Best British Short Stories 2017

by Nicholas Royle

  The crowd step back. The uncertain suits, the puzzled office workers, the angry retail assistants. Chicken shop stewards, the cabbie, Bluetooth blinking in his ear. They step back until there is no one left but a trio of young men, Polo emblems on their chests, hands aloft, calling in the direction of the police.

  The police shimmer and stir, lift and separate. Arms and legs piston hard, five officers backstepping faster than the crowd. They speed away from the body until they enter a parked ARV, three in the back, two in front. The vehicle gains life and roars into the distance. One of the remaining officers, a tall, gaunt woman, reels in blue-and-white tape, eyeing the young men with a glare veiled by an invisible sheen. When the tape is a tight blue-and-white snail in her hand, she also retreats, climbs inside a car with her partner, starts the engine and they roll away backwards. The visored officer joins his visored colleagues, where they gather like a bunched fist, semi-automatics raised and pointing.

  The body lifts, impossibly. Ten degrees, twenty degrees, ninety; the fallen baseball cap flips from the ground, joins the head, and the man is half crouched as though he might run. He holds his left arm up, fingers reaching for sky, one bright palm facing the officers while his right hand clutches his heart. Drops of sweat fly towards his temples, as his head turns left, right. Thicker beads of red burrow into three puckered holes in his Nike windcheater, exposed beneath his fingers. He blinks one eye, as though he’s winking.

  He is not.

  Tiny black dots leap from his chest like fleas. Three plumes of fire are sucked into the rifle barrel. He stands and raises his right hand to his blinking eye, almost wipes, and then both palms are raised. He is shaking his head. His mouth is moving fast. His eyes are shifting quickly. Streetlights turn from orange to grey.

  The young man is stepping into the Civic. The police officers are stepping across the street. The Polo youths on the opposite side of the road turn their heads, beginning to brag that road man’s time has come, and seconds after, of Wiley’s tweets about Kanye. They’re laughing. They have no idea. On the street, the young man drops his palms and crouches inside the Civic. He sits, puts his hands on the steering wheel and waits. The police officers stop shouting, they back further away. Beside the empty ARV, they lower their semi-automatics until the weapons are pointing at the dark street. Three get into the shadowed rear seat. Two climb in front. They roll backwards, away. The Polo youths reach the nearest corner. A flash of illumination from Costcutter lights, and they are gone.

  The young man reaches down, starting the Civic. He puts the car in gear and its tyres turn anticlockwise, following the ARV; he could almost be in pursuit. He is not. He’s looking into the rearview, chewing on his inner cheek, a habit he has learned from his mother. He’s trying not to look at his blue-faced Skagen. A prickling disquiet, palms sparkling like moist earth; his hand lifts from the wheel and he marvels at this. He remembers; he must watch the road.

  He wants to text his girl, but he’s afraid to pull over. He wants his right foot to fall, but knows where it will lead. Yards roll beneath him, and he stops paying attention, ignores his rearview mirror. There’s a song he doesn’t recognise on the radio. He taps the steering wheel in time. His palms are dry. He might even be singing; it’s impossible to tell. There are blue lights in every mirror. He hasn’t noticed.

  Noisy blue dims into black silence, but he doesn’t see this either. Few pedestrians notice the ARV rolling backwards, or the baritone engine. Baseball-capped youths follow its passage, only tearing their eyes away as it leaves. Broad slabs of men duck towards the blank wall of shops, hide their faces, relax shoulders and return to upright positions. An elderly woman tries to loosen her spine, swivels too late and frowns, sensing a presence she can’t quite see, pulling her trolley towards her stomach. Schoolgirls in askew blazers and stunted ties, pink Nikes and petalled socks, lift their gaze from the pavement and become grim portraiture, before they retreat into a dusty corner store. The warped door shudders closed.

  The young man palms the steering wheel anticlockwise, turns left. The sad-eyed windows of unkempt houses within an inch of dilapidation. The regressive spray of thick green hoses inside a hand car wash, a dormant hearse and driver. Mustard brick new-builds and the glow of a Metro supermarket, tired women stood on corners the closer he gets to home. They try not to stare in; he tries not to stare out. He does not see the green Volkswagen van creep behind him for another half-mile. He palms the wheel left again, backs into a dead-end street. The green Volkswagen slots onto the corner of his block. He passes by its idling rumble, eases into a residents’ bay, and shuts off his engine. Pats his pockets ritually to make sure everything is there. He gets out and stretches, bent backwards, reaching towards sky.

  The sun on his cheeks, the occasional chilled breeze. Patchwork blue and grey above. The tinny chatter of a house radio, shouts of neighbours’ kids playing football. His windcheater flutters like a flag. There is tingling warmth inside him. It’s bathwater soft, soothing, and for one moment he smiles. He waves at the kids, who leap to their feet, yell his name.

  Ray.

  He is.

  He doesn’t see the man on a street corner talking into his lapel. He misses urgent eyes that scan the road and fingers pressed against one ear. The lonely intent.

  He enters the house, back and further back, immersed in turmeric walls, imitation pirates’ maps of back home, studio photos of himself, his mother and troublesome sister. He slows in the narrow passage. Smiles wider. His phone is pressed to his left ear, he’s grinning. It makes him look younger. The phone drops into his jeans pocket. He enters the kitchen.

  His mother holds him close like a promise, one hand grasping the back of his head. Her eyes are shut. She rocks him in silence, as though he were still a boy. She knows and does not know. He is muttering about being late, but she refuses to listen. On the dining table a plate is dotted with rice shards and pink slivers of curried mutton, dull cutlery laid prone, fork cradling knife, a smudged glass sentry beside them. He wrestles from his windcheater and throws it onto the back of a chair. He sits.

  General Impression of Size and Shape

  ROSALIND BROWN

  1

  Attention snagged on the phone, lifted from flow of sentence. At window, sorry just a second, binoculars in one hand, dull light with heavy cloud, a fast dark shape with long tail, a few clean flaps and a flat glide. Checking against confusion species, especially kestrel, pigeon, collared dove and maybe even a question mark over peregrine, because after all they can fly, they migrate, never discount. All analysis done rapidly under the mind’s surface, like gravel fragments collecting in underwater drift. Mouth open usually for some reason. Builds in a series of yesses, warmer and warmer, until the word surges up and breaches into clean air. Sparrowhawk.

  Pre-dinner drinks in garden, chilly September, cardigans around shoulders. Then a quick movement above, face tilts back to evening sky. So does another face. Four small liquid-flying birds, forked streamers, glamorous and chasing and chattering, going south. Textbook swallows. Politely both back into the conversation.

  * * *

  A set of well-worn routes in the brain. Necessary often for the speed of it. Something springs out of a tree and the sense of it being dark grey and long-legged and in a rush is all you’ve got. Or maybe an instant of a white rump in the sun and that’s a certainty.

  Or at the other end of the spectrum, seeing it relaxed and taking up a position in a distant bush. Too far even for binoculars, keep them up ready at face and creep forward with blind feet, hoping no sudden rough terrain. Body not dealing well with such tight control, threatens to break out in spasms, shoulders already tired. The classic nightmare, having the bins up and deciding to bring them down, or bins down and deciding to bring them up, and sometime between defocusing eyes and refocusing eyes, it’s gone. Not unusual in that scenario to call a bird a wanker.

  Attention goes now no
t only to pointed wings scaring pigeons in the market square, but also to a certain model of red Volkswagen estate, even many miles from home. Strain eyes following it away down the road. Numberplate, no.

  What are you looking at? Oh, nothing.

  Peregrine falcon population of UK estimated at maybe 2,000 breeding pairs. All with that look in their eye, wild alertness, tingeing into fear. One on a rock halfway down a headland in Cornwall, underline the words also on cliffs in lowlands in bird book and draw neat little smiley face. One hassling two golden eagles in Scottish highlands, deliriously good sighting. And one in town on the church, quick phone call and rendezvous under the spire, wow nice one, bird being photographed against its knowledge, so how are things, then leaps off its gargoyle and speeds away on its own obscure business, bugger, maybe it’s camera-shy. Flash of a smile, not looking up from inspection of photos. End of lunch break, both back to offices. Watching inbox like a (ha ha) hawk after that.

  Early dark morning, treading together, not speaking, cloudy breath barely visible. Sitting in the hide, serene chill water and golden reeds all around. Sun seeps in. Those important weekday times, 7am 8am 9am, melt together waiting for bitterns. At long last, utterly against expectation, one of the reeds emerges and is the thing itself, hunched and stealthy. Tiptoes, tip-talons. Breathing triumphant words, binoculars rigid with focus.

  All across the county, people making coffee in morning kitchens, grubby with sleep, empty birdfeeders in gardens. Here in the hide, the construction of something else entirely, bit by bit, bittern by bittern.

  Lay down thousands of sightings in your mind, build them up like a dry stone wall. A knowledge so hyper-specific it will enable you to hear the chipping from the hawthorn and not even need to think the names of robin and wren before you start to work out which one, and simultaneously listen for that otherness in the sound which might make it blackcap. Like piano exercises, get countless banalities under your belt, woodpigeons from every angle, mallards in all mutant plumages, so you’re ready for the greats. The curlew in breeding season sending a long wail over drenched moorland. A vast starling murmuration suddenly contorting and bunching away from a predator and it really is a peregrine, everywhere at once, plunging in and out of the chaos. Hands placed on shoulders in the gloom and gently manoeuvring round to see a barn owl ghosting over the reeds in front of you, so definite and white, and behind you a warmth neither white nor definite.

  An eagle rises above the ridge, closer than you thought it would dare, your stomach collapses, it fixes you with its bleak and alien mind.

  One day perhaps will be able to glide over the top of these memories like a gannet skimming the waves, spears of pure white for wings. For now, like a blackbird foraging in dead leaves, jumping and jerking and making an unnecessary commotion.

  A light lace of waxwings falls over the countryside wherever there are berries, fieldfares rattle off insults to each other, redwings are speckled and shy on the ground. And together miles and miles of road in three or four different counties, hours and hours of music on the car stereo, with attendant good-humoured arguments about bad taste. Hen harriers, pale shapes gliding wearily in to roost, and that concludes business for the day. Slow and shivering walk back to car, awkward binoculars clashing in hugs, what time do you need to be back, it’s fine, she won’t get suspicious for a while yet. One delicious half-hour whisky later and murmured fantasies about eloping to America, they have hummingbirds there, faces close enough to feel the heat in his cheeks, laughing at stories about swans attacking cyclists, a pub in a village whose name won’t be remembered, just a straight fenland road and a huddle of houses and a camera full of photos and a mind full of dopamine. It’s so strong, you know, that dopamine, it can break your arm.

  2

  Spring begins to force its way up, message forums explode briefly, reed warblers and sand martins and wheatears, until all arrivals accounted for. Simple pleasure of a soft greenfinch screech across an evening park. Nest-building and crazed all-day singing and territorial fly-bys from chaffinches more pink than a squashed finger. Feathery shit from willows breezing over the path, gathering in clumps. Marsh harriers courting, the renowned food pass, the female twisting herself upside down to catch the vole from her mate. Sturdy retired women into hide, depositing special lightweight telescopes, removing no-rustle coats, lifting binoculars, oh isn’t that marvellous. Young fair-weather couples in denim jackets and inadequate footwear and no bins. Kids interested in basically nothing except shouting again and again the word BIRD.

  Still reeling from very painful conversation which the mind insists on holding up like a banner, deserted early morning café, the guilt-pecked eyes characteristic of the adult(erous) male, so awful if she discovered, trembling and speechless, table abandoned with one empty cup and one only half-drunk. All day desolate at desk. Allowed still to be friends of a kind, accompanying each other on trips to see red-footed falcon, penduline tits, single Savvi’s warbler, all rarities, feckless and exhausted and hundreds of miles out of normal range and therefore on the receiving end of hundreds of long lenses bigger than a man’s face.

  Collective nouns for the various developments. An exultation of larks, certainly not. A fling of sandpipers, well, perhaps, but a bit late for that now. A charm of finches, same. A quarrel of sparrows, a confusion of guinea fowl, a pretence of bitterns, it’s in there somewhere. Anyway, for official things, go through his assistant now.

  Different approaches, all valid. Know all the Latin names and proper terminology, primaries, coverts, supercilium, eclipse plumage, build up an exhaustively tagged database of photos. Or read about the soft stuff, the merlin was a lady’s falcon, bitterns were once hunted in fenlands and cooked in pies, red kites in Shakespeare’s day were as common in filthy cities as gulls are now. Also, swifts do not land for two years after fledging, they sleep on the wing. Their reality is the spaces between things. The sight of them going in shallow circles, adding a stratum to the clear spring sky, screaming contentedly. Materialising right in front of the car, heading straight for the windscreen, before skimming up and over the roof at the last second, and two sets of held-breath laughs and one pair of hands squeezing together above the handbrake, heads turn towards each other, don’t think this is a good idea, hands detach, shamefaced reluctance, it wouldn’t be wise to get into that again.

  Dropped off back at own car hidden on side street, first decision is whether to cry before going home, or to save it for soundless wet stretching-open of mouth later in dark bed.

  Two young friends get together, both seventeen, hands timidly touching and arms around waists, watching them with real jagged thoughts inside, both with hair so translucent it’s practically colourless, expressions of unadulterated, wholesome, thoroughly deserved joy.

  Spin the wheel of who will receive desperate sobbing phone call today, who will dispense advice to be ignored, who will nonetheless continue to send patient and sympathetic messages. Unanimous bewilderment about why contact is being maintained, why more meetings, and yes, of course, you’re right, but unthinkable to give him up, like ripping out a lark’s lungs.

  Those early day songs only played now for forcing relief, like turning on the tap for a stubborn bladder. Sunday afternoon in a shop, holding a shoe, raw singer-songwriter voice over the speakers, endure it perhaps, three minutes at most, thoughts winding tighter and tighter, then suddenly, no, get the fucking hell out. In the street, starlings all cocky, swinging their little shoulders and darting for bits of dropped baguette.

  Paraphernalia in pockets, chocolate bar wrappers, species lists from the big reserve, gloves, unidentified plastic bit broken off binoculars, old tissue, waxy, no longer sodden.

  Even more of the same, seven-hour stretches, waiting before six with the sun already high, elbows and binoculars propped on car, spotting skylarks, then the one and only red VW speedbumping into the car park, unshaven greeting, out on the road again. Or the afternoo
n into evening, low sun, shrieking of baby birds and glimpses of mad open mouths, cuckoos thinking about returning to Nigeria, sudden airborne squirt of shit. Then onto final destination through growing darkness, dead-end road, headlights off, coats on, jokes about being afraid of the dark and no really it is quite spooky, finding out the furious purring of nightjars.

  Back in the car with completed checklist, getting on for eleven at night, no surprises when conversation turns dangerous again, pauses lengthening, voices softening. Eventually, lay-by. Making the beast with two jesus did you hear that owl. Both faces twist round to see tubby silhouette flapping away in disgust.

  3

  Alone for months now. Light always seems to be coming or going, always a complicated pattern of black bare twigs against a gradient of twilight sky.

  Back to the nature reserve, up and down the paths, covering them all, working, writing over old memories, doing a system reset. Sky seems to proliferate with crows, a steady airborne stream arriving to roost in a stand of poplars, bickering the whole way. Large and monumental moon rises, listening to both the sounds and the silence.

  Some things remain. No more joint missions chasing after rarities, or standing in perfect formation with binoculars out at contrasting angles, or turn-taking in the bushes when toilets are half an hour back that way. No more journeys home to a deadline, his deadline. No more entries in the ledger of semi-expectant goodbyes.

  But still brace back on a bike to watch a sparrowhawk, still scan the skies to borderline unsafe degrees while driving, still tweet angry articles about poisoned raptors. Still load up body with clothes, head out, try to sink self into landscape, to feel whether the birds are cock-a-hoop or cowering, to listen to the robin experimenting quietly in the bushes before making its loud, two-line proclamation, then further out to silent fields and a short-eared owl, quartering the field in heavy yellow light, methodical, slow, indifferent to anything except the twitch in the grass. Being very cold and very quiet can achieve certain emotional targets, drills a hole into the chest like a woodpecker, brings its own relief.