The Perfume Trick, by Abbas Saqib

  Arif handed the young man a bottle of perfume. “Here—something sharp that hits the brain, a little fiery. Just as you asked.” 

The customer sniffed it once and bought it on the spot. Arif watched him go, faintly puzzled. Good-looking fellow, well turned out — and this was his taste in fragrance? He shrugged it off and turned to the next customer. A while later his phone buzzed—a WhatsApp message from Mehak. Dad, Rashid’s asking again—should I send Mom to talk to you? 

He typed back without pausing. Absolutely not. We don’t marry outside our community. 

Mehak didn’t reply. But that night, when she came in with his medicine, he flinched at the sight of her—hard enough that it startled him too. He collected himself and, after a moment, said quietly, “Tell him to come for tea Sunday. With his mother.” 

The second she was back in her room, Mehak was on a video call, practically shouting into the phone. “Congratulations, Rashid. Dad said yes.” Then she giggled, “You are, genuinely, the cutest devil alive. That perfume trick — I wouldn’t have thought of that in a hundred years.” 

The first step, by Peter Morford

The other day I read in The Times that Samuel Foster’s  weekly book review would be his last.  The fourth leader was a kind of premature epitaph thanking  him for the pleasure he had given his devoted  readers for over thirty years..   “We wish him well in his retirement although we know he will still grace our pages for years to come.”

We had been friends at University. After graduation we soon went our different ways. I bluffed my way into an architect’s office and learned on the job.  Foster wrote a few short stories “For practice before I could write novels,” as he put it. His stories were either ignored or rejected.  He would stick the Thank you but no missives on his wall behind The Hay Wain and write another tale.

As he said at the time it was the first step in his literary career. There would be tumbles but, like the baby learning to walk, he would learn and who knows what would happen next.  If  Austen and Eliot; Dickens and Tolstoy; Fleming and  Rankin survived early rejections so could he.

He got a job as first dragon in a fiction publisher. He usually read twenty  manuscripts  a week. He sadly rejected the worst and  passed  the more promising work to his boss for more filtering. A few were published. Some sold just enough for a profit. One or two might make a fortune.

For years our friendship had been spasmodic. We might meet for a concert or a play. More rarely the four of us would holiday in Scotland or The Lakes with the children. After those delights we might not see each other for months or even years during which we emailed Christmas cards.

             Last week I heard that he lived in a farmhouse just ten miles from us. I thought it would be good to see him again. I emailed him. He answered and said he was pleased to hear from me. “ We’ll have a drink and perhaps Joanna will cook dinner. Saturday?”

Over dinner we talked old times and inevitably, about his colleagues whom he had outlived. Later, before a blazing wood fire, I felt there was something missing. He had his exposed beams, the ingle-nook, appropriately dark furniture, big tv and a music centre – but no books.  He must have read my mind. “No,” he said,” My library is in the barn.  I’ll show you if you like.”

We crossed the cobbled yard. Inside it was warm and, I must say, delightful.  Thick carpets, comfortable sofas for resting and a desk for working. “How many books?”

`“About ten thousand.  A lot of them are first editions which were part of my reviewer’s fee. Others – just my personal books for fun. They’re a permanent record of my literary life. I still surprise myself when I’m browsing.”

 “What are you reading now Sam?”

“The same book as I read yesterday. The Old Man and the Sea.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You see Harry, I can’t read any more.  No, the sight’s all right. It’s the brain. Not dementia but something else.  I don’t have the concentration that I used to have.  A few minutes and my mind wanders.  I’ve always had to be a quick reader when I read two or three books a day- many more when I was a Booker judge.  But now, an odd word will distract me. Sometimes it links me to something else I had read – ten twenty, fifty years ago. I would find myself sinking into  daydream.  My eyes would scan but my brain was working elsewhere.  So now I read the same book every day. I suppose I could recite the whole book but I don’t want to do that.  I still get the suspense of the story. My sympathy for the old man will never change and I go to sleep looking forward  to reading it again after breakfast.”

*

 

Dream fantasy, by JVC

   I am in a broken-down lift with members of the England women's cricket team. I can see Heather Knight, Danni Wyatt-Hodge, Lauren Bell, Lauren Filer, Maia Bouchier , perhaps Sophia Dunkley and Linsey Smith and some others, so it must be a very large lift. We have been stuck there for some time, and one of the girls gets panicky, but I calm her down and suggest we have a sing-song. Then, as is the way with dreams, the scene shifts and we're playing blind man's buff: I am blindfolded and the others circle round me, giggling and slapping me before retreating out of reach. I say that if I catch someone, I'll claim the right to kiss her. I do eventually grab hold of one and kiss her: I think it's Lauren Filer, but at this stage I wake up.

What should I make of this?  

Surrender, by Dennis Clarke

“Hello! I know who you are; you’re detective inspector Robertson; but you don’t really know who I am. You think I’m a harmless old woman called Suzi Marginton, and that’s true enough as far as it goes; but you’ve probably also heard of me as Sheba, after the Queen of Sheba in the Bible. Yes, that’s right: I’m the person who supplies all the drugs in the town. Or rather, I used to. Surprised to see me? You’ve been after me for years, but you never even got close, did you? But now I’m here.

  “Let me explain. You’ll concede, won’t you, that we only ever traded cannabis and LSD: no harder stuff. And it was always clean; never cut with anything dangerous. Furthermore, we never used violence. This town was peaceful for years, wasn’t it? Bur now times have changed.

  “A new group’s trying to move in and take over. They call themselves the Elite. Sometimes they spell it backwards: ETILE. You’ll likely have seen this sprayed up on a wall, and wondered what it means; now I’m telling you. This mob pushes skunk, heroin, crack cocaine: anything you can name. And they’re a violent mob: there’ll be killings on our streets soon, if you don’t act quickly.

  “So I’m here to tell you this; and I want you to arrest me and lock me up. Because, right now, I reckon it’s the safest place for me to be.”   

Pagan Philosophy, by Peter Shilston

 (Dedicated to the people of the Caucasus, which I visited many yaers ago)

The people are like their mountains,

beautiful, but untamed

implacable against those

who do not show them proper respect

They know that

to leave an insult or injury unavenged

serves only to invite more.

Silly people in the cities

may talk of dying for a cause

but a seious man knows that

if your cause is to triumph

you musy kill for it

In the end we all die

but what better way to die

than in defence of your home

sword in hand

surrounded by the bodies of you enemies

The only true immortality

is when children yet unborn

tell stories of your mighty deeds

The mountains and their people

once inspired Pushkin and Lermontov and Tolstoy

and now they inspire

Vladimir Putin

- a serious man

.

Injury Time, by Matthew Stewart

 

Words to tunes, by C. F. Sharpe

(In all these, I often choose words largely for their sound)

Lullaby for a friend's baby (Tune: Brahms's "Lullaby")

"Little Daisy, my darling, sleep soft on your pillow

With a smile on your face, not a tear in your eye.

And when dawn tips the sky, I shall be by your side.

And when dawn tips the sky, I shall be by your side."

.................................................................................

Pilgrimage (Tune: Schubert's "Trout")

"I hear the brooklet gushing, from its rocky fountain near

And down the valley rushing, so fresh and wondrous clear.

I know not what came o'er me, or who the counsel gave,

But I must hasten onwards, all with my pilgrim's stave."

.................................................................................

Homage to Rupert Brooke (Tune: prelude to Act 3 of "Carmen", by Bizet)

"The boy who sang by Granta's stream

Of spires and fenland, tears and laughter in the morning

Taken by a wider dream

Out eastward sees the rising sun of early dawning

Hears a voice calling loudly now for songs of war and duty

Beauty

Youth and honour lie in Flanders field

And by the banks of Somme and Yser seek for fame

A sword to draw, a lance to wield

A shield to bear the man who dies to win a name

So hear him sing: Now may God be thanked, who matched us with his hour

Power

Loud rejoicing as the boat sails away

To sunbaked islands, seas that once were dark as wine

Where heroes fought a burning day

And deeds as brightly as the Hellene sun would shine

And so he goes, seeking Ilium's walls and Hector's martial story 

For the

 

Boy who sang by Granta's Stream 

In storm and glory to the war 

Is gone"

(Footnote: Rupert Brooke, the beautiful heart-throb poet of the early 1910s, hailed the outbreak of the First World War and volunteered for the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. From his classical education, he would have known that Gallipoli could be seen from the ramparts of Troy. The imagery of this poem is deliberately archaic, because Brooke had no idea what the war would be like - but, the, neither did anyone else)