Best British Short Stories 2019

by Nicholas Royle

  Ambit is not alone. Magazines such as Ploughshares and Glimmer Train in the US have been doing it for years, and, as Rory Kinnear says as Stephen Lyons in Russell T. Davies’s post-Brexit drama Years and Years, ‘We are American. Our business is American, our culture is American. We’re certainly not European, are we?’

  Also doing it is the Fiction Desk, whose £3 fee can be avoided if instead you buy one of their anthologies, the latest of which, their twelfth, is And Nothing Remains. I may not like submission charges, but that’s not contributor Alex Clark’s fault and so I will say I enjoyed her story ‘Briar Rose’, as I did her story ‘The Thief’ in Stroud Short Stories Volume 2 (Stroud Short Stories) edited by John Holland. This second volume in the series features stories read by their Gloucester-based authors at Stroud Short Stories events between 2015 and 2018. In particular I enjoyed Joanna Campbell’s ‘The Journey to Everywhere’, its exuberance of language and character reminding me of the great William Sansom.

  There was no shortage of anthologies published last year, among them Unthology 10 (Unthank Books) edited by Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones – congratulations to them on reaching that milestone. The blurb on the back of Tales From the Shadow Booth Vol 2 edited by Dan Coxon describes the Shadow Booth as a ‘journal of weird and eerie fiction’, taking its inspiration from Thomas Ligotti and Robert Aickman, but nothing in it reminded me of either writer. It feels more reminiscent of The Pan Book of Horror Stories, and, speaking as someone whose first short story sale was to that long-running series, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Mark Morris, a contributor to the Shadow Booth, is the editor of New Fears 2 (Titan Books). In his introduction he acknowledges the lasting influence of un-themed horror anthologies, such as the Pan series and others. He goes on: ‘My aim with New Fears, therefore, is to bring back the un-themed horror anthology – and not as a one-off, but as an annual publication, with each volume acting as a showcase for the very best and most innovative fiction that this exhilarating genre has to offer.’ What a shame, then, that publishers Titan pulled the plug after this second volume, in which a highlight for me was Stephen Volk’s stomach-churning ‘The Airport Gorilla’, which may be narrated by a soft toy, but is extremely hard hitting.

  Jez Noond’s ‘Zolitude’ drew my eye in The Cinnamon Review of Short Fiction (Cinnamon Press) edited by Adam Craig. I liked it, even if I didn’t really understand it. I sense strongly that the lack is within me and not the story. I always enjoy Courttia Newland’s stories; ‘Link’, in Everyday People – The Color of Life (Atria Books) edited by Jennifer Baker, was no exception. Ramsey Campbell led from the front in The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors (The Alchemy Press) edited by Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards; Campbell’s ‘Some Kind of a Laugh’ is followed by a further 24 stories by a roll-call of horror writers. Standing out among the stories in Dark Lane Anthology Volume 7 (Dark Lane Books) edited by Tim Jeffreys is ‘Your Neighbour’s Packages’ by Megan Taylor, which you read with a dynamic response of mingled horror and delight, as the neighbour’s packages mount up in the protagonist’s home. You hope the packages remain unopened while the story delivers on its promise. You’re not disappointed. It’s followed by Charles Wilkinson’s ‘Time Out in December’, which could hae been called ‘Hotel Lazarus’ and could have been written by Franz Kafka.

  Running a small press is a draining business in lots of ways, not least financially. Manchester’s Dostoyevsky Wannabe don’t charge a submission fee, but nor do they supply their writers with contributors’ copies. This didn’t put off the writers contributing to Manchester edited by Thom Cuell, among them Sarah-Clare Conlon and Anthony Trevelyan, whose stories, ‘Flight Path’ and ‘Repossession’, respectively, were my favourites. While I can’t help feeling that, if you’re not paying your writers, providing them with a free copy of their work is the very least you can do (co-founder Richard Brammer puts forward a case for it being more punk operation than big corporation), I love the look of Dostoyevsky Wannabe’s rapidly growing list of publications, for which credit must go to art director Victoria Brown.

  Let’s stick with the north for two more anthologies published last year. Firstly, Bluemoose Books published Seaside Special: Postcards From the Edge edited by Jenn Ashworth, whose prompt for stories inspired by the coast of the north-west of England, produced a fascinating anthology with some outstanding stories. Melissa Wan’s ‘The Husband and the Wife Go to the Seaside’ is remarkable, mainly for its style and its embracing of doubt and uncertainty. Pete Kalu’s historical piece on the subject of slavery is impressive, partly for the unflinching examination of its subject matter and partly for its original approach, the story taking the form of a will being dictated. Also notable were Andrew Michael Hurley’s ‘Katy’, a missing-child story with a difference, and Carys Bray’s haunting tale about the song of the Birkdale Nightingale, or Natterjack toad.

  Secondly, and finally, there was We Were Strangers: Stories Inspired by Unknown Pleasures (Confingo Publishing) edited by Richard V Hirst. It so happened that my favourite story in this anthology of stories inspired by Joy Division’s first album was Sophie Mackintosh’s ‘New Dawn Fades’, which also happens to be my favourite track off the album. Other highlights, for me, included David Gaffney’s ‘Insight’, Zoe Lambert’s ‘She’s Lost Control’ and Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Candidate’.

  There were more stories in more magazines, anthologies and collections, as well as on web sites and broadcast on radio. I can’t claim to have read them all, but I have read as widely as I can and selected what I think are the best. Next year’s volume will be my tenth – and last – as editor of this series.

  NICHOLAS ROYLE

  Manchester

  May 2019

  The Husband and the Wife Go to the Seaside

  MELISSA WAN

  The husband and the wife arrived at their cottage on the coast one moonless night. Both were ready for a change and told themselves this time away was the beginning. From a distance they saw that their cottage, mid-terraced in a row of holiday homes, was the only one with its lights still on, shining into the dark. The wife said it looked exactly like the pictures and when the husband stepped from the car to unlock the gate, she smiled at him as he turned back, before realising he wouldn’t see her in the glare of headlights.

  Approaching a house with all the lights on made the wife feel like an intruder, but the husband turned the key and edged her in with his hand on the small of her back. Everything awaiting them seemed exactly as they expected.

  ‘Nice of them to leave the heating on,’ said the husband, peering into the dining room. The wife walked upstairs, half expecting to come upon another couple in their bed, but instead the towels and blankets were neatly folded, not a crease in sight. Downstairs, the husband had left a trail into the sitting room, his brogues kicked off, suitcases abandoned in the hallway. He was flopped into an armchair – the best one, she noticed – and tapping into his phone.

  ‘After this we’re turning them off,’ he said, ‘and I’ll find a place to hide them.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ asked the wife. ‘What if I need to get in touch with you?’

  The husband looked up with raised eyebrows. ‘You said we needed some time away, so that’s what we’re doing. It’s two weeks.’

  The wife nodded and turned into the kitchen. She found a gift basket on the counter with a handwritten card reading Welcome to Arnside.

  ‘We can always eat these,’ she said, holding up a tin of spaghetti hoops.

  ‘What an odd thing to leave in a hamper,’ said the husband.

  ‘They’re nostalgic. We used to have the alphabet ones. I’d eat them from my bowl which had the alphabet around the side.’

  ‘That’s cute,’ said the husband.

  The wife told him she could heat them up.

  ‘No thank you.’ He fished out a packet of shortbread and sat down at the dining table. ‘We never ate anything tinned.
’

  The wife put the hoops back into the basket and sat across the table from the husband. She kept mistaking the tap of a twig on their kitchen window for a knock at the door and every time she’d snap up her head. She could hear the husband chew above the thin vibration of the fridge.

  ‘It’s so quiet here,’ she said.

  ‘That,’ said the husband, ‘is the sound of having left it all behind.’

  The wife turned on the television, glad for the false laughter of a studio audience, and asked if they could go to the chip shop tomorrow. The husband said she could do what she wanted.

  ‘It’s what I’ve been dreaming about,’ said the wife. ‘The drip of all that chip fat.’

  The husband unfolded his paper and raised it to hide his face. On the cover, the wife read the headline: Body Found in River Bela. The photograph was of the river, static in black-and-white, and didn’t show the corpse. They’d crossed the river on their drive through Milnthorpe, had stopped to walk over the footbridge, and the wife’s eyes widened at the thought of a corpse drifting cold and stiff below their feet.

  ‘What’s that noise?’ she asked, looking up at the black window.

  ‘What noise, darling?’

  ‘It sounds like breathing.’

  The husband told her not to let her imagination run away with her, and turning up the volume, the wife stared blankly at the screen as the husband turned the page.

  When the wife got into bed, she left her light on for longer than usual. Her eyes would lose their place in her book, find it again and read the same sentence over. She wore her new satin nightclothes spotted with pink roses and slipped herself between the sheets. When the husband came in wearing his flannels, he kissed her on the head, switched off his light and turned away onto his side.

  ‘“It was times like these,”’ the wife read, ‘“when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”’ She turned to look at the back of the husband’s head; she could detect where his hair was beginning to thin. She closed her paperback, sipped at her water and turned off her reading lamp.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said.

  The husband made a noise with his throat.

  ‘It’ll be nice to be here, won’t it?’ she said. ‘To refresh.’

  The wife adjusted her pyjamas until an audible sigh came from the husband’s side and she was still. There was a skylight in the ceiling through which, on her back, she watched the drift of cloud.

  In the morning the husband and the wife were woken by the sound of drills. A team of builders were busy on scaffolding around the front of the house next door.

  The husband retrieved his phone to email the cottage owner, who wrote back to tell them it had been on the website. Indeed, he found the small print: ‘From mid August until January there will be building work next door. Some noise and disruption may be experienced.’

  ‘You mean it’s going to be this loud the whole time?’ asked the wife.

  The husband said they would be out most days anyway, and told her not to look when he put the phone away.

  In daylight the house looked tired, its walls and surfaces more grey than white. On the website the sitting room had been described as historic, but the bookcase was stuffed with second-hand romance novels and the wife knew the throws were bought in Ikea.

  ‘It could do with a lick of paint,’ she said, to which the husband replied that this was what they called shabby chic, that it was a style.

  The wife boiled the kettle and took her cup of tea upstairs. Since the husband had claimed the armchair, she contented herself either with the sofa in the sitting room or this chair with the view. She sat by the window and looked down onto the street beyond their front garden, from where she could see the labourers moving back and forth. She watched, trying to ignore the noise, and when the bronzed arms of a worker caught her eye her cup stopped before her lips. His muscles shifted as he hoisted a plank onto his shoulder and he walked with extraordinary confidence for somebody so high up. When he lifted the board, she glimpsed the dark growth of hair beneath his arms.

  After breakfast, through which the drills whined and the wife overcooked the eggs, she left the house arm in arm with the husband. The promenade was a few hundred metres away, a mixture of express supermarkets, small-town cafes and upscale boutiques; to walk from the pub on one end to the chip shop on the other took about five minutes. This morning the sky was turned white by a layer of cloud, and as they passed groups of elderly ramblers in fleeces and walking boots, the husband greeted them as though he knew them, shaking their hands because it was a small town, and as he said, things are done differently in small towns. The wife smiled but kept her eyes squinted on the mudflats, her legs trembling as gusts of wind blew up her skirt. Luckily she’d packed a jumper but eventually she had to ask the husband if she could buy a pair of trousers from the shop.

  ‘I did tell you,’ he said, handing her their credit card.

  The husband waited in the pub, sitting down with a pint as the wife closed the changing room door. It was a shop for ramblers and the wife looked so ridiculous in the waterproof pants and sandals that she reluctantly bought a pair of their cheapest walking boots and asked to wear both immediately.

  She read on the handwritten labels that the fleeces were made from a flock of rare Woodland sheep, farmed only a few metres away. This and the antiquated tin of Werther’s Originals on the counter made the wife think it might all be staged, as though if she opened a wrapper she would find a piece of folded card inside.

  ‘You know there are rambling groups here,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘And Cedric does cross-bay walks. They’re very popular.’

  The wife took her receipt, saying thank you but she wasn’t a big walker.

  Arriving at the pub – hoping to have lessened the effect of the mismatch by taking down her hair – the wife found the husband talking to a crowd of older women at a table outside. Their trekking poles were stacked against the wall behind them, their faces browned with sun and their silver hair sporting the occasional well-placed streak of dark hair. The wife thought this crowd made the husband look even more distinguished, and she had the notion of him as a stage actor well known for performing Shakespeare. His jeans and jacket of cornflower blue were the precise balance of casual and chic, his hair peppered just enough to make the wife in her present state feel humiliated.

  She went inside to order half a pint, hoping the women might have left by the time she came back, but when she did, they’d surrounded the husband and were all energetically laughing together. The wife approached the group from the side and handed the husband their card, excusing her appearance by gesturing to her trousers and explaining the shop was too small to have any options. The ramblers cackled and stuck their legs into the air, telling her she was one of them now.

  ‘You’ll have to come on our next walk,’ said one.

  ‘We have a pole you can borrow,’ said another.

  ‘And a spare coat that should fit.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said the wife, blushing, as she looked at her husband. ‘This was just for the cold.’

  The ramblers shook their heads, the sunglasses on their headbands like rows of additional eyes.

  ‘She says that now,’ said one.

  ‘Just wait ’til you’ve been in them pants a few days,’ said another.

  ‘You won’t be able to get her out of them!’

  They all screamed with laughter. The husband told the wife that one of the women had a partner who’d also gone to Cambridge.

  ‘They were different years of course,’ said the woman, ‘But I’m sure they’ll have lots to gossip about.’

  ‘Isn’t that a coincidence?’ said the wife. ‘I’m sure if I met anyone from my old poly we wouldn’t have anything to say.’

  The women chuckled and the husband said his wife h
ad a wicked sense of humour, at which she smiled and supped her porter.

  ‘How did the two of you meet?’ asked one.

  ‘We both teach at the same school,’ said the husband.

  The wife said, ‘He’s history and I’m English.’

  ‘Luckily we’re all English here,’ said one.

  ‘Although we are getting a lot of Poles,’ whispered another.

  ‘And not the right kind!’ They lifted their sticks and roared.

  The wife stayed quiet as they moved on to talking about property and how dead the market was. Conversation then turned to their partners; their other halves went fishing whilst the women walked and enjoyed their freedom, and in the evenings the two groups came together to watch the sunset.

  ‘Turner said Margate had the best skies in Europe, but he’d probably never been to Arnside,’ said one.

  ‘Nigel has the perfect viewing spot. Always comes with Prosecco,’ said another.

  ‘He’d be happy to pull out a couple of chairs.’

  ‘It will have to be next time,’ the wife said, explaining they needed to catch the next episode of a show they were addicted to.

  Luckily the siren sounded and the group was up, downing their pints to catch the bore, saying that next time they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  ‘You’ll want to meet Nigel,’ said one to the husband.

  ‘He’ll take you canoeing,’ said another.

  ‘Amongst other things.’ And they laughed for a final time.

  When they left, the husband finished the wife’s porter and said he was going to see the bore from the pier. The wife had no choice but to follow, the sound of the women’s laughter still ringing in her ears.

  ‘They seem to have their routine worked out,’ she said. ‘Too much activity for us though, don’t you think?’