This story was shortlisted in The Brian Moore short story competition and the Fish short story competition.
http://www.culturenorthernireland.org/features/literature/brian-moore-short-story-awards
http://www.fishpublishing.com/competition/short-story-contest/
Competitions are great motivators!!!
The Frenchman
She would
close his eyes in death; that was all she knew about him.
***
The
Frenchman who sold her the cottage made a living from his vegetables. Set on
the edge of Clare Galway the stone cottage with its Stanley
***
“She
sallies about that cottage naked in the dead of night,” said the farmer.
“I’ve seen
her in satins and bows and high-heeled shoes wavering in and out of the cow
shed,” said his neighbour.
“She only got
two letters all summer long and them nude postcards from abroad written in
Italian,” offered the postman.
“Sure I’d
hate to live near any of yous,” said Ruth the barmaid.
“She crumbled
out of the car last week,” began the Frenchman.
“You mean
clambered,” said the postman.
“No, I mean
she was tired, or arthritic.”
“Ugly and
arthritic too,” said the farmer into the bottom of his pint.
“She keeps
herself to herself is all you can hold on her,” replied the Frenchman as he
smoothed the plastic tablecloth with his fingers. He seemed to be patting down
some imaginary fold with long sweep strokes; thirty years speaking English in
this rural backwater and still his hands fumbled with something he couldn’t
quite fathom.
“Hold on
her? Would ye listen to yer man!”
***
“How do
people die if they die with their eyes wide open?” she asked her friends in the
city.
“A knife in
the gut.”
“A jealous
lover.”
“A shock to
the system!”
All
predicted sudden and violent deaths.
***
She watched
him from her deep recessed cottage window; a tall lithe man pushing fifty, his
spade sliding easily into the caked earth as he cut beds for winter seeding.
Swallows
dipped in and out of the turf shed, wild pheasants ate the grass seeds she’d
planted in late summer. The russeting oak cradled the blossoming holly and she
nearly trod underfoot fungi bright as hot coals. Winter was coming.
She’d best
stay away from the Frenchman, for how could she close his eyes in death if she
never went near him; it was the intimacy implied in that gesture that bothered
her.
***
She howls
by the light of the moon.
She walks
naked at sunset.
She has
teeth like fangs.
She pees in
the turf shed.
She’s a
queer one for sure.
She works hard…
He means for a
blow-in!
***
There was a
light tapping at her door, playful like a tune. Sarah was stacking woodpile in
the corner of the alcove where the black Stanley Stanley
“It’s you
so,” she muttered opening the door.
“No, a life-size
model! The Irish! They love to state the obvious or talk in riddle. “I’ll do it
now, in a minute,”” and he laughed, his black eyes twinkling.
“Have you
something to tell me or not?” asked Sarah bristling.
“You’re a
sour woman, or is it dour? I’ve come about the system,” and he waved his hands
towards the Stanley
“You’re an
observant man,” she quipped back.
“What I
mean is the electricity is cutting and the pump is not functioning and the system…”
Words fluttered and danced. She could see him tilt and turn the spade this way
and that, testing; words sliding across the blade, settling only when he had
done explaining.
“You didn’t
interrupt me!”
“Sure why
should I? Thank you. I understand; about the system. And it’s dour, but sour
works too.” And she closed the door on a bemused expression.
***
They say
she has a hoard of illegitmates in the city.
They say
she killed a man by simply sitting on him.
They say
she has the evil eye and can cast a spell.
They say
she stacks money in the chimney.
“She
listens,” said the Frenchman.
***
She had
never been wrong before; her intimations she always trusted.
But he
appeared more often now.
Did the
flue need cleaning?
A tile had
fallen off the roof.
The hedge needed
trimming?
And so he
came, feeding her stove and her emptiness with hands that smoothed and folded
imaginary contours on her cotton tablecloth and, stroking it, he told her his
story. And once in the telling his eyes rolled upwards in their sockets and her
heart stopped; she leaned towards him fumbling.
***
Swallows
dipped in and out of the loft that night and the lovers flew with them. They
flew out through the roof and waltzed on the Milky Way; followed the quest of
the plough and ended up in the Northern Star. Then they fell into a deep, deep
sleep.
“La petite
mort, we call it.”
“Little
death?”
“And la
grande mort, that’s death; the end or the beginning.”
Sarah began
to laugh; her rolling laughter scattering the swallows that nested under the
eaves. And then the tears came, and the falling of the ache she had been
holding.
“So you’re
not dead yet,” she said placing her palms over his eyes.
“The Irish!”
“I know! We
always state the obvious…”
Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017
Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017
