James Robertson
365
Stories
Contents
JANUARY
1 January
2 January
3 January
4 January
5 January
6 January
7 January
8 January
9 January
10 January
11 January
12 January
13 January
14 January
15 January
16 January
17 January
18 January
19 January
20 January
21 January
22 January
23 January
24 January
25 January
26 January
27 January
28 January
29 January
30 January
31 January
FEBRUARY
1 February
2 February
3 February
4 February
5 February
6 February
7 February
8 February
9 February
10 February
11 February
12 February
13 February
14 February
15 February
16 February
17 February
18 February
19 February
20 February
21 February
22 February
23 February
24 February
25 February
26 February
27 February
28 February
29 February
MARCH
1 March
2 March
3 March
4 March
5 March
6 March
7 March
8 March
9 March
10 March
11 March
12 March
13 March
14 March
15 March
16 March
17 March
18 March
19 March
20 March
21 March
22 March
23 March
24 March
25 March
26 March
27 March
28 March
29 March
30 March
31 March
APRIL
1 April
2 April
3 April
4 April
5 April
6 April
7 April
8 April
9 April
10 April
11 April
12 April
13 April
14 April
15 April
16 April
17 April
18 April
19 April
20 April
21 April
22 April
23 April
24 April
25 April
26 April
27 April
28 April
29 April
30 April
MAY
1 May
2 May
3 May
4 May
5 May
6 May
7 May
8 May
9 May
10 May
11 May
12 May
13 May
14 May
15 May
16 May
17 May
18 May
19 May
20 May
21 May
22 May
23 May
24 May
25 May
26 May
27 May
28 May
29 May
30 May
31 May
JUNE
1 June
2 June
3 June
4 June
5 June
6 June
7 June
8 June
9 June
10 June
11 June
12 June
13 June
14 June
15 June
16 June
17 June
18 June
19 June
20 June
21 June
22 June
23 June
24 June
25 June
26 June
27 June
28 June
29 June
30 June
JULY
1 July
2 July
3 July
4 July
5 July
6 July
7 July
8 July
9 July
10 July
11 July
12 July
13 July
14 July
15 July
16 July
17 July
18 July
19 July
20 July
21 July
22 July
23 July
24 July
25 July
26 July
27 July
28 July
29 July
30 July
31 July
AUGUST
1 August
2 August
3 August
4 August
5 August
6 August
7 August
8 August
9 August
10 August
11 August
12 August
13 August
14 August
15 August
16 August
17 August
18 August
19 August
20 August
21 August
22 August
23 August
24 August
25 August
26 August
27 August
28 August
29 August
30 August
31 August
SEPTEMBER
1 September
2 September
3 September
4 September
5 September
6 September
7 September
8 September
9 September
10 September
11 September
12 September
13 September
14 September
15 September
16 September
17 September
18 September
19 September
20 September
21 September
22 September
23 September
24 September
25 September
26 September
27 September
28 September
29 September
30 September
OCTOBER
1 October
2 October
3 October
4 October
5 October
6 October
7 October
8 October
9 October
10 October
11 October
12 October
13 October
14 October
15 October
16 October
17 October
18 October
19 October
20 October
21 October
22 October
23 October
24 October
25 October
26 October
27 October
28 October
29 October
30 October
31 October
NOVEMBER
1 November
2 November
3 November
4 November
5 November
6 November
7 November
8 November
9 November
10 November
11 November
12 November
13 November
14 November
15 November
16 November
17 November
18 November
19 November
20 November
21 November
22 November
23 November
24 November
25 November
26 November
27 November
28 November
29 November
30 November
DECEMBER
1 December
2 December
3 December
4 December
5 December
6 December
7 December
8 December
9 December
10 December
11 December
12 December
13 December
14 December
15 December
16 December
17 December
18 December
19 December
20 December
21 December
22 December
23 December
24 December
25 December
26 December
27 December
28 December
29 December
30 December
31 December
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365
James Robertson is a poet, short story writer and essayist, as well as an acclaimed novelist. His five novels are The Fanatic, Joseph Knight, The Testament of Gideon Mack, And the Land Lay Still and The Professor of Truth. The Testament of Gideon Mack was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and picked by Richard and Judy’s Book Club. Joseph Knight received both the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award and the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award in 2003–2004. And the Land Lay Still also received the latter award in 2010.
By the same author
The Fanatic
Joseph Knight
The Testament of Gideon Mack
And the Land Lay Still
Republics of the Mind
The Professor of Truth
At the beginning of 2013 I began an experiment. Could I write a short story on each day of the year? The stories would all be exactly the same length: 365 words. By the end of the year, if the experiment was successful, there would be 365 365-word stories.
Despite some anxious moments on days which seemed reluctant to reveal or release their stories, I completed the task. Then, throughout 2014, the stories appeared, one each day, on the website of my publisher, Hamish Hamilton (www.fivedials.com). Now they are collected here in one volume, their third life. I hope they have more lives to come.
James Robertson, 2014
JANUARY
1 January
The Beginning
Before the beginning there was nothing. And nothing came from nothing, since nothing can. But something, somehow, did, and that was the change. Was it a moment or an aeon – and who among us is bold, clever or foolish enough to define the difference? Well, anyway, there was a time when change happened – and that was the change, the first pulse or tick or fractional movement that signified the arrival of time. Chronos. And the how of that change has ever since been the fuel of legend, faith and science, and arguments among them. In the end – which is itself a subject of similar contention – everything is theory and speculation. Priests, shamans, physicists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists and natural historians are as one on this, though they might vigorously deny it: nothing they can offer us is much more than informed guesswork.
Ahead of these pretenders came the mother and father of them all – the chronicler, recorder, teller of tales. One day the mist rose from the ground, and the thought was, What is this? The mountain rose in the sunlight and the thought was, How did it get there? The river ran, birds chatted and sang, animals bellowed and grumbled, and the thought was, What are they saying? And hard behind that one came others. Who am I? Who are we? What is this strange mystery in which we find ourselves?
The night came down – or up – as it had done before, the moon was in the night or it was not, the stars were there or they were hidden, and – something was different. The storyteller saw a pattern and began to trace it. Or there was no pattern, it was just guesswork. And this was the beginning, before which was nothing (and of that ‘before’ nothing was or could be known). This was the beginning, when fire, that had burned dry grass or leaves outside, was brought inside, to a circle of stones, and was fed through the night. And our ancient forebears gathered round and looked at the flames, and held out their hands to the heat, and waited for the dawn.
The beginning was when the storyteller first said, ‘In the beginning …’
2 January
Story
for Jamie Jauncey
What is a story? A writer friend tells me that if he said he went on a train from Perth to Doncaster, changing at Edinburgh, that wouldn’t be a story, but if he said it was only when he got to Doncaster that he realised he’d left his bag in Edinburgh, that would be. Something has to change for it to be a story, my friend the writer said, something has to happen.
A boy goes out to the shop and doesn’t come back.
A boy goes out to the shop and doesn’t come back for seven years.
A boy goes out to the shop and when he comes back seven years later he is a girl.
These are stories, if I am not mistaken.
Here is another.
A boy goes out to the shop for a pint of milk but coming home he turns left instead of right, and walks through the woods. In the woods he finds a strange mound covered in thick, soft, green moss, and he sits down on it, and he falls asleep. And while he sleeps, out from a door in the side of the mound come the fairies, who drag him away to their underground world. They beat him and starve him and make him their slave, and put a spell on him so he forgets who he is. After seven years’ hard labour they let him go, and he wakes on the soft green mound with a confused memory of that terrible time. And the pint of milk is there on the ground beside him.
So he hurries home and in through the door, and in tears he tells his mother and father what happened. How sad and worried they must have been all the years he’s been away. They smile at him. That’s a good story, they say, but you’ve only been gone twenty minutes. And he sees that they are no older than they were when he left, and he looks in the mirror and neither is he. But when his mother opens the milk it is shrunken and solid, like cheese, and – according to the stamp on the carton – seven years out of date.
3 January
At the John Bellany Exhibition
What are these rooms full of ? What are these pictures about? You walk past blood and fish-guts, unspeakable horrors real and imagined, unremitting toil, raw sex, turmoil, violence, and the symbols of a religion that goes beyond sect or creed in its relentless chess-game of life and death. There is something local about this ferocious art. When a Scottish Calvinist goes round the back of the world into darkness he will meet a Scottish Catholic coming the other way. And Hell may be there, but what sign of Heaven, or God?
This art has no peace. Even in the late landscapes of Italy the sky looms over towns and villages, threatening destruction. Through all these rooms you feel you are following a man who still, at seventy, can only wrestle and grapple with life.
> But in one small section you do find tranquillity. Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, 1988. Bellany’s liver has packed in under the abuse he has dealt it. He is admitted for a transplant. The operation, like so much that has happened to him, is a challenge. He comes through it. The new liver takes to him. Regaining consciousness, he cannot yet believe he is alive. He asks for pencil and paper and starts to draw. His hand. Himself. Self-portrait after self-portrait. He draws and paints himself back into life. He stares out at himself, at the place he is in, at life returning. And because he is still weak, at the mercy of tubes and wires and the healing process, there is a kind of peace, a kind of acceptance, and something else – a bright, clean, heavenly light.
You remember these hospital images from when you first saw them, a quarter of a century ago. You were a young man then, and the Bellany you were looking at was in his mid-forties, younger than you are now. But you had thought you were looking at an old man, at the resurrection of an old man. It is a shock to realise how young he was, how much more life he had in him.
And you too. And still have. Here you are today, his paintings and you, on this grey Edinburgh afternoon, alive.
4 January
Cannibal Lassie
The Glack of Newtyle is a long, narrow, twisting defile between the hills of Hatton and Newtyle in Angus. It runs south to north from the high ground of the Sidlaws down to the rich, fertile land of Strathmore. The Glack has always been a place of uncertainty, and sometimes of danger for the unwary. Today, especially on early winter mornings when the sun has not penetrated its gloomy bends to melt black ice, or at night when deer haunt the trees that line its many bends, it catches out drivers who have their minds on something other than the road – the over-confident, the careless or weary. Broken fences and the debris of smashed vehicles in the ditches are testimony to these not infrequent mishaps. But centuries ago, according to legend and chronicle, the Glack harboured perils of a more horrific kind.
A cannibal and his family had their lair nearby, and would lie in wait for travellers making the journey from Dundee northwards. Men, women and children alike were taken and devoured – the younger the victim, it was said, the more tender and sweet did they judge the flesh. At last these depredations could be tolerated no longer, a force was assembled and the ‘brigant’ and his wife and offspring were captured and burned, with the exception of a daughter who was only one year old at the time. She was brought to Dundee and raised and fostered there till she came to womanhood. Then she too was condemned to be burned, though whether for having participated in her family’s crimes as an infant or because she had reoffended is not clear.
A huge crowd, mostly of women, cursed her and spat on her as she was led to the place of execution in the Seagate. The lassie turned on them angrily. ‘Why do you chide me so, as if I had committed some unworthy act?’ she cried. ‘Believe me, if you had experience of eating the flesh of men and women, you would think it so delicious that you would never forbear it again.’