Best British Short Stories 2016

by Nicholas Royle

  There were grains, of course. Grains and seeds, and a swan in fact. A tiny white swan, with beak and eyes hoisted as if regarding four or five swans walloping through the clouds above. Poor little white swan, so realistic and wistful, I’ll put you back where you were. Which was, I believe, on the corner of the mirror frame. How did you get here little white swan? I turn you about between my thumb and forefinger and cannot remember for the life of me where you came from.

  South Africa. South Africa! Can you believe it! It turns out my little stove comes all the way from an incredibly distant continent! I can see chickens with extraordinary manes stalking atop the flaking hob rings, pieces of caramelised corn wedged in the forks of their aristocratic claws. And all these big root vegetables with wrinkles and beards and startling fruits and rice hissing out the sack like rain. Everything red, everything yellow. I know nothing of course; I remember standing chopping vegetables for a salad in a kitchen in south London very many years ago and a man from South Africa stood beside me and showed me how to prepare the cucumber, that’s all. I remember he scored the cold lustreless skin lengthways with a fork several times so that when he cut it at an angle there were these lovely elliptical loops of serrulated cucumber, and I have sliced it that way every time ever since. It looks particularly chichi in a short tumbler glass of botanical gin.

  Dear Salton of South Africa my cooker is on its knees please help. Perhaps send the parts I need upon a cuckoo so they arrive in time for spring – on second thoughts a cuckoo is a flagrantly selfish creature so feel free to select a more suitably attuned carrier from another imminently migrating species – but please not a swallow because they don’t get here until sometime in May, which will I fear be far too late, and anyway I’m sure they’re far too dextrous and flash for such a quaint assignment. I live on the most westerly point of Europe, right next to the Atlantic Ocean in fact. The weather here is generally very bad, compared to the rest of Europe that is, and that might be a reason why not too many people live here. The fact that the population is quite low might in turn account for the fact that the country’s basic infrastructure is very uneven which means, for example, that the public transport service is stunted, sporadic and comprehensively lousy. Fortunately despite all this, and its history of starvation which did in fact take many hundreds of lives hereabouts and beyond, the exact spot where I live is pleasant overall and taxi drivers often remark upon what an unexpected piece of paradise it is and how they never even knew it was here. I mention the famine, Salton, not in order to establish any sort of sociohistorical affinity which would be a very crass contrivance indeed, but simply because my mind is currently more susceptible to images of hunger than it has ever been on account of the fact that I am running out of matches, so to speak. This is not the time of year to be eating granola and salads and caper berries, let me tell you. Oh Salton of South Africa, do you even exist? I rather fear you do not, the attempts I made to discover your headquarters merely disclosed a host of online platforms from which hundreds of secondhand models are bought or exchanged. You are producing nothing new it seems, and are no longer on hand to assist with the upkeep of the kitchen devices you once put your illustrious and rather intimidating name to. No doubt I’ll have to resort to clamps or something like that.

  As a matter of fact I read somewhere that as many as two thousand stricken bodies were pulled out of ditches and piled onto carts then wheeled down the hill to the pit at the churchyard below. But I think to myself, not all of them were pulled out of the ditch. By the time they collapsed and dropped down dead into the ditch some of them would have had no form really, no flesh left at all. Nothing to keep the bones raised, nothing to keep the skin bound, and so the bones would slot down deep into the gaps and the skin would slacken and mingle with rainwater and sediment and the eyes would soon well up and come loose and sprout lichen and the fingernails would untether and stray and the hair would ooze upwards in rippling gelatinous ribbons and the teeth, already blackened and porous, would suck up against the sumptuous moss and babble and seethe. There would hardly be any trace of them, nothing to take hold of. Imagine that, Salton – already so wasted away there was nothing remaining to pull out and carry off.

  Then I came across a company in England who supply spares, parts and accessories for all kitchen appliances, including the cooker, dishwasher, extractor hood, fridge and freezer. However, despite an impressively extensive catalogue of replacement cooker knobs my particular model is nowhere to be found in the existing options and elicits zero response when I enter it into the site’s search facility and so the only remaining course of action is to fill out an enquiry form which I do because as far as I can see this is the end of the line and I may as well get to the end of the line and accept my inevitable defeat fully. Sure enough, approximately three hours later I receive an email from the company web support team informing me that unfortunately on this occasion they have been unable to find the item I require. They assure me that even though they haven’t been able to deliver on this occasion they will continue to attempt to source the item – ‘If successful we will add it to our range and notify you at once’ – I don’t expect to ever hear from them again. I always knew, in the heart of my heart, I would not have any success whatsoever with locating replacement control knobs for my obsolete mini-kitchen.

  I feel quite at a loss for about ten minutes and it’s a sensation, I realise, that is not entirely dissimilar to indifference. So, naturally, I handle it rather well.

  A week or so before Christmas I was standing at the kitchen worktop in my friend who lives nearby’s house, maybe we were sharing some kind of toasted snack, I don’t remember – I was wearing a hat, I remember that, and perhaps I’d intended to go somewhere that day but due to some humdrum hindrance didn’t really go anywhere. He was getting some things together but was attentive and forthcoming nonetheless. Because he works from home and his work involves materials and equipment and his home is quite small there is always a lot of stuff on the worktops and table and even across the sofa and often while we talk, I’ll fiddle about with some item or other and may even pretend to steal it in a very bungled and obvious fashion. Oh I remember now. A few weeks before, he’d found a makeup bag in the road and he wondered if I wanted anything from it. That’s not the reason I called on him though, as a matter of fact I’d seen him several times since he’d found the makeup bag and I’d almost clean forgotten about it but then, as I was coming out of his bathroom, I thought of it and asked him if he still had it. When I opened the makeup bag there was that deep-seated scent of sweet decay and the cosmetics inside were very cakey and dark. What’s that? he said. Concealer, I said. And this? he said. I think that’s a concealer too, I said. Do you think it belonged to someone older? he said. No I don’t, I said, the opposite. How come? he said. Check out this lip gloss, I said. There was nothing in the makeup bag I wanted – bar a pair of tweezers. That’s all you want? he said. Yeah, I said. Then we put everything back into it and he put the whole lot in the bin and then I noticed the pair of pliers on the side. Where did you get those? I said. You can have them if you want, he said. Can I? I said. You probably need it for your cooker, he said. Yeah, I do, I said, big time. And I was about to reach for them when he said they needed sterilising first. Put them in boiling water for a few minutes, he said. What for? I said. They’ve been down the toilet, he said. And he wrapped them up in a clear plastic bag and I put them in my pocket, along with the expensive-looking tweezers. Give me a shout when you get back, I said. Might do, he said. Have a good one, I said.

  By the way it turns out I depicted a number of things quite inaccurately when I was discussing that book about the woman who is the last person on earth – for example, the dog, Lynx, belonged to Hugo and Luise, the couple whose hunting lodge the woman was staying in when the catastrophe came about. The dog is actually a Bavarian bloodhound, which is more or less what I had in mind anyway, but he didn’t just turn up, like I said, he and the woman alre
ady knew each other. There are other mistakes too, elisions mostly, but I’m not going to amend any more of them because in any case it’s the impression that certain things made on me that I wanted to get across, not the occurrences themselves. Maybe if I’d had the book to hand at the time I would have checked the accuracy of those details I relayed, but perhaps not, at any rate it wasn’t possible to check anything because I’d lent my copy of the book to a friend. My friend, who is a Swedish-speaking Finn, had been feeling unwell for some time and I thought this particular book would be the perfect book for a poorly person to read and when eventually I met her to collect it she put her whole hand on it very neatly and said it was an amazing book. We were both sitting at a small round table in the afternoon and we each had a glass of red wine. She had recently returned from Stockholm where she had been celebrating her mother’s ninetieth birthday. She was feeling much better and talked excitedly about the trip – the hotel they stayed in, she told me, served breakfast until two o’clock in the afternoon! That’s very civilised, I said. Yes, she said, and there were tables and tables of the most delicious things. Melons, she said. There’s something from Stockholm inside the book for you, she said. Oh, I said, wow, and I carefully opened the book and inside was a tiny knife with a bone handle. That’s beautiful, I said. I had to post it, she said. Oh yeah, I said, rotating the knife slowly. I like little knives, she said. Me too, I said.

  The road home doesn’t have any cat’s eyes or stripes painted on it anywhere. There is no pavement and the cars go by too close and very fast. On either side of the road is the ditch, the hawthorn trees and any amount of household waste; including, actually, dumped electrical items. And as I walked from my friend nearby’s house along that road towards home a week or so before Christmas I stood still at the usual place and experienced a sudden upsurge of many murky impressions and sensations that have lurched and congregated in the depths of me for quite some time. If you are not from a particular place the history of that particular place will dwell inside you differently to how it dwells within those people who are from that particular place. Your connection to certain events that define the history of a particular place is not straightforward because none of your ancestors were in any way involved in or affected by these events. You have no stories to relate and compare, you have no narrative to inherit and run with, and all the names are strange ones that mean nothing to you at all. And it’s as if the history of a particular place knows all about this blankness you contain. Consequently if you are not from a particular place you will always be vulnerable for the reason that it doesn’t matter how many years you have lived there you will never have a side of the story; nothing with which you can hold the full force of the history of a particular place at bay.

  And so it comes at you directly, right through the softly padding soles of your feet, battering up throughout your body, before unpacking its clamouring store of images in the clear open spaces of your mind.

  Opening out at last; out, out, out

  And shimmered across the pale expanse of a flat defenceless sky.

  All the names mean nothing to you, and your name means nothing to them.

  Thomas McMullan

  The Only Thing Is Certain Is

  1.

  The man in the crematorium explained that it wasn’t in his nature to give me something that wasn’t mine. He sat me down in his office and told me that he’d received a letter from the government. The letter made it clear that the equipment he used at the crematorium was no good. There was too much energy being lost. Heat was being wasted and that was bad for the planet.

  He didn’t have a choice in the matter. He’d installed an energy-efficient incinerator that burnt at higher temperatures. It was cool to the touch. If you stood next to it you wouldn’t feel any heat at all. You could put your hand right on the outside and you wouldn’t feel a thing. There was a problem. Because of the greater energy efficiency more of the body is vaporised. This means that there’s less in the way of remains. If you’re a grown adult it doesn’t matter but if you’re a little baby there’s nothing left at all. No ashes. No trace.

  He’d written to the manufacturer for advice on what to do and the manufacturer told him that they were looking into it. Some of the people at the crematorium suggested that they burn some wood and use that. It’s symbolic, they told him. There’s no way to tell the difference. But he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t think it was honest and it wasn’t in his nature to give me something that wasn’t mine. He told me he was sorry and he gave me the urn. He asked where my wife was and I told him she was in a beautiful place out in the country. He offered me a glass of water and told me that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about whether the new regulations were right or wrong. There were the moral and spiritual concerns but there was also the environment to consider. He shook his head and said we all had to think about the future.

  The urn was a uniform shade of pale blue, close to the colour of a cloudless sky. There were no markings on it except for a single ring of silver footprints. I removed the lid. The man had not been misleading me, the urn was empty. The interior was lined with polished silver and the lustre had not been touched or smudged or soiled. I put the lid back on and returned my attention to the man, who was staring out of the window.

  I followed his gaze through the glass of the window to the grounds of the crematorium, to a tree, to leaves that rippled and flexed in the wind. I asked the man what his first name was and he told me it was Daniel. I told Daniel that I appreciated his honesty and I moved to leave but Daniel stood upright and said in a low voice that rang with sincerity that he didn’t feel right about any of it. He didn’t feel right sending me out of his office with an empty urn. He didn’t want to upset me by leaving it empty, that wasn’t his aim. He just didn’t think it was right to give me something that wasn’t mine. He hoped that I appreciated his honesty and asked if I wanted to see the letter from the government about the new energy-efficiency regulations. I told him I didn’t. He shook his head and said that he didn’t feel right. He came close to my face and said that I shouldn’t leave the urn empty. He told me he would help me find something to put inside it.

  I clutched the urn against my stomach and stood staring out of the window at the tree, at the ripple of the leaves.

  2.

  On the heath I heard a buzzing. From where I sat I could see a crowd of people walking down Parliament Hill. Below me snaked a procession of men, women, and children following in line. The crowd stretched towards a circle of people. In the circle were two wooden stakes, one for each of the men being led across the grass on wooden carts. I watched with Daniel from the top of the hill as the two men, who looked as if they were already dead, were taken towards the crowd. Some of the crowd were taking pictures of the men with their phones. Most were chatting amongst themselves.

  Daniel finished the dregs of his coffee and moved away to find a bin. There were people on the heath who weren’t part of the crowd, who were sat on blankets in rings around picnic hampers. There was a family playing Frisbee and I watched the blue disk soar through the air from one family member to another. One to the other to the other. The father caught the Frisbee and held it above his head triumphantly. He readied his arm to send it to his daughter, who changed her stance, her feet firm on the ground. The father twisted his body, paused, and uncoiled to send the Frisbee to his daughter who caught it without moving more than an inch.

  Daniel returned from the bin and rubbed his hands together. He commented that the weather was warm. The sun was hot on the back of my neck. The cart carrying the two men passed close to the family but they didn’t give it any notice. The father was again in charge of the Frisbee. He twisted his torso almost one hundred and eighty degrees from where it should be. He kept his body coiled and then released it. His hand loosed the Frisbee and it flew high into the air, too high for the daughter to catch, over her head and into the depths of the crowded proce
ssion. The daughter pointed towards where the Frisbee was last seen. The father shrugged but his daughter kept pointing and so he jogged dutifully towards the crowd. He passed beside the bodies and, like the Frisbee, soon disappeared from view.

  The rest of the family went back to their picnic hamper but the daughter stayed where she was, looking out at the procession. Daniel walked down the hill and beckoned for me to follow. I put the urn in my bag and did so. As we moved down Parliament Hill the landmarks to the south were swallowed by the horizon. With every step the crowd became harder to define. The edges of the procession, which had been so easy to gauge from my perspective on the hill, grew blurred and imprecise. What was contained became uncontained and soon it seemed as if the crowd had expanded to fill the entire heath. There were bodies all around me, their footsteps close. My breathing grew faster and I felt someone place a hand on the small of my back. Someone touched my neck. I nearly lost sight of Daniel but I pushed through the crowd and kept the back of his head in view. We were travelling in the same direction as the others around us and, although there were people on all sides of me, I didn’t fight against the flow. I let myself be led by the procession, keeping Daniel in view. There were hands behind me but I was too hemmed in to turn around. I moved my backpack to my front and held it close to my chest.