Second place went to Susan Bennett for The Humpty.
Third place went to Sian Cummins for A passive-aggressive killing spree.
A big thank you to judges Adele Geras, Nicholas Royle and David Gaffney, to Blackwells for donating the £50 gift voucher for first prize and to everyone who entered and helped raise more than £150. The winning story will by posted on the Oxfam Bookfest blog at www.oxfam.org.uk and be linked to The Big Issue website.
Chorden: an insignificant village at the bottom of an insignificant valley. Lawkhill, the place we used to pay our council tax to, is twenty miles away. They didn’t care when we lost our post office in 2004, or the public house in 2008. Not that that was much of a loss. They didn’t have a cleaner. The carpets smelt of wet dogs and stale beer. We only used to go in when Ada insisted. I’d just have a packet of cheese and onion crisps – their glasses were always smeared – but Ada would have a lemonade.
When they announced they were building the dam to create a new reservoir there was no public outcry. The water was needed for Lawkhill and the big cities further south. Places we never had occasion to go to. There wasn’t a local newspaper to make a fuss for us. The Chorden Recorder had been shut down in 1987 and it was a waste of time for years before that, full of nothing but advertisements and football. A lot of the people we grew up with had left the village long ago, or passed away. There were empty houses already, and the posh lot with their second homes were more than happy to take the money and go elsewhere.
Men in suits came and told me I had to sign things and then I was sent a cheque for the house and I put it in our money tin in the freezer. There’s never been a bank in Chorden. There hasn’t been one in Hopple, the next village along, since 1993. Lawkhill’s got a street full of banks but they stopped our bus service to there in 2002.
I try to keep to a routine. My mother was a great one for routines, always up and dressed with her full face on at dawn. Every day of the week had a purpose and each hour of the day was given to a different task. Monday was wash day. No need for that anymore but, still, a routine’s important.
When I wake in the morning the first thing I do is look out of the window. I used to check the weather to see what to wear. Down here there are clear days and murky days. I have to sleep in the living room now because the stairs are lethal. The windows are glassless. The walls bare stone. The yellow embossed wallpaper that Ada picked survived longer than I thought it would, but in the end it began to lift and split. Strips of it twirled in the water like snakes before they floated off out the window. If you don’t weigh things down here they’re soon gone.
The plaster crumbled not long after, falling to the carpet in clumps, trailing puffs of cloud. I swept it up as best I could. Of course the carpet was already long buried beneath the mud but I like to sweep. Sometimes I do it until I’ve silted up the water so much I can’t see. The remains of the curtains are still clinging to the curtain rail. Drowned rags. So sodden barely a tug of the water can budge them. A little like me.
It’s surprising what survives down here. I’ve collected all kinds of little knick knacks. I’m not a thief. I’m just taking care of the things that people forgot to take with them. Plant pots, chipped mugs, pans, a Rubik’s cube, three rolls of sellotape. I’ve found books. In number 14 there was a whole bookshelf full of them. No one had lived in there since 2005 when Mr Durham died. Some of the books have little plastic labels stuck to their spines; they must be library books from Lawkhill Library. The pages are too soggy to be separated though.
Sometimes I find little treasures; an earring, a brooch, buttons, coins – lots of coins, mostly coppers but enough to buy several packets of cheese and onion crisps if I still had the opportunity. In number 6 I found three small glass bird ornaments on the mantelpiece and only one of them has a broken wing.
I don’t bother with the big things. A lot of people left their cookers and there are bikes with missing wheels and wheelbarrows and broken ironing boards. Things move about too. One morning there was a child’s red tricycle right outside my front door. I remembered seeing it before, over the wall of number 2, and it was rusty even before the water came. There’s a rabbit hutch in number 13’s yard, I just hope they remembered to take the rabbit with them. Washing lines are still strung up. It gives me a turn every time a plastic bag gets caught on one of them and I think there’s a blouse blowing in the wind.
I’ve recently borrowed one of next door’s green plastic garden chairs because our settee has turned to a bed of mush and metal spikes, crawling with life. The last of the dining room chairs lost a leg last week. But this plastic chair’s a devil; it won’t stay still. I go to sit down and it isn’t where I left it. And I never hear it move. I can’t hear a thing but the babbling of the water.
Once I’m up in a morning, and dressed, the next thing I do is go out for a little walk. I still shut the door when I leave the house. Well, I push it to – the wood’s too swollen for it to shut properly. None of the houses have roofs now but I think it’s nice that there are still walls and doors. Gives me a sense of privacy.
I walk in the road rather than on the pavement. It’s like when we were children, never a thing on the street but us playing our games. Elastics and marbles. I’ve lived on this street all my life. Ada lived in number 3. I lived on the other side, number 12. When we got to courting age the old folks in the village used to tease us, asking what two pretty young girls like us were doing without husbands. When both our parents had died we sold those houses and bought number 7 to be our own. Ada was 44 and I was 43. No one bothered asking us about husbands again.
It didn’t surprise me that I was able to stay here. I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else. It took a while for the river to burst its banks but when it did the water came swishing up the road and ferreting under the door. No one came to check the village was empty. They’d said they were going to demolish the buildings before they finished the dam but in the end they didn’t bother. Must have decided to save themselves some money and let the water do the work for them.
I panicked just for a moment when I had to make the change but I soon got the hang of it. My chest feels clearer than it has done for years and it’s easier for me to stay upright in the water than it was in the air.
I enjoy the walk to up to the church, past the green. The war memorial cross is still standing, although, of course, the duck pond has gone. When we were girls the men would play cricket on the green. Serious business it was and woe betide any duck that waddled into their way.
We never played in the churchyard. Billy Chadwick told us it was haunted, that if we went near the stones ghosts would appear and scratch out our eyes. The place looks untidy now. I try my best to keep on top of the tangle of weeds but they crawl into the cracks and curl round the stones. On Ada’s grave I keep a bunch of plastic carnations under a rock. I borrowed them from number 3. I wish I had daffodils for her but we have to make do. Sometimes when the sun’s shining on the surface over my head and I’m knelt there I fancy I can hear the bell ringing. But it’s a trick of the water. They took the bell with them after the last service in 2009.
On my way home I collect small pebbles and stones. I’ve worn through too many pockets with them already but I need to weigh myself down. What worries me is I’ll die without seeing it coming, rise to the surface, and they’ll fish me out and take me away.
I couldn’t bear to leave the village.
The Humpty
by Susan Bennett
Big. Fat. Bald. Six Foot Two. Head like a sumo. Long dress over the knees. White knickers. Small tits. Clean shaven. Respectable. Footsteps shuffle. Someone outside bangs on the toilet door. I stop. Silence. There’s a pause and I sense the other indeterminate woman frowning. She sighs loudly and then her heels trot away. I reanimate and continue packing all of my other clothes into large handbag. I unlock the toilet door and hatch out of my box - out of hiding.
There’s a long mirror on the wall. I lean forward to adjust my breasts – helped along with a Wonderbra and chicken fillets. My hips sashay to the left and then to the right as I barge through the double doors and into the hot thick air of the vegetarian café. Everyone in here is too liberal to bat an eyelid. But they see me. There’s a student that’s looking to the left and yet banging his friend’s leg on the right – she gets the picture and turns to look up at me. I saunter by – no one says a word. That’s why I began coming in here to change. They all like to think they have minds as broad as my hips. Some of them could really do with a good bra. Most of them have nipples showing through their t-shirts. They think they’re free. Perhaps they are. I think you can tell a lot about people from their choice of underwear. I can spot a padded bra a mile off – being a wearer of one myself. And of course I discovered my wife to be a wearer of one when we first met. I took it off and she unravelled before me – she even tried to bunch her knees up in an attempt to hide. We were only young and she soon got to realise that men don’t really care when it comes down to it. She doesn’t know about me and my underwear, hence the café toilets in the city miles away from her and the risk of being unravelled.
My bra has become dirty. I can only have the one as it’s too hard to hide lots of garments. It sits yellowing under my dress. I’m heading to Marks and Spencer for a new one - where everyone is too middle-class to say anything. Whenever I come to this city I always have to pass this group of lads that hang around outside the pub in the middle of the day. They always spot me, and they always make sure they identify me as being a man.
‘Hey you…Faggot!’
Yes, they are here again today, with their stale beer stink and sovereigns. I’ve been called a lot of names on my outings, so to surprise me at all it needs to be original cos it’s water off the hunchback by now. I’ve heard it funnier and meaner than you can know. ‘Norman Bates’ was my favourite. We can all laugh. Mostly these lads shout ‘It’s the Humpty’ oh yes ‘The Humpty’ they call me. I don’t even know why they’re saying it. My gut is girdled. 36-34-34. Curvaceous. Beautiful. But, I don’t really like being known even if it’s only by ‘The Humpty’. I’ve got my life as a man back at home to think about.
The boy’s chants grow distant as I round the corner. A gang of buses go by and blow hot air up my skirt. Momentarily I’m exposed and try to remain ladylike, push my skirt back down and look around to see if anyone has noticed. I’m safe. I begin to sway through the high-street, past all of the girls posing as Katie Price or Kate Moss. Some of them trail perfume scents that are alien to any plant found in nature. Others are betrayed by their aging hands that have been smoothed out in Vaseline and spiked in acrylic. I realise, happily, as I’m wandering through all of the gel-bras, boob-jobs and pancakes, that no one else registers me at all. I could be a Kerry, or a Denise or a Samantha. Legs shuffle, people weave, someone bumps me from behind and says ‘sorry’, calls me ‘love’. A smile creeps across my lips as I enter Marks and Spencer.
This place is full of small, blonde, middle-aged women milling around at five-foot four inches tall. They’re just like my wife. A select few of them are sporting designer handbags named after Jane Birkin or some other old bag. Talk about your superficial gratification. You can be anyone you like these days with the right handbag - you can be anyone you like with the right kind of underwear. I finger my way through the posh lot of bras and hum contently to myself. Why do people always want to look at the same rack as you in shops? There’s always one. Here she comes busy-bodying her way through the bras until she gets right up next to me.
‘Excuse me love’ I say in my normal voice.
This love quickly changes her mind, when she realises who she has the same taste in underwear as. Sometimes being caught out isn’t so bad. I pick out a few bras, push-up, plunge and balcony - with no intention of buying any but the plain white one. The ladies changing room is unattended and I go straight back into the little box to change. The dress comes off and I try the balcony bra on first; I don’t know why I persist with different styles – I know full well that a balcony bra does nothing for the flat-chested –even with fillets. But I suppose I still wish it did. I stand with my hands on my hips, posing for a moment and turning around the see the back. I give a smoulder over the shoulder.
‘Excuse me’ I hear a voice saying.
‘Excuse me is there someone in there?’
I don’t know what to do without giving myself away so I just peep out.
‘Excuse me sir, I’m sorry but I can’t allow you to be in here. These are the women’s changing rooms’
I can see the woman from the bra section standing in the doorway. She’d obviously spotted me coming in and complained – as if anyone’s interested in her.
‘I’ll just get changed’
I fix myself together quickly and hand the bras back to the woman.
‘You can try these on in the male changing rooms sir’
‘No - they’re no good’
I walk away with that achy feeling in my heart. I can hear the shop assistant in the background saying, ‘Yeah that was a bloke. Did you see him?’
Back out on the street I just keep walking, the further the better. By the time I get to the other side of town my heels need a rest. I’m away from the shoppers, alone on the outskirts of the city and facing St. Anne’s church. The fear of reproach has long since left me and I go through the dusty doors to take a rest. The peace of the church air makes me feel completely clear. All is quiet save for a parishioner leaving the confessional box and taking her place in front of the alter. It would be nice to talk to someone honestly I think to myself as I walk on. My white stilettos toll along the aisle, hitting the remembrance stones of others whose names have worn away with time. I step inside the little box. There’s silence for a moment and I surrender to the feeling of the walls closing in. The hatch slides open and the faint outline of a face can just be made out behind the mesh veil.
‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned’
A female voice replies, ‘How long since your last confession?’
I turn to look again at the silhouette but it’s just a shape.
‘I’m sorry I don’t remember my last confession’
‘What has brought you here today?’
‘I’ve been lying to my wife’
‘Have you tried to be honest with her?’
She prescribes me some words and I exit her little box. I make my way out, back over the dead men that rest under this place - all rotting in coffins beneath me in their best suits.
Outside the air of the city bites and I’m now miles away from my vegetarian café. I decide to take the bus back over to keep warm and save my aching feet. It’s gone quiet. Most people have headed home. Somewhere all of the shoppers are kicking their shoes off and taking their faces off, relaxing into themselves in private, and ruminating over their purchases – ‘Does it suit me?’ – as though the clothes of the high-street adapt to the individual. I can see myself in the bus stop. ‘I pass’ I think, ‘I definitely pass’ as I pose into my reflection. Oh no, a gang of lads. They’re typical. Dressed just like you’d expect. I turn away slightly so they don’t see my face.
‘Has the 79 been yet?’ One of them asks me.
I shake my head to hide my voice.
‘What about the 130?’
I shake my head again.
‘Hey love, have you got a light?’
I offer a smile.
‘Are you a mute or what?’
He stops and stares at me as though he’s been challenged.
‘Hey lads, that’s a fuckin’ bloke…Are you a bloke love? Have you got it tucked between your legs?’
He’s right up close, looking up into my face. He puts his hand on my breast and squeezes.
‘Do you feel that? They’re not real. Ha ha ha they’re not real’
I can hear more of them approaching.
‘Hey that’s The Humpty. I told you about him, the fucking Humpty. Grab him David.’
I pull away and walk, head down, not looking back. My heels knock up pace along the concrete. The boys laugh and I go a little faster. My heart is banging through my chest. My legs are sweating through my tights. My feet ache. I try not to cry, hitch up my handbag and turn back to check the road before crossing. Bang. It’s me and the concrete. Several feet are kicking down at me, some of them in trainers, some of them in boots. I ball up and make myself foetal, my head in my hands. I hear one of them shout ‘Pull his wig off, pull his wig off’. And then I get a kick to the back. One of them spits into my ear. Fucking Faggot. My clothes are ripping. The bus goes past and splashes. My mouth fills with blood. I feel like I’m fading out.
The feet pound away. They’re gone. My bald head is out on display for everyone to see. I get to my knees and go through the shaky humiliation of picking up the scattered contents of my handbag. The bastards have thrown my shoes in opposite directions up and down the street. I can barely open my eyes. My dress is now just a white rag hanging off me and I sit in my yellowed bra and tights.
I can hear the sound of heels getting gradually louder like a nail being hammered into wood. I strain to make out a woman walking towards me. It’s my wife’s sister. I’m not certain that I’ve been identified. She rounds me, and as she does, her eyes meet me at their corners. She’s frightened, visibly frightened. She looks at my yellowed chest as though it was straight to the heart of me. In her horror, I can see that she is mistaken. She thinks I’m a man exposed. She’s almost made it past me when the sound of her heels ceases. Then stiff as a holy statue she turns to where I’m knelt and gawps
‘Is that you Jim?’
‘Yeah it’s me’ I say.
‘It’s me.’
Dan was twenty-two, with heavy sad eyelids and painstaking hair. He was insightful beyond most (of his age and collar colour ), and had a sweet soul he kept from all but a few. He hid murder behind his sullenness this morning, and as he slumped loudly into his swivel chair his massacre skulked into action.
It was some time before Dan's colleagues realised they were being massacred. For most of the morning they went about their tasks with due banality; James leaned over THANATOS (the intractible finance system), Jenna filed exam results, Dan served customers with a cheeriness that they would mention later, unable to believe what this charming young man had done. But, by the second brew, someone had realised that something was wrong. Sarah, the shy publications officer with who Dan had once had a short lived affair tried to go out for milk and found the exit door jammed.
She was too nervous to ask Dan outright about it although she knew it was he who had been asked to report the problem with the hydraulics. She stood in a neutral spot, no closer to Dan than to her other colleagues, took a breath and asked breezily, 'does anyone know when the engineer might be coming to fix the door?'
The two seconds of silence that followed were too much for her, and Sarah felt herself turn towards Dan, though she regretted it instantly. Dan blew up for the first and last time that day.
"You mean me don't you?' he ranted quietly. 'Have the balls to just ask me instead of insinuating! And no, I don't know when the engineer's coming because I forgot to call him alright? I'll do it this afternoon. Jesus, I'm not infallible.' And with that, Dan pushed his i-pod into his ears and resumed a silence that would last the rest of Sarah's life.
Sarah, for the first time in a while, lost it. 'No one's asking you to be infallible,' she shrieked (God, she hated the way her voice did that when she was angry), 'it would just be nice if you would do one or two of the things in your job description in addition to your hard work on Facebook! The rest of us drop a bollock to keep this place going, we don't have time to carry you as well! And, no, I don't really feel like I can just ask you because you make yourself so damn unapproachable. As you've just demonstrated.' Sarah took a breath. He hadn't heard a word of that, but she felt better for getting it out of her system. And the others would back her up, because they'd complained about Dan's attitude before. She turned to them with a shrug.
'I think that was maybe a bit much Sarah,' said Jenna. 'He does his best.'
'Oh come on,' said Sarah, 'he does this all the time.'
'He's just a part-timer,' said James, 'and he actually cares about this place. It's a quiet time of year. We're all on Facebook now and again.'
'All you've done is made him feel small,' said Jenna.
Sarah was crushed. She had made Dan feel small. She had pulled rank over someone she'd once liked and admired. She huddled quietly in her seat, sucking back tears.
The jammed door was forgotten.
No more customers came in that afternoon, but that wasn't unusual for the time of year. They all got on with their jobs. On Facebook, Dan wrote 'is killing everyone at work', and his friends liked and LOL-ed.
The afternoon was long and hot, but there was a full bottle on the water cooler and crisps and chocolate in the vending machine.
At five o'clock they remembered that the door was jammed.
Jenna and James were too embarrassed to say anything, and made small talk for fifteen minutes after 'close of play'. Sarah didn't bother moving from her chair, and bit her nails. Dan stayed in his seat, refusing to conform to nine to five even if it meant him staying in work unpaid. He seemed to be working now - there was a spreadsheet on his screen.
'You see,' said Jenna, 'we can hardly say anything about Facebook when he stays late to finish off. He's passionate, that boy.'
'Is it me, or was anyone else planning to go home at five?' said Sarah, quietly.
At six o' clock, James suggested they try the engineer, 'just in case, er, he got the address wrong. Dan?' Dan gave an ambiguous shrug, so James picked up the phone. 'Er...guys,' he said, 'the phone's doing that thing it did when the network went down.'
'Let me hear.' Jenna snatched the phone off him. 'It is too.'
When they closed for Christmas, telecoms had turned off the phone network as an energy saving measure, but had forgotten to boot it up again straightaway, meaning that their first day back in work had been a little more relaxed than expected.
'But we told them we weren't closing for summer,' said Jenna. 'We were supposed to send over the opening hours to central admin.'
'Someone was supposed to,' muttered Sarah.
'But then that means...'
'Internet's down,' confirmed James. 'And no reception on the mobiles unless you go out in the car park.' The building was built of breeze blocks, a year before architects became aware of the need for mobile reception.
'So what do we do now?' said Jenna.
'Look, it's fine, we updated the website with the opening hours. It won't take some arsehole five minutes to complain when they find we're not open in the morning. Then security'll come and unjam the door somehow.'
'In the morning! So what, we're supposed to stay here all night?'
'It's not too bad. We can make beds out of the tote bags they put all the give-away crap in, yeah Sarah? We can use the money in the petty cash box to get stuff out of the vending machine and replace it later. They'll understand that we needed to eat.'
'Someone was supposed to update the website too,' muttered Sarah, but no one looked at her.
At four o'clock the next afternoon, James and Jenna held an emergency council in the disabled toilet.
'No one's coming,' said Jenna.
'I'll be honest with you,' said James, 'I thought someone would've been here by now.'
'Sarah thinks Dan didn't update the website,' said Jenna. 'She thinks he deliberately left the wrong opening hours up so that people would think we closed at lunchtime yesterday. She's convinced that we're locked in here for the six weeks of summer.'
'That's ludicrous. Dan's a good guy. If he didn't update the website, it was a genuine mistake. He knows he's got responsibilities, part-timer or not.'
'We need to find out for sure though.'
'I know. We need to speak to him.'
'Dan.'
'We need to speak to you mate.'
'It's not that we're blaming you - we know none of this is your fault. You're just a part timer.'
'We just need to know for sure how long we're going to be stuck here.'
'I mean, if the opening hours weren't changed on the website...'
'We'll have to ration the vending machines and the brews. We're alright for water, but the cold stuff won't last long and it's a hundred degrees in here with the shutters down.'
'Dan, no one's going to blame you love, we just need to know.'
Dan turned away from Minesweeper, gently took the earphones from his ears and held them in his lap. He looked at his knees and mouthed the words, 'I'm sorry guys'.
Jenna gave him a hug.
Sarah died first, three days later, from a hypoglycaemic panic attack. The petty cash was gone and she twisted her fingers into the leg of James' pants, heaving and begging for change for the vending machine.
'I'm sorry,' said Jenna, 'but I think she's faking it. You hold on to your money. You've barely got enough for yourself and you might have to share that with Dan and me. You had a Snickers yesterday Sarah,' she said loudly, 'you're fine. We've had far less than you. Stop overacting.'
Sarah went blue not long afterwards, and died next to the vending machine, her twitching hand thrust into the vending slot, as if she thought she could reach up and grab a life-saving snack. James became uncomfortable when she started to foam from the mouth and suggested they try to help, but they'd all put off booking their first aid training. After she went limp, Dan seemed upset and took himself into the disabled toilet for an hour or so. When he emerged, he was uncommonly nice and made brews for the three of them, though they were too dehydrated to tolerate the caffeine.
It was heat exhaustion that did for Jenna, a few days later. She sobbed that she couldn't bear another mug of warm water and shook the cooler in a sad attempt to extract a drop. In her final hours she lay at Dan's feet, and gained a dying woman's insight. She gasped a last curse at Dan, and at herself for failing to see the light. Her last words, 'don't take this the wrong way...' creaked out of her throat before she became a second contribution to the flies and the intolerable smell. Dan refused to look her in the eyes while she was dying. When she was gone, he opened his top draw and took out a ski mask.
When James became crazy with hunger, he asked Dan to help him breach the vending machine.
'Come on mate, we'll find something to pry the front off!' (The ski-masked face looked at him.) 'Come on man. There's Coke in there!' (Dan turned impassively to his screen and opened Solitaire.) 'Fuckin' aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!'
James ran at the vending machine and headbutted it. (Sarah's body slid flat onto the floor.) He ran at the glass front with his elbow. He broke his shoulder. He kicked the machine, and finally he grabbed it in a bear hug and tried to rock it. Dan watched him rock the vending machine back and forward, once, twice, building pendulous momentum. The machine rose off its back feet. Scampi fries, glistening bottles of Coke, chocolate, all shifted towards the front of their carousels and the vending slot.
James screamed, 'fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckin' aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.....'
The machine toppled and fell on James. His ribcage crunched into his heart and lungs, his skull fractured and a pool of viscera leaked onto the floor.
Dan was trembling. He got up and walked on stiff legs to the cleaning cupboard. He brought out the yellow slip hazard signs and placed them one either side of James. He took off his ski mask and crumpled to his knees. He cried and blamed his colleagues for what had happened. He was only a part-timer and they had died and left him without proper supervision! How was he supposed to know what to do! Anyone would have done the same in his place. Their incompetence had made life unbearable.
Dan pulled himself together and went to the cloakroom. He took a cigarette carton and a box of matches from his coat. He took the only cigarette from the box, and sparked up, dropping the lit match in the waste paper bin. He switched off the lights, and in doing so may accidentally have knocked the switch that disabled the fire alarms.
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