Good news! Endeavour Media will publish an e-book edition of my novella Chasing Angels which was published in 2006.
Here's the new cover - I love it!
A completely new e-book will be available to download on Friday 6th September 2019! PS It's now available for only £2,99. Bear with me, I could share the link two hours ago. I can't now! Is it me or does the internet like playing silly bu**ers just for the hell of it?) I'll try again soon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07XHL7CHS
I am very fond of this novella. Until then, I had only ever had success with my short stories. When I won first prize for my short story, "Sailing to Byzantium" in the annual short story competition organised by the late lamented publisher, Biscuit Publishing, the prize - as well as a welcome sum of money, gave me the opportunity to publish a novella of my choice.
The book's launch was huge fun. It was held in Newcastle's amazing library - known affectionately as the
Lit and Phil. It was a freezing December evening shortly before Christmas and the streets were full of the well-known Newcastle youth; the men in sleeveless vests and the girls in vertiginous heels, micro party dresses and bare arms. After the launch, we all ended up in a Chinese restaurant. It was the weirdest, most fun-filled evening I had ever spent. Lovely, supportive Brian Lister with his white beard was more than Father Christmas with a sack of goodies. I will never forget it and that wonderful day.
But I'm jumping ahead of myself. How and why did I write about Henriette?
My husband began his sporting activities by first walking in hills and mountains and then climbing them with ropes and all the correct gear and techniques. He began on the famous Almscliffe Crag in Yorkshire.
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Almscliffe Crag
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He then travelled to the Andes and Nepal with friends and professional guides. He climatised well to extreme altitude and when his idea of a pleasant holiday was trotting up Mont Blanc at a ridiculous speed, I accompanied him. I didn't climb, of course. Those who know me can guess I was far more interested in the history and culture of Chamonix where we were based.
While he was off in his boots, helmet, axe, ropes etc, I soaked up the atmosphere of the beautiful town in summer. I shopped until I dropped, drank cup after cup of delicious coffee in one of the street cafes or lingered over breakfast in the hotel. I soaked up the atmosphere, wandered in the alpine meadows, took cable cars and the little train up to the famous Mer de Glace*, I came home brimming with notes and ideas for short stories, some of which were later published or won competitions. I was on a roll.
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| My Ascent of Mont Blanc by Henriette A'Angeville |
One of my haunts while in stunning Chamonix, dominated by the Mont Blanc Massif was the museum where much was dedicated to pioneering climbers -- including the amazing Henriette D'Angeville, eccentric spinster, daughter of an aristocratic family whose decision to climb to the summit of Mont Blanc, against all advice and warnings of death is all written in her account which I have in French. As my French is not what it was, I bought and devoured the English edition translated by Jennifer Barnes and with a preface by Dervla Murphy - "My Ascent of Mont Blanc" published by Harper Collins in 1992 and now out of print. The good news, you can still buy it second-hand. It's a cracking read.
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| Chamonix |
I took this book as the ground base of
Chasing Angels which is total fiction. I also read local guides and notes taken in the museum and online. Any errors are mine and mine alone. I hope I did justice to this remarkable lady who will always remain close to my heart.
Endeavour Media have designed a fabulous cover which sums up the whole endeavour with wit and amazing artistry. Although Biscuit reproduced a stunning photograph of Mont Blanc, I do think my new cover is a huge improvement.
(*As a bonus extra to this post is my short story based on the train ride France entered World War One.)
MER DE GLACE
Stella
watched the young man lead the girl through the dining room to the
table by the window. ‘I haven’t seen them before. You see, people
aren’t all going home.’ Henry, immersed in his newspaper, did not
reply.
She
ordered more coffee. As the waiter moved away, the young man caught
her eye and smiled. She should have looked away but she liked his
grey eyes too much for that, although she was a married woman and
married women had reputations to preserve. But the rules were being
rewritten. She could feel the scratch of the moving pen on her skin.
The
young man turned to the window and the misted rooftops. The girl
chewed her plait amiably.
Stella
stirred her coffee. ‘They look friendly. We could do with the
company.’
Henry
turned a page as, beyond the windows, another Alpine August day was
easing itself into brilliance. ‘Please, dear. I'm trying to read a
complex article about the Austro-Hungarian position.’
She
bit her lip. When she first met Henry she had fallen in love with his
calm reason. The youngest of eight girls, nobody had ever paid her
much attention or if they did, laughed at her, so it wasn’t
surprising she’d been charmed. Now she had learned not to make a
noise when she cried.
The
waiter placed a boiled egg on the table. Henry folded his newspaper
and picked up a spoon. ‘Your eyes are very bright today, Stella.
The doctor was right. The mountain air suits you.’ He dug into his
egg and grimaced. ‘I ask for lightly-boiled. This is concrete. But
that’s the French for you.’
Stella
poured more coffee from the pot and, inhaling its dark bitterness,
resumed her observations. The girl was toying with the crumbs left on
her plate and her companion was watching her and jotting notes in his
book. ‘I know who they are,’ she said. ‘Hansel and Gretel. He
has worked out a plan so they won't get lost in the forest. He will
drop the crumbs behind them to make a trail. But it won't work. The
birds will eat the crumbs and the dark forest will close over them.’
Henry
threw his newspaper across the table. ‘This is such an old edition.
We could already be at war.’
The couple rose from their table. ‘I think they're German,’ said
Stella
‘Who?’
‘Hansel
and Gretel.’
‘Are
you sure you're not feverish? Besides, there won't be any Germans
here now. They'll all be at home preparing for war.’
Stella
laughed. Henry's features sharpened. ‘I fail to see any humour in
the situation. I sometimes think your misfortune has affected your
mind.’
‘You
are right. Nothing’s funny any more.’ She forced herself to her
feet. ‘I'm tired. I'm going to lie down.’
Henry's
manner changed on the instant. ‘You should have said before. Let me
take your arm. You know, I can scarcely believe that the Kaiser and
our King are cousins.’
It
was a lie. She wasn't weary, at least not in her body - it fizzled
and spat like fat in a pan. As soon as Henry left her to return to
his breakfast she flung open the shutters and leaned over the
balcony. The town was going about its business. Carts thronged the
streets. Women on balconies shook blankets and called across the
river to friends. A boy was sweeping the flags of the hotel terrace,
dragging out tables and chairs, brushing fallen leaves from the
canopied swing-seat. Behind him, the river tumbled over heaps of
smoothed boulders. The colour and texture of onyx, it rushed on,
never changing, ever moving. How long would it take before the water
she could see poured into the Rhone to disgorge later into the
dazzling blue of the Mediterranean? When a fisherman dragged his nets
ashore in Corsica, when his gasping, silver treasure slithered across
the quay, would he see that same water? And if some of that same
water glistening on one fish's back later splashed on the market
floor, how long would it be before the sun reclaimed it, sucked it
up, to fall as snow on the peaks that now shimmered through the mist?
For the journey did not begin here. It had started up there in the
ice that had creaked and cracked high above her centuries before man
was born.
What
did a war mean to rivers, glaciers and mountains? And what importance
was the loss of one child, a child who had never breathed air nor
drank water? A drop, as they say, in the ocean.
Threads
of mist lay in loose skeins across the valley and shawled the white
Massif, but as she watched, the threads unravelled and the peaks
revealed themselves to her. They didn't roar or splash like the
river; they didn't chatter and clatter like people, but they spoke.
Only she couldn’t understand.
The
effort exhausted her. The moment slipped from her grasp. The mist
closed in again. She shivered, closed the shutters and lay down on
the bed.
She
must have slept. Sunlight striped the wall and Henry was leaning over
her. ‘I think I’ll go for a hike. You don't mind, do you? I’ll
be back before dinner.’
She
closed her eyes. ‘Not at all.’
As
soon as he’d gone, she went out onto the balcony. Below her Hansel
was seated at a table reading a book. He was then joined by Gretel
who waved her straw hat at her. Stella waved back.
‘Eva
and I are about to have lunch,’ the young man called up. ‘Join
us.’
‘I
can't.’
‘Are
you a prisoner?’ said Eva.
‘No,
but I have. . .’ She chose her words with care. ‘I have been ill.
I need to rest.’
‘You can rest here,’ said Eva.
‘Indeed
you can,’ said the young man. ‘It is most pleasant in the shade.’
After
introductions had been made, Stella found herself seated at a small
table beneath a birch tree with a glass of wine before her and a
cushion at her back.
Over
lunch, Theo – not Hansel, after all - explained that he was taking
Eva, his sister, on a European tour to complete her education. ‘But
she refuses to learn anything. She is hopeless.’ Eva pulled a
face. She began to strip lengths of straw from her hat and drop them
to the ground.
Theo
ignored her and fixed his attention to Stella. She could feel his
intensity weighing on her fragile body. ‘Such a pretty name. It
sparkles.’
Like
champagne? Sunlight? Ice?
‘Tell me all about yourself.’
‘I'm
very ordinary.’
‘Oh
you are not ordinary at all,’ exclaimed Eva, throwing down her hat.
‘You are quite beautiful.’
When
the meal was over, Stella and Eva moved to the swing-seat. The
shadows of the birches crept inch by inch across the terrace. A soft
breeze rolled down from the mountains, rustling the dry leaves.
Chaffinches pecked for crumbs at their feet. Two doves were calling
to each other and bees lumbered through the heavy afternoon air. The
seat creaked as it swung. Its fringe rippled and Eva snored gently,
her arm thrown across Stella's lap. Theo remained at the table,
reading. Absorbed and without self-regard, he melted into the
scenery. Stella looked past him to the mountains, their whiteness
merging with the pale sky behind a veil of shimmering light. She
fanned herself with Eva's flattened hat. 'I feel like a Lotos Eater.
Do you know Tennyson's poetry?'
Theo
closed his book. ‘Of course. “On the hills like Gods together,
careless of mankind.” Shall I order tea?’
‘No
need. I am sipping nectar.’
‘Very
good,’ he said crisply as if he was a schoolmaster.
‘Where
will you go when you leave France?’
‘We
had planned to tour England. But that is now out of the question.’
‘The
war,’ she said watching a line of schoolboys march past.
‘Yes.’
‘If
war comes . . . .’
‘It
will come.’
‘Will
you fight?’ She had a sudden image of Henry and Theo rushing
towards each other, sabres aloft.
He
laughed. ‘Why should I? I shall take Eva to Zurich. Switzerland
will remain neutral. And you? What are your plans?’
She
shook her head. She couldn't think ahead nor imagine anything other
than leaning back, suspended in the air, beneath the glittering
mountains. She wanted to catch the butterfly moment in her hand and
hold it captive, feel it fluttering until she chose to let it go.
‘When
I first came here,’ she said. ‘The mountains seemed too large.
Unbalanced. I was terrified they would crash down on me.’
‘And
now?’ asked Theo batting a fly from his face.
‘Like
they want to embrace me and keep me safe. Like a mother folds herself
over her child when he is hurt.’ Her sob caught her by surprise.
Theo leaned forward in his chair, not questioning but making her feel
she owed him an explanation. Before she was aware she was doing it,
before she had time to regret her indiscretion, she was telling him
about her still-born son and the doctor's fear that she would never
have another child.
‘I
detect your loss has left a shard of ice in your heart,’ he said
Perhaps
he was right in his precise account. She felt cold towards him as if
he were a knife and she an oyster. She didn’t reply.
A sudden cold wind swooped down like a crow, rattled the trees and
lifted the leaves from the ground. The birds had stopped chirping but
the river tumbled down to the Rhone, to the sea, to the sky to fall
as rain, to trickle, splash, rush, pour and tumble again and again
and again. And here she was.
‘Stella!’
And
there was Henry. He took her arm and with a cold nod to Theo, pulled
her from the seat and propelled her into the hotel, up the stairs and
into their room. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? Here we are
on the very precipice of war and I find you chatting with Germans.’
Stella
gripped the bedstead, steadying herself against the rage boiling
inside her. She felt both very small and as mighty and implacable as
the mountains over whose heads, inky rags of cloud were now pouring.
If she chose to she could rip the paper from the walls, claw the
paint from the wardrobe, shatter the windows and leap to the ground
and run through the streets, a screaming harpy. Instead, she had to
pull each frozen word from her mouth, one by one.
‘I - hate - you.’
He turned and left the room.
The
rain fell all night and on and off for the next three days. Bloated
clouds filled the valley, blotting out the crags and peaks. The river
rose and spilt into cellars and kitchens, but Stella, curled up in
her bed, knew nothing of this or the day the rain stopped and an
invalid sun limped into view.
There was a knock on the door and Eva entered. She flumped down at
the foot of the bed, chewing her plait.
‘Theo
and I have been worried.’
‘There
was no need.’
‘Theo
says you have an illness of the heart.’
‘Did
he? Then he is wrong. There is nothing wrong with my heart. It's more
simple than that. My husband says I must not speak to Germans.’
Eva
opened the shutters. ‘Theo thought as much,’ she said. ‘Tell
me. If your husband knew I was here, would he kill us?’
‘Henry?’
The very idea of her husband, of all people, bursting into the room
armed with a gun, sword or even his alpenstock was so ridiculous that
she giggled. Eva joined in, and the more they did so the more
ridiculous her prolonged sulk seemed.
Stella
joined Henry for dinner that night and neither mentioned their
argument. When Henry suggested that a train journey to see the famous
Mer de Glace would ‘blow away the cobwebs,’ Stella saw no reason
to say no.
The
carriages soon filled. Stella sat glumly, wedged between Henry and a
Belgian woman who, clearly expecting hard times to come, was
distributing lumps of bacon and bread amongst her offspring.
The
little engine nosed the carriages up the steep, winding track. One
moment she had a fleeting view of the valley and the next the train
plunged her into dank blue forest and dripping tunnels before once
more bursting out into the light. The air grew increasingly more
chill and she felt thin and stretched, distanced from reality.
And
yet, even here, the talk was of war. ‘La Guerre, La Guerre.’ It
scuttled up and down the carriage like a rat. The train lurched ever
upwards. Women crossed themselves, silent lips moving; children
screamed and gasped as the incline steepened or the track seemed to
cling to the very edge of the mountain. The train slowed to negotiate
a viaduct before levelling out alongside a hotel. Its terrace was
already dotted with fashionable hats, their brims rivalling the table
parasols. The engine chugged into the station and wheezed to a halt.
Passengers stumbled out onto the platform, huddling into their coats
and blowing on their hands, exclaiming at the sharpness of the thin,
icy air, hovering, uncertain what to do.
Henry
took her arm and led her to the viewing platform overhanging the
glacier. ‘I shall climb down to the surface, but I think it would
be best if you waited here,’ he said banging his hands together,
his breath clouding around his face. ‘The crevasses are very deep.
Retire to the ladies' waiting-room if you get too cold. I’ll meet
you at the hotel for lunch. Shall we say in half an hour?’
Stella
felt light-headed, like a kite tugging on its string. Perhaps it was
the altitude. It certainly wasn't the sight of the glacier. She had
expected a river of diamonds but it was a dirty, grey blanket of
grit. Tourists were moving aimlessly on its surface. With their
ladders and lengths of rope, it looked like a game of snakes and
ladders for ants. Behind her, the train driver and his companions
were passing around a bottle of beer and exchanging jokes as they
stoked, watered and polished the engine. Wafts of sulphurous smoke
drifted down and melted in the milky blueness of the mountains that
guarded the head of the glacier. She checked the guidebook Henry had
left behind. They were called, 'Les Grandes Jorasses.' She didn't
know what the name meant but it sounded suitably lofty.
‘What
a pleasant surprise.’ Without waiting to be invited, Theo sat down
beside her and slipped his haversack off his back. She wasn’t sure
whether she was pleased or not.
‘Where
is your husband?’
‘Playing
snakes and ladders.’
‘I
see,’ he said but clearly didn't.
‘What
does 'Grandes Jorasses' mean?’
‘I
don't know. Does it matter?’
‘No.’
They
both pretended to admire the view; she looked left; he right.
‘Where's
Eva?’
He
pointed to where she was crouched on the snow, plait in her mouth,
pencil and sketchbook in her hand.
‘Stella,’
he began, then stopped. He reached out his hand. Instantly she was
both elated and deflated by the inevitability of the gesture. Was
this what she had come here for? To replace one dead flame with a new
spark? How banal. She waited for their hands to touch, ready for
what? To sink into his embrace? How would that feel?
But
their hands didn't touch. Instead, agitated voices broke out around
them. One of the railway workers had left his fellows and was pushing
his way towards the hotel. Another began to slide and slither down
the steps towards the glacier, shouting and gesticulating. Soon the
whole mountainside was stirred up as if an ant's nest had been poked
by a giant stick.
‘What
is it? What's happening?’ she cried. Theo was now on his feet,
struggling with his haversack, calling to Eva.
Henry
returned. She held her breath, bracing herself for his anger but he
merely bowed to Theo. ‘It would seem that your country has declared
war on France. It will not be long before our countries are at war.’
He held out his hand.
‘Indeed
so.’ Theo did not take it. He turned to Stella and bowed. ‘Goodbye,
Mrs Thompson. My sister and I must leave for Switzerland
immediately.’ Helping Eva to her feet, he guided her steps over the
ice towards the track that led back down to the valley.
She
took a step forward. She could go with them to Zurich. She could
start a new life. ‘Wait for me!’ she called but her voice was
lost in the vastness around her. Eva turned her head
briefly but Theo showed no sign
‘It's
time we went home, Stella,’ said Henry softly. He paused, then
whispered. ‘You are so, so lovely.’ He took her hand and folded
it in his.
The
platform was already crowded with ashen, silent faces peering at the
sky in the expectation of thunderbolts crashing down from the blue or
at least something more significant than a little toy engine with its
comical funnel and scarlet carriages.
Theo
had gone and she was glad. Like raindrops on the ocean, nothing left
a mark on people like him. But what of Henry? And the moment she
posed the question, the mountains and the ice melted away, and she
saw him in a ditch, splattered with blood-streaked mud, his eyes wide
and staring, seeing nothing. She clutched her fur collar and
stumbled.
‘Are
you all right,’ he said.
‘Absolutely fine,’ she lied. The mountains had lied. Their
eternity was a lie. ‘Let's not take the train,’ she said
The
snow kicked up by their boots circled them in a glittering
luminescence until they entered the purple shade of the pines and
where the snow was too thin to leave any sign that they had passed
through
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