PORN MALLOW
Sara Crowley

There was another pornographic picture caught up in the branches of her mallow. She tweezed the photo out using her thumb and forefinger, curling her lips in disgust. A shudder of revulsion accompanied her as she quickly fairy stepped her way across the front garden and back inside. A winter chill sliced through the mellow autumn light making it cooler than it appeared. Warm indoors, central heating up to 21, toasty. She pumped liquid soap into her reddened palms. She'd dropped it into her recycling box. It'd been automatic to put it there; it was paper, ergo it had to go in the green box. Now worry puffed its way into her, what if the recycling men thought it was hers? Should she take it out and put it in the food rubbish? Would they even notice? Joyce decided to leave it where it was, loathe to touch it again.

Twisting in the duvet covers tepid thoughts dripped like water torture; it was the man next door leaving the photographs, she really had to get a spare key cut, her brush was on the floor behind the dressing table, carrots don't help you see in the dark and too many can turn you orange, that nice blonde boy who used to be in the ARGH STOP IT, turn, plump up pillow, jerk out leg, too hot, too lumpy, too…

Sometimes, when she had stayed home for a while, the outside felt scary. It was easy to get grooved into her own routine. Same brekky, same radio show, newspaper delivered. Joyce liked order; she approached her chores blankly, as she did her treats. Supermarket shopping normalised her somewhat. She favoured the smallest trolleys, as did most others, it was upsetting if there weren't any available and she'd hang around the exit until she got one that was just being finished with. The mundane conversations soothed her, price of these mangos, cold outside, excuse me please.

Halloween had just passed, Fireworks night looming, then Christmas, and already the stores were twinkling silverly. The sinister penis pictures seemed a long way from threatening in the illuminated aisles.

Her living room looked out onto the garden. Joyce rolled her sofa over so it was adjacent with the window, determined to be proactive, a good buzzy word that she'd heard said often by women on the telly. She would watch and discover who was leaving the lewd images. And she would do so in comfort.

She leant against the armrest, propped a cushion into the hollow in her back, feet up, legs stretched, a mug of hot chocolate steaming beside her. Initially she focused on her mallow, untidy but flourishing, its tiny pink blooms a cheery antidote to the rest of the hibernating flowers. And then she watched people passing, coats buttoned, scarves, some hats, chilled air exhaling from chattering mouths. They carried briefcases, satchels, sports bags, carriers, handbags; all transporting things from one place to another. Cars, headlights and motors, occasionally music, cats, a few dogs being walked. As the night ebbed deeper into the morning fewer people passed. Joyce needed the toilet and twice ran bursting to it. On her return she anxiously sought out the plant but both times it remained undisturbed.

‘So maybe it blew there.’

‘Yes that's what I thought at first, I've found five so far though, now that's far from a coincidence don't you think?’

Marie agreed but wasn't sure what Joyce should do.

‘You can't keep on sitting in the dark night after night; it'll do you no good.’

‘It's as if he knows I'm watching.’

‘You don't think he can see you surely?’

‘I don't like it, it gives me the creeps.’

‘I'm not surprised love.’

Once the thought that it was Bert entered her head it stayed there like a puzzle piece satisfyingly inserted. He lived two doors away, a widow with dark, stained trousers. The scent of pipe tobacco stalely surrounded him, and now Joyce supposed the aura of masturbation to cling to him too. She couldn't decide whether he was terrorising her or sexually propositioning her. Mucky bastard.

She had three bookcases, each lined with books higgledy piggledy stacked sideways and lengthways. Yellowing musty pages of church bazaar novels and publisher's seconds and art books from boot fairs, bargains because their printed value was far more than she had paid. They had been untouched for years, papery dust gatherers silent despite all their words. She sat in the centre of her floor, flicking leisurely, knowing only that she would recognise it when she found it.

The photograph was of a Korean couple, at least that was her assumption, she'd always had difficulty with the oriental types and they could be so touchy if you got it wrong. Anyway, they were Korean, or Japanese, definitely not Chinese. A lovely young couple, wholesome and squeaky clean. Both wore dazzling white t shirts and looked smilingly to the distant right. They looked happy but not ecstatic, like ice skaters without the sparkles, anticipating perfect six point zeros forcing joy at their second place five point nines. The girl wore an oversized stripy bow at the back of her head and held two orange flowers, the boy stood with his hands on his hips. Joyce knew that they would be polite. She ripped the page from the book, feeling empowered.

At 4.33 a.m. she left her house. The night was crisp, soft moon shine beaming all around, lighting the crunch of leaves that littered the pavement. Bert's house was in darkness as she padded through his garden. He didn't care for his plants and they grew strangling each other; a tangle of branches engaging in a Darwinian struggle to survive. She firmly slotted the image between two chunky stems, checking that it was stable enough to withstand autumnal winds by blowing on it with as much puff as she could muster. Then she went home.

---

Sara Crowley has had short stories published in Pulp Net, flashquake, and a variety of other lovely places. Her novel in progress was shortlisted for the Faber/Booktokens Not Yet Published Award in 2007. © Sara Crowley, 2008.

***

DODIE'S GIFT
Vanessa Gebbie

There is a little blood on the sand, in a hollow in the dunes. There is semen too, although it is hidden in the shadows where sand and grass have been churned. The blood is clear, scarlet, bright; both its colour and its brightness out of place in the soft grey-green and pale straw colours here. It will fade soon, darken until it’s almost black, and it will be lost when a herring gull chooses this place to bring the head of a newly dead catfish. He will drop it, stand over it, stabbing at it with his yellow hooked beak, parting skin from muscle, lip from cheek, eye from socket, until all that is left is a mess of reddened bone and one thin sliver of catfish skin with a feeler still attached.

There are tracks leading in different directions. One set, Dodie’s, scramble up the side of the dune, the sand puddled and broken where she tried to claw her way out of the hollow, the top slipping further away with every step. The marram grasses are crushed where she slid down towards the field. The barley stubble is also crushed, over, over, over, where Dodie ran crying to the General Stores.

The other footmarks are The Philosopher’s, weighted, regular, the sand only disturbed and uneven in one spot at the base of the slope where he stood to adjust his clothing before striding away towards the caravan site.

**

Who is Dodie? Just this: a woman in her forties who works at the Stores. Invisible. She wears a blue nylon overall, and if it is hot she is uncomfortable by the end of the day. Maybe she smells of onions. She sleeps above the Stores in a small room that overlooks the yard. She’s worked here as long as the surfers and body boarders who stay at the caravan site can remember. If you find her at the Tinner’s Arms in the evening, you’ll see she doesn’t drink much, makes half a cider last all evening, but Bill at the Tinner’s doesn’t mind. She’s a fixture who has a place here, whereas in a city she would drown.

It is difficult to give a name to what makes Dodie different. There is no lack of intelligence, with her appetite for reading of all sorts, crosswords, number puzzles. But it is as though a membrane separates Dodie from the world. As though she was born covered in a cowl which was never quite stripped away. She looks at you, puzzled, trying to work you out, trying to read you, know you.

What she does know is here, in the Stores. She knows the pastel and black plastic tops of deodorants and the gold, white and green of hairsprays. She knows the sugary smell of Lux soap, the deeper elusive scent of Imperial Leather. She knows the jolly primary colours of perfect cereal bowls on the packets of own brand and Kellogs. She knows how sticky soap powder feels if it spills out of the box.

Dodie reads everything. Everything that comes in to the Stores in twine-tied bundles brought by the paper van. Newspapers. Women’s magazines, white smiles on the cover, ‘How to cook for six on a shoestring’, ‘Sex after the menopause? It’s great!’ Men’s magazines with bottoms and breasts pushing out on the front cover. Children’s comics. Puzzle books. She uses the photocopier in the back to copy the puzzles. Fishing periodicals. Surfing magazines. Music magazines. The special stamp-collecting issue that comes in for Mr. Fisher next to the Church Hall. She takes them up to her room and reads them all, careful not to mark them, then pushes them under the mattress to flatten them and puts them on the shelves the next day.

Who is The Philosopher? Just this: a man in late middle age, like a million others, greying, spreading, unremarkable. Invisible too. He came into the General Stores towards the end of a day in mid-September, and stood by the bread racks. He put one hand up to a Mother’s Pride plastic wrapper, and just stood there, head bowed, his rucksack making it difficult for other shoppers to pass easily. Dodie waited for a while before coming out from behind the counter.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, glancing at his face, then away.

The man looked up at the bread, then at her.

‘I’m thinking,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking about bread.’

‘OK, but could you think over there?’

The man did not smile, although his eyes narrowed a little and it could have been a smile coming. Dodie had read that smiles start with the eyes. But if she had looked closer, there were no laughter lines. He took a loaf of bread and moved to the till. Dodie took his money without a word. From then on he was, to her at any rate, The Philosopher.

**

They know little about each other after a few days of him appearing in the Stores, standing there, thinking. He chooses his times. Chooses times when the Stores isn’t too busy, so he can stand and think. Because he knows it intrigues her.

She has no idea who he is. Just a man, slightly overweight, staying on the caravan site (she asked), cheap deal, last minute. Caravan sleeping four, but he’s only one. He goes for long walks, alone. She’s seen him in The Tinner’s, drinking beer out of a bottle like a teenager. She asked his name ‘Mr …can’t remember,’ someone said.

She imagines him shaving in the morning in pyjama bottoms, peering into a speckled mirror that spots his face. He has a mouth that might have turned up once, now it is pinched. His hair is faded, was reddish. Thinning. His eyebrows are a straggle of too-long hairs. He looks wild, energetic. But that may be just illusion.

Now Dodie’s thinking too. She’s thinking she’s never met anyone like this. He stands there in the Stores at different times, day after day, where she can see him, but she’s sure he hasn’t stood there deliberately. By the bread one day, the tinned food, the next. He sat on the floor once with his head in hands. He is so deep, she thinks. So lost in thought. He was thinking about bread that first time. Bread. What about bread? A fundamental of life? Biblical? What, Mother’s Pride? Then tinned food? Thinking about tinned food? Time, that must be it, with tinned food. Preserving time. Keeping things unspoiled, but in the dark where you can’t see them, and they can’t see you. Baked beans, own brand cheaper than Heinz. Tomatoes, dented tins cut price. It must all mean something.

Dodie thinks this must have been coming for a long time. She hasn’t exactly been waiting for it, more it has been waiting to happen. She knows she’s clever, because they told her, years ago at school, she won prizes. Books, with stickers in. Bookmarks. A painted plate.

The Philosopher has been coming for a long, long time. It’s been in her horoscope. Over and over she’s read it: ‘Virgo: With the moon in Mercury, you’re going through a difficult time in your love life. But your time will come. Your even temperament will please someone who needs you.’

Dodie the Virgo. She knows, because she’s read it so many times… ‘Only 5% of females are still virgins at the age of forty five.’

She’s forty five before Christmas.

**

Today The Philosopher stands by the washing powders, fabric conditioner and Fairy Liquid. It’s nearly closing time, and Dodie needs to mark some unsold goods with today’s sell-by date at half price. She needs to walk past him to collect two Mother’s Prides and some malt loaf, some wedges of ‘Farmer’s Own Choice’ cheese and a four pack of cherry yogurt. He says nothing as she passes him. But when she comes back, he’s blocking the aisle.

‘Excuse me,’ she says.

He says nothing but moves back. Then, when Dodie is touching him with her arms, holding the goods close to her breasts, because he has not moved quite far enough, he says, his voice so close to her ear that she jumps,

‘I’m still thinking.’

‘What about?’

‘Guess.’

Dodie looks round, sees a Fairy Liquid bottle. ‘Recycling?’ she says, ‘Reincarnation?’

The Philosopher smiles, kind of. ‘How clever,’ he says. ‘We are on the same wavelength.’

‘Are we?’ says Dodie, nonplussed, putting half-price stickers on the malt loaf. The Philosopher puts a hand on the loaf, catching two of her fingers under his. She jumps again. His breath smells sweet-heavy.

‘I’ll have this,’ he says. ‘And that,’ he nods his head at the bread and cheese, ‘when you’ve finished.’ He waits.

Dodie adds the prices up wrong. Blushes.

‘When you’ve finished…’ he repeats.

‘Sorry…’

‘…we could talk about thinking. At the pub.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Well?’

She was right. It was coming. He was always coming, and she should have been ready. He’d seen something in her that she hasn’t met herself yet, and she didn’t see it. ‘… your time will come. Your even temperament…’

‘Yes please.’ Dodie says. And knowing she smells of onions, ‘Half an hour?’

And Dodie starts to make herself ready. Not just herself, although this is unconscious. Her room is as tired as she is. The bed slumps; what was bright pink candlewick is faded, uneven, the fringe pulled, trailing on the rug. There is a framed print above the bed of the sea crashing against rocks; someone, a long time back, pencilled a boat in one corner. She tried to rub it out but it’s still there, a stick man waving through the ocean at her. Dodie takes down the unlined cotton curtains and takes off the bedspread, bundles them together and puts them in the downstairs washing machine. That makes her feel better.

Later, in The Tinners, they sit together in Dodie’s corner, on sagging burgundy plush cushions. He has bought her a cider, he drinks beer from the bottle. They talk. Dodie is half listening, looking at the scratches through the varnish on the table…the number four among the scratches.

Bill calls over. ‘Dodie? You OK, love?’

The Philosopher answers, before she does, ‘She’s fine.’ Dodie just looks up and smiles.

‘Look,’ Dodie says, tracing the scratches with her finger. ‘Number four.’

‘It will mean something,’ he says ‘You wait…’

And Dodie waits, breathlessly, drinking in instances of the number four the next day. Four silver cars in a row outside the General Stores. Four stamps on a letter from New Zealand awaiting collection under the counter of the post office shelf. Four brown moles on her left thigh. Four packets of condoms sold to the driver of the paper van.

She’s picking up some apples that have fallen onto the floor. A voice close to her ear, a hand on her shoulder…’So what did the number mean?’ Dodie drops the apples. Four of them.

‘I don’t know…’ she breathes.

‘Yes you do,’ he says. ‘You have the gift.’

Dodie straightens up, the apples in her hands. ‘Have I?’ she says, eyes bright.

And so it goes on. Dodie’s curtains are rehung. She cleans her room over and over, getting down on her knees to wipe the skirting board with a blue cloth. She buys herself some hair colour, first time ever. Chestnut lights, it says, and it splashes in the sink, works its way into the cracks round the plughole. Leaves her hairline looking dark, dark. She tries the lipsticks, buys a chalky pink one, Moonflower.

Bill at the pub keeps asking if she’s OK. She smiles every time.

Four days. They’ve been ‘going out’ for four days, and people are smiling at Dodie, not at The Philosopher, and she thinks they mind about something. Maybe they are jealous because not everyone can think so deeply. Today, today, today and today. Four of them. He’s so clever. He thinks about hedges, drainage ditches, yellow diggers, dead crows, sheep’s wool, and seaweed. He says there is so much to think about in this life.

Dodie breathes faster. She searches for things, finds them, throws things out for him to think about.

‘What about beermats? Darts? Chipped pint mugs? Alcopops? Boiled eggs? Coffee?’

The Philosopher smiles and pats her hand. She doesn’t jump any more. ‘Some things are deeper than others,’ he says. ‘I’ll teach you.’

And she listens looking through him, her lower Moonflower lip hanging loose as he thinks in streams about newspapers, printing ink and trees, the ‘circle’ as he calls it of capitalism (where, he says, lots of people work in a circle, or a spiral, doing things made necessary by the ‘work’ done by the person before, but take them all out, and the world wouldn’t suffer). Sometimes he bangs the table with his fist and her cider jumps and Bill looks over and raises an eyebrow.

**

It’s late on the fourth day. She’s going for a walk with The Philosopher today. He’s coming for her soon, half an hour after closing time he said, seven thirty they close. Eight he’ll come. They’ll walk down the lane towards the beach, and they will think as they go about bungalows, lamp posts, telegraph poles maybe. Communication. That’s it. Tarmac, double yellow lines and crows flying high up above the bent fir trees. Wind. She’ll ask him what wind is, because you can feel it, but can’t see it, and that must be like God. Or is it the world turning faster and faster and faster so in the end everyone will fall over? She laughs at the thought and feels the power of it.

Dodie remakes her bed and buys herself some freesias from the bucket outside the door of the Stores. Yellow like slab cheddar. And lilac. She cuts the stems, puts them in a handleless mug painted with a boat flying the Cornish flag, and the freesias splay out on the chest of drawers, hanging in her room like aliens. She showers, using a new shower gel the girl surfers buy, which smells of lemons and limes. She puts on a flowered skirt she hasn’t worn for years, a white blouse. Moonflower.

The lane is quiet. They pass the bungalows, and just as she knew they would they think about bungalows. About old people, zimmer frames and holiday-makers, buckets of dead whelks. They pass the telegraph poles, wires, and she was right, they think about the buzz of conversation, and she brings in God then, about how God can differentiate between prayers and ordinary conversation. About whether whispering is a better way to communicate than shouting, about letters from new Zealand that no-one picks up, and she’s sure it’s a woman’s writing.

They pass the barley field and think about the razored stalks, about harvest mice displaced, and she feels the sadness of it.

They walk on to the beach, the sea pounding to their left, the dunes on their right. They pass three herring gulls tearing at a dead catfish, and they think about predation, food chains, starving and feasting. The beach is empty, and it’s getting cold. The sun is still up there, just.

The Philosopher has been holding her hand. His grip tightens a little and she starts to think about her room, the curtains, how the sun will come through the curtains early in the morning, the freesias. The stick man in his boat. She wants to tell The Philosopher about the stick man, because it must mean something, and he says, ‘Let’s sit down here,’ pulling her towards the dunes. But Dodie doesn’t want to go there. She wants to go back to her room, because her horoscope did say, ‘… your time will come. Your even temperament will please someone who needs you.’

But he doesn’t listen. He’s not saying what he’s thinking any more, and their footsteps, which had left regular tracks in the damp sand, flat flat sand right to where the waves are beating, become crossed, muddled, fast.

Dodie stumbles on the dry sand of the dunes as he pulls her up the side. ‘Why?’ she says. ‘Why are we going here?’ and she says something about freesias and stick men and The Philosopher says nothing, just pulls, pushes, doesn’t even look at her face, pulls, pushes, pulls, pushes and hurts her.

**

He doesn’t come in to the General Stores the next day.

At the end of that day, Dodie walks down the lane, waiting for the thoughts to come. She passes the bungalows, and they are just bungalows, their windows blank. The telegraph poles carry wires that hum in the wind. The barley stalks have cut her legs. She walks along the beach, looking to see if the tide has left any footsteps. They are there, somewhere, she thinks, even though their shape has gone.

She sees a young couple walking, the girl’s hair blowing over her face like a veil, and she feels the sadness of that.

She waits for them to pass and climbs slowly up the dune, searching. The grasses are still flat, but the breeze has softened the shadows in the sand. The place is healing itself. But there, at the bottom of the hollow, a gull has had a meal, and the sand holds white bone, red bone, skin, and Dodie doesn’t want to see it.

She tries to make something out of yesterday’s incident that is not hopeless. She won’t allow herself to name the act that happened here, and will wonder, if someone takes something you were going to give them anyway, is that stealing? She will think. In time her thoughts will become memories, and she will recall a little kindness where in fact there was little, and some meaning where there was none at all.

---

Vanessa Gebbie's short fiction has won many awards and has been published around the world (and appears in issues 1 and 18 of LITRO). This story is taken from her recent collection, Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt Publishing, 2008) – see www.saltpublishing.com for more info. © Vanessa Gebbie, 2008.

****

THE WAKE
Zoë Green

It is four o’clock on a warm August afternoon in Farley Green and I am sitting on my balcony with a cup of Ceylon and one of those apricot biscuits Mina bakes me, and I am planning my funeral on the back of an envelope. 6.30pm, I scrawl on the smudged brown paper. Dusk is fitting for the fifth act, the birds carolling forth my requiem beneath the dying sun, and the audience hunched in winter coats beneath the naked trees, awed and tearful at the symbolism of the set. Where? I settled on burial some time ago, the noise of the crematorium conveyor belt being too reminiscent of the MRI scanner, but it would be hypocritical to have it in a church, and all the best churchyards are booked up anyway. Mina, my Macmillan nurse, says it’s positive I’m planning the funeral; I suppose she thinks it demonstrates acceptance.

The girl who lives in the bottom half of the house – Hester – is in the garden watering courgettes and her black lab bounces in and out between them brandishing a stick. I watch Hester often; today she is talking to the dog as she waters, and her blue and white cheesecloth top looks Greek. The garden is built on three levels and tumbles down to the river where the dog likes to swim. When he swims he makes a honking noise and the hair on his head sinks flat like a seal’s. Afterwards he stumbles out and shakes his shoulders so droplets fly everywhere and his fur sticks up in quills.

I’d like to say that I don’t want anything big, but I’d be lying. The audience will require one last bow, a final curtain-call. Perhaps, at the very end, I shall convert; I’ve always fancied Catholicism, and I’m fond of the place at the end of the road with its perpendicular-style windows and the old Romanesque chancel. The acoustics are good, the choir is not bad, and the churchyard is of the briar and ivy variety; I think I would fit in. St Peter’s? I scrawl. Incense? Verdi? Find priest.

I retired here from London five years ago just before Hester arrived to take up the post of Radford estate manager. Radford is the castle at the top of the hill. I saw her in the early mornings, sitting on a low bough at the bottom of the garden, staring out over the river. She had a boyfriend, a married teacher at the local college. Laurence held her not by her hand but by the arse and, in the evenings, their arguments brewed and boiled, hissing and fizzling under the dying sun. She – this dark-haired dryad – chucked stuff, plant pots mostly, and when they broke up she troughed her way from eight to twelve stone in less than a year. Like me, a person of appetites.

The family I shall not invite to the funeral: they are either dead or disapproving. I daresay there will be enough glamour to whip up a smattering of media interest – though I shall only invite those who won’t upstage me, which rules out the West End contingent. But Ferdi – here’s the question – shall I invite Ferdi? Will Debrett’s instruct me that, as at weddings, ex-lovers are personae non gratae at funerals?

Hester is slicing away at the courgettes which, with their frilled yellow heads, remind me of the lanterns they hang in Soho at Chinese New Year. She saws at the stalks with a large blunt knife, muscles glowing in the sandy light. The dog has his muzzle underneath the hedge; his hind legs strain forwards while his forelegs crouch and scrabble; his tail whips back and forth, slashing at sunflower stalks. He is burying something. Or digging it up.

When she bought the dog, the four stone slid away. She called him Laurence, after the teacher. I heard her calling him in the evenings: “Si-i-it. Good boy. Lie, Laurie! Good dog.” She walked him four times a day and he developed the contours of a racer. Her dark hair became shiny like his and I wondered if she realized her own capacity for Mediterranean glamour. It was at this time that they told me I was dying.

Ferdi, I write, question mark. And, in brackets, Marco, question mark. I was never glamorous. A director prefers to watch from behind the scenes, though Ferdi accused me of showiness in buying the yellow coat that made me look like Marlon in Last Tango. Ferdi wasn’t so much glamorous as coiffed, and his Givenchy glasses studied me from atop his straight marble nose. Shut away in his literary agency on Piccadilly, he was surrounded by an aura of mystery, and I determined to peel off his skin and scoop out everything inside. I wanted to know him better than he knew himself; I wanted to live him and I wanted him to want to know and live me. I should rather have desired contentment for us both, but I didn’t. I thought that to be in love was to fuck and to be discontented.

Hester is walking up towards the house, a bunch of courgettes under one arm, the dog galumphing behind her, its jaw dangling open and its rasping pant audible from where I sit. A yellowed nub of dried-out bone lies on the lawn by the hedge. It was January last year when she started on the garden: cutting back great swathes of hogweed and thistle, digging and weeding and raking and hoeing and sowing. She was, I thought, trying to bury herself. Nightly, I saw and smelt the orange glow of a cigarette on her patio, and I wished there was someone I could introduce her to, some young man of means and wit, but I knew nobody like that who was straight.

It was at an olive market in Provence ten years ago that Ferdi slid the green rosemary-barbed picholine into my mouth, and told me he loved me. How long had I waited to hear these words! How often had I dreamed them? But instead of echoing them, I chewed around the stone and spat it into my palm. When he trudged back to his hole in Piccadilly and I to my perch at Wyndham’s, I ignored his calls, stood him up for dinner and, when I did see him, serrated my conversation with references to exes. Exes who were better looking, better in bed, more amusing, more famous, more extraordinary. I was testing him; he did not know and, when I found the note under the empty cafetière, I felt vindicated. He couldn’t possibly have loved me: he had lied. He had tried to make me love him; he was vain, an attention-seeker, needy. He had betrayed me: he was going to Italy with Marco. With Marco, that silent wonder, that gawking nonentity, that glaikit clothes horse with his ridiculous bow ties, silly Edwardian moustache, and tiny pervert’s hands. Marco, to whom I had introduced him, who was my friend, and my find.

The bell goes downstairs and the dog lets out a dominoes of barks. Garlic rubs itself against the evening air; Hester must have guests. I have little appetite myself – the drugs have subdued it – but I go inside to pour a sherry. When I emerge, Hester is standing in front of the sunflowers, holding hands with a man. He is taller, older, and his pinstripes out him as a servant of the City. Hester is explaining something, drawing pictures in the air with her fingers, and he gazes at her, rapt. Then he cups her head and covers her mouth with his. I watch; surely I can be excused this, now, at this time. It helps with the memories.

Ferdi doesn’t know I’m ill. A perverse, bitter part of me believes that if he really cared he would. I want to have Spender’s Farewell at the service and I think of the Irish river of Ferdi’s voice, and of how he would have been the natural choice to read. Hester and the man are still kissing – kissing and smiling secrets. I know that nobody will ever put their mouth on mine like that again. Pain, weakness, reliance – these traits of the disease are not attractive. When I crumple up the envelope, Hester and the man break apart.

She waves a braceletted hand at me and leads him inside. The door shuts and laughter trickles from within. The noise of furniture moving, then silence. It is cold out here now: the sun has dropped below the trees and my hands look ghostly pale in the half light. For the first time in weeks, I feel the nudge of hunger – but I know there is nothing in the fridge apart from Mina’s biscuits and some year old cheddar. I smooth the envelope flat on the table, and add his name. There: it is done. To host one’s own prehumous wake is, I know, unorthodox; but it is the only way I’ll ever find out if he comes. I don’t add Marco to the list.

---

Zoë Green is Writer in Residence at Charterhouse School. Born in Scotland, she read English at Oxford and did the University of East Anglia Creative Writing MA. She won the Orange Prize for Short Fiction in 2004 and is represented by Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath. © Zoë Green, 2008.

See www.litro.co.uk for more info.

I have remarked upon this perversity before, but the most trying of cases may originate with the most ordinary of criminal minds. On this occasion, two wholly unremarkable villains had virtually stymied us. They had run down Fate’s hourglass and now scant hours remained before the pair, together with their ill-gotten gains, were to sail beyond our reach forever. Our last recourse was both elaborate and uncertain. My part in it was to linger at Earl’s Court station until I sighted our quarry, upon which I was to board the same train as them, without exciting their suspicions.

It is not my custom to travel upon the ‘tuppenny tube’ or its competitors, but when my old friend asks something of me, I do not refuse. And while he himself is an acknowledged master of disguise, I had shown myself an able apprentice today in the appearance I presented to the world: tweeds soon destined for the rag man, shoes called back from gardening duty and buffed to a mirror shine, and a faded regimental tie borrowed from a friend. In short, I was the picture of a retired military man down upon his luck. As we waited for the train, I was scrupulously oblivious to my fellow travellers, my gaze distant as though still fixed upon some hostile Afghan horizon.

Of course I know what my friend would say, because he told me later, once the matter was settled. ‘Romantic nonsense. I grant that you have captured exactly the look of a former military man now in his autumn years, but it is hardly a disguise!’

Hard words perhaps, and if our acquaintance were a few decades younger I might have been offended, but I knew this was simply what passed for wit and high spirits with him.

I chuckled and said, ‘I suppose I cannot accuse you of the same today. But I should like to point out that not every one of your wrinkles was applied with a brush; quite some number of them were acquired in the ordinary way.’ That said, I could not fault him on his deception. When I took my seat in that carriage, I half suspected he would be present too, in some fiendishly unfamiliar guise, but I could not at first uncover his charade. I was the first to be seated and as others boarded I surreptitiously appraised each of them. Like the biblical story of the ark, they came in two by two.

First came the pair I was interested in. Next were two young ladies, perhaps shop girls. Behind them were two gentlemen clearly able to afford more agreeable transportation but no doubt finding ‘the tube’ more of ‘a lark’. And lastly an elderly man and woman - not apparently travelling together. A final pair, two men in poor quality suits, chose instead the next carriage along. I was pleased, as I didn’t much care for the look of them; for an unpleasant moment I had feared that our two felons were really four - a proper criminal gang - but then the rogues turned aside and chose the next carriage and my fear was allayed.

The young ladies sat to one side of me, the well-to-do gentlemen to the other. On the opposite bench, the two felons were joined first by the old woman, and then on the far side of her, by the old gentlemen - a gentleman I now fancied I recognised! He clutched a handkerchief to his face - conveniently obscuring his features - and coughed a little, in what I suspected was a feigned manner. I watched him closely, but without giving myself away, and at last I was sure. Over the years my friend had taught me well - sufficiently well that he could no longer fool me. With my tutored eye, I noted a putty-coloured smudge on the old man’s pocket handkerchief which I was certain had been unmarked a moment before. It was, I was sure, theatrical make-up which had rubbed off upon the cloth. I had uncovered my friend’s identity! Turning now to business, I strained my ears to hear the murmurings of the two criminals.

Two weeks into the case, they were each as familiar to me as the man I saw in the mirror. Penford - short, hollow-eyed and twitchy - a night-watchman by trade, was on the left. Close by him was Allinson, of average height with pink fleshy cheeks and sandy hair. They were of similar age, perhaps thirty, but incongruous as a pair in all other ways. And yet somehow they had formed an alliance; Allinson with his access to the stock ledgers and delivery books knew exactly which items of inventory could most easily be removed from the great department store where they both worked. Penford, having concealed his criminal past, had secured a job watching over the store’s warehouse at night. He was the proverbial fox in the hens’ coop when it came to minding the stock. What had brought them to our attention was a most singular theft and one far above their previous petty form. The owner of the store had placed in the company safe a necklace, intended as a gift for his wife, on the upcoming occasion of their thirtieth wedding anniversary. In keeping with tradition, the necklace was fashioned of pearls, but of such lustre and opulent size that its value was tremendous.

Though the criminals suspected nothing, my friend and I had already confirmed their guilt and penetrated their plan to board a boat to New York later that very day. Their previous thefts had paid for their passage, with a little spending money left over; the necklace would set them up for the rest of their days. According to their travel papers, they were to stay initially with Allinson’s uncle in New York. He was, we had learned, a jeweller - which was no doubt what had inspired them to steal the necklace in the first place. In short, we had learned everything about their scheme save one vital detail: the whereabouts of the necklace. It still eluded us completely. It was not concealed at their lodgings, or hidden in their luggage (which they had sent ahead the previous day and which the police had intercepted at our request). Our searches had revealed nothing and now, with scarcely two hours before their train left Victoria Station for Dover, we were still in the dark. My private fear was that the necklace was even now on its way to America by post, or via an accomplice, and had already passed beyond our reach.

As nonchalantly as possible, I turned my head to catch the scoundrels’ conspiratorial whispers. I thought I made out a remark about boots - or under the circumstances it may very well have been boats - and then the train started up. Since electrification had supplanted steam, the cacophony of the Underground was greatly reduced, but still it was far from conducive. The clatter and din as we picked up speed obliterated any hope I had of overhearing their exchange. Worse still, the other occupants of the carriage raised their voices to make themselves heard, further drowning out anything of interest.

‘He’s lovely manners and never tries nothing on,’ one of the shopgirls was saying to her friend, ‘and I’ll tell you I don’t mind lookin’ at him, not one bit. But there’s something not right and it’s got me in a proper lather. Mum says there’s no half ways with marriage proposals. If it ain’t all right then it’s all wrong and I should get shot of him.’

From a different quarter, one of the gentlemen spoke next, addressing his comrade. ‘Good lord! My wristwatch! I had it before we left the house and now it’s gone.’ He held up his bare wrist in disbelief.

His companion tutted and patted his waistcoat pocket. ‘Wear a proper watch, not a lady’s bauble. I’m sorry you’ve lost it, but let that be a lesson. Mine always needed a new strap or if it wasn’t that then the lugs were coming loose. I paid more to keep it repaired then it cost me in the first place, and I still never knew the blessed time.’

‘That was an inferior piece, Richard old man, and you know it. If I might remind you, the very reason you bought yours was envy for mine. Four years on the North West Frontier and it never gave me a bit of trouble.’

They lapsed into silence, and for a moment I thought I might be able to hear our villains conversing but then the young lady who’d spoken earlier started up again. ‘I’ll tell you exactly what I mean. Last month I bumped into Tommy of a Tuesday morning. I was on my way in and there he was in the street. The start of the day and he was a sight. He hadn’t shaved properly; he wasn’t dressed for work; I couldn’t believe it. ‘You better not go into the bank looking like that’, I says. ‘Taking today off’ he tells me. So I says, ‘Maybe you should take tonight off and all.’ By the look of him, he hadn’t even been to bed.’

I couldn’t hear her friend’s response, only the original speaker’s reply. ‘Yeah, but it weren’t just the once. I met him last week on The Strand. I was on an errand, it was hardly gone nine in the morning, and I bumped into him strolling along without a care. ‘Bankers’ hours,’ he said, but it weren’t funny. I could smell drink on him and perfume on top of that – lots of it. He made a promise to me: a pint after work, two at the outside, and no other women. So what am I to think now? But the rest of the time he’s good as gold. I wonder if it’s not working in a bank that does it. He isn’t made for that sort of work. He should get outside, work with his hands.’ I didn’t hear her friend’s comment, but they both laughed intemperately for a while because of it.

We had passed Gloucester Road, with only two stops to go before Victoria, and I had yet to overhear anything of value. I was beginning to despair when I noticed the old woman adjacent to Penford and Allinson scribbling on a scrap of paper. She was crooning to herself and clutching a stub of pencil. What was she writing? Then I recalled that Penford had an elderly aunt, his only living relative. She owned a confectioner’s shop near Sloane Street which was not that far from our current position; might this be her? Was she accompanying them? If we looked, would we find a berth in her name on the boat to New York? Was the necklace already aboard, concealed in her luggage?

The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed; but what was I to do about it? I wondered if I dare try to communicate with my friend. As subtly as I could, I caught his eye and threw a glance towards the old woman to his right. He looked positively alarmed and I wondered if he had understood me at all.

The train was slowing for Sloane Street station and time was running out. And then, just before we came to a stop, I finally heard Penford’s voice.’Mustn’t forget my uncle has a sweet tooth,’ he said, and then a number of events took place in a short time.

First, our quarry rose from their seats as though they meant to get off here, one stop early. Second, the old woman pulled a whistle from her sleeve and gave a shrill blast upon it. And finally, a moment later, the two rough-looking men from the next carriage appeared at the door, vigorously pushing their way towards us.

I had no idea what to make of this. I felt that I must act, but I could not arrange the events I had seen into anything approaching a comprehensible order. And then the old woman pulled the wig from her head and stood up, seeming suddenly much taller than she had before, and I realised that I had once again been fooled. Here was my old friend after all – not the elderly cove in the next seat.

‘Constables!’ my friend commanded, addressing the two rough-looking men approaching, ‘take these two into custody.’ He indicated Penford and Allinson. ‘And arrest this man for the theft of a gentleman’s wristwatch,’ he said, pointing at the old fellow opposite me.

For a second I wondered if one or other of those just named would contest their capture, so I stood up to make my presence known, and asked, ‘Need any help?’

‘My dear fellow, everything is in hand,’ he replied. He addressed the carriage in general, saying, ‘Now, let us not delay these good people.’ The policemen escorted Penford and Allinson from the train, and I led the watch thief, who no longer moved as though infirm.

Before disembarking, my friend passed the scrap of paper upon which he had been scribbling to the surprised young woman whose conversation we’d overheard and then he asked the gentleman who had lost his wristwatch to alight with us. Once on the platform, the missing timepiece was quickly retrieved from the pocket of the trickster to the obvious pleasure of its rightful owner. ‘The elderly are often overlooked,’ my friend explained to him. ‘Two of us made use of that knowledge today. My suspicions were aroused by the imprint of your watch strap still visible upon your wrist. Clearly you had lost it only a minute or two before, and probability suggested the culprit was the only other passenger, besides myself, travelling in disguise. Did he approach you?’

‘Damn fellow coughed on me,’ the gentleman said.

The watch thief was led away and our attention turned to Penford and Allinson. Discreetly I asked my friend, ‘Do you have some plan to make them talk?’

‘Why, they’ve already talked. Surely you heard them; you could hardly fail to,’ he said.

‘Some remark about the uncle’s sweet tooth, that was all I heard. I don’t see how it helps us.’

‘And it didn’t bring to mind at once Allinson’s aunt with her confectioner’s shop?’

I was loath to admit that I had thought hewas Allinson’s aunt. All I could do was mutter, ‘I still don’t see...’

‘It’s really very inventive,’ he said. ‘Do you recall the shop window? I’m disappointed with myself that I didn’t see it at once. Nuts, raisins, ginger - all dipped in chocolate.’

‘Good lord!’ I exclaimed, ‘The pearls too?’

‘I believe so. Why leave two hours for so short a trip unless they planned a stop along the way? The remark confirmed it: a visit to a certain confectioners to pick up a very special gift for Allinson’s uncle.’

Impressed, I asked him, ‘And your note? What was written upon it?’

My friend laughed and said, ‘I felt it only fair to explain that the young woman’s fiancé obviously worked in Covent Garden Market. The start of her working day was the end of his. The nearby public houses are opened especially for the departing workers and the scent of flowers is like perfume. The young man had obviously told her he worked in a bank thinking to impress her.’

‘Marvellous, Holmes,’ I said. ‘Simply marvellous.’

*

© Robert Finn, 2007. Robert Finn is a former career-Londoner who now finds himself absolutely charmed by living in the countryside. Perhaps his subconscious is trying to tell him something, though, as the last three things he’s written have been set on Underground trains, including his recent mini-novel, Underlife, due out around now.

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This is how it will happen. Circle Line. Liverpool Street. 7.16 a.m. Half asleep. Platform is a rugby scrum. Teetering on the edge. Dangerous territory. We’ve all been there. Mutant mice scurry around the live rail. Frantically late. The train rumbles in and grinds to a halt. The racket eviscerates my hangover. Squeeeeze into carriage. Airless. Breathless. Elbows jag into necks. Groins grind into bums. Grab at the handrail. Middle finger jams in sliding doors. Oh-fuck ... Yank it out. FINGERFUCKINGTIP MISSING! Blood splatters shirts and ties. Stick stump in mouth and scream FUCK! Try it. Strangely painless. Dribbling like cartoon vampire. My favourite hand. An exclusion zone will materialise around me. Then some angel pulls the emergency handle. Train judders. Doors crank open. Smother stump with hanky. A fist of crimson candyfloss. I imagine tearing up the escalator past a blur of cheesy advertising models with chewing gum noses.

Rush into the heaving concourse of the main line station. Out of the darkness and into the light. Shafts of sunshine dazzle down from the crystal roof. A cathedral of collisions; of gothic detail, of digital information, of screaming retail brands, of people from every race, nationality, class, culture, creed and who-knows-what sexual persuasions. Part of me will be going into shock. Part of me will be trying to think rationally; think A&E, think ambulance, think next of kin. But I’ll be swept along on tides of humanity; workers & skivers, day trippers & train spotters, beggars & scoundrels, pick pockets & ticket stammers; the itinerant and nomadic tribes that wash in and out of here every day. It will become impossible to move in a straight line. I see myself crashing into a tribe of American evangelists in sharp black suits bound for the airport with badges proclaiming Hi! I’m Cy front Miami! Praise the Lord! Outside the Easy-Walk-In-Tanning-Kiosk, I crunch into a gaggle of Essex girls with bronzed skin, snippety legs and diamanté belly buttons. I’ll be herded into Boots and collide with a teenage mother pushing two spitting toddlers who eyeball my injury with Midwich Cuckoo stares. I’ll tumble over suitcases, scatter florists displays, skid into scalding cappuccinos, wrestle with flexible queuing systems, emasculate small dogs and banjax signing systems.

I attempt to tack a haphazard course to the station entrance, but the faster I move the slower I go. By now, the blood loss will be making me feel woozy, but then a pair of friendly arms will envelop me, like landing on a cloud of cotton wool. Focusing, I’ll look up and see the face of a saint, her shimmering halo glowing like a Belisha beacon. Am I in Heaven? And she is going to smile back, a beatific grin that evaporates my anxiety. At this point, the rest of the station goes into slow motion, as if we are suspended in some once-removed dimension. And from this place of safety I’ll dare to ask who she is. She will inspect my throbbing hand, and tell me without a whiff of irony that she is Saint Mechteld, the patron saint of missing fingers. Programmed by years of religious iconography I’ll look for iridescent robes, celestial trappings, perhaps a pearly harp, or a lute, or a flute, or a magical singing lyre or even a pouting cherub. But she wears Calvin Klein this, Tommy Hilfiger that, FCUK something else and sports a pair of scruffy Nike Air Zooms. Over her shoulder is a zippered bag with Amsterdam-Schiphol flight tags. Mechteld will tell me in perfect English, with only an inflection of Dutch that she’s just arrived on the Stansted Express. And I hear myself splutter stupid questions like: How did you know I would do it? Can you get my finger back? Why didn’t you stop me? But she will simply whistle through her front teeth, remove a spliff from behind her ear, and plant it between my lips like a shut- your-gob thermometer.

Aided and abetted by an aura of Lebanese gold, she will spirit me out of the station, floating up the escalators into the frantic streets of the City. As we hit the open air, I discover her perfect halo is little better than the glitter and fuse wire constructions we made for our Christmas tree fairy when we were kids. She appears underslept and overworked. Her fingernails are almost nibbled down to the cuticle. But for all this mortal vulnerability, she will exude an ethereal credulity. Then forcing my hand above my head like a red flag, she will steer me through the secretaries, receptionists, managers and personal assistants as they are gobbled up by the office buildings. We’ll slip down the ancient lanes and dog-leg alleys to a Tower Hamlets Health Authority building I’ve never noticed before, with a sign outside announcing the Liverpool Street Finger Clinic.

In reception, a triage nurse who obviously knows Mechteld well, peeps under the sodden wrapping to ascertain the extent of the damage, then logs my details. Our entry to the outpatients’ waiting room is greeted with cheers of recognition by finger victims whom Mechteld has helped in the past. Some wear slings supporting heavily bandaged, half-cocked arms. Some hold pinned and wired fingers aloft like reluctant pupils in a detention class. Others are just popping in for post-op check-ups, and quietly appreciating their mending fingers like never before. Mechteld’s presence warms them up, and knuckle-biting narratives of industrial accidents and unfortunate occurrences trundle round the room - everyone has a story to tell: Egbert Monchique sliced his fingers off with a DeWalt radial arm saw at the City & Guilds Apprentice Centre just around the corner. We cringe as Mechteld recalls him carrying the tips to the clinic like fairground goldfish in a plastic bag. He says the surgeons worked through the night to glue them back on fuelled by fixes of Mars bars and Tizer. Johnny Toronto tells us he works for a geophysical exploration outfit on the 37th floor of the Broadgate Centre above the station. Three months ago he lost his little finger to a maverick detonator during a seismic survey in Azerbaijan. He’s here today because a slip on the Millennium Ice Rink has opened up the old wound again. Nasimah from the Batigalorious Fashion Emporium in Petticoat Lane had her index finger amputated after mangling it in the cogs of a Singer hydraulic steam press. Jean-Patrice d’Allery, from a Parisienne dynasty of master wood carvers has restored Grinling Gibbons’ masterpieces all over the Parish of Bishopsgate. Jean is a regular at the clinic having whittled away most of his fingers over the years. Albion Milton, the septuagenarian Master at Arms of the Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds severed his ring finger when removing William & Catherine Blake’s restless tombstone during the refurbishment of the unisex public toilets. Hanna Hilb rescued a fox that was hit by a bus right outside the main station and took it back to the Museum of Immigration in the old Huguenot quarter of Spitalfields where she is a curator. But the ungrateful beast attacked her, bit off her middle finger and then stole a chicken from the Three Monkeys Curry House in Brick Lane. Charles Crispill runs a veneer warehouse in Patina Yard, Hoxton. He shredded his left thumb while quarter cutting a burl of precious thuya from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. He proudly holds up his transplanted big left toe for all to admire, which now flourishes on the space his thumb vacated.

Visits to hospitals confront us with our ephemerality. As we tread limbo in corridors and cubicles, I’ll ask Mechteld how she got the gig to be a patron saint. She’ll explain that Liverpool Street is twinned with Amsterdam Centraal station and they enjoy reciprocal patron saint arrangements. She says fingers are in her blood and that she comes from a long line of fingery heroes. Her great, great grandfather Joop was the boy who stuck his legendary finger in the Domberg Dyke and saved the village from drowning. Her cousin Geertje’s family have been manufacturing the world famous Gouda cheeses for generations, and every hallmark hole is still gouged by their stiff Lutheran fingers. Back in the early seventeenth century, Mechteld’s green-fingered ancestor Jochem Hoogaboom, hand-reared the very first tulip bulbs that triggered the tulip mania, that lead to the crash of the Amsterdam stock exchange.

Mechteld will tell me that anyone can become a patron saint: choose your cause and apply for the vocation. The training is not dissimilar to The Knowledge - the competency test for London taxi drivers. But instead of practising how to get from A to B, you learn how to navigate fate and fortune. There’s not much money in it, but the job satisfaction is beyond measure. Mechteld cautions that in these times of universal diaspora, compulsory multi-tasking and diminishing attention spans, we all need someone to look over our shoulder.

While positioning my hand for X-ray, Mechteld will confront me with my collision and question whether it was really even an accident. Once the film is processed, we pore over my ghostly skeleton. We stare at the missing fingertip; this intrinsic part of me that does not exist anymore. Mechteld observes that for many of her customers, the accident is often an unconscious cry for help; the body mutinies against the errant ego and attempts to return it to the fold. At first I’ll feel hostile to such a suggestion, because I’ve always believed in the supremacy of mind over matter. But she will couch her arguments in such intriguing and unthreatening terms, I’ll begin to see right through my defences. We’ll talk so effortlessly, I’ll find myself admitting to vulnerabilities I wouldn’t dare share with others; that my life has been like a dog chasing its tail; that I’ve never given much thought to where I was going or why.

A nurse will appear and show us into a small specialist operating theatre with anatomical charts of hands, tendons and nerves on the walls. She sets out plastic sheets, kidney bowls, scalpels, forceps, tweezers and swabs on an orthopaedic trauma table. While waiting for the surgeon, Mechteld and I shall reflect on our progress through life, and the difference between what could have happened, and what did. We’ll talk about what’s true - and what’s not true, and how through failure or disappointment, some people turn their lives into elaborate fictions.

Dr Bethiana Sanchez - on secondment from Hospital del Dedo Sagrado in Barcelona - breezes in like a mother hen surrounded by a flock of medical students. She is delighted to see Mechteld and they embrace like old friends. She inspects the remainder of my finger and instructs the surgical nurse to administer a local anaesthetic. As the needles go in, Mechteld slides her arm round my shoulder. The doctor talks the procedure through as she sews up the blood vessels, pulls the muscle over the bone, folds the skin into a neat flap and stitches everything together. After dressings, tetanus jab, antibiotics and an appointment for tomorrow, I am let out on probation.

As we emerge onto the steps of the clinic it is clear that something has happened between us. It’s incredibly tangible but impossible to articulate. We have been manoeuvring towards it since the moment we met, and it feels exhilaratingly awkward.

Wafts of lunch from numerous cafes aggravate our hunger and we walk back towards Liverpool Street and the Great Eastern Hotel, a terracotta temple to the glory of rail travel. We hog a squashy leather sofa in the Fishmarket Bar, sip pints of medicinal Guinness and talk about the power of fingers and how they are taken so for granted. Mechteld touches my cheek and says fingers are sense organs, a kind of radar, antennae, existential measuring sticks. She clenches her glass and describes fingers as the tools of the hunter-gatherer, designed to catch, select, shape and make their mark. Gathering momentum, she’ll talk excitedly about how we use our fingers to communicate, and with animated gestures, act out the universal signs - pointing, warning, beckoning and ticking off. She’ll poke out her tongue and sneak in a V sign and I’ll instinctively counter with a fist. Then suddenly, giggling like kids we are playing Rock Paper Scissors and the kiss just happens. It startles us but feels alarmingly natural. And then the kisses will come rapidly and spontaneously as if our lips were made for each other.

Our destination for the rest of the afternoon is inevitable, but we need fuel to get us there and find a table in the art deco Aurora Dining Rooms. There is a delicious sense of erotic anticipation as we gorge ourselves on regional dishes expressed into Liverpool Street from all over East Anglia: Butley native oysters dredged from the brackish creeks of Orford Ness. Toad in the Hole made from Norfolk Old Spot porkers reared in Great Snoring with heaps of juicy samphire from Wells-next-the-Sea. And finally Walberswick fudge cake, dripping with sheep’s yoghurt from Suffolk ewes grazed on the Blythburgh flood meadows. Over espresso and armagnac, Mechteld tells me she is being relocated. The world is changing fast and there are new insecurities for patron saints to address such as self-help groups, international terrorism, cigarette smoking and genetic engineering. She says one of her friends is now the Greek patron saint of mobile phones. Mechteld has been offered postings in South America; maybe Chile, maybe Honduras, maybe Brazil. But she’ll add that she’s not decided anything about her future ... yet. Then we check into the hotel and take the glass lift to the seventh floor. The luxurious room is set into the eaves and oriel windows peep out over leaded roofs, flagpoles and church spires towards Threadneedle Street. We’ll wash away all the crap and crud of the day in a scalding power-shower - my bandages protected by a pedal bin liner - and collapse on the fresh linen sheets. One handed, I’ll feel clumsy, an awkward sexuality, my fingers like blunt instruments without any sensitivity. But Mechteld’s fingers are exquisitely tuned. They have a phenomenal touch; like hummingbird’s sneezes, like a kitten’s inquisitiveness, like peals of laughter. And I’ll learn so much from her. My fingers will find a new voice and we shall tease and tickle and stroke and squeeze each other into a frenzy of pleasure.

Afterwards, clinging close, as naked as you can get, we’ll listen to the muffled drone of the traffic and the whine of jets limbering up for Heathrow. The rumbling of Tube trains way down below will shudder up through the fabric of the building. I’ll slip into the deepest sleep and wake hours later.

Mechteld has gone but her halo reclines on the pillow, with a small note in spidery handwriting, asking me never to forget what happened to us today, and to light the occasional candle for her.

*

© Tom Lynham, 2007. This story was previously published in the collection From Here to Here (Cyan, 2005, ISBN: 1-904879-35-7) edited by John Simmons, Neil Taylor, Tim Rich and Tom Lynham. Tom Lynham tried to change the world by inventing the Televisor and building the Unfinished Table, but now he writes stories about how other people do it.

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Life just bounces
The salesman’s skin glistened with sweat. ‘Where’s the big money?’ he cried.

‘Bouncy castles!’ we replied.

‘Correctamundo!’ His legs quivered like a manic preacher’s. ‘And I know that those of you who respect yourselves as people will sign up today.’

The words of the presentation echoed in my head as I stared at the rusted generator and sagging vinyl edifice that covered the lawn. All my redundancy, everything, sunk into this. Rowena would kill me. I had no van to transport it and no money for advertising.

I switched on the power, the generator throbbed and clunked, and slowly the gaudy plastic puddle rose up to become a quivering enchanted fairy palace. I thought about the others back at work, the ones who had been kept on. Then I flicked off my shoes and jumped in. I bounced. It was good, bouncing away. The salesman was right. Everybody wants to bounce.

Music like ours never dies
Marion said the article could have been written with me in mind, and I riffled through the supplement and there it was: Losing it – the Bay City Rollers story.

The Rollers had everything, but threw it all away. They were egos on legs, emotionally cramped, and manager Tam Patton had a sinister, seamy undertow that eventually destroyed them.

Marion was right. Their story was my story. I was self-obsessed, vain, and paid slipshod attention to Marion’s needs. The Bay City Rollers were encoded in me. And Tam Patton? He represented my father. Emotions were unsilted, tears fell on Les McKeon’s face, and when Marion returned from her run, I hugged her close.

‘Darling, I will never allow us to become the Bay City Rollers.’

She flipped Les over. ‘This is the article I meant.’

EMOTIONAL INFIDELITY, it said, above a picture of a man and woman on a park bench.

Alone, I drew a penis jutting out of the man’s trousers and a moustache on the woman. That’s what the Rollers would have done. What matters is the moment, not everlasting fame.

Spoilt Victorian child
I saw the ad on the Internet and thought, what the hell? I had no kids of my own, probably wouldn’t have time, so why not go for it?

I didn’t realise the child was Victorian at first, I thought it was just grumpy. But when it asked for a sing-song round the piano instead of plugging in the Xbox, I knew that I’d been done. The knickernockers should have been a clue.

I’d read an article about the trend for adopting Victorian children. They were cheap to maintain as they ate little, had no desire for expensive trainers and were unable to use mobile phones. Yet I hadn’t seen many around these parts. Until now.

But still, it was a child, so I made the best out of it. I tried every possible distraction the twenty first century had to offer, but nothing worked. The child was continually bored.

Until it found the flyer for the Art Treasures of the UK exhibition. As soon as it read about the paintings and artefacts to be displayed in Manchester Art Gallery it became agitated with joy. I was to take it to the exhibition without delay and must ensure that our visit took full advantage of Mr Halle’s orchestral performances and the various organ recitals scheduled throughout the day, which the Victorian child had circled in the much-handled programme.

I hadn’t been to an art gallery myself since I was dragged there by my school, but I agreed to give it a go.

When we got into the city centre I was amazed. The streets were full of them, Victorian children just like mine, each with a bemused parent trailing behind as they raced towards the gallery. I had no idea so many Victorian children existed; there were hundreds, and whilst we waited in the queue, I got talking to one of the other parents. He’d got his Victorian child from the same Internet advert, and was having the same problem keeping it entertained. It was great to share my problems with another parent, and later that day as we trooped home and I watched my Victorian child jabbering away with the other Victorian children about the paintings and the sculptures, I began to wonder whether I should read up about the behaviour of Victorian fathers. I could grow an elaborate moustache, perhaps invest in special wax. The idea appealed and, recalling one of the tunes from the organ recital, I began to whistle through my teeth, which the Victorian child said was a vulgar affectation and exceedingly annoying to the ear. It was then I realised that the child was middle-class too and I went upstairs to look for the contract.

Pretty, ain’t it?
Mrs Kalinsky spoke through wreaths of smoke from the cigarette she had permanently cocked at the side of her head. ‘This is Alfred.’ The fat pampered cat looked up at her. ‘He’s insured for two grand.’ Her long nylon-clad legs made a hissing sound as she crossed and uncrossed them. ‘Double if he gets run over.’ She stroked the flabby ball of fur. Bars of shadow from the Venetian blinds made her expression unreadable.

But I couldn’t go through with it. Then two weeks later a ginger tom got flattened on the A556 out of Eccles. I scraped him into a bin bag, dyed him Alfred’s colour, and took him to Mrs Kalinsky’s vet.

I didn’t see Mrs Kalinsky again for weeks and I never got my cut. Then from the window of the police van, I saw her with the vet in a restaurant, drinking wine. And laughing.

Previously loved
One minute I was on the landing the next in a floating, luminous space, pulsing with blinding light, with no centre, no edges, no up or down. Dozens of men sat on white sofas, staring ahead, and I joined them. The rapturous humming of a thousand angels filled the air. White robes hung loosely about me and soft moccasins were on my feet. Everyone looked the same; we were in a cheap science fiction series. I asked one of the men what I was doing there, and he smiled slowly as if recognising a lost relative, and asked me in an awed half whisper what I remembered last. I told him I had gone upstairs and couldn’t remember why, and had stood on the landing trying to recall. Suddenly, I was here.

It had been the same for them all. They had all gone upstairs, tried to remember why, and couldn’t. He asked me if there had been a mighty flash, and I nodded.

‘If you can remember why you went upstairs, you will return,’ he said.

I asked if anyone had ever managed to get back to the real world, but he couldn’t remember.

‘We are not very reliable on recent history,’ he said.

I sat and thought. Rusty cogs ground in my head, but nothing came. My mind seemed to empty of all facts. If asked, I would have been unable to explain even the concept of upstairs, or the idea of a house, or describe my town, my wife, or what I did during my days on earth.

After a time a salesman asked if I was interested in buying the sofa I was occupying; if not that one, maybe a small corner set – currently on special offer and available in leather as well as linen. I could plump for brand new or previously loved.

I signed a buy-now-pay-later deal for a new one, at a very reasonable interest rate. I wasn’t stupid. Owning your sofa is the sensible choice if you spend long periods sitting on it. Renting is dead money. After all, the sofa might grow in value, while all you have to do is sit and think and stare.

The lost language of chairs
I know that they used to talk to each other. About loose leg joints, fraying seat-covers, unsatisfactory positions in the room. About how one wasn’t used enough, one was sat on by the heaviest resident, and how the Crowther boy habitually rubbed the back of one of them with greasy fingers causing a pale shiny pate like a bald head.

They often discussed Mrs O’Neil, with her old-fashioned dusting technique and cheap polish that smelt of rancid fat.

But they couldn’t speak any more. They had forgotten how. They stood in silence, able to communicate only by gesture, and only one gesture at that – the gesture of open arms, which said, ‘come fill this empty space, I am waiting for you, only you,’ and the sad fact is that this was not what any of them wanted to say at anytime, not what they wanted to say at all.

Double digging
Gloria’s face was on the banknotes in nice town. Her smile throbbed with evil e-numbers. She was never horrible, never mean, and never made a juicy dig at the girls in promotions. But today dental anaesthetic had tugged the corners of her mouth into an exaggerated sad-clown face and, for the first time in Gloria’s life, she looked like mortal sin.

Benjamin didn’t normally register Gloria’s presence but when he caught sight of her sour, crushed expression he stopped her, and told her that suddenly he felt a connection. She had a dark, adhesive quality that beckoned. He scanned his desk and his eyes landed on a tiny fern growing in a yogurt pot, which he picked up and handed to her.

‘Come to my allotment on Sunday,’ he said.

Gloria nursed the fern over to her desk. Everyone smiled and offered words to ease her lonely desperation. Her inbox for the first time contained the drinkypoos email. She looked from the email to the fern, and silver voices sang in her head.

On Sunday she watched Benjamin dribble seeds from his curled palm into holes his big fingers had jabbed into chocolaty soil. He smiled at her, she scowled back though numb cheeks, and he laughed.

The dentist could offer her daily injections for a limited period only. It was strictly unethical. But what would she tell Benjamin and the others when her smile returned? How could she go back to happy when miserable was so much fun?

Smaller than one-eightieth the diameter of a human hair
I’m big in little things, things smaller than one-eightieth the diameter of a human hair. I love the job, it suits me, but Janice isn’t impressed and when I got an invite to present a poster at the Micro5 conference in Iceland she went into her usual rant. What’s so absolutely fascinating about things that are below a certain size? A dog might be the same size as a sewing machine, but does that give them something in common? Worth a building the size of Selfridges, and full of weirdy beardies?

It was good in Iceland to share time with other people who were passionate about things smaller than one-eightieth the diameter of a human hair. I met Helen on the hot springs trip. ‘You know how I explain to my students the length of a nanometre?’ she told me. ‘It’s the amount my pubes grow every second.’

The next day Helen and I sat close together watching the final presentation. The lecturer was a pony-tailed boffin whose tie looked like it had been dipped in batter. I drew a picture of him with a burger king crown on his head, wheels for legs, and a speech bubble that said I am a twat. We laughed, really, really laughed. All around us everyone was thinking about things that were smaller than one-eightieth the diameter of a human hair, and the room seemed to hum with promise. For the first time in ages I didn’t feel like I was a tiny particle being examined through a microscope by higher beings in a laboratory somewhere.

The way you say park
He had been listening to her voice for years; the percussive, slightly guttural approach to Newton-le-Willows, the gorgeous ripe burr in the vowels of Hazel Grove, the absolute absence of sarcasm when she apologised for cancellations. Today he was singing along in his head as usual when he heard her inject a new enunciation into Eccelston Park, giving the word ‘park’ greater emphasis and putting a little suppressed laugh at the end of it.

This was significant because it was his name. Parker. And each time she said park she made the same little flourish.

He decided not to go in to work and instead stayed at the station, listening to the way she said park. The staff wouldn’t tell him where her office was, but tomorrow he would discover her name and shout it on all the platforms. That way she would know that he loved her in return.

Little Jan
I was the only Janet in the office until she arrived but there was no problem until one day I asked Harriet for the long stapler and she said she’d given it to little Jan.

Little Jan. She wasn’t particularly little and I’m not especially big. I didn’t want to be known as big Jan, like some bull dyke prisoner. Harriet tried to reassure me; the new Janet was little Jan but I would always be Jan. But they might as well write fat cow on my forehead for all the difference that made. So-called Little Jan is a 12 at least, and not TopShop, more like Marks.

So whilst recovering the long stapler I told Jan all about fast-track promotion in this place, the people to influence, and how to do it.

Now I’m still Jan but she’s known as stock-room Jan and she’s off long-term with stress.

We are the robots
She was the third girlfriend to ditch me this year. ‘We went to this club,’ I told Gary, ‘and at the end of the night she’d completely changed. She was distant, hostile.’

He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles ‘Did you dance?’

‘Well,’ I poked at a beer mat. ‘At one point I did throw a few shapes.’

He tilted his head towards me. ‘Did you do the robotics?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘What was the music?’

‘Eighties techno’

Gary removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. ‘How many times have we been through this – you hear the music, you do the robotics.’ He picked up his coat. ‘No woman will stand for it.’

Later I was on the floor. A moog bass line squelched, a metallic snare ripped the air, I was part of a machine, a valve in the heart of a bleeping gnashing metal beast.

Away day
Imagine you are happy. Picture it. You, happy. It can be you, yes. You can be happy, like everyone else. Picture it now. You, a happy person, doing happy things, without a care in the world. Have you got it? Can you see yourself? What are you doing? Don’t tell me, I know. You are in the countryside. You are with friends and family, the people you love. It’s a sunny day. You are sharing food and drink – wine, even. You are drinking from a paper cup, a tablecloth is laid on the grass.

It is a picnic. You are having a picnic.

Everybody’s idea of happiness involves a picnic. A picnic has everything a human being needs. If there were more picnics the world would be a happier place. And what do our clients want from us but happiness? Isn’t that why they come here? Why the health service contracts us to deliver the service?

Next month the clinical psychology team are going on a picnic. Details are attached, along with a map. Please wear appropriate shoes and clothing.

*

David Gaffney is the author of Sawn Off Tales (Salt Publishing, 2006), Aromabingo (Salt Publishing, 2007) and the novel Never Never out in September 2008 on Tindall Street Press. He has also been published in several magazines including Ambit, Stand, Opium, Transmission, Riptide, Succour, and Illustrated Ape. © David Gaffney, 2008.

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A IS FOR APPLE.
A BAD APPLE.

He’s seen noses broken over less: the fag butts on the pavement have been carelessly tossed, five drags left in them.

Jack’s his name. He chose it himself. Few people choose their own names. He’s seen a lot try, adopting hard or suave AKAs, but those snide-nicks never stick. Jack picked his name from a book, The Big Book of Boys’ Names, a good place to start. Normal but cool, that’s why he likes it. Jack of all trades, Jack of hearts, Jack the lad, Jack in the box, car Jack, union Jack, bowling Jack, lumber Jack, steeple Jack, Cracker Jack. Always the childish pursues him: denied his own childhood, denier of another. Also Jack the Ripper, he didn’t spot that until later.

Beside him walks Terry. As they’ve walked together a thousand times, though always before in corridors; never in the splendour of this new unroofed world. Even with Terry there, Jack’s nervous. For all the promise of the sun and the baby-blue sky, he’s cold. Terry smiles at him and he can see the excitement there; he tries to look calm and happy. Maybe this is Terry’s moment, not his. Terry’s spent fifteen years working for this, waiting to see Jack striding down a sunny street.

Terry knew Jack when he wasn’t called that. Terry knows his birth name, the name he shed. Now lying like a sloughed snakeskin, in a file, in a cabinet, in a vinyl-tiled office in Solihull. Terry met Jack when he was called simplyA, a letter for his name. Child A, a court name, to distinguish from a second child, B. Friend, accomplice, instigator, nemesis perhaps to Jack; now dead, no matter. Found hanged in cell, suicide presumed. ‘Good Riddance’, said the Sun, and a nation cheered. Jack felt nothing but a numbness when he heard the news. He alone now knew what had happened that day, and that even he knew less with each week that passed. But he also felt a fear that his cover was blown, and considered a spell with the fraggles, seeking sanctuary with the sick.

Jack’s feet feel light in the box-fresh, bright white trainers that Terry gave him to wear. They cushion and bounce him, lift him up. Terry says that his son wears them, that they’re the height of fashion. Jack’s seen the new lads coming in with them for a while now, but he’s still pleased with them. They’ve set the seal on his day. New and radiant and airy, that’s how it feels; there’s so much space around him. He could run in any direction in his new Nikes and nothing would stop him. He knows he could outrun Terry easily. Terry’s old enough to be his dad. He looks at him: the soft smoke curls in his grey sideburns, gentle eyes, brown like his Sierra. Jack used to wish he was his dad, used to think that none of it would have happened if he had been. He could never outrun Terry, because he’d stop when called. Jack could never let Terry down.

‘How’re you feeling, son?’ Terry asks. ‘What do you think of the wide world?’

‘I dunno.’ He always feels childish around Terry. A chance to let down barriers and bravado. ‘It’s big.’

He realizes ‘wide world’ is not just an expression. Streets are broad, houses high, horizons unimaginably vast, even corner shops are commodious. Big dens of pop and videos, fags and beer. The trees are greener close up, the walls are redder, the windows more see-through. He wants to tell Terry all of this, and more. He wants to tell him how great wheely bins are, how every house should have a name like the one back there did, how telephone wires drape like bunting. He wants to shake Terry’s hand with thanks and hug him with excitement and have Terry hold him tight to quell the fear.

But he only says: ‘It’s big.’

They pass a skip painted dazzling sunflower-yellow. Jack remembers skips as full of shit and bricks, but this one’s empty except for a cocoa armchair. He wonders if only Stonelee skips were full of shit; but the flies wafting above the chair must believe it’s on its way.

It was Terry who suggested they walk the last few terraced streets to Jack’s new home. Their driver is waiting outside, in a biro-blue Camry, with a stick-on taxi sign. The letters of its number plate spell ‘PAX’. Jack thinks this is a good omen, like they used to say when they were kids. Before ‘the incident’, as his assigned psychologist called it. Pax meant you made up, that the past was forgotten, a truce and amnesty declared, begin afresh.

The Camry is the third car that Jack and Terry have been in today, weaving a false trail, even though apparently unfollowed. The press knows that he’s being released; even the liberal papers called for a working committee. The Sun said ‘Tell The Public Where He’s Going And Let Them Sort Him Out’. Terry says they’re just being sensationalist, that most people believe he’s served his time. Terry reminds him that they haven’t got a photo taken since puberty. That he’s a special case, not going on the offenders’ register, untraceable. Even Jack didn’t know where he was going until an hour ago.

‘It’s a city,’ is all Terry would let on. ‘Plenty of new faces around, specially with all the students, no one’ll notice you, and no one’d think to look anyway.’

Terry explained there may have been better situations than this one, more controlled environments for Jack to move into. But they went for anonymity, and for speed. If Jack had stayed in prison while extended plans and preparations went on, there might have been a change of heart, a change of Home Secretary. He could easily have ended up inside for another ten years.

The car is outside tan-bricked number 10. Two suitcases in its boot contain a manufactured life. The life belonging to Jack Burridge. Jack Burridge has just finished the last of several short stints for taking and driving away. His Uncle Terry has found him a room and a job. Jack Burridge has no connection to the fuss in the papers. Jack Burridge feels like a caterpillar, about to embark upon a second life, a phase he didn’t know, didn’t even dare hope, existed.

The driver is a policeman, special protection squad. He’s a professional; if he’s disgusted his thoughts don’t show. He nods granite-faced to Terry, who leads Jack up to the door with a broad-leafed hand on his back. Jack feels like his legs will collapse but for the strength pouring into him from those fingers. Terry is his parole contact, his only true friend, and now his uncle. He might just as well be God. Once, as a boy, though he can’t now remember it, Jack thought that he might be. Terry’s hand is the hand of redemption certainly, the hand that reached out to save a drowning child, the hand that raps three times on a door that’s painted a garish granny-smith green.

‘Hiya,’ says Terry with artificial exuberance to the woman that opens the door. ‘This is my nephew, Jack. Jack, this is Mrs Whalley.’ He pronounces it like ‘Wall’.

She says, ‘Kelly,’ as she shakes Jack’s hand, her own a little too slim for her fullish form. Legacy perhaps of a slighter youth. Not that she’s old, somewhere in a make-up blur of thirties, two to five. Her eyes, blue themselves, are shadowed in a brighter tone, so that the blue inside them looks like green. They flick unconsciously to Jack’s crotch as she asks them in.

‘You must excuse the mess,’ she says, though none is in evidence. ‘I’m working nights this week, I’ve only just got up, really.’

The lounge they sit in is small but seemly: pink walls, pine polished floor, framed pictures of parents and holidays; and a large print of a famously obscure couple kissing in Paris.

‘Cup of tea, Jack?’ Kelly asks.

He looks hesitant.

‘Lovely,’ Terry answers for them both.

Kelly gets busy in an interconnected kitchen while Jack and Terry get the cases from the car. The policeman-taxi drives away. Two more are watching from the windows of a guesthouse over the road. Terry will also stay there tonight. Just in case. Though Jack has a panic button, state of the art, disguised as a pager, that goes straight through to Terry at any time. Cuts to the protection squad if Terry doesn’t take it. He should never be out of reach of safety.

Kelly knows none of this, only that she has a new lodger. She probably thinks he looks young for the twenty-two she’s been told, though really he is two years older. His skin is doughish pale, and she’d be right if she thinks there’s a kind of awe and innocence in the way he looks around him.

She moves her uniform from the back of the sofa to let Terry sit down. It is a sensible nurse navy, not the short curvy white worn by strippers and schoolboy fantasies.

‘Thank you,’ says Jack, as he takes the tea from her. Not a trace of the broad accent of his youth remains. Long years spent trying to fit in at Brentwood then Feltham have removed every taint. He sounds more rough South East than anything. Jack Burridge comes from Luton.

The tea is too sweet, which makes it extravagant somehow, and Jack savours it.

‘Which hospital do you work at?’ asks Terry.

Kelly’s reply vaguely washes over Jack’s ears, but he watches her face: round, kind, wilful, helpful.

Then she asks him a question, something about the weather or the journey. It takes a moment for the words to achieve significance in a mind still reeling in new sensation. Sensing his stumbling, she redirects it to Terry.

A cat slides easily through the kitchen flap, and saunters into the room, while the three of them are still engaged in this two-way conversation. It’s a slate-grey tabby which, with narrowed eyes, selects Jack for its favours: rubbing against his leg, before settling on his lap to cajole a tickle. Its bones feel frail like chicken, but the fur is warm and soft, and it purrs pleasure.

‘There, I knew you were all right, Jack,’ his new landlady winks. ‘He’s a good judge of character, is Marble. Aren’t you, Marble?’

She gets up to give the cat’s back a quick tousle, and Jack can smell her hair. Vigorous, green-meadowed Alberto Balsam adverts.

‘Marble, this is Jack. He’s our new lodger.’

She addresses the cat as if it’s a child, not a baby, but one that starts to be a companion.

The small-talk continues, though it’s not small for Jack. Terry nods a smile with anything that Jack utters. He chose Manchester, he found the house and Kelly; and against any and all the doubters, he is sure that this boy, his boy, will make good. The fact that Mrs Whalley, whom he likes, so clearly likes Jack, confirms to him that he is right to like them both.

Even Terry can need reminding that it’s OK to like Jack.

Kelly shows them around her home with enjoyable pride. She gives operating instructions on the washing machine and dishwasher, and the other white wonders of the kitchen. Jack is impressed with his room. Terry had deliberately talked it down so he would be. It’s a box-room, small, with a low sloping roof, but recently decorated. The wardrobe and desk share a flat-pack freshness that the allan-key on the window sill confirms. Clean newness seems to reverberate. The exception is a slightly battered portable telly, which sits on the desk’s corner, so that it’s watchable from in bed.

‘It’ll not get ITV for some reason, Jack,’ Kelly says, ‘but there’s nothing but rot on that channel anyway. Try not to have it on too loud if I’m on nights. House rules here are just common sense and courtesy. I can see that you’ve plenty of both, so I’m sure there’ll not be any bother.’

After another cup of tea Kelly confides that she has promised to eat with a friend before they both start work. The daylight has already dimmed through the lace curtains. She comes back down the stairs wearing her uniform, and with it an equally functional black cardigan. She offers to let Terry stay the night, and when he refuses, begs a promise to come back soon. She shouts final friendly commands as she leaves the doorway.

‘I’ve left a key in the pot on the kitchen table, but it’s the spare I usually leave with the neighbour, so I’ll have to get one cut as soon as I can. I’ll not be back till the morning, so make yourselves at home. There’s plenty of videos if there’s nothing on the box, and any amount of fast food places at the end of the road. You’ll have seen them as you came. But if you just want a sandwich or something then help yourself to the fridge. There’s not much in there, I’m afraid. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack. Bye Terry, see you soon.’

And the door slams to a still house.

‘She can’t half talk, heh?’

‘She’s nice, Terry. Thank you.’

‘Ah, c’mon.’ Terry must have noticed the tear in Jack’s eye.

But it’s quickly blinked away. Terry probably wishes he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t said anything. Though it doesn’t matter and he’s seen far worse. Later they kick back in the spiced-fat comfort of a doner kebab. Chilli sauce burning into cans of apple Tango, almost too slippery to hold. Jack has never had a kebab, which one of his cellmates professed to miss more than his family. The Styrofoam box reminds him of something. He stares at it, pooled juices already congealing into waxy solid. It is McDonalds, only they used to come in these boxes. McDonalds was the stuff of childhood treats, another good omen. Jack is a great believer in omens. The mundanity of prison focuses the mind, tuning recognition of pattern and difference. A black grain in puffed rice at breakfast can mean a bad day, seven matchsticks left a good one. Primitive societies set great store by these things. Prison is primitive.

Together they study the Sunday night football round-up. Terry tests on players and form. Jack Burridge supports Luton Town of course: ‘Luton Airport who are you?’, ‘The Hatters, the Hatters and we’re all fucking nutters’. The odds of finding a fellow fan up here are remote, but he must demonstrate a knowledge of his team. Actually Jack has never had any real interest in football, but he can talk a good game. He’s shared a cell with a Celtic Casual, a Chelsea Headhunter and a middle-aged Notts County trainspotter called Trevor who was doing five months for getting his thirteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant.

When Terry leaves, Jack prowls the house, tentatively opening drawers and doors. He feels the weight of the pans, and touches the contents of the fridge, reading sauce bottles like books. He takes the dry blast of the airing cupboard on his face. The deep hall rug between bare toes, with its wellworn trough connecting the lounge and the front door. Eventually, when he has sniffed and stroked his way to some intimacy with this dark and strange new house, he curls foetal beneath the duvet in his small box-room. And despite the unfamiliarity of everything around him, Jack feels safe, because he knows he is the apple of his uncle’s eye.
It is under Terry’s careful gaze that the events of the next two weeks will unfold. An orientation time for Jack. An opportunity to adjust before he starts his job. A fortnight only, to try and lose the bewilderment with which he looks at this world.

They will visit parks, restaurants, pubs, an art museum, an airport. Jack will open a bank account, fills in forms, make his name more real with each one. He is going to stand in a crowd at a Saturday morning market, shaking with fear at first, immobile while strangers’ faces file around him. They will walk on a moor, where the silence is absolute, no noise but the sound of their own feet brushing the bracken. They will ride there in Terry’s car, which Jack has only ever watched from afar. Has never before felt the vinyl seats under his fingertips. Heard the radio on its one working speaker. They are going to laugh when, in town one day, a rottweiler bangs its face against a van window, desperate to get at a cat. They will buy the Big Issue, from a guy who says he was ready to give up until Terry came along. And Jack will say that he knows how this feels.

Each day for fifteen, Terry is going to pick Jack up at 7:30 am, the time he will soon be picked up for work, and show him another alien angle on life. And every night Jack is going to close his eyes and not believe this is happening to him.

Every hour, whether with Terry or alone, he will practise his story. Learn his legend. Focus on the things he needs to do to make himself a little less a fish on the riverbank, a little more the man a different boy might have become.

*

Jonathan Trigell was born in 1974 and lived in St Albans, Manchester, Derby and Stone before moving to France, where he has worked as a holiday rep, guide, barman, dish-pig, driver, airport manager and ski-instructor. In 2002 he completed an MA in novel writing at Manchester University. He now organizes events and races throughout the Alps for Natives.co.uk. Boy A and his second novel, Cham, are both published by Serpent's Tail. © Jonathan Trigell, 2004.

Boy A was voted best "book to talk about" in a public poll organised as part of World Book Day, March 6, 2008. You've read the first chapter, now go out and pick it up in your local bookshop or library and discover it for yourself!

This issue of LITRO is in association with the 2008 Get London Reading campaign. As well as our usual distribution near stations and in bookshops, galleries, etc., it is also available in dentists' waiting rooms across the capital – so take the chance to get your teeth into a book (sorry...)!

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Venice … the city of secrets
Trevor Ray

What none of us knew until later … and even then, never the full story … was that the Levantine had deliberately invited contact with the gambler … the Prince of Gamblers … for political purpose. Was that the actual truth? Political rumour rarely is …

Florian is proprietor of the finest and most popular caffe in the Piazza San Marco and is known to every long ear in the city … what he retails to a certain few is never merely rumour … but is always political. Or sexual. Or criminal. Often all three. But never merely rumour.

So listen well …

A document changed hands at that dark table. A proposal? A guarantee? A contract? A promise? A bribe? An official document, heavily sealed … an unusual sight in Venice, where a man's word can be trusted … if he wants to live.

It had long been rumoured that Napoleon was regretting having given the Veneto to the Austrians for safe-keeping … factions in the city, headed by major families, had made proposals for the return of the sea-city to the Senate but it was also believed that the Doge was the Little Corporal's man … maybe it was time for a re-election … ?

But who was the stranger? If he was truly from the Levant, he would be interested in personal benefit, whoever he might be representing.

Perhaps a racial generalisation … but built on a trading city's experience.

And now this game of three … what meaning has this? What does it obscure? Certainly the truth … for this is Venice. The city of dissemblance.

As the winter sun lost itself behind the shaft of the great campanile, Florian served the guests with more of his sublime molten chocolate … braziers were drawn closer and all around the Piazza guttering candles cut the light of the stars. L'Amiral Venga sent a signal to the Arsenale shipyards and soon we were aboard a barchiello swifting across the dark lagoon, heading for l'Osteria ai Pescatori on the tiny island of Burano.

Il Rouletto … fortunes changed hands each first day of Advent on the result of this ancient contest between the Green and the Red factions … estates changed masters … mistresses altered position … history took new direction, as the two crews circled the island.

As was customary, we purchased the lengths of fine lace that draped our lovers for the evening, ordered risotto sarde in soar and great flasks of Refosco against the night airs … and screamed abuse across the square at the antics of Goldoni's actors and the buranello of Galuppi's vibrant music. That Baldassare … his brave tunes haunt me still …

The maroon called us all to the start of the race … the noisy crowd raced through the lanes, keeping close to the shoreline, the two competing craft glimpsed briefly between the coloured houses as the fisher-crews strained at their sweeps, women cursing, men whistling … the rich man at the Red helm, the Levantine at the Green … play on, play on …

At l'osteria, we sat on, drinking, coins slapped on tables, promissory notes pocketed, men grinning through their wine-sweat as small fortunes disappeared into the dark.

Passion … desperate passion.

The widowers' garb fooled no-one, the Queen of the Sea was a tight place … sneeze and instantly your most distant enemy wished you good health. The Red helmsman's riches were his family wealth … the Principe Fortuny had inherited the great Fondi banking dynasty.

With it came the dangerous envy of every cut-purse in the trading empire of the Venetian State.

None more ominous than Europe's Rapist, himself desperate to found a dynasty that would carry his aberrant ambition into the future … and it was supposed by those who scryed for a living, that every stranger in the city was an agent of Napoleon's security service. The Doge versus the Emperor and his Austrians. Passion … desperate passion.

From the shadows around the public gabinetto, came the reappearance of the flustered beauty Fortunata, the rich one's mistress, as she rejoined the uproar of our drunken company. I stumbled past her to find a man pissing on his collapsed neighbour, both laughing helplessly as they splashed in the steaming stream. Two Austrian vigili looked on, unmoved.

'The Greens, the Greens, the Greens …' the cry cut through the night, flaming brands surrounding the exhausted crew as they stood in their craft, gasping, punching the future, waving victorious banners. Amongst the chaos, the aged Levantine slipped past me, wiping his hands on his gabardine.

The hooked golden beak of Fortuny's leathern mask pointed at the sky as he mopped away the tears of frustration that ran down his pale throat. As his man handed vellum-bound books and cased scrolls to the Levantine, the Principe tore his red sash to shreds. The silks dri