Best British Short Stories 2016

by Nicholas Royle

  Soon the pace had slowed to a shuffle and the crowd fanned outwards. Instead of standing Daniel pushed forwards, slipping past the men and women in front of him. I did the same, weaving between the stationary bodies and trying my hardest to keep sight of Daniel until I reached the end point, the ring that I’d seen from the top of Parliament Hill. Here the crowd had formed a circle around two wooden stakes.

  Daniel was by my side. He asked me if I’d come to the heath a lot with my family. I told him that we’d come here together in the winter but that was the last time I’d been. It was nice to see it in the summer with the leaves on the trees. Daniel told me that he used to come to the heath when he first moved to London but he came less and less now. I asked him why this was and he said it was because of a girlfriend he’d had. They used to go running together in the mornings on the heath. The area reminded him too much of her. He tried to go running after they broke up but it had been too much. They’d even had sex in the bushes, one time, on a warm summer morning. If running had tainted the heath could I image what having sex there had done. I told him I could. It was hard for him to be on the heath even now, he explained. It was all he could do not to think about her face in the bushes. If he closed his eyes he could see her face surrounded by leaves, half shrouded in shadow.

  Daniel closed his eyes and I scanned the perimeter of the circle. I spotted the father I’d seen before, the Frisbee clasped in his hands. His daughter was nowhere to be seen. I wanted to catch the father’s eye but before I was able to meet his gaze a cheer rose around me. Daniel’s eyes were still closed as a section of the circle opened to let in the carthorse. In the cart were the two men. A group of officials moved forwards. Although the men in the cart were pale they were not dead, and with the assistance of the officials they limped towards the stakes.

  They did not struggle, although judging from the state they were in I didn’t think they had the strength to do so. With practised efficiency the officials tied the men to the stakes and removed themselves from the centre of the circle. The crowd cheered and cried and I could feel the people around me change their stance. They coiled their bodies and prepared to release. The two men looked out at the people, out at me. With an almost uniform movement the crowd moved forwards towards the men. I would have moved with them if it hadn’t been for Daniel’s hand on my arm, a look of concern on his face. He pulled my arm and heaved me from the closing circle, past the bodies and out of the crowd.

  3.

  Daniel had already had a coffee but he could use another so we passed through the doorway of a café on the Holloway Road. The café was called the Hollywood Bistro. Daniel asked me if I was sure about not wanting a coffee and I told him I was. He said he didn’t want to drink coffee while I sat there doing nothing. He said he’d get me a Coke and I said a glass of water would be fine. He ordered me a Coke. We sat down at a table and waited for our drinks to arrive.

  On the wall beside us was a picture of Holloway Road in the 1920s with horse-drawn carts on the road. It was hard to imagine a London full of horses. It was all such a long time ago. All of the horses dead now. I thought of the hundreds of years of history we’d walked over since leaving the crematorium. All of the bones. All of the bones beneath our feet. Only a paper-thin piece of time between. There was nothing from one moment and the next, it should be so easy to cut a hole and pass back.

  Daniel admitted that he wasn’t sure how to ask me about my child. He understood that it was probably the last thing I wanted to speak about but it was the reason he was there and if he was going to help me he needed to know more. I didn’t want to talk about my child. I didn’t want to say her name. I wanted her to be alive and at home. I didn’t want to have any reason to speak about her. I wanted her to remain an unsaid certainty, as unsaid as the keys in my pocket or the shoes on my feet. I didn’t say any of this to Daniel but he nodded all the same. He assured me that we would fill the urn to the brim.

  A waiter came over to our table and placed the coffee in front of Daniel and a glass full of ice in front of me. The waiter then opened the can of Coke and poured it over the ice. I watched the bubbles fizz and fall. Daniel told me that he thought a lot about what was right and wrong for the dead. Some people put coins on the eyes of their loved ones, he told me, or in their mouth, to pay for the ferryman to row them across the river Styx. It was an old tradition but some people still did it. The coins weigh the eyelids down so that they don’t pop open in the casket during the funeral. When the body is burnt the coins are left behind, a little blackened but good enough if you spend some time polishing them clean. He told me that he keeps the coins in his pocket. When there are enough of them he takes them to a charity collector at his local supermarket.

  I asked what charity he gave to coins to and he said it depended on who was standing outside of the supermarket. It didn’t really matter, he explained, as long as it goes back in the river. It’ll go from the donation tin to the bank to someone else to someone else. It’ll flow like that. If he left it with the ashes it wouldn’t flow anywhere. It would just stay there and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, would it?

  Was this the right thing to do? Should he leave them in the ashes? He realised he should probably give them to the family of the deceased but it wasn’t in his nature to give people something that wasn’t theirs. It seemed wrong somehow, to leave the coin in the ashes like a toy in a box of cereal. Surely it was better to pay them forward. But was he doing enough? Should he do better?

  At this point a woman on crutches pushed through the door and started singing. Everyone in the café turned to see where the singing was coming from but when they saw that it came from a woman who looked dirty and homeless they turned back to their cups of coffee and plates of chips. The woman sang loudly, her voice was strong. She banged the ends of her crutches on the floor to keep rhythm. The song didn’t sound pretty. It sounded angry. It wasn’t a song someone would sing if they wanted people to feel pity. The woman sang the song as if she wanted us to hear it.

  The waiter who had served us moved towards the woman, his arms outstretched in an attempt to usher her towards the door. In response the woman started to sing louder, she also started to dance, shaking her hips as she banged her crutches against the floor. The waiter looked back to someone behind the counter, the owner of the café, who opened her eyes wider and made it clear she wanted the homeless singer removed. The waiter took a step forward and the woman smacked him in the shin with one of her crutches. The waiter fell to the floor clutching his leg and the singing woman leapt with surprising agility around the room singing her song and shaking her hips.

  Everyone looked horrified apart from Daniel who was standing and clapping his hands. He dug into his pocket and passed a coin to the woman and she took it without hesitation. The owner of the café was calling the police from behind the counter. I closed my eyes and listened, to the words the woman was singing about love. She sang with such genuine emotion that I could feel my heart swell. The woman reached a crescendo, her voice ringing out, passed through the air, into my ears, my nerves submerged. I opened my eyes and she was gone.

  4.

  Daniel stood in front of me as we fell from the ticket hall of Holloway Road tube station. The advert in the lift showed a stampede of horses running across a field. It seemed that the advert wasn’t a piece of paper but a window to the outside world. With a cloud of dust behind them the horses galloped, mouths slavering and necks arched as if they were charging into battle but there were no saddles and there were no men on their backs.

  A train was waiting at the platform and we jumped on as the doors closed behind us. With a lurch the carriage moved and the windows turned black. Daniel looked down at his feet. He swayed backwards and forwards, his right hand holding the handrail above his head. His eyes were closed and a smile was on his mouth. I asked him if he was thinking about his ex-girlfriend and he admitted that he was. He knew that he shouldn’t be, it
had been a long time ago, but the memories were flooding. What did it matter if he enjoyed them for a few moments?

  As our train passed into the heart of London the carriage filled with more and more people. By Holborn I was pressed against the door. A pregnant woman came onto the train and the people parted to let her through to where a young man gave up his seat. The woman was beautiful and the young man was handsome, they smiled at each other when their eyes met for a second time. Daniel’s eyes were closed. He swayed in place between the passengers. I felt the urn in my bag, pressed against my spine. I looked out of the window into the tunnel and there spread out beside the carriage was a band of horses running through the dark, the flesh stripped from their bodies. The skeletons kept pace with the train, their white bones racing.

  I closed my eyes and imagined that the edge of the urn was my daughter’s foot. I imagined that she was on my back and that she was alive. I’d gone into the dark and I’d pulled her out of it and she kicked her legs in the air and smiled with spittle-slick lips. Daniel started to hum the tune we’d heard the homeless woman sing in the Hollywood Bistro. His eyes were open now. The pregnant woman had her hand over her belly and the handsome man asked her when she was due. I listened to the sound of the two people talking, soon covered with the shriek of the rails as the train hurtled through the dark. Without warning the pregnant woman reached out for the handsome man’s arm and, lifting her t-shirt, guided his hand to her swollen belly. The sound of the train died down and the handsome man told the woman that her skin was cool to the touch. He was expecting it to be warm but it was cold. She told him all the heat was inside. Sealed up. It might feel cold from the outside but inside she was burning up.

  Daniel asked me if he could do better. He’d not done enough for his ex-girlfriend, he said he knew that, but could he have done better? I told him you can’t look back. He shook his head. His eyes were wet and his lip was trembling. It wasn’t just the living, he told me. Could he do better for the dead? All of the dead he’d seen in the crematorium, had he done enough? He wanted to know my answer. I didn’t know what to say and he closed his eyes again.

  Out in the dark the horses charged. I felt the edge of the urn dig deeper into my back, against my spine. I felt fingers tugging at my hair, something on the back of my neck. Two feet, a bubble laugh, and I reached behind me and pulled her from my back. There she was. My little girl. Her hands clasping at air. I couldn’t believe it. I held her tight, pressed against my chest and felt the warmth come through my clothes as the train rocked back and forth. I kept her held like this for some time, and when the train surfaced at Barons Court and the light flooded into the carriage I didn’t dare to move.

  When I couldn’t feel her warmth I released my grip, not of my daughter but of my bag, the urn a lump inside. Daniel must have seen the expression on my face because he was beside me then, his hand on my shoulder.

  5.

  My wife was in a beautiful place out in the country. Daniel echoed this back to me in the departure concourse of Terminal 5. I nodded and told him I was going to see her. Above us white arches rose like ribs. Crowds of people flitted between check-in machines and baggage desks. Daniel wanted to buy another coffee but told me that if he had much more his heart would burst. We stood on the concourse and watched the people around us. The family I’d seen near the procession on the heath were grouped around a set of suitcases. The father was going through the passports and the daughter was watching him, the blue Frisbee clasped in her arms. The father counted out the passports, pointing his finger at his wife and each of his children in turn.

  Daniel’s eyes were closed again. He was rocking back and forth on the heels of his shoes. I asked him if he was thinking about his ex-girlfriend and he told me he’d made a decision. He’d decided to himself that he’d see her again. He’d call her up and if she didn’t answer he’d go and knock on her door. If she answered he would take her to the heath where they could go running. She had the most beautiful brown hair, he said. She’ll probably ignore him, Daniel admitted, but if he got her flowers that might smooth things over. He’d buy her a bunch of roses.

  The family were ready to pass through customs. The father picked his daughter up and put her on his shoulders. She threw her hands in the air and held the Frisbee above her as high as she could, waving it triumphantly. She kicked her legs and the father moved forward, pushing their luggage through the crowd.

  I told Daniel I was glad to have his company but I needed to go through the next part of the airport alone. Didn’t I want his help? I told him that filling the urn was something I needed to do on my own. Besides, it was only an urn. There wasn’t anything of her inside it. She was vaporised. She was smoke in the air. She was taken in by the trees, passed through the leaves. She was invisible, spread over London. She was air in our lungs. She followed us over Hampstead, down the Holloway Road. She flowed through the underground ventilation and she rose with the planes around Heathrow.

  Daniel dug into his pocket and pulled out a blackened coin. He pressed it into my palm and told me it was for the ferryman. We shook hands and Daniel went back to the underground where he disappeared from view.

  I went through customs, into the departure lounge, into the airplane and into the air. I looked out of the window to London; to the buildings and roads I’d etched with my feet. I tried to map out the route I’d taken from the crematorium. A line through the centre, down underground, and into the air. The higher I rose the smaller it all seemed. There were so many people passing between doors. There were so many ghosts. So many bones. But you can’t look back. I opened by bag, took out the urn and, holding it to the window, scooped the city inside.

  Stuart Evers

  Live from the Palladium

  The man bends down and asks: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ After the pause, after the raising of the eyes, I deliver the line Mother has taught me. ‘When I grow up, Mr Hughes, I want to be a proctologist.’ Mother laughs. Mother shakes her head. Mother puts on her finest Jewish accent: ‘My son, the proctologist!’

  The best jokes exist in the present tense: man walks into a bar; your momma; knock-knock. This is something Mother says when we talk about comedy. I am nine years old the first time I tell the proctologist joke. It is a success and Mr Hughes takes us home in his big car. The following night I am allowed to sit up with Mother and watch the videotape of my father. He performs the brown-suit routine and we laugh like it’s the first time. The best jokes, she reminds me, exist in the present tense. ‘You can depend on a joke,’ she says. ‘A joke is always happening.’

  There are faded colour photographs of Mother in her youth, drink and cigarette in hand, laughing with men who were once well known. Mother has high, arching eyebrows, a bowed mouth, long painted nails; she is dressed impeccably, stylishly. You cannot ignore her glamour.

  She knew the hotel bars where the pier entertainers drank and would approach them if she’d enjoyed their act. She slept with some; provided others with material. This she tells me.

  ‘One of mine,’ she tells me once, twice; again, again, ‘was on the Royal Variety Show. Old Roy came out on stage all fat and sweaty in that dinner jacket that never fitted, and he says’ – Mother adopts a broad northern accent – ‘“My wife said we should experiment more in the bedroom. After two weeks, I’d discovered a cure for cancer and now she’s left me. Some women are never satisfied.”’

  The following Saturday, Mr Hughes picks Mother up in his big car. Mother has asked our neighbour Serena Jenkins to babysit. I am obviously, shyly in love with Serena Jenkins. I will never smell hairspray without thinking of her; will never hear Whitney Houston without seeing her shift from left to right in her tight denims.

  The sofa is old and surprising with springs; it is made for two. I sit next to Serena and put my feet up on the coffee table in a way I am not allowed. The flat is tidy for once. There are vacuum-cleaner skids in the nap of the th
in brown carpet, polish smears on the windowsill, a new air-freshener beside the television.

  ‘Do you know what I want to be when I grow up?’ I ask Serena after I’ve poured her a glass of Coke.

  ‘What’s that, little man?’ she says.

  ‘When I grow up, Serena, I want to be a proctologist.’

  She sips her Coke and puts it down on the coffee table.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she says and looks down at her homework. In her textbook there is a picture of Gandhi; in her exercise book her rounded, bubbly handwriting. I assume she hasn’t heard what I said.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s what I’m going to be: a proctologist.’

  She closes the textbook on her index finger and turns towards me. She hasn’t laughed twice. Everyone always laughs.

  ‘What’s a proctologist?’ she says.

  Mr Hughes invites us to live with him. He has a big house with a garden, four bedrooms, a garage. Also a big television and two bathrooms. I am thirteen and it’s the best thing that could have ever happened to us. Even Mother says that. But we make heavy work of leaving the flat. The move takes over two months, always an excuse found to stay another day, another week. There is no pressure from Mr Hughes, he reminds us of that, but he seems confused as to why we spend so many nights a week back at the flat, huddled by the gas heater watching videos.