Saddell Bay by Andrew Shephard

Late evening light is sharpened bright

by hidden setting sun.

A ghostly boat burns fiery white,

birds dazzle, spin and plunge.

Shafts of fire light many a pyre

across Kilbrannan Sound.

Ten thousand years of settlement

and this is where I’m found.

The castle keep’s a silent stone,

the raiders swept away.

A laird’s house sits grand in a field

and stares across the bay.

Ferryman waits awhile for stores

when roads were made of sea,

but Cul na Shee, that nook of peace,

is where I choose to be.

An itch in my ear says the midges are here,

my beach fire is burning out fast,

but Cul na Shee is waiting for me

with sunset now served in a glass.

Beach fire

Saddell House

Saddell Castle

Cul na Shee

We rented a cottage from the Landmark Trust in Kintyre. The cottage was built in the 1930s right next to the beach for the retiring village schoolteacher. Getting there involved a long drive, single track roads, and two ferries, so you could say it was remote. It was June, and stayed light until very late. The dog loved it, and so did we. In the cottage was a book in which people were invited to write about their stay. This poem was my contribution.

Author interview by Clair Wright

Sometimes you finish reading a book you’ve enjoyed and are just dying to ask the author something about it. Well this week I got the chance to grill Andrew Shephard at the Writers’ Lunch about his newly published novel Nellie and Tabs, while he was waiting for the tomato sauce.

Your novel comes with such a powerful sense of the sights, sounds and smells of the 70’s alternative culture. Did you write this from your own experience or did you do a lot of research?

A lot of the details are dredged from my own experiences, and stories that I remember people telling me at the time. I didn’t do much research other than looking at old magazines and letters because I wanted to condense the main action into one year, and I didn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good story.

When you write a novel do you start with character or plot? Or was it the 70’s culture that inspired the story?

With this novel I started with the setting. The alternative society, as it was called at the time, is the type of enclosed world which makes good material for a novel. It takes the reader to a different world, though some aspects, especially youthful idealism, passions, and trying to find a role which suits, are familiar to most people.

Nellie covers a lot of ground in the book, moving from the commune in the north, to the Midlands to work on Peace Times, then London, Cambridge, Wales…. What made you choose these locations, and how important was Nellie’s travelling to the development of the story?

Well Nellie does not stick at anything for long so measures his life in months not years. Wherever he goes he does not quite fit in. He moves on to try and dig himself out of the latest hole he has dug. The locations I use are all places I have spent some time, so I sort of lived each scene as I was writing. I felt like I was really there, albeit as an observer.

The plot has many different strands as we follow the path of the different characters. It’s got everything – crime, politics, Nellie’s journey, and the ‘will they, won’t they’ romance of Nellie and Tabs themselves. Did you have all these strands fully planned out before you started writing?

No, I didn’t. The setting came first, then the main characters. As I wrote, the characters became sharper in my mind until they became almost as real as people I know today, and then I knew what they would do when they had difficult choices to make.

Nellie is a really interesting character, with some quirky aspects to him, such as his interest in magic tricks, and his nickname! How did you come up with him?

The magic tricks were important from the beginning because a trickster knows about illusion. He thinks other people – like Tabs with her I Ching and the peaceniks with their revolution – are performing an act too. He’s not a believer. The nickname came when I was imagining his life before leaving home, and a brother who changed Neil to Nellie as an insult. But Neil likes it, because of the song ‘Nellie the Elephant’ (a children’s song popular in the 1960s) and he fancies he has a better memory than his friends. Elephants reputedly have a good memory.

Your other main character, Tabs, is a real enigma – full of contradictions. Did you like her, in the end?

Tabs alights on new ideas, whether spiritual or political, and gobbles them up. She does the same to people, too. She is very much a free spirit, a 1970s style feminist who does not want to be tied down by a conventional relationship. So although she and Nellie feel a strong attraction to each other, there are issues which keep them apart. Did I like her? I admire her as a pioneer. She is more of a radical than Nellie is.

The ending of the novel, the last couple of chapters, are a real surprise, - it’s quite a bitter-sweet ending. Did you always plan to end the story in this way or did you change direction as your characters developed?

I neither wanted to repeat the traditional romance, nor completely lose the sweetness of a significant relationship. But I really did not know how it would end between Nellie and Tabs. Endings are always difficult, but at about the third attempt, as I was cycling back from a meeting with Emma Harding, my editor, it came to me like a revelation. So there was work to do even after I’d ‘finished’ the novel. Some people say ‘writing is re-writing’ and I experienced that to the full with this novel. But having written some bad novels, I think I can tell that, this time, I have written a better one.

Thanks, Andrew. You may now finish your ham, egg and chips. I hope it hasn’t gone too cold.

Nellie and Tabs is available as a paperback and ebook from Amazon. Just click on the cover graphic.

Lost by Virginia Hainsworth

Lost.         

To the marching lines of khaki ants.

To the shouts of a corporal not much older than you.

To the exciting unknown.

For comradeship trumps love

In this game of men.

Lost.

To the sound of the guns which took root in your head.

To the screaming black void, which held you in its grip.

Empty eyes searching

For fragments of peace

Amidst a deluge of fear.

Lost.

Sucked into the greedy mud of a French field.

Becoming one with the sodden earth, an impromptu grave.

Your dreams have escaped you,

Exhaled into the universe,

Borne aloft on your last breath.

An Offer You Can't Refuse (part two) by Suzanne Hudson

Phil watched Katie as she bent her head to read the dimensions of the room in the brochure.  The sun was streaming in through the patio windows and it lit up the highlights in her long blonde hair, as it fell over her shoulders.  Something flipped inside him.  He realised that he’d never seen such a beautiful creature.  He fought the urge to reach out and touch her silky hair.  She looked up and asked him a question but he didn’t hear what she was saying.  He was transfixed by that pretty little elphin face and those huge green eyes and he felt his stomach lurch with desire.

‘Bloody hell, Phil, get a grip!’ he told himself, breathing in deeply and trying to concentrate on what she was saying.  Katie’s eyes flickered with a brief moment of puzzlement as she rephrased the question and this time Phil listened carefully and then answered as briefly as he could, before leading the couple out into the hallway.  He knew that he had to get himself as far away from her as was physically possible, without being rude.  His heart was racing and he was sure he was blushing.  He led the way up the steep staircase, calling down behind him for them to mind their heads.  A sudden image leapt into his mind, of her husband cracking his head on the ceiling at the bend in the stairs and falling backwards onto the tiled floor of the hall, dead on impact.

          ‘God, what is wrong with you?’ he muttered to himself as he led them into the largest bedroom and hurried over to push up the sash of the window, sticking his head out and gulping in air as if he was drowning.

          ‘The master bedroom,’ he announced, as he spun back around, trying desperately to get back into estate agent mode, but as they looked about and Katie enthused over the Victorian tiled fireplace, it suddenly occurred to him what they would be doing in this room and he shot out of it as fast as he could.  He showed them the other two bedrooms and the bathroom in record time and ushered them downstairs.  Michael shook his hand in the hallway.

‘We’ve got a few more to see, Phil,’ he smiled. ‘But yes, we are very interested.’ 

          Phil’s heart sank and he began to panic.  He couldn’t bear it, the thought to them living in this wonderful house together.  Could he pretend to get a call to say that an offer had just been made on it?  Was it worth losing his commission, just to save him from having to imagine them here?  He knew deep down that they would just find another house, that there was nothing he could do and no way that he could compete with a sports car and all that testosterone.

          Phil stood at the window and watched Katie swinging her long legs into the front of the tiny car and he felt like a part of him had died.  He didn’t care about his pint at the pub anymore and the night out with the lads.

          ‘Goodbye,’ he sighed and then he frowned as he saw the car door opening again and Katie climbing back out and running up the steps to the front door.  He was there before her.  She stood framed in the doorway, embarrassment flooding her face.

          ‘Sorry, Phil, I think I left my scarf in the kitchen…’

          ‘Oh, that’s fine, come in,’ he said, glad to grab a few more seconds with her.  She hurried down the hall and reappeared with her floral scarf in her hand. 

          ‘By the way, I’m sorry about Michael.  I know he can be a bit much at times.’

          ‘Oh no, he’s…’ began Phil.

          ‘But he’s my big brother, so I’m kind of stuck with him!’ she laughed and Phil stared at her in disbelief.

          ‘Did you say he’s your brother?  I thought you two...’

          ‘Oh, you didn’t think we were an item, did you?’  Katie’s laugh echoed around the hallway. ‘Oh, my goodness, sorry, I thought they would have told you.  We’re brother and sister.  Katie and Michael Fraser.’

          ‘That’s amazing,’ said Phil and he realised that he was grinning from ear to ear.

          ‘It is?’ asked Katie, blushing a little.  ‘I couldn’t afford a place on my own, so Michael said he’ll buy somewhere as an investment and let me rent off him.  He’s got a heart of gold really.’

           Phil knew that it was inappropriate to hit on one of your perspective buyers but he also knew that he might never see her again.  It was now or never.

          ‘You’re not the only one who’s forgetful, you know,’ he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and getting out his business card.  ‘I forgot to give you this.’  His hand was shaking but on the back of the card he managed to scribble, ‘Can I take you out for a drink?’ and handed it to her.  She turned over the card and read what he’d written and he saw a look of surprise on her face and then it broke into a beautiful smile.

          ‘So I’m very interested…’ she said, as Phil opened the door and she stepped out.

          ‘You are?’ he said, not sure if she was talking about him or the house.

          ‘In fact, I’d like to make an offer right now.’

          ‘You would?’  She turned back to face him, her eyes dancing.

          ‘Dinner at eight?’