SUNPENNY Writing Competitions: Sue Haigh, "The Dream-Weaver's Son"

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NOTES:

NEW WRITERS' SHORT STORY COMPETITION 2008/2009
FIRST PLACE

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"The Dream-Weaver's Son"

by Sue Haigh - caves des Blavetières, Genille, France

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sue Haigh was born in the north-west of England but has spent most of her life on the north-east coast of Scotland, where she has worked as a teacher, university lecturer, clinical aromatherapist and counsellor. She studied psychology, education and languages in Bristol, Paris, Cologne and Dundee. She now lives and writes deep underground in a cave house in the Loire Valley, in France, and has been very busy since first submitting her entry to this competition, making a name for herself around the world. Her work has now appeared, or is forthcoming in, a variety of anthologies and magazines.

In addition, Sue has written a book of thirteen Scottish short stories, The Snow Lazarus, with the support of the Scottish Book Trust. Some of them have been published in Britain and abroad and have won literary awards. She has also written a series of children's stories, Stories From a Cave, set in and around her own house in France. This book will be published in 2011. Sue's first novel, Missing Words, is set in pre-war Germany and Scotland, and is still in progress. An excerpt from this novel was highly commended as a stand-alone story, One Day in May, by the Harvard Review. She is also engaged in research for her second novel, set in medieval Bruges, and was recently appointed fiction editor at Grey Sparrow Journal. She reviews short fiction for Five Star Literary Stories, and has won a number of national and international awards and has been short-listed in others.

COMMENTS FROM JUDGES:

1. Very classy writing, beautiful range of vocabulary, great story, strong characterisation. Not terribly keen on "accent" dialogue but it rang true.

2. A wonderful cameo, a glimpse of a moment in time, in history, an evocative comment on so much of India's social politics and undercurrents, with an unexpected impactful ending. Strong descriptive phrasing, very visual writing. Conveys the sense of teeming humanity of India very well. Good characterisation and dialogue, especially to someone who knows this kind of character! Well defined. Beginning needs a better hook. Could have been a bit better polished to avoid typos and missing punctuation, and should always use a serif font like Times New Roman rather than a non-serif.

THE STORY:

Calcutta, February, 1947.

Eenoo McLennan, en route from Dundee to the McCormack Mill in Serampore, steps onto the gang-plank of the SS Narkunda and gazes at the harbour far below. The acrid heat of the late afternoon sun hits him as if he has walked into a wall of flames and he wipes his brow with a rough handkerchief and stands like a schoolboy evacuee with his cardboard suitcase at his feet, waiting for events to overtake him. He looks up at the Howrah Bridge, hanging mirage-like over the River Hooghly, and across to the railway station. The roar and clamour of humanity make his head spin. On the quay beneath, vast crowds of people in family groups are lying on the ground, and cattle meander with leisurely confidence between the supine bodies. Dust has absorbed the humid rays of the sun until it is at boiling-point and blazing rain-drops of light dance on the stones. Eenoo’s shirt – one of the only two he possesses – clings to his back and beads of sweat run down his temples and neck. His ears buzz as if a swarm of the flies which ride on the backs of the cattle were heading straight for his brain via his ear-drums.

Everywhere in the teeming, racketing streets, people who are not actually horizontal and sleeping seem to be on the move as overflowing trams and buses rattle along, ploughing their way through the impenetrable throng. There is a unknowable order in the mighty confusion of taxis, cycle-rickshaws, ancient cars, cattle and pedestrians as Eenoo bends down to pick up his case and make his way slowly down the gang-plank, carried along by the pushing and elbowing of the other passengers, now anxious to escape from their month-long incarceration at sea. He recognises a platinum blonde woman who is mincing crabwise down in front of him, until she stumbles awkwardly over the boards, twisting her ankle as she teeters unsteadily on her three-inch red heels. Eenoo drops his case again and leans forward to break her fall. Recognising her rescuer, Platinum Blonde sniffs mightily, glaring angrily past his left ear, then disdainfully at his feet and his shiny black shoes and snatches her arm away from his hand as if it had been burned. With a disgruntled toss of the head and vermillion curl of the lip, she makes off down the steep gangway, leaving Eenoo to retrieve his belongings. When he finally steps onto the teeming harbour, the familiarity of the faces of the Indian workers at home in the gloomy world of the Dundee mills fades amid this sprawling alien culture, evaporating into the smoky sky with the overpowering stench of stagnant spiced air.

Seeing the mass of people crossing the floating Howrah Bridge, Eenoo is suddenly overcome with a foetal longing to retreat to the dark warmth of his tiny, airless cabin below the water-line of the Narkunda. The explosive din and clatter of the railway station on the far side of the viscous brown river draws him like a magnet through the jostling crowds towards the bridge. He has never seen so many people all together, even at the Overgate Carnival. At the far end of the bridge a dilapidated sign announces the entrance to the Howrah railway station.

The McCormack Mill, according to the piece of paper in Eenoo’s hand – now practically illegible after the number of times he has pulled it anxiously out of his pocket to study his employer’s instructions as he paced the deck of the Narkunda – stands ten miles up the Hooghly on the riverbank. He studies the train-warrant, issued by McCormack’s Reform Street office in Dundee.

“You need help, Sahib? Can I show you to your train?” An emaciated youth with a withered leg and rough crutches is squinting up into his face – he is even shorter than Eenoo – his open hand thrust forward. “Where are you going, Sahib? Is this your first visit to India? I welcome you and wish you much good fortune in my country.”

Eenoo looks away warily, not wanting to invite the beggar to further intimacy, but the boy stares directly into his eyes, smiling crookedly, one eye-lid drooping as if he has suffered a stroke, waiting patiently for an answer, his head on one side like an inquisitive blackbird. His hair, as black as Eenoo’s, stands on end and his eyes, one of which turns inward, giving him a louche expression, are so dark that it is impossible to see where the pupils end and the irises begin. Eenoo cannot tell if the boy’s lop-sided posture is the result of his deformity or merely an attitude of polite enquiry.

“Ah havnae a clue aboot the trains or yer rupees, lad,” Eenoo answers, at last, embarrassed at his own ignorance in the face of the perfect English and courtesy of the almost naked youth.

“But this is not important, Sahib.”

The boy bows and gestures with the outstretched hand, placing it over his heart to show he is no longer a beggar but a new-found friend. “Tell me where you are going, Sahib, and I will show you to the right train. Where do you come from? Do you have a family? Why are they not with you here? Are they well? I hope I am not asking too many questions, Sahib. I will tell you about my family, if you like.”

The side-ways smile, which appears to have a life of its own, fixes itself in place again. The questions, now that the matter of money is no longer an issue, trip off his tongue and tumble over one another like children in a sack-race, making Eenoo’s head spin again. His only dealings with foreigners, apart from the mill-workers, have been with the Aberdonians who sometimes come down the coast to see their home team play United at Tannadice. And extracting a word from them is, as he tells Jeannie, like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. And when they do speak, it is in a dialect so alien that they might as well come from another planet. The young man – for Eenoo can now see that he is older than he at first appeared, his lack of height and physical substance giving an impression of pre-puberty – persists.

“My name is Muhesh, Sahib, I was born here in Calcutta. My father’s name was Chidam. He is dead, but my mother and sisters live near here. My mother is very unfortunate that she is blind and can only weave baskets to earn a few rupees and that her only son cannot work and has to sell her baskets or beg to keep her family alive. But she is a weaver of dreams. I would like to give you one of her dream-baskets, Sahib, to bring you luck. Tell me where you come from, please.”

Eenoo hesitates briefly, but there is not a trace of irony or self-pity in Muhesh’s voice and his chirruping frankness makes a welcome change from the hoity-toity hauteur of his fellow-passengers on board the Narkunda, especially the platinum blonde with the vermillion sneer. Apart from the Welsh coal-master with legs like leeks, who sings Sospan Bach at the top of his voice after two whiskies and his wife with her floury raisin muffin of a face, none of them has, in the space of a whole month at sea, paid the slightest bit of attention to him.

“Ay, well, ma name’s Eenoo, lad. Eenoo McLennan, and Ah come frae Dundee in Scotland.”

Muhesh looks puzzled and his eyebrows draw together in concentration as he struggles to decipher some recognisable sounds amongst the cacophony of vowels and glottalstops. Then his dark forehead clears and the smile becomes a cavernous laugh, which escapes from a hole in the centre of his bony skull. The teeth, broken and protruding at all angles, appear for the first time.

“Sahib, I know Dundee!” he exclaims after a lengthy pause. “Many of my cousins and uncles have been to Dundee. They are sailors and take jute to your mills. The Verdant Works, the Eagle Mill, the Manhattan Works!” He recites the names of the unknown edifices like an excited child, then lowers his voice reverentially, “Do you own these mills, Sahib? You must be a rich man! Why is such a rich man travelling by train without servants? Why has the chauffeur not been sent to fetch you? But, excuse me, I have seen many British people, but I have never heard a name like yours. Is it a high-caste name, Sahib?”

Eenoo laughs his low-pitched laugh out loud and claps Muhesh on the back, so that he staggers, much as the Welsh coal-master did to him in the bar of the Narkunda.

“Ah’m afraid the enswer tae bathe yer questions is no, Muhesh! Ah’m no a mill-owner, Ah’m a mill-worker, a tenter – Ah work wi the weavers, lookin efter the looms. An mah name’s an Inuit name – ma mither wus an Eskimo an ma faither wus a Dundee whalerman.”

Still straining to catch the meaning, Muhesh repeats Eenoo’s pronunciation of the word “Inuit”.

“In-oo-it. I have never heard this word before, Sahib”.

“She wus an Eskimo – Nanou, her name wus – frae Baffin Island, in the Arctic Circle, an ma faither baide wi her family fer five year after he wus shipwrecked. He faither an brothers rescued him frae the ice. Lost a foot wi the frost-bite-they cut if aff wi a flensin-knife. The cold froze his blood, they say. Then he brought Nanou an me an ma wee sister back tae Scotland, but bathe o them died o influenza before they reached Aberdeen. So Ah wus brought up by ma faither an ma gran. Ma gran wus working on the weaving-flats frae six i’ the mornen tae six at nicht, an never aff the feet. When the Great War started he wusn’a fit tae sign up wi the Black Watch, so he stayed in the hoos tae be a kettle-boiler, as they cried such men as didna work and couldn gang tae the war. Sometimes he’d stand on the shore an’ he’d stare oot ower the wa’er fer an age, an Ah’d ask him how he wus takin sae lang, an he wouldna enswer. Ah think he wus thinkin aboot ma mither an ma sister, lyin under the sea, but he never said.”

Muhesh is standing silently, his head still on one side, but Eenoo’s words wash over him like a bow-wave, falling untouched by interpretation onto the gritty platform behind him. In the distance, a noisy crowd of men is making its way chanting towards the station gates, and Muhesh turns to watch the turbaned gang as they wave and shout and jeer at passing cars.

“Eenoo, Sahib, I think you should go to the waiting-room now. It is at the other end of the platform. I will show you the way. But please come quickly, Sahib!

Eenoo follows the tiny figure, whose urgently hurpling gait puts him in mind of his father as he hobbled along with his false boot, woven from strips of whaleskin and sealskin by Nanou and her mother in their Baffin Island igloo. When they reach the relative calm of the waiting-room, Muhesh turns and takes Eenoo by the wrist, pulling him through the door.

“I am not allowed to stay here, Sahib”, he whispers, looking anxiously behind him, “but you must sit here until the danger is past. These men wish to free India from the British. They have come here to await the arrival of the train from Ishapore. They are waiting for the Viceroy, Sahib. They are supporters of the Congress and they will not be happy to see British people like yourself. I am most sorry to tell you, Sahib.”

As Muhesh speaks, a train clanks and wheezes haltingly into the station and comes to a grinding stop opposite the station-master’s office. The station-master, a fat, greasy, irritable man, shuffles self-importantly along a threadbare red carpet towards the first-class carriage and bows low as a tall, aristocratic-looking European in a white topee steps out onto the platform. The volume of noise from the crowd at the gate rises to a crescendo with fanatical howls of “Hind Jai! Hind Jai!” and “Nehru! Pandit Nehru! Hind Jai!” Angry fists wave in the direction of the European, and punch the vibrating air like boxers. The Viceroy, attended by a retinue of impassive Indian servants, hesitate imperceptibly, then strides along the red carpet towards the gate, ignoring the din of the jostling, calling men as they begin to surge forward into his path.

“What’s goin’ on Muhesh? What are they shoutin’ aboot?” Eenoo is cowering behind the door of the waiting-room, the only other occupants of which are a frail-looking European woman of about forty and her daughter, a sallow girl of eighteen or nineteen. When they hear the roughness of Eenoo’s accent, they exchange a doleful glance and lower their eyes to the books they are reading. Their Indian servant looks at Muhesh and gestures to him to move away. Muhesh does not move, but whispers loudly to Eenoo.

“They are followers of Mahatma Ghandi, Sahib. He is the Living soul of India! And Mr Pandit Nehru, the President of the National Congress, Sahib. They wish the British lo leave India and India to become two nations. There have been many riots in Calcutta, and many soldiers to stop them. I have seen them. But I do not want you to leave, Sahib. Please do not leave, you are my friend. Just wait here and I will go and see what is happening. I will come back soon, I promise”.

With that, Muhesh disappears into the crowd which has gathered to see the action. The Viceroy has not yet reached the gate when the barrier gives way and the chanting hoard spills out onto the red carpet. From nowhere, police with batons and soldiers in puttees charge onto the platform and two shots ring out among the rioters. Eenoo stands transfixed as he sees Muhesh’s spindly legs dragging along the ground and his small body being hauled roughly out of the station gate by uniformed thugs, a dark trail of blood staining the earth behind them. His eyes turn briefly towards Eenoo before he disappears into the throng and Eenoo moves forward to follow, but a hand on his arm restrains him and he turns around. It is the Indian servant from the waiting-room.

“I would not attempt to do what I think you are about to do, Sahib. A boy such as this is not worth the trouble. He was a foot-path dweller in the pay of followers of the Congress party and would die soon, in any case. Look, he has dropped his bag of cheap ornaments. Take them, they are worthless. You can do nothing, Sahib. Believe me.”

For a long time, Eenoo sits in numbed silence in the waiting-room. His stomach churns and waves of nausea break over him as he tries to make sense of the extraordinary events of the past half-hour, as if he has walked by mistake into someone else’s house and has witnessed an incomprehensible act of private violence. At length, he opens the rough jute bag the servant has thrust into his hand, and a pungent, luteous aroma of spicy wood rises from a jumble of tiny, exquisitely woven baskets, each with a closely-fitting lid. It is the smell of sandalwood. Closing his eyes, Eenoo gently runs his fingers over each work of art created by Muhesh’s mother, the blind weaver of dreams, while the two women stare out of the dusty window.

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