Mona McKinlay's work has been in several publications, among others: The Glasgow Herald, Cutting Teeth, Literary Mama, Litro, The New Writer and The Quiet Feather. She has an MPhil in Writing from the University of Glamorgan, and is presently working on her first collection of short stories and a novel, The Hypnotist's House.

Click image to read an extract from Moore's 'Birds of America' on the Salon website; for an interview with Moore on The Believer website, click here or to view his books on Amazon, click here

WILD GARLIC IN MAY

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EDDI READER SINGS THE SONGS OF ROBERT BURNS

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THE SMELL OF MY DOG

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EDINBURGH

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STARTING A NEW BOOK BY A FAVOURITE WRITER

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by
Mona McKinlay

I CAN TELL

The Good Father is a villian.

The way he stands near the parking meter, works his lips, cups the pouch like he does the balls of the altar boys. The way he slants his eyes in my direction, hand hovering in benediction as he counts the coins for the machine. I can tell Beelzebub stares from the depths of those black shining shoes, untouched by the snow and slush.

The Good Father watches with a smile as economical as communion wine, while I insert the coins into the slot and press the green button for the ticket. Nothing happens. The air nips the back of my neck when I press the refund button. I try once more, shuffling my trouser pockets for money. The nearest shop, a hardware store, is closed on Wednesdays. By the time I’ve found somewhere for change, I’ll probably have a parking ticket.

A hand lightly covers mine when I give a final push of the refund button; I turn from the gold signet ring, look into raisin-coloured eyes. The Good Father removes his hand, and for a moment, an urgent moment, I have a desire to confess the vanities and mistakes of my life: Good Father, I spat out the wafer, the flesh of Christ, when I was eight years old, like I have spat out every relationship since.

As I collect my coins, the same tapered fingers that rested upon mine now proffer the pouch. I shake my head. Amusement? Irritation? flickers in his eyes. He silently nudges the pouch closer. Heat creeps up my back: I’m there in the sacristy, head thrust against McKenna’s crotch, while he whispers, ‘It’s your word against the Father’s.’ The smell of him is on me now; I give my own coins to the Good Father, mumble thanks and dip my hand into the pouch.

© Mona McKinlay

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THE 3:AM PSYCHOTHERAPIST

The red digits on the clock grip his eyeballs like crampons. He’s thirsty. Must be the takeaway. A murmur comes from the shape beside him. What was that? She meant to tell them to leave out the Monosodium Glutamate?

This is why he lies awake beside his sweet forgetful wife? Why he feels hungover when he only had two beers - because of those MSG dollops of rubber billed as king prawns?

Or is he awake because of a dream? Can this be why? Scene one: He’s alone - and naked - in a swimming pool. But something more than this disturbs him. Scene two: The manager’s office. Mr Affability says nobody else has complained about the lack of water in the pool, but he’ll look into it.

So this is why he is awake at 3:AM? Because of a dream? What’s a little existential angst when he’s Freud’s elevator boy, daily hauling people up and down the royal road to the unconscious?

So why does he lie awake?

He’s fed up being a psychotherapist. This is why he lies awake. Fed up with social embarrassment: clients avoiding him publicly, drunks at parties, diminished gravitas: ‘Psycho-the-rapist, how do you do?’ Fed up being stuck between the psychics and public houses in the advertising directory. Fed up with people saying how weird they are.‘See how weird I am!’ he wants to shout.

But wait - what about those others - the hypnotherapists? What chance have they - wedged between the hygiene and ice cream ads? And here he is lying awake? He needs to get a grip. There are worse things than a psychotherapist. He shivers. And worse things than climbing naked out of an empty pool at 3:AM.

© Mona McKinlay

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DALSTON NIGHT

He sits by the window, drumming his fingers on the ledge, while the soft felt of dusk slips over the rooftops. Outside the boarded-up Turkish barber’s a dog urinates. It raises a leg, leans forward, concentrates, then, swivelling like a scrawny ballerina, leaves a yellow trickle against the wall.

Shapes flicker at a window opposite. A lamp is switched on. His own standard lamp is now in his daughter’s house, in a room which will be known as dad’s room from tomorrow. Before the shutters go up on the off-licence, his daughter will arrive, breathless, and in her bright, chiming voice will cite the lack of parking spaces for being late. She will need this prop to distract him from the finality of the occasion. In three weeks, the developers will roll in, bulldozers ripping cornices and stucco to make way for retail units. And when the removal van has gone, when his daughter asks if he has everything, he will look round his home of thirty years and say ‘Everything’, not add, ‘except your mother.’

He twists in the chair to see the space beside the mantelpiece where the lamp stood. His breath becomes tangled at the image of his wife, Ruth, reaching for the clock. Beside it on the mantelpiece is a photograph of her on a park bench laughing into the sun. He squints over at her dress, wonders about the colour. Maybe blue. He remembers… blue… a ribbon of blue, twirling, swirling, him panting, her laughing as she wound her way through the Pavilion, and his blood quickening, knowing soon he would walk her to her lodgings, spread her out on the fur coat, burrow his way home to Krupa on the gramophone.

From outside comes the sound of shouting and a door slamming. He turns to see men loiter on the pavement. Curry wafts on the breeze from the takeaway around the corner. He has a vague feeling of hunger, but the old fridge is almost empty, and he watches the men for a while, his eyelids heavy, his chin nudging his pullover.

Hunger jabs his belly when he opens his eyes. The fridge isn’t empty after all. He retrieves a hunk of Gouda from the back, scrapes off the mould, wolfs the cheese with half a dozen cream crackers. Chomping into the night, he listens to the far-off wail of a siren and watches a plane flash across the sky, while lights blink on and off in the building opposite.

He leans out on the wet ledge, his gaze travelling the slicked-out road, along the empty street, up to the shuttered theatre of closed windows and up to the roofs and pock-faced moon. Leaning further on the sill, he exhales slowly, drizzle settling on him like another skin.

In the distance, clattering through the silence, is the sound of wheels racing over cobbles. A lorry approaches Dalston Lane as the traffic lights change to red.

© Mona McKinlay