Category: Flash fiction

He is under the tumble of the raspberry canes and the torn felt roof tiles behind the old kiln. The kiln with the protection order and the draggle of bats and the adder that slumbers, mostly. He is forty-eight, forty-nine in October and he is exactly the right age to be hiding under raspberry canes. His cheeks are flushed with the pleasure of holding the grudge. 

They’re basically my parents, she said, after that first tentative kiss outside her flat three years ago, they’re desperate to meet you. Later the four of them sat at a discrete table in a private club. Eric’s hand lingering too long on Lexy’s shoulder. Iris looking everywhere but Eric. Lexy bubbling and smiling and calling for more bread, more olive oil, more pomegranate molasses, more of everything delicious. ‘So, you’re in finance,’ Eric said to George, sweeping imaginary crumbs from the table. ‘George is the head of his department,’ Lexy said, heaping English mustard onto her bleeding steak. George had opened his mouth to correct her, had changed his mind.

It’s warm under the canes, comforting even. George lies on his back, blinking at the shafts of sun that strobe through the foliage, stroking his fingers through the jots that jig and shimmer in the small space above his head. ‘George!’Lexy shouts. ‘George!’

‘Iris and Eric are gifting me the cottage,’ Lexy announced, wiping soy sauce from her mouth in the noodle place across the road from Tesco. ‘We’ll spend the summers there. Eric has done up the studio.’  George had frowned. The cottage had it in for him. That baleful squint of a building with its festering Aga, its subterranean potholes, its bawdy sea holly, its wanton apple trees, its provocative gingham curtains and its awkward attic bedrooms. Lexy had a perfectly good studio three streets from their flat. They didn’t need a cottage full of summers. 

Or insects. 

Or heat rash. 

Or the interminable land.

Or the rats that scattered the attic walls.

‘Let’s sell it,’ he said. ‘Realise the capital.’ He ran the numbers on his phone. But Lexy was scrolling cottage garden herb sites. Ordering a hand-stitched lavender bedspread from Etsy for the bed with the too short too soft mattress and the source, he swore, of the snoring habit Lexy no longer bothered to deny. 

He pulls his knees closer into his chest and rubs at the nettle stings vexing his scalp. Dock leaves, the village postmaster said. Rub them over the sting. George didn’t ask what a dock leaf was, or what would happen if he used the wrong leaf. He bought antihistamine cream. The cream made the stings bluster and pus. 

He misses his fish. Lexy wouldn’t let him bring his fish. Nessie the Neon Tetra. Gary the Green Cobra Guppy. Lorna-Mae the Clown Loach. ‘No, George,’ she said, ‘they won’t fit. The colours are all wrong.’ She carried them across the road to the neighbour’s kids and he punched the wall and wept. 

He checks his phone. Three hours now, and she hasn’t called, he checks, keeps checking. She shouts but she doesn’t call his phone. He shuffles down on the hessian flour sacks he’d taken from the kiln, rests his head against his water bottle and his packet of ginger biscuits, and checks his phone again. ‘George,’ she shouts, her voice drifting on the easterly. ‘George!’  

‘You’ll be able to write,’ she said, cupping his chin in her hands as they lay naked on the living room floor in amongst half-packed boxes. ‘You’ve always on about needing space to write.’ It was true George talked about writing. Stroked his eyebrows, brandished literary reviews, signed up for expensive courses led by authors with beard creams and pronouns. But things got in the way, she got in the way, he never attended the courses, never managed more than a few sentences of the epic insights he yearned to share.

Having the neighbours over for a bonfire on their first Saturday at the cottage was her idea. And, after they left, burning the vintage ship’s trunk they were using as a table was his. They sat and crouched, six of them, holding their hands out to the jumping flames, as Lexy expounded, explicated and aggrandised. Lexy and her ceramics, Lexy and the fertility of her creative visions, Lexy and the unleashing of her spiritual vibe, Lexy and her dawn duets with fairytale nightingales, Lexy and her three rescue hens plastered with love. When the half case of red was finally empty, she walked the neighbours down the dark lane to the gate, giggling and pointing to the moon. ‘Be a darling and tidy up, will you,’ she said as she linked arms with the two men. And so he cleared the trunk of glasses and bowls, then heaved it into the fire, surprised at how quickly it spattered and sparked and shrank into the night.

 ‘George,’ Lexy’s voice is softer now, tired, ‘I know you’re here somewhere.’ Above him, the crows that live in the veranda up their squabble with humanity. The crows have foiled every attempt by Eric to poison them. He mocks a silent victory sign, his fingers to his forehead.

He opens the packet of ginger biscuits. Scowls at the waft of cigarette smoke. She must be sitting down. She always smokes sitting down. Her right leg crossed over her left. Her eyes half closed. Each draw deeper, more salubrious than the last. He’s asked her to give up, cajoled, threatened, sulked. It makes me feel nauseous, he has to say to her at least three times a day. Why would you do that to your lover?

He launched his rebellion on their first day in the cottage and has maintained it ever since. Spends his mornings pitching too hard in the rocking chair in the scullery that squints out over the scrubby field with the bulls. Spends his Saturday afternoons visiting the local tip, a twenty-mile drive away. Spends his evenings rearranging his treasures in the long jumbled garden. Gnomic miscreants, twisted lobster pots, dried delphinium heads, a slot machine, a bleached merry-go-round horse, a rusted chicken hutch still full of vintage chicken shit. 

A squeak and a drag of plastic and metal across wood. She must be sitting down on the plastic car seat he’d picked up at the dump. Dragged it out of Eric’s Land Rover with a flourish of dust. ‘Look, darling,’ he called to her. ‘A throne fit for a princess.’ Lexy came out of the cottage, her hands plaster ghosts, stared at him, and ground her heel into one of Eric’s rare petunias. ‘Take it back,’ she said, pointing at his treasure. He pushed past her, arranged the car seat on the sunniest aspect of the veranda and strode down the gravel path to the middle of the garden. Sat on the pile of red bricks that Iris insisted he, George, should use to build a barbecue. He watched the mass of raspberry canes shiver and shake, burst open and disgorge a rescue hen. The hen shook herself, pecked at the loose earth around his feet, and wandered into the kiln. He peered through the hen-sized tunnel, glimpsed the snug nest of covert eggs. 

He is a dormouse taking umbrage. A man in his prime forsaken by a privileged hipster twenty years his junior with no imagination and no eye for the perfect reuse of modern urban decay. 

He hadn’t planned to kill the chickens.  Iris had driven him to it. Preening and petting them, gathering them in her arms like babes. All the time peering at him over their stupid little heads with her narrow eyes and porcelain teeth. Staring at his groin. Pointing at toddlers when the four of them were out in the village. He hadn’t planned to leave them bloody, headless, on the veranda either. But there they were, matted and mutilated, him swinging back and forward in the plastic car seat with a beer in his hand, when Lexy came back from the gallery. 

The cigarette smoke is closer. A waft of Rive Gauche. A flashy crunch on the gravel beside him – her immaculate white trainers. He tightens his abs, throws his head towards his belly. The nettle stings rip and shingle. The click of her lighter. The faintest smell of petrol. Something wet, sprinkling on his shoulder. Raining? But the sun? A crackle, sparks, the snap snap of flame curling wood. The dark spoor of burning rubber. Hot then heat. 

No, Christ, no. He is a dormouse taking umbrage. A record-breaking grudge. He can’t come out. He mustn’t come out. His hair on fire. His flaming linen suit. 

He pins it to her. A white poppy made of old tissue paper. Its thin stem wooden green. A nappy safety pin to hold it to her breast. 

He stands back. Regards her. Look at you, he says, ruffling her hair loose from its black band, touching her lower lip with a finger. 

She blinks, steps past him, looks at herself in the wall mirror. They are in a large crimson anteroom on the second floor of the theatre. Her long black dress, sleeveless and backless, is too loose around her hips. She has diminished, she thinks, in the last few weeks. 

His poppy, purple paper with a daube of gold glitter in the centre, is tucked into the ribbon of his top hat. Jazzy, he says, pointing at it and twirling around her. He clicks his heels, bows.

They are alone in the anteroom. Alone in the theatre. Apart from the marmalade cat, all ribs and balding, that dumps half eaten rats under the grand piano that still hovers the stage. The piano’s black keys have been obliterated, its velvet cushioned stool long since burnt for heat or comfort or just for something to do.

Let’s dance, he says, taking her hands in his. She frowns, pulls her fingers away. His touch is sticky awkward on her skin. I don’t remember how, she says. 

She steps back, he steps forward. 

We used to know, he says. His voice is light, neutral. She can’t meet his eyes. Outside a siren blares, passes, fades. The walls shudder. Wind pushes in through the broken windows. It’s dark out, a shade beyond grey. 

He steps forward, she steps back. 

See, he says, we’re dancing. She shifts her weight from one leg to the other. Stretches her hips. Shakes the old silk around her bare legs. Black is a colour she’d never worn. 

Until this.

She touches her tissue flower. Where? she asks. Where has he been, where did he get it, did he go further than he should? 

Here, he says. I was just here. He sweeps his arm around the room. A great wide flourish. Clacks his heels on the parquet floor, bends his knees, lifts his top hat in the air, and dances. Off he goes, languid and febrile, glib and gauche. Round her, and round her, in ever increasing circles. Clacking through the shards of glass, leaping the collapsed beam, kicking up the dust into dull dove clouds. 

He reaches the far corner of the room by the door to the stairwell. The corner with the white spangled tulle dress splayed out in a foolish soft pile. Where a woman might have stood. Fluting champagne, smoking Silk Cut through jade or ivory. Holding a wrist out for a curtsy or a kiss. He stops.

Another siren. The room blinks blue red blue and back to bare.

She lifts her arms, points a toe, follows him to the corner, clomping through the glitter in her hiking boots. He looks down at the white dress, moves off towards the window. A little skip a little jump. A snap of fingers from each grubby raised hand. 

She puts her hands on her hips, lifts her skirt. Furls and unfurls. Lunges and lifts. Tango without his frame. They dance and tap and spin around the room, out of synch, in breathy ravaged silence across the shards. Passing the white dress again and again. 

She stops first. Her boots inches from the embroidered frock. They look at each other. They look at the dress. He picks it up with both arms. Cradling it. Rocking it. To and fro. She leans in. Resting on him. Drops her face. Breathes in the milky breath. The talcum powder. The  coddling. 

Look at you, she says. Look at you two.

Aye, lang may the willie keep us warm, Morag, Arthur says.

Are you taking the mickey, Arthur?

Morag and Arthur are sitting on two worn faux-leather arm chairs in front of a two-bar electric heater. They hold their stocking-soled feet out to catch the warmth. They both have a blanket around their shoulders. His is moss green, hers is a red and yellow tartan.

Morag is wearing a black woollen hat with a scarlet pompom and a matching coat. She has not unbuttoned the coat. A soft grey scarf in a silky material sits up around her chin, hiding her neck. Arthur is wearing a pale brown v-neck sweater over a shirt of a similar colour. His trousers have a neat pressed line down the centre of each leg. One of his socks is black, the other navy blue.

The net curtain over the one small window shivers. It is dark out, four in the afternoon in the far north of the country. The radio on the sideboard is almost inaudible. It’s probably cricket commentary. It was always cricket commentary. Behind the pair, stretched along the bottom of the front door, is a black velour lang willie, its pink eye fixed on Morag.

Just making conversation, Arthur says.

Aye, Morag replies. She fiddles in the leather tote bag on her lap, takes out a toffee, unwraps it and rolls it into her mouth. She sucks on the sweet and wriggles her toes. Her left cheek bulges. She looks at the faded floral wallpaper, the chipped table legs, the sideboard with nothing on it but the radio and a white candle in a beer bottle.

Fifty years, Morag, he says. To the day. He pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders. Looks into the heater. Not even a postcard, he says. Not even.

I was never big on postcards, she says. She takes the toffee out of her mouth, wraps it in a tissue and puts in her bag. Pulls her scarf higher up her neck.

I thought you were, you know… Arthur shifts in the chair, crosses his legs, uncrosses them.

What’s that, Arthur?

Dead. I thought you were dead.

Why would I be dead? Morag’s tone is neutral. She looks at Arthur for the first time since they’ve sat down. Outside, the rain starts and the wind picks up. The light in the small room flickers, fades and resets.

Arthur takes a moment to reply. That’s what the papers said, he says. And the postmaster.

That Eric wouldn’t know nothing, Morag says. Her voice has risen an octave.

He was your boss, love.

Love? You’ve picked up an odd way of speaking, Arthur.

Arthur crosses his legs again. His eyes fix on the upper bar in the heater. The heater gives their faces the faintest of orange glows.

Morag looks at Arthur’s hands. The ring is still there. The flat wide gold band. Her lips tremble. She reaches for the toffee.

Arthur pushes his hands under his blanket. Strokes his knees. Morag wonders whether there’s a cat under there. Or worse.

Where did you get that lang willie, Arthur?

Mrs Hawthorne made it for me. After the double pneumonia.

Pneumonia you say? That’ll be the smoking.

I’d given up, he says. The night you went. Promised myself. Promised you.

Oh, she says. They that dance must pay the fiddler.

Arthur coughs, pushes his blanket off and gets up from the chair. He walks to the window. Stands there with his back to her.

And who is Mrs Hawthorne, anyway? Morag continues.

Arthur pulls aside the net curtain and looks out into the glen. Watches the rain filling the potholes in the gravel track. Watches the rain sliding over Morag’s small red Mini.

What are you doing here, Morag? he says to the window.

I don’t know, love, she says. I don’t know.