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Martyrs and Other Stories
Martyrs and Other Stories
Martyrs and Other Stories
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Martyrs and Other Stories

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Eleven stories make up this collection. A number, like ‘The Guiding Hand’ and ‘Unspecified Matters’ are biting satire while others, like ‘A Day Oot’, ‘Window Boxes’ and ‘Martyrs’ are gentler in tone. Covering roughly the period from the early nineteen seventies until the millennium, around half can be termed Scottish and three Irish. The predominant theme is politics – from the sectarianism experienced in (an Irish) childhood through the politics of the workplace to the first elections of the Scottish Parliament. The maverick characters have lifestyles varying from the decadent rich to surviving on the dole but throughout the author’s voice is consistently her own.
‘A Day Oot’ was published in ‘Northwords’ in 2000, ‘Minutes’ was published in ‘Cutting Teeth’ in 2001 and ‘Window Boxes’ was previously published by ‘The Stinging Fly’ (Dublin’s Literary magazine) in 2004. The rest of the stories have not been previously published.
Alexis Scott was born in Derry, N. Ireland but has lived almost all her adult life in Scotland. She trained as a solicitor in Scotland and has worked in many different jobs, including welfare rights and social research. She has written all her life, mostly fiction. Her other works of fiction include EATING WOLVES (print), THE YEARS (e-book) and DEACONSBANK (e-book).
Alexis Scott has also contributed to the anthology ‘True Cat Tales’ (kindle) and ‘The Dynamics of Balsa’ (New Writing Scotland 2007) as well as various academic journals and literary magazines.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherAlexis Scott
Release dateJun 27, 2013
ISBN9781301323067
Martyrs and Other Stories
Author

Alexis Scott

Born in Derry, N. Ireland. I trained as a solicitor and have worked in welfare rights, money advice, social research, selling art. I have written all my life. My other e-books include The Years and Deaconsbank. My one print book is Eating Wolves (Dewi Lewis 2003).

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    Book preview

    Martyrs and Other Stories - Alexis Scott

    Martyrs

    and other stories

    by Alexis Scott

    Smashwords edition

    Copyright © 2013 Alexis Scott

    Photo Copyright© Colin Howard

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    The monument on the front cover is the Monument aux Bigoudens at Pont l'Abbé, Brittany, France, by François Bazin.

    Alexis Scott was born in Derry, N. Ireland but has lived almost all her adult life in Scotland. She trained as a solicitor in Scotland and has worked in many different jobs, including welfare rights and social research. She has written all her life, mostly fiction. Her other works of fiction include EATING WOLVES (print), THE YEARS (e-book) and DEACONSBANK (e-book).

    Alexis Scott has also contributed to the anthology ‘True Cat Tales’ (kindle) and ‘The Dynamics of Balsa’ (New Writing Scotland 2007) as well as various academic journals and literary magazines.

    Alexis Scott can be contacted on alexisscott00@hotmail.com

    Praise for EATING WOLVES:

    ‘As good as people-watching on the beach – only better.’

    Carson Howat, The Scotsman

    ‘Extremely readable’

    John Carey, The Sunday Times

    Eleven stories make up this collection. A number, like ‘The Guiding Hand’ and ‘Unspecified Matters’ are biting satire while others, like ‘A Day Oot’, ‘Window Boxes’ and ‘Martyrs’ are gentler in tone. Covering roughly the period from the early nineteen seventies until the millennium, around half can be termed Scottish and three Irish. The predominant theme is politics – from the sectarianism experienced in (an Irish) childhood through the politics of the workplace to the first elections of the Scottish Parliament. The maverick characters have lifestyles varying from the decadent rich to surviving on the dole but throughout the author’s voice is consistently her own.

    ‘A Day Oot’ was published in ‘Northwords’ in 2000, ‘Minutes’ was published in ‘Cutting Teeth’ in 2001 and ‘Window Boxes’ was previously published by ‘The Stinging Fly’ (Dublin’s Literary magazine) in 2004. The rest of the stories have not been previously published.

    Table Of Contents

    Introduction

    Minutes

    Favours

    Window Boxes

    Martyrs

    Pudding

    A Day Oot

    The Guiding Hand

    Unspecified Matters

    Lies

    The Empty Room

    Perpetual Torment

    Minutes

    Phyllis was forty by the time she started noticing rather a lot of people were calling her dear. Of course that was nothing new, no more than men (once upon a time) giving you their seat on trains or buses or holding doors open for you. Then she had stared at them with disdain or even, in the case of the men calling her dear, retorted: I’m not your dear, just as she had resolutely refused their offer of ladies first. Only now the dear-calling seemed to happen rather more often than it used to.

    In any event she had noticed the ladies first lark was always limited in its generosity. For example, when you were commuting and you could see the train was crowded (which was almost always) the men dropped their fausse politesse like a hot potato and scrambled in front of her like ill-trained mongrels. Naturally, the minute they got on board there was a mad stampede for the seats and it was generally the women - middle aged as well as young - who were forced to stand and wobble about and look for something to hang onto for the whole of the thirty minutes the train took from Stirling to Glasgow. Phyllis had never bothered with all the wobbling about: she would just head for the only space on the train where you could sit on the floor - the part near where the carriages were joined together. Naturally, the floor was always filthy on these dirty old diesels but she decided she would rather sit on a filthy floor than risk getting varicose veins. In those days the prospect of reaching Margaret Thatcher’s age had seemed light years away (Thatcher had her varicose veins done around the time Phyllis was sitting on filthy floors) but still she knew to look after herself. In those halcyon days (the filthy trains and the sexism apart) she worked on the government’s Manpower Services Community Programme scheme - a rather more generous version of the current schemes for in those days you could earn what is now the equivalent of about fifteen grand a year - three quarters of what Phyllis earned now, with years of experience behind her. If you were a graduate, as Phyllis was, anyway, you could. Still, the MSC jobs were all pretty low-status and you could get away with jeans and a T-shirt, not like these days when the lowest of the lowliest clerks has to dress to the nines in navy blue suits. Or a bold pink if you are young enough and daring enough (or have an exceptionally important job which Phyllis didn’t, of course). Not that the MSC job wasn’t a good job - well, in a way it was. In a many ways it was more interesting than what she did these days: sitting at a computer terminal all day long, sending out the same old boring fundraising letters, taking the minutes at meetings and writing them up afterwards in a socially acceptable form (so that Jones’s use of the word crap would be deleted, for example and only the most oblique reference to Mr Jones’s mild disapproval, would be recorded). Sometimes Phyllis felt like chucking it but she could not afford to: after all, what with all her family responsibilities over the years, and then the divorce, she had never managed to save tuppence, not even for a personal pension.

    But this dear business. These days it wasn’t the men who did it. No man these days would dare in case he found himself castigated by his peers as well as all of womankind - and that’s if he was lucky. If unlucky he might just as easily end up before some tribunal and find himself out of a job. No, these days it wasn’t the tight-lipped dark-suited briefcase brigade (who looked as though they wouldn’t say boo to a goose) who joined her and the navy and pink-suited females on the shuttle trains to the city: it was the women. Not her professional colleagues, of course, who were all feminists or at least post-feminists. It was younger, as well as older, women in shops, public buildings and serving you in the pub even, who seemed to think it was quite the done thing to patronise forty-something females. When she had been a young student, and worked in shops and pubs during the long vacations, she would never in a million years have had the nerve to call any of her customers dear. It was, quite simply, she thought, a matter of respect. But how to respond was a problem.

    She decided to discuss the matter with Jenny - a colleague with marginally more junior status and only four or five years younger - during one of their infrequent pub lunches. Infrequent because post-feminist women - the majority of her (female) superiors as well as colleagues these days - inclined towards the belief that you were not really doing your job properly unless you worked at least every other lunch break. Then, of course, there were the babies in the workplace nursery or the moaning husbands to attend to (naturally the women did not refer to their husbands as moaners - rather, they were very much modern, post feminist men who wanted to be involved in everything to do with their families. Privately Phyllis saw this as an excuse for controlling their wives: after all, if they had to discuss family life with husbands at every available opportunity, plus attending to the babies in the workplace nursery, the wives couldn’t exactly go and have a drink with colleagues, let alone get up to any hanky-panky, could they? However, as Phyllis was divorced, her opinion on such matters was never sought, let alone accepted, so the thought remained private).

    Oh. Jenny seemed genuinely surprised. But, you know, Phyllis, people have always called me ‘dear’. And I don’t just mean my husband or his mum. I think it’s a lovely expression, really. I mean, it is a term of affection, after all, isn’t it?

    That’s not the point. Phyllis did not conceal her irritation. Christ, did the woman think she was stupid or something? It’s far too familiar. Besides, men don’t get called it - ever, do they?

    Of course not. Jenny looked hurt. But just because there’s a difference there doesn’t mean it’s - well, you know - discrimination, Phyllis. She started whispering and half turning round as if she was worried who might hear.

    Well, I think that’s exactly what it is. She hadn’t meant to sound stroppy; that wasn’t what she was here for at all. She had wanted to discuss the matter because she was genuinely worried. Despite all those protestations about age not mattering she was suddenly finding that it did matter, very much, how old you were. She knew fine Jenny wasn’t a raving feminist: she didn’t know any raving feminists these days anyway. Still, they were friends as well as colleagues - sort of; what she had imagined was some heartfelt debate with this woman about ageing and ageism and maybe even death and dying and here they were talking crap, the two of them. She felt like crying but she had her dignity.

    It makes me feel - undignified, she went on hopelessly. "I just can’t stand being talked to like that. I mean, can you imagine anyone calling Cherie Blair ‘dear’?

    They had finished their prawn sandwiches. Jenny stood up.

    I’m afraid I’ve got to go. I’ve got to finish that piece for Mr Jones.

    Phyllis had all but forgotten the conversation with Jenny some months later when she was going for the Policy/Development Officer job. She should walk it, she reckoned, having been the only Policy/Development Assistant for yonks. As she read through the job description, she reckoned you could say she did the job already in all but name. The Person Specification naturally fitted her to a tee. Still, when it came to the interview she had rehearsed her stuff well, dreaming up hypothetical questions, talking to herself in the mirror - all that: careful not to rely even on just the presentation she had spent hours preparing (in her own time, of course). No-one could possibly accuse her of being complacent.

    The interview went smoothly, as expected.

    We hope to decide this afternoon. Jones, who was chairing the interview panel, smiled broadly at her. She could even have sworn he winked.

    The news came, not that evening, nor even the next day, but the day after that (she couldn’t approach anyone, of course, or it would be canvassing, wouldn’t it?) that she hadn’t got it.

    I regret to inform you, my dear....( My dear! My dear!) However, I have been asked to tell you that the panel were most impressed with your performance and wish you luck in any future application.

    Performance! As if she was a fucking monkey! As if my dear wasn’t enough! She was practically raving by the time she got into work. Only still she couldn’t say a word. Naturally, if the successful candidate was a man she’d go straight to a tribunal, pleading sex discrimination.

    Only the successful candidate was a woman, Jenny told her. Skirt halfway up her backside. Bleached blonde hair. Late twenties. Evidently Jones’s type. Look, I’m not happy about it, either. I mean, the only reason I didn’t apply for the job myself was because I thought I didn’t stand a chance. What with you having far more experience and everything. But this one who got it - I mean, she was just a typist. Barely a Standard grade to her name: I mean, it’s ridiculous, really.

    Jenny was depressed about the whole business but Phyllis was seething throughout the next fortnight while she hatched a plan. She asked for two weeks’ holiday to commence two days after the next meeting of the Policy and Resources committee meeting and booked a holiday abroad. The assistant at the travel office stared at her when she told her she didn’t care where she went as long as it was out of the country. For the next ten days she had to smile at Jones through clenched teeth every time she saw him and she had to smile even harder at the Policy and Resources meeting when Ms Bleached Blonde in her late twenties was welcomed to the group. Blondie’s blouse was cut so low that when she leaned forward you could see more than just her cleavage. Phyllis looked down at her own dowdy navy suit that she had chosen deliberately that day for its wide and deep pockets and reached into her left pocket as the meeting began. As the (longer than average) meeting ended she heard a faint click that, thankfully, no-one else seemed to notice.

    Afterwards she typed the minutes on her computer at home. Before she put them in their envelopes, ready for the post, she checked

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