Winter Tales Read online

  Kenneth Steven lives on an island off the west coast of Scotland. He is a poet, children’s author, novelist and translator: some thirty of his books have been published to date. He travels widely to undertake readings and give lectures and creative writing workshops, and he has made many programmes for BBC Radio. Much of his writing is available on Kindle.

 

  First published in Great Britain in 2017

  Marylebone House

  36 Causton Street

  London SW1P 4ST

  www.marylebonehousebooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Kenneth Steven 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978–1–910674–50–5

  eBook ISBN 978–1–910674–51–2

  Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company

  Manufacture managed by Jellyfish

  First printed in Great Britain by CPI

  Subsequently digitally printed in Great Britain

  eBook by Manila Typesetting Company

  Produced on paper from sustainable forests

  This book is for my mother,

  to thank her for the inspiration of stories

  through all the years of my childhood

  Contents

  Preface

  Cullen Skink

  Elmeness

  The Skylarks and the Horses

  Lemon Ice Cream

  The Song of a Robin

  The Listener

  A Christmas Child

  Out

  The Gift

  The Healing

  The Miracle

  The Ice

  Preface

  For a long time I feared that short stories would remain always beyond my pen. I loved them: I read the work of Katherine Mansfield and all the Russian greats; I discovered the stories of American authors like Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald. I fell in love with stories like ‘Ethan Frome’. But still I didn’t seem to be able to create my own.

  The short story has been described as a little novel. It is a window; a tiny moment that is sufficient to open the senses and the heart of the reader to what might become a whole world. It is no more than a look into a secret garden, but sufficient to convey the scent and wonder of it before the door is closed once more.

  I think that what finally helped me write my own stories was the translating of them from Norwegian. Some years ago I had the honour of bringing the Nordic Prize-winning novel The Half Brother to English. But the author, Lars Saabye Christensen, is in my opinion first and foremost a writer of exquisite short stories. It was these I wanted to translate more than anything – and I did, without ever finding a publisher willing to bring out a collection.

  The paradox is that the translator often works with the text of a short story or novel more intensely than the author. I lived with those stories for days as I worked on them, sentence by sentence. I have always felt that this process helped me understand the short story in a way I simply had not done before.

  But there are still days I despair and fear another story will not happen again. I am only thankful for the ones that have poured from the pen, and those contained in this selection represent the ones that have truly won their spurs.

  A good number have been read on BBC Radio 4; several have been published at home and others abroad. ‘The Ice’ was nominated for a Pushcart, having appeared in an American journal; ‘The Listener’ was runner-up for the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize.

  Often the stories seemed to appear from nowhere and write themselves on the page in my tiny cabin in Highland Perthshire, where nothing disturbed them until they were done. My thanks to all those who read those first drafts, and offered wise advice on their completion.

  Cullen Skink

  It was a day in November such as only the north-east corner of Scotland can endure. The wind came in what he called tufts, chasing smoke from roof stacks and sending gulls at angles into driving mist. The sea was a living cauldron; from where he stood above the town he could see no boat pitching and diving through the waves. And what man would want to be out there, yet generation after generation of his family had sent their sons to pull a living from the deep. How many lay at the bottom of that endless heaving of water they called the Widowmaker? Had he not been a fisherman himself for nigh-on twenty years?

  Peter Jonah Mackie turned back up the road. He didn’t want to think about the sea; too much of his life was lost to it already. As he raised his head to keep walking the steep road, his eyes met the steeples of no less than six churches. They were a God-fearing folk in the town of Cowie, and up and down the coast it was little different. When your lives hung by a thread, there was nothing for it but to pray the boats would make it back through the storms another year.

  *

  Jonah had been his grandfather’s middle name before him. As a boy he’d carried the name with pride. When the minister spoke of Jonah and the three days and nights he’d spent in the belly of the whale, his cheeks had burned. He’d imagined Jonah lighting a fire inside the whale, and the great fish in agony beaching on a rocky islet so Jonah could walk ashore.

  He’d always imagined that on the headland called Spurn Point. A place of criss-crossing tides, made of nothing but granite stacks and boulders. You could see no dwelling from deep down in the hollow of Spurn Point; Cowie was swallowed by the cliffs. It felt as old as time, and it was here he’d wandered alone as a child. East of here nothing but what his grandfather called the grey wolf of the North Sea, and beyond – Norway.

  How could it have been that twenty-four and a half years later he’d return here, just after dawn, to find the body of his only son washed in after three days missing at sea? The Mary Jane lost in the worst winter storm, and his son’s wife at home in Cowie, six months pregnant with their first child. How do you begin again after that? What do you say that fails to sound wooden and hollow and barren?

  ‘I’m home, Calum,’ he said softly, closing the front door, and the boy who was his grandson came charging into his arms so lemons and onions and salt went rolling over the floor from his bag. How do you begin again and what do you say?

  *

  The boy’s mother had had to get a job at once; there was no time to grieve. She studied at night in the room that had been her husband’s workshop. While Calum Iain Mackie slept, knowing nothing of the world he had come to, having chosen not a shred of the story that was his. It was a strange net that had brought him up to the grey streets of Cowie.

  His mother was out teaching now; Peter had two hours with his grandson. They played well together; he got down on his hands and knees to be lions and tigers – raced along the corridor on all fours until Calum rolled about laughing. Peter laughed too, though there was something like glass inside; he laughed as he tickled the boy yet still it hurt. But by the time Ailsa had returned from school they’d be sitting on the sofa together, Peter reading and Calum perched beside him.

  Today wind and weather chased about Cowie; a day for being cosy and forgetting. For a time at least, before the real world and its sadness came blowing back through the front door.

  ‘You’re going to sit up here and help me, Calum.’ He hoisted the bo
y onto the work surface beside the stove, then remembered his grandson wasn’t ready.

  *

  ‘This is for you,’ Peter told him, putting on the play apron with blue and white checks Ailsa had found for him in Aberdeen. At that moment, all that interested Calum were the contents of a jar of raspberry jam; he was concentrating on digging out the last little bit and lifting it to a sticky mouth. But Peter took the jar from the starfish hands and the blue eyes watched him now, little feet jigging over the side of the work surface.

  ‘We are going to make the best soup in the world, Calum Iain Mackie! And you are going to help me!’

  The small head nodded contentedly as a gull blew past them over the next garden, and the telegraph wires whirled like skipping ropes.

  ‘We’ll need a lot of tatties! And your mother dug these from the garden only yesterday.’

  He held up a bucket of potatoes for Calum’s inspection – peeled and ready. Carefully they rumbled into a pan of bubbling water. Calum searched for a last piece of jam at the end of one finger.

  ‘Now, this is the bit you’re going to help me with. Watch carefully. I’m going to start with the smoked haddock.’

  He waved strips of fish under the boy’s button nose that wrinkled as the scent rose. Calum did nothing but watch as the strips were cut into tiny yellow cubes.

  ‘Wait until you smell this, my wee fighter!’ Peter exclaimed, eyes sparkling. He poked Calum’s tummy.

  ‘We need plenty of the best butter, and we melt it till there’s nothing but runny gold in the pan. What I want is the pan to be hot, but not so hot the fish burns. That would be bad, bad as you losing a marble under the sofa you never found again! So you just put in the bits of fish – gentle, gentle. See how they’re yellow to begin with? They must be white by the time they’re done, and break into pieces with the wooden spoon.’

  ‘When will it be ready?’ Calum asked, and looked up from under his white-gold curls. His dad had been just as fair when he was five years old. But his hair was the colour of winter beech leaves by the time he left school. By the time he’d told them he wasn’t going to Aberdeen to study; he was going to fish out of Cowie and was saving to buy a boat called the Mary Jane. Peter swam back into the kitchen and the moment; heard the echo of his grandson’s words.

  ‘It will take exactly long enough,’ he answered. ‘The best cooks can’t tell you how long things take to make, Calum,’ he went on as the tiny fragments of fish squeaked and squealed in the pan. Gently he moved them to one side and then the other with the wooden spatula.

  ‘They take as long as they need. Sometimes they need longer and sometimes they’re finished before you know it.’

  *

  A bit like life, he wanted to say. A bit like this strange journey we’re on called life, where everything you plan can change in the blink of an eye, and the only real certainty is what happens at the end. And I wish I could preserve you from all of it, but I can’t. I wish I could take your hand and tell you there was an easier way, because I love you with all my heart and I want to keep you from the rocks. If there’s anything I want, it’s to keep you from the rocks.

  ‘Now,’ he said instead, ‘what we need next is a tiny bit of onion. Not enough to ruin the taste of the fish, because that would be awful! Just this much, Calum – enough and no more. Will you come down and help me, because you can’t where you are! You’re up somewhere about Ben Nevis, and that’s no good when you’re helping make the best soup in the world. Wait till I find you the stool.’

  Carefully he lifted the boy so his little feet stood sure and safe on the wooden stool that had belonged to his mother, and maybe to hers. It was scuffed and scarred so it was worthless, yet he’d fight the man who tried to take it from him. It was price­less, and somehow inside was all the labour of the mothers that had gone before. He kept it in honour of them.

  ‘Hold the wooden handle tight as you can, and stir the onion and the fish together. That’s it! I’ll put my hand over yours and we’ll do the rest together. Don’t stop! A bit more and it’ll all be melted and ready! Well done!’

  He ruffled the corn-coloured curls and Calum looked up at him, gleaming.

  ‘But you’re not done! Oh no, the most important thing is still to come. This is from the recipe for Cullen Skink that goes back to the time before Mary Queen of Scots was thought of.’

  Peter held out in front of Calum a whole lemon and let it roll over his palm.

  ‘This is the secret,’ he whispered, ‘and you’re going to make the magic come true. Stay there and let Granddad do the difficult thing first. This is the dangerous knife, and you never do ­anything with that.’

  In a second he’d cleaved the lemon in two.

  ‘Right, time for the magic! Squeeze with all your might and the secret lemon will trickle through all that fish!’

  Calum ginned. His half of lemon was dented, but it needed a strong hand, and Peter’s came round his own so juice dribbled and ran. He said nothing as he concentrated and watched, and he thought of his son’s hands as they must have fought that night on the Mary Jane, and he felt the sting in his eyes. For a second he couldn’t see his own hand over Calum’s; they became one and flowed together, until he heard the boy’s delighted joy as the last of the juice ran out. Then they did the second one and by that time the storm in Peter had stilled and his heart had slowed. He could be himself, as though everything was all right and nothing was wrong inside. The way he had to be for this boy now, until he was old enough to understand.

  ‘No one else knows the secret,’ he said, bringing the boy down from the stool. ‘And it’s as old as the salt in the sea!’

  Calum’s eyes were dancing now. ‘What do we have to do next?’

  ‘There’s one amazingly important thing left,’ Peter told him. ‘No, that’s not true – there are two. But first we put the fish and the onion and the magic lemon in with the tatties, and you can stir it all like a witch would stir her magic broth!’

  Calum stirred as if life depended on it, held up in his grand­father’s quivering arms. Peter brought the boy back to the floor with gratitude. Ailsa wouldn’t have let him do that, he was sure. She guarded her boy like gold. But what could you say? Could you tell her she was doing Calum no favours? You had to watch and be patient. You had to remember and do nothing but love.

  ‘And the very last thing we do, my wee fighter! We take a whole carton of cream and slowly pour it in. We take the pot away from the heat to let it cool, and we put the lid on tight. Yes, you can do that – I’ll lift you up and you can make sure it’s tight. Oh, what is that mother of yours feeding you? I’ll soon not be able to lift you at all!’

  *

  Then they were done and the whole house smelled of lemon and fish and cream. Outside rain hurled itself against the glass, and the sea went wild. They sat together and read a story; Calum’s index finger following the words. Ailsa would soon be home and the three of them would have Cullen Skink. He cut big chunks of fresh bread and put a plate of them on the kitchen table. Suddenly he thought of something, a question he would dare to ask.

  ‘And what are you going to be when you grow up, Calum?’ He bent down close to the boy; felt the sharpness at the back of his eyes, his heart hammering his chest. He bit the edge of his lower lip.

  Calum’s eyes rippled with gold, and for a second – no more – a pale, damaged edge of sunlight broke from over the sea.

  ‘I’m going to be a cooker!’ Calum shouted, dancing in his apron, and they laughed and they laughed and they laughed.

  Elmeness

  It was always twenty past six when Annie woke. It was the robin outside her window, in the rowan tree. She knew he came to waken her and sometimes, when she opened one half of the curtain, she would see him there on one of the branches, before he flew away.

  It was Saturday this morning and there was nothing she needed to do. She didn’t hav
e to find kindling for Aunt Isobel’s fire, nor did she have to do homework because there was no homework to do. She felt that feeling of Saturday morning at twenty past six flow into her tummy like a kind of honey. She sat at the window for a moment, her elbows on the sill, and looked out over the whole of Elmeness. It wasn’t high summer any more; the year had started to crinkle. That was how her grandfather described it and she could hear how he said the words as he tapped out his pipe by the stove.

  The robin had gone from the rowan tree and she saw how the berries had turned orange; only a week or so ago they had been yellow. And she was sure there was something different about the sky, as if the light and the clouds had changed, though she didn’t quite know how. At that moment, the sun bloomed full through Elmeness and Annie thought how silly it was to be sitting there when she could be outside instead. And she was dressed sooner than it takes to riddle a chimney. That was something else her grandfather said, but even he didn’t seem terribly sure what it meant.

  She put on everything except her shoes. Aunt Isobel was almost certainly awake and reading some favourite book or other, but Annie wanted to think she might be asleep just the same. There was one particular stair she knew she had to avoid; if you stood on a certain part of it there was a noise like a tummy rumbling. She carried her shoes all the way downstairs, and once when she wanted to sneeze because of the dust, she pressed the forefinger of her right hand (the hand that was empty) under her nose so that the sneeze would go away. That was a trick her grandfather had taught her one day when she was feeling very sad; he said it was useful if you were borrowing biscuits from the tin at the time.

  *

  Outside was a thatch of birdsong. She clicked the door shut as if she did not want to disturb the world. It was like when the first snow came; she always walked along the stones at the edge of the drive, because the pure whiteness was too perfect to break. One day, when she had become an artist at eighteen, she would paint the scene so it was captured for ever. She would paint Elmeness so everyone would know how special it was, for Annie knew that it was really the centre of the world and always would be.