Drifting dust and orange daylight: Writing 'Hardrada'
by Ashley Stokes
('Hardrada' appears in The Shadow Booth: Vol. 4, available here.)
‘From the trig point on Ditching Heights, the town was a grey eye open in yellow fields. Beyond its outer suburbs, across the barren countryside, the ancient outlines had again risen. Sunken rooms, burial chambers, mineshafts and underground galleries, long-gone walls and fortifications stood out like the letters of a lost alphabet. The tombs at Rixall glowed under the dead grass near the abandoned railway station. It was here that we’d seen Carter Thatch hazed in drifting dust and orange daylight.’
So begins 'Hardrada', a story of things that flicker in and out of life as hot summer weather drags on and intensifies. Restless England, hazy and baked mad, writhes with ghosts and re-enactments. Men assembled at a trig point agree to share their intelligence with George Nunes, landlord of The Swan with Two Necks and small-town v…
‘From the trig point on Ditching Heights, the town was a grey eye open in yellow fields. Beyond its outer suburbs, across the barren countryside, the ancient outlines had again risen. Sunken rooms, burial chambers, mineshafts and underground galleries, long-gone walls and fortifications stood out like the letters of a lost alphabet. The tombs at Rixall glowed under the dead grass near the abandoned railway station. It was here that we’d seen Carter Thatch hazed in drifting dust and orange daylight.’
So begins 'Hardrada', a story of things that flicker in and out of life as hot summer weather drags on and intensifies. Restless England, hazy and baked mad, writhes with ghosts and re-enactments. Men assembled at a trig point agree to share their intelligence with George Nunes, landlord of The Swan with Two Necks and small-town v…