Gold Dust magazine (Issue 24)

Twice-yearly magazine of Literature & the Arts

Issue 24 – December 2013

Welcome to our winter issue!

Following on from the success of our playwriting competition, Gold Dust has hosted a singer/songwriting competition, with the finalists playing their entries to a live audience.

You can read all about this live event on p54.

Recent results from our online Gold Dust magazine survey (which you can complete yourself at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y5QR7BG show that half of our readers prefer to buy the full colour printed edition, while the rest are split between the online version and the PDF download. Over 40% of readers heard about us from a friend, which is great to know that people are talking about us and passing on the Gold Dust message!

In this issue, The Time Hunt by Pia Bastide (p40), was selected for our Best Prose award, while The Half Strip Street...By A Mile by AM Spence (p44) was chosen as Best Poem. We also have an exclusive interview with Join us Pamela Woof of the Wordsworth Trust (p4).

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Omma

(GD magazine founder)

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Gold Dust team

Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/golddust

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

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mailtallulah@googlemail.com

Artwork

Prose Editor & Cover Designer David Gardiner

Cover design David Gardiner

Poetry Editor Dave Turner Photographer Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Photographs Eleanor Leonne Bennett (except where indicated) Illustrations Slavko Mali (except where indicated)

Illustrator Slavko Mali Webmaster, DTP & Founder Omma Velada

Circulation Online (www.issuu.com/golddust): ca. 3,000 PDF (www.lulu.com/golddustmagazine): ca. 500

Proofreader Jo Copsey

Gold Dust magazine Founded in 2004 Bringing you the best poetry & prose

Contents Regulars

1

Editorial

by GD founder Omma Velada

54

Contributors Our writers’ bios in all their glory

56

The Back Page Gold Dust news

Short stories

10

Movies

by Nigel Jarrett

16

Washed up

by Annette Kupke

20

A New Fredom

by Martin Keaveney

30

Debts

by Wayne Dean-Richards

40

The Time Hunt

by Pia Bastide BEST PROSE

Reviews

13

Riding the Wave

by Lorraine Brooks Reviewed by Dave Turner

19

Metaphor

by Micheal Hardgrove Reviewed by David Gardiner

33

The Sighs of a Mouse

by Paul Chappell Reviewed by David Gardiner

47

Petrarchan

by Kristina Marie Darling Reviewed by Adele Geraghty

Features

4

Interview: Pamela Woof Interviewed by Dave Turner

24

Play extract: Sigmund’s Free Will

by Gianni Boscarino

52

Gold Dust Sings All about our latest live event

BEST PROSE The Time Hunt

by Pia Bastide (p40)

BEST POEM The Half Strip Street...By A Mile

by AM Spence (p44)

Flash fiction (<1,000 words)

23

Otto Won’t Come

by Slavko Mali

34

Dreams

by Emma Balmforth

36

Loss

by Guido Dresmé

38

Overdose

by Matt Denniss

48

Dance

by James Cox

50

There was nothing in her eyes

by Liam Shipton

Poems

9

Fairy Panic

by Daniel Ari

14

Waiting to get my hands x-rayed

by Barry Charman

15

Potty Party Girl

by Rhonda Parrish

44

The Half Strip Street...By A Mile

by AM Spence BEST POEM

46

Emoticon

by Jessica S Frank

Pamela Woof

INTERVIEW

The President of the Wordsworth Trust talks to our Poetry Editor, David Turner

Pamela Woof, Wordsworth Trust Honarary President

P

amela Woof is the Honorary President of the Wordsworth Trust. She lives in Newcastle upon Tyne but spends much of her time at Dove Cottage in Grasmere where William Wordsworth lived from 1799 to 1813. Pamela and her husband, Robert devoted much of their working lives to the trust. Robert was the Trust's Director for many years until his death in 2005, his great achievement and lasting legacy to the Trust and all lovers of Wordsworth's work is the new Jerwood Library, which has become the major centre for Scholarship of the English Romantic movement in the 18th and 19th centuries. Pamela herself is an internationally recognised scholar of the life and work of Dorothy Wordsworth, in 4

particular Dorothy's Journal, and she has edited a modern edition of this important source of material about Wordsworth and the Romantic Movement.

Gold Dust: How did you become involved with the Wordsworth Trust?

Pamela Woof: Well, I met my husband, Robert, on a family visit to Toronto. He was a young don at the University of Toronto and was then already a Wordsworth scholar, we married and it was only after the ceremony that I found, rather like Princess Diana, that there were three people in our marriage, Robert, myself and this haunting character, William Wordsworth. In fact another man, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, kept joining the

Interview: Pamela Woof mĂŠnage too! When Robert got a fellowship at Newcastle University, which suited him very well as it was the closest University to Grasmere and the Library of Wordsworth's manuscripts and papers, we moved back to England. At that time my life was devoted to bringing up our four children and organising trips every school holiday to the Lake District, in fact the children thought that they belonged to Grasmere not Newcastle. When the children became older I took a job teaching in the Newcastle University's Department of Extra Mural Studies and did some private research on Dorothy Wordsworth. When the Trust sent an exhibition to the US I was asked by the then Director of the Trust, Jonathan Wordsworth to write some accompanying notes to Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal to help Americans understand the time and place in which they were written. Following on from this I was asked to edit a new edition of Dorothy's Journal for the Trust and so, with Robert, I just carried on working on various exhibitions and projects that the Trust was developing.

Gold Dust: Why is the Wordsworth Trust based in Grasmere?

Pamela Woof: In the 19th century a group of gentlemen noticed that Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's old house in Grasmere, was up for sale. They formed a Society of Gentlemen, campaigned to raise the funds to buy it. The Cottage was bought in 1890 and opened to the public in 1891. The Trust has been based there ever since. The scholar, Ernest De Selincourt befriended Wordsworth's grandson, Gordon Wordsworth and visited him in Grasmere. As a result of this visit in 1925 Ernest De Selincourt produced a brilliant and radical text of 'The Prelude' based on the 1805 manuscript. Previously only the long, much revised and Christianised 1850 version, published after Wordsworth's death, had been known. In 1935 De Selincourt's publication of the 1805 'Prelude' led Wordsworth's grandson, Gordon to bequeath all the family's papers to the Wordsworth Society. The bequest included Wordsworth's letters, drafts of his poems, and Dorothy's Journal. This bequest, together with the Wordsworth Society's members own collections, became the nucleus of a small library and museum and Society bought the surrounding cottages in order to house it. Before his death my husband, Robert worked hard to build a new library, 'The Jerwood Centre' with a donation of ￥500,000 that he secured from the Jerwood Trust. Built adjacent to the Wordsworth Museum, it is an award-winning building holding the manuscripts, books and paintings not on show in the museum. It was opened in 2005 by the poet and Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney. The library Issue 24

December 2013

is now a very important resource for scholars researching 18th and 19th Century art and literature as well as acting as a centre for the local history of Grasmere and the surrounding area.

Gold Dust: Why is the 'Prelude' such an important poem if Wordsworth did not publish it in his lifetime ?

Pamela Woof: 'The Prelude' is a poetic biography of Wordsworth's spiritual journey through life.

Wordsworth thought it too deeply personal to be published, affected perhaps by criticism of the personal nature of his poems. Although Keats admired Wordsworth, he disapproved of the subjective nature of much of Wordsworth's poetry describing him as the poet of the "egotistical sublime." Wordsworth gradually drifted to the right from his youthful radical position. By 1837 Wordsworth had become a conventional Anglican and had much revised and Christianised the poem, even so it was not published until after his death in 1850. He had been a passionate supporter of the French Revolution but because of the failure of the French Revolution in giving rise to, what Wordsworth saw as, the tyrant Napoleon, he became an admirer of the founder of Modern Conservatism, Edmund Burke and the enlightenment political philosopher Thomas Godwin, both of whom opposed revolutionary politics and supported a reformist path to establishing liberty and equality. Wordsworth began to think that the only path to achieve these ends was by improving people's sense of sympathy and empathy for others, by feeling rather than through reason. This lead to his collaboration with Coleridge to produce 'Lyrical Ballads' in which Wordsworth was trying to show that people who do not wear fine clothes can also feel deeply. This was the beginning of the English Romantic Movement.

Gold Dust: What are the objectives of the Wordsworth Trust?

Pamela Woof: The Trust's objectives are to raise interest in Wordsworth's poetry and in the Romantic Movement both in its literature and its art. The Trust has a large collection of watercolours, drawings and paintings that show the development of the art movement from 1770 - 1850. The Trust also aims to enhance its visitors' knowledge and sense of the importance of poetry and feeling to their individual lives and more widely to society's understanding as a whole of the human condition. Wordsworth was a meditative poet so the Trust wants people to move into a slower, stiller, more contemplative and mediative mode of being through coming into greater contact with Wordsworth's poetry. It also aims to educate the young and inform the tourists who visit Grasmere.

More mundanely it accepts a responsibility to preserve

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Interview: Pamela Woof Dove Cottage and the landscape around the village. In this role the Trust is consulted by and responds to the Local Authority about any developments in the area.

Gold Dust: What is your role in the Trust at present and in the past?

Pamela Woof: Currently I am the Honorary President of the Trust. I have done and still do carry out research, principally into the work of Dorothy Wordsworth. I have edited the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, the Grasmere Journal and then her Alfoxden Journal. I help to prepare exhibitions put on by the Trust at Grasmere and elsewhere. I have just created a first ever exhibition of Dorothy Wordsworth's work and her own writing, 'Dorothy Wordsworth: Wonders Of The Everyday' She was not just Wordsworth's personal assistant but a poet in her own right, a poet of impression as Wordsworth was a poet of memory and meditation. As President I do all I can to support the aims and objectives of the Trust.

Gold Dust: Do you write any poetry or anything else yourself?

Pamela Woof: I only write academic articles and books but I did once win a sonnet writing competition at the Wordsworth Conference. I also write a journal but it is not for publication.

Gold Dust: How relevant are Wordsworth and the Romantic Poets to life and literature today?

Pamela Woof: Wordsworth's work is immensely important as it takes people out of everyday worries and towards a meditative stance. It promotes feeling and sympathy towards others and helps us all to develop our own imaginative experience.

Gold Dust: What is your favourite poem and which one do you think is Wordsworth's greatest?

Pamela Woof: Oh, that is unfair! I cannot answer that – the one I am reading at the moment is my favourite.

As to the greatest poem, it's impossible to say.

Gold Dust: Was there any scandal in Wordsworth's life?

Pamela Woof: Well, in 1791 when Wordsworth was twenty two he fell in love with Annette Valon, a woman teaching him French in Orleon, and he had a child by her. Because of the political situation and lack of money Wordsworth had to return to England.

Wordsworth was cast off by his guardian because he only got a poor degree, was very radical politically, would not take Holy Orders and had got a girl with child. Wordsworth published two long poems to try and make some money to support the child called Anne 6

Caroline. These were called 'Descriptive Sketches of the Alps’. Unfortunately the project failed. Wordsworth was unable to get back to France because of the war.

Post between the two enemy countries was almost impossible so the relationship faded. Wordsworth eventually married Mary Hutchinson. During the 1802 truce Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth went to Calais to meet Annette and his daughter Caroline.

Wordsworth had by then inherited some family money but Annette Vallon was a Royalist and a Catholic and a supporter of the aristocracy, unlike Wordsworth. In these circumstances a marriage would have been difficult. They agreed a financial arrangement for Caroline and Wordsworth returned to England to marry Mary Hutchinson later that year. Mary, the close family and friends knew of Wordsworth's daughter, but the affair was suppressed publicly and the world did not know until 1917.

Gold Dust: What can Gold Dust readers do to help support the Trust?

Pamela Woof: Come and visit Grasmere and read Wordsworth's poetry.

Gold Dust

Wordsworth’s poetry: The Prelude Wordsworth was Poet Laureate for many years and his fellow Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, once said that the following lines from Wordsworth’s The Prelude were the most beautiful in all English poetry.

For I have learned to look on Nature Not as in the hour of thoughtless youth, But hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating but of ample power to Chasten and subdue, I have felt a presence That disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean and the living air And in the mind of man.

The Wordsworth Trust

Come and Visit Dove Cottage in Grasmere the home of William Wordsworth, England's greatest poet

William Wordsworth

Further your understanding of William Wordsworth’s life, times and influences with a visit to Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. This is a showcase for the National collection of important materials documenting the English Romantic Movement – including original manuscripts, artefacts, works of art and more.

Dove Cottage was the first family home of Britain's greatest poet, William Wordsworth. He lived here 1799 - 1808, moving into the former pub initially with his sister. Settling in this enchanting place in the heart of his 'native mountains' meant that he was able to concentrate on writing and this period was his most inspired and productive.

The Dove and Olive Bough The cottage had once been an inn, the 'Dove and Olive Bough'. It was now to be the Wordsworths’ home for eight years. In 1802 William married Mary Hutchinson and three of their five children were born here.

Come and take an entertaining guided tour of the cottage, hear about Wordsworth and the antics of his friends and fans.

Stroll in the garden he created with his sister, where he composed some of the greatest poetry in the English language.

Explore the Museum where you will discover the greatest collection of the Wordsworths’ letters, journals and poems in the world.

See our special exhibitions, come to one of our events, treat yourself to a bit of retail therapy in our shop and enjoy wonderful food in our tea rooms.

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The Wordsworth Trust

Dove Cottage

It was in this little cottage, at times ‘crammed edge full’ with people, in the heart of the remote Lake District, that William Wordsworth wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language and Dorothy kept her famous 'Grasmere Journal', now on display in the Museum.

Step int Dove Cottage to get a sense of that time: stone floors, dark panelled rooms, glowing coal fires and the family’s own belongings. Little has changed in the house since the Wordsworths lived here. Stroll in the Dove Cottage garden, a place of refuge, meditation and inspiration. It was, wrote Wordsworth, ‘the work of our own hands’. Here they planted flowers and vegetables, watched birds and butterflies and, most importantly, read, talked and wrote poetry.

The Public Tap Room of the ‘Dove and Olive Bough’

Admission to Dove Cottage is by timed guided tour and you can buy tickets at: https://wordsworth.org.uk/visit/book-your-tickets.html A fascinating guided tour of Dove Cottage Admission into the Wordsworth Museum & Art Gallery Admission into special exhibitions Free family activities during school holidays Adult: £7.50 Students: £6.50 (on production of valid student card) Child: £4.50 (under-6 go free) Family: (1 or 2 adults and 1-3 children) £17.20 Patrons and Friends/National Art Pass: free

8

POEM

Fairy Panic My kid emerges crying from her room.

Figure it’s another grumpy rising.

Muster pre-coffee patience for drama.

Wonder what’s the plot. Favorite socks missing?

Honey spread too thin? No, she’s deep in gloom― Her tooth―fuck me! Her front tooth was waiting all night long for a distracted fairy.

No cash, not even a note this morning!

The resident spirits negligently fell asleep before their task was performed.

She sobs into the shirt she pulls on. We, meanwhile, hurriedly collect three singles in a red envelope, calligraphy sign, hot potato it to the fishbowl.

My wife cries, “Look! By the fish―there’s something.”

She comes, wipes her eyes, collects her windfall.

“So weird,” she sniffs. “They ignored my pillow.”

Daniel Ari

Illustration: Lauren Ari

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Movies

SHORT STORY

by Nigel Jarrett He’s taking her ashes to Lyme Regis, as he always promised...

H

e’s taking her ashes to Lyme Regis, as he always promised. Or rather, as she always requested. It’ll be life following art, because he’s just seen Last Orders, the film based on Graham Swift’s novel about how a dead man’s friends fulfil his wish to have his ashes tipped into the sea at Chatham. Michael Caine and David Hemmings are in it. She told everyone that he was ‘film mad’, and she was right. She’d picked up a bit of the mania herself but was not obsessive; women’s interests, she’d said, were always stopped from becoming obsessions by a sharper sense of duty, a domestic thing.

When not tinkering with his vintage car (currently a 1926 Fiat 509A Spyder), he watched films and read about them instead of sharing duties. He never denied it; the unintended dereliction, not the obsession with film, was a ‘man’ thing. Life, he always thought, was like a film, a bit cinematic, even down to half-remembered episodes on the cutting-room floor.

He used to joke in company about how he’d renege on the promise at the last minute by dumping the ashes in a council rubbish bag. She went along with the joke most times but one evening when he was telling it to some new neighbours round for a drink she started to cry. All those times when she ribbed him for not taking her last wishes seriously and then for no reason failing to see the funny side and welling up. Perhaps it was because the neighbours, an elderly couple with little to say, chuckled when he told them, grabbing the

10

chance to react positively to something. She was outnumbered. But he wondered if some bitter memory had coincided with an alignment of the planets. Maybe she was too tolerant and he too insensitive. He never understood that saying about the attraction of opposites. In his anger, the anger of being embarrassed in company, the crying reminded him of something out of a bad B feature. Movies never made him cry, only brought him close to crying. She always wept for the world. He often thought he was missing out.

Collecting them two days before, he was amused to find that the ashes were inside a real urn.

Though small it was heavier than he’d expected: a cheap-looking, coppery object with her name inscribed not very elegantly on the side. Perhaps it was weighted, like a chess piece. He placed it in a shoebox on a bed of tissue-paper and it rode beside him on the front passenger seat, next to the stain she made when he had to brake sharply that time while she was trying to drink coffee. The previous night, his sons called in as a sort of final farewell gesture. Not that there was a ceremony, words formally spoken.

None of the family was religious or even sentimental. They just told him to drive safely and have a good journey. They hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for the venture and he felt they were neutral about it, like the young were about so many things. It made them, standing there together, seem slightly remote, a pair united in their indifference.

They’d always been closer to their mother than to him. They did try to

dissuade him, unsuccessfully, from taking the car, ‘the new clanking and farting job’, as he’d heard one of them call it.

He left after breakfast and planned to be at the coast before lunchtime. He would have something to eat and wander for a bit,

Photo: Slavko Mali

scatter the ashes over the side of the Cob, as she had instructed, and go straight back home. Combining his visit with some other activity didn’t seem right – ‘making a day of it’, as they used to say on trips out when the kids were little. Lyme Regis had no significance for him. It

Movies by Nigel Jarrett was where her mother had been born – her mother and her mother’s ancestors. She’d done her research.

Passing through Blandford Forum, he wonders if a photograph should have been arranged of the actual scattering. No-one mentioned it, least of all the boys. But he took his camera anyway. He couldn’t see himself asking a stranger to take a picture. Maybe he’ll just take one of the spot where he’ll cast her remains on the waters.

He smiles at how the human race dignifies the horror of death and its aftermath with suitable-sounding

the fish he’d lost interest in as they puckered their lips at him in silent admonition.

The journey down is shorter than he supposed. Before lunch he does a ‘reccy’, leaving the ashes in the car boot. (You never know). He takes the camera with him. The south coast is three weeks into the official summer holiday season, though Lyme Regis doesn’t seem that busy, despite the sunny weather. There’s a warm breeze, but as he walks along the Cob it gets quite windy and there’s a chill in the wind – where from he can’t guess. The papers have been full of

phrases. He will be committing her remains to the deep. He supposes ’deep’ in the circumstances would take a capital D. He wonders how long human ashes will float before sinking. He’s reminded of goldfish flakes and how it was his punishment as a child to continue feeding

stories about the topsy-turvy seasons.

He heads for the nearest attractive-looking café. Actually, it’s a ‘tea-room’ and he knows no-one inside will be under fifty. He’s wrong, as he often is. A young woman sits at a window table alone. He’d say

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she was a girl if the world hadn’t become so sensitive about labels. To call her a ’girl’ would now be dismissive, a male response embodying an attitude, patronising or worse.

She wears bohemian dress and her red hair is the red of a neon sign. In front of her is a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, like tempting keys to a temporarily forbidden pleasure, and at her feet a garish raffia bag. Occupying plumb centre of the room are a couple, probably in their early forties, with a young teenage boy sitting between them. They exude an air of having regretfully left their days of hedonism behind and their seriousness is that of a responsibility heavily undertaken and borne, as if the child was not so much unwanted as unintended, a mistake.

Perhaps he’s not theirs. The boy himself occupies dream territory, making up a violent game with a clutch of toy fantasy figures. Close by is a woman of his own age, dressed fashionably in a manner beginning to clash with the disfigurements of age, features he knows only too well. They exchange smiles, as though confirming some shared knowingness about life. It’s the briefest of brief encounters. Before any pleasantries can be uttered she collects herself and pays her bill. She pauses in the doorway before stepping out into the sunlight, like someone in front of an open furnace-door, just as soon gone for ever.

He realises he’s miscalculated again. His coffee break has drifted into lunchtime. But he’s not hungry enough for a meal. He orders a snack and another coffee. After paying his bill he marches straight to the car park to collect the ashes and the camera. There’s the usual trio of admirers walking round the vehicle.

Though it’s still sunny, the wind has picked up. He’s already considered the actual scattering of the ashes, deciding to suppress any embarrassment. If he’s seen and

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Movies by Nigel Jarrett questions are politely asked, he’ll be civil but brief. Death is everyone’s business but also no-one’s but the bereaved. She didn’t want it done at night, surreptitiously, or in winter.

As he walks towards the Cob, he remembers The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the film starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep, in which it appeared. It looks faintly ridiculous now, not a practical maritime thing at all but something sculptural, a phallic sea whimsy.

The bottle-green waters nudge it, as if with amusement or coquettishly.

There are not many walking its broad back, which reflects the sun, not the wet surface of sea spray associated with the film’s romanticism.

To pour slowly like someone making a pot of tea or to cast like a seedsower? Neither, he’s decided. He’ll make for the end and tip the ashes in one go.

Striding along the Cob’s spine, he begins to worry about the wind.

It’s gusting. He doesn’t want her blowing back at him in swarm-ofbees fashion. He’s rounded the structure’s slight dog-leg with his destination rocking towards him when he sees someone at the very edge who wasn’t there a second before. It’s someone who must have risen from a crouching position.

Erect in silhouette, the figure reminds him of Streep in a familiar scene from the film – in fact, a publicity still. Then the figure turns abruptly to face him. The red hair glints like a beacon. It’s the girl, young woman, from the café. She’s staring at him, her cheeks streaked with black icicles; she’s crying a clown’s tears. Her colourful gear completes some kind of picture and the raffia bag beside her must contain her props. He thinks of a street performer, an end-of-pier ‘turn’, and wonders if she is in fact an entertainer. As if on cue, she executes a surprising trick. She turns briefly to look over her shoulder at the sea and then jumps upwards and back12

wards in one movement before dropping out of sight. For a moment he’s transfixed with a spectator’s awe and pleasure, almost willing her to re-appear as if by magic, like a film episode run backwards to a point of re-consideration. But she doesn’t. He hears a splash. Still clutching the ashes, he runs to where the bag is and looks over the edge. She is floating away from the Cob, face down and with her arms and legs outspread. He can’t swim, daren’t jump in rashly, daren’t leave the shoebox containing the urn. He has no mobile but a woman with her companion ten yards behind does.

She’s using it. He tells the companion what’s happened. The woman on the phone hears what he says, breaks off her conversation and rings 999. The three of them return to the edge and the first woman dives off, but the woman who jumped has moved away quickly and appears to be sinking. Help is on it’s way, the phone woman says.

It sounds stupid to him. It’s too late, he says. She’s gone. And she has.

The would-be rescuer seems to know this too and with a smoother stroke is making for the shore, probably to save herself. He watches her rounding the cob. Only seconds later, the police arrive and a crowd gathers. As if from nowhere, an inshore lifeboat describes a skater’s arc of foam and stops a hundred yards out, its crew looking in all directions.

The body is soon located in thirty feet of clear water. The woman had weighted herself down just like Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, though that was in a river. (There was a great underwater shot of her going to her death in stockings.) The weights must have been in the bag, because the bag followed her into the water, lifted by a gust of wind.

He answers police questions and is told he’ll be contacted by the coroner and may have to attend an

inquest. He hangs about with the box under his arm. The body is recovered when the end-of-Cob assembly has retired, and he watches it hauled up the side of a rescue launch like some bulky exotic fish.

He leaves with the stragglers and makes a decision: he’ll wait till the evening and do then what he came to do.

It’s busier than it was when he first walked it. But he’s lost his inhibitions. If anyone has seen him they haven’t drawn attention to it or approach him. The ashes drop down the side of the Cob in the still air, forming a pancake of sawdust which quietly moves off, dispersing as it reaches choppier water.

It’s almost dusk when he reaches Warminster. The car needs a rest.

He is the butler Stevens, played by Anthony Hopkins in The Remains Of The Day, Mike Nichols’s film based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel.

The loyal but slow-witted Stevens, denying himself love as well as resisting intimations of the wider world’s strategies, is touring the West Country in his new employer’s vintage Model A Ford and being confirmed in his wartime delusion that duty is impervious to doubt; that’s if doubt could ever have been entertained when the subservience shown to a man equally deluded (by the prospect of appeasement with the Nazis) had been so rigid.

He pulls into a pub car park. In the beer garden, customers are laughing and joking, and enjoying evening drinks. By the time darkness settles they have all gone elsewhere, like the onlookers on the Cob. Under a central neon light and weighted down by grief, he sighs heavily. Long-delayed tears begin to fracture his windscreen view of an emptied world. He never did take a photograph.

That girl, he sobs. That poor girl.

Gold Dust

Riding the Wave

REVIEW

by Lorraine Brooks BTS Books, 2010 £8.33 File size: 591KB Reviewed by Dave Turner Yet she can be equally powerful without the decorations of meter and rhyme, as in Poem 1:

L

ike the drama of Ancient Greece, this collection of Brooks's poems addresses fundamental aspects of human experience. The basic and universal instincts that drive human behaviour are explored. No subject is taboo or too painful for the sharp spear of her pen to dissect. Abortion, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, parental anger, female obesity, marital abuse, terrorism, sexual lust, betrayal – every difficult topic is handled with skill and sensitivity so that each poem moves the reader and invokes a powerful emotional reaction. Brooks switches easily between free verse and metrical rhyming verse, exploiting both poetic forms skilfully to suit her purposes. Her poem about betrayal, 'You Are My Child', demonstrates her skill with rhyme often with the kind of originality that made Lord Byron famous: I suckled you, nurtured you, Went to church with you or: I'm in the recesses of thought That impresses you I am the one of whose Loving caresses you.

I gave the soul to who Loves and undresses you...

And now you betray me – yet I think no less of you.

Find out more...

It isn't in words that truth is exprerssed.

Texture and tone tempts the fingertips Where affirmations lie deep And emotions surface.

The touch is the sting.

The end of 'Oklahoma City' must surely speak for all the survivors of terrorist acts, ‘Why am I here when my world is being blown apart?’ This objective is cleverly achieved by parading multiple viewpoints of the same event with the repetition of an opening refrain in each stanza, 'When the flash came', working to build an emotional reaction for the final interrogative.

Yet this is not just a collection about the pain and suffering that life brings but also a brave and open declaration of personal experience: falling in love or lust with 'The Man in the Green Shirt', finding 'In the Mist of the Morning' that you still care for someone you parted from ages ago, or fearing that a callous and incomprehensible bureaucracy will separate you from your family in Soweto when you commute away to work.

There are amusing, perhaps self-deprecating, comments upon life too. In 'Black Woman's Hair' Brooks seems to be mocking herself with the threat, 'Keep your hands out my hair!' and demanding the hairdresser to: Do me up with somethin' tough So I can go out and strut my stuff.

This is a fine collection, one to make you despair of humanity and fear for your own further suffering, yet at the end of both book and life you are lifted back up again to assert that, for all its pain, life is, after all, worth living.

BTS Books (Between These Shores) states that it aims to find the best in new, upcoming writers.

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Gold Dust

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POEM

Waiting to get my hands x-rayed They call for a man whose name is almost mine, twice they do it, then again.

I get up and ask if it’s a mistake, but it’s not me they want.

They’re calling him on the left, you go down that corridor to have your chest x-rayed.

He’s having a bad time of it, the man who’s almost me.

Recently there was a man on the TV, had the world’s first hand transplant.

He had gout, it paralysed his hand.

I’m too young for that, I’m sure.

A nurse calls out my name, and the name of an old Indian woman.

We wait as she shuffles wearily behind us.

The man I was sitting beside twitches, he was waiting an hour before I arrived.

I’m taken to a room, and told they can’t x-ray both my hands, not enough reason.

“What about pain?”

In a minute I’m done, I’m gone.

Back past those still waiting, who sit as if stuck in an uncertain pause.

Wearily I walk out, led by crooked bones, and I know the pause has been extended.

The true wait is waiting.

Barry Charman

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

14

POEM

Potty Party Girl hey gurl u @ the bar? ya im stuck @ work take a shit for me â&#x20AC;Śuh? a shot A SHOT take a shot for me ROFL damn autocorrect!

Rhonda Parrish

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

15

SHORT STORY

Washed up

by Annette Kupke This morning, a fluther of jellyfish washed up on the beach and died on the shingle...

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his morning, a fluther of jellyfish washed up on the beach and died on the rocks and the shingle.

They shimmer in the sunshine still, but nobody can see them from the castle. The castle sits on the cliff tops, not in the way of seabirds’ nests, which tend to cling precariously to nooks in the rock face, but rather like a lighthouse. It doesn't announce danger, though, but wealth.

It’s serious wealth too, wealth that contracted the finest architect in the land, hired the most skilled artisans, commissioned paintings from the most talented artists, purchased the most delicate china, the choicest fabrics, the most exotic plants. It’s serious wealth that employs a host of gardeners, cooks, valets, footmen, maids, stable hands and so forth.

It’s serious wealth, a wide ocean of which only a trickle reaches the lowliest servant in the house, the scullery maid Polly, who scrubs the greasy pots eight foot below the realm of elegant rooms scented by sweet peas and roses.

The scullery is dimly lit, damp, and filled with the odours from the drains. Polly, who is also the youngest and the scrawniest of all the maids, tightens her apron strings and leans over the sink.

Once she is finished with this lot, she will be able to get her dinner.

Polly doesn’t eat in the servants’ hall, but in the kitchen, together with the between maid, Rosie, but she helps to set and clear the table for the other servants’ dinner sometimes, and she has seen the big board that domi16

nates the shorter wall. It is a long list of commandments. She knows her letters, but not all that well, and she only figured out one line on each occasion.

YOU MUST NOT SPEAK TO A MEMBER OF THE FAMILY UNLESS SPOKEN TO YOU MUST NEVER USE THE MAIN STAIRS UNLESS YOU ARE CLEANING THEM YOU MUST NOT LAUGH, SMILE OR SING OR SPEAK TO YOUR FELLOW SERVANTS BEYOND WHAT IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO CARRY OUT YOUR DUTIES YOU MUST NOT WALK IN THE GARDENS UNLESS YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT ALL MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY ARE AWAY Polly has no way of ever knowing where the members of the family are, and even if she did, she couldn’t imagine having time on her hands for a walk, so Thou Shalt Not Walk in the Gardens is a commandment she can easily obey.

She hasn’t even seen the gardens, apart from the corner of the shrubbery that is visible from the kitchen windows. Neither has she seen the family parts of the house, nor any member of the family other than from afar. She works for Mrs Harris, the cook, and lives in awe of Mrs Airdrie, the housekeeper. Her world is confined to the scullery, the kitchen and the small room under the back stairs where her narrow bed stands next to Rosie’s, sepa-

rated by a stool. Open skies stretch over her only once a day when she carries the slop buckets across the yard. Her skin is pallid and her voice meek.

She listens eagerly, though.

Though Shalt Not Gossip is another commandment, but whenever the senior servants are out of earshot, the maids do it anyway.

Polly has nothing to contribute, of course, but she snatches up whatever crumbs of tittle-tattle reach the kitchen floor. The new chaise longue in the green drawing room has been shipped in from Paris and cost all of two hundred and twenty pounds. The young master has sneaked out to the country fair and has come home drunk. The Marchioness has thrown a priceless painting into the fire because it portrayed a lady more beautiful than she. Sir William, guest at a house party, has declared his sympathy for the socialists at dinner time.

One of the monkeys has escaped and has been seen down by the beach, poking dead jellyfish with a stick.

“Monkeys?” Polly lets her spoon sink. “Real monkeys?”

“Don’t you know about them?” says Rosie. “They’re in the pagoda, over by the lake. Two of them, I think, though now there would be only one. I don’t think they’ll catch the wee devil.”

“It’ll starve, poor thing.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

They’re cunning.”

Polly finishes her dinner, paying little heed to Rosie’s further chitchat. The monkeys are on her mind. When she was a little girl she had a book, given to her by her

Washed up by Annette Kupke Nana, with the picture of an animal for each letter of the alphabet. It had a monkey for M, a slippery fellow wearing a dinner jacket and top hat, his long tail curled around the trunk of a palm tree.

There are palm trees in the gardens, or so Rosie has told her, though how that could be, since this is not Africa, Polly doesn’t quite understand. Perhaps the runaway monkey will find a palm tree and stay there. While she stands over the sink yet again and washes up the dishes from her own and Rosie’s meal, she imagines her picture book monkey dangling from the fronds of a palm, lifting his top hat at the Marchioness as she drives past.

For a week and a day, the monkey haunts her daydreams and sometimes even her sleep. In the scullery, where the moisture clings to the whitewashed walls and the scrubbed pots gleam on the draining board, Polly imagines the monkey swinging from the plate racks.

She sees him dancing along the row of tubs in the laundry room. His fleeting silhouette drifts past the windows. He is cunning; he steals the freshly baked loaves and the apples from the pantry. He grins, he sneers, he chatters and waves his hat at Polly, and when Mrs Harris turns round sharply and the big blue serving dish shatters on the floor, he jumps up and down with glee and claps his little hands. Polly keeps her head down to hide her smile, and she knows he loves her,

the thief, the jester, he looks out for her and brings her gifts; a pork pie, a lily, twin cherries with a leaf still attached to the stalks. Surreptitiously, she eats the pie and the cherries behind the door of the scullery, and she hides the lily in a jar under her bed. At night, when Rosie sleeps, she takes out the jar and inhales the scent of the lily.

On the ninth day, the monkey doesn’t come. The lily under the bed has curled back its petals, which are crisp and brown round the edges like a fried egg. Polly stands by the sink and waits for the chatter and the bouncing silhouette, but she hears only the clonking of the earthenware in the water.

Outside, the sun is obscured by clouds that coast across the sky like jellyfish, trailing tentacles of rain behind. Polly’s hands in the murky water resemble strange ocean creatures, crabs or sea stars that scuttle among the plates.

The kitchen is abuzz with preparations for the dinner of the house party, maids crowded around the big wooden table, maids scurrying back and forth, the coal boy dragging scuttle after scuttle to the fireplace, and Mrs Harris with a toasting fork in her hand shouting from the range.

Polly, the jelly moulds, Polly, the mixing bowls, the rolling pin, Polly, where’s the rolling pin, good grief, girl, hurry up, are you still not finished with it!

And Polly scrubs while rivulets of sweat trickle out from under her

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

bonnet and tears roll down her cheeks. Her back aches, and her head; her stomach feels like one of the jellies that have come out of those copper moulds, all wobbly and jittery. At the back of her throat a burning pain has made itself at home and stings her every time she swallows. She holds on to the edge of the sink and tries to breathe slowly to calm the nausea.

The waters in the sink rise up to devour her, she is drowning, surely she is drowning, doesn’t anyone see? She is sinking, sinking and the ocean closes over her head.

Polly, says Rosie, and then, Good grief, girl! cries Mrs Harris, and Polly is lifted up by the waves and borne away to a dark and silent place and with a grateful sigh she sinks into her grave.

When she awakes, she is in her bed and a glass of water stands on the stool. Her throat is locked with pain. She lifts a hand and examines it; it is red and rough and looks like a hand and nothing else. The fever enshrouds her. She lies still and listens to the noises from the kitchen. There is the drum roll of the chopping knives and the polka of footsteps. Then Rosie comes with a jug of water and a bowl of porridge.

“Mrs Harris says you’re to stay in bed, but you’ve got to shift for yourself, since we’re all too busy today to nurse you. I’m to bring you soup for lunch later. Try to sleep, so you’ll be better tomorrow.”

Without waiting for a reply, Rosie leaves. The smell of the porridge makes Polly sit up, but when she takes the first spoonful, she gags on the heavy stickiness. She sinks back onto her pillow and tries to make sense of the world. What looks like a monkey’s tail is really just a loop of the carpet beater sticking out from behind the dresser, or is it the other way round? She tosses and turns, her body is floating; the sheets caress

17

Washed up by Annette Kupke her with the waving motion of seaweed. Her head is bobbing up and down, up and down as the whiteheads roll on. With salt-encrusted eyes she stares at the four broad, bright stripes on the wall. The sun is shining outside. Polly rises and pads with her naked feet over the stone floor. Below stairs, all windows are barred against intruders, but she knows that the slimmest of the maids can wriggle out between the bars when Mrs Airdrie won’t let them go to the village dance. Polly is as skinny as any of them. She loses a button on her dress, but otherwise she stands unharmed in the coach yard. All is quiet. Above, the sky is a deep, deep blue with thin clouds drawn across it like lace curtains.

Polly steps out. She barely knows which direction the lake lies and sets off at random along the criss-crossing paths of the shrubbery. Fuchsias and jasmines brush against her hair and shoulders with their quivering petals. She swims in the shadows of mighty rhododendrons and towering hydrangeas, leaving the imprint of her naked foot on the damp earth of the path.

A swathe of grass, a wall, she dives through an archway and gasps for breath. Long and unbelievably straight is the smooth strip of turf that stretches out in front of her, and on either side rise flower cliffs in bold clusters of every colour she has ever seen. Each clump clamours for her attention with equal violence, and she is tossed to and fro by the scents and shapes, until she feels queasy again and runs, runs down the strip of turf and out a doorway at the far end.

Beyond it lies woodland. She is on familiar ground here, the copse of twisted oaks and sycamores not much different from the one she used to walk through on the way from her village to her Nana’s house. Without boots, though, the knobbly roots are out to 18

stub her toes and the nettles sting her calves and ankles. The path winds downwards, turns rocky and spits her out at the beach. Gratefully, she sinks her feet into the sand.

The sea is a curious thing. In the distance, it is frozen; it lies still like one of the silver platters the footmen polish, but gains movement gradually in its advance on the shore. Eventually, the long bands of foam collapse on the beach. Lumps of dead jellyfish still litter the sand. They are sugarfrosted with a layer of fine grains that hides the fragile oddity underneath, the transparent gems of limpid colour. Tortured shapes of rocks, covered in green, hairy growths, rise from the sands, glistening castles of temporary might.

The incoming tide will submerge them and reclaim what is hers.

The dead monkey leans against a rock as if the green, hairy growth is his pillow. He is a sad, soggy bundle, a crumpled rag left in the sink. Flies cluster round his open eyes; their stare is fixed on the shards of mussel shells at Polly’s feet. The sun glints off the rock and the monkey raises his head, waves the flies away and bares his teeth in a ghoulish grin.

He stretches out a skeletal hand and reaches for Polly’s ankles.

Polly flees. Across the sand, up the path, leaping over tree roots, brushing past the nettles, she runs.

The path forks here, splits there, she runs on. Above her head in the trees she hears the chattering of the monkey and sees him brandishing his hat. There are no cherries now and no lilies. He doesn’t love her now; he will get her for thieving, and for blaming him. He will get her, because Thou Shalt Not Walk In The Gardens, and Mrs Harris and Mrs Airdrie come out by the back door and cheer him on.

The maids and the footmen line the battlements clapping their hands

and on the grand balcony, the one that overlooks the sea, stand the marquess and the marchioness and watch through opera glasses.

Polly runs, Polly jumps, and here is the tree root to trip her up and there she falls with her face in the mud.

She lies crumpled like a rag left in the sink.

When she comes to, the sun shines from the sea, so it is getting late. Rosie would have found her gone and the window open, though perhaps she will not tell. Polly picks herself up and brushes the dirt off her dress. Her brow feels cooler.

It’s a short walk through the wood and then she comes out on a large, sweeping lawn bordered by the lake. Perched on the summit of the hillock stands a curious building, like a tiered cake. This must be the pagoda. Polly climbs the slope and as she draws near she sees the cages. The lowest tier of the cake is an aviary where pheasants strut and canaries twitter. They are imprisoned behind fine meshing, but one cage is different, sporting slender bars instead. She peeks in.

Curled up in a corner sits the other monkey, the one who was wise enough to stay put. He is a scrawny thing with fur ravaged by mange and eyes so dull that she thinks the butler will hasten over to polish them. Nutshells, apple cores and excrement litter the floor. If Mrs Harris saw this mess, there would be a reckoning. Polly presses her face against the bars and clicks her tongue at the creature. He turns his lifeless eyes on her and makes a limp gesture with his hand.

“Poor you,” whispers Polly.

“Poor wee monkey.”

The monkey shakes himself and scratches his belly. From the debris on the floor he picks a lump and flings it at her.

It hits her right between the eyes.

Gold Dust

Metaphor

REVIEW

by Micheal Hardgrove Kindle, 2012 Kindle edition ÂŁ0.77 50 pages Reviewed by David Gardiner

T

his is a collection of short stories whose only unifying feature seems to be recurrent religious or philosophical themes and references, although not in a didactic or proselytising kind of way. It may be simply that the stories are written by an American, a resident of Wewoka, Oklahoma, close to the geographical centre of that mighty land, where such matters have perhaps a greater day-to-day relevance than they tend to be given here in secular England.

The first story, Humandroid explores a theme close to one of my own interests, the relationship between artificial intelligence and our stubborn refusal to dispense with notions of 'soul' and distinctions be-

tween what it is to be 'alive' and what it is to be a mere mechanism. Many of the stories that follow resemble modern Westerns, where sheriff's deputise citizens to hunt down and shoot bad guys, followed by struggles to come to terms with the morality of killing. Another of the tales deals with the rebirth of the goddess Venus, and her attempt, with the help of her chosen human agent, to establish a world-wide religion of genuine love that will save humanity from itself. Yet another imagines the antics of a tramp in a present-day American city, inhabited by the returned ghost of Charlie Chaplin.

Are these the best short stories I have ever read?

Probably not, but they are very competently written, highly entertaining, and now and again leave you with a genuinely interesting thought, or a chuckle and a smile on your face.

The author states that the stories are published under a Creative Commons copyright, which means that they can be reproduced and distributed free of charge for any non-commercial purpose, and at 77 pence for the download it's difficult to see how he can be making any income whatsoever from his work.

This is a quirky and highly individual collection, not always profound but never dull, and at 77 penceâ&#x20AC;Ś well, how can you possibly go wrong?

Gold Dust

Find out more...

Micheal Hardgrove has written two previous eBooks that are available on Kindle: Confessions of a Holy Fool, which is 'a book about our ideas about God', and The Echo and the Pixie, which is 'a book to teach children how to avoid or escape all sorts of abuse'.

Michealâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s facebook page is at: https://www.facebook.com/micheal.hardgrove.1

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

19

A New Freedom

FLASH FICTION

by Martin Keaveney

Your Mother is sick. Come home. Serious...

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our Mother is sick. Come home. Serious.

The telegram jutted out of Michael’s pocket as he hurried up the boreen. When he reached the yard, he found his pace automatically slowing. It was as though he were afraid to reach the back yard, the large kitchen and confirmation of his worst fears.

He had read the message repeatedly, first as he stood outside his flat in Ravenscourt Park, on his way to work in the Underground.

He had continued to the station, a thoughtful figure amongst the commuters. An icy cold spread over his skin as he passed the black cabs and imagined his mother’s impending final journey in Malone’s hearse. The red buses chugged along ahead of him in the crawling traffic. One disappeared round a corner and he wondered was the Photo: Eleanor Bennett

20

blood of her life also slipping away; slowing in her veins, leaving her wrinkled skin the colour of porcelain. He averted his eyes as though to distract his mind from the thoughts within.

In six years he had received three telegrams from home. The first two were the deaths of his last surviving grandparents. Written news was bad news.

He took the telegram out again as he waited on the crowded morning platform. In the centre of a tangled crowd – wailing children, irate mothers, impatient suited businessmen, suitcases and trolleys – Michael tried to squeeze more information from the seven words.

He had read it on the steel deck of the B&I line ferry as North Wall edged closer in the blue horizon. The spitting sea-air stung his cheeks as he thought of what

awaited him in Mayo.

Back on Irish soil, his anxiety was gnawing away inside like a relentless toothache. The Dublin train was busy. There were plenty of lads travelling home for a summer fortnight with whom to strike up a conversation over a bottle of stout in the dining car. But he had found it hard to concentrate as they sped through the Midlands. A couple of beers made little difference. The knot deep in his abdomen continued to tighten, like the ropes they used to strap down a large load of summer hay bales.

He imagined Kennedy next door; standing in the yard, sipping a half-one in the heat, nodding his sun-hat toward Michael with helpless sympathy. His Aunt Joan would be inside, efficiently slicing brown bread and tossing generous lumps of ham abreast them. A murmur of chatter pervading the

A New Freedom by Martin Keaveney house. After the formal sympathies, a casual conversation would emerge amongst the locals. Farming, weather and other carefully selected gossip. The atmosphere spread with a blanket of normality, covering the pain and loss beneath. And his father? Would he be pensively puffing the pipe in the corner like he usually was on similiar grim occasions? Or would he finally shed a tear? The thought came that he should never have left home.

He had gotten a lift in Jack Armstrong’s Morris Minor from Claremorris Station. Armstrong had heard nothing of his mother’s illness, but he supposed these things ‘came on fair quick,’ and repeated ‘God love her,’ enough times to make Michael feel like getting out and walking. They stopped in the village, where Armstrong decided he’d have a stout in Butlers.

Michael could see that the old sheep-farmer preferred to leave the returning emigrant to walk the five minutes to the house and hear the potential bad news alone. Armstrong did advise a ‘half-one,’ to ‘steady himself,’ but Michael declined. Behind him he could hear the sleepy salute of old Butler and the tap hissing out Armstrong`s ‘medium’ as he walked quickly up the tree-sheltered hill.

It would have been nice to be home were it not for the trouble, back again amongst the sweetsmelling aftergrass, the sprawling beech trees, the pink rosebushes with their pleasant perfume. A far cry from the dust, grime and mechanical aromas of Piccadilly Station.

He looked around, everything was unusually quiet. The yard was, as always, clean and tidy. Similarly the turf shed where he had spent many summers tossing sods, while his father neatly built up the outer wall, carefully choosing the squarest pieces to ward off the win-

Issue 24

December 2013

ter rain. He could hear the poultry outside the henhouse; clucking contentedly as they burrowed around in the dry clay. If only he could be as content in his own corner of the Earth.

The hawthorn bush at the gable was trimmed back neatly, the picket fence freshly painted. His mother wouldn’t ‘give to say’ to the neighbours that it would be any other way.

That was the great thing about England. A man was free from the prejudices and perimeters of social life in south Mayo. He could go off to work and have a couple of beers in the evening and do what he liked. A Saturday afternoon spent watching Arsenal destroy Wolves in Division 1 of the Premier League was a perfectly acceptable pastime.

It was a paradox he often struggled with. On the one hand, there was the sophisticated cosmopolitan life of England; anonymity, order, service, opportunities, culture, and far more women. On the other side of the Irish Sea there was tradition, familiarity, compassion, family values and a personalised social etiquette.

It was the place where people spoke his accent. They may have changed tongue but to compare the Eton vowel tone with the crushed Mayo dialect was ludicrous. It was no different to comparing the slang of Liverpool and Manchester. It was not just about the way people spoke.

There was a value; on land, on marriage and character, that Michael felt absent in the rapid, often faceless life of the West End. There were the vibrant colours and odours of flora along sunny boreens. The carefree lambs in the fields, overlooked by a casual conversation between two neighbours.

The respectability of being a farmer, a land custodian after centuries of repression.

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

Michael had always been a reader and was well informed about Davitt, the Land League and the struggles the Irish had to reclaim what was theirs. Who could imagine a son giving up his land?

For an annual rental fee, yes, but not to work it, not to devote his life to it, seemed to verge on treachery.

A betrayal of his native country.

Yet there were far more opportunities on the other side of the Irish Sea. Michael had worked in a number of difficult jobs; tunnelling, construction and bar work. In recent years he had moved on to train-driving. The long hours and repetitive character of the work had eventually bored him. He saw a poster somewhere and looked into joining the Royal Navy. Thoughts of the farm were distant as he sent off the application.

It had seemed so exciting when he had gone down to the recruitment depot at Canary Wharf.

Filling out the documents, looking at suave young officers, nonchalantly dropping in and out of the office dangling important looking keys, adorned with smart badges and stylish caps. They bore tall and slim frames, used elegant phrases, wore heavy-heeled boots and expensive aftershave. It was a far cry from the green wellingtons and brown corduroy trousers which he knew always awaited him in his old room.

The duty officer, a chirpy Geordie not much older than himself, had shown him around the base, where two large ships were docked at the port. In a year`s time, as an Able Seaman, he could be setting off for three months to the Indian Ocean, the Sergeant said.

The interview had been an officious affair in an oak-panelled room with soft brown leather seats. Three slick-looking officers and a pummelling of incisive and deliberately searching questions. Why do you want to be in the Royal Navy?

21

A New Freedom by Martin Keaveney Where do you see yourself in five years time? What do you know of nautical travel? But teenage years spent devouring history and geography books led to an informed young man sitting on front of the recruitment committee. They were impressed with his knowledge of wars, colonies and distant lands. A week later he had been informed he was accepted and was to enlist as a recruit at Southampton at the end of the month. He wrote home excitedly, his mind a flurry of excitement.

It felt as though a new freedom awaited him on the high seas.

A new freedom and a new life of adventure. The land was still far from his thoughts. And now, a few weeks later, it appeared the shock had sent his mother to the grave.

She had been only fifty-eight and in good health when he had left at Easter. She had continually bemoaned his love of the city. His apparent ease at handling aspects of city life seemed to bewilder both of his parents. An only son from the back-end of nowhere successfully settling and enjoying London life.

Now embarking on an exciting career as a sailor. The only reply to the news had been his cousin,

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

22

Áine, writing to tell him to take it up.

They could always rent out the land. Seeing the words ‘rent out the land’ in black and white sounded a blasphemous chord somewhere within him.

There were times, as he walked a couple of bullocks along a back road with his father in the dry frost of late December, when he felt completely at home. But in the heady smoke-filled clubs and pubs of Hammersmith, the ‘the land hunger’ seemed something from a distant universe. To come home to lowing calves and spring lambs seemed ridiculous for a twenty-four year old man.

Back at home, the uncomfortable situation simmered like the great big kettle perennially steaming on his mother’s Stanley range.

Some day, it would boil over. His mother lamented at Easter that there would be no one to look after the land. Michael stared out of the window as she placed a steaming dish of bacon and cabbage before him. His father shifted uncomfortably in his seat by the electric twobar heater, saying nothing. Michael senior had originally been a builder.

One of the finest in the area. But his mother had insisted the land

was the priority. His father had left his trowels in a far corner of the hayshed, reinvigorated only for a repair job around the farm. Michael said nothing either. Perhaps that was the best way to handle it. Say nothing.

When his father had written ‘Serious’ in the telegram office, it could only mean in the context of death. Michael senior was a man of few words, and those words were even fewer on paper. So to use such a colourful and strong word as ‘serious’ in a land where bluntness was the norm meant things were indeed serious.

His musing was interrupted by the low chug of a Massey Ferguson 35. He could see the little red tractor come up the boreen, pulling a neatly stacked trailer of turf behind.

The little convoy steered into the yard. His father adopted that hard half-smile expression that he had used for years as his nearest approach to a laugh. The tractor came to a stop and the engine died. The trailer was almost full of sods.

‘Well.’ his father said. There was someone else on the back of the trailer. Red and wrinkled, with a grey scarf to protect her head from the sun, sat his mother. Her hands were black from tossing sods all day. Her stockings were ripped from hours of hard labour, flinging the turf into the trailer in the fields and out of it into the turf shed.

Michael knew the job so well; he knew how hard it was.

He felt like an enraged father confronting two mischievous children.

‘Did ye not say it was serious?’ he stuttered.

‘Ye`re needed here,’ his father replied quietly, stepping down on to the dusty ground.

‘It’s very serious.’

Gold Dust

Otto Won’t Come

FLASH FICTION

by Slavko Mali

The snow was winnowing. Is that unusual? Especially if it’s January...

T

he snow was winnowing.

Is that unusual? Especially if it’s January.

But I was winnowed inside a yellow on-street phone box.

When I was leaving the house this morning, my wife told me: ‘Don’t forget to give me a call!’

Finally, there was an opportunity. I picked up the receiver and after a moment I heard a voice: ‘You are winnowed at the phone box 1957’. Please, do not say anything, otherwise Otto won’t come!’

‘Otto who?’ I cried out.

‘Otto Weinsbender!’

‘And why do I need him?’

‘To fix your brain.’

‘And what’s wrong with my brain?’

‘Well, it’s winnowed!’

I thought over this fact. There was a useless buzzing on the line, while I was thoughtfully gazing through a phone box glass at the snow that was persistently and more and more densely winnowing.

‘Hello!’ I muttered into the receiver distractedly.

‘May I help you?’ came a service voice from the other side.

‘When will Otto come?’

‘NEVER!’ answered the voice decidedly.

‘But why? I am winnowed here, I know that he must have a lot to do, and other phone boxes are probably winnowed too. I see one over here, and there is some man holding a receiver in his hand persistently. Here, I will wave at him.

He is waving back at me, so I’m not alone. Please, tell me when Otto will come? It‘s snowing more and Issue 24

December 2013

more, slowly covering the phone box, and I promised my wife… This phone has no dial, it has only one line… please… Otto is my only hope… as a matter of fact, who is Otto?’

‘I am Otto.’ came the indifferent voice from the other side.

Shaking myself from panicky thoughts, gazing through thick flittering snow on a piece of glass that was still unwinnowed, I still see a small red phone box in the dis-

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

tance.

The man inside it waves at me nonchalantly and hangs up carelessly.

The snow kept on winnowing…

Not unusual for January.

Unless your brain is winnowed.

Then you speak even when you shouldn’t…

Gold Dust

Illustration: Slavko Mali

23

PLAY

Sigmund’s Free Will

by Gianni Boscarino Here we publish Act One of this three-act play. You can read the play in full at Gold Dust’s issuu page: http://tinyurl.com/pqwbgsq The characters in the play: Alice Sally Larry (Alice’s dog) Gregor Sigmund (Gregor’s dog) A girl Bill Staging: The setting should be stark and surrealistic, ie a bare stage with minimal props and set. The dogs should be played by soft toys with a soundtrack for the barking. The girl and Bill should be played by mannequins, spotlit for their scenes.

ACT ONE Two women sit at a bare table on a bare stage.

Sally, a 42-year-old blonde lady with a tall, slim, almost masculine, body and contrived manners, drinks from an (empty) cup of tea, .

Her clothes and jewellery are very plain and slightly old fashioned, but classy. Her friend Alice eats a piece of (plastic) chocolate cake with ostentatious pleasure. Same age, typical Mediterranean features. Her bright eyes are a bit darkened by the few wrinkles that surround them. She’s wearing a low-necked black dress that enhances her curvacious figure. Alice can’t be defined as pretty. Most women would describe her as slightly vulgar, most men find her quite sensual. Beside them peacefully sits Alice’s fluffy dog.

Alice: So Sally, how was your weekend in the mountains?

Sally: Very nice thanks. I love going away. We haven’t been anywhere for at least 2 months!

Frank always at work and me always at home…

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and when he comes home, he has his dinner and then falls asleep in front of the TV! Alice (laughing): Isn’t that everything a woman needs from a husband? I couldn’t think of a better scenario.

Sally (smiling): Of course there are some advantages; but sometimes I think we are almost too happy. Frank has a rewarding job, Anne is doing well at school and I take care of the house and have lots of free time. Everything is so settled! There are no problems to discuss, no arguments…

Alice: Oh, I couldn’t live with no arguments! Can’t you just make them up sometimes?

Sally (proudly): Off course, I do it constantly. Although it’s not quite the same thing. He’s always so perfectly relaxed and content. It’s nerve-racking! Even when we argue he is always so calm, diplomatic, and so tolerant! It makes me feel like he doesn’t really care!

Alice (laughing and still eating): Come on, you’re so unfair on him! Frank is such a good husband. He works hard for you and your lovely daughter to have a good life. And he let’s you do whatever you want. You go out in the evening and you’ve got your tennis and salsa classes…

(Pause. Her face becomes more serious and she starts caressing her dog) I wish I could do those things and go out like you do!

Sally: I’m sorry, Alice, I know how hard your situation is. I shouldn’t complain in front of you. I only wish there was a way to help you.

Alice (detached): There isn’t.

Sally: But maybe there is.

Alice (somehow complacent): Nope.

Sally: But… Alice (proud and quick): Too late, I’m afraid…

Sally: I know what you mean. But maybe I should try to talk to your husband. Maybe I can

Sigmund’s Free Will by Gianni Boscarino

make him… (Alice turns pale) You know, you never let me try…

Alice: No, please don’t! It would only make things worse. He wouldn’t even allow me to see you any more.

Sally: But if not me, then maybe someone else.

There must be someone Robert would listen to!

Alice: Sally, you are the only person I have spoken to about all this. If my father hadn’t died, things wouldn’t have gone this way. (With affected dramatic tone) I still remember Robert promising to my poor father that he would take good care of me after his death. Oh, I was so young at that time!

Sally: What about your brother? Won’t he help you?

Alice: If he only knew half of the things Robert has done to me he would try to kill him! Can you imagine?

Sally: I still don’t understand how you can play the part of the happy wife so well, in front of your family and everyone else.

Alice (smug): I’m a very good actress. And I don’t see my family or friends much anyway.

Sally: Alice, I don’t know which is the best way forward, but you can’t carry on like this. Is he still violent with you?

Alice (with a subtle disappointment): Not as much as he used to be. Only when he drinks. It’s all because of jealousy.

Sally: How can he still be jealous? You’re not even going to a supermarket on your own!!

Alice (with affected dramatic tone): I know, it’s madness. Sometimes I still manage to cheat on him, but it’s quite hard. You know he always locks me in when he leaves the house.

Sally: How do you manage then?

Alice: The plumber, the gardener, the painter…

Sally: God! Imagine if he didn’t lock you in!

Alice: Sometimes the neighbour…

Sally: That’s awful, Alice. Why do you do that?

Alice: That’s my only revenge on him. That’s what he deserves for having made my life hell. (Dramatic again) How I wish I had never met him!

Why was I so unlucky?

Sally: Alice, forgive me if I ask you. (Pause) Why did you fall for him? Was he different at the beginning? How did you meet him? Did you like him then?

Alice: No, I’ve never liked him. He was already Issue 24

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fat and bald. I was only 17! I met him at a party and I was just trying to escape from another boy’s annoying attentions. So I pretended to be interested in Robert. He was the oldest and the biggest guy in the room, so he had no problem in getting rid of that boy.

Sally: And you’ve been pretending to love him ever since! You must have realized pretty soon the trouble you were putting yourself in, but still you chose to do nothing about it. You could have broken up with him at any time!

Alice: I’ve tried to leave him. But he wouldn’t let me go.

Sally: What do you mean? I will never understand how...

(Enter Gregor and Sigmund from the left, walking towards them. Gregor looks tall, strong and fashionable) Alice (interrupts): Look! Gregor is coming!

(Sigmund notices Larry’s presence and starts barking and growling aggressively. Larry starts barking too and both dogs try to stretch their leash as much as they can, attempting to get closer to each other. Sally doesn’t like

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Illustration: Slavko Mali

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Sigmund’s Free Will by Gianni Boscarino

dogs and looks very annoyed)

a dog always resembles his owner! But Gregor doesn’t count, anyway. He’s still so young!

Alice: Larry, stop it!

Alice: He’s already 33!

Gregor: Calm down, Sigmund, they’re all friends Sally: Well, he’s still single. of mine.

Alice: If he was married it would be no different.

Men are all the same in this respect. My husband (Gregor keeps walking towards them and tries is 55 and is still the same. I’m sure he wouldn’t to control his dog) miss any chance of cheating on me! Sometimes I wish he could find another woman so that he Gregor: Hello Sally, hello Alice, sorry about this. would leave me alone.

Alice: Hello Gregor. How nice to see you darling! Sally: My husband never looks at other women.

Please sit with us. How are you?

Maybe he’s just too lazy for that.

Gregor: Very well, thanks. How are you ladies?

Sally: Not too bad.

(The girl leaves) Alice: Yes, not too bad.

Alice: I’d say he is the exception, not Gregor.

(Gregor sits down at their table) Gregor (slowly turning towards the ladies): How disappointing! It would be most flattering for Gregor (looking at Sigmund): Isn’t it amazing me to be considered an exception. how what seems like the most intelligent, peace- Sally (with sarcasm): Look who’s back! ful and civilized dog can suddenly be transformed Alice: Our most intelligent peaceful civilized into a blind ferocious warrior? And all just by the friend! presence of another peaceful dog! And what’s most unbelievable is that he has no sense of fear.

This tiny little puppy wouldn’t hesitate a second to give up his life to fight against a pit bull! And all for absolutely no reason!

(Everyone laughs) Sally: Well, I guess that’s the main difference between humans and animals.

(A young attractive woman wearing very little appears beside Gregor. He stares at her with an empty look.)

Sally (without realising Gregor is not listening any more): They just follow their instinct, whereas we have the chance to think, judge the situation and decide what’s best. We’re privileged. Don’t you think? Are you listening to me?

Alice (laughing): Maybe men are not that different from dogs after all! As soon as a certain stimulus comes along their instinct takes over everything else.

Gregor (to the sexy woman): Ehm, can I help you madam? (inaudible conversation follows).

Sally (laughing): You’re quite right. They say that 26

Sigmund’s Free Will by Gianni Boscarino

Gregor: You must forgive me, ladies. That woman needed some help. She was lost and I had to give her some directions.

Alice (sarcastically): Of course!

Sally (smiling): Oh, how kind of you! And did you get her telephone number?

Gregor: I didn’t. But I left her my business card.

Alice: Oh! Is that in case she gets lost again?

Gregor: Precisely.

Sally: That’s so thoughtful of you! You see, during your absence we were just talking about how common this “kindness” is among the male population. Alice believes it to be inconveniently common.

Gregor: I guess too much kindness is undesirable.

Alice: That’s what I think.

Sally: You’re too pessimistic.

Alice: I don’t think so. But we should listen to Gregor’s neutral opinion.

Gregor: Everyone wants to ask my opinion and no one wants to listen to it.

Illustration: Slavko Mali

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Alice: We’d love to listen to it. A successful writer and deep reader of the human mind like you will certainly be able to help us.

Gregor: I can read everything apart from my own writing. What is your dispute about?

Sally: We were just wondering if a man would ever be able to control the urge of having, let’s say, to “help” such women that look so particularly in need.

Gregor (laughing): I certainly wouldn’t be able to, I’ve been brought up as a gentleman.

Alice: Yes, we know that. But would it be any different if you were a middle-aged happily married man?

Gregor: They won’t need my help any more by that time. They’ll prefer someone younger.

Sally: So you’re trying to “help” as many women as possible for as long as you can I guess.

Gregor: That’s right.

Sally: Gregor, may I ask you when was the last time you had a steady girlfriend?

Gregor: That was in primary school. In the first year. Her name was Emma.

Sally: Ah very sweet! And how long did that last?

Gregor: About 3 months.

Sally: And that’s your longest relationship?

Gregor: As far as I know, yes.

Alice: How did it end?

Gregor: She said she needed some time to think.

Alice: That’s always a bad sign.

Gregor: I also had an imaginary girlfriend for quite a while. I guess I was missing Emma.

Sally: How did that one go?

Gregor: I broke up with her after two months because she was nagging at me all the time. (The ladies laugh) Alice: Do you think you will ever get married then?

Gregor: Yes, I shall get married as soon as I find the right woman. But how to know which is the right one until you’ve tried them all?

Alice (laughing): OK I guess you are quite an exception. Let’s take another example then. What about the case of Mr. Rutherford?

Sally: Oh I’ve always thought he was slimy.

Alice: No you haven’t.

Sally: How can a man leave a wife and two children for that stupid 24 year old toilet cleaner!!

Gregor: He didn’t, in fact.

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Sigmund’s Free Will by Gianni Boscarino

Sally: What do you mean?

Gregor: Technically it was his wife who broke up with him.

Sally: Of course! Because she found out about his affair. What was she supposed to do? Ask the girl to move in with them?

Gregor: I don’t know, I’m not judging her. I’m just saying it was her who chose to break up the family, not him.

Sally: Well all this wouldn’t have happened if he was a man rather than an animal. No sense of responsibility! And why can’t he understand that the girl is only interested in his money?

Alice: We don’t know her. Maybe she genuinely loves him.

Sally: There’s nothing genuine about our Russian immigrants.

Alice: Come on, don’t be racist!

Sally: Who’s talking about race? I’m talking about cultural and social differences. And I believe that opportunism is very common in people who have been living in miserable conditions and left their post-communist country to come here in order to try and get a better life. And Mr Rutherford is just the first fool she found. I’m sorry but I have much more respect for Sigmund than for those two.

Alice: Animals are always better than humans.

But our point wasn’t about putting Mr Rutherford on trial. What we were arguing about is if other men in the same situation would have behaved

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

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differently. Gregor, what do you think?

Gregor: Well, I’ve seen Jelena and I can tell you that any man who claims he would have behaved differently is a liar.

Alice: And that’s exactly what I thought.

Sally: Gregor, how can you talk like that? I only forgive you because you’re still young and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Gregor: Obviously that was just my humble opinion.

Sally: You’ve never been humble, Gregor. You’re actually very conceited and if every man was like you there would be no families left.

Gregor (looking embarrassed): That is not true!

Sally: Oh yes, unless the woman decides not to give any importance to her husband’s faithfulness. Maybe that’s what you wish women would do. Sorry my friend, but I have no sympathy for this. A grown-up man should behave according to his responsibilities and not according to his animal instincts.

Gregor: You must agree with me that most middle-aged married men would never be in the position of having to try to resist to Jelena’s seductive weapons. He’s been particularly lucky.

Or maybe unlucky, I forget which.

Alice (laughing): Sorry, Gregor, but that doesn’t really make it any better. The point is that as soon as a strong enough temptation comes along, no matter how uncommon this might be, men are totally helpless.

Sally: How can men be such weak creatures?

Gregor: Everyone has his weakness. Can you resist the temptation of buying expensive things that you don’t need?

Sally: No. But that’s totally harmless.

Gregor: The harmless things are the most dangerous. Consumerism is the worst disease of modern society.

Sally: I’m talking about temptations that can lead you to damage other people’s lives. I don’t understand how you can justify such behaviour.

Those people should be castrated.

Gregor: Moralism has never helped anyone. If a branch was to fall upon someone’s head would you consider the tree to be immoral? Or would you want to punish a wild animal for having bitten someone?

Sally: What’s this nonsense all about? We’re

Sigmund’s Free Will by Gianni Boscarino

human, we make choices and we shall be responsible for them.

Gregor: Free will is only an illusion. Our choices are influenced by factors we haven’t chosen. Our genes, parents, society, friends. Chance is our lord, we are not free at all.

Sally: Is that all you think we are? What about our soul?

Gregor: You see you were talking about reason and rational choices. Now you have moved onto metaphysical soil. Maybe we do have a soul, but there is no proof. Now is it fair to judge and wish for punishment when all our judgements are only based on a metaphysical hypothesis?

Sally: That’s sounds like anarchy, or apathy.

Gregor: My question is, why would anyone do the wrong thing if he really had a choice?

Alice: That’s because we don’t know we’re doing something wrong. If I could start my life again I would change everything! I really wish I could!

Sally: If you are thinking of stabbing someone is it that difficult to understand that you’re going to hurt him? And Alice, you can still change things if you only had the courage! At any time!

like Gregor, he’s a very interesting guy. (Long pause. Her expression gets serious) Sally let’s go out tonight. I really need it. Why don’t we go dancing and stay out all night?

Sally: What will you say to Robert? He will be furious!

Alice: It wouldn’t be the first time. I might as well give him a real reason for his anger this time.

Sally: Alright then. It would be a great night. You can sleep at mine. We’ll tell him you’re sick and don’t feel able to drive back home.

(Enter Bill, expensively dressed) Bill (with an American accent): Can I buy you ladies some champagne?

Sally (hesitating): Actually we were about to…

Alice: Of course! Please take a seat with us.

(Bill joins the ladies. Stage lights out.)

Sally and Alice (clinking glasses with him): Cheers.

END OF ACT ONE Gold Dust

(Alice starts crying and tries to cover her face) Gregor (embarrassed): Ehm, this conversation is getting too personal, I think I should leave.

Alice: I’m sorry, Gregor, I’m OK, you don’t need to leave.

Gregor: Actually I’m running late, I really need to rush. It was good to see you ladies.

Alice: See you soon, Gregor.

Sally: Take care.

Gregor: Goodbye.

(Exit Gregor) Sally: Are you OK, Alice?

Alice: Yes I’m fine, don’t worry.

Sally: Don’t mind what Gregor says. He has some really abstract ideas. He’s only good at writing novels. In real life matters he is totally inept.

He dates a different woman every week. He has never been able to be in a relationship and he never will. And have you noticed how he was looking at your cleavage?

Alice (laughing): Most men do. I don’t mind it. I Issue 24

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You can read the play in full at Gold Dust’s issuu page: http://tinyurl.com/pqwbgsq

Commentary by the playwright Two married ladies in their forties and a young writer confer with each other about their sentimental lives in a play that deals with the complex weave of social pressures and irrational instincts that we are all confronted with every day.

This script came from reflecting on the superficiality and conformism induced by the mass media and the resulting attachment to a specific idea of happiness rather than happiness itself.

The intense dialogues between the characters convey their alienation and vain search for control over their own lives. False morality, conformism, instinct and social pressures compete to impact on each individual’s, perhaps illusory, free will.

Find out more...

Gianni Boscarino keeps a poetry blog at: http://gianniboscarino.blogspot.co.uk

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SHORT STORY

Debts

by Wayne Dean-Richards Carrie Stone said, ‘I’ve got a headache...’

C

arrie Stoner said, “I’ve got a headache.” It felt like a team of builders were at work on the inside of her skull, though the pain stemmed not from her skull but from her jaw for she had had two wisdom teeth removed at midday and, remembering her time in the dentist’s chair, her tongue sought the copperytasting stitches.

Carrie was pale, with bleachedblonde hair, her own colour showing through at the roots. Aged twenty-nine she had that day had two wisdom teeth removed and wondered what it meant to have wisdom teeth removed at her age.

She couldn’t help thinking that it must mean something.

As must the fact that she had kept her visit to the dentist from her husband, Joe Stoner. She had kept her visit to the dentist from Joe as if it was a secret, something dark and shameful. Why is that? Carrie wondered. Why? She thought there must surely be a reason. It made no sense for there not to be, yet if there was a reason, Carrie didn’t know it.

“Take something for it,” Joe Stoner said. He hoped the irritation that he felt wasn’t in his voice. Joe Stoner was also twenty-nine. He was flabby, with prematurely thinning dark hair, and when he opened his eyes and saw that his wife lay propped up on her pillows, beside him but not touching him, so carefully not touching any part of him that it was easy to believe there had never, ever, been any passion between them, he felt wounded.

“Take something for it,” Carrie 30

repeated. “Right,” she said, and went through to the bathroom without putting on a light, took two aspirin from the cabinet above the sink and dry-swallowed them whilst staring intently at her darkened reflection. Her reflection offered no answer to the question of why she hadn’t told Joe that she had had two wisdom teeth removed, why it was that she had been so secretive about a trip to the dentist.

Conscious that Joe was watching her when she returned, as if he somehow knew about her stupid, and so far as she could tell pointless secrecy, Carrie climbed awkwardly back into bed. She had told him that she had a headache and it was true, she did. But it was also true that she had said it so Joe would know there was no point reaching over, so he would understand that sex wasn’t an option, their early night a chance to catch up on sleep and nothing more – their early night a failure, then, since they were both still awake.

“Satisfied?” Carrie said. She believed the barb in her voice wasn’t fair, wasn’t something she could justify as a response to what Joe had said to her, but found she didn’t care.

During the silence that followed, Carrie Stoner lay very still, looking disinterestedly at the spacious bedroom and expensive furnishings, everything new or nearly new, everything just so. After which she started to talk. Looking straight ahead at the wavering darkness, Carrie Stoner talked about her sister and her sister’s two kids. Their dog was missing, Carrie said, so her sister and the kids had at-

tached photocopied images of him to dozens of lampposts within a two mile radius of their house. Certain that this wasn’t something Joe wanted to hear Carrie nonetheless told him how one of the kids had carried photocopied images of the dog, MISSING and their phone number written in black permanent marker below the image, whilst the other had carried the string they used to attach the images to lampposts, the mission a joint effort, then.

Carrie’s sister had a boy and a girl. The boy was fourteen months older than the girl, but he wasn’t a little shit the way most big brothers were, Carrie said, the way she believed Steve had been according to Joe, Steve the older by ten minutes, hence Steve had always been the ‘big brother’. “That’s right, isn’t it?” Carrie said and turned to look at Joe: at his profile in near darkness. Seeing the way the flesh beneath his chin sagged and his hair had thinned, Carrie couldn’t help thinking that despite him being an identical twin Joe didn’t look much like his ‘big brother’ Steve any more. She said, “You did say that because he was ten minutes older than you, you always called Steve your ‘big brother’ didn’t you?”

Stifling the urge to sigh, Joe Stoner leaned over and switched on his light. Wearily, he took a cigarette from the packet beside the lamp and picked up his lighter, but registering the look of disapproval on Carrie’s face didn’t light up. Instead, like his wife, Joe Stoner lay propped up on his pillows, the unlit cigarette clenched between his lips, and began agitatedly working

Debts by Wayne Dean-Richards the lighter through his fingers. “I don’t remember ever saying that,” he said, and took the cigarette from his mouth and slid it back into the packet, though he continued to work the lighter through his fingers.

“You did,” Carrie insisted. “I can’t prove it, but I definitely remember you saying it.” She frowned. “I wish everything people said was recorded,” she said. She knew it was what Nixon had done, had seen a film about Nixon starring Anthony Hopkins, the three-hour portrait of ambition and paranoia oddly comforting, she remembered, Hopkins not much of a Nixon look-alike, but with the right controlled mania. “Then we could rewind what we’d recorded to prove who said what so we wouldn’t have to argue about it,” she said.

“I’m not arguing,” Joe said, straight-faced. He was sure this contention was something Carrie would pick at, but she didn’t.

As if she hadn’t even heard her husband, Carrie Stoner said, “You said because Steve was ten minutes older than you, that you always called him your ‘big brother’, I’m sure you did.”

During a brief but weighty silence, they stared intently at the moving shadows beyond the reach of Joe’s lamp until, as if there had been no break Carrie went back to talking about her sister’s kids and their lost dog. She spoke in the same fragile, distant voice as before, telling Joe how her sister had explained to her kids that they might never see the dog again because someone had stolen him or because he was dead, had been hit by a car, perhaps, and left in a gutter. Carrie said it was important to understand that her sister’s kids were both still little, but they were brave little kids, brave enough despite their size to come to terms with these possibilities and brave enough to face them head on. They

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were two very brave little kids, Carrie repeated for emphasis, two very little brave kids with an honest mother who didn’t flinch from telling the truth.

Listening to his wife, Joe Stoner continued to work the lighter through his fingers, the light reflected off it sharp as razorblades.

For a time he was content just to twist the lighter, but after several minutes he started adding a squeeze to each twist, the lighter warmed as Joe Stoner twisted and squeezed it, convinced that in some way all Carrie’s talk about brave little kids and an honest mother who didn’t flinch from the truth was really about them being nearly thirty and not having kids of their own. Perhaps if you didn’t have so many headaches, Joe Stoner thought. Perhaps if I wasn’t always so tired, and you didn’t have so many headaches, he thought.

But Carrie Stoner did have a lot

of headaches. And Joe was always bone-tired. Joe Stoner was convinced that these were truths as great as those Carrie’s sister was intent on sharing with her brave little kids, and he imagined voicing this and then other truths to his wife, doing so without flinching in a voice that was loud and clear.

The other truths would include Joe reminding Carrie that, first and foremost, he was a businessman.

And after he said it Joe Stoner would pause for dramatic effect.

Then he would make clear to Carrie that being a businessman was one of the hardest things in the world. Every night he stayed late to cash up, Joe would tell her. What, did you think I was betting on horses or playing cards? Do you think that’s why I’m always late?

Joe imagined saying. Betting on horses or playing cards with money I can’t afford to lose, Joe imagined saying, laughing to underline the ridiculousness of such an idea.

Photo: stock.xchng

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Debts by Wayne Dean-Richards But before he could speak, the thought of lost money drove Joe Stoner to push the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, put his cigarette lighter on the bedside table, and glance over at his mobile phone.

“Who’ve you been sending texts to?” Carrie demanded immediately, saw Joe hesitate and said, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed, don’t you take me for a fool, Joe Stoner.”

Even in this light Joe saw the tension in Carrie’s face and the searching expression in her eyes.

His need for a cigarette became more intense. “I’ve been sending texts to Steve,” Joe Stoner admitted.

“Steve?”

“That’s right.”

“Your brother Steve,” Carrie said. It came out sounding odd not because Carrie had had two wisdom teeth removed, but because she had almost said ‘Our Steve’, managing to check herself only just in time, sure that ‘Our Steve’ wouldn’t have gone down well with Joe even after all these years. “Your ‘big brother’ Steve?” she said, looking hard at the shadows stencilled across her husband’s face as her tongue dug at the stitches in her gums.

Joe Stoner was sure he had never called Steve his ‘big brother’ and he was tempted to make an issue of it, but instead opted to nod, nodded and hoped that him nodding would prompt Carrie to shut up and turn away, close her eyes and go to sleep, at last allowing him to go to sleep, too. Joe Stoner believed that when he was asleep he would stop thinking about lost money and the desire to light up a cigarette would recede.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Carrie didn’t turn away. Instead his wife continued to glare at him, breathing hard as if after some great exertion. There was no chance, Joe Stoner saw, of her let32

ting it go. “I’m allowed to send my own brother text messages for God’s sake,” he said. Even to his own ears Joe Stoner sounded desperate.

“Your ‘big brother’, Steve,” Carrie insisted, she didn’t know why.

“My ‘big brother’, Steve,” Joe said, suddenly so tired that he was ready to say practically anything.

“So the text messages have all been to Steve? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s right,” Joe said. “That’s what I’m saying.” He moved his pudding head moving up and down. “It’s alright with you if I send text messages to my ‘big brother’, isn’t it? I mean that is alright with you isn’t it?”

“Why? Why are you sending him so many messages?” Carrie Stoner said, stepping right over his sarcasm. “It’s not as if you have anything to do with Steve anymore.” Her shoulders clenched, Carrie was for a moment tempted to retreat, but didn’t, and pressed on with, “So why are you sending him text messages all of a sudden?”

Joe Stoner considered telling Carrie that it wasn’t any of her business why he was sending texts to his brother. He considered telling her that these days anything to do with Steve was his business and his business alone and she would do well to remember it. He opened his mouth, ready to say those words, ready to enjoy the outrage he knew they would generate.

Then Joe shut his mouth so sharply his teeth clicked. He wondered how it had reached the point where he wanted to inflict damage on his wife, and anticipated enjoying its effect. The first time he had set eyes on her Joe had wanted Carrie so much it hurt, an actual physical pain deep in his chest.

Carrie had been beautiful then and was beautiful still, older now, her face thinner and harder and her

dark hair bleached-blonde nowadays, but still beautiful. Joe Stoner thought his wife was still beautiful, yet now he wanted to say to her words that he knew would damage her. How, he wanted to know, has it come to this? Having no ready answer to that question, Joe Stoner swallowed. His fingers twitched. He said, “He owes me.”

“Steve owes you?” Carrie said.

Though she was still beautiful, Joe saw that there were lines in Carrie’s face where less than a year ago there hadn’t been, these more recent lines were pronounced even in this dim light. “That’s right,” Joe said. He ran his hand along the line of his jaw as if to tighten the skin there.

“I would’ve thought...” Carrie began. Then, blinking rapidly, she shut up.

“What?” Joe said.

“Nothing,” Carrie said with quiet precision, said it again and then edged further from him.

They hadn’t been touching anyway, and Carrie had put no more than an additional inch of soft cotton between them. Yet it might as well have been a mile, ten miles, a lifetime. All at once Joe Stoner felt as if he had been punched in the heart, all the air forced from his flabby body. His throat so dry it burned, he said, “Steve owes me money and I need it back.”

Again Carrie Stoner dug her tongue into the stitches in her gums, pressing so hard it hurt, pressing the stitches till she tasted copper whilst once more asking herself why she hadn’t told Joe that she had had two wisdom teeth removed: Why? “I need the money Steve owes me,” Joe Stoner said, and though he felt the continued weight of Carrie’s gaze, he refused to turn and meet it with his own.

It was 2.28AM.

Gold Dust

The Sighs of a Mouse:

by Paul Chappell Essays and Stories UKA Press, 2013 REVIEW

£7.99 278 pages Reviewed by David Gardiner

T

his is a very unusual book in that it was written by a man who took his own life in July 2013, and the essays and stories it contains chronicle his descent into depression, or if you are loath to attach a medical label to his state of mind, despair. They take us through two unsuccessful attempts to end it all, the second of which leaves him hospitalised for a few days and, in his own estimation, robs him of the remaining shreds of his dignity.

All of the various short pieces that make up the book originally appeared on the writers' websites ABC Tales and UKAuthors.com, and they take us almost to the very moment of his final high-speed car-drive into a brick wall and hence eternity.

I should perhaps say at the outset that his declining fortunes and mental state are not the only topics Chappell writes about in this collection, because it spans a long writing career, and many of the essays and stories deal with different subject matter entirely, and are merely first class examples of a fine writer's work, many of them very funny, all of them intelligent and well-crafted. Their presence makes the rest of the collection all the more poignant, his untimely death all the more tragic.

The author had good reasons for his decision to give up on life, and he explains them at length, and often with a stunning irony that propels the narrative into comedy. His house and possessions seized by the bailiffs, deep in debt, alone, hungry and denied

Find out more...

Introduction by his brother Julian:

http://tinyurl.com/q9bp9kw Issue 24

December 2013

state benefits, shamefully neglected by the people and institutions that he has turned to for support, he decides that suicide is simply his best option. There is nothing that comes across as inevitable about this decision, you or I or indeed he might have decided differently. It seems to be a free and rational choice.

In saying this I don't mean to deny the reality of the 'black dog' (depression) that Chappell could not escape – it is simply that the illness comes across as one factor but not the only one influencing his decision. Had he been given just a little more support both in practical ways and in terms of understanding and treating his illness his story might have had a very different ending. This book is a devastating indictment of the mental health care professionals and the other public servants entrusted with the management of this man's illness. Coming so close on the heels of the Stafford Hospital scandal let us hope that the book gives those in the relevant professions pause for thought and causes them to re-examine their working practices and their attitudes to people suffering mental distress. Chappell makes it clear repeatedly that this is a large part of his reason for recording his thoughts. If it happens then he will not have died in vain.

'When well-meaning people say, “Why don’t you...?” and then name something that they believe should make me happy, I want to kill them very hard.

It isn’t their fault, they don’t know any better, so I usually let them live. But let it be known, now and for all time, that such suggestions are not helpful.'

With nothing in all the world capable of making him happy, Chappell decided that the rational course was to leave it, to experience nothing was preferable to experiencing only misery. In this his logic seems impeccable. The world owes him a debt of gratitude for the insight he has provided into the thought processes that lead a person to that final dark act. I hope this book will be widely read and thought about by everyone whose lives touch upon those experiencing mental distress.

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Gold Dust

33

FLASH FICTION

Dreams

by Emma Balmforth

She is gone now but I can never stop thinking about her...

S

he is gone now but I can never stop thinking about her. We would lie in bed and she would say ‘Do you believe in dreams?’ and she seemed so serious that I would laugh and pull her towards me and kiss her until she stopped asking, because back then I thought there was nothing more tedious than other people’s dreams, even hers.

And it hurts to think of this, because one day she must have stopped asking and I didn’t notice, and maybe if I had answered her question, just once, then things would have been different.

It started one morning. It was such an ordinary morning that I can’t tell you very much about it. It was just a morning. I had known her just long enough to fall in love and for her to share my bed, and it was only much later that I realised that this morning had been the beginning.

We were walking to the train station as we always did, and just as I kissed her goodbye she said, ‘Give my love to Anne and say I hope her flu gets better.’

‘What are you talking about?’

I said. ‘Anne hasn’t got flu. She’s fine.’

She frowned. ‘You told me, didn’t you? ‘ ‘No. Not me. Not Anne.’

‘It must have been someone else then. Who’s got flu?’

‘No-one. No-one has flu that I know about,’ and I laughed and left.

When I got to the station doors I turned to wave, but she didn’t see me. She just stood there by the road, and she seemed so small that I wanted to rush down and 34

hold her, but I would have missed my train so I didn’t, and I soon forgot about the whole thing.

Another day and I walked into the kitchen. She was searching the cupboards, moving all the jars around. When I asked what she was looking for she frowned at me, distracted and said ‘Pickles. I'm looking for the pickles we bought the other day.’ I couldn’t remember buying any pickles, but I looked in the fridge anyway. There was nothing there.

‘Where did we get them from?’

But she couldn’t answer that.

‘Maybe we ate them?’ Yes, we agreed, we must have eaten them.

It seemed strange, because you would remember something like that wouldn’t you? But neither of us said anything. It was only a jar of pickles.

They were just tiny everyday things. How was I supposed to know?

Days, weeks, months later, I don't remember how long, we were in the park lying on a blanket in the shade of a large oak tree. She turned to me and asked in that soft, murmuring voice of hers if I had returned the socks with the holes to the shop.

‘I haven’t bought any socks,’ I told her, stroking her hair.

She sat up, letting my hand fall, 'of course you have. We spoke about it.' We argued. She wouldn't believe me that I hadn't bought socks with holes in.

Then there was no going back.

She saw cousins in the high street that I knew were in Australia and an old school friend from 20

years ago and she didn’t think it was strange she hadn’t aged a day.

She said she had been stung by bees but couldn’t find any marks, and she told the dentist that her teeth were falling out, although she didn’t even need a filling.

She thought she was going mad. I thought we both were.

Then there was the day when she came home and said she had been followed. Her eyes were wide and her breathing fast. I told her to

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Dreams by Emma Balmforth call the police, but she wouldn’t.

She said she had no description, just a feeling someone had been there, watching, waiting. A feeling she couldn’t shake. What good could the police do? What good could anyone do against panic, a shadow, a knot in her gut? Neither of us said anything for a long time and we drowned in the silence until she dropped to her knees and started to cry. All she would say was that she was sorry, over and over again. I knelt on the floor too and held her tight and told her that it would all be OK, but I don’t think either of us believed it. I couldn’t stop her crying.

I was forced to accept that the girl I loved could no longer fully waken from her dreams.

After that she never left the house. In the evenings when I came home from work we would sit under a blanket together and she would listen as I talked about my day. She was like a shadow of herself. So insubstantial she seemed unearthly, seemed to shimmer and flicker like a fading candle. When I put my arms around her, it was like holding a whisper. She would then tell me about her day, always seeking reassurance: ‘That was real wasn’t it?'

At first I tried to help. I would explain as gently as I could that those things hadn’t happened, and she would go silent and empty. So I began to say yes. ‘Yes my darling, that happened’. ‘Yes that’s true’. Yes to everything. I only said

it to make her smile, but I now think I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe that was the worst thing I could have done, but I couldn’t watch her heart break anymore. Instead I broke mine.

If I am not sure when it started, there can be little doubt about when it ended. A wintery pearl of an early morning, spiked with frost.

As I came down the stairs she met me. She seemed excited, her pale cheeks flushed with red, her pale eyes sparkling. ‘Let’s go for a walk’, she said, ‘I have something to show you.’ I hesitated and tried to think of excuses because I didn’t want her to go outside. I felt she would be safe in the house, but she wouldn’t listen and she left, and all I could do was follow her.

The beach was deserted, too early for the swimmers and dog walkers, and there was a cold wind that pinched our faces and fingers as we stood at the water’s edge, listening to the sighing waves.

‘I flew today,' she said, and I said ‘Where?’ That was how we talked now.

‘Oh everywhere, just for a while, I could feel the wind in my hair.’

Perhaps I frowned. I said nothing.

‘Look, we can go now. It’s fun.’

‘No, not now – remember I can’t fly.’ There was something in the way she spoke, an energy that I hadn’t seen for a long time.

Something had changed and it scared me, although I couldn’t say why. I turned to her and grabbed her arm, but she kept staring out to the sea. ‘Please, I can’t come with you, and I don’t want you to leave me.’

She pulled her arm away. ‘I’ll teach you,’ she said laughing. Then – she was gone.

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December 2013

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35

FLASH FICTION

Loss

by Guido Dresmé

‘Darling, you need to loosen up that tie a little...’

‘D

arling, you need to loosen up that tie a little.'

Martin looked at himself in the mirror.

His collar indeed made the flesh of his neck bundle up.

'You're right, thanks.' He loosened up the knot, and turned his neck to use the free space.

'That's better. Are you ready?'

Are you ready? No, never. For a funeral you are never quite ready.

You can dress up, you can put a mask on your face, but you are never ready. Funerals are never fun. There are the occasional outbursts of muffled giggles during the coffee and cake afterwards, but never fun. He though that he would not be giggling today, however.

The images from the nine o'clock news nudged his brain, and then quite forcefully, fought their way to the surface. A group of firefighters was rummaging about with hydraulic cutters and spreaders.

The doctor from the emergency response team, looked at the car wreck with his hands in his pockets. The look on his face was that of a sad schoolboy who halfway through unwrapping his birthday presents realizes that this was not the so-desired flaming red monster madness truck. There was nothing left to salvage. Nothing left to save.

Martin also hears his sandwich falling on the floor. The slightly wet thud of pesto on kitchen tiles. His eyes were fixed on the small tv screen on the kitchen counter. He recognized the car on the screen.

Worse still, he recognized the license plate.

36

'Martin..?'

'Martin!' With a shock he woke from his own thoughts as if from a very deep sleep. The doorbell rang.

The cars had arrived. Martin walked from the bathroom to the living room, while he put on his jacket. The lining itched.

'Sarah? Sarah, are you coming? From the couch came a mumble, the sound from the tv revealed a rerun marathon of the Snorks.

'Can Gwen come too?' She held out her doll.

'Gwen can come too.' Sarah put her thumb in her mouth, and stretched out her arms to be picked up. 'Here you go darling, I'll come sit with you in the back.'

'Don't you have to drive daddy?'

'No darling, not today.'

With Sarah on his arm, Martin made his way through the house.

Through the living room, the hallway, entering the small hobby room. This was the room she used to draw and paint in. The room was left in its usual chaos. On the table a huge collection of pencils, paper, ink and balled-up sketches. Drawing had been her great passion.

Never again would he have to go and get her at 2 in the morning to come to bed, to find her sitting with hunched shoulders, the tip of her tongue visible between her lips, completely lost in her own concentration. Having drunk a bit more then he could stomach, the Bulgarian truck driver had parked his truck in her car. On the freeway.

Sarah looked up, pulled her thumb from her mouth, and asked: 'What are we going to do with this room? Now mum has died, can I

keep a horsey in here?' Martin chuckled.

'Even now your mum has died, you can't keep a horsey in here darling.' Sarah did not protest, but commenced the sucking of her thumb, and rested her head against his chest.

'Oh the poor thing. You would think losing one of your parents would be enough reason to allow her to keep a horsey.'

'Yes, I can imagine you think that. You are not around anymore to muck out the place now, are you? Not that you did that when you where still here,' he added with a smile.

The doorbell rang for the second time. The ringing lasted longer than the first time. Was it possible the hearse driver was loosing his patience? As if he was not used to waiting. With Sarah on his arm he walked to the hallway again. From a bucket next to the door, he picked up a large bouquet of pink and yellow flowers.

'Martin?'

'Hmm?' 'Take good care of yourself, will you?' '...'

'Please take good care of Sarah?' '...'

'Why don't you say anything?'

Martin produced a sigh from the depths of his toes. 'Things are not that great, at the moment darling.' Then, angrily: 'You are dead, but I still hear your voice. You are dead, but you are in everything around me. You are dead, and despite the fact that we are off to bury

Loss by Guido DresmĂŠ you in a couple of minutes, you seem to be closer now than when you were still alive. I...' his voice faltered. Sarah had fallen asleep, he felt how her drool was slowly soaking his shirt where her mouth touched him.

Then, in an outburst, Martin

yelled: 'Why? For fuck sake, why didn't you stick to our deal. You and me. Old and knobbly kneed. Playing yahtzee in the park. For every day that we would have together, a good glass of red wine. You and me. Old, but very very happy.

Why...Did...You...Die? With his fist

around the bouquet of flowers, he punched the doorpost. Powerless.

Defeated.

There came no response.

Louder than the doorbell, that started to ring for the third time, sounded the silence, the absence of an answer.

Gold Dust

Photo: Eleanor Bennett

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Issue 24

December 2013

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37

Overdose

SHORT STORY

by Martin Denniss

Damien twisted slowly as if he’d been smacked in the face, and his eyes rolled into his head...

D

amien twisted slowly as if he’d been smacked in the face, and his eyes rolled into his head.

Then he fell flat and hard, like a thousand-year-old pine in the forest, crunching on the forest floor.

He was motionless and awkwardly positioned, like a hit and run victim, and soon his face turned white, then a little blue.

Abigail screamed. She and Tammy watched as he fell. In the dimly lit room the girls looked at each other. They were best friends, and the absolute, unrivalled, biggest fans in the world of Damian and his band The March. In fact, they were fans before the band had that name, when they were playing covers at unpaid gigs as the Elastic Band. Now Damien was on the ground and to Abigail and Tammy, it seemed as though he wasn’t getting back up.

‘Is everything okay?’ Mr Richards strode into the room and flicked the switch on the ceiling light, his eyes darting around the room for an explanation of the scream. He stood above Damien like a school teacher standing above a troublesome pupil and said, ‘Why can’t we throw a fucking album release party without one of these fucking louts getting too smashed to bother talking with the press or the fans.’

‘Is he okay?’ asked Tammy, who was now clutching Abigail’s arm. ‘He fell down hard.’

‘He’s just had too much to drink is all,’ replied Mr Richards, who was now tapping Damien’s 38

body with the side of his foot. When Damien didn’t move, he kneeled down beside his client and stared at his lifeless face. ‘Jesus, I don’t think he’s breathing.’ He then checked for a pulse.

‘Are you a doctor or something,’ said Abigail.

‘No, but it doesn’t take a doctor to know this he’s in serious trouble. Quick, lock that door; we don’t need any of the press seeing this.’

When Mr Richards said this Tammy gasped and Abigail whispered, ‘O…M…G.’ ‘I said one of you lock that fucking door.’

But before either of them could follow the order, the door swung open again and in walked a man that looked as though he would have fit in seamlessly on stage with The March.

‘Here he is,’ he said with a wonky smile, revealing a blackened tooth. The man closed the door and locked it. ‘My friend here thinks he is a god. One EP and then a record deal and he thinks he’s fucking immortal.’

‘I’m sorry, who might you be?’ asks Mr Richards.

‘I’m Laz. And this rockstar here owes me money.’

‘Don’t talk about him like that,’ said Abigail.

‘This is obviously not a good time. You need to leave,’ Mr Richards said to Laz. ‘This fucker bought a fifty worth of heroin off me but said he only had twenty on him and that his manager would fix me up later. I came to the party so I could cook it

up and get high with him, but the lousy bastard couldn’t wait. He’s gone and snorted it all.’

‘Jesus. Are you saying he’s overdosed on heroin?’ said Mr Richards, eyes wide with panic.

‘Yeah. That’s right. Now, where’s his wallet,’ Laz said approaching the body.

‘Listen you little shit, you’re not gonna touch Damien or his wallet.’

Mr Richards stood face to face with Laz, who considered his words, smiled, took one step back, reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small knife.

‘No, you listen, you old fuck. I need my money. I got a kid you know, he’s as annoying as fuck but he still needs to eat. And I’m trying to run a business. Now you either get outta my way so I can take the wallet, or point me in the direction of his manager who owes me thirty bucks.’

‘I’m the band’s manager. And I don’t owe you shit, rat.’

‘Why are you arguing about money,’ Tammy said, ‘Someone call an ambulance.’

‘It’s too late,’ said Laz, relaxing the knife, ‘our friend here is walking the tightrope. Any minute now he’ll err a little further to one side and slip away.’ He said this with a grimace; it wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen it happen.

Mr Richards held his phone to his ear and thought to himself that this was no way for a band’s breakthrough album promotion to begin.

Or was it? And that’s when the light bulb clicked. He stared into space for a moment and ignored the voice

Overdose by Martin Denniss on the receiver asking him if he needed the police, an ambulance of the fire brigade. He hung the phone up.

‘What are you doing,’ cried Abigail.

‘All of you just shut the fuck up for a moment.’ He stood there scratching at his jaw line, then, and as if winning an argument in his own head, he smiled and began to nod. ‘Nobody leaves this room until the paramedics take Damien out in a body bag.’

The two girls and Laz just stood dumbstruck.

‘This album will have the sort of media attention that no promotional budget can buy.' With both hands Mr Richards framed a headline in mid-air, ‘Dead Rockers' Final Masterpiece.’

‘You’re out of your mind, old man,’ laughed Laz. ‘And think of the money we’d

make,’ said Mr Richards, frantic, with the genius idea reaching fruition in his head. ‘Yes, yes, that’s it. We can each sell our story to any of the papers and magazines.’

‘I could make more than thirty bucks, right?’ asked Laz. ‘Ten times more.’ Mr Richards assured him. ‘And you girls, you ever wanted to be part of rock and roll history?’

‘It would be kinda cool to say you were there when the guy from the The March died,’ Abigail said.

‘And I can say he wrote the song ‘Infinity’s Daughter’, off the new album, about me,’ said Tammy.

So, the four of them reached an agreement: nobody was to enter or leave the room until they were all certain he was dead.

‘But, we need a consistent story,’ began Mr Richards, ‘So this is how it will go. I was sitting in the

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December 2013

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room discussing what Damien thought to be The Marchs’ key influences, when – ‘ ‘But we were in the room with him,’ Abigail interrupted, ‘and he was about to tell me he loved me.’

‘No he wasn’t, he likes me so much more,’ said Tammy.

‘Just listen, we need to decide on a realistic –‘ ‘Oh, I’m fucked, then,’ Laz interjected, ‘I can’t say I was here to collect money for the drugs that killed the motherfucker.’

‘Then don’t, you moron. You can say you’re a friend who was just hanging out. Maybe you were in here talking with the girls over in that corner.’

‘Gross. Didn’t you just say realistic? We would never talk to someone like that.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t talk to you bitches either,’ ‘Oh, sure.’

‘Listen we just need to…’

And amidst the arguing there was a single cough, which seemed to reverberate around the room like a giant church bell. The four of them became silent, which made the second cough more pronounced. It was Damien; he had rolled to his side, vomited and was now coughing the residue and acidic taste out of his mouth.

‘I need some water,’ he muttered.

Mr Richards’s sighed and Laz cursed. The four of them looked down at Damien who was now spitting on the carpet, then sternly at each other.

Mr Richards pulled a twenty and a ten from his wallet and Laz disappeared, like a cockroach when the light turns on. The girls shuffled out of the room and went back to the party, looking for the cute bass player, and Mr Richards knelt down and said, ‘I’m here for you buddy, you’ll be alright.’

Gold Dust 39

SHORT STORY

The Time Hunt

BEST PROSE

by Pia Bastide

There she was, piloting her miniature boat in the small pond...

T

here she was, piloting her miniature boat in the small pond. She looked so proud! Her eyebrows were furrowed with extreme concentration, her pink tongue was sticking out, and the wind was blowing in her fine, almost white hair. For some reason, Eli got mad. A furious anger devoured her.

“We're going”, she shouted, leaving.

The child hesitated for a second (she was just about to embark on an imaginary cruise to Africa) and ran after her. She tried to cling to her hand. Eli gently but firmly pushed her away. She was staring right ahead of her, her walk was jerky and her jaw was clenched.

Suddenly, Eli stopped in front of the old shooting gallery. The thick, dust-covered burgundy curtains made it look like an abandoned theatre, home to flat wooden horses riddled with holes.

“What's your name again?”

“Lucy.”

Eli nodded. Lucy. Loo-see.

She looked like a Lucy. In fact, she reminded her of that little girl in a children’s book, the one who loses a bunch of handkerchiefs and ends up befriending a hedgehog. What was that book called again? After a few minutes of intense reflection, Eli still could not remember its title – her memory had been failing her lately.

“Do you like guns, Loo-see?”

The child shrugged. She did not mind guns, but if she really had to choose, she would rather go back to her little boat. Eli paid for five cartridges and gave Lucy the rifle. Despite all the kid's efforts to 40

stand on the tip of her toes, she was too small and could barely see the moving targets. After her fourth missed shot, Eli took the gun away from her and put it back on the counter. As she saw Lucy's look become gloomy, she paid the man for a lame cuddly toy mouse, with protruding eyes and ridiculously enormous ears. Lucy thanked her politely and shoved it in her coat's pocket.

“Can we go home now?”

“No. Not yet”.

“Mommy is going to be worried.”

“She shouldn’t. We’re having a great time, aren’t we?”

Lucy looked at Eli, disconcerted.

“We’re having a great time, right, Loo-see?” Eli repeated.

Lucy nodded her head – yes, it had been a lovely afternoon.

Earlier that day, Eli was once again wandering about in the city with nowhere to go and no one to see. She happened to go past Sacred Heart Elementary, her old school, and it brought back hateful memories: the sad grey uniform, the endless grace before lunch, the nuns and the teachers trying relentlessly to shove all that religion nonsense down innocent children’s throats. Just the thought of it made her shiver. She still hadn’t forgiven her parents for sending her to that place. The two o’clock bell announcing the end of class had drawn her out of her daydreams; however, she stayed in front of the massive green gate and waited with the horde of parents who seemed to be caught up into some sort of my-kid-is-better-than-yours

competition. The gate opened and vomited a blurry crowd of schoolchildren who rushed to their progenitors. A little girl came out last, looked around and sighed. Mommy was late. Tonight, she was probably going to complain about the circulation on the 478 and tell Daddy that it was time they moved to the City – she couldn’t stand Brooklyn anymore, and he had to start thinking about their children’s future (“Christ, Robert, it’s the second time this week that Lucy has to wait at school because I’m stuck in traffic!”).

Eli came up to the child and had asked her if she wanted to kill time with her. Lucy had never killed anything before (well, apart from that colony of ants last summer with her cousin Joe) and thought it might be interesting to go on a time-hunt. So she accepted, even though Mommy had made her promise to never follow strangers.

But Lucy didn’t feel threatened by Eli, probably because she was not trying to be overly nice in order to trick her – in fact, Eli hadn’t smiled once – or maybe it was because she seemed harmless with her skeleton-like face that looked too big and heavy for her frail body.

“How old are you, Loo-see?”

“I’m six”, she answered, waving about half a dozen of chubby fingers.

“And how old am I?” “I don’t know.”

“Go on, guess.”

“You are…old.”

“Old? I’m only eighteen!” Eli cried out.

But Lucy had already run off to see the colossal Saint-Bernard that

The Time Hunt by Pia Bastide was resting under a naked weeping willow. She looked so tiny; she could not even put her arms around its massive neck. She climbed onto the beast’s back and buried her head in its warm fur.

With her mustard-coloured dufflecoat, she looked like a microscopic saffron dot shrouded in an ocean of dog’s hair and rotting leaves.

Eli didn’t want this moment to end. She realized she was crying.

Her cheeks were wet and freezing.

She should have taken a coat.

What was she thinking, going out in a t-shirt in the middle of November? But she didn’t care, she didn’t think she could get more ill anyway.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Only Loo-see.

Eli sat down on a bench and looked around her. They had renovated the park. The enormous spider’s web had been taken down because some boy fell and broke his leg. She had spent a countless number of afternoons perched up

there, all the way to the top so her parents wouldn’t risk getting her.

She remembered the wonderful feeling she used to get in her tummy when she was climbing the entangled ropes as fast as she could: a mix of excitement and fear.

She remembered hugging the metal pole with all her strength and finally daring to look down and catching glimpses of envy in the eyes of the cowardly children. She remembered spitting on them and feeling almighty, untouchable.

But it wasn’t there anymore.

Because some stupid boy fell and broke his leg.She noticed that they had also closed down the little snack-bar. That was probably due to some new health regulations.

Someone must have complained about those greasy waffles that Roberto was handing with his hairy hands and noticeably dirty fingernails. However, that someone most certainly forgot to mention how good they were.

She used to come here every Wednes… – no, every Saturday when she was a child. Yes, it was every Saturday, because she had dancing class early in the afternoon. She hated it, her mom loved it. Coming to the park was her reward for spending an hour in a pink tutu to please her mother. Eli didn’t know why she stopped coming here though. She seemed to remember that she came back a few times after giving up ballet – the accident! Of course, the accident happened! There used to be those large vertical logs, taller than her, and one day, when her mom had turned her back for a second, she went on the biggest one and decided to dive. She landed on her head and was driven straight off to the hospital. That’s probably why she didn’t come back in the first place. And then she grew up and forgot about the park.

Lucy climbed on the bench and started to spell out the inscrip-

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The Time Hunt by Pia Bastide

tion on the back.

“In…lo…loving mi… memo… ry… of…”

“Gertrude Knight. In loving memory of Gertrude Knight.”

“Why is it written on a bench?”

Lucy asked.

“I don’t know, for when one of her friends or relatives misses her and wants to spend a bit of time with her, I guess.”

“But why wouldn’t they go to see her in person?”

“Because she’s dead,” Eli sighed.

“Oh”, Lucy replied. Just “oh”.

Just that.

And then she was off again.

This time, she was getting down to the playground. That’s when Eli noticed that it had changed too. Since when did seesaws have comfortable seats? And why was it so shiny? Eli squinted and saw that it was not wooden anymore. That devastated her. All she was seeing was a cold, unfriendly chrome mass. The jungle gym looked like a cage. They even managed to make the little house look dehumanized.

What happened to the soft, usedwood that used to crack under your feet? How could children carve messages in the beams now? She thought of that boy who used to go 42

to Sacred Heart too. Florian. Cute kid. He would always let her win at dodge ball and sometimes they’d hold hands under the sticky canteen table. One day, on one of their play dates at the park, they stole a knife from the snack-bar and started to carve their names on one of the walls of the cabin, when Eli’s mom caught them. She took the blade away and left them with an unfinished “ELI + FLOR”. Eli wondered if Florian thought about her from time to time, but then she realized that he probably didn’t remember her since the only memorial of the childish love they once shared had been destroyed.

It was gone forever.

Lucy came back once again and sat down next to Eli. She said that she had banged her head against a metal bar in the playground. Eli felt the lump in her throat quiver.

“Touch it, it feels like a tiny egg,” Loo-see exclaimed, taking Eli’s hand and putting it on her blonde head. The warmth and the softness of her hair made Eli jump and she promptly put her hand back on her side. The child’s vitality was scaring her; everything had been fading around her since she had become sick.

“It’s a big one,” Eli answered, “I’m sure it hur...”

“And there was a girl who wanted to steal my swing”, Lucy interrupted, “but I told her that I saw it first and I pushed her off it. Finders, keepers; losers, weepers!” she smiled, looking blatantly pleased with herself.

Eli took her wallet out of her backpack and started to count the dirty cooper coins lying at the bottom of it. $0.63. Just enough, she thought with relief.

“Come on, Loo-see,” she said, getting up, “I’ll get you a hot chocolate.”

They started to make their way to the old snack-bar.

“You’ll see. Roberto makes the best hot chocolate. It’s thick and soft at the same time, and you can really taste the cocoa but it’s not bitter…it’s like drinking velvet.”

Lucy was skipping along next to her, not listening to a single word she was saying. Two fat sparrows were fighting for a stale sandwich crust. A baby was crying over there.

And that tree looked like a soldier with its beige and green trunk. Lucy gave it the military salute.

“Granpop planted a tree on the day I was born,” Lucy chirped.

“It’s a peach, and it gives the best peaches of all Minnesota. That’s where he lives. He has a really big garden. My cousins have trees, too; Joe has a plum tree, Laura has an apricot tree, Alice has an apple tree and Baby Jane doesn’t have one yet”, she said, counting on her fingers. “My brother’s pear tree died last summer. He got real jealous of my peach and Mommy tried to make me share it with him.

Mommy hopes that she’ll get the house when Granpop goes away so she can sell it…I hope she doesn’t, I like how it smells.”

Eli stopped abruptly. She remembered. The snack-bar no longer existed. She felt her ribcage tighten around her heart. She had

The Time Hunt by Pia Bastide to see it, she could see the red roof from here, they were so close…she had to see what they had done to it.

Eli started to walk faster, dragging a puzzled Lucy behind her and finally, they arrived in front of the old buvette.

“Eli? Why are you taking me to the bathroom?”

Eli couldn’t take her eyes off the brand new sign that was covering the east façade of the snackbar. It indicated “restrooms” in fancy letters. Toilets. Roberto’s restaurant had been turned into toilets. GENTLEMEN on the left, LADIES on the right. Toilets. It made Eli sick – literally. She rushed off to the nearest bush, fell on her knees and vomited. She could taste the bitter taste of bile in her mouth. She eventually managed to get up, her weak legs barely supporting her weight. Lucy gently tugged on her shirt and handed her a handkerchief. It was pale pink and golden initials had been sewed on the right corner. The fabric was still crisp and glazed, like it had never been used.

“I don’t want to mess it up”, Eli protested faintly, pushing Lucy’s hand away. Instead, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She hated that shirt anyway. Actually, she

hated all her clothes – nothing fitted her anymore, they all made her look like a decomposing scarecrow.

When she looked up, she saw a horrified woman staring at her, holding her children close to her, as if to protect them from the world’s filth. She probably wasn’t aware of the huge penis drawn on the fountain behind her. She’ll find out soon enough.

Eli and Lucy went back to their bench and sat down in silence.

Loo-see started to meticulously rip dead leaves apart and kept all the stalks because they looked like little spears. She was convinced that the rodents from the park would be grateful to find some ready-made weapons if they ever got into a war.

Eli watched her melancholically.

She didn’t know how to apologize for the lack of hot chocolate.

“Things can disappear so rapidly”, Eli said. “One second you think it’s there and you assume it’s going to stay, but when you come back, it has vanished to who knows where…”

“Like when my brother eats my cereal”, Lucy replied pensively.

“Yeah, kinda like that. It’s just…you feel so alone, you know, when everything is changing

around you and you barely recognize anything. Or when no one recognizes you. I mean, look at me. I haven’t always looked like this I used to be a little prettier than this.”

“I think you’re pretty in a sort of ugly way”, Loo-see kindly affirmed, putting her head on Eli’s arm.

Eli smiled faintly and closed her eyes, letting the bitter autumn wind play with what was left of her hair.

They stayed like this for a while, not saying anything, until the night began to fall. Lucy kneeled on the bench and tapped on Eli’s shoulder. She had to go home now.

Eli didn’t move. Lucy shook her a little harder, but nothing seemed to wake her up. Her skin was stone cold. It didn’t look like she was breathing either, but Lucy thought that maybe it was just how she slept. So she picked up her stalks, carefully put her scarf around Eli’s delicate neck and left with the strange feeling that, just like everything else in this park apparently, Eli was going to vanish to who knows where.

Gold Dust

Photo: stock.xchng

Issue 24

December 2013

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43

BEST POEM

The Half Strip Street...By A Mile Still, on a formerly pissed-stained mattress, Propped awkwardly, on a broken metal-frame, I stare at the transparent bare bulb burning, Predictable, like foreigners Before have done – All huddling in, an unloved cracked corner Of poorly formed walls. English people would not consider it.

And no bigger Than both Indians' Who neighbour either side of me, on the Curry Mile.

I listen in to the unwilling to listen torn-worn corridor Of priceless paired-shoes – placed outside rooms.

The slumlord yells, cheap weekly rents, At the immigrants, Who hide out along The mustard-linoleum corridor – Locked in their line-up of (strong smelling) shoebox rooms.

In June's early hour, They wake To pray to Allah, burrowing in their prayer mats.

The Sheik, left to me, snores loudly, consistently, Through the badly cracked plaster of a plastered wall.

Brother snores in-tune with brothers, as a way to compromise, And I cough out justifiably Amongst those prayers, Praying among the priceless paired-shoes of Muslim men, With their heads pressed against prayer mats – And In June's early hour I listen in To the snores and the prays to Allah People, too set in their ways, people, unwilling to compromise – I turn on my good ear to drown out The car horns and the snores and the prayers, And the Moroccan Who's TV mad.

Above, bedsprings creak, and the bare bulb burns – Moroccan man turn’s over.

I hear Rahman's Door and a fart (silence), And imagine Rahman rinsing his arse.

My mind tries to wander off, but vivid like a crime scene photo The piss-spattered shit-stained bowl follows, And a part of Rahman offends my nostrils.

Iranians on the end Free their tunes, As a flip-flop is trapped as a doorstop. The bad smoke (smell) Of Shisha leaves (lingering), 44

And I recall Rahman the year before...

'Here, no England. It capital of world.'

Six Am Six am, coughing-up, I wake to the fat Iraqi's phlegm-call.

The pubic, plastic, shower-sides and its limescale tiles, tell it all.

I am dead centre, in Mary Jane Crocs, and I spot the Iraqi's phlegm.

The kicked-in tiles Hang wide open – By a thousand, knotted, foreign hair-strands, Like matching, twin-cell, letterboxes, in Bali, Indonesia – And the lukewarm water Trickles over me Like summer rain, spouting, from a well-rusted watering can.

The fat Iraqi's, same sad song sounds louder – Pounding, chapatti dough round with his palms – Whilst Mr. Singh's mobile (mono ringtone) rings, And the water Freezes (as he does the pots), And I gasp for breath, shaking myself, Like not able to breathe when I start to fall asleep.

The Iranian drags out His prayer mat Like an Alsatian pup, pulling his best blanket out from his kennel.

Shisha fumes escape him, roused up in the Iranian's young lungs, His strange (strong smelling) tongue-tie-pray whiffs my nostrils, As I pass him on his travel prayer mat, Like a big fat toad: Little fat webbed-palms face down, Praying to Allah, on the mustard-linoleum corridor.

And I lock my second lock, before I head off to town.

Mr. Singh takes over from the fat Iraqi, Murmuring his one hour pray, down the Iraqi's ear, And I nod to my house mates (the foreign strangers).

Street Strip News The energy-saving dud-lightbulb hangs, still: My Nokia 113 lights the stairway, As I ascend The AsianWealth tabloid papered stairs.

The outside-door – again – Is left wide open, And Sunday's Sun lies open.

I nudge page 3 shut (with my foot),

To see what's on the front.

And I think out loud: 'Mr. Singh got sacked yesterday?'

Tunnel Vision on Corridor Chaos The mustard-linoleum corridor, of the religious and not religious, Tunnels its foreseen complaints and upset of tongue-tied tales Of late rents, loud sex, prays, broken appliances and its filthy mess – All year round.

The Iranians, on the end, Bark loudly of their dearly-loved homelands. The young Iranian Begs the slumlord to skip this week’s weekly rent, So that he can send

His Muslim mother money.

But again the slumlord yells, 'No, you give me rent.’

I glance along the dark narrow linoleum corridor, And then back at the young Iranian, who paws fifty pounds Over to the slumlord. Mr. Singh sings his one hour pray, The summer afternoon heats The four front rooms, Whilst the smell of chapatti dough burns. His adopted son does the pots, And Mr. Singh chops onions, as the washer shakes the floor.

And I can see My best summer ever, I was ten, spread across a fridge, with not a care in the world.

AM Spence

Illustration: Slavko Mali

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

45

Emoticon He emailed a whore for sex.

Erotic, detailed asking to meet up later.

Wrote of his vasectomy, pink scars still tender and raised from just six weeks earlier.

But he’d wear a condom, if it would put her at ease.

Make her more comfortable.

Smiley face emoticon ending the proposition.

His wife was at the hospital waiting for surgeons to finish on their son.

She needs to be with the boy, the baby’s with her mother.

Three kids are enough, she said, making the arrangements and he went in as scheduled and Vital pieces of him were cut and burned.

Photo: stock.xchng

46

Just a week later he cried for their child cathartic tears of the unknown went to hug her but she was already on the phone, making appointments and competent rational decisions.

The only light is from his laptop dark skies of December and the house is empty.

The ad blinked with flesh and text, said she’d make him feel like a man.

Jessica S Frank

Petrarchan

REVIEW

by Kristina Marie Darling BlazeVOX Books, 2013 Kindle edition ÂŁ1.99 File size: 79KB Reviewed by Adele Geraghty infinite, unseen promises of multiple realties. Each single line provides multiple scenarios, through the unstated; the holes in the weave, the empty spaces between tangible occurrences, the metered breath between words. Each vignette, succinct, tenuous and weighted with deceptive strength, evokes an individual, personal relativity. Petrarchan is a feast from which one is never fully sated, always wanting just a bit more. Every generation produces its writers who knead the parameters of expectation; think Stein, Joyce, Ferlinghetti, Cummings, visionaries of conception and style who set new literary standards. In our time, this is Christina Marie Darling.

T

Gold Dust

raditionalists beware. Petrarchan, the latest volume from Kristina Marie Darling, invites us on another exquisite mystery tour. Darling once again proves to keep fresh her tradition for literary innovation, gathering the pearls of history's best scribes as framework, then using them to structure a collage of sensual windows, through which we must build our own clarity. This is Darlingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fifth book from BlazeVOX Books and, there is no cut crystal here; no lavish painting of the obvious or twist in the tail tableau to render a vivid reward. Don't hope for light to lead the way, because this is virgin territory, at its most alluring. The only way to receive the gift that is Darling's is to jump in, mind wide to all unseen possibilities and to question nothing. Her strength is not in what she has portrayed, but in what she has left unsaid.

This is the wisdom which is Darling's; to evoke an autonomous empathy from the reader, through vignettes of the most tactile and sensual description.

Petrarchan is a delicate web, each thread connecting

Kristina Marie Darling

Find out more...

Kristina is the author of 15 books and maintains a blog at: http://kristinamariedarling.com

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

47

Dance

James Cox

“It plays the song, the radio does...

“I

t plays the song, the radio does, And as it plays she sings along.

She learnt the words when she was young.”

As the song played on that tatty brown kitchen radio she couldn't help squeezing shut her eyes and smiling.

Without consent her body swayed and her thin, grey arms extended around the space where he no longer was.

If he were to fall out the sky at that moment, Jim would have slotted perfectly into the gap between her cheek and flattened palms just as he had done all those years ago.

The snare tapped out a sassy shower. A trumpet blew a trill.

She was twenty-years-old and at the Corn exchange home guard dance.

Jim was a taut 23 year old cutting a fine figure in his de-mob suit, with his thick tanned wrists and perfect nose.

When she first saw him he was already watching her from a dark corner of the hall.

As a needle scratched the empty revolutions between songs he extended his hand towards her.

And she took it with a flushed smile.

He lead her to the shiny wooden floor as the song that would become their own began to play.

They stayed on that floor until the MC raised the lights.

When she opened her eyes she was 78 and caught herself in 48

her kitchen mirror wearing every year.

She wiped away the swell of a tear.

“You old fool,” she said aloud.

“This is a dedication,” read the announcer, “from Jim to Matilda.

He says thanks for the memories and being you, even when I was barely myself.”

The music played on and a nasal crooner began to sing.

For a moment the tune was drowned out by applause as Jim span her into his arms and kissed her.

The claps were from the swathes of well wishers at their wedding, sealing their whirlwind affair after just months of courtship.

The man they hired to sing with the band that day wasn’t quite as good as the man on the record – she had never cared for singers’ names – but the instruments played just about as close as August heat.

As they slow-danced chest to breast she could hear Jim whispering each word to her.

Each face that swirled into view over his shoulder, the beaming bridesmaids, her teary mother, vanished into insignificance and at that moment she wished she could trade the elation for privacy.

But still he whispered and still they danced, under the parasol of that song.

Matilda caught herself grinning and shook it away.

“Old fool,” she repeated and filled the kettle.

She turned to switch off the wireless but caught sight of the cracked, matt photograph on the

shelf. The one of her and Jim suspending their boy between them as he shrieked with laughter.

Harry fell asleep much faster when Jim sang to him.

She would listen through the door and would hum the melody along with him.

Without that sassy shower of snare and slippery trumpet melody the words were raw and aching.

When Jim’s volume tapered off she knew Harry had fallen asleep and it was time to creep off into the front room.

It’s funny, she thought, looking at that photograph, how something as simple as a song can crop up like this time and time again.

The photo was bleached from years of sitting by the window and the colour had faded, apart from the flash of Harry’s red Wellingtons and Jim’s navy suit.

He loved that suit.

He even looked dapper in that stubborn, double breasted suit when they buried him in it.

He laid awfully still looking calm and grey.

The same song played over a poorly amplified sound system and the snare was lost to the sniffles from the chapel.

Harry didn’t blink, not once during the service.

She stood beside Jim and said goodbye, kissed her finger tips lowered them onto his perfect nose.

She mouthed the last few lines of the song and prayed he would do the same. But of course he refused. It was the first time she had cried that he had not come to her.

The song finished and she found herself sitting at the table in

Dance by James Cox her yellow kitchen staring at her thin hands.

She wondered how many times she would hear that song between now and her own eternal

coda.

The empty grooves between one life and the next.

“Wasn’t that lovely,” said the announcer “Something nice and

breezy to start the show, now for something altogether more serious…”

Gold Dust

Illustration: Slavko Mali

Issue 24

December 2013

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49

There was nothing in her eyes

FLASH FICTION

by Liam Shipton

It was around about 9pm and I had been in the bar since it had opened...

I

t was around about 9pm and I had been in the bar since it had opened. I was drunk on whisky and the barmaid was getting better looking as the night went on.

There weren’t many people there; it was a bar for drunkards. There were no beautiful people, there was no dancing and the service was lousy. It suited me perfectly. It is my belief that a man should drink in a bar that reflects his state of mind, and I was doing that.

Somebody came out of the toilet. I didn’t remember seeing anybody going in, but I wasn’t sure of much at this point. The man came and sat on the stool next to mine.

“Whisky.”

He looked familiar. He had a receding hairline and a weathered face that looked as if it had seen a few

Illustration: Slavko Mali

50

things, covered in whiskers. His eyes spoke pain.

The barmaid served the whisky.

Damn, she looked good. I studied the man some more.

“Don’t I know you?” I asked him.

“Depends on how well-read you are,” he replied.

“Ah, it is you then! You’re Charles Bukowski!”

“Call me Hank.”

I told him that I admired his work, and he seemed indifferent.

“I’m Sam, Sam Hilton. I’m a writer too. Well I’m trying to be,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked, “There’s already enough of those in the world.

What on earth do you want to be a writer for?”

A good question and one that

every writer should know the answer to. I didn’t know it then; I’m not sure I know it now.

“That’s good,” he said, “once you understand what writing’s all about, that’s when you should stop calling yourself a writer. They have courses now, at universities, creative writing courses. As if creativity is something they can teach. You’ll go far, boy, just don’t let them teach the soul out of you. Read Hemingway, read Kerouac; if you must, read me.

Just don’t read their fucking rule book.”

We sat in silence for a while. We finished our drinks, and I said I’d get the next round. I waited for the barmaid to finish snorting cocaine off the end of the bar, and called her over.

She looked even better now. She brought us our whiskies. I told Hank

There was nothing in her eyes by Liam Shipton that I was thinking of giving up drinking.

“Man, if you’re going to be a writer, be an alcoholic. If you’re going to be anything, be an alcoholic. It’s the only way,” he said.

“But it’s doing me no good. I wake up feeling tired, my skin’s bad, I’m depressed all the time.”

“Well you have to be. Any writing worth reading is born of darkness.

Alcohol gives you that. Any decent writer should drink copious amounts,” he replied.

“Walt Whitman never drank,” I reminded him.

“And look where it got him! Walt Whitman’s dead!”

“So are you. You died in ’94.”

“I didn’t die, I can’t die. I just tried death out to see what it’s like.”

“You can’t ‘try death out’.”

“Suit yourself.”

We sat in silence some more.

The barmaid snorted another line. He

Issue 24

December 2013

read my mind.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “She’s a lousy fuck. Gives nothing back and has no imagination.”

“You’ve fucked her?” I asked.

“That’s not the point. Even if I hadn’t, it shows in her eyes. Look hard enough and you’ll see. That girl’s not what she seems. She’s no muse, she’s no nothing. Look in her eyes and tell me what you see.”

I waited for her to move so that I could get a better look. I tried looking into her eyes in a subtle way.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly! That’s my point.”

He had a bag next to his barstool. I didn’t remember seeing it there before, but I wasn’t sure of much at all. He reached into it.

“I have something for you,” he told me, and he produced a book and slammed it down on the bar.

THERE WAS NOTHING IN HER

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

EYES A NOVEL BY SAM HILTON “Where did you get that?” I asked him.

“How should I know? It’s your novel.”

“But I haven’t written a novel. I haven’t even started one. I’ve only written poems, songs, short stories; that’s even got my name on it,” I said.

“I never died, you know. People just perceived me to be dead. I’m going for a shit.”

He put the book back in his bag and took the bag and himself back into the toilet. I never saw him come back out. Sometimes I’d go back to the bar, to maybe see him again, but he never made another appearance.

The barmaid still worked there though, and I often wondered if there was any truth in what Charles Bukowski told me.

Gold Dust

51

Gold Dust Sings

FEATURE

Rick Hayter reports on Gold Dust Sings, Gold Dust magazine’s singer-songwriter competition, which took place on 15 November 2013 at The Horse pub in Lambeth.

Results Winner: Alistair Warren Runner up: Meryl & A Bit of Yellow

I

t’s not often this North London boy goes south of the river, but this was definitely worth the risk.

The best 5 of the 40 or so entries to the first Gold Dust magazine singer/songwriter competition were due to perform. It was up to the two other judges and myself to decide the winner of the £100 (and record biz interest) prize.

The venue was great – a room above a student hangout on the wild Westminster Bridge Rd. We got zodiac signs on the ceiling, a posh red and gold curtain behind the stage – we even had a mirror ball (sadly unused).

There was a good enthusiastic crowd – about 40 of them, an excellent sound guy and two lovely sisters as MCs. The scene was set.

The following comments on each of the contestants are taken directly from the judges’ score cards.

1 Ali Warren Nice fingerpicking (a bit quiet at start). Lovely vocal, mesmeric, powerful. Hard to make out words. Second song – good change of tempo.

Expressive dynamics. Good voice control . Excellent control and balance between guitar and voice. Ambient mood, trills, dynamics, subtle vibrato.

2 Meryl & A Bit of Yellow Clear vocals and lyrics. Well prepared. Memorable song. Relaxed, tuneful, good stage manner.

Nice dynamics, rhythmic. Catchy tune, beautiful voice, good instrument/voice balance. Second 52

song a bit repetitive, but a good melody with engaging lyrics.

3 Garry Perkins A natural performer with catchy lyrics, great tune, rhythm and blues classic sound. Second tune didn’t cut it much. Nice Rock guitar feel. Strong rhythm. Clever, funny, lyrics. Slightly self conscious performance. Catchy.

4 Adam J Morgan Started a bit self conscious, great performance by the end. Sophisticated, literate songwriting. Good piano playing, voice control. Versatile on guitar, and good tempo. Good lyrics and tonal quality.

Powerful rendition of last tune. Nice dynamics.

Quirky. Unusual progressions. Catchy, memorable chorus.

5 Charlie Leavy Strong songwriting and stronger performance.

Second song almost a rap. Vigorous strumming but also good sense of dynamics. A very good song, very commercial and has a catchy tune.

Definitely a rising star – good control of her instrument. Relateable. Catchy riffs, vocals and guitar. Natural – pitch perfect. Could cover more range.

I am sure I speak for all 3 judges when I say that choosing a winner was fiendishly hard. Objectivity is difficult to apply to a single 10 minute exposure. It is almost impossible to disregard ones personal taste. In short, I even started to feel sympathy for the dreaded Simon Cowell.

All 5 of the performers had excellent qualities in one or more departments. Ours is a mongrel art form. A singer/songwriter needs to sing, play an instrument, write lyrics and music and have per-

Gold Dust Sings

formance skills. Charisma does no harm, nor does sex appeal, nor does dress sense. No one human can excel in all these areas, though some come close.

Hats off to David Gardiner for soliciting the en-

tries, choosing the top 5 and organising the event.

A splendid time was had by all â&#x20AC;&#x201C; even the poor judges.

Gold Dust

Ali Warren

Charlie Leavy

Meryl & A Bit of Yellow

The venue

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December 2013

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53

Contributors Every issue, we receive around 200 short story and poetry submissions from all around the world.

Prose Nigel Jarrett Nigel Jarrett is a freelance writer and music critic, having worked as a reporter and sub-editor on a daily newspaper. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies Award for short fiction. His début story collection, Funderland, was published by Parthian in 2011 to enthusiastic reviews and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His first poetry collection, Miners At The Quarry Pool, will appear in 2013-14. His poetry, essays and stories appear widely and he reviews jazz for Jazz Journal and poetry for Acumen magazine. He is also the co-editor of The Day’s Portion (Village Publishing), a collection of Arthur Machen’s journalism. Jarrett also writes music criticism and essays.

His stories are beginning to appear on literary websites. In 2012, he was again a finalist for the Rhys Davies Award. Born in the industrial Eastern Valley of South Wales, Jarrett attended Cardiff University College. He is also an artist and illustrator. He lives in Monmouthshire, not far from Tintern Abbey. He has a website: www.NigelJarrett.wordpress.com Annette Kupke Annette Kupke is a middle-aged special needs teacher, originally from Germany, who has lived in Scotland for thirteen years.

Writing has been her hobby on and off since adolescence, and one of her stories was among the twenty selected winners of a national short story competition when she was eighteen. However, for many years she didn't take writing very seriously, until some five years ago when she started to write regularly and engage in online writing communities. She has had poems published in Snakeskin, The Delinquent and Poetry Scotland and a short story in Issue 22 of Gold Dust.

Martin Keaveney Martin Keaveney first trained as a professional chef and later worked in property management. In recent years, a teenage love of writing re-emerged. He holds a B.A. Honours Degree (2.1) in English Literature and Italian from NUI, Galway, where he has also enrolled on the M.A. in Writing. His short story The Rainy Day will be published by Poddle Publications in their anthology Small Lives later this year. A second, Bachelor Avenue was published in an anthology by Untilled Field Writers in December, 2012. He also writes screenplays, many of which have been produced by a local film crew and screened at national festivals. He is currently developing a pilot based on mythical Irish legends for Room 12 Productions in London.

Wayne Dean-Richards Wayne Dean-Richards is a teacher, father of three and the author of many pieces of short fiction, published in both the UK and the US. His story Me and Groucho, I’m Bruce Lee and Debts were published in previous editions of Gold Dust. He is an accomplished reader of his work, both live and on radio. Some of his short fiction was collected in the critically acclaimed At The Edge, and a novel Breakpoints is available from Amazon. See Wayne’s homepage at www.waynedeanrichards.com for more details.

54

Emma Balmforth Emma Balmforth and lives in West Sussex with her husband and two teenage sons. She has had a varied career so far: she’s been a waitress, a civil servant and a teacher. Although she read English literature at university and dabbled in creative writing courses, she has only recently decided to take her writing more seriously and has finally managed to finish some short stories. She came across Gold Dust when she was looking for short stories to read when at the office and probably should have been working. She was impressed with the variety of tales, which were often unusual and sometimes dark. It made a change from a lot of other magazine fiction out there, and she thought her work might have found a home.

Guido Dresmé Guido Dresmé was born in 1983, and has continued to live ever since. At this point he is not known for anything, but until that changes he gratefully goes about his shopping in complete anonymity. He writes stories in various genres, and in two languages, Dutch and English. He happily lives with the love if his life and his daughter in Enschede, The Netherlands.

Matt Denniss Matt writes short stories about things going wrong, and long stories about things going very wrong. His work can be found in Regime Magazine, The Tincture Journal, Word Riot, Vibewire, Flash Fiction Offensive, trans lit mag, Zinewest and Hypallage Writing. Be sure to check out the upcoming editions of Niche Magazine and The Tincture Journal for more of his work.

Liam Shipton Liam Shipton is a 20-year-old short story writer, poet and songwriter. He spent his teenage years living in France where he discovered the works of Victor Hugo and Molière. He returned to the UK at the age of 16 where he started writing more and more frequently. Liam claims that his goal is to “make the reader stare into harsh reality; the more uncomfortable they feel, the better”. Although he has not been previously published, Liam has recorded a musical album consisting entirely of his own material.

Pia Bastide PIa Bastide is a previously unpublished second-year university student.

Slavko Mali Slavko Mali moved from the life of a physical worker to designer and journalist. He is devoted to drawing and painting, comics, cartoons, graphic design, illustration, mail art, and writing short stories and poems. He lives in Nish (Serbia) as a freelance artist and a tenant. Since a car ran over his dog he began to wander looking for the killer, but he understood that the murderers are all around us. He does not like art, but it's his destiny. He likes to listen to the radio.

James Cox James Cox is a 30-year-old features writer for newspapers trying

Contributors his hand at a bit of fiction. He writes features for Newsquest Essex on subjects such as human interest, food, lifestyle and current affairs, which appear in local papers such as the Colchester Gazette, the Basildon and Southend Echo. Deep down he has always harboured the desire to publish fiction.

Poems Barry Charman Barry Charman is an English-born writer, currently living in North West London. He is a past winner of the London Writers’ Competition Promis Prize. He has had a short story published in a Smashwords anthology, and has been published in a Flash Fiction Worlds anthology, the Poetry Box Magazine, Cyclamens & Swords Publishing website, and won the Writers’ Forum flash fiction contest 2012, gaining him publication in the Lakeview International Journal of literature and arts. He has a blog at: barrycharman.blogspot.com AM Spence AM Spence was born in Manchester and read literature as an undergraduate at The University of Manchester. In 2009 she completed an MA in creative writing in poetry at the same university.

Rhonda Parrish Even though she has been known to be too insecure to call herself a poet, Rhonda's work has been nominated for a Rhysling award and included in Imaginarium 2012: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She recently edited a speculative anthology entitled Metastasis to benefit the American Cancer Society and has a fairyinspired anthology forthcoming from World Weaver Press. In between those projects she still finds time to write, and to edit and publish Niteblade Magazine. Rhonda maintains a website at http://www.rhondaparrish.com

health care worker, living in London with partner Jean; adopted daughter Cherelle has recently moved to Australia and married her Kiwi boyfriend. Four published works, SIRAT (science fiction novel), The Rainbow Man and Other Stories (short story collection), The Other End of the Rainbow (short story collection) and Engineering Paradise (novel) as well as many anthology entries and competition successes.

Interested in science, philosophy, psychology, scuba diving, travel, wildlife, cooking, IT, alternative lifestyles and communal living. Large, rambling home page at www.davidgardiner.net .

Dave Turner Dave Turner is a lifelong poet and has been writing for over 40 years.

In his spare time from writing poetry he was at first a Primary School Teacher and then a Software Engineer and brought up two children with his wife Mavis. Now retired, he is a student of English Literature at Sunderland University's Centre for Life Long Learning and interested (unlike Hamlet) in all the uses of this world. His work has been published by UK Authors Press and United Press and he is now a published and performed Playwright, thanks to Gold Dust Magazine.

Omma Velada Omma Velada lives in London with her husband and two children, and writes full-time. Her short stories and poems have been published in numerous literary journals (including JMWW, The Eildon Tree and The Beat) and anthologies (including Voices From The Web and The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry 2005). She came second in the UK Authors 2004 short-story competition and was also elected Writer of the Month at EditRed. Both her novel, The Mackerby Scandal (UKA Press, 2004) and her short story collection, The Republic of Joy, are available from Lulu.

Jessica S Frank Jessica S Frank is an actual red-headed step-child living in a small town in Wisconsin. She is a former newspaper reporter, which pays only slightly higher than being a published poet. Her poetry has appeared in RagMag and The Mid-America Poetry Review, and six of her words live in infamy in It All Changed in An Instant: More Six Word Memoirs. She lives with her husband and three children, who, with any luck, will be in minimal therapy when they grow up.

Daniel Ari Daniel Ari has been devoted to writing practice since 1985. Poet’s Market 2014, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney’s, 42 Magazine, Empirical, Defenestration, Conscious Dancer and several other publications have recently published (or slated to publish) his work.

Daniel leads writing groups and performs poetry readings throughout California and the Pacific Northwest. He is also a career copywriter.

Features & Reviews Gianni Boscarino Gianni Boscarino is a jazz pianist who writes in his spare time. He has a BA in Music from Middlesex university and an MMus in Jazz Performance from Guildhall School of Music.He maintains a poetry blog at http://gianniboscarino.blogspot.co.uk.

David Gardiner Ageing hippy, former teacher, later many things, including mental

Issue 24

December 2013

www.golddustmagazine.co.uk

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The Back Page

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Watch this space...

Issue 25 of Gold Dust magazine It may seem like a long way off now, but put a note in your diary that Issue 25 will be out in July, in good time for your summer beach reading!

About Gold Dust • Every issue of Gold Dust is viewed online absolutely free by over 3,000 readers.

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Gold Dust anthologies Gold Dust has published 2 poetry anthologies and 1 prose anthology:

To submit to Gold Dust magazine Our (short) submission guidelines can be found at: www.golddustmagazine.co.uk/Writers

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