I've spent some of this afternoon reading some of my unfinished
stories and bits of my almost finished novel. I have almost forgotten why I
began writing them, but on reading once more realise that some of my
scribblings are pretty good. Perhaps it’s the distance, the time spent away
from them – in some cases over ten years – but I almost feel the urge to finish
them. Particularly my book.
I hate unfinished business.
Of course, the themes are neither light nor cheery. But
there is something about it that is worth finishing I think – if for nothing
else so that I may find out for myself how the story ends.
Here are a few words from the ninety thousand or so I’ve
written so far…
I remember once - I must have been about nine - I stole a
couple of cigarettes from my father’s packet when he wasn’t looking. He smoked
like a trooper; cancer got him in the finish. He should have believed the
warnings. I was in the yard having a puff, I thought everybody was out, but he
must have come back, or he was never out, because I heard him opening the back
door. I knew it was him, Clara hardly ever came out into the yard except to
hang out the washing and it wasn’t wash day. He was probably going out to his
shed, that’s where he kept his things, tools, fishing tackle, porno, that sort
of thing. Anyway, I heard him coming and there was I smoking one of his fags
stolen from his packet as bold as brass. If he’d caught me he’d have given me a
hiding for sure - partly for smoking, partly for stealing but most of all
because he could – and I didn’t want that to happen.
I tossed the cigarette into the bushes. It wasn’t much of a
yard, but there was a bit of tangled garden at the far end with an old
sunken-bath pond in the corner, rank with thick green slime. My mother, Rose,
had insisted that my father put it in when the new bath had been fitted, the
one with the lifting seat. She used to sit by it and doze in the sunshine that
final summer, that last summer when the water was still clear. The yard was
pretty overgrown now, he didn’t have the time for gardening any more - what
with the pub and the bookies and the arguments with Clara, she was the woman he
took up with after my Mother died, perhaps before, I don’t really know.
Whenever it was I don’t think mum died of a broken heart as a result, they
never got on. I was a quick thinker even then, I heard the door and tossed the
cigarette into the bushes still alight, by the time he’d turned the corner of
the house and into the yard the cigarette was gone and so was any evidence that
I’d been smoking. He grunted something at me then went to his shed, fetched out
his hammer and went back into the house.
Fucking great! I’d got one over on him. I liked to do that,
it was a sort of hobby of mine. I’d won, he’d lost, I was the victor and he was
the vanquished, even though he’d never even known that a battle was being
waged. Once I was sure he was safely back in the house - I could hear him
hammering in the cellar - I went to get my smoke back. I knew exactly where in
the hedge it’d landed – detail is important - and I reached to get it.
It‘d landed in a bird’s nest. There were three tiny pink,
featherless birds in the nest. I don’t know what they were; I’ve never been big
on natural history. I can’t stand those boring wildlife programs on the
television, but the cigarette had set fire to whatever the nest was made of,
twigs and grass and stuff, it looked like it was lined with feathers. The tiny
birds were squeaking and the burning nest was causing quite a bit of smoke. I suppose
I could have put it out if I’d wanted, but I didn’t want, so I didn’t. I picked
my cigarette out of the nest and watched. It was very interesting, the birds
fluttered their tiny featherless wings as their pointed yellow beaks opened and
closed, opened and closed as they squealed for help. I watched the birds
suffocating and I kept watching until the fire burnt itself out. It wasn’t a
blaze and there were hardly any flames, it was the smoke that killed the birds.
A bit like my dad really, it was the smoke that did for him, that was years
after Clara was killed. She fell, a terrible accident. I finished my smoke and
left the nest where it was smouldering.
I saw the mother fly to the nest later from the kitchen
window. She was brown, quite large with a yellow beak; she kept flying away and
flying back, flying away and flying back and making this loud squawking noise
all the time. A mother’s love knows no bounds. I’d won. I’d got one over on my
dad and, just as in all wars, there had to be casualties. The birds were in the
wrong place at the wrong time. They should have been more careful…
