exercises from a fiction course

Lost

I didn’t do it on purpose, honest I didn’t, but I couldn’t see mammy anywhere. She was right next to me but then I went to stroke the puppy that I saw and when I turned around I couldn’t see her anymore.

My head and eyes got all hot, and I thought that I was going to cry, but I tried really hard not to cos mammy gets all cross when I cry. She always says “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” and then I have to go and sit in my room. I didn’t want to make her angry by crying, and I tried really hard not to cry by holding my breath and counting to ten. I tried making it a game that by the time I got to ten mammy would be there again, but she wasn’t.

I knew she was going to be really angry with me, the kid of angry where her face gets red and there’s bits of spit at the sides of her mouth.

And then I thought I could hear her shouting “Sam! SAM!” but I wasn’t sure cos there were loads of people in the street and I was getting bashed by bags. There were loads of legs but lots of them were wearing the same colour trousers as my mam, but then I did see her!

She was looking the other way but even from behind I could tell that there was going to be trouble, but I didn’t mind cos I was happy that I wasn’t lost anymore. I ran towards her as fast as I could, and she turned around just as I got there.

She kneeled down so she was the same height as me, and got hold of my shoulders and put her face right up close to mine. She shouted at me that I must NEVER do that again, did I understand her? I was never to slip away from her when its busy like that and didn’t I know that there are nasty people who are just waiting to find a little boy without his mammy so that they can take him away and do horrible things to him? I didn’t answer this cos I knew that sometimes when mammy asks questions she doesn’t really want you to answer them and I’d be in more trouble for being “smart” with her.

And then she started to cry and said how she wasn’t angry with me really, she was just relieved because she loves me so much, I’m all she has now and if anything ever happened to me…. She didn’t finish that bit so I don’t know what would happen if anything ever happened to me. She’d probably cry more than she does now, when I’m in bed and I’m not supposed to know about it. But I do know about it because sometimes I sneak down and listen behind the door and try to think of ways to make it better like she does when I’ve hurt myself.

I can’t remember if she cried before daddy went to live with that other lady and their stupid baby.








Patience

She’d been sitting there so long that that the shadow had seeped along the wall and was halfway across her face. Now and again a nurse (the same one? different ones? who could tell?) popped a chirpy head round the door, enthusiastically offering to conjure up that universal panacea, “a nice cup of tea“. At around the fourth or fifth offer Maura had conceded a weary defeat, but the polystyrene cup remained on the magazine table, untouched, the milk colluding in the middle, a tiny UHT island.

Only the fingers showed any motion, the nails of one hand absently picking at the nails of the other, and her eyes remained focussed on some invisible floating thing eighteen inches in front of her. Her feet were planted firmly on the ground in front of her, and Maura absent-mindedly chided herself for wearing the shoes he hated so much.

“Make you look like a police-woman, horrible clumpy things. Why can’t you wear something a bit more feminine, bit of a heel or some-at?”

“I’m on my feet all day and you want me clip-clopping around in floozies shoes, eh? I’d break me bloody neck!”

The corner of her mouth twitched briefly, a fraction of a smile. Funny how you can miss people before they’ve even gone, she mused.

Soft footsteps padded along the corridor, and she turned expectantly towards the door, but the nurse glided smoothly by. The distant clatter of a dinner trolley and a fuzzy annoyed voice attested that there was a necessary bustle of activity going on outside the cocoon of the waiting room. The low hum of the strip lighting and Maura’s regular, measured breaths were the only sounds.

How would she tell people, if the worst happened? The prospect of all those pitying looks, the hands on her arm, the earnest assurances that “If there’s anything we can do, anything at all, you know you mustn‘t hesitate…” made her shudder. And afterwards? The standard finger buffet: egg and cress, ham and cheese, chicken drumsticks, crisps, all served on their best wedding china and washed down with libations of tea, tea and more bloody tea. Maybe she could get some garlic bread, although George had never been keen on “poncey foreign rubbish“. Not that that would matter anymore, but as a mark of respect perhaps she shouldn‘t…

A dumpling cheeked nurse, possibly the same one who had brought the tea, appeared in the doorway, jerking Maura out of the shopping list she was mentally compiling.
“Your husband is out of surgery now, Mrs Temple. If you could come with me, the consultant would like a little word?”

Pushing herself up out of the sunken chair Maura followed the nurse out of the door and along the corridor.







Happy Slapping

He’d been mopping the corridor outside the headmaster’s office when he heard about it. Happy Slapping. Happy slapping? Hard to see where the idea of happiness came into it. Some poor kid who, as if the relentless bullying was not enough, had their public beating video-ed on one of these fancy new mobile phones and broadcast to the remaining two percent of the school population that hadn’t congregated in the dene that lunchtime to whoop encouragement to the little shits that set about him.

Poor kid, guilty of what? Wearing the wrong trainers, probably, or coming from a household that still sits at the table to eat their tea.

He couldn’t catch every word, not unless he’d pressed his ear right up against the door, and whilst he enjoyed a good eavesdrop as much as the next person he was certainly not a snooper. Still, the mother was easy enough to hear, her voice being naturally higher and raised in near hysteria. The boss he couldn’t hear so well, just the low mumblings of placatory platitudes and assurances that Oakfield took this matter very seriously indeed. Probably bricking it in case she went to The Chronicle. Just a hop and a jump from it getting picked up by the nationals, and that wouldn’t please the PTA one little bit.

At first he hadn’t known who they were talking about, who the reluctant media star was, although he could think of a few little toe-rags who always found their way to the hub of the trouble. And then he caught the name, and an in-take of breath had rattled past his ratty front teeth. One of the hardest nuts in school! No wonder he could hear the mother, screeching like boiling kettle in there! He’d chuckled a bit at the image of Mrs Archer with a spout for a nose and steam chuffing out of her ears, but hearing the names of the girls responsible had snapped him out of his humorous reverie sharp enough. Milly and Catriona, a prefect and the president of the violin club!

Christ, the proverbial would be hitting the fan with this one! The Archers were well known for their tendency to settle scores “privately”, with the guarantee that as many members of the sprawling, brawling clan as were currently at liberty would get involved in meting out their family brand of justice. Those poor girls, they’d no idea what they had got themselves into, probably just found that, for once, Candice Archer was without her pack of sneering sycophants and that they outnumbered her two to one. Maybe like to try a spoonful of her own medicine, a sort of thank you for all the doses she’d served them in the past.

Yes, this was going to get messy, very very messy. And not the sort of mess you could swill away with a spot of warm water and bleach. He gave his mop a good squeeze, then shuffled off along the corridor, mucky water slopping over the sides of the bucket as he went.