Surge Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  INTRODUCTION

  Why Surge? by Michael O’Brien

  Brick by Frank McGuinness

  SURGE

  Birthday Boys by Fergus Cronin

  Undocumented by Mary Morrissy

  Goldfinch in the Snow by Éilís Ní Dhuibhne

  No One Knows Us Here by Claire Simpson

  Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness by Darran McCann

  Charcoal and Lemongrass by Ruth Quinlan

  Country Feedback by Mike McCormack

  Celestial Orbit by Bridget Sprouls

  Yehudit by Paula McGrath

  Paprika by Frank McGuinness

  The Letter by Colin Corrigan

  Quality Time by Madeleine D’Arcy

  The Late Bite by Gina Moxley

  Heroes by Sheila Llewellyn

  The Gravedigger by Helena Kilty

  The Healer by Derek Flynn

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

  INDEX OF AUTHORS BY UNIVERSITY

  Copyright

  Why Surge?

  Michael O’Brien

  My father, who founded The O’Brien Press with me forty years ago, also helped to found the New Theatre Group, in 1937. A radical theatre, it played in Dublin’s Peacock and other small theatres. The NTG’s magazine was Surge, and it published new fiction, poems, novel extracts, short stories and political and dramatic commentary and review.

  In March 1943, my father wrote in Surge about the ideals of the NTG’s founders and its future: ‘There was an extraordinary spirit, a creative will-to-do … Its purpose was to give to its socialist progressive audience plays that no other Irish theatre dared produce … to play a serious role in the dramatic role of the nation.’ He continued: ‘It must find its own national playwrights and it must produce their plays in a theatre which is capable of paying royalties and wages.’ A similar spirit has surrounded The O’Brien Press since it published its first books in November 1974.

  The idea of a short story collection showcasing the best emerging Irish talent was first raised at a board meeting of the Dublin Book Festival. Ireland has a great tradition for the short story, which flourished in the 1940s and 50s when The Bell magazine, edited by Sean O’Faoláin, Peadar O’Donnell and Anthony Cronin, discovered and published the creative talent of the era. As part of our Brandon Fiction programme, O’Brien Press wished to bring together new talent from all parts of modern Ireland, and found inspiration in the current work of the creative writing schools in the four green fields of our major universities. For the collection, we decided not to separate the authors into their individual colleges, nor to arrange them by alphabetical order of surname. By what logic or theme are the stories arranged? That is for the reader to work out.

  It’s a joy to work with so many creative and inspiring people in the five universities: National University of Ireland, Galway (Adrian Frazier, John Kenny, Mike McCormack, Lionel Pilkington, Julia Kilroy); Queen’s University Belfast (Glenn Patterson, Darran McCann, Garrett Carr, Ciaran Carson); Trinity College Dublin (Gerald Dawe, Deirdre Madden, Gina Moxley); University College Cork (Mary Morrissy, Claire Connolly, Eibhear Walshe); and University College Dublin (Frank McGuinness, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, James Ryan). There is a real feeling of partnership in the writing, making and promoting of Surge. So thank you, writers, students, leaders and teachers, with a special thanks to Frank McGuinness for his fine introduction and for inspiring support for Surge, Brandon and The O’Brien Press - a true friend.

  Thanks also to our wonderful staff, authors, artists, industry colleagues, the Arts Council and Northern Ireland Arts Council, Dublin Book Festival, Patrick Sutton and Smock Alley Theatre, media, readers and all who helped with this unique project.

  Launching Surge in November 2014 at Dublin Book Festival in Smock Alley Theatre marks forty years of O’Brien and the 100th anniversary of my father, Tom O’Brien’s, birth. I’m proud to hand on the Surge title to a new generation of creative writers, and I hope it truly carries forward the best of what we have achieved over forty years.

  Brick

  Frank McGuinness

  I know a woman who flung a brick through her partner’s window. When confronted why, she explained she wanted to make sure they would answer the door – there were times you had to do more than knock. I find that incident an inspiration. While the most adroit of writers in this genre can achieve effects of breathtaking subtlety, I’d still maintain in every successful short story you can find, among delicate shards of glass, that solid brick, threatening, wonderful, ready to propel itself, if necessary, into one’s imagination, doing damage, external and internal, and, unlike most novels, not remotely bothered to care what consequent healing may be necessary. There is then a ruthlessness about the form, and its style is a matter of how that ruthlessness disguises itself.

  The stories in this collection come from students in creative-writing courses at master’s level in Queen’s University Belfast; Trinity College, Dublin; University College Cork; National University of Ireland, Galway; and University College Dublin. Two students from each institution have submitted work, as has a mentor of their writing. I am not going to spoil any shocks or spike any guns loaded within by detailing plots or revealing characters that populate these pages, but I will say if this assembly proves anything, it is that, even on the most cursory of readings, there is evidence of a remarkable complexity and sophistication of voices and visions emerging out of our colleges. Each story surprises by reason of its difference from what proceeds and precedes it in the order of the book. Taken together, these fictions entertain like the best of conversations, each woman and man holding their own corner, saying what it is they have to say, and not one outstaying their welcome. They know by instinct how to keep their counsel, most tantalisingly and most beguilingly when they really should not do so, leaving the reader’s tongue hanging out for more, and, with genuinely Irish hospitality, not obliging.

  There is nothing worse than a story overstuffing itself. No fear of that here. This is writing that marks austere times by its economy, and so it proves itself to be all the more genuinely sympathetic to those afflicted by the history, past, present and to come, of that financial deluge. Every single piece of fiction here in its diverse way stands as a metaphor of the profound change, the seismic change, our culture has undergone these past years. Wounds, visible and invisible, are detected; their trauma is the touch from which there is no recovery. In the best possible sense, this is art of its time.

  And the old school out there will surely be delighted that these folk provide sound moral guidance to all aspiring writers. What is this moral? Find your brick, smash a window, leg it. The window should, of course, be your own, so return to collect and do what you must with its pieces.

  Birthday Boys

  Fergus Cronin

  The two dogs stop their yapping and look over at me from the shed across the yard. Baleful. They won’t come across in this rain. Are they wondering how I’ll open this door? No latch, just a bit of rope. Typical. Hit it with the shoulder anyway. Gust blows me in. Feckin rain follows me in too. Shut it out with a slam of the arse. Throw on a light. No sign of the quare lad, or that other hobo. Table in disarray, embers smouldering, kettle as black as Nigeria. Sootwebs for decoration on the mantel. Two black cats on a dirty old mat … only see their yellow eyes. The old farmhouse has three rooms. This middle room is where everything happens. Has done for one, two hundred years. See the crib is in place, on top of the old food safe. Normal so.

  Shake out the hair.

  ‘I’d say you didn’t trim it since.’

  ‘You fecker … I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Happy Christmas so, little brother.’

  ‘Ah yeh, the same to yourself. Jeez, Nog, what’s that you have
?’

  I’ve called him Nog since I was a child and couldn’t get my tongue around his full Christian. Saved him from an eternal Nollaig. He has come from the dark cave that is his bedroom, holding some class of a coloured paper decoration which he goes to pin up over the hearth.

  ‘Ah for feck’s sake look at your own. Is it dreads you have it in or is it just more soot?’

  A white gap opens in his gaunt bristly face and he makes the silent laugh with his great bulgy eyes. His long dreadlocks are gathered in at the neck and slung inside a grimy collar.

  ‘My sootlocks. Hah. Did you throw your head into Little Andy’s? Any sign of the other honch? On the road?’

  ‘Nah, I walked straight up from the bus. Terrible crossing earlier. Set off the alarm at security. Is he about?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him, but I hear he’s around okay. Stoppin over at Delia’s, I’m told. Last couple of nights.’

  Typical JJ. He’s the middle brother. Have to smile.

  ‘He’ll have had the Beatle boots off so. And polished?’

  ‘Did you notice a black one out on the acre? I can’t see her in the back field and I was waiting for it to stop peltin. She’d be heavy.’

  ‘Can’t say I did.’

  ‘It’s comin in hard all right. You came up with it against you. She’d be stupid enough to turn into it too. Go on up, into it.’

  ‘I can’t say I’d any choice in the matter and there isn’t a leaf on a tree.’

  ‘Don’t be touchy. I was sayin that she’s stupid. I’ll get her when it stops.’

  ‘I’d say it’s down for the evening. You still keeping them on so?’

  ‘Ah, a couple, for the, you know, grant or whatever. The payment yoke from Europe. Know the feck. Reps. Europe be the feck.’

  Nog had got the bit of land after the father had shagged off. Then he had stayed on with Mama, until she went. We brought her ashes home ten years ago tomorrow, on Christmas Day.

  My oldest brother is a peculiar man; like the rest of us I suppose. He spends half his time gadding about the country – after theatre and art, the heck. The rest he stays here, and I suppose keeps it up. The other lad wanders about in some other direction picking up a gig here and there. JJ was in bands – showbands, rock bands – so he has his circuit. Me? In a peculiar way, I’m probably the most settled. I’ve lived in London for, oh, over forty years now. Started life as a class of a hippy, then tried the political stuff: you know, the revolution – where did that feck off to? Sure I got pissed off with it anyway, with Thatcher you know, so I became a punk. Feck me. Then I retired and got a job in the Council and settled down to a sweet life of work, blues, ganja and healthy food, all by my lonesome. Oh, and grew the hair again. We all do now. It’s something for Mama. Swore one Christmas we’d never cut it again, none of us. Mama loved that. Her three hairy crows. Feck the rest of them.

  Growing up in our house we all read our share. Mama’s people were townies, teachers and the like, so she came stocked. The father read his own stuff: the Irish Press, Reader’s Digest. Mama swore that she got him to read Turgenev. Maybe that’s why he fecked off. Nog can’t remember that, but then there is a lot to forget too. Every year I bring them a book each – slim, so as not to burden them in their travels. Poetry is ideal. In fairness, you would hardly think of either of them that way – if you didn’t know them that is. They are both big, strong, wild-looking men. Yeh, but how shall I put it … they have their sensitive side. JJ might draw a clout now and again – well able to – but we are all of us passive men beneath. Myself, I am of a weaker construction, being short and slight, but I have been described as wiry, and that gets me by.

  ‘You’ll like that, I think. She’s the Poet Laureate now. It’s a good one to carry around.’

  ‘Thanks, brother. That’s brillant. Here, did I tell you about that feckin Beckett play I saw up in Dublin?’

  The table is cleared back a little and tea and a couple of egg sandwiches are set up. Nog is splayed on the chair with no back, having left the one with the back to me, his gesture to my weaker frame. When JJ joins us he can use the crate.

  ‘It was that one with the pair in the dustbins. The Endgame. What? Jaze, I’ll tell you, it was brillant! Brillant altogether. And a laugh. Oh, a feckin great laugh. Did you ever come over it? You should. I was up for a week in the hostel, there in Amiens Street. A great breakfast. I went across to that art gallery. Saw that painter buck O’Donoghue’s pictures on the Way of the Cross. Brillant.’

  ‘I see you have the crib up.’

  ‘I do. Tradition. Hah?’

  ‘Tradition. Yeh, I suppose. We’ll all go up to the graveyard tomorrow as per usual? Are you ready this year? Any news on a headstone?’

  ‘Nah. Didn’t get back to your man. Still, he has the piece of marble got. From feckin China no less. What the feck. Hey.’

  ‘Hey, what?’

  ‘Hey, look what the wind blew in now. Howya buck? I was just sayin to me other buck here that the feckin marble comes in from China now.’

  ‘What feckin marble?’

  ‘For the grave above.’

  ‘Sure there’s no one up there.’

  JJ’s giving it the usual rattle. He is looking good. Great man for the suit. This time a pinstripe no less. No way am I sure about the plum shirt though. Looks like something from one of his showbands. Sure, probably is. His hair down over his shoulders in a soaked black sheen. How does he keep the colour I wonder? Although, in fairness now, he could be a man for the dye. And sure Nog the same, but he’s definitely not a man for the dye. Mine all gone grey and these two bucks, ten, and what, twelve years older, and all black. I look at the kettle. Yeh, it must be from me living in the city. JJ throws down an old saxophone case and goes over to the fireplace where Nog has got a blaze lit.

  ‘Good to see the old crib out. Tradition.’

  ‘Yeh, me and Nog were just saying about going up to the grave tomorrow.’

  ‘Like I was saying: there’s no one up there.’

  In fairness he was right. Mama’s ashes haven’t been taken up yet. Her own folk didn’t want her back, so where else is there to put her? Sure what the feck else would we be talking about doing on Christmas Day anyway. I look to see what Nog will say. He’s holding back, looking at his poetry book, shaping to ignore the trend that is coming about. JJ is looking into the fireplace and saying it – the thing he always brings out.

  ‘So I’ll say it again. Isn’t it way past time we brought up them ol’ ashes and buried, or scattered, or whatever you’re supposed to do with ’em? Nog? We say this every year, and there’s always some ol’ reason. Didn’t you say last year that you’d be ready? That you’d have the headstone and some ol’ prayer or a poem or something sorted for this year?’

  I have to agree with JJ. He’s turned now from the fire, and I can see into his big smoky eyes and the look is determined. There’ll be no dodging this bullet, I’m thinking. No, not this year. The both of us are now looking over at Nog, who looks up, after a steady little wait. There we are: the three shaggy heads all looking at each other. Three shaggy feckers under a tin lid that keeps us dry. Then Nog looks over at the crib.

  ‘All right. We’ll do it so.’

  Christmas morning, and the yard is flooded, but the rain has stopped and the day is cold and bright. The watery light in the room is coming in over the books that are packed in the deep sill of the back window. Nog comes in, all business, in his wellingtons, with the tops rolled down. Funny I think; he’s like Noah, with his pairs of dogs, cows, cats … and brothers. He is in and out doing fiddly bits and pieces all morning, and we chat away between mouthfuls of breakfast.

  A half dozen fried eggs have been polished off, and a whiff of burning turf and grease hangs in the air by the time JJ surfaces after twelve. His suit is all crumpled. There isn’t a whole lot of talk out of him. He goes straight over to the crib and looks in at it for a while. It’s a simple affair, made up of a cardboard box on its side and covered in
a kind of black crinkly paper. The opening like the mouth of hell itself with a fairy light giving off a red glow from inside. I expect to hear water dripping. Well, there was always a drip from somewhere. ‘Hey, did you fix all them leaks or what?’

  The crib has never changed, not since I can remember. Like the house – other than the thatch is off now. The tin up and the new toilet tacked on to the back wall. I look into the maw of the crib. There’s the baby, a baby king with his crown and his other king things; the world and the wand yoke held splayed out, his little legs crossed. A snatch of straw, kept from the old roof, makes up the little manger for the baby to lie in.

  That Christmas we brought the ashes home, we divided them up in three. We’d each of us had the fill of one of Nog’s Old Holborn tins. The idea, I suppose, was that we’d each of us have our own, well, piece of Mama, to keep in comfort … our own way. Whatever about anyone else’s, it was always understood that the home ashes, Nog’s, would be properly buried or whatever, in case anyone was ever coming back – say after we’d all be gone – you know, to pray or whatever. Visit. The other two-thirds of Mama could wander around with JJ and myself, as I said, for comfort. Nog kept dragging his heels on it, but sure something would have to give; we needed to put some of Mama to rest. Anyway, that was the sum of it.

  My own tin was always sitting there, on a table or a shelf, wherever I fetched up. Well, actually, I had moved them for a while to a wooden box that Sha, fuck, had given me. It came from India I think. I used to keep my dope in it … then my mama. For a while I had a little, like, holy cloth over it and would often uncover it and light a candle and a few joss sticks and play ‘My Sweet Lord’, that George Harrison song. A little ceremony. Out of it. Oh yeh, tears. Back safe in the tin now though.

  Don’t know what’s the story with JJ’s. Things have a habit of detaching themselves from that man. Like he leaves things in places. Doesn’t really lose stuff, just moves on without it. And then, usually, the stuff catches up, somehow. Used to keep the tin in that old sax case. That’s always somewhere he can get at it, has to be if he gets a gig. Has it with him now. Wonder if the tin’s still in it? Of course he might have tried to shove them up his nose too. He’ll play something if we ever get graveside. Remember him blowing that thing when he was a kid. Fourteen, fifteen, whatever. I must have been five or six. Loved the sound. Blues. Mama got him those American records in Cork. The father used to say he’d be better off with the cattle in the house. Maybe that’s what drove the old man away. Left when I was ten. One day he was just … not there. I can only remember Mama hugging me and she not crying at all. No tears, just a surge of energy in the house. Nog was around but seemed to be out always, away in a far field. He never spoke about it then, or now. JJ was already gone with the bands.