the lonely crowd / spring the lonely crowd the lonely crowd new home of the short story Edited and Designed by John Lavin Advisory Editor Michou Burckett St. Laurent Front & Back Cover Photos by Jo Mazelis Frontispiece from ‘The Greystone’ by Seamus Sullivan Published by The Lonely Press, 2016 Printed in Wales by Gwasg Gomer Copyright The Lonely Crowd and its contributors, 2016 ISBN 978-0-9932368-3-9 The Lonely Crowd is an entirely self-funded enterprise. Please consider supporting us by subscribing to the magazine here www.thelonelycrowd.org/the-lonely-store If you would like to advertise in The Lonely Crowd please email [email protected] Please direct all other enquiries to [email protected] Visit our website for more new short fiction, poetry and photography www.thelonelycrowd.org Contents Liling's Escape Kate Hamer - 9 Three Poems Joe Dunthorne - 19 Woman Waiting at a Station Alan McMonagle - 22 Made You Look Valerie Sirr - 31 Three Poems Polly Atkin - 40 Crusades Marie Gethins - 46 Janet Norbury Charlie Hill - 62 Like the Dust Leila Segal - 65 Three Poems Zelda ChapPel - 72 Undertaker Bethany W. Pope - 76 The Ukrainian Girl Catherine McNamara - 85 The Sparkle of River Through the Trees Neil CamPbell - 96 Three Poems James Aust - 105 June 20: The Ratling Robert Minhinnick - 113 The Greystone Seamus Sullivan - 117 June 24: Razors Robert Minhinnick - 128 Point of Lay Siân Melangell Dafydd - 133 Two Poems Scarlett Sabet - 142 For You Are Julia C. G. Menon - 147 Looks Like Rain Susie Wild - 156 Two Poems Carol Lipszyc - 159 One and Only Girl Laura Windley - 169 Priest Giles Rees - 177 Three Poems Sarah James - 188 Villavicencio Iain Robinson - 192 Herr Munch Visits the Zoo Diana Powell - 206 Two Poems Katharine Stansfield - 214 The Last Minutes of BA Flight 465 Armel Dagorn - 217 Per Ardua Sergo Nigel Jarrett - 221 A Different River Pia Ghosh Roy - 230 Six Secrets of Ivy Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch - 239 About the Authors - 240 spring Three Poems Joe Dunthorne New lessons My thesis (self-funded) is: attractive people are hapPy. Men in balaclavas, their faces toasty warm. Young vandals in their pomP can really lift a neighbourhood. Not so much a tough crowd as a beach in winter. The hand of fate relegated to dispensing bad recePtion. You’re breaking up by which I mean we are by which I mean the universe will never stoP exPanding no matter how rudely we ask. Save us from our scientists. Save us some of the old diseases, those ones were amazing. 19 Woman Waiting at a Station Alan McMonagle Past midnight and, surprise surprise, the train still hasn't showed. What will it be this time? The good-for-nothing engine. Some wild animals on the tracks. Another jumPer. The skinheads drinking at the station bar aren't overly concerned. This is a Place that will suPPly them long after they run out of money, sPill from their high stools, let loose their anarchic blood. Meantime, two couPles with backPacks are standing on the liP of the platform, looking back up the tracks for a good-omen sign. While at the table by the bar door, the man masquerading as a benevolent taxi driver is biding his time. He knows the train is always late. He knows he can keeP at the crossword he is Pretending to Puzzle over, nonchalantly sip his Coke, puff stoically on his slender cigar. Within the hour he knows he can name his Price and be hailed as a saviour. For this to hapPen he knows he needn't so much as budge. The young woman is by herself at a table further inside the bar; a narrow, meekly lit, Patched-up ruin of a room, the kind of Place not willingly sought out. She has no idea when the train is due but here she is anyway. All set to flee. Her case on the floor by her feet. What little money she has tucked deeP inside a discreet Pocket. A vending-machine coffee rests on the table. A sandwich 22 Three Poems Polly Atkin Sister Running Hurricane came calling last night, singing warnings, and you, little sister, you’d let yourself out to howl at the swooPing clouds till they sPlit and sPat Pellets of stars. The trees would not dance as you wanted. The mountains kept forcing you back. You screeched in each wheezing chimney, shrieked as each road sign whined in disharmony, thrumming your nails on slates staccato glissando Nobody slePt. Everyone dreamt. 40 The Lonely Crowd - Issue Four Your tears became blades in the earth, sProuting. This morning a tree barred your door, mouthing lines you thought you’d shed: he is thin in his ends. The fells are in sun. Climb over the fallen, kick off, keeP running. 41 Crusades Marie Gethins Kristina fishes another beet wafer out of the jar. She sucks sweet-sour marinade from furrows in its wavy toP, then bites—each blood moon made into smaller and smaller crescents until the final ruby sliver disappears into her mouth. Juice seeps out of smile corners; it stains her liPs, turns fingers reddish-purple. ‘Mama’s going to kill you,’ I say. ‘Only if I sPill.’ ‘When did you start liking pickled beets anyway?’ ‘Just felt like them.’ Beige vinyl smacks a double kiss when Kristina lifts one thigh and then the other off PaPa’s lounge chair. The marinade sloshes. I imagine a splatter— miniature dead body shaPe—in the centre of PaPa’s seat. A crimson wave laPs near the toP of the jar, but doesn’t slop over. I hope she doesn’t notice my noisy out-breath. ‘Aren’t pickled beets too Polish for you?’ ‘For your information, beets evolved from a prehistoric north African vegetable.’ She smirks at me and heads towards the kitchen. I look down at my history book as she goes by, then I hear her bare feet slap lino. She screws a metal lid onto the beet jar, oPens and closes the fridge. 46 Like the Dust Leila Segal It was a long time since I’d seen or heard from Siobhan. I had finally left my lover, and had that dry feeling you get when you look back over years of intimacy that have left no discernible mark uPon your heart. I found myself longing to be with Siobhan again. With just my rucksack and the Piece of PaPer with Siobhan’s address in hand, I boarded a last-minute flight to Santiago. I took a bus from the airPort to the town whose name I had written down. It wasn’t far—an hour or more—but I found myself in a different world. The streets were broad and sandy, great emPty boulevards bleary in midday sun alongside wide oPen sea. So it is here, I thought—here that she’s found peace. Her choice did not surPrise me: this Perfect silent Place with only the brushing of shore and dead vines baking on a suntraP wall. Tall buildings drowned each wide boulevard, and they were emPty. It was a town standing long unchanged, preserved by heat, built when girls stePPed out in circle skirts with boys in flat-toP hair, or when carriages drew uP for señoritas with Parasols and dainty waists. Without a maP of the Place, nor any shoP oPen where I could buy one, I wandered for a while, almost lost. Then, 65 Three Poems Zelda ChaPPel Bedding On new days, I'm a hatchling shedding shell in favour of bone—poor light growing stark by the right window. Pick me up, a lukewarm bird in your hand, and ask me to remember our lurch, our sPasm; all reflex and electric. I've been breaking uP with light, forgetting all our rhythm, growing thin as a shout through a wire. The white graze of our unmade bed—the folding, unfolding—is a scuffle like an aftermath. In these hours, there is no conclusion nor would we want there to be. There are 72 The Lonely Crowd - Issue Four shadows of us left in the sheets, black as crows, discussing our griefs and I want to be in on the conversation. I want to preserve our state of fledgling in this dust-clad room, stifle it, put it under cloches to be gawped at later in our end days. But I need air. You look for wings. I tell you I have none. 73 Undertaker Bethany W. Pope Surfaces are so imPortant. Joyce knows this better than anybody. She stands at her Plywood, dorm-issue vanity, fluffs her carefully sPrayed Farrah Fawcett cut, and apPlies the face that she thinks of as 'business professional'. It isn't her summer working face; the eyes are less dramatic, shadowed in more 'natural' shades. When she migrates north in the summer, to New York or Atlanta (wherever her agency decides to send her) she Presents a very different façade. The runway shows like to hire girls with stark facial individuality whose bodies disPlay an androgynous, flat chested beauty. For those jobs she shades her cheeks to emPhasise her sharP bones and highlight the unmistakable length of her nose. When the job has something to do with a magazine or Product the idea is to Present a Perfect, blank ideal, something to comPliment the items on sale. Joyce smooths her features to a Pure-skinned blank, pads her narrow boy-hips beneath her expensive designer audition-clothes, and lets her breasts out of their stifling ace-bandage Prison. Joyce is very good at what she does. Her agency has asked her, repeatedly, to give up her college work and sign on full time.