The Best British Short Stories 2014

by Nicholas Royle

  The trains went to Trusby and Hillier, Ollerby and Chribton, Sawmills and Hallways, Gap Hill and Pebble Cove, Lower Beedington and Broiler Hill, Upper Sidcomb and Lower Hawton.

  There was a summer and a winter timetable but the places remained the same.

  Sometimes our station was snowed in or there were floods down the track. Once the station was decorated for the coronation. There might be delays also, caused by a driver being ill or a dead pig on the line or a fallen tree but these were rare events. The station was operational every day except for Christmas Day and January 1st and the day mother ran away.

  Sometimes I was involved in the ordering of more track or extending the platforms and there were additional notices required informing passengers about waiting rooms and toilets and a few notice boards about local events; a visiting circus, the local football and cricket clubs, bus timetables and the local taxi service. Sometimes the white line at the edge of the platforms needed repainting. The station clock kept perfect time, of course.

  Downstairs was half light and doubt and where was mother? And bad meals and silences and bed-wetting and where was mother? And sometimes father got into bed with me. I kept thinking of the trains, the timetables and the way that the passengers got off and on the trains.

  Downstairs was no visitors and eating the same food and the garden slipping into wilderness and the only place to get to was the roof space and the noise of it and the hurry hurry of it and my father talking nonsense more and more and the way sometimes rain got in and always the gleam of the track, its glory, its determination.

  He does not see the passengers. He does not hear the small children. He does not get up into the roof space as much as he used to.

  One day I noticed one of the women passengers. She looked so much like, like mother. And the man she was with I think was Malcolm Roberts who used to give out the hymn books in chapel. There was a small boy with them.

  I’ve been doing a lot more things recently. New track, changed timetables, more trains, a small booth providing drinks and snacks and now a major new timetable system so we all know what is happening.

  There have been a few strikes. Sometimes the passengers miss their trains or the platforms have been changed and I can see the passengers getting all confused and have to tell them what’s what.

  Last month, I think it was, there was a passenger who had fallen onto the track. Platform six. Train for Bidford, Castlemere, Coddlington, Upper Holt, Bramington and Studley. Beautiful early-evening rural run. Usually packed full. Hits the man full on. Terrible for the driver, of course.

  Kept the passengers calm. Said it was an incident. Before the police arrived. Before the body was carried away.

  I am up here in the roof space. I am Michael. I told him not to get into my bed. I told him to stop it. I warned him lots. And when I closed the trapdoor and wouldn’t let him up here he screamed like a brat. Filthy language.

  Then when I had almost forgotten he existed he somehow got up into the roof space and went off down Platform Six. He was walking very fast.

  I should have given him more time or stopped the train departing on time. I should have sent one of the four porters running after him. I should have closed down the entire system until he came back.

  But all the passengers had got on board and the train went off and it was time to announce new arrivals.

  I should have contacted the signal box.

  I should have stood up in the roof space and screamed i forgive you.

  But I did nothing.

  I sat there all night and then very early in the morning I saw them carrying something into the station.

  All twisted and split.

  I keep it in a small box, over there, with all the other broken things.

  Number Three

  Anna Metcalfe

  Miss Coral gets up from her desk on a cool October afternoon. She walks over to the kettle and drains steaming liquid into a clear plastic flask, the tea leaves swirling within. Moon is crouched in the corner of the office, a small book of poems on her knees. Dead Water by Wen Yiduo. She learns the lines, breathing out the words.

  ‘Time to go,’ says Miss Coral. ‘The Director can’t catch you here again.’ Her tiny frame and button-bright face do not convey the threat she intends. Moon looks up. Her eyes, a little too far apart and as flat and smooth as her forehead, sit open and blank. She gets to her feet. She can’t have grown an inch since she got here, Miss Coral thinks.

  Moon is a scholarship student, transferred from rural Wanzhou. To the Director’s surprise, she arrived in Chongqing by train, unaccompanied. She was standing on the platform, carrying her belongings in a bamboo basket strapped to her back with coloured rope. When the Director asked Moon why her parents did not bring her, she replied indirectly. They allowed her to take the train instead of the bus, she said, cutting through the mountains to cross the Golden River in four hours instead of six.

  Though Moon has been at Number Three Middle School for two years, she remains the new girl. When she arrived, her grades in Chinese and mathematics were already exceptional, but she had no knowledge of English. Miss Coral was engaged to help her improve until she reached the requisite level for her age. It was felt that once her skill set was complete she would fit in. She never did. One or two of the other students like to mock her country accent; the rest remain aloof. Moon doesn’t seem to mind. She neither seeks friendship nor refuses it and wanders the extensive grounds of the school wearing a look of mild surprise, as though perpetually reliving her first day.

  Their evening English lessons became the first of Miss Coral’s extracurricular duties. They met every day at six o’clock in the break between afternoon and evening classes. They waited for one another by the entrance to the school library. They chose always to sit at a table towards the back of the lower ground floor, far away from the computers and the teen fiction shelves and where few other students gathered. They leant over a new copy of English Now! and Miss Coral made frequent corrections to the textbook’s spelling and grammar with corrector fluid and a ballpoint pen. To make time for Moon, Miss Coral had to hand over one of her English Literature groups.

  A month after their lessons began, rumours started to circulate that the rival school across town had employed what they called a Real English Teacher. Letters from parents of students at Number Three Middle School arrived, threatening the withdrawal of their children. Number Three was supposed to be the best, they said. Why didn’t they have such a teacher on their staff? A meeting between the governors and the school’s patrons took place and a partnership began with Teach China. Anglophone language teachers would come and go in six-month-long rotations. Miss Coral was charged with the running of the programme. These foreign teachers must receive a good impression of Chinese hospitality, the Director said.

  Within a few months of Moon’s arrival, Miss Coral had been removed from the classroom completely. She acquired an office at the end of the Director’s corridor from which to conduct her duties as International Hostess. The Director was keen that she should not take the redistribution of her skills as a sign of promotion, so he liked to hint among her colleagues that she had been withdrawn from teaching on grounds of incompetence. It was to be understood that, if it wasn’t for his greatness of heart and generosity of spirit, she might not have a job at all.

  Miss Coral and Moon moved their evening English lessons from the back of the library to the office. Miss Coral would leave the door open, to save Moon the shame of standing in the corridor like the students awaiting detention. When Miss Coral entered the room she would find Moon hunched over her homework, sitting squat in the corner with her papers placed neatly in front of her on the floor. At the beginning of each lesson, Miss Coral had to invite Moon to sit down with her at the desk. Moon worked hard, improved quickly, and soon there was no more need for lessons. Yet, Miss Coral kept up the habit of leaving her office door
open in the evenings and often she would come back from afternoon meetings with the Director to find Moon in the corner.

  ‘Time to go,’ Miss Coral says again. ‘I have to be at the airport in an hour.’ Moon watches as Miss Coral sips a mouthful of tea and twists the metal cap back onto the flask. She hooks the flask’s wire handle over her wrist like an expensive handbag. From the desk, she gathers a small purse, a plastic folder full of papers and a laminated sheet of A4. She slots them into a canvas satchel. Moon makes a small bow towards her, a shimmer of a smile on her lips, then leaves. Less communicative than ever, Miss Coral thinks.

  Miss Coral takes a taxi across town. The city is different again. Another skyscraper, another bridge underway; new routes to serve new destinations. The shanty town shacks of Tianfu, half flattened, are making way for settlement housing. Though she has been here five years, there are moments when life in the city comes as a shock. In her home town, a few hundred miles into the country, her father is a hospital porter, her mother a department store janitor. She goes to see them twice a year and sends money when she can. Soon, a main road will be built connecting the town to the city and perhaps then things will be different.

  The driver winds in and out of the traffic with the front window down and bursts of cool air flow over her shoulder as they cross the Jialing. A late afternoon sun casts a haze over the urban sprawl. Smog and fresh dust linger, hovering over warehouses, slums and disused factories as they leave the inner city and approach the airport.

  Miss Coral arrives with twenty minutes to spare. She finds a good spot at the edge of the ribbon that marks the arrivals gate, takes small sips from her tea, and waits. When the announcement comes for the London flight she delves into her satchel and produces the laminated sheet of A4:

  WELCOME TO CHINA MR JAMES

  Amid crowds of Chinese businessmen, a young white man emerges from the sliding glass doors. He is tall. His light brown hair is roughed in greasy tufts and bruise-purple smudges darken the corners of his eyes. For a moment, he appears lost, then he picks out Miss Coral’s sign from the lineup of hotel taxis and family reunion balloons. He smiles. Coming together on the Chongqing side of the airport ribbon, Miss Coral extends her hand towards him as he, simultaneously, drops into a bow. ‘Welcome to Chongqing,’ she says, tapping him stiffly on the arm as he rights himself.

  In the taxi on the way back to school, he sleeps. She watches him, wasting her welcome speech on the driver. It is an honour to welcome you to China, Mr James. Number Three Middle School is delighted to have a foreign teacher on the staff and, though I know you are yet to begin your teaching career, we are sure that your presence will inspire and encourage the students to improve their language skills and broaden their cultural perspectives. She stops short of the section where she had intended to explain her role as International Hostess and allows herself, instead, to note the stubble on his neck and chin, the tear in the left knee of his jeans.

  When they arrive, she takes Mr James straight to his apartment on the eleventh floor of the residential building. Only the most senior teachers get their own apartments, the rest bed down six to a room. When she opens the door to his large, unshared space, she expects him to be pleased. He takes a quick look around, runs a palm over the arm of a beige, faux-leather sofa and asks when the flat will be cleaned. She pretends not to have heard this and instead hands over his timetable and a list of codes to the electric school gates. After midnight, she warns, he’ll have to call the doorman to let him in. Mr James raises an eyebrow but says nothing. They both sit down. Miss Coral places the six-month contract on the glass-topped coffee table in front of them. It must be signed by tomorrow in order to get the visa ready, she says. With a shrug and a yawn he turns to the back page and crams a string of Latin letters into a space made for three Chinese characters.

  A week later, sitting in her office with Moon in the corner, Miss Coral receives a phone call. It is Mr James.

  ‘Hello, Mr James,’ she says.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ he begins. ‘It’s about the money.’

  At the mention of money she gets to her feet. Moon looks up from her place.

  ‘So, I’ve been chatting with my friends,’ Mr James continues. ‘They’re all English teachers. In private foreign-language facilities, mostly. You know, Wall Street English and such. The point is that it seems they’re all getting a couple of thousand more than me a month.’

  Miss Coral recoils. His words strike her as rude. She states firmly that she would prefer to discuss this in person and asks him to designate a convenient time.

  On the way to his flat, she wonders whether or not to tell him that he’s already being paid more than almost all of the other teachers at the school. She considers trying to explain that this is not a private language facility, attended only by the rich children of the city’s elite. That Number Three Middle School has little enough money going to students like Moon. Too patronising, she decides.

  When he opens the door, Miss Coral finds the displeasure in his face more violent than she had expected. It seems out of proportion. If she were to ask the Director for a pay rise on his behalf she would be sacked for her audacity on the spot. ‘Mr James, I don’t have long,’ she says. ‘Seeing as you already signed the contract I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.’

  Mr James opens his mouth to speak but presses his lips together when he sees that she is not finished. She sits down. He joins her.

  ‘Given that this is an ordinary Chinese middle school, and not a supplementary private language facility, there are some perks you may not already be aware of,’ she says.

  He opens his eyes a little wider, releases some of the tension from his jaw.

  ‘We have a full month off for Chinese New Year in January,’ she says. ‘And when the students come back they have two weeks of exams, during which you are not expected to teach.’

  ‘And will I get paid in that time?’ says Mr James.

  ‘Yes,’ Miss Coral replies. Mr James appears placated and starts musing over the details of a six-week-long trip across South East Asia. Miss Coral, pleasantly surprised by the ease of this negotiation, gets up to leave.

  ‘Look,’ he says. She stops and turns her face to his. ‘I just can’t help but feel it was dishonest, you know, you not telling me I’m getting below average wage.’

  ‘It was written in the contract,’ she replies, her eyes smarting at the accusation. His phone, sitting on the coffee table, bleeps loudly. ‘And it is not below average,’ she says. Mr James taps at the keys of his phone before placing it back on the table. He returns his attention to the room. There is a silence.

  ‘Look,’ Mr James says again, studying her face with intent. Miss Coral notices that his eyes rest a moment on her lips. ‘I don’t want to fall out in my first week.’

  When she gets back to her office, Miss Coral finds that Moon is still there, squatting, birdlike, in the corner. The small of her back is flat against the wall, heels off the floor, weight on the balls of her feet. As usual, she has a book perched on her knees. As Miss Coral arranges herself at the desk, Moon gets up, scattering loose tea into the flask. A rush of hissing water hits the bottom of the plastic cup and Miss Coral watches as it fills.

  At the beginning of November, Mr James calls Miss Coral to ask if she would like to go to dinner with his friends. Show us your favourite haunt, he suggests. She meets them by the school gates. Mr James is there with two blonde girls – Sybil, who is French, and Carey, an American – and three unshaven young men who introduce themselves as Johnny, Kit and Max, leaving their nationalities undisclosed. Miss Coral takes them to the best Fire Pot restaurant in Shapingba. The menu comes on a clipboard: it is a check list of items grouped into vegetables, meat and side dishes. They all turn to face Miss Coral.

  ‘How spicy do you like it?’ she says, placing ticks and numbers beside a dozen or more items on the menu.

&nb
sp; A cauldron of red broth arrives: a ferocious-looking concoction of sesame oil, fresh chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. It is held between two waiters while the centre circle of the table is removed and a gas canister placed beneath. The gunmetal cauldron fills the hole in the middle of the table and the flame from the gas brings bubbles, thick and slow, to the surface of the soup. Skewered ingredients appear on platters. Cloud ear mushrooms, winter melon, lotus root and pak choi. Miss Coral shows them how long to cook each one, plunging her chopsticks into the soup and deftly removing chilli-soaked hunks of blood-red pumpkin and yam.

  Empty bottles of beer gather beneath the table. Pi jiu seems to be the only Chinese word they know and they order in bulk, counting in English, making hashed attempts at the Mandarin. She tries to teach them Chinese fingerspelling for numbers, mapping the shapes of the characters with her hands.

  For most of the evening, Miss Coral says little and busies herself sharing out food from the pot. She listens as they compare culture shock crises – Why is everyone always shouting? – Someone touched my hair on the bus – I’d give anything for a cheese and pickle sandwich – Make mine a PB and J. Miss Coral is surprised to find how much she enjoys hearing the critique. No one asks those kinds of questions in Chinese. The French girl, Sybil, is sitting on her right. As another round of beer is ordered, Sybil leans towards Miss Coral. She speaks softly. ‘Do you like living in China?’ she says.

  ‘I’ve never lived anywhere else,’ says Miss Coral.

  ‘Don’t you want to travel?’