The Best British Short Stories 2014

by Nicholas Royle

  The short story, its use of adultery as the ethical question of the modern age. Not war, not death or grief – well, those too, but not, you know, bullfighting, or money, or violence. Do you think I’m obsessed?

  I think that’s a question you should ask your wife.

  But before he could think of something to say to this, the others came through, Zac swinging the whisky bottle by its neck, then sort of half-throwing it up to catch it full in his hand.

  Looks like you need some of this, he said.

  Indeed I do. Thank you. Mark held out the glass for Zac to splash into, and smiled to the others. I was just banging on to Liz about adultery and the short story, he said. Actually, I’ve got this fantasy, this book I’m going to edit. The Faber Book of Adultery. The joke being, I suppose, that the subject is so all-pervasive as to make the selection entirely otiose. It could be pages taken at random from any book, published ever. They’re all about adultery. A sweep of his arm, as if reading from a banner. The. Faber. Book. Of. Adultery. The Faber. Book of. Words.

  They laughed, and he blushed, and warned himself to ease off on the adultery. Accordingly the conversation became general, and they grouped themselves and sat, in pairs and threes. Mark could feel the alcohol in his bloodstream, and the music thrumming along behind the conversation, as if to underpin and corroborate it. Flirtation was a wonderful thing, he felt, and he was, he also felt, quite good at it. Flirtation was all about the navigation of invisible boundaries and contours, the skirting of a hill, the climbing of a stile. The only thing was that the line that stood between him and his friend’s wife wasn’t acting like a line. It was humming, glowing like a strip light, expanding and contracting, becoming more a zone than a line, something that could be stepped into without necessarily being crossed.

  Even filching glances at Laura, he got no sense that he’d overstepped any mark. He sat there, sipping his drink and nodding along to whatever it was this Nicci was saying, but really he was listening to his body. His body was singing – or, not singing, but something like it, something like the harmonics you get from a piano. This heightened sense of – not desire, exactly, or desiredness, but something to do with desire.

  You’re flirting with yourself, he told himself, and smiled at the thought.

  You’re flirting with yourself, over her.

  He watched Zac get up, laughing at something Laura had said, and go to the far end of the room. He leaned to tap at the screen of his iPhone, there in its dock, then scrolled with his finger. He tapped again, and the music changed: something harder, folky still, but with an electronic undercurrent that seemed to chivvy it along.

  It was as Zac walked back over, affecting a cool/dumb clown-dance as he came, that Mark was struck by an appalling thought.

  His wife, and his kids, treated his iPhone just the same as Elizabeth had treated Zac’s: as common property. The kids even knew the pass code for it. They played games on it, when they were allowed, and Laura checked the weather and looked things up on the web if the laptop was off, or being used. And then there was that app they’d downloaded onto their phones that allowed each of them to see where the other’s was, for if it got lost. How was anyone supposed to have an affair under such circumstances?

  All those post-war Yank adulterers, with their elegant tail-finned cars, and their motels and pools, and their bright New England suburbs, they were all shagging away in what now seemed like a golden age. Nobody could have affairs any more, surely, any more than they could have drinks cabinets. He knew they did, in the abstract, but he certainly didn’t know anyone who had. He couldn’t see how anyone would even start to go about it.

  It was a chastening thought, and his thank you kiss to Elizabeth, there in the hallway, was chaste, too, though he couldn’t help but note the particular quality of the pressure with which she squeezed his arm, through the corduroy of his jacket, as they smudged cheeks, in a way that might have been code, or the code for a code. The still night air and back-of-the-head buzz of the booze and the warm clear rising thought of the impossibility of it all put a spring in his step as they walked home, and he clinched his wife’s waist tight in to his, so she nearly tripped, and squeezed his bum in retaliation, and they laughed, and quickened their step again.

  In the weeks that followed he thought about it more. He got out his Oxford Concise Dictionary, as was his habit at such times – when he felt an idea coming, beginning to take up residence in the part of him that wrote, that made him a writer – and looked up the etymology. It came from the Latin: Adulterare, to corrupt, as in to adulterate. Which was a nicely moral formulation: anything else added to a marriage being necessarily inferior, like cutting cocaine with baking powder, or worse. He’d assumed it shared a root with ‘adult’, but it didn’t. That came from adolescere, to grow up. You had to be an adult to commit adultery, had been his thinking. After all, teenagers didn’t do it, nor really did twenty-somethings. It was a grown-up activity, a mark of maturity.

  He thought about how a story about adultery might work. If he was to have an affair, in this world of smartphones and itemised bills, and of couples who both held down jobs, and had kids, this world without motels and Cadillacs and backyard pools, how would he go about it? If he was going to have an affair with Elizabeth, for instance, how would it happen? He thought of the readings and events he had coming up, and of other ones he could organise or invent, and he thought about how he would make contact with Elizabeth, safely and discreetly and deniably, or places they might bump into each other as if by chance.

  Before any of these hypothetical situations could resolve themselves into anything like a plot, he found himself back at her house. It was a Friday evening, and he was babysitting Walter, their four-year-old, as the first leg of a trial babysitting swap. The plan had been that Laura would do it, but their own eldest, Morrie, was poorly, and Laura said she’d stay at home, and Mark should go.

  Zac let him into the house, and told him to get himself a drink while they finished getting ready. It was the fortieth birthday of a friend from school, in a pub a taxi ride away. Elizabeth looked gorgeous in a wrap dress – he said as much after he’d kissed her hello – and she acknowledged the compliment by dipping her head to one side to fix her earring, a movement that dislodged a segment of hair that seemed to unfurl, in slow motion, down to her shoulder.

  He stood on the front step to wave them off, feeling that strange feeling you get sending people out into the world from their own home, as if you’d become their doppelgänger, slipped yourself into the hierarchy. He watched till the taxi rounded the corner, then closed the door, gently, listening for the click of the latch. The house was his.

  To begin with, he went to the kitchen and topped up his glass from the bottle Zac had pointed out to him. The place was messier than the night of the dinner party. There was a stack of children’s paintings at the far end of the kitchen surface, stiff as poppadoms. More paper, with pencils and crayons, and left-over bits of the newspaper on the table. Two plates slotted slantwise in the sink, stuck with dried tubes of pasta and what looked like congealed custard. He opened a cupboard and looked inside, closed it, switched on the radio, then switched it off again.

  He went into the sitting room, his sock feet making him feel even more like an intruder, and picked three recentish novels from the shelves, trying to guess which of them – Zac or Elizabeth – they belonged to. He took them to the sofa and flicked on the television. With half an eye on the telly he read their back covers, copyright pages, acknowledgements and openings, then put them down. He took his wine and went up the stairs. He stood for a moment outside Walter’s door, listening for his breathing. He went inside and stood in the middle of the room. The boy was sprawled face down on his bed, in flannel pyjamas, with his duvet kicked down to the foot of the bed and his bum stuck in the air. Mark thought of his own children, of Morrie, and reminded himself to text home to check how he was. He pulled the duvet o
ver Walter, who grunted and shifted in response.

  One by one he pushed open the other doors off the landing: the bathroom, with its strange array of bottles and pots on the shelf and window sill; the spare room, clothes laid out on the bed in dry-cleaner bags; and then the master bedroom.

  He stood looking at the bed, the two bedside tables, then he went to the cupboards and opened them. The doors on the right were Zac’s, those on the left, hers.

  He ran the back of a hand over the sleeves and sides of the garments gathered there, her clothes, then pushed his arm in, making a gap and widening it, to expose a delicate grey cardigan with mother of pearl buttons. His neck muscles were tight from the strain of listening for the sound of the front door. He slid his fingers inside the opening of the cardigan and ran them up and down against the weave of it. He had given himself the beginning of an erection. This is what he did, he thought, he vampirised other people’s lives, sucking up incident and detail and squirrelling it away. He drew out his hand slowly, letting the fibres snag on his knuckles as they came, then brushed the clothes straight and went around the bed and sat down on it.

  There, face down on the bedside table, was his own novel, his second and best one. He gave a laugh. This must be Elizabeth’s side, mustn’t it? He lifted a corner of the duvet and saw the beginnings of something liquid, a silk pyjama top. He switched on the bedside lamp and opened the book at the marked place. It was the scene in which the protagonist, Ricardo, was having his final confrontation with his father, accusing him of ruining his life by, well, by doing all manner of not particularly awful things, like being a bit strict, and making him play rugby, and sending him to a school he hated. He turned to the front.

  ‘To Laura, always,’ it said. The first was to Laura, the second to Laura, always. He’d set a precedent, and if he didn’t keep dedicating his books to his wife, it would look odd. Why had he not simply dedicated it to his father, who was still alive when he wrote it, dead when it came out? His father, who had done so much to instil in him his love of books, and films, and so little to turn him into the kind of snivelling, self-pitying squib of character epitomised by Ricardo.

  He flicked through the pages, to see if Elizabeth had left any mark of herself or her thoughts: an underlining, a folded corner. Nothing. People didn’t have that kind of relationship with books, really, sad to say, not even him. Books, he felt, had usually stopped meaning very much to people by the time they were old enough to benefit from the wisdom they contained. People – grown-ups, adulterers – read books for the consolation they offered for the sad, true fact that they hadn’t become the sort of the people they’d thought they would by reading the books they did when they were younger. He shook his head at himself. It was a stupid thought, the sort of thing he’d put in his book and his editor would insist he take out.

  He put the book back on the table, stood and sighed, and looked around the room. The double-stacked pillows, the painting above the bed, the full-length mirror on its stand in the corner. There was something here, he thought. The marital bedroom.

  He went down to the kitchen and found a couple of unscribbled-upon sheets of paper and a pen and went back upstairs. He sat on the bed and started writing.

  The marital bedroom. Not so much a physical space as a mental one. A place where certain things happen. Some allowed, some proscribed.

  Then:

  He followed Frances into the living room. The curves of her backside. Crossed that out. The way the downward curve of her back changed direction, rotating through the three dimensions, to become the swelling pads of her derriere.

  Just writing it brought back the sensation of arousal. The loosening at the insides of his legs, the hairs on his scrotum. He wrote there for ten minutes, sat bent over on the edge of the bed, then decided he had best go downstairs. He smoothed the duvet and double-checked the room before he went.

  It was gone twelve when he heard the key in the lock. He was lying stretched out on the sofa, half-dozing, with a bad early Julian Barnes splayed open on his chest. He blinked awake and swung himself round and up. Felt for the wad of folded pages in his back jeans pocket.

  It was Elizabeth. She stood in the doorway and smiled a little fuzzily at him.

  Hi there.

  Hi.

  Everything okay?

  He stretched. Yup. All fine. Not a peep. Good time?

  She nodded, and shrugged off her coat.

  I’ll just pop upstairs and look in on him.

  Sure. Mark followed her out into the hallway. Zac was nowhere in sight. He stood there, thinking, until she reappeared.

  A load of them went on to a club, she said, as she came down, but I decided to call it a night. They’re Zac’s gang, really.

  Right.

  He’ll regret it in the morning, of course.

  Of course.

  Now they were both stood in the hallway. He hadn’t moved to get his things together, his jacket and phone. A moment arrived, and sort of hung between them. He waited it out, then said, with a carefully calibrated half-smile, So can I interest you in a nightcap?

  A nightcap?

  I quite fancy a drink, to be honest. He pulled a hangdog expression, watching her face, as if to show he was already resigned to her saying no.

  Okay. What’ll you have?

  Well, I’ve had a couple of glasses of this very nice Sancerre, but I think I could push to a glass of that Talisker from the other night.

  Talisker it is then.

  He followed her into the kitchen, tracking the movement, slightly weaving, of her hips and back – and, okay, her bottom – her furtive nips at her hair. This he wasn’t good at. He could do dialogue, and drama, and introspection, but it was the transitional moments that got him stuck. Getting a character into the room. Getting them out of a car, in through the front door. It was laborious, self-conscious work. Nor could he assume that she would turn around and kiss him, just like that. If he wanted this to happen, he would have to make it happen – and that was the hardest thing. Now she had the bottle, and two glasses, and was pouring. When she turned, he would do it. But then if she went to the sink to get water? When she passed him the glass, then.

  Water? Or do you prefer ice?

  A drop of water. Lovely. Perfect.

  There you go.

  She held him out the glass and he took it and as he took it he pressed his fingers onto hers. And, at the same time, pushed his mouth down onto hers. That impossible, unthinkable action, like wilfully smashing your head against a wall, or the trunk of a tree. And, for a moment, she let herself be held there, be stopped, for a moment. Then she slowly pulled back, so very slowly he could feel the suck of the skin of their lips as they parted.

  Well, then. What do you think you’re doing?

  I’m sorry. I just . . .

  His mouth, he couldn’t stop it, was hovering in the vicinity of a grin, as if waiting for permission to feel relief, or wicked embarrassment.

  Ah, you just, she said. I see. Well, that’s clear, then.

  I just wanted to kiss you.

  She lifted her arm to put her glass to her mouth, and his hand fell from it. She drank, swallowed, then tidied her lips with her tongue.

  And what did you think would happen then?

  Well, I suppose I thought that either you’d kiss me back, or you’d ask me to leave. Or, you know, slap my face . . .

  She said nothing.

  And, well, you’ve not done any of those things.

  She slid the few inches along the kitchen counter until she was right next to him.

  I’m not about to throw you out, am I?

  Does that mean you are going to kiss me?

  Ah, well.

  They were standing so close now it was like being stuck in a crowded lift together. It would be impossible to even breathe without touching her. His erection was back, and
he felt in it something like the power he felt when he was writing, and it was going well, the words revealing themselves one after the other on the screen, the text shifting up, line by line, to accommodate him.

  It’s not something I’m used to, kissing strange men in my kitchen. Or any men at all, really. Though I would like to kiss you.

  And she did, curling her arm up to cradle the back of his head, and they brought their heads together in a whisky-tinted kiss that seemed to act, as he closed his eyes, like some kind of sacrament. He moved the hand that wasn’t around his glass, on the kitchen counter, down to her waist. They were both making quiet noises of surprise and approval in their mouths, while their mouths, too, made noises, the incidental laps of tongues and lips.

  He spoke, the words humming in the cavity of her mouth.

  I wonder if you think we should go upstairs, he said.

  She seemed to ponder this for a moment, then unkissed herself.

  You want to go upstairs?

  Mm.

  Upstairs, as in to the bedroom? She distanced herself further, a matter of inches, or centimetres, or less. Mark, I am not having sex with you upstairs, with my son asleep next door. She said this with a hoarse half-laugh that only served to mark the utter humourlessness of his proposition.

  Well, obviously, he said. I didn’t mean. I mean, we don’t have to go upstairs.

  Now they were talking over each other, she saying, What, so you want to have sex in the kitchen? while he was saying, I didn’t mean that at all, and sort of paddling at the air between them, while she seemed to be trying to find a pose for her chin, her arms, her hips, that might best transmit whatever it was she might be thinking. She picked up her glass, empty, and drank from it. She poured more, in anger, then went out of the kitchen into the hallway.

  Shit, look, he said, but he was talking to himself.

  He followed her out.

  So how was your evening, then? he said, hating himself as he spoke. I hate myself, he thought, and he shoved the pages of writing further down into his jeans pocket.