From All Angus (Angus Writers' Circle Anthology 2015) Read online

her man.

  All going well it should be here

  between Christmas and New Year.

  Her folks will come round, sure, you’ll see,

  once baby’s here, believe you me.

  But listen, stay schtum, don’t say a word.

  I’m not one for gossip so you’ve not heard.

  I want folk to trust me, not think that I’d tell

  so I don’t spread gossip. Do I hell!

  Magic and (Missed) Romance was written in response to an Angus Writers’ Circle competition on the subject of A Childhood Holiday and is again based on truth. In fact, I subsequently returned to Venice with a tour group and did indeed meet the man that I would later marry.

  MAGIC AND MISSED ROMANCE

  The hotel was breathtaking. Our rooms were adjoining and I remember my parents had one and my sister and I the other. Both rooms looked out onto the Grand Canal where we could see all the bustle of city life, albeit on water instead of roads.

  We dined on an open-air terrace where artists came to sell their artwork. I remember my father bought two paintings which I still have on my wall today.

  One evening a gondola was sent to fetch us and we sailed gently onto the Grand Canal towards the Rialto Bridge. It was a full moon and in front of us were two launches bedecked with flowers and twinkling lights. On one was a quartet and on the other three opera singers.

  More gondolas appeared from different hotels until there were lines of them about twelve abreast, bobbing gently on the evening breeze. They were all heading slowly towards the Rialto Bridge, with the moonlight dancing on the water.

  I recall thinking how incredibly romantic it was; something I would remember all my life and that, much as I loved my parents, I couldn’t help wishing I was a little older. After all, the gondolas and gondoliers in their striped jerseys, the ancient bridge, the flowers, the opera ringing out over the rippling water, the full moon.... What a waste! Venice is a city for lovers and I was there with my parents and sister!

  Oh well, I thought, perhaps another year!

  I am married with three grown-up children and I have been retired for a few years now. I had always enjoyed writing and joined Angus Writers’ Circle with one of my daughters in the summer of 2012. My short stories and articles have been published in My Weekly and Scottish Memories and I have had some poems published in various anthologies.

  PAM TURNER: This is an extract from my novel, Outrage.

  OUTRAGE (EXTRACT)

  The weather was vile and Aaron was tired. The windscreen wipers were fighting a losing battle with the pounding rain; his eyes stung and his neck, shoulders and other parts ached.

  His shift had been calm enough until the new admission had been brought in by the police. A young man, in the manic phase of his illness, had grappled with all three nurses on the floor until the sedation took effect. In the grip of fear-filled hallucinations, the guy had elbowed Aaron in the ribs and kneed him in the balls.

  Now all Aaron could think of was getting home, soaking his sore bits and crawling into bed.

  Suddenly, the street lights went out.

  “Fuck’s sake!” Blinded by oncoming headlights, he tapped the brakes and leaned forward to peer through the silver-sheeted darkness. Horns blared. Tyres squealed. A figure seemed to materialise in front of him. Stamping on the brake pedal, Aaron flicked on main beam and made an emergency stop, breath whistling through his teeth.

  The figure raised a shielding arm across its face and stumbled onto the pavement.

  Unaware of the drama, the vehicle behind began furiously honking.

  Ignoring it, Aaron craned his neck to follow the figure’s path as it headed towards the bridge parapet.

  “No, you don’t,” Aaron breathed, flooring the accelerator and wrenching the car left onto the bridge. Screeching to a halt, he leapt out, narrowly missing being flattened by an overtaking bus.

  The figure was half over the parapet when Aaron grabbed for the arm and tail of a wet jacket and yanked. As they landed together in a puddle, Aaron at first thought he was holding a struggling girl in his arms, but there was no softness. It was a wiry, male body which fought against him.

  For the second time that day he was elbowed in his ribs, making him gasp and exert control.

  A young male voice began swearing like a trooper.

  “Calm down,” Aaron said into an ear. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The youth froze, head hanging, body trembling. An unwashed, damp smell rose from him.

  Despite the whooshing of passing vehicles, horns protesting around his abandoned car, Aaron was aware of the youth speaking and lowered his head to listen. “Let me die. Please let me die.”

  “No way,” Aaron breathed.

  As the youth struggled again, Aaron pulled him closer, back hugged against his chest.

  “What’s happened? Has he been knocked down?” asked a man’s voice.

  Looking up, Aaron blinked against the light. “Can you turn that thing off and phone an ambulance?”

  “Sure thing.” The man fumbled with the torch as a woman appeared at his side. “Phone an ambulance Helen. This boy’s been run over.”

  “Oh my word!” Hurrying over, the woman knelt, sheltering them with a raised umbrella. “Where’s he hurt? Shouldn’t he be in the recovery position? I’m a First Aider.”

  “He needs an ambulance,” Aaron insisted.

  “It’s on its way.” The man came closer, the beam of his torch playing over the youth’s slumped, shaking figure.

  Aaron hugged him protectively. “Will you stop that please? You’re frightening him.”

  Although the man moved away, the woman remained, now making hushing, cooing noises.

  When the paramedics leapt from their screaming ambulance, Aaron backed off and let them do their job. Watching them lift a now weeping boy into its interior, he stood uncertainly in the doorway.

  “Are you coming or what?” One of them asked.

  Aaron looked at the boy, curled in a ball, both hands covering his face. “I’ll follow in the car,” he heard himself reply

  What the novel is about: Pushed screaming into the world with his fiery head covered by a caul, Morgan was born lucky, so his Mum told him. When she died, his luck ran out. After years in the clutch of paedophiles, he tries to kill himself. Saved by off-duty nurse Aaron, who becomes his friend, protector and eventual lover, Morgan’s story becomes one of fear, courage and sustaining love as he fights to bring to justice the public figure who abused him.

  ALLAN WEBSTER

  THIS YEAR, JERUSALEM

  Instead of that hot bus trip over the desert to Jericho, Angus McNab decided to treat himself to a quiet walk around Jerusalem on his own. With all that rushing about following the tour guide, you didn’t have time to take things in. You needed space to chew the cud: to reflect on how it would have been when Jesus was here.

  The group leader and the Israeli guide had tried to talk him out of it. Was his health up to walking about alone in this heat? What about the security difficulties? The old man had been adamant. He would see the Old City again, even if it killed him. All the same, he felt in his pocket to make sure he still had his pills.

  “I do have other customers waiting,” said the shop assistant. Angus had almost grown used to the abrasive manner of these big-city Israelis, so different from the quiet courtesy of his ain folk on the Scottish Isle of Jura. He ignored her remark. Clearly the girl resented the influx of tourists who were making the jewellery store so busy.

  He continued to study the rows of gold earrings on the velvet-lined tray. A man behind him coughed. The shop assistant was wearing too much perfume, Angus decided, wrinkling his nose. He continued to check prices.

  “I’ll take this pair,” he announced at last, “as a gift for my granddaughter.”

  He thought of the slim face of the seventeen-year-old and shook his head. Lynn was still more interested in loud music than rearing sheep. He hoped she would appreciate the
gift. The young assistant stood impatiently while Angus counted out the unfamiliar currency.

  In the late seventies, when he and Janet had come to the Holy Land with a group led by yon famous minister from Glasgow, he’d left his wife to do all the shopping. It was pounds, then – even if they were only worth tuppence – not these new-fangled shekels. Finally, he abandoned the attempt to tender the right amount and rummaged in his wallet for a larger note.

  “I don’t need a fancy box. Yon envelope with the shop’s name on it will do.”

  He left with his purchase stowed safely in an inside pocket, next to his box of pills, and made his lonely way back along the crowded pavement. Walking past the hospitals, he went down the Street of the Prophets towards the Old City.

  They had pilgrims of a sort on Jura, Angus reflected: he’d passed them often on the unmade road to the north end of the island, hoping to see the Corrievreckan whirlpool. Sometimes, when the rain was heavy or they looked especially footsore, he would give them a lift in his Land Rover. A few of the more serious types would ask for directions to the cottage where the novelist George Orwell wrote 1984.

  When Angus and Janet had been married in the wee church at Craighouse back in 1963, the year 1984 had seemed impossibly remote, and as for the twenty-first century....

  The TV aerials and satellite dishes which he could see over the battlements of the Turkish wall seemed utterly incongruous as he braved the traffic to reach the Damascus Gate. He joined the crowd who were attired in a mixture of modern and biblical dress as they shuffled past the crippled beggars by the scent-filled