Best British Short Stories 2017

by Nicholas Royle

  ‘You can touch him if you want,’ Dad says.

  My hand reaches out to the animal’s nose. It is unexpectedly dry and hard. I trace his nostrils with my fingertip. On his neck the hairs feel coarse and prickly against my palm, but near his ears they are soft and whispery, moving slightly when I exhale. He smells of polish and heather.

  ‘Do you think your mother will like it?’

  Ed nods, so much that I think his head might fall off.

  ‘He’ll look handsome, I think, on the wall by the half-landing.’

  I look at Dad. The half-landing is just a few steps from my bedroom door. I pull the skin up on the back of my hand and then let go.

  Ed reaches up to grab an antler. Dad gently removes his hand, prising his fingers from the ridges of bone. ‘Careful now, he’s very old.’

  I look at the silver plaque at the bottom of the shield and read the words engraved there: Alfred Kingsley, from Kathleen M. Preedy, Sept. 25th 1912.

  ‘This woman,’ Dad says, ‘was a huntress. She must have shot the stag and kept his head as a trophy.’

  My eyes open wider.

  ‘I wonder what Alfred made of it?’ he says.

  I wonder what Mum will think.

  ‘Right, you two, we need to hide him. Your mother must know nothing about this. It’s a surprise.’

  We smile. Surprises are fun.

  ‘I’ve asked Nicky if we can put him in her bathtub,’ he says, as the three of us troop out of the back door and over the road to Chestnut Square, Dad carrying the stag in front of him. It’s freezing outside. Drivers slow down as we walk along the pavement, craning their necks just to see.

  Nicky answers the door. She gasps when she sees what is in Dad’s arms.

  ‘Blimey,’ she says, ‘you weren’t joking.’

  We follow her upstairs, all of us in a line, and put the stag in the spare tub, crowding around to watch as he is lowered in. He looks strange rising up through the white enamel.

  ‘She’ll not be expecting that for Christmas,’ Nicky says.

  ‘No, probably not,’ Dad says.

  After we’ve hidden the stag Dad spends the next few weeks steeple-jacking and clearing the chimneys. While he works he tells us how the jackdaws build their nests in the spring, dropping twigs down until one lodges and then dropping more until a nest is formed.

  ‘Jackdaws are one of my favourite birds,’ he says, ‘really bright. Not as threatening as crows or rooks, or as noisy and aggressive as magpies.’

  We watch as he pulls down all the compacted twigs to clear the flues. When he is finished he sets off a blaze in all the fireplaces downstairs. Flames leap up and illuminate our faces as we run from room to room, giddy with heat and destruction.

  Soon after, snow begins to fall, big, fat, swirling flakes that drag power cables down all over Warwickshire. For weeks we eat by flickering candlelight. Dad ventures out for supplies in the big red Toyota pickup. Our house is the only one in the village with heat. Nicky and her children Ben and Katie write their Christmas cards at our kitchen table, soup warming on the Aga. Copper pans full of water are placed on the hotplate to heat. Ed and I still share baths so we pile in with Ben and Katie in the big tub, Mum and Dad and Nicky forming a warm-water chain from kitchen to bathroom.

  By Christmas the snow has mostly melted and the lights are back on. Dad unveils the stag to Mum but we never know what she says. What we do know is that he’s staying. Ed and I watch as Dad fixes brackets to the wall. We cover our ears against the sound of the drill, plaster and brick dust falling around our feet. When he finally lifts and hangs the shield, the stag looks like he has always lived there. His antlers branch upwards into ten white-tipped points, ears pricked beneath them and nose blackened with varnish.

  Dad looks down at us from the top of the stepladder. ‘They call this the brow,’ he says, pointing to the first tier of antlers, ‘then the bray and the trey,’ he continues, indicating the second and third tiers. It’s almost like he shot the stag himself.

  I climb the few steps to the upper landing and turn round.

  Ed slides down the banister.

  I walk backwards one, two, three paces to my bedroom door and keeping going until I feel the iron and brass bed behind me and climb onto it. It stands over a metre high. As I rest my head on my pillow and look out through the doorway the stag’s glass eyes are level with mine.

  Dad turns around and smiles at me. ‘He’s not quite a Royal, only ten. Looks pretty smart, don’t you think?’

  I say nothing and Dad turns and clears away his tools.

  Later Ed comes into my room and asks if I will read him a story. He has the Little Bear book in his hand.

  ‘Only if you lie under the bed,’ I say, ‘and give me 20p.’

  ‘OK,’ he says, and fetches me the coin before he crawls beneath the iron bed with his duvet.

  When I finish the story and before I turn off the light I look out of my bedroom door. Glass eyes shine in the darkness of the stairwell.

  ‘Night, Ed,’ I say, but all I hear is gentle snoring.

  I turn off the light and lie in the semi-darkness. Street lights glow through the leaded windowpanes, my curtains always open. I drift off but wake with my legs tangled up in sheets, pyjamas stuck with sweat. It is still dark outside. I look under my bed. Ed is still there, breathing slowly and deeply. I lie back on the pillow and stare at the ceiling.

  Months pass and in spring the house finally releases us. Mum places Persian rugs on the washing line and beats them, clouds of dust rising into the air. In the evenings it is my job to put the geese away, but they scare me. They hiss as I try to herd them inside, opening their orange beaks to show me their pointy black tongues and sharp little teeth. One stupid goose decides to build her nest in the middle of the herbaceous border. We all try to round her up, but she won’t budge. That night when we go to bed I know something bad will happen. In the morning I go out with Dad. He walks straight to the nest. It lies empty.

  ‘Here,’ I shout. On the green grass lie the pink innards, glistening like jewels. A long tube widening into a sac, all left neatly in a pile.

  Dad comes over. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘Where is the rest of the goose?’ I ask.

  ‘The fox will have buried her body. She’ll come back for it later.’

  I look down and follow a trail of feathers. On the ground lie two white wings opened like fans. A band of muscle joins them where they have been dissected from the goose’s back. They look bigger than I remember. I ask Dad if we can mount them on a wooden shield, to go next to the stag. Wings spread, pinned and wired as if about to take flight.

  Dad looks at me.

  ‘I don’t think your mother would go for that,’ he says, holding the wings in one hand, the entrails in the other. I never mention it again.

  By the end of summer I’ve grown used to the jackdaws clattering and calling, using the chimney like a megaphone. The sounds change when the chicks arrive and I go outside to look at the roof. I can see them nesting on the twisted chimney tops, the adult birds bringing food for their young before the fledglings eventually leave their nest.

  One night, a week before I start secondary school, I cannot sleep. The stag stares at me and I stare back as I lie there in my bed. His constant, unchanging presence reassures me. When I wake up the next morning it is dark in my room. I look at my clock. It says 7.15 am. I stare into the darkness, and rub my eyes. My ears pick out a buzzing noise. I push my feet into the blankets and sheets so I’m sitting up. It should be light by now.

  I get out of the bed and stand next to it. My eyes are drawn to the window. I move a step closer. A black curtain appears to have been drawn across: it moves and ripples and hums. The air feels thick around me.

  I take a breath and inch closer. Two huge bluebottles scud past my head, the sound of their flight too loud. My m
outh opens but no sound comes out.

  I turn, tearing my eyes from the window, and run from the room.

  ‘Mum,’ I scream. ‘Mum!’

  I run all the way to the kitchen.

  ‘Mum, flies, in my room, all over the window, millions,’ I say between deep gulps of air.

  She shakes her head. ‘It can’t be that bad.’

  I lead her there and point at the window.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ and then I know that it’s bad.

  Mum turns, and mutters something under her breath. I follow her as she goes and fetches a can of fly spray and the hoover. Then I stand behind her and watch as she enters the room, armed like a gladiator going in for the kill.

  For weeks my bedroom smells of fly spray and death, even with all the windows open. When Dad tears down the paper that blocks up the fireplace a carcass falls into the grate. A baby jackdaw, fallen through the twigs and down the flue onto the newspaper that had sealed the chimney.

  ‘Flies laid their eggs on the dead bird,’ Dad says, ‘and then the larvae hatched, and later the bluebottles too. They must have squeezed out around the edges of the paper, drawn towards the light of the window.’

  I imagine the maggots crawling over the dead bird.

  ‘I’ll seal it up properly this time,’ he says. ‘No more flies, don’t you worry.’

  The flies that hatched out from the maggots flew past the end of my bed. I am not comforted by Dad’s explanation. He doesn’t seem to understand, so I decide to take a bath.

  I watch the big tub as it slowly fills, and pour bright blue Radox under the taps. Dipping a toe in first to check the temperature I inch myself in, my skin turning red where the water touches it. I submerge my head and try to forget the flies. My body feels different, like it is not my own any more.

  I open my eyes and sit straight up, waves crashing against the sides of the bath.

  My brother is standing there, about to ask me something.

  ‘Get out,’ I screech. ‘Get out,’ I slam my hands down. ‘Get out, get out!’

  Water and soap fly into his face.

  Ed turns away, eyes swimming and face screwed up with rage as he runs from the room.

  I stand up and get out of the bath, my arms and legs shaking. Bubbles cling to my scalded skin. I grab a huge white towel from the rail and wrap it around me before I go to the door and lock it with the old rusty key.

  When I turn around and catch my reflection in the mirror my face appears twisted, my upper lip curled. I open the towel and stare at my reflection. Dark hairs grow where there weren’t any before. Buds have sprouted on my chest. I quickly close the towel, two pink spots forming on my cheeks. I check the door is locked before I get back in, willing the flesh to melt from my bones as I add more and more hot water.

  I stay there and let the water cool. Minutes, then hours, pass by.

  My skin wrinkles; I like how numb it feels.

  Mum shouts through the door at me. I ignore her.

  Words and Things to Sip

  JAMES KELMAN

  I had to move on. The main question concerned Anne: where was she? I gave up the highstool at the bar and carried my drinks and bag to a table, accompanied by my brains. That was alright; I needed them to think and I was wanting to think.

  The nature of the thought, the content. Forget one’s father. Had I been thinking of my father? Not in so many images, simply a sensation, a sensation of daddy – poor old fucker, dead for the last twenty years. We think of the dead, even fathers, they are always with us. Even when we are thinking about all these hundred and one different and varied matters, business matters: will one ever make a sale again in one’s entire miserable existence? Shall I ever walk into some fellow’s office and chat him into an irreversible decision in regard to a sum of money large enough to guarantee one’s job for another fucking month. No wonder one sighs. My old man never had such crap to put up with. He was a factory worker. One contends with all sorts, all sorts.

  Life is so damn hectic, especially the inner life. The dead and the undead. And thoughts of Anne and myself, our relationship.

  I groaned again. These days I groan out loud. People hear it and look at me.

  I didnt need pubs like this in which to become annoyed. Although they did annoy me. I get annoyed at myself, by myself and for myself. Leastways irritated, I become irritated, breathe in breathe out.

  Having said that, I was turning over a new leaf. The short-tempered irascible chap had gone forever. Recently I had been prescribed aspirin; anti-coagulants. One’s blood. Henceforth I was to be a changed man, a veritable saint of a fellow. Never more would I lose my temper over something as trivial as bad service in a hostelry of questionable merit, a bad boozer in other words, who cares? Not me. Never more. Those parties who ignore a body they perceive as a stranger. Erroneously as it so happens. Little did they know I was a fucking regular so why not treat one as a fucking regular? Who cares, of course, me or not me, it dont matter.

  Unpunctuality whether in barstaff or one’s nearest and/or dearest.

  A bad choice of language. But never more, never more.

  What never more? What the hell was my brains on about now? These whatyacallthems did not deserve the name. Brains are brains. Whatever I had, tucked inside my skull, those were unclassifiable, certainly not fit to be described as ‘brains’.

  Oh god, God even.

  Yet Anne was rarely punctual. Why worry about one’s nearest and/or dearest.

  Odd. I recognised where I was sitting. This was where I typically sat in this typical bar, of all most typical bars. It was side on to the door, avoiding unnecessary draughts.

  I had books and reports, the smartphone alive to the touch, even sensing the touch. And an old newspaper too, a – what the hell was it, a something Planet – what a name for a newspaper! Was that not Superman, here at the Daily Planet with Clark Kent and that old chap, the irascible editor, what the fuck was his name? Who knows, who cares, Perry Mason or some damn thing, so what, I could have read the sports pages.

  Maybe I would. Whether I did depended. I was drained – drained! Yes, washed out, exhausted, weary, deadbeat, shattered; stick adverbs in front or behind, all you like any you like; mentally, psychologically, physically, sexually, emotionally, socially; then quantify: totally, wholly, almost, just-about, a small amount, very much. Had I strength to spare I might read a report, book or newspaper. Alternatively I could sit and sip alcohol, insert the earplugs and listen to something, something! Or view television, or watch the world go by, neither intrigued nor bored by thoughts of a downbeat nature. Mum too – if it was not the old man it was her – why was I thinking so much about my parents? Maybe I was about to drop dead and that was a sort of roll-call of one’s existence. Hells bells.

  Anne would be here soon anyway. It did not matter if she were late. I had not seen her for six weeks, had not slept with her for my gad three months, three months. One could ruminate upon that. I enjoyed lying with her side on, her eyelids flickering. She also with me. Twas our favoured position. We relaxed. I did anyway, being without responsibility for eight or nine hours, barring texts, emails and even phonecalls for heaven sake, but I could not switch off the phone, though her breasts, her breasts.

  I disliked myself intensely. Nevertheless, one continues to exist. A small something in my pocket. A piece of jewellery nonsense for the one I loved. Gold, gold I tell you gold! I screamed it hoarsely, in the character of a crazed Humphrey Bogart, unshaven, unkempt – what was the movie? the mountains and gold.

  Anne liked gold. Women do like gold. Golden jewellery. Joo ell ry. I kept the piece in my trouser pocket that none might steal the damn thing. England was not Scotland. Given that forgetfulness was a greater risk than theft. If I took it out my pocket I would forget to return it.

  But I did enjoy gazing upon gold. Gold was a pleasure of mine too given tha
t in my position I could not aspire to the unkempt unshaven look, being as how the state of one’s dress, the label on one’s suit, the subtlety of one’s timepiece

  Oh my dear lord. Panic panic panic.

  Defective memory banks. The mind dispenses with petty data. The clock on the wall. I checked my wristwatch against it, and the phone checking both, pedantic bastard. And not panicking. Never panicking. Never, never never never. I was not a panicky fellow – never used to be – besides which the anti-coagulants, lest the dropping dead factor . . . Jesus Christ I groaned again! I was glaring, why was I glaring? I studied the floor. One’s shoes. One’s socks. Tomorrow was Monday and I would buy new ones, new socks.

  Oh god god god.

  Three gods = one God, the way, the truth etcetera etcetera, breathing rapidly several intakes of what passes for air, for oxygen because one’s head, one’s brains, what passes for the thingwis, the whatyacallthems.

  Where however was she? One would have expected punctuality.

  And the barstaff:

  barstaff are typically interesting. We try not to study them too blatantly lest personal misunderstandings arise. But we do study people. We are people and people study people. Humankind is a reflective species. Two had been serving in this pub for as long as I had been using it which for heaven sake was a long time; seven or eight years. Certainly a long time for barstaff to remain in the job. They assumed they had never seen me before. They were wrong.

  But who wants to be a regular? It means one is alcoholic, near as damn it, an alcoholic geek, one who gets sozzled in the same bar year after year.

  Neither bar worker allowed me a second glance. I was a nobody. They might have qualified this to ‘nobody in particular’ which would have been better in the sense that a particular nobody is better than a general nobody. Still it would have been wrong.

  Regularity need not operate within a brief span of time; twice every two years is also a pattern, and such an event can be enclosed by mental brackets. I might only have come to this pub six times a year but I only came to the damn town on said half dozen occasions. So is that not regular? Make the question mark an exclamation. Six out of six is not 99% but a fucking hundred if one may so speak. Of course I was a regular. Some people are so constipated their bowels only move once a month. But at least it is not irregular.