.... Our Winner ....

... Annemarie Neary

We are very pleased to announce that Annemarie Neary is our £1,000 GBP Posara Prize winner with Cat and Casanova, her short story on the theme of 'A Foreigner in Italy'. Very well done, Annemarie!

She says:  "I am thrilled to win the Posara Prize.  Lois rang with the news while I was overseas and it all felt quite surreal. I am incurably addicted to Venice, so my prize will have to involve a visit there, hopefully during the Biennale."

Annemarie's short story is set in Venice during Carnevale and features a young couple whose characters are transformed by the fancy dress they wear one night. Here’s how it begins:

"It was only as the anaesthetic wore off that I realised it was me they had in mind. I tried to join in the conversation, but my voice was something dragged half-drowned from the bottom of a well. Jonny brought the subject up himself that very evening. 'Wherever you like, Cat. The world is your oyster.'

"He was standing over me, head to one side. I noticed he'd developed a cleft between his eyebrows, a sympathy wound he wore for me. His eyes looked rubbed red, but maybe the hospital lighting irritated them; he always said that neon eats away your soul. 'I'll bring brochures,' he said.

You can read the rest of the story Below.

Sharon Kendrick, one of the judges says:  "Cat and Casanova's quirky opening dragged me straight into the story and the vibrant writing was sustained throughout. It was an original idea which kept the reader guessing." 

Jessica Hart, another of our judges has these comments: " wonderfully evocative story...very atmospheric....terrific sense of place"

Check our Facebook to hear Annemarie's explanation of what the prize meant to her, and her advice to entrants for the Posara Prize in 2012.

Cat and Casanova

By Annemarie Neary

It was only as the anaesthetic wore off that I realised it was me they had in mind. I tried to join in the conversation, but my voice was something dragged half-drowned from the bottom of a well. Jonny brought the subject up himself that very evening. 'Wherever you like, Cat. The world is your oyster.'

He was standing over me, head to one side. I noticed he'd developed a cleft between his eyebrows, a sympathy wound he wore for me. His eyes looked rubbed red, but maybe the hospital lighting irritated them; he always said that neon eats away your soul. 'I'll bring brochures,' he said.

That night, the drugs whooshing through the drip sent me aqua-planing on a broad and soupy sea. Not at all the kind of sea for a brochure: it was green-grey and lacked islands. It was only when I looked down that I noticed I was buck-naked on an oyster shell of monumental proportions, my hand covering the place where the missing breast had been. Venus, of course.

By the time Jonny came back the next day, my head had cleared. 'Any thoughts on the trip?' he asked. My brain flashed up Ibiza and an image of the ward sister in a dayglo bikini. Then, I remembered Venus.
'Venice,' I said.
The little cleft between his eyebrows deepened. His lower lip jutted just the tiniest bit before he remembered simply to agree. I could see him think. It's not enough for her to pull through, she wants romance too. I could see he wasn't sure what he could manage. 'Sure.' He spread his mouth into a smile.

Those days, my every whim bore fruit. So, when my sister Rona came to visit she brought an armful of guidebooks. 'See Venice and die' she said, then clamped her palm to her mouth in horror at what had slipped out of it. The locker squeaked under the weight of the books.
'Oh, and there's that.' She tossed the slightest of them onto the bed, an odd little oblong book by a JG Links. I like to see the cut of their jib, these writers of books, and when Rona had gone I looked for a photo of the man whose book was the wrong shape to stack with all the others.
Links gave me a benevolent smile. The sun shone on him like he was a hill. Beneath his left ear crouched the Basilica di San Marco. I wondered how he'd come to be suspended like that in mid-air over the Piazza. I was impressed. I chose him for my guide and, like a silvery angel in his good suit, Links showed me Venice.

Meanwhile, they nurtured my obsession, the nurses and Jonny. I felt humoured, but no matter. 'Well, Cat, where have you been today? More canals?' Not Maura Drumm, though, whose life was a round of funerals and hospital visits. 'Venice?' she said, dabbing the end of her thin red nose' 'Twill be no surprise when that goes under. That's a dog's had its day.' 'Don't mind her,' said Jonny, 'Aren't the waves lapping at us all?'

Jonny was keen to get our trip out of the way. Perhaps he'd decided the whole thing was unhealthy, this obsession with a dying city. As the departure date approached, I was overcome by anxiety that, somehow, Venice would let me down.
'It is, on the whole, not a disappointing city, even to those with enviable powers of imagination,' Links assured me. Others weren't so certain. There was talk of having to force a path through the scrunched up streets, of rip-off merchants on every corner, of bad food and foul smells, pigeon shit and made-in-China masks. And then it turned out we would be there for Carnevale. 'Did you not know they had the Carnival in the February?' said Maura Drumm, 'It'll be bedlam.'

Before I know it, I'm criss-crossing Venice in search of the shop where I reserved our costumes online. Jonny is trailing along after me, jabbing away at his Blackberry. Just as he is about to insist on being fed, we happen upon the place. Its rails are dripping with capes and gloves and jewelled shawls. There are the deepest velvets, and lace, rivers of the stuff. New skins. I show Jonny his costume.
'You've got to be kidding,' he says.
But he bites his lip and shakes his head and in the end he goes so far as to touch the long black cape. Then, he sees the shoes. 'Ah Cat, not the high heels'

The man who dresses Jonny is called Mario. Mario is a man's man, thickset, with strong, practical hands. I can sense Jonny's fear begin to subside. All the same, he remains dead set against the wig until Mario points out that you can't be Casanova with a comb-over. Each new item of clothing takes Jonny one further step away from himself. By the time he is fully kitted out, Jonny has forgotten all about me, too. Casanova and he stare back and forward at each other in the full-length mirror.
While no one is watching, I slip behind the curtain at the back of the shop and I put on my dress. I don't know why I went for yellow, when I don't have the skin for it. and I shut my eyes tight as I ease the heavy brocade up over my body. Beyond the curtain, I can hear Jonny and Mario laughing, reciting football teams at each other.

'Let us ascend the bridge,' says Links, and I take a deep breath, remove my Cat wig with its brown bob and put on my Carnival curls. When I open my eyes I still look like Cat Kelly, the sick, washed-out version. It's only when I put on the half-mask that the excitement starts surging up. That lady in the mirror is beyond time and, for tonight only, that lady is me. We walk onto Piazza San Marco when night falls. By then, Jonny has mastered his new shoes. Euro pop bellows out from the Carnival stage. Jonny lets his fingers slip from mine, wiggling them in the air at me as he trips off in the direction of the Basilica. He drapes himself across one of the marble pillars that, by day, resemble bales of shot silk. Up there, Jonny Kelly looks languid and cocksure. You might even say he looks antique.

Next thing, he's been spotted and it's all click and whirr. Jonny plays it up to the hilt. He's puffing out his chest, rippling his fingers through the ruff on the front of his shirt, tilting his hat. Someone else stops to watch, then another and another until a whole flock of Japanese ladies with very pale stockings and very shiny shoes whip out the digital cameras to worship Jonny Kelly from Kilpedder.
'Yoo hoo!' I wave to him, 'Yoo hoo!' but he turns his grand beaky profile away from me. By now, the crowd of onlookers stretches right the way back to the base of the flagstaffs in front of the Basilica. I have to use my elbows to get through them. Jonny is executing low bows, making curly cascading movements with his hands. His jacket whips behind him as he jaunts back and forth. Jonny is dancing. Jonny? Jonny is dancing with one of the little Japanese ladies, teetering on the steps of the Basilica in his ribbony shoes and her face is shining with excitement that she's in Venice, in the arms of Casanova.

Before I know it, there's a clatter of black-gowned creatures sweeping me along through the shadows. They spin me round till I can't see which way is up. I hear Johnny panting as he runs after us, clackety clack in his ribbony shoes. I am the centre of attention now and they're snapping away at me, these people who wear rucksacks and visit cities. Not even an acqua-planing Venus can beat this.
'They don't know you're only Cat Kelly,' says Jonny, splitting himself.
'Would you ever shut up,' I say, and I give him a dig. 'You're ruining it for them. None of this is real anyway.'
'You don't have to be real to have impact.' says Jonny, just to me now.
He points his cane at the campanile and he has it all off pat about the time it collapsed and this one being, oh, just a bit older than your granny and it's obvious that he's been sneaking a peek at Links because he even uses the same words.

I'm looking up now and I'm trying to work out where Links could have been in his photo and I imagine him suspended under the sparkly little sky that seems only to exist as a roof for the Piazza. And because he is the god of this place, I ask him to make me a worthy fake, a made-in-Venice illusion. Then, I gather up my skirts to follow Jonny who has been waylaid by another group.

'They gave you the wrong mask', an English woman is saying to him. 'If you're supposed to be Casanova, you need the Bauta. That one's the plague doctor. I'd take that up with the shop, if I were you.'
I hold hands with my plague doctor, who thought he was Casanova, while the moon slides in and out of little wispy clouds and a chill rushes in from lagoon. I look through the columns to the place where once they hanged traitors. Who remembers the pain and the having to die? It's the columns that remain. I look up at the filigree palace where the Doge sat and dared adversity to come and get him. Why bother with a fortress? Every living thing has its span.

But I'm tired as Venice now. Like her, we've been pandering to the fantasies of the entire world, me and Jonny. The yellow lady and her Casanova, we move through the arcade beneath the Procuratie Nuove. The shutters have gone down on the glass shops and the great bell of the campanile is tolling. The bag sellers gather their wares and melt like a mist. The musicians have gone too and the only sound is the clicking of Jonny's heels and the scraping of his cane as he trails it along the walls.
On we walk, past the closed cafes and the little explosions of graffiti and all the time the water is slapping away beneath us.

That night, we lie in the high narrow bed in our hotel. In the half-light, Jonny touches the place where they carved me like a chicken. I screw my eyes tight, and in the starry swirls beneath my eyelids stands that indestructible woman in her Carnival curls and her yellow dress.

.... and if you want to look back at all the shortlisted entries, here they are....

In no particular order these were our finalists, and you can read all their stories on our blog (apart from Vittoria's, who hasn't given her permission to publish it):

• Catriona Stewart, Venetian Epiphany
• Vittoria Laurence, The Man and his Castle
• Kay Seeley,Some Enchanted Evening
• Paul Fowler, Primavera
• Juliet Platt, Serenissima
• Alexandra Wilson, The Lesson
• Annemarie Neary, Cat and Casanova
• Anny Kilbourne, The Aphrodisiad
• Karen Dawson, The Plum Season
• Linda Keech, The Procession
• Helen Bowell, Learning Horology

You will find the official press release for the announcement of all the finalists in our press room.

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