The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain

By Judy Darley

Some homeschool days, the lounge is a sea, stairs a snowcapped mountain, bathroom a jungle, Mum and Dad's bedroom a sun-seared dessert…

 

The stories in The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain speak of togetherness and separation: how we strive to connect with that one person who could save us, and how we attempt to save the people who most matter to us.

 

Discover the lost, the self-conscious, the reckless. Learn how to milk an alpaca. Encounter a river with one thing on its mind. Touch on moments of isolation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Find out how a ghost tree could bring a community together. Witness the moment when friendship sparks into something more. Consume a life in one mouthful. Meet the lovers, the families and the undefinable others who make up these worlds and sweep us along.

 

Praise for The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain

 

Darley has a beguiling and distinct voice; her writing is never less than beautiful. A captivating collection.
—Amanda Huggins, author of Crossing the Lines and All Our Squandered Beauty

 

Beautifully written and frequently surprising, this book is a wonderful read for these unusual and uncertain times.
—Gaynor Jones, author of Among These Animals

 

There's so much loveliness in Darley's collection, often in the most unexpected places. In every way, this is a collection for all the senses to savour.
—Fiona J Mackintosh, author of The Yet Unknowing World

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reflex Press
• Release date: Mar 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201687427

Judy Darley

Judy Darley is the author of two previous short story collections: Remember Me to the Bees (Scopophilia/Tangent Books) and Sky Light Rain (Valley Press). Remember Me to the Bees was shortlisted for the Edgehill Prize. She grew up in Thornbury, near Bristol, and has a BA in Journalism. Her short stories, flash fiction and poems have been widely published, and read by the author on BBC radio, in pubs, caves, and a disused church, as well as at literary festivals and charity events.

Book preview

Self-Defence Against Yesterday

The first call of the day comes at 11 a.m. sharp. The girl sounds like she’s still sleep-fogged. She tells me she’s called Gala and asks me to bring a wheelbarrow. I raise an eyebrow at the phone but don’t make a peep. I’ve had stranger requests.

I’m at her door within the half-hour. Gala lets me in, blinking yesterday’s partially unstuck false lashes. I wonder if she knows desiccated kelp is knotted in her hair.

‘Can’t you call him an Uber?’ I ask. Part of my role is to help the girls become self-sufficient. ‘Is he really that legless?’

She shakes her head. ‘The problem’s the opposite, Hera.’ She points to the bathroom door. ‘In there.’

‘What, passed out?’

The girl’s mouth purses so tightly it seems sewn onto her face

Curiosity overcomes me, and I step inside.

At first, I don’t know where to look. Then a splash makes me jump, and I turn.

The cephalopod eye that meets mine is vast and full of winter storms.

The towel rail bolsters my balance as I totter.

Limbs ridged with pearly suckers wave in greeting. Translucent skin flushes from the bathroom suite’s aquamarine to a coy blush shade.

I swallow once and again. My throat is as dry as the strand at low tide. Inhaling, I expect to smell fish but catch only hints of salt and stale amaretto.

As I stare, the octopus stretches sinuously until he almost fills the tub. The immense eye seems to expand until it’s all I see. My head fills with a blueness, a greenness, the drag of currents and tides. I grow fluid; weightless. The light dappling me is not from the sun.

The ocean recedes, and I’m in the bathroom, aware of my one heart thudding out of rhythm with the octopus’s three.

With a curl of one limb, the octopus beckons, siphon frilling gently.

I lurch out of the bathroom and close the door behind me.

‘Where’d you pick that one up?’

‘Don’t know.’ Gala closes her eyes. ‘Don’t remember.’

‘What’s the last thing you do recall?’

‘A glass of something with one of those maraschino cherries... That stupid Justin Bieber song ‘What Do You Mean?’ playing way too loud.’ She frowns. ‘Will you help, Hera? My mate Ari says you got rid of a half-bull for her last week. She reckons you’re the best.’

‘That’s why I’m here.’

I drag the wheelbarrow up the steps into the house and through to the bathroom. ‘I don’t know what your deal is, but you can’t stay here. I’ll leave the barrow, and when I return, I want you in it. Got that?’

Gala’s grinning when I rejoin her in the kitchen, but I fix her with my steeliest look.

‘You are not off the hook, missus. What madness is this, not remembering? Time to slow down, take better care of yourself.’

Her smile withers. ‘I know that, Hera. Last night was just...’ She pushes up her sleeve, showing me a round, red welt on her inner arm. ‘They’re all over me. Reckon they’re from the suckers.’

I sigh and hug her. ‘Don’t fret. I’ll check he’s in the barrow, chuck a bath towel over him, then this is almost over. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

The wind is against us as we march down to the strand. The octopus peers out from under the towel occasionally, his massive eye looking at me rather than our surroundings.

What? I want to shout. What are you judging me for?

I wonder if we should have called the local aquarium, but vaguely remember that their last cephalopod died after laying ten thousand eggs.

The ocean vision I glimpsed makes me certain this cycloptic octopus has never been in captivity.

It’s harder going when we get to the sand. The wheel keeps sinking. I use all my strength to shove it onwards until we reach where the grains are packed dense and wet.

‘Can you make it from here?’ I ask, and the octopus makes a movement with one limb that I assume means yes.

I stand aside and watch as he clambers out, body rippling as he flows into the surf.

He doesn’t glance back.

Gala and I sit on the strand for a while despite the cold, watching the wind chase clouds over the sea. I run my fingers through her hair, picking out the seaweed. ‘You girls need to look after yourselves better,’ I tell her. ‘I was only able to offload your mate Ari’s half-bull thanks to the ring in its nose. On Thursday, Eury woke up next to a viper! Pure poison. If you don’t watch yourselves, one of these nights you’ll bring home some beast I can’t get shot of. Did Ari show you the self-defence mantra? Stay alert, expect the worst...’

She snorts, bull-like herself for an instant, and spouts the next line: ‘If in doubt, LEAVE. Yeah, got it. No more pills or booze. I’ll take up yoga instead.’

‘Come to my self-defence class on Tuesday,’ I urge her. ‘I promise you it’ll be at least as useful as yoga.’ My mobile vibrates. I check the WhatsApp message.

‘Emergency?’ Gala asks.

I nod. ‘Lass called Atala’s accidentally brought home two half-horses she needs gone. Okay to get yourself home?’

She nods, and I hurry off, wheeling the barrow before me like a chariot.

Family Psychology

Some homeschool days, the lounge is a sea, stairs a snowcapped mountain, bathroom a jungle, Mum and Dad’s bedroom a sun-seared dessert. You list dessert creatures: ‘Chocolate-tailed chuckwalla, jammy gerbil, custard vulture, sugar-swirl rattlesnake...’

The lounge thrashes with child-hungry squirms. Upstairs, bone-crunching jungle towels writhe. You save me when the dessert duvet gums me into sinking sand.

You’ve set your sights on the uncharted territory of the roof, aka the moon.

I waver behind curtains. When you return – narrow-mouthed, blank-eyed – I grasp your arm, but my fingers pass through. My brother, adrift beyond our realm.

My turn to rescue.

Tidal Suck

Locals have called it the Banana Bridge ever since some bored councillor thought to have its inverted smile painted yellow. It joins the city side of the river with the quarter where Gael lives, close to the spice processing plant.

Gael inhales the comforting scent of coriander and marjoram, drawing it deep into her lungs. She chooses her spot over the mushroom-hued water, unzips her bag and retrieves the carefully wrapped package. Surely, she thinks, it should feel like something more in her hands, be heavier, beat out a pulse echoing her own.

It feels like nothing.

The hospital offered to incinerate it for her. She couldn’t bear the thought of it shrivelling in the heat or of chucking it in the black wheelie bin or, horrors, eating it, as some parenting forums advised.

She’d toyed with the idea of popping it in the food-recycling tub, ready to be composted for the city’s parks, but that too somehow seemed wrong.

Her breasts ache. She thinks of her son, waiting at home with his grandma for her to return.

The river, with its tidal suck and ease, makes sense to Gael. She’s weighted down the mound of flesh with shingle to prevent it resurfacing.

There’s nothing more to be done – no words she can think of. Gael raises her hands high above her head and throws the placenta as hard as she can. It arcs between yellow-painted struts towards the river’s murk.

With barely a splash, it disappears. Gael sucks in a breath of spice-laced air and exhales.

On the riverbank, wading birds tread around rusting bicycle wheels, pressing leafy prints into the mud.

The Sideways House

We learnt to live in corners, bracing heels on ledges and cornicing. Windows became doors to scramble through, fingers gripping hinges. Our pictures hung askew, books dominoed, and the showerhead swung like a perturbed cat’s tail whenever we dared turn it on.

I didn’t mind. We adapted, slinging hammocks from sideways shelves and reminding ourselves to upend bottles before opening. It was all a novelty, a shared experience we’d never anticipated. At night I crept across the kitchen ceiling and slid feet first from the skylight to greet the upside-down moon.

Skirting the Perimeter

They caught the ferry across Lake Iseo to Monte Isola not long after breakfast. Apart from the occasional sidelong look, the rest of the tour party left them alone. Word had spread fast, Sara thought.

Neil sat beside her but stared over the water, neck and shoulders rigid. When she reached out to touch the red patch below his hairline, he flinched away, and she couldn’t tell whether it was because the sunburn hurt or if he just couldn’t bear to feel her fingers on him.

‘Monte Isola is the biggest lake island in Italy,’ their guide declared as they disembarked. ‘When we arrive, you have four hours of free time – enough to stroll up to the sanctuary or have a leisurely coffee – your choice.’

Four hours – such a long time to fill. The aroma of lemons drifted over them and dispersed.

‘What kind of flowers are these?’ Sara asked Neil, cupping starry yellow petals and trying to prompt him into pulling out his Flowers of Northern Italy book. That always made him happy.

But he just shrugged. ‘How should I know?’

She sighed. ‘Hot, isn’t it? Shall we trek up to the sanctuary or not bother?’

He shot her a look that made her want to recoil. ‘Not bother, I should think, don’t you? Why make the effort?’

It hurt, as he’d intended, but she reasoned with herself that he had every right to his bad mood.

It didn’t mean she needed to endure it with him though. She strode along the perimeter path that led round the island, pretending to herself that she didn’t care whether he followed or not.

A moped whizzed past, then another, the latter laden down by an old man and a tiny child of no more than four or five. A group of pensioners wandered near, talking in voices that rose and fell with the breeze that rustled the cypress trees. She plucked up her courage, determined to enjoy the excursion, and called out: ‘Buongiorno!’

‘Buongiorno!’ came the replies, frilled with a smattering of words she didn’t understand.

One old man, still handsome despite his advanced years, garbled something poetic-sounding and incomprehensible.

‘I’m sorry, do you speak English?’ she asked.

‘A little. Are you German?’

The question disconcerted her, and she thought again of the conversation she needed to have with Neil, to explain her response to the events of the night before.

Neil caught up with them at that moment, gawking from Sara to the elderly Italian. The muscles around his mouth and eyes tightened. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Neil, this is...’ She turned to the stranger for clarification, but he just blinked, smiling. ‘I’m sorry, what’s your name?’

He shook his head. ‘My English is harder to