‘St Francis Treads the Stones of Hoy’ by David Rose

I’m not religious, but has anyone, anywhere, quite managed to shed a Catholic upbringing? Speaking personally the residue I’m left with, apart from the guilt, is a Pavlovian obsession with medieval saints. Consequently, when fortune led me to a story titled ‘St Francis Treads the Stones of Hoy’, written by David Rose, man of letters and vast but modestly deployed erudition, I was there.

And what a luminous tale it is. It seems unlikely that Francis actually went to Hoy. I can’t find evidence. The only biography I’ve read, by G.K. Chesterton, contained remarkably little biographical information. But records suggest he certainly preached a sermon to birds, no shortage of which exist on Hoy. The scene is set.

Francis, it would appear, is seeking a challenge. He is by now experienced in avian-related oratory, having already converted the birds of Umbria. He alights on Hoy. Prepares himself. Seeks the right spot on which to pour forth. Checks the direction of the wind. The birds grow, not silent, but quiet and uniform in their expectation. They pulse simultaneously. Francis begins.

Though new to those in attendance, his words are not original. He has used them on many occasions. Perhaps the birds begin to sense this, as at some point they become a little restless. But a puffin remains intrigued. It steps forward attentively. It releases the fish it was holding in its beak.

As someone who also wrote a scene in which a wild bird laid a fish before a human, only to be accused of going woo-woo, I would like to point something out here. Wild animals, circs allowing, take their prey to places where they feel safe, and are programmed to keep a firm grip on it. This is Rose’s subtlety. The puffin leaves its fish on the ground, near Francis, and only retrieves them once he has gone.

Sermon given, Francis feels euphoric, the euphoria gently fading as the burden of his life, with all its previous discord, re-enters his thoughts. By the time he boards the ferry he is weary.

The story, which is framed in a musical motif, ends with two sentences of transcendent beauty. They could belong to a poem. They get me every time.

Published in Confingo Magazine, Autumn 2023, by Confingo Publishing

‘Flora’ by David Rose

I read this story when it was the opener in Nicholas Royle’s very first Best British Short Stories anthology and I was absolutely transfixed. Rose can be quite a tricky writer to get your head around sometimes, but this is one of his more approachable stories.

‘Flora’ is the story of the odd and frankly unhealthy obsession that develops when an older man invites a young female botany student to use his library and then his garden to work in. He begins to watch her, observing how she dresses and speculating on what might be going on with the young man who accompanies her from time to time. After a while, he digs out his old Zeiss birdwatching binoculars and if this were a McEwan story, you feel it might go down a rather unpleasant path. But then, just before the end, Rose pulls off the most elegant ninety-degree turn that takes the story in a completely different direction and you wonder who was really watching whom.

I believe Rose is still around, despite the title of his collection, but he doesn’t seem to be writing any more, which is a pity. I wish there were more David Rose stories around.

First published in The London Magazine, April/May 2010 and collected in Best British Short Stories 2011, Salt, 2012, and Posthumous Stories, Salt 2013

‘Stripe’ by David Rose

I started reading this in the BRB one breakfast time with the kids yammering around me. The story is so intense and violent that the narration itself blacks out in places. When I finished, I looked up and turned around and, decompressing, found I was alone in the house.

Published in the Brixton Review of Books, Issue 15, Autumn 2021

‘Ariel’ by David Rose

I first encountered the work of David Rose through Vault, his anti-novel, and have since been catching up on his shorter fiction. He is consummate, his mastery of the form remaining woefully under-acknowledged.

First published in The End, Unthank Books, edited by Ashley Stokes; collected in Best British Short Stories 2017, Salt Publishing