a sense of place: the nottingham writers' studio journal january 2015

Angela BartonRosemary Brierley

Tony ChallisSarah Dale

Helena DurhamLiz Hart

Pippa HennessyCaroline SalzedoFiona Theokritoff

Mike Wareham

a SenSe ofPlace

January 2015

This collection of work was published in 2015by Nottingham Writers’ Studio,

25 Hockley,Nottingham NG1 1FH

www.nottinghamwritersstudio.co.uk

Collection copyright Nottingham Writers’ StudioCopyright for individual articles rests with the authors

Nottingham Writers’ Studio gratefully acknowledgesfinancial support from Arts Council England

Printed in Great Britain by Russell Press, Nottingham

INTRoDuCTIoN ...................................................................................................................5

PIECING ToGETHER THE PAST Rosemary Brierley ...........................................................7

PoTBANk Liz Hart .........................................................................................................15

THREE LuNDy PoEMS Pippa Hennessy........................................................................24

I LovE THIS BoDy Caroline Salzedo............................................................................30

EvIDENCE oF EARTHquAkE Tony Challis ......................................................................33

DISSoCIATIoN Helena Durham....................................................................................34

DuSk IN AFGHANISTAN Angela Barton........................................................................36

THE DRovERS’ RoAD Mike Wareham..........................................................................38

WRABNESS Sarah Dale .................................................................................................40

RIvER SWIMMING AT SkENFRITH Fiona Theokritoff .....................................................43

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contentS

In fiction, places can too often be relegated to the background: setting,a mere backdrop. But location is far more influential than might firstappear. The setting of a scene can alter characters’ moods (a place withbad memories? or with cultural meaning?) and determine the course ofevents (can they be honest with each other in public? do they have tobe quiet?). It can also reveal character by shaping a character’s choices(are they safe at home? or on the run?). on an even deeper level, thesense of place that a writer evokes can add dimensions and meaning,summon moods and conjure up powerful imagery that exposes a story’sbeating heart.

The theme for this issue is “A Sense of Place”, and the selected piecesshow great skill in crafting settings that could never be called“backdrops”. From windswept coastlines that define a coming of age tosocially rigid workshops that recall a far-too-recently lost world, thesettings in these stories are vital players in their own right.

This issue’s theme was selected in honour of Nottingham Writers’Studio moving into its own dedicated premises. As the stories in thisvolume clearly demonstrate, place matters, and we very much hope thatour new home can inspire, welcome and draw together the communityof writers that we are so lucky to have.

The NWS Journal Editorial Team

5

IntroductIon

Mombasa: a city on an island, less than five miles square, cloaked withinthe east coast of kenya. on the north side, Tudor Creek, a shallowharbour where, for centuries, Arab dhows came to barter beads, woodenchests and cloth for ivory and rhino horn. on the south side, Port Reitz,the deep inland waterway where naval battleships, destroyers andtroopships sheltered at kilindini docks during World War II. Mombasa:only a name until a few years ago, somewhere I couldn’t have pinpointedon the map, a place I would never have visited if not for Aunt Flora.

Flora had a secret, one she’d kept for over sixty years. The familyknew that during World War II, she served in the Women’s Royal NavalService (Wrens) stationed in Mombasa and Ceylon, but she’d never spoketo anyone about her time there – until the last few years of her life. Whenshe died at the age of 92, she left me her diaries. I have pictures in myhead of the places she visited, but these are sketched from words. I needto go there and see for myself...

* * *our ship sets a course through a gap in the ridge of white water that marksthe coral reef protecting kenya’s east coast. We sail on between buoys,straight ahead towards the island of Mombasa. The low cliffs and thelighthouse loom closer, and at the last moment the ship turns hard to portand hugs the island so closely that we can see people playing golf on theheadland and almost feel the spray from waves crashing on the rocksbelow. Then we have entered the narrow approach to kilindini docks.

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PIecIng together the PaSt

Rosemary Brierley

NoTTINGHAM WRITERS’ STuDIo

8

The contour on the mainland side is natural and undulating, withpalm trees growing down to the water’s edge and waves lapping ontosandy beaches; on the island side, it is man-made with straight-sided,concrete quays, corrugated iron warehouses and rusty cranes. The bluewaters of Port Reitz stretch out before us. I try to imagine what it was likewhen the Wrens arrived on the 5th of April 1943: rows of dismal grey hulls,a forest of funnels, gun turrets and radio masts reaching up above thepalm trees.

From all accounts Mombasa is the last place anyone would wantto be stationed. We were taken in buses from the docks along avery uninteresting road to the WRNS Quarters and I must say myfirst impressions were not good... All around the camp was barbedwire... and guards at the gate.

Flora’s diaries make no mention of the work she did or where she lived:the Wrens had signed the official Secrets Act before they left Britain.However, she once let slip that they were billeted at Fort St Joseph.

“Fort St Joseph is in a restricted area. you cannot go there,” saysomar, the guide my husband and I have hired for the day.

Instead he takes us to a two-storey building with wooden wallsworn and bleached with age. He tells us that during British rule, it wasthe law courts. It appears to have changed little since then despite themodern sign outside that reads The Centre for Heritage Development inAfrica. Inside, it is dark and a fusty smell hangs in the air. No one is aroundso omar leads the way upstairs, turning to point out loose treads. At theend of the landing is a room where cobwebs hang from the ceiling androw upon row of hardback books line the walls. He explains to a womanin a sari that we are looking for information about Mombasa duringWorld War II; they both begin searching the shelves. I try to help butcannot as the gilt lettering on the spines is not English. I feel like anawkward supermarket customer demanding an out-of-stock item. Then

a man wearing a long, white kanzu comes in and speaks to omar, whoushers us back along the dusty landing and into a small room. Inside, awhite man sits at an antique desk with a laptop computer open in frontof him.

When omar speaks to him in Swahili, the man’s face glows withexcitement. He stands and, arms open wide, steps forward to greet us. Toour surprise, he says, “God has brought you to me,” in a German accent.

Hans, a marine archaeologist studying the coastline around Fort StJoseph, has become interested in its wartime coastal defences. He hasdiscovered that Navy personnel were once billeted there. I can hardlybelieve it: I am talking to someone who can confirm Flora’s account, hasa permit to enter this restricted area and offers to take us there.

once there, Hans shows his pass and the guard unlocks the rustygate. A path of bare earth winds through the coarse grass and lowbushes on a strip of land between the walled police compound and thesea. The cool breeze is a welcome relief from the scorching sun. All thatremains of the fort itself is crumbling stone ramparts and an octagonalroom half buried in the cliff. Gun-slits frame a view over the old harbouron one side, and on the other, of rugged cliffs and the Indian ocean. Iask Hans where the Wrens’ bandas used to be. He says they were insidewhat is now the police compound and that, although he is allowed inthere, he cannot take us with him. I try to be content with peeringthrough the gaps between the bricks. And there it is: a hut almostidentical to the one my aunt stands outside in a photograph preservedin her album. I take out my camera but Hans shakes his head.

* * *The next day, omar is waiting for us along with Ahmed, the taxi driverwho took us to Fort St Joseph. Before being posted overseas, Floraworked at Bletchley Park, and my research revealed that many of theircode-breaking outposts were set up in requisitioned schools. The wordsHMS Allidina are written inside the cover of her diary; our destinationtoday is Allidina visram High School.

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10

I expect just to look over the wall, but no, Ahmed drives straight inthrough the gates, alongside the pristine playing field and right up tothe rear of the school. Surrounded by tall poplar trees, the walls of thistwo-storey building are freshly painted in magnolia, and the manywindows have louvered wooden shutters to keep out the heat of the sun.The stone arches above them are picked out in sky blue.

omar gets out of the taxi and beckons us to follow him throughwrought iron gates into a courtyard surrounded on three sides by thebuilding. The architecture is not African, but a relic of colonialism,reminiscent of a two-tiered cloister with walkways behind colonnadesand stone balustrades. Leading off these open-air corridors are stoutwooden doors; I guess they open into classrooms, as one of them islabelled 4W.

A well-tended garden sits in the centre of the courtyard, boastingan abundance of large, shiny tropical leaves. We skirt around it, inhalingthe fragrance of the creamy-white frangipani flowers, hearing only thefaint drone of insects. omar leads the way up a few steps at the far endof the building, across a lobby and out again through the double frontdoors. 1921 is chiselled into the stone above them.

I realise that the school is set on a cliff top overlooking Tudor Creek.I once read an account by a wireless operator stationed in Mombasa.When the Arab dhows came into harbour, the boatmen beat their drumsso loudly that at times they couldn’t read the signals. So I am right aboutinterpreting Flora’s diary. This must have been the Bletchley Park outpostwhere they intercepted messages from Japanese admirals to their fleetin the Pacific, from generals to their forces occupying South East Asia.Here, behind closed doors in one of these classrooms, Flora played herpart in decoding those messages.

* * *As the only servicewomen in Mombasa, the Wrens were never short ofinvitations to dances or outings. officers aboard ships in port took themsailing down the kenyan coast.

It was a glorious day and we left from the flagstaff steps. She wasa fine boat, a 32ft cutter and there were four chiefs, a PO and ustwo Wrens. We did our best to learn about sailing althoughseveral times when I took over, I think they thought she wouldcapsize and were all making remarks about being ready to swim.We sailed along to a very pretty beach where we droppedanchor.

on another half day off, Flora and her friend joined two secondlieutenants for a trip to White Sands. To get there, they drove across theNyali Bridge to the north mainland, where we are now heading.

The Nyali pontoon bridge, a flimsy structure that rose and fell withthe tide, is long gone, so we take the new Nyali Bridge, a concrete, six-lane highway. The mainland road is lined with makeshift buildingsconstructed of coral, thatch or corrugated iron – anything, in fact. Theyhouse a nursery school called Little Graduates, a beauty salon namedPretty Woman. A shack no bigger than a garage has a hand-painted signsaying Nectar Pub. on open land, Masai people stand next to theirtraditional homes and watch us drive by. We pass a modern supermarketand a garden centre, then Ahmed brings his taxi to a halt outside theWhite Sands Hotel.

The seashore has now been taken over by a string of up-markethotels. Back in the 1940s, it was a public beach with access via a narrow,rutted track.

We bounced along; it really was a wonder we were not thrown outof the back... Eventually the road opened out and we foundourselves almost on the beach, there were a number of small,white, thatched bandas, situated amongst palm trees. It was apicture I shall never forget, a perfect spot…a place one readsabout but can hardly believe exists, it was so peaceful and milesaway from any signs of towns and civilisation.

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As Flora and her companions ate their picnic, two local boys appearedout of nowhere. one of them wound sisal around his ankles to link themloosely together then, using the sisal to gain purchase on the ridgedbark, he shinned up the trunk of a palm tree When he reached the top,coconuts rained down to land with dull plops in the soft sand. His friendscooped them up and offered them for sale; Flora and company boughtthem, of course.

After they’d eaten their picnic Flora looked round for some shadefrom the blistering sun.

We had tea on the balcony of one of the bandas overlooking thesand-hills and sea. We were rather dubious of the small butteredpancakes they brought us but they tasted much better than theylooked.

More than sixty years later, my husband and I sit on high stools at theWhite Sands Hotel sharing a bar meal with omar and Ahmed. The hotelis pure luxury. We were greeted by a doorman in tails, led acrossgleaming marble floors beneath shimmering chandeliers to the veranda.We look out on a pond where tall sword-shaped leaves emerge from thestill water, lily pads float on the surface and circular stepping stones leadacross to the beach. I follow this path to the shore. Palm trees bow outtowards the sea, casting frond-shadows over a great sweep of white sandthat stretches for miles between green headlands way, way in thedistance. Through the crystal clear water where the sea gently laps theshore, many varieties of conch shells and coral are visible. Further out,the ocean turns from transparent to turquoise, then to deep cobalt blue.The sun shines in the clear sky, and flat-bottomed clouds hover on thehorizon. I now know why Flora called White Sands the perfect spot.

* * *No bridge offers a direct route to the south mainland so we take the ferryto visit Shelly Beach just as Flora did on her last day in Mombasa.

It was an exceptionally hot day so we went across to the mainlandby Likoni ferry... Once off the main road, you felt to be miles fromcivilisation, as there was nothing to be seen but palm trees in alldirections with hills in the distance. There were several narrowpaths leading to small native houses, very primitive with a smallgarden in front and several goats and hens round about.

The metal ramp scrapes onto the concrete and Ahmed drives slowly offthe ferry, hooting at the foot-passengers swarming around us. Today, thepalm trees are gone, the ground cleared to make way for development.Mansions now occupy the area between road and shore, their groundsblooming with flame-coloured flowers of the flamboyant tree, purpleand magenta bougainvillea. on the other side of the road, more modesthomes of breeze blocks and corrugated iron are in various stages ofconstruction, some with only two rows of bricks to mark the foundationsand lay claim to the plot. Larger buildings have signs outside labellingthem as accommodation for the disabled and underprivileged, homesto children whose parents have died of AIDS.

In 1943, anyone could visit Shelly Beach. Not so today. Access is onlyvia the big houses or the hotels that border the shore. We pull up in frontof the Shelly Beach Hotel; it is surrounded by an electric fence, a barrierblocks the driveway and security staff stand guard. The hotel has beenclosed since 2004 because, with the troubles in kenya, tourists havestopped coming and the company is bankrupt. one of the guards agreesto show us around what must once have been an idyllic holiday paradise.Now weeds carpet the rustic paths, black and green mould smudges theconcrete walls of the holiday villas and the thatched roofs have slipped andhang at alarming angles. The swimming pool’s tiles are cracked, and just apuddle of rusty water remains at the deep end. The palm trees, however,stand proud, with warnings of falling coconuts still nailed to their trunks.

As we wait for the ferry to take us back to Mombasa Island, we seethe ship we will board tomorrow berthed among the container ships in

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kilindini docks. on her last day in Mombasa, Flora also made this fiveminute crossing and, with a hand shading the sun from her eyes,searched among the grey battleships and frigates for the troopship thatwould take her on to her next posting in Ceylon.

It seemed hard to realise that on the following day we should besailing away and leaving all this behind. I never thought onarriving in Mombasa that I should ever be so sorry to leave.

We too will be sorry to leave Mombasa. I arrived with my mind full ofrough sketches, drawn from conversations with Flora and the words shewrote in her diary. Tomorrow I will take away with me real images of realpeople and real places, and a greater insight into my aunt’s past.

rosemary Brierley gained an MA in Writing fromNottingham Trent university in 2006. Before retiringshe was an associate lecturer for The openuniversity and worked in the NHS. Since thenRosemary has had several articles, mainly on health-related topics, and a couple of pieces of short fictionpublished in national magazines. She is currentlyworking on a memoir of her aunt’s experiences inWW2.


14

Every time Jen tried to bring the eyes to life, she failed. They stared backat her, empty and uninterested. Twenty pairs of eyes, all lined up alongthe middle of her workbench.

She picked up May Morning, one of the figures she’d just finished. Adelightful young girl in a navy-blue and white gingham dress carried abasket of meadow flowers and gazed at an apple tree spread with palestpink blossom. Eight inches high with a lot of work in it, it was part of arush order for a big American department store.

Jen sighed. However delicately she wielded her liner brush, MayMorning’s eyes stayed unmoved by the glowing blossom and the freshnessof the morning. ‘Capture the eyes, Jen,’ her night-school art teacher hadtold her, ‘and you capture the essence of a person.’ The teacher had goneon to talk about Russian icon artists, how only the most devout andexperienced were privileged to paint the eyes, for only then did the saintcome alive. Jen wondered if the clay people and animals she painted livedin some way, just as the saints did. After all, God made man out of clay.

karen the supervisor had called Jen the youngest and best freehandpaintress in the shop. Jen had been pleased with the compliment, butshe had studied the eyes in the portrait gallery at Hanley Museum andknew that painting eyes on pottery figures wasn’t the same as paintingeyes on easel portraits, with their illusion of reflective light.

If only one day she could be a portraitist, a proper artist, not apaintress on a potbank in Stoke-on-Trent. Not a factory worker whose

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PotBank

Liz Hart


16

work clothes – as smart as any secretary’s up Hanley – smelled as if shemisted herself with Eau de Turpentine. Not a girl who’d just been raisedto accept her place in life and trained from school to decorate hundredsof pottery figures a week on piecework pay, with nothing to look forwardto but marriage, children and a two-up, two-down, and the same twoWakes Weeks a year on holiday in Skegness.

Last year, a social anthropologist from London university had spentsix months observing and interviewing them as they worked, joining inthe everyday life of the potbank. Intrigued, Jen had engaged her inconversation. Helena had explained that she studied people as they wentabout their everyday lives, in families, communities, in their work places.She’d seemed fascinated by things that were ordinary and unremarkable,like how the paintresses set out their workbenches, each one personaland unique, how they mixed their colours, and what they meant by“good work” and “bad work”. She’d listened with such interest when Jentold her about her Auntie’s pottery Dalmatian, half-size but modelledtrue-to-life, and how she changed the water in its bowl every morningbefore leaving for work. Helena had written that down in her notebook.

Having someone there, interested in them as craftswomen, was niceeven if Helena did have some strange ideas. For instance, she believedcraftspeople and clay were intimately connected in a “kind of alchemy”that stretched back to Primitive Man. She’d said it was “a universalattempt to gain control over elemental forces of nature that hadmiraculously survived the onslaught of industrial production.”

Helena had left four months ago to “write up” her findings, and Jenstill missed her. Meeting her had changed Jen somehow. She’d startedto see things differently.

Helena had encouraged her to study for a Fine Art degree inLondon, even offered to help with the application. But, uncertain aboutlosing all that was familiar, Jen had hesitated, hadn’t applied. Since thenshe’d felt strangely restless.

With a shrug, Jen forced her attention back to her figures. May

Morning was good work for her, the figure flew through her fingers, andshe could make her piecework money with ease. But, unless sheconcentrated, she’d start making mistakes and then the supervisor wouldreturn the board of work for her to do again. Given everything elsehappening on the potbank, she couldn’t risk producing substandard work.

Later that morning, Jen stood in the canteen with the other paintresses,almost ninety of them from the two decorating workshops - the Small FigureShop she worked in, and the Big vase Shop. They’d been summoned by MrAllcock the new Works Manager to be told about his plans for “re-engineering.” He was twenty-five, had worked in the car industry inBirmingham since leaving school and had just gained a Master’s Degree inBusiness Administration. He knew all about how a potbank ought to work.

Mr Allcock stood at the end of the canteen in a white coat over hisnavy pinstripe suit, like a hospital doctor. ‘Now girls, as you know for thelast six months we’ve been piloting a new system in the Big vase Shop.under the unit System you don’t paint a piece all through, like before,but only one or two colours, then it goes to the next girl, and they painttheir one or two colours, and so on. Breaking the process down into unitsmeans we’ve been able to take women off the street and train them asfreehand paintresses in six weeks, not six years!’

Listening to him, Jen thought of her friend Dorothy, who sat nextto her at the workbench, and Sylvia and Enid who sat together furtherdown the shop. All three were in their sixties and had known each othersince school. At fourteen they’d been apprenticed for six years asfreehand paintresses at Spode before being allowed even to touch thebest ware. What would they make of all this?

‘Girls, you’ve got to remember that it’s the 1980s, not the 1780s, andthe old master potters are long dead. If Stoke-on-Trent is going to stayahead of the game, we’ve got to modernise, and that means new waysof doing things. Any questions?’

There weren’t.

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‘They’ll never be able to make it work in this shop,’ Dorothy announced whenthey got back to their workbench. ‘Sylvia and Enid will tell you the same.Wasting their time. Painting them big vases isn’t anything like paintingfigures. Just filling-in with a big brush. They’re not proper paintresses!’

‘They say they’ve got robots now at Wedgwood.’‘Not freehand painting they haven’t, duck.’ ‘It’s only a matter of time,’ Jen said.‘Whatever they do, no good will come of it. you’ll see. ’ Dorothy

hummed to herself as she applied sky blue to the lace on May Morning’spetticoat. ‘Me youngest cast these,’ she said, fondly. ‘Been clocking-on atsix o’clock every morning, working until seven or eight every night, toget this order out for Mr Allcock.’

Suddenly, from the other end of the shop, Sylvia cried out.‘What’s up, Sylvia?’ Dorothy called over to her.‘Black Eagle’s materialised, duck. He’s smoking his pipe at side of me

chair. “No smoke without fire,” he’s just said to me.’ Jen glanced over butthe spot beside Sylvia was empty. To her eyes, at least.

At breakfast next morning, Enid nipped to the downstairs toilet,then met the Grey Lady on her way back. These encounters neverbothered her. She just said ‘Morning, duck’ and stood aside politely whilethe Grey Lady walked through the wall.

‘See!’ Dorothy said when Enid reported the encounter. ‘Sylvia’s spiritguide yesterday, and now the Grey Lady. That Mr Allcock’s called-upthings as he shouldn’t have.’

Jen didn’t respond. She was used to sightings of such visitationswhenever change was afoot, although she’d never seen anything herself.She’d asked Helena once whether she believed in the spirit world, like allthe other women did.

Helena had bitten her bottom lip and thought for a moment, thensmiled. ‘When I first came here Jen, I didn’t at all. I thought of myself asan objective social scientist studying other people’s beliefs. But then oneevening a strange thing happened. I’d just been interviewing Alf the kiln

man and it was getting late, almost dusk, and to get to the main door I’dcome up through the First Floor Casting Shop. I stood for a moment andlooked around. Something wasn’t right. The air was speckled with claydust as usual, but it swirled around as if something had disturbed it. Theshop was quiet, all the casters and fettler-spongers had gone home, yetit buzzed with life, more than ever it did in the daytime. There were rowsand rows of pale ghostly Dalmatian dogs, unpainted clay bodies, allstaring at me with white eyes. They knew I was there! I ran as fast as Icould through the shop and down the stairs and didn’t stop running untilI was out on the street.’

Three weeks after the meeting with Mr Allcock, two days before the unitSystem was to be piloted in their own shop, Jen said to Dorothy, ‘Someof the Big vase women have called a meeting. They’re worried for theirjobs. There’s talk of making the ware in China. Big Brenda’s coming alongto speak about what’s happening. you coming?’

The older woman shook her head. ‘It’ll never happen, whatever MrAllcock says.’

‘But when they’ve worked out how to do it under the new systemthey’ll send it to China and we’ll all be out of a job. Big Brenda told methey’re sending the head figure maker and his wife to train them. They’regoing for two years at least, all expenses paid, a house and car andeverything, top wages, and when they come back they’ll be made.’

Dorothy stared wide-eyed at Jen as if she’d just blasphemed. ‘Howcan Chinese make pottery?’

‘They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Why do you think it’scalled china?’

‘yes, but it’s not the same as making earthenware figures is it,turning them out by the thousands on piecework? Anyway, where arethey going to get the designs from for a start?’

‘They’ll use our designs and make the moulds, same as us. Won’t beany different,’ Jen said.

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‘you mean they’ll take our work and make it out there?’ ‘of course they will. May Morning and all the rest and for a fraction

of the pay and no union. Like it used to be here, and will be again if webury our heads in the sand.’

Dorothy scraped her palette knife on the mixing tile, her mouthtight. ‘That’s the trouble with you,’ she said after a while.

‘What?’‘Since that Helena turned your head you’ve got an answer for

everything. Getting above yourself. Think yourself too high. Think you’reposh like her. But you’re not. you’re just a factory worker same as rest of us.’

‘It’s not that...’‘What is it then?’‘oh, it’s... it’s... Dunno. Can’t explain.’ Well, she could, but would

Dorothy understand? She didn’t feel higher or better than anyone else,she felt different, and life called to her to find out what that meant. Shedidn’t want to become like May Morning, stuck for ever gazing out at theworld with empty eyes. She wanted more from life, not less, and sheached to know what she might become if only the potbank weren’t sucha small, enclosed world.

‘Now you listen to me, lady.’ Dorothy wagged the palette knife inJen’s face. ‘Those Big vase women are always making trouble, spreadingrumours. And you’re becoming a trouble-maker like them. It’s workerslike you as’ll be death of pottery industry. Don’t know why you don’t goand join them. you don’t have to sit against me, and I don’t have to sitagainst you!’

As she listened, something inside her tore away, like a dam wallcollapsing, and a great wave of frustration burst inside her until herknees shook and her hands trembled. She’d had enough of beingtreated like a girl, of not being heard, of feeling more and more like shedidn’t fit in.

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ she heard herself saying. ‘Whyshould I leave my workbench just because you don’t want to hear the

truth? At least the Big vase women don’t sit there, doing nothing,behaving as if nothing’s ever going to change, when it’s staring you inthe face. If you don’t want to sit next to me, that’s fine. you leave! Go andsit with Sylvia and Enid and you can spend your time reminiscing aboutthe good old days. Here I’ll help you carry your things.’ She started togather up Dorothy’s family photographs and brushes.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Dorothy grabbed Jen’s arm. ‘Putthose bloody down!’

‘Leave go of me!’ Jen shouted.‘Mum! Jen! What are you doing? Stop it!’ The two women broke apart to see Dorothy’s son standing at the

end of their workbench, staring at them. By now the workshop had gonequiet, and Sylvia and Enid had come over.

‘It’s alright, duck,’ Sylvia said to Michael. ‘Just a little ruck, that’s all.’‘Michael, what are you doing here?’ Dorothy said. ‘Why aren’t you in

casting shop? And why are you carrying that black bin bag?’‘They’ve made me redundant, Mum, that’s why. I’ve no work.

They’ve stopped casting May Morning. Going to make them in China.Supervisor came and tapped me on shoulder, said Personnel want to seeyou and when I went in they said as they was sorry but they’d got nomore work for me, me job had gone, and they gave me this bin bag andtold me to clear me stuff and go home.’

‘They can’t do that! union won’t let them,’ Dorothy said. Sheslumped in her chair, face pale as china clay.

‘Seems they can,’ Michael said, going to his mother and putting hishand gently on her arm. ‘Seems they can do a lot of things.’

‘Michael, what are you saying? Sylvia asked.‘I’m only the first, is what I’m saying.’ He glanced around at the

paintresses from the rest of the shop who’d now left their workbenchesto gather around him. Rows of them nudged up to each other, somelinking arms, faces anxious, questioning, looking to him for answers. Hestepped away from his mother and stood to address them, hands shoved

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22

deep into his overall pockets. ‘you’ll all be getting your redundancynotices,’ he said, a crack in his voice. ‘It’ll be in Sentinel tonight. Potbank’sclosing in three months. Going to pull it down to make room for a carpark. They’re building a superstore.’

For a moment everything was still. No-one moved or spoke. Thewomen gazed upon Michael in awe, as if at a Seer. Then, starting as nomore than a murmur, an anguished cry began to rise from the group ofpaintresses like the wail of a dying creature. All around Jen, women heldeach other, cried on each other’s shoulders, talked, shook their heads -disbelieving, shocked, angry, distraught.

Jen knew she was witnessing the end of things.Michael had put his arm around his mother and was leading her

away. ‘Taking her home,’ he called over his shoulder to Jen. ‘Dunna worry,duck. Weren’t your fault. It’s bosses setting us against each other.’

Then Jen saw the Grey Lady walking slowly towards her, headbowed, her white hands crossed on her chest, in mourning for the living.As the apparition neared Jen it lifted its head and smiled at her, a sad,knowing smile. Jen smiled back and the Grey Lady nodded and vanished.

Next morning when Jen got to their workbench, Dorothy was sitting inher usual place, just as before, but she didn’t look up and say ‘Hiya, duck,’as she normally did. Jen assumed she was being sneeped. Too bruisedinside to be the first to speak, and unsure what else to do, she unpackedher toast and tea flask.

She’d just sat down when Dorothy leaned across and kissed hercheek with the tenderness of a mother. ‘I’m sorry, Jen, for what I said toyou, duck. you spoke the truth and I should have listened.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jen replied, squeezing her hand. ‘you didn’t meanit. We’ll always be friends.’

Then Dorothy reached under the bench and took out of hershopping bag two oatcakes, wrapped in greaseproof paper, rolledaround crispy bacon and grilled cheese, still warm. ‘know you like them

done like this, and I got up early to go oatcake shop so they’d be nice foryour breakfast.’

Jen watched Dorothy arrange the oatcakes on a plate with a napkinshe’d brought in especially. Something in those simple actions, thekindness and decency of Potteries people, stirred her deeply. Sheunderstood now that it came from a humanity that sprang from makingthings, from taking something of the earth and bringing it to life by theskill of your hands. How precious that was, and how much she’d taken itfor granted.

In that moment, Jen knew that she wasn’t staying. This was herhome and yet she didn’t belong here anymore. She would phone Helenatonight and tell her that she’d changed her mind, she did want to applyto do a degree, and would she help her? She would become a portraitist.She wasn’t going to end up like Michael and Dorothy and all the rest,thrown on the scrap heap. She couldn’t stop the inevitable. Changewould happen whatever she did. But one day she would reach back intoher memories to resurrect something of this world which, by then, wouldbe lost forever. She would paint the Dorothies and Sylvias and Enids; thedesigners, modellers and mouldmakers; the figure makers, casters andfettler-spongers; the aerographers, lithographers and gilders; thedippers, kiln men and sliphouse men.

All her fellow alchemists. When they were no more, her paint brush would give them life.

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A SENSE oF PLACE

liz hart taught and carried out research as a socialanthropologist and historian, and studied CreativeWriting with Don Webb at uCLA Extension. She hasnumerous non-fiction publications. Potbank is herfirst short story and draws on two lengthy periods offieldwork in the North Staffordshire Potteries. She iscurrently working on her second novel, and wouldlike somebody to publish her first.

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three lundy PoemS

Pippa Hennessy

my garden, sixty miles from the sea

1.

this is the wrong island

2.

the MS oldenburg bounds across the Bristol Channelmy stomach churns

an old man wearing blue dungareesand a dishevelled demeanourwaves binoculars at a pair of guillemotsdolphins fold the waves like silk

the Rat Island oystercatchers shoutwelcome, welcome, look at me, look at me

hammers on the hold door replywe're here

3.

red wine swells nine voices to climbtorch-beams to the glass-captured moona burnished beetle follows mefrom the seals’ playground at the tip of Brazen Wardto Long Roost, where ten thousand razorbillsand eight puffins nest

Pippa hennessy was a software developer in aprevious life, but she’s much better now. She tries tofind time to write in between her three jobs. Whenshe does, she writes poetry and fiction, and has alsopublished graphic stories and creative non-fiction.She first visited Lundy in 2000, and stayed there over25 times in the next eight years. She has beenyearning to return ever since.

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A SENSE oF PLACE

a dunlin trips over my feeton its way to the next puddleskylarks, invisible, fill the sky

five adults and seven children picnicby the concrete engine blockof a WWII German bomber

I wish the gulls would hushas a newborn lamb takes its first steps

two puffed-up pigeons huddle and grumbleby the one-roomed cottage where I shiverand can’t sleep for laughing

4.

I am never more than half a mile from the seathe sea which is always flat and grey

when I return to the wrong island


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In old light cottage

A threadbare armchair enfolds methe flue howls back at the galethat portrait of Wellington gazesout of the window at the lighthouse.

Handwritten scrawls fill the log booknot mine, not yet.

June 28th 2000Saw a puffin. No time to write.Boat leaving soon. Sad to go.

August 13th 2000Another lovely stay. Did lotsof walking.

Then twenty-three and a half pagesin one hand.

October 23rd 2000...The electricity went off at 12:23tonight. I had to get up to go to the looat 2:14. The flue kept me awake for 3 hoursand 47 minutes altogether...

That october, when he wrote that,we were here for six days

and anotherbecause of the storms.

Slipping and slidingdown the Clovelly cobbles, our pink labelsmatched his.

Hello. We’ll be neighbourshe said, standing too close.

I turned away to laugh with my friends.We drank and tied our tongues in knotsin the lighthouse, for six days

and another.The girls won all the games

and I fell in lovewith this peat-topped blockof granite, glued by the Gulf Streamto the Atlantic’s edge.

We celebrated the extra day,he complainedhis train ticket would expire.

Now I know too much of what he did,when the flue screamed.

He didn’t write that he asked me fora safety pin

to hold his trousers upso he could get to North Lighton schedule.

He didn’t writethat our singing woke him upwhen the boat was cancelled.

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His review of the garlic breadserved in the tavern

was detailedand informative. He didn’t mentionthat we sat at the long tableplaying bridge

loudly while he ate, alone.

He wrote:7:58am, I washed up.8:13am, I took the rubbishout to the bins.

He didn’t seethe oystercatchers digging for wormsjust behind the cemetery wallor the gravestonesof medieval chieftains standingwhere they had stood for centuries.

He didn’t hearthe seals singing as they rode the storm.

He didn’t feelthe spindrift skidding like rabbitsacross the heather.

A threadbare armchair enfolds methe flue howls back at the galeand I write

18th April 2002I am here.

Quarry Beach

Do you remember the old ladder?its broken step halfway down,thorns scratching hands that clungto ropes

and rotting wood.We climbed down anywayto where great granite eggsmake thunder under the waves.

our bare feet took us over seaweedand limpets

to see orange beaksflash past, crying look at meand we wished we could fly.

A seal swimming southwardsas usual

stopped briefly:why do beasts with such long flippersrefuse to play with me in the waves?

one stone on another, we builta tower to remind the seawe were here

for a whileI sat, warming my back, hatchingan image

of the sun and the seaand of you

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A SENSE oF PLACE

30

I love this body: the body that I know. It anchors me; takes me awayfrom the chattering ‘monkey mind’. When I breathe, the monkeyquietens. My lungs expand and massage the heart housed betweenthem.

In Chinese Medicine, the heart is the Emperor and good healthoccurs when the Emperor is happy. How often has my Emperor beenhappy? I send her my focus as if I am holding a delicate, precious baby.

Is it her who sends these butterflies into my stomach? They releasean aching that I cannot name, dark like a thicket of thorns. I ease myfingers underneath the ribs deep into the tissue. Gentle tears bubbleup. Then with my slow, measured breathing, my stomach feelscaressed; the tears stop; the butterflies still. Perhaps they have becomedragonflies floating on the now-calm sea of my stomach.

The aching thicket is softening: it has been a lifetime’s work tocreate; it is a lifetime’s work to unravel.

From my stomach, liquid spurts through a valve into the smallintestine. The pulsing rhythm of peristalsis is like a spiral, like the tidesof the sea and movements of the universe. one of my Shiatsu teacherssays it comes from your mother’s egg at conception, at that alchemicalmoment when something new is created. I send my mind back to thespring when it happened. Perhaps birds sang like they do now.

The small intestine is deep in the body, not attached to theabdominal wall; a long thin tube with inner projections like sea

I love thIS Body

Caroline Salzedo

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A SENSE oF PLACE

anemones. Text books say the surface area is the size of a tennis court.It reverberates to change. In Chinese Medicine, it sorts the pure fromthe impure. As children, it’s our parents’ role to do that, and protect usfrom shock. If they don’t, as I know from all the small intestines I havemassaged and tended like gardens, a deep need develops in the cellsfor safety and shelter. I breathe, for all the times when I felt lost andunsafe as a child. Now only I can make it better.

The whole sea of the digestive system is calmer. Peristalsis is likea stately minuet. I take my focus to the valve between the small andlarge intestines, down by the appendix, where it changes from anarrower tube to a wider one; from taking things in to letting them go:a pivotal place. I feel a whirring, like it is out of kilter, and I rub it, see itin my mind’s eye opening easily, without spluttering.

up the ascending colon, across and down the descending colon.The pillars of the large intestine whose strength holds us up are likeone long tube on each side of our body. I imagine them filled withgolden liquid, suffused with sunlight.

I breathe and take my hand round the right side to say hello to myliver; vital to life. What a name! The liver has a spark like the flash ofinspiration. I feel it can take me anywhere in the universe: a magiccarpet; my bottle with a genie and all the wishes in the world, if I butknow how to ask.

And then the back; my spine and kidneys: my life story, toldwithout pretence or bluster. We can put on a front. We cannot put ona back. Everything lies hidden here. The place between my shoulderblades where I erected walls behind my heart, and my back eruptedwith pain. Stories going right back to being alone in the darkness ofthe womb. In my mind’s eye, I have held that delicate, precious baby,like I held my heart, and sent her love.

Breathe; remember that the stories are no more. They are in thepast. I am sitting in a room in a familiar house. outside, birds aresinging. Reality is this body I love and know.


32

My hands take me to a place of healing where I acknowledge thefear and joy of everything known and unknown. My breath unfolds andripples, and something opens like a trap door, connecting me out intothe universe and down into my deepest cells.

caroline Salzedo is a Shiatsu practitioner andteacher, writer, wanderer and crone, who runscreative workshops incorporating movement andself-expression. A passion for writing is part of herspiritual practice, reflected in her pieces about bodywork, and the stories she writes, some based on hertime in revolutionary Nicaragua in the 80s.

33

(House destroyed, 3rd July 365 AD, Kourion, Cyprus)

Baby eighteen months old, time enough to name the others.Mother nineteen years; her young body had borne fruit.Father twenty-five, here seen clutching at meaning.

Child, woman, man; three pelvic bones in line, still.A fierce inward thrust from male spine, right,to powdered infant skull, left.Coming from behind, his femur almost touches hers;mother’s arms over child’s head, and ribs galore:a palely ochred nest of bones.

We know so much.What is most important we have always known.

Nurturing warmth pleased these bodiesas they strove to secure their harvest.The infant bathed in the sun, floated on the sea,until the flick of a god’s thumb;a hiccup of the sustaining planet.

What remains of us is bone-deep.

evIdence of earthQuake

Tony Challis

tony challis has spent many years working ineducation and therapy. He has been writing poetrysince the 80s. He facilitates the Rainbow LGBTWriting group at Nottingham Writers' Studio and issecretary of Nottingham Poetry Society. He hasbecome firmly enthusiastic about the compact butdynamic city in which he lives.

to pack seaside t-shirts, pullover fleeces and unread booksto abandon the scent of pillow, the softness of rabbit’s ear to be doing this grown-up thing

to take the trainto feel it pick up the heart beat to lose a city, become blind to its name on the route map

to inhale salted air, to exhale six hours of accumulated nothing to view an estuary mouth, to consider its width, its tidesto fear its swallow and the lack of landto rub the right hand on white wash, the left on pastel stuccoto fish for the name of this village

to remember in moments of being herewhere there is

to wish the flip-flops had not been forgotten

to email photos of Pinky Murphy’s with its knitting-for-all basket, clotted cream teas

to say this is the warmest place in Fowey in July

to make a transient discovery: memory is a flickering light bulb

to plunge into darkness, be fog over the sea

to trust this is the day to leave to read the ticket’s destination, to follow instructions

saying change, change, changeto wash up at some station unable to make sense

of the next reservation

to have the presence to ring to hear her voice say

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dISSocIatIon

Helena Durham

New Street? Then you’re in Birmingham. Look for the train to Nottingham.

Platform 11? one foot, then the other.Breathe, breathe gently. Ring once you’re home.

to be conveyed to compare steam from the cooling towers with clouds

over the bay on Wednesdayto stroke the pebble pocketed for its smoothness on Thursdayto rummage for the door key, to be tickled by beach sand

from the paddle on Fridayto breathe deeper with the click of the door

in the warmth of red brick

to sip hot chocolate from the favourite mugto snuggle up with pillow, stroke rabbit’s earto close down

to wake up, to check the calendar to wonder why a line was drawn through last week

to shrugto shop, because the milk has gone off

dissociation: noun2, a short-term defence mechanismagainst trauma, a post-survival disorder.

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A SENSE oF PLACE

In her more mature years, helena durham gained adegree in creative and professional writing. She hasworked for the NHS and the Church of England. Herinterests include writing, choral singing andmindfulness. She volunteers with the library service’sEnglish conversation group for asylum seekers andincomers, and she is now an expert in explaining thephrase “Ey up mi duck”.

He looks for beauty in this brutal gameAmongst the bitter dust of Helmand,And finds it in the sun’s splendour;Its amber rays caressing the mountain range.His army boots leave prints in the earth,As barren as unanswered wishes.But he finds no flower to press against his face To smell memories of his wife’s perfume.Waning daylight clings to rocks,Holding back the invading night.The wind, as sharp as a sickle blade,Is watched by a chalk-smudge moon.Through the silence his heart thuds,

minutebyslowminute.

Squabbling insects dance and torment,Biting and sucking his pink-parched skin.He thinks of England’s gentle rainDimpling puddles under pewter skies,And sighs.Dusk creeps onwards, darkening his thoughts of missed opportunitiesTo say I love you.As night pours in from the sky.

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duSk In afghanIStan

Angela Barton

Does she see the same moonsomanymiles away?

The soldier wipes his furrowed browWrinkled like the wind-blown dunes.Eyes raised, he looks into the navy blue;A shared constellation with home.Moving onwardsPast peripheral shadows of outcrops,Like broken teeth in a rotting mouth.Tears roll down the hardest face each silent nightIn this foreign land, where each man dreamsof going home.

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A SENSE oF PLACE

angela Barton is busy editing her third novel, In TheShadow Of The Mulberry Tree. She has won awards forher writing and was delighted to win a national ‘firstchapter' competition. Having secured a London-based literary agent, Angela is hoping that her latestbook, set in wartime France, will find that elusivepublishing deal!

They came this way, the drovers.From holy Anglesey, y Monthey drove their little Welsh Black cattleacross the silver shifting Llanfairfechan sands

up through the wastes of Eryriwhere Snowdon loomed in misty snow.

Shunning toll roadsthe tracks wove across the purple moorsby standing stoneslichened orange and grey in whorled runes

a stone-narrow bridge across a peaty nant between two drystone walls a swarded green.

They came this way, the drovers,Along this stony track through the gate by the blood-red rowan tree—across the Berwyn moors.

By rushing Nant Rhydwilymthree red barked pines confer—sign for an inn: ale singingbed for the night,a pen of stones and thorn to keep the cattle in.Stop to hear the drovers’ voices in the wind.

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the droverS’ road

Mike Wareham

From Anglesey’s green fattening fieldsthree hundred miles to Smithfield slaughterthey came this way, the drovers.

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A SENSE oF PLACE

mike Wareham was an English teacher in EastMidlands comprehensive schools for 33 years. Thenhe saw the light and started writing stories andpoems instead, completing a degree in CreativeWriting at Nottingham university. This was muchmore fun than marking! He still does spots ofteaching – film, creative writing and literature – butonly to those who’ve left school. He is also in bands,playing the guitar and singing Americana and Blues.

It’s nearly my bedtime by the time we’ve packed the car and picked upmy grandparents. I’m squashed between them in the back seat with abox on my lap. The box contains a full bottle of milk, a half empty bottleof milk with a pale blue plastic cap on it (which is supposed to make itspill-proof, but Mum doesn’t trust it), a loaf of bread, the butter dish fromhome (complete with butter), and an already open packet of custardcreams. I’m reminded, frequently, not to let the box tip up.

At our destination, only half an hour’s drive away, Dad slowlymanoeuvres the car along the familiar lane, rutted and bumpy, with longgrass brushing the underside of the car. The lane is only wide enough forone car. I watch the milk swishing from side to side. We have to carryeverything from the car with us and I’m instructed again not to tip thebox. I fear I will drop it deliberately, powerless to prevent the fleetingurge to do the one thing I am told not to.

We’ve come to the chalet. We are on holiday.It’s my grandmother who started calling it the chalet. I don’t know

why. It is a beach hut, though not a picture postcard one. It is not an ice-cream coloured accessory to a staycation, or an investment property. Farfrom it. This is 1972.

It stands independently from its handful of neighbours. They are allbuilt, or cobbled together, to different designs. ours – it belongs to mygrandparents – is made of dark wood, with big single-glazed windowslooking out over the estuary. At eight years old, I think it is the sea, and

40

WraBneSS

Sarah Dale

assume that the clock tower visible on the other side is French. Close up, it smells of creosote, with a background scent of sea air

mixed with pollen from surrounding crops. It stands on stilts to escapethe highest of tides, with a dark and sinister space underneath. I try notto look in it on my way up the wooden steps just in case I see somethingterrible. At the top of the stairs is a decked area, decades ahead offashion, and there sits the hut — the chalet — itself. It is big enough tosleep in, with a bunk bed for me, and a porthole to peer through. Mustyair greets us as we open the door and go in. I finally find somewhere toput the box down.

It has no water supply or electricity. If we need water or the toiletwe have to walk along the shingly beach and up a steep flight of stepsto a toilet block at the top. The steps are gritty under my bare feet, andslightly damp and cold in the shade, but at the top, we are suddenly inthe warm evening sunshine flowing across the fields.

I brush my teeth. No one makes me wash properly here. Then Ireturn, already feeling salty and sandy, to go to bed. I try to stay awaketo listen to the adults’ conversation, but lulled by the sound of theirchatter and the gentle hiss of the gas lamps, I surrender to irresistiblewaves of sleep.

The next morning I wake to the smell and sound of bacon frying. Butsomething isn’t right. There are too many Dad-noises. Clattering, whistling.

‘Where’s Mum?’ I ask as soon as I scramble out of the bunk.‘outside, she’s not feeling too good,’ Dad says. Before he can stop me,

I push past him to get outside. The rain is blowing at me as if someone isthrowing it in handfuls. I can hear it hitting the chalet and the deck. Andthere Mum is, hunched over a bucket, coat around her shoulders, her hairwhipping around like strips of seaweed. Dark, wet, shiny.

She looks up and glares at me, and at Dad who is behind me. I ambundled back inside. My pyjamas are wet and Dad tells me to get dressed.

We eat our breakfast without Mum as if nothing is going wrong. Idon’t like the bacon. It’s not crispy like Mum does it and I try to cut out

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42

all of the fat. They tell me to cheer up and spend the day trying to makeme draw a picture or go for a walk. Later, the sun shines shakily and Mumchanges her clothes and brushes her hair before we have our lunch.

We eat all of our meals sitting in a row. The counter runs under thewindows with the view of the beach, the mud and the water. Lunch isinvariably salad — tinned salmon, lettuce, cucumber, tomato. Everythingis homegrown or homemade using familiar unquestioned recipes. Forpudding, we have cake. There is gingerbread (sliced and buttered), fruitcake, scones with jam from last year’s raspberries. It is washed down withtea, served in Cornish blue china cups, the blue and cream stripesstamping a lifelong imprint on my memory. Today, I notice that Mumdoesn’t eat much.

I keep thinking about last year when Mum went to hospital. She wroteme letters and Grandma came to stay to look after me and Dad. We wentto the chalet for the day during that time. I didn’t like it. I wanted Mum.

Every day, they pretend that everything’s normal but I know it’s not.Mum’s not the same any more. She keeps sleeping. I’m not allowed to siton her lap. I don’t like her like this. I don’t want Dad or Grandma instead. Icry in my bunk bed so no-one can hear me. I want Mum. I just want Mum.

Weeks later — we’re back home, school has started again and theweather is cold — they tell me that there will be a baby. They look at meas if I’ll be pleased. I’m not.

I only want Mum, and I thought she only wanted me.

Sarah dale lives in Nottingham and practises as anoccupational psychologist. Her writing so far hasfocused on non-fiction themes relating to mid-lifeand resilience. She has self-published two books,Keeping Your Spirits Up and Bolder and Wiser and isnow venturing into writing fiction. Her website iswww.creatingfocus.org.

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I am swimming in the borderBoth St George and the dragonBasking in a natural jacuzziMermaid, siren, floozyMy dimpled thighs surrendering to breathless cold.Now, more like a Hampstead lady I creep, cautious over slithery rocksBorrowed daps keep my soft toes safe.I scramble out, and as I drip border dropsthe dust beneath my feetbecomes old-blood mud. Listen as Ancient ferrous soil singsWith the mettle of warriors’ souls,In a rusted lusty voice. Iron in the blood, clanging for honouron history’s marches, hard–fought tale of ransacked castle, river and bridge.

(The river Mynnwy runs through Skenfrith, its coursedelineating the border between England and Wales)

rIver SWImmIng at SkenfrIth

Fiona Theokritoff

fiona theokritoff joined Nottingham Writers’ Studiotwo years ago. She writes mainly poetry, and iscurrently working on her first play. She produced herfirst poetry collection Undertow in 2013. Aftertwenty years working in children’s publishing shetrained as a homeopath, and now practises from herhome in Nottinghamshire.

This issue’s theme was selected in honour of NottinghamWriters’ Studio moving into its own dedicated premises.As the stories in this volume clearly demonstrate, placematters, and we very much hope that our new home caninspire, welcome and draw together the community ofwriters that we are so lucky to have.

Founded in 2006, Nottingham Writers’ Studio is run bywriters for writers, and is dedicated to the support anddevelopment of all forms of creative writing.

As well as creating a vibrant social community forwriters to discuss and develop their work through courses,writing groups and live literature events, NWS haschampioned major writing events, including WEyA2013,the Eu-funded Dovetail Project, and Nottingham Festivalof Words, Nottingham’s first city-wide literature festival forover thirty years. We are proud to support NottinghamCity of Literature.

Membership is open to committed writers who havebeen or are on the verge of being published, living in orconnected with Nottingham. Current members includenovelists, poets, songwriters, scriptwriters, copywriters,playwrights and publishers at all stages of their careers.our patron is 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Awardwinner Jon McGregor.

NWS is supported by Arts Council Englandthrough Grants for the Arts.

www.nottinghamwritersstudio.co.uk

a sense of place: the nottingham writers' studio journal january 2015

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