All stories

Standing in front of the mirror, she unfurled a baton of vibrant red from its tubular container. Pouting in towards to glass, she pressed the lipstick on to her pallid lips spreading a thick layer to each corner of her mouth. Her breath temporarily misted up a circle of her reflection as she blew herself a kiss. Stepping back to inspect her outfit, Dorothea felt ready. Her neat bob was held back from her face by a chic feather headband. Her delicate drop waist silk dress was so fashionable with its tiers of fabric creating fullness from the waist down. The elegant beads that adorned it caught glimmers of light from the old Tiffany lamp in the corner of the room. Rolling on her full length gloves, she turned to give herself one more inspection from all sides.

“Dotty, come on! You look fabulous, you always look fabulous! We’re gonna be late, you know how I hate being late!” Dorothea’s roommate Mary was standing in the doorway pulling a modest lace shawl over her shoulders.

“We can be late, let them wait. We don’t have to come runnin’ when the call you know.” Dorothea opened her wardrobe and paused for a moment to choose a covering. “Hhmm, maybe I won’t” she said and closed the wardrobe door.

“Dorothea... ”

“I’ll give them indecent exposure” Dorothea said pointedly.

Mary gave a nervous laugh and grabbed a set of keys from the sideboard. “OK, but I’m driving.”

The 148 Club was in the most exclusive part of Chicago. Entry was by invite only and rumour had it that the party never stopped. Dorothea had longed to cross its notorious threshold ever since she moved up from Bloomington. She had arrived in the city two months prior carrying with her just a small suitcase which had been frantically packed in a last minute dash from her parent’s house. Her worldly possessions reduced to just a few items of clothes and of course her beloved photo of Clara Bow. Dorothea had always been a spirited girl but when her parents caught her climbing back into the house through a bedroom window at 3 in the morning, it was the final straw.

“Good evening ladies.” The elegant doorman held back a heavy velvet curtain and ushered them in. At the front of the room there was a modest looking stage with opulent drapes and brass floodlight casting a pool of light into the centre.

Another usher appeared. “Your host would be delighted if you would join him for a drink before the show.” He gestured towards a table set back in a booth to the side of the stage. Prime viewing but secluded from the rest of the guests.

“Hhmm, of course he would. Well, you’d better bring a couple’a Gin Rickey’s then.” Dorothea winked at Mary as they turned and started towards the table. As they approached, the seated figure paused his conversation and turned to greet his guests.

“You gals made it along huh?”

“Of course we did, Al.”

It began harmlessly, at first. Not with a sports car or a clumsy affair, but with little things; a battered record player, some dog-eared biographies in his garage, some posters blu-tacked to the wall.

And the day after the large parcel arrived, the noises in the garage began.

Mum was obviously beside herself. She’d read about women whose husbands had stumbled into this sort of thing after watching a John Coltrane documentary, or reading an article about keeping your mind active after retirement. She just hadn’t expected it to happen to Dad.

He’d always been so sensible; his garage a place of reassuring practicalities - spades, rat poison, wellies, broken anti-prowler lights. Not cigarette smoke and intimate lighting and husky jazz.

She certainly hadn’t expected the saxophone lessons. None of us had. We didn’t think it would get that far.

We were sitting in the kitchen listening to Dad falter through the first 3 bars of The Girl from Ipanema again when mum finally broke. She dropped her head into her hands.

“I thought we’d be like those lovely normal couples, spending our retirement at the beach, watching seagulls” she wailed. “Now he wants to take me to ‘gigs’ in basements full of emaciated twenty-somethings. I don’t deserve this! Yesterday he was talking about ‘syncopation’ - is it something he’ll want to...do?

“Sounds weird.” I agreed “I’ll talk to him”.

I took my tea with me. In the garage Dad was sweating profusely over his saxophone. He startled when I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Hello love” he gasped “Everything ok?”

“Dad.” I sat down and looked at him. “What’s this all about?”

“What do you mean?” he said, shiftily.

“All this. You know. The - jazz…?”

“Oh well. I’ve always liked the old, uh, and now I’ve got a bit of time on my hands I thought, well why not? Eh?”

He didn’t meet my gaze.

“Have you thought about what it’s doing to mum?” I asked “She’s very upset.”

“How do you mean upset? Your mother loves jazz. She told me so herself.”

“She said you were talking about syncopation. It frightened her.”

“Well she wasn’t frightened when we watched that chap doing it on telly, was she? No! Didn’t stop talking about him for a week!”

He was looking disgruntled now.

“Hold on” I said “Did you take up the saxophone because you think mum fancies John Coltrane?”

“Well she started going on about what it must have been like to live fast and die young and all that. We were always very - conservative - just bought a house, had a family, you know? To be honest, I’d rather be watching the seagulls at the beach, but your mother? Well, she’s got different ideas. I need to show her a good time. Don’t want her to get fed up with me, do I?”

“I think” I said, standing up “ you should come in for a cup of tea and a chat. She might surprise you. Oh, and bring your bird book.”

Ken sat, gazing despondently over the foggy seafront. He had moved to Brighton in the 20s armed with his Leica and a brand new Besson, bought for him by his grandfather on his graduation from the Royal Academy of Music the previous year. He had spent his days snapping photos of the holiday makers promenading along the pier, then trying to sell them the images as bespoke postcards, and his nights entertaining them in the bars. He’d made enough to live, but never much more than that. The late nights and copious whiskey consumption in those golden years between the wars had taken their toll on his body, and the horrors of his conscripted days haunted his mind and poisoned his dreams, but here he sat, 112, and feeling every second of it.

As the early morning fog lifted, the cool sun began to warm and dry the fine patina of dew from his hunched form. A seagull fluttered down on the bench by his side, and nosed its beak arrogantly into the paper bag wedged into the crack by his long-cold coffee cup. A few flakes of croissant fell to the floor, and several more gulls swooped in, fighting over the tasty morsels. He shooed them away, and as the first one took flight it aimed a shit right on the handle of his trumpet case.

A girl ran by in hot pink and gray, her iPhone strapped to her arm in one of those cases which ensured that, no matter where she was or what she was doing, she could track and share her activities over the baffling multitude of social media. Like anyone gave a shit where she’d run or what she’d had for breakfast afterwards, Ken mused, uncharitably. He wondered how different the 20s would have been if iPhones had existed then. His snapping wouldn’t have made him a penny, that was for sure, but what of the jazz… could such musical debauchery and freedom have flourished in the light of such constant, intrusive surveillance? Would he have dared use the trumpet intended to further hone his aptitude for classical music to become a jazz musician in Brighton’s seediest but coolest bars if he’d known his exploits would be all over instagram the next morning? His grandfather would have been so angry, and so ashamed - he’d died thinking that Ken was playing in orchestras, not jazz quartets and jam sessions. Anyway, it didn’t matter now. His fingers had long been too stiff to press the keys, and his heart too heavy to care. All the trumpet did was to remind him of everything he’d loved and lost; his father and wo brothers in the trenches, his sweetheart to an air raids, his Leica to that bastard prowler in the alleyway behind the lanes.

He got up, and stretched. His gnarled and tired limbs loosening slightly in the luke-warm winter sun. Hobbling, he found his way to the end of the pier. He paused, taking one last look back at the Besson, waiting unassumingly in it’s brown case, now adorned with fresh seagull shit. Praying that its next owner would find more happiness than he had, Ken took his final step.

The adjustment centre was a Victorian seafront building set over four floors, with turrets at the roof wheeled by seagulls. Nana Rachel drove fourteen-year-old Glenn and marched him up the steps. She practically threw him into reception. Everyone there was nice at least. They took him to a room, gave him a cup of water, and then brought in his case worker.

Mary was only a few years older than him, wearing tight jeans and a top that wrapped itself around a gravity defying chest. She took the seat the other side of the small table and read through his case notes. He watched her face carefully, looking for any signs of discomfort or disgust.

Mary laid down the case file on the table. She smiled at Glenn.

Mary said, ‘I think you wanted to be caught.’

Glenn said, ‘How do you work that out?’

Mary said, ‘You went in the music room with another boy. You weren’t exactly subtle about what you were up to. I’m told the noise was like elephants mating.’

Glenn said, ‘We got carried away. How is that a crime? You must have, surely? Been with someone, finally able to be yourself at last, and then it doesn’t matter what happens, what anyone might say. You just go for it, because there’s nothing more important than that moment.’

Mary slapped the table with both hands.

‘Think about your parents! Think how hard this must be on them. They are good, jazz loving people. I’m told your house is open plan, done up like a twenties jazz bar. Do you really want to hurt them?’

Glenn closed his eyes. The guilt that had bubbled deep inside since it happened was clawing at his throat. The way Dad Colin had fainted when he heard what happened, and even Dad Jace, though he was the strong and silent type, the look on his face.

Glenn sipped from his water to calm himself, to stop him having to answer.

‘This kind of thing is a poison,’ Mary said. ‘An insidious prowler that creeps through the minds of young men and guides them down the wrong path. You have a choice, Glenn, between the path that is decent and honourable. Normal. Or down the path that is-‘

Glenn hurled his paper cup at the window and shot back his chair. He stood so fast that his thighs jostled the table. Mary flinched back in shock. Glenn bit back his scream, and then through gritted teeth he spoke.

‘It’s not a choice. It’s something you’re born with.’

He took a deep breath, and then, for the first time in his life spoke the words he had buried for so long.

‘My name is Glenn, and yes, I was caught in the music room playing Abide with me on a soprano trumpet. But I don’t like jazz. I find it repetitive, with no sense of rhythm or tonal structure.’

Glenn stood a little straight and put a clenched fist across his chest.

‘What I love is a British style brass band. Go to hell, Glen bloody Miller, Louis Armstrong, and all the rest. When I go to bed at night it’s the Reg Vardy Band or Grimethorpe Colliery I hear in my head.’

‘Parp, parp, parp,’ went the saxamaphone, ‘bong, bong, bong,’ went the drum.

‘Oh lawks, I’m late once again,’ said Leslie. ‘Silly, silly me, what a fool I am, I’ll forget my own head next, if it wasn’t attached to my body!’

He stopped, he looked around, and here it came, the horror - he had no body, he was a head sitting on the coffee table in the lounge. His body had left without him again!

Shit, he sighed, that was probably the sign of another nervous breakdown.

Just then he heard a tap, tap, tapping at the window. By blinking rapidly, working his jaw and waggling his ears he was able to swivel his head enough to see the window.

The horror.

THE HORROR.

Outside the window was a giant seagull prowling around. Now what was he going to do? It was tapping on the window with its mighty orange beak, twisting its head this way and that to turn its beady orange eye on him. Fear coursed within him, his bowels turned to water. He was saved from that little indignity since his body was elsewhere (though somewhere on the Circle line between Paddington and Wood Lane a headless torso, hitherto unnoticed in this faceless social media world suddenly found itself in a widening circle of empty space).

No. This was not the time for fear.

‘Come on, Leslie,’ he said. ‘It’s time to head up. What are you, a mouse, or a head?’

Leslie waggled his ears in a threatening manner. ‘Come on then, giant seagull, come over here. I’ll bite your knees off!’

The seagull grew enraged at his bravado. It took a run up and thrust the tip of its beak to shatter the glass. This was just the stroke of luck Leslie needed, a shard of broken glass landed on the table mere inches from his lips.

‘Ha ha!’ he ha-ha-ed. ‘Jokes on you, seagull, for I have have been playing the jazz since the age of seven* and my lips are so flexible and strong and covered with calluses that I can seize this shard of glass and and grasp it between my mighty yet sensuous lips as though it is a sword with which to vanquish you! Oh shit, I’ve spent too much time monologuing and the beast is upon me! Aaargh, my eyes, my eyes, the-’

It’s not only ravens that peck out eyes you see**, and once the seagull had taken both of Leslie’s eyes (which is fair enough, given that he was late with something that he’d promised to deliver) it shoved chips stolen from a child into his mouth until he choked to death.

The giant seagull was eventually battered to death with a large bottle of poison. The adults would have used the poison inside but were defeated by the child proof cap.

Leslie’s headless torso is still on the Circle line. Those who knew him say that his personality has improved immeasurably.

*yes, that’s right, back on theme, check me out

** yes, that’s a deliberate pun

‘Parp, parp, parp,’ went the saxamaphone, ‘bong, bong, bong,’ went the drum.

‘Oh lawks, I’m late once again,’ said Leslie. ‘Silly, silly me, what a fool I am, I’ll forget my own head next, if it wasn’t attached to my body!’

He stopped, he looked around, and here it came, the horror - he had no body, he was a head sitting on the coffee table in the lounge. His body had left without him again!

Shit, he sighed, that was probably the sign of another nervous breakdown.

Just then he heard a tap, tap, tapping at the window. By blinking rapidly, working his jaw and waggling his ears he was able to swivel his head enough to see the window.

The horror.

THE HORROR.

Outside the window was a giant seagull prowling around. Now what was he going to do? It was tapping on the window with its mighty orange beak, twisting its head this way and that to turn its beady orange eye on him. Fear coursed within him, his bowels turned to water. He was saved from that little indignity since his body was elsewhere (though somewhere on the Circle line between Paddington and Wood Lane a headless torso, hitherto unnoticed in this faceless social media world suddenly found itself in a widening circle of empty space).

No. This was not the time for fear.

‘Come on, Leslie,’ he said. ‘It’s time to head up. What are you, a mouse, or a head?’

Leslie waggled his ears in a threatening manner. ‘Come on then, giant seagull, come over here. I’ll bite your knees off!’

The seagull grew enraged at his bravado. It took a run up and thrust the tip of its beak to shatter the glass. This was just the stroke of luck Leslie needed, a shard of broken glass landed on the table mere inches from his lips.

‘Ha ha!’ he ha-ha-ed. ‘Jokes on you, seagull, for I have have been playing the jazz since the age of seven* and my lips are so flexible and strong and covered with calluses that I can seize this shard of glass and and grasp it between my mighty yet sensuous lips as though it is a sword with which to vanquish you! Oh shit, I’ve spent too much time monologuing and the beast is upon me! Aaargh, my eyes, my eyes, the-’

It’s not only ravens that peck out eyes you see**, and once the seagull had taken both of Leslie’s eyes (which is fair enough, given that he was late with something that he’d promised to deliver) it shoved chips stolen from a child into his mouth until he choked to death.

The giant seagull was eventually battered to death with a large bottle of poison. The adults would have used the poison inside but were defeated by the child proof cap.

Leslie’s headless torso is still on the Circle line. Those who knew him say that his personality has improved immeasurably.

*yes, that’s right, back on theme, check me out

** yes, that’s a deliberate pun