The Car Wash by Judith Skilleter, Aperol Spritz

Danny is 8 years old and hates car-washes. He goes with his dad every Saturday to the local car-wash and he does all sorts to avoid going. He hides under his bed – but his dad finds him and thinks it a huge joke.  He goes to a friend’s house – but his dad waits until he returns home. He tells his mum he does not want to go – she tells him not to be selfish as it is the only time he and his dad can have boy’s time together and his dad enjoys it so much. Then after each trip to the car-wash he and his dad usually go for an ice cream and his dad talks about football. Danny hates football.

Danny once told his dad he would rather not go but his dad looked so sad afterwards, and looked so glum getting in the car on his own, that Danny felt terrible and rushed after the car and got in. His dad grinned and Danny felt sick inside. “Boy’s together” said his dad. “Yeah” said Danny with no enthusiasm.

You see, Danny’s dad has a new car, his first ever brand new car and he is so pleased with it. He spends hours fiddling with all the knobs and buttons and working out what does what and peering under the bonnet. And he is always outside polishing it till it shines and the weekly car wash is an absolute necessity, as far as his dad is concerned,  in order to keep it in tip top condition. And it is an opportunity to be with his only son, something he looks forward to very much.

Danny can understand why doing this together is important to his dad.  Danny has three older sisters who just seem to baffle his dad – clothes, make-up, mobile phones and friends are all that interests them, all that they talk about, even Lizzy who is only ten. Danny has overheard long conversations between Danny’s dad and mum about how his dad cannot talk to his daughters, he does not know how to and they just disregard him. His mum said not to worry, it was just a normal phase they were going through. “But how long does this phase last” asked his dad.  His mum just shrugged her shoulders; she too was facing the wrath and moods of pre-teen and adolescent girls.

Danny would love to spend time with his dad but not go to the car-wash – it terrifies him. First of all he hates water, especially water coming at him with force and surrounding him. He is even reluctant to take showers; he waits until the water is at the right temperature and at the gentlest setting and he leaps in, a quick wash and then he’s out. This is so unlike all his sisters who seem to be in the shower for ages. “How can they get so dirty” he asks himself. “Perhaps it’s to get off all that make-up” he reckons.

But in the car wash and having the car between him and this surge of water makes no difference because he can clearly remember falling into a swimming pool in Majorca when he was five years old. He can remember water all around him as if it was attacking him, from all sides, and he can remember punching and kicking and trying to fend off this attacker. And he can remember calling for his mum and water gushing down into his tummy and lungs. Then he can remember nothing until he woke up with someone pressing hard on his chest and all this horrible water coming out of his mouth – and his breakfast. Then he remembers crying and feeling the most awful pains in his chest and tummy – and his mum was crying and his dad was crying and he had no idea why they were so sad. He knows this happened; it was real but somehow no-one talks about it anymore. It is as if it never happened.

And then in the car-wash they are attacked by long legs, as if twelve massive spiders are in the car-wash trying to get to him with their huge hairy legs battering the car, trying to get through.  And above the car, sitting on the car roof, where he could not see them, there would be 12 huge hairy bodies, all with evil eyes. The spiders would be determined to get through the metal somehow – and to kill him. They were trying to get to him, through the front windscreen, through the back windscreen and even through the doors, especially his door. Danny hates spiders.

Danny has tried to tell his mum and dad why he does not like going but they just do not listen. They tell him he is being silly, that there is nothing to be frightened of. But Danny knows something different; he knows the truth – the spiders and the water are just waiting for him, to get him once and for all. The water is waiting to finish off what it tried to do in Majorca and the spiders are there to make sure the water succeeds.

Poor Danny. What can he do?

About the author

Judith Skilleter is new to writing fiction after a long career in social work and teaching. Her first children's novel The April Rebellion, has recently been published. Judith is a Geordie, who settled in East Yorkshire 45 years ago and is married with 3 grandchildren

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Incongruities by Niall Crowley, Aperol Spritz

He’s surprised to find himself whistling as he drives up the hill. Sentinel trees stand tall each side, reaching over to create a sun-spotted tunnel. Enough to momentarily cheer, but hardly to get him whistling. He can’t manage a recognisable tune at the best of times. There must be some more substantial change of disposition at play. A crack in that unrelenting stress of taking on a first job in the midst of a pandemic. The road narrows with deep channels cut on each side, forcing him to slow down and concentrate.

There’s only one space left for parking. The barn looms over the concrete yard, with its rutted block wall, bales in shiny black plastic peering over, curved sheets of rusted red arched above. Too many cars he thinks dolefully, not a time for crowds. He sits with the door open, face up to take in the warmth of the sun, before strapping on his mask. Rusted machinery stacked to one side, horses grazing in the field to the other, and a wilderness of Fuchsia glowing up ahead.

Around the corner, a spread of tables laid with shining cutlery, pungent coffees and teas, and an array of sweet and savoury. The intense buzz of heads bent close, laughing banter rippling through small groups, and individuals silently intent on Sunday newspapers. The ‘Kitchen’ is like a piece of the city, cut and pasted onto the back of a withered farmyard. He stands rubbing his hands awkwardly, not sure where to locate himself.

She’s swamped, brain addled with demands from all sides. Unrelenting conveyer belt one moment, dirty dishes going in, laden trays coming out. Clerk of works the next, orders taken and lodged, bills totted and resolved. Sunday morning is the tough shift, not that she has any choice. Her father dozes in the mornings, an opportunity for her to get out and earn some money. That sleep holding her father, however, is a product of restless nights, an insomnia she is forced to share. It leaves her on constant edge.

The sun caresses her in its warmth, but the mask traps the heat in a damp sweat around her mouth. It aggravates, but the patrons need to feel safe. At least she’s let serve the outdoor tables. She couldn’t take risks with bringing the virus home, with her father so vulnerable. The possibility still leaves her on tenterhooks, resenting any proximity with those she has to deal with.

She reaches a point of irritation on these busy mornings. No downtime to keep you going, little of the banter that, carefully distanced, provides the buzz. Coming away from the hatch, she recognises him, gawky and anxious, almost adolescent. He’s a looker, though, and of an age with her, but one couldn’t be thinking like that. Still, it eases the irritation. Knowing he’s nervous with the virus, she waves him over to a more secluded corner spot.

‘Well Reverend, what’ll it be today?’ She hovers, notebook in hand.

‘Morning, I think I’ll have the…’

‘Don’t tell me. The eggs benny, americano, drop of milk, no sugar, and a side of toast?’

‘Well, yes, that sounds perfect. Thanks. How is your day going?’

‘Run off my feet, Reverend, and poorly paid, so no change there either.’

‘You enjoy it though, don’t you?’

‘It has its moments, and how’s the day job going for you, Reverend?’

‘Ah, it’s busy, always busy…’

‘We should do a swap someday, experience each other’s busy, and see what that tells us.’

There’s a twinkle in her eyes, telling him there’s a smile behind her mask. He smiles in response behind his, as she threads her way back through the tables. Reviewing their exchange, he winces. A script is what he needs for these occasions. That’s how he goes about his work, the relevant texts reviewed at length and a detailed commentary assembled in advance of each service. Maybe with time he wouldn’t need the prepping, but, being on a form of probation, there’s no room for miscues.

The church is a monument of crafted stonework on the outside, a peeling dampness of decaying plaster on the inside. The congregation is of an age, last in line of families well represented under the scattered headstones that surround. Social distancing is no challenge with such dwindled numbers. Masked faces, pale and withered, stare passively as he holds forth from the pulpit in youthful exuberance. He had yet to see most of the members without their masks. While respectful of them, he struggles to understand how his mission had to start here.

‘Heard you put on a great show this morning, Reverend’. She sets down eggs, coffee, and toast.

‘Well, it’s not really theatre. It’s more…’

‘Whatever it was, they were still talking about it over their coffee and cakes.’

‘Really? I don’t dare imagine what was said.’

‘No matter, you made them think, Reverend. That’s not half bad, and much needed around here.’

She watches him as he unmasks, pokes tentatively at the eggs, and takes up his toast with appetite sparked. There was a stab of envy in her comment, along with the admiration. That was her dream, to make people think. It propelled her into teacher training. The Parish Priest had already promised her a placement year in the national school. Three years in, the study going well, her father’s lungs gave out. Her world shrivelled up to tend his needs. She was the only one left, her mother having passed early with a stroke and her sibling gone far.

She shakes herself, not a time for being maudlin, better to take pleasure in a favoured regular. The Reverend has a charm, even if that collar puts heavy years on him. Ensconced up in that old rectory, he comes from another world, afforded more authority than is good for a man that young, and exuding stylish remnants of some former standing. She savours the brief warmth of human contact he offers, more a distant memory for her now. Her father has little energy to engage. Work, most times, involves no more than brief impersonal transactions. She is stuck, life on pause.

He eats too quickly, a combination of the good food and his bad habits. Coffee requires no such dispatch. The place is busy, hard to know a pandemic rages all around. His gaze drifts to watch her, but surreptitiously, as she flits around the tables. The place is no more than a metal canopy stretching out from two converted farm sheds. The rectory has grandeur with tall rooms, comfort in heavy furnishings, and style in neatly tended gardens. The ‘Kitchen’, though, surpasses his living quarters with ease. Company, bustle, and babbling laughter mark it out. It engages him more each time, life-giving, life-saving. Then, of course, she works here.

His upbringing had been a trail of rectories, ever more palatial and lifeless, as his father rose through the ranks. A path was laid out for him with some paternal prodding, but he’d wanted to invest it with something of himself. He had not joined to minister to landed pensioners, the Bishop had persuaded him. ‘Go get the hang of your trade’ he’d been told, to his consternation. His vision was more to change and improve the world. The Bishop had bade him be patient, and he had obeyed too quickly, a habit of his. He signals for the bill, slipping on his mask. Time to go or the members will have him down as work-shy.

‘That’s decent, Reverend, but you can’t be making up for the low pay like this.’ She still gathers up the money he has put down.

‘You need to be making plans at your age, you know. There’s more for you out there.’

‘You’re going all paternal on me now, no need to be doing that.’

‘Talents are gifts to be used, not for wasting.’

‘Needs must, Reverend, needs must.’

The furrowed brow over her mask is belligerent. Too predictable. All it takes is a pair of testicles to offer judgement and guidance, even with the most meagre of knowledge to back it up. Add a collar, of any denomination, and the inclination magnifies. Pained eyes stare back over his mask. He pushes out from his chair, mortified at the silent altercation, stumbling backwards from the table. Conflict from behind masks is difficult, conflict where they are only beginning to find a way to communicate is impossible.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be intruding like that, very rude.’

‘It wasn’t rude, it’s just …’

He’s gone. She watches him disappear around the corner of the barn. People are staring. He wouldn’t be coming back. She has no idea what she’d say to him if he did, or even if there was anything to be said. There are orders to take, tables to clear, a job to be kept. He’d be out the gate by now. She runs, ripping off her mask to call after him. Rounding the corner, she almost bumps straight into him striding back towards the café.

They step back to consider each other. Surprised and quizzical, unsure of what had happened, is happening. An uncomfortable silence grips them, in search of words to suit ill-defined circumstances, words that could match the moment. Confident realisation dawns in shared smiles, not relying on anything as clumsy as speech. A gentler silence plays over them.

‘You have a lovely smile, I never got to see that behind your mask’. He blurts it out, involuntary but heartfelt.

‘Reverend, I didn’t mean to…to…’ She flounders as his comment hits home, flushing crimson.

‘It’s Paul, my name is Paul.’ He’s laughing shyly, slightly intoxicated.

‘Paul. That’s a good name for a ... I’m June.’

Smiling again, both of them. She turns reluctantly to go back to work, glancing back at him, shaking her head.

‘Jesus, I’ll be run out of the place with all this.’

He pauses, watching after her. Maybe another coffee and a slice of that millionaire's shortbread wouldn’t go amiss.

About the author

Niall Crowley works on equality and human rights, based in Ireland. His fiction has been published by CafeLit, The Galway Review, Spillwords, and Pure Slush. He was shortlisted for the From the Well short story competition in 2021 and 2022, and the Colm Toibín International short story award in 2022. 

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It was a dark and stormy night……by Judith Skilleter, Aperol spritz

 

But the Harker family were safe indoors. Outside it was horrible, the rain and wind were vicious. According to the weather man it was all due to global warming. “I wonder what Donal Trump makes of it” mused dad, Aidy Harker, as he looked out at the wet darkness. The moonlight was making the rain shine as it hit the ground like bullets and then headed off down the hill. “I suppose it is streaming down the hill” mused Aidy “Although rivering down or oceaning down would be a better description.”

It had been a dark and stormy night indoors as well as outdoors. Aidy was not a happy man. His wife Jane had recently had a decent lottery win, not enough to move to the South of France but enough to make significant, and unwelcome as far as Aidy was concerned, changes to their house. They had had words – dark and stormy words.

Her first plan had been shutters - shutters at every window had recently replaced curtains, curtains that had served them well for over twenty years and which had witnessed a lot of his family’s trials and tribulations and adventures. Now they had tasteful dove grey shutters through which Aidy was observing the weather. To Aidy they seemed like parallel prison bars and he hated them.

 His wife Jane’s argument for shutters had been determined, and slowly but surely his resistance had been worn down. Aidy didn’t care that they were the third family in the street to have them and if they did not have them now they would be accused of copying the others and falling behind. He didn’t care that they were the only family to have them fitted to every window, even the bathroom where the window was frosted glass. He just liked curtains. He liked welcoming the day with a couple of swishes of well-loved fabric.

The children were not bothered either way. The twins (Gavin and Paul, aged 12) had their bedroom shutters permanently closed. “I think I’ll start charging them for the electricity they use keeping the lights on all the time” thought Aidy. And as for Alexis, well, she was a very moody teenager these days and he felt safer keeping away from her bedroom. Alexis was particularly moody on this dark and stormy night, in fact she was also dark and stormy because her boyfriend Lee, who was supposed to be in Milton Keynes at a conference had been seen in The Cat and Fiddle pub in town with that cow Harriet Wilson.

And then there is the island, Jane’s second plan. Jane decided that the kitchen table, which had been a wedding present and had served them well throughout their marriage, had to go. It was replaced by an island “more storage space and far less mess “argued Jane. Only the island only had sitting places for two. “But we are family of 5 “argued Aidy knowing all the time that it was not worth the effort. “We can use the dining room, it is never used so now is our opportunity to use the dining table for what it was meant for” replied Jane with total misplaced confidence.

Of course, what happened was that whoever had their meals first bagged the 2 places and the others either stood at the island to eat or dragged in dining chairs which were too short for comfortable eating. It was a disaster.

Jane was currently in their bedroom, ruminating about potential changes and trying to find the best shutter position for the rough outside conditions. Aidy had said “Absolutely no” to her marvellous idea of having an ensuite in their bedroom. “No way are you messing with the only space in this house I can call my own” he had said very firmly. The space Jane wanted to use was currently occupied by his computer and printer and 40 year old Airfix models - it was Aidy’s and it was staying Aidy’s.

“The bathroom is next to our bedroom. Why don’t I just move our bedroom door a metre to the right and then you can have your ensuite with far less fuss” suggested Aidy.

“That is not the point and it is not funny” replied a very cross and frustrated Jane.

Jane then realised she would have to think through plan 4, the loft conversion idea, very carefully. They were doing a conversion over the road at number 64 and the plans looked marvellous.  However, they had a very good reason for their extension plans as a new and unexpected but very welcome pregnancy had taken root in number 64. Jane did not think she could go to those lengths to get a new loft.

The storm continued outside and it continued inside for some time. As for Aidy he vowed never to contribute to a lottery every again.

About the author

Judith Skilleter is new to writing fiction after a long career in social work and teaching. Her first children's novel The April Rebellion, has recently been published. Judith is a Geordie, who settled in East Yorkshire 45 years ago and is married with 3 grandchildren 

 

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Abroad in the Season of Masks, Part 2

 

by Geri Lipschultz

Aperol Spritz

Here’s the story I did not write about our sudden gift of an excursion to Europe, a flight or flights, on tracks, both made for us and those which we’d chosen. Here’s the overflow, the negative space, the truth that came from the exhaust of a trip we didn’t ask for, yes, here’s the story I did not write, which is a list, an anti-story, not exactly a defiance of narrative but a moment, extended and vast but a segment, not a line, not even linear, upon which no craft can bestow beginning, middle, end…because we are hurtling forward, expansive in our or at least my ignorance of any sweet or sour premise/promise of narrative: here are observations that didn’t quite fit in and may never fit in but remain authentic, reportage at best: how grateful I was for those who were serving the public, who put up with us, in the trains and planes and hotels and restaurants, who put on that mask of civility, whether tired or scared or lonely, for example the young man, a member of the family who owns the Hawelka, a café well known in Vienna for gathering writers and artists and yes, celebrities, a café with serious history, and this smiling fellow greeted all the espresso drinkers and beer drinkers that drizzling Sunday morning, everyone at the outdoor tables, and he shared this with me, what the café had once been when the writers huddled together to keep warm, how one would speak and others would join in—in that very different time that was not this one—and I wondered where they were, those writers; I wondered what they would say about our time now; and yes, how could I honor the beauty of it all along with the—yes—guilt I felt for witnessing so much of this culture, this part of my/our planet even in its defiled state, along with the guilt I felt for not having had the time to review the intricacies, the background, the significance of the art and the architecture I would witness, neither the music; also I did not mention the various contrasts, including the terrific smell of sewage in Venice, nor how well dressed everybody there was; nor how I wore the same dress three times before washing it;  how though we on a very few occasions did walk into those stores, we could not bring ourselves to buy things—neither for ourselves nor anyone else; and how hard it was to catch the eye of others, except of course when they thought you were staring at them; just exactly how much on guard I really was, and why this was, which I suppose I didn’t mention because I’m still on guard, as we all are on guard; just how much in mourning I was, and similarly why this is, because I’m still in mourning, as we all are in mourning—as if we could capture all we lost; as if we could build again and blot it all out; but what is there to build again—but trust in each other and in our ability to love again and believe in the promise of our species when in fact our species has failed and is still failing and yet how we march on because there is no other choice; how sometimes I looked hard into the eyes of the masked children of fellow tourists, and how it seemed some of them caught my eye, too, how we smiled at each other, how I could feel my own lips in a smile, a smile no one could see, and how now I still feel the sorrow of that; how grateful I was for the umbrellas that shielded us from the rain when we were eating or drinking, because really I did not want to be inside any public dwelling eating or drinking without the mask—and how, walking around the next morning, I looked at those umbrellas in their folds drying out, as if they were exhausted, and I renewed my gratitude, though silently, for surely doing more than their share, more than they thought they’d ever have to do, for those rains were hard rains, they were incessant rains, they were killing rains, and I was thankful as well that we were not in those terrible rains; and between the rains and Covid, how the earth was trying to tell us something, and how we were not listening, especially in America we were not listening, and what was I to do, how could I change it, not to mention how loud it was when the machines cleaned the streets at 4 and 5 am daily in Salzburg, at least for the two nights we were there, and how the waves of sound bounced off the stone of the ground and the stone of the buildings and the stone of the mountains that were our witness, as my own ears and eyes and heart are witness—and how neither the mountains nor I can do much more than be

About the auhtor

Geri Lipschultz has published in New York Times, Ms., the Toast, Black Warrior Review, College English, The Rumpus, Pearson’s Literature: Introduction to Reading and Writing among others. She performed in her one-woman show produced in NYC by Woodie King, Jr. She teaches writing at Hunter College and BMCC. www.gerilipschultz.com @alicebluegown1