Tag: Fiction

In Turbulent Times

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Excerpt

Last year at Brodick was a disaster. It should have literally been the last. But back they came.
‘This year will be even better than last,’ his mother had written. ‘Morag is her old self again after that awful experience in August and Rowena is just such a sweet little doll. We are going to be so happy showing her off to all the other guests and visitors. She will be the Little Belle of Brodick this year. If only your dear father could be there in flesh instead of in spirit. But how proud he must be in any case, as I am. Hamish has continual headaches these days and Alec is pale and liverish from working so hard. They both need the holiday at Brodick, as you must too. Could you not take the earlier week off and be with us the whole time? After all, you are the boss of that firm of yours. And Morag never sees you through the year. She misses you. She says you are becoming more a stranger than a brother.’
This year the changes of last year were twelve months worse. Mrs Anderson’s whole body was turning to steel, like her tiny, ball-bearing eyes. Morag was no longer pregnant. She was anaemic and tired and bitchier than ever. Rowena ran away every time Ian approached and screamed that he was going to beat her. This invariably brought Morag or her mother or both of them running to the child’s side, yelling at Ian to leave the little dote alone, to act his age and stop bullying a mere infant. Hamish and Alec sat all day every day in the stuffy sitting room, playing cribbage almost interminably. There were no walks, no golf, no drinks. Only the boat-trips were continued, apparently for Rowena’s sake, but Ian had missed those during the first week of the holiday.
‘Never mind, Ian; we’ll all enjoy the return trip to Gourock at the end of the week,’ his mother said. ‘It’ll be so lovely to have us all together again, the whole family, sailing up the Clyde towards home. I bet your dear father is sighing so contentedly if only we could hear him.’
‘I won’t be going back with you at the end of the week.’
‘What do you mean, Ian; you won’t be going back with us at the end of the week? Of course you will.’ His mother’s voice grew shrill, like the high-pitched squeal of scraped metal.
‘I won’t be. I’m leaving this morning. I’m catching the boat back to Belfast tonight.’
‘But Ian, it’s only Tuesday,’ Morag pointed out. ‘I’ve hardly seen you.’
‘Look your fill,’ said Ian, glancing at his watch. ‘You’ve got one hour and thirty-five minutes.’
‘Oh you insufferable, inhuman monster,’ Morag yelled. ‘You’re making a mockery out of family feelings and affections.’

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270

Prairie Roots

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Excerpt

The picnic brought out most of the people who lived in the vicinity
of the school or whose children attended the school. As
well, because it was a Sunday, people from other school districts as
well as relatives and friends of the parents came to gossip and to
munch on a few goodies. It was usually a relaxing day for the
adults and their only concern was to avoid sunburn and prevent
their children from consuming so much food that their little
stomachs would rebel and reject the contents. Which frequently
happened. They came on foot or in wagons and some even in cars.
Those who arrived by wagon would unhitch their horses, lead
them into the barn for the day and join their friends and neighbours
beside the school and the confectionery stalls. They stood
around in circles or brought out chairs or sat on the grass in the
shade to smoke and talk. Thewomen watched their children, compared
notes and exchanged information on various women things.
We found out in the evening whether any of our school indiscretions
had been leaked from the loose lips of our friends, then
through their mothers to our mother, and were relieved when no
accusations were made or suspicious questions posed to us.
The children did what children always do; they began by
spending some of their money on the various goodies before gathering
on the sports field to play games, as they waited for the official
program to begin. On a nice warm day, the merchants would
be very busy selling pop and ice cream, not to mention a variety of
candies, suckers and chocolate bars as well as items such as oranges
and hundreds of hot dogs. Even though the prizes awarded
to the winners were chits for food items, the children could not resist
the temptation of the smells and sights and just had to have
some of the good things before the races started.
At approximately 1:00 PM the main organizer, usually the principal,
would get his teachers and other helpers together and they
would walk out to the sports field to begin the various races.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562900

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897920

The Qliphoth

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Excerpt

She kicked the crotch of the guy who always calls me Fuckbeard when
Jago’s back is turned, but they managed to hustle her out,along with tearful
Cedric who’d turned his back on the whole scenario.
Now that all is quiet in the dorm, with Wolfbane locked away in solitary and
his supporting cast tranked down safely in their pits, I can safely itemise matters
relating to the Order of the Brazen Head. I’ve gobbed out today’s input of
sleepy-time, thanks to Simba throwing a shrill tantrum that distracted Jago at a
crucial moment of the dosage ritual.
So now, around midnight, in the little cone of bedside light, I am the only
sentient being in the Creation, an archivist of the Akashic scrolls.
Pol Pot’s revolution may have destroyed my artifacts but not the cellular
structure of my memory. Of course she ransacked our home, looting, pillaging,
laying waste . . . But I have the Lore by heart. I’ve copied it out laboriously
over the years, filling a whole series of these black books. Jago pretends to
humour me in this, but I still won’t reveal my stash as his own humours are far
from consistent.
For example, only last month he had a sudden pre-breakfast purge of our
“traumatic memorabilia”, our “hoard of faecal souvenirs” as he called the contents
of our bedside lockers. “This is the dark body of the Madonna you must
destroy!” he shouted at Eamonn and Cedric, sweeping away their framed photos
with his fat hand, grinding the pics underfoot, those saintly mothers and
martyred wives, whoever, it’s all the same to Jago whenever the neo-Freudian
fit hits him.
Yet he was only inches away from a lost knowledge more subversive than
any of his primal infantile soap-operas. I declare this is the Gnosis of the Brazen
head and these are the lost letters of its Lore:
73 Harsnett Road,
London SE 27
March 8, 1943
Dear Firestone,
What a pleasure to receive your letter! It displays a grasp of occult scholarship
which is impressive for someone still in their first year of undergraduate
studies, albeit in the shadow of the Bodleian Library, near the banks of Isis. I
myself took my first degree at Cambridge before my brief scholastic period at
the seminary in Rome and my later researches in Vienna. But the cloisters of
Oxford must still be charged with ancient potency, even in these dismal times.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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Thrush

A
House Near the Sea

The houses I had they took from me. It happened
that the times were unpropitious: war, destruction, exile
sometimes the hunter meets the migratory birds
sometimes he doesn’t. Hunting
was good in my time, lots of people felt the shot
the others roam around or go mad in the shelters.
Don’t talk to me about the nightingale, nor the skylark
nor about the little wagtail
inscribing numbers with its tail in the light;
I don’t know many things about houses
I know they have their own race, nothing more.
New at first, like babies
playing in the orchards with the tassels of the sun,
they embroider the colored window shutters
and the shining doors over the day;
when the architect finishes they change,
they shrink or smile or even become resentful
with those who stayed behind, with those who went away
with others who would return if they could
or those who vanished now that the world
has turned into an immense hotel.
I don’t know many things about houses,
I remember their joy and their sorrow
sometimes, when I stop
even when
sometimes, near the sea, in empty rooms
with an iron bed with nothing of my own
looking at the evening spider, I contemplate
that someone is getting ready to come that they dress him up
in white and black cloths with plenty of colorful jewels
and around him venerable ladies
with gray hair and dark lace shawls talk softly
that he gets ready to come and say goodbye to me;
or a woman with quivering eyelashes and slim waist
returning from southern ports,
Smyrna, Rhodes, Syracuse, Alexandria,
from cities closed like warm window shutters
with perfume made of gold fruits and herbs
that she climbs the stairs without seeing
those who slept under the stairs.
Houses, you know, grow easily resentful, when you
empty them.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4279077#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Redemption

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Excerpt

…at their destination, and they should fasten their seat belts. Hermes
looked down from the window. It was a cloudless night. He had a
superb panoramic view of the city, full of lights flickering in the dark.
He could distinguish the streets and the tall buildings as the aircraft
slowly descended.
They landed, and Hermes got up to take his carry-on bag from
the overhead compartment, stepped off the plane, and said goodbye
to Tom. An airline official led Hermes down the long hallways to the
baggage area. He found his suitcase from the appropriate carousel
and made his way to the arrivals area, where people waited for their
friends and family members. Happy voices were everywhere; people
embraced one another, kissing, laughing, and crying. He turned
around as if to see someone he knew. There was no one there, he knew
no one, and this was his first bitter moment of realization that he was
so far away from people he loved. He wished Magda were here. He
then sat on a bench and wondered aloud,
“And now, where are you going, Hermes?” A question justified
under the circumstances, a question he had no answer to, only the
sense of loss, of abandonment, of forlornness, and fear crept into his
heart. Then, as if from the great source, he felt he heard a voice that
whispered to his heart, not to his ears. And it was the voice of his new
motherland that said,
“Welcome, Hermes, you are here in Vancouver now, go out
there, find your way to do your studies and get your diploma. Your
folks are waiting for you, back in Greece. They look forward to seeing
you back. Your diploma is your goal and nothing less…” were the
words he felt he heard, and the voice wasn’t any other but the voice
of Canada, his temporary motherland, which, like a mother, took
another orphan off the streets and gave him a chance.
Suddenly, the fear he had just felt vanished, and a jolt of enthusiasm
took over his senses. Hermes stood up. His eyes ran around the
space of the large airport hall when his glance met the old woman
whom he had helped in Montreal; she saw him too. At the same
time, a very tall man with a good-looking woman approached…

https://draft2digital.com/book/4172538#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763858

The Unquiet Land

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Excerpt

When he and Caitlin returned to the sitting room the music was just starting again, and dancers were sorting themselves out on the floor. But a sixteen-hand reel in the sitting room was much too ambitious. The set collapsed amid shouts and laughter, but the music played on.
“Fiddlers are tireless,” someone said. “Wouldn’t it be good if they could pull a plough?”
“And play the fiddle at the same time.”
“That Dan Ryan is always on the fiddle—no matter what he’s doing.”
“Hey Molly, what about a song?”
“Give us The Sally Gardens, Molly.”
“Good girl, Molly.”
“Come on now, don’t be shy.”
“She’ll start in a minute. Just wait and see.”
“Sure she hasn’t the shapin’s o’ beginnin’ on her.”
“She has surely. Good girl, Molly.”
“The Sally Gardens, Molly.”
Molly Noonan began to sing in a clear soprano voice the first of many songs. Almost everyone in the sitting room performed a song, a recitation, a step-dance or a tune on the fiddle or the pennywhistle. There were no more set dances. As the evening wore on, the ceilidh became quieter.
In the kitchen a few women sat around the table talking over cups of tea.
“I still think she’s pregnant already,” said a thin, bony woman with a face as sharp as the prow of a skiff. “You mark my words, she’ll be a mother well before nine months are out.”
“Maire Kelly, you’ve an evil tongue in your head.” Una Slattery was loyal to Caitlin whom she had cared for as a little girl.
“No, I haven’t,” said Maire. “But I have a sharp eye. I can tell when a woman’s pregnant. And I’m always right. Wasn’t I right about the Dooley girl? And Lizzie Thompson? And I’m right about Caitlin MacLir.”
“Caitlin Carrick,” said Maggie Potter, a woman in her thirties more talked about than talkative. She had been engaged for thirteen years to Willy Dunn, a farmer who refused to leave his mother to marry.
“Caitlin Carrick. I’m sorry. I’m not used to that yet.” Maire Kelly was a stiletto-tongued spinster not known to be afraid of speaking her mind. “Barbed wire in a black dress,” was Slattery’s description of her. “Mind you,” Maire went on, “I’m not reproaching her. It’s happened manys a time before and it’ll happen manys a time again. Michael Carrick is a handsome big man, straight and steady as they come. He’ll make a good husband and father.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Jazz with Ella

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Excerpt

Hank stopped before a hammered gold ladle outlined in pearls, which had been owned by Tsar Volodya Feodorovich and was dated 1618. “Wow, dig this jewelled pooper scooper.”
Marty laughed. “Hey, take a look at Lona. She’s practically salivating over that medallion.” The two darted over to join her in front of a glass case.
“What is it?” Hank asked her.
“An encolpion,” Lona said, without tearing her eyes away from the outsized milky-blue sardonyx. “It was made in the 17th century.” Carved on its surface was a depiction of a haloed St. John set within an oval gold filigree border studded with jewels.
“Bet it’s worth a bundle,” Hank said.
Natasha scurried over, too, just in time to catch Hank’s last words. “Treasures of the Armoury are closely guarded,” she announced.
“By whom? Is that your security?” Lona asked innocently. An elderly woman, face lined, kerchief on her head, sat slumped, hands in lap, in a plain wooden chair near the doorway.
“Oh, Natasha, yoo-hoo!” called Linda Appleton. The guide winced as Linda descended on her like a warship sailing into action. “Can you tell me whether photos are permitted in here because David is taking lots of them?” As they moved off to sort out David’s picture-taking proclivities, Hank took the opportunity to corner Lona.
“So what’s an encolpion?” he asked, not expecting an answer.
Lona turned away from the showcase reluctantly. “It’s a medallion worn by bishops, of course. Don’t you know anything?”
Hank couldn’t think of a suitable response so he sloped off, frowning.
★
If they had visited only the Kremlin that first morning, it would have been enough stimulation for the jet-lagged travellers. Jennifer had already used up half a notebook with details of their breakfast, the church, the soldiers’ uniforms and the carriage of Catherine the Great. But instead of stopping for lunch, their tour guide led them out of the Armoury, back into Red Square and up to the longest and most silent of queues that they had seen thus far—for the mandatory visit to Lenin’s tomb.
“Lenin’s memorial has been closed to visitors during renovations,” she told the group. “You are lucky to visit on this one day that it will be open.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Straits and Turns

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Excerpt

The Dancer
It was a cloudy April day; one could hardly discern the mountains to the north shore, where two mountain peaks resembling lions stood facing each other as if they were playing a good game of chess without any concern for the people of Vancouver, down by the shores. These two lions were so symbolically attached to the lives of Vancouver citizens that they had named the bridge which connected the Lower Mainland with the North Shore ‘Lion’s Gate Bridge’, the same way the Hellenes had the Lion’s Gate at Mycenae.
Costa was sitting by the window of his one-bedroom suite and kept writing a few lines of the novel he had started a few months earlier, as his eyes suddenly left the paper and gazed at the expanse towards the North Shore, on the other side of the harbour. Indeed, Vancouver was a beautiful city situated on the edge of the land by the Pacific Ocean, on the west side of which the lands of the Orient were located, including Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, and, to the south, Australia.
He got up to refill his coffee mug and lit a cigarette. It was Tuesday, his day off, so he didn’t have much to do other than write a few lines and perhaps go to Stanley Park for a stroll until his wife came home. His mind ran to the nasty letter he got from his father when he disclosed to them that his girlfriend from Athens had joined him in Vancouver and that they lived together and perhaps they’d get married soon so she could stay permanently; his girlfriend had come with a visitors visa which meant she had to leave in three months unless Costa married her thus making her wife of a legal immigrant.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4250839#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763866

Swamped

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Excerpt

Reason intervened at last and yanked their wild thoughts back
to reality at almost the same moment. As suddenly as they started,
they both stopped and stepped apart. Frances quickly fixed her clothing
and hair, took a deep breath, and walked out of Eteo’s office. Helena
and Logan noticed her brusque, nervous manner as she passed
them on the way to her office and thought their different thoughts
about what might just have taken place in their boss’s office.
Meanwhile Eteo’s mind ran back to the VSE annual gala the previous
November. Pacific Trends had reserved three tables and invited
its top twenty brokers and the four big wigs of the firm to occupy the
twenty-four seats. Before the dinner, people gathered, mingled,
talked, exchanged ideas, laughed, and gossiped. Eteo always attended
these events—he was always among the ten top producers in his
firm—but that year he had truly paid attention to Frances Woodruff
for the first time. She was also a perennial big producer, and on that
occasion she had been seated with Bradley and the other big wigs.
Eteo was at the adjacent table with seven other brokers. It was shortly
after his divorce, something all his colleagues had known about, and
when Eteo was at the bar getting a drink, Frances came up behind
him, rubbed her beautiful, lush breasts lightly against his back, and
then hugged him from behind. In front of everybody else at the bar
she said, “Hello, handsome Cretan,” her voice resonating with everything
Eteo was tuned to at that moment.
When Eteo told Logan about this startling show of affection the
next day, his son had said, “Be careful, dad, take precautions. She’s
known to sleep around.” Eteo had laughed and assured him he would
be careful, but he had never pursued the affair even though he had
often imagined it. He promised himself that this time he would not
fail to visit Frances soon and light his devotional candle on her altar,
as he put it to himself. Pleased with that image, he turned to his
screen and the behavior of the stocks in his accounts. The performance
was good on every front except Golden Veins, where he remained
exposed without any reasonable exit. He called Richard.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

He Rode Tall

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Excerpt

But for the most part, it was a year or so here and there with postings
to what sounds like exotic locations, such as New Guinea,
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Cape Town, Chile, South Korea, and Lisbon.
A long time ago, Joel had figured out that he wasn’t getting the top
assignments any longer, but at this point, he was just thankful to
have a job, any job as an engineer and he knew that he was desperately
hanging onto this posting.
Early on at Empire, he figured out that Mr. Lee wasn’t a fan of
his hard-drinking nightlife and was less than excited about tolerating
it. Mr. Lee had explained to Joel on his first day at the new
office that he had asked the home office to consider sending
another engineer to help with this project. It wasn’t that Mr. Lee
didn’t know Joel’s abilities yet; it was that Mr. Lee already knew
of Joel. In the maritime engineering community, word gets
around fairly quickly, and the word on Joel was that he was a
has-been, or maybe more accurately, a never-been. Recruited to
the firm right out of university at the age of twenty-two, Joel was
marked for great things. There was no doubt that Joel had an
incredible wealth of potential, but that potential seemed to dry
up a long time ago.
So here he was, six months into a project to shore up the foundation
of an old terminal, and after a twenty-five year career with
the same firm, Joel could sense that the end was near. Already
the project was way behind and significantly over budget. And
Joel knew that although they couldn’t pin everything on him,
many of the problems were a direct result of him screwing up.
Being as he was, from consuming vast quantities of alcohol daily

Joel just couldn’t keep up anymore. At best he was
half the engineer that he used to be and even back then he was
only putting in half the effort. If his calculations were right, Joel
figured that he was probably functioning at something close to a
quarter of an engineer. This project really needed a fully functioning,
experienced senior engineer. He knew it. But he wasn’t
about to change. Or even if he wanted to, and some mornings he
certainly felt like he wanted to, but he just didn’t even know how…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562862

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897955