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Caustics by Cinzia DuBois

Cinzia DuBois is an Edinburgh-based poet whose writing is intrinsically influenced by philosophy and classicism. She performed some of her poetry for the first time at A New World!?, an event co-hosted by The Ogilvie and Interrobang?!, in April of this year; though new to the poetry scene, she hopes she will have the opportunity to publish and perform her work in the future.

 

Caustics

 

Where did you find her?
For a moment I felt rare. Diamond in the rough.
Enchanting,
A golden tree root protruding from the earth,
Bodying a phloem of sapphire drunk on liquid silver
Melted by rhythm.
Somehow I was noticed
In the depths of this dark harpsichord echo chamber
Where minds met lines
met tongues
met hearts.
All feet were paddling together in a concrete pool,
Observing lost lines of poetry
Floating upon the surface of regis rugs.
Until this moment I had been drugged by my invisibility.
Addicted
To the security of being
nobody.
Vacant-body.
Just another space-taking body.
Where did she find me?
Ambling apathy at the base of a pearl coastline,
Shifting broken glass beneath her feet, their polychromic splinters scratching at her skin.
I owe my survival of these decades
To the art of submersion.
Refined drowning. Close enough to the surface to still be present
So no one notices how deep you are.
Close enough
To catch drowning sailors,
guide them back to shore,
but never let them take you.

I have found more certainty in catching caustics
Than sincere sentences.
There are no falsities in the kisses which seal envelopes of light.
Diamonds of fluorescent turquoise tattoo themselves upon my sunken skin;
I am made mystic.
My thighs, wrapped in a faux sailor’s silk,
Feel uncomfortably thick. Painfully closed.

No man would risk his life drowning for this.

Cinzia can be contacted via @Cinzia_DuBois on Twitter and C. A. DuBois on YouTube.

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Procrastination by Eilidh G Clark

Eilidh G Clark is currently working towards her Creative Writing MLitt at the University of Stirling. In her spare time, she writes book reviews under a pen name for a national newspaper and works part-time for The Red Cross.

 

Procrastination

 

Cardboard daylight
Prods me through vertical blinds.
I am slumped on an un-reclining recliner with
Warm-breath-blowback burning my cheeks.

My toes curl like a fist on the carpet, as cold as the kitchen tiles.
I cannot move.
There is a pork and apple loaf
Baking in the oven
Two hours too soon
And a laptop on standby.

I am waiting,
I have been waiting for years,
For that phone call, that chance,
But it will not come
Not in this bitter, cold, dark afternoon,
Not in this room.

I need to put the light on
But I won’t;
The dogs will think they
Can go out to play and I can’t bare the dampness, the half night day,
That is turning all the orange brick brown.

I am writing, or at least I am typing, anything except
What I ought to write. But I will wait a wee bit longer. Until I am
Kicked up the arse by the artificial light of night, when the start of time begins to run out.
It’s going to be a late one,
Writing by light-bulb and shaded by undusted cobwebs.

You can find Eilidh on Facebook here; more of her writing is available on her blog.

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Excerpt from A Fine House in Trinity by Lesley Kelly

Lesley Kelly has worked in the public and voluntary sectors for the past twenty years, dabbling in poetry and stand-up comedy along the way.  She has won a number of writing competitions, including the Scotsman’s Short Story award in 2008. Lesley lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two sons.

What follows is an excerpt from A Fine House in Trinity, Lesley Kelly’s debut novel, which was published by Sandstone Press in April of 2016. A Fine House in Trinity was also long-listed for the McIlvanney Prize 2016.

 

1939-1949

 

See, if I had to blame somebody for the state of my life, if I had to root around in the dark recesses of my past and choose the one person that I could legitimately point a finger at and say, ‘It was you. You started all this. You started me on the drinking, the sleeping around, the not holding down a job. Everything. It was you.’ See, if I had to do that, I know exactly who I’d name as the culprit, and I know exactly the date of his crime. The date? 24th July 1948. The person? Josef Wiśniewski. My grandfather.

If you’d met him though, God rest his soul, you’d have thought him the sweetest old fellow going. And to give him his due, my grievances aside, he was a good man. He steered clear of most of the vices of men of his generation. His wages never went to line a bookie’s pocket. He never had his fill in the pub then gave his wife the benefit of the back of his hand. I never even heard him curse, although maybe he confined his bad language to his mother tongue. And he was always, always good to Granny Florrie (who wasn’t really our granny but, well, we’ll get to that one later).

In fact, to my eyes the man only had one fault–an overwhelming love for Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II. I know not everybody would see that as a flaw, but when you grew up in the Workers’ Republic of Leith like I did, it seemed a wee bit odd at least. But, Christ, the man was mad for royalty. His front room had so many pictures of Elizabeth II it would have put your average RUC canteen to shame.

But to understand why he did what he did (and by-the-by ruined my life) you have to understand where he was coming from. Grandad Joe was born in 1924 in a wee village just outside Lvov in Poland. To hear him talk, it was a bloody countryside paradise. A rural idyll. Birds singing in the trees, sheep in the fields, yadda yadda. The only fly in the ointment was that he was Polish, and most of his neighbours were Ukrainian, but for the most part they all rubbed along together.

There were five of them—Dad Filip, Mum Ewa, and his two younger sisters, Alicja and Anna, and Filip had high hopes for a couple more junior farmhands in the next few years.

By 1939 Joe was fifteen. He was at the local school with ideas in his head about going on to university (first one in his family to go, if he made it, and everybody was rooting for him). He wasn’t really keeping an eye on world events, to be honest none of them were; politics was an urban thing—what did the government of Germany have to do with getting the harvest in? What did they care who was in charge of the Soviet Union? Stalin knew squat about keeping your chickens happy. No, Joe was not worried. He was spending the best part of his time mooning over the lassies in his class, with big plans for getting into their knickers. After all, they were not short of hay to roll around in.

But that’s the thing about politics—just ’cause you choose to ignore it, doesn’t mean that it’ll choose to ignore you. On the 1st September 1939 German forces invaded Poland from the north, south, and west. A couple of weeks later, the Soviet Red Army invaded the eastern regions of Poland with the full support and cooperation of the Führer.

Filip was worried, but as he kept telling Joe, Poland wasn’t on her own. The British and the French would be sending in troops any minute, there would be a bit of bloodshed, he couldn’t deny it, but Poland would be liberated.

He was still holding to this line when the Red Army arrived at their house to tell them they didn’t live there anymore. Eastern Poland was now officially part of the Ukraine, and therefore the Soviet Union. Poles were no longer welcome to stay. Within days, Joe and his family were booted out of their house, and were on a train bound for the Soviet Union, and a life of communal paradise on a labour farm.

Siberia was cold. Brutally, mortifyingly, cold. Before he left Poland, the coldest Joe had ever been was on the ritual 3 am trip to the outside lavvy in the middle of winter, standing there with his hands shaking and hoping his wee man didn’t get frostbite, and by the time he got back to bed he was always so damn cold he needed to go again. That kind of cold? Siberia on a good day. In summer.

Wee Anna was the first to go. It started with a cough, then she lost her appetite for the meagre rations that were on offer, then she couldn’t get out of bed. Two months after moving to the camp, Ewa woke to find Anna dead beside her. She didn’t have long to grieve though, because within six months, both Ewa and Alicja had also passed away.

So, Joe and Filip were left on their own to try to make the best of life on the farm. They were used to life being hard back in the Ukraine but it didn’t compare to this. No equipment, no horses–they were trying to farm the soil with their bare hands. Just when they thought they couldn’t stand it any longer, politics found them once again. By 1941 Stalin and Hitler were no longer bosom buddies, the Poles were no longer the enemy, and they were pretty much free to go, if they could find their way back to Lvov.

Joe and Filip got themselves on the first transportation they could find back to Poland. Joe would have been on top of the world, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d noticed that Filip had started with that oh-so-familiar cough. Sure enough, Joe waved goodbye to his last remaining family member somewhere in Azerbaijan, as the train door was opened and Filip’s corpse was dumped by the side of the track.

At the age of eighteen, Joe was orphaned and alone in the world. He joined the Polish Army, and saw out the rest of the conflict in Italy. Come the end of the war, the Polish situation had become a bit of an embarrassment to Churchill. Stalin was keen to hang on to control over Poland, and Churchill was not going to rock the boat, so it was the bum’s rush for Poland and the Polish Army.

Joe was flown to England, and demobbed. He was then given the choice–get flown back to Poland and take his chances with Stalin, or stay in England and take his chances here. He talked it over with his pals and they all came to the same conclusion. God Save the Queen.

One of his pals had a brother living in Edinburgh, so the pair of them took the next train North. Old Joe’d got a few bob in his pocket from the demob, so when he got to Edinburgh he decided he was going to get a room to himself. Lebensraum. He’d never had a room all to himself before, between his sisters, the labour farm, then five years sharing with other squaddies, but Joe decided–the good life started here.

He waved goodbye to his friend then wandered down the cobbled streets of Edinburgh until he saw a ‘Room to Let’ sign and chapped the door. An old wife answered.

‘I looking for room.’

The old wife looked him up, and down.

Joe, sensing reluctance on her part, tried to reassure her. ‘I have money. Can pay good.’

‘Oh, aye. And what’s your name, son?’

‘Josef Wiśniewski,’ he said proudly.

To his surprise the woman started shaking her head. Through the rapidly closing door she said, ‘Oh no, son, I’m not having any of you Poles staying here. You lot should be long gone by now.’

And with this welcome to Scotland, Joe realised that not everyone was all that grateful for their war effort.

 

Joe was sleeping on a bedroom floor with five other men and working twelve-hour shifts down Leith Docks. But he was not without ambition. He could do well in this country, he thought, if only he could be a bit more, well, British. He looked at his fellow Poles, all living on top of each other, drinking themselves insensible at weekends, and wondered if there wasn’t more to life than this.

One Sunday morning he was out for a walk when he saw a sign in a newsagent’s window. ‘English lessons. Good rates. Enquire within.’ Suddenly it all became clear to Joe. He was going to improve his English, get a job in an office and go to night school. He’d get his degree, get a better job and woo some Scottish lassie. He pushed open the door to the newsagent’s and nearly fell over the step in his haste to begin his self-improvement.

 

Miss Ailsa Morrison was a very proper-looking young woman. She explained that she was a qualified primary school teacher and was offering English lessons in the evenings. Her father did not approve of her teaching foreigners so she was holding the lessons in the back room of the newsagent’s. She named her price.

In the first lesson he learned about English nouns, and noticed how beautiful Miss Ailsa Morrison’s eyes [noun] were. The second lesson covered verbs and adverbs, and Joe noticed how delightful Miss Ailsa Morrison’s laugh was. She laughed [verb] beautifully [adverb]. By the time they reach prepositions he realised he was completely in [preposition] love with Miss Ailsa Morrison.

Ailsa, for her part, played her cards close to her chest. It must have been obvious to any observer that she’d got a lovesick Pole on her hands, but she didn’t encourage, or for that matter, discourage, him. She was, however, happy to listen to his stories at the end of each lesson. He told her about his family, his experiences in Italy, and what life was like for him in Scotland. When he suggested they meet for a walk one Sunday afternoon, she blushingly accepted.

 

After six months of careful tutoring, Joe felt confident that his English was good enough to start implementing his plan. So he headed into town and presented himself at the first office he came to. There were three men in the office, so he addressed himself to the one who looked the most senior.

‘I am looking for work.’

The man looked him up and down in a way that was becoming familiar. ‘Oh aye. And who might you be?’

‘My name is Josef Wiśniewski.’ Joe hated himself for the small hint of defensiveness now in his tone.

The two other men sniggered.

‘The boss doesn’t employ papes.’

Joe thanked them for their time, and hurried back to find out what a ‘pape’ was.

 

‘Oh, Joe,’ said Ailsa, ‘It’s a rude word for a Catholic.’

Joe considered this new information. ‘But I do not go to church. How do they know I am Catholic?’

‘Well, your name I suppose.’ Ailsa sighed. ‘It’s a Polish name and Polish people are Catholic.’

‘I fight a war for this. I fight for Poland and now I cannot get accommodation and I cannot get job because of my Polish name.’

‘Oh, Joe,’ said Ailsa again. ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she took his hand.

They were sitting side-by-side in the room at the back of the newsagent’s. The newsagent had gone home.

‘Do not be sorry. It is not your fault. My name is my name and I proud of it.’

Ailsa was so moved that tears welled up in her eyes. Joe noticed her distress and wiped the tears away with his calloused hand. They were sitting very, very close together.

‘Oh, Joe,’ said Ailsa for the final time that evening. Joe put a finger to her lips and kissed her.

 

‘We can’t, Joe.’

They were sitting a respectable distance apart in the back room of the newsagent’s.

Joe threw his hands up in a gesture of disbelief. ‘I learn the words for nothing.’

‘And you said it beautifully,’ said Ailsa, tactfully ignoring the fact that he had just asked her to marry ‘it’. ‘But my father will never approve of me marrying a foreigner.’

Joe leaned forward and took Ailsa’s hand again. ‘Why not? I work hard, I get better job, I work harder for you and for our babies.’

‘The babies are the problem.’ Ailsa pulled her hands back to her lap. My father’s never going to accept his grandchildren growing up called Wiśniewski.’

Joe got to his feet. In one sentence Ailsa had confirmed all his fears. He walked slowly out of the room, and was halfway through the shop before he heard Ailsa call his name. He paused, looking at the tins of peas and the posters about sugar rationing.

‘I can still give you English lessons.’

He shook his head and opened the door.

 

Joe wandered the street for hours that night. He asked himself ‘in my position, what would Queen Elizabeth II do?’ (although I’m not sure she’d really have the frame of reference to imagine herself as a penniless twenty-four-year old Pole). But in a blinding flash of royal inspiration, Joe realised what Bessie would do, old Miss Saxe-Coburg-Gotha herself. What she would do is change her name to that of an inoffensive local town. So, he borrowed a map of the UK from work, closed his eyes, crossed himself for luck, rotated his arm three times above his head and came down hard.

On Staines.

Three days later he marched into the Victoria Street Registry Office and changed his name by deed poll. On 24th July 1948 Josef Alojzy Wiśniewski officially became Joseph Aloysius Staines.

 

Now, I’m not saying that things couldn’t have been worse. A couple of inches northwest and I’d be going through life as Joseph Bishop’s Itchington. At least that would have spared me a lifetime of ‘stain’ puns. In Joe’s position I might even have done the same thing. I can relate to his motives: he was too proud of his name to change it to get better digs, or a half-decent job, but the first whiff of a bit of skirt and he’d renounced all his patriotic fervour. I’ve done enough daft things over lassies myself.

And, I know that there was no malice in it. Old Joe didn’t realise when he went into the Registry Office, the repercussions his act would have twenty-five years later. He didn’t know the impact on my first day of primary school when the teacher sat us in alphabetical order. If old Joe hadn’t messed with nature I would have been nestling safely in between George Thompson, who went on to be Dux of the school, and Angela Young, who everyone agreed was the prettiest Gala Queen they’d ever clapped eyes on. I could have spent my formative years sandwiched between brains and beauty.

Instead, on my first day of school I sat down, turned my head, and stared into the fat, four-eyed face of Lachlan Stoddart.

Lesley can be reached via Twitter, @lkauthor. View an exclusive excerpt from Lesley’s new novel from Sandstone Press, The Health of Strangers, here.

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The Archaic Smile by KC Murdarasi

KC Murdarasi is a Scottish author based in Glasgow. She studied Ancient History at the University of St Andrews, then worked as a missionary in Albania for a few years before returning to the UK.

 

The Archaic Smile

 

The van doors swung open, revealing the limestone figure, and Nicholas bit his lip to suppress a gasp. One leg in front of the other as if impatient to move, hands clenched into implacable fists, each muscle as perfect as the day it had been carved. Taking in every inch, Nicholas, curator of the Ancient World collection at the Royal Museum, swelled with pride. This was his purchase; he had negotiated it, organised the funds, arranged the transfer. Now here it was. Nicholas’ pale blue eyes burned as he stared at the statue. It didn’t meet Nicholas’ gaze, instead smiling impassively over his head.

“He’s a happy chappie, ain’t he?” said one of the couriers, jolting Nicholas back to the present. He realised he was shivering in his shirt sleeves.

“You’re late,” Nicholas snapped. “You should have been here two hours ago.” The couriers shot each other a look and started to wheel the carefully strapped statue up the ramp into the Royal Museum.

The London sunshine was weak, filtered by layers of cloud—nothing like the fierce sunshine of Greece, but it was welcome after centuries of darkness. One foot in front of the other, the statue entered its new home.

Nicholas led the way through the confusing passages of the museum, his quick steps sharply defined on the hard floors, until they reached the main gallery. In a small, dark room, off to one side, waited an empty plinth.

“Just here, please,” he said. His hands played nervously with his tie clip as he watched the couriers jack the statue to the right level, then painstakingly inch it on to the plinth. Nicholas’ thin frame, a picture of nervous energy, provided a contrast to the solid musculature of the limestone man who stared calmly over his head.

“Zakynthos Kouros,” read one of the men after they had finished. “Is that his name, then?”

“It’s what it is known as,” conceded Nicholas, frowning at the inexactitude. “It is a kouros, a statue of a young man, and it is from Zakynthos. Hence, ‘the Zakynthos Kouros’.”

“Who’s it supposed to be?” asked the other courier.

“No one knows,” said Nicholas. “It was probably a grave monument for a young warrior.”

“Well cheerio, Zak,” said the first man, “Keep smiling!” The two men laughed as they wheeled their platform back out to the van. Nicholas winced. The kouros kept smiling.

The young man in whose memory the kouros had been carved had been dead for some time when the commission was finished. His family, rich and influential, had the brand-new statue installed on the highest point of the island. The warrior’s grieving mother visited often, his other relatives less so. They left small presents, libations, remembrances, but soon the visits stopped and the young warrior was forgotten. The kouros remained, however. Unperturbed by the years he continued smiling to himself until everyone had forgotten why he was there. It didn’t take many generations before the islanders started to believe that his perfect form, larger than life, must represent Zakynthos himself, the legendary founder of the island. The small presents and libations began again, this time accompanied by prayers and requests for blessings from the hero Zakynthos.

Emma, the junior gallery assistant, popped her head into the room.

“Is this him?” she asked, “He’s amazing! You’d never know he was so old.”

Yes, you would, thought Nicholas, if you knew anything about it. He sometimes wished he could be more patient with junior staff like Emma. She had a real inquisitiveness which should be encouraged, but she knew so little that was of any worth. She had a degree in Cultural Studies. Nicholas thought Cultural Studies was the sort of thing people studied if they had no culture of their own, though he had never said this to her.

“Why is he in the side room? Why not in the central gallery?” Emma asked. Nicholas frowned. He had considered this for some time and still wasn’t sure about his decision.

“It’s easier to protect here. It would be preferable to display it in the main gallery, but I can’t take the risk of crowds jostling it.”

Emma nodded distractedly as she walked round the statue, looking it up and down. “There’s something funny about him,” she said. “It’s as if his forearms are on the wrong way. Or his hands are.” She made a fist and looked from her hand to his. “And his face–that funny little smile! Why did they make him smiling? Is he supposed to be a friendly warrior?” She gave a smile of her own to Nicholas. It wasn’t as effective on him as it was on other men, but it still had a thawing effect.

“It’s called the archaic smile,” Nicholas explained. “Early Greek sculptors found it hard to carve the mouth realistically. The solution, they discovered, was to carve little grooves on either side of it, giving the appearance of a smile. The archaic smile disappeared once sculptural technique improved.”

“Shame,” said Emma, “it’s really cute.” She reached up a finger to touch the kouros’ smiling face. Nicholas’s hand shot out, stopping just short of grabbing her wrist.

“Don’t touch it!” he snapped, shocked. “Never touch limestone without gloves. The acid in your fingers will damage the rock.”

Emma backed away, stung. She never seemed to be able to do the right thing where Nicholas was concerned. Nicholas saw that he had shaken her and wanted to apologise. But how could he apologise when he had only stopped her from doing something she should have known better than to do anyway? Instead, he spun on the heel of his shiny brown loafer and hurried off to his office.

The Zakynthos Kouros did not remain alone for long on his elevation on the island. Others arrived. Some were merely small relief sculptures, but others were kouroi like him, standing almost as tall as he did. These were in a new style. Their bronze bodies glowed like warm flesh. Their hair fell in realistic curls and the mouths on the faces of these boy-men had perfect, curved, pouting lips. And yet the islanders remained loyal to their Zakynthos, with his rock-cut, dependable, not-quite-right anatomy, his steady gaze and his cryptic smile; the offerings kept coming. From time to time over the decades an earthquake would shake the island. Some of the lighter bronze statues would fall and need to be propped up again, or repaired, or melted down, but the Zakynthos Kouros stood strong, the lord of the island.

Nicholas hunched over his computer, the light of its screen competing with the failing light of the autumn afternoon. He sighed and ran a hand through his unfashionable hair. More and more he had been feeling that he was not cut out for this job, or perhaps that the job was not cut out for him. At thirty-two he was one of the youngest collection curators the museum had ever had, especially of the prestigious Ancient World collection. Luck may have played a part, but Nicholas knew that his drive, intelligence and perfectionism had taken him this far this quickly. Yet now he found that what he’d achieved was not what he wanted. He was expected to line manage other people, people with no similarity to himself and apparently no sensitivity for the ancient world. He had free reign to display exhibits and design collections, which was his dream, but he was expected to submit reports detailing the educational value and accessibility of his choices. He was in love with the relics of the ancient world but he often felt that his work cheapened them.

Shaking his head, Nicholas pushed the subject out of his mind and went to work on his computer. There was a lot to finalise before the exhibition opened the next morning, and the central exhibit arriving late had not helped. He worked away doggedly at the final details of tour plans and exhibit guides before movement below distracted him. The smoked glass of Nicholas’ office looked down on the gallery, and he could see some of the junior staff near his prize exhibit. They had obviously come from other galleries to see the new purchase. Some of them had gone inside the room, and Nicholas could not see from here whether they were wearing gloves. Quickly saving his work on the computer, he hurried out of his office and down the stairs.

Earthquakes had become a feature of the kouros’ existence on Zakynthos, and he smiled on calmly as they passed him by over the decades and centuries. But the base on which he stood was gradually weakened, and the crevice in the side of the hill which had been there for centuries was gradually widening. Even he was not invulnerable; one day, much like any other, the shaking and rumbling started again, and this time the kouros did not stand strong. Tipped over onto the soft earth, with his fists clenched and his face still set in a smile, he rolled into the crevice. Dirt and debris piled on top of him, hiding him from sight. The islanders wondered what had become of their Zakynthos but, as after all earthquakes, they had more pressing concerns on their minds. The rain set the fresh dirt in the crevice, the grass sprang up, and the kouros was lost.

Down in the gallery, having protected the kouros from ungloved hands for the second time, Nicholas realised he would have to do something more permanent. There were Tensa-barriers in a storeroom. He didn’t like using them but it was obviously necessary–there were currently no glass cases large enough to hold the kouros. Nicholas looked around to make sure that nobody was waiting to prod his purchase while he was gone, but it was the end of the working day and the last of the assistants was leaving the gallery. Relieved, Nicholas hurried to the storeroom.

Other earthquakes followed while the kouros was buried in the hillside. He could feel them pressing on his stone limbs, the earth shifting around him, packing him in more tightly. Sometimes it seemed as if the pressure must crack the limestone, but each time the strong rock held out, surviving another year, another decade, another century beneath the ground. Goats walked over him, rains fell on the earth above him, but the kouros’ stone smile stayed in place.

Nicholas took a deep breath and released it slowly. He always felt more at ease when the museum was empty, when it was his private domain. He set up the garish black-and-yellow striped bands around his prize exhibit, a metre and a half from the statue, far longer than any arm. There was barely any space left in the small room—no risk of a crowd. This was the first time the statue had ever been on display since it was discovered, and Nicholas felt the responsibility keenly. Only expert archaeologists had ever seen this statue, and he could not allow it to be damaged now that it had been entrusted to the care of the Royal Museum. He set up a metal placard holder behind the barrier, then hurried up to his office for the final item.

In the end it was another earthquake which had released the kouros. A spate of tremors occurred close together, sending panic through the islanders, who now drove cars and carried phones but still feared the shaking and rumbling as their ancestors had. The crevice in the hill, so long filled in, started to open again. The dry earth shifted and broke apart. Eventually, one of the many quakes dislodged enough earth to reveal a piece of the Zakynthos Kouros: one foot poked out into the light, as if he had kicked the hole himself. Once the quakes and aftershocks were over, it wasn’t long before the foot was spotted. The exultant looks on the faces of his discoverers when they realised that they’d found a whole archaic kouros reminded him of his early admirers. He smiled.

A piece of paper flapped in Nicholas’ hand as he walked quickly to the centre of the gallery. He slipped under the barrier and placed it on the placard holder, behind the plastic panel. ‘CAUTION: Do not attempt to touch this statue as it is very delicate’. Yes, that would do. Now all that remained was to shut down his computer and lock up. He wanted to get an early night, ready for the opening of the exhibition in the morning. It would be his triumph. He leaned down to adjust the piece of paper in its holder.

The smile on the kouros seemed sinister in the half-light of the side room. Towering above Nicholas, it looked far from delicate. It had survived its identity being forgotten. It had survived new styles of art and new philosophies. It had survived earthquakes too numerous for even an ancient hero to remember. It was lord of the island of Zakynthos.

The limestone remembered the tremors, the shaking and rumbling. It remembered the sensation of toppling, falling, from so long ago. Slowly it began to move.

Nicholas looked up from fiddling with the paper, but too late. He tried to back through the door but the barriers hindered him. The kouros crashed down on top of him. Its clenched stone fists pinned Nicholas’ arms to his side. The weight of its torso stifled him from crying out. There was silence.

*

The opening of the new Archaic Exhibition the next day was a great success. No one commented on the empty plinth in the side room. Instead, people’s eyes were drawn to the star attraction in the centre. One of the junior staff hurried over to Emma as casually as he could and spoke in a low voice so that the spectators could not hear.

“What on earth happened last night? I heard Nicholas got crushed by a statue or something?”

Emma replied in the same low tone. “It was the Zakynthos Kouros, the new one. But it’s okay; Nicholas is going to be alright. A cleaner found him this morning. A few broken ribs, but it looks like that’s all.”

“Poor sod!” replied her colleague. “What have you done with the statue? Was it smashed? That thing’s worth millions!” Emma raised her eyebrows and leaned closer.

“It was completely undamaged!” she whispered. “Nicholas must have broken its fall.”

“Dedicated to the last,” chuckled the boy. “But you haven’t displayed it, have you?”

“Of course I have,” Emma said, obviously proud to have been the one to make the decision. “Nicholas would want me to. But it’s okay, I’ve taken precautions.” She led him over to the centre of the room where the largest crowd was clustered.

“I’ve moved it to the central plinth. The other one must have been unstable. And I’ve put up those metal security barriers, not the stretchy ones. And I’ve put up a sign too.” She pointed to the display board which stood in front of the strong barriers. “It was open on Nicholas’s computer so I just changed it a bit and printed it.”

The limestone statue now towered over a sign that read: ‘CAUTION: Do not attempt to touch this statue as it is very dangerous.’

Standing tall in the centre of the gallery, staring over the heads of its new admirers, the kouros smiled.

Karen can be reached via her website: www.kcmurdarasi.com.

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Uncovered by Sheena Kamal

Sheena Kamal was born in the Caribbean and immigrated to Canada as a child. She holds an HBA in political science from the University of Toronto, and has most recently worked as a researcher for the film and television industry. Her debut suspense novel Eyes Like Mine has been sold in over a dozen countries and is published in the U.K. by Bonnier Zaffre.

 

Uncovered

 

They stared at the face, uncovered.

That’s her, said Esme.

Don’t be daft, said her husband. He walked away from the body on the slab.

Esme did not follow him. She confirmed her daughter’s identity to the police and got a cup of peppermint tea from across the road before going back to the car, where her husband waited.

The car ride back home was tense.

He made their afternoon meal, as he always did these days, but left the stir fry on the stove before she came down from her shower. Esme heard him in the basement, puttering around. He came upstairs with his golf clubs, announced he was going to play a few holes, uh huh, and left. Refusing to stay, refusing to grieve a daughter he didn’t want to say goodbye to.

She had expected something like this. He had been having an affair for three years now. She had become suspicious when he took up cooking and golf almost simultaneously. She’d canceled his golf membership after one year, and he still hadn’t noticed.

Nicole had told her that he was cheating, which Esme had denied, of course, because it wasn’t any of their daughter’s business. Besides, it was better this way. Imagine if he had taken up cooking and then stuck around to harass her each afternoon?

With Nicole gone, Esme was free. She loved her daughter, but when jewellery started to go missing, when her husband began sneaking money from their account to give to Nicole, when Nicole began running away from home whenever the mood struck, when Esme had come home early one day to find her teenaged daughter’s beautiful face buried in some jock’s crotch, her lovely dark hair held up in a sweaty male fist… it was all too much for Esme. Her life in this country was a joke. This was not the dream she’d had when she moved up here, at first taking a job as a maid. It had seemed a stroke of luck that she met her husband right away, in this very house. He had been married to someone else then, but he was open to straying and had never changed.

Esme got her suitcase out from storage and packed clothes that were lightweight, brightly coloured and in breathable fabrics. When the cab came to take her the airport, she made sure she had the deed to the land back home and all the proper information to access her accounts. She had always been good with money. So much so that her husband never noticed how much of his she took over the years. The sum was nothing to him, but amounted to a small fortune where she was from–and she knew how to stretch a dollar, especially on her island, where she could live like a queen.

She left, thinking of the young woman on the slab. Her husband was right. It wasn’t Nicole. But the life insurance company didn’t have to know that. Her daughter was still alive somewhere and, Esme knew, would come looking for her if she ever came to her senses. Maybe they could make new dreams together, if it wasn’t too late.

Sheena can be reached via her Facebook page.

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The End by Samuel Best

Samuel Best is a Creative Writing graduate from the University of Strathclyde and has been published in British, North American, and Scandinavian magazines. His debut novel Shop Front was described as “a howl and a sigh from Generation Austerity” and he founded the literary magazine Octavius.

 

The End

 

We’re stood out in some field in the middle of nowhere, maybe a mile or so outside town. I mean, a mile isn’t that far, but tonight we could be on another planet for all the life around us. We’re sharing a bottle of rum, drinking it straight in mouthfuls that make us shudder. Above, the sky burns as meteors leave lightning trails. In the middle of town a crowd gathers; we might even be able to see them from here, if we looked. Your teeth chatter and I pass the rum over.

‘Will there ever be anything so beautiful again?’ you ask, letting the bottle hang from your hand.

I reach over, my fingers grazing your skin, and you go to pass the spirit back. I set it down amongst the grass and it tips over. There isn’t much left to spill.

Standing back up, I take your hand in mine and squeeze. Our eyes are still fixed on the sky, a hundred bone-white needles piercing the night. I don’t really know what to say to you, and that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re here now, seeing this. The sky is on fire and there is no future beyond us. Our eyes sparkle and blaze like little stars, and when we blink the whole world goes black.

Samuel Best can be reached via Twitter, @samuelboag.

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With a Different Stroke by Nandini Sen

Nandini Sen is an anthropologist who runs the virtual book club ReadinGLa(d)sses. She was one of the storytellers for Edinburgh City of Literature’s Story Shop 2016 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and had an article published in the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures in November 2016.

 

With a Different Stroke

 

1

We smelled the forest under the bare sky,
Weighed the warm wooden furniture at the coffee shop,
Stood in the road and walked away.
I knew that if we met again
In an unknown twilight zone we would begin
And end whatever we were whispering,
Talks of castles, cathedrals, hills and glens.
I felt numb as I watched your cold, wavering car
Fading away at the turn of the road.

2

Reality and dreams mixed;
We cycled down mystical paths
And got off at the foothills.
You invited me to your home against the smooth, green terrain.
We entered the quietness without knocking on the door.
Once again we met
When evening set in Edinburgh;
We were ready with our intimate talk of the town,
Awaiting your entry.
The clock chimed five,
And we began our journey over the deep River Forth.

3

We sat and played bridge around the old oak table.
Hamish and Heather were absurdly quick and clever;
My partner and I could hardly twist the cards.
I never regretted those wonders emerging from their wins.
Sometimes we listened to Tagore’s solemn songs;
They mingled with Robert Burns’ poetry, while
The middle ground Beatles and Floyd
Hammered a rhythm in our brains
To the beat of the TomTom.

4

The everyday monotone engulfs us;
We go to Scott’s monument and catch the fresh air,
Enjoy our usual trance out of single malts,
Return home by ten.
We sit down for a couple of hours watching Trainspotting,
And shudder from a feeling of ennui.
Let us once again go
Smell the fresh, green forest.

Nandini can be reached via Facebook through ReadinGLa(d)sses.

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Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), Season One by Angela Clem

Angela Clem earned her MSc by Research in History from the University of Edinburgh in 2016, and her BA in History from Macalester College in 2015. Currently based in Overland Park, Kansas, she works in Financial Aid at Johnson County Community College and is also Social Media Coordinator and Online Editor for The Ogilvie.

This review contains spoilers for Season One of the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events, as well as vague spoilers for the original book series of the same name. The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and not necessarily of The Ogilvie editorial staff.

 

Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix), Season One

 

I’ve been a die-hard fan of Daniel Handler’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (ASoUE) since I first read them when I was ten years old. Upon every re-read, I’m drawn in by his morosely humorous narration of the tale of the Baudelaire siblings, three unlucky children who are consistently undervalued, misunderstood, and often mistreated by the adults around them. Perhaps the most notable characteristic of ASoUE is Handler’s wrecking-ball destruction of the fourth wall by writing under the pen name Lemony Snicket and then including Snicket as a character in the series. Ultimately, though, my favorite thing about these books is how they calmly step off the beaten path of children’s fiction: the world is not entirely a good place, people don’t always do the right thing, and intelligence and kindness aren’t necessarily rewarded with fortune and happiness. Over the course of the series, Handler slowly reveals a much more realistic (and according to some, postmodern) world than that which is so often portrayed in books written for children.

In their Netflix adaptation of the first four books, developers Mark Hudis and Barry Sonnenfeld manage to uphold Handler’s grim tone, while making a few necessary changes to translate the books into a TV series that is both amusing and clever. The show’s very prominent inclusion of the narrator Lemony Snicket (Patrick Warburton) preserves the source material’s literary nature, as does the fact that each book spans two episodes. A two-episode arc occasionally sacrifices a steady pace for languorous exploration of Handler’s universe, but this is a much more preferable problem than that of the 2004 film adaptation, which crammed three books into 107 minutes. By allowing an ample length of time for each story arc to unfold, Hudis and Sonnenfeld cede the floor to Handler’s idiosyncratic style, which is best enjoyed holistically rather than selectively.

Take Episode One: following Snicket’s touching dedication to a mysterious woman named Beatrice, the first scene takes a claustrophobic, conspiratorial and clever tone as Snicket–illuminated by a dim row of wall sconces and a solitary match–warns viewers against watching this “dreadful, melancholy, and calamitous–a word which here means ‘both dreadful and melancholy’–” show. This echoes the various moments in the books at which Handler advises, “…if you wish to avoid an unpleasant story you had best put this book down.” For me, this is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the ASoUE books, and I was delighted to see it echoed in the Netflix adaptation. It’s worth noting that Snicket’s warning (along with many other lines from this episode) are quoted almost directly from the original text. While I wouldn’t necessarily encourage copying dialogue from the page to the screen ad verbatim, it works surprisingly well here due to the fact that Hudis and Sonnenfeld have allowed Handler’s books to drive their show. It’s a pity, therefore, that later episodes don’t follow suit; I found Episode One to be the strongest because it perfectly showcases Handler’s playful approach to postmodern narrative for a young adult audience, as reflected in Warburton’s deadpan yet lyrical delivery.

The show’s visual appearance is extremely reminiscent of Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice. This is no surprise, seeing as how ASoUE production designer Bo Welch lent his talents to both. After Snicket’s initial monologue in the underground tunnel, the camera tilts up through a cross-section of the pavement to follow a wholesome, brightly colored street trolley as it rattles down a tree-lined avenue. Such shots bring to mind the quaint model sets of Thomas & Friends and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood… complete with shiny red fire engine. Conversely, at significant turning points in the Baudelaires’ lives, Welch depicts the children (dressed in pastel or bright colors) as completely isolated amongst a sea of neutral greys and faded browns. Welch’s style is at once wondrously childlike and darkly sardonic—a difficult but necessary balance to strike, as Handler’s books are intended for a young audience, but also deal with themes such as loss, grief, and abuse.

Younger viewers are likely to enjoy Welch’s almost cartoonish style, along with the mischievous main title theme and the precocious young protagonists. Older viewers will appreciate several familiar faces among the cast including Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), Justice Strauss (Joan Cusack), Sir (Don Johnson), and Georgina Orwell (Catherine O’Hara), as well as Warbuton’s Snicket . By nature of the plot, Harris is the most likely to dominate the show, but he doesn’t. He brings his extensive musical theatre experience to the role, providing the lead vocals for both the main title theme and for a comically operatic, off-kilter song introducing Olaf and his theatre troupe in Episode One. For the season-ending song, however, his vocals blend with those of Warburton, K. Todd Freeman as the hapless banker Mr. Poe, and the three Baudelaire children. Thankfully, the actors who play Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire (Malina Weissman, Louis Hynes, and Presley Smith, respectively) hold their own, both in the season’s finale theme and among such a strong cast–a generally uncommon occurrence in screen adaptations of children’s books. Weissman’s and Hynes’ deliveries are occasionally stilted which contradicts their characterization as exceedingly bright children, but the flip side is that one must only look back to the books to see Handler employ equally repressed, buttoned-up, Victorian-style language.

Those among you who have read the books might be frustrated with the liberties taken by Hudis and Sonnenfeld regarding plot pacing. Certain Very Furtive Developments in the plot not introduced until the fifth book are dramatically telescoped for the purpose of enticing a television audience. Klaus’ discovery of the small spyglass in the ashes of his home, for example, kick-starts the darker, more mature plot of V.F.D. and its hidden influences on the children’s lives. This is mirrored through a fantastic minor plot following a mother and father (Cobie Smulders and Will Arnett) in their attempt to return to their children.

Season One ends on a note of resignation–literally–with a delightfully morose tune that drives the season home to its conclusion. Obviously, this was not part of Handler’s books (although I like to think that he would have employed musical numbers if it could have been done). The song’s lyrics echo what Snicket has been urging us from Scene One: that the tale of the Baudelaire orphans is exceedingly miserable. We as viewers have been trained to crave a reliable sinewave of positive and negative occurrences in the narratives we consume, but sometimes “…that’s not how the story goes.”

We leave the Baudelaires at a grim, graveyard-esque boarding school where they will presumably experience even more unfortunate events. However, with the tantalizing promise of this continued misery, Hudis and Sonnenfeld—thanks to their successful translation of Handler’s playfully postmodern style—have us on the edge of our seats, a phrase which here means, “eagerly awaiting Season Two.”

Angela can be reached via email and Twitter.

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20 Lambert & Butler by Gary McKenzie

Gary McKenzie is currently studying English literature at Stirling University. Gary has performed at various events in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and has also set up spoken word evenings in his hometown of Alloa. His work been published in Poetry Scotland, AfterNyne Magazine, The Grind, and South Bank Poetry.

 

20 Lambert & Butler

 

The 6 AM darkness is painful
An unrelenting reminder that you should be somewhere else
Somewhere warm and safe. Not here and not alone.
Your morning cough now takes longer to shift. It belonged
To a winter cold two years ago and has since taken up
Permanent residence. The rattle and wheeze takes hours instead of minutes
To prepare you for the rest of the day, it is only when dusk falls do you feel anything close
To yourself, or at least the memory of.

The clock on the wall marches routine into a calendar, pages that have been silently torn
Without your permission now lie muddied across the damp pavements.
Will it ever stop raining?
Up and out onto the streets, the lights give the town a fake tan.
Still, it is your favourite time of the day, quiet.
Hopeful.

You cough, light a fag, cough, blow out the smoke
With less and less conviction.
It is quiet.

Every morning during the week, you open the door
Hear the shop bell, now buzzer,
Announce your presence.
You wipe your feet on the cardboard box that is used as a doormat
And a sigh involuntary escapes, it echoes round the shop.
A sigh heavy with anger about where life has refused to put you.
The counter was once wood, it is now cheap and throwaway plastic.
Fake.
That would not have happened when you were a boy
The old man kept the place immaculate, and now look
Look around at today.

The new owner behind the counter seems to have grown old without you noticing
He knows what you want, but you still say it anyway
20 Lambert & Butler, a bottle of ginger, and some chewing gum to help
With the dryness that arrives before lunch.
You used to get change from a fiver, now you add coins to the ten pound note.
Look around at today.

The morning exchange, the usual reply
‘Aye im daeing fine’ is disavowed by your own breath.
That heavy sigh is still heard, it has seeped into the walls
Screaming with all the rest. You both face each other
Like guard and jailer, never saying what is raging inside.
The weather, you talk about the weather
And how this damp chills you to the bone.

Gary can be reached via his email address, garymckenziepoetry@outlook.com.

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Excerpt from Magnie’s Boat by Hannah Nicholson

Hannah Nicholson is currently working towards her MLitt degree in Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen. She also graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a BA (Hons) in English with Journalism and Creative Writing in 2010, and during her studies she was a 2009 runner up of the English department’s Keith Wright Memorial Prize. Originally from Shetland, and a 2005 winner of the local library’s Young Writer of the Year Award, she is particularly interested in promoting the isles’ distinctive dialect as a medium of written and spoken Scots. She also currently has a poem featured on the website of Quotidian magazine.

Her novel-in-progress, Magnie’s Boat, is set in Yell in the 1920s and is inspired by a combination of local folklore and a personal interest in family history. The dialogue is written in Shetland’s own dialect, although the narrative is not. For reference, a Shetland dictionary is accessible here.

 

Magnie’s Boat, Chapter 1

 

Merran could still remember the day Magnie disappeared.

She was nine at the time. It was a bright sunny afternoon in May, with only the lightest breeze in the air. It rustled the fresh green grass that made up her family’s land near Cullivoe, in the north end of the island of Yell. The sky was a brilliant shade of blue, furnished by the occasional white cloud. The sun’s rays performed a xanthic dance on the surface of Colgrave Sound, the long stretch of sea water between Yell and the neighbouring island of Fetlar. Merran had never been there before, but on such a clear day she could see it from the front door of her family’s but-and-ben. She could also see Linga, the island that Magnie had told her about when she’d been younger. It was said that a man called Jan Tait had fought a bear in Norway as punishment for not paying his taxes, and when he’d beaten it, he had been pardoned and allowed to take it home. He’d left it on that island, tied to a post. Magnie had told her there were still circles in the ground in the place where the bear had once been. Merran had been enthralled. Maybe she would get him to take her to the island next time he was off and he could show them to her.

Since the weather was so beautiful, Magnie had declared his intention to head out in his little rowing boat and fish for mackerel for the family’s tea. He would only be on Bluemull Sound, the sheltered strait between Yell and Unst–another island nearby. He’d been in ownership of his vessel for around a year, having bought it with some of his Merchant Navy wages, and he revelled in his newfound freedom.

“Kin I come aff wi’ de?” Merran asked Magnie excitedly.

But Magnie showed that face he made when he was full of doubts, and he looked out of the window, then back at Merran.

“I doot no’ da day, peerie wife,” he replied gently, ruffling his hand through his youngest sister’s long brown hair. “Anidder day, mebbe.”

“Oh, a’right,” Merran sighed, not even trying to hide her disappointment. Magnie smiled.

“Al come back wi’ a guid haal,” he assured her.

“Will it be lik’ yun Galilee at we learned aboot in Sundee skule?” Merran asked excitedly.

“Better as yun,” Magnie said, winking at her.

The two exchanged smiles. Magnie may have been nineteen, and the oldest of the five, but he had always had a strong bond with his youngest sibling. This hadn’t changed even when he had been in charge of the croft during the Great War years, when their father, Ertie, was a prisoner of war in Holland. Merran hoped Magnie would manage all those fish on his own.

“Nixt time du’s aff,” she asked him, “will du tak’ me tae da bear’s island as weel?”

“Yea, I likely could,” Magnie said. “Canna be sure at da bear’ll be yundir, though.”

Merran giggled.

“Tak’ guid care oot yundir, Magnie,” Ruby admonished him as he left. “Da watters oot yundir at Bluemull kin cheenge ithoot ony prior keenin’.”

“Dinna du worry aboot me, Midder,” Magnie assured her. “Am been fishin yun watters fae I wis owld anoff tae hadd a pole. If am no’ back be tae time, send oot a search pairty.”

With that, he set off out the front gate and down the hill, and onwards to the pier.

The hours went by, and Magnie hadn’t come back. The day was still calm and bright blue. Ertie came in for his tea, along with Lowrie and Peter, Merran’s other two brothers. Merran’s sister, Betty, was by this time living and working in Lerwick.

“Whan time did he say he wid be back, Ruby?” Ertie asked. “No lik’ him tae be dis laet.”

“He said tae time,” Ruby replied, as she gazed out of the ben end window towards Bluemull Sound, her brow furrowed. “Dir somethin’ no’ juist aafil right wi’ dis, Ertie. We’ll need tae geng an’ look fir him.”

So Ertie and his two younger sons made their way down to Breckon beach in order to see if there was any sign of Magnie or his boat. After an hour the three of them returned. This time it was Ertie’s turn to furrow his brows. His face had drained of what little colour was left in it post-war.

“Dir nae sign o’ him, or da boat,” he said, his voice heavy with worry.

Merran could feel her heart sink into her boots. She looked up at her mother. On Ruby’s face there had appeared lines that Merran had never seen before. The look on her mother’s face was something she never wanted to see again.

When the family went to bed that night, none of them got a great deal of sleep. The following morning, the search parties were sent out to dredge the sound. All day Ruby paced the floor.

“I dinna understand it,” she said. “Da waddir wis da boannie yisterdee, a beautiful fishin’ day, an da soond wis flat calm. Dey wir nae sign o’ da watters turnin’. Whit could be come at him?”

“I dinna keen, my lass,” Ertie replied, going to her and trying to console her. “A’less dir been a whaal gotten separated fae its pod an’ laandit up here.”

“Wid it o’ gone fir him?” Ruby asked worriedly.

“No’ on purpose,” Ertie explained. “Yun kin worry dem, an dey sweem aboot in a blind panic.”

This did not reassure Ruby, nor any of the children.

There had still been no news when they went to bed that night either. Then, the following day, their neighbour Bertie Fraser came striding up the hill and shouted at Ertie. Ertie called on the family and they all ran down to the beach.

They were greeted by the sight of an upturned little boat being dragged ashore by some of their neighbours. Merran recognised it immediately; it was finished with cream-coloured paint and had a blue trim. When it had been pulled up on to dry land she ran down towards it. As she did, tears left salty tracks down her cheeks. When she reached the boat, she threw herself upon it and the sobs engulfed her. She was so shrouded in her own sorrow she didn’t notice her mother collapse and have to be carried back up the hill to the croft. Finally, she felt a hand on her shoulder and peered up. Bertie’s kind face peered back at her.

“Come alang noo, my bairn,” he said softly. “Du canna lay here aa’ day.”

“Laeve me,” she choked through her sobs. “Juist laeve me.”

“Nah, Merran,” Bertie soothed, “come du, lass. Come hame tae de fokk, dey need de wi’ dem.”

He gathered her up in his arms and carried her back up the hill. Weak from sobbing, all she could do was lean helplessly over Bertie’s shoulder and allow him to take her away from the scene.

The days following were a blur. Ruby spent most of them lying in bed, swallowed by grief. Upon hearing the news of her brother’s apparent death, Betty returned from Lerwick. It was left mostly to her and Merran to keep the house in order and to cook the evening meal although they themselves were grieving. Meanwhile, Ertie, Lowrie and Peter kept the croft going as best they could. Since there was no body to bury, a memorial service was held in the kirk. Magnie had made many friends during his time in the Merchant Navy, and the presence of those who weren’t still away bolstered an already large turnout. Still there was no explanation for how this had come to pass, for how could Magnie have possibly got into difficulty when there was no obvious sign of trouble on the water? The only plausible explanation was Ertie’s suggestion about a distressed stray whale.

Some days after the memorial service, Ruby took all the photographs of Magnie down and put them away in a box, which she then placed in a drawer in the living room. When her mother wasn’t looking, Merran found the box and went through the photographs. Her lost brother gazed steadily out at her from them. Merran could picture the blue of his eyes and the black of his hair even through the sepia tinge of the pictures. She could also envision his smile, mischievous and warm, even though he was straight-faced in many of the photos. Her favourite was one of him at the peat hill from the previous summer, taken shortly after his return from sea. He was wearing the same outfit he’d had on the day he vanished–his blue flat cap, a knitted Fair Isle jumper, dark blue trousers and a pair of rubber boots. He was smoking his father’s pipe and smirking as he did so. Merran compared it to another photo of him in his Merchant Navy uniform. In that one he was straight faced and neatly turned out. She took her favourite one and kept it in her bed, under her pillow. Magnie might have been dead, but she didn’t want his presence to disappear from the house, like those of her grandparents when they passed.

Of course, despite everything, life for the Williamsons had to go on. Betty remained at home for a few months until she was certain that Ruby could manage without her, then she returned to Lerwick. Lowrie, who was fourteen, left school that summer and also remained on the croft to help out his father. Both Merran and twelve year old Peter continued their education. Merran hoped to become a teacher, but despite her academic achievements her father had other ideas.

“Dinna be sae stupeet, lass,” he scoffed at her. “De, a teacher?”

“Oh, but Faedir,” she protested, “I wid love tae…”

“Oh, of coorse,” Ertie sneered, “I sood send de awa’ tae hae an education, an’ den du’ll mairry an’ hae bairns an gie it aa’ up, an hit’ll o’ been a total waste. Du’ll do as du’s telt!”

Merran pleaded and begged, but her father wasn’t for backing down. Her teacher didn’t get much further with trying to convince him, and so Merran, too, was destined to leave school at fourteen like her siblings before her. During this time, Magnie’s boat remained upturned on the spot where it had come to rest on Breckon beach. Steadily the paint peeled and the wood mouldered, and so the little vessel that had served to feed the family so many times fell into disrepair. It made Merran sad–that boat had been Magnie’s pride and joy for the last year of his life. He and his brothers had hoped to eventually save to buy a proper fishing boat together so they never had to go back to the whaling or Merchant Navy. Lowrie and Peter still planned to do this when they found others willing to jointly buy a suitable vessel.

Five years passed, but Merran never walked past Breckon beach without acknowledging her brother’s boat–without a grave it was all they had to remember him by. Sometimes while on the beach she would go and stand with it, and she would feel his presence. Merran sometimes couldn’t help but think of what Magnie would be like now, at twenty-four, had he lived. He had been a handsome and cheerful young man, and had caught the eye of many a lass on the island. Perhaps he would have married one of them, and they would have had lots of children. Merran tried not to cry. It all felt terribly unfair.

The wind began to pick up. Merran shivered and swept her hair out of her face as best she could and pulled her shawl around her. She was turning on her heel to go home when a figure standing next to Magnie’s boat caught her eye. She squinted. It appeared to be a woman examining the boat. Despite having never seen her before, Merran felt drawn to the woman, and decided to descend down the hill to the beach to speak to her.

The whole time that Merran made her way down, the woman never took her eyes from the rotting corpse of Magnie’s boat. She certainly didn’t seem to register Merran’s presence, no matter how close she got. When she was only a couple of feet away, Merran spoke up.

“Hello?” she called.

Hannah can be reached via her Twitter account, @selkiesong, as well as on her Instagram, @tooriekep.