Steven ApplebyJo GatfordBarry McKinleyKate WilliamsMark Victor Young

Historical fiction is often unfairly disregarded by literary magazines, but it’s not all bodice-ripping and Cockney urchins, so we thought it was time to showcase the best of the past. This month we can offer duels, deceit and nuclear meltdowns, but we promise there won’t be a Catherine Cookson cliché in sight. Our stories will whisk you from inter-war Paris to strike-torn, bomb-blasted Seventies London: you can watch Ernest Hemingway and Gertude Stein have a punchup, courtesy of Mark Victor Young, or enjoy the droll humour of an Irishman’s job-hunt during the Winter of Discontent in Barry McKinley’s Job.

In our First Look section, we feature an extract from Tibetan author Yangzom Brauen’s astonishing debut, Across Many Mountains. It’s a harrowing but ultimately uplifting true tale of her family’s escape from Chinese persecution in 1959, and has been compared to Jung Chang’s moving bestseller Wild Swans. We’ve also got a short story from bestselling historical biographer Kate Williams, who has turned her hand to short fiction especially for Litro, with a tale of a beleaguered governess at a sinister country house.

And if that’s not enough, alongside a brilliant new cartoon by Guardian regular Steven Appleby, we also have Jo Gatford’s funny and tender Dead Leg, featuring a shoe-shop assistant and a one-legged Korean War veteran. In Time, the Devourer, Liam Hogan reboots an age-old myth and reveals what happened when King Midas met his match, while Assignations by Simon Jones brings us sex, betrayal and pistols at dawn in a Georgian mansion.

Katy DarbyEditorMarch 2011

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Litro Magazine is published by Ocean Media Books Ltd

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The Weakness of Hearts Kate Williams 6

Cartoon:How to Confuse the Scent of Serial AdulterySteven Appleby 14

JobBarry McKinley 16

Gertrude and Ernest, Paris 1926 Mark Victor Young 21

Dead Leg Jo Gatford 27

Novel Extract:Across Many Mountains Yangzom Brauen 32

Time, the Devourer Liam Hogan 36

Assignations Simon Jones 40

ListingsAlex James 46

he carter left me too early, and I had to walk up the hill, dragging my bags. The house was black against

the sky by then, and the moon was covered by dirty clouds. The trees bent over toward me and their look was not welcoming. A squat woman with keys at her side opened to my banging at the door.

‘They are all abed,’ she said. ‘We were expecting you at five.’

I could see nothing past her but a few flickering candles. You would think a grand house like this one might have a chandelier.

‘Lateness,’ she said, as I crammed past her and smelt her, hard onions and coins.

I nodded, as I walked into the narrow hall. What was to say? That the coach had stopped at an inn on the way, where I did not know, and there had not just been a place to eat and horsemen in corners, but stalls, like a fair. There were usual things, pans and vegetables and boxes of firewood, but then grander stalls with flounces, haberdashers’ things, hats, ribbons, skeins of silk for pretty girls, ones with calm hair and blue eyes, not me, and piles of cakes and gingerbread for little boys. It was not those that drew my eye. After a lifetime of girls, I had had my fill of sugar. It was the stacks of old books, sitting in front of a man who looked even more aged, his hair so untidy under his hat that it looked as if it had been half torn from his head. Women flocked around the ribbons like flecks of colour on a painting, but he sat there, still, as if not caring that the people around him seemed not to want his wares.

He looked at me and smiled. ‘Books for you, Miss? Maps, recipes, stories, I have them all. Even spells, if they would interest.’ I had thought of a story book, when I came close. I had never had my own book, only borrowed time with those of others, and I desired a story more than anything. But then, as he held out one and there was gold on the spine, I could stop but look more.

o quote Jean Paul Sartre:

“I would have taken the job in the tampon factory…

But I knew there were strings attached”.

December 1978. London smelled like a city gone bad. Rubbish had been turned into towering, tottering architecture on the streets; the stacks of black plastic bags cushioned the traffic noise and blocked out light from shop windows. The smell was bad, but not unbearable. The rats were big, but not monstrous; I walked from Euston to Victoria and nothing bit me but the cold. I caught a train to Croydon and found the building on Mitcham Road easily enough. A grumpy receptionist sitting behind a desk festooned with silver tinsel took the Biro out of her mouth just long enough to point it at the cubicle where the interview was to be held.

“You’re early,” she said blankly.I still wasn’t used to the English accent. Everything

sounded sarcastic.

Mr. Longley wore a loose wedding ring that slid back and forth on his finger like a bead on an abacus, and when he reclined in his swivel chair, his neck disappeared into the striped material that was part shirt, part optical illusion. He looked up from his notes and was clearly surprised by my youth.

“Oh!” he said, his eyes dragging over my body like a stoker’s rake. “You’re quite … splendid. Please do sit down.”

I noticed the framed photo on his desk; it showed a debonair and rascally gent with a spotted tie, trimmed moustache and a large toss of wavy hair. I wondered if it was his father, or perhaps a lesser known villain from Edwardian vaudeville.

Did I mention I was stoned? Two lines of speed and a hefty joint in the smoking carriage.

“So, Jack,” he said, “you have worked in the nuclear power industry before?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I worked for a French uranium company

here was a message from Getrude Stein the day he arrived back in Paris. The desk clerk at his hotel

gave him the card. It had a picture of a farmer’s market somewhere in the 17th arrondissement, and said: “Ernest. Looking forward to seeing you. Let’s meet on Friday. Gertrude.” It was Friday, and the message had been there for some time. He had just returned from New York with the final proof of his novel. His publisher was looking for the last set of corrections. He had a fifth of whiskey in his case. He pushed his notes and the manuscript underneath his fishing gear and checked them at the desk with his case without even going up to the room. He asked to use the phone.

“Will your wife be joining you?” said the clerk. “No,” he said, pulling a card from his jacket.He phoned for reservations at Les Deux Magots.

Whenever Gertrude or he returned to Paris they met at the café. He had finished two saucers when she arrived. Alone. No Hadley, so no Alice, he guessed. Maybe it was more than that. There was a reason he no longer received invitations to their home at 27 rue de Fleurus. Alice believed that he wanted to sleep with Gertrude, which was true. Those feelings were natural and brought no shame.

“How are you, Mr. Hemingway?”“Fine. I ordered the usual.”“Excellent.” She tasted her drink. “How was Pamplona?”“Beyond compare,” he said.“Did you go to the bullfights?”“Yes. Twice.”“Good. One can’t go too often.” She looked away and

sipped her drink. “Such noble creatures ... such a vital, timeless struggle between man and beast. It has been too long since I was in Spain.”

He nodded and finished his drink.“I heard about the business with Hadley.”He grunted and signaled the waiter for another.

aul Jacobsen used to give me a dead leg in Sunday school and I used to bite my tongue so hard to stop

from crying that I swear there’s still a dent left on the tip from my two front teeth. Then he got his leg blown off in Korea – his right leg, which made me think something was odd because it was my right that he used to knuckle numb each week, since he always sat on that side of me – and a part of me wondered if it wasn’t some sort of divine retribution.

He got a prosthetic – this stinking rubber appendage he covered in bumper stickers because really he was young enough to still be the idiot child he had been in Sunday school. Not a person you would have wanted next to you in a battle, so perhaps it was best that he got sent home.

I was leaning against the counter watching a kid spit at its mother and kick her in the chest like some feral while she tried to shove shiny Mary Janes onto its feet for the new school year. Mr Hall was perusing the slippers because Laila the sausage-dog had gnawed up another pair and half-dug them into the manure pile outside the riding centre. Paul conked his false leg onto the measuring stool and grinned like we were exchanging peeks at each others’ bits when we were six and didn’t know any more than it meant we peed in different ways.

He was used to sympathy but I didn’t give him none. He said he didn’t care for the pity – he never felt the leg get blown off ‘cause he was fast knocked out anyway, and then when he woke it was gone. He thought his peg-leg was cool besides – got him chicks for being a war hero and meant he spent a quarter less time in the shower.

He needed a size ten for his left and a nine for his right, because they didn’t take into account such things when they screwed it on your stump – you got what you were given. I said, why don’t you just stuff the other shoe with tissue or a sock? but apparently it always slipped off no matter how well stuffed. How about tape? I said. You think I want to tape up my goddamn shoe every time I want to leave the house? he said, not angrily – he just had enough

Cartoonist: Louie Stowell

or fear of Chinese soldiers, they only dared walk through the freezing nights, with no light to guide

them but the stars. The mountains were black towers before the dark sky. The group, numbering a dozen or so, had set out shortly before the Tibetan New Year festival, which, like the beginning of the Chinese calendar, usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. New Year was deemed the best time to escape. The high passes were covered in snow, and icy winds whistled across them, but the snow was frozen hard at night and was sometimes even stable by day, in contrast to the warm season, when trekkers sank knee or navel-deep into a mixture of snow, ice, water, mud and scree. It was common knowledge that the Chinese border guards preferred to keep warm in their barracks during the winter rather than go on patrol in the biting cold. Everybody agreed that the soldiers would sooner spend the New Year festival, the most important Chinese holiday, celebrating, drinking and playing cards than doing their actual duties.

My mother Sonam’s heart beat wildly as she struggled to keep up with the adults. She was only six years old.

Soon they caught sight of danger looming in the distance. In the valley far below their path, they saw large, brightly lit buildings. They could only be housing Chinese soldiers; Tibetans had no such huge and uniformly built houses as these, with such bright lights. Shouting voices, crashes of music, laughter, sometimes terrifying screams emanated from the buildings, echoing off the mountain. The Chinese soldiers loved chang, Tibetan beer made from barley, and they presumably had plentiful supplies. The sounds Sonam heard were blood-curdling, like a herd of wild beasts gathering in the distance. But her mother whispered to soothe her. “It’s good that they’re celebrating”,

f you ask me, Midas had it easy.My name is Helene, and I am the daughter of a God.

Or so my mother told me from an early age. Her husband was not impressed by the divine miracle he returned home to, and so at the unusually early age of seven, I became an acolyte at the Temple of Aphrodite.

The Temple of Aphrodite recruited only the most beautiful acolytes, and as I grew, it became obvious to me that I was the most beautiful of them all. But serving from such an early age, it was also obvious that such beauty does not last. I saw many a weeping woman cast out of the temple as the first blemishes of middle age appeared on her face.

I vowed this would not happen to me, and so I intently studied the science of the day on the subject of ageing. The charlatans who sold me their expensive potions pandered to my obsession, and I reached the point where I was convinced I would live forever. I gloated that my beauty would never fade, and would always be on par with Aphrodite’s. In the middle of her temple, right in front of her altar.

So, yes, of course the jealous bitch heard me.Her punishment was a curse – a most peculiar, vindictive

curse. In some ways, you could say, I was granted my heart’s desire – I would never grow old, my beauty would never fade. But at what cost!

Flowers withered in my hand. Wine soured, and bread went mouldy. Plaster crumbled from the walls of the temple, and my bed collapsed in a rotten ruin beneath me. Worse than all of this, when my friend Phoebe tried to comfort me, her skin bubbled and creased, liver spots appearing before my eyes. Her legs creaked as she tried to stand, uncertain of what had just happened, her beauty ruined.

Everything I touched faded, aged, perished. Tempus edax rerum – time, the devourer of all things. Even my clothes fell to tatters, and, naked, I was banished from the

etter this way, thought Veldram as he drained his glass. There is no wine in the world can sour as quickly as

secrecy in an affair of the heart. At first the letters hidden in a tree bole or behind the jardinière, the assignations, the flimsy errands to send the servants away, waiting for a flutter of a fan, a swish of her skirt – these are the happiest, most addictive games one can play. You both watch laughing as the whole stupid world blunders around in the gloom – meanwhile, you lie in the sunshine of infatuation, immune and omniscient.

Best of all, you watch her husband as he stomps around the estate, bullying the stable boys, ever bad-tempered and base enough to see nothing more in his wife than a chattel, a fine piece of flesh to be draped in silk and set in the drawing room. You didn’t make the man a fool, but by Christ you revel in his idiocy and you want to show him to the world as the dense wretch he really is, despite his dukedom.

But that is where the problem begins. Soon your wit, your cleverness, is too much to keep concealed. You don’t become careless or clumsy – you become deliberately, even calculatedly, more obvious. You unveil more and more clues, before friends, before the man himself. You strut around his home, sit at his table listening to his brusque yet tedious conversation about stocking the game woods, the laziness of the labourers and his plans for the grazing land by the river – and when he is away, you woo his wife.

Delancey had told him not to be such a bloody idiot. Veldram had laughed. The most intelligent of his companions, his oldest friend and, as a distant relative of the Duke, the very reason he was a guest here in the first place, yet even Delancey was left bemused by this magical adventure. He had to be told very early – too close and too greatly loved, he could never be deceived. There was no danger of him talking – he was far too loyal – but he was uneasy and worried who else would notice. Through Veldram’s remonstrances and the Duchess’ pleas, he became part of the game.

LISTINGS

The awakening and stirring of the senses, the discarding of winter shackles, and the smell of cut grass mixed with the promise of life to come. It’s spring, and we show you the very best stories, lyrics and artistry that await the story-hungry come March, in our events listings, edited by Alexander James.

1st to 12th March: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Theatro Technis, 26 Crowndale Road, Camden. EmpathEyes Theatre Company presents a new production of Cuckoo which includes live music and physical theatre. Having sold out at the Arcola Theatre, EmpathEyes returns with this striking production which aims to draw away from social prejudices and stereotypes of mental illness, starring writer, Gul Davis. A devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness. See: www.theatrotechnis.com

1st to 3rd March: Silent Opera, Debut venue. Unique performance blurring reality and dreams. The audience will experience the production through headphones whilst following the frantic singers around the surreal setting of the Debut tunnels. Dido, Queen of Carthage, invites you to a lavish court party, where she presents her splintering life as audience members sip a mythic Courvoisier Punch served to them by a twisted gallery of choristers. Premiering a unique method of opera performance, this high-octane production promises to cast a radical new light on classical tragedy. See: www.ideastap.com

2nd March: From Hackney to Hastings, 11 Mare Street, Hackney. Nicholas Johnson, Iain Sinclair and Rebecca E. Marshall. Doors at 6pm, Lecture at 7pm. Three writers showing films and reading poetry and prose published by Etruscan Books. As one prominent northern poet once put it: People leave London. But where to? And why? We have the pleasure of meeting three people who have made an alternative southern exodus. See: www. lasttuesdaysociety.org.

10th March: The Convex Club (Overground). DJs: Faris Badwan (The Horrors), Rhys Webb (The Horrors), Sammy Seven (S.C.U.M), Luke Tristram (Flats).Go back to the last great creative era of the 60s, with stand-up poetry and a music policy of Punk, Girl Groups, 60s Pop. Faris and friends play their favourite 45s in the basement of The Book Club. Be prepared for tin foil walls, lightbulb ceilings, oil projector disco and a new rotating mirrored obelisk. The night will be filmed on Super 8 and 16 and everyone will

have their 15 minutes of fame, now in glorious Technicolor. See: www.wearetbc.com.

13th March: An Evening of Story Telling with Giles Abbott. 11 Mare Street, Hackney. Doors at 6pm, stories commence at 7pm. Giles Abbott started storytelling in 1999 as a result of losing much of his “useful eyesight” in 1998. Now registered blind, he puts it; “Through loss of something I took for granted I have found something I didn’t know I’d lost - the joy of story!” See: www.lasttuesdaysociety.org.uk.

Until March 19th: Visions of Kerouac. The Half Moon, Herne Hill, London, SE24. Visions of Kerouac explores the complexities of a man who defined his generation, yet struggled to find a place within it. Fuelled by drink, drugs, sex and the whims of his bohemian friends, including Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady and William Burroughs, Duberman’s play follows Kerouac’s life. See: www.halfmoonpub.co.uk.

17th - 26th March: The Most Incredible Thing. Sadler’s Wells. Hans Christian Andersen gets put to electro. World famous electronic pop duo the Pet Shop Boys have collaborated with No.1 dance venue Sadler’s Wells to produce a full-length work based on an Andersen story. The Pet Shop Boys have composed an original score for the production, which is choreographed by Javier De Frutos, featuring Ivan Putrov. The Most Incredible Thing, celebrating the power of art in the face of human destruction, has its world premiere at Sadler’s Wells in Spring 2011.See: www.sadlerswells.com.

19th March: Tristan Bates Theatre’s Midnight Matinees, Tower Street, W1. What do you get if you mix eighties lycra with a night of poetry? This, it seems … midnight strikes, coaches turn into pumpkins and the arty folk come out to play at the Tristan Bates Theatre. This Spring’s Midnight Matinee is going spandex-tastic, denim-on-denim and all-round 80s style. In honour of our friends Hard Graft Theatre Co and their fantastic Our Style is Legendary, March’s MM is set in the Eighties. See: www.tristanbatestheatre.co.uk.

1st to 23rd March: La Boheme. Little Opera House, The King’s Head.Welcome to opera gone contemporary. Now in its second year, the world’s longest continuously running opera comes to London’s Little Opera House for the first time. Don’t miss this affecting new version of Puccini’s much-loved weepie. One of the most accessible and moving operas ever written, at the heart of Puccini’s classic is the human drama of aspiring novelist Rodolfo, who falls for an immigrant cleaner, while his friends struggle to grow up and make ends meet. See: www.kingsheadtheatre.com.

Until April 2nd. Antony and Cleopatra. South Bank.Forget the hype, a mass bid is on to restore The Rose, London’s first ever theatre, pre-dating The Globe, Now you can see a play in the shadow of this excavation, which has bids by the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino hoping to see it restored to former glory. This Spring season opens with one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic epics: a fusion of historical fact and beautifully written drama, set against the backdrop of Ancient Rome and Egyptian politics. From the old world, not the new. See: www.rosetheatre.org.uk.

Late March: Restaurant and Sky Bar at Heron Tower.The launch of what could be the next setting for a Britflick. Heron Tower is the tallest building in the City of London, providing unrivalled views and enhancing the skyline. The tower is due to open in March and will boast a spectacular Restaurant and Sky Bar on the top three floors of the tower. See: www.theherontower.com.

‘Do you think it must hurt to be burned, Miss?’‘I cannot imagine.’‘But then you are glass. You would not burn. You would break into pieces.’

I stared at her, and then Alfred next to her, and I could not help it. My legs began to shake. It was the look in her eye when she said, ‘break into pieces’. There was only a flicker, only a moment in the pale iris of her eye – but I knew I had seen evil. It shone out to me, just as clearly as you might see goodness in the kind touch of a nun.

Kate Williams “The Weakness of Hearts”, page 3

Cover Image: Banksy, “Coke Copper”

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