All stories

“Oh shit, I haven’t switched the photos around”, Ceri said. “Quickly delay her”, and disappeared into the lounge.

“No don’t leave me, balls….Hi Constance, lovely to see you”. I stammered my greetings in an overly friendly voice, several octaves higher than normal. Her fingers were dry and flaky on my lips as I bent to kiss them. Another ancient custom she couldn't let go. I could smell a sort of putrid, stale aroma, like wet clothes left in the dryer for days. Constance was tall and gaunt, a stooped crook of a woman, more rigid pole than human flesh. Her skin seemed impossibly thin, as if they had ordered the wrong skin for her body and god and his angels had just desperately pulled it over to fit, before shouting no refunds and flinging her down to earth.

She would never have been a child,i mean not a proper child, too regal for antics. Whenever I asked Ceri about her mum, she always described her exactly as she appeared now. As if age was immaterial to her, she did not age because she was time itself. Eternally ancient. Ceri appeared from her last minute photo swap and gently kissed her mother's cheek.

“I'll get the kettle on”, she said disappearing again.

“Lovely to see you Daryl. Are you going to take my coat?” Constance’s voice was coarse, of course. I smiled and hung the ancient anorak on the hook. She had ascended into the front room, and stood as still as a painting, a queen in waiting.

“Constance, would you care to sit down? I asked

“Why thank you.” I swear she creaked as she sat.

I saw her inspecting the changes, the newly painted door-frame to the kitchen. Door closed for now; one shock at a time. I saw her gaze sweep across the room to the wonky photo-frame. Behind the recently jammed in photo of Ceri and Constance from our wedding, I knew there was another photo of Ceri and her dad laughing. The gaze paused a moment and then continued onwards.

“I’ll just see how Ceri is getting on” I said and backed out of the room, keeping the door as closed as possible.

“Oh god. Are you sure about this” I asked.

Ceri was gently hitting her head against the cupboard. “What else can we do, those ungrateful bastards?”

She was referring to the children of Prof. Peter Thronbuck, who on the recent death of their father had put not just the spanner but the whole toolbox in the works, when they announced that the house had been left to them, not to Constance, much to her surprise and our dismay. It wasn't meant to be like this. When Ceri’s dad had died a few years back, we had gratefully inherited the house. The house that Ceri had grown up in with her parents battling away, and that had also been both battle and Constance free for the past twenty years. Until now that was. Like a queen exiled, who had quietly built an army of regret and bitterness, that now swept through my land, to restore her to her throne. I was powerless to stop it. I added an extra sugar to her tea. Perhaps a few more of these each day would be the start of my usurping, but I highly doubted it.

We have a saying in Zushi: May the backs of dragons guide you safely to shore.

Well, that’s a lie. It’s my saying. The simple people of Zushi could never be so swift with language.

Sometimes I whisper it so that it sounds more enticing.

Ai makes fun of me.

“May you ride your mighty dragon to shore in bliss!” she says to me and giggles like a spoiled schoolgirl as we sit and watch television. No prompt. No discussion. Just unfiltered rudeness!

“Ai-chan, stop it! You know how much I wish to ride on the backs of dragons one day!” I frown at her, fold my arms, and pout. Her eyes go wide and her cheeks redden. This pleases me and I show her my white teeth.

The two of us are sitting in our flat on a grey futon we bought from Ikea. They have one in Tokyo-Bay and we visit there just to sit on their futons. Last time we visited, we left with this futon and two catalogs for future purchases. One now sits near the toilet and the other sits on the coffee table—also from Ikea—next to a photo of Ai and me hugging during last spring’s town festival.

Ai and I are best friends. We met at the age of five at shōgakkō. We were the smallest in the class and the youngest. On the first day of school, a boy told me I had funny elbows. Ai told him he smelled like her obaasan. He smelled his shirt and walked away crying. Ai and I have been friends for thirteen years now.

“Hey, Elle-san, hand me that wrench behind you.” Ai was saying to me as I reminisced about the blossoming of our friendship.

“Wrench? What for? Are you about to fix something? And why is there a wrench on the couch?” I grabbed the tool from behind my head and tossed it next to her.

“I’m going to whack you with it for sleeping in late and missing your interview!” Ai held the metal weapon in her hand like a crazed murderer.

“Ai-chan, get a grip! I rescheduled it. I told you this already.” I puffed out my lips, wondering why my sweet Ai was so upset.

“You cannot miss this interview! Yoko-san will only give you one chance.” Her voice softened and she put the wrench down.

“Your sadness will ride the waves of dragons one day, Elle-chan. I promise.”

I said nothing but there were tears in my eyes. I was not ready to speak of the sadness.

“What were you fixing with that wrench, anyway?” I changed the subject before I tasted my tears.

“Our bikes. I was tightening the wheels. They’ve been sitting there all winter. It’s almost springtime and we’ll want to ride to work together.” She looked so pleased with herself. She loves to fix the future’s problems.

“Will you drive me to my interview on Wednesday?” I took the wrench from her and placed it in my lap.

“Take my car. I am off on Wednesday. I will sit and wait for my dragon. A big, black dragon with a shiny red eye that spits fire!” Ai laughed like an aroused flower.

I played with the wrench in my lap, wondering if I should smack her kneecaps.

A hug from mum could make the whole world go away. “Oh Spanna”, she would murmur, or maybe call me “Spans”, and then wrap me in her arms and make everything seem alright. The nickname came from school - kid said something stupid, he was a spanner. When your name is Anna and you spend your life tripping over your own feet, or clocking a kid in a wheelchair with your schoolbag, what else are the kinds going to call you?

I didn’t mind it from mum, and I didn’t mind it from Andy either, but Andy’s dad?

Andy and me have been together for three years, and here it is at last, our first house. A fixer-upper, my mum called it. Shithole, is how Andy’s dad put it, but he did fetch out his toolboxes and climb into his paint spattered overalls, to give us a helping hand, as he put it. Mum and I laughed about that. Imagine if Hitler hadn’t shot himself. Suppose he escaped Berlin but then fled, not to Argentina, but to Pinner, where he lived out his days running a little house renovation business on the side before one day passing the torch – and all of his people skills – down to Andy’s dad.

I was tea-girl. I was also paint-stirrer girl, and crap picker upper girl, and bacon sandwich fetcher, and move this, get that, no not there, there, THERE WHERE I’M POINTING.

And when I was trusted to something by myself? When I cocked it up? Andy was there with a hug, to murmur Spanna in a way that made it all better. Andy’s dad overheard, but strangely – for him – barely even a smirk. Perhaps I’d jaded him with all my other DIY screw ups.

Of course not. We went round Andy’s parents for tea and Andy’s dad disappeared for ages into the shed, finally emerging in triumph with a battered old tool that he presented to me solemnly.

‘It’s for you, the DIY girl. Start of your own toolbox.’

It was an old rusty spanner. Andy and I looked at each other. We knew what it meant. Andy’s mum cooed in delight, and she made us pose for a picture of him presenting it to me – “look lovely in a frame, that will”.

Anna’s Spanner, and that became the call, whenever something went wrong or was misplaced – fetch Anna’s Spanner! Even Andy took to doing it. Couldn’t find his hammer? Anna, where’s your spanner? Spilt some paint on the hall floorboards? Check out Anna’s spanner, with its super absorbent coating of rust flakes.

I had a good day working in that house if I only had to fetch my spanner eight or nine times.

Andy wasn’t there that afternoon when his dad started shouting as though the house was on fire. I went on with making his tea (just the way he didn’t like it, from the face he always pulled when he sipped it), Andy’s dad screaming more and more frantically for me to fetch my spanner. I eventually drifted upstairs to the bathroom to find Andy’s dad red faced and panting, his overalls gone dark with water, and pools of water beginning to trickle between the floorboards to the freshly painted ceiling below. Andy’s dad had both hands clasped around the end of a piece of copper that was protruding from the wall, water oozing between his fingers.

“Gooal!!! Yes!!! Get in!!!”

Karl hugged Robbo, Robbo hugged back. It had all been worth it.

It had looked dodgy for a while it was fair to say.

Asking the Missus if he could go to Madrid for the Champions League final five minutes after accidentally killing his Mother-In-Law, for example. That was a quandary.

What had happened was, he’d been round putting some photo-frames with pics of the kids up for the old lady whose name was Muriel. He’d had a few tools on the top of the stepladder. Then that bloody cat had jumped up onto the bottom rung wobbling it, a big spanner had fallen off and slammed straight into Muriel’s temple killing her instantly in her chair.

He’d always meant to broach the game that afternoon, while the Missus was having lunch with her mates in town. A well-timed text. This slightly complicated things though. Made it more important to establish the principal quickly.

Things like people dying made the Missus unpredicatable. It was even possible she’d do something silly like organise the funeral for the same day as the final or something. He knew how she was.

So he’d clear the trip first then tell her the bad news when she got home. If he booked the flights in the meantime, they’ed be harder to cancel.

He’d phoned Robbo and told him to come over quick. Robbo was his partner in the decorating business, a specialist in restorations and a fellow Reds fan.

Muriel had a spanner-shaped bruise on her temple and blood on her cardi.

Karl reckoned the Missus would be narked if she thought he was involved. That was the sort of thing that, illogically, in his opinion, might endanger the whole trip

Much better, if he could make it look like, what was it called? Natural causes.

So they set to work on Muriel’s restoration.

Make up, a clean cardi, prop her in her chair with a bag of mintos hanging from one hand.

Bob’s your uncle.

Robbo had just left when the Missus arrived. Good professional job.

However then things had got sticky.

She made quite a scene, holding Muriel in her arms and weeping and wailing, crazy really, until some of the make-up came off.

Then she’d gone hysterical and called the police, accusing him of allsorts.

He’d tried to explain but it ended up with him and Robbo being arrested.

There were no tvs in the police cell where he was being held so the lawyer had advised him that if he really wanted to see the game at all, the only way would be to plead guilty to manslaughter, avoid a lengthy trial and make sure you got a good chair in the prison common room.

All things considered, he’d rather have been in Madrid, he’d rather not be about to divorce, or be starting a ten stretch, he didn’t even have anything against Muriel, he’d liked her.

But for a while he’d thought he wouldn’t even get to see the game and now here he was with his best mate, watching Liverpool winning the Champions League!

Yes It had all been worth it

After all, as the great Bill Shankly said, “Football isn’t a matter of life and death, it’s much more serious than that!”

Someone is coming. I can hear footsteps outside my door, the shadow of boots in the chink of light at the bottom. They stride, confident, then hesitant at the last. The footsteps stop.

I wait between these crumbling walls, watching dust motes dance in the sickly sunlight that forces its way in through the creepers and climbers wrapping my windows in a green-hued death grip.

The handle rattles, trying to turn, but I grasp it, holding fast then slam my body into the peeling, rotting door. The boots step back at that. The handle stops turning and I hear breathing now, hot and heavy, inches from where my face presses into the splintering wood.

“Jim, I need the keys for the second bedroom. I think something’s got in there.”

The voice is a man’s and I can hear the slight edge of fear under his confident call. He knows that, whatever I might be, I’m no trapped animal.

In the end they shove their shoulders to the door, which gives, this time, with no resistance. I step back, blending in with the shadows in the darkest corners. They don’t see me, but one of them, I think, knows I’m there.

They have heavy boots and tool belts at their waists, dangling hammers and spanners and measuring tapes. They are here to rip out the soul of my beautiful house and turn it into something cold and clean and modern for the latest family who have bought it.

They will smash and scrape and hew and cover until nothing of mine remains. My house has stood empty and decaying for decades, nearly a century now, growing older and wilder and no-one ever questions why it has never been restored before.

I watch as they violate my bedroom, opening cupboards and rifling through my drawers. One finds my photograph in its tarnished frame and props it up on a shelf. It’s me on my wedding day. I smile shyly at the camera with eyes full of hope and naivete, the closest I have ever been to pretty.

“Christ” says one “she’s a fright. Looks like my mother in law on a bad day.” The other barks a cursory laugh and measures my windows. They both freeze when the frame flies across the room to land with a clatter on the floor. Neither speaks, but one shoots a glance into my corner.

When the door slams shut in the stillness, though, they pass wary glances at each other. I can hear their hearts beating faster, see the pinpricks of sweat beading on their upper lips. How much of me, I wonder, can these two stand?

Less than the last lot, I discover. I choose the one who suspects more than he sees and draw my face closer to his, watching him shudder. When I whisper, lovingly, into his ear he drops his hammer, stammers an excuse and hurries away down the stairs, followed swiftly by the other.

They won’t be back. They will find an excuse, the building is unsound, or there’s just too much work to make it viable. They will tell the owners they would be better to cut their losses and sell. A money pit. They’re sorry, but what can they do?

Powdered wigs, beauty marks, heaving bosoms, pox ridden harlots, corsets and velvet jackets. These are the things that spring to mind when I hear the word “restoration”. My mother-in-law on the other hand thinks immediately of currant buns, chipped tea cups, raspberry jam, and egg sandwiches. These are the things that she and her cabal of do good friends sell at jumble sales and fetes to raise money for the restoration of the church roof.

It makes life awkward for me. At parish meetings, when the conversation comes round to the restoration fund, I’m imagining Count Edward StJohn-Smyth dribbling over Betty Golightly’s ample décolletage whilst shouting “Pshaw, tis a buxom wench you are young Betty”. Meanwhile mother-in-law is making eyes at the Deacon and asking if there might be an extra fold away table for the weigh the cake competition.

Please don’t get me wrong, I understand that the restoration of the church is important. I try my very best to be supportive. At last summer’s school fete I spent 5 hours in charge of the “Hit the Nails in the Log” stall. This requires participants to hammer as many nails into a log in 1 minute as they can. At the end of the day the winner gets to keep the hammer. It was a blazing hot day and I had no shade. I had to deal with several accidents, one of which resulted in a broken thumb. This year we decided to modify this stall, so there will be an “Undo the Bolt” competition and the winner can get to keep the spanner, generally considered to be a less dangerous implement.

So I do get involved, but I can't seem to totally immerse myself in the mind numbing detail of planning the next Beetle Drive. For god's sake I don't even know what that is, but I do know it requires me to hand-write posters to be distributed around the village. I offered to print them but mother-in-law said “that would be the easy way out and the road to victory is paved with obstacles so we need to be repugnant"...she means resilient but her spoonerism is apposite.

However, I get bored and have a tendency to launch myself into imaginary landscapes. My fantastical sojourns can be triggered by anything, a word, an action, an object. The Deacon pointed to the steeple the other day and next thing I knew I was being ravaged by Ralph Fiennes dressed as a Nazi.

The coffee morning at Mrs Brownlow’s and the framed photo of her cat had me lounging on a chaise long wearing a pink fur trimmed chiffon negligee twin set with a long haired moggy purring on my lap. Perched beside me on a stool was a pretty young blonde man, scribbling furiously as I dictated my latest work of titillating popular fiction.

Most of my daydreams involve some kind lustful behaviour. When sitting next to the mother of one's husband that can have a quite a discombobulating effect. It will all be easier soon. The Roof-o-meter in the church has nearly reached its target. Only one more whist drive and the roof will get its lead flashing. Flashing........o’h Deacon!