We are delighted to announce the winners of our Short Story Competition 2017, which has been judged by Charlie Maclean
And the winning entries are:
1st Prize £500
The Walker by David N Martin
2nd Prize £100
Three Sides of the Story by Dr Charles Knightley
3rd Prize £50
What About My Heart? by Christina Sanders
Judge's Report by Charlie Maclean
Judging the
Words With JAM competition has been a great pleasure and immense privilege. There is so much to praise in the originality of ideas and quality of writing contained in the shortlisted entries.
It has been such an enjoyable experience, diving into the different worlds evoked in this collection of stories: ‘Every Second Saturday’, a heartfelt tale of unrequited love; ‘The Legacy’, a potent family drama; ‘The Walk to the Sandwich Station’, a poignant story of realisation and change; ‘The 96th Meeting’, set in San Francisco in the 1960s, with punchy dialogue and larger-than-life characters; ‘Rarer Gifts Than Gold’, a quirky tale overflowing with gastronomic detail; ‘Other Half’, a moving story set in rural France; ‘The Quickest Way Back’, about a bicycle, a youthful mistake and the chance of a satisfying redemption; the colourful and atmospheric ‘Bon Bon and Marguerite; ‘High Whimsy’, full of inventive names and unexpected turns; the fantastical and powerful ‘Alone in the Dark’; ‘A Stroke of Fortune’, an uplifting story of recovery and second chances; ‘A Dog Walker’s Family’, an escalating drama of revelations; and, finally, the mysterious and energetic ‘Life Form’.
Choosing three finalists from the shortlist has been extremely hard, but three stories particularly stood out for me and chose their places in my mind and heart.
In third place: ‘What About My Heart?’, a dreamlike first-person narrative full of vivid detail, strong scenes with great dialogue, and possessing a sense of the surreal.
In second place: ‘Three Sides of the Story’, a tale of life, death, marriage and payback. A compelling story with strong characterisation that, despite its dark subject matter, has a playful energy. I also enjoyed its bittersweet twist of an ending.
In first place: ‘The Walker’, about a man criss-crossing the countryside in search of his shadow - an intriguing story that, for me, read like a modern-day folklore yarn. As the protagonist walked on in his journey, I followed, drawn along by the hypnotic passages of this captivating tale.
All the stories have stayed with me, and I congratulate every writer on their excellently crafted and inspiring creations. Bravo!
First Prize Winner: The Walker by David N Martin
You are a walker. You walk, its rhythm the rhythm of your thoughts.
In rain, cloud or sun, your feet step out. On Woodland paths, old Drovers’ trails, the tracks of hills and mountains, railway lines left bare by Dr Beeching, your mind winds through its gears. You escape your body to some place other, better, best.
Once, you remember, you were an athlete, the gazelle, an urban hero. You ran, but in that last fall, your knee popped out. The surgeon said, “No more free running for you, young man.” You had run your last rooftop, slid your last handrail, made your last leap from building to balcony.
You moved back home. Walking became therapy. Walking was some way back to something. A yard or two, then to the end of your parents’ garden. You leaned on a tree, hunched double, choking as your heaving chest protested. The spring air smelt of wisteria.
A girlfriend drove you out and put you on your first canal towpath, introduced the smells of boats and water and the sound of country silence.
By summer, you could walk a mile without pain. You loved it. For a while, you confused it with love for her.
"Let's do The Roaches," your friend said. Her name was Marion, her smile persuasive. ‘The Roaches’ sounded as illicit as the weed she bought that fetched the aches from your joints.
The Roaches were high. Their tangled rock escarpments, towering summits, and bleak moorland rinsed all petty concerns from your head. You walked them. Rushing on in front, forgetting your companion.
No one, it seemed, understood what walking meant. As strength returned, you tackled the northern lakes, the Lapworth Circuit, Rhossili Bay, Mousehole to Lamarna.
In the holidays, you walked the Tennyson Trail on the Isle of Wight, fourteen miles up and down in the heat of August. Here, a walker caught in the moment thinks the thoughts of poets passed. Rhythms and rhymes seep into your steps.
Then, at journey’s end, Carisbrooke Castle bursts the horizon. King Charles once sat imprisoned here.
But less of death and more of life. You walked Brightstone Down, Alum Bay, The Needles. These you remember. When you left your holiday, Marion was gone. Her, you forgot.
You had the habit now. You walked on alone through the ochre shades of autumn, stopping to talk to walkers along the way.
“Are you here for a day out?” they'd ask.
“We're here with the Essex Ramblers,” they’d say, or name some other distant club. “We all came for the gardens.”
Or perhaps, “For the view.”
Or, “The lake.”
“The hills.”
After a while, you realised, they don't feel it. No one else does. It's not about being here to be somewhere or with someone, it's just about being.
They’d just hoist their backpacks onto their shoulders. Carry on.
“You talk like that guy,” one woman said when you told them. “Doesn't he talk like him?” She turned to her husband, a nodding parcel-shelf dog for everything she said.
“Wait a moment, what guy?” you asked.
“Him,” they said in chorus. “Haven’t you heard? The Walker.”
As soon as you heard the name, you knew he'd understand. You asked for details. They had none. Only the rumour.
November snows closed the season. You sat impatient, wandering virtual chat rooms in your father’s study, listening for his presence, hoping that someone would know. But no. The Walker remained a title and a whisper. And Christmas came.
*
Weeks in your parents’ house, smoking for medicinal purposes, wondering about the mystery man. The winter fired you for the New Year, charged your determination, rested your knee.
You peeped out on the softening world like something reborn. I’m a walker, you said. You forgot the runner-past. If anyone asked, you’d deny it.
With the first march, you vowed you’d meet this man. You started along the Pennine Way, 250 miles from the north to south. The wrong way to do it! The guidebooks told you, walk with the wind at your back, but also said the last section over the Cheviots was wild; you wanted to do that first. It was where you’d meet the scattered walkers coming north.
You told them about your obsession. They were impressed. Unlike the old heroism, it was enough that you inspired their efforts. You showed the surgeon’s scars on your knee, but shared no story how they came there.
“Good luck,” they said, “good luck. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
On Good Friday, skirting Hadrian's Wall, you met a couple who said they'd been rambling 30 years. In three decades, you'd think they’d have met the Walker several times.
“Son, what are the odds? There are 175,000 miles of public walkways,” the crusty husband told you.
“I'll walk them all,” you said.
The wife lent her iPhone and you Googled for the latest sightings. There were none. You sprinkled questions in your favourite chat rooms. Everything was about last year. You wondered if, like you, the Walker walked in seasons, not rising until the spring.
The Pennines were conquered by May, but that wast but a fraction of the walkways to which you'd sworn. The South West Coast Path runs 630 waymarked miles from Minehead to Poole Harbour. It is but a nibble at the task, yet still the biggest bite you could take. With all its climbs and falls, you’d scale the height of Everest four times, cross 302 bridges, top 920 styles. You started in June. In July, you were done.
Meeting weekenders became commonplace. You talked of walks you’d done and why you’d done them. You were full-time on their part-time journey. They started to treat you with an arm’s length awe.
But a swelling came with the summer, ballooning in your weakest joint as the honeysuckle and lavender took the harvest air. Your knee filled with fluid. You knew you ought to stop, but you didn’t. You couldn’t.
You met two girls at a campsite, students from Stuttgart. You cooked on the fire in front of their tent. You dunked a wash towel into boiling water, hoping to use its heat on the swelling. You rolled a marijuana cigarette and offered them a drag.
“Sure, I know someone, this guy, who met him,” said the doe-eyed girl. Her friend had refused the dope in favour of sleep. “In Scotland, I think. I don't know quite where. It is not my country to know. He has a wooden leg, this guy said. All those kilometres on a wooden leg. It is a miracle.”
This special someone settled in your mellow brain, the barb of his hook bit the core. You smoked so much the night turned purple. You built thoughts and thoughts around the idea. Someone had walked farther than you on even less, continued with greater scars.
In the morning, you woke up next to the doe-eyed girl. Your leg had locked solid.
After the hospital, you walked no more until December and then you were confined to your parents’ treadmill, the one your father bought when his BMI broke thirty. Yet still your mind kept flying.
Come Christmas, you looked again for online mentions. You asked questions. You began to get detail in reply. It seemed he'd drifted south. Some Cornish campsites reoccurred, places with names you recognised.
He talked now not just to ramblers and walkers, but to the coast-bound campers, surfers and kiteboarders too, addressing the wandering youth.
“He'll share a smoke without prejudice,” they said. “He always has a word or two to give.”
*
So now, the winter thaws and you unfreeze. Your knee bends and unbends. You dream of the outdoor paths, mirrored lakes, bluebell trails and lowering boughs of forest trees. The Walker draws your thoughts from the shadows of your pain.
You're ready now to tell everyone everything you stand for, louder than before. You’ll tell them how you made it back. Walking defines you.
Renewed, you walk the Cotswold Way, Pembroke's Coastal Path, the line of the Thames.
Somewhere near Cricklade, a young woman screams. You take a rowing boat onto the river and pull her struggling dog to the side. You untangle the weeds from its legs.
In Windsor, a few days later, you come across a gaggle of ambulances and police cars. A boy has fallen into the waters. You are too late. Nothing to be done, but catch a glance of pale skin before they cover him, smeared with the river grime, the mother comforted by an arm in a high-visibility jacket.
As walker, you see life and death. You see everything. You tell campers you meet about the dog. If you hadn’t saved the dog, you’d feel worse about the boy, but still, thinking about the boy is bad enough. You tread it under the rhythm. You drop the boy from your conversation after the sleepless nights. You talk about the dog instead.
In four months, you walk two thousand miles.
*
“You need to stop this madness,” the surgeon says. He’s showing you what science says about your knee. “Look at it.”
You look at it. All you see is limitation.
“I may have to go in again.”
“No,” you say.
“You’re not listening, are you?” he says.
Your mind is on the road somewhere in the endless paces that repeat and repeat, where thought loses sense of time. And breaks free. Second and minute lead to hours and days. They give the illusion that change is all, but what comes after today has no hold. The truth does not lie in chronology. Creation bathes in something greater.
With the next new spring, you are across the water. Ireland. Walks in a green and wilder country. You walk. It rains. You walk. The wind blows. On Errigal Mountain. On Dingle Way and Diamond Hill.
You stop to rest your leg, but pain sets in when you do not move.
“’Tis God’s own country, so it is,” the wayside rambler tells you. She is young and lost. You tell her about walking. She offers you the comfort of her body.
“Have you heard of the Walker?” you ask.
“Everyone has.”
“He’s been here?”
“He’s been everywhere.”
In the morning, you walk on, your knee as pain free as your heart. You have no doubt left this girl with more than wisdom. There will be others. They swarm like bees to sweetness. The aura of your walking draws them, young and old. You can favour but a few.
In a sawdust pub on the banks of the Shannon, you spend a night. You hear a music other than the windblown silence. You are no longer the spiritless stumbler, choking on wisteria scent. You have mastered your art. Your mind is your own.
Back in England, the news that greets you seems impossible. Halfway along the Snowdonia Path, you camp with ramblers from competing tribes. One claims, the Walker is now in the Hebrides; another, citing clashing dates, swears he saw him in the flesh not a week ago, as close as this hand before your face, but on Exmoor.
“Maybe he flies,” a third suggested.
“In planes?”
“Maybe.”
“Or walks on water.”
Their idle talk astounds you. They say he trod the surface of a river, came down the tributaries to London, and raised a dead child who’d fallen from the towpath.
Two days more, you walk alone. Aside Llyn Llydaw, your hard-won silence breaks. One misplaced twist and a skeletal ‘crack!’ sends you crashing to the ground. You look down and see your leg turned backwards. Pain splits your head.
They give you morphine. Now you have no idea what occurs. That fug that comes with stillness drags you into darkness. You dream bad dreams of a white hospital. You dream the freedom you had was stolen. You wake to your mother’s face, your father’s stern expression.
“Oh, my son,” she wails. “There was no way to save it.”
“You had your warnings,” your father says.
They tell you to take it a day at a time, but they don’t understand. You don’t want to wait. You want to fit your stump with the carbon contraption on offer, the mechanical knee and ankle. You want to be gone. To walk again.
*
This time you will not stop for winter. It rains. It blows like Ireland, but colder this time. You’re soaked through before the snow. The noise of weather makes it harder to think, but you walk anyway, unsure if it’s the clattering hail or the limp in your step. It interferes with the mental rhythm you used to find in the first mile. Now it takes two or three, and as many rolled cigarette papers of shredded Mary-Jane.
Your stump comes bloody from its socket every night. Your back holds onto pain. Your body betrays you and your answer is to reach harder for a truth beyond.
Lame as you go, crippled, walkers tell you of the hope you give them. You are an icon, even with a limp, or maybe because of it. There’s nothing like someone who has suffered to inspire the suffering.
Back to The Roaches, where you walked with Marion, you make camp another Thursday night. Someone gives you a waxed box of supermarket wine, a Chilean red. The couple from the next tent come with French sticks and cheese triangles. You thank them before you notice you’ve met them before. The husband quoted you the length of British walkways. You said you’d walk them all. Remember that? Three years ago almost to the day.
People from other tents creep over. You seem to gather a particular crowd. They ask about your journeys, your meetings with the Walker, the sacrifice of your leg.
You tell them your leg is no sacrifice. You have been saved by the silence of those miles, the harder the sweeter. You did it for yourself, but now you say you did it for them. And when they press you for more, you don’t want to disappoint.
“Are you him?” a young man asks.
“If that’s what you need,” you reply. You remember being the younger man.
The gathered drink your wine and eat your bread with cheese. It does for anyone who comes.
*
That night, the midnight hour will light the bandwidth of the on-line world. Twitter and Tweet. A GPS to the Great One’s location. The Walker is found.
You will not know until morning, when TV crews and crowds crush together at the gate of your camp. A young woman will come. She will be with child and she will kiss your cheek and name you.
You will stand, one-legged, and think. You’ll look out on a trail of faces, like a snake down the winding path of the slope. You’ll stare over their heads. You’ll have nothing to give them. He is out there, still.
Second Prize Winner: Three Sides of the Story by Dr Charles Knightley
Donna released the brake. Gravity moved her wheelchair down the hill, slowly. She helped it along by turning the rear wheels with her hands. There was a sparkle in her eyes coupled with a mischievous grin on her face. The chair accelerated down the slope towards the canal. Chris stared incredulously as he yelled, “What are you doing?” Donna didn’t answer. Was it her idea of a joke? He laughed and shouted out, “Very funny, now stop messing about.” But the wheelchair with occupant continued its perilous journey.
An aged couple, Peter and Marilyn, resting on a nearby bench witnessed the antics. Peter gulped and asked his wife, “Did you see that?” He pointed his walking cane towards the wheelchair.
“Pardon?” Marilyn asked.
Peter repeated his question in a louder voice.
“No need to shout,” she replied in a trembling voice as she fiddled with her hearing aid. “Yes, I can see. I'm not blind.” She adjusted her glasses and began to wave her walking stick pointing between Chris and the runaway wheelchair. “He pushed her. That man pushed the wheelchair.”
"Did he say it was funny?"
“Funny? Yes, yes,” she answered, “he said it was funny. And he laughed.” Her wrinkled mouth remained open.
Meanwhile Chris was running after the wheelchair, but it was getting further and further away, closer and closer to the water’s edge. He shouted, “Donna. Stop.” But the vehicle didn’t stop, it continued its dangerous trip downhill towards the water. In the loudest voice he could muster he shouted, “Donna, stop.”
“Did I hear right, Peter? Was he telling her don't stop?”
Peter, his blood flecked eyes open wide, said, “Yes, he shouted, don't stop. He doesn't want her to stop. The bastard.”
“Bastard.” Marilyn's mouth closed with an audible snap.
The left rear wheel of the chair hit a protruding stone and the chair tilted to the right continuing its run on two wheels. Chris was still in pursuit.
Peter said, “She's going to topple.” He placed a hand on Marilyn's and held it tight.
Marilyn closed her eyes, “I can't look.”
The chair was close to its tipping point when Donna leant towards the left and the chair returned to a stable position.
Peter announced, “Phew, she didn't fall.” Marilyn opened her eyes.
Chris sighed with relief but his look soon turned to fright, the wheelchair was continuing its journey downhill fast approaching the water’s edge. There was nothing to stop Donna and the wheelchair; they plunged into the water. Donna still had a grin on her face and just before the splash she shouted something. Chris watched, open mouthed, as she disappeared into the water. Plumes of water shot into the air and water rippled. The torrent and waves soon abated, replaced by air bubbles on the water surface.
The onlookers gasped as they watched Donna disappear.
“She’s going to drown.”
“We’d better go and help.”
Peter looked at his overweight wife and then at his own frail body, “I don't think we'll be much help.”
She sniggered. “I’m a good swimmer.”
“Darling, you were a very good swimmer, but that was several decades ago.”
“Yes, dear. You don't need to remind me.”
Peter stood up and helped his wife up from the bench. They walked cautiously towards the site. “Not too fast,” Marilyn complained.
Chris stared, watching the bubbles in the water, waiting for Donna to rise to the surface. Nothing. No sign. To rescue Donna he had to enter the canal. Without thinking he stepped into the water. Instantly his thoughts turned to his clothes, Donna would be so mad. He imagined her saying, “Those are your new clothes, look how wet and dirty you've made them.” He was brought to reality by the cold water. As he shivered, he wrinkled his nose. The smell was unpleasant, a mix of stale fish and sewerage. It was also deeper than he’d imagined and panic set in; he couldn’t swim. He thrashed around trying to keep himself afloat.
“What’s he doing?” Peter asked. “Why isn't he helping her?”
“Oh my god, he’s stopping her getting out.”
Chris felt something solid nearby and climbed onto it. He stabled himself and spat water from his mouth. He looked down. The water was relatively clear near the surface. He saw he was kneeling on the back of the wheelchair.
Marilyn, witnessing Chris’s behaviour, had difficulty speaking. She took a choking swallow. “Peter, he’s standing on her.”
“He’s trying to kill her,” Peter said. “We’d better not get any closer; we don’t know what he’ll do to us.” They went behind a bush where they had a good vantage position.
Marilyn complained as she knelt, “My knees aren't so good.”
Peter helped her down. “Where's the phone?”
“In your pocket.”
He fumbled around in his left pocket, no phone. He tried his right, still no phone. “Are you sure it's not in your handbag?”
She sighed as she rummaged through her bag. “Oh yes, here it is,” she exclaimed proudly.
“Phone the police,” Peter said.
She passed the phone to him. “Can you call them? I can't see with these glasses.”
Chris realised he was preventing Donna from getting out of the wheelchair. He moved to one side, immediately sank and was immersed up to his mouth in the water. His feet touched the bottom of the canal. It felt squidgy and he had the sensation he was slowly sinking. He stood on tip-toes but continued to steadily sink into the mud. When he stopped sinking, his nose was just above the water level. One of his nostrils was blocked but he could still draw air into his lungs through the other. He knew what he had to do, took a deep breath and went underwater. He could make out Donna’s body, lifeless and still attached to the overturned wheelchair. She had a fixed grin on her face. He grabbed hold of her head and tried to lift her up. Donna and the wheelchair were too heavy and they didn’t budge. He was desperate to breath and rose to the surface for air.
The couple watched Chris’s antics. “He’s making sure she stays under,” Marilyn moaned.
Peter said, “I hope the police arrive soon.” He stared at the phone in his hand. “How do you take pictures with this thing?”
“I don't know!”
“We should've listened to our daughter.”
“I think you have to press something that looks like a camera.”
“Here it is.” He pressed the camera icon and an image appeared. He pointed at Chris and pressed some of the buttons. An affirmative sound made him realise he'd managed to take a photograph. “That was easy,” he proudly proclaimed.
After a quick gulp of air, Chris made another attempt to rescue Donna. Once again he submerged himself. That fixed grin was still there on her face. Was she enjoying the torment she was putting him through? He grabbed hold of her long auburn coloured hair and pulled on it. She didn’t budge. And neither did that smile disappear. He was still clutching some hair when he surfaced and shuddered as he rinsed his hands.
“Why's he pulling her hair out?” Peter asked.
“Could it be a wig?”
“No, it's definitely hair.”
“He must really hate her.”
On the third occasion that Chris tried to rescue his wife he placed his hands around her neck. He tugged and heaved but she wasn’t going anywhere. He gave up and attempted to get out of the water. He crawled onto the back of the wheelchair and stretched out to reach the dry land with his hands. He couldn’t reach; he kicked his feet against something solid. When he realised it was Donna’s head, he felt awful and said out aloud, “Oh god, I’ve kicked her head.” His hands reached the canal side and he scampered onto solid ground.
Peter continued to take photographs. “What a beast. Did you see him jumping on her to make sure she wouldn’t surface?”
“He’s a maniac,” Marilyn said. “Did you hear what he said?”
Peter looked grim, “He said it was good that he kicked her head.” He shook his head.
“What a bastard.”
Chris lay on the ground coughing and spitting water. It was a few seconds before he could sit up. He reached for his man-bag which he’d dropped earlier on, thankful he kept his phone in the bag rather than his pocket. He rang the emergency services.
It took several minutes for divers to pull Donna and the wheelchair out of the water. Paramedics attempted to revive Donna but it was futile, she was pronounced dead.
Chris related his version of the incident to the police. “I can’t understand why she did it. I’m sure she went in on purpose. I tried to get her out but I couldn’t move her.”
The watching couple explained what they saw.
“I’m sure he pushed her in.”
“Yes, I’m sure he pushed her in.”
“And then he shouted, don't stop, as she was going down the hill.”
“He was laughing when she hit the water.”
“He was demented, jumping all over her.”
“He said he was glad he kicked her head.”
The police took statements from all concerned as well as Peter’s phone with the photographs.
When a friend of Donna’s heard about the drowning she immediately went to the police and showed them copies of emails she’d received from Donna.
“I think he’s planning to kill me.”
“He’s after my compensation money.”
“He keeps taking me to the canal.”
“He’s going to drown me in the canal. You must tell the police if he succeeds.”
She was convinced that Chris had murdered his wife. “Donna was such a lovely woman. She loved life. I don’t think he was happy with her. He was always yelling at her when he was pushing the wheelchair.” She shook her head slowly and frowned, “Never any PDA.”
“PDA?”
“Public display of affection.”
At the trial the prosecution brought up the fact that Donna was strapped securely into the wheelchair. “Was this your normal practice?”
“No,” Chris answered as he shook his head. “She must have strapped herself in.”
An expert stated, “If she hadn’t been strapped to the wheelchair she would have easily surfaced.” He gave a slow, disbelieving shake of his head. “That was a callous act.”
The pathologist reported bruise marks on the victim’s neck and stated, “This indicates strangulation.” He also said there were bruises on the head together with excessive hair loss, both indicative of the victim being hit several times.
Chris sat with his eyes closed, hands covering his face. Everything was going against him.
Three years previously, Chris and Donna had been returning from a dancing competition. A contest which they should have won, according to Donna. She was driving faster than usual and her speech was fast and venomous. “It’s your bloody fault we came second. You had too much of wine.”
“Come on darling, I only drank after the contest, and only because we lost.” He waved his hands dismissively, not that she could see. “You always blame me.”
“Of course it was your fault,” she shouted. “You were so drunk you kept missing your steps.”
“I wasn’t drunk. It was you that kept missing your steps.”
“I was perfect,” she insisted, looked towards him and turned the steering wheel away. The car veered to the opposite side of the road.
“Careful,” he shouted as Donna straightened the car, “you’ll kill us both.”
“You know I don’t like driving at night,” she said. “You shouldn’t have got yourself drunk.” She raised her voice, “If I wasn’t driving I'd punch you.”
“Calm down,” he replied.
“Don't you tell me to calm down,” she spat out. “Flirting with that judge didn’t help.”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
“Hah,” she laughed. “Well excuse me, but brushing your chest against her breasts and pinching her bottom is flirting in my book.”
He laughed, “It wasn’t me, it was her. I couldn't stop her, she kept sidling up next to me. Anyway, I'm sure it was innocent.”
“Innocent, no it wasn’t,” she shouted.
A car with full headlights on approached them; Donna panicked and steered away from the lights. She screamed, “Oh shit,” as the car careered off the road, down a slope and crashed into a large oak tree. The airbags went off.
Chris saw the airbag inflate as he was wrenched forward, the airbag deflated rapidly and he was cushioned into a gentle impact. Within a few seconds he looked towards Donna, she was slumped across the steering wheel. There was blood on her head. “Are you alright?” he asked. She answered with moans and groans. “Donna, are you alright?” More moans and groans. Chris retrieved his phone and called the emergency services.
Donna spent two months in hospital with serious injuries including a damaged spine. She was unable to walk again and was confined to a wheelchair.
Chris suffered friction burns on his neck and chest which remained sore for several days. He also had a bruise from his shoulder down across his chest from the seat belt. But these injuries were minor. His real suffering began after the incident.
It was rare for a day to pass without Donna saying, “You've ruined my life.”
“It wasn't my fault.”
“Yes it bloody well was. You know I don't like driving in the dark.”
Chris remained silent. He knew what was coming next.
“It’s your fault I can’t walk. It’s your fault I can’t dance.”
He sighed, letting out a long drawn out breath.
“I was going to be a dancing star, and you robbed me of my dream, my destiny.”
There was no point in arguing with her, he lived with her ranting. He loved her but at the same time he hated her. If only she'd left him as she'd threatened, before the accident. He'd have missed her but then he wouldn't have had to live with the evil hateful woman she'd become. But with the accident it was too late, much too late, Chris was stuck with Donna. There was no way she would leave him.
Chris recalled that a few days before she died she said, “My life is over, there’s no point living.”
Much as he loved her, he wished she would die, saying under his breath, “Why don’t you just go and kill yourself?”
She might have heard his remark because she said, “One day I’ll get my own back. Just you wait and see.”
He laughed at the suggestion.
Chris stared with a vacant expression as he sat in the dock listening to all the evidence. All he could do was sit and wait for the judgement. But he realised Donna had indeed got her own back. Her version of what happened was untold but he recalled what Donna had said as she splashed into the canal. It was quite prophetic, she shouted, “Goodbye, this is it. It’s payback time.”
Third Prize Winner: What About My Heart? by Christina Sanders
We are not angels, we are travellers, salt tongued, sweet breathed, our limbs barrel hitched, bait looped, two sailors resting in a storm. His name is Jianyu. My daughter Elaine pronounces it
Gee On You.
I don’t try.
It means building the universe, Jianyu tells me, pulsing his fingers along the ridge of my spine. I think of my Willow pattern plates, stacked in the sideboard, Sunday best; blue pagodas and watery gardens, swallows swooping over steepled terraces.
On Friday nights, Elaine lingers in the hall, slicking her lips with Revlon
Fire & Ice. She lifts her oversized T shirt to squirt Anais Anais in her armpits, the pale pink cotton sags between her hands. She’s waiting for Jianyu to pull up in his Honda, to ring the bell and push the white plastic bag, heavy with her order of Crispy Won Ton, Pork Dumplings, Singapore Rice Noodles and Pak Choy into her hands.
Elaine is an Actuary. She measures risk and predicts longevity with algorithms, her fat fingers curling over the keyboard. According to her calculations, I have already lived five eights of my life (0.625 decimal). ‘You can’t argue with the facts,’ she says, watching me rub Clarins into the webs of fine lines under my eyes.
When we hear Jianyu’s car pull up, Frank nudges Elaine, ‘Go on,’ he says, ‘go and say hello to your boyfriend. Don’t want to starve do you?’ And he laughs. Seventeen stone four of him, a hulk of sagging curves and fleshy pockets. Father and daughter: it’s the Thompson gene, a suety clot in the DNA, swelling their flesh, kinking their gallbladder with craving. He is a man who moves slowly, chewing days like a cow at the cud. Some nights I hear his jaw moving in his sleep. You do not make love to a fat man, you sit astride and close your eyes, ride crab style, reverse cowgirl, or doggy fashion, and pitch your dreams elsewhere. Dr Kennedy worries about their hearts - atherosclerosis, strokes, cholesterol, diabetes. ‘Elaine,’ he’s said to her for years, ‘there’s a beautiful girl inside there, struggling to get out, why won’t you let her?’
On Monday at the drycleaners, Loretta pulls a frothy white wedding dress from a rail, drapes it across her body, ‘Imagine getting married in this?’ She stretches yards of synthetic satin between her latex gloves, bends her head to inspect a crusty stain, ‘Jesus,’ she says, ‘is that jizz?’ and throws it into the machine. A few minutes later she’s shaking out a black Tux when a mini iPod falls out of the pocket and skids across the floor. ‘You know, you should be wearing gloves when you’re loading up the perc,’ she says, picking up the iPod, pocketing it in her pink overall.
Two weeks ago, Elaine went to Weightwatchers at the Methodist Church on Elim Street. She made Frank go too. Now every Wednesday they come home with menus and dayglow charts,
points plus calculations they discuss for hours at the kitchen table, counting syns, weighing up ways to optimize each food point. The fridge is full of watercress, strawberries, celery, turkey breast, cucumber, spinach, skimmed milk, low fat yoghurt, cottage cheese, kale, smoked salmon and lettuce.
At night I run along the front to the pink rocks rising round as shoulders from the waves. I love the sound of my trainers slapping the tarmac, wind gusting up the channel, whistling between rocks. How can you not love rocks? A man with a tripod stands on the harbour arm staring at the sky.
‘Mrs Thompson,’ he shouts, waving his arm, black silky hair flopping over his forehead. ‘It’s me Jianyu, look at the moon, it’s a full perigee moon, only in sixty years... I’m filming it.’
His car smells sweet and salty, steamy and sour. I watch him collapse the tripod into a bag. He’s filming life, he says, all of life as he finds it, here. His fingers deftly unscrew the lens, place it in a soft sponge case. The dark body of the Canon rests between his legs. Long before he bends towards me, I sense his kiss as an intention, invisible atoms vibrating towards me, and without thinking, I turn to meet his lips.
‘Mrs Thompson,’ Jianyu whispers, running his fingers along the downy hairs of my neck, under the hem of my cotton T shirt as we lower ourselves onto the nubbled upholstery of the back seat My eyes are wide open. My heart swells with something I know but cannot name.
‘This must never happen again,’ I say.
He grins, a mock salute, pushing two fingers to his temple.
*
When Elaine was a baby, she cried, awake and asleep, bunching her little fists, jerking her knees to her tummy.
‘What is it? What is it you want?’ I used to whisper, hooking and unhooking her from my breasts, jiggling her over my shoulder, burping her, patting her, pacing up and down the living room, unable to satisfy or give comfort. Frank was better. He cradled her to his belly, sucked her fingers and toes, blowing raspberries on her cheeks to make her gurgle, ‘My little starfish baby,’ he cooed, ‘watch out, here comes daddy whale.’
After work, Frank sits at the kitchen table working out points on his laminated menu planner, totting up columns of numbers with a little blue pencil. I put the shopping down on the counter, pull out tins of tomatoes, stack them in the larder. Elaine’s making a sandwich, slicing cucumber and tomato, overlaying squares of ham, pink and pliant as silk. She squirts low fat mayo in a spiral, opens the fridge, spoons mustard on the bread, spreading it slowly with her knife the same way a painter may prime a canvas, covering every inch. Her attention to detail moves me. A lump, love or pity, craws my throat. I snap open a bag of Doritos. A cheesy tang fills the kitchen. ‘Look what I bought you, your favourite!’
Elaine squeezes her eyes tight,
‘A few won’t hurt.’
‘For Godsake.’ Frank shakes his head.
‘What?’
Elaine shakes her head, hair slapping in her eyes. She wears the same pained expression she wore when we refused to pay for her tummy tuck or a down payment on her new Fiesta, or a hundred other million things beginning with the word No - though, we’ve paid for plenty over the years: Madame Tussauds, Whipsnade, Wookey Hole. We dressed her in gingham, white socks, black patent Mary Janes. We bought her mollies and angel fish, a long haired kitten; paid for tennis lessons, school trips to Gstaad then Venice, a sweet sixteen party with a pink stretched limo...I could go on.
‘What?’ I say, ‘What have I done now?’
Her feet thunder on the stairs. ‘Elaine,’ I shout after her, ‘Why can’t we just be friends?’
*
Jianyu shows me how to work his Canon, to slow the shutter speed, click through F stops, slicing time to still frames. Birch leaves fly, silver discs of light tumble over his denim jacket, carpeting and cushioning the pavement.
‘Did you catch that?’ he says, ‘is the film still running?’
Later, in his room on the eleventh floor, with one bed, one chair and no curtains, my hips rise to meet the hollows of his belly, every nerve cell alive with a pleasure so sharp, it renders me mute. Out of the window, a three quarter moon follows us all the way.
*
I’m steaming ink stains, stooped over the spotting board in the backroom in the drycleaners, reciting dishes I’ve learnt like poems to stave off boredom:
‘Kuong Po King Prawns; Soft Shell Sesame Crab; Steamed Lotus Dumplings; Crispy Fried Seaweed. Green chrysanthemum leaf tea’
Loretta says: ‘Stop, you’re making me hungry.’ She takes a mauve velvet jacket from its polythene sleeve, and hooks it over her shoulders, angling herself in front of the mirror. ‘What?’ She says, ‘I’m just borrowing it, no one will know.’
On Friday night, Elaine comes downstairs, Fire & Ice lips, her hair teased and stiff, the peachy reek of her perfume fills the hall. She checks her face in the mirror, and without saying a word, closes the front door softly behind her. Frank snaps the Venetian blinds, watching her melt into darkness. ‘Do you think it’s a boy?
I pick up a magazine Elaine left on the chair, skim an article on juicing. ‘Who could say?’
‘I saw her, Frank says, his hand still holding the slat of the blind, ‘in the Golden Grill, she was sitting at the counter eating a kebab,’ his voice wavers, ‘by herself.’
There are facts I do not need to know, which I can evade or side-step. Now, there is a picture of Elaine, sharply focused, in full colour, sitting alone, wiping flecks of onion or blobs of mayonnaise from her chin as she eats with her head low to avoid her reflection in the mirror, while the little Afghani men behind the counter with their slicked back hair exchange glances. The air feels too thin, too shallow in my lungs.
Frank lets the slats fall. ‘That was a few weeks ago…perhaps there is a boy now?
He hooks his thumbs inside the waistband of his jeans and walks towards me, stretching the loose denim away from his belly, ‘Eleven pounds in two weeks, can you notice the difference?’
I want to say no. I want to say give up Frank, it’s too late. I want to say what about my heart Dr Kennedy?
All night I ache, sick in my bones. I dream of the monkeys at Whipsnade Zoo; little wizened men with sagging balls who change into logs, misshapen, cursing from toothless mouths. It is a sign. On the way to work the next morning I stop in town to buy Elaine a cashmere cardigan I saw in the sales, new pajamas, rose scented bath oil, the turquoise Kat Kitson purse she’s craved. At the drycleaners, I tell Loretta the ‘borrowing’ has to stop. I find a piece of white card in the back office and write in blue felt pen: ‘Collect within three weeks or we will give the clothes to charity.’
‘Good idea,’ she says, ‘We can sell them on e-bay.’
‘No, I say, ‘No, we will not. My voice carries a weight, an urgency, which makes her sneer, but she doesn’t answer back.
Jianyu - one last time, that is all I ask. I have never said his name out loud, not once, not even to myself, or in the moment we return to our binary nature, when the room around us opens up, and he lays back on the pillow, hands behind his head. Laying together, I shyly shape the sounds on my tongue, waiting for his name to acquire harmony or gravity. He pushes back the sheets, hooks his leg over the bed, looking for cigarette. I go to the bathroom, stand at his cracked porcelain sink and splash water over my face. I reach for the towel hanging on the back of the door, bury my face in its scratchy fabric. The scent is unmistakable: sweet and peachy. The towel falls, tumbling in slo-mo to a twist and fold on the pitted green lino .
‘Mrs. Thompson,’ Jianyu calls, ‘What you doing in there?’
If I could find the point of divergence. If there was a way to start again.
*
All afternoon I work in the kitchen, grinding cumin, cardamom, coriander, chopping olives and dates, blanching almonds. I check the planner, count calories - 380 including rice. Elaine’s lost weight, her lovely chin tilts like a tea cup, her hair falls softly over her shoulders.
‘We just need a few figs and we’ll have cooked the whole damn Bible.’ I say, throwing onions into the pan.
She doesn’t laugh. I pour in the cardamoms, watch them soak up oil.
‘I saw you,’ she says, ‘getting out of Jianyu’s car.’ Her voice is sly, slowly provoking. Heat flushes my neck. Spots of oil splatter the steel. The lemons I scraped earlier have left speckles of zest stuck to my fingers. If I lifted them to my mouth they would taste sharp and bitter. I wipe my hands on my apron. ‘Elaine,’ I say, ‘I can explain...really I can...’ I walk towards her, wanting to kiss her hair, melt her scowl, to find the little girl with the fake alligator purse full of plastic beads who shuffled around the bedroom in my patent sling-backs, clinging to the dressing table for balance, but she laughs - loudly, the sound rippling down her throat, heaving over her breasts, and belly in shudders and gasps. ‘Oh my God, you really think you could be mistaken for his girlfriend don’t you? That is sooooooo......funny...’
In the frying pan the cardamoms pop.
If Jianyu was here he’d point his Canon at the dancing seeds, at the mother browning onions, at the daughter crying with laughter.
‘All of life,’ Mrs. Thompson he’d say, ‘all of life is here.’
Congratulations to all the winners, we will be in contact soon.
