inpreparation

IN PREPARATION

Novels:
Fair Game: The Steps of Odessa
Pigs Might Fly

Play:
Robin Hood: the Play, Or How Prince John Pitted His Wits Against the Outlaws of Sherwood Forest

Fair Game: Steps of the Odessa
General readership.
For Natasha Kaltsov, everything is set fair for stardom as an international soccer player – until her journalist father, Victor, is abducted by the USB, Ukraine’s secret police. Neither Natasha nor her brother Lonya can escape the danger their father has put them in, with his sensational revelations about government corruption; for the ‘Presidential Tapes’ are in their safekeeping to be delivered to the world’s press in the event of his death.
From this time on, Security are on the tail of sister and brother. Natasha struggles to hold on to her footballing ambitions while being crossed at every turn by the shadow of her absent father. Into her life steps Monika, officially a tour guide for foreign visitors to Ukraine. Yet is she truly the person she claims to be and might her friendship end in Natasha’s betrayal?

Background: the situation
Ukraine is slowly but painfully emerging from the shadow of Soviet rule. The name means ‘Land without Borders’. It is a vast country, the second largest in Europe, which over centuries has been conquered and occupied by many peoples – Vikings, Mongols, Sarmatians, Scythians, Greeks, Poles and during the 2nd World War, Germans.

Communist rule imposed dictatorship and terror, before and after the Nazi occupation during which innumerable atrocities were suffered by the people of the Ukraine. In the Great Famine of the 1930s, engineered by Josef Stalin determined to eradicate the 'Kulak element' - the farming and landowning class - millions died of starvation; hundreds of thousands were despatched to labour camps, thousands were murdered.

Independence from Soviet rule in 1999 has been followed by a painful transition, not the least in relation to freedom of speech. Ukraine has the sorry record of coming near to the top of the table of nations harrying and persecuting their journalists. In part, Fair Game’ is about the risk to his life that investigative reporter and broadcaster Victor Kaltsov takes in order to uncover stories of corruption and of greed that threatens to destroy the environment.

Such stories involve the ‘new rich’, the oligarchs, and reach up to the very highest levels of government. Victor’s crusading zeal not only puts himself in jeopardy but the lives of his family, his daughter Natasha and his son Lonya.

Key to a ‘Land without borders’ is the ceaseless search for identity: it is also key to the characters in this story. Natasha and Lonya strive to be people in their own right, disengaged from the situation their father’s activities thrust upon them, yet at the same time loving him and admiring him for what he does. They respond uneasily, critically, sometimes resentfully, but ultimately supportively to the perils of their ‘guilt by association’.

Natasha is a talented footballer, so gifted that she has high hopes of selection for the national women’s Under 19s X1. She and Lonya are, as the story opens, in grief for the loss of their mother who died of cancer two years’ earlier. They understand that Victor’s mission, to bring certain truths into the open, to crusade against the poisoning of the Black Sea, is also driven by grief and loss and a sense of desperation – even in the face of dangers to his children as well as himself.

The nation’s security agency, the SBU, has inherited the attitudes and methods of the old KGB that ruled with terror throughout the countries of the Soviet confederation.

‘Enemies of the state’ can expect attacks, beatings, arrests on trumped-up charges and sometimes death at the hands of those serving the will and interests of the authorities; and their families may become victims in their turn – placed under constant surveillance, their lives suddenly hit by ‘bad luck’ in various forms such as the loss of their jobs or of their housing rights.

The story
Victor Kaltsov has come in to possession of documents and tape recordings of a sensational nature. Made public, these could prove disastrous for the government and the country’s president. Home alone in the family apartment in Kyiv, Natasha has night visitors: two members of SBU ‘take her into custody’, in fact abduct her, the intention being to hold her hostage, as a bargaining tool – her life in exchange for the documents and tapes.

Ukraine lies deep under snow. Taken to a farm cottage – an SBU safe house – a few kilometres outside the city, where the Great Steppe begins its vast journey south towards the Black Sea, Natasha watches one of her captors sleep, the other drink himself into a fumbled sexual approach. Fit, strong, alert and easily provoked to anger, she turns drunken advance into a typical striker’s attack, escaping but only into a nightmare of ice, deepening snowdrifts and darkness. A distant light offers hope – another cottage where, after cracking her shins against snow-covered machinery, she is offered shelter by an old peasant couple and their niece, Monika.

An instant bonding occurs between Natasha and Monika (who is far from what appearances seem to denote) and their friendship is a dominant feature of Fair Game. The following morning, Monika leads Natasha through a snowstorm to the nearest railway station. The SBU agents Myk and Sergei guess the possible destination of their escaped prisoner. They wait for her in their Mitsubishi Shogun on the approach to the station, though the storm reduces visibility to a few metres.

Natasha is safely in the wagon of a goods training heading for Kyiv when she hears a gunshot. Angry at his humiliation of the night before, reckless by nature, Sergei has seen his target apparently turning back from the station. In the storm, he mistakes Monika for Natasha. His wild shot catches Monika in the shoulder.

The irony of this wound will eventually be recognised by the reader when it becomes clear that Monika is also a member of Security – albeit of the lowest grade of SBU, Class 3, and seasonal only, her job that of taking foreign tour parties around Ukraine.

To be the guide of Cossack Tours, she qualifies because of her command of English, the result of a privileged education, far beyond what her ‘Uncle’ Vanya and ‘Aunt’ Sophia could ever provide. To hold such a post requires membership of Security. Monika’s remit is to convey to her tour parties, mainly American, the pleasures of Ukraine – and to be the eyes and ears of the SBU.

On her recovery in hospital from the flesh-wound caused by Sergei’s bullet, and as the Spring thaw arrives, Monika will introduce her select party (and, briefly, the reader) to the history and culture of Ukraine. She will show them the capital, Kyiv, the popular sights of the city such as St. Sophia, but also more obscure gems such as St. Cyril the Lesser.

She will guide them through the treasures of Lviv, Ukraine’s most beautiful city, then journey with them through the magical Carpathians, the tour ending in Odessa on the Black Sea.

In this same transition from winter to spring, Natasha’s performances for the local Falcons X1 draw the attention of Vera Sorokin, coach of the national women’s Under 19s. Natasha is trained by, and receives inspired encouragement from, the Falcons’ manager, Jock, a Scotsman, an example of a reversal of the Ukrainian diaspora, who, after a modest career in professional football, had abandoned Forfar for Kyiv.

Recognition of Natasha’s talents is accompanied by growing publicity, especially when it is discovered that she is the daughter of the famous/infamous Victor Kaltsov. Such recognition ought for Natasha to be a source of joy but a dark shadow now envelopes her life and that of Lonya – first the arrest of their father, then his alleged ‘escape’ from a police van taking him and other prisoners to jail.

The prolonged absence of their father constantly affects and influences the lives of Natasha and Lonya. They are turned out of their father’s tiny apartment. Whatever they do, wherever they go, they are watched, the hope being that they will lead Security to their father – or more to the point, to the missing documents and tapes, now referred to in the Press as the Presidential Tapes.

Dad’s bequest had indeed been to leave with Natasha and Lonya the task of ensuring the documents and tapes reach a safe haven prior to publication. The handover eventually takes place in the basilica of St. Cyril the Lesser. Even when sister and brother manage to follow their Dad’s instructions, when they no longer possess what the SBU is searching for, they continue to be under suspicion and in danger.

The headless body
Suddenly, in woods north of the city, a macabre discovery is made: that of a headless corpse. The media immediately conclude that this is Victor Kaltsov. Natasha is in the eye of the publicity storm, not for her exploits on the soccer field but as the daughter of the ‘missing journalist’.

Monika, now in Lviv with Cossack Tours, her friendship with Natasha known to the SBU, is ordered by security to persuade Natasha to identify the body, thus Natasha makes her first discovery about the identity of her friend. There is a bitter falling-out, love temporarily dashed: ‘You lied to me, Monika. How could I ever trust you again?’ ‘I never betrayed you’. The harrowing experience of identification results in Natasha confirming – the body is not that of her father.

Monika’s own true identity emerges in parallel with Natasha’s realisation of her talents as a soccer player and her independence from the ‘Kaltsov effect’ – being perceived not in her own right but as the daughter of a hero, a troublemaker, a scourge.

Like her country, Monika has journeyed through profound transformations: from high privilege, rejected by her in dismay and disgust, via the ambivalence suffered by being both caring tour guide and an informant, to her troubled but ultimately life-affirming relationship with Natasha.

The journey for both of them has been one of self-discovery, opening up the prospects of a new and better future.

The Odessa connection
The significance of the Steps of Odessa has so far only been hinted at – it is the birthplace of Natasha and Lonya; their mother, a poet, had written lyrically about the ancient port on an ancient sea; their grandmother – Babu – lives there; and it is the dream of the Three Strays –
Katiya, Dmitri and Olga, young kids encountered by Natasha on her escape by train in the early part of the story, to fish in the Black Sea and marvel at the legendary shoals of anchovy.

Most significant are references to the immortalisation of the Steps by Sergei Eisenstein in his film ‘Battleship Potemkin’, and of the scene in which hundreds of men, women and children, advancing up the Steps and voicing their sympathy with the battleship’s mutinying crew, are mown down by the White Guards and Cossack auxiliaries – images of the past that cast their haunting shadows on to the present.

Two major events are due to take place in Odessa on Willow Sunday, or rather a third when Natasha’s personal perspective is taken into account. These are: an international conference of world finance ministers (G8) in the new Conference Centre beside the harbour of Odessa; and a vast civil rights protest – the Parliament of Liberty – arranged to coincide with the conference.

Natasha’s major event, to take place the day before Willow Sunday, is the Under 19’s women’s international, Ukraine versus Russia, a match the media will seize upon to heighten national rivalry, where at long last the same rules, on the same level playing field, will apply to both teams.

All signposts finally lead to Odessa, the circles of narrative converging like hoops upon a target.

Renegade agent and disaster plot
The G8 Conference will, if carried off successfully, confer prestige on Ukraine, bring it in, as it were, from the ‘Soviet cold’; equally it will confirm Ukraine’s increasing identification with the West, disengaging itself from the Slavic East – a situation deeply resented in many quarters; so deeply in the case of SBU agent Mykhaylo Belakin (Myk) and a number of his associates that he plans a devastating response to what he sees as the nation betraying its historical roots and turning away from its true destiny. The massacre on the Steps of Odessa portrayed in Battleship Potemkin may suddenly become a horrific, modern-day reality.

Guest of honour: but will he turn up?
Throughout the story, Victor Kaltsov’s absence seems to work on the destinies of the main characters like a hidden hand. Yet the organisers of the Parliament of Liberty promise his resurrection, and Victor is billed as a main speaker. The famous tapes will at last be played to the multitude on Odessa’s steps, to the nation and indeed to the world – for global eyes are on the activities of the G7 Conference.

Will Victor emerge from his silence? Will maverick SBU Mykhaylo Belakin, armed with a lightweight proximity (or close-range) mortar, succeed in causing the devastation of both the G8 Conference and the Parliament of Liberty?

Will Vera Sorokin, the national coach, ignore the threats to her professional future and play Natasha, the most talented player of her generation? Will the Ukys beat the Rus and avenge the oppressions of the past, when even the Ukrainian language was banned?

The resolution of most of these questions is to be found on the Steps of Odessa.

In summary
Natasha Kaltsov, the central character of ‘The Steps of Odessa’, is a young woman with an obsession – a love of football that, left to her choosing, would be the centre of her life. However, circumstances – the world out there, beyond the boundaries of the soccer pitch – impinge on her and will not let her alone.

She is forced to open her attention to issues of moment: to the hounding of her father; to child poverty as represented by the Three Strays; to the need to fight corruption as represented by Ukraine’s oligarchs; to face up to institutionalised violence as represented by the activities of the SBU, and most of all to manage her feelings with regard to Monika – feelings that swing like a soccer game from end to end, from love and affection to suspicion and distrust, from admiration to anger, from jealousy to forgiveness.

The search for identity, both for Natasha and Monika, is, like that of Ukraine itself, troubled; but it is also an exciting and fascinating journey. Though the dramatic climax of the story takes place on and around the Steps of Odessa, the strands are gathered together in an Epilogue that envisions the future. The title of the Epilogue speaks for the characters and for Ukraine: ‘Stepping Out’.

Postscript
Although ‘The Steps of Odessa’ is a work of fiction and includes in its narrative many ‘inventions’, those readers with a knowledge of Ukraine will recognise a number of contemporary realities. Victor Kaltsov is the author’s creation, but his resemblance to real-life journalists in Ukraine is to be seen as an acknowledgement of their courage in adversity and a tribute to their dedication in support of human rights.

Well-known in the West is the tragic story of the journalist Georgi (or Giya) Gongadze, an outspoken critic of government, who disappeared on 16th September 2000. On 2nd November a farmer discovered a headless body on the outskirts of Tarashcha some 80 miles south of Kyiv

The corpse was identified as being that of Gongadze, murdered, many have claimed, with the approval of the President himself.

That story has still not run its final course. Accusations and denial continue and the Gongadze case falls into the category of so many mysterious ‘disappearances’ where, for the loved ones left behind, the families and the friends, resolution and closure seem impossible to achieve.

Linked to the Gongadze case are the so-called Melnichenko Tapes, another real world link with the fictional Kaltsov or Presidential Tapes referred to in Fair Game. Under pressure from Reporters Sans Frontieres and journalists’ organisations in Ukraine, the government gradually acceded to an inquiry into the verification of the tapes, this prior to the elections of October 2004.

However, the new government has failed to pursue the matter with the vigour they promise and journalists continue to be seriously harassed by the authorities of Ukraine.

Pigs Might Fly
This story is set at a time when the only computers were as big as a house. Young people could not e-mail each other because there was no such thing as e-mail and the mobile phone was light years away; and as for television – well, just a few of the better-off were installing their black-and-white sets.
In rural areas, milk floats were pulled by horses; and plenty of folks had to go down the backyard to the lavatory. It was even possible to play football and cricket in the street without being mown down by the cars of commuters late for work.

Going to the pictures was still the entertainment which got people out of their homes; unless they were in to dancing, in which case they'd gather to do the quickstep or the modern waltz in the church hall, or in the cities, at the Palais. Girls got pregnant, but not quite as often as they do today and the best a boy could expect after a night out was a hug and a kiss – and a cold walk home.

Life was often hard, but the pictures opened up the world – to adventure, fantasy and romance. The local cinema held a very special place in the hearts of communities, far more than do the multiplex entertainment centres of today.

However, in the minds of developers and businessmen out to garner profits after years of war and peacetime hardship, the future belonged to the shopping basket. Cinemas were prime sites for development, for demolition and replacement by supermarkets, shopping malls and car parks.

This was also the time when trams ceased to ply the streets of Britain, when thousands of miles of rail were closed in order to give free rein to the motorcar and the motorway. It was a time when old buildings came down and concrete skyscrapers began to take their place. Neighbourhoods vanished: was anybody consulted?

It is always a problem to know what, in the name of progress, should be held on to; what should be cherished and preserved in face of change. Each individual, each group of individuals, each community must decide for themselves. Sometimes there was conflict, though most often, resignation; only a few, like Curlew Stevens on behalf of his hospital-bound father, stood up to be counted.

Synopsis
16 year old Clark Gable Stevens (nicknamed Curlew because one of his few talents is being able to imitate that wild bird of the moors) is suddenly faced with a crisis – that of having to give up his layabout existence and ‘ grow up’. His father, proprietor of Fetterton’s Ritz Cinema, its future under serious threat as the developers wish to flatten it in the name of commercial progress, has taken a fall. With a number of significant bones broken, he will be holed up in a hospital bed for days, weeks or even for ever. Who but his son Curlew can rescue the Ritz?

Councillor Morgan and his son Nigel are at the head of the queue to bulldoze the Ritz; after all, argue the Morgans – and they are not far from the truth – the cinema is dilapidated and crumbling. It’s an eyesore in their view, a fleapit. On most nights it draws an audience insufficient in number to make up one football team, never mind two. But for Leonard Lamont Stevens, film fanatic, dreamer, the Ritz is his life, the place where miracles happen.

Curlew knows all about the shaking of heads; knows that most people think Dad is as much a weaver of dreams as his sister, and Curlew’s aunt, Our Annie. She is an eccentric with only a fingernail’s grip on the real world (the rest of her inhabits the lives of Picts and Vikings). On the other hand, Curlew doesn’t like being told what to do by the Morgans of this life, especially as Nigel fancies the lovely Susan, Curlew’s step-cousin, and the girl of his dreams.

True, Curlew would much prefer to continue to idle away his days in a hay meadow staring at the clouds, but the Ritz is more than just a building: it is a cause. So what if Curlew’s plan to mastermind a Save the Ritz campaign is as likely to succeed as, in the words of Chippy Bulmer’s dad, pigs might fly?

Battle commences. David sets forth against so many Goliaths. First, Curlew must unite and inspire his friends to stop shaking their heads and muttering about lost causes; second, with his comrades – and hopefully sweet Susan at his side – he must turn entrepreneur and persuade town and countryside to flock, pockets laden, to the Ritz Grand Carnival.

With such vision, with so many brilliant ideas – the first ever Ugliest Pet in the World Competition, for example – could anything possibly go wrong? How come, then, that suddenly Curlew is accused of setting fire to the school sports pavilion, and the proof – empty petrol cans – is conveniently found in Dad’s shed? Surely Curlew’s enemies would not stoop, on the very day of the Carnival, to kidnap?

Finally, in a packed Ritz, with international tortoise and snail races still in progress – who has turned off the lights, and who is about to direct the Ritz’s newly-refurbished hosepipe on Fetterton’s most distinguished citizen, Lady Birtwhistle?

Will catastrophe get the better of Curlew Stevens, or might he have just that little bit of luck; what on earth could that be, soaring over the housetops of Fetterton? It couldn’t be: impossible!

Robin Hood: the Play, Or How Prince John Pitted His Wits Against the Outlaws of Sherwood Forest
It has long been my ambition to write a play on the theme of Robin Hood. If such a character really did exist, he would probably have lived (so historians estimate) in the reign of Edward 11 rather than that of Richard 1. But historians also tell us there were probably scores of Robin Hoods, that the name was a colourful substitute for ‘outlaw’. However, the best reason for opting for Robin’s adventures to take place in the reign of Richard is his nasty brother John; a true and classical villain; and thus a relishful source of entertainment.

This version of the legend is essentially an action-filled comedy with, hopefully, plenty of juicy parts. For Prince John, of course, but also for Robin himself and for Marian Fitzwalter. Historians also inform us that Marian was probably a 19th century add-on to the tale, symbol perhaps of the coming of Spring, emblem of the May-day celebrations.

Every modern Marian needs to be a woman of spirit, enterprise and an equal of men in whatever they claim to be superior in. And every modern story of Robin needs also to remind itself of the paradoxes – Robin as purse-snatcher and doyen of charity, Sherwood as Elysian glade amid the realities of typical British weather.

This story focuses on the great all-comers archery tournament whose prize is the Silver Arrow. The whole enterprise, of course, is Prince John’s cunning plan to capture once and for all the infamous Robin Hood, for he is confident he has divined the outlaw’s weaknesses which sooner or later will bring him to disaster – his pride and his vanity.

The play is written for school or youth theatre production. There are 29 speaking parts, plus soldiers, dancers and spectators at the Tournament of the Silver Arrow. Though there are only five parts for women these are prominent and have some of the best lines.
Available on enquiry.

Contact James Watson at watsonworks@watsonworks.co.uk