Writing tips 2: the end

A good end is as important as a good beginning, and nearly as important as a great middle. And surprisingly unusual. A perfectly ended story remains in your mind forever, its faintly astringent taste lingering on the tongue.
The most famous, and one of the best, is the end of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Our antihero, Jay Gatsby, has spent his misspent life one one ambition: getting to the point where he can be the husband of adorable young socialite Daisy Buchanan (née Fay; good thing boys don't take their wives' names or he might have become Jay Fay).
At the end Fitzgerald has his narrator, the slightly louche but perfectly socially placed Nick Carraway, standing on the edge of the sea, looking out across the bay at the house once lived in by Daisy and her horrid husband - the house Gatsby gazed longingly at every night.
And Fitzgerald does a wonderful thing: he encapsulates his story, but more, he encapsulates all of fiction, every story, because what are stories about but seeking the future in the past:

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Fitzgerald has done a fabulous thing: he has made a philosophical statement, and it's a world-changer, but it's also not the 'moral' of his story - Fitzgerald would not be so cheap or so ill-mannered as to offer the reader who has done him the honour of entering his story a moral.

Not so with the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitisyn, whose story Matryona's Place is a wonder and a jewel - until its last two lines. He manages to take a lovely, delicate story and turn it into a finger-wagging lesson, undoing all the subtle, gorgeous storytelling of the previous 38 pages and leaving the reader going "Bleaghhhh!"
In Matryona's Place, our narrator arrives home, and goes to the Personnel Office to ask for a job in some remote village where they need a mathematics teacher. He's sent to one place, but it's not of-the-soil enough for him - they buy their food and drag it home in sacks. So he goes back to Personnel, and describes what he wants, and they send him to the village called Peatproduce.
Here, the only person who can put him up is the aged Matryona. Her wooden house is lovingly described - its traditional Russian stove, her beloved fig plants set all around the windows, the mice, and the five layers of thick ribbed wallpaper stuck together and standing out from the wall that the mice run behind; the lame cat that pursues them; the miserable goat.
It becomes gradually clear that the teacher has returned from a prison camp. He and Matryona live happily together. She's hard-working - apart from her daily work, every day she has some special job, like collecting a load of turf semi-illegally, making pickles, collecting mushrooms in the forest.
At the time the teacher goes to live with her, Matryona is spending a lot of time going from office to office trying to get a pension. Her husband disappeared in the war; she always worked on the collective farm, but apparently not on "productive work", so she's not entitled to any pension for herself, but only as her husband's widow.
Meanwhile, all the neighbours call on her all the time for work - harnessed in the five-woman plough, collecting turf, digging, etc.
Eventually, Matryona is dragged into an unwise enterprise by her brother-in-law - the man she really should have married, and a thoroughly bad lot, spoiled by disappointment in love. She is horribly killed by a train, and her mangled body is brought home. Her body is prepared, the relatives quarrelling over who will get the house.

Everything she said about Matryona was disapproving: she was dirty, she was a bad housekeeper, she wasn't thrifty, she wouldn't even keep a pig because she didn't like the idea of fattening up a beast to kill it, and she was stupid enough to work for other people without pay...

Solzhenitsyn beautifully writes:

Only then, listening to the disapproving comments of her sister-in-law, did I see an image of Matryona which I had never perceived before, even while living under her roof.
It was true - every other cottage had its pig, yet she had none. What could be easier than to fatten up a greedy pig whose sole object in life was food? Boil it a bucketful of swill three times a day, make it the centre of one's existence, then slaughter it for lard and bacon. Yet Matryona never wanted one...
Misunderstood and rejected by her husband, a stranger to her own family despite her happy, amiable temperament, comical, so foolish that she worked for others for no reward, this woman, who had buried all her six children, had stored up no earthly goods. Nothing but a dirty white goat, a lame cat and a row of fig plants.

It's the perfect ending. But then Solzhenitisyn loses it. He can't trust the reader to get the point; he takes it out and slaps it down on the table like a side of fish:

None of us who lived close to her perceived that she was that one righteous person without whom, as the saying goes, no city can stand.
Nor the world.

Elsewhen

This is the first story in my collection Love. When I wrote it years ago, it was a playful homage to the mediaeval love stories based on the model brought back from the Middle East. I never knew it would prove so prophetic.

ELSEWHEN, the sky darkened over Fatima Mansions. Friday night, the call of a muezzin mixed with the Angelus bell and the handbrake turns of a stolen BMW. Joy spoke from the concreted yards.

The Omurchu caravan was coming into town, the camels tired and cranky as they trudged down Christ Church Hill. Tomáisín saw a door open, glimpsed in the blue paraffin light a family saying the Rosary, detailed as a Mansur miniature: grandmother, wives, daughters, faces lifted to the statue of the Virgin. 

The door closed, Tomáisín and the lead camel swinging forward to guide the line of beasts through the evening traffic jam.

A Guard held up his white-gloved hand as the Angelus rang, sounding its eighteen notes from the cathedral high behind them, the notes echoed and tolled by mosques here and there in the city. 

The traffic drew to a halt, drivers bowing their heads as the bell-notes struck on car radios. A one-handed man begging for a cigarette stopped with his mark, both faced east.

As the notes faded the spell of stillness fell away. Tomáisín's camel was bitten and lashed back. The ex-thief's cigarette was lit, the prosperous mark cupping the flame of the petrol lighter. The Guard repossessed his anger, stormed over, saw Tomáisín's Omurchu features -

"Is it yourself, Mr O. Go on ahead, so."

Tomáisín steered the camel train around, into the square, kicked up a leg and slid from the camel he rode. "Hang on a tick, I just want to check the bookings," he said to his overseer, Pangur. Pangur led the string of beasts in and parked them by the wall.

 As Tomáisín called the hotel, the Perspex door of the kiosk framed a picture, another picture for Tomáisín. Two women with buckets of disinfectant and floppy mops washed blood from the cobbles. A tipper truck full of boulders backed into position, directed by a porter from the bank. By the fountain an old lady stood, her eyes above her veil fixed on the barred truck from Mountjoy Gaol.

Tomáisín felt a shudder run down his back at this ordinary scene. He turned away.

The booking cleared, he remounted and led the caravan along the one-way system and across the bridge to Capel Street market. 

"You go on, Tom," said Pangur in his high voice, "I can clear up here." His broad Welsh face turned, checking the loads against the bills he held. 

"Are you sure?

"Sure, why not. I'll settle the lads in their hotels and join you after. Get this lot stabled. Go on and have a few pints."

Tomáisín Omurchu walked away, the sound of his shoes sharp, echoing through the streets following the dying echo of the bells back across the city, into the valley where Fatima Mansions rises, and where Ayishe is waking from her sleep.

I awake from sleep, the photograph of death, and go immediately to check my image in the mirror. The face is the same: had I expected it to change? I put on my grandmother's chador, consider, does it look as well with my red hair as it did with hers? My eyes stare back, Celtic grey, Moorish downward slant. Their expression does not reflect my thoughts. The stranger in the mirror is there again. "Ayishe, come to serve the food," calls my co-wife, and I go. Is the pictured person the mirror shows me a representation of creation?

I look out from the top flat, looking over at Christ Church and the river. My husband, like my family, is a thief, a super thief as he boasts, and an elderly one who has never lost so much as a finger. He sends me to work for him, setting up the men. 

We sit and watch television. First an American programme, guns and heroics, then a veiled Irish newsreader, her eyes furtive. We are laughing at the news when the call comes: I am sent over to the hotel by Capel Street Market. 

Tomáisín turned on the television. A newsreader. Little news. Stock market report: Omurchu up 4. 

"Can I get you anything, sir?"

Plausible face, blank, serviceable. "A pipe? Newspapers?" The face watched him. "A woman?"

"Why not?"

"Any preference, sir?"

"Not really. Clean."

So in she came and turned on the bath. "I want the tap end, mind."

"Hey — you're supposed to pamper me, make me feel like a master, not squabble over the bath."

"Oh yeah? And risk my life too?"

I climb out of my shalwar and dress and shake off pants and vest, sit on the edge of the bath and put the toes of one foot into the steamy water.

"Is it very bad at the moment?"

"You have to be joking. The Legion of Mary are everywhere, handing out immaculate medals and brown scapulars. Again you get a pint in your hand it's whup out and you're handed a Pioneer total abstinence pin. Girls being stoned to death wholesale in Dame Street. Bad? Are y'in earnest?"

She was in the bath, blue lights showing in her red hair as she fanned it behind her, careful to keep it out of the water. One strand escaped and he lifted it clear, wrung it out like a washerwoman.

"So what do you want me to do? Tell you stories?"

"Stories?"

"Some men like that." His skin is smooth, dark and gold. His wrists are full of grace, widening to where the muscles run under the sleeves of his T-shirt. "Diarmuid and Gráinne. That's a racy one." My voice doesn't break but it roughens. What is this?

Tomáisín sat on the edge of the bath and looked at the woman. The rich flesh of her belly appeared and disappeared shyly as the water moved. Her nipples were small, unusually so. He could have covered them with a finger, a forefinger pressing each button. Her lips pressed out, a warm rose. 

I take the soap and begin to lather myself. I can feel my heart beat, even with my fingertips. Is he going to get on with it? In the way of business they sometimes need encouraging. Why is my heart beating so. I must have a fever coming on. Have I frightened him with all that old chat about executions? Of course he could buy himself out, no bother, but sometimes it's the rich fellows who are the most cautious.

"Did you come far, today?"

"Mullingar."

Is he not getting in the bath, or what?

"You must have been fairly shifting."

"The old camels can cover the ground, all right."

She kicked out the plug, wrapped herself in a yellow towel and sat on the edge of the bath, steaming, the steam rising gently into a cloud around her. Abruptly she dropped to her knees and caught his foot as he tapped it.

"Shoe the little horse,

 "Shoe the little mare,

 "But let the little colt go

 "Bare, bare, bare." 

She looked up at him, her lip caught between her teeth as she smiled. "What age are you?" She stood and walked to the bed, the towel falling until it trailed from one shoulder and she was a collection of shadows: her shoulder blades, her neck, her waist, the hollow which put a stop to the line from back to bottom. "Turn up the light." Her voice trembled.

He turns to the globe, but instead of pumping the pressure up he opens the valve and with a brief hiss the light turns from blue to yellow and shadows shoot up the wall as the light fades. 

"What's your name," he whispers, and when I tell him, he whispers, "Ayishe."

He crosses his hands and strips up the black T-shirt, falls beside me.

They lie together. Downstairs the porter is calling the Guards. Yes! He is a member of the Pádraig Pearse Youth. 

I look at him, Tomáisín. His eyes are very black, big and glossy. We have finished making love, he licks my lip with the tip of his tongue and my mouth floods with fresh water. 

"Love," he whispers, "Oh, love."

"Oh love," I whisper, "where did I find you?"

"Sweet one, I'm here."

Yes, they have found each other, and they lie together, these two strangers, his tears running into her eyes and her fingers holding the soft hair beside his ear.

When the knocking comes on the door I am safe in his arms.

"Open up. Open up. I am a Garda." The door shakes as the men kick it and hit it.

How sweet his kisses are.

Money

Money as the only value seems to be coming into its own. Every time it's suggested that terrified people in mortgage arrears should get help, some little fuck is going to start whinging "But what about me, I paid four hundred grand for this shoebox. I was thrifty. I didn't spend. Why should they be helped?"
Every time some new law or treaty or decision is mooted, every time people look at a work of art, it's "But how much will it cost?"
Kids, it's not all about money. There are other values that are more valuable, more vital, more immortal, more decent.
Money's important, but it's not the thing we should be looking to to decide our moral decisions.
Which thought comes to me from a selfish place; I've been wandering around the gaff distributing flyers for an ebook of short stories I've published on Amazon and iTunes.
To my surprise, Dublin's more elegant areas are giving up the old Irish custom of having boards in shops and cafes where local theatrical groups and plumbers and dog-walkers could bestrew their flyers and cards and leaflets. Probably doesn't bring in any business.
Even the supermarkets, where you used to be able to snaffle up an ad for guitar lessons or Swedish massage as you stood in the queue, have banished the leaflet board to some lonely pillar.
One comfort: if you do find a cafe with flyers and leaflets, it's going to be an arty place where other writers and painters hang out, gazing thoughtfully at their notebooks as they sickle off an Americano and a slice of lemon drizzle cake.
Hope is not lost, though, even in the non-arts-cafe life; there are still places that will kindly take a flyer and post it up; my heartfelt thanks to Laser DVDs and Books Upstairs and Grogan's and Accent cafe, and the many other places who have stuck a flyer up to lure those eager to read surreal stories that will haunt your dreams and nightmares through the years.

Who's Gatsby?

Jay Gatsby - mystery man, surrounded by wild Roaring Twenties party animals who arrive in lines of expensive cars to gatecrash the lavish bashes at his seaside mansion near New York - was almost certainly based on bootlegger and former Great War hero Max Von Gerlach, an acquaintance of F Scott Fitzgerald's. Gatsby's adored love, Daisy Buchanan, was based on Ginevra King, a beautiful but rather empty Illinois teenager the young Fitzgerald (above) fell for with a big bang during the Christmas of 1914.
Gatsby is a composite, as are all Fitzgerald's characters, and there's a certain amount of Scottie himself in Jay - the outsider desperate to be an insider, the naif who thinks he's a sophisticate. His profession is a whispered-about mystery throughout the book - is he a bootlegger, involved with the Mob or the Jewish gangs, as suggested by his mentor who reveals to the seedy narrator Nick Carraway that Gatsby has 'gonnections'?
Gerlach was a reputed bootlegger, one of the roiling mass of friends and semi-friends surrounding the Fitzgeralds in the grande monde and demi-monde of 1920s American high society and its outreaches in Paris and the South of France. He was rumoured to be a bootlegger, and a surviving note from him in July 1923 survives in the Fitzgeralds' scrapbook: "En route from the coast - Here for a few days on business - How are you and the family, old sport? Gerlach" - 'old sport' is Gatsby's great catchphrase.
Gerlach, it is said, was a mechanic when he went to war, and a society man when he came back. Things went wrong for him and he shot himself in the head; it was this that blinded him; in the 1950s, he was blind and living permanently in pyjamas in a New York hotel.
All this has been discovered by Charleston, South Carolina detective Howard Comen, who has been years on Gerlach's trail.
Another plausible candidate for at least part of Gatsby's personality is the Fitzgeralds' actual next-door neighbour in Great Neck, Long Island in 1922 and 1923, the stockbroker Edward Fuller. Damon Runyon's joking use of 'broker' for someone who's broke is accurate for Fuller, who declared himself bankrupt owing $6 million - imagine that in today's money. Fuller was buddied up with the racketeer Arnold Rothstein, the model for the sinister yet fatherly Meyer Wolfsheim who takes Gatsby under his wing in the novel.
In one turning point in the novel, Gatsby talks to Carraway, reveals his love for Daisy, and his belief that they are a fated couple, he can win her from her thuggish ex-football-star husband. But Carraway himself is no clean-cut hero; when we meet him he is trying to slither out of a commitment to one woman to pursue - or rather, be pursued by - another, the equally slithery golfer Jordan Baker.
In a writhingly embarrassing confession, Gatsby tells the sneery yet somehow human Carraway about himself: he's from 'the Midwest' (from San Francisco! - to Americans, the 'Midwest' is actually the central northern states of their union), he has attended Oxford (transparently untrue), he has been a hero in the war, his heroism recognised by many nations, 'even Montenegro - little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!' - and he produces a medal, engraved on the back. The war heroism, it seems, is true; not that it helps poor Gatsby's future. He confesses his love, and asks Carraway to help him win Daisy - bring them together.
No better man. Carraway is soon involved in a louche facilitation. Daisy is immediately taken with the new Gatsby, adoringly watching him tumble his priceless couture shirts - symbols of the wealth he thinks will win her - through the sparkling air of his hard-won mansion.
Carraway, always the hurler on the ditch, watches the courtship, and also observes Daisy's husband Tom's brutal courtship of a working-class woman, another imprisoned wife, who believes Tom is about to leave Daisy for her, even as he breaks her nose with one swift gesture after she mocks Daisy's name.
The end comes with a crack when Tom realises, to his utter astonishment, that Daisy is in love with Gatsby. I'll leave off the spoiler, for those who are still reading.
And Gatsby's profession? In the end, it turns out to be the ultimate symbol of the Roaring Twenties before the crash, and of Celtic Tiger Ireland for that matter: he's running fiddles with bonds. Carraway, too, is in the bond business, so when he picks up the phone in Gatsby's deserted castle in the end and hears: "Young Parke's in trouble... they picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns -- " - when he hears that, Carraway knows what the story is.
In the end, despite grubbying his life for the love of the worthless, disloyal Daisy, Gatsby is a true knight, chevalier sans peur et sans reproche.
The seediness, the mistresses, the tearing-away of the glamour that shone from the high life of the Twenties, meant that the book would sink like a stone on publication, only to be recognised years later for the masterpiece it was. Only Fitzgerald could take a wealthy young crim and make a true hero of him.