1st prize
Boulogne Bloodby Lewis Bertenshaw
As the 18:59 train to the Parc des princes crawled nonchalantly around the corner, Tuan took a final heavy draw before stamping his spliff into the frozen dirt of the platform. When the train had pulled in, he watched patiently as the doors slid open to reveal a familiar mass of squirming bodies within, pulling down his hood as he stepped on board, and finally coming to rest as he leant uncomfortably against a sharp wall of the carriage. The stifling heat of the crowded train was not a welcome change from the freezing winter conditions; Tuan had always preferred the cold and the ethereal way in which it heightened and sharpened the senses. He couldn't help wishing that he'd saved the joint until he was outside the stadium.
Tuan hated trains, but there was no better way to get to the stadium from his small home in the 20th arrondissement de Paris, and he was never forced to pay. The Reseau Express Regional, however, was not the only thing that Tuan didn't like. He didn't like it when his uncle took him to some faraway village, where posh people had monthly meetings with pointless twelve course meals, and played Petanque while using the past historic tense. He didn't like school or the white boys in his class that terrorized him because they knew he was like the other dirty immigrants - the Moroccans and the Algerians - and wouldn't let this go. What he disliked most of all however, much more than the numbing sensations that the train often gave him, was when he got battered by the Boulogne Boys. This hadn't happened in a while, but Tuan bore the scars of many previous battles, most noticeably a jagged pink scar from under his left ear to the left corner of his mouth. If his father would have allowed it, he may have tried to hide the ugliest part of his scar near his ear by growing his hair long, but unfortunately only a thin layer of greasy black hair which clung desperately to his rough scalp was deemed acceptable.
"What you staring at kid?"
For a second Tuan didn't realise the words were directed at him, but he should have been expecting it; lately it was rare for his strange appearance not to draw some sort of attention. It was hard to recognise who had spoken, but then he noticed two piercingly green eyes staring out at him from the stern white face of a thin yet frightening looking man. He was stood at the other side of the carriage, wearing only a tight green polo and long khaki shorts in spite of the freezing conditions. With his short, spiky blonde hair and pale complexion, he was one of the most pathetic creatures Tuan had ever seen on the train to a game, and he certainly wasn't a Boulogne Boy, but this gave him an air of mystery that disturbed Tuan. He was probably one of those crazy rich Parisians on crack. Still, Tuan had to say something.
"Nothing, faggot"
This only succeeded in shutting him up for a few moments. Tuan could see a reply dancing on his lips, and a reply was duly delivered.
"What? Why don't you go back to where you come from? Filthy scoundrel."
Tuan wanted to reply; there were so many things he could say. He wanted to explain that he came from Vietnam, and that he was proud of his country of origin and the way in which it had fought courageously and successfully to maintain its national identity. He wanted to ask the man why he didn't consider different ethnicities as "French" like him, and why he had allowed himself to be sucked into the intense feelings of racism that appealed to the mind of nearly every Caucasian youth in Paris. So many intelligent thoughts, but Tuan couldn't express them, so merely looked down at his shoelaces as the train pulled away from the penultimate stop.
Tuan let his mind wander as he thought about what he would be faced with when he got off the train tonight. The last few times at the Parc des Princes had been tame, but about a month ago there had been a huge riot between opposite ends of the ground, which had resulted in a couple of tragic deaths. Tuan sat in the Tribune d'Auteuil, where it was widely acknowledged (but not true) that all the immigrants sat. Opposite, the Kop of Boulogne, home of the Boys: the primary cause of all hooliganism. Tuan feared the Boys as you never knew what lengths they might go to in order to sate their crazed hunger for violence, but it wasn't an unequivocal love for Paris St Germain which brought him to the ground despite this prospect of bloodshed. Tuan looked forward to a little brutality, and saw fighting as a way in which to take revenge against the cursed circumstances which he lived in and the discrimination that he had to endure day after day. Whether it was a Moroccan, an Algerian or best a white man, Tuan felt an incredible release of tension and frustration when he knocked another man to the floor or scratched at somebody's delicate skin in the anonymous dark. Tuan did not feel good about these things when he thought about them at home, but when he was caught up in the violence he became a crazed animal, fighting for survival and most of all revenge against his classmates, the whites and the society which had cast him aside. Tuan licked his lips as the train doors opened at the final stop.
***
"Quiet night tonight, Tuan", said Bazyki, Tuan's half-Tunisian friend, blowing thick white smoke into the menacing silence of the night.
Tuan said nothing: his disappointment was apparent. He looked up as they walked and directed a cold stare at a wandering police officer, one of the useless petasses from the women's unit.
"When's the last time you got in trouble with the police?"
"Never, I'm only a kid."
The mutual silence resumed between them as they turned a corner and saw the lights of the stadium straight ahead in the distance. There were thousands of people on this stretch now, all adding to a feverish atmosphere around the stadium. These nights really were one of the only things that Tuan enjoyed in life, just to be mixing with thousands of other people, feeling their heat and listening in on their conversations, was a welcome change from the boring life he was forced to lead at home.
"I can hear a bit of shouting now."
"You can?" Tuan replied with obvious excitement.
"Yeah. Could be the Boulogne!" said Bazyki, reaching across and prodding Tuan in the ribs. "The big scary Boys!"
"Not scared of them"
As the two advanced along the street, the shouting became clearer and louder, although they could not see where it was coming from. They were both walking a little quicker now, and could hear the screech of a police whistle not too far away. As they passed a side street off to the left, they were confronted with the scene they had been hoping for. It was a mass of about a hundred entangled bodies, fighting to get at each other with fists flying, bats swinging and bottles darting through the air. The odd contorted, angry face could be seen through the intense noise, and Tuan had seen this too many times not to realise that they were the horrible white faces of the Boulogne Boys. Without thinking, he darted forwards into the brawl.
The first man he came across was a heavily-built black man, but he dodged around him and headed for one of the Boys. As soon as he saw one, it was as though his fist acted independently of his body, and his rage was directed along his arm and into the man's face and his fist smashed into his jaw. To Tuan's surprise and delight, the man hit the floor and Tuan crouched gloriously above him. His fists were braced to deliver some further blows when a glistening knife appeared out of nowhere in front of his eyes. He arched backwards but the knife sliced through the air and Tuan gasped as he felt the sharp, cold metal break deep into his skin. Tuan fell backwards clutching his chest and landed on the firm road, his last sight being the snarling face and jagged teeth of the Boy. For some reason, Tuan's mind turned to History in the final moments of his life, as he thought of the millions that had fallen before him to protect the cold ground onto which he was now bleeding. He wondered what would end this different conflict- a conflict of races- in the young new generation, but his final thought before his heart died in his chest would have made him cry. It would probably take a white boy to die.
2nd prize
The Nose and the Tongue by Jon Richardson
They called him the Nose and, like most Frenchmen, he adored wine. It was said he could smell a pastry crumb under an inch-thick floorboard, legend claimed his nose was keen enough to track a fox over a gorse-moor or smell a crock of cream from ninety yards. They said he stuffed his nostrils with lemon-drenched cotton to maintain their remarkable acuity. It was almost certainly true.
The restaurant was a long, low velvet stomach of bruise-blue curtains and grimacing satyrs. It was a spider-graveyard and the silverware was twisted and tarnished into witch-fingers.
But none of that mattered.
What the restaurant had was wine. Wines like no other. Delicate wines that stroked the light grape-shade and rosy-red; liquorice-dark wines that'd melt your tongue; wines as boring as bathwater but so delicious they broke your heart like an egg. Here were wines that one sip would leave you stiff as timber and periwinkle blue, but your corpse would be split with a smile so joyful you might have died of sheer bliss.
The Nose stood glass in hand; a crowd watched eyes shiny with curiosity and something like terror. The candlelight made him ten feet tall. He was a gaunt man, tall and wiry with a pinched, purse-clasp expression and bland, wobbly, oyster-grey eyes. He touched the glass to his teeth and spoke with a voice like the best butter, only clipped short so every word had a sneering, ugly edge to it.
"The fragrance of a wine can give you an impression before tasting," he took a deliberate sniff, pausing so close that gossamer ripples billowed.
"Crisp," he said at last. "Berries. Harvested in autumn.... November 23rd." The crowd gasped.
"Bottled in eastern France," a sniff, "past Perpignan but not as far as Montpellier." An astonished silence.
Someone in the crowd snorted. Nose strode forward, oyster-eyes blazing. "You!" He snapped.
A woman, stout and solid as a stove, waddled forward and fixed him with a loose, mocking, monkey-grin. "Monsieur Nose?" She batted fierce, moth-wing lashes. "Is it really you?"
"What're you doing here?" The Nose cast a nervous glance at the class as if expecting them to crumble into dust or take to the skies on bat's wings at her signal.
"Do carry on teaching. I won't make a peep honey. I'm a mouse." "I suppose that's why they call you The Tongue then? For your meekness?"
If a rival to The Nose's talents existed then it took form in her, 'The Tongue'. She was the 'wine witch' and her scathing reviews had closed wineries, shattered dreams and sent one wine-maker over the edge of a ravine. She had a mouth of gunpowder and unkind words for everyone. Her cannon-strong wit was so legendary you could almost expect her to arrive from the night astride a great black goose.
She was squat and barrel-bellied with a broad face, riddled with bumps and breaks like a potato.
Her smile was a gargoyle grin, a real firework.
"At least I wasn't the Frenchman caught sipping a Spanish rose in southern France. Nearly beaten to death weren't you?"
The Nose bristled. The crowd of amateurs looked from one to the other. It was like watching a pair of street cats spit and hiss right before they started brawling. They hadn't paid for this.
"Here," A man whispered to a woman ringed with lace and pearls like an iced cake. "I hear they're the bitterest rivals. Scrap like badgers in a sack. Once he tripped her at a tasting and she almost drowned in a vat of grapes - she gave him such a wallop afterwards."
Tongue closed her cardboard-crumple hands around a bottle. She smirked. "What's this treasure?"
People might be knocked about and rattled as far as she was concerned but wines were precious, trembling things to be cherished and coaxed into bottles.
Nose smoothed back his hair. "This? This is Matron's Blush. Worth more than a barrelful of diamonds. I had to prise it from a dying collector. There are people who'd wade through blood to get it. Or lose an eye. So careful! I'm an expert after all. You couldn't fill a thimble with your sense."
"You poisonous river troll! You couldn't tell the difference between a Chateau Civet and applesauce!"
"You, madam, are an alley-cat of doubtful sanity with a bellyful of spear-points."
Nose grabbed at the bottle and Tongue scuttled back, cackling. She jabbed at him with a fat, fierce finger.
The crowd edged backwards as the argument descended into a scuffle. Glass smashed with a church bell chime. A table was overturned. A satyr lost an ear to a wild swing.
"Enough nonsense!" Madame Rousseau, the restaurant owner, took this opportunity to slide from the shadows. Plump, pink and persistent, she had big, scrubbed, apple shine cheeks and wasp- warning eyes. There was something crumpled about her face, like she'd been left out in the rain and warped like wood. She strutted, arms behind her back. You couldn't tell what was up her sleeves.
Tongue and Nose straightened up, shamefaced.
"I've had enough of you. How about we settle this? A tasting contest. Nose, Tongue and my obscure collection. Winner takes all."
It was an obvious plan. An arrogant plan. But it was a Rousseau plan and therefore a good one.
"Do you mistake me for an eel-brained imbecile? Why she'd cheat herself purple."
Tongue's grin contracted into a sour, supercilious crease.
"I'll judge!" Madame Rousseau declared. The wine taster's eyebrows were crescents of surprise.
"Impartially of course. You can do it here," she trilled. "I happen to be a luminary in the wine
world. I've entertained Dukes here. Movie stars."
*
By the time of the contest the sky had brewed itself to a plum darkness. The street gleamed like a tarnished coin, its' shine robbed by tree shadows.
Rousseau was dressed in a waterfall of silk which ran with snakes of shimmer. She turned as Nose entered and narrowed her eyes in a calculating, cat-smile. She looked like she could have been famous, once. An impish starlet, plump and pale as the moon. Her fingernails were fat, mahogany back beetles. She proffered a blindfold.
"I smell something rotten. A most unpleasant sweatiness. I was afraid it was the wine but it's definitely you." Nose quipped as the blindfolded Tongue sauntered through the crowd.
"I wonder how your smile will look when it's turned inside out."
Rousseau took a vulture-beak bite into their arms and steered them forwards, bobbing and rocking so they were knocked and trodden on. She poured two glasses of wine. The glug-glug chuckle of the bottles broke the silence into crumbs. They were tense, held-breath crumbs.
"Please identify your glass," "A classic white. A Weeping-Cinnamon if I'm not mistaken." Nose answered confidently.
Tongue took a little more deliberation with her glass, teasing the surface with her tongue before taking a gulp. "A Fremescence-Bluechild'34." She grinned her gargoyle grin and drained the glass.
"Excellent," Rousseau's crumpled face beamed. "Round Two, I shall drop an earring into a glass - you shall guess which. No peeking."
She plucked a cloudy, fish-egg pearl and watched as it sank listlessly to the bottom of a glass. With quick fingers she scooped it out. "Begin"
A sniff, a swirl, a nervous cough, a chime of glass. Nose huffed and heaved like a bellows. Tongue had turned rice-pudding pallor.
"Well?"
"Glass three," Nose lifted the fabric from one rain-dull eye and permitted himself a grin.
"How can you have known that?"
"Madame Rousseau has a distinctive perfume. Rosehip I believe. Glass three reeked of it."
"Cheat! That wasn't wine-tasting you scheming goblin!" Tongue's brow knotted like a ship prow. Angry bulges glistened at her lip. "Rematch!"
Nose laughed, "Of course not." "Rematch!"
"No."
Tongue lunged. She hit Nose with a horse-heavy blow that sent him reeling. The judge's chair came apart like a cracker as they struck it. A plate had a chip bitten from it, like a piece nipped from a cat's ear.
Rousseau gasped as Tongue drove her finger into Nose's eye. She gasped much louder as Nose shoved back, nudging the table, nudging the...
The bottle! Madame Rousseau wailed. "Catch it," she crowed and slapped the air.
The Matron's Blush turned almost lazily before it met the flagstones with a spear-thrust, tidal-wave, gunshot-shock. The bottle sprang apart and fragments scattered in a glittering, piebald shark-tooth pattern. A drop hung, pregnant-bellied, before it wobbled free and sank into the floor leaving a greedy, mulberry stain.
Nose howled as if at a child's death. He collapsed, hands smoothing at the air as if he could somehow fuss and fret the bottle back into being. Behind his eyes stars were falling.
Rousseau clucked consolingly. "There there, it was only wine."
"Only wine!" His voice shook as if tugged by a fiddle-bow and his purse-clasp mouth puddled into a sad, hanging shape. Tongue dusted herself down sheepishly. Someone removed their hat, for the sight of a Frenchman mourning his wine is a sorry one indeed.
3rd prize
This will all be over as soon as Spring arrives by Kat Spooner
"Where are you going Paul?" His head jerked up from the thin turnip soup, "Just to the tabac Mama," he said, as soothingly as he could manage. The rough russet parcel sat heavily under his overcoat, his hands trembling on the soup spoon. His mother's face momentarily slackened, "Very well, mon cheri," she murmured, hastening into their tiny kitchen; he knew what was coming next. "This will all be over," out of habit, Paul mouthed the words, "as soon as spring arrives." His mother had been habitually saying that for the last three proceeding winters, each time a little less hopeful and a little more worn.
Yet the parcel still lay on his lap, and the wooden cuckoo clock above the mantelpiece continued to tick loudly, urging, forcing him to leave. Nine-thirty - it was time. Seizing the chance when his mother's back was bent over the moth-eaten darning, he slipped out of the apartment and down the steep steps into the dim avenue. The long street was devoid of anyone, anything, not even the broken brie moon gleamed. All for the better, Paul couldn't be seen. Despite the icy late March evening he was sweating, a thin boiling trickle running between his shoulder blades. He only wavered once at the crossroads, suddenly convinced that the enemy would spring out from behind the amber road light, march him into a green army truck and then into an obsolete destination never to be seen again. Like his father.
The night remained still all but for a slight whistling breeze. Paul hurried on uneasily checking surreptitiously the vacant doorways and shuttered windows jutting out onto the Rues.
Through the 8eme arrondissement he slipped, cutting behind the grand Avenue des Champs Elysees, at all costs avoiding any potential encounters, the instruction firmly embossed by the small, stooping man who had entrusted him with this at the cafe a day before. The significance still rang through, "Now my boy," the elderly man had whispered emphatically, "now, you mustn't be seen at all, d'you hear? No, not at all."
By the time he began to approach the motionless banks of the Seine he knew, could almost feel the palpable relief of handing this burden, whatever it was, over. Paul could admit now, only to himself, that he wasn't quite the De Gaulle hero he often made out to be, the real thing was beyond all the mock fights and storytelling. He quickened his stride.
In the damp evening and dim light, he didn't make out the tarnished boots until he almost collided into them. Slowly, with great dread, Paul lifted his gaze. As he expected, not one, but two pairs of cold eyes, almost hidden under those metal helmets stared coldly back. The tall one's lip curled slightly, "Vat are you here?" he snarled in a thick guttural accent, eyes glittering, his hand stroking the rifle nestled in his arm. Paul's first instant thought was sharp disgust, as he always felt when he saw them or worse heard them speak. Almost four springs later and they had still failed to master even some of the most elementary aspects of the French language. But this repulsion was swiftly replaced by a pulsing fear. Paul chocked the fastest response to him, "Ich bringe das Brot fuer meine Mutter", the words tumbled out like glass marbles in less of a whisper. Both sides knew he was lying. "Show," the harsh voice commanded again, his caustic voice thick with contempt. Paul froze; weighing his chances, then gradually withdrew the small package from his coat, like a magician unveiling a prize.
Both men's eyes fixed on the parcel, their swastika's glinting in the squalid light. For the first time in Paul's life he prayed fervently, frantically, to his father, the elderly man, sweet Mary, God, someone, anyone to help. The split second passed. It was only then that Paul noticed the two soldiers' scarlet faces, the pungent odour of Parisian biere, and their unfocused glazed glances. Feeling a sudden stream of daring, Paul's fists uncurled, "Sie zu sehen? You see?" He shouted, gesturing at the round package, insisting that it obviously did resemble a baguette. One of the soldiers frowned slightly, unsure and unsteady. The other tall one, seemingly having lost his fury, almost gave a perceptible nod. Paul was bold enough to glower and then suppressing his rumbling anger, edge past the two towards the relief of the river. The scrape of their hobnailed boots against the stone side of the road told Paul they were fast disappearing into the foggy night.
No longer was Paul solitary. His father and mother, his lost friends from the lycee, De Gaulle, God, everyone was willing him. He mustn't stop now. The sky was no longer black poison, but a blanket shielding him from others. "Ne vous inquietez pas, do not worry" he whispered to the city of Paris.
A few minutes later, under the eaves of the bridge, each man whispered the resistance code word and the package was carefully, caringly handed over. The lined, sweaty face deep with exhaustion, beamed, leaned over and patted the gangly teenager. The warm strength of the gesture was reassuring as indeed were the whispered words, "It will soon be over my boy, thanks to you."
Neither dared to say more, and as quickly as he had appeared, that kindly face which Paul was sure he had recognised, smoothly evaporated. Footsteps echoing, Paul turned; he had now truly done his duty. "Ne vous inquietez pas," he murmured, stopping and staring at the Cherry trees along the banks of the Seine. Their beautiful pink blossom had just begun to show, the very first signs of spring. It would soon be over.
Boulogne Bloodby Lewis Bertenshaw
As the 18:59 train to the Parc des princes crawled nonchalantly around the corner, Tuan took a final heavy draw before stamping his spliff into the frozen dirt of the platform. When the train had pulled in, he watched patiently as the doors slid open to reveal a familiar mass of squirming bodies within, pulling down his hood as he stepped on board, and finally coming to rest as he leant uncomfortably against a sharp wall of the carriage. The stifling heat of the crowded train was not a welcome change from the freezing winter conditions; Tuan had always preferred the cold and the ethereal way in which it heightened and sharpened the senses. He couldn't help wishing that he'd saved the joint until he was outside the stadium.
Tuan hated trains, but there was no better way to get to the stadium from his small home in the 20th arrondissement de Paris, and he was never forced to pay. The Reseau Express Regional, however, was not the only thing that Tuan didn't like. He didn't like it when his uncle took him to some faraway village, where posh people had monthly meetings with pointless twelve course meals, and played Petanque while using the past historic tense. He didn't like school or the white boys in his class that terrorized him because they knew he was like the other dirty immigrants - the Moroccans and the Algerians - and wouldn't let this go. What he disliked most of all however, much more than the numbing sensations that the train often gave him, was when he got battered by the Boulogne Boys. This hadn't happened in a while, but Tuan bore the scars of many previous battles, most noticeably a jagged pink scar from under his left ear to the left corner of his mouth. If his father would have allowed it, he may have tried to hide the ugliest part of his scar near his ear by growing his hair long, but unfortunately only a thin layer of greasy black hair which clung desperately to his rough scalp was deemed acceptable.
"What you staring at kid?"
For a second Tuan didn't realise the words were directed at him, but he should have been expecting it; lately it was rare for his strange appearance not to draw some sort of attention. It was hard to recognise who had spoken, but then he noticed two piercingly green eyes staring out at him from the stern white face of a thin yet frightening looking man. He was stood at the other side of the carriage, wearing only a tight green polo and long khaki shorts in spite of the freezing conditions. With his short, spiky blonde hair and pale complexion, he was one of the most pathetic creatures Tuan had ever seen on the train to a game, and he certainly wasn't a Boulogne Boy, but this gave him an air of mystery that disturbed Tuan. He was probably one of those crazy rich Parisians on crack. Still, Tuan had to say something.
"Nothing, faggot"
This only succeeded in shutting him up for a few moments. Tuan could see a reply dancing on his lips, and a reply was duly delivered.
"What? Why don't you go back to where you come from? Filthy scoundrel."
Tuan wanted to reply; there were so many things he could say. He wanted to explain that he came from Vietnam, and that he was proud of his country of origin and the way in which it had fought courageously and successfully to maintain its national identity. He wanted to ask the man why he didn't consider different ethnicities as "French" like him, and why he had allowed himself to be sucked into the intense feelings of racism that appealed to the mind of nearly every Caucasian youth in Paris. So many intelligent thoughts, but Tuan couldn't express them, so merely looked down at his shoelaces as the train pulled away from the penultimate stop.
Tuan let his mind wander as he thought about what he would be faced with when he got off the train tonight. The last few times at the Parc des Princes had been tame, but about a month ago there had been a huge riot between opposite ends of the ground, which had resulted in a couple of tragic deaths. Tuan sat in the Tribune d'Auteuil, where it was widely acknowledged (but not true) that all the immigrants sat. Opposite, the Kop of Boulogne, home of the Boys: the primary cause of all hooliganism. Tuan feared the Boys as you never knew what lengths they might go to in order to sate their crazed hunger for violence, but it wasn't an unequivocal love for Paris St Germain which brought him to the ground despite this prospect of bloodshed. Tuan looked forward to a little brutality, and saw fighting as a way in which to take revenge against the cursed circumstances which he lived in and the discrimination that he had to endure day after day. Whether it was a Moroccan, an Algerian or best a white man, Tuan felt an incredible release of tension and frustration when he knocked another man to the floor or scratched at somebody's delicate skin in the anonymous dark. Tuan did not feel good about these things when he thought about them at home, but when he was caught up in the violence he became a crazed animal, fighting for survival and most of all revenge against his classmates, the whites and the society which had cast him aside. Tuan licked his lips as the train doors opened at the final stop.
***
"Quiet night tonight, Tuan", said Bazyki, Tuan's half-Tunisian friend, blowing thick white smoke into the menacing silence of the night.
Tuan said nothing: his disappointment was apparent. He looked up as they walked and directed a cold stare at a wandering police officer, one of the useless petasses from the women's unit.
"When's the last time you got in trouble with the police?"
"Never, I'm only a kid."
The mutual silence resumed between them as they turned a corner and saw the lights of the stadium straight ahead in the distance. There were thousands of people on this stretch now, all adding to a feverish atmosphere around the stadium. These nights really were one of the only things that Tuan enjoyed in life, just to be mixing with thousands of other people, feeling their heat and listening in on their conversations, was a welcome change from the boring life he was forced to lead at home.
"I can hear a bit of shouting now."
"You can?" Tuan replied with obvious excitement.
"Yeah. Could be the Boulogne!" said Bazyki, reaching across and prodding Tuan in the ribs. "The big scary Boys!"
"Not scared of them"
As the two advanced along the street, the shouting became clearer and louder, although they could not see where it was coming from. They were both walking a little quicker now, and could hear the screech of a police whistle not too far away. As they passed a side street off to the left, they were confronted with the scene they had been hoping for. It was a mass of about a hundred entangled bodies, fighting to get at each other with fists flying, bats swinging and bottles darting through the air. The odd contorted, angry face could be seen through the intense noise, and Tuan had seen this too many times not to realise that they were the horrible white faces of the Boulogne Boys. Without thinking, he darted forwards into the brawl.
The first man he came across was a heavily-built black man, but he dodged around him and headed for one of the Boys. As soon as he saw one, it was as though his fist acted independently of his body, and his rage was directed along his arm and into the man's face and his fist smashed into his jaw. To Tuan's surprise and delight, the man hit the floor and Tuan crouched gloriously above him. His fists were braced to deliver some further blows when a glistening knife appeared out of nowhere in front of his eyes. He arched backwards but the knife sliced through the air and Tuan gasped as he felt the sharp, cold metal break deep into his skin. Tuan fell backwards clutching his chest and landed on the firm road, his last sight being the snarling face and jagged teeth of the Boy. For some reason, Tuan's mind turned to History in the final moments of his life, as he thought of the millions that had fallen before him to protect the cold ground onto which he was now bleeding. He wondered what would end this different conflict- a conflict of races- in the young new generation, but his final thought before his heart died in his chest would have made him cry. It would probably take a white boy to die.
2nd prize
The Nose and the Tongue by Jon Richardson
They called him the Nose and, like most Frenchmen, he adored wine. It was said he could smell a pastry crumb under an inch-thick floorboard, legend claimed his nose was keen enough to track a fox over a gorse-moor or smell a crock of cream from ninety yards. They said he stuffed his nostrils with lemon-drenched cotton to maintain their remarkable acuity. It was almost certainly true.
The restaurant was a long, low velvet stomach of bruise-blue curtains and grimacing satyrs. It was a spider-graveyard and the silverware was twisted and tarnished into witch-fingers.
But none of that mattered.
What the restaurant had was wine. Wines like no other. Delicate wines that stroked the light grape-shade and rosy-red; liquorice-dark wines that'd melt your tongue; wines as boring as bathwater but so delicious they broke your heart like an egg. Here were wines that one sip would leave you stiff as timber and periwinkle blue, but your corpse would be split with a smile so joyful you might have died of sheer bliss.
The Nose stood glass in hand; a crowd watched eyes shiny with curiosity and something like terror. The candlelight made him ten feet tall. He was a gaunt man, tall and wiry with a pinched, purse-clasp expression and bland, wobbly, oyster-grey eyes. He touched the glass to his teeth and spoke with a voice like the best butter, only clipped short so every word had a sneering, ugly edge to it.
"The fragrance of a wine can give you an impression before tasting," he took a deliberate sniff, pausing so close that gossamer ripples billowed.
"Crisp," he said at last. "Berries. Harvested in autumn.... November 23rd." The crowd gasped.
"Bottled in eastern France," a sniff, "past Perpignan but not as far as Montpellier." An astonished silence.
Someone in the crowd snorted. Nose strode forward, oyster-eyes blazing. "You!" He snapped.
A woman, stout and solid as a stove, waddled forward and fixed him with a loose, mocking, monkey-grin. "Monsieur Nose?" She batted fierce, moth-wing lashes. "Is it really you?"
"What're you doing here?" The Nose cast a nervous glance at the class as if expecting them to crumble into dust or take to the skies on bat's wings at her signal.
"Do carry on teaching. I won't make a peep honey. I'm a mouse." "I suppose that's why they call you The Tongue then? For your meekness?"
If a rival to The Nose's talents existed then it took form in her, 'The Tongue'. She was the 'wine witch' and her scathing reviews had closed wineries, shattered dreams and sent one wine-maker over the edge of a ravine. She had a mouth of gunpowder and unkind words for everyone. Her cannon-strong wit was so legendary you could almost expect her to arrive from the night astride a great black goose.
She was squat and barrel-bellied with a broad face, riddled with bumps and breaks like a potato.
Her smile was a gargoyle grin, a real firework.
"At least I wasn't the Frenchman caught sipping a Spanish rose in southern France. Nearly beaten to death weren't you?"
The Nose bristled. The crowd of amateurs looked from one to the other. It was like watching a pair of street cats spit and hiss right before they started brawling. They hadn't paid for this.
"Here," A man whispered to a woman ringed with lace and pearls like an iced cake. "I hear they're the bitterest rivals. Scrap like badgers in a sack. Once he tripped her at a tasting and she almost drowned in a vat of grapes - she gave him such a wallop afterwards."
Tongue closed her cardboard-crumple hands around a bottle. She smirked. "What's this treasure?"
People might be knocked about and rattled as far as she was concerned but wines were precious, trembling things to be cherished and coaxed into bottles.
Nose smoothed back his hair. "This? This is Matron's Blush. Worth more than a barrelful of diamonds. I had to prise it from a dying collector. There are people who'd wade through blood to get it. Or lose an eye. So careful! I'm an expert after all. You couldn't fill a thimble with your sense."
"You poisonous river troll! You couldn't tell the difference between a Chateau Civet and applesauce!"
"You, madam, are an alley-cat of doubtful sanity with a bellyful of spear-points."
Nose grabbed at the bottle and Tongue scuttled back, cackling. She jabbed at him with a fat, fierce finger.
The crowd edged backwards as the argument descended into a scuffle. Glass smashed with a church bell chime. A table was overturned. A satyr lost an ear to a wild swing.
"Enough nonsense!" Madame Rousseau, the restaurant owner, took this opportunity to slide from the shadows. Plump, pink and persistent, she had big, scrubbed, apple shine cheeks and wasp- warning eyes. There was something crumpled about her face, like she'd been left out in the rain and warped like wood. She strutted, arms behind her back. You couldn't tell what was up her sleeves.
Tongue and Nose straightened up, shamefaced.
"I've had enough of you. How about we settle this? A tasting contest. Nose, Tongue and my obscure collection. Winner takes all."
It was an obvious plan. An arrogant plan. But it was a Rousseau plan and therefore a good one.
"Do you mistake me for an eel-brained imbecile? Why she'd cheat herself purple."
Tongue's grin contracted into a sour, supercilious crease.
"I'll judge!" Madame Rousseau declared. The wine taster's eyebrows were crescents of surprise.
"Impartially of course. You can do it here," she trilled. "I happen to be a luminary in the wine
world. I've entertained Dukes here. Movie stars."
*
By the time of the contest the sky had brewed itself to a plum darkness. The street gleamed like a tarnished coin, its' shine robbed by tree shadows.
Rousseau was dressed in a waterfall of silk which ran with snakes of shimmer. She turned as Nose entered and narrowed her eyes in a calculating, cat-smile. She looked like she could have been famous, once. An impish starlet, plump and pale as the moon. Her fingernails were fat, mahogany back beetles. She proffered a blindfold.
"I smell something rotten. A most unpleasant sweatiness. I was afraid it was the wine but it's definitely you." Nose quipped as the blindfolded Tongue sauntered through the crowd.
"I wonder how your smile will look when it's turned inside out."
Rousseau took a vulture-beak bite into their arms and steered them forwards, bobbing and rocking so they were knocked and trodden on. She poured two glasses of wine. The glug-glug chuckle of the bottles broke the silence into crumbs. They were tense, held-breath crumbs.
"Please identify your glass," "A classic white. A Weeping-Cinnamon if I'm not mistaken." Nose answered confidently.
Tongue took a little more deliberation with her glass, teasing the surface with her tongue before taking a gulp. "A Fremescence-Bluechild'34." She grinned her gargoyle grin and drained the glass.
"Excellent," Rousseau's crumpled face beamed. "Round Two, I shall drop an earring into a glass - you shall guess which. No peeking."
She plucked a cloudy, fish-egg pearl and watched as it sank listlessly to the bottom of a glass. With quick fingers she scooped it out. "Begin"
A sniff, a swirl, a nervous cough, a chime of glass. Nose huffed and heaved like a bellows. Tongue had turned rice-pudding pallor.
"Well?"
"Glass three," Nose lifted the fabric from one rain-dull eye and permitted himself a grin.
"How can you have known that?"
"Madame Rousseau has a distinctive perfume. Rosehip I believe. Glass three reeked of it."
"Cheat! That wasn't wine-tasting you scheming goblin!" Tongue's brow knotted like a ship prow. Angry bulges glistened at her lip. "Rematch!"
Nose laughed, "Of course not." "Rematch!"
"No."
Tongue lunged. She hit Nose with a horse-heavy blow that sent him reeling. The judge's chair came apart like a cracker as they struck it. A plate had a chip bitten from it, like a piece nipped from a cat's ear.
Rousseau gasped as Tongue drove her finger into Nose's eye. She gasped much louder as Nose shoved back, nudging the table, nudging the...
The bottle! Madame Rousseau wailed. "Catch it," she crowed and slapped the air.
The Matron's Blush turned almost lazily before it met the flagstones with a spear-thrust, tidal-wave, gunshot-shock. The bottle sprang apart and fragments scattered in a glittering, piebald shark-tooth pattern. A drop hung, pregnant-bellied, before it wobbled free and sank into the floor leaving a greedy, mulberry stain.
Nose howled as if at a child's death. He collapsed, hands smoothing at the air as if he could somehow fuss and fret the bottle back into being. Behind his eyes stars were falling.
Rousseau clucked consolingly. "There there, it was only wine."
"Only wine!" His voice shook as if tugged by a fiddle-bow and his purse-clasp mouth puddled into a sad, hanging shape. Tongue dusted herself down sheepishly. Someone removed their hat, for the sight of a Frenchman mourning his wine is a sorry one indeed.
3rd prize
This will all be over as soon as Spring arrives by Kat Spooner
"Where are you going Paul?" His head jerked up from the thin turnip soup, "Just to the tabac Mama," he said, as soothingly as he could manage. The rough russet parcel sat heavily under his overcoat, his hands trembling on the soup spoon. His mother's face momentarily slackened, "Very well, mon cheri," she murmured, hastening into their tiny kitchen; he knew what was coming next. "This will all be over," out of habit, Paul mouthed the words, "as soon as spring arrives." His mother had been habitually saying that for the last three proceeding winters, each time a little less hopeful and a little more worn.
Yet the parcel still lay on his lap, and the wooden cuckoo clock above the mantelpiece continued to tick loudly, urging, forcing him to leave. Nine-thirty - it was time. Seizing the chance when his mother's back was bent over the moth-eaten darning, he slipped out of the apartment and down the steep steps into the dim avenue. The long street was devoid of anyone, anything, not even the broken brie moon gleamed. All for the better, Paul couldn't be seen. Despite the icy late March evening he was sweating, a thin boiling trickle running between his shoulder blades. He only wavered once at the crossroads, suddenly convinced that the enemy would spring out from behind the amber road light, march him into a green army truck and then into an obsolete destination never to be seen again. Like his father.
The night remained still all but for a slight whistling breeze. Paul hurried on uneasily checking surreptitiously the vacant doorways and shuttered windows jutting out onto the Rues.
Through the 8eme arrondissement he slipped, cutting behind the grand Avenue des Champs Elysees, at all costs avoiding any potential encounters, the instruction firmly embossed by the small, stooping man who had entrusted him with this at the cafe a day before. The significance still rang through, "Now my boy," the elderly man had whispered emphatically, "now, you mustn't be seen at all, d'you hear? No, not at all."
By the time he began to approach the motionless banks of the Seine he knew, could almost feel the palpable relief of handing this burden, whatever it was, over. Paul could admit now, only to himself, that he wasn't quite the De Gaulle hero he often made out to be, the real thing was beyond all the mock fights and storytelling. He quickened his stride.
In the damp evening and dim light, he didn't make out the tarnished boots until he almost collided into them. Slowly, with great dread, Paul lifted his gaze. As he expected, not one, but two pairs of cold eyes, almost hidden under those metal helmets stared coldly back. The tall one's lip curled slightly, "Vat are you here?" he snarled in a thick guttural accent, eyes glittering, his hand stroking the rifle nestled in his arm. Paul's first instant thought was sharp disgust, as he always felt when he saw them or worse heard them speak. Almost four springs later and they had still failed to master even some of the most elementary aspects of the French language. But this repulsion was swiftly replaced by a pulsing fear. Paul chocked the fastest response to him, "Ich bringe das Brot fuer meine Mutter", the words tumbled out like glass marbles in less of a whisper. Both sides knew he was lying. "Show," the harsh voice commanded again, his caustic voice thick with contempt. Paul froze; weighing his chances, then gradually withdrew the small package from his coat, like a magician unveiling a prize.
Both men's eyes fixed on the parcel, their swastika's glinting in the squalid light. For the first time in Paul's life he prayed fervently, frantically, to his father, the elderly man, sweet Mary, God, someone, anyone to help. The split second passed. It was only then that Paul noticed the two soldiers' scarlet faces, the pungent odour of Parisian biere, and their unfocused glazed glances. Feeling a sudden stream of daring, Paul's fists uncurled, "Sie zu sehen? You see?" He shouted, gesturing at the round package, insisting that it obviously did resemble a baguette. One of the soldiers frowned slightly, unsure and unsteady. The other tall one, seemingly having lost his fury, almost gave a perceptible nod. Paul was bold enough to glower and then suppressing his rumbling anger, edge past the two towards the relief of the river. The scrape of their hobnailed boots against the stone side of the road told Paul they were fast disappearing into the foggy night.
No longer was Paul solitary. His father and mother, his lost friends from the lycee, De Gaulle, God, everyone was willing him. He mustn't stop now. The sky was no longer black poison, but a blanket shielding him from others. "Ne vous inquietez pas, do not worry" he whispered to the city of Paris.
A few minutes later, under the eaves of the bridge, each man whispered the resistance code word and the package was carefully, caringly handed over. The lined, sweaty face deep with exhaustion, beamed, leaned over and patted the gangly teenager. The warm strength of the gesture was reassuring as indeed were the whispered words, "It will soon be over my boy, thanks to you."
Neither dared to say more, and as quickly as he had appeared, that kindly face which Paul was sure he had recognised, smoothly evaporated. Footsteps echoing, Paul turned; he had now truly done his duty. "Ne vous inquietez pas," he murmured, stopping and staring at the Cherry trees along the banks of the Seine. Their beautiful pink blossom had just begun to show, the very first signs of spring. It would soon be over.
