Cora Vincent E-Book

Georgina Aboud

• Herausgeber: Myriad Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.' —Kerry Hudson A chance break in a West End theatre production forces a derailed actress to confront her demons and offers her an opportunity to escape her past and live life to the full. Cora, a once promising actress, is trapped by circumstances and immobilised by a disheartening career path, failed relationships and a battered sense of self. Set against a background of a country split by politics and disjointed through lives that are increasingly isolated and lonely, this is a short, sharp story of small victories and immense moral courage. Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

Leseprobe

Praise forCora Vincent

‘Georgina Aboud’s stories are both startling and considered. Hers is an important new voice.’

—Cathy Galvin

‘Wow. Writing of the highest order. Very few people put words together as beautifully as this.’

—Susannah Waters

‘Georgina Aboud has a voice and vision all of her own. She writes prose of rare vividness and lyricism, moving effortlessly between rapture and melancholy, and making startling connections between the past and the present. In Cora Vincent she creates a character and a story that speaks strongly to where we are now.’

—Tom Lee

For Terry and Emile

Contents

Title PageDedicationCora VincentAcknowledgementsAbout the authorAbout SpotlightCopyright

Cora Vincent

2019

Ten. Nine. Eight. The old pier stands undressed, but defiant still, and there’s boy in fingerless gloves who does a cartwheel, and a girl with a face punctured by piercings and a glittering in her eyes. The fireworks squeal and light splendours on the water. Hey! Take a photo, will ya? Seven. Six. Use the flash, the flash! Five. And the dog wears one of those jackets that I hope stops her being scared, and I have a whisky tang on my tongue and a brine wash through my hair, and the girl and boy kiss and the crowd goes Ahhhhh cos a firework bursts wide open like a sun. Four. Three. And the girl says, Who’s your kiss for tonight? and I say, James, he’s with his wife, and she 2laughs and says, It’s like that, is it? Two. So the girl gives me her final tinny and she smiles at me and I can see what she would have looked like as a child, and then, Woah! Babe, cover your eyes! Cos a nude blur staggers across the pebbles and wades into the sea, and the sea pulls out its final breath of the year, a gutless wheeze, and slaps up against the naked old pier, which is only bones, and One, we are on the precipice of hope, again.

And a January where sleepers in seaside shelters kip on cardboard that held sun-swollen fruit. And then February, sodden with an empty promenade and a sky and sea melded the same, and our man plays clarinet against every morning’s sleet. In like a lion, out like a lamb, March sloshes to April, upswelling open for the verdant plush of May and yoga on the Lawns, and barbecues that scorch pebbles and drift into the navy blue of the midnights. Blink, not so hard that you lose time, and it’s June with flashing rain and marmalade skies. And then here it is, again.

Again, the longest day of the year. It’s the day the sun stands still, a day for ancients and stones moved by miracles, and me.

Happy Birthday to me.

3We get the face we deserve, that’s what we’re always told. To keep us good and honest and kind and small. I’m told I look younger than my age. People mean this as a compliment.

Really? Oh, thank you, I say, and I touch my cheek.

Peel back my skin though, and the truth idles everywhere: in glistening leg muscles and shoulder blades that could, if I say so myself, belong in an anatomy textbook. There’s a truth in my never-inhabited uterus. In my fists. In a jagged crack that runs across my forearm, in a missing tooth lost at a disco, and a lost appendix, dug out from the abyss. Managed to keep both my kidneys, but I’d give one to the right person, and I’ve always kept my heart, cushioned close by offal, and persisting still. Tattery old heart holding all the years my face does not, and squeaking with so many truths it could be drawn on cave walls.

1972

I am born tiny and hairy. I am born silent and early. White coats and blue uniforms think I’m dead. So I’m smacked within an inch of my small croaking 4life, then placed on soft crocheted blankets in a glass box. They talk in percentages. The squeezed kind that don’t yield profits or pass tests. Dad and Mum (because she is still around) bring in a man wearing a dog collar. He says prayers and he commits me to the underworld, and Boom! I turn from a puke yellow to pink and scream every profanity that I heard in the womb.

When Mum visits, she peers over me and she doesn’t take off her coat. ‘She’s a ratty bugger. Don’t think she wants to be here.’

‘Bollocks!’ Dad says, finding a chair.

But Mum is right: I pull out the tubes that support me and the blue uniforms sedate me. I scratch all I can reach, with fingernails the size of pinheads, until I bleed on the lambs’ wool. Dad huffs on the glass and draws animals in his breath, while each miniature organ struggles. Dad says he can hear me screaming in the cafeteria three floors down, and when he finally brings me home, he doesn’t sleep for a year.

Dad says I survived for an effing reason, believes I am destined for great things. Mum has moved on before I know what she thinks.

. . .5

2019

The sun puddles on the bedroom floor at around 9am. Sometimes I am up at this time, usually I am not. I lie in bed waiting for something to change. I drink tea and eat toast until the dog threatens to wee.

This morning, talk radio says they’re still coming over in their droves. Norman from Margate says enough is enough. He says the sooner we are out, the better.

The dog and I walk on the seafront, and every day the ocean is a different colour. Today it’s a sage field, with a single drift of thin-thread turquoise that stretches from pier to pier.

And now, high on the promenade, is a large starfish that the dog is throwing at my feet.

‘Leave it.’

She picks it up again, chucks it higher and it hits my shin before landing on the ground like an open hand. I nudge it with my foot and the dog, energised, flings it at me, relishing the game.

It belongs to the sea.

So I pick it up, and I hold the starfish between the tips of my forefinger and thumb, turning it back and forth. Up close it’s possible to see its very fabric: an 6underside that’s scaly and shark white, and a top half that’s decorated in orange and pearls and prehistoric crust. Did you know a starfish can grow another body, create a whole different being, from a single, severed limb? Resurrection, it’s quite the party trick.

I place it on the pebbles for the water to take, and my phone rings.

‘Theatre. London,’ my agent says, before I can say hello. ‘You know that audition you went for. Few months back. Anyway, Elizabeth whatsherface had to pull out, broke her arm horse riding, bloody amazing.’

‘Great.’

‘And it’s starring that Bright Young Thing—big buzz, wrapped a film with whatshisname. This is going to get a lot of attention, Cora. Do yourself a favour, bring your A game.’