The Year of the Flood: Margaret, what were you thinking?

Let me begin by saying that I love Margaret Atwood. The dream of touching the hands that created such beautiful poetic prose is one that I am sadly realising will never come true. I am an avid and faithful collector of all her works of fiction, committed to filling my bookshelves with Atwood’s creations, and, perhaps blasphemously, not minding about the dog-eared appearance of some of my charity shop lucky finds. I read her books regularly, repeatedly, owning the claim that I have read each item in my collection ‘at least once, of course!’ I am easy to buy for at Christmas due to the prolificacy of her writing; not only novels, but poetry, lectures and articles. I have a ready answer to the ice-breaker, ‘so, who’s your favourite author?’ I am lucky that I found her so young. I am blessed, and I am grateful for this every time I submerge myself in her mesmerising world. Several times a year my partner is an Atwood widower. She makes me want to write like her, to reveal these inner worlds, painful and infuriating and beautiful, challenging society from the safety of a dingy room and an internal turmoil. She gives me the belief that curled inside me is a powerful yet vulnerable tale of sexuality, oppression and rage. I am constantly amazed at the words she pulls out of the page in succession, and often I re-read phrases and paragraphs in order to digest it fully, to do it justice, to appreciate this work of art.

Imagine, then, if you will, my utter disappointment on reading The Year of the Flood. I consider myself well enough informed to comment, and I am not afraid to be damning. Her penultimate novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003 and I am the proud owner of the first edition hardback (a rarity on my student budget). This novel intrigued me at first- I was surprised by the political subtext, the scientific terminology and the gloomy futuristic outlook. The text was thick with biological language, describing a world that could easily have begun with the one we crave now (genetically modifying, gene splicing, eradicating disease and anger, creating the Perfect Human Being) which was shudderingly unsettling. I am not a science fiction fan, I am not particularly into politics, and I have never had a ‘Science brain’ but despite this unlikely combination, I thoroughly enjoyed the book (and have subsequently read it twice more). Snowman (born Jimmy) is living a meagre existence, struggling to combat hunger and protect himself from extreme weather conditions, battling with Crake’s legacy of a crumbling world. There are flashbacks to his childhood which explain the background to the apocalyptic present, and the sub-plot of the unfulfilling love affair with Oryx. I enjoyed the novel because Atwood continued to portray the human condition in all its ugliness and glory, its dreams and failures, grief and passion, whilst introducing us to a new world order. And so we come to The Year of the Flood. The long-awaited sequel to Oryx and Crake was published in 2009, and I could barely contain my excitement when I held my copy for the first time. Now, my test of a good book is this: if after browsing the first paragraph I turn to the next page without realising, I am committed to taking it home with me. However, The Year of the Flood did not draw me in. I did not suddenly lose all contact with the outside world to be immersed in Atwood’s prose. In fact, it took me several attempts to finish it with, I think, two other books in between. Of course, I had to finish it: this was unquestionable. I am a devoted Atwood fan and therefore I go with the rough and the smooth. I am loyal. But I will not refrain from dissuading people from buying this book.

The initial reason for my lack of engagement with the story was the structure of flitting from Ren to Toby without depth or insight, interspersed with the banal and time-wasting songs from the Gardeners’ hymn book. After the 6th song I just skipped them. I felt completely disconnected from the characters, caring not one bit about their plight. There were few additions to the world of Snowman, with the pigoons still wandering about and the weather being predictably bad. This was now boring. Atwood took us through the history of the Gardeners, introducing us to the world of the pleeblands that existed outside Jimmy’s secure compounds while he was growing up. Although I appreciated a little background and a fleshing out of this new world, I felt there was little depth added by continuing the same line. The characters lacked personality, they were heartless, aimless, dispassionate. I knew nothing about Toby’s motivations; nothing at all about AdamOne: his background, his personality, his looks for goodness sake!; and nothing about the soul of Ren, her sense of self, her raw sexuality, her inspiration. The one thing that has kept me hooked to Atwood’s prose since I was 17 was glaringly absent: the humanity. I am utterly disappointed, and quietly concerned about the next contribution from the Canadian. I think I will learn my lesson from this whole episode: when her next novel is announced, I think I’ll be a little more patient before I go diving in to the first page.

The Thin Line Between

The Thin Line Between

‘He doesn’t love me, Auntie, he never will,’ said the pretty girl to the good witch, and the good witch sighed and cleared away the dinner plates.
The good witch looked out of the small kitchen window while she washed the dishes and her gaze fell upon the house and garden next door. They belonged to the bad witch. The good witch’s niece was in love with the bad witch’s nephew, but he was as evil as his auntie; he wasn’t capable of being in love with anyone.
The good witch sighed again. She was very unhappy because her niece was unhappy. The pretty girl spent the days hiding her face with her long blonde hair and weeping quietly whilst pretending to read a book.
Next door’s garden was very dark and overgrown and great black clouds hung above it so there was never much daylight to dispel the heavy gloom. The good witch looked at the crooked trees and the tangled overgrowth, and suddenly she spotted the bad witch’s skinny goat emerging from a bush.
‘Oooh!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ve got some left over lettuce leaves. I think I’ll give them to the poor goat.’ The good witch smiled to herself, unlatched the gate and, grasping the generous handful of salad, she carefully stepped into the bad witch’s garden. She shivered, partly because of the cold and partly because she could always sense the evil that seemed to seep out of the air itself and into her skin.
The goat heard the cracking of twigs underfoot and looked up from the black bubbling river from which he was drinking. He stared as the woman in white approached him, her outstretched hand offering food. He knew he shouldn’t be tempted by the goodness of this witch, but his nose began to twitch and he could not resist nibbling a few lettuce leaves. After all, they were free, and the bad witch hadn’t given him half as much to eat as he’d wanted.
When he had finished eating from her hand, the woman in white walked away, pushing through the trailing spiky fingers of the overgrown plants that almost hid the stony path from view. The goat was still hungry, and he could sense that on the woman’s dress there were remnants of food clinging to the material, and so he trotted after her, the whiteness glowing in the dark to guide him.
However, when he reached the fence that divided the gardens he began to feel very uneasy. He began scraping the earth with his hooves. The witch had walked into her garden that shone with radiance in the moonlight. He blinked, and continued to follow the smell of food.
The good witch was so pleased that she had enticed the starving animal to a place of happiness and plenty, and the pretty girl was delighted to have a pet. It was some time before the evil had completely drained out of the goat. For the first few days, his eyes had glowed red and smoke billowed from his flared nostrils as he paced the length and breadth of the garden. Eventually, the pull of goodness was too strong against the evil that he had breathed in for so long. Now he could see the darkness that hung over the other garden and was grateful that he had left it behind.
One morning, as the sunlight sprayed the beautiful garden and made the dew drops sparkle like glitter, the goat awoke and felt perfect peace. He was happy, and he was good. The pretty girl was able to feed him and pet his soft head.

Unfortunately, things had been dramatically changing next door. The bad witch’s nephew had seen the good witch stealing their goat and he had told the bad witch, who was furious. She planned her revenge over many weeks and eventually decided she would put her plan in action.
She wanted to steal the most prized possession of the good witch: her pretty niece. The bad witch’s nephew was going to be the bait. She knew how much the silly girl was in love with him, as she used her crystal ball a lot. Her nephew thought the whole thing very amusing and heartily agreed to tempt the girl into their blackened evil garden.
On the fateful evening, they laughed over their meagre meal and then the boy was ready to go. He did feel slightly uneasy about being too near the pure, good garden, but his auntie was persistent and dangerous so he didn’t want to disobey her. Besides, he couldn’t wait until the girl was as evil as he was.
At 7.30 every night, they had observed, the good witch would leave the house through the back door to feed the goat some left over scraps. At 8.30 every night, the good witch’s niece would creep out of the back door to feed the goat some more food she had saved from her meal. It was at this time the bad witch’s nephew would go to her.
‘Pssst!’ he said, quietly, from the top of the fence. She thought it was the breeze rustling in the trees.
‘Pssst!’ he said, louder this time. She thought it was the insects starting their music for the night.
‘PSSST!’ he insisted, very loud this time because his auntie was standing below him poiking him with her staff.
The young girl stifled a scream when she saw the overbearing figure leaning uncomfortably over the fence and grinning wildly. When she realised that it was her Love, a smile began to grow on her lips and her heart skipped a beat. She was thinking that finally he had come for her, that he was at last in love with her.
The boy held out one hand and balanced himself with the other.
‘Come,’ he said, softly and quietly so as not to alert the good witch as to what was happening. But the good witch’s niece was rooted to the spot. The sound of his hushed voice washed over her like warm honey and the fluttering of her heart made her chest ache in longing for him. She half closed her eyes and let her hair fall away from her face, allowing the moonlight to bathe her skin with silver.
‘Pssst! Come here!’ the boy repeated, more forceful this time as his auntie prodded him harder in the leg. She was getting impatient.
‘Hurry up, boy! Get her!’ she hissed from below.
The girl jolted back into reality and stepped towards the boy’s outstretched hand. She was anticipating the touch of his flesh against hers. She had waited so long.
She held out her hand, wanting him to kiss it delicately. Instead, a bony old claw gripped her hair and the bad witch’s walking stick hooked through her dress, and the girl was heaved over the fence into the evil garden. Aside from the sound of her muffled cry, it was possible to hear a thud as the boy fell over the fence and landed in the good witch’s flower bed.

And so it was, that the good witch’s niece was trapped in the tower in the bad witch’s house with no light or food or warmth, and the bad witch’s nephew was tucked up in the spare four-poster bed being nursed by the good witch. The boy had quite hurt himself when he fell.
Slowly but surely, the evil in the air seeped into the girl’s blood. Her eyes would occasionally flash red while she gripped the bars of the window looking out on the eerie shaped in the garden. When the bad witch was sure that the girl was thoroughly bad, she unlocked the heavy door that kept her inside. The girl didn’t run. She breathed in the stale air and sniffed the stench evaporating from the stone walls. Her figure was hunched from being in such cramped conditions and she crept downstairs to explore her new home. She was grinning, and had an evil glint in her eyes as she sensed the pure badness that saturated the entire place. The bad witch was happy for the first time since losing her nephew. Her plan was to get him back and keep them both.
Meanwhile, the young boy was unable to resist the cleansing powers of the glowing goodness that warmed his blood and softened his heart. The good witch spent every evening sitting by the bed telling him of her niece, showing him photographs and drawings she had done, and reading him poems she had written. Slowly, the boy began to fall in love with the good witch’s niece and longed for his broken leg to heal so he could rescue her from his evil auntie. Since the air was so pure and the water so clean he did heal quickly and was soon strong enough to walk in the garden, feed the goat and help the good witch with her housework. He was very happy, but he mourned the loss of the girl almost as much as the good witch did herself. It was very sad. The good witch wasn’t capable of bad thoughts so she would not concoct a plan of revenge. She was waiting for her niece to return.
The boy felt increasingly frustrated at the barrier between the good garden and the bad garden. He couldn’t bear the evil force that struck him every time he opened the gate and made him double over with sickness. He was unable to return.
One afternoon, as he was trimming the roses, he thought he would throw one of the flowers over the fence to tempt the girl. That one lone rose lay unnoticed in the undergrowth. However, the boy never gave up. The next afternoon he threw another red rose. It fell alongside the first which had slightly shrivelled due to the lack of nourishing goodness.
The following afternoon, the boy threw a handful of lilac and magenta pansies over the fence and they fluttered down through the gloom landing randomly on branches and bushes and grass.
The boy was determined in his efforts and daily he sent over a handful, or an apronful, or a barrow load of lilies or poppies, daisies or roses, violets or forget-me-nots, and over time they created a beautiful carpet of colour in the bad witch’s garden.
Now because the bad witch was so engrossed in plotting to steal back her nephew, consumed as she was with bitterness and hatred, she failed to notice the change occurring in her garden. The good witch’s niece, who had become very bad, spent her time wandering the house and learning from the bad witch as she didn’t really know how to use her badness. One particularly gloomy day, the girl decided to venture outside and become familiar with the layout of the garden. She picked her way through the treacherous undergrowth, not caring if her clothes were ripped or her skin scratched enough to bleed. Her red eyes helped to light up the path ahead of her.
She eventually reached the fence and walked alongside it in order to get back to the house more easily. The boy’s flowers still shone in many layers and colours, their power of purity stronger than the evil that was being slowly stifled. The good witch’s niece gasped when she saw the spectacle and as she did so her lugs filled with the sweet intermingled fragrances of all the flowers and her heart was filled with goodness again. It was poured into her as if the flowers had been storing their power until she found them.
The bad witch was in her blackened room and she jolted upright, dropping the potion that she was holding. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, letting out a scream audible to only evil things. Her world was closing in. The beauty, light and colour spread through the garden, saturating the heavy gloom with life. The trees that had grown bent and crooked stood up straight and spread their branches. The thorns shrank back and flowers flourished. The grass glowed many shades of green and the tangled black ivy that clung to the fence and the walls became a healthy thriving plant with tiny buds that popped open.
The bad witch was repulsed by the goodness and she sped after the evil as it disappeared into the distance.
The pretty girl, who stood in the centre of this spreading beauty was welcomed by an old woman in white and a young man with a limp who kissed her hand.

THE END

In Beauty’s Wake

My rounded weight presses down on the skin of the water, the gentle resistance as I settle into my displaced shape. I feel the ripples shudder beneath me as I move in her wake, her powerful webbed feet scoop her forward. In my awe I am a faint replica of her graceful, delicate mass: I am the fading echo that will eternally follow. Our wings rest huge and light on our backs, arched in protection of the bubble of air we carry; secretive; safe. The immensity of our strength is veiled by our brittle-rooted, wavering feathers, as insubstantial as clouds seen up close.

I push myself faster, throbbing with the booming double-beat of the heart as it demands physicality; she is tugging me closer. I am propelled alongside and spin halfway round to slow-paddle. She subtly turns in response, knowing she has drawn me to her and she curves her neck in shyness and encouragement. Her heated presence glows stronger and I am captured: she is glad I am closer as our pace slows and we drift from our own momentum. Black rivulets swirl around us; the chilled green liquid laps against our oily bodies, slapping, splashing indecisively as we dance, flirting, but with that magnetic certainty that keeps us together. We bow our heads beautifully and hold each others’ gaze; her glinting black orbs wink and flutter before we simultaneously twist away, only to return side by side, continuing our journey upstream.

I am following her again, and in triumph and flattery she snaps her beak high in the air, a sound like shells thrown against shells. The orange of the setting sun is reflected in the droplets of water that rain from her laughing mouth; she is drenched in beauty. The darkened lines of twisted branches that reach above us across the river frame her and cast shadows on the interrupted surface; drapery trails down to reach sunken rocks. I become aware of the darkness that grows in the overhanging banks to either side of us where the ripples of water are absorbed almost noiselessly.

I remember our cygnets, grey flecks in the green shadows, calling, calling us home. I yearn to make her happy once more, to make her complete in her purpose of raising our children, the embodiment of our love. I had shined with my true essence of fatherhood. Protective and proud I would lift my wings, outstretched and awesome, in defence of my family. That was my purpose, my fulfilment.

Now, as I try to communicate my desire to quench her longing, she keeps herself from me, she denies me. Beneath the curved bulb of her eyes I see her unhappiness, and yet she masks her heart by teasing me, by leading me forward to where she wants me to be. Her glances towards the land are as frequent as mine but I sense she searches for something different. Her iridescence glimmers in the fading light, and seeing her bowed head glancing tentatively at the rustling undergrowth, I feel her sadness that throbs around her and I am saddened. I know she will continue to swim onward even if I stop.

Cider at 16

Hiding in the hollow of a tree
you paint my skin
with the colour of your saliva.
Drown me in a
wash of new love
with my arms held up against the trunk
I hang before you
helpless and glowing
and I sink into the flood of pain,
your gulping kisses.
I am tainted by your touch.
As the cops drive by
in a flash of white
I realise
I love you.

Moon in a Steel Fist

In my solitude, my
cushioned, straight-backed solitude, the
candle glares its contradiction.
Haloed heat on strong curled iron,
the moon captured in a steel fist,
yet it is a firework
dangerous to touch.
I watch time drip away before me
collecting in a pool of
delicate liquid heat, the
waxy skin on each tear drop
promises protection,
the glowing arrow, ready to be thrown.
I breathe in so deeply, so deeply,
I feel the warmth in my cavernous stomach,
I am hollow with light
I am swelling with light,
my sight is further.
My breath is a gentle breeze,
a ray of sun, like the
delicate yellow fingers that reach for my eyes.
I relax into the soft, golden warmth.
Waxy smooth; I am
swallowed into the
pulsing crackling centre.
It is warm love that melts any doubts.
I run through the flame,
I slip through the needle’s eye,
following the torch in the night.

Knew

In the sunlit creamy room
she watches white towels
crisp on the line.
She is papery frail,
loose skin holding her in,
cold shivers through her clothes.
I blink away my concern
and guide her trembling muscles to a chair.
A halo surrounds her
of sepia moments
that will last forever.

Untitled (9/11)

Shattered remnants
of people
fall from the sky
and I leave Mum in tears to
watch the horror and lies.
That was the day I realised
true empathy
and the man whose hand I held
didn’t really love me.
I cried for those broken families and
the children on the streets,
two opposing countries
feeding their followers sweets.
The hypocrisy and delusion
has broken up our world,
I’ll never return to innocence
those feelings forever unfurled.

Kitchen

An open book
pages turned by an invisible hand
the only movement in the room
I am still.
Clear liquid stands cold and
silver sparkling drops from the tap
diamond the sun.
I blink
and there’s a tear on my cheek
and a spider on the blind
delicate
almost transparent
and my tear lands on the floor at my feet,
a little pool that reflects.

Volume of silence
bulges at the sides
seeps through the walls to be caught by the wind,
erases those thoughts that haunt the room.
I heave them in.
I can see our family’s photograph
heavily framed.
Glare and sneer
I do.

Calais, or ‘Ou es le rue a Paris?’

We crossed all England in a day
Hitchin lifts along the way.
On arrival at the docks in France
We knew we didn’t have a chance.
‘Gettin to Paris is gonna be easy
With only twenty quid, believe me!’
The trucks ain’t movin and neither are we,
We’re stuck in this dive next to the sea.
For fuck’s sake, it’s for charity!
Look at my t-shirt, drivers- look at me!
We’re desperate to get to the Eiffel Tower
But really us English don’t have the power.
The French wave their arms and shrug their shoulders-
They don’t give a shit and nobody told us!
Our cardboard signs are getting droopy,
I’m so damn tired I’m goin loopy,
Find me some beer and a place to sleep,
At least this trip has been pretty cheap.
Be thankful for mercies, however small.
Now there’s the problem, convincing us all
To keep thinking positive and not give in,
Persuade each other that we could still win.
But we know that’s crap as we sit in the cold,
Something we’ll laugh at (a lot) when we’re old.
I’m sick of the sight of Calais, my friend-
Only Scott Adams knows when this will end.
Face it guys, we’re staying here.
Don’t all rush at once to cheer.
We left our luck in the back of a truck,
And frankly now I don’t give a fuck.

Breakfast

Gritty spit and gravelly smile
his unravelling lips
shiver me.
Dusty thick fingers
from hands that tell me
to choke the protest in
my tight throat.
Tubular air escapes
soundless.
Tramp tramp
an army
my ear to the floor.
Fleshy linoleum cushions me,
I see a mud maze
fallen from his boots
casting shadows
parallel to my own.
He hollows out my mouth
he digs, he digs
my filthy skin.
Socks slip, I bang my ankle
and break a nail
and there’s blood on his hands
like jam.