Tees Valley Writers

Marion Husband

Marion Husband is a novelist and creative writing teaching living in Stockton on Tees. In 2003 Marion Husband’s graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing at Northumbria University and received the Blackwell Prize for Best Performance. In 2005 her first novel, The Boy I Love, was published by Accent Press and in the same year she was awarded the inaugural Andrea Badenoch Prize for Fiction for Paper Moon. Marion also leads creative writing workshops and teaches for the Open College of the Arts. She regularly reads her work to groups and societies and is on the board of Mudfog Press. Marion lives in Stockton on Tees and is currently working on her fifth novel.

PUBLICATIONS

The Good Father (Accent Press, 2007)
Say You Love Me (Accent Press, 2007)
Paper Moon (Accent Press, 2006)
The Boy I Love (Accent Press, 2005)
Service - a pamphlet of poems (Mudfog)

An extract from The Good Father

CHAPTER ONE

Spring 1959

Hope came to the funeral. I noticed her as I followed the coffin through the church porch where I had to pause whilst the bearers shifted their load discretely on their shoulders. Standing at the back of the church, she turned to me and smiled that delicate smile of hers, lowering her eyes almost at once, not expecting me to smile back perhaps, perhaps believing that smiling was some breach of funeral etiquette. Perhaps it was, but I smiled all the same, although she didn’t see me. No one saw me because my father’s coffin blocked the congregation’s view of my face. For those few seconds as the undertaker’s men synchronised themselves and Hope lowered her eyes from her brief, shy smile, I thought how lovely she was; if I were poetical I would say that my heart seemed to expand a little, that I felt suddenly generous and good and hopeful, and I smiled. The bearers began their slow progress up the aisle; I made my face solemn again, an appropriate expression for such a time.

We sang I Vow to Thee My Country and Jerusalem and The Lord’s My Shepherd – hymns my father had chosen years ago, planning for his death well in advance, as he planned everything. There were not many mourners, Doctor Walker of course, Mrs Hall, Mr Hall, a few of the neighbours my father so despised. I had informed cousins that he had not seen for years and I have never met, but they declined to attend, citing ill-health and old age. So I stood in the front pew alone. The wreath of white chrysanthemums that graced the dark coffin filled the air with its peppery scent and the bright cubes of light from the stained glass window were cast at my feet, and I sang the hymns and said the prayers, all the time thinking that if I turned around I would see Hope, her head bowed to her hymn book. I thought I could hear her voice above all the others, sweet and clear, singing the too-familiar words of lambs and green pastures; I thought too that I could feel her eyes on me, her soft, concerned gaze. How wrong it would be to turn around, what a bad impression I would give of myself, a man who couldn’t concentrate on his grief, on the solemnity of the occasion, but glanced about the church like a tourist. But it would have only been a glance. And although I longed to I didn’t. I was as well behaved as ever in my father’s presence. I was right and proper and straight-backed and I sang not too quietly, not too loudly but clearly and with my head raised so that I looked straight at the window that shed its coloured light at my feet, the window that depicted the Good Shepherd, a benign and sadly smiling Christ, pale and blond and tender as Hope.

© Marion Husband