SANDERLINGS

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Incomers

Remember that first winter we loafed about by the puddle behind the post office, the one that was crusted over with grubby ice and bicycle tyre marks and two perfect imprints of duck’s feet? We bled our knuckles playing Jacks, hunkered down with our backs sliced against the granite wall, army green balls of sheep shit breezing about in the wind.

Did we imagine they were platypus prints, the duck’s feet? Of course. We were exotic, then. Tanned little shy kids with reading ages well above our new peers and accents that stumbled and shrank when we fell.

Remember the post-mistress in her black Mini Cooper, her dim headlights scattering Mrs Campbell’s wall-eyed goats over the dry stone wall as the old woman crashed her gears, wheels skidding round the tight turn that everybody said the Council should sort before somebody or somebody’s dog was killed for God’s sake!

We weren’t there the night Mr Campbell’s croft burnt to the ground, the thatched roof a wild dazzle of yellow and orange jiggery pokery, a leaping spark setting off the neighbour’s byre, all six cows dead and the saddle-back sow in the lean-to roasted to a golden crisp.

Didn’t stop them blaming us, though. We’d brought it on them, they said, with our foreign ways and our fancy words. Shook their fingers in our faces. Clumped the sheep shit in our hair. Later my mother found me with my head in the sink scouring my scalp with a wire scrubber and coal tar soap. We hadn’t even got here by then, I wailed.

Why did we come here? Why?

For a while, they died. One young man spun his car off a cliff into sweet-scented gorse blooms twenty metres below. It was two days before the man from the Council spotted the tangle of wretched black metal veiled in pretty yellow flowers on his way back through the glen after a bitter public meeting that started off about pot holes and ended up about goats. He’d only stopped for a piss, legs wide in the brawning heather.

One night, sent camping by our mother into a local wood, we boiled a brew of gorse flowers, three of us bent over a blackened pot on a fire, stirring and chanting and arguing the toss about why the infusion didn’t taste of the coconut we could so obviously smell.

Twice a day, five times a week in term time the school minibus swept round the curve where the young man spun his car into the blossoms. Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ was number one in the charts. All of us kids chorusing:

can you hear me, can you hear me

through the dark night, far away

I am dying, forever crying

to be near you, who can say

Old Duncan was found spread-eagled on his back in the frost in the car park outside the third pub a week after Valentine’s Day. Maureen, the cousin of the post-mistress once removed, swore she saw a robin hop hop hopping on the peak of Old Duncan’s hoary nose before she screamed and called for help.

Old Duncan had the misfortune to die in our second winter before the gorse flowers bloomed. He did, though, get the crystallised bird tracks on his marbled cheeks. They wanted for nothing, the locals. Nothing at all.

fiction Flash fiction

Puddled

In this puddle there is a beginning, a middle, and some steam. Not just any old steam but a thin volatile funnel of pearly mist that twirls up and eastwards towards the burnt out monastery on Blackheath Hill.

Abigail, aged eleven and a half, stands in the centre of the puddle, the water so deep it’s just an inch from the top of her blue wellington boots. She cups her hands around the vent of steam, the cool damp tickling the chill of her fingers.

‘What says you?’ she coos to the drizzle. ‘What says you, Steam?’

Up the hill in the burnt down monastery the breeze bumps cascades of plump brambles against blackened granite walls and the berries sigh and simmer, their gossip hushed as they wait for the little girl to come up from the valley below.

Abigail, in her black velvet frock, white ribbons in her red pigtails, is on her own. She doesn’t have a basket for the brambles, but she does have pockets and two large navy cotton handkerchiefs. When she was ten she tried collecting the brambles in her wellington boots. On seeing Abigail’s purple and pulpy bare feet when she’d come in from the scullery that day, her Aunt Lydia swooned in a dead faint, hit her head on the squat wooden bear that kept the kitchen door propped open and never fully recovered.

Something crackles in the undergrowth in the conifer forest between Abigail and the burnt out monastery. A branch breaking or a stone tumbling. Might it be a wolf? Alas, we are in Scotland and wolves are yet to be reintroduced. The last wolf in Scotland probably died alone in a cave, tired and fed up, in around 1700. This was well before the invention of blue wellington boots and long before anyone had the audacity to name their daughter Abigail.

Nevertheless, Abigail stops messing about in the puddle and pulls her hands back from the steam. Her cheeks tighten and her hands clench to fists. Eyes are upon her, animal eyes. She knows this with a certainty unusual for a little girl that has spent most of her short life living in a pleasant suburb with a cathedral and a swing park and only comes to the country for an annual two week holiday to give her melancholic mother a break.

Should she turn her head to look to the forest with its regiment of trees and desolate carpet of decaying needles? No, that would be too obvious. She looks up at the sky. The steam has disappeared, afraid of the animal eyes or afraid of Abigail’s clenching fists or, perhaps more humdrum, it’s just burnt off in the sun that’s now blazing down behind the scorched monastery.

So now in the puddle we’ve lost the steam but we still have the beginning, the middle, and Abigail. Abigail pulls herself together. As there is no end, there are no animal eyes. Nothing to see here. She wades out of the puddle, shakes her wellington boots and skips up the path into the wood towards the fat berries waiting to be plucked.

The wolf, when he tears and rips and bloodies, is so silent even the brambles don’t notice the kill.

Image taken from Wikipedia Commons.

musings

Couched

Sat there, the righteous couch, like the boulder those folks rolled back to reveal Jesus. Of course, there’s no Jesus sat there on this couch, this couch that squats low and fat by the scrubbed out window with its wanton gauze curtain that’s just a little grubby. Jesus is not a lover of corduroy and my god, this couch is king of corduroy you know those black granity ribs that leave that grid pattern all over your arse or at least they would if you could see your own arse but you’re too old for that twist and pout these days isn’t everybody? If asked, Jesus might have said that the couch had the scent of wet Spaniel or Judas or even a fish finger sandwich but nobody asks Jesus about the couch because there are far more important things to be discussing with the Son of our Lord. When pestered, the curator has little to say on who originally owned the couch or how anyone managed to get it up the tight stone spiral staircase to the top floor although she has her suspicions. So here it is, a discomforting resting place for those who make it to the top of the building gasping and wheezing to peer out through the grubby gauze and the haar and over the supermarket car park that adjoins the seventeenth century graveyard. Couches, cars, gauze, gravestones – all as squat, righteous and pointless as each other.

exercise

Missing Leer

Brenda is weary, teary, bleary-eyed. She’s been calling for her coffee for six hours now. Six hours and no response. Why such ridiculous silence? Have staff no manners anymore? She only needs a coffee and a lemon meringue pie – no drama! She wipes her face, shrugs, and slouches her shoulders deep down in her brown hessian wrap.

No sounds from anywhere. No clinking of cups or saucers. No whirring steaming machines. No chirpy gossiping from underpaid waitresses.

She is, of course, as always, alone in a seedy dark cafe, almost 4am, no friend, husband, wife or lover beside her. Her driver, Max, will be worried. No, she reappraises. Max will be snoring, sleeping, wanking. No need for Max. All she desires is a coffee, a double espresso if she’s offered a choice.

She pulls over a second chair, raises her legs, parks her heels carefully, folds her arms and closes her eyes. Sheep jump fences in dozens. She could number each one although why?

5am. A sound! Someone walking on broken glass? Someone scraping, opening a door, forcing a window? Brenda is seldom afraid. She scans shelves of crockery and pepper grinders, she looks over dim lines of chairs and benches, she checks over rugs and nooks and crannies. She sees no-one, hears everyone. So many sudden suspicious noises, so much grubby darkness!

Brenda never screams. She is seldom afraid. Now, however, she has her chance. Brenda opens her lips wide, readies her jaw, and screams. She screams and screams and screams.

Window glass shivers, cracks and falls. Doors blow open and slam closed. Jugs waver and shake, carafes whine and jiggle. Rugs roll up and die. Brenda needs a friend, a lover, anyone to hear her screams. Even a police officer would do.

She pauses screaming, plucks her phone from her purse and dials 999. Hello, she says, hello, hello, hello?

No answer.

Overhead ceiling panels creak then collapse. Brenda lies in pale smoking rubble, her hessian wrap all askew. Only a coffee, she whispers beneath several beams and planks. I only came in for an espresso and a lemon meringue pie.

Tags lipogram

exercise Flash fiction

Santa’s Lipogram

It’s Christmas and I can’t contain it, I’m so happy so manic so wildly lit up! I want Santa and I want him now.

Santa is a famous fat man who understands snow and stars and birds and Bambi and visits kids at night, gifting all sorts of stuff.

Watching, waiting, glowing kids prick up nostrils, smooth back curly hair (dark or fair) looking for gifts, for surprising animals (a fox, a chimp, a fish, a rhino), putting out Dad’s gin and Mum’s cola.

Christmas wasn’t always fun. In old days, Christmas was, for many folk, dark and morbid. Christmas had Satan.

Satan was a bad man. Satan had a chariot and took infants from cots at night. Singing songs of damnation, Satan slung sorry bairns into sacks and took his loot into his Christmas shop, a shop dimly lit with dragons and mouldy sprouts.

Anyway, you don’t want to know about Satan. It’s Christmas! I’m planning a carnival for fun with biscuits, rum, trout, scallops, custard and vodka – all of it in bright glass, pans and pots – all of it for folk in our church.

I’ll put this pillar of gifts by our arbor of oak and holly and folk will sing hymns, sing loudly for Santa and Mary (although sadly, many may sing for that awful man Satan).

Tags lipogram

exercise fiction

Queue

He queues. Red coat. Green gum boots. A prune-coloured bowler hat. He queues for the bus but the bus does not come. He stands there anyway. Stomps from foot to foot. Hunkered underneath the tweed red coat grandfather had left him after the death. The family calls the death the death because the death was the death of all deaths, grandfather’s death and nobody else’s. He queues and stomps and looks at the wee woman swathed in violet blue, a yellow scarf across her cheeks. Black-eyed, the woman. Grandfather’s dead black eyes. Across from the woman a toddler alone. No mother no father no-one at all. Just a toddler that screams for the bus. No, not screams, more throaty growls, arms that wave and bare feet that stamp stamp stamp all out of sorts. He queues for the bus she queues for the bus and the toddler stamps on the concrete all out of sorts.

The burst, unexpected. A burst detergent. Bubbles all over the place everywhere. The queue jumps and leaps, grasps and snatches. Bubbles that shatter flaunt and scatter. The man wants more bubble bomb bursts. Explode over here, he shouts. More bursts and more bubbles! The bus does not come. Not now, not ever. Not a bus stop after all. A laundry shed. A shed full of bumble bubbles. The man walks off. Crosses the road. Leaves the black-eyed woman and the fowl smell of the toddler. Laundry? Pfft! No need for that!

The man has long left when the bus comes. The bus comes for the laundry and the queue and the bumble bubbles. The woman enters the bus. The bubbles enter the bus. The man cannot see whether the bare-footed toddler enters the bus or not. He walks up the road. Spots another bus stop. Rubs his prune-coloured bowler hat. And queues.

Tags lipogram

Flash fiction

A mule called Dave

The priest hadn’t looked them in the eye. He sips his drink alone at the wake, the wine staining his lips a maudlin puce. Afterwards, Beth doesn’t talk to him for two years. Or more. Not one word. On good days she makes a sound. A cough. An intake of breath. A tut. These days are so rare that he takes a note of them, pressing a pencil mark on the calendar he got from the local garage on the kitchen wall. Mostly they live in their separate rooms in their separate beds in a dark trembling silence. A silence not broken until the circus comes to town. He’s handed a leaflet in the post office queue, queuing to pay the television licence for the TV they never watch, the radio they never listen to. He goes twice for the tarot card readings in the caravan behind the big tent. The third time he returns home with her twins. Later, when he tries to return the twins, the circus has gone. Only a mule remains, tethered to the sign that says no ball games here. He returns home with the mule and the twins. He names the mule Dave. The twins he never names, can never decide, so opts instead for One and Two. Does Beth name them? Eventually. Perhaps. He doesn’t know. He can no longer hear. He’s lost the ability to make out words. You could ask Beth. That is, if you could find her. If anyone knew where to find her and him and a mule called Dave and the stolen twins.

Tags bereavement, grief

Flash fiction

Brink

He says, nothing sinister, just wiping that jam from your cheek.

Dense, alabaster white, the silence between us. His finger tracing my right cheek, hovering around the hairs above my upper lip.

Did you get it? I’m careless, thank you. In the mornings especially. Is that all of it? I say.

My forefinger drifts over the skin shuffle he’s left behind. Doesn’t land. Doesn’t disturb the precious.

Yes, he says.

Navy suit jacket. Black trousers too shiny about his knees. Dark hair middle-parted gathered rough behind his ears. Younger than me. Where’s his other thumb?

How much? I say.

Palm tight around my cotton purse. Curtailed fingers. Threading.

He says, how much jam?

Wiping his finger on his sleeve. Taller than me, off-cut eyes. Not from around here. Voice too nasal, trill.

How much should I pay? I say.

Soft clatter from Mrs Campbell’s letterbox across the hall. Wheezing cough. Silence.

He says, a fiver.

Palm tight around my cotton purse. Curtailed fingers. Kneading.

Can you come again? I didn’t know there were people who did this, what would you call it? I didn’t catch your name, I say.

Dip my knees. Floral orange nightie curtsey. Hem working loose about my calves. Cheek sticky tingle. Unravelling.

He says, yes.

Purple scar spilling from his left ear, breath curdle sour.

It’s so long, since, you know. I struggle, there’s something about someone else. Dead. He died, I say.

Pull at the belt around my towelling gown, tucking my thumb in. Shouldn’t have said that.

He says, when?

When was anything all of it everything so much time when was the lamenting all that separating?

I have jam on weekdays. Sundays if Helen brings bread. She uses a machine. I smell it at night, patisserie dreams, Paris choux. Sorry, talking too much, it’s been so long, I say.

He shifts from one foot to another. Eyes about me. Black abraded boots. The shining.

I’m at church, he says, on Sundays.

Blue daypack slung over his right shoulder, grubby union jack stitched to the outer pocket.

The church with the minister in the red shoes? Comforting, the way his robes whisper when he walks. Secrets, I say, and riddles.

Stepping towards me, boot in my doorway, boot in my hall, hand reaching for mine.

He says, yes.

Shuffling back from him. He’s too close. Where to put my hands?

Before church? You don’t need to come in, I say.

Skin flake on his lip. Psoriasis-raw knuckles.

He says, I can come in.

Soft clatter from Mrs Campbell’s letterbox across the hall. Wheezing cough. Silence.

Really, it’s okay like this. Or maybe don’t come. You’re busy, I say.

He’s crossing my brink, my liminal.

He says, I’ll come. Raspberry, isn’t it?

His missing thumb on mine, belly heaving flush. Helen picks the raspberries in the gulley behind the hospital. Too brave, Helen, shouldn’t go there.

The light in the hall flickers. Church bells chime in the distance. Chime and chime and chime.

Again.

poetry

Arrival

I remember. You will not have forgotten I will have been feverish when I hark back. I remember. You will take your tea three sugars not stirred, will lean across the table, press the cold teaspoon against my Parian cheek. You’re not what I expected, you will say. I remember. We will dance in the milk shadow of the sun as we run towards the eclipse, the colander half-moons scattering our skin. I remember. You will lie face down in buttercups, I’m measuring the beelines you will say, fancy a shag after? I remember. You will be swinging the keys, two for you one for me, the foolish spider plant snaking out from under your arm, half price from Aldi you will say, couldn’t resist. I remember. Your rough fingers will brash the nape of my neck, fiddling the clasp, the chain a cleave for your capital E. I remember. You will bring home a puppy, a bloodhound, you will name it Greggs, it won’t live more than a day. I remember. You will say the slap was just a dream, a blip between wake and kip, a dream you’d also had, you will say. What a coincidence. I remember. You will tell me how petals grow, that it’s all about a gene called jagged. I remember. I will slam the door in your grin every time you demand a fairy-lit crypt, a buddleia crown, a shroud of lepidoptera. I remember. You will remind me that your end will be a constellation of grief, illogical, and yellow. I remember. You will study the refracting light through the pond. Why, you will say to the frogs at the wake in your name, is the shine not taking the shortest route? I remember. You will chide the child we will never have because of the puppy that will not live, the way your mother will bilge and phlegm, your fault, Esme, your fault. I remember. You will stand in the village square in your sepal cloak, your dead Greggs held aloft, your psalms scoring blossom names across the heavens. I remember your death like it was tomorrow, the mouldering and wilting, your damson bloom. I remember. Your mother will say you’d always go first, that it was written in the anthers, that I’ll light a cigarette, kick her wretched corgi, Rex. I remember. You will say I’ve changed my mind, it’s not the end I want, there will be a scene, an almighty scene, the vicar rewriting his entire harangue. I remember. You will say you’re still mine, Esme, mine still, as I sit in the final pew in my final weep, the nylon grey hassocks firmament under my feet. I remember. That light, I will say to you, doesn’t bend the way you want it to, even now.

This piece was published by Otoliths, edition 70. Do head over to read the other works.

exercise fiction

Demons

Twist and curl, fist and whirl, blissed and hurl, christ. He sits cross-legged on the bare stone slabs weaving the strands into shapes, not shapes, dolls not dolls, demons (he loops his lips around the word). Demons. Demons for the local market.

Sits there in the scratchy light he pitches forward and back, pulling out handfuls of straw from the bale listening to the hale on the hot tin roof, stuffing their arms shaping their bellies gutting out their mouths with a swift gouge of his only knife.

Lays each incomplete demon out flat, tall and lean to the rear, short and rumpy to the front there in the bare room where he lives without furniture without props without comfort just the rusted out chassis of a Ford he’d pulled from the burn one November night the fish scattering the phosphorus dimpling purple green dragging it back leaving a chassis shaped gash through his field of post-wheat blue.

Gives some of them eyes, the males at least, red map pins, the child demons get green, none of them a nose or ears or cheeks although some, perhaps one in ten, the lucky ones, they clutch a three-pronged pitchfork fashioned from number eight fencing wire he cuts from rusting coils on a farm on the other side of the village.

Perches those fully spawned fiends on the chassis, hither and thither, turning them into couples each facing the other down those with eyes lording it over those without, the candle spluttering their shadows into some demented stage.

Sleeps when he’s finished his work for the night on a narrow mattress of incomplete baby ghouls the half worked shapes yet to have their mouths plowed his body flattening them into a semblance of wary hunger and furious refinement.

Does he, a sleeping man of some inordinate age in a loin cloth and a rag that may once have been a t-shirt of rainbows and unicorns, does he imbibe these infant fiends with life actual life? If he was asked and why would he be nobody else knows of the ghoulish mattress but him, he’d shake his head slowly his lips parting then pausing then pursing and closing.

Erects his cardboard sign ‘pay what you prefer’ on his grass pitch at the market with his fifty demons grinning wheat ear to wheat ear and sometimes perhaps once a month the old woman selling dried herbs in the stall beside him brings him a nice cup of chamomile tea.