Quartier Perdu , livre ebook

Comma Press - Sean O'Brien

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

114 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Sean O'Brien's stories are all lit with the unmistakable hue of the Victorian gothic: from the rantings of a deranged psychiatric patient, to the apparition of demons swarming into a remote, rural railway station; solemn oaths are broken and need atoning for; minor transgressions are met with outlandish curses. Often we join O'Brien's protagonists attempting to take time out from their troubles, but removing themselves from their normal lives only lets the supernatural in, and before they know it personal demons find very literal ones to conspire with.

Sujets

Short story

Informations

Publié par	Comma Press
Date de parution	07 juin 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912697038
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0274€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Also by the same author
THE SILENCE ROOM

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Comma Press.
www.commapress.co.uk

Copyright © remains with Sean O’Brien and Comma Press, 2018
All rights reserved.

The moral rights of Sean O’Brien to be identified as the author of this Work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Many of the stories in this collection were written to be read at Phantoms
at the Phil, an event held at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical
Society Library at Christmas and Midsummer.

‘Change for Low Rixham’ was first published as chapbook by Enchiridion (2011).
‘Certain Measures’ appeared in Beta Life: Stories from an A-Life Future, ed. Ra Page and Martyn Amos (Comma Press, 2014). ‘Ex Libris’ appeared in Lemistry: A Celebration of the Work of Stanislaw Lem, ed. Ra Page (Comma Press, 2011). ‘Lovely’ appeared in the Newcastle Journal and in Platform. ‘Quartier Perdu’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. ‘Story Time’ appeared in Bio-Punk: Stories from the Far Side of Research, ed. Ra Page (Comma Press, 2014). ‘Swan, 1914’ appeared in Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science, ed. Ra Page (Comma Press, 2011).

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-10 1905583702
ISBN-13 978-1905583706

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England
For Peter Bennet
Contents

I

During an Air-Raid
The Sea-God
To See How Far It Is
The Good Stuff
Verney’s Pit
Change for Low Rixham

II

What She Wanted
Ex Libris
Story Time
Swan, 1914
Certain Measures
Lovely

III

Quartier Perdu
Keeping Count
A Cold Spot
Revenant
A Green Shade
The Aspen Grove
About the Author
I
During an Air-Raid
Vicky found herself standing up, peering into her handbag, then closing it again. She paused for a second so that Ray would notice and break off his conversation with Susie, but it was Susie who saw and shifted her gaze to make him look up. It was obvious now.
‘I think I’d better go,’ Vicky said.
‘Well, let’s just finish our drinks,’ said Ray. He smiled at her tolerantly and lit a cigarette. Susie busied herself with her compact while looking over it at each of them in turn, awaiting developments. The pub had grown quiet, as if interested in the small, squalid crisis as a relief from the larger processes of the war they seemed to be losing.
‘I’ve already finished,’ Vicky said. The noise surged back. Ray smiled and spread his arms to encompass both the young women.
‘Well, let’s get another and after that we can all go.’
‘No, really. I’ll leave the pair of you to it. It was very noisy in the shelter last night and I’ve got a headache and I need some sleep. Busy day in the studio tomorrow.’ Why was she justifying herself? Ray moved his head from side to side, consideringly, amused. I just work there, turning the knobs, he had said. She used to think he was joking. Same as you, typing scripts. It’s nothing to us, really, when you think about it. She couldn’t agree. She had thought that with luck she could make him more serious. Susie, of course, presented no such obstacles. Her smug prettiness was all that was the case with her.
‘Well, if that’s what you want, I suppose you’d best get off then,’ said Ray. We’ll... we’ll... I’ll... see you tomorrow.’
‘I dare say.’
‘Goodnight, then, Vicky,’ Susie said with a precise, formal smile that accentuated the voracious size of her mouth. She looked like a stranger now. Her lipstick seemed almost black in the muddy light of the bar. Something had been settled. It was as if Susie was already sitting in some other place, a kind of future, confident that soon the desired visitor would arrive and stay, and the redundant one would be gone.
‘I’ll try to telephone you,’ said Ray. But why would he wish to do so in the middle of the night? Surely he would be sleeping, or occupied?
‘Take care,’ said Vicky. The noise of the room thickened as she pushed through a crowd of soldiers and their girls.
The street was a sudden silence. It was long dark now. The air held an autumn chill. Searchlights quartered the heavens patiently. Perhaps nothing would come tonight. Vicky realised that in her fury of suspicion she had not thought to note the route they’d taken from Broadcasting House. Surely , she told herself now, you must have expected to go home alone? Ray had a nose for beer and was prepared to walk distances far beyond Fitzrovia to track it down. There were no landmarks in view here among these nondescript nineteenth-century terraces. A taxi might appear, but she would not waste money on it. She set off, hoping to find a main road and a bus.
Street followed blacked-out street, shuttered shops, law offices, garages, builders’ yards. The district, anonymous and wholly unfamiliar, seemed deserted, as if everyone had secretly slipped away, revealing a private silence that had always been there. Keep going, Vicky told herself. Something will turn up. And don’t think about the pair of them. There was no point in wondering where the attraction lay: it existed, that was all, and the pair had acted on it, and now she was an embarrassment, a joke almost, rather than the injured party she surely deserved to be. But it was not to be dwelt on, whatever it was Susie could do for Ray that she could not.
When the sirens began she quickened her pace past a little park, past the ruins of a bombed church and its tumbled graveyard which lay next to a secondary school. Beyond that the streets grew somehow barer, more formal, as if their medium was thinning out. There were taller buildings here, Victorian office premises, shuttered and comfortless charitable institutions, the non-committal shop-fronts of dealers in obscure products, and still there was no one else about. She should have stayed at the pub and put up with them. And been humiliated at greater length now the truth had been revealed and she had caught them in a lie which neither of them seemed to have spotted or to care about. They must think her as foolish as themselves. But at least Ray would have known the way back. The click of her heels on the pavement was lonely now.
As she crossed another anonymous junction she heard the thrumming of the bombers approaching up the river. But in the narrow canyon of the streets she could not make out where the river itself lay. Then, sooner than she had expected, there was the sound of an explosion. No sooner had it damped down than there came another and then another, steadily, as though leisurely laying down a path of fire and death across the capital. She froze for a moment and looked up. The searchlight beams moved frantically among the broken cloud, unable to settle on a target for the ack-ack gunners in the parks. She shook her head and went on.
More explosions, still falling in a regular pattern, now four or five seconds apart, and every time nearer. The bombers must be almost overhead. There was a huge blast on the far side of the crossroads, and a warm gust blew against the back of her legs. She looked over her shoulder. The whole street-end was ablaze with blinding phosphorescence. A high wall collapsed in a wave of brick and glass. The familiar smell of ash and sewage followed, but no ambulance sirens or fire-bells approached. The street seemed stunned in the brief aftermath.
Another bomb fell, much closer, enveloping her in its hot breath. The next one would kill her. There was no way off the street, no shelter, barely a doorway. She took off her shoes and began to run, hopelessly, choking in the dust-cloud. Wait, wait, she thought. Not yet. Please. I’m not finished. Then, to her right, a sign for the Underground appeared. The mesh shutters were half-down, as if abandoned. She ran bent double through the gap into the booking hall and as she did so, the bomb-blast picked her up and threw her across the concourse and against a wall.

*

She could not tell how long she’d been unconscious. The pressure wave had stopped her watch. It should have killed her, she thought. You read about people found sitting around the dinner-table, intact but stone dead, their food untouched, entombed like impoverished Pharaohs with their meagre grave-goods. She lay for a minute, still dazed, looking abstractedly across the concourse at the street. In the station entrance stood a wall of gold-white flame – breathing, flexing, stretching, as if gathering itself, while black cross-hatchings of smoke and ash ran in waves across its supple skin.
It was, she thought, as if the fire was about to become . It was entirely silent in the station, a kind of roaring silence in which it seemed the flames stood and looked tigerishly at her. She knew she must get up and get away, but she was half-stunned, concussed, moving with underwater slowness. She pulled herself upright, shaking her head, her hair full of chalky dust and smuts, her suit grey-white with ash, her stockings – a gift from Ray – torn to ribbons, her handbag still somehow over her shoulder, her shoes nowhere to be found.
The heat was intensifying: at any moment the fire would come inside to claim her. She found her way to the top to the escalators. The unmoving wooden treads seemed to plunge off into the dark after a few steps. Not that way. There needed to be a barrier she could close behind her. Beside the escalator was the entrance to the emergency staircase. She opened the heavy iron door: inside lay a descending stone spiral and more darkness. She stepped through and let the door grind shut, took a matchbox from her bag and struck a light. As it flared, her shadow ran away before her down the dim curve. There was an immense thud behind her, as if a great beast had hurled itself at the other side of the iron door. The match-flame shivered and died. She began to make her way down, with one hand on the rail and the other held out before her as if bearing an invisible and sigh