HI~Arts New Writing Sampler Spring 2011

New Writing from the Highlands & Islands of Scotland Spring 2011

New writing from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland Spring 2011

First published in 2011 by HI~Arts Ltd. 4th Floor Ballantyne House, 84 Academy Street, Inverness IV1 1LU All rights reserved. © for each individual sample, its specified author, 2011 The right of each individual author of the work in this collection to be identified as the author of their own work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the copyright , Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is distributed freely on the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover, or in any medium electronic or printed, other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent recipient. ©Cover image - Lord Leigh aka Lord Breakfast: www.flickr.com/people/lord_breakfast

Welcome...

Engaging, entertaining and original writing from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland...

The work in this collection is - with one exception - by writers seeking publication of their first novels. The work ranges from highly crafted literary fiction (Kristin Pedroja, Orla Broderick & Fiona MacInnes), to a genre-melding, action-packed tale (Richard Neath), and a new novel for young adults (Jesse Paul).

The new fiction work in this sampler is by writers who have developed their writing with the assistance of our services.

In each case, they have done so with creativity, dedication and a commitment to constructive engagement in the editorial process such that we can recommend them to any agent or publisher as writers you can really work with.

HI~Arts’ Writing Development Project has, for the last seven years, provided writers in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland with high-quality, professional development services and support, including professional mentoring, critical assessment, networking opportunities, showcases and key advice on finding an agent or publisher in a changing and demanding market place.

If you are a publisher or agent interested in seeing more of the work of any author featured in this sampler, please contact me directly at: peter@hi-arts.co.uk Thanks for reading their work.

Peter Urpeth Writing Development Co-ordinator HI~Arts

Contents Kristin Pedroja: ‘The Group’ - 6 Orla Broderick: ‘The January Flower’ - 13 Jesse Paul: ‘Lenton Rice’ - 21 Richard Neath: ‘Breakfast Will Do’ - 28 Fiona MacInnes: ‘Iss’ - 32

Kristin Pedroja Kristin Pedroja is a writer and editor whose work has been published by a variety of print and web-based magazines and newspapers, including Seattle Magazine, The Prague Post, Ljubljana Life, and Tango Diva.

She works as a copywriter and content editor, and has written three novels, including ‘The Group’, an excerpt of which is published here for the first time.

Kristin is a founding member and serves as Coordinator of the Highland Literary Salon and is on the Board for Northwords Now, a literary and cultural magazine for the north of Scotland. Kristin graduated from the University of Kansas in 1996 with a B.A. in English and received minor distinctions in both Creative Writing and Journalism. Originally from Wichita, Kansas, now lives in Inverness.

~ The Group - a novel by Kristin Pedroja It’s been two years since Sylvia left her abusive husband, but the nightmares haven’t disappeared. Seizing upon the idea of using her financial expertise to help other women in violent relationships gain independence, Sylvia initiates a support group. When a local television celebrity, an overweight Walmart checkout girl, an elderly socialite, a model who is also an illegal immigrant, a Bible-thumping mother of four, and a straight-talking grandmother show up at the meetings, Sylvia wonders how they will ever find common ground. Yet the shared burden of a terrible secret draws them together. The group’s foundation is rocky, and small victories are quickly deflated by inconsiderate remarks and defensive jabs. But Sylvia is determined, and week by week the women forge connections and discover fresh ways to cope, both as a group and in their own worlds. Just as Sylvia senses a breakthrough, the unthinkable happens, forcing them examine the reality they’ve worked so hard to conceal. THE GROUP is a work of women’s fiction that dives inside the complex layers of domestic abuse. From shedding the past to accepting the fear of an unknown future, the book explores how unlikely friendships can inspire hope, the most powerful antidote to pain.

HI~Arts New Writers / Page 6

The Group by Kristin Pedroja

Excerpt from The

Group

a novel by Kristin Pedroja Of course it’s a secret, the biggest one you’ll ever keep. You live a double life, piling lies on top of one another, precariously balancing what you told this person and that person and those people. You have your list of excuses, some that can be used universally and others tailored to specific occasions or people or times of the year. You invent hobbies or pets or sick relatives, you feign illness or exhaustion or medical problems.

You’ve become an expert illusionist.

Your clothes are conservative. Your makeup rivals a drag queen’s.

You wear your hair down most of the time, or tie scarves around your neck. You’ve worked out a system of mirrors in your home to ensure everything is covered. Mirrors are crucial to your existence.

You don’t have close friends. Only carefully chosen acquaintances.

When you’re not at home, you’re skittish, terrified of giving anything away. When you are at home, you tread water, making sure everything is in its place, ready, perfect, while you wait and see how things will go.

It’s never you, anyway. It’s somebody else in your body. You watch from above, disappear into your thoughts. You wait, and wait, and take it, and refuse to feel anything. It’s not you. It’s just a shell, a casing. And eventually, it stops.

That’s when things get muddled. You ease back into your skin, ignoring the stings and the cuts and the scratches and if it’s really bad, the blood or the bones. Your consciousness settles and the guilt, the indignity, the depression, the anger, the disgust, the love whirls into a heady cocktail.

AMY The wheels of the SUV skid against the wet pavement as Amy jerks to a stop, inches from the BMW in front of her. She glances at her girls in the rearview mirror. Sally’s nose is in a book and Margo is staring out the window, singing to herself as she pats her tutu. Amy’s heart bursts with an uncomfortable affection, laced with regret and sadness and loathing, as she always feels for her daughters.

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The Group by Kristin Pedroja

The car behind her honks, and Amy continues along the road. This erratic concentration isn’t new. Age, she thinks, having four kids, keeping up appearances. She’s always exhausted. The Valium helps with her anxiety, but she’s still frazzled.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Margo.”

“Will Kenny and Marcus come to the recital?”

“I think so.”

“Will Daddy come?”

“I’m sure he’ll try.”

“Did I tell you the song I dance to? It’s that song from that movie.”

“Which movie?”

“I told you, Mommy. The one about the mermaid.”

“Nemo?”

Sally snorts. “Of course it’s not Nemo. It’s The Little Mermaid. Nemo is about a clownfish.”

“I said that! The mermaid one!”

“You didn’t know the name or you would have said it.”

“Yes, I did know!”

“God, Margo. You’re so annoying.”

“You’re so annoying. You’re mean, Sally.”

“Girls.” Amy glances in her rear view mirror and catches Sally shooting Margo an evil look. Margo doesn’t seem to notice. Sally’s nasty streak comes out far too often. Amy knows that streak well.

Amy turns up the radio to drown out the girls and pulls into the long circular drive that leads to the house. She pulls the car into the garage.

“Take in all your things,” she shouts at the girls as they rush inside. Amy checks inside the car for leftover bags and litter. She takes out three bags of groceries and feels their weight pulling her arms downward. She stands in the darkness of the garage, her legs unwilling to go inside. She could stay out here, sleep in the car, only go inside for meals and bathing.

She could disappear.

“Maahhm!” The door to the house bursts open. Her son Marcus is breathless. “Mom! Kenneth took the parental controls off of World of Warcraft.”

“Great.”

“Not great, Mom. There is some really bad stuff in that game.”

“I was being sarcastic. Here, take this to the kitchen.” She hands him one of the bags and follows him inside, where he heaves the bag onto the kitchen table. “He’ll lie to you, you know. He’ll say he didn’t take them off because he told the kids at school that he got to play the full HI~Arts New Writers / Page 8

The Group by Kristin Pedroja

version and one of them asked him about it and he couldn’t answer so he figured out how to do it at our house.”

Amy lets out a long sigh. Ever the righteous child. “I’ll speak with him later.” She hears his gangly footsteps pound down the basement stairs.

Amy puts away the groceries in a daze, unloading homemade muesli and sustainably farmed salmon and organic vegetables, all from the local farmer’s market. She thanks Jesus again for the excellent chefs at the children’s private school, who ensure the students get most of their fruit and vegetable intake each day along with nutritionallybalanced, low-carb snacks. More importantly, they ensure that Amy doesn’t waste an hour of her day making tomorrow’s lunch.

The clock ticks beyond six o’clock; Kenneth will be home soon.

Though the cleaner came this morning, Amy still sprays and wipes the countertops. She glances at the planner on the fridge. The girls’ recital is in two Saturdays, the same day as Marcus’ soccer game. They would have to figure that one out. She hears shouting outside and sees the girls twirling in their tutus, leaping across the garden.

The door to the garage slams shut. Her heart thumps as she tosses two steaks onto the grill. She hears him open the door, and feels his eyes graze her body. She wonders what he’s thinking, whether he notices the bulges around her middle and thighs, whether he misses her pre-children body as much as she does.

She turns and smiles at him, longing for him to kiss her.

“How was your day?”

He frowns. “Why are you cooking that?”

“It’s Mexican tonight.”

“No, it’s steak night.” He points at the planner on the refrigerator. “See? Tuesday. Steaks. Mexican is tomorrow night.”

Amy’s heart sinks. “Oh.” “I was looking forward to a juicy steak tonight.”

“Juicy steak fajitas will have to do.”

He pokes at the steak with a fork. “That’s overdone.” Amy takes it off the grill and stirs the vegetables.

“Put the chicken in with the peppers. The flavor is better.”

“Sally won’t eat it. She’s vegetarian now.”

“You have no control. Those children need discipline.”

“I’m not going to force her to eat meat if she doesn’t want to.”

“Well, maybe you should.” He loosens his tie, then stomps upstairs. Amy takes a deep breath and puts fresh beef on the grill.

She looks at the calendar. She’d misread by a day, and now dinner was ruined. And what in the world would she cook for dinner tomorrow HI~Arts New Writers / Page 9

The Group by Kristin Pedroja

night? She couldn’t make steak, because Kenneth’s favorite butcher only had beef tenderloin on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Perhaps she could swap Thursday’s halibut and get to the butcher on Thursday between her lunch meeting and picking up the girls.

The garden door slams shut and she watches the girls run to Kenneth. He picks them up, one in each arm, and swings them around, all pink tutus and skinny legs. They dance for him, eagerness in their eyes. Her body seethes with envy.

The garden door slams again and Kenneth’s feet clomp against the oak floors. He grabs her by the neck and pushes her into the garage, then closes the door and slaps her body against it.

“Your little girls look like sluts.”

“Kenneth, they’re wearing tutus.”

“They make the girls look like slutty little dancers from a strip club.

I wondered why the hell you spent $400 at a shop called Prima Donna and now I find out it was on slutty costumes for our young daughters.”

His hand is an ice pick, ripping across her face.

“Four hundred dollars! Send them out to the street, they could probably make it back for me in a few hours.”

“The tutus are for their recital. The girls have been rehearsing for months.”

She is slammed to her knees, her head hits the door, his hand grips her hair.

“Never speak to me like that. You will tell the girls they will not be in the recital.”

“But they’ve been working so hard!”

The back of her head explodes against the wall.

“Now as the church submits to Christ” another explosion “so also wives should submit to their husbands” explosion “in everything.”

Amy falls to her left side, her neck throbbing, her head numb.

He reaches out a hand.

“Now get up. Dinner better not be burned.”

She takes his hand and he pulls her up. He kisses her nose.

“There’s a good girl. Now remind me how lucky you are.”

“I’m very lucky.”

His fingers dig into her flesh. “Good girl. Now tell me how much you love me.”

“I love you more than anything.”

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The Group by Kristin Pedroja

“I’m going to check on the boys before dinner. You’ll take care of those slutty little costumes. I don’t want to see them at the dinner table.”

She nods her head. He cups her cheeks with his hands. His thumb slides along her cheek.

“Fix that before dinner, too. Don’t want the kids thinking you fell down the stairs again. Clumsy Mum-sey.”

She falls onto the concrete floor and holds her head, breathing through the pain. Pulling herself up, she slips inside the door and into the tiny bathroom, taking the floral bag from its hiding place beneath the sink. Examining her face, she knows she can’t do much about the swelling but can blend in the redness. She pats foundation over the bruise.

It usually takes four minutes, from start to finish, to be presentable.

She clears her throat and turns her head, using the mirror on her compact to ensure everything is covered. Then she slips the makeup bag under the sink and goes out to the kitchen. The girls are twirling in the garden. She calls out to them.

“Girls, you need to go inside and change for dinner.”

“But Mom!” “I want to eat in my costume!”

“You don’t want to get food on your recital clothes, do you?”

“Mom!” “Come on, Amy. The girls can eat in their tutus if they want to.”

Amy looks sideways at Kenneth. She’s not sure if he’s kidding. “I’d like for them to change.”

“I’d like for them stay just as they are.” Kenneth reaches out and hugs his daughters. They giggle and fall into a pile on the grass. “My perfect little princesses.”

“Fine.” Amy turns to go back inside. The girls’ squeals make her cringe.

The boys thunder up the stairs and through the house.

“Stop. Carry out these glasses.”

“Mom!” “You can handle it.” They growl, but pick up the glasses and trudge outside.

“Time for food, little monkeys,” Kenny calls. Amy grins. He’s called them little monkeys since they were tiny.

“Kenneth, do not talk to your sisters that way. Amy, did you hear that? Kenneth Junior is still calling our daughters monkeys. No discipline.” Kenneth frowns and sits at the head of the table.

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The Group by Kristin Pedroja

“You’re unworthy of my name.”

“Whatever, Dad.” “So.” Kenneth clears his throat and looks at his family. “Your mother forgot it’s steak night, so we’re having Mexican.”

“I like Mexican better, anyway,” Kenny says.

“That’s not the point. It’s Tuesday. Sit down.” He clears his throat, and they join hands. “Dearest Jesus, who died on the cross for our sins, make us ever mindful of the needs of others. Bless this food to the nourishment of the bodies that you so kindly gave us, and bless us as we continue to live according to your word. In your son’s name we pray, amen.”

“Amen,” they all mutter. Kenneth frowns “I’m not pleased with this dinner.”

“I like Mexican,” Kenny says.

“I wanted steaks, too,” Sally whines.

“Me, too,” pipes Margo.

“I do also, when it’s Mexican night. Not on Tuesdays.” Kenneth piles his plate with steak and passes the food clockwise.

“Mommy, you changed your eye shadow.”

“What, Margo?”

“You had blue on earlier. Now it’s pinky-peachy.” She cocks her head to one side.

Amy feels Kenneth’s icy stare. “You’re thinking of yesterday, Margo.”

“Did you fall down the stairs again, Mom?” Kenny asks, glaring at her.

“No, Kenny.” She feels her throat tighten. “Oh, look, I forgot the guacamole. Anyone need anything?” She gets up and limps inside, feeling her body shake. Her head is on the verge of an explosion.

She pauses by the sink and catches her breath. He doesn’t know, she tells herself. There’s no way he could know. Kenny is smart, but she’s smarter than him. She’s smarter than all of them.

She steps back outside and hears Kenneth clear his throat.

“Forgetting something?”

“Pardon?”

“The guacamole.”

“Oh. Of course.” She goes back inside.

~ HI~Arts New Writers / Page 12

Orla Broderick Orla Broderick was born and raised in Ireland. Her Grandfather played the fiddle, her uncle read her Oscar Wilde.

Her Father loved the drama of the stage.

She went to an all girls’ Catholic boarding school but was always in trouble with the nuns and learned to write as one way to escape her reality. She had her first article published in The Irish Times when she was seventeen.

Orla left Ireland in 1990. She trained as a nurse in Kent in England. She learned to ride a motorbike, tried to write poetry and short stories. She won the Hot Press short story competition in Ireland in 1996. She travelled by motorbike for several years, finally moving to Scotland and then the Isle of Skye.

Orla is a single Mother. She now has her own cleaning and gardening business, which pays the rent and keeps her daughter in shoes. Maggie Manvell from Working For Families read Chapter One of Orla’s first novel ‘The January Flower’ and suggested HI~Arts may be able to help.

Orla has since been to Moniack Mor Writers Centre (Arvon Foundation), HI-Arts writers’ Masterclass; she has been mentored by Roger Hutchinson and Angus Dunn, and had articles and stories published with Channel 4, Pen Pusher and Chroma.

~ The January Flower by Orla Broderick The title is taken from Advent, a poem by Patrick Kavanagh, in which the humble snowdrop symbolises the return of love despite the harshness of life. Drumlie Dub is Chapter One. It is set on a housing estate in the Highlands of Scotland. Our narrator is Mary. She has the soul of a poet.

She cannot easily conform to the ways of an ordinary housing scheme.

Her sensitivity clashes with the culture and, with her small daughter, she escapes into the beauty of her island home. She dances and weeps and allows her imagination to soar, all in her search for love and the strength to sustain it.

HI~Arts New Writers / Page 13

The January Flower by Orla Broderick

Excerpt from

The January Flower

by Orla Broderick Chapter One - Drumlie Dub Toy town. Lego land. Little white boxes for little white lives.

There are three trees. They will lose their leaves before the week ends. There will be no change of colour. Greens do not fade to red and orange and brown here. There is no ceremony to the process. The leaves fall off the trees. It takes a fortnight. And then we have winter. Winter lasts for ten months. There is no grass, no soft turf to kick a ball, to play a game, to roll on. The mountains in the distance are purple and blue, sometimes gold. They look fabulous. Climb closer and sheep ticks claim your blood, cling first to your clothes, then crawl in under your skin, bury their heads inside you, sucking your blood to feed their young.

The decision is mine. The weight of it only I may carry. I have borne you here and raised you here and I fear that I was wrong. My head melts inside with the dilemma. On the tail of a whim and the vague promises of some man, I moved to an island off the north coast of Scotland. I got pregnant and was abandoned. There is only me and you and the dog.

I have kicked the dog. I have screamed at you. I have been caged.

I caged myself, created this prison. Now I must dig us out, I must write another chapter for the great novel of my life, must imagine a happy ending. I must think very hard at what my happy ever after could possibly be.

There is no play park here. There is no play area. Mountains and fields stretch to infinity, the domain of the sheep and their ticks. These small houses were built with no gardens, no green area, and no swings.

These are the outskirts of any city. Perfect for some but not for you. In a dream I decorate this corner; build cycle paths, may poles. I see frames of silver birch replace fallow fields. A half pipe for skateboarders. Ten swings in a row. I only want for you to be happy. The only thing I crave in this lifetime is that you should be happy. The sound of your laughter, the giggles and chortles and belly laughs are my soul food. That your bright brown eyes may dance each day in joy is the reason my lungs draw air.

I sometimes drive us ten miles to a play park and we spend an hour or so sliding and swinging and hopping.

Then we come home.

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The January Flower by Orla Broderick

The fires are lit now. Every chimney belches smoke. The dark cloth from the sky meets the grey blanket from the ground. There is barely a gap between smog and rain cloud. The air is poisoned by peat and coal, warmed by the wet.

I had to leave you for a week; I was in the hospital with an asthma attack. The damp is a constant. Healthy living and the countryside are synonymous in small talk, but a contradiction in reality. Rain continues throughout the year. We enjoy the fringe benefits; splashing in puddles is a daily ritual. Wellies are wonderful. You would wear yours to bed, muck and all, given the chance. Jumping rivers is a competition sport.

The dog usually wins but you are a close second now, fearless adventurer ready to conquer lakes and waterfalls and tell me how amazing you are. I stand as you run and jump and splash and kick water.

I watch and get wet. You pick up stones and throw them for the dog. The dog jumps and bounces in the water. More splashings. We giggle, even the dog grins and lets her tongue hang down to the ground. At home we change our clothes and dry the dog. We go out again chasing rainbows after lunch. You know the songs and you sing them. Your small voice tries out the words and you taste the colours. Red and yellow and pink and green and you point into the cloud and hunt the hue you desire. We pretend we have wings to fly and we soar up the rainbow’s peak and slide down again on our bottoms. Encased in fantastical pinks we ignore the rain, we forget about sunshine. We had already forgotten about sunshine.

I am tired of the rain, the perpetual damp and the asthma and chest infections. I watch the barnacle geese glean their feed from the fields and then rise as one and go south.

The night has her own qualities out here in the country. Every few feet a lamp shines out. The council deemed it more important to illuminate each corner of Drumlie Dub than allow natural light. By day the crows sit on these lamp posts, on their way to and from the nearby dump. The crows will take anything. In spring they will fight each other for the eyes of newborn lambs. I think they are the souls of old paedophiles. I have taught the dog to chase them, to guard the house, protect you from these creatures. Boy racers roar through the night. The police give chase because it is all the police do. The police roar through the countryside and the crack heads light their pipes in peace.

It is cool here in Drumlie Dub to know drugs, to use drugs, to experiment with narcotics and mix it up with booze. It is normal for the parents and therefore it is normal for the children. Teenaged girls prowl the streets at night like slick cats. Like tom cats. They are predatory HI~Arts New Writers / Page 15

The January Flower by Orla Broderick

creatures, intent on fighting and wounding. They have no adults to love or care for them and so must demand the attention of strangers. Gangs of girls stalk their prey under the council’s fluorescent lighting system.

I step outside the front door and examine the sky, hopeful of a glimpse of the stars I adore. I think of the other world I had created for you, our cottage on the beach in the middle of nowhere. I think of the human beings I imagined would live on islands in the Atlantic. The decent, salt-of-the Earth folk withstanding great rains and storms and upstanding in all that life itself could fling upon them. Instead I found the largest lunatic asylum in the world. The decency of people erased like the comets. I watch these garish girls in costumes that city prostitutes would call gaudy. I empty the potato peelings on the compost heap. I gather in the dolls and cups and books abandoned in the garden. The gang decide to call insults to me. They insist I am weird. They insist I am a lesbian.

They yell verbal abuse at me. They tell me my child is the spawn of the devil. They throw stones at my dog. I want to defend you. I wish to defend myself. My urge is to smash my fist into the face of one. I would be arrested and questioned if I did such a thing.

I believed I could escape this society. I imagined a world where we would evolve as people and grow as souls. I found a world where heroin and cocaine are Mothers Little Helpers. The emptiness inside my neighbours can only be touched by chemicals. Class A drugs and alcohol and prescription medications are the stars that dance inside these heads.

I cannot remember a time without you. I fold the tiny vests and hang up the miniature jeans and match the small socks and I peek at you lying still and snoring happily. I have carried the memory of you all my life. The hope, the notion of you. The dream that became you has been with me, lying dormant for my entire existence. For many years I believed I had been a twin and that my mother had miscarried at some stage in her pregnancy, leaving me alone in her womb. I believed that part of me died as I entered this world. I have been bereft for years, hoping to touch you again. My whole life I searched for my missing part. You filled that void in me. Your being in my belly completed me. If you are enough for me, then surely by the same law of love then I must be enough for you. If the two of us merely stay together and strive to keep each other happy then will it matter what piece of the planet we inhabit? * Feminism never happened here. This is a culture crying out for the suffragette movement. The women are crying out for moisturiser.

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The January Flower by Orla Broderick

The female face has been forced to harden. The grim set of the jaw upsets me. They have been denied dimples. Decades without cosmetics have created visages like prunes. An old friend once asked me if there was a typical Islander, was there a physical attribute common to the Isles, like an identifying mark. After seven years on this rock I know the characteristics, the thin bridge of the nose stretching out in a bulb - all the better for looking down at others, my dear. The narrow lips passing gossip to large ears. The small brow houses a small mind.

I want you to know soft images. Your sensitivity to the world is the treasure we seek as adults. I want to cushion the impact of the world on your fragile senses, that your imagination may lead you through your years of development. I want your internal wisdom to be preserved, be nurtured through to the harsh adolescent years.

The television is covered with a drape for most of the day. You are uninterested in it and I am feared of the images created and shown as suitable for children. The harshness of it is a threat to our peaceful house.

Our home is our sanctuary, the corners of which are comfortable and child friendly. There are no precious ornaments here, no delicate china, no breakables. The furniture is solid and easy to climb and jump on.

Music plays and we dance. I want to wrap you in fairy dust as the angels watch each breath you take. I want to keep the pain of the outside world at bay.

Drumlie Dub. The very name means muddy; clouded turbid waters.

Drumlie describes gloomy weather in Old Scots. In seventeenth century Scotland Drumblie meant melancholy. A Dub Is a stagnant pool. And therein lies the irony. Many families here have known troubled times, have seen homelessness. Many lived in middens when the letter came with the Drumlie Dub house offer. We left our crofts, our homes. Without a choice, we were glad to go. We were repossessed, dispossessed, relocated. We celebrated and delighted our luck, our new built Drumlie Dub affordable house. Here we are now in this misty place; this muddy pond. To thrive or fester together.

A young woman pushes her pram past my house, her eldest skipping ahead, her youngest not born yet. Her shoulders are hunched forward and she lurches up the street. She is pale. Her hair is lank. She is thin and drab and smiles once a year, on her birthday. She lurks in shadows, apparently afraid of attracting light. Her house faces into the street and is visible from every sitting room. It is easy to watch the activities of her family from any corner. She has hung no net curtains and her front door is open. Her man will never conquer the drink. She will never leave him.

Our children play together but the young woman and I never speak.

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The January Flower by Orla Broderick

The leaves have left the trees. The lichens grow green on brown bark.

The trees seem to call for comfort and often times now I go and smooth my palm along wonderful wood and inhale deep into my heart the beauty of nature. The earth reeks of potent powers and I am restored.

The base smell touches the root of me and I yearn for sex, for the basic pleasures of the flesh. I imagine this tree, strong and sensuous, to shapeshift; arms open and beckoning. I move the leaves rotting underfoot as though to make a bed. I realise then I am fuelling the neighbourhood notion that I am indeed the maddest of all.

As the autumn closes out daylight we close into ourselves. The finer adjustments women make in more conducive climes are now forgotten.

There is neither gel nor wax nor spray invented to ease the frizz the damp creates on island hair. I shaved one leg several weeks ago and the effort was so great and the gain so little that the other leg is untended and overrun. I have one eyebrow only. I could not even attract the last dying wasp or a hermit bee searching for shelter. I have long forgotten the complexities of cosmetics. As the trees lose their coverings and stand bare against dwindling pale light, we expose only our noses to the air and the elements.

The sky is dark and moody over Drumlie Dub this morning. The very air is broody and grumbles with thunder. A heavy hailstorm made the earth crunchy. Tiny wrens hop in search of a crumb. It is only November and the sense of winter has come. The sun will break through the purple cloud and blind us with brilliance for a brief time. It will illuminate a hill or a wall or a river, will wash the target in gold and majesty, only to be swallowed again by the grumpy grey. The perpetual battle between light and dark.

This is a perfect morning for chasing rainbows and rather than document the doings of the sky I should be out in the woodland walk or down by the beach. It is too cold to be out. I see a distant hill from the window. I see the dance of delight the sun makes on the gentle slope.

Large mountains have the horizon dominated. A vast range of peaks already peppered with the first snowfall. On my left harsh jaggy protruding points. On my right the curves and contours are graceful.

The duality of rough and smooth co-habit the sky line.

I imagine sometimes the female form seen in the shapely surface opposite. Huge round lumps like giant breasts overlook Drumlie Dub. Hips and thighs stretch toward the mouth of the river. All is sensual. The male spirit is represented in the rugged rocks. All creation sourced from the sexes and their relationship with each other. I remain alone, unmatched, imbalanced. The sheep will find a ram without doubt.

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The January Flower by Orla Broderick

All beasts mate here. The long dark nights generally lead to couplings.

The laws of nature decree it.

There are few men here in Drumlie Dub. But more men than trees.

The sober ones ran far away to more civil societies. The drunks stayed, the dope heads still hang out here, with nowhere else to go, they wander our streets. The good ones are married, work hard and are faithful to their families - I know two of this kind only.

Of course I had a man once. Your Father. Before the boobs fell to my knees and the stretch marks of pregnancy patterned my body with snail trails I was beautiful and wild and free. Your Father was dark and handsome and gentle. Always covered in the mire of earth he smelt to me sexier than the act itself. His arms were the boughs of the strongest tree offering sanctuary for me. You have his eyes. Those dark dark pits of pitch. My desire for him consumed me day and night. We had few words in common. We had no plans to have a child. Although we dreamed of distant lands and warmer climates the island claimed our souls and we stayed here wrapped together. We lived then in the little house on the beach and the storms came and the wind crashed all about us and yet we rode through it. We rose and fell into each other as gales rose and fell outside. The sea threw her weeds into the air and I abandoned myself to the passion of it all. It is difficult for me to comprehend that it was just an illusion, that it was a game of make-believe. There was such magic between us. Every dream we gave breath to came to fruition.

It seemed we could not speak civilly to each other. As the waves smashed against the house, we smashed against each other. The sea became fearsome, flinging flotsam on the shore. I cursed him and he cursed me. His dark pall mirrored in the water. I soared through the troubles, breathless and full of love. The weather cleansed me. As cold as it became outside, my heat and my fire glowed red for all to see. The wind rushed deep inside me and the swell of it lifted me, tossed me and carried me. Then quieted itself again. Calm times allowed me to rest and in those hours he would talk, he would tell of the unhappiness of childhood and I think now, in hindsight that this is where we bonded; this was our only mutual ground. I have remembered his sadness.

I honour him as I raise his child without him. My drive and my strength came from him, from his lost years of joy. I pray to God each morning before you wake that I may face the day with love in my heart and a smile on my face. It is the way of evolution that one generation provides for its offspring the thing it lacked itself.

We chased sunsets, your Father and I. We would jump in the car in evening light and search for colours in the sky. There is so much sky here.

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The January Flower by Orla Broderick

And so many ever-changing colours. On a headland we would stand, gazing at the sun sinking, burning everything, brandishing all with flames of fiery red. The land and sea and air all burnished copper and orange and gold. Tongues of fire would light the sky. And we would be as the beasts, rutting and bucking in the heather.

At night we would stand outside the little cottage and star-search.

The immense heavens surrounded us; there was no light pollution there.

And once I watched a shooting star and I wished for this man’s beautiful baby. I wished upon a shooting star.

And you are here, my angel. And he is not. He lives on the island and no doubt is still clothed in earth but will not see us.

The lilies on the window sill have wilted, their pollen scattered orange on my beige carpets. Your Father brought me flowers once, all tied with brown paper and string. It was a simple but beautiful gesture and it worked wonders or passion. Oh, why must I always be dreaming of sex, when there is none in my life? Why should I hang on to the memory of one who got away?

We sit, we sleep, we shit in our gleaming boxes-for-life. The unsocial society. We slink and skurry to shops. Hurry back into the tv and dvd and ps2. Maybe a wave, maybe a nod. Sometimes a sentence echoes lonely in the air. We do not speak to each other. Eyes averted, gazes glazed we glide through each others lives - invisible.

I want to show you love. I want to show you the love in even the darkest thing. There is often a burden with living but my second gift to you is Light. May yours shine bright.

~

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Jesse Paul

Jesse Paul was born in 1971. She was educated in Bristol and later studied Creative Writing, English Literature and Drama. In 1993 she ran away from her father’s circus. Since then, she has worked as a comedy storyteller, a teacher and a theatre arts practitioner.

Jesse has written two short commissioned plays (Brittle Secrets and Digging For Change,) and a collection of short stories for children (Other Cautionary Tales), commissioned by Arts Council South West.

Jesse now lives in Inverness with her partner and two children where she has been working on her novel with mentor Angus Dunn.

Lenton Rice is Jesse’s first novel.

~ Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul A novel for readers aged 15+.

Seven year old Lenton Rice lives in a small town with his discontented mother, Madeline. On the other side of town, 38 year old Jazz musician Edward Kelly wears sky blue shorts and he’s still a virgin. When Madeline sees an advert in a music magazine for a female singer in her home town, her musical passion is rekindled, only she’s not twenty anymore, and she’s a single parent, and her son Lenton is seriously oddball. Told from the quirky and somewhat uncomfortable perspectives of these three characters, Lenton Rice warmly invites the reader in to eavesdrop.

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Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

Excerpt from Lenton a novel by Jesse Paul

Rice

Edward Kelly Edward Kelly leans against the painted brick wall of the club. He shuts his eyes, whistles so that his black moustache irritates his lips. He scratches at the itch, catches himself with a fingernail.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he says, laughing, but he doesn’t mean it.

His lip stings; there’s a tiny chunk of flesh underneath one of his nails. He digs it out with his thumb and flicks it onto the ground. He checks the time on his watch, sighs, sticks his head through the open doorway of the club.

‘You coming?’ he shouts.

He doesn’t feel like waiting.

A white tomcat springs onto the high wall opposite. It mooches along the top, glaring at him. Edward mews at it. He claps his hands. ‘Not your patch, pussy cat,’ he says.

The cat doesn’t go away.

‘Stupid fuckin cat,’ he says, turning his back to it, just in time to watch Brian saunter out of the club. ‘You took your time,’ says Edward.

Brian gives a dirty little grin. ‘Had something to sort out,’ he says. He pulls the door shut, locks it, stuffs the keys into his filthy jeans.

Edward wonders briefly what Brian had to sort out. Something to do with sex no doubt. Always is with Brian. Edward grimaces, embarrassed at his own thoughts. He puts his hand on his empty stomach, and it growls at him like baby with a chest infection.

‘Okay,’ says Edward. He rubs his tummy. ‘Okay, okay, let’s go to the café.’

‘Talking to yourself again?’ says Brian. He punches Edward hard on the shoulder.

‘I’m not playing,’ says Edward, regretting it straight away. His throat goes dry, embarrassed.

‘Let’s go,’ says Brian. He links arms, makes Edward skip across the concrete yard, stupid bastard.

They skip through the archway and turn right into the main street.

Slowed down by the after-school throng, they walk three blocks and a couple of corners as far as Pauline’s café.

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Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

Edward pushes the door open and they go up to the counter. The familiar smell makes his nostrils flare. There isn’t much point in looking at the menu. He knows what’s on it. He can read it with his eyes shut – nothing but breakfast. He shudders. He doesn’t want cheap tinned tomatoes floating around his plate, or lacy fried eggs, or bacon with gristle-fat. He screws up his face, sticks his tongue out.

‘Don’t like today’s menu?’ asks Pauline.

‘Sorry.’ Edward feels himself blush. Always blushing.

‘I’d have her on the menu,’ whispers Brian into his ear. ‘How you doin?’ he says, leering at Pauline. ‘Give us your lovely liver and onions, and chips, and a milky coffee please.’

‘Righto,’ says Pauline. She rolls her eyes.

‘We’ll be at that table in the window,’ says Brian, pointing, making his way over.

Edward needs to eat. There’s nothing he wants to eat.

‘What about you?’ asks Pauline.

‘Three bits of toast,’ he says eventually. ‘And a pot of tea.’

‘Did you forget something?’ Pauline’s hair looks like soft straw.

Edward studies the chalked-up menu behind her head, brushes his fingers through his own oily hair, tracing his scalp with his nails.

‘Don’t think so,’ he says. ‘I only want toast.’

‘You could say please,’ says Pauline. She smiles.

‘Shit, sorry,’ says Edward. ‘I mean please.’

Edward sits with Brian. A gentle breeze comes in through the open window. He can smell the traffic: better than the stink of liver and onions Brian’s about to eat. He drums his fingers on the table. They could do with a drummer in the band. A drummer or a singer.

Pauline’s quick with the food. She puts their plates down on the table.

‘Cheers,’ says Brian, poking a chip into his mouth. He talks to Edward with his mouth full. What we gonna do?’ Brian’s voice is full of grease. So is his mouth, so is his brain.

Brian’s plate is overloaded with brown liver-gravy. Edward tries not to look at it. He picks up a piece of his toast, bites into – salt. A lot of salt in the butter. He takes another bite and licks the butter from his moustache while Brian works through an enormous chunk of liver.

‘We can’t run the band like it is,’ says Brian. He yawns.

Edward can see the meat sticking to his molars.

Pauline comes over with the drinks.

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Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

‘Thanks,’ says Edward. He pours his tea straightaway. ‘We need a woman,’ he says to Brian.

‘Right,’ says Brian. He throws a chip into the air, catches it in his mouth. ‘Maybe you do. I’ve got plenty.’

‘A woman singer.’

‘Yeah right.’ He snorts. ‘How we gonna get one of them?’

Edward shrugs. He folds the last piece in two and crams it in in three bites. It hurts his jaws chewing it. The butter tastes like animals. ‘Could advertise,’ he says quietly.

‘What, for a woman?’

‘Yep.’ Edward takes a chip from Brian’s plate, and flicks it at him.

It lands on his flat head.

‘You must be desperate.’ Brian takes the chip off his head and eats it. He stuffs around in his back pocket, takes out his address book, starts to flick through it. ‘You can have one of mine if you like.’

‘Advertise for a singer, you plonker.’ He tries to take another chip, but Brian slaps his hand.

‘Tell you what,’ says Brian. He pushes himself back from the table.

‘If you can find a lady round here good enough to sing with us, she’s got the job.’ Brian stands up. ‘You find her, Kells. It’s your job.’

Bastard.

Edward Kelly watches Brain open the door of the café and turn left down the street. He waits until he can’t see him any more, and then he stands up, abandoned. He straightens the table, adjusts his sky-blue shorts, settles the bill and leaves.

Lenton Rice Lenton Rice runs head down round the garden. He pumps his arms hard, wondering if they look like pistons. He can’t exactly remember what pistons do, but he is going fast anyway. Fast as a train. He watches his heavy shoes flap, the laces undone. He hates his shoes. It would be good if one of them flew into the road and got chewed up by a wild dog – except it might come back for the other one. Lenton keeps an ear out, just in case. He runs to the gap where the front gate is missing and stops.

Right or left?

He squeezes one hand into a fist, and then the other.

Right or left?

He traces his finger along a line of mortar on the left gatepost. He does the same on the right. The left one is smoother.

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Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

Left then.

He needs his hood up for that.

Lenton runs with his head down and his jacket hood up. He slows to peek into his favourite garden; the one with carved animals standing round a pond. They look so real – especially the lizard. He is saving up for a lizard like that. Probably take ages. Lenton carries on. He runs round the corner and keeps going til the next, where there’s a skip. He stops. There might be something good in there.

Lenton stands on tiptoes to get a better look. There’s a brown milk-crate on the very top, and underneath, a bike. It’s a definitely a bike – a white bike with a round bell, and brakes, and glow-in–the-dark stickers. He needs a bike like that. It looks exactly like the kind of bike you were supposed to fish out of a skip. Someone must have put it in there for him.

He has a quick look around. Nobody watching - Brilliant. He glances back down both street corners, just to make sure. A wire-wool dog lopes around the third corner. Lenton feels his ears go hot. It might be a biting dog; He’d better be quick. He pulls both his socks up.

‘Come on,’ he says. He presses his palms onto the side of the skip, takes his own weight. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘It’s easy. Brilliant.’ He giggles.

Lenton Rice lies on top of the junk on his tummy. His feet dangle in the air over the edge of the skip. He leans across and hooks the milk-crate with his fingers. He drags it towards him, slips back down.

The crate hits his thigh – it’s got sharp edges. ‘Oh no,’ he says. The pain makes his whole face burn. His tears stay in his eyes.

Lenton rolls the crate upside down, puts it on the pavement in front of the skip. He checks it with his foot and it wobbles slightly. It might be dangerous to stand on it. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a long time, checks to make sure the dog isn’t coming, puts one foot on the cracked plastic. Then, very slowly, he stands up, completely straight.

The crate bows in the middle. He holds on to the sides of the skip, just in case. The bike is easy to reach now. Lenton stretches his arm out, ready to grab, and a man wearing sky-blue shorts stops in front of the skip.

He winks at Lenton, and Lenton wonders if it’s polite to wink back. Go away, he thinks. The man winks again, and whistles off. Thank goodness for that. Lenton winks at his back. Wink. Wink. He likes winking. He feels like a detective.

The stuff inside the skip creaks and drops, catching hold of the bike and trapping it as he pulls it towards him. He has to climb inside again to release it. Standing as straight as he can, he sinks a few inches before he clutches onto the sides, saving himself. It feels like he’s in a swimming HI~Arts New Writers / Page 25

Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

pool, a swimming pool full of scrap. It isn’t very comfy. Keeping hold of the sides, he takes a few steps. It’s not that bad. He shunts closer to the bike. There’s a book trapped in the spokes. He pulls it free, looks at the cover. It has a picture of a man riding an old-fashioned bike on the front.

He is balancing another man on the handlebars, and both of them are laughing. Cycle Mania – could be useful. He chucks it down onto the pavement and heaves the bike on top of it. Nothing to it.

That creepy dog again, running towards him with its tongue hanging out. It’s a grey dog, with a face like a walrus. Lenton ducks. He can smell its wet carpet tongue from where he is. He waits, peeping, while the dog carefully sniffs every section of Lenton’s new bike.

‘Don’t you dare, stinky dog,’ says Lenton. He bends sideways to check if it’s a boy or a girl. Girl. And her teeth are massive.

‘Go away,’ says Lenton. He flicks at the air with his hand, and the dog skids off, runs back towards the corner. Good riddance.

Lenton counts to twenty-three. Then he jumps down from the skip – he bites his tongue as he lands. He can taste blood. He keeps it sticking out while he pulls the bike up – the air will do it good. The bike is easy to sit on. Lenton keeps his feet flat on the pavement and stuffs the book safely inside his jacket. It isn’t very comfortable. He looks down at his bent legs. It seems a bit small, and there are no pedals. He squeezes the brakes. Nothing happens. He tries the bell, and it sounds rusty, like a jackdaw. It might be worth a lot of money.

‘Right then,’ says Lenton. ‘Time to go.’ He leans to one side, and sets off using his feet as paddles. It doesn’t feel very safe and the bike is heavier than a ten-tonne truck. He wasn’t expecting tyres on a bike to be so squishy. He starts to shake.

By the time Lenton reaches his own front garden, he’s boiling hot. His hair drips sweat into his eyes. He rubs them and they sting, watering so that he can’t see. He paddles between the gateposts with his eyes shut.

Easy. He keeps them shut on the path, and bumps into something big and soft. He tries to guess what it is. Probably a bag of garden rubbish.

He opens his eyes. The walrus-dog jumps over him. He falls off the bike and it lands on top of him, practically crushing him flat. Lenton opens his mouth to scream. Nothing comes out.

‘Are you okay? asks a deep voice.

Lenton shuts his mouth because now he is looking up into the face of a teenage boy. He isn’t much bigger than Lenton, although he looks a lot stronger.

‘Supposed to learn to ride before you shut your eyes.’

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Lenton Rice by Jesse Paul

Lenton thinks his voice sounds false, like he’s talking through a special microphone.

‘I’m Elvis,’ says the teenager.

‘Oh,’ says Lenton. He is still lying down, holding onto the bike just in case. The book is just out of his reach.

‘I’m Elvis,’ Elvis points to himself.

‘I know,’ Lenton says. He wonders if teenagers count as strangers.

‘Good,’ says Elvis. ‘We’ve got that sorted then.’

Lenton stares at Elvis. Got what sorted? He licks some blood from the new graze on his finger and tries not to notice the panting dog. Lenton pushes the bike off and sits up. The dog moves closer. Her tongue is covered in spit. She probably has rabies. She opens her jaws, drools and chomps casually on the back tyre. Her saliva drips hot onto Lenton’s socks. He pulls them up. She might bite him in a minute. The dog stops chewing, stares at Elvis like she’s in love. It’s Elvis’ dog then.

‘Bad girl,’ says Elvis. ‘Rubber isn’t good for dogs.’

Lenton looks at his bike miserably.

‘Been to the library?’ Elvis asks Lenton.

Lenton shakes his head. He wants to cry.

‘Did you nick the book then?’

‘No. No I didn’t.’ Lenton badly wants them to go away.

‘Okay, okay,’ says Elvis. He wrinkles his nose, puts his head on one side, laughs.

Lenton thinks his laugh sounds like hiccoughs. ‘I just got it off that skip. Anyone can take things off skips,’ he says, watching the dog take another careful bite, pinning the tyre down with her paws. She sits down next to Lenton and chews. She smells like tennis balls.

Lenton picks up his bike. ‘I got to go now,’ he says.

‘Shall I help you with your bike then?

‘I only live here,’ Lenton points to the flats behind him. It will be good to get away from those two.

‘Me too,’ says Elvis. ‘I just moved in.’

~

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Richard Neath Richard Neath lives and works on the Isle of Skye. He is unusual as an author in that he chose to self-publish his first novel, ‘A Fall Of Stones’, and made a real success of its promotion, arranging readings and launch events in bookshops, with readers groups and through the internet, and in the process gaining significant local and regional press coverage. Requiring three reprints and sales in the 1000s. He has built a loyal following of fans who constantly ask when his next novel is due out.

Richard also writers articles for the quality angling press.

~ Breakfast Will Do by Richard Neath Breakfast Wiil Do Is a highly original, genre melding novel - part action road movie, part murder mystery - a book of unexpected twists and turns, that tells the story of Charles Spencer Eddington, over the course of one night’s drive, along the M6 motorway from the Midlands, north to his destination on the island of Seil in the Scottish Highlands.

Bitter over the death of his father, even more so over the betrayal of the, albeit short term, love of his life, Charles has thrown himself into a life of alcohol, computer games and depression - a life that grows more desperate as his outlook on the world becomes more cynical each day. But life goes on for Charles; a life of traffic speed camera burning, late night teenage fornicator jet-washing, burglar bashing, garden littering, whisky drinking, computer games playing and a gradual climb back to something approaching normality.

‘Breakfast will do’ charts the continuing downward spiral of our man Charles as he struggles with dangerous knowledge about his tenant, and over what is the right course of action to take.

‘Breakfast will do’ is a story riddled with dark humour and presents a main character so deeply etched with cynicism that the reader at first wants to slap him, then, gradually starts to feel just that little bit sorry for him and finally, hopefully, wants to shake his hand.

HI~Arts New Writers / Page 28

Breakfast Will Do by Richard Neath

Excerpt from Breakfast

Will Do

a novel by Richard Neath Broad Street was alive and pulsing to the beat of techno forcing its way from the bouncer patrolled club entrances. The pavements were thronging with revellers, swaying and strutting from bar to bar. Scantily clad young girls that made me feel old. Aggressive young men that made me feel inferior. They all flowed past me in a tide of lager and testosterone, looking as though they were out searching for the next fight. Police officers strolled in short sleeves and bulletproof vests, their shiny boots kicking through drifts of fast food cartons and nightclub flyers.

I wanted some fresh air; what I got was a thronging slum.

“Sir … excuse me … Sir?” I turned and the lights of the city swirled and brought on a wave of giddiness that I tried to clear with a deep breath and shake of my head.

Slowly, my vision became clear and steady.

In front of me, a brown-eyed girl of perhaps twenty, maybe a couple of years older stared back. Her face was dirty, flanked by long, matted brown curls that, despite her obvious streetwise aura, gave her an innocence that was impossible to ignore. She was almost angelic, almost beautiful; obviously homeless. Her eyes though - chestnut and deep, almost limitless, they glistened in the streetlights and threw me completely. A beauty which weeks of street grime and dust couldn’t hope to hide entirely, but also, much more. I stared, dumbstruck for what seemed an utterly inappropriate length of time and she just stared back.

There was none of the usual ‘time is of the essence, let’s get a couple of quid off this obviously wealthy bloke and scarper’ about her. She seemed composed somehow, intelligent, sure of herself.

More than that.

She seemed sure of me.

As lost as she was, as totally at the bottom of the pile as she was, she seemed to know that I was more so. She seemed to sense intuitively, that, as far as souls went, mine was deep in the middle of some desolate wasteland that she could only have nightmares about. She saw something that I had no comprehension of, not really. Admittedly, I was getting there, you know? But wow, she speared straight into my brain and gave me a bloody good shake.

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Breakfast Will Do by Richard Neath

“Sorry Sir … are you OK? You look a little … well, odd.”

“What? Yeah, yeah, I’m OK.” I paused, unsure what I was trying to say, what I should say. The homeless of Broad Street normally stop you and ask for some cash for a cuppa, not analyse your deepest thoughts and ask about your well-being.

“Can I help you?” - I honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I … I … just wondered if you could spare some loose change?”

A large group shouldered their way past us and for a second I was jostled and pushed, disorientated and suddenly a little scared.

Instinctively I put my hand over my back pocket, protecting my wallet as they flowed past me in a seamless surge of denim and leather. All around, the mass of people seemed to double; faces pulsed and rotated, floating past, jeering, poking fun and laughing. Like a fairground ride on acid, the images intensified to a point where I was convinced I was going to faint. Then, like a twang of elastic, I was back.

“Are you sure you’re OK? You really don’t look too well.”

I never even answered, but dug into my jeans pocket, fished out my wallet and handed her a £20 note. I smiled, turned and headed back towards the bright lights coming from my hotel foyer. The Maitre D’ swung open the door and I turned, gazing back into the throng of humanity that seemed to vibrate along the wide pavement. In the distance, a shape-less bundle of ill-fitting clothes was being absorbed into the mass, the only clue that it was her, a tangled mass of curly, off-brown hair. Without the eyes you see, she was nothing.

Back in my hotel room, a single malt from the room bar cradled in my lap, I thought about what had happened, tried to analyse it, struggled and found that I couldn’t.

Twenty pounds for a brown-eyed girl young enough to be my daughter. A girl with nothing but a pair of astonishing eyes. I’d probably increased her wealth by the power of ten with a single note. Less than I’d spent on wine in one evening. Jesus, less than I’d burned away with the Habana cigar that I’d been chuffing prior to leaving the table on my ill-fated walk to the stage. That made me smile and I sat, wobbling on the room’s one comfy chair, sloshing whisky at £5 a glass over my jeans and making myself feel sick again. The laughter came easily as I thought of my shaky walk, holding on to the back of my chair for a little too long, then lurching between tables, a steadying hand on any solid surface I could find, while all the time my brain, what bit was still functioning, seemed to be shutting down.

Coloured flashes of light had gone off behind my eyes and I remember seeing the chairman of the Chamber clapping hesitantly at my HI~Arts New Writers / Page 30

Breakfast Will Do by Richard Neath

approach. He’d known. He saw what was about to happen - it shone from his concerned face like a neon sign. I watched him glance across the stage to his second in command and in that one glance I read a whole page of condemnation and reproach.

He seemed to be saying “Told you so, this is what you get when you give the award to a drunk.”

The thought made me laugh even more and I struggled to replace my glass on the coffee table, spilled most of it on my shoes, then dropped it.

I watched it roll, flicking the remaining liquid across the polished wood.

I remember, before I collapsed from the second step up to the stage, seeing my chairman look down at his very shiny shoes, shake his head twice, then fix me with a stare and mouth “You bastard.”

I think I smiled as I passed out and know that dropping my trousers and flashing my bare arse at him had crossed my mind.

In my hotel room I was roaring with laughter, the sort that gets you worrying whether you’re ever going to stop, whether you’re ever going to manage to draw another breath. You know what I mean? Gasping and aching, your stomach knotted in painful cramps, spittle flying with each outburst, nose beginning to run along with tears from blurry eyes; everything damp and dribbly.

“For God’s sake, some of us are trying to sleep. Have a bit of thought!” Bang, bang, bang. The light fitting above the bed rattled and I actually saw my headboard shake.

That just set me off even worse, only now I clamped a hand over my mouth and rolled onto the floor, wheezing and coughing, desperately trying to keep the noise away, keep it bottled up. My face was puffed and red, cheeks blown out and teeth gritted and I was away again, coughing again, thinking I was going to be sick again, tears streaming now as the laughter built to a gut splitting, climax; powerful, pleasurable, terrifying all at once.

Then I was crying, only crying. The laughter gone, dried up, spent like a storm that passes quickly and leaves behind it a steady, relentless, windless rain. A real downpour. The sort of rain that really wets you.

~

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Fiona MacInnes Fiona MacInnes lives and works in Orkney. She is a writer, painter and teacher.

In 2006, she received a Scottish Arts Council Writers Bursary, and in 2008 was awarded a place on the Scottish Books Trust’s prestigious mentoring programme for new writers.

Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in Scottish literary journals, including her short story ‘Outsiders’ being published in The MacAllan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Collection (ed. Robert Allan Jamieson).

~ Iss by Fiona MacInnes ISS is the story of the parallel lives of Michael and Seana. Both are born into the same island fishing town, Michael from a tinker’s family and Seana from an immigrant Gaelic family. The close knit prejudice of the community impacts on each in different ways. Poverty, class, racism, and sexism wear through the myth of the Scottish Island idyll where birth right assumes huge importance. The backdrop is the post fifties era of nuclear development and the distant decisions that impact on the eventual demise of the fishing industry.

Michael becomes a seal shooter in the cull of the 1970s and runs into direct conflict with protesters from the city. Seana can’t wait to leave the small town atmosphere of gossip and heads to the city to become and artist. She finds that the art world she thought would give her meaning is in fact empty and filled with its own prejudices and class divisions. Her dreams dissolve into low paid work and the grind of daily survival. Back on the island Michael and Seana’s search for identity converge over Michael’s mother who is losing her own personality through dementia.

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Iss by Fiona MacInnes

Excerpt from Iss a novel by Fiona MacInnes Prologue

Michael cut the engine on the outboard and let the dinghy drift in towards the Skerry. A petrol feather of peacock blue slipped into the wake of the boat, shimmering in the evening sun. A fine day and a gentle wind blowing offshore.

‘The fuckers.’

It was low tide. Brown tangle smeared the black rocks.

‘The bastards.’

Michael tipped back his head, the base of his skull connecting with the top of his spine. Above, the Sistine blue cupola careered away from him. His head felt heavy. He closed his eyes, listening to the slap of salt water against the blue fibre-glass boat hull. Wooden boats? Far too much maintenance. Wrapped in canvas in the bottom of the boat was the rifle.

Michael waited.

Then from the town came the noise of the pipe band. The bass drum first. It boomed two beats then was joined on the third by the thrash of the side-drums. With the convergence of the pipes he reached down to unwrap the rifle. The first bullet pierced the skull. Soundlessly the head slapped away from the impact. The crack alerted the others and they floundered with ungainly heavy flopping towards the sea. They were hauled high up on the rocks and Michael had already picked out his sequence of shots. The second shot went in at an angle as the animal was turning. It scored through the blubber and soft tissue like a knife through grease, bruising to rest against a section of vertebrae. The third entered the animal towards the tail flipper, causing it to collapse almost at its destination, the protecting sea, lurching, still alive. All the seals were moving, and the Skerry erupted into a splashing mass of heavy flesh meeting water.

‘Wait yi bastards….

Wait….

Yi fucking maggots.’

Michael let them dive, waiting for the heads to reappear. He lined up the sights of the rifle on the water about twenty metres from the Skerry.

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Iss by Fiona MacInnes

As the heads appeared above the surface, he swung the rifle over.

After that he just took pot-shots but he was pretty sure he got three more in the water. The injured seal was flicking its upper body in ever heavier efforts to move. Michael trained the gun on its head. The boat was only about twenty feet off the rocks. The killing shot landed right above the eye.

‘That’s fine.’ And Michael lowered the gun, keeping his gaze on the still hulk for a moment. Once they had swum out of range there was no point wasting bullets. The bodies would slide off at high water, gently rolling down to the bottom of the sea. It would be a good few days before anything appeared on the shore.

The pipe band was keeping up its medley of Scottish marching tunes.

As the parade came through a gap in the houses, the music swelled out towards the sea. Muffled between the cavernous buildings, the volume temporarily subsided, only to swell again further along. All eyes would be on the parade. The police would be marshalling the floats. The pier head would be ten deep in crowds and Michael would take down a carry-out later and mingle with them all.

I cannae dae it mither…the words crackled through his brain and even the shots couldn’t dull them. But killing something made him feel easier, it returned some power.

With one pull on the cord the outboard rasped into mechanical life.

Pushing in the choke, Michael pulled the tiller in towards him.

He felt better. Setting the boat round the back of the holm and in towards the harbour. Two half hitches on the handrail at the steps up to the old stone pier. Then he folded the canvas back round the rifle, securing the cloth parcel with an old piece of frayed end line from a creel.

Entering the black shed from the seaward door he put the rifle up on the rafters, fastening it with a chain and padlock. He would make sure there was no chance of losing his license.

From the bottom of the close he could see the parade. It was stuck at the Hotel because of the traffic coming off the ferry. Through the narrow close he could see the crowd with eyes fixed on one of the fancy-dress entrants. Michael reached into his back pocket for his tobacco tin taking a ready made roll-up from the box and slowly lit up, heaving the sweet smoke into his lungs.

What the fuck..?

He felt mild amusement and in that moment superior, spectating on the drunken idiocy of others so ready to make fools of themselves.

Seana Rufus. Seana fucking Rufus… dancin’ aboot in a fuckan’ Red Indian get-up. Fuckan’ heedcase…

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Iss by Fiona MacInnes

‘Pissed as fuck,’ he said out loud.

He leaned on the wall and smiled.

‘Snotty little cow she wis.’

Michael walked away from the crowd.

He knew he could lay is hand on the bottle of rum. Still wrapped in brown paper from Harald Jeffrey’s shop. Willie Bremner’s rum, secreted there like a totem or a threat on the high shelf in the shed. Part of the legacy. Part of the things he knew he must resist or had no right to like that girl in the parade…Seana Rufus. He knew his place and in the shifting sands of belonging there were truly no rules. Jis kis yi wur born here disna mak yi wan o’ iss…

‘Ah fuck it. There’ll be an end tae it.’

The gala week was reckless and unsettling. It shifted people.

Unhinged drinking took hold of the place lurching at the stays that normally held everything together. The community became a restless body loosening the strait jacket of the usual daily mores. Michael knew that to survive and stay in control, he had to keep sober and aloof. But the unsettling stuff had already begun. Seana and his mother.

Everybody in the town knew it now – old Agnes McLeay’s mind was gone. Visiting his mother in the Eventide Home, Michael was alarmed at what she might say, what she might ask him to do. More than once she’d asked him to finish her off.

‘You could do it son, pit me oota this useless state…’

‘Whit di yi mean mither?’

‘Yi ken fine whit I mean! Pit me ower the Crag.’

Her speaking like that was bad enough, like it was just asking you to go out and get a quarter of Pandrops.

His mother, never more lucid, never more serious, or rational with this one shred persisting through the dementia. He pretended she was ranting.

‘Yi canna spik like that mither.’ His mind in turmoil because she always returned to the same subject in one form or another, accusing him almost of cowardice. It reeled on and on in his brain, the dilemma, the justifications, getting her to stop that talk.

Yi canna jist feeninsh fowk off whitever they say tae yi…

Then Michael met that lassie, the Postmaster’s daughter Seana Rufus and her one of the clever ones that had been in his class at the school and witnessed every particle of his humiliation. It made him want to flee.

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Iss by Fiona MacInnes

Part One in 1957 Annie hurried Tom out of the house to go for the Doctor, ‘He’ll never get his car up here. Yu’ll hiv tae get him in the tractor.’ At the top of the hill the snow was creamed into troughs and covings, immaculately sculpted between the dykes. Tom tied his scarf round his face and set off hunched.

He could see the sky, itself pregnant and heavy with the next fall of snow.

The loch was frozen and the perfect flatness of it was like a whole new country undiscovered. It made you want to walk out onto it and disappear.

Back in the upstairs bedroom of the farmhouse Agnes McLeay pressed her face against the damp plaster to get some coolness. The sweating wall merged into her skin and soon was made warm and she had to turn her cheek again. The fire was too hot.

The ripping pain of the contractions was the constant, around which everything else rotated. Grabbing the underside of the mattress and pulling, then becoming consumed with such weakness that everything swam. The smell of Annie’s sweat as she leant over her with a dampened cloth and the piercing glow of the fire that was too orange, a hot wire in her head. Her own voice issuing a moan as if it was no longer part of her.

Then she cranked her body right up into a tight coil. Ratcheted everything up to breaking point and held it for a few seconds. She felt the grating of a boulder in her anus. So hard. Everything was subsumed into getting rid of this stone lump.

Like shittan’ a neep.

And it started to go. There was no way back. It might rip her in two but the baby had to move. Any control she might have had was now gone and she wallowed in the great waves that pulsed through her.

Unnaturally strong they were, coming from some muscle force unknown with a strength and will of their own. Like being pummelled and pulled, wound up and released.

Annie was darting over to the window to look for the tractor.

‘Come on lass, try an’ haad back a bit.’

Annie leaned into her sister on the bed and absorbed the possessed groans, the wrung-out sounds that Agnes made, ‘Damn thing, get this damned thing oota me.’

Time was different, minutes were hours, and everything was measured between groans and the hideously contorted looks on Agnes’ face.

Then Annie heard the slow ‘putt’ of the diesel Fergie tractor as Tom HI~Arts New Writers / Page 36

Iss by Fiona MacInnes

pulled into the yard quickly followed by the louping of the doctor as he took the stairs two at a time. And she breathed a little easier.

Annie stood back as the doctor took over in the room. He said little, working between Agnes’ knees, feeling and measuring with his fingers.

His jacket off and his bare arms beneath rolled up sleeves. It seemed unnatural to see a doctor’s flesh... his suit trousers stuffed into Wellington boots.

‘Been going a while?’

‘Yes Doctor’ replied Agnes in her special doctor voice. ‘She started at five this morning.’

‘Okay, the baby’s coming, but she’s pretty tired’ Agnes lifted her eyelids dreamily, resigned to submit blindly to whoever took charge.

Within the hour Michael McLeay was born in the upstairs bedroom of his aunt and uncle’s farm-house. It was November and his father Harry, his brother George, his sister Shirley and a grandmother he would never know, were living in a brown canvas tent, heated by a cast-iron canon stove that bellowed black smoke over the white landscape. Like a moored steamer draped in tarpaulin. Tinkers.

Agnes slopped back into the bed with the relief of the expulsion.

Annie whispered to the doctor more than a little excitedly, ‘that’s the caul is it no, Doctor? Hid’s got the caul?’

He was piercing the amniotic sack that still surrounded most of the baby, feeling for its mouth as you might clear out a lamb’s. The doctor ignored her and carried on, slipping the sac away from the mouth, cutting the cord, and swabbing the stump. He held the baby up by its’ legs. Like a drowsy lamb, the new-born twitched and let out a bleat.

My hid’s like a skinned rabbit…but everything’s there anyhow. Annie made the quick visual check for ‘normality’.

‘It’s a boy Mrs McLeay,’ pronounced the doctor.

Agnes felt a wave of heaviness engulf her. Until that point in the day she had heard only the creaking of the old farm-house, empty of the noises of young life but full with the sounds of ancient floor joists shifting with Annie’s heavy tread and complimented with the delicate fragrance of fungal growth. The sound of the child’s snorting breaths seemed strange and loud in that old dead room. The fire sparked violently and sporadically as it ripped through a piece of barnacle-encrusted driftwood that Tom had chopped up. It snapped Agnes back to the realisation that the birth might be over but the work was just beginning.

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Iss by Fiona MacInnes

‘Wu’ll put by the caul Doctor…hid’s good luck.’ Annie scooped the limp remains of the amniotic sac onto a tea towel as if it was a great treasure. She set it on the dressing table anticipating the time later on when she would pin it out on a clean piece of lining paper. Annie felt busy and important, and composed herself to wrap the boy in a towel.

The doctor checked his watch.

The baby out, there was still the afterbirth to come. Agnes again gave her body up to spasms and with the final remnant from her womb ejected, the Doctor wrapped the bloody placenta in a torn sheet and passed it to Annie. The placenta was of no interest to Annie. It would go into the kitchen stove to be burned.

After it was all done, the doctor took a dram downstairs, Annie shooing the favourite farm cat off a chair for him to sit on.

‘Aye she’ll be pretty well tired out. You’ll need to give her plenty of time to recover.’

‘Hid’s a relief hid’s all by wi’ an’ a grand healthy boy too’. Childless Annie beamed with the closeness to it all.

‘Don’t ken why she had so much bother – he’s no that big….wi’ the caul as weel. A sure sign o’ good luck fitivvur.’

The doctor laughed, ‘You surely don’t believe all that stuff these days do you?’

Annie smarted. ‘Well there’s no harm in it. The caul’s good luck.’

The doctor conceded, ‘I suppose there is no harm in it, though some of these old tales are not so benign… I was thinking of the Fulmar oil the Saint Kildan women used. The poor things dressed the cord with it. They thought it had protective properties... Turned out it killed most of them,’ and the doctor drained his glass.

His cheeks were flushed with the whisky.

Annie declared, ‘If you’re born with the hood you’ll never die of drowning, so they say anyway and Tom added, ‘I knew a sailor that paid ten guineas for one, but then sailors are a superstitious breed.’

Tom set off to take the doctor back to his abandoned car in the tractor. He climbed into the metal box hitched onto the back which that same morning had been used by Tom to pick up stiff dead ewe from the field.

Upstairs in the house Agnes was staring at the plaster showing through the faint floral wallpaper where the wall had been rubbed.

Awareness was dawning that across the room there was a baby, that she would have to heave herself into its’ life. She could hear the small grunting noises it made and felt herself resenting its helplessness. Then the irritation changed to a flood of sorrow and she welled with tears at HI~Arts New Writers / Page 38

Iss by Fiona MacInnes

the aloneness of the new child with no-one truly but herself in the world.

‘I made my bed’ she was thinking.

Her only act of impluse, just four years previously took her away from the bounds of a simple damp croft house in the country.

Remembering the tart words of her mother, ‘Yur bed, yull hiv tae lie on it lassie…’ Pulled in and ensnared by the sweet trickery of handsome eyes. Big black-haired Harry the tinker as he was then, trailing her away from the islands and off through Caithness.

‘I burnt me boats weel an’ proper.’

Her face and arms were weathered with the tattie picking, strange against the white sheets in Annie’s sterile bed. Agnes lost her place back in her old life and the only one that still spoke to her was her sister Annie.

She knew she was watched and despised, a stranger in her own environment, hardening a place inside herself to deal with it all and shut out the whispering… a dirty passle o’ brats…Shirley born in Inver, George at Rogart, and now this one, Michael in Orkney at Annie’s.

~

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HI~Arts is the arts and culture development agency for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Full details of HI~Arts’ range of projects and services can be found at: www.hi-arts.co.uk