Short Story Competition 2013 - Winners

From left to right: actor Greg Page; Short Story Competition runner-up Trystan Lewis; novelist and our honourable judge Tania Hershman; actors Tricia Stewart and Lin Sagovsky; and novelist and co-founder of the Liars’ League Katy Darby

Grace Tsai, who received a cheque for £500 and an Arvon Foundation residential writing course of her choice, was confirmed as the winnerfor her entry, ‘For The Discerning Traveller’ – whilst Trystan Lewis, for ‘Miss Copley’s Freedom’, and Neal Mason, for ‘Lagly’, were confirmed as runners-up.  The evening was a great success; after a brief introduction from Tania Hershman (who treated us to two of her own excellent short stories) that gave appreciation to the unprecedented number of entries and the general high-standard of the writing submitted, the Liars’ League actors brought our three winning stories to life.

To read the entries honoured at last night's event, scroll down the page.  We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have, and a huge thank you to all those who entered.

SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2013 WINNING ENTRY:

For The Discerning Traveller by Grace Tsai

Where

Cramped in darkness black enough to stain, the Wanderer breathes. She is the worldʼs best, and only, professional stowaway.

People often remark about how cold the cargo holds of planes are, but the reality is colder.She likes to compare it to climbing Mount Everest in knickers (an activity with which she has entirely too much experience to discount the comparison).

Half asleep from the familiar lullaby of the engine, a nonsensical snatch of melody filtered through hard casing and zippers, she focusses on the destination. She breathes.

Itʼs always easier to think about where youʼre headed than where you are (and, especially, where youʼve come from.)

Thou

He crosses his legs.

Whoever made up the Ten Commandments, he thinks with vitriol, was either an idealist or a bastard.

The dark-haired girl perched two seats away takes out what looks like a well-loved and, by extension, well-chewed dog toy.

He uncrosses his legs. He can see the pinched expression on his face reflected in the shiny faux leather of his shoes.

A peek. Itʼs actually a weathered map with creases for valleys and nary an inch of map still pristine, dominated by seemingly random scarlet marks instead of black border lines.

He crosses his legs, pretending to casually stretch to catch another glimpse of the — is that parchment?

The couple sitting across from him exchange another tender wisp of conversation, and he tries so hard to do anything but covet.

Or both.

God, he hates airports.

Art

Sunlight worms its way into the room, lukewarm after having been filtered through the curtains. You had a dream last night. Usually, you canʼt remember your dreams in the

morning, except as vague wisps of mist amidst a gale.

But you remember this one.

You dreamed that you were in a cave, and the cave was connected to lots and lots of tunnels which are connected to lots and lots of other tunnels.

Oppressive silence. Great time to develop claustrophobia, you think, half-panicked, giggling hysterically, feeling the hewn walls with fluttering hands and wishing, wishing you

were a bat. A left turn. You stumble on a pebble, surprised at the coarse loudness of your own fear. Keep on, keep on. Turn left. Seventeen cracks on the cavern floors so far.

Another left. Youʼve forgotten what the sky looks like – eighteen – what anything looks like. Left again. Nineteen. Steady. Left. Slow. Left. Calm. Left. Something in your head is screaming, screaming at you left but you canʼt care, not in this yawning darkness. The shrill noise left echoes unpleasantly inside your head, but left itʼs better than left nothing left left left

you turn right and there are three geese, illuminated by shadow, two of them hissing, hissing angrily and the other (first from the left, your mind garbles unhelpfully) had one of those face: the ones you see everywhere and nowhere, almost absurdly mediocre and commonplace, dark-haired and dark-eyed, on the street, in the bus, passing by, wandering away, blinking but neither sad nor happy left left left

and thatʼs why youʼre dialing the phone now, calling your parents or a lover or an old friend because before that one nanosecond in a startlingly vivid dream when you had made eye contact with a goose you had never seen eyes more deserted.

That

“Mummy.”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Whatʼs that?”

“Thatʼs a box, Tim.”

“No, I mean inside it.”

“Just things, Tim. Like what we have in our suitcase.”

“But mum…”

“Timothy, donʼt whine. And no touching.”

Tim, like any other small child would, did exactly the opposite of what his mother said:

He touched the box. And was unpleasantly surprised when it moved. He glared at it after the initial shock and was determined not to be beaten – by a box of all things. So, after quickly checking his mother was still otherwise occupied, he peered into one of the small holes on the side, and baby-blue eyes met dark ones.

“Whoʼre you.” “Shh!” “Whatʼre you doing in there?”

“Iʼm an explorer.”

Tim blinked.

“A wanderer, if you will. Now shhh.”

Timʼs eyes went very round. He really didnʼt know what to say to that, so he just murmured softly to himself.

“I donʼt whine.”

Thirty-four years later, Captain Timothy Jones commandeered the first expedition in search of off-Earth habitation in space.

Is

She never means to change things, be an influence, cause waves. But sometimes sheʼll accidentally knock a cart over or meet someoneʼs gaze or allow people to really notice her. Itʼs like dipping a toe into a still pond – ripple after ripple of effect travel and bounce back, reflect off each other and become new patterns of unforeseen consequence.

As a true Wanderer, though, she doesnʼt stay for the aftermath. Itʼs hard not to look back, but fear is an excellent teacher.

You really should stay, the kind innkeeper would say, just for a few more days. Saying no doesnʼt ever really get easier, though itʼs part of the job description. She ought to know. She created the profession. She redefined “freelancing”.

This is the price, she told herself each time, eyes shuttered behind frozen lids, and freedom isnʼt refundable.

Sheʼs always very tempted, yet rest is for the weary, and she canʼt afford to be tired.

If she never stops, stays one step ahead, nothing, not even loneliness, can catch up.

Home

Once, in a fit of spontaneity, he signed up for a vacation to Italy. It was one of those guided tours, designed to make individuals feel like part of a group, but vacationing in a strange land with a batch of strangers really only makes one more alone.

Location. Bus trip. Historic location. Long bus trip. Scenic location. Longer bus trip. Quaint location. Against the very fibre of his nature, he struck up a conversation with a dark-haired girl during the third hour of the seven hour-long bus trip. He doesnʼt know why – probably because being in a foreign country is like being drunk, complete with severely lowered inhibitions and near-lethal injections of foolhardy courage. It was mostly one-sided, but he

blathered on since anything was better than listening to the old man in aisle five snore.

And then she looked at him with glacier-hard eyes and asked him when was the last time you went home. Dazed, he abandoned the meagre pretense of conversation. He made mental plans to purchase an airplane ticket. For the first time in his life (lots of firsts that day), he thought maybe, maybe his mother was right. She always said he was like tofu, soft and fragile and mushy on the inside even after you fry it for a long time.

It wasnʼt until the group returned to the bus after Florence (Firenze!, the revoltingly cheerful tour guide would chirp) that he remembered he hadnʼt asked for the girlʼs name.

He tried to look for her, but it turned out that she was never part of the group, at least not officially. This time, completely compliant with the very fibre of his nature, he left the matter well alone, and was almost successful in not dwelling upon piercing words and dark, cool eyes.

He spent the entirety of the plane ride gazing out the tiny window, grimy with the press of innumerable childish noses and valiantly ignoring a cup of apple juice which looked too much like pee. Flight attendants and fellow passengers alike seemed to sense and be repelled by his mood. So this is what itʼs like, he mused, to be cold.

He stepped off the plane, stepped into a cab, then off the cab and into the house of his childhood. He realized that nothing had changed, not even his parents (they were a little greyer, though he didnʼt like to think about that at all), except himself.

He spent the long return flight cursing the girl with flinty eyes he had failed to forget but mostly himself, for not being able, really, to be cold.

Sometimes, he lies awake at night, wondering how much cold birds must endure for their freedom.

SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2013 RUNNER-UP ENTRY:

Miss Copley's Freedom by Trystan Lewis

I'm drawing her chair without her in it. I'm drawing the indentations she's left behind, the worn patches on the arms where she held her precious remote control, the stain on the antimacassar from her hair rubbing. Her little leather foot stool has a shiny patina where her feet used to rest, there’s rings on the occasional table where she put her cup. I'm wasting my time really, I'd be better with my camera; they’re not things you can capture with a pencil.

    I've already taken photographs of her slippers lying there at the foot of the stairs next to the hot water bottle I gave her. I got right up close to them, looked right inside them. It's the dints and dents I'm interested in, the marks she's left on this world. The space she created but no longer fills.

    It's very quiet. Usually I can't think straight in this house for all her rattling on, her pointed questions, her helpful advice, her little digs. “We all make mistakes, don't we?”, “Parents these days...”, “A boyfriend, that's what you need.” Now that's all stopped, there's just silence.

    And, well, it’s awful to say but it's a blessed relief, it really is. I’m free for the first time, really free like I haven’t been since I first went to London. That doesn't excuse what I did, I know that. But if someone is just hanging on and waiting to die and their only function in life seems to be, well, to make somebody else miserable... and if their dying can bring some happiness... ease some suffering somewhere. I'm not going to feel too bad.

    I examine the newel post knob, the varnish still looking new on one side but worn away on the other, letting the grain show through. Mother’s hand sliding over it, how many times? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand?

No, I don't feel bad about what I did but if I could have done it without her knowing, that would have been better.

From the top of the stairs I can get a good perspective shot down the banister onto the tiled floor. It was the impact with those tiles that did it the doctor said, if she'd had carpet or even boards it might have been a different story apparently. Head over heels she went. Heels over head actually, base over apex. Then smash. The back of her head hit the floor and the lights went out.

    Of course I took advantage of her blindness, that doesn't seem fair either. She had good hearing though. “That you, Pauline?” she said. Amazing really, I hadn't moved a muscle, I was just standing here at the top of the stairs waiting for her. It must have been my breathing she heard I suppose but she kept coming. “Yes.” I said. That's what I feel bad about, there was no need for that. “Yes Mother. It's only me.” Shove.

    I sit down on the top step. I'm so tired. I can't shed a tear but I do put my face in my hands and let my body give a little judder of sadness.

    Hang on, who's this?

    There's somebody at the door. I can see the shadow of them through the frosted glass. They ring the bell, it doesn't work. If they were a regular visitor they'd know that. My heart starts racing. They knock. Oh, they better not have revived her, I'd be in trouble then.

    No, I can see who it is, she’s been around before. I’m not answering the door to her again. She said she’d got the address from some agency, said she was looking for her birth mother, said she’d been given a name, she said her mother was Pauline Copley. I laughed in her face. What a pathetic trick. She's not my Nancy. My little Nancy wouldn't look like that, such a mess, frizzy hair, biting her lip and scratching at her hands. Nancy had something more about her than that. Whoever this woman is she's not mine, a con-merchant I reckon trying to get my cash.

    And even if she was what she says, even if she was my flesh and blood? What good could ever come of it? Does she think she wants to get to know me? Make up for lost time and become bosom buddies? She'd be sorry. Imagine the disappointment. Thirty odd years of waiting, dreaming about your fairy birth-mother and you get me.

    I look down at the slippers and hot water bottle still lying there at the foot of the stairs but I can't move from where I am at the top of the stairs, I'm frozen. That woman, she's still there, standing in the rain just the other side of the door. I want to scream at her to leave me alone but I can't.

    I would have recognised her if she’d been my daughter. I knew every part of Nancy’s face so well, every curve, the sweep of the cheek, the cupid's bow, those long eye-lashes, the turn of the nose. I knew that face better than any mother ever has ever known their baby's face. I remember looking at her and knowing it couldn’t be her. I looked at her eyes, they weren’t blue like Nancy’s, she didn’t have the same smooth skin that I remembered, that's for sure, she'd smoked the youth out of it, picked her spots, squeezed her blackheads and scrubbed cheap soap into the cracks and pores.

She’s knocking again and trying to look through the glass, she’s persistent I’ll give her that, she’s been back here three times so who knows, maybe she really is the fruit of my withered womb and god help her if she is but I'm having nothing to do with her. The chord was cut by the doctors and then cut again by Mother and now it’s staying cut.

    Of course, all my crowd, my Bohemian set. They thought it was the coolest thing. They'd all help, yeah, they'd be glad to have her at their studios, a few hours here, a few hours there. Of course they'd help out. Of course they wouldn't get bored of me. They'd bring the booze round to mine if I couldn't come out to them. They were the best crowd of friends a girl in trouble ever had until the little thing actually arrived and immediately started crying. From that point on she demanded and she cried, she demanded and she cried and then demanded some more. She cried until she was exhausted and she demanded that I be exhausted too. And who really wants one of them in their studio? Who really wants a night out in that flat with that going on when there’s paintings to be painted, when there are pubs full of conversations to be had, when there’s a city full of young, interesting people doing and saying all kinds of interesting things. Who wants to be helping out with a screaming baby then?

    No-one it turned out.

    So I left college and surprise-surprised Mother one winter's evening, straight off the train. "Here I am and here's my shameful secret." The return of the prodigal daughter you might say.

No fatted calf though, not even a skinny one. She gave me absolute hell on a handkerchief; I was a slut and a whore and a dirty stupid little trollop and that was all fine because that was what I expected but blimey O'Riley, thirty years later and she’s still going on about “my little mistake”, it never stopped. Not until last night anyway. 

    It was Mother that said I couldn't cope. It was her that phoned the council or the agency or whoever it was and, when the day came, it was her that took Nancy out of my arms and handed her over to the woman at the door. Oh Mother, how could you have done that?

    She knocks again then turns and walks away. I go into the front bedroom and watch her leave. She looks back at the house, she even looks upstairs but she doesn’t see me. Maybe it is her. And so what if it is? I’m free now, I’m not getting rid of one burden to pick up another. Mother’s gone and Nancy’s gone and neither one is coming back as far as I’m concerned.

    I look around Mother’s room, the dressing table with no mirror, the special alarm clock that talks, the old bed spread. I see the pillow she's had for the last god-knows-how-many years, the big yellow hollow in it. I take a photograph. I go around the other side and take some more. The space she created but no longer fills. 

    I know it's daft but I can't help it, I feel so heavy, so tired. I pull back the covers and climb in. They're heavy covers, good, heavy, old-fashioned covers and a good eiderdown over the top. She was never one for a duvet, oh, and the pressure of them feels so comforting I can see why. I put my head in the space she made in the pillow. I can smell her. I’m sorry Mother.

I can't raise a tear though, like when they took my Nancy away, I never cried then either. I just went back to my drawings, my hundreds of drawings. Her face, her face, again and again. The corners of her eyes, the bridge of that tiny nose, the rose-bud lips, the chin, hours and hours of work, metres of pencil lead. I just went through them once then put them away and felt better.

    That's what I’ll do tonight, dig out all my pictures of Mother, the hands, the eyes, the hands again, the blind eyes again. I'll go through them one by one, tick them off in my head, I’ll kiss her good bye and that'll be that. Freedom.

SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2013 RUNNER-UP ENTRY:

Lagly by Neal Mason

It`s thieves like him that give prisons a bad name! All the same, these amateurs. Make me sick. No pride in their work. Like everything nowadays; sloppy. No standards. Can you find a safe-cracker who knows his Chubb from his Yale? Ha! When I was young, he`d know to a milligram how much explosive to use. Nowadays, they slap it on like plastering a wall. Instead of blowing the lock, they blow up half the bank. Costs more in explosives than they get from the safe – or would do if the explosive wasn`t kicked.

You`ve only got to look at him. A kid, that`s all. They don`t want to know about apprenticeships these days. Straight out and earn some money. You try to teach them, but it`s no use. He could learn so much from an expert like me. First, he steals a getaway car. A Lada.

`Best car in the car park,` he said.

`What were the rest? Reliants?`

Anyway, having opened it with his lock-picking equipment – a four-pound lump hammer – he begins to wire up the ignition. An hour later, with half the wiring loom dismantled, he`s managed to make the wipers and hazard lights work. You can imagine it – I wish I had. Wires everywhere. Car looking like a dishevelled hedgehog. These kids know nothing. They won`t listen. Funny thing is, he`s always got his nose in a book. How does he think I reached the top? Not by reading, that`s for certain. I watched, I listened, I copied. It takes time – and a little more subtlety than a lump hammer. When I pull a job, Scotland Yard goes into a panic. I`m only inside because of bad luck.

He gets the car going, eventually. I was trusting enough to leave him to it. Should have known better. Simon`s always been unreliable. Just like his Mother. She gave birth to him in Marks and Sparks. Wouldn`t have mattered, but she was robbing the place at the time. She`s a shoplifter, see. They could hardly get to the baby for all the nicked baby clothes under her coat.

Well, while Simon`s pinching the car, I`m up to my neck in cold water. In a water tank in an attic. And where`s the attic? On top of the Amman Gallery. Clever huh? I`d walked in as an ordinary, fee-paying visitor. Already recced the place, of course, like the thorough professional I am. The next bit took a matter of seconds; I climbed on a chair in an empty corridor, then disappeared through the attic hatch. But I`m smart, see – not like Simon, despite his reading; I realise the security guards might check the attic when the gallery closes. But they`d never think to look in the water tank. Especially as it`s January and five degrees below freezing ...

Simon doesn`t really have the brain for crime, to be honest. He`s not thick; he doesn`t have the razor-sharp perception, the finesse. And kids won`t be told.

So, there I am in the tank. It`s not what you`d call pleasant, but determination marks out the men from the boys. I raise an arm to check my watch – being careful, of course, not to make any noise while cracking the surface ice. Only an hour to go ...

I met his Mother at Pwllheli Butlins. She was a chamber maid. I was on a working holiday - `holiday` in that I`d booked in as a resident; `working` in that I was pillaging the place. Rifled chalets while holidaymakers were sunbathing or entering knobbly knees contests. That`s how I met her; she caught me ransacking her room – and what a gold mine that was: jewellery, cameras, radios by the dozen. Could have been awkward, mind, but I got her talking. She was on holiday too. From shoplifting. She fell for me straight away, of course.

The hour in the tank passes very slowly. It`s all I can do to climb out. I lurch towards the attic hatch but, with no feeling in my feet and legs, I step between the rafters. The plaster shatters like ice. Hurtling down, I admire a sunny landscape in oils. As I`m descending the stairwell, my appreciation of it`s rather brief.

In crime, as in life, resilience is what counts. That`s the difference between me and Simon, see. Just because I`ve fractured a leg and the burglar alarms are deafening and I`m purple with cold, it doesn`t mean my plan`s gone wrong. I`d known all along the alarms would sound the moment I appeared. It`s simply a matter of time, of gathering masterpieces quickly.

Hopping as fast as possible, I climb the stairs. I make straight for a Cannelloni. I take out my penknife to cut the oil painting from its frame. I can`t open the blade. It`s not my numb fingers; it`s obviously shoddy workmanship. Cheap, foreign junk. Should be banned! No standards. Throwing the useless penknife aside, I take the painting next to it, remove its glass and frame and hurry to the next masterpiece: a Tortellini.

Must hurry now. Stopping only to sneeze, I hop over to a priceless Tagliatelle. Frame off, glass off and tuck it under my arm. That`s my lot. No sense in being greedy. What I`ve got must be worth thousands. That`s the difference between a real professional and the others; knowing when to stop. All a matter of judgement.

The bout of sneezing`s a problem. Not my fault, of course – just one of those things. It`s a delay I could do without. Have you tried sneezing and hopping at the same time? Not possible. `Once for a wish, twice for a kiss, three times for something better.` What do you get for twenty-five?

Finally, the sneezes stop and I bounce down the stairs feeling a bit like Zebedee. The alarms seem more urgent. I open the gallery door and there`s our getaway car. The Lada. At least there are no police cars yet. Five hops and I`m in the car. Simon finds the ignition key, fastens his seat belt, adjusts the mirror, indicates to pull out and, at last, we`re going. On three cylinders.

`Simon,` I say, `I don`t want to sound hypercritical, it being your first job an` that, but every alarm bell in the world`s clanging. I didn`t expect Formula One but, optimist that I am, I expected more than five miles an hour. And why are the wipers and hazard lights on? Could you manage just a fraction more speed? – or shall I get out and hop, and you can catch me up later?`

It isn`t long before we hear police sirens. It`s bad enough when the police give chase – on foot; it`s worse when D.I. Fowler opens the door, a huge grin on his face.

`Hello Lagly. And where are you off to in such a rush?`

Humiliating. Degrading. A man in my position. A respected leader of the criminal fraternity. I`m unable to answer him – partly because I`m sneezing and shivering violently.

So here I am – all due to bad luck and Simon`s incompetence. Not that he cares; all he does is lie on his bunk and read. It`s all he ever wanted to do. Says I forced him to be my accomplice. His Mother agrees and blames me for the fiasco, would you believe? You do your best for someone, try to put them on the right lines, and this is what you get.

As an idea, the robbery was a work of art. As for the art itself, well, bad luck played a part there too. Couldn`t take the paintings I`d intended. The paintings I took were watercolours. And, because I had hugged them close to me, and I`d taken them out of their frames, and my clothes were sopping wet ...

But I`m too resilient to be disheartened for long. Lots of great men are like that. There`s a big job I`ve got in mind. Very hush-hush, of course. Don`t know much about it myself yet. All I`ll say is it`s in London this time. Kensington actually. The Something and Albert. It`s a museum, you know. Now, when Simon and I get out, if I can train him in the use of explosives ...

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