EXCERCISE IN WRITING

The idea here is that you have to construct a story around these phrases. I guess it is practice in being able to to something to order rather than just working from your own imagination.

• Sarah threw the book out of the window.
• On Friday it was all over.
• For years now she had thought of doing this.
• They had ham and eggs for lunch again.
• Bravery, she knew, was often underrated.
• ‘If you even think it, I’ll ….’
• The doorbell rang.
• ‘You’re so beautiful …..’
• It was early afternoon.
• She recalled a particular phrase her mother had once said.
• Beyond the garden wall there was a school.
• Her dress was the colour of wet slates.
• The mirror was set in a gold frame, and she remembered the day he had bought it for her.

Here is the result of my efforts:-

A NEW START – By West Coaster

She had talked it over with her mother on Wednesday. On Friday it was all over.
Before he arrived she looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her dress was the colour of wet slates. The drab colour matched her mood. The mirror was set in a gold frame, and she remembered the day he had bought it for her.
What a tosser, she thought. Him and his stupid gifts. Ludicrous furniture and books on self improvement.

It was early afternoon. The doorbell rang. She opened it.
“Hello Simon, just go through to the kitchen.”
He stepped in and, rather awkwardly, thrust a brown paper package into her hand. “It’s a little present for you.” Without looking at it she laid it down on the table in front of the mirror.
She followed him into the kitchen. “I thought you were going to eat with your parents.”
“I was.” He said. “But they just won’t cut down on their cholesterol. They had ham and eggs for lunch again.”
She pictured him, hectoring his ageing parents about their diet.

“You’re so beautiful, that colour suits you.” He gazed at her with large bovine eyes.
She looked out of the kitchen window at the garden as she mixed a salad for him. At least she could give the condemned man his last meal. Beyond the garden wall there was a school.
His van was parked in the playground. The sign on it’s side read ‘Simons Objects Darts’. The man was a cretin.
He seemed to read her thoughts.
“Please don’t leave me.” He said. “If you even think it I’ll probably kill myself.”
“Oh really Simon. Don’t be so wet, and stop snivelling. It’s over, I’m moving on”. She felt now a feeling of liberation. She recalled a particular phrase her mother had once said.
“Never get involved with a man unless he looks like he’s good for least one orgasm a day”.

She led Simon back to the front hall. There was just one more thing. Bravery, she knew, was often underrated. For years now she had thought of doing this.
“Goodbye, Simon, and here”. She hefted the heavy gilt framed mirror from the wall and gave it to him.
“Goodbye Sarah”. He tottered unsteadily down the path.
Sarah absently picked up the package that Simon had left and went back to the kitchen. She sat in front of the open window enjoying the afternoon breeze. She unwrapped the package, it was a book, its peremptory title shouted from the cover. ‘Start Writing Fiction!’ What a load of old bollocks, she thought. Sarah threw the book out of the window.

THE PERFECT HOUSE

That story, The Big Easy, was going nowhere. I am engaged now in a project to write a story based on pre-written lines. I am finding this difficult. I had an idea to write it as if the story was about writing the story. It idea seemed good in my head but I could not bring it out. Meanwhile I will post the following:


“Oh Jim, it’s perfect. Look at that view, I love it. I’ve always wanted a view of the river but I never thought we could afford it. You are so clever, I’m so lucky to have you for my husband. I’ve just met the downstairs neighbour. She’s so glamorous but she seems nice all the same. She’s coming up now with the key to the roof terrace. Oh that’s the bell, I’ll get it.”

“Jim, this is……”

“Hello Scarlet, I thought you were in New York”

“Hello Jim. I was for a while, after we …..”

“Laura. I’m sorry darling; I’d like you to meet Scarlet, my ex-fiancée.”

Big Easy

I don't know where this is going. I would like to develop a short story but all I have is this atmosphere. I know this bar. It is there on the South Side of Houston. So the easy part was describing it. What happens next?

It was a big room. The waitresses’ arms and legs were decorated with tattooed fantasies and they wore skirts just concealing enough so you had to guess the end of the story. . It was called the ‘Big Easy’ and it lay just outside the Loop on the south side of Houston. The name suggested New Orleans but there was nothing of the frayed grandeur of that city around this section of Houston, it was just frayed. The building was almost a cube, but somewhat wider and deeper than it was high. It wouldn’t have taken an architect to design it, just a builder with a square and a plum line. On the left as you entered the place were three pool tables with a couple of raised benches against the wall behind them, for spectators or players between games. On the right was the stage, and just in front of that a wooden dance floor maybe big enough for about ten jiving couples. There were tables arranged between the dance floor and the bar at the far end of the room opposite to the entrance. Here and there around the room an occasional neon beer sign glowed tastefully, otherwise the walls were decorated with old posters featuring various blues artistes who had passed through. Behind the bar a clutter of liquor and wine bottles sat below a gantry with two rows of optics. Next to the optics a row of beer taps was arranged above a grubby looking stainless steel sink. All in all it looked better in the dark.

I had been coming here once or twice a week for just over three months now, and I was becoming a familiar face to the waitresses, and occasionally I got a friendly nod from one or other of the regulars at the pool tables. It was dowdy but I liked it, mostly because it was a relaxed kind of place and the crowd was neither one thing nor the other, just a mix. Young and old, rich and poor, black and white, and everything in between; middle-aged Harley riders and well pressed young oil traders, labourers and tool pushers, everybody seemed to fit right in. And the music was good, which was why I had come in the first place.

The band on stage now was blowing out Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Broom’. The lead guitarist was a white boy with long, blonde hair. Behind him the rhythm guitarist was about thirty with the look of an Irishman about him. The drummer was a pale skinned black man of indeterminate age, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and the bassist was a stooped, elderly, black man, so immobile you had to look closely to make sure his fingers were moving on the strings. The dance floor was crowded and the people at the bar, and sitting at the tables, were relishing the kid’s performance. I watched him for while and turned back to the bar to pick up my beer. As I turned ……

CROATIAN INTERLUDE

She liked a gargle. She had just told me this, about how she was the wild child in the family, how her mum always worried about her and here she was thirty five years old and still not married and all her friends had settled down and what was going to become of her. I looked at her across the table of the slightly fancy restaurant I had taken her to. Her returned gaze was open and direct. We had just met less than an hour ago on the riva, as the locals called the café bar promenade. I had noticed her earlier in the day when she had walked by among the crowd. She was medium height with a generous figure and her dark hair was a wild tangle of long curls. I noted a strong pair of calves and sandalled feet below a long dark blue skirt. She disappeared in the late afternoon throng and I resumed my people watching.
Then later, on another part of the riva, I saw her again, sitting alone at a table reading a paperback. I couldn’t quite make out the book but I guessed it was English and I wondered if she was also, or an Australian perhaps hitching around Europe. By this time the sun was setting over the hill beyond the harbour, although there was still a comforting warmth rising from the old stones. I debated with myself as to whether I should try and approach her. I was alone in the town and she looked like she would be pleasant company. I wasn’t exactly unattached, neither was I thinking about contriving a pick-up, but it would be a nice change to have someone to talk to.

I sat at the table next to her and tried to observe her without being too obvious. The book lay on the table and I could see it was a John Grisham. As I looked over I noticed that she was watching me quite openly with an amused smile on her face.
- I’m sorry, I said. – Somehow feeling stupid and awkward. - Are you English?
- No, she said, still smiling. I’m Irish. Where are you from?
- Scotland, but I’m working here for a while.
I rose from my seat and moved over to her table.
- Would you mind if I joined you, I said. Sometimes you get desparate for a yarn.
She smiled warmly.
- That’s what I was thinking too.
Her name was Maeve and she was from Cork. She was a social worker, working with handicapped adults. This was her first holiday in a couple of years and she had decided to start the first week on her own then she would meet up with her friends down in Dubrovnik later.

Our conversation drifted around for a while and then coasted to a stop. I wanted to stay with her but I wasn’t sure if she was of the same mind.
- Look , I said. – Have you eaten? Only, there’s a nice fish restaurant just up the hill there and I’m usually eating on my own, so…
She picked up her book and placed it in a bag, smiled at me and said
- Let’s go then.

Now here we were in the restaurant. The food was as good as I had told her. We had shared a bottle of wine and I felt easy in her company.
I studied her face for a while as the conversation lulled. She held my gaze with greenish-brown eyes behind which I could sense a warmth.
- What are you doing tomorrow? She asked.
I thought for a while about what exactly I had to do the next day. There was a busy work schedule, I had to phone home and find out how our youngest had got on at school.
I noticed, as I looked at her, a small mole on her left cheek just outboard of her lips. As she smiled the mole sank into a dimple.
- I don’t know, I said. What would you like to do?

REDUNDANT

Harry sat on a low stool beside his workbench. His toolbox was open in front of him and he was smoking the last cigarette of his last day as a patternmaker. . It was late afternoon and a beam of sunlight shafted through the high window at the end of the workshop, highlighting the dust that always hung in the air. His flat cap was pushed back on his head and he was wearing bib overalls with a tartan working shirt below. His elbows rested on his knees and his sleeves were rolled up. The muscles of his forearms arms stood out, tight and hard.

He was a small man, perhaps five foot six inches tall, lightly built and his grey flecked hair was short and neat. He was forty five years old and he was being made redundant. Patternmakers working in wood were a thing of the past now and the company was closing the pattern shop and the moulding shop. It was cheaper to buy in parts from the Far East than to maintain out workshops with out of date methods. He knew this was true but it made him sick all the same. He looked up at his workmates, tidying up their benches and packing their own tools away. There were only four patternmakers left now, soon to be none. He remembered when this shop had nearly thirty tradesman and half a dozen apprentices. Harry could put a name on every empty bench.

He breathed in through his nose and he noticed now, although he never normally did, the ever present smell of soft pinewood, resin, and glue. He remembered when he started here as a storeboy in nineteen fifty, almost exactly thirty years ago. And he thought of all the men he had worked with over the years, craftsmen, who had taken him under their wing when he was a young apprentice and showed him how to do things right. Some of the tools in the box in front of him were handed down from those old guys, lovely objects of wood, brass, and steel which would never wear out as long as they were cared for.

Harry looked down at his hands. In his right hand was his cigarette and the first two fingers were stained brown with nicotine. He turned his hands over and looked at his palms, the skin hard and calloused from years of chiselling and carving. He had loved this work, this craft, and the company of his workmates, and now he wondered how he would feel on Monday when he had no work to go to.

TIME OUT OF TIME
A Short Story by West Coaster

Rory MacIntyre walked quickly through the narrow lanes. It was June and the monsoon season was at its height. It was nearly midnight and, although it was not raining at the moment, the cobbles were wet and slick underfoot. It was almost completely dark but occasionally the moon shone between dark, racing, clouds. In her note Miyoko had said she would meet him at the Spectacle Bridge and, as he turned the last corner, he saw her there. She was wearing a dark cloak over her kimono and, although her face was half hidden by the hood of the cloak, he knew it was her. Junko, her maid, was standing in a nearby shadowed doorway discreetly awaiting her mistress’ bidding. Miyoko heard his heavy tread on the cobbles and looked up at him as he approached.

“Miyoko-chan”, he said, “you are here. Are you sure this is not too public?”
Miyoko Watanabe, daughter of the provincial governor of western Japan, looked into Rory’s eyes and smiled.
“Do not worry Rory-san, another girl meeting her lover at midnight on the Spectacle Bridge will not arouse too much interest.”
They stood close to each other, not touching. Rory wanted with all his heart to hold her tightly to him but he knew that she would not allow it.
“They are calling me back to Tokyo”, he said. “And then I’m on the next available ship to England.”
“I know”, she said. “My father told me.”
“What will happen with you?” He asked.
“I am to go to Kyoto to live with my aunt until this scandal, as my father calls it, has blown over.”
“Does your father know you are here?”
“I don’t know Rory-san, and I don’t care. I only know I had to see you again.”
Rory saw that she was crying. He made to embrace her but she drew back and turned her head away from him. He waited, and in a moment she turned back , her face composed.

Rory recalled the first time that he saw her at the consulate reception. It was April 1939 and in Europe there was nervous talk of war. Rory’s father, Air Marshal ‘Jock’ MacIntyre, had delayed his retirement in order to strengthen the RAF’s strategic planning department at the War Office. In Japan, for now at least, there was a patina of normality overlying diplomatic relations with Britain, and the consul was hosting this gathering to introduce the new attache for trade. Rory, the new consular assistant, was on official duty.

He remembered looking across the crowded room at the pretty girl in her formal kimono. She was standing alone on the balcony looking out at the old port city. Her face was, he thought, like the most delicate flower and, when he had wangled an introduction, her smile, so unlike other young Japanese women that he had met, was open and direct. She was twenty two years old and the only child of the most powerful man in the western province. Her father, Yasuo Watanabe, was an industrialist, a politician, and an aristocrat. He also saw himself as a moderniser and he had sent his daughter to the United States to complete her education. Miyoko had studied art history in New York. Rory was delighted to meet a young woman who was near to his own age and who also spoke perfect English. Miyoko, in turn, was captivated by this handsome, red-haired Scotsman. They spent the rest of that first evening talking, and she laughed readily at his jokes and the way he affectionately mimicked some of the pomposities of his superiors. Rory loved the way Miyoko spoke, and he gently mocked, while she pretended to be offended, her American accent. It seemed as if they could see into each other’s hearts, as if they had always known each other. He confided to her how his father had wanted Rory to follow him into the Royal Air Force but he had resisted, entering the Foreign Service instead. She told him of her dream, to be able to study art in Venice. She did not want, in spite of her parents’ pleadings, to settle down to life as the dutiful Japanese wife. Her father, she wryly explained, blamed her mother for not being firm enough and her mother blamed her father for encouraging these notions in the first place. Rory knew they had to meet again and she, although bound by convention, encouraged him.

They met discreetly at first and then more openly, although there was always the quiet presence in the background of Junko-chan. One night, some two months after they had first met, she told him to meet her at her friend’s house. When Rory arrived he saw that, apart from Junko, they were alone. Miyoko had said that she wanted to make him tea and, knowing that her friend was away, had contrived this private rendezvous. Rory knew they were both being reckless but he also knew that there was something between them which was somehow fated. They kissed for the first time and, as their lips met, the universe was reduced to only them, and at its centre was this kiss. Junko was gone and they were finally, truly, alone. Miyoko took Rory’s hand and led him from the living room to the adjacent tatame room.
“I love you, Miyoko-chan”, he said when they lay together.
He undressed her, always looking into her eyes, his hands worshipping her perfect, pale, smooth skin. She kissed his face and neck then arched forward, pushing herself into him.
“I love you, Rory-san”, she said. “Please don’t stop.”

It couldn’t last, and in their hearts they both knew it, but they kept meeting, with the ever discreet Junko as a kind of chaperone, but always, eventually, managing to be alone.
“We are not living in the real world Rory-san”, she said to him one night.
“This is time out of time Miyoko-chan”, he said, believing that they could live, for now at least, outside of the real world. “No-one can touch us here, and who knows how things will turn out later. Let us just live this now”.

When her father eventually found out about them he was furious. In the present political climate his daughter’s entanglement with this minor diplomat, this gai-jin, could not be tolerated. The consul was summoned, the ambassador in Tokyo informed. Rory was told his career would be finished if he did not follow orders. The word, it seemed, had also reached his father. Events were moving and Rory was being moved with them as surely as if he was on a train.

Now they were here on the Spectacle Bridge, meeting for the last time.
“I love you Miyoko-chan”, he said.
“I love you too, Rory-san, but this love hurts too much”.
She could not help herself and moved closer to him. Rory wrapped his arms around her as she held her face up close to his. The rain was beginning to fall again. Rory knew then, at last, that there was no such thing as time out of time. There is only time and it washes over you like a wave and then it passes. He knew, because some logic told him so, that some day he would not feel this pain, but at this moment he did not want to believe it. He wanted this ache in his heart to be always with him, because it would be all that was left to him of this time and the love of this beautiful girl, and when the ache ceased then so would life itself. He kissed her and the rain mingled with their tears and the roar of the river rose up and surrounded them like the coming storm.
“Goodbye Miyoko-chan. Sayonara”.
“Goodbye Rory-san”.
She kissed him on the lips one last time. He let her go then and she turned quickly and walked away. Rory stood on the Spectacle Bridge and watched her until she was out of sight behind the small wooden buildings of Nagasaki.

Hello Again

I'm sorry to have been away so long. At the moment I am doing an Open University short course called 'Start Writing Fiction'. This seems a good opportunity to post the fruits of my labours from that.