Staff competition entries

Read the entries story ‘The Potter’ by Michael Holloway and runner-up ‘The Lady’s Not For Turning’ by Laura.

Winner: 'The Potter' by Michael Holloway  

I knew Charles Barry through my mother, who knew him before my father, and also because I once broke into his house. It was when I was fifteen years old, and me and three other boys got in the habit of breaking into houses to see what we could find. I didn’t really care what we’d take, I just wanted to get inside his place, see what he had. There were glossy golden-brown clay pots and cups on the mantlepiece, their veiny fractures running all over their surfaces like motorways, and I decided, without much reason, to destroy them. They were fragile like eggs, and the other boys did the same, laughing as we did it. The clinking of the broken clay pieces at my feet. This time, for some reason, there was something I felt deep in my heart, but I didn’t know what it was. 

That day I broke in happened to cause something to change in me. The other three had run off before I even knew he was there. He’d hooked onto my collar like he was holding the scruff of a dog and I yelled at him to let me go. You could tell it was him, you’d see him coming up the hill every morning – the painful hunch, swollen hands and hard skull-like face. 

Where’d you get off doin’ somethin’ like this then, eh? he said. 

I tried pulling away from him, but his grip was too strong. 

Where’s all that anger coming from then? Where’s yer parents? 

It’s just me an’ me mum. 

Where’s yer da? 

I struggled again against the strong, vice-like grip of his fist, and he let go of me. But I didn’t run. There was no point in running because he knew my mother and she’d give me a belt for breaking in old Charlie Barry’s place let alone smashing up his clay pots and things. 

Is that what you do then? he said. Smash up other people’s belongings? I worked hard on these, you know. 

He leant against the countertop which was covered in broken pieces of clay, one of which was a woman’s face from a sculpture as though it were my own mother telling me off. Although I was only a kid, any remorse I had had mixed with my temper producing a great deal of confusion. I remember I had this feeling I could evaporate. It’s the only way I can describe it, that this hot pressurised steam in my head would swell out and my whole body would dissipate into the air. 

It was after that when Charlie Barry had me working in his studio, which was part of a disused church turned into a community centre. 

You just make clay pots, do you? I said. 

There’s more to it than that, he said. 

Three days a week he ran a class of about fifteen people who he taught clay modelling. They all had the same wide-eyed eager stare, a hunger to learn, their hands quick and precise. They all brought with them this thick smell of clay and sweat that lingered long after they left. It made the room hot, the windows wet, and thick dust like a bedsheet, which I was happy to brush up. There was the gluey clay stink and the burn of ash in the furnace. Near the furnace sat someone called Olivia who was moulding the shape of a small vase before it seemed she was engulfed in the wavering heat of the furnace before I closed it. Over the next few weeks, Olivia and I started seeing more of each other. She was a little older than me with sharp cheekbones like what I’d carve into the clay. But while Charlie showed them how to make things out of clay, I was there with my brush and shovel making the place clean and tidy. I didn’t mind really, I kind of liked cleaning, it kept me calm, a sensation I wasn’t used to, so I found myself almost hypnotised, crouched down brushing up bits of clay, sweeping the dust, forming a kind of organisation from the indistinguishable chaos around me. 

Each day, when he arrived at the studio, slouching beneath the low hanging ceiling, his painful hunch pulled and strained, he prepared his workspace. He switched on his lamp, put on his apron, tying it first round the back then round the front, then he threw a lump of clay down on his worktop which made a sound like a slap in the face. Once he’d had enough of me cleaning up, he showed me how to mould clay with my hands. He was very precise in his instruction, his imagination fathoms-deep, telling me that I could create all sorts, to my cynical I-don’t-knows and early on in our friendship he was something of a spiritual leader of sorts, not that I needed nor believed in that, it’s just how I’d describe him, in looks and in demeanour. The clay was red and cold like a kind of fruit, and he told me to ply my thumbs over the surface as the wheel kept spinning. I spilled water over it and applied more pressure, and gradually I saw the thing change shape. I had no artistic talent and I didn’t have a creative bone in my body, but I’d found myself wanting to make this little bowl, so small it hardly even had any use. 

I’d stopped with the breaking in and stealing, and I no longer had anything to do with the other three boys. I left them to figure out their own lives. But as time went on, even though I liked working for Charlie Barry at his studio, I couldn’t help feeling stuck like the clay itself was at my feet, wrapped at my ankles. 

I said, How’s a kid who’s grown up with nothing supposed to have anything? 

Come on now, Charlie Barry said. Just because you’ve had nothing doesn’t mean you can’t have something. 

And then he put me to work. 

* 

He was getting on beyond his years now. I believed he was going through some kind of transformation as I imagined him not just an old man but like a dog in his well-seasoned days. Venerable. Wizened. He was my teacher, and I knew there would be a day I would know everything he knows. A day when he would no longer teach me. The clay was heavy in my hands, the weight of a baby, and the soft orange goo stuck underneath my fingernails like rust. When I told Olivia I’d met Charlie after I’d broken into his house she laughed because that was now so far removed from the person I’d become. I was now in my twenties and I’d begun spending more time with Olivia than I did at the studio. 

Charlie used to sell his clay ornaments and he was moderately successful, but now his rheumatoid hands didn’t allow him to mould the clay anymore. Olivia and I had tried to help him with his business, keeping the studio open and the classes going, but neither of us were as good at making things as Charlie was. 

There’s more going out than coming in, Charlie said. I don’t know what we’re going to do. 

We’ll manage, I said. 

But I didn’t know how we’d manage. I suddenly had the image of my younger self, getting into all sorts of trouble, stood in front me in the studio, angry and unable to think. It was Charlie who took me in and gave me something to do, taught me how to shape clay into new and interesting things, these beautiful tangible objects that were still fragile but were now hardened with their own existence. Soon, the pottery studio was closed down due to rising costs. After Olivia became pregnant, we moved away, and after the baby was born, we’d forgotten all about Charlie Barry’s studio. 

A few years later, Olivia and I had established our lives together just outside of the city. One day, I picked up our son from school and he showed me a little clay pot he’d made. It was a funny little crude circle, and I could see the lines and zig-zag patterns he’d carved in. It brought it all back to me, the texture of the clay and the smell, and I remembered Charlie Barry, and his studio. I told Olivia I wanted to try my hand at clay moulding again, so I went and bought myself a potter’s wheel and some clay. I set it up in the kitchen – it was as large as a coffee table that came up to my knees – and I laid some newspaper down on the floor. Once I sat down, I plied my fingers to the cold, soft block and began to create something new. 

Runner-up: 'The Lady's Not for Turning' by Laura Brough 

I’ve always wondered about that worm – the one that turned.  It’s spoken of like it’s a good thing – finally the worm gets to stick up for itself and fight back, but actually, if you think about it, it’s still a worm.  What’s it going to do?  It seems to me that worm turns because it’s given up trying to get away and has decided to accept its fate. 

So I’m not a worm.  But I feel like one sometimes – I haven’t any defences either.  And I reckon my best chance is staying buried deep underground, where no one can see me, and not letting anything entice me to the surface where I’m visible to predators. 

We get a lot of predators.  Not just the obvious predators, the drug dealers and gangs and such, but the less obvious.  The “friend” who helps you out once or twice but then demands money, or sex, or whatever in return.  The alcohol sellers who offer a quick way to forget and stop caring.  The bookies who offer excitement and temporary hope in return for long term misery.  Those are the ones I’ve avoided so far.  But sometimes, you think, it would be easy to give up.  To just accept that one of them will get me in time.  That I can’t hope for much else, being what I am and who I am. 

My friend Rhoda says it’s stupid to talk like that – after all, she’s doing ok for herself, sort of.  She got out of the estate - didn’t go far but she’s got a house, and her bloke seems like he’s ok – I’ve never seen her with bruises, although that said, I never had visible bruises either and Shaun was not a good man – is not a good man, though I’ve no idea where he is now.  Dolly down the road reckons she saw him once when she was on a night out over the water, so if that’s true he’s out, but I’ve told her I don’t care and that’s sort of true – caring isn’t the right word for the slight sick feeling I still get every time I hear his name.  Anyway, forget him.  Rhoda says that anyone can get lucky, like she did, and what’s to stop me?  I say Rhoda’s got more brains than I have, and it’s not surprising that she got promoted to supervisor, and although I fill out the forms every time she says there’s a job going at her place it doesn’t really surprise me that I never get anywhere.  After all, there aren’t many jobs and hundreds of others in the same boat.  Rhoda says that when it’s her team recruiting then she’ll be on the panel and she’ll get me onto the line and I should hang in there, and it’s sweet that she says that but I reckon it’s just guilt that she’s doing better than I am.  Not that she needs to feel guilty – she was always the clever one and I’m happy for her.  At least she’s trying to help – that cow in the job centre just sniffs when I tell her how many applications I’ve done – they set you targets, and I don’t mind that because if I see a job I can do I’d be happy to give it a go, you know – it’s not just the factory lines, I’ve gone for cleaning and shops and all sorts - but then, you fill out all these applications and it gets a bit shaming to say, I’ve applied for this many and none of them have got back to me and you’d think she could do something more than just this superior sniff that says, well, no surprises there, who’d employ you, fat bitch?   

I don’t really go out much apart from the job centre.  There’s the dog, so I walk him twice a day, though he’s a lazy bugger and I think he’d sleep twenty four hours if he could.  Sleeping and farting, that’s what he’s good at.  And once a week there’s this place – it’s like a foodbank for dogs.  I mean, it is a foodbank - they do human food too, but I just go for the dog.  I can look after myself, but you sort of think it’s not fair for the dog to always live on the cheapest stuff, and honestly the women in there love him – they’re always finding special bits and pieces for him.  Steak and cheese, his current tins say, can you believe that? Rhoda keeps saying I should join her for park run, cos it’s only in the park and it’s free and some of the men are fit, but I said “If they are fit, the last thing I want them to see is me when I’m hot and sweaty and no face on.”  She laughed at that and didn’t say anything but I can tell when she’s given up and when she’s just biding her time and I think she’s just biding her time on this one.  She’ll probably give me running shoes for my birthday or something, because you can see she’s not letting it go yet.  And it would probably be ok, I mean, Shaun isn’t the sort to do running with posh people and I don’t think he’s trying to find me anyway.  I mean, I didn’t go far, it’s not like I’d be hard to find if he put his mind to it.  I’m not sure what I’d do if he came looking.  I mean, that’s why I got the dog, although I didn’t realise then that Marty is the laziest dog ever and the worst he could do is probably gas someone to death, but you know, he’s a bully so he looks fierce, and maybe…I don’t know.  I don’t like to think about it.  Sorry,  I’ll be ok in a minute.  I mean, yeah, I probably should do more with myself, do something, but, well, there’s always that bit of you that thinks, what if you had something he wanted.  Like actually wanted, more than a convenient woman to punch or fuck or wash his clothes or whatever.  I’m guessing he’s got someone else.  He’s not bad looking in his way, and he can make himself pleasant enough until he’s got you and you find out what he’s really like.  But it’s always at the back of your mind, if I had money or if I got my figure back or something, what would he do.  It’s like I said.  Predators.  Make yourself visible and who knows what you’ll attract.   

So yeah, I suppose I do keep myself buried, a bit, but it’s like I’m safe, you know?  And I haven’t always been safe, so that’s good, right? I’m still here.  Still carrying on with my life.  Who was it said ‘The Lady’s not for turning’? Oh. Didn’t realise it was her who said it but anyway, it’s like, Not for turning, that’s me. I’m not giving up yet.