Twelve Stories

by Paul Magrs

  So, Granda is trying to prevent them leaving the house. They flee—on the 723 to Darlington.

  At the hotel, at the snowy table cloths… fiddling with their lunch… watching Ada Jones reading aloud from the high table. Another novel about the poor in the old days. Another novel about the high-born lady who marries an Irish tinker, and comes down in the world… has to live in a terrace…

  The queue for the book-signing has to be embarrassing. Gran has brought all of Ada’s novels. All in tatty yellow paperbacks. She isn’t buying the new hardback, and this causes trouble. She gets ousted from the queue. Doesn’t get a chance to say, ‘Remember me!’

  Sitting at their table, depressed. Watching all this twittering going on around them. Knowing they have to go home to Granda.

  And here you hit it. How do you end a story like this?

  Do you want Granda following them? Bullying her? Begging her? Does it hinge on her going back into her life?

  Another story of yours about meeting someone you knew years ago. Catching up, being caught on the hop. Have they had their head turned? Have they spoiled themselves? Is there an epiphany? Can hope enlarge you? Stop you fitting back into the shape of your life?

  Can your old friends save you?

  Are you alone in the end?

  Don’t do the same story again. Anyway, there’s too much plot in this.

  January 4TH.

  Ada Jones should have turned into a HORRIBLE person. Piss posh. British-Councilling all over the world, dispensing wisdom, wearing big hats. Out in the wilds, out in the sticks, up in the north. Throwing grande-dame hissy fits at Cheltenham and Hay festival events. The very closed world these people get into when they think that they’re the queen.

  And the two women confronting each other. Two very different fives, both from the same place. That’s often the shape of your stories.

  Is it because you’re the son of one of a pair of twins?

  Ada drops them off home in Fenyhill in her big car. She comes in, though Gran is embarrassed. And Granda’s pissed and crazy. He winds up dead. Maybe Ada helps Gran do a moonlight flit.

  I don’t know whether your stories need stronger or weaker villains. More or less melodrama. More of less EVENTS. Probably less.

  Sometimes you think so—simplistically.

  The boy watching the older generation come together—and shame themselves, misbehave, reveal their secret back-stories. And then resolve it all melodramatically. That’s what you do, every time.

  January 19TH

  Thinking, lying awake last night, about the Great Big Book Exchange. I’d read Hardy’s On the Western Circuit.

  I like the idea of notes written in secondhand books. Underlinings and messages.

  Something about the secret life of books. How they’re independent of us, floating, seeking us out, and coming to us at just the right moment.

  The shop is owned by a man with two plastic arms. It makes her flinch when he counts out change, scraping the coins across the wooden desk. Making her hold open the paper bag herself, so he can drop her purchases in. He’s determined to do as much for himself as he can.

  The man in the shop suggests books for her. And there’s suggestive messages in the margins. Winnie knows it’s him. She hopes it’s him.

  But it’s the Saturday girl.

  The boy reads the books after his Gran, and replies to the messages in his own hand. Wanting to encourage the man with Plastic arms. He’d like to see Winnie and the bookseller together.

  The girl checks and scrutinizes the margins, and between the lines and she hopes that the boy is sending messages to her. She meant the originals for him…

  Then they have to think—how can a man with two plastic arms underline anything accurately? How can he make these tiny annotations?

  Still too much plot, Paul.

  January 21ST

  Books cause lots of dust, silting up the bare boards of the Great Big Book Exchange.

  The man with two false arms sits reading at his desk. The tip of his right index finger is textured just right for turning pages.

  This is an Exchange, and his customers return with piles of paperbacks—lurid, recent, spines all cracked or kept pristine… older, more sober, angiy yellow and coarse, or fine and shiny, classy or trash. And he considers their worth, their heft and weight and value. Gives his customers credit on the little grey cards, like library cards, that prove membership of the Exchange. Scribbled scores and ticks. Not everyone gets to join.

  He watches the old woman and her grandson come in, each Saturday morning.

  January 22nd

  Dirtying her fingers with smudgy pages and wearing out her eyes just to get to the last page. So that everything is finished by Saturday and her trip to the Exchange.

  Now the boy is at it. She’s got him sitting up all night in his room. She indulges him, orphaned and quiet and being brought up by these ancient people. Neither of them know what a boy his age should be like. Not in this alien day and age. Orphaned and old-fashioned, the boy is. They are bringing him up in the rough approximation of a boy of today and they’re probably doing it all wrong. Him with no friends and no going out. Him with the shaming school reports. Quiet and slow and doesn’t speak up. Can’t mix. Can’t fight back.

  Today she looked—when they were out down the shops, doing the messages—and that was his pyjama top he still had on, under his V-necked sweater, under his good winter coat.

  January 25th

  No book the grandson reads will ever be the equal of Doctor Who —The Three Doctors, by Terrance Dicks.

  Just for that hour or so, every Saturday morning, the boy and his Gran are in the realm of the man with two plastic arms. They are in his self-created domain. And that’s just like The Three Doctors—when everyone gets whizzed off to the universe of anti-matter.

  The bookseller is like Omega. A god—afloat, alone, solipsistic and gauntleted. In his blasted, wasted, empty universe of anti-matter. Of nothing. Exiled and beyond the pale. He calls his subjects to him—to share his loneliness, his dreadful state—so they can tend the sacred flame together. They can lighten his cosmic load. One day they will remove his mask. And they will find no face underneath. Just the man inside corroded away.

  January 28th

  The boy stayed up that night and he couldn’t stop thinking. His mind aswirl after On the Road—his pillow getting lumpy and hot. He was thinking about the two boys bombing down to Mexico in their broken car. Two silly boys, over-excited with freedom and heat-exhaustion. Wearing the same clothes for days on end.

  And how they got all hot and sticky in some kind of al fresco Mexican joint with whores and tin shack showers.

  And then he was reading about Moomintroll waking too early from hibernation. Finding his island gloomy and creaking under snow. Finding creepy new friends who he passes the dark days of winter with—all of them living off mackerel and the jam stored in the cellar. And how they kind of exploit him, really, these new friends…

  January 30TH

  And they read so much, in that house, that they couldn’t possibly remember it all. And so much leaked out. They didn’t remember names or events, or bits of plots.

  And the old man couldn’t see any point to it, in that case. Why skim and plough through all those pages if you don’t retain anything?

  Do you retain the colours, the shapes, the echoes of voices? The aftertaste? The atmosphere?

  They say the iPod can contain all the songs you’ve ever loved. That’s the point of having one. It must be consoling. Is your mind like that for stories?

  Jungled and festooned with stories.

  February 28th

  You read and reread books, and go back to them again, because you suspect that you’ve left something behind. In them, inside them, caught up inside the latticework of their pages.

  Or maybe—there’s something in them you never found, but should have found. Something you were meant to discover. Maybe there was some lesson you should have lear
ned. Something that passed you by.

  Though—no. You don’t really think lessons are learned like that. You mistrust the notion that stories are there to teach you something. They aren’t there to be decanted of content and moved on from—and left behind. They should be perplexing, every time you come back to them.

  But you keep returning to these books.

  February 29th

  You try to remember what you wrote in your own books. The feel of those scenes; the sound of those voices; the shape of those sentences. But they don’t seem like yours any more. It’s not quite as if a stranger wrote them… and it’s not like they’re the books your half-remember having read, a long time ago… it’s as if these are the books that you wrote in a dream.

  These stories seem both as strange and familiar as that.)

  The Eyes Have It

  The longest half term Linda has ever known. Both kids off school and her mother staying. Of course she’s murderous by Sunday.

  Trips to stately homes and the Lake District’s damp October charms. The things her mother loves. They’re bunking up and making room for the old bag. She dotes on her grandchildren and they adore her. And Linda? Granny points out Linda’s faults as usual. She doesn’t hoover in the corners. Pastry’s soggy. Drinks too much wine at tea time. Tonight, Linda’s whisking chocolate in the hot pan. It’s Hallowe’en. Linda’s mother’s pounding the streets with her granddaughters. Three of them done up as garish zombies.

  Granny admits it herself: she spoils her grandchildren because she’s making up for the time she never lavished on Linda. They’ll never be latch-key kids like Linda was.

  Here’s Linda managing to burn the hot chocolate. Good job Granny’s not here to comment. What else is Linda doing? Grinding up the tranquilisers. They go pastel pink when they’re a deadly powder on the chopping board like this. Oops, they’ve dropped into Granny’s mug. What a shame.

  Will the poisoned cup look any different? Conspicuous in its deadliness? Glug glug froth. Why, not at all. Best not mix them up.

  It’s while Linda’s setting them out on the tray, heart-thumping with the idea of revenge that she sees the eye.

  Stuck to the fridge door. Blinking slowly. Frowning at her, she thinks. Livid, sticky, judgmental. Linda shrieks and almost drops the tray of hot drinks. She steadies herself.

  The eye knows what she’s up to. It’s no bigger than a twenty pence piece, but it scares her silly. She’s been seeing them everywhere this week.

  It began last Sunday, before the matricidal thoughts fully took hold. Linda drove them to the monstrous car boot sale in a field in Knutsford. Granny’s always liked poking about in jumble. Kelly went because she collects unicorns. Eldest daughter Sally remained in her black-walled bedroom to paint. GCSE course-work. She’d been producing ghastly canvases for weeks. Products of a young imagination warped by what? ‘It’s Gothic.’ Sally shrugged and tutted when her mother said, why couldn’t she do a nice landscape? Some flowers?

  Apparently Granny understood. Sensitive-souled Granny got the whole Goth thing.

  Linda found some new cushions for the sun lounger and a Maeve Binchy she’d missed. Granny was waiting by the car with a framed painting she’d picked up for a fiver.

  Hideous thing. Worse than anything even Sally had produced. Granny was triumphant. She’d found the vilest thing she could, just to spite Linda. ‘Sally will find it inspirational, don’t you think?’

  ‘She doesn’t need any more inspiration,’ Linda sighed, veering down the endless country roads.

  Home again, and here came Sally scowling like she always did when mired in one of her creations. Her face lit up when she saw Granny’s gift.

  A greyish swampy graveyard thing. Clouds and devil bats swooping over the moon. A girl with lank hair—not unlike Sally herself—moping in the foreground.

  Sally enfolded Granny in a hug. Linda winced.

  The worst thing was the eyes. Up close Linda saw they weren’t snowflakes or rainspots, but eyeballs, painted oh-so-meticulously. Eyes stuck into gravestones, grass and sky.

  Almost enough to give Linda the screaming ab-dabs.

  Modest Granny smiled. ‘I knew it was just your thing.’

  All through the evening’s telly Linda felt those eyes. They averted their gaze, each time she looked. Exactly as the cliché had it, they followed her about the room. Horrible, dewy eyes, concentrating on her.

  ‘Mummy’s afraid of the painting,’ Granny smirked. ‘She always was a bit soft.’

  Linda was forced to watch horror movies. She was outnumbered. Her glance kept going to the picture. Bedtime finally, she picked up the remote. The off button was an eye, complete with pupil and green iris. She pressed it firmly and told the girls it was time for bed.

  She was seeing things.

  All that week the eyes were on her. The postman delivered a parcel and Linda squawked in fear. There was a green eye in the palm of his hand. In the supermarket, late night shopping for extra food (Granny ate well) she stood stock still before the sausage links, the water melons, the Cotes du Rhone. Everything stared back at her.

  The eyes are contagious. Sally starts to put eyes into her own work. Just the thing, she declares happily, to unify her paintings and make her collection ‘hang together’.

  But Linda feels beset by eyes.

  ‘Ignore your mother, Sally,’ Granny laughs. ‘She knows nothing about art. She might have done, if she’d stayed at school and done her exams, like you’re doing.’

  Insufferable Granny. A week of snide remarks and those eyes as well. No wonder Linda feels that Granny has to go.

  Linda’s dizzy with paranoia. She’s doolally by the time Hallowe’en’s come round. As her zombie family tricks and treats in the frozen streets, Linda’s whipping up the hot chocolate.

  And Granny’s special drink.

  Then she sees that eye stuck in the middle of the fridge door. What are you doing? it asks. It stares. Forces her to reconsider. Matricide. Revenge. And why? Does she hate her mother that much? Is she that jealous of her own daughters, to rob them of the Granny they obviously adore?

  Linda takes the tray to the living room. Why aren’t they home yet? The chocolate will be cold. She shouldn’t have sprinkled poison in. Will she simply watch as Granny slurps it up? Stand back as Granny keels over?

  The drinks cool and grow a sheeny skin. Linda wonders how being a murderess will feel. An accomplishment at last. Then an eye appears on the surface of Granny’s milky drink. It bobs there, staring gravely at Linda.

  It winks.

  A key in the front door. Babble of voices as her girls come home.

  Can she do it? The eye winks at her again. Yes, she can.

  Never The Bride

  Maybe everyone is like this. Sometimes, though, I get this morbid fear that I am doing things the wrong way. Does everyone worry about not coming quite up to scratch?

  It’s the little things. Keeping everything immaculate and just so, making sure that the breakfasts and teas are on time and that the rooms are exact, with the correct number of towels and flannels and little bits of soap. My guests are quite particular. My establishment attracts a certain class of person, I would say, though I am not a snob.

  My friend Effie, who lives above the bookshop she runs next door and is a bit lah-de-dah, says that I am obsessed with getting things right for my guests. She used the word ‘mania.’ She says no one else running a B&B in this town goes to the same trouble. For all her airs and graces, Effie is a bit slapdash about her own place. She’s the arty type. She’s very literary. The only books I have are the Bible and Milton, of course. I make sure there are copies in every one of my six rooms, in the drawer of the bed-side cabinets. And two fresh bath towels laid out, two flannels for every basin, and the curtains are always opened exactly a foot wide, to let enough sunshine in, but not so much to let the room look bleak. Effie says I fuss, but it’s like someone once said, God is in the details.

  But don’t get me on the sub
ject of God. Effie tried once and I had to get her to stop. She understands now that my God and her God are not quite the same. That was as far as the conversation went. Effie is a good friend to me, but like everyone else in Whitby, she knows nothing about my past.

  I always wanted pretty things. I wanted chintz sofas and chairs, and nicely patterned curtains in light fabrics. I wanted colourful, dainty crockery. And I wanted to please people. Serve them tasty, wholesome, well-cooked food. I got a craze for cleaning. I would wait until the guests went out in the mornings, and left their rooms all a-tumble, strewn with the bric-a-brac of holidays that are nostalgic before they are over, as seaside holidays always are. And then I would creep in clutching cloths and yellow dusters and a tin of baking soda. I would crouch in bath tubs and sprinkle on the powder and I would scour to my heart’s content. Everything has to shine.

  My livelihood depends upon the excellence of my establishment.

  Despite everything, I am, in the end, more or less, a self-made woman.

  Last night I dreamed that my husband came back to me. I still call him that, though we fell short of the actual nuptials. Every time I pull that counterpane over my head and leave the heating on I get too hot and I have the most lurid dreams. Of course he isn’t coming back to me. And he would never recognise me now. Perhaps.

  He came across the sea from the extreme north. It was the depths of a blue winter in Whitby. He came frozen in the most beautifully clear ice berg, which had detached itself neatly—so neatly—from the Mother Berg in the north. And, prostrate, beseeching, suspended within like Prometheus, he came floating back to my shore, as if seeking me out. I found him on a shingle beach, washed up and melting slowly in the weak November sunshine. And his skin wasn’t green. And his joints were not bolted. And he was no monster. He was just another man and, although I had barely seen him before, I would have recognised him anywhere.