The Bond - H. J. Hampson

I see Suzanne Arnold’s face every time I close my eyes. There she is with her dazzling, sunshine smile, tattooed on the insides of my eye lids. These days - at least - it is not every time I blink, which is how it used to be. It’s curious she’s smiling, really; but, I suspect she is not smiling at me. It’s a replica of a photograph, so of course she’s really smiling at whoever is - or was - beyond the camera lens. Kevin, no doubt. Pathetic, wet, Kevin. He doesn’t deserve her eternal smile.

Her hair is so dark and thick and I long to touch it, smell it. Does it smell of molasses, I wonder? I’d like to think it does. Or caramel, or autumn? She looks like an autumn kind of girl with her hair and her chestnut eyes that could warm you with a glance on a fresh October day. Sometimes when I dream about her, I wake up imagining she’ll be there next to me. Don’t I sometimes feel her soft breath on my neck just before the fragile dreams disintegrate in the stale air of the morning?

She looks so young as well - early twenties at the most and you would never think she was a mother of two. It’s the same in every photo - her sparkling smile lighting up every shot. I’ve seen many photos of Suzanne Arnold. I have, I’ll admit, gone out of my way to find them. I’ve sat there in front of the computer, shivering in the cold and so tired I can no longer sleep, plowing through the treasures Google has thrown up. I don’t want to do it. I try to stop myself, but that little empty rectangle is like a mouth that is begging to be fed her name. The cursor, blinking with impatience, eggs me on.

There’s so many photos - some of her with Kevin, some of her with the boys (Joshua, 6, Billy 3), some of her with friends, laughing, holding a glass of wine with her lipstick stain on the rim. I feel dirty and ashamed looking at these pictures, but they can only blame themselves for letting these photos get all over the internet. Kevin would be so upset if he knew I was looking at them. He’s already said he wants to kill me. It’s hard to take his threat seriously, but still. Poor old Kevin.

It gets worse - sometimes I drive past her house on purpose. OK, ok, it’s not just that- I sometimes go there on foot. I mean, go specifically there. It is my destination, the reason for the journey. I don’t do anything as unseemly such as loiter, though. I just walk past, note the shiny black Pinto parked in the drive, note how tidy the little front garden is, and stroll on. That’s all his work, the garden. He does well to keep it up, I’ll give him that. You can see straight into their front room if you walk past their window at a slow pace. It’s hard to make anything out really, but I do fancy there’s a photo frame on top of the TV. Is it of her? The picture I see when I close my eyes? Possibly.

Sometimes I see him, Kevin, and it paralyzes me with fear. As you’ve probably gathered, Kevin is not the violent type, but still if he saw me, if he knew who I was, Lord knows what he would do. But he doesn’t know. I just keep walking past anyway, head down, minding my own business.

Joshua goes to the same primary school I went to myself, which I find a strange coincidence; and, it leads me to speculate whether, in fact, Suzanne went to that school as well. Is it possible, by cruel irony, that we were there at the same time, running past each other in the playground? By my calculations we may just have been - she would have been in the juniors when I was in the infants, but there’s no way I can remember. I would never have known her then.

Speaking of playgrounds, I’m not the kind that intentionally hangs around at kids’ playgrounds, Christ no, but once or twice I’ve been passing by the park when I’ve seen the boys playing there. So, yes, in those circumstances I have sat down on a bench, pretending to read the paper but instead listening out for their whoops and squeals amongst those of the other kids. That’s all, it’s completely innocent, really.


Why do I do it though? Well, that’s the craziest thing. If I’m honest it’s because I’m envious of it all. When I return to my miserable, little flat, with its gray walls and dark spaces I long for the warmth and the light of that little terraced house, filled with the noises and smells of the boys, filled with love for Suzanne.

I’m envious of Kevin too, of the way he just soldiers on.

And I guess I’m envious of her, for being missed so much. There was someone to cry for her on television, someone to write "Mummy, we miss you" in awkward, spindly letters on the cards, someone to leave flowers tied to the railings.

But most of all, I’m sorry. I wish so badly it could have been different. We’d never met before that night, and just for those few seconds we were together.

She was wearing dark clothes, and I just didn’t see her until her face was right in front of my windscreen, eyes wide and mouth gaping, and then the thud, and then she was gone. I never looked back; I just drove on, my heart thumping and a sick feeling in my stomach. It was instinct, my foot just went down on the accelerator and that was that. I didn’t know she was dead until I saw the appeals, and then I couldn’t go back. Would you? Knowing you’d just driven away and left her to die?

So that’s one thing I’ve got that Kevin hasn’t. A little secret between me and Suzanne, and she’ll never tell on me.


-HJ Hampson lives in London and is currently adding the finishing tweaks to her first novel. This is her first published short story. Her dream is to move to LA and join Chuck Palahniuk’s writing group.

-Photograph by Christopher Barrio

-Models: Left: Nicole Pitoscia, Right: Lisa Damiani



-Special Thanks to Ellen Schafler for the use of her home for the photography.

The Advance - Sophie Duffy

Late summer and the garden was a mess. Morley could see the state of it from his armchair in the window. Nothing wrong with his eyesight. He could make out the roses, branches splaying, petals scattered on a lawn in need of a short-back-and-sides. From the occasional venture to the vegetable patch he knew the courgettes were marrow-sized and there were enough unpicked blackberries to make crumbles for an army. He used to be on top of things. A keen gardener. Mulching. Hoeing. Now it had all gone to seed -- literally. Rheumatoid arthritis and a war wound had finally got the better of him. White flags came to mind.

Morley opened The Telegraph, focused on matters at hand; 8-Across.

If he had the money he’d get someone in, like his sister, Alice. She had a man-with-a-van who did her grass, odd jobs around the house. And a cleaner. Someone to dust the ornaments and rub away at the brass. What did she do with her time, aside from bridge and her wretched dogs? He had more time than he knew what to do with. Too much thinking. Too much remembering. Not enough action.

So the grass grew. The brambles spread. The weeds bloomed. One of them was threatening to take over and smother everything in its path. Not your everyday dandelion or ragwort. Not a native but one he’d seen before in another lifetime. Out East.

He tried to ignore its frothy white flowers, the slight queasiness in his stomach, and concentrate on the crossword.

Perhaps he’d get a man-with-a-van? Or a cleaner? But he was a pensioner. Needed to watch the pennies. Bad investments. Big old house. If Margery were here, she’d get things under control. But she wasn’t. He’d have to sort it out. Not easy stuck here in his armchair.

Morley pushed the paper aside and switched on the television. The news would be on soon.

September came and went. An Indian summer, the girl called it on the local weather. He’d never been to India so he couldn’t comment. He’d been in Singapore. Changi jail. Then Formosa. Marching through the jungle in that relentless tropical heat. Then Kinkaseki. The mines. Beriberi and dysentery. Lucky to get out of there. Most of them didn’t.

October. He battled his way across the ankle-deep lawn to the vegetable plot, a far cry from the regimented rows of the past. It was a riot of decay. The smell of rotting vegetation. Foxes. Neglect. The weed-encrusted soil was pitted with over-ripened berries. Too much even for the birds. He didn’t have the energy to pick the last few. Wouldn’t know the first thing about making a ruddy crumble. That was Margery’s domain. He’d provided the housekeeping, made appreciative noises where required, even taken on the drying-up once he’d retired. She hadn’t married him for his cooking. He couldn’t remember what it was she’d married him for, but there must’ve been something. She’d waited all those years, long after the war had ended. Waited for him to come back and jump-start the family she yearned for. But he came back a different man. Hardly a man at all.

Now he had to make do with a succession of meals-on-wheels for people with dentures. He still had a full set of teeth and a fine head of hair for a man of his age. Yet he couldn’t manage anything more strenuous than the cryptic, and sometimes even that was too trying, so he’d opt for the box. The news. The weather. Sometimes he’d keep watching, right the way through Neighbours and beyond. All nonsense. Then before you knew it, it was Countdown which at least got his brain back into gear. “Use it or lose it.”

He’d never be able to do the garden again. He needed help. Labour. Cheap labour.

He’d heard about the Poles from Pippa down at the post office. They were everywhere. Building sites, nursing homes, even wielding drills at the dentist. Happy to work for less than the going rate.

He had nothing against the Poles. A brave nation. A strong resistance, hiding out in the forests in all that bitter snow. And those camps. Worse even than the one he’d known. And there’d been refugees down the road after the war. Ilford Park. “Little Poland.” They’d always been here, but never this many. A new wave of them, chasing work. He could do with his very own Pole. He’d ask about it next time he shuffled down to Pippa’s.

Morley was absorbed in a domestic dispute between two Australian lovers when he spied him outside, a solid young man hanging about down the drive. The stranger soon abandoned his reconnaissance and advanced towards the house. Perhaps he’d batter Morley senseless and leave him for dead. It would be weeks before anyone discovered his mangled corpse. Nobody called these days, not since he’d cancelled the meals-on-wheels. He was fed up with the cottage pie, the hotpot, the liver and bacon casserole. Had enough of them at school. In the army. Though he’d have risked his life for one spoonful of English cooking in the camp. All that rice. Sticking like glue in your mouth. Gagging. But never enough to stave the hunger. The pain.

It wasn’t just the nursery food he was fed up with. It was the pitying looks of those busybody women. He’d had enough pity when he’d finally been returned to Margery in 1946. The busybodies knew nothing of what he’d endured. Though there’d been women out there. Women and children. Babies. Easy to pity them.

There was a gentle knock at the door. If Morley had dozed off, or left out his hearing aid, he’d never have heard it. Could’ve had his throat slit in his sleep and he’d have been none the wiser.

“Hello?” A voice wafted in. “Please I can come in?”

“In here, old chap.” Morley shouted back. “The door’s open.”

Come in and murder me. Help yourself.

Morley aimed the remote control at the box and dispensed with Neighbours. Heaven forbid he breathed his last to that theme tune. And there he was, standing on the threshold of the drawing room, looking so young. But then everyone did these days. Mooching around in clusters on the village green. Queuing up any old how in the Happy Shopper.

This chap looked less hardened than the locals. His grandparents – great-grandparents even – would have had their fair share of troubles but he wasn’t carrying their burden. An open face. Honest.

“Pass me my stick, would you?” Morley asked, trying not to make it sound like an order. “I’ll show you around the garden. Bit of a mess, I’m afraid.”

The young man complied, offering his arm for Morley to lean on. He accepted. Why not? It was hardly the action of a murderer. Though murderers could be sly. Or, downright blatant. He’d seen both sorts in the camp. No scruples. Not that anyone remembered that, tanking through the village in their Mitsubishi Shoguns.

“I hope you’re no stranger to hard work.” He led the way to the front door, didn’t even flinch when the Pole took him by the elbow down the steps. “And I can’t pay you much. I’m a pensioner.” He stopped and looked at the newcomer. “Do you understand a word I’m saying?”

They were standing on the lawn now, the dampness seeping round their ankles.

“I have good English. I am studying in the college.”

“Well done, old chap. That’s the spirit.” Morley said, clapping him on the back. “When in Rome.”

Though, he didn’t know if he believed that. In the camp they’d made their own little England. A chamber choir. Humming Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Birds of a feather. But it was Margery who somehow got him through the darkest, hottest, never-ending nights. Thinking of her peaches-and-cream skin. Her smile. Her Yorkshire puds.

They carried on to the vegetable patch, past the compost heap and the useless scarecrow.

When he’d returned from the East, he discovered there was more to Margery. The war had changed her too. She’d dug over the bottom of the garden and made it into this vegetable patch. He cried when he saw the strong green spinach pushing up through the soil, feeling its way towards the weak English sunshine. He knelt down and picked the leaves and he cried.

Margery made a Welcome-Home curry for supper that night. Spent hours at the range. Laid the table with their wedding service. Polished the cutlery. He couldn’t eat it. Not one mouthful. Told her he never wanted to see a grain of rice as long as he lived. Poor Margery. She cried then too. She cooked the spinach for him instead. He could taste the vitamins. The iron. He felt like Popeye. He was sick. Couldn’t keep anything down. It was weeks, months before he could eat a proper meal. That’s irony for you.

But he’d kept it up all these years, the plot. Good to pop out and pick runner beans for supper. They’d never go without fresh food. There’d been enough sacrifices.

And now, here was the Pole, examining the soggy leaves, sieving the soil through his fingers.

“What do you reckon to that?” Morley pointed his stick at the over-exuberant weed, its heart-shaped leaves and garlands of creamy flowers belying its ferocity. A cunning disguise. Camouflage.

The young man shook his head and said simply: “Japanese knotweed.”

“Japanese, eh?” Morley felt his mouth go dry. “Bloody Japs. Creeping up on you.”

The Pole looked at him.

“Can you get rid of it?”

“It is not so easy. I will try and clear it first. Dig up the roots and burning them. They come back maybe. They are very hard to kill.”

“Persistent blighters.”

The Pole stood still, listening.

Later they drank tea, sitting on a bench outside, wrapped up against the cold, watching a pale sun slip down a dirty-orange sky. The Pole – Patryk – had been there all afternoon, a heap of weeds to show for his work. A sprawling tangle of greenery. A pungent smell of earth and sap.

“Margery wouldn’t have given this knotweed the time of day,” Morley said, dunking a stale Digestive in his tea.

“Margery?” Patryk asked carefully.

“My late wife. Fine woman.”

“I have girlfriend, Karolina. She is the fine woman also.”

“Lucky chap.”

A week later Patryk returned, bang on time, sputtering up the drive in a battered van – a Ford Bedford, no less – bringing with him his girlfriend, Karolina, who was indeed fine, with dark glossy hair like the horse that used to graze in the field. She was armed with an arsenal of cleaning fluids and cloths, asking politely if Morley wanted any cleaning done, very good price.

If Alice could have a whole workforce, then why couldn’t he?

Karolina brought him a cup of tea in the drawing room, nice and strong like Margery’s.

“I have cake.” She announced in her thick accent. “Is Hippy Shopper cake. Very good. Your wife not want you … er … like the stick.” She pulled in her cheeks.

My wife. How Morley longed to say those words about the real Margery. The living, breathing Margery. But there was only the photo on the television. Margery in her bridal gown. Margery in black and white. Margery the memory.

He wanted Margery his wife.

He realised with embarrassment that he was crying in front of the Polish girl. He hadn’t cried since Margery died last year. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. Maybe the spinach moment, kneeling in the dark red earth of his home. But there was something so poignant about the Happy Shopper cake.

Tears fell on his hands. His old arthritic hands.

Karolina gave him a tissue from her apron. “You must eat cake.” She said. “Is very good.” And she smiled. No pity. Just kindness. She left him then, to grapple with the kitchen which was as under threat as the garden.

He closed his eyes, thought of Alice with her wretched Labs. Dog hair everywhere and chewed-up newspapers. But perhaps she’d got it right. Those mutts were protection for her. Company.

Morley cried some more.

A week later he found himself looking out the window, waiting for the Ford Bedford to sputter up the drive. There were potholes everywhere. He’d get Patryk to fill them in.

As the Australian lovers were having yet another tiff, the van appeared. Morley zapped off the television (Decca, none of this Sony nonsense). He watched Patryk and Karolina walk towards the house, she with a Happy Shopper bag, he with a pot of some sort.

He met them at the door.

“We have brought the lunch. To share. Is Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket. You like?” Karolina tried out her English, more confident.

“I have absolutely no idea but let’s give it a go, eh?” He led them to the kitchen. Even dug out a table cloth. “Chicken, you say?”

“And fries.”

“Chips,” Morley corrected. “In England we say ‘chips’.”

Morley sat in the drawing room, in his armchair, full on chicken and those thin little chips. Rather enjoyable. A family bucket! They’d devoured the lot. Karolina sent him in here with tea and cake. He’d completed the crossword in record time. Use it or lose it.

He folded the paper and watched Patryk set up a bonfire, gathering in the fallen leaves, the dead wood. November fifth was approaching. He might struggle down to watch the fireworks on the green. The smell of sulphur in the air. Flashes in the sky. He could even throw a little soiree for his new comrades-in-arms. Show them how things were done. He could shove some jacket potatoes in the Rayburn. Open a can of beans. Grate a bit of Cheddar. Margery would approve. And he’d fork out for some of those sparklers they had in a glass cabinet down in the post office.

They were young. They’d like sparklers.

The bonfire was ready. Patryk took some matches out of his jacket pocket and was about to strike one when he stopped and looked up into the fading sky. Morley looked too, at the flock of swallows advancing south. Migrating. Birds of a feather. They were late. Should have gone by now. But then who was he to talk?

No doubt it would creep back, the vicious weed, but Patryk might still be here to keep on top of it. If they stayed on, Morley would show this young couple how things were done. It would be Christmas before you knew it. Turkey and tinsel. Mince pies and crackers. He’d ask Alice down for a few days. And the wretched dogs. She knew nothing about Kentucky Fried Chicken. He’d fill her in. Meanwhile, Margery would have to hang on. But then she was used to waiting. A fine woman.

-Sophie Duffy's short stories have appeared in various anthologies and publications including Dark Tales and Momaya Press. In 2006 She won the Yeovil Literary Prize with her novel The Generation Game which led to her signing with agent David Smith from Annette Green Agency. Her current work-in-progress, This Holey Life, was runner-up in the Harry Bowling Prize last year. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University where she studied with poet, Graham Mort. Sophie lives with her family by the sea in Devon.

-Photograph of farm in Peconic, Long Island, N.Y. by Christopher Barrio.

A Girl Named Grape - Guy Mankowski

We spent winter in the bath, the bed; any womb we could find. Lily visited late at night to give me candles and deicer. My fingers had split open through frostbite. I held my bloody stumps against the flame of the candle, hoping its warmth would heal them. Lily would laugh, and say that she was the only one sane enough to keep me alive. Then she’d talk to the swallows while making pastries out of snow.


The pain was so intense that it made me reluctant to lift my pen. But I had to. I found it strange that my surrounding environment inspired me while also preventing me from writing. Snow frothed out of the ground and clambered up the trees. Lily and I huddled together and watched it swing there like an errant child refusing to come down. She’d shout at it to fall on the grass and sleep. The ice lingered round my windowsill and also refused to go. I didn’t leave the house for the whole of the winter. I had only my clumsy words, my characters, and her visits to keep me company.


It scared us to watch the frost advancing. From my window, the houses of the town all seemed slanted and malformed. It was as if they were not of this world. They leaned in conspiratorially and I tried to ignore them and concentrate on writing.


Three characters came to my door that winter. The first was Albert. He arrived on the snow outside by unicorn. I couldn’t understand how he didn’t leave a footprint as he came to the door. He appeared quite literally out of the wilderness. He stamped off the snow on his shoulders and lit his pipe before making himself at home. He teased his white beard with grubby fingers, a brittle mane that remained there despite him having the face of a nine-year-old boy. It was hard to write with him in the corner, playing the harmonica and talking about how he would race unicorns in the summer derby.


Albert was sometimes interesting, but usually too restless to be good company. The problem was that I didn’t know where to send him. “Get out there.” I’d say. “You don’t live here, and this isn’t somewhere you should be staying.”
“But I don’t know where I live.” He’d answer, packing down his pipe. “I know I came from a harbor, and that I’m looking for a girl named Grape. You must know more than me.”


I’d eventually give up and return to my pen. To the demanding endlessness of those words, always knocking at my door craving to be let in and written down, sure they had come from somewhere that qualified them for consideration. “Okay, okay.” I’d say, Lily laughing at me as I addressed words that weren’t visible. “Form a queue. Prove that you’ve come from a credible place, and that you haven’t visited any other writers. Then we’ll talk business.” Then I’d pull up a futon and offer them fruit.


Lily was a godsend; she appeared to chime with my principles about colors when we met. She was wearing a green dress, which seemed honest in light of her name. I’d seen her fishing for frogs by the pond thick with moss during the summer. I’d heard statues singing lullabies to her, a little out of tune, and her trying to sing back to them. She’d intrigued me.


The creative process would have been all but impossible without her conjugal visits. When she’d come to the door, she’d shake off the crystals of snow that had formed on her head, and separate her scarlet cheeks into a smile. When she knocked, I’d feel scared to answer despite shivering in anticipation at the thought of her visiting. “I’ve brought a basket for you” she’d say. “Let me in so I can feed you.”


I’d be desperate to feel her clammy, tender flesh against my fingers, but she’d insist I wait. The pen would be upstairs, calling me, dancing all over my papers and leaving an inconsiderate mess. She’d lay jars out on the kitchen table, each clunking with pleasing honesty onto my work surfaces. I’d look at that glorious array of chutneys, jams and marmalade, and then smear some on a hunk of bread. Once I’d eaten something I felt less light-headed.


Lily would then let me take off her robe and charge into her while she checked her hair for split-ends. Without the freedom from anxiety she offered I’d have never been able to write. I think Lily decided she wanted to play that role the first time she met me, that without her I’d spiral into myself and never claw my way out.


Afterward, I’d attend to the fountain pen, now skipping all over Albert and dirtying his beard. The pen was unkind to Albert; it never represented him in a kind light. It barely mentioned his gentle nature. It was much more complimentary to Evelyn and Daphne though; perhaps because despite being a genderless object, it spent many hours in my feral grip.


Evelyn would dance, and never really stop dancing, even tiptoeing a little when she arranged atlases on my shelf. She’d pirouette and giggle, and giggle and pirouette. Daphne would tut at her, and then do more sit ups. When she’d exercised enough to make a wet sheen on her stomach, she’d go into the shower and stay there for hours. I could hear the water run straight down the plughole as if it wasn’t reverberating off her body at all. She would always add between ten and twenty pounds to the electricity bill.


I tore through reams of words, and when I ran out of paper I sent Lily out to find some more. She’d return with brittle leaves, and I’d scrawl on them and try to come up with a system to keep them in order. With no paper to write on, I had to make do with whatever I had. It made making revisions difficult.


We dreamed of glorious reams of unblemished ivory, like Egyptian sheets. “Imagine what you could do if you could roll in an avalanche of paper?” She’d say. “Imagine if you could toss and turn and burrow and twist in endless blank pages, scrawl it right out of you, untie all the knots and smooth out all the tensions, write Albert and Evelyn and Daphne right out you?” I liked her even more when she talked like that, abandoning her domestic instincts. “Go on, take it to the end.” She’d pester. “Make Albert tell Daphne she’s his daughter, and that she can take up her sports scholarship in Leicester. And, while you’re at it, tell Evelyn he thinks her name is Grape. She’ll never go for an old gimmer with a beard, but it will save him peeping in her window throughout the summer months.”


“Okay.” I’d respond, torn between gratefulness at having her with me, and annoyance at having a coach. I’d ravage a few more pages, throwing them behind me after each line was filled. Lily would drop her mixing bowl and leap into the air, guiding the scrawled-on leaves neatly down to the pile.


Having spent enough time with them to build the courage to write the inevitable, I joined them all together one night in an organic feast. Lily laid out a beautiful spread of candle-roasted chestnuts, pastry fancies made from snow, custards mixed from poisonous berries neutered by rustic charm, and reindeer meat cooked on roaring fires Albert had built from nowhere. All were laid out on unfurled plates of moist leaves, glistening with anticipation at hosting the feast. Albert got berry wine in his beard, and got a little sarcastic. Evelyn got flirty and giggly after a few mulled wines and had to be given Calpol to calm down. Daphne ran round every house in the block until Lily pulled her from the snow that had built up to her waist, begging her to keep it company. In the end Albert wrapped Evelyn up in bed, and seemed satisfied that their relationship would never amount to anything more. Daphne slept fitfully having met her target weight.


I lay on my back and felt warmed by the sound of Lily’s breathing, though I knew she’d leave for her own family once I settled to sleep. I thought of my enormous belly and felt warmth cascading through my weary limbs. I slept for what seemed like months.


As time passed we heard rumors that soon the snow was going back into its tunnels. By now Lily and I had had seven babies, and five of them had names. Albert became almost paternal towards them, though he seemed to be preparing for imminent departure. Matters had been settled between the characters. All that was required was the front door to be left open a while, and then I knew they’d soon depart. Lily insisted that Albert pack a blanket for the nights he’d sleep in the harbor. I could just see him dozing there as steamers bustled past. We knew Daphne one day too would cartwheel out of the door and never return; that we’d next see her muscular and glistening on some podium. Evelyn was the most reluctant to leave, or perhaps (as Lily jealousy remarked), I was reluctant for her to leave, as she “represented an unattainable feminine ideal” (her words, not mine). I tried to find Evelyn’s lips to kiss her goodbye, but of course was disappointed to find that as a character she had none. But she too eventually waved us farewell as the buds started to sleepily open. I don’t think it was my imagination that made me believe that she was just as reluctant to leave me as I was to see her go.



-After graduating with a Masters in Psychology, Guy Mankowski, formed ‘a Dickensian pop band’ called Alba Nova, who signed to Comfort Records before embarking on a tour of England’s most disreputable music venues. He then worked as a psychologist at The Royal Hospital in London, work which he now continues in Newcastle. His short fiction has appeared in various magazines and his first novella was published by Legend Press in the collection ‘8 Rooms’. He counts F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francoise Sagan and David Bowie as his main influences.


-Photograph by Christopher Barrio

Houlihan’s Wake - Bryan Murphy

Houlihan wakes.

When the taxi goes over the second speed bump, it jolts him into full consciousness. “Playa Chisme,” the driver announces as he pulls up. There is no sign of beach or sea, only a street of assorted shop-fronts swimming in the heat. Houlihan clambers out of the taxi into it. He revels in his disorientation for a moment, and then he pulls his light backpack out of the taxi, pays the driver and thanks him. The driver gets out, ducks into the nearest roadside shop, emerges with cigarettes and a cold Sol, then sits in his car and gulps the beer as he watches Houlihan stagger along the short street.

Houlihan cannot see Ivaylo. Ivaylo was not at the airport, and he is not here to meet Houlihan, either. Although the sea is not visible, Houlihan can hear the surf dumping itself on the beach and then slithering back with full force. Houlihan looks out for their back-up meeting place, a restaurant known as “Poison”. At the end of the street, he finds a green and white eating place called “Le Poisson”. He thinks that must be it, walks in through a wrought iron doorway, arranges his pack and himself at a plastic table, and orders his second beer of the morning. On the table is a flyer, kept in place by an ashtray. The ink smudges as Houlihan picks it up. Its message in Spanish, illustrated with line drawings, is summarised in English: “Big Lifeguards Party! One Year Without Deaths! Posada Curandero Dusk Till Dawn”.

Houlihan suspects the organisers may be counting chickens that have yet to hatch.

A commotion outside distracts him from his third beer of the morning. Three young men, wearing rumpled T-shirts and dirty cotton trousers emerge, barefoot, from a path beside “Le Poisson” and run full tilt down the main street in the direction from which Houlihan has come. They are followed by four young men in heavy boots and uniforms. These men carry truncheons. The distance between the two groups widens. Behind them all trails Ivaylo, his face soaked in sweat, his breathing short and hard. As he passes “Le Poisson”, he notices Houlihan, swerves into the restaurant, throws his bulk into the chair next to Houlihan, picks up his bottle of beer and swigs down what is left inside it. Ivaylo looks at his friend.

“You should eat something with that,” he says.

“I was thinking about it,” Houlihan answers, “if this is Poison.”

“Don’t worry,” says Ivaylo, “they only feed it to their neighbours’ cats, not to their own customers, as far as I know.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Houlihan replies, “just the opposite. Tell me what is going on here.”

Ivaylo explains that the State of Acaxao has imposed a four-fold increase in license fees on beach traders all along the coast. This has sparked a series of riots, which have now reached Playa Chisme. Heavy-duty police have been sent in to quell them.

“We had better keep out of the way,” he adds. “Those boys can get violent.”

That sounds good to Houlihan. He tells Ivaylo he wants to see for himself what is happening on the beach, and leaves his friend sitting at the table trying to squeeze a last drop out of the beer bottle. He has already paid.

Houlihan hurries along the path Ivaylo had appeared from. Guided by a cacophony of surf and raised voices, he takes the first turning, which leads him past a series of palm-thatched huts flanking inner courtyards, set back a little way from the ocean.

The fine sand of the beach is littered with overturned restaurant furniture. Shoes and sandals lie scattered among it. Knots of uniformed men are chasing, or laying into, civilians, some of whom wield sticks. One person sits clutching his head with a bloody hand; another lies twitching.

Houlihan sees a trio of police surround a bikini-clad woman and knock her to the ground with no fuss. This is his chance. He runs at the trio, attempting to insult them in his broken Spanish. He pushes his way into the circle, his voice raucous, and stands over the woman, arms out, waiting for the police clubs to rain down on him. It does not happen. The police move off to torment someone else. Houlihan wants to run after them, to offer them another chance to smash his head.

“Hey!”

The woman’s cry stops Houlihan. He looks back at her.

“Get me away from here. Please!”

Houlihan moves to the woman and, with care, lifts her to her feet. He likes the look of her, despite her distressed state. He supports her as the two of them stumble together along the sand, away from the aftermath of the riot. She has him lead her around the curve of the bay to the eastern end of Playa Chisme, to the guest house where she is staying: Posada Tempesta. Houlihan notices that it is next door – but one – to Palapas Paulina, where Ivaylo is supposed to have booked him a beach hut.

The woman has a bruised shoulder, but nothing worse that is visible.

“You know,” she says to Houlihan, “I think you saved my life. I’m really grateful to you.”

Houlihan likes her voice, though he cannot place the accent to anywhere more precise than North America.

“If I can do anything, anything at all, to thank you, I will. You just have to ask.”

She leans into him. Bad associations flood into Houlihan’s brain: promises, betrayals. He holds the woman at arm’s length. He looks into her eyes for several seconds.

“Just remember that I like white lilies,” Houlihan tells her, then turns on his heel and leaves.

Ivaylo has booked him into Palapas Paulina. The establishment is run down, but it has a bar that is open. Houlihan buys a couple of Boemias from it and takes the bottles into his hut. He pours the cold beer down his throat, and then arranges himself in the hammock. He is soon asleep.

The dream recurs. Houlihan is living abroad. He wants to return to Ireland but he cannot, because he has done something terrible there. He does not know what it is, but he knows that if he goes home, he will have to pay for whatever it was with the loss of his freedom.

Ivaylo wakes Houlihan when he barges into his hut, bangs down the backpack which Houlihan had left at Le Poisson, and stomps out, slamming the door as best he can. After that, Houlihan sleeps only fitfully. He thinks about home. Can he go home? No. Yes! He knows what he has done. His profession was creative accounting. He was caught overdoing it, but got hush money from the company instead of prosecution, as well as the sack. So he has already paid for what he did wrong. Now he is jobless and broke. Yet there is something more, something deeper and darker that torments him. Houlihan cannot bring it into his conscious mind, but he feels sure his guilt is absolute.

The heat at the middle of afternoon oppresses Houlihan when he comes out of his hut onto the beach. He trudges down to the water’s edge and into the shallows. The cold refreshes him. The waves break far before they reach him, but he feels the strength of their undertow as it sucks at his legs. Houlihan looks past the white surf at the dark blue Pacific as it stretches to meet the light blue sky. He thinks that now is not the time to turn it all off.

Houlihan leaves the water and traipses back to Palapas Paulina. He spends the remainder of the afternoon there, drinking Boemia, passing the time of day with the few people who happen by, and watching the sun slip toward White Rock Island at the west end of the bay. At dusk, music reverberates eastward along the strand.

Houlihan showers and puts on clean clothes. He sets out to find Ivaylo, thinking that he will take his friend to the best Bulgarian-Mexican restaurant in the village, which he has heard is full of them. The first person he encounters looks Bulgarian, so Houlihan stops her and asks if she knows Ivaylo. She does, and she tells Houlihan where he is likely to find him. As Houlihan follows the dark road, his thoughts switch from Ivaylo, not such a false friend after all, to the woman who thought he had saved her, full of northern promise. He does not see the face until it is right in front of him. It is a pale face; it has freckles. It speaks to Houlihan with an Irish cadence: “Here now, aren’t you the one who …? How on earth did you get away? What are you doing here? Do you imagine you can just …?”

Houlihan feels panic rise inside him, soak into his brain and sweep back down through out his body. He breaks into a run. He sees a line of dark human shapes at the end of the road. As he nears them, he understands that it is a phalanx of riot police. They are moving towards him, banging their clubs on their shields and chanting. Houlihan realises his guilt has been exposed and they are coming for him, to carry out the sentence. But now he does not wish to die at the hands of policemen. He veers off the road and sprints down paths between dark houses and back onto the beach. He kicks off his sandals and plunges his body into the sea. His clothes do not hold him back.

Houlihan flails at the water and succeeds in propelling himself beyond the breakers to where cross-currents and rip tides can welcome him with their induction into a short journey of no return.

Two people on the beach have seen him: a Mexican veterinarian and his Swiss wife, who are out walking their dogs in the cool evening. They surge into the water – they have done this before, when alone – but this time the dogs leap in after them, determined not to be excluded from the game, and the two people turn back, unwilling to make a sacrifice of their animals.

Houlihan is cold in the Pacific water. His body chokes and freezes, but his mind is lucid. As the sea drags him under for the last time, no biopic of his brief life flashes before his inner eye. He focuses his senses only on the touch of faithless Carmen, the taste of unforgiving Claire.

A description of the dubious proclivities of Houlihan’s closest family flows from the mouth of the lifeguard. He kicks Houlihan hard in the chest he has spent so much effort getting to work once again.

“You try to ruin our party! No way. Tonight we celebrate: one year, no drowning. You just stay away – stay away from the water, and stay away from our party!”

He kicks Houlihan on the side of the head and stomps off west.

Houlihan lies still. He hurts everywhere. He shivers. Minutes later, he sits up. He sees blurry lights at the far end of the bay. The sound of music coming from that direction is louder than the sound of the surf in his ears. He feels gratitude. He remembers the lifeguard’s words.

Houlihan begins to feel less cold. He looks at the lights, which gradually clear, and again thinks of what the lifeguard said to him. He begins to laugh. Soon his laughter is beyond his control. This is one party he is not going to miss, not for the life of him.

-Bryan Murphy is a translator who lives and works in Turin, Italy. In the past, a fixation with living in interesting places in interesting times has landed him in Angola, Bulgaria, China, Hong Kong, Portugal and Thailand. His writing has appeared in The Hiss Quarterly, Transparent Words, Football Poets, at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere. He recently joined the Turin Theatre Company, who immediately typecast him as a villain. Despite not having an American visa, he is currently the voice of the spirit of Giacomo Casanova at Il Mago Casanova’s conjuring show in Las Vegas.

-Photo of Beach by Christopher Barrio