Dark Nursery Rhymes - an extract

Yesterday upon the stair

I met a man who wasn’t there

He wasn’t there again today

Oh, how I wish he’d go away

I lie in bed but sleep won’t come

I stare out into the darkness of the bedroom

Turning onto my side, I face the windows

In the moonlight, the shadows of the forest trees that surround the house

Wander across the blinds

It’s going to be a stormy night

But then I sense him standing behind me

Beside my bed, leaning forward slightly as if trying to see my face

I turn towards him,

He seems to be there, but now no more than a shadow

I stretch out my arm, but my fingers go right through him

My arm thrashes, I seem to stir his being.

Like washing up liquid in a bowl of hot water.

In spirals of red, blue, green and yellow, he is gone

In the morning as I wander, half asleep

Along the corridor to the bathroom

I see him again,

Out of the corner of my eye,

Though now he seems to be like my reflection in the mirror

And yet I sense him,

Watching me, always watching me

What does he want? Why is he here, why now?

Whatever his message, whatever he wants to tell me,

I don’t want to know

I just want him to leave me alone.

UPDATE

We've been out of circulation a bit lately, BUT David now has a short piece of work in an exhibition called "Re-allotted" at the St George's House Gallery in Bolton, called "Gates of Eden"

He's creating a much longer work - working title "A Life in the Year" which chronicles the triumphs, trials and tribulations of an allotment site secretary through a calendar year. This work will be part of the next Slug Society exhibition which takes place at Brewery Arts Kendal, dates to be confirmed.

Both "Gates of Eden" and "A Life in the Year" are being illustrated by Rob Jackson.

Robert Eldon is hoping to have some poetry and prose to go into that exhibition. He has been trying to get on with Groken and with his SF piece.

Word Square Exercise

WORDSQUARE

Dave's writing group was set a wordsquare exercise, these are the words he got.

Purple  bitter    sulphur   anger

So he wrote the piece below which he called 'UNBLOCKING THE SINK' because he was trying do undo a bad bout of writer's block, here goes ....

Bitter and anger go together ….

In ‘Chance Encounter’, the first (and so far only) lengthy piece of fiction I’ve had published in a national magazine (Writing Magazine), the ‘hero’ (for want of a better word) is both bitter and angry following his perceived desertion / betrayal by his former partner (Amy) and the collapse of the company he’s worked for all his working life, leaving him alone and unemployed. He’s bitter about what’s happened and he feels anger towards Amy and just about everyone else. He finds a kind of redemption in the end though. The ending gives hope even if it’s unresolved.

The opening passage of ‘Chance Encounter’ also has another kind of bitter in it, the hero’s sitting in the Buerre Louise pub sinking his ‘second pint of bitter from some obscure Cornish Brewery’ before setting out to find ‘a fish supper at the Judd St Chippy’.

And I’ve just finished reading the latest ‘Rebus’ – ‘Better be the Devil’ – Rankin back to form. And bitter features a lot in Rebus stories, though for most of this latest one he’s on the wagon, fearing the results of hospital tests, the threatened diagnosis from which hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the novel. 

But what of sulphur? The smell of sulphur is the smell of farts, the smell of Trump but that’s been overworked just now.

Then I remember the springs at Saturnia in Tuscany with their warm, bubbling sulphurous waters and the overflow running down the hill into pools where trippers bathed for free. But I’m not sure whether the smell came from underground minerals or from the used disposable nappies floating in the stream.

So my mind turns to the Devil, the smell of sulphur is the smell of the pits of Hell.

And what of purple – well there’s UKIP – the purple rosettes, the purple lettering on a yellow background.

Maybe I should be thinking about writing a detective story. And now I think of it, the opening passage of ‘Chance Encounter’ has its homage to Chandler’s great detective, when the hero mutters as he leaves the pub ‘down these mean streets a man must walk’,

My detective could be a bitter, angry man who’s drawn to Tuscany for some reason. But I worry, aren’t all detectives in fiction, bitter, angry men with relationship and drink problems? And didn’t Val McDermid have a story in which her detective goes to Tuscany. Is this getting derivative?

In my story my bitter angry detective with relationship issues and a drink problem will find himself (or even herself) travelling to this small castle in Tuscany (Val d’Orcia?) pursuing a trail of deceit and treachery surrounding a nationally recognised sort of UKIP figure (with possibly satanic overtones – clouds of sulphurous odours surrounding him – shades of Dennis Wheatley or even the Da Vinci code) With a pivotal scene in the gardens at Saturnia around the sulphur springs.

Yes that’s what to write, with a bit of purple prose, but will I write it?

Watch this space!

APOLOGIES

Apologies that we haven't been posting anything for a month or so.

One of us hasn't been writing much and the other has concentrated on entries to a couple of competitions.

We hope (since next week is half-term and writing group and Italian lessons are taking a break) to post something next week.

Hang on in there, please!

Dave J / Robert E

REUNION - by Robert Eldon

4th March at  8.00 a.m.

Ben finishes his breakfast, washes up and then sits in his chair by the window with a second cup of coffee and finishes the ‘Guardian’ crossword. 

That completed, he limps out into the back garden, shivering in the cold morning air. The limp, like the scars on his chest, is a souvenir of his last heart operation. He refills the bird feeders, remembering to scatter a little seed near the bushes for the dunnocks, before slipping back into the warmth of the house, locking the door behind him. Back in his chair, he watches through the window as a wren creeps out from its bolt-hole in the climbing hydrangea to grab a few seeds. A robin soon chases it back into hiding.

There’s a rattle as the mail comes through the letterbox and lands with a thud on the mat in the hallway.

‘It’ll just be adverts,’ Ben grumbles.

There’s a white A5 envelope amongst the usual pile of catalogues and circulars. 

‘University of Oldbury, another plea for donations.’

But it isn’t, it’s a letter from Morris Hirschfeld. He’s writing to all their old university course. It’s the 40th anniversary of their graduation, and he’s organising a reunion at Oldbury.  There’s a website and an email address.

Ben takes the letter into his study and sits wondering whether he should join them. He’s thinking about someone who he really wishes he could see again.  

‘Hilary and I just drifted together. Nothing intense, sort of friends. We were both still living at home and travelling in every day, so we missed out on a lot of the groups that formed in halls and student flats. We became “study buddies” as they call them in the States. I guess she found the notes I wrote up each night – three colours of ink in hard-backed notebooks – pretty useful. Well most of the time that’s how it was, on her side at least.

After graduation I got funding to do my PhD at Leamwick, and Hilary joined the marketing department of a multi-national down in London, a high-flying career beckoned for her. But we kept in touch.

Then one Tuesday morning, I got a call from her. She said she was supervising some market research exercise near me - suggested we met up. I invited her to stay at my flat. I gave her the bed, slept on the sofa.

She stayed on for the weekend. On the Sunday morning, I walked into the bathroom, and there she stood, just a pair of knickers on - still remember those knickers very well, sort of white with little perforations all over them – like Tetley teabags – I think they called them Artex knickers. No - that can’t be right - Artex is what some idiot had used on the ceiling of the cottage I bought when I retired, bugger to get off. 

I got flustered, stammered out ‘I’m sorry’, closed the door and dived back into the hallway. She came out after me, stood there facing me with her hands on her hips, just stood there smiling.

“Do you know how long I’ve been stood there, quietly waiting for you to barge in and surprise me?” she said. “You really are hopeless.”

You’d think I’d remember her breasts, how she looked, wouldn’t you, but it’s the knickers - that’s what I remember.

That evening I drove her to the railway station, we kissed in the car park, then she took the train back to London.

Back at the flat, the scent of her perfume still lingered on my pillow.

And that was the last time I saw Hilary Blake.’

Ben logs in on his laptop and emails Morris.

7th September 4.00 p.m.

Ben’s in his kitchen when the pain hits him. The iron bands round his chest, the sweating, the feeling of nausea, Ben knows the symptoms only too well. He presses the pre-set number on his phone to summon help.

‘Can’t be ill now,’ he thinks, ‘it’s the reunion next week.’

Half-an-hour later the paramedics arrive, at the same time as his brother, Jim.

‘They’re going to take you in for the night, just to be on the safe side,’ says Jim.

8th September 8.00 p.m.

It’s visiting time in the cardio ward. Jim’s sat at Ben’s bedside. He looks concerned.

‘Well, looks like I’ll still be going to that reunion,’ says Ben, ‘looking forward to that.’

Jim says nothing.

13th September 8.00 a.m.

Ben’s standing on Platform 1 at Blackedge station. It’s the end of the line. It’s a ten minute walk from Ben’s house, but he can’t remember exactly how he got here. The platform’s thronged with people. To Ben’s eyes they seem grey and faded. They ignore Ben. A girl standing near him, shivers and pulls her coat tighter around her, even though the morning sun is already warming the day.

Ben sings to himself, ‘I’m standing on the railway station, got a ticket for my destination.... Paul Simon composed that on Warrington Bank Quay, or was it Widnes?’

He boards the train for Oldbury, he’s heading for the reunion at the University.

13th September 9.15 a.m.

Ben stares out of the window as the aged multiple-unit emerges from the mist that seems to have enveloped it since they left Blackedge an hour or so before. Now it’s ambling through a townscape of scrap-yards and derelict factories, clattering its way towards his destination. He’s still thinking about the girl he hadn’t seen for nearly forty years.

Ben looks round the carriage. The seats around him are empty. ‘So much for all those stories in the ‘Evening Post’ about overcrowding and cattle truck conditions,’ he thinks.

13th September at 9.30 a.m.

Ben disembarks onto an empty platform at the new re-designed University station. He doesn’t know which way to go. Everything’s changed.

Suddenly another train comes in. It’s absolutely jam-packed. Students and office workers in bright, modern clothing pile off the train and start up the platform. Somehow the tide seems to swirl round Ben and he finds himself being swept along towards the exit.

There’s a sign pointing to “University Campus”, so Ben heads in that direction. He crosses a road and finds himself in a car park. All his memories tell him that there should be an old brick building in front of him, but there’s nothing there, just an empty grassed space and a signpost pointing to ‘Library / Cafe’.

‘I’m still too early, maybe I’d better get a coffee.’

So he wanders off across the grass.

As he reaches the Library a woman, a girl really, steps out towards him.

She looks so familiar, he thinks for a moment that…. But she can’t be.

‘Hello, Ben,’ she says.

Hilary?’ he says, ‘Is that really you?’

And they link arms and walk together across the campus. The young woman in her leather jacket and tight jeans and the old man dressed in his best formal suit.

‘You don’t look a day older than when I waved you off on that train at Leamwick station,’ says Ben.

Hilary smiles. ‘You look a bit more worn, I fear. Have the years been hard?’

‘Not really,’ says Ben, ‘there’s just been a lot of them. I used to have hair, and why am I dressed like this? It’s a reunion, not a funeral.’

‘So you’re here for the reunion, then?’ asks Hilary.

‘Yes, you too?’

 ‘In a way.’

Ten minutes later they’re standing in the shadows of the Senate House, looking across the grassy square, watching a group of middle-aged men – their former classmates – who’ve gathered around Morris Hirschfeld on the steps of the sixties glass and concrete block that is now the Maths building. 

‘Shall we join them?’ asks Ben.

‘I don’t think we can,’ says Hilary.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Maybe we should just go back to Leamwick, take up where we left off.’

‘Could we do that?’

Meanwhile the group are chatting amongst themselves.

Morris Hirschfeld is holding a clipboard with a list of names.

‘I think that’s all of us,’ he says.

‘What about Ben and Hilary,’ asks another, ‘Do you know anything about them, are they coming?’

Morris puts his clipboard under his arm and sighs.

‘No they won’t be coming. I suppose we had to expect in forty years we’d lose someone. It’s amazing in a way the rest of us are all here.’

‘Ben was due to be here today. But he died last week, heart attack. Today’s the day of his funeral. His brother emailed me. He said Ben’s last words were that he was really looking forward to seeing Hilary again. He must have been out of it by then. He knew about her, he was the one who told me.’

The group falls silent. Then, ‘why what happened to Hilary?’

‘She was killed in a rail accident, not long after graduation,’ says Morris, ‘apparently she’d spent the weekend with Ben in Leamwick and was heading back to London. I only found out myself a few months ago when Ben emailed to say he’d come to the reunion. First time I’d heard from him in 40 years.’

Morris pulls himself together, ‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get on. Let’s get started on this tour of the new campus.’ He waves to a young woman standing by the Maths Building doors, ‘here’s our guide.’

Meanwhile, in another time and place, in a flat in Leamwick, a long-haired young man is stepping out of the mist and sleepily beginning to turn the handle of the bathroom door.

The Promised (Threatened?) Cartoon

GROKEN CHAPTER FIVE - ROBERT ELDON

This is as far as Groken goes at the moment - Robert should resume soon (we hope!)

Nils Joansen is sat in his study at home, when his wife enters.

‘You have a visitor,’ she says, and she ushers Freya Krol into the room.

‘One of the Huldegarde folk accosted me in the street today. He said he was the son of my mother’s sister. Is it true then, what mother has always said about Anna, that she, well, you know…. with that man from Huldegarde?’

‘Whether what your mother alleges is or is not true is not for me to debate,’ says Nils. ‘I think the man in question must be Bron Turner, who is indeed, or so I believe, the son of Anna Turner, Anna Frandsen. As such he is the legal heir to the Skarafjord properties, both Alvanaes and Huldegarde, and technically my client.’

‘Alvanaes is rightfully my mother’s, she was the elder granddaughter, it should be hers,’ says Freya.

‘But old Frandsen disinherited your mother when she left Alvanaes against his wishes, he left everything to Anna, his will is very clear.’

‘He made that will under threats from Anna and her Huldegarde lover, father will get it overturned soon, I know.’

‘Your father is about 25 years too late to mount a challenge, though I’m sure it fits with his plans to retake the Huldegarde site from Mr Youngman.’

‘Eric says that you should never have given Youngman leave to start his project, and what’s more he says that if you meet with this Bron it will be the worst for you.’

‘I do not take kindly to threats,’ says Joansen, ‘not even from someone as pretty as you. Tell your brother to watch his step.’

He shows Freya out through a door that leads into his garden and then along a path to the street. Once he’s back in his study, Mrs Joansen comes in and says ‘tonight seems to be your night for being visited by attractive young women, maybe I should worry!’

A slim girl with long black hair follows her into the room. Mrs Joansen leaves and Nils and the girl sit opposite each other across Joansen’s desk.

‘Well, Mr Joansen,’ says the girl, ‘you will see Bron Turner in the morning. In fact here is his mobile number, call him now and make the appointment.’

‘The Krols have just told me I mustn’t see him,’ says Nils.

The girl looks amused, ‘Mr Joansen, the AM Foundation has a considerable interest in the success of New Huldegarde and also in Mr Turner. We would not wish our plans to be impeded in any way. You will see Bron Turner in the morning.’

‘Your foundation has made a considerable investment in the project …..’

‘Considerable to you, perhaps….. Do you not think it interesting though?’

 ‘What’s interesting?’

‘That just a couple of days after Anna Turner told you that she and her husband intended to travel here, they were both killed in that car crash. Just a coincidence I suppose? By the way, how did Anna Turner inform you of her intention to visit the islands?’

‘A letter, to my office, Mrs Turner was a somewhat old-fashioned woman in some ways.’

‘And did you mention her plans to anyone?’

‘Other than your colleagues, you mean?’

He picks up his ‘phone and dials the number she has given him.

‘Hello,’ says a voice at the other end, ‘Bron Turner.’

‘Mr Turner, my name is Nils Joansen. I believe we should meet. Can you come to my house tomorrow morning at 8.00 a.m? It’s Karl Johansgatan 14, it’s easy to find.’

The girl smiles at the old man. ‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘I’ll be on my way.’

The next morning Bron parks his motorcycle outside the lawyer’s house, and walks up to the front door. Mrs Joansen lets him in and shows him into Nils’ study.

‘Let me bring you some coffee,’ she smiles, ‘and maybe a few buns would be welcome?’

Bron smiles back, friendly receptions have been few and far between on this trip.

Nils arrives and the two sit down. Mrs Joansen brings in coffee and rolls and then slips away.

‘So, you are Anna Frandsen’s son. How may I help you?’ says Nils.

‘I know that you were my mother’s lawyer and that you wrote to my father about my great grandfather’s estate.’

‘There are those who would dispute that Adam Turner was your father.…’

‘What do you mean, who says that?’

‘Sigyn Krol for one, she believes that you are the child of a liaison between your mother and a Huldegarde man. If I may say, without offence, your appearance does support that belief.’

Bron is silent.

Nils continues, ‘Sigyn believes that your mother and her lover forced her grandfather to draw up a will disinheriting Sigyn and leaving all to Anna. If she could get proof, then she and her husband would challenge your right to the land in our courts. Birger wants the land for his tourism business and Sigyn, well, Sigyn is a Frandsen and Alvanaes runs through their veins like blood.’

‘How after all this time can they believe they can get proof?’ asks Bron.

‘As I said, your appearance supports the story of a lover amongst the Hidden Folk. And were it ever possible to locate and question your, what is the phrase, biological father, they could go a long way. Birger Krol is a powerful man, and many would benefit, financially, were his plans to be successful.’

‘Adam Turner was my father, I will fight any man who says otherwise.’

‘Then you will certainly have to fight Eric Krol, for he will seek you out and try to provoke you.
But we move too fast, let’s drink our coffee and sit a moment, there must be much you want to ask me about your inheritance, about the estate.’   

An hour later, Bron leaves the lawyer’s house. As he reaches his bike, his arm is caught by a burly middle-aged man.

‘Birger Krol,’ says the man, ‘I’m your uncle, as I’m sure you know. Can we have a few words?’

Birger and Bron make their way to a nearby café. ‘If I have much more coffee and eat any more buns on this trip I’m going to be high as a kite and as fat as a pig,’ thinks Bron.

‘You’ve met my daughter, Freya I believe?’ says Birger.

‘Yes, she definitely didn’t like the idea I was a relative,’ says Bron.

‘It’s the Hidden Folk thing, my wife told them stories when they were small. Her feelings towards the Folk, whilst understandable and widely shared are, perhaps, a little extreme.’

‘I believe she has certain doubts about my parentage,’ says Bron.

‘I hate to speak ill of the dead,’ says Birger, ‘but my wife has always believed that your mother was party to some arrangement between her grandfather and the Folk. She believes that Anna was promised to one of the Folk, a man called Machndoch, to be his wife. My wife believes Machndoch and your mother forced old Frandsen to sign a will that disinherited her from the Frandsen lands. She is very bitter, even after all these years.’

‘And you, Mr Krol, what do you believe?’

‘Your appearance suggests that you are indeed the result of a liaison with one of the Folk. But I am not one to hold to old prejudices. You may be of the Folk but you are also half Frandsen, and for the Frandsens the land at Alvanaes has always been the most important thing, almost a sacred trust. And I’m sure you’ll want to maintain that tradition.

Work with me. I have money and influence, I have big plans for that land, together we could achieve much. Think about it, I’ll be in touch.’

And with that Birger Krol signals to a waiting Mercedes that sweeps him off into the town.

Bron rides back to Rachel’s house where he’d spent the previous night. She is standing by a motorcycle very like his own, but a shiny blue. She is tying her camping equipment onto the pillion.

‘Going somewhere?’ asks Bron.

‘I thought I’d join you at Alvanaes for a few days,’ says Rachel. ‘You can tell me everything that’s happened to you this morning. But first I think we ought to go out to Huldegarde. Word on the street is that Eric Krol and his friends are planning to pay Mr Youngman a visit this evening, maybe we should see what transpires. It promises to be ……. interesting.’