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It is always difficult to pick a winner from the 6 short-listed stories, and this year was no exception. The following five were close-run favourites, Coalwoman, Chopsuey and I will die on a Tuesday in New Pudsey, Leeds, being particularly argued for by various members of the judging panel. Next year we are introducing a 2nd and 3rd prize, which will go some way to alleviate the hardship of the decision.

The following stories are all of great merit, and in particular we must commend Judith Hall for getting not one, but two stories into the final short-list, which is in itself an accomplishment worth boasting about.

We hope you will enjoy them all.

BIOG: CHAR MARCH
Char March is an award-winning poet and playwright. Her credits include: 3 collections of poetry, 6 BBC Radio plays and 7 stage plays. Her short fiction is published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. Char is finishing her first novel - set in present-day Berlin, and Leeds. She grew up in Central Scotland and now divides her time between Ardnamurchan and Yorkshire. Photo by "bonnie&clyde" photographers

I will die on a Tuesday in New Pudsey, Leeds
Written by and copyright of Char March

At 7 minutes to 3 in the morning.  Exactly the same time I was born – but that was a Saturday, and in East Dereham, Norfolk. 

My mother was drunk to get through it – both times.  Drunk for me shoving myself out, dislocating her pelvis;  and drunk now, for me giggling and holding her nicotine hand while my blood chugs into this 1970s avocado bath.

The contents of my veins look purple – the combination of avocado and crimson.  Quite fetching in a way.  My fave colour as a pre-teen.  I even dyed my ex-army jacket a sort of sludge purple.  Mum had refused to walk the same side of the street with me – when we went into East Dereham to sell the eggs and honey.

To townies it might seem an idyllic, bucolic existence.  It wasn’t – it was a Gulag.  Those East winds, unbroken from Siberia, laid down a layer of ice on the gable end of the farmhouse that didn’t thaw till into May.  And the feed buckets were all metal.  Not being able to find your gloves meant losing the flesh off your fingers.

Dad was born to it.  A blunt, trance-like state of total acceptance.  Hefted to the land as bad as sheep. 

No mid-wife available – they said.  They never came out to anyone who lived in the lanes.  It was as if all of them at the Norwich & Norfolk Hospital sat in their hill-island surrounded by faded maps labelled Here Be Dragons.   After all, every ambulance driver had his memories – of returning, palsied and mute, from hours of wandering lost in lanes so narrow both hedges squealed along their sides.  And wincing at every blind corner – expecting to be impaled on the bale-prong of a tractor … or the tusk of a minotaur. As bad as any Cretan maze for, with each endless hedge standing higher that their quavering blue top-light, and rooted in a landscape so flat the Earth didn’t even dare curve there, how was a body ever to find their way out? 

And it’s true – we were difficult to find.  Even I got lost – frequently – on my way back from school, and, later, from the odd disco in far-off King’s Lynn, or Wymondham.  It was as if any homing radar I might have had was faulty from the off.  Perhaps I was a Friday model, slammed together just before knocking-off time in my genetic factory.  But I choose to think it was deliberate sabotage.  I had no intention of ever feeling at home there.

The oily miasma from the clogged drainage ditch;  the creaking ruin of the failed windmill;  the sickly stench of silage;  the constant scrabbling from the rows of frantic hen-sheds;  the summer plagues of thunderbugs blowing in with the bilious gasp of oilseed rape.  It was a stagnant place where everything in it – except my Dad – wanted to escape.

Not even foxes visited us.

And certainly no mid-wife, so my Dad, to try to muffle Mum’s wrenching screams, broke out the Christmas port.  And Mum glugged it back as I tried to stay inside her, then tried to come out sideways, and then backwards, and then finally, desperate for air – my safety bag burst long minutes before – I hauled past her narrow hips and out into this place.  And wished myself back within the year.

She’d lost 5 of me before I came.  So Dad had, finally, to make do with this poor imitation of a strapping son.  His vision of a male heir with all the solid reliability of a Socialist Realist peasant – bulging muscles and stalwart jawline – was replaced by me.  This awkward daughter with bowed and brittle legs;  cack-handed – there’s never been one in my family!;  and dim-eyed.  Bottle-glasses from the age of two – to save me from stumbling into the slurry pit too often.

The bees liked me though.  I would be gasping inside the cloy of black netting, sucking in the sweet smoke – as much to try to calm myself as drowse them.  And they would crawl in front of my myopia, black-hair legs poking through the mesh.  Then stare their compound image of me back into the mind of the hives.  And they would calm me.  I would be as soporific as Caliper – Dad’s antique collie (letting off a continuous fart by the Rayburn for her last two years).  I would tune into their insect leg-language, the cleaning of their antennae, their modulating rhythms of humbuzz – and I would relax.

My Mum took to port after that Titanic struggle with me.  She’d wedge the bottles of Tawny and Ruby quiet with own-brand cheddar and cheap sanny-towels inside my push-chair.  And try to make up the housekeeping with a 50p either way on the 2.30 at Newmarket.

When we lost the farm, Environmental Health came in to supervise the draining of the slurry pit.  Our rented plot had been sold by our landlord to a developer of course – and 82 barely-detached Executive Homes.  It was then Dad saw where the profits had gone.  The fetid lake had barely gone down a foot when the empties started gleaming through.  A solid block of port – 60 foot long, by 30 foot wide, by 17 foot deep. 

Mum came out with a tray of tea for these rare things – visitors – and, after a bit of a pause, started to laugh.  I didn’t know what she was doing – I’d never heard her laugh before.  The tray shook so much the tiny milk jug I’d never seen before tipped over onto the tray-cloth I’d never seen before.  Dad tried to take the tray from her, but she snatched it back from him – and the teapot (it was the usual one) went over the edge and smashed into the acrid stench of slurry caught in port bottles.  She threw the whole tray in then, and went back to the house – still laughing.

Auntie Clarice in North Leeds wasn’t pleased to see us.  My Dad as uneasy and stumbling as a bull.  My Mum, her left eye still barely squinting out from the cushion of bruise. 

And I was 13 and had never written a single thank you letter for the yearly ‘People’s Friend’ Diary she sent me.  My mother had at least gone up to Uncle Derek’s funeral, but Dad and I were informed, within our first hour there, that Mum had fallen over drunk in the crematorium – And appeared to be trying to remove her undergarments before the Funeral Director hussled her out.  Right in the middle of the committal too.

Dad lasted less than a fortnight.  It was like he’d had his tap-root hacked off.  They said it was a heart attack that axed him as he strode across the outer ring-road, but we knew better.  He was marching towards The Fens – cutting straight across country (or rather, city and traffic) when he gave out.  Trying to make it back to the only place he knew as home.

But, when Dad got axed, Mum sobered up.  She rose to the surface of her port lake with a great gasp.  Got her act together with such delight and efficiency even Auntie Clarice was almost forced to say something positive:  A flat in New Pudsey, eh?  Well, I hear there’s not as many coloureds over there, so there won’t be all those late-night shops.  At least if you get the urge again, you’ll have to walk a good two mile. 

We never saw her again.  Our one encounter with Relatives had lasted just over 3 weeks.

We painted all the walls pink and lime green and a sort of baby-biz ochre.  And painted each other, and laughed until I wet myself.  And then we laughed some more.

I felt disloyal.  I’d loved my Dad.  Not understood him.  Not been loved by him – in any way that was perceptible.  But I still felt disloyal.

Mum even got a job – and a nice skirt and two blouses.  One on;  one hung dripping above the bath.  And she kept the flat clean.  I learnt the smells of toilet cleaner and washing-up liquid for the first time.  And, on a weekend, we take the bus somewhere free.  Our shoulders joggling together out to some ruin.  Ruins seem to be mostly free:  Kirkstall Abbey;  Bolton Abbey;  the Cow and Calf rocks that look like a ruin but are, allegedly, natural. 

I’ve never understood why Henry the 8th didn’t dismantle the abbeys – not just dissolution them.  Because ruins have a definite power – a grandeur and a poignancy that mere grassed-over foundation stones can never command.

We’d sit and munch on sandwiches hot from the chugging journey and skim stones on whatever river was near.  And I watched my Mum grow – her outline feeling its way into the sunshine, and shimmering with relief at being out from under the pressure of that massive East Anglian sky.  We’d stroll with linked arms.  Partly because I’ve never been better than poor on my feet, but mostly because each of us wanted reassurance that we really had been re-born.  Linked by that soft inner-elbow warmth, we could feel the beat of reality.

And then there was the bone cancer.  I, who have never felt well, did not know I was ill.  I was just even more energy-less;  more achey;  more yellow in the bathroom mirror. 

And then I collapsed in Chemistry.  We were creating esthers – their perfumed cloy trickling down my throat.  So Miss Wattis thought I’d just been overcome with fumes;  ordered all windows thrown wide.  But when I collapsed again at the end of the period with a veritable gale blowing through, she sent for the School Nurse.

Nurse Ballantine has seen me so often, she just bundled me into her car and drove me home.  We were just turning into the flats when I was sick.  All over her dashboard.  Bright bright yellow.  She did her nut.  And made me sit on the kerb heaving and choking till the ambulance came.  Used my blazer to wipe down her leather-grained plastic.

That’s how they knew it had spread to my liver – the yellow.  I still took my A-levels.  My Mum was adamant.  I was two years behind everyone else anyway – because of all the months and months eaten up in hospitals for the seven leg-straightening operations and both corneal implants.  She’s been trying to get them marked quicker for me.  But she’s having to vault all the usual stonewalling.  And I’ve had enough.  And there’s no way I’m doing any more time in hospital.

So, we’ve had a bottle of Vintage Port each – Mum wouldn’t hear of Tawny.  And I’m telling her again that I could get a taste for this stuff.  And she’s gone lachrymose, and I’ve gone giggly so it’s a good job I worked it all out beforehand.  I flew through the Physics exam 4 weeks ago so everything should be fine.  The rate of flow from two open veins each with a diameter of 3mm into bath water at a temperature of 25 degrees C.  So I know it’s soon.  It’s 12 minutes to 3, and I’m almost certain I’ve timed it just right. 

I so want to die when I was born.  It’ll be like vanishing – as if I never was.

Coalwoman 
by
 Daithidh MacEochaidh

I got a wife, my Scottish wife, the same way Hardy stole tales for Wessex. I did not leave the village in the Ukraine for this woman, for this story, I left for money, for the village-girl that I loved. We were seated at the table one night, we made busy working out just what was possible for us. Lenka was good with figures. We would be able to marry one day, when we were old and grey and no chance for children. It was not good. I left the Ukraine twelve years ago. I was one of the first.
At first, I worked for a year in Berlin. The work was good. It was easy travelling between home and the Ukraine; sometimes I was lucky, I would see Lenka every other month. It hurt. The parting was always tears, sometimes shouting. I had enough of shouting. The Germans on the sites were good at shouting: the old days were back; Germans bossing around Slavs; Slavs working the hardest, earning the least and the great wheel of Europe’s history turned.
A friend, a Polish friend, heard that money was better in London. We took an all-night bus and arrived, struggling with new words again and new places. But we worked, the money was good and the Slavs worked alongside others of the earth from white to black.
It was bad then. I saw Lenka once every six months. It was too much. It was too little. When we met we rowed, we tried to force our life into brief weeks. Always there was tension. I came back once to the village. Her mother met me from the bus and I knew it was no good. I followed Lenka to a grey flat in Kiev, where she boiled cabbage and was fat with another man’s child. She cried, said she was sorry. She shouted. She threw a plate at my head. There was nothing more to be said. I wished the fair Lenka luck and I did not return to my own country, my life in the village; there was nothing for me there, though it teemed with brothers and sisters, cousins and their children; the old ones too, those above and those below the ground. Nothing for me.
I returned to London and worked and worked. The stupid language made my mind idle. There is no structure, no bones, to this language. It is simple. It is too subtle. There are conjugations that are only used by women in my Slav tongue, wounded and worried by the conquerors that claimed my country. There are many cases and habits that go with them tighter than shadows. Here, this language weak and sloppy goes to bed with anyone, haphazard, undisciplined and elusive for all that. We learnt to make sense quickly: simple words, simple tensions. It was all as glib as the caveman pointing with his club. I had to make sense of this place where the words fell like autumn leaves. I had to make sense of myself here.
This learning, this sitting in old libraries, this sweating over charity books and well-thumbed dictionaries, stopped me from drinking, from wasting money, for the cheap lousy comfort of some girl on a street corner. I read, I learned, I read your Dickens and made no sense of London; I read your Hardy and wanted to move away from all cities.
I had money. I had hard iron in my red hair. I had the sickness of cities and the rot of a dead heart beating within and I moved. I moved like the despised Roma; I tried this town, then that. I found nothing, only the ache of distance. West I went first to find this man’s, this Hardy’s, country. It had gone. I was a fool. I tried the north country, saw real snow again, but felt no heat of summer. I worked alongside a small man, wiry and hard as pulled steel; he took me for one of his own and talked about Scotland. I moved again.
This was my journey and the journey was slowing. There was only a dash of rust to my hair. My face was lined. The rot in my heart swelled, I was sick with spoilt hope. They called me ‘the reader’, for everywhere I went, I read when I could. I could turn a page and disappear and travel to places that I could grasp and understand as real as the black earth of home.
I had enough of being the reader; the man alone in company.
In Perth I took a delivery job for Johnston & Johnston, selling coal, working the small farms and villages. I did not mind this. The young men, did not like the routes, the long hours driving, the time away from town. I liked the country, the sweep of the hills, the long wind of the road; the isolated farms that peppered the night with light. This I liked. There, I found this wife.
The order was four sacks. A bag upon my back, I walked to the house. Life here is slow, the sputter of the truck was noticed. A small woman, young and drab, a meanness to her face, came from the kitchen. Her sleeves were rolled; her skin was raw and white, she just pointed to where the bunker lay. I threw in the coal. She watched me. I threw in another bag, then she stopped me.
You had best come in a moment, she said, and returned inside. I followed. She had been peeling potatoes; the kitchen was unheated and her pinched face glowed cold. I have only enough for two bags, but we can go through to the bedroom, she said. I expected her to look away when she said such words, but she looked straight at me and I coloured like a youth. I shook my head, it was not my coal. She nodded, drew the money, the exact money from a purse for two bags and put it on the scrubbed table. I left a receipt. I left, not turning back, but for the rest of the day I wondered about that woman; the life of a woman who would pay so much for two extra bags of coal.
After the war, my Grandma told me, that food was so scarce that all the fungi of the woods were collected; despite the risks. Ones that were suspect were dried and preserved in raw spirit to kill the poison. She lost a brother, killed by a mushroom, killed by hunger; it took a day to dig his grave in the iron-bound ground. When the time for mushroom gathering came again, the whole family went to the woods and still gathered what they could.
I thought about the woman with the thin face, her skin like old snow and the exact money placed on the scrubbed table. It travelled with me all day. It was company.
I retraced the road, adding miles and hours. I pulled up the truck a distance away from the house, silenced its throb of diesel, and moved without haste to where the uncurtained light burned from the kitchen. I moved through the dark and spied like a thief, like a lover; drawn to the light sure as a moon-moth.
The man was heard before I saw him. It was she that I looked for, not the voice of the man raised in anger, spoiling with harsh words. She stood by him, as he pounded his fist on the table, as, while seated, he pushed a bowl of broth around. The woman said nothing. She said nothing, even as he rose and poured the food over her head. She backed away. The man shouted, kicked the table aside and tore open the door. I moved to the shadows, as the man jumped into his car and sped away. I waited till I could not hear the roar of the engine, then walked back to my truck. Despite weight, despite awkwardness, I carried two sacks to the house threw them down by the kitchen, a bag fell against the unshut door, a small pool of light lit the earth, a fallen piece of coal shone black.
She came to the door, towelling soup from her hair. Only for a second did she look curiously at me, then at the two sacks. She smiled. I took her hand and led her to the truck. Night was tight all around us, a frost was falling and the journey long.
We have moved on again. We work. We live together. Our child will come with the autumn. I no longer think of the village, of Lenka, of all the years wasted without comfort. Together, we learn to live the years down.

CHOP SUEY

by 

Judith Hall

Ken Wong Cheng leaned his bony elbows on the counter and just for a moment let his  tiredness take over, coursing through his body and leaving him weak, like the opium that  fuelled his Saturday nights. After the restaurant had closed he’d walk the three blocks round to Lee Wong Chek’s, the little chinaman he’d known nearly all his life. All of his life that  counted that is, since the day he set foot in America. Usually there were six or seven others   there, men who had  finished a long weeks work, and they would smoke and talk. Lee Wongs  wife would serve food. Invariably fish in some form, bargained for as she trawled the markets  on Canal Street. Sometimes squid, cooked quickly and hot with ginger and chillies. Sometimes, if money was short, sweet and sour made from whatever fish was cheapest yet always served with grace and generosity. At one time his own wife would go with him, the two women sweeping in and out of the kitchen, their laughter hanging in the smoke as it thickened and swirled, until the early hours. He thought of her now, freshly washed hair black and shiny, switching like silk at her shoulders as she disappeared through the kitchen door, empty bowls balanced on long slender fingers.

He rubbed his face with his hands, making his pasty skin momentarily pink beneath a  thatch of spiky black hair and highlighting the creases which tracked his pale blue eyes  inherited from his father. Apparently an American who had left Guangzhou with his diplomatic corps well before Ken Wong was born. Four years had passed since had Suzy died. Although she was with him often, now he didn’t think of her every single day, didn’t have to walk to the cemetery every night so that being near might soothe his heartache. He had begun to think that perhaps he would like to work a little less and play again a little more. In fact he’d been thinking for sometime of maybe putting a manager in charge of the restaurant. Then he could see some places. Maybe California, he had an uncle out there in the vineyards. Maybe he’d go see him for a while.

He looked up. It wasn’t often he actually saw his customers, shut away in what was the heart  of any good restaurant, hot and frantic. How long he had spent there. From the time as a  young skinny immigrant when a distant friend of his father had hired him to do odd jobs, he  had stayed in Manhatten. Always willing, always working, making money, determined to stay  in America. He cleaned the kitchens, he washed rice, chopped vegetables, watched and  learned. Found he could cook with a passion and flair. Slowly the restaurant began to thrive.  Even when he bought into the business he stayed in the kitchens, watching, cajoling,  complaining, seeking perfection, ignoring the frenetic bustle and the heat.

Out here it was a different world. The tall ceiling and the softly painted walls gave a feeling of  elegance. Hushed, sophisticated civility prevailed as lunchtime was finishing and the diners,  replete and relaxed, lit their cigarettes. A shaft of late winter sunshine creeping in off the street threw the elegant oak panelling into deep shadow and illuminated the green and gold stripes  of the huge bamboo pushing skywards in the terracotta container beside him. His fingers  drifted to his neck and massaged the mauve puckered scar that ran from his ear down under 

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 his chin. He had been young and reckless enough to protest against paying protection money  and after the fighting, when he dared not go to the hospital, Suzy had tended to him. His  life had been given meaning by this restaurant, and by marrying Suzy. One had gone and the  other -  he sighed - the other began to feel like a millstone around his neck. 

At the table by the window two young women seemed deep in conversation. The sun,  touching the green half glazing meant to deter prying eyes, gave them an unbecoming pallor.  Ken Wong eyed them surreptitiously. He loosened the white tunic hot around his neck. It  appeared that only one was doing the talking, her round face increasingly animated, pausing  occasionally to draw from an extra long Dunhill held between fingers tipped with scarlet. He  felt a  pleasurable frisson of recognition and tried hard to recall where he’d seen her
Her companion, felt hat low across her ears, seemed subdued and pensive, fiddling with the  little china spoon in a bowl, now empty of his prawns with green peas. He wondered briefly if  she’d liked it
Abruptly he stopped leaning as the man at the corner table pushed back his chair and helped his escort, a tall and elegant blond, on with her coat. Ken looked admiringly at the fox fur,  shivering with long and fluid shades of red, and gave a little bow as the man guided her  towards the door with a well manicured hand at her back. He thought how much his clientele  had changed since the early days. They were well heeled now, dressed on Fifth Avenue and  with time for a business lunch or social tete a tete. Maybe even a clandestine love affair  conducted over his peking duck.

He went back to his watching. Scarlet lips to match the nails were still talking, the sickly green look had passed and her hat, the same startling blue as her eyes, had by now allowed several strands of rich brown hair to make their escape. And then he had it.  He’d been at a meeting of local small businesses, concerned, as were most others, by rumours  of large commercial rent rises in the city. A banker from Chase Manhatten droned on about  raising capital. Ken listened without interest. Suddenly the seat beside him was filled by a slim figure in a green suit, her perfume soft and elusive. She bent to put her bag next to a pair of  very trim ankles and sighed loudly
“Such a lot of bullshit don’t you think?” she said, pulling a notepad from her purse. “Business  plans, cash flow, sales projection. Without paying customers it’s all meaningless.” She tilted  her head at him. A question, a statement, he had no idea
He shrugged. “They’ve got to have some basis for lending money I guess. I wouldn’t want to  be starting out right now though.” “You’re not here to raise money then?” Her directness amused him “I’m thinking of getting out” he said. “Not getting in.” It was the first time, he realised, he had given voice to such thoughts
“Really?” Her eyes widened with interest. “You think business is getting too difficult in New  York?” “I think any big rent rise will be of concern to many. Taxes already are too high and  immigrants,” he shrugged again, thinking of Lee Wong Chek, “many need more help.”

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 “Are you here to champion a cause then?” Her tone was almost teasing. He smiled but before  he could reply someone was beckoning to her from across the room
“Oh, excuse me” she stood up. “I work for the Small Business Gazette Mr er..” He was on his feet “Cheng. My name is Ken Wong Cheng.” “I’d like to talk some more Mr Cheng” the hand that shook his was firm amd warm, and  grasping her notepad she was gone. He had left without the opportunity of seeing her again.

Now as he looked, her lips were fascinating and in the sleepy effect of the afternoon he  imagined the feel of them on his lips, perhaps sticky, like candlewax, or slippery, or hot like  red chillies. And would she leave lipstick wherever she kissed him? And those nails, perhaps she would draw them in and out like a cat, scratching and stroking...............he was suddenly aware of those oh so blue eyes turned towards him, half closed against the cigarette smoke, in a long hard stare
Had he been a younger man Ken Wong Cheng might have blushed
He merely smiled, and inclined his head. She looked down and tapped the little white tube  between her fingers over the ashtray. And then she smiled back. Her lips parted over small  very white teeth and a slow, warm flirtatious smile enveloped him. She uncrossed her long elegent legs and moved towards him
“Chop Suey is not the only thing on your mind then Mr Cheng”.  A question, a statement, he had no idea. But the promise of possibility rose inside him like a bubble.

IN LOVING MEMORY

By 

Judith Hall

 Tommy Grindles’ hands were large and capable looking, weathered and brown on the back with black hairs like stitches, creeping down the outside and spilling over into sprouting  clumps on each finger. Violet watched, fascinated, as he stooped over a pile of cardboard  boxes unpacking perfectly white, perfectly round cauliflowers, slashing off the leaves until  each head was framed in a perfect green caress, and then reached the shelf with a toss of those big hands
He looked up “Morning Violet!” he shouted, as he always did when she made her way  through the market. She squirmed a little, part in pleasure and part embarassment, her warm brown eyes and tight little face lighting up with a brief self-concious smile. Tommy threw the  empty box on an ever increasing pile as he straightened and came across to her
“Sorry to hear about your brother Violet, bit of a shock for you, so sudden.” “Yes. Yes.” She tilted her head “Roy was always careful though, see. Always clean. Mum  taught us to be clean. Clean in thought as well as deed she’d say. And he was.” She nodded abruptly. Tommy began sweeping up the cauliflower leaves. He thought about Roy, the odd, old fashioned little boy from years ago who even as a grown man lived with his mother and sister in one of the old Victorian houses down on Beach Road. He remembered seeing him often on a Saturday, whiling away the morning perusing the second hand magazine stall, flicking through the top shelf girlies. He’d seen many under the counter vidieos leave under the jumper of Roy Tutall
“Asian ‘flu Violet. It’s seen off a lot of people this winter. Clean or not.” Tommy Grindle had been in the same class as Violet and Roy at school. The funny brother and sister who came to school holding hands and didn’t join in any games in case they got dirty. Who weren’t allowed to play on the beach. Ever
Violet had rebelled now and again. She’d tuck her skirt into her knickers and climb the school fence to spend lunchtime scrumping apples with Alice Macey and her brother. She must have been about twelve years old, riding Colin Macey’s bike that day. At least, he was riding and she sat on the saddle with her arms around his waist squealing with delight as they sped along the track by the school front gate. That was when her mother arrived, on her way back from her daily communion with the Lord whilst rearranging the church flowers
When Violet returned to school after three weeks or so her right hand was tight and puckered and two fingers were useless. She made no mention of her mother’s quiet fury and her mutterings about the devil and the fiery furnace and the Good Lords punishment. They said  she’d taken something hot from the fire and everyone talked about it for a long while because it seemed her spirit was gone along with her dexterity
Tommy glanced involuntarily at the hand, held across her heart as if telling a truth, and then quickly away
“When’s the funeral?” he said quietly. “I’d like to come.” “Don’t know, not yet. Had to wait ‘till Mr Bowman could do it, someone we could trust.”  Violet held up a finger. “I could trust him because he buried Mum, see?” She leaned forward “We haven’t many friends. Mum told us to keep ourselves to ourselves because some people

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aren’t very nice. Well they’re not are they? Some people. She told us to be careful and have  broad shoulders. And we’ve got broad shoulders Roy and me. See?” She nodded and smiled
Tommy Grindle felt a fleeting and unaccustomed rush of compassion. He patted her arm
“You let me know Violet.” He went back to his cauliflowers and Violet turned in the direction of the Post Office as the clock above the bank struck the quarter hour.

Violet looked forward to Thursdays even if, like this morning, a heavy drizzle brought in on grey clouds scudding off the sea accompanied her into town. Behind her going and in her face coming home, pattering on her plastic headscarf like smarties on Mr Jessups scales. From years of habit his shop was her first stop with a list of things she would collect on the way back
“If you do that Violet” her mother used to say “you won’t have to stop and talk to him. Mr Jessup’s a nice man but it’s wise to be careful”. Violet rather liked going to Mr Jessup’s. An enjoyable prickle of defiance sometimes kept her talking longer than usual as he bustled around in his white overall and packed everything for her, the lemon curd that she liked and the lux soap flakes she couldn’t get anywhere else. From there she’d cross the road and walk through the market to the Post Office in the square before it shut for lunch.

Violet waited nervously in the queue to be summoned, her fingers plucking her coat sleeve as she hoped over and over it would be the lady she usually saw.  “Caroline”, her badge said
She searched anxiously along the counter until with relief she saw her, neat in the liquorice  allsort blouse and a friendly smile that Violet anticipated with a timid pleasure. She looked  forward to seeing Caroline in a way she didn’t understand. She wanted to tell her things she  wouldn’t tell anyone else, to share her secrets and not feel disappointed. Caroline didn’t seem  to mind that it took her a while to take the plastic cover out of her bag and grapple with her  pension book. It wasn’t easy with only one good hand to find the right docket and sign. And  she wanted to make a good firm signature so that it was neat
“I have got the right date haven’t I dear?”. Violet smiled toothily as she pushed her book  under the glass. “I was wondering if it will be leap year next year. I think it will you know.  You can ask a man to marry you then can’t you? In a leap year. If I met someone nice I’d do  that “, she confided.  She stopped, her mouth working with her thoughts
“There’s be no hanky panky of course, oh no. Just someone nice.” She blushed coyly. Caroline smiled and date stamped the pension book loudly
“Last time I came” Violet flashed a dark look further down the counter, “she told me to sign  before I got to the counter so it was ready and I wouldn’t hold up the queue. My mother told us to be careful of people. And if I signed my book before I got here someone might get it and cash it. You don’t know who’s about do you?”  She leant forward and held up a conspiratorial finger. “Got to be careful, Mum always said”
She stroked the ten pound notes flat into her book and put the change in her pocket. “Bye bye dear. See you next week.” “I’ll be here Violet. Bye”.

 3

Caroline watched Violet struggle with the door as the wind tried to take it from her. The firmly belted tweed coat didn’t flinch and just a few strands of dyed black hair escaped from  the headscarf before she was gone. The queue shuffled impatiently like a hungry crocodile. She served a man twelve first class stamps without noticing him and thought of her first encounter with Violet, a seventy years or so old bundle of constant apology who had departed with “My Mum would say - ‘here Violet, you being a nuisance again?’”   She knew nothing of Violet but the sadness she felt for that strange little figure suddenly constricted her throat and she snapped up the ‘closed’ sign as her vision blurred.

Tommy stepped back sharply to avoid colliding with Violet, scurrying her way home. She looked hard at him and then scowled at the building behind. “I would have thought what happened to your Mum would have kept you out of those places Tommy”. He shrugged uncomfortably. His mother’s affair with the bottle had been no secret in the town
“Only a Guiness. Just medicinal like”.                  “My Mum always said.. that....” she concentrated hard on her feet “that them that drink defy the good lord. And....and if you drink you lose control and He won’t be there to help you.” She pointed a finger at him “I don’t s’pose He was there to help your Mum was He?” “No.” Tommy shook his head. “No, there wasn’t anyone there to do that Violet”
 Just as there wasn’t any one there to help you he thought
“Yes, drink’s a terrible thing,” Violet seemed quite agitated “Mum always said.........” “It’s all a long time ago now Violet” Tommy smiled gently “I think you should get home”.

The following Sunday, Tommy nosed the white Mercedes between the little saloons in the cemetery car park, like a shark amongst minnows, and felt the worms of apprehension creeping through his stomach just as when he was a boy. You never knew how mother was going to be. She could be all smiles and chatty one minute and letting him steal a cake from her baking and then change in an instant. Flare up over some careless remark, some imagined slight or inference. He could still feel the sting of her hand on his ears, the warmth of her breath as she shouted in his face. He got heavily out of the car awkwardly holding on to the flowers he could not bring her in life. Third row from the gate and several rows to the left Tommy caught the movement of a bobbing headscarf. Someone bending over a grave, crouched and mumbling. One hand vigorously scrubbing the headstone, the other held over her heart. 

Violet wanted it to be tidy when they laid Roy here. Clean and tidy. She wondered if Mum knew Roy had gone too. He’d always been her favourite. Well she could have him all to herself now. She ceased her scrubbing and wiped the stone clean with a cloth she brought out of a carrier bag. From the watering can that leaked more than it poured she splashed water into the little metal urn, causing a small company of ants to flee like sunbathers caught in an unexpected downpour. One by one, she pushed red carnations through the holes into the water. Mum had hated red carnations. Then, oblivious of all else, Violet collected up her bits and pieces, smoothed her coat, and turning deliberately towards her mothers’ headstone, she spat.

BUTTERFLY

By

Alex Porter

    
 ‘Ma. Dae the doors in heaven make a sound like the ones in Star Trek?’
      She looks down at me. Squeezes my hand. I can see that she’s trying not to cry.
      ‘Whit dae ye mean Billy?’ she says.
      ‘Well. Dae they make that hissin’ sound?’
      She doesn’t answer. I look up. Her mouth has gone all funny - like she’s chewing something sour. I look away. It’s freezing out here. Some of the men are standing facing each other. They each bend down and pick up a rope or something. I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps they‘re going to start skipping.. Then they straighten up and I can see that the box is on top of the ropes. It’s a big, shiny box and somebody has put flowers on it. I don’t like the box even if it is shiny. Boxes get locked.
      Then the wind comes and it nips my eyes. I close them. I keep them closed. Mum begins to cry. I can feel her shaking. Her hand is really tight. I caught a butterfly in the summer. I wanted to squeeze it in my hand, to see what it would be like all squashed up. Mum is squashing my hand but I don’t want to say anything. The butterfly spoke to me with its wings. They tickled my skin. Something hot tickles my cheek.
      A man is speaking. He’s talking about dust and ashes. Funny that. I open my eyes but I don’t see a fire. Then the box disappears. Just like one of those magic tricks on the telly. It just goes away. Except it’s not magic. I know what they’ve done to Granpa. And what I want to know is how he’s expected to get to heaven if he’s stuck in a box. I want to shout at them. Call them names. I want them to do what I did with the butterfly. They’ve made me cry and I was trying so hard not to. I try to twist out of Mum’s grip. She pulls me in towards her but I’m shouting now, screaming at them. The men stare at me. I twist and tug to free myself. A woman says, ‘Billy. Billy son. don’t!’ I punch Mum’s arm again and again. She’s calling for help and crying so hard I think she’s going to choke. Then the men are running towards us in their black suits. They seem to be getting bigger and bigger. Like giants. Then I realise I am sinking;  like Granpa - sinking into the ground. Then I’m in the box.
      And the box is full of fluttering things. They’re on my face and hands and I can’t open my mouth to breath because they’re on my lips and I try to shake them off my hand but there is too many of them and I want to scream but . . . .
      ‘Are ye awright wee man?’ Even before I open my eyes I know it’s Uncle Jake. I can smell his breath - rum and fag. He is crouched beside me, his arm round my shoulder. I look up and see a circle of faces. I wonder how I got to be lying on the ground. Then the big moon of Mum’s face and her black glove on my forehead. It feels soft; like one of the dusters she uses for polishing. Uncle Jake lifts me to my feet. ‘Och,’ he says, putting a hand out to steady me. ‘Yer a wee soldier Billy. Ye’ll be fine.’ The word HATE is written across the knuckles of the hand in pale blue ink. I shiver and Mum, clutching her coat about her neck, takes my hand.
      ‘Let’s go home son, afore we freeze tae death,’ she says.
      We live in a flat. It’s high up but not that high. Mum calls it the ‘third story.’ When I come upstairs after playing with my pals I always imagine somebody standing outside our door and saying, ‘Once upon a time . . .’
     When we get in I see that the table which usually sits under the window has been moved. It’s in the middle of the room and it’s got lots of bottles on it. My mum takes my coat off and I go over to the table. There are lots of bottles; all different sizes and colours. I see blue ones and green ones, some that are a brown colour and some I can see through. The green ones are the ones that Mum likes. I lift  one - it says ‘Gin’ in big letters on the front. Another one says ‘Vodka’. I don’t see the lemonade one. The clear ones are what Uncle Jake likes - whisky. He also likes the dark  bottle with ‘Rum’ on the front. I think Granpa likes that as well.
      Mum sits down in the chair near the fire and takes off her shoes. She lifts her feet to the electric bars to heat them up. I’m still cold so I go over and stand in front of the fire. Mum has got her eyes closed. There’s a little table next to her where the phone sits. I can see Granpa’s pink betting slips poking out from under the phone. That’s where he always keeps them. His tartan slippers are under the table. He lets me play with them. I fill them with my wee plastic soldiers and the slippers are boats and the carpet is the sea and they try to land on the white, fluffy rug at the living room door ‘cos that is the beach where the Germans are.
      I can smell sausage rolls! Mrs Mc Ghee, our next door neighbour, comes in with a tray filled with sandwiches and sausage rolls. She smiles at me and whispers ‘hello’. I smile back. She disappears into the kitchen with the tray. I like Mrs McGhee. She sometimes lets me into her house when Mum isn’t feeling well. She comes back into the living room and pats me on the head. She always does that.
     ‘ Take whit ye like Billy,’ she says, ‘but mind and leave plenty fur the men.’
      I nod and race through to the kitchen. I get a paper plate and fill it with sandwiches - egg mainly but a couple with cheese - and two fat sausage rolls. They’re  hot enough to nearly burn my fingers. The sandwiches are cut into triangles the way posh folk eat them. Then I hear them coming up the outside stairs. I run to my room and close the door.
         I let the flakes fall onto my bedspread. The pastry melts in my mouth - like sherbet does but not so sour. I lean back against the wall. This is the room I share with Granpa. He has the bed over by the window.
      There’s a table between the beds with a lamp on it. That’s where he keeps the book he’s reading. I like it when he reads because the lamp stays on and I get to sleep quicker. Sometimes I try to keep my eyes open so that I can watch him turn the page. He always licks his finger when he wants to do that and I think it looks funny. He keeps his glasses at the bottom of his nose. I remember they fell off once and I started to laugh. He laughed as well but then he put his finger up to his lips. Mum doesn’t like it when we make a noise at night.
      Even though he’s an old man his hair is still thick and black. He combs it with a brush. The same kind that gets used on dogs. I pressed my hand against it once: it was jaggy and made little dots on my skin. Uncle Jake told me yesterday that Granpa’s hair will keep growing - so will his nails. I don’t believe him. He always tells stories when he’s had too much to drink.
      Sometimes I like Uncle Jake. When Mum isn’t up to it he takes me to the special doctor. He waits outside while the doctor asks me about my nightmares and about  dad going away on a spaceship. When the doctor goes out to speak to him I steal some lollipops from the jar on the desk. I don’t like doing it but Uncle Jake likes the strawberry ones and I know he’ll be angry if I don’t get him any. That’s when I don’t like Uncle Jake.
      Granpa is lying on the bed.
      ‘Dae ye want a sausage roll Granpa?’ He looks at me through his glasses. His eyes are big and blue and shiny. He smiles at me and shakes his head. Looks away.                                                                                                                           
      ‘Mrs Mc Ghee made them. They’re awfy good.’ I hold the paper plate out for him but he doesn’t take it. Just lies there looking up at the ceiling. Maybe he wants to sleep.
     Once, me and my pal Jimmy filled a couple of milk bottles with water and dropped them from the kitchen window onto the backyard. We watched them fall. They made a funny noise when they hit; a kind of plopping sound instead of the big explosion we were expecting. It was still fun though. But the sound I now hear coming from the living room isn’t fun; it’s the sound I expected to hear when we dropped the bottles - a loud crash. It’s not just one though. I count them; one, two, three! Bottles falling onto the floor. Smashing and bursting. And the voices.
       I hear women scream. Men  roaring at the top of their voices. Something heavy thuds against the living room door. Then more screams, louder than the first. Then I hear the table being knocked over, the bottles and glasses shattering against each other. The rumble of men’s voices is like thunder; like a storm battering against my door.
      I lie down, pull my knees up to my chest. I cover my ears. Close my eyes. Sometimes it works. I hum to myself. A song we learned in school - and if one green bottle should accidentally fall. . . . But it’s no use. Not this time.
      I look at Granpa. Want him to help. Why is he just lying there? I sit up.
      ‘Granpa,’ I shout. He doesn’t move. Just stares up at the ceiling. I want to go to him. Pull him up. Get him to go next door. Make it go away. Make it stop. ‘Granpa,’I shout, louder this time so that he can hear me over the racket coming from the living room. ‘It’s really bad this time Granpa! Tell them to go away.’ I start to cry. My belly hurts.
       Then Granpa turns to smoke. It starts at his feet and slowly moves up his legs. I rub my eyes. Bit by bit he slowly disappears. His belly, his chest, the hands he uses to hold his books. All turn into a misty, milky mist that drifts up to the ceiling. Then his face goes cloudy, like it’s covered in fog. I think hard. Close my eyes and try to make a picture. A picture of Granpa. He’ll come back if I think hard enough. But it’s no use. I open my eyes. He’s gone.
      I get up. It’s like a dream. I can’t help myself. My legs carry me next door. Lots of noise. Lots of people. I look to the side. Mum is sitting in the chair by the side of the fire. Her legs are all spread out like she’s fallen into it. Her eyes are closed. All around me people are shouting. I try to force my way through the crowd in the middle of the room. It’s hard. They won’t move. I’m not even sure they see me. It’s like when Granpa took me to the football and we had to force our way to the front. I squeeze between legs, an elbow comes swinging towards me and I have to duck my head. Someone grabs my shoulder. I twist away. My face is pushed up against someone’s jacket. The material is rough and scratchy. I push past.
      Uncle Jake is crouching in front of me. A man is lying on the floor beneath him. He has a cut above his eye. Blood is running down the man’s face. Uncle Jake is pulling at the man’s shirt, trying to lift him from the floor. Trying to help him. Broken glass crunches beneath my feet. Uncle Jake has his back to me. Doesn’t see me. I want to know why the man is not letting Uncle Jake help him.
      Then Uncle Jake brings down his fist. A woman screams, shouts something. Her words are lost in the racket. Uncle Jake raises his arm again - I see the pale blue letters on his white knuckles. I don’t even know I’m doing it. I’m just there, my hand is covering Uncle Jake’s fist and the room is suddenly silent. I feel as though I’ve just
woken up. He looks at me. His mouth falls open. I tighten my hand over his. I look at him. I’m not afraid.