Competition Results
The winners of the Pentlands Writers Group 2010 Short Story Competition are as follows:
Adult Category: THE TEN LOVES OF LIZZIE SALT, by Douglas Bruton
Highly commended in this category were:
New Zealand River Sharks, by Alison McKnight
Ten Years Old, by Andrew McCallum
Local Category: THE PARTY THAT NEVER WAS, by Val Davies
Highly commended in this category were:
Full Circle, by Beth Mowat
Who Cares, Sins, by Clare Donaldson
Young Writer Category: APOCALYPSE, by Carly Walker
Highly commended in this category were:
Tom’s Terrible Tenth, by Isla Donaldson
It’s a Twin Thing, by Eilidh Reid
Ten, by Harriet O’Connor
The Last Fall, by Emily Dickinson
Countdown, by Sophie Hickman
The Ten Loves of Lizzie Salt (Adult) - The Party That Never Was (Local)
- Apocalypse (Young Writer) - Judges Comments
THE TEN LOVES OF LIZZIE SALT
by Douglas Bruton
Just because she died in the moment that Lizzie Salt was born, does not mean that Lizzie has no love for her mother. Once it was anger that she felt at being left; now it is just love. Lizzie lies in the dark still, her own life almost spent, hands held over her ears, and she listens to the drumming of blood in her head and thinks she remembers another dark listening and another heart beating. There’s a photograph by the bed. Not in a frame, but propped up against the clock. Black and white and the corners all blunt and creased. The aunts once said Lizzie the girl was like her mother. She searched for the things that were the same in that photograph, wanted once to believe what was said.
In the picture is her father when he was young, his face close to Lizzie’s mother’s face. Lizzie did not recognise him at first, just as she did not recognise her mother. Lizzie saw only a boy in a fisherman’s sweater, his hair cut crooked and his smile all bright, like a penny when it is new. Lizzie never knew that smile. Not even when she brought home silver paper stars on her schoolwork. Not when she laid her small prizes in her father’s rough hands. There was love, for him and for her, and smiles there were, too, but not like in the picture; pennies are easily tarnished.
Lizzie remembers a dog her father bought her when she was ten. She called it Pepper because its hair tickled her nose and made her sneeze. Lizzie Salt, and Pepper. It was a joke that was lost when she shortened its name to Pep. It was a coarse haired thing, not one colour but all colours. And it followed where Lizzie went, rubbing itself against her bare legs to let her know it was by. There have been other dogs in her long life, but it is Pep she loved. Cried for almost a year when it was laid in the ground. Lizzie was twenty three and the aunts shook their heads and said so many tears for a dog was not seemly.
There were boys in those Pep-puppy years. They asked her out to dances in the village hall. Held Lizzie’s hand in the near dark and squeezed her small fingers in their grip, not knowing they sometimes hurt her. They were grown to men one day, those puppy-boys. At least they thought they were men, and then they were gone. Some just left the village one September, in a group. Went off to fight and never came back. There’s a quiet grey granite memorial in the centre of the green, names cut into stone and arranged in order like they were in a teacher’s book. Lizzie does not anymore recognise the names of the boys whose kisses she once counted dear, not all of them. But one there is. Not the first or the last, but one she remembers above the rest. He walked her home after the dance and they talked. The sound of his voice was like singing, at least in memory it is. And his name was Stephen. Lizzie wonders if it would be counted strange that she still loves Stephen, though he is no more than a name on stone and a remembered song.
Then there was Alice. Friends at school when they were small and they met again as women. Alice kneeling in the dirt of the graveyard and shedding brief tears for a man that would have been hers if the war had only ended a month before. It was Lizzie who picked her up and set her on her way again. They were friends for some years and Alice’s hand in Lizzie’s felt soft like Stephen’s hand had felt – or maybe Lizzie’s memory held hands with a ghost then and she only thought Stephen’s hand was soft. Alice could laugh. That was important then. She wandered about Lizzie’s house in too few clothes on Saturday mornings and laughed at Lizzie’s father shaking his head, and her laughter was sharp as a slap in that house. They were to church together where they flirted with the minister till he blushed. Then they both laughed, right there in front of God, Lizzie and Alice. And their laughing followed them out into the street and heads turned in the village to see what there was to be laughing at.
Then Alice was sleeping in the bed of Robert Stowe and Lizzie went alone to church. Maybe she loved God for a while. It felt like love, is what she did say. Then it was not love. Lizzie not ever telling what the minister did in the dark after prayers on a Sunday in Lent. Lizzie not telling Alice or her father. Blood enough had been spilled; there was no wish for more. On dark nights afterwards, Lizzie sometimes crept to the church door and spat on the church steps and called the minister’s name and called God’s and wrapped them both in curses.
Not ever telling Donald Black when at last he made Lizzie his second wife. She was almost thirty and had given up looking, when Donald came knocking with a posy of wild-flowers and a jar of strawberry jam that his mother had made. He was dressed in a suit, like it was Sunday and his hair brushed flat and his face scrubbed so hard the skin was pink. He smelled of horses and coal tar. Every week for almost a year Donald came knocking. They walked out together, the distance between them growing smaller and smaller as the year turned over. Lizzie did not really love Donald Black, but lying in his bed, or Donald lying in hers, was something she loved. His arm lay heavy across her waist and his breath was warm on the back of her neck. Having Donald by her made her see that something had been missing in her life; Donald there filled a space for almost twenty years.
There was a child. Born too early so that it took only a single breath, all wheeze and choke, and then it could manage no more. It was a boy. Lizzie does not recall the many hours of pain that lead up to the birth except that she afterwards said, ‘No wonder my mother died.’ They called the boy Stephen, but only Lizzie really knew why. He was buried in a small wooden box and Lizzie shrank from the minister’s hand of comfort on her shoulder.
Years passed. Not noticed at first. Not noticed until they had gone and their passing had left a mark on Lizzie. Her back stiffened and bent, and her fingers ached when it was cold or wet. Donald went from this world and his going was quiet. Her father followed soon after and, when the aunts stopped coming, Lizzie had the house to herself. She took in bleating lambs whose mothers had rejected them. Or glass-eyed birds with broken wings and hedgehogs that had felt the sharp teeth of foxes. They were company of sorts. There was love in that, too – the love of Lizzie for the animals, and the love of the animals for Lizzie.
Now, the days left are few and her own breath is all wheeze and choke, and Lizzie lies in the dark, remembering. The window is open and the curtains thrown wide. She can see the stars and they look the same as they did when a boy called Stephen gave them their names. Above the sound of the slow ticking of the clock she can hear a fox barking in the next field and an owl calling. She looks over her shoulder at the years she has lived and comes back to God at the last. She puts her hands together, as best as she can, and she prays. She does not ask for anything in her prayers. She just talks. It is something she has missed, this talking with another. She talks into the morning, some of her words having shape and small sound. It is a way of hanging on to what she still has, for there is yet one thing that Lizzie loves. The sun comes up on the day. She can feel its heat climb into her room. She turns her head to the window. She is crying and her tears are soft and warm and taste of salt on her lips. She remembers then something her father always said: ‘Life, like food, has little taste without it has salt.’ It makes her smile, remembering those words. And her smile is like her father’s in the photograph and like her mother’s, too. And Lizzie Salt closes her eyes and her smile does not slip.
Douglas Bruton has had some success in writing competitions over the past few years, including winning HISSAC’s short story competition in 2008 and winning the Biscuit Prize 2009. He has also been widely published in literary magazines including The Vestal Review and The Eildon Tree. His novel for children, ‘The Chess Piece Magician’, was published in September 2009.
THE PARTY THAT NEVER WAS
by Val Davies
I don’t know why I thought ten was special. I think it must be because of what Uncle Derek said about double figures. But it’s not as if you go to another school or something. It’s just like being nine all over again.
Then I found out it was going to be a whole lot worse.
‘You’re going to have your birthday at your Dad’s,’ said Mum. She didn’t look up from what she was doing, which as far as I could see was trying to undo a knot in a plastic bag she was only going to throw away anyway.
‘But it’s not even his week!’
When I was nine it was his week, but we changed it so I could have my party.
‘What about my party?’
When I was nine, it was a balloon party. Balloons on the invitations, balloons all round the house, balloons for everyone to take home afterwards. Even a large bunch of balloons on the front gate. I know it’s not like taking the whole class to the swimming pool or something. But it was fun. There are lots of games you can play with balloons. Uncle Derek came to help. He’s great at parties. He can even do conjuring tricks.
‘Dad’s going to take you to Alton Towers as a birthday treat. Instead of a party. You’ve always wanted to go to Alton Towers.’
‘Yeah, but, Mum, I’ve invited my friends.’
‘I could tell Dad not to bother. We could have a party when you come back, I suppose.’
So there you are. The thing about being old enough for double figures. You get to choose between two things you really want. In the end I let Sasha decide. Sasha’s my best friend. She wanted a party of course, because she wasn’t going to Alton Towers.
‘What would you say if it was you?’ I asked. ‘If you could go to Alton Towers?’
‘I’d still choose the party. Because it’s more friendly.’
I wasn’t sure that was really true. But she thought she was, and I didn’t want everyone to think I was unfriendly.
‘I’ll go to Dad’s the weekend after next,’ I told Mum. ‘Like I should have done. Then we don’t have to change anything.’
‘Sorry, but it won’t work. I’m going away.’
Why didn’t she tell me that in the first place? It had nothing to do with Alton Towers. It was because my birthday weekend was Uncle Derek’s long weekend off and they were going away.
‘Can’t you wait till his next long weekend?’
‘Gemma, we’ve booked it. There’s a special offer on your birthday weekend. In three weeks it’ll be Easter and everything gets expensive. I thought you’d love to go to Alton Towers.’
‘I am not going to Alton Towers! I want a party.’
This was just the beginning of the bad things that happen when you hit double figures. I didn’t go to Alton Towers. It was just a normal rather boring weekend with Dad and Laura. Laura made a cake. She’s not such a good cook as Mum. It wouldn’t matter too much if she didn’t keep on saying it.
‘I’m sorry I’m not so good at making cakes as your mum.’
‘I thought chocolate was your favourite.’
‘Don’t eat it if you don’t like it.’
Actually I would have liked it if she’d just shut up. There was nothing much wrong with the cake. She’d made two. A long one and a round one. Not just double figures. Double cake.
‘That’s cool,’ I said.
‘You really like it?’ she said, as if she didn’t believe me.
In the end I didn’t like it any more.
Then, Dad. We didn’t go to Alton Towers. We went to a smaller, closer place with the same sort of thing, only not so scary. Just the two of us. Dad tried hard. The trouble is he gets seasick on all the rides, but he wouldn’t give up. I was afraid he’d throw up over me. So then I said I’d had enough and we went home early before Laura had quite finished the cake.
But the really bad things didn’t happen till I got home on Sunday night. Mum picked me up from the airport. She was in a good mood and we stopped at Pizza Hut on the way home. She kept chatting away all the time about what a wonderful weekend they’d had. I let her go on.
‘What about you?’ she said when I stopped chewing.
‘It was okay.’
She frowned but let it go. ‘Let’s go home. I’ve got something important I want to talk to you about.’
I should have twigged. I didn’t. I thought it was going to be about my party, or what Mr Dixon said at the parents’ evening last week.
‘You like Uncle Derek, don’t you?’ she said.
‘Of course, I do. Will he come to my party again?’
‘What we were hoping,’ she said and then stopped and looked round the living room. I couldn’t see what she was looking at.
‘Hoping what?’
She spoke all in a rush. ‘Uncle Derek’s going to come and live here with us. So he’ll be here for your party and everything else. He’ll be like a second dad for you.’
‘You can’t have two dads! And Uncle Derek doesn’t live here. He’s got his own place.’
‘He’ll sell it. We wanted to make sure you were happy about it first.’
‘Well, I’m not. I think it’s a crazy idea.’
‘But, Gemma, Derek and I love each other.’
‘I thought you loved me best.’
‘I do. Well, I love Derek and you in different ways.’
‘Mum, you can’t do it. I won’t let you.’
‘You’re tired. Let’s talk about this again tomorrow.’
Tomorrow I had school and she had work and after school I went to Sasha’s house, so we didn’t talk. It went on like this for a few days and Uncle Derek didn’t come round and I started to think nothing awful was going to happen after all.
On Thursday they were both there when I got back from school, sitting side by side on the sofa like Tricksy Dixy and the headmistress, when they called me in to go on about Sasha and me talking in class. But there was a glass of juice and a whole plate of biscuits ready for me, to make it look friendly. They both started talking at once.
‘Did you have a nice day at school?’ This was Derek. Mum knows I hate school.
‘Gemma, we have something important to tell you.’
‘You already told me. Can I put the telly on?’
‘No, this is something else.’
I took two biscuits just to see if Mum would say anything. She didn’t. Not about the biscuits anyway.
‘You’re going to have a little brother.’
‘What?’
‘At the end of July, I’m going to have another baby.’
‘That’s daft. You can’t have a baby.’ I picked up the remote.
‘Why can’t I have a baby?’ Now Mum sounded cross.
‘You just can’t. You’re too old.’
They both laughed. ‘Gemma, I’m thirty two. Derek and I want to have our own family. And we want you to be part of that.’
‘I’ll go and live with Dad.’
‘Is that what you really want? You said you liked Uncle Derek.’
‘Yeah, but that didn’t mean I wanted to live with him. It’s not the same thing.’
‘You’re right. It’s not the same at all,’ said Uncle Derek. ‘That’s why I’ve moved in.’
I switched on the telly. They looked at each other and went out and left me to it. I don’t know what the programme was.
After that Uncle Derek was there all the time except when he was working. And Mum’s tummy got bigger and bigger.
There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I didn’t want to go and live with Laura. When the baby was born he was very sweet. But that’s not the point.
The point is that when you get older you have to make all these choices and most of them aren’t choices at all. I never did have my party.
APOCALYPSE
by Carly Walker (age 14)
It was on that fateful Wednesday morning that Lukas Jamieson had made the long and somewhat tedious journey to work. He had passed the same slightly misshapen trees and had given his usual cheery wave to the homeless man on the corner of the street. However, he had unluckily been caught in the morning traffic jam. Humming slightly to a classic rock song on the radio, he began to look at his surroundings in more detail. Surprisingly, he noticed that there were far less trees than he had thought. Must’ve been the impact of the city, he thought to himself whilst tapping his foot impatiently. Being stuck in traffic congestion was not one of the most desired things on his list each morning. It was traffic congestions that caused unpunctuality; which then lead to pay deductions with his firm. As the radio presenter began to delve into the morning’s news stories, Lukas glanced down at the small clock. 9:59am, 10th October 2010. Hmm, he mused. That meant that in exactly one minute, it would be the tenth hour of the tenth day of the tenth month of the – ugh, he was confused already. Suddenly, the car sat in front of Lukas began to pick up speed. At last the congestion was disbanding! As Lukas pressed his foot slightly on the pedal, the radio suddenly cut dead. Unaware of what was happening, Lukas pressed his foot harder on the pedal. As the bonnet of Lukas’s car collided with the bumper of the car in front, Lukas cursed loudly and tried to reverse. His car was somehow refusing to move. That was when he noticed the stillness. He waited for a moment, contemplating the situation. There were no birds tweeting, no cars revving their engines and no wind whistling through the moist air. As Lukas tried to open the car door, he realised that it was stuck. He tried again, pressing harder on the handle. After none of the doors opened, he unwillingly and gingerly slipped off a shoe. His car would not just suddenly freeze on any other day, so why today? Why had all of the other cars frozen? And why, he argued, did the radio suddenly cut off? His car was brand new and he was positive that it was better than most of the other models along the road. However he wasn’t too happy about being stuck inside it so he was doing the natural thing surely? Raising the shoe above his head, he brought it crashing against the glass which shattered, sending shards of glass flying onto his clothes. He shook the glass off and sighed. The car had cost him a fortune, and here he was destroying it like an imbecile. Lukas crawled out of the car window and fell onto the road, breathing in the fresh spring air. He staggered to his feet and edged nearer to the car in front of him. He was going to have to apologise for ramming the car and the driver might not be too happy. Excuses and apologies raced through his minds as he tapped on the window. There was no movement. Confused at this woman’s obvious lack of concern about her car, he pressed his face closer to the window, in a rude manner, and gasped. The woman was frozen. Not frozen in the sense of coldness but merely not moving. The woman’s eyes were no longer blinking, just staring manically ahead as if she was in some kind of trance. Somewhat confused and frightened, Lukas continued to pace up the motorway, noticing that everyone bar himself were in this trance. What was going on? First the radio, then the cars and now the people...but why wasn’t he affected by this? As Lukas looked up into the sky, he noticed that darkness was befalling. Surely that was impossible! But as Lukas squinted, he realised that this strange day was spiralling far out of context. The Sun was being blocked by something huge. But it wasn’t the Moon. It was something incomprehensible. As the last few seconds of daylight wore away, Lukas found himself panicking. He was seemingly the only one moving and not in a strange trance and now he was witnessing a blackout. Could it be...? he thought. Lukas gulped as he watched the last shimmer of sunlight vanish. It seemed like the Earth was shutting down. A deep wave of emptiness overwhelmed Lukas as the sky exploded into darkness...
Sean Black (Adult Category):
Three really stood out for me.
New Zealand River Sharks demonstrated a very commercial voice and the dialogue was probably the most seamless of all the stories. A really good ear for dialogue is a huge asset for a writer and it's something this person demonstrated in abundance.
Ten Years Old provided the most evocative prose of any of the entries. This is a writer very much in control of their material. It overcame a slight lack of narrative drive by being quite simply a very accomplished piece of writing.
I felt that The Ten Loves of Lizzie Salt best fulfilled the brief. The writing was of a high standard and as a reader I was very much drawn into the story and the central character. The writer created a world for the reader to step into - no mean feat in a short story.
So, my overall winner was The Ten Loves of Lizzie Salt.
For those who didn't win, I think it's really important to bear in mind that this is just one person's opinion. There was at least one very positive aspect to all of the entries.
Carl MacDougall (Local Category):
The best story is ... 'The Party That Never Was' ... this uses a voice that is clearly different from the author's own voice and gets a 10 year old girl's attitude and concerns exactly. It has the best opening and also reveals the narrative details when necessary, showing how decisions outwith her control impact on the girl's life. It isn't difficult to imagine her future.
Tom Murray (Young Writer Category):
Enjoyable to read such high quality imaginative stories … after much re-reading the winner emerged as 'Apocalypse'.
This story I felt combined the theme of 'Ten' most completely with the narrative … the big and smaller picture weren't presented as separate but integrated into the story without strain. Not an easy thing to do. These factors married to a story that developed over a short space of time but tells you so much about the character and his life … A well constructed story that can be enjoyed on several levels … It left you with questions … A very good imaginatively detailed story.
All the writers explored their subjects and told their story with imagination and detailed used of language. It bodes well for the future to have so much talent out there.