THE IRISH LITERARY scene has long been a source of national pride, but it’s in particularly rude health at the moment. Yet with so many books to catch up on, it can be easy to lose track of what’s out there.

Enter The Irish Read, where we feature an extract from a piece of work by an Irish or Ireland-based author.

The taster from a novel or short story should spur you on to find out more about the writer and their work.

The writer

This week, we bring you an extract from a short story by the Northern Irish writer Wendy Erskine. Anyone familiar with her writing will know that her characters are pin-sharp, her observations on the nuances of people’s behaviour are spot on, and her love of music and culture has a neat way of adding to the layers in her stories. 

Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast, where many of her stories are set. Her first collection, Sweet Home, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. It was also long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize and won the 2020 Butler Literary Award.

Her latest collection is called Dance Move, and is published by Stinging Fly Press (home to the excellent journal of new writing, Stinging Fly).

The story

This extract is from the story His Mother, from Dance Move. It’s ostensibly a tale of family tragedy, but Wendy finds so many other interesting nuggets in the interactions between the people involved, both humorous and illuminating. 

There were two weeks of coordinated searching of forest areas. So many people helped. Logan went, but not Sonya. Craig wanted to, but he was too young. He was angry when they said he couldn’t and shut himself up in his room. Logan came back, his big hands torn with briars. Cold nights with the wind howling up the old chimney breast and Curtis was out there somewhere. When he was young, he always wanted the hall light kept on when he went to bed.

There came that afternoon when she broke off from cleaning the kitchen to see that she had six missed calls from Logan. Sonya knew that was it. She knew what that meant. But she couldn’t bear to speak to him yet. When she heard the car in the driveway she began shaking so violently that she couldn’t utter a word. When Logan came in he said, We’ve got him, Sonya, we’ve got him. And then he sat down on the bottom stair and started making a noise like a small animal.

They put Curtis in his good clothes for the funeral. Sonya took forty minutes to press his shirt, cleaned the expensive white trainers with the tiny silver lettering that were clean anyway. It was a sunny day at Roselawn. Logan stumbled his way to the end of a bible reading and Jade read some poem, breaking down halfway through. It was decided that the last song as people were filing out should be one that Curtis liked. Craig picked something.
Is it his favourite? Sonya asked.
Dunno, Ma. We didn’t sit around making lists of our favourite tunes, you know? just know he liked it.

It was called ‘Your Love’ by Frankie Knuckles. It was pleasant enough at the beginning. But then a guy started sighing, huffing and puffing in a sexual way. Sonya didn’t feel it was suitable for a funeral. But nobody seemed to notice, or if they did, they didn’t say anything. Craig managed to get a paper cut from the edge of one of the programmes they handed out and got blood on the cuff of his shirt. After Roselawn they went to a golf club. Sonya busied herself helping with the food, which was chicken curry or beef bourguignon. Nearly everyone took the chicken. She couldn’t stand it when Curtis’s friends hugged her, the softness of their necks, the smell of their aftershave.

Sonya passes a bin but she doesn’t see Curtis, only a poster for a long-past demo at the City Hall against pay cuts. Further along then, there’s an electric box. A noise comes from these boxes, a hum like a pylon. When she moves away she imagines she can still hear it, the air quivering with the painful, insistent sound. Those placid people at the bus stop, can’t they hear? Two young men walk by, laughing at something, and Sonya’s watching hard. It seems like they’re laughing, certainly, but the one on the left, is he really? She’s done those oven chips over and over again and they are just right every single time now, just right.

It was a month after the funeral. On Sundays they always sat in the good room with the papers. The fire was lit and Logan had dozed off after lunch, the colour supplement across his chest. Logan didn’t sleep at night either; she felt him twisting, getting up for glasses of water, checking his phone. As usual, Craig was upstairs. The clock on the mantelpiece said three o’clock. Beside it was their wedding photo and that orchid the people at work had given her as a birthday present. And then, propped up against the orchid, was the picture of the four of them in a restaurant in the town. At the end of the mantelpiece the old school photo of the boys sat, Curtis with his arm round the four- year-old Craig. Curtis’s new teeth with the jagged edges were just coming through. His tie wasn’t straight and the collar was pulled to one side. Could those dopey teachers not have tidied you up a bit before they let the man take the picture? she had said. In a rush it came to her that it was raining outside, and Curtis was out there, dispersed all over the city on the posters, the rain coming down on him. She grabbed a knife from the drawer in the kitchen and got into the car, Logan still asleep in front of the fire.

The Ormeau Road was one of the places that she knew they’d put posters. She remembered them saying, we did the whole length of the Ormeau. The first poster she saw was on a metal shutter. It’s okay, son, she said, as she started scraping with the knife. It came off in long strips that time because even though she didn’t have any water, the paper was soaked with the rain. But there were so many! She could see another poster across the road on the bus shelter outside the Indian takeaway, and another one further down on a lamppost. That one was not so easy to remove, being on a curve, and the knife slipped, so she sliced between her finger and thumb. She was wet through in the rain with no coat, but she had to take off her cardigan to wrap it round her cut hand.

In the early days, Jade still used to call round. There were dark roots where before there was honey blonde. Jade always liked to reminisce about the holidays that she and Curtis had taken. Sonya, she had to admit, enjoyed seeing Jade more now than she ever did when she was with Curtis. One night after she had left, Craig said, why is she even bothering coming round here when she is seeing somebody else now?
That’s not true, Craig.
Yeah, it is.
But it would be far too soon, Sonya said.
Well, you might think that. Doubt she does.
Jade cancelled coming to the house two weeks in a row.
When she eventually did appear, Sonya wasn’t wanting to ask.
Sonya, Jade said. No doubt you’ve heard. Heard what?
About me.
What about you?
It’s nothing serious.
Your life, Sonya said. Up to you.
When Jade left, she told Logan.
He shrugged. Just the way it goes, he said.