Hello all
I am really pleased to be part of the blog tour for Tom Vowler's great book 'That Dark Remembered Day'. Thank you to Tom and Headline books for including me.
I am excited to be able to bring you an extract of the book (which is really good), as well as having 3 copies of the book to giveaway.
Extract from That Dark Remembered Day
Spring 1983
In those last moments of childhood, before everything splintered forever,
he watched her disappear along the lane. They’d got off the school
bus together, made plans to meet later in the
woods behind his house, nervous and exhilarated at what
might occur. Their fumblings of the last few weeks,
gloriously ardent explorations of one another that had so far been contained,
now longed for a crescendo, a progression to unknown, untasted delights. He
assumed it would be her first time too, although when
he’d asked, she’d just smiled and pulled him
closer. It irritated him that his own bedroom was ruled
out for such a momentous occasion, his
father, with the exception of walking
the dog, home all day since his
return from the war, ghosting between rooms,
ever present, albeit in a vacant
approximation of himself. There was
enough to contend with performance, the mechanics of the thing without
the fear of someone walking in, though the woods hardly guaranteed
privacy. He’d wanted so badly to ask his friend for advice, a sense
of what to expect, but of course the one
person he could ask about
such matters was now the one person he couldn’t.
Once she was out of
sight, he caught up with his friend, a friend he’d replaced
in the girl’s affections hoping the awkwardness
between them, the sense of
betrayal, would recede a little in the
days ahead. More than anything, he
wanted his friend to punch him, to lash
out in a rage that would see them sprawling
on the ground, bloodied but with the tension broken. Anything but this
silence. He wanted to say sorry, how neither
of them had meant it to happen,
that you couldn’t help your
feelings, that he hoped the three of
them could still hang around together.
Instead he
kicked a stone along the road, watching it skim and buck,
hoping his friend might join in, before the hedge
claimed it. Passing the gate they sometimes climbed over for a
smoke, he suggested a fishing trip at the
weekend, if the weather held; he’d found
a new spot, miles upriver from the
old iron bridge. There would be chub
and roach, even a barbel if they got
lucky. They could get up at first light
Saturday, pack some food, make a flask of
tea, then meet by the oak tree in the top
field and walk down to the river with their
rods. ‘How about it?’ he said, looking
at his friend’s back. Still the silence, the unspoken allegation
of theft, his friend striding on in anger.
Reaching the houses
on the outskirts of town, he saw a car on the
brow of the hill, sideways on so that
it blocked the road, and they stood
staring at it for a moment. One of
its doors was open, the engine ticking away.
Beyond the car, the town’s lone traffic lights passed through
their silent cycle, the roads leading off them empty as a Sunday
morning. Someone was shouting, perhaps half a mile away, the pitch of the words
rising, the sound just carrying to them on the breeze.
They walked on,
around the car and up to the crossroads, where several dogs barked in a
discordant choir. A hundred yards or so along Cross
Street, they could see a bicycle abandoned on the
pavement, the groceries from its basket spilt
on to the side of the road, a trail of fruit
strewn along the gutter. Opposite the bike,
outside the newsagent’s, a pushchair was upended
as if it had fallen from the sky, its contents long
gone, and he realised that that was what was
missing: people. To the north, beyond the town,
they could hear a siren now, distant like white noise.
At the fork in the
road, the two of them separated without speaking, and a few
seconds later he found himself running past the churchyard
and out of town, over the humpbacked bridge, where finally
he stopped to catch his breath. Hands on knees, puffing,
he looked ahead, seeing by the side
of the road a mound that looked both ridiculous and common-
place. Still as a rock, it had been
covered almost entirely by an old
grey blanket, and as he passed it,
as his mind processed what it was,
he felt his heart quicken, da-dum da-dum, as if it were dancing.
Part One
Autumn 2012
Grateful
to emerge from the violence of his
dreams, he prepared for the hangover
awaiting him. Somewhere in the
fog of his sentience Zoe left for work, the front
door if not slammed, then closed with scant
consideration. She’d have made their
daughter’s breakfast, got her
ready for school, but with
nothing of significance to fill
his days now, the school run had
become his alone. Reaching for some
painkillers in the bedside drawer, Stephen
knocked over the glass of water, the last of which trickled
in a rivulet into the paperback he’d yet to
start. A pallid light bled through the curtains
and he winced at the emptiness the day promised, as
if all its moments had already
been glued together with inertia. The
steady build-up of traffic on the road into
town could be heard, an
insidious taunt from those with
routine in life, whose days
were a series of edifying events.
Downstairs, Amy was
finishing her cereal, her lunchbox standing proud in the middle of the
table. She looked at him standing there in his
underwear, unshaven, her face full of concern that
they’d be late again.‘Hey, you,’ he said, offering a reassuring smile as
he made himself a strong coffee. There was a note from
Zoe: some groceries to get if he went into
town, a suggestion of what to cook tonight, that
she would be home late again. She’d
signed off with This can’t go on.
He too wondered how
long it could be endured. Initially, for the first couple
of weeks, he’d savoured the
leisurely rhythm of his days, filling the
mornings with long-put-off jobs around the house, the afternoons
with fishing for pollock or bass off the harbour wall,
perhaps a few quid on one of the
afternoon races before congregating by the
school gates. But the absence of structure
gave his mind space to lurch into darker
realms, turning in on itself and sabotaging the
quiet progress, bringing into
relief the ‘episode’, as Zoe now referred to it.
She had
tried to draw him into an exchange
about his recent transgression – the hows
and whats, if not the why something he’d resisted
for now. And whereas her instinct was to show
support, to be, as they said, there
for him, her face could barely hide the incredulity at the
situation he’d brought upon them.
‘What made
you do such a thing?’
‘I’ve tried to tell
you, I don’t know.’
They
had made love last
night, a frantic scramble
he’d initiated once she had stopped reading. There was something
about his enforced idleness
that lent the passion,
on his part at least, additional vigour, perhaps desperation, as if
impotence, real or symbolic, could take root
in such times. Once he’d finished,
she’d rolled over, patting his thigh with
her trailing hand in felicitation, sleep coming for her
in seconds.
After walking
Amy to school, he took
the binoculars and trekked out
of town, along the coast
path, hoping the brackish air would
calm him as he stopped to watch
cormorants skim over the water, tight
to the surf, their elongated necks cleaving
the air like arrow shafts. If he was lucky, a kestrel
would hover at eye level, out over the
cliff edge, scanning for small
mammals or nesting birds. At
this time of year the sea could be black as
ink as it roiled beneath a flinty, turbulent sky. He looked
out beyond the headland, picturing the rusting
hulks of wrecked ships that ghosted the sea
floor, forests of kelp slowly claiming them. In
the distance, out in the Channel, sheets
of rain slanted downwards as if
smudged from the cloud,
while on the horizon a vein of
sunlight divided land from sky. If he made good
time, he could be near Helford by
lunchtime; he’d stop for a pint, warming himself
by the fire. The beer would be honeyed, a pint would become two,
his hangover almost forgotten. Later he would time the walk back to pick
Amy up from school.
The terms of his
suspension, although anticipated, felt ridiculous. None more so
than the mile radius of campus he was
to remain beyond until the hearing.
He’d held on to the vague hope
that a resolution could be
reached informally, his apology, if
sincere enough, accepted. But the lecturer had
lodged his complaint with unambiguous expectation: he
would settle for nothing less than
the full disciplinary procedure. HR had written
to him, stressing that he should seek
representation – a friend, someone from the union that
he would remain on full pay,
but a return to
work was out of the question. A link to
the university’s
constitution was provided, should he wish to read it.
The day in question
had unfurled in benign fashion for the most part. As a senior technician
in the marine biology department, his job was a varied one. One day
he could be collecting plankton for student research,
the next mapping seagrass meadows on the ocean
floor, or, more prosaically, feeding and
monitoring fish stocks. Colleagues
came to him with all manner
of requests, whether practical
or scholastic, his knowledge respected throughout
the faculty and beyond an encyclopedic familiarity
with his subject that had emerged from
a private passion rather than formal schooling.
If this led to accusations of arrogance,
he was unaware of them, though
some probably regarded him brusque,
even rude on occasion, his
emails lacking the deferential etiquette
required. But nothing had ever spiralled beyond the occasional tetchy or
sarcastic exchange.
In recent months,
however, small pressures had built up following a departmental shake-up. As
their workload increased, resentment was cultivated. Talk of cutbacks laced
conversations, rumours that they’d have to reapply for their jobs.
Tensions between teaching staff and technicians could flare with minimal
provocation as goodwill was slowly withdrawn. Lecturers, though, while
often ignorant of how much work their requests
involved, were generally courteous, his relationship with
all but one productive and, at least
superficially, egalitarian. But David Ferguson
had never warmed to
him. Not since they’d clashed several years ago over
conditions of an experiment into the immune systems of trout. Not
since Stephen had
confronted him with suspicions that a mass
mortality among the fish was his
fault. And not since Ferguson’s
fellow lecturer, Zoe Wheeler,
had moved in with Stephen. This
last was conjecture, but Ferguson was certainly
fond of Zoe and had barely hidden his
surprise when she got together
with a technician rather than
a member of the academic staff. Stephen had
once suspected the man of being
one of her former
lovers, but this seemed unlikely
on a campus where extracurricular pursuits
between members of staff rarely went unnoticed.
And so for years
the two men had allowed a tacit feud to steadily
gather, its impetus bolstered by each barbed email,
every point of conflict exploited or stored for future
vitriol. The fact that Stephen suspected he
knew more about his subject than Ferguson
only served to intensify the ill feeling. And perhaps on
some level Ferguson sensed this too,
his behaviour a defence against a
perceived inadequacy: that for all his academic
prowess and stature in the field,
when it was stripped down, he
knew less than the technicians he regarded
as serving him.
The escalation had occurred in
the weeks before, midway through a six-month feeding trial. Part of Stephen’s
role was to look after the automatic feeders,
check the power to the pumps, change the
filters when necessary.
In a
hurry to get away one evening, he had inexplicably forgotten to set
one of the internal alarms. Overnight, oxygen levels had
depleted, and with no intervention, most of
a tank of fish lay floating on the surface by morning,
meaning the whole trial would have to
start again. It was his first significant
error in the job, the blame his
alone. Ferguson, perhaps mindful of Stephen’s past criticism of him,
didn’t hold back, despite the presence of two technicians and several research
students.
Stephen took the
rebuke without reply, his own sense of guilt fuelling the admonishment as
Ferguson left with a disdainful shake of his head. But in the hour
that followed, a sensation made itself known
in his chest, a tightness of breath
as if his own ribs were compressing
him. As the agitation grew, nausea rose from
his stomach, his head pulsing with a
quiet rage. Even now, he couldn’t remember the walk to Ferguson’s
office, who he might have passed and ignored on campus.
What he could recall was the
man’s expression of astonishment as Stephen
pushed open the door, walked steadily
across to the desk and brought a fist down
hard into the side of Ferguson’s face. After the
incident, he was told to go home, a phone call from the
senior technical manager later that day
informing him that suspension was inevitable. The offence was a serious
one, of course: the physical assault of a
colleague, a facial injury that, although
not requiring stitches, bled
significantly. There would be
bruising, a black eye that
passed through the spectrum of hues
in the days that followed, whispered outrage
from all who saw it. The police had not been called,
though Stephen was advised that this remained an option for the complainant. There
were three disciplinary levels he could be subject to. An oral warning
would be normal for a first offence,
but unlikely given the severity of the
incident. Even a written warning would be
lenient, the woman from the union had advised him
in their brief telephone conversation last week.
Either of these
would stay on his record for a year before, in the event that
no repetition occurred, being wiped
clear. Or, quite reasonably, the committee could
decide that the offence warranted dismissal,
which he could appeal against if he produced some
mitigating circumstances. And what form might these take, beyond the
vague sense of his unravelling? Of the appalling
crisis building inside him, the likely cause of
which he’d managed to keep from colleagues, from
his wife, all these years? No, better not to resist
whatever punitive squall they unleashed his way. Better to ride it out, hunker
down, try for once not to pick a fight with life. The hearing
itself was in three weeks, enough time
for witnesses to be called, written
submissions to be made. A supreme arbiter would be
appointed, likely the Vice Chancellor, a brute of a woman whose sermonic emails
displayed a level of corporate jargon
Stephen could rarely fathom. He could expect little sympathy
from her.
He’d waited
until after dinner that evening to tell
Zoe, who’d been off campus and hadn’t heard.
She spoke of the embarrassment, of colleagues’
reactions, of what would happen
if he lost his job, checking every few minutes that it had
actually happened, that a mistake hadn’t been
made, or that she wasn’t the victim of some
ill-judged practical joke. And later, when her inquisition
petered out, she’d looked hard at him, scrutinising his face as
someone might a stranger, disquieted and appalled, perhaps a little frightened
even.
The wind was gusting now, a fine
rain blinding him if he looked into it. Herring gulls
and fulmars rode the thermals in graceful arcs, the easy rhythm of
their flight soothing him. The gulls on the beach
below issued proud, barbarous cries as they delved
into the seaweed or jabbed at stranded
cuttlefish. Beyond them, groups of sanderlings gathered
on the tideline in search of sand
shrimps, scuttling comically back and forth
with each breaking wave, froths
of foam eddying around them. As
he rounded the headland, a couple
of walkers passed him on the path, a genial nod
and half-smile exchanged, their dog scampering
back and forth, nose to the ground. Inhaling
deeply, he felt that the briny air had imbued him
sufficiently now, dulling his headache to a faint
pulse.
Did it mean anything?
Beyond the fact that his temper could flare
these days with such small provocation? A fuse
that, while never being interminable, had now
barely any length at all. When, a couple of
months ago, the technical manager had called him
in, asking if there were problems he should
be aware of, mentioning that Stephen seemed
uptight, often curt, he’d tucked it away in the
part of his mind that resisted enquiry. Last week
Zoe had even suggested he seek help.‘The union know,’ he said. ‘They’ll help me
prepare or the hearing.’ ‘I didn’t mean that sort of help.’ He took a few
seconds to catch up. ‘That’s a bit overboard, isn’t it?’ ‘If you won’t talk to
me . . .’ ‘We do talk.’ ‘Apparently not about this, though. Not about your
childhood.’ ‘What do you want to know?’ ‘I don’t understand what’s happening
to you, why you did it.’ ‘I’ve told you why.’ ‘You don’t
hit someone because they’re an arsehole.’ ‘It was a one-off, an
aberration. I don’t know, stress of work.’ ‘I’m
scared.’ ‘Of me?’ ‘Of it all.’
This they shared, for
the manifestation of violence had left him shaken at this new capability.
Beyond childhood scrapes and a scuffle in a pub
a few years ago, he’d avoided any
physical run-ins, despite a contrary
personality, one that shifted easily to
aggravation after a few drinks. He’d always known both when to
stifle the antagonising of others and how to stop
his own temper rising. The incident
with Ferguson was inexplicable. It belonged to
the realms of fantasy, one you
let play out in glorious retrospect in
your mind, while acknowledging gratitude for
decades of social mores and
evolving civility that
prevented you from punching colleagues
you loathed.
Again he
tried to recall details of the
seconds leading up to it. There was a hangover, as was
increasingly the case these days. There was general resentment towards aspects
of work. He’d argued with Zoe the night before. Amy had been
difficult over breakfast. Yet none of this excused what
he’d done, the terrible person he was
apparently becoming, the origin of which didn’t bear thinking
about. He looked out to the open water, its irregular
surface specked with half a dozen fishing boats. A tanker sat
sombrely on the horizon. For a moment he thought he saw the dorsal fin of a
basking shark cutting through the swell a few hundred yards out, but by the time
he found the spot with the
binoculars, it had gone. Most, if not all of them, would have left for the
warmer waters of the south by now. On the tip of
the promontory ahead, sea heaved
at the rock, slamming into its
coves, the water forced up a blowhole
with each wave, spuming into the wind.
Inland the
cloud had opened, just a crack, allowing the sun
to wash briefly over the fields,
chased by a surging line of shadow. A
pair of choughs squabbled in the gorse that flanked the path. Ahead,
through the drizzle, he could just make out
the bone-white walls of the pub a couple of miles
along the coast, and he pictured himself
sitting by its fire indefinitely.
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A bit about Tom Vowler
Tom Vowler lives in south-west England. In 2007 he completed an MA in creative writing, and since then his short stories have appeared widely. Tom is the assistant editor of the literary journal Short Fiction. His debut collection of short stories, The Method & Other Stories won the Scott Prize (2010) and the Edge Hill Award (2011). He is an Associate Lecturer in creative writing at the University of Plymouth. That Dark Remembered Day is his second novel.
@tom_vowler
