine of the firearm as Jean-Luc unlocked the chain. He checked her surroundings and pulled her inside. “Tais-toi,” he said when she tried to speak, pointing to the telephone on the floor. Her heels cracked over broken glass as she crossed the room. The table set was upturned along with the bed sheets and wires were torn out of the rotting wallpaper. She heard the leaky drip behind the bathroom door left ajar and as time passed she listened to the laughter and the fucking on the sixth floor while she lay on the bed, wary of its aroma.

Jean’s shirt was entangled and he was drenched in the shadow of a half-pulled curtain. He kept a tight grip on the handgun with broken sips of Scotch until the phone started to jingle. She sat up on the bed but he got to his feet and ordered her not to move. He picked it up and she searched for a sign of passing or relief in the bags under his eyes. He hung up and said a word so hushed that she couldn’t hear.

19

She asked him again who it was.

“Walter,” he said. “He told me… Howard...”

He stood at the other side of the bed and she could feel his eyes against her back waiting for her to react, but she stared into the crack of the wall. It was a gateway into another ordinary life but the movement on the other side had ceased. They had peeked into 603 every day since they had booked the room on their return from Eureka Valley but it had been four days since they had seen the old man. The sink was full and the kettle hadn’t been used in a week and the light had been left on. He lived alone, listened to the racehorses, ordered takeaways and kept holy on the Sabbath. Jean had joked that he probably died in his sleep and that his body was still in the bedroom. She didn’t argue otherwise.

“You already know,” he said. She had met Howard in Pasadena while Jean spent the afternoon with his whore, whoever she was. An audition hadn’t gone well and he had spent most of their time together ranting about Antony Perkins doing a better job, but he had a heist film lined up with Henry Hathaway and it was set in the south of France. He told her he was going to be away for a while and that he had signed his piece of the rights to I, Augustus over to the Luchiano crime family and it was time for Jean to do the same.

She nodded her head. “Oui, mon choi.” Her eyes moved to the newspaper he threw on the floor in front of her: TEN MILLION DOLLAR DISASTER Water Permits Denied as Problems Plague Merhoff Production “Je sais aussi,” he said. They could hear the sound of slapping flesh through the wall as the grip of Jean’s hand lifted Helen’s hair and slapped her across the cheekbone. She pushed him away and screamed into the stained cover of the pillow. He was already pacing and muttering under his breath with the revolver arched over his head.

20

“I want a divorce.”

It was as if he hadn’t heard her until she inhaled a choke full of dust and started to cough to the beat of the bed hinge scraping in the next room. Jean started to bang on the wall and shout with a hoarse wail that made her picture him drowning in Lake Piru where they had spent their honeymoon. She watched him count the bullets in the chamber and slide to the floor, staring into his own abyss. She slid across the carpet and cut the palm of her hand on a broken piece of glass but his eyes stayed on the tip of the barrel as if contemplating the opportunity before she got too close.

“C’est fini mon amour,” she said. The noise of the other bed had stopped, but they heard sirens outside and decided to listen to the commotion in the street. A prostitute argued with a client and in the other room the gamblers raised their voices. Then they watched the shadow move against the light in the corridor. A pair of feet lingered in the doorway and they could hear the stranger’s slow breath. Then it moved away and Helen pulled Jean’s head to her own. He was falling into a light sleep but she stayed awake, staring at the flickering light bulb and surveying the room they had spent every day since the production had been put on hold. Damp lingered in every corner and old urine emanated from the bathroom and copies of the screenplay lay scattered on the floor and drenched in old whiskey.

She flicked through the pages of the nearest stack as they started to stick. ‘Jean-Luc Pellegrin’ had replaced ‘R. R.’ on the cover page and it was only the Battle of Actium scene that was yet to be crossed out with a large X like the other pages. Most of her lines had been changed or taken out and it was unrecognisable from the early drafts. She had kept a copy of it on set but had never brought it to Jean’s attention. He and Howard were in disagreement almost every day over lines, camera placement and costume choices and she never had the opportunity to voice her creative concerns.

He jolted awake and raised the gun to the door. They heard the movement of heavy boots on the stairwell but she couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. The gamblers had quietened down and there was only the sound of the footsteps. Jean gave her head a gentle push and started to crawl. Then the feet 21

appeared under the door. Jean took a step back and aimed down the rear sight. On the sound of the hammer click, the feet retreated again.

“Just give them what they want.”

He joined her on the bed.

“Two years of our lives for nothing! Rien.”

“You still have a film.”

Jean stood up and became animated. “It is the rise of Augustus and the defeat of Marc Antony. Sans cette scène il n'y a pas de film.”

“And Cleopatra?”

“Quel?”

She shook her head. “Rien.” He lay down next to her and she caressed the gun from his hand as he kissed her neckline. She unbuttoned the rags of his shirt and he reached under her dress, ripping fragments from her De Givenchy. His tongue rolled against hers and he buried his face into her chest. She pulled his head close and pushed the gun into the subterfuge of the bed sheet littered in cigarette burns. He was pulling at her underwear while he bit at her neck and she pulled up the dress to her waist. She sat over him and he uttered a French obscenity and they moved against the shade of the lamp light until the eyes of other lovers stared back at them, and then they stopped. He sat upright and wiped the stray ash from his sleeve and he started to organize the room in the way it was before she had left for Pasadena. “…cannonballs litter the skies…”

The typewriter sprung into gear as daylight bled into Figueroa. She saw the Theatre on the corner showing a matinee of It Started With a Kiss and she remembered her final meeting with Phil Berg. She had turned down the role of Maggie Fitzpatrick to play a famous queen alongside James Mason with the 22

promise of an Egyptian style premiere at the Chinese Theatre. “…Octavian is knocked from his feet…”

Helen’s character found herself in a tug of war between the warring gangs for most of Manhattan Bullet but ultimately her arc remained unresolved. She may have been treated indifferently by the Irish mob, but she wasn’t treated terribly like other women in their establishment and she was financially secure in her job at the restaurant in Five Points. According to George Rockwell, it would take more than a swooning Frenchman to make her betray her Irish ancestry and play for the Italian side, but in the end it all got lost in the violence.

23

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: SAEED SALIMI BABAMIRI & JAMAL FATHI

Jamal fathi: Kurdish poet and social writer. His social works are published in newspapers.

Saeed Salimi Babamiri: Kurdish translator and poet. His published books in Iran are Kurdish translations of “Half an Apple” and “The Mouse's Wedding” a play and a story in verse, both for children. He has many other translations waiting to be published. His major long translation from Kurdish into English verse is “Mam and Zeen” by Ahmad Xanee. It is known as “Kurdish Romeo and Juliet” which is ready to be published.

24

My Sad Evening I wish I could find my sad evening in which I grew, And my last dreams… in the arms of it… could come true.

Or our time would give birth to a spring so deep, In which I could drown my thirst and keep.

In the eyes of life that we hardly cope… …are shaking hard, two drops of hope!!

One of them avalanches, down in the bottom of history, And the other goes up, at the end of our future tree.

My dark days began when scissors of my memories, Started to cut my life’s length in diaries.

And like a lifeless scarecrow, I just viewed that hollow show.

Days, months, and years came, But it did never ever came.

At the end, it, in a season full of thunder and snow, Or in yellow arms of autumn, its baby leaves did go.

25

When the postman handed me my mail, My eyesight was kept in darkness jail.

Between coming and not coming of my love and fate, In my eyes, floaters were coming to my poor wait.

I did not still knew that it came or not!

Me and my fate in chain and knot.

But I know well, That life collapsed…

Into the darkness of hell!

Oh! Now from between my life and hell, A poem grows into my pen, I feel it well.

Although I could not have any autumn…

To put my hands in the hands of peace for a while, Or a spring, to put my hands in the green hands of a smile.

Poem by: Jamal Fathi (Kocher) Translated by: Saeeed Salimi Babamiri

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EDITOR’S NOTE 2021 has been a rough year with a number of difficulties and changes which we are still getting used to some of these range from medication changes and new side effects attached to that. The latest Windows Update led to some issues and I ended up having to roll back to a previous setting and reinstall a lot of software including the tools I use to produce each issue. This issue features a range of poetry and prose and represents a great range of voices from around the world and we hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we did. Hopefully 2022 will be a much stronger year for everyone and here’s to the New Year.

Happy reading, good health, and keep creating, Amos Greig (Editor)

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LAPWING PUBLICATIONS ‘IN A CHANGED WORLD’ Over the past number of years technology has transformed poetry publishing: shop closures due to increasing operational costs has had an impact, to put it mildly, shops are reluctant to take ‘slow moving’ genre such as poetry and play-scripts among other minority interest genre.

The figures given a few years ago were: we had 5000 bookshops in the UK-Ireland and at the time of the research that number had dropped to 900 and falling: there was a period when bookshops had the highest rate of ‘High Street’ shop closures.

Lapwing, being a not-for-profit poetry publisher has likewise had to adjust to the new regime.

We had a Google-Books presence until that entity ended its ‘open door’ policy in favour of becoming a publisher itself. During that time with Google, Lapwing attracted hundreds of thousands of sample page ‘hits’.

Amazon also has changed the ‘game’ with its own policies and strategies for publishers and authors.

There are no doubt other on-line factors over which we have no control.

Poetry publishers can also fall foul of ‘on consignment’ practice, which means we supply a seller but don’t get paid until books have been sold and we can expect unsold books to be returned, thus ‘remaindered’ and maybe not sellable, years can pass!

Distributors can also seek as much as 51% of cover-price IF. They choose to handle a poetry book at all, shops too can require say 35% of the cover price, which is ok given floor space can be thousands of £0000s per square foot per annul. In terms of ‘hidden’ costs: preparing a work for publication can cost a few thousand UK £-stg. Lapwing does it as part of our service to our authors.

It has been a well-known fact that many poets will sell more of their own work than the bookshops, Peter Finch of the Welsh Academia noted fact that over forty years ago and Lapwing poets have done so for years.

Due to cost factors Lapwing cannot offered authors ‘complimentary’ copies.

What we do offer is to supply authors with copies at cost price.

We hold very few copies in the knowledge that requests for hard copies are rarely received.

Another important element is our Lapwing Legacy Library which holds all our retained titles since 1988 in PDF at £4.00 per title: the format being ‘front cover page - full content pages - back cover page’.

This format is printable as single pages: either the whole book or a favourite page.

I thank Adam Rudden for the great work he has done over the years creating and managing this web-site.

Thanks also to our authors from ‘home’ and around the world for entrusting Lapwing with their valuable contributions to civilisation.

If you wish to seek publication please send you submission in MW Word docx format.

LAPWING PUBLICATIONS

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POETRY TITLES 2021 All titles are £10.00 stg. plus postage from the authors via their email address.

PDF versions are available from Lapwing at £4.00 a copy, they are printable for private, review and educational purposes.

9781838439804_Halperin Richard W. DALLOWAY IN WISCONSIN Mr.Halperin lives in Paris France Email: halperin8@wanadoo.fr 9781838439811_Halperin Richard W. SUMMER NIGHT 1948 9781838439859_Halperin Richard W. GIRL IN THE RED CAPE 9781838439828_Lennon Finbar NOW Mr Lennon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: lennonfinbar@hotmail.com 9781838439835_Dillon Paul T WHISPER Mr Dillon lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: ptjdillon@gmail.com 9781838439842_ Brooks Richard WOOD FOR THE TREES Mr Brooks lives in England UK Email:richard.brooks3@btinternet.com 9781838439866_Garvey Alan IN THE WAKE OF HER LIGHT 9781838439873_McManus Kevin THE HAWTHORN TREE Mr McManus lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: kevinmcmanus1@hotmail.com 9781838439880_Dwan Berni ONLY LOOKIN’ Berni Dwan lives in the Republic of Ireland Email: bernidwan@gmail.com 9781838439897_Murbach Esther VIEW ASKEW Esther Murbach lives in Switzerland though she also spends time in Galway Email: esther.murbach@gmx.ch 9781916345751_McGrath Niall SHED Mr McGrath lives in County Antrim Northern Ireland, UK Email: mcgrath.niall@hotmail.com 9781916345775_Somerville-Large GILLIAN LAZY BEDS 9781916345782_Gohorry & Lane COVENTRY CRUCIBLE Mr Lane lives in England-UK and due to the recent death of Mr Gohorry Mr Lane will be the contact for this publication: Email: johnslane@btinternet.com

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