Liberty Tales E-Book

Katy Darby

• Herausgeber: Arachne Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 171

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

2015 marked the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and Arachne Press celebrated with an evening of stories, poetry and song on the subject of Liberty, now collected together in book form. The call out continued until the end of the year, and here are the collected and eclectic responses, from authors and poets from all corners of the UK and further afield, including Sarah Evans, Nick Rawlinson, Helen Morris, Owen Townend, Alison Lock, Peter de Ville, Cassandra Passarelli, David Guy, Carolyn Eden, Brian Johnstone, Andrew McCallum, Bernie Howley, Jeremy Dixon, Liam Hogan, Jim Cogan, Katy Darby, David Mathews, Anna Fodorova, Cherry Potts, Richard Smyth.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Introduction

Cherry Potts

Lag

Jim Cogan

Free White Towel

Carolyn Eden

Bothered

Sarah Evans

The Poppies

Helen Morris

Stopped by a Busker

Owen Townend

Into The Blue

Nick Rawlinson

The King’s Computer

Liam Hogan

Jail Break

Kate Foley

Cena

Peter DeVille

Girl in a Suitcase

Cassandra Passarelli

The King and The Light

David Guy

Dog’s Life

Alison Lock

Border Country

David Mathews

Knitting for Demons

Cherry Potts

Liberty

Andrew Callum

Wigtown Bay 1685

Elinor Brooks

The Fool’s Tale

Katy Darby

Tabernacle Lane

Jeremy Dixon

Flax, San Francisco

Jeremy Dixon

Pearls Over Shanghai

Jeremy Dixon

Character Study

Katy Darby

Fruit of the Sea

Anna Fodorova

Witchburning

Richard Smyth

The Branded Hand

Brian Johnstone

Black & White

Brian Johnstone

The Privilege of Departure

Bernie Howley

About the Authors

More from Arachne Press

Introduction: Magna Carta

Cherry Potts

JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects, Greeting.

TO ALL FREE MEN OF OUR KINGDOM we have granted, for us and our heirs for ever, all the liberties written out below, to have and to keep for them and their heirs, of us and our heirs:

Magna Carta, if you read it, is mainly about asserting the rights and privileges of the higher echelons of society to not be messed about by the king. It has some famous clauses that are still enshrined in law today and some downright wacky ones that don’t even translate anymore. Then there are some practical ones which sadly we didn’t get stories for: protection of underage heirs, standard measures of wine, ale, corn and cloth, sensible recovery of debt that did not beggar the debtor, restoration of dispossessed lands, including common land, assertion of the ancient liberties of the city of London...

These stories and poems address some specific clauses of Magna Carta but also the more general concept of Liberty. Magna Carta never got as far as freedom, this was liberty for the rich. Serfs had no freedom. Quite a few of the clauses relate to the rights of women. Except that when you read them, they don’t amount to a whole hill of beans. Nonetheless we got quite a few stories that address the woman’s lot. Pammy in Carolyn Eden’s Free White Towel would have benefited from the clause on widows’ rights, except that she isn’t one.

King John has quite a reputation as a bad monarch, and most people have heard of him however inaccurately, either from Robin Hood, 1066 And All That, or the wonderful A.A. Milne’s poem King John’s Christmas, and although emphatically not about John, the evil king surfaces in several stories.

Some of our stories go that step further, and stray into freedom, of whom to love, the right to roam, to live outside the system, freedom of religious expression, from emotional oppression, and of course, freedom from slavery – all alien concepts to the drafters of Magna Carta.

With the government endlessly flirting with destroying the Human Rights Act, and with no written constitution, even the rights enshrined in Magna Carta can look fragile at times. The fight for liberty isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Where appropriate, I’ve quoted the relevant clause.

This is the most famous clause of Magna Carta, and one that is still in force.

Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terre.

Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus, aut differemus rectum aut justiciam.

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

Lag

Jim Cogan

Fry stripped naked while the two of them watched, and then dressed again in the clothes they’d brought on a tray: boxer shorts, socks balled into a lovers’ clinch, black jeans that had been almost new on the day he’d arrived. The shirt was as he’d left it. Its freezing fibres billowed round his frame, caricaturing the weight he’d lost. He found his watch shivering in the toe of his left shoe, which rested with its mate atop his jacket.

‘Nice,’ said Endersby as he watched him shrug the leather on. ‘Surprised that one didn’t go walkabout.’

There was no mirror, so Fry struck a player’s pose and looked at them both with his eyebrows raised.

Hassan obliged with a wolf-whistle.

‘Now remember,’ said Endersby, ‘the magic ends at midnight. If you’re not back by then, you’ll be leaving your knackers in that tray.’

Hassan smiled. ‘He says that to all the girls.’

‘Try and be a good boy now.’

‘Yes Boss,’ Fry grinned and gave them a thumbs-up. They let him out via the air-lock. Sudden oxygen. A drizzle-flecked carpark dotted with staff wheels. It was a short walk to the barrier, past the HMP logo, then a longer trudge to the bus-stop, where a half-dozen day-releasers were already waiting. Grown men with hardened lives and hardened bodies, joshing like teenagers.

After the bus-ride, a railway carriage. Cooling towers looming over the fields. Civilian commuters clutching at their bags, staring at the floor or out of the window, anywhere but at the day-releasers lolling on adjoining seats, their banter ramped up a notch for the occasion, loving the effect they were having on a world that had shut them up for so long.

He sat with the group, keeping silent. An old lady caught his eye. He shook his head and smiled. She looked away, relieved.

An elbow poked his ribs. ‘Where you going today, pretty boy?’

It was Gannon. Local lad. Multiple GBH.

‘College reunion,’ said Fry.

Gannon shook his mangy head and smiled. ‘Well I’ll be buggered. So am I!’

‘Small world,’ said Fry.

The pack howled together.

By the time he reached the city centre he was alone, Gannon and the rest having dispersed on the arrivals platform, bound for parts unknown.

The sun was out, filtering down through young leaves, spraying patterns onto the limestone college walls. High walls, built to keep you out, not in. He watched bicycles slipstream each other round a memorial to murdered bishops and thought of Billy MacLeod, the arsonist, with his dewy-eyed nostalgia for the smell of char-grilled human.

The bicycles were piloted by children, children festooned with college colours. Wherever he looked, they were there, the fresh-faced inheritors of his city. His city of speared dreams. Dreams shivved in the prime of life. Dreams running red down a windscreen.

He made his way along the main commercial drag, fighting the tide of bright eyes, youthful smiles and futures still intact. In a small room above a gentlemen’s outfitters he sat in a barber’s chair, praying for a slip of the blade, then went downstairs to hire a dinner suit. He spent the next two hours alone on a bench by the river, dressed in his finery, his other clothes beside him in a carrier bag as he filled his lungs again and again, trying to stay calm.

When he finally moved, the time on the invitation had long since passed. Ten minutes later he was standing before the studded, weather-beaten gate of his own college, soles teetering on the cobbles, the pointed shadows of the railings reaching across to prod at his heels. The place seemed forbiddingly old-school, nothing like the institution he now called home. More like the Scrubs, or engravings he’d seen of the old Bastille.

Inside, the porter recognised him at once, startling him with the warmth of his greeting. He showed Fry a hatch in the ancient wall where he could leave his rented dinner suit at the end of the night, and promised to see it returned to the shop.

‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said, shaking Fry’s hand, and pointed to the glow from the dining hall. Fry could hear cutlery duelling above the evening breeze. His face felt strange, as if a sneeze were on the way.

He walked across the grass. In seventeen years, nothing had changed. Candlelit tables ran the length of the room beneath a high ceiling. Poets, prime ministers and a lone bluestocking saviour of humanity smiled from the panelled walls. Voices purred in an ambience lubed by pre-prandial fizz. Fry paused in the doorway to check the seating plan, even though he’d already received it by post and virtually memorised it in his cell.

Pretending he wasn’t still checking for her name.

Pretending it didn’t cause him pain when it still wasn’t there.

It was a joke, of course. All of it.

A joke that the invitation even reached him in prison. A joke that the screw who opened it had seen fit to pass it straight to the Guv. A joke the Guvnor was probably now telling at parties: his prisoner out on day release to attend a gaudy.

Whatever the ins-and-outs, permission had been granted before he’d even seen the invite. No alcohol, mind, and no staying overnight. The seating plan had arrived a few weeks later.

If her name had been on it he’d never have dared come.

And yet, since it wasn’t, what had been the point?

Nothing he ever did made sense.

A couple of diners had noticed him now. A hundred more pairs of eyes might turn towards him at any moment. A last upsurge of pride quelled the urge to run.

Take the plunge. You’ve done this before.

Just play it like you did on your very first day.

They’d placed him at the end of one of the tables, an empty seat to his left. An ideal vantage point for surveying the room, which he couldn’t help doing. Eyes met his and darted away. Hands waved and heads turned, smiling, before swivelling back to ask each other if it was really him.

It took a moment or two to recognise each person. The men were slender boys encased in flesh sarcophagi, familiar eyes, chins and noses protruding through a sea of matter. The women, without exception, were almost too beautiful to look at. Beautiful of face, of body and of attire. He found himself staring at them the way he’d ogled girls as a teenager. The way you’d behold an alien or a goddess.

An old college Fellow sat opposite him. Fry introduced himself.

‘Ah. You’re the chap who did some time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, am I right?’

‘Still doing it,’ smiled Fry.

The don leant forward with a grin. ‘Might I ask what you were in for?’

‘Philosophy, Politics and Economics,’ said Fry.

The old man, a renowned classicist, pounded the table as he laughed. Fry felt himself relax for the first time since the train.

And then he saw her.

Barely three metres away, at the next table, with her back to him. She turned to speak to the man on her right, lips mouthing in profile. He felt his whole body shudder, heard his mind warble ‘What? What?’ before it finally clicked, and he started running through the seating plan in his head. He caught her first name, then the duplicated surname shared with the guy who now sat beside her.

Married. To someone they’d both known. Someone she’d never stopped knowing.

She seemed taller, rangier. Her hair a different colour.

Maybe.

The rest of the meal was lost on him.

‘Done a Kidman, hasn’t she?’

He’d drunk the coffee but declined the port. The hall was emptying now but still full enough to keep him hidden, and her close by.

He recognised the person who’d slid in beside him, but couldn’t remember the name. Another chubby face with too much tooth in the grin.

‘A Kidman. You know what I mean. Bleached herself, hasn’t she? Started out all flame-haired and rosy-cheeked and ripe, and now… I mean, what the fuck happened to all those freckles? I’m telling you, I don’t even bother watching her films anymore.’

Fry’s gaze flitted from the guy’s fat hand to the butter knife. The wood of the table was soft enough for a proper crucifixion. That’s why all the mess hall surfaces were steel.

She was heading for the exit, her husband’s hand in the small of her back.

‘Didn’t you have a thing with her once?’

‘Nicole Kidman? No.’

Fry stood up.

He told himself he’d stay till someone uttered the words ‘vehicular manslaughter’, but no one did. They made him feel welcome. Valued. Wanted. That made him feel bad. He kept losing her in the crowd, telling himself it was just chance.

When he noticed the clock it was gone eleven, and he knew he’d probably miss his train. He retrieved his carrier bag and got changed in a bathroom. As he stashed the DJ in the porter’s hatch he heard his name being called.

She was walking alone by the side of the grass.

‘You’re not off, are you?’

Fry nodded.

‘Jesus, we haven’t even… d’you have to? One more drink?’

Her eyes. Full on, like yesterday.

Fry gulped and shook his head. ‘I’m on a rather tight schedule. I take it you know about…?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Look, can you wait here? I’ll be one minute, that’s all. Promise.’

He watched her go. The hair. The shoulders. The calves beneath the hem. He began to panic.

She’d lied. Two full minutes went by before she returned, a car key dangling from her index finger.

‘Drive you,’ she said.

‘Yes, but… are you okay to…?’

‘Haven’t touched a drop all night.’

Her car was a few streets away, a Volvo four-wheel-drive with a baby seat in the back. She beeped the doors and bade him get in.

‘Won’t be a second.’

He sat in the front seat looking at the night. He heard the tailgate open, heard her rummaging in the back, felt the quiver of the suspension as she perched on the bumper. The tailgate slammed, the back door opened and the high heeled shoes she’d been wearing landed in the baby seat. Fry swallowed, unsure whether he could handle the sight of her bare toes flexing on the accelerator. He tried to stop himself from glancing down as she got in, and when he failed he saw she was wearing running shoes, mud-spattered ones with deep rubber lugs, of the type favoured by fell racers.

The engine fired. So did Adele. The same song Gannon liked to hum when he did the Times crossword.

Na-na-na-na someone like yoooo-hoo-hoo.

‘Sorry,’ she said, and killed the stereo.

He hoped he knew why.

They mostly talked about her, which felt right. He didn’t even need to look at her that much. Instead, he thought of the running shoes, saw her contouring at speed along a muddy incline, soles mauling the turf, her bare legs cased in mud, her breath the only sound against the silence of the hills. As she disappeared behind a crag, he waved good-bye.

When they arrived at the barrier the dashboard clock read 12.07.

He nodded towards the razor wire. ‘Quick coffee?’

She answered with a stifled laugh and a grin full of mischief. ‘Probably best get back,’ she said, and kissed him on the cheek.

He watched the tail-lights disappear and rang the outer bell, getting Hassan on a double shift.

‘Tut-tut-tut, Fry. Very very tut-tut-tut.’

‘Sorry Boss. Won’t happen again.’

‘I won’t tell if you don’t. Now get yer jim-jams on and fuck off to bed.’

‘Yes Boss,’ said Fry, grateful to be home.

Vidua post mortem mariti sui statim et sine difficultate habeat maritagium et hereditatem suam, nec aliquid det pro dote sua, vel pro maritagio suo, vel hereditate sua, quam hereditatem maritus suus et ipsa tenuerint dit obitus ipsius mariti, et maneat in domo mariti sui per quadraginta dies post mortem ipsius, infra quos assignetur ei dos sua.

At her husband’s death, a widow may have her marriage portion and inheritance at once and without trouble. She shall pay nothing for her dower, marriage portion, or any inheritance that she and her husband held jointly on the day of his death. She may remain in her husband’s house for forty days after his death, and within this period her dower shall be assigned to her.

Free White Towel

Carolyn Eden

I don’t miss his breath, stinking of beer and dry roasted peanuts, nor his spittle dribbling on my collarbone, bruised where it wouldn’t show.

Now I am an outdoor bird, a magpie watching daybreak’s dew, the drizzle of an English summer cooling my healing neck, as the park gates swing open at one or another end of my favourite bus route; the 188 from Greenwich to Russell Square.

I suppose it will be harder when the weather turns.

‘Daft cow!’ Stanley laughed and I could tell from our chauffeur’s wobbling shoulders that he too considered me an object of ridicule.

All I’d said was, ‘I didn’t know the big sales now start as early as November!’ as we cruised along Oxford Street, passing Selfridges and John Lewis still all a-glitter at midnight.

The joke was that I’d mistaken a dismay of rag-bag rough sleepers for bargain hunters.

Why else might someone curl up on the hard ground outside a department store?

Stanley laughing was a bad sign. Too often his chuckles tended to slither into sneers and slaps. I had learnt it was best to say nothing, ask for nothing, for I did indeed need nothing. I belonged beside the Aga while The City was Stanley’s domain. ‘Up West’ was not for the likes of me, apart from the annual November hell of a Masonic Ladies’ Night.

Ironically it was an overnight Masonic jamboree that gave me the idea. All the wives had a spa session while their other halves bared their calves in ceremonial bonding games. Embarrassed by my lumpen flesh I declined massages and the like but found delight in hiding my flab in the steam room or submerged in the glorious hot tub before huddling beneath a fluffy free white towel upon a lounger. I fell asleep, and when I woke up I thought – I could live like this.

My sleep used to be pocked with anger, fear and worry. The worst dreams were the happy ones, waking from bliss into a bruised chaos that stung like a raw finger dipped into a salt and vinegar packet of crisps I once found abandoned on a memorial bench dedicated to Robin who so loved it here.

When I was a child, a meagrely shod, scruffy tramp occasionally knocked on our back door to beg for a glass of water. He’d pilfer whatever lay within a hand’s-snatch while mum’s back was turned at the sink. He favoured oranges.

Mum taught me that whilst a good deed a day keeps the hubris away, one should never leave a purse on the kitchen table.

I suppose I was lucky to have been brought up in a penny-pinching household where meals were planned to the last splinter of cheddar. Like my mother I have become an obsessive planner. Scrumped apples alone do not make a pie.

I have not yet resorted to stealing although I have been known to ‘liberate’ some biscuits and ball-point pens from a hotel’s amenities trolley.

My incredulity at the vagrants in the big city seems less funny now that I too am homeless.

I was never mighty as in ‘look how that mighty Pamela’s fallen’ but I was certainly a languisher with a body grossly swollen from baked goods munched in solitude.