Gavin Eugene O’Toole is a writer and freelance journalist in London. He earns his living as a newspaper sub-editor but nurtures the hope that one day he can earn his keep as a writer of fiction.

He enters story competitions regularly, and has won a number of credits since he began doing so in 2016, including: Listowel Writers Week short story competition (winner 2019) and humorous essay competition (winner 2020); and the Ovacome prize (winner 2021).

He has published two novels for young adults (Molly Path, 2022) and children (Land of Waves, 2024) with the independent publisher Hawkwood Books. Land of Waves tells the stories of young unaccompanied refugees making perilous journeys to a new life, and was shortlisted at the Wells Festival of Literature Book for Children Competition in 2021. In June 2024, he toured schools across England in support of Refugee Week to talk about the book.

He has written for the Morning Star about obstacles faced by working-class writers.

He is not yet represented and is actively seeking an agent.

He is married and has three daughters.

Links to his work can be found on his website: geotoole.uk.

You can follow him on Twitter at: @GOTwrites

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Iceberg

If she really cared, she’d leave me alone. He repeats this to himself as he inspects the busybody pinned to his sofa. She is tightly wrapped in a grey tartan suit. Sober, prim, self-possessed. She looks nothing like a vicar.

Go on, pray to your sky spirits; waste your breath on a god that doesn’t exist or, if he does, hates me with a passion. What do I care? Just leave me be.

He says none of this but listens to the vicar’s practised delivery with irritation that stings his gullet like heartburn. He would say something, tell her where to get off, he never went to that church of hers and never will; doesn’t believe in all that hocus-pocus even if the missus did; hates the Christmas celebrations she is offering to share with him. But he can’t get a word in edgeways because the woman obviously loves to hear herself. That’s it, he decides, she doesn’t worship god, she worships the sound of her own voice. Preachy. A performance. Undoubtedly a hypocrite spouting godly gibberish.

The cheek of it. Coming here to inspect the grumpy git at number fourteen; check whether he’s dribbling his gravy, washing his underpants, now that the old bag has croaked and he’s a joyless widower on his tod without a soul in the world, sitting in an icebox because heating is a luxury and he was never given to indulgence.

Well guess what, he tells her under his breath, I like it that way.

He pulls the blanket closer around his neck and shoulders, and traps it taut against the floor with his toes. He has been listening to his visitor drone on for a good ten minutes, ignoring the flood of platitudes she chants about his dead wife. They drain away like soapsuds in a car wash. He wonders how much longer he will have to put up with this nonsense before the vicar gets the message and leaves. All he wants is to be alone, fester in his cocoon, ignore the seasonal cheer until it’s all over, tough out the biting temperature in peace. His mind drifts and he anticipates the sound of the front door clicking as she leaves, sensing the relief her departure will bring.

But now she’s asking him about his cooking, for goodness sake. What are you having for Christmas dinner? Are you getting your shopping done? Leave it out, he wants to say, mind your own business, I’m not a child, I prepared my own meals for years before my wife came along; of course I don’t need my shopping done. Meals on wheels? Canteen sludge.

He does not say anything but pledges that, if she persists, he’s going to have to open his filthy gob. Then he’ll really say what he thinks and she won’t like it one bit, will she? Vicar or not, he won’t spare her blushes. The cat will be out of the bag. He’ll tell her where to go, why he hates her church and happy clappy hangers on and do goodery for undeserving parasites; how that false piety duped his wife, consumed her little life, swallowed up the short time she had on this earth, and for what? What did your god give back when she was on the ward, vomiting yellow bile, coughing blood, agonising about heaven? Your god gave her grief, that’s what.

It's becoming too much, listening to the interrogation. He cannot stand it any longer. He parts the blanket around his chest and at once feels the discomfort of the frozen air in a house without heating. He points at the kitchen and feels the stiffness in his finger. Do you want a cup of tea? he asks, pushing himself up awkwardly. It’s a pretext. The kitchen will be his refuge, even though it’s colder than the living room. But that’s a small price to pay for respite from the sermon.

The vicar smiles with infuriating pseudo-sympathy that provokes him to raise his eyes as he turns away. Won’t be a jiffy, he says, and chuckles at his deception. Because he will take so long to make a simple cup of tea she will grow tired of waiting and depart and that’ll be that. With luck she’ll never come back.

He clicks the kitchen door behind him and shivers as the chill in this room embraces him at once. His blood is thin from medication, and he is suffering more than ever from the perpetual winter. He has not used the oven for an age and the kitchen’s vinyl floor and large window have transformed the room into a refrigerator. He shuffles around uncomfortably, curving his chest and shoulders inwards to conserve heat, rubbing his hands. He wishes now he had brought his blanket with him. It was a foolish oversight. He could have sat wrapped at the table indefinitely listening for the sound of his visitor stealing down the hall and away to her brainwashed flock. Good riddance.

He fills the kettle and flicks the switch, although a voice tells him it will be a waste of energy because the vicar will not be there when he gets back and he has to save his pennies. He does not want to sit on the cold wooden chair, so he places his palms flat on the kettle to absorb its warmth.

A picture forms of his wife doing the same thing and he is surprised at how sweet this memory is. He enjoys its glow, reruns it, studies her hunched form, traces the wisps of grey hair falling beside her temples freed from the bun she pinned back with clips.

The seething of the water grows louder, filling the space with its foaming pitch, but he is lost in his vision. The figure of his wife is so real he could reach out and touch her, but he resists the temptation to display a side of him that he spent their lives together restraining. He holds back from such a tender gesture because that is what he has always done.

The water boils and the click of the kettle rouses him from this reverie, and he is thankful for it because he is disturbed. He reaches into the cupboard for a teabag then fills the mug, aware that his hands shake as he grips its handle. His fingers are numb and he wraps them around the steaming vessel. It's scalding but he does not care and endures with bravado the painful throb in his skin and bones.

Then his wife returns. She cupped her mug like this as well, he remembers, and he sees her seated at the table, lonely, staring into space. She extracts from her cup the warmth that he knows he never gave her. She is listening to his lecture, another rant against a world in which she is all but invisible. She hears him out dutifully, stoical. She accepts the lack of attention like penance.

He lets go of the mug and stumbles back into the chair at the table where she sat for years in quiet expectation that he would end his emotional boycott, see her, converse with spousal affection. He wants more than anything now that she is gone to look into those eyes once more and see them stretch as she smiles. He wants to smile with her, hold her, hug her, feel her. But of course, it is too late.

There is a tug on his cheek and he touches it. On his fingertip is a compressed tear, and what he notices most is its frigid coldness. At that moment he pictures her again, in the hospital bed; him standing over her, terrified of removing the armour he has worn his entire life to expose the soft flesh beneath, unable even then to take her hand.

He is overcome by a sadness he has never felt before. He wants to travel back in time to reveal to her in those final moments the bitter reality that when she is gone he will be lost in a wilderness of permafrost. The regret is overwhelming. He despises himself. The pressure on his chest squeezes out the air and he is vanquished.    

That lonely kitchen is no longer a refuge. He decides that he does not want to be there. He finishes the tea, stirs in milk, takes it back through to his waiting visitor. The vicar smiles. Thanks, she says.

Something unexpected nudges him. A voice inside says her gratitude is genuine, accept its courteous motive, enjoy this company for in his splendid isolation it is exceptional. Is it possible that his wife is talking? He bridles at the thought. Spiritual humbug. For the birds.

He feels the reflex to dismiss the vicar’s appreciation, to mine her inflection in search of insincerity. He returns to his armchair and wraps the blanket around him as before with stubborn, jerky intent until he is as swaddled as he can possibly be. He will show no frailty, even at his age, even if it is a relief to be back from the kitchen.

The vicar sips her tea and asks if he is having one. He looks out the window, tells her no, he has had enough. They sit in silence. She waits with patience, but although he would not admit this, he is no longer as impatient for her to leave. She is not there drinking tea, but his wife, and the fire glows, the television casts flaming shadows on the wall. He is experiencing something approaching happiness.

But there is no television now, just a hollow room filled by the voice of a stranger pointing out the obvious. I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but it’s cold in here. Are you warm enough with that blanket?

Once this would have been sufficient to light the touch paper and send him spiralling into stratospheric rage. But the voice inside says hold your horses, get a grip, it’s a fair question. It’s no life. You occupy a mortuary.

It is all he can do to grunt, a formula that fails to curtail the vicar’s discourse for she has a mission. A lot of our pensioners at the community centre find it hard to pay the bills, she says, awaiting his response with an intensity she makes no effort to conceal. It is a gambit.

She is interested in your welfare, the voice tells him, since when was that a bad thing? Hear her out. But his mind is already listening because he is befuddled by this frontal assault on his dignity and cannot think of a way to repel her hateful goodwill. He has lost his touch. He is just not angry enough anymore. Goodness knows he wants to be — to clench his fist, tell her what for, explode with satisfying fury. But before this inner struggle has been resolved she speaks again. Her momentum is unstoppable.

We keep the heating on down there all day so parishioners have somewhere to go. It’s toasty, she says. And the banter is like a bonfire, enough to warm anybody’s heart.

To make the point, the vicar puts down her tea and rubs her shoulders and he wants to berate her for play acting, laying it on thick. He hates drama, any form of exhibition, but a frosty breath on his nape causes a shudder and that voice he is hearing tells him to admit it, he’s freezing inside and out, and this woman radiates enough heat to thaw an iceberg.

Perhaps she senses him retreating from the fortress of intransigence that he has built in that polar heart. Perhaps the voice that has spooked him is now talking through her and telling him he has punished himself enough.

Your wife used to love it, the vicar adds with a winning smile, I’m sure she’d hate to think of you all alone in a cold house at Christmas.

He melts.