The Penguin Book of the British Short Story

by Philip Hensher

  He was a good man, but where did these boat days go? Whereas, should he come in with her at the teaching, they would see their work as it grew day by day. And he could still do the lobsters, if there were any left in the sea. With the French and the Russians and the warm-water breeders at it, the sea was full of mostly red herrings, forget the silver darlings.

  Sandy now, she would see more of her father if he came in with the teaching, and then Euphemia maybe, when it was all settled, would get down to having another baby.

  The purple line at the horizon lay over the slow grey sea. The air smelt of weed, cigarettes and diesel; the post office van was idling and the men gathered around it in their oilskins, smoking for the warmth. The children of the island were standing against the rail at the end of the pier, their feet kicking against the robust wire barrier with a bright harsh chiming. Six of them red-headed, in shades of red from orangeade to a bracken mixed with rough briar brown, and one of them with the crow-black hair that does not shine and goes with blue eyes. The children were waiting to wave, even those who were waving no one off; it was the boat, which was the presiding event of their lives, that they wished to acknowledge.

  Against the folding evening clouds, and frosted by their departing rims of hard light, the shining ruby-juice red of Sandy’s straight hair and the drained white of her face seemed to Euphemia to be stamped like a royal seal set to important words. It was not easy to think of Sandy with a brother or a sister. But Euphemia did not approve of only children; especially not here, where circumstances were already isolated in the world’s eyes. It was not possible to imagine loving Sandy any less or loving any child more than Sandy was loved; it was hard to imagine the love that Davie and she bore for their child stretching to accommodate more, but Euphemia was convinced that this would occur naturally, without pain, like passing through a door into a new room with open windows.

  The ferry was loaded. The gangplank was lifted on its ropes and let down to the pier for rolling and storage in the metal waiting room at the end where the children hung and bobbed and cuffed one another’s bright heads. A long plaintive blast warned that the boat must soon go and the children hollered back to it through cupped hands. Lights were coming on in the boat; soon the dark would land over them all, steaming across the water from the purple edge of the sea.

  Davie was checking that goods had been properly exchanged, the gangmower sent to the mainland for fixing by June time, the cowcake fetched up out of the hold, the canned goods and frozen gear stowed ready for the shop, the box of specially requested medicaments boxed up for the doctor, the beer rolled into the pub’s Bedford van; detail was what mattered in this job, and he took a pride in it.

  In the restful numbed cold silence, people began to prepare themselves to make farewell and to depart for their homes. The moment the children loved was coming, when they could wave to the boat as it pulled out and away from the island, seagulls over the wake like bridesmaids. They stood and waited at the pier end, looking out to sea.

  There was a creak, a sodden tugging groaning. The seagulls gathered. The eighty people on the pier experienced the shared illusion that it was they and not the boat who moved. The rudder of the ship was churning deep under the water which, astern, showed silvery green below its surface and white above. The air was still enough for a hundred separate lifted voices to reach the ears intended as the twenty souls on the boat looked down to the crowd on the pier. The children waited.

  The stern spring of the boat cracked free of the cleat from which Davie had forgotten to lift it. After the first tearing report of the bust rope came the whipping weight of sixty yards of corded hemp and steel, swinging out through its hard blind arc at the height of a good-sized child.

  ‘Lie down, get down, for God’s sake,’ yelled a man. The women fell to the ground. Unless they were mothers, when they ran for their little ones to the end of the pier as the thick murderous rope lashed out, rigid and determined as a scythe to cut down all that stood in its way.

  Sandy lay under her mother’s heart, hearing it in the coat that covered them both. The concrete of the pier seemed to tremble with the hard commotion of the rope’s passing over them.

  Snapped out of her dreams, Euphemia held her only child.

  The boat continued to move away, its briefly lethal rope trailing behind it, a lone seaman at the winch above, coiling it in to usefulness. The black ferrous patina on the big cleat had burned off under the seething tension of the rope; its stem was polished by force through to a pale refined metal blue. The children from the end of the pier comforted their mothers, who stared out to the disappearing ship seeing, abob in the water, the heads of children cut off at the neck, their frozen sweetness of face under the streaming curtailed hair; red, red, red, red, red, red or black, and to grow no more.

  JANICE GALLOWAY

  last thing

  we were

  coming

  coming back from the pictures with half a packet of sweeties still coming round the corner at the Meadowside with Mary saying she was feart to go up the road herself Mary is feart for everything but so I said I’ll take you because I’m bigger than her the film thing we’d saw at the pictures that Halloween thing wasny really scary I don’t think but Mary saying she hated all the screaming the big knife was horrible one time her brother pushed one under the toilet door she said and told her to slit her wrists but he’s not right Billy he works a place they make baskets or something he’s not right in the head so I said I’ll take you up the road offering her a sweetie it got stuck to the back of her teeth and she was laughing kidding on her mouth was glued shut and she couldn’t talk only make these moaning noises because her mouth was all stuck together when this shape a big kind of shadow thing started it came out of the close at the corner of the main street right where the streetlight is at the corner a big shape coming out and turning into a man he was only a wee bit bigger than Mary so maybe he was a boy really and he said

  I’ve lost my mate

  just like that he said and away back in again away in the close he had come out I just looked but I couldn’t see him but he was definitely there you could hear him saying it again in there I’ve lost my mate only a wee thin voice with no body now but you couldn’t see maybe he was round the back garden or something and I thought he must be lost too the man maybe not from here with him speaking funny the way he did not knowing you didn’t wander about in people’s gardens this terrible idea of being lost and maybe not knowing where you were and not being able to find the person who had come with you like losing the only thing you understood and I went in Mary was kind of hanging back she didn’t like people she’s an awful feart kind of person Mary she gets rows from her mother for talking to folk she gets rows for just being there but I went in away after the sound of the voice that had lost its friend and was maybe lonely I went in after the voice and I couldn’t see him at first it was too dark too

  dark off the main road and I didn’t like it was too

  dark I couldn’t hear anything any

  more and I was nearly shouting for Mary to come too it was frightening expecting to go in and help somebody and suddenly they weren’t there to be helped and it was like a dark tunnel between nothing and where she was out there so I was about to shout her when something

  some thing wrapped it

  self around my neck I didn’t know just felt the tilt backwards and couldn’t work out why I was unsteady on my feet till the thing went tight in my neck like a piece of pipe or something it was blocked a stuck thing poking into where I needed to breathe and my legs going soft like they wouldn’t be able to hold me up I just went like a dolly because I got a surprise not knowing what it was till I was being dragged backwards back

  wards away from the road the streetlight out there the yellowness kind of slipping further away because somebody some body was dragging me by the neck a man he said YOU’RE COMING WITH ME but his voice wasn’t right like he was choking or crying maybe something was wrong it was defi
nitely the man saying YOU’RE COMING WITH ME and he shoved one of his hands up under my jersey I could feel the big shape of his hand sort of pulling my jersey under my jacket and going up onto my belly and it made me stop and breathe wrong it was so unexpected his hand there then he pushed me round the edge out the close altogether against the wall so then I could feel the wall being crumbly thon way plaster goes after years with the wee bits of moss growing through it crumbling through to the grey stuff underneath you think it would have felt scratchy but it wasn’t it was just this stuff disintegrating under where he was pushing me back against the wall so it was hard to keep breathing right with his hand pushing under my chin so all I could see was the sky a funny colour with the orange off the streetlight making wee grains in it like off milk but right then right that minute something kind of turned in my head something kind of clicked and I wanted to look him right in the eye

  it was what I really wanted to do I wanted to

  just see his face just

  look him in the eye he was pushing my face so hard my nose was running he was hurting my wrists but I kind of pushed my head straight till I could see because I wanted to see his face I wanted to stare at him he was cutting off where I was trying to breathe and know I just wanted him to know to see me and know what he was doing the noise of Mary greeting from the street out there I could hear her in the place by the close mouth Mary a terrible coward and not even sure where I lived and even if she found it I was scared she got a row so would I for being out I could get a row easy for there being marks on my neck maybe hit I wondered if it looked like lovebites or hit for not being back on time the face of the man rising a single eye in enough light to glisten seeing me watching him and thinking it will make a difference if he can see me so I looked at him

  right into his eyes I looked right at him

  keeping

  my sights

  clear

  and

  still

  ALI SMITH

  miracle survivors

  When the thaw set in they found one man still alive who’d been buried in the snow for over a week. His skin was blue and his pulse so submerged that the man from the rescue services almost missed the beat altogether and took him for dead. His clothes were stuck to his skin under his arms and at his chest and neck and crotch.

  In town that year the snow had reached over two foot high and out of town had lain thicker than most living people could remember. The main news on television, between the sports results and the Generation Game, ran a report about the white Christmas there was going to be in the Highlands, and the radio said not to travel, and if you had to, to carry a spade in the boot of your car.

  Several people had suffocated in their cars trying to keep warm with the ignition left on, snow piling round them on the gone roads, snow creeping up the windscreens and blotting the windows out. One couple, found sitting in the front seats with their arms frozen round each other, looked like they’d just fallen asleep. The bodies of other people surfaced near their abandoned cars as the slow work of the thaw went on. But the old man, still breathing, just, they found by chance at the side of the Culloden road while they were searching for somebody else. Nobody on the list of people missing matched his description. Well that’s no surprise now, is it? he said to the nurse afterwards. It’s not as if I told anyone I was planning to be missing now, did I?

  Macpherson, Thomas, she wrote on the form. She wrote Not Known in the spaces marked date of birth and next of kin. She wrote the word Traveller in both the space marked occupation and the space marked address. I’ve been all over, the man told her hoarsely as she wrote. I’ve been to Iceland, I was there once and you know there wasn’t any dark at all. It was all daylight. I’m not making that up. I had a bath in a hot spring. What’s your name? Well, Margaret, it was fine and warm under the snow, Maggie, is it Meg you get called, it had the makings of a fine bed, if you’d only been there yourself to keep me warm. Don’t get me wrong now, I’m not meaning anything by it, just a thought, and a polite thought, and a very nice one too.

  The nurse told the reporters what his first words had been when he came round: No Wonder. No Wonder Says Miracle Survivor. He wanted to say something so I put my head to his ear to hear and he whispered the words ‘no wonder’ to me, said Nurse Margaret Gallagher (22). Afterwards, when he was well enough to be photographed, the old man explained that it wasn’t wonder he’d said, it was vinegar: No Vinegar. He’d been in the ditch and dug himself down in the snow to make room, and where he was digging, he said, he’d found a half-eaten bag of chips someone must have thrown out of a car window on to the verge.

  Can you describe to us how it felt under the snow? the reporters asked.

  Oh, it was fine and dandy, the man said. I had a good rest.

  The papers sent their photographers back to take his picture again, this time still wrapped in the tinfoil hospital blanket and holding a fish supper. My father’s father, he told the photographers, knew a lad that went down on the Titanic. My father’s father went through two fortunes. My father’s father would have had enough to go on the Titanic himself if he’d wanted, the man said.

  By the end of the week the nurses were squabbling over who’d get to put the lotion on, who’d get to shave him, who’d get to do his feet. One day one of them showed him a photograph of her boyfriend. Oh he’s a handsome young stag, the old man said, you’ll have a herd of big-eyed bairns out of him and you’ll be together for a long time, look at him, he’ll live to be a hundred years and be loyal to you for more than seventy.

  The next day all the nurses, even the men, and some from the other wards, were in and out of his room showing him their photographs.

  The younger nurses took to sitting on the edge of his bed whenever they had a break; the Sister gave three of them a dressing-down about it one morning, going in there on the thinnest pretext just dodging their work and making more work for others. The nurses looked at the ground so as not to look at each other; she’d be angrier if any of them was to laugh now. But the Sister leaned forward and spoke in a quite different voice. Has he told any of you what it was like, what it was really like being under there all that time? Does he remember anything about it? She looked from one kirby-gripped white-hatted head to the next; they were sitting up, looking up now, they all spoke at once. Has he said at all how they actually came to find him in amongst all that snow? the Sister asked, low, insistent.

  It was the tree he broke the branch off, Shona said. He says the snow was so high, Sister, that he could just reach up and break the branch off, and all the snow from the other branches shook down on to him and nearly knocked him over, nearly buried him there and then, he says, but he stuck the stick as far as he could through the snow into the ground and tied a bit of his coat on to it.

  Oh, the Sister said. Sort of like a flag, do you mean?

  The others told the Sister their versions of the story. Just ask him, Sister, just ask him yourself, he’ll tell you, Shona said. Shona was especially fond of Tom. Shona means great beauty, he’d told her. To everything there is a season, Shona, and you’ll have three babies, three girls, and they’ll each go through their lives like nobody else in the world and make you happy, so they will, mark my words. And at the new year, be sure and not lend anybody anything or pay anybody anything you owe them. You’ll end up lending and paying all year. Whatever else you do lend no one your matches, and don’t be taking rubbish out of the house. The things you do on New Year’s Day make your luck for the rest of the year, now, so make sure your first-foot is tall and dark and very handsome. I’ll be your first-foot this year, shall I, eh, Shona?

  Shona pulled one of the decorations down off the wall and wrote her address on the back of a piece of paper chain.

  Later that week Sandra (noble beauty) and Fiona (fine boned and prosperous) were tucking him in, one on each side, when he said, I’ll be needing my clothes back now.

  They looked at each other across the bed. You’re not fit to go yet, Tom, Fi
ona said. Your clothes are burnt, Tom, Sandra said. We’d to send them for burning. And we’d to cut them off you anyway, you couldn’t have put them on again even if they hadn’t been burnt.

  What about my boots? the man asked.

  Against the wishes of the doctors, in the clothes of the fathers and brothers of nurses and with folded pound notes in so many of his pockets, the man left the hospital on the last day of the year.

  Twenty minutes to midnight, twenty years later, and Dawn is about to break in to a newsagent’s on the deserted station concourse. Not break in exactly, since they have a key though they’re not sure what it’s for. This girl Tina who Dawn’s been hanging about with for the past while for safety in numbers lifted it off one of the men who run the shop when she was doing him a favour earlier. Tina swears she’s seventeen though Dawn suspects she’s nearer fifteen. Anyway Tina’s favours have been keeping them warm all week. Tonight it’s freezing cold again, too cold for snow.

  It’s weird to see the station so empty. There’s nobody down there, not a soul, just them and the great scuffed space of the floor shining from the lights left on in the shops, their windows all cheap with tinsel. The front of the newsagent’s has a metal shutter down. Tina rattles the padlock then looks around as the sound echoes across the concourse. Round the back in the dark they try the delivery door and the key turns. The door has a panel that’s been blocked off by a big plank of wood; someone’s tried breaking in here before.

  Tina makes straight for the Mars Bars. Behind the counter Dawn finds a convector heater and switches it on with her foot. She puts her face in the blast of air as it warms, and her hand by a telephone under the counter. She picks the receiver up. She listens to the dialling tone.

  Can’t be new year yet, she says. There’s no crossed lines.

  In the light from the display window she fills her pockets with packs of cigarettes, and she tries the till, just to see, but it won’t open. She chooses a box of matches with care, and sits on a stack of newspapers while she lights a cigarette. She looks at Tina, sitting on the floor in her dirty pink jacket with the Broons annual open in her hands and all the racks of magazines behind her.