by Penny Thomas
Grass suffocates, tall enough to hide a grazing donkey; a playground for stray cats. Jagged holes in roofs stick out tongues of purple jacaranda.
A dirty white church. Only one window remains. Saint Frances stands still in a wood, drenched in birds of all colours.
Four worn stone steps lead to the always open door. At the top of these is Mustafa. The stone of the church seems whiter against his gleaming black boots. Motionless in camouflage and a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans, his hands sweat around his rifle.
Through the baking midday quiet, he hears a car rumbling up the road towards him. Nobody uses the useless green line road these days, except tourists. Sure enough, as the car rounds the bend and slows to a stop, it’s a shiny blue Peugeot. Leather skinned parents step out of the front, and three overweight, pink nosed children out of the back. They peer through the fence, the mother raising a camera. Mustafa sighs before taking the few steps to the wire and testing his rusty English.
‘No picture. Notice!’ he points with the business end of the rifle to the crooked but obvious sign three feet from where they stand. The family apologise and scramble back into the car. The children look out of the rear window as they drive away. Mustafa turns back to the church and takes his place by the open door.
Inside the church is dark and cool. A tear of sweat creeps down the side of his nose, past the corner of his mouth, over his chin and hangs there for a moment, as if steeling itself for the drop. It is dislodged with a tiny shake of the head. It falls and lands on an ant next to his boot. The ant drowns in what must feel like a ton of salty oil. Mustafa watches, not moving a muscle. He barely breathes as a rushing flood of memory overwhelms him.
A day as searingly hot as this one, ten years ago.
Two eight-year-old boys running along the green line road. They had found a deflated football beside the crisp corpse of a hare. They took a few moments to decide which to play with. There were so many things they could do with each of them. They opted for the football. Now they booted it back and forth, clouds of sandy dust kicking up a lot higher than the un-bounceable rubber.
Mustafa kicks the ball, the browned, tired trainer of his right foot splitting a little more at the toe.
‘Gooooaaaaaaaalllll! David Beckham!’
Mehmet stops running, looking at him in disgust.
‘No, I’m David Beckham today, you’re Ryan Giggs.’
‘Don’t care. Ryan Giggs is better anyway.’
Mehmet shakes his head, sticks out his tongue and turns away. He catches sight of a hole in the fence. There is a tensing of the back of his neck, the sudden stillness of acute interest. Mustafa runs to join him and sees the gaping hole through to forbidden territory. With the wordless eloquence of best friends they glance at each other, nod, step through.
Moving through this unknown landscape, they make for an island of corrugated iron roof and greying walls. Paddling through the grass is slow progress, toes catching on bricks and stones, tripping, slipping their way to the promise of a cool dip in the shade. They reach the house, met with a blank wall-face. Negotiating their way around the building, their unthinking hands drag along behind them. The surface of parched stone and whitewash is irresistibly crumbly to the touch.
Rounding the corner they come into an abrupt dirt clearing, a snake coiled in the middle of the bare space. Mustafa plucks a long strand of grass and moves forward. A pain in his shoulder stops him. Mehmet has it pinched between thumb and forefinger, knuckles white with the strain.
‘My father says this kind is the soul of an evil man. The devil sends them back as snakes. You can tell because the black in their eyes is round like people.’
‘That’s not true!’ Mustafa laughs, thinks for a moment, and adds; ‘Your father smells like a goat.’
‘Only because he works at the Mezbaha. At least he has a job. And anyway, it is true because when did you ever see a snake with round eyes?’
Mustafa considers this. He stares at the snake, the unthreatening colouring and size making him scoff. Cynicism wrestles with the fear of getting the evil eye. He decides it isn’t worth the risk, throws the grass stalk down and steps back.
‘I’m bored anyway. Look, there’s a church!’
They regard the bell tower they can see above the trees. It does look like a church, so they move toward it, neither admitting, but both glad that they will be protected from the evil eye.
The door stands open, hinges rusted beyond movement. The two boys step inside and pause, their eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the cool dark. At the end of the short aisle, Jesus hangs from the wall. The right half of his face chipped off. The remaining half wears an expression of pitiful longing, the nails through his palms being the least of his worries when compared to this perpetual solitude.
‘Why did they do that to their god?’ Mehmet asks, wiping a flat palm up his nose.
Mustafa shrugs. ‘Infidels.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Look!’ Mehmet, so easily distracted, has seen a black line of movement on the stone floor. The ants stride in unison, well trained soldiers focussed completely on one distant aim. The two boys start gathering together stones, twigs, broken tiles and bits of plastic.
One stone placed in front of the line, forcing the ants to change direction. They march left, to be met with a ridge of blue plastic.
Left again, a tile.
Turning right, a Fanta bottle.
Right again, a plank of wood on its edge.
Another left, a cracked and sticky lighter.
The ants are turned off course by the two boys, again and again, but never break ranks. With intense concentration, precise and careful placements, a maze takes shape.
Confusion begins suddenly, the ants hit just one too many obstacles and the whole system of command implodes in an instant. They divide into groups, dithering between this way and that. Next, individuals break from the groups and run over and on top of each other. The boys turn to each other, grinning. They feel like giants. They swell with power and control. Kings of the ant world.
A few minutes pass in silent concentration, before it breaks up and boredom floats like tissue in water. Mustafa stretches his neck, peering up at the flaking paintings on the ceiling.
‘Does God still live here if nobody comes?’
Mehmet shrugs.
*
The sun is bashing down on the steps now, reflecting off the white-ish church walls. Mustafa takes his cap off, scrubs up his oil-dark hair and shakes away the sweat.
His mind wobbles. After the barrage of memories, reality feels like walking out of the movie theatre into daylight.
He checks his watch.
4.00pm.
He has been standing at these steps for eight hours. Soon his relief will be here. To stand still in a forgotten part of the country.
He stretches out his neck by twisting it first left, to the quiet crack of a vertebrae, then to the right. His body follows ever so slightly and he glances into the church. A few tiles and rocks lie on the floor, too ordered to be accidental.
Over adolescence and his two years in the army, living along the green line and spending his days within it, he has stopped questioning. His time is spent standing, sweating and thinking. He has come to his conclusion. Nothing changes. Ten years, ten days, the same empty buildings. The same half starved cats piss and mate in the same places. The same snake skin bunched in a clearing, fossilising.
God doesn’t live here any more.
Author biographies
Elizabeth Baines’ stories have been published widely in magazines and anthologies, and her collection, Balancing on the Edge of the World, is published by Salt, who also publish her two short novels, Too Many Magpies and The Birth Machine. Her work is included in two previous Honno anthologies, Power and Laughing, Not Laughing. She has also written prizewinning plays for radio and stage, and she is the runner-up in 2014’s International Short Fiction Journal prize.
Alice Baynton has written stories since she could ho
ld a crayon. Born and raised in an idyllic valley out in the wilds near Aberystwyth, she honed her craft and spent a lot of time with her cat. She studied Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University before travelling in South America and going to live in New Zealand for a year. She is currently half way through her Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, living nearby in Cheshire. Despite all of the moving around, her heart is still very much in mid-Wales, and she has to return home for regular top ups of Welshness. She has had two short stories published by the small, independent Tranquillity Publishing, is a contributing editor for the online travel magazine Eventus, and despite having yet to begin her first novel, she can feel it brewing.
Caroline Clark (65), originally from the Midlands, has lived in Aberystwyth since 1978, when her husband came to work there. She has mainly been active in community theatre since coming to Wales – as an administrator, performer, director and wardrobe mistress. She has always written poetry and more recently short stories, which have been published in various anthologies including Honno’s Written in Blood. She regularly reviews books for the Gwales website. In recent years, while being a fairly housebound carer, she completed a novel and has plans for another. She is also working on a collection of poems relating to the local landscape and history.
Pam Clatworthy was born in Rumney, Cardiff and educated at the village school, which was an exciting place during WW2 as air raids disturbed lessons and talented, married women were allowed to return to teaching. She went on to Gowerton Girls Grammar School and finally trained as a teacher. She moved to Cumbria where she now lives and has written for The Countryman, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and has had short stories and poetry broadcast on regional radio. Pam is married with two children and five wonderful grandchildren who all love a ‘cwtch’ from time to time.
Chrissy Derbyshire is an author, folklorist and storyteller based in Cardiff. Her first book, Mysteries, was published in 2008. She has since had several stories, poems and essays published in magazines and anthologies, and is a regular speaker at The Mercian Gathering.
Eileen Dewhurst has lived and worked in North Wales for more than twenty-five years. She loves reading and writing, being with friends and family, making a bit of music now and then and, most of all, being outside walking with the dog.
Maria Donovan grew up on the Dorset coast and lived for some years in Holland before moving to Wales in 1997. She likes languages, peace and studying history. Her first collection of short stories, Pumping Up Napoleon, is published by Seren.
Gillian Drake was born in Barry and now lives in Swansea. Her two books for teenagers were both published by Pont; other published work includes short stories, articles and poetry. Gillian is a graduate of Aberystwyth University, and gained an MA in Creative Writing from Swansea University in 2005. She has worked in the voluntary sector in areas as diverse as archaeology, mental health and education.
Melanie C. Fritz was born in south-western Germany in 1982 and only came to Wales in 2006 to study at the University of Glamorgan and to learn a bit of Welsh. She has enjoyed making up and writing down stories ever since she was taught the alphabet and, to date, she has published two novels in her native German: Weltmeister im Handtuchwerfen in 2010 and Chaos im Kessel in 2014. She lives in Pontypridd, a place that inspires her somehow.
Jacqueline Harrett is a former teacher and lecturer with a passion for oral storytelling. She has had articles published in the TES and her resource book for teachers, Exciting Writing, won the UKLA author award in 2007. Throughout her teaching career she tried to inspire others to engage with the written word.
Jacqueline was born in Northern Ireland and has two grown-up children. She has lived in Cardiff for more than twenty years with her long suffering husband, a mad cat and a tortoise called Speedy.
After years of inflicting her writing on her colleagues on an in-house magazine, Nic Herriot finally let loose her creativity in 1995 when she completed an MA in Creative Writing at Trinity Carmarthen. Her ideas come from family, friends and adventures that happen in the real world. All her family have left home, to save themselves the embarrassment, except her poor wife, who is waiting for her passport to come through. Nic wrote this story as part of her campaign to show that there are good care homes out there.
Suzy Ceulan Hughes is a writer and translator. Mad Maisy Sad is her third short story to be included in a Honno anthology.
Rona Laycock was born in Bangor, North Wales. Over the years she has taught in schools and colleges in the UK, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, established and run a ‘helpline’ for a local BBC radio station, and trained emergency response volunteers for NGOs and local authorities. She has an MA and PhD from Swansea University where she studied with the late Nigel Jenkins, who was an inspirational mentor. She runs creative-writing courses and literary events in and around Gloucestershire, where she now lives with her husband, David. Her work has been published in various national and international magazines and anthologies.
She is the editor of writing magazine, Graffiti, and her first poetry collection, Borderlands, was published in the form of an audio CD in 2009 by Music Masters Ltd and Cole’s Press.
Jo Mazelis’ collection of stories Diving Girls (Parthian, 2002) was short-listed for Commonwealth Best First Book and Welsh Book of the Year. Her second book, Circle Games (Parthian, 2005) was long-listed for Welsh Book of the Year. Her novel Significance was published by Seren in September 2014. She lives in Swansea.
Sue Moules has published three poetry collections: The Moth Box (Parthian), In The Green Seascape (Lapwing), and The Earth Singing (Lapwing). She also published a joint collection Mirror Image (Headland). She is a member of the poetry performance group Red Heron.
Sue has been published widely in literary magazines including Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, Planet, Ambit, The North, Orbis, Ambit and Roundyhouse. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies: On My Life ( Honno), Exchanges (Honno), Poetry Wales 25 Years (Seren), The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Cinnamon), The Voice of Women in Wales (Wales Women’s Coalition), Of Cake and Words (Cledlyn), A Star Fell From Orion (Peter, Bridge and Stephen), and Poetry From Strata Florida (Carreg Ffylfan Press). She was featured as the first Honno poet of the month in July 2012 and will be Honno poet of the month again in July 2014.
Siân Preece was born in Neath and studied English Literature at the University of Wales, Swansea. She has lived in Canada and France, and in Scotland, where her first story collection, From the Life, was published by Polygon. Now based in Cardiff, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and in the following year won the 2010 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition with her story ‘Getting Up’. She writes stories, drama and abridgements for Radio 4, and is currently working on a novel and a second story collection.
*
Penny Thomas is publisher at Firefly children’s Press and fiction editor at Seren. She lives in Cardiff with her two children.
The Wish Dog is the third collection of short-stories that Stephanie Tillotson has edited for Honno, two in collaboration with Penny Thomas. Herself a published playwright, poet and short story writer, Stephanie worked for many years in television, radio and theatre production. She now lives in Aberystwyth and is writing a doctoral thesis at Warwick University on Shakespeare in performance.
Published by Honno
‘Ailsa Craig’, Heol y Cawl, Dinas Powys, South Glamorgan, Wales,
CF64 4AH
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Copyright © the Contributors, 2014
© This Collection, Honno Press, 2014
The right of the Contributors to be identified as the authors of the stories within this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner
s.
The stories within this Work are fiction and no resemblance to any actual individual or institution is intended or implied.
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.
Published with the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.
ISBN 978-1-909983-17-5
Cover image: Shutterstock
Cover design: Graham Preston
More from Honno
Short stories; Classics; Autobiography; Fiction
Founded in 1986 to publish the best of women’s writing,
Honno publishes a wide range of titles from Welsh women.
All Shall Be Well
A quarter of a century’s great writing from the women of Wales
Edited by Penny Thomas & Stephanie Tillotson
A wonderful and absorbing collection of writing by Welsh women taken from the fiction and non-fiction anthologies published by the press over the last quarter of a century.
ISBN: 9781906784331 £9.99 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781906784461 £14.99 (hardback)
Cut on the Bias
Stories about women and the clothes they wear
Edited by Stephanie Tillotson
An anthology of short stories that explores the intensely personal relationships women have with what they wear.
“Reading these stories is better than shopping ! ”
Nicola Heywood-Thomas
ISBN: 9781906784133 £8.99
Coming up Roses
Stories of Gardens and Life
Edited by Caroline Oakley
Stories for the Green Fingered: From birth to death, horror to hilarity – a collection of stories for gardeners at home and away.
“Crime, romance, loss, haunted tales... this collection has it all.”
Lynda’s Book Blog
ISBN: 9781870206938 £7.99
Written in Blood
Edited by Lindsay Ashford and Caroline Oakley