Writing Competitions again....

This is a feel-good, predictable little piece of flash written for a competition. Whiskey of a particular brand had to come into it!



HORSE POWER  

Rory googled jobsearch again. He had finished his course in marketing eight weeks ago, and so far no luck. Some of his pals were already planning to join a friend in Canada or Australia. Working in the mines in Western Australia was becoming a popular destination for new Irish graduates.

   “Gran, what do you think of Australia?” he said over his shoulder to Granny Maire who was now pouring over the jobs vacancy pages in the newspaper.

   “What do you love to do? That’s the question.”

   “What does that matter? What keyword should I enter in this job search, Gran?”

   “Horses? You used to love horses.”

   “Gran. I’m serious.”

   But Rory entered horses and found himself staring at a complex array of jobs for a betting company.

   “I have to select a department now. What do you think? Dial-a-bet, Quantitative analysis, Risk?”

   “Are you sure you’re on the right site, son? What about equine management? Isn’t that the grand title they give to it now?

   “I think we’re on different pages, Gran.”

   “I’m seventy five and I’m telling you now, Rory O’Hare, you’re a born genius with horses and if you don’t follow your talent you will end up in a mine somewhere of your own making. Now it’s getting late and I’m having a night cap. Will you join me?”

   “You should be drinking hot chocolate at your age.”

   “There’s nothing that a drop of whiskey won’t solve.”

   “Get off my case will you, or I’ll end up in a paddock up to my knees in muck.”

   “Worse places to be. You never minded when you were a lad. You had a sparkle in your eyes then. Did you apply for that course?”

   “Goodnight, Gran.”

   Gran walked sprightly out through the door and into the kitchen where she would settle into her nightcap and the daily crossword. Rory’s eyelids were already drooping over the webpage. He read the long list of job titles ; business analyst, business intelligence analyst, E-commerce project manager. How did you get qualified for all of these posts? And who was getting the jobs these days? Nobody he knew.

 

  Maybe she was right. Maybe he should just check his emails for word about that place on the stable management course she’d coaxed him to apply for three weeks before. His friends had laughed, but something inside him had held firm through all the teasing and taunting. Rory tapped in his password.

   
Five minutes later he was flinging open the kitchen door.

   “Have you any of that hard stuff left Gran, because I think we have something to celebrate that really matters.” 

Granny Maire noticed that his eyes were sparkling.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

The Frenchman

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 range and converted hayloft seemed suspended in a time warp. Oil fired central heating was a promise and, for the moment, Sarah spent her days lugging buckets of turf and logs from the out house, feeding them to the black iron Stanley that choked and spluttered and spewed out wood smoke. She saw little of the Frenchman.

                                          ***

“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 squatted, and through the half-door windowpane she saw the tall man standing. She looked into eyes that were black as the Stanley; his skin was rain beaten, and he held himself straighter than any man she could remember.

“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. “I notice smoke from your chimney and I see you have it fired.”

“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

Sherlock's Back

Happy to report that Sherlock, our one-eyed Moggy, is safe and sound and back home again.

He was found by scouts a few days ago at their camp in the Dublin mountains near Ticknock. We don't quite know how he got there, as it's a 10k trek, or what he has been up to for the past 3 weeks!

But the scouts looked after him well until the scout master brought him to the SPCA yesterday. 

And thanks to the microchip I got the call.

Thanks Everybody at Larch Hill Camp!!

We hope he earned his Badger Adventure Badge.

http://www.larchhill.org/

Crystals

It was one of those jobs that didn't quite fit in with my CV, but was somehow part of the journey. A stint in a shop that sold alternative books, remedies, crystals, salt ionisers.....

The Crystal Gazer

Mildred Moody opened the shop door slowly, hoping to avoid the tomb-creak that usually ensued. She dodged the chimes that somebody insisted on hanging at eye level just inside the doorway. A glance at the notice board told her that somebody had rearranged it again. First of the month, every month, some insistent body reorganised the business cards. Mildred would now have to scour through row upon row of them in search of her own, just in case somebody had decided to shred her this month.

She closed her right eye and screwed up her left one. That way she could make out, eventually, the gold rimmed edges of her own business card, almost obliterated by a brash rainbow offering of Indian Head Massage, Reiki and cellular healing.

“I left yours up, Miss Moody,”  chirped a voice from behind the cash register- Tara, the owner’s teenage daughter, headphones in situ, painting her nails black, tuned to Spin 103, while Terry Oldfield poured tranquillity around the shop floor.

“You should move those chimes,” grunted the little woman in the second-hand Mac and down-at- heel Clarks Springers and clutching a Tesco bag-for-life.

“Magda says the sound of chimes breaks up stagnant energy, Miss Moody.”

“Your mother may be right, but somebody will lose an eye!”

That said Mildred turned towards a shelf arrayed with precious stones and crystals. Glittering amber, carnelian and obsidian winked at her from glass bowls. A particular amethyst caught her eye. In its polished face she could just about make out what might be the head of a hyena God. Anubis weighing hearts at the time of the passing over. Anubis trapped in a crystal time frame!

Mildred felt for the coin in her coat pocket. Her fingers swept the expanse of pocket lining until they encountered an unexpected gap in the seam. Without moving her head Mildred looked sideways at the girl behind the counter. Tara was talking with animation on her mobile.

“Bored - speechless. Two customers- all day. Weirdos! Quess who’s here again?” The voice dropped. “Yeh, the loop. She’s seeing visions, in stones! Says they talk to her. Yeh, I know!”

Mildred’s fingers crooked and burrowed deeper into her coat lining. Just as she reached the edge of a coin the chimes rang out and Mildred lost contact. A young man in a business suit and pink tie blustered in.

The amethyst was winking furiously at her. She turned her back to the counter and reached for the stone. The business suit was checking out the CDs.

“Temple of the Forest? It sounds relaxing, but is there any water sound in it? I hate the sound of water.”

“No idea,” the girl replied.

“Perhaps I could hear a track or two?” the suit persisted.

Mildred heard Tara’s sigh.

“Call you back in a sec,” she said to her friend on the mobile.

“Are these ionisers any use?” he queried.

The business suit was going to be a problem.

“I’ll find you a leaflet.” Tara vacated her perch behind the cash register.

This was Mildred’s chance. With a deft move she bagged the amethyst.

High heels clip clopped behind her.

“Can you put that stone back on the shelf, Miss Moody!”

“I can’t, as a matter of fact. It’s probably stuck in the hem of my coat. Besides it was  an experiment in energy transfer…..”

“I’ve heard it all now!”

“If you attune yourself to the crystal it can be moved along any axis, Tara.”

“Well then, I’d be grateful if you would attune it back to the shelf.”

“Attunement uses up a lot of energy, my dear, and, for the moment, I’m zapped.”

The girl’s painted nails tapped with menace on her hip bones.

“She’ll pay you next time,” came a voice, apparently from Mildred’s pocket.

The tapping stopped. The business suit dropped the salt crystal ioniser that rained orange splinters onto the shop floor.

“You heard Anubis! I’ll pay you next time.” And Mildred, negotiating her Clark Springers through the salt crystal shards, headed for the door. Chimes rang out as the door creaked to a close.

The high heels headed for the notice board, and the black painted nails prised out a gold rimmed business card that read:

Mildred Moody

Ventriloquist and Crystal Gazer

Fortune Teller and Soothsayer.

Holding the card ceremoniously between painted thumb and forefinger, Tara picked her stiletto steps through the glittering glass strewn across the shop floor. At the back of the shop she opened a door and leaned over a toilet bowl. The nails released their prey and the card fluttered into a swirl of flushed foam.

“It’s called Bull shit, Miss Moody!”

MISSING SHERLOCK

Our one-eyed Moggy has disappeared since June 22nd.

MISSING SHERLOCK

I stroke your paws
on the screensaver of my laptop
and stretch my fingertip
to touch the tip of your nose
and recall your soft fur
and wet snout, your engine purr
your roll-over-scratch-me
your snake flick about my feet
your dives through garden-hose-spray
your rocket-leaps after flies
your paw-swings at lupin
your skulks behind flower-pots
your Premier-League-advances across
tiled floor in pursuit of belled balls.

I find them now abandoned
beneath beds, couches, cupboards
in places you couldn't reach.

Like you now, beyond my call.

                                                                 

Summer Trails

The Stylist

Nobody sees him shave his trails but in the evening they are there

turning our park woodland into a gallery of buzz cuts, long and short,

opening up our possibilities,

giving us choices we never knew we had.

 

A high taper with scalp exposure in front of the big Ash.

To the left, a clean shaven trail that cuts through fields of daisies,

and, to the right, a razed trail that weaves and curves through common vetch,

its clinging tendrils wrapped around its neighbours.

 

A mane with shaved sides circles the Beech,

enticing us past stinging nettles that skirt

a hedge of bramble, not yet ripe, and ribwort plantain,

its ovary capsules spilling seeds at our feet.

 

Or past a butch cut that slices through a clump of dandelion,

their jagged teeth, dents-de-lion, in various stages of growth,

some bright yellow heads threatening closure with the scent of rain,

and gossamer balls of seeds  shedding themselves in our wake.

 

A stroke of his blade and a stubble path is shaven with precision

through tall grass sporting hogweed five feet tall.

A V junction creates a crown of creeping buttercups

drawing the eye to a newly planted Oak.

 

He’ll be back tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that.

Restyling and regrooming our park.

The man on the grass mower tractor

from Dunlaoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard 2017

In Memoriam

A Single Girl
(for Ann, RIP)

Your ashes won't be coming home.
We won't be angsting about shape or size of urn
Or whether to keep or scatter or when or where.

The Black Lough where you used to skate, if the ice held
Or the sea at Portrush where you climbed through marram- grassed- dunes
Ate sand-flaked sandwiches, dipped your toes in the Atlantic waves

Screamed knives,and retreated to Barry's Amusement Arcade
And the burning smell of rubber tyred dodgems, the ping and pull of slots,
The jute box blasting out Sandie Posie's Single Girl.

You never did find your "sweet lovin' man to lean on"
And settled for that "great big town" Down Under.
No email. No Mobile. A non-adaptor.

We heard of your passing a week on.

Copyright with Cathy Leonard April 2017