Holloway The Half-life of Snails

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-913640-58-3
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 380 Seiten

'a novel that shimmers with compassion... the author has crafted a tale that will linger longer than the half-life of many other books you will read this year.' - Alex Lockwood, author of The Chernobyl Privileges 'A careful, tender and arresting story that explores how we're formed by the places we think we own - I was moved by this suspenseful and delicate novel.' - Jenn Ashworth, author of Ghosted Two sisters, two nuclear power stations, one child caught in the middle... When Helen, a self-taught prepper and single mother, leaves her young son Jack with her sister for a few days so she can visit Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone, they both know the situation will be tense. Helen opposes plans for a new power station on the coast of Anglesey that will take over the family's farmland, and Jennifer works for the nuclear industry and welcomes the plans for the good of the economy. But blood is thicker than heavy water, and both want to reconnect somehow, with Jack perhaps the key to a new understanding of one another. Yet while Helen is forced to face up to childhood traumas, and her worst fears regarding nuclear disaster, during a trip that sees her caught up in political violence and trapped in Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone during the 2014 Euromaidan revolution, Jennifer too must discover that even the smallest decision can have catastrophic and long-lasting effects, both within the nuclear industry, and within the home. And Jack isn't like other five-year olds... as they will both discover with devastating consequences.

Philippa Holloway is a writer and senior lecturer at Staffordshire University, living in England but with her heart still at home in Wales. Her short fiction is published on four continents. She has won prizes in literary awards including the Fish Publishing Prize, The Scythe Prize, and the Writers & Artists Working Class Writer's Prize. She is co-editor of the collection 100 Words of Solitude: Global Voices in Lockdown 2020 (Rare Swan Press). @thejackdawspen

Autoren/Hrsg.

Holloway, Philippa

Leseproben

Chapter One

He is small for his age, only a month and a half into his second year at primary, not quite six. Goose-grey eyes and jackdaw stick-nest hair that makes him look smaller. She won’t cut it, no matter how many times people hint, or state bluntly, that she should. Being different will give him strength. In the long run.

He clambers over the barbed-wire topped fence, agile, careful not to catch his jeans on the rusting spikes, dashes into the field as if he is a wild animal released from a cage. An after-school ritual, necessary to rebalance him. Every weekday, as soon as they get home, he changes into jeans and sweater, hiking boots and jacket. He moves differently in his proper clothes, is less nervous, more vibrant. Once changed, they walk along the lane and spend a few moments chatting, giving him time to shake off the day’s lessons and rules, and then, once they’ve both savoured the pause, he helps her with the last of the farm jobs. She saves the most appropriate for him, the ones he’ll learn from – challenging but doable. Every day he gets a small sense of achievement, learns another vital skill.

He runs in a wide arc across the grass, head tilted to the sky as a murmuration of starlings lift, compress and dissipate before settling again in the next field. Helen watches him, her heart swelling along with the flock. Standing here, on the farm her family has owned for generations, looking out over fields of fat, pregnant ewes and wind-bent hawthorns, she can usually, even if only for a second, forget. She inhales deeply, relishes the sharp sting of cold air that floods her lungs; the rich scent of sheep droppings, the tang of sea salt from just over the horizon behind her, the brackish undertones of sodden leaves still mulching at the edge of the path. She drinks in every season, has done every year since her own childhood on the farm. It’s everything she wants for Jack, all she has to offer him. He is crouching now, one small finger outstretched to investigate some hidden treasure he has spied in the longer grass near the hedge.

An only child, a single mother. The odds are stacked against them, in so many ways. They are doing okay, she thinks, as she watches him rummage, pull out his reward. He is a natural on the farm, attuned, her taidy would say. Born to it. He comes to her, beaming, his first gummy gap giving him a waif’s smile.

‘What did you find?’

‘A tooth!’

In the centre of his mucky palm lies a sheep’s molar, ridged and worn, yellowed with age.

‘Good find, Jack.’ She ruffles his hair and smiles. ‘Will it fit in your mouth to replace the one you lost last week?’

He giggles and leans against her leg as he holds the tooth up to the light and turns it, examining every contour and tone.

‘It’s too big for my mouth!’

‘Well,’ she crouches to his level, brushes a tangle of hair off his forehead, ‘we’ll just have to wait for yours to grow through. Come on, we’ve got work to do.’

He shoves his new-found treasure into his pocket and follows her, helps lift sacks of sheep pellets into a barrow, insists on trying to lift the handles and push it himself. She stands behind him and takes the brunt of the weight, and together they walk carefully along the lane and open the gate. The sheep know the squeal of the hinges, they bellow and start trotting towards them, their swollen sides swaying comically. Helen uses her penknife to slice the bags open, and she and Jack tip and spread the brown pellets over the close-cropped grass.

‘Do you remember why we give them extra food in February?’

‘For energy to grow their babies.’

‘Da iawn, Jack. Here, shake the rest out over there, make sure they all get some.’

The ewes bump and shove one another, press together to get the best of the treats. She could become lost in these moments ? by the rhythm of them, the realness ? if the threat of losing it all wasn’t a constant itch, like nettle rash, in the back of her mind. If there weren’t plans for a new nuclear power station to replace the one that has dominated the coastline since before she was born; land acquisitions and groundworks already underway. She’s been fighting the development from the start, tracking its growth: a steady creep towards the edge of her ancestral land, the requests to buy the family farm at more than market value. A constant worry that taints everything, bitter on the back of her tongue. She won’t give in, no matter what. For his sake.

Jack has drifted, is halfway down the field, shouting to her. His voice high and half lost to the wind. She walks over, trying to shake away the constant niggling worries that line her skull.

He is jumping, pointing.

‘Look Mam, she’s stuck, I think.’

He’s right, one of the ewes is caught in the briars that border the bottom of the field, tugging and straining then sagging back, exhausted. Helen hasn’t been in this field since last night’s rounds, it could have been caught for hours.

‘Come on then, time to learn!’ She jogs towards the sheep, slowing as she nears so as not to startle it. Jack by her side, matching her pace. Like a shadow, eager and attentive.

Helen is practical, doesn’t waste time trying to settle the ewe, knows that soft words won’t calm it. The best thing to do is get it free as soon as they can. She pins its head between her knees, squeezes her thighs together as it bucks, and feels it relax. Then hands the penknife to Jack.

‘Wriggle in close and cut away at the bramble, Jack. Cut her fleece if you have to.’

He doesn’t hesitate, and she doesn’t have to tell him to be careful with the sharp blade; he’s been using tools like these since he was a toddler, to her parents’ and sister’s horror, and has never cut himself yet. Attuned, she thinks.

Jack leans his shoulder against the swollen flank of the sheep, pulls at clumps of muddy fleece and saws away at it until, bit by bit, the ewe comes loose. Before he can finish cutting through the last knot, it gives a sudden tug backwards and slips out of Helen’s grasp, then bolts. Jack staggers back, lands on his bum in the soft earth.

‘Ti’n iawn?’

He nods, stands and brushes himself down, watching the ewe trot up the slope to search for any pellets left in the sparse grass. He’s grinning. Tough.

‘Come on, it’s time to get ready,’ she says, taking the knife and folding it back into her pocket. His smile disappears, and he slips his hand in hers, clings. She hopes he’s tough enough. They are both nervous. They’ve never been apart for any longer than a school day since he was born.

Back in their barn-loft bedroom, Helen sits on her haunches while Jack brings her folded underpants and balled socks, fleece pyjamas and a tattered book for her to tuck into his rucksack. Already it holds waterproofs, a water bottle and a hand-powered torch, high-protein snacks, and a silver foil survival blanket neatly folded into a small square pouch. There is a list in carefully formed child’s handwriting inside a small brown notebook, and after each item is carefully stowed he marks a tick on the page with a stubby pencil.

‘Think,’ she says when he’s finished. ‘Is there anything missing from the list?’

He sways in his big hiking boots, rotates like a miniature scarecrow in a breeze, scanning the room for anything he’s missed.

Stops turning.

‘Modron and Mabon.’

‘Get them, then.’

He picks up a large pickle jar from the floor at the side of his mattress. It’s half full of cabbage scraps and sticks, and somewhere underneath the leaves there are two large garden snails buried deep inside their shells.

‘I’m ready.’

Outside, Helen pauses in the wind that cuts in off the coast and rushes over the fields, stares again over the island towards the razor-sharp teeth of Snowdonia, distant on the mainland. The sky is clear, the watery sun just on the horizon behind her. The mountains still have snow on the peaks. The fields nearby are now tinged deep blue in the fading light. She shivers.

‘Did I ever tell you about the blue fields, Jack?’

He looks up at her and sighs. ‘Yes. Over and over and…’ Freckles on pale skin.

‘Alright, no need to be cheeky.’

He carries on in a monotone, ‘Taidy sprayed the fields bright blue to stop Caesar…’

‘Caesium.’

‘… to stop the sheep getting… dirty?’ A frown. He waits to be corrected.

‘Contaminated.’

Jack looks at the winter-worn fleeces and muddy underbellies of the sheep huddled against the spiky hawthorn hedge, rubs a sleeve under his runny nose. ‘It didn’t work, they’re still dirty.’

She ruffles his hair. She wasn’t much older than he is now when the first images of Chernobyl’s shattered reactor flickered onto the tiny black and white portable TV in the living room. Doors and windows shut tight against the hot spring sunshine until the rooms were stuffy and her nose itched...