If you were bored – and Hampson soon was – you could go up on to West Hill and stare out towards France. One lunchtime he went into the English Channel, a pub about a hundred yards back from the clifftop, and Beatrice was sitting there at the back. He bought a drink and went over. He asked if she minded him joining her, she asked him why she should mind. Unable to disentangle anything from that, he said:
“This is a weird place.”
“It’s a town of the dead,” she said.
“I meant the pub,” Hampson said.
This is a short extract from M. John Harrison’s brand new short story, ‘Getting Out of There’, just published as a standalone chapbook by Nightjar Press. It’s a limited edition – just 200 signed and numbered copies – so I’d advise you to get in there quick or they’ll all be gone.
It’s difficult to describe the effect this story had on me. It’s not just that the setting feels familiar – very familiar – it’s the sense that this character, Hampson, could so easily be Mick from Signs of Life, twenty years older and still trying to come to an accomodation with himself.
The story has a happy ending of sorts. All the time I was reading the second half I kept thinking of the ‘remembered Earth’ sections from Tarkovsky’s Solaris.
As a reader and as a writer, this story made me weep. It is immaculate.
‘Getting Out of There’ will keep you going until the – tentatively promised and eagerly awaited – publication of MJH’s next collection.
It will be the best £3.50 you ever spend.
cover photograph by Conrad Williams