It was hard when I moved with him to the city. I didn’t fit in with his crowd. We got to bickering; the resentment built up in him and I was no longer exotic but just different. Suddenly, he didn’t want different - like my dad with my Gran, he was embarrassed by me. It was little things at first – gibes and threats and then he started to beat me. I realized it was all my fault and all and I still loved him. I just couldn’t seem to make him love me any more.
Then I saw him out with someone else. Naturally she was blond and had those kind of blue eyes that looked as if the sky was shining right through her head when she lifted it up to meet his eager lips. That kind of did my head in.
I am thinking about my grandmother now, as I stand at the stove, stirring the pot of herbs. “I’m making some chicken soup,” I tell Alex. My eyes wander over to him as he sits carelessly reading the newspaper at the table and they darken like the night outside the window. I lift a hand to touch the bruises on my face and wonder if I inherited my grandmother’s desire for revenge right along with her old recipe book.
Saturday 20 March 2010
Wednesday 17 March 2010
Short Story: The Inheritance - Part three
When I was going through school, I knew just how she felt - not really fitting in. I never did either. Perhaps I was fey like her, although I didn’t know what it meant back then. Ours is a small community and perhaps it was just that folks knew I was related to her and they didn’t like that; although that wasn’t something I could help. Perhaps it was just the color of my skin – I always was a little darker than most of the other kids, like I’d been out in the sun too long. Just like her. Either way, throughout school, I had more than my fair share of hair pulling, being tripped up in the corridors and having my lunch box snatched.
I guess I can’t blame the other kids for not wanting to be friends with me, half of them had relatives who’d gotten sick back then or so they said. It was hard though, desperately wanting to be a part of a group who wouldn’t accept you. I was marked out from kindergarten and it only got worse as we’d all gotten older. I can remember looking with envy at the girls who used to hang out with the popular guys, the ones who were the jocks, the sports heroes – the ones who used to call me a freak. They were the girls with the blue eyes and long fair hair, or so it seemed to me looking at them out of my own eyes - eyes as dark with resentment as the rocks on the mountains outside our back yard.
I’d like to say my life changed when Alex walked into it and I guess it did for a while. He was different from the rest. His mom and dad had moved up there from the city. “My dad’s a writer,” he’d said dismissively. “He wants the quiet to finish some book or other.” Alex didn’t take too kindly to the move. “Where do you guys hang out?” he’d said. Where are all the coffee shops and malls?” There weren’t too many of those on our island. I suppose he had us all marked down as country bumpkins. The moment I clapped eyes on him though, I knew I wanted him and the feeling seemed to be mutual. In a way, I guess he saw in me the same things that my grandfather had seen in my Gran – in his eyes I was exotic, different from his slick city friends. Of course the other kids soon filled him in about me but it didn’t seem to make any difference and soon we were an item.
I guess I can’t blame the other kids for not wanting to be friends with me, half of them had relatives who’d gotten sick back then or so they said. It was hard though, desperately wanting to be a part of a group who wouldn’t accept you. I was marked out from kindergarten and it only got worse as we’d all gotten older. I can remember looking with envy at the girls who used to hang out with the popular guys, the ones who were the jocks, the sports heroes – the ones who used to call me a freak. They were the girls with the blue eyes and long fair hair, or so it seemed to me looking at them out of my own eyes - eyes as dark with resentment as the rocks on the mountains outside our back yard.
I’d like to say my life changed when Alex walked into it and I guess it did for a while. He was different from the rest. His mom and dad had moved up there from the city. “My dad’s a writer,” he’d said dismissively. “He wants the quiet to finish some book or other.” Alex didn’t take too kindly to the move. “Where do you guys hang out?” he’d said. Where are all the coffee shops and malls?” There weren’t too many of those on our island. I suppose he had us all marked down as country bumpkins. The moment I clapped eyes on him though, I knew I wanted him and the feeling seemed to be mutual. In a way, I guess he saw in me the same things that my grandfather had seen in my Gran – in his eyes I was exotic, different from his slick city friends. Of course the other kids soon filled him in about me but it didn’t seem to make any difference and soon we were an item.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
Short Story: The Inheritance - Part two
It wasn’t unusual for a dog to be found dead. Dogs are scavengers and eat all kinds of unsavory things, especially hunting dogs. I only heard the story second hand but in a way, I felt it must have served him right – not the dog, his owner. A blustering, swaggering braggart of a man. I know how he would have been, because his grandson is just like him.
It didn’t end with the dog. At first it was a collection of small incidents that crept up on our small community like snakes out of the long grasses by the river - things going missing, milk souring in the pans and crops rotting in the ground before they ever got pulled. Then the swaggering braggart’s hair started to fall out; not a gentle thinning like the other men, but in large clumps so his scalp was left looking like some kind of a vegetable patch which had been raided by the deer out the woods. He lost it all before he died, along with his swagger.
My mother told me later that the braggart had tried to corner Gran behind the chicken coops when she first came to the village. She was kind of delicate about it at the time, but I think she meant that he tried to rape her.
It has all gotten kind of blurred over the years but a whole heap of folks got sick after that. Maybe it was a smoke screen, to hide the real thing or may be it was the result of a lot of over active imaginations. I guess only Gran would be able to tell us that and of course she’s no longer with us. I go and visit her grave sometimes in the grounds of the state penitentiary but no matter how hard I try to communicate, she doesn’t answer me.
It didn’t end with the dog. At first it was a collection of small incidents that crept up on our small community like snakes out of the long grasses by the river - things going missing, milk souring in the pans and crops rotting in the ground before they ever got pulled. Then the swaggering braggart’s hair started to fall out; not a gentle thinning like the other men, but in large clumps so his scalp was left looking like some kind of a vegetable patch which had been raided by the deer out the woods. He lost it all before he died, along with his swagger.
My mother told me later that the braggart had tried to corner Gran behind the chicken coops when she first came to the village. She was kind of delicate about it at the time, but I think she meant that he tried to rape her.
It has all gotten kind of blurred over the years but a whole heap of folks got sick after that. Maybe it was a smoke screen, to hide the real thing or may be it was the result of a lot of over active imaginations. I guess only Gran would be able to tell us that and of course she’s no longer with us. I go and visit her grave sometimes in the grounds of the state penitentiary but no matter how hard I try to communicate, she doesn’t answer me.
Sunday 14 March 2010
Short Story: The Inheritance - Part one
Apparently no-one really knew where she came from. The folk on our island at that time were an insular bunch and didn’t take too kindly to strangers, so it must have been hard for her – until she married my grandfather and he draped respectability around her shoulders like a cloak.
They said that she just appeared one night, out of the storm, one of the many Northeasters that dog our coastline. She was dragging a mongrel cur behind her. After she married my grandfather, the mongrel cur was delicately referred to as ‘a mixed breed’ and later still as ‘ a sweet little thing’. My grandfather’s family were elders in the community then.
Naturally I only knew her much later, but she always seemed to me to be different, my grandmother. Viewed through my young eyes, she didn’t seem to fit in at all. With the benefit of maturity, any number of adjectives would have described her, but as a child, I just knew she was different.
I could see my father was embarrassed by her at times. Like most men he wanted to conform - be one of the crowd but she didn’t understand this large awkward son of hers and would laugh and tease him and all; the laughter throbbing in her throat like a gurgling brook. My mother’s sister used to snigger behind her back at family gatherings, making snide remarks about Indian reservations and witch doctors. “She’s away with the fairies,” she used to say, but my mother tried to be kind and replied “No, she’s just a little fey.”
Of course my grandfather was captivated by her very difference. To him she was exotic - a symbol of an outside world after which he yearned but was never destined to explore. He would hear no word said against her, even when the rumors started to gather in the darkness.
They said that she just appeared one night, out of the storm, one of the many Northeasters that dog our coastline. She was dragging a mongrel cur behind her. After she married my grandfather, the mongrel cur was delicately referred to as ‘a mixed breed’ and later still as ‘ a sweet little thing’. My grandfather’s family were elders in the community then.
Naturally I only knew her much later, but she always seemed to me to be different, my grandmother. Viewed through my young eyes, she didn’t seem to fit in at all. With the benefit of maturity, any number of adjectives would have described her, but as a child, I just knew she was different.
I could see my father was embarrassed by her at times. Like most men he wanted to conform - be one of the crowd but she didn’t understand this large awkward son of hers and would laugh and tease him and all; the laughter throbbing in her throat like a gurgling brook. My mother’s sister used to snigger behind her back at family gatherings, making snide remarks about Indian reservations and witch doctors. “She’s away with the fairies,” she used to say, but my mother tried to be kind and replied “No, she’s just a little fey.”
Of course my grandfather was captivated by her very difference. To him she was exotic - a symbol of an outside world after which he yearned but was never destined to explore. He would hear no word said against her, even when the rumors started to gather in the darkness.
Friday 12 March 2010
Read my story from the Guardian newspaper which was syndicated in the Mail on Sunday:
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jul/09/familyandrelationships
This is not only a story of 'friends reunited' but one of heartbreaking personal loss.
www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jul/09/familyandrelationships
This is not only a story of 'friends reunited' but one of heartbreaking personal loss.
An tense eco-thriller, set in Holland.
It is in the aftermath of bomb threats and the assassination of a popular Dutch politician by Islamic extremists. The immigrant population is large and vocal, threatening traditionally held liberal Dutch values. ...
"The cars in front of them ground slowly past the two policemen who had parked their motorbikes across the highway, effectively forming a roadblock.
Marianne nervously opened the driver’s window as they drew level with the dark-uniformed figure; cold air cutting through the warm cocoon inside the car. “Papieren alstublieft.” The tone was abrupt and a pair of cold blue eyes looked searchingly over the car, missing nothing. Pressing back into his seat alongside hers, Doug could feel his breathing involuntarily speed up. Shit, why did these guys always make him feel guilty? ..."
It is in the aftermath of bomb threats and the assassination of a popular Dutch politician by Islamic extremists. The immigrant population is large and vocal, threatening traditionally held liberal Dutch values. ...
"The cars in front of them ground slowly past the two policemen who had parked their motorbikes across the highway, effectively forming a roadblock.
Marianne nervously opened the driver’s window as they drew level with the dark-uniformed figure; cold air cutting through the warm cocoon inside the car. “Papieren alstublieft.” The tone was abrupt and a pair of cold blue eyes looked searchingly over the car, missing nothing. Pressing back into his seat alongside hers, Doug could feel his breathing involuntarily speed up. Shit, why did these guys always make him feel guilty? ..."
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Ever wondered how it would feel to be stuck in a hotel under curfew with tanks in the streets outside and armed guards on the roof?
Ever wondered what it would be like to be caught up in melée of frenzied rioters when you went to pick your child up from school?
It happened to me.
You can experience the fear and read more about how it could have ended in my book "For the Love of David".
Ever wondered what it would be like to be caught up in melée of frenzied rioters when you went to pick your child up from school?
It happened to me.
You can experience the fear and read more about how it could have ended in my book "For the Love of David".
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