Local Fires E-Book

Joshua Jones

• Herausgeber: Parthian Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 213

Beschreibung

Chloe enters the local talent show, seeking fame, fortune and a ticket out of town. Meanwhile, her mother, Angie, wakes up hungover on the morning of her fourth wedding day. William ponders his impending autism diagnosis through the lenses of Descartes and Hollywood heartthrob Clive Owen. Jimmy, the hot-headed proprietor of a firework shop, rages at the emergence of a rival store, as his ex-wife considers the existential ramifications of her uncanny resemblance to TV cleaning personality Kim Woodburn. Local Fires sees debut writer Joshua Jones turn his acute focus to his birthplace of Llanelli, South Wales. Sardonic and melancholic, joyful and grieving, these multifaceted stories may be set in a small town, but they have reach far beyond their locality. From the inertia of living in an ex-industrial working-class area, to gender, sexuality, toxic masculinity and neurodivergence, Jones has crafted a collection versatile in theme and observation, as the misadventures of the town's inhabitants threaten to spill over into an incendiary finale. In this stunning series of interconnected tales, fires both literal and metaphorical, local and all-encompassing, blaze together to herald the emergence of a singular new Welsh literary voice.

Leseprobe

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LOCAL FIRES

Stories

JOSHUA JONES

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Table of Contents

Title PageDedicationBrief Interview with Condemned Child #1The Fourth Wedding​I. Morning​II. NightHow Would Clive Owen Feel?Opportunity Street The Episode Where Homer and Marge Sleep with DangerHalf Moon, New YearTommyUnder the Belt, Above the Bed Brief Interview with Condemned Child #2It’s Black Country Out ThereJohnny RadioTen reasons why I didn’t stop Danny Jenkins from throwing your brother into a bin:Nos Da, PopstarWho Are You Calling Kim Woodburn?Brief Interview with Condemned Child #3A Congregation of CygnetsAcknowledgementsLibraries Wales Author of the Month – Joshua JonesCopyrightvi

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For Home

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1

Brief Interview with Condemned Child #1

Why did you start the fire?

— You are talking as if you have already made up your mind. What evidence do you have that brought you to the assumption that it was us that started the fire?

You were seen running away from the church down Inkerman Street, shortly before smoke was seen trailing through the smashed windows, were you not?

— Were we? We were simply in the area. As I’m sure you know, I live nearby. So, you’re saying someone saw smoke coming from the church, saw us chasing each other down the street, and put two and two together?

In my experience kids your age smash windows, litter, drink and smoke weed in the woods.

— In my experience, kids don’t have anything else to do.

Except burn down a church?

— Except drink, take drugs, use up as much time as possible to pass through this nothingness so many of us feel. Why do 2you think so many of us are like this? Why do you think a boy in my year at school is currently in a juvie for dealing? Why is it that another boy from school, my age, was found dead in his bed after a night drinking?

Your guess is as good as mine.

— You don’t need to guess. I’ll tell you. It’s because of this town.

Care to elaborate?

— This town breaks us. It is an oppressive state. A day here is a weighted blanket pressed down over your face, the suffocating darkness of it all. I realised this for the first time when six swans were found, on two separate occasions, with their heads decapitated and a stomach full of pellets from a BB gun. This senseless violence was very real for me. Very at home. Dad used to take me for walks through Sandy Water Park and point out the wildflowers, the seabirds. We haven’t been since those swans were killed. A part of us died that day. Something broke.

Let’s stay on topic.

— Have you read the Mabinogion? The woods next to the park are named after it, the sculptures hidden within inspired by its eleven stories. I remember when Dad took me there for the first time, and we hunted through the forest for the hidden sculptures. It was one of the best days of my life. Since then, 3I’ve seen girls give head to boys they barely know in the clearing with the iron boar. I’ve seen people set fire to the boar, trying to melt it down. The sculpture of the owl, the stag also, both missing, the posts vandalised.

How is this relevant?

— There’s no mystery anymore, Officer. And no reason.4

5

The Fourth Wedding

​I. Morning

In the room on the third floor, the pale, early-morning glow reaches across the walls, illuminating the interior, and warms the sock-clad feet of the figure lying spread-eagled on the bed against the one green-wallpapered wall.

She lies with her open mouth inches from a small pool of purple vomit, baring arse to the candelabra. Somewhere in the folds of the duvet a phone is ringing. Although muffled, its demands wake the figure. She stirs, her groans lost in the memory foam. She turns onto her side, cheek damp with dribble, wrinkling her nose in disgust. She smells the sick before she sees it and retreats across the bed. Pinching her nose, she searches with one hand through the duvet and finds her clutch bag by her knee. She fumbles with the lock and pulls out the phone from where it’s nestled between loose change, receipts from the bar downstairs. She answers the call on the final ring.

— Alright Angie, love? Ow’s the angover?

— Iya Jan. Am anging, fair play. You alright?

— Yes, yes, just downstairs with The Girls aving something to eat. Seen the time, love?

Angie squints through semi-closed eyelids, ignoring the dull ache in her left eye.

6— Oh fuckin ell, it’s half ten! Right, am getting up now.

— Don’t worry, mun, we’ll be up with some brekkie for you inna bit. What d’you want?

— Paracetamol and a Berocca if you got any.

— Yes, yes, no problem. Anything to eat though?

Angie unsteadily makes her way over to the desk above which a large rectangular mirror hangs on the wall. She curses under her breath as she almost trips over her boots and jeans strewn across the floor.

— No thanks, onestly. Angie pauses. Maybe some toast might elp though.

— Alright love no problem. I’ve got the keycard so you go sort yourself out and we’ll be up inna bit.

She drops the phone onto the desk with a thud. Squints into the mirror, her nose almost touching that of her reflection’s; her contact lens is stuck to the left of her pupil. The eye is bloodshot and sore. As soon as she starts poking at it, tears flood her waterline, threatening to cascade down her cheek, still damp with forgotten saliva. She extracts it successfully, flicking the discarded contact lens into the bin below the desk. She blinks away the tears, rubs at her cheeks with the back of her hand. She checks the other eye in the mirror and realises she must have taken the lens out after stumbling into the room late last night. You fucking idiot, she says to her reflection. Surely by the fourth wedding you know not to drink the night before?

The glass on the bedside cabinet is full of water. Someone must have left it there for her. How’d she get here? Maybe she wouldn’t have thrown up if she had drunk the water. Or at least it may have washed out some of the purple colour. Angie 7picks the glass up and takes it to the en suite where she pours the lukewarm water down the drain. She fills the glass and drinks it in big quick gulps, soothing her scorched throat, and fills it again. She takes the glass back into the room and places it on the desk next to her phone.

Angie turns around to face the room and rests against the desk. She quietly observes the scene. Plans of how she’s going to undertake the cleaning of the room are almost immediately discarded, long before they near fruition. The throbbing in her head is too violent for coherent thought. But, not wanting Aunt Jan and The Girls to see the state of the place, she kicks her discarded clothes under the desk. Angie drops the duvet and pillows onto the floor. Delicately, she picks at the corners of the bedsheets, brings them together and ties them with the vomit in the middle. Holding her breath, she walks quickly to the room door, almost tripping over the duvet and dumps the sheets in the hallway. That’ll have to do.

The pressure of the shower drums against her scalp. It’s hot and heavy, softens the dull ache in her temples. Standing in the bathtub, the curtain pulled tight across the flimsy rail separates this moment of solitude from a day giving vows of undying commitment. Weeks of practice. Flash photography, children dancing and crying, choking on a perfumed neck when greeting a friend or work colleague, relatives fighting over who has the biggest hat and who wears it better. Angie hadn’t bothered with a photographer for the first two weddings. Well, the first one, they couldn’t afford it anyway. But they hired one for the third; she thought it would be a wedding to remember. During the months of organising the fourth 8wedding, she had thought to herself: This, this is the one I won’t want to forget. A voice through the front door, unmistakeably shrill, calls out from beyond the shower curtain:

— You in there, Ange? I got The Girls with me. Alright?

— Yeah, Jan, yeah. I’ll be with you inna minute.

— No worries, love, take your time.

Angie washes her hair with the complementary shampoo, the air thick with the sweet smell of coconut. She runs conditioner through her hair with her fingers, pressing it into the tips. Some of the dye from her freshly blonde curls bleeds down her back and thighs; not enough to cause concern. She hums the tune of a pop song played on the speakers of the bar last night — what was its name? The lyrics of the chorus, a song her daughters knew and sang to each other, with their faces almost touching and giggling. The same ten, twenty songs played on loop all night. She had heard it three or four times throughout the evening, enough times to remember the melody, but didn’t think to ask the barmaid who sings it.

Angie pulls the shower head from its clasp and washes out the conditioner from her hair. She watches the bubbles and creamy, coconut-scented foam swirl around the drain before descending. She briefly considers masturbating. Her water-wrinkled hand, still holding the shower head, skates past her considerable waist, past the caesarean scars and wide hips, towards her inner thighs. The water’s hot, constant pressure is too attractive.

Rapturous giggling interrupts her moment. She opens her eyes and blinks quickly, the light fading through the shower curtain. She is suddenly aware of how long she’s been in the shower and hastily places the head back in its clasp. Angie 9squirts shower gel into her hands and rubs it into her body. The artificial shea butter makes her almost retch. The faucet squeals when she twists it.

The persistent hum of the fan rushes to dominate the soundscape, without the whoosh of the shower to dampen it. White noise replaced by white noise. The curtain rattles along the rail as it’s yanked back. She breathes in the humidity, imagines her lungs wetting, a relief from last night’s chain-smoked cigarettes. She sighs, tugs a white towel from the radiator next to the shower. It’s soothing against her forehead. She wearily rubs at her burning skin, rich red worn through the day-old spray tan. She douses herself with deodorant before covering herself with the white robe that is hanging on the back of the door. She takes another towel from the radiator and wraps it around her hair.

Standing in front of the mirror, Angie wipes a small circle of the glass clean with the side of her clenched fist. The fan has done very little to clear the steam from the mirror — it makes a lot of noise for something so useless. Which husband was that? Too many of them, really. She had a type. She prods the bags under her eyes. The skin around them feels puffy. She removes the engagement ring from her pruned fingers to rub cream on her face, quietly thankful for the neutral, watery smell of aloe vera and cucumber. Anything stronger would be opportunity for retching, in her current state of fragility. After tonight, with a new wedding ring on her finger, the engagement ring, with its rows of stones that smugly, expensively glint in the mirror-light, will be placed in a wooden box with red velvet lining, stored at the bottom shelf of her bedside cabinet, where the rings from previous engagements 10and marriages are kept. Before leaving, Angie scoops up the complementary toiletries and stuffs them into her makeup bag.

A heavy, perfumed fog envelops her as soon as Angie opens the door to the bedroom. Aunt Janet is sat in the chair by the desk, Angie’s sister Susie and Charlie, Susie’s daughter, both sit on the edge of the bed. Susie has a daughter and a son, both with the same father, from her first and only marriage. It still appears to be successful. Angie’s own daughter Chloe, her youngest, stands in the back, between the bed and the window. The light from outside is still bright and fresh, not so pale as the morning. The aggressiveness of the ceiling light hurts Angie’s eyes, still sore from sleeping with one contact lens pushed to the side like a nagging thought.

The Girls are loud, never listening, only waiting until it’s their turn to drill into one another’s ears with their incessant giggling. Their lips, ultra-pink, protrude from faces an unnatural orange that nears brown, startling against the whites of their teeth. Jan and Susie had taken Angie on a girly date to a teeth-whitening clinic in Swansea last week, before the hen party. It justifies the years of harm their mouths have taken, from drinking since their teenage years, and smoking longer still.

Chloe is different, despite Angie’s attempts. The only thing Angie and her daughter share is their love for reality TV. Never interested in makeup, this morning Chloe allowed Charlie to put a small amount of mascara on her unusually long lashes. Her unremarkably brown hair is tied neatly in a bun on the crown of her head. She takes after her father; handsomely pale and tall. Husband Number Two. On this occasion, she had given in to Angie, allowing her to apply a very small amount of lightly coloured fake tan to her skin. She refuses to wear 11heels, says she doesn’t need them — she’s tall enough and holds herself in a way that is beyond her seventeen years. There she stands in the corner, quiet and graceful in a pair of sandals.

— Come sit by ere, love, Jan rises from where she sits and gestures towards the desk. Some Beroccas there for you an all.

Angie sits down and begins to pick at the toast. The butter is thickly coated, sludgy, the bread like stone. She drops a Berocca into the glass of water and takes a sip while it’s still bubbling. The fizzling tickles her nose as she drinks.

— Chloe, have you seen your sister?

— She’s just making sure the boys are okay, then she’s bringing the dresses up, Chloe replies.

— Ohhh where the bloody ell have tho— found them! Jan passes the crinkling sheet of tablets over to Angie. Get two of those down you!

The pills feel like chalk in Angie’s mouth and don’t mix well with the fizzing water, the colour of a highlighter pen.

— How much do you remember from last night, Ange? Susie asks.

— How much do I want to remember? asks Angie, to laughter.

Charlie laughs too. She is still too young to drink, but Angie knows that doesn’t stop people her age from trying to get into Met Bar with their sibling’s IDs and their crop tops. She and Susie were those kids once, playing dress-up in each other’s clothes and arguing over makeup. Most of their fights were over who borrowed whose shoes, or which boys were out of bounds.

Chloe sits on the bed opposite the open window, looking out with her back to the room. Outside the air is crisp. It has been 12a cold morning. A light breeze brushes through the neatly trimmed bushes and trees dotted around the courtyard. The car park a little further down the hill is mostly empty, except for a small number of vehicles belonging to staff. Mostly black, grey or white and all of them dirty, Aunt Janet’s bright pink Fiat 500 sparkles in the morning dew. Square lumps of pink fluff in the shape of dice can be seen through the frosted glass, hanging from the rear-view mirror. It has been cleaned and waxed by Janet’s new boyfriend the morning before. He always makes sure her car is the pride of the car park. On three occasions he has paid to have dents hammered out, the pink repainted, angry car owners appeased. Aunt Janet says she forgets she can’t drive in heels.

The sky’s usual grey is a pleasing blue, mottled with transparent clouds. The season could be mistaken for spring, if it were not for the wilting of browning leaves, like hands downstretched. Chloe watches the guests arrive, some of them parking cars, some of them walking up the bank, while her mother gets primed and ready to look like a star, as if she’s about to climb the steps to the door of the Big Brother house. Though not before she’s passed the wall of flagrant camera flashes by wordless paparazzi, invisible behind their cameras, the live audience bleating like goats. The gentlemen among the arriving guests hold doors open for their wives and the elderly. Children run ahead through the car park, their parents chasing after them, worried they’ll dirty their hired suits and pretty dresses before the ceremony begins. Her mother’s second husband didn’t allow any children at their wedding. The entire day, she felt like something was missing. Since then, Angie’s never had a childless wedding.13

​II. Night

Angie lies next to her new husband. The latest one in a series of men. Four of them made it to marital status; two of them became fathers. Of those married one became deceased, one divorced her, the other divorced by her, and the latest — yet to be determined. Downstairs, her son and first daughter, Bertie and Lottie, one birthed before the death of Husband Number One and one after, and Chloe, a blessing from Husband Number Two — or, as Angie sometimes refers to him, the sperm donor. They’re still dancing, presumably. Jan and her new boyfriend hadn’t been seen in a while. No one noticed them leave and even if they did, they wouldn’t have cared. Bertie’s waistcoat will be on the back of someone else’s chair by now, its rust-coloured boutonnière missing. The cleaners will find it under a table in the morning, the dried aster flowers trampled and its orange petals missing.

Chloe had been too shy earlier in the afternoon to dance but, with Lottie’s encouragement and the pushing of drinks across the white tablecloth by many an elder relative’s tremoring hand, she found her courage. And then she kept going, stopping only to kick off her sandals or to pick up a runaway child and hold them in the crook of her arm while gently weaving her hips side to side. Strands of her hair fell onto her bare shoulders and one of the other girls would reach up and tuck it back into the bun on her head. Everybody adored her, all the young girls wanted to dance with her, and it made Angie’s heart ripple with pride.

Peter rolls onto his back causing the bed to surge like a 14wave, bringing Angie back to land. His belly protrudes from him like a barrel, his frame still wrapped in its wedding attire. Angie had given up the fruitless attempt of seducing him when he passed out, fully clothed, the lamps lit and swamping the hotel room in an aggressively warm glow. He was too drunk to fuck, although it was his idea to leave the party early. And not quietly either; not a quick dash to the exit and up the staircase. Angie would have taken off her shoes and held them by the strap as she let the carpet cushion her steps. No, not like that. Peter, being Peter, had bellowed over to Angie from where he stood at the bar, pint of Guinness in hand. Angie had been in the middle of teasing Bertie in front of his latest boyfriend with memories of him as a child, when Bertie was Bella. And how much Angie loved and supported him through it all, and how much she loved having a son. Bertie had his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and the three of them were laughing, when Peter shouted Right en, wife! Am finishing this pint, them am taking you upstairs forra shag! Bertie scowled at him, and Angie rested a hand on his tense arm. E’s only havin a laugh, she said.

Who’s laughing now? Angie thinks, staring up at the ceiling. Peter had spanked her across the threshold of the room where she hoped they’d consummate their bond to each other. The room was dark when they entered, dimly light by the shaft of light from the hallway that threw Peter’s wavering frame into shadow. Angie giggled, her buttock stinging from his mark, turned around to kiss him. He almost fell into her outstretched arms as he came towards her. She took him to the bed and laid him down on the covers, before dashing round the bed to light the two lamps either side of the headboard. 15Satisfied with the ambience, Angie pulled herself on top of him. His stomach, like the hardened leather of a horse’s saddle, had sweat through the Ralph Lauren shirt. She took to the task of unbuttoning him. The top two — no, three — had become unbuttoned throughout the evening, the more he drank. His chest lay bare under her thighs, displaying silvery curls of hair slick with sweat. His collar stank of spilled beer. She asked him to stay awake for her, just let her undress him, almost begging. He mumbled false hopes and empty promises. In the morning, he said drifting off; in the morning. He muttered something Angie had to lean in to hear, something about it being the best day, and tomorrow… tomorrow…

Wasn’t this meant to be the best day of her life? What about the first three? Maybe she could have said that was true about the first wedding, to Husband Number One. It was unfair, his death. Unfair, she tells herself to this day, but she’s forgiven him since. No, when Angie thinks about it, about the best day of her life, it has nothing to do with the weddings. She thinks of the day she took Chloe on a trip to London a couple of years ago, after Chloe had begged for weeks and weeks to visit the V&A Museum. She’d learned about Rodin’s The Age of Bronze in school, looked at pictures of it on the internet, simply resolved she must see it with her own green eyes. And Angie said yeah, fuck it. She’d said yes for the shopping, and for that reason, they booked a private room in a hostel, so their newly bought treasures would be safe while they went out to a nice dinner. The next day was for walking around the museum, then a quick trip back to the hostel before the Megabus to Swansea, where Jan was to pick them up and take them home. They stashed rosé in the locker at the hostel, two bottles 16bought from the shop two doors down, before they headed to Oxford Street. Cheaper than drinking in London, Angie had said, ignoring the fact Chloe was too young to even set foot in pubs, except the ones in Llanelli, like Met Club and the Jailhouse, where any girl baring a bit of chest could get in without ID.

Shopping had been nice. They’d gone into all the expensive shops, the posh ones, looked at all the pretty things. They were excited for the Big Primark and what bargains they could score in TK Maxx. It had been a nice day. But that next morning, at the V&A, that was special. Not that Angie knew it would be at the time. She was there humouring Chloe. She’d loaded up on coffee first (and complained about the prices of sandwiches in Pret A Manger) and followed Chloe around the enormous rooms, feeling insignificant, listening to her daughter excitedly ramble on about Japanese textiles, landscape paintings by Amelia Long, who used to be a Lady of somewhere. Then into the sculpture room. The other stuff was alright, yeah, the art, but, Christ that sculpture. The Age of Bronze. How do you even describe something like that? It was beautiful. It emanated strength, and a fragility, that felt very manly. Or what masculinity should be — vulnerable. Its beauty was in its humanity. To be vulnerable is to be strong, or something. Angie felt very moved. She felt like she’d experienced something. She saw what Chloe saw.

Peter interrupts her thoughts with a fart. The smell follows moments after the sound, like thunder after lightning. It begins to rain outside. The patter of water droplets, apprehensive at first, taps against the windowpane, synchronises with the bass that continues to vibrate through the floors from the function 17room. Angie fills her lungs with air and lets out the deepest sigh she can muster until her lungs deflate. This is how I feel, like a deflated lung, she thinks. She gets up from the bed and takes a glass from the stand next to the TV. She carries it to the bathroom, holds a finger underneath the tap until the water, which rushes out so fast it feels like foam, is cold enough, and fills the glass.