The Water Thief and The Manatee E-Book

Kitty Fitzgerald

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

Seitenzahl: 224

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This is a highly readable short book; a political, ecological and cultural fable as a young girl and her father on a small island are confronted with the reality and cruelty of global market forces when the local well and water supply are annexed. For support they call upon the mythical powers of the manatee, a creature who we learn is the girl's mother. The book is illustrated by Easington based artist Nicola Balfour whose artwork was on display at the IRON in the Soul Festival, where The Water Thief had its official launch. Kitty Fitzgerald has written plays for stage and radio, and has published four novels, including Pigtopia (Faber), which has been translated into 27 languages. IRON Press also published her short story collection Miranda's Shadow.

Leseprobe

First published 2017 by IRON Press

5 Marden Terrace

Cullercoats

North Shields

NE30 4PD

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[email protected]

www.ironpress.co.uk

ISBN 9780993124587

ePub ISBN 9781999763602

Printed by imprintdigital.com

Stories © Individual Author 2017This collection © IRON Press 2017

Cover Illustration Ryan FostonCover and Book Design Brian Grogan

Typeset in Georgia

IRON Press books are distributed by NBNI International

and represented by Inpress Ltd

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Introduction

JOINTLYEDITINGTHIS collection has been a pleasurable, if exacting, task. We both read all of the submitted stories (almost 200) and each one was discussed during a four month period in which we drew up a short list, then an even shorter list, settling finally on the seventeen you have awaiting you in this collection. During this time, many packets of Ringtons tea were consumed. Several well-known names didn’t make it, while some total unknowns did, which seems fair enough. The longer the selection process continued, the more the final selection began to shape itself. Some stories that were written elegantly enough and were perfectly presentable were declined because they didn’t quite belong in an anthology of this title. Many writers seemed locked into their idea of what a ghost story ‘should’ be, whereas our only general stipulation was that the story should contain a ghost. The word ‘ghost’ is open to many interpretations, of course. Instead of trying strictly to define it, we treated each equivocal case in its own right, often trusting to our instincts.

Some modern ghost story writers successfully include in their collections stories which have entirely historical characters and settings, and links with contemporary life firmly in the subtext. But what excited us was the prospect of adapting this most traditional of genres to our present era, in the most direct way. Of course, this in itself is something of a tradition. Charles Dickens’ second most famous ghost story, The Signalman, published in 1866, was very much of its time — and likely inspired by real events, including his own traumatic experience of the derailment at Staplehurst, Kent in 1865. Perhaps more significantly, Dickens was exploiting the ghostly potential of the isolation of the signal box and the railway tunnel darkness, and the spookiness of telegraphic communication at a time when the horrific signal related Clayburn crash of 1861 would be still vivid in his readers’ minds. The supernatural events in M.R. James’ tales, clearly had their origins in his medieval studies, but his protagonists were usually firmly rooted in his everyday world of the early 20th century—here he was using the contrast between the two worlds to scary effect. A near contemporary of James, E.F. Benson (of Mapp & Lucia fame) makes the same device explicit in his best known ‘spook’ tale, The Bus Conductor, where the narrator asks his haunted friend: ‘You saw the ghost here, in this square box of a house on a modern street?’

The writers who interested us were those who took on both the responsibility of a ghost story and a sense of our own time and culture. Thus we liked very much the young couples in Jane Ayrie’s and Michael Parker’s stories, whose 21st century concerns are set against encounters with ghostly light effects (The Light Left) and the ancient wrath of a dispossessed widow (Appropriation). In The Last Checkout Wendy Robertson’s ghost puts in a shift or two at a supermarket, Noreen Rees’ ghost in The Installation is an ultra helpful tv engineer, and Tom Johnstone’s revenant in The Follow Up has met her end via a mishap with a state of the art ride-on lawnmower.

Not all the stories are high drama. The ghost story is less likely than its close relation, the horror story, to depend on climactic shock or fear. Sometimes atmosphere itself is disturbing. In How to be Invisible, Chris Barnham’s protagonist begins to inhabit a ghostly dimension following a break up. As his life falls apart, he starts, perhaps literally, to fade from view. It’s not surprising that in the 21st century the newest meaning of ‘ghost’ has emerged online, where ‘to ghost’ is to subject a former ‘friend’ to the living ‘death’ of exclusion from social media. Matt Wesolowski uses this concept to excellent effect in Ghosted.

No doubt the ghost story genre will continue to survive the increasing pace of modernity. In our various ways, we’re all haunted and we can all suffer from feelings of alienation. The best ghost stories can evoke those hauntings and those feelings anywhere: in a graveyard encounter between contemporary young offenders and ghostly First World War veterans (Christine D. Goodwin’s Dulce et Decorum); in a modern cancer ward (Kitty Fitzgerald’s Intruder); in a football stand in Ian Harris’ Support You Evermore; or sitting screen bound in today’s version of the ‘square box of a house on a modern street’.

Eileen Jones, Peter Mortimer

Editors

Tyneside, Summer 2017

The Stories

The Last Checkout

Wendy Robertson

Support You Ever More

Ian Harris

Intruder

Kitty Fitzgerald

How to be Invisible

Chris Barnham

The Undertaker’s Boy

Karen Turner

Playing in Their Own Time

Tracy Fahey

Sunday Lunch

Jenny Cozens

Dulce et Decorum

Christine D. Goodwin

The Installation

Noreen Rees

A Trick of the Light

Andrew Jones

Appropriation

Michael James Parker

The Lengthsman

Charles Wilkinson

The Light Left

Jane Ayrie

Ghosted

Matt Wesolowski

In the Blink of an Eye

Beda Higgins

The Follow Up

Tom Johnstone

The Last Bus Home

Andrea Stephenson

Dedicated to all true spirits

The Last Checkout

Wendy Robertson

WENDY ROBERTSON first embraced teaching as a creative and quite successful enterprise but was always a ‘writer who happened to teach’ – publishing three novels while she was still teaching, as well as some short stories and journalism. After that she surrendered to the writing goddess and has published a wide range of novels and two short story collections as well as the occasional article. More on website: <www.lifetwicetasted.blogspot.co.uk>.

ESME’SHUSBAND MAURICE died when they were both thirty-five. No, Esme would say. It was on her birthday, so it must have been six days earlier. After all wasn’t she six days older than Maurice? Always had been, ever since she’d got on with him at that sixth form dance. Tall, blond and graceful, Maurice was the pick of the crop even though he didn’t dance.

By the time they’d been married for three years Esme had learned that Maurice – the meticulous son of a meticulous mother – liked routine: Monday, fry up of Sunday’s dinner leftovers; Wednesday mince and dumplings; Friday night fish and chips; Saturday night the pub then early to bed for the energetic wrestling match Maurice called making love. When Esme – in the early days of their marriage – suggested a midweek tumble, he shook his head. ‘Not on a work night, Es,’ he would say. ‘Not on a work night.’ That was down to something he’d read about boxers. Or was it footballers?

Maurice didn’t like any kind of change. A new road in the town and he was growling, spitting feathers. A change in a hospital appointment and he would propose manning the barricades. Foreigners in the town and he was in despair. Predictably, he canvassed for Nigel Farage and voted for Brexit.

Esme came to understand that Maurice and their life together was all of a piece. Children never turned up but neither of them mentioned it. His job – clerk to the council – was the big one. Her job – assistant librarian – was the small one.

Her old friends – who soon dropped away – wondered how a person like Esme – a little bit dizzy and loving the world: young people, old people, children, dogs, cats - could share her life with a man like that.

It turned out that Maurice’s iron-clad routines came to be Esme’s safety net. As long as she serviced Maurice’s routines, he went his own sweet way and she went hers. She did her job in the little library three days a week where she was popular with the readers. On Tuesdays she went to her yoga at the college and on Thursdays she attended her knitting club at Costa Coffee. There she talked with the women and got to know a man who knitted in wild colours but said not a word.

One Thursday she was hurrying back from her knitting club to put a steak pie in the oven when she turned a corner onto the High Street and bumped into a young woman wearing a close headscarf who had a canvas bag filled with copies of the Big Issue.

‘Sorry, so sorry!’ Esme was flustered. The woman flashed her a twinkling smile. ‘Is no matter,’ she said. When her smile faded, her face had a closed, Madonna look. Esme bought a copy of the Big Issue and later, after supper, she stayed in the kitchen and read it from cover to cover. There on those pages lay life on the edge of everything and what could happen for people to put things right in society. And there were some nice photos too, of people just like the girl in her street, making an effort to make a living.

‘Esme!’ Maurice called from the sitting room. ‘News!’ They never missed the news. Maurice liked to keep up with things out there in the world. His current preoccupation was all those people getting into England through Calais. The French were at fault of course.

That week in the street she met the young woman again and they exchanged smiles and greetings. Esme asked how she was. ‘Am a bit tired,’ she said. ‘I come a long way here on bus. Sometimes maybe not make enough for fare.’

Esme frowned. ‘That’s not right.’

The young woman shrugged. ‘Is OK. I always make a little bit. I need for my little ones.’

‘You have children?’ said Esme astonished.

The girl spread three graceful brown fingers, held them in the air and smiled. ‘One – two – three,’ she said. ‘Girls. Next time boy!’ She rolled up a Big Issue and handed it to Esme, who gave her a five pound note and rejected the change.

Esme walked on to the café on the corner and read the paper. After that day she would buy the Big Issue every week and read it in the café. She usually put the paper in the bin as soon as she got home. One week Maurice, who loved the recycling ritual, came across a discarded Big Issue. He came into the kitchen where Esme was clearing away the detritus from their Wednesday mince-and dumplings. ‘What’s this? What’s this?’ He shouted, his face a dangerous shade of purple.

She looked carefully at the paper clutched in his hand. ‘It’s the Big Issue,’ she said. ‘I buy it every week.’

‘You bought it off some foreign street beggar? And then hid it away?’

Esme stood very straight. ‘I didn’t hide it, Maurice. I knew you wouldn’t want to read it so I…’

He flung it onto the table and shook his head, making his thick fair hair lift in the air. ‘I swear I don’t know where you go to, Es, in that head of yours.’ He turned and stalked off into the hallway. And then Esme heard a crack. She rushed after him and nearly fell over him where he lay collapsed on the floor, his face stiff and white and one hand fluttering.

Maurice’s mother Greta came to stay and took charge of the funeral. She brought with her a framed photo of Maurice looking young and handsome. She made the vol-au-vents and sandwiches and supplied the port and sherry for the toasts at the wake. Maurice’s boss, the mayor, paid tribute as did Peter, his friend, who had started working at the council with him.

Esme looked blankly around at the people in her long room. She watched Greta doing her rounds among them, graciously sharing everyone’s sorrow and accepting everyone’s sympathy. Esme wondered how Greta, managed not to let her sadness show. Esme looked at Maurice’s photograph on the sideboard: the handsome young man she had married. So young.

Maurice’s friend Peter caught her glance, broke off from his group and headed in Esme’s direction. She backed away, leapt the stairs two at a time, went into her bedroom, and locked the door.

She sat on the bed and tried to feel something other than paralysis: an inability to think or feel. Anything. She sat until she could hear talk in the hallway and cars starting up outside. Finally, the front door slammed and everything went quiet. Then she could hear the tip tapping of Greta’s high heels on the parquet on the landing. A gentle knock on the door. ‘Esme? Everyone has left. They all understand that you must be grief stricken. Don’t worry. They don’t think it bad manners that you hid yourself away.’

Obviously Greta did. She coughed. ‘Oh well. I’ll leave you in peace. Stephen’s coming at six to help me with Maurice’s papers.’ Stephen was Maurice’s handsome younger brother. He’d been at the funeral but was so popular at the wake that he hadn’t got round to talking to Esme.

Greta’s footsteps tapped down the stairs and the front door slammed. Esme breathed out and stood up. She turned to the bed, placed the pillows neatly, dead centre. A bed for one. She dropped onto it, put her head on the pillows and went to sleep.

On Sunday Esme went to church and sat right at the back. At the end of the service the vicar – a stout, rough-spoken woman who had conducted Maurice’s funeral – stopped beside Esme as she made her way to the back of the church. ‘Are you bearing up, Mrs Cottrell?’

Esme shrugged.

‘Always hard, I know. Have you cried yet?’

Esme shook her head.

The vicar nodded. ‘That sometimes helps the ice to melt.’ And she turned away to pay attention to someone tugging at her black gown.

When she got home though, Esme was very pleased she’d been to church.

At first she still followed Maurice’s food routines even though she threw out a lot of food. She still paid a fiver for her Big Issue on Wednesdays, She still went to yoga at the college on Tuesdays and the Costa knitting club on Thursdays, before going on to do her shopping. The knitting women started to pull her into their talk. And the man there told her his name was Craig and showed her what he called his ‘project’ – images in wool of castles of the North, designed by himself. One Thursday, on her way to the shops, she closed her eyes feeling the wall of ice had started to melt around her.

In the supermarket that day she selected the chicken, the minced steak and the usual pork pie. Then it occurred to her that this was all such a waste and she turned the trolley round and returned all the food to their fridges. Then she moved on, picked three different cheeses, some salami, ham and tomatoes as well as her favourite green beans and avocados. Maurice had always sneered at avocados, calling them trendy: a favourite insult of his. Now Esme bought peaches and good coffee, realising that meals could just be a series of unplanned picnics.

She wheeled her trolley along the line of checkouts gagged up with queues. The last one, the one at the end, was empty. This was new. It was different to the others. More handsome, if you like, with dark wood panelling.

The young checkout girl wore the blue supermarket tunic with a matching close headscarf. She smiled up at Esme watching her unload her cheese and ham, her beans and avocados onto the counter. Esme frowned. For a moment she thought it was the Big Issue girl. But it wasn’t. This girl was younger and she had a port wine mark on her neck shaped like a seahorse. Still she was very like the Big Issue girl.

Esme blurted. ‘Are you new here? Have you worked here long?’

The girl smiled. A wisp of black hair escaped her headscarf. ‘Only three days. Is a nice place to be. Here.’ The voice was familiar.

‘You have family here?’

‘I have many here. Is like home.’

Esme loaded her shopping back onto the trolley. The bill came to forty-one pounds. She paid in cash: four ten pound notes and one fiver. The girl smiled up at her gave her the bill and four pound coins, and turned her attention to the next customer.

Esme wheeled the trolley outside and opened the boot of her little car. ‘Excuse me madam?’ A tall young man stood there, a security badge pinned onto his grey uniform shirt naming him James Walton.

‘Yes?’ she said, frowning.

‘Mr Filey the manager says would you be kind enough to come and talk to him?’

‘I don’t think… I don’t have the time.’

James Walton smiled genially. ‘Mr Filey insists.’ He took the handles of the trolley and started to wheel it towards the big doors.

Esme scurried along beside him. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Don’t worry madam. Mr Riley is a very kind man. Too kind, sometimes.’

She trudged silently alongside him to the store then, through the crowds, up in a lift to a cluttered office on the first floor. Mr Filey, short, and well turned out, stood up to greet her and pointed to the seat on the other side of his desk. James Walton wheeled her trolley beside Mr Filey and went to stand by the door, arms folded.

‘Now Mrs…?

‘Cottrell,’ she supplied.

‘Now, Mrs Cottrell I’m afraid it seems that you’re guilty of theft.’

Esme’s cheeks went red. ‘That’s not true. Absolutely not true.’

‘You claim to have paid for the goods in this trolley?’

She reached for her purse. ‘Of course I did. I paid in cash. I have the bill here.’ She opened her purse. There was no bill. But lying crisply in her purse were the five ten pound notes she’d come out with. ‘I… I paid. I swear…’ Her voice trailed off.

James Walton came across, fiddled with Mr Riley’s computer and turned the screen towards her. On the screen was the long line of checkouts. She watched herself wander to the end of the line. But there was no checkout with stylish wooden panels. Just a broad windowsill looking out over the car park. She watched herself smiling and talking as she loaded her shopping first onto the window sill and then back into the trolley.

Now she put her hands across her face. ‘I didn’t know. Where is that last checkout? That girl? There was a girl.’

Mr Riley shook his head. There is no last checkout Mrs Cottrell, and no girl.’ He paused. ‘I think you must have imagined it.’ He stared at her bowed head for a long time, then coughed. ‘I suggest, Mrs Cottrell you give James here the money and he’ll pay for your goods and escort you to your car. Let’s just say you had a bad moment. What these days they call an episode.’

As they went down in the lift, the security man grinned at her. ‘Too kind. I told you he was too kind.’

‘I didn’t…’ she blurted.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ he purred, kindly enough.

He even helped Esme load her shopping into the boot of her car and waved her off as she bumped into gear. She parked outside the supermarket car park, put her head in her hands and took five very deep breaths. Then she went home and had a picnic tea of ham and cheese before she turned on the television to some documentary about the African Savannah.

Esme waited for the next Wednesday and made sure she was on the High Street early. The Big Issue girl was coming towards her, a small frown on her smooth brow.

‘Hello!’ said Esme. The girl pulled up short. Her smile was strained but still sweet. ‘Good morning,’ she said and put the heavy Big Issue bag on a raised wall surrounding a bit of garden. ‘How are you today?’

‘Good,’ Esme said. ‘To be honest I’m a bit puzzled. Last Thursday I met this girl. She was your very double. Do you have a sister working here at the supermarket?’

A high flush stained the girl’s cheeks. ‘Not here,’ she said. She fiddled around and straightened her Big Issues in the bag. ‘Thursday you say?’

‘Yes. In the supermarket.’

The girl’s hands fell to her side. ‘Up till Monday, I had a sister. Now we hear on telephone that my sister dies on Monday. Three days before Thursday. A bombing.’ She put her hand on her throat. ‘My sister have a mark here. Like a fish.’

Esme looked at her. ‘What has happened?’ she thought. ‘What has been happening to me?’

‘I must go on,’ said the girl. ‘I must work.’ Her soft mouth closed in a grim line. She picked up her Big Issue bag, fished out a copy and gave it to Esme, who opened her purse and extracted the fifty pounds with which she always set out in the town. The girl glanced around at the busy street. ‘No. No.’ she said. ‘I cannot.’

Esme pressed the notes into her hand. ‘Flowers for your sister. Truly!’ Then she turned round and fled down the side street back to her own house, her own kitchen. And she cried. She cried for the Big Issue seller and her sister who had been killed in a bombing. It seemed that her whole body was melting and transforming itself to tears, running down her neck and into her shirt. After half an hour she washed her face at the sink, dried it with a tea towel and sat back down at the table. She opened out the Big Issue. The headline said something about peace talks in the Middle East.

The next Thursday, after an enjoyable time at the Costa knitting club, Esme went to the supermarket because she’d run out of fruit – very necessary for picnics. She filled her basket with plums, bananas and tangerines. There were only three people in the queue at the sixth checkout so she joined that queue. Her glance raked the length of the checkouts and stopped at the last one. The wooden panelled checkout was there again. The girl with the close headscarf was also there, smiling up at her customer as she registered his purchases. Esme’s eyes moved to the man and she blinked. There was no doubt that it was Maurice, although his hair was spiky and more white than blond. And he was wearing a purple roll-neck sweater which he would always have despised as ‘trendy’. And he was laughing with the girl, looking into her eyes. He could even have been flirting.

Esme was looking around wondering how she could make her way to that last checkout, when a boy cannoned into her, upsetting her trolley. He mumbled something and helped to put her trolley upright and gather up the scattered fruit. It took some minutes for Esme to reassure him that there was no harm done and to regain her place in the queue. Now, when she looked along the checkouts there was no wooden panelled checkout, no blond man, no girl with a close headscarf and seahorse birthmark.

Her head buzzed as she unloaded the trolley into the boot of her car. As she settled behind the wheel and put the car into gear, a smile spread across her face as big as the sun.

Support You Ever More

Ian Harris

IAN HARRIS is the father and grandfather of an ever-expanding family in the North of England. By day he is a factory machinist, by night he is a writer of fiction. He is an incurable hoarder, and has previously been published in the e-zine Every Day Fiction.

FIFTEENMINUTESTO half-time, and at nil-nil there’d been little so far to warm the sparse crowd on a dull, grey, November afternoon. Lower league football can be as exciting as any, with players of lesser talent playing with passion and enthusiasm for the love of the game, rather than for the stratospheric wages of the pampered prima donnas at the very highest level. At least, that’s what I insist when I find myself in some remote corner of the country in some crumbling, damp shed of a stadium on my ongoing quest to visit every league ground in the country. I try to convince myself that tense, thrilling encounters can be found in the most unlikely of places, and quite often I surprise myself by coming across an exciting match in the dullest of surroundings… this, sadly, was not one of those games. This was simply a mid-table, mid-season encounter between two groups of low-division cloggers, grimly hoofing the ball back and forth over a quagmire of mud. It was woeful.

That hadn’t deterred one particularly loudmouthed supporter, however, from screaming his displeasure at every misplaced pass, mistimed tackle or misjudged refereeing decision, his bovine bellowings easily drowning the muted mutterings of the rest of the crowd. My only question was why, with so many vacant seats available all around the stadium, he’d chosen to sit directly behind me… I hunched down in my seat, huddled into my collar, and tried to ignore the lout.

The home team’s striker received the ball in the penalty area with his back to goal. In a single, fluid movement he brought it under control, spun, and unleashed a blistering shot. The crown groaned as the ball flew high and wide, way over the crossbar, to disappear into the stands behind. The striker adopted the customary head-in-hands pose, then began trotting back to his own half.

The yob behind me leapt to his feet and unleashed a stream of profanities at the hapless centre forward. I flinched, partly at the volume of the shouting in my ear, but mainly in embarrassment because a couple of seats to my left sat a little lad, maybe eight or nine years old, who surely shouldn’t have to be exposed to language like this. I gave him a surreptitious sideways glance. He didn’t appear to be particularly bothered by the moron behind us; he was simply sitting there, his chin on his fists, seemingly engrossed in the game. His shoes were old-fashioned and well worn, his knitted bobble hat faded and unravelling at the edges.