Batons

And then Jocky says d’you think she’d have been worth it then? And I take a deep drag on the cigarette and think about that for a bit and I say yeah, I think she’s worth it. I’m using the present tense and he’s not. Jocky’s acting like there’s no way I’d ever do anything about chasing after the girl. But he’s wrong; I’m already planning on chasing after her.
We sit in the van for a bit waiting for the rain to stop, and I wind down the window because it’s all getting a bit much what with the cigarettes and the heat. I hate rain when it’s hot, just feels like a waste to me. I prefer rain when it’s cold. Cold and rainy. Hot and dry, that’s how it should be.
I first saw the girl a couple of weeks ago, and she was hanging off the arm of some big man, all brow and forearms. Just something about her got to me, can’t say exactly what, very pale, which I like, looks delicate, fragile like. Didn’t look like she belonged at the Fox, not with all the brickies and roofers, the lads and the shouting. She looked different, and was even chewing on a strand of hair. Looking nervous. I asked Maccy and he just said she was probably a fucking student, not that I’ve got anything against students he said as I raised my eyebrows at him. You’ve always worked hard son, he said, you’re all right.
You see, I look like I fit in at the Fox, I’ve got a plaid shirt covered in all sorts of shit, I’ve got my hair cropped right down to the scalp because it’s easier that way. And it’s easy for them to forget and go on about fucking students.
So the rain stops and Jocky says we’d best get back to it and I say aye and I’m up the ladder and on the roof and fucking hell the city is beautiful in the sunshine. I mean proper light like you get in paintings, there’s purples and greys and greens and they’re all shining. So I stand for a minute and I take it all in, just breathing in and out and looking at it and I hear Jocky shouting why don’t you get some work done you lazy cunt, get some done yourself Fat lad I shout back and put the felt on my shoulder and walk up the roof.
I even know exactly how I’m going to get the girl, I’m going to wait until the big man goes to the toilet or whatever and then I’m going to walk past her on my way to the pool table and bump her slightly and I’ll say excuse me in my softest voice and she’ll look round and say that’s okay and then she’ll be looking at my eyes. And when she looks at them that’ll be it, I’m going to hold her gaze for a couple of seconds and then smile and go and play a game or two with Andy and Ste, and maybe Jocky if the fat fuck’s come in for a pint and I’m not going to look at her again for the rest of the night. That’s how I’m going to get the girl.
Her fella’l break your fuckin’ arm says Jocky, hauling his fat arse up onto the scaffolding, and dumping a massive load of tiles. I’ve got say fair play to him for that, he gets tiles up a ladder like no one I’ve ever seen. Won’t use a tile-lift ever since the belt snapped on one, hiring company’s fault, shitty gear, and they all went flying off, a full load of tiles, thirty or so. One of them hit a little girl who was waiting to buy an ice cream from a van, the driver did one before any help could show off, just drove off playing his fucking chimes with this little girl lying there in the street. Match of the Day theme, it was. I saw that, but I know better than to mention it around Jocky ever again. Which is weird, when you’ve seen something that somebody else has seen and it’s a pretty big and scary thing and you want to talk about it and you can’t, that’s hard. I’ve always wanted to talk to Jocky about it, but if you so much as mention how handballing all the tiles up the ladder is hard graft his face goes a bit thunderous and you think right, best shut up then.
I’m not arsed I say, her fella can fucking try. She’s worth it. It marks me out as different, the way I say fucking, rather than fuckin’. My accent’s changed a bit since I moved up here, but not that much
So me and him roll out the last bit of felt, right at the top of the roof. We only need two batons so I hammer them in and turn round for a bit of a sit down to feel the sun on my face, and wait for some more tiles, he’s always quicker at getting them up the ladder than me, but I’m better at getting about on a roof than him, so we each do our bit, it’s the way it’s always worked virtually ever since the day I was working the bar at the Fox and wondering what to do with my life and my brand-new shiny degree and in walked Jocky and said why don’t you come and work for me? And I said yeah alright. And I hammer the batons in and set the ridges right and do the leadwork and call him a fat bastard and he puts the scaffold up and does most of the carrying and calls me a student wanker, that’s the way it’s always worked up with us.
Except Jocky hasn’t come back up the ladder and I get fed up of waiting so I climb down the scaffold (it’s the old sort with loads of footholds and hand grips and it’s more fun than the ladder) and he’s sat in the van with his hand on his chest and breathing hard. I don’t ask him if he’s alright because it would be a stupid question. I just start the engine and get to the A&E as fast as, screaming at people in the way and smacking the horn. Will you shut the fuck up with that fuckin’ horn says Jocky in a gravelly way which doesn’t sound much like him if I’m being honest, you’re getting on me fuckin’ nerves. There’s a bit of scouse in the way he says nerves. Nairves.
And when I get to the hospital this skinny doctor somehow makes sense of all the shouting I’m doing at him. Though by now it’s pretty obvious what’s happening to Jocky; I mean, I’m not a doctor and I know so they rush him off and I sit around for a couple of hours waiting for news. I go for cigarettes every half an hour so, and I’m nervous. All the doctors and nurses are giving me funny looks because I’m still covered in shit from the roof. And then I see this nurse who looks familiar, she’s got very pale skin and very blond hair and she’s talking to the guy a couple of chairs down from me in a soothing voice which sounds like it might have a bit of Scottish in it. And I realise that it’s the girl but I don’t really feel like talking to her.

The rest is silence

I am sat on my own in the garden of the house that I own and I’m wondering whether or not I have an agenda for every single thing I ever say. I’m wondering this because last night I went to dinner with a woman who bore a startling resemblance to an ex of mine who got married about a year back.

It is night, which is just as well.

If it were day my cheery retired neighbours would be bustling about in their garden. They’d have the grandkids over, and from behind the honeysuckle with the white-flowered bindweed curling through it would come shouting and laughter. Unmediated. Without an agenda.

She accused me as I was in the middle of saying something. What’s curious to me is that I cannot remember what I was saying. I recall a distinct change in the atmosphere at the table and becoming instantly aware that I’d been talking for a while, and equally instantly aware that I could not remember a single word I’d just said. Just looked at me and said “do you ever say anything without an agenda?”
I asked her what she meant, a few times. Becoming increasingly bellicose as I did so, my voice rising enough in volume and pitch to cause a nearby couple to turn towards our table in alarm.

It’s not just night, it’s pretty late at night, which is just as well.
If it were earlier in the evening my cheery retired neighbours would have their family round for the match. Liverpool were playing some team from France, I think. Or maybe Spain. They’d be chanting and shouting and full of direct intent. They’d care only about winning the game. I could hear them, as I stretched out on my bed and looked at my bedroom ceiling, attempted to follow the tracery of lines from the moulding in the corner as it reached towards the top of the window. I’d seen John that afternoon and he’d invited me round. He’d done it so openly, so without artifice. Just simply inviting me round. Because of this I felt instantly utterly unable to attend.

There’s a Groucho Marx line which is constantly paraded by the sort of people who like to rent others senses of humour rather than maintain one of their own. You know it already, the one about clubs and members. It doesn’t really bear any relevance to why I am sat out here, late at night, with even the birds asleep, wondering whether or not everything I ever do has an agenda. It does bear relevance to something though. I’m sure of it.

When I was ten I was afraid of dancing. Petrified. I couldn’t understand the mechanics of it at all. A girl called Clare asked me to dance at the school disco. I turned her down. I think it all started going wrong from there on out.
There are the first intimations of dawn, a change in the pressure of air, the honeysuckle thick and cloying around my nostrils, which is just as well, because soon there will be an explosion of birdsong, and when there is an explosion of birdsong there will be a distraction.

All from Clare, down to me sat at a table in an overpriced restaurant where the customers only care about the shiny fittings because they were all wolfing down food which I couldn’t help but note was pretty poor, buying dinner for a woman who I was becoming slowly aware that I didn’t even like but who did bear a startling resemblance to an ex of mine who got married about a year back who now I come to think of it didn’t have an ounce of artifice in her whole body and who I broke it off with brutally for no readily apparent reason other than perhaps I was being invited to join a club with dancing and I’m still scared of dancing even now, to this day, to this night, sat in the garden of the house that I own, wondering whether or not everything I say, or do, has an agenda. And what the implications of this are.

The woman in the restaurant had beautiful hair. The rest, I guess, is silence.

This is

This is a story about a young man named Nicholas Clarke who, at the age of twenty-six decided that he was satisfied with his achievements and killed himself.
I’m not saying for a second that he’d achieved a great deal. In sum total he had thirteen different academic qualifications. He had sustained four relationships in excess of six months, two of these he had felt strongly about and on no fewer than three occasions had contemplated fatherhood, once through circumstance and twice by choice. He was diligent with work, and had held down a moderately well-paid job doing something with paper for two years. He had, on the whole, wrought more good than harm.
When he was twelve he wrote down a list that he headed “life goals.” This is the list:

1) Sustain at least four relationships
2) Hold down a moderately well paying job for a period greater than six months
3) Wreak more good than harm.

One Sunday he realised that he’d held down a job for more than the six
months that he’d set himself. It was a bright and clear day. With a mild sense of anticlimax Nicholas went hell for leather at himself with the breadknife.
This was a story about a young man named Nicholas Clarke. I never said it was going to be very long.

Ten twenty word short stories

I

He wasn't particularly surprised when the doorbell failed to ring, when the phone stayed silent. He was never particularly anything.

II

"The problem" slurred Captain Heroic sadly, staring at the half-empty bottle "is I've killed all the bloody super-villains."

III

It seems like seven o'clock would never come. She checked her reflection, then the clock again. It was broken.

IV

She smiled bravely for the cameras, pretty in the sodium glare. Far behind her, entirely unnoticed by anyone, he jumped.

V

He arrived at the time they agreed and was surpised to find that she was already sat waiting, and frowning.

VI

The old guy had always sat there, for as long as they could recall. Then one day he was horizontal.

VII

Before he could offer to buy her a drink she'd hissed at him and stalked off like a jungle cat.

VIII

"It's not you" she said
"It's me?" He mimicked, bitterl
"No, it's them" she pointed at her parents, glaring outside.

IX

"If you don't take that job you'll always regret it" she said.
"Not as much as this sandwich" he coughed

X

When pushed, he'd always say it was her shoulders, then her smile. He'd never say any more than that, though.

The Apotheosis of the Shopkeeper

And in the town nothing happening. A sea mist pervades the streets, the front doors are locked. Cats scavenge around the remnants of the market, mewing and fighting, in the mist they are ghosts, mere suggestions of the idea of cats.
Nothing happens for a reason and the reason is this. On Wednesday the circus is coming to town and it will be a big circus with lights and wheels and sounds. The town is holding it's breath and when the circus comes it will exhale, the doors will open, the streets will fill and the populace will flood as one to the circus.
When an event comes to town it becomes bigger than the event itself, it becomes the embodiment of carnival passed down in the town form generation to generation, a freewheeling and thrilling genetically programmed excitement, once the spirit of Carnival is loose, it's difficult to put back in the bottle. But for now, nothing, only the smothering mist.
When the circus comes to town all bets are off, some of the people stand and watch, amused, as though Rabelais himself had risen from the grave and was stood taking notes but most tear into the heart of the circus, girls and boys in packs eyeing each other up, the packs splintering and reforming seamlessly, most give up to the whirl and sound, waking with sore heads and the montage of grinning faces already a rapidly fading dream. The circus is coming to town.
But for now, nothing happens. Just mist and silences, the pubs lie quiet, in each street there is a muted square of light at the ground floor of each house, in the mist each street lamp is disused, a phosphor glow travelling on the backs of droplets n a halo around it. The effect is pronounced at the great lynching lights at the brow of the hill, the huge over-arcing lamps at the traffic lights where the arm extends right out over the road like an invitation to a public hanging.
And then the power fails, a circuit in a station has failed and now not even electricity is happening save every burglar alarm in town sensing trouble and launching into their apocalyptic, atonal squalks, in the high street the back-up power comes on and the restaurants are lit as though they were restaurants for ghosts, the shoe-shops shyly offer to sell emergency shoes. The hollering of the sirens summons a hundred business owners from their beds, cursing and stumbling in the dark, pulling on trousers, groping for keys, falling over the cat, and hustling out into the gloom to pull keys from pockets and start cars, marvel at electricity briefly and drive slowly and carefully into town. There are no traffic lights so each junction is a model of decorum and considerate driving as they edge around each other and finally reach their destinations. The noise is deafening, a modulated electrical pulse splitting their ears with it's screech as they stand there, trying groggily to remember their alarm codes, as the are about to turn off their alarms, as one, all across the town the power comes back on with immaculate comic timing and the alarms die.
Of those shopkeepers who came out tonight most go home to their wives "Mr Shopkeeper, is that you?" she cries fearfully "yes dear" he replies "I've been keeping Shop." Some, reasoning that it is not long until they open anyway, stay there and will spend the rest of the day serving customers with their pyjamas hidden by a tightly-fastened raincoat, and their be-slippered feet never shifting from behind the counter (for those shopkeepers who purvey general goods it will be a busy day, as the power-cut excites much buying of batteries, candles and tinned goods). One or two, being of a philosophical bent take a trip to the coast to sit and meditate upon the nature and practices of shop-keeping, dawn sees a string of them at half mile intervals, like stout watchmen in flannel bedclothes staring out to sea as if looking out for Viking raiders. Each thinking his lonely thoughts of a shop-keeper.

I am part of a long tradition. I am part of a nation of shop-keepers, we are legion.

I sometimes think Audrey wishes I was a fireman.

Soon it will be carnival, not now, but soon.

I wish the sun rose in the west, I would be younger and younger by the moment, my bones ache and my arse is wet but soon I will open the shop. Soon it will be time for commerce.

I am old. I am too old for her, she is clearly going to say no, damn these cliffs for being too small to jump off. I'd just get my feet wet and then everyone would say "look everybody, there's the man who tried to kill himself by jumping off a four foot cliff, what sort of an idiot is he?" I'm an old idiot, I'm too old for her.

What did he mean when he yelled "Sophist!" at me? Why did he do that? What does "sophist" mean anyway? I'll have to look it up. Stupid snotty kid.

Da da da da dummm, da da da da dummm diuddle duddle daaa duddle duddle daaa

All apart, but facing the morning together, in place, the shopkeeper-philosophers of the town. Dumpy gnomes of the early morning, waiting for the light to roll over their backs and out, on towards Ireland.
In the darkness of the power cut people confront fears, in the pitch darkness couples hold each other slightly tighter and whisper loving words to each other, those children who were awake when the world plunged into darkness edge their way along landings and into their parents bedrooms, to be lulled with the gentle sing-song words of their mothers and the strong arms of their fathers.
In one small mews cottage a man sits, smoking. He listens to a battery powered radio, when the lights go off he exhales luxuriously, leans back and listens to the late book, an actress' honeyed tones reading Dickens. After a while he smiles for a moment.
In an alley an intense man who has been following an astonishingly beautiful young woman for the last quarter of a mile since she left the club he first saw her in loses his quarry as the lights go out, he lunges forward, trips and falls, breaking his wrist in the process. His cries of pain attract the woman he was stalking, who uses her mobile phone to call for help, it arrives promptly and he is taken to hospital, where the nurses are sympathetic and helpful and not at all brisk and unfriendly and his feelings can only be guessed at.
In the morning the cut will be shown to have had some small effect on peoples lives, a knock-on of togetherness, it gives people something to talk about at bus-stops, in the smoky saloon-bars of the pubs, in the playground and staff-room alike.
It will emerge that it was a grid failure the like of which the county hasn't known since the early seventies, covering an area of over three hundred square miles with a population of approximately nine million people. Police will estimate three deaths caused by failure of traffic systems, and a handful more caused indirectly by emergency services being hampered. A local newspaper will make a hero of an ambulance driver who delivered a baby in a remote farmhouse located on the vast moss. Leader columns in national papers will wonder about the state of privatised utilities. A popular and handsome middle manager will be made the scapegoat, and only a few cynics will notice his regular beating of top brass at squash (he will move on to a better paid job in a different sector, so it all works out fine for him). Time will pass, and a footnote will be written and fictions will remain the only history of what happened. Nobody writes new nursery rhymes any more, so it won't pass into folklore, it'll just be something that happened once.

The man who never looked at tits

He remembered the day he made the decision with a clarity that it was shameful he never applied to any other memory, but given the extent to which that one decision had changed his life he supposed that his memory was simply attaching to it the importance it deserved.

It was a bright summer’s day three years beforehand. Summer had wrought its usual magic of conjuring girls into existence who didn’t seem to exist for the rest of the year. Long limbed, clear-eyed and unattainable, and, as such, all the more desirable. He had just turned a gawky and uncomfortable twenty and, if not never been kissed, certainly felt that he was lagging behind the peloton in such matters.

The problem was that this was summer, high summer, flags getting cracked, the air heavy with the scent of municipal flowerbeds, every girl in the street just a garment or two away from shudder inducing nudity, every breast quiveringly restrained by the flimsiest of gauze. It was agony for him. Sex was everywhere and he wasn’t getting any. He wasn’t even, as his mate Ben often complained of being, in the category of I think of you as a brother / friend / insert emasculatory appellation of your choice here. He was, largely, ignored. Smiled politely at or just gazed through by girls en route to an encounter with a man with tinted hair and a smile that came a little too easily.

And that day was the hottest of a very hot summer. His error (though, looking back it struck him as a stroke of tactical genius) was to nip out for a quiet and contemplative lunchtime pint, at precisely the same time as the offices disgorged secretaries by the hundred, loosening hair and losing jackets, and the schoolies steamed provocatively from their gates, shedding ties and undoing buttons. A schoolboy error. The area around the clocktower was, or so it seemed to him, a seething hormonal ocean of untouchable smooth, tan flesh. Panicking, he struck out north, for the relative safety of the pub, run as it was by a short-arsed little Hitler with a droopy moustache no beauty, he felt sure, could intrude there, and it was then that he saw her, or, more accurately, Them.

They were barely contained in a small vest. Large, but not huge, a smooth coffee colour and a cleavage which made him want to sprint forward, bury his head and make raspberry noises with his tongue. They were perfect, he was dimly aware that they were attached to someone, and after marvelling for a couple of moments looked up. And nearly died on the spot.

They weren’t false advertising, she was beautiful. A sleek bob of black hair, dimpled cheeks and lively, sparkling eyes, which he imagined probably danced with a mischievous laughter (or something like that) on those occasions when they weren’t staring at him with a pure and profound hatred. He’d been clocked, and she wasn’t happy. He turned and ran.

It was over a restorative pint that he had his revelation, and from that day forth he never looked at a pair of breasts ever again, unless they were being specifically offered up for his appraisal, which occurred more often than before. He’d look first at the eyes, then at the hair, a look of vague admiration on his face but never more than that, and he would never let his gaze drop below jaw level. Not ever. It was a miracle, really. After a couple of weeks of this he struck up his first conversation with a girl in six months. Her name was Rachel, she was a criminology student with a profound interest in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, a horse that she loved and a seemingly insatiable appetite for Italian food, all of which he discovered whilst studiously ignoring the more obvious facts of the consequences of said penchant, over a couple of meals until permission was granted and he looked at them for a good, long time.

The elderly light (ii)

I also hate the idea that I am in any way better than these man I see, mostly men, nearly always men. The men who lean, those who stand, those who sit. When I first started here I hid my learning, not knowing how wrong of me it was to do so. I was a giggly ingénue, stumbling over their jokes with a bright and hopeful earnestness. It took me some time to work out that they were actually funny, and that I could ditch my pretence at bonhomie, that I could feel a glow of, if not comradeship, exactly then at least a degree of…
Aha, I nearly said acceptance. That’s never really been high on the list.
But there is a pleasing element of collusion, it’s there in the wifely phone calls deflected, in the ejection of bumptious, lager-weary young lads, in the helping into taxis, the sly one after lasties when all I want to do is go home. In the quick wink and the knowledgeable palming of coins. A complicity in incredibly minor pieces of devilry which let us all think for a moment that we’re masters of our destinies. That we’ve got one over on the nebulous them.
Acknowledging anything else would, I think, be a bit too much to bear.
I think I realised this in maybe my third or fourth week here. I’d been listening to some casual insults flickering between a couple of roofers and a pair of domino playing old geezers, Jack and Ted (and I truly believe that it is only in these pubs that good, solid names like Ted, Bert and Harold survive, clinging grimly on to existence like the last few drops of mild in a dimpled glass. The day we hire a barman called Bradley or Jake, civilisation will end) when Jack rose suddenly and placed a domino with an air of finality and a distinct click on the glass topped table. He stood, and without a word to anyone, left.
“What was all that about?” asked Big Pete, a swag bellied brickies.
“First time he’s ever beaten me” replied Ted, shortly, looking distraught.
We’ve not seen Jack since.

The elderly light (i)

I know what you’re thinking.

No, really, I do.

You were thinking, what’s he doing in here?

I admit, this isn’t the most salubrious of establishments. Not for Malky such fripperies as food of a lunchtime, no-smoking areas, guest beers and clean, shiny toilets. Clean anything, for that matter.

You’ve been here before, or somewhere very much like it. It’s an archetype. Two fruit machines. One threadbare pool table. Slightly sticky tables. Elderly light wheezing past net curtains stained yellow. Old men dotted about the place like discarded coats. The click and murmur of dominoes from the back room. You’ve been here before. You may not have stayed very long but that, in my opinion, is more down to you being a snob than anything ele. So long as the lines are kept clean (and I’ve worked plenty of places far funkier than this who neglected to) a pint of Stella’s a pint of Stella, when all’s said and done.

Me? Well, I’m not an ambitious man. I admit I cut a somewhat singular figure when set in this context. You’d be expecting a woman with a vast shelf-like bosom and a direct manner perhaps? Or a gruff old geezer with a hole in his throat? Sorry, you’re stuck with me. I never have to get up early, and Malky’s somewhat creative with his books, so come the end of the week it’s a pile of crisp notes and no one the wiser. Which suits me fine, for the time being.

What? Of course I have plans, it’s just that I don’t feel like acting on them right now. Everyone’s in so much of a rush to make their mark. It worries me slightly. The same way as when I was at school I used to look at my bright eyed and motivated fellows, choosing their subjects and fretting over prospectuses in the certain knowledge that they wanted to be a doctor / lawyer / whatever. Marine biologist. That sort of thing. I’d always think, how do you know?

So yeah, it’ll do for the time being.

Plus, it may seem dull to you, but to me everyone who comes through that door is interesting. Don’t frown at me like that. I’m not about to tell you that everyone has a fascinating story to tell or any sub-Joycean nonsense like that. Most of them do have an interesting story, unfortunately it’s just the one, and there appears to be no upper limit to the amount of times it can be retold. No, they’re interesting because of the choices they make, or rather, don’t.

Look at it this way. Would you take a seat at the same seat, in the same pub, at the same time, every day? What drives a man to do that? What possible eruption of chaos has fed this maniacal desire for routine, for control? And don’t feed me the alcoholism line. I know what an alcoholic, a proper alcoholic, looks like. You can tell from the eyes. If it’s them you’re after I suggest the benches set into the side of the market, or possibly the park. No, these old boys desire simply order, the drink’s secondary. Most of them can make half a pint last two hours, sitting it on the table and staring at its black depths as it sits, and settles, and sucks the elderly light down into itself.

There’s a story in that, maybe, but not in this. It’s a fine distinction