Something on
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Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
Something on
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Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
First part of a short story about food, Scotland and... love?
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My prose piece 'Choose Being an Actor' appears in Volume 6 of From Arthur's Seat. The anthology is available instore at independent bookshops across Edinburgh, and at Waterstones Online:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/from-arthurs-seat/abigail-flowers/kate-lavelle/9781739963507 Briar was particularly pissed that night. Undiluted Chambord. She was playing ‘Watching the Wheels’ on repeat and gurgling happily to herself about ‘divine timing’, as if John Lennon had somehow written the song specifically for her, to let her off the hook for her fifteen-year strong period of creative malaise.
On the fifth play, Marius wandered into the room, his hands clasped together in front of him like he was trying his best to imprison an unruly fairy. Ignoring us both, he paced the room impatiently, looking for something, then stopped to watch his mother slurring along to Lennon. I held my breath, watching his face as he registered the same fallacy in Briar’s line of thought that I’d been keeping to myself for the last forty minutes. ‘He wasn’t, though,’ he said mildly as he continued to hunt the skirting boards. For the first time since he’d entered the room, Briar’s eyes slid to meet his. ‘Who wasn’t what?’ ‘John Lennon. He wasn’t just watching the wheels. Not really. I mean, he maybe wrote the song about a brief period of time when he was, sort of, dossing… but if you think about it, the very existence of the song means he wasn’t watching the wheels at all. He was creating. He was writing, and producing.’ Briar’s soft drunken smile turned to stone. Marius, unperturbed, opened his thumbs. The translucent pink heads two miniscule baby birds poked through the opening between them. ‘He was the wheels, arguably,’ said Marius, holding the birds up to his ear. In the few seconds between the fade of the fifth play and the intro of the sixth, I heard the eerie, barely-there sound of cheeping. Ghost babies. Shadows of a sound. ‘Revenue,’ said Marius sagely, before his eyes finally fell on what he was looking for: a packet of sunflower seeds. He bent to the countertop, picked it up with his teeth and stalked out of the room, his mother’s eyes on his back. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the look that was in them – wounded, vaguely confused. It was as if she was trying to pinpoint the exact moment in time the goblins had swapped her son, the sweet baby who had who stared at her with such fuzzy-eyed, obedient adoration, for this sharp, strange, clever changeling… this alien adolescent who would challenge her, and doubt her, and break her spell of denial in a way nobody else had ever dared. There’s a new boy working in the café. His glasses magnify his already-huge olive eyes slightly, lending an owlish quality to his sincere face. All the tired Monday morning eyes are on him, because he's one of the very rare, lucky ones to have kept their magic after the Strawberry Moon Disaster. His wings are huge; inky black and velvety, releasing plumes of glitter from the tips every so often as he takes coffee orders. The wings, of course, are the main focus of the many stares he's attracting, but I would have noticed him anyway. I would know him a mile off. It's Andrea, an Italian boy I went to primary school with for a year or so, before the Tourmaline Reforms. He spoke little to no English when we were children, but we still managed to be friends. His mother told me that he wanted to be the most famous performer in the world. He had a baby sister, I remember, who was the apple of his eye. On the counter, he’s put some white cups on display, tipped and filled to the brim with bright-coloured powder; one a mustardy yellow, the other a dense, highly-pigmented green that reminds me of Urban Decay’s Kush eyeshadow. ‘You want to try?’ he asks me. I can see from the look in his eyes that he doesn't remember me. ‘Is Matcha, or Turmeric. For lattes.’ ‘Okay,’ I laugh, pointing to the green dust. He takes a jar from the counter-top and sprinkles a measure into a large cardboard cup. He opens the palm of its hand, summoning a silver jug which sits there for a moment or two, until fine plumes of steam float from its brim. When the milk is ready he uses his hands as normal to pour the milk on top of the Matcha, creating a pretty, unfussy leaf print on its surface. ‘You disappoint her,’ says the man behind me in the queue nastily. ‘She thought she was getting the fucking Mona Lisa.’ Andrea, ignoring this, presents me with the steaming green cup. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘You are Little Matcha Girl.’ I laugh. ‘You know this tale? 'The Little Match Girl'?’ he asks. ‘Yes. Yes, I remember. It’s very sad. ‘In Italian, ‘La Piccola Fiammiferaia’. They make a play recently, in London. Her name is Fiammetta.’ ‘Ahh. I see.’ ‘Is very beautiful story. I know it because my sister…’ He loses concentration for a second, and then I notice little cardboard holder is knocking at the bottom of my cup. I adjust my grip, and it nudges itself onto the base, allowing me to hold the cup without burning my hands. ‘Your sister liked the story?’ I probe him, gently. He looks up at me again and gives a tiny apologetic shake of his head. ‘No, no. She doesn’t like this story at all. They use it to teach her English. But my sister cried every day so had to change. My sister was very, you know… how do you call it. She was caring for things. Anyway, that was before. Sorry, is not good English. I am Andrea.’ ‘Oh! Eh, I’m Nina. And, no. No, it's good, your English is lovely.’ Andrea smiles, and then looks at me searchingly for a moment, as though my voice sparked a distant memory. The man behind me lets out an impatient sigh, so I say goodbye, and move away from the counter. At the door, I throw Andrea a parting glance, and his face brightens, suddenly, with recognition. He smiles, his wings sparkling brightly. When I get outside, I look down and see a glittering Mona Lisa face on the surface of my latte, which stays piping hot for my entire commute to work.
Some practice readings of chapter drafts from my novel in progress. I haven’t finished recording the section, but if you would like to read on you can find ‘Humanities’ as published in short story form in Gutter Magazine 2019 by clicking the August 2019 archive of this blog: https://somethingonpaper.weebly.com/extracts/archives/08-2019
You can support Gutter by subscribing or ordering past issues over at https://www.guttermag.co.uk/getgutter
Practicing reading my work aloud - here, with a bizarre little story suitable for fans of vampires, cocktails and New Wave band The Church...
Extract from The Bat Cave
☾⋆ ‘They’re not bagpipes, actually.’ Ryan’s face snapped up towards Nick’s, his eyes narrowed. ‘Aye they ur.’ Another punter drawled a long cocktail order in Nick’s general direction. He nodded, easily procuring a glass jar of bright muddled raspberries from a high shelf above him. Ryan, who was hard of height and seemed to have taken the jar-reaching (and Nick’s general Australian-ness) to be the official heralders of battle, squared his shoulders. ‘How can they no be bagpipes? I mean they’re… It’s… clearly… fucking… bagpipes.’ He took a steady pull of his pint, momentarily soled by the quality of his reasoning. ‘Scottish band, The Church,’ he added to the gamine girl with a pretty pixie crop who sat perched on the bar stool beside him. She was (and she knew it) the real reason for the utterly bizarre display of mismatched machismo unfolding before her. ‘It’s a guitar. With an effect on it,’ Nick offered mildly, dividing the dark, glutinous mixture between four enormous crystal tumblers. I watched as the girl swivelled her petite body slowly clockwise on her stool. After being crossed daintily all evening in the direction of Ryan, her legs now opened like a rare, pale flower towards Nick. Despite the huge dark bar that stood between them, her body language had spoken its whispered invitation. Ryan looked briefly panic-stricken, then made a rather repulsive lip-smacking gesture that I assumed was supposed to be an impressive scoff. ‘Aye. I think not. This was the 80s, son. Don’t think they were making guitars sound like bagpipes in the 80s, somehow. No. Don’t think so, somehow. Don’t think so, son.’ Nick, ignoring this, leant into the bar to further the craft of his luminous gin Brambles. The deep violet lighting caught his face, bringing out the planes and angles which had been, until now, obscured by shadow. Presently, as he chopped blackberries with an enormous silver knife, he raised a hand to wipe his chin, leaving a vivid trail of liquid along his jawline. The pixie’s petals bloomed further. I wondered if Nick could smell their perfume yet. ‘Well, it’s an 80s Fender,’ he said mildly, ‘with an 80s E-bow on it, recorded on an 80s Syclavier.’ He grinned very briefly at the girl, ignoring Ryan completely in flagrant, hilarious disregard of the fact that the entirety of the spoken conversation had been between the two men. Despite his formidable looks, Nick’s smile was boyish – would have been innocent, even – if it wasn’t for the pointed white canines which now caught the gleam of the slow disco ball that cast its night-time glitter over the dark basement. The effect was quite alarming. ‘Synths!’ he finished, cheerful. The fairy girl giggled, delighted. Ryan’s displeasure was complete. ‘They’re fuckin’ bagpipes. Scottish band, The Church. Hence. Bagpipes.’ Nick smiled at him, then the girl, then shrugged briefly, dressing his glasses with Crème de Mure. Ryan, wild-eyed now, drew his pint - which had been almost full seconds ago - to his lips. Squinting from my viewing spot across the floor, I noticed with a quick thrill that the glass was now empty, save for the inch of foamy dregs at the bottom which swilled like sea-suds towards his lips. In his confusion, Ryan leant so far backwards to catch the booze that he fell, quite spectacularly, from his stool onto the floor. In the ensuing chaos, Nick signalled quickly at the girl to make her escape. She stared at him for a moment, then dashed off into the night, her pale legs gleaming as they disappeared up the stone stairs that lead from the basement up to the pavement, and freedom. ‘They’re from Sydney,’ offered Nick, just loud enough to reach Ryan from on high as he flailed like a cockroach beneath him, attempting, like many before him, to get to grips with The Bat Cave’s polished marble flooring. Nick caught my eye for the first time all evening, finding me immediately at my spot next to the juke box, where I liked to pretend sometimes that I was ‘dusting it off’. ‘Help me close tonight, would you?’ He glanced briefly down at the various vivid drinks bejewelling the surface of the bar. Before my eyes, they each filled to their brims with clear liquid. The dark berry juices pooled up into the booze, dancing like spilled ink in water. I caught my breath, stuttered a response, but Nick had faded again out of the purple lights, along with the final otherwordly strums of Under The Milky Way. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6nKP10j4s Later that night, as my own words shone on the walls around us in a glittering black ink that never seemed to dry, and yet did not run or blur, I looked up at Stellan. ‘Can we have beautiful blonde children, and live here in this flat all the time, if you are spirit and I’m not? I can cook for you and wear long shirts instead of dresses.’ ‘No.’ Despite my carefully frivolous phrasing, this question had been playing on my mind for several weeks, and its answer came now with the short finality I had feared. I scrunched my face and buried it in his shoulder. ‘I’ll live with you in the spirit world then. I don’t like this one anyway.’ Gently, Stellan nudged my face out of his shoulder and looked at me. ‘No, you can’t do that either. The spirit world is strange and scary. It is full of deals and double-crossing.’ I looked at him, eyebrow raised. He snorted softly. ‘Your world has those things, yes. But there is a difference. Deals and double-crossings in your world are not also laced with evil magic.’ ‘I’m not sure about that.’ To this he said nothing, but closed his eyes, shifted his long body to rest beside me, instead of above. I looked around my bedroom; my cool, inky haven in the humid night. Aside from Kitta’s unsightly stain in the corner, the room always looked more beautiful, somehow, when Stellan was here… as though the moon and starlight were able to ooze in through the open window along with his presence, and colour the space with their nocturnal glamour. Since the restaurants had closed, the smell of the Glasgow summer night was different - laden now, only, with the day’s blossoms and the dusty heat drifting up from the pavement - and not the heady scent of Finnieston curry houses that I had only then come to realise were so synonymous with my city. Now, without them – the rich smells of food and spices, of beer, of Friday-night city lust, and without the implications activity, and life, and people that came with them, it was very easy to imagine that Stellan and I were the only two beings left, held together in the quiet bedroom which had become, for those few precious months, the unlikely meeting spot between our separate worlds. ‘That’s not what you want,’ he said eventually, sternly. ‘You don’t want to live a life hidden away from your own world. There are beautiful things in your world.’ ‘No,’ I said, petulantly. ‘Yes. You are one of them. By hiding here, you are denying your world the gift of you.’ ‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. ‘No. You are just afraid, and lazy.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘In your world, you can use your stories. You can make money to live by, if you tell them.’ ‘But I don’t want to.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because. Because… doing that properly involves work, and phone calls, and events, and… people who work in publishing.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Yes. Well. What were you saying earlier? About evil magic?’ |