Alison Moore - The Pre-War House and Other Stories

‘When your father met your mother,’ she said, ‘he was engaged to a lovely girl.’

My mother, at that time, was also spoken for; she had a boyfriend, a good-looking young man with olive skin and oil-black hair and eyebrows which met in the middle. She was eight weeks pregnant, but not yet showing, and she had not yet told anyone, not even her boyfriend, the father.

That summer, after the trip my father made to Bournemouth for a conference, he took the same coach to the coast and back every few weeks, on his own, just to see my mother, to be handed those warm cups of tea. And half the time the hostess he found on that seaside-bound coach was not my mother, who was on another coach going somewhere else, or she was with her good-looking boyfriend, or not, because he left her when she started to show.

On the last coach trip he made, my father took his tea from my mother and smiled, and asked her, if she was free, if she would like to, if she had time to look around Bournemouth.

He left his fiancée and married my mother, who wore white over her bump, and he brought her home, to his mother’s house.

When the baby was stillborn, my mother dug a small grave at the end of the garden, by the wall, and laid her baby in it, in a shroud at the bottom of that hole, like an egg in a nest. She filled in the hole and planted a barberry bush, and my father clipped and weeded the grassed-over grave and made it neat.

Now, in the long grass, wild flowers flourish, their roots reaching for those tiny bones. Fly larvae have been nibbling at my father’s vegetables, and beetle larvae have been nibbling at the woodwork, and moth larvae have been nibbling at my grandmother’s clothes, which are inside the boxes being carried through the front door by the men, and I hear the slow ticking, the metronomic clicking, of the hallway clock going by.

The empty house has a hollow echo. It must be almost as it was when my great-grandmother first walked through the front door, stepping into the hallway of her brand-new pre-war house.

When the van has left, I lock the front door behind me and walk down the driveway to my car, and the footprints I make are lost amongst all the other footprints, the men’s big bootprints, coming and going in the snow.

My thanks to those who have inspired or enabled any part of this collection, whether by making a comment in the pub one night about winking (that’s you, Gillian Collard), by wondering aloud at work about an unresponsive computer (that’s you, Ian Perry), by taking me on an exploration of some woods or recalling a World War Two bomb that fell very close to home (that’s you, Dad), by taking me to India (that’s you, Kevin Ryan), by finding us a holiday apartment with a memorable metal staircase up the outside (that’s you, Dan), by having a passport ‘taken into safe keeping’ whilst working as an au pair (that’s you, Jenny Kennedy), and so on. Thanks to everyone who has supported and encouraged me in many and various ways — family and friends and the editors and publishers who have given my stories their stamp of approval. Special thanks as ever to Nicholas Royle, my highly valued agent and editor, to John Oakey for a handsome and clever cover design, and to Jen and Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt for continuing to be such a pleasure to work with.

‘When the Door Closed, It Was Dark’ ©2010 by Alison Moore, originally published as a chapbook (Nightjar Press)

‘Humming and Pinging’ ©2000 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Marches Literary Prize Anthology 2000

‘The Egg’ ©2011 by Alison Moore, originally published in Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds (Two Ravens Press) edited by Nicholas Royle

‘Overnight Stop’ ©2013 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Lampeter Review #7

‘Glory Hole’ ©2011 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Lightship Anthology: 1

‘Nurture’ ©٢٠13 by Alison Moore, original to this collection

‘Seclusion’ ©2013 by Alison Moore, originally published online at www.paraxis.org

‘Sleeping Under the Stars’ ©2013 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Nottingham Short Story Anthology 2012

‘Jetsam’ ©2013 by Alison Moore, originally published in Ambit #211

‘Monsoon Puddles’ ©2004 by Alison Moore, originally published in Quality Women’s Fiction #43

‘It Has Happened Before’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in Shadows & Tall Trees #4

‘The Yacht Man’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in The New Writer #111

‘The Machines’ ©٢٠13 by Alison Moore, original to this collection

‘Wink Wink’ ©2000 by Alison Moore, originally published in the Creative Writers’ Network magazine, winter 2000

‘If There’s Anything Left’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published online at www.theyellowroom-magazine.co.uk

‘Static’ ©2009 by Alison Moore, originally published online at www.manchesterwritingcompetition.co.uk

‘Sometimes You Think You Are Alone’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Screaming Book of Horror (Screaming Dreams Press) edited by Johnny Mains

‘A Small Window’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in The Warwick Review vol.6 #4

‘The Smell of the Slaughterhouse’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in The New Writer #111

‘Helicopter Jean’ ©2002 by Alison Moore, originally published in The New Writer #53

‘Small Animals’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published as a chapbook (Nightjar Press)

‘Trees in the Tarmac’ ©2012 by Alison Moore, originally published in The New Writer #112

‘Late’ ©٢٠13 by Alison Moore, original to this collection

‘The Pre-War House’ ©2010 by Alison Moore, originally published in The New Writer #103