She-Clown E-Book

Hannah Vincent

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

Seitenzahl: 222

Beschreibung

These fierce, funny and feminist short stories shine with everyday heroines at work and at play. Ordinary lives are transformed as women try to be themselves while clowning around for others. Captured in familiar situations as well as in flights of fancy, the women in these stories are engaged in acts of self-preservation: they are exhilarated to discover the joy and surprise of other women's company, they make bold sexual choices, they go on a night-time excursions; as grandmothers, they give their grandchildren unsuitable presents. In one story, a young woman and her mother harness their creativity to express their horror at the world around them. In another, a teenage mother struggles with her feelings for the father of her child. One of the tales follows a woman who experiences the freedom of the workplace while another shows how imprisoning it can be. Compassionate, unexpected, and full of small triumphs in the face of adversity, this collection establishes Hannah Vincent as one of the freshest voices in contemporary fiction.

Leseprobe

i

Praise for She-Clown and Other Stories

‘Hannah Vincent practises a sort of believe-it-or-not deadpan surrealism to write about what really interests her — people, humanity, how we all get on, or get along or, in some cases, just get by. She-Clown is an excellent example.’

— Nicholas Royle, editor of Best British Short Stories

‘Hannah Vincent’s short stories are fictional sisters of Judy Chicago’s epic feminist artwork The Dinner Party. The language, the worlds and the characters are glorious.’

— Julia Crouch

‘Hannah Vincent’s stories are as minimal as Raymond Carver, and as clever as Raymond Carver: nothing is ever as it seems then you turn the page and are surprised again.’

— Lisa Blower

‘Hannah Vincent writes tight, spares no words and pulls no punches. From clown paint to oesophageal frogs, her stories are often strange, always sharp and like to linger.’

— Alice Slater

Praise for Hannah Vincent’s novels

Alarm Girl

‘A book of heat, loss, wit and aching tenderness.’

— Tim Crouch

‘Beautifully written; the heat and landscapes of South Africa leap off the page as Indy’s story unfolds.’

— Bella

‘An assured exposition of grief, belonging and the nature of self. Convincing characterisation and strong evocations of South Africa and suburban Britain conspire to turn a simple tale into a book which lingers in the mind.’

— Sussex Lifeii

‘Sensitively written, this is a heartrending tale of a young girl trying to make sense of her life while accepting loss and change.’

—We Love This Book

‘In tone and content I could compare it to Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall… A subtle and yet powerful novel…’

— Writers Hub

‘Beautiful, moving and achingly human.’

—Spirit FM

‘A hugely sating read. Compelling, beautiful and poetic, this is a book to get utterly lost in.’

— Bookgroup.info

The Weaning

‘An original, surprising, beautifully crafted novel that stands out from the crowd … packs a powerful punch … pared down … enthralling … a great achievement.’

—Anya Lipska

‘A gripping page-turner.’

—Paul McVeigh

‘Blown away by this book…without doubt a full-on five-star read.’

—Bookish Chat

‘A beautifully written, evocative and very dark story that explores issues that will resonate with the reader. Hannah Vincent is a talented observer; she sees life and people and relates them through her books with incredible insight. Fluent and powerful, I loved this book, just as I adored her first!’

— Random Things Through My Letterbox

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To Mum and Dad

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Contents

Title PageDedicationPortrait of the Artistis it normal for a young girl to write this kind of thing?Firefliespinpricks of light danced in front of her eyesCarnivalrearranging the crown jewelsShe-Clownfrom smooth to rough, then rough to smoothBenedictionshe went quiet on me, and she had been quiet ever sinceThe Poison Frogafraid of what her mother might doThe Mermaid and the Tickher red swimming costume hung from a branch of the treeAn Extra Teatif I ate myself, would I be fat, or would I disappear?The Paintingnot her work clothes. She looks like a manCamel Toeshe wonders which of them was the difficult oneThe SparrowI will not be consumedGranny’s Gunnot a woman’s womanConnie and Medo you think I’ve changed much?3 o’clocktalking to yourself now, are we?G-loriouswhat does it matter if it’s real or G-real?Woman of the Yearsomeone thinks highly of you, considers you worth inviting, wants to celebrate youAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorCopyright

8

Portrait of the Artist

CARINA’S MOTHER stared at the man’s penis. It was misshapen, like a dahlia tuber, with pendulous balls hanging below. The name ‘Leonardo’ was written in different coloured letters in an arc above the drawing, like a rainbow. The classroom clock ticked softly. She heard her husband’s stomach rumble. A casserole she had made was waiting for them at home.

The classroom door banged.

‘Sorry to keep you,’ the teacher said, breezing in.

She was young, with neat, fine hair and interesting clothes. She pulled out a chair on the other side of the desk, and thanked Carina’s parents for coming. Carina’s mother glanced at the picture on the wall again. The life-sized figure was contained inside a pencilled square, which was surrounded by 2a circle. There were two pairs of arms and two pairs of legs. She stared at the carefully drawn penis and wondered if it was this young teacher who had drawn the man so lovingly.

Carina was a lively member of the class, the teacher said, with successful friendships and an interest in history. She would be a candidate for one of the good universities, if that was what they wanted for her? And what Carina wanted, of course.

‘University’s what we want for her, yes,’ Carina’s father told the teacher, and Carina’s mother nodded in agreement, conjuring a mental picture of their daughter in a graduation gown, a scroll balanced lightly in her hands. She hoped Carina would find the casserole when she got back from her netball match. She had left her a note.

‘Good,’ the teacher said, smiling.

She wore coral lipstick and round glasses with tortoiseshell frames. Maybe Carina would be a teacher one day.

‘Now then, the reason I called you in today was this,’ the teacher said, opening a drawer in her desk and pulling out a sheaf of papers. She handed Carina’s father a few sheets from the top of the pile. He reached for his reading glasses, inside the briefcase by his feet. Watching him, Carina’s mother spotted a button lying on the classroom carpet and bent forward to pick it up. It was black, probably off a school skirt, or a schoolboy’s trousers.

The teacher gave Carina’s mother some pages, too, but Carina’s mother didn’t have to read them to know what was written there. She lay them on her lap and pressed the button into the palm of her hand, felt its indentation. Scanning the paper, she recognised her daughter’s distinctive handwriting — her fancy As and exuberant Ys — and she experienced the same light-headedness she felt when she discovered the pages underneath Carina’s bed.3

She had been hunting for last summer’s plimsolls to take to the shoe bank — Carina had a new pair of trainers. She was growing fast. She was a young woman now. She had started her periods while they were on holiday. Several packs of sanitary pads with French writing on, which they had bought from the campsite supermarket, were stashed under the bed, alongside a violin case, some old board games and puzzles, and this sheaf of papers. Carina’s mother had assumed the pages were homework, and she sat back on her heels to see if she could understand any of it. It was a test she set herself, fully expecting not to comprehend what her daughter had written, but expecting also to find this lack of understanding a pleasure.

The violence of the first few sentences made her catch her breath. She glanced quickly around the room, as if someone was watching her. Then she shoved the papers away from her and staggered to her feet, her heart beating fast, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. She nudged the pile of paper with the toe of her slipper, as if it was a dead thing. Then, trying not to read what her daughter had written, she crouched down, shuffled the pages into a neat stack, and quickly stuffed them back where she had found them.

For the rest of the afternoon she polished and tidied Carina’s room, dusting with a cleaning rag made from a pair of her husband’s old pyjamas, soft from years of washing. She rearranged the furniture, dragging the bed out from behind the door, vacuuming underneath it and heaving it to a new position underneath the window, taking care to replace the sheaf of papers along with the jigsaw puzzles and the violin in its case. When Carina came home from school, she approved of the changes her mother had made, saying how much easier it would be to concentrate at her desk now it wasn’t facing the window.4

Later that same night, after her husband had gone to bed, Carina’s mother crept into her daughter’s room, like she used to on Christmas Eve. Instead of leaving presents, she took the sheaf of papers from under the bed and read them in the bathroom with the door locked.

Afterwards, with her husband and daughter still sleeping, she went downstairs to the kitchen and made herself a drink. Sipping the hot chocolate, she went through the collection of old clothes she kept for cleaning rags, cutting up a nightie of Carina’s and a faded T-shirt of her own with the kitchen scissors. She snipped off the yellowed front section of some of her husband’s underwear, and then, with a needle and thread taken from the sewing box she inherited from her own mother, she began to stitch the pieces together. At other times, the neighbourhood was full of noise — of strimmers and lawn-mowers and next door’s radio — but there, in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, everything was quiet. The weather was so mild, she opened the back door. A fox came sniffing right up to the house, stared her in the eye, then ran away.

Now, her husband was reading the words that had caused her those sleepless nights. She concentrated on the steady tick of the classroom clock, and on the feel of the found button between her finger and thumb. Next to the drawing of the naked man was a list of facts about Leonardo da Vinci’s life. Leonardo was a genius. Leonardo was a vegetarian. Leonardo’s mother was a peasant girl. The colouring in of the letters that spelled his name was extremely neat, with a red L, yellow for the E, pink for the O, a green N. There was no repetition, except for the final O which was pink, the same as the first one. At last, her husband looked up.

‘I can see why you wanted to show us this material,’ he said, removing his reading glasses.5

‘It’s strong stuff, isn’t it?’ the teacher said.

‘Strong’s one word for it,’ he said. ‘Is it normal for a young girl to write this kind of thing?’

‘My question is, why does she want to write about these things?’ the teacher said, leaning forward and looking at them both, her eyes magnified behind her glasses.

Carina’s mother looked away, her gaze dragged back to the naked man. Faintly sketched lines suggested pubic hair.

‘It’s the world we live in, isn’t it?’ she said, forcing herself to look at her husband and the young teacher.

‘Well, I don’t know what world you live in!’ her husband said.

His face was flushed, and she could see a small patch of bristles in the hollow of his throat where he had missed a bit when shaving.

‘Have you discussed Carina’s writing with her?’ the teacher asked.

‘We had no idea she was writing,’ Carina’s father said. He turned to his wife. ‘Did we?’

The fingers of the man in the drawing were touching the outer edges of the square. His naked feet were resting on the tangent point where circle met square.

‘Did we?’ her husband asked her once more.

Was the circle inside the square, or was it the other way around?

‘I suggest you take this home and have a chat with her,’ the teacher said, holding out the sheaf of papers to Carina’s father. He took the pages and thrust them inside his briefcase.

‘Give me a call if you or Carina would like me to make an appointment with the school counsellor,’ the teacher said.

They made their way through the empty school corridors to the car park and drove home through rainy streets without speaking.6

Indoors, Carina was waiting for them, sitting on the bottom stair with wet hair. She was already in her nightie. Her slippers had puppy faces and floppy ears on each toe.

‘What did she say?’

‘She wanted to talk about your writing,’ Carina’s father said, meeting his daughter’s gaze. He brought the bundle of papers out of his briefcase.

Carina scowled, spots of pink appearing on her face and neck.

‘She’s worried, Cari,’ her father said. ‘We all are.’

‘Worried about what?’ Their daughter’s eyes brimmed.

‘Worried about you — about why you would write such things.’

Carina snatched the papers and scrambled up the stairs, clutching her writing, stumbling as she went. Her mother gathered the damp netball kit that lay on the hallway floor. She would carry it to the washing machine on her journey to heat up the casserole, imagining, as she always did, a thread extending from her body, creating an intricate web as she weaved in and out of rooms on her daily business, tidying and dusting and polishing. Picking up the netball kit meant that loading the washing machine and preparing dinner could be contained within one movement — if she left it there, to see to later, there would be a messy tangle of thread. She tried not to double back on herself, in order to maintain a clean line.

‘You wrote those things down — are you saying you didn’t want anyone to read them?’ her husband called after their daughter.

A door slammed as Carina’s mother moved towards the kitchen. She heard her husband tread carefully up the stairs, heard him tap on Carina’s bedroom door, heard their daughter tell him to go away.7

‘I’m coming in, Carina. I’d like to talk to you.’

The casserole she had cooked remained untouched. The round dish stood neatly in the middle of a square, woven placemat. The note she had written lay next to it. She loaded the netball kit into the washing machine, glancing at her daughter’s name written on the inside of her sports shirt collar in fabric pen. One day it would be written on the door to a classroom, or an executive office, or on the front of a history text book, or on a foundation stone, even.

She scooped washing powder from a box in the kitchen cupboard. Reaching behind the box, she fetched out a small, cloth doll. She had drawn its eyes and nose and mouth in fabric pen. She stroked its hair, made from the frayed laces of outgrown plimsolls, and held the dolly briefly against her cheek. Then she slipped a hand into her pocket and took out the button she had found in the classroom. She held it against one of the dolly’s drawn-on eyes and was pleased with the effect. It brought her to life. She hid the doll among the polishes and detergents once more, along with the button. She would sew it on tonight, when the rest of the world was asleep.  

Fireflies

CAZ WAS IN the kitchen making sandwiches with the woman. The man was doing the washing up, standing at the sink with his back to them, a tea towel draped over one shoulder. The tea towel had pictures of churches printed on it. The woman sawed at a loaf of bread sitting on the breadboard. The loaf was round and the breadboard was round too. Caz unwrapped her own loaf from its plastic bag and spread two slices with salad cream then sprinkled on cheese the woman had grated. She cut the sandwich into quarters, then cut each quarter in half again so there were eight small fingers. She laid them on a plate the woman handed her, brushing off seeds from the woman’s bread that had stuck to it. They waited for the kettle to boil.

The couple made them sit at the table every mealtime.9

‘We think it’s important to eat together as a family,’ the woman said.

‘We aren’t family,’ Caz said.

Social services had arranged for her and Jude to be temporarily re-housed after what her key worker referred to as ‘the incident’. Luke wasn’t allowed to know where she was, and Caz wasn’t even sure herself. It had taken a long car journey to get here.

They carried their drinks and sandwiches into the room the man and woman called ‘the conservatory’, where Jude was waiting for them.

‘How comes you got a highchair?’ Caz asked. ‘You got grandkids?’

‘We tend to foster quite a few babies,’ the woman said.

Caz handed Jude a piece of sandwich. Jude watched the man walk around the table. The man pulled out a chair and sat down. He took the tea towel off his shoulder and folded it into a neat square, smoothing it out with both hands on the table in front of him.

‘We’ve got some news,’ the woman said.

‘Yeah?’ Caz said.

The woman and the man looked at each other. Caz moved the piece of sandwich closer to Jude’s mouth, but he wasn’t paying attention, he was looking at the man.

‘It might be a little difficult,’ the woman said. ‘You need to prepare yourself.’

The conservatory roof was one massive skylight. At night you could see stars, but in daytime it was so bright it gave Caz a headache.

‘Spit it out,’ she said.

‘Luke’s social worker has been in touch and they want to arrange contact.’10

‘Fuck that.’

The man kept smoothing the square of his tea towel.

‘Obviously any visit would be supervised.’

‘He’s not getting contact.’

‘I know it’s hard —’

‘He’s not fucking getting it!’

They didn’t understand. Luke didn’t want to see Jude — he was doing it to wind her up. His name on her arm was one thing, she could always get laser removal, but like a twat she had it written on Jude’s birth certificate. She gave up on the sandwich and lifted Jude’s beaker to his lips, nudging it against his mouth to make him drink. The bruising around his eye had faded from purple to yellow, it would be gone soon.

On the day of ‘the incident’, she had taken Jude into town. It was raining and the plastic cover on his buggy didn’t fit properly. She ducked inside a supermarket where a security guard followed her down one of the aisles.

‘I’m not on the rob, if that’s what you think,’ she told him, slipping a tube of foundation up her sleeve.

‘No, you’re waiting for the rain to stop.’

‘Thass right.’

‘It’s stopped.’

She flicked a finger at him and left. The hems of her tracksuit slapped on the wet pavements all the way home.

Her key worker was always telling her how lucky she was to have her flat, but her key worker didn’t have to drag Jude’s buggy up six sets of stairs every time she came home. She paused for breath on the second landing. They were always on at her to give up smoking.

There was a shuffling behind her neighbour’s door and she could hear the chain being drawn across from the inside.11

She waited for the girl to emerge.

‘Alright?’ Caz said.

The girl gave a kind of smile.

‘Pissing down,’ Caz told her.

She watched as the girl manoeuvred her pram out on to the landing.

‘Mind them stairs, they’re slippery as fuck.’

The girl nodded. She waited while Caz moved past her.

‘Getting big,’ Caz said, glancing inside the girl’s pram. ‘Jude’ll have to watch out for him — reckon he could have him, easy!’

She was sweating by the time she reached the door of her flat. The bass from Luke’s music vibrated through her fingers as she slotted her key into the lock. When she stepped inside, the air was heavy with weed.

Luke was sitting on the sofa. He had his boots on and he was wearing proper trousers instead of trackies. She parked the buggy and crossed the room to push a window open as far as it would go, which wasn’t far because of the catch. They were scared people would top themselves.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘Opening a window for his asthma, you retard.’ She turned the music down. ‘Got you something.’ She fetched the tube of make-up from the bottom of the buggy and chucked it at him. It landed in his lap.

‘What’s this shit?’ He turned the make-up over in his hands, pretending to read the packaging. ‘I ain’t wearing make-up.’

‘There’s no point getting done up like a twat and going in with a black eye,’ Caz said.

‘Who are you calling a twat?’

She peeled off her wet jacket and top and sat on his lap, facing him in just her bra, her legs straddled wide.12

‘Steady,’ Luke said, placing his hands on her hips.

Her hair was wet from the rain. She squeezed the moisture from her ponytail and water ran in thin rivulets between her breasts.

‘Getting me wet,’ he said, pushing her off him.

She went into the bathroom to get a towel. She rubbed her hair dry and checked her reflection in the mirror. When she came back into the living room, Luke had his eyes closed and his head was resting against the back of the sofa. One of his eyelids was dark purple. Jude murmured in his buggy. Caz took him out and put him on the floor. He crawled over to the Xbox.

‘Jude, no.’ She picked him up again and sat him on Luke’s lap.

‘Hello, little man,’ Luke said, opening his eyes.

She sat next to them on the sofa and unscrewed the cap on the tube of foundation. She squeezed a blob of cream on to her finger. Jude watched.

‘Come here,’ she said, shuffling closer.

He looked handsome in his interview clothes. The diamond stud in his ear glittered in the smoky room, reminding her of the tiny dots of light she had seen in Corfu on the walk back from the bar at night. The guy her mum was dating said they were fireflies. She went to dab foundation around Luke’s eye, but he jerked his head away.

‘D’you think I’m a faggot?’

‘You said it, not me,’ she said, laughing, and she reached out towards him again, with the make-up on her finger.

The force of the blow knocked the tube out of her hand and sent it flying. She heard her jaw crack and felt Jude’s body tumble against hers as he fell off the sofa. Everything went dark, then pinpricks of light danced in front of her eyes.

. . .

13Now, Jude had a black eye to match his father’s. The bruise had faded from purple to yellow since they’d been living with the couple. It would be gone soon.

Her key worker asked her how she planned to turn her life around now that Luke was off the scene. Trouble was, he wasn’t off the scene, was he? She had wiped his number off her phone, but he was Jude’s dad, and now his social worker was arranging for him to have contact.

The night before the contact meeting she couldn’t sleep. She snuck downstairs in her pyjamas and smoked a cig outside the back door. There were so many stars she knew she must be a long way from a town. The car journey to get here had taken hours, and tomorrow they would make the same journey back again and Luke would get to hold Jude and play with him while she was somewhere else. She wondered if he was awake, and if he was, whether he was thinking about her.

‘Can’t sleep?’ The woman came to stand next to her on the back step.

Caz breathed out a plume of smoke and they both watched it drift upwards in the dark night air.

The woman pulled the back door quietly shut behind her and shivered. She was wearing a cardigan over her nightie.

‘It’s supervised contact only, Caz. His social worker will be there the whole time. Jude will be perfectly safe.’

The woman wrapped her cardigan more tightly around herself. ‘We could go to the shops or a café afterwards. Do some thing nice,’ she said.

Caz stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer she kept on the kitchen windowsill.

‘The important thing is to keep a cool head,’ the woman said. ‘It’s not ideal and it’s not what you want, but —’14

‘He’s Jude’s dad. He’s got a right to see him,’ Caz said, pressing the dead cigarette into the flower pattern in the middle of the saucer.

‘You’re being very mature about this. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with your attitude.’

Caz took a deep breath.

‘That’s right, remember your breathing exercises.’

The woman suggested they turn in now, as tomorrow would be a long day.

The next day, Caz got up early, before Jude was even awake, and put on her white top and her big hoop earrings. Outside the house it was dark, but she could hear the man and the woman moving around downstairs. She scraped her hair into a high ponytail, watching herself in the mirror as she fastened it with a hair elastic.

The man helped her strap Jude into his car seat, then he got into the driving seat. The woman sat next to her husband in the front of the car, while Caz sat next to Jude in the back.

‘All set?’ the man asked, and the woman turned around to face Caz and asked if she had everything she needed.

The man started the engine. It had been night-time when they made this journey before. After the fight with Luke, Caz could barely remember the drive. She had seen motorway signs flashing past, and the red tail lights of other cars, but that was all. Now, in daylight, she looked out of the window at fields of cows and sheep. One field had a burnt-out tree in the middle and the man told a story about a herd of cows who were electrocuted when their drinking trough was struck by lightning.

They stopped at motorway services for the man to stretch his legs. The woman brought out a bag of sandwiches she had 15