“The pocket watch in the window. Is it a Ballian?” I asked. “Indeed, sir, a Ballian.” “How old?” “Twelve years.” “And its provenance?” “From a master, sir.” “May I examine the piece?” He took the watch from the shop window and passed it to me. It was clear a master had finished it, for the brass was rendered with delicacy and the glass had a curve and quality seen only in the finest lenses. However, I had seen a hundred pieces with such a finish and none of them were a quarter the price of this Ballian.
The story is short, very short, and tightly focused. With that delightful quality of a type of short story, nothing much happens. An English family of rural labourers, father, son, mother, and baby daughter, walk over a hill. The father, 'slightly drunk', berates 'his little son' for losing a sixpence. I don't want to spoil it by saying much more, but if you have ever heard someone being relentlessly, repeatedly berated by someone whom they cannot answer back, you will appreciate the awful, sustained oppression in this tale.
Having diligently followed the instructions in Chapters 5 and 6, you will now have more money than you know what to do with. One opportunity open to you is temporal tourism: how much better it is to stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other spectators and watch the brave gladiators fighting for life and glory, than to traipse around the ruins the Colosseum has become, guided by a man with neither the wit nor the imagination to describe the wonders that once happened there, your senses numb to the heat, the dust, and the excitement?
She was naked, standing on the flat metal plate in her tiny apartment, and all I could see were her eyes. Caitlin. My closed, dead past. Resurrected, and about to disappear again, forever.
It started with a phone call, like always. My number’s in the freesheets, amongst the whores and the scams. I didn’t recognise the voice as I jotted down her address. She still wasn’t sure, she said. Could I come around tomorrow anyway, talk things through?
Of course, I said. No problem. It wasn’t like I could pick and choose.
Annalisa sighed. "Always takes so long, doesn't it?"
The woman looked up. She was probably called Tamara, Annalisa decided, or Hermione. One of those Kensington names. What on earth was she doing here, in the shabby waiting room of the Hackney ante-natal unit? She looked like she should be brunching at the Woleseley, not slouching on a green, foam-filled NHS chair beneath a dog-eared anti-smoking poster.
Besides, Tamara certainly wasn't pregnant. Her grey cashmere dress skimmed an extravagantly concave stomach. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of bluebottle shades, and in her hands she clutched a large leather handbag, the kind Annalisa had seen in glossy magazines, usually with a four-figure price tag attached.
I was born at some point in the nineteen-sixties. I’m English, I’m from the north of England. My parents – I’m of unknown parentage. I’m learning, slowly but surely. Everyone here has been very helpful.
‘Do you remember it? Any of it?’ Doctor Wainwright asked me this morning.
I thought hard. I did not remember. I shook my head.
How to explain about Mr Funny? It's no easy task. Was Mr Funny a kind man? Was he a humanitarian man? Perhaps only in the sense that he'd sometimes talk about kidnapping our business rivals, putting them 'in a frikkin' hog oven', then serving them up with 'mash potatoes and apple sauce, the goddamn, ingrate, limey faggots.'
We are separated into lines and herded onto the ship two by two, like Noah’s animals. Only not to be saved: we are beyond redemption, they say. As we file below decks into the dark and stench of the hold, I am followed by the darting eyes and whispering voices of those who think they know my story. Who have read it in the penny bloods or heard it sung at Tyburn fair. I keep my head down and my shoulders hunched forward. I will myself to become invisible, as I once was.
Archaeologists, theologians, historical scholars and general religious freaks have eagerly awaited the release of writings found on a stone tablet recently unearthed near Mount Ararat. What follows is an exact translation plus or minus 20 percent for accuracy from some strange biblical language into Hebrew then into Turkish then into Greek (just for fun) and finally into English. The Stone Tablet’s heading, which was found to use the traditional Times New Roman font in bold, reads:
Morality Laws for Wild Animals Aboard Noah’s Ark aka: How to Survive 40 days and 40 nights without incurring the Wrath of God.
It was called a ‘paddling pool’ on the box but it had ambitions. The picture showed a whole family actually sitting inside the pool. Mother, father, daughter and son, each with water lapping at their waists. Well, straight off, her own family was wrong; three children, no father and her wrung-out mother. And unlike her own, the legless family were smiling, their arms raised in competition to catch a fun little beach ball. Caitlin felt only disgust.
An alarm pricked her to half-consciousness. It sounded like the school bell, but from a strangely muffled distance. The thought that she had fallen asleep in class skittered across Honor’s brain. But then a roaring took over: the memory-echo of a great smashing whirl, of earth upheaving, and the present cyclone of raging wind outside. Of wind inside.
Earlier this afternoon at 3pm, the head of my Assistant Director of Communications exploded. The incident shut down production for at least 45 minutes, while the rest of the Communications Department waited for the Cleaning Crew to remove the biological matter and sterilize the office to working standards. Total collateral damage was calculated at one computer terminal, three computer monitors, the all-in-one printer machine, two blazers, two blouses, and one pair of trousers (the two managers seated nearest to him). It was an exceptionally messy episode.
My father was never happy in work. His one great glory came when I was fourteen, about the time I started playing jazz seriously. He was a shift manager at a fancy resort hotel. He wore a mustache then, dyed and combed, and a lemon polo, and wandered the carpeted halls of the complex with purpose, straightening pictures, rearranging the continental breakfast, and playing grab-ass with the maids. Somehow he lasted three years. They hated to let him go. Without being able to say what he actually did around the place, everyone seemed to love him.
“You could do some management training,” my boss says, handing me my contract for renewal. We are expanding and there are opportunities opening up in testing the machines that test the smartcards,”
“… that live in the house that Jack built,” I say.
I got a job at this craft beer bar. They stocked over fifty different beers, of all types. Porter, Pale Ale, IPA, Stout, Bitter, Belgian stuff. The boss was intense in the interview. I thought it would just be the regular conversation; you’ve worked in a bar before yes? When can you start? Great. See you Monday. But this guy, he started telling me about how a revolution was happening in beer. How it was changing, how taste was king and we should all get on board the beer bus towards flavour utopia.
The job description on Danny Bannerman’s new business card was very straightforward: it said ‘Writer’. Not that Danny really needed a business card. He had a few regular clients who kept him in enough work, and he lived simply and inexpensively, so it wasn’t as if he had to actively market his skills. In fact he hadn’t thought of getting a business card at all; it was just that one afternoon he had half an hour to spare before his train at Victoria Station and there was a machine on the concourse which produced them.
Greetings, dearest friend. Your letter was a welcome respite from the stultifying boredom of life here in sleepy Melikhovo: the unwanted visits from dull relatives and Mamasha’s constant fussing and baking. If I have to eat another slice of that woman’s legendary sponge cake, “oh and maybe a glass of tea with that dear?”, I will be forced to take out my Balkan dagger, the same you once coveted, with the blade curved upwards like a man’s excitement, and run her through.
From this angle she could be anyone. Face obscured by pillow and strands of sticky hair. The curve of her waist as it balloons out into her hips, a novice attempt at blown glass. I used to think she looked like a cello, but now it's slightly more double bass. Not that I’m moaning, no sir, not me. I like a bit of purchase. If I squint hard enough and I mean really squint she could even be Shakira. Bet Shakira wouldn't tut if I accidentally pinned her excess arm skin to the bed with my elbow. In fact, I bet Shakira doesn't have any excess arm skin so I imagine this probably wouldn't be an issue. And her hips don't lie. Although I'm fairly sure Karen's don't either. Unless there’s something she’s not telling me.
The baby monitor squeals and my hand jerks to find it, pulling me out of a dreamless, unsteady sleep. Before I know where I am or what’s going on, I’ve clutched the receiver to my head and I’m zeroed in on the source of the noise: May, my baby daughter, is crying in the dark. The sound rings in my head and down my spine; it cramps my stomach and makes my veins clench. She’s calling out because she’s scared or hurting. Something’s wrong and her daddy has to be there for her.
I caught sight of myself almost naked in the mirror earlier today. If I’m honest it was more of a deliberate peek. I’d just arrived at the hotel, you see, and thought I’d have a shower before I was due to be picked up. I didn’t like what I saw, though. My hair has started to recede, and I have acquired bags under my eyes that look large and almost droopy. My body is no longer supple, my chest hair is turning white and I seem to be developing breasts – what I think tonight’s audience would call “moobs” if I have the terminology correct. Thin spindly legs emerge from old-man’s y-fronts.
Two statues gaze at each other across the London skyline. One, perches high above a Victorian telephone exchange, now converted into Artists' studios, and is in the image of Mercury, the winged messenger. The other stands proud but unregarded atop the cupola of a Church, and represents either one of the nine Muses, or more probably Ariadne - the detailing is rather uncertain.
Liar Katy Darby's debut novel, a Victorian drama called The Whores' Asylum, was published by Fig Tree (part of Penguin) in February 2012. It's had some nice reviews in The Independent on Sunday, the Sunday Times and Metro so far.
SAMMY WINS THIRD IN BRIDPORT 2011
Congratulations to LL author Sammy Wright who came third in the prestigious Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2011: he owes everything to Liars' League. Everything. Especially his first-born son ... More here
OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANNEXE MAGAZINE!
They came, they saw, they asked us a bunch of interesting questions. Interview by Nick of Annexe Mag with Katy of LL: here
