The Ephemera

By Neil Williamson

The Ephemera
by Neil Williamson

with an introduction by Hal Duncan

Nothing lasts forever. Everything is ephemeral.

Time slips by, people change, happiness is fleeting.

Neil Williamson's collection of bittersweet tales features eighteen stories of impermanence: from the ends of love affairs and the brief sanity of wartime convalescence, to the fading away of old languages and the dying of humanity itself.

An artist communicates solely through a bizarre mosaic, a father and his dying daughter seek hope in plague-ridden Scotland, a London pensioner's existence is inextricably bound to that of his pet canary, and in the jungles of Borneo a criminal searches for his missing son hoping for reconciliation before the end of the world.

This edition includes four bonus stories, including one written specially for this collection, and each story has a newly-written afterword.

"Emotionally complex and displaying a keen eye for detail, the stories in Neil Williamson's collection The Ephemera are a rich and rewarding read from a stylish new Scottish talent."
-- World Fantasy Award-winner Jeff VanderMeer

"Subtle, evocative and compelling, The Ephemera is a collection that shines with reflection and intelligence."
-- Liz Williams

• Language: English
• Publisher: infinity plus
• Release date: Apr 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458145949

Book preview

The Ephemera

Neil Williamson

with an introduction by Hal Duncan

Published by infinity plus at Smashwords

www.infinityplus.co.uk/books

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© Neil Williamson 2011

Cover © Vincent Chong

 Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

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.

No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

The moral right of Neil Williamson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Contents

Introduction by Hal Duncan

Foreword—A Gallery Of Ephemera

Shine, Alone After The Setting Of The Sun

The Euonymist

The Bone Farmer

The Happy Gang

Cages

Amber Rain

Postcards

Softly Under Glass

Well Tempered

Harrowfield

The Apparatus

The Bennie and The Bonobo

A Horse In Drifting Light

Sins of the Father (co-written with Mark Roberts)

Hard To Do

The Codsman and His Willing Shag

Crow's Steps

The Gubbins

The Last Note Of The Song

The One Millionth Smile

Cover

Publication Acknowledgements

About the author

Acknowledgements

Advertising feature: more from infinity plus

Introduction—Hal Duncan

For me, this collection has a peculiar meaning, a personal meaning others won't see in it—can't see in it. In many ways, it's a cabinet of ephemera that tells a story as a whole for me. Having encountered so many of these tales first through the Glasgow SF Writers' Circle, they mark moments in my own development, stand as souvenirs of earlier times, in place of memories that have long-since drifted off into the haze of kinda sorta remembering back in the day. I've no idea what night we might have workshopped this story, what pub we were in when Neil told us that one had sold—nothing so crystal—but in reading them, they click together for me to a model of changes—then, now, the points between.

When I first met Neil Williamson through the Glasgow SF Writers' Circle, you see, I was still caught up in an obsolete notion of fantasy, shaped by the commercial category's genesis in the 1970s post-Tolkien boom, I guess. SF was my taste—in its widest, wildest sense, for sure, abbreviating the Science to S to evade the question of its absence, but still insisting it was SF—as opposed to, you know, that stuff about elves and magic swords. The idea of slipstream was... pulling at loose threads in that tapestry of preconceptions. Gary Gibson, another GSFWC member, was working on his slipstream magazine Territories... when? Fucked if I can remember. What I do recall is Neil bringing in these weird little stories, how copies of The Third Alternative or Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet would be handed out for show of a sale here or there.

In our little anarchist syndicate of scribblers, stories such as these marked out an aesthetic terrain that wasn't beholden to any boundaries. We've never really set limits on what belonged—there was never anyone to set limits. And I'm not sure any of us fussed over what side of what fence they fell on theoretically. Call this one SF. Call that one horror. Call them slipstream or interstitial. Or don't. Fuck it, over the years, it seems to me, that old closed definition of fantasy has just been shrugged off in favour of... an admission of just how varied fantasy can be, of a diversity that's typified, manifested, in a collection such as this.

Within the category itself, as evidenced here, there's a return of fantasy to roots that go back long before that Tolkien boom—and I don't just mean to Howard and Lieber. No. Flick through the pages of this book to a story such as Well Tempered, view it from a different angle, through lenses tinted rose or sepia, and this might be a Bradbury tale, a type of fantasy with zero interest in sword-wielding shenanigans. A Horse in Drifting Light has a similar quality to it, I think, sparks thoughts of Bradbury's The Pedestrian in my mind, conjuring a wholly SF scenario but no less a fantasy story for that. Does the why and how of the horse really matter? I don't think so.

Here such category distinctions as SF and Fantasy are irrelevant, are most blatantly eschewed in Weird Engineering tales like The Apparatus or The Gubbins. I'm not sure if Neil counts The Bennie and the Bonobo in that category, but I see something of the same sensibility there, in engineering that's certainly wonderful if it isn't weird—George Bennie's railplane. But that wonder... there's a twist on SF's love of gadgetry, I think, a spirit I'm tempted to suggest is very Scottish, romantic and reverent, for sure, but more pragmatic than the technocrat's dream, less about the potential for an awesome frontier future, more about... the stuff. It's a footerer's love of bits and bobs, the materials of mechanisms—the gubbins, indeed. But we'll get to that.

Fantasy or SF? Inhabiting that Bradburyesque twilight zone where fantastic and horrorific also shrug off distinction, many of the stories here might be classed as dark fantasy if one were desperate to taxonomise. There are aspects of the uncanny, as in The Happy Gang where a medical adjutant in WW1 stumbles upon a dugout with a far eerier wrongness than the carnage going on around, or in a classic Jamesian ghost story such as Harrowfield, or in something like Sins of the Father, which verges on good old Lovecraftian horror. They're all Neil stories to me though, more than anything. And seeing them as such... this is where they become benchmarks of change for me, points upon the path to where I am now, endlessly wittering on about it all being, at the end of the day, strange fiction. Fiction of the wondrous or the monstrous, the marvellous or the mysterious.

And the mundane too, most interestingly, most wonderfully of all.

The strangeness here is often subtle, you see, not a sensational spectacle of the unreal but rather a skewing of our perspective on the real. We might find, say, a steely alien nettle sprouting in a Scottish family's back garden, a whole interstellar civilisation part of the picture but utterly backgrounded in a story where the fantastic is really a weird weed sneakily springing up in the domestic, a resilient intruder—right scunner—but not the monstrous interloper of horror. No, the strange here is too damn thrawn to be locked into that role.

Often the fantastic is a reconstruction of the domestic, in fact, a mosaic of crockery and other such seeming banalities, mundane materials—clay, porcelain, metal, glass—not smashed, unless in the accident of a dropped tumbler, but rather clipped carefully with pliers, to be recombined, with utmost precision. A mosaic through which one might walk into another existence—it's a fitting image of the collection itself, echoed in the series of paintings in Softly Under Glass, the flashes of imagery in Postcards, all speaking of individual glimpses into... what? A deeper reality, perhaps? Or just a deeper experience of this one? Somewhere in all those little visions, or between them maybe.

Finding the fantastic in the domestic is a recurrent theme, to the point one might outline an associated imagery of birds—a canary in a council flat, a talking crow on a rooftop, the key image of The Codsman and His Willing Shag. That last example strikes me as where this theme's articulated most explicitly, in a story speaking of disenchantment with the mundane, the parochial, speaking of the wonders that lie beyond, wonders it's only natural to yearn for... but refusing to deny what is and will always be our home. It's a story of re-enchantment, rediscovery.

The fantastic need not be a foreign force, you see, something we only encounter via its incursion into our realm or our incursion into its. It is already here, could be in anything. In a child's doll carved from bone, fragile, all too easily crushed to dust. In a photographer shooting his ex under the shadow of an alien not-quite-invasion, focusing in on a swallow tattoo. There are epiphanies to be found as much in the everyday aspects of these images as in the exotic—ambiguous epiphanies perhaps, but profound, exquisite. One need not always go looking elsewhere for the fantastic. The perils of fantasies of escape into exotica, indeed, are at the heart of The Last Note of the Song, a pirate story and, in a stroke of pure inspiration, a musical to boot. What could be more awesome than to be swept out of a drudge's life into The Crimson Pirate as an MGM Musical? Ah, but that music can be a siren song, the story tells us. Don't be so quick to get caught up in it.

If you can help yourself, that is. I know I read them and I find myself doubly struck because they are in a way, for me, exactly the sort of thing they speak of—sculptures of bone left after the past is gone, a mosaic that makes an image of elsewhen. But even without that personal connection, I have no doubt you'll find them equally as captivating. Where that music comes to us not from beyond but from within, where it is this fleeting, fragile, precious melody of materials and moments—articulated here most subtly, most simply, perhaps, in the lynchpin story of the collection, Hard To Do—it's hard not to surrender to that equipoise of joy and sorrow over what is so precious because it is so fleeting, so fragile...

Those little things, the bits and bobs, the gubbins of lives.

The ephemera.

Foreword—A Gallery Of Ephemera

One of the cool things about assembling a collection of stories from across my writing career is the photograph album effect. Looking back on stories I wrote when I was starting out is like browsing through old snaps. Recognising that awkward teenager with an 80s rock band mullet and questionable taste in clothes is like acknowledging the absence of polish in some of those early stories. Which is not to say by any means that I dislike them. On the contrary, they're part of who I am. I love their directness and I'd kill to have some of those ideas again, but that's the point: if I was to try writing those stories now, they would be different stories because, in writing terms, I grew up.

Leafing through these Kodachrome snapshots now is a rewarding exercise in reminiscence. Many of the tales surprise me in terms of their construction and approach, a few irk me because there are better ways to achieve the effects I was aiming for, and I now freely hold my hand up to an over-fondness for what the members of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle referred to as 'Neil's melancholy endings', but for the most part I'm proud of my early efforts. The questionable taste in clothes may remain, but nowadays I'm calling that my style, and it's interesting to chart its development from story to story as the years passed.

But think about those snapshots for a second. Think about what they represent.

Non-writers appear continually to be baffled as to where authors get their outlandish ideas. Writers on the other hand think nothing of this. They have ideas all the time. It's in knowing what to do with them that the skill lies. When I started writing—when I started thinking like a writer—I was overwhelmed by ideas for stories. They blossomed around me everywhere I looked, and I blithely picked the pretty ones, and the cool ones, and the weird ones, stuffed them into my pockets or pressed them in a book for later. Not all of these notions were usable of course, but some of them I attempted to build into pictures. Into stories. The stories you see here are the best of the ones that got published. So, as snapshots go, they each represent something unique: the moment when an inspiration—one of thousands—was nurtured into a story.

Which makes this collection a genuine gallery of ephemera, and I thought that was something worth celebrating. So, for this new edition, I've appended to each story a short note recounting the notion that engendered it. Some are very specific while others are pretty general; some are surprising while a few are banal. But that's the nature of ideas, and of writing.

What else is new in this edition? Well, I've also added a handful of additional stories that for one reason or another were not available to include the first time round. And, lastly, I've also written a new story. At the top of this piece I wondered about how one of my early story ideas would turn out if I were to write it now, so I decided to find out. I rummaged through the drawers and found a faded, old idea that I once had high hopes for. The story that resulted is called Crow's Steps. The idea dates from the mid-nineties but it's always been at the back of my mind, and I hope I've finally managed to do it justice.

Of course, there's a melancholy ending. But that's my style.

Shine, Alone After The Setting Of The Sun

When I got home from the studio Annie was smashing crockery on the back step. I laid my guitar case down and watched my lover standing at the kitchen door, silvered by the 2am moonlight, dropping mugs and plates and breakfast bowls one at a time onto the concrete. From the living room, drifting jungle noises and David Attenborough's sonorous murmur counterpointed the explosive shattering.

"Annie!" I yelled.

She turned and grinned breezily. Hi, Lorna. You're back. How was the session?

I was amazed. When I left that morning, she hadn't even seemed aware that I was going out.

What are you doing?

At least she had the grace to look abashed. Oh, right. Bit of a guddle, yeah? Then she actually beamed. I'm getting back to work.

I watched her as she crouched and began to sort through the mess of fragments. Such a transformation. Right up to that morning she had been so withdrawn, so tightly, bitterly wound, self-exiled to her own dark, curtains-drawn world, doing nothing except sleep and watch her nature videos; and now everything about her seemed to deny the last few months had happened. The brightness of her expression; the renewed energy in her step; the almost forgotten spark of drive in her eyes, replacing that smudged, haunted cast. All this spoke of some remarkable, but so welcome, return of normalcy, of the Annie I knew and loved and had wanted back for so long.

But... however much I wanted to believe this, however much I found myself grinning too, infected by whatever inspiration had sparked this shift of mood, I was equally fearful that it signified some darker, internalising twist of Annie's psyche. I knew her too well.

Right at that moment, though, I was tired and my head was too full of the day's jingles to tackle the problem. I mumbled something like okay then, and went to run myself a bath.

~

Annie was sitting on the step, carefully breaking up the larger pieces with pliers. I came to stand behind her, feeling soft and renewed. Without turning, she said, You smell of apples.

I ran my fingers through thick strands of damp hair. I borrowed your shampoo. Sorry.

She gave me no sign, and I could read nothing in the curve of her spine under her thin, stretched Greenpeace t-shirt as she bent over her work, so I took a chance. Slowly, braced for rejection, I lowered myself to the floor behind her, wrapping my arms and legs around, resting my head on a shoulder, breathing in warm body scent, relishing the proximity. And Annie responded, laying down her pliers, leaning back and relaxing into my embrace. We sat like that in a silence I was powerless to break until the weight of questions finally forced words from my lips.

How are you? Weak, insipid, open to as non-committal a reply as you could get. At first it seemed that Annie was not going to give even that, but then she spoke.

I'm all right I suppose. I wake up every morning hating myself for bringing a child into this world and go to sleep hating myself double for not being able to do anything to make it better.

Straight to the point; and it told me that not everything had changed. Annie had been running this conviction around since she discovered she was pregnant, digging it deeper, etching out the grooves of it in her mind. How many times had I tried to reason her out of this and met with violent rejection, or with that blank silence, so intense, which I found even scarier? That was before. Maybe now she would listen. My fingers described light, calming circles on her brow as I searched for some new combination of words that would convince her.

The world's not all so terrible, you know. I said it lightly, but Annie twisted round fast, fixing me with a hot stare that dried everything I was going to say to dust in my mouth. Her stare softened, her eyes brimming and spilling twin tracks down her cheeks as she reached up to shush me with one finger, one shake of the head. I felt the tension drain from her, and her body sagged against me, head resting this time on my shoulder. My fingers resumed their tiny movements at her brow and in her thick hair. Quietly, into my chest, she said,

All I wish is that we could have our own little corner where everything is good and safe and just right for us.

People like you make the world better, Annie. It was feeble but Annie seemed to take a measure of comfort from it, cuddled in a little closer, squeezed my arm lightly. I was grateful for that at least. I didn't even mind the heavy press of her belly against my leg. Presently a growing coolness in the air set us both shivering and I coaxed her to stand and come inside, asking, "What are you doing out here anyway?" For the third time that night, she smiled, and that one was genuine, one hundred per cent Annie.

I have to make a mosaic. For the baby.

~

When it came to her work, everything was must, or need, or have to with Annie. Each of her paintings, once she latched onto an idea, was driven to completion by some inner force; usually at the neglect of those around her. That was just her way. She might scratch around for ages for a concept, but once she had it she became fixated and worked hard at it until it was done. It was a fascinating, entertaining process to watch; perilous if you got too close, and often lonely for the observer.

At the end of it though, without fail, something special. A lurid scene, a slant-wise look at the world centred around one or more of Annie's characteristic elongated figures, stylised people simplified to bright ribbons. She said they were human beings reduced to spiritual essence. String people, was how I thought of them.

Annie's String People pictures just about sold, eventually. Sometimes for more, usually for less, but at least they sold. And she had managed to produce them at more or less regular intervals over a couple of years. Money came in, but her contribution to our finances was small compared to mine. Certainly I envied her. I'd have loved to sit and write songs all day instead of tossing off standards and carpet warehouse jingles for take after incomplete take as some idiot drummer slowly got his act together, but any resentment I felt was swept aside by my regard for her talent. I loved each one of those pictures, marvelled at the fierce intensity of colour she favoured. They moved me, and I found them attractive and repellent in equal measure. I couldn't wait until a new one was completed.

Of course, Annie had done nothing recently. No paintings, no sketches. Since discovering her pregnancy she had been unable to work. For weeks she had fidgeted around at her board. Then in her frustration she turned to other forms, other media. Still nothing. Nada. Zilch. Now, suddenly, this mosaic.

~

Annie made herself a rectangular frame which covered most of the kitchen floor. She sat before it cross-legged, surrounded by a semicircle of Tupperware tubs, each containing a pile of pieces; clay, porcelain, metal, glass. I stepped around her to get to the kettle for coffee, watching as she carefully chose a piece, shaped it with a file, cemented it and found a place for it. Rather than the geometric elements traditional in mosaic design, Annie's pieces were shaped irregularly, their edges smoothed and curved to fit with their neighbours. Each had their chosen place in a pattern which was building inwards from the edges of the frame. Perhaps, though, pattern was the wrong word. Certainly, I could not yet identify any form emerging from this pebbled pixel-array. That was the impression it gave, a blankness, like the static on an untuned TV.

~

Annie went out in the car. She left before I woke, and was gone maybe a couple of hours. Just enough time for me to start worrying; and get pissed at her for making me worry. She had not set foot outside the house in over three weeks. I had just decided to start ringing round when she walked into the house, her arms laden with plants in clay pots. Even more filled the boot of the car. An eclectic collection of flowers, shrubs and vegetable plants, one or two of each, even a couple of bonsais. I sighed, mystified. Annie had never been a gardener.

I helped her to unload the car. Neither of us spoke but I caught Annie's eye, asking wordlessly, Why? The reply was that cheeky, knowing look that she was so good at. Because. And I smiled, just a little.

Over lunch our conversation was light, inconsequential. I found that I was beginning to believe this return to as normal a life as you could expect with Annie, however suddenly it might have come about. It was seductive. I wanted it badly, but was afraid to surrender to it completely.

~

The plant pots all found their way into the mosaic. Fragments of them anyway. When I came home that evening there was a broad band of terracotta across the picture, and a heap of dark earth and discarded plants outside the door.

Oh Jesus, Annie. This is too much, I said to myself, because at that moment there was no sign of her. Then footsteps sounded behind me and I turned, too fast, propelled by anger. Annie shrieked, jumped back, losing her grip on the glass of water in her hand. The tumbler shattered on the concrete. Water, icy, clear, splashed my feet, dribbling in amongst the earth, pooling muddily around my shoes.

Ah shit, I cursed, stepping away. She went and spent all that money on plants and now this. Annie,... I began, but I ran out of words.

Annie's face had gone tight, shrunk inwards, an expression somewhere between hurt and defiance. She spoke quietly, but with venom, "Okay. I was just coming out to clean this stuff up. I thought we could plant them in the garden. It is summer after all."

My anger melted away into... what? Pity, sympathy, confusion? Yeah, look, I'll give you a hand.

Thanks, Annie's face cracked weakly, an attempt at a smile.

Little things like shared tasks, working away without the need for conversation, are what I loved about our relationship. Just being there with her, breathing her air, sharing her with no-one. Occasionally I sneaked glances at her, admired her single minded attention to trowel and earth, to stem and woody roots. The same as when I watched her in her studio; just standing, looking on as she went about her work. Never once did I catch her glancing back at me, but I didn't mind.

Later she picked up the pieces of broken tumbler, delicately disposing of the shards. The thick round base she kept though. Something about it fascinated her. She held it in her palm, traced its still wet surface with a careful, deliberate finger. Then, with a secret little smile, she took it inside.

~

"Hey! What's all this?"

Annie looked up from attending to the steaming array of ironware on the hob. Big smile, warm and generous.

Hi. Sit down, it's nearly ready.

I stepped nimbly around the mosaic to reach the table, used to it being there now, a part of the kitchen; even if it still refused to offer me anything resembling a recognisable picture.

The table was set with plates that did not match, and a bottle of red wine had been opened and placed in the centre of the table beside a pair of candles which were slender and white as bone.

I sat, poured myself a glass. The wine was thin, but I savoured it.

So candles, wine. You cooking dinner. What's the big occasion?

Celebration, Annie said, placing a bowl of potatoes before me. I'm nearly finished the mosaic and you're going to have a weekend at the seaside.

I took another swallow of wine to disguise my