Why loving books is not the same as loving stories

Why loving books is not the same as loving stories

On a couple of occasions recently while watching documentaries there have been shots of various libraries from around the world and I have emitted involuntary noises of serious appreciation more suited to the sighing of eye candy of some sort. One of them was actually a library in Russia. Vast terraces of shelves of books, stretching into the distance, complete with ladders to reach the higher ones, and neat desks complete with lamps with poison-green glass shades. For one millisecond I could smell the wonderful vanilla aroma of old books mingled with the more animalic tones of the leather binding, and feel the pent-up expectant hush that comes with such places and the soft indoor breeze caused by the tuning of hundreds of heavy pages of thick cream paper.

That’s what I call a proper library. Shoot me if you like but I don’t like modern accessible libraries with their noisy children’s corners (that is to say, noisy areas for children rather than corners for children who make a lot of noise, though the two are pretty much synonymous) and colourful displays and internet desks. I haven’t even got round to joining the library here, only two doors away from my own front door because it’s that kind of library. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I know all the arguments in favour of making libraries places where people can chat and children can discover the wonder of books. It’s just not for me. I’m not comfortable with it in the same way I’m deeply uncomfortable with people conversing in normal voices about everyday topics in the period before a church service starts (after the service is fine. If I ever go these days, I bow my head and stay silent and apparently in prayer to avoid this sort of conversation.)

I LOVE books. I always have done. I was gutted when before moving to the coast in 2006, among the many physical things that were given away, a large number of books had to go or we had no chance of fitting into our new but MUCH smaller house. I own books I will never be able to read (though I did give my Hebrew Bible to a friend who reads the language) and I am haunted by inner visions of mysterious, heavy, leather bound books that hold secrets and wonders. It’s why, despite having a digital copy of Jung’s Red Book, I do one day want to own a real physical copy. The digital pictures have merely whetted my desire.

A book is an object of great beauty and it holds something that is beyond the story is turns out to contain. Books have themselves become a kind of archetype, something representing knowledge, wisdom, mystery and wonder, a vessel for enlightenment. I began some months back to write a small journal of my personal grail quest. I have painted a few pictures in it; holding it, with most of its pages still untouched, I am aware of the potential of the words I have written and those I have yet to find. There is something intrinsically HOLY about books. The notion of burning books makes me sick; throwing a book away will enrage me. I got very sharp with a student a few years ago as we stood at the Boreham Interchange services; I’d watched him read a book on the coach for several trips, and that day I saw him stand reading, finish the last page, shrug and proceed to THROW IT IN THE BIN. I went mildly ballistic and rescued the book. I have it still, regardless of the fact that my German is unlikely ever to be proficient enough to tackle it.

There is no such thing as a bad book. There are many bad stories, but the medium in which they are offered ought not to be tainted by this. In my opinion FSOG ought never have been printed; it’s now the volume that charity shops have ended up with stockpiles of. In its digital form it did not carry the same weight of existence as it does in paperback form, and now it seems that the idea of a “great book” is muddled up with great (ie: HUGE) sales, and the sheer numbers FSOG sold sets a measure all other books are somehow expected to aim at.

The argument between those who have embraced the digital era of the e-book and those who believe that it’s not a book unless it’s paper and ink is getting tired but there’s people like me who are happy that both are available. I love books but I also love stories. I love being able to hit “one click” and know that in seconds I will have a new story to enjoy. Some I then buy a hard copy of, either to give or to add to my own small library. Some stories are essentially disposable, read once and forget. In fact, the vast majority of beach-read blockbusters are like this, and I have been able in recent years to part with many(well, a few, anyway) of these indenti-kit novels.

But there’s always a huge part of me that is the girl who aged eighteen was so overawed that she was only able to stand inside the old British Library for a few seconds before the power of the books made her run away quivering ever so slightly. It’s that part of me that despite being a relative nobody in the world of books, I try to get my stories into book form, that paper-and-ink book baby, because the solid reality of a book you can cuddle* has a level to it that e-books can’t match, no matter how many are ever sold.

* Yes, I cuddle books. Doesn’t everyone?

Red Eyes~ a story for Hallow E’en

 

Red Eyes( a story for Hallow E’en)

I’ve never been one to scare easily but when I saw those red eyes staring hard at me, their intensity dimmed by the reed blind that was partially pulled down over the glass door, I froze. I was catapulted into a state of instantaneous terror I’d never known before. They say when you are about to die, you life flashes before your eyes; well, at sixteen there wasn’t a lot to flash and like one of those flicker comics, it was over in micro seconds.

But I was still alive and those eyes were watching me, their unwavering scrutiny of me showed no sign of movement. I leaped from the sofa where I’d been snuggled down with Middlemarch and my Latin homework and turned the key in the lock. The glass door led into the old fashioned sun lounge built onto this sizeable Victorian house and with the door actually locked I felt a tiny bit safer but my heart continued to pound. Upstairs my two charges slept the peace of the innocent and I remembered that as babysitter I was responsible for their safety.

Having bought myself a little time, I considered my options. I could run down the hall and phone my dad, who lived the other end of the street and hope he got here before whatever was in the sun lounge broke through the glass and tore me to shreds. You see, I had an idea of what was out there and I didn’t like it at all.

The road I grew up in was very much the ‘in’ place to build a house in Victorian times, and the road is packed with large houses, some in their own grounds. Much of the extra land has been sold off and more houses built so the progression from the 1860s when the first houses were built to the 1990s when the most recent were added shows a range of architecture. The Ways’ house where I worked two or three times a week was one of the very first and during the excavations for foundations at that end of the street the workmen had unearthed a pagan Saxon cemetery, complete with funerary urns. According to newspaper reports at the time, urns were smashed and destroyed before the authorities could call in an expert. That was where I now stood, quivering with fear. The spirit of some angry Saxon was waiting out there, ready to crash through the glass door and annihilate me. If that wasn’t scary enough, the kids upstairs would be next. If I took my eyes off those eyes, I wouldn’t know where he was. And then somehow that would be worse than knowing.

I somehow managed to control my breathing and decided that if I was going to go, I had to try and exorcise the evil out there first. So praying under my breath I unlocked the door and stepped into the darkness of the sun lounge and waited. The room retained a little of the heat from the summer sun and it was filled with the green pungency of tomato plants.

Nothing happened. The eyes were gone. I walked round, my knees knocking with fear and saw nothing. I crept back into the living room and as I turned to shut the door behind me, I almost jumped out of my skin.

The eyes were back, shining and evil.

I twisted and lurched back into the sun lounge and waited for my doom to fall, crouching on the floor, face to face with……

…………………. two cherry tomatoes, glowing crimson in the light from the street lamp beyond the garden.

Ever since then Occam’s Razor has been my closest weapon in the fight with the world of the supernatural…..closely followed by my sense of humour.

Writer’s Block- a short story

 

Writer’s Block

The blank page was as empty as a bank account the day before pay-day, and as depressingly familiar. Like a signpost pointing an accusing finger, the page indicated another day of failure, of emptiness and despair. Oh, words had been briefly typed upon this mocking sheet, and then erased before they had time to settle there. If this had been an old-fashioned typewriter, then a forest of paper would have been in the bin by now, and with crumpled islands of discarded starts surrounding the target. That was one small mercy of the computer revolution, no waste paper any more. Instead, the untitled page opened day after day, with all words wiped from it. Surely there was a Greek myth somewhere of someone who toiled all day writing words that faded from the page as night fell. If there was, he couldn’t remember how it ended

Well, the words didn’t fade: he deleted them, despising himself and those ill-chosen words that just sat on the page like awkward teenagers, jostling each other and looking out of place and untidy and defiant. It was the defiance that got him angry and made him hit delete over and over again.

I used to be so good at this, he thought, miserably, closing the file and shutting the computer down. A glass of wine to chase down the blues, and he’d call it a night, again, sleeping fitfully and being pursued by words that fled when he turned and tried to see their shapes. Tomorrow, just to be that little bit more hopeful, was another day and it held all sorts of joys, not least of which was an appointment with a hypnotist. He sighed, drank the wine too fast to enjoy it and went to bed.

“I want you to visualise your block,” said the hypnotist.

Trying to oblige, he did so.

“What form does it take?”

“It’s like the Berlin Wall, but a hundred or so feet high,” he said.

“Visualise a door.”

He did so. It was a very handsome door too, with brass fittings and a massive bolt and lock.

“It’s locked,” he said.

There was a tiny sigh from the hypnotist, and through the filters of his downcast eyelashes, he saw her glance at her watch. She’s bored with me already, he thought, and sighed himself.

“Look in your pockets, you’ll find the key,” she said and he could hear the boredom and irritation.

In his mind’s eye, he pulled out a massive bunch of keys, and after rifling through them, he said,

“Nope, it’s not there.”

“You must try harder,” she said and he snapped open his eyes, and glared at her.

“Do you not think I’m already trying as hard as I can,” he snapped.

“I think you’re deliberately sabotaging yourself because you don’t really want to get through this block,” she said. “Don’t bother to make another appointment until you make your mind up to really embrace this.”

Well, that was a waste of time and money, he thought as he drove home to the empty screen awaiting him. Now I know my block is a hundred feet high and crosses a whole country, and I don’t appear to have the key. Really helpful. Not.

Before he opened that taunting file again, he checked through his emails and found one from an old friend.

“I’ve sent something for your little problem; should be with you tomorrow,” she’d written.

The block had become so much a part of his life that he often felt he ought to introduce his friends to it at parties. The block had lasted longer now than many relationships and like a failing marriage that has ceased to even invite interest, let alone the kind of slightly voyeuristic attention it did at the start of the downward slope, it had become a subject to avoid among his friends. They were bored with it and with him; a writer who can’t write any more ceases to have a place in the world unless he reinvents himself, perhaps as an editor or a critic. For him that would be when mercy killing might be in order.

His friends scarcely ever mentioned his block, as though it were an embarrassing disorder the discussion of which might somehow infect them, so it intrigued him what she might be sending. At the start of it, people had been full of helpful suggestions and ideas, all of which he’d tried, with a steadily decreasing amount of enthusiasm. He wasn’t sure what else might be possible; hypnosis had been his last idea.

The following afternoon, the parcel carrier van pulled up outside his house and offloaded a large and heavy box. Signing for it, he barely managed to get it inside and dumped it on the kitchen table with a resounding thud. Taped up and mysterious, it sat there, inviting him to open it. He stared at it, wine glass in hand unable to make a start on it. Somehow the prospect of another disappointment was almost too much to bear. By the second glass of wine, curiosity was getting the better of him and he began ripping away the tape and slashing at the cardboard with the vegetable knife in a frantic effort to get it open.

Peeling the flaps back, now ragged from his frenzy, he peered inside. He blinked. Amid the polystyrene chips, there sat a large rough hewn block of wood, which was tied up with a bright red satin ribbon.

“What the f-?” he said, biting back the obscenity.

He emptied the box, tipping the chips out on the floor and feeling through every corner of the box. Nothing. Not even a note, nothing.

“The bitch…” he breathed, awed that someone he thought he knew so well could surprise him like this with such a vicious piece of mockery. He’d really not have thought her capable of such extraordinary nastiness.

Anger boiled over, and he hefted the block in his arms and marched outside into the fading light of the garden. The wood shed was mostly full, with the arrival of a new load for the coming winter and he at first intended to just chuck the block in there but as he flung open the door, something caught the light and glinted. The big axe he used to split logs was embedded in his chopping block and the polished head gleamed with oil.

“I’ll show you what I think of your block,” he said, and seized the axe, tugging it from the block and as his long-repressed fury took control of his hands and his heart and he placed his gift on the block and began to attack it with the axe.

Halfway, he stopped and sharpened the axe very carefully. It was only the coming of darkness that halted his focussed efforts. By then the block had been reduced to splinters suitable for kindling only.

Sweating and breathless he threw all the pieces he could find into the log basket and carried them back into the house. Well, tonight seemed to be getting colder; time to light the fire for the first time this autumn, then. The hearth needed sweeping before he could lay the fire, and by the time the flames had begun to warm the room, he felt only a sense of emptiness again. He’d lost a friend today, truly, because he’d obviously never really known her at all.

Sat cross-legged on the hearth rug, he gazed at the fire and felt tears streaming down his face, distorting his vision and making the flames seem softer somehow, reminding him of his grandmother’s house when he was small. She’d make him crumpets by toasting them on the fire and slathering them with butter from their own cows. He remembered her with some surprise; she’d been gone more than twenty years and he’d scarcely given her a thought in all that time. Strange, really, when she’d been the one who’d enthralled him with tales of her own childhood and of things her grandmother told her. He probably owed his whole love of stories to her.

Watching the dancing flames, he saw images in them, pictures of things long ago and far away and rather marvellous and magical, and he found himself reaching for his laptop and beginning to type, filling that blank sheet with words that danced like the flames and made patterns of surpassing wonder.

And he didn’t delete a single word.

The Uninvited Guest

  The Uninvited Guest 

I felt him come in; through the noise and colour and lights of the party, I felt him come into the room and stand quietly to one side, not mingling,  just waiting and watching. We have such a deep connection he didn’t need to tell me he was there; I knew. Maybe there was a change in the air, maybe I smelled him, his scent distinct as the ozone smell before a storm breaks. Whatever it was, I knew he’d arrived and I felt a brief flare of rage that he should just turn up here, uninvited and unwanted, when I was trying to enjoy my party.

The heat of the room was pleasant still and I was passing from guest to guest, making conversation and laughing, but all the time I could feel his eyes follow me round the room. He wouldn’t do or say anything yet; from experience I knew he could be trusted to behave for a while longer. He might even be decent company for some guests but if that were the case, as I shut the door on the last few to leave, there’d be hell to pay for ignoring him all evening. I had to act.

I sidled up to him; he’s an expert sidler so he appreciated that, and grinned at me as I took his elbow and guided him into the kitchen. With my foot wedged against the door, to stop anyone else coming in, I looked at him sternly and felt furious that he just laughed.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “I didn’t invite you.”

“You never do,” he said, his mouth turned down in a quirky mock frown. “You never do.”

“Well, what do you expect? You’re a right royal pain when you’re with me. You make my friends hate me,” I said.

“No,” he said and I saw that the joking was over. “They don’t hate you. Honestly. They don’t even know about me, most of them. Or care. I know I make you different when I’m with you, but is that such a bad thing?”

“Yes,” I said.

Someone rattled at the door.

“Just a minute,” I called.

“Look,” I said. “You can stay, all right, but please don’t upset anyone.”

“Deal,” he said and held out a hand.

Reluctantly I took it and he squeezed it.

“We do need to talk,” he said gently and I could see he meant it.

“Later, when everyone’s gone,” I said.

“You always say that,” he said.

“Maybe this time I mean it,” I said.

He kept his word and behaved like a perfect gentleman. I’m not sure anyone really noticed him among the guests; he certainly didn’t stand out as anything out of the ordinary. Nonetheless, I was glad when I shut the door behind my last guest and knew there was nothing more he could do to spoil my party.

I was collecting glasses and he came up behind me, making me jump and drop glasses. I scrabbled to retrieve them and set them down on a coffee table.

“We need to talk,” he said again.

“Then talk,” I said. “I have all night now. What do you need to tell me?”

a morning

Tea, in bed. Who could wish for more? One of us usually has to get up earlier than the other so the rule is, Up first, you make the tea. Himself often gets up at 5.45am to go for a run, then back to do kungfu training in the garden and then make tea. Over the winter, this has lapsed a little. Weather has been severely unkind and so running has been sporadic.

Today, the sun shines. I drink tea, go and turn on my pc, still nightclad and towsled. I need to see my emails, check the blog, almost before I wake.  The cats mumble around us, wanting cuddles before settling down in the ruins of our rumpled duvet. I seldom get a chance to make the bed before they’re asleep and inviolate.

The dog emerges, looking sheepish and slightly embarrassed like a party guest who has woken to find they have outslept their host and the cunning plan to slip away unremarked has failed. I don’t know why she looks like this, but she does.

We drink coffee in my study. The study is the tiny third bedroom, that serves as occasional guest room. You have to like books and not feel oppressed by the sheer weight of them on every wall to sleep well in this room. We discuss the day, laugh and then bid farewell as his lift to work arrives.

I head for the shower, and emerge a few minutes later, hair in a towel and get dressed. I can dress casual today as I am just supervising sports this afternoon and not teaching. Jeans, then, t-shirt that looks vaguely French. It’s the blue and white stripes, I guess; all I need is a beret and a string of onions.

Now downstairs. The living room smells of jasmine from the flowering plant that opens starry blooms and pours out sensual sweetness. I let the dog out and pause. I light a little incense with my brief blind morning prayer that is without words and wait for the dog to scratch to come in again.

    I need a stamp; there’s a letter to post. I trip out to the row of shops a few dozen yards from my front door, hair dripping and no mascara yet. The locals know me, I don’t have to pretend. I buy a stamp, post the letter and the odour from the baker’s shop lures me in to buy. He’s a clever chap, our baker; he gives me samples of new cakes he’s devised or is experimenting with and asks my opinion. I buy cake to go with my second coffee.

Home:  the dog wants her breakfast. I feed her while I make more coffee and take my cofee and cake upstairs to the computer. The cake is still sitting on the top of my printer, waiting for me to eat it. I chose farmhouse fruit cake, kidding myself it’s at least got fruit in.  

I’m procrastinating, I know this. I’m putting off the moment when I open my documents and begin from where I made myself stop last night. I made a decision late last night to stop writing and go to bed. I knew there was a point where if I continued to write, I simply would not sleep at all and at about 11.15, I wasn’t sure if I had passed that point. I promised my husband that I would get up and start again if I stayed awake past a certin point. I fell asleep about an hour after I went to bed.

When I am like this, I exclude everything around me. I don’t hear things or notice anything in the house. I do the basic tasks at the core of running a home and I do them in automatic pilot. When I have finished a book,  whether it takes three weeks or three months, I wake up from the dream I have been dipping in and out of and see what I have not done. I am lucky, in many ways because my family seem to take up the slack and do the vital tasks that I tune out, like feed the animals and water plants, but the finer things, like tidying and dusting…well, no.

I come home to Briar Rose’s castle at least in my mind; hung with cobwebs and with ivy sneaking through window panes and the mice playing on the hearth, made fearless by my absence. It’s only my guilt that notices the things I didn’t do. Many I don’t do anyway. I gave up ironing years ago as it is such a waste of time and energy.

I put off the final moment when I sit and return to what I enjoy best, because I am so scared that one day I will start and I won’t be able to stop when external reality calls for me to stop. I tell myself I am honing my ability to multi-task, to compartmentalise. I’m not. I’m deferring becoming enslaved to my addiction. 

Time to eat that cake. The coffee has gone cold.

Someone’s watching me…(short story)

Warning: not for the faint-hearted!

 

Someone’s watching me….

 

   As I turn onto Great Russell Street, the whole of Bloomsbury behind me seems to echo with my footsteps. There’s something about frosty nights that seem to make sound travel further and faster and for a second, I am sure that the echo is more than an echo and a second set of footsteps follow at a distance behind me.

   Nothing.

   The immense bulk of the British Museum looms, oddly bereft without the usual hoard of visitors milling around; a faint odour of old fried onions still fills the air as I approach the gates, but the hotdog seller is long gone and maybe the smell is my imagination, like those footsteps. I consider my route for a moment, and turn back a little and head along Museum Street.

   Click clack click clack…my heels would strike sparks if I walked any faster; little Segs nailed into them to slow the inevitable wear. I’ve only got one good pair of shoes for going out and they cost me far too much to let them wear down as quickly as they will otherwise do. I can’t bear seeing girls wearing heels that are half worn and uneven, stumbling because of the poor grip. I’d much rather wear good running shoes but out in my glad rags, they don’t exactly go, if you know what I mean.

   It’s also cold and I wish I had worn a proper coat instead of this excuse for a jacket. But you have to look the part, and I hadn’t originally intended to be coming home this late or on foot for that matter. I’m not the first girl to walk home because she’s run out of money for a taxi and I won’t be the last. At this time of the morning, the tube is still shut and I’d never go down there alone at night anyway. Brave I may be but I am not either fearless or stupid. Up here, I can hear anyone or see them before they see me. Or at least I think so. Those footsteps are beginning to bother me but it’s late and I’m tired. I worked a long day yesterday (or was it today when I got off shift? Can’t remember now).

   I cut across New Oxford Street and down into Shaftesbury Avenue and think about Shaftesbury the man, and how today’s London would thrill him. None of the dreadful, mind-blowing poverty is left; even our poor are better off than the poor of his day. I’ve gone past the turning for Neal Street now and I curse softly. I want the most direct route and if I continue down Monmouth Street I’ll be funnelled straight down to St Martin’s and Trafalgar Square. If I cut through Neal’s Yard, I’ll be back on track.

  Neal’s Yard is eerily quiet and unnerving; the massive potted trees rattle their twigs at me and I shiver as I pass through. At the other side of the yard, I pause, sure I have heard something, but a small black shape races across the gap and I relax. It’s just a rat; you’re never far from a rat in London (or any city) but you seldom see them by daylight.

   But daylight is a long way off, and I want my bed and I cut across Long Acre and down into Covent Garden. It’s deserted, as you’d imagine, and silent, how you could never imagine it being in the day. Litter blows across the cobbles and I can hear music somewhere. It’s past closing time for just about everywhere, so maybe it’s someone’s car stereo.

  Another rat darts across. Despite the best efforts, food waste attracts vermin and I wait to be sure the rat was alone. Something that might once have been a burger is so mashed into the cobbles; another small black shape detaches itself from its meal and starts to run.

  “Nothing to fear from me, mate,” I say, and begin to walk again.

  There’s traffic noise now coming from The Strand, but only intermittent and again I am certain I can hear footsteps. I still myself as I walk, willing myself to be calm and to listen. I’m going slower now, even though as my heartbeat begins to race I want to break into a run.

   Yes.

   There is indeed someone behind me, maybe thirty yards or maybe a bit more. They are keeping pace with me, keeping out of sight in the shadows. Oh crap. Whoever it is he (or she, because I can’t see them) is very good at this. When I stop, they stop. No wonder I thought it an echo. As I round the corner and come close to the shuttered Jubilee Market, I know that whoever it is will have to cross the open space and be visible, so I take the road next to the Market and walk down very fast till I get to the Strand, where the lights are brighter and there is a little traffic.

  It’s not a lot of use really, because as soon as I get there, I know that I can’t even hail a taxi. I have about thirty pence in my purse, and no means of getting more, so I can’t even say, “Take me to a cash point!”. I’ll just have to hope that my follower is slower than I am. I can run pretty fast if I need to, but in these shoes? I don’t think so.

  I cross the Strand and take the alley between buildings. I can sense someone behind me, the other side of the road but I’m damned if I give him the satisfaction of turning round to try and see him. The alley is steep and has a flight of steps, and I nearly fall as I negotiate the steps. It’s horribly dark down here and I wonder if I have made a mistake. But Embankment Gardens are at the bottom of this alley and once through those, I’ll be down on Embankment and into brighter light.

  At the bottom I realise my mistake too late. They lock the gardens at night. I consider my options. I could climb the railings and cross like that. But I am in a tight skirt and I don’t think it’s going to allow me to do that. Short of taking the damn thing off while I hop over the fence, I’m stuck.

  It’s then I make my big mistake. I turn right and start to follow the gardens roughly west. I’ve forgotten that if I turn left, I can cut through and join the Embankment near Waterloo Bridge. I am thinking that maybe one of the other gates will be open and I can cut through. Like I say, I’m tired. Turning right takes me between the Gardens and the backs of the properties in the streets behind the Strand. Once, hundreds of years ago, the Savoy Palace stood somewhere along here and further back in time, the Strand was indeed a sort of beach.

  My heart nearly bursts out of my chest; the footsteps behind me have got a lot faster suddenly and like an idiot, I instinctively begin to run, cursing both shoes and skirt as they impede my speed. To my horror, the way ahead plunges into a dark lane, leading to parking garages or something for the buildings that tower above me. Dim orange lamps make more shadows than light and as I stumble, I fall headlong into a darkened corner. I scramble onto my knees, poised like a runner at the start of a race, trying to see who’s there.

   I hear breaking glass and the dim lights vanish and I am in almost total darkness. All I can hear is my own breath rasping in my throat and the sudden slowing of footsteps. The bastard has broken the lamps so I can’t see him, and after a second, a bright light appears directly in front of me, ten or so yards away. He’s holding a powerful flashlight, shining it deliberately in my eyes so I can’t see him. I can feel bile rising in my throat and I think that maybe if I throw up on him, then he’ll be so disgusted he’ll let me go. I’m also feeling so angry that I could burst; some anger at myself for letting this happen to me but simple, atavistic fury at the old, old story of the subjugation of women by fear.

  Something glints as the light wavers and I know he has a knife. Oh well. The fury passes and I am left with resignation; if I can live through this, then maybe that’s something. There’s nowhere left to run after all. My mouth is so dry but I open it anyway to scream.

  “Don’t scream,” he says.

  His voice is flat and deliberately accent-less, as if he doesn’t want me to know his origins. That’s good. It might mean he intends me to live. I try to control my breathing but it’s coming out ragged and rough and I retch with fear and I sense him smiling. Don’t ask me how I know that, but when he speaks again I can hear his pleasure in my fear.

  “Throw your bag over there,” he says and with shaking hands I comply, fumbling a little.

  “Don’t hurt me,” I say, and am shocked. I sound like a little girl.

  He just laughs. The torch dips a little and I hear him moving towards me and then I hear the unmistakeable sound of a belt being undone. I swallow hard and brace myself for the inevitable.

 The next few seconds are chaos and yelling and even a bit of blood.

  But the blood is not mine. The knife clatters across the concrete; I even fancy it sparked a little, and my attacker stares at me in shock, clutching at the side of his head, cut open when I hit him with the torch I retrieved from my bag. But he only has a second to investigate his wounds, before I wrench that arm into a firm hold behind his back and secure it with the other hand in cuffs, and because I am only human, and because my knee is in the middle of his back (my skirt has now ripped beyond repair), I lean over and press his face ever so gently into the dirty floor and whisper,

  “You’re nicked.”

   And I get to my feet and walk away and leave my other followers to drag this animal to the van waiting outside in the street.                     

The Parable of the Goldpanner

 

 

  Once upon a time there was a young man who ran away to seek his fortune. He had heard that men could get rich by mining for gold and so he travelled to the gold fields only to be told that the mines were all but exhausted of gold but he could still find gold by panning for it in the streams that flowed from the mountain. Much gold still remained inside the mountain; indeed, far more remained than had ever been taken out but it had become too dangerous and expensive to go any deeper into the mountain and dig for gold and so men contented themselves with the gold that washed from the heart of the mountain. Indeed, this gold was known to be purer and need less processing before it could be used. In ancient times, the nuggets were simply taken and washed before being skilfully beaten and shaped into rings and cups of astonishing beauty. Now, gold that had been mined had to be crushed and heated and treated with dreadful chemicals to extract the pure gold and by the time the finished product was ready it had cost almost as much to produce as it was now worth.

   On his first day the young man stood knee deep in the icy waters that rushed from the heart of the mountain and panned and panned till his back ached and his feet and legs became numb with the cold. All the while he squinted into his pan and every so often he would shout out with excitement and pick out something and stuff it swiftly into his leather pouch. At the end of the day, he ran, tired and cold as he was to the Valuer’s tent and poured out his day’s finds expecting to go home to his family that day, rich beyond belief. A long silence followed that was followed by a low rumble of laughter, first from one man and then from all the men present.

  “Why are you laughing?” he asked, bewildered and angry that they should mock him so.

  “Because all you have found here is Fool’s Gold,” said the Valuer, wiping his eyes of tears of mirth. “Every man here did this on his first day. Until you know what gold really looks like, you will think that this mineral here is it. Let me show you.”

  The older man pulled from his pocket a small leather bag and extracted from it a small rough lump that shone like the morning sun rising above the hills. It was brighter and somehow purer in colour than the iron pyrites that he had shown the Valuer, and instantly the young man knew what it was he was actually looking for.

  “The old man who taught me gave me that lump so I would know what I was looking for and not be misled by fakes and forgeries. And now I am giving it to you because sometimes when the winter sun fails to shine and you are cold and miserable, you will need to look at the true gold so you can remember what you are seeking,” said the older man. “And one day, you will pass this nugget onto someone else so they too know what they seek.”

  So the young man returned to his icy stream bed and began again. Sometimes he would see a gleam that made his look again but it only took a second before he knew he was once more looking at Fool’s gold and he would sigh and carry on.

  Weeks passed and then months and all the time he carried on looking, his small reserve of money dwindling each day that passed until one day he had no money left to buy food. He looked at the gold nugget the Valuer had given him and considered whether he should sell that so he might eat that day, but after looking at it, he realised that he would maybe one day forget what true gold looked like and be led astray once more. So he put the nugget away and carried on swirling the water and sediment in his pan and suddenly, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, he saw first one and then another tiny lump of pure gold. All that day he worked and when he trudged back to camp, he had enough gold to sustain him for weeks.

  As the years passed, the young man accumulated gold, and slowly and steadily he grew richer and older until one day, standing knee deep in the water of his stream, his bones started to ache with cold and tiredness like they had never done before and he waded back to the banks of the stream and sat down.

  “All I have had of this stream, I have spent and enjoyed so very little,” he said to himself. “I have bought food and only the necessaries of life. Maybe it is time I began to enjoy the gold I worked so hard for.”

  So packing up his kit he walked back to the camp, which by now had become a small town, and went to the Valuer’s tent to say goodbye to his old friends.

  “I’m going back home,” he told them. “I have enough now that I can support my parents and maybe even marry my sweetheart and start our own family.”

  As he started to leave the tent, a second young man came in. His eyes were filled with feverish excitement that the first young man recognised at once.

  “I’m rich, I’m rich,” shouted the new arrival, pouring out on the Valuer’s table the spoils of his first day’s work.”

  The laughter that had seemed once so mocking now seemed friendly and rueful, the recognition of a mistake the men had all made in the past. The new youngster’s face became red and angry and he seemed almost in tears with frustration.

  “I’ve never seen gold before,” he admitted, sweeping his pile of Fool’s Gold to the floor in his disappointment. “How am I supposed to know if no one has ever shown me?”

  The first young man, no longer so very young or so very foolish, went over to the other man and put his hand out.

  “Here,” he said. “This might help.”

  In his hand was the gold nugget he had once been given to help him know what true gold is.

  “But don’t you need it any more?” asked the newcomer.

  “No,” said the first young man. “You see, after all this time, I think I will always know gold when I see it. And I have found enough gold of my own now to be able to be sure I will always know how to find more if I need it.”

  And so our not-so-young man walked away, and went home to his family richer and dare I say, wiser than when he had set out years before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seminar

I decide to ease my mind by writing a short story and it kind of took a life of its own….

 

The blue blinds billow silently as the breeze catches them, and a snatch of giggling emerges from the room within.

 

I sigh. I had a feeling already that this was going to be one of those hours of my life, stolen away by goblins and lost forever. Giggling goblins at that, the worst sort.

 

Most of those at the gathering are human, or enough so to qualify for the title, though an experienced goblin hunter knows enough to realise looks aren’t everything.

 

I mean, the chief goblin actually looks far more like an elf with a problem with self-esteem and personal hygiene. Take away the  facial piercings and the mantis-like figure and she’d almost pass for human. In the dim light of a nightclub, with your beer goggles on, she’d pass for all right for an off-night.

 

They don’t know who I am, of course. They think they do, but they’ve gotten careless in recent years and while it’s taken me a few years to track down this nest, I’m here now and they trust me. They think I’m a nice doormat of a teacher who is painfully eager to please and a pushover for other staff to manipulate. They can’t deny I’m a good teacher, but I still never get my dues and I get passed over for more popular newcomers for the plum jobs.

 

It’s a good cover and no one in the chief goblin’s coterie has the faintest idea of what’s coming. Actually, nor have I. I haven’t finalised my plan yet, but I’ve got my little bottle of Holy water in my pocket, just in case. I’ve been biding my time for the last two or so years, sometimes forgetting myself just who I am and what I am doing here.

 

I slip in, trying to be unobtrusive but a colleague accosts me for a hug. I’m not sure exactly what he is but I smile warmly but distractedly before seeking a seat at the very back. These briefings, so pretentiously designated as “Staff seminars” are utterly tedious but I can feel the tension coming off the newcomers like sweat in a Turkish bath. Some of them even clutch pens to take notes.

 

The usual format of introductions trickles by, glacially slow, and then the real meat begins.

I switch off. I’ve heard it all before. I filter it all out and just watch as the chief goblin cavorts manically, her face twisting into grotesque imitation of smiles. She can’t resist mangling language, turning innocuous words into parodies of themselves by adding extra letters. It’s supposed to be funny but it’s painful, or it would be if she were actually human. If she were human she’d be ashamed of the crimes she’s committed tonight against the English language. As it is, I can see the rough line of her spine emerging from her tunic, and the typical goblin scales and knobs are almost fully visible tonight. To a human she just looks mildly anorexic, and without any sense of sartorial style.

 

I’ve not been certain before tonight but it seems now that the boss is not a goblin at all but a human enchanted, enthralled by this creature and manipulated to her bidding. Well, that’s good. There are two more goblins, young ones, present, as far as I can see, and a few others I’m not certain of. With the chief goblin dealt with, the two youngsters will flee, and any others will retreat, I think. That is, if I do anything. But I don’t think I will. Not tonight.

 

The young one is speaking now and I feel a rush of sudden anger. A whole host of options fill my mind. I want to shout and protest at this gross imposition of extra, unpaid work, all because a few individuals want to put on a show. The humans have no idea how much work they’re imposing, but the goblins have calculated it to the nth degree. They go so far as the next-to-last straw that breaks the camel’s back, and then stop. It’s a form of torture they’re very good at. There’s no fun if people realise what’s going on and say no. But like frogs in hot water we just accept and accept and accept until our flesh falls away and we become soup for goblins. Of course, this is all a metaphor. Goblins haven’t eaten humans in millennia, except for a few rare cases that have been poorly documented.

 

The humans are sitting there smiling and I can see the magic dust twinkling in the evening sunlight. Every time the chief goblin moves clouds of it stream off her like dandruff and it pacifies everyone. I can hear a few dissenting thoughts but no one voices any concerns.

 

The hour is up and a minion, who is probably a goblin goes off to get drinks ready and like the good little slave I am I go through to help. Enough is enough. While her back is turned I add Holy Water to the bowl of fruity punch and to the wine. It won’t harm the humans but it’s going to be interesting what it does to the goblins. It’s been a long time since I did this and I’ll be glad to get it over with. I’ve had to breathe through an inhaler daily to survive the dust, though everyone thinks it’s Ventolin, and I’d like to breathe properly again.

 

“Here’s to the new term!” says the chief goblin, raising her glass of punch and clinking it with that of the goblin minion next to her. I can see her skin throwing off yet more dust and an artificial joviality fills the room like the office Christmas party, fuelled by cheap wine and white lines. Goblin magic is more subtle these days than it used to be but it IS effective.

 

She slings the whole glass down her throat and as I watch, she starts to shrink, her loud voice crying out shrill but diminishing rapidly as she dwindles from almost six feet tall to a speck on the carpet.

The curious thing is that no one notices her vanish; I guess it must be the magic. Minds simply edit her out of the story and restore it to where it might have been if she’d not been there

 

The two young goblins stare at where she was, their eyes full of horror and their mouths still full of juice. There’s a dilemma going on here: spit or swallow?

 

In the end, they spit, but discreetly into a pot plant. When they come back I can see their magic has faded almost to nothing just from having it in their mouths and know they are no danger to me, or anyone for many years. You can’t kill a goblin but you can make their lives very unpleasant.

 

“Why don’t you two go and wash the glasses?” I suggest with a smile.

 

“Yes, Boss,” they chorus and as they walk away, trying not to abase themselves and as they creep past me, a faint mosquito whine rises from the carpet.

 

It’s going to be decades before she comes back from that one.