THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Elle McNicoll has gained a huge following since the release of her debut novel A Kind of Spark. As her latest book, Like a Charm, hits the shelves, BooksfromScotland got in touch to ask Elle about her favourite books.

 

Like a Charm
By Elle McNicoll
Published by Knights Of

 

The book as . . . memory. What is your first memory of books and reading?

Elmer. I still think it’s one of the best books of all time.

 

The book as . . . your work. Tell us about your latest book  Like a Charm. What did you want to explore in writing it? 

I never set out wanting to write about any specific theme or issue, it always begins with a character. Which, in this case, is Ramya: a girl who is 12, loves fashion, has learning difficulties and also happens to have magical gifts. She also loves berets. So, I wrote about her.

 

The book as . . . inspiration. What is your favourite book that has informed how you see yourself?

Probably my own, to be honest. I wrote A Kind of Spark because nothing like it existed. An Own Voice book for ND readers young and old. I still can’t believe it survived the pandemic and reached readers.

 

The book as. . .education. What is your favourite book that made you look at the world differently?

The Eyewitness Book of Sharks. An amazing account of my favourite animal and their underwater world.

 

The book as . . . an object. What is your favourite beautiful book? 

Eight Princesses and a Magic Mirror by Natasha Farrant.

 

The book as . . . entertainment. What is your favourite rattling good read?

Anything by Talia Hibbert or Jennifer Bell.

 

The book as . . . a relationship. What is your favourite book that bonded you to someone else?

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman. She’s an exceptional writer.

 

The book as . . . rebellion. What is your favourite book that felt like it revealed a secret truth to you?

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

 

The book as. . .technology. What has been your favourite reading experience off the page?

Plays, usually. Tony Kushner and Tennessee Williams.

 

The book as . . . a destination. What is your favourite book set in a place unknown to you?

 Persuasion by Jane Austen has always made me want to go to Bath.

 

The book as . . . the future. What are you looking forward to reading next?

I’m in a slump at the moment, so something engaging and dynamic that is impossible to put down. I’m excited to pick up The Wolf Den next, I think.

 

Like a Charm by Elle McNicoll is published by Knights Of, priced £6.99.

David Robinson finds you can’t keep a good story unwritten when he reviews Sarah Smith’s debut novel, Hear No Evil, by Sarah Smith.

 

Hear No Evil
By Sarah Smith
Published by Two Roads

 

Imagine you’re a policeman directing traffic. You want to tell the driver facing you to get a move on. You put your hand out, palm open and facing up, and move it back towards your shoulder. In sign language for the deaf, this gesture means that something happened in the past. Over your shoulder. Behind you. Gone.

Now imagine the past through the eyes of a deaf-mute girl in, say, the early 19th century. Sign language is in its infancy, and certainly not standardised. As a deaf girl, you probably haven’t been to school, so you can’t read and write, and because of that, the people you can’t talk to probably think you are stupid. Stupid and ignorant and, when accused of murdering your baby, probably guilty.

That is precisely the story Sarah Smith tells in her debut novel Hear No Evil, which is partly based on the real-life case of Jean Campbell, a Glaswegian who in 1817 was the first deaf woman tried in a Scottish court, accused of throwing her three-year-old child into the Clyde from the Saltmarket Bridge. Her trial made legal history for another reason: the court employed Edinburgh deaf school owner Robert Kinniburgh to help in her interrogation. In the novel, he does a lot more, repeatedly going to Glasgow to ascertain the facts of the case and see if he can uncover anything that could save Campbell from either the hangman’s noose or the insane asylum.

Already, perhaps, you can see both why Smith was drawn to this story and – because of her insistence that early sign language be a key part of it – the difficulties inherent in telling it. There are, she has written, hardly any deaf users of sign language in fiction, and the few that there are ‘range from the patronising to the absurd; childlike victims who are “rescued” by the hearing protagonist, or one-dimensional characters whose lack of hearing is used simply as a device to move the plot forward’.

Her own fictional Jean Campbell would, she resolved, be a lot more than that. At first, she wanted her to speak on the page using sign language – but, well, how was that even possible? And even if it was, as a hearing person, she was wary of cultural appropriation. No: the way into the story, she resolved, was through Kinniburgh. His empathy towards Campbell, his determination to understand her, his uncovering of the truth behind her plight would drive the story and, in the processs, allow it to be told through his own explanation of sign language. That’s how, for example,  I know that the sign for ‘in the past’ looks like (my description, not hers) a traffic cop beckoning cars onwards.

Smith’s novel runs on twin tracks of drama and explanation, often swapping between them. Sometimes the explanations go on for far longer than one would expect – Kinniburgh’s exposition on sign language to a partly deaf congregation lasts for ten full pages – but as the story is set at a time when signing is still new and strange, it is easy to understand why. As a reader, one starts to realise the sheer attentiveness involved in following sign language, and even then it can still seem puzzling. In Kinniburgh’s talk to the congregation, for example, he has to say ‘Rottenrow’ in sign language. You can, he says, either spell it out on your fingers (time-consuming) or try a sign. The sign for Rottenrow he comes up with is one showing whiskers like a cat or a mouse. Why? Because ‘the name is common in towns or villages throughout the country where there once was a row of tumbledown cottages infested with rats’. Would you have got that? Neither would I. In fact, as we are told Rottenrow could also be derived from the Gaelic phrase Rat-an-righ (road of the kings) perhaps some people in the congregation would have more readily understood a sign indicating a crown instead.

Although Campbell is accused of murdering her child (in the novel, a baby) by throwing it into the Clyde, Smith loads the dice in her favour so much that you never really think she is guilty of the crime. Her jailer says she’s no trouble, a local barmaid sings her praises (‘she cares for that wean as good as anybody’), members of her local church put in a good word for her and Robert himself notes her ‘intelligent expression and admirable composure’ on first meeting her at Edinburgh’s Tollbooth Prison. The fact that she has so many modern attitudes – being open about her desire for her labourer boyfriend, not minding that he’s from the other side of the sectarian divide, and the fact that she ‘shows no shame or remorse’ about living in sin seals the deal. She’s like us, so we like her.

Robert Kinniburgh isn’t like us at all. As he goes about trying to establish what really happened to Campbell in Glasgow, Smith seems to be painting him more and more as a person completely rooted in his times. The plot pauses and takes a breath while these details are provided. The jobs of the people in the coach with him back to Edinburgh (an engineer draining Nor’ Loch, a brewer setting up in Fountainbridge); once there, the timetable of the deaf school he runs and the anticipation among the pupils for the following month’s balloon flight over Arthur’s Seat by James Sadler. In Glasgow, we are shown where the city fathers are planning to widen the Clyde and inquire about the new asylum being built on Parliamentary Row. All these facts are threads tying him down to his times, and so do his attitudes: when told of a husband ‘making his wife suffer’ (in our day, we’d call it marital rape) he points out that this may be part of a husband’s duty. ‘The Lord exhorts us to go forth and multiply. He was only doing God’s will.’

Sarah Smith says that she was inspired to write the story because no sooner does Jean Campbell flit into the historical record via court reports in the Glasgow Herald and the Caledonian Mercury than she disappears again. Those brief mentions are, however, also enough to give Campbell a slender afterlife on the internet, and if you want to check out the real story underpinning this novel, University College London’s website is worth a look.* The blog there tells you what happened next, but as that would be too much of a spoiler, I won’t give the game away.

 

Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith is published by Two Roads, priced £16.99

*https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/library-rnid/2014/01/24/interpreter-in-court-1817-the-famous-case-of-jean-campbell-alias-bruce/

 

Scottish historical fiction is having quite the moment just now with many novelists taking on Scotland’s past as a rich subject to explore. Sue Lawrence carries this on with her latest novel, The Green Lady, which uses the diary of Marie Seton to look at the violent clash of personal and political ambition.

 

Extracts taken from The Green Lady
By Sue Lawrence
Published by Saraband

 

1615
Marie Seton

As I lie on my bed, not far from death, I have asked Sister Agnes to bring me over my journals and my letters, which I have not looked at for so many years. I feel ready to reflect on my long life before I begin my journey into the next. I had just received news that Alexander Seton, now Lord Chancellor of Scotland, is to begin preparations for the royal visit from London to Scotland next year. The plan is for King James and Queen Anne to tour the country, from Dunbar to Aberdeen, presumably at great expense. The King never travels without hundreds of servants and horses and probably the entire Court and its attendant trappings. But my nephew Alexander has never been one to let the mere matter of money get in the way of his great schemes.

I believe he was generously rewarded for his guardianship of Prince Charles who, in his first few years while his parents were in London, was brought up by Alexander at his properties in Scotland, including Fyvie Castle. As well as receiving an annual income, my nephew was also made Earl of Dunfermline. And now that the young prince’s elder brother Henry is dead, Charles will be the next king of England and Scotland. How Alexander will be rubbing his hands in glee that he brought up the future King Charles I of Great Britain.

But, as I lie here thinking about my life and my relationship with Alexander Seton and also with his first wife, Lilias, I wonder what would happen if his royal patrons knew what he actually was. Then perhaps he would not be lauded as one of the greatest men in Scotland, one of the finest legal minds and among the most gifted patrons of the arts. If only I had the King’s ear, as I had his mother’s ear during all my many years in her service. His mother is now more often spoken of as Mary, Queen of Scots, even though she was not only Queen of Scotland but also Queen of France, and her name, like mine, was Marie, not Mary.

I sigh as I think back to those times, when I was one of her four Maries, at first her childhood companions and friends in France, then later, at Court in Scotland, her ladies-in-waiting. But whereas the other three abandoned her when their men came courting, I was the one to remain loyal and true, though I too had to leave her shortly before her death. That I regret even to this day.

I force my ancient, arthritic bones upwards in the bed so that my head can rest against the cold stone wall. I pick up my diary and flick back through the pages to those happy times when, instead of wearing this simple habit of coarse grey wool, I would dress in fine Court attire, in gowns of silk and velvet, with gold and jewels woven into the fabric and pearls plaited through my hair, and all of this even more sumptuous and lavish at special banquets and assemblies.

I have a notion to read more about life back then and, in doing so, remember the conversations I’d always meticulously recorded. I had wanted my journal to be not just a written account of what happened, but a memory of all the voices. I inserted comments and addenda along the way in later years. And now I shall listen to them all again, whisperings in my ear of old promises and of secrets and lies.

 

***

 

October 1584

After what seems like an interminably long sixteen years serving the Queen in captivity and in various levels of damp discomfort and cold confinement, when my bones have ached from morning till night and my heart is tight with sorrow, I know I have to start thinking of myself, of my own well-being. And the only way ahead therefore is for me to retire from her service, something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago, but now is becoming an imperative.

George has written to say he is to travel to France next spring on a mission for the Queen and has suggested I travel with him to ensure my health, which has been failing, does not suffer any longer. In the Seton family, it is a tradition that the unmarried middle-aged women retire to a convent for their last years. I know I will never marry, so surely now is the time to devote myself to God rather than to my Queen? After many discussions with the Queen, she has eventually agreed it would be better for my health that I leave her, and I have accepted the invitation that I received so many years ago, when I was still a young woman. At last, I will join the Abbey of Saint Pierre in Reims, whose Abbess is the Queen’s aunt, Renee de Guise.

During those years of indecision when she came to rely more and more on me, her only Marie, I often could not sleep for worrying. But then early one morning as I lay in the dark before the hope of light that the dawn brings, I asked myself a question: if she were me, would she continue in service, to the detriment of her health? Or would she grasp this opportunity and for once think of herself? I knew immediately the answer. Once my decision had been taken, I felt neither fear nor trepidation, and of course she acquiesced, with tears and sighs, but also with fortitude; this is, after all, her battle with her cousin, Elizabeth, not mine.

But first, before I exchange one form of incarceration for another, I need to live, for just a short period, in freedom. Since George is not leaving for France till the month of March in 1585, I agreed that I would first recuperate with my family. It’s been decided that I would travel, after a short stay at Seton Palace with George, to Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, which his son Alexander has just bought from Andrew Meldrum of Drumoak. My nephew wants to show it to me before I leave for France, and I too am excited to see what is soon to become another Seton family home.

 

I shut my eyes tight as I remember writing these words and the excitement I felt in my new venture, including a visit to my nephew’s new property. I believed it could be the last time I would set foot in Scotland. As it turned out, of course, it was not, and I had to return another sixteen years later to attempt to put right the wrongs my brother’s son had visited upon his own dear wife.

It was during those few months of freedom residing up at Fyvie that I first met Lilias Drummond. She was not even fifteen, yet already betrothed to my shrewd, ambitious nephew, Alexander Seton. There was such an immediate connection between Lilias and me, even with the age difference; I was already forty-three years old. And by the end of my stay there in the wilds of Aberdeenshire, I had decided without any doubt that it was she who would be the recipient of my beautiful parure once I had gone. Those sparkling rubies, emeralds and pearls would be so beautiful around her fair neck.

Such spontaneity was not in my nature, but I felt somehow that God had guided me to this decision. Alexander may have been the Queen’s godson, but to me, Lilias was more than a goddaughter could ever have been; she was the daughter I never had.

 

The Green Lady by Sue Lawrence is published by Saraband, priced £9.99.

The call for change in the Metropolitan Police is increasing as its practices and culture come under scrutiny. Donna Mclean’s memoir Small Town Girl can only strengthen the case for reform. BooksfromScotland talked to her about her extraordinary book.

 

Small Town Girl
By Donna Mclean
Published by Hodder

 

Congratulations on the publication on your memoir Small Town Girl. It’s an extraordinary story. For those who are unaware, could you tell us a little bit of the story behind the writing of the book.

Thank you! In 2015 I discovered that my ex fiancee, who disappeared from my life in 2004, was actually an undercover police officer. Carlo worked for a secretive political policing unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, within the Metropolitan Police. Over 40 years the SDS and its successor, the NPOIU, spied on left wing and grassroots groups. Women activists were deceived into long term intimate relationships in order to gain greater access to the groups. I was one of those women.

 

It clearly took a lot of courage to take your story to the public. What prompted the decision to write?

I started writing in early 2017, having been encouraged by a close friend to write an article for a trade union journal. I was anxious that it wouldn’t be accepted or would be sent back with heavy edits! This wasn’t the case and it spurred me on to sign up to a six week creative writing course, Write Like A Grrrl. I started writing snippets of my story, showed the tutor and she said you have to write a book about this! Little did I know!

 

Before this happened did you consider that you would ever write? How was the experience in putting your story to paper?

I hadn’t written since I was at school. As a child I loved writing, and wrote pretty much every day. Someone gave me an old fashioned typewriter and I would bash out stories at night. I had brilliant English teachers at Prestwick Academy and they were extremely encouraging. Unfortunately it all fell away when I left school. Getting my story down on paper was one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done, plus I have absolutely found my writing voice again. I’ve written for several national newspapers, I’ve published two short stories and I will soon be writing a regular newspaper column.

 

Other than writing what else has helped you come to terms with what has happened to you?

The support of other people affected by abusive policing methods, the opportunity to speak about it in public, walking by the sea, re-examining my life and priorities. It has been a tumultuous few years but I am very much back on track, on a better track than before. Coming through this experience, I’ve been able to make big changes to my life. I don’t view myself as a victim, I think I’m a survivor.

 

What would you like to see happen for the public to be able to trust the authorities again? Do you think that even possible?

We saw the forced resignation of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick yesterday. That’s a tiny step. What we need is utter transparency, a willingness from the top to admit, accept and deal with the corruption, racism, sexism and homophobia within the Met and other forces. It’s not a few bad apples. It’s the whole orchard. Policing needs a radical overhaul, not just a new face at the top and some superficial changes.

 

Do you see yourself writing another book? Do you have other stories you wish to share?

Yes, absolutely! I have a story in my head that has been there for 35 years. I first came across this tragedy at Ayr Library when I went to do some research with my English teacher. It has never left me and it now is shouting to be told. I also have a folder of extra words (30k) that were edited out of the book. This is going to keep me occupied for a while!

 

Small Town Girl by Donna Mclean is published by Hodder, priced £16.99.

As part of the Year of Scotland’s Stories, we will be running a series of Responses on BooksfromScotland, commissioning writers to respond to books from the Publishing Scotland membership, engaging with work in different ways. To mark LGBT History Month, Kevin Guyan, Edinburgh-based writer and researcher, and author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action, writes about The Bi-ble: New Testimonials, Volume 2, edited by Ellen Desmond and Lauren Nickodemus, published by Monstrous Regiment, sitting at the intersection of data and lived experience.

 

The Bi-ble
Edited by Ellen Desmond and Lauren Nickodemus
Published by Monstrous Regiment

 

Beyond the binary: queer data and bisexual lives

What happens at the intersection where data meets identity? More generally, what tensions emerge between the representation of lives – in data, education, media, art and culture – and the reality of the lives they claim to represent? These questions were on my mind as I read The Bi-ble: New Testimonials (Volume 2), a collection of 19 essays about the experience of being bisexual.

My own writing focuses on data about LGBTQ communities in the UK, and the decisions made by people in power about how and who to count. For those with the ability to craft the narrative, what stories are brought into view and what stories are pushed further into the shadows? The Bi-ble speaks to the dual sides of visibility by documenting the diversity of bisexual lives and the interplay between identity and institutional bedrocks such as culture, religion, family, education and history. The Bi-ble therefore offers insights that go beyond the grasp of data and its rigid rules: the messiness, nuances, half-steps and grey areas that are formative in making sense of who we are in this world.

In the Foreword, Kemah Bob asks, ‘Where do definitions and labels stop serving to empower us and begin to box us in? When do they begin to limit the ways we think we’re entitled to feel about ourselves and other people?’ In my book Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action, I argue that we need to pay attention to the dark side of quantitative data practices. The completion of a diversity monitoring form in your workplace or answering questions about how you identify in a national census are not apolitical or value neutral activities, they produce benefits and harms for particular identity groups. As Bob rightly describes, definitions and labels are liberatory as well as limiting. Numerical data gives the impression that what is counted is static, fixed and unchanging across time and geographies. Those tasked with the collection of data are wrongly understood as archaeologists uncovering artefacts from the belly of the earth, rather than entomologists trying to capture butterflies with broken nets. When we imagine identity characteristics as ‘moving targets’ and value what people say about themselves, rather than trying to fit lives and experiences into predetermined categories, traditional understandings of identity and data are reconfigured.

The challenge of definitions and labels is particularly evident in essays that examine who counts as bisexual. Rebecca Wojturska, in the essay Bidentity, writes, ‘I am a bisexual who has never slept with a woman’, While Vaneet Mehta notes in The Hardest Things I’ve Ever Had to Do, ‘who you have had sex with, or relationships with, does not define your sexuality – it is your thoughts and desires that do’. These reflections highlight the opaqueness of ‘sexual orientation’, which include sexual identity (how a person thinks of their sexuality and the identity terms with which they identify); sexual attraction (the object of a person’s sexual and/or romantic feelings); and sexual behaviour (the sex/gender of a person’s sexual partner(s), if they engage in sexual behaviour).

Of course, the many moving parts of an individual’s ‘sexual orientation’ are not unique to bisexual lives but are equally part of the experiences of those who identify as gay, lesbian and straight/heterosexual. As Alizée Pichot notes in ‘Bisexual Woman Has Sex with Gay Man’: Not Such an Unusual Story, and the title of their essay suggests, ‘Heterosexuality (read: male/female sexual relationships) is not as limited as it appears. In fact (disclaimer, major announcement coming!), heterosexual activity can be très gay, too!’ I welcomed the collection’s exploration of the fuzzy borders between bisexuality and heterosexuality, a topic that some might perceive as taboo but contributed to The Bi-ble’s rounded exploration of the topic.

 

History and problems

Most historical data about LGBTQ people in the UK (or those perceived as different in terms of their gender, sex and/or sexuality) relates to the lives of individuals we might now understand as white, cis, gay men. Data was collected as proof of a ‘problem’, where people in power felt something was wrong and needed fixing. As an evidence base to demonstrate criminality, pathological maladjustment or to mark some individuals as different from the ‘normal’ majority, the historical relationship between LGBTQ communities and data practices is harmful. When used primarily to inflict harm upon the people about whom the data related, the relative absence of bisexual people in datasets is an omission that had no easy solution – in other words, nobody would want data collected about them when it is used to paint their community as deviant.

These histories inform our present-day relationship to data. Policymakers and researchers still collect data to demonstrate the existence of a problem, whether it’s evidence of under-achievement in education, poorer health outcomes or experiences of hate crime. Yet, as data makes the journey from collection to presentation, the analysis continues to erase the experiences of bisexual people. For example, when bisexual respondents are aggregated into a wider LGB+ group and data is reported as representative of lesbian and gay respondents only, they are made invisible. This analytical manoeuvre is particularly problematic as bisexual respondents often constitute the largest proportion of those who identify as LGB+. For example, 3.7 per cent of students identified as bisexual in the 2019/20 academic year in UK higher education institutions that returned data to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, whereas just 1.3 per cent of students identified as a gay man and 0.8 per cent identified as a gay woman/lesbian. The erasure of unique insights from bisexual respondents means that even when we have more data about LGB+ lives, when data is published, bisexual people appear to be missing.

The erasure of bisexual lives, as described in The Bi-ble, is not only something done to LGBTQ communities but is also something that occurs among LGBTQ people. Jayna Tavarez, in their essay exploring the realities of being LGBTQ+ on campus, reminds us that when it comes to racism, cissexism, classism and other -isms, ‘The LGBTQ+ community at large has proven time and time again that we are capable (and guilty!) of reproducing the same harmful systems that we claim to combat’. As a response, the editors of The Bi-ble describe how their vision for the two volumes was to produce something that ‘would wedge themselves in on bookshelves and claim some much-deserved visible space for the often erased B in LGBTQ+’.

 

More stories

The removal of bisexual people and identities from narratives across the board makes collections like this all the more significant. Although the balance is improving, the historical canon of LGBTQ writing continues to foreground a narrow depiction of LGBTQ lives. Writing on Black queer femme representation in Erotic Computer, which considers Janelle Monáe’s Black queer femme representation through the lens of Audre Lorde’s writing, Jessica Brough argues ‘it’s hard to be what you can’t see, and it can be hard to be proud of something so rarely celebrated in the mainstream’. In its overarching call for more (and more diverse) bisexual stories and content, The Bi-ble is a necessary tonic.

 

The Bi-ble edited by Ellen Desmond and Lauren Nickodemus is published by Monstrous Regiment, priced £9.99.

 

Kevin Guyan is an Edinburgh-based writer and researcher. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action, which explores LGBTQ data in the UK. Queer Data is published by Bloomsbury Academic and is available from most booksellers.

The Year of Stories x Books from Scotland response strand was inspired by Fringe of Colour’s series, which you can read more of at fringeofcolour.co.uk.

Gill Lewis is a children’s author who writes about animals and our human relationship with the wild world. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages and have won the Little Rebels Prize, the German Prize for Environmental Youth Literature and the US Green Earth Book Award. Here, she tells BooksfromScotland the inspiration behind her latest book, Song of the River.

 

Song of the River
By Gill Lewis
Published by Barrington Stoke

 

‘Why do you write stories?’

This is one of the most common questions I get asked at schools. A seemingly simple question, yet one that has been hard to answer. Yet, over the last ten years, since first being published, I have begun to understand why I write. Of course, writing is about wanting to share thoughts and ideas and hopefully through an engaging story. But writing is a form of protest too. It is a way of joining other voices to call for change to happen. We know we are in a climate emergency and a biodiversity crisis. The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, with the RSPB State of Nature Report showing severely declining native species populations. With increasing urbanisation, children are becoming more removed from nature, losing contact with the wild world. But stories can help bridge that gap. Stories have the potential to be powerful because they can take the reader by the hand and lead them through another person’s world and help them empathise with the protagonist’s journey and make them deeply care.

Song of the River is a song of protest. I have written about the need for restoring wild landscapes in two of my books; Sky Dancer and Eagle Warrior. Both are about the need to rewild intensively managed grouse moors. Song of the River is a story about using one particular animal, the beaver, to re-engineer our landscapes. Beavers, a once native species, are keystone species. They can change landscapes, create new habitats and increase biodiversity. They cut down trees and dam rivers, creating wetlands that in turn have the potential to thrive with variety of flora and fauna. In doing so, they slow water, reduce soil erosion and reduce the risk of flooding downstream too.

We often think in visual terms about restoring landscapes, but when I was writing Song of the River I thought about the changing soundscapes. With restored wetland habitats comes a cacophony of animal song: birds, amphibians and insects. The song of the river will change too, from a rushing river in full spate to one burbling and tinkling as water flows through the ponds and pools. It’s a song we would have heard five hundred years ago, before humans exterminated the beaver from Britain. Now, with the return of the beaver into many parts of Britain, we are already seeing the huge benefits they bring. But there is still reluctance to let these creatures back.

In Song of the River, ten-year-old Cari must fight against local resistance and persuade her community why the beavers are so badly needed in their valley. But when we first meet Cari, she has unwillingly moved from the city to a new life in the countryside where her mother has opened a riverside cafe. Cari is angry and in turmoil. She feels just like the river that rages through the garden of her new home.

‘Sometimes I feel like the river. Sometimes I feel I’m drowning in its sound. The river rages deep inside of me and I can’t make it stop. How can you stop a river? How can you change its song?’

 But when a flood devastates their new home and café, Cari begins to wonder if the plans to reintroduce beavers to the valley can save their livelihood. First, she must try to convince the community to give the beavers a chance, but even if she does, will it be enough to stop her home from being destroyed for a second time? Ultimately, I wanted to draw parallels between Cari and the river, and that if the river can change its song, then maybe Cari can change her own life too.

*

Another question I’m often asked by schools is, ‘what do you hope readers take away from your stories?’

And my answer is that I hope they enjoy the story and know that, like Cari, their voices count and deserve to be heard. Because we need many voices. The United Nations has declared the next decade as one of nature restoration. We can all be agents of change. Words are powerful things. They can rewild hearts and minds, and if we use them well, we can rewild this world.

 

Song of the River by Gill Lewis is published by Barrington Stoke, priced £6.99.

 

 

Greg Buchanan’s debut novel, Sixteen Horses, is a thriller with a hint of gothic. In this extract, a farmer has made a terrible discovery.

 

Extract taken from Sixteen Horses
By Greg Buchanan
Published by Pan

 

Fifty feet away, the field gave way to freshly tilled brown soil, forming mounds everywhere on the uneven earth. Chalky rocks littered the plot in every direction. Each step in this place was as muddy and wet as the last.

Further still, a thin metal fence marked the edge of the land, clots of wool decorating the wire like fairy lights where the sheep had once tried to break through.

But there were no animals in sight now. There was nothing but detritus.

‘I don’t see what—’

‘There,’ the farmer interrupted. ‘In the ground.’

Alec looked down. For a moment, he saw nothing but dirt.

‘I don’t—’

Alec stopped talking, a breeze moving past them both. Something shook along the soil.

He removed his torch and stepped forward, pointing its light at the source. Just three feet away, almost the same colour as the mud itself, there lay a great mound of black hair, coiled in thick and silken spirals.

He moved closer and knelt down. He wiped his hands on his trouser legs, reached into his pockets, and pulled out a pair of latex gloves. He tried to pull them on in one smooth motion, but his fingers – clammy, damp from the walk – clung to the latex before he could get them fully in. He had to inch each one into place before he could touch those cold dark circles. He stared at them all the while.

He lifted some of the hair up, surprised by the weight of it, its coarseness. He held it higher and ran his fingers along the strands, gripping at intervals. Towards the base of the spiral, where the rest of the hair still lay upon the ground, he felt flesh and bone.

Alec put it back carefully. The sun continued to rise. There was something else.

It was black, almost like plastic in its sheen, a thin half-moon of dulled white at its rim. It looked past him.

There was an eye, a large sad eye in the earth.

Alec stepped back.

‘My daughter found them,’ the farmer said. ‘Shouldn’t even have been out . . .’

Alec shone his torch across the area. There were others – some close together, some alone. He walked until he was sure he had found the whole set. He paced back and forth, a hundred feet all around.

He counted sixteen submerged heads, all apart, all with only the barest strand of skin on display, all with a single eye left exposed to the sun. One of the heads had been dug up a little more than the others, revealing the neck, at least. It was unclear how much of the corpse remained beneath the surface.

There were footprints everywhere: his, the farmer’s, the daughter’s, no doubt. He hadn’t been told any of this . . . He hadn’t known . . .

‘Who could do this?’ the farmer croaked, blinking. ‘Who could make themselves—’Alec looked up suddenly, acid rising in his throat. The sky was growing brighter, its red spreading like fire, the clouds shifting blue. Still the flies and crickets screamed across the reeds, though nothing crawled along those dead eyes. Nothing seemed to touch them.

There was a stone house half a mile away along the horizon.

‘Who lives over there?’ Alec asked.

‘No one.’

Alec stared at it a moment longer. It was a lonely-looking place.

‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ he asked. ‘It’s—’

Grotesque.

Beautiful.

‘No. Have you?’

Alec shook his head, stepping back, staring once more at the hair. It was all tails, he could see that now.

‘That’s murder,’ the farmer said, his voice soft. ‘Just look at them. Look.’

It was in fact criminal damage, a mere property crime. If you decide something isn’t human, you can do almost anything.

Alec looked at the house again, dark and cold in the distance.

‘Do you know anyone who might have a grudge against you? Anyone who might try and cause you harm?’

The farmer tried to smile. ‘Apart from my wife? No, no . . . I get along with folk. Always have.’ He paused. ‘What do I do?’

‘We need to get a vet in.’ Alec stood up. ‘We need to get post-mortems performed, if we can. I wouldn’t touch them until we know more—’

‘Can’t afford any of that,’ the farmer said.

‘You wouldn’t have to—’

‘And besides,’ the farmer interrupted. ‘Someone buried them, didn’t they? Horses don’t just get that way themselves.’

‘What about the mud? If this used to be wetland, maybe they . . . I don’t know, maybe they—’

‘No,’ the farmer said, firmly, without elaboration.

Alec paused, looking back down at the eyes. But for the lack of motion, they might have been alive.

He got his phone out to take some photographs of the scene.

They would have to do until help came. ‘Try and keep your other animals away,’ Alec said. ‘If you can keep your other animals inside or—’

‘What about the owner?’ asked the farmer.

‘Of what?’

‘Them – these—’ The farmer gesticulated, wincing.

‘What?’ Alec glanced down at the heads and up again at this man. ‘Were you stabling them?’ He paused. ‘We’d need to contact the—’

‘NO,’ the farmer spat. ‘No – no – no—’

‘Hey, it’s OK,’ Alec said, stepping closer as the farmer turned away. ‘I’m sure it’s covered by your insurance.’

‘You don’t understand. I don’t keep horses – I’ve never kept horses. That’s what I tried to tell the girl on the phone—’

A fly landed on the rim of an eye.

‘I’ve never seen these horses before in my life.’

 

Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan is published by Pan, priced £8.99.

Kirsti Wishart gathered a fair few fans with her debut novel, the comic-speculative mystery The Knitting Station. She is offering the same surreal delight in her latest novel, The Projectionist set in the strange seaside town of Seacrest. In this extract we are introduced to the dead-not dead film critic Cameron Fletcher.

 

Extract taken from The Projectionist
By Kirsti Wishart
Published by Rymour Books

 

We’d left the streets of Seacrest, travelled hundreds of miles south to its polar opposite in style. The bedroom of a drab maisonette in a non-descript cul-de-sac in a suburban Yorkshire town. Even in such uninspiring surroundings, however, the Seacrest spirit was at play. Here an unremarkable man called Arthur Dott was getting into character.

Admittedly, it didn’t look much. Instead of the alchemical process of an actor’s transformation – for Arthur was a trained actor, a promising career having dwindled to the likes of ‘Decrepit Gent in the Woolpack’– it looked like an old man having an afternoon nap, passing the time until Countdown. But in the twitching of Arthur’s facial muscles, his hands, we could tell a change was coming. He was getting into character, creating the man he would play in a few weeks. He was thinking that since he received his invitation to Seacrest, Cameron Fletcher had rediscovered an enthusiasm for life missing for years.

Being dead had suited him, freed him from the constant attention of his fans. He’d filled filing cabinets with their letters asking when his next piece of writing would appear, if any of his scripts were being filmed, if he’d be willing to let them direct one, asking for an autograph, a small piece of a great man. The announcement of his death stemmed the flow yet not as much as might be expected. It seemed his fans believed him capable of evading Death himself, charming the Grim Reaper into a drink before hammering him at chess. When photographs of his funeral were released there were still those who wrote to congratulate him on such an elaborate practical joke but really, enough was enough. When was he going to start writing again?

At first the coffin was comfortable. The afterlife afforded him the perfect opportunity for change. He sloughed off the identity of Fletcher, sold off his books and papers. He’d always envied actors their opportunities for trying out new personalities. He still wrote, had things published under pseudonyms, changing his style whenever doubts were raised over the true identity of Taylor Stannard or Eliot Green. As the years passed though, he began to feel there was something missing. He had cast himself adrift. Being dead was becoming a bore and he began to realise how much he’d enjoyed being Fletcher. Seeing his name out there, being listened to, inspiring others to be as creatively reckless and surprising as his writings.

And then Luke Howard appeared.

At this point Arthur sat up. Although he appeared awake his eyes were as unfocused as a sleepwalker’s. He looked different somehow from the man we met a few minutes ago. The way his shoulders were held, how he got up and walked from the bed to the small desk and chair with an ease we wouldn’t have expected. In front of him were a box of cigars and a neat stack of notes, clippings and photos. From the top he lifted a scrapbook labelled ‘Seacrest’. He started to leaf through it, wearing a smile that was not his own.

With three weeks to go before his first visit to that remarkable town, Fletcher flicked through his scrapbook until he reached an article from the Seacrest Gazette from seven years ago. The year a strange and enigmatic young man arrived from nowhere and gave the town hope. He read:

Although, regrettably, Cameron wasn’t able to visit Seacrest during his life-time, he often wrote about how a number of postcards sent by an uncle there on holiday inspired his early interest in films. He described it in one of his earliest articles as ‘the perfect place for moviegoers – here they take worship of the flickering lights thrown out by the projector as seriously as it deserves to be, building wonderful temples to celebrate this love. It is the place for all those who love to watch and if you count yourself in that number you should make your pilgrimage there.’ I think you’ll agree that it is fitting Seacrest is the new home of the archive of the great man, a living memorial to his work. I am proud to act as its curator.

In the accompanying photograph, there was Luke standing with arms folded in front of the open doors of the van he had driven into the town, a van full of books and photographs, one of those filing cabinets, reels of film and scribbled over scripts. Dressed in black, looking like a young, skinnier Anthony Perkins. An inset photo showed some of the proof, a number of books laid out on a table that caused Fletcher’s heart to twinge: Red Harvest, Nightmare Alley, Kiss Me Deadly opened at the fly-leaf to show the stamp of Fletcher’s personal library, the drawing of a cinema screen framed by curtains and ‘A C.F. Entertainment’ in curled script across it. Next to those, Cameron Fletcher’s death certificate. Every time he saw it, Cameron shivered. Haunted by his own ghost.

The final paragraph was a quote from Dr Jo Ashe, a lecturer in Film Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, proponent of the theory that Cameron Fletcher was a fake, a forgery: ‘If the artefacts Mr Howard has brought to Seacrest are authentic this has to be counted as one of the most important discoveries in recent film history. Please bear in mind, however, there is still plenty of evidence to suggest ‘Cameron Fletcher’ was the creation of a group of highly creative individuals, a very convincing prank. I’m sure Mr Howard is genuine in his belief these were once Fletcher’s belongings but I think it best for all to keep an open mind.’

Arthur’s shoulders had broadened. He appeared to have gained more weight, more presence. Although he gave up smoking twenty years ago, he stretched for the cigar box, pulled out one of Cuba’s finest. He lit it with a battered Zippo lighter that had arrived with the rest of his new past, Cameron’s past, three months ago.

After he’d taken a few puffs, relishing the rich, dark taste, he tapped the unlit end on the picture of Luke. Instead of his own Leeds accent he spoke in an American drawl, like a man possessed. ‘I’m very much looking forward to meeting you Mr Howard,’ and he laughed wheezily ‘but even more excited about being introduced to you, Dr Ashe. Proving my existence to you will be most entertaining.’

 

The Projectionist by Kirsti Wishart is published by Rymour Books, priced £10.99.

If you cannot get enough of royal court intrigue in your historical fiction, then may we recommend Jean Findlay’s The Queen’s Lender, which explores the life of George Heriot after the Union of the Crowns in 1603. BooksfromScotland asked Jean to tell us what inspired her story.

 

The Queen’s Lender
By Jean Findlay
Published by Scotland Street Press

 

In 2014 I returned to live in Edinburgh having spent twenty-one years in London and beyond. Central London is mainly Victorian but central Edinburgh throws you further back in history; the stones you touch on a daily walk go back 500 years.

The city had changed after twenty-one years – for the better; it was busier, more prosperous, cosmopolitan – devolution had made its mark. Restaurants were busy and spilled out on the street. The Poetry Library was full of poets, books, events.

This buoyancy was infectious. Here was a living, breathing city of ancient stones with the ghosts of the past still wandering through. One of the ghosts, the poet Robert Ferguson, had taken metal form and was striding past the Canongate Kirk. Fergusson wrote ‘The Ghaists, a Kirkyard Ecologue’ a political poem in dialogue form with George Heriot as one of the speakers.

HERRIOT
I find, my friend, that ye but little ken,
There’s eenow on the earth a set o’ men,
Wha, if they get their private pouches lin’d,
Gie na a winnelstrae for a’ mankind;
They’ll sell their country, flae their conscience bare,
To gar the weigh-bauk turn a single hair.
The government need only bait the line
Wi the prevailing flee, the gowden coin,
Then our executors, and wise trustees,
Will sell them fishes in forbidden seas,
Upo’ their dwyning country girn in sport,
Laugh in their sleeve, and get a place at court.

It is an insight into a clever man with satirical views on governments of any time.  Then his building is impressive, in such good nick it looks almost modern, though built in 1628.The dainty stone carved figure of its founder sits inside the quadrangle of the school and every year in June on Founder’s Day he’s decorated with fresh flowers by the pupils.

Sometimes an author doesn’t impose their will on a book, it’s the other way round; it’s the book that finds the author and determines the course of its narrative.

A combination of living history and the mirror of the times: the Union of 1603 which laid the path for the Union of 1707 was being voted on in 2014, and whatever the outcome then, this Union was evidently coming undone. This turning point in history could hear the echo of another.

I was struck by Heriot’s statue and the saying beneath ‘This statue shows my body, this building my soul’ Here is a man who is not afraid to acknowledge his belief in the soul, and his deathbed vision still exists in the form he composed it.

Heriot witnessed the Union of the Crowns of 1603.  He was Jeweller at the court of James VI and I and a favourite of his wife Anna.

The novel takes place in Denmark, in Edinburgh and in London. George Heriot and his wife Christian follow King James and Queen Anna to London. The journeys are very different, and part of Heriot’s is tragic for his children.

In London the court is a Crucible, a melting place, where the foundations of what later becomes the dominant cultural force in the world, the English language, are forged; and it all takes place by historical chance, under the eyes of Heriot the jeweller.

James I gave Shakespeare his first proper tenure, a job for life. This was inspired by Anna who had come from Denmark which had an Empire and could afford an in-house playwright attached to every palace.  Anna spoke Danish and middle Scots and communicated in the early days with her king in German. James was a scholar of Hebrew, Latin and Greek; he spoke French and Italian and some Spanish and of course the whole court moved to London speaking Middle Scots. This vibrant linguistic influence not only had its affect upon Shakespeare but also James wanted to leave his mark by translating the Bible into English, commissioning fifty-four translators for the task.  Since he was a child he had been attempting translations of the Psalms.

The playwright Ben Johnson is another character who makes an appearance along with the poet William Drummond of Hawthornden and Inigo Jones the architect.

It is a slim volume but it took seven years and was awarded two Fellowships. I’m grateful to the Hawthorndon Fellowship 2017 and the Lavigny International Fellowship 2019.

 

The Queen’s Lender by Jean Findlay is published by Scotland Street Press, priced £12.99.

To Dundee now, and if you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of the city’s fictional detective DI Dania Gorska, then may we recommend that you rectify that as soon as possible. You can start here, with this extract from her latest case, The Murder Stones, written by Hania Allen.

 

Extract taken from The Murder Stones
By Hania Allen
Published by Constable

 

She turned her attention to the car.The driver’s door was open, giving her a clear view of the heavy figure slumped face down over the wheel, his arms dangling.There was no air bag. What she could see of his dark hair was flecked with grey, and blood had seeped through it and trickled into his ear. His sheepskin jacket was worn and patched in places, although the matching gloves looked new. His head was almost touching the windscreen, which had shattered so completely that the mere touch of a finger would dislodge the webbed glass. She brought her face close to the man’s skull, then straightened and gazed at Milo. From the expression on his face, he’d seen it too – the array of wounds to the back of the head.

‘I’m about to move him,’ he said. He glanced at the photographer.‘ Ready, Lisa?’ He leant into the car and gripped the man’s shoulders. Using no more force than was necessary, he eased him back and rested him against the seat. It was then that Dania noticed he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Milo stepped back, inviting her to look.

The man’s craggy, lined face put him in his sixties, although he might have been older. His eyes were open and their expression of terror made it clear he’d been fully aware of what had been about to happen. The purplish-blue bruise on his forehead and the smashed nose suggested that it was the force of the blow on hitting the windscreen that had killed him.

The photographer took several photos, then picked her way round to the other side, leant in at the open passenger door and took several more.

‘That’s me done, Prof,’ she said, fiddling with the camera.

Trying not to disturb the clothing too much, Dania fished around in the man’s pockets. She found only a crumpled white handkerchief, and a small colour photograph of a young woman with fluffy blonde hair. She was laughing as though she’d been caught out by whoever was taking the picture. Dania turned it over, but there was nothing scribbled on the back.

‘His daughter, perhaps?’ Milo said, peering over her shoulder.

‘Or his wife when she was young.’

Dania beckoned to one of the SOCOs, who put the photo into an evidence bag.

She made her way to the passenger side and checked the glove compartment. It contained a single item: a Morris Traveller handbook.

‘Is that what this car is?’ she said to Milo. ‘A Morris Traveller?’

‘Indeed.You don’t see many of them around these days.’

‘There’s no indication of who he is.We’ll have to get an ID from the DVLA.’ She glanced at Milo. ‘Do you know much about these cars?’

‘I used to drive one, would you believe. I bought it when I was a student. Lovely maroon colour. There was a girl in my class I wanted to impress, you see, and I thought having a car would do it.’

Dania looked at him with curiosity. She knew nothing about his private life. She didn’t even know if he was married. ‘And did you?’ she said. ‘Impress her, I mean?’

‘Alas, no. She fell for a boy with a motorbike.The two of them dropped out of medical school and went touring round the world.’

Dania smiled. ‘I see. And do you happen to know if Morris Travellers come with air bags?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware; at least mine didn’t when I bought it. Although it may be possible to have them fitted. But don’t quote me on that.’

‘Kimmie should be able to tell me. What she doesn’t know about cars isn’t worth knowing.’

‘And what’s your current thinking? That there’s an air bag installed, and it failed?’

‘It’s possible. But what puzzles me more is that he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.’

Milo frowned. ‘It never fails to amaze me that even now there are people stupid enough not to buckle up. Right, I’d better get him to the mortuary.’

She watched him leave with one of the SOCOs, then called Hamish over. ‘This man that Tam Adie claimed to have seen leaning into the car. Did he give you an indication of where he was headed? You mentioned woodland.’

‘Aye, into those trees behind you.’

She stared into the wood. The day-old snow covered the ground as far as she could see. ‘What about footprints?’

‘We thought of that. Johnty is already in there, following the tracks. He’s using his scanner.’

‘That must be a thankless task.’

‘You know what Johnty’s like. When it comes to footprints, he never lets up. He said he’ll keep going until he gets to the other side. According to Google Maps, the woodland comes out on to a road. My guess is this unknown man left his car there.’

‘I won’t even ask if there are traffic cams.’

‘Nothing for miles. The nearest are on the A90.’

‘I wonder what made the car crash into the tree. Is there ice on the road?’

‘If you come this way, ma’am, I’ll show you.’

Hamish picked his way through the cluster of SOCOs, Dania following.

She gazed in astonishment at the shape in the road. ‘Good Lord, I’ve never seen a deer that big.’

‘He’s fair bonnie, and no mistake. A red deer, according to SOCO.’

‘Why hasn’t it got antlers?’

‘Aye, well, they shed them in winter, then regrow them.’

‘Seems a waste of time and energy.’ She glanced back towards the Morris. ‘Okay, so he was driving along the road, saw the deer—’

‘Hit it and crashed into the tree. Or swerved to avoid it and crashed into the tree.’

‘Seems straightforward enough. But there’s one thing that bothers me.’

‘Aye?’

‘He had wounds to the back of the head. Hitting the windscreen wouldn’t have caused that.’

‘You think it was this man Tam Adie reported?’

‘Possibly.’ She examined the deer. ‘This animal’s been hit, which must have been the Morris Traveller. But the damage isn’t enough to have killed it.’

‘You think it was already dead?’

‘And here’s the evidence. See these tracks here?’

Hamish squatted on his haunches and peered at the ground.

‘Aye, I ken what you mean.’

‘They suggest the carcass was deliberately dragged.’

‘Which means—’

‘That whoever did it, intended to cause an accident.’

 

The Murder Stones by Hania Allen is published by Constable, priced £8.99.

We are fans of the novella here at BooksfromScotland, and we will happily recommend the novella series published by our favourite speculative, fantasy and sci-fi publisher Luna Press Publishing. This month, they are releasing their latest batch, including work from authors across the globe, and here, we have an extract from The Queen of the High Fields by Rhiannon A. Grist.

 

Extract taken from The Queen of the High Fields
By Rhiannon A. Grist
Published by Luna Press Publishing

 

Grey water slapped the side of the boat. We bounced as we cut across the waves, sending a salty spray up and into our hair.

‘We should go round. Cut across the waves,’ Corin shouted over the sound of the motor, squinting into the wind.

I shook my head and gripped the tiller handle tighter.

Trust me, I mouthed back at him.

I could alter the course, go with the waves, go round, but this is the only way. There’s no going round with the High Fields. There’s only through. Through the waves. Through the mist. No shortcuts. You have to fight the current to get there. The motor would handle it as long as I did.

The sky was grey.

Corin and his friend, I couldn’t remember his name, sat looking out the front of the dinghy. They shared talk I couldn’t hear over the wind and the motor. Corin’s hair fluttered like a moth’s wings. He turned a smile my way and I waved back, kicking myself for letting a pretty face turn my head like this. To think that was all it took to send me back.

I’d met Corin last night at the Severn’s End Inn, one of the last old man pubs left since the pilgrims and the tourists settled in, and the only place a local like me could be left alone with her pint. At night, the coastline glittered with new bars, clubs and tourists shops up and down the newly constructed boardwalk, decorated with fairy lights, flags and flowers. New hotels were in the process of being built further inland, past the wide expanse of the dunes, so most visitors had to make do with the traditional fishermen’s cottages and converted community buildings. Some of the older folks of Severn’s End had managed to hold onto their small stone houses, doggedly attempting to go about their days as normal, dodging the out-of-towners. But more and more of the crouching, shrugging buildings were being made over for holiday rentals, turning the community of the town quite transient. Every day the small fishing town was taken over by tourists from all over, walking up and down the boardwalk, following tour guides, taking the haphazard and wholly inaccurate ‘History of the High Fields’ ride built from the remains of the old ghost train in the now revived and reimagined Abergafren Fair, wandering through shops selling t-shirts, fridge magnets and phone covers saying ‘Chase the Light’. Then, when the sun went down, hundreds of revellers took over the black beach each night, wearing flower crowns and submersing themselves in vats of cheap wine and fucking furiously on the cold pebbles, hoping to recreate the moonlit bacchanalia they imagined on the other side of the water.

This morning, the tourist crowds and the remnants of last night’s shivering revellers had been beaten back by the unrelenting drizzle that came down in curtains of white noise, snaking in waves across the tossing surface of the sea. A small group gathered at the pier despite the rain, hoping to grab a photo of that famous glow on the horizon, to catch an air of that divine peace, inspiration, resurrection, destruction, whatever it was they were seeking, coming across on the wind. Sometimes you could smell incense, though that could have easily come from the multiple put-together shrines, with their tea lights and postcards and side plates of milk and bells and electronic musical boxes and fluttering petals, that dotted the volcanic rocks along the shore. When the rain cleared, many still would take a tour boat out onto the waves to get a closer look.

A few travellers each year would come here with a rowboat, dinghy or some other raft of their own creation and attempt to cross the sea to the promised shore, hoping their faith and determination would win them passage onto the High Fields themselves. I’d found where they shared their tips and advice online: The Queens Court Forum. I’d often considered shutting the site down, but the fascination was cute when it wasn’t entirely based on falsehoods. Some of them claimed you had to build your boat yourself to pass, but Hazard and I hadn’t done that. We’d rented ours. And who would know better than us? I even knew a few who had swum it. I remembered at least one from my time on the island. But that was… ten years ago? Had it really been ten years since I’d left the High Fields? How could a decade creep up on me like that? I supposed I’d become too used to the slow crawl of time in that unnatural place. Still, I’d had ten years to escape. I’d promised myself I’d head inland, start a new life in a landlocked city or on the top of a mountain, but I hadn’t gone far since coming back ashore. I was still here, stuck in Severn’s End, despite the tourists and the pilgrims, despite everything, clinging to this grey rock dotted with Christmas lights and hangovers.

‘Have you ever met her?’ Corin had asked me.

He had good hair, warm blond with a slight wave, and blue eyes with a ring of amber at the centre, like the penumbra of an eclipse. His voice lilted as he spoke, like his words were going up and down stairs and round corners, like his mouth was a house. His arms had a thickness and softness to them. The kind that said he’d never held an axe, but if he ever had to he’d have no problem splitting logs. He was younger than me, yes, but not annoyingly so, and he looked at me as if I was the only person in the room. That’s probably why I let him take the empty bench in my booth. I even dropped my usual tactic of denial, of avoiding any connection between me and the High Fields. God help me, I wanted to impress him, like I was a teenager again. I wanted to make him stay and talk to me a little longer, until he saw whatever it was people saw in the people they want to keep around forever.

I smiled, coquettishly I hoped, and said, ‘Met her? I know her.’

That’s how we ended up out in the strait, bouncing along in my dinghy in the grey of the early morning before the tour boats started their daily orbit, salt on my lips, head a-tangle with too much drink, hope and regret. I was always learning new things about myself. That day I learned that I could sell out a friend for a chance at a pretty, young man.

Or perhaps that—even after ten years of promising myself I’d leave—I’d take any excuse to go back.

A flock of terns screeched high above us, battling against the wind as I urged the dinghy on against the tide, their calls rattling my aching head.

I would make it a quick visit. There was no harm in that. And I was only bringing two ashore with me, so the increased level of ‘witness’ would be manageable. The trip might even be pleasant. Check in on the new batch of the Faithful, catch up with Hazard, impress my young admirer, then back to shore. Yes. Everything would be fine.

‘How long before we get there?’ Corin’s friend—what was his name? —shouted over the noise of the boat and the sea.

‘Peter, that’s not how it works,’ said Corin.

Peter, OK.

Corin explained that I was working to attract the High Fields to us through the use of higher vibrations, created through a strict paleo diet and a positive mindset. All hilariously wrong, of course, but his youthful confidence was so adorable I couldn’t bring myself to correct him. Where did they get these ideas, I wondered. It was like listening to children explain Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy or where babies came from. Sometimes it was better to let such innocent fancies be.

Peter frowned, looking between me and Corin, trying to figure out if he was pulling his leg no doubt. I was surprised to see him when I met Corin down at the harbour that morning. I didn’t remember Corin mentioning a friend, but was too hungover to push the issue. Peter seemed Corin’s exact opposite. He had a permanent frown line between his brows, and a head of dark curls with a sprinkling of greys peeking out from his temples. Thirties, I’d guessed, so more my age. Or perhaps a hard-lived twenties. He was wiry, quiet and observant; so different from Corin. If I hadn’t met them together, I would never have placed them as friends. But then again, I suppose anyone might have said the same of me and Hazard back in the day. She was the centre of any room she was ever in, even before she became the Queen. Whereas I…

The waves turned sluggish and slow.

‘We’re getting close.’

 

The Queen of the High Fields by Rhiannon A. Grist is published by Luna Press Publishing, priced £7.99.

Across 2022, Publishing Scotland will be curating a series of online content to tie in with Visit Scotland’s Year of Stories. Each month we will share the features, profiles and interviews that you can find over on their website.

 

You can visit Publishing Scotland’s Year of Stories homepage here.

 

Each month Publishing Scotland will be offering Publisher Spotlights, so you can get to know some of Scotland’s publishers.

Publishing Scotland spotlight Canongate Books.

Publishing Scotland spotlight Floris Books.

Publishing Scotland spotlight Saraband.

 

Each month Publishing Scotland will have features too, including book recommendation lists and author interviews. In January, Publishing Scotland’s #YS2022 theme is AFRESH.

Click here for Burns book recommendations.

Click here for 2022 poetry recommendations.

Click here for recent Scottish debuts.

To read an interview with Leela Soma, author of Murder at the Mela, click here.

To read an interview with R. M. Murray, author of the Saltire-winning Bleak, click here.

To read an interview with Andrés N. Ordorica, author of At Least This I Know, click here.

 

If you want to take part in the Year of Stories, follow the hashtags #YS2022 and #TalesofScotland, or visit the VisitScotland website.

 

It’s been a tough two years since the pandemic took hold, but that doesn’t mean we need to go into 2022 too downheartened that COVID-19 is still ever-present in our lives. In his new book, Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence, Gavin Francis explores how time, rest and recuperation is vital in rejuvenating ourselves.

 

Extract taken from Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence
By Gavin Francis
Published by Wellcome

 

The word rehabilitation comes from the Latin habilis, ‘to make fit’, and carries the sense of restoration: ‘to stand, make, or be firm again’. The aim of rehabilitation, then, was to make someone as fit as they can be, to be able to stand firmly on their own two feet. And though recovery was the clinicians’ ultimate aim, it’s curious that the words ‘recovery’ and ‘convalescence’ are generally absent from the index of medical textbooks. As long ago as the 1920s, in her essay ‘On Being Ill’, Virginia Woolf wrote that we lack a mode of writing about illness, that it is ‘strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature’. A century on, her assertion no longer holds true: we do have a literature of illness. But I’d argue that we still lack a literature of recovery.

The medicine I was trained in often assumes that once a crisis has passed, the body and mind find ways to heal themselves – there’s almost nothing more to be said on the matter. But after nearly twenty years as a GP I’ve often found that the reverse is true: guidance and encouragement through the process of recovery can be indispensable. Odd as it seems, my patients often need to be granted permission to take the time to recover that they need. Illness is not simply a matter of biology, but one of psychology and sociology. We fall ill in ways that are profoundly influenced by our past experiences and expectations, and the same can be said of our paths to recovery. I have learned much from those other clinicians – the nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists – who have most helped my patients, and am always being reminded of how much there is still to learn.

The therapists in the brain injury unit knew that convalescence is anything but a passive process. Though its rhythms and its tempo are often slow and gentle, it’s an act, and actions need us to be present, to engage, to give of ourselves. Whether it’s our knees or skulls that need to heal from an injury, or lungs from a viral infection, or brains from a concussion or minds from a crisis of depression or anxiety, I often remind my patients that it’s worth giving adequate time, energy and respect to the process of healing. We need to take care over the environment in which we’re attempting to heal, celebrating the importance of nature and the natural world and recognising

the part it can play in hastening recovery. Many patients I’ve known over the years have found a way to make sense of even a very difficult illness journey. When an illness or disability is incurable it can still be possible to ‘recover’ in the sense of building towards a life of greater dignity and autonomy.

There is no hierarchy to suffering, and it’s not possible to say of one group of conditions that they deserve sympathy while another group deserves to be dismissed. I’ve known patients whose lives have been dominated, for years, by the grief of a failed love affair, and others who have taken the most disabling injuries, pain, indignity and loss of independence in their stride. Though it can be tempting to resent someone whose illness appears to be less serious than our own, or to judge ourselves harshly when others seem to be coping with more challenging circumstances than we are, comparisons are rarely helpful. Neither should we be anxious to set out a timetable of recovery: it’s more important to set achievable goals.

As a doctor, sometimes all I can do is reassure my patients that I believe improvement of some kind is possible. The recovery I’m reassuring them of might not be biological in nature, in terms of a resolution of their condition, but rather an improvement in their circumstances. What follows is a series of reflections on recovery and convalescence gleaned from my own experience of illness, and of thirty years in training and in practising medicine. It contains much that I wish I’d known when I set out on my career, while acknowledging that there is always more to know. Every illness is unique, which means that all recoveries must also be in some sense unique, but I have tried to set out some principles and waypoints that have proven helpful over the years to guide me, and my patients, through the many landscapes of illness. It’s a place that all of us must visit, sooner or later; from time to time we all need to learn the art of convalescence.

 

Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence by Gavin Francis is published by Wellcome, priced £4.99.

We have been excited here at BooksfromScotland since we heard Louise Welsh was working on a sequel to her fabulous debut The Cutting Room. David Robinson finds that the follow-up, The Second Cut, has been well worth the wait.

 

The Second Cut
By Louise Welsh
Published by Canongate

 

Twenty years is a long time to wait for a sequel, but so completely does Louise Welsh’s The Second Cut  shred the clichés of crime fiction, and so convincingly and freshly does it swathe Glasgow in her beyond-noir aesthetic, that it is well worth the wait.

Clichés (or rather, their absence) first. In most crime novels, the beginning is clear enough: there’s been a murder, the police are on the case, a corpse has been discovered and everything will spiral out from that. In The Second Cut, we have to read the whole novel to find out whether or not there’s been a murder, but either way the police aren’t particularly inclined to investigate, and what causes the plot to mesh into gear isn’t a crime so much as an attempt to tidy up a crime scene. (Don’t worry, I should add: there will be blood – although whose, where, how and whodunnit you probably won’t guess.)

One of these days a creative writing postgraduate – at some university other than Glasgow, where she has a professorship in the subject – will write a thesis on the avoidance of clichés in Louise Welsh’s fiction. This goes much deeper than plot, right into the heart of her art. If you doubt that, try searching for a cardboard cutout among the characters in her new novel. Or look at Rilke, her tall, thin, promiscuous gay auctioneer protagonist, and tell me who else is like that in crime fiction.

In spite of his name, Rilke seems to fit right into Glasgow. He knows the city’s history, the forgotten and hidden versions as well as the official one. He knows his own mind too, and there’s a Sherlockian certainty about his aesthetic and sexual tastes. He is also a great noticer of detail, which he has to be in order to remain at the centre of his auction house’s trading web.

Rilke’s job matters. Even back in The Cutting Room, he had been working at Bowery Auctions for twenty-five of his forty-three years, so it’s clearly the only job he’s ever had, and now he’s well into his fifties, that’s still the case. He won’t bend the rules on taking on antiques without provenance, tolerate laziness among the porters or take pre-emptive bids before an auction. But dealing with someone who has helped the firm, either in the past or the present, he’ll be altogether more lenient. So lenient, in fact, that he won’t worry too much about breaking the law.

And that’s where Jojo comes in, a drunk crashing a gay wedding at the Glasgow Arts Club en route to an orgy. Jojo is an embarrassment at the best of times, but is a useful source of tip-offs about antiques, like the one he gives to Rilke about an imminent country house clearance in Galloway.  He  invites Rilke to the orgy (he says no), hands him a bottle of what turns out to be a date rape drug, and heads off. He is found dead in a doorway in a lane off Ingram Street the following morning.

Plotwise, everything follows from three things in that last paragraph: the body, the bottle and the Galloway country house sale. But while the plot is feasible, immersive and engaging, it’s not the reason The Second Cut goes so deep into the reader’s mind. We follow Rilke for more than that. If, for example, in 2023 he were to auction off a duelling pistol that had been used in a murder, and in 2024 a faked treasure map sought after by criminals, we wouldn’t be so interested. That’s Lovejoy’s territory (John Grant’s 24-volume series, televised in the Eighties and Nineties and starring Ian MacShane as an antique dealer and forger) not Welsh’s, and the serial crime novel’s  annual adventure is just another of the cliches she is avoiding.  A decade ago, in an interview (Dead Sharp, by Len Wanner, Two Ravens Press) she admitted she was vaguely attracted by the idea of bringing Rilke back every ten years (as Patricia Highsmith did in four of her five Ripley novels) and that she would enjoy writing about a changing Glasgow from his point of view. Even so, she still held back for a further decade.

Glasgow has altered enormously in those twenty years. That Glasgow Arts Club gathering, at which a panto dame in oyster satin and ostrich feathers shushes the crowd as the two grooms cut the cake, is a sign of the times. Gay men can legally marry, no longer fear the police the way they used to, and their lives have become more convenient and danger-free. Fancy sex with a stranger to fill in that dead half hour before a meeting? Grindr was invented for this very purpose, and Rilke – ‘a serial shagger’, according to Jojo – takes full advantage of it. Except now, age is starting to catch up with him: strangers he calls on are just as likely to look him up and down and say ‘No I don’t think so’ before shutting the door.

There is so much to enjoy in this novel – the assurance of its descriptions of post-Covid Glasgow, Rilke’s lonely panache, the nuances of sexual politics, the dry, high-quality bants – but what’s irresistible about The Second Cut is the way in which Welsh manages to get all of this up and running at the same time. There’s one scene I’m thinking of in particular. It’s not pivotal, not given any big authorial bravura build-up,  just five characters in a van driving from one part of Glasgow to another. Yet when I finished reading it, I realised that I’d never read anything like it.

Rilke is at the wheel, and Les – a transvestite of similar vintage (‘he looked like Nureyev might have, if he had survived HIV and given in to the occasional fish supper’) – is in the passenger seat.  Les has summoned Rilke and Jojo’s lodger, an art student (who, it turns out, is painting key scenes in the book) to pick him up at George Square, where a demo against a visiting Terf (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) is in full swing. Because there’s a counter-demo, a full range of culture war banners are being waved. In the crowd, Les has met two pretty boys (they might be girls; he’s not sure) who want to score some dope off him. He calls them femboys, and Midwich Cuckoos, but one of them takes exception to this and points out that she does, actually, have a vagina. Later on, we’ll find out that they identify as gender-queer. ‘Good for you,’ says Les. ‘I identify as a tranny.’  ‘You should have a better opinion of yourself,’ one of them tells him.

Shorn of all the abstractions of gender politics, here are some of their nuances in the flesh. And not just nuances: Welsh takes us to the edge of the cultural Grand Canyon that is the debates over trans rights – skilfully sketching in her characters’ views on the issue without overbalancing the story.  In these divisive times, that’s a feat in itself.

So those five non-heteros in the van (a rarer sight than is should be in crime fiction) leave the anti-Terf demo (even rarer) behind and head off up the Great Western Road, as classical music fan Les (another cliche bites the dust) switches over to Radio 3 to drown out his talk with Rilke about date rape drugs.  Outside:

‘Deliveroo couriers were waiting outside fast food shops. A band was uploading their gear from a taxi outside the Pint and Hug. A young boy sat on a scrap of cardboard on the street, watching them …’

And there you have it. A Glasgow I know and a gay subculture Glasgow I don’t. And, between hardback covers, a  plausible, atmospheric, and completely engaging guide to both.  It’s only January, but the bar for this year’s William McIlvanney prize is intimidatingly high already.

 

 

The Second Cut by Louise Welsh is published by Canongate, priced £14.99.

We have been looking forward to reading Andrés N. Ordorica’s debut ever since we featured him in our ‘Introducing’ feature back in 2020. We’re delighted to share some of his poems from his wonderful collection, At Least This I Know.

 

Poems taken from At Least This I Know
By Andrés N. Ordorica
Published by 404 Ink

 

At least this I know

They say the sun never set upon the British Empire,
I do not know if that is true.

But I hear it spread from ocean to ocean,
from green seas to waters blue.

They say that once a man flew around the world in
Eighty Days,
I do not know if that is true.

But I hear he did it in a hot air balloon,
wind guiding him from one country to the next.

They say Alexander conquered the world at quite a
young age,
I do not know if that is true.

But I hear all were under his rule,
from the Adriatic to Syria, Babylon to India.

I hear there is a place in a land far away
where chimney houses guard children from danger,

where fairies live near them and hide too,
I do not know if that is true.

They say that the New World is so varied and vast,
in one day, you can go from snow-capped hills to
great plains
where lakes are so wide, they spill into the horizon,
but again, I do not know if that is true.

They say there is a land with a beautiful rising sun,
creeping over a most holy mountain,
with hues of reds and oranges painting the sky,
a fiery phoenix ascending from ashen ground.

Who knows if any of this is true?

They say that while you are sleeping,
in a far-off land someone is waking,
that the sun sets in the West and rises in the East,
the moon pulls the ocean and causes waves to crash.

I do not know if this is true, but what I do know is…

My father once held my dreams in his hands,
while anointing me with chrism in God’s name,
and although we don’t share the same language,
in my father’s eyes, I am loved.

At least this I know.

 

Things I want

I want that freedom.
I want to be free, floating, and fierce.

I want to cut through like a machete, chopping down the
bamboo that surrounds me.

I want to walk into a room and be seen.
I want to see all things that represent me.
I want to see every shade and find solace in our
multitudes.

I want to soar high above and look down on this world
and find belonging.
I want to give comfort, receive comfort, comfortably exist
in the centre of it all.
I want to not have to think, not always question.

I want that freedom.

I want to swim far and wide.
I want to be a fish and swim safely in the sea.
I want to be caught in your net.

I want you to hoist me up, savour me: your catch.
I want to be gutted, filleted, and served on a platter for
your consumption.

I want to be free and wild and angry.
I want to be soft and hard and par-boiled.
I want you to eat me.

Now.

 

We are young and still have time

1. Heat on skin as the sun bores down
   on wood varnished by sticky sweet cider.

Air smelling of spring, summer in the distance,
I smile at you while soaking up the promise of a day.

2. We walk side by side along the gallery wall
with its monochrome photos of distant cities.

We say how we will go there someday,
and we believe it because we are young.

3. Coorying in among the dim candlelight,
pressed up against the foggy glass alcove.

Seasons changing, the patio a distant memory,
we laugh about this as we toast the year.

4. Friday night, I wait for you on the steps,
ten minutes to go until the band starts up.

We’ve missed the preshow pint (no bother),
really, I just want your company in the dark.

5. Music blares from speakers stacked like Lego,
as strobe lights cast blue-violet filters on our skin.

The throng of revellers fall and rise against the stage,
the band they are like ministers preaching to the
masses.

6. Over the bass and drum, I whisper, I love you
   and through the snare, you mouth, I’m glad
   we’re here.

 All around us, the future feels bright and
never-ending.

We believe it because we are young and still
have time.

 

At Least This I Know by Andrés N. Ordorica is published by 404 Ink, priced £9.99.

As part of the Year of Scotland’s Stories, we will be running a series of Responses on BooksfromScotland, commissioning writers to respond to books from the Publishing Scotland membership, engaging with work in different ways. For January 2022, and our theme Afresh, Jess Brough, founder of Fringe of Colour, writes about Salena Godden’s debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death, published by Canongate.

 

Mrs Death Misses Death
By Salena Godden
Published by Canongate

 

Mrs Death Misses Death is, to me, the most original novel title of recent years. Even before opening the book to the first page, this wordplay led me to think of near-death experiences and intrusive thoughts, as if death sits on your shoulder and whispers ‘try me’.

In Salena Godden’s debut novel, Death can not only whisper, but can follow, accompany, guide and archive human life. Here, Death is ‘she’, and she is a ‘homeless black beggar-woman with knotty natty hair, broken back, walking ever so slow, slow, slow’. She shapeshifts throughout the novel, but Black womanhood remains in her various forms.

I wondered why she had to be a Black woman. We are given the explanation that ‘there is no human more invisible, more readily talked over, ignored, betrayed and easy to walk past’ and, indeed, many scholars of Black feminism, such as Gail Lewis and Jade Bentil, have pointed out a forced duality of Black womanhood – that is to be, on one hand, invisibilized. On the other, hypervisibility intrudes on Black womanhood, for instance through objectification, fetishization, dehumanisation and stereotyping. Death can be so like this – teetering on the cusp of forgettability, ignored with enough practice till it is staring you in the face, while simultaneously remaining in our thoughts and daily lives at all times. As Godden puts it, Death is ‘the words trapped on the bitten tongue’. The pairing of Death with Black womanhood may be, therefore, an acknowledgment of that duality.

Admittedly, I struggled with the framing of Mrs Death as female. Godden makes the point that Death is so often depicted as male – the tall, hooded frame of the scythe carrying Grim Reaper, Hades, various (but not all) media depictions of The Angel of Death, and so on. This is her rebuttal. I am always trying to see gender as irrelevant as possible and so, in my mind, Death does not need to be framed as female to contradict gendered expectations, because Death does not need gender to be personified.

However, ours is a society in which Black trans and cis women, particularly those from working class backgrounds or living in poverty, are so often forgotten in historical retellings of both life and achievement and loss and tragedy. This may be via police brutality (resulting in the ‘Say Her Name’ movement), contributions to knowledge and scientific discovery (intentionally, as scientists and researchers, or forcibly such as the enslaved victims of the torturous ‘father of gynaecology’ Dr J. Marion Sims, or the cells stolen from Henrietta Lacks) and as agents who have been erased from their importance to their community. Perhaps, then, it is a rejection of all of this to place a Black woman who is homeless front and centre at the heart of all life. What a grave undertaking for Mrs Death, to carry the whole world on her back.

Gender non-conformity comes through a different character – working class Londoner and writer Wolf Willeford, who is described with gender fluidity. This is something we understand was a struggle in their childhood, but fortunately does not appear to be weighing heavy on Wolf’s mind in adulthood (the clarity of their self is refreshing). It is Wolf’s role to transcribe and document Mrs Death’s experiences, which Godden gives to us in essay, discursive and poetic forms. It is up to the reader to discern the true relationship between the pair; how Wolf’s identity may be a part of Mrs Death and how gender is therefore implicated. There are hints in the shadows between dialogue that suggest they are of one mind, but we may also consider Wolf as a sort of Medium, with the ability to not only witness Death in human form but to communicate with her. This relationship, along with Godden’s critical analysis of human behaviour and even the publishing industry at one point, is what makes Mrs Death Misses Death playful, placing the novel between the fantastical realism of Wolf’s conversations with Mrs Death and the non-fictional accounts of real-life deaths, which include mentions of famous murders and dead artists.

Like so many writers, Wolf is a reflectionist. Throughout the novel, they detail their experience of losing their mother as a child in an apartment block fire reminiscent of the 2017 Grenfell tragedy – the refusal for these lost lives to be forgotten, ensuring they are memorialised through storytelling is something I appreciate from writers like Godden – and the impact this loss had on their later life. Wolf talks about how, since that day, ‘I was never really alone: I felt her beside me, like a sudden urge to step out in front of a speeding train, to die was a temptation, a desire, a compulsion’. It is a feeling that parallels those initial thoughts I had, of death on your shoulder, imagining dying beyond the abstract and visualising an action with the curiosity. We, the readers, are urged in turn to consider the beckoning towards death of survivors and of those who have lost loved ones to Death’s unflinching pull.

What will linger with me most is the section focused on Time. Here, Godden depicts a relationship between Life, Time and Death (Life and Time being other personified entities in the novel), forming something analogous to a love triangle. When people say ‘take your time’, I have always understood that to mean ‘take it slow’ – a suggestion or command to stop and think over whatever it is that you are doing, to avoid rushing in. When Mrs Death said it, I heard ‘take your time back’, and I felt she was imploring me to use my time for myself.

With Time written as a concrete noun, object or person, I considered how that makes Time transactional. In the last few weeks of 2021, I spent many hours thinking about how I have used, lost and even abused my time. Now, more than ever, I have this raging understanding that I do not want my time to belong to work, that it should not be owned by anyone other than myself, including belonging to malnourishing relationships. I want to feel the benefits of time, to reap the rewards of growing older and reflecting, and to dedicate my time to whatever will help me regard time, not as a chore or something to be endured, but as a measure of possibility. It is something that I can lend, but at the end of the day I want it back. I want to feel like my time belongs to me. Those are the days I feel the happiest, that is when I feel like I am doing life right.

Godden’s metaphors helped me conceptualise this. I realised that I must be the owner of my time because I am never not paying for it in the currency of my life, and there is no one else who can pay that debt for me. It does feel a little grim to think of time and life in relation to economics, but what I can be certain about is that my life is my life, just as my time is my time and my death is my death.

I don’t know if it is the human condition or if it is that we have been conditioned to view life as synonymous with productivity and with output, but that is certainly a common narrative. I have thought about what I would like to leave behind in this world before I die, and that had always been intrinsically tied to what I hoped to produce. Planning for that is not always possible – life is short, life is unexpected and unpredictable, life can end without warning. The intention to leave something behind is often physical – I want to leave something someone can touch, and something someone can think about – but what if it wasn’t?

The last couple of years have made me more aware of mortality than ever. And so, if we cannot plan to leave something behind, who we are, who we were, must be that thing. Can production be simply a bettering of the self? I am still working that out, but I am now inclined to think that what we leave behind must be time well spent.

 

 

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden is published by Canongate, priced £8.99.

The Year of Stories x Books from Scotland response strand was inspired by Fringe of Colour’s series, which you can read more of at fringeofcolour.co.uk.

Music has such a capacity to uplift, to inspire, to recognise, to connect, and Graeme Thomson’s latest book explores how the work of Simple Minds captures those possibilities. Here, in the introduction to Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds, he ponders on the band’s legacy.

 

Extract taken from Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds
By Graeme Thomson
Published by Constable

 

Some Promised Land

There is a much-quoted maxim usually attributed to the late Scottish writer, artist, activist and polymath Alasdair Gray: ‘Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.’

It appears in Lanark, Gray’s remarkable modernist dystopian novel, published in 1981. Although it is often credited to him, Gray always made clear that he was paraphrasing from ‘Civil Elegies’, the 1972 poem by the Canadian writer Dennis Lee. The line has travelled. It has many uses. In the early days of the new millennium it was engraved on the outer wall of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

It has loftier affiliations, certainly – yet whenever I think of those words, I hear Simple Minds.

I hear the otherworldly pulse of ‘In Trance as Mission’, with its ‘holy backbeat’ and the hopscotch skip of the bassline, like a loved-up heart murmur, or a dog running on three legs, forever slipping off the pavement edge.

I hear the hot prowl of ‘Premonition’, padding like some rough beast over high ground, a crackle of bad vibes and dark disco thrills.

I hear the modernist primitivism of ‘This Fear of Gods’, at once an ancient ritualistic blues and a catechism beamed in from an uncertain future.

I hear the dizzying pre-rave euphoria of ‘Theme for Great Cities’, and the gossamer opening bars to ‘Hunter and the Hunted’, redolent somehow both of soft-focus snowfall and the ripple of heat haze playing over some far horizon.

These are the sounds of a newly independent creative democ­racy, still engaged in the process of imagining itself. Self-made, improvising the outlines of its borders, in thrall to the excitement of instinctive combustion, the thrill of exploration. Heaving the guy ropes and erecting the scaffolding around its civic structures.

This five-headed writing machine is eccentric, built from neces­sity, of varying competences, each part imperfectly locked into the other, leaving room for the accidental miracle, the magic of chance (sometimes chance is all there is). The standard definitions melt into invisibility. Time signatures slip. What sound is keyboard, what sound guitar? Verse or chorus? Is this even a song? Does it matter?

Hard to break it apart, but let’s try.

At the root, the bass work of Derek Forbes, one of the great British musicians. A man who plays with the dexterity and invention of someone who, ideally, would like to have more strings – and perhaps a couple more fingers – at his disposal, but who also values the art of simplicity, repetition, mood, motion. Any German band of the 1970s would have been fortunate to have had Forbes. Praise scarcely comes any higher.

Locked to Forbes, the powerful tracking trance beat of Brian McGee, selfless in his pursuit of a rippling lucidity, a calibrated surge and swell. A percussive drummer who understands the allure of the glitterball as keenly as the relentless rhythm of the night train, McGee turns the key on the motorik engine.

If Forbes and McGee lay down the foundations, Mick MacNeil and Charlie Burchill paint in the colour and melody, providing shape, creasing the unyielding rhythmic line.

Burchill trades in immaculate understatement. Subtle, soulful, cerebral, a guitar hero in mufti, a sound-shaper and song servant willing to do whatever is necessary in order to make the thing work. Often you don’t quite know if he’s there or not. Often his aim is for the guitar not to sound like a guitar. Just occasionally, because he can, he unleashes a lightning strike.

The impeccable Mick MacNeil, the future’s dream of a classicist, introduces subtly insistent melodies, ambiguous textures on the keyboard. He is an avatar of good taste, an engineer in sound, shunning faux-orchestral bombast for spare formalism. The results are forensic yet instinctive, a relentless exploration of possibilities.

In the thick of it all I hear Jim Kerr’s voice, an open channel between the music and the swirl of moods and emotions it throws up. I see his words as snatched Polaroids, each line a new picture, apart yet connected to the whole. Evocative and ethereal, unearthly yet profoundly human, Kerr pulls focus on music that he envisioned as ‘soundtracks to films that didn’t exist, but which existed in my head’. Mine too.

Some years ago I spoke to Paul Buchanan, the singer and songwriter in another great Scottish band, The Blue Nile. ‘We tried to surrender to being a group, to get out of the way of the music,’ he said. ‘That gives you a fighting chance of once in a while doing something worthwhile.’ It seems to me that this aspiration holds true for Simple Minds in their early days of music building. They did not care to impose distinct personalities on their work. There is a refreshing absence of any fixed stance or specific cause. It is all mystery and muddle. One can’t break it down, prise it apart. It just is. Their music was a unified projection of something more potent and profound than the sum of their individual contributions. ‘Sometimes,’ says Kerr, ‘it was just, “Get out of the picture.”’ I hear a better version of them, of us. A better nation? Why not.

Themes for Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds by Graeme Thomson is published by Constable, priced £20.00.

January is proving to be an excellent month for poetry, and we are delighted to share extracts from Imogen Stirling’s epic Love the Sinner, a longform collection that narrates one night in the life of a modern Scottish city, peopled with characters navigating frailty, love and resilience. There will be performances of Love the Sinner later on in the year, and we’ll definitely be booking tickets.

 

Poems taken from Love the Sinner
By Imogen Stirling
Published by Verve Poetry Press

 

Greed
20:00hrs

Once heralded The Murder Capital of Europe (!)
Obesity Centre (!)
Time to upset the titles and rewrite the narrative
with gentrification.
Not on our watch,
not if Pret a Manger has a say.

40,000 children living in poverty

The city’s hidden secrets are threatening its Commonwealth prowess,
its cultural status.
Downgrade, reframe and you’ll see instead that
the kids here will scare you.
She can watch them from her window,
pre-pubescent villains running hoodlum doused in boredom.
Ghosts of Greed’s childhood, she sees her brothers
in their eyes, her parents in their cries.
Their teeth are broken glass,
watch them bare their shards and laugh.

[sung]
Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You’d make no difference anyway
Rather save attention for an H&M spending
After a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin, is it?
Is it? Is it?
Hardly a sin, is it?

Ties fixed so tight, they’d choke the love in you,
dull the voice in you,
skew the thought as you pay
£8 for espresso and croissant
to wash down the anti-depressants:
normalised sedatives for 9-5 addicts,
for apathy criers,
disquiet deniers.
Greed knows that hand-to-mouth living
lacks the glamour of the movies
when there’s nothing in your fridge
and Instagram pics of your notebook and coffee
won’t cover your rent. See,
once you’ve got money,
there’s nothing like it.
This round’s on me becomes motto of victory,
makes your heart swell with the thrill of success
and forget where you came from;
start afresh, score out the rest.
Get your foot on the ladder,
my god you are climbing.
Once you get a head for heights,
t h e v i e w f r o m t h e r e ‘ s s u b l i m e.

[sung]
Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You’d make no difference anyway
Bottle it up for the sacrament of happy hour
After a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin, is it?
Is it? Is it?
Hardly a sin, is it?

Squint, just there –
and you only see rooftops and not the debris.
If you squint, just there –
makes the figures on the street
look a bit less human
and a bit more trash.
We say people make us but
what people make us (?)
what people don’t make it (?)
as we airbrush the streets and
romanticise the guilt away, won’t look it in its face.

Greed remembers the stomach plummet day
her brother turned up to reception,
a spectre
of sallow skin and furrowed brow, eyes sharp and darting.
She hailed security, pretended not to know him.
Power hanging by a thread, she lives with the
Sword of Damocles grazing her neck
and will guard what she has earned with feral rage,
raise the blade
to whoever dares to take it.
No care that her family’s stories
tell this city’s history, stand rooted in legacy.
For no one is sacred in this modern world,
we’ll blot them out and write new gods,
put the casual in casualty,
make them submissive and mute them on Twitter.
They’ve given you all, city,
what’s their reward?

(sung)
Avert your eyes, pick up the pace
You’d make no difference anyway
Rather save your two quid for a Starbucks indulgence
After a hard day
Hardly a sin, is it, hardly a sin, is it?
Is it? Is it?
Hardly a sin, is it?

The streets outside are raucous, she tells herself,
the streets outside are toxic.
There’s sanctuary in corporate solitude,
she tells herself.
Alone after dark in her ivory tower block,
she makes a toast to memory,
denial leaving stains
at the bottom of her
glass

 

Pride
22:50hrs

He woke up and there was peace,
like a perfect vacuum.
Horizontal in a room that smelt of space,
that brought him grace
from usual daily mornings laced with friction.
Her body tensed with frosted animosity
that he attempts to melt with puns and coffee vapours
as they sit in breakfast table stalemate,
conversation long evaporated
into disinterest.
She is a heavenly statue, cold and
impassive.
The house hangs heavy on her word –
but not today.
This morning brought forgotten respite,
eased into the day
with open heart and gentle wake,
just his arm
draped tender
over
his waist.

Pride is Man.
Sweet routine of morning run and night-time gym,
exfoliate for perfect skin then beers to rough it up again.
Grad job, new wheels and FIFA on Sundays,
he plays the role perfectly, down to a tee.
They see him a modern Adonis,
all carpe diem and signature flawless.

They see him a modern Man,
all techno and dick jokes.
His girlfriend is beautiful, they make quite the pair.
She’s the talk of the office,
‘golden’
they call them,
all couple goals hashtags.
It makes him feel smug, it defines him.
Tries to keep this in mind
as the boredom starts biting,
the interest starts dying,
he sees her eyes wandering
and they argue more than they talk.
And though he’s not really that bothered,
he holds on to her still like a crucifix.

Because he is Man
and this morning’s duvet clings to the blood
of punctured ego, it’s gooped and sticky,
holds him down like a fist.
This room looks different to him,
the same space
where they’ve smoked
and they’ve talked
and they’ve studied
and laughed
for as long as he’s known,
his best friend, his gaff.
Now it looks like a trap, now he looks
like a bad decision. Always so easy
in his skin;
he sees him now still slick with midnight sweat
and cheeks flushed rose
with baby blush, what is he dreaming of?

Adam and Adam,
they lay tight, ribcages pressed
with umbilical closeness.
He makes him think poetry.
He is Man,
he is Man,
is he Man, when
nothing even happened,
they just talked and fell asleep, he was so kind,
you see. She’d locked him out their place again,
refused to see his face
again.
He bought them beers, he rolled a spliff,
he listened.
Pride can’t remember the last time
that somebody just listened.

But he is Man
and everywhere he looks now
everything seems phallic,
everywhere he looks, it feels like
someone’s laughing.
They are stone-carved god men
moulded through history
to be what they are today.
They are Strong Men, Hard Men, Tough Men
yet everything’s fragile,
one step out of line and identity’s shattered,
all they have worked to maintain.
Pride has rainbows coursing through his veins
and he feels shame
and he feels clarity
and the river is staggering,
certain to break any moment.

He should cry out
but his throat is choked with words of love
and hate and loneliness.
So all he can do is
hiss through his teeth at him
as he blinks the day awake.
And spit at his goodness while his stomach
twists at the thought
of the guys at work
and the girl at home
and their words
and their looks
and he’s scared
and he’s sick
and he just wants
to hold him.

 

Love the Sinner by Imogen Stirling is published by Verve Poetry Press, priced £9.99.

 

Data has never mattered more. Our lives are increasingly shaped by it and how it is defined, collected and used. So it’s a great idea to get a clearer picture on how it is collected, analysed and applied, particularly in a world where it is as easy as it’s ever been to share false information. Kevin Guyan’s Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action is a brilliant study on how this is done within the LGBTQ community, and is enlightening reading. Here we share an extract from the book’s introduction.

 

Extract taken from Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action
By Kevin Guyan
Published by Bloomsbury Academic

 

Queer data is a tension. On one hand, it freezes in time and space particular ideas about what it means to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and/or queer. It establishes these meanings as categories, which are fed into counting machines and used as the basis for decision-making. This construction and deployment of categories are at odds with the queering of data, which critically questions the foundations upon which these categories stand, the value granted to some identities above others and who actually benefits from the collection, analysis and use of data about LGBTQ people. Queer data is more than a study of individuals that sit outside the categories of heterosexual or cisgender. It is equally a brash, confrontational and in-your-face challenge to conventional understandings of how data and identities intersect – how people respond to queer data is either their problem or their wake-up call. As an approach to data and identities, queer data disrupts the binaries of male/female, heterosexual/homosexual and cis/trans and asks us to reconsider the notion that ‘numbers speak for themselves’. When data captures the lives and experiences of LGBTQ people, numbers do not speak for themselves – they always speak for someone. As I will argue, decisions made about who to count, what to count and how to count are not value-neutral but bring to life a particular vision of the social world. (1) Queer data exposes the decisions made about data, from collection to its use for action, to ensure that data about LGBTQ people is used to construct a social world that values and improves the lives of LGBTQ people.

Gender, sex and sexuality data is having a particular moment in the UK with increased interest from those outside of academic contexts and those engaged in data practices in the public, private and voluntary sectors. (2) Some of this interest relates to the UK’s 2021 and 2022 censuses, which, for the first time, capture data about the population’s sexual orientation, gender identity (England and Wales) and trans status/history (Scotland), discussed in Chapter 3. The addition of these questions marks a landmark moment for LGBTQ representation and the potential for improved evidence to address inequality. Yet, participation in the census, and other data collection exercises, is a double-edged sword as they require LGBTQ people to engage in practices that flattens the diversity of experiences and design-out certain lives. This data dilemma, the potential benefits of being counted versus the risk of being counted in ways that are inaccurate or further entrench inequality, might seem relatively new. However, there exists a long history of political and social struggles over the design of classification systems that present themselves as ‘purely technical’ but promote a biased account of the social world. (3) Several studies have investigated the implications of this data dilemma for women, indigenous communities and people of colour. (4) María Lugones has described how mechanisms of ‘heterosexuality, capitalism, and racial classifications’ were forged by colonial powers as a ‘colonial/modern gender system’ that has since shaped contemporary ideas about identity classifications. (5) Lauren E. Bridges has also explained that histories of naming and categorization ‘have long been entangled in histories of sovereignty, colonialism, subjugation and exploitation’. (6) Critical race theorists, such as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, have similarly argued that races operate as ‘categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient’. (7) Although ‘invented’ as a category, the effects of race on social relations and people’s life opportunities are material and multiple. (8) Queer Data expands on feminist, postcolonial and critical race scholarship to explore how, among LGBTQ individuals, those who stand to benefit from ‘being counted’ also risk engaging with technologies that might normalize categories and practices that hamper rather than help the wider LGBTQ population.

The topic of difference has energized the work of LGBTQ researchers, practitioners and activists since, at least, the middle decades of the twentieth century. Although this work addressed themes such as social mobilization, political organization and cultural representation, the experiences of people we might now describe as LGBTQ have historically eluded data collectors and analysts, an absence I explore in Chapter 1. (9) In rare instances where data about individuals that transgressed normative ideas about gender, sex or sexuality was captured in datasets, it predominantly featured as a means to pathologize or stigmatize, record acts understood as criminal or deviant, or differentiate individuals from the normative majority. Knowing more about the membership and contours of an identity group can inform decisions made about the allocation of resources, changes in legislation, access to services and protections under the law. Gathering evidence of a problem is one of the key methods used to advance the rights of marginalized groups in the UK. For example, public bodies are required to publish relevant and proportionate information that demonstrates their compliance with the duties described in the 2010 Equality Act. (10) This includes the collection, analysis and publication of employees and service users’ data, as it relates to nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment (trans status), marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex and sexual orientation. Heightened data competence can therefore ensure data is used to improve the lives and experiences of LGBTQ people rather than only serve the interests of, what Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein describe as, the three S’s: science (universities), surveillance (governments) and selling (corporations). (11) As a contested and political practice, the collection, analysis and presentation of data about LGBTQ people are partly constructed through administrative decisions made at each stage of this journey, as I discuss in Chapter 2. The production of meaning and subsequent distribution of life chances have the effect of reflecting an incomplete account of LGBTQ lives and experiences to the outside world and among LGBTQ people, whose sense of self is informed by this partial reflection. To minimize the risk of mistakes being made, LGBTQ people need to lead this work and seize control of data that impacts their lives, rather than trust that others will understand, or care enough to understand, experiences that sit beyond their personal frames of reference.

For this reason, Queer Data is unapologetic in its focus on the use of data for action that improves the lives of people about whom the data relates. With a focus on events in the UK, Queer Data offers an accessible introduction to the interplay between queer theory and gender, sex and sexuality data. (12) Peppered with examples from my work as an equality, diversity and inclusion researcher in Scotland and engagement in the design process of recent UK censuses, Queer Data encourages researchers, practitioners and activists to think about data differently and ask critical questions such as ‘Why do we collect data this way?’, ‘Whose interests does data serve?’ and ‘Why do we collect data at all?’ Queer Data charts a practical path through this tension that acknowledges data’s potential to recreate simplified, stereotypical and exclusionary rules but also operates as a tool to gather evidence, document inequality and bring about change. The conflictual ingredients of queer data therefore require researchers to adopt a mixed approach that elevates the stories of LGBTQ people but also exposes the constructed structures upon which all minority and majority identity characteristics stand. By demonstrating that data about cis and heterosexual people also has a history – shaped by social, cultural, economic and political factors – queer data ensures that LGBTQ people are not further marginalized or defined as the ‘other’ by the research tools used to investigate their lives and experiences. (13)

 

*

We stand at a key moment in history. New technologies and approaches, from big data to data abolition, overlap with longer-term disagreements over how to recognize difference among identity groups, the representation of difference through data and its use as an evidence base for action. Failure to engage with agencies that collect, analyse and use data potentially locks out LGBTQ communities from recognition and access to vital funding and resources. Yet, participation in these practices requires submission to normative approaches to categorization that involve the inclusion and exclusion of particular lives and experiences.

This work cannot take place with LGBTQ people looking in from the outside. Data is more than numbers in a database – it also presents a method for individuals to join together and shout ‘Look here, we exist!’ However, at the heart of these developments lies a tension between ‘being counted’ and ‘being beyond counting’, which exposes the strained relationship between queer theory’s disavowal of categories and the requirements of data to classify, arrange and make judgements based on these results. There is no simple solution to the push and pull that exists between understanding identity characteristics as something disparate and fluid versus something that you can tick on a diversity monitoring form. Queer Data navigates a path through this challenge that uplifts LGBTQ stories but also destabilizes the normalcy of data about cis, heterosexual people. How we think about data, a product of historical and cultural traditions, has blinkered us to how gender, sex and sexuality data can and should impact LGBTQ lives in positive ways. For those already engaged in data practices, Queer Data showcases ways to embed critical approaches in your work. For those new to these themes, I hope the following chapters demonstrate the diversity of initiatives underway, offer entry points to expand your queer data competence and embolden you to use data to challenge injustice. Queer data is a powerful weapon; in the right hands, it can reshape all of our futures.

*

1 I use the term ‘social world’ to underscore that perceptions of reality are contested, contextual and shaped by our actions rather than something objective that exists beyond us.

2 A constellation of activities related to gender, sex and sexuality data occurred between 2019 and 2021, including the Scottish Government’s formation of a Sex and Gender in Data Working Group, proposals to reform the Gender Recognition Act in the Scottish and UK Parliaments, and debate about approaches to the collection of diversity monitoring data in public, private and voluntary sector organizations.

3 Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999), 196.

4 Scholarship includes Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020); Maggie Walter and Chris Andersen, Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology (Walnut Creek: Routledge, 2013); Ruha Benjamin, Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code (Medford: Polity, 2019).

5 María Lugones, ‘Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System’, Hypatia 22, no. 1 (2007): 187.

6 Lauren E. Bridges, ‘Digital Failure: Unbecoming the “Good” Data Subject through Entropic, Fugitive, and Queer Data’, Big Data & Society 8, no. 1 (1 January 2021): 2.

7 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (London: New York University Press, 2001), 7.

8 Zeus Leonardo, ‘Through the Multicultural Glass: Althusser, Ideology and Race Relations in Post-Civil Rights America’, Policy Futures in Education 3, no. 4 (1 December 2005): 409.

9 John Grundy and Miriam Smith, ‘Activist Knowledges in Queer Politics’, Economy and Society 36, no. 2 (May 2007): 301.

10 The Equality Act has three general duties: eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimization; advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not; foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not, noted in Equality and Human Rights Commission, ‘Public Sector Equality Duty’, 26 March 2021.

11 D’Ignazio and Klein, Data Feminism.
12 Recent studies that have also explored the intersection of queer theory and gender, sex and sexuality data include Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash, eds., Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); D’Lane Compton, Tey Meadow, and Kristen Schilt, eds., Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology (University of California Press, 2018); Amin Ghaziani and Matt Brim, eds., Imagining Queer Methods (New York: New York University Press, 2019).

13 For discussion of queer theory’s disruption of the centre and the margins, see Arlene Stein and Ken Plummer, ‘“I Can’t Even Think Straight” “Queer” Theory and the Missing Sexual Revolution in Sociology’, Sociological Theory 12, no. 2 (1994): 178.

 

Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action by Kevin Guyan is published by Bloomsbury Academic, priced £17.99.

Looking for a new, cracking crime fiction novel? Well, let us introduce you to C S Robertson’s The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill. It comes recommended by some of Scotland’s most popular crime fiction writers including Helen FitzGerald and Doug Johnstone, and that’s good enough for us! We hope you enjoy this extract.

 

Extract taken from The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill
By C S Robertson
Published by Hodder & Stoughton

 

The hallway is a sea of mail and fast food flyers. A narrow pathway has been cut through the middle of it by the feet and legs of police and paramedics, leaving knee-high mounds to either side. This is what you get when time stands still, when no one knows or cares that there’s no longer anyone at home. I’ve seen it too many times, letters continuing to be sent because direct debits continue to be paid, pizza offers and takeaway discounts that can’t tell the difference between life and death, and guilt-etched Christmas cards from people who can’t find the time to call or visit.

It was a water leak that brought people to the door. A student in number six noticed a small sag forming in his ceiling and called his landlord. Three visits to Mr Agnew’s flat brought no response so they’d little choice but to call the police, who put the door in and found the old man lying dead in bed.

That was two days ago. The cops have gone, what was left of Thomas Agnew has gone too, and only the smell remains. I’m suited up and wearing a respirator mask but there’s still no missing the odour. I got used to it ages ago, I’ve had to, but that doesn’t mean I’m unaware of it.

I know the science. The very second that life ends, decomposition begins. The gases and chemical compounds that get released from the body all have their own smell. Cadaverine and putrescine smell like rotting flesh. Skatole smells like shit. Indole is mustier, like mothballs. Hydrogen sulfide is rotten eggs, methanethiol is rotting cabbage, dimethyl disulfide and trisulfide are like the worst garlic you can imagine. They all smell bad, but together they smell like nothing other than death.

This one is bad. The boys in blue would have got it full blast when they put the door in. Some of them can’t handle it and you hear the odd tale of tough-guy cops throwing up, eyes streaming, stomachs heaving. If they’re lucky it might be so bad that the underwater unit gets called in with breathing apparatus to get the body into the shell.

I start, as always, with an appraisal of the property, doing an initial walk through and hazard assessment of the scene. Moving quietly through the flat, I head for the bedroom. Mr Agnew’s final resting place. His deathbed. It’s where the dangers are; potential biological hazards like bloodborne pathogens, human body fluids and tissue. They could be hiding in grout, cement, wood flooring, sub flooring, you name it. The entire room has the potential to emanate death odours, so my first task is to use cross-contamination protocol to control it by securing and separating it from the rest of the flat. I seal it off, then set about making it safe.

It’s my job. I’m a lonely death cleaner.

To give it its Sunday name, I carry out bioremediation. I do the deep clean that’s needed after a body has lain decomposing for so long. It’s smelly, it’s sad, it’s messy, and it’s dangerous.

People almost always want the clean-up done quickly. It’s another thing out the way, something else they don’t have to worry about, and it helps their grieving process and their sense of guilt if they don’t have to think about their loved one lying alone in their own dirt. From the door, I can see a chest of drawers topped with a ragged line of framed photographs, a large pine wardrobe with its doors half open. There are more unopened letters, discarded socks, and a small stack of yellowing newspapers.

I pick my way carefully across the room until I’m standing by his bed. I can’t help but stare. When someone has lain in the same place for five months, you can still see where they’ve been, still see their shape, long after they’ve gone.

I don’t know how many people have taken the time to remember him, but the bed has. The bed holds his memory, his length, his width, his final outline. It holds hairs on the pillow and his depth in its contours. It also holds a dark soup of bodily fluids. Mopping them up is my next job.

The police are waiting on post-mortem results, but they’ve told me there are no suspicious circumstances, sure that Mr Agnew just passed away in his sleep. I kneel by the bed, the only sound the rustling of my protective suit. As I look closer, my breath catches in my throat and I’m aware of my skin tingling and my heart rate rising, but nothing else. The room, the house, the outside world, all shrink into black silence and the only thing I can see or think of is the tiny object on the corner of Mr Agnew’s pillow.

My hands are gloved in blue as I pick it up. A dried daisy. I hold it up to the light, turning it between two fingers. The petals used to be white but now they’re a murky grey. The yellow centre is dull and burned out. I stare at it for what could be seconds or minutes until the spell breaks and I bring it near to my mouth and kiss it through my face mask before dropping it gently into a clear plastic bag. Mementoes must be kept or else there’s nothing to trust but memories.

I’ve only been told three things about the man. His name, that he’d lived alone, and that he lay undiscovered for an estimated twenty weeks. The police are appealing for family members to get in touch as there are no known relatives.

I use a fogger to get rid of the insects, flies mainly, that have infested the room. I don’t mind them particularly, it’s maggots that I can’t stand. I can’t even allow myself to think about their feasting.

To do this job you have to be two things that seem at odds with each other; professional and compassionate. Sometimes I’m too much of the second one, and that’s my curse. I do what I do because I care.

 

The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill by C S Robertson published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £14.99.