"Broken Green Bottles"

The story is set in Northern Merseyside, (Liverpool, Crosby, and the sand dunes and beaches of Hightown, which was a small village of about 1,000 souls at the time.) It's a 'general fiction' novel about three young teenage lads growing up in the year the music died: 1959.

They explore the ghost town of Fort Crosby, an abandoned coastal defence fort, complete with working shell-lifts, coastal batteries, working radios and intact buildings. The folks next door have something going, the nearby river and salt marsh provide deadly traps for the unwary, and loopy Joe Materson who lives at the end of the road has found something buried in his garden.

Then there's Old Beardy, half-legend half-real, who lives somewhere in the dunes. And the Naked Pervie.

Reality and fantasy combine, resulting in a tragedy that nobody could have forseen.

"Broken Green Bottles" will appeal very strongly to baby-boomers who lived through the postwar period, with its strange absence of young men - killed in the war - and dislocated relationships between the Beatles generation and their fuddy-duddy parents.

Above: The salt marshes of the River Alt, part of the setting.  www.photo-digital.co.uk/. ../merseyside.htm
Literary Agents: This story is complete in first draft.

Extract from the first draft: (all material © Clive Warner, 2004)

The tide was out, and there seemed to be nobody at the boat club. A light breeze came from the salt marshes, carrying the briny smell of the Mersey. It played with the boats' rigging, slapping the lines against their masts, making a tick-tick-tick sound. Overhead, a long vee of ducks was heading out into the Irish Sea. Their quacking soon faded and all I heard was the soughing of the breeze in the reed beds, the ticking of boat lines, and Dougal scuffling in the driftwood.

I liked this time of day best. The colours of the sky as the sun went down, the breeze from the sea, the shadows growing long. I had no friends in the village to share these things with, so I shared them with the ants, or the frogs in the ponds.

I walked across the concrete slipway that ran from the boat club gate down into the river. The owners used it to launch and retrieve their yachts. The river seemed to be hardly moving, so I guessed the tide must have been turning. The water was at such a low level that I wondered, like I had many times before, if I could wade across to the other side, but then I remembered that every year, two or three people drowned trying that. They drowned in the river, or they drowned in the salt marshes, caught when gullies filled secretly behind them, or they were sucked down in the quicksands.

see www.liverpoolpictorial.co.uk/.../ hightown1.html

Dougal disappeared. I stood there, paralysed, then Dougal's head broke the surface. The mud moved in ripples around his head and I pictured his little legs swimming frantically, but it was no use. He made a horrible strangled bark, and slipped beneath. I ran down the slipway, lost my footing on the slimy concrete and fell on my bottom, and to my horror continued sliding into the mud. I was up to my knees in the stuff before I could stop myself. As I sat there, wondering if I should inch to the left or to the right, a large bubble burst on the surface of the mud, making a sound half way between a fart and a belch. a fetid whiff of gas made my eyes water.

Oh God, what was I going to do now. Poor Dougal. There'd be no more dog shows for him. Mum was going to kill me when I got home. I felt cold slimy mud creeping into my shoes, and began carefully inching to the left bank of the slipway. When I got within reach, I grabbed hold of the long grass and was able to climb out of the muck.

My new shoes were ruined and my trousers full of brown mud, God, Mum was going to double kill me. "I can't go home." The words came out of my mouth as if someone else had spoken them. But they were true. I knew that. I sat there on the grass verge rocking back and forth with my head in my hands. Going round and round inside my brain: What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I . . .

One thing at a time. No room for more than one thought at a time. Stand up. Wipe shoes and trouser legs on the grass. Rip up more grass to clean as best as I can. Walk. Not towards the village, the other way. What's there? The poplar bushes. The houses on the sandhills with their wierd people that never spoke to anyone from the village. The tar shack on the beach. Old Beardy. Fort Crosby.

I continued walking, mechanically, past the boat club, where the shadows under the boats had grown darker. Maybe I could lift the tarpaulin cover or a hatchway on one of the yachts and slip inside, sleep there. No. It would be one of the first places they'd look. It would have to be the poplar bushes. I knew a good grove of them, not too close to the beach, growing in a kind of valley in the dunes. I had no idea how they lived in the sand, but they thrived. The silvery backs of their leaves made a pretty effect in the sunshine when the wind rustled them. There was no sunshine now, though, as I crept off the path and into the dunes, stepping through the small scraggly trees at the edge of the grove, heading towards the centre, pushing branches aside, twisting and turning through the thick foliage, until I found a hollow in the ground, with several trees growing around and over it. It would do.

As daylight faded, I bent branches together and twisted stems round them, broke more branches from other trees and wove them through, until I had a green and silver roof and three leafy walls. I left one side open, but couldn't see very far anyway, the branches grew too thickly. The sky was quite dark now. The breeze dropped away, and mist began gathering in my hollow, so I broke some more branches and made a pile of them to lie on and keep the creepy-crawlies off me. Then it began to get cold. I only had my school jumper on, and I started to shiver, so I had to get a load of leafy twigs to cover me.

I lay there in the middle of the woods, listening to the curlews crying in the darkness, and my legs began to shake. I put my hands on them to stop it, but my hands began shaking too. Then to my horror tears poured out of my eyes and ran down my face. I went "Uh! Uh! Uh!" and pounded my fists into my thighs as hard as I could. It hurt, but I stopped shaking, and after a while, so did the tears.

I must have dropped off to sleep. I woke up to find myself in the dark. A little moonlight came through the branches, so the trees, the branches, even myself, were pale gray smudges. The mist had grown thicker, too. I fancied it had a smell, like old, stale, boiled cabbage. The curlews had stopped their cries but a new sound came rolling down the estuary and through the leaves, clearer than I'd ever heard it from my bedroom, the deep toll of the bell-buoy: dooo . . . mmm.

I pulled my jumper over my head and put my hands over my ears, rolled under the branches and began humming tunes to myself. Then I realised that if there was anything out there it might hear me, so I shut up. For quite a while I lay there with my eyes closed. It seemed forever.

The clammy mist tickled my nose and made me want to sneeze. Then, a long way off, a faint splashing sound came to my ears. I ignored it, but it didn't go away. It had a furtive sound to it, like a boat slipping through the water, the waves lapping against its hull. Gug! For sure it was Gug coming for me. I stuck my fingers in my ears but then the jumper slipped down and I opened my eyes for a moment. Bad mistake.

From the direction of the beach came a faint greenish glow, and in the next moment, I heard Gug calling my name: "Jim Simmons. . . Jim Simmons" . . . several times. The voice got louder, and the faint glow got brighter. Oh God, Gug must see me, through the leaves and branches. He, it, must detect people with some special sense. I had to get out of there, and fast. My heartbeat hammered in my ears, my skin prickled, and I felt my hair stand up on my neck. Oh God! Why, why why why me? This is a dream, this must be a dream, get out of the dream, run!

I jumped to my feet, threw off the twigs and leaves, and leaped, head down, for the opening. A branch smacked me over the eye. Even the trees were taking revenge for my bending and mangling them. I crossed my arms over my face and forced my way through. The moon glimmered overhead and the leaves were thinning out, but still I missed seeing a sudden dip in the ground and dived forwards, arms flailing for balance, twigs whipping my face. I hit the ground and rolled, sprang up again, with no sense of direction, but the branches seemed thinner ahead, I saw the moonlight between them, and so I ran that way.

The trees became bushes, then shrubs, sea-thistles, dune grass. My running grew more like soaring, I took off in great leaps, floated for a while, then lightly came back to earth. With only a tiny effort more, I could take to the air, but it didn't matter somehow. My face burned like flame, my lungs too. Sand shifted underfoot, I stumbled – but found my footing on springy turf, leaping effortlessly over deep, muddy gullies. Thoughts of gravity, Icarus, and Indian fakirs.

This couldn't be, someone kept repeating in a tiny, sensible voice – but who cared? It is the river you will find, the river, the river, said the tiny, sensible voice, but no, shut your gob, I will fly like an angel – Into the mud, like Dougal. Into the mud. Like Dougal.

HOME