The Art of Tying Knots
short fiction from Lancashire and Cumbria
Rosie Garland Ian Gray Gill Nicholson Sarah Fiske David Gaffney Click here to open the book
Contents Foreword Andy Darby
Go Forward Go Back
1
03
Rosie Garland Look Both Ways Ian Gray Hangman
10
Gill Nicholson Afterwards The Box
15 18
Sarah Fiske Burnt Porridge at Versailles
20
David Gaffney You and You Alone Celia’s Mum’s Rat
25 29
04
Rosie Garland
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5
Look Both Ways Everyone deserves an interesting exit. Better than a bare-gums, blurred-eyes, arthritic-fingers drift into the void. I’m filling the tank with unleaded: shake the drops off the nozzle and head out faster than the five miles per hour I’m supposed to stick to. I slow down on the slip road. Stop and let him in, ignore his ‘Birmingham, please?’ Later, when it’s too late, I wonder whether he said that at all. “Yeah,” I say, not taking my eye off the white lines. “I hate the M6.” “Thanks for picking me up.” “Yeah.” “I’d only been there five minutes.” “Yeah.” “My lucky day. I need one.” He sniffs, picks at his cuffs. “Downwardly mobile?” “Pardon?” “Should have said ‘what’. Posh. Trying to hide it.” “What?” “That’s better. Your camouflage isn’t working. I can spot you a mile off.” His forehead corrugates in the rear-view mirror while I tailgate four drivers hogging the middle lane at exactly seventy miles an hour. One by one they obey my flashing headlights and huddle back into the inside lane. “You said, I hate the M6,” he says eventually. “I do.” “But we’re on the M1.” “So?” “Um. Nothing.” “I haven’t got a problem with the M1. You got a problem?” “No.” “Good. What’s that smell?”
Rosie Garland
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6
“Pardon? What?” “You smoking?” “No.” “Sure?” “I don’t smoke. It’s a bad habit.” “Just don’t smoke in my car, Ok?” “Ok.” I balance my fingertips on the rim of the steering wheel at ten to two. “It’s always ten to two. Why isn’t it ten past ten?” “What?” “Better.” “Uh?” “Now you’re getting it. Y’know. You said ‘what’ when I asked a question. Then grunted. Even better.” I take the exit to Leicester Forest Services so fast we judder over the hatched-off area. “It makes my lip sweat, doing that.” “Christ,” he squeaks. “You’re not the only one. Is this Deliverance or something?” “No. You sure ain’t got a pretty mouth, boy. Go on, say it for me.” “What?” “Got it in one. I like you.” We get out of the car and I slap him on the back. He coughs the whole time it takes us to walk from the bottom end of the car park to the whooshing doors. I take the opportunity to tell him a story. “These services are the biggest pile of crap in this entire pile of crap we call a country. Bring back Thatcher,” I say, sneaking a look at his response, but he’s still hacking his lungs up. I’m lying, but all artists are liars. “Even worse than Watford Gap,” I continue. “That song may have been true once, but not
Ian Gray
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11
Hangman Last lesson of the day I was to supervise the Unit. The Unit fulfilled a number of functions. Most days it was a punishment room where kids who had misbehaved spent a few hours doing mundane writing tasks. Other times it was a ‘cooler’ where kids who had lost control, temper, a fight, were held for half an hour to calm down, lick their wounds and consider their place in the universe. Sometimes it wasn’t used at all. So, an hour supervising the Unit could either be a blessing or a curse. Supervising one kid, no matter how challenging was never really a problem, but the Unit held a maximum of six kids – five in enclosed cubicles and one at the supervisor’s table – and in the last lesson of the day, that was a unique kind of purgatory as the sixty minutes crawled by. On this day I’m talking about however, I wasn’t expecting much trouble. The senior kids were out on some visit and it was still too early in the term for the others to have kicked up much of a fuss. I opened the door to find a young Biology teacher sitting at the table with a small boy with wild eyes and a flushed face. Clearly he had just arrived from some crisis. “He won’t sit in a cubicle, but he’s a bit calmer now, aren’t you Cain?” said my colleague. Cain simply glowered. “Mr. L will be back for him in a while,” the young teacher went on, looking intently at Cain, “he has to make some calls first.” Mr. L! Nick Leonidas, also known as Leo, Nick the Greek or Old Nick, Pastoral Head and hatchet man. Nick normally only dealt with the Upper School so Cain must have stepped out of line in a big way. I looked at him. As if sensing my unspoken question, Cain spoke up, with a hint of bravado, “I set fire to the gym, didn’t I.” “I’ll leave you to it, then.” The young teacher picked up some folders and left the room.
Ian Gray
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Cain sat back in his chair, stretching his little legs in front of him. He exhaled loudly and appeared to relax. “Alright Cain?” “I’m gonna be perm’nently excluded ain’t I?” It wasn’t really a question, but I answered him anyway, “dunno, Cain. Not up to me.” He looked at me balefully and shook his head in disbelief at my naivety. “Got form fer fire startin’ ain’t I? On a red card an’ all.” He stood up, pushing the chair over as he did so. I straightened up, expecting him to make a run for it, but he just wandered over to the window. There wasn’t much of a view, just the boiler room. “You have to sit down Cain, you’re not allowed to leave your seat. You should be in a cubicle really.” He turned away and flung himself into a cubicle. He began to drum his feet against the wall. It was very irritating. But that was the Unit; kids were sent there because they were irritating. “He’s takin’ his time ain’t he?” he said at last. “Who?” I said. “Him! Leo, Mr. L!” “Like Miss said, he has some phone calls to make.” “Nah, he’s lettin’ me sweat. Thinks I’ll start to get scared.” He lifted his head to look at me. “You won’t get out of here when the bell goes. We’ll both have to wait for ‘im. Like I said, he likes to keep yer waitin’.” I nodded as if I were complicit in the arrangement, but began to wonder, like Cain, just how long would Mr. L take to make his calls, and whom he was calling. Suddenly, Cain was out of the cubicle and was rummaging in some drawers.
Gill Nicholson
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Afterwards Afterwards Steph knew she had to think about clearing out his things. Everybody said it was a necessary part of moving on, what you did once the ashes were scattered. She’d taken Will in the urn, tipped him into the tarn when no one else was around. To make sure the current caught him, she waded in wearing beach shoes, staggered up to her waist holding Will aloft. The ashes floated away, their trail of scum like cast willow blossoms. She filled the urn with water and sank it too but wished she hadn’t, because after she clambered out she saw it lying there. She hoped it would sink into the mud, the evidence buried. But no one had seen her. She squelched back to the car sobbing unrestrainedly, dried and changed out of her wet clothes wailing and cursing. Then she drove home with the radio on full blast. Steph was still undecided about getting rid of Will’s stuff. Why shouldn’t she just leave everything until she needed space for something else? People would not like it; the embarrassment of a dead man’s jacket, his baseball cap and panama on the hallstand. Steph did not want empty pegs. Will’s shoes were kept on shelves in the utility room. They were going mouldy. She couldn’t take them to Oxfam. His slippers were imprinted with his toes and heels. It would be easier to start upstairs. She tackled his wardrobe, hearing his exasperation at its old-fashioned awkwardness as she wrestled with the hangers. Without sorting them, she bundled shirts into a bin bag for the charity shop. The boys wouldn’t want any. Will’s medication, stored in the bottom, she popped from their foil blisters, not looking at the calendar of future days they had promised. She poured them into the lavatory bowl expecting the gushing water to sweep them away but it took three goes. Then she peered inside the wardrobe for a final check. But for fluff it was empty. Though it matched their bedstead, Steph wanted to be rid of the wardrobe. That night she climbed into bed just as conscious of Will’s absence
Gill Nicholson
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now as she had been the night after he died. His pillows were stacked up on his side. It was no use jettisoning them to sleep with cold space on both sides. She would part with the whole suite. In the morning she would ask the boys about the unwanted furniture and find herself a single bed. There was a mess after the removal men took the bedroom furniture to the auction. Dust was no problem but the unpainted space revealed on the wall was. Will had not been able to push the paintbrush behind the wardrobe. If you’ll clear everything out first, I’ll shift it when I feel better … finish the job off properly, he’d promised. She had agreed but the moment never arrived. There was no paint to match the ice-blue walls; she’d checked all the tins stacked in the garage. She set about Will’s bedside chest of drawers next, stuffing his underclothes into plastic bags with the KY jelly, and cufflinks he’d never used. There, underneath his socks, she found more pills; not a few day’s worth, but beta blockers going back months. Her heart thumped and a cold clamminess filtered into every pore of her skin. She shook her head; refused to allow the questions entry. Swiftly, she went downstairs and out into the garden. This time it would have to be burial, under the carpet of grass. She dug ferociously making a small deep pit, not caring about the mice and moles. Her single bed was delivered just as she stamped the last sod into place. She made it, struggling with double sheets and duvet. Steph had thought the blank where the wardrobe had stood was a sign of Will’s optimism. Now it shouted another story. She stared at the patch of old wallpaper: huge pink and red roses, gaudy, sentimental. They had both hated it. She would have to see to it; cover it up somehow.
Sarah Fiske
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Burnt Porridge at Versailles My mother, Lady Jervaux, ran a circus, and her mother before her, and greatgrandmother Le Dodo before that. I have been tracing this maternal line back. Back to times when female circuses were performed in the throats of caverns, the hum of forests – even the swashy brine of seabeds. But this is no time for imparting mysteries of the female psyche. All I will say is I have information in my possession that is older than the Dead Sea Scrolls – older than theory, or time. Evidence of my genetic inheritance which testifies to the fact that my own family – my female line – are descended neither from the pink and white chastity of Eve, nor some glubby life form. I have no wish to challenge the concept of evolution. Quite the contrary. It is clear to me that the bulk of humankind did crawl from the sea. And – oh so slowly, barely an ounce of initiative between them – mate with monkeys. I just happen to know that my own ancestors did not. My family stepped straight – fully formed, upright and breathing – into immaculately vowelled life. When Mummy’s great aunt, Dolly Bognor, reached the summit of Everest in 1900, equipped only with a knapsack, Thermos flask, and the plus fours of a man she had slain at the source of the Nile in 1860, she was overwhelmed by such an acute sense of dullness, she took out a scouting knife and etched the word ‘bugger’ into her palm. This incident played dreadfully on the minds of three generations of Royals. Old Widow-Weeds dying of envy in 1901. And thirty-five years later grandson George rasping “Bugger Bognor” as his embalmers unpacked their bags. Dolly Bognor had winning ways, nutcracking thighs and unstoppable appetites. In short, she could twist any man, woman, or beast of the field around her little finger. At the Great Exhibition
Sarah Fiske
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of 1851, she had pole-vaulted Crystal Palace naked, with three hundred pink flamingos salivating in her wake. Have you ever considered how much more economic and efficient it is to be a person of small stature? Dolly Bognor was fifty inches in her stout shoes. My family are all compact. We can sit four to the back seat of most jalopies – and still have oodles of legroom. Mummy always used to say that the tall should be taxed in times of war. They cost so much more in spam and shoe leather. She wrote constantly to The Times about it. And I think I would have to agree with her. When I watch cat-walking models today, I think – all right, you’re tall. But what’s the point of you? What does your height have to do with the price of fish? So much of life as we are taught it, is back to front or inside out. Mummy always insisted we wore any clothes Nanny Gravelax had made for us, inside out. She said gratitude depended on it. That to conceal those hours of painstaking stitching would be a gross disservice to an old woman already half blind and crippled by arthritis. We girls were thus the butt of constant ridicule. And my father forever complaining that his daughters wore rags and looked state-educated. Each Michaelmas, Daddy would hoist us down through the pantry hatch into the thundering bowels of the house, to meet the boiler men – a precaution against them mistaking us for their own offspring, and perhaps mislaying us in the complex central heating system. Mummy confided in me, quite recently, that Daddy also wanted to acquaint them with our inordinate plainness – hoping it would deter any thoughts of beastliness, or profiteering from white slavery. When I suggested a little huffily to Mummy that Jocasta and Cornelia might be somewhat stodgy, but I had never thought of us younger ones – Imogen, Lilith and myself – as entirely plain, she roared with laughter. “Darling!” she cried, embracing me, “you’re simply hideous!”
David Gaffney
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You and You Alone Angela and Rowan loved each other. Utterly, thoroughly, completely. All was love. Angela was crammed to the brim with pulsating pink jelly; Rowan was on a speeding motorbike screeching down a long curving road. But there were small imperfections: a fraction of time when the speeding motorbike shuddered and gasped, a tiny fissure in the pink jelly. And the cause of these wrinkles were the ex-lovers. Neither Angela nor Rowan was young, so over the years they had collected an assortment of exwives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends. Not to mention the many flings, flirtations and encounters they had each enjoyed. Although they rarely met any of the exs, the knowledge of their existence and of the intimacies their partner had shared with these strangers oppressed them. At night Angela would wake up and imagine she could see the ex-lovers swaggering up and down in front of her, pointing and laughing. Rowan said he sometimes felt as though he was lying under many thick, heavy blankets, and the blankets were all the exs. This went on. Dark cavities appeared in the pink jelly. The speeding motorbike coughed and puttered, threatening to stall. Something had to be done, and the solution was simple. They would kill all of their ex-lovers. When the ex-lovers were dead, the couple would be utterly content and it would be jelly and motorbikes wall-to-wall. They agreed on the definition of an ex – you had to have slept with them more than once, spent a whole night together, and shared drinks or food. This criteria helped reduce the list, but there were still a lot of people to kill. They agreed that Rowan would kill her exs and Angela would kill his. That way it would be harder for the police to trace the murderers. And to make it even more difficult to connect these suspicious deaths – twenty-six in total – each of the killings would be carried out differently. Rowan listed the various ways available and matched the victim with the method, based on his knowledge of that person’s preferences. A certain ex-lover hated water, so
David Gaffney
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drowning was out. Another was afraid of heights, so the push off the cliff was not possible. Someone hated blood, so the knife was not an option. One had a fear of being buried alive so suffocation would be unkind. On a big sheet of paper they worked out a detailed plan which indicated the dates of each of the ex-lover’s deaths. Next to the date of completion Angela drew a big pink star and scribbled the word hurray. Six months later the ex-lovers were all dead. It was summer and Angela and Rowan were sat on their patio holding hands and drinking sparkling wine. “Are you full of pink jelly?” he asked her She was. And was he speeding round the bend on his motorbike? He gripped invisible handlebars in his fists. “Vroom vroom.” There they sat in the gathering twilight thinking about what they had achieved. It had gone well. It had been hard work, unpleasant often, but all in all, worth doing. Their world was now perfect. Until they began to discuss what had happened to their ex-lovers bodies after they were killed. Three had been buried (Angela and Rowan attended one of the services) but they had no idea what had happened to the others. Apart from one, who had made it known that he wished his ashes to be shot into space in a small capsule. His new wife had loved him deeply and was certain to have made this happen. His name was Roger Farringdon. The capsule containing his ashes would be circling the earth now, even as they spoke. Angela and Rowan looked up at the sky. It was a clear night and stars were twinkling. It bothered them that Roger Farringdon was up there, spinning in space. It was as if Roger Farringdon still had power over them, as if he was looking down on them, laughing. Typical of a man to want to live forever. They scoured the sky for evidence of the capsule, and after a time imagined that they could see a tiny pinprick reflected off the moon, drifting balletically.