Liars' League

My favourite story: Brindley Hallam Dennis on A. E. Coppard's "Weep Not, My Wanton"

This little gem, by the overlooked English tale-meister, A.E. Coppard, can be found at the link below, on the excellent openlibrary.org from Toronto: http://archive.org/stream/adamevepinchmeta00coppuoft#page/42/mode/2up

The story is short, very short, and tightly focused. With that delightful quality of a type of short story, nothing much happens. An English family of rural labourers, father, son, mother, and baby daughter, walk over a hill. The father, 'slightly drunk', berates 'his little son' for losing a sixpence. I don't want to spoil it by saying much more, but if you have ever heard someone being relentlessly, repeatedly berated by someone whom they cannot answer back, you will appreciate the awful, sustained oppression in this tale.

In Tempore Vacuo by Gordon Collins

May 12 In Tempore Vacuo

Read by Greg Page

“The pocket watch in the window. Is it a Ballian?” I asked.
“Indeed, sir, a Ballian.”
 “How old?”
“Twelve years.”
“And its provenance?”
“From a master, sir.”
“May I examine the piece?”
He took the watch from the shop window and passed it to me. It was clear a master had finished it, for the brass was rendered with delicacy and the glass had a curve and quality seen only in the finest lenses. However, I had seen a hundred pieces with such a finish and none of them were a quarter the price of this Ballian.

 

Extract from The Time Travellers' Guide - Ch. 7: Tourism, by Liam Hogan

May 12 Tourism

Read by Carrie Cohen

Having diligently followed the instructions in Chapters 5 and 6, you will now have more money than you know what to do with. One opportunity open to you is temporal tourism: how much better it is to stand shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other spectators and watch the brave gladiators fighting for life and glory, than to traipse around the ruins the Colosseum has become, guided by a man with neither the wit nor the imagination to describe the wonders that once happened there, your senses numb to the heat, the dust, and the excitement?

 

A Time and Place Unknown by Jason Jackson

 May 12 A Time & Place Unknown

Read by Cliff Chapman

She was naked, standing on the flat metal plate in her tiny apartment, and all I could see were her eyes. Caitlin. My closed, dead past. Resurrected, and about to disappear again, forever.

It started with a phone call, like always. My number’s in the freesheets, amongst the whores and the scams. I didn’t recognise the voice as I jotted down her address. She still wasn’t sure, she said. Could I come around tomorrow anyway, talk things through?

Of course, I said. No problem. It wasn’t like I could pick and choose.

 

If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out Lovers' Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other sexy and lovable stories from the League archives, appears.

Heriot by Richard Smyth

May 12 Heriot

Read by Silas Hawkins

I was born at some point in the nineteen-sixties. I’m English, I’m from the north of England. My parents – I’m of unknown parentage. I’m learning, slowly but surely. Everyone here has been very helpful.

‘Do you remember it? Any of it?’ Doctor Wainwright asked me this morning.

I thought hard. I did not remember. I shook my head.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

He smiled.