presents
with
‘
C o nt e nts _ Introduction 04 – I ntroduction 06 – CAM I LA FiOR I 08 – Jar r e d McGi n n is 10 – Ve r ity Fleckn e ll 12 – Katy DAR by _ Performance Lyrics 14 – Fi nal Cigar ette Blu es 16 – “ W ho Does Th is Frog Look Li ke?” 20 – Com pan ion Pi ece
_ Submissions 26 – Som e car pets do r e mai n! 30 – Spi ros HALAR IS 31 – HE AND SHE 32 – Lu ke walle r 34 – I n th e ag e of n icoti n e 38 – josh ua marshall 39 – b rai nstor m i n a teacu p 40 – an e esha 41 – my most hate d th i ng 42 – you le ft m e 43 – spi ros halar is 44 – an na spe nce r 45 – a mor n i ng cigar ette wh ile r evisi ng f or a-leve ls 46 – im not talki ng about cance r i’m talki ng about cigar ettes 48 – th e fi nal cigar ettes 50 – why i n eve r starte d smoki ng, an d how i can’t stop 54 – ve ron ica wood 56 – jason lear 57 – sharons addiction 60 – m hai r i mcg h e e 62 – joan na scott 63 – n i kki shail 64 – e mm e rson b ramwe lL
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Book Desig n Jo Spencer www.okjostudio.com Photog raphy Clare Kelly cargocollective.com/clarecatherinekelly Original cover design by Two Associates Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers published by Picador
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i ntroduction
PRESENTS
This book is a visual record of a live event performed at Latitude festival 2011.
which were to be included in the book.
The event came about when YARN invited Jo Spencer, founder of Soupa Creative Network to design a spoken word and illustration book live in the Literary arena. This is the result. Members of the public were invited to submit words and images around the theme of smoking,
Performers included: Jarred McGinnis; Verity Flecknell; Hannah Rockey; Katy Darby and Camila Fiori. Some of their own stories are included here however, we would also like to thank those of you who couldn’t make it but submitted work anyway. We hope you enjoy what this book has to offer.
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about us
YARN is a new festival celebrating story and storytelling – showcasing film, theatre, music, illustration and literature and providing a platform for mixing them all up! It’s all about fun and exploration, devoted to letting the imagination run wild.
Founded by designer Josephine Spencer in 2004, Soupa is a platform for new illustrators and creatives to showcase their work and exchange ideas. Soupa acts as a central hub in which designers can promote themselves, sell their work online and network with industry professionals.
On the Soupa blog you can find out about all that’s going on with Soupa including latest projects, creative events, competitions and book reviews so it’s the best place to check out what’s going on. You can also read about other creative events outside Soupa.
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Camila Fiori I’m a PERFORMER and ARTIST who plays in the spaces between... forms, cultures, languages, audience and actor, reality and fantasy, the gap thoughts,
between your
or the pause between the pages of an old book, written by a lost people. Although I’ve always WRITTEN, it’s only been in the past few years that words have become a central feature of the work I make – from INTERACTIVE INSTALLATIONS to POETRY PERFORMANCES I WRITE POETRY under the table, I dance inside the wardrobe, I make theatre in your underwear drawer, and headgear out of furniture.
Occasiona lly known as Damsel D usty
A penchant for exploration and costume making brought about the hat-wearing, story sharing character/ alter-ego: ‘DAMSEL DUSTY’. Theatres, galleries, festivals, bars, alleys, roofs, abandoned cars are just some of the places Dusty has laid her extraordinary hat(s), performing poetry and hosting ‘INTERACTIVE BRAIN-STORMING TEA PARTIES’, COLLECTIVE STORY TRAILS, and collecting contributions for the ‘LANGUASTICAL DICTIONARY’ (a fantastical dictionary of lingual gymnastics: unique words gathered from around the world, to legitimise ‘illegitimate’ language!) I have worked as an ACTRESS IN FILMS AND PLAYS, and my own performances, writing and art works have visited venues ranging from the Whitechapel Gallery to London’s Jazz Café, Royal Opera House to the Freud Museum, Trafalgar Square to the streets of Brazil.
www.myspace.com / camilafior i
‘Camila Fiori - ‘Who Am She’ for ‘Objects of Desire’ at the Freud Museum, 2011’ Photographer - Ollie Harrop
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Pe r f or m e rs
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Pe r f or m e rs
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Jarred McGinnis Having achieved his life goals at fifteen, Jarred McGinnis has whiled away his days in various ways. He has lived in New Mexico, Florida, Texas, Scotland and now London - it makes you wonder exactly what he’s running from. As a result of his years in Britain, his stories are sometimes populated with such exotic things as prams, boffins, piss-takes and a sprinkling of extra vowels. When the time is right, he will tell humanity the english word that rhymes with orange. In addition to writing fiction, he holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence.
wicke dtomockth eafflicte d.com
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Verity Flecknell Verity is an indie folk/blues artists who is setting out to challenge perceptions of the two F*words- Folk and Feminism. “Effortlessly enveloping classic Americana, guttural blues and sweet folk sounds, Verity is a rare breed of performer. Simultaneously theatrical yet utterly without pretence” (The Girls Are..) Raised in Germany and England her music takes in influences from Ani Di Franco and Laura Veirs to Billie Holiday and the White Stripes. Verity is founder of Storm in a Teacup- a london based female art/music collective, organised the DIY feminist arts festival; Ladyfest Ten and works for the English Folk Dance & Song Society.
STORM IN A TEACUP is a Londonbased collective set up with the aim of promoting women in the arts. Fed up with finding no platform for our amazingly talented female musician, writer, poet, artist and illustrator friends we decided to do something about it. The project has now escalated with a fanzine, club nights and record label all in the pipeline! Following the successful launch of our zine and clubnight we want to spread the word and get as many people as we can to join our group. So whether you want to play a gig at one of our events, write for the fanzine or just want to meet like-minded people, then join our group and get in touch. In 2010 STORM IN A TEACUP helped to programme LADYFEST TEN festival celebrating 10 years of the feminist arts DIY subculture with a 3 day festival of music and arts. We are currently planning lots more feminist cross-cultural events for 2011.
STOR M I N A TEACUP
Joi nou rteaparty.wor dpr ess.com
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Pe r f or m e rs
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Pe r f or m e rs
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Katy Darby Katy Darby studied English at Oxford University and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, where she received the David Higham Award. Her work has won several prizes, been read on BBC Radio, and appeared in magazines and anthologies including Stand, Mslexia, The London Magazine, the Arvon anthology and online at Untitledbooks. com, Carvezine.com and Pulp.net. Her story Going Out won the 2007 Happenstance Prize, and her plays are published by Samuel French. She teaches Short Story Writing at City University in London.
liarsleag u e.type pad.com
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PER F OR MANCE
L YR I CS
Final Cigarette Blues Verse 1
Verse 2
I smell death a’comin, He’s rolling me down the bend And I haven’t had fresh breath, Since I don’t know when I’m still sucking on my cigarette, And I keep draggin’ on Til I’ve smoked my final Cigarette And I’m Dead and Gone
When I was just a baby, My mum told me love Always be a good girl, Don’t play with that stuff But I started out on Camels, Moved onto Chesterfields Then I ran off to Reno, With smoke at my heels
(Kazoo)
(Kazoo)
Til Ive smoked my final Cigarette And I’m Dead and Gone
Til I’ve smoked my final Cigarette And I’m Dead and Gone
Verse 3 Luckies made me lucky Marlboros made me bad I laugh in the face of death And it was the best smoke I ever had Now I’m down on my knees Til I’ve smoked my last cigarette And I’m finally free (Kazoo) Til I’ve smoked my final Cigarette And I’m Dead and Gone
Ve r ity Fleckn e ll
“ W ho Does This Frog Look Like?” “What did you say?” “Who does this frog look like?” The girl shows me a toad sitting at the bottom of a 7-11 Slurpee cup. “That’s a toad.” “You think so, Mr. Science?” “Jesus, it looks like Elvis.” “Totally. This is so awesome. I’m Karla.” “Alan.” I look into her eyes and I am smitten. Gold and green, ringed in mascara and dark eye shadow. Her blonde braids bobbypinned up like a halo. She smiles as she pets the toad’s head, right on its Presleypompadour bump of black flesh. “Want some?” I hold up my plastic bottle of coke, half filled with Canadian Club. “Drinking’s for losers,” she says and takes a swig. “You live around here?” “Not sure where I’m living.” As I put a cigarette to my lips, she pinches it, takes a drag and hands it back. “You can crash with us.” She sits beside me on the curb. We stare into the cup with the toad
“ Jesus, it looks like Elvis.”
motionless at the bottom. “We’re going to call you Elvis. Is that okay?” We talk and trade back and forth my cigarette for my whiskey. When she talks about “the guys” she lives with, I feel jealous then I feel foolish for feeling jealous. I watch her lips on the bottle. She passes it back. I take a drink and pretend I taste cherries. I was thinking about this when she surprises me with, “My stepdad was a little too grabby grabby and mom, of course, didn’t believe me. It was all too after-school special, pathetic. I knew the guys from talking to them at shows; so it was no big thing to move in. That was a week ago. It’s nice. I have my own bathroom, more than I had at home, and everyone watches out for each other. I think you’ll like it. Why’d you run away?” It’s too hard to explain that I’ve had ten foster homes in however many years. So I say I couldn’t stand being at home anymore, which is true. “You want to see the squat?” she asks. “Lead on.” We pass my foster home, a normal one story white house with a car in the driveway,
Jar r e d McGi n n is
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like every other on the street. My clothes in two garbage bags, AKA foster care suitcases, are still there but I don’t care. I keep expecting to glimpse Suzanne or Mike passing before the window, maybe even looking out with concern, but it never works like that. I don’t say anything to Karla. I’m not sure I can tell her those things yet. The squat is a condemned hospital near an overpass. She squeezes through a hole cut in the chain link fence and holds it open for me. We follow a path as it wanders through waist-high weeds. Grinding guitars and feedback-choked shouts grow stronger as we step over toppled piles of bricks and tires filled with muck and mosquito larvae. “The straight-edgers are having a show tonight,” she explains. We pass door after door covered by plywood until we reach one that isn’t. “Hold your nose,” she says. The smell is a barn full of animals, the blood from a butcher’s apron and the men’s john at a
Greyhound station. The stench claws at me, watering my eyes, getting up my nose, in my mouth, into my clothes. I pull the collar of my shirt over my face and follow the tangles of graffiti climbing every wall, thick as ivy. “Don’t worry. Our place is nowhere near here,” she says as we crunch plastic vials and avoid bloody wads of toilet paper. I follow her along the hallways illuminated by the lights of the overpass. The amplified thumping from the straight-edge show hums through the walls. “Home sweet home,” she says. “Oh my god! Damien! Mousy.” On top of a receptionist’s desk, two guys sit cross-legged with beers and a chessboard between them. “Hey girl.” Damien unfurls his lanky legs clad in skinny black jeans and hops down. He is a buzz cut, ripped tank top and leather jacket. He lifts her off the ground and she gives him a loud, exaggerated kiss on his cheek. “When’d you guys get back into town?” she asks. “Just now.” He hands her his beer, and she takes a sip. They keep their arms around each other when she turns to introduce me. They look like a couple. It’s killing me. “Alan, this is Damien and Mousy. Alan’s going to crash here tonight.” Mousy shouts ‘beer’ and throws a can to me. “Thanks,” I say. He nods and returns to the board, examining it between sips. Damien sits on the ledge of the desk, his legs dangling as we stand before him. I tune out their conversation about his trip from Denton and about people I don’t know. His leather jacket is covered in the patches of all my favorite bands. The metal tops of disposable lighters are clamped along the
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jacket’s zipper to make two rows of fat metal teeth. I’m no competition for him, and I settle for just-a-friend status with Karla. “I got you a homecoming present.” She hands him the cup with the toad. “His name is Elvis. Alan named him.” He shakes out the toad and puts it onto his shoulder. It sits frowning and needy as if at any second it will start to croak ‘Love Me’. “Awesome sideburns,” Damien says. He puts his beer up to the toad’s mouth. It rotates toward me and sticks out the tip of its tongue. “He even does the lip curl thing,” I say. “You going to hang around for awhile?” she asks Damien. “Not sure. We’ll be around until we scrounge up bus money. There’s some people in New Orleans we want to hook up with.” He points to me, “you want to come?”
Karla says, “Nah, we’re cool. If you guys are here tonight, we need to go find a mattress for Alan.” Damien puts the toad on my shoulder. “You take care of him. You named him. I can’t take care of shit,” he says. “It’s cool. She gave him to you.” “And he gave Elvis to you. That’s how it works,” Karla says. She pats the toad’s head then mine. After our beers, we walk along the sidewalks of deserted strip malls with their neon lights still burning. I slip Elvis into my jacket pocket. He feels cold, jelly and bones. “Buck up Buckaroo,” she says. “How do you know Damien?” I say and I know I’m being pathetic. “He and Mousy started the squat, but they’re not really around anymore.” The windows of the thrift store advertise ‘Overnight Donations Welcomed’ with an arrow pointing down. There are garbage bags full of clothes and cardboard boxes brimming with cast off things that people once couldn’t live without. I pull out a child’s xylophone and tap at it with a kitchen spoon. I dance in a little circle and make faces at Karla. She says, “No mattress but, if we get enough of these bags, you can make a little squat nest.” “The cow says moo. Moooooo!” says the Speak-n-Spell as I toss it into the parking lot, and it shatters. I pull out matching motorcycle helmets. One has ‘Bud’ written on it and the other ‘Sissy’. I strap on ‘Sissy’. “You be Bud,” I say. She slides on a pair of granny glasses underneath her helmet. I wear
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skiing goggles that colors the world a funny orange. “Choose your weapon,” she says and hefts a garbage bag half full of clothes. We pillow fight with the bags, knocking each other around, laughing and cackling, chasing each other, throwing arms-full of t-shirts like kids having a snow fight. My cheeks ache from perma-grin. For the first time I noticed her dimples, her wonderful dimples. We only stop goofing around, because a cop car is prowling the road beyond the parking lot. “Did they see us?” We grab the bags of clothes and hurry away, swinging them at each other and laughing. We cross parking lot after parking lot until we come to a lone shopping cart waiting for us under a street light. “Going my way?” she asks. I climb into the cart as she holds it steady. She struggles to move it until momentum builds up, and we sail through the night air thick with the smell of chocolate billowing unseen from the smoke stacks, like candy cigarettes, of the nearby Nestle factory. Stopping before the long slope of the parking lot’s exit, we grin at each other and raise our eyebrows in unison. We are already thinking the same things, amazing. “What’s at the end?” I ask, regrettably introducing doubt between us. “Does it matter?” “Get in.” I scoot to the back of the cart. She climbs in and sits between my legs. I knock on her helmet then mine. “Ready.” I shift my weight forward and back to jerk the cart closer to the slope. She understands and we shift our bodies in unison. The cart inches toward the edge. The slow squeaking of our wheels quickens and soon the rattling of the metal mesh
drowns our shouts and laughs. We zip down the hill and see the world as a jangling blur of florescent lights, parking lots and landscaped bushes. I pull out a wad of clothes and toss them into the air. “Oh God!” she says. The curb is flying toward us. I grip the cart and squeeze my eyes shut. That dark second feels like forever. We hit hard. The cart bucks us out. Our helmets clang together. I see stars and the landing knocks the wind out of me. I looked around and Karla is face down with one arm pinned under her body. She doesn’t move. Scared doesn’t describe what I feel as I quickly crawl to her. I roll her over and check if she’s broken her arm. No, she’s okay. I unstrap her helmet and hold her head. Her face breaks into a smile. She opens those eyes, those gold green eyes, and lolls out her tongue, pretending to be dead again. “Oww,” she giggles. “That was a stupid idea. You okay?” “I think I broke a rib.” “Which one?” she asks then gives my side a playful punch. “Oww!” I fall to the ground. “Shit! Elvis.” I cautiously take the toad from my jacket and set him beside us. He sits, frowning. She pets his toady sideburns. “He’s okay,” she says. We study each other’s faces. “Kiss my ouchy.” She taps her head. “You kiss mine,” I say, still holding my side. She leans over, kisses my hand then taps her head again.
ENDS
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Companion Piece Marty? Marty, it’s Ang – oh. No, fair enough. I didn’t think you’d pick up. I can’t blame you, after the other week. Listen, I’m sorry, I really am. It was good to see you again. I should have told you about the Declan thing, the getting married thing upfront, I know, but ... well, I was afraid you wouldn’t come to Swindon. I shouldn’t have been, I suppose. What does “not really” being with someone mean, anyway? Not married, at least. I wonder if you said that to any girls when you were with me? Like it was an option, an inbetween Schrodinger state that could go either way, depending on what was on offer. I hope you haven’t got a girlfriend. Oh God, that sounds awful – I don’t mean it like that. I mean ... I hope you didn’t betray anyone the way I betrayed Declan. That sounds awful too. It doesn’t – didn’t feel like betrayal. You were there first, after all. It was more like when you dream about someone else, you know – you can’t be responsible for what your subconscious gets up to while you’re
out for the count, can you? Can you? Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way to Swindon for a start. I just didn’t want to ... shit on my own doorstep isn’t a very nice way of putting it, but ... muddy the waters, I suppose? Basically, I didn’t want you and Declan within a hundred miles of each other. Because it’d break his heart if he ever found out, and for no reason, too – it’s different with us. It’s always been different. He wouldn’t understand. I had a meeting for work, God help me, over at the Town Hall. I thought that’d be the best time to do it – when I really was at a business meeting in Swindon, so that if Declan asked when I got home I could say, I was at a business meeting in Swindon, and he’d say Swindon? and roll his eyes, and I’d roll my eyes back and say yeah ... the Council’s a new client, and he’d say how was it, and I’d say something like, it was Swindon, what do you think? I shouldn’t be so mean about Swindon. The Holiday Inn’s actually quite nice; I love those mini kettles they give you.
Katy Dar by
A r esp onse to “What’s I n Swi n don?” by Stuart Eve rs
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Reminded me of our crappy little place in Wigan, the kettle and the buggered radio that only got Radio 4 and John Peel. It’s all you need, really, you said that. Or did I? Anyway, we managed to entertain ourselves somehow. Maybe that was what got me thinking, gave me the idea. Of seeing you again, I mean, of being with you, to see if ... Declan has – we have all these things in the house, these gadgets and games and labour-saving gizmos ... the full Sky package, Sports and Movies, the PS3, the surround sound, the blender, the steamer, the heart-monitoring space-shuttle exercise bike, the laptops, the iPhones, the Wii ... he’s got a PS3 and a Wii, yeah. He didn’t get on with the Xbox. And we don’t use them half the time; or he does, for a month or two, and then they’re just dusty toys that need cleaning and the boxes kept and the receipts in the kitchen drawer just in case.
“ I shouldn’t be so mean about Swindon. The Holiday Inn’s actually quite nice”
What did we have, apart from the radio and the kettle? No microwave and the oven was bust, I remember that ... What the hell did we eat? Did we even
have a toaster? I think so – no, wait, it was one of those sandwich-toaster things students always buy, we found it under the sink covered in grease, left there by a previous tenant. I scrubbed it so hard that when you finally made a sandwich you couldn’t eat it, you said it tasted of Vim. I don’t remember us eating, except takeaways ... obviously we did, I mean you’ve got to eat, but all I remember is you smoking your Marlboro Reds, or rollies when you were hard up, and us drinking all that rough red wine from the Quite Early Shop. Was it you who made that up, or me? It said Late Shop on the sign but it closed at eight, so you started calling it the Quite Early Shop. It was you. I thought I might not come home that night. I really did. That night in Swindon, I mean. Stay over at the hotel, make love a few more times then get in the company car and drive till we hit water. God knows what we’d have done next. Didn’t you always want to go to Thailand? Or was it Tibet? Maybe you have already. I should have asked. Sorry. I didn’t even ask about your job. But then again, it wasn’t a fucking networking opportunity. Can’t imagine staying there for anything but you. But it’s not you any more, is it? Not really. I don’t mean that in a bad way. You’ve changed,
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I’ve changed ... you should see some of the lads from the Wigan days, my God. Bald, fat, they could pass for fifty ... You’re looking good on it, believe me. Still got most of your hair, maybe not as skinny as you were back then but two out of a six-pack ain’t bad. You said something like that, didn’t you, when we got up to the room ... You haven’t lost your looks, or you haven’t lost your figure ... something like that. I think you were trying to be complimentary.
Sarah says everybody gets cold feet. I haven’t told her, God no – it’s just something she says. Like a preemptive strike, to make sure I don’t even think about it. I can see her watching me very closely when she says that. She’s protective of her brother, fair enough. It wasn’t cold feet, though. Itchy feet, maybe. You know when you just have to do something? No matter what, how stupid, how late, how wrong, you just have to? I had to call you. I knew you’d say yes.
Isn’t it weird that we’ve both reached that age where we’re counting up not what we’ve got, but what we haven’t lost?
I can’t believe you gave up smoking. Everyone does, I know, eventually, but not you: everyone but you. You know the reason I was attracted to Declan at first was that he smelled like you? He smoked Marlboro Reds too, when I met him. I made him give up pretty quickly, of course, you know I’ve always hated it, but you ... I remember once you said if you had to choose between booze and fags you’d choose cigarettes. That really pissed me off, cos I’d seen you choose fags over food more than once, and I ... that was the night I called you a fucking cunt, I think, and threw that book at your head. I’m sorry about
I mean, I always knew I’d get there, in the end; getting engaged, even getting married, didn’t come as a surprise, but I never thought you would, somehow. Move to London. Get a ridiculous Hoxton fringe ... I didn’t want to say anything at the time, but – well, it’s your hair. What’s left of it. I’m joking. All these years and I’m still having a go at you about your hair. Sorry.
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kissing, you’ve either got it or you haven’t: it’s just one of those things between people, isn’t it? It doesn’t make any difference in the end, I mean nobody stays with anybody because they’re a good kisser, but it’s so good. But in the hotel, when I kissed you after, it was like ... You know how Diet Coke tastes different to normal Coke? Almost exactly the same, almost; but just slightly wrong, something missing. It’s worse because it’s only a little bit wrong. They’ve taken all the sin out of it. All the fun. You tasted like Diet Coke. Low-fat. No-carb. Caffeine-free. I never liked the taste of cigarettes except on you. It’s not like licking an ashtray, it’s like kissing a smoker. Nicotine gum just isn’t the same.
that too. But I sort of admired that, you know. Diehard. A diehard smoker. You’d never change. And then you did. The hair I could handle. Even moving to London. You always were a good kisser. Maybe the best. Sex you can work on, but
I don’t know why I called. Just to say hello, I suppose, but we said that, didn’t we, several times, in the bar, in the hotel room, in the bed, after. Remember? Just to say goodbye then. At least now we both know what’s in Swindon. Or I do, anyway.
ENDS
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YARN team
i n th e g r e e n room
Top row; Katy, Matt, Hannah, Gemma Bottom row; Jarred, Camila, Jo, Verity and Clare
Submissions
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Some carpets to remain! The Butchers were an ugly couple. Although Henry Butcher was a senior civil servant and his wife a chartered accountant, to Madeleine the stench of abattoirs surrounded them. Janice Butcher’s enormous mouth was forever open. The more she talked the wider the cavern gaped, displaying strong canines that chewed every syllable as if it were gristle. Even when she was silent her teeth protruded beyond her scarlet lips and her tongue darted between her cheeks as though foraging for further fleshy morsels. Both Butchers had thick podgy fingers reminiscent of flabby, flattened pork sausages.
At least their plans to remove the “insectinfested thatching” had been thwarted by some “busy-body” threatening a preservation order.
The Butchers proudly itemised the wonderful improvements they had foisted upon the three hundred year old cottage that they had sold to Madeleine and Graham.
The bills were staggering. Graham frowned constantly, muttering about overdrafts and the need to economise, economise, economise ad infinitum. The Aga would have to wait a year or two and as for starting a family ......
Linoleum had been placed over the parquet flooring. “Couldn’t be fagged with all that polishing.” Janice boomed. Double-glazed, pivoting picture windows had replaced the leaded-light casements. “Far more practical, my dears.” Henry had grinned. They had coated the oak beams with white non drip gloss. “You’d never believe how dark and dreary it was in here!”
Mr Fairweather, tutting constantly and scrawling morosely upon his notepad had sighed as he gave Madeleine his estimate for the cottage’s restoration. “However you must understand that craftsmanship nowadays don’t come cheap.” He said as he tapped the wall around the mock yorkstone fireplace. “D’you know, there could well be an ingle-nook beneath all this rubbish.”
By the following spring though, most of the Butcher’s major blasphemies had been exorcised and the cottage regained its charm. Sweet scented logs smouldered in the restored grate and stained oak beams held gleaming brass and copper-ware. Glaring spotlights had been replaced by subtlety shaded standard lamps and the flock wallpaper had been whitewashed.
Carolyn E de n pag e 26
“ Yes, it is lovely. Of course the carpet’s got to go. Hideous, isn’t it?”
Yet there was one remnant of the Butchers that continued to gall Madeleine. A vast swathe of opulent purple carpet stifled the sitting room floor which screamed to be cosseted with fringed rugs of autumnal hues.
have here.” Mary-Sue had gushed. “My goodness you’ve done wonders in such a short time. What a charming room this is!”
Graham was adamant. “Absolutely not! There’s no way we can run to new carpets this year. The cars are both going to need a mint spent on them to get through the MOTs and we can’t travel to town on rugs! Unless, sweetheart, you can find flying, Persian ones.”
“It’s okay. Almost magenta, isn’t it? Superb quality. Murder to keep clean, I suppose but nice and soft!”
“There’s a sale at Henderson’s’ next month. Couldn’t we just manage...” “We can’t even just manage what we’ve already spent on this place. Those Butchers did us good and proper! No, I mean it, not a penny more on the cottage. Not yet, anyway.” There was no more arguing, not with Graham in that resolute mood. The carpet’s purpleness seem to screech whenever she entered the sitting room. In certain lights it became the dreaded maroon of her old school uniform, reminding her of those incarcerated days of Latin verbs and incomprehensible calculus. At other times she saw caked droplets of blood within its swirls and remembered the dull eyes of game birds hanging in the windows of Hoskins, “Purveyors Of Fine Meats” the shop adjacent to the hospital where her father had spent the final month of his life. Its plainness was an irritant, constantly splattered with minute flecks of dust however frequently it was vacuumed. It always claimed her attention; a malicious reminder that the Butchers’ ignorant influence remained spoiling her tranquillity. “Oh Madeleine, what a beautiful place you
“Yes, it is lovely. Of course the carpet’s got to go. Hideous, isn’t it?”
It amazed her at how tactful friends could be. She knew full well that, unless she preempted them, the moment visitors reached the garden gate they would turn to each other whispering, “Sweet cottage, but what awful taste in carpets!” It was worse the nights Graham worked late. The isolation did not worry her; she was not the sort to jump at every creak or rustle, worrying unnecessarily about intruders or evil spirits. Neither was she the suspicious type. She trusted Graham implicitly Madeleine was basically practical; a romantic yes, but an hysteric never. Only some evenings, especially when she was exceptionally tired, then the carpet would claim her. Her eyes would suddenly alight upon a patch of it and the purpleness would swirl at her conjuring images of formless doom. She would see those gross cheeks of Janice Butcher or the gummy leer of a hatchet-wielding Henry, his piggy eyes fixed upon a procession of doomed cattle. The visions would last for a matter of seconds until Madeleine shook her head and focused once again on the normality of the white-washed walls. Then, sensible enough to bypass the drinks trolley, she would amble into the kitchen with its soothing quarry tiles and comforting biscuit tin. “You’re alone too much!” Her mother knew everything without ever being told. “You should start a family - you’re not getting any
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younger, you know!” “I know!” “Don’t tell me you can’t afford to. No one can. Everything, I take it, is all right in-er-that department?” “Yes, mother, that so-called department is fine. We’re just not ready to...” “And you should give up smoking. That’s the third since I’ve been here!” She couldn’t have a baby; not yet, not here, not with the Butchers’ rancid clamminess pervading her home. Through the carpet they mocked her. “So genteel, are we? So sensitive with a proper sense of what is right and fitting? Scrub all you like, but we can still laugh at you! Close your eyes and watch us eat our rare roast beef. See the rosy droplets of blood moistening our lips!” Graham’s promotion had been swift and unexpected. “There’s not much more Money, I’m afraid.” Graham had this wonderful way of speaking in capital letters when he was excited. “Not actual Cash in hand. A better Title of course, darling, Assistant Deputy Controller - sounds Grand doesn’t it? But it’s the Perks that’ll make all the Difference. A Company Car! So how about two weeks in the Sun?” “Rugs for the lounge?” “Ah! One week in the sun, then!” Graham knew when he was beaten. “Okay, but don’t go mad. I’ve sort of grown used to this room as it is - I know you think purple’s a vulgar colour but at least it’s cheerful!” That last comment, thought Madeleine, was almost grounds for divorce if not committal,
but she let it ride. Graham had not noticed the swelling in her belly and she would not tell him until she had become at peace with her home. Graham had his obstinate streak too. Although he was delighted about the baby he worried about the expense.. “For goodness sake, Maddy, there’s nothing basically wrong with it! It can go in the guest room. That bed your aunt gave us is so large that no one’s going to notice the colour of a bloody carpet. We can’t afford to throw money away so it goes up in the back room and that’s my final word on the subject!” Madeleine was surprised at how difficult it was to move the double divan from the guest room to the landing despite the way Felix and Bert - “no job too small” - had huffed and puffed and grunted as they had worked. To her untrained eye, it had all seemed a ploy to bolster up their fee. She soon learnt that their struggle had been for real. And now, for the second time in a day, both mattress and base had to be transferred to the hall. Desperation gave her both the necessary strength and determination. Her finger nails were snagged and her shoulders ached, but the floor of the little eaved room was totally cleared and she could begin. Even after only a couple of hours, the bed’s tiny wheels had left their imprint and scraps of blanket fluff had become entwined within the purple pile. She sat cross-legged upon a sheet of newspaper - she’d not allow the carpet to brush her flesh - sipped at her mug of percolated coffee and surveyed the room. Yes, it was right. The time had come.
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She took out her last ever packets of cigarettes and a box of matches from her pocket. She closed her eyes as the nicotine rose to her head, producing that wonderful feeling of dizziness which is the joy of inhaling tobacco after many days’ abstinence. The smell was thrilling. As she reached the point in her cigarette when the filter begins to feel just a little warmer, the point described as, “leave a long stub”, she opened her eyes and leaned forward until she was practically lying on her stomach. Wilfully, with a serene smile, she ground the glowing residue of tobacco into the very centre of the purple carpet. A brown, crusted ring appeared around the spot where the filter tip rested, withered and expired. A solitary patch of the luxurious pile had become irreparably soiled. Madeleine retrieved the crumpled stub, chucked it into a large glass ashtray and promptly lit another cigarette. During the course of a long, luxuriating afternoon, she revelled in the naughtiness of chain smoking, extinguishing each cigarette upon a different area of carpet. Some were maliciously screwed in tiny, circular movements, whilst others amused her by quietly dying in their own time, creating singed sores around them. She spooned cold coffee over those smouldering butts eager to soil beyond their designated bounds. As dusk approached the rectangular area where the guest bed would stand was pockmarked with scorched craters like the scabbed, acne faces of puberty. Small clumps of unmutilated tufts cowered in the wake of intermittent, coarse blackened pits. The pathetic margin of unblemished carpet, orphaned and useless, held no terror. The room stank from the fumes of cremated wool mixture but wasn’t there also just a
whiff of burning flesh? Ribs, chops, cutlets, scrag-end - smouldering in a grease-laden oven? At last she rose from her squatting position, grinned triumphantly and flung open the casement window and, in a final petulant gesture of defiance, splattered dregs of coffee grounds over the desecrated floor. She sang a tuneless lullaby as she vacuumed and, when she stood back to admire her handiwork, she felt a sense of satisfaction kindred more to that of artistic creation than of spiteful vandalism. She slid the divan bases back into the guestroom, consigning their wheels to the dustbin, but found it a bit of a struggle heaving the mattress on to its perch. Her strength might have waned had she not the determination of the nesting female. She fetched crisp white linen from the airing cupboard, meticulously folded hospital corners, fluffed pillows and draped the giant candlewick bedspread so that it evenly skirted the bed’s perimeter camouflaging her handiwork. She latched tight the windows, sprayed sparingly with lavender air-freshener and removed the foul brimming ash tray and the empty coffee mug. The door was clicked shut; the deed, at long last, had been done. If ever they had to move house again, then she would simply generously insist that the old bed, along with some carpets, would remain.
THE END CODA That Madeleine and Graham’s daughter was born with a tiny port-wine birthmark staining her cheek was, of course, totally coincidental.
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M E M B E R
Spi ros Halar is
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/spi ros-halar is
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M E M B E R
He and She She looked the part: bed hair, fag in hand.
‘You know who i am, right?’ He didn’t. Was this a joke?
Make up smudged haphazard? No completely planned.
Six years it had been and it’s true, he looked good.
She glanced around, sussed out the competition.
Dazed by his beauty (and arrogance) she fell back in the mud.
Her target in sight she took the first step on her mission.
Dusting herself off, she rose up from below
Slightly unsteady on her new heels, she exhaled and spoke.
His last words to her? ‘Steady as you go.’”
Clar e Ke lly
www.clar ecath e r i n e ke lly.co.u k
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M E M B E R
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Lu ke WALLER
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/ lu ke-walle r
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In the Age of Nicotine He orders a large gin and tonic and checks out the barmaid’s curves as she bends down to get a bottle of Schweppes from the fridge, his flat hand running up and down the smooth blond wood of the bar top. Thanks, he says. Takes his change, surveying the room and choosing a table away from the bar, en route to the toilets. He unbuttons his suit jacket with one hand, hitches his trousers and sits. Drinks. Lemony tonic fizzing his nose. Then he sees her. In the corner. She’s taking a Marlboro Red from its box. Knocks the filter against the packet. Zippo snaps, head tilts, eyes screw, ostentatious inhalation, toss of hair, exhale to the ceiling, look of quiet satisfaction. Now she’s picking at the non-existent shred of tobacco on her tongue. This is pure theatre. Where did she pick this up? She must love those old arthouse films. The French ones. Black and white. Subtitles. Years ago he had a girlfriend who was into all that stuff. He went along to see a few. Great to look at, but no real plots or anything like that. Nothing happens. They had a great bar there though, at the
cinema. He used to go early and sit in the bar, drink a few drinks on his own before the film. There were plenty of women in there too. Arty sorts mostly. Mainly plain girls in shapeless clothes, but some classy types too. The kind that probably don’t even have to read the subtitles and have been holidaying in France since they were kneehigh. Sophisticated. Dressed with a bit of style. Nothing ill-fitting, or badly chosen. Each garment making the most of their assets. Leading the eye around their bodies to accentuate their best features -- large breasts, long legs, hourglass figure -- or to conceal their imperfections -- chunky thighs, broad shoulders, fat arse. He admires that. Make the most of yourself, whatever it is you’ve got. Make the most of it. Don’t cower away. Make the most of yourself. Be better. He can’t take his eyes off this woman, smoking her cigarettes like she’s in a screen test. He’s got a book of matches in his jacket pocket and next time she reaches for a cigarette, he’ll be there with the lighted match at the ready. He picks up all the free stuff at hotels. Matches, combs, soaps and shampoos. He’s got a drawer full of them
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at home. Tons of it. And he’s got this trick with the book of matches. You just fold the match over -- never tear it off, never do that -- and turn the book inside out, as if you’re breaking the spine of a paperback, then you just snap your fingers and there it is. Instant fire. Instant cool. It never fails. He’s thinking that if smoking became an Olympic sport -- and let’s face it there’s no reason why not, they’ve already got synchronised swimming and that version of gymnastics where they jump around with a hula hoop -- if smoking did become an Olympic sport, this woman would be challenging for a medal. Imagine standing on the podium, with the gold medal round your neck, listening to your nation’s anthem, the flag being hoisted, waving to the crowds, with a Marlboro smoking in your hand. He wonders how would they score it? Probably it would have to be a function of quantity and quality. The number of cigarettes they could smoke in a set period, and there’d be a panel of judges giving scores for artistic merit. And there’d be different divisions and sub-divisions too; filtered and filterless; high-tar, medium-tar, low-tar -- like all the different weight classes you get in boxing. He loves the way she holds her cigarette. Such long, elegant fingers. Some women look common, even sluttish, when they smoke, but this woman could singlehandedly revive the reputation of the civilised smoker.
Just look at her. He has never felt shy with women. Always known what to say, how to put them at their ease, how to lead them on. It’s something you’re born with, he thinks. Forget all the self-help books and the pheromone sprays. That’s all bullshit. Strictly for inadequates only. Either you’ve got it or you haven’t. And it never leaves you. Never. Of course, he’s had dry patches. Everyone does. It’s like a golfer with the yips -shanking and slicing and topping. Or a darts player with dartitis -- one day unable to let the dart go, as if they’ve lost the confidence that it’s going to sail into the treble bed as usual, surprised and appalled to find the dart still gripped between their fingers. But you always beat it in the end. Always. She’s stubbing out the cigarette now. This is a crucial point. Will she spend an age chasing hot embers around the ashtray, or has she got the technique? Can she put it out with one smooth, strong action? There you go. She’s got it. An artist, right down to the butt. He doesn’t have a fetish for smoking. Not at all. Nothing like that. It’s just that this particular woman happens to be an especially sexy smoker. Some women are like that, there’s just something they do that hits a spot and elevates them from their usual ordinary self. Gives them that
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extra pop. It could be anything -- the way she drives her car, how she holds a cup or a glass, a special way she gazes out of a window on a train. Even reading a magazine or watching TV. Anything at all, except maybe hoovering, or washing the dishes, or something like that. He’s never been a smoker himself. Weak lungs. Tuberculosis as an infant. Could have finished him off in those days. Had rheumatic fever too. He missed a lot of school through sickness and wasn’t allowed to do sports, or go on trips. The next cigarette she sparks up, he’s going to be there with his book of matches. Work his magic. To him it’s no different to closing a sale. You’ve got to do the nitty-gritty to get in front of the client. Understand how they tick, identify what they need, make sure they know you can give them what they want. Only you can give them exactly what they want. It’s a matter of confidence and cynicism in just the right proportions. Too much of either and you’re nowhere. You have to be confident that, whatever it is they want, you can deliver. You must be cynical enough to not believe a word you tell them, but you better sound like you do. Believe your own hype and you’re dead. Get the mix right and the world is yours. He gets up and walks over to the jukebox. He doesn’t want to appear out of nowhere with a lighted match. He doesn’t want to pounce on her out of the blue. That’d be creepy. That’s not the right approach. Up to the jukebox and right in her eye line. Let her notice him first. There are rules for this sort of thing. It’s like sport. If you don’t know the rules you’re not going to score, you’ll be flagged offside before you get your shot off. Know the rules. The problem starts when he gets to the jukebox. It’s then he realizes he’s not as clued up on this type of thing as he used to be. He’s not clued up at all. He doesn’t listen to radio outside of Melody or Heart or
Smooth FM, and even then he doesn’t really take any notice of the music, it’s just there. He can’t remember the last time he bought any music. He cleared out all his tapes years ago and bought a mini-CD player, but he never got around to buying any CDs. He’s flipping through the choices and trying to maintain the veneer of nonchalance. Think a suave and debonair man of the world, taking his time over a particularly good wine list. Enjoying the list itself. That type of thing. He hardly recognises anything on this machine. And the tracks he does know aren’t appropriate for this scenario. The selection has to be just right. He doesn’t know her musical tastes, so he has to pick something that is neutral, but ineffably classy. A few years back this would have been easy. Sade, something like that. Simply Red, maybe? They must have some Simply Red on here, surely? When did people stop listening to Simply Red? What do the people who used to listen to Simply Red listen to now? Maybe an Elton John track? They have that on the machine. No. Too gay. He feels there’s someone standing behind him. That’s the sixth sense. Sensing when someone’s watching you. Everyone’s got it. Everyone can sense. It goes back to the Stone Age. It’s simple self-preservation. The woman who’s smoking, she knows someone’s been watching her, and he knows that she’s been watching him at the jukebox. That’s why it’s important to look like he knows what he’s doing. He turns around and it’s not the elegant smoker, but a gum-chewing twentysomething girl, dumpy in a too-tight crop top and hipster jeans, muffin top belly. He looks over her and sees that the woman is not at her seat, but that her drink is still there -large white wine -- and so are her Marlboros. The girl stares at him with a look that might amount to youthful disrespect, if only she could summon the resolve to muster the requisite facial muscles into position. Instead the look she gives him is a pure blank. So blank it hardly deserves to be classified as a
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facial expression at all. Loose change jingles in her puffy pink hand and she looks past him towards the silent jukebox. The man checks again that the smoking woman has not returned to her seat and, in her absence, is happy to admit defeat, gives the girl an ‘it’s all yours’ kind of gesture and rejoins his gin and tonic. As he takes his seat, the woman exits the restrooms and swishes by him. He watches the sway of her hips, perfectly accentuated in a black pencil skirt and heels. This woman knows, he tells himself. This woman knows how to make the best of herself. She’s an expert. She could even teach him a thing or two. He watches her return to her seat. The moment is nearly on him. On them. He checks the book of matches in his pocket, adjusts his cuffs, straightens his tie, passes a palm over his hair. The pleasant bustling sounds of the bar -muted conversations, ice being scooped and tinkling into glass, the beeping of the till, the noise of coin on coin -- is lost to a thumping backbeat and air raid siren wail of the twenty-something girl’s jukebox selection. The man looks up. The girl is seated by the window with a pastyfaced youth in a tracksuit and baseball cap. Nodding heads in time with the beats. The woman, Marlboro packet in hand, glances over at the man for the first time. She gives him a look, as though he’s just affected an introduction by breaking wind. It gives way to a quizzical air, then she turns her head away, smirking. She lights her cigarette.
“ He turns around and it’s not the elegant smoker, but a gumchewing twentysomething girl”
He has to turn this one around. Make the most of the situation, bad though it is. Don’t cower away. Get over there and explain. Just explain what happened. Come right
out and tell her the story. But it would take too much explanation. It’s complicated. Would he have to explain that he couldn’t decide on a track by himself? That he’s so completely out of touch with things? He needn’t tell her that. He imagines trying to explain to the woman and getting lost in the telling. No. No explanations. You can’t start making excuses for yourself by way of an introduction. Make a new plan. Quickly. Be decisive. Make a joke of it. That’s it. There’s a joke in here somewhere. A joke at his own expense? No, not at his expense, at the girl’s. That’s it, she’s an easy target. He must be able to come up with something. It can’t be that difficult. But maybe that would make him appear old? Like an old man, complaining about the youth of today. Different tack entirely is what’s needed. Just keep it snappy. A one-liner to dismiss the thing, get a laugh, move on. Move in. A oneliner. Come on! Kick that brain into gear. He needs a one-liner. Pithy and funny. A killer one-liner to break the ice and clear the air. What though? What? Out on the street it’s twilight. He deep breathes through a mild attack of vertigo. A couple of stiff drinks and no dinner have left him feeling weak. More than weak, he feels vulnerable. He feels old. He tries to decide what to eat. He thinks pizza and McDonalds, fish and chips, a kebab. He can’t decide what he wants. He just knows he needs to eat. On the way back to the hotel -- really it’s more of a motel, no bar or restaurant, or room service -- all he passes is Mr Wok’s take-away. So he orders prawn crackers, spring rolls, wontons with plum sauce, sweet and sour pork balls with egg-fried rice. He arranges his meal on a newspaper he lays across his hotel bed, drinking cold beer and miniatures from the mini-bar. He eats too much and feels over-stuffed. Unwell. Old. Later he will fall asleep watching the porn channel. But before that he makes a call to his wife, like he does every night he’s away on business, and takes a travel iron from his suitcase and irons a shirt for the morning.
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M E M B E R
Josh ua Marshall
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/josh ua-marshall
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CAM I lA FIOR I
www.myspace.com /camilafior i
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An e esha
sp otte d on i nstag ram app
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My most hated thing “ My most hated thing is passive cancer. smokers can buy their own way to an early grave, I’m happy being alive.” Ph il Howe ll @15pe rce ntki dn ey www.h i dde n di ng bat.co.u k
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You left me You left me and my heart is broken Your love for me was only token All we shared was a lust for smokin’ I knew it was over when I saw that bloke on top of you.
Simon MacDonald
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M E M B E R
SPI ROS HALAR IS
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/spi ros-halar is
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M E M B E R
ANNA SPENCER
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/an na-spe nce r
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A morning cigarette while revising for A Levels She thinks she lives for her first cigarette of the day. A pair of cotton pyjamas, Christmas-present slippers, the milkiest of teas. Her ample rear is perching on a damp patio slab, her glasses slightly askew with the morning hours. She worries briefly about clouding the new neighbours’ washing with her smoke. She remembers her mother mentioning the man next door is a vicar. She wonders if they are allowed to smoke. She hears the other neighbour shuffling, filling a watering can, as she sends her clouds like thoughts over the wall. She draws it in, fooling herself into thinking she needs this. The tea is gulped frog-like swallows,
with nicotine fingers cupping the cooling mug. She remembers the first cigarette she smoked: stolen from a school play props table with furtive, curious hands. Now she lives in a blue, cartoon cloud, with pathetic unpopular girls sitting with her between lessons and wishing they had the guts to smoke too. Her mother smokes, but she must never know. Our girl will hang out of bathroom windows until she is thirty if she has to. She will never steal her mother’s supplies as her love of detective dramas has made her a sleuth of sorts and she would absolutely know. The girl stubs it out between patio cracks and slides the butt underneath the fence. Let that fence never be knocked down.
Ray Morgan
rayp oetry.b logsp ot.com
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I’m not talking about cancer I’m talking about cigarettes. They were out one night, in the winter, having a beer in the courtyard of a pub as he rolled up a cigarette using the tips of his fingers and tongue. Nimble. She waited, watching him. After it was glowing in his mouth, he said “I’m sorry, would you like one”, thinking she was staring intently, desirously, at the cigarette. “No,” she said disgusted and raised her eyebrows at him. He waited for her to go on, not wanting to ash his cigarette, letting the smoking end grow long in his mouth. “I just think it’s really dumb. I mean, you’re killing yourself, right? Painting your lungs black, right? Aren’t you?” she said and waited. He placed the fag on the edge of the ashtray and didn’t say anything else. V sat there, burning up with the cigarette at his silence. “Correct me if I’m wrong...” she said. “Yes,” he said. “Sure. But don’t you think it’s a bit cool, you know?” She laughed at him and he was shocked, her mouth like a black hole.
What the fuck does she want? He thought. “A bit cool,” she laughed, “Fuck Michael, how old are you? Sixteen, down behind the toilet block at school? Cool. Fucking hell.” she laughed. Fuck you, he thought. “Fuck you” he said loudly and over her laugh. “Don’t you think there’s something to it, V? Really. Because no, I’m not sixteen and despite all the government health warnings and whatever, smoking is still cool.” She clearly wasn’t expecting this, her eyes were alive now, glistening, she sat straight backed, alert, mouth a tight line and mittens folded in the table in front of her. Neatening herself with every breath, getting everything in order, ready to take the blows, fire back ten-fold. He was angry that she expected to win every fight, to beat him, laughing at him. She laughed nervously. “Stop laughing” he said flatly and justlikethat, like a crack in the air and
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she did. Stop. “I still think it’s ridiculous,” she said, clawing back the ground, finding her footing, wrapping her mouth around an argument “but maybe I’m wrong” she said, meaning, I’m not wrong. She continued sarcastically “maybe there’s nothing ‘cooler’ than cancer.” She punctuated the air with the down-up of her middle fingers around cooler. He fired back “I’m not talking about cancer, I’m talking about cigarettes”. “I’m talking about cause and effect,” she said. “Yes, yes, he said, “But isn’t that why cool things are cool? Because you don’t think about the effect, because there seems like there’s no effect, or, or, or, the cool thing swamps the effect”. “Or, or, or” said V, meanly. “Articulate as ever, Michael”. He was shocked by her savagery, how much was up for grabs with her. You could lose the argument because you repeated your ‘ors’, because your phrasing was awkward and so by extension, you were. You stopped for breath and she punctured your lungs. He rolled another cigarette, to spite her. He said “I’m waiting for the counter argument, V.” He lit up and sucked the tobacco. “Is it good?” she asked.
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They were like boxers circling each other in the ring. punch, counter punch. Point, counter point. “Do you feel cool, Michael? Do you, do you?” She was taunting him now. “Oh God,” she said, sarcastically. “You’re just so fucking cool”. He sat there smoking, somehow he was aware that he was making her feel ugly. He placed his left ankle on his right thigh so that his red sock was exposed, he was taking up space and he said, calmly, staring at her, “Someone once told me that once someone makes the argument personal, you’ve won. So do I chalk this one up?”. She stared at him, the early beginnings of a smile in the corners of her mouth. “Fuck you, Michael” she said. Fuck you. “No” he said. “No, no, no, no, no. And you can make fun of that if you want. But, fuck you.” There was silence and she looked at him, bit her lip and looked away, “alright,” she said. “Alright”, and put her left hand hard on his cheek. “You can”. He furrowed his brow. “Please,” she said. “Oh,” he said, shocked . “V, V, V, I, I, I don’t...” he said. “Michael!” she said, loud in the middle of the courtyard. Her cheeks flushed. “Please, Michael”, she said against the navy night, her navy bow so prim around her neck.
The final cigarette After reading ‘The Final Cigarette’ I remembered my friend saying she wanted to quit smoking, and every time she quit, she’d say that every cigarette she smoked would be the last, so I kept each cigarette she smoked after she said it again to me recently, which were all smoked on 10 different occasions.
Halima Olale mi http:// fazyluck.com /
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Why I never started smoking, and now I can’t stop I always wish I’d been a smoker. Well, not really – but you know what I mean. I’ve seen all the European movies, all the Hollywood films noir – hell, even Bladerunner made it look cool. There’s just something about how people look when they do it well, this creamy white smoke rising from their mouths, like they’ve got fire actually inside them – like they’re more than human. Demons, maybe, or dragons.
new enough to still be exciting? Drinking, smoking, drugs and sex – anything but essays, basically. And getting a light or bumming a cigarette is a great way to flirt. And if you take a girl back to your room, and she smokes, and she runs out, and you don’t have any … well, it sort of ruins the moment to have to pop out to the twenty-four-hour shop, is all. Condoms, cigarettes and coffee, the three Cs of seduction. For me, anyway.
I never took it up properly, but I have a cigarette now and again. Everybody should, I think, just to remember or discover what it’s like. Months between them these days, sometimes years. I’m very brand-loyal, though – I don’t smoke anything but one particular German brand called Smart. Whenever I go to the continent I try to pick up a packet. One pack, no more. I don’t cry myself to sleep if I can’t get hold of them, but I like to always have a few in my drawer. The taste is unusual – they’re quite strong, and have a slightly liquorice flavour.
Why Smart? All right.
Keeping a pack of cigarettes in my room – even though, as I say, I never really smoked, is a hangover from my University days. Most of the girls smoked back then – it’s that time, isn’t it, when you do whatever’s
Picture me at a party in my first term – still a fresher, hardly knowing my way around the campus, let alone the city, tagging along with one of my tall good-looking new best friends to the house of some unbelievably sophisticated second-years, carrying our shitty white wine and supermarket quarterbottle of vodka. I’m dressed in the eternal default uniform of the boy who doesn’t know what to wear to a party – jeans and a band T-shirt. God knows what band. One that I hoped girls would like, I suppose. We walk in and it’s a blast of smoke and yelling chatter and loud bad music from the stereo in the corner. There’s gritty red wine in white plastic Tesco cups and empty beer
Vish Chan di raman i
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bottles forming green pile-ups along the walls and couples, already drunk, snogging awkwardly on the cheap landlord furniture. There’s something brutal about that kind of party, but they also throb with possibility – like every party, I suppose, if you’re young and single and don’t really want to be either. Age 18 I was still getting ID’d in Oddbins. My bumfluff goatee didn’t help. I shaved it off a few months later, and got a girlfriend the next week. So. I go to get beer for me and Dave and Steve – everyone’s got a mate called Dave, or Steve, or both, I think it’s some sort of immutable rule of the universe – anyway, I go into the kitchen to fetch us some beer and say hello to the girl whose party it is. She’s like the cheerleader of the second year language students, everyone fancies her. Stephanie. And she’s glamorous because she’s half-German and her brother’s a pop star or something in Germany. Though given that so is David Hasselhoff, I’m not that impressed.
foreign students in our year. “OK if I join you?” I say. “Sure. You don’t mind music, do you?” “Only the shitty Europop they’re playing in there,” I said. “Me too. Acoustic, I mean. I came out here to practise. I have a gig later on.” I’ve pegged it now: his accent is German. Light, but definite. “No,” I say. As I get closer I see he’s cradling a guitar. I sit at the other end of the bench to give him room to play. I realise I’ve left our wine and vodka on the table in the kitchen, but I don’t want to leave – not now, anyway. It would be rude. “You got a drink?” he says, reading my mind. “Not really. Shall I –” “You want one?” “Sure.”
I find her all right, but she’s pushed up against the fridge getting off with some guy I don’t recognise who’s about twice my height and is probably – no, definitely – on the rugby team. This means I can’t get to the fridge. I don’t want to go back to Dave and Steve beerless, so I decide to chill out in the garden, which I can see just outside the kitchen window – there’s a little patio and some scrubby grass behind. The smoke and the noise is giving me a headache, anyway. It’s late October, so it’s cold, and I don’t think anyone else is out there until I see the spark and flash of a lighter, and then the glow of a cigarette end.
He passes me a square green bottle, filled with something black. The top is already off. I hesitate. I don’t have a glass. “Just swig it,” he says. I do. “Christ,” I gasp when I can speak again. “What is that stuff?” “Jagermeister,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even though his face is in shadow. “Don’t you like it?” “No, er, it’s … unusual.” “Aniseed flavour. And it’s strong.”
“Hi,” I say in the direction of the little red dot. My eyes are adjusting to the night and slowly a figure emerges, sitting on a bench at the end of the garden. “Hey,” he says. He’s got some sort of accent, European, I don’t know what. There’s a lot of
Next time I was in a cocktail bar I asked for a shot, just to see if it was as awful as I remembered. It’s a thick evil brown, like tar, and it tastes pretty much how it looks. He stuck another cigarette in his mouth and
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absently offered me the packet. It looked like a weird brand, so I took one, out of curiosity. He lit both and started tinkering with his guitar, tuning it up. I wondered if he was about to serenade me. “Are you German?” I asked, just to say something. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked me back. “Eine kleine bischen,” I said, remembering my stock phrases from GCSE. “Enough to understand song lyrics?” he said in English.
the garden, standing around or sitting on the damp grass, listening, even though they don’t understand the words any more than I do. But someone does. Stephanie stands at the back, a cigarette smoking in her hand, the rugby player long discarded. When he finishes the song and there’s a little ripple of applause, she calls from the back: “Play the new one!” Max turns and smiles at me conspiratorially. “I wrote it for her. She hasn’t heard it yet.” I don’t know what to say.
“Wie komm’ich am besten zum Bahnhof is about my limit,” I said. His face was in the light from the kitchen window now, as he leant over his guitar, and I could see him smile this time. “Good,” he said. “This is a very sentimental song and I don’t want to embarrass you.” But you know what always happens when someone has a guitar at parties – people hear the music drifting from the kitchen, or the bedroom, or the garden, or wherever, and they come out to listen. Usually I hate the sort of wanker who cracks out his acoustic at a party, but this guy – Max was his name – genuinely seemed to want privacy to practise. But at the same time he was too polite to tell anyone to fuck off, including me. So by the end of the third song there’s a little crowd out there in
He starts playing the first song, the one he’d warned me was sentimental.
He starts playing the first song, the one he’d warned me was sentimental. The tune is pretty and mournful, slow and longing. I don’t understand most of the words, only the refrain – something about breaking the fall. Breaking her fall. Everybody goes quiet and respectful as he sings, the way people do when they know something’s serious but they don’t really understand it – like in a museum, or a church. Stephanie stalks through the crowd when he’s finished and throws her arms around his neck, kissing him. Their heads press together, hers straw-blonde and his dark. She whispers something in his ear that sounds like “einfach klasse”, and he laughs. “Better than Schiller?” he asks, leaning back and looking at her. “Much better,” she says, and he laughs again, but she doesn’t. I find myself wishing that someone would look at me like that, ever, but mainly that Stephanie would look at me like that, now, tonight. I feel a bit
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awkward being so near to them. I hope I’m more in shadow than I actually am, because Stephanie turns to me and says, “Don’t I have a talented brother?”
Stephanie’s, and she didn’t sleep with me, but I like to think she would have. Maybe if I hadn’t pretended to run out of cigarettes and we’d stayed awake a bit longer, she might have. I never made that mistake again. As it was, that night, I slept on the floor.
“Oh,” I say, “yes.” “Come on Max,” she says, “you’ve given us enough free entertainment tonight. You’d better get to your gig.” He nods and smiles. She plucks the packet of cigarettes form his shirt pocket – I can see the brand name now, they’re called Smart – and she tuts. “No more of these,” she says. “They’re bad for your singing.” “OK.” He hands the pack to me. “Here, you have them.” He turns back to Stephanie. “And how about yours?” She makes a face. “Oh all right. It’s your lucky night, fresher.” I am left sitting on the bench holding two half-smoked packs of Smart cigarettes, one in each hand, as I watch them walk away, arm in arm. All that night the girls want to know what Max said to me and what the songs meant (as though I knew any better than they did!), and the guys wanted to know why Stephanie gave me her cigarettes. I went back with a blonde third year called Claire who said I was cute and smoked all of Max’s cigarettes. I didn’t let her have
Who knows why anybody smokes, why anybody drinks, why anybody writes songs or sleeps with somebody or does anything? It’s funny, but every time I light up a Smart, every time I drink a shot of Jagermeister for old times’ sake, that night comes spiralling back. It’s like a snatch of music or a smell from childhood that takes you to that moment, that time, completely and just for a second. But if you hear that music, smell that smoke every day, the associations fade and it becomes commonplace: the magic won’t work anymore. I suppose that’s why I never really started smoking. And I suppose that’s why I can’t stop. -Why I Never Started Smoking and Now I Can’t Stop by Vish Chandiramani was read by Max Berendt at the Liars’ League Cigarettes & Alcohol event on Tuesday June 26, 2007. Born and raised in Bath, after studying law at university, Vish Chandiramani naturally decided that she wanted to become a social worker. She is currently doing a full-time PgD in Social Work at Lancaster University and writing stories in her spare time. Why I Never Started Smoking is her first fiction publication and is based on a true party.
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M E M B E R
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VERON ICA WOOD
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/ve ron ica-wood
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M E M B E R
Jason LEAR
sou pa.co.u k/cr eatives/jason-lear
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Sharon’s Addiction She was a singer, aye. Didnae stop her, no way. Twenty a day, sometimes more, y’know? Greedy for ‘em. Would rather smoke than eat. Only things she liked more were the bevvy and the old sweet lovin’, o’ course, but as she said, you can combine those two wi’ a fag most of the time, if ye’re canny. Loved the old lady nicotine, did Sharon. She had such a sweet voice, like a choirboy or something, but she hated classical singing, said it was a loada shite - she wanted a rockier, bluesier sound. And she loved the fags, the image, the blue smoke in low bars, a’ that. Sucker for black an’ white films, a romantic at heart. My Sharon.
“ Loved the old lady nicotine, did Sharon.”
Aye, well, it wasnae meant to be I spose. I met her when I was working behind the bar in the Charlotte Square Hotel – a nice posh place, one of the better jobs I’ve been fired from. I’d just given up smoking, weaned masel off, cold turkey, nae patches, nae gum, fuck aw t’help. It wasnae easy but wee Sharon made it ten times harder. In more ways than one, y’ken? She was the lounge singer on Thursdays, ye know the drill, old jazz standards wi’ the house band, or on slow nights just the awd fossil on piano, a pinch o’ Billie, a snatch
o’ Judy and a sprinkling of Eartha and the bus-pass crowd think they’ve died and gone tae heaven. I used to mix her a Dirty Martini when she had her break an she’d sit at the bar in her golden dress, aw sequins and cleavage, or the red one that showed off her pins, an we’d have a natter. Soon enough she’d stick around even after her set was over, an I’d feed her freebies when the boss wasnae looking. And then I started to walk her home, cos she didnae want tae pay for a taxi and the streets at that time o’ night, especially going back to Grassmarket where she lived in a tiny one-bed flat under the eaves, were no’ safe for any woman, let alone a stunner like her. And when we got back there … well, let’s put it this way. There were about seventyfive steps up to her flat and we didnae make it past step twelve. She was a woman of appetite, all right. God knows, she still is. Ye ken what folk are like when they’ve given up the baccy, aye? Doesnae matter if it lasts a month or a lifetime, they’re all over ye telling ye how much better they feel, how it’s changed their life, given ye advice and pamphlets and recommendations an’ that, till even if ye’re already smokin’ a fag ye want another one?
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Well, I was like that. Worse than a fuckin’ Christian. After we’d shagged for maybe the ninth or tenth time – on our third night together, in fact – when she rolled back an’ lit up her Superking I actually leaned across and took it out her hand. She sat up, her breasts spilling over the tangled sheets. “What are ye playin’ at, Jamie? Gi’s it back!” “It’s killin’ ye, Sharon,” I said in that fuckin’ sanctimonious, pious, sorrowful way people do, like ye’re a bad dog who’s shite on the rug. “An’ it’s no good for your singin’ either.” She narrowed her eyes at me until they were like wee glints of broken glass on top of a wall. “That’s my business,” she said, and snatched it back. The next morning when I woke up, she was gone and there was a long brown scorch in the bedclothes. But I wouldnae leave her alone. I just went on an on an on – really determined to do her some good if it was my last act on earth, which as ye can imagine, it came close to being. I bought her the Allen Carr book for her birthday – she didnae like that, I can tell ye. Good job I got her the gold earrings she wanted as well, or else I wouldnae be talkin to ye now. I left the patches an the gum out in obvious places – well, ye know the drill. And what d’ye know – it worked! At least for a wee bit. Although honest to God as I’m standing here, I wish it bloody hadn’t. What happened was she got a chest infection – nasty, those thick explosive coughs that sound like ye’re firing a gun at a brick wall. Aye, like that. An’ her doctor told her it could ruin her voice – not just roughen it, y’know, but totally wreck it.
So I’m her quitting buddy, and I come up with a great idea. We’re still in the honeymoon period y’ken, cannae get enough of each other in the bedroom an aw that. So I take some time off work to look after her, an I dose her up with the gum and the patches an I bring her the cough medicine an the box set of Sex an the City, an I leave her on the living room sofa all curled up an I say, “There y’go doll. I’ll just be in the kitchen wi’ the paper an if you feel like you want a smoke, yell out an I’ll take your mind off it.” Well, give it an hour or so and she did. Want a fag, I mean. So I’m straight in there with my masterplan – I didnae even try to talk her down, I just started kissing her and before ye know it our clothes are off and ciggies are the last thing on her mind. And instead of a post-coital cigarette, she was that knackered she just fell straight asleep. The perfect solution, I thought. For a month or two – and Christ, what months they were! – my method brilliantly. As long as we made love whenever she felt the urge, her nicotine cravings were beaten back. She got better, I got the envy of all my friends, and we got up to some pretty hairy shenanigans in the most unlikely places. I think we must have christened every close in Edinburgh by the time the Festival came around. It was the Festival that did it, y’see, an I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s no just theatre, you see, there’s thousands o gigs, thousands o bands, everyone’s drinking round the clock and doin the maddest things, ye cannae stand the pace – at least, I couldnae. Sharon, on the other hand, had a booking every night an often two or three or four even on the same evening, all over the city, New Town an Old, from big hotels to the dodgiest dives you ever saw.
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An, like I say, she had an appetite – an no much willpower to curb it, unless I was around. Ad I couldnae always be around – likesay, I just didnae have the strength to keep it up. To keep up, I mean. She never came home smellin’ of smoke, I’ll gie her that – or not her own, anyway, only other people’s, that faint pubby tang. I’d broken her addiction to nicotine for good an aw, God help me. It was when she came home at eight, nine in the morning – when she didnae come home at all, for a night, a couple o’ days, a week – that I started worrying. And when I found out what she’d been up to, it all made a grim, horrible sort o’ sense.
“ After we’d shagged for maybe the ninth or tenth time”
times’ sake, an sometimes just because I hope … never mind. She’s a loyal girl, an more tae the point she’d never come back to me. She’s used me up, just like she does wi’ her other boyfriends, at least for a while. This was a year ago an I’m only just recovering masel. They don’t last long but by God they have an incredible time while they’re wi’ her. And I spose I should be glad that she’s happy. All’s said an done, she’s a lovely lass, an I’m sure she’ll cut down eventually – cos if she doesnae she’ll have tae move tae Glasgow. And you know the worst thing about it? The absolute fuckin’ joke of the whole thing? What wi’ all the stress of it – the exhaustion, an losing ma job, an having to find somewhere else to live after she kicked me out – I’ve started smoking again. Dinnae talk to me about irony, son. Been there, done that. Oh, that’s very kind of ye – I seem to have left my pack at home, and I must admit I could do wi’ one. Cheers, pal. I thought ye’d never ask. --
She’d been a twenty a day girl, you see – and she still was. Only it wasnae cigarettes any more – it was blokes. Sex. She craved it like a old lag craves snout. I’d cured her of one addiction and given her another one, and this time the demand far outstripped the supply, at least where I was concerned. Last time I saw her she looked radiant – healthy, flushed wi’ endorphins, every muscle in that lovely wee body toned like an athlete’s by hours every day of solid shagging. Even her voice has improved – I go an watch her on the circuit now, for old
Sharon’s Addiction was read by Daniel Dresner at the Liars’ League Cigarettes & Alcohol event on Tuesday June 26 2007. Graeme MacFarlane studied at Leeds and then Glasgow University, where he took the Creative Writing MA, before making the inevitable move into English teaching. His fiction has appeared in several Scottish print and web publications. He lives in Edinburgh, where his first novel, a murder mystery taking place in the Old Town in the 1700s, is set.
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M hai r i Mcg h e e
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Joan na Scott
Death Stick De lig hts
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Ni kki ShailL aka alpha b etty
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E M ERSON BRAMWE LL
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Thank you to all the artists, writers and photographers who have contributed to this book.
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