This network of Victorian alleys at the edge of the city is a gift for buyers and sellers. There are often needles in the gutters. Sheila in the ground-floor flat has called for an ambulance several times; young lads and old, wiry men alike, not able to make it home before necking what they’ve bought. What city doesn’t have a drug problem, Callum said, when they looked around the place. And anyway, that’s why we can afford a flat with a double-bedroom, so don’t knock it, love. You’re not knocking it; not now. You’re glad of the company, however distant, while the baby clusters. You lie back in bed, and the baby tilts back her head, swooning with milk. You listen to the lads staggering off, finding their own comfort, their own protection from snakes and raiders.
Sometimes there is singing. There’s a couple whose voices you have come to recognise. They stumble home together from the pub a couple of nights a week. They’re both loud and hoarse and boisterous. Some nights they sing together, ’90s Britpop anthems, blundering through the words, compensating for inaccuracy with volume. Tonight it’s mostly the woman singing; her voice cracks when she reaches for the high notes. You don’t recognise the song. The man whoops when she finishes. As their voices recede and the street settles back into quietness, the distant city sounds skitter across the sky. A freight train echoes for minutes, its rhythm on the tracks repeating over and over – huckle-berry, huckle-berry, huckle-berry. Silence. A faraway siren swooping. A sudden whoosh from the motorway. Silence. When the baby finally falls asleep in your arms, you are too afraid of waking her to put her down.
A blackbird breaks the quiet outside. When you check your phone, dawn is still far off. The bird is misfiring in the dark. That’s another of your discoveries: the sounds of birds. You listen to them as daybreak approaches each morning. There are so many of them, clicking and cooing and calling out to one another across the dark rooftops, telling one another of the light beginning to crack open the distant horizon. You’ve begun looking for them in the daytime too, trying to identify them. There’s a pair of blackbirds nesting in the privet at the front. They seem to be doing things so carefully and so equitably. The nest is hidden deep inside the hedge and each parent, when it is time to leave, darts suddenly out, leaving any watcher uncertain of the exit point. Then they return, they initially stand some way off, on the top of the gate for example, with a morsel in beak, checking and checking once again that no one can see where they are about to go. You watch this from the front window, as you walk with the baby, watching the birds take turns all day long, so prudent and so diligent. They’re wise to be careful. The mangey white cat from next door, its fur yellowed at the paws as if by nicotine, waits on its own front-door-step, licking its claws until it’s time for fledging.
Over the road, where the houses have small front gardens, two ducks have made their nest a surprising distance from the river, a clutch of thirteen eggs hidden underneath a shrub. The man whose garden they have chosen fills an ice-cream container each day with water for them, and sometimes the dawn chorus admits some quacking. This afternoon, the old man stopped you on your walk out with the pram to tell you that a plumber’s merchant has run over the drake – the man has had to scrape him off the road with a spade – and now the female is circling her eggs dementedly, giving the whole game away. The foxes will surely come. What should he do, the man asked you, as though the pram qualified you in some way to give advice. I don’t know, you said, what can you do?
You tried not to think about it as you walked the streets, the baby whimpering under gunmetal skies and falling blossom. But now that the blackbird has gone off at this early hour, you can’t help but return to the thought of the nest. Can a blackbird be insomniac? Or is something afoot? Is the fox about, stalking the lone duck for her eggs? All is quiet again. Even the baby is silent. But you continue to listen, and a memory materialises vividly in the dark: an experiment you were forced to take part in at primary school. Each of you is given an egg, a hen’s egg, at the start of morning class, and is asked to keep it safe, to guard it all day long. The lesson is about the difficulty of looking after something precious and fragile, about how much care is needed. Most girls put the eggs in their pockets, curling their fingers around the grainy shells and hoping to see it through to the end. You make it to lunchtime, when a brief lapse in concentration and a desire for more pudding results in you leaning over recklessly and crushing the shell against the serving table. The crack is initially hardly visible, but then tiny chips begin to come away along its fine line, and when you see the white skin inside and know that the game is up. At the end of lunch, you drop the egg into the dining room bin, with the slop of leftover custard and chocolate sponge, and it makes a sad little plop of defeat. One girl in your group, Leanne, whose hair is always dirty and whose life is already marked by loss, smashed the egg almost immediately, hurling it against the playground wall: I’ll only end up breaking it, she said, might as well do it now.
It’s the couple again, on their way home from the pub. Tonight they’re heckling each other mercilessly. It’s the woman you hear first. She’s jeering, almost singing her insults at him. The thing about you, yeah, is that you don’t know when to shut up, do you? On and on about boring shit. No wonder Paul left. With you going on about your dogs. No one cares about your pedigree bitch, Johnny – she shrieks. Her heels clatter; she’s stumbling around, winded by laughter. Yeah, well the thing about you is that you don’t have your own friends, do you, Shell? You’re only friends with the blokes you’re shagging, aren’t you? Not exactly known for your conversation, are you? His voice is lower and rougher, but it’s still got a playground, sing-song cadence. Yeah, yeah, well at least I don’t walk funny. Look at you, look at the fucking state of you! Bow-legged, walking like you’re from Manchester, she shouts back. Yeah, right, then why are you shagging me, love? You can’t get enough of my amble. And look at the fucking state of you. Look at that fucking fringed monstrosity you’re carrying. What is it they say about handbags? Meant to be like a girl’s cunt, aren’t they? Peals of laughter. Howling. Singing. Silence.
In the middle of the night, in the time before, if you found yourself awake for long stretches of time, you would sometimes get to wondering what it would be like to die. Imagine, your brother used to say to you when you were a child, late at night, a torch up-lighting his nostrils and teeth, imagine, our Ri, how many people have died in this house. It’s over a hundred years old, you know. And aren’t there meat-hooks in the cellar? Do you think they were only used for animals? And what was that creak in the hallway?
Redbrick terrace houses; you are always awake in redbrick terrace houses. The council-owned back-to-back in Meanwood you grew up in, and now, here you are, back in your hometown; another Victorian slum on the other side of the City. But tonight, as you lie awake listening to the baby scratching the sides of the crib-basket, you don’t wonder about who has died here, over the years; you think instead about how many people might have been born in this house. How many tiny creatures have spluttered into life, here, in front of the old fire-place or drenching the sheets of an old bed? People seldom give their consent to die; but no one can ever give their consent to be drawn into life. And endings seem more comprehensible, now, than something beginning. After all, no one is really responsible for death; even a murder is only foreshortening. But a birth? Conjuring something into being, into blood and bone and nails? You were truly culpable for that.
The girl in the flat next door goes out every Thursday night. There is music beforehand, loud laughter, screaming, ferocious and repetitive swearing. Sometimes, in the early hours, you hear the girl return alone, closing the front door carefully, padding up the stairs to her studio, starting a film on her laptop, American voices pinging at one another indistinctly through the party wall. Tonight, the girl returns with another girl. You feed the baby, you feed the baby for more than an hour; the baby rests briefly, her head lolling back, and you think that you might be able to lie down, to rest for just a minu
te or two, but then the baby’s head lifts again, eyes soft and closed like a tiny bat’s, and she blindly latches back on, still hungry, clustering her tiny soft mouth. Callum turns suddenly in the bed; sighs; settles back into sleep. You listen to the girls next-door as you continue to feed. They keep trying to whisper, but their voices speed one another along, rising, giggling, shrieking. Eventually their voices taper off into silence – only to re-emerge in the darkness as long, soft, lush moans.
It’s the couple again. The baby has just gone down in the basket when you hear shouting from the end of the street. They’re rowing. But he’s louder than before. There’s no laughter and now the woman’s not making any comebacks. By the time they’re close to the house, he’s going full throttle. Don’t think I don’t know about it, you and Jimmy, you fucking slut. Don’t you stop here, don’t you think you can stop here, don’t you think you’re not going to get what you deserve. Get up. Get up. You can fucking walk. You move to the window, push aside the curtain. Someone turns a light on in the house opposite. They can call the fucking police. I don’t give a fuck. The woman’s down on the pavement. She’s in tight white jeans and a white top that has ridden up as she’s dragged along. She’s not making any sound: she’s playing dead, trying to make herself as heavy as possible. Fucking get up, you cunt. You’re coming home with me.
Stay on the line, another voice in the darkness says to you. The police are on their way. Can you keep them in your sight? I’m inside my flat, your voice says, and they’ve just started moving again. Can you go outside? the other voice asks calmly. Can you follow them at a safe distance?
You turn to the Moses basket. The baby is asleep. Callum is asleep too. But he’s close by. He’d hear, surely he’d hear the baby and he’d wake if anything were really wrong. If the baby needed him. You can go outside. You can leave them together for just a moment. The idea is terrible and wonderful.
I’ll try, you say. You get a coat from the hallway and leave as quickly as you can. You can’t have taken even a minute but when you open the door, there’s no sound: the couple has vanished. You step out onto the street and the night is darkest blue and as cool and deep as a sea. You walk up and down, check the turn-offs and the mouths of ginnels. But there’s no sign of them. I’ve lost them, you tell the call handler. I’m so sorry. Can you keep checking? the voice says. We’ve had a number of calls. The police are almost with you. There are lights on in some of the houses around you. Other people have called too. Other people have been awake, or woken, and heard too. You turn back towards your flat. The sky above it is clear, the stars glinting coldly in the darkness. This is the first time you have been outside alone since the baby. You feel giddy. And you feel bereft.
You linger for a little longer on the street, even though the trail’s gone cold. You think of the woman, somewhere close by, but hidden from you. Will somebody else hear her again in the dark, someone who can help? Maybe there’s someone listening for the woman right now, someone who will answer when she cries out, wherever she is. You think of the first time you heard the baby’s heart-beat in the blackness inside you: your own slow, low pulse answered by this new one, quickening. You listened for her so intently, with such care, hearing her inside yourself even before you saw her.
A police van approaches slowly. You flag it down. They were heading that way and then I lost them, you say. I’m sorry.
Tonight an owl breaks through the darkness. At the same time, the baby laughs in her sleep, a goofy breathy laugh, her cheeks dimpling, her lips wet with milk. Your heart feels like it might be about to shatter. You cry often these days. Maybe it’s that thing they talked about in the class, Ri, the baby blues, Callum says. You could ask the doctor. Or we could try your Mum again. The baby might help, if she sees her. She’ll sort hersen out, one day, she will. We have a beautiful little girl, Ri, there’s nothing to be sad about.
But it’s not sadness. Not exactly. The thing is, you now think, is that you’ve lost all of your conditioning. You learned about Pavlov’s dogs at school: conditioned to associate a bell with food, they slavered whenever it was rung. But the lesser-known fact, the teacher had said, was that when Pavlov’s lab flooded, the dogs lost their conditioning. A trauma, a shock, a revolution: you can lose everything you’ve learnt that way. Since the birth, you’ve forgotten all of your passwords; your days feel like waking dreams; you don’t know how to talk to people without being honest, or how to pretend you’re not terrified; you can’t remember how to forget all of the things that have hurt you; you can’t remember how to forget that all of the things that should be joyful have also hurt you.
The owl screeches again. The baby raises her small, fat hands in the air, twists her wrists and points her fingers as though she’s conducting an orchestra in her sleep. It’s the caring that has been the trauma; it’s the caring and the being cared for that has been the shock. After you gave birth, the midwife who was about to sew you up stroked your hand. I’m going to be ever so careful, love, she said. I do needle-work at home. And you felt like a precious, embroidered glove. Or you felt how it might feel to be a child with a mother who cares for her. It is the tenderness of the details that has broken you apart: the tiny scar at the baby’s belly button, the tuft of hair at the nape of her neck, her tongue, Christ, the baby’s tiny, perfect tongue, rough and clean as a kitten’s. And that woman in white, it’s the detail of her top riding up that you keep thinking of, keep caring about. You didn’t even see her face, just her pale naked torso, and the line of dark fabric that must have been her bra. Was there anyone else to care about these things? Are you the only mother of them? Other people called 999 too. There were other people who had heard in the middle of the night; other people who surely cared.
The baby has settled into a deep, silent sleep in your arms. You look at her: at the feathered veins of her eyelids, finer than lines of purple silk; at the tiny creases in her dark lips. Have I not numbered each hair upon your head? Have I not picked off each flake of cradle cap, scooped out the soft wax from your new ears? You listen for the baby breathing; and when you cannot hear it, you pull her in closer and then you feel her breath against your own chest, you hear the tiny rasp of her inhale. You turn off the light from your phone. I heard you before you were born; I hear you still in the dark. You reach one arm under the duvet, find Callum’s warm belly, rising and falling. This. This breathing, together, in the dark, the night an echo chamber for the owl outside and a distant siren and the first street-cleaner and your own mother, somewhere, close by or far off, in a back alley or on a stranger’s sofa, comatose perhaps, but breathing in this darkness with you too. And aren’t you all asleep, or awake, together, under this same night sky, with no god but you – all of you – to care about this cluster of details.
Smack
JULIA ARMFIELD
The jellyfish come with the morning – a great beaching, bodies black on sand. The ocean empties, a thousand dead and dying invertebrates, jungled tentacles and fine, fragile membranes blanketing the shore two miles in each direction. They are translucent, almost spectral, as though the sea has exorcised its ghosts. Drowned in air, they break apart and bleed their interiors. A saturation, leeching down into the earth.
People claim they are poisonous – Sea Nettles, Lion’s Mane, Portuguese Man of War. Bringing their phones down to the beach, they snap pictures, send them into nature shows. One photograph makes it into the local paper, another fills five minutes on a regional morning show: ‘And in local news, a shoal of jellyfish has been causing consternation for tourists at one of the more popular pleasure beaches. Certainly not what you’d expect, coming up for a long weekend, is it, Cathy?’ – ‘Actually, Tim, I think you’ll find a group of jellyfish is called a “smack”.’
The provenance of the jellyfish remains a mystery. People argue amongst themselves, message links to articles back and forth. They are the result of global warming, of toxic-waste disposal. They are a sign of a change i
n worldwide migration patterns, rising sea levels, El Niño. They are Californian and a long way from home.
From the back porch, Nicola watches the clean-up for the best part of the afternoon. She has been in her dressing gown since the previous evening, sharp with yesterday’s deodorant, caking of toothpaste in the corners of her mouth. She watches men with rubber shoes and litter-pickers moving down the beach, scooping up the glutinous shapes with pails and trenching shovels, dumping them down. The day is hot – white summer, restless with foreign birds. On the deck, she sits with one ankle hooked over the other and eats croissants, stale since Tuesday morning, slugging coffee black because the milk has turned to yellow curds.
Beneath her dressing gown, she is bloody with mosquito bites. Unrazored beneath the arms, unplucked, unmoisturised. The yeasty smell of unwashed bedlinen, salve on childish bruises. Last night, she ate outside – pre-cooked garlic prawns, torn from the packet – and the plates have been left to moulder in the heat of the day. Vulture-like, gulls circle the deck. Dark wails across a melted sky.
‘You’d set yourself on fire, if you ever tried to live by yourself,’ Cece had once said. ‘Two days, tops. You’d boil an egg and burn the kitchen to the ground. Either that or we’d find you three weeks later, suffocated under piles of your own mess. You’re not a natural housekeeper, sweetie. You’re not that type.’
‘Only because you’ve never let me try.’
Best British Short Stories 2019 Page 12