'As Yet Untitled' Extract 2

A Liverpudlian suburb.

Old photos scattered over the table, Hilda’s eyes glowing like strange owl bulbs in the light of her laptop. A small white TV stands on a small, rickety chest of drawers in the corner of the room, blaring Wimbledon. Andy Murray is playing Djokovic as Edith sits in her chair by the window, a cup of tea in her hands, feet in burgundy velvet slippers curled up behind her. I immediately check for signs of loneliness around her watery eyes as a tiny Andy Murray runs back and forth across her glasses, but she looks perfectly content, if a little dazed. There is something vaguely worrying about my immediate assumption that my old and wizened aunt must be locked in a cage of sadness. I picture an old mind struggling to reconcile her burgundy velvet isolation with happy moments in her past. I suppose it would make me feel a bit better if the grey days I know will follow could be somehow twisted into a gorgeous plotline. My angst is slowly de-knotted, my great aunt’s senility overcome, as we engage nightly over Earl Grey and tales of her childhood.

I trudge upstairs into the bedroom to find Hilda spread out generously on her single bed, her Kindle high above her head and bits of paper with scribblings about Jess Rankin piled high on the bedside table. It’s a very Hilda-at-night-time scene, one that would continue in the same vein until at least four in the morning if I wasn’t bunking by her side. It’s quite comforting, really, to think that she’d rather be in her own room too. This has something to do with my phobia of sleeping at friends’ houses in Primary School, in the days when my eyes would fill with tears when 9pm came and someone else’s mother helped me brush my teeth, and something about the sight of my little friends’ pink or silk pyjamas would seem horribly alien and terrifying. In those moments, I felt that nothing could be lonelier than wishing to go home while my friends plotted midnight feasts of chocolate that fizzed in their mouths and Rainbow Drops that stuck in their teeth and kept their eyes open past eleven. I never felt more different as I lay in the darkness, my face hot and heartbeat heavy as I struggled not to cry.

At least Hilda won’t pester me for ghost stories or give me vinegar crisps that burn my lips too late at night.

‘Hello, just ignore me,’ I say, crumpling down onto the creaky single bed. The sheets are a strange, starchy, almost thatched material, with a 70s wallpaper pattern. Brown and orange.

‘Mmm… Just finishing my P.D. James.’

The same P.D. James she started yesterday morning, I think. Hilda reads 100 pages an hour, taking everything in. Her assertiveness in everything she does allows for this level of concentration when reading. It wouldn’t be worth her while if it was any different. I think of happy afternoons spent in the Borders café, endless streams of Paninis and hot chocolate and wedges of rocky road as she devoured chapter after chapter of whatever chunky, thick book she’d bought herself. I could have anything I wanted, and would always choose a poster-paint Jacqueline Wilson paperback, which she’d swap for the hardback as she approached the counter, ignoring my father’s protests as they tumbled from my mouth and assuring me the hardback version was ‘much nicer’. As I skirted my fingers over the laminate illustrations of the cover, feeling their contrast with the matte background, I privately agreed.

'Hatty'

 This is a short story I wrote for a writing class a few years ago. At the start of this academic year I was feeling a bit lazy, a bit project-less, so I spent one mad evening converting the story into a short play, with three characters: The Narrator, Hatty, and James. The piece was selected for performance at the STaG (Student Theatre at Glasgow) theatre festival, held for three consecutive nights at Stereo, Glasgow. My friend Kate and I collaborated to direct the play, holding auditions and developing the script to make the story work as a piece of theatre. The photo above is mid-rehearsal, with our brilliant actors Angus, Sarah, and Richard - who played James, Hatty and the Narrator.


                                                                        Hatty

‘You give me just a taste so that I want more
Now my hands are bleeding and my knees are raw
Now you've got me crawling, crawling on the floor
And I've never met a girl like you before…’

Edwyn Collins – ‘Girl Like You’

* * * * *

NARRATOR: Our own little butterfly. I’ll tell you her story, though I skip many night-times, many moons and stars and men. She wrote her own version, you see, but it was shaded with pastel colours – too many dusty pinks and russets where it should have been all black. For everything must be beautiful on paper. One blank sheet and she can shade it any way she likes. So I will tell you the tale of the one evening the mask slipped. She fell in love – but the broken cannot see love – and broken she was… as were the rules. She relished the chill that ran through her bones as she stepped from her flat, a crumbled Glasgow tenement on Melrose street, nestled somewhere behind Queens Crescent. Her senses were sharp and vicious with the cold as she turned to regard the building in its decayed splendour. A single light burned dull crimson in the highest windows, dark curtains parted just enough to reveal the strange and beautiful interiors within. Twisted mannequins adorned with silver and, a dusty black spinning wheel casting spidery shadows on the walls, chased by Oscar the tabby cat, impervious to their stillness.

A fleeting glance to her right set her nerves ablaze, and her fingernails drew blood against her wrists, the imprint of the streetlights forcing her from her reverie. The lights and cries of Friday night in the city repulsed her in their simplistic vulgarity, for she dealt only in secrets, and the quiet wonder of things untold. Yet, in the twist of her revulsion, tonight’s task seemed easier. She could hear the faint screechings of her distant commanders, somewhere in the back of her mind; the threatening plea for action stirring her into the night.

Avoiding the sequins and screams of the main roads, she detoured slightly in her chosen route, finding herself in the furtive, inky grandeur of Blythswood Square. Branches swayed against a purple sky, as in the distance, she heard the click of heels, a cackle, the dull thud of a car door. As she walked on, the shadows of the square curled themselves around her body, beckoned from the clandestine places of the night, where whispers and pleas shivered gently and were lost. She had been here before, in another time, when deals were harsher, and her vengeance honey-sweet. Pausing, she heard the screams again - their orders - louder and more urgent, and knew she had lingered too long. Her nails embedded in her palms, she slid onto Sauchiehall Street, and into the stark warmth of the people who had yet to fall between the cracks.

This night, her choice was immediate, and easy. He was tall, with dark scruffy hair and that ruffled, ‘just-out-of-bed’ look that has fuelled heartache and self-compromise among women for centuries. He carried his lean body with effortless grace, and his shirt clung to him the way it should. His clothes spoke of inherent good taste, yet were not chosen to do so. A smile lingered on his lips long after he had finished laughing, and his eyes were the colour of her bathwater, framed with long, sooty lashes. She watched as he stood at the ironically ‘kitsch’ juke-box, eventually settling on a song with a jangling, twisting introduction, prompting a drunken nostalgic cheer from his friends.

‘Never met a girl like you before…’

He danced, turning slowly, with his pint glass aloft. The pink blossom of excitement spread from her neck to her cheeks as she thought how rewarded she would be, when she had changed him forever, made him vulnerable, her own. She stood in the dark space separating the toilets from the bar, biting her lips hard to bring the blood to the surface, a technique inducing an effect far superior to that of any lipstick against her flawless white skin. The synthetic tang of bad cocaine was beginning to fade from the back of her tongue, the bridge of her nose. The capillaries lining her nostrils were largely severed and torn, a nod to the varying levels of rot and decay masked by her porcelain outer shell.

A glint of silver in the dark corner as she drew her hair pin from inside her 40s coat. Her dark, gently fragranced hair swept into an elegant bun, loose curls licking her neck, the black of her pupils pulsing in time to the music. She would be happy to stay here, in the shadows, a dark wallflower thriving quietly from the lives and laughter of others. But - as she had decided long ago - that lifestyle is better suited to the ugly, lonely and deranged. She must flit in and out of the gaudy charade, adding her own faded shades of watercolour beauty to the lives of the men who needed her, to whom she belonged for one night, before her disappearance annihilated them. This was her duty, and she undertook it with the solemnity of the gods. Her gods.

 She could pinpoint the exact moment he fell in love with her; about twelve minutes later. James. She had followed him outside, hovered near him on the pavement, wasting matches until he approached with a light. An unimaginative routine, with an unfailing success rate. She had let her hair fall to her shoulders and her eyes fill with tears when he had asked her where she was from. He’d just stared. His smell intoxicated her; her pupils fighting off the fine mahogany outlines struggling to encase them, thin as gossamer. She wanted to take him there and then, some back alley somewhere, desolate and depraved. However, she must uphold the pretence. Shy, intellectual art student. Hatty, she told him. Hatty was her name.

The implicated intelligence, the vulnerability of the persona always made them shiver. He asked her where she had come from, and if she liked Glasgow. France, she said, and yes. She had started out working at the Citizens Theatre, enthralled by the dark places beyond the stage, where murder and rape and manipulation had etched their marks in the wooden beams and dusty costume halls. She would linger when the grand circles emptied and the lights burned out, watching the dull glimmer of the chandelier as it hung in its ghostly opulence.

 She played her part well, whispering to him of her paintings - paintings that did exist - on the outskirts of her memory. She spoke of twisted, gnarled visions, but all he heard was the velvet of her voice. She was too thin, yet he was surprised to find himself getting hard the more he thought on it. The visibility of her ribs, the fragility of her wrists. Even the dark circles under her eyes contributed to her collective beauty, which was frightening, like a third presence. He told her so, and then he dared to kiss her. Deep red spots throbbed behind his eyelids when she let him. She took him home.

* * * * *

She wore a dusty pink linen nightgown, and smelled powdery, like roses. They lay among musty sheets, and Oscar the cat nuzzled his neck. She slept quietly in his arms, and he kissed her head. She was wide awake, and could see him. She had to make sure he’d forgotten the sex. The mirrors and the teeth and the fire. She did as was expected, and he left as the birds sang.

 They came that night, in their hordes. A flaw in the routine, they said. A fatal flaw. She had forgotten something, and they changed her face as punishment, until it resembled the paintings on the outskirts of her imagination. Her body crumpled, and Oscar died of fright. As the faded green of her bathwater turned dim with blood, dark pictures slid through her mind, of a city whose streets had masked and bathed her in their lonely beauty. A tower, a spire, or television wires against a steely bright sky. The displaced elegance of a forgotten park while the safe ones slept. These visions had been hers, and had held her though her pain. These, they could not steal.

'As Yet Untitled' Extract 1 ('Toothpaste and Mandarins...')

In the morning I wake early. Katie is still dead to the world, her dark curls stark against the pillow. I wait for the day’s first wave of anxiety to flood me, anticipating the toxic adrenaline rush that will force me out of bed. It doesn’t come. Instead, Katie’s bright bedroom offers up a delicious platter of displaced optimism. The pipe running down the wall outside her window releases plumes of thick white steam into the morning air. I wriggle about on the futon, sinking deep into the quilt. Soft radio voices seep under the door of Rita’s bedroom across the hallway. Jerry is snoring lightly, curled up in a ball by Katie’s side.

At length, I detangle myself from my cosy nest, glancing around for something to put on. Finding only office-related clothing immediately available, I unravel a cotton blanket from the foot of Katie’s bed. It is outrageously pink, with the word ‘Babe’ written repeatedly on its hem in metallic Comic Sans. She sleeps on as I wrap it around myself and pad downstairs.

Rita’s kitchen, with its sunlit mahogany and sky blue fittings, is reminiscent of the bright domestic spaces full of plaint-splodged children in CBeebies adverts. It’s all ridiculously Perfect Homes until I realise there’s no ordinary milk in the fridge - only Soya. I vaguely remember Rita insisting on buying this, despite Katie’s protests that when you put it into tea or coffee it looks like little sea monkeys swimming about in the mug. I pour a glug into my Nescafé without looking, and settle myself at the table.

‘Oh, hello.’

I jump, slopping coffee onto the crushed linen cushion of my chair.

I haven’t seen Katie’s brother Robbie since he left for Law School five years ago. I remember him as a thin, intense adolescent with dark, sticky-up hair. Standing before me now, I can see how much he has changed. He’s taller – much taller. All glinting green eyes and forearms. He smiles briefly before making a beeline for the fridge.

Enter Number 2: Robbie. Protagonist’s best friend’s dishy older brother. (Sitcom staple)

I am suddenly excruciatingly aware of Katie’s ‘Babe’ blanket.

Robbie smiles.

‘Janey, isn’t it.’

‘Yes! Hello! Sorry. Hang on, I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ says Robbie calmly.

He runs a hand through his hair as he acquaints himself with the fridge’s offering of raw vegetables, canned fruit, Soy Milk and Babybels. I’m on the verge of shunning the blanket altogether when I remember Katie’s negligee beneath.

I could ask him about his law degree. I could be an adult about it, and tell him how well he looks. Instead, I nod towards the Babybels.

‘Didn’t know you were supposed to put them in the fridge.’

Robbie turns at leisure to survey me, eyebrows raised as he tears the red wax shell away with his pointy teeth. For a moment I am reminded of some gory canine killing in a David Attenborough programme. I do my best not to pursue the thought.

‘Well… yeah. It’s cheese,’ he says.

‘Right, yeah…’

I gaze down at the tepid brown liquid in my mug, my mind still conjuring unbidden images of Robbie chomping through a baby gazelle’s hind legs.

‘Toast?’ he asks, now eating from a tin of neon orange mandarin segments with a fork, so that the juice falls back into the tin and splashes his T-shirt, his shoes, the floor.  

‘No… no thanks.’

He nods.

I watch him for a second, absent-mindedly wondering what his mouth tastes like. Toothpaste and mandarins. 

‘How long are you home for, then?’ I venture, shrilly.

‘Reading week. So… a week. Got here at about four this morning and let ourselves in. I messed up with the train tickets. Don’t think Mum knows we’re here yet. Suzy’s asleep.’

All of a sudden I wonder what I’m doing here in CBeebies land and not at home with my ailing father. Before I have a chance to bundle myself up and out of the kitchen, an elegant pair of hands snake their way up Robbie’s midriff from behind. I try to see the body to which they are attached, but it is hidden completely by Robbie’s athletic frame.

‘Mmmmm. What have you got for me, then?’

Robbie takes the hands in his and gently plies them away from him, pulling their owner centre-stage.

Enter Number 3: Suzy. Robbie’s girlfriend. Shiny black hair.

Costume outline: a pair of men’s boxer shorts (Robbie’s), a small white T-Shirt, and not much else.

Further details: wouldn’t be seen dead in a ‘Babe’ blanket.

Robbie kisses her forehead.

‘Suzy, this is Janey, Katie’s friend.’

Suzy smiles her hello and levers herself up onto the kitchen counter. I notice the manicured toes at the end of her long, toned legs. She presses a foot against Robbie’s hip.

‘Sleep well, Rob?’

Robbie grins impishly at her through a mouthful of toast. I’m still planning my escape when Katie appears in the kitchen in her office clothes and court shoes.

 ‘Hello, Brother,’ she says, punching Robbie on the shoulder and heading straight for his plate of mismatched foodstuffs. Appearing not to notice Suzy, Katie proceeds to drink the juice straight from the bottom of the tin of mandarins.

Script Note: Establish likeable familial relationships.

 ‘Yes, hello, Sister. You’re looking very young-woman-at-the-office this morning. If you take your lustful eyes off my breakfast for a minute, I’d like you to meet someone.’

Suzy emerges from behind him and steps forward to embrace Katie.

‘I love your hair’ she breathes, ‘Robbie showed it to me.’

Katie touches her curls defensively.

 ‘He showed you my hair?’

Robbie rolls his eyes.

            ‘Photos, Katie. She’s seen photos. You like it, don’t you Suzy?’

‘I love tousled hair.’

Katie eyes Suzy’s sleek black locks suspiciously.

I smirk to myself, picturing Karen’s face if she were here to witness this little gathering. It’s a pilot episode waiting to happen, if only Suzy would rise to the Superbitch credentials that her role inherently demands. I watch her face, waiting for the flicker of venom that would banish her irreversibly to the Land of the Odious Ice Queens - but her open smile doesn’t falter as she continues her enthusiastic admiration of Katie’s curls.

Script Note: Beware a dip in pace. Enter Number 5.

            Rita swoops into the room and wraps Robbie and Suzy in her arms. We all say our happy birthdays. Soon, it is my turn to be cocooned in the fragrant silk of Rita’s fringed kimono.

            ‘Well! A house filled with gilded youth! And how are you feeling this morning, Janey?’

            ‘Oh! Are you unwell?’ enquires Suzy earnestly.

            ‘Oh, no, I’m fine. It’s just that… Well, I recently became the product of a broken home.’

            Script Note: Protagonist’s humour is out of sync with majority of assembled company.

Katie snorts into the tinned mandarins. Rita clears her throat, before padding briskly over to the kettle.

‘Now, it’s not as bad as all that. Nothing a bit of karaoke won’t fix. You’ll be there tonight, I expect? And tell your dad. It’ll take his mind off things.’

            ‘I’m not sure. Quiet night in with Tommy, I’d imagine. Thanks, though, Rita. I’ll let him know.’