Short stories are where I like to experiment. It is a place to try out new ideas and characters, and to play with different forms of writing. Here is an example of a piece that may one day grow into a longer story.

Please come back to see further examples of my short stories from time to time.

The Legacy

The room smelled of death as Julia entered it for the first time in years. An atmosphere of musk and old age caught in her throat and snagged her heart, as she squinted through the pervading gloom, in an attempt to locate the fading occupier that lay buried somewhere beneath the silk coverlet.

Once a rich burgundy, the heavy drapes that hung at the windows now carried a sheen of grey from so much dust. Hastily drawn, all crumpled velvet, they blocked the daylight with vicious efficiency, as Julia stumbled towards the great bed.

‘Aunt Eliza? It’s Julia.’ The room was so cold that the words hovered as great clouds of steam before her face.

‘I’ll open the curtains. The sunshine might do you good.’ Julia crossed the room and pushed the velvet with force. Instantly, the sun lit the dust as it danced away from the disturbed fabric in great swirls.

Julia coughed at the sight of it, rather than from the fact of it lodging in her throat. She barely glanced outside at the snow, which lay two inches thick on the ground and probably stood nearer three on the windowsills.

The eyes in the bed blinked as they grew used to the light. In the same moment, Julia looked around her. Nothing in the room had changed in thirty years. Not since her childhood summers, when she had regularly visited this vast, ancient house.

Every year, Julia’s parents had left her in the care of her aunt while they motored through various parts of Europe. She had had a lonely time, wandering around the endless rooms with nothing to occupy her mind but a fear of the ghosts that lurked in every corner and a vivacious, distracted aunt who had little inclination to entertain a rather awkward and shy child.

Julia crept towards the bed. The movement felt strange in a room where time appeared to have frozen. The four-poster still dominated the room with its ornately carved oak frame and heavy damask hangings. The tallboy still hovered in the shadows, straining to be noticed. While an assortment of soft and hard-backed chairs of all ages and description continued to linger about the room like guests at a party who didn’t know when to leave.

As a child, Julia had always been terrified of the house which seemed to brood over an unnecessary problem. As an adult, this discomfort had not left her. Even today, she felt overawed by its presence and as an act of deference had kicked off her wet boots before apologetically creeping up the stairs that insisted on squealing with the shift of each tread.

Now, as the chill seeped through the soles of her feet, she wished she had defied her sense of reverence. After all, the snow would have made no difference; there was little in this house left to ruin. Time had seen to that.

A feeble arm lifted itself from beneath the coverlet and with great effort patted the unoccupied space on the bed.

‘You’re cold. Put that around your shoulders and sit with me.’ Eliza gestured with a nod to the Chinese silk shawl that lay draped over a wicker chair, arranged elegantly, as if for a magazine shoot.

Julia dutifully wrapped herself in the shawl. Despite the fineness of the fabric, it offered surprising comfort against the chill of the room. It was only then that she noticed the empty grate.

‘Why isn’t there a fire lit? Let me call Mrs Chambers.’

‘Don’t fret. It’s hardly worth the trouble for all the heat it gives. I have my eiderdown and my covers. That’s all I need.’

Julia said nothing, but made a mental note to speak to the housekeeper on the way out.

‘It’s good of you to finally come.’ The old lady’s voice had grown as thin as her emaciated body and Julia had to lean forward to catch each word even though she sat close enough to touch.

‘I could hardly deny your request, especially when Mrs Chambers telephoned to say that you were ill.’

‘How long has it been?’ Julia fought a sting of shame. More than ten years had gone by since she had last seen her aunt.

‘Oh, I don’t know. A few years, perhaps. Weeks, months travel so fast these days. As one gets older…’

‘Yes. Up to a point, and then…well, it slows down again. Time drags, when you have the desire, but not the strength to live life to the full.’

Julia blushed at the words. She had been an only child, and after the death of her parents and with no children of her own, she had lost the habit of family. She had been wrapped up in her teaching job at the university lately. And anyway, the house was so out of the way and held little in the form of happy memories.

‘There’s no need to think up excuses, Julia. The time has gone; it cannot be recaptured. I didn’t ask you here to make you feel guilty.’

Julia brushed away the suspicion that the old lady had been reading her thoughts. There had always been something enigmatic about her manner, something that made Julia uncomfortable in her knowing presence. It was her eyes. Violet to the point of violence, they seemed to see right through you. Even now, when the rest of her body had faded to a wither, the eyes shone; they lit up the room in a way that the winter sun could only aspire to. As much as Julia tried, she could not force herself to meet her aunt’s steady gaze.

It was said that she had been a great beauty in her day. The photographs that lay scattered about the room, covering each surface in their silver frames proved it to be true. A life in pictures, catalogued from the 1920’s onward. Photographers had queued up to capture her image. And the poet. This was why the famous poet had fallen for her in the 1930’s.

‘I thought he must be a homosexual, at first.’ Julia was startled by the words that seemed to come from nowhere.

‘Well, poets generally were, in those days. Particularly the crowd he gadded about with. They called themselves The Aesthetes. Such pretty things, all up at Cambridge together, then making a big splash in the London literary circles. Very few entertained the idea of women.’

‘Edward. You’re talking about Edward?’

‘Why of course, who else were you thinking of? It was the last time that you and I met. You accompanied me to the luncheon to celebrate Edward. It was fifty years since his death. Not much to celebrate, in my opinion. A life cut short. Why celebrate half a life, when the rest is emptiness.’

Julia reddened once again at the thought that she had neglected her only living blood relative for so long. Her aunt had never married and had no children of her own. Her only sibling that had survived beyond childhood had been Julia’s mother, who had died some time ago.

‘It was thoughtful of Edward’s publishers to produce a commemorative edition of those last poems of his. Even though they have never been out of print. It was a kind gesture.’

‘Immortal. The book he dedicated to you.’

‘Written on active service. Most women had letters from their lovers, or postcards from far flung places. I received sonnets. After they were published, the critics had the audacity to call him a war poet. It is not how he would have wanted to be remembered.’

‘But the poems are romantic. I tell my students that they are the greatest love poems written in the twentieth century.’

‘Well, perhaps.’

‘He immortalised you in those sonnets.’

‘The flesh may decay but the poetry, the memory, will endure. Is that what you mean?’

‘Your passion will remain in the heart of everyone who ever opens the book. It’s a love that will never die, despite…’

‘Despite us both being dead?’

‘Well…’

‘Flesh. That was always one of Edward’s themes. It cropped up again and again in his work. Can flesh be immortal? Can it be preserved for eternity? Or does the only true continuance of the flesh lie in reproduction. In creating new generations. We live on through our children. There is no other way to realise immortality. Flesh and blood. Isn’t that how one generally refers to family?’

The old lady turned her head towards the window. It was as if the snow lost its grip on the glass and melted under the intensity of her gaze.

‘You know this is it, Julia. The end of the line.’

‘Yes.’

‘What a sad state we have reached; two lonely spinsters in an unheated room.’ Eliza let out a dry laugh. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you the house. I wouldn’t wish this rambling Gothic ice-box on anybody. And anyway, you’ve done nothing to deserve it.’

‘I wouldn’t expect…’

‘It’s been signed over to the Edward Marsh Society. They’re planning to turn it into a museum and research centre for his work. Many of the downstairs rooms already house his vast library and archive, so they are more than half way there. They’re keeping the furniture and everything you see around you. They want the place exactly as it was in 1939, during that last summer. It probably comes as no surprise, that there’s no money. Most of it went long ago. And what’s left will go to the Society. It means there won’t be anything for you.’

‘It was the last thing I’d thought of.’ The words were made less convincing by Julia’s irrational suspicion that her aunt could read her mind. She had never considered closely what her aunt would leave her, not down to pounds and pence exactly, but it was a shock to know there would be nothing. As the only living relative of a wealthy woman, she didn’t think she had made too audacious an assumption, by imagining that something would come to her.

Julia’s plans had been destroyed by the words that spilled onto the pillow. Suddenly, the idea of giving up her teaching job to write a book about her aunt’s affair with the famous poet became nothing more than a dream. Now every academic in the country could write the book that she had planned for so long.

Any stranger could have access to the letters and the private papers, to the unseen fragments of unfinished work, to the secrets and the romance. The archive was not to be hers. Nor the money that would have bought her the time to write.

She could contest the will, but what good would it do? The old woman was sane, and it was only right that a literary estate of this importance was placed in the public domain.

‘Chin up. It’s not the end of the world. You have your job, which you can barely tear yourself away from. And there is nothing to prevent you from writing a book if you so wish. It may even help you to create a bit of your own immortality.’

‘That wasn’t what I was thinking. Yours is such a romantic story and yet, I’ve never taken the trouble to speak to you about it. All these years, and we’ve never...’

‘It’s all passed, and as far as I’m concerned, it should remain that way. I’ve become tired of writers and academics knocking on the door, to ask me what Edward was really like. What do they expect me to say? He was a man and I loved him. He wrote poems. He was killed in the war. It was tragic, but not unusual. He was not the only young man to die in a prison camp.’

‘Trying to escape. To get home to you.’

‘It was not unusual.’

‘But he kept his spirit. All the time he was in that dreadful camp, he wrote to you every day. He wrote those poems. Despite the awfulness of life, he still managed to capture the spirit of love, of hope.’

‘It is the only way to survive. Surely without hope, we have nothing.’

‘And is it true that you had the poems bound and returned to him, in the camp?’

‘It was thanks to the Red Cross. They were very good at getting parcels to the prisoners of war. I won’t say that our correspondence was given special treatment, but he was very famous by that time. And my face was known from the magazine pictures. Everyone knew of his poems and of our love.’

‘And he was found with the book in his pocket after he was shot?’

‘It was a small volume, so he could carry it with him always. The authorities were good enough to return the book to me after the war. They knew of course, that it was a part of me, just as much as it was a part of him. Both of us were in that book. We both owe it our immortality. It is the closest thing to our flesh and blood. I keep it with me always, knowing that his heart and soul lie within the covers of that little volume.’

Julia’s aunt slid her arm under the pillow and pulled out a small book. She passed it to Julia, who took it with a trembling hand. She ran her fingers over the smooth hide of the cover. It shone as if highly polished and was as fine as any leather she had ever felt.

‘It feels warm to the touch. Almost as if the animal that gave the skin is still alive.’

Eliza smiled with pleasure as Julia caressed the cover of the book.

‘I want you to have it after my death. To keep it with you always, the way I have done.’

‘But, it’s a piece of literary history. There is so much legend surrounding this particular book. Surely it should go into the archive.’ Julia stumbled over the words. Despite her desperation to keep the precious item, she knew that it should stay with the house, with the rest of Edward’s personal belongings. And now, holding it in her hand, it suddenly felt altogether too intimate. This was a very private object, once shared by two lovers. The longer she held the volume, the more she felt she was invading something very personal.

‘What Legend? What nonsense have you read, Julia?’

‘Well, there is a theory… and supposedly a surviving letter…somewhere…that states that this book is bound in…human skin. That it is bound in…your skin.’

Eliza let out another dry laugh and smoothed down the silk coverlet, not looking Julia in the face.

‘They say that you had the poems bound in your skin and sent to Edward in the prison camp, so that he could still caress you. They say that you attested to being able to feel those caresses, every time he ran his fingers across the book. That you could feel the sensation of his kisses, whenever he put his lips to it.’

Julia reddened with embarrassment as she finished her story. Still gripping the book in her hand, still feeling the heat from the leather, she could almost believe it to be true.

‘They? Who are they? Who are those people that profess to know this? When did I ever admit to such a thing? And where is the letter that proves it? You won’t find it in this house, not in Edward’s archive, that’s for sure.’

By now, Eliza had half lifted herself from the bed. Her voice had risen to a high pitch to express her indignation. Despite her obvious weakness, her eyes flashed with emotion.

‘I’m sorry for upsetting you. I’m only saying what I’ve heard. It’s such a romantic story…so…’

‘So unbelievable. It’s those penniless academics trying to cash in on our love. I don’t want you repeating it after my death. It is not why I’m giving you the book.’

Eliza coughed and fell back onto her pillows. This time it was a throaty cough and so deep rooted that it took control of her body. Julia panicked at the sight of her aunt’s distress.

‘Hold on, Aunt. I’ll get Mrs Chambers. In her anxiety, Julia rubbed the book rapidly between her hands as if to soothe the suffering woman and ran for help.

Julia returned a few minutes later with Mrs Chambers. The room felt colder than ever and the sun had disappeared behind the afternoon clouds. Eliza lay twisted and silent across the bed with her face buried in the pillow. She had either choked or suffocated in her bid to control the coughing.

Mrs Chambers flicked on a side lamp and went to close the curtains while Julia approached the bed. She reached forward to turn her aunt over and noticed that her nightgown had come undone at the back, probably during her struggle to defeat the cough.

It was as she went to fasten the buttons that she noticed the mark that travelled from just below her shoulder blades and down her back. Despite the years of healing and the withering of old age, it was clearly discernible as an area of heavy scarring that could have resulted from a burn.

Arguably, it could have also suggested that a good deal of skin had been removed. The skin that was missing, thought Julia with a smile, was just enough to cover a small book. She had her legacy after all.