Best British Short Stories 2018

by Nicholas Royle

  Every madness is logical to its owner. Marie had got lost, gone mad, call it what you will, when time had ceased to mean anything to her. Even if she never moved, she would never know where she was.

  Sometimes, if I remained completely still, holding my breath and slowing even my pulse as far as I could, I could see her perfectly. She’d slide into view and then out of phase again as I drew breath, let my heart beat and blood flow. She moved not at twenty-four frames per second, but just one.

  It wasn’t all slow stillness. There were times when the film sped. I kept a close watch but she vanished anyway, and these were the times I wondered, I worried, if she had moved into another slipstream, time now passing for her so quickly she vanished from view.

  How else could it have happened?

  The time I was out in the garden, minutes at most, then came in to find the house had moved on years. The mould had grown, the season outside the window had changed, and all the clocks had been smashed.

  There had only been a few in the house, all wound down or batteries exhausted. One on the kitchen wall, one in the hallway, another on the mantel in the living room. Their insides mixed on the floor as I walked in: the different ages of chronometry scrambled. The shards of a small black plastic battery pack, springs and cogs, shattered glass, twisted hands and, so sad, the broken faces.

  ‘Watch,’ she said. ‘They were all watching me.’ I couldn’t tell if her tears were of happiness or relief or distress. ‘On your wrist.’ She pointed. ‘It’s watching you.’

  Time was her enemy, stretching out for ever or forcing its entire weight into tiny moments of her life. For Marie every second was an eternity, every eternity a second. She was there from the big bang until the eventual heat death of the universe, sitting on the sofa in that room, looking for a story whose ending she would never know.

  The next morning she’d gone. Or perhaps it had been the one before that, or the day after. I can’t remember any more. There was no car abandoned near a bridge, no pile of clothes neatly folded on a beach or a riverbank. There was no bag ever found in a left-luggage locker at an international station.

  CHLOE TURNER

  WAITING FOR THE RUNNERS

  WHEN I REACHED the bottom of the hill path, there was a pumpkin on the corner, rammed onto the sawn-off lamppost like a head on a stake. A rotting, putrid thing, weeks old. It wasn’t even upright – it sagged towards the road, so the tea light inside was a silvery pool of rainwater. The stalk was furring like a baby rabbit’s pelt, and the smirking mouth was starting to pucker down at the edges, but I still felt it was laughing at me.

  I’d known she’d be there, up at the top, so I’d wanted to be prepared. To get up there before her, so there could be no surprises. Not like that other time: me stood there in an old vest and my painting jeans, watching them leave, not having to wonder too hard why he might want her over me. This time would be different. I’d find a vantage point. Pull a group round me. She wouldn’t have the upper hand.

  I was later than I’d have liked starting out, though. One of the chickens had woken sickly, stalking the pen like a drunk in search of hooch, and I’d had to wait for the vet to visit at the end of her rounds. Danny always said I was far too soft – he’d have wrung its neck before breakfast – but it’s the rest of the flock you have to worry for. Anyhow, it was a false alarm in the end: just a sore on the wing; thanks to that old bully Mabel, no doubt, who takes issue with any challenge to the pecking order.

  Climbing the path to the top, at last, my heart was thundering. Arial was bounding up the slope as if he’d just been let out of a box: snapping at leaves; taking great gasps of air, and sniffing at the ivy berries, green and black starbursts like the fireworks last weekend.

  When we passed the little allotment at the back of the cottages, the sunflower grove I’d admired there just weeks back now stood sunken-headed and brown. Hunched seed-heads of shame, unharvested and spoilt by the rain. And further up, that stubby-legged pony the children used to call to was standing in a sticky mire around the rusted trough. The ground was greasy there, and I had to grab at the hand rail to heave myself up the steep bit. I felt my boots slide under me, and tried not to yank on Arial’s lead. Bright yellow maple leaves fanned across the slick mud, lurid toddler handprints amongst the gritty rust of the beech masts.

  She was there first.

  Alone, but first. She had her back to me as I rounded the summit, sweat pricking the hair follicles around my face. I paused a moment to get my breath. Right beside the hole Annie used to call the fossil pit, where the cavity left by a fallen tree spills tiny clams and crinoids, and the occasional sea urchin, from its crumbling limestone. There was no time to pore over it today. I lifted the shirt from the small of my back, let the breeze flash cold against my skin. A blackbird flew down from the half-dead oak on the curve of the path, picked at something amongst the leaves, then stopped to stare at me with its unblinking yellow-rimmed eye.

  She might turn any moment. I had to walk the final thirty paces, and join her at the finish line.

  Normally I’d have been delighted for my Benet to have made a new friend. My mother’s always saying that he’s a strange boy, but he’s only different from the splashy men she’s drawn to: jazzy trousers and clown specs, comedy turns once they’ve had a drink. Wouldn’t know they’d been slighted, their skin’s that rhino-thick. Benet’s not like that. He’s strong and healthy, never happier than when he’s out running, but he’s always been delicate when it comes to people. The first to cry after a playgroup scuffle; I don’t mean a tantrum – not just some toddler injustice – but a genuine sorrow that he’d been knocked back by another child. He couldn’t stand to be told off, was inconsolable if I lost it over the state of the playroom or something broken at home. His sister Annie used to tease him sometimes, but she knew when to stop. She could sense his fragile heart.

  And then, well . . . it wasn’t surprising really, given how things fell apart. Somewhere along the line, he stopped listening to people, in case they said something he didn’t like the sound of. Drove his teachers mad. And though he made one friend in junior school – Rob Cowbridge, scrawny little shrimp of a thing – Rob ended up going to the Grammar in town, and Ben had been bobbing about like a lost balloon ever since.

  It would have to have been that Will, though, wouldn’t it? Not that it was the boy’s fault. He seemed a nice enough lad. But Julie’s boy. Of all the kids to make friends with, to pick the son of your Dad’s . . . well, I hardly knew what to call her now. He’d moved on from her too, I knew that much. She’d lost him just like I had, and with him had gone the smug grin she’d been wearing that day, sitting in the passenger seat while he threw a bagful of threads together and then walked out of our lives for good.

  Down in the valley, I could see bonfire smoke coming up from the new-builds where the old factory used to be, though they’d only been lived in a couple of months, so who knew what they’d grown so soon that they might be burning. I wondered which one was hers. Handy being so near her mum, who still lived in the 60s estate the other side of the stream. But they were tiny houses, those new ones. Close built. Poky, I dare say, if you were used to something much bigger.

  He’d been building the place in Stroud for the four of us: Danny, me, Annie and Benet. Julie hadn’t been working long as the receptionist in his builder’s yard, but time enough to make a connection, it seemed. Then came the day when Annie was hit by a car on her way back from ballet, thrown in the ditch like something fly-tipped. Everything went dark that day, for all of us, and things between Danny and me were never the same after. I dare say Julie was a consoling shoulder, where mine was somehow found wanting.

  I was getting close now – couldn’t avoid it – but I’d only covered half of the distance between the two of us when there was a great shout from the gorse hedge at the top of the field. Mrs Harris’s Lycra thighs emerged from the shrubbery like purple hams. Her neon rash vest and visor followed after, slipping through the gap
in the hedge where the stile is.

  ‘Alright, ladies?’

  Mrs Harris could out-honk a ship’s horn. She was marching down the slope towards us, and that’s when Julie – realising she was no longer alone – turned round and saw me.

  ‘They’re about five minutes off. You’ll not thank me for the state of them, mind, with this mud. Your Benet looks like he’s been surfing in the stuff.’

  Neither of us replied. If Mrs Harris thought we were rude for ignoring her, she didn’t show it. She just kept on talking: about the state of the ground, about some stray dog, and about how she’d caught a couple of them – naming no names – having a crafty fag round the back of the scout hut half way round. All the while Julie and I were looking at each other but not looking at each other, like a couple of feral cats.

  Mrs Harris was still gabbing on, now about a deer heading off into the old hill fort, when I noticed that Julie hadn’t come alone, after all. There was a little girl in a yellow headband hiding round the back of her knees, tracing lines down her mum’s skinnies like she was drawing a helter-skelter. I’d forgotten she’d got another one. The girl looked about two years old, with blond curls like wood shavings. I wondered if she was his.

  ‘I’m off back up the track to check them in. You’d better be prepared to make some noise, if you’re the whole of the welcome party.’

  Mrs Harris stamped back up towards the break in the hedge. First time I’d felt like smiling all day, watching that socking great arse trying to hoick itself over the stile. Like a Thelwell pony in Spandex.

  ‘You look happy. Can’t say I enjoy this much, waiting around knee deep in it.’ Julie was pulling at a tab on her quilted jacket while she spoke. I dare say you don’t, I thought. I bet you never used to have to do it, either. This would have been his job, supporting the boy that he swapped for mine.

  I could look at her properly now she’d spoken to me. I’d seen her from a distance in the playground, of course. They’d all swarmed round her that first day, like they do, when anyone new appears on the scene. She’d brought her mum along for moral support, and the PTA head was in ecstasies at the scent of new blood. That was before they all knew who she was. They might think me hippie and odd and not-their-sort, but the ranks close quickly when an outsider threatens one of their own. Everyone took my side, but even so I’d kept my distance, and we’d never been this close before.

  You’ll forgive my first reaction, I hope: noticing that time had not been kind to Julie. It gave me a flutter of pleasure to see that those cheekbones had sagged like the melting rim of a church candle. I wasn’t unhappy to note that that pretty scattering of freckles across her forehead had now merged into a tea stain of brown. From the way she was thrusting out her chin, it struck me she was trying to hide a fold or two, though God knows we’ve all got them. But then, and I could have kicked myself for feeling it, there’s that sadness in seeing a beautiful woman who’s faded, even if you wished all kinds of bad things on them once. I found myself wondering why she wore her hair like that, so that the bare patches at her temples were on show, and why no-one had told her about the tidemark of foundation that ran along her jaw.

  ‘They shouldn’t be long, now.’ My mouth was all wobbly while I was saying it. Malleable, like I couldn’t rely on it to do what it was supposed to do. ‘I expect we’ll hear them coming.’

  The little girl was pulling on Julie’s coat, and I noticed she had a big plastic ring on her finger. See-through and candy pink, like the one Danny gave me when we had our first wedding: the one in the Juniors’ playground at St Peter & St Paul’s. So sodding long ago. It must have been springtime, because I remember the girls throwing cherry blossom over us before we’d even got started. And Phil Simmons acting the vicar, though he had to go in for his sandwiches before he’d got to the ‘man and wife’ bit, so perhaps the marriage was on shaky ground from the start.

  The little girl had started to come towards me now, and Julie cried out as if she was walking towards a fire.

  ‘Hannah!’

  Danny’s mother’s name. So that answered that one.

  ‘It’s okay. I expect she’s interested in the dog.’ Arial was sitting on the toes of my boots, his tail thumping the wet grass. His eyes were on a rook sitting in one of the pine trees. ‘He’s friendly, if you want to say hello. He’s just watching that bird.’

  A great big sigh shuddered up through me. I felt like lying down and rolling away over the turf towards home. What would Julie think of that? Danny’s mad wife tumbling face first in the mud like an out-of-control toddler. I expect they used to laugh at me often enough. What was Julie thinking that day, drumming painted fingernails on the steering wheel of her Golf, waiting to take my husband away?

  A few more parents were drifting up the path now, some hovering close to us, some hanging back by the fossil pit. The woman with the triplets in Year Three, who never smiles. Mrs Palmer, Benet’s class teacher, with her red setter, Raggie. Mike Hows – such an angry man – was stamping down the remains of a thistle stand as if it’d done him some wrong. And Jackie Fell and Lorna Vaughan were fiddling with their phones while they chatted, never lifting their eyes to each other. There were plenty of glances directed at me and Julie, though. Kay Wellon gave me an Are you okay? look, but I just nodded and turned back to the little girl.

  There was nothing of Danny in her face, but there was no mistaking those curls, and when Hannah smiled at Arial, I saw something there. A memory. Of Annie, strangely enough, which was harder to take. Annie’s big lopsided grin when she knew she’d done something right. Lighting the cake candles with a match, like a big girl. Blowing them out for nine, ten, eleven . . . and then no more.

  ‘He’s called Arial, but my son calls him Biscuit. Because he’s always trying to eat them. I expect you like biscuits too.’

  She didn’t answer, but she knelt down next to him. Arial let his long black ears be patted, never taking his eyes off the distant bird. I could feel Julie’s eyes on me, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. I looked at the girl and I looked at Arial. Then I looked over and down the valley, just as a green woodpecker burst from the shaggy depths of a box tree, trailing its rough laugh as it disappeared out of sight down the hillside.

  ‘Tally ho!’ Mrs Harris again, from the far side of the hedge. Then a shout, further away. Laughing, and the crunch of trainers on the rotting maize stalks in the field. Flashes of blue and white where the hedge was thinning. They were on their way.

  Mrs Palmer had told me that they did everything together, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that our boys vaulted the stile in quick succession and then ran down the slope towards us arm in arm. Will was kicking something ahead of him: a browning maize cob, trailing what remained of its husk. As they got near, he hoofed it over our heads, and I brushed a strand of rotting silk from my hair.

  ‘We were first. We won!’ Benet’s navy cotton shorts were lifting above his mud-slicked thighs on each side in turn, baring a white triangle of flesh. His hair was crumpled and damp. His face was flushed, smudged. He still looked like a boy. Julie’s Will was taller, his hair shorter, the armband with his race number tight across his biceps. His lower legs were covered with hair, not the fine down that still dusted Benet’s calves. ‘Can Will come back to ours?’ he said, skidding to stop.

  ‘Willy,’ the little girl interrupted, saving me from answering as she ran towards her brother. He straightened up, as if treading water, trying to break his momentum so that she wouldn’t be tangled in his long legs.

  ‘Hannah, wait!’ Julie snatched her up. And then: ‘He could, if you wanted . . .’

  There was a pause, and I thought about that first night after Danny left, when I’d pulled the clothes from every drawer. Buried my face in the rough cable of his Aran sweater until the loose fibres caught the back of my throat. Tipped the chicken pie I’d made for tea – his favourite, for his birthday – into the back pen for the pig.

  ‘Thanks. We have something to do.’
>
  ‘Fine, just a thought.’

  She looked at me then. Her eyes were pink all round the lower lids, and there were two short furrows between her brows. I could see her jaw working under the slack skin of her cheek. I thought about my Ben, and how he’d cope if he was on his own again.

  ‘Another time, perhaps,’ I said. And she smiled at me, so that deltas of lines fanned from the corners of her eyes.

  The boys bumped and punched each other as they separated, and then Julie left with her half-grown man and her little girl. The other parents drifted away. Mrs Harris raised her hand as she left with an armful of marker flags. Benet was jumpy and high, but I made him wait, hang back, until they were all far down the hill. To distract him, I pointed out the tree where I’d seen the woodpecker. As we stood there, it came back across the hillside – arrow straight between wingbeats, a bolt of green across the valley.

  Eventually, I couldn’t hold them back any longer, and we set off, Arial sniffing at every stile post, and barking at the poor pony with its sodden coat. I looked at the sloes and reminded myself to return when the first frost had been. Where the path meets the road at the bottom, Benet helped me lift the pumpkin’s rotten carcass from the post. We carried it, with its smirking face, to the paddock below the house, and Benet stood on the wall and drop-kicked it across the field. When that thing splintered into a hundred coppery pieces across the plough-carved mud, we got free of something. From that day, we started to move forward.

  ELEY WILLIAMS