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Winning Stories 2009

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Clio Gray - Founder

RESULTS OF THE 2008 ANNUAL SHORT STORY COMPETITION

First Prize         £350                Douglas Bruton             Barken, Mad Sometimes
Second Prize     £50                 Neil E. Sentance           The Colour of Days
Third Prize        £50                  Christina Moore           The Snapping of Mr Bourne
                                                                                    & his shoe lace

Highly Commended
                                                Lesley Jackson            The Tree House
                                                David Tallach               Ask for me Tomorrow
                                                Miranda Lewis             Roadside Tapestry*
                                                Clayton Lister              The Undercurrent

First prize went to DOUGLAS BRUTON, of West Linton, (Peebles and Selkirk), for an astonishingly accomplished story that has something of the character of Annie Proulx or Raymond Carver about it, and is a simple story and yet one so well told it has the reader enwrapped by the end of the first few sentences. There is no doubt we will be hearing more of Bruton and his work in the future.

* Not published here due to contractual obligations.

Barken, Mad Sometimes

Barken watchin her. Watchin the way she moves from one table to the next, giftin smiles to old men sat in wood chairs with half empty glasses and dirt on their graspin hands. Movin like she was dancin, and every man there reachin for her, one thing on their minds. Her name was Sand, just a girl still in Barken’s eyes, but somethin more in the dream of every jack there in Marty’s bar.
Barken, outside lookin in, seein Sand through spit-smeared glass where he’s wiped the dust from the window with the torn tail of his shirt. Barken always outside, always somethin between him and her these days. Though once it was different, he remembers, carries that memory wrapped in cloth tucked next to his heart. Sometimes, when Sand catches him watchin, always watchin, he knows she remembers, too. Times, he sees her touchin fingers to her lips, just the tips, barely touchin, hair fallin across her face, and he knows for sure she still remembers.
Tonight, Barken throwin hate at every man there in Marty’s bar, throwin it like it was a sharp knife that held a balance in his hand, and he cusses em, every one, laughs sometimes, laughin through the cussin, cause he knows what they don’t; Barken’s been where they won’t never go.
Sand laughin some, too, at the men in Marty’s bar. Laughin at em like they was old fools, men made stupid with drink, brave, a little, their heads all turned her way, and all she’s offerin em is smiles. But Barken on the other side of the window, reason enough to be smilin for the rest of his days.
It’s just that Barken’s smile made of glass, some days, like it could shatter, easy, like that – all the broke pieces sharp and cuttin the air, like bullets was flyin, and the cur catchin one, in the side again, goin down, sudden, no howlin. No use cryin, he says to himself, but the smile broke when he remembers.
And Barken has other memories, for makin the smile whole again.
‘Ain’t no one taught me, Barken. I just knows, like it’s in the blood.’ Sand’s words, a gun in her hand, fingers grippin the muzzle, her two curs called to heel. ‘Reckon I’s always knowed.’ Sand holdin it steady, no shakin, her crouched curs snarlin through gritted teeth. The hammer cocked, an her child-fingers pressin the trigger, slow, the knuckles whitenin some. ‘See, I feels safe with it in ma hands,’ she says. The hammer fallin and a shot-can spinnin cartwheels in the air like it was carnival. ‘Safe like I never done with no one ceptin you, Barken.’ That’s what she said, and there’s a thread pulled tight between them, a thread other men feel in their thighs, weakenin, lustin, not darin to go near for fear of the curs and the guns and Sand’s finger tight on the trigger – and her never taught to shoot, like it’s in the blood.
Now, Barken where no one sees, squat in the shadows, a shadow himself, too, legs brittle like sticks, wrists so you can see the knotted bones under the skin. Barken in the gagged dark, kneelin like he was prayin, kneelin in a place where the sun don’t fall, not ever. Spiderwebs hangin like thin-worn cloth, thin as breath almost, last breaths, the breath of ghosts. Barken kneelin in the dirt, where dust-mice play in a draft, runnin in the same circles, never leavin. And Barkin never leavin, though there’s some as would later wish him gone.
Barken, a hand reachin into his shirt, reachin for the thing hid there, folded into a tear of cotton, frayed and fingered, a sweat-stained rag smellin of Sand no more, ceptin in memory. Barken holdin it in the flat of his palm, like it was an offerin, like pennies dropped in his tin cup outside church, droppin from the fingers of women doin good deeds so as they might after win entry to a better place, the pennies makin cheap music. Barken smilin thanks, his mouth sayin so, too, but words thick as molasses, comin out all sticky and black. The women not ever lookin in his eyes, faces turned from him and hurryin away and not seein him. The thing in Barken’s hand jus like an offerin.
Barken peelin back the folds of cloth, the nip of finger and thumb, a soft bone-pinch, shape of an imperfect ‘o’, shape of Sand’s mouth if she knew. Barken peelin it slow, and every time a surprise it is still there, seein it real, like her smile when she was alone with him once, smilin different then from how it is now in Marty’s bar with stupid brave men catchin at her skirts. In Barken’s hand somethin revealed, a kind of proof, maybe, so as Barken believin the time he spent with Sand more than somethin dreamed.
Every time he unwraps the cloth Barken hearin again what Sand said, clear like she was sayin it over. Sand on his side of the glass, kneelin in the dark and the dirt, next to Barken same as before, cobwebs like lace in her hair. Sand sayin, ‘Fer you, an only you. Cause I tells you this, Barken, you is a good man. An good men be planning their ends, not havin em planned for em, see. So, this is fer you, a gift fer when you is ready. You hear, Barken? You understands what I is telling you?’
There in the unfolded cloth, lyin in his palm, yellow light from the window so he can see, polished and loved for it is her gift to him. A bullet.
Sand sayin again, ‘Fer you, when you’s ready.’
Barken noddin, agreein with her there in the dark outside Marty’s bar. ‘Maybe you’s right,’ Barken says, his lips movin over the words but no sound comin.
Sand at his ear sayin, quiet, ‘Damn sure I’s right,’ her hand a small fist punchin his shoulder. Sand in his head, at least, and Barken thinkin he still feels where she was punchin, though a year turned over since she was.
Barken hears her laughin; that much is real, comin at him through the open door of Marty’s bar, and the festival-clink of glass, and someone coughin, and smoke hangin yellow in the air, all mixin with Sand’s laughin, and spillin out of the open door.
Barken turnin the bullet overover in his fingers, warm from where he kept it next to his skin, tastin the metal with his tongue, the blunt smoothness of it. Barken thinkin hard thoughts, like he’s solvin a puzzle or doin school math. Inside, somethin hatchin, a plan, like she said, like Sand said.
Somewhere a bell starts ringin. Ain’t no church bell, though it pulls the attention of the men snatchin at Sand’s skirt. Barken’s face pressin to glass again, watchin her dancing between the tables, rememberin how it was before, thinkin maybe he was ready now. Barken hearin Sand laughin like she knew he was ready.
It’s this sets up echoes in Barken’s heart: him a boy, limpin on the foot clubbed before it was ever set to the ground, before it even saw the light, the leg twisted some, old women sayin the mother looked an eagle in the eye, or an owl, must have, and the mother – Barken’s mother – slow-countin the toes of her baby, endin with her face to the wall and never lookin back at what she had.
Years after, years of schoolin, and playin, and growin alongside Sand, comes a day when Barken and his cur, takes a bunch of wild flowers to Sand’s back door. Barken knockin to ask what he thinks she already knows anyways.
Barken waitin a while till the door opens, lookin over his shoulder, back the way he come, thinkin maybe he dropped something, all the careful words he brought for her lost. Then, Sand there, hair all mussed, blouse buttons open so Barken can see. That Corbin Douty standin behind her, like he belonged there, wipin his mouth with the back of his hand, laughin. ‘Sand wants a proper man, huh, not no pig-trotter boy.’
Barken’s cur growls. A growl in Barken too, risin up from his belly and spillin into the air despitin him. Sand reachin up to put a hand on Barken’s shoulder, sayin, ‘I din’t know, I din’t know.’ And Corbin Douty swaggerin onto the back porch sayin, ‘Ha! Get gone pig-boy.’
And maybe after all, watchin Sand through glass is all he’ll get now.
Barken rememberin Corbin Douty that day, and days before, days after. Barken ain’t fergettin, can’t let it go. ‘Get gone pig-boy.’ Makin him madder than a roped wild horse. So mad he don’t know what he does, not then, not with Sand sayin she was sorry againagain in his head, that she din’t know – how could she? What he sees, what Barken sees then, is a curtain drawn, not black or red, but somethin in between. And his club foot kickin the air, tight fists punchin into the dark, punchin blind, punchin flowers, and Barken’s cur breaking the quiet into jagged shards.
After, Barken still mad, nothin makin sense, kneelin at the river, breath comin in jerks, his knuckles all broke, and blood runnin in the cold water, so cold it feels sharp, the sting like salt in his wounds. His cur watchin, fright-eyed, from a distance.
‘I din’t know, Barken,’ she keeps sayin.
‘Ain’t no pig-boy,’ he says.
‘You ought to done told me.’
Sand’s hand on his cheek, soft like he dreamed, only the dream mussed up, like Sand’s hair. Blood on her hands, too, and her touchin him is a hurt, the sound of Corbin Douty laughin as he walks away.
‘If’n you’d just told me,’ she says.
Barken noddin, knowin, understandin what Sand’s sayin there at the river’s edge. His sudden tears wet on her fingers, like silver, like salt.
‘I tells you this, Barken. You are a good man.’ Tellin him like always. But he knows good men don’t catch the best fish, good men waitin with a line and a baited hook only sometimes gettin a bite. And Corbin Douty pushin the boy-Barkin to the ground, and stealin the one fish he caught.
‘If’n you’d done told me,’ says Sand.
Barken, kneelin in the dark, remembers another day, later, Corbin Douty shootin the ground where he stood, pistol loose in his hands, and Barken shakin, not darin to move, ceptin his foot, the one that was wrong, slidin in the dust, the smell of piss and his pants warm against his leg. Corbin Douty laughin like he always done.
Then Barkin’s cur, uncertain in the space between em, between him and Corbin Douty, teeth showin, and somewheres deep in his cur-throat a slow snarl comin. And before Barkin can call him back, the cur dead in the dirt, dead at Barkin’s feet, cur’s blood spillin red and warm. Barken thinkin the cur din’t feel no pain – sufferin’s for those as live with the loss.
Barkin knows Sand saw what Corbin Douty done; later Sand comin to him with a pretty speech and a bullet he carries next to his heart, all wrapped in a tear of petticoat. Sand kissin him then, cause his cur was dead. Barken not fergettin that and not fergettin what she said. Not ever.
There in the dark outside Marty’s bar, his face pressin the glass, Sand dancing for old men, Barken thinks he is ready. A plan he has, and that reason enough for smilin, so Barken smiles, though it looks like somethin else when he does.
The ringin of the bell stops sudden, and the old men in Marty’s bar pushin back their chairs and drainin their drinks and hitchin up their pants and wipin their mouths with the backs of their hands, like Corbin Douty does in Barken’s memory. The old men, then, filin out, and crossin the street to take their pick of the whores in tight dresses, jus like they done every Friday for as long as they was men.
From the waistband of his pants Barken pulls a gun, Sand’s gun. She’d showed him where it was so he knew, so as when he was ready he would know. Under the floorboard in her bedroom, the rag-rug pulled over so no one would see. Ceptin she showed Barken. So the gun in his hand now, cold against his palm, heavier than he remembers. And he fits Sand’s bullet-gift into one of the chambers, cocks the hammer with the pull of his thumb, waits for what he already knows.
Sand shuttin up the bar: wipin clean the tables, straightenin the chairs, sweepin the wood floor. Barken watchin, always watchin. Only tonight is different, Barken’s hand shakin a little as he waits, his finger restin on the trigger, and the dark to hide him. And all the difference: Sand’s gun in his hand; the rest the same, for like other nights he comes, Corbin Douty, swaggerin like he always done, spittin in his hand, slickin back his hair before slippin unnoticed, he thinks, into the shadows between the houses, creepin to Sand’s back porch, the lock on the door broke so he jus walks in, sure of himself.
Barken this time at his heel, silent in bare feet, past the curs sleepin out back, the gun in his two hands and Barken ready, listenin at the door before enterin. Barken climbing the stairs, sure as Corbin Douty, not touchin the third step, not settin off the groanin of wood there, knowin the turn at the top, the door that is hers, open. Barken standin, silent in the near-dark, watchin em on the bed, Corbin Douty’s hands on her and his breath comin in short grunts, like he was the pig. Barken with the gun raised, and still they don’t know.
‘I’s ready,’ Barken says. But so quiet they don’t hear, and Corbin Douty don’t stop his pig noises, not at first, not till Barken says it again, again, each time louder than the last till he is shoutin so they do hear.
And Corbin Douty rolls from her, lies there fixin Barken with his eye, mockin him with his smile an his laughin, just like before, just like always. Only tonight that ends. Sand sees the gun in Barken’s hand, calls his name, and he hears her say one more time that he is a good man. Barken knows what that means. His finger tightens on the trigger, slow-pulls it back, like he seen Sand do once, feelin the kick when the hammer falls, and the gift Sand gave him a year ago is returned, next to her heart now.

<top>

Second place goes to NEIL SENTANCE. Neil’s story, The Colour of Days, begins in what seems like an ordinary place on an ordinary day, and yet moves with extraordinary swiftness into something else entirely, encapsulating the casual violence that breeds brutality, not only in war, but right at home, on our own doorsteps.

The Colour of Days

I hadn’t seen the butcher’s son, John Palson, for ten years, since before the war, when I met him that Sunday morning at Old Joe’s garage. It was my first weekend back in the village since I’d been demobbed; four years an airman, seen the world, most of it blasted by Hitler. Old Joe had done most of the talking. I’d listened, distractedly, to his high rapid voice, like a skylark’s song, hovering in heaven. Young Palson, solid as a feedbag, walked in out of the sun and stood framed by the door. He nodded at us, blinking, and said nothing. I wondered if he’d remembered me. My hair was longer now, rook-black but dappled with white, and I half-hid behind its lank strands and a ragged attempt at a service moustache. But he caught my look, and returned it.
We watched as Old Joe’s hand gripped a screwdriver and began shaking over the head of the screw. The best mechanic on the Great North Road it was said, until he was knocked off his Norton, spending the next two years in and out of the infirmary. I frowned and looked away, drawing on a cigarette. 
‘Been sent for a ball of Whitworth thread again John?’ Old Joe said, as the tool, in a heavy moment of stillness, engaged with the cross-head.
‘Come for oil for that gate near the roddon,’ said John, not rising to it. ‘Dad’s been on at me to mend it — best bull’s been getting in with heifers agin. I’ll put it on tick.’
Tight bugger, I thought. He’d still skin a fart for a farthing. I looked young Palson over. He’d changed only little. He’d gained a conversational habit of raising his head slightly, a weighing up motion, with a long look down the span of that broken nose. Tufts of auburn hair had sprouted from his ears, a rejoinder to his balding pate, now blistering at the crown. He half-smiled when spoken to, gap-toothed, sulphurous. He had taken out a pocketknife and was scraping at the hard skin on the palm of his hand. My Uncle Harold always said he was a useless article, and a mean bastard. I remembered his petty cruelties at school: a playground Napoleon, Uncle said. Some days I’d be caught in the crosshairs, catapulted stones lobbed at my capless head with an escort of snide taunts; then my shins would be kicked coal-black, all for cleverness, for quickness, for being much-too-bold-for-a-little-lad. But the war had hefted him up. He’d received his call-up papers in the spring of ’44, but his old man wouldn’t spare him for the New Front. He’d thrown the papers on the fire, pokering the buff envelope into the cinders. Instead, he’d sponsored John with a few good acres of his own, and the younger man had set about cornering a nook in the local town black market. The war had warped everything, even here. He’d won respect and station, and now had the ear of Ministry men.
I muttered cheerio and walked off down the lane and through a clump of alders, dark against rusty bracken. I looked over at the spume of gravel and scree collecting in the beck bottom. The banks were filled with linen-white sweet briar and dog roses, and I remembered how my sisters would collect rosehips in autumn for Mrs Jepson and her tubercular husband’s cough. In summer, all the boys of the village would catch rainbow trout at the ford, hanging on to the depth gauge, legs astride mid-stream while the fish leapt up the weir. In hard winters, we’d skate on the blue ice, wound in patched-up scarves, until we were rounded up to hunt for lost sheep in the snow.
I stopped a while and sat on the fence, dangling my feet over the side and leaving an indentation in an anthill; angry meadowsweet ants crawled out like shattered yellow battalions. A boot in the past. A magpie eyed me cockily from the top of the fingerpost to Westborough. I moved on.
Round the river bend was the old cricket ground. It had been put under the plough during the war, and was now a mare’s nest of hay rattle weeds. A frayed remnant of the boundary rope lay coiled in the nibbled grass. I remembered the day, back in the summer of ’37, before, well, everything, that game against Hough. John Palson was a fearsome bowler then, grim-faced and hard as hornbeam, hurling the ball down, unshackled and unerring. I was idling down at fine-leg, maybe dreaming, fielding the frittered edges through the slips and hoping it’d stay fair for the Skegness cycle ride the next day. The sky was big. Lean strands of weak cirrus were unmoved by a gently fretting wind.
I saw him first, coming from the north. Fred Palson the butcher was a giant, no crook-backed labourer. A man of substance and means. He stopped a moment in the long grass at the north field edge; then moved forward decisively, over the boundary rope and through the covers toward the wicket. The game stopped, young John in mid-delivery. His father seized him by the collar and hit him hard on the head with the flat of his hand. John buckled, rallying in time to be clouted under the eye, blood spilling on a good length, a red welt rising on his cheekbone. The old man then dragged his son off, now a roaring child. We looked away. Jimmy Smith fetched the foothold sawdust and spread it over the bloody patch. The game resumed in near silence, the wind murmuring through the damson trees. 
A low dark decade had intervened. A troop plane droned in the clear sky over the chapel lane and returned me to the pressing now. Sunday afternoon unfolded like so many sluggish Sunday afternoons in those ashen post-war years. The mantelpiece clock ticked through to the next Westminster chimes. Auntie May and Uncle Harold sat in the armchairs, open-mouthed, asleep. They’d been running the Coopers Arms since the twenties, when Uncle had got his comp from an accident on the corporation lorry, but could never make much of it. The pub was shut for now till the riptide of evening regulars washed in at half-seven. I was in the corner, on the hard bentwood, with a packet of Woodbines, sending blue smoke into smudged air. It was a day of blueness. When I was a small child each day of the week had a colour: Friday, white; Saturday, red; Sunday, blue, colours that hadn’t faded. Sunday lunch with the family, a treat. But not for me any longer; just the three of us now, wearied and tattered in a failing local. I traced with an idle finger the parallel lines of woodworm etched in the wainscot like Arabic scripts. 
The hammer of a fist on the door. I leapt up.
‘Open up, Fred Palson’s been gored by his best beast, open up, bloody quick.’ The voice was Horace Armstrong’s, the herdsman. Auntie May, now as alive as she had been dead to the world, unbolted the door, and in a headlong rush, Horace dragged in Palson the butcher. Blood welled on the parquet floor, and I nearly slipped on it helping to pull him in. He was deadweight and we had a great job laying him on the long table near the tap room.
‘Watch that blade, boy, we’ve enough blood here.’ Horace pointed to the long butcher’s knife, loose-tucked in Palson’s belt. It too was flecked red, but the blood was hard-dried and coagulated along the edge. I pulled it out and lay it on the window sill. It quivered slightly, piercing the barroom murk with a gleam.
‘I found him crawling up the Roddon Road. Poor bugger, I was only down there for a seed drill.’ Horace was ruby-faced and panting, and there was a red rift of blood on the white of his overalls.
Auntie was now fluent authority. ‘Our Bill, get down to the village to Jepson’s farm, they’re on the telephone now, ring for the doctor.’
Palson laid stock-still, blood leaching from under his smock which she was trying to staunch with her apron. I was out the door and running alongside the sash of limes beside the village road, an animal stench thick in my nostrils.
Running. I’d always been fleet of foot, as headmaster Burton said, his rustic Mercury, sent off delivering messages and doing errands. I went to the mile County Trials once, but had thrown up bitter bile before the first race, blaming a doubtful breakfast I hadn’t had. Then in the RAF, I would run the bounds of the base, a patch of mean scrubland reclaimed from the West African jungle for the duration, racing the tedium, and the terror.
The Jepsons had rung for an ambulance, but as I got back to the Coopers, I saw Uncle Harold in the street, chomping on his pipe stem. He nodded toward the open door; I went in and Auntie was sat calmly in a chair, her arms folded, her impassive face lit from the side by a guttering candlelight. The butcher was no longer bleeding, but neither was he breathing. I looked at his hands by his side, cold and white like knapped flint. Someone had been sent for his son.
Horace was in the public bar that night, half-pints lined up behind him; he was regaling the crowd, an old dog having his day. Words spattered out with each drink.
‘He said he’d pull through, he was strong. But, I dunno boy, he was boggered, I reckoned.’ I sat away from the fire, though the night was damp and cool for midsummer. Before me a cordon of old farmhands sat semi-circling the grate. Horace had told of being at the butcher’s that morning: old man Palson, cleaver in hand, his smock already streaked with gore after hours in the slaughter room, had raged about the roddon field gate not being mended.
‘I told him to settle his sen, but he just looked at me gone out. You know how he got, boy, wild. You couldn’t do owt with him.’ Young John had seen the flash of that temper and that knife once too often and had bolted out of the door. I must have met him at Old Joe’s a little after. Horace hadn’t lingered either, but the barroom sages could see what had happened: old man Palson, his anger stoked, its fires sending him down to the field in his bloody clothes. The butcher, struck down by his prize beast, pierced by horns and ground by hooves, dead on a pub slab within the hour.
‘And strange to say like, young John didn’t want that animal put down, no, not at all. But we all persuaded him it were best. He’s kept the nose ring though, i’nt that a rum ’un? Reckoned he’d hang it from a nail in the dairy shed.’
Horace’s auditors slowly filed into the night, as at length did he, a little unsteady as he rose from the stool, and I was left in the smouldering firelight.

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Third place went to Christina Moore for the oddly affecting tale of man at the mercy of his compulsions and obsessions, whose life begins to unravel after his mother is taken away to hospital, and his carefully constructed world order can no longer be maintained. We’re all a bit like Mr Bourne in our own ways, and this story reminds us all how close we sometimes come to the brink.

The snapping of Mr Bourne and his shoe-lace

Mr Bourne pulls his polished toytown-red front door tightly closed behind him at the same time each day.  The click of the latch reverberates satisfyingly through his fingers, and the familiar snap echoes through his mind.  He inhales the sharp winter air with the same precision and control that he inhales the hazy summer air.  He traces an unchanging route around the park each day whilst the minute hand traces its own identical route around the clock.

Every day the birds sing the same songs tirelessly while Mr Bourne walks, following each note in his head as the feathered choir performs.  The tunes have made a niche in his brain now as though they have always been there, and it seems to him that he came out of his mother’s womb knowing those melodies.  Remembering the rhyme and having no desire to fall and break his back, he does not step on the cracks.  His feet carefully guide his safe passage during the morning walks.

Today has started poorly.  The door, swollen with January dampness, resisted his urgent tugs this morning, before finally surrendering with a sudden lurch.  As Mr Bourne was unbalanced he knocked the front door mat, and, consequently had to bend down to re-arrange it.  Straightening his body and fixing his gaze on the mat he still felt unsettled.  A further adjustment reassured him enough to allow his passage through the brightly painted door.

Now as he descends the first step Mr Bourne checks his watch and instantly feels unnerved.  Today the door did not close at the same time as every other day.  Today the journey of the minute hand and that of Mr Bourne are not precisely co-ordinated as the time is three minutes past eight and he is therefore three minutes late.   Stopping where he is, Mr Bourne starts to think.  He is leaving the house three minutes late and therefore will arrive home three minutes late.  All activities of the day will be three minutes later than they should be and the end of his day will be delayed by those same three minutes.  Tomorrow will start three minutes late as will the next day and for the rest of his life.  He is searching desperately for a solution, but now the minute hand has reached four minutes past, so with an extra little flutter of his beating heart Mr Bourne continues on his way.

Mrs Simmons of number thirty-two, has Fridays off work.  She spends the first few hours of those Fridays almost swallowed by the red armchair that faces the window to the front garden.  Battling with crosswords contained in the large newspaper draped across her lap, she contentedly brushes falling crumbs from her honey-drenched toast onto the thick carpet as they land on the inky pages.  Mrs Simmons’s sleepy face always smiles politely through her living room window at Mr Bourne as he passes by on his morning walk.  This particular Friday morning, as Mr Bourne is approaching the fourteenth panel of the fence, painted a rich mahogany brown by Mrs Simmons, she is not sunken into that red armchair; instead she is travelling to the dentist’s surgery where she will sit upright in a hard plastic red chair in the waiting room.

Mr Simmons, expecting his ex-wife to be home as it is a Friday, had tried to drop off a box of photo albums at his old house.  He cursed the woman when she did not answer her door, waited a moment, shifting the weight of the heavy box to his other arm, and made one last attempt to get a response from the silent house.  Unrewarded after another brief wait, he turned and briskly walked back to the street where his car was parked.

As he nears the fourteenth panel of Mrs Simmons’s garden fence, Mr Bourne’s plain, oval face is recognised immediately by his ex-neighbour, who, dressed in a suit, greets him with a salesman’s enthusiasm, enquires as to his health and asks him for a favour.  The man gets into a silver car, checking for messages on his phone with one hand and running the other through his hair.

Mr Bourne stands clutching a large cardboard box as Mr Simmons’s car races him to work.  Little beads of sweat have started to swell at the receded hairline of Mr Bourne.  He rushes in a panic to Mrs Simmons’s front door and having no free hands pounds with his forehead.  Hardly daring to breathe, he listens, and stares motionlessly at the elaborate ‘thirty-two’ hung on the door by Mr Simmons four years ago.  Little flakes of pale blue paint are peeling from the door around the numbers as a result of another winter of damp and rain. His murky grey eyes are unblinking as he waits, hearing the echo from his beating of the door in his head and feeling the pain where his skin was pressed against the heavy wood.  The house stares back unflinchingly and without remorse as Mr Bourne’s meticulously planned life enters a state of chaos.

Confused and caught off guard by the man with the tie, who seemed to find Mr Bourne so familiar, he had been unable to respond appropriately and as a result had been left with the burden of the box.  The man, with his confidently shining black eyes had suggested that Mr Bourne take it to his own house until Mrs Simmons returned.  This was not an option.  Hence Mr Bourne finds himself staring at a black three and a black two that look so harsh against the pastel shade of Mrs Simmons’s front door, becoming ever later.

Suddenly he straightens and spins to face the road.  Licking his dry lips nervously, Mr Bourne and the box flee the unsympathetic house in the direction of the park.  Perhaps it is in his imagination, but he can almost see engrained in the pavement a path made by his own feet, where they have trodden on the same concrete each day towards the same destination.  He is pulled as though by a safety rope towards the iron gates of the park that he should have reached nine minutes ago.  It is at this moment, that his shoe lace comes undone.  The box disappears as Mr Bourne pounces on that black lace, desperately attempting to tug it with its fraying strands into submission.   The lace snaps.  So does Mr Bourne.

Inevitably life will never be able to conform to the rigid structure within which this man is compelled to exist.  He used to have worry-lines etched in his forehead.  Now even when at peace, age has ensured the wrinkles will not dissipate.  However every day he returns to the house and to his mother who will calm his anxiety with soothing words.  There are times when Mr Bourne seems really impossible to placate, and on these occasions she gives her son the gift of time, returning the hands on the clock to their rightful place while he sleeps. As soon as her son’s difficulties had become apparent, Mr Bourne’s mother had worked hard to feather-line their nest, caring for her poor little bird so that no one, least of all himself, would have to know of his struggles.

Today is different.  Due to an event last night, Mr Bourne is finding life rather more stressful than usual.  There is a niggling feeling coating every moment with an extra layer of worry, but Mr Bourne can’t quite remember why.

Mr Bourne runs over the morning plan in his head.  En route back from the park, he will buy a pint of milk from the corner shop.  He will put it on the kitchen table while he washes his hands.  With clean hands he will lay the table for breakfast while his mother makes the tea.  After breakfast, Mr Bourne will wash each item, carefully arranging them on the draining board.  He will then dry each item thoroughly with the clean white tea-towel, attentive not to let his mother’s carefully stitched initials get wet as he does so.

For now, Mr Bourne and his snapped shoe-lace struggle awkwardly around the park.  He curls his toes to hold the slipping shoe on more firmly.  Increasingly agitated, he enters the corner shop through the waiting open doors, and goes straight to the refrigerator where he touches each of the green lids that sit in a row there.  He gets to the end of the row and starts again, jabbing each one with a stubby finger before finally selecting the middle bottle.  Mr Mehta watches, as always, waiting patiently until Mr Bourne has finished lining up his perfectly polished coins on the counter.  As always, to humour his odd customer, Mr Mehta collects each coin with similar precision, thanks him and wishes him a good day.  In his distracted state, Mr Bourne cannot remember if he has responded with his usual thanks and goodbye, and to be on the safe side, he continues to repeat his phrase loudly as he leaves the shop.

Back at the house, the toy-town red front door remains sealed like a giant red mouth petulantly refusing to open, as Mr Bourne wiggles his key with increasing urgency, pushing at the exaggerated vibrancy of the painted wood.  Finally with a lurch the door capitulates.  Once inside the house, Mr Bourne washes his hands even more thoroughly than normal.  His hands are purged in hot water and soap.  They dart in and out of the scalding lava-like flow as though too shy to stay there long.  He lays the table for breakfast as always.  Today mother is not there to vanquish his concerns, and Mr Bourne drapes a fresh towel on one of the heavy pine chairs and sits down.  With the clock perfectly in his field of vision, he watches as the hands follow each other around the clock’s face in a slow motion game of chase.  He becomes later and later until suddenly he is perfectly on time.  It is twenty past eight, and Mr Bourne tips the cereal box at just the right angle whilst counting time until he has precisely the correct amount of cereal in the bowl.  He pours the now warm and slightly souring milk until it skims the tip of the painted blue leaf inside the bowl.  Mr Bourne eats his breakfast dispassionately, and conscientiously clears the table, taking equal care with each item.  This includes the crockery from mother’s place, still as spotless as they were when he took them from the cupboard.

The morning has passed with the usual meticulous order, and now it is twelve minutes to one.  Mr Bourne and the plates have waited patiently for lunch for eighteen minutes.  The empty crockery stares blankly at him, offering no suggestions to alleviate the situation.  He taps his left foot nervously against the cool peach-coloured floor tiles, becomes acutely aware of the lack of equilibrium this instates, and taps the right foot in perfect mimicry of its counterpart.  Mr Bourne continues to allow his feet to tap alternately for the next twelve minutes, at which point he clears the table.

That night after washing the pristine dinner plates, Mr Bourne removes his stained clothes.  From his twenty-four hour morning, the urine on his trousers is almost dry, and they are now just slightly creased and metallic smelling.  His white t-shirt is limp and saturated with the sweat of prolonged stress.

It is a new morning, and fresh and positive, Mr Bourne has completed his morning walk without complication.  He has counted each fence panel and reassured by their constancy, he has crossed the road to his park.  He has replaced the offending shoe-lace with a twin from a drawerful of spares, and with his typical sensible care he has also replaced the lace of the other shoe.  He feels confident that the day has potential to be perfectly in order.

Mr Bourne and his mother have always lived lonely lives.  Mother preferred to avoid others’ scrutiny of her son’s difficulties, and instead they continued to manage alone in their own simple way.  At the moment Mr Bourne is more lonely than usual, as he is the only one in England living Saturday today.  Everyone else finished Saturday twenty four hours sooner than Mr Bourne, and are now busily getting on with Sunday.  On the cold side of a closed door again, Mr Bourne is waiting for the corner shop to open.  Finally at ten o’clock, Mr Mehta jangles his keys in friendly greeting and observes how early Mr Bourne is today.  With a good natured groan the metal grill is heaved upwards to expose the glass door to the shop.

A fresh pint of milk sits on the kitchen table.  A fresh towel is on the kitchen chair, and Mr Bourne sits on the towel.  He waits to be on time again.

Mrs Simmons knocks on the door, holding an envelope addressed to Mr Bourne.  “Sorry this came a few days ago, but I haven’t had a chance...”  She bustles into the kitchen bringing her typical comfortably harassed air, and as Mr Bourne sits meekly in his chair, she makes tea for them both.  “I saw the ambulance last week, your mum ok?”  Mrs Simmons had seen the old, frail woman being helped into an ambulance on Thursday night, but as far as she knew, had not yet returned.  She watches Mr Bourne quietly sipping his tea.  Guiltily she observes the evidence of his recent decay, feeling sorry that she hasn’t taken the care to come and see her worryingly gaunt neighbour sooner.  She doesn’t mention the discovery of her photo albums abandoned in the street.  His feet tap nervously.  Rummaging in her purse for a battered old receipt, Mrs Simmons scribbles down her new mobile number for him.  Reluctantly after only a short while, the busy woman leaves Mr Bourne and his chair to listen to the steady ticking of the clock.  The time announces that the day is now lost irretrievably.  The remaining tea goes cold and stains the sides of the cup while Mr Bourne waits to be punctual again.

He is confused by his worsening situation, not understanding what exactly in his life has changed and why he is in a constant state of anxiety now.  Mr Bourne is losing days and losing weight and losing his mind at an accelerated pace; each time something knocks his day off track he does what he needs to do to get himself to his chair so that he can recover time in the only way he knows how.

One day the toy-town red door doesn’t open at all.  This day has already gone wrong before Mr Bourne has managed to leave the house.  As the days pass, from his seat staring vacantly at the wall-clock, it becomes apparent to Mr Bourne that he has probably given up the struggle.

It is always a close-run thing when the judges winnow down to the last few stories, which ones to single out for praise, and which to reluctantly leave behind, yet we all felt that these next few stories were deserving of the opportunity to be read, and perhaps as varied a sampling of styles and subjects as you can get.
There was a stillness and peace to David Tallach’s Ask for Me Tomorrow, the simplicity and clarity of which was its own reward, and in stark contrast to the war-strewn violence of Miranda Lewis’s Roadside Tapestry, which swings wildly from childhood trauma and loss to an agonising death in the desert. More melancholic, and very moving, was Lesley Jackson’s The Tree House, with its interwoven strands of loss within life, and one life amongst the many. Another tale of death and dying is Clayton Lister’s The Undercurrent, but one which comes from a very different angle and one takes you on a slightly surreal journey first one way, then another, but always with a vividness of description that is completely involving, leaving you all the more shocked once you reach the end and finally understand what you have just been told.

Many thanks to all who entered the competition. It is always a pleasure to read your stories, a pleasure we hope we can now give back to you.

Ask For Me Tomorrow

by

David  Tallach

March

Rain spilling down on the edge makes a mockery of my work. This is the open space I chose, a green rectangle opened up, the standard size. I was mowing it just last summer, like the rest of the grounds. Lifting the turf in rhythm now, slap, scraping the surface of the ground, a raw wound opened, the top black as dried blood. Work regularly, cutting through the layers. The first daffodils are out, I pause, look at them briefly, resting a hand on my spade. Examine my calluses, smile at my collection. Rain falls persistently, a month to Easter. The sky cloudy, cumulo-nimbus. Working regularly, a trench of sorts. Like my grandfather in the First World War, his kilt, the lice, rats, duckboards by Verdun. Sinking down, the sticky earth casts shadows, freshly cut, moist loam. Discipline. My working clothes originally dark blue, stained with earth. I am getting hot even so, going down like a manmade elevator, finger pressed on the button to the basement. Below, the root of all things. And Australia. The space is not required until tomorrow. I like the quiet, time to myself. The space is rising around me, a brown box to contain another. Boxed in. Another pause, looking out at the sky above. The church spire is the only landmark from here. Then my relief comes, time to get out. It’s not as if I am six feet tall. And so I rise, rise to my lunch, my part over.

June

Sweat. The roses in full bloom: I squirt them for greenfly. Walking around the grounds. Shirt sleeves. The grass grows quickly, I return often to trim the borders encroaching on each other, plants vying with each other to run the place. Last burial in late May, a spot beneath a cherry blossom tree. Sun is warm. In the distance comes the slow bustle of the town, a steady grumble I can afford to ignore here. The River Ness runs fast, cold and deep. River of water of life. Passing me by. Flowers and wreaths on some graves. In my handiwork, I disturbed the earth, opened a door, closed by the minister and then sealed by me. River goes ever on. Slow, hazy day, unusually hot. People lie out on the green banks across the river. Maybe they are waiting to cross. Unwary. Maybe they need a ferryman to take them over, maybe I am he. Flowers full of life: bees, pollen, humming. Keep the grounds tidy. Bend to pick up occasional litter. Lunch: cheese and pickle sandwiches. Back to trimming, get the mower started. Begin at one side, continue, circling older gravestones, some sunk and leaning, subsidence. Other heads are leaning, further down. Cutting the long spears of grass, reaching up as if to tickle the sombre grey stones into life. The Day of Judgement. All the chaff shall burn. The grass is ordered now, shortened. Days like grass. The cherry blossom falls. Full bloom.

September

The leaves keep falling, onto my shoulders, down into the new rectangle I am cutting into the earth. Red, yellow, brown, brown as the earth baked from a long hot summer. Heavy work. Patterns of life, patterns of death. Hearing a baby’s cry, looking up, my hair tousled, filthy, clods of earth on my working clothes. The mother soothes the child, rocks the pram. The river is clear today, sparkling. I return to my haven, cutting the familiar trench, wounding the soil to close over the head of another, keep them shut forever and a day. An apple fallen from a tree, its boughs outstretched near me, an invitation. The wind blows in a gust, the leaves rustle, the green apple rolls over and over. Suddenly I do not like it, it rolls towards me, round and shiny and ominous as a green skull, blank and baleful. It rolls to the edge of my fearful pit, and stops. I knock it with my spade, send it tumbling back. The earth is dry and crumbly, seeming ripe for this particular harvest. Shift and cut. Time for my break, rise from the row now three feet deep, saunter over to a bench for my lunch, corned beef sandwiches. The slight wind is pleasant with the sun, trees rustling. I close my eyes and rest for a moment. Something nudges my foot. An apple returns. Then they all start to fall.

December

Cold, crisp darkness. The ground is hard, indifferent to sorrow or regret. Frost diamonds sparkling, the whole surface engaged to death, cold and beautiful. I sit on the bench again, late afternoon, sun setting over the river, shining off the pedestrian suspension bridge. The ground has gone to sleep, locked off for the winter, but I ensure it is tidy, free of litter, sweets, mince pie packets. The trees seem dead, conifers silent as Quakers. There are evergreens over by the church, thick and green. No snow, but a hard frost. Sparkles. A child falls and cries, cutting herself on the hardness. Her mother picks her up and takes her away to a world of warm blankets and hot drinks. School is finished today, children leaving for the holidays. Here it is cold, cold. If the ground is needed, it will need a digger, my arms are getting stiff. Mechanical remembrance. Turn of the soil, seedtime and harvest, turnover, regular clockwork, machines rolling on, tick tock. I stand up, feet crunching on the frozen grass. Some apples from the autumn are still there. I walk between the stones, thinking of this lost city of friends. I had the last care of them. This is my own plot in the corner, this is my place, here I’ll stay, for I do like it well. Ask for me tomorrow.

The Undercurrent
By
Clayton Lister

Mina watched the car enter the reservoir car park from a long way away — or as if she only now were waking from a deep sleep — with little comprehension and still less interest. It was the old man scrabbling out of the car that drew her in.
On foot, and with some urgency, he set off along the footpath that ran between a high hawthorn hedge and stream acting like a moat to the Water Treatment Works. Blackberries were mixed in with the haws — and another black fruit: Buckthorn berries! Likewise, it delighted Mina to identify the tallest reeds in the stream: not bulrush, as often mistaken for, but reedmace. She wanted to share, or boast, this knowledge.
But the old man had moved on, off that shady footpath to the broad verge where the long grass bowed and tangled, rainbow sparkling wet. Mina would have loved to stop and play. The spiky heads on those big ugly plants — whatever they were — were ripe for picking. They would have stuck to the old bloke’s cardi, maybe his bum, and later he would have sat on them. Yow! But he was having none of it. ‘Great burdock!’ Mina exclaimed; and off he sped.
That was how the game started — as a celebration simply: that she could name the plants was marvellous to her, so she would: ‘Bees in the bindweed! Snuffle-snuffle, oink-oink . . . Hogweed!’ Chasing after the old bloke, the louder she exclaimed, the faster he ran. So that by the time the footpath had taken them behind the village, she could barely keep pace for laughing. ‘Moo parsley!’
Only toward the end of that creepy long tunnel of coppiced willow did Mina begin to suspect that after all, it was not a game to him. Here, for lack of light, the lower branches were spindly and leafless. Noticing a single straggly shoot of bittersweet nightshade twining through the canopy, she cackled witchily; the old geezer spun fearfully on his heels, toppling and nearly falling.
Mina resolved then to keep quiet. She wasn’t a wicked girl. He slowed his pace; still, the old boy clearly was not enjoying this walk of his. When they turned into the field of tall grass all gone to seed, she feared he might not make it back to the car park. He’d clearly forgotten about the hill. But at the top he stopped and shook his fist. ‘Bloody vultures, I ent dead yet!’ he said. Mina forgot herself and corrected him.
‘They’re not vultures. They’re rooks!’ she laughed.
He hurtled down the other side. If he lost his footing now he’d fall into the river. He ignored completely the greeting a jolly-looking fat man gave him from the cratch of his moored narrow boat, and his barking dog.
Onward he raced without so much as a glance at the Pinkhill hide, over the bridge at the inlet works, past the reed lagoon, all the way to Shrike Meadow. Only then did he allow his old bones a rest. At the meadow’s edge where it fell into the river, he picked his spot. There he dropped, deadweight, swung his legs over and dangled his feet actually in the water. Again unable to help herself, Mina giggled. He all but fell in.
‘You’re funny,’ Mina told him. By stepping out from behind that hawthorn tree, she meant to put him at ease. But while he’d certainly been aware of her before now, he hadn’t actually seen her. He gasped, and buried his face in his hands. Mina was sorry to make such an impression on him. ‘You’ve still got your slippers on,’ she tried to explain herself, but could not understand his muffled reply. ‘What was that?’
‘I said, “I ent here for your amusement!”’
She felt terrible. But it also dawned on Mina, studying the old man’s weathered features, that she hadn’t been so far off the mark thinking he might enjoy her little game. ‘It was you what learned me all them things!’ she said, recalling it only now. She knew by the guilty glance he cast her that she was right about that. And, ‘“. . . he’s a mine of useless information”,’ she quoted from someone. Mina herself didn’t know who until the old boy made the enquiry with a raised brow. ‘It’s what Mum said,’ she realised then, out loud.
‘That so? What else did she say?’
Mina thought hard. ‘“Never there when you want him — which is never. Always when you don’t, which is . . . always.”’
Mina knew now that the feller was her granddad. He snorted. But if he was her granddad, how come he’d been scared? ‘You,’ she guessed, ‘didn’t come here to see me, did you.’
It was a little hurtful that he hadn’t. His response, though, was to laugh grimly, and that hurt outright — as did what he said. ‘Your mother must be right. I am losing my marbles.’ In fairness, sensing her umbrage he tried to make it better. ‘. . . if I ever had any. Always was a distraction, you.’
Mina swallowed hard. ‘Ent distracting you now, am I?’
He only laughed again. ‘I’m still here, ent I? Ten years after . . . Who’d have thought?’
Mina was nonplussed. ‘Ten years? After what? That can’t be. I ent ten yet. I ent even nine years old.’
‘Oh,’ he said, regretfully, ‘Oh. Well, spose I might be wrong.’
But he wasn’t. He knew it. She knew it.
‘Blow me down,’ Mina said. ‘I’m dead, ent I.’

*
Yes. He was sorry, but there was no denying it. The last time he’d seen her? She was quite dead. He himself had identified the body — once they’d fished it out. Hadn’t even cleaned it up for him. All bloated and blue, she was. Dirty. Hadn’t looked like her at all. 
Mina sat down heavily on the sward’s edge next to Pops, her own feet not quite reaching the water. He clearly needed it, but she daren’t hug the old boy. The dead cannot touch the living. Everybody knew that.
It’d been a day just like today, he said. Or a day like this would be. Blistering. That whole summer had been, unlike this one. Miserable, this one. Bloody awful. First time he’d been back since what happened. But no, he had not been expecting actually to meet her here.
Mina listened, sympathetic but dazed.
He’d done what he could, of course — in the first place had not wanted her even to paddle, had warned her not to venture any further from the bank. But she was stubborn-headed. Not unlike her mother in that respect, who in all these years had not let him forget it was his fault. Since Mina was here now, he hoped she appreciated the heartache and bad feeling she had caused. But he must have recognised the extent of her dejection: he didn’t push the point, only continuing at length, ‘They said some awful things.’
What they or anyone said wasn’t of much interest to Mina. But she ought to say something, she thought. ‘Blaming you?’
‘Because you didn’t have no clothes on! I told you keep ’em on.’
Funny how the memories returned to her only when reached for. ‘I had my knickers on,’ Mina said.
Pops only snorted, as much to say, All the difference that made!
But she’d been swimming. Why would she have swum dressed? That really would have been silly. She was dressed now — barefoot but dressed. It felt good to flex her calves and ankles, dabble her toes in the water. The flesh on Pops’ legs between his trouser hems and socks was pasty, bluish even — much more like a dead person’s than Mina’s. As if oblivious, or they belonged to someone else, Pop let his feet dangle half in the water. He still hadn’t removed his slippers.
‘So you,’ she said, ‘came here today . . . what for?’ Mina didn’t know the reason as truly as her own prompted recollections had answered some of her other queries; but at the back of her mind she could feel something surer than mere suspicion forming. He’d not sat down to cool his feet any more than he’d come to visit. He was here to do himself in! Just how to put a suggestion like that to your own granddad, though? He’d been in such a state even when he arrived that, ‘You didn’t shut the car door,’ she recalled.
Pops seemed genuinely surprised to learn that — surprised then brightly amused, ‘Well, that’ll serve her right, ’n’all!’ he said, and with all his might hurled the car keys into the river. He was old, though; stiff-limbed and clumsy. They plopped just a few feet distant from his knees; and Pops followed.
Again, Mina felt the need to say something. But she felt that it had best not be about his mishap. Seated waist-deep in water, he made no effort to climb out. So, at length, she asked, ‘How is mum?’
‘Hah!’ Pops slapped the water. What did he care? He slid a little deeper. ‘She’s got a new man.’
Curious. That was so curious that Mina doubled forward the better to read Pops’ expression. If he wasn’t going to volunteer any more than that, she’d have to ask. ‘Who was her old man?’
It seemed a reasonable enough question; but Pops glanced at her sharply.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’
Pops winced, shifting uneasily, as if after all, he had damaged something slipping down the bank. His tailbone maybe? But Mina knew he hadn’t.
‘We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we,’ she recollected. ‘We have. I never knew who Mum’s man was. Granddad? Pops? Who was my dad?’
‘Ask your mother!’ Pops snapped. ‘She’s the one got bloody pregnant, bloody stupid.’
‘I did ask,’ Mina told him truthfully. ‘Lots.’ Even as she spoke it was coming back to her. ‘Mum said it didn’t matter, but . . . I’d probably find out for myself anyway, in time — if she knew him?’
Pops didn’t have an opinion on that. None that he wanted to share, anyway.
‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘about this new man.’
The old man huffed. ‘Wouldn’t be talk of buggering off if it weren’t for him, I’ll tell you that much! Bloody old folks’ home! They took my car from me. They’d no right!’
Mina didn’t care anything about his car. Or old people’s homes. But this conversation about her dad, that was interesting. The very last time she was here, that’s when they’d had it before. Unwilling to drag up the details of the actual drowning, Mina had imagined she entered the river in high spirits (hadn’t Pops himself hinted as much?) stubbornly resisting his pleas to withdraw. Now that she thought about it, she’d been furious. Backing in deeper, she had believed she was safe. The river was running a lot more slowly on that day than this. She’d been so angry, though, would it have made any difference if she had appreciated the danger? Why would he not tell her?  
Then another memory surfaced: she knew well enough how babies were made — didn’t like it; but those kids down the road from where she, Mum and Pops had all lived together, weren’t lying about it. She’d asked Mum. Who, though — who with Mummy — had made Mina? They had lied about that, those kids. Surely. Hadn’t they? It couldn’t have been . . .
‘Granddad!’ Mina shrieked so loudly and shrilly that Pops flinched. In flinching he slid a little deeper into the water. He had to scrabble to regain the seat he’d found. Mina fought an urge to strike him, kick him back down. She must not touch the living.
He was muttering. What was he muttering? ‘You raise a child . . . I taught you everything you know!’
‘My daddy’s name!’
But he only shrank from her, deeper again into the water but not intentionally. Not by choice.
‘So, do it,’ she said. ‘What’s stopping you?’
The old man shook his head.
‘What you came to do, do it.’
He seemed all at once to have become more conscious of his vulnerability. Pops scrabbled on to his knees, now facing Mina as if wishing — or begging permission — to climb out. Mina simply stood up. That he could look so pathetic repulsed her. The muddied water lapped at his chest and throat. His mouth worked, but wordlessly. Mina pointed. Best not fight it and prolong the agony. What was he waiting for?
Now he found his voice. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I love you . . . ’
Mina’s turn to smile grimly: What, that smile said, In the same way you loved Mum? She shook her head. It was a very effective way of driving someone backward into deeper water. Dead or not, it was much more satisfying than forcing a person physically ever could be, Mina was sure. Altogether better than backing in yourself. He might well try and stand up.
There he slipped, so easily away. It was child’s play. Mina was so intent in his silent passage from the bank that until now she hadn’t registered the jolly-looking fat man they’d passed earlier. Neither had she noticed his dog although the mangy old thing had bounded ahead of its master to bark furiously at Mina. The man watched Pops’ body, rolling, submerging, re-emerging as it passed. He looked for a moment like he might plunge into the river to intercept it, but saw sense.
Would this mutt never stop its yapping? ‘Boo!’ Mina said, alarming it into a spin.
Then it did lose interest — as, so Mina realised, she herself began to withdraw not just from the dog, but the entire scene. She saw it as if from an increasing distance. Pops’ body slipped under one last time. Just how far would it carry? Mina wondered, vaguely. All the way to Pinkhill Lock? How far had she been carried? That was a memory beyond her compass. Had she gone too far driving him all the way to his death?
Not that guilt or remorse afflicted her particularly. But then the thought struck, wherewould that part of Pops go that wasn’t his body? Would he simply fall asleep — as she felt she’d been asleep these past ten years? But she’d returned, hadn’t she — woken — when the opportunity to avenge herself arose? What if he felt that same need? No matter he’d come here today to drown himself. He hadn’t come out of guilt. He’d come to make her mum feel guilty. ‘Can’t see anything ’cept what he wants,’ is something else she’d said about him. ‘Selfish see.’ As both he and Mina need be in the same place for Mina to wreak her revenge, so they would be for him to wreak his; and there in sleep, their eternal death-sleep, together they would be.
Mina was going under even now. She could feel it. Feared it. As when alive she had feared sleep for the nightmares that she could not always wake herself from. Now, as then, more than anyone, more than she’d ever wanted a dad, Mina just wanted her mum.  

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The Tree House
By
Lesley Jackson

     At number eight a man walks towards the tree-house that rests between two sturdy horse chestnut trees at the bottom of his garden.  He does this once each morning to quell the flutter of panic he feels when he wakes and again each evening, to escape his empty house.

     He climbs the ladder to the hut that blends into the foliage that surrounds it. From here he can into his own and his next door neighbour’s house and garden. He can also see a snatch of road between the houses but all he wants to look at is the sky. He’s not sure there’s a heaven but soothed by dappled sunlight he thinks it’s possible. After a while he picks his way back down the ladder to check on his sweet peas.

     Next door, at number nine, Kathy enters her kitchen. She stands beside her husband at the sink as he washes the dishes. They both gaze out of the window.
     “Arnold’s out for his stroll again,” she says.
     “It’s a damn shame,” says her husband, fitting another gleaming plate into the rack. “It had no business coming down this way.”
     “Mmm,” says Kathy. She remembers Arnold’s tree house when it was nothing more than a wooden frame covered with plywood, but his grandson’s arrival has led to more than a few changes. She remembers Arnold telling her his news:   
     “Aye, it makes perfect sense. Living here will be cheaper and better than lodgings at

the University. And he can help with an old dream of mine.”
     “It’s a magnificent construction, fellas,” Kathy says aloud to the trees and decides she can’t imagine them without it. She leaves the kitchen and runs upstairs to make the bed. She can hear children outside the window. It reminds her that her dreams have come to nothing.

     Outside, two girls in school uniform cross the road. One of them notices the brass number on the door.
     “A man died there,” she says. 
     “Where?”
     “There,” she says, pointing.
     “When?”
     “Dunno. A week, or a few days ago. My dad says. There was blood all over the place.”
     “There was not.”
     “There was. Look, there’s a stain on the road.”
      “Eeeugh.”
     “My dad saw it happen.”
     “He did not.”
     “He did, too.”

     On the other side of the street, in the upstairs bedroom of number twenty-four, a child

the same age is lying in bed with measles. He hears the shrill voices of the children
outside. He’s glad he doesn’t have to go to school but he wishes he didn’t have to lie in his room all day. He thinks about the tree house in the garden opposite. His mum says the people won’t be needing it now and he wonders if he could have it, maybe.

     Arnold fills his kettle at the kitchen sink. He hears voices outside, looks out of the window and sees the girls walking to school. His thoughts turn to his own walk to school as a boy, to his son’s troubled schooldays and then to his grandson, smiling for all time from the frame on the bookcase. Arnold cannot make sense of the world. He survives the war and sees both boys grow into fine young men for this: Death, outside his own front door. Arnold’s chest heaves and he sits down heavily on a chair and sobs, still holding the kettle.

     The children walk to the end of the road and past the newsagents on the corner.  Jess has been working here since she moved into the area a month ago but she plans to leave before the new term starts. She will be twenty-four soon. She knows she doesn’t look it because she wears her hair in a pony-tail and prefers not to wear make up. She stands in the doorway and leans out, looking down the tree-lined road as if into her own future.  Her pony-tail flicks right and then left, as she checks each end of the road hoping to see a young man walking towards her at any moment. He comes in for a newspaper most mornings. She smiles at the thought of him, always in a rush to get back to something he’s building.
     
      At first he keeps it a secret but finally he tells her:
     “A tree-house! Excellent!” she says.
     “It’ll be finished by Saturday. You can come to our official ‘Opening of the Tree House Ceremony’, if you like,” he says, smiling. I’ll meet you here, when you finish work. It’s not far.”
     “Great,” she says, smiling back. “Thanks.”
But when she waits around after work on Saturday, he doesn’t show up. And he hasn’t come in for his newspaper since.
     “Strange,” she says out loud to the street because she senses he is a person who means what he says. Some things don’t make sense.

     A widow in her early sixties, who works part-time as a dinner lady, is also walking to school. It’s quite a distance but she needs the exercise. She plants one heavy foot in front of the other but her pace is slow and her breath is short. She doesn’t manage much these days. She has a young man do most jobs for her around the house and garden. But he hasn’t been lately. She might ask after him at the school. He does some work there from time to time. Perhaps he is busy with that tree-house he is building for someone. There’s a funny thing, she says, laughing out loud at the memory. She meets a young man in the Air Force who dreams of having a tree-house one day and now she meets someone, almost the same age, who is building one. The man she remembers is from here, too, but she meets him in Belgium of all places. 
     “Ada,” she remembers him saying, “You turn all my skies blue”.

     The boy with the measles has grown tired of day-dreaming and is asleep. His mother looks in on him and then sits out on the decking at the back of the house, waiting for her husband to return from his reconnaissance trip to Scotland. He will be back shortly after midday to tell her whether they are moving again soon.  She knows it’s hard for their son, new places, new schools. He doesn’t mix very well. Lately, all he talks about is the tree house over the road. It’s an eyesore, really, straddling the trees. She sighs as she tightens her wrap around her shoulders. Well, maybe it will have to come down now. 

     Ada is standing in the school kitchen, stirring dumplings into the stew, moving them around carefully to stop them breaking. She thinks about the young man in Belgium, how some things are so full of promise and then they are gone. She is posted away; they write for a while and lose touch. She wonders if he gets back safely. Someone has died recently, not far from here. They are still talking about it in the canteen. She doesn’t catch his name, a young man who stops to direct a lost driver in one of those big, articulated, lorries. The driver tries to turn the lorry round, reverses and crushes him against the railings at the side of the street. It doesn’t bear thinking about. What must it be like, to see it coming? To know?

     A taxi moves swiftly down Sidney Street, bringing a man from the railway station to number twenty-four. The driver is listening to the man talking about Glasgow. 
      “It’s no accident how things turn out,” he says.
      The driver tells him about an accident on this very road. This pretty, tree-lined

 street. It’s not the sort of place he expects to meet the Grim Reaper. The lorry is not even careering down the road. It’s just turning round.

     The taxi driver drops him off and does a U-turn in the road. He is in a hurry and there are no schoolchildren to worry about at this time of day. As he speeds along, he makes a face at the windscreen and says aloud:
     “How does a driver crush someone when he’s reversing, for Christ’s sake?”
He can’t make sense of it. Why does the young fella not leap out of the way, shout out, bang on the back of the truck?

     Kathy glances out of her front window as she dusts and sees the taxi flash past. They could have speed bumps put in but even those won’t help the likes of Arnold. She looks up at the sky and notices a bank of dark clouds. She needs to keep an eye on that sky. She has washing pegged out.

     Jess is sitting alone in the newsagents, turning the pages of the local paper. It’s almost four o’clock and the shop is quiet. She is thinking about what she will do later, after work. Usually she goes jogging, taking a circular route past the school onto Sidney Street and then back to her room. She’s pleased with the area; it has a friendly feel. She likes her boss and there’s an oldish lady she often sees when she is out jogging who smiles and says hello. And then there’s the young man she hasn’t seen for a while.

     There is a photo of the young man on page five in the newspaper she is reading. It is
quite a large photo next to a headline that reads: LOCAL MAN CRUSHED IN TRAGIC ACCIDENT but as she reaches page four a group of children on their way back from school burst into the shop, clamouring for sweets.  She folds up the newspaper and moves along the counter to keep an eye on them.

     The boy with the measles wakes up when he hears the children on their way back from school. He misses being with them, though they’re not really his friends. They seem later than usual. They have probably been buying sweets. He wishes he had some. His dad says they might move to Glasgow because there is nothing to keep them here. He thinks he might run away and hide in the tree house.  

     Arnold hears the children returning. He looks up at the clock.
     “Is that the time?” he says aloud. Hours fade from his grasp, like dreams. ‘Hold on to your dreams’, he remembers his father saying. The tree house is an old dream. He keeps it to himself as a lad in case someone laughs. But eventually he tells a girl he meets in Belgium. She doesn’t laugh. He’s not thought about her in years.
He should get out, fetch his own newspaper but he’s afraid to pass that terrible place. In any case the garden is in for a spot of rain. He wants to store his grandson’s tools safely in the shed. It doesn’t seem right to leave them out in the wet.

     Ada has done her shopping and is half way home. Her bags are heavy but she can

 walk home twice before the bus arrives. She feels rain on her face. 
     “Oh, what a nuisance,” she says to the pavement and takes a short cut through Sidney Street.

     The taxi driver is travelling down Sidney Street for the third time but this time he’s on his way home. He notices a young jogger, her pony tail swinging. She is running on the spot, waiting for him to pass and he turns to look at her. She’s a sight for sore eyes, he thinks, legs right up to her neck.

     Ada tries to hurry as raindrops clatter onto the tissue box at the top of one of her bags. Her steps are laboured and so is her breathing. Cars are parked on the pavement and she can’t get between them and the wall. She steps onto the road and walks around the cars, but, as she tries to get back onto the pavement, she trips.

     Jess doesn’t mind a bit of rain but it’s getting heavy. As she jogs on the spot considering the best route home she sees a woman, loaded with shopping bags, trip on the other side of the road. Groceries spill from her bags. She recognizes her as the grey-haired lady who smiles and says hello. Then she notices that the taxi is moving towards the old lady but the driver is not looking where he is going. He is looking at Jess.

     By the time the driver sees Ada, she is well into the road, chasing a tin of beans. His
wipers give him a clear picture of her for a few seconds before the windscreen clouds

 with rain. It’s hard to judge how close she is. He brakes fast and hard, but it’s not enough.

     Ada looks up, sees the car coming and turns but the wing of the car brushes her hip as it swerves away and she loses her balance and falls. She gets up immediately and sits on the edge of the pavement, covering her face with her hands. Her knees and elbows are grazed and bleeding. 

     Jess races over to Ada to comfort her.  Then she runs over to Arnold’s front door and bangs on it urgently. There is no response, so she runs around to Kathy’s front door and rings her doorbell. There is no response from there, either. Kathy is hurrying through her garden, snatching washing off the line and Arnold can’t hear anything for rain bouncing off his shed roof.

     The taxi driver calls out to Jess and they gather up Ada’s shopping and help her to stand. The driver offers to take her to hospital where they can check her over. Then he can take her home. It’s the least he can do, he tells her. Jess wants to see she’s all right and scrambles into the back seat beside her.

     As the taxi pulls away, Ada looks up and notices a tree house in the gap between the houses. She wonders if this is the tree house her young, odd-job, man is working on. “Look,” she says to Jess, pointing up into the trees, “there’s someone up there.”

Jess squints up at the trees and wonders if it might be someone she knows.

     At number eight a man stands in his tree house for the second time that day, looking

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