Miss Coral says she has no plans to do so. Before Miss Coral can elaborate, the French girl asks her what she does in her spare time.
‘I like translating things,’ Miss Coral says, after a pause. ‘And perhaps that’s as good as travelling. Perhaps it’s better. No jet lag,’ she says. As she speaks she addresses the simmering broth. An old university professor still sends her bits of translation work, she says, but she can’t tell the Director, or anyone at Number Three Middle School. On a whim, last year, she applied to do a Masters in Translation in Beijing. She got accepted, but she can’t take up her place. Miss Coral laughs at herself. She has a good job, she says, thinking of the teaching she once loved. When she looks up at Sybil, Miss Coral sees that she is no longer listening, is paying more attention to balancing domed mouthfuls of rice on her chopsticks.
The end of the evening comes. Miss Coral and Mr James share a taxi back to the school. The night guards open the gate and Miss Coral gives them a tip. They walk up the wide avenue towards the residential building. They ride the lift together. When it stops at his floor, Mr James says goodnight, stopping the doors with his foot. He leans over and kisses Miss Coral on the cheek. She smells the beer on his breath.
‘Fuck,’ he says, ‘I forgot you don’t kiss in China.’ He walks into the dimly lit hallway, laughing to himself.
Miss Coral takes the lift up to the twelfth floor. She tries not to wake her roommates as she slips into bed, fully dressed, listening to the sound of the other teachers breathing in their sleep.
December proves troublesome. One afternoon Mr James comes to her office. A student is causing him concern and he has come to ask that something be done; he thinks perhaps the boy has Down’s Syndrome. Miss Coral does not recognise the phrase and asks Mr James to write it down. After he has gone, she looks the words up, and is confused by myriad translations in Chinese. She arranges to observe the class in question the next day, during their History lesson. She takes care to pick a slot in the timetable when she knows that Mr James will be busy teaching other classes somewhere at the other end of the school.
Miss Coral immediately picks out the student concerned. He is a large boy, unusually tall, sitting at the back of the room. He swings on his chair, writes nothing down, is ignored by his classmates and History teacher alike. When a stream of incomprehensible noises escape his lips, the History teacher turns and gives a sharp reprimand in Mandarin, silencing the boy. Mr James, of course, can only discipline in English, and perhaps this is the problem.
Miss Coral speaks to the Director, who presents a simple solution. The boy can be removed from Mr James’ lesson as soon as he causes trouble. The Director gives Miss Coral a key to a cupboard in an adjacent corridor where the boy can sit until English is over. It would be prudent to lock him in, the Director says.
When Mr James is next scheduled to take the class, Miss Coral waits for him to arrive outside their classroom. In her careful English, she explains the lesson she observed and the Director’s advice and hands over the key. Mr James stares at her. Miss Coral is aware of the muscles in his mouth tightening. He looks towards the classroom door then brings his eyes back to meet hers: ‘I’d rather he screamed for an hour than lock him up in a cupboard. That’s fucking disgusting,’ he says. Mr James enters the classroom, slams the door behind him.
It is not until she is back in her office that Miss Coral allows herself to cry. When Moon opens the door, she lingers a moment on the threshold. She takes up her usual position in the corner and keeps her head down as Miss Coral pats dry her cheeks and smoothes the front of her shirt. When Miss Coral has straightened herself, Moon still does not look up. She has her head dipped over her book, tracing the lines with her finger and making occasional notes in the margins. For the first time, Miss Coral is aware of the calming presence Moon exerts on the room. Miss Coral gets up and leaves. When she returns, she is holding a small wooden stool and a cushion.
‘Stand up, Moon,’ she says and Moon obeys. She places the stool and cushion in the corner and Moon smiles in a way that Miss Coral has not seen before. It feels as though the sun has moved a little closer to their window.
Towards the middle of the month, Mr James demands a Christmas holiday. The Director allows him the 25th and 26th. He pushes for the 24th. Miss Coral, receiving his urgent text messages and voicemails, is too afraid to ask for more. When she plucks up the courage to approach the Director again, it takes less than a second for him to refuse her. When Mr James phones in sick on December 24th, instead of docking his pay cheque the Director docks hers. Everyone will know, she thinks. That night, Miss Coral makes sure she is in bed, feigning sleep, long before her roommates arrive.
In January, Mr James leaves for Vietnam – ‘a six-week romp down the East Coast, Halong Bay, Nha Trang and Ho Chi Fucking Minh’, as he puts it to her in an email. Miss Coral returns to her hometown for Chinese New Year. By the time she leaves, the school is almost empty. She has been working hard on her latest translations, making the most of the office. Moon, too, has stayed behind, helping where she can, making creative suggestions. They share a taxi to the train station before embarking on long cross-country journeys in opposite directions.
Two weeks later, when Miss Coral comes back to school, she finds a postcard from Mr James on her desk. Halong Bay. He gives her the date of his return. He will miss the start of term, he says, because the flights are too expensive. She breaks the news to the Director by email. He informs Miss Coral that she will have to cover the classes and that Mr James’ wages will be docked by a quarter. Nervously, Miss Coral paraphrases the Director’s response into an email for Mr James, to which she receives no reply. When she next hears from him, he is already back in China, and has other things on his mind.
In his absence, his apartment had become home to a swarm of flying ants. He arrived to find the floor carpeted with insect corpses and the air about him thick with the survivors. What, his email said, is the school going to do about this?
On the third day of term, Miss Coral is already exhausted. What does he want her to do? Go over there and sweep up the insects herself? She writes back, conveying her sympathies but making it clear that the maintenance of his apartment does not come under her job description. She recommends that he buy insect spray and offers to hire a cleaner on his behalf, though he would have to pay. Beyond that, she is powerless. Miss Coral clicks ‘Send’ and finds that her head is filled with images of ants raining from ceiling to floor. They are flooding the room like the sand of an egg timer.
When Mr James’ contract comes to an end on March 31st, Miss Coral throws him a farewell party. She flits between classrooms, brandishing a basketball shirt bearing the school logo on which students paint parting wishes and well-worn quotations in permanent fabric marker. Everybody writes something. Across the left shoulder blade, Moon writes a line from Confucius, with a translation in brackets: ‘Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.’
In a large classroom on the second floor, they convene. Some groups of girls have prepared traditional Chinese songs to sing. Others come laden with white cardboard boxes containing sticky piles of egg custard pastries and sanguine jujube dates. Black and white sachets of White Rabbit Candy garnish the tables and bottles of sweet jasmine tea line the window sills. Mr James appears genuinely moved. Miss Coral hands him a card she made herself, done in traditional Chinese calligraphy. Inside the card, her message conveys her thanks, on behalf of Number Three Middle School, for his freeness of spirit and passion for equality. It is of utmost importance, she writes, for Chinese students to speak good English, so that they may have more colourful opportunities in their futures.
When he gets back to England, Mr James sends her an email returning her thanks. She opens it from the office computer. He will never forget such a pretty little face, he says, and Miss Coral puts her hands to her cheeks to mask the flush she feels rising as she reads.
In early April, Mis
s Coral is called to the Director’s office. A letter has come from Teach China, from their Chinese delegate in Chongqing. He hands it across to Miss Coral and demands that she read it aloud.
To the Director of Number Three Middle School,
Following a letter of complaint, demanding considerable compensation, we must express to you the concerns of our client. Mr James reported to us that he was dissatisfied with his rate of pay. Further more, he was somewhat disappointed by the arrangements for the Christmas holidays. (Christmas, we would like to remind you, is one of the most important events in the Western calendar.) The accommodation provided was less than satisfactory, a statement for which he provided photographic evidence. In dealing with these matters, Mr James claimed that he felt underrepresented at the school, being unable, himself, to communicate with the authorities in Mandarin.
‘That will do,’ says the Director.
Miss Coral feels something like a stone lodge in her throat. She prays she won’t be asked any questions. Her mouth is too dry, her throat too small for speech.
‘I’m sure you know what this means,’ the Director goes on. ‘You will be paid for the rest of the month, but we ask that you leave today.’
It takes less than thirty minutes for Miss Coral to pack her belongings into a large canvas rucksack. She peels the sheets from the bed and folds them neatly into a pile. She lingers for as long as she can in the office, re-organising paperwork and deleting old emails. When the door clicks open, she flinches, but when she looks up there is no one standing in the doorway.
She pulls a piece of paper from the notebook in her handbag and tries to think of what she might say to Moon. But even if she could find the words, she decides, where would she put the note? And how could she possibly know that Moon would be the one to find it? She folds up the paper and slots it back into the notebook.
When the office is clean and bare, Miss Coral opens the window to refresh the air. She places the clear plastic flask and an unopened packet of tea leaves beneath Moon’s stool in the corner. As she leaves she lets the office door swing wide.
In the taxi across town, through the smog and the half-hearted spring rain, stopped in traffic on a bridge crossing the Jialing river, and gazing over at the far-side embankment, Miss Coral has time to note that the Tianfu slums have now been flattened completely.
Ashton and Elaine
David Constantine
1
Ashton – not his real name, but even supposing he ever had a real name, nobody in this story knew it – Ashton was found behind Barmy Mick’s stall late afternoon on a Saturday in the week before Christmas, as the market closed. Mick’s son Kevin, a boy of eleven, found him. He went to fetch some sheets, boxes and sacking, to begin packing up, and when he lifted the tarpaulin, under which they were kept dry, there lay Ashton, shivering. Kevin covered him up again and went to tell Mick. Dad, he said, there’s a coloured lad under the tarpaulin. Mick took a tilley lamp from a hook over the stall, and with it, drawing off the covering, illuminated Ashton, who lay on his back with his eyes wide open. Fetch your mam, said Mick. She was soon there. All three then, father, mother, child, stood looking down at Ashton in the light of the lamp. Day was ending in a drizzle. The lamp had a haze, a tremulous mist, of light around it.
Ashton wore a stained thin jersey, stained thin trousers that were too short for him, unfastened boots that were far too big. No socks, his bare ankles looked raw. He shivered, and stared upwards. The mother, Alice, bowed over him. What you doing there, love? she asked. Ashton, who was perhaps Kevin’s age, said nothing. Mick handed the tilley to Alice and knelt down. What’s your name, son? he asked. Again Ashton said nothing; and it was not possible to tell, from his expression, whether he understood the question or not. He seemed to be clenching himself tight, as though trying not to shiver, and his face perhaps showed only that: the effort, and the failure. Mick stood up. I’d best go and fetch somebody, he said. Alice handed the lamp to Kevin, kneeled, drew one of the packing cloths over Ashton, up to his chin, and laid her hand on his forehead. Ashton closed his eyes, perhaps – who knows? – to safeguard a kindness behind his lids. But he could not stop shaking and his face, which, eyes shut, looked more exposed than ever, still manifested the struggle.
Mick came back with a policeman. Alice stood up. Kevin shone the light over Ashton. The policeman squatted down, removing his helmet and cradling it between his big hands in his lap. Ashton opened his eyes. Can you talk to us, sonny? the policeman asked. Can you tell us how you got here? The rain came on heavier. Ashton said nothing, only stared, and shook, the thin cover showed it, crumpling and twitching. Better get him moved, said the policeman, rising, putting on his helmet, turning aside, speaking into his walkie-talkie. Alice knelt again, rested her hand on Ashton’s forehead. He closed his eyes.
The ambulance, first the siren then, in silence, the twirling blue light, drew attention to the scene behind Barmy Mick’s stall. A score of people assembled, keeping their distance, in a half circle, all gazing, none speaking, two or three held lamps, in which the rain shone. The ambulance men, in their uniforms, were as imposing as the policeman. One knelt, Alice moved aside, he drew off the cover, and in a murmur asked questions, which got no answer, meanwhile feeling over the child’s limbs and, very delicately, under his spine where it rested on the sacking. The other removed his loose boots – so bruised the feet – and with great care the two together slid him over on to the stretcher laid by. Then they lifted him and walked the ten paces to the ambulance’s wide-open doors, Kevin following with the boots. The doors were closed. Slowly, quietly, the ambulance felt its way out of the market. At a distance the siren began to howl. Everyone dispersed. The last shoppers went home, the stallholders resumed their packing up.
2
The consultant on duty at the Infirmary that afternoon was Dr Fairfield, a paediatrician, a local man who, on the way to begin his shift, had called at the maternity hospital to see his daughter who had just given birth to her first child. The sister in charge undressed Ashton, still speechless, staring and shaking, and stood back, watching Dr Fairfield’s face. Many times she had watched him assessing the state and the immediate needs of a child; and on the way home and sometimes in the night when she thought of her work, she saw the child in question, or perhaps a whole series of them, all hurt, all harmed, all distinct in how they suffered, but as the register of that, almost as the accumulating sum of it, she saw Dr Fairfield’s face when he first kneeled to be at the same height as a child standing before him or looked down closely from above at a boy or a girl laid on a clean sheet on a trolley. And now, watching him as he contemplated Ashton, the sister saw something like puzzlement, like wonder, in his eyes. Many years in the job, he looked, to her, in the case of Ashton, to be being pushed to the edge of his knowledge and comprehension, to a sort of frontier, beyond which lay only a wasteland devoid of any human sense. Unspeakable, he muttered. The boy stared up at him and shook as though under the skin he was packed with raddling ice. And still his face looked tormented by the effort not to shake, as though if he shook it would be the worse for him, but to halt the shaking was beyond his strength. Among the marks on his body those on his wrists and ankles, of shackling, were perhaps, being intelligible, the easiest for the eyes and the mind to bear.
A trainee nurse came to the door. The sister kept her away and brought her message to Fairfield that the police were in reception. Tell them I’ll come down when I can, he said. But it won’t be soon. They’ll want the clothes and the boots, I suppose. And could you ask her to find Dr Adegbie. Ask Dr Adegbie will she come up, please. Then he turned back to Ashton, spoke softly to him, rested a hand on his shoulder and began to study what had been done to him and what a doctor might be able to do to mend it.
3
Back then disappearing was a lot easier than it is now. You walked down a street, took a bus, sat among travellers at a railway station, unfilmed. Of cour
se, children who were reported missing would be looked for by the police and sometimes also by the general public in organized search parties; but the unreported missing, why should anyone look for them? And a child who, as in Ashton’s case, arrived from nowhere, speechless, unless he was on a list with a photograph or a description or sketch of what he might look like – and Ashton, the police ascertained, was not on any such list – how should a place of origin be found to return him to? The two scant bits of clothing and the cruel boots said nothing. The police labelled them and put them in a cupboard in a plastic bag. And at the Infirmary Ashton was given, first, pyjamas and later, when he could walk, clothes that fitted him comfortably so that in his outward appearance he did not look odd among the other children on the ward. He walked well enough, in a hunched and hesitant fashion, but he did not speak, though the doctors found his speech organs to be healthy. He had, moreover, keen hearing and very sharp eyes. But he would not speak. He watched. ‘Watchful’ was the word that came to mind whenever a doctor or a nurse remembered Ashton in the Infirmary. He was easily frightened, he had resources of terror in him that on unforeseeable occasions suddenly might be broached; but his usual state was watchful, his eyes looking out in a restless wariness.
4
The peat and gritstone country even today, crossed busily by trunk roads, motorways and flightpaths, surveyed unceasingly by satellites, if you once raise your eyes to it from the west side or the east, it will lie in your dreams and in the imagination high and level ever after, as a foreign zone, as a different dimension of the life of the earth. The cities for more than two centuries with blackening labour pushed up into it, climbing its streams, and the ruins are up there still. In the cities the moors feel very close. In the age of the smogs you might not often have noticed them, but the smogs are a thing of the past and from railway platforms now or from high office windows, look out east or west, you are bound to notice that the moors are there. You are very close to a zone and a form of life in the world which under the human traffic and the human litter goes down and down many thousands of feet, unimaginably dark, unimaginably old, and with not the least memory or presentiment of love or pity.
The Best British Short Stories 2014 Page 8
