Another changeable day with squalls, clouds playing tag and fabulous light. Aside from the odd cow parsley stalk snapped by the wind these conditions fuel the verges’ tropical rates of growth. Below the parsley, and in places almost as tall, hogweed, nettles of all persuasions, garlic mustard, Herb Robert and several varieties of grass elbow each other aside. Lower down the dirty, exhausted leaves of daffodil poke through the crush like victims of a stampede. Bedstraw, almost unnoticed now that everything else is green, reaches a height of six feet or more using the hedgerows for support. Does this allow a final decision to be reached as to which variety it is? Unexpectedly the greatest length, usually straggling but here perhaps able to climb, is awarded by field guides to marsh bedstraw, a species I have ruled out on account of its preference for ditches. And it is earlier to flower than other contenders but there are no signs of colour yet. As with many of my attempts to identify things the jury is still out. Perhaps it is time to accept a balance of likelihood, a majority verdict as it were.
Looking up into one of the great trees I see an oak apple and then another nearby, both of them of a size fully meriting their name. A little further on a sprig like Thursday’s has fallen onto the road and a first glance reveals several galls, most clinging to leaves but one appearing to be fastened onto the wood. On closer examination, however, there is a leaf, so tiny it is dwarfed by the parasite, a piggy backer larger than its pig. Scattered on the ground are many more of the same which have become detached from their moorings to resemble windfalls of currants or berries. The first specimens I found and took home have resisted all attempts to keep them alive so this is another opportunity for a spot of kitchen-worktop dissection. The same fruit-like consistency is exposed but this time a white maggot emerges at the centre. At first sight repulsive, as I might have imagined, like any egg it makes an appeal for protection, our nurturing instincts inherited, ungovernable.
It is another bright morning, a fierce sun halfway up the sky, the wind cold and gusting from the west. Nothing but unravelled vapour trails mars the blue, which is pure and deep overhead but leaks flavour towards the horizon. Blossom has started to appear in Tall Tree Orchard, the flowers a rich, celebratory pink. Two pigeons bale out of an oak, the startled clatter of wings making the birds look guilty. My eyes adjusting to the light I see that leaves have started to form, the old tree steeling itself for another year. At times like this, and with age on my mind, the cycle of life looks exhausting.
The cuckoo pint attracts my attention for the first time in weeks, its presence taken for granted, its early exuberance upstaged. At first I think the thin green cylinder is a new leaf, yet to unfurl. Then I notice the same thing in other specimens, some of them quite immature. Is this the flower whose likeness to sexual organs has earned the plant its other name, Lords and Ladies? There is nothing for it but to open one up, their frequency in the lane excusing the intrusion. At first there does seem to be a leaf of some kind turned in upon itself, but on tearing at the outer folds I discover the thin, priapic organ known as the spadix, its purple skin concealing pale flesh which has been exposed where my thumb scraped the surface. Soon these cocky little spires will be visible everywhere, but exposing one like this makes me see how extraordinary they are, the upper part of the shaft slightly swollen like a club, the whole thing dense yet pliable. The function of this wand is another question, given that the flowers themselves are tiny and concealed at the base. I suppose it draws pollinators in – but how: by colour, shape or movement in a breeze? At least that is the male source of the epithet accounted for. The distaff side must be the sheath I have just broken into which unwraps to form a hood, shapely and secret within. The country folk who coined the plant’s name had dirty minds.
Rain cloud, windblown and blotchy, covers the sky. A weak shower begins to fall then thinks better of it. The crow pretending to fly overhead is really being swept by a broom.
On turning into the Spinney I am met by the same dumper truck I saw the other day – or at least the driver is the same, a fair-haired bandit with his face hidden behind a scarf. There are lumps of red clay on the lane – so compacted that when I kick one towards the bank it does not break. At first this action feels public-spirited, but instinct is selfish at heart and it is me I have imagined being peppered with clods spat by passing cars. Or is it playfulness I have regressed to, the small boy making a ball out of anything?
A few minutes later the truck returns preceded by another just like it. Their buckets are full of soil, fertile-looking and claggy. I watch them disappear round the kink in the lane then track their progress along the B-road by means of the amber lights flashing. They turn into the meadow beyond the Paddy and bump over the uneven ground, the lead driver standing at the wheel, legs braced, the small boy in me awake again and enthralled. My eyes run ahead of them and see a spoil heap already head-high at which, one by one, the trucks lurch to a halt and upend their loads. There is a building site not far away. Perhaps the landowner is being paid to receive the waste or has need of it for some earthwork he is planning. Once again I am struck by the clarity of the light and how near this little drama seems to me.
There is something mechanical going on in Tall Tree Orchard as well, making a mindless, grinding sort of noise. Despite the absence of leaves I cannot see what it is, the density of branches surprising. Perhaps they have started to spray, although there is a pyramid of gravel or clinker behind the hedge which may be connected. This is the real sign of spring, not flowers appearing or longer days but farmers with their artillery.
Like any repeated action writing about and even walking the lane can get to seem tedious at times. I wake feeling listless after a disturbed night and find nothing to interest me this morning. On my return after lunch, however the world looks a different place. The flashiness of dawn has yielded to a more settled radiance. The air has had time to warm up a little. Even the rain get points for coming out of nowhere. On my approach to the junction with the B-road a cloud half-covers the sun and cars are reduced to vague, rushing shapes save for single points of brilliance on glass or chrome. Then the light changes again and everything is revealed in sumptuous detail: a Tesco van, a timber transport, a high-backed people-carrier with a wheelchair pope.
On my way back I blunder uninvited into a festival of sparrows. Attracted by feeders outside the cottage they tumble about the hedgerow emitting high-pitched cheeps, single notes that playfully slide and bend. Like the pigeon their reputation for being plain is quite undeserved, the richness belied by the adjective ‘brown’ made almost ornate by flecks of black and white. No peacock, certainly, but no strutting either.
Once back into the Spinney I am on naming business. Not the trees that puzzled me yesterday but the plant with the cleft leaf that I comically mistook for convolvulus. Found everywhere along the lane, it is maturing beyond the juvenile stage which deceived me, the leaves bigger, brasher and swarthy-green. Persuaded by these changes to try again I have another candidate to investigate. Arum maculatum (the second word derived from livid spots like birthmarks) is more commonly known as Lords and Ladies or Cuckoo Pint, the former on account of a fancied similarity between the flower and genitalia. That is something I look forward to seeing. The photographs are a good match; its habitat is wet places and although we are miles from a river everywhere is wet this year; and it occurs all over England and Wales, only thinning out towards the north like my scalp. This is good enough for me even if, unlike my prose, there are no purple patches.
Rather than bore you, and risk crashing the internet, with extracts from all the stories I have written, this part of the website includes longer passages from two of the pieces which are currently languishing in an unpublished – or, as I like to think of it, pre-published – state. An American jurist, defending his habit of leaving judgements in a desk for a while before going public, called this waiting period ‘ageing in the wood’; and it is true that something written and then set aside can surprise you with its brilliance when looked at after an interval, or more likely shock you with the number and blatancy of its flaws. See which of these verdicts you think applies to the examples given here. The header to this page illustrates the first of the stories sampled.
The Speed of Light
A man on holiday with his wife is stricken with jealousy and suspicion but it is his behaviour that ends up under the spotlight. He is a reliable narrator without being a very likeable one, the reader’s sympathies not easily placed.
Extract (from the start of the story) Imagine this. You are standing on a tropical beach staring intently at the sea. Study how the light behaves, congealing like solder on the crest of a wave or turning its slope to porcelain. Watch as a passing cloud makes the surface as hard and dull as slate, and then how it brightens when the swell tilts upwards towards the sun. See a tired wave collapsing under its own weight then shrinking back again, the dregs leaving a spittle of foam on sand glassy with receding wetness.
Now you are in the picture. Now you know what I was doing, what I was thinking, when my wife walked out of the trees behind me with another man.
If I had extended by a few seconds this daily act of communion I would not have seen her emerge from the coconut palms that overhang the upper slope of the beach and shelter with rustling, porous shade the paths that lead to the village half a mile inland. I would only perhaps have heard her voice calling me and, turning, watched her paddle through the sand, this year’s sarong flapping loyally round her legs, the twin yolks of her yellow bikini bright against the ten-day tan. I might not even have noticed the young man heading back towards the hotel in his barman’s uniform, but in any case there would have been nothing to connect them, a local hurrying to work along the tide mark of pale driftwood and scrawny seaweed, and a woman guest rejoining her husband after a morning spent snorkelling while he, the hopeless swimmer, clung to dry land and painted.
But I chose that moment to look round. Your neck rotates a few degrees, the wrong splinters of light pierce your eye, and the whole world changes. I saw her arm outstretched, her left hand, the one with my ring on it, raised to hip-level and beginning to fall back again. I saw his arm already dropping to his side, as if he had wanted the moment to end sooner. I saw her looking at him along the axis of her brown, freestyler’s shoulder. I saw him turning away, regretfully, anxiously as they came out into the open – and maybe contemptuously as well. All of this was clear, or at least possible, in a moment so still and so saturated with meaning it was like an allegorical painting…
Zaragoza
In this story an English geologist working in the oil industry looks up an old colleague in Spain and finds himself staying longer than expected. Many of my stories hinge on changes in the way people think about themselves and this one is no exception, the protagonist forced to confront both his future and his past. The first page or two were workshopped with the novelist Jim Crace. He cautioned against the alliteration in paragraph one and I tried removing it but could think of nothing better. Even so he was kind enough to call this ‘great writing’.
Extract (from the start of the story) Now that the bar had emptied after lunch Stephen was alone, with only his addictions for company: a fourth cigarette, lit from the stub of the third, and a second cup of coffee, bitter and bituminous. They outnumbered him, his vices. Worse, they functioned as a team, each fix craving the other.
He looked down at his feet. A gutter ran the length of the bar, shallow and tiled like a urinal. It was littered with ash and the peeled skins of prawns, dropped without looking by everyone else but in his case aimed with one eye closed and a tally kept to ward off boredom. This patter of empty husks, sheath-like and glittery, called to mind shellfish sinking to an ocean floor. He checked his watch again. Much longer here and rock would begin to form at his feet, something sedimentary that bore, in its whorls and cavities, a memory of the life forms he had munched on while waiting.
Where was Hector? It was unlike him to be so late. First-time fathers had more important things on their minds, he supposed, in this case the christening or baptism or whatever they called it here. But that was the point: coming second to these other loyalties made Stephen feel restless. The moment had arrived earlier than expected and was sure to cause disappointment, even offence. But he always obeyed his instincts in these matters, and stubbing out the cigarette before it was finished drove the point home: it was time to leave Zaragoza…
My stories appeared in five BCU anthologies (a testament to the quality of my writing or to the length of time it took me to finish the course). The last two of these collections I also edited. Extracts are presented here from each of these entries, along with images of the book covers behind which they coyly repose. The header to this page comes from a fresco by Giotto which features in the last story sampled below.
For ‘Simnel’s Yew’
For ‘A Man of His Times’
For ‘Standard Deviation’
For ‘Bedpan Hotel’
For ‘Signore Bigshot’
Simnel’s Yew
I had two stories in the inaugural anthology Finding a Voice (2008) but this one was finished first and therefore gets pride of place. An old woman and her son embark on a series of visits to famous trees which becomes for her a means of communicating something important.
Extract (from near the middle of the story) Their third tree was his choice, a towering redwood in the grounds of a private school. It was said to be the tallest in England although Lawrence thought this a cheap distinction, there being, he was sure, much taller ones north of the border. They were taken to the spot by the Principal’s secretary, pausing to be shown the new gymnasium then standing aside for blazered boys on their way to lessons, numbers trumping age in deciding right of way. The tree bore the name of the man who planted it over a hundred years before, a shipping tycoon turned amateur botanist whose last claim on posterity this was, now that his fleet of liners, once synonymous with luxury travel, had disappeared without even a sinking to be remembered by. Gabidon’s Pine was a misnomer, according to Marwick, the redwood being a sequoia, not a pine. Lawrence, versed in the false attribution of paintings, took a dim view of this mistake. In his eyes it somehow diminished the tree. But custom had a habit of snubbing what was technically correct, as Violet had seen with streets when the council tried changing their names, and she liked the idea of a native species stealing the intruder’s glory…
A Man of His Times
In this story, which appeared in The Book of Numbers (2009), a man tries to ditch the stale categories of race, gender and age but finds it difficult to escape who and what he is.
Extract (from the start of the story) Lance Draper ducked into the museum without breaking stride, judging the clearance perfectly. Subsidence had caused the front wall to sag soon after it was built, even the oldest prints showing the famous bellied lintel. As a result, anyone of more than average height was forced to stoop when passing through the door, which looked and felt like homage, to the place itself but also to its founder, whose bust, atop a marble plinth, met you inside the hall.
Lance found it difficult to reconcile that mild, uneventful face with what was known about Malvolio Kendrick. Naturalist and bestower of names, his own attached to numerous species of insect and plant. Trafficker in totems and masks from Brazil to Benin. Member of Parliament. Diplomat and, reputedly, spy. Property developer, the streets around the museum his design. And, as if that wasn’t enough, three marriages yielding eleven children – and they were just the legitimate ones. ‘When did you find the time?’ Lance thought, as he reckoned with the sapping complexity of such a life. ‘Man, they threw away the mould.’
It was ten thirty – later than usual but there were good reasons for that. He had slept at Clea’s the night before, and needed to call home for his books and a change of clothes. The memory of her receding into the bathroom passed through his mind, a towel worn like a stole but otherwise quite bare, each cheek lifting and falling as she walked, a comic device, a sleek contraption of desire…
Weights and Measures
By the time of the third anthology, The Spiral Path (2010), I was writing about things further removed from my own experience. This story features the best ending I have ever written, which is a bit of a tease because the extract comes from earlier in the story. Monica, a young single woman with decided views on life, meets someone she used to know on the train and finds the standards of behaviour she prides herself on surprisngly hard to maintain.
Extract (from the middle of the story) They had met doing holiday jobs in the local branch of Flooring World, Monica in her first year at university, Simon is his second. It was a barn of a place, with rolls of carpet as big as felled trees, mats piled like pancakes and imitation Persian rugs on the wall. Simon helped with deliveries, loading orders onto the van, changing the displays. The men who worked there cracked jokes about students and made him arm wrestle, laughing at his weakness. It was a half-hearted initiation, after which they treated him as one of their own. The comradeship of labour – or idleness, as it was half of the time. Monica rarely escaped the office, where she did the filing and answered the phone. It was dogsbody work ruled over by the manager’s wife, who initially resented having a younger woman around and then bored her with gripes about marriage. Monica almost envied the men, who at least had a form of solidarity, however limited their conversation. As the summer wore on Simon spent more time in the office, as his usefulness became clear. Comments were passed about Monica and him, clumsy attempts at match-making which they both ignored, except to relieve passages of boredom or, once, in the pub, when a kind of flirtation occurred…
Bedpan Motel
The fourth anthology, Extremus appeared in 2011 and was my first experience of editing. This might have proved a distraction from my own work, particularly as I was trying out a form new to me, the monologue. But in the end I was reasonably pleased with the outcome, in which an unreliable narrator tells a story from his past only to reveal more about himself than he intended.
Extract (from the start of the story) In the year in question I was… well, let’s say much younger. That’s not forgetfulness on my part, or vanity. Call it superstition, born of long years in the trade. If I say how old I am the phone will stop ringing. The parts will dry up completely. But no doubt you have ways of finding out such things. Or more likely, you’ll ask my daughter, who has much less reason to be coy about her age. Although she must be getting on a bit, perhaps to the point when her own parts are drying up, if you get my drift.
Let’s start again. It was never-mind-which-year and Flic was only a few weeks old. Oh yes, that’s what we called her, short for…its longer form, anyway. It used to amuse me how people gave their children perfectly decent names and then immediately mucked around with them. Then, low and behold, I went and did the same. Of course, you’ll know Flic by her stage name… which eludes me, for the moment. Would have been nice if she’d kept mine. We are a dynasty, you know. Three generations. Or is it four, now? Makes one proud – and humble, of course. Yes, that’s it. Humble and proud…
Signore Bigshot
This is probably the most effectively realised of the short stories I have had published and appeared in Blood from a Stone, the last anthology I was involved with. It relates the effect on an Italian businessman of a chance encounter with an American and deals with art, memory, sex, the strangely delayed death of religion and a bourgeois as opposed to a proletarian sensibility – all in less than 5,000 words.
Extract (from the start of the story)
“Mano sul mano.”
Guido placed over his companion’s hand, with its writer’s callus and childlike absence of rings, his own plump and predatory paw. He noticed, as if with her eyes, a pouch of flesh at the base of his thumb, the liver spots which made his skin look unclean. He was like this about his physical self, never morbid or excessively vain but alive to its humours and flaws: the billowing from muscle to flab which started years ago, and lately the subtle encroachments of age.
This was a trademark routine, a verbal prank that could turn its hand to seduction or philosophy. The first couplets were an excuse to make contact, a small liberty gauging the level of response. After that, of course, the words were on their own.
He closed his hand around hers and said “Mano in mano”, the middle word stressed to indicate a natural progression. She stiffened momentarily, more in surprise than alarm, her eyes fixed on his mouth like someone who senses a trick is being performed and wants to know how. Was he running ahead of himself? They had known each other less than an hour yet something about her had made him impetuous, an unfamiliar braiding of sharpness and naivety. For once it was not clear what outcome he desired…
Our division of the calendar is scoffed at by nature, the new year starting as the old one finished with wild and miserable weather. Never having been superstitious I regard this as disappointing rather than ill-omened and not without consolation. Later we will light a fire and enjoy the shelter and warmth as people have always done in mid-winter. First, however I must take my daily walk up the lane.
Turning right out of our drive I see the first part stretching before me like a tunnel with light at the end. I would have said this effect was achieved by the trees meeting overhead, and by the road’s antiquity causing it to sink below the land – a hollow way. But with starting this journal in mind I look more closely and find the canopy is formed less by the trees converging than by those on the right leaning inwards. Nor is the degree of sunkenness uniform, the bank rising more steeply on the opposite side. Here is my reason for keeping a record, such basic facts not registering until today. I need to pay more attention and writing makes me.
With the trees at my back the aspect becomes more open. There are houses to the left and an old orchard opposite. Then commercial apple growing takes over before, on one side, a large ploughed field. The lane finally opens onto a B-road, not busy but fast at this point so that cars flash across the opening like particles in a collider. Ahead rises a hill, cultivated on its lower slopes but wooded at the summit. New trees have recently been planted, the white posts resembling a war cemetery.
I shall have to describe of all this in more detail and monitor how things change over time. But for now an overview is all I have room for. This is because I have decided on a limit to how much I write, not quite arbitrary but linked to the number of days. Each entry will contain 365 words, no more, no less and already I am finding the discipline helpful. Any creative act needs constraints to work within. The picture defers to the frame.
