The Best British Short Stories 2013

by Nicholas Royle

  At home, decide you are going to need a special shelf. Box up your self-help books and put your PhD books in their place. Sit at your desk and look at the shelf.

  Make a cup of tea.

  Watch The Apprentice on iPlayer.

  Wonder what the term ‘original research’ means.

  Go out to a nightclub with your friends and dance to the A-Team theme music.

  Three days later, go to the special shelf, take a book, and begin to read. The book is about blind chimpanzees in central Africa. Decide to write a PhD on ‘The correlation between visually impaired chimpanzees in central Africa and blind characters in the early novels of Charles Dickens’. Because it sounds impressive.

  Open a new Word document and write that down. Then spend two and a half hours Googling for correlations between visually impaired chimpanzees in central Africa and blind characters in the early novels of Charles Dickens. Huh, well how about that? No luck.

  Whew, you have just attended your sixth supervisor meeting, and thank goodness these exist.

  Your supervisor has asked you to stop creating Word documents containing impressive-sounding titles, and to spend your time reading instead. ‘Your angle will come,’ he says mysteriously, and you can’t help blushing at his use of the word come.

  Decide that you are probably in love with your supervisor. Treat yourself to a new cardigan for your next meeting.

  It is now half a year since you started, and your deliciously handsome supervisor has suggested you apply for a scholarship to study at the Library of Congress for a few months. In America. Five hundred and thirty-eight miles of books, he says, and you picture the two of you, running naked through the English Literature section, kissing by Milton and boning by Chaucer.

  Miraculously, your application for a scholarship is successful, and you fly out to Capitol Hill. There, you live with two guys; one of whom is a furniture salesman, and the other of whom works in Congress. It is the start of summer, and every time you step out of the door you feel like you are being slapped in the face with a hot, wet flannel. Throw away those cardigans, girlfriend!

  At the library, there is a special Center (‘er’), where you have your own workspace, and there is a filter coffee machine, and you have to get your bags checked every day on the way in and out, and you feel Very Important Indeed.

  Go for beers after work with your new academic friends. Get so drunk you lose your way home and fall asleep on the steps of the Capitol building. Get found by the police. When they ask where you live, tell them you can’t remember. (It starts with a . . . no, wait . . . ) Let them take your phone and call your housemate, telling him to come and collect you. As he drives you home at four in the morning, don’t forget to tell him how sorry you are, at least once every five seconds. And cry as hard as you can when he informs you that you were asleep under his office window.

  Spend the next day in bed, phoning your ex-boyfriend, your mother, your father, your sister, your friends. Get back with your ex-boyfriend, because a long-distance relationship is probably just what you need.

  What you also need is routine: so find one. Arrive at the library for half nine. Leave at four. Read voraciously. Develop an interest in the representation of blind women in nineteenth-century literature. Come up with a groundbreaking theory about the description of prostitutes’ eyes in the novels of Charles Dickens. Email your supervisor. Consider ending it with a kiss.

  Spend evenings listening to your housemates debating politics. Understand about one sentence in ten. Go to a peacock farm owned by the furniture salesman’s aunt. Lie on a sun-lounger by the pool and wonder whether getting back with your ex-boyfriend was a good idea.

  Holy guacamole! You have a full draft of your PhD!

  Near the end of the scholarship, your dad comes to visit. Proudly show him your place at the library. Books here, computer there, filter coffee machine over there. Take him to the Brown Bag Lunch and listen to your friend Guido play a tune on the library’s Stradivarius. Does your dad look impressed? Of course he does.

  Take a couple of days out from the library to go to New Orleans with your dad. Norlins, he tells you. You have to pronounce it Norlins. Listen to a jazz band on the Mississippi. Take a horse and cart ride around the French Quarter. Visit the voodoo museum. Go on a boat ride and spot eight alligators.

  On your dad’s last night in America, stay up late discussing your PhD. Sparkle as he tells you how proud he is. Listen carefully as he tells you how bored he gets these days, because he has no-one to talk to about clever things. Ask him if that’s why he drinks so much. Get him to promise to see a doctor about his hernia when he gets back. Tell him you love him more than anyone else in the world.

  When you get back to Scotland, break up with your ex-boyfriend. Shortly after that get a phone call from your dad. His hernia is sorted, he says, but now he has cancer.

  See a psychiatrist.

  Fly to Disneyworld with a man you have known for just two days. Then Prague with a man you have known two weeks. Consider this progress. Receive feedback from your supervisor. Edit. Edit.

  See a psychologist.

  Go to England and feel shocked at how ill your dad looks. Think about quitting your PhD. He tells you how proud he is of you for doing it, so don’t quit, don’t ever quit, just keep on going.

  Back in Scotland, double your dose of antidepressants. Stop eating properly. Cry after two glasses of wine. Get herpes. Completely rewrite your entire PhD in a fortnight. (You have ditched the early nineteenth century, and are now looking exclusively at the fin de siècle. The fin de siècle is where it’s at, dude.) Get a new boyfriend. Watch endless episodes of Come Dine With Me but stop cooking. Realise you’re not really sure what the fin de siècle actually is. Return all your library books and put the self-help books back in their place.

  How to Cope with Depression.

  A Rough Guide to Grief.

  Pulling Your Own Strings.

  Phone home several times a day. Your mum tells you she wants a divorce. Your sister tells you she wants to die. Your dad tells you he has ten weeks to live.

  Try cognitive behavioural therapy. Come off the antidepressants. Ask your supervisor out on a date and cry when he says no. Cry after one glass of wine. Tell your supervisor he is a total prick. (But delete the email before you hit send.) Rewrite the entire PhD again, this time only using words beginning with the letter ‘c’. Come home early from a nightclub and cut yourself with a razor. Tear off a piece of the aloe vera plant and squeeze the gel onto your wound. Go back on the antidepressants. Develop a headache. Go for a brain scan.

  Hurray for you, hurray for you.

  Make a list of your losses over the last ten years. Map them out on A3 paper and colour-code them. Brain scan tests inconclusive. Go home for Father’s Day. Decorate the patio in chalk. Draw hearts and stars and write ‘I love you Graham’s number’ and tie balloons and streamers to the silver birch tree by the back door. Watch your dad walk across the patio with his Zimmer frame and tears in his eyes.

  Just before you leave, your dad whispers something: go on lots of adventures for me.

  Cry on the train all the way back to Glasgow.

  Move in with your boyfriend. Phone your dad and ask his advice on plastering walls. Wish him luck for his hospital appointment tomorrow.

  Build a bed.

  Find a missed call from your mum the next morning.

  Seven hours later, arrive at the train station. Buy a cheese and onion sandwich for your dad and head for the hospital. Wonder why your mum has stopped replying to your texts. Walk through the hospital wondering where all the people are. Find the oncology ward and reach for the door handle. A nurse stops you. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  In a darkened room, see your sister and your aunt and uncle. Your mum is waiting for you outside the wrong hospital entrance.

  A few moments later, see you
r first dead body. Touch it. Talk to it. Say goodbye to it.

  Drink. Cry. Edit.

  It’s snowing outside. Put on a cardigan. Fuck it, put on two.

  Buy an extra pair of tights because your legs sting so badly in the cold, then walk tentatively towards your viva. A viva is an exam, where you get to discuss the research you’ve done over the last four years. To show the examiners why you are an expert, why you deserve to be a Doctor. It’s the most satisfying part of your whole PhD, your dad once told you.

  Two hours later, the viva is over.

  Try not to slip over in the snow on the way out, and head for the nearest bar. All your friends are waiting for you. They have cards and presents, balloons and streamers. Down two glasses of champagne and open your presents.

  What’s wrong with a PhD composed entirely out of words beginning with the letter ‘c’, you ask. What’s wrong with those cunting cocks – can’t they cope with the concept?

  Consider writing a letter to Margaret Atwood or Bill Gates. Consider writing a letter to your dad, telling him how relieved you are he’s not here to see you fail.

  Hurray for you.

  Wonder what the hell a PhD is anyway. Then do all that you know how to do. Write.

  Bedtime Stories For Yasmin

  Robert Shearman

  Mrs Timothy never wanted Yasmin to be frightened, not of anything, and she made sure that in all her picture books the lions had nice smiles and the crocodiles came with blunted teeth. Mr Timothy disagreed, and that was predictable enough; since Yasmin’s birth her husband seemed to have found a way to disagree with his wife about everything. ‘You can’t protect her from the world,’ he said. ‘It’s big and it’s scary and it’s right outside the door!’ Mrs Timothy knew this was true, but it was a scary world Yasmin needn’t have to confront just yet – and when it came to kindergarten, and school, and college, and all the other horrors her husband kept throwing at her, then they’d have to see, wouldn’t they? – maybe some careful control would be in order. Maybe they could just do their job as loving parents and make sure Yasmin never had to mix with the wrong sort.

  When Yasmin was put to bed at night Mrs Timothy would leave the light on. And she’d read her her favourite stories – about very hungry caterpillars, about beautiful princesses, about kindly folk who would never do her any harm. Mrs Timothy was not an especially good reader, and her voice inclined towards a flat monotone, so before very long Yasmin’s eyes would get heavy and she’d fall asleep. And that was good, that was right, and the final image with which the story would leave her would never put her into a state of anxious suspense.

  One night – only a few months ago, was it really so recent? – Mrs Timothy heard screams coming from Yasmin’s bedroom, and she ran to see what was wrong. Yasmin was sitting up in bed, and she seemed to be shrinking away from the sheets, from the windows, from the wardrobe, from everything; she held her little pillow out before her as if it were a shield. ‘Don’t let the giants get me,’ she said. It turned out that earlier that evening Mr Timothy had read her a story himself, quite against his wife’s instructions, whilst Mrs Timothy was busy cooking dinner. The story had featured giants galore. Mr Timothy said, ‘She seemed to be enjoying it at the time,’ and Mrs Timothy opened the book and was horrified by what she saw there: men as big as houses, and stamping upon the little fairy folk, and pulling them apart like Christmas crackers, and eating them whole and raw. It took two readings back to back of Robbie the Happy Rabbit to calm Yasmin down again, and even then Mrs Timothy had had to edit out the bits where Robbie had chewed at his carrots, Yasmin didn’t need to hear any more about chewing that night.

  It wasn’t the incident that caused the break-up, but it hadn’t helped. ‘You don’t love me any more,’ Mrs Timothy said one day, and Mr Timothy thought about it, and agreed, as if it were a revelation. ‘And you don’t love Yasmin either,’ sobbed Mrs Timothy, ‘or you wouldn’t have frightened her so!’ Mr Timothy said nothing to this, but he didn’t deny it, so it was probably true. And that very same hour he left, he didn’t even bother to pack, and Mrs Timothy was left to cry with her daughter and wonder why there was so much wickedness in the world.

  Back before Mrs Timothy had become Mrs Timothy, long ago, when she’d believed everyone in the world loved her and no one would let her down, she’d had an Uncle Jack who would read her bedtime stories. Uncle Jack would come to her room after lights out and sit on the edge of her bed, and say, ‘Time for a story, my pretty princess.’ She didn’t want to hear his stories, but the pretty princess always won her over – and she couldn’t but help like Uncle Jack, he smelled so unlike her parents, and she couldn’t work out why – maybe he smoked a different brand of cigarettes, or drank a different sort of beer – it was a strange smell, a sweet smell, as if her Uncle Jack was full of sugar – and sometimes, if she listened to one of his stories without making a single sound, he’d ruffle her hair as a treat. She knew when he began a story she should keep quiet, she mustn’t scream or cry out, she mustn’t even whimper – if she did, he’d simply stop the story, turn back the pages, and start all over again.

  He brought the book with him. An enormous book, when he sat it down upon his lap and opened it up it was wider than he was, and she could only imagine how many stories there must be in there – hundreds, no, thousands, no, all the stories in the world. The pages were thick and heavy and as he turned them they creaked like old floorboards. He didn’t turn on the lamp, he read to her by moonlight. Sometimes if the moonlight was bright enough she’d steal a look at those pages; they were dense with long words, and the words crushed tight on to the paper, and there were no pictures.

  The stories frightened the girl.

  One night he told a particularly terrifying story. And she tried not to, but she kept gasping out loud with fear. And each time she did, no matter how softly, Uncle Jack would hear her, and he’d stop, and back would creak all the pages, and he’d begin once more. He never seemed angry. He never seemed impatient. He read just as before, the same pace, the same wet hiss, the same emphasis on the most disturbing of words. And it was always at the exact same point that she’d gasp – five times, six times now, she could never get beyond the moment where Little Red Riding Hood admired the size of the wolf’s mouth. She knew that all that was waiting for Little Red Riding Hood was death, the same horrible death that had befallen her grandmother, and she didn’t even know what death was, not properly, only that it was big and black and would consume her, and once it had consumed her she’d be lost and no one would ever find her again.

  Six times, seven times, eight. All through the night he read to her the same story, over and over, and each time the girl would jam her fist into her mouth, she’d hold her breath, she’d try to lie in bed stiff and hard and not move a muscle – anything, so long as the story would continue, so that the story would at last come to an end.

  She fell asleep at last, for all her terror she was too tired to keep awake. And then she sat up with a start, and it was so dark, and the moonlight had gone, it was as if the moon had been switched off, and she was still terrified, and Uncle Jack was gone. His book, however, was lying on the edge of her bed.

  It was her one chance to be rid of it. And yet stretching out her hand to touch it seemed such a dreadful thing. She could feel her heart beating so fast it would pop, and she wondered if that was how her parents would find her in the morning, lying dead on the bed, her fingers just brushing the warm leathery cover of a giant book; she wondered if Uncle Jack would be sad she was gone, or even care.

  The book was so heavy she thought she would never lift it. Still, she did.

  The house seemed different in the dead of night. The stairs made noises that sounded like warnings as she stepped on them – or maybe they weren’t warnings, maybe they were threats – maybe they were calling out to the strange shadows on the wall to turn on her and eat her. The book filled her arms, as she wa
lked ever downwards shifting its bulk from side to side it seemed she was dancing with it. She reached the back door. She unlocked it. She opened it. The blackness of the outside seemed richer and meatier than the blackness of the house, and in it poured.

  She dropped the book into the bin. She slammed the lid down, in case it tried to get out again.

  And then, back to her room, this time running, as fast as she could, no time to shut the back door, let alone lock it, back to her bed and under her covers before anything could eat her alive.

  She had a temperature the next day, and her mother was worried, and kept her in bed. And all day long the little girl looked out of the window and hoped it would stay daytime for ever and wouldn’t get dark. Because as soon as it were dark, she knew, Uncle Jack would return. And what would he say when he found out she’d thrown his book away? He wouldn’t be pleased.

  She couldn’t sleep that night. She waited for him. But Uncle Jack didn’t come.

  Mrs Timothy was worried Yasmin might be disturbed by her father’s disappearance, but she seemed to take it in her stride. It was her mummy who dressed her in the morning, who fed her, who read her bedtime stories. ‘Sometimes things just end,’ Mrs Timothy offered as explanation, and Yasmin had nodded slowly, as if she were a grown-up too, as if she could understand such things. But maybe the mistake was that Mrs Timothy had used the same phrase to explain why the next-door dog had vanished after being hit by that car; one day Yasmin frowned at her mother, she had something to ask that had been on her mind for quite a while. She said, ‘Is Daddy dead?’

  ‘Good god, no.’

  ‘Not dead?’

  ‘He’s just away. Somewhere else. For the time being.’