FINDING GIANTS
Joshua Landers

‘Think you can aim that thing?’

Kyle points at the bandage on my right hand, shoulders his rifle. I crease the stock of my .22 in the bend of my arm, lift my shoulder, and raise the barrel at him.

‘Good enough,’ I say, and sit on the tailgate of my truck.

He lays his rifle down and grabs mine, scopes it across the cow pasture behind the hospital, cars parked around us.

‘You’ve shot this?’ he says, whistles air into the chamber.

I tell him the handful of times I’d shot at squirrels waving their tails in the field by my apartment, a raccoon that’d kept ripping open my trash bags left on the porch.

He slides a bullet in and closes one eye. Aiming up, he shoots out the nearest streetlight in the parking lot. Shattering glass, sizzling filaments. Then silence like I’ve never heard.

He hands me the .22.

‘Good enough,’ he says.

We drive an hour north towards Orick. I have a beer between my legs, the whiskey I’d bought earlier in my front pocket, waiting for some type of drunkenness to wash over me.

Kyle’s phone rings. He flips it open and speaks with his hand covering his mouth. The way he talks, I can tell it’s Melissa, my ex-wife.

They started dating a few years ago, before our divorce papers were even paper clipped together. Moved into his place in San Francisco the first weekend our daughter, Candice, was supposed to visit me. It’d been like that ever since. They took quick weekend getaways together to catch rainbow trout at Rock Creek. Ski vacations in Tahoe during Candice’s winter breaks. Deer hunting in the Sierra Nevada’s on her spring vacation.

Candice sent me some pictures over the internet once. Three faces scrolled down my screen, lifting a lifeless head by the antlers, smiling.

Kyle puts the phone back in his jacket pocket.

‘Can’t believe you didn’t get a shot off,’ he says.

The sky lightens to the east, tall shapes of the redwood forest silhouetting jagged against the dark mountains. The stars between the clouds washed out figures on a blackboard. On the dash, the green digital numbers click to squared off eight’s, but I know it’s six o’clock in the morning.

‘Didn’t have a gun,’ I say, and finger my bandage. The feeling of my thumb is still there, a weightless tingle, the flesh just above where the doctor had cut the bone even and stapled it shut.

Kyle squints at me, eases onto a roughly paved road off the highway.

‘Figures,’ he says.

We stop outside the parking lot in front of the main trailhead, a low chain blocking our entrance, wrapped and locked around a dented metal post. The ground ahead the color of moon dirt in the headlights.

‘This it?’ he says.

He searches through his camouflage duffel bag on the seat between us and pulls out a long flashlight, a couple boxes of bullets. Clicks the flashlight on, off. On and off. Opens the door.I look at the trail cutting into the forest in the headlights.

‘Think so,’ I say.

Kyle gets out, picks up the rifles from the back of the truck, and says, ‘Grab the bullets.’

Last time my daughter was supposed to visit, while I was on my way down the 101 to pick her up, she called on Kyle’s cell phone. I’d planned a weekend at a K.O.A. campground just outside Monterrey. Reserved kayaks for a three hour bay tour, bought tickets to the aquarium. Ice chest full of Natural Light and juiceboxes and store bought sandwiches.

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Me and Mom are going backpacking with Kyle instead. That okay with you?’

I pulled off the highway, reached in the cooler next to me and fingered open a can.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Next time.’

She reminded me of her mother then.

I remembered Melissa used the same expression while she was frosting our daughter’s eleventh birthday cake, just after she’d said that I wasn’t much of a husband, that she wanted a divorce.

‘That okay with you?’ she’d said.

‘What happened to working it out?’ I said, then the doorbell rang.

We barbecued with the neighbors, drank some before Candice began opening gifts. After she blew out her candles, we watched her rip apart the present I’d wrapped, her friends in birthday hats gathering on their knees around her.

I’d struggled for months to buy her a Playstation, a few games. Took overtime at work, cut corners at the grocery store. When she flung the wrapping paper behind her, I interlocked my fingers, tapped my heels. Cracked my knuckles and took a drink of whiskey hidden in a party cup.

Candice pushed the present away and stared at me, stood with hands on her hips. Her friends looked at me the same way, as if I wrapped a puppy in a Styrofoam box without air holes.

‘I asked for a Playstation 2,’ she’d said, walked up to her mother sitting next to me and said, ‘Do I have to play this?’

Melissa shook her head.

Maybe it was the whiskey I drank too much of back then, the warehouse job I still have, or any number of things, but that was when I’d slapped my daughter. Flat against the cheek. Reached out from my chair and snapped my hand.

Four thin slats reddened her pale face before she ran to her room.

I remember sitting there, spreading the circle of moisture beneath my cup across the end table, flicking out the tingle from her face. Her friends filed out, I couldn’t watch them leave. I stayed in that chair until the sun dipped below the roofs of the houses across the street and watched its reflection rise again in their windows.

*

Kyle crouches near the edge of the ravine and loads his rifle, twists the end of his scope and presses his eye against it. We’re somewhere near the middle, where the route begins to loop back around. He ruffles over dead pine needles with his hand, picks a few up and sticks them between his lips, and says, ‘Right here?’ Looks at me and says, ‘You sure?’

I strap the .22 over my shoulder and take a few steps in both directions. Every bend looks the same, thickets of brush and fern one color in the creeping dawn. The trail’s covered by needles and pine cones, broken limbs and hidden rocks beneath. It’s difficult to tell which way we came in.

‘Looks familiar,’ I say.

He spits the needles out of his mouth and stands up.

‘Familiar?’ he says. ‘If a daughter of mine got attacked, I’d know every inch of this place. Every goddamn twig.’

He slides down the slope of the ravine, holding the rifle above his head as if he’s about to fall into a pool of water.

When he’s at the bottom, he looks up and says: ‘You don’t have to be here.’

I lean against the nearest tree. Fist my knuckles colorless, then ease the whiskey bottle halfway out of my pocket with my wrist. Gripping the bottle with my left hand, I take a drink. Some spills out the sides of my mouth. I think about certain things I won’t be able to do anymore. Bowling, horseshoes during lunch breaks outside the warehouse, grasping a pen. I recap the bottle with my four good fingers.

I’ll adapt.

*

Candice and I went on a group nature hike through this forest yesterday morning. One of the only things we could agree on since she arrived.

I’d picked her up from Melissa in Ukiah a few days ago, our first successful exchange. I’d cleaned my apartment, fanned out past issues of Tiger Beat on top of the coffee table. Figured she needed something to read when she visits. But she’s never touched them.

‘Ready?’

I stood near the trailhead and looked at my daughter, crouched down and tying her hiking shoes. The rest of the hikers geared up in the parking lot, our ranger giving last minute details about the hike. A heavy mist had cut off the tree line and nestled into the forest. The sun a flashlight pressed outside a foggy window. Candice walked past me, tongued her lips off her new braces.

‘This is retarded,’ she said.

We moved well ahead of the others. We heard them and caught glimpses of their bobbing heads through the scabbed trunks and sword ferns on the opposite side of the ravine.

She’d let me catch up, stopping and turning while I mounted a carved out rise in the trail. I hunched next to her.

‘Race,’ I said. She rolled her eyes and swiped at her short bangs. I said, ‘Come on,’ and poked my index finger into her belly like I’d done when she was a baby.

I jogged and spun backwards, stuck my tongue out at her, then hummed ‘Eye of the Tiger’ while I high stepped. She stopped moving and crossed her arms. Shook her head. Laughed when I tripped over a branch and fell back on my hands. She walked past me and swiped her hand over my head, grinned, and sprinted up the remainder of the hill.

I heard the crunches of her feet against the pine needle floor, her quick hard breaths shoot out her nose. The frozen water bottle I’d given her that morning sloshing and clinking at her hip, and the woman’s voice growing from somewhere within her speaking, whispering, maybe singing a song she knew out loud, to no one in particular.

Then nothing.

I figured she was sitting on a felled trunk at the side of the trail. Waiting and cursing me.

I pushed myself up and made it to the top of the hill. Coming around a redwood, hands laced behind my head, I saw my daughter lying at the edge of the ravine. Her neck cranked backwards, chin and shoulders lifted just above the ground. A far away voice saying: ‘Daddy, Daddy. Get it off, please.’ Gurgling full of fluid. Half her head engulfed within the jaws of a mountain lion.

It dropped Candice’s head when it noticed me. My daughter wheezed and toed for some sort of grip under the pine needles.

I stepped forward.

The cat mounted her back and bit onto her head again. Muscles corded tight beneath its skin, paws slapping at her flailing arms.

Complete silence.

Picking up the nearest branch, I yelled and rushed at the cat. Wailed its back and its massive haunches. The silkiness of its coat.

Again.

Again.

It didn’t budge.

Blood soaked Candice’s hair, dripped to the ground. I dropped the branch and poked at the animal’s eyes, fists against its concrete skull. I pried at its mouth. It released its bite for a moment and snapped at my hand.

I stepped away and grabbed the branch again. Teeth digging into her neck, it slipped off, twisted her around, and began dragging her down the slope. Candice’s body limp, jerking over the ground with the backward movements of the cat.

I ran in front of it. The cat pinned its ears back, hissed. I swung the branch and smashed its nose. It arched its back and I flared my jacket, stomped towards it. It sidled along the slope, pawed the air, and disappeared down into the undergrowth. I stood with the branch over my head.

Candice’s lips worked silently. When I rolled her over and dragged her across the trail, I saw half her face was raw, covered in blood, peels of skin poking through her hair. She couldn’t stop trembling.

The group of hikers ran up the hill and formed a broken circle around us. Someone handed me a canteen and I poured water over my daughter’s face, several holes and gashes, I couldn’t tell how many.

The ranger bent over me, pulled out his radio and worked open the pack on his belt. I took my jacket off and balled it under Candice’s head, ripped off my shirt and wrapped it around her face. The ranger glanced at me.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘How big was it?’

I shrugged my shoulders and spaced out a height between my hand and the ground. I noticed my right thumb was gone then.

*

‘When you see them,’ Kyle says, raising his index and middle fingers. ‘One of two things: they messed up, or something’s about to die.’

I hold his flashlight with my good hand as we explore parts of the ravine not yet washed out with the morning light. A stream parts two sides of the landscape, runs under uprooted trunks fuzzy with moss. We follow alongside for hundreds of yards.

Kyle walks sideways, foot over foot, his rifle scanning the thick underbrush. Stops and scopes snapping twigs, crunching leaves. Points forward with his index finger when a stellar jay flies into the stands of trees or a salamander zigzags its way to the nearest clump of rocks.

We stop at a clearing where the stream pools up. There’s a bank on one side of us, thick with ferns. On the other side, the pool’s dammed by a tall clump of slick rocks with more forest beyond it.

Kyle holsters his rifle and splashes his face, rubs his eyes. Cups water into his hands and drinks it.

‘Good watering hole,’ I say.

He looks behind him. Stands and kicks around the ferns, barrels the rifle into a couple of hollow logs and flips them over. Then bear-crawls halfway up the bank, shouldering his way through the plants. Sits down, pushes up his hat, and scopes his rifle around the ravine.

I prop my gun against a tree and walk into the pool, dip my bandage into the water. Let it soak through, strips of loose gauze floating beneath the surface. I crouch down and peel away the bandages.

My hand is pruned white, indented with the pattern of the gauze. The stump of my thumb is wrinkled. I move the base of the bone that’s still there, wiggle it beneath the stitches, then walk across to the clump of rocks.

I sit on a half submerged stone. Let the cold water smooth out around my waist. Lean my head back and try to focus my eyes.

When I feel even again, I move to dry land and lay down near the base of the rocks, spread my arms and legs out. There’s cool air coming from somewhere, and I look over. Near the ground, no more than shoulder wide, a shallow crevice is carved out in the rocks. I can see the shine of its slick back wall. And on the lip of the cave, three furry spotted heads rise and sniff the air, their tails swiping back and forth. They step to the ground and stumble close to me. Each of them producing a high pitched chirping whistle.

‘Shit,’ I say, and rise up. Step back and wave my arms to where I think Kyle might be sitting. Try to collect some sort of saliva in my mouth, and say, ‘Over here.’

I’d called Melissa earlier from the Mad River Hospital. Kyle answered, said she wasn’t home. I knew she was.

Long pause. Scratchy muffle of the receiver against his chin.

‘Hold on,’ he said.

She sighed when she got on the line, and said: ‘It’s your weekend, Jeremy.’

‘Something’s happened,’ I said.

I told her about the attack, but saved the details. My thumb. The slight shock I’d been diagnosed with hours earlier. The stitches patterning over our daughter’s scalp in an arcing black crescent. More than half a dozen puncture wounds through the cheek and more below the jaw.

She remained silent for several seconds, puffs of breath and broken words.

‘She’s got another surgery early in the morning,’ I told her.

Lying across the seat of my truck, I put my phone on speaker and looked at Kyle’s business card Melissa had given to me. In case of an emergency. His smile blacked out, eyes circled. Two horns protruding from his glossy forehead. Frankenstein bolts above his collar. The words ‘Dial-A-Dick’ scribbled in my own handwriting next to his office and home number.

Candice had pulled it out of my glove box on the way to our hike. Held it up to me and arched her eyebrows. Smiled and tossed it to the floorboard. Whether she found it funny or cruel, I couldn’t tell. But as long as she laughed at something I’d done, I felt we still had a chance.

Melissa cleared her throat, relayed information to Kyle.

‘We’ll be there in five hours,’ she said.

Dial tone.

His SUV pulled in the parking structure at two in the morning, and Melissa jumped out of the passenger side before it came to a complete stop. I waved my injured hand but she ran past, disappeared into the hospital’s back entrance.

She came back half an hour later, wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Kyle sat in the car, and she went up and said something to him then walked over to me.

When she was close enough, I saw her eyes were still wet, mouth parted open. She touched my elbow, started to cry, and I swung my legs out of my truck. She noticed the bulky bandage on my hand, touched my forearm, squeezed my good hand. I smiled and wiggled my four fingers at her.

‘No more thumb wars,’ I said.

She put a hand to her throat, rubbed the back of her neck.

‘Couldn’t reattach it?’ she said.

Shaking my head, I said, ‘Nothing to reattach.’

Kyle walked around and opened his back door. He looked at us. Melissa stiffened, stepped back, hugged herself high across the chest. Eyes slit under the dull parking lot light, his face sunburn tight, he nodded at me. He had his camouflage jacket on, tossed the duffel bag on the ground, and strapped the rifle over his shoulder.

He picked up the bag, slung it in my bed, and set the gun next to it.

‘Didn’t you see it?’ he said.

I leaned against my truck.

‘See what?’

‘See what?’ he said. ‘The lion.’

I looked back at the rifle.

‘Not until her head was in its mouth,’ I said.

His lips fluttered and he caught a breath in his cheek. I got in my truck and smiled, remembering what I’d just said to Melissa.

No more thumb wars.

Kyle aims at the cubs, looks behind him, aims again. He’d brought my rifle through the pool and my barrel drips as I line up the nearest one in my sights. Two are on their sides, chewing on twigs, while the other circles around our legs.

‘This is no good,’ he says, and shoots a round straight up. All three cubs jolt and begin whining again. Kyle boots one aside, swipes needles up at it with his foot.

‘Won’t be far off,’ he says. ‘It’ll protect its young.’

I lower my rifle and catch the stock on my injured hand. Yellow liquid bubbles between the stitches, followed by light colored blood. Razorblades slicing inside my arm, then my fingers beat with hearts all their own.

Kyle stands next to me as the cubs wander. They stop to lick the air, bump into one another, and stomp their oversized paws on banana slugs curling themselves near the water’s edge. One cat stops near my shoes and begins gnawing on my laces.

‘We should go,’ Kyle says, sticking his ear towards the forest behind us. Spins around and steps in the water.

The trail’s somewhere above us, but with the wall of brush and trees I can’t make it out.

Blue breaks cracks in the gray above the tree line. Leafy patterns of light forming shadows over the ground.

‘Time is it?’ I say, and jiggle my foot at the cub.

Kyle’s knee deep in the water.

‘The hell’s it matter?’

He shoulders his rifle again and points it up towards the bank. I look down at the cub.

‘Where’s your mommy?’ I say, and pet it with my right hand. Leave dewdrops of blood on its ears. Hard to believe the giants they become.

Losing balance, I prop the rifle against the ground and settle on my knees. Kyle says something but his voice drowns out, and he disappears around the opposite side of the rocks.

The other two cubs lower their bodies and paw themselves towards me. Lay side by side next to their sibling. I drop my bad hand, tilt the stump of my thumb to the sky. Everything quiet. Weightless.

The cubs look at my hand, lovebite my fingertips. The one that chewed on my shoelaces licks the dry blood forked over my palm, sandpaper clean. Then it moves up, licking, catching its sharp teeth on the stitches as it rises on its front paws and bends its neck over the top of the wound. Gnaws what’s left of it. The others come around and do the same, switching places over each other, fighting for position.

I slide the .22 on top of my knee and grip the body. Control the weight of the barrel with my bicep. My head’s heavy and I let it hang.

I locate the trigger and hook my index finger around it. Press the stock under my armpit and remain still. Angle it close to the back of the nearest cub’s head. One looks back at me for a moment, its soft fur around the mouth stained red. Eyes yellow and slit in the middle. Looking directly at me. Unblinking.

Somewhere above I hear distant voices. Hikers, bikers along the trail. Hunters within the trees. My own.

I look up.

Kyle’s head pops above the rocks. He climbs and crouches on top, points his gun. Sunlight reflects off the end of the scope. He opens his mouth wide, peels the rifle from his cheek, and yells again. But all I can hear are the slurps of the cubs, their feeding.

What was it Kyle said earlier? Something about the mother. Protecting its young. Does she know where they are? Would she know what to do?

The cubs claw at my hand, straddle my arm, and rip through the stitches. I finger the trigger. Slip the barrel into one’s ear.

A part of me is missing now. That’s all I know.

***

Joshua Landers currently lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife and their two and a half year old son, Rowan. He has been published or has work forthcoming in Night Train, Verbicide, Rio Grande Review, and Outsider Ink magazines. He is also working on a novel set in 1861 California, and is more than happy to call it a "western".

***

AMONGST THE BONES
By Marion Husband

Patrick Morgan, butcher’s boy, leaned against the dance hall bar watching as other men shuffled her across the all-exposing floor. The band played Goodnight, Sweetheart and I’ll be Seeing You, oily unguents to soothe the rub of bodies. Patrick Morgan, cool ascetic, rarely danced. His drink was ignored, his cigarette burning to harmless ash between his delicate fingers. And when the singer sang I’ll be looking at the stars, Patrick Morgan bowed his head. This was their song, after all, sweet as decay. It was right that it should hurt him still.

She was eighteen when she first saw him, a girl, a child, a baby. She had looked up from slicing brawn and there he was – that smile twitching his lips, a surprising smile from one who casually slit the throat of squealing pigs. And in his uniform, in his officer’s clothes, his disguise was complete. She never would have guessed he was the boss’s son, the boasted of son, the son who butchered the slaughter beasts with such consummate zeal. Closely shaved and neatly shorn, Lieutenant Patrick Morgan was too slight, too finely boned for butchering. The hairy-armed navvy of her imagination, the seven foot giant of his father’s tall tales, was in truth and reality, the graceful, sensitive prince.

‘He’s just a lad,’ her mother said, ‘a nowt in a uniform.’

‘A lad,’ her father said, ‘Uniform or not.’

He said, ‘You’re a lovely girl, my Daisy Fields,’ and his voice was round and soft as sugar plums, his words as hard as candy rock. She closed her eyes tight as he held her face between his palms, as he said, ‘Relax now. Try not to think of England.’

She dared to open her eyes, to breathe again, to unclench her fingers from their fistfuls of sheet. Foreheads touching, his Cyclops eye unblinking, he sighed into her shut-tight face. ‘Oh, my Daisy. In France they call it a little death. But it’s nothing like dying. There’s no pain, you see. No pain at all. They must die discretely in France, must file into the charnel house with quiet, bored expressions.’

The monstrous eye closed and a tear fell onto her face. She wished he would be quiet, that he wouldn’t talk so. His body was a dead weight, his breath perfumed with gin, scolding her face. She stroked his back, taking care not to touch the knobbly bumps of his spine. His body repelled her. Only his face was beautiful, only the idea of him buckled and buttoned inside his officer’s clothes.

‘I think our Patty’s sickening for something,’ his father said.

She’d never heard him called Patty before. She imagined Patty sick in bed in striped pyjamas, hot with measles or chicken-pox. Weighing the clammy links of pale pink sausage, she kept her head bowed, ears twitching at his father’s sniffs. He shouldn’t cry; she wished he wouldn’t take on so. Taking a handkerchief from her sleeve, she pressed it into his hand.

‘He’s fine,’ she said. ‘Pat’s fine.’

Patrick Morgan wasn’t the first, he only thought he was. He wasn’t the second, only she would never tell him that. He only presumed and she should have been flattered but felt instead an itch of irritation. He should have been able to tell, to have sensed a certain sophistication. Instead he held her face, frowning.

‘I’m awkward,’ he said. ‘Like something carved from bone, brittle and stiff and awkward. You must forgive me if I’m not what you expect.’

‘What did you expect,’ he mother said, ‘from a lad like that?’

‘A bellyful,’ her father said. ‘Expect a bloody bellyful.’

‘I’ll be looking at the moon,’ the crooner crooned, ‘But I’ll be seeing you…’

The band held out to the very last chord, dragging the song down with them. Her partner disengaged his hands and quick with furtive glances sought his mates. This one wouldn’t walk her home, wouldn’t venture onto enemy territory no matter what he’d heard of tarnished reputations. This one sought safety in numbers, in talk of what was surrendered. He stepped around her, mumbling excuses as the dance floor emptied of the last, reluctant few.

Alone she watched the squares of mirror-ball light litter the deserted floor. She waited, straining to hear his footsteps, breathing deeply to catch his scent. He would smell of gin and cigarettes, of cold air brought into a warm room. He would speak softly, as though he’d never been away.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘How could I not?’

‘In French,’ she said. ‘Say it in French.’

‘Je t’aime.’ He gazed at her, his forehead creasing into worry lines. ‘I’ll think of you in English. They won’t be able to read to read my thoughts.’ He took her hand and pressed it to the furrows across his brow. ‘You’ll be here, all the time. When they find me they’ll find you.’

On the High Street trams, on the red brick station walls, the posters told of keeping mum, of the price of careless talk. At each admonition she shuddered, carelessly giving herself away. On the horse-hair seats of the Empire she watched the bloom of parachutes seed across the screen, virgin white against the monochrome skies of France. She sat stiff and breathless, clutching the prickly plush of the armrests. In France, he said, they ate their horses. In France, he said, they stacked their dead in crypts, the smell competing with red-hot rushes of garlic-breath. He closed his eyes. ‘The bones are stacked so neatly. They take such care. Il est mort, they said, and left me there, laid out amongst the bones. I heard the smiles in their voices, saw the skulls smile back at me. They took the light away and the bones sighed contentment into the darkness.’

He covered her mouth with his fingers, bruising her lips against her teeth. ‘You mustn’t tell. Promise me now. If you promise I’ll come back and we’ll be married. I’ll be a gardener, I think, planting babies in my sweet Daisy Fields.’ He smiled but his eyes became dark again, his face pinched and pale with distraction. ‘No more butchering. No more bones.’

‘I think our Patty’s sickening for something,’ his father said. He twisted his apron in his blood-grained hands, watching his Patty through his butcher’s shop window. Lieutenant Patrick Morgan smiled at the girls, touching his cap in mock salutes. He didn’t look sick from the outside. Inside the shop she covered her belly with her hands, splaying her fingers over her apron’s stains. On the floor the bones shone like just-shelled pearls. She covered them with a cloth, breathing through her mouth against their cold iron smell.

‘Pat’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’s fine.’

From the front row of the Empire she watched the brides’ silk of parachutes trail over Norman fields. On the edge of her seat, eyes straining into the darkness, she searched him out amongst the stains of khaki buckling to the ground. The newsreel rolled, its voice quick and sure of victory, changing to a slower scene of ships. She sat back, feeling the baby coiled tight inside her. So tenacious his child, so immune to gin and bitter remedies. Pressing her hand against her body she felt a shove of foot or elbow, a tiny webbed hand bunched into a fist. On the bright screen the king and queen smiled at soldiers; a movie star waved from an aeroplane. His child shifted deeper, hiding behind its cover of flesh and blood, rolling her belly like waves. She thought of bones and horses, of little deaths in France. In between she thought of why he didn’t write, of excuses and blame. She blamed herself, of course.

The band packed up; cloakroom tickets creased in sweat-warm hands. Above Morgan’s High Class Butchers his baby slept and on the empty dance floor she waited, straining to hear his foot steps, to catch his cold air scent. She waited, smelling only the dog-ends of cigarettes, the sour flatness of the beer-sticky floor.

‘In France,’ he said, ‘they don’t like their bones disturbed for long.’ He rolled away from her, throwing his arm over his face. ‘So they raised me up from the dead, like Lazarus. Or Christ, of course.’ Taking her hand he worried her fingers one by one, forcing the blood to their tips so that her nails blushed pink. ‘I smelled of brittle brown bones. I walked for miles with my brown bone smell. All the way to England.’ He lowered his arm to look at her. ‘They’ll send me back now. Now I don’t smell of bones.’

In dreams he lies on her bed, curled against he like a half-formed child. In these dreams he doesn’t speak at all, not in French, not in English. She has lost the sound of his voice, although she knows it was sweet, like sugar plums.

Awake she sees him from the corner of her eye, in the shop queue at opening time, in the street as she walks his baby’s pram. She’d heard rumours of his death, of the firing squad of SS flashes, of betrayals and reprisals, the tit-for-tat killings that passed as little deaths in France. She found it hard to believe such ill-kept secrets, although the war was over now and Mr Churchill waved from balconies, two fingers stuck up to the world. She found it hard to believe they killed him, that unlike Lazarus he stayed amongst the bones.

The dance was over; the band left a silent stage. Across the empty floor Patrick Morgan, butcher’s boy, smiled that smile. Such a surprising smile from one who slit the throats of squealing pigs.

***

In 2003 Marion Husband graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University and won the Blackwell Prize. In 2005 her first novel The Boy I Love was published. Paper Moon followed in 2006 and Say You Love Me in 2007. Her fourth, The Good Father, was also published in 2007. In 2005 she won the Andrea Badenoch Award for Fiction.

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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 drifted away like blood splashed on the night wind … following his fortunes …

*

Play on … play on …

*

Three packs of cards appeared … the pictures bright and taunting, aces, deuces, treys and combinations; the hands only awaiting the call of the two chancers.

But the Levantine swept the cards from the table. He spoke haltingly with a biting note.

'The first gambit is mine by chance and good fortune … the side-wager foolish and for you, sire, crippling. My skills lie in knowledge, not chance. In culture, not fashion. In art and in craft, not in guile and moral usury. Propose your second side-bet … if you have any fine thing to match your losses …'

The Prince half-rose from his seat in anger but a touch on his shoulder made him turn.

The beautiful Fortunata kissed her Prince's hand and made it plain to all that she offered herself as his wager-stake …

Passion … desperate passion …

The Levantine smiled … like a fox eating scorpions.

'Then I propose a small adjustment, perhaps in my favour … I have no understanding of these games … Scopone or the devil's picture gallery, Triomphi … but what if, hooded, we both sit before a well-known painting and with the Master of the Casino to describe it … we each ask but a single question … which he must answer truthfully … and one of us must identify the work, the subject and the painter … agreed? Better that than these … images …'

At the Accademia, cushions were strewn about the room for the bystanders, Fortunata seated with the vellum books of account and the scrolled deeds of property at her feet. Food and drink served in plenty and varied tensions in the festive air.

Three strikes of the Master of the Casino's bastone di comando echoed the night bell of San Salute … three o'clock of a wintry night, so dark the murk over the canals that even the dead were grateful to be rotting in eternity.

The Prince and the Levantine hooded with silvered leather and an easel set before us … three more strikes upon the marbled floor and a rectangle, shrouded in black velvet was brought in …

Play on … play on …

The Master of the Casino said, 'Sirs … since the fifteenth century after the death of Christ until tonight, what you seek lives always in the Accademmia … your questions, please …'

The Levantine craned his neck in a listening gesture, his head turning from side to side.

The silence was broken as the Prince asked, 'What are its proportions … ?'

The Master of the Casino hesitated, then stepped forward and first, placed his forefingers on Fortuny's shoulders, then one finger on the nape of his neck, the other with delicacy, on the Prince's rump.

'Ha!', breathed Fortuny, 'a landscape …'

The Levantine's head twisted about as he tried to find the meaning of the gasps and stifled laughter from all around.

Finally, he managed, 'And its constituents … its working?'

The Master of the Casino held up a hand to still the whispers all about, lifted a corner of the velvet and said, 'Oils worked on oak wood … a panel.'

The silvered hoods were removed and the contestants moved apart, the Prince to a cushion at the feet of his mistress, the Levantine to a corner of the salone, pressing his flushed cheek to the chill marble of the wall.

Three more strikes of the bastone and a questioning gesture toward the Prince.

'Oils on panel … an oil … it is a portrait …'

The Levantine laughed, triumphant, 'A portrait! You were shown it was a landscape … we all heard you say it was a landscape!

'It is a portrait … of a young man … standing in the open air … A Young Man Standing Before a Landscape. By … fifteenth century … ah, yes … that thoughtful, rustic young man, caught so well by Hans Memling … it's the Memling, the beautiful Memling.'

The Master of the Casino remained impassive, turned to the Levantine. He snarled as he faced the assembly.

'Bastards. Landscape … portrait … you are cheating lying bastards … all of you, bastards … Venetians, every one of you. Bastards.'

He snivelled his anger into his sleeve … but suddenly, realisation dawned. 'Christian lying bastards … since the fifteenth century after Christ … you think you can trick me … you think you can insult my people with your lying Christian tricks? A landscape of the fifteenth century that no one of my faith would suspect? It is … it is … it is the Bellini … you and your desperate passion … it is The Procession of the Reliquary of the True Cross in the Piazza San Marco by Gentile Bellini … !

And with a scream of triumph, he stepped forward and ripped the velvet from the easel.

The panel was a portrait of a young man standing before a landscape.

'BASTARDS. Venetian bastards … !

Fortunata flew at the Levantine, her fingers reaching for his eyes. He caught her arms and twisted her about … as he thrust her away I fancied that I saw a flash of something reflected in a fine old wall mirror. Had he pressed into her hands an object … ? It was certainly the flash of something, gold, silver, steel … niello perhaps, that caught my eye.

*

Play on … play on …

*

Only the death to be decided … the man of brightest riches or the figure from the furthest dark? The Venetian or the Levantine? Was the risk, the thrill, the pleasure worth a life? Passion … desperate passion …

*

Play on … play on …

*

The blind dominos of death …

Again we drank our way past Santa Maria della Salute and out into the lagoon … the musicians we took with us did their jangling noisy best to keep the night at bay … a castrato who was aboard started to sing and was howled down by the sailors but his tears were soon kissed away by a couple of slim-hipped young oarsmen.

A vessel approached … water police? Austrians? We were past caring … hailed us, seemed satisfied by the reply and veered away.

'Whither bound?'

'San Cristoforo della Pace …'

… the Island of the Dead.

We landed in a sudden squall, a bitter sheet of horizontal sleet that stirred the still waters of the winter lagoon into maddened foam. Ashore we found shelter in the Cappella Emiliana, beneath that miraculous hexagonal dome … there I noticed, high among the hatchments, a tablet commemorating Pontus, the innocent murdered by order of Valerian … and realised that this was the saint's feast day, the second day of Advent … had this nightmare been all of a few hour's making?

The blind dominos were the Prince's choice of hostile wager … masked, the contestants to be set free in a burial ground perilous with opened graves … vaults in preparation for winter's casualties of life in the city of treachery … ground broken before frosts ironed it into concrete. Black vaults waiting for the season's promise.

'He who first falls', cackled Fortuny, 'will have found his true level in life …'

The rules proposed? Each contestant to carry a spade with which, as does a blind man, he might guide his steps … and with which to infill the trap into which his opponent fell … to heap spoil upon him … interring the loser where he lay, still living …

Play on … play on …

The rain now torrential, the blind domino masks with no eyes cut were carefully adjusted and to make doubly sure, that silvered leather hood was again placed on each man's head and fastened firmly at the throat …

Flaming brands flared and smoked among the spectators, the winds sending the light in eerie gusts across the newly opened cemetery … a temporary resting place for the great and good of the city state … bones to be disinterred each few years to make way for sons and daughters … a place of finite sadness before the nestling-together with neighbours, loved or despised, in the municipal charnel house.

Fortuny tries a few tentative steps back towards the chapel … the Levantine remains still, spade raised, listening, his hooded head craning forward on his neck, listening, trying to hear beyond the wind … listening …

Fortuny moves in a shuffle, testing each step before committing to an advance, searching for indications underfoot of the condition of the earth, whether firm or not, brought to a sudden halt by the feel of spoil beneath his boot … a gasp as he realises the danger he has found … beads of sweat run from the throat of the hood to mingle with the rain …

The Levantine seeks his target, the merest movement carried on the wind … and gambling, makes the shortest way towards the Prince … stumbles once … leaps clear across an opened grave, landing close beside his rival … his spade, by chance, strikes against Fortuny's implement … a second swing bites the soft earth of the grave edge … the third is the death blow, cleaving the richly-clad shoulder near the heart … and with a scream of triumph, the Levantine tears off his hood and domino, catches up the fatally stricken body of his opponent, tosses him into a nearby hole, shovels a token spadeful of earth on top and races into the dark …

*

Passion … desperate passion …

*

The following day, state police discovered the clothes of the Levantine abandoned at the landing place … ivorine teeth, false hair, a great hooked nose of papier-mache, realistically sallow … but, despite their close enquiries among those who know most in the Giudecca, no further sign of the man himself.

But … rumour is rife in San Marco that a document signed by Napoleon himself was found in the Principe Fortuny's portfolio. Florian smiles but says nothing.

Venice is the city of secrets … but secrets known to more than one are, as Florian says, not secret at all … earlier today, a close friend, a pretty young sailor, steersman aboard an Austrian barquetto, told me of a sweet adventure …

Laying in close to an island in the lagoon, a young Englishman had leapt aboard to join a beautiful woman whom they were taking out to a fast brigantine bound for Falmouth. She seemed excited … my sailor imagined that they were eloping … the only baggage she had brought aboard was a great leathern chest of books and scrolls. The Englishman was angry with her, would not respond to her caresses … kept asking for the flask, the flask, the flask … why had she not used the flask? Over and over.

She grew angry and said she might have a better use for it at some future time … he laughed at her obvious threat, which annoyed her even more … she waved a small beautifully worked steel and gold vial at him, before secreting it between her breasts …

'Venetian bitch', the Englishman called her …'Fleming the English … Fleming the mercenary', she called him … as they embraced.

*

Passion … desperate passion … play on … play ...

*

© Trevor Ray, 2007. On Trevor Ray:

... mouthing filigree silver chains and amber set in golden riddles,
I swear by the ancient rubric of the goddess who made life smile …
[I wonder what I’m thinking as I exercise these worms?]
Celts couldn’t write until the fourteenth century was dead,
since when what curious crap have we sung, penned and said …

-----

Part of the Process
Karina Mellinger

Mary and Tony are going for a weekend to Venice to revive their flagging marriage. Even now, squirming in their leather seats in the First Class Lounge at Heathrow, sipping from flutes of chilled vintage Krug, they both know this trip is a bad idea.

It reminds Mary of the first night of their honeymoon when they stood side by side on the balcony of their suite at The Georges V and watched the fireworks which spelt out their names spilling down over the Seine. She knew marriage to Tony had been a bad idea then.

And it reminds Tony of their first date when Mary arrived at the Royal Opera House wearing an orange trouser suit, almost as hideous as the emerald silk dress she has on now. That’s when he first knew a relationship with Mary was going to be a bad idea.

But, bad or not, life goes on and their marriage guidance counsellor, Diana, has told them that going on a holiday may sound like a cliché but it really can make a huge difference.

Diana says she has cancelled her other plans and she will be at their complete disposition the entire weekend of their stay. They can ring her whenever they want. That’s how much she wants their marriage to work. So they’re off to Venice to give things one last try. They’re doing it for Diana. More than anything Mary and Tony really don’t want to let her down.

*

When they land at Marco Polo Airport Mary immediately disappears to the ladies lavatory so she can ring Diana and tell her about the flight, how it had been a nightmare, how her langoustine had had a metallic taste to it, how the novel she was reading had ended implausibly and how for the entire journey Tony had rustled his copy of The Telegraph like a man possessed.

Diana suggests to Mary that her reaction to the newspaper noise may be related to their previous discussions about Mary’s feelings of sexual inadequacy. Will Mary reflect on that? Mary says she will. Diana says she’ll ring her soon to see whether she’s come to any conclusion – would Mary like that? Mary says she would.

Diana tells Mary that to calm herself down she should do the Body Contact exercise they have been practising together, the one where Mary rests her hand gently on her thyroid, heart, liver and pubic bone for three seconds and says to each of them in turn, ‘I accept you.’

Mary looks at herself in the mirror above the long line of handbasins.

She touches herself. She says, ‘I accept you. I accept you. I accept you. I accept you.’

Two women are standing next to her washing their hands. One of them says to her friend, ‘Questa qui è matta.’

The other woman shrugs. ‘Cosa vuoi – è inglese.’ Mary feels better already.

*

Mary and Tony walk out of the airport into the hot sunshine. Tony flinches. Warmth he likes but this kind of heat he finds oppressive, excessive. They have booked a small, exclusive hotel on the Venice Lido. That way they can absorb the aesthetic energy of the city without actually having to plod round it. They walk down the pier to their waiting speedboat. Tony notices that the driver has a slight squint. Tony is frustrated. You don’t come to the most beautiful city on the face of the Earth to be ferried around by someone who looks like that.

They set off across the lagoon. The water is flat and soft and giving like a turquoise cashmere carpet. Then, of his own volition, without even bothering to ask if this is something Mary and Tony would like, the driver does a detour up the Grand Canal instead of going straight to the hotel. This is annoying as Tony wanted to get to the hotel sooner rather than later to check the latest Nasdaq prices. The motorboat splices past Piazza San Marco, Santa Maria della Salute, Palazzo Dario, Palazzo Loredan, Santa Maria della Carità. Mary scrabbles in her handbag to find her favourite lipstick which she thinks she must have left on the bloody plane.

Tony looks at the buildings filing past. The driver turns to Tony and gestures towards them with a squinty-eyed look of pleasure and pride.

‘Una meraviglia!’ the driver cries.

‘Yes. Very nice,’ Tony says.

Tony feels the lagoon water spray onto his face and a mild sensation of sea sickness at the pit of his stomach. He is with a woman with poor dress sense and a man with a squint. He wants to be happy but how can he?

He texts Diana, ‘Life is so imperfect!’

She texts back, ‘This awareness is part of your process,

Tony. Cherish it.’ So he does. Thank God for Diana.

*

hen they arrive they find that Diana has arranged for flowers – white roses, tuberoses, calla lilies and gingers – in the bedroom suite. The room is swooning with their fragrance. Tony has them removed before they set off his hayfever. There is a hand-written note from Diana: it says ‘I’m so proud of you both.’ Tony feels tears well in his eyes. They ring her to say thank you, taking it in turns on the phone. She asks how they feel going down to dinner. They both say it’s going to be tough. Diana says she is there for them. Tony and Mary both wish she were.

When the time comes, however, Tony and Mary feel they cannot face the hotel dining room so they arrange instead for room service. As they cannot decide what they want to eat they order a buffet. The hotel sets up a table outside on their private terrace, a wide platform of ornate terracotta, engorged with jasmine and bougainvillia, edged with steps down to a small lawned garden which leads to the hotel’s private beach.

The sun is setting. The sky has settled to a rich russet streaked with lemon and red.

Mary and Tony decide they would rather have supper in their room so they can watch the evening news on TV while they eat. They have the table brought in from the terrace. The waiter fills their glasses with a 2001 Chardonnay delle Venezie. He presents them with ripe melon and peaches and figs and with Mozzarella Bufala Campana, Carpaccio and Prosciutto Veneto Berico-Euganeo. Tony doesn’t care for starters on principle. Mary has never liked raw meat, for Christ’s sake. She nibbles at a bread roll.

Mary and Tony leave their mobiles out on the dining table, just in case Diana rings.

Mary knows she should make small talk with Tony but doesn’t know where to start. She texts Diana, ‘Nothing to say!’ Diana texts back, ‘Relax. Silence is rich with possibility.’ Mary sighs with relief. The waiter removes their empty plates. Mary notices that he is very handsome with high, taut buttocks. Of course. Italian men are so predictable.

The waiter returns with a large tray laden with dishes. He sets the tray down. He says, slowly, ‘C’è Vitello in Salsa di Cacciagione al Tartufo, Fritto Misto di Mare, Moleche Frite, Cozze all’Aglio e Prezzemolo, Sardine in Saor, Bigoli co’l’Arna. He looks intently at Mary and waits.

Mary looks at the dishes paraded before her. She sniffs. ‘Ugh. Garlic,’ she grimaces. She puts up her hand to indicate revulsion and refusal. Tony accepts some of the veal but nothing else. He’s not sure what any of the rest of it is and, anyway, he never has much of an appetite after a flight.

A pianist from the Accademia di San Rocco arrives and sits at the Fazioli grand piano in the salone just off the terrace. She plays the last movement of Schubert’s Sonata in D Major. The music seeps in through the open doors of the room. The waiter bows his head in reverence. Tony gets up and closes the doors. He can’t concentrate on the bloody news with that noise going on.

Mary and Tony sit wordlessly. Tony chews; Mary picks at the crust of her roll.

Finally, when the news is over, Tony puts the TV on mute and announces that he thinks this is getting silly and that they should ring Diana.

‘Fine,’ says Mary eagerly.

They dial Diana’s number. ‘Hi Diana,’ says Tony. ‘Look, Diana,’ he says, ‘this isn’t going very well. Could I just put my mobile on speaker phone and you just stay on line for a bit?’

‘OK, of course, I’m here for you.’

Mary and Tony both sigh with relief.

Tony returns to his supper.

‘How is it?’ Mary asks politely. ‘How’s what?’ Tony asks desperately. Jesus, not another analysis of his existential state, he prays, please God no.

‘The food.’

‘So so. Aren’t you going to have anything?’

‘I’m finishing this cigarette first.’

‘Yes, I noticed that.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Is this the prelude to another lecture about smoking? Because I don’t think I could handle that right now, I really don’t!’ Mary shrieks.

‘You see, Diana – even the most trivial comment is misinterpreted.’

‘Let her express herself, Tony,’ Diana advises calmly over the airwaves.

‘Is this part of her process?’ Tony asks in a thin, tired voice.

‘Yes, Tony, it is,’ says Diana.

‘OK,’ he whispers meekly.

‘The fact is,’ Mary continues loudly, ‘I can’t stop thinking about the langoustine I had on the plane. It was definitely off, I could taste it, I could smell it, and I think that it may have been a metaphor for my marriage. That too is off, over.’

‘OK, Mary, this is good,’ Diana says reassuringly. ‘You’re getting in touch with your anger. That’s good.’

‘No, it’s not! You know I can’t do anger without you here, Diana,’ Mary trembles.

‘I know that,’ says Diana. There is a knock at the door. When the waiter opens it there is Diana.

‘Diana!!’ Mary and Tony both cry as they rush over to embrace her, their bodies colliding spontaneously against each other for the first time in years.

‘I thought I’d better come to support you in case things got really tough so – here I am.’

‘Marvellous!’ Tony beams. ‘Waiter!’ he instructs, ‘bring another place setting!’

‘No,’ says Diana firmly, ‘no, I won’t actually sit with you, I’ll just sit near you, so you know that I’m here, so you’ve got the confidence to really be yourselves.’ Diana goes over to a low armchair at the edge of the room.

‘Oh. OK,’ Mary and Tony both mumble in disappointment. Dejectedly, they walk back to their seats.

The waiter brings a bottle of Vin Santo and cheeses and desserts. Quartirolo Lombardo, Robiola di Roccaverano, Provolone Val Padana. Zabaione, Tiramisu, Panna Cotta, Amaretti, Cioccolatini con Aceto Balsamico di Modena. Tony takes one of the biscuits but it’s terribly dry, nothing like Digestives. Mary pings her finger against her cut-crystal glass. Eventually the handsome waiter clears the plates of uneaten food away. ‘Non è piaciuto?’ he asks them both.

‘What did he say?’ Mary asks.

‘God knows,’ says Tony. Why should he care what the waiter has said?

*

It’s time for bed. Tony and Mary undress and put on their pyjamas. Diana sits quietly on the chair at the foot of the bed.

‘Thank you for being here,’ says Tony humbly.

‘No problem,’ says Diana. ‘Use me as you need me.’

‘Fine,’ says Mary gratefully.

Mary and Tony get into bed. Tony reads The Financial Times, The Investors Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal and Money Week. Mary watches Casablanca on TV and orders a new Fendi handbag from the internet on her laptop. There is a reproduction in oil of Lorenzo Lotto’s ‘St Catherine’ on the wall. The saint is holding her head at an irritating angle. Mary gets up and takes the painting down.

Eventually Tony feels sleepy and turns out the light. Mary nods off at the bit where things get emotional in the film.

*

Diana takes off all her clothes and walks out onto the terrace. She feels the terracotta stone still warm with the heat of the day. She feels it glowing, vibrating under her feet. The waiter comes and takes her in his arms and kisses her. He massages Vin Santo into her breasts; he wipes Zabaione down the length of her back and licks it off. He crams Carpaccio into her mouth and eats it out of her. He wipes ripe figs across her thighs, and smears Panna Cotta up between her legs then devours it all.

*

The next morning Mary and Tony wake up. Diana is there, awake, in her chair. Tony has an erection. He says to Diana, ‘I had an amazing dream in the night.’

‘Dreams are good,’ Diana says.

He turns to Mary. ‘Shall we take a boat to the islands today? There’s the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello which is a thousand years old.’

‘Jesus, Tony,’ says Mary, ‘I don’t think I can be bothered, not in this heat.’

‘Yes. Maybe you’re right,’ he says. He reaches for the phone to order breakfast and then to ring the office in London.

Diana smiles.

*

© Karina Mellinger, 2007. Karina Mellinger worked in Italy and is now a full-time writer. Her novels Defying Reality and A Bit of a Marriage are published by Dedalus.

This story previously appeared in The Decadent Handbook, also published by Dedalus. Dedalus have specialised in publishing contemporary English language and translated European fiction for almost 25 years. Recently announced funding withdrawal is threatening their continued existence. Please check out their website, www.dedalusbooks.com, for more details on their books and the campaign – Don't Let Dedalus Die.

LITRO is published in association with Ocean Media (www.oceanmediauk.com) every other Friday and distributed for free near to London Underground stations, and in bookshops, bars and elsewhere around the UK and beyond. To get in touch please email litro.fiction@gmail.com or visit www.litro.co.uk.

Niki Aguirre
FLIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

One summer evening, in the middle of the night, Luis Alberto sent for his seven offspring and prepared to dispatch them to the hereafter with a Colt 45. This was their punishment, said my grandfather as he lined up the children by order of height, for the misfortune of having a harlot for a mother.

Luis was a neat and elegantly dressed man; a successful textile merchant with a penchant for pince-nez and pocket watches. His business took him out of town 22 days of the month, and though he spent the majority of his hours on the road, he enjoyed his work, for it afforded him ample time to contemplate his good fortune. He had a ravishing wife, a lovely house and 7 healthy children – 4 of them strong sons who would one day take over his textile empire.

“When you are older,” he promised the boys, “I will take you on the Condor Express.”

“What is the Condor father?”

“Only the most marvellous invention! A sleek bullet of technological perfection – you should see her – glimmers like a bird on silver wings, but she flies like a demon.”

“Luis,” warned grandmother.

“When you are older,” he continued, ignoring Ikela, “I will show you the demon in action.”

To his daughters he promised nothing, but now and then he brought them sweets.

On this fateful day – the day of this story – grandfather only pretended to leave for his trip. A few hours later, he slipped back in the house and found Ikela in the embrace of another man.

No one is quite sure what transpired between my grandparents. What is known is that Luis called for his progeny, lined them up in a row and threatened to kill them. Despite his accusations, my adulteress grandmother stood like a statue, while seven pairs of eyes burned into the back of her nightgown.

“What are you waiting for?” she said to her husband. “Go ahead and shoot me. But why are the children out of their beds? This is between us old fool.”

“They are here so they can see the whore they have for a mother!” he roared, the gun shaking in his hand.

“What’s the matter Luis, don’t you know how to use your pistol? Tell me you didn’t call your sons here so they can witness your incompetence? Now either kill me or release me so I can go back to bed.”

“The only place you are going is to hell, Blackbird,” spat my grandfather, his grip tightening around the Colt.

Ikela was only16 when first Luis first saw her as she shopped in the market. Her shiny blue-black hair shimmered in the sun like the feathers of an exquisite bird. He was so smitten he ran out of his store and followed her, trying to work up the courage to say hello. He knew then that if didn’t conquer his fear, the image of her blue hair would haunt him until he went mad with desire like St. Benedict in the legend where the devil took on the shape of a blackbird.

He flew into St. Benedict’s face causing him to be inflamed by an intense longing for a beautiful girl he’d seen only once. The saint was so tortured he tore off his clothes and jumped into a thorn bush to save himself.

Grandfather set about wooing Ikela, offering her chocolates, flowers and perfume. But she showed no interest. He tried music and silk scarves, all to no avail.

“Luis is a successful man who wants to marry you,” said her father. “Don’t you want a big house and servants?

But my grandmother wanted more. In fact she wanted so many things that sometimes her chest felt as if it would explode from wanting.

One day, Luis gave Ikela a pair of old castanets he found in the bottom of a trunk.

“Did you get those on your travels?” she asked, tracing the etchings gingerly with one finger.

“I acquired them in Sevilla,” said Luis, who had never been to Spain.

Legend has it that they were a gift to Dona Otilia from the finest Matador the world had ever seen – the valiant Juan Miguel de la Sierra.

On seeing the Bella Dona in the front row of the stadium, the Matador felt his heart rise up and overtake his chest. Her skin was smooth like honey, her lips like dewy rose petals.

Shielding his eyes against the harsh sun, Juan Miguel chanced another look toward the stands. At that precise moment she turned and he found himself staring into her almond eyes. His heart threatened mutiny. In an instant he was on down on his knees presenting her with the castanets he kept wrapped in a kerchief for luck. The castanets had belonged to his mother, the gypsy songstress Leonora Davilla.

“Accept these as my humble gift,” he said.

Otilia reached out with her white-gloved fingers but then shook her head.

“Will you at least come tomorrow and see me?” he asked, but his words were lost in the noise of the crowd. When he looked up she was gone.

Otilia was at the corrida the following day again in the front row, her ivory hair combs catching the light.

Juan Miguel tried to concentrate, but he could only think about her eyes.

The second time he saw her, he imagined she was covered from head to toe in black lace, with only her delicate throat exposed.

The third day he felt he was drowning. He was the helpless sea and she was the voluptuous pull of the moon.

On the fourth day, he no longer cared about bullfighting, only in seeing her face.

On the fifth day, Otilia came accompanied by a handsome man. The Matador felt the stirrings of something primal in his scrotum. He watched as the stranger leaned in so closely close, he was practically touching Otilia’s lips through the mantilla.

His nemesis that day was none other than Negro Pablito, the fiercest bull in all of Spain. The crowd shouted its approval, but he heard only the blood in his own ears. Half-heartedly he waved the red cloth. Negro Pablito responded by snorting and kicking up his hooves.

Juan Miguel glanced toward the stands to see if she was watching, but Otilia was smiling at her companion, her teeth like little pearl daggers.

Temporary blinded by a mixture of hot tears and afternoon sun, the Matador stomped his black boots as hard as he could and took a horn to his already shattered heart.

There was little anyone could do. As Juan Miguel lay dying in the dirt of the bullring, he called over an assistant and placed the castanets in his hand.

Take these and give it to that woman you see there,” he whispered. “And tell her, tell her…

“What did he say Luis Alberto?” said Ikela the tears streaming down her face.

Here my devious grandfather smiled, refusing to divulge the dying words. “Marry me first,” he said. “Marry me and I will regale you a lifetime of stories.”

From that day on, everything changed between them. Instead of presents, Luis gave Ikela stories. There was something about a well-delivered tale that made her face come alive. When he talked of distant and exotic places, she took on a dreamy look. Sometimes like the virgin Theresa, she bordered on the ecstatic.

You see, my grandmother was possessed by a severe case of wanderlust. She was certain the grass was greener in other lands, and far more interesting than the same boring trees and rivers she saw every day. She was sick of the sight of the southern mountains that were as familiar to her as her own two hands.

Ikela wanted ice and snow and ladies with golden hair who lived in castles.

“If you marry me, I will show you these things,” Luis promised. “Our lives will be one adventure after another. We will have porters and monogrammed luggage. We will ride camels and elephants.”

“And where will we go?” said Ikela taking his hand.

“To Egypt, to the pyramids. To uncover the secrets of the Sphinx.”

“And after that?”

“The Taj Mahal where I will buy you rubies.”

“And then?”

“To Africa, for lions and bears and zebras. And after that my love, we will go home and make a baby. Don’t you want to make a baby with me Ikela?”

And the dreaming would stop for kisses.

So grandmother agreed to marry him.

Their wedding day was the happiest day of Luis’ life. He turned to look at his treasure, resplendent in a simple white gown with a wreath of delicate hyacinths on her dark hair and was so taken by his desire that his knees buckled.

Within two years, they had three children. Ikela tried to tell her husband that three was enough for anyone. If they didn’t stop, they would never be able to visit the places he’d promised.

But the children kept coming and Luis continued to woo her with stories.

After their fifth, Ikela began to lock her bedroom door. But it only made Luis more desperate to have her. He purchased atlases and maps, travel books and globes and scattered them around the corridors of their house.

After their seventh child, Ikela hired a builder to extend the nursery into a separate wing. It was here that she spent most of her time hiding from her husband; her days a flurry of children, nannies and activities, but, sadly for my grandmother, no adventures.

When Luis heard the whispers about his wife he couldn’t believe it. Not his darling Ikela. But just to be sure, he started spending more time at home. He noticed things he hadn’t before. Had she always worn a silver rosary? He didn’t remember her being religious.

“You lying viper, you harlot, you whore! How dare you!” said Luis, waving the Colt at her. “What kind of mother, what kind of woman are you?”

“The kind who needs a real man not a desiccated dinosaur.”

“Like the parasite I found you with? That low-life, scum-bucket, bible salesman? I should have listened to my mother. She always said you were common.”

“Ignacio is not a bible salesman Luis. He is an organist from the church and as I told you before… we were praying!”

“If you were both praying, my darling wife, why were you the only one on your knees?

The terrible accusation hung in the silence for what seemed like an eternity. No one uttered a single word: not a protest or a plea. The only sound was the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

Then my father, Diego started to cry.

“Stop your hysterics this instant,” shouted Luis turning towards him. “Or I’ll shoot you first.”

At that moment, the Colt leapt out of his hand and as if by its own accord, fired a bullet.

At precisely the same time the gun went off (grandfather was later to say it was the hand of God) my father fell to the floor, just missing the bullet’s trajectory. It lodged itself instead in the clock inches from where he had been standing, stopping time precisely at 12:42.

“Dios Mio!” cried Luis, finding himself entangled in Ikela’s hair. “Release me woman! Don’t you see I’ve killed our son?”

In an amazing feat of cooperation that was never again to be repeated Oslo, Orlando and Otterdam, the three eldest boys, ran toward their father and wrestled him to the ground. Oslo yanked his hair, while Orlando took swipes at the old man’s knees. Trembling and foaming at the mouth, Luis muttered blasphemy after blasphemy, threatening to shoot his progeny in quick succession if they did not release him.

Quick as anything Otterdam stole the gun away and flung it out the window. It fired a round into the portico, narrowly missing the cook who was eavesdropping, her ear pressed against the patio door.

Meanwhile, my father was prematurely pronounced dead by his sisters, who raised-up such cacophony that it awoke Ikela from her stupor. She found the children weeping and holding hands in a circle, while her husband lay on the floor; her sons like Lilliputians sitting on his chest.

Ikela’s curses were almost a relief after the silence, the words like incantations, each one growing louder and louder until the walls themselves shook from the power of her rage.

It was then that my father chose to make his re-entry into the world. Sitting up, the bewildered tot rubbed his eyes.

The family stopped mourning and turned to stare at my father, uncertain if he was a dream, a ghost or a demon.

“I’m hungry,” he announced fluttering his eyelashes. “Why are you all crying?”

The death and resurrection of her youngest proved too much for my grandmother’s nerves. They say she never fully recuperated.

The next day, Luis rounded up the children and the servants and gave a speech about compassion, forgiveness and most importantly, of the need to maintain secrets. This was a family matter, he told them and they should never mention the incident with the pistol to anyone, not even amongst themselves. The servants were to stop whispering in the hallways and the children had to stop tiptoeing around the house like it was Sunday.

Grandfather hired a team of builders to erect a brick fence around the perimeter of his property and had the doors and windows barred, so the lakes, purple mountains and green grass that Ikela detested her entire life, were now permanently obstructed by wrought iron crosses.

People said that overnight the world lost a beauty and gained a monster. All that remained of her were her tresses, although no one was allowed to see her crowning glory. It lived permanently on top of her head like a snake, coiffed and coiled and ready to strike at a moment’s notice. She even began to take on asp like characteristics, her eyes cold and her cheekbones angular. A doting mother before, she now delighted in the retribution and humiliation of her loved ones, hoarding their shortcomings like poisonous ammunition to use later.

One night, grandmother threw wide the only French doors in the house that weren’t barred and stepped out onto the ledge.

Those who saw said she stood like a magnificent bird, the winds picking up her hair and raising it behind her like gossamer wings.

My grandmother stretched out her arms and took flight, a flock of blackbirds pulling her through the night sky, until she disappeared into the darkness; only in death, taking that great adventure that was her one desire.

© Niki Aguirre, 2007. Niki Aguirre is a London-based fiction writer. A longer version of this story appears in her collection Twenty Nine Ways to Drown (Lubin & Kleyner, 25 Oct 2007), which is available now from good bookshops and Amazon.co.uk.

Roy Bacon
GOOD KENNETH

The garden party was well under way when Mrs Southern arrived with Kenneth. They crossed the lawn in full view of the terrace, the man on the end of the dog leash obviously finding the clipped grass easier going than the gravel of the lane: his knees and palms were bloody.

“I couldn’t leave him at home,” Mrs Southern called out as they approached the ladies at the drinks table. “He won’t be any trouble, I promise.” She nudged Kenneth in the ribs with her foot, and he lay obediently in the shade of a ceanothus bush.

It was a hot day, and Mrs Southern wore a cotton dress that flattered her full figure. Her husband wore nothing, but now that he had stopped moving, his genitals were decently hidden beneath his body. For a man in late middle age, he wasn’t in bad condition, although the tight collar had chafed his neck badly, and a long scratch on one thigh suggested an encounter with a neighbouring feline. He rested his chin on his wrists and gazed wearily at the ankles of the party guests.

Kenneth’s wife was one of the world’s minglers, and for most of that summer afternoon he only glimpsed fragments of her long and complex orbit through the party. He himself was more or less ignored – it wasn’t so different from many other social events he had attended during his married life. Every so often a hand reached down to pat him on the rump or shoulder. When he was addressed it was generally clear that no reply was expected.

He dozed, twitching occasionally to keep the flies off. He dreamed he was visiting his tailor’s in search of a summer-weight suit. He nosed among the racks looking for something in his size, but all the sleeves came down below his knuckles, and the material, which from a distance looked like linen, always turned out to be fur. When Kenneth woke he was on his back, displaying a half-erect cock.

He wished he’d brought a book.

At half-past three he unhooked his leash, stood up, and walked to the centre of the sun-filled lawn. He squatted and after a moment’s effort deposited a large turd on the greensward. There was a murmur of disapproval from the terrace, before his wife hurried over with a plastic bag. Her technique was swift and prophylactic, and Kenneth’s warm creation was soon swinging neatly from her wrist. He couldn’t meet her eye as she led him back to the ceanothus.

It was much later, and only a few diehards were left gnawing on dry bones of conversation, when a pair of Liberty-print thighs swelled into Kenneth’s line of vision, followed by a face made up with a thick application of sympathy. He had seen the woman somewhere before, behind a charity cake-stall, or getting up a petition to prevent common people spoiling some aspect of local niceness.

“I’ve been watching you all afternoon,” she said. “I keep telling myself it’s not my business to interfere, but I can’t bear to see you suffer any longer.”

She touched Kenneth gently, smoothing his receding hair and rubbing her cool fingers pleasantly behind his ears. Her head was on one side as though she really was trying to see inside his mind. Finally she asked, “Can I get you a bowl of water?”

© Roy Bacon, 2007. Roy Bacon works in government communications – a great training for anyone with an interest in writing fiction. Short stories, long noses.

Jo Horsman
CAR PARKED

Today, I tried again to find my car. It was parked next to a blue one which has gone, I’m pretty sure.

I know the stairs to the airport were mainly grey, smelt a bit of wee and had a yellow line running along them. I now know they are all like this.

The car park seems to be full all the time, spinning around. I am dizzy.

The light doesn’t get through at all really. My husband thinks I’m looking a bit peaky.

I have just had a phone call to say my car is in a field. I definitely didn’t put it there.

© Jo Horsman, 2007. Jo lives by the sea. She likes to write about the people who get left behind. She spends much of her time online with The Fiction Workhouse.

David Gaffney
CELIA'S MUM'S RAT

I was alone, away from home, and bored, so I lay on the hotel bed and scrolled through the names in my mobile phone. It was then I came across the strange entry. Celia’s mum’s rat.

I had no idea Celia’s mother owned a rat. And if Celia’s mother owned a rat, why had she felt the need to buy it a mobile phone? And why had I at some point needed the rat’s number, and needed it frequently enough to enter it into the phone’s memory? Or, rather, felt a need to know that if the rat called, I would know who it was. Maybe at some point I had decided to avoid the rat’s calls or at least wanted time to prepare an excuse as to why I wouldn’t be able to assist the rat. Yet surely, if Celia’s mum’s rat were important enough to own its own phone, the rat would have a name? After all, we didn’t call Celia’s mum’s boyfriend, Celia’s mum’s boyfriend. We called him Raymond.

I imagined the sleek, smug-faced rodent lying on a miniature chaise longue, the mobile clamped to its ear, squeaking away to other rats with similar luxurious accessories. Budgies have mirrors, hamster have wheels, what do rats have? Phones. Was there a computerised system to translate the rat’s squeaks into rudimentary requests? Like food, bedding, water? Handling maybe?

I looked about me at the bleak hotel room. The clock said 11.30. Celia’s mum’s rat might feel a sudden desire to be handled at any time. Celia’s mum and Raymond might be out. My phone would ring and the robot voice would say I WANT YOU TO HANDLE ME NOW, PLEASE.

It was a chilling thought. I turned off my phone and tried to sleep, but the idea of the rat was adhesive. The phone would ring, the demand would be made, and I would drop everything. To assist Celia’s mum’s rat was my purpose in life.

© David Gaffney, 2007. David Gaffney’s collections of short fiction Sawn Off Tales and Aromabingo are available now.

Anonymous
ROBERT AND JOHN

One fine May morning, Robert and John were told by their mamma to go to school. So they put on their caps, and having kissed their mamma, were soon on their way. Now, first they had to pass through a pleasant lane, with tall elm trees on one side, and a hawthorn hedge on the other; then across two fields; then through a churchyard, and then up a little grove, at the end of which was the school-house. But they had not gone more than half the way down the lane, when John began to loiter behind, to gather wild flowers, and to pick up smooth little pebbles which had been washed clean by the rain, while Robert walked on reading his book. At last, John, calling after his brother, said, “I do not see what is the use of going to school this fine morning; let us play truant.”

“No,” replied Robert; “I will not take pleasure, for which I know I must suffer in after hours.”

“Nonsense about that,” said John; “I will enjoy myself while I can.”

“And so will I,” replied Robert; “and I shall best enjoy myself by keeping a good conscience, and so I will go to school.”

“Very well, Robert, then tell the master that I am ill and cannot come,” said John.

“I shall do no such thing, John,” replied Robert; “I shall simply tell the truth, if I am asked why you are not with me.”

“Then I say you are very unkind, Robert,” said John.

“You will not go with me, then?” asked Robert, with a tear in his sweet blue eye.

“I shall go up into this tree,” said John; “and so good morning to you.”

Poor Robert gave one long look at his brother, heaved a deep sigh, and went on his way. And naughty John sat in the tree and watched him, after he had crossed the stile, walk along the smooth broad pathway that led through the field, then enter the church-yard, and stoop to read a verse on a tomb-stone; then take out his kerchief, wipe a tear from his eye, look upward to the cloudless heaven, and then he was gone. And John sat still in the tree, and he said to himself, “Oh! that I were as good as my brother; but I will go down and follow him.”

So he went down from the tree, leapt over the stile, ran along the fields, and did not stay to gather one cowslip, though each one made him a golden bow as he passed. And when he went into the school-room, though he was only five minutes later than his brother, he told his master the whole truth, and how naughty he would have been, had it not been for a kind little thought, which came into his mind, and bade him try to be as good as his brother.

From Child’s New Story Book; or Tales and Dialogues for Little Folks (Published by S. Babcock. 1849).

Tracey Fuller
THE BOOTLEG NUN

I went to a church school, girls only, with nuns. One of the nuns was different, she seemed to shine. She was young but wore a beige skirt and jumper with those tan tights you can’t believe are still in the shops. We only saw her fringe; the rest of her hair was trapped under a veil.

She held these amazing lessons. Sex Education. Lord knows what she knew about sex. The class knew quite enough, we didn’t need any educating. She pushed back the furniture and we’d lie on the floor. You’d think there’d have been a riot but everyone just lay there. She pulled the curtains, played soft music and led what she called a meditation. I closed my eyes and this beautiful voice washed over me. She said we were loved and I loved her back. Jesus loved us. For some of us it was the first time we’d heard we were loved, and girls often sobbed quietly in the half-light.

I visited her classroom after school once. She was inside getting changed. I knew I shouldn’t watch but I couldn’t move. She wriggled out of her skirt and underneath she was wearing jeans, ones like I’d wear, bootleg, and they crinkled over her stomach like they do when it’s really flat. She turned and I walked away quickly in case she caught me staring. A moment later she rushed past me, a raincoat clutched around her shoulders, and outside to a waiting car. Leaping into the passenger seat, she pushed off the coat, grabbed her veil and hurled it behind her, throwing back her long hair.

As I walked home blossom blew from the trees like confetti.

© Tracey Fuller, 2007. Tracey Fuller’s novel The Silver Vessel has a lifeboat crew, a vintage car, a daring diving show and the Great War. What more do you want?

Morgan Omotoye
IN 2007 THE POET’S FRIEND

Said, there are no cymbals in you, no soar, no juju, no breathy burr of electric sugar, no wolf ticket, soft machine or porno lollipop; in short you’re no poet.

The poet did not know how to reply. He felt words that were from the beginning turn to ash on the ciliations of his tongue.

The poet stopped writing. Starts to die. One morning he wakes up with a spider-web in his ear. He’s dying inside, he knows. He knows what he must do.

The poet’s favourite writer was shot in the back of the head in Poland. There was a so-called ‘wild action’ and the local Gestapo went hunting. The poet’s favourite writer was shot in the back of the head in 1942.

The poet decides to save him.

He is going to build a time machine.

The ink came from an octopus. The octopus could talk like you or me, and when she saw the poet with his harpoon, she said one word, ‘Finally.’

The paper was the blue skin of a randy Jinn, which the poet strangled in its sleep.

Then there was a sword that was actually a beautiful black woman with a Pam Grier Afro. She was young and she had a family. When the poet saw her she was hanging clothes on a line, and she was so beautiful the poet nearly cried and it was the sadness in his eyes that made the woman say, ‘I understand, let me make dinner before you take me.’ So she cooked and hummed while she cooked and the poet sat in her happy kitchen and stared at his hands and when she was finished the poet did what had to be done. And she was a sword. And as he carried her away the poet heard her children walking home from school. How did he know they were her children? How could he not?

The ink, had to be mixed with his blood, the paper had to soak up his blood, and the sword spilled his blood, and the wound was deep, some say he died that day, but I know he was building a time machine. To save his favourite writer, who made him want to be a poet.

Years, getting the right words to fit the wrong ones, and blood, lots of his blood and the words wouldn’t stick to the Jinn-skin unless they were true. Finally its done. He gets down to the salvia bubble bursting from the cracked lips of his favourite writer, the ore-shine on the epaulets of the Gestapo, who move like one beast and there is only one gun one scream as the bullet cracks the cosmos open. The poet writes it all down. He takes his time.

He sends the poem to his friend, second class. The poet’s friends is bemused and annoyed to receive a poem from his friend who should no longer be a poet, the cheek.

The poet’s friend lets the poem collect dust, then one day, he picks it up, he reads, he reads, and he is there. In Poland in 1942 in a small town called Drohobycz and he is that one gaunt face turning in horror at his name being called, and it is his brains that fall while I stand here, telling you this story, about the poet and the poet’s friend who rescued me.

© Morgan Omotoye, 2007. See LITRO issues 53 and 68 for more stories by Morgan Omotoye.

Dave Curtain
IT'S GETTING HOT IN HERE

Inside the ant farm, a senior colonel alternately flexed and relaxed each of his three pairs of legs as he waited nervously for an audience with the queen. She was nearly 10 years old, a time frame almost beyond the colonel’s comprehension. He gazed out into the blurry heavens outside the farm, wondering what empyreal machinations might be transpiring that he also could not comprehend.

One of the queen’s assistants clicked his corrugated mandibles together, signalling that the queen was ready to grant the colonel an audience. Obediently, the colonel followed the assistant into the dimly lit main chamber. The segments of the queen’s reclined body rippled as she folded her wings in silence. Dusk rays illuminated the silvery goo dripping from the tip of her bulbous gaster. She looked tired. The colonel waited for the inevitable question.

“Colonel”, she squeaked, rubbing her forelegs across the washboard-like set of ridges on her chest, “Have you discerned any semblance of a solution to our predicament?”

The sinewed muscles lining her trunk glistened in the half light.

“No, ma’am. Nothing new that is.” The colonel’s antennae waved about anxiously.

The queen’s own hair-like sensors bristled visibly at their tips. “Still no demands?”

“No ma’am.”

“Does anyone have any idea why we are being kept here?”

“I’m afraid we do not, ma’am.” The colonel’s small head dropped in shame.

“They are clearly capable of some kind of social organisation, perhaps you could even call it intelligence. For crying out loud, they’ve got us trapped in this, this…” she trailed off, almost wordless with rage, “…thing!”

“Indeed, your majesty, although it’s difficult to fathom any sophisticated level of interaction with their own environment”.

The queen glared out of the farm, fuming. Her cocoa brown abdomen seemed to darken further with her anger.

“There must be some way of ascertaining what causes them to act as they do,” she mused.

“If anything, your majesty,” the colonel stroked his copper head nervously as he spoke, “I’d say that their actions are becoming increasingly random.”

The queen nodded, stroking her chin. “Go on.”

“We think the increased temperatures may be impairing whatever basic faculty of reason might underlie their incomprehensible behaviour...”

© Dave Curtain, 2007. Dave is an emerging writer from Melbourne, writing quirky short stories and working on a novel.

Three tales by Bruce Holland Rogers
STRING THEORY

The Eleventh Dimension

No-one had direct experience of the extra dimensions, so learning about them at age six was difficult even for genetically enhanced superchildren. Child-friendly names were devised. This helped. Children learned that the eleven dimensions were Length, Width, Height, Time, Happy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, Doc, and...

Even with the new names, one dimension was hard to remember. Even for genetically enhanced superchildren, the universe was not without mystery.

Recipe for a Theory of Everything

Start with a figurine of turtles stacked one on top of another and an excellent hammer. Smash the turtles. Smash the pieces, and keep smashing. Pound the dust into atoms. Smash the atoms into protons. Keep smashing down to quarks and gluons. You’re close to the theory of everything. Pound everything into strings. Keep pounding. After strings, turtles. Pound, pound, pound. Smaller and smaller turtles, all the way down.

But Maybe She Just Couldn’t Knit

Wanda had been about to defend her superstring dissertation when the universe gave its answer. Broken strings littered the floors of physics departments everywhere. “But they were so pretty!” she cried.

She drank.

Later, she picked herself up. She went to AA meetings. She spun her old strings into yarn, knitted the yarn into a sweater and wore it to a meeting. Everyone who saw it started drinking again.

© Bruce Holland Rogers, 2007. Bruce Holland Rogers is an American writer living in London. More of his stories are available at www.shortshortshort.com.

Mike Fell
CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR

OK, I lied, this one is seasonal. All the team at LITRO would like to wish you a merry one of the former, and a happy one of the latter – thanks for reading!

Mike Fell is editor of LITRO.

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LITRO is published every fortnight and distributed for free near to London Underground stations, and in bookshops, bars and elsewhere around the UK and beyond. To get in touch please email litro.fiction@gmail.com or visit www.litro.co.uk.

The Story of Stories (based on a traditional Zulu folktale)

Once, a long long time ago, there lived a woman named Manzandaba with her husband Zenzele.

They lived in a traditional home in a tiny village. They had a lot of children, and, for the most part, were very happy. They would spend the day working the earth near their home, weaving baskets, tanning hides and hunting. From time to time they would all go down to the ocean and play on the sand, laughing at the funny crabs that went scuttling hither and thither, and marvelling at the birds that would flutter and swoop in the brisk sea breezes. Zenzele was a skilled artist and loved to carve. He would sculpt beautiful birds out of old tree stumps, and with his axe he could conjure the most wonderful impala and kudu bucks from stone. Zenzele filled their home with beautiful works.

Their only unhappiness came in the evenings when the family would sit around the fire before going to sleep. There was not enough light for weaving or carving, yet it was still too early to go to sleep. “Mama,” the children would cry, “Sifuna izindaba! Tell us some stories, Mama!” Manzandaba would try and try to think of a story she could tell her children, but it was no use. She and her husband had no stories to tell. They asked their neighbours, but none of them knew any stories either. They listened to the wind rustling and moaning outside – could the breeze be trying to tell them a story? No, they heard nothing. Not a single story, dream or enchanting tale.

One day Zenzele suggested to his wife that she go in search of stories. He promised to take care of the home, to look after the children, to wash and mend and sweep and clean, if she could just bring back stories for the people. Manzandaba agreed. She kissed her husband and children, said good-bye and set off on her journey.

She decided to ask every creature she encountered if they had any stories they could tell her. The first animal she met was Nogwaja the hare. Everyone knew him as a real trickster, but she thought she’d better ask him all the same. “Nogwaja, do you know any stories?”

“Stories?” exclaimed Nogwaja. “Why, I know thousands, no – millions!”

“Oh, please, Nogwaja,” begged Manzandaba, “can you share just some of them with us?”

“Umm...” Nogwaja said. “Uhhh...well, I have no time for stories now. Can’t you see that I’m in a terrible hurry? Wasting time with stories in the daytime, indeed!” And Nogwaja hopped quickly away.

Sighing, Manzandaba continued on her way. The next creature she came across was a mother baboon with her babies. “Oh, Fene!” she called. “You’re a mother like me! My children are crying for stories. Do you have any that I could bring back to them?”

“Stories?” laughed the baboon. “Ha! With all the work I do keeping my children safe and fed and warm, you think I have time for stories?! I am glad I’m not a human with children who cry for such worthless things!”

Manzandaba walked on. She then saw an owl in a wild fig tree. “Oh, Khova,” she called, “maybe you can help me? I am searching for stories. Do you have any stories you could tell me to take back home?”

Well, the owl was most upset at having been woken up. “Who is making all this noise?” she hooted. “What do you want? Stories! You think you can wake me up for stories? How rude!” And with that the owl flapped off to another tree and perched up higher to be left in peace. She was soon fast asleep again, and Manzandaba went sorrowfully on her way.

Next she came upon an elephant. “Oh, gentle Ndlovu,” she asked, “do you know where I could find some stories? My people are hungry for tales, and we don’t have any!”

Now the elephant was a kindly animal. He saw the sadness in the woman’s eyes and felt sorry for her. “Dear lady,” he said, “I’m afraid I do not know any stories. But I do know the eagle. He is king of the birds and flies highest of them all. He might know where you could find stories!”

“Ngiyabonga, Ndlovu!” she said. “Thank you so much!”

So Manzandaba began to look for Nkwazi, the majestic fish eagle, and soon found him near the mouth of the Tugela River. Excitedly she hurried towards him, and called out as he was swooping down from above, talons reaching out to pluck a fish from the river. “Nkwazi! Nkwazi!” she called. She startled the eagle so badly that he dropped the fish he had caught. He circled around and landed nearby on the shore.

“Hawu!” he exclaimed. “What is so important that you make me lose my supper?”

“Oh, great and wise Nkwazi,” began Manzandaba – and here he puffed out his feathers at her flattering tone – “Nkwazi, my people are desperate for stories. I’ve been searching for them for a long time now. Do you know where I might find some tales?”

“Well,” he said, “even though I am very wise, I do not know everything. I only know of the things I can see here on the earth. But there is one who knows even the secrets of the deep, dark ocean. Maybe he can help you. I will call him for you – stay here and wait for me!” Days went by as Manzandaba waited for the king of the birds to return. Finally he returned. “Sawubona, nkosikazi!” he cried. “I am back, and I am successful! My friend, Ufudu Lwasolwandle, the giant sea turtle, has agreed to take you with him to the place where you can find stories!” And with that the sea turtle hauled himself out of the surf.

“Woza, nkosikazi,” said the turtle in his deep voice. “Climb on my back and hold on tight. I will carry you to the kingdom of the Spirit People.” So the woman took hold of his shell and down they dove into the great abyss. Manzandaba was amazed. She had never seen such beauty before in her life. Finally they came to the ocean floor where the Spirit People live. The sea turtle took her straight to the palace of the King and Queen. Manzandaba bowed down, and was a bit afraid to look at them.

“What do you desire of us, oh Woman from the Dry Lands?” they asked.

Manzandaba told them of her wish to bring stories to her people.

“Can you help me?” she asked shyly.

“Yes,” they said, “we have plenty of stories. But what can you give us in exchange?”

“What do you want?” asked Manzandaba.

“What we would really like,” they said, “is a picture of your home, your people. We can never go to the Dry Lands, but would so love to see them. Can you bring this for us, Manzandaba?”

“Oh, yes!” she replied. “I can certainly do that! Thank you, thank you so much!”

So Manzandaba clambered back onto the turtle’s shell, and he took her back to the shore. She showered him with thanks and asked him to return with the next round moon to collect her and the picture.

The woman told her family all about the things she had seen and experienced on her journey. When she reached the end of the tale her husband cried out in delight. “I can do that! I shall carve a beautiful wooden picture for the Spirit People in exchange for their stories!” And he got straight down to work.

Manzandaba admired her husband’s skill. She watched him as the picture he carved slowly came to life. There was their family, their home and their village. Soon others heard about Manzandaba’s quest and the promised stories and came to watch Zenzele at work. When the next round moon showed her face Zenzele was finished. He carefully tied the carving to Manzandaba’s back. She climbed on the turtle’s shell and down they went to the Spirit Kingdom. When they saw the picture the King and Queen of the Spirit People were delighted. They admired Zenzele’s talent and gave Manzandaba a necklace made of the finest shells for her husband in gratitude. And then they turned to Manzandaba herself. “For you and your people,” they said, “we give the gift of stories.” They handed her the largest and most exquisite shell she had ever seen. “Whenever you want a story,” they said, “hold this shell to your ear and you will have it!”
Manzandaba thanked them for their great kindness and headed back to her own world.

When she arrived at the shore, her whole family and all the people of her village were there to meet her. They sat around a roaring fire and called out, “Tell us a story, Manzandaba!”

So she sat down, lifted the shell to her ear, and began, “Once, a long long time ago...”

And that is the story of stories!

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Folktales are a way of handing down knowledge, customs and values from one generation to the next. In keeping with this tradition I have adapted this tale from a version which appears at www. canteach.ca/elementary/africa2.html.

LITRO is published every fortnight and distributed for free near to London Underground stations, and in bookshops, bars and elsewhere around the UK and beyond. To get in touch please email litro.fiction@gmail.com or visit www.litro.co.uk.

Anya and the Purple Butterfly by Lubna

Poor Anya is ill and all alone indoors.

She is bored as she lies in bed all day,
while all the other children laugh and play.
She stares sadly out of the window.

Suddenly, Anya sees something
flying as high as a bird above her favourite tree.
What can it be?

She watches the purple mist shimmer around the treetop,
across the garden, through the window
and straight onto her fingertips.
Anya gasps.
It is a beautiful, purple butterfly.

“Butterfly,” she whispers.
“Oh I wish I could fly
just like you up in the sky.
You flew so quickly and so high.”

“Hmmm,” said the butterfly.
“If you like, I’ll tell you why I can fly.”
“Oh, yes please,” said Anya, eagerly.

“Well,” began the butterfly,
“Once upon a time,
I was a small, green caterpillar.
There were plenty of juicy leaves for me to eat.
So, I munched away, then rested a little,
then munched some more and then rested some more.
That was all very nice and easy.
But there were some things
I was very afraid of.

I was afraid of birds
with their big, sharp claws
and pointed beaks
and loud cries.
I knew they wanted to
eat me up or feed me to
their hungry babies.
I was afraid of the rain that beats down,
sometimes so hard that it almost knocked me
off my branch and into the puddles on the ground.
I was terrified of falling off, because
caterpillars cannot swim!

Even though I could eat as many
tasty leaves as I could possibly want,
I became tired of creeping and crawling
and tired of hiding from the birds
and tired of trying to shelter from the rain.
So tired, I had to stop and rest.
I found a branch and wrapped
myself up in a cosy chrysalis.

It was very quiet and I was all alone in there.
I wondered if I would ever feel any better.
I wished that I could play with my friends.
All I could do was wait another day.

After a while, though
I was not tired any more.
And, then, I did not feel afraid.
I felt strong. I stretched and pushed my way out.
In all that time, something amazing had happened.
I had wings. I had become a purple butterfly.
I was a butterfly and I could fly!
I flew high into the clouds and sky.
I saw how beautiful
the world is
and how people smile,
happy to see me flutter by.

In the butterfly garden
I soared with the other butterflies
We danced amongst the flowers,
weaving and whirling.
We drank sweet nectar.
We all flew high.

You see, I was tired, alone and afraid.
Then, I stopped to rest for a while.
Look what happened!
Everything changed.
It’s not just me.
This happens to moths and dragonflies.
And maybe even to little people!”

With that, the butterfly tickled Anya’s fingers
and fluttered away.
Anya sat up.
She sat up and smiled.

At bedtime, Anya thought about the purple butterfly.
As she fell asleep, she imagined all the butterflies flying about together,
so happy that the whole world smiled;
and that night,
Anya flew over the rainbow
and under the stars.

-----------------------------------------------

Lubna is a writer, performer and creative arts business consultant. She recently appeared in Ray Cooney's Not Now Darling on the Colorado stage, is developing her first play having received an award from North Western Media and is writing more butterfly stories. An audio version of the story can be found at www.anyaandthepurplebutterfly.com.

When my father was around twenty years old, doing compulsory national service with the British Army, he found himself posted to Christmas Island in the South Pacific. While his former schoolmates back home were square-bashing in the rain, he was spearfishing in the Blue Lagoon or watching land-crabs scuttle across burning sands. He was an avid stargazer, and at night he trained his binoculars on treasures of the southern sky – the Magellanic Clouds, the Jewel Box – which he described to me years afterwards, instilling in me a fascination that was to form the basis of my adult career.

Along with his fellow conscripts, my father was one day ordered to stand on the beach, close his eyes as tightly as he could and hold his clenched fists over them. He knew what was about to happen. As a safety measure, the men had all been instructed to wear long trousers that morning, rather than shorts. It was a beautiful, calm day, my father told me. They all stood there, heard the countdown, and thirty miles behind them, a hydrogen bomb exploded.

My father said that even with his back turned to the fireball, and with his eyes closed, he could see the bones of his own hands. A few seconds later he turned and saw the rising mushroom cloud; a ball of incinerated air convected so swiftly into the upper atmosphere that sparks of lightning flashed around its rolling flanks.

Then the sound arrived: a shockwave that knocked the young soldiers to the ground. As the spectacle continued to unfold, the disrupted air above them curdled into black rain clouds, drenching them with viscous bullets of water. When it was all over, they showered and changed, got on with their daily duties and later enjoyed a laugh and a pint at the regimental club’s tombola night.

As soon as my father was released from the army he married the girl in Glasgow he’d been writing to every week since he was called up. A year later they had a plump and healthy son, my brother Ken, who now works as a civil engineer. After another two years, I came into the world; but at first the midwife wouldn’t hand me to my mother. Instead she called for a male doctor, who had a look at the little bundle he was presented with, took it away for closer inspection, then came back to report his findings to my anxious and exhausted mother.

‘It’s a little boy,’ the doctor told her. ‘Unfortunately he’s blind.’ My mother asked how he could possibly be so sure, and he told her that since I had no eyes there really couldn’t be much doubt about it, could there?

That’s how my life began: I told the new girl about it today. She’s called Jagoda and says the hours and money are fine; she’ll clean and iron, do a bit of cooking if need be, read the mail. She comes from what used to be the other side of the geopolitical divide, now vanished like a dream, that caused my father to be soaked in fallout. The bomb he witnessed was meant to damage people such as her, but instead made me.

‘Do you regret what happened?’ she asked in accented but perfect English, and I laughed, for how could I ever regret being born? I was a love-child, after all. Had my father not been so passionate about the stars, he would never have applied for a posting where clear nights and southern constellations attracted him more than puffer fish or gooney birds. Had a high-energy photon from the nuclear blast not severed a chemical bond inside his body, sending a free radical on its hungry, damaging course, then I might have been born sighted, and perhaps I would have been unmoved by the stories he told me about the mythical beasts and heroes which wheel above our heads each night and go unnoticed by people for whom the flicker of a television screen is more compelling than the glimmer of distant worlds. I might never have become a cosmologist – and Jagoda would have needed a different employer.

‘Let me show you around,’ I offered, then took her on a tour of the flat, which didn’t take long. ‘The only rule,’ I said, ‘is that you don’t move things, otherwise I never know where to find them. So no tidying. Other than that, treat it like any other place.’

‘What about the lights?’ she asked. I didn’t know what she meant. ‘They’re switched on, though it’s the middle of the day. Do you leave them on constantly?’

I realized there must be something wrong with the timer; the lights are meant to come on at night to reassure callers and deter burglars, but perhaps my young nephew had fiddled with the control at the weekend when my sister came to visit. I showed Jagoda how to make the necessary adjustment. ‘You see how much trouble I have to go to for the benefit of the sighted?’ I explained. ‘It costs me money to keep you folk from being in the dark.’

‘Perhaps we should try living in darkness like you,’ she suggested.

‘Oh no,’ I said, taking her back to the living room so we could finish our tea. ‘There’s no darkness in my life.’ She thought I was being metaphorical, but such things don’t come naturally to a scientist like me; I was merely stating a fact. ‘What’s behind you right now?’ I asked once we were seated.

I heard her turn to look. ‘A door, some bookshelves.’ Her voice echoed against the far wall.

‘Now face me again. How does the bookcase look to you?’

‘It doesn’t look like anything – I can’t see it.’

‘Exactly, and that’s how everything looks to me: neither dark nor light, but invisible. I’m sure you’ve never felt you were missing out by not having eyes in the back of your head; I feel that way about eyes in front. I’ve never needed them and I don’t want them. I only wear these artificial things so that I won’t frighten people.’

Throughout my childhood I had to go to hospital regularly to have new eyes fitted. They prevented my sockets from closing up, but couldn’t keep pace with my growth; so on countless unpleasant occasions I sat stoically while gel was squirted into each empty orbit and left to set, providing a cast for my next set of custom-made eyes. In a medical school drawer somewhere, I expect my youth is still mapped out by a forgotten array of ancient discarded blobs staring blankly in every direction.

In the old days, I told Jagoda, the world’s false eyes were crafted by German glass-blowers renowned for their unmatchable skill. The one-eyed Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, maimed in a shooting accident, had a different eye made for every occasion: proud, lascivious, sleepy, hung-over. A man’s soul, it is said, is written in his eyes, so I share with Prince Christian the opportunity for self-creation; but my eyes are not glass, because the Second World War cut the supply line, and when Spitfire pilots fell from burning, shattered cockpits into the safety of military hospitals, there was nothing to plug their ruined faces. It was the Perspex shards embedded in their flesh that saved them. Found to be biologically inert, the plastic proved a perfect substitute for glass, and henceforth the nation’s artificial eyes were moulded in a workshop in Blackpool, which is where mine came from, made to simulate real eyes, with matching irises and pupils, so that I can look relatively ‘normal’.

‘They’re very realistic,’ Jagoda told me. ‘When you came to the door to let me in, I thought at first that you were someone else, because you’d told me on the phone that you were blind. It took a few moments to see there was something different about your eyes.’

‘They don’t move or blink – you can only do so much with two lumps of plastic.’

‘I think they make you look very distinguished,’ she said tactfully. Perhaps mine came from the same design catalogue as Prince Christian’s. Posing as a child for successive generations of these impostors meant sitting patiently in a leather chair, holding my mother’s hand while the gel went firm in my sockets. When the casts were ready, the cheerful whiskery doctor would extract them delicately, but never without some of the gel adhering to my own tissue – like stripping an elastoplast from under the tongue. There were consolations of the usual hospital kind: a chair I could swing in as much as I liked; a stethoscope with which to probe my beating heart; inscrutable gadgets of cold, smooth steel, drawn randomly, it seemed, from the doctor’s menagerie of disposable spares. None of these, however, could counterbalance the ominous sense of dread I felt whenever we walked down the echoing hospital corridor with its sickly smell of undefined despair; its heavy swing doors; its stock of conversational snippets, momentarily caught from passers-by as Mother and I marched to the eye clinic. Those fragments of unknown lives, falling into my ears like fluttering relics, seemed all the more poignant by virtue of their sheer triviality. This was a place where absolutely no one wanted to be – even the doctors would doubtless rather have been in the pub. And this was the place where I had to come and have false eyes pushed into my head so that to sighted people I would not appear too monstrous. And like any child, I accepted it.

My escape, I told Jagoda, was to think. In the doctor’s leather chair I would avoid the discomfort by fixing my mind on an idea, a memory, a hope. I would hold it with the same tenacious grip that kept my comforting mother close beside me.

‘Did you ever wonder what it would be like to see?’ Jagoda asked.

‘Of course, just as I’ve wondered what it must be like to be a goldfish or Napoleon – or a woman, though I’d never undergo surgery to find out. I don’t suppose you’d want to go round wearing Perspex testicles, would you?’

‘What a horrible idea!’

‘False eyes are about as much use to me, and real ones appeal even less. Certainly I’m curious about sight, but only if I could have the experience for a very short time, and be sure it was reversible. More tea?’ She’d drained her cup with a slurp, and accepted a top-up.

What’s it like to see? No poet has ever described it, though accounts abound of what things look like, for the benefit of those who know already. There was even a congenitally blind poet, Thomas Blacklock, who impressed eighteenth-century sighted contemporaries with striking visual evocations of a natural world he never saw. Aristotle offered something more useful in his theory of how the eye works. Rays fly out of it, he claimed, strike distant objects, and in this way give the sensation of vision, so that sight is really a form of touch: a beautiful confirmation of what any blind person suspects. Uncontaminated by the later knowledge that light is a wave flowing into people’s eyes, Aristotle constructed a theory based only on what he genuinely felt.

‘What else did you think about during those hospital visits?’ Jagoda asked.

All sorts of things, I told her; but most of all I wondered why any of it was happening: the leather chair, the gel, my entire life occurring in just the way it was; and why the unfolding narrative, like one of the Braille story books I was then learning to read, should have reached the point it had, precisely then. Was all of time a moving finger, pointing at the tiny dots that make up our lives? Is the rest already written? This was a feeling for which our language has no word; the sensation of being alive, here and now, and of being surprised by it, as one often is in childhood, though the wonder fades with the habits and distractions of age. I made my own word for it, ‘livacy’, so that whenever the rush of fearful joy overcame me, a sense of death as well as life, I had a name I could hold on to, as reassuring as my mother’s hand.

Perhaps Dad felt it when the bomb exploded behind his back, its invisible light strong enough to crowd straight through his head. He could see the bones of his own hands, he told me, even with his eyes shut; and as a child this didn’t strike me as extraordinary because the bones of my own small hands made an equally clear impression when I held them to my face. But I noticed the strange pleasure he took in recounting the scene of beauty and destruction he attended. We know life only through its juxtaposition with death.

My life is without light yet knows no darkness. Jagoda found this strange; all sighted people do, which is why I enjoy explaining it to them as much as my father liked recounting the scorching flash; the momentary, all-embracing burst of creation; the rising pillar of involuting cloud that was a brain, a tree, or a thousand other resemblances to the awed onlookers watching from many miles away through smoked glass, being irradiated by human ingenuity.

I was in the back garden with my father one night, holding his star map for him while his binoculars licked the cold sky, when he explained to me how it all worked: the fusion of hydrogen atoms, releasing so much energy that for a brief moment the fireball was like a piece of the sun brought down to earth. He was an engineer by trade, and the universe he described to me was one of machinelike intricacy and perfection. A hoarder of spare parts encountered in his work, he had filled a cupboard in our house with knurled cogs, bits of clocks, greasy gears and tangled wires terminating in sandwiches of plastic and solder that smelled of unknown factories as romantic to my mind as Ursa Major or Canes Venatici hanging far above our heads. He was a hoarder of useless knowledge too, and the workings of bombs and stars lay heaped in the reckless jumble he shared so eagerly with me.

We are all made of atoms, he told me, whose centres are like little jack-in-the-boxes. The lids are held down by nuclear force; the electrical repulsion of protons inside the atoms pushes against this restraint like a pent-up spring. To close a jack-in-the-box, you need to push down hard on the spring until the box shuts with a click. Squeeze lots of hydrogen atoms together and the force makes a trillion clicks: fusion’s thunderous roar.

It was enough to knock my father to the ground, this energy from mating particles carried through seared air into his youthful body. Yet only a single click – on a Geiger counter as he emerged from the shower afterwards – was enough to decide my future and his. For me, it was the blessing of being who I am. For him, it was the cancer that killed him three years ago.

I didn’t tell any of this to Jagoda; she’d come to offer domestic help, not hear my life story. But she wanted to know what I do for a living, so I explained how one thing had followed another, like particles communicating their quantity of motion, or like the harmonious interlocking of a succession of toothed wheels. I was born from a hydrogen bomb and so is everyone, since the sun or any other star is a bottomless ocean of hydrogen whose atoms, compressed by their own sheer weight, fuse unavoidably, sending parcels of light burrowing haphazardly through the thick and perilous mantle, out into space, across distances of unimaginable emptiness, traversing the cosmos without incident until at last a few of them might fall, like unexpected snowflakes, upon the innocent lens a human aims towards the place where they were born.

Those nights in the garden when I stood with Dad and gave him the loyal audience he elsewhere lacked were the means by which that feeble starlight entered my life, keeping me company during visits to the hospital and prompting the first stirrings of livacy that stayed with me as native wonder turned to scientific curiosity. How fortunate I was, I realized, to be able to experience something no sighted person can truly imagine: a universe in which neither light nor dark exists, though this was how everything began, in a condition lacking even space and time which we only fully recover when we come to be deprived of every sense, like my father now. If the stars hadn’t taken him to Christmas Island he would probably still be alive, and I wouldn’t have wasted an hour telling Jagoda his story. She starts next week; there’ll be plenty for her to do, and before she left she asked me one more thing. Since you’re a cosmologist, she said, can you explain to me what started it all in the first place? Why is there something rather than nothing? That’s the oldest question of all, I replied. I wish I knew the answer.

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Andrew Crumey has a PhD in theoretical physics and is former literary editor of Scotland on Sunday. His novels combine history, philosophy, science and humour, and have been praised and translated worldwide. He is 2006 winner of the £60,000 Northern Rock Foundation Writers Award, the UK's largest literary prize, for his forthcoming novel Sputnik Caledonia.

This story first appeared in New Writing 15 published by Granta in association with the British Council. The collection is available from Amazon priced just £9.99. New Writing 15 collection © The British Council, 2007.

‘Livacy’ © Andrew Crumey, 2007 reprinted by kind permission of the British Council. LITRO is published every fortnight and distributed for free near to London Underground stations, and in bookshops, bars and elsewhere around the UK and beyond. To get in touch please email litro.fiction@gmail.com or visit www.litro.co.uk.