Very Little Helps by Clare Weze

Normally, the café is too busy to overhear customers’ conversations, but today is deathly quiet. 

There’s a craft festival in St John Street. His workmates have been sent there to man a pop-up café and most of his regular customers have defected too, so Markus can hear every word the only two punters in the place utter. Every. Sodding. Word. They’re in their sixties – or maybe their seventies, it’s hard to tell – and they’re ladies dressed to lunch, even though it’s late in the day. A talker and a listener. The talker, who’s white, is well curled into the chat, like such types always are, and the listener – a black woman – is taking it like it’s medicine. 

The words roll over him at first, but then something in the monotony of her tone makes him tune in. Just to see what could be that dry. Dry, yet pulsing. Pressing. And Jesus. It’s all about her oil-fired central heating boiler. The listening one can’t steer the conversation. She has a feeble try every so often, but BOILER. BOILER MAN. SERVICE AGREEMENT. BOILER just steamrolls her.

Markus wipes the counter down in rough, zig-zagging sweeps and wonders why the boring one wants an audience when a wall would do. He shoves the cloth onwards to the sink sloppily, thinking of his colleagues, Doog and Mali, who will be well underway by now. They were chosen to run the pop-up café at the festival because they out-hipster him. Jacob, the manager, has left Markus in charge – yet again – because he says he’s solid and dependable. It wasn’t his ambition to be dependable. Jacob says something about dependable Hungarians, but that’s bullshit, because Markus’s British Hungarian mum lost touch with the Hungarian side of the family, so he knows embarrassingly little about Hungary. He just pictures the Danube and all the lights in Budapest, like everyone else.

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The Lone Valley by Clare Weze

Clare Weze has been writing fiction for most of her life, starting as a child, and writes for both adults and children. She is a Northern Writers’ Award-winner (2016) and a runner-up in Unbound’s 2016 short story competition. Her work received a special mention in the Galley Beggar Press short story prize (2016), was longlisted in Fish Publishing’s short story contest (2016/17), and will appear in the next Bath Flash anthology (2017). An extract of one of her forthcoming children’s books is to be featured in Commonword’s anthology of ‘children’s writers to watch out for’.

Her short fiction has been published by Bridge House Publishing and Curiosity Quills Press. She is also the co-author and editor of Cloudscapes over the Lune, in aid of the children’s charities Make-A-Wish Foundation® and Rainbow Trust.

http://clareweze.com/

I knew immediately. That first day, before I even got my suitcases upstairs I knew it was a mistake. At the interview, she was just like she is on telly, and it was mega-quick, in a posh Mayfair hotel. All smiles she was, like when she’s reading the news, but when I got to her house in Chelsea a week later, it wasn’t her any more. She was someone else. Same face, but with … issues.

And I messed up. Her real name isn’t what you hear on telly. It’s Madelaine.

‘Laine,’ she said. ‘Not lin.’

We were in the kitchen and she was giving me what she called orientation.

I tried to be friendly. ‘Wasn’t there a song called Madelaine? K D Lang, was it?’ 

‘That was Chatelaine,’ she said, and she didn’t look too pleased. ‘I hear you’re quite a cook, Amber.’

She’d talked to Susanne, who I babysat for when I was still at school. Susanne can overdo things. Well, what was I supposed to say? I’d given it plenty of welly at the interview, so had to follow through. Interviews are a farce anyway. Everyone knows you just tell them what they want to hear.

I tried to turn into what she wanted, but my cooking wasn’t poncey enough. And anyway, I don’t see how you can be expected to keep a whole massive house clean and make something for tea as well. 

And she had people round to dinner loads, so it had to be perfect all the time, like a Spring Clean job. She did the cooking then, but I had to help and I didn’t understand what she was on about half the time. She called things funny names and used weird stuff. Quince paste. Candied orange peel. Where was I supposed to get those, and how would I even know what they looked like? I worked out that if I bought couscous and coleslaw and green gloop from the deli and put it in one of her fancy glass serving bowls she was cool, but when people were coming, she wanted a banquet.

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Day 12: Owning It by Clare Weze

What gave you the idea for your Baubles story?

It’s set near my old home, and going back there after a long time away enabled me to see it through new eyes. That new view can sometimes be rose-tinted, which is what’s happened to my character, Bea. It’s a beautiful landscape, but it isn’t always good for us to own everything we think we need. I like Bea, and I might return to her. She isn’t based on anyone I know, and yet her whole backstory popped into my head in one lump, which is unusual.

How would you describe your normal style of writing?

I start with a character in a situation and build from nuggets I’ve collected over the years: dilemmas, conversational topics, odd events and intriguing ideas. My style varies from project to project. Sometimes it’s quite dense and detailed, but other stories require a looser, more open style. I don’t like one project to resemble another too closely, so if I see obvious stylistic patterns, I’m likely to rip it up and start again.

Have you published other material?

This is my fifth anthology publication. More details can be found on my website: https://clareweze.com/

Do you have a writing routine?

I leave continuity notes for myself after each session, and break in gently by doing easy jobs left over from last time. When something takes off, I go with it until it’s played itself out, then return to the list. I try to write most days, even if there isn’t time for more than a couple of lines. Having children has taught me to grab the tiniest scrap of in-between time. Before they came along, I’d hold out for an entire day’s writing or nothing. It’s much better to have a regular routine.

Do you have a favourite place for writing?

I write best in my favourite café where the coffee is roasted in their sister premises next door. The gorgeous smell of roasting coffee beans hits me in the car park and draws me along the street. By the time I arrive, I’m ready to write, and I can’t listen to the radio or do housework in there, so I’m forced to focus. Background music and chat seem to help with this, and my theory is that the extra effort needed to concentrate works like blinkers on a horse. The resulting tunnel vision channels my focus.

Tell something quirky about you.

I’m half Nigerian and my name is pronounced ‘way-zay’. However, the spelling – Weze – looks like something you do when you have a rattly chest. Over the years I’ve had fun when people either bravely try to pronounce it or avoid saying it altogether. Evil of me. At one point I tried putting accents over the Es, but it rarely helped.

An extract from Owning It 

 

 

“Oh God, I’d forgotten how charming it is. Carry on over the river bridge. And now we go up a long, slow hill.” Bea points to the houses perched at the side of the road. “This is Thickrash Brow – honestly! So many architectural styles, but always the village feeling. Except they call it a ‘town’ because it has a town hall. How sweet is that! Isn’t it the smallest town imaginable?”

Daniel says, “There’s Lilliput.”

Bea’s heart starts thumping. She isn’t prepared for the ache of it. The physical longing. But what about the hurdle sitting next to her? Say it. Just say it. See what happens. If you say it, it becomes real. “No pollution,” she begins. “No Tube.” Her head soars now, matching the pace of her heart. “Think how it would be to drive up to your house and park outside it, just like that.”

“You’re not serious.”

The hill levels out and becomes moorland. They park beside a footpath leading to an enormous boulder with steps cut into the side. Bea grins at Daniel’s smile. “See? I knew you’d love that it’s called the Big Stone because it’s big and it’s a stone.”

Daniel is silent.

Bea presses on. “What do they call them – boulder deposits?”

“It’s an erratic, surely.”

“That’s the word.”

Erratic. Ties in with his opinion of her, no doubt: springing this on him before she’s even so much as seen a house. But she knows there’ll be a house. She just knows.

“So quiet. I always slept like a baby here,” Bea says as they walk across to the stone. “Left behind by a glacier. Or as legend has it, left by the Devil on his way back from… oh, I forget where.”

“It’s a nice view, but I don’t have to own it.”