7 DAY STORY WRITING CHALLENGE #1 WINNER

Prize: £500

Finalists

Western: Nicole K. Hollick

Paranormal: Gabrielle Ginn

Thriller: Jenny Weisberg

Magical Realism: Joan Bullion El Faghloumi

Chick-Lit: Thandi Gamedze

Historical: Nicki Blake

Horror: Rebecca Wilson

Dystopian: Debbie Cooper

Crime: Emily Macdonald

Romance: Debbie Rolls

Science Fiction: John Maygrove

Fantasy: Adam Yule

Honourable Mentions

Lauren-Joy Rosenbach Western

Judy Barnes Western

Helen Dudley Western

Chris Kok Magical Realism

Josephine Queen Magical Realism

Susan Jensen Sweeting Historical

Ruth Barber Horror

Mary-Louise McGuinness Dystopian

Kristina Vincent Paranormal

Susan Wigmore Crime

Tracy Jones Crime

Amanda Ingram Science Fiction

and the winner is…

Emily Macdonald

Big Boys Don’t Cry

(CRIME)

As he was led away, pale and diminished, he bowed his head to the floor.  In one fleeting moment, he suddenly looked up to sweep his gaze over the hushed court room.  In the sea of appalled faces, he found me.  Our eyes locked, his expression was piercing, angry and then deadened with greying disappointment and he dropped his head again.

I felt sick, ashamed. I bit hard on my lip, welcoming the bloody metal taste in my mouth.  I was the guilty one.  Don’t cry.  Big boys don’t cry.

The summer slowed time, especially in the high sun hours when the minutes stretched and pondered as if they needed rewinding.   I’d taken to waking early in the cool of the mornings, impatient to get outside.  The view from my window reached beyond the churchyard with its bent black yews and tilting headstones to the beech and oak trees of Farely Wood and beyond, to the weary wheat fields, Upland Ridge and then the downs, climbing hazily to meet the line of sky in a pale, saturated line. 

Aged twelve, I had been old enough to know that a hot, dry summer of recurring blue cloudless skies was a very fine thing but young enough to be susceptible to boredom in the slow ticking of the days. 

My mornings would begin optimistically.  I’d breakfast hastily in the kitchen, sometimes eating while already on the way out, stuffing a folded piece of bread, sticky with strawberry jam in my mouth, posting apples to bulge in the pockets of my shorts. 

My satchel contained all I needed for the day.  A porkpie (if I was lucky) or a luncheon meat sandwich, a rock cake, a whittling knife, a notebook, a sharpened pencil.  Around my neck I wore Grandfather’s binoculars (given to me on my 10th birthday) for looking at nature, perhaps birds (Mother’s suggestion, boring) or motorcars snaking up the long drive to Ravensbury Hall (far more interesting).

In my mind I was on important business, entrusted with recording details in my notebook of the comings and goings of the small village of Farelymow. I was practicing my powers of observation.  I’d tap my head with my pencil, waking up what the famous detective Monsieur Poirot, would have called ‘‘the little grey cells’’.   

I perched in the forks of trees, slyly secreting myself, sometimes able to eavesdrop if villagers passed close by.  I’d climb Upland Ridge so that I could train my binoculars from afar and assume a god-like authority over the activity below me, or spy from my favourite post, at the height of the church bell tower.  I was forbidden from climbing without permission or unsupervised but Grandfather (the Vicar) spent his days either visiting his parishioners or locked in his study and the verger was arthritic and quite deaf.

Sometimes I’d study the villagers out in the open.  Seated by the duck pond where I could monitor the door of the village shop, the post office and, further along, the dark gabled entrance to the Royal Oak pub.  I’d jot dates, names, times and comments in my notebook, feeling clever and important. 

In truth, my observations had become unsavoury.  I was snooping. Grandfather had reprimanded me for my curiosity.  He said I had an unhealthy appetite for intrigue.  Detection, was in his view, a grubby business and I was to occupy myself with pursuits more fitting to a young man of my station.

After a week or so I stopped recording the most repetitive behaviour.  I’d come to realise that people were creatures of habit.  They did a lot of the same things at the same time, every day.  Most of these things were not very interesting.

Instead, I decided to concentrate on the activities that seemed to me, to break with the usual rhythms of the village.  The accents and jars, the unusual, hasty or surprising. Miss Longford, dashing back to the shop just before closing to buy a pound of sugar (was she baking or making jam?), Jenny Cooper placing flowers furtively in the churchyard on Reggie Harfield’s grave. Harold the butcher’s boy cycling towards Farely Wood, looking around before laying his bike under the hedge, and a short while later, Patty Knoakes scuttling out of the undergrowth, adjusting her skirt and quite rosy in the cheeks.

‘’I like to inquire into everything’’ Poirot had said.  ‘’The good dog follows the scent, and if, regrettably, there is no scent to follow, he noses around - seeking always something that is not very nice’’.

What caught my attention most was any movement around Ravensbury Hall.  The generous estate grounds meant that anything I spotted was in minutiae but a flash of motor car chrome, an elegant pacing rider or the flicking whites of rallying players on the tennis court warranted capital letter annotation in my notebook.

TUESDAY 22ND JULY 1952, 10.05 am Observation point: Upland Ridge. PHOEBE RAVENSBURY, on horseback by Ashton Copse.  Deduce: horse riding. Destination: unknown.

The Ravensburys attended church dutifully if irregularly.  ‘High days and holidays’ said Mother.  She wasn’t disparaging, more accepting that this was the way of things. 

For me, the Ravensburys in church made a Sunday.  They always sat on the right-hand side of the nave, facing the pulpit.  We sat on the left and Mother would nudge me, silently reprimanding my sideways scrutiny of the family. I liked to study Phoebe’s full-skirted cotton dresses, pulled in with a tight, buckled belt.  Lady Ravensbury’s hats, wide-brimmed and tilted, just so. The surreptitious checking of a wristwatch, the stifled yawns.

Mostly I liked to watch Edward.  The way his hair flopped forward so that he’d toss his head with a flick to take it out of his eyes.  The sun angled through the stained-glass window catching the delicate blond hairs on the nape of his neck.  Once he’d caught me looking and thrillingly, I’d been rewarded with a stealthy quick wink.

Edward came to church the least often.  Once he’d come-down from Oxford, he’d been posted for his National Service, but this summer, he was home.  I’d plotted him in my notebook, roaring through the lanes in his beautiful open-topped car, and spied him from a distance, striding purposefully in well-cut flannels over the fields towards Barrow Rise. 

Once, to my joy, he’d even given me a ride in his car.  I’d been startled from a humming reverie as I dawdled along a high hedged lane and had to jump clear as the silver car reared around the corner. I’d scrambled into the hedge scratching myself on brambles.  Edward had jerked to a halt and called out

‘I say, I am sorry old chap.  Robert, isn’t it?  May I give you a ride by way of apology?’

‘Robin’. I’d said.  ‘My name’s Robin’.

I’d climbed into the shimmering car before he could change his mind and he’d driven me back to the vicarage, the long way, smiling at me sidelong, his arm stretched over the back of my seat.

‘She’s a beauty, what? Jaguar XK120’

‘A beauty’.  I’d agreed, pressing my feet to the floor.

As we pulled up by the church (all too soon) he’d ruffled my hair.

‘Better get that cleaned up.’ Edward traced my leg where the bramble scratch was oozing, a dark dotted pathway towards the edge of my shorts. He’d touched his forehead as if doffing a cap to me and I watched him as he accelerated away, waving his arm in salute.  

TUESDAY 22nd JULY ‘52, 12.10 pm. Observation point: village oak tree. EDWARD RAVENSBURY with UNKNOWN young man.  Arr. by Jaguar XK120 (I was pleased to remember this detail), tennis whites, enter Royal Oak.  Deduce: post-match drink. 12.50 pm depart, destination: prob. Hall for luncheon. 

Edward hadn’t seen me up in the tree.  He’d been deeply engrossed in his conversation with the unknown man.  In the car, ready to leave, I’d seen him reach over to open the glove box.  His hand had rested on the young man’s knee, as if accidentally. I’d felt a bitter stab of jealously and decided in that moment that the Unknown young man was not likeable. 

TUESDAY 22nd JULY ‘52, 4.00 pm. Observation point: church tower.  ED. R with UNKNOWN.  Arr. Jag.  Enter church.  Rolled paper sheets, tin can.

Deduce: brass rubbing. 4.50 pm Depart.

WEDNESDAY 23rd JULY ‘52, 3.50 pm Ed. R with UNKNOWN.  Arr. Jag.  Observation point: church tower.  ED. R with UNKNOWN, again.  Arr. Jag.  Enter church.  Rolled paper sheets, tin can. 4.45 pm depart. Deduce: more brass rubbing.

The following day, telling myself that the afternoon heat had driven me indoors, I entered the cool dank of the church.  It hadn’t rained for more than a week and the parched countryside was becoming tired and spent.   Cracks were appearing around the gravestones and only the ants, amassing over the crumbling earth maintained a busy momentum. 

I lay stretched out on a box pew, head resting on a crimson embroidered kneeler.  I had a book with me but it was closed, sitting on my chest.  I wasn’t really interested in it.  I was waiting. 

Secreted against the wooden high-back, I was hidden from view when the church door opened.  A blade of light widened like a hairpin and diminished again as the heavy door thudded shut. I rolled, quietly onto my front. 

Two sets of footsteps.

‘Alone at last’ I recognised Edward’s voice.

‘Come here’ was a man’s rough response.

There wasn’t any more talking but from the accelerated heavy breathing and wet smacking sounds I came to a realisation.  I lay rigid, sure that the quick beating in my chest would have me discovered.  Desperately curious I listened, engrossed and very excited.  Slowly, I sidled along the pew, keeping myself low.  Tentatively, I raised my head to peer around the edge, down the nave to the two men, moving rhythmically behind the font.

Just as a stifled moan rang out my book dropped to the floor and Edward, raised his head. I ducked down and lay, heart thumping, as still as I could.

‘My God! What was that?’

‘Nothing’ said Edward.  ‘Don’t worry, it was nothing.’

They’d left very soon after.  I was shakily pulling myself upright when the door opened again.  Edward re-entered the church and walked, unhurried right up to where I hesitated, inert.

‘Robin, here, take this’ Edward held out a 10-shilling note.

‘Go on, take it’ he said ‘And if you ever say a word, to anyone, I’ll….’

He let the threat hang there like a dust smite on the stale air.  He stepped closer and cupped his hand under my chin so that I was forced to look into his eyes.  Then placing a finger on my lips he’d said

            ‘There now.  Shush…’

He kissed me lightly, touching his lips to mine then slowly he turned to walk back down the nave, stooping to collect the tin of wax crayons. 

Nothing, he’d said.  It was nothing.

Grandfather had seen through my self-righteous tell-tale. He had beaten me, ostensibly for climbing the church tower.  The beating had been thorough but measured as if Grandfather knew I would have welcomed a furious thrashing.   My notebook, held by Grandfather with obvious distaste had been confiscated (needed in evidence he’d said) along with the binoculars. 

Grandfather’s vocation was to observe and understand human behaviour.  Little passed him by.   I had seen him as an arbiter of right and wrong but I was naïve.  He was more gracious, not one to cast judgement.  He was deeply pained by my confession which cornered him, forced him to act.

I was sent away. To boarding school in Derbyshire.  Mother went to Harrogate to stay with her sister and not long after, married again.  The Ravensburys no longer attended church.

I hadn’t confessed to the ten-bob note but I hadn’t been able to spend it either.  One Good Friday, while attending a meditative church service, I placed it in the collection plate, tightly folded.