Mischief - Hardcover

Weldon, Fay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1784081027 ISBN 13: 9781784081027

Publisher: Head of Zeus, 2016

Synopsis

Fay Weldon's inimitable voice has never gone short of praise. Now she introduces her pick of 21 favorite short stories from a 50 year career as one of Britain's foremost writers. Included in print form for the first time is a new 100 page novella The Ted Dreams, a ghost story for the age of cyber culture, big pharma, and surveillance.

About this title

About the Author

Fay Weldon’s work includes more than 20 novels, five collections of short stories, several children’s books, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and a number of plays written for television, radio, and the stage. Her books include Habits of the House, Life and Loves of a She Devil, Long Live the King, The New Countess, and Rhode Island Blues. She was awarded a CBE in 2001.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Mischief

By Fay Weldon

Head of Zeus Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Fay Weldon
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78408-102-7

Contents

Cover, 
Welcome Page, 
Introduction, 
1970s, 
Angel All Innocence, 
Alopecia, 
The Man with No Eyes, 
Breakages, 
Weekend, 
1980s, 
Delights of France or Horrors of the Road, 
Down the Clinical Disco, 
A Gentle Tonic Effect, 
Chew You Up and Spit You Out, 
Ind Aff or Out of Love in Sarajevo, 
Baked Alaska, 
GUP or Falling in Love in Helsinki, 
1990s, 
Love Amongst the Artists, 
Lily Bart's Hat Shop, 
Knock-Knock, 
Wasted Lives, 
2000s, 
A Knife for Cutting Mangoes, 
Smoking Chimneys, 
Happy Yuletide Schiphol, 
Why Did She Do That?, 
Christmas on Møn, 
The Ted Dreams – a novella, 
Preview, 
Original Publication Details, 
About this Book, 
Reviews, 
About the Author, 
The Love & Inheritance Trilogy, 
Also by this Author, 
An Invitation from the Publisher, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Angel, All Innocence

There is a certain kind of unhappiness, experienced by a certain kind of woman married to a certain kind of man, which is timeless: outrunning centuries, interweaving generations, perpetuating itself from mother to daughter, feeding off the wet eyes of the puzzled girl, gaining fresh strength from the dry eyes of the old woman she will become – who, looking back on her past, remembers nothing of love except tears and the pain in the heart which must be endured, in silence, in case the heart stops altogether.

Better for it to stop, now.

Angel, waking in the night, hears sharp footsteps in the empty attic above and wants to wake Edward. She moves her hand to do so, but then stills it for fear of making him angry. Easier to endure in the night the nightmare terror of ghosts than the daylong silence of Edward's anger.

The footsteps, little and sharp, run from a point above the double bed in which Angel and Edward lie, she awake, he sleeping, to a point somewhere above the chest of drawers by the door; they pause briefly, then run back again, tap-tap, clickety-click. There comes another pause and the sound of pulling and shuffling across the floor; and then the sequence repeats itself, once, twice. Silence. The proper unbroken silence of the night.

Too real, too clear, for ghosts. The universe is not magic. Everything has an explanation. Rain, perhaps? Hardly. Angel can see the moon shine through the drawn blind, and rain does not fall on moonlit nights. Perhaps, then, the rain of past days collected in some blocked gutter, to finally splash through on to the rolls of wallpaper and pots of paint on the attic floor, sounding like footsteps through some trick of domestic acoustics. Surely! Angel and Edward have not been living in the house for long. The attic is still unpainted, and old plaster drops from disintegrating laths. Edward will get round to it sooner or later. He prides himself on his craftsman's skills, and Angel, a year married, has learned to wait and admire, subduing impatience in herself. Edward is a painter – of pictures, not houses – and not long out of art school, where he won many prizes. Angel is the lucky girl he has loved and married. Angel's father paid for the remote country house, where now they live in solitude and where Edward can develop his talents, undisturbed by the ugliness of the city, with Angel, his inspiration, at his side. Edward, as it happened, consented to the gift unwillingly, and for Angel's sake rather than his own. Angel's f

Edition details

• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1784081027
• ISBN 13: 9781784081027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416