Walking With Ghosts by John Baker (Gollancz 1999)

Your mother was a historian, a secret historian. Her account of the Great War is still among your papers in the bureaux. You have failed to edit it for more than thirty years. The truth is, you never wanted to edit it because it was hers. You were jealous of her, as she was jealous of you. Her only achievement, as far as you are concerned, is that she was a cousin of Dylan Thomas (and your earliest memory is of being kissed by him).

  

'I was kissed by Dylan Thomas,' you have told everyone you ever met. 'He went down on one knee and kissed me on the cheek. I remember being tickled by a day's growth of beard, and the smell of figs on his breath. He was a relative on my mother's side, somewhat removed, but he visited us when he was in the neighbourhood.' You have been a snob about that.

   

In truth you don't know if you remember it or not. You don't know if you remember Dylan Thomas, or if what you remember is your mother's memory. Because she told everyone the same story: 'Dylan Thomas kissed Dora, you know. She was small at the time, but she still remembers, don't you, Dora? His bristles and a figgy smell, typical childhood observations. He was my cousin, you know, a regular visitor whenever he was in Wales.' You are like your mother. You have become more like your mother as you have grown older. The last ten years have been a nightmare in that respect. You would not have believed it possible. You feel like her. You turn your head when someone speaks and in a flash you recognize the gesture. It is your mother turning her head. She lives in the tone of your voice. Your characteristics, gestures, inflections of speech, they are all inherited. You are reverting to form. Everything you rejected, burned, left behind; it is all reconstituting itself. You have not escaped. You have run away, but you have not escaped.

You laugh because you can see now what you were running from. It is life's oldest comedy. Your mother was not so bad. She was like you. A Swansea girl, born and bred. When you laugh at her you are laughing at yourself.

King of the Streets by John Baker (1998)

At first glance she was a nice old lady, but when you got to give her another look you saw right away that she was weird. Something about her walk, perhaps? The way she nodded her head from side to side or kept glancing back at the passing cars? There was nothing immediately wrong about the way she was dressed. Cal could see colours on these new closed circuit screens, still hadn't got used to it; rust colour to her print skirt, maroon cardigan hanging from her shoulders, draped. Looking closer he could make out strong leather shoes, hair permed and reminiscent of the forties, stiff with setting lotion, tight little kiss curls framing the upper part of her face. No, he was remembering his grandmother. The screens did that to you sometimes, gave a fairly good outline and somehow forced your imagination to fill in the details.

Death Minus Zero by John Baker (Gollancz 1996)

He led them over to a Scorpio Auto on the other side of the car park. Blue job with black leather inside. Norman checked through the window to make sure there was some sound equipment inside. Using his bent coat hanger he had the thing open in about ninety seconds.

"How do you do that?" the youngest wigger asked.

 Norman locked the car again and fitted his wire hook down inside the window frame. He fiddled for a moment, said, "Now you try."

The youngest wigger took hold of the coat hanger and jiggled it about.

"Just about there," Norman said. "You feel the little lever inside? Don't pull so hard. That's right, you can feel it moving."

 "Yeah. I got it," the kid said.

 "OK," Norman told him. "Push the handle in and pull it up slowly."

The door of the Scorpio opened. "Easier than a can of sardines," Norman said. He told the eldest kid to get his bag from the BMW. When he brought it Norman shoved it in the back of the Scorpio. "And the Tina Turner tape," he said.

"I've got something else to teach you," he said to the youngest wigger.

"What's that?" The kid was eager to learn everything this character could show him.

"Put your back here," Norman said, pointing to the door of a VW Camper. "And hold the door handle with both hands."

The kid did as he was told.

Norman came over and stood in front of him. "You got hold of it with both hands?" Norman asked.

The kid nodded and Norman butted him hard in the face. The little wigger dropped like a stone. His friend ran off down the car park, putting about seventy yards between himself and Norman. "You're a fast learner," Norman told him. The little wigger was sitting on the concrete shaking his head from side to side.

 "That's the best lesson you've had today," Norman told him, retrieving his hundred and twenty pounds from the kid's pocket. "Don't forget it."

Norman left him there, got behind the wheel of the Scorpio and wired it to go. He waved to the elder wigger as he drove on past, slammed Tina into the tape deck, and stuck a chicken sandwich into his mouth.

Poet in the Gutter by John Baker (St. Martin's Press 1995)

Sam went to the men’s group because it was winter and cold in the flat, and because he was off the booze, and because another marriage had gone bust. There’s this place runs groups of all kinds, every night of the week. It cost ninety pence to get in, and that particular night Sam had the choice of Esperanto or the men’s group or going back on the booze. He walked in on them and sat down in the circle. They were talking about fairy stories and Iron John and about how women were in touch with the earth and men in the twentieth century were alienated. Sam thought about switching to Esperanto or walking fifty yards down the road for a beer and chaser. But he stayed put.