Novel extracts: from Pest Maiden
One - Birdsong, Dust, Delirium
Russell Fairley was unwell.
His symptoms: a head full of hot tar, needles in the eyes, ships' bells in the ears, nose streaming like a burst pipe. Every other part of him was limp. Even his cock felt weak, sapped. And it didn't stop at the body: his brain, too, was stuffed up, congested with unwelcome and unhelpful information.
He had been hunched up at the table all morning, while the rubbish cart chugged and grunted along the road. He had sat through an orgy of road-drilling, a procession of loud, foul-mouthed school kids and the frenetic whine of a neighbour's washing machine spinning itself to orgasm. He had sipped from the same mug of coffee without minding the bitter chill of it. But on hearing that thin, intermittent squeak from the garden, like a rusty hinge, Russell's ailing concentration was knocked out yet again. He got out of bed, dumping his mug on the book he'd been reading. Cold coffee slopped over the rim and splashed the page; he eyed the mess he'd made with something like satisfaction.
The back green was bare and brittle; around its edge, shrivelled rosebuds drooped on their stalks. Beyond the iron railings, a car reversed into the cul-de-sac, turned and drove up the hill to the main road where, across a porridge-coloured panel of tenement, traffic slid in a sluggish stream. It was a drab, constricted view. Again he was assailed by that maddening, high-pitched squeak. This time, though, he identified the culprit. Directly beneath the window, a blackbird flexed its sharp yellow beak and drilled its monotonous song into the heavy winter day. It hopped a few steps and repeated itself. A blackbird, Birdsong. How in hell could birdsong be such an irritation? But these days everything irritated Russell. His entire life felt like an unscratchable itch, a rampant inflammation. He thumped on the window. The glass quivered. The blackbird flew off. His knuckles hurt.
The author has asserted his moral rights.
Moral rights? Taken a fucking liberty, more like.
He clutched the cracked spine of the splayed hardback book and glared at the coffee-stained passage. Every so often his eyes would light up with a pained gleam, he'd raise his pencil and swoop down on a page which already looked as if it had been attacked by birds.
For my mother, who won't like it
She's not the only one, pal.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
That'll be right.
Of course the author had changed names, occupations and a few physical details but it was the kind of change, the cheap doctoring of fact, the sly shift of focus which scunnered him. Iona Rivers was fond of running her fingers through Rightman's 'thick, lustrous hair' whereas Leslie Little possessed 'a naked, egg-shaped skull which didn't benefit from exposure; in summer it turned pink and peeled, in winter it was deathly pale and shiny'. Russell tugged at a clump of stringy, unwashed hair. He was nowhere near bald. Yet. Thinning maybe, but who wasn't at the utterly unremarkable age of forty-one? Even Arlene - at thirty-three - had complained of hair fall, scrutinising her comb in horror and searching the chemist's shelves for products which promised bounce and body. Well, she'd found plenty of that kind of thing elsewhere, hadn't she? Anyway, baldness wasn't so bad, given the right shape of skull. Plenty of bald blokes did every well for themselves and some of the kids these days, girls and boys alike, regarded a shaved head as a fashion detail, even - God help them - an art form, though he'd never seen any of them sporting an egg-head.
And the names; the author, Franklin B. Fox, had rewritten himself as Guy Rightman, Arlene the Adulterous had been immortalised as Iona Rivers, while he, Russell Fairley, the wronged innocent limb of this particular pubic traingle, had been recast as Leslie fucking Little. No imagination was needed to work out that Little was a loser. Critics - and the book had already been given more than its fair share of coverage - had lapped up the alliterative possibilities and crude innuendo of the name: Little Man Loses to Rightman; Little's Big Letdown, and so on and so on. Why did Fox have to stack the odds so heavily on Rightman's side? Why did he need the winning personality, the interesting life and full head of hair, when he got the girl anyway?
From his grime-mottled reflection in the window it was clear to Russell that he didn't look his best; the five day growth on his chin was more like a pot scourer than designer stubble. A frown had gouged a ragged furrow between his eyes. His hair twisted limply from his head like the overworked expletives inside it. His pyjamas gaped at the belly, exposing an embyronic paunch. He was on the short side and, as Arlene had informed him with enraging regularity, the extra pounds were more noticeable than they'd have been on someone bigger. If she didn't go for wee, cuddly men, if she preferred the steroid-enhance hulks she no doubt tripped over at the gym, why hadn't she made a bit more effort to get what she wanted? But that was Arlene all over; act in haste, repent at leisure. Not that she'd done much in the way of repenting, not a thing, in fact. She'd just roared off to work one night with a bootload of her belongings, and hadn't come home.
"Between the worthies and the wannabes was a row of women, their staid office clothes jazzed up with ceramic pins and flimsy scarves in jade, fuschia, apricot. There was a muted, tamed look about them all, except for one."
Russell couldn't bring himself to re-read Fox's description of Guy Rightman's clapping eys on Iona Rivers. It was enough to make a complete stranger puke, never mind a recently dumped ex. All that 'pent-up desire he saw in her eyes'. Surely even Arlene would have squirmed at that. Grand notions like desire and the soul were not Arlene's cup of tea at all. Not the Arlene he knew. Waiting for the poxy little event to kick off, the Arlene he knew would have been bored and impatient, irritated by the delay, the poor quality of the wine, the uncomfortable seating, unflattering lighting, the lack of atmosphere. She would have been throwing together some scathing comments to bring home, like a carryout supper. Arlene would have scoffed at the very mention of desire. Until she met the author, that is...
10 - A Hideous Jig
He is in Boon's; he knows it is Boon's but candles drip on raw wood trestles and blackened greasy walls drip with condensation. In the middle of the room, a fire spits; at its hearth, a pair of lean dogs snap and grizzle over a large bone. The dirt floor is littered with peelings, fruit pips, fish heads, scraps of gristle, dog shit. Flies fizz and blister a steaming turd. A colony of rats noses through the pickings, nonchalant, proprietorial. Boon's but no art nouveau, no nouvelle cuisine for the nouveau riche; a beggars' banquet. At the table the toothless, shoeless and possibly mindless eat, drink and are more than merry; hysterical in fact, swilling down blue black wine and ramming food down their gullets, as if each mouthful were their last. On a nearby bench a plump young woman and a vigorous young man gorge on each other. Seeing them so engrossed, a fat man in a gaping shirt, cheeks red as tomatoes, tongue wetly circling his mouth, plucks a turkey leg from the table and shoves it down the young woman's cleavage.
The woman squints at her breasts, pale and quivering like twin scoops of junket. The turkey leg glistens with grease. Her chin sinks into the folds of her neck. Her mouth droops open, tongue curls greedily towards the rounded tips of grey-pink bone. She pushes aside her young man and spreads her legs. The diners leer and drool. A second turkey leg is shoved roughly into the depths of her filthy petticoats. Panting - from lust or lack of breath - the tomato-cheeked man, his free hand closing on his crotch, pumps the plump woman full of turkey meat. Her moans are a mixture of pleasure and pain.
In an unlit booth, a wasted woman begins to beat a sombre, ponderous rhythm on an empty beer keg. The dogs raise their narrow heads. The rats are oblivious. The diners sup from mugs of ale or slump into their plates. A voice, a cold, steely voice cuts through the belches and guffaws, the moans of misery and desire. The diners stagger to their feet and form a ramshackle chain. As one touches another, their rags crumble to the ground like long dead skin, revealing flesh riddled with dark blotches and swellings. A dry, rasping laughter crackles round the cavernous room as the procession lurches into a slow, hideous jig. Tongues balloon from mouths, lewd and stupid. The revelry swells but still doesn't drown out the ponderous dead beat of the drum nor the icy plainsong of the Pest Maiden, a tall, gaunt, hollow-eyed bag of bones, her distended shadow slithering across the floor; here I have always been, waiting in the dark. My time has come again.
The fire hisses, gasps. The room is hot as a furnace. The procession stops at the bench. The leader stretches out his cankered hands. The fat man falls to his knees, the displaced lover covers his eyes and the plump woman throws back her head and screams...
Arlene is standing at the door of the kitchen. Her apron is bloody as a butcher's. With a sweep of her arm, she clears the table.
--So what have you decided on then? Listeria, salmonella, E Coli, CJD? Or would you prefer something more traditional?
1 - Blood the Memorious
Blood the river - wider deeper faster, infinitely more treacherous than the mind's uncatalogued emporium of spent events. Blood the vessel, blood the channel. Blood the ebb, the flow, the roaring chorus of kinship, the circular song. The surge downstream. Spring, torrent, flood. Effluence, effluvium. Blood's games; Chinese whispers, pass the parcel, catch-kiss. Dispenser of rewards, consolations, booby prizes; hook-nose, cleft chin, hen toes, knock-knees, jug ears, a frown from the mother's side, a frown from the father's. An insensitive stomach, a fragile heart, colourblindness, perfect pitch, dodgy synapses. Blood the travel bag. Blood the passport. Blood the ticket, plane, the boat, train, coach, cart, the mule, the camel. Blood the hold, the trunk, backpack, suitcase. Blood the money-belt, credit card. Always the journey, never the destination. Blood the midge, the rat, the leech, the lamprey. Blood the graze, scratch, sore, lesion, the laceration, the open wound, the scab, scar. Blood the bottle, flask, chalice, phial. Blood the host of inbred loyalties, cataclysmic affiliations, molotov cocktails, fatal liaisons. Blood the hunter-gatherer, looter and pillager, dealer in the begged and borrowed, the renovated, rehashed, regenerated. Home-maker/home-breaker. Blood the roller-coaster, global grid, the labyrinth, the catacombs, subway, sewer...
© Dilys Rose.