Kontakte and Other Stories

My short story collection, Kontakte and Other Stories, which was first published in July 2013, has now been republished by Roman Books in a new second edition.

The book is a collection of stories based around the theme of music, in different contexts. There are stories about music and love, music and sex, music and illness and, particularly, music and its tremendous and sometimes terrifying power. Each story centres on a piece of music, exploring the subject thematically, stylistically and structurally.

The collection has been shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Fiction Anthology, and longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.

You can read a version of the preface to the collection on Thresholds International Short Story Forum.

And you can read one of the stories from the collection below.

Hope you enjoy it! Thanks, Jonathan Taylor

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Tonight’s Concert Will Commence in Fifteen Minutes

 

But she remains sitting.

 

She remains sitting in the bar area.

 

She remains sitting in the bar area of the Victoria Hall, Hanley, sipping her usual.

 

She remains sitting in the bar area of the Victoria Hall, sipping her usual, waiting for Charlie.

 

She remains sitting in the bar area of the Victoria Hall, sipping her usual, waiting for Charlie and Tchaikovsky.

 

She knows what has happened.

 

She knows what has happened to Charlie’s wife.

 

She knows what has happened to Charlie’s wife, since their last concert, a month ago.

 

She knows what has happened to Charlie’s wife, since their last concert, a month ago – the cancer, the funeral, the notices in The Evening Sentinel.

 

Despite that, she knows he will come through that door in a minute or two.

 

She knows he will come through that door in a minute or two, kiss her hand, take her arm and lead her through Door B to the stalls.

 

She knows he will come through that door in a minute or two, kiss her hand, take her arm and lead her through Door B to the stalls, as he has done for the last nineteen years. After nineteen years, she no longer needs him – and he probably no longer dares – to call in advance, to arrange their meetings. All she needs do, every September, is just get hold of the Victoria Hall’s calendar for the season, and pencil all the Tchaikovsky concerts into her diary – because she knows that, on those evenings, he will come through that door, kiss her hand, feign surprise at their accidental meeting, and lead her through Door B to the stalls.

 

Or at least, she used to know that, used to be sure.

 

But this particular evening she also dreads something else.

 

She also dreads that he will come through the door … differently.

 

She dreads that he will stride through the door differently, with a new mac, a bunch of chrysanths, a new kind of assurance.

 

She dreads that he will come through the door differently, with a new mac, a bunch of chrysanths, a new kind of assurance, and sit next to her and say: “Now she’s gone, let’s not do the concert this time. Now she’s gone, let’s change nineteen years of habit. Now she’s gone, let’s talk, sit, walk, kiss, go on holiday, get married, all to the music of Tchaikovsky. I loved her, but she’s gone. Now I can love you instead. I’ve known you for nineteen years. Nineteen long years.”

 

And after nineteen long years, she’ll have to tell him.

 

After nineteen years, she’ll have to tell him that, for her, it’s still a business arrangement. Still a matter of £60. Nothing more nor less. Honestly, nothing else at all, whatsoever, in the slightest, even after nineteen years. The music was neither here nor there, even after nineteen years.

 

Even after nineteen years.

 

Nineteen years – two more years than he was married to her.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s concert will commence in ten minutes.

 

He was lonely.

 

He was lonely back then.

 

He was lonely back then, and he’d found her classified ad and dialled the number.

 

He was lonely back then, and he’d found her classified ad and dialled the number: “Do you like Tchaikovsky?” he’d asked.

 

It was an unsual pick-up line, and she’d been tempted to ask something back like: “What position is that?” or “Is that something the Slavic ones do?”

 

But she hadn’t, had lied instead: “Yes, of course, everyone likes him, great stuff, love it,” and that had been that, for nineteen years. Nineteen years of Tchaikovsky. Nineteen years of deafening Russian brass, self-indulgent emotionalism, tunes which spun round and round her head for days afterwards, didn’t stop even during simulated orgasms with other clients. Nineteen years of waiting for him here, sipping her usual, being led through Door B to the stalls, sitting on bum-achingly-hard chairs, pretending not to be bored or near sleep, now and then squeezing his knee, now and then catching his eye moving down her blouse, or up her thigh towards a strategically-exposed stocking-top, now and then glancing at him when he wasn’t looking, when he was engrossed in some particularly intense fortissimo moment – at his side-combed hair, his dandruff, his bony shoulders – and thinking, for that moment, the music had done something to his eyes, made them seem too droopy-heavy for his face, or somehow too heavy for her, and she’d look away again, thinking instead of the £20, £30, £40 or £50, depending on inflation, which she would get at the end of the night, and which would pay for something she thought she needed.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight’s concert will commence in five minutes. Please take your seats.

 

She’d thought all this would finish when he met her.

 

She’d thought it would finish when he met her, when he married her.

 

She’d thought it would finish when he met her, when he married her, when she started the new accounts job,when she got married herself, didn’t have a kid, then got divorced, when gradually, one by one, her old regulars – all of whom preferred, shall we say, non-Tchaikovskyian services – stopped calling.

 

“You don’t need me any more,” she’d said to him, one 1812 evening. “Why don’t you bring her instead?”

 

“She doesn’t like Tchaikovsky. She likes Michael Barrymore.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“She thinks I come on my own. Or I think she thinks that.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“No-one here knows either my wife or me, well, apart from you. I think.”

 

“Oh.”

 

And so it carried on.

 

And so the concerti, the overtures, the ballet excerpts, the eardrum-thumping symphonies carried on.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight’s concert is about to begin. Please take your seats.

 

And so the concerti, the overtures, the ballet excerpts, the symphonies carried on, till now.

 

But now he is not here.

 

She glances over at the upside-down programme clutched by a couple rushing past her, reading the words right to left: ynohpmyS euqitéhtaP, yksvokiahcT. She doesn’t need to reverse the words. She knows already she’s in the right place at the right time.

 

But he is not.

 

He is not here.

 

He is not here, and there is quiet around her.

 

He is not here, and there is quiet around her, a hush in the concert hall.

 

He is not here, and there is quiet around her, a hush in the concert hall, followed by applause for leader and conductor.

 

He is not here, and there is quiet around her, a hush in the concert hall, followed by applause for leader and conductor – and then, Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, his favourite, is creeping, on pianissimo bassoon, through the half-open door to the stalls opposite.

 

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, his favourite, is coming, on pianissimo bassoon, through the half-open door to the stalls opposite: first movement, Allegro non troppo, then second movement, Allegro con grazia, then Allegro molto vivace, and finally

 

and finally, sitting alone with her empty glass, only the Adagio lamentoso filling it, she thinks of Charlie’s side-combed hair, his dandruff, his bony shoulders

 

and finally, sitting alone with her empty glass and only the Adagio lamentoso filling it, she thinks about what this music, which she has heard so many times before, but never really heard, seemed to do to his eyes, making them too droopy-heavy for his face, making them too heavy for her, making her look away.

 

Or, at least, until now.

 

At least until now, when she no longer wants to look away.

 

At least until now, as the gong, the bassoon, the final B-minor chords make even her ageing eyes feel too droopy-heavy for this world and

 

and she pushes her glass away

 

and leaves before the applause.