Peaceful Sleep

The Cemetery Beside The Sea .

The weekend before last, a week before Hallowe'en I spent the weekend in Dingle. The Friday night was wet, that misty rain that blows in from the Atlantic soaked us to the bone. Thankfully the welcome of John Benny's bar warmed the chill from our bones and steamed the rain out of our jackets .

Saturday proved one of those wonderful autumnal days, when the sun casts a sharp warmth and Slea Head never looked as beautiful as we rounded the coast in our little Berlingo van. On the way out of Dingle we stopped at Ventry, memories of holidays with the children surfacing as we walked the beach and took photographs from the Dunes. Walking from the beach we continued on to the little graveyard on the hill. A place we had passed many times but never entered. 

There was such a peace and tranquility in the tiny cemetery, a place dotted with old and new plots, the old disappearing into the hill, some plots sunken and exposed due to subsidence and the proliferation of rabbits, the new marble headstones at odds with the lichen covered granite; most illegible and eroded by the passage of time.  Mountains surrounded the tiny graveyard, cattle grazed happily beside the stone walls and the air was full of the sound of the sea and seagulls crying overhead.  It inspired a story and I include it below.  

Fionn Tra (Ventry)

I followed her from the beach. From my vantage point on the dunes I could see the boats clearly through my binoculars, I followed their progress out of the bay and the seagulls that followed in their wake and moving along the beach I came to the girl. A tall shadow caught in the sun’s last strength, a sentinel by the water’s edge on the deserted strand.

I watched her with the surf crashing on the sand in front of her, watched it surge forward until I thought she would jump back for fear of wetting her boots but she never did. I watched the wavelets cover the black boots again and again. But she just stared out into the distance unmoving.

This was my favourite time of day, when the sun slipped slowly behind the mountains and the beach darkened. Usually I watched from the dunes, sometimes I walked the beach and passed dog walkers and runners with a polite hello and perhaps a comment about the weather but I had never seen the girl before.

After a time she turned and walked back in the direction of the car park.

And so I followed her out of curiosity, that and the fact was that she reminded me of my late wife at the age when I first met her. Quiet and still, a woman who spoke only when she had something worthwhile to say.

And I was more than a little bored. I had a summer lease on a small cottage outside Ventry, a mile back from the beach where I remained relatively out of reach of my family; three grown up children with their own lives to live and children to worry about but who had made it their business to worry about me. They couldn’t easily reach me in this far flung spot, I had no phone except an ancient mobile and the coverage was sporadic at best which suited me perfectly. It was two years since their mother had passed and I still missed her, some days more than others. But early on in my grief I made the decision to carry on, to make plans and projects for myself, it was either that or follow her into the grave. And I wouldn’t leave my children doubly bereft.

The evening was drawing in and it was time for me to retire for the evening but what did I have to rush back to?  To read one of the many dusty paperbacks I had bought in the local thrift shop? Or to watch some worthless television programme? So I followed the girl back from the beach making sure to leave a gap between us. There were two cars in the car park, mine was the old Toyota. The other was a bright and relatively new Ford Fiesta. But she passed the cars continuing further along the sandy lane before slipping quietly through the open gates into the old cemetery.

Set on a slope the cemetery was old and rambling. It looked out onto the harbour. In the surrounding fields cattle grazed and the mountains cast shadows across the yellowing furze and ferns. A few modern headstones stood out in stark relief to the lichen covered crosses and the ancient pieces of granite that pushed up from the hill like so many broken teeth.

Rabbit holes dotted the site, entering and leaving gravesites with no thought for those whose space they shared.

Peeping over the stone outer wall was pointless; there where only the two of us at the cemetery. I pushed open the gate to gain entrance, it had only been ajar and I wondered how the girl had slipped in so easily. I would have done myself an injury to slip through so narrow a gap and I was thin to a degree that worried my daughters.

The gate, rusted through to the paint screeched my approach and I winced. She had already turned in my direction. She smiled slightly and continued through the graveyard, her step delicate but determined on the mossy grass. We were alone in the late July evening as the sun began to set.

“It’s cold” Her voice was startling in the complete silence where not one bird sang.

Her voice travelled easily across the headstones. I moved closer to hear. She was talking to me, no one else, her voice low and with the local musical lilt.

No older than her early twenties she looked like no other young girl I had ever seen. My young granddaughters wore their makeup like masks, their faces doll like and unnatural  but this girl’s face was pale and make up free, her eyes large and filled with sorrow, as blue as the Atlantic on a summers day. But it was not her face that drew my attention it was her attire, she was dressed sombrely in a simple beige hand knit jumper over a grey and black plaid skirt that reached the knees. Her dark hair was tied in a low ponytail with a black ribbon. The boots that the sea had covered were small heeled and laced to the calf; they looked old with the heels worn away.

“Yes, it is “I stood away slightly, giving her space as she stood beside one of the older granite headstones, the writing illegible to my bad eyesight.  She rubbed her hand across the top of the cross, a caress.

“Are you visiting a relative?” she asked and I suddenly felt the cold. It was as if its fingers were pulling at my legs like the fog that had started to seep across the grass from dunes.  

“No, I’m just passing through” I muttered for want of a better excuse “I’ve always wanted to visit and here I am” I smiled to allay any fears she might have talking to a stranger, albeit an old man.

“It’s a lovely place, so peaceful, beside the sea” I looked out towards the harbour and she followed with her eyes, again I caught a look of sorrow on her pale face.

“Yes” she spoke as she stroked the top of the gravestone. “Yes, I find it very peaceful, they all do”

“Are you here to visit a relative yourself?” I asked politely.

“My husband” she looked at me across the moss covered graves. Her eyes clear and blue.

“Oh, I’m very sorry” I suddenly wished to be someplace else, anywhere but there on that windswept hill surrounded by death and grieving.

“The sea took him” she continued to the air, as if I wasn’t there at all. Her voice a whisper on the wind. “He was a fisherman, and the sea took him for her own”

“We were married a year and now shall be apart forever”

I stood silently beside the grave, waiting in vain for the right words to arrive.

The gate creaked and I turned to watch an elderly couple enter the cemetery. A husband and wife it seemed, the man helping the woman to carefully walk between the graves, they were coming over towards me. The woman smiled a greeting. I turned back to my companion but she was gone. I looked about me and unless she had hopped the low stone wall it appeared she had vanished into thin air.

I asked the couple as they neared me if they had seen a young woman leave, they might have noticed us talking when they entered. They looked at me strangely.

“Sure there was only yourself here”. The husband spoke and a look passed between the pair.

She nodded in agreement.

“But….” I gestured to the grave beside me.

“Ah poor Jamie O’Shea” he made a sign of the cross. “Poor man and him just married”

“What of his wife?” I asked, already feeling the cold mist of shock enter my bones.

“Catherine, that was her name”

“Aye” interrupted his wife “Catherine, she was a pretty girl, she never got over it. Died herself shortly after”

“Died how?” I heard the impatience in my voice.

“Threw herself off the pier at the harbour. She was buried in the other place”

“Other place?”

“For the lost souls” the old woman murmured and crossed herself. “The poor crater, sure she was half mad with the grief”

I left them to their visit with a hasty goodbye. Of the girl there was no sign. I drove a couple of miles following their directions until I came to a small stone walled field.  A plaque on the wall marked with a cross told me I had come to the right place. There were no headstones here. But there were flowers, fresh and in pots against the wall.

I added my own bouquet; a small bunch of wildflowers I had taken from the field next door, daisies and forget me nots , blue as the Atlantic on a summer’s day.

Then I got into my car and drove to Ventry, back to the rented cottage where I began to pack for home.

The Welcoming Committee

Marcus Black is a vampire hiding out in suburbia. 

He just wants to be left alone.


Find him and others in  The Lights Went Out and Other Stories.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lights-Went-Out-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B016DQTLYA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1444732186&sr=8-1&keywords=the+lights+went+out+and+other+stories

Here's One I Prepared Earlier

The Old Place

A new poem for the collection - just for you. Now aren't you glad you took a sneaky peak?

The Old Place

He could take the turn in his sleep.

A step to the gate

Oxidised and complaining

That squeaks to open

Begrudging passage

To a lane once  a road

Barely room for the car

And the hazel branches

That hold the car close

As they scratch at the windows

And scrape at the doors.

The lane twists and turns for a  mile or more

Strewn with the fruits of the January storms

Moss covered limbs

Light with decay

Easily lifted

Tossed out of the way

And the smaller branches

That crunch beneath tyres.

Between  hazel and hawthorn

And white blossom turning

The car passes slowly

Till a bend to the right.

And rising above the treetops

The hint of  a roof

Red bricked, leaning,

Familiar shadow

Atop the still standing weathervane

The cockerel realistic in his rust coat

And the old place appears before him

Shaking hands hold the steering wheel

That turns in the yard.

Into home

That is home no more

Deserted yet inhabited

With crows in the chimneys

And rats in the attic

Spiders weave curtains across

Dust covered windows

Ivy marks the door

Slipping on the mossy flag

He drops the key clumsily

From unsteady fingers

Cymbols in the silence

He stoops cursing,

With back stiff and curved

The key is placed in the lock

of a door that never was closed

To family and friends.

A  push that opens

To an empty space

Memory rich.

Against the wall he struggles

Shoulders heaving

Long have their dreams and hopes

Been buried deep

In the churchyard

He  passed but could not enter

He recalls

The tears on her cheek

That  last vanilla scented hug

God grant you safe passage Mikey

Him, with the back turned

The door forever closed against him

No more the seat by the fire to warm his feet

And no more the heat of the range

The scent of bread and apples

And  the butter and jam

 and plates set on the table,

the clatter of cutlery and delf,

and eating and arguing.

prayers for good weather and sick relatives

and for the pride of a son taking orders

Gone, all gone

Only him and the scratch of the rats

And the caw of the crows

A set of footprints across the dust

The print of her kiss on his cheek

Safe passage my son.

Safe passage.

Darkling

Excerpt from Darkling - Taken from The Lights Went Out and Other Stories.

She slipped through into woods with the agility of one well used to nocturnal ramblings, knowing how to pick her way along the meandering path regardless of the moon’s milky glow that shone through the thickets of hazel and birch.  She hummed low to herself a verse that was popular amongst the young girls in her village.

“Rose petals, rose petals, red and white, he that I marry, come to me this night”. It was custom for maidens on Midsummer’s’ Night to make potions to bind their admirers in love and matrimony and Emma Loxley needed only one more addition to a concoction she had ready: leaves that could only be harvested after nightfall.

She moved on further into the wood, her thoughts on the son of one of her father’s friends, a handsome boy who was much admired among her circle of friends, for his pleasing manners and brilliant blue eyes.  Emma smiled to herself, pulling her cloak tight against the chill air. She was dressed for concealment, she wore a grey cloak over a brown wool dress, clothing she had changed into after her parents had retired for the night before  she climbed from her ground floor bedroom window and slipped from the grounds .

As she wandered, the path narrowed and disappeared in parts. She stopped at a gap in the trees, a clearing of sorts. The area seemed strangely unfamiliar to her in the moonlight. Emma had wandered further this night than before, she had missed the church bells chime the hour. The sounds of the outside world failed to pierce the dense canopy. Branches crossed above her head creating a network of tunnels where even the moon light found it hard to penetrate.

As she turned to make her way back to the more familiar path she noticed the dark pointed leaves that she required and pulled a small knife from the pocket of her dress and proceeded to cut several stalks low from the base careful to leave enough of the plant behind. So absorbed was she in her task that she didn’t notice the stranger until she was nearly upon him.

He walked upon the hummock between the ring of gnarled and ancient rowan trees, where the ground rose up to a point past the twisted branches to resemble a bald pate above a broken crown. An old place, the heart of the forest it was said, a place she had never trod as the light grew dimmer and the trees formed a ring that scratched and pulled at the wanderer who had strayed from the path. It was an area of the forest that local lore guarded against with tales of strange noises and lights.  Emma pulled herself up smartly and half hidden behind the stout trunk of an oak she observed the wanderer.

He appeared to be of above average height with shoulder length golden hair that shone in the moonlight as he moved about the hill. He looked to be well dressed, like a noble man in his frock coat, waistcoat and breeches; each of a different woodland hue, the greens and browns of bark and leaf.

 He wore knee length hunting boots, the leather bright as a new chestnut.  A most beautiful creature, he strode with what purpose she could not tell. His long limbs moving with fluid grace. He seemed a part of the moss covered hill he walked upon, as if he had appeared from the earth itself.

Unable to take her eyes off the stranger, Emma moved from tree to tree until he seemed close enough to touch until finally as if in a dream, she stepped out from behind the cover of the trees to face him, a bird released from a trap with no choice but to fly towards danger.

The walker between the trees turned on his heel sensing her, he moved towards the slight figure of the girl in the grey cloak whose wide eyes shone at his approach. The stitching on his waistcoat glinted in the moon’s light as he neared. Her eyes were drawn to a face of contradictions; ancient yet youthful.

His skin was white as the light that the moon poured down.

White as bone bleached in the sun.

Pale as the ice in the village pond in midwinter.

Pale and cold as death.

The Pleasant Pheasant

He's at it again. Doing that strange inverted cough sound. The cock pheasant that lives in the hedge.
Only now he sounds closer.
I pull open the patio door, step out onto the decking and ...laugh.

Willow is nonchalantly relaxing on the deck, he turns his fat tabby head in my direction and then looks across the grass as if telling me to follow his gaze. Which I do and I see him, through the gaps in the railings; a beautifully bright cock pheasant staring back at me.
He crows as he struts about, his yellow ringed eye looks haughtily at the cat as if to say -
"Cats are of no consequence to me"
He walks across the lawn before slipping into the hedge and disappearing.
Five minutes later I hear him crow from the far side of the field.
I fear that his strutting days are shortlived. I live with his nemesis; my husband, the lunatic hunter.
You should have hitched a lift with the swallows my friend, I think.
Lie low on the first, you beauty, stay quiet and keep that glorious head down.


I've grown accustomed to his calls and he really is quite a pleasant pheasant.

Not So Blair Witch - A Walk in the Woods

Another beautiful Autumnal day, the sun streaming at a slant, falling dappled between the yellowing ash leaves as we walk the lane to the hay field.

There are no cars, just the sound of bird song, a tractor in a field across the fields.

We come to the field of stubble dotted with large round yellow bales, awaiting collection and she's off running. With a leap and a bound she is up on the top, a bale that nearly reaches her height.

In the centre of the field is a small copse of trees and bushes that have grown up around a hollow. A wood within a field. We step in and the trees close around us. 

Rowan bushes that have sprouted to the size of trees enclose the hollow so that their branches form a close canopy over our heads. 

We could be anywhere, the Blair Witch springs to mind and I wish for a cine camera to record the shadows and the moss covered tree trunks. It seems medieval, ancient and very still.. 

A good spot for a spooky Hallowe'en camp out. 

As the light starts to fade we retrace our steps and clamber under rambling briars and low hanging boughs back to the relative safety of the stubble field.

 Epic Day!!!

Epic day, monumental in fact. Let me fill you in! The beautiful picture you are looking at is a photograph I took with my humble phone last September. It has bitter sweet memories for me because I was down in Kells, County Meath for a week whilst my poor Mum was dying. The weather was typically beautiful for that time of year when it should have been lashing down in sympathy and myself my two sister and two brothers and of course my amazing father (carer for my mother for many years) spent a week together just as we had when we all lived together as a family. It was a sad intense time. 

Down the road from the house is an old hall "Dulane Hall", a tiny building used for meetings up and down the years and now quite left alone. The entrance was nearly overgrown with ivy and I loved the way the gate was draped in greenery. I took this picture a few days before Mum passed and it's special to me. 

Yesterday I uploaded it to Kindle as the cover for my first ebook - The Lights Went Out and Other Stories. A book of twenty two short and long stories (some flash fiction in there also) that I wrote over the span of about five years or so. The book is now up and ready for download! And it's the best feeling in the whole world. I can't believe I didn't do it before. Be kind to my little book.

All I need is the reviews!! and its back to the drawing board for "Martha's Cottage".

Where's that bottle of wine?

A short story that was sort of a by product of a larger one I was trying to edit for the longest time. Funny how the mind wanders and suddenly a complete story will emerge from a scene or a description. I quickly scribbled it down before it disappeared and went into someone else's head. Enjoy

Loose Ends                                                                                             

It’s now been two days since she left us here. It’s getting embarrassing.

We stand a couple of metres apart, waiting, and ready. But ready for what?

I wouldn’t have minded if she had brought us on a bit, you know? To past the introductions so we knew each other slightly better. As it is, it’s just bloody awkward.

There are implied memories, a sense of something between us but also a sense that she hasn’t a bloody clue what to do with us.

The time just drags. I mean, I know it is still the exact same time. It’s always the same time. That doesn’t bloody change. How could it? It’s just hazy. Stretched. My watch still shows nine thirty. Nine thirty, on a Saturday mid October. I really don’t know what year to be honest. Its dark and it's cold and I’m glad of my parka with the furry hood and for the boots and my fitted jeans even if the look is not exactly me. You know, I feel that she could have made a better effort really but at least I’m comfortable. And it hasn’t stopped raining in two days. How could it stop? It’s on a continual loop. If I pay attention I can see the same pattern of splashes onto the gravel, hear the same bullet like drops as they hit the corrugated plastic roof above my head. Concentration is the key. If you don’t then everything just goes blurry about the edges.

And so we stand there, two near strangers staring out at this dismal beer garden through a curtain of rain. Watching water drip onto the picnic benches and fag butts that litter the path in front of us. I have a Marlboro Light and he deftly hand rolls a cigarette before popping it onto the edge of his lip where it hangs in anticipation of the lighter.

Daniel.

This is his name. And I know this how?

We’ve met before, on numerous occasions.

We may even have had an affair once.

Well more of a one night stand type of thing; you know the type?- a drunken mistake. He’s behaving as if he doesn’t remember and maybe he doesn’t.  For me, it’s more of a past life lived, something that may or may not have happened.  I can only recall glimpses, the paleness of his chest hovering over me, the curve of an elbow, and the blur of his face. Images that slip in and out of my memory like jigsaw pieces sliding in a box.  When I try to remember they slip back further. Hiding.

We seem to meet in the same situations; usually it’s in a bar. Sometimes in this hotel. The last time he was less forceful, we didn’t have a conversation, more of an exchange of words. “Is this seat taken?” My husband, (Yes, I have one. Somewhere) my husband was buying a drink.

Hence the awkwardness.

And so we stand watching and smoking. We haven’t anything else to do. It’s what we are meant to do.

I glance at him. He is handsome enough in a weather beaten kind of way; his hair is long, dirty blonde, tied in a pony tail. He is beardless. He looks older than me and yet younger. He’s a musician, I’ve just spent the last hour watching him play the fiddle in the Hotel lounge and he’s good. 

Looking at him I know that he has lived, really lived. Not like I have. He’s written better, he’s travelled, been places. You just know he has friends all over the globe, always has a couch to crash on at the end of the day. He lives his life on a daily basis. There are no direct debits coming out of his account. If he has one.

He catches me looking and smiles, a lazy ready smile. And I think, ha, he remembers something. I bet he does. It’s fair to say, there is an attraction.

But I don’t know where it will lead. Things get changed around so much. One minute I’m in the Hotel and the next instant I’m looking out on Dingle Bay leaning against the car. Sometimes I’m on my own on a bus heading out to Dun Chaoin.  We’re rarely together, Daniel and I.  But there has been a lot of activity lately. Things are tighter, more controlled.  Some details are being left out and certain aspects made clearer. I feel that this may be the last time we do this.

There is a noise.

We both turn as the door back into the Hotel opens. It closes swiftly. Nothing happens.

“She changed her mind again” he turns away and looks back onto the beer garden.

I sigh and walk over to the edge of the decking, to where the plastic roof ends.

A couple materialise out of the gloom, they stop to kiss under the shelter on an overhanging chestnut tree. They are young and furtive. Have they been there all along?

The rain is stopping. There is clarity to the night. Fairytale stars appear as if by magic in the perfect velvet of the night sky.

A scene is being set.

I turn away from the railing, moving purposefully towards my companion.

Hold out my hand like I am supposed to.

“Hi. I’m Ruth. We met in the bar last night”. Suddenly, I am nervous.

He is pleased. He takes my hand and holds it in his own, slightly rougher one.

“I knew it, I knew you looked familiar”

And we’re back.

The End.

Ode to Suzie

Oh Suzie. Queen of Cats. Queen of the Torties. Gracious and capricious Ruler of the Beanbag.

You are a week dead today. 
Seven long days of tears and remembrances. Of shock at your sudden passing and anger at the senselessness of your death. 

We miss your rudeness, your strange didgerydoo miaowing at the window sills. We miss the way you pretended to bite when we tickled in the wrong place. Your little orange tipped right paw. 

We miss your total belief in your self, your right to be inside all day long, your right to get into the house before any of your human counterparts did.

You lie under the apple trees. In the sunniest spot in the garden, wrapped in a beautiful blue and silver sari with a decorated wooden cross that my husband (you thought you were his dog) made for you. 

You leave behind four desperately sad children and two adults and your tabby friend - Willow. Your love/hate relationship, now disbanded had left him lost, he miaows at the window, he peers in looking to find you. He hurls himself about my legs at the washing line for attention. 
Hard to think it was only last week that you and he were boxing on the window ledge. Sparring with little paws raised and now you lie sleeping under the apple blossom.

Sleep soundly my friend. We will meet again. 

Nasty Nicotene

Nasty, nasty, nasty, lovely, no, nasty fags. They will be the literal death of me. 

Bastards. Apologies for the bad language. But really there is no better word for the little feckers. They mock me. They wait in my husband's pockets late at night when no one is awake to see me sneak out the patio door (it's quieter) and quickly roll and light up leaning against the deck. Last night I saw a beautiful half moon that slid gleaming yellow from behind the midnight clouds. No one there but me and the bats to notice. 

But there I go again, making something lyrical out of a snatched nicotene moment on the deck . Later, when I had scrubbed my teeth and guiltily slipped into bed beside my snoring husband, I felt the disappointment, the lack of self respect. I blamed it on the few glasses of wine, the fact that my cat died last week (another post). I find I have lots of reasons to blame my lapses of good healthy behaviour.

Today I went for a two mile run. To be good. To blast oxygen into my lungs. And I think it did good. I felt energised. I'm writing aren't I? Why would I want a rotten cigarette in my mouth? 

Absolutely never, never, ever going to have a cigarette again.

Husband. Hide the damned bastards. Please.

My Husband's Hair

My husband's hair is coming along nicely. His visit to the hairdresser last year, precisely the day before my daughter's confirmation is now just a nightmarish memory. Yes, we still have the dodgy photographs and the kids can still recall the screams of horror when he walked into the kitchen looking like a shaved badger. But it's fading. 

Now we have curls, we have bounce and please God some time in the near future we will have something like this:

Afterall I have three months left until the Electric Picnic and I cannot have a short haired man at my side.

My personal favourite is a mix of Poldark and Childermass. 
Hmm. We'll see. 
I have time, I can rebuild him.




Well, a girl can dream can't she?

Procrastination.

Ok. It's been a while. The spirit is willing but the body is definitely weak. God, I am having such a problem getting down to serious writing. I have been editing. Ok, I'll be honest, I've been semi-editing. The story I have been editing has come to a standstill. I am at a complete loss as to what to do with two of the main characters that I have left them completely in limbo. This has to stop. 

One good thing came out of it though. I wrote a complete and finished (very little editing required) short story about the two characters stuck in limbo. It came to me whilst I was waiting on my roast potatoes to finish in the oven. Husband on the couch devouring the Sunday paper, kids running about the kitchen and coming and going outside. I sat down at the table with a half cold cup of coffee and scribbled a near complete story down in about ten minutes. 

It's short, a mere three pages, less than a thousand words but I have to say, I'm quite proud of it and it gave me the confidence to get back in the saddle so to speak.

Now, what to do with those two stubborn, and now complaining characters? I still hate the original story but there are good bits in there, if I can pull them out and shine them up. I think I can do something with it. 

Well, here's hoping.

Writing is definitely a discipline. I must make a specific time to write and stick to it. It's that simple. 

And yet it's not. It's a mental bloody torture. The thought of writing is in my head from when I crawl out of bed (angrily, most mornings, resentful of the fact that I have to make sandwiches and organise the kids to school) to when I hit the pillow. The only way to get it off my back is to sit down and tap the keys, scribble in the notebooks that I seem to leave in every room in the house. But most of the time it's like struggling through thick heavy mud, the message from brain to finger tips is constantly being re-routed or interrupted. Damn you facebook, Damn you twitter. Damn you youtube. 

 

Have to do more. Have to be more.

Have to stop watching my favourite bits of Poldark over and over again on my smart phone.