A series of short fiction set in, or influenced by London.
A series of short fiction set in, or influenced by London.
Out he comes, dredged from the canal. The narrow-boat girls pat him, tend him, talk to him.
—Mate. These city boy tossers. They think they own the place. There’s kids on here. Babies in buggies. Good job it was you went in, not one of the kiddies, eh?
They salvage his bike and he’s packed off home in borrowed clothes. He thinks of what he will say to his wife. You’ll never guess what happened to me.
Two coots drift on the water sideways as he pushes his bike back under the bridge where it happened. The cycle whizzing past. The wobble. The fall. Steady old Clive in a slow-motion tumble. Pathetic.
Clive has a fitful night with dreams of icy water and miring weeds. He is looking up through a layer of oil at a darkened world. He is sinking.
The next day, his wife leaves early. She is kind. She rings in sick for him. She puts a cup of tea on the bedside table before she goes to catch her bus to work where she will tell her receptionist, her colleagues, her patients even, if she has enough time with them today, that her husband fell in the canal.
Clive takes a sip of tea. The brown liquid comes back up, propelled by bile. It runs from the corner of his mouth, onto his white t-shirt, onto the pale blue duvet cover they bought from Habitat all those years ago.
He puts the tea on the bedside table before he coughs. His chest rasps. A grunt follows.
—Coffee? says the grunt. Is that coffee?
—It’s tea, Clive manages to say as the wave of shock catches him and his mind whirrs into gear to tell him it’s a delayed reaction. He’s had an upset. It’s normal.
—I want coffee, the voice in his chest goes. Beans. Ground. Roast. Brewed. Barista barista.
Clive has a flicker of annoyance — he hates the four new artisan coffee shops on the high street. He pulls the covers over his head.
—It’s too dark under here. I can’t breathe, the voice says.
—Who are you?
—Mud Man.
—You’re inside me?
Mud Man grunts.
—But. How?
—Just am.
—But why?
—Shush, Mud Man says, I’m sleeping now.
Clive wakes from a doze and tells himself he’s been dreaming. He goes for a wee.
He goes for a shower.
—Ooh, that tingles, Mud Man says.
Clive trembles as he turns off the shower. His legs wobble as he climbs from the bath. He looks down at his hard on. He waits and listens. There is only a dripping noise from the shower head. He rubs himself dry.
Clive lies fully dressed on top of the bed and watches TV.
—I’ve got one like that, Mud Man says.
Clive breathes in and out fast through his nose as the bearded man on TV holds up a chamber pot.
—I let the geese use it for shitting competitions. Five points for a direct hit.
Mud Man gives a series of short rasps that Clive thinks might be laughter.
—It’s not easy to control, you know, Mud Man says.
—What isn’t?
—Goose shit through water. Most of it drifts off.
Mud Man gives another rasping laugh. The programme moves onto an art deco mirror.
They watch TV together for the rest of the morning. Bargain Hunt. Great Railway Journeys. A budget cookery show. Clive goes to the kitchen. He finds a multi-pack of bacon fries at the back of the cupboard. A half-eaten pot of hummus in the fridge.
—Ugh, Mud Man says at the first mushed mouthful of maize and chick pea. Bile rises. Clive puts the food away. He’s not hungry anyway. A dramatisation of Sigmund Freud’s life comes on TV. Clive dozes. He is back in the canal. His voice is breaking.
—It's too cold down there, Clive tells Mud Man. You can stay with me.
—With you? In your clean sheets? What will your wife think?
—It’s so dark there. You don’t like the dark.
—The dark there is different. The dark there is good. Mud Man coughs.
—I can get us something nice to eat. Something that doesn’t make you nauseous.
—Shush. I’m trying to watch. This chap has a nice beard.
—Do you think you might like some chicken?
—Chicken bones. Chicken bones. Canal’s full of chicken bones.
—A nice organic chicken. Not chicken shop stuff.
—Shh. I’m listening.
Clive dreams himself rising out of mud, a slippery birth into air and sunshine. Leaving behind blind pale creatures in layers of sediment. He wakes to the sound of the front door opening. His wife is back.
His wife chops onions.
—Do you think it’s the shock?
Clive can hear the impatience in her voice. She deals with deluded people all day long. She can turn cancer, brain tumours, dementia into colds, stress and old age.
Mud Man keeps silent while Clive tells his wife it’s like he’s got a new friend.
Clive keeps silent while his wife boils water for pasta and talks about the links between unexpected physiological experiences and emotional reality.
Clive eats his first mouthful of pasta tentatively. When he swallows, he feels how hungry he is. He wolfs the rest down. He carries the empty plates to the kitchen and washes them. His tears fall on eco-friendly bubbles.
Clive’s wife arranges for him to see a counsellor. They talk about trauma and bodies and memories. He cycles home along the tow path. He stops to look at oil on the water. A girl wearing a tabard asks him if he’d like to become a friend of the canal. He can’t get any words out and the girl blushes. His foot slips as he pushes off and his bike wobbles but he balances and rides on.
This story was originally a winner at British Academy’s Literature Week.
Copyright, Melaina Barnes, image by Ekaterina Nosenko in the Londonist Flickr pool.
Previously in this series
Fairy tales
- The Fingernail Fairy: Do you believe in her?
- The Last Train: A fairy godmother on the tube.
- Waterloo Sunrise: A dawn encounter on Waterloo Bridge.
For children/by children
- The Lion: Something’s up in Trafalgar Square.
- Lyndon The Greatest Thief in London: A light fingered robber meets the Queen.
- Beyond the Central Line: Notting Hill Gate looks different today…
- The Makings of a Killer: A dark encounter in Southwark.
- Places to Hide a T-Rex in London: About time someone tackled this one.
- The Modern Fire of London: A sneezing dragon is a dangerous thing.
- The Let Down Competition: A mango has a fight with a pig.
General London fiction
- Mark: A struggling actor becomes a hero of the people.
- The Guardian of Travellers: Victoria Coach Station passengers take the advice of a sage.
- Graphic Novels: A celebrated novelist finds inspiration in Shoreditch Library.
- Not Enough: A family struggles to get by.
London at Night
- The Soho Nocturnes: Sebastian Groes tries to shatter the concrete dream that is London.
- The Station Clock: Peter Watson takes a slow walk to Euston.
- Asparagus and Syrian Gold: A guy on a blind date takes a risk… but will it pay off?
- The Race: Susanna James races against the dying of the light.
- Sirens of the Tideway: Emily Williams recounts a ghostly police chase.
- Mark: A struggling actor becomes a hero of the people.
Christmas in London
- The Ghost of Christmas Replete: David Croser shares a Christmas tale set in the bleak midwinter.
- Keep the Change: Lee Hamblin takes a sneaky taxi ride.
- Night Bus Dreams: Michelle Surtees-Myers is picked up by an enchanted night bus.
Summertime
- The Patient Banker: Tom Dean has a visitor call in at a houseboat.
- An Afternoon Some Time Ago: Nathan Good takes a nostalgic ride on the London Eye.
- Easy Pickings: Kay Seeley is being vigilant on the South Bank.
- Stepping Stones: Alison Chandler goes on a night walk.
- One Summer in London: Angela M. Rodriguez steals a very personal item and then wears it at Notting Hill Carnival.
London razed
- Blackout on Fen Street: Seth Insua wishes away the city.
- The Man From BEER: Which bits of London would you delete? By David Ritchie.
- London Falls: Liz Hedgecock unleashes a digital wipeout on the city.
- They Walked: Adam MacLean ponders what would happen if London’s building just got up and left.
- The Wallbuilder: A great wall was built around London, not everyone was happy, by Jonathon Dean.
- Tastes Like Chicken: Glen Delaney retreats inside London’s oldest fortress.
- The Conqueror: Rebecca Sams filches a legendary London object.
- The Busker Ascends: Darren Lee brings plague to Leicester Square.
Transport tales
- Amelie: Narges Rashidi considers the interactions of three people on a District Line tube.
- Shelter Drawings: Stuart Snelson’s tale of a mysterious Circle Line artist.
- Tracks and Albums: Richard Lakin attracts the attentions of the British Transport Police.
- Seeing Red: Anthony Fitzgerald on the woes of a cab driver.
- Instant Karma on the 263 to North Finchley: one seat left on the bus. Next to you. Raving drunk gets on. By Ronnie Capaldi.
- The Sender of Second Chances: Anthea Morrison records a chance encounter on a bus.
Future/History
- Two Four Eight: Lance V Ramsay envisions an Orwellian dystopia in the lingo of future London.
- Old Nichol: Jill Fricker evokes the woes of the old East End.
- Clissar: Grazia Brunello dips into the future of north London, through a glass darkly.
Horror/Thriller
- Harvest Festival: A spooky Halloween tale in the London suburbs by Helen Craig.
- Ordinary Days in London: Madelaine Hills on a Docklands disturbance.
- Bishopsgate: Oliver Zarandi visits the site of a bomb.
- Sirens Of The Tideway: Emily Williams recounts a ghostly police chase.
Fantasy
- The Perfect Gift: A Christmas fairy tale in which London’s statues come to life, by Katherine Wheston.
- The City Inside: Tom Butler has some curious metropolitan anatomy.
Relationships/sex
- Routine: The importance of the day-to-day, by Clare Kane.
- Jazz Code and the Tube: The ambivalence of dating, by Jenny Mackenzie.
- A Free Man: Melanie White’s flash fiction piece considers a recently single guy at a bachelor party.
- Clean Living London: Ursula Dewey rolls her sleeves up for some housework.
- Swipe Right: Does Tinder have the answers? By Heidi Scherz
- The Writer and the Dancer: Close encounter at a flat party by Vincent Wood.
- St Peter’s Gate, Knightsbridge: A nocturnal romance at closing time, by Theo Klay
- First: A romance begins inside a London gay club. By Lance Middleton.
- Natural Disasters: Can you find love at the supermarket checkout, when your customer’s buying porn? Yoel Noorali enquires.
- NO! SUSHI: A relationship breaks down during a Japanese leaving party, by Clare Kane.
Other tales
- Compatibility: Stephen Lynch conjures the awkwardness of flat hunting.
- An Extract From the Diary of Kay Richardson, Actor: The surreal tribulations of a washed-up London thesp, by Tom Mitchell.
- The Further Adventures of Kay Richardson, Actor: More from the feckless thesp, by Tom Mitchell.
- The Further Adventures of Kay Richardson, Actor (Part 2): Our debauched hero tussles with mannequins.
- You Were Not In When We Called: A Christmas tale from Megan Toogood.
- The Do: Alan Fisher gets party phobia.
- Direction: Kevin Acott goes on a time-shifting pub crawl.
- RTA: Ryan Cartwright is involved in a traffic accident where all is not what it seems.
- Vegan Pigeon Eater: Rae Chambers sees a south London cafe get an unwelcome visitor.