Naked City

by Anthony Cropper

  Table of Contents

  Naked City – Contents

  Crumpet

  Muff-Diving Over the Fish Market

  Father and Sons

  Statue

  Percentages

  The Model Woman

  Breaking For the Border

  Submarium

  If There is No Justice

  Between Hope and Paradise

  Rules of the Game

  Pig, Who?

  Wings of a Dove

  Expectanz

  Crime Class

  A Dog in a Bag

  Jogging

  Why I have to wear a pair of Wranglers

  Authors Biogs

  Verso Page

  Naked City – Contents

  Part I – Naked City

  This powerful collection of short stories takes us inside the modern city. Perhaps nothing illustrates the current climate of social change more than the renaissance of our cities, with the introduction of new architecture, city apartments, bar culture and new lifestyle possibilities. These stories capture the spirit of the times with a telling look at how change affects the way we live our lives.

  Crumpet by Malcolm Aslett

  Muff-Diving Over the Fish Market by Char March

  Father and Sons by James Nash

  Statue by Tajinder Singh Hayer

  Percentages by Steve Dearden

  The Model Woman by Dee Rimbaud

  Breaking for the Border by Mandy MacFarlane

  Submarium by Lee J Harrison

  If There is No Justice by Tom Palmer

  Between Hope and Paradise by Penny Feeny

  Rules of the Game by Adrian Reynolds

  Part II – This Could Be Anywhere

  Seven short stories from an impressive selection of new writers. This collection offers a progression of stories drawn from young family life, inter-cut with comical snapshots of the single lifestyle.

  Pig, Who? by Penny Feeny

  Wings of A Dove by Andrew Parker

  Expectanz by Jane Graham

  Crime Class by Mark Costello

  Dog in a Bag by Michael Stewart

  Jogging by Peter Bromley

  Why I have to wear a pair of Wranglers everyday for as long as I live on this street by James Walker

  Crumpet

  Malcolm Aslett

  Mark and Ingrid might have married but for their views on how to butter a crumpet. There were other minor issues of dissatisfaction in the manner of human tastes and frailty: Ingrid smoked, and Mark thought ‘housework’ was taking your bike to bits in the kitchen. But really, if we are to believe what they tell people, it was the crumpets that were the killer in a relationship that had started passionately and with promise.

  There was nothing unfamiliar about the situation. They had met on holiday in Greece and when they had returned home Mark (engineering student/biker/every mother’s son) rode six hundred miles every Friday to stay each weekend with Ingrid (biologist/Londoner/two years older) because he thought she was the best thing since sliced bread (white/bleached flour/family size). Now Ingrid was to see him on his home turf. She caught the train to Newcastle, visiting the north for the first time in her life, with the same kind of expectations adventurous Victorians had entertained when travelling to Stamboul on the Orient Express. Mark met her at Central Station. They kissed demonstratively. He took her bag, which was surprisingly large and heavy, and she scanned the locals to spot any ragged waifs gnawing at morsels in doorways or pot-bellied men with coal dust on their faces. It was all eerily normal.

  ‘It’s clean, isn’t it?’ she asked, surprised.

  Mark thought she was making remarks about the architecture.

  ‘Yes. They sandblasted it a few years ago. All the stonework. And cleaned up the girders and trusses and repainted them.’

  Then he worried he might be sounding dull and hurriedly thought up a lame joke.

  ‘We know how to show a girder a good time up here!’

  Ingrid was so pleased to see him she laughed as if it was funny. They linked arms round each other’s waist though this was plainly awkward. Mark leaned into her face to balance up the weight of the bag and Ingrid, standing half an inch taller, had to remodulate all relevant body parts to fit up against his side and walk at the same time. She ignored the discomfort in favour of a display of affection and waited till they had cleared the building before she found some excuse to stop and check that her lighter was still in her pocket and then hold his hand instead.

  Mark lived near the quayside in a converted warehouse with wooden doors at inhuman heights and the remnants of pulleys and stumpy projections on the peeling face of the building. There were cobbles underfoot and to either side were the shells of guttered buildings with rough grasses and hardy looking flowers emerging through the cracks in the concrete like the survivors of mini-earthquakes. The River Tyne showed through the gaps at unpredictable moments and seagulls perched on rooftops with the confidence of predators. It made Ingrid believe she was somewhere she was not supposed to be, somewhere out of bounds. But the city centre was a ten-minute walk and the Tyne Bridge was close enough to cast a shadow on the bedroom window round about teatime. And it was the bedroom where they spent the afternoon.

  The blue sky was flat and still against the panes. A cloud pushed past on its way south, sluggish as a tourist out window-shopping. They lay underneath a single sheet and the temperature of the air seemed to drop five degrees in as many seconds as the shadow of the bridge crept across the wall. Mark had his left arm under her head, crooked to take in her right breast, his hand tingling with numbness. He didn’t care to move an inch. Mark was clingy. He wanted to be holding her at every moment. It didn’t bother Ingrid. She actually liked it, most of the time. There was no doubt in her mind that he was besotted with her. He was that northern all-or-nothing type of man who believed people said what they meant if they looked you in the eye and if you fell in love with a girl it was because she was the one for you. An innocence based on a train of social accidents and whatever was showing on television at the time of his childhood. In Mark’s case this had been a disproportionate number of Hollywood films of the forties. He had a moral framework that, if dismantled, could have been packed into boxes with stencilled lettering reading: ‘Labour Party’, ‘Meat and Two Veg’, ‘That Book I Read (I forget the title)’. But as well as these there would be a smaller, more carefully packed item bearing the words: ‘Katherine Hepburn/Ingrid Bergman – the Sacred and the Profane’, for they were as good and as bad as he could imagine women to be. For her part Ingrid enjoyed this unsophisticated understanding of, not only the world, but also herself. It was a comfort to be thought of in such uncomplicated terms (Good, Honest, Clever, Beautiful). Besides, she felt comfortable with the power that was contingent to being a young man’s lover, knowing that if his thoughts could somehow be made transparent and light passed through them, they would cast sepia images displaying a panoptikon dedicated to her face and form upon every wall. Well yes, sex and sport would be on display too. He was a regular geordie lad, after all. And as she had been through it all before - several times - she could enjoy it all with the confidence that only time-honoured experience or complete ignorance can provide. She made a shivering sound, an intake of breath.

  ‘Y’ cold?’ he asked.

  ‘Mmmm!’

  Mark unclasped his arms and leaned over his side of the bed to fish up the eiderdown from the floor. Ingrid felt the weighty coolness as it came across her and flicked her feet, tail-like,
to have it settle farther down. She shivered again.

  ‘I’m hungry.’ Her voice was just the right side of babyish.

  ‘You want something to eat?’

  ‘Mmmm!’

  ‘That can be arranged.’

  ‘W’t’ya got?’

  Mark twisted his face and pretended he had little in the house. He was so easy to read this was actually a waste of time but Ingrid politely played along. He had been excited about the visit for two weeks and stocked up with all sorts of goodies he thought would be treats, things he had never tried before but hoped that his first experience of them would become part of their history as a couple. The difficulty was, the flat didn’t have a cooker. His kitchen consisted of a kettle, a toaster, cups and plates that had been given away once too often and several bent pieces of metal he referred to nostalgically as ‘the family silver’.

  He gave her shoulder a long goodbye kiss and slid out of bed.

  ‘I can’t find me trousers,’ he told her, rooting through the bits of clothing strewn on the floor.

  ‘Well where’s the last place you had them?’ she teased.

  ‘On me legs.’

  Ingrid cuddled into the duvet and chuckled while Mark picked up the long sleeved t-shirt he had been wearing and stuck his legs through the arms and pulled it up tight muttering: ‘Designer swimwear!’

  He waddled into the bare-brick loft that served as living room, dining room, study, kitchen and garage space for his bike and kayak – the bedroom was simply two thin plywood walls that boxed in a corner of the space that had once been the ground floor of a warehouse.

  She lit a cigarette while he was gone. The bed had no headboard and she stacked both pillows against the wall so she could sit up. She entertained herself by noting all the objects being used for something other than their original intention: a doorframe acting as a wardrobe held up by stanchions with a thick dowel bearing the hangers, a beer can holding pens and pencils, a wooden fruit crate on its side with a mix of shoes in it and books on top. If a little more care had been taken it all would have looked artlessly arty, but the purpose was so unremittingly functional and so apparent was it that the bare minimum of effort had been used to achieve the end result that it made the room appear slightly sad and uncared for. She played a different game:

  Q. If this room was a pair of shoes what type would it be? She toyed with the idea of Wellingtons with laces but finally decided it wouldn’t be any kind of footwear but rather the box they came in. When she heard him preparing to come back she remembered he would make faces at the smoke so she jumped out of bed and yanked at the bottom of the sash window. It would not budge. But the shaking brought the top sash crashing down and cracked a pane. She was back under the covers and looking supremely innocent when he came through the door holding a tray heavy with cups and bowls and objects wrapped in bags and greasy paper. He nodded his head in the direction of the window.

  ‘I thought I heard a crash. It’s forever doing that. Hope you didn’t get a fright.’

  She shook her head, her eyes wide, and changed the subject.

  ‘What have we got here?’

  She made space upon the bed for him to place it in the centre then started ripping at the paper and bags without further ceremony.

  ‘Oh, garlic olives! Mmmm, and brie? And…brown cheese? My almost favourite.’

  ‘The girl said it was Norwegian.’

  ‘Ah, the fjords!’ she said in her best travel programme English.

  ‘Ah, the Austin Allegros!’ he countered.

  Ingrid laughed aloud. Sometimes she didn’t understand his humour but she laughed with the enthusiasm of the good sport.

  ‘Oh, and what’s this?’

  ‘It said clams on the tin but they look just like cockles t’ me.’

  ‘You were ripped off, eh?’

  She took a sip of the Bulgarian wine and made a discreet face.

  ‘And crumpets. Mmm. Have you anything to put on them?’

  ‘I’ve put it on. Butter.’

  ‘It must have melted.’

  ‘Of course! You have to put it on when it’s straight out of the grill so that it melts.’

  She cut a large wedge of Brie and pressed at it with the knife to get it to stick to the crumpet. Then she took a large mouthful and immediately decided to ask a question.

  ‘Sho whatsh nesht?’

  ‘Didn’t they teach you to not talk with your mouth full in your house?’

  ‘Itsh not full. Look!’

  She took another large bite and then squeezed in yet more, her cheeks bulging.

  ‘Gnow itsh full,’ she told him with satisfaction.

  They were both laughing, Ingrid near to choking on crumbs. They flopped back on the bed, Ingrid turned on her stomach with her head over the edge and her shoulders trembling with suppressed giggles. She put her hand in front of her mouth and let the food fall into it. Still shaking she bent an arm to pull a serviette from the tray and wrapped the offending pieces around it and dropped it onto the floor.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Mark told her admiringly.

  The situation inevitably led to more lovemaking. By the time they got out of bed and dressed again the sun was down and the sky outside grained with the particles of a starry night showing through the twilight.

  Ingrid was up and ready for a change of pace.

  ‘I’ll make some crumpets, shall I?’ she asked him.

  ‘That’s alright. I’ll do it.’

  She was out the door of the bedroom before he realised. Her voice echoed from the large space beyond. ‘No, that’s OK. You get a shower. You’re sweaty!’

  Mark dutifully picked fresh clothes off a hanger and went to the bathroom to shower and shave. When he got out he found the dining table - an old tongue-and-groove door on a pair of trestles- was set up with coffee and cups and the remains of the previous feast but looking neater and more expensive. As he sat down she came over with a plate of crumpets.

  ‘Here we go.’

  He dabbed at one with a finger.

  ‘You’ve let them get cold.’

  She looked hurt and put an arm over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s no biggy, is it? You can still put things on them. Try it!’ she told him with a voice oozing reasonableness.

  She sat down next to him and immediately put a thick spread of soft margarine on hers. Then came a brick of brown cheese and a dollop of cherry jam. She took a bite and made noises.

  ‘Mmmm!’

  Mark caught himself acting peevishly and tried to correct it.

  ‘Alright, alright. I get the picture.’

  He made up a twin to Ingrid’s crumpet and started to nibble at the edges.

  ‘Mmmmm?’ Ingrid asked.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he told her.

  ‘And what does that mean?’

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  ‘It means I need a drink.’

  Ingrid had spoken to Mark two days earlier on the phone. When she had asked if there was anything to do in the town he had proudly told her that Newcastle city centre was the most policed area in Europe on a Saturday night.

  ‘Um, well. Call me old-fashioned but that doesn’t make this girl sit up and whoop.’

  ‘Right, right. I see what you mean. Well then, there’s an old cruise liner on the river that they’ve made into a bar and restaurant.’

  ‘Oh that might be fun,’ she told him. ‘What’s that like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been.’

  After further probing it was apparent that pretty much all Mark knew of the nightlife was his local pub on the quayside.

  So now they found themselves on the quayside coming out of the selfsame pub. The air had turned cold. A cutting breeze brought the smell of the sea as it came barreling up the River Tyne and turned Ingrid’s bare arms into goose bumps in the time it took to remember where she was.

  ‘Ooof! That’s cold.’

  ‘Here, you can put this on,’ Mark told her, dropping h
is leather jacket over her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, thanks! Oh! That’s better!’ she told him and squeezed tightly and thankfully onto his slim hips.

  Mark guided them up steep streets to the town centre, past loudly singing gangs of boys and girls in thin bright clothes, dressed as if on a holiday in the Mediterranean on a balmy summer’s evening. A stately crescent of buildings led to a broad pedestrian area with a kind of Nelson’s Column at its head.

  ‘Who’s that on top?’ Ingrid asked peering up.

  ‘Earl Grey. Inventor of the tea bag, legend has it.’

  ‘Finally. A monument for someone who really provided something significant to our way of life.’

  By the reflective walls of the Eldon shopping centre a fight broke out between two men dressed in identical football strips and who were, quite possibly, twins. The sound of the smack of fist against flesh travelled with unique clarity in the broad streets rumbling with human voices. Mark was curious and slowed to watch but Ingrid pulled him in the other direction. At another corner they stopped to get their bearings.

  ‘Where does this street lead?’

  ‘This way takes you to the bridge. Do you want to see it?’

  He had asked her this three or four times since she had arrived and it was gradually dawning on her that he had some affection for the grimy old thing.

  ‘Yeah, sure!’ she told him, her tone a mixture of enthusiasm and disinterest.

  In the pocket of the jacket Ingrid was wearing there was a piece of tissue with something inside it that kept pricking her finger. She had been toying with it all the while and now pulled it out.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Mark took a moment to remember.

  ‘I nearly forgot. I picked it up for you at the station while I was waiting.’

  She unwrapped the tissue, which she stuck in her cuff, and held in her hand a badge in the shape of the Tyne Bridge.

  ‘That’s sweet.’

  ‘Just a memento,’ he told her softly. ‘It’s a three-month anniversary present.’

  ‘I like it. Are you going to pin it on me?’

  They stopped so that she could unzip the jacket a few inches and he awkwardly pinned it to her top. They kissed for a little while and then silently agreed to walk on.