The Lampeter Review - Issue 9

tlr The Lampeter Review

ISSN 2054-8257 (Print) / ISSN 2054-8265 (Online) JOURNAL of the Lampeter Creative Writing Centre www.lampeter-review.com

issue 9/ MAY 2014

Rosy Adams Moritz Aust Michael Bartholomew-Biggs Michael Bennett Susmita Bhattacharya Jackie Biggs Mark Blayney Philip Bowne Joanna Campbell Thomas Chapman Horatio Clare Maria Donovan Dic Edwards Aidan Flanagan Eloise Govier Maggie Harris Sarah Hudis Nigel Jarrett Daniel Jeffreys Tyler Keevil Alan Kellermann Tony Kendrew Anna Lewis David Lloyd Ann McGarry Rob Morgan Sue Moules Kevin O’Sullivan Bethany W Pope Maria Taylor Spensa Thornton Kevin Tosca Owen Vince Eloise Williams

THE LAMPETER REVIEW The online magazine of the Lampeter Creative Writing Centre www.lampeter-review.com | info@lampeter-review.com

Managing Editor: Dic Edwards Guest Editor: Carly Holmes Associate Editors: Rosalind Hudis, Tony Kendrew Advisory Editor: John Lavin Design: Constantinos Andronis (info@spectrum-design.gr) Cover Page Image: Moritz Aust (www.moritzaust.com) Š Respective authors. All rights reserved. None of the material published here may be used elsewhere without the written permission of the author. You may print one copy of any material on this website for your own personal, non-commercial use.

THE 2014 DYLAN THOMAS INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL Internationally renowned poet Menna Elfyn will host a celebration of the centenary of Dylan Thomas with two weeks dedicated to his life and work. The Summer School will be held at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s Lampeter Campus and locations throughout West Wales from 25th May to 7th June 2014. Full programme and application is available at www.tsd.ac.uk.

CREATIVE WRITING UNDERGRADUATE COURSES AT TSD Based on the Lampeter Campus, the Creative Writing BAs build on a fifteen year tradition of teaching Creative Writing at this location. The courses offer modules in all the creative genres and are underpinned by an element of English Literature.

MA CREATIVE WRITING & MA CREATIVE & SCRIPT WRITING The Creative Writing Degree offers two pathways. It can be taken as a one year taught course with a further writing-up year, or part-time over four years. Modules are offered in all creative genres.

BA and MA courses are taught by a staff of prominent, internationally renowned writers and lecturers, including poets Menna Elfyn and Samantha Wynne-Rydderch, poet and playwright Dic Edwards and poet, author and critic, Jeni Williams.

PhD IN CREATIVE WRITING Trinity St David’s Creative Writing PhD has built up a reputation as one of Wales’ most successful doctoral programmes. The course supervisors are all published creative writers with expertise in most areas of prose, poetry, fiction, children’s fiction, narrative nonfiction and scriptwriting.

The PhD in Creative Writing combines a proposed manuscript (fiction, poems or playscript) with an element of supporting or contextualising research. The proposed manuscript will be volume length (the natural length of a book, whether poetry or story collection, novel, or playscript). The supporting research will be roughly 25% of the 100,000 word submission.

Applications to: d.edwards@tsd.uwtsd.ac.uk

Table of Contents

-7Editorial / Carly Holmes -11Nigel – A Memory / Rob Morgan -13Three Poems / Alan Kellermann -16The English Lesson / Joanna Campbell -22Two Minutes Silence / Michael Bartholomew-Biggs -23On the Edge of Change / Jackie Biggs -24Time Will Change It / Eloise Govier -25Sleeping Beauty / Maggie Harris -32Three Poems / Anna lewis

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-36There’s a War Coming / Tyler Keevil -47Three Poems / Maria Taylor -50A Troubled Duet / Thomas Chapman -68On Board with the Tollivers / Nigel Jarrett -74Vincent / Dic Edwards -77Silver Buttons / Michael Bennett -82Bones / Owen Vince -83Six Photos / Moritz Aust -90The Moth Box / Sue Moules -91Two Poems / Bethany W Pope -93Dog Sitting / Maria Donovan -97Ordinary Cloudless Tuesdays / Kevin Tosca -99States: from the Left Coast / Tony Kendrew

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-102Two Poems / Ann McGarry -105Aleppo Dreams / Susmita Bhattacharya -107Couda / Daniel Jeffreys -112Shadows / Sarah Hudis -113Pennies From Heaven / Kevin O’Sullivan -117Bobby / Philip Bowne -122Blue of Snow / Mark Blayney -123Winter Sunlight, Glen of Imaal, Wicklow / Aidan Flanagan -124Home / David Lloyd -129To Chris Meredith / Rosy Adams -130My Name is Marcia / Eloise Williams -135Grieving Keats / Spensa Thornton -136Radio Free Rochdale / Horatio Clare -147Contributors

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Editorial

Since I began my stint as guest editor of this issue of The Lampeter Review, two seasons have shuffled through their days to make room for their successors. I’ve escorted my debut novel through its editorial process and watched it leave me for the wider world with barely a backward glance. I’ve toiled over my PhD thesis and despaired that I will ever finish it. I have finished said thesis and handed it over with much relief. Christmas has come and gone, and with it my failed intentions to eat less, drink less, dance more. And people beloved as writers and as friends have died.

The winter here in Wales has been of epically mild and stormy proportions. A cosmic joke with the punch line just out of reach. Petrified forests thousands of years old have been uncovered along the coast, and buildings hundreds of years old destroyed. I sat at my desk in my writing room through gale-torn afternoons, reading submissions while winds toppled trees and flood water invaded homes up and down and across Britain. My anxiety for my own home and garden might have influenced my reading, for this issue is largely concerned with fiction and poetry that are strange in theme and tone. Even a little dark. I tend towards strangeness in my own writing so it’s not surprising that qualities of otherness and liminality proliferate in a journal that I’m editing.

That’s not to say that issue 9 is bleak and melancholic, for it’s not. The writing contained within these pages has one common thread – it excites me. There is humour and beauty and, above all, imagination.

I was worried when I accepted the honour of guest editing such a prestigious journal that I would prove to be less than adequate for the task. I was worried that I would be unable to see the jewels among the rougher stones and would embarrass my fellow editors as much as I embarrassed myself. What I hadn’t counted on was how absorbing the process would be, and how much fun I would

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have. For that I have those fellow editors to thank, and, of course, all the people who submitted their words. I know from my own experience as a writer how hard it can be to send bits of your mind out into the world and have them returned to you time and again until they find their literary home, if indeed they ever do. It takes bravery to keep doing it, so thank you to all those who submitted, published or not. Don’t ever stop.

Rob Morgan opens this issue with a personal, sensitive essay about the late and much missed Nigel Jenkins, remembering encounters with him from as far back as the 1970s. Tony Kendrew, one of TLR’s Associate Editors, offers an essay on a grieving donkey and his attendance at this year’s American Writer’s Conference.

He is ‘Our Man in the States’ and will be giving a States-side essay to each issue from now on.

Alan Kellermann is the poetry editor for Parthian. The three evocative poems published in this issue focus on a moment of movement or of stillness: each revealing an intense concentration. They show us just why his poetry is so critically acclaimed.

Anna Lewis is a prose writer as well as a poet, and author of the poetry collection, Other Harbours. The three poems published here show the tremendous and effortless range of her writing, both in theme and subject.

We were inundated with poetry submissions for this issue and reading through them all, knowing that the majority wouldn’t be published, was a difficult task.

Spensa Thornton and Rosy Adams are Creative Writing students at TSD and their poems both pay homage to other writers, one more renowned than the other, and centuries apart, but each a wonderful poet.

Jackie Biggs and Mark Blayney submitted poems that were inspired by or based on pieces of art, and they are both published here with the accompanying graphics, by Eloise Govier and Aidan Flanagan respectively. It’s interesting to see each coupling together on the page: the one a creative response to the other.

The imagery in Maria Taylor’s three poems is rich and sumptuous, appealing to all of the senses and making each poem a delight to read. The same can be said for Sarah Hudis’ and Owen Vince’s poems, which both have an organic yet ethereal quality which makes you want to return to read them again.

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Dic Edwards, Kevin O’Sullivan and Michael Bartholomew-Biggs all include poems in this issue that are preoccupied with a history that resonates and bleeds into the present day. The scope encompassed in these poems is global, and yet the anchor is local and familiar. The reader is included as a witness to the different histories represented.

Sue Moules’ poem, The Moth Box, taken from her collection of the same name, shines a light on an aspect of nature sadly overlooked, rendering beautiful and ornate what are often seen as mere, drab moths. Bethany W Pope’s two poems are, in contrast, raw and muscular. Powerful images combine with a lack of sentiment to leave the reader unsettled and engaged.

Ann McGarry’s two poems are narratives of longing and belonging. Canadian based Ann is also a novelist. Her seeming lightness of touch and depth of meaning ensure her poetry is profound and yet intensely readable.

We are very excited to be publishing photographs by the German photographer Moritz Aust in this issue. Just seventeen years old but already capable of capturing and creating breathtakingly surreal and striking images, Moritz is deservedly gaining recognition in an international arena. The selection here, used both for the cover and the centre spread, reflect the loose themes of marginalisation and skewed reality that have evolved as this issue has grown.

Among the prose published in issue 9, we have a short story by the awardwinning Canadian novelist and short story writer, Tyler Keevil. There’s A War Coming uses satire and humour in a restaurant setting to highlight a significant global event. We’ll leave you to work out the subtext for this one.

Horatio Clare, another award winning, and best selling, writer, has given us a world exclusive extract from an as yet unpublished novel – Radio Free Rochdale.

The sample chapter gives the reader an immediate sense of the power of Horatio’s prose, and leaves us wanting more.

Maria Donovan’s short story focuses on a poignant encounter between human and animal and delivers an emotional impact that is authentic and honest. Maria has two published short story collections and Dog Sitting showcases her skills beautifully.

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There is a decidedly international feel to the pieces by Joanna Campbell and Maggie Harris. Joanna’s lyrical prose and the delicate story arc of The English Lesson combine to achieve a narrative that haunts the reader. Maggie’s re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, updated and relocated to a Caribbean setting, sparkles with local dialect and larger than life characters.

Nigel Jarrett is a poet and prose writer, and former winner of the Rhys Davies Prize. On Board with the Tollivers expertly blends cultures and the opposing experiences of youth and age to comic but ultimately sobering effect.

Both Daniel Jeffreys and Michael Bennett offer pieces that take an off-kilter look at the world. Daniel’s Couda has a hallucinatory quality that enthrals and chills, and Michael, in Silver Buttons, employs the sea as a powerful metaphor for loss and the human fear of decline. My Name is Marcia by Eloise Williams gives us an agoraphobic narrator whose struggle to overcome her disability lifts a domestic and everyday scene into the realms of the epic. The prose is lyrical and sensitively delivered, and has all the more impact for that.

This issue also publishes two pieces of flash fiction. Aleppo Dreams by Susmita Bhattacharya offers a refreshingly focused and successfully executed look at the effects of war on those left behind. Susmita’s debut novel is due to be published later this year. Kevin Tosca’s prose piece, Ordinary Cloudless Tuesdays is inventive and strange, in the best possible way.

Though set on different continents, Bobby by Philip Bowne and Home by David Lloyd share themes of fragility and the difficulties of emotional expression in a dominantly masculine environment. As well as containing strong prose writing, both of these stories are real page-turners.

The play featured in this issue is an extract of a screenplay by Thomas Chapman, who has just finished his MA in Creative and Script Writing at TSD. Though just a fragment of a much longer piece, this scene from A Troubled Duet is absorbing and engaging enough to need no explanatory accompanying paragraph.

Many thanks to all of our contributors and readers for making this issue possible.

It’s been a real pleasure to read so many remarkable submissions from across the world.

Carly Holmes, Guest Editor

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Nigel - A Memory Rob Morgan

We worked, back to back on Saturday evenings in the late seventies and early eighties, Nigel and I, as WEA Tutors at a class in the Labour Hall in the illnamed Elysium Building. He lectured on poetry and literature, my subjects were biography and education, though sometimes the elated Bingo victories from the far-off and much busier bar would interrupt a point of critical importance, at least of importance to us. Our audience, the class members, were a dying breed even then. Men and a few women who were well-read, largely self-educated, very literary and politically minded, an audience of steel and tinplate men, miners, council employees and shop workers. They didn’t just listen like sixth formers, they had read, they thought, had opinions, they challenged, and they knew. We both remembered, twenty years later, the elderly lady who always sat knitting; it put me off stride more than Nigel, but she could and would throw in an unexpected quote from Joyce or Yeats, and hit the mark every time!

One evening I ventured into Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, that brilliant chapter ending where Jude’s refused entry to the University, put in his place and takes his revenge in timeless graffiti. He dipped into Hardy the Poet. The discussion was lively to say the least, and one of us had to be right!

He was proud of his first award, in 1974 of the Young Poets prize from the Welsh Arts Council, when he was at the University of Essex, and of inclusion in that first, ground-breaking Welsh Arts Council volume 3 Young Anglo-Welsh Poets, along with Duncan Bush and Tony Curtis. I took it from the shelf an hour ago, and could hear Nigel reading from it, thirty five years on. That rich, deep, unmistakable, baritone voice, a sort of Bryn Terfel of the spoken word. He would raise a head or two in classes with the first sentence, people who hadn’t encountered him before would tune quickly in. A voice to envy that was. What was that expression he used? The manifestation of the feeling.

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Sometimes he read his own poems, though his reading from R.S.Thomas was best for me. He’d read the poems written from memories of Morocco and Greece; that poem about the crushed white dove, one of his best now, as it was then. He was writing poetry in blazing African sunlight, and I was writing review essays in a drab Llangennech classroom! His early Gower poems, like Memorials at Oxwich, strip bare his roots - now, sadly, he’s praised and guarded, and eternally imaged, like the father in that poem.

I thought of Praise of a Man the memorial verse of the Scots poet and teacher, Norman MacCaig when I heard that Nigel was gone. Spare, affecting words… lights dim but don’t vanish. Yes, you will see his tracks still, in the snows of the world.

Nigel’s still there, you can hear it, read it in his own words, from that early 1970’s poem the spirit of place.

‘I pledge my return for as long as they make the invitation and then afterwards, in secret, at night.’

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Three Poems Alan Kellermann

An Amateur’s Guide to Astronomy Tonight is hysterical with stars.

Light and memory: both needle through from the past.

In this bay, we were equally combustible. One lunatic electron is enough to ignite bodies.

I remember you in charted galaxies. Andromeda’s arms. Your hands on my waist; the startled particles between. Gravity.

When you pulled me into the February sea, we were nebulous. Light and memory. Constellations apart, we scuttle our feet under different waves.

How to tease the sea from the moon’s leash?

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Noir Tell me I’m not a star. My hair mad as crows, my lips best savoured raw. So what if I smiled more wax than teeth?

Don’t say I didn’t want it the American way: the picket fence, the Oldsmobile.

Some girls are born in the rumbleseat on a back road. Tell me I’m not a star. I was no angel. This city traded its angels for stars.

Always give them what they want.

So they say. In the movies, every lamppost is a spotlight. A headlight? A flashbulb.

You can’t walk the streets without posing for a close-up.

The papers say I asked for it. Instead my steady hand edged liner along a lid; then I hid each bitten nail. Tell me You’d notice me if I didn’t. Tell me I’m not a star. My snapped stem cast among the grasses, you still call me ‘dahlia’.

[ 14 ]

Train The whole carriage has come unstuck at the station. We move to be moving.

In the inhale before departure a little girl’s reflection looks at my reflection in the train opposite.

Or maybe we aren’t confederates in travel.

Perhaps we’re separate elements. Perhaps there was no interaction and the fields aren’t sick with buttercups and all cows don’t align north/south. It’s possible no one on trains notices hairstyles or eczema or tracksuits, and the rails’ clickclick is the sound of people expecting us.

Sometimes just being isn’t asking too much.

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The English Lesson Joanna Campbell

Someone once told Dieter that a heartbeat can slow down, just for one unsought second that lodges in the memory like a hidden light. When one of these old lights emerges, connections with pain are severed. But when the heart gathers power again, the light retreats.

Dieter wished he could summon these memories at will, in the same way that his teeth sculpted each bite of cheap fruit-bread to contain at least one sultana, like a small burst of wine.

But the moments came unbidden.

In the language-assistant’s room, Susan Brown was coaxing him through English tenses. Dieter could only concentrate on the green spears of gladioli in a glass vase. Red buds were pushing through their caul of leafy skin, a blind passage into the air.

A football thumped against the wall outside, close to the window behind him.

Dieter didn’t duck. He felt the heat of hard eyes and suppressed laughter scorching his back. The ball scuffed the ground. The boys were placing it ready for the next kick, willing him to jerk like a puppet this time.

Miss Brown was looking through the window, not rapping on it like the normal teachers. She just murmured English words, then sealed her lips over her softlooking teeth.

Dieter hoped she would keep him in her room until the last bus took the boys away at four thirty. The weak winter light would fade as they walked. She might wait for him while he bought his mother’s Bavarian ham. The street-light would switch itself on as they talked. With the ham-parcel cold in his hands and his satchel at his feet on the frozen ground, he would keep her there. He would tell her his sister was born yesterday. And that he missed her so much he would have liked the butcher’s cleaver to chop through his heart.

Susan Brown lived in a hostel, she had told Dieter. She spent her evenings writing letters to her fiancé in England while the other young people fried eggs or played

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table-tennis. She wrote on sky-blue airmail paper. It rustled like onion-skins. He had seen her alone in this room at break-time, covering leaf after leaf with her rounded writing.

At the beginning of the year her lips used to press a waxy imprint of her smile on the back of the envelopes. Last Saturday he saw her roller-skating in the park with the others from the hostel. One young man wreathed a scarf around his neck and hers, lacing them together.

She shook her head when the boys slammed the ball against the window-frame.

If the glass shattered, flakes of window would rain on Dieter’s back like sugar crystals. But Susan Brown couldn’t shout and watch them stand to attention.

They knew she wasn’t a real teacher yet. Her skin was white like curds and her hair draped like brown lace over her shoulders.

“Before my journey with my mother this morning, I am drinking coffee with her in Hertie’s store. That is why I come late,” Dieter told Susan.

They listened to the wind scurrying the ball across the asphalt. A flicker of sun lit the white veins of the compass-point scratches in Dieter’s desk. With the point of his pencil he stirred blotting-paper scraps in the ink-well into a fountain-head of ink-speckled confetti.

The ball bounced off the window. Dieter dipped his head to shrieks and guffaws.

“Bloody thugs. No respect at all,” Susan whispered, glaring at the boys. “How that glass didn’t smash, I’ve no idea. In England we’d be grinding it under our feet.”

“Pardon, Miss Brown?” Dieter said, sitting up, noticing the angry blood rush into her neck.

“Never mind,” she said. “Come and sit by me, out of the firing line. That’s it.

Excuse me a minute, Dieter, I’ll shut that high window.”

She took the pole and hooked the top window shut. It took her a few attempts because she wasn’t tall. The boys were shouting remarks. Dieter saw dark stains spread under her arms. Her hands were trembling. She looked lonely, as if she wanted to take the bus to the port and the next ship to Harwich. He imagined her curled in the recess of a port-hole, watching the sea take her away, inch by inch.

“Did you enjoy your breakfast in Hertie?” Miss Brown asked, sitting down again.

Dieter listened to the swish of her skirt-lining against her stockings as she crossed her legs again.

“It rains like ice when we are walking there,” he said. “I hold my sister to my chest. My hand is like an umbrella for my sister’s head. Her hair is thin. It is, how you say... silken. Nothing is for breakfast. We eat first rye-bread at home. But we drink the coffee in Hertie because we are too soon for the hospital. Window is closed.”

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Miss Brown smiled, her front teeth glinting. “Your tenses need polishing, Dieter.

You should be using past tense. And you said ‘window’ instead of ‘door’. ‘Soon’ instead of ‘early’. But ‘silken’ is excellent. What is your sister’s name?”

“Her name was Ilse.”

“You should say ‘is’, Dieter. You don’t need the past tense now, because Ilse is still her name. It’s in the present time.” Miss Brown eased her chair back. The noise of the footballers was hushed now the window was shut.

“It was Ilse’s last journey with us,” he said.

The feet of Miss Brown’s chair squealed on the floor. He wanted her to smile again, but her hand was over her mouth.

Dieter’s heart was thudding the way Ilse’s did on his lap in Hertie. Leaning over her, his face had brushed her chest. He felt it leap like a tiny fish inside his eardrum. He sat up again, watching his red-raw wrists jabbing out of his worn cuffs.

And then he saw how his fingers curved in a beautiful arc, cradling Ilse safe from the coffee-steam and the damp shoppers passing their table.

“I’m so sorry, Dieter,” Susan whispered. “Oh my goodness, you shouldn’t be at school. Shall I walk you home?”

“It was a long journey,” he said. “I didn’t want it to begin. And Hertie was so warm.”

Susan was listening, searching his sentences for the truth, or perhaps for mistakes, like a dentist’s hook probing for specks of decay.

He couldn’t speak anymore. The room was inside a kaleidoscope, red and green fragments thrashing in blackness around him.

“Dieter,” Susan said, “are you all right?”

The electric heater in the corner spluttered, the orange bars fading, its warmth dying on Dieter’s ankles. The scent of Miss Brown’s summery perfume had strengthened in the heat. He felt he was sealed in here with her and her tapestry bag of airmail paper and her packet of liquorice cat-shaped sweets. Her long gladioli were sentry guards towering over them.

He rubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. “Yes, Miss Brown. I’m well. Er, will your fiancé meet you in England at the end of the year?”

“Well, that’s his plan,” she said, looking down at her skirt.

“Will you see him from the ship in England?”

“He says he’ll wait in the café with a pot of English tea and a plate of scones,” she said. “That’s what he wants to do.”

“Why?” “Well, to welcome me back, I suppose.”

[ 18 ]

Dieter could hear the lament of seagulls and sniff the salty air clinging to Miss Brown as she walked to the café, trying to locate her man through the damp coats and stacked luggage.

“And are you, how do you say, overjoyed for your wedding?”

Miss Brown often twisted her ring round and round, letting it catch the light.

Sometimes it slipped along her finger and almost came off. But today he couldn’t see it at all.

She didn’t answer.

This morning in Hertie his mother’s tongue had lapped at her cup where a scab of sugar clung to a trace of coffee skin. She was stretching their time like elastic.

Dieter wound and unwound his long scarf around his neck.

A waitress came, trying to be helpful.

“Another?” she asked, her transparent lipstick glossy under the strip-lights.

“We have no time,” his mother said, setting the cup down on the saucer without a sound.

They walked in step. His mother’s pace was slow because she had given birth the day before. Her legs were tired. Her emptied belly swung in a different rhythm under her coat.

Ilse had been born in their bathroom to avoid stains on the bit of carpet in the other room. Dieter wiped the slippery lino and laid the baby in an empty drawer, his anorak beneath her as a mattress. He hoped her cheek would touch the gentle furry lining in the hood.

Dieter tried to forget the purpose of their journey. The coffee swam in his stomach. His breath hung in the cold air. His heart was wrung dry like a salt-fish strung up in a harbour.

The journey was painful because of sudden hailstones. Dieter wrapped his scarf round his sister. They paused in the woods to shelter under a tree. His mother took Ilse to her breast. Dieter’s arms encircled them both while hail rattled on the back of his jacket and his sister sucked and sucked as if she would never taste milk again.

They arrived at the hospital window to find it locked. They walked around the courtyard for ten more minutes while blackbirds heralded the sun. Lime leaves had curled up to nurse raindrops. Eventually the wind slid them along the veins to stain the ground.

The key rattled in the lock of the baby-window. They walked over to it. Dieter read the sign. Babyfenster.

If you leave your baby here, he will be looked after, no questions asked. If unclaimed after eight weeks, your child will be adopted. Why not leave a letter he can read in the future? [ 19 ]

“It’s better than out on the steps in this cold,” his mother said as if she meant the small bay tree they had once owned.

After ten minutes a sensor in the bed triggers an alarm, alerting the duty-nurse in the delivery room to the new arrival.

Dieter’s mother asked him to open the window. It was actually a wooden hatch with a handle. There was no glass.

She placed Ilse in the small bed that was heated to thirty-seven degrees centigrade, covering her with the lemon blanket turned back ready. Ilse wriggled and sighed, full of milk, tucked away from the bitter day.

His mother tried to close the hatch slowly, but it shot into place.

Dieter imagined the duty-nurse listening to the grind of their shoes in the gravel path. She might glance out and see their retreating shadows.

The sensor would respond any moment to Ilse’s soft weight. Dieter clenched his fists. His fingernails stuck in his palms. His breath froze in the air. He felt winded, as if his mother had kicked a football into him.

He wished the boys from school would appear. With their knuckle-headed sense of justice they would force the hatch off its hinges. Their rough fingers would acquire finesse, unfolding the blanket, easing her out, cupping her head, bringing Ilse out into the world.

Dieter and his mother walked on.

They parted at the corner by the cooked-meat shop. She would go home to their flat for a sleep while Dieter hurried to school. She dropped a few pfennig into his hand for the stray strips that would shed from the ham-joint hanging in the window.

“Buy the offcuts at the end of the day,” she said. “They would only be swept up from the floor.”

The football-players were leaving to catch their bus, shouting as they passed the window. Dieter imagined them going to their homes on the new estate where their mothers would slice Streusel shot through with plums and sweeten the crust with a white peak of whipped cream. And the boys would eat, the day forgotten, while their mothers wiped their hands on their aprons and switched on lamps.

“Stay for a bit until the coast is clear,” Susan Brown said, offering him a liquorice.

“Um...is your little sister all right, Dieter? I’m not sure, you see, if we might have our wires crossed. You mentioned something about it being the last time...”

He shifted the liquorice to one cheek. It burned there, but he liked the bittersweet heat of it in his mouth.

[ 20 ]

“She is well, Miss Brown.”

“Oh, what a relief. I thought you meant...Well, never mind now. I suppose we should make tracks soon. I must catch the post.”

“A letter to England?”

“Yes. It must go today. I’ve spent days writing it.”

“I’ll post it for you, Miss Brown. The post-box is directly by the butcher.”

“Thank you, Dieter. That would be a very kind favour. Make sure you do, won’t you? Make sure it catches the post.”

“I can watch for the postman to come. But...”

“What is it, Dieter?”

He imagined her running along the road, her cobwebby hair flying like a torn banner, begging him not to post it. And his hand would be in the slot, the letter falling from his fingers like a leaf to join the pile inside.

“Nothing. Just...are you sure, Miss Brown?”

She nodded and handed it to him. He wished they could stay here. But the heater was out and she was switching off the lights.

The letter weighed nothing in Dieter’s hands. He would have to post it with care before the wind snatched it away. And then, just before the butcher slid his shutters down, he’d slip inside the shop for the meat, his feet leaving their marks in the day’s sawdust.

They went out into the icy afternoon. Miss Brown locked the door and jangled the keys into her bag.

“When Ilse was born,” he wanted to tell her before she walked on, “I knew I’d wait my whole life for another moment to equal that.”

He had not spoken out loud, unsure of the right words in English for the past and present. There was probably no point in pinning down time in that way. He just knew he could still feel Ilse’s heavy head in the fold of his neck, as if she lay there now. He could still see her mouth closing round her wrinkled fists. His own heart was pulsing inside her from the second she was born.

And there wasn’t a language for that. It was a pin-prick of light, dancing like a firefly to its own tune. There was no time of arrival. But the memory was always waiting, hoping to hook up your pain and bring you a moment’s peace.

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Two minutes’ silence Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

Cyrillic writing comes as a surprise beside a cliff top church in Ceredigion.

Beneath the name, the monument explains itself in Welsh: merch Rwsiaidd – a Russian girl, washed overboard, you guess, unmissed until her passing ship had passed.

Or did somebody stretcher her ashore?

The stone says 1936: perhaps she was a runaway who’d smuggled sickness with her self out of a homeland that she feared would grudge her even earth for burial?

Her grave is flowerless among the better-visited memorials to Owen, Rhys and Morgan. So you pause and lay your curiosity in place of missing wreaths and leave its fading scent of good intentions.

Above her body, now as fleshless as an unshared, unembroidered story, your stiff invisible bouquet ensures the Russian girl remains a little longer just this side of unforgotten.

[ 22 ]

On the edge of change Jackie Biggs

Ripples shine in streaks of silver as the lake surfaces in twilight, but below, in blood reds – and further blues cruel shadows wait to creep into consciousness.

We sit by the edge, watching the day sink.

Springy trees are lush, dusky sky is a burst of intense Brazilian heat a whore’s breath - as sky turns tarty orange around a purple bruise.

And beneath reflection, what then?

Memories live undisturbed in cold depths.

Are these secret waters our undoing?

Crimson-crushed horizons mark the ruddy sundown.

Look at the beautiful sky, you say, how wonderful to see.

But what I FEEL is the nearness of the lake bottom.

(after Time Will Change It, a painting in The Lakes series, by Eloise Govier)

[ 23 ]

‘Time Will Change It’, a painting in The Lakes series, by Eloise Govier, previously on display at Pendre Art, Cardigan

Sleeping Beauty Maggie Harris

A Caribbean Tale Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt. So Carlotta was saying to herself. She hugged her new baby close, walked with her up and down the hallway, stepped out on the veranda to give her some breeze. She looked down at this new perfect creation: in the newborn girlchild’s eyes the universe swam, lakes and rivers, clouds and forests. Her eyelashes curled against her dark skin like ethereal palm leaves, lit by the moon. Her dark curls swirled like a shoal of sea-horses. Carlotta looked out over the yard where the bougainvillea scrambled over the bruk-teeth fence, vivid purple splashes. The flamboyant spilled over the side gate. A balloon from the party was caught up in the mango tree and bunting was hanging crookedly between them all. Marti would have to put an axe to that bush, it was climbing up the coconut tree wild and fast. She cast her eye over the yard – it could all do with a tidy up, plastic glasses were strewn over the grass which itself needed cutting, the water tank was leaning, and parts of Marti’s motorbike was strewn all over the concrete. He would have to move all that now. Before, he would suck his teeth at her when she raised the subject, Carly, is a work in progress. You calling it washing-machine parts? Well when you and me speeding down the highway you would feel like a queen then right! Some Englishman disappointed with the island and plagued with debts had given it to him.

When you have a new baby your time wasn’t you own. Carlotta had already realised that. When before she had had all the time in the world, the office job was just filing and a little computer work. All the years she and Marti were trying for this special baby she’d been advised she mustn’t do too much; it wasn’t that her body was delicate, but she mustn’t have too much stress, body and mind had to work together. But despite the slightly disreputable backyard, they never

[ 25 ]

thought the place was all that bad. She and Marti always used to call it ‘their little kingdom’, was they and they own, and the minicab business brought them enough to live a good and decent life, especially when he had an airport or cruiseship run. But when a baby born work get plenty, and the party last night had been a celebration without too much planning, from the time when people coming round wanting to wet the baby head, to them deciding, well all right let we have a little party.

Who would have known how it all would end up? They’d been planning a proper party, a proper christening, which was gon be at St Mark’s Church when Andreatta when six weeks old. Carlotta had picked out the christening gown even before the baby was born but didn’t want to tempt fate, had had Cave Shepherd Department Store put it by with a little down-payment. Well who wanted to surprise her and walk in last evening with the gown! Her very own Aunt Mel, her sister godmother! Carlotta didn’t even know how she know bout the lil get-together, which was what she was telling everybody who was coming from everywhere to the ‘party’ they said they’d heard Carlotta and Marti were holding for the baby. Carlotta lost count of how many times she repeat, was only a little ting, the real celebration was the christening, September month end, at St Mark Church and was going to be proper invitations too. But one after the other they climbed the front steps, neighbours and relatives from as far apart as St Philips and Bathsheba. Carlotta had had to send out to get more food from the Trini shop, nuff people like roti Bajan style, especially when rum was flowing. Even with all the lack of preparation, everybody was having a real nice time, the baby passed around from arm to arm to be kissed, blessed, palm crossed with silver, and in some cases US dollars. The musicians from out the back all come round with drums and shak shaks and guitar. Marti had had to stop them plugging in the sound system because he kept saying wasn’t a proper party yet.

But then, in the midst of enjoyment, trouble come. Like oil on the proverbial waters, trouble come. Trouble catch a hire car and come. Trouble walk down the pitch road, cross the gap, take short cut through Millicent back alley, push through next door washing line and come. She walk with she high heel shoe right up Carlotta and Marti front steps and through the gallery where Carlotta swinging Andreatta in the rocking crib.

“Well,” she said, “well.” And hand on hip, look down on the group who one second ago were chatting, eating roti, and handing out blessings to the child.

“Well,” said Trouble, “is a time when some people get so big-up they can’t remember them old friend.” [ 26 ]

Carlotta looked up, puzzled. “And you is...?”

Trouble laughed, a backyard laugh which men hate and women fear. She sucked her teeth long and slow.

“So you na remember me even? You na remember you Godmother self?”

Carlotta thought quickly and searched her memory slowly. Godmother? She knew some people had Godmothers, women chosen by parents to guide children in the faith should anything happen to them. But apart from a silver crucifix and a white bible which her mother, God Rest Her Soul, had put by in the sewing machine drawer when Carlotta was growing up, and apart from one or two Aunties and friends of her mother who said Good Morning in church or passing by the library, Carlotta felt shame to acknowledge she couldn’t remember this one. Part of her didn’t like what she was seeing, an apparition the other side of fifty, in a red party dress, matching shoes and silver handbag whose voice was slurred, didn’t seem anyone her mother would have chosen, but then again, her mother, God Rest Her Soul, was now on the other side and not here to testify.

Carlotta also knew that even for Godmothers times and years take their toll and the person who may have been found suitable thirty years ago was not necessarily suitable now. However Carlotta had been well-brought up, her father had used to say it does not matter where you come from, is who you is, an edict that had always kept Carlotta holding her head high. So breeding made her rise, and breeding made her say, I’m sorry I can’t remember you but welcome to our house. And breeding was just about to offer Trouble a drink when Trouble’s eyes went travelling round the room, noting the happy revellers, the pictures on the walls, the new sofa and sound system, and the small pile of presents on the coffee table.

“Well,” she said, “Well. Not only was me not invited to the feast, not only did me not say to meself, all right they might did forget me, lemme go anyways. Not only did me catch hire car and walk down the long road past all them nasty chattel houses and past these big-up concrete house with electric gadget galore, all at my own trouble and expense, but now me find,” she paused, and closed her eyes, gathering herself from a rapid breathing which was seeming to overtake her; “now me find me own god child na even know me, na even remember me!”

She opened her eyes and raised her arms on which the silver handbag swung.

She waved her fingers as if adjusting invisible gloves. “Well let me leave y’all something y’all won’t forget.” She leaned over the rocking crib where the baby’s [ 27 ]

deep sea eyes had suddenly opened, meeting the dull brown eyes above her. “You my child, you my bright-eyed child, make the most of this pleasant life for it won’t last. You will live as if dead then you will be cut up, cut up I tell you! Only one thing gon raise you my child, and it won’t be no prince!”

A cackling rose into the air, a cackling whose volume rose in the room, and travelled through the open windows, out into the yard where the boys were singing, and entered Marti’s ear just as he was about to join in. The sun chose that moment to disappear behind a cloud, taking its warmth with it, and everyone, both in the yard and the house, shivered. For a few moments confusion reigned, nobody knew what had gone on, how the place suddenly grow cold, who the old woman in the red dress with the handbag was who marched past them and out the gate. Marti, when he rushed inside at the sound of Carlotta’s piercing scream, found his wife holding their baby close to her breast and crying uncontrollably.

The people them had been in uproar, the men ready to chase Trouble out on the main road and bludgeon her to death. But she was long gone, disappearing like the black clouds that had swooped down, bringing winds from nowhere and emptying the yard of revellers. The few who stayed were vociferous in their responses.

Eh eh! But is how woman like that can just waltz in and curse a innocent baby like that!

Demons live amongst us! The Lord Jesus has departed!

We gon catch her ass and skin her! My uncle is a policeman, he can find out who she is.

Best get Father Patrick round quick bless this poor child.

Now this morning, Carlotta come out onto the veranda, singing and talking to her baby girl, watching out for any danger waiting to snatch her from this world.

She had already worked the house, had got up at dawn and cleared every floorboard, every shelf, every drawer, putting anything that could harm her baby out of reach. She knew it would be a while before Andreatta even crawled, but she would be prepared. The yard would be her next agenda, and Marti, however much he complained, would tidy up that mass of scrap metal he called a bike.

[ 28 ]

And so began Carlotta’s anxieties. Even though the police informed them that Trouble was a madwoman from St Vincent who had last been seen on a cargo boat heading out to sea. Even though all the good people in her life would constantly reassure her that Good overcomes Evil, that words have no power to cause harm, and blessings would be had from pastors, priests, a saddhu from Trinidad and even a obeah man from Guyana; to sprinkle water, pray, offer incantations and dispel the evil back to whence it had come, worry entered Carlotta’s skin and bone. Endless contemplation caused her to hear voices, engage in conversation with unknown and unseen persons, a development which Marti, over the years, tried his utmost to prevent from becoming common knowledge.

The baby now, Andreatta. She had grown into a charming child, a personable, well-mannered child who although cosseted, protected, and loved to the point of distraction, had let none of that infringe on her character. Due to the fear of her mother, she had been educated at home; Carlotta’s fear would not allow her to send her daughter out into the world, anything might happen. The curse had said she would be cut, and Carlotta had taken this literally, placing sharp things out of her reach, scissors, knives, opened corned beef cans, needles, nail files. They used no glass, no china crockery. The thought of broken glass or cracked cup slashing that perfect sapodilla skin filled Carlotta with horror. They used enamel and plastic and Carlotta did not care what anyone thought. When Marti presented her with a bright red le Creuset saucepan, she wept.

Over the years, the bungalow had been improved, another bedroom added, another bathroom. A water feature in the shape of a mermaid had been cemented into the garden, and the palisade fencing had been replaced by a brick wall, with decorative inserts and scalloped edging. The flamboyant and the bougainvillea, the mango and the coconut had all grown tall and wide-leaved. In fact it can be said that Carlotta encouraged their wild proliferation. They grew from both inside and outside the wall. They cast shadows on the new patio, took the bite out of the sun.

Marti now owned a fleet of minibuses which took tourists to and from the cruise ships and on tours to North Point and Harrison’s Cave. Carlotta was bought gold bracelets and earrings and an Apple Mac on which she took online courses in Shamanistic Cultures.

Andreatta, until the age of sixteen, had been quite happy with her secluded life.

She had more dolls than she could play with, and dolls houses, and Lego. Children and friends of children came visiting by the score, cousins and friends of cousins, [ 29 ]

came marching through the alleyways and backyards, came via the highway, and poured through the door. But more and more Andreatta’s face turned to the gate that led to the outside world, she spied the young men and women going down to the beach, she heard their laughter.

She wandered the enclosed garden kicking stones, her shoulders hunched.

Marti turned from the window at the sight of his daughter peering through the gateway.

“We can’t keep her away from the world, Carly,” he said. His voice was sad and tired, his hair turning grey. He had thrown himself into his work which had taken away some of the worry, but the toll it had taken on his wife was much worse. “I think we need to forget this madness now, and let her take her chances.”

“No!” Carlotta shouted. She flew at Marti, and forced his hands into hers. “We can’t Marti, a curse is a curse.”

“This is enough! We can’t live like this, woman!” He strode out of the door and headed into the garage and stood for a moment looking at his pride and joy. The motorbike gleamed, black and silver, not the heap of scrap-metal like it was sixteen years ago. He stroked the upholstered leather seat lovingly. He thought of the dream he had had of Carlotta riding pillion with him along the Highway and cruising round Bridgetown. But he had only taken it out once; Carlotta refused to go on it. He sat astride it, and rolled the handles lovingly beneath his palms.

He turned the key, felt the roar between his thighs. He eased it out of the garage and along the driveway. Andreatta turned from the gate to look at him, reached her hand out and ran her fingers along the handlebars. Two motor-cycle helmets hung there. Her large underwater eyes were wide with longing. She opened the gate for him and stepped aside. Their eyes met, and both turned to stare back at the house. She climbed on.

Carlotta ran out into the garden screaming her daughter’s name. But she was too late; Marti was speeding down the road, heading for the Highway. Their daughter’s head of curls sprung beneath the helmet.

Carlotta fell onto the driveway, her hands over her face. She sat there, shoulders shaking, tears falling. The sun was warm on her back. She rose up.

[ 30 ]

The yard looked different. The bougainvillea sprawling on the picket fence seemed less bushy. The old mango tree suddenly looked young and green, the sunlight pouring through its leaves, the patio bright. A brisk breeze blew up and brisker still. It bent and broke the stems of the climbers hugging the wall, it scattered petals across the yard like offerings for a Hindu festival. Carlotta watched in fascination as the clouds overhead went spinning past like those images of time-lapse photography. She headed for the veranda, sat down and waited.

As the sunset spread she heard the sound of the motor-bike roaring down the street, slowing as it entered the yard. As she watched, her daughter dismounted, lifted the helmet and shook her newly-cropped head free.

“Don’t say a word, Mum,” she said. “It’ll grow back, if I let it. I decided it was time I took matters into my own hands.”

[ 31 ]

Three Poems Anna Lewis

Isca Caerleon Two hundred years they settled here; so when new officers arrived from Lugdunum, Cirta, Concordia and got the tour of barracks, bath-house and gymnasium, they must have rolled their eyes to see the Flavian mosaics, chipped flagstones, antiquated plumbing. Not just back of beyond, this place (the only road lost once a month to mud, the locals docile now but all the same prone to tattoos and facial hair), but back in time – and what of the legion’s children, generations born and grown out here, dangled from Rome by dwindling thread? Like orphans raised by grandparents, they ran barefoot

[ 32 ]

on faded tiles; and, “Cripes!” they might as well have said, or, “Crikey!”, as they mimicked drill across the plaza, played at centurions and natives, hallooed and ululated.

[ 33 ]

Passage For twelve days you dreamed, but barely slept. The names of all the villages were taken down, the sign-posts stripped, lanes deadened by lorries, jeeps, so you kept to woods and darkness: a stream of pale coats between the trees.

And your stream intersected with another, in the deepest gully of the dream: you sank beneath the water as the searchlight swung, rose on the other side not merely white from cold, but bleached. Still above each head, the searchlight veered.

Afterwards, past speech and past fatigue, you felt yourself no more than grades of ice: thick and thin in parts, entirely sheer.

[ 34 ]

High Season The leaves have begun to bow out, each morning a new curtainfall on the lawn. But they’ve gone to red and gold too soon: swallows clip, still, across the half-demolished hospital, blinds remain down in the primary school, and visitors linger within the cathedral, crowd beneath the clock each quarter-hour.

By the steps from the transept, a stone supplicant shades her face with her veil. Summer is kept by the rhythmic click of the cameras: the bells: the endurance of afternoon light down the stairwell.

[ 35 ]

There’s A War Coming Tyler Keevil

It was past midnight on a Friday and there were only six customers left in the restaurant: an elderly English couple, three Korean businessmen, and the American actor who had been causing problems all night. He had broken a champagne flute and sent back his bison steak and gotten in an argument with his female companion. After an extended bout of yelling and swearing, she’d dumped a glass of Perrier over his head and walked out; now he was sitting alone on the patio, smoking a cigar. He was being observed from inside by Seb and Hamed. They were both standing at the rear busser station, leaning against the bar as they watched the actor through one of the windows that looked out on the patio, and the harbour beyond.

‘He’s our real worry,’ Hamed said. ‘He’ll be here all night.’

‘He better not be.’

‘Two o’clock, easy.’

‘I’m beat, man.’

It had been a manic night; the restaurant had been packed and they’d turned over three hundred tables. Now everything had settled into that certain stillness that came at the end of a shift: the kitchen cool and cleanly metallic, the tables stripped and reset in preparation for the morning. All the servers had been sent home, and all the kitchen staff, too. Only he and Hamed were left, and their manager, César, who was in the back counting the cash.

‘We should have kicked him out,’ Hamed said.

‘César knows where his bread’s buttered.’

A few of the other customers had complained about the actor’s antics. One couple had even left without finishing their meal.

‘Those people were regulars. And good tippers.’

‘They don’t rack up six hundred dollar tabs, though.’

‘True that.’ Hamed had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. He was gnawing on one end, grinding it between his molars. ‘I bet you he pays in cash.

[ 36 ]

Yankee dollars.’

‘He was bragging about staying in the penthouse at the Metropolitan.’

‘He must have dropped a few bills on that prostie, too.’

It took Seb a moment to realize Hamed was talking about the actor’s date.

She had been wearing a strapless blue dress, and she’d been very pleasant to him when he’d brought the bread and water and tabernad to their table. She had told him that it all looked delightful.

Seb said, ‘She was pretty nice.’

‘Well, she sure wasn’t his wife.’

‘Didn’t something happen with his wife?’

‘She reported him for beating her up.’

‘That’s it.’

‘But they dropped the charges.’

‘Because he’s famous, probably.’

‘Or he paid her off.’

They were talking without looking at each other; they were both still looking at the actor. His head and torso were framed perfectly by the window, and it was as if they were watching him through a television screen.

‘Have you seen his new show?’ Seb asked.

‘I saw the first episode.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘The same as the other one.’ Hamed turned the toothpick over with his tongue. ‘He plays an old, washed-up cop.’

From behind them came the sound of the kitchen service door swinging open and shut on its springs and they both looked back. César had appeared. He was a small man – as short as Hamed, but not as muscular – and he had a goatee and a smoothly shaved scalp that shone like mahogany under the restaurant lights. He spotted them standing there and started towards them. They straightened up. Seb clipped his bowtie back on and Hamed took the toothpick out of his mouth.

‘Hands and feet,’ César said. ‘What have I told you about your hands and feet?’

Seb had begun wiping down the bar top. ‘To keep them moving.’

Hamed said, ‘We’ve done everything. We’re just waiting for people to clear out.’

César glanced around. Seb knew he was looking for something amiss, something to catch them out on, but there was nothing; all the tables were set, all the chairs in place. The bar had been bleached and wiped down, the wine glasses polished to the point of gleaming.

[ 37 ]

‘The customers aren’t paying to see you stand around. Go ask if they want anything.’

‘They don’t want anything.’

‘How do you know, Hamed? Are you telepathic, now?’

‘The oldies and the suits have already had their bills.’

César jerked his chin towards the actor. ‘What about Mr. Hollywood?’

Seb said, ‘I’ll go see.’

He folded his napkin and adjusted his apron and went out to the patio. It was on a balcony that overlooked Coal Harbour. From that side you could see across to Stanley Park, and the marina, which was full of yachts, sailboats, and pleasure cruisers, all sitting still in their births. Some of the cabin lights were on, and the reflections wavered blurrily in the black water of the harbour. It was late August, tourist season, and the air was heavy with humidity and the rich stink of the sea. There was no sign yet that autumn was on its way.

The actor was sitting at one of the central tables. Seb knew César was watching through the window, so he did everything as they’d been trained: he strode over with the napkin draped on his left forearm, which was braced against his abdomen, and asked the actor if they could get him anything else. The actor gazed at him dopily. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair tousled, his collar crumpled.

‘Another drink, perhaps?’

The actor looked down into his highball glass, as if considering it, then back up.

‘Are you a socialist?’ the actor asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You either are or you aren’t.’

‘I guess I’m not, then.’

‘I’m thinking of moving up here. Too many damn socialists in America, these days. Socialists and communists and liberal queers. Pretty soon they’ll be painting the place red.’

‘Canada’s pretty liberal, too.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Get me another goddamned drink, then.’

‘Do you have a particular preference, sir?’

‘Do you have a particular preference, sir?’ the actor repeated, mimicking his tone. Then he made a face and laughed. ‘You’ll never get anywhere acting so diplomatic, kid.’

‘I’m just doing my job.’

‘Well, do your job.’

‘Whatever you say.’

[ 38 ]

‘I’m just messing with you, kid. Get me a bourbon. And nothing cheap.’

Seb nodded and turned and went back inside, still holding his arm across his stomach like a marching soldier. César had waited to hear the outcome. When Seb told them that the actor wanted a bourbon, something expensive, César snapped his fingers and pointed at Hamed. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘The man wants a drink.’

‘He’ll drink in here till dawn, if we let him.’

‘And if that’s the case, you’ll serve him till dawn.’ César pinched all the fingers of his right hand together, holding them up as if displaying a gem. ‘That’s what you do. You serve. You’re servants. Comprenez-vous?’

Hamed didn’t answer. He didn’t look away, either.

‘Now get him some bourbon.’

César stood and glared until Hamed took down a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s and measured out two ounces in one of the stainless steel shot glasses.

He dumped it neat into a tumbler, the amber liquid sloshing smoothly, and placed the glass on a tray for Seb to carry out. César grunted, satisfied, and turned to go.

As he walked off, he called back, ‘And bring one to me while you’re at it.’

Hamed got down another tumbler. ‘Goddamn César.’

‘He’s too sober tonight. Stiffen that up.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

‘I just meant he’s more likely to make nice when he’s got his drink on.’

‘Take that out to Hollywood, why don’t you?’

Seb shrugged and palmed the tray and returned to the patio. The actor was leaning back in his chair, smoking another cigar. Seeing Seb, the actor grinned and blew a smoke-ring towards him. To Seb it smelled rich and foreign and exotic, something that he didn’t have access to and probably never would.

‘It’s the diplomat.’

‘I’ve got a diploma, all right.’

The actor guffawed. ‘You bring my drink, diplomat?’

Seb put the whiskey on the table.

‘What is it?’

‘Pappy Van Winkle’s. It’s good stuff.’

‘I know what Pappy is. Tell me something, kid – whose side are you on?’

Seb said that he didn’t know. He didn’t know what the actor was talking about.

‘There’s a war coming, sooner or later. And everyone will have to pick sides. You’re either with us or against us. America’s got a lot of enemies out there.’ The actor held up his glass, considering it. It was a very rehearsed gesture, and Seb felt as if he had stepped onto the set of one of the actor’s movies, as an extra or walk-on part. ‘And enemies inside, too. They’re the worst. But when it all goes down, you’ll have to choose, kid. Think about it.’

[ 39 ]

‘I will, sir.’

‘You do that. I want an answer.’

On the actor’s table were a few empty glasses, a cup and saucer, and a coffee press, down to the dregs. Seb cleared those away and carried them back inside. Behind the bar was a glass washer, which he placed the glassware in and then turned on. The conveyor belt slid into motion and the heat and steam started up, smelling faintly of bleach. As he was waiting for the cycle to finish, Hamed came out from the back. He stood beside Seb and said nothing and they both gazed down at the machine. When the cycle finished Seb took out a wine glass and began polishing it with his napkin. Hamed took the other. While the two of them worked, the English couple gathered their things and left, leaving their bill holder folded shut on the table. Seb went to clear it, flipped it open to check the tip, and wandered back with it.

‘How’d we do?’ Hamed asked.

‘Ten bucks and shrapnel.’

‘Typical.’ Hamed took the bill holder from him, and asked, ‘You want a drink?’

‘Did César say we could?’

‘Forget César. I’m the bartender.’

‘I’ll have a beer, then.’

Hamed pulled two sleeves of Cream Ale and handed one to Seb. The glasses were kept in a freezer below the bar, so they were coated in a glaze of frost. Seb took a sip and made a satisfied sound and pressed the glass to his forehead. It felt like an icepack. They carried their drinks down to the busser station, and stood with their backs to the kitchen, in case César came out again.

As they sipped their beers, it seemed natural to gaze at the actor.

‘What was Hollywood saying?’ Hamed asked.

‘He kept talking about socialists. He thinks they’re taking over America.’

‘They should.’

‘He says he’s immigrating to Canada.’

‘With his record? Yeah, right.’

‘I thought they dropped the charges.’

‘There was a bunch of other stuff. Drunk and disorderly, resisting arrest.’

Hamed took a swig of beer, smacked his lips, and peered into the froth as if he could taste something a bit off. ‘And didn’t he get busted for shouting racist slurs at some cops?’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘The guy’s lost it.’

‘He’s a good actor, though.’

‘He used to be.’ [ 40 ]

What Seb didn’t admit to Hamed was that he had admired the actor at one time, and watched all of his films. It hadn’t been all that long ago – when Seb was in his early teens – but back then the actor had been at his peak. He’d made a career out of playing good, honest men: all-American heroes. He had foiled bomb plots and fought terrorists on home soil and flown fighter jets in top-secret operations. Now he was sitting in their restaurant acting like a jackass, and Seb was embarrassed for both the actor and himself, for ever having been a fan.

‘What a poor bastard,’ he said.

‘Poor nothing. He’s rolling in it.’

‘The poor rich bastard, then.’

‘Look at that.’

The actor had reached over to ash out his cigar, and nearly fallen out of his chair. He managed to catch himself, but in doing so dropped his cigar. It lay on the floor, smouldering.

‘I wish he had fallen,’ Hamed said.

‘And knocked himself out.’

‘Then we could go home.’

‘Who’d cover his tab?’

‘We’d charge his credit card, and throw him in a cab.’

The actor seemed to sense their scrutiny. He twisted in his chair and peered at them through the window – as if he was looking out of the screenworld in which he lived. Then he held up his empty glass and waggled it from side to side, demanding service.

‘Look at this prick,’ Hamed said.

He reached for the bottle of Pappy, and splashed some in a fresh tumbler.

As Seb slid it onto his tray, Hamed said, ‘Tell him it’s the last one. We’re closing up shop.’

‘César will flip.’

‘César’s the one who told me.’

‘When did he tell you that?’

‘When I took him his drink.’

‘If you say so.’

Seb carried the bourbon out. When he put the drink down on the table the actor didn’t even look at it; he was watching Seb’s face.

‘We’re going to be closing up soon, sir,’ Seb said.

‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘It’s last call.’

The actor picked up his bourbon and sipped at it. From the nearby tables Seb began gathering the tealights, which sat in bulb-shaped candle holders. He took each one, blew it out – the wick smouldering with that fragrant, waxy smell – and placed it on his tray.

[ 41 ]

‘Have you decided?’ the actor said.

Seb looked up, holding a tealight in his hand, still glowing.

‘Decided what?’

‘What side you’re on.’ When Seb still didn’t answer, he went on, ‘When it all goes down, and the socialists attack, are you going to be with the good guys, or the bad guys?’

‘The good guys, I guess.’

‘You don’t sound very sure.’

‘I’m not sure who the good guys are.’

‘Who do you think?’

‘America?’

‘We’re always the good guys.’

Seb blew out the tealight, and added it to his tray. ‘Maybe I won’t be on any side. Maybe I’ll just be in the middle, or neutral, or whatever you call it.’

‘There’s no middle ground, here. You’re either with us, or against us.’

‘But I’m neutral.’

‘You goddamned Canadians. Grow some balls, why don’t you? Being neutral is the same as being neutered. It’s no better than being a socialist. Or worse – a communist. Are you a communist? You talk like a little commie. A little commie lefty. A pinko queer.’

‘That’s me. I’m pink as a baby blanket.’

The actor laughed. ‘Pink as a baby blanket. That’s good.’ He patted his palm on the table, as if applauding. ‘I’ll have to remember that. Pink as a baby blanket. Hah! You know something, kid? You’re all right. Now get the hell out of here and let me finish my drink.’

Seb continued gathering the tealights. ‘We’re closing up.’

‘I said screw off!’

Seb left the last three tealights where they were and went inside. Hamed watched him come up. Seb put his tray down on the marble bar. The candle holders rattled together and made a tinkling, wind chime sound.

‘What did he say?’

Seb tried to laugh it off. ‘He called me a pinko queer and told me to screw off.’

‘He said that?’

‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

‘He better not say anything like that to me. Goddamn Yank.’

‘It’s just talk.’

‘That’s how it starts.’

Hamed plucked the toothpick from his mouth and studied the end. He’d gnawed it to shreds. He turned it around and started on the other side. [ 42 ]

Seb said, ‘I don’t think he’ll leave.’

‘We’ll see.’

They stood and watched the actor through his television-window. The three Korean businessmen got up and gathered their things and left. Then it was just the two of them and the actor and this stand-off. The actor seemed to know it, too. He raised his glass and put it to his lips and tipped it back, slowly and deliberately, draining the bourbon. Afterwards, he held up the empty glass and made that same waggling gesture, without bothering to look at them.

‘There you go,’ Seb said.

‘I got it.’

Hamed took his toothpick and flicked it towards the sink. Then he walked around the bar and out to the patio. He was a short-legged man, and when he was incensed, like now, he moved with a certain waddling swagger, like a wrestler approaching the ring.

Seb stayed at the busser station and watched. Hamed went up to the actor’s table, and smiled and stood with his arms crossed and said something. The actor said something back. Seb could hear the muted sound of their voices but not the words. He saw Hamed make a spreading motion with his hands, passing them one across the other, palms down – signalling that it was all done, finished.

Then some more words were exchanged, louder this time, and angrier. The actor began shouting, and pointed repeatedly at Hamed with his index finger. Hamed’s expression was fixed and brittle. After a moment, he turned away and came back inside. He was smiling the oddest smile: thin-lipped, compressed, and meaningful.

‘What’s up?’ Seb asked.

‘Wait’ll César hears this.’

‘What?’

‘He just called me a raghead.’

Seb glanced at the actor, who was watching them, and waiting.

‘I guess that does it.’

‘I’ll say.’

Hamed was already headed for the back. Seb hustled after him: past the outer kitchen, with its wood-fired kiln, now dark and silent, and through the swinging metal service door to the inner kitchen, where the bread ovens, sinks, and dishwashing station were all situated, and around the corner to the changing rooms and the manager’s office. The door was ajar. Hamed knocked and pushed it open further and stepped right in. Seb lingered on the threshold.

‘We’ve got a little problem,’ Hamed said.

César looked up. He was sitting at his desk, which was covered in piles of money and till receipts. At his elbow was a tumbler of bourbon, nearly empty, and in his hands he held a stack of twenties that he was in the process of counting – [ 43 ]

the topmost bill pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He looked like some kind of criminal kingpin.

‘What?’ César said.

‘That Yank just called me a raghead and a sand nigger.’

Seb couldn’t see Hamed’s face – he was looking over his shoulder – but he could see César’s and the way it changed. He pivoted halfway towards them in his swivel chair, and looked at Seb inquisitively. Seb nodded to confirm it, even though he couldn’t be sure. At that point César reached for his whiskey. There were still two cubes of ice in the bottom of the glass. He made a circular motion with his hand, so the cubes spun around inside. César watched their movement, as if trying to read tea leaves. When they came to a stop he put the tumbler down and said, ‘Get that connard out of my restaurant.’

‘He won’t go.’

‘Make him go.’ César swivelled back to his money, and receipts. ‘We’re closed.’

Hamed was smiling even wider, now. He inclined his upper body in a half bow and back-stepped out of the office, pulling the door shut behind him.

Then he snapped for Seb to follow him, which he did. They headed out to the busser station. The actor had lit another cigar and was oblivious to their return.

Hamed reached around behind his back to untie his apron, and Seb did the same.

They both laid their aprons down on the bar top, carefully folded. Then they undid the cuffs of their shirts and rolled up the sleeves to the elbow. This sort of preparation was all new to Seb. Hamed also undid the top button of his collar, but Seb left his alone.

‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.

‘Just get him by the arms – one of us on each side – and guide him out.’

Seb nodded. He’d seen that kind of thing on TV. ‘What if he puts up a fight?’

‘He won’t. He’s drunk and old.’

Hamed led the way onto the patio, with Seb trailing a little behind. The actor heard their footsteps and looked over as they approached. He grinned at them, the cigar clenched between his teeth. He said, ‘Here comes the cavalry.’

Hamed said, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave now, sir.’

‘You can ask me whatever you like, Muzzie.’

Hamed grabbed him by the collar and yanked him out of his chair. The actor made a surprised sound and the cigar fell from his mouth, bounced once on the table, and landed on the floor in a sprinkling of sparks. Hamed got hold of one of the actor’s arms and locked it in the crook of his elbow. The actor began to flail and windmill with his other hand.

[ 44 ]

‘What the fuck is this shit? You can’t touch me. You can’t touch me.’

‘Help me, here,’ Hamed said.

Seb jumped in and caught the other arm, pinning it against his own chest.

The actor was helpless, now. As they hauled him through the restaurant, towards the staircase that led down to the entrance, he went limp as a cat, dragging his feet against the stone tiles. He was yelling, too – asking if they knew who the hell he was, and threatening to sue, and talking about pressing charges. ‘This is assault,’ he kept saying, over and over. ‘This is a felony!’

‘We don’t have felonies in Canada,’ Hamed told him.

At the top of the stairs was a glass door, and Seb had to release the actor to hold it open before they could guide him through. But as soon as Hamed had him at the threshold, the actor went berserk. He began to claw and swing with his free hand, then grabbed at Hamed’s face and pulled it, making the skin stretch like putty, and in return Hamed drew back and punched at him – a quick jab to the side of his jaw. Seb tried to intervene, saying something about taking it easy, but they were scuffling by then, toe-to-toe, the actor’s face focused with real fury, and it actually did look like a fight scene from one of his movies, a climactic struggle, with Hamed cast as the villain, except in this case the actor was all run-down and worn-out and didn’t have it in him to win. And as they tussled the actor threw a haymaker, missed, and lost his footing on the top step; he seemed to teeter there theatrically, the space around him going vertigo. Seb was standing close enough to reach out, to grab him, but didn’t, and then the actor was toppling backwards, falling, tumbling down the staircase in a series of messy somersaults, and eventually coming to rest at the landing, where his head hit the hardwood and made a hollow sound, a very real sound. Not like in a film at all.

‘Oh, man,’ Hamed said.

The actor was lying still, one arm folded under him. From somewhere outside a horn sounded – just a little comic toot to punctuate the end of the performance. The two of them hurried down there, and crouched next to him, moving as guiltily and furtively as footpads.

‘Don’t move him,’ Seb said.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘His neck might be broken.’

Seb checked for a pulse, pressing his middle finger and forefinger against the actor’s throat, on the jugular. He had never done this before, and didn’t know how to do it, but it was what they always did in movies, didn’t they? You checked for a pulse. He couldn’t feel much of anything, but at his touch the actor groaned and turned his head.

‘Thank fuck,’ Seb said.

[ 45 ]

He and Hamed looked at each other, with the actor sprawled between them.

Hamed said, ‘We’ve got to get him out of here.’

‘We can’t just dump him outside.’

‘The Metropolitan, right? You said he’s staying at the Metropolitan.’

‘Call a cab.’

While Hamed hustled back upstairs to get his cellphone, Seb hoisted the actor by his armpits, like they did with bodies, and dragged him through the front doors. A wide wooden walkway connected the restaurant to shore, and on it were some Yucca plants in big ceramic pots. Seb propped the actor up against one, and squatted down beside him. The movement and fresh air seemed to be reviving him: he was moaning now, and muttering incoherencies.

‘Repercussions,’ he said. ‘There’ll be repercussions.’

Hamed came back, breathing hard, and announced a cab was on its way.

While they waited they worked out their story, in tense and conspiratorial tones: the actor had drunk a bit too much, and tripped coming down the stairs, and bumped his head a little. That was all.

‘We were helping him out.’

‘That’s right. We were just helping.’

The actor mumbled belligerently, as if to contradict them, and they both went quiet, the lie hanging uneasily between them.

‘Anyways,’ Hamed said, scuffing his shoe on the deck, ‘he deserved it.’

‘He could have died, man.’

‘He didn’t deserve to die, but he deserved something.’

Seb shrugged and didn’t argue. He was thinking back to when it happened, and how there’d been that moment, just before, that he maybe could have done something to prevent the actor from falling. But he’d stood there, watching. Knowing what was coming.

‘What’s up?’ Hamed asked him.

‘Nothing.’

‘You worried he’ll remember?’

‘I don’t know.’

There was no way he could explain it, that sense of foresight and anticipation.

So they waited for the cab in silence, while the actor muttered something about the communists, and the Muslims, and them all being in it together. And in the bay the waters churned, and in the city a siren droned, and above the inlet Seb noticed a plane coming in to land, flying low, so close that he could see not only the running lights but the landing lights and some of the cabin lights, too. He watched as it slid towards the skyscrapers downtown, moving in slow-motion, and seemed to collide with an office tower, before emerging, miraculously, on the other side.

[ 46 ]

Three Poems Maria Taylor

Vintage The pelt is musk. I breathe in the scent of another life, Mitsouko dabbed on the wrist nicotine from a long cigarette or maybe it’s the dampness of a wet riverbank, smoke trailing from a hunter’s gun.

I feel the pulse of a foreign heart, trying on the coat for a dare bowed under its glamorous weight, neither bold or animal enough to wear mink on the street.

[ 47 ]

How to Trap A Ghost Wait in the stairwells or hallways of the past. Be patient.

Watch their half-remembered outlines shake off rain from gabardines.

Do not approach them at first, allow them to behave normally as they remove shoes, hang coats on pegs search pockets for cigarettes.

Maybe they’ll join you on a sofa.

Be still. Don’t spoil things.

Study their faces until you remember exactly what they looked like.

Act. Allow your hands to curve around their flimsy necks.

They will only do the same to you unless you strike first, like the way you keep a locket around your neck that hurtful oval of remembering

[ 48 ]

Woman Reads Erotica She has taken her seat at the back, deliberately over a bumping wheel and turns to a dog-eared page where the hero’s face is shining as he crawls up a woman’s body for more than a kiss. Doors hiss open, autumn blows in dead leaves.

A man who’s probably an alcoholic, snoozes, his doughy face is crushed against glass. A uniformed shriek of teenagers are on the stairs falling over themselves for kicks.

She turns pages on tied wrists, chrome bed-posts, raspberry silks.

An imaginary finger traces a line from her purple, mottled lips to places underneath her roll-neck.

No lover is like him. She lives her affair without moving, from flirty spring to cayenne summer. Her mouth opens as if for water. The bus screeches to a climactic halt at traffic lights.

She looks around. It’s Tuesday.

No one does sex on Tuesday.

[ 49 ]

A Troubled Duet An excerpt from the screenplay Thomas Chapman

Int. Car - daY CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s hands on the steering wheel, illuminated in sunlight, thumbs stroking the wheel.

The old Mini Cooper CHUGS along the lane with the upright piano in tow. Beside the lane is a huge valley, a river running through and dramatic, rugged hills beyond. A hazy golden sun is low in the sky.

Dylan looks out through the passenger window.

The road ahead winds between huge hills with streams cascading down, towering noble trees like guardians stand beside the road as the Mini begins to climb a hill.

In the distance over the valley a large bird glides through the air, alone and free above the river.

CLOSE-UP of the speedometer, slowly decreasing. The ENGINE REVS LOUDER. CLOSE-UP of the temperature dial, the needle edging red.

Steam creeps from the edges of the bonnet as the car begins a gentle descent.

Dylan’s foot slowly releases the accelerator and applies the brake. His other foot presses down the clutch.

Dylan’s hand moves the gear stick into neutral.

The Mini glides serenely down the shallow descent, the sound of TYRES ON

[ 50 ]

TARMAC. CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s face, relaxed as the breeze dances through his hair.

On the road ahead is a lay-by. Dylan drifts the Mini calmly into it and comes to a standstill.

Ext. LaY-BY - dAY The bonnet steams. Through the windscreen, Dylan leans down towards his feet.

Far off, the bird CRIES. There is a CLUNK and the bonnet springs up slightly.

Dylan lifts the bonnet, props it open. The hillside breeze blows across the hot, steaming engine.

Dylan sits down crossed legged on a rock overlooking the valley with an apple and a page of road map in his hand.

The lone bird glides and swoops in the distance.

Dylan places the apple on the rock and examines the coffee stained map. There is the sound of ROCKS CLUNKING against each other. Dylan looks over his shoulder.

On the other side of the road, climbing over a stone wall and onto the road is RUBY, a seventeen year old girl with a rucksack almost bigger than she is. She struggles down from the wall walks past the car, raising a hand self-consciously in a half-hearted wave.

Dylan raises his hand.

Ruby keeps walking, then stops a little way past the front of the Mini. She looks at the steaming engine, then at Dylan.

Ruby Broken?

DYLAN Kind of.

Ruby looks at the piano in the trailer.

[ 51 ]

Ruby What’s with the piano?

DYLAN (Defensive) Taking it to my father.

Ruby stares.

Ruby Right. (PAUSE) Good luck.

Ruby walks on. Dylan looks back out across the valley and bites into his apple.

The sun shines on Dylan’s face as he chews slowly with his eyes closed.

Flashback to:

Int. cHILDHOOD COTTAGE - dusk (1987) PIANO MUSIC plays distantly in another room as dusk sunlight illuminates the back wall of Dylan’s childhood bedroom. In the centre is young Dylan’s shadow sat in the window.

The room is sparse, with only a mattress on the floor. There is a little pile of clothes neatly folded in the corner of the room.

The Sash window is pulled all the way up, Dylan sits outside it on the window ledge, legs dangling, with an apple in his hand. Beside Dylan is a Mimosa Pudica plant (Sensitive Plant) in a pot. Dylan runs the fingertips of his free hand over the leaves, watching them slowly close in response.

The heels of Dylan’s bare feet tap against the cottage wall.

The sun shines on Dylan’s face as he takes a tiny bite out of the apple, chewing slowly.

A golden sun is setting in the distance above the hills.

In the garden below, a blackbird perches on a fence post.

[ 52 ]

CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s face, chewing slowly. Suddenly there is a MISTAKE in the piano music which then STOPS ABRUPTLY. Dylan stops chewing. The only sound is a BREEZE THROUGH LEAVES. CLOSE-UP of the blackbird. Its head tilts to one side, listening, comprehending, waiting.

The PIANO MUSIC starts again, Dylan sits totally still. Eventually he starts to chew tentatively. There is another MISTAKE in the music and it STOPS ABRUPTLY. Dylan’s face is afraid, the apple drops from his hand and bounces off the windowsill.

The apple falls down, past the open living room window and SMACKS on the cracked path below.

CLOSE-UP of the blackbird FLAPPING LOUDLY and taking flight.

Dylan crosses his arms like a good boy and follows the blackbird with his eyes.

The blackbird flies off into the distance.

Dylan slams his eyes shut and clasps his hands over his ears.

CLOSE-UP of the green apple. ZOOMING OUT the apple lies on an uneven, neglected path with weeds sprouting through. There is total SILENCE. Then piano keys are ANGRILY THUMPED DISCORDANTLY five times. Then SILENCE. CLOSE-UP of the fence post.

CLOSE-UP of the tree at the bottom of the garden, totally still.

CLOSE-UP of the underside of the apple, cracked where it hit the path.

Dylan’s eyes open slowly. He looks from side to side then slowly pulls his hands away from his ears. All is still and SILENT. Dylan’s hand reaches to the Mimosa plant and touches the leaves gently. A DOOR SLAMS LOUDLY. Dylan’s hand jumps. SILENCE permeates.

CLOSE-UP of the Mimosa leaves closing slowly beside Dylan’s finger. [ 53 ]

CLOSE-UP of the fence post.

CLOSE-UP of the apple. There is the sound of Dylan quietly CRYING OUT and getting LOUDER. CLOSE-UP of the Mimosa leaves, curled up.

Dylan pulls at his own hair. As he runs out of air, the CRY DIES. Dylan stares straight ahead with tears in his eyes.

Dylan’s toes are curled and tense. Beyond is the path, blurred with the green apple on it.

The sun glows orange from the hills.

Dylan’s shadow on the back wall of his bedroom is almost totally swallowed by sinking light.

Dylan stares out, tears in his eyes, dazed.

There is a small slither of sun above the horizon. It becomes blurry with tears and then closed into darkness as Dylan’s eyes close. It is black.

In the blackness, Dylan HUMS, a continuation of the piano piece that had been playing.

Dylan sits upright in the window, his eyes closed, the palms of his hands planted on the window ledge.

Dylan’s fingers go whiter as he applies weight on them.

Dylan’s HUMMING gets more INTENSE. His bottom shuffles forward, closer to the edge.

Dylan’s bare feet are pressed against the cottage wall, his toes curled.

Dylan’s bottom shuffles forward a bit further.

CLOSE-UP of tears forming in the corners of Dylan’s closed eyes.

Dylan’s bottom shuffles forward a tiny bit, almost on the edge.

Dylan’s elbows shake, his fingers white.

[ 54 ]

CLOSE-UP of a tear in the corner of Dylan’s eye, reflecting the final arc of the sun. The tear releases and makes a slow descent down his smooth cheek.

Dylan’s bottom shuffles forward, half hanging from the ledge.

CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s tear hanging from his chin. It releases and falls in SLOWMOTION. As the tear CRASHES into the path a BLACKBIRD SINGS SWEETLY. CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s teary eyes opening and staring straight ahead. The song “BLACKBIRD” by THE BEATLES begins.

Perched on a branch of the large tree, the BLACKBIRD SINGS. Dylan’s head tilts slightly as if listening, comprehending, waiting.

LONG-SHOT of the cottage with Dylan in the window. The blackbird SINGS. (“BLACKBIRD” BY THE BEATLES CONTINUES THROUGH NEXT TWO SCENES) Back to present: Ext. LAY-By - dAY (“BLACKBIRD” BY THE BEATLES CONTINUES FROM PREVIOUS SCENE) The large bird rides currents of air over the valley, swooping and rising.

Dylan sits with the half eaten apple in his hand, watching.

Dylan stands up, takes one last bite from his apple and then throws it as far as he can into the valley.

Dylan looks at the car engine, then holds his hand just above it. He takes a deep breath and looks down the road.

In the distance Ruby trudges on slowly.

Dylan looks back at the engine and rubs the back of his head with a vague frown.

[ 55 ]

Int. CAR - dAY (“BLACKBIRD” BY THE BEATLES CONTINUES FROM PREVIOUS SCENE) Dylan sits in the driver’s seat, lowering the back all the way down.

The back rest touches the rear seat and stops.

Dylan winds down both of the front passenger windows.

Dylan rests his head back against the seat, staring upwards. There is the quiet sound of a BREEZE running through the car.

There are spatters of coffee on the ceiling upholstery.

CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s eyes, closing drowsily. (“BLACKBIRD” SONG FADES OUT) It is black. There is the sound of the BREEZE.

DREAM sequence seen from Dylan’s POV as a child cHILDHOOD COTTAGE - night Dylan’s bedroom is totally stripped bare. A naked light bulb hangs from the ceiling, shedding a dim, gloomy light over naked floorboards. There is an outline where the mattress once was.

The bedroom door is ajar. Dylan moves towards it, then stops.

The window is closed, it has no curtains and it is pitch black outside. Reflected in the glass is young Dylan with the dull light bulb above his head.

Dylan continues towards the door. Something CLATTERS across the wooden floorboards and STOPS. Dylan’s bare feet stand still on the floorboards, a plastic toy just in front of them.

Dylan’s hand reaches down and as it picks the toy up it begins to play the TUNE “Row Row Row Your Boat”.

Dylan’s big toes rub slowly against the adjacent toes. The TUNE SLOWS and eventually STOPS.

[ 56 ]

Dylan holds the toy in one hand and uses his spare hand to tentatively open the door.

As the door opens, a shaft of light shines out onto the landing and staircase.

PIANO MUSIC starts to play in the distance. Dylan steps out onto the landing.

Dylan is sitting on the stairs, his feet resting on the bottom step. His toes slowly grip and release the edge of it.

Straight ahead where the front door should be, is a brick wall.

Dylan stands in front of the living room door. His spare hand reaches out and carefully takes hold of the doorknob, then slowly turns it and pushes. The door does not open. He twists and pushes harder.

Dylan takes a step back and holds the toy in both hands.

The door frame has a warm light seeping through the edges.

CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s eyes, reflecting the oblong glow of the door frame.

DYLAN (Whispered) Dad? Dylan steps forward, his fingers wrap around the doorknob very gently twisting and pushing.

DYLAN (CONT’D) (Whispered) Let me in. I need to come in.

PIANO MUSIC STOPS. The light around the door fades. Dylan opens the door.

Dylan enters the room. It is empty and unfurnished apart from curtains, flickering in the night breeze beside the open window. On the floor is a dust outline where the piano was.

Dylan stands in the kitchen. It is totally bare and all the cupboards are open and empty. The back door is open.

Dylan walks through the back garden and stands beside a fence post. He places the toy on it and turns to look at the house.

[ 57 ]

The house is dark. All the windows are boarded up. There is the sound of a BREEZE THROUGH LEAVES. Beyond the house in the distance, the hills are illuminated by the moon.

There is the sudden sound of FLAPPING WINGS. Dylan spins round.

The tree at the bottom of the garden has a BREEZE passing through it.

PANNING DOWN to the fence post, the toy is gone. Dylan’s hand reaches out. As his fingertips touch the top of the wooden post, a BLACKBIRD SINGS. The leaves in the large tree at the bottom wave gently in the BREEZE. Perched on a branch is a lone blackbird.

CLOSE-UP of the blackbird SINGING, its feathers gently ruffling in the breeze.

BACK TO PRESENT:

Int. Car - day CLOSE-UP of Dylan’s face, his eyes closed. A BREEZE ruffles his hair. The far off bird CALLS OUT over the valley. Dylan’s eyes open. He sits up.

Across the valley the sun is low in the sky, beneath clouds that drift. There is the sound of a CAR DOOR OPENING and then the sound of the BONNET CLOSING. Light floods into the car’s interior. Sound of CAR DOOR CLOSING, followed by the ENGINE STARTING.

EXT. Peak district - dAY The Mini pulls onto the road and moves slowly into the distance.

Out across the valley clouds float in a pink sky, their shadows drifting silently across the hills, darkening and illuminating the landscape as they pass.

INT. cAR - dAY Dylan has his left hand on the steering wheel, his other arm rests on the open window as he drives through the Peak District.

[ 58 ]

CLOSE-UP of the car radio being turned on. COUNTRY MUSIC plays and then STOPS as Dylan twists the knob until tuned into a station playing FLEET FOXES “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”.

MONTAGE - ‘Tiger mountain peasant song’ BY fleet foxes CONTINUES THROUGHOUT -- THE ROAD AHEAD HAS TREES EITHER SIDE, CARESSING THE TARMAC WITH DAPPLED SHADE -- DYLAN LOOKS STRAIGHT AHEAD. LIGHT AND SHADOW SWEEP ACROSS HIS FACE, HIS HAIR RUFFLED BY THE BREEZE -- AS THE ROAD CURVES ROUND A HILL A GLORIOUS VISTA OPENS UP AHEAD WITH THE SUN JUST ABOVE THE HILLS IN THE DISTANCE -- LONG SHOT OF THE GLORIOUS PEAK DISTRICT, GREEN HILLS AND AUTUMN TREES ROLLING OUT FOREVER. IN THE DISTANCE THE MINI GLIDES FORWARD WITH THE PIANO BEHIND -- SHEEP ON A HILLSIDE STAND STARING -- THE SHADOW OF THE PIANO SLIDES ALONG THE SUNNY HILLSIDE -- CLOSE-UP OF THE WING-MIRROR REFLECTING DYLAN’S HAND RESTING ON THE WINDOW EDGE, TAPPING TO THE MUSIC -- MOVING SLOWLY PAST A FIELD, A COW’S HEAD POPS UP FROM BEHIND A STONE WALL, STARING AND CHEWING GRASS. DYLAN’S HAND RAISES FROM THE WINDOW, A LITTLE WAVE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT -- DYLAN’S HEAD LEANS FORWARD, HIS EYES SQUINTING SLIGHTLY -- IN THE FAR DISTANCE SOMEONE IS WALKING IN THE ROAD -- DIRECTLY AHEAD, RUBY IS WALKING, HER RUCKSACK BOBBING UP AND DOWN. GETTING NEARER, RUBY TWISTS TO LOOK OVER HER SHOULDER -- DYLAN TURNS THE MUSIC DOWN

[ 59 ]

INT. CAR - DAY The Mini stops beside Ruby. Dylan leans forward.

DYLAN You’re meant to walk on the right in the countryside.

Ruby peers into the car, the sun setting behind her.

Ruby (Dry) Sure. Wouldn’t want to get hit by all this traffic. It’s mayhem.

The green hills roll on forever without a sign of humanity.

DyLAN (Amused) Absolutely. (PAUSE) Do you need a lift?

Ruby (Defensive) I dunno.

DYLAN Where are you heading?

Ruby looks into the Mini.

The interior of the Mini is stained with coffee and strewn with pages of the road map.

Ruby Somewhere.

DYLAN That’s a coincidence, I’m going somewhere too. I’ll give you a lift if you like?

Ruby suppresses a smile.

[ 60 ]

Ruby How do I know you’re not some axe murderer looking for defenceless girls to kill?

DYLAN (Sarcastic) Yeah, all axe murderers drag a piano with them. We like to be inconspicuous.

Ruby rolls her eyes.

Ruby Fine.

Ruby opens the passenger door. Dylan grabs all the loose pages of the road map and shoves them into the back.

DyLAN You’ll have to put your bag in the back with mine.

Ruby begins tugging on the passenger seat in vain.

DYLAN (CONT’D) There’s a thing, a lever, down the side.

Ruby Oh. Ruby presses the lever up, pulls the seat forward and starts shoving her huge rucksack into the back, struggling to fit it in.

DYLAN You’ve got lot of stuff.

Ruby pushes the seat back which doesn’t quite click. She shoves the seat angrily and gives up pushing.

DYLAN (CONT’D) Alright?

[ 61 ]

Ruby (Irritated) Fine.

Ruby gets into the Mini, cracking her head on the door frame. She sits down, her seat still tilted forward slightly.

DYLAN Okay?

Ruby looks at Dylan, her face annoyed. She shoves her back hard against the seat three times until it clicks into place then looks up at Dylan with a smile.

Ruby Much better. (PAUSE) Thanks.

Dylan smiles, amusement and curiosity.

Ruby looks out of the passenger window.

DYLAN I’m Dylan.

Ruby looks at Dylan, trying to fit the name to the face.

Ruby Ruby.

Ruby goes back to looking out of the passenger window.

DYLAN So where are you heading?

Ruby (Uninterested) I said. Somewhere.

Dylan’s head tilts slightly, watching Ruby.

Ruby rests her elbow against the window and her head in her hand.

[ 62 ]

DYLAN (Hesitant) Okay, well, I’m heading north, past Edale.

Ruby (Uninterested) Me too.

DYLAN Right, okay. So I’ll drop you off in Edale then?

Ruby Okay.

Dylan starts the engine.

DYLAN You going to put your seat belt on?

Ruby stares at Dylan blankly for a few moments, her emotions opaque. She CLUNKS her seat belt in.

Int. Car - day Dylan drives. Ruby gazes through the passenger window. Dylan glances across, then back at the road. His thumbs tap the steering wheel impatiently.

DYLAN So where are you from?

Ruby Derby.

They sit in silence for a little while.

Ruby (CONT’D) You good on the piano?

[ 63 ]

DYLAN Haven’t played in a long time.

Ruby stares straight ahead.

Ruby Mum used to take me to piano lessons. But she wouldn’t buy a piano until I got good. I had this crappy little keyboard to practise on.

(PAUSE) I never got good.

DYLAN You could always take it up again?

Ruby is looking back out of the passenger window.

DYLAN (CONT’D) There’s a train station in Edale. In case you need to get anywhere.

Ruby Okay.

DYLAN Or a B and B if you want one?

Ruby I have a tent.

DYLAN You’re okay then?

Ruby Mmm. DYLAN If you tell me where you’re trying to get to I might be able to help.

Ruby looks straight at Dylan.

[ 64 ]

Ruby You said you’re taking the piano to your Dad? Is he a pianist or something?

DyLAN (Hesitant) Yeah. I guess he is. (PAUSE) Or was.

Ruby looks at Dylan intently.

Ruby Okay...

Ruby looks out of the passenger window a while. Eventually she leans across and turns the radio on.

MONTAGE - MUSIC PLAYS THROUGHOUT -- DYLAN DRIVES WITH BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL. THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOWS OF THE CAR, RUFFLING HIS HAIR. -- RUBY HAS HER HEAD RESTING ON HER ARM WHICH RESTS AGAINST THE OPEN WINDOW. HER HAIR FLOWS IN THE WIND, THE SUN IS ON HER FACE -- LONG SHOT OF THE MINI AND PIANO MOVING ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE, THE SUN ALMOST TOUCHING THE PINNACLE OF A HILL -- CLOSE-UP OF THE WING MIRROR REFLECTING RUBY’S FACE, HER EYES WATCHING HERSELF, EMOTIONLESS -- THE MINI MOVES PAST A SIDE ROAD TO THE RIGHT -- DYLAN TALKING TO RUBY AND POINTING TO THE BACK SEAT -- RUBY TAKES HER SEAT BELT OFF, TURNS ALL THE WAY ROUND SO SHE IS KNEELING ON HER SEAT AND REACHES INTO THE BACK, GATHERING PAGES OF STAINED ROAD MAP -- DYLAN POINTS AT A SIDE ROAD TO THE LEFT AS THEY PASS IT BY AND THEN POINTS AT THE PAGES IN RUBY’S HANDS

[ 65 ]

-- RUBY IS LOOKING THROUGH THE CRUMPLED PILE OF PAGES IN HER HANDS, HOLDING THEM UP TO THE LIGHT TO SEE PAST COFFEE STAINS -- DYLAN LEANS FORWARD AND POINTS UP INTO THE SKY -- HIGH ABOVE THE CAR A LARGE BIRD OF PREY GLIDES AND CIRCLES OVER A COPSE -- RUBY LEANS FORWARD AND POINTS WITH HER RIGHT HAND, SMILING -- THE THROUGH WIND BLOWS THE PAGES OF ROAD MAP OUT OF RUBY’S HAND AND OUT OF THE WINDOW -- LONG SHOT OF THE MINI, PAGES OF ROAD MAP FLUTTERING OVER THE ROADSIDE BARRIER AND INTO THE VALLEY -- DYLAN LOOKS AT RUBY’S EMPTY HANDS, THEN THE PASSENGER WINDOW -- RUBY LEANS OUT THE WINDOW, THEN SITS BACK DOWN LOOKING APOLOGETIC. -- DYLAN LOOKS WORRIED -- RUBY SMILES. SHE COVERS HER MOUTH WITH HER HAND AND TRIES TO STOP HERSELF LAUGHING -- DYLAN LOOKS DISTRESSED -- RUBY CAN’T CONTAIN HER LAUGHTER ANYMORE END MONTAGE

Ext. PEAK DISTRICT - dusk On the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere, the Mini slows to a standstill. The ENGINE STOPS. Inside, Dylan sits with one hand on the steering wheel and the other running through his hair. The engine CLICKS as metal contracts.

[ 66 ]

INT. cAR - dUSK Dylan stares straight ahead.

Ruby looks at Dylan, then looks ahead, nervously.

Out across the valley there is a glorious sunset over the hills in the distance with pink and orange clouds. THIS SHOT REMAINS THROUGHOUT FIRST PART OF THE CONVERSATION DYLAN (o.S.) (Angry) You’re coming. We’re going to look until we find the pages we need.

Ruby (O.S.) It’s gone.

DYLAN (O.S.) What do you mean?

Ruby (O.S.) Over the edge. In the valley, never to be seen again.

DYLAN (O.S.) (Despondent) So now we’re lost.

Pink clouds drift silently in the distance as a GENTLE BREEZE blows.

Ruby (O.S.) We already were.

[ 67 ]

On Board with the Tollivers Nigel Jarrett

“WELCOME to the Chatanooga thingumee!” Mo Tolliver hollered, as we entered the compartment. “We think it may be carrying a full set of its own spare parts.”

“We hope it is,” Jean Tolliver corrected, greeting us with a smile that beamed apology for her husband’s lack of politeness. They looked tired and in need of their refreshment, such as it was.

We were on the Budapest-Prague express, and there was no reason to suppose that the Tollivers were anything other than an elderly American couple balancing their exasperation at poor service with acceptance of it as part of a Central European quaintness they’d read about in books. They introduced themselves with a haste we found odd.

“Cold and hungry - isn’t that just about the world’s worst combination?” Mo asked, his wife agreeing with a nod while looking at us for support.

Helen and I had boarded the train fifty miles short of Prague after visiting Kútna-Hora, where the cathedral was closed and in one place emblazoned with graffiti. It was a steam train with old-fashioned carriages. The Tollivers were sitting opposite each other in the window seats of an otherwise empty compartment, eating from a huge bag of bread rolls.

It was called an express but its lumbering progress seemed to confirm and deepen the Tollivers’ sense of cheery disappointment. It struggled to reach the speeds associated with a lengthy journey by rail and for miles at a time it slowed to a crawl, often through areas of poverty and dereliction, as if the driver or

[ 68 ]

the railway people were making sure we missed nothing of the country’s sharp contrasts. It was Mr Tolliver, often with his mouth full of bread, who drew our attention to it through a dirty carriage window. We didn’t let on, but we’d already experienced it on the outward journey - abandoned rolling stock frozen by rust, and overloaded carts drawn by thin and tired ponies, their drivers sitting sideways on with whips extended like fishing rods.

The Tollivers had flown to Vienna from London, travelled by train to Hungary, and then, with an urgency for which the reasons were unclear, caught the juggernaut we were now on and settled for a journey without official means of sustenance. In Budapest, Mo had left his seat to buy rolls from a platform vendor, only to see the train begin moving out early; he’d had to run and leap back on while it was slowly accelerating, his wife barely visible behind the window’s grime, struggling to open the ventilating quarter-light above her head.

Helen and I were just drifting around Europe after our A-levels. Some things we saw left lingering impressions, covering like a blanket the subsequent ones. That same day, after leaving the train, we’d had to catch a bus to Kútna-Hora. Everyone clutching the chrome handles on the seats in front seemed to be holding the vehicle together as it moved. Across the aisle from us was an old woman with a chicken in a plastic bag. The chicken’s head was sticking out and it was panting, its eyes wide as though aware of a grisly fate. Against the threat of showers, the woman herself had covered her head in a scarf improvised from a similar bag to the chicken’s.

Even as ragged students, Helen and I looked better off than the other passengers.

In Wenceslas Square, the day before, Helen had been almost run over by a legless beggar on a skateboard-like contraption which he propelled with a clump of wood in each hand. It was straight out of a 1920s street scene by George Grosz. We knew that from sixth-form Art Appreciation. The graffiti on the sides of the barred cathedral in Kútna-Hora dripped in mid-sentence, the messenger evidently having fled before full delivery.

“Are you guys hungry?” Mo asked. “You’re welcome to a bun but there’s no filling, not even a dollop of sauerkraut.”

He was serious but Jean laughed like someone who had been plied with sauerkraut every hour for all the time she had been away.

“He could have bought some from the same fellow but it would have meant being stranded in the middle of nowhere without a dime,” she said.

[ 69 ]

We declined. We’d bought sauerkraut on our arrival in the Czech Republic. It lay unopened in the fridge back at the Prague flat we were renting.

“Say - do you have any water you could sell us?” Mo asked.

With our bulky backpacks, we must have looked like people who might have had plentiful supplies. We had four small bottles each. They insisted on accepting only one, though we offered them two. Mo guzzled first, before wiping the bottle on his coat sleeve and passing it to his wife. We refused payment, quickly wearing down their persistence. It was odd, but slaking his thirst precipitated a kind of confession from Mo, a liquid thing, trickling to begin with but promising a cataract. It was all a bit scary, unexpected. The train rumbled on, clunking over points.

“We had to come, you see,” he began. “Necessary journeys. Is your journey really necessary?”

Helen and I exchanged glances but Jean chuckled. “He’s quoting. Remember that wartime thing in your country to save gasoline, that slogan?” she said.

We did vaguely. Mo swept vagueness aside, dredging detail before we were ready for it.

“Mrs Jean Tolliver here, aka Jaffe Goldgruber, had to go back. Didn’t you, hon?

Not for the usual reason, mind you, the boring, told-a-million-times reason, how the family were rounded up, pitched into trucks, taken to Ricse, Kistarcsa, Sarvar, the Hungarian transit camps before the Great Onward Journey to the killingfields. Did you know, by Christ, there are people who are saying it never happened.

Check that! Never happened, for Chrissake! It must be dumb cold where those characters are.”

Jean leant towards her husband and placed a hand on his knee. I think we expected her to console us, not him, for the monologue that had begun to make our minds grope for connections. She must have been about seventy, he not much older.

“She got out - didn’t you, honey - shimmied up a drainpipe in the waiting room.

Waiting room, be fucked, if you’ll forgive the French. Left her best friend behind, little Aliya. Do you know what it means? Aliya - ‘To ascend, go up’. You couldn’t invent it. Never recovered, did you honey? Tiny Aliya, who was too scared to do what her name told her she must. Then the march to Bergen-Belsen, then you [ 70 ]

wonderful Brits going in. Jean here - d’you know what Jaffe means? ‘Beautiful’.

Beautiful Jean, the survivor.”

Jean turned her head slowly towards us. Was it out of pride, embarrassment or confirmation? Then the compartment door was slid open roughly and a ticketinspector stood before us with his hand held out. Jean rummaged in her bag. She was shaking. I reached for our tickets and Jean held out theirs. The inspector looked at them, eyed us one by one, and then mumbled something before slamming the door shut. An abandoned railway station slipped by, its windows blocked by rotten tin sheets.

“Who died and made him boss?” Mo asked. “What a schmeboygah! Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was, beautiful Jean made the mistake of going back to Hungary, land of her fathers, the dough-guzzling duh-ta-duhs.”

At this point, as her husband stared out of the window to reflect on his wife’s historic lapse of good sense, Jean attempted to join in, with a slightly imploring tone.

“It was my home, after all,” she said. “I had to go back… ” “But there was no-one there,” Mo cut in, addressing us, not his mistaken wife.

“Talk about breaking the devil’s dishes. Why would there be? They’d all been herded together and taken to the ass-end of space, never to shimmy. Eh, Jean, never to shimmy up a pipe and get the hell out! Christ, I’m tired. You guys tired?”

We shook our heads, not knowing whether this was the right response. Perhaps not being tired was an insult to those who could have been nothing else after a marathon train ride. All this Helen and I discussed afterwards, after the events that took place at the end of the journey. “Anyway,” Mo said. “What about you?”

We told them as they shared their bread bounty with us. It didn’t take long. We were Brits and young and callow and that was enough. Outside it was almost dusk.

We glimpsed flurries of snow. We talked some sixth-form politics. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, was two weeks dead, shot by a Jewish extremist at a peace rally in Jerusalem. We didn’t mention it and neither did they. As our selfrevelations tailed off, Mo got his second wind. Jean was dozing, her head at rest against the window, her reflection coming into being as the light outside grew dim and the compartment’s naked bulbs stuttered on. Mo lowered his voice.

[ 71 ]

“You see, once the mother-effing Russkies came down the lane in fifty-six, the native Magyars took against the Goldgrubers of the world,” he said. “Never liked them anyway, if you ask me. And who’s asking Mo Tolliver? Or Moritz Thalbauer, German Gentile, if my old man hadn’t changed his name, the old weisenheimer.

Like, the Jews have soaked up too much pity? What about us? the Magyars said.

Leave some for us, or let us spit in your face. My old man? He wanted to be an American, start from scratch.”

It was Helen who looked puzzled - or concerned: I still can’t pin her down. But she was ahead of me then, cutting a path through this waterfall of recollection.

“And Budapest?” she asked. “Is it the same? Have they changed?”

Mo slumped back in his seat wearily, like someone whose secret has been stolen, leaving him with no prop. “Have they, Jean?” he asked his wife, who opened her eyes as he spoke. “Are you a stranger in the old country?”

Jean roused herself. “Well, it’s the gypsies, isn’t it?” she said, cryptically.

“They hate them. And here, too.” She stared outside with her nose pressed to the window, as if under the street lights she might see members of the scattering dispossessed at the start of the journeys.

While Helen and I tried to think of something to say in the silence that followed, Jean went back to sleep and Mo joined her. With his head dropping on to his chest and the bag of rolls hanging from his right forefinger, he resembled some innocent villager who had just been shot accidentally, caught in crossfire while returning from the bakery. Only his snoring betrayed the life in him. It was loud and uninhibited and made us giggle. Jean was soon at it too, at a higher pitch but much less noisily. It was the briefest of naps, because within fifteen minutes the train was approaching the outskirts of Prague, and they woke simultaneously with a jolt and with expressions gripped by momentary terror.

“It looks dumb freezing out there,” said Mo presently, prodding his wife to wake her. “Have you guys far to travel?”

We explained that we were staying on the other side of the city, in one of the old Soviet estates, though we didn’t mention the Russian connection. They were in a city-centre apartment, a short taxi ride away.

[ 72 ]

“Well, thanks for your hospitality,” Jean said. If they hadn’t been American, their hearts a-throbbing on their sleeves, it might have sounded like a reprimand for not having contributed much to the exchanges.

Mo stepped on to the platform first, followed by Helen, then by me, the gentlemen helping the ladies disembark. As I took Jean’s elbow, she groaned.

Walking past the engine, which stood snug and steaming against the buffers, Mo muttered something about ‘the Casey Jones Special’ and chuckled. He caught my attention and pointed to an oil-smeared engineer who was tapping the wheels.

It was there that we parted, almost without formality. We hadn’t even asked them what their plans were, or they ours.

Then, as we looked back at them making for the city exit, we saw Jean fall to the ground. Even by the time we reached them, they were encircled, some people obviously knowing what had happened and tending to Jean, and others, still standing, drawn between lending a hand and moving on. The concourse, to dignify the grubby expanse at the railhead with a name it didn’t deserve, was in motion, thronged with rush-hour crowds, mostly manual workers by the look of them. Mo had taken off his jacket and had made a pillow of it for Jean’s head. Outside the circle lay Mo’s plastic bag and two bread rolls - hard, uneaten escapees. A petrified stray dog had its eye on them. We tried to push our way forward but couldn’t make ourselves understood. We shouted Mo’s name but our voices were lost in the commotion. We watched as the ambulance arrived and Jean was taken away, our roles as the recently befriended usurped by others, strangers with expertise.

At least we stayed; at least we waited. We called Mo’s name again as he stepped into the back of the vehicle, and this time he looked round, seeking us out but not acknowledging our wave, perhaps not recognising us at all. And that was the last we saw of them.

We made one more trip to Kútna-Hora. The Church of St. Barbara is one of the grandest and most beautiful in Bohemia. It is not a cathedral, as we first thought, and this time it was open to visitors. A workman, the double of Mo’s investigating mechanic at the station, was removing the graffiti. The Church of the Most Holy Trinity is a brisk walk out of town, in the suburb of Sedlec. It has three naves and was enlarged four centuries ago. In 1870, the historian Frantisek Rint re-modelled the charnel house, known as ‘the bone chapel’, using about 40,000 human skeletons.

It was amazing. Not that long before we encountered them, we might have said the Tollivers would have loved it, a couple of Americans on the tourist razzle. So many conditionals now. Even the chandelier is a bony work of art. [ 73 ]

icepoem # 010 - Vincent Dic Edwards

i can imagine that picture on the platform at The Hague Autumn 1883 leaving Sien with her baby boy on his knee baby looking into the eyes of the colour god for love and Sien broken who had given her body to him stripped to the pitch of death the pallor of hunger just like the miners of The Borinage The Black Earth Country and The Common Grave blackened by the haunting slag and the children looming to be saved and The Potato Eaters by the hard pressed lamplight eating with the very hands that dug the dirt to get the crop for he had said earlier in Paris how beauty is found among the rough hands of workers rather than the slick nudes for sowing and reaping is not just work but allegorised life and death /Paris where he had stepped out to the Luxembourg to admire the Millets and the Corots but recalling the Amsterdam docks with the drenched ground and timber piles and the golden sky of the rising sun captured in the forlorn puddles/ and then back to the low country and his first palette with its ochre-red yellow brown cobalt and Prussian blue Naples yellow Sienna and black and white when Christ became the supreme artist shacking up with Sien the whore pregnant with a second bastard Sien ragged muse for a beggar with an act Sien whose beauty rose from the scorn poured on her which he was too lost to contest until he had to go away from the misery

[ 74 ]

and the bleakness and to the South! and i can imagine him leaving the train at Arles armed with his urgent pungent impressions of the Dutch countryside come to pursue a notional Japan a land of magnificent colour a land of heat in the South French Vincent who had bantered with Bernard contrasting the “good fucker” Courbet to voyeur Degas and quoting Ziem the Barbizon painter who said how a man becomes ambitious the moment he can’t get a hard-on and how to him Vincent he was indifferent on the matter protesting that his ambition could not be so subservient this Vincent who had cried for the poor in the North where hard-ons were utilitarian when what mattered was not to be able to draw a hand but its gesture to smell the wind as the digger glances up the life so critical of those doomed by the dark not the boozy brotheling nights with Lautrec and the slip into the waters of absinthe/stepping off the train at Arles and into the SNOW and ice but he would go out into the white fields for one day the sun would come and i can picture him out there in the white of his loneliness the loneliness always there and among l’Arlésienne who hated intruders especially him weird him finding the blooming almond in the ice which he painted and his brushstrokes the line of nature and the moving water and the stark grass and the bridge on the canal and the thatched cottages surrounded by the reeds waving wildly in the lunatic mistral and the stars above the Rhone and the café at night coloured more than in the day and he painted the old arthritic olive groves and the rocks grain scalloped and veined like the grain of old olive roots and the cypresses like thick dark lightening conductors grounding the energy of the sky everything swept up in a current of energy everything he sees made of the same plasma the moon coming out of eclipse and the stars blazing the sky heaving like the ocean and the cypresses moving with it and the gravity of great sunlight effects the warm colours of the South the beautiful contrast of red and green and orange of sunflowers and lilac and i can picture him with Gaugin painting with Gaugin and him painting Gaugin and Gaugin painting him and pressing on Gaugin beseeching Gaugin supplicant to Gaugin afraid Gaugin may leave him and i can picture them when the rain came the constant rain and the night drinking and [ 75 ]

now the impossibility of working like this and the anger and threats and the descent into madness and the explosion of personalities and that cold wet December day when Vincent took the razor to his head/and i can picture him committed at Saint Remy de Provence where the screams of the mad echoed down the stone corridors him painting the view through the bars painting landscapes and nature for your soul he would say is alive in the blue of the skies and the blade of springing grass and he painted grass here in the South and fields and irises and sunflowers and fields and grass and always landscapes but no people and he had turned away from the people and into himself in search of colours the colours of heat and here in the South he abandoned people for the warm colours of the South and i can picture him walking from the Auberge to the Chateau d’Avers and i can picture him staggering bent from the shot that lodged in him though fired point blank it should have passed right through him unless it wasn’t and he was shot from a distance murdered and i can picture him at his funeral the bright yellow of the cornfields and wheatfields the deep blue of the church at Auvers and the red of the poppies and the purple of the irises and though the people had returned mourners from Paris bringing yellow flowers yet i cannot picture that flaming soul thawing with its soul heat the ice around the people of the North

[ 76 ]

Silver Buttons Michael Bennett

The sea breathes. I hear its waves of breath at night, when there’s nothing to keep me busy.

In and out, In and out, In and out.

Its heart is hidden somewhere deep below, pounding out the waves. Sometimes I think I can hear that, too. The heart will never stop. The waves will eat away down there at the cliff edge as they’ve always done. Each year a bit further in. The wind gets into the sandy earth, and so does the frost. The rain helps it along. The sea and I got along fine until last week, when it started taking things from me. It was a fork, my best one, I had it since before I bought the house. It was a fine fork, with a solid oak handle. I came out to dig the potatoes and it wasn’t where I left it leaning against the house. I looked in the shed, but it wasn’t in there either. I asked Sal, and she said it was in the shed. She was making us tea at the time, and I could see the tendons straining in her arms as she poured water from the kettle, and the shape of her knuckles. They looked ready to burst out of her skin. So I stopped her just before, took the kettle from her, and made the teas myself. I told her about the fork again and she held up the other kind of fork, the one you eat with, and smiled.

Plenty more in the drawer, she said.

I went down the stairs that lead from the lane to the beach. The steps seem higher than they were, but that can’t be right, not with all the erosion. Sal doesn’t come down anymore, and I don’t as much as I used to. Not many people do nowadays.

Once it was full of fishermen tarring and smoking and winching their catch up the side of the cliff. The stone melting pot is still down there, and tar is splashed all over the rocks. The winch is still there but not for much longer. After a storm Sal and I would take bets over that winch. I would always bet the wind’s taken it, and she would always bet it was still standing.

[ 77 ]

I walked along the tideline. There were lots of dead crabs on their backs, and orange string. It takes me a while to walk the length. My feet seem to sink into the sand more than they used. The beach must be getting sandier. They do, over time, don’t they. I can see the tip of our chimney if I stand in a certain place now, near the winch. Last year I couldn’t see that. I couldn’t even see the aerial.

When I looked back, I could see the fork stuck in the sand. It must have been put there early, when the tide was going out. I went to pull it out but I couldn’t get close enough. I stood watching it awhile, watching the sea claim it slowly. I wouldn’t say it was mocking me. The sea doesn’t care. It’s like us, if we didn’t have a soul. We would just be hearts beating and lungs breathing, and we wouldn’t care.

I watched the fork and the dark water rising around it until the sun went down.

We had the doctor out that week. Sal’s leg swelled. It started off small, then ballooned. She said it was a bit sore, that’s all. She never tells me if something’s bad – she always says it’s just a bit sore. The time she fell and fractured her wrist. When she bent down too far and cracked a rib. Nothing to worry about, she said. Just a sore rib. It’ll sort itself out in no time. The doctor gave her some antibiotics for the leg, and it went down again quickly, but there’s a difference in her walk now. She shuffles a bit, and instead of going up the stairs one leg at a time she waits for the other leg to catch up with the first so that she stands with both feet on each step.

She asks me to bring the milk in from the step because it’s too far from the door.

She doesn’t want me to notice these things.

‘Nice spot here,’ the doctor said. He was different from last time. Younger, but not too young. ‘Nice view. Needs a bit of work, but a nice view indeed.’

Sal looked at me and rolled her eyes.

‘That wood’s rotting away,’ the doctor said, running his hand along the window frame. We don’t have double glazing yet. ‘I reckon that’ll need replacing soon.’

I didn’t like the way he moved around our home, like an estate agent or a safety inspector. I told him it was fine, everything was fine, nothing needs doing or if it does we’ll do it ourselves. He held up his hands apologetically, but he was smiling broadly. We’ll phone the surgery, ask for someone else. The other doctor, the older one, who doesn’t try to be so friendly.

Sal put her leg up on the old dining chair, the third one we keep by the table just in case. Outside I saw the washing pulling on the line, all the whites that Sal washes by hand in the sink. There was a gap between the blouse and the bed sheet, just big enough for a pillowcase or some knickers. There were two pegs there, hanging upside down like a pair of bats. I didn’t like the way the wind pulled at the sheet, the way it billowed out and stretched towards the sea.

[ 78 ]

At night I can’t sleep. I listen to the breathing outside. I listen to the breathing inside, next to me. I start to think about how the two might be connected, and if the sea stops breathing then so might Sal, or if she does then so might the sea. I imagine the fork sinking further into the sand before the waves claim it. I wonder where the pillowcase is; I couldn’t find it in the linen basket or under the bed, and it wasn’t anywhere in the garden either.

In the morning I wake up late. Sal is opening and closing drawers in the kitchen.

She opens them from the bottom up, all of the drawers. I ask what she’s looking for and she says my buttons, my silver buttons. She went over to the chair and held up her red cardigan, the one made of special wool from Scotland. All of the silver buttons are missing. All that’s left are fine woollen tendrils like stamens in a fuschia. Help me find them, she says. They must be here somewhere. I make a joke about the magpies coming to steal them, but she doesn’t hear. She’s turning around and around, looking for somewhere else that might be hiding them. My silver buttons, she keeps saying. They must be here somewhere. I take her wrists in my hands and look into her face, but she’s peering over my shoulder, her eyes darting over the countertops, the bread bin, the biscuit jar with pink polka dots on it, where sometimes there’s a little something for a treat. She doesn’t look at me.

My silver buttons, she whispers, and she seems as lost as they are.

I leave her to sit with a mug of tea on the wicker chair next to the radiator, and I go out into the garden, along the path, and down the steps to the beach. The steps are higher than they once were, and more slippery too. I look for small silver glimmers in the sand. I start near the rocks splashed with tar, work my way along the cliff edge, between the marram grass leaves. I look up and I can see the chimney of the house, which is something you could never see before. I wonder if the buttons are up there somewhere, hiding under the dead heads of the thrift and thyme, threaded onto the grass, pressed into the earth.

My feet sink into the sand. The sand pulls more than it used to.

The sun starts to dip into the sea, and the colours on the waves dance. I won’t find them in this light, but I keep looking. Down by the winch. Around the rock that we used to climb and sit up on, and watch the boats draw in. Near the old iron post that someone has stuck lots of bright rubber gloves on. But the buttons aren’t anywhere. As I climb the stairs again I look back. The fork has disappeared; the sea has breathed it in.

In the night Sal wakes. It’s my leg, she says. I’m sure it’s nothing, but it’s tingling.

She sits up and switches on the bedside light, and rubs it. It hasn’t gone down. The skin is cracking, and it’s hot to touch. She looks lost again, and she holds my hand.

I’m sure it’s nothing, she says. [ 79 ]

I gather up things I know she’ll need: Two floral handkerchiefs.

A packet of Polo’s.

A torch just in case.

Nivea moisturising cream.

Some Imperial Leather soap and a dark green flannel.

Two blouses, a pair of trousers and two sets of underwear.

A book about a kitchen maid who falls in love.

But what about the buttons, she says. Did you find them? I shake my head. I tell her it must be the magpies, you know how they collect shiny things for their nests.

She shakes her head as if there’s a fly buzzing around it. I lead her down the stairs.

It’s hard because the leg is pushing into me, and it’s hot and heavy and clumsy. We get into the car, and it starts on the third go. We don’t use the car much. Not now they can deliver your shopping. It’s a long drive, and Sal keeps quiet and looks at the window.

At the hospital there’s not a long wait. Wrong time of the year for emergencies, the nurse jokes. Why do they always joke when you’re old, as if you’re young again?

We put Sal into a wheelchair and keep the leg elevated, and the nurse asks if she’s feeling any pain or strange sensations anywhere else, and when it first started, and what medication she’s taking. But she doesn’t answer, she looks lost, she holds my hand and says something. Can you bring my brooch, she says. The purple one, you know. I’d like to have it here. So I leave her as she’s being helped into bed, as the doctor comes and inspects her leg.

When I get home I sit down for a while. I notice the sounds that aren’t around when she’s here: the carriage clock on the windowsill, the hum and gurgle of the fridge.

There are a few brooches in the drawer she keeps necklaces and things in, but none of them are purple. Maybe I should take one of these, get back there quickly to make sure she’s ok. But the purple one means a lot: it’s the one Mark bought her before he went away. Before the sea. Mark would know what to do. He would find the buttons and the pillowcase, and he would have been able to walk out further into the waves to get the fork back.

I look everywhere for the brooch: inside the wardrobe, under the dressing table, in the porcelain trinket boxes and vases. I feel myself shaking. First the fork, then the buttons, now the brooch. Before that, a long time before, Mark. I open the window, feel the chill air. I notice the window frames, and how the paint has been flaking off for years, how there are gaps in the wood. I wonder how long it will be [ 80 ]

before the waves have cut so far into the cliff that the house tumbles down it and splinters on the rocks below. Everything would be gone in a few weeks, taken away on the tide by the sea’s breath.

If the sea stops breathing, will Sal? If she stops breathing, will the sea?

Then I see something glinting underneath the bookcase.

[ 81 ]

Bones Owen Vince

there was a time when the dead were carried to sad, slow places where the soil was too hard for shovels. They broke the earth by burning fires of coal and petrified wood and oil ; you could see it from the horizon, the smoke thickening into a nail of cloud which connected, just for a moment, the sky with the heel of the earth and the dead who would rest there.

[ 82 ]

Six Photos Moritz Aust

Most of my photos contain some kind of hidden story. My work is always dramatic and the use of dark colours is also a signature of mine. I adore earthy tones and in my opinion they really suit the concepts I like to explore.

Most of the time I have no idea where my inspiration for photographs comes from. Sometimes I think there’s an emotional link, though my personality is more happy than melancholic. Or it could be the geographical area I find myself in, and the social situation. It’s not easy to figure out where inspiration actually started but I am sure that it is a mix of all the things I feel, see, the situations I find myself in, and my life experiences so far.

Surrealism is in almost every one of my photos. The impossible is fascinating and exciting to me. I like to think about places where the rules we obey here on earth don’t exist. Where people and nature are one, and everything that seems weird to us is totally normal. I find that photography is one of the best tools to convey these fantasy worlds onto a digital canvas and show them to other people.

[ 83 ]

Asleep Series I

[ 84 ]

Asleep Series II

[ 85 ]

Peace in the Darkness

[ 86 ]

Cry

[ 87 ]

Addicted to Cups Part II

[ 88 ]

Light

[ 89 ]

The Moth Box Sue Moules

We have caught the night.

It sleeps in here, pulled in by light.

We open it in day, take out the shapes and name them.

Scorched Wing, Tussock, White Ermine, Marbled Coronet, Green Carpet, Phoenix.

We lift them out, look at them through hand lenses, marvel at their intricacy.

We leave them in the shade to sleep out; they merge into garden.

Later, they will flap in quick quivers, heat their delicate tiled wings, soar into the dark.

[ 90 ]

Two Poems Bethany W Pope

10.

A barn full of manuscripts gone sour, of dung, Dust piles, decades of drafts crumbling, tables laden with Manuscripts of forgotten collections: his life.

I picked through the tattered remnants of interviews; The New York Review of Books covered his first collection.

The heat was incredible. Magnified sunlight Encroached. Sweat streaked my skin. An ache in my forehead, his Deep voice reverberated, with shouts, with stories, Uncovering the past. He spoke of the summer spent Renting a room in a dilapidated castle. A Goshawk flew through the window one morning, it Engaged him for a moment, open beak, open wings; Medium-large predator, zebra striped. His spirit Yearning for flight. A feeling he kept, but never wrote.

[ 91 ]

11.

The woman sweating, laboring in the attic; my Head throbbing from heat, I watched her scrub, cleaning Out the unused toilet, her long black hair sweeping Under her arms, flat face rivulated with Great beads of salt water. She talked about her son, Her silent six-year-old. They came up from Mexico Through the vast fenced border, risking vigilantes So that he could get treatment. She found herself Trapped, undocumented, at the mercy of a Usurious millionaire who rarely paid her and Resorted, when she asked, to veiled threats of INS. Needing information, better English, lawful help, Education, she was stuck in her basement Den; the small apartment underground he entombed her in.

[ 92 ]

Dog Sitting Maria Donovan

The man says, ‘Oh by the way, if the dog dies while we’re gone, we won’t blame you. It wouldn’t be a problem at all. The wife would be just as glad if he did.’ The wife is tucking the dog up in blankets as we speak and kissing its nose.

We won’t blame you. He said it with a tiny shake of the head.

The wife is cheerful – fending off the inevitable with some chatter. ‘He’s been doing that old dog thing of standing in a corner,’ she says, ‘or staring at a wall – but the medication helps. He’ll probably go on like this another couple of years.’

Her husband, standing behind her, shakes his head – deliberately this time.

As soon as they have gone the dog tries to get up – he can’t do it. He looks at me and opens his mouth and out comes an anguished baby cry. I roll him into a sitting position, brace his back legs and help him to stand. Once on his feet, he’s OK. We go through the kitchen to the back door. ‘It’s best to take him outside as soon as he gets up,’ the wife said. ‘Just in case he needs a wee.’

On the tiled kitchen floor the dog raises his tail, looks me in the eye and wees a warm golden puddle that runs between his toes.

‘Gee thanks, dog.’ I pick him up and carry him to the back door, and prop him up outside, where he wees copiously again.

This is a lovely house. Big conservatory with a view that goes a hundred miles – all the way down to the headland at Newquay, all the way up to Snowdon (on a good day). In front, beyond the fields and the stands of pine, across the bowl of sea, sits Ynys Ennli on the rim and the hills of Llyn are dusky blue humps rising from the water. A red kite below the house, swallow-tailed buzzard, twists in the sun. I go outside. Robins are softly tweebling their messages of war. The dog turns, crosses his front legs, loses his balance, staggers sideways and falls down a flight of steps, like a black furry sack flung down a rubbish chute. He lies there in the long wet grass without saying anything. I rush down, pick him up

[ 93 ]

and set him on his feet again. ‘No bones broken?’

‘We won’t blame you if he dies,’ the man said. But what if he’s hurt? Ribs crushed. Skin torn. Legs broken.

Special rates. That’s what we negotiated. ‘We hate to have to go away when he’s like this,’ the woman said. ‘We really do.’

But go away they must. For a wedding or a funeral or a something. They both explained it to me when they got me on their own, apologising. But they both had different stories.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m used to it.’ I’ve been through it myself.

‘How can you bear it?’ said the woman, head on one side. ‘How can you do it all again?’

‘I used to be a nurse,’ I told her.

‘But it’s not the same,’ she said. ‘Or maybe it’s not so hard when it’s not your dog.’

‘He is my dog while you’re away.’

She covered her solar plexus with one hand and looked at me.

‘I’ll look after him as if he was my own.’

‘It’s the hard decisions at the end that are the worst, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘We’ve left you the number for the vet.’

‘Will I need it?’

She put her head over to the other side. ‘It’s what we do isn’t it? Leave the important numbers.’

But they have not left me a number for where they are going. And I don’t have a mobile number for them. Only this landline.

She sighed. ‘We took him to the vet the other day and she said there was no reason to have him put down on humane grounds.’

And the man, whispering while she packed the car: ‘It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we came home and found he’d gone.’

I walk the dog around the garden, slowly. When he crouches to poo he nearly falls, and I stand by his head and hold him by the shoulders. He looks at me: I look at him. When he’s finished I run back up the garden for the shovel. The woman showed me the hole to put the poo in. ‘If you need to, if it’s nearly full, then fill it in and dig another.’

I run back but still the dog’s already followed me halfway up the garden.

The long grass defeats him, he totters and I catch him before he falls into the pond. ‘He fell into the pond last week,’ the man said. ‘The wind caught him and blew him off his feet.’

‘Sorry, little fella,’ I say. ‘I still have to pick up the poo.’ He follows me down the slope, gravity helping him to trot, an almost convincing illusion of vitality. I use the shovel, and scoop the poo. It’s such a big heavy shovel. What [ 94 ]

do they want me to do? Hit him over the head with it? Bury him in the bit of woodland they pointed out? Make him and all the pain they feel just disappear?

He struggles after me up the slope again. Can’t manage the steps to the back door. I pick him up, put him under my arm like a stuffed toy, and carry him inside. He’s supposed to weigh 17 kg. That’s the measure of anti-inflammatory they told me to draw up for him in the mornings. ‘Though he’s off his food,’ she said. I put him down and shut the door and go and get his towel. I forgot to put it ready for when we came in. He doesn’t follow me. He stays just where he is. He doesn’t move. This is because the very tip of his tail is caught in the door. It must be just the hairs because he doesn’t cry. I open the door and dry his feet, holding him under my arm so he doesn’t fall. Under his neck is a bald patch where the vet took blood six weeks ago. The hair has not grown back. Barely any stubble, just this shaming patch of skin cut out of his still beautiful coat, thick and black, a little rusty from much sunshine. His tail’s a little threadbare, the line of it showing through the thin fur. Bald in one or two tiny spots.

He follows me to the kitchen and while he is drinking I run upstairs and get the scales. I put the scales on the carpet by his bowl and weigh myself: I could lose a few pounds. Then I pick him up and step on the scales again. Do the maths.

Mmm. 14kg. Now I’m going to have to tell them the dose they’re giving him every day is way too much.

Tinned food he has and dried food. And for me, tuna and rice. The dog waits by his empty bowl, staring into it as if he can make something tasty appear.

I open the tin of dog food and give him a scoop. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want the dry food. I give him a scoop of tuna and rice and he eats it. Another scoop. He eats it. He eats all the tuna and rice. And waits by his empty bowl as if he’s already forgotten what he’s had.

Since I’m not eating the dog food either now there’s nothing much for me to eat in the house. ‘You can’t go out and leave him,’ the woman said. ‘If you do go out, take him with you, and be quick when you go to the shop because if he tries to get up and he can’t he will cry. Then maybe someone will come and break your car window.’

I pack. He watches me, his dark eyes following my every move. I put his bed in the car and carry him out and lay him down on the back seat in the dog hammock. He pants. I move him round so his head is on a rolled-up fleece for a pillow. That looks better. He stops panting and closes his eyes. I pack his bowls and his lead and his collar, which he doesn’t wear at home. I pack his medicines.

My bags are still in the car.

[ 95 ]

We drive away. Two hours later and he’s still asleep. I stop at the shop near my house and get something for us to eat. Chicken, rice, vegetables.

I boil two chicken breasts – we share the food. I help him to lie down in his bed. When he’s asleep, I call their number and leave a message on their landline.

Just to let them know – he’s gone.

[ 96 ]

Ordinary Cloudless Tuesdays Kevin Tosca

Jonathan believed the tall leafy objects in Lampart were purple. Matthew believed they were red. Luke believed in blue. Jonathan, being the biggest and strongest and richest of the three men in the village, killed Matthew first because red was just plain ridiculous. Blue was closer, but not exact — certainly not correct — and when Luke wouldn’t come around to his way of seeing, Jonathan murdered him, too.

Jonathan, mere minutes after the last bloodletting, found himself another shrewd, willing woman who, when post-coitally asked what colour the tall leafy objects were, whispered in his ear and asked him what he thought. Purple, Jonathan — feeling the rim of his ear being traced by this woman’s crafty tongue — immediately said. Of course, cooed his soon-to-be newest wife. And they had lots of babies, and they taught purple to all of them.

Jonathan, however, eventually tired of domesticity, of the screams and demands and responsibilities of children and women. He wanted to set off on a mid-life expedition. And so he did.

Not far away was the village of Bruntley, and he decided it was as good a place as any to stop for his first night away from home. He was shown great hospitality there: caviar, champagne, melt-in-your-mouth flesh, all the underage girls or boys he could desire.

That evening, sitting around the fire and a bit tipsy with his new friends who seemed so civilized, the subject of the tall leafy objects came up.

“Never seen that brilliant shade of orange, have you Johnny?” one of his new friends, a man named Mark, said, nudging him — Mark being the biggest and strongest and richest man in Bruntley.

“No,” Jonathan said, “can’t say that I have. Will you excuse me, please? I have to take a leak.”

[ 97 ]

Instead of urinating, he rushed back to Lampart, gathered his eldest sons and the rest of the men from the village, and marched on Bruntley.

“Johnny!” Mark called out good-naturedly, “you piss like a drunken elephant.”

Jonathan said nothing. Why speak with dogs? He and his army slaughtered every man, woman, and child in Bruntley because they believed the tall leafy objects were orange.

“Orange,” he spit, the blood dripping off of him. “Morons!” The men from Lampart took everything of value from Bruntley and returned home.

That night, after bedding his wife and after everyone was likewise satiated and more babies were assured — more beings who would see the one and the only and the proper and the true colour — Jonathan stood on the tallest hill in his village and saw the lights of the distant villages as if for the first time

[ 98 ]

States: from the Left Coast Tony Kendrew

The Death of Zack Communication is an awfully long word for something so simple. Somebody sings or dances or reads. We laugh, we applaud, we weep.

I was recently at the 2014 American Writers Conference in Seattle. I counted about six hundred and twenty-five opportunities to check for laughter, applause and tears. Actually, it was more like two or three times six hundred and twentyfive, as most of them were panel discussions with multiple speakers.

Not that I had a chance to check on more than a handful.

Before the overwhelm of the first day of the conference I took the morning to visit a friend on one of the islands in Puget Sound, a short ferry ride from downtown. My friend met me at the pier and said she was goat sitting and had to go and milk Betty.

Ten minutes from the ferry – it’s a small island – I was tiptoeing through the mud in my city shoes, remembering the dreaded US Department of Agriculture forms handed out on flights into the States, and having to decide, the last time I filled one in, whether the little flat outside Lampeter, where I lived for a year with the chickens and the three lambs fattening for the slaughter, constituted a farm in the eyes of the USDA. Mustn’t lie to the feds.

Across a sunny field flanked by tall firs a brown shape lay in the long grass. My friend said it was Zack the donkey, depressed at the death of his life-long friend

[ 99 ]

a week before. He hadn’t eaten for days, she said. Yesterday she had gone to him, his head down. She had stroked his ears and told him of her sadness. She was worried.

After Betty had yielded two foaming cans of goaty milk and started kicking, and her two strutting kids were fed, we wandered across the field to Zack, watching closely for movement. The goats followed, heads jerking in a parody of curiosity.

Zack’s head lay back at an awkward angle, his lips pointing at the sky, teeth showing. Zack was dead.

Such sudden and simple emotion, not very far from the city, not very far from the chickens, and three white geese, heads in the air suspecting something’s wrong but not knowing what to do about it.

Sort of like me at that moment.

Back at the conference, three times in three days I stood to applaud speakers with some of the other thirteen thousand who had found their way through the gargantuan space to the right room at the right time. I caught seven of the six hundred and twenty-five presentations, rising to my feet for Coleman Barks (his Rumi) and Christopher Ricks (his Bob Dylan), but most enthusiastically for the conference’s final Saturday night speaker, Sharon Olds.

As I stood in the long line for her signature on my copy of her Pulitzer Prizewinning collection, Stag’s Leap, the word came to me of the quality of her poetry I most wanted to emulate: communication.

How to make the words reach from the page to the heart?

Sharon Olds had opened her reading by saying that when she got off the plane a few hours earlier she had recognized and felt at home with all the other writers milling about. I thought about that. What is it about writers? How did she recognize them? Were they carrying journals? Copies of Proust? Did they look cerebral? Or was it the way they dressed?

She told us her next book would be a collection of odes. She read two of them: Ode to the Douche Bag and Ode to the Hymen. Delighted laughter at the mention of each, of course, and as she read them too. She had us in her hand. She knew how to reach across, and not just through the titillation of bodily candour, something her critics go on about. She communicated through the power of the statements themselves, and the words she chose to express them.

[ 100 ]

Individuality also communicates: the writers at the airport. Sitting at our table at the book fair, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David table, I watch a woman in her ankle length pink plastic boots between the aisles of white tablecloths. A small thing, that glimpse, but memorable – a palpable hit. And, turning my eyes, OMG look at her! Long, very long, lemon yellow legs, made longer by nine inch heels (I swear they were nine inches; I held my hand out to measure: nine inches thumb to pinky) below a navy blue minisuit. Holding tight to her man, by his collection of magazines and bookfair handouts, at least, the wordier of the two, for support. (Pinky – there’s a useful Stateside word!)

Now shiny black shoes go by, under jeans, tomato dress and black cardigan, and a straw boater with a black ribbon.

An elderly, conservative-looking man in a suit. But look at his feet! Blue suede shoes with red laces!

Here comes a very large woman, blazing a bright red dress with faux leopard skin trim: collar, sleeves, cuffs and belt. She doesn’t care!

Then there’s the girl with a scarf made of huge felt flowers in dark green and deep red. The only one in the world!

And ah! Blue stockings approaching through the crowd. But wait! A lime-green silk dress and electric blue padded jacket above. And long dark hair. Does that not speak! Just the mention of it is enough! Enough to speak, to have a voice.

Two enormous rooms full of white tables in long aisles crowded with individuals, each with a poem or a short story or a novel in the works or just out, or shopping for ideas, or agents or publishers or MFAs or PhDs, or ways to make their words communicate.

The way Ode to the Douche Bag or a dead donkey communicates.

[ 101 ]

Two Poems Ann McGarry

Street Scenes It is a long departure, death.

Each minute, so.

I have no fear, you tell us at the end.

Your words – bright banners – catch a faith We’ve put aside and of it make one quiet beat of praise.

Come the morning, I’m shopping in the High Street In my high-heel boots. Go for a coffee and a pain au chocolat.

What a devil is this thing, life!

Makes off with everything, even death.

When my mother’s mother, Kathleen, died young, My grandfather went with a whore in Cork City.

She’d found him running through the streets calling, Kath, Kathleen, where are ye?

And took his arm, guiding him to her door And up the stairs to her tiny room Where she made tea for him.

[ 102 ]

Holy Land I shall lie so still you will believe I am your very body breathing in the dark, and then I shall slip away, leaving a facsimile that assures you of my presence.

I am unfaithful for this wanton straying from your side into the holy land where I walk in solitary steps away, away from being known or followed.

My father was a brave man every day with my mother: I am not his daughter in that regard, not now, not anymore, if ever.

A retrograde, a fish, I am a shooting star past, not holding anything but its extinction.

I roam from your side with not a semblance of regret and leap like a bride before the wedding into the edgeless liquid dark where all the shapeliness of light, and the furniture of time and place must wait forever‌ or,

[ 103 ]

until I stand, a prisoner at the dock of a new day, protesting all knowledge of escape, pointing to the evidence, this child I lift from his bath, wet as birth, (who shouts in triumph every time) to whom I whisper in his forgetting ear, leaning close to hear what he hears still --voices, like distant cattle bells moving through a felted night --and know some code or message passed that binds us.

[ 104 ]

Aleppo Dreams Susmita Bhattacharya

She rushes out of her nightmare, into the silence of night. She gasps, as though fingers are closing round her neck. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the peace. Push away the images. She tries, like she tries every other night. But the dreams of her first husband trample her sleep. The bombs falling through the air. The rubble.

The smell of gunpowder. The blood. Her mind always ricocheting between what was and what is. Breathe in. Breathe out. She wants to reach out for his hand. But she lets him sleep. He should not be drawn into the unbearable layers of her past.

He feels her breaking out of her dream. She is gasping. Moaning. Gagging. He knows that she had stood there, bathed in her husband’s blood, screaming like an animal. That was years ago, before he married her. And he wonders if he should have married her at all. He cannot take this anymore. They have escaped, but cannot escape the haunting of her husband. He feels her reach out for him and then her hesitation. He moves away. He cannot comfort her. His life too has been riddled with loss.

They resort to sleeping separately. First, he on the floor and she on the bed.

Then to different rooms. He claims her dreams keep him awake and he cannot concentrate on the present. She agrees, and is relieved. It is time to move on, but she is fettered. She has nothing to offer him. Together they have memories of trying to forget their individual pains. Together they left their country and struggled to gain a new identity. But they have no identity. Only a past. Only a story. Only a dream.

Then one day, years later, he will dream. He will dream of paradise. The streets of Aleppo alive with celebration. The arghul filling his heart with the music of his childhood. Men dancing the dabka, swirling, kicking and clapping. Their energy thrusting into the air. The smells of sheesh kebabs and shawerma spilling out of

[ 105 ]

cafes and driving him closer to ecstasy. Bakalava, like only his mother could have made, dropping bit by bit onto his hungry, greedy tongue. And he will see her in this dream. Gliding in swathes of cloth, her laughter tinkling and merging with the sweet giggles of his daughters, the husky guffaws of his mother, the laughter of his first wife. Her voice long forgotten. Their warm breath will caress his face and he will reach for her. But find emptiness. She is long gone. And he? His body will not be strong or young. It’ll be just like a pressed leaf. The memory of youth.

Only the skeleton and veins have remained.

[ 106 ]

Couda Daniel Jeffreys

‘How long did you say he was by the side of the road?’ The doctor said, replacing the clipboard at the foot of the bed.

‘At least two hours… they brought him in this morning…’

He was aware of the male nurse, the squeak of rubber soles as he hourly checked his drips, rubbed moisturiser on his lips and massaged the soles of his feet. He sensed other beds, little starched oblong shapes that sprung into focus like diving boards. A young woman surrounded by teenage girl friends, all dressed in black, was beyond their efforts at normal chat. Their voices were broken up by the beeps of machines talking to one another, intelligent bird-like beeps that the girls tried to decipher. To his right was a huge figure that groaned and crawled under the single white sheet.

The dream — if it was a dream and not happening in some distant corridor — was the steady drip of water, and he could see the bead forming, slithering to the end of the wire, swelling and then falling in slow motion.

Sometimes it was on the ceiling and he felt the splash on his face. He wanted water. The moon which floated in the winter sky, pale as the teenage face beyond him, promised vast mineral reserves. They could run a wire directly from the moon to his mouth and he could suck at her ice cold lakes. Other times he saw the drip forming on a sharpened black twig and he felt the cold and snow of a winter forest.

Every day a girl visited the man on his right. She prayed at the foot of the bed in some strange language that sounded as if she were choking on dark soil.

Her shoulders shivered as she whispered her message and all he made out was Couda, Couda.

Couda was old and very bald - a few tufts of white candy floss, burnt to a crisp, stuck to his head. He was dried out and blackening like an overripe banana.

[ 107 ]

The drip grew louder at night, he felt cold and thought of his parents’ house all shut up and their grandfather clock in the hall. When it struck midnight Couda stepped out of the clock and floated over the lilac bushes in the garden.

New people sat around the teenage girl’s bed - parents, the mother elaborately made up and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. Now the ward looked different: it wobbled like a bad science fiction set as they sped in a space ship towards a half-strength sun. But he kept thinking their destination was really a trick, there was nowhere left to touch down, they were crammed in a deepfreeze, all they could do was orbit some inert rock and dream their dreams in the hospital.

The nurse (attractive, with a little gold earring) washed him down with a sponge, and he tried to thank him but couldn’t, the effort adding to the pressure on his head. He was learning the new machine language. If he spoke it would only be to beep. He was tethered by tubes, in his arm, in his neck and he was embarrassed, as if he’d been caught wearing his organs outside his body — a naked cyclist trailing a drip and catheter on two trolleys, cycling around a rush-hour roundabout in the rain. Lorry drivers hooted, and he weaved between them, tubes tugging at his arms, stretching across windscreens. The plasma looked thick and red, a boil-in-the-bag pasta sauce, and he felt faint at the thought of it.

Couda, said the woman in the evening, and took pumpkin seeds from a plastic bag. Couda, she pressed dried fruit under his sharp little nose. But Couda was splayed out, his bald head blackening like his limbs.

It was another night, another pale moon drifting over the tops of office blocks with buses splashing past when Couda sat up. The ward was quiet apart from the beeps and murmured voices from the nurses’ station. A patient had got to the end of their diving board, and was preparing for the drop.

Couda was awake, stretched out on his stiff white altar with long curling toe nails. He heard the creak of Couda’s neck, that sinewy neck with great grooves of age scooped out between the tendons. And Couda, as in his dream, drifted across the ward on to the teenage girl’s bed and scratched with his toe nails at her chest, scratching like a fighting waterfowl until he drew blood, and then sucked at her wounds and plasma bag until he grew blacker and blacker and was part of the dark. The girl’s chest strained at her flimsy night gown. He tried to cry out.

An alarm sounded, a nurse came running, other nurses appeared and drew the curtains around her bed. They wheeled her away and then wheeled her back just as the cleaner finished mopping the floor.

[ 108 ]

In his dreams the drip was louder, the plaster on the ceiling bulged outwards, about to give birth to gallons of moisture, and he flinched from the deluge. But when it came it was the male nurse’s warm squeezed sponge. ‘What happened here last night… have we got a sleepwalker?’ His throat lurched, he only had to say Couda but the nurse was already combing his hair and carefully rearranging his gown. ‘Couda,’ he gasped, ‘couda…’

The teenage girl was pale, all her liquids were on the outside replenishing her body. Her mother straightened her sheets. ‘You come into this world fighting and all for what…? What did he mean complications?’

He wanted to warn the parents and tried to wriggle a toe; but realised he had as little power over his toe as he had over the striplight on the ceiling.

In his dreams the drip drip grew slower. The bead of water swelled at the end of a sharpened twig and, as it elongated, the corridors stretched and buckled. The drip pulsed and wobbled, heaving with the skin of a cooling pudding. A blackbird in the snow watched the man sideways; its cold eye turned into a stethoscope.

‘We’ll have to operate again tomorrow evening. I’m worried about clots.’

The surgeon and nurse moved to the next bed, he could feel Couda concentrate. The surgeon wore a paisley tie and lots of jewellery, his bouffant grey hair in contrast to Couda’s crisped candy floss.

‘Strange case here. Nothing much wrong internally. Scans all ok.’

‘Looks like a fakir — you think he’s willing himself asleep?’

‘I think he likes it here.’

The girl came in later that evening. She nodded at the parents smoothing their daughter’s forehead and sat down by Couda’s bed. She opened a tapestry bag and took out little jars of ointment. Brandishing a sprig of rosemary wrapped in tin foil, she sprinkled it across the old man’s forehead. ‘Couda,’ she said, and the whispered prayers began again.

Whether the prayers had worked on him as well he couldn’t tell, but he felt returning sensation in his limbs. He seemed to collect in pools by the open window and the moon was crumbling away and Couda’s thoughts settled on him like the itchy old blanket in his parents’ dog basket.

Watermelons with little droplets on the skin lined up in an old country parlour; pumpkins, too, turning black under a cracked skylight thick with webs and spiders. The black swollen vegetables trembled and from within came a hollow vrssk vrssk before the skin started cracking. A wolf eats up the moon crumb by crumb.

When he looked up he saw a shadow on the skylight, nimble and manylegged, a huge spider greedily watching the pumpkins as they swelled and [ 109 ]

trembled. Then it dawned on him that this was not a spider, it was a man swimming across the cracked glass. The man watched him and tapped with long nails on the skylight. With a soft puff the first pumpkin exploded, sticky black liquid shot across the room and the skylight gave way. The old man with gallons of water and wet leaves was falling towards him.

The dripping had stopped. ‘We had to operate on your brain.’ The surgeon was smiling and checked the dressing on his head. ‘Draining nicely. Do you have any idea what happened?’

‘Afraid not. I was cycling home by the roundabout…’

‘You might want to knock the cycling on the head for a bit,’ and he laughed at his joke.

He watched the surgeon smile at the male nurse, ‘I’ve got a conference in Zurich and I’d like to get off early and do a bit of sightseeing. Any trouble, ring me but I’ll be back in ten days and we can take the staples out.’

He wanted to kiss the surgeon’s fat jewelled fingers. ‘The operation went well. Very well, but there’s always a risk of infection.’ The surgeon moved off and he noticed the bed next to him was empty. ‘Couda,’ he said, ‘where’s Couda?’

The male nurse plumped up his pillows. ‘Couda? No one by that name here.’

‘But the young woman who used to visit…’

‘Amazing what you took in. I’m afraid the young girl opposite isn’t any better.’

‘No. I know she’s not going to get better. I mean the one who used to visit…’

He was in a different ward where he was encouraged to walk his plastic bags and catheters towards the lifts and back again. He had escaped the empty wheelchairs lined up against the wall; they were waiting for other bodies, bodies that were going to be taken apart and folded back together again.

Taking the lift to the café he sipped coffee and watched the unshaven men outside, smoking in their dressing gowns. The breeze blew through the revolving doors. He took the lift back up to his ward and it stopped and a porter came in with a shrunken woman on a hospital bed. Her hands brown and twisted ginseng roots, curled on top of the blanket, ‘I want to die,’ she said. He got out before the doors pinged.

He got in the next time a lift came, and reaching his floor, moved towards the nurse’s station — if it was his floor? The same little gel dispenser and a common room with a telly left on, but when he turned through the double doors he was left in no doubt. Mothers sitting in their beds, babies at their breast with stunned, serious expressions, stared at him strangely. With his bandaged head [ 110 ]

and trolley trailing behind him, he felt like an ambassador from another world: a King with a bloodied, broken turban travelling from a land of drought to a ward of milk and water.

A pale sleeping woman without a baby turned uncomfortably and he noticed in the next bed the young woman who had visited his ward. Her baby was big and gulped at her breast, its head smooth as a watermelon. In the chair sat the bald man, his toenails curling out of his sandals. Together they leaned over the baby and he heard their voices whispering, ‘Couda,’ they said, ‘couda.’

[ 111 ]

Shadows Sarah Hudis

They reaffirm our presence, these intrusions into sunlight I am my perimeters, coloured in, I am the sum of the space containing my parts.

Eve hid from God in the shadows, and without light I am taller sinewy legs and no eyes.

As solid as an absence.

I could be milky, indifferent marble.

I could be cardboard, disintegrating in the rain.

Changeable as a shadow puppet, or the

fortuitous folds of a curtain, material illusion.

Blank with possibility – she plucked, she ate.

[ 112 ]

Pennies From Heaven Kevin O’Sullivan

I, embryo — conceived in the textured dark of a cold midwinter night; the coal-fire banked and ready for stoking at the first light of day; alarm clock set to ring up the sleepers who scramble, who scratch for a semblance of daily subsistence — I, embryo, a jot just begot … anchored adrift … umbilical-tied to the world outside, where my own true body will soon appear and fulfill a pregnancy’s promise.

I, embryo grow … through the winter of ’38.

In these first eight weeks I sing the transformative self,

howling unheeded the embedded brio in embryo,

knowing I’m not just created but here to create in turn,

awaiting that moment of magical morph into fetus

when fingers and toes … pop right out … just like that.

And now I’m a fetus, that favored form — alive and lively — acquiring expressiveness, a wee bit of kick, even a primitive knowledge, sensing the weather outside on a warming trend, but not knowing why.

[ 113 ]

The superior status of a pragmatic fetus I claim.

Nary a whine … never a grumble.

Guileless, yes, and full of expectancy.

“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December …”

I hear it, you know — the music — it pumps me up; amazing.

“Every time it rains it rains … pennies from heaven …”

Mom, there’ll be plenty of pennies for you and me.

Put your ear down here …

Listen to my heart beat. You couldn’t hear it at first for all the noise … out where you are … but in here too.

The worst is the static. It’s like tuning the radio.

We’re all all-ears for FDR’s fireside chats, which in mid-’38 are heard by millions … who … look for handouts … cry in their booze … clutch their beads … work for nothing … stand on bread lines …

What’s a bread line?

I sing a song of the big world, the big round world.

“Red sails in the sunset … out there on the sea …”

I’m soon to come out and be with you all. And I’ll

leave this make-believe status behind …

“Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe”

My mother and I will do the “Turkey Trot,” you’ll see.

I’ll find the old flappers, a speakeasy too.

I’ll have siblings, and more kin, and tons of fun.

After two boys arrive — ‘33, ‘35 — the Depression deepens to me in the womb, dreaming of life on my own and play with my brothers.

But there’s hardly a living in “land of the living,” Dad doing drinking, Mom all awry: “Can’t feed the two, and now there’ll be three; no money for milk, and the priest prates on, ‘Have patience, dear,’ says he with his daily delivery of heavy cream.”

What’s heavy cream? [ 114 ]

When I hear a song, I sometimes sing right along.

“Life can be so sweet on the sunny side of the street.”

It’s the thirties. Come on! Quintuplets survive, you know.

They survive! All five, on the sunny side, I bet.

“HI-dee HI-dee HI-dee HO” I know, I know.

But small craft warnings don’t wave in the womb.

Years later, in sorrow and guilt — but more out of loneliness, having turned widow and losing her grip — through her tears she tells me, “I tried to abort you in second trimester. I tried but I failed.”

I keep myself calm by trying to keep her calm with tales of her grandchildren.

I sing now … a new song of aliens landing from space.

“Martians” … the radio screaming … the people in panic.

You say, it’s just make-believe. I say, no it’s not.

And a song of the fierce big wind: Hurricane ’38.

“The worst natural disaster in United States history.”

Is that make-believe? No it’s not, no it’s not.

Sudetenland … kristallnacht … make-believe?

And me in the womb; what about me? Am I make-believe?

No I am not, no I am not. “I’ve got the world on a string,

sittin’ on a rainbow, got the string around my finger …”

“Your pain, Mother, must arise from recent loss, not from old memories. We remember so poorly; be kind to yourself,” I tell her.

But certain dull noises come up from repressed as I think of that version of “me,” in “favored form” no less, attacked in my sac, my life-saving, fluid-filled sac, with my brio besieged, though buoyant against the thuds and the thumps, HO-dee-HO, and the whup and the wrack, [ 115 ]

HO-dee-HI, and I try … I try … to imagine

the grace in her womb,

and by extension

the joy in creation

which powers my true body engine.

Yet the truth, when I let it, makes of me still …

a wannabe born …

a wannabe born …

a wannabe born.

Popular songs of the 1930s quoted or alluded to

“Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December” (1938)

Words by Maxwell Anderson; Music by Kurt Weill “Red Sails in the Sunset” (1935)

Words by Jimmy Kennedy; Music by Hugh Williams “Pennies from Heaven” (1936)

Words by John Burke; Music by Arthur Johnston “Falling in Love with Love” (1938)

Words by Lorenz Hart; Music by Richard Rogers “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (1930)

Words by Dorothy Fields; Music by Jimmy McHugh “HI-dee HI-dee HI-dee HO” (1930s)

Words and Music by Cab Calloway, “Hi Dee Ho Man” “I’ve Got the World on a String” (1932)

Words by Ted Koehler; Music by Harold Arlen

[ 116 ]

Bobby Philip Bowne

“Surely it’s unnatural for an eye to see death twice over?” Bobby said doubled over, fastening two straps around his grey wrists.

He coiled the straps around a one hundred and twenty kilogram barbell, sucked in the stagnant air and tugged the bar up from the floor. I watched him grind it along the front of his hairless shins, struggling and grunting, testing his joints, barely hauling it up to the top of his legs. I caught him enjoying a moment of pride in his crinkled face, having deadlifted more than me. He had always been so smug about his strength, but officially becoming a pensioner at the age of sixty-eight really thickened up his broth. He let the metal weights crash onto the rubber floor with a loud clang. His white moustache fell over his lips like two wilting petals, parting only for his yellow smile.

The gym instructor drew his eyes up from his copy of Fifty Shades Darker, and shot us a cutting stare from the back of the warehouse gym. He was well known around Eastbourne as Slickback Rick – rumour had it that the nickname spread as far as Brighton and Polegate during his doorman days. His hair was noticeably thinning on top now, but he compensated for this by using his own bodyweight in hair product. He sat by the old wooden door which fell into the room at a jaunty angle; like it was pulling itself away from its hinges. On windier days, a salty sea-breeze tickled its way through that old cracked door. Sometimes the sunlight broke through the jagged blind, and fractured the suffocating grey light. It was a strange place for a gym to be: up by the coast, on the Downs. It was too close to nature.

“But you ain’t gotta give your eyes. I chose to. You can choose what goes.”

“I’d never fancy getting rid of all my innards. Especially my eyes. They see it all. Don’t they deserve a rest?” Bobby’s arms were tied in a defiant knot.

“It’s just something I’ve had to think about,” I said. “They ask if you’d want to be a donor on the driving licence application.” I lied. A few other men were in the weights section, measuring their manliness by the resonance of their

[ 117 ]

grunting. The tuneless music of dumbbells clattering onto iron racks rattled through my ribcage.

“I hate the idea of it. Always have. It’s Frankenstein nonsense. Why would I want my heart beating in another man’s body?” Bobby was as stubborn as a wet match. Any transplant of his organs would be useless: they’d reject their new host straight off. Take his bowel. Although it seems loyal to him, in another I could see the thing slackening at will. It’d be anarchy. I imagine no amount of Yakult could appease Bobby’s betrayed bowels.

A bead of sweat plummeted down Bobby’s straight nose, lingering on the tip for a few seconds. His nose had been flattened out from his National Service in the mid-fifties, when he got into a scrap over a cut out of Brigitte Bardot. He never told me any more than that, but I guess he lost, ‘cos his nose was as sheer as a cliff’s edge. “How’s your dad, anyway?” He always shoe-horned that question into conversation, as the people who are never there to ask for themselves will do. He inspected the loose sleeves around my biceps. “You’re slacking, Freckles,” he said. I didn’t like him calling me that. I expected better than a lazy jibe at my gingery skin.

A seafront burster whisked Rick’s sheets of loose paperwork up into the air.

One fell onto a treadmill and got stuck in its belt, appearing and vanishing every other second. He ignored them and leafed over the next page of his book with hungry eyes.

“So you wouldn’t have another man’s heart, or liver, if you needed it?” I asked, knowing he needed a liver – my dad told me before everything, a few weeks back. “Well, he’s alright for now,” he’d said, “but they say it’s six months an’ old Bobby’ll be out on his back.”

I slipped two plates off each side of Bobby’s barbell and let them clank on the floor. At that, Slickback Rick looked ready to kick fifty shades of shit into me. To him the iron plates were to be treated as sensitively as a grandmother’s rosebush; and his animosity towards weight-clangers intensified if such noises interrupted his spunky day-dreams. He gritted his teeth. His jaw tensed and relaxed just below his ear at a slow, pulsating rate.

I went as Bobby did, wrapping the straps about the greasy bar and heaving it upwards towards my mid-riff. It slipped from my grasp as I almost had it, crashing down onto the floor.

“Rick’s gonna chop your bollocks off if you keep that up, Freckles.”

“Someone else could make use of them then, maybe.” I said.

“No-one’s gonna want a bollock-transplant with you, old boy. Imagine waking up from the op with a pair of tic-tac ginger nuts. I’d rather have no bloody bollocks.” I noticed a burst blood vessel in Bobby’s left eye. Probably from lifting too much. [ 118 ]

“My grip’s still so weak,” I said, thumbing the golden callouses at the bottom of my fingers.

“It’ll come on with time.”

“I don’t know.”

Bobby snatched at my nose, squeezing it between his index and middle finger, before drawing his hand away and pursing his thumb between the two fingers.

“Got your nose! I’ve got it lad — hope it’s not on the transplant list.”

I had a bad habit of trying to grab Bobby’s fist when he did that. It felt like I had to, otherwise he’d win and I couldn’t bear that. Bobby hid his hand behind his back, and then lifted it above his head as I scrambled around him to try and lock his hand in mine. With his spare hand he patted me away. Brushing me aside, he started to laugh. He was at least six inches taller than me and twice as broad.

He kept laughing at my attempts to grab his hand which made me more angry and so I started to hit him on the arms and chest. But he was still laughing, more and more with every punch. His long, flat mouth dissected itself into an open red wound, bleeding laughter. I started telling him to “shut up” and to “stop now,” and “let’s just carry on with it”, but by then he knew, and he could see the tears that blended into the sweat on my whiskerless cheeks.

“Why won’t you just have a transplant when you need it, Bobby?”

He stopped. Like a marble statue, he was fixed. He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up off the floor, clicking what felt like each separate vertebrae in my spine. My chin rested on his hard shoulder.

“There’s no point, Freckles.”

“Of course there’s a point. What’s the point in all this, then? Building up, getting stronger, all to give up?”

“Give the worms more to chew on when I’m six feet under, won’t it?”

Bobby’s sandpaper cheeks became colder and wet. His face had fallen green at the mention of death – the colour of an apple that would never run ripe.

“You’re giving up.”

“I’m not,” Bobby rubbed away the teardrops from his eyelids.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. Bobby sat on one of the old leather benches that had lost half of its covering. I sat down next to him. His back crumpled over into an arc, and his face dropped into the palms of his hands. My arm was around his wide back as we spoke. I think Slickback Rick had been put off his erotic fiction by this point. I spotted him in the reflection, slumped on his stool, eyeballing us.

“It’s just not meant for me, Freckles.”

“But you love your life. You always said about Beachy Head and how people would be stupid to throw away their lives down there. Why won’t you try? There [ 119 ]

could be a donor out there already.” I just wanted him to understand how much I wanted him to stay with me.

“I just want to enjoy what’s left. Now let’s see you lift that thing properly.”

We left the gym. I hopped on my old red bicycle, ready to get home to see dad and tell him how strong I’d been that day. I could feel the crest of the waves that night; I heard the foaming whitecaps crackle over the black sand from the roadside. Bobby shook my hand, squeezing mine between both of his hard palms.

Before he left me he patted me on the chest and offered me his packet of aniseed balls. He always had a half-empty packet of aniseed balls. Bobby pulled his backpack straps taut so that it sat on the tops of his shoulders. It looked heavier than it needed to be, he looked hunchbacked.

Bobby left, meandering over the South Downs in the half-light, along the Seven Sisters. I thought it strange because Bobby didn’t live that way. I carried on anyway.

At home the smoke clung to the walls. Dad sat in his armchair, wearing a light blue shirt unbuttoned to the chest. He was whistling along to Live Forever. He always had Oasis on when I came home. I thought there was something wrong with the way he whistled. It sounded like the tune struggled in the thicker air, or that the melody was blackened by his sticky lungs.

“Why won’t Bobby do anything?” Dad carried on whistling. I went into the kitchen and fired up the gas hob. The clink of the pan on the metal grids reminded me of Bobby slamming down his weights. The hiss of the gas didn’t drown out Dad’s whistling. The kitchen worktops had a dusting of ash scattered across them, and an empty bottle of Bell’s resting against the skirting board.

Dad let out a hacking cough. I knew he didn’t care. He picked up the tune again a few moments later. I heard the footstool rush out of the armchair, thrusting his body back. On the table there were dog-eared family photos that Dad had stubbed his cigarettes out on. I picked up the glass bottle, felt the weight of it in my hand, wrapped my fingers around the bottle neck and drew it back over my shoulder. I imagined the impact of it on the wall, how it would explode and release everything. I needed to do it. But I couldn’t.

A moment later he was in the kitchen doorway, propping himself up against the doorframe. I half expected a clip round the ear for clanking the pan on the hob. He looked at me, his head cocked to the side like he was lending his ear to listen. I stepped towards him to try and get him to bed but he went for me before I could get close, barging me backwards and out of the way. He lurched over the sink, his barrel shaped gut contracting with a violent pump-action, forcing round after round of his cheap whiskey down the plughole. When he drew [ 120 ]

himself back, his eyes looked full of whiskey and loaded with rage.

“Don’t cry, George,” he said.

I could have cried for hours. But Bobby wouldn’t have let me.

[ 121 ]

Blue of Snow Mark Blayney

the clarity of trees in cold light like waking up under a new goose mattress, hair tousled, scrubbing a circle in the frost window a view like distant land through a long unused telescope gathered wood, tied in white the chilly blanket of mountain muffling sound, the naked return to bed the branches cracking and spitting red tomorrow, your face in the cloud like coffee steam the mountain vaporous at night, how exotic memory seems

[ 122 ]

“Winter Sunlight, Glen of Imaal, Wicklow” - a screenprint in an edition of 45 prints by Aidan Flanagan

[ 123 ]

Home David Lloyd

(from a story sequence titled The Moving of the Water, set in the mid-1960s in an upstate New York WelshAmerican community)

At eight fifteen in the morning, Benny DeCarlo sat in his office – a windowless cleaning supplies room with two chairs, a battered file cabinet, and a wooden desk with pink invoices strewn around a framed photograph of his wife.

Various-sized boxes had been piled along the walls to the ceiling. Benny was drinking black coffee he’d poured from a thermos, talking with Doug Sessa, the youngest custodian on his staff.

“So what?” Benny said. “He forgot to wipe his mouth. Who cares?”

“I’m telling you it was toothpaste. Fresh toothpaste.”

“You can tell fresh from old?”

“Old toothpaste is dry.”

“There’s no law against brushing your teeth at work.”

“I’m saying the toothpaste explains what I heard during the late shift.

I thought it was the heating system, but the furnace was fine. So I tracked it to the south storage room, which was locked. That’s where Griff keeps spare parts, right? Then the noise just stopped, everything dead quiet. But I’m telling you, when I saw Griff this morning, I knew what that noise was.”

“What?”

“Snoring.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“If it’s bullshit, there’s no harm checking out the storage room. Let’s open it right now.”

“That’s Griff’s room – I leave parts and supplies to him. He can fix any

[ 124 ]

broke thing in this school, and you know it. He worked construction for Tibald before they went bust. He’s been here for ten years. With Griff, there’s no surprises. He clocks in early. He never calls in sick. He brings that same bangedup lunch box to work every day. At noon he eats a ham and cheese sandwich and drinks tea with milk and sugar from a thermos exactly like mine. His wife puts a couple of these biscuit things in his lunch box – sweetest woman you’d ever meet. After Angela passed away they invited me to dinner and I ate ten of those biscuits. Griff’s always clean shaved. He doesn’t smell. See what I’m saying?

There’s no way his wife kicked him out. There’s no way he’s sleeping in a storage room. If that’s true, nothing’s true.”

“Come on Benny. You got the master key. If I’m wrong, there’s no harm. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a six-pack.”

“I don’t drink do I?” “OK. Soda. I’ll buy you a soda.”

Benny stood out of his chair slowly, fingering the ring of keys attached to his belt. “Where’s Griff now?”

“Working on the gym bleachers. Afterwards he’s got no reason to go to that storage room. Unless” – and here Doug smiled for the first time – “unless he left something at home.” *** Benny pushed open the door and flicked a switch that lit a bulb in a ceiling fixture. He scanned the narrow hallway. Cardboard boxes were stacked on shelves attached to the walls.

“Jesus,” he said. “Griff built in these shelves. And labeled and alphabetized everything: ball bearings, bathroom tiles, brackets.”

“Did you tell him to?”

“No, but it’s a great idea. It’s why he gets things done. He doesn’t need me looking over his shoulder. Not like you,” Benny added, “with that dumpster episode.”

“You had to bring that up didn’t you? I said I was sorry.”

“We don’t run a public dump. You can’t fill our dumpster with other people’s crap. Especially toxic crap.”

“I said I was sorry.”

Benny pulled a large box labeled ‘nuts and bolts’ off the shelf. Inside, he found smaller boxes, organized according to size. He turned to Doug. “This here’s the best organized supply room I ever saw.”

Doug squeezed past Benny to continue down the hall, occasionally setting a hand on a labeled box. He stopped at a black curtain hung from a rod attached to the ceiling. [ 125 ]

“The room’s got an L shape,” Doug said. He yanked the curtain over and flicked a switch. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Six recessed track lights lit up an efficiency apartment with fitted beige carpeting and sheet-rocked walls painted off-white. In a far corner was a half-size refrigerator with an electric frying pan on top; pots and pans hung from a rack bolted to the ceiling. Floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed with paperbacks were fitted against the right-hand wall. A couch and a small round table with a reading lamp stood against the left wall, facing a TV on a chest of drawers. A photograph of Griff and his wife hung above the couch.

“Here’s where he sleeps.” Doug pointed to a loft with a retractable ladder.

“Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say he was a freak?”

Benny pulled open a hinged screen near the couch. “Port-o-potty,” he said. He flicked a switch for a ceiling fan. “And a bathtub. How’d he get a bathtub in here?” He started laughing, and Doug – after hesitating – laughed with him.

“Do you believe this guy? Everything’s crammed but nothing’s crowded. And the workmanship.” Benny ran a finger along the edge of the bookcase. “Custom-built, as plumb as can be.”

“Benny.” Doug lifted a framed document from the wall. “What’s this? It’s a bunch of gibberish.”

“It’s gotta be Welsh,” Benny said, looking it over. “That’s what he talks with his wife. And her name’s at the top – ‘Elizabeth: 1901-1964.’” Benny put his hand on his forehead. “Hey, it’s a funeral program. She’s dead. She died this year.”

“And then he moved into our storage room,” Doug said. “That’s gotta be what happened. Unbelievable.”

Benny was again scanning the room. “He carted in lumber and worked for how long? A month? Three months? Nobody knew. The guy …” he turned to Doug.

“The guy’s a genius.”

“Must have been at it weekends and nights,” Doug said, “so nobody heard.”

“Ten dollars we find cheese and ham in the fridge,” Benny said. “And milk.

I’ll be god-damned.”

“Griff’s the senior guy on staff. What’re you gonna do?”

“There’s no choice.” Benny shook his head. “I have to let him go.”

“Remember that raccoon last winter?” Doug said. “It’s like that. Nasty.”

“Yeah, and it was your job to get rid of it.”

“I wanted to,” Doug said. “I brought my hunting rifle, remember?”

“You don’t bring a gun to a school you idiot. How can you not know that? It was Griff took care of it. Trapped it, and drove it to a golf course.”

“Probably rabid,” Doug said.

“Anyway,” Benny said, “he did a nice job, didn’t he? Better than my own god damn place.” [ 126 ]

*** Just before noon Benny found Griff in the gym, setting tools into a toolbox.

“Will the railings hold?” Benny asked.

“I bolted them good,” Griff said. “They’ll hold. And I had a word with Coach Henning. You wouldn’t believe the state of his office. Shelves, a closet, a built-in desk would change everything.” Griff pulled a folded paper from his back pocket.

“So I drew up a plan…”

“Griff,” Benny said. “We gotta talk.”

“Just listen,” Griff said. “I even can fit in a cedar closet for uniforms. What d’you think?”

“Here’s what I think,” Benny said. “We get some lunch. Does your wife still pack those biscuits in your lunch box?”

“No,” Griff said, looking away. “Just sandwiches now.” *** Instead of joining Griff for lunch, Benny went to his office and shut the door. He sat in his squeaky swivel chair. He stared around: at the dusty metal file cabinet, the bare walls, gritty concrete floor. “Jesus Christ,” he said. He took a sandwich from his lunch box and tossed it on the desk.

A knock on his door was followed by a quick, “You here?” Doug stepped in and closed the door. “What did you tell him?”

“Who?” “Griff. What did you say? About him living like a raccoon.”

Benny shook his head. “He’s not living like a raccoon. He’s living like a messed up person.”

“You didn’t say anything?” Doug took a step closer. “You’re letting him stay, aren’t you? In a god-damn storage room.”

“Who cares?” Benny said. “Who really cares? We all get out of bed in the morning don’t we? We go to work. We go home. For me it’s an apartment in a building where I don’t know anyone. You go some other place. You’ve got a toilet, a TV, a bed, right? He’s got those. Except somewhere along the line his home got messed up. Or maybe he ran out of money. If a wife gets sick and dies, that’s expensive. I know about that.”

“I can’t believe this,” Doug said. “This is fucked up.”

“He’s sixty-seven for Christ’s sake. What’s he going to do? Where’s he gonna go?”

[ 127 ]

“This isn’t right,” Doug said. “You think the principal wants a creepy Welsh guy taking a bath in a storage room? Using a port-o-potty for God’s sake? You think that’s gonna work?”

“He’s not creepy. He’s messed up.” Benny took a bite of his sandwich and chewed. “I’m one too. A messed up old guy. If I didn’t stop drinking, I’d be a dead old guy. I retire in two years. Maybe I’ll move in with Griff.”

“Go ahead,” Doug said. “Make a joke. That’s your call. Do whatever you want. But remember what I said.” He pointed a finger at Benny. “This isn’t right.

And someone’s gonna find out. And then you can only blame yourself.”

“How about you?” Benny said. “You’re in on this. What’re you going to do?”

“Me?” Doug opened the door. “I’m not messed-up. I’m not an old guy. And I’m not losing this job.”

[ 128 ]

To Chris Meredith Rosy Adams

Dear Sir, you won’t remember me, I’m sure.

One of many in those old-school high school days.

I’m all grown up now, I don’t skive no more although I never missed your class. Those four years most teachers didn’t even see my face, dear Sir, you won’t remember me, I’m sure you’ve got way more important things on your mind than reminiscences of old school daze.

I’m all grown up now, I don’t skive no more.

Come late to university I saw your name wrote on my reading list, pride of place dear Sir, you won’t remember me, I’m sure.

Your name feels awkward in my mouth. No more sir, even teachers have first names it seems, ‘cos I’m all grown up now, I don’t skive no more.

You’ve gone so far. Perhaps you’ll leave the door ajar for me. I’ll follow you a ways, dear Sir, you won’t remember me, I’m sure.

I’m all grown up now. I don’t skive no more.

[ 129 ]

My Name is Marcia I am Agoraphobic Eloise Williams

Fire My name is Marcia – I didn’t choose it. It makes me sound like a character from a Woody Allen film where all the actors repeatedly talk over the top of each other and look scarlet with rage. Probably because they can’t hear what anyone else is saying. This method of communication reflects my family perfectly. I don’t really see my family anymore.

I didn’t choose my hair which is somewhere between straight and wavy and frazzles out from my parting into a triangle around my head. On a humid day I look like a wigwam.

In addition to these problems I am ginger.

This defines me in a way that other hair colours don’t. When I am angry my hair flames in crimsons and coppers. When I am happy my hair shines carrot orange.

When I am sad my hair becomes crispy and burnt like crunchy autumn leaves.

My personality is stereotypical for my colouring.

People say: I’m easily annoyed - ‘because she is a red head.’

I am sad because - ‘she was picked on for being ginger.’

[ 130 ]

I am happy because - ‘how could you be down with hair like Ronald McDonald.’

I didn’t choose my crooked teeth which are crossed at the front and make my too thin lips protrude so I can never quite close them.

I’m aware that this is a fashionable look for TV personalities who have their real enamel removed so they can pay to have false, goofy looking, American style, denture resembling, stupidly straight, electric-white teeth. But mine are real and I can’t afford to change them.

I didn’t choose to develop a moustache or to have russet splodges all over my body which used to be a dot-to-dot of freckles until they joined together in a lump when I hit thirty five.

I didn’t choose to be alone, but when you look at the list of things that are wrong with me, I’m not surprised.

I think the bird is dead.

I sit at the window in the morning gazing out. Sometimes the sun pours rays through the dust of my room and dances patterns on the carpet in quavering pools of light. Sometimes it is so strong that it burns the scents of memories from my antique wooden chair and smothers the room with the smoky smell of time.

Sometimes I miss it completely because I can’t get out of bed.

This morning I have made it to the window.

I tuck myself just behind the frill of the curtain so I am not in view from the neighbouring garden and sip at my smouldering tea.

Usually I listen to the tick, tock, tick of time, but today the man next door is practicing early and darting piano notes flicker and snap. I roll the notes hungrily around my lizard dry tongue like a Catherine Wheel then spin out their colours from a heart filled with fire.

Despite being Welsh I can’t sing.

[ 131 ]

Air Today the sun is a whisper.

I lean forward a little further from the safety of my corner to observe the greedy horizon. Disused local shops creak and whinge. Desolate churches cry the sigh of long forgotten hymns over vandalised graves. Children forget to put coats on their push-chaired foetuses as their multiple cheap chains clank, slapping their rank on love bruised necks, fighting to be the roughest of the rough, to at least succeed at something.

I don’t see any of this. I see the end of my garden, the crumbling wall, the hills in the distance, the clouds crossing swords in a shivering silver slate sky. I haven’t been outside in months.

The bird hits the pane of the window with a thump. The glass shudders as it falls like a stone. It’s a hard landing. The house is imprisoned by a cement path.

It takes me an awfully long time to make my way from my safe place to the kitchen door but I can imagine the bird out there struggling around in pain, its wings fluttering helplessly in the breeze whilst it opens its mouth in a silent squawk of ‘help’.

I stand at the kitchen door.

I stand at the kitchen door for a long time.

And then I stand there a bit longer.

The air in the room becomes a vacuum. I don’t know how this happens but when I think of going outside it always does. It starts to pound at my ears as if it is trying to drum its way into my skull. My stomach fills up like a pumped tyre.

My head feels as light as a hot air balloon one minute and as heavy as a sinking submarine the next. It is difficult to breathe - by difficult I mean shards of oxygen are whistling through my teeth in spiteful strands thinner than spaghetti and I am gulping at nothing, swaying from side to side like a willow - but for once I am determined. I touch my fingers to the handle and suck a drowning mouthful as I pull the door towards me, ready to sky dive, to parachute onto the battle field, to face the world outside.

[ 132 ]

I step over the kitchen stoop, one step, breathe. I step onto the path, one more step, breathe. I bend to pick up the bird in my trembling hands, one more step, breathe. I repeat the sequence backwards.

I am in my kitchen and the door is closed but I feel different for a moment.

I was closing in on myself like an envelope but now I am billowing out like a jellyfish.

Water Raising a salty tongue to my lips I cradle the bird gently in both hands, with my back to the door hard and my soul returning to my body in shudders and waves.

The bird has a single drop of blood at its breast, a deep vermillion bead that doesn’t drip, or swell, but remains intact in its marble-like perfection. It stares up at me with its glassy eye and I see a tiny version of myself reflected. I wish I could imagine what this bird has seen before it saw me. I hope I am not the last thing it sees, a triangular headed woman with piano key teeth and obvious psychological problems. I pick up a tea towel from the surface with my chin and create a little nest as best I can with the use of my mouth and my elbow. When I lay the bird down it seems to relax a little into the creased folds, his little eye slowly shuts but his tummy undulates steadily so I let him rest.

There is a thick skin on my tea now so I quietly remove the kettle and take it through to the living room to make a brew. I let the bird sleep in the other room whilst I feed the hungry pot and stir the water to tan.

I’m not very good at playing the nurse. I’m not the best with blood.

The clock seems to have slowed to almost still and melancholy notes float and dip before seeping into the floor.

My bathroom is pink. A shell-like colour that clashes with me so startlingly it winds me when I catch sight of myself in the mirror. The water splashes and waltzes reflections to the walls as it tumbles to the sea. I disappoint some of it by collecting it in a small clear dish and laying it neatly with the lemon and summer-blue cotton wool balls that have now become my temporary bird

[ 133 ]

hospital. I am aware I am taking my time but I’m afraid the bird will die once I start my inadequate tending.

I tread water for a while, arranging my miniature surgery, rearranging it. There are only two cotton wool balls and a dish so even I can’t procrastinate for too long.

It’s raining outside. I can hear the tip tap, tappety-tap of the drops landing on slate just above my head. The forecast on the radio says we are due flash floods but that’s just a normal day.

I balance the dish carefully down the stairs, trying to stop the tiny ocean rollers from slapping over the sides. I only lose a small amount which trickles down my arm and drips from my elbow to leave a navy splash on the royal blue carpet.

The bird is dead. I knew it would be.

Earth I don’t know how long I have been in the garden digging. The rain has stopped and there is a chocolate thick mud smell in every breath. The small mound of earth glistens as I pat it down gently. I rock back on my haunches and let my lungs fill with the clean crisp smell before starting my shaking journey back to the safety of my personal prison.

I stop the clock.

My fingernails are brown as I get into bed. My hands smell of the world.

I close my eyes and think.

I think about the bird leaving the earth and flying up towards the swallowing moon.

I think I hear the world outside turning slowly while people slumber and rot.

I think about Woody Allen. He has achieved a lot for an agoraphobic.

I think about the view from my window.

[ 134 ]

Grieving Keats Spensa Thornton

(Charles Brown arranged for Keats to journey to Italy, without Keats’ knowledge or consent, because at the time the warm climate was considered a cure for consumption) But I didn’t know my hands would tremble turning page after page to hear your sobs when robbed of Fanny’s arms, torn apart.

Blood and brine lined your mattress with each pitch and toss of the ship, your ink-stained fingers numb gripping your bunk. Did you search on deck for the moment of her eyes? Her treasured white cornelian, now your only thread to her, made your dead hands colder.

You would not let it go, and it lies still with her last letters that you could not bear to read. It is winter in Rome, and cold: my nostrils burn; my coat with its upturned collar a shield beside your grave. I’m torn apart, but two hundred years too late.

[ 135 ]

Horatio Clare Radio Free Rochdale

Chapter 2 – The Wasteland of Best Westerns Daventry, he established, was near where he was. He found himself on a helpful map of service stations. Tonight somewhere, Saturday night somewhere, Rochdale on Sunday, he proposed – no sense rushing too far north too soon. Never Ever Go North: it had been one of his Iron Rules, along with No Long Distance Relationships and No Actresses. The last had been handed him by a friend who was an actor, who had dated several actresses and indeed married one. He – the friend, the Great Coyle – had advised against actresses, at one point, and he, Saul, had liked the idea of being someone who Didn’t Date Actresses. In fact he had long longed to meet an actress and date her, having first made it clear that he could not. And here he was, a pair of ragged claws slumped in a service station not that far from Daventry early on a Friday night with an after-hangover (when you can eat practically anything, though nothing in that service station) dreaming about a past life in which he had never had the chance to not not date an actress – bitter fate! And all over now, everything over, now that he had met her - and contemplating a return to the North, where he had vowed he would never go again, after the last few times.

There being a certain comfort in the helpful map he returned to it and regarded old man Britain, with his wild eccentric hair, jumping off the cliff of northern France, face to the gale, legs kicking, head high, veins varicose with service stations. Two nights of daunting potential: a little holiday, a leaving present to himself. Where? Some great city? No: no great expense. The coast would be nice but Daventry was far from coastal. Hidden England then, not Sunday supplement Secret Treasures of England with their BMWs and smug ducks, no, something – quietly pleasing. And close: the car... M1, M6, round Rugby, clip Coventry, bugger Birmingham, something like Cannock, sounds nice, or Lichfield... The word stirred

[ 136 ]

like a tail flicking in the mud on the floor of a peaceful pond... Lichfield, what was it? The Voyage of QV66! Lichfield cathedral! He would go there at once. Perhaps they would still be serving supper.

“I’m afraid the restaurant has closed sir, but there is a twenty four hour room service menu – sandwiches...?”

Ham and bloody cheese and two bottles of red wine, one he would not finish, and the television. What had Loz said? Magnificent, no, majestic arse. Majestic. Not fat: he would have noticed. Horny and lonely he contemplated the newsreader on News 24. She would be nice. Did she have a boyfriend who knew her intimate voices? And the weather girl on Sky. What did she wear under? How many hands on how many solitary cocks in how many Best Westerns, in England, now? Voices in the street: the Lichfield lads had scored some baking powder cut with a crystal or two of Medellin. The Voyage of QV66 by Penelope Lively – lovely name! – had a hero called Stanley who was a monkey, and a dove, and a cow, and probably a dog and they all set sail across a post-apocalyptic flooded England, either going to Lichfield or leaving it. He had loved that book once. Waterstone’s Lichfield would surely not have a copy. First thing, he vowed, he would eat breakfast: all of it.

Whenever Stanley had an insight, was about to achieve a break-through (upon these the success of the voyage depended) he would suffer a dreadful headache which would put him into an appalling temper. It had been very funny at the time, though nowadays they would probably diagnose a tumour. There was one about the numbers on the road signs: after a headache and some bad language Stanley had intuited that the numbers related to distance. So London 127 means – a very long way indeed. How many headaches to Rochdale? He pictured a temperate valley with a distant motorway beating the darkness and three chimneys on a low sky and a converted watermill selling soft furnishings.

Could you make anything else out of sausage skin? It seemed useful. Viewing windows in eggs, for example. He punctured a tomato which spat pip and red dribble at his shirt. The bacon left little pink wedges between his teeth.

He watched some of them spiral down the plughole in the bathroom. Farting significantly he returned to bed and watched more news. Morning hotel beds are the best places to be. They hold heat so well. Reception wanted to know if he would be staying another night. Celebrating his confirmation he lit a cigarette and took a shot of last night’s wine. In the rim of sky above the roofs opposite he watched the frigid wind tousling the clouds and grinned and shivered and wondered if Mr Bleaney really had it as badly as all that. He was not a legless beggar in the ravening Mumbai traffic. No one crucified him, mocked him or diced for his threads. And nowadays he would have access to limitless pornography to take his mind off her downstairs, the fuckees’ ersatz ecstasies [ 137 ]

covered by her jabbering set. She was the one to feel sorry for. No name, even, and scant profit in Bleaney’s rent; honour-bound to cook cabbage, sauce and gravy; poor lonesome curator of a one-wanker zoo. Phyllis, probably.

Around lunchtime he woke and sallied. Spring was colder here, without London’s warm-blanketing hum. Up and down the pedestrian area they were still lining up for lattes. Small dogs with pinched expressions – the effortful retention of all that forbidden faeces – led their ladies on.

Waterstone’s: “It looks like it’s out of print...”

“Thank you.”

Rugby! And on the eighth day, God, perceiving that his proudest creation was bound to pave over all Creation and flog it off to Tesco, created rugby. And He saw that it was good, especially played the way the Welsh play it, as long as you did not make the mistake of supporting them and have to suffer years of unnecessary defeats consequently. Four hours of it Saul Pyke took, in a nameless pub, measured out in seven fine pints. And his boys, the Welsh, actually won in Paris! He scanned the crowd in case Jessica had been swept there. He measured the weather and imagined that cool Parisian sun lighting her (not) auburn hair. Then he had three double whiskies to celebrate everything and threw up, gloriously, in the Best Western bath.

His phone was full of spontaneous emissions of Welsh joy. At this rate, he thought, as another night slumped down against the window, Rochdale is going to come as a relief. He woke up again later and called the desk.

“No I’m sorry the kitchen’s just closed, but we do have...” “ – A twenty-four hour room service menu?”

Nine hours and one breathless but ultimately humiliating encounter with Cameron Diaz – majestic **** - in ‘In Her Shoes’ later, he sank back into the embrace of the car’s kind old driving seat. He was around three hundred quid down, had missed the cathedral, and the holiday was over.

Chapter 3 – Twinned With Bielefeld If you’re going - to Sutton Coldfield - be sure to wear - some pigeons in your hair. The North came over the radio as he drew closer. Gravel and shattered glass voices, harsh laughter: how can they be so assertive about everything?

If they’re so certain why aren’t they rich? Although, judging by the quality of

[ 138 ]

the cars of the M6 they were, quite. The sky seemed to list towards the lumpen line of the land, rain darkening the high ground, spray hazing the motorway, agglomerations of heavy diesel particles spattering themselves on the windscreen like dirty little moths, and somewhere beyond Manchester, where he survived death-by-Audi courtesy of a girl with white blonde hair who was talking into her phone while apparently checking her make-up at eighty five, the ground rose ahead to a brooding embankment of moors, and off to his left a shoal of wind turbines waved for help.

“North I’m convinced of it!” he informed the car. “And over there, that could be...”

Three miles now, then the white flashes counting down, three, two, one, and...

‘Welcome to Rochdale, Twinned With Bielefeld’. Could they really have paired it with a germ warfare research station?

Easy old girl, he muttered, we don’t know what ‘estranged’ actually means; nor do we know if the natives are well-disposed to southerners. Let’s find somewhere quiet to eat and drink and hide you and check into a B and B and take it from there. No heroics, now.

“How many nights will you be staying loov?”

“Two please.”

“And will you be having tea or coffee in the morning?”

Perhaps she meant brew it overnight.

Michael Caine would have gone out for a pint in a straight glass and drunk it at the bar near the station beside a man with five fingers on his right hand. The town centre consisted of a vacant paved area, some unpromising clubs, many hairdressers, a solicitor specialising in family law, two shuttered bars, a theme pub with no obvious theme, a shuttered fish-and-chip shop, a pedestrian street lined with building societies and charity shops, a sculpture of two bronze sheep and a scatter of pale people hurrying away, borne on a biting wind. There was also a magnificent gothic revival town hall and another pub, not shut, called the Flying Horse. He had a pint for starters, a kebab for main course and a cigarette for desert. Sunday night television and a pink bedspread: Bleaney had been busy.

“Jessica?”

“Hello sweetheart. How are you?”

“Dandy. How was Paris?”

“Paris was wonderful. I wish I’d stayed.”

“But you didn’t.”

[ 139 ]

“Noo. What are you doing?”

“Watching TV in the Dick Whittington and wondering why I never came to Rochdale before. It’s so beautiful! Can I come and see you?”

“You’re here! Wow. In the Dick Whittington! Don’t go into the pub next door. In fact you’d better come up before you get battered. I haven’t got much to drink, though...”

“I’ll bring some! Do you need anything else?”

“Well you don’t have to bring anything else but since you ask we do need washing up liquid, loo paper, wine, milk, bread...”

“And Rizlas!” shouted a voice. A man.

“Who’s that? Someone estranged?”

“No, it’s Tully, my friend.”

“Cool.”

“He’s looking forward to meeting you. See you in a minute then?”

“Yes! Great...in a minute.”

He had to call her back to ask for an address and directions.

“Get a taxi sweetheart.” – and she gave him the address. “There’s a shop at the bottom of the road and the taxi will wait for you.”

He thought it must be a mistake. “How much?”

“Four pound mate.”

Four pounds! The taxi turned and bumped away. He was standing in a wide cobbled cul-de-sac surrounded by high trees. There were spits of water in the wind and that was her house, the tall one on the end. Two stone steps and a white front door. No bell.

He rapped. At first there was nothing, then a clang, and someone opened the door, cursing. A pale face floated in darkness. The voice sounded anxious: “Hello, is that...?”

“Hello. Are you Tully?”

“Yes, Saul is it? Come in. Madam’s in the bath. Don’t trip over these fucking bikes I just really fucking hurt myself, look, what do you think – is it bleeding?”

After darkness and bikes came impressions of flagstones and a big room with a big sofa, a couple of low mismatched chairs, a stuffed vertical book case, dim lighting, a wild dog like a black fox which jumped at him with surprising springs

[ 140 ]

and an overall feeling that this was a hippy house – but Tully wanted him to inspect a grazed shin.

“Ouch. Nasty. Warm water, with salt.”

“Salt, really?” Tully had dark eyes and blackish hair which lumped out from his head beguilingly, as if he had just got out of bed. “Won’t that..?” Tully burst out laughing. “Won’t that fucking hurt? Salt in the wound and all that?”

“Shouldn’t be so bad. Disinfectant... Like going in the sea?”

“Oh fucking hell I don’t think it’s necessary. Do you think it’s necessary? I think I’ll just have something to drink. Do you bring rizlas?”

“I do. And...”

“Wine, great, and beer, great, and whisky! My, my. Sit down Zappa! Bloody dog...”

“She’s beautiful, aren’t you? Beautiful you are!”

“She is gorgeous isn’t she? Quite fancy her actually. Can I offer you a – glass...?”

The kitchen was a small rectangle with neat fitted units in pale wood, dark windows above the sink, two fridges, two dishwashers and a washing machine.

They liked their consumer durables, then, these northerners.

They each had a whisky. They both rolled a cigarette. He liked Tully immediately: he had the look of a man who did not eat well and was not unfamiliar with nights on hot tin tiles. His average height and build were concealed beneath shapeless dark clothes. He had a puffiness and pallor which only just failed to conceal an attractive face: clever brown eyes, wide mouth which was desperate to move, to form, to curl and to spout, and an air about him which Saul recognised: Tully was an intellectual. Saul had seen many in London, but they always ate well, washed thoroughly and dressed if not with style then expensively. Tully evidently did not.

Although it was not exactly cold in the airy sitting room, Tully hunched like a tortoise in his black coat which looked as if it might whiff a bit. No one else would want to delve into its swollen pockets.

“So you met Jessica in London?”

“Yes.” “I heard you made a speech!”

“Ah...”

“And now you’re here.”

“I guess...”

“So I should ask you - actually she’ll probably kill me,” (he whispered this and

[ 141 ]

waved one hand in a stabbing motion to emphasise his pleasure at the thought).

“But – are your intentions – honourable, can I ask?”

Tully was smiling and nodding in encouragement or in amusement, but there was no doubt as to the sincerity of the question. Saul felt an absurd sincerity of his own well up.

“Absolutely. Absolutely, I just think she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and I sort of fell for her and I’m serious about her, if that doesn’t sound mad, but if she wants me to go there’ll be no trouble at all, I’m gone...”

“And you do know she’s married?”

“Yes. Estranged, I heard?”

“Fucking awful business. And she’s got a kid?”

“So she said.”

“Well, good luck to you mate. Fair play actually. Cheers.”

“Cheers, Tully.”

“Cheers – actually I don’t really know your name - Spyke, or something?”

“Saul Pyke. Why did they call you Tully?”

“My name’s Jethro.”

“Ah.” They were both laughing hard when he heard the displacement of weight beyond the wall; movement, descent. Zappa’s ears shot up and she wagged her tail at the door. They kept laughing until the door opened and there she was, actually there, taller than he remembered her in a hippy dress of red and green swirls, with her hair long and damp and more purple then than auburn, smiling at their laughter and sudden silence and saying, in that soft and lovely voice, “So what’s going on in here then?”

He stood up, aware of Tully watching him with a witness’s smile. They stepped towards each other like teenagers on Prom night. Straight out of a Dylan song, he thought.

“Hello beautiful,” she said.

“Hello Jessica,” he managed, and the breath refused to leave him properly as he kissed her cheeks: very cool, and her hair smelled cedar-sweet and a dark light seemed to swirl around her.

[ 142 ]

Fetching a glass of wine for her he realised there was a tiny flotilla of cork bits in it. Before he had time to change it she said “No, give it to me. I always like some cork in my wine...” (‘...ole-ways... soom...’)

His heart was beating quite quickly as they took seats, him at one end of the sofa, her at the other, Tully on a chair and Zappa doing rounds, thrusting her nose at each in turn and snaking her back hips, as if asking for cast confirmation that this really was an occasion as happy as it seemed. Quite soon she and Tully were talking about work. They were Further Education teachers at the college in town.

Tully taught the Motor Vehicle boys, “Tully’s little droog fiends” as Jessica called them. She taught future nurses, musicians, drama students, hair dressers: taught them how to read, write and speak, apparently. It sounded anarchic.

It works like this, Tully said. Every kid they take gets an EMA, a payment from the government, thirty quid a month for materials, as long as they turn up. Do they turn up? Not always.

“Does their EMA get cut, then?”

Jessica made “Spppff!” sound. Tully raved: “I’ve had parents coming up to me, you know, threatening me, shouting – ‘Where’s the fucking money then?’ And it’s not going on rent either. Kids hand it over and the parents are off down the pub, the dealer, the bookie, whatever... But, you know, at least the kids are under some pressure to turn up!”

Saul and Tully rapidly entered into conversation like a socio-political game of Snap! to which Jessica occasionally contributed a corrective or illustrative anecdote. They began with this record-breaking, dribbling, drunkenly wastelaying recession which had seized the country’s helm (Saul did not like to think about it: voluntary redundancy in the middle of this, anyone?) setting Government and Opposition in a dance-off for who could find the biggest ‘savings’.

“And where do you think ‘Further Education’ rides in the charts?” Tully demanded.

“Who votes we throw more cider money at the underclass? Few enough of the kids are old enough to register – and who – or what - counts with the parents? Who gives a fuck if the parents – these are second or third generation unemployed, yeah?” he winced. “Who gives a fuck if they live or die?”

“Well, the BNP say they do,” Jessica put in.

“Exactly! It’s not surprising those cunts...”

Further Education had had its summer, they explained. There had been a lot of

[ 143 ]

money for a Chief Executive who was not paid by the hour, nor retained on a short term contract, who was going to deliver a (pointless, they said) new building which was going ahead, requiring that everything else be slashed to sustain it.

The teachers were paid little. (It all rather reminded Saul of the Corporation.)

They gave their lives to it and were rewarded with short term contracts. They would be informed if they were required next term about three weeks before it began. Their manager’s job was to extract the maximum of unpaid hours (weeks, in the summer) from them, alongside the highest possible scores from their students. Because of the League Tables, you see. None may fail, or what little money there was would withdraw.

And what did they actually do – what were Jessica and Tully actually for? As they switched from the general back to the particular, exchanging notes on a boy who had been coming on but whose progress had recently stalled (back on the skunk, they agreed), Saul saw them in clarity: two Catchers in the Rye. They manned the final frontier between the kids and the oblivion of bus stations.

They stood between the politicians’ beloved prison system and another swarm of unrequited and drug-hungry hoodies.

The whisky went down well and a little bit of something nice appeared from somewhere. Jessica insisted on rolling it, which she did beautifully, fashioning something longer than her slender fingers. When she passed it to him he felt like Leonard Cohen.

“How long have you been teaching here?”

“Seven years,” she said; she sighed.

“Long!”

“It’s my penance.”

“For what?”

“Crimes of a past life!”

She had several past lives, it emerged. She was a Pagan, she said. For the first seven years of her life she had been away with the fairies. She had a grandmother who was a witch, who had loved her and taught her. Once she had lived in ancient Egypt. In her dreams she fought dragons in defence of her little boy. With a sword – she cut their throats. But the crimes for which FE teaching in Rochdale was penance were committed in this life, she laughed, in Portugal, she explained, where she had multiple convictions for soliciting. Not selling her body on the street, but Time Share. (It was more lucrative.) She had had a driver, a house keeper and a maid. As Saul was to discover, this had not helped her washing-up skills or her attention to house work. In those days she had been paid a grand a week, cash. [ 144 ]

“Someone did once offer me a job running a brothel,” she said, thoughtfully, “But I turned it down.”

Gangsters, gangsters everywhere, and Saul’s stomach did shrink.

“Are you in any sort of trouble?”

“Oh no.”

“She is!” Tully cawed, “She’s always in trouble.”

Jessica took umbrage and Tully took it back. She could call Tully to heel faster than Zappa, he noted, but she obviously loved him, so fair play, as Tully would say.

“Well, I better go. School tomorrow...”

“Alright darling.”

This was the moment. He could go with Tully, who even now was summoning a cab, or...

“Shall I go?” he whispered.

“If you like!” she whispered back.

“Can I stay for another?” he whispered.

“Ok then!” she whispered back.

“Will you marry me?”

The taxi hooted and Tully kissed Jessica, then he and Saul hugged spontaneously.

Tully fell over the bikes again on the way out, cursing. When they had stopped laughing they looked at each other shyly. Alone for the first time: any rupture of those warm darkling glances would have been violent. His was also clumsy, despite the couching.

“So – may I ask - how long have you been – estranged?”

“About a year.” (Actually it was somewhat less.) “So...”

“Difficult?”

“Yes. I can’t really – well, I wouldn’t anyway, obviously, but there’s no question of one night stands. My little boy...”

“No, no question, I understand that.”

“And how long have you been – single? If you are?”

“I was going out with a girl called Anna until about a month ago, then I said I was going to move out – I was living with her – and I’ve been on a sofa for the last few weeks.” [ 145 ]

“And what are you going to do now sweetheart?”

“I’m going to have to think about another job.”

“But not with the BBC, I imagine.”

“No... I could... go back to newspapers...” (The way he said it made it sound hopeless. What paper in the North was ever going to take him on? He did not even know where Runcorn was.)

“Go on,” she said, gently.

“Well, it’s a question of what you’re good at, really, isn’t it?”

“Yes – so – what are you good at?”

“I’m a good barman... I can catch sheep... I’m a good shot... Umm...”

“A sheep-shooting barman then?”

“Yes... Or... I’m good at English literature.”

“Teacher slash barman slash sheep stealer?” she suggested.

“I’ve got my redundancy money,” he remembered, brightly. “That’ll see us through for a bit. But then there’ll have to be something.”

She might not have heard the ‘us’ but she had.

“What do you really want to do?”

“I only want to make radio,” he said, “and have you have my babies. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t want my son to grow up in Rochdale, going to shit schools. And I’d like some more babies... yes.”

For the rest, he could not have told you what they said. The dance of hands, the space diminishing between them, the world whirling around the house in a kaleidoscope of tail lights, motorways bent into bouquets, tottering mills, bound houses hunched in scrums, dark moors applauding and stars crazed across the black shield of night he would remember, and her saying “I’ve killed you so many times before, but this time... maybe I won’t...”

And Zappa blinking at him before the downstairs light was extinguished and her leading him up the creaking stairs, her steps as soft and her grip on his hand as light as a virgin bride’s, and a full moon lighting a mattress on the floorboards of her room and bare twigs beyond the window moving without wind he would recall.

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Contributors

Rosy Adams is in her second year of the BA in Creative Writing at Trinity Saint David, and hopes to carry on to postgraduate level. She lives in the Welsh countryside with her children and a number of dysfunctional animals. This is the first time her poetry has been published but hopefully it won’t be the last!

Moritz Aust is 17 years old and lives in Schweinfurt, Germany. He’s a fine art and portrait photographer with a passion for surrealism. He started taking photos in 2011 and undertook the 100 Days project in 2012, which involved taking a photograph every day for 100 days. It helped him to develop his style and an enduring love of photography. By the end of the project he felt he was a different person and saw the world through new eyes. Everything seemed inspiring and full of meaning. He spent time experimenting with his photographs and working on getting them published. In the summer of 2013 Moritz started the 365 Days project but has had to pause it due to school commitments. His work has been featured in magazines, newspapers and social media outlets including facebook and flickr. www.moritzaust.com

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is poetry editor of the on-line magazine London Grip www.londongrip.co.uk. He has published three chapbooks and three full collections, the most recent being Fred & Blossom (Shoestring Press, 2013), a narrative sequence about love and aviation in the 1930s.

See also mikeb-b.blogspot.co.uk.

Michael Bennett was born in 1987 and grew up in Suffolk. He has been published by Litro, and will appear in the next edition of Jon McGregor’s journal The Letters Page. He is currently working on a novel and short story collection.

Aside from writing, he likes natural history, old books, painting, and playing the viola.

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Susmita Bhattacharya received an M.A. in Creative Writing from Cardiff University and is published in Wasafiri, Litro, Penguin-India, Planet, Commuterlit.com, the BBC etc. She lives in Plymouth, UK. Her debut novel will be published by Parthian Books in 2014. She blogs at susmita-bhattacharya. blogspot.co.uk.

Jackie Biggs, after a successful career as a journalist and editor, is now writing poetry in a wide variety of styles and has had work published on a range of websites and in magazines and anthologies. She loves literature to be live and reads her work regularly at various venues in her home area of Wales, including at The Cellar Bards in Cardigan, Poems and Pints in Carmarthen and at events at Rhosygilwen in Pembrokeshire. She blogs at jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk.

Mark Blayney won the Somerset Maugham Prize for Two Kinds of Silence.

His story The Murder of Dylan Thomas was a Seren Short Story of the Month and his new one-man show Be your own life-coach‌ with ABBA tours this year.

He is available for MCing, readings and comedy performances: please see www. markblayney.weebly.com.

Philip Bowne lives in Cheltenham and is a Creative Writing student at the University of Gloucestershire. He specialises in the short story and is influenced by many writers, including Celine, Irvine Welsh and D. D Johnson. He is currently working on writing his first short novel.

Joanna Campbell has been shortlisted many times for the Bristol, Bridport and Fish prizes. Numerous anthologies and magazines have published her short stories. In 2013, she won the local prize in the Bath Short Story Award and came second in the William Trevor/Elizabeth Bowen contest. She is currently revising a humorous novel about an English family in Berlin during the Cold War. Her debut collection of short stories is to be published next year. Further details of her work can be found on www.joanna-campbell.com

Thomas Chapman is originally from Nottingham, but has since fallen in love with West Wales and spent the last few years studying in Lampeter at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David. He has just completed his Master’s Degree in Creative and Script Writing, having chosen to write his dissertation in the form of a feature length screenplay. He has previously had poetry and prose published in the anthology The Month Had 32 Days and also in the compilation of poetry, Collected Whispers. Thomas is currently writing an original radio play

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and eventually hopes to further his adventures in writing by embarking on a PhD.

Horatio Clare is the award-winning author of two memoirs, Running for the Hills, and Truant, the travel book, A Single Swallow, and a novella, The Prince’s Pen. His new book, Down to the Sea In Ships, is out now, published by Chatto and Windus. Variously a journalist, teacher, radio producer and broadcaster, Horatio began life as a sheep-dog substitute, herding flocks in the Black Mountains.

Maria Donovan lives near Llanon and is the author of a collection of short stories, Pumping Up Napoleon, published by Seren, and a set of very short stories, Tea for Mr Dead, by Leaf Books. Past work has been influenced by her time living in Dorset, Holland, France and Cardiff. This story, Dog Sitting, takes the setting of the smallholding where she lives now and is an oblique response to the loss of her long-time canine companion, Bertie. Another story dedicated to him, The Wish Dog, will be the title story of an anthology of haunting tales from Wales, edited by Penny Thomas and Stephanie Tillotson, to be published by Honno Press in the autumn of 2014.

Dic Edwards was born in Cardiff. He studied at St David’s University College, Lampeter, Cardiff University and Aberystwyth University. He has written over 20 plays, including Franco’s Bastard, Utah Blue and The Pimp as well as the acclaimed poetry collection Walt Whitman and Other Poems. He also wrote the libretto for Keith Burstein’s controversial opera Manifest Destiny. In Feb-March 2009 his play Casanova Undone was produced at Kruttenden by That Theatre in Copenhagen. He wrote The Cloud Eater with Brazilian composer Mario Ferraro which was produced in London last May and was staged in a festival for young people’s opera in Rio de Janeiro in October. He is the founder and director of the Lampeter Creative Writing Centre at the University of Wales, Trinity St David.

Aidan Flanagan is a printmaker based in Co. Meath, Ireland, who specialises in creating original limited edition landscape prints. He creates his prints using screenprint, carborundum, photopolymer intaglio and drypoint techniques. He has exhibited his prints at Royal Hibernian Academy, Royal Ulster Academy, International Print Center New York, Center for Contemporary Printmaking at Norwalk, Connecticut, 8th British Miniprint Exhibition, Eigse Carlow, Limerick Printmakers, Impressions at Galway Arts Centre, Higher Bridges Gallery, Clinton Centre, Enniskillen and Miniprint de Cadaques, Spain. He recently had a successful solo exhibition of over 50 of his prints at the Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne Library and Cultural Centre, Co. Meath, Ireland. He will complete a [ 149 ]

short residency at the Cill Rialaig Art Project in Kerry during 2014. His website is www.aidanflanagan.com.

Eloise Govier exhibits both nationally and internationally with recent shows at the Welsh Assembly, Amsterdam, Barcelona, London and Berlin; she has pieces in private collections across Europe, the Far East and in the States. Eloise creates paintings and immersive art experiences from her studio in west Wales. www.eloisegoviergallery.com

Maggie Harris was born in Guyana and has lived in the UK since 1971 and Wales since 2006. A poet and prose writer, she won the Guyana Prize for Literature 2000, has represented Kent in Europe as a woman poet, performed her work across the UK and the Caribbean, was awarded a Leverhulme Research Scholarship at UWI, a Fellowship at Southampton University, and has been involved in several literary and cross-art collaborations. She is currently one of the writers involved in the Developing Dylan project in Wales and her latest book of poetry is Sixty Years of Loving (Cane Arrow Press, 2014).

Sarah Hudis is a 17-year-old poet and A level student from Bont Newydd, a rural hamlet in West Wales. She has won several poetry competitions in Wales, including the RS Thomas prize and the World Book Day competition run by Ceredigion Museum. She has twice won the Shield for English language poetry at Tregaron Secondary School eisteddfod. Sarah is bilingual and writes both in English and Welsh.

Nigel Jarrett is a winner of the Rhys Davies Prize for short fiction. His first story collection, Funderland, was published to wide acclaim in 2011, notably in the Guardian and the Independent on Sunday. His début poetry collection, Miners At The Quarry Pool, was published by Parthian in November 2013. He lives in Monmouthshire.

Daniel Jeffreys’ short stories and comic writing have appeared in Esquire, AMBIT, The London Magazine and Litro, as well as being shortlisted for Radio 4’s Opening Lines. His first novel The Bathory Quartet is concerned with a louche music promoter who can only derive emotions through music. Daniel works in a library. Read more at conanlibrarianlondon.wordpress.com

Tyler Keevil was born in Edmonton and grew up in Vancouver, Canada. He has won several awards for his short fiction and his work has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. His debut novel, Fireball, received the Wales [ 150 ]

Book of the Year People’s Prize, and his second book, The Drive, was recently released by Myriad Editions. There’s a War Coming is taken from his forthcoming story collection, Burrard Inlet, due out in May.

Alan Kellermann was born in Wisconsin, USA, and lives in Swansea. He completed a PhD at Swansea University where he lectures in Creative Writing.

His first collection of poetry is called You, Me and the Birds. He is poetry editor for Parthian.

Tony Kendrew lives and writes in a remote and beautiful part of Northern California, where he produced a CD of his poems called Beasts and Beloveds.

His first collection of poetry, Feathers Scattered in the Wind, will be published

by Iconau in the spring of 2014. A second collection, Turning, also a CD, was submitted as his dissertation for the Creative Writing MA at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Lampeter.

Anna Lewis was born in 1984. Her poems have appeared in journals including Agenda, Poetry Wales and New Welsh Review, and her first collection, Other Harbours, was published by Parthian in 2012. She also writes short fiction. Her website can be found at www.annalewis.org.uk.

David Lloyd directs the Creative Writing Program at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. He is the author of nine books, including a novel, Over the Line (2013) and a fiction collection, Boys: Stories and a Novella (2004), both from Syracuse University Press. His other books include three poetry collections: The Everyday Apocalypse (Three Conditions Press, 2002), The Gospel According to Frank (New American Press, 2009), and Warriors (Salt Publishing, 2012). In 2013 he edited the anthology Imagined Greetings: Poetic Engagements with R. S. Thomas (Gwasg Carreg Gwasg). His articles, interviews, poems, and stories have appeared in numerous journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, New Welsh Review, Planet, Poetry Wales, and TriQuarterly.

Ann McGarry nearly grew up in London, attempted to teach children, keeps on writing. Published poems in the U.S. where she lived for a while, (Kaliope, PointNoPoint, Sow’s Ear, Synapse). Currently resides in Canada (B.C.), where she is working on her second novel. “Writing poetry allows me to move across boundaries and cruise domains and realms normally beyond reach,” she says.

Rob Morgan has followed careers in teaching, youth service and politics, and now works part time in his ‘declining years’ as a Special Education Consultant [ 151 ]

and with the Ministry of Justice. He has close links with Schools, Colleges and Universities across Ukraine and lectures there occasionally to further his long term research into the Ukrainian Diaspora in South Wales. Rob writes, largely ‘non-fictional creative writing’, for a score of journals and other publications in Britain, the United States and Eastern Europe. His interests include games of all sorts, especially ‘GO’ and Backgammon; he detests gardening and decorating, and has studiously avoided both during his thirty five years of marriage.

Sue Moules is a Lampeter graduate and a Writer on Tour. She has published three poetry collections: In The Green Seascape (Lapwing), The Earth Singing (Lapwing), and The Moth Box (Parthian). She is a member of the spoken word group Red Heron, and involved with WISPA, the Welsh/Irish spoken poetry alliance.

Kevin O’Sullivan is an independent scholar and poet who was born in New York City. He has worked as a college teacher, actuary, salesman, entrepreneur, and cryptographer. With poems published in ISLE, Zymbol Literary Journal, and The Little Magazine, he is working on a first collection. And he volunteers time to the Arts and Humanities.

Bethany W Pope has published two full-length collections and a chapbook: A Radiance (Cultured Llama Press, 2012); Crown of Thorns, (Oneiros Books, 2013); The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in New Welsh Review, Poetry Review Salzburg, Envoi, Planet, Magma, The Prague Review, Words & Music, Music and Literature, The Quarterly Conversation, Tears in the Fence, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Galway Review, The Prague Review, Sentinel Quarterly and other reputable publications.

Maria Taylor’s debut collection Melanchrini (Nine Arches Press) was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize in 2013. Her poems and reviews have been published in a variety of publications including The Rialto, The North and The Times Literary Supplement. Most recently she has published Poetry Bingo with HappenStance Press.

As soon as Spensa Thornton was old enough he ran away to sea, looking for adventure and the allure of distant cultures. Needing more autonomy, he later hitchhiked to Australia with a duffle-bag and £10. On reaching India he stowed away on a P&O Liner, and was dumped off in a Freemantle jail where he was promptly put on a cargo ship to work his passage back to GB. He’s studied horticulture at Edinburgh Botanic Garden, and art at Edinburgh, Kingston, and [ 152 ]

Bath. He’s developed and run a Community Arts Project for children in Belfast, made and played afro-centric musical instruments, and been a specialist in Japanese Interior Design. He’s currently undertaking a degree at UOW Trinity Saint David.

Kevin Tosca’s stories have appeared in Fleeting, Litro, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine and elsewhere. They have recently been included in Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s and Bartleby Snopes’s Best Of anthologies. He lives in Paris. You can find him and his work at www.kevintosca. com. You can also like him on Facebook. He’d like that.

Owen Vince is a poet and writer living in west Wales. He studied, and practiced, as an archaeologist, before turning to writing - an experience that shapes much of his writing. He has had work published in a number of magazines - Cadaverine Magazine, Synesthesia, The Siren, among others, and was the winner of Granta’s #TheDig competition and Press 53’s flash fiction award in 2014.

Eloise Williams came to writing in the search for sanity after fifteen years of working as an actress. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University and has been placed in many competitions and anthologies.

Unfortunately the search continues. http://www.eloisewilliams.com

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