Best British Short Stories 2015

by Nicholas Royle

  ‘We thought we’d walk with you,’ says Peter’s mother. ‘What a good idea, a little leg stretch.’

  They walk along with her, nodding to the woman in the transparent mac as they pass the shelter.

  When they reach the end of the promenade, Peter’s father says, ‘We should turn back,’ and as they walk Sonia home again they tell her about the evening’s entertainment: a show at the pavilion and dinner at the Grand.

  ‘I’ve booked you a table,’ says Peter’s father. ‘It’s a fine place. It’s where I proposed to Peter’s mother. We go there every year for our anniversary.’

  ‘Have the seafood platter,’ says Peter’s mother.

  Peter, wearing one of his father’s ties, walks Sonia along the blustery promenade. The seafront is all lit up with lightbulbs strung between the lampposts. ‘See?’ says Peter. ‘Who needs Las Vegas?’ At the pavilion, they see an Elvis. Sonia finds him disappointing. When the show is over, they go on to the Grand.

  They are greeted as ‘Mr and Mrs Webster’ and Sonia opens her mouth to correct the misapprehension but they are already being led through the restaurant towards their table in the corner, and in the end she says nothing.

  When the waiter comes to take their order, Sonia asks for a pasta dish.

  ‘Are you not going to have the seafood platter?’ asks Peter.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ says Sonia.

  Peter looks concerned. He orders his own meal without looking at the menu.

  Sonia, looking around at the decor, says to Peter, ‘I doubt they’ve changed a thing since your parents first came here.’

  Peter touches the flock wallpaper and says, ‘That’s a nice thought.’

  The waiter returns to light their candle and pour the wine. They raise their glasses, touching the thin rims together. Sonia brings hers close to her mouth but barely wets her lips before putting it down again.

  ‘All right?’ says Peter.

  Sonia nods. She has not yet told him about the test she did in his parents’ bathroom, about the white plastic stick with the little window in the middle, the vertical line that proved the test was working, and the sky-blue, sea-blue flat line that made her think of a distant horizon seen through an aeroplane window. She has not told him that when she came out of the bathroom with the plastic stick still in her hand, Peter’s mother was standing there, and that when, after breakfast, she looked for the stick, it had been moved.

  The waiter returns with their meals. Peter, smiling down at the food on his plate, picking up his fork, begins to talk to Sonia about the possibility of a management position at the pavilion. His dad, he says, can pull a few strings.

  The waiter is coming back already. He is going to ask them if everything is all right, and Sonia is going to say yes even though she has barely had a taste yet. Peter is holding his fork out across the table towards Sonia, offering her a piece of something whose fishy smell reminds her of the stony beach, the tarry pebbles, and the gulls that will wake her at dawn.

  She sees, in the molten wax around the wick of the candle, an insect. Sonia picks up her fork, aiming the handle into this hot moat. She is an air-sea rescue unit arriving on the scene to lift the insect to safety. Carefully, she places the insect on a serviette to recover, as if it has only been floating in a sticky drink.

  ‘I think that one’s had it,’ says Peter, and Sonia looks at it and thinks he might be right.

  Peter, who had the whole bottle of wine to himself, is still sleeping the next morning when Sonia gets up, puts on the beige coat and lets herself out of the house. She walks down the promenade again, away from Peter’s parents’ house, heading in the direction she and Peter came from when they arrived here. She goes as far as the end of the promenade, where she stops to watch the gulls, and then she goes further, climbing up above the town until she is standing a hundred metres above sea level in the wind. She is still in Eastmouth, though. She cannot see across to the next town. When she looks at her watch, she realises that she has been gone for a while now. As she makes her way down from the cliffs, she hears the tolling of a bell; it is coming from the church that stands on top of one of the hills that surround the otherwise flat town.

  On the promenade, all the shelters are empty. All the bay windows of all the retirement homes are empty. She realises that it’s Sunday and wonders if everyone’s at church. Peter’s parents might be there, and perhaps even Peter.

  She veers slightly away from the promenade now. It is the start of the summer and ought to be warmer, but it is windy and cold and she is glad of Peter’s mother’s coat. She has her purse in the pocket. She heads down a side street that brings her out at the train station, which is overlooked by the church.

  Alone on the platform, she stands in front of the train timetable. She looks at her watch, although pointlessly, as it turns out, because when she consults the timetable she finds that no trains run on Sundays. She wanders to the edge of the platform and looks along the tracks in the direction she would go to get home, and then in the opposite direction. Is there really nothing at all on a Sunday, she wonders; does nothing even pass through?

  She is still there when she notices that the woman in the transparent mac is now standing at one end of the platform. She is talking on a mobile phone but she is looking at Sonia and so Sonia nods at her. She doesn’t know whether she has been recognised. The woman, putting away the phone, approaches. When she is within touching distance, she says, ‘You’re the Websters’ girl.’

  ‘No,’ says Sonia, preparing to introduce herself, whilst at the same time noticing the locals coming down the hill, coming from church. The service is over. It seems as if the whole town is heading towards them, like an army in beige and lilac.

  ‘Yes,’ says the woman. ‘You are. You’re the Websters’ girl.’

  The crowd is nearing the foot of the hill; they are close now and one by one they look at the woman in the transparent mac and they nod.

  The Tourists

  JULIANNE PACHICO

  WHO’S COMING TO the party? A lot of people, it’s going to be a big success: the Mendozas and the Vasquezes, the Lorenzos and the Smiths. The maids drag the white plastic chairs into the yard, forming half-circles beneath the mango tree and around the barbecue pit. The gardeners carry out the big wooden table, a security guard following closely behind with a ruler to scrape off the white globs of dried candlewax, accumulated in thick layers from weeks of blackouts. The dogs yip excitedly, nipping at people’s ankles, and behind the safety of their chickenwire cage the rabbits look on, horrified. Inside the kitchen, staring out the window, one of the cooks says, ‘We really need to lock them up. Can you imagine Lola rolling in her poo and then licking Mrs Montoya’s hand?’

  The caterers have arrived; they’re getting set up. They’re carrying big metal pans, steam rising beneath the lids, filled with white fish soaked in lemon juice, red peppers for the grill, raw bloody steaks and chicken breasts stabbed with fork marks. Nothing is extravagant, nothing is over the top, except for maybe the lobster claws on ice, the tins of caviar and the oysters that the cooks are busily prying open with their special metal knives. That’s not his style.

  Here he comes. Folding the cuff of his black shirt above his wrists so that a pale strip of unburnt skin shows, like a patch of exposed land on a jungle hillside. People rarely notice, but the three middle fingers of his right hand end abruptly in smooth pink stumps, neatly aligned with the humble pinkie. ‘Looking good,’ he says to the blinking white Christmas lights hanging from the branches of the grapefruit tree. ‘Excellent,’ he says while strolling past the arts and crafts supplies set out for the children by the pool: crayons and candles and paper plates. ‘Go along now,’ he says to one of the many cats, sitting on the drainpipe above the jacaranda bush, a distasteful expression behind its droopy whiskers. Who knows how many pets they have at this point? Just the other week he saw a turtle lumberi
ng under the sofa in the living room, but when he got down on his knees to check there was nothing there, not even dust balls or coffee-flavoured candy wrappers.

  He wanders inside the house through the swinging patio door, scratching the back of his neck. The maids have done a good job at making everything seem presentable. The bookshelves have been dusted, the broken electric piano cleared away (a lizard got electrocuted deep inside its mechanical guts years ago and ever since it’s refused to make a sound, not even when the cats frantically chase each other across the black and white keys). Considering that they only come out to this country ranch every few months, for Easter or holiday weekends, the house still feels fairly lived in: the living room fresh-smelling with the sharp scent of white laundry powder, the lampshades shiny without a single dead moth smear, no cobwebs around the chandelier or shelves of VHS tapes.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he says, knocking on the door to his daughter’s room at the same time that he pushes it open. The room is deserted – the only sign of her presence is a stack of CD cases spilled all over the bed, next to some shredded packets of plantain chips. It’s hard to restrain himself, this rare opportunity to intrude in her bedroom – normally the door is firmly locked, American bands screaming their angst-filled rage from her stereo on the other side. So he now finds his eyes flickering greedily, taking in one new poster after another hanging on the walls. The one of a mournful-eyed American singer with shaggy blond hair holding an acoustic guitar, that’s definitely new; Snoopy dancing with a balloon, that’s been up since she was in kindergarten and received it as a present at one of the immense birthday parties she hosted here for all her classmates. The closet doors are half open; he can glimpse the shelves lined with stuffed animals that couldn’t fit into the storage trunk in the hallway, Care Bears and shabby dogs and other beasts that were never loved enough to be guaranteed a spot at their main house in Cali. There are rows of plastic toys based on countless American cartoon shows, Transformers and ThunderCats and Ghostbusters, stiff plastic bodies randomly positioned in a messy parade, silently poised with their daggers and ray guns, ready to leap into battle with invisible enemies at a moment’s notice. Everything slowly gathering dust.

  From where he’s standing he can clearly see that the empty packets of plantain chips have been licked clean, not a single crumb remaining. Shaking his head, he picks them up between two fingers and drops them from the bed onto the floor where it’ll be easier for a maid to sweep them up. That’s when he sees it – the small ziplock baggie lying on a pillow, half-filled with bright red Jell-o powder – the kind of treat you can purchase from street children at traffic lights. He picks it up and shakes it up and down, the powder accumulating at the bottom, except for the wet clumps clinging near the baggie’s thin lips. He can already picture the garish stains across her front teeth and mouth, the demon red of her tongue flashing at the guests as she utters a sullen hello, the sticky finger smears on her shirt, running up and down the fabric as though a tiny animal with miniature bloody paws had danced all over her body. Ave Maria, the maids will say when they see her, closing their eyes in supplication. Mija, what were you thinking? What will your father say when you show up looking like that for his party?

  The automatic gate rumbles at the same time that he hears car wheels crunching on the gravel driveway. He puts the Jell-o baggie in his back pocket, jammed tightly behind his cellphone. After closing the door behind him, he pulls his right shirtsleeve down as far as it’ll go, almost completely covering the white scars snaking over the backs of his hands.

  Here they come. Black and blue high heels clicking, jackets draped over arms, wispy strands of thinning hair combed neatly back. The chauffeurs park the mud-splattered jeeps with Bogotá licence plates under the fig trees; the bodyguards climb out and immediately cross their arms, already hovering in the background. He waits under the mango tree in the backyard. Smoke rises from the barbecue pit. The chefs grimly rotate sausages slashed with deep knife cuts over the fire, red peppers and onions impaled and sweating on wooden sticks.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ he says in greeting. Right hand hidden behind his back in a clenched fist, left hand extended and welcoming, fingers spread wide.

  Everyone arrives safely, happily. Nobody’s been chased by the crazed spider monkey, the one the maids have nicknamed ‘Baloo’ for the size of his black testicles, so impressively heavy that the housecleaners whisper amongst each other: Now that’s a real man, Linda, just what you need, someone to keep you satisfied, before exploding into giggles. At the last big party (two years ago? Three? Was it celebrating the successful Congress run, or hosting the visiting HSBC managers?), Baloo had run back and forth over the stone wall for hours, staring hungrily at the food, the tables, and the guests most of all (this was before the shards of glass were installed along the wall’s perimeter, before Uribe’s successful presidential campaign based on vows to ‘restore national peace and security’, before he’d started hearing the clicking sounds of recording instruments every time he lifted the phone). At one point, Baloo had jumped down and stuck his head up Mrs Montoya’s skirt, and her banshee screams had caused the maids in the kitchen to raise their eyebrows at each other.

  Thankfully there’s been no sign of Baloo for months now – the fact that the security guard has been tossing his slimy orange and banana peels inside the forest, well away from the main house, has possibly helped. As a result the party is going well, the conversation gliding along smoothly, effortlessly. No bottles of aguardiente or rum yet, it’s still early, the sun casting hazy yellow light over the freshly mown grass, the mosquitoes blessedly absent. Instead it’s green glass bottles of chilled beer for the gentlemen, tall slender glasses of champagne for the ladies. The hired waiting staff stalk silently back and forth across the patio, black and white uniforms still free from wine splatters and crumbs. Everything is under control; everything is fine.

  He doesn’t see us, but we’re watching.

  We’ve been doing so for a while now. We didn’t get any greetings, no gentle air kiss near the cheek, no firm pumping handshake, but that’s okay, we don’t take it personally, we don’t mind. Instead we take our time, take things slow: there’s no reason to rush, no reason to make things happen before they need to. We walk in slow circles around the barbecue pit, smelling the charcoal fire and crackling chicken skin with deep inhalations. We put our hands tentatively in the glass bowls of peanuts; what a nice rattling sound they make when we stir our fingers. We take turns gently touching the beer bottles, admiring the streams of condensation running down the smooth glass bodies. No one makes eye contact; nobody invites us to sample a plate of sliced limes or a tray of roasted garlic. But we’re not upset; we’re not bothered. For now, we’re happy, watching the hummingbirds dart nervously amongst the orange flowerpots. Everything has been so tasteful, nothing over the top – no helicopters landing in the football field, no spray-tanned models greased up and wrestling each other while the guests cheer and look on. No one’s slinging their arms around each other, singing classic Mexican corridos at the top of their lungs; no one’s pulled the gun from their holster and started shooting wildly at the darkening sky. Nothing like that. The food is delicious, and everyone is having a wonderful time.

  He loves it when parties are at this stage – the post-beginning and pre-middle, when no one has gotten too drunk or noticed who’s been pointedly ignoring them. It means he can sneak away to the bathroom adjoining his private bedroom, lock himself inside for up to fifteen minutes at a time, sometimes twenty. He sits on the bowl, chin resting in hands, trousers sagging around his ankles. It’s moments like these when it’s impossible to ignore: how all over his body there are patches of skin now drooping where they used to be firm and taut. There are brown and purple spots all over his arms that definitely weren’t there twenty years ago either, and red moles on his upper shoulders he keeps mistaking for insect bites. This year, too, he suddenly found himself mentally adding secret
descriptions to his friends’ names: prostate-cancer Andrés; emphysema-cough-Pablo; beet-juice-diet Mauricio. More and more lately, it seems as though everyone he knows is talking to doctors instead of priests, men with stethoscopes around their necks instead of crucifixes. He can’t pinpoint the exact moment when it changed, but there’s a new fear now lurking beneath everyone’s low-volume conversations. It’s not just extradition to Miami prisons or undercover DEA agents or stash house security guards secretly wearing wires beneath their collared shirts. It’s also cancer cell counts, will-drafting, uneasy conversations with mistresses, even more uneasy conversations with wives. He’s started biting his nails again too – they haven’t been this short since he was seventeen, doing deliveries in the hillside neighbourhoods for local bosses. His first job. He would sit in the front seat for hours, waiting for his partner’s signal, and tear off every last possible shred of nail, until the cuticles were non-existent.

  (His right fingers were long back then too, with deliciously bitable nails – the index finger was his favourite.)

  But now’s not the time to dwell on it. Not tonight. He pulls his trousers up briskly and rebuckles his belt. As usual, he flushes but doesn’t wash his hands. He wanders past the bookshelves, back out to the porch. Under the drainpipe Mauricio is telling a story about his recent senatorial trip to Uruguay, how uncomfortable it made him to see all the small children at his official reception, the way they honoured his presence by saluting and marching across the basketball court, military dictatorship style.

  ‘At least, if nothing else, we’ve never had that issue here,’ he says, beer bottle coming dangerously close to clinking against his coffee-stained teeth. ‘Long live democracy.’

  By the mango tree Ravassa’s wife is already drunk; he can tell by how closely she leans towards Alonso as he speaks, summarising a TV series about medieval knights in Spain that he’s just finished watching. Alonso is half-Mexican, which maybe explains why he uses so many hand gestures while talking: the way he darts forward, parries, blocks, defends, you’d swear you could see the sword glowing in his land, a luminescent silver. Ravassa’s wife keeps laughing and reaching out, trying to brush her maroon-coloured nails against his chest.