The Schoolboy (ISBN: 978-1905614882)
The Schoolboy is a short novel (a novella), which is published by Cinnamon Press. The tale describes the events of the week of Nick, the protagonist’s birthday, during which one of his teachers is assaulted. Nick’s family has seemed to disintegrate in front of him, with his father barely present and his brother in hospital. In some ways it is a coming-of-age story, and in other ways it is distinctly not. Writer Richard Gwyn describes the book an “exploration of a teenage boy’s inner violence and sexual rage with a finely-tuned ear for the nuances of spoken language and a superb eye for detail.”
The extract below is from the opening of the book. The Schoolboy is available to buy here.
Mum is slumped in front of the TV in a semidoze, filmy tea slopping dangerously near to the lip of the blue mug. I touch her shoulder gently, aware that I stink of not-so-fresh sweat. Mum has become very bony. The rise of her clavicle is as set as a cliff. My hand shakes on her bones, and I taste bile.
“Mum. Mum. Are you awake?”
She mutters in her sleep, a sort of film-sex murmur. I put the chip shop bag down as quietly as I can and slide my hands under her armpits. The feel of the deep and gaunt hollow reminds me of tripping over roots in the woods. I am just tensing to lift her up, when Dad’s key clicks into the front door. He doesn’t bellow anything down the hallway in the role of a sitcom dad, not like he used to (Honey, I’m home…). I hear the shift of fabric: he hangs his coat up on the stand, then he pushes the kitchen door open, before silently sneaking towards the sitting room. My legs seem to chatter, and I am disgusted.
“Hi Dad,” I say, standing apologetically in front of Mum, my groin level with her face. I reach for the plastic bag of fried things and try to move away. There is a pain in my eye, and I feel like I can’t look at anything ever again. I have to stare at the beige carpet.
“Shall I wake Mum up? I went to get us chips.” I smile politely, to the floor, though I’m certain my voice quavered. There is a pause, and I look up. Dad looks extremely odd. I can’t tell if he’s annoyed, bemused or simply blank.
“Don’t wake her up. She’s on the sleeping pills again.” He shifts his briefcase in his hand, puts it down.
“I’ll take her up,” he says, and his eyes slide over me in that way that makes me a little scared. He stands in front of me and bends down to lift her up. She is thin as paper. He rests her head against his shoulder, swings her knees in his hand. I can see him almost stroke her skin, the little naked patch on her shoulder left by her vest, where my warm fingers have just been, then see him think better of it, his eyes down.
“I’ll put her to bed,” he says, again, an assurance to me, for what I don’t know. I think that’s the closest they’ve got to intimacy in three years. I change feet, shift my weight. He leaves, Mum swinging in his arms, her long, thin arm flapping in an invisible breeze. I don’t know what to do.
Copyright Holly Howitt, 2007. The Schoolboy is published by Cinnamon Press, 2009.
Dinner Time and Other Stories (ISBN 978-1905614530)
I have selected three pieces from my collection of microfictions with Cinnamon Press, Dinner Time and Other Stories. Microfiction is an interesting genre, using a bit of this, and a bit of that – it borrows from poetry and uses the form of prose, whilst destabilising boundaries between the two. Often no longer than a few hundred words, microfiction aims to please, annoy, play with and remodel expectations of what short writing is. It is often characterised by a twist in the tale, like poetry, but also relies on the monotony of sentences to frame the bizarre goings-on encapsulated in a tiny space. Microfiction is often discussed in relation to prose poetry, which is also a destabilised and open genre. Personally, I think the difference between the forms is less than a hair’s breadth, and the genres should be discussed openly, rather than in a closed, hermetic fashion. Therefore, some of the pieces in the collection could be considered prose poems, rather than microfictions, in particular the eponymous Dinner Time sequence. Nick, the character from The Schoolboy, also makes an appearance in the collection.
Halo
Sitting in the cathedral, there is the vellum of the Magna Carta stretched tight behind us, tiny incisive words scratched through the thick yellow skin and catching the quibbles of yesteryear in it, sprawling flies in amber. I lit a votive candle in the private chapel and donated ten pence into a red plastic bucket; the noise turned the tourists around.
An old woman tells her granddaughter that Saint Cecilia is the patron of music, pointing to stained glass as she speaks. I have no way of telling whether or not this is true; only my ignorance can advise me. I do not look at the old woman. But when my back is turned, I hear her say to me, in a cracked and hushed voice, “You are looking for something that isn’t here, you know. The church isn’t for you.” When I leave the exhibition room and pass my candle, the wick is already barren, and smoking. I wonder who heard her.
Copyright Holly Howitt, 2007. This piece is published by Cinnamon Press in the collection Dinner Time and Other Stories. All work is copywritten to Holly Howitt and all rights have been reserved.
Capricorn
The goat is exhausted, her ribs opening and closing as if her breath were unravelling only to constrict her body. Her eyes are dry; her white eyelashes flail over the flies and dust she kicked up in the heat, but do no justice to the soft pink flesh. Panting, she lies on her side and, after a beat, lets me rest my head against her flank as I curl on the brown grass beside her. She smells of rotten hay and something else, something almost like hot tyres, something comforting and something like fear. There is the ghost of a bleat, but she is too tired to deny my head its soft, hot place, though her ears flatten, much like a distempered cat’s. I know I should be more careful, be more diligent around her. As my mother said, Where does the word capricious come from? I didn’t know, but it sounded bad, made the goat sound bad. Capricious, said my mother. She is capricious. The goat closes her yellow eyes. She has a terrible temper, and fully-grown horns. Her hooves are enough to break a metatarsal, crush a nose – if she wanted. But for now, she is safe. She likes me, likes the way I rake my fingers through her coarse hair and the way I feed her apples that I have picked from the tree, shaking them free of earwigs first. But she can change in a moment, be a devil at will.
Last week, she ran her horns through my sister’s jumper, disembowelling the soft jersey. My sister’s mouth opened, ready to scream, but nothing came out. My mother was all in a flap – an inch deeper and the goat’s horns would have sliced my sister open, she said. I look at the goat, peaceful now in a hazy dream, her coat sticky with sweat. I wish she had disembowelled my sister. But I won’t tell anyone that. Because the goat will do it herself, when she’s ready.
Copyright Holly Howitt, 2007. This piece is published by Cinnamon Press in the collection Dinner Time and Other Stories. All work is copywritten to Holly Howitt and all rights have been reserved.
Water
There was that time – do you remember it? – where the government said that we must share baths because the sea was evaporating, so we did, you and I, and you soaped my toes and I flannelled your back (most of the loofahs were dead by then) and we thought we were making a difference. Then we were told to drink our bath water as water was precious, and we did. You used that tall glass and I used the blue whisky one. It seemed somehow tastier then, like it looked on those adverts, in that blue glass. Finally we were told that we must only use water if it were to boil one or the other for supper, water being scarce. So I put you in that big pot that we used to put coal in when it still existed and I boiled you dry. After I’d ladled you out of the water, I washed my hair in your stock.
