Trifles — Part 1
His mother asked him to run over to Anastasia Rathbone's for a bowl of trifle. There was to be a truthing that evening and Mr Power would be needing Mr Rathbone's strong pliers, which he liked to use when working on an informer. So he walked along the Top Road, humming, keeping an eye out for liberation army patrols and trying to think of something that might be nicer than buttered bread sprinkled with white sugar. A kitten just as its eyes are ungluing was nice, especially as it couldn't really bite or scratch. And the hot water bottle that made the bed feel like it was on fire was almost better than everything — but only when he had chilblains.
It began to rain, so he began to run. Which was when he fell. Which was when the note his mother had pinned to the lining of his corduroy jacket came loose. Not that he noticed. The gravel that had embedded itself all across his kneecap required concentration. He had been knocked down often enough on the school yard to know how sore gravel could be. The knee was every bit as bad as the elbow, but not as bad as the forehead, but none of these was as bad as the Jeyes Fluid his mother used for treating the gravel cuts. Breen's mother put mercuricome on grazes, which smelled much nicer, but because of the truthings and the disinfecting that had to be done after the informers had been cut up, Jeyes Fluid was all they had at home.
Old Mr Noody, who visited twice a week for tea and a chat, always sniffed the air when he came into the kitchen and always said, "Jaysus Fluid!" It was the only original thing he had ever said but no one laughed at it anymore. Still, when most of those who didn't laugh anymore at Mr Noody's witticism went to the store and ordered the disinfectant from Mrs Ruane, they'd shout "Oh, and a bottle of Jaysus Fluid, Mrs!" And everyone would laugh out loud if it was one of the funniest things they'd ever heard.
Next week: Part 2
Comments
Will we eventually see the connection between trifle and pliers?
Except for the digression on Jeyes Fluid, it sounds like the beginning of a British dystopian sci-fi novel. The British luuuurve them their dystopias, and are eager to see them lurking around every corner.
By the way, I note that we know a great deal about our milieu, but do not know the name of our young (I assume) protagonist. This always gets a bad mark in the writing group I (used to) frequent, one fellow saying that he'd reject, out of hand, any story that began with an unreferenced pronoun.
Posted by: Angie Schultz | October 25, 2006 08:05 PM
Pliers meets trifle next week!
It's not meant to be sci-fi, but I suppose I've watched Blade Runner once too often.
Neither is it meant to be dystopian. Not in the classic sense, anyway. Terror of the Irish variety is the core of the story, but the same kind of horror can be found in many other places today. What many of us find beyond the bounds of belief -- the sectarian slaughter in Iraq, the mass killings in Sri Lanka, the horrors of Darfur -- are being carried out with the active support of "ordinary" people. This is what is so frightening about our world. Nothing should be taken for granted and things are not always what they appear to be. Especially trifle!
Young person's name to be revealed as well next week as it will not be possible for him to get the bowl without a certain degree of social interaction.
Thanks for the critique, Angie. Hope you can find the time to read each installment.
Posted by: Eamonn | October 25, 2006 11:21 PM
I hope I did not come off as too snarky. It is of course well-written (pronouns aside). But I didn't know what it was: fiction? memoir? yours? someone else's? You did spring it on us rather suddenly.
I read you every day. I look forward to more, although I'll point out it will be difficult to successfuly pull off a serial in such short installments.
James Lileks was writing a novel inspired by his matchbook collection. Those were very short installments -- the first draft, anyhow. I liked it a lot, but he couldn't sell his publisher on the idea.
Posted by: Angie Schultz | October 26, 2006 07:42 PM
Snarky? No way! Very happy, I am, that you have read the excerpt so closely. No, a novel won't work if posted in small segments, but the challenge is to find some new way of getting the fiction reader to read online. Books are here to stay, and thank God for that, but the next generation of readers might be interested in reading from different devices in different ways. The audio book shows that the MP3 format can be used to deliver books and it's possible that HTML, not PDF or CD-ROM, might be handy when stringing stories together. Just a thought.
Posted by: Eamonn | October 29, 2006 02:01 PM