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Congratulations
to Christine Cox of St Leonards on Sea, United Kingdom, who wins £200 for her
story, "A Child's First Dictionary". The story is published below.
 "I was very surprised and delighted to win this competition.
I've loved writing stories since I was at primary school, but I've only ever done it sporadically, having been busy with the family and my work. I have several jobs: I'm a counsellor/hypnotherapist, I teach personal development classes (assertiveness, stress management etc.), and sometimes English as a Foreign Language. I live in Hastings, England with my husband. We have four grown-up children, five grandchildren, and the number is growing...
I've made a few attempts at short stories over the years. One of them came second in a local competition, but this is the only one that has ever come first, and none of them has been published. Nor has any of my other stuff, except a few magazine articles, several years ago. My latest project is a magic realism novel about colourful monkeys. The theme is friendship, learning to get on together, and how this can make people happy. So far it's been rejected by all the publishers and agents I've sent it to. But it's been tried out on a class of 9-10 year olds, who all loved it, so I know it's worth persevering to get it into print. Winning this competition has given a big boost to my confidence, and has made me more determined than ever to do it somehow."
Ten special commendations go out to
the following entrants (in no particular order):
Deirdre Oliver, Australia,
"Slipping Into Memories"; Ian Murray, Ireland, "And
Johnny Ran"; - Vicki Hill, United Kingdom, "Past
Days";
- R.V. Jones, United Kingdom,
"Caught in an Octagon of Unaccustomed Light";
- Peter Hutton, New Zealand, "The
Assignment";
- Susan Avitzour, Israel,
"Understanding Betsy";
- Jim Rodgers, United States, "A
Superior Man";
- Daniel Gipson, United States,
"First Response";
- Gayla Chaney, United States,
"Francis Down Under";
- Christopher Bell, United States,
"Porcelain".
All eleven stories will be published in
issue 12 of firstwriter.magazine. The winning entry can be read below: |
| By Christine Cox
dictionary n. a book that explains the
meanings of words. I wished.
Ours was a very respectable street. The houses were detached, with large
gardens front and back, and the verges full of trees that blossomed in
the spring. Our neighbours, tall and gangly Mr Amos, short and fat Mr
Nicholson, said: "Good morning," and raised their hats to my
mother as we passed them on our way to the bus stop.
"Always so gentlemanly!" exclaimed Mum, as though she were
surprised by their good manners. I had no idea why she should be. Mum
had a habit of making remarks to me that I couldn't understand, without
explaining them.
"Are Mr Amos and Mr Nicholson brothers?" I asked. My mother
laughed, the sort of knowing laugh she gave when I asked her why Mr
Greaves and Mrs Keeting, who lived at number 22, had different surnames,
or told her that Roberto Gigli's mother was only going to marry his
uncle if he got promotion.
"No, just friends," she said.
"Why do they live together, then?"
"Friends do, sometimes."
"Did Mr Amos get lonely, after his mother died?"
"That's enough questions. We'll miss the bus."
But I knew Mum had been shocked when she discovered that Mr Nicholson
was living with Mr Amos, because I was there at the time. It happened a
few weeks after old Mrs Amos's funeral. Mr Amos invited us in to watch
the Coronation on his television, because we didn't have one. We were
sitting there on the sofa, Mum and I, while our host tuned in the TV,
and we heard clinking noises coming from the kitchen. "You've
visitors, have you, Mr Amos?" asked Mum, and at that moment a
short, round, baldish man appeared at the lounge door, carrying a tray
of tea and delicious-smelling shortbread. As if this were not surprising
enough, he put the tray down on the table, and proceeded to pour the
tea. This I had never seen a man do before. But what truly astonished me
was his apron: the fact that he was wearing one at all, and the fact
that it had flowers on it.
I must have been gaping, because Mum nudged me vigorously.
"This is Mr Nicholson," announced Mr Amos, without any further
explanation.
Mr Nicholson beamed at us. "Delighted, I'm sure," he said, in
a posh, fruity, old-fashioned voice. "Do have some of my freshly
made shortbread!"
"Is Mr Nicholson a baker?" I asked on the way home. But I only
got the laugh, the maddening laugh, that mocked me for my ignorance
whilst keeping me in it; and Mum went back to muttering: "Well I
never! Would you believe it? Oh dear, oh dear, that apron!" to
herself.
"What is he then?" I persisted.
"Oh – a solicitor, he said, retired. Though I can hardly believe
it. It's a blessing the poor old lady's gone, that's all. She'd turn in
her grave if she knew." My mother's voice had taken on a more
sombre tone. "Turn in her grave," she repeated.
"Didn't Mrs Amos like solicitors?" I asked.
solicitor n. a lawyer who advises people and defends them in a lower
court of law.
This was the first word I looked up when Granny gave me "A Child's
First Dictionary". She brought it when she came to stay, and I, a
solitary, serious child, who liked words, was delighted. I decided to
learn a new one every day.
I was glad of the dictionary, too, because I was chosen to represent the
family in accompanying Granny to Chapel, in my Sunday suit, white shirt
with the scratchy, starched collar, red tie and red sleeveless pullover
that Granny had knitted me. The Bible readings were full of strange
words that no-one explained.
The dictionary wasn't any help with most of them though, as it turned
out. "Harlot" simply wasn't in there, and neither was
"circumcision", even when I looked under "s".
I looked up "queer" after I heard it from Colin Smith. It was
when my ball landed in Mr Amos's garden, and I went to knock on his door
to ask if I could search for it. Colin, who was big and scary and had a
reputation for wildness, had parked his motorbike on the pavement, and
was sitting on it, smoking and chatting to a friend. "You don't
want to go in there!" Colin called out to me as I carefully opened
and closed the garden gate. "They're queer in there, they
are!" The friend sniggered.
I knocked in spite of them, but there was no reply.
queer adj. 1. strange, unusual. 2. unwell.
I knew this of course, because my father always said: "That's
queer!" when he thought he'd left his pipe or false teeth in a
certain place, and they weren't there; and Granny often talked about
Auntie May's "queer turns", and how Uncle Albert had passed
away so suddenly, having only been "taken queer" the day
before. But none of this explained the snigger.
I was squeezed into my favourite hiding place: the space between the
gooseberry bushes, where, they said, I had been found as a baby, and Mr
Amos's fence. I was studying the dictionary when my ball came flying
over my head, skimmed the bushes, and landed on the grass beyond. I
stood up and perched one-legged on a thin tree stump to look over the
fence, and saw the short, round figure of Mr Nicholson, inspecting a row
of beans.
"Thank you, Mr Nicholson!" I called out.
"Ah, Peter! There you are." He came over, beaming at me.
"I've just made some jam tarts. And Mr Amos has some things for
you. He's been clearing out his loft. Would you like to come and
see?"
I returned from Mr Amos's house carrying "Pirate Tales for
Boys", a stamp album, and a box labelled "Meccano".
I was late for tea, and there were guests: a thin, nervous-looking man
in round glasses and a dog collar and a pretty, plump, kind-looking lady
beside him. I deposited my trophies on the table, sat down, and took the
lid off the Meccano box.
Disappointingly, it contained lead soldiers and old coins; but there was
also a penknife that looked promising.
"Manners, Peter!" snapped Granny. "Say 'Good afternoon'
to Mr and Mrs Trimble.
You know Mr Trimble, don't you?" I recognised him now: the young
minister who had appeared at Chapel to "fill in" while the old
one was – somewhere I couldn't remember. "Mr and Mrs Trimble
won't be with us long," continued Granny. "They're off to the
missions." It sounded as if they were due to board ship as soon as
we'd finished tea. "He's missed grace and I'll vouch he's not
washed his hands." Returning to the subject of me, Granny addressed
this to my mother. But I knew Mum wouldn't do anything about either of
those things.
"What have you got there, Peter?" Mrs Trimble asked me.
"Some toys and books from Mr Amos next door. He's been turning out
his loft."
"You have a nice, friendly neighbour then."
"Yes. And Mr Nicholson is very nice too. He gave me jam tarts that
he'd just made."
"Peter! You've never – you've not been in –" began Granny,
aghast. "Marjorie," (to my mother), "he's been with –
You shouldn't let the lad – You never know what he might – Well, if
I were his mother, I wouldn't allow it." Granny at last managed to
finish a sentence.
Ever willing to stand up for people, but in awe of her mother-in-law,
and suffering from a similar sentence-completion disability, my mother
said feebly: "Oh, I don't know – They always seem – I mean,
you'd never think – He's a bank manager, you know, Mr – and his
mother was very –"
"That's as may be," interrupted Granny. Then, in a whisper,
but still loud enough for us all to hear: "but it is an
abomination, Marjorie!", then louder: "An abomination.
Leviticus Chapter 11. Is that not right Mr Trimble?"
The nervous young minister, in the act of eating a shrimp sandwich,
looked confused and then alarmed, went red, said: "I – er
–" and appeared to be struck with an even worse dose of
sentence-curtailing disease than the other two. Attempting to swallow
the piece of sandwich in his mouth, Mr Trimble choked.
"We shall miss you both when you're in Africa," my mother told
our guests emphatically. "Things won't be the same without you at
all," she added with apparent feeling, though she was C of E, and
had never met either of them before. She poured Mr Trimble more tea,
while his wife thumped him on the back.
But Granny stuck to her point. "Well, it's not a healthy place for
a little lad to go visiting, that's what I say" she pronounced.
"It's not healthy at all."
"Oh!" I piped up, because at last I had understood something
they said. If it was health they were worrying about, I could set their
minds at rest. "It's alright," I continued eagerly. "Mr
Amos and Mr Nicholson aren't queer any more. They might have been queer,
but they're not queer at all now!"
In the silence that followed, it became clear to me that my words had
not had the desired effect. I slid out of my seat and bolted to the
gooseberry bush. The word-destroying sickness must have finally struck
them all dumb, because no-one even called me back for leaving the table
without permission.
I took the lid off the collection of valuables I kept in a half-buried
cake-tin: conkers, a box of matches, a compass for my planned trip to
the North Pole, half a packet of Spangles and the dictionary. I added
the penknife, which I had sneaked out in my pocket, knowing they would
say it was too sharp for me, even though it was rusty.
I took out the dictionary and looked up "abomination". It
wasn't there; "abominable" would have to do.
abominable adj. hateful, as an abominable crime.
But our neighbours hadn't committed a crime; they had only been kind to
me. What could be hateful about home-baking and handed-down toys?
Disgusted with its unhelpfulness, I put the dictionary back in the tin.
It was over a year before I got it out again. The conkers were mouldy,
the matches damp and unlightable, the penknife jammed with rust, and the
Spangles a squishy mess. The compass still told me where North was, but
I knew, by then, that there was more to Arctic exploration than that.
The pages of the dictionary had black spots on them, but I could still
read:
solicitor n. a lawyer who advises people and defends them in a lower
court of law.
During that year, I hadn't been allowed to visit our neighbours' house
again, and, while Granny was with us, my mother had only nodded to them,
instead of chatting over the fence, as she'd been accustomed to do. But
Granny wasn't there when Mr Nicholson died suddenly from a heart attack:
she'd gone home. So Mum went to Mr Nicholson's funeral. A few days
later, I went with her to take a fruit cake she had baked round to Mr
Amos. He thanked us profusely, but the gift seemed to depress rather
than cheer him. Mum's cooking was not a patch on Mr Nicholson's: the
cake had sunk in the middle, and Mr Amos's heart seemed to sink further
when he saw it.
He continued to go to the bank each weekday morning, in his pinstriped
suit, but he never appeared in the back garden, which Mum said was
"going to rack and ruin". I lost several balls in it, because
she wouldn't let me bother him by knocking on the door to get them back.
I had taken to reading the Daily Express, frightening myself with
tales of children who disappeared and were later found dead in a cellar
with their feet cut off, or buried in a shallow grave. But it was in the
local newspaper that I saw the headline: "Bank Manager Charged with
Soliciting", and in smaller writing, underneath: "Arrested in
Public Convenience." The newspaper was removed from under my nose,
but not before I had seen the name: Mr Walter Amos.
"Soliciting" was another omission from my dictionary, but it
was obvious to me that it must be what solicitors did. Mr Amos was a
bank manager, of course, not a solicitor, but perhaps he had learnt
soliciting from Mr Nicholson, who had been one. Only what could be wrong
with telling people about the law, even if a toilet was an odd place to
do it? I sighed, and chucked the useless dictionary into Mr Amos's
weed-choked garden.
The next day, there was a commotion at Mr Amos's house. Looking out of
the landing window, I saw a policeman standing outside the front door,
and an ambulance parked in the street. Two men came out of the house,
carrying a stretcher. I recognised Mr Amos's feet, which the red blanket
did not quite cover. It covered his face, though, and I knew what that
meant. I knew it was an abomination.
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