Eildon Tree 28 by Live Borders

THE EILDON TREE

SUMMER/ AUTUMN 2016 ISSUE 28

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New writing from the Scottish Borders & beyond

www.liveborders.org.uk

Registration No SC243577 | Regist ered Chari ty No SCO342 27

CONTENTS GUIDELINES 3

Attenborough – Jane Pearn

EDITORIAL 4

Doctor Morgan will see you now! – Kevin O’Dowd 14

POETRY

Losing face – Kriss Nichol

Spring fling – Janet Sutton

Maya – Russet J. Ashby

At the Graves of Joyce and Canetti –

Brian Gourley

Border Reflections – Ian Richardson

But and Pen – Nigel Stuart

Casting for Sea Trout – Noel King

David Hume – Jock Stein

Raghu B. Shukla

Potential – Norma Powers

The big idea – J.U. Tough

Rock – Lee Garratt

The Border Tree – Andrew Thomson

Summer in Winter 1916 – Norma Brown

The fires are out – David McVey

The Beta Chart – Tracy Patrick

The Gap – Thomas Clark

The grass is always… - Ian McFadyen

The horse in the park – Lee Garratt

The Killin Times – Hamish Scott

The Mauricewood Devils – Dorothy Alexander

Tint – Richie McCaffery

The mermaid tattoo – Valerie Lees

To the Hare in a March field – Brian Gourley

The shepherd – Barrie McEwan

Vita’s Sissinghurst – Pim Claridge

What pretty isn’t – Douglas Bruton 43

A poem for 29 February 2016 – Kathleen Mansfield

No afternoon tea today, thank you – Shirley Muir

Occasional reflections (non fiction) –

SCHOOLS 8

SHORT STORIES

An unexpected journey – Emma Martin

BEST KEPT SECRET 45

A memory of the Coventry blitz, November 14 1940 – Ronnie Price

A sharp scratch then darkness – Jane Pearn

Blue eyes – Sean Fleet

BOOK REVIEWS 48 THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS 56 BIOGRAPHIES 60

CONTENTS 2

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

GUIDELINES WHERE TO FIND YOUR FREE COPY OF THE EILDON TREE

The Editorial Team and the Arts & Creativity team, Live Borders thanks all venues and outlets for their support in promoting The Eildon Tree.

appeared in The Eildon Tree previously, please refrain from submitting further work until at least 2 issues have passed since your work was printed.

THE PROCESS

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING WORK TO EILDON TREE

• Your work will be sent to the Editors for consideration. Acceptance and inclusion in the magazine is at their discretion. • You will be notified when a decision has been made. Please be patient, we receive many submissions. • If your submission is accepted for publication you will be sent a copy of the work to proof-read before print. • All contributors will receive a copy of the magazine. • If your submission is not accepted on this occasion, please do not be deterred from submitting alternative work in the future.

Poems, short stories and non-fiction articles of local and national literary interest, as well as short novel extracts, are all welcome for consideration.

Publishers and authors may submit publications for review. We do endeavour to review as many books as possible but cannot guarantee inclusion in the magazine. Please note we are unable to return any review publications.

Live Borders Libraries Borders College Scottish Borders Council High Schools u3a Groups WASPS Artist Studios, Selkirk Forest Bookstore, Selkirk Masons Bookstore, Melrose Main Street Trading Company, St Boswells Langlee Complex, Galashiels Heart Of Hawick, Tower Mill Damascus Drum, Hawick

Winter/Spring 2017 submissions of new writing are invited for inclusion in the next issue of Eildon Tree. The Submissions Deadline is 30th November 2016.

• A maximum of 4 poems, stories or articles up to 3,000 words. • Electronic format: Arial pt 12, single line spacing, unjustified margin. • Book titles and quotes should be italicised, but without speech and quotation marks, unless specified in the text quoted. • Include a brief biography, maximum 40 words. • Please do not resubmit work which has been seen previously by the Editors. • For an informal chat please contact the Arts & Creativity team Tel: 01750 726400 • Teachers submitting work on behalf of pupils should contact the Arts & Creativity team for further guidance.

Publications Submitted for Review

The Editors and the Arts & Creativity team, Live Borders, are not responsible for the individual views and opinions expressed by reviewers and contributors. The Eildon Tree is available from all Live Borders Libraries and a wide range of local outlets throughout the Scottish Borders. The Eildon Tree can also be downloaded: www.liveborders.org.uk The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect Live Borders policy or practice in the arts.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK

By post: The Eildon Tree, Arts & Creativity team, St Mary’s Mill, Selkirk, TD7 5EW By email: eildontree@liveborders1.org.uk (Please note: All work should be sent to the Arts & Creativity team and not to individual Editors)

REPUBLISHING THE SAME AUTHOR

We publish work by both emerging and established writers and strive to support the work of professional and aspiring writers. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, it is our policy not to publish work by the same contributor in consecutive issues to help make way for new writers. If your work has

CAROL NORRIS

SARA CLARK

IONA MCGREGOR

JULIAN COLTON

EDITORIAL TEAM Carol Norris, Sara Clark, Julian Colton, Iona McGregor

PUBLISHING TEAM Lisa Denham and Joy Dunsmore

GRAPHIC DESIGN Graphic Design, Live Borders Cover poem: Rhymer’s Stone by Julian Colton

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

WELCOME

WELCOME TO THE EILDON TREE 28. Spring is a time of new growth and new beginnings. On 1st April 2016 The Eildon Tree and SBC Arts Development was transplanted to new ground under the aegis of Live Borders – a new integrated Trust delivering sport, culture and leisure services on behalf of Scottish Borders Council. The Eildon Tree Editors are delighted to welcome back Arts Manager Lisa Denham to the ET team and would also like to thank Susan Garnsworthy for her support and advice over the past year. We look forward to working with the Live Borders Arts Team under the new Trust, to meet the aspirations and interests of the magazine’s existing and future contributors and readers. It is hoped there will be fresh opportunities to build on the magazine’s excellent track record of achievement gained over the past 18 years and to enhance The Eildon Tree’s reputation for showcasing contemporary literature of quality and creativity. It was with great sadness that we learned that our friend, colleague and champion of contemporary literature and performing arts, Iain MacAulay, had passed away in April after a battle with cancer borne with bravery and dignity. We would like to dedicate this edition of The Eildon Tree to him as a tribute to everything Iain did in his role as Arts Development Officer to nurture and promote the publication of quality writing and development of major literary events and activities in the Scottish Borders. Iain understood that what really matters to The Eildon Tree’s growing constituency of writers, editors and readers is that the magazine provides an exemplar publication for literature

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

from Scottish Borders and beyond and an uplifting even life-changing experience when writers see their unique talents celebrated on the printed page for the first time. The Eildon Tree is clearly thriving, as witnessed by the high quality readings at the launch in February of ET Edition 27. The recent submission windows have also seen an incredibly high standard and exceptional volume of work coming in. This, of course, means even harder choices for the Editors to make when selecting work. For those who didn’t make the final cut for inclusion in Edition 28, we would encourage you to exercise patience and persistence. More experienced writers will know fully the value of possessing such virtues. They will also be aware that work of a good standard might not be included purely due to the constraints of space and the need to provide new writers the opportunity to appear in the magazine, particularly local writers. For widely published or emerging writers from the Scottish Borders and further afield, perseverance and attention to detail are the keys to success. Keep sending in your submissions. We love reading them. Julian Colton Carol Norris MBE. Iona McGregor Sara Clark The Eildon Tree Editors.

POETRY AT THE GRAVES OF JOYCE AND CANETTI

BUT AND PEN

Take the nr6 tram right to the oak-and-pine fronded end; Here. End station. Get out. Depart this life. Zephyrs confrère before the clanking metal gate as you pass through; the stooping groundsman will throw a heavenward glance and signal with the hand. Ascend. Turn left. Father, Son & Holy Ghost. Canetti’s there. A grey flourish against black stone. Long-stemmed yellow rose. At swim. Like a mermaid in a black sea. The poppies wither and the laurel from last year’s funeral wreath has curled and wrinkled in the August heat Jim your man sits like a bow drawing across a fiddle; his sightless glasses cast a nonchalant glance. You can’t decide who’s the greater of two masters, can’t decide if it’s time to break into spontaneous elegy: it’s an impromptu auto-da-fé, the toss of a coin, an exchange over a glass in the Odeon, an agonised confessional in a blue and white tram, a slight of conjuring, a Dadaist toss-up too far. Seriously. They’re boho itinerants, vagabonds, Travellers towards the life eternal. Halt. That reminds you. The tram back To the gold of history takes twenty minutes In a city that’s never stopped for life or war.

(On seeing a black and white film of Hugh MacDiarmid, watched by Valda, writing poetry by the fireside of their Border cottage.)

Brian Gourley

BORDER REFLECTIONS We travel, lost in snow, on the twenty first of December until our head lights found a road sign Failte gu Alba. At the dividing line we had to stop for a moment. There was no one there to check our papers. Mum said we’re nearly there, you’ll run on the same snow on the other side just as white and just as muddy. I stood in my own country one leg on either side at the border line At the border one leg on either side I stood in my own country just as white and just as muddy on the same snow on the other side. Mum said we’re nearly there, you’ll run. There was no one there to check our papers. At the dividing line we had to stop for a moment until our head lights found a road sign Failte gu Alba. We travel, lost in snow, on the twenty first of December. Ian Richardson

Through pipe and peat smoke, I could see his hands, like tafelmusik, flutter out an air as formal, yet relaxed, as one who stands attentive to a winter’s quartet, where the weaving lines may yet engage, that she whose constancy, first hidden in the shade of scratchy monochrome, evaded me. His Parker Sonnet stabbing like a blade, self-driven and, as far as could be seen, unhesitant, penned insolent quatrains, as heated as the glowing turves. Yet clean as granite cliffs, someone half-seen, took pains for his hearthstone, its gritty pillars sheer; fire-shadows lapped that she who hid his fear. Nigel Stuart

CASTING FOR SEA TROUT My father made sure his footing was secure, bent under the wind and cast as far as he could. I never remember him catching anything, definitely nothing we could cook, but he enjoyed the trying. I see him all at once – as a young man, just a man, and an old man. He fished here the day Armstrong landed on the moon. He fished here the day mother went into labour with me – they had to send someone to catch him that day. He fished here today where we found him; the tide gone out, his left palm stuck on the rod handle, his right fingers reeling, entangled in the fishing wire. Noel King

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POETRY DAVID HUME

ROCK

His home swallowed by the makeover of St Andrew Square, Davy Hume has taken refuge on a High St plinth, his wavy hair in green tinged bronze: great excoriator of religious rot, bare-chested, as befits a philosopher determined to pare the apples of conventional thought down to the core, and spit the pips at prejudice.

I thought myself hard like stone. When storms came, I would stand, unmoved, as the rain poured and the wind howled around me. I thought myself tough like teak baked under a tropical sun. Termites would break their teeth gnawing then scurry off to find softer wood. I thought myself immense as the sea. Ships would flounder and sink in me, women’s hopes gasp and die.

Upon his knee he balances a stony reputation, labelled by some wag “a good book has no ending”, flagging up a dialogue still pending with more than natural theology.

I thought myself as aloof as the sky Gazing down at earthly troubles, the trials of insects. Jock Stein Then you told me you were leaving me, had found someone else, and the stone broke, the teak crumbled, the sea emptied, the sky fell.

POTENTIAL I am your uncalled- for conscience: the prod behind the elephant’s ear. Once you soared solitary„ eyes raking landscape; fine- tuning of wings, the pause, the focus, the stoop.... the claws the kill.

Lee Garratt

SUMMER IN WINTER 1916 He slept warm in his dream last night. A child in his grandfather’s garden listening to birds call and feeling earth rough hands grasp his fidgeting fingers, stilling them with love

But you flew too hard and fast into the window’s glare and left your dusty negative impressed there on domesticity’s unyielding glass. You became a starling hustling for a crust. I stoop for a peacock feather, an owl’s white down, and fail to gauge the subtle, sequinned glow of your sleek plumage. But when you join your flock, in soaring synchronicity, arching like Thai dancers’ wrists, my heart stops, then twists, to join your plunging flight.

Walking down the to the special place Grandpa’s hands tightened with pleasure as they reached the rose beds filled with colour perfume making their head’s spin The old man stopped by a new bush. The rose his grandfather had created with such love was perfect, the flowers heavy, bee laden The boy saw white petals streaked with pink, a centre of deep crimson ‘It has three colours Grandpa, three colours made here in your garden, in Flanders.’

Murmuration lost from sight... ...leaving a new image on my mind: superb, and finely etched, indelible, and re-defined. Norma Powers

Pinks oozed sweetness, and bleeding hearts nodding over the path as they walked, shivered with their passing footsteps bright marigolds shone in the hot sun

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

‘Smell the rose, smell it’s spicy fragrance.’

POETRY He bent to cup a bud in his fingers ‘Not the bud lad, not the bud. perfume comes as the flower starts to die.’ The screech of shellfire shattered his dream jolting him back to the black mud of battle coldness seeped, into his aching bones freezing his dream away

Depending on your hemisphere Listen for your inner narrator — do not be afraid to wake them up — After a while the cycle will become familiar Like a river draining and filling Or the tide, a steady matter of clockwork

Today as yesterday he would see three colours pooling blood puddled beneath white flesh, pink, ripped and torn three colours of Flanders

*Beta blockers

For a moment he could smell again his grandfather’s roses, the perfume strong as in his dream but heard too the whisper ‘Not the bud lad, not the bud!’ and was afraid.

The bridge at Kylestrome : we’re admiring as ever the elegant sweep of white concrete, tinged pink tonight by sunset-light streaming off its western loch, Chairn Bhain. (There are two lochs to the east , green mirrors, long, reflecting mountains, where the Atlantic comes to rest Glencoul of the great waterfall, and Gleann Dubh.) There’s a car in front (a rare thing in itself, up here this late) and suddenly it brakes, crawls forward. We can’t see past the curve, can’t think what the hold-up is…. Then it pulls away, and trotting towards us, on his own side of the road, is a red deer stag, a young one not quite the presence of a monarch of the glen, but lithe and nimble, chestnut brown – his first antlers, maybe, still bound in velvet like a soft toy. The big ruby eyes are wild with not quite panic. He’s aware but ignores us, stays focused on a point far past the southern shore. He doesn’t break his nervous trot, keeps purposeful, determined. We watch the rear view till he disappears. What enticed him from his wilderness of lochans on the north side to this lone adventure ? The wild blue yonder behind us, the fabulous green peaks of Sail Ghorm and Sail Gharbh? Did he see himself grazing the great ridge of Quinag? Who knows? But we wished him safe past the inn at Kylescu, where venison is on the menu. Ian McFadyen

Rose ‘Tricolore de Flandres’ was created in 1846 in Flanders Norma Brown

THE BETA CHART* This small white moon Will create an area of low pressure Winds can be breezy at first Expect an amount of holding onto lampposts It is advisable to carry an umbrella — It will help steady the nerves Don’t worry about the plodding clouds They may look like they’re sinking But there will always be an area of lightness Between them and the ground Breathe it in, think of sliced lemons and salt-washed air If you find the current is slow, or the body Sluggish, this is because you are at the centre Of the low. For others, there may be rain A neon light that blinks but doesn’t quite Go out. You may feel surrounded By men in heavy grey trench coats This is called the depression To escape, turn clockwise or anti-clockwise

Tracy Patrick

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS…

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

POETRY THE KILLIN TIMES

VITA’S SISSINGHURST

A chappin knock wis aince a soun A liked tae tent an meanin misst; nou siccan chappin micht as weel be dingin nails intil ma kist

For a moment I was struck, as if stumbling in on some perfectly rehearsed scene of how the whole business of family history works – a bribe of breath in exchange for bright myths. Richie McCaffery

Did she open her door each morning and dream upon her heaven with sunhine on her face, and was the grass, silkwashed in lines, fingered by the sun? And did the yews even then throw deep shadows over paving stones and bricks, and sprawling drifts of blue through white? and did the wallflowers, burn old red between box hedges, fragrant in summers slumbering noon and did the the silverplated birches, shine against a drift of distant Downs and marshmarigolds bend golden heads to meet their faces, water mirrored? And in the evening, did the sparrows scuffle in thick creepers on the wall below the open leaded window, as she leaned, thoughtful, at the sill, and dreamed upon her heaven? Pim Claridge

TO THE HARE IN A MARCH FIELD

A POEM FOR 29 FEBRUARY 2016

In the light of a half-morning, a hare caught me in the snare of a gaze iron-fisted to the extreme.

Builders and cats and their unhappy mix And hospital appointments creating emotional tics. Agendas and water fountains and waiting rooms with yesterday’s news And friendly, smiling, staff dispensing kindness to sooth the inescapable vibration of discomfort.

Hamish Scott

TINT Left alone for two minutes, I return to the room to find Theo colouring in an old black-and-white family photo – great grandparents now purple and green. What had been taken and sapped of blood into dour untruth was made garish fiction at the hands of a five year old descendant of those who coloured his eyes and hair.

You’d have called him a rebel, or perhaps an iconoclast. With only a metal gate standing between him

The “two-year” check; a leap of faith. Professionally palpating my exposed tenderness With words of reassurance and reference to my notes. Estrogen sensitivity 8. “That’s good.” I’ll take her sensitive word for it. Relief it’s done. Over. Back to the world of Reality.

And me, he stood up to take the measure of the air. He held the ring, Stood on hind legs; paws uplifted, pugilist, fighter, the better opponent by far;

A hiding cat fearful of noisy builders. Tension is a matter of degree.

He leapt as the sun rose. He’d make a kingdom Of a frost-scorched field. Brian Gourley

Accidents and police road blocks and hours to get home. Frustration about lost hours travelling, working, travelling. No thought for those whose cars entangled and entwined. Their fate put out of mind. Fate. Can we influence it? On this Leap Year Day. Kathleen Mansfield

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

SHORT STORIES A MEMORY OF THE COVENTRY BLITZ, NOVEMBER 14 1940 We stood amongst rubble on the pavement looking up at the ruins of our house. Most of it had gone with a five hundred kilo bomb; incendiaries had finished it off. Perversely, a small vase stood alone on a blackened chimney breast. My mother, suddenly looking older than her forty years, my six year old sister and me – a twelve year old schoolboy. “We’ve lost everything you know, but thank God we are alive”. My mother spoke quietly but there were tears in her eyes. Although she was much younger my sister probably felt her sadness more. For me the war, the bombing, was exciting. The main frustration waiting to be able to go into the RAF.

That morning was the culmination of ten nights of air raids, each lasting longer and being heavier. More shrapnel in the streets, larger lumps to boast about – “mine’s bigger than yours”. The shelters had become quite fun. A lot of different people we didn’t know. On the second night I saw this really pretty girl, about my age, with almost white blonde hair. I had to do my prep in the shelter because the raids were starting earlier and in November it got dark early. Latin and Ancient Greek to the cacophony of ack ack guns and the whistling of bombs. One night there was a lot of laughing and ribald comment as a stout lady removed her corset in a parody of striptease. Some of the strangers were rather jolly and sang songs like ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and ruder ones as the nights wore on. One called ‘Roll

Me Over on the Clover’. Sometimes I used to stand at the entrance to the shelter with the wardens, wearing my own steel helmet, an unusual Christmas present. We could see the gun flashes and hear the characteristic Dornier and Heinkel engine throb. “Looks like a bad one tonight” I would say, very grown up and brave. I may have been trying to impress the blonde girl whom I made contact with after a couple of clumsy attempts which I suspect she found amusing. Boys! Her name was Margaret Baker and lived in a nearby road. I discovered that she was at the same girls’ school as my cousin. Each night the bombs seemed to get closer. One night there was one very close and loud; there was a lot of dust. Everyone seemed to give a collective sighsigh when the next bomb fell much further away. After about the third night I took the opportunity to sit next to Margaret. She was very pretty with blue eyes and a sort of nice small nose. I noticed that she had long legs. I took the chance during a lull one night to kiss her cheek, and she let me hold her hand. On the last night, the November 14 blitz when our house went down, the raid lasted ten hours. That was the night when I whispered to her that she was very beautiful and she let me have a proper kiss. After that decisive night the raids stopped. It had been the climax of the blitz for us. Dad found a house to rent in another part of the city. I lost contact with Margaret which was sad. I later tried to contact her through my cousin Ellen. But is seems her family moved away from Coventry after the bombing.

People always seemed to be on the move… But at least I had the memory of telling her that night how beautiful she was and kissing her properly. As my mother, my sister Sylvia and I left the ruins of our home literally to begin a new life I did not realise what it meant. It did not at the time seem calamitous although mother’s deep sadness was manifest. I suppose the happy memories of my pre-war childhood were still implanted. Sunday afternoon picnics in our little car with mum anxious about the cows coming closer in the gated field. An air gun for my birthday and new chocolate bars called Milky Way. My new rugby kit when I got the scholarship to grammar school. Changing into summer uniform after Easter at my junior school with khaki shorts and striped elastic belt with a snake. A relatively modest life really, and I know now that my parents made sacrifices. I was so much much more fortunate than many kids and I always felt loved. A long, long time ago. But when I went back a couple of years ago the memories flooded back. My sister came with me and we walked through the open area of the old cathedral. It brought back mixed memories of doing the same thing with our mother a few days after that destructive night, picking our way through rubble and still smoking timbers. Two pieces of timber had been nailed together crudely, and put above the altar. A card above it had words in crayon ‘Forgive them Father, they know not what they do’. It is still there, but now encased in a protective box. Ronnie Price

THE EILDON TREE Issue 28 Summer/Autumn 2016

SHORT STORIES A SHARP SCRATCH, THEN DARKNESS

year. I can see it from their point of view: I’m hardly a good investment.

Throughout my childhood, there were always at least two of them – uncles or friends of the family. Men who could mend a car, fix the dripping tap, name every tool, log every route. Our mother would frown at us as we sighed or giggled at their litany of wrenches and roads, Rawlplugs and roundabouts. The women too, with their understanding of the intricate relationships of family, their ability to combine varied ingredients to make a meal. They were utterly boring to us as children, though in my teens I think I developed a grudging admiration for their practical skills. I took after my father: my life was in my head and in words. It still is.

Of course the law has a proper title but everyone calls it the Noone Cares Act. First to go were the ones who had no family or friends. The amendment followed swiftly, fixing the limit at 80, family or not, caring or not. Ready or not. Dissenting voices were shouted down, called selfish if they were old, out of touch if younger. We have government by slogans. “Work till you’re 70, live till you’re 80.” It sounds quite reasonable, put like that. But not if it’s you they’re talking about.

Now I long for their stolid certainty – so reassuring with hindsight – that everything had an explanation, a cause, a solution; that there was always a way around difficulties, something good you could make with the leftovers. Comfortable in a corner together, they would trade routes, recipes, advice. ‘I turn off the A-road earlier to avoid that bend where people come to grief.’ ‘That’ll work if you use some twoby-four to strengthen it.’ ‘You just need to add an egg.’ Who were they, these Ians and Grahams, Pats and Janets? Too late to ask my mother: she is a weight of ashes long since scattered on the river’s peaceful waters. She was 89 when she died. I am the age I am, those extra nine years unachievable. I’m upright and active, though slowing a little. The brain is in good order. Eyes and ears still work, with help. But I take a handful of no doubt expensive chemicals each day to keep everything ticking over, and there was a spell in hospital last

How did it happen, and so quickly? A couple of years ago, almost every day there’d been stories of cruelty and neglect, and overstretched services. It seemed that there was no-one with patience and kindness left, or none that would work for such pitiful wages. So they turned the problem on its head: it was impossible for anyone to be kind and patient, it was the fault of the old. Nature had never intended this. And, quite suddenly it seemed, an idea once muttered under the breath, was being discussed openly. Editors pontificated, websites appeared, it was trending on social media, there were online petitions… and before we knew it, soon after the election, it was voted through. There was a sense of a burden of resentment lifted. Whatshisname (I admit, names sometimes escape me, but it’s hardly a capital offence) announced it would mean more money for ‘hard-working families’ – that idiotic expression passed down from one government to the next. And more for the military and for the police, now doubled in number and all armed of course, since Black December. Cue approval in the media and scrutinising looks on public transport or in the shops – quickly averted in embarrassment if you stared back. We are an easy

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group to target: and after all, it might well be our fault. Whatever our race or religion, we were there when our world started to disintegrate. We lived through it and we didn’t – couldn’t – stop it. When I am with friends who are approaching their Day, we call the coach the cattle truck. This makes people angry with us. ‘It’s not the same,’ they argue. ‘How could you say such things?’ At first with the backlog there were coaches every day. We didn’t know how to react – to wave goodbye, or look away. There used to be clumps of objectors at the coach stations. Now that’s all stopped. As we left town there were just the usual small fires and sirens, the boarded up shops, people shouting and running and occasional gunfire. The night curfews mostly hold, but even in daylight you’re safer in groups. I got my message from the king (what will they do with him if he’s still flourishing at 79?) thanking me for my contribution to the country. And then the letter from the council, saying when to go to the coach station and asking if I need assistance to get there. At the end there’s some small print that says if I don’t arrive in time, a police car will be sent to fetch me. And that if I’m away from home, or deliberately miss the coach, from midnight on the departure date all benefits and pensions cease, I am no longer entitled to banking facilities and my will is deemed invalid. They leave no doubt. We are taking up space we have no right to. We are leftovers. Small businesses have started up, offering ‘Letter parties’, get-togethers to say goodbye. Balloons, cake, limos; whatever you want. Patrick, less sensitive than his sister, mentioned it last year, but his voice trailed away at the look on

SHORT STORIES my face. That’s another thing that upsets people – when we call them deathday parties. My best friend Kate decided to climb in the Cairngorms a week before her Day. It was a bitter January: I expect she just lay down in the snow. She always was bloody-minded. ‘OK’, she’d said, ‘I’ll go but it’s on my terms, not theirs.’ I’m not as brave. So yesterday I locked up the house, picked a single daffodil and walked to the bus stop. I didn’t look back. I found myself glancing sidelong at the other passengers, trying to guess if anyone was headed the same way. One woman looked older than me. She couldn’t be, of course. Some of my better-off friends have

hardly seems worthwhile to make new friends now. I noticed that we’d all fastened our seatbelts. Thoughtless habit? Or a conscious decision to go the easy way. Some were smartly dressed, as if for a special occasion. Well, you only get to do this once. Some were grimfaced; others resolutely, bravely cheerful. One or two seemed bemused, disoriented; fragile as birds, their thin bodies draped with clothes like ragged plumage. There’s a special room at the coach station, with tasteful pictures and a lot of natural wood. My lot came to see me off, the two children (not children at all of course), the four grandchildren and the baby, a greatgrandson. Poor wee mite, he’s been in and out of hospital since he was born. Some genetic syndrome. I’ve sometimes wondered what’s next… who’s next. But I’ve said nothing. There were tears in their eyes, and Elise hugged me especially tight. I had to resist the urge to cling to her. Thank God her father was spared this. He’d have been 80 last month. I didn’t wave as we pulled out. I didn’t even look, afraid they might have turned away already.

I brought my diary: this will be the last page I write. slipped away to Switzerland to get a few more years. Strange to think it used to be the other way round, people travelling for help to end an unbearable life. No trouble with that request nowadays. The coach was one of those luxury ones with tinted windows and a toilet down some steps: difficult for some of us to negotiate. It had luggage space, but you’re told to bring just a small bag, if you really feel you have to, and to hand your keys in when you get there. I brought my diary: this will be the last page I write. I packed my toothbrush too. Old routines, necessary rhythms, even now. There were about twenty of us: I think the local councils club together for economy. I didn’t know anyone. We didn’t bother with talk, deep in our own thoughts and memories. It

I’m told it will be my turn at 10.30 tomorrow. I’m to switch off my phone at 10. Brisk and cheerful, they say we will go in groups of three, ‘for company’. They tell us it is all for the best. A young woman dressed in a clean white uniform takes my details and says, ‘You’ll just feel a sharp scratch, then darkness’. I expect she’s right. What quality of darkness will it be? I’m hoping for a kind of soft velvet nothingness. She asks what I’d like for my evening meal and I tell her I don’t care. She looks disappointed, as if I have let her down. I want to

ask if we’ll be incinerated in groups of three as well (I can see the tall chimney from my window). They could divide the result into thirds and package it up for the families. No-one would ever know. And may we choose who we die with? No, of course not. She says it would cause administrative problems. As I leave the room she adds, ‘Don’t worry about getting dressed tomorrow. You’ll find a disposable gown on your bed.’ I turn to look at her. She blushes slightly. ‘It’s easier for us afterwards.’ My room is pastel green with flowery curtains. There are some books on a shelf. Religious ones and, strangely, some thrillers. You’d have to be a quick reader, or you’d never find out what happened in the end. The bed has a thin mattress and sheets made of a kind of paper. I suppose it’s not worth proper sheets when you’re only there for a night. I feel a flutter of panic behind my ribs. I’m not ready. Not tomorrow, not 10.30, not yet. But perhaps one’s never ready, always clinging to some small future. Even in extremis, fighting for just one more breath. Those Pats and Grahams of my youth – where are they, when at last I value their kind of wisdom? They might understand the mechanics of it, how kindness has uncoupled from care, become optional; how the only value we put on lives is monetary. Maybe they could explain how it has come to yesterday’s journey, to this squat brick building with the tall chimney. Where did we go wrong? Could we have fixed the problems if we’d had the right tools? Could we have re-sharpened our blunted emotions, learnt again how to be kind? Could we have turned off at a different junction and avoided this place where people come to grief? Jane Pearn

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SHORT STORIES BLUE EYES

disrespect to his ancestors.

“I haven’t got enough money, hon.”

Joel Dawson stared into the mirror and cursed his blue eyes. His mother’s eyes had been the colour of ebony, and her hair had been as black as a moonless night. Joel ran his fingers through his own hair; the black was now rapidly turning to grey, as the end of his fifth decade drew nearer. He cupped his hands and scooped up some ice-cold water, splashed his face, then repeated the action several more times. He opened his mouth and sucked in some of the water, swilling it around in an attempt to remove the taste of stale whisky. He tried to remember the previous evening: where he had gone, who he had met, how he had gotten back home; it just made his head ache. He stared into the mirror once more, deep into those intense blue eyes.

The phone rang. Joel knew it would be Dan, the principal from the school. He also knew what he was going to say. The last time he had failed to turn in, he had been warned that it was his final chance; he couldn’t keep letting them down; the children’s education was suffering. He picked up the receiver.

“I’ll buy one for you!” she offered.

“You’re a loser, Joel Dawson,” he muttered, “A hopeless loser.”

his hair and tied it back, swilled some mouth-wash, and headed for the front door.

Joel dragged himself into the living room. The photograph on the shelf above the stove caught his attention and he picked it up. His mother’s dark eyes stared straight at the camera. Her hair was plaited into tight braids, and long decorations made from dentalium shells hung from her ears. Her dress was adorned with blue, white and red stripes made from hundreds of glass beads. A white man stood next to Joel’s mother, his arm encircling her waist. His long blonde hair fell across his shoulders and his eyes shone like sapphires. When Joel’s mother gave him the photograph he had wanted to cut it in half and destroy the white man, but she had stopped him: it was the only picture he had of his father. Whatever he thought about the man who had deserted his mother with an infant child, he shared his blood. His mother had taught him that he must never show 12

“Lo,” he croaked. He listened silently to the principal’s reproach, then mumbled a few words and ended the call. He returned to the bathroom, brushed

“Well, that’s very kind of you, Nina, but the car I’ve got’s just fine. I’ll get it fixed.” The girl grabbed Joel’s hand. “OK,” she said, “Come and look at my painting.” Joel allowed himself to be led across the room to the painting easels. He studied the bright blue circles and black lines that Nina had daubed onto the paper. “It’s you!” she exclaimed.

We’re the invisible nation. They don’t give a damn about us.

The principal was waiting in the foyer when Joel arrived at the school. With downcast eyes, and muttering an apology, Joel headed for the schoolroom, where his class was waiting. The other man stepped across and blocked his path. “Are you sober, Joel?” The principal accepted Joel’s grunted assurance, and stepped aside to let him pass. The instant Joel entered the schoolroom, he was surrounded by excited children. A small, dark-haired girl ran up and grabbed his leg as if it was a tree trunk. Her deep brown eyes flashed a disapproving look, and she grumbled that he was late again. Joel gave an exaggerated sigh, and said that his car had broken down. “Why don’t you get a new one?” the girl asked.

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Joel crouched down to get a better view of the picture. “Wow, I didn’t know I was so beautiful.” At lunchtime Joel was summoned to the principal’s office. He listened in silence to the words he had heard so many times before. He was a great teacher, the kids loved him, the school didn’t want to lose him. The principal looked Joel straight in the eye. “I’ve had some complaints. Some of the parents are concerned about your extra-curricular activities.” Joel stood up and walked to the window. He gazed at the forest trees on the opposite side of the valley, now turning deep shades of crimson and gold as the fall set in. The tops of the mountains beyond were already getting a covering of snow. “I don’t know if I can go on any longer, Dan. I love my job. I love the kids. But I’m tired of watching

SHORT STORIES them grow up, just to have the life sucked out of them.” The principal crossed the room to join Joel at the window. The two men watched Nina and her friends chasing each other around the yard. Dan broke the silence. “Things are changing.” Joel spun around. “No they’re not, Dan. You know that, as well as I do. We’re the invisible nation. They don’t give a damn about us. Most of them would be perfectly happy to see us shoot and hang ourselves into oblivion.” Dan grabbed Joel by the shoulders and shook him hard. “And what’s your solution, Joel? To drink yourself into oblivion? Explain to me how exactly that is going to help these kids.” Dan let his arms fall to his sides, and the two men returned to staring out of the window. The sound of the bell being rung in the yard drifted into the room. Without speaking, Joel turned towards the door and headed back to class. Nina twirled Joel’s shoelace around her finger. The teacher looked down at her and smiled, before continuing with his story. “Naapi, was sad because his brother, wolf, fell through a hole in the ice and was washed away by the river. Naapi ran to a place where the river flowed too swiftly to freeze, and waited to see if wolf would appear. He started to cry and wail, making an awful noise.” Joel imitated the noise, and was soon joined by the listening children. He held up his hand and silence was restored. “Kingfisher was perched on a branch, high above. He heard Naapi’s crying and wailing, and began to laugh.”

Joel gave his best imitation of a kingfisher’s call; a chorus of little kingfishers joined in. Again, Joel raised his hand. “Naapi didn’t like to be laughed at. He threw his war club straight at Kingfisher, but the bird was too quick; he ducked and the war club skimmed the top of his head, making the feathers stand on end. ‘Ha!’ cried Naapi, ‘That’ll teach you to laugh at me. From now on you will wear a head-dress.’ And that is why, to this day, every kingfisher wears a war bonnet on the top of its head.” Nina clapped her hands together. “Yes, yes, yes!” she cried. Joel looked down at her and smiled, then re-tied his shoe laces. The car raised a plume of dust as it bounced along the dirt track that snaked up into the hills. Chief Mountain dominated the view ahead, thrusting vertically into the sky, like a huge, supernatural molar. When he was younger, Joel had tried to climb the eastern face of the mountain, but the fifteen hundred feet of sheer, crumbling rock had defeated him. The mountain was sacred to the Blackfoot people; Joel’s ancestors were buried there. He wondered whether his father had ever visited Chief Mountain. Was his father still alive? And where were his white ancestors buried? Near the base of the mountain, the track petered out and Joel stopped the car. He got out and gazed up at the huge mass of barren grey rock. A pair of eagles circled close to the summit, their calls barely audible so far below. Joel went back to the car and grabbed the carryall from the passenger seat, then set off in the direction of his ancestors’ burial site. It didn’t take long to find the place that his grandpa had shown

him. He took the dried sweetgrass braids from the carryall and placed them on the dusty earth, spread the dried sage on top, struck a match and set fire to the pile. It soon began to smoulder and smoke. Joel squatted down beside it. He inhaled the sweetsmelling fumes, and began to speak to his mother. On the way back down from the mountain, Joel pulled the car off the road by the side of the river. He walked along the riverbank until he found the ‘rub tree’, and waited for the bear to come. He’d seen her here before, fishing for salmon. She was in fine condition, and was probably pregnant. She would be feeding up, ready for the winter denning. Joel was hoping to see her with a cub in the spring. She wouldn’t look quite so magnificent then, but she was a strong young animal and would recover quickly. Joel heard a sharp crack. He spun around. The bear was right behind him. “Idiot!” He spat out the word. The bear reared up on her hind legs. Her dark brown eyes shone like glass beads. Joel held her gaze for a second, and then looked away. She was close enough to swat him like a mosquito. Joel stood his ground, moving his feet further apart, and stretching his arms out by his sides. He began to speak softly to the animal. “This is your land, lady, I know that. I’m only passing through.” The bear sniffed the air and whined. “This river’s where my grandpa taught me to fish. I can still remember hooking that first salmon.” The bear dropped down onto all fours, gave another short whine, turned, and loped off, down

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SHORT STORIES towards the river. Joel watched her skip across the fast-flowing water, and disappear into the trees on the far side. He looked up at the rocky ridge of Chief Mountain; storm clouds were billowing up, like smoke from an enormous camp fire. Joel placed another log in the stove and opened the air intake. The cold had come early to the valley this year. It looked like it was going to be a hard winter. He picked up the letter that had been hand-delivered that morning and re-read it. This was a formal warning; his behaviour was unacceptable; parents were concerned; if he continued to behave in this way, the board of governors would have no alternative but to dismiss him. Joel crumpled the letter into a ball, opened the stove door and threw it in. He watched the words disappear as the flames consumed the paper. He picked up the photograph of his mother and took it to the sofa. He stared into his mother’s eyes. She had been so proud of him when he returned to the reservation to teach at the school. He thought about Nina; she reminded him of his mother: her looks, but also her spirit. Joel picked up the whisky bottle and replaced the top; he screwed it on tight and set the bottle on the floor. Then he lay down on the sofa, pulled his parka over his weary body, and closed his eyes. A deep rumble of thunder rolled across the valley. Sean Fleet

DEAR MR ATTENBOROUGH

DOCTOR MORGAN WILL SEE YOU NOW!

How we laughed! A harem? He’s in charge? How wrong can you be?

“Agnes Chasehold!” summoned the nurse, “Doctor Morgan will see you now- this way!” and stretched her arm out as though instructing a dog or a naughty child. She enjoyed the power of command over those who were sick and sought healing, rather as she were leading enemies of the French Revolution to the guillotine.

Let me explain. The cooperative runs itself mostly - food, social life, rearing the young, all taken care of. We only need to buy in labour for one purpose. Yeah, you guessed it. All females, there’s one thing we don’t do. So here’s the deal. We find a good looker with plenty stamina, we pay him in meat. He gets first dibs, but that’s ok, we need him fit and ready to go. And the manners on some of them, we’d rather not share. The present one’s a sweetie, really helpful in the hunt, tries his best. But there’ve been others…. well really. Clueless. We’re better off without them, get more caught. They can be a pain, the young ones especially. Last year’s signing spent so much time posing and flicking his mane, he didn’t have time for the action. So we had to get rid. Of course if they get old and lazy they have to be let go, but sometimes we just fancy a change so we put the word out, know what I mean? It soon gets around and hey presto, lover boy has serious competition. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but what can you do? They have to fight it out. I’m not saying we cheer them on, but it can be quite entertaining on a quiet afternoon, if you stand well back. Don’t ask me how we heard about your tale. Let’s just say we have our channels. Next time, maybe run your story past us first. Best, The Pride PS Those new bouldercams you use, they’re great. Better than you little guys popping up like meerkats (though someone said you’re some kind of ape, right?) and distracting the youngsters. Jane Pearn

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Inside his surgery-sanctum Doctor Morgan, a short and becomingportly man in a tweed suit, sat behind the barrier of his mahogany desk; a large blotter lay in front of him which he tapped impatiently with his tortoise-shell fountain pen. A young man, a final year medical student, sat awkwardly at one end of the desk trying to look at once keen but invisible. Morgan fingered his fob-watch which hung across his brown moleskin waistcoat, looked at his ‘list’ for the day then said to the young man- “The main thing you should learn if and when you join our esteemed ranks, is ‘time.!“ He slapped one hand down onto his desk- “Time..” then brought down his other hand, “...and Patients” and smiled at the pun. “We poor doctors have only so much of the first, so here’s a word of advice. During the war I was in charge of a field hospital. Saw men in all kinds of horrible conditions.” He frowned, shut his eyes tight for a moment then looked down at his hands. “But you may believe me when I tell you that those with the worst injuries, said the least; never grumbled, waited quietly, patiently for their turn to receive whatever help you could give them. Then again, those with the slightest injuries could talk your ears off telling you what was wrong, how they were wounded, how it would affect

SHORT STORIES them afterwards. Know what we called them? Blitherers. And in here it is no different. Time in surgery is limited and somehow we have to fit the patients in as best we can. So watch out for the ‘blitherers’ ‘cos if you don’t they’ll use up time from the serious cases. Yes.” He offered the same wisdom to all the trainees he was sent and he was pleased with his confidence in its usefulness. He looked at his list. “Agnes Chasehold….Ah yes she was here last year; nothing much wrong with her, a ‘B-and-B’” and enjoying the opportunity to make the other feel inferior, repeated, “B and B”, then, pleased to have caught him out explained “B-and-B. No not bed and breakfast; bladder and bowels” and tapped his pen on the blotter as though awarding himself a score. Hopefully they would all be ‘shorts’ today so that he could enjoy beating Stirling in a round of golf. “Agnes Chasehold to see you doctor!” declared the nurse holding the door open and laying the patient’s notes on his desk. He smiled gravely then asked in an unvarnished skeptical tone, “Yes well, and what seems to be wrong with us today Mrs.Chasehold?” “Miss! doctor” the nurse corrected him abruptly . “Of course, of course, ‘Miss’ Chasehold; and then, to the student, “Where ‘would’ we be without Nurse to steer us through the waves?” The nurse, unamused, left closing the door loudly. “So, now then, and what can we do for you today? The woman was small and slightsomeone whom a novelist would

describe as ‘grey- small and slight in appearance and from the timid shrinking way she perched on the edge of the chair equally small and slight of personality. Her greying hair was tightly covered over by a gaudy cotton scarf, clearly a ‘present from Italy’ and her body by a thick coat of a nondescript oatmeal colour. Her face was thin, and almost without any colour; pinched, pitiable, harassed, and as though to protect herself, she held a shopping bag in front of her. She nodded her head repeatedly in answer to questions so that Dr.Morgan realized that he would have to speak for her. “No need for any embarrassment in front of…” and he pointed at the young man as though he were a thing rather than a person, “Here is Mr. Cruikshank- a trainee doctor you see Miss Chasehold.” He uncapped his pen ready to write out a prescription, “No need for embarrassment at all; waterworks and bowels still a bit of a problem?” “No” said the woman. “No? Not that?” he asked, expecting to be offered some

She took a deep breath, then – determined to go on with the ordeal – said “It’s my mind, I think.” other minor complaint. There was a long silence during which the woman pressed the bag even closer to herself, clenched her mouth, hooded her eyes and shook her head as though in the grip of some terrible inner torture.

“Then…?” “It’s…..” and her voice trembled; reluctant, ‘even terrified’ thought the student. “Yes, yes, we can be frank in here” and when this produced no response, “Please….there ‘are’ other patients waiting to be seen. Now, what brings you here today?” he added with a benevolent smile. She took a deep breath thendetermined to go on with the ordeal- said, “It’s my mind, I think.” Then her face, frozen at some terrible internal horror, she began to cough. “Ah, water, a glass of water if you please Mr. Cruikshank. At times like these you will invariably find…” The young man sprang to his feet and crossed the room to pour some water from a jug into a glass then was bewildered to see the doctor’s hand stretching out to take then drink it. “Better, that’s better” said the man after he had emptied the glass. He leaned forward, “Now, your ‘mind’ you say? In what way…. can you elucidate a little more?” This unusual word confused her for she thought that he wanted her to explain the reason for whatever it was that had brought her there. When Morgan handed the empty glass back to Cruikshank, it seemed to act as a signal to the woman, and, as though it had enabled her to begin her explanation, she said in a weak voice, “Well doctor it’s been with me a long time, since I was a child really, but now it’s getting worse all the time.” She lowered her head as though in great guilt then slowly explained the condition that had brought her there. “It’s that….I’m always knowing

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SHORT STORIES that… it’ll sound silly to you, but I’m always knowing that…” and the deep breath she took struck Cruikshank as terrifically profound. “Well, it’s that the present moment that I’m in is immediately becoming the past. It’s gone, if you see what I mean, so I can never catch up with it. The next is always turning into now and now is always turning into the past so that I can never…!” and she buried her face in the top of her bag so that the rest was muffled, “I can never catch up with myself, and I can see myself dying, ever so quick, in every minute that I live…..” Morgan looked stupefied. He was a good man- according to his lights- enjoyed the prestige of his position, genuinely wanted to do his professional best for the sick; had seen the horrors of war, then long years of routine surgeries, the routine complaints of infants to the aged; but as a somewhat wooden man, had absolutely no comprehension of the kind of thing this wretched woman presented. But then, he thought, Cruikshank’s a young chap, one of the ‘modern school’ who had explained earlier in the week some of the latest theories about mind and matter he had studied, and, giving the blotter a serious gaze, turned to him“Mr. Cruikshank, you might like to speak about some of the latest methods…..this kind of thing.” Cruikshank was speechless. He had indeed, in recent lectures, been given an outline of the latest psychological ideas, but, how to connect them with a real patient…? He was also very conscious of time, of Morgan’s wish to get to the golf course, and this put even more pressure on him to say something useful, perhaps even wise, salient, that might touch on this curious problem. So he floundered in the shallows

of psychological theory and, after coughing nervously, asked, as gravely as he could, how long this state had been going on for, then remembered that she had already said- since childhood. He clutched wildly at this straw- “Your first experience of this….state, you said it was in your childhood?” ‘Ah the wisdom of the young’ Morgan thought, leaned back in his leather cushioned swivel-chair and tried to predict what would come next and tapped his pen as though lost in deep diagnostic thought. “Yes doctor….sir. I remember it well. It was a Sunday school lesson and the teacher- that were Miss Lessop told us the story of an early Christian missionary trying to explain to a heathen Saxon king about life and eternity. She said that he told them that our life was like a swallow flying from the outside darkness though a window in a nobleman’s hall and how while it was in the light and noise it thought that that was life, but then, in a moment it was outside again in the darkness, and so people should realize that this life isn’t everything, isn’t as important as we think it is.” Bewildered by the story, the two men stared at the woman who had in her telling seemed to have grown fuller and younger. “And, well, it stuck in my mind and became the only way I could think and now I can’t stop and it’s terrible…..terrible. I can’t stop myself and I daredn’t sleep at night, and I can’t bring myself easily to shop or cook or anything because it’s always slipping away so quickly. And I’ll have to tell you doctor that I’ll be glad when it’s all over.” A deep silence filled the room, broken only by Morgan’s tapping pen. The thing had to be broken and he took charge of the situation with his

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professional position- “Yes well Miss Chasefield, that’s as may be, but we’ve got to look on the bright side. You’re still relatively young” and after looking at her notes, “Sixty two. Well, at your age it’s natural to get the blues from time to time.” Then, struck by a sudden though he said, “Some people- I don’t know what my young colleague here thinksbut some people might think it advisable to recommend someone in your…..position, to undergo a course of treatment at somewhere like Schayler’s Assylum!” And, as the woman sat up in rigid fear, he knew he had solved the problem. “But you are a sensible woman and I don’t think we want to see you in a place like that, eh?” and looked at Cruikshank hoping that the young man would not want to intrude any fancy ideas but simply go along with his judgement, and, to his side, the young man shook his head with vigour. “The priest says I should ask Jesus to help me just to ‘live one day at a time’” the woman offered as though for diagnosis and looked at the men in turn. “Wise advice from a wise man” said Morgan nodding sagely, pleased that they were nearing a swift end. “And now, did you find the tablets for the…. the waterworks, helpful?” The woman nodded, realizing that her case of what a metaphysician could call ‘ontological insecurity’ was still unresolved; that since neither priest nor doctor could comprehend her state, she must indeed be at root mad, condemned for some unknown wickedness to be daily, hourly, moment by moment, exquisitely conscious of hurtling through her life until in one final blessed moment, all three times would telescope into one, when, at last, she would find peace. Kevin O’Dowd

SHORT STORIES LOSING FACE ‘Put that down and pay attention!’ Her voice ricocheted off the walls. Anil sat, eyes glittering like mica, and a stunned silence engraved the room. Once more Suzanne questioned her decision to come here, but calmed herself by looking out the open window at the garden with its marigolds, mimosa, and frangipani. She turned her attention back to the class, ‘Okay, irony. The dictionary definition is “A result precisely opposite in effect from what might have been expected.” So what do you think that means?’ No response. Suzanne looked at each of her students; they suddenly had taken an extreme interest in the page of text. Except Anil, whose sullenness was tangible. ‘Come on, we’ve been talking about this. Rama?’ There was nothing for several seconds then a thin boy with huge eyes sitting at the back tentatively raised his head. ‘Please Madam, does it mean that you expect one thing to happen and the opposite does?’ Anil glared at him. Rama quickly looked down again as the atmosphere congealed. ‘Well done, Rama. Now, how does this relate to the situation Macbeth finds himself in just after he’s killed Duncan?’ A hand was slowly raised. It belonged to the school’s top student from the British Embassy, who wore lilac-coloured dragonfly grips in her tightly curled red hair. ‘Yes, Grace?’ Suzanne encouraged, smiling. ‘Please miss, is it that Duncan gave Macbeth the title Thane of Cawdor

and then Macbeth betrays him, just like the Thane of Cawdor did?’ ‘Excellent, Grace. At least someone has been paying attention.’ Anil eyes narrowed. ‘Okay everyone, turn to page

and precise, ‘I would not do that if I were you.’ His mouth smiled easily at her, but his eyes brimmed with threat and darkness. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Time suspended in the humid air between them, broken only when

Suddenly a funnel of heat surged through her, spreading upwards. 42 and read through to page 76 making notes about Macbeth’s character. Remember to look at what he says, what he does, and what others say about him. These are all clues to his character.’ All heads, except for Anil’s, bowed. ‘Anil, please see me at the end of the lesson,’ Suzanne ordered, pushing damp, stray tendrils of greying-blonde hair behind her ears. Her loose floral shift dress had sprouted damp patches under the armpits and along her spine, making her feel and smell like a basket of damp laundry. As the other students filed out Anil stood, watching Suzanne gather in the books. His school uniform was impeccable, the white shirt crisp and starched-looking. Eventually, books stacked on her desk, Suzanne addressed him. ‘Anil, these disruptions have to stop.’ A smirk crept over his face. ‘I do not know to what you are referring, Madam.’ Suzanne felt her anger rise again, and almost managed to control it. But when she spoke, it spiralled, dragging her with it. ‘Yes you do! And if this happens again I shall have no choice but to inform your father.’

Anil turned on his heels and left the room. Suddenly a funnel of heat surged through her, spreading upwards. It seemed to burn everything in its path, settling in her chest, neck and head area. Unsteady on her feet, she sat down, took deep breaths and waited for the moment to pass. Not again! What on earth was wrong with her?

Suzanne found Roshana in the staffroom at lunchtime. She plonked down on a chair next to her, withdrew a banana and some peanuts from her bag and proceeded to tell Roshana about the morning’s incident. ‘I told him I’d contact his father if his behaviour doesn’t improve.’ ‘Oh no, that would not be a good idea,’ Roshana replied, shaking her head. ‘Why ever not? Surely Mr Bannerjee’s position at the bank—’ ‘Exactly. Anil is a very proud and privileged boy. An only son. And in this country sons are treated like princes.’ Suzanne brushed scraps of peanut shells from her lap. ‘Maybe that’s the problem.’

Anil replied, his tone measured

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SHORT STORIES Roshana shook her head, ‘Sons perform certain rites. They learn the ceremony of sacrifice, of beheading animals with a single blow. And only a son can perform the most important rite at his father’s funeral. So you see, you do not diminish a son in the eyes of his father, especially one in Mr Bannerjee’s position.’ ‘He’s so arrogant,’ Suzanne confided between mouthfuls, ‘I just felt this rage and let rip.’ ‘Don’t you know that public rebuke is a humiliation?’ ‘But—’ ‘Please, let me finish. In this country it is important to maintain one’s dignity. Humiliation means a loss of face. This can be dangerous…Particularly for women.’ ‘Why particularly for women?’ ‘Because here we have no status. We are just possessions of our fathers or husbands. There is no punishment for killing your wife because she is not classed as a person. Neither are children.’ ‘That’s barbaric!’ ‘It is harsh, but it is our way of life. Foreigners who live here should respect our customs and traditions. The British Council have told you this?’ ‘Of course, but...’ ‘Take care, Suzanne—being a foreigner will not protect you.’ ‘Protect me from what?’ Roshana did not reply. Awkwardness stained the air between them. ‘Look, Roshana, I do appreciate there are cultural differences— that’s obvious when I teach Macbeth—I just find them hard to understand.’ Suzanne paused, not sure how to

continue. In an attempt to lighten the situation she laughed, wiped her forehead and joked, ‘Not to worry. I’ll be reduced to a puddle soon in this heat.’ Roshana giggled, the bells in her nose tinkling as she adjusted the end of the red and gold sari covering her head. Looking at her watch Suzanne rose from the chair, peeling the damp skirt from her legs. ‘Tonight we are having a family gathering. Would you like to join us, Suzanne?’ ‘That would be lovely...but...what do I wear?’ Roshana chuckled loudly, shaking her head and the bells tinkled again. ‘You foreigners! I’ll come for you at the end of school, okay?’

Opening the door to her classroom Suzanne’s smile faded; Mr Bannerjee was sitting at her desk. He exuded wealth, from his smart, neatly pressed suit right down to his gold rings and intricate leather sandals. Anil sat opposite at a desk, his back ramrod straight, eyes directed towards the floor. Dynamics in the room shifted subtly, like cobwebs, as she walked in. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Bannerjee. What can I do for you?’ Suzanne bowed her head slightly, her hands in the Namaste position. Mr Bannerjee returned the gesture and cleared his throat before speaking. ‘I understand there are a few problems with Anil?’ His rich, modulated voice made her think of honey and figs. Suzanne hesitated. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ Mr Bannerjee shifted his position and uncrossed his legs. ‘As you know, we are Brahmin, with a certain standing in the community. We set examples and people

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look up to us. It has come to my attention that Anil is not behaving like a gentleman in class. Is this so, Miss Henderson?’ Suzanne’s face reddened slightly under his gaze. ‘Where did you hear this?’ she asked. ‘I have my sources,’ Mr Bannerjee replied then looked pointedly at Anil, whose face darkened; he looked at the floor. ‘In this country, Miss Henderson, there will always be someone who needs advancement, who can be relied upon to pass on information.’ Mr Bannerjee turned his attention back to Suzanne. ‘Is it true about Anil?’ ‘Mr Bannerjee, I really appreciate you coming down here.’ Suzanne hesitated for a couple of beats. ‘However, your fears are unfounded; I have no problems with Anil.’ She looked directly at Anil, ‘But you can rest assured that if I do I won’t hesitate to contact you.’ Anil’s eyes met hers before returning his gaze to the floor. There was silence for a few seconds. Suzanne held her breath. Mr Bannerjee nodded. ‘Thank you. Good afternoon, Miss Henderson.’ He lifted his bulky frame out of the seat, shot Anil a withering look, then left, closing the door behind him. Suzanne relaxed, pleased that a confrontation had been avoided, but Anil was tense, like a dishrag being squeezed. He stood. ‘Excuse me, Madam, I have a science class to attend.’ He walked from the room leaving in

Dynamics in the room shifted subtly, like cobwebs, as she walked in.

SHORT STORIES his wake eddies of controlled anger that seemed to stick to her clothing.

At four thirty the last class was dismissed. Thinking of the evening ahead Suzanne smiled as she tidied her desk and locked away the books, pencils and rulers in a large metal cupboard that was bolted to the floor. It would be nice to meet Roshana’s family, to learn more, first-hand, about the people and their customs. To be less of an outsider. She had come to Nepal expecting to immerse herself in its culture, but so far had spent most of her time either with ex-pats sitting in bars or restaurants, or in her room alone, uncomfortable with the crowds, the poverty, and lack of personal space. Tonight would be a turning point. Lost in thought, she was vaguely aware of the sound of footsteps. Looking up she smiled in anticipation of Roshana, but it was Anil who walked through the door. A collage of sound and activity followed in slow motion. As though someone had turned up her sensory perceptions, simultaneously she noticed dust motes in the sunshine streaming through the window, a broken piece of chalk on the edge of her desk, her handbag on the floor beside her seat, the softness of a breeze catching the hairs on her arm, sounds of crows fighting outside. There was a raised hand, Anil’s eyes, his voice. Then pain. So much pain. As the acid bubbled and burned deeper, screams ricocheted off the walls. Suzanne writhed on the floor, tearing at her face, aware of Anil standing over her, watching. After several heartbeats he turned on his heel and walked out the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Kriss Nichol

SPRING FLING Margo had secured Laura’s help at the Church’s ‘ Spring Fling’ in aid of the ever-present church roof fund by promising that the morning would be fun and a good excuse to offload lots of unwanted stuff whilst providing a great opportunity to spy out and acquire lots of other people’s unwanted stuff. Laura had hesitated since she and David were hardly church goers but Margo was certain that God would be grateful to receive money to repair his leaking roof even from the ranks of the Unbelieving. And since David had recently been recruited into the newly formed Parish Men’s Group Laura felt a tenuous toe hold on Heaven , together with a pressing need to sort through the piles of her redundant belongings which

of precariously packed bags and boxes. He had gone on to erect a seemingly unending number of recalcitrant trestle tables in the hall before sorting out the gas boiler in the church kitchen which was obstinately refusing to ignite for Vivien Rutherford, the vicar’s wife, on this morning of all mornings, despite being hit smartly and repeatedly on the side with her huge handbag. He then escaped with a final cheery call to Laura and Margo to “enjoy yourselves” and a fiercely hissed aside to Laura not to come back with anything. At all. The hesitant May sunshine had brought out eager crowds of bargain hunters who kept Vivien and her willing team of helpers busy with the serious business of providing coffee and scones whilst the Spring Fling stall holders, arranged

The hesitant May sunshine had brought out eager crowds of bargain hunters… were choking up the attic, and so finally she had said, “Yes, OK. I’m up for it if you are.”

around the four sides of the Hall, did a roaring trade with their preloved treasures.

David had proved more than equal to the task of emptying the attic of a generous boot load of Laura’s unused lamps and pictures and planters and ornaments and endless wicker God-only-knowswhats that she had brought with her when she had moved up and had never found a home for at The Cottage. He could barely conceal his delight at the thought of finally paring with at least some of the endless piles of clutter which had converted his visits to the attic into a slalom run

Laura watched as the pale, thin girl with the pushchair already overflowing with carrier bags, wove her way expertly through the crowd and came to a stop by Margo’s bag filled with baby clothes. The large, clear plastic bag which Margo’s daughter Emma has presented as her contribution to the Church’s ‘Spring Fling’, was wrapped in an extravagant swathe of baby blue ribbon and bore the legend,” Boys Designer Baby Clothes. Unworn. Many in Original Packaging. £20”

For David this was a happy day indeed even if it found him roped into emptying Margo’s car boot

The girl was balancing a particularly sticky looking toddler on one hip. The little girl was

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SHORT STORIES doing her very best to snatch handfuls of the sausage roll which her mother was eating with one hand whilst holding an unlit cigarette in the other. Laura felt sure that such overt possession of a cigarette must be completely contrary to the rules of the Church Hall. The stroller’s grimy front wheels were angled perilously close to Laura’s deftly arranged piles of prettily mis-matched crockery and the whole hazardous contraption seemed to be held stationary only by the hooking of the toes of one heel clad foot. Laura tried hard not to think about the damage and the mess if the girl’s grip on toddler, pasty, cigarette and stroller should falter. This was the girl’s third or fourth slow revolution of the Church Hall but the first time she had actually stopped at Laura and Margo’s table. She regarded Laura steadily through a heavy neon pink fringe and hitched the toddler up and away from the cigarette before conceding what remained of the sausage roll to her child, “I’ll give you a fiver for it,” she said suddenly, nodding towards the be-ribboned bag of clothing, “and that’s it.”

had rapidly buttered and then secreted away in the depths of a kitchen cupboard moments after Vivien had produced the fragrant offerings from the depths of her handbag and set it on the counter top to admiring glances from the rest of the home bakers. Margo’s version of Christianity contained a strong belief in God helping those who helped themselves. Although whether this extended to scones meant for general sale and the repair of His roof was probably a moot point. “And Sod’s Law strikes again,” thought Laura, “They’re boy’s clothes, I’m afraid,” she said summoning a smile to complement what she hoped would be the helpful, “Oh dear, never mind,” tone of voice she was trying hard to employ,

“But you’re on this stall,” the thin girl shot back whilst giving in to her toddlers furious demands to be down on the floor, “No one else has offered nothing or they’d have gone.” Laura’s eyes raked the crowd for Margo who she spotted at the table near the entrance. She seemed to be peering intently at something and not about to straighten up and walk helpfully back to make the executive decision which Laura felt completely unable to call. Laura felt equally unable to abandon their table to bring Margo back as she wasn’t entirely sure that this persistent young woman wouldn’t simply abscond with the bag of baby clothes and quite possibly their Tupperware box of money which was so clearly and ill-advisedly on view.

Margo’s version of Christianity contained a strong belief in God helping those who helped themselves.

Margo’s bag of designer baby clothes was clearly marked “£20” and whilst Laura privately thought that was a bit steep for a church sale she knew that Margo would never agree to it going for such a reduced amount and certainly not to someone who was probably going to make a quick profit by turning the whole lot around on ebay the same evening. Margo was nowhere to be seen having left a few minutes before promising to return with coffees and a couple of Vivien Rutherford’s wonderful scones which Margo

“wouldn’t you just know it?” The girl didn’t miss a beat but reached into the rear pocket of her ripped jeans as the toddler attempted to wriggle free and the pushchair lurched alarmingly. Laura closed her eyes momentarily and beseeched the deity she didn’t believe in to protect Margo’s precious crockery at all costs. Margo had almost convinced herself to take back her cups and saucers on the strength of their sudden and obvious attraction when Laura had paired them together in the manner of a sweetly disorganised Mad Hatter’s Tea-party. The girl waved a crumpled five pound note at Laura and repeated her offer. “I can’t,” said Laura, “they’re not mine, you see.”

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The toddler meanwhile was enthusiastically investigating some brightly coloured children’s books piled under the table and marked 50p each or 3 for £1. “Leave ‘em,” instructed her mother disinterestedly as the toddler’s probing fingers sent the pile slithering sideways, “now.” She pushed the cigarette behind one ear before emptying the stroller unceremoniously all over the floor and reached awkwardly for the now screaming toddler before plonking her into the seat and clipping the restraining straps around her wriggling little body. “Mine!” yelled the child, “mine, Mum, mine!” “Shurrup I’m talking,” said the girl bending down and retrieving another sausage roll from somewhere in the depths of the haphazard pile of carrier bags

SHORT STORIES at her feet and shoving it in the toddlers general direction. She stood up and regarded Laura coolly, “well?” An equally thin young man appeared at her side and after a further examination of Margo’s bag and a quick exchange during which Laura heard the word ebay at least twice, they announced £10 as being their, “last offer, Missis.” Laura thought hard and then smiled taking the five pound note and some hastily collected coins, “Here, she said, “take these too. They’ll never sell hidden away under there.” And she placed some of the children’s books on the toddlers lap, “You’ll be doing me a favour, honestly.” She managed to tuck a few more books around the toddler before the couple finished tying the assortment of carrier bags to the pushchair and left without a word of thanks.

lot on her plate right now. The lad is her late partner’s brother. She’s come across from Glasgow with the child and moved in with his family. Nowhere else to go it seems.” Laura sighed, “Rotten luck.” Turning to watch as the pushchair wobbled its way out of the hall she said quietly, “God working in mysterious ways again, perhaps?” Duncan stared at her for a moment and then said, “ Chloe, the Mum, has started coming to our Parent Plus Group on Friday afternoons. And I know Vivien needs some help. Would you consider coming along? Just to see what it’s all about, you know?” Margo meanwhile wove her way carefully through the crowd towards their table holding a vase protectively close to her chest, “Just look at this for an absolute bargain you two,” she smiled triumphantly. “Cath Kidston and only £3. It’ll fetch at least ten times more than that on ebay .” Janet Sutton

“Where’s me roll?” asked the young man. “I’ve given it ‘er,” replied the girl nodding at the toddler now hushed and showered in flaky pastry crumbs. “Screw you,” said the young man amiably and took the cigarette from behind her ear. Duncan Rutherford, watching from across the room, saw Laura’s eyes follow the stroller and it’s shaky progress through the crowd. Laura reached for her handbag, took some money from her purse and put it into the Tupperware box. “Hello,” Duncan said, “ I’m the vicar here, Duncan. Pleased to meet you.” “Hi,” said Laura smiling and held her hand out to him, “sorry about the commotion.” Duncan shrugged, “She’s got a

MAYA The plane lands without a quiver but still my heart thuds in my ears. I feel faint, but as the lights turn up vibrancies inside the cabin distract me. Colours glow in shafts of radiating sunshine that penetrate the cabin. The exit is now gaping like an open mouth. The scent and heat of the outdoors drifts in. Passengers stretch. Conversation swells from murmur to buzz as life renews. Each passenger reaches for their bag, as if newly woken from a sleep. Fear gurgles in my stomach. My planning hadn’t prepared me for this feeling of insecurity. My packed suitcase was supposed to hold everything I might need. My pampered life in Scotland was no preparation for Nepal, even under the tutorship of Yam Kamari Gurung and the

needs of her school and her pupils. I am the vulnerable one, as I walk with my group of VSOs, subdued and unsure, into the dark cavern of the airport building and the unknown, like an actor in a film, except that the demands on me are unscripted, my dialogue will be real, and the word ‘No’ is not an option. It is dark when we arrive at the village. I have been paired with Jo. We are shown into our house. I had been excited at the idea of independent living until reality hit. It is a house. It has four walls and a roof and a bathroom, of sorts, but all idea of comfort has been erased, not even a curtain on our barred window. I want to cry, to phone home, but I can’t trust my voice not to say I’m coming home. Everything passes like a dream, we are fed, although I’m not sure what the food is. We take bottles of water back to our house. I don’t care which bed is mine, both are covered in tablecloths. Jo takes the paisley pattern and I the shiny jacquard green. It takes moments to unpack my crisp new baby doll pyjamas and I unearth my tiny teddy, my beanie, and push him out of sight under my pillow. Tears prick at the back of my throat as an image of my mother haunts me, and I climb into the narrowest, saggy bed I have ever seen, and I sleep. Somehow we waken in time for breakfast. Jo is in tune with the place. She even knows which path takes us to the canteen. She remembers which building is the school. How does she do that? I feel as if I took the wrong turning somewhere back in my life and the path ahead is obscured by a fog of indecision and mystery. A small group of old men sit on chairs, in a ragged circle. They grin at us. One or two of them wave. Their dark skin is creased and

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SHORT STORIES their hair is curled and short, or long and straggling beneath hats. There is a calm dignity in their presence. Some of them are dressed in cool grey high necked tops and matching leggings, with a large tee shirt on top, others are in sagging tee shirts over washed out trousers. I imagine they age with my grandfather. They look very old. My grandfather spends his mornings out on the golf course. He will gaze out over the countryside as he strolls from hole to hole. He will sit with his cronies in the club house passing the time of day, much as these men do, I supose. The ladies, old and young chatter ceaselessly. The brightest blues and oranges and reds, uncoordinated, add haphazard personality to them all. The contrast with dark skin is fabulous. The skirts of the young girls hang low on their hips. Garments drape, or grip to their form. I am so different in my linen trousers and a white tee shirt, with my sunglasses perched on my head and a wide brimmed hat in my hands. I feel eyes rest on me. ‘Rose I need you to come!’ Yam shouts from the doorway. She beckons. ‘Hurry. Jo, you go to the school.’ The urgency in her voice is clear. I follow. ‘I need you to watch Maya. Her mother’s been arrested. Don’t let anyone in. Keep her in here. Look after her! She understands English.’ Yam steers me in. On the floor I see a sandwich of mattresses covered in a variety of fabrics: checkered, seersucker, cotton. The open window is barred. Curtains hang misaligned from nails. A very small cooker is back against the wall and the wall is darkened from heat and oil and splashing food. A bright wrap hangs

behind the bed in decoration. In the shadow I can hear a whimper, a hiccup of misery. Cowering on top of the mattress is a small, dark haired girl. She’s about three years old, wearing only a worn tee shirt. She stares at me through tears. ‘Rose this is Maya. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ The door slaps shut. I stand. She stares. Her crying begins again, just a grumble at first. I make a formal introduction. I hesitate. Her response is a cry… louder now. There is no hiccup, just a torrent of wailing, not quite a scream, yet, but that comes too. A coal, black eye watches from behind a clenched fist and a pool

This is Scotland. This is where I live. of tears. The outburst is too much for me. Tears pool in my eyes. I blink and they cascade to a drip on my chin. She’ll see me as a victim too, I justify my tears. I am just as forlorn, just as alienated, just as lonely, missing … ‘And what good will that do?’ That’s my grandmother’s voice, practical, down to earth and realistic. ‘You need to toughen up. You’re no better than a baby yourself.’ She is right. I step forward. The scream shatters me again. I gulp.

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I step forward again, with more confidence. ‘Hello Maya. Can I sit here?’ I sit beside her. I wipe my face with my hands. ‘This is my first day here. Can I help?’ I speak in a whisper. She has to stop crying to hear. ‘I’ve come all the way from Scotland. I’ll show you on a map one day. I had to leave my mummy. Tell me about your mother. What’s she like?’ The crying was now a sob in her throat. ‘Is she pretty? Did she put your ribbons in?’ I touch her ribbon. She has two bunches in her soft dark hair. One is freshly tied the other is falling out. ‘Can I fix your hair?’ I look around for a brush. Maya points. I see a comb on the bed beside her. Little by little I gently pull the comb through her hair and she becomes quiet. I sing as I tie the red ribbon into a big bow. ‘A mirror?’ She jumps up and goes to the mirror on the wall. She points. I pick her up. She shakes her head. Her bunches bounce. She touches her ribbons. She smiles. In the mirror I start to sing. It’s a silly song. I need to put her down to make my fingers hide and dance. ‘Here I am. Here I am. How do you do…?’ I make my index fingers dance. Then I work through each finger in turn. She watches. She listens. Then she wants to join in too and we laugh. She takes my hand and pulls me to a plastic box. She lifts out a scruffy paperback book. ‘Katie Morag? I don’t believe it. This is Scotland. This is where I live.’ I giggle. She pulls me over to the mattress. We sit together with the wellfingered picture book. It’s the one about the lost teddy bear. ‘Now you’ve made me feel better. I have to do the same for you. I’ve got a little teddy bear that has come all the way from Scotland to meet

SHORT STORIES you. We can get him later. Now can we read this?’

NO AFTERNOON TEA TODAY, THANK YOU

called. No response. She must be dozing.

I put my arm around the little girl who has shown me that I can survive in Nepal, and I read my favourite story of a little girl who lives on a scottish island.

Laura’s steps slowed as she got nearer to the house. Her reluctant legs told her that she wasn’t enthusiastic about getting back home. She’d been walking along the beach for an hour, trying to raise her rather sunken spirits, yet gloom descended once again as she neared her own front door.

Laura hung up her coat and peeped in the living room. No mum. She wasn’t in her bedroom either, but Laura could smell L’Air du Temps. They weren’t expecting company. Why the perfume? She grinned. Mum was a sucker for posh perfume.

Russet J. Ashby

If only mum would accompany her on a walk to the park or on a bracing tramp along the beach. Today the sea had twinkled an extraordinarily bright blue. The wind was rich with the salty aroma from the heaps of wet seaweed brought tossed ashore by last week’s storm. She’d sat for a while in the sunshine on the springy dune grass. Foam flew through the air from the wave tops as they were whipped by the wind. The brightness of the white spray dazzled and enchanted her. Mum would love this, she had thought. But now she went out less and less. It couldn’t be good for her. She needed to meet people, chat over a coffee, fill her lungs with sea air. Laura had offered to take her to the Caledonian hotel in Edinburgh for afternoon tea last week but that lovely treat hadn’t tempted her. Little cucumber and salmon sandwiches cut in triangles, tiny cakes with cherries on top and coconut haystacks - her favourite - all piled high with large currant scones onto a three-tier china cake stand. ‘No thank you dear,’ her mum had said. ‘Not today.’ Laura turned the key in the lock.

Laura went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Perhaps she’d gone to the neighbour to deliver that misaddressed letter. She’d make two cups of coffee anyway. Laura got out the tray, loaded a plate with chocolate biscuits and filled up the milk jug. As she stood waiting for the kettle to boil she saw an envelope on the table. Laura was written on the front in her mum’s handwriting. ‘Dear Laura, I am sorry I didn’t warn you but I feared you would try to stop me. As you know, I have been writing to Michael, a boyfriend I was engaged to before I met your father. He is meeting me for afternoon tea in the Caledonian then we’ll catch the train to Yorkshire where he lives. His wife died two years ago and we have decided we want to be together. I hope you and Stephen forgive me for this awful deceit and the disloyalty to your dear father. I am sorry to have been such a burden to you recently. I shall phone you when I am settled. Love Mumxx’ Laura put the note down. She slumped onto the chair and looked at the two cups of coffee and the biscuits. Then she burst out laughing. Her father had been dead twenty years. Her mother’s ninetieth birthday was next month. Shirley Muir

‘Mum, I’m home,’ she

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SHORT STORIES OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS (non-fiction) During the last eighteen months or so, I have been reminiscing – proof positive that I am in retirement. I have also developed a fascination for certain words, such as: inspiration, momentous, excellence, delight, serendipity and a few others. Older and wiser, I ponder over this mystery regarding the intense awareness of such specific words. I finally came to the conclusion that, following the reminiscences, these words are prompting me towards some striking events of my life and are imparting distant messages borne out of the general mist of reminiscences. No longer bothered with the whirlwind activities of working life, this introspection is not altogether unexpected. So what exactly are the messages and how should I deal with them? Well, their significance is variable, as it depends on the phase of my life – or anyone else’s for that matter – they relate to. For example, they may remind us of the innocent and inspirational events of childhood, the exultations and inexperiences of student life or the profound and vital events of working life. Essentially, they all point to crucial life experiences. But, how do I know that the words I consider enthralling have become incarnate? Perhaps I should explain this conundrum by recounting snippets of information from three different periods of my own life: Childhood – While living with my parents in a remote village in north-east India, I was inspired to be a doctor after observing a group of children surrounding the car of the village

doctor. My mother informed me that “he is a very important and honourable man, as all doctors are.” Undoubtedly, a moment of great inspiration. At university – As a medical student in Patna in the late fifties, I went to Patna airport, along with my chums, to catch a glimpse of Pandit Nehru. I had a sudden urge to shake hands with India’s Prime Minister – in fact, to have his blessing. I jumped the security fence and ran for my life. He was about to board the plane but I managed to shake hands with him, not realising that I had risked my life – I was being chased by armed security men. Inexperience? Ignorance? Perhaps downright stupidity. Working life – When working in a Manchester hospital, I visited the USA for a month’s lecture-cum-study tour in 1989. While in Boston, I had the opportunity to address staff members of Harvard Geriatric Centre. Undoubtedly it was the high point of my career. What a delight – a village boy from India delivering a lecture at Harvard? Incredible. So, how to deal with these messages – these little gems? There are more ways than one. A lot depends on one’s frame of mind and personal circumstances: you can follow your own passion, such as writing, in my case. If, however, you believe in a quiet life, just forget about the whole thing and enjoy yourself. The main point is to do what you like to do, not what you ought to do. Why torment yourself if you are not passionate about writing? That won’t be salubrious. But, I have a clear idea as to how I would make the most of the offering and reap its benefits. As an admirer of the celebrated American writer, John Updike – who continued writing even when very ill and dying in the hospital

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– I would go on writing as long as I can. Besides feeding my passion, my writing would work as a document for posterity. And in passing, it would also mitigate the fear of inevitability. This is a much better way to alleviate the unease and pain of the Grim Reaper than the plan suggested by the French essayist, Michael de Montaigne: thinking about the end of our life every day for fifteen minutes once we have passed our prime. What a sad, intimidating and messy daily ritual to contend with! But this is not the culmination of this paradox. Why am I now aligning death with fear, concern and unease? After all, that is unheard of in the culture in which

Reflections or introspections are akin to life’s lighthouses… I was born, brought up and educated. I should elaborate on this point: coming from a Hindu Brahmin family in India of priestly rank, preaching a sermon was part of my family life. That meant frequent access to the community at large. From those associations and also by attending large religious gatherings, I hardly ever met anyone who was worried about or expressed a fear of death. This was true for my family – including me – and every one of my acquaintances. Even people in their advancing years considered death a natural end to one’s life and that’s that. The fact is that I have been living – for nearly forty-seven years – in the lap of western

SHORT STORIES civilisation, where fear of death is overwhelming. I suspect my approach to thinking about many things, including ‘eternal rest’, has changed: I firmly believe that this is because of the change of culture – the cultural shift, that is. Is this explanation incongruous? No, is my simple answer: after mature consideration, I can’t envisage any other plausible way to explain this puzzle. The embers of old thinking are no longer glowing. In all probability I have been influenced by the culture of this country, now that I have been living here for such a long period. It is possible that my no-fear-of-death thinking when growing up in India was just an inchoate idea and not hardwired in my brain. Besides, we should not forget that our brains are, at times, idiosyncratic. This may well be a contributing factor to my current line of thinking. Whatever, fear, along with other instincts such as ambition, kindness, disloyalty, love and many others, will continue to be part and parcel of the human psyche as long as life’s caravan moves on relentlessly through the generations. We can’t live in a vacuum after all. In essence then, reflections or introspections are akin to life’s lighthouses, which not only remind us about our past failings and achievements but also serve as warnings for our present and future. Raghu B. Shukla

THE BIG IDEA The Managers ‘The last word on how we may live or die Rests today with such quiet Men, working too hard in rooms that are too big, Reducing to figures What is the matter, what is to be done.’ W.H. Auden The move from Fisheries to Culture had Caitlin quite excited. The result of a successful promotion panel, she recalled a previous Minister describe that department as the Ministry of Fun. There was limited opportunity for glee in dealing with cod quotas and the chance to move from Fisheries to join what she envisaged as a stream of exhibition openings, schmoozings and general trendiness appealed. There was also an opportunity to make her mark in the forthcoming announcement of the latest of the government’s themed years. Each year was anointed with a theme that allowed government departments and agencies to gather around a shared topic and bring their marketing muscle to bear on one common purpose for the benefit of the greater economic good. They were about to embark upon ‘The Year of the Big Idea’ The Minister’s team were in the final stages of planning the launch of the next ‘Year’. Caitlin had been asked in her interview what she might bring to this venture. ‘What’s the Big Idea’ asked Director of Cultural Strategy and Creative Innovation, Denise Pottersby. Denise was immaculately contained in an expensive dark grey trouser suit and mauve shirt

with a finely wrought item of contemporary craft on her lapel. The piece she felt was a symbol of her commitment to the art of the maker and the creative industries more generally. She had the slim figure of a runner. Denise had been in the civil service all of her working life and risen to her current position like a bureaucratic ninja: silently but with deadly effect. Over a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in the company of friends she would espouse left of centre views and values, implying how these views informed her efforts at work to improve the lot of the disenfranchised working classes. The current extent of her contact with the working classes was driving through Pilton from her Barnton home on her way to Victoria Quay. In her 15 year career not one of her actions or utterances had made a material impact on improving the lot of another human being, except hers. She had been married for four years in her mid-twenties to a local politician who had firstly moved to the right and then moved out. She had remained singlemindedly single since. She had succeeded far beyond her level of competence and as such was now perfectly suited to the current role. The interview panel was completed by a similarly slight man with thinning hair pulled back into a straggly pony tail. Greg Paterson’s thin lips rarely formed into a smile and when they did it revealed a set of small discoloured teeth that suggested a calcium deficiency in childhood but was in fact the result of an intense flirtation with amphetamines while at university as he studied for his degree in accountancy. He had extricated himself from that most compelling of addictions with

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SHORT STORIES the help of counselling and conversion to Scientology. He had the emotional intelligence of an earth worm and the presence of a paper clip. He was numerate and delighted in detail; these were the kind of qualities that the Director of Cultural Strategy and Creative Innovation valued in her staff. Denise smiled at Caitlin. ‘Or should I say Caitlin, what’s your big idea?’ Caitlin returned the smile, as per the guidance received from her career coach. ‘It’s the chance to think big. Ideas wise. It’s where innovation meets aspiration. One might even say it sets the scene for a new enlightenment.’ She had worried about using this historical comparator, mainly because she didn’t really know what the old enlightenment had consisted of, but she did know the Minister was big on it, whatever it was, so she took the chance. It paid off. ‘I like your thinking,’ said Denise. ‘The Minister often takes the enlightenment as a jumping off point for his own reflections.’ The great tradition in the civil service of impartiality and objectivity she knew was more nostalgia than fact. Her own success was built on policy shape shifting and as far as she was concerned then the enlightenment, old and new, was the canines’ cojones as far as policy guidance was concerned. She had even gone so far as to read up on it, on Wikipedia.

Caitlin crossed her legs in satisfaction and relief that her strategy had paid off. It was a temporary respite. Greg entered the fray. ‘Yes Caitlin big ideas are all very well, but of course we are always mindful to ensure the big ideas bear fruit. Have an impact. Bangs for the public buck. What would you envisage as the KPI’s for The Year of the Big Idea?’ To an outsider Greg’s series of abbreviated queries may sound other worldly. This bureauspeak was the internal lingua franca that allowed the initiated the means to justify their own existence and distinguish themselves from the electorate and most of the elected. Caitlin was fluent. ‘I couldn’t agree more Greg, that with the pressures on the public pound it is imperative that we are able to articulate not simply outputs, but also outcomes. In the case of The Big Idea I’d suggest a balanced scorecard approach that takes both qualitative and qualitative measures, with longitudinal time frames, and includes consideration of economic and social impacts.’ Greg and Denise both nodded solemnly in agreement. All three of the participants in the exercise had fulfilled an unholy sacrament. ‘Good Caitlin. I think that’s more or less all we need. But if you have any questions for Greg or I?’ Caitlin smiled and made good eye contact with Denise. ‘Well to be honest the only thing that I wanted to ask was…. Where did you get that beautifully crafted brooch?’ It was a done deal. ▲▲▲▲▲▲

“There existed for a long time the traditional belief that the basis of

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painting and sculpture must be founded on an ability to draw. That concept has now changed” William Scott, artist The group met in their ‘pop up’ space in the shopping centre in Greenock. It had popped up as a result of the bankruptcy of the previous occupants, a picture framers. It had been a small family run business whose credit line had run dry during the banking crisis. One unintended consequence of the venal behaviour of the financial sector had resulted in free available shop spaces in towns all over the country now inhabited by ‘creatives’. This loose collective of artists had spent the first week in the shop trying to decide what to call themselves. They had concluded with a vote. ‘The Willie Scott Appreciation Society’ (inevitably reduced to WSAS) beat ‘Dali’s Moustache’ by one vote. Willie Scott was an artist born locally who had become increasingly popular after his passing in 1989. His often starkly minimalist work was an inspiration for many of the group, especially what they described as his ‘frying pan period’ when he featured a wide range of kitchen utensils. His work now sold for very large sums. He was obscure enough to be cool and successful enough to be inspiring. Having resolved their name they moved on to the even more challenging task of crafting their artist’s statement. This would be their articulation of the principles that informed their practice, the values that underpinned their work and the means of distinguishing them from the mainstream. As usual the discussion saw Charles ‘Chanky’ McIntyre in full flow. Chanky had established his reputation early on when

SHORT STORIES his degree show, ‘The Bog Doors of Perception’, achieved a certain notoriety not so much for its artistic qualities but for the unintended consequences of the piece. The work comprised a series of polaroid photographs of the cubicle doors in gents’ toilets with below each the details of Chanky’s meal from the previous evening. The photographs were taken in each of Edinburgh’s public lavatories while he relieved himself of the waste from that meal. It transpired that the graffiti captured in one case, ‘If you want to suck my big dick call 0131 222 2314’ was the home number of a senior lecturer in Craft and Design at the Edinburgh College of Art. He had to go ex-directory. ‘Risk. And innofuckingvation. That’s it. End of story.’ proclaimed Chanky. ‘Yes, yes, I see that Charles. But aren’t those the attributes of any contemporary practice? How are we different? How can we distinguish ourselves from the crowd?’ said Beccy in her gentle Home Counties tones.

‘Dream Catcher’ was a series of delicate sculptures made from plaster, each one representing an object or person from one of her dreams over a five night sequence. An avocado, the Brooklyn Bridge, her dentist, a tea cup and a pair of female breasts (Suchetta’s although that was not specified) were presented on individual plinths. An exploration of the relationship between our conscious and unconscious minds the piece was well received by her tutors. ‘Well frankly I am not terribly bothered. Never mind an artist’s statement, what about getting on and actually producing some art. Shouldn’t we be spending some of our energy on getting support for the work? Shouldn’t we be applying to Sc’Art?’ said Suchetta. ‘Aw for s sake Suchetta, that just says it all, that shower of useless, faceless, clueless bureaucrats. Waste of time.’ Chanky was not alone in his view of the country’s national arts agency, recently rebranded as Sc’Art at some

other, that challenged the very idea of ‘self’, or so they said. ‘But in order to do so’ said Bill, ‘we do need an artist’s statement’ said Ben ‘The boys are right’, Suchetta agreed. Agreeing was one of her specialities, as represented in her degree show presentation, which was a cut up collage of The Munich Agreement mixing the text of the document with pictures of the signatories. ‘Can’t someone start it off by drafting a statement that we can then discuss. Beccy you’re good with words. Why don’t you give it a go?’ Bill and Ben nodded in synchronised agreement as Beccy picked up her lap top. ‘OK then, I’ll have a bash.’ she said as Chanky arose from his chair. ‘Fair enough. I’m away oot tae get a bevvy. Anybody else fancy a wee bottle of the fine tonic wine?’ Several hours and three bottles of Buckfast, six bottles of Peroni and a half bottle of gin later the WSAS collective had arrived at their artist’s statement.

Our medium is life, our gallery is the world, our passion is the unknown.

‘Aw for fuck’s sake Beccy. Next you’ll be wantin’ us tae talk aboot brand values. We are not fuckin’ sausages eh?’ opined Chanky. Beccy was un-fazed by this familiar line. ‘Indeed Charles, we are not sausages. ‘ ‘Suchetta, what’s your thoughts on the sausage question?’ Beccy was the moderate voice of reason whose post graduate studies in Community Education had equipped her with enabling and facilitating skills. At least that’s what it asserted in her CV. Her degree show had been a more conventional proposition.

considerable expense. ‘It seems to me,’ began one of the remaining two members of the collective, who were twins, ‘that it is entirely legitimate to seek public support for our work’ said his brother, finishing the sentence. They were so alike in appearance, demeanour and outlook that it appeared that at times they themselves found it hard to tell who was who. In fact their degree show, ‘Self Portraits’ had caused quite a stir in so far as they were super realistic portraits one of the

“Our art has no purpose. It exists entirely for its own sake.

As artists we take no responsibility. Other than to our work. Our medium is life, our gallery is the world, our passion is the unknown.” They had also decided upon their inaugural collective project, their big idea. ▲▲▲▲▲▲

For the Opening of the Scottish Parliament, 9 October 2004 “Open the doors! Light of the

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SHORT STORIES day, shine in; light of the mind, shine out! We have a building which is more than a building. There is a commerce between inner and outer, between brightness and shadow, between the world and those who think about the world.” Edwin Morgan The Scottish Parliament, snuggled in at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Craggs, after fifteen years was no longer a source of architectural debate, but had settled into its role not only as a chamber for political discourse, but a place where people could visit, meet and explore. The Garden Lobby was a favoured spot for such gatherings and the perfect venue for the launch of The Big Idea. The pop up banners were in place, displaying The Big Idea logo, a question mark curved in outline around a light bulb, with the words ‘What’s Your Big Idea’ below. This was the result of a £75k design commission that involved a series of focus groups, surveys and several meetings. The final version based on a drawing submitted by an eight year old girl from Craigmillar after a schools’ competition. She received an ipad mini and a photo opportunity with the Minister. Caitlin and Gregg had arrived early to ensure all was in place for the launch. Caitlin had drafted the Minister’s speech, referencing the enlightenment of course, as well as incorporating ‘key messages’ from their ‘core script’. This included the importance of the creative industries to the economy (tick), the importance of individual ‘creatives’ to the creative industries (tick) and the government’s commitment to both

(tick). She knew he was prone to wander off script especially if the mood was convivial and his glass was full. He was well known as a man of healthy appetites and she had been rather surprised, at an overnight event in Aberdeen, to see him ‘mine sweeping’ the half full glasses of wine after a reception in the hotel. The guest list had been another significant task for Caitlin to manage. Of course there were the officials from the various cultural agencies that, while in theory operating at arm’s length from the government, were unlikely to tie their corporate shoe laces without first thinking how that action aligned with government policy. Denise had also been very clear that there had to be ideas people in the room. Academics, artists, authors, musicians, scientists and what she described as ‘digitals’ to ensure the event was seen to be engaging with the right

plan, that will articulate outcomes, outputs, key performance indicators and some other stuff that we will duly consider.’ At the back of the assembled group Caitlin could hear some whispered mumblings. She turned to see one of the waiting staff, a young woman in black blouse and skirt, tray of haggis bonbons in hand, in heated whispered debate with Chanky. Caitlin realised the young man was helping himself to handfuls of the bonbons, and stuffing them into his pocket, as the waitress protested. ‘Yes, our creative industries are nothing without our creatives.’ continued the Minister with passion, as he set aside his notes. The watchful would have seen a slight shake of the head from Denise. ‘Of course the creative individual, the artist, brings a unique and challenging insight to our lives.’

How many conceptual artists does it take to change a light bulb?’ constituency. As recent applicants to Sc’Art for financial support WSAS were on the guest list. ‘And of course we are committed to supporting the creative industries and the force behind those industries, the creatives themselves.’ The Minister was in full flow. He paused for a sip of wine. Denise, standing just behind him to one side briefly cast her eyes to the floor. ‘As a manifestation of that commitment I am pleased to announce one of my very own big ideas, the launch of our Creative Industries Task Force whose key task will be to produce an action

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Caitlin by now had lost interest in the speech as she noticed two other female guests appeared to be similarly helping themselves to handfuls of canapes, stuffing them into pockets, bags, mouths and even down trouser fronts, while two men, identical twins, with small hand held digital cameras recorded their actions and the reactions of the other guests. ‘In fact, can I ask you a question? How many conceptual artists does it take to change a light bulb?’ queried the Minister then pausing for silence as comedy protocol required. The silence was shattered by sound of a metal serving tray

SHORT STORIES clattering onto the floor. The crowd turned their attention away from the Minister to the source of the noise. They witnessed Caitlin grappling with Chanky as he now tackled a tray of venison bites with cranberry sauce on mini oatcakes. The Minister moved from talk to action. He seemed to be at one now with his inner Glaswegian as he began to part the crowd, walking at first then picking up pace, only to be felled by Suchetta’s tiny foot as she tripped him in passing. He threw his arms out in front and glided on his stomach like a goal scoring footballer coming to a halt at Chanky’s feet. Their eyes met briefly before Chanky took flight, followed by the other members of WSAS. Their work here was done. ▲▲▲▲▲▲

Bill and Ben had carefully edited the video material and added a soundtrack by fellow art school graduates, now in a band called ‘Acid Christ Bath’. ‘La Grande Bouffe’ became a social media sensation and the original film was bought by well know collector Oz Curran-Clausen. Art critic A.J. Better described it as a ‘bold post-modernist statement that challenges the very nature of the political process and corporate hospitality’. While Chanky’s availability was curtailed by his 100 hour Community Service Order (his defence in court was to read out the WSAS artist’s statement) he did make it along to the WSAS meeting where their new work, they agreed, should be submitted for the Turner Prize. They remained hopeful that their application to Sc’Art’s project funding stream will support their plans to re-stage the piece as a performance art piece in due course. J.U. Tough

THE BORDER TREE I do not want to be here. The place was full of memories, for Casper and I and the tree. The tree was ugly-- by any measurement—it was old but not very, it was green but not very. It looked lonely. It looked lost. It was growing all alone. In a desolate moorland in the Scottish Borders—well no—it could well be in Northumberland. Silly tree, it did not know in which country it was growing. Casper and I had come upon it many years ago-- it was much smaller then, little more than a sapling. We had agreed that it would never last. Two rough winters would sweep it away. Perhaps, that was why Casper and I kept coming back. We wandered around the remotest parts of the Borderlands yet somehow we had always found ourselves back at the tree.

or we were talking rubbish. Never expressed an opinion. We found comfort in a turbulent world in talking to our companion, the strange, the lonely, the unusual, the tree that had proved it was a survivor and a friend who was always there. We never told anyone else about our strange, magic, border tree. Like the tree we grew old together and age sometimes hindered our visits to the tree. Casper found walking very difficult and we had to stop going. Casper died peacefully in my arms. He was very old. In dog years he was 110. He was my West highland Terrier. I put him to rest under our mutual friend, the lonely tree. I do not want to be here. Andrew Thomson

It had not been swept away. It had grown. It was stiil a funny shape. But it was still there. We used to sit under it --if the sun was out, we were fair weather ramblers. We use to talk about all sorts of matters under the tree. We talked about friends old and new. We talked about life. We put the world to rights, under our tree. Was it in England or Scotland? Did that matter? We were living in Scotland during a hectic period of wide spread discussion about Scottish Independence and many people did think it mattered. Casper and I decided that it didn’t matter to the tree. When we lost a dear and wonderful lifelong friend we had spent a long time talking to each other------and the tree. Perhaps we talked so much because the tree never interrupted us, never told us we were wrong

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SHORT STORIES THE FIRES ARE OUT

and lap at the kindling.

The fires have all gone out now, replaced by discreet, invisible central heating systems that slowmicrowave us for our comfort.

I watch, fascinated, as the flames leap and spread with a crackle like milk poured on cereal. The sap in the kindling starts to sizzle and it sparks and snarls. The updraft draws the flames and there’s a roar in the hollow of the chimney. Yet the coal – perhaps too damp and cold – is struggling to catch and when the framework of burnt newspaper and spent kindling collapses just a couple of bits of coal are falteringly alight.

Back when the fires still burned, it was my job to light ours. Picture a darkening afternoon in November; a cold mist drifts towards the houses from the river and meets the smoke plumes that rise from every chimney except, so far, ours. I arrive home from school shivering, with only my blazer over my thin school shirt and tie, my breath feathering upwards as I rattle the Yale in the lock. I close the door behind me, toss my vinyl Adidas bag under the stairs and make my way to the living room. Every morning my mum rakes out the old ashes from the fire, wraps them in pages from the Daily Record and then sets the fire so that it’s ready for me to light when I get home from school. Then she hurtles out for the early bus that takes her to the woollens factory. And so, on this late afternoon, I kneel before her handiwork; more bits of the Daily Record, rolled up into paper dumplings the size of tennis balls, topped by a crisscrossing of the kindling that we buy in string-wrapped bundles from the Co-operative. This structure is topped by a mixture of the previous day’s cinders and some small pieces of coal. I’m still cold, my fingers are raw and chapped and I have to blow into my cupped hands for warmth before I can grip a match between my fingers. Then I scrape the red tip against the sandpaper and touch the fragile, hissing little flame to as many exposed bits of newspaper as I can, pushing it as far into the fire as possible without burning myself; actually, I do lose the hairs on a couple of fingers. Little tongues of flame now rise from the blackening newspaper 30

I go into the kitchen and return with a tablespoonful of sugar and scatter it on the smoky coals. There’s a sizzle, a burst of blue flame like a gas ring and a smell like candyfloss. It’s done the trick,

I watch, fascinated, as the flames leap and spread with a crackle like milk poured on cereal. though, and the small coals are now fully alight and starting to be consumed. I take up the cold tongs and use their small clasps little four-fingered monkey-hands - to swap larger coals from the bucket to the fire. There’s a lot of smoke but it’s definitely on its way. I’m still crouched before the fire, blowing into its heart, when Dad comes in. I turn to face him, as if proudly showing off the fire I’ve created. ‘Call that a fire?’ he snorts. ‘That’s no a fire. Gie us the poker.’ Later that same evening we’re settled after our tea in front of the fire and its near-neighbour the telly. Eventually I decide that I have to leave the room and go upstairs to

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the toilet. I’ve been saving it up for ages because the toilet is no joke to visit at this time of year. When I get there and pull the door open I see, before I pull the lightcord, a flickering red-blue glow. There’s a gentle liquid purring and a sour taint of burnt fuel. Dad has dug out the paraffin heater from the shed and set it going. I switch on the light and do the necessary, with, in the background, a reassuring putter powered by Esso Blue. The heater isn’t really for us, though; it’s not to ease the experience of exposing tender bits of skin to freezing temperatures or to free us from sitting on a chill, damp toilet seat; it’s to prevent the water pipes from freezing. But we benefit all the same. Soon we’re reconvened as a family round the fire and the telly, like worshippers at a prayer meeting. The red-orange glow of the fire projects shadows and reflections to every corner of the dark room, counterpointed by the bright white flickers from the telly screen that skip around the walls. When a programme ends, I switch the light on. ‘Switch that aff!’ shouts Dad, ‘The telly’s better wi the light aff.’ ‘I’ve got hamework to do.’ ‘Do it upstairs in your room, then.’ It will be freezing in the bedroom and I say so. ‘Well, put on a jumper,’ says Dad as he switches the light off. I wrestle with some arithmetic upstairs for half an hour (in bed with my clothes on for warmth) and then come back down. Uncle John and Auntie Bell have arrived and Dad is already arguing with Uncle John. Mum just wishes everyone would stay quiet until Softly, Softly is finished.

SHORT STORIES ‘Ye cannae beat a gas fire,’ says Uncle John, ‘ye just switch it on when ye want it. No messing about wi matches and paper.’ John and Bella won hundreds of pounds on the pools a year before and their house now has gas central heating. ‘Away,’ says Dad, ‘a real coal fire’s best. Anyway, the council might no let us change the fire.’ ‘That’s just an excuse.’ ‘Ye’re daft. How would we get hot water from a gas fire?’ ‘Get an immersion heater like everybody else!’ ‘Is anybody but me interested in this programme?’ asks Mum. So we sit and watch Stratford Johns as Charlie Barlow, the hot red glow of the fire on our faces, a tableau you could paint but not photograph. Now and again someone moves - up to the toilet, perhaps, or into the kitchen to put the kettle on - and as they do they remember that to depart from that cosy half-circle is to revisit the biting winter chill. Even just behind the settee it’s palpably colder. John and Bell leave after New Scotland Yard and hurry through a cold mist to the bus stop. I’m in bed by then but I know that Mum will be tidying the fire, now just a rich orange glow in a bed of ashes; she’ll be wrapping the day’s tattie peelings in yet more newspaper to put it on the remains of the fire overnight. By morning it will all be consumed, reduced to a puff of ashes. Picture us again, a year or two later. The miners are on strike and there are no coal deliveries. Each weekend I’m sent up to the football pitches, which are built on the former spoil heaps of our long-closed local pit. I tease out some stony, small coals from the banks and take them home in a

bucket. As a railway worker, Dad can sometimes get some coal from signalmen who always have a secret supply somewhere, but our fires are increasingly fuelled by old logs which enterprising shopkeepers are offering for sale at alarming prices. As he sits in front of one such sparking, angry fire, I look at Dad and wonder at how thin he is, at how little the fire seems to warm him. One Saturday, Dad takes me out into the garden. He is thin and papery-skinned and leans on the wall as we look at the London Plane tree that dominates the back garden. ‘Go and get that wee saw out of the shed,’ says Dad. When I do

Each weekend I’m sent up to the football pitches, which are built on the former spoil heaps of our longclosed local pit. so, he points to the tree and says, ‘Right, get started on that tree. It’s for the fire.’ The tree keeps us going for weeks with its light brown sausage-shaped logs that flare and spark and hiss as they burn; but they give out plenty of heat, though it doesn’t seem to do Dad much good. Imagine me in my bedroom, busy at my homework, drawing heat from the tiny Dimplex electric radiator I have been allowed. I hear angry voices carrying up from the living room. ‘A gas fire? Away!’ Dad’s voice. ‘Have ye been listening to John and Bell again?’

‘Och, listen to yourself,’ snarls Mum, ‘It’s no you that has to clean out the ashes and set the fire and order coal and buy kindling. Sam’ll put it in for us and I’ve already talked to the council. All you have to do is come to the furniture shop.’ Soon a gleaming machine of metal and wood, tamed blue flames puttering behind bars, occupies the grate. My Uncle Sam, a builder, then adapts the coal bunker into an extension for the kitchen, so that Mum can have a front-loading washing machine. Dad still doesn’t look well but struggles back to work. In the evenings he seems to wither as he sits gazing at the gently-purring gas fire, counting the cost of the changes. We often watch the telly with the light on, now. ‘It’s no good for ye,’ says Mum, ‘sitting in the dark like a pot o bulbs.’ It was some time after this that the letter came from the council. The housing stock in our street was to be refurbished, redecorated, some worrying asbestos was to be removed and during the work we’d be decanted to a temporary caravan site on the football pitches at the old pit. The houses would be repainted and the roofs retiled, the lofts and pipes insulated and central heating would be installed, with a choice of gas or electric. Only Mum and I moved into the caravan; Dad was in hospital. ‘What a waste,’ he said during one visiting hour when we’d been telling him about the conversion work, ‘all so’s we can sit in rooms that are too hot and sound like there are hairdryers going all the time.’ Now you’re to picture one final scene, just a few months later. The house is bright and welcoming and warm and there are smells of new paint and fresh wood. The

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SHORT STORIES gas fire still putters away and now radiators clunk and tinkle in every room, even the toilet. The wider family and some of Dad’s workmates are squeezed into the living room and Mum is circulating among them, handing out the sausage rolls and tea. ‘Och, it’s such a shame, hen,’ says one of my aunts to Mum, ‘he was a good man right enough. Anything I can do for ye, just ask.’ I sit in a corner by one of the new white-painted radiators, munching a bit of shortbread. When Mum goes upstairs for something, I hear Uncle John say, ‘It’s how he would have wanted it, him being keen on real fires and that. It’s much cleaner than being buried wi all the worms.’ I retreat to my room, now warmed

The house feels warm and dry, but something is missing… by its very own radiator, and listen as the voices downstairs grow louder, the laughter more bellicose as the whisky starts to flow. The house feels warm and dry but something is missing. That evening I sit in the living room before the gas fire while Mum is in the kitchen arranging some leftovers for tea. The darkness gathers outside and creeps into the house. I decide to leave the light off for now. David McVey

THE GAP “How much longer, granddad?” Ewan’s granddad frowned as he looked out of the train’s window. Autumn was coming, and on the low, flat hills of the borderland, trees bunched against the cold in leafy confederacy. “I don’t know,” he said, “An hour on the steam train, used to be. Less than that.” Ewan peered out of the window too, though he could not tell at what. The train had yet to gather pace, despite the gradient, and he could still pick out the individual blades of grass as they trembled in its shadow. “Stops an awful lot though, this new train,” his granddad went on, “Don’t see why.” “To let people off?” Ewan said. His granddad snorted. “Oh aye, to let people off… at Stow!” Ewan had never heard of Stow, beyond its recent addition to his railway maps, but he chose not to acknowledge the fact. His eyes wandered around the inside of the carriage, the digital display above the door. “Next stop, Galashiels,” he read aloud, “Is that where we’re going?” His granddad nodded. His elbow was propped awkwardly on the slender inset of the window frame, his chin resting on his fist. “We just call it Gala, though,” he said. “What’s the train station like in Galashiels?” Ewan asked. “Gala. And I don’t know, I’ve never been.” “I thought you were from Galashiels, granddad,” Ewan said, feigning confusion. His granddad scowled.

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“It was a different station in Gala then. This one’s brand new. You know that fine well.” Ewan shrugged and settled back into his seat. Of course he knew that; he knew everything about the line that was worth the knowing. He knew when it had first opened, when it had closed. He knew the names of all the old stations it had long left dormant – Hawick, Melrose, Fountainhall. The trains too, he knew all about them, their coupling systems, their track gauge, their maximum speed. It was the first new line to open up from Edinburgh in his lifetime. How could he not know all about it? The bygone days of the steam engine did not excite him quite so much – he had a feeling that people back then had somehow been born boring and old – but he’d picked up a thing or two, not least from his granddad’s stories. As anecdotes they were ambiguous and obscure, mainly because his granddad was himself confused so much of the time, but also because they made frequent reference to things that Ewan knew nothing about. His granddad laboured under the delusion that any character he introduced to the extensive dramatis personae of his memories, however briefly, was thenceforth established permanently in Ewan’s budding mind, like all those train numbers and timetables and God knows what else. As a result, he suffered the continual disappointment of finding, midway through his stories, that Ewan had no idea who Sandy McRae was, or Wattie the Butcher, or Langlee Budge. Ewan, for his part, bitterly resented these claims upon his imagination, and resisted them in any way he could; but as his parents rarely left the house nowadays, putting up with granddad was the only way he could even get near a

SHORT STORIES train, never mind get on one. He drummed his fingers loudly on the glass. “When do you think we’ll get to Galashiels, granddad?” “It’ll not be long now,” his granddad said. Ewan felt the faint, uneasy sensation of the train-line beginning to curve beneath them, and he pressed his cheek flat against the window’s glass. He watched for the train’s front to emerge distantly from the mass of itself, before it disappeared again as the line grew straight. For a moment more he waited with one eye closed, then reluctantly sat upright. The window left a cold tingling on his cheek which was not totally unpleasant. “What are we going to do in Galashiels then?” His granddad coughed importantly. “Well, it’s Gala versus Hawick the day, so I thought we might go down to the rugby club…” “Rugby!” Ewan breathed scornfully. His granddad laboured to ignore him. “Then we’ll have a wee poke around the centre. See what’s different.” “There’s a McDonalds in Galashiels,” Ewan prompted. His granddad looked out of the window and shook his head. “There didn’t used to be,” he said. “There didn’t used to be indoor toilets either, did there, granddad?” “Right enough, aye. I mind the first time… Och, you’re just taking the mickey now,” his granddad said, staring down into his folded arms and trailing off. It was a wounded silence of the sort which could normally be relied upon for five

or ten minutes of uninterrupted dreaming. Time that Ewan spent looking out of the window and pretending he was by himself, that the passing scenery was the great rise of the Swiss Alps, along whose dizzying ridges the Deutsch Bahn 507 ran. All the way to Moscow it travelled, the longest railway journey in Europe. It was not difficult to imagine now, that those black-red smudges of forest which ran like brushstrokes across the horizon were the dark woods of the Rhine, the stuff of fable.

“Well, but how come?” he asked, “Was it too dear, or were you just not allowed?”

“I was about your age last time I got this train,” his granddad said, “Last time I was in Gala, in fact.”

“Stood at that train station God knows how many hours,” his granddad said, “That many people. Half of Gala, if you waited long enough. Some of the faces, mind…! Used to wonder what was the story was up in Edinburgh, they all came back with faces like fizz. I’d have swapped places with any of them in a heartbeat. Mind you, I suppose they’d have said the same thing about me. Wee lad with big ideas, leaning over the platform bridge, watching the world go by…”

Ewan’s shrug conveyed a great deal more nonchalance than he actually felt. His granddad went on.

“Aye, but granddad,” Ewan said, leaning forward, “How did nobody take you on the train? Did they not know?”

“It was the only time I ever got on that train. Did you ken that? Eleven years old, and the first time I got the train was the last. Leaving Gala for good.”

“See all sorts, so you would. Couples away on their honeymoons, big crowds down to see them off, all cheering and waving their hankies. Next week they’d get back and I’d be the only one there.”

Ewan made a face of elaborate scepticism. “How that? You’re always banging on about the trains. The noises they made, the different colours. At the train station this and on the platform that. It’s all you talk about.” “Aye, I was never away from the station, right enough,” his granddad said, “Never cost anything to get into the station. Kent everything there was to ken about trains, so I did, except what it was like to get on one.” Ewan shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

His granddad crossed his knees and smiled faintly. Shadows flashed across his face, as if they were turning a corner. “A week’s a long time to be away in Galashiels.” They listened in silence to the thrum of the train, the whoosh and scrape of the uncut branches. As they sat there, Ewan tried to envisage what it was like outside, the long scores left in the shining paint, the splintering wood. How long it would be before they found a way to accommodate each other, he wondered, the new train

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SHORT STORIES and the ancient boughs, how much might have to be broken and worn away for leeway’s sake? He looked into the woods. The old tracks of the Waverley Line, they still were out there somewhere, those overgrown and ruined connections that could never now be re-opened. It had only taken a lifetime, and yet how quickly a fresh path became a forgotten one, if left uncared for. The sun streamed in, and the trees began to part. The river which had lazed beside them all this while seemed suddenly to race ahead, as if its destination were in sight. Ewan’s eyes ran with it across the fields, beneath an old stone bridge on which a man stood fishing, and out to where its giddy path grew clear again, wherever that was. “Granddad,” he said, lifting up their bags, “That’s us.” Thomas Clark

THE HORSE IN THE PARK When Alfred got to his father’s house after school, his dad was already home sprawled on the sofa, TV blaring. It was a nice, sunny day so Alfred got his bike and went out into the big park that his dad’s house backed onto. “He slowly cycled the paths that looped and crossed, watched the football matches for a while. Soon though, he found himself heading into the wooded area. Perhaps it was the cool shade that drew him in.” Alf watched the football matches for a while but then found himself heading into the wooded area. Perhaps it was the cool shade that drew him in. The ground here was uneven, it had once been worked for mines his dad had told him, and the old spoil heaps had slowly turned into a wooded network of paths and trails. Alf came to rest in the quietest bit of the wood. He could still hear the odd shout from the football but the low sun slanting in through the leaves, and the sound of the crows cawing as they flapped homewards, cast something of a spell on this town boy. A rustling nearby brought him out of his daze. Looking up he saw a white horse appear slowly out of the shadows. A white horse with a long, fluted horn that speared out of the middle of its forehead. It was quite a tall horse Alfred thought, though not nearly as big or as heavy as the shire horses he had once seen. No, this horse seemed more delicate, more precise of feature. Alf tried to feed it some grass but it seemed neither hungry nor interested, so he stroked it which he

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knew it liked from the way its ears twitched and its muscles bunched and frisked beneath his fingers. “My mum’s moving away” he said. “She’s moving away to London”. The horse looked at him with his big, silver eyes and swished his tail. The boy looked around him. It was suddenly nearly dark. The crows had settled down and there was only the odd caw. A bat flitted past. “Goodbye” he said and went home. The light was on when he walked in and the telly was still on. A few beer cans lay on the carpet and his dad was snoring with a pizza box on his stomach. Alf took the remaining two slices out of the box and went up to his bedroom where he read a story about dwarves and wolves and forests until he fell asleep. The next week, when Alfred visited his father, he went to see the horse again. And he did so every time he visited for the next month. The horse always appeared in the same place at around the same time. Alfred stroked it and talked to it. Tried to feed it too but it never wanted anything, not even polos or apples. Then, suddenly it seemed, it was the end of the summer. “So we’re moving next week”, Alf said as he stroked the horse. “London. I don’t think I’ll be able to visit you so often after that – it’s quite a long way away.”. The horse just looked at him with its big eyes. Silver like a new moon on an Autumn night. “Come with me” it said. The boy stared as he’d never heard a horse speak before, not even a horse with a long, fluted horn that speared straight out from the middle of its head.

SHORT STORIES “Come with you” he murmured. “Where?” “To my land. Where I live. There are dwarves there. Dwarves with a lust for gold, dwarves with axes. Wolves that when they howl your blood runs cold. Forest so wide and so broad that if you lost your way, days would go by before you found your way out, if you ever did.” The boy looked around him and thought. It was dark now and he could hear the bats chittering as they flew around him, feel the brush of air as their wings flapped past. “But....my mum and dad.” The horse looked at him again. Silver like the moon reflecting off a northern sea. It looked at him for a long time then turned and walked

for they loved him, in their fashion. But with the passing of time they found their lives carried on very much as they always had and their photos of him gradually gathered dust and were put into the spare room. ....Alfred watched the strange beast disappear into the shadows. He was torn; a large part wanted to go but it seemed so final, so extreme to just leave. After a few minutes he tried to follow the horse but it was just a tangle of thorns and in the darkening gloom he couldn’t make out any possible path it could have taken. Alf moved to London shortly after that and rarely returned and, when he did, the horse was nowhere to be seen. Alfred lived a decent, hardworking life. He became a teacher and was married and had

He was torn; a large part wanted to go, but it seemed so final, so extreme just to leave. back into the shadows. Alfred watched it for a few moments, watched as it started to disappear into the dark. Then he followed..... ....it into the shadows. Alfred lived a long life in the unicorn’s land. He did indeed see dwarves and wolves, walk in forests. His experiences weren’t always happy ones but his life was full and rich and wonderful in many ways and he remained friends with the unicorn throughout everything. He sometimes thought of his mum and dad and his old life but his thoughts became faint over time, so faint and odd did his previous life seem that he began to see it as a dream or a story he had read long ago. His mum and dad missed him very much of course,

a family. He continued to read and always his taste was for strange lands, deep forests, other worlds. Years later he would often pause, when reading to his children, over the description of an animal that seemed so familiar but so peculiar. ‘It couldn’t really have happened’, he told himself. ‘I have always had a vivid imagination.’ And so he finished reading the story, said goodnight to his children and closed the door. Lee Garratt

THE MAURICEWOOD DEVILS – In 1889 a mining disaster at Mauricewood just outside Penicuik, Midlothian, caused the deaths of sixty three men and boys. In this extract from The Mauricewood Devils, a novel by Dorothy Alexander, published by Freight Books, February 2016, we hear the voice of Martha, the daughter of one of those killed. As a child she lived with her grandparents in Innerleithen, sent there as a baby with her sister when their mother died. We were often as not at school on Christmas Day. New Year’s Day was a holiday, but not Christmas. We were at the school that year my Dad was lost because I remember saying a special prayer for him at the service we had in the morning. Then Miss Lillie read us a story. It was The Little Match Girl. I’ve never forgotten it: the girl sent out to sell matches in the depths of winter with just her slippers on and no coat, and no-one would buy any matches from her. The wee soul scared to go home because of the row she’d get (I knew all about that) and lighting all her matches to keep herself warm. The only thing about her that I envied was that her granny was kind. It maybe wasn’t the best story to tell us. I wasn’t the only one in tears at the end when they find her all frozen in the morning. I couldn’t get her out of my head although I cheered up on the way home because we went into Phamie’s. Phamie said me and Helen had to come in before we went home because her mother had a surprise for us. We got a surprise from her every year. She knew we’d get nothing at home so she always diddled us up a little parcel, just a little thing; no one had the money for anything fancy. That year she’d

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SHORT STORIES made us each a handkerchief with our initials embroidered on the corner and little flowers round about. I knew that I was safe to show it to my grandfather because it was from Phamie’s mother and my granny wouldn’t dare chuck it on the fire. I could be a bit of a besom though and so away I went home, so pleased with myself, making a big show of it, letting my grandfather see my new favourite handkerchief. You’ll be keeping that for the church on Sundays, I suppose, he said. And I said no, I’m going to keep it with my other special things in my white box. This was a wooden box painted white. It had a rose stencilled on the front. I kept it under the bed and it had things in it like a small metal mirror in the shape of an apple that my auntie had given me when she was clearing out a drawer. The mirror had apple leaves for a handle with a silk tassel tied round the stalk. It was inside a leather case marked like apple bark. It had Eve and the Apple stamped in gold writing on the front although you’d have struggled to make it out because it was almost worn off. It was meant for a woman to carry in a bag. I loved to pull it out of its case and peer at myself in the smooth, shiny metal. And there was a miniature pair of scissors that my grandfather had found down the side of an old chair that he’d done up. They had the loveliest blue and white handles and a dainty little clip to hold the blades together. There was one of Jaikie’s feathers, a fluffy one from when he was young. There was a stone with pretty green markings from out the Leithen, lengths of ribbon, a sprig of white heather for luck, and four-leaved clovers. I’d have two or three in the box till they dried out so much they fell to pieces. We had them pressed inside our Bibles too, and I had

a piece of yarrow in mine from up Lee Pen. That was one of the things we did in the summer. Jess would bring us blotting paper from the mill where she worked, bits that were no good, that were going to waste, and we’d pick roses and other flowers that we liked and put them in between sheets of blotting paper, put other paper on top then weigh it down. We had a brick that we’d cleaned up especially for the job. We once tried it with a hollyhock. Phamie’s Dad, Big Alex had given us it. He liked his garden. It was thanks to him that the station platform at Innerleithen was always pretty. They had big planters either side of the track. Alex was so proud of them; he always made sure they were colourful and well kept. He grew vegetables too but you got the feeling that that was because he had to, to feed his family. But his face lit up when he was with his flowers: chrysanths, gladioli, dahlias, and fuchsias. He loved them. He bred them, tried for different strains. He had a small glass-house, not many people had them then, but Alex did. So this year he’d tried hollyhocks and he gave one to me and Helen. Now, he says, you’ll need to plant it out in the garden. See if your grandfather’ll let you plant it beside his shed because it’ll need something to lean on, and it’ll grow big, maybe even as big as me. Our jaws dropped at the thought of such a huge plant. I don’t know what colour it’ll be. It could be white or red or any shade of pink in between. And you’ll need to remember to water it, at least until it gets going. That

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must have been a couple of years before my Dad died because I was about five years old when we had the hollyhock. Helen carried it round to my granny’s house because she was the biggest and I ran into the shed shouting to my grandfather to get a spade, quick, because we had a flower to plant. He was mending a shoe but gave up after two minutes of us dancing round him. We told him Big Alex had said we should plant it at the side of his shed so that it would get the sun and how big it would be, and he said that if it was that big he’d not be able to see out the window. But give him his due, out he came. Helen already had the trowel and watering can laid out. I lugged the big fork, it would be about twice the size of me, and between us we planted this bloody hollyhock. My grandfather put a whole lot of dung in beside it because nothing was ever planted there and the soil was poor while Helen and I took it in turns to fill the watering can and give it a good soak. And we tended it faithfully. We couldn’t let it die. Then we had some good weather, so it grew and grew until it burst out into the loveliest deep red flowers, big and silky, as big as a saucer. Big Alex had to come round to see them we were so pleased with ourselves. They’d win a prize in a show he said as we near burst with pride. All our granny could say was that if we put as much work into what we should be doing about the house it would be a fine day. Everyone ignored her and Big Alex winked at us because he had his back to her and said you could win a medal with them they’re so pretty. She just tut tutted and shook her

SHORT STORIES head while Big Alex stood beside the hollyhock to let us see that it was nearly as big as he was just like he’d said it would be. Helen had been desperate to dry the flowers so we did our usual with a whole stalk of them but it didn’t work, they went mouldy. We should have laid them out in the air to dry but we didn’t know that then. When we lifted off the brick and the paper all that was there where some mouldy black blotches and the stem all slimy. There was no way we’d be keeping them, no way I could put one into my white box. But the handkerchief from Phamie’s mother went in there and I wrapped a piece of dried lavender in it so that every time I opened the box I’d breathe in the scent of it and lay it back down as if it was the Crown Jewels. Helen had the best thing either of us had in her keepsake box because she had our mother’s wedding ring. My Dad kept it for her when our mother died but only gave it to her when she was old enough to look after it herself. I was to get his when his time came. That’s what he always told me. That would be to make me feel that I wasn’t missing out. I don’t suppose he ever thought that his time would come so soon. I never got it though. I wouldn’t have wanted it with what happened. But Helen, she was always going to wear our mother’s ring when she got married, and she did. It fitted her fine. She was built like our mother, at least that’s what people said, people who’d known her. And Helen had a vague memory of her although she was only two when she died, a memory of something pale blue and a voice, singing. When I was small she would make up stories about our mother to satisfy me because, often as we were going

to sleep, I’d pester her to tell me about her, what she’d have been doing if she hadn’t died, what our life might have been like. And in Helen’s stories she was always kind, always motherly, always making delicious cakes or buying us all the best clothes. The poor soul could never have lived up to it. And she was always singing, so Helen would sing her heart out like a wee lintie and I would fall asleep with her voice wavering in my ears and her arm around me, and I just loved her. That was when I was small. When I was older I’d make up my own stories when I was falling asleep, about my mother, about my Dad and Jess and how it would be if we lived with them, and quite often the stories would be about how I would do away with my granny! I was good at thinking

all ended up round at Phamie’s on New Year’s Day which was unheard of. I think that Phamie’s mother and Big Alex had decided that we all needed cheering up so they insisted that my granny and grandfather came along to the house and brought us with them. Big Alex assured my granny that there wouldn’t be much drinking because all the children would be there and anyway, anyone who would be wanting any would have had enough the night before. There was a pot of stovies on the go and they’d see us in half an hour. That’s really good of you, Alex, said my grandfather. We’ll be there. And so we were. We all had a quick wash, put on our Sunday best and went round to Phamie’s house. Well, I’d never seen the like. You could hardly

When I was older I’d make up my own stories as I was falling asleep, about my mother… up ways of doing that. I was good at justifying it too. As far as I was concerned, God would be able to see through all her God-fearing ways, any God worth his salt at any rate. We weren’t even allowed up to the table to eat our food. And it wasn’t just that we were children because we had a cousin came to stay with us for a while, Grace her name was, stayed with us when her mother had to go into the hospital, and she was fed at the table. She got the best of stuff while we had to sit on the bench at the fireside supping our tatties and gravy on our knees. I suppose there were plenty worse off than me and Helen. And we always felt it worse at times like Christmas or the New Year when people gathered for parties and the like. Although that year my Dad died was like no other. We

move for people, and the noise, it was great; people laughing and shouting at one another, children running up and down the stairs and in and out the door. Big Alex got my granny and grandfather sat down near the fire while we disappeared with Phamie and the rest of the gang. I was in my element; any time spent near Phamie’s big brother, Tom, was the best time as far as I was concerned. I was daft on him. He was a joker, full of fun. I think I liked him so much because he reminded me of my Dad, that and his curly blonde hair, many’s the girl envied him his hair. Tammy Troot his Dad called him, or Doubting Thomas, like in the Bible, or True Thomas. I didn’t know who True Thomas was; I just thought it was some kind of opposite to Doubting Thomas. I asked Big Alex one

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SHORT STORIES time who True Thomas was and he said that he’d lived a long, long time ago and that he went away with the fairies – not away in the head – away to stay with them. The Queen of the Fairies took a shine to him so she took him away for seven years and when he came back he couldn’t tell a lie. I must’ve looked worried. Big Alex said I did. It would be the thought of not even being able to tell a white lie because I was good at telling them; they could make the difference between getting a skelp or not. ▲▲▲▲▲▲

... that New Year’s Day day at Phamie’s we all had great fun. And the highlight for me and Helen was when we discovered

meowed at her. You’re all right, I’ll not touch them. She moved aside to let us all see. You’ll need to shush, Queenie needs peace and quiet. But Helen piped up will they not freeze to death out here? And Phamie’s mother said no, because she’d bring them all into the house once everyone went away. And she shooed us all back in where it was noisy and warm and poured us glasses of ginger wine. We called it wine but there was no alcohol in it. You got a little bottle of concentrated ginger at the chemist’s and made it up with sugar and water. I loved anything with ginger in it, still do. So we all trooped into the living room and Phamie announced that Queenie’d had kittens and that we’d seen them and that her mother was

They reckon it’s just like going to sleep, that there wouldn’t have been a struggle… that her cat had kittens. We were chasing one another when Tom ran outside and into the shed. He stopped dead in his tracks and we all stotted into one another at the back of him. He turned round, shushed us all and said look, Queenie’s had kittens. And right enough, there she lay on an empty sack in the far corner with what looked like five small hairless creatures suckled into her. You’d better fetch mother said Tom, she’ll know what to do for the best. So Phamie’s mother whirled out of the house, all cheery and flushed, bits of hair twirling round her face, wiping her hands on her pinny and giving me and Helen a big smile and a hello before she chased us all away from the shed door to see what was going on. Well, Queenie, she said, what have you brought me? The cat

fetching them in later on. Bill Johnson said that’ll be for your Dad to drown them, then, eh? The looks on our faces must have been a picture for Big Alex said not these ones, Bill, I promised them that the cat could keep her first litter. I can still see my granny’s sour face in the corner. Far better rid of them, Alex. And I’m warning you, I’ll chuck stones at them if they come round to do their business in my garden. Helen was so excited about the kittens she could hardly get to sleep. I knew without her saying that she wanted one and that would be a no from my granny. Then in between being excited she’d get herself in a state about how anyone could drown kittens, and was I sure they didn’t feel anything when they went into the water? I had to be quick and

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say no, the shock of the cold water knocked them out right away. Then she panicked in case Phamie’s mother forgot to take them into the house and they’d all be frozen by the morning. So I had to get up and look out of the window to see if the lights were still on along the road and if the shed door was shut. Then there was a roar from the living room to settle down and get to sleep – what did we think we were playing at and we’d better not have opened that window? My granny couldn’t sleep at night if she thought there was a window open. Next thing, we could see her shadow in the light of the scarce-open door. So I scrambled back into my bed and for a while it was as if nothing could take away the lift we’d got from our afternoon round at Phamie’s till Helen said I wonder if the cold water knocked our Dad out right away? As it turned out I don’t think it was the water that killed him. I think he must’ve just run out of air. Those who found him said that a lot of them were sitting up against the walls as if they’d known what was coming and had just waited quietly. They reckon it’s just like going to sleep, that there wouldn’t have been a struggle, and I hope so, I bloody hope so. Dorothy Alexander

SHORT STORIES THE MERMAID TATTOO I read it in an old copy of the local paper – one that I was crumpling up to put inside my coat to keep me warm. “Peter Duffy” it said “Beloved husband, loving father, much loved Grandpa…” Uncle Peter. He was always kind to me, a gentle soul, cheerful in spite of living in a house full of women. Auntie Claire, her silly fussy ways, dressing the girls all the same; always making them do stuff, ballet, horse riding, swimming. Funny enough Tanya enjoyed all that, the competitive cut and thrust. The eldest, she was the son that Uncle Peter never had and she rose to the challenge magnificently marching her competitive edge all the way into Afghanistan. Lance Corporal Duffy, 1st Battalion, Royal Logistics Corp. Lisa my middle cousin, more like Auntie Claire, frilly, mincing, self-important. Working in a local supermarket now, I saw her last week one day when I was sitting outside, she didn’t know me. Just before I got moved on. She came out chatting with some other woman full of self-importance going on about how popular she was, how helpful to the customers, helped an old woman who had collapsed – Aisle Three - as if it mattered which aisle, how her manager couldn’t do without her, likely to get promoted soon too. Big deal, big bloody deal. Then there’s Jojo, Joanne to everyone but me. I was always Jono to her so that we could sound like one person Jojo, Jono. When she laughed, she wasn’t laughing at me, just laughing because that’s what we did, made each other laugh. Yes, then there was Jojo, not interested in the competitive jungle that was family Duffy. Self-

contained that’s what she was. Jojo got caught out of course; too indifferent to know when a boy was coming onto her until it was too late. Davey Marshall with the stubble, a 6th Year nobody, big mouth, no brains. He managed to talk Jojo into partnering him to the Leavers Dance and she, being innocent of his reputation, agreed. 3 months later all thoughts of University came crashing down around Auntie Claire’s ears. Jojo just smiled, buttoned herself into her cream two piece suit and married Davey at the local Registry Office. Davey joined the Merchant Navy as soon as he had got Jojo installed in a Council Flat. She didn’t mind his absence, she happily settled into her new life and sang and danced around the flat and read to her growing baby. Jane was born with a shock of red hair when Davey was crossing the Equator on his way back from Buenos Aires on the corned beef run. He came home as little as he could but always managed to get drunk on his last night of leave and beat up Jojo as a reminder to her to behave herself whilst he was away. He’d got himself a tattoo of a mermaid – the historical image for a prostitute – “That’s you my wife” he shouted as he hit her once more for good measure. I was always shocked that her family never acknowledged it or did anything to help her. “Small price to pay for him being away for

3 months later all thoughts of University came crashing down around Auntie Claire’s ears.

6 months at a time” Jojo smiled at me through swollen bloodied lips on the first occasion she called me for help. It was when Jane was about 2 that he came home on his last leave. True to form when he left Jojo had a broken ankle and two cracked ribs. Storming out the door with kitbag and passport drunk as a Lord. Jojo rang our house guessing I would be there home from Uni. I was in my running gear just stretching to warm up. “Don’t tell anyone Jono” she had said, “just come. Jane is asleep and he’s gone but my ribs hurt and my foot is swelling up fast.” I took the quickest route along the canal tow path behind the abandoned paper mills. No one went there after dark only winos and courting couples. It was too cold for courting couples and winos don’t inhabit in the real world - I should know. So I ran, with long angry strides and with every breath I hammered into my brain what I would do to that bastard Davey if I ever got hold of him. Surprisingly there was a drunk weaving his way along the tow path, swearing and muttering. He was carrying a bundle and his coat flapped open. I was almost level with him when he looked up and I was shocked to see it was Davey. He didn’t recognise me but in effort to accommodate another person on the tow path heaved his kitbag from one shoulder to the other – the swing unbalanced him and he pirouetted side-wards his kitbag whirled out of his hand in the slow motion arc of a discus thrower and landed on the bank. I grabbed at his coat, it was the instinct of one human being to save another that’s all. But the coat peeled off his back and he disappeared into

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SHORT STORIES the dark waters. I threw the coat aside and launched myself forward onto my belly, my arms outstretched waiting for him to bob back up again but he didn’t. I wasn’t going to jump in and try and save him - he would be a dead weight, a dead loss and in any case no-one would believe the bizarre coincidence of my story. I must have waited a full minute before I got up and then fell back down again tripping over the kitbag. I threw up in the hedge. Dizzy and cold and empty I tried to think what to do. I must get to Jojo, I must. I picked up the kitbag and coat with some vague idea that she might want them back again. But they were too heavy for my shaking arms and shoulders to hold so I stashed them under the hedge a few meters from where I had thrown up. When I got to Jojo and she was in the hallway lying all crumpled up and holding her ribs. “You have to ring your Mum” I told her. “She must come for Jane and get you an ambulance you can’t ignore this any longer; no one can ignore this any longer. “ “Just let him get on-board that ship I never want him to come back here ever again, just let him get on that ship.” ”Which ship?” I asked “Tell me which one and I’ll watch to see he goes aboard.” “The Delomo sailing at 11.00” she gasped through a burst of pain. “Ring your Mum now and whatever you do don’t tell her I was here. Don’t tell anyone I was here. Never tell Jojo do you understand? Just ring your mum now.” She was muddled with pain now but she nodded and smiled and lifted the receiver. I ran back along the tow path picked up the coat and kitbag 40

That’s when they came across a skeleton tangled in the wire mesh of a rusted shopping trolley. and jogged along to the Docks. I stopped just long enough to slow my breathing down, shrug on the coat, shoulder the kit bag and stuff my one trembling hand into the pocket. I boarded the Delomo and I thrust the papers and the passport into the junior officer’s hands. I breathed heavily into his face and as he was sitting down he could only see my dark sweaty matted hair from below but he could smell my breath and the vomit of earlier. Thinking better of making a scene there and then and knowing that in the morning he could have his revenge on me for several months at sea he waved me away. “Berth 17C” he said as he pointed down a dark panelled wood corridor. I found 17C and stowed the kitbag on top of the bunk. Shunning the noisy and well lit parts of the ship I slipped out on deck and found a dark corner, crouched down beside some coiled ropes near the back and waited. Not long after everything was noise and bustle and the engines started. I waited until the dock was 50 meters away and shrugging off Davey’s overcoat dived silently over the edge raising hardly a ripple. I swam underwater in the dark and filth and emerged some way away nearer to the marina pontoon, I clambered out, shivering and ran home. I went back to Uni, Jojo went back to the flat with Jane and Davey was officially listed missing presumed gone overboard. 8 months later she gave birth to a son - yes Davey’s son but she called him John after me.

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They drained the canal 12 years later to clean it up for tourist narrow boat holidays and the old paper mill was to be converted into luxury apartments. That’s when they came across a skeleton tangled in the wire mesh of a rusted shopping trolley. The DNA proved it to be Davey Marshall and the case was reopened but who boarded the Delomo that night in place of Davy Marshall was never solved. Valerie Lees

THE SHEPHERD Dougie eased himself down into his chair, enjoying the comforting embrace of a well worn friend after another long day on the hills. The fire spluttered and smoked as it took to the fresh shovel of dusty black coal that had just been added. Reaching for his tumbler he took a sip of the silky, golden Talisker 10 year old malt, his favourite dram, and he sat back with his head resting to one side of the threadbare wing back chair. At 78, Douglas Robert Macleod was one of the oldest shepherds still working the sheep in Scotland, a product of the grand estate system of the Highlands and Islands – and a survivor of the old ways of shepherding. His evening dram as he sat by the fire was a long established ritual, working the hills for sixty years his travels had taken him from his home island of Skye to his current position for the past twenty two years on the Strathglen Estate in the Northwestern Highlands. His thoughts drifted to his wife Jessie, taken from him some five years earlier, and her voice interrupted his peace. ‘Macleod, when is it that

SHORT STORIES you will see yourself to giving me a house of my own?’ He gave a smile. ‘I’m sure this will be the last lambing I will see my dear, so it is.’ He said it out loud and was surprised to realise he was again talking to himself. The life of an estate shepherd was sometimes transient, as you had to go where the work was. It had led them to a variety of tied houses, usually cottages in all states of repair and condition. Jessie had always worked her miracles in providing a warm and clean house for them, but she always dreamed for a place of their own where they could settle in themselves, and truly call it their home. When Jessie took the cancer, all thoughts of this were dismissed, with the wish only for a chance of more time together, which was not to be. Dougie was no stranger to life and death, the cycle of lambing and the sometimes vicious loss of lambs and ewes to the predators of the hills had given him a straightforward and logical approach to the ways of life and the inevitability of death, wherever it may come from. But the promise he had given Jessie that he would retire and they would have their own place had never been fulfilled; it irked him when he felt it shouldn’t. Was he truly as selfish as some would accuse him of being ? It was done now, he raised his glass to the fire, now giving out a warmth which cheered him. Dougie pushed open the door of the shop and the little bell gave its usual tinkle. The smell of home baking had crept through from the kitchen into the shop area, Mary had been busy. ‘Hello there Dougie how are you today?’ Mary said from her position behind the counter. She had owned and run the local village store it seemed for a lifetime and Dougie and Jessie had known her and Robert

well through their regular visits for provisions, and at the Kirk on a Sunday. She was in her early seventies, a widow also, with her husband having passed away many years ago, his heart finally giving up the struggle. She was a short woman, with wavy white hair and a rosy complexion and her piercing blue eyes darted quickly about, never seeming to rest. Dougie had been told she had a soft spot for him, and recently he had been more and more looking forward to his weekly visit, and a chance to listen to her warm chatter and see her enchanting smile. He remembered the same feelings he had had for Jessie so many years ago and the flash of desire that at times would overcome him in their courting days. ‘You will be having a cup of tea and a fresh scone, they are still hot from the oven?’ said Mary, not even giving Dougie a moment to reply to her original greeting. ‘That would be grand, Mary, thank you,’ said Dougie. He had long ago realised that Mary always happened to have fresh scones on the go on a Thursday morning when he made his regular visit, and it pleased him to have this to look forward to. Mary bustled about bringing through a tray with a fresh pot of tea snug under a hand knitted tea cosy, and a plate of warm scones and home made jam. Dougie hardly got a word in edgeways as Mary proceeded to bring him up to speed with the happenings in the village and the gossip that inevitably found its way to her counter. He was quite content to sit and nod occasionally and make the appropriate sounds

of interest just happy to enjoy her company. ‘And what about the ceilidh on Saturday night are we finally going to see you there, it’s been so long Dougie?’ She had been trying to persuade Dougie to come along to the ceilidhs at the village hall for years, he and Jessie had been regulars back in the day but Dougie had stopped going when she had died, preferring the peace of his fireplace and the quiet company of his dog Jed. ‘Och it’s not for me now’ said Dougie, feeling the beginning of a flush developing around his collar. Mary’s blue eyes twinkled and her mischievous smile was entrancing. ‘Dougie Macleod! I have been dropping hints to you for goodness knows how long. You are that set in your ways you can’t see what is in front of you.’ And with that she set about clearing the tea cups and plates. Dougie took the opportunity to make his escape, the ringing of the shop door bell betraying his flight.

There was still a sharpness in the air despite it being well into May…

There was still a sharpness in the wind despite it being well into May as Dougie checked the lower pasture containing the small flock of black Hebridean sheep he tended. They had all finished lambing now and were kept busy rearing their young. Being of hardy origin they flourished in the Glen but needed their ancient breeding when the cold winds and snow arrived in the winter. The bleating of the young lambs was a soothing and reassuring backdrop to Dougie’s thoughts as he automatically and expertly scanned the flock looking for any problems in his charges. His mind wandered back to the

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SHORT STORIES village shop, this was the first time Mary had made her intentions so plain and it left Dougie strangely excited but also confused. He had accepted his place in life, his time in the hills with the sheep and his time alone in the cottage. There was no reason to give this up now with Jessie gone but he also had begun to face up to the reality of his future – on retirement he would lose the tied cottage and effectively his home. Where would he end up – in a council house in a faceless estate in town? The sun had broken through the scudding clouds and warmed his face. He could smell the aroma of the sheep on the breeze, mixed with a freshness that heralded the rapidly developing spring and the promise of more settled summer weather. A warm wet nose nudged his hand and a tongue licked his wrist as Jed reminded him there was things to do. ‘All right lad, let’s go.’ Jed was getting on in years too, almost eleven – still as keen as when he

up at the front of the cottage the next morning. Dougie had seen it approach from the kitchen window and had recognised it as the estate Factor’s vehicle. He opened the cottage door as the Factor approached, a short plump Yorkshire man with a shock of blond hair, dressed in the requisite country tweeds befitting his position. ‘Good morning to you Dougie have you got a minute I need to talk with you?’ asked the Factor. The occasional visit from the Factor was a normal occurrence although he tended to let Dougie get on with his work without too much interference. ‘Of course come away in I will put the kettle on,’ replied Dougie. Once they had settled at the kitchen table the Factor wasted no time in getting to the point of his visit. ‘It’s about the Hebrideans Dougie, I’m sorry to say that we have had to make a decision about the future of them. It looks unlikely that we will be keeping

Dougie remained silent and the factor began to look even more uncomfortable. was a youngster but slowing down a bit and Dougie wondered if he had another winter in him. The younger shepherds, whilst still using dogs, had taken to the use of quad bikes, enabling them to cover ground quicker and more efficiently. For Dougie his wooden crook with its ornately carved head was all the technology he needed, that and nearly sixty years of experience. He strode on over the field, still strong and straight backed despite his years, there was fencing to check and then some work on a wall at the foot of the Glen. His thoughts of Mary were firmly pushed to the back of his mind. The green estate land rover pulled 42

them beyond the next lambing, and we will be looking to move them on before next summer.’ ‘I see’ said Dougie simply. The Factor looked embarrassed for a moment before pressing on. ‘It’s a bit awkward Dougie, I’m sorry to drop this on you, but when they go then we just do not have another position we can move you into’. Dougie remained silent and the factor began to look even more uncomfortable. ‘So you see, I need to make you aware of this now, so that you can make arrangements in good time.’ Dougie nodded. ‘That’s fine I understand, thank you for giving me good notice, I’m sure that I

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can get myself sorted by then’. The Factor seemed relieved at his response and quickly replied, ‘That’s very good of you Dougie, we can talk more about it in due course but for now I must get on.’ Dougie showed him to the door and returned to sit at the kitchen table. He sat for a moment whilst this news sunk in. It wasn’t the first time he had had to move on, but now at his age he was at a loss as to where he would go next. He looked over at the wall where his wedding picture hung, a faded black and white photograph. Him in his best suit, Jessie in her Grandmother’s long white wedding dress, holding a posy of flowers and both with happy smiles at the beginning of their lives together. They had always moved on places together, and now he suddenly felt more alone than he had ever felt since her passing. She had always been the practical organiser, the one who brushed over any setbacks and propelled them both forwards. What would she say now? ‘Och Macleod, get yourself on and sort yourself out, you’ve no the time to be sitting feeling sorry for yourself.’ Dougie smiled, got himself out of the chair and went to put the kettle on the stove. ‘My, my, twice in the same week? There are no scones to be had if you are expecting some, but I can put the kettle on if you like?’ Mary did not make a comment on Dougie’s previous exit and seemed not to have taken offence. ‘That would be lovely Mary thank you and sorry about the other day, leaving so abruptly…..’ replied Dougie. ‘Not to worry you will have had your reasons I’m sure,’ said Mary smiling. He had taken his time to think through what he was going to do and say to Mary. The Factor’s visit had made him realise that he had to move on, and grasp the opportunity that lay in front of

SHORT STORIES him, as Mary had already pointed out. ‘Would you come to the ceilidh with me on Saturday, Mary ?’ he suddenly blurted out. Mary paused and turned back to face him. ‘You have had a change of heart then, Dougie?’ said Mary a hint of a smile forming. ‘You are a fine woman, Mary, and I am very fond of you, it’s about time I thought more about the future and less about the past. I would be honoured to have you on my arm if you would accept my invitation?’ Dougie waited, feeling like a young man again in nervous anticipation. Mary smiled and held out her hand for Dougie to take. ‘We should never forget the past, our memories and what is in our hearts, Dougie Macleod, but that should not stop us leaving room for some happiness in the future. Thank you, and yes, I accept your kind invitation’. The dram tasted sweeter tonight. He sat back in his chair and smiled thinking of Mary and wondering if he still could keep up with the youngsters at the village hall on Saturday night. Maybe it was time to hang up his crook and let himself enjoy retirement. He had never seen himself doing anything other than shepherding, but maybe Mary would need a hand in the shop now and again? Barrie McEwan

WHAT PRETTY ISN’T Our mam was sick. It was serious. There was doctors who looked as sour as pig slurry when the pit is opened for the first breath, and they shook their clean grey heads and clasped our da’s hand in theirs and patted his shoulder. And they said there was nothing but praying to do. But our da was not one for church singing and speaking with god. He was a farmer. Da refused to accept what the

doctors told him. He paid their bill and thanked them all the same, but he could not accept what they’d said. Da put on a cheerful voice - doctors are just men after all – and he said our mam was just too pretty, and she was pretty. Da called her ‘honey’ and ‘sweet’ and ‘sugar’; she blushed at the new attention he gave her in front of us, all that looking and kissing and touching. And he said we should all look out for her, for our mam, and we should make everything easier for her in these harder times. There were days and days we went to the beach, and ‘our mam stretched out on a towel looked as thin as a model and pretty like da said’. And Lucy kept singing and dancing across the sand and waving a striped towel above her head like it was a flag. And it was early August and the sun was still warm and the sea warm, too. Da brought us lunch when the animals at the farm had been seen to and he kept asking our mam if she was alright. Then, one day the whole world was turned on its head, and up was down and down was up, and pretty was no protection against dying. I remember the day and the moment. I was reading the morning newspaper and it said ‘Marilyn Dead’ on the front page and her pretty picture underneath. And hadn’t our da once said Marilyn was the prettiest girl that ever drew breath and our mam had said maybe she was. And Lucy’d asked if angels were prettier, and mam said she thought not. ‘And there in the newspaper in letters big and black and not to be missed Marilyn was dead’, and I knew then. Everything was clear in the days and weeks that followed. Da was trying too hard and there were cracks in his voice if you listened,

and some days he sat on his horse out back and just stared at the dirt, and time just passed him by. And our mam got thin as sticks and weak with it, and her dress hung loose about her and her breath came in short snatches. And Lucy was the only one who did not know and Lucy counted the eggs each morning and brought the cheerful number back for our mam to marvel over. Then mam dead and nothing in any newspaper to let the world know. Sudden as thunder when it claps in a grey sky or lightning when it flashes. And they laid her in the churchyard ground with a white carved stone at her head and wilting flowers at her wet feet. And da lost all his words for the longest time and might have lost his wits, too. And Lucy just cried. It was only a year later that the President of the United States was shot in his car and he was pretty, too. I remember mam said so, way back, and she asked me if I didn’t maybe agree, and I did cos it pleased her. Da asked if she didn’t really mean ‘handsome’, that the president was handsome maybe? But mam shook her head and she insisted he was pretty, like boys can be, and like men who are closer to the boy they once were growing up. And what with Marilyn and our mam and the pretty president, well, I worry now over a girl called Martha, and she’s the prettiest girl in school, everybody thinks so, and she kissed me at our mam’s funeral and she held my hand and said, ‘There, there now.’ And on all the days following, she’s held my hand still, and I’ve held hers, tight as not ever letting go, and I look for pretty Martha getting thinner or breathing short, my heart in my mouth, and looking just in case. Douglas Bruton

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SCHOOLS AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY All she heard was screaming. The ear-splitting noise was everywhere – in front of her crimson flames engulfed the passengers, making their way closer to her. They were plummeting hundreds of miles per hour to the ground. She thought of her little sisters, waiting eagerly with her parents at the airport not knowing she wasn’t coming home. She knew she was going to die. Her life as an exchange student flashed before her eyes. The plane landed smoothly on the runway. She made her way to the luggage collection point in a hurry. This was her first time abroad; she was an exchange student from Germany. In a few minutes she would meet her host family, who she would be living with, for the first time. She felt sick to her stomach as she thought of what they would think of her. Would they like her? Making her way to the exit she scanned the crowd of people in front of her anxiously searching for the family. The whole plane was breaking apart. First the wings snapped off and the window on the other side of the aisle burst in, showering the passengers with sharp glass. After finding her host family, she settled in to her new house. Her host mother Margaret showed her the village they lived in and her 3-yearold host brother Hamish gave her a tour of his best hiding places. In spite of the captivating Scottish landscape all she could think of was her first day at her new school tomorrow. She hoped she would make friends quickly.

and left in the rain to catch the school bus. She was swept up in the noisy hustle of everyone clambering to get a seat on the bus and saw a free seat next to an irritable-looking boy near the back. Making her way over, he shot her an uninviting look and she ended up next to a chatty girl who wouldn’t stop talking. The oxygen was failing and every breath was a struggle. They’d been dating for a few weeks. She was so happy to not only have made some wonderful friends but even had a boyfriend. She never would have guessed the grumpy boy, Ben, on the bus had such a nice side. For her birthday he surprised her with a homemade cake. It was burned but she loved it because he’d made it. The flames had almost reached her. She tried to scream but smoke from the fire was filling up her lungs. She walked around the corner smiling as she heard Ben’s voice. His shocking words rang her ears. “She seriously hasn’t figured it out yet? I can’t believe she can’t see that this whole thing is a joke. Best dare I’ve done!” The plane exploded on the ground, killing everyone on board. She was dead. Emma Martin S2 Galashiels Academy

Her seatbelt was digging into her thighs and she heard a baby howling behind her. She was the only one not panicking in a sea of despair. The ear-splitting ring of her alarm woke her with a start. Looking out of her window she noticed the looming rain clouds huddled together like sheep. Skipping downstairs she enjoyed a breakfast of beans on toast

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BEST KEPT SECRET

Best Kept Secret James Brown Selkirk 1832 - 25 December 1904. Distinguished Scottish Poet & Essayist. Author Bible Truths With Shakespearean Parallels Published 1862 Whittaker & Co London. Also the poem Auld Selkirk Toon put to music by G.R.College & performed at The Selkirk Common Ridings every year. Also books of Poetry & Essays on Philosophy. When my husband, myself and my mother, May Hoggard, came to live in the house Cascade in 1984, we were aware of a magical history & influence we were very privileged to enter. Mr. & Mrs. Macculloch, the late jeweller and his wife, in Galashiels, from whom we bought the house, told us quite a lot. This included the resident three crows, who would announce any guest walking up to the house with a distinct caw, caw & a tap on the window. The otters, who came up the burn during the night. The badgers who came for bees nests, also at night, & the solitary Roe Deer who we have often seen â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Change- Shaper for St Patrick we hear. Then there are the Mallard Ducks, Mr.& Mrs.,from the Tweed, who come every Spring to inspect for suitable nursery quarters.

They fly in every day for weeks inspecting everything. Only once or twice have they approved the location, but when we were approved, we had the brilliant spectacle of a little pond, created near our kitchen door, being used as nursery swimming lessons, before suddenly one morning, pop!, the six seven or eight (too quick to count them) ducklings are launched in the racing Cascade Burn, and are flushed in an instant away, down to the roaring Tweed.

Not the least of the fascination, is the fact that the burn forming the Cascade waterfall, after which the house takes its name, appears to either run uphill or go underground after leaving the Hollybush Loch, which is the source of the burn. If underground, one wonders who made the channel, as the rock here is not pervious at all to water, unlike limestone. There are very few, if any other, waterfalls in the Galashiels area, due to this. I have an old map of 1795

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drawn for Hugh Scott, The Laird then, as are his descendants now, at Hollybush, showing his Barony & Lands. This does not show the house Cascade, which was built 40 years later in 1834, but does show the Hollybush Loch, then called simply the Reed Moss, but the shape of a lake is clearly shown, much as it is now, with a burn flowing from it, which now flows past the Cascade House, then entering the Tweed. So, possibly the Romans in this area made this underground canal to produce the waterfall. They, for eons, in August each year, held sacred ceremonials related to the Goddess Diana, otherwise known as Artemis, customarily in a place where a waterfall fell from a lake as in Lake Nemi, Aricia, outside Rome, where there was the sacred grove of oaks. This seems to me a similar setting to the Cascade Glen, remnant of the ancient Caledonian forest. The house is immediately situated next to two conical hills, likely manmade, though as yet unexcavated, and Walter Elliot, the Selkirk Antiquarian, believes they are pre-historic settlements, as he has been dowsing over them & found evidence of vertical shafts such as contained large timbers. There is also a similar conical hill at the top of the Cascade ground, which looks very similar to me

though it is an unknown entity. We have been suddenly visited since living here by many people, including from Australia, who,

or their ancestors, recount vivid experiences living here. A tragedy when a twelve year girl living here, drowned in a sheep dip, in the early 20th Century, actually a water supply to the house twelve feet deep, now covered by railway sleepers, higher up the hill. Then there was an old shepherd, living in the Rink Farm cottages, who convinced my husband twenty five years ago of the reality of dowsing for water, when the shepherd happened to come across him in a field above the house, furiously digging all over a field, and exhausting himself, to find where the water cistern supplying the house lay. The

BEST KEPT SECRET shepherd produced his dowser, found the water source, then encouraged my husband to rewalk the ground using this, and convinced him of the veracity of this, as the cistern was found directly under where the metal dowser prongs moved, just like a compass swinging to the North. In 1984, I met a 90 year old patient in Galashiels Sanderson Hospital (now closed) who was a maid in this house in 1910, with the barred back windows to prevent escape, and the call bells, as per Downton Abbey, when there were stables here, now a workshop. We were told of the three ghosts here. I have recently discovered that a then famous man of letters lived in this house for twelve years, from 1858 to 1870, when he wrote his book the Bible Truths With Shakespearean Parallels, amongst many works of poetry and essays. James Brown, also known as JB Selkirk, the author, lived here after his marriage to Agnes Brown Bucham from Galashiels,who died 1874, age 37, after giving birth to 9 children.He was greatly admired in his time by now famous writers including Tennyson, but he, himself, appears to have slipped off our radar. I think it likely, that JB Selkirk was a tenant, not owner, of the house as the Title Deeds from 1834, when the house was built, show that it remained in ownership of the large landowner and Laird, Pringle, more anciently known as HopPringle, and his descendants. JB Selkirk then had the house Thornfield built, in Selkirk, ( notably also the name of Mr Rochester’s house in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre published to great acclaim in 1847) There from 1870, his wife died, age 37, four years later. Before her death, three of

Far left: Full grave with snow with caption: Ancient ruined church of Selkirk in the Forest containing the grave of J.B. Selkirk and family Bottom Left: Bible Truths with handwritten inscription with caption: Antiquarian Library Collection, St Mary’s Mill, Selkirk Left: Poems by J.B. Selkirk

her nine children had predeceased her. After her death, John Brown of Selkirk’s health declined markedly and he lost the impetus to write further.

same. Eventually the truth will out as they say. How many writers and artists have only been recognised posthumously? There is a principle in this also perhaps.

Therefore, I believe, that this book was written in the better times of his life while living in the house Cascade, with his wife, and the coming of nine babies.

However, perhaps his memory is not completely lost in the world of literature & publishing, even today, as I was amazed to discover that this antiquarian book has been reprinted in Paperback by two publishers in 2015, Leopold Classic Library at £10.90, Forgotten Books as a Classic Reprint at £9.59 which are available from Amazon & that Rare Books Club .com published this in March 2012, & Nabu Press in March 2010. Interestingly the Author is named Anonymous in that edition. Neither of the latter are currently available. Amazon have a single hardback copy at £100.

By serendipity, only last week, I sighted the historic book, locked in the glass shelves of the Antiquarian book cases in the meeting room at St. Mary’s Mill, Level Crossing Road, Selkirk. I have been put in touch with the Librarian, Jennifer Lauder, who is the custodian of this collection & have been able to view this book, and others by this author, in this historic collection, with her. I have read his book and think it splendid. He clearly knows every word that Shakespeare wrote, probably by heart, and likely every word of both New and Old Testaments, and can therefore make appropriate correlations between them, which I think is very effective and inspiring. That then was scholarship. Perhaps different now. The principle however remains the

The books in the local collection, have the authors handwriting in them (which was, it seems, his wont) and there is a copy inscribed by his son two years after publication, so I would imagine that these books would be very valuable if available for sale now. Carol Norris

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#UNTITLEDONE Eds. Kevin Williamson and Michael Pedersen Polygon Poetry 95 pages ISBN: 978-1-84697-334-5 Neu! Reekie is one of those things which really shouldn’t work. A creative collective of poets, musicians, and filmmakers whose live shows are frequently described as ‘happenings’ – that’s a notion which has all the makings of disaster. Yet Neu! Reekie does work, spectacularly so, and is one of the hottest platforms for spoken word poetry (and all else besides) in the country. For my money, what prevents Neu! Reekie from becoming the anarchic mess it really ought to be are its co-curators, Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson. The live shows, taken as a whole, have a rhythm and a cohesiveness which make them works of art in their own right. I don’t think this is simply because Pedersen and Williamson schedule the right acts in the right order (though no doubt that helps); but, as hosts, they’re superb tone-setters, exceptionally good at striking the relaxed, semi-serious note the shows depend on.

also the editors of this volume, #UntitledOne, the first anthology from the Neu! Reekie collective. Editors being nowhere near so prominent as hosts, they are represented only by a couple of poems each and a short introduction; but I missed them, and although I’m not sure exactly how it would have worked, I’d have liked to have seen them find more ways of sticking their oar in. It’s not the done thing for the editor to force himself between the reader and the work, but the Neu! Reekie experience is so dependent on the pair for its texture and coherence that I’d have been glad to see more of them; some form of textual MCing, maybe, scattered throughout the book.

Pedersen and Williamson are

But then that’s probably to

FAMILIAR YET FAR: The Story of Oisin Kelly By Iona Carroll Mauve Square Publishing 2015 394 pages Paperback £8.99 ISBN: 978-1-909411-39-5 Kilgoolga, Queensland, Australia – 1857. An argument takes place between a quick-tempered German, Heinrich Seefeldt, and his 48

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understate the invisible parts of Pedersen and Williamson’s work, the bits which are carried out as splendidly in #UntitledOne as in the shows. The real wonder of Neu! Reekie is the breadth of voices which it synthesises, and this volume does a fantastic job of bringing together the good, the great, and the rising stars of (primarily) Scottish literature. You’ve got Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard and Douglas Dunn on one hand, Hollie McNish and Kirsty Logan on the other; and then Irvine Welsh as well, presumably on an entirely separate hand, growing out of who knows where. All of which is not to mention the digital double album which comes free with the book, including the likes of The Merrylees and Stanley Odd. It’s hard to imagine such a disparate group sailing together under any other banner than Neu! Reekie’s. So twofold kudos, really. Firstly for an anthology which does an excellent job of capturing the feel of Neu! Reekie for those who haven’t seen it yet (though why haven’t you?); and secondly for an anthology of great value in its own right, a kind of performance poetry map of the stars. I look forward immensely to #UntitledTwo. Thomas Clark

neighbour, Jamie Paterson, over a boundary fence. It culminates in a bloody murder which, on the initiative of the German’s sister, is made to look like a deed carried out by Aborigines. That was all so long ago but sometimes the past refuses to remain buried... In Familiar Yet Far, Oisin, transported from rural Ireland via Edinburgh and a disastrous

BOOK REVIEWS ANY NEWS FROM INDIA?

establish her equilibrium. She was brought up by grandparents and didn’t know her parents well. Up until now, her identity has rested on keeping her images of them and their life in India vague.

By Dorothy Bruce Twinlaw Publishing 2015 Paperback 326 pages ISBN 978-0-9932220-3-0 From the moment Ro opens the door of her home to a stranger at the beginning of Any News from India? the author opens up a world of anticipation, expectation and suspense. You’ll constantly want to read on to see what happens next. At one point in the novel Ro delays the opening of a mysterious package, deliberately suspending revelation of its contents and knowledge of how they will impact on her life. For me, this incident epitomises the way the plot progresses. Dorothy Bruce invites us to enter the life of one of her three main characters and then, revealing just so much, turns to another character’s story until, towards the end, in a masterful fashion, they are linked in subtle ways. Just as there is a question mark in the title, so questions abound in this intriguing novel. Who is this stranger? What are the secrets of Ro’s late mother, who spent some time in India? How is Aitken to deal with the sale of his ancestral home, when it is entrenched in his history and even in his personality? What is going to happen to Maitla? And more. The influence of the past on the present features large. The portrayal of Aitken, an MP who cannot afford the upkeep of his family home, Berefield, in the Scottish Borders is fascinating. Dorothy Bruce shows him as a vulnerable character who feels guilty about selling his property and de-stabilized by his decision to do so. Essentially, he is Berefield and Berefield is him.

Maitla’s story is also one of identity and adaptation. She is both cornered by the past, in that she loses a loved one and she liberates herself to start afresh. A lawyer, her past, like Aitken, includes a family heritage, but she has broken away from this. So, the three main characters have very different lives and experiences but, in unexpected ways they mirror each other. The novel is very visual. The descriptions of places are marvellously graphic so that they come across almost as photography in words. Dorothy Bruce is also a photographer. A couple of the interspersed poetic phrases stand out. Ro is handed an old, black and white photograph that is described as being spider-webbed by creases. Another example is a description of a gesture made by Ro’s elderly aunt: A hand wafted around her mouth like a moth around a light and then … Any News from India? is well-worth reading for its diversity, depth and descriptive power and, in particular, its depiction of the Scottish Borders and Borderers’ way of life. Dorothy Bruce is on her way to becoming a prolific writer. Her other books to-date are In the Wake of the Coup, The Seaweed Cage, Alexander Reid and the Japanese Influence: Art, ships and plants. She also writes a blog: http://jingsandthings.wordpress.com Pat Mosel

Ro is shaken by the news the stranger brings and starts to delve into the past in order to re-

relationship with a young American woman, finds himself in outback Queensland, Australia, a country deeply affected by the war in Vietnam. Iona Carroll executes the switch from one rural community to another, so very different, with a true writer’s panache. As in the first novel, Crying Through the Wind (reviewed in ET 25) the characters are wonderfully real,

and one cannot but help feel for the young Irishman waking up in such an alien world. From the start, the past, and not just Oisin’s, is important. The writer subtly weaves this into the story as it unfolds, using a fine balance of both pathos and humour. Wonderful characters drive the story, starting with Cecy the manipulative American woman

in Edinburgh who initiates the innocent young Irishman into the pleasures of sex and causes him to travel to the other side of the world to escape from the memory of her. Hans Seefeldt and his sister, Hilda, Claire Patterson and Eleanor Bradshaw, who also has links with the past, see to it that he does. Whilst the conclusion of the first novel reduced me to tears,

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BOOK REVIEWS that of Familiar Yet Far had me gripping the sides of a roller coaster of a story. There are many threads in this fabulous novel and they come together in a riveting ending which forces the reader to hold tight. Very cleverly done. Maria Peres, the celebrated Mozart pianist, when asked what it was she loved about the composer replied that in Mozart’s music humour, tragedy and

romance are all mixed together. I would say the same about Iona Carroll’s writing. We have all three in beautiful balance in the first and the second novels of The Story of Oisin Kelly, and I’m truly looking forward to the third and concluding novel, Homecoming. Once again, I want to know what happens next in the life of this troubled yet likeable young Irishman. Eddie Nessuno

THE MAURICEWOOD DEVILS Dorothy Alexander Freight Books Pbk ISBN: 978-1-910449-66-0 £ 8.99 Around 1960 when I was about sixteen I spent a lot of my weekends cycling through Lothian, doing industrial gothic. Once you’d broken the back of the long climb from Morningside to Fairmilehead, you could coast downhill into an intricate landscape of coalfield settlements: pubs and co-ops, the mighty Bilston viaduct across the deep gully of an Esk tributary. There was precipitous Hawthornden, Roslin with its dripping woods and gunpowder works, caverns and redoubts linked up by wooden tramway; Penicuik’s Pilkington Free Kirk like something from a medieval book of hours. Above it, near Pomathorn an old woman pointed where a horse waggonway had run from a pit to the main road. My granny was born doon yon pit. It figured. Female labour only ended in 1842. I justified this with a sixth-year thesis on Scotland’s first railways, but it was really a project in 50

the romantic. A museum of technical antiques and strange effects, the fingerprints of Poe and Washington Irving about it: as well as Stevenson and Scott. Later, my friend Iain MacDougall’s oral histories of farm bondagers, papermill and gunpowder workers, would people it with real folk and their stories, opening up not a kailyardfull of couthiness but survivors and their clouds of witness. Dorothy Alexander’s remarkable fiction goes further: imagining the impact of the fire and entombment at the Mauricewood pit in 1889 – killing sixty-three miners – on Martha, the daughter of Davie Anderson, one of its victims, being brought up by relatives at douce Liberal Innerleithen, an hour’s train-journey south, and on Jess her stepmother, waiting for her husband’s corpse to be recovered. The term ‘magic realism’ has been overused. A ten-year old girl’s rationality is still evolving. Experiences may or may not have happened, or have been vectored through the Bible and the ballads, both of them the heart of a heartless world. But there could be an empirical route into it, if we go back from 1916,

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GOLDEN JAGUAR OF THE SUN By Oliver Eade Mauve Square Publishing 2015 247 pages, Pbk ISBN:978-1-909411-35-7 With a cast full of characters and a storyline that zips along at quite a pace, we encounter the strange world of multidimensionality with drug gangsters, Aztecs, Mayans, a princess and of course the Golden Jaguar thrown in to keep all the dimensions up in the air at the same time. The Golden Jaguar of The Sun is the first book of a trilogy and focuses on the story of a young hero, Adam Winters, a fifteen year old American boy who lives in Houston,Texas alongside his beautiful Mexican/Spanish girlfriend, Maria, who is also

when the psychologist Arthur Brock, a disciple of Patrick Geddes, used ‘ergotherapy’ to spring the traumas of the front-line casualties he treated at Craiglockhart by getting patients like Wilfred Owen to live with Lothian miners who were, like front-line soldiers, accustomed to daily peril. This civilian entombment, as well as the Western Front, contributes to the power of a poem like Strange Meeting, moving from an underground encounter: Courage was mine, and I had mystery; Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled.

BOOK REVIEWS

family for hundreds of years. As well as giving Adam the bracelet, Maria tells him that there’s another similar bracelet buried somewhere in Mexico and legend has it that the person that wears both would be the master of the fiercesome Golden Jaguar of the Sun that used to prowl around the Aztec Sun Temple during human sacrifices.

fifteen. Maria is not only beautiful, but also talented and the novel opens with Adam and Maria on a plane heading off to New York to record her first album. On the plane Maria gives Adam his birthday present, a Mexican bracelet that has been in her

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. The Mauricewood Devils takes its place along with another, historical, dissection of an 1880s disaster, Peter Aitchison’s Children of the Sea (Tuckwell, 2001) centred on the destruction of the Eyemouth fishing fleet on 14 October 1881. Aitchison uses the fishertown’s campaign against the Kirk’s financial exactions to build up a portrait of a distinctive community, isolated from the inland farming villages, feminised by the onshore role of its women as vendors and bankers to their

Adam is thrilled with the bracelet as he’s really interested in archaeology. He’s also a bit of a geek which has got him into difficulties with the class bully, Spike, who used to go out with Maria. One day, however, Spike beat up Adam in front of his girlfriend and from then on Maria only had eyes for Adam. However, Adam has a problem with jealousy. It is as though his insecurities won’t let him believe that Maria loves him and only him and if he isn’t careful this could well destroy everything between them.

men, ending with the heartbreak of returning, storm-driven boats smashed against the sill of the harbour-mouth, 189 crewmen battered and drowned within grasp of their own families. The accompaniment of John Bellany’s haunted paintings of fisherfolk seems to give a similar effect to Martha’s invocation of Border folklore and legend. Against the victims solemnity covered for guilt. At Davie’s funeral the panoply: braided, ostrich-plumed black horses The undertakers didn’t seem to have much of a job lifting it on to the back of a hearse. In my head it was a skeleton they loaded onto their wagon – gives way to the measured, bitterness of the widowed Jess:

When they get to the recording studio Adam’s jealousy kicks in big time and his imagination makes him believe all kinds of things and he ends up at a party where drug pushers are trying to force their wares on a young boy. Adam steps in and rescues him, but in the process he gets shot… or does he? From here on in, Adam finds himself on a terrifying adventure through time to make all right in the world. Will he succeed? First he must find the second bracelet and tame the Golden Jaguar of the Sun to help him in his quest. The Golden Jaguar of the Sun is full of adventure and fast paced action as Adam has to face his fears, conquer his jealousy and learn to deal with his teenage angst in the face of fantasy and folklore. A really well-written, enjoyable read. Vee Freir

There was a crowd of people there and I’ll never forget the way she looked at one of them. When the horses stopped and the undertakers opened the hearse, she walked across and talked to a sober, well-dressed man. You could see his face go grey. She told him that he wasn’t welcome at my Dad’s graveside and that she would appreciate it if he’d stay away. I didn’t know that at the time. I was just struck by the dignified way that she did it. Then we followed the coffin from the gate to the graveside. The Mauricewood Devils weren’t malignant but the literally corrupting dead, for the twothirds of them walled-in while still alive would not be reached for

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BOOK REVIEWS months: an additional horror for their families to anticipate. Deaths tend, though, to come with big-ticket projects: think Tay Bridge, Piper Alpha. The Bilston Glen viaduct, started as the mine was being driven in 1875, was massive, so the Shotts Iron Company seems to have had the idea that the coal-and-iron mix at Mauricewood might emulate the blackband ore of the Monklands, that grew the Lanarkshire iron industry but was now beginning to run out. Did the prevailing depression cramp the project’s style, cause corners to be cut? It’s unwise to functionalise Dorothy Alexander’s achievement, except to say that its reflective poise and sympathy stands out against the formulaic excess of our current cash-register Bloody Scotland dwindling into its own satanic kailyard. Alexander ends with a cathartic chapter in which the vision of the collier’s daughter Martha becomes that of Thomas the Rhymer. (Her dream-world is the iron road, and at the end of it the Rhymer’s Eildons). In a denouement as dramatic and

gripping as – say – the ending of Michael Powell’s film A Matter of Life and Death, the miners, and indeed the dead of historic Penicuik: papermakers and Napoleon’s soldiers, rally to Peerie, the Queen of the Fairies, and confront the Devil come for his tithe who sounded ‘like the booming of a great engine’. Within a medieval pageant of heaven and hell, Martha gets the martyrs off through shrewd recourse to Walter Scott, and the Devil takes the men in top hats. There is a day coming when churches are used as stables and castles as haybarns, when all will be held to account. Not wholly remote from Owen, or the fantasy-fiction of James Hogg or later George MacDonald – and the actual, involved figure of the novelist Samuel Rutherford Crockett, caught up in the Mauricewood disaster as minister of Pilkington’s gothic Free Kirk, and pledged to the victims: Silent, because they had seen their old life crumble like a swallow’s nest in the rain? Prof. Christopher Harvie

MISSING, PRESUMED UNREAD Tom Bryan Indigo Dreams Publishing Poetry 74 Pages ISBN: 978-1-909357-84-6 The seventh collection by erstwhile Eildon Tree editor Tom Bryan is a fusion of Canadian/ Scots/Irish folklore and myth told in Bryan’s always engaging prosy, well-crafted narrative style. Seven collections of poetry is a significant achievement and it’s testament to Bryan’s ability to leaven his work with a charming, almost naïve oral tradition innocence that prevents the reader from ever becoming bored with it. The opening section of poems, Sassafras Boy, did seem a little thin, even unremarkable, with some unwieldy rhyming schemes at times gilding the prose styling where it struggles to find ingrained natural rhythm. It might be a false dichotomy, but Bryan always registers as a craftsman rather than an artist, a perception I guess he will be happy with. Given the collection’s title, this reviewer

NO STRANGER TO DEATH By Janet O’Kane ISBN: 13978-1493779802 352 pages PBK Fiction There are fictional detectives from Shetland to Midsomer and all points in between. Now we have our very own Doctor Zoe Moreland, GP in the Scottish Borders. Recently widowed, Zoe thought her move to the Borders would mean a fresh start for her but little did she know what was in store for her in the rural and fictional village of Westerlea. While walking her dog on a

cold November day, the doctor comes across a body lying in the remains of a Guy Fawkes bonfire from the night before. Reluctantly, Zoe finds herself in the centre of a murder investigation and there is more is to come. Another person dies in mysterious circumstances and Zoe’s own life is also in danger. No Stranger to Death is a well thought out mystery which relies much on dialogue for the pace and action. The reader is kept guessing right to the last page.

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I confess I had my suspicions about one of the characters half way through the novel but such was the skill of the writer, I didn’t get it entirely right. The characters are a wonderful jumble and include Doctor Zoe’s new found friend, Kate who happens to be deaf and always wears pink. The two women set about solving the mystery of the two murders in the close knit rural community and it is fun to read about real locations in the Borders as the drama escalates. This helps identify the story and

found himself wondering if this was going to be a book of poetry off-cuts. Thankfully it isn’t. Part Two – We Must Remain – is an altogether more interesting and reflective section musing on isolation, relationships and the poet standing apart from society while struggling to make ends meet as the literal and metaphorical roof falls in. These pieces will resonate with many writers/poets. Part Three – Multiple Scars – centred on his wife Lis’s brave battle with Multiple Sclerosis, gives rise to strong, original pieces infused with anger, frustration, resignation and love. Multiple Sclerosis Metaphor: Rat In The Fuse Box is perhaps the stand out poem in the whole collection. Part Four – Still Travelling- struggles to build on this and there is a sense that this is a collection not quite at fullthrottle. Again most poets will be familiar with this feeling and indeed know the value of embracing it: Fish hook, line, knife, bandage aspirin. Matches, purification tablets, the clothes I’m in. Maybe a brain seeing only what

a technique that local readers enjoy. I thought that Doctor Zoe was a believable character, if somewhat naïve. Mystery is added to the story as we find that the doctor has a secret past which is slowly revealed to the reader. There is a hint that there might be more surprises to uncover in subsequent stories. Doctor Zoe is not your average sleuth and

on cue the concluding section – Wolf Dream – sees a return to familiar fur and rifle fusion of the fables territory, in the epic From Dream Alba and Mountie James Macleod Confronts Sitting Bull, Saskatchewan, 1877. The final poem Letting Go reads as a self-conscious epitaph piece in the manner of Yeats’ Under Ben Bulben or Seamus Heaney’s District and Circle. Here Bryan wishes his ashes scattered in the places he has loved including many locations in and around the Scottish Borders: a slug feels or snail sniffs. Somewhere warm without snakes. Nobody looking for me just yet, missing presumed unread. A few poems bubbling in my head. (Desert Island Discs) Some of the pieces are located in England and it has to be said that Bryan’s writing loses something outside of his Scots Canadian hinterland, which Bryan seems acutely aware of himself. Right

it is true to say that she had no intention to become an amateur detective but circumstances have conspired to make her so. Perhaps the opening lines of No Stranger to Death give some hint of what is to come: Zoe Moreland saw her first dead body at the age of twelve, and had seen many others since. But that morning, for the first time ever, she could not tell if she was looking at the remains

No mote must remain nor on any mantel stand. Let loose all in any place once loved by me (when I wasn’t dust, when I wasn’t free) (Letting Go) Missing, Presumed Unread stands as a thoroughly enjoyable immensely readable collection. Let’s hope it won’t be long before we’re reading Tom Bryan’s collection number eight. This reviewer has a feeling it might prove to be something special. Julian Colton

of a man or a woman. Although this particular murder mystery is solved at the end of the novel, we are left with an opening to the next story, Too Soon A Death. Our fascination for murder mysteries seems unstoppable and I am sure that Doctor Zoe along with her sidekick, Kate will happily oblige us with some more carefully contrived plots, all set amongst the rolling hills of the Scottish Borders. Iona McGregor

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BOOK REVIEWS The Devil’s Stain Introducing Harry Somers Physician and Investigator By Pamela Gordon Hoad Mauve Square Publishing 2016 £7.99 PBK IBSN: 978-1-909411-46-3 This novel covers the period from 1422, on the day that King Henry V, of Agincourt fame, died of the flux in France, to 1441 in England. Shakespeare’s play King Henry VI Part II also commences on this same day the novel commences. This is a serendipity, however, as the author confirms to me, that although acquainted with them, she actually avoided studying the Shakespeare History plays of this period, so as not to be swayed in her interpretation by a perhaps fictional dramatic interpretation. She thoroughly researched all the other historical evidence available, which as an Oxford University History Graduate, with continuing historical research and writing since her degree, she is ably qualified to do. At the time of King Henry V’s death in France, his son, who would inherit the throne as Henry VI, was a baby. At the same time in Scotland, the King, he who would become James II, was also a baby. So, Regents governed both Kingdoms until these babes came to their majority. The novel relates historically present people in the main, as detailed in the annals. The Dramatis Personae in King Henry VI Part II, lists King Henry VI, Margaret his Queen, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King’s Uncle & Protector before the

King’s majority. The Duke’s wife, Duchess Eleanor, Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, great uncle to the King. Then there is Margery Jourdain – a witch (low case in the list), John Hume and John Southwell, priests and Bolingbroke, a Conjurer and A spirit. The is also Jack Cade, calling himself John Mortimer, a legitimate claimant to the throne as descendant of one of the seven sons of Edward III, the source of dispute to the throne leading to the Wars of The Roses. He was leader of the Kent peoples’ rebellion of 1450. In the play, Henry VI, there is a major scene involving Jack Cade & his rebellion, which almost overpowered the Monarchy, reaching London with large force of arms, & Jack Cade striking the London Stone, now lying almost unknown near Cannon Street Station, on which he declared himself the true King of England. The novel involves all these historical characters, but as a venture into an historical murder mystery, there is a fictional invention of some additional characters. That includes the hero, Harry Somers, Physician and investigator, including forensics as could be realised in the early 15th Century. The historical details researched around the fictional characters are actually factual and reveal fascination with the burgeoning of the Renaissance knowledge at that time. The development of Medicine with new knowledge coming from Italy, the excitement of new translations of Ancient Greece, such as Plato’s

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Republic. That is, translations from the Greek to Latin, which was understood in England then. Duke Humphrey was very interested in the new learning and knowledge & paid for Italian Clergy & Physicians in his service in London to bring these translated books here. This is well described, as is the remarkable medical education of the hero Thomas Somer, from a poor son of a laundry woman to a high status Physician at the Court, facilitated by Duke Humphrey, who also was responsible, having persuaded his nephew King Henry VI, for the founding of Eton, though, then, a school for children of the poor. This book, with major historical accuracy, is a thrilling and compulsive read. The pace is sustained and creates a riveting read. Beautifully written, the authenticity, strongly evoked, gives great power to the work. It is a refreshing change to the plethora of works pertaining to the 16th century, and the era the author is engaged with in this book, is rather unknown to most. The pace is excellent and sustained, that is to the last page and beyond. For this is the first book of a Trilogy. I know the Second book is written, awaiting a Publisher, and that the Third part is being written as we speak. I would predict this novel and the sequels will become a Best Seller. In my mind most certainly should. Carol Norris

BOOK REVIEWS

TRUESTORY by Catherine Simpson Sandstone Press Ltd, 2015 ISBN 978-1-910124-59-8 £8.99 This is a story of feelings, emotion and ultimately hope, written in an engaging and descriptive style. I was a bad person, a bad mother, says Alice when thinking of how she has raised her son Sam, adding that despite the inevitable repercussions, It was always worth going out if I wanted to stay sane… Most parents can sympathise with such feelings, though most don’t have a son like Sam. My father Duncan Gordon McCabe is firing a gun through the bathroom window… types eleven year old Sam whose knowledge of the world is gained from the internet, his own extending only a few yards beyond the back door of the farmhouse and 823 steps to a neighbour Jeannie’s cottage. Although he has a prodigious memory Sam is afraid of people, being touched, sudden actions, loud noises, unknown surroundings. His mother feels unable to leave him, home schools him, and has long since given up on taking him anywhere. In the pub, Duncan meets Larry, who has an

VOICES By Oliver Eade Mauve Square Publishing, 2016 Paperback £6.99 ISBN: 978-1-909411-47-0 274 pages Fiction This is Oliver Eade’s second adult novel and the location is totally different from his first, A Single Petal which was reviewed in ET22. A Single Petal took place in the Tang Dynasty of Ancient China while his latest novel is partly a futuristic story set in modern day London. Eade explores the frightening possibility of an alien takeover of Earth and, on another

appealing money-making idea, taking him home to Backwoods farm to help out. Larry’s acts of kindness win over both Sam and Alice, initially furious at his arrival, and persuade Sam to venture farther around the farm than ever before. Alice is grateful for Larry’s help with her son, feeling, He might only have travelled twenty yards today but I felt as though he’d scaled a mountain. Alice is trapped by the needs of her son, and trapped in a stale and humdrum marriage with a husband who is obsessed by get-rich-quick schemes to revive the fortunes of his failing family farm. Sam is trapped by his fears of the world, yet, like his mother, longs to escape. Larry, trapped by his upbringing, runs from his past. Alice’s relationship with Larry brings their lives into focus, changing directions of travel for her, Sam and Duncan. The internet is an inventive way of showing Sam’s view and his struggle to make sense of an alien and terrifying environment. The advice received, and his responses lighten the mood, adding depth and a touch of quirkiness, as well as bringing hope which in the end triumphs. Dorothy Bruce

level, the equally disturbing world of sexual abuse, child pornography and murder. The settings for both novels may be worlds apart but the themes are strikingly similar. Both novels focus on family relationships, in particular those between a teenage daughter and her father and in the case of Voices, a grandfather. The story begins with Simon, a grandfather and a science fiction writer at work on his new novel. He is distracted by mysterious voices coming through his computer as he attempts to write this novel which is about saving the world from an alien takeover via the Internet using

‘Dark Energy.’ Simon has a ten year old granddaughter, Lisa who has turned against him because of the lies that her mother, Helen told about him. Simon’s daughter-inlaw, Helen is a nymphomaniac. She ran off with a very unsavoury character, a photographer named Stefan. Simon’s son, Jamie stutters. Simon’s neighbours are having an affair and there’s a murder to solve. Simon is framed for the murder having discovered the body of the neighbour’s wife in the garden and therefore according to the police, the main suspect. The character I liked the most

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BOOK REVIEWS

ONE WRITER WITH TWO PLAYS IN BORDERS AUTUMN 2015

was Russian widow, Katya who befriends Simon and confronts the police with the true facts. Katya is a powerful mother figure. She contrasts with the dark character that is Lisa’s own mother, Helen. There is so much to come to terms with in this novel and I found some of the descriptions of the unsavoury aspects of adult human behaviour so compelling that I had to put the book aside for a few moments before continuing to read. This is the mark of a true story teller and Eade has achieved that in this novel. His writing is as diverse as human experience. He dips easily and effortlessly into the fantasy world and then just as dramatically, catapults the reader into the real and sometimes, frightening seen world. Some of the issues that are explored in this novel do not make for easy reading but it is definitely a book to read. From the first page until the last questions are asked of us. How do we come to terms with sexual depravity whose evil is evident in every strata of society? Is the Dark Energy which holds the world together, Love or in a secular world, even God? At the end of the day, is Love the only thing that will save us from the dark side? Iona McGregor

On October 31st 2015 I attended the first theatre production at The Haining, Selkirk. A promenade production by Grid Iron Theatre, Edinburgh on Halloween – The Devils’s Larder, a novel by author Jim Grace, had been adapted for the Theatre by Ben Harrison, Director of Grid Iron, reprising a staging of 1998 in Gargantia The Underbelly in 1998 and Fermentation Glasgow in 2002. Using food as a symbol for human situations, these fourteen scenes, linked by the symbolism of various foods, in a non- narrative fashion, were superbly performed and resonant. The technical assets of theatrical skills were demonstrated to the highest advantage in the lighting and sound effects and the brilliant use of the rooms and architecture of the Haining, all of which had been carefully pre -planned before the one night performance. A lot of work had gone into this. Several of the scenes were memorable. In A Little town of Great Charity the current refugee crisis is illuminated by the population giving their purchases bought as mistakes and now unwanted - Until the cart is overloaded with our charity and has become the oddest shopping trolley in the world. In Angel Dough: I used to say to make good bread I need an

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angel in the kitchen. Who’ll be the angel today and kiss the dough? The grandmother recounting this used as a child to be asked by her grandmother to seek an angel to come in from the garden; when she became a mother she asked her children to kiss the dough; now alone as an old lady and ill, she bakes what she believes will be her last loaf – now, she has to kiss the dough herself as there is no-one else left to do this. In Ashes To Ashes, A woman eating ashes – those of her late husband which made her ill, The Doctor attends and we hear the song her dead husband used to sing all the time, through his listening to her stomach through the stethoscope, amplified through the Dining Room at The Haining – You can’t eat grief. It is far too strong and indigestible… you have to let the sorrow swallow you. An excellent and rather powerful theatrical experience, immaculately delivered with supreme professionalism and a pleasure to witness this in Selkirk, especially at the Haining. Director: Ben Harrison, Producer: Judith Doherty, Music and Performance: David Paul Jones and Mary Macmaster Cast: Johnny Austin, Charlene Boyd, Ashley Smith, Antony Strachan. On 12th November 2015 I attended the wonderful Mac Arts Venue in Galashiels, now the City of Galashiels according to Pecha Kucha (see Mary Morrison on this) for a production of The Gift of Stones. This novel, also coincidentally by Jim Grace as above, was adapted for the stage by Nobby Dimmon, Director of The North Country Theatre from Richmond, Yorkshire which has graced the stage of the Wynd Theatre in Melrose, now sadly

THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS

defunct, for over the past ten years and his company were welcomed to this new venue in the Borders almost with a full house. Bobby Dimmon and his team had researched the Neolithic History and visited Orkney and Grimes Graves in Norfolk before presenting their play to add authenticity to the production. The play is set in the Neolithic Era, in a fictional location in England, where skilled workmen in carving flint had a successful communal life. The Narrator played by Nobby Dimmon,

The inspiration for this novel from Jim Grace is derived from the Margaret Thatcher years with the demise of the car industry in Birmingham where the author lives. He has created a fictional environment in the long distant past to recreate the political facts of this. Although Jim Brice’s novels are not autobiographical, he says that the Narrator in the Gift of Stones whose amputated left arm features significantly in the narrative, does derive from the fact that his father had a chronic osteomyelitis of his left arm, whose scars & potholed skin continuously wept pus from shoulder to elbow for many years and this was a memorable part of his childhood. He shows that the need for justice always has existed in the conscience of man. He also shows the creative energy of mankind in production of fiction that can show truth to people in a clearer, deeper way than recitation of apparent facts which may be lies, as well as intimating the endless power of magical thought in the past extending even in our own more cynical and secular attitudes today.

had a left arm amputated in childhood resulting from an arrow injury, and as a result, was an outsider in this community as he could not engage in stone carving. As a result he turned to storytelling to earn his living. He produces several variations of their communal history, as fiction, any of which could be the truth. Ships are seen off the coast and are a mystery but they are in fact bearers of the New Bronze Age which will put all the skilled workers in stone out of a job and this indeed occurs by the end of the play.

This was a significant and original piece of theatre, beautifully performed, which made people in the audience very thoughtful. Story Teller and Director Nobby Dimmon, Do and Daughter Vivien Garnett, Craftsman Martin Dower,Younger Narrator Mark Cronfield, Cousin Edward Darling. Carol Norris

THE TEMPEST William Shakespeare Three Inch Fools Travelling Theatre Company Abbotsford, Melrose. 13th August (Outdoor) Billed as one half of the Borders Battle of The Bards – Handlebars Theatre Company were performing Hamlet at Bowhill on the same lovely midsummer’s night – this magical performance will live long in the memory of those in attendance, as well as proving once again the appetite Borders theatre-goers have for high quality, informally set, imaginative pop up affordable productions. Beautifully acted by a cast of brilliant exuberant young talent with just the right measured ear for the nuances and inflections of Shakespeare, both in the main plot and the low comedy sub-plot, the text had been pared down a little producing an even more sinuous, compelling play than the one this reviewer had been reading in the days leading up to the event. It might be heresy to say it, but if Shakespeare has a dramatic fault it’s that he is sometimes a little too eager to show off his knowledge of mythology, the ‘Niobe all tears,’ dialogue which can drag a little despite the beautiful cadences of language. Stripping it back a little was a masterstroke in this instance. If this is the kind of al fresco production that Abbotsford are going to accommodate in its comely grounds in future then Borders theatre lovers had better get used to booking early. A glass of your favourite juice, crisps, sandwiches, a gorgeous Borders setting and Shakespeare; what more could anyone ask for? A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night anyone? Julian Colton

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THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS

THEATRELAND IN THE TROPICS – A DIFFERENT WORLD Recently I had the opportunity to work alongside professional actors in two classical theatre productions at the London Fringe, which is all year round. The plays were Uncle Vanya by Chekov and Medea by Euripides. The Director of ten years standing hails from Yorkshire and is known for her productions of the classics of theatre. She has a small company, The State of Grace Theatre Company, which performs at a very small theatre in South London at New Cross, magnificently named The London Theatre. The hoarding outside proclaims it The Smallest Purpose Built Professional Theatre in the United Kingdom, indeed so discreet is it on the street that you would miss it walking by as I did on first arriving. It is a black box theatre, albeit with a cosy bar and the latest in high tech lighting and sound equipment. The technicians who work this are on apprenticeships from all over the world, USA & European Drama Schools Graduates and more locally, theatre folk learning the skills of the profession by being on the job on a voluntary basis. There is another black box in, fact two, within this black box which are the minute dressing rooms, without air conditioning or exits, other than onto the stage, and one has a toilet which cannot be flushed during the performance and where to cough, even once, would be considered sacrilege. The Black Hole of Calcutta as a metaphor was a perpetual presence. The cast, with a wide range

of ages, for Uncle Vanya were all from Britain, for Medea, international. All highly trained and experienced professionals, some in both Dance and Drama. The comraderie and mutual support from these wonderful acting professionals was wonderful; we did create a true ensemble. A delight to experience. Audiences were disappointingly small, except for first and last nights which overflowed. On the first night of Uncle Vanya, twelve Russians from the Russian Tourist Agency came. They knew their Chekov well and despite the play being in English, laughed a lot and made the show come alive. Only Russians, it seems, find Chekov very funny. There were moments of high comedy, around the privation

Old Library, an Edwardian Art Deco building, in parkland near The Elephant and Castle and Woolwich Arsenal at the Director’s new bedsitter home. Clearly, an important part of the skills to be rapidly acquired in addition to the steep learning curve professionally, was to understand the London Transport system which is amazing and simply fantastic. I never waited for a train, under or overground for more than 2 minutes, and there are three or four alternative routes to go between A & B if one route has problems. Out of the Black Box and into the sunshine. It was a heatwave, 30 degrees, while I was there for eight weeks or so. The climate is tropical I do believe. Vegetation is so lush it rapidly bursts through every crack in the global concrete, every inch of the railway embankments are so green with trees, tall, tall trees, bushes, flowers, it is quite magical. Plants we have in the North as shrubs grow down here to thirty feet high trees- I’m thinking broom and yucca as well as others. Near where I stayed in Welling, Kent there is an ancient forest mentioned in the Domesday Book, Oxlea Wood, at Shooters Hill, on the Old Dover Road where the highwaymen used to live, lush oak forest, nightingales and flocks of parakeets ,green tropical birds. When I first saw one of these birds in the garden of the house where I stayed, I thought I was hallucinating. Close to it looked exactly like a green dove with a fantail. Rather a sweet call too. Then there are the Lidos, many

Only Russians, it seems, find Chekov very funny. endured in the dressing rooms, and the fact that the Set Designer, graduate of Milan University, carried the unwrapped corpses of two children, rather realistic too, required for Medea, swathed mummy like in bandages with bloodied cut throats, on the Underground for an hour and a half, requiring three separate train journeys, to the Theatre, without comment from officials or passengers. Rehearsals took us all over London, a Theatre Pub in Walthamstow, under the railway arches at Brixton, alongside the workshops making the glamorous costumes all year long for Notting Hill Carnival, the renovated

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THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS

of them, a great joy. Renovated and open and popular. So different in the North where all have been closed down. But it is different down in the Big Smoke obviously where the climate is tropical. Near Kings Cross Station is an Artwork which is an open air swimming pool cleansed by plants surrounded by wild flowers, brilliant blue cornflowers amongst them. Major building going on all around but with this oasis of nature in the midst of it. A plaque nearby indicates that Queen Boadicea is now thought to be buried under Kings Cross Station. I experienced great old fashioned courtesy wherever I went, on the trains, the tube, the streets and squares from all the nationalities in London. A very different experience to that portrayed in the media reporting violence and crime. It seemed to me that the one place the multinational society works well is London. I enjoyed a visit to the Cuban Ambassador’s Residence in St John’s Wood next to the Oval Cricket Ground where I met Jeremy Corbyn. So, altogether this sounds like paradise. Can it be? These theatre companies and actors are working flat out with no funds. The Director worked at least a 14 hour day during these two productions, carrying two massive suitcases of costumes and props for an hour and a half on the tube each way, each day to the venue as the theatre was doing other shows in our rehearsal period and everything had to be cleared away after our rehearsals there. Her husband, a teacher, was

co-opted to bring the set in a car, park perilously regarding parking restrictions, & man handle it all in to the theatre. The actors and Director and other professional staff are not paid, they receive a Profit Share, that is the Box Office takings, with usually a 50% cut to the Theatre involved, not much divided between all involved in a production. We received zero from the first production, in fact the Directors company had a significant loss, and £10.50 each for the second production. The actors had travelled with no expenses paid, from distances for all rehearsals & performances such as High Wycombe, and Milton Keynes. They had come from previous theatre productions and were working hard on auditions for next shows, all on the same basis of Profit Share. So how do they live? They take jobs in between they can find, in call centres, bars, shops, to give them their livelihood, so they can survive to continue with their profession. They do not buy new clothing from shops but are expert in Charity shops and “Found” items such as on trains. But this is not sustainable in the longer term and we are allowing this great theatrical talent, which brings huge income, as well as pride, to the country, to be squandered. The rents in London and Greater London, that is wherever the London Transport reaches, are beyond the reach of honest hard working people, as is buying a home. At present you need to be a billionaire, rather than a millionaire to afford to live in London.

Actors I met in London, being in general a left wing lot, believe there is an ethnic cleansing programme at work there, removing all but the filthy rich to walk the streets of London. Presumably the workers, in railway, transport, parks, health service, social work and council who make the city of London so great, can be dispensed with. Carol Norris

Love Songs to the Nilgiri Hills at County Hotel, Selkirk, 31January 2016 A feast of music, poetry and song was held at the County Hotel, Selkirk, on the afternoon of 31 January this year, when nearly fifty people came together to celebrate the publication of Love Songs to the Nilgiri Hills, the new collection of poems by Selkirk-based writer, Robert Leach: three hours (with interval) of some of the best literary and musical entertainment to be had in the Borders. It wasn’t all light entertainment, though – some of the work was thought-provoking, demanding, and even sombre. Robert Leach opened with a few poems about India from his new collection, but later read from another newlypublished collection called About Russia, which brought us at least one unexpected example of Communism in action. Dorothy Alexander from Galashiels read some of her ‘found poems’ from Fragments, the Hawick missal project, complete with medievalstyle visual aids, as well as an intriguing excerpt from her current novel. Also from the local area

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THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS

was Selkirk’s Tom Murray, best known perhaps as a playwright, but also an experienced and accomplished poet as he showed here, notably in a fascinating poem about a fox, evoking memories of Ted Hughes’s wellknown The Thought-Fox. From further afield came Morelle Smith, well respected in Edinburgh for her poetry. Much of her work evokes difficult aspects of life in Eastern Europe, and the poem about the Danube which she read, with its haunting invocations to the ‘mighty’ river, was particularly moving. Rather different was the work of Nick Pemberton from Carlisle, whose work perhaps few people knew, but whose work made a strong impression, none more so, perhaps, than the dark What We Beg For, commemorating another poet, Barry MacSweeney. Alongside the spoken words was some marvellous music which gave the afternoon much of its timbre. The Borders’ favourite, Rory Macleod, gave superb renditions of some of his best, most stimulating songs, while John Milligan, once of Galashiels, now of Edinburgh, contributed both songs and comic poems. His hilarious quickstep ballad (‘Slow slow quick quick slow’) will long be remembered by members of this audience, who clapped him to the rafters! Most went away thoroughly satisfied. ‘Can we do it again?’ asked some. ‘Once every six months at least’, urged others. Perhaps something for the Arts team to consider? Little Vsevolod

DOROTHY ALEXANDER Dorothy lives and works in the Scottish Borders. She has a PhD in Creative Writing form the University of Glasgow and won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Award in 2002. Further information available at www.dorothyalexander.co.uk RUSSET J ASHBY Russet is a new writer. She is developing a writing style and writing skills through short stories and aspires to completing a novel. She is part of the Kelso Writing Group and she writes as part of Women Who Write With Elves. NORMA BROWN Enjoying retirement in The Borders with so much talent around. I write mainly flash fiction with the occasional foray into poetry. I write mainly for my own enjoyment and the love of words. DOUGLAS BRUTON Douglas has had successes in competitions including winning Hissac, The Biscuit Prize, Firstwriter, and the Brighter Writers’ Circle Prize. He has also had recognition from The Bridport Prize, Fish, Sean O’Faolain and The Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. PIM CLARIDGE ..aged seven I had polio making schooling impossible, governesses came... and went, but books became friends and I fell in love with words. Army Father, Naval husband, family of four.. we moved continually... through it all I spoke to paper... now at last I have the peace to write... if only someone will listen! THOMAS CLARK Thomas is a Glaswegian writer and poet now based in Hawick. He is also current poet-in-residence at Selkirk FC. His first poetry collection, Intae the Snaw, was published by Gatehouse Press in 2015. He blogs at www.thomasjclark.co.uk SEAN FLEET Sean Fleet enjoys writing poetry, short stories and

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non-fiction for adults and children. He has been spending much of his time on a renovation project in Berwickshire, but hopes to devote more time to writing in the near future. LEE GARRATT A middle aged English teacher ploughing a lonely furrow in Derby. I have delusions of grandeur and day dream a lot. BRIAN GOURLEY Poems have appeared in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, Northwords Now and The Irish Literary Review. Currently working on novel and poetry collection. Completed PhD on Reformation playwright John Bale and have published critical articles in the field of early Renaissance drama and preShakespearean drama. NOEL KING born and lives in Tralee, Co Kerry. In this his 50th year, he has reached his 1000th publication of a poem, haiku or short story in magazines and journals in thirty-eight countries. His poetry collections are published by Salmon: Prophesying the Past, (2010), The Stern Wave (2013) and Sons (2015). He has edited more than fifty books of work by others and was poetry editor of Revival Literary Journal (Limerick Writers’ Centre) in 2012/13. A short story collection, The Key Signature & Other Stories will be published by Liberties Press in 2017. VALERIE LEES Valerie has known and loved the Scottish Borders for thirty years and has lived here for the last six. Always a story teller to family, friends and anyone who would listen, she now writes to soothe her creative itch. KATHLEEN MANSFIELD Kathleen Mansfield teaches English and Drama at Galashiels Academy. She also teaches yoga and directs and produces plays. Her collection of reflections, “Tumour Rumour”, is available on Amazon Kindle Direct. All monies go to Maggie’s, Edinburgh, for families affected by cancer.

BIOGRAPHIES EMMA MARTIN I’m 14 years old. I’m a S3 student at Galashiels Academy. I enjoy writing as well as sports like karate, and also Irish dance. I prefer writing short stories rather than longer stories because I like that it only has to be in a short time frame.

KRISS NICHOL Kriss has an MA in Creative Writing and her poems and short stories have been featured in small press magazines, anthologies and online. Several have been highly commended or won prizes in competitions and she has written 2 novels.

RICHIE MCCAFFERY Richie was recently awarded his PhD in Scottish Literature by the University of Glasgow where he wrote a thesis on the Scottish poets of World War Two. His pamphlets include Spinning Plates and Ballast Flint as well as his first book-length collection Cairn from Nine Arches Press in 2014.

KEVIN O’DOWD Since retiring and leaving the Borders for Perthshire, Kevin O’Dowd writes the ‘bluecanarytales’ (see his blog) which mostly explore single universal moral/psychological issues and very small ‘casts’.

BARRIE MCEWAN Barrie was born in Edinburgh, brought up in Linlithgow and currently resides in Dumbarton. He is studying a BA Hons in Humanities with Creative Writing at the Open University, and has had a poem published in Poetry Scotland. IAN MCFADYEN Former teacher of English. Life now split between the Borders and Sutherland. Contributions to Eildon Tree have been intermittent, but they stretch back proudly to the very beginning. Also proud to be next to William McGonagall on Scottish Poetry Library Website... DAVID MCVEY Lectures in Communication at New College Lanarkshire. He has published over 100 short stories and a great deal of non-fiction that focuses on history and the outdoors. He enjoys hillwalking, visiting historic sites, reading, watching telly, and supporting his home-town football team, Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC. SHIRLEY MUIR Has a degree in molecular biology from Edinburgh University. She lives by the sea in East Lothian and she writes short fiction, poetry and memoir, often with a scientific basis. She is a member of the North Berwick writers’ group.

TRACEY PATRICK Tracy lives in Paisley. She has an MLitt from the University of Glasgow, and is a creative writing workshop facilitator. Her pamphlet Wild Eye Fire Eye is available online from Amazon and www.abbeybookspaisley.com and also at www.tracypatrick.co.uk JANE PEARN Jane moved to the Borders from the Isle of Man in 2005. Individual poems, stories and articles appear in print or online from time to time and she has two poetry collections published – Matters Arising and Further To. NORMA POWERS I had short stories published, read on Totnes Radio and a novel came in final three of national competition. Poems have appeared in magazines; including Sentinel which Highly Commended Walter Ralegh. We returned to The Borders in 2015, after too long an absence. RONNIE PRICE Ronnie has been writing since his schooldays, poetry and prose. Two novels and three non-fiction books have been published; also poems in a recent anthology. He is now writing short stories inspired by membership of the Kelso Creative Writing Group. IAN RICHARDSON Ian lives on the East coast of Scotland and is a regular visitor to the Borders in summer and winter. Since winning Waverley Lines in 2015 ,

he has been greatly encouraged by the publication of his poetry and other writing. HAMISH SCOTT Hamish Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1960 and now lives in Tranent on the outskirts of the city. His has published three collections of his poetry in Scots with The Laverock’s Nest Press. RAGHU B SHUKLA India born, retired Consultant Physician (NHS); senior editor of an internationally contributed book on comprehensive care of the elderly; articles and short stories published in Candis, Borders Writers’ Forum anthologies, The Eildon Tree and Indigo Dream Publishing; plans to publish his memoir next year. JOCK STEIN Jock is a preacher, piper and poet, who began his working life in the Sheffield steel industry, and is now retired and living in Haddington. NIGEL STUART A Glaswegian/ Borderer who writes poetry in English and Scots. An academic historian specialising in 20th century history based on film sources, he is also a published translator of late medieval and Renaissance poetry in Scots, Occitan and Italian. JANET SUTTON Janet has lived in the Scottish Borders for 10 years and is still trying not to miss Chester too much. She is a member of Kelso writers Group and this is an extract from a novel she is currently writing. ANDREW THOMSON Andrew Thomson, a member of the Kelso Writers Group, is a Glaswegian who has lived and worked in around the country. He moved to the Borders in 1987 and lives in Kelso with his wife and two dogs.’ JIM TOUGH A Borders resident for thirty years, I have worked for many years in the arts across the UK in both public and voluntary sectors. I am increasingly committed to pursuing a long term interest in creative writing.

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For more details on our family events see the kids’ secton of What’s On.

Thursday 16 June

Friday 17 June £12, £10

2.00pm - 4.00pm

£10, £8

2.00pm - 5.15pm

£10, £8

2.15pm - 3.45pm

£14, £12

2.30pm - 5.30pm

8.00pm - 8.30pm

Phoebe Smith: Wanderlust Peter Gordon - Savour: Salads for All Seasons SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro James Naughtie and today's Yesterdays Scottish Borders Folk tales with James Spence SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro Chris Brookmyre Amy Liptrot Nick Clegg Allan Massie SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Mikado

8.45pm

Matt ridley

£12, £10

6.45pm - 7.15pm

9.00pm

An evening with rory Bremner Music: huradal & the Lost Architect

£14, £12

7.45pm

£10

7.45pm

tradBeats Workshops Borders Youth theatre@Work road to rio Creative Writing Workshop VoMo tV - Web tV in Action Poetry Workshop PC Brown & Gavin hastings: Sounds of Science with evelyn Glennie SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Mikado Chris McGrath: Mr Darley's Arabian Michael Forsyth hollie McNish - Nobody told Me SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Mikado Kathy Lette Play: Memories of a Lullaby

7.45pm

ian McGuire - the North Water

8.00pm

5.30pm 5.45pm 5.45pm - 6.15pm 6.00pm 6.00pm 6.45pm - 7.15pm 7.15pm 7.15pm 7.30pm 7.30pm

9.00pm - 10.15pm

£8, £6

4.15pm

£10, £8

4.30pm

£12, £10

5.45pm - 7.15pm

£10, £8

5.45pm - 6.15pm

£14, £12

6.00pm

£10, £8

6.00pm

£10, £8

6.00pm

Saturday 18 June

FREE FREE FREE FREE £10 £20 £10, £8 £12, £10 £12, £10 £10, £8 £10, £8 £12, £10 £10 £8, £6

£5

8.00pm - 8.30pm

Mike rutherford SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro

£14, £12

10.30am 10.30am

£5

9.30pm

evelyn Glennie with Kirsty Wark

£14, £12

FREE

9.30pm

isabel oakeshott - Call Me Dave

£12, £10

FREE

9.30pm - 10.45pm

Cera impala and the New Prohibition

Story of Life on earth with Christopher Lloyd Debi Gliori 11.00am BBC radio 4 Bookclub with Maggie o'Farrell 11.00am - 4.00pm Abbotsford Knight School 12.00pm Cressida Cowell - how to train Your Dragon 12.00pm - 12.30pm Bookbug rhyme Session 12.15pm A.A. Gill 12.15pm Mac and Bob - Music and Mayhem 12.30pm When in the World? 1.00pm - 1.30pm Bookbug rhyme Session 1.30pm Kirsty Wark, Sally Magnusson & Lisa highton 1.45pm Alistair Moffat with Gordon Brown 1.45pm Magic of Maths with Kjartan Poskitt 2.00pm Blackbird, Blackbird with Kate McLelland

A wonderful four days of talks, discussions, food & drink, live music, comedy ily and more for all the fam

FREE

£5 FREE

£10, £8

£10

Sunday 19 June 12.00pm - 1.30pm

Jazz on a Sunday Afternoon

£5

12.00pm

Nine Authors, Nine Books

£6

£5

12.00pm - 4.00pm

Abbotsford Knight School

FREE

£12, £10

£12

FREE

12.15pm

Gorilla Loves Vanilla with Chae Strathie

£5

£14, £12

12.30pm

Michael Morpurgo - Private Peaceful

£5

£12, £10

1.00pm - 1.30pm

SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Northern Light

£5

1.00pm - 2.30pm

Colouring in at Melrose

1.45pm

heather McGregor & Merryn Somerset Webb

1.45pm

A Puppy's tale with Alan Windram

2.00pm

Jay rayner: My Dining hell

2.00pm

Allan Burnett – Celts versus Vikings

2.15pm - 2.45pm

SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Northern Light

3.00pm - 3.30pm

Storytime

3.15pm

Julius Zebra with Gary Northfield

£5

£5 FREE £12, £10

2.00pm - 2.30pm

Storytime

FREE

2.00pm

outdoor performance: Not to Scale

FREE

3.00pm

Albert roux

3.00pm - 4.30pm

Colouring in at Melrose

3.15pm

Walter Scott Prize Shortlist

3.15pm

Captain Crankie with Vivian French

£5

3.30pm

the Jungle Book with ian Beck

£5

3.15pm

the Children's Garden with Matthew Appleby

£5

4.30pm

Gordon Brown

£14, £12

3.30pm

Jame Naughtie - the American Primaries

£14, £12

4.30pm - 5.00pm

£10, £8

3.30pm

Sumayya Usmani

4.00pm - 4.30pm

Storytime

4.00pm - 4.30pm

SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro

4.45pm

tom Devine

4.45pm

Duchess of rutland: Capability Brown

5.00pm

Phill Jupitus

5.00pm

Patrick Gale

6.30pm

SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro Jo Marchant - Cure Graham robb Joyce McMillan - theatre in Scotland SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Figaro Walter Scott Prize for historical Fiction Douglas Alexander Jim Sillars Sonia Purnell - First Lady

6.15pm

Gervase Phinn

SCottiSh oPerA: A Little Bit of Mikado

6.15pm

6.45pm - 7.15pm

James Crawford

6.30pm

7.45pm

Jonathan Dimbleby

£14, £12

richard Porter - inside top Gear

6.30pm

£12, £10

7.45pm

helen McGinn - Knackered Mother's Wine Club

8.00pm

Decca Aitkenhead - All at Sea Gin is Still in

Beloved Poison with e.S. thomson

7.45pm

8.00pm

Dorothy Alexander - the Mauricewood Devils

9.15pm

Frederick Forsyth Sara Pascoe Colin Macintyre: Words and Music

Gregor Fisher with Melanie reid Phill Jupitus - Porky the Poet

4.45pm 4.45pm 5.00pm 5.30pm - 6.00pm 6.15pm - 7.00pm 6.15pm 6.15pm

9.15pm 9.30pm

£14, £12 FREE £10, £8

£12, £10 £10, £8 £8, £6 £10, £8 £10, £8 £12, £10 £12, £10 £8, £6 £10, £8

£15 £8, £6 £14, £12

8.15pm

£5 £14, £12 £5 £5 FREE £5

£10, £8 FREE £10, £8 £12, £10 £10, £8 £14, £12 £10, £8 £12, £10 £10, £8 £14, £12 £8, £6 £15 £14, £12 £12, £10

£12, £10 £10

Top left, clockwise: Sara Pascoe, Phil Jupitus, Nick Clegg, Hollie McNish, Evelyn Glennie,Mike Rutherford, Jay Rayner, Rory Bremner, Jonathan Dimbleby

Road to Rio 2016 Olympic Creative Writing Competition Go for gold in creative writing and celebrate Rio 2016 Take part in our creative writing competition by submitting a short story or poem based on an Olympic theme by 19th August 2016. FREE Creative writing workshops with writer Tom Murray Tuesday 14th June 6.00 – 7.30pm Tweedbank Sports Centre, Galashiels, TD1 3RS

Friday 17th June

2.15 – 3.45pm

Harmony Gardens, St Mary’s Rd, Melrose, TD6 9LJ (as part of Borders Book Festival – the future)

Tuesday 26th July 2.00 – 3.30pm Peebles Library, Chambers Institute, High St. Peebles EH45 8AG

Wednesday 27th July 2.00 – 3.30pm

Hawick Library, North Bridge St. Hawick TD9 9QT

Thursday 28th July 2.00 – 3.30pm

Duns Library & Contact Centre, 49 Newtown St. Duns TD11 3AU (Advance booking essential through libraries@liveborders1.org.uk) * Open to 8-18 year olds

WHAT COULD I WRITE ABOUT? l l l l l l

Here are some ideas which could inspire you. How would it feel to compete? How the Olympics inspire people to try new sports How the Olympics create a feeling of pride in your home nation What does it mean to aspire to be the best in the world? What will life be like for young people living in and around Rio? How the Olympics have developed since their origin in ancient Greece

ENTERING IS EASY 1. You must be aged between 8 and 18 years old 2. There are prizes for the following categories PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS HIGH SCHOOL PUPILS Category 1a – Short story Category 2a – Short story Category 1b – Poetry Category 2b – Poetry 3. You can use up to 500 words in a short story or maximum PRIZES of 20 lines in a poem. Books 4. You can enter as many times as you want. Book tokens Work published 5. Competition closes on 19th August 2016 FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT T: 01750 726400 | A: St Mary’s Mill, Level Crossing Rd, Selkirk TD7 5EW | E: libraries@liveborders1.org.uk Registration No SC243577 | Registered Chari ty No SCO342 27