Best British Short Stories 2017

by Nicholas Royle

  Dawn arrived to discover Dom Ruiz slung over the bell, hands clinging limply to a thick, white rope, face battered beyond recognition. He dangled like a grisly gift a god had despatched. Meanwhile the tongue ran its moist tip along the bruises on Filamo’s hands.

  Spat out from another chasm, Dom Mendel lay sprawled on a wide patch of the Abbey’s green surrounded by concrete paths. Time travel flight had occurred again. He knew it from the trembling in his knees, the ache spreading in his chest, the blockage in his ears slowly thinning, popping. His bruised hands were numb, stiff after being curled in the same position for hours. As though he’d been inserted into a corner of sky trying to balance, fingers instinctively wrapping around the shadows of lost items. Every junction fell off the map each time. A severed organ floating in white smoke till it disappeared. He sat up gingerly, taking small gulps of air. It felt like spring. Bright sunlight shrouded everything. The abbey was a carcass of its former self, its high walls reduced to mere remains. The sound of cars on the roads around it was jarring, alien. Mouth dry, barefoot, he stood slowly, noting the curfew tower in the distance. Exits at either end of the gutted, green gladiator-like pit beckoned. He decided to take the exit in front rather than the one behind him. He crossed some stone steps before landing in the graveyard. St Margaret’s church stood to his right behind the tower a short walk away, bearing a flimsy white banner that said Café Open. People passed him throwing curious looks. Their clothing appeared odd and unfamiliar. He ran his hands over a few gravestones. The rough stone was cold to the touch. He grabbed sprigs of grass lining the bases, placed them on his tongue. Chewing, he made his way over the zebra crossing and onto the tail end of the market on East Street, drawn by the buzz of stalls, the cacophony of voices, the smell of meat hissing and spitting over a barbecue. He ran a finger over the tongue in his pocket as he heard the words Bell End, mango, fireworks, truncheon. It curled against his finger as though acknowledging receipt. He walked along the market in shock, throngs of bodies spilling, multiplying and scurrying in every direction. On the high street, a man held a snarling Alsatian back from him. He could smell what it had eaten hours ago, a rotten, pungent scent. He resisted the urge to bare his teeth. Something lodged in his chest. His blood warmed. His heart began to mutate into the shape of the snarling dog’s mouth, knocking against chest walls. He stumbled away from them. Trapped light in his retina split into tiny grains. Everything felt intense, gauzy. A bearded man bumped into him. He entered the sliding red door of the shopping centre almost by accident. Things bled into each other; the mannequins’ mouths pressed against their glass confines, stitches from their hands coming undone, grazing his retina. Along the way his footsteps were dogged by sightings of familiar faces; Dom Emmanuel appeared on the raised stage for a concert, holding the knife that had killed him, slicing his neck repeatedly at the microphone. Dom Augustine’s head lay in the Asda supermarket freezer, one animal trap snapping over his lost limbs as they reappeared. Dom Kamil sat engulfed in flames in a barber’s chair. Dom Ruiz lay slumped over a Thomas the Tank Engine train, clutching one yellow note.

  Dom Mendel passed a line of monks on an escalator, touching their shoulders but each one vanished. He was consumed by a loneliness so vast it was unknowable in this lifetime. He followed the exit out and back onto the streets. He kept walking, filled with a slow hypnotic wonder, wiping the dew off a car side mirror, becoming a small figure in its contained distances. Then on all fours, he scavenged in the bins outside the Yaki Noodle bar opposite the station. Afterwards, he walked around back streets staring at houses. He walked to Creekmouth, passing the mural of two men vomiting water, coddling ships while the land flooded. He studied the parked HGVs on industrial roads wondering what they contained, noticing the small factories and recycling stations. A veil of bleakness cloaked it all. The ghosts of Creekmouth swirled. Workers for the Lawes Chemical and Fertiliser Company emerged from rows of cottages attempting to stuff items into his pockets. The Bluebird and the Yellow Peril aircraft of the Handley Page Factory hovered above, between the rough marshland of Barking Creek and the north bank of the Thames leaving white trails in the sky. Children ran from the school, mouths turning to dust as their cries faded. Debris of old lives tumbled through the nearby tidal barrier. The sound of ships sinking filled his ears. An ache in his hands intensified. Laughter from Romanian weddings rang at the entrance of the River Restaurant. He almost entered to search for hands he could borrow. He stood in the midst of it all listening, to marshy land rising, urged by the echoes of the Thames, to the sound of a great flood coming. He did not notice his feet were bleeding. His teeth began to chatter, his tongue distended. The tongue in his pocket started talking.

  The last Dom, Dom Mendel, stood on the bank of the river Roding, disrobing to reveal breasts jutting, her nipples hardening in the cold. Pregnant with another bloody season, her new name carved on her stomach from a serrated knife read: Filamo. She had left behind the abbey in the chasm, its entrances spitting Bible sheets, its lines leaning against a distant prayer, the faces of saints morphing into bruises. A different transformation was occurring; malevolent cherubs chased the cockerel, the limping cockerel drunk from holy water chased the Jesus figurine, squawking ‘Amen!’ Rolling jabuticaba fruit chased the hatched monk’s fingers. And the abbey chased new burial ground. Dom Filamo listened to the symphony of cars, human traffic, the beauty of noise. She dipped her left foot into the water. After fishing a hammer and tongue from her robe pockets, she started to bludgeon her head, hitting the ring of hair. As another yolk broke and blood ran down her face, she slipped the tongue into her mouth howling. The tongue of a saint. That first kill. The reason for the punishment of a period of silence. Her skin mottled. She leapt into the river gripping the hammer, chasing the sheep’s head that had surely become a different animal by now.

  Treats

  LARA WILLIAMS

  It was nearly fifteen years ago that Elaine had stood peering toward the harlequin bustle of the fourteenth floor, doped by the static September heat, watching the glass panelling refract and scythe. It was one of those sneaky summer days, one that lounges around a chilled August, making a wild and unpredictable cameo, hoodwinking you into knits, swindling you out of sandals. She’d already taken to whispering ‘You get to a certain age’, to no one in particular; the tiny bones in her hand creaking like violas, shopping bags cutting into the skin of her wrists; whispering it beneath her breath, the words a smooth tonic.

  You get to a certain age.

  She was thirty-five.

  Joan met her at reception, dressed head-to-toe in black, like some sort of devastating widow; her lips a woozy red, her foundation a flawless white facade. They took the lift, staring silently ahead, slim parallel lines, a vertical Hays Code, counting off the floors.

  ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ Elaine ventured.

  ‘Not especially,’ Joan replied, buttoning her cardigan with a pointed elegance.

  The office was a mess: a scatter of half-opened boxes, the cavalier architecture of a child’s fort; the ceiling fan flickering off and on; the paint drying in patches. But Elaine saw its potential, the order in the olio, feeling the compact thrill of a nice meal or good art. Her thoughts had slowed to a plod in the heat, circling slowly, like the fish in the bowl her husband had gifted her. She grappled for half-formed ideas; wispy responses dispatched into the air, floating away like dandelions huffed into the wind. To her surprise, Joan offered her the job – Personal Assistant – and she rose to her feet, not quite knowing how to accept the offer, announcing ‘Shall I just get us a cup of tea?’, a conspicuous affirmation.

  She was Officer Manager now, but still retained a few PA duties, picking up dry-cleaning here and there, swirling stevia into coffee. Everyone needed a bit of looking after. Even Joan.

  Elaine liked to look out for people. She was a tall woman, and as a tall woman, she suspected she was made for it; made to protect, to watch over. Everything about h
er seemed to accommodate her height; her airy, echoing vowels, the swooning lumber with which she moved. But then she hit fifty, felt the uteral twangs, the telling hot flushes and fluctuations of mood, and realised her body wasn’t made for height, for elevation; it was made, and had always been made, for menopause. She gained a little weight, developing a pleasing paunch she’d rub admiringly. She’d sit at the kitchen table breaking off squares of cooking chocolate. She rang her sister to say she wouldn’t be coming home for Christmas, and while she was at it, could she stop being such a goddamn tramp her whole life. She had crème-de-menthe with dinner. She listened to Cher. She booked a trip to the Peak District alone.

  Her husband wondered what the hell had gotten into her. He’d curse and rumble, rolling his eyes at her elasticated waistbands, ask her why she’d stopped wearing make-up. But it didn’t bother her; things were looking up for old Elaine!

  ‘You want to take an old girl to the cinema?’ she asked.

  ‘Not especially.’ he replied. ‘But I will.’

  ‘Old woman,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Old woman.’

  Elaine got in early to leave a plastic pot of maraschino cherries, and a small bottle of vodka, on Joan’s desk. Performing secret good deeds was a guilty pleasure for Elaine – a covert joy, a sort of private joke, really, shared only with herself. She would perform secret good deeds, flush with joy, made glad by the baffled delight they’d bring. She’d slip ten pound notes into charity buckets. She’d pay for drinks. She’d order slices of cake, have them presented to young couples, watching them across the café. She occasionally imagined secret good deeds were being performed for her, the world fluent in a silent language of kindness. Upon finding an apple on her car bonnet, a Pink Lady, as yellow and red as the sun, beaming a smiling curve of white light, she thought: Who left this for me? What lovely person left me this? before noticing the rest of the car, a punnet of raspberries smeared across the windscreen, an orange squelched into the numberplate, and a note, tucked and fluttering, beneath the wipers.

  Can you keep your fucking car out of the loading bay?

  But the slow drag of disappointment had grown numb, hard, like a frozen waterfall, it barely registered. There were things to get excited about in this life. Things to thrill for. Like zumba and sugared almonds. Water aerobics and ­flavoured liqueur. Cher.

  At three she popped out to get Joan some lunch. She selected a smoked salmon bagel and an iced tea. At the till, John the Sandwich Guy, literally the name of his business, slipped a French tart into her bag. Elaine smiled. A big screwball smile. As big and sinking as the Titanic.

  ‘Thanks, John,’ she said. ‘You’re a good egg.’

  ‘You’re a good egg!’ he replied, chuckling floridly. ‘An Ananov egg! A Fabergé egg! Eggs Benedict!’

  She left giggling, letting the door click softly behind her, and the thought suddenly struck her, as occasionally it did, that she didn’t have a single true friend in all the world.

  She got home to the smell of pizza, the sound of the seaside, tinkering from the television. She located the pizza box, a paper white square, balanced on top of the kitchen table, promising slicks of grease and steam marbling the lid. She teased it open, knowing already there would be none left, and made instead for the fridge, compiling a plate of leftovers. She ate at the kitchen table, watching the fish circle its bowl, the seventh fish, she thought, Moby-Dick the seventh. She set down her fork to sprinkle fish food onto the water, pink and orange flakes that had the texture and smell of chicken stock. She felt subversive, transgressive, radicalising the food chain like that. The fish wriggled hurriedly to the waterline, its orange mouth nipping sweetly at the surface, its big black eyes frozen in a kind of permanent disbelief, a doubtful and necessary trust.

  Once, she had wanted kids. And then she wanted a kid. Then she wanted a cat. But now she was fully committed to this: a solitary goldfish, eternally circling the left-hand corner of their kitchen table. She looked at the goldfish, swimming and flickering, the little hinges of its jaw, chomping up and down. She loved it, she thought, in the smallest, saddest way. She wanted to fish it out, to feel it in her palm, to stroke its slick, twitching body and feel its satin-soft fins.

  She finished her food, depositing her plate into the sink, and made her husband a cup of tea. She placed it on the carpet next to his feet, on the flattened pale ring of shag, kissing his head as she went to bed.

  ‘Wait,’ he called. ‘What do you want for your birthday?’

  She paused between the top and the bottom, stasis on the stairs, fingering the covered buttons of her jersey.

  ‘Just your health and happiness,’ she replied. She thought he’d forgotten.

  ‘And a million dollars.’

  ‘How about that trip to the cinema?’ he said.

  ‘Well wouldn’t that would be nice,’ she replied, thinking she wouldn’t be able to sleep with all this excitement flip-flopping in her heart.

  She worked on her birthday. She always worked on her birthday. There were things to be done! – papers to file, phone calls to make. Plus Joan needed looking after: at eleven she would deliver her morning cappuccino; at one she’d remove the cherry tomatoes from her salad; at four she’d make her lemon and ginger tea; past six o’clock she needed to be told to go home. There was a catharsis in it. There was a ceremony. It was a full-time job. It was literally a full-time job! Elaine made time to treat herself too; treats could save a person, she thought. ‘Treat yourself every day,’ her mother had told her, and she did – taking herself on little walks, an expensive haircut here and there. Once, her husband had treated her, courted her, whisked her off to restaurants, showed her off to his friends. Now her treats were reserved for her birthday, and even then, they didn’t always manifest.

  At the end of the day, Joan called her in, asking if she’d shut the door behind her. ‘Don’t think I forgot,’ she said, beckoning Elaine over.

  She thought Joan looked more pale, more delicate in the milky evening light. She wondered if she was getting enough iron. Joan gestured at a brown parcel, tied with string, propped amongst the scattered jetsam of admin on her desk. ‘That’s for you,’ she said, and Elaine began unwrapping the parcel, pulling back the folds. ‘What are you doing?’ Joan said. ‘That needs couriering. Tonight.’ Elaine blushed, a hot pink hue, arching her nose and cheekbones. She resealed the package and tucked it beneath her arm. She could drop it off on the way to the pictures.

  She removed her coat from the back of her chair, swinging her bag across her shoulder, noticing her phone flashing, a staccato red reminder. Voicemail. Her husband. Delivering a flimsy excuse for cancelling their plans. She returned the phone to its cradle, sat back in her chair and thought about her life. It was like the time she went to an art gallery, expecting something grandiose, something moving, something, perhaps, profound: swampy colours, powdery paintings of girls in profile. Instead she found hokey sculptures, marble penises extending from the corners. Being given salt when you wanted sugar. An olive not a grape. That was it, she thought. That was her life all over.

  She waited in line at the cinema; she’d decided to go alone, though her irritation lingered, like a stubborn base note of leather or sage. She looked at the people queuing around her: couples, mostly, but a few people on their own, also. At the front desk she asked for a ticket for herself and another for the young girl behind her, a fellow solo cinema goer, nervously thumbing the lapel of her coat. She asked they just give her the ticket – no fuss made, no details given. She left the desk, her own ticket printed and folded in the palm of her hand. She thought about the young girl, thought about how surprised she might be, about how nice it was to be treated.

  She thought about all the nice things people had done for her, from historic dates with her husband to the brief moment she saw that apple, perched on her car; how her heart had skipped a beat like it might leap out of her chest. She thought she’d
treat herself to some popcorn, and a hotdog too, taking up the space around her, stretching out her arms and legs, and enjoying the film. She thought about how it was her birthday, and not a bad one at that, and her heart did a little leap on its own; you could do that, to your heart, you could be so kind to yourself you could make your own heart leap.

  After all, she thought, what goes around comes around.

  The Wind Calling

  DEIRDRE SHANAHAN

  My dad might still be travelling through England in the caravan, raiding the place of what it’s got – jobs, money, sites to stop in – but I haven’t heard from him in a long time. There were six of us when we started out, then four after Mum died. My elder brother drifted off. In the end, I t was me and Dad.

  He had his two china cats, a Spanish fan, pictures of hurling teams, and his dog Treacle, whose eyes are dark as muddy tracks. The past piled up, like the sections in our history books, Stone Age, Vikings and Tudors, which we had from school. Comics, photos and games are stuffed in a corner as if we had never left. The way we lived was the way we were, running around on a midsummer evening, frenzied with the excitement of throwing stones in a pond, the hush of trees we sat under to gossip about Colum Brady, tall, with the squinty eye, blonde and eighteen with a dreamy look, as if he couldn’t understand what he had been born into. Ever since I saw him on a site outside of Galway, he wore a long coat which came to the ground, scarves free as streams and waistcoats with flowers. Once he wore a cape. Jem thought he was Jesus but I knew he wasn’t, because he had no beard. Jem thought a lot of him because he was always giving him balls, jigsaws, and once a cricket bat which he didn’t know what to do with. Colum knew about things we only guessed at: the best form for a horse, their price, the names of the stars and planets. He showed us a swing made from a tyre, how we could nick a bike and a string of pearls he had lifted in a jewellers. He led Jem on, telling him things, setting dares, making up stories.