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First Short Story Anthology
Published by firstwriter.com in 2012
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Foreword
Every year, firstwriter.com runs an international short story contest. This chapbook contains the winner and ten special commendations from the firstwriter.com First International Short Story Contest, which ran from 2004 to 2005. The winner, Alexandra Fox, was awarded £200 for her moving story "Cradle Song for Isobel".
These stories were first published together in 2006, in firstwriter.magazine issue 8: Turning Leaves, where they continue to be accessible via https://www.firstwriter.com/Magazine/
If you would like to enter a story in this year's competition, please go to https://www.firstwriter.com/competitions/short_story_contest/
Table of Contents
Cradle Song for Isobel
By Alexandra Fox
Gray's Anatomy
By John Ravenscroft
The Teenager
By Bridget Livermore
One Small Step
By Toby Allen
The Death of James Chambers
By Tom Campbell
Partly Living
By Gervase O'Donohoe
As the Lean Tree Burst into Grief
By Susan Johnson
Boogie
By Heather Casey
Post Christmas Blues
By Brian Gray
Another Country
By Susan Watts
Album: A Story in Photographs
By Jane Greenwood
Cradle Song for Isobel
By Alexandra Fox
United Kingdom
I will not think of Isobel.
I’ll think of Jamie and his football match this afternoon, and how he’s missed so many training sessions that he doesn’t know if he’ll be in the team. I’ll think of keys left under doormats, peanut butter sandwiches with the jar open on the side, two-day shirts with grey lined collars, hair that needs a trim. I’ll think of his round questioning face that doesn’t dare to question.
But I’ll not think of Isobel.
I’ll think of Amy and the doors she needs to slam, the stamping up the stairs that starts, then stops half-way, the shouting swallowed into tight throat and twisted gut. I’ll think of the parents’ evening I missed this term, absence notes unwritten, homework unhelped, and all those lifts from other mums that I’ll never be able to return. I’ll think of how to pay for the ski trip in January and whether to mention that her blazer smells of cigarette smoke, and maybe I’ll even try to talk to her some time.
So I will not think of Isobel.
I’ll think of getting someone in to fix the hoover, buying bleach and new yellow dusters. I’ll consider having a good spring-clean, wearing myself out with the work of it, mindlessly scrubbing baths, and polishing and brushing those cobwebs from the cornices.
And I won’t think of her.
I’ll think of other people all the time. I’ll be fat and cheerful, coping oh-so-well. I’ll talk to the mum over there and say isn’t it wonderful that her little boy’s well enough to go back to the normal baby ward, and it’s a shame that he’s blind but he’ll still have a wonderful life, after all, he’s so loved. And I’ll put a quiet arm around the girl on the window-seat, lost in the bright-light confusion of bags and dials and beepings. We’ll look together at her scrap of a baby in the goldfish tank and I’ll explain in soft sounds because the long words of the nurses have passed over her head like a cloud in the wind and she’s so frightened. And I’m frightened too, but I will not think of mine.
I’ll think of the efficiencies of nurses, and the astuteness of doctors, and the acumen of consultants, but not of Isobel.
And I’ll think of buying some chocolates for the staff and bringing them in tomorrow when it’s over.
I won’t think of her.
And I won’t think of the tall shadowy man beside me, because if I think of his grief I might rip a tear through the strong sheet that hangs between us. If his sorrow spills into mine I’ll melt, overflow, dissolve and my whole self will turn into a salty liquid, slightly acid, and seep, seep across this scuff-marked lino and evaporate, till all that’s left is a dry white powder lifted by the breeze from the window.
I’m so lucky. I’ve got the two already. What’s this point-four but a statistician’s glitch? One-point-four ounces, lung function point-four of what’s needed, half a brain working, half-sighted, part-deaf, (wholly mine), fully, excruciatingly finger-tip aware of pain. That’s why I can’t think of her.
I’ll think about the priest, dear bumbling Father John in his creased stole with the fringing missing from the edge. I’ll see the fatness of his finger as he tried to mark a cross on a forehead that had no room for it, and I’ll try not to remember that he said, “Isobel ... why not call her Mary? Save Isobel for the next baby. I’ll pray for you. There’s always hope.”
But I looked at her and I could only think of Isobel.
I’m almost thinking of her now, as the clever fingers of the soft-eyed nurse unclip the wires, and I’ll breathe with her as the tube is pulled from the clinging of her throat, and she mews faint with the tearing of it. I’ll press my nails into my palms, and watch them take the needles from her neck, her scalp and listen to the suck of the electrode pads peeled from skin as thin as tracing paper.
And then I’ll think of Isobel.
As she is put into my hands, and I stroke her with my fingertips, so softly, round and round, painting my love on her. And I see that great black-haired hand come down over mine infinite in its gentleness, and cup her head. With my thumb I’ll feel her heartbeat slow, and the racking of her lungs as they try to pull the hard air into them. I’ll breathe soft, warm into her mouth and let her take her fill of me one first-last time.
I’ll wait, wait. Then I’ll put the empty body in the empty box, small, so very small, not half a baby, but taking with her more than half my heart. And in the years to come, through all the busy-ness of life, I cannot ever see myself forgetting her.
Table of Contents
Gray's Anatomy
By John Ravenscroft
United Kingdom
On a cold Shrove Tuesday morning three weeks after Henry Gray had been admitted to the hospice, God paid him a visit. He sat on the edge of Henry's bed and they talked for about fifteen minutes. They talked about life and death, about magic, about responsibility. They talked about Doreen. Eventually, God told Henry what he had in mind.
Afterwards, Henry listened politely as God tried to crack a joke. It involved hospital pancakes, suspender-belts, and a nurse called Edna. It could have been funny, but God's delivery wasn't up to much. Henry hoped he wasn't planning on touring the stand-up comedy circuit, because if he was his routine was likely to be embarrassing. Now if God were to try his hand at a magic act, like the one Henry and Doreen used to do in the old days – well, he had natural advantages, didn't he? The punters would come flocking. But comedy? No. Forget it.
Henry smiled in the right places, but he was thinking how much better Doreen would have told the joke. She'd been a natural, able to leave you weeping with laughter almost without trying, and he wished now that he'd made more of her talent for comedy in the magic act. As usual his ego had got in the way. One of many regrets
.
God laughed at his own punchline, then stood up.
“Well, Henry,” he said. “I really must be going.”
“Things to do?” said Henry.
God sighed. “You could say that.” He sounded tired. “It's not easy, you know. Which is why I'm hoping you'll be able to help me out. Take a bit of the strain, so to speak.”
He loomed over Henry's bed and touched him on the eyes, nose and lips.
“Now don't let me down, Henry Gray,” he said.
“I won't,” said Henry. “But remember your half of the deal. Remember Doreen.”
God smiled, turned away, and walked briskly through the ward, heading for the exit.
None of the other patients paid him any attention. There was no reason to – God didn't look like anybody special. He looked like an accountant. Ten minutes after you'd met him, you wouldn't be able to pick him out of an identity parade. At the door he turned and gave a parting wave. Now the wave was good, thought Henry. Very royal, very House of Windsor. Breeding will out, his mother would have said.
He managed a slight nod of the head in return, little more than a twitch really, but God saw it and smiled. Even the tiny sparrows, Henry thought. Even the tiny sparrows.
A nurse came through the door and God stepped to one side. The Lord and Father of Mankind stepping aside for a nurse pushing a medical trolley. Then he moved through the doorway, and vanished into the dismal NHS corridor. Henry wondered what he thought of the puke-green paint on the walls. Quite a contrast to what he must have been used to.
He lay back in bed, thinking, mulling over what he'd been told he must do. Listen to your body, God had said. All well and good, but it wasn't quite as easy as that. He'd spent the last few weeks trying not to listen to his body, trying to block out the unwelcome messages it kept sending him. Before he could start listening to it again, he had a few mental barriers to dismantle. Still, like Doreen used to say, you don't argue with the Creator, do you? And if God kept his word… well, it would be worth a little pain.
Cautiously, Henry began taking down his defences. He braced himself for the expected flood of agony and nausea. It didn't come. He dismantled a few more struts, removed a few more sandbags. He waited, but still it didn't come. In fact, for a sixty-three-year-old who was supposed to be knock-knock-knocking on heaven's door, he didn't feel too bad. Not too bad at all. A damn sight better than he'd been feeling before God's visit, that was for sure. And soon, it seemed, he was going to be feeling a whole lot better.
“Three days, Henry,” God had said. “Maybe less, certainly no more. I want you out of here. You have work to do.”
Henry was so deep in thought, so busy thinking about his new job and about Doreen, that he didn't notice the nurse standing by his bed until she began straightening his pillows.
“You're looking perky this morning,” she said.
Henry grunted. He didn't like many of the nurses, but he liked this one. Red, that was how he thought of her. Red, on account of her hair. It was a lot like Doreen's. Beautiful breasts, too, from what he could see. A pair of beautiful breasts, just like Doreen used to have, but packed away, out of bounds, strapped and tucked into her tight blue uniform.
“I'm too old to be perky,” he said. “But I'm surely feeling better.”
And yes, he really was. Better with every passing second. Three days? No, Henry didn't think so.
Red lifted his hand to take his pulse, her fingers leaking warmth into the thin skin of his wrist. Maybe the watch pinned to her uniform told her what Henry already knew. He saw her eyebrows lift a little.
“Hmmm…” she said, laying his hand down on the sheet again.
He remembered another bed, another hospital. He remembered laying down Doreen's hand, laying it down for the last time. Tucking it beneath a white sheet. Never picking it up again.
He swallowed.
Red started to fiddle with the bag hanging from a stand by the side of his bed. She checked the plastic tail of tubing that looped directly from its base, ending in a catheter plugged into Henry's left arm. Morphine. Henry and Mr Morphine had become very good friends recently. Much too good. It was time to say goodbye. He turned his head, aware that it moved more easily on his neck now.
“It's not the morphine,” he said. “I had a visitor, see.”
Red was straightening his sheets. “Is that so, Henry?” she said. “The Invisible Man, was it? I've had my eye on you, and I've not seen a soul.”
He paused for a moment, wondering if he should tell her. What the hell, he thought. It wasn't as if he'd been sworn to secrecy or anything. And anyway, the situation was going to become obvious enough to everyone pretty soon.
He sat up and yanked the catheter out of his arm. Red looked alarmed.
“Henry! What are you doing?”
“God came to visit me this morning,” he said. “We had quite a chat, me and God.”
“God?” Red had taken the catheter from him and was trying to reinsert it. Henry grabbed her hand.
“God,” he said. “And I don't need that thing. I'm cured, see. I'm not going to die, I'm going to get better. I'll be going home. Back to my wife.”
“Henry, this is your medication talking. Let me just...”
“No.” He kept hold of her hand. “I've got a bit of a job to do. Just fancy that, nurse. God hasn't finished with me yet. Not with old Henry Gray. He's given me a bit of a job to do. And he's promised me something in return. Promised, he has.”
“Henry...”
Doreen, thought Henry, remembering her wink. Such a wonderful, sexy wink.
He reached out and found Red's left breast. He gave it a gentle squeeze. It felt delicious.
Red stared at him, her eyes and mouth a triple triangle of zeros.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I've been dying to do that for weeks. Now, is there anywhere around here I can get hold of a decent atlas?”
Five days later he stood naked in front of his bathroom mirror, shaving the hair off his legs, arms and chest. Joe Sanderson, the barber he'd been going to for the past twenty years, had already shaved his head, but Henry felt happier doing the more intimate parts of his body himself. He'd put newspaper down to save making a mess of the bathroom carpet, but there was still hair and shaving foam all over the place.
“God, you move in mysterious ways,” he sighed.
Joe had been pleased to find Henry looking so well.
“You old bugger,” he'd said. “I didn't think we'd be seeing you here again. Not after, well... you know.”
“I got better,” said Henry.
While still in the hospice, he'd learned that it was wiser to shut up about his visit from God. Everyone he'd mentioned it to had suddenly become very uncomfortable. Joe didn't push it, though. He wasn't the type. He just nodded and got on with his job.
“So what can I do for you today? Same as usual?”
“No,” said Henry. “Shave it all off.”
Joe had looked at him in the big wall-mirror. “All of it?”
“All of it.”
With a shrug, he'd reached for his electric clippers.
They'd done tests on him, of course. The doctors had done all kinds of tests. Most of them had refused to believe the results, and they'd wanted to do further tests, but Henry had said no. He was well, he had a job to do, and he was going home to do it. End of story. Against their advice, he'd discharged himself.
It was nice to be back in his own place again, to be amongst his memories. Doreen had been gone over four years, but the feel of her was still there. For now, though, he was alone, and that was good. He was free to begin work, to start conducting what God had called their “little experiment”.
After Joe had finished with his head, Henry had gone shopping. There were several things God had told him he was going to need: new razor-blades, shaving foam, some fine-tipped magic markers, and the best world atlas he could find. At the big chemist in town he'd bought a top-quality first aid ki
t. Then, back home, he stripped off and got down to business.
He stood looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. He'd shaved off all of his body hair except the pubic bush above and around his penis. He'd left that until last for sentimental reasons. He remembered how proud he'd been when his first pubic hair arrived. It had been like a present from God, a sign that his manhood was just around the corner. He remembered Doreen on their first date, forty years ago, grinning up at him on the back seat of his car. He shivered at the memory.
But now the tiny island of grey curls in the middle of an otherwise unbroken sea of pink flesh looked ridiculous. With a heavy sigh he covered it with shaving foam and reached for his razor.
When he'd finished he dried himself carefully and, still naked, went into the living room, where his new marker pens were waiting for him on the coffee table. The atlas was already open at a map of the world, showing the various lines of latitude and longitude that God said he would need to transfer. This next stage was going to be tricky. He picked up one of the pens and began.
An hour later he walked back into the bathroom and took a good look at himself in the mirror. His body was covered in a grid of fine black lines that corresponded fairly accurately to the lines of latitude and longitude on the map. The Greenwich meridian ran straight down his front, splitting his nose, lips, navel and penis into two halves. His penis tended to flop to the left, which spoilt the symmetry. That was annoying. It was an important reference point – the equator also ran through it, slicing it from top to bottom as well as from side to side. Still, he thought he could probably work around the problem.
Using his Greenwich meridian and his equator as starting points, he'd drawn other lines at fifteen degree intervals, north, south, east and west. He'd made a good job of his front, but it had been tricky getting an accurate grid on his back. Fortunately, his back was mostly Pacific Ocean, so accuracy hadn't been so critical there.
He'd also pinpointed several key locations and transferred them to his body. At 51 degrees north, London was in the middle of his chin - much higher up than he'd thought it would be: New York, at 40 degrees, was lower down, back near his right shoulder-blade.
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