For the Love of Willie by Agnes Owens (Polygon 1998)

 

Foreword

Two patients sit on the veranda of a cottage hospital run by a local authority for females with mental problems, some of them long-term and incurable. Peggy, stoutly built, middle-aged, and with a hard set to her jaw, rises and stares down through the high railings at a bus shelter below.

‘A man in that shelter resembles someone I once knew,’ she tells her companion.

‘Really?’ says the companion, elderly and frail but known as the duchess because of her imperious manner. ‘It beats me how you can remember anything.

'I remember lots of things. That’s why I’m writing a book.’

‘A book? You never told me. What’s it about?’

‘About my life before they put me inside,’ says Peggy. She adds wistfully, ‘I had one, you know.’

‘I can hardly imagine it,’ says the older woman, whether referring to Peggy’s earlier life or the book not being clear. ‘Anyway,’ she says snappishly, ‘if you do manage to write a book who will read it? They’re all simpletons here, including the staff.’

‘I was hoping you might read it,’ says Peggy, ‘you being a highly educated woman with a superior knowledge of the frailties of the human heart.’

Her irony is lost on the duchess who says with a condescending smile, ‘I might, if I’ve nothing else to read. But wouldn’t it be better to get it published? Otherwise the whole thing could be a waste of time.’

‘What does it matter?’ asks Peggy. ‘I’ve plenty of time to waste.'

Election by Tom Perrotta (Berkley Books 1998)

PAUL WARREN

 “SO TELL ME,” said Dad. “Who's gonna win this election?”

Lisa shot me a surprised glance, her pretty eyes widening with alarm. Tammy stared blankly at her pancakes. Mom twisted her head, apparently searching for our waitress. Dad pressed on.

“What's the matter? We're all intelligent people. Doesn't anyone have an opinion?”

The whole brunch had gone like that, Dad playing teacher, the rest of us fumbling for answers. Mom was stiff and tongue-tied, Tammy sullen, Lisa polite. I'd done my best to keep the conversation afloat, but I was starting to lose heart.

“I'm a lifelong Republican,” he went on, “but I'm actually thinking about pulling the lever for Jerry Brown.”

The sense of relief around the table was immediate and conspicuous.

“Jerry Brown?” Mom scoffed. “You've got to be kidding.”

“I'm serious,” he insisted. “This country's corrupt from top to bottom, and Brown's the only one with the guts to say so.”

“Perot's saying it too,” Lisa reminded them.

“He's nuttier than Brown,” Mom observed. “The ears on that man.”

“What about Clinton?” I asked. “He's pretty interesting.”

“Ugh.” Dad looked disgusted. “That guy. He could stand out in the rain all day and not get wet.”

“I'm surprised,” said Mom. “I had you pegged for a Clinton man.”

“Me?” he said. “What gave you that idea?”

The Hedge Knight: A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms by George R. R. Martin (Voyager Books 1998)

The spring rains had softened the ground, so Dunk had no trouble digging the grave. He chose a spot on the western slope of a low hill, for the old man had always loved to watch the sunset. “Another day done,” he would sigh, “and who knows what the morrow will bring us, eh, Dunk?”

Well, one morrow had brought rains that soaked them to the bones, and the one after had brought wet gusty winds, and the next a chill. By the fourth day the old man was too weak to ride. And now he was gone. Only a few days past, “he had been singing as they rode, the old song about going to Gulltown to see a fair maid, but instead of Gulltown he’d sung of Ashford. Off to Ashford to see the fair maid, heighho, heigh-ho, Dunk thought miserably as he dug. When the hole was deep enough, he lifted the old man’s body in his arms and carried him there. He had been a small man, and slim; stripped of hauberk, helm, and sword belt, he seemed to weigh no more than a bag of leaves. Dunk was hugely tall for his age, a shambling, shaggy, big-boned boy of sixteen or seventeen years (no one was quite certain which) who stood closer to seven feet than to six, and had only just begun to fill out his frame. The old man had often praised his strength. He had always been generous in his praise. It was all he had to give.

Dangerous Davies and the Lonely Heart by Leslie Thomas (Heinemann 1998)

Walking alongside the mouldy canal on the deep summer afternoon Detective Constable Davies wondered what would happen if the water actually began to flow. A plastic beaker, itself gradually taking sips of filthy water, lolled on the thick surface. Eventually it would sink to the bottom to lie, possibly for ever, down there with ages of sunken rubbish. But if the canal began to move like even the most turgid of rivers, and all the canals in the country did likewise, starting up spontaneously and all at the same time, what a difference it would make to the country. He took a sniff.

Davies himself was not moving fast. He was bulky and well into middle age. He puffed as he trudged. It had been raining when he left his lodgings that morning and he was encumbered with his macintosh which he had to wear because his arms were occupied with two car batteries, stolen property found as he had expected, lying below one of the bridges. Not for the first time in his career he cursed criminals who stole heavy things.

Giant summer weeds, almost tropical, swollen green rhubarb and mad cabbage, burgeoned along the tow-path. Steam rose from the thicker growth drifting up to join noxious substances hanging in the north-west London air. There was a sort of yellow-ochre tinge to the clouds, something chemical trapped below them. Somebody ought to have painted the scene. Turner had been a dab hand at that sort of thing. Davies wondered whether anyone like Constable had visited Willesden. It would have been different then, though, real fields and bits of puffy woodland and little hills; hardly a copper or a crime in sight.

Although the canal did not flow, its route occasionally described a gentle bend. Shuffling around one of them Davies came upon as pretty a picture as he was likely to see that day. Against the urban grey and green a gypsy caravan was drawn up on the tow-path, a horse was foraging among the weeds for fragments of grass, and a huge black kettle was balancing and steaming on a camping gas stove. “Ma Daliloquay,” muttered Davies with a touch of pleasure. “South for the summer.”

An old lady in colour-blind clothes appeared at the caravan door. Davies had known the time when the caravan had been bright with paint and patterned around the frame, but it had faded since Fred Daliloquay had gone to gypsy paradise. That had been some funeral; the men had crazy races, riding half-wild horses through the industrial streets.

Dead Wrong by Cath Staincliffe (Robinson 1998)

Teatime at home was a disaster. Maddie burst into tears and refused to eat a morsel. Something to do with the layout of the food on the plate. Tom had been fine until he knocked his blackcurrant juice all over his plate and the rest of the table. I struggled hard to force food down into my stomach which was tense with irritation. Maddie continued to howl until I told her to go off and do it somewhere else. She stormed off. Ray cast me a questioning look.

‘I’m not in the mood,’ I said. ‘It drives me up the wall when she does this, when she won’t explain what’s wrong. God, if I knew she wanted the flipping peas in the middle I’d put them in the middle. I’m not telepathic.’

‘You should be,’ Ray said. ‘It’s a prerequisite of motherhood.’

The door flew open and Maddie flounced in. ‘Mummy.’ She’d stopped crying now and she was all outrage. ‘You didn’t give me any tea and I’ll starve and I’ll die and then you’ll be really sorry and I’ll be glad.’ She wheeled round and pulled the door to behind her hard. She was trying for a satisfying slam. Unfortunately a well-placed stuffed dinosaur was in the way and the door merely bounced back open again.

I covered my mouth to stifle the giggles. It wasn’t the first time she’d threatened me this way, but I reckoned her mouthing off her anger at me was probably healthier than swallowing it all and storing it up for adult life.

Of course by bedtime peace had been restored. We’d talked about my need to know about her constantly shifting requirements – not that I thought it would make one iota of difference. I hugged her, told her I loved her and read a long story. I even managed to bite my tongue when she complained of feeling hungry and brought her warm milk and an apple. Perfect mother or what?

Life at the Top by Mark Hodkinson (Queen Anne Press 1998)

Tuesday 23 September 1997

Wimbledon 4 Barnsley 1

The lowest Premiership crowd of the season, just 7,668, saw Barnsley defend gallantly for 65 minutes before conceding four goals in the final 25 minutes. Michael Hughes, Carl Cort, Robbie Earle and Efan Ekoku scored for Wimbledon, after Eric Tinkler had given Barnsley the lead. The defeat was put down to a 'lack of professionalism and failure to take responsibility' by Wilson. 'It is happening too many times and I am sick of it. It has to stop,' he warned.

The goal proved to be Tinkler's last in a season where he struggled to find fitness and and form. Better Red Than Dead was particularly uncharitable in its critique of Tinkler: 'His performances on the field have been absolutely abysmal; he can't tackle, can't pass, gets brushed off the ball like he isn't there and for a bloke built like a brick shithouse is about as hard as a marshmallow toasted over an open fire. Yet he struts his stuff as if he's the best player we've ever seen . . . I'd rather play Lars Leese in midfield than this streak of cow's piss.'

A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler (Fawcett Books 1998)

I am a man you can trust, is how my customers view me. Or at least, I'm guessing it is. Why else would they hand me their house keys before they leave for vacation? Why else would they depend on me to clear their attics for them, heave their air conditioners into their windows every spring, lug their excess furniture to their basements? "Mind your step, young fellows; that's Hepplewhite," Mrs. Rodney says, and then she goes into her kitchen to brew a pot of tea. I could unlock the outside door so as to slip back in overnight and rummage through all she owns - her Hepplewhite desk and her Japanese lacquer jewelry box and the six potbellied drawers of her dining-room buffet. Not that I would. But she doesn't know that. She just assumes it. She takes it for granted that I'm a good person.

Come to think of it, I am the one who doesn't take it for granted.

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.

Near Neighbours by Gordon Legge (Jonathan Cape 1998)

Adam switched off the motor.

'Oh,' said Geordie, 'you're back again.'

'Back to listen to you and your blethers, aye.'

'By God, see if I was a younger man - I'd take my hand off your face before you could say Gazza. I've battered bigger than you, mind. Plenty bigger.'

Aye, I think I mind you telling me - hundreds of times.'

Geordie was the type as would probably be quite happy if Adam were to headbutt. He'd live off it for years. 'Aye,' he'd tell folk, 'just right in front of my face. What a mess it was and all. Blood and brains all over the shop. Never get that cleaned. That's what the polis said. Said to me, "Geordie," they said, "long as you live, and as hard as you try, you'll never get that cleaned."'

Adam replaced the seat. 'Well, want to give it a go, auld yin?'

Geordie made to get up. He adjusted his legs. He adjusted his legs like they were artificial. To all intents and purposes, they were.

(From the short story, 'Past Masters'.)

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Press 1998)

Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life. He'd been accused of being in thrall to his career, but that had never been the case. His work sustained him only because it was an easy option. He dealt every day with strangers, with people who didn't mean anything to him in the wider scheme. He could enter their lives, and leave again just as easily. He got to live other people's lives, or at least portions of them, experiencing things at one remove, which wasn't nearly as challenging as the real thing.

Election by Tom Perrotta (Berkley Books 1998)

Mr. M
All I ever wanted to do was teach. I never had to struggle like other people with the question of what to do with my life. My only dream was to sit on the edge of my desk in front of a room full of curious kids and talk about the world.

The election that turned me into a car salesman took place in the spring of 1992. when Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill were still fresh in everyone's mind, and Gennifer Flowers was the momentary star of tabloids and talk shows. All year long my junior Current Events class returned again and again to a single theme, what the media liked to call "the Character Issue": How are private virtue and public responsibility intertwined? Can you be an adulterer and a good President? A sexual pervert and an effective, impartial member of the judiciary?

All Points North by Simon Armitage (Penguin Books 1998)

Colne Valley once had a reputation as a hotbed of radical thought and political activism. It figured strongly in the Luddite uprisings. Enoch Taylor is buried in Marsden, whose looms were pulverized by the hammer of the same name, and William Horsfall was, aptly enough, shot from his horse in Milnsbridge, after saying he'd rather ride up to his saddle girths in blood than give in to the demands of the rabble. Out of the dozens of mills along the valley floor, a handful are still working with wool. The rest are converted into units, full of New Age hippies brewing patchouli oil and making ear-rings out of circuit boards, or moored at the side of the river, rotting away like decommissioned ocean-liners. Weavers' cottages with their double-glazing look down from the hillsides, like old faces wearing new glasses.

In the 1970s, the Valley fell into a long, pleasant afternoon nap. In their sleep, electors stumbled along to voting booths in junior schools and village halls, and put a cross next to the name of Richard Wainwright, Liberal, who held the seat for donkey's years. He was a good man, and that was all anybody needed to know. On your eighteenth birthday he sent you a signed letter on House of Commons stationery welcoming you to the electoral register, and you sold it to your fifteen-year-old friend for ID in the pubs in town . . .

Garnethill by Denise Mina (Carroll & Graf Mystery 1998)

"Marie was the eldest. She moved to London in the early eighties to get away from her mum's drinking, settled there and became one of Mrs Thatcher's starry-eyed children. She got a job in a bank and worked her way up. At first the change in her seemed superficial: she began to define all her friends by how big their mortgage was and what kind of car they drove. It took a while for them to realize that Marie was deep down different. They could talk about Winnie's alcoholism, about Maureen's mental-health problems, and to a lesser extent about Liam dealing drugs, but they couldn't talk about Marie being a Thatcherite. There was nothing kind to be said about that. Maureen had always assumed that Marie was a socialist because she was kind. The final breal between them came the last time Marie was home for a visit. They were talking about homelessness and Maureen ruined the dinner for everybody by losing the place and shouting, 'Get a fucking value system,' at her sister."

The Sweet Forever by George P. Pelecanos (A Dell Book 1998)

"Karras crossed the avenue, approaching Stefanos and the kid from behind. As he neared them, Karras saw the televisions in the window were all tuned to the same image: Len Bias, wearing that jazzy ice green suit of his, standing out of his chair at the calling of his name.

All right, it was news. But why were they running the draft highlights again, two days after the fact?

"Nick?" said Karras.

Stefanos and the boy turned their heads. The black kid was crying freely, tears running down his cheeks.
"Dimitri," said Stefanos, his eyes hollow and red.

Karas felt hot and suddenly nauseous in the sun. He backed away to a government oak, leafy and full, planted by the curb. Karras stepped into its cool shade.

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. It was better there, standing in the darkness pooled beneath the tree.