the bbc national short story award 2011

london: comma press 2011

(rag love was first published in the monthly, issue 63 dec 2010)

‘Trudy wore a tight red dress that morning. It wasn’t an evening gown, but it was long and low-cut and it showed the good and bad of her – ‘

Hyland tells the story of a (presumably) young married couple who have dreamed up a plan to stag a con-trick , with the help of a substantial bribe – one which they cannot afford but have scrimped and loaned for – so that they may fulfill her fantasy of making love in luxurious bed in the penthouse suite of a vast cruise liner whilst it is fleetingly docked in Sydney port.

‘I wanted it because she wanted it, so we could have it together.’

Unsurprisingly the plan is filled with flaws, and like all good tragedies these flaws tend to be deep-set within out heroes.

What this story ultimately lays bare is that fantasies should not necessarily be played out in reality.

‘She was happy, and for a moment, I was happy too.’

The realisation of a fantasy begets the end of a dream.

And what we, and our heroes, painfully learn is that in act of deceiving others we can reveal more than we want about ourselves. And when we recognise that everything we lived for was built on a sand-castle performance then when it collapses there is nothing left to hold onto.

‘On a very hot day, the sight of the boy’s wet footprints on the footpath made me yearn for the relief of that backyard swimming pool,’

A story of roles, performances, and how to fill them. About jealousy, envy, and coveting what others have  - as if this alone will make you content.

‘When we finished, she told me how good it felt, and she sounded like an actress when she said, “It was just perfect.” ‘

One of the troubles with dipping in other people’s pools is that the shallow end is often deeper than you think.

drinking coffee elsewhere

new york: riverhead books, 2003

‘Her hair was a shade of blond I’d only seen on Playboy covers,’

‘She always said she was fat…  large black women wore their fat like mink coats.’

A story of identity of one who does not know with whom to connect, or how.

‘One of her hands curved atop the other to form a pink, freckled molehill on her desk.’

afraid of everyone. isolated. cold. self-reliant.

‘Suddenly I was hard-bitten and recalcitrant, the kind of kid who took pleasure in sticking pins into cats;’

where the longing is for belonging. and there ‘s a need to be in, before you can come out.

‘Heidi was round and soft and had a moonlike face… And lesbians had cats. “Do you have a cat?” I asked.’

a lovebite. honest passionate expressive of a secret vital self, one of which your parents might not necessarily approve, or at least, want to see.

sharp. raw. biting. bruise-like. an uncensored reminder.

‘ “The human penis is one of the most germ-ridden objects there is.” Heidi looked at me unconvinced.’

the dare in a lair.

‘ ” Sleep with him? Then when he makes fun of you, what?  Come pound your head on my door reciting the poems of Sylvia Plath?” ‘

like seeing your reflection. in a mirror. on a ceiling. not knowing what to feel.

‘ “Soft packs remind me of you,” she said. “Just when you think you’ve smoked them all and you think there’s none left, there’s always one more, hiding in that little crushed corner.” ‘

a caffeine hit. darkly sweet. eye-widening. thrilling. affirming. warmly relaxing. pert. alert. bombastic. funk. paring. daring. spank.

‘ ” What are you going to do when you’re finished?” Heidi asked. Sexy question marks of smoke drifted up to the windows before vanishing.’

‘ I remembered the morning of my mother’s funeral. I’d been given milk to settle my stomach; I’d pretended it was coffee. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere.’

Taking something that was intended to be childishly reassuring, warm, comforting and turning it into something adult, something dark and bitter? How readily do we guzzle pub-psychoanalysis?

drinking clinking chinking sinking stinking blinking thinking

coffee frothy sweetly softly dark like toffee

elsewhere is anywhere where not here begins and nowhere is not somewhere that can yet be seen

these ‘Orientation games’:

1. select your game

2. choose a side

3. play

Now, d’ya wanna come in for coffee, or not?

johnny panic and the bible of dreams

london: faber and faber 1979

‘How I envy the novelist!

‘I imagine him, better say her,’

The poet envies the novelist her time and space.

The novelist envies the poet his brevity and speed.

‘She, it seems to me, has all the time in the world. She can take a century if she likes, a generation, a whole summer. 

‘I can take about a minute.’

‘Everything is changed in a minute.’

‘How shall I describe it? – a door opens, a door shuts. In between you have had a glimpse:’

‘The door of a novel, like the door of a poem, also shuts.’

‘The poet becomes an expert packer of suitcases:’

Continually folding and unfolding. Often without moving on.

What two things can fairly be compared, for are not all things only themselves and no other single thing?

Lemons & oranges. Apples & pears.

complete stories

london: faber and faber 1990

‘ “Who that?” he whispered, appearing in the doorway. “I smells fo’ niggers.” ‘

‘ “You oughter be able smell good enough to git our names.” ‘

And here we is again, landing down hard in the deepest of O’Connor’s deep souths.

Now Old Gabriel ain’t no angel but that don’t stop him worryin none about becomin one real soon -

‘ “Ain’t no mistakin’ a wildcat. Ain’t been one ’round here since I was a boy.” ‘ Now there’s one round  here again.

Structured in 3 parts, present day with Old Gabriel, then back with Gabriel as a child when there was last a wildcat aroun, then back to the present day (or night).

Other than two short scenes of dialogue the story occurs almost entirely in the thoughts and fears and preparations and what ifs and courage-rallying defiance of Old Gabriel.

‘It’d jump on them fust; fust Reba then him.’

O’Connor’s trademark cut-throat imagery:

‘It breathed heat and spit wet lime.’

‘Their forks were scraping back and forth over their tin plates likes knife teeth against stone.’

O’ Connor spins the tension and then pulls it taut.

‘Won’t nothin’ to do but wait.The smell was near. Won’t nothin’ for old people to do but wait.it gonna git him tonight. The teeth would be hot and the claws cold.”

They’d a listened to him, they’d done had it by now.’

‘When he die he wanted to be sleepin’ in a bed; didn’t want to be on no floor with a wildcat stuck in his face.’

music for chameleons

london: penguin 1993

‘It was not a shabby place, but a pleasantly furnished, elderly brownstone kept hospital-neat by its owners, two maiden sisters.’

Unsurprisingly for Capote, his anecdotal story and the easy, conversational manner of storytelling make it impossible to infer whether it is embellished memoir or complete fiction.

The narrator, whom we may, or may not, presume is the author lives in a rented room next to the eponymous hero, who receives all manner of visitors and phonecalls to his room ‘often after midnight and as early as six in the morning.’  Our narrator, evidently not wanting to be a scandal-stirrer or cast aspersion on anyone’s character, is quick to make clear that his neighbour ‘was not a drug dealer or a fortuneteller’.

Capote sets his story in  the winter of 1945 – that perhaps points to deciphering the enigma of Mr. Jones more than anything else in this story.

The brevity of this anecdote barely allows for description of place, setting, decor, or indeed very much at all. almost all of the attention is given to building up a picture of Mr. Jones.

‘There was no mistaking that lean, distinctive face, those high cheekbone with the single scarlet star-shaped birthmark.’

The story is set in 3 clear times: the first then – the winter of 1945; several months later; ten years after that. Interestingly, the first the first two scenes are told in the past tense.

‘I moved to Manhattan. Several months later I returned’

The third is recorded in the present.

‘Now it is a zero-cold December afternoon. I am riding in a subway car. There are only a few other passengers.’

What effect does this have on us, the collective reader?

Who keeps up with the Jones?

Indeed, who checks in to a hotel, motel or boarding house as Mr. Jones?

the granta book of the american short story: volume one

london: granta 1992

(edited by richard ford)

‘There is a certain shade of red brick –  a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue – that is my childhood in St Louis.’

Brodkey’s unnamed narrator takes us gently by the hand and walks us through his streets, and their cross-hatched scorings across the landscape of ohis childhood memories.

‘(and a tangible fear that made me feel a falling away inside, like the plunge into the unconsciousness when the anesthetic is given),’

There is a vertiginous feeling that pervades the voice throughout as if he, and we too, are poised precariously on the broken lip of something we should not dare fall into.

‘there was going to come a moment when, like an acrobat, I would have to climb on her shoulders and on the shoulders of all the things she had done for me, and leap out into a life she couldn’t imagine ( and which I am leading now),’

Normally, I would try to extract a punchy sentence, or a line or two, which captures some great poignancy of the story as a whole. But to isolate a line or two would not give a fair impression of what is really at work here.

‘that finally drove me away from any sensible judgment with life to the position that dreams had to come true or there was no point in living at all.If dreams came true then I would have my childhood in one form or another, someday.’

Brodkey builds carefully; line after line, clause upon clause, he leads us up an  staircase, on which we can never quite see far ahead enough to know exactly where we’re going.

He writes passages so beautiful, melodic and taut with yearning that the words seem to tremble on their lines.

‘Edward’s would press his eyelids in spasms of ecstasy; his delirious, taut little boy’s body would fall backward on the soft pillows and bounce and his back would curve;the excited breathy laughter would pour out like so many leaves spilling into spring, or so many lilacs thrusting into bloom.’

When you’ve climbed a few of these staircases it begins to feel like you’re a figure caught in a drawing by M.C.Escher – always climbing yet somewhere unknowingly sinking lower.

‘He was a precocious ad delicate little boy, quivering with the malaise of being unloved.’

Arguably, what he creates is not a state of grace but a state of remorse.

‘the cold winds of insecurity hadn’t shredded the dreamy chrysalis of his childhood. He was still immersed in the dim, wet wonder of the folded wings that might open if someone loved him; he stil hoped, probably, in a butterfly’s unthinking way, for spring and warmth. How the wings ache, folded so, waiting; that is they ache until they atrophy.’

A remorse that aches as painfully as any heartbreak, coupled with the unforgiving burn of never having let himself love.

‘Mother, my teacher, my sister, girls at school, other boys – they all wanted me to love them.

‘But I wanted them to love me first…

‘If I had to love first I would love only perfection.’

As he walks us through his streets, Brodkey’s unnamed narrator takes us gently by the hand not, as we first thought, because we might need to feel more secure and not alone; but because he does.

what we talk about when we talk about love

london: vintage 2009

Carver at his most minimal. The briefest of the brief.

‘I’d say to my wife, “I think I’ll get a Smith and Wesson.” But I never did it’

A short story. Short short. With short sentences. Creating a shortness of attitude. In the tone. Cold even.

‘Melody didn’t like it any better than I did.’

This is deliberate. Of course. Though whose deliberation we cannot know. At least from this version. Carver or Lish.

‘His name was Ross and he had six kids. He walked with a limp from a gunshot wound his first wife gave him.’

My least favourite of Carver’s. I have to say. It feels mean where others feel rich. In so many ways.

‘She went out to the kitchen to do it while I waited until I heard running water.’

I’m not sure it mines the depths that others reach. Or strikes wonder.

‘It was a Friday noon and he was fifty-four.’

Nonetheless, there is an icy truth that colours the cold. It matches the polar blue of a broken heart.

‘ “Honey,” I said to Myrna the night she came home. “Let’s a hug a while and then you fix us a real nice supper.”

in-flight entertainment

london: jonathan cape 2010

Simpson brings another of her quirky, entertaining, light and comic stories that ring deeper and truer with each reading. She seems to have a wonderful control of every diverting tactic – each of which speaks quiet volumes that amplifies the sound of what is not being said, and therefore, what is actually going on. Other people’s conversations, phone calls, a view out of a window, the personification of gardens and their flowers all lend subtle but powerful colour and texture to the picture she paints for us. A picture that is complex and fascinating.

‘Her mobile ringtone cut in , a jaunty jerky samba, and instantly she was transported from cold-eyed fury to smiles and coos of delight.’

‘her features showed in her face like fruit, a mouth that brought cherries to mind, or, when she yawned, strawberries.’

‘ “What?” said Barry, and suddenly he was blushing like a maiden.’

‘The two of them were tinderbox touchy, gigantically flinty.’

‘Nearby stood a bush of peonies with big pink faces, amorous and Elizabethan in their high-coloured finery.’

‘ “You don’t believe me, do you,” he said helplessly.’

the doll

london: virago 2011

‘Most people had their own pews, and those who had not, generally found it very difficult to get a seat at all.’

‘The world is so full of glorious opportunities to-day… we have every chance to better ourselves, to improve our minds, to give the best in exchange for the best.’

‘Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify Thy Glorious Name, evermore praising Thee, ‘

‘The vicar nodded his approval – ‘

‘No, you have nothing to be frightened of.’

‘And now to God the Father…’

collected stories

london: vintage 2008

‘Everything was blue and gray.’

‘Trees were pencil sketches on the lavender mist.

‘That was when they heard the bells; church bells, thin and feminine in tone, quavering as the wind changed.

‘ ” Listen,” said Murphy. ” Don’t that sound nice?” ‘

‘ That was the word.”

‘Church bells on misty mornings were things you forgot sometimes, like fragile china cups and women’s hands.’

‘hear nothing except the faint, silver monotony of the bells. Remember this. Remember every second of it.’

How could i ever forget.

Thank you. Thank you all.