Another Nod From The Bridport Judges

(Another good piece of news and unexpected: The Bridport Prize judges have given another nod to my work. Not yet on the winners' podium, but another shortlisting credit. Over 6000 stories entered this year so this recognition feels very good indeed. And here's the continuing story of Port Brokeferry.)

FALSE EYELASHES AND SMELLING OF PARMA VIOLETS

Elspeth climbed the three steps and knocked on the door. Then she stepped down onto the grass again and waited. The music from the fair was loud, drowning out the choke and growl of the generators that were hidden behind painted boards showing girls with flashing blue eyes and bright teeth and perfectly plump breasts. It was like there was a party on the green and she hadn’t been invited, like she was a sour neighbour there to complain about the noise.

Elspeth heard a woman’s voice calling from inside the trailer. Still she waited at the foot of the steps. Waited for the door to open so she could see the woman face to face. Then she would decide what she was going to do.

The woman was blond, her hair all lacquered curl and lift, and she was wearing a man’s shirt with the collar turned up and a belt around the middle. She had on a creased skirt that Elspeth thought was too short for a woman of her years, even if she had the legs.

‘What is it?’ said the woman. ‘I’m sort of in the middle of things.’ She had to shout to be heard. She had one false eyelash on and one off, and her lips were pale and her cheeks smudged pink like a doll’s. She had a mark on her neck like a bruise or a bite. ‘Got to see a man about a dog, a very thirsty dog, if you get my drift,’ she said.

‘It’s Lynn isn’t it?’ said Elspeth.

The blond woman looked her up and down, taking the measure of this woman who dressed plain like a schoolteacher. ‘It is Lynn,’ she said. ‘And who might be calling on Lynn?’

Elspeth did not offer up her name, but asked if they might talk, privately, just the two of them. Inside.

Lynn disappeared back into the dark of the trailer leaving the door open and Elspeth climbed the stairs and followed her.

It took a moment for Elspeth’s eyes to adjust to the dimness of the trailer, even with the light leaping in through the open door. And there was a muffled quiet inside – the music stayed outside. Lynn sat in front of a mirror, leaning close to the glass, and she was applying a glossy red wax to her lips with a small brush. She pressed her lips together, then pouted like she might kiss her own reflection.

‘A private talk?’ Lynn said when she had done.

Elspeth was looking at the mess of the bed and the discarded clothes dropped on the floor and empty beer bottles collected in drunken arrangement in one corner of the trailer and the dinted crowns of bottletops arranged on the narrow sill of the window.

Lynn caught her looking. ‘Wasn’t expecting company,’ she said. ‘Leastways not the sort of company that minds how things are.’ And she picked up the dropped clothes and pushed them into a drawer, and pulled the bed straight without really making it.

‘It’s about Kyle,’ said Elspeth.

Lynn sat on the edge of the bed then and left a space for Elspeth to continue.

‘He’s my brother, you see. And he’s going through a bad patch. With his wife. Things not as they should be between them. You know. And he didn’t come home last night. And I know he’s been here. With you. And it’s none of my business, it isn’t, and I should leave well alone, I know that. Only there’s a girl. His girl. My niece. Pretty as a picture, she is, and still at school. Not yet finding her way and this could be…and I thought… if you just knew…’

Elspeth broke off then. It was all there. Everything she had to say. Not as direct as she had thought she’d be, but there if this woman called Lynn could read between the lines.

Lynn turned back to the mirror and carefully fitted her second false eyelash. She blinked and winked, first with one eye and then with the other. Then she spritzed a sweet perfume onto her neck, sweet like bubblegum or parma violets.

‘I hear what you’re saying, Kyle’s sister. I do,’ she said when she’d done. ‘And I can see that you mean well by your brother. But like I told you already, there’s this man I’ve got to see about a dog and it’s a right thirsty bastard.’

And it was left at that. Lynn retraced her steps onto the green where the music was all hop and jiggle and she could hear the screams of girls on the waltzers. Then she walked away from the party, once again feeling like the complaining neighbour and not really sure that she had been heard.