I was blessed to discover Graham Mort’s stories when they began to appear in Fictive Dream, an online journal that has come to mean much to me over the years. Immediately I was drawn to the voice, the economy, the understatement, the quiet poetic sensibility. Upon research I discovered that Mort is in fact a distinguished poet. No surprise.
In this story which, despite its brevity and unhurriedness, spans most of two lives, we meet Celia and Stefan. We meet them first when just married, living in a cramped bedsit. Celia is performing her morning wash as Stefan looks on, struggling to believe his luck. Prior to this they first encounter one another in a pub in Camden. Stefan we’re subsequently told, is Polish, Celia Irish. We learn these details at the author’s leisure. A gentle slipping back and forward in time typifies the narrative as it unfolds. It hovers, offers snapshots, blossoms into longer description, then contracts again.
You could call Celia a love story, but perhaps it’s more a story about living together, sharing lives, and what can happen to love at close quarters over a long period. Nothing special occurs, even Stefan’s ‘mistake’ is mundane when seen from the outside. Two boys are born and in time each produce a grandchild. Celia and Stefan, separately, grow distant from their Catholic faith. Eventually Celia tends Stefan as he is dying, and then is left with the life they have lived, with the lasting effect of a crucial happening, with a sense of things beyond words.
And that’s all. But a plain description belies the involving quality of this story, its profundity, its existential scope, its beauty. There’s true craft behind the apparent simplicity of Mort’s prose. He varies his sentences to great effect. The way he builds imagery is painterly.
I’ve read this story a number of times now, and on each reading it goes deeper, says more, asks further questions. It won’t leave me alone.
Published online in Fictive Dream, 2025 and available to read here
A Personal Anthology 