Recently I wrote a short
story about revenge. It was one of those pieces where I tried to cram too many
ideas and influences into 3000 words, so it probably won’t get published (in
which case, you’ll see it on here some day!) The starting-point was a Walter
Scott quote which can be found in the railway station named after his writing.
Scott uses ‘sweetest’ here
with bitter irony: revenge is hurtful, dangerous and damaging. When meted out
on someone with an already broken life, the effect can be devastating. My
short-story began as a curious tale about yarn-bombing. The walking-statue of
Robert Fergusson was decorated a few years ago (so this part of the story is
true) with a pair of woolly leg-warmers. In my piece, the guerrilla-knitting continued
in a more sinister vein, as an ex-lover used yarn-bombs, street-graffiti and
finally, photographic means to defame the person who had – so the story claimed
– done her no wrong.
The final influence for my
writing was a form of revenge that I, in my naïveté, wasn’t even aware was a ‘thing.’
There is a video on this which I urge you click on here before you read on. https://embed.theguardian.com/embed/video/commentisfree/video/2015/jan/21/naked-pictures-this-is-what-i-did-revenge-porn-emma-holten-video
Scoring revenge-points
when love goes wrong is a cheap nasty thing to do, especially when that lover
has done nothing unpleasant to you. That’s assuming there was any love there in
the first place. If all a person wants from a relationship is sex, then love is
disenfranchised from the start. And anyone who preys on another person in this
way is pretty low.
Posting this on February
14th may seem churlish, but I want to pick up on one thing from the
video. 10% of this sort of revenge mentioned is carried out on men. That’s a significant
proportion. I don’t want to bang on about victim culture here, but it seems
that we can all be vulnerable from time to time, and must defend ourselves from
unscrupulous people.
This month’s Cautionary
Tale (again, not exactly celebrating St Valentine) is about someone who, through
trying to be gregarious, chatty, and friendly puts herself in danger. When a
person demonstrates good nature, whether they are a woman, a man, or a mouse,
no-one has the right to take advantage of them. My mother used to say, “Two
wrongs don’t make a right.” To avenge someone who has done nothing wrong to you
makes you less than wrong. It makes you amoral.
I’ll end with a more
pleasant conclusion. Last week, a different sort of yarn-bomb adorned the Robert
Fergusson statue. It was not just a scarf, but an anonymous act of altruism, enough to melt anyone’s heart. Next month’s story is another Tale of back-fired
benevolence, but one that I hope has a happier ending. But here, while I’m
being utterly un-romantic, is this month’s amoral misery.
from
Charlotte & The Charlatan
– and other
cautionary tales
Deborah Dangermouse
Deborah Dangermouse, Dangermouse Debbie, was hell-bent
on putting herself at risk. She’d court conversations with total strangers,
stickily stirring up situations like a wooden spoon beats up a chocolate-cake
mix; whipping up turbulent salutations like egg-white puffed up with a whisk.
Dangermouse
Debbie cared little for safety, and less for her health; she’d strike up a
sentence in mid-conversation, having seemingly picked out her victim by
stealth. Bashful and meek, she’d be walking alongside the man in the street,
then suddenly pipe up: her little voice giving her co-pedestrian minimal
choice. An instinct to overcome reticence, she did this with alarming lack of
defence: one minute, quiet-as-a-mouse, not a squeak, then mid-sentence they’d
find themselves haplessly having to speak.
Debbie
did nothing through malice or evil intent; her innocent banter came out of a
simple desire to be friendly. Fed up with spending too long in the house,
cooped up like a chicken, a hermit holed up in a cave, starved of company; a
church mouse without any family; a domestic rodent without a cat, all Deborah
Dangermouse craved was the chance of an innocent chat.
Where
was the danger in that?
In
the pub, in a queue, in the street or a park: wherever everyday people meet and
engage she’d hover and pluck subjects out of thin air: Dangermouse Deborah just
didn’t care. For Deborah, danger was so little bother and not a concern, she’d
prattle in full-flowing waffle before her poor victim knew what they’d let
themselves in for.
At
the bus-stop: The 34’s always late – I got stood up once, on a date – do you
know how they work out the timetables – and she was off, full-pelt, non-stop.
Woe-betide the passenger who got on the bus with Deborah: the assailed was
pinned down to a lengthy, unwanted discussion until he or she reached her stop.
In
the disco: This is my favourite tune – last night was a full moon – did you
know there are seventeen moves that are grooved by your average dancer – and
before they had the chance to shimmy away or turn their back, Debbie would get
them to listen to her full repertoire of fascinating chat.
In
the bar, she’d sidle unsuspected up to middle-aged men who were more selective
about who they drank with. ‘I’m Mouse,’ she’d announce, ‘But you’ll probably
call me some other name.’ (She got “Mouse” from a worrying mother, who
protected her strictly from dangers, warning of single-men, weirdoes and
strangers.) All the same, within seconds, Debbie was up to her tricks.
She’d
been accosting unsuspecting folk ever since she was six; by twelve she knew she
had greater allure, and by 24 she had plenty in store for the gibbering drunk
or colossal pub bore. Her loosening tongue and her loquacious banter created a
thirst, for which one opportunist (he won’t be the first) provided a goal for
her ultimate danger.
Oh,
Dangermouse Deborah, didn’t you think to look closer at what that man put in
your drink?
