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Winner: Beatrix Locke
Beatrix says: “I was so delighted to hear I'd won. As a Suffolk-born writer, it means a lot to be recognised by a local competition and feel part of its literary culture. The Front Back Door came out of long wrestling with the prompt; I was determined to try something different with it so it's gratifying to hear the story has been rewarded on this merit. All my thanks!”
Emma Shercliff, literary agent and judge of the adult category said: “I loved this piece; it was a real stand-out for me. This is a very self-assured piece of writing; the author achieves the tricky feat of keeping the reader interested without revealing too much, and I found the narrative voice very compelling. The pacing is excellent - we are launched headfirst into the story, with no preamble, which makes this an engaging read from the outset. I was impressed that the author was able to introduce complex themes of loss, grief and familial responsibility into such a short piece, with each member of the family dealing with bereavement in their own way. This was perhaps the most imaginative and creative response to the prompt, with the front door being used both as an intriguing, tangible object, and to symbolise protection and loss. I would love to see more writing from this author!”
The Front Back Door
by Beatrix Locke
On Saturday afternoon, my older brother Jacko removed each of the screws. One by one, and took the front door off its hinges. The raw threshold exposed us to the street and Mum said that wouldn’t do at all. So, Jacko did the same to the back door and put that one up in its place, closing us off again.
We lived in a terrace with a rectangular back garden: four-sides fenced and neighboured. The pre-fab extension – grown back and outwards of the house – blocked off the side gate. Even I couldn’t get in that way. Jacko called me ‘Scrambler’ after he found me on the roof of the lean-to; I was coaxing a stray cat, with wiry orange stripes and green eyes, like the tiger in my atlas.
For a while we left the back doorway open, overlooking the narrow patio that stepped down into the long grass. Almost like the veranda of a safari lodge, whispering with a shredded fly screen in savanna heat. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d curl up in the dog bed and keep watch through the empty doorframe. A gamekeeper on the lookout for wild animals.
From there, I could see the front door where Jacko had left it. Flat in the grass, scarred side down. A black shape at night, it was my watering hole, where I’d watch for creatures emerging from the overgrown lawn. Daytime, when light distinguished the panelling and handle, I thought it looked like a doorway underground. Perhaps a lost network of war rooms, or a tunnel out of town. I never went into the garden to try it, walking the adventure in my mind. When Jacko finally moved it, there was only yellow, flattened grass underneath.
He took it into the shed for firewood. Chopped short-ways and split down the grain for kindling. Some of the wood near the bottom was scorched through. I saw how Jacko crumbled off the charcoal bits before he put the sticks in the hearth bucket.
When it was still the front door, the outside was painted red. I could see it coming along the street on my way home from school: pursed lips in the symmetrical face. Our dad had painted it when they moved in as newlyweds, because it was his new wife’s favourite colour. Red like her wind-flushed cheeks, or the pansies that self-seeded the window boxes of her mother’s house. Like her kiss.
Not like the cherry-red glow of coals, or the heart of a target. Not then.
I heard her tell Jacko that she never wanted to see him walk with a limp. I thought it was an odd thing to say. Jacko was lithe and dark at eighteen, covertly strong in his narrow, tapered limbs and geometrically straight shoulders. He was capable and sure-footed. He wasn’t like Connor Daly across the way, who’d had that accident at the football club and smashed in both his knees.
Jacko told me that Mum said odd things because she was sad about Dad. She had taken to referring to herself as Mrs Detective Sergeant Aswas Asis. Darkly muttering while she watched out of the window. I’d never met Aswas Asis and wondered why Mum had taken his name. I asked Jacko if she was still married.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Now she’s a widow.’ Like the spiders I’d read about; Jacko said yes. Solitary and self-preserving. Who loved us just the same, just not herself anymore.
But it was nothing I should worry about because he would protect me. ‘You watch the back garden,’ he’d say when we played safari. ‘I’ll watch the front.’ My brother in arms.
I thought he gave me the more exciting territory. Volleys of swifts overhead and crackling with insects: my frontier was overgrown, untouched wilderness.
I’d also read about wildfires in my atlas. Uncontrolled flames, spread by the wind through areas of vegetation or wood. Naturally caused in the hottest part of the day. Ignition during the night, except for a lightning strike, usually indicated unnatural causes. Human interference.
I’d hear them when I was awake in bed, too hot to sleep. Balmy through the summer because we kept our windows shut. A moving, murmuring, growling pack. Voices distorted through the glass. When I went downstairs, it was always quiet through the back doorway. Only the whispering fly screen. My peaceful savanna.
One night, Jacko came down too. I was already in the dog bed; I’d told him I slept there sometimes. He was dressed, dark like his hair so his agile body looked bigger, absorbing the gloom. He stood in the hall and put a serious finger to his lips. Then, he went through the front back door, onto the street, and shut it behind him.
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