THE WINDING STICK
Elise Valmorbida
Click here for Elise's author page.
A solitary cashier in an all-night garage is haunted by visions of real life and death, but is unable to intervene … until dramatic events force him to venture beyond his limits. He stumbles into hope, love, true insight – and Tamil London, where the hidden stories of others come to light. There’s Kandy (a sex worker and psychology student), The Whistling Woman and, most important of all, the mysterious garage manager Siva. Written with compassion, suspense and verve, The Winding Stick is a story of London’s immigrants: a novel that explores dislocation and delusion, but becomes bright with possibility and love.
Praise for The Winding Stick
'Valmorbida’s enigmatic plot is matched by an equally obscure structure and slick, musical language. The book’s swinging tempo and shifting points of view make for a challenging though worthwhile read.'
Scottish Review of Books
‘Valmorbida tells intriguing stories. Her characters feel real and could be found anywhere in London – but their hidden worlds are as unfamiliar to the protagonist Terry as to most readers. An original and compassionate study of changing social structures, The Winding Stick is well worth reading and enjoying.’ Rajes Bala
'A stark tale of interlocking immigrant stories centred around an all-night garage.' Scott Pack, The Friday Project
'This book is a literary classic in the making and you should read it as soon as you can. More please from Ms Valmorbida.' Vulpes Libris
For the full review, click here.
Praise for Elise Valmorbida
‘There have been countless books on the migrant experience, but few recall this rite of passage with such wit and daring’
Sunday Herald Sun and Sunday Telegraph, Australia
‘Valmorbida writes with energy and challenges the conventionality of what language can achieve … engaging, often funny, sometimes poignant’ Canberra Times
‘In The Book of Happy Endings, Elise Valmorbida achieves something rare and precious, and she writes like an angel.’
John Madden, director of Shakespeare in Love
‘Intelligent and life-affirming… This is a book that patrons will browse and be compelled to check out. Recommended for most public libraries.’
Library Journal, USA
‘Valmorbida brings her gift for elegant language to this collection of narratives about the search for love.’ Publishers Weekly, USA
About Elise Valmorbida
Italian-Australian émigré Elise Valmorbida runs a communications agency and teaches creative writing at Central St Martin’s in London. Honoured as a Trailblazer by the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2007), she is the producer of award-winning indie feature film SAXON, released in 2009. Her published works include Matilde Waltzing, The Book of Happy Endings, and The TV President.
An extract from The Winding Stick
I see reflections, lights, tricks. Wherever I look, my face is in the way. It’s out there, shot through with traffic, or waiting on the forecourt between jams and jellies, but it’s always too big. Like a head out to haunt some crook in an old film. I squint. You’ll always be ugly. Shut your bloody face.
From the inside looking out, you get the picture. The shop fridges blend with pumps dispensing carton milk. Motorbikes ride through rows of juice in boxes. And brown teddy bears, lined up for sale on the top shelf, sit bigger than humans on car roofs.
On my first night, way back when, I thought all the customers were a bit short. A dwarf, followed by a squat man, followed by a child-driver reaching up to pay for petrol and tobacco. Then I remembered my built-up floor. I laughed to myself that night, alone in my glass box. From the outside looking in, you might have felt sorry for this man with bad eyes, perched on a stool, giggling like a girl in a lit-up photo booth. But, chances are, you wouldn’t have noticed.
I am raised up so I can look down. Between my cameras and my eyes, I see everything. Seven cameras. Two eyes. One camera is trained on me, although my manager knows I won’t steal. I’ve got the knack of money (it runs in the blood) but Siv knows I wouldn’t steal. He even lets me sit in his office. He leaves the door unlocked. Sometimes I need to go in there, away from the glare of the shop and the forecourt. If Siv has been working late, he leaves behind his smell of musk in amongst the smell of papers. I suck it up with my nose. Musk, more musk. Siv’s dark sweat and paper mixed with musk.
I wipe the discharge from my eye with my finger. Nightmare you are, with all that crap in your eyes. I look at my reflected face and I hear the song of the expectant pump as my first customer shoves the premium nozzle into his tank.
Ti. Ti. Ti. Ti.
Pump Number Two.
To authorise, I wipe the icon on the computer screen with my finger. Pump Number Two gets a green light.
I watch him through my window. I watch him on camera as he fills his car with my petrol. His hair like pelt has ridges where the fat skin rolls at the back of his neck.
My computer sings to me. The flow has finished.
My customer comes to me, puts the ball of his face up against my slot and speaks. ‘Pump Number Two – and The Truth.’
There’s a picture of a dead teenager on the front page. She is smiling. All day and all night. Piles of her. I slip her through.
He pays. He won’t look me in the eye. Our fingers touch with the slink of coins. He goes. I can’t see the place he goes to, or the things he’s done – I don’t always know.
Not everyone is porous.
Out there, beyond the forecourt, is the huge stream of lights – too many – cars, constant, lorries rumbling, people processing, driven, road without end. In here there’s just me and the hum, the air conditioning and the breath of fridges.
At my feet there’s a big grey padded bar. If I kick it, the emergency wall will shoot up, metal and wood six inches thick. Faster than blinking. A shield that makes everything invisible. On the inside it says: keep calm. And there are two red buttons to jab for the police.
The time is 23:15 on the camera.
Pump Number One is singing. It’s the furthest pump, at the edge of the road. A small businessman in a pinstriped suit. I authorise. He fills up his motorbike and my computer closes the deal with a Ti. He comes to my window, tripping at the step.
‘Number One’ is all he says. He’s hiding inside his crash helmet, but his eyes are red grapes swimming in the drink and I know where he’s been before he tugs at his suit pockets, feeling for change, and pulls out the red polka-dot tights. Her feathered G-string flies out like magic. When he opens his wallet I see his kids inside, stuck behind plastic. (I think of the sundries man who nozzled my mother, the man with nine children kept in the dark inside his pocket.)
My computer sings again. Pump Number Six. A green or black van with the bonnet up, pissing water like an old horse. I authorise the pierced white couple. They’re sick of each other.
Pump Number Three. A silver saloon. I authorise the black man in a tracksuit. For him, white people are a kind of cancer.
Pump Number Two. I authorise Adam. He’s filling his old Escort. He’s nearly blind with age. He should be asleep, he shouldn’t be driving, but he’s been poking about in a woman’s drawers. I don’t want to know his name. I turn away, try to think of other things: the thief who drives off without paying, the two-eyed emergency button, the smear on the glass across my view.
But the petrol is pouring like a story. The smell of it seeps through the slot at my window, rubs itself all over my skin, prickles my eyeballs, makes them weep. His petrol is free-running, clear. Adam still has a craze for saving. He married the wrong woman and he lived through the war.
