Novels

Extract from a new work ‘The House of Consolación’, especially for Christmas:

3. Tom’s story.
The farm of the wells.

When we first saw Cortijo de los Pozos, it was in ruins. An old broken down stone building surrounded by terraced land that spread down the hill like the skirts of a woman, although the retaining walls were crumbling away in several places. It was south facing and the sun poured down on us, hot and thick and golden like the local honey.
“We could plant a vineyard,” William said, “We could make our own wine.”
The idea excited us; it was the perfect place for it. I shut my eyes and imagined terraces of vines patterning that south facing slope with horizontal stripes. We could have our own press, I thought, I imagined us dancing barefoot on the grapes. Lying on them as if it were a vast red bath, sucking grape juice from each other's bodies.
But, of course, reality bit in, we are not fools. Far from it, we are realists and as we sat outside the local bar that evening, watching the sun setting down the valley, William said to me, “Tom, do you know anything about growing grapes or making wine?”
“No,” I said, “nothing at all.”
“Neither do I,” he said.
We looked at each other and laughed ruefully, knowing that our dream of a vineyard would never come to pass.

We had some money, if not as much as we’d have liked, so we could buy the Cortijo de los Pozos and restore it in the way we wanted to make our perfect house and garden. William had worked in corporate law and he has always been good at investments. He was able to take early retirement with more of a pension than I could have obtained in forty years from my job in dementia care.
We turned the old farm outbuildings into holiday cottages, as luxurious as we could make them, with underfloor heating and state of the art appliances. I fantasised about providing safe and private holidays for other gay couples but it was the grey not the pink pound we attracted.
Older retired people book our cottages; heterosexual couples who are mostly sweet and appreciative of all we offer. A few I find patronising and a very few have unrealistic expectations of an old cortijo, but the majority are excellent guests and they pay well. We offer a service cooking them an evening meal which we serve on the terrace as the sun goes down. This has proved popular.
We keep looking for ways to earn more money and we keep coming up with new and exciting ideas. We are both keen cooks and gardeners and, seeing how interested our guests are in the dishes we cook for them, as well as in our abundant garden amid this arid, semi-desert landscape, we have started running themed holidays. Clients can book a course on local cuisine and cooking Spanish dishes with local produce, or on planning and planting a dry garden and how to find suitable draught-resistant plants.
I still wish we could attract more gay tourists to our magical cortijo but most of them prefer to stay up north in Barcelona, where the bars and clubs are open all night and then they can breakfast down on the Quay or in Parc Güell. Cortijo de los Pozos is too isolated, rural and tranquil.
Perhaps it is as well, since we have worked hard for our place among the villagers and I believe most of them do accept us. Now we have created our garden, we hold parties with live music in the summer. We charge an entrance fee and give the money to the local school - or to Father Dominico to distribute for us.
William is Protestant to his core - he lives up to his name - but my mother was Irish and Catholicism is like an old coat to me. I know my way around a Catholic Church as if it were my own home. Sometimes, when I'm feeling mischievous, I make confession and go to mass, my Spanish is good enough for that. Father Dominico doesn’t know what to make of me or what to say about my way of life, but he knows how to demand penance.
“Give alms to the church, my son, give generously to maintain this old church and our Lord will forgive all your sins.”
Every Christmas I take part in the concert, singing in the village choir - I have always had an excellent voice. William helps the men assemble the Belén in the community centre, recreating the village and its environs in miniature with the holy family resting in Paco’s bar. We have both worked on a replica of our farm and the first year we lived here, Astrid, the artist who lives with Ramón, made little figures that looked like us but she had us embracing which caused so much gossip, Father Dominico insisted we should be busy weeding instead, “Tending the garden like Adam in Eden”. So Estrella’s grandmother made new figures of us down on our knees which are placed each year working in our garden.
I love the Belén as much as the children do, and I would love to have one here in the Cortijo but William laughed at the idea when I suggested it.
“I should build you a dolls’ house,” he teased me.
One year we will have a Belén, I promise myself.

4. Estrella: Tales from my Village.
The Belén.

Every Christmas I helped my abuela and the other women sewing for the Belén. Sofía always refused to come with me because she hated sewing, but she did help her papa and the other men repair the little houses and other buildings. Unlike some pueblos, we use the same Belén every year, we just extend it so it grows larger and larger. Originally it stood in the church but now it is far too big and fills up the community centre in the main square.
Besides helping her papa and the other men build the Belén, Sofía liked making two things for it - the little sheep and goats that follow Ramón the goatherd, and the angels which she placed about the pueblo - on the roofs of the miniature buildings and up in the volcanic hills to form the Heavenly host that sang to the shepherds and to the baby Jesus.
We're all in the Belén, our bodies sewn with care by my abuela and the other women - and by me when I was a teenager, because I was so good at sewing. Our faces are painted by Astrid, the Swedish woman who seduced Ramón and lives with him now for most of the year. We're all there; Sofía and I, with our arms around each other and Ángel standing to one side in what he thought of as a manly pose; my grandparents and cousins are there, and all the children and teachers from the school. Ramón is there with his goats and Astrid herself, in her multicoloured jumper, painting them. Even my mother Pilar is there, come home from Madrid, looking sophisticated in high-heeled boots, skinny jeans and a fur jacket. Everyone in the village is included, all sewn so carefully. Some of the figures - those of the older people - are used year-on-year, but us children and teenagers grew too fast so generally the women had to sew us afresh each Christmas.
The Holy Family are the only figures that have been used for generations and they are the only ones made of clay rather than sewn or knitted by the women. One year Father Dominico asked Astrid if she could repaint them, or even make new ones because she's skilled at modelling in clay as well as painting. In the end, she decided to repaint the old figures which was a popular choice with the village, although there was a lot of muttering when they were finally revealed because she painted them as African. I was pleased because the only person always missing from the Belén is my papa and Mama told me that Joseph now looks rather like him, so it's as if Astrid has included him at last.
Ramón has built Astrid a studio at the back of his cortijo and she works there - when she isn’t painting outside down on the shore or high on the clifftop. Every October, she returns to Sweden for a month, having first of all shipped her year’s work back to her agent in Stockholm. Her agent organises a big exhibition for her, and when we were young, Sofía and I and my cousins all said novenas for her in the church so that she would sell lots of pictures and come back with much money in the bank.
When someone moved to the pueblo who we all liked, we asked Astrid to add them to the Belén. I asked her to make a little figure of Señora Glynis which I dressed in a colourful rainbow scarf and bright red jacket just like Glynis wore. I placed her walking through the pueblo with a row of tiny cats following behind her which I made myself. They are all different colours like her cats in real life but Sofía shook her head when she saw them.
“They would never walk in a straight line,” she pointed out, “they are cats.”
I realised she was right and so we arranged one little cat washing itself and another stopping to catch a mouse, but most of them were gathered around Señora Glynis hoping to be fed. One I put rubbing itself against her leg and another trying to trip her up and one riding upon her shoulder. They made me smile and I hoped everyone else would like them too.

Part of our church was originally a mosque back in the days of the Moors. Miguel Rubio, the sacristan, was very proud of it and showed tourists round although he treated the North African workers with contempt, which shows he is a hypocrite. He was just as rude to the gitanos, the gypsies, even though they are good Catholics. I hated him, even if it was a sin.
My bisabuelo gitano, my gypsy great grandfather, came out of the mountains after the death of the one they do not name except in whispers. My great grandmother looked at him and fell in love, she knew at once he was her man.
How they lived up there, the gitanos, during the bitter years of the General’s dictatorship, I cannot say, but live they did. My abuelo once told me that the villagers traded with them, giving them bread and wine and other provisions in return for the rabbits and goats the gitanos hunted up in the wild passes.
They never spoke about the past, the grown-ups, none of them talked about it - the long bitter years under the General and his fascist thugs. I think a grim silence hung over that time for fear the hatred and fighting would break out again, since there are many who still admire the old tyrant, who hate anyone unlike themselves and who would welcome back the fascistas. They could even be found among my own family.
“I don’t have to justify my country to you!” I once heard my great-uncle shout at Señora Glynis when she wanted to organise an exhibition about Federico García Lorca and to stage a performance of his play, Bodas de sangre.
I hate them, the fascistas. They were the ones that insulted my papa and mama and taught other children at school to be unkind.
My papa is from Sudan and when he went away the other children wouldn’t play with me anymore. They ran off when they saw me coming and called me names. One boy, Eduardo Castro, even threw stones at me. Abuela was angry when I told her, she said my papa was the gentlest of men, he never drank like the white men do and never raised a hand to anyone, man, woman or child.
“He must have been wicked,” Eduardo said to me, “because the police took him away.”
But Mama said it was because he had to go back to his own country and we couldn’t go with him because there was no work there and so no food. We had to stay here and Mama had to go to work in the city while I lived in the village with Abuela and Abuelo, and my cousins, Ada, Elena and Carla whose papa and mama also worked away in the city.

Walking Shadow, Miriam Hasting’s first historical novel, was published in November 2019 under the name of M W Hastings, and is available direct from FeedaRead Books as well as through Amazon. It is also available as an e-book on Kindle. This is a historical novel with profoundly modern themes: the fear of terrorism, political manipulation of information, and issues of religious fundamentalism and intolerance.

Miriam Hastings’ latest novel, The Dowager’s Dream, is available now in paperback from FeedARead Publishing. Also as an e-book on Kindle: The Dowager’s Dream.

In a crumbling mansion on the north coast of Scotland, the Dowager grows old; exiled there by her son, the Laird, she dreams of her girlhood and waits for death, but when the tenants keep talking of a monster in the sea, she becomes obsessed with the strange creature living in the bay beyond her windows.

The people claim the sea monster portends disaster and they are right for the Laird has grand plans to improve the estate. He intends to evict all the tenants from their crofts in order to turn the land over to an army of sheep.

Can the Dowager stand up to her unscrupulous son? If she does, she may have to pay a terrible price.

Edmund (aka Rosamund) Shakespeare, younger sibling of William and lead player of female roles with the King’s Men, is the narrator and central protagonist. When the novel opens, it is January 1606 and London is a dangerous place; the gunpowder plot has just been foiled, spies and informers are everywhere, and Edmund is a prisoner in the Tower, charged with treason.

The Minotaur Hunt.

Miriam’s first novel, winner of the MIND Book of the Year Award, is a present-day story with a legendary model. To the people of Crete, the Minotaur was traditionally a creature of darkness and horror. Locked in a labyrinth where no-one could see him, he became the scapegoat for everyone’s worst imaginable nightmares and terrors.

Chrissie and Rachel are Minotaurs. They meet in Bradley, a rambling Victorian institution for the mentally ill. As the novel unfolds and their respective stories are gradually revealed, their growing relationship becomes a rich source of shared experience and a focus for their deepening knowledge of themselves.

Some reviews of Miriam Hastings’ The Minotaur Hunt:

[An author] “of great talent and wit, the courage to lead us through purgatory and the tenderness to love and understand its inhabitants.” Monica Dickens.

“There are echoes of romantic fiction, but there is also a whiff of grim realism . . . Underlying the narrative is an impressive refusal to attempt glib explanations.” Bernard Ineichen.

“Miriam Hastings’ The Minotaur Hunt is an engrossing novel set in a mental health institution and in the minds of some of its patients. . .The positive portrayal is very well done, yet it does not pull any punches about the difficulties faced by those with serious mental illness”, Mercia McMahon.

“No matter how dark the labyrinthe of emotions, there is always redemption for the human condition, and this sensitivity to lightness, back-to-back with the darkness, is where Hastings’ writing is at its finest. It has the voice of authenticity.” Vine Voice.

“The Minotaur Hunt is beautifully written with an immediacy and urgency that has you turning the pages”, The Bub.

New Work

Miriam Hastings has recently completed a new novel, The Dowager’s Dream, a surreal fantasy set on the north coast of Scotland at the time of the brutal clearances in the Scottish Highlands. The novel was inspired by the (largely imagined) lives of Miriam’s great great-grandmothers, Margaret MacKenzie and Christine Patterson, and also by an account written in 1809 by a minister’s daughter, describing a mermaid she had seen in Sandside Bay, Caithness. Although The Dowager’s Dream is set in the early years of the 19th Century, the themes of dispossession and ethnic cleansing will resonate with the contemporary reader.

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