litro.co.uk

Redshirt

Louie Stowell

This month’s Litro cover artist is Gillian Ayres, one of many talented artists exhibiting at the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition now in its 242nd year. Click here on to find out how to become a Friend of Litro and be entered into our competition to win one of 5 pairs of tickets to this year’s Summer Exhibition.

Gillian Ayres studied at the Camberwell School of Art. After leaving in 1950, she began to paint abstracts, with her first solo exhibition being held in the mid-1950s. Ayres was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. In 1986 she was made an OBE and in 1991 become a Royal Academician.

Ayres’ early works were typically made with thin vinyl paint making up relatively simply forms from a limited colour palate, but later oil painted works are much more colourful and exuberant, as seen above in this month’s cover  art.

Cover artwork by Gillian Ayres (June 2010), High Summer World of Light, 2009, oil on canvas, 198.5 x 275cm, Courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery.

Ayres was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1986, and in 1991 became a Royal Academician. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours. Ayres is represented by Alan Cristea Gallery, www.alancristea.com

Nobody wants to be alone: everybody wants to belong. Sociability is part of what makes humans such a successful species, but it’s when groups become gangs that the fun stops and the trouble starts …

You’ll find plenty of gangs in the following pages: some you’ll want to join, some you’d run a mile from – and maybe even some to which you already belong. In this month’s issue of Litro we’re going to intrigue, move and unnerve you with tales of chain gangs and girl gangs, school gangs and old-fashioned gangsters; gangs that protect and those that destroy. From the mob instincts of the lads on the lash in Yorgos Trillidis’s Sunday, to the swashbuckling adventures of a pirate crew in Michael Spring’s brilliantly surreal Narky Jack, we’ve got gangs in all their glamour and glory.

Sara Maitland’s atmospheric jungle-set Watu explores the power and vulnerability of being an outsider in a tribal society, whereas David Mildon’s Red gives us a glimpse of tribes closer to home, when football fans clash. Meanwhile, Tessa North brings us the Deep South, and a prisoner desperate to shed his chains, while Melissa Katsoulis’s true account of a daring literary hoax shows just how far one middle-class white girl went to feel part of the gang.

But believe it or not, that’s not all – not by a long shot. We’ve also got a brand-new, prize-winning translation of a Verlaine poem about a gang of harlequins and pierrots, a mobster hoist by his own car-yard, and a shoot-out in a cinema.

So, it’s up to you. Do you wanna be in our gang? Just turn the page.

Katy Darby

Editor

Who says London has a monopoly on mindless violence? A kebab-shop brawl in a small University town has tragic and ironic consequences in Yorgos Trillidis’s cautionary tale. Saturday night’s all right for fighting, but at three in the morning on Sunday, it can all go horribly wrong …

Sunday

Yorgos Trillidis

It’s three o’clock in the morning and I have just left the club on Prince of Wales. I am crossing the street heading to the nearest kebab house. I am not drunk though I have drunk. I enter. Three sweaty, dark-skinned men are watching closely a sizeable piece of lamb rolling on a steel plate. I place my order, pay in advance and head out for a quick cigarette. I take a stand just outside.

I stare at the people who have just exited the nightclubs. It’s closing time, yet the street seems less busy than usual. Maybe because it’s August and the students have gone back to their homes; maybe because most of the locals are getting a tan somewhere in the Mediterranean. I take long drags and can’t wait to replace the butt with some meat. Then I see them on the other side of the road, ready to cross the street.

It’s a group of five. They wear stretched t-shirts, baggy jeans and white sneakers. They look particularly drunk – but again, who doesn’t? They are coming towards me. It’s a popular fast-food joint, I say to myself, no need to worry. They are talking loudly and they spit out the vowels and the consonants with casual violence.

I look the other way. What I see is the future coming swiftly towards me, aiming at me. The future enters through my nostrils, rides the appropriate neurons and gets carried all the way to my brain.

They are going to come near me. One of them will ask me something I will not be in a position to grasp. I will shake my head. Another one will feel obliged to rephrase it. Although I will understand, more or less, what they want from me, I will refuse politely. Then the one who was the first to talk will start cursing. I will repeat as clearly as possible that it’s my last one. Then a third one will try to get it out of my fingers. I will let him. They will start laughing and cursing me with words I will not fully comprehend. After that I will say something stupid, something like ‘you must think it’s quite a brave thing to do, five picking on one’, or something equally stupid – the precise phrasing has not yet been formulated.

It’s then that they will assault me. They will not stop kicking and punching even after I hit the ground. At some point one of the two guys who’d remained silent will pull out a knife. None of the bystanders will interfere, though I will hear someone calling for the police.

In the ambulance I will see a blue light and a void will suck me in. The doctor at the hospital will simply announce the time. The following day the coroner will perform the autopsy. Among other things he will discover some lumps in my lungs. Although he is sure of what he has found he will give a sample for biopsy. The results will be ready in three days.

Meanwhile, a police officer will make an international call. It will be rather short because he hasn’t taken into consideration the fact that my mother does not speak English. Later on that day, a member both of the thriving Hellenic community and of the Norfolk Police Force will redial the same telephone number.

When the results are out the doctor will not see his jaw dropping. It was an aggressive form of cancer that would have had me dead in six to nine months. He will then debate whether he should inform my family about his findings. He will discuss the issue with some colleagues of his and with his wife. Words like ‘ethics’ and ‘purpose’ and ‘irrelevant’ will be heard in the several exchanges. After a sleepless night he will decide not to reveal anything although he will not be in a position to explain why, exactly.

Back home my mother will spend the rest of her life on a rocking chair going back and forth all the time, a habit that will not be disrupted even when the phone will ring and a voice on the other end of the line will inform her, in broken Greek, that all five men have been identified and two of them have already confessed.

Yorgos Trillidis was born in Cyprus in 1976. He studied Law in Athens, International Politics in Edinburgh and Creative Writing in Norwich. He was a writer in Residence at the International Writing Program in Iowa in 2008. He has authored two short collections in Greek. He lives in Nicosia.