The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘They’re not coming in my house. I want proper workmen.’

  ‘Is workmen, Emma.’ His phone rang again. He cursed, and threw it down on the back seat, got out of the car and left her alone.

  On the pavement, Boris started talking to people. She sat inside trembling, clutching the steering-wheel. What if they suddenly rushed the car, snatched her handbag, raped her, mugged her? The phone rang again, urgent, painful. After thirteen rings she picked it up. A woman’s voice shouted in an unknown language. ‘I don’t understand,’ Emma whispered. The woman’s cries became more desperate. ‘I don’t understand. Speak English, please,’ Emma said. ‘You’re in England now. Please speak English.’

  She felt better as she said it, briefly, in this unfamiliar place, that had no rules; she stood up for something she thought she believed in, but then the phone went silent, dead, and she laid it on the seat, and felt worse than ever. It must have been his wife. She spoke no English.

  Boris came back with three hangdog giants. They got into the back without speaking a word. There was a smell of metal, and old cigarette smoke. They would make her car smell of men – for Edward was not, in that sense, a man.

  ‘I think your wife phoned,’ she said to Boris.

  He shrugged. He would not look at her. ‘Drive home please Emma. We finish the painting.’

  The cloud had cleared by the time they got back, and the sun drilled through, fiercely hot. That long dark road with its unhealthy armies had left her with a spreading weight of terror. Boris had come to her on false pretences; he had let her imagine him framed by blue mountains, aromatic meadows, sturdy flocks, but now she saw he just came from this, a sour sad place where no one was happy.

  They worked all day, the three strangers and Boris. She heard him shout at them from time to time. She went out twice, nervously, to see what they were doing, and offer tea, but Boris refused, waving one hand in dismissal, going on painting with the other one. She felt unsettled, sitting bowed in her study, trying to invent a love story, safe in her room in the cool pleasant house but uneasily aware of the four male bodies crawling all over it, obsessed, intent, locked to her hot surfaces, sweating, grunting.

  The men stayed till seven, and then filed in, burnt red by the sun, hair splashed with white, lips grey-coated, refusing to look her in the eyes. They seemed barely human. She went out and inspected. The job was finished. Boris spoke to the others, who looked only at him, as if Emma herself hardly existed.

  She needed Boris to smile at her, ‘Would you like a drink, Boris?’ she pleaded. ‘You must be thirsty after all that work. While I put the money in an envelope.’

  ‘No thank you, Emma. Men wait outside.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be all right. They’ll be perfectly happy.’

  ‘No thank you, Emma. I go now, please.’

  When Edward arrived, they had just disappeared. He was itching for a fight: the train was hellish, boiling. ‘Did he bloody well turn up?’ he shouted in the hallway.

  ‘Go out and have a look,’ said her voice from the study.

  Five minutes later, Edward came back in and appeared at her door, actually smiling. ‘At long last,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look too bad. And he’s finally cleared all his paint pots away. The whole bloody lot. Why are you crying?’

  In November, some tiles blew off the roof, and Edward instructed her to telephone Boris. She had missed him, sharply, day by day. When she tried his number, it was unobtainable. She rang it repeatedly, swearing and weeping.

  Next day she got dressed as soon as Edward was gone and drove to the suburbs, remembering. Boris’s sweet dark eyes, the slight roughness of his jaw. He had opened doors for her. Surely he liked her. He gave her a rose. He… admired her.

  The forest of men was there, as before. She kept nearly stopping, was afraid, drove on, and finally drew up beside a young, slight man. He had a thin clever face, and black eyes like Boris’s. Perhaps he came from the same country. She thought his mouth was quite appealing.

  At twelve o’clock she called him in for coffee. ‘Thirsty on the roof,’ she said, kindly, with elaborate mime to help things along.

  ‘I understand you,’ he said. ‘It’s okay. Nearly everything, I understand. In my own country, I learned good English. I am a student. I was a student –’ (Yes, she thought, they are all students. The minicab drivers all claimed to be students.) ‘…sixteenth and seventeenth century history… I am here because of the war.’ He started to talk about invasions, displacements. Oh dear, she thought, he may be a bore.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she cut in. He told her.

  ‘My last man came from there,’ she said. She felt a rush of hope and pleasure. She told him the name. ‘Perhaps you know him. Very hard workers, your countrymen.’

  His face had changed. It was charged with interest. ‘But Boris is a great man,’ he said.

  ‘Excellent worker,’ she agreed.

  ‘Is a great artist,’ he said.

  She laughed. It was charming, how they all praised each other. Every single one was a genius.

  ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘He is an artist. We think he is a genius.’

  ‘Yes, Boris liked to think he was an artist. That’s why we got on. I am artistic, too.’

  ‘In my country, Boris is a very great artist. Abroad you don’t know him, but in my country… But now I think he says he will do no more painting.’

  She wasn’t sure she had understood him. For a moment she’d thought he meant actual art. ‘Yes, he’s stopped working for me, since the summer,’ she said. ‘That’s why we need a new man, really.’

  She went to the kitchen to fetch some biscuits. He carried on talking in the rich, empty room. ‘Boris says he will do no more painting. Is a great loss for my country. He says life is over, since his daughter died. His beautiful daughter died, in August.’

  The packet wouldn’t open; she was wrenching it, noisily, crashing bourbon biscuits on to bone china, but she managed to pick out the single word ‘daughter’, and remembered Boris’s wife, her misery, the apples she ate, her grey distance. The wife and daughter had spoiled it all. ‘Are you married?’ she called back through from the kitchen.

  He shook his head. ‘Life is too hard to marry,’ he said. ‘Life is beautiful, but life is short.’

  ‘I see you are sensitive,’ she said, ‘like me. I am an artist, you know. I write. There will be other jobs for you,’ she said, smiling.

  Kenny

  Colette Paul

  Colette Paul is a Scottish author. She has published one book of short stories, Whoever You Choose to Love, which was shortlisted for the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Writers Award, and serialised on Radio Four. She won the Royal Society of Authors short story prize in 2005.

  Kenny told her last week that sometimes he forgot they weren’t living together any more. Sometimes, he said, he would turn to say something to her, or switch off the telly and reach for her. It would take him a few moments to realize she wasn’t there.

  ‘Our home used to be my sanctuary,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’

  He looked at her face for a response, and June looked away. She concentrated on a patch of wallpaper above the radiator, cream with tiny gold Chinese symbols spread along it. They were probably Chinese for Peace or Love or something. The wallpaper was torn away at one edge, and underneath someone had drawn a willy, resplendent with pubic hair.

  ‘June,’ he said, ‘d’you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  He sighed and turned away. He wasn’t in the habit of being serious or articulating his feelings, and it embarrassed him.

  ‘I don’t care what’s wrong with you,’ he said, ‘you’ll do for me, June.’

  It seemed to June that there’d been a kind of profound silence inside her, for the past few weeks now, and she didn’t know if she wanted, or even if she was able, to break it. She supposed she was depressed. She had thought, in a vague, unfocused way, that moving away might help, but nothing had changed. She
was still the same.

  This morning she wakes early. She lies still, looking out of the window, the sky heaped blue upon blue. A car horn beeps outside and then it’s quiet except for the clock ticking. The clock ticking seems to deepen the silence. Mornings are the worst time for her. She tried to describe it to Kenny once, how what she felt, just after waking, was like grief. It was like being overcome with grief, although she didn’t know what for.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s like being neither dead nor alive,’ she said another time, and Kenny took that as an insult and reminded her of all she had to be happy about.

  She gets up and walks to the kitchen, drinks a glass of water, then another one. Things used to be different; she can still remember when things were different. Remembers Kenny, up at six in the morning getting ready for work while she drifted in and out of sleep. The noise of the bathroom taps running, Kenny spitting out toothpaste and washing his face. He’s very thorough when it comes to his oral hygiene, hates people with bad breath and embarrassed by the state of his own teeth. He told her once that he used to try not to smile because of them. June was surprised; she hadn’t imagined he felt self-conscious about a single aspect of himself.

  ‘They’re the only charmless thing about me,’ he’d said, nibbling her shoulder, ‘so I can’t be doing that badly.’

  And then, still naked, coming into the bedroom, by the mirror, combing his hair. Him coming over to her, his face, smelling of soap, on her neck, saying, ‘Aren’t I a handsome devil?’ and her laughing. Telling him he looked alarming, telling him to let her sleep.

  ‘Come on, Boo, refresh me,’ he’d say, and he’d make her sit up and talk to him.

  He called her Boo because when they first met she was too shy to speak to him. He was staying in the hotel she was working in, doing some building work on the west wing extension. One night there’d been a party in the hotel bar and Kenny had come over and spoken to her. He asked her why she never said hello to him, and June said she did say hello to him. She’d blushed and Kenny had said he’d been watching her and he’d decided that she wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

  They got to know each other over that one summer. On her nights off Kenny took her to expensive restaurants, the funfair on the other side of Ayr pier, to the ten-pin bowling and the cinema. He was earning a lot from the hotel job and was angry if she tried to pay for anything. It violated his sense of what it was to be a man. Also, he liked to spend money, and liked other people knowing he spent money. One night, walking along the beach in the rain, he asked her how much she thought his socks cost.

  ‘Have a look,’ he said and lifted up his trouser leg. ‘How much?’

  June said she didn’t know, two pairs for a fiver? Kenny roared with laughter. He said they were Armani, fifteen pounds a pop. She’d been horrified.

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed,’ she said, ‘of spending that kind of money on socks?’

  ‘Ashamed? Why should I be ashamed? I left school a dunderhead with one standard grade, and now I’m wearing Armani socks. Why should I be ashamed?’ He put his arm around her and said, ‘I’m still a dunderhead right enough, but we all have our crosses to bear.’

  Kenny liked to turn everything into a party. He knew how to tell a story, gleefully, how to make his digressions more interesting than his original story. He dealt efficiently with interruptions, knowing when it was best to hand the floor over to someone else, and when to dismiss them. And though he never laughed at his own jokes, there was always this feeling that he was deliberately reining himself in, that he wouldn’t be able to stop laughing if he started. Kenny was funny. Instinctively he understood the comic value of certain words, words that other people knew but never used. He made everyone sound ridiculous, but lovably so. Regularly, at the end of the night, June would be sitting, quiet, surrounded by a bunch of people she barely knew. Kenny would be holding court, getting higher and higher, making everyone laugh. At two or three or four in the morning, in that dismal Royale Hotel bar, Kenny’d leap up and fetch the night watchman, Mr Henry, to their table. June was frightened of Mr Henry. He seemed ancient, his face lean and ferocious, dark brown and creviced from the sun. He’d once accused June of stealing a fibreglass maid that stood at the door of the hotel.

  ‘Right, what is it?’ Mr Henry would say. Kenny would point at June and shout that they couldn’t shut her up. She hadn’t taken her medication, he’d shout, she was a troublemaker, and they wanted her thrown out. Everyone would scream with laughter, and Mr Henry would be furious, telling Kenny he’d no time for his tomfoolery.

  ‘But you’re laughing inside,’ Kenny would say, slinging his arm over Mr Henry’s shoulder.

  After breakfast she cleaned the rooms on the top floor where Kenny and his workmates were staying. He would take his break at eleven and meet her up there. They would sit on the edge of the hard bed eating the complimentary shortcake and watching Colombo. They didn’t talk much when they were alone. One morning he said he thought they should take their clothes off.

  ‘You can keep your hat on,’ he said.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said June.

  ‘If you think I’m the kind of guy who would put a girl’s modesty in jeopardy,’ said Kenny, ‘then think again.’

  Light came through the cheap blue curtains, the bed sheets hadn’t been changed yet, and June could feel the grit which Kenny trailed with him from work press into her back. Afterwards he put his arm behind her neck and kissed her face.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d never, you know, done the deed,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Was it okay? I didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘It was okay. I wanted to.’

  They lay in silence, and after a while June said, ‘You look sad.’

  Sometimes she thought she could sense a sort of sadness from him. It was his eyes, she’d decided. They were pale, luminous blue, dark-lashed, and sometimes, seeing him by the door, or alone in repose, they had a dignified, sober melancholy about them.

  ‘I am sad,’ said Kenny, ‘I’ve just missed the Colombo double bill.’

  ‘Seriously,’ she said, laughing. ‘Aren’t you ever sad?’

  Kenny scrunched up his face meditatively and said, ‘Do you remember when Jamie died in EastEnders? On Christmas fucking Eve, when Sonia was waiting for him, when he’d just bought her an engagement ring? He was all happy and excited and then that bastard Martin Fowler had to run him over. There was a definite lump in my throat that night.’

  She laughed, and Kenny kissed her cheek and said, ‘Why would I ever be sad? Not one bad thing’s ever happened to me in my whole life.’

  June said, ‘It must be terrible to have a happy childhood. It doesn’t prepare you for all the crap to come. I’m glad,’ she said, ‘that I’d such a bad one.’

  ‘How was it so bad?’

  ‘You tell me about yours first.’

  Kenny shrugged and said there was nothing to tell. It was just happy.

  ‘Tell me one thing you remember,’ she said, ‘anything at all.’

  Kenny paused and then smiled. ‘There was this one time in primary school,’ he said. ‘We had to draw pictures of Britain during the war. So I drew a wee boy with a banana skin in his hand and a big smile and one of those bubbles coming out his mouth saying YUM. And then the teacher comes round to look at all our drawings, and everyone else’s drawn unhappy people and rubbly buildings and stuff. So she comes to mine and looks at it and says, “What’s that?” and points to the banana skin. And I say, “A banana skin,” and she goes, “But there weren’t any bananas during the war,” and I say, “That’s why the boy’s so happy. ’Cause he’s found a banana.” There,’ Kenny said, ‘will that do?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, laughing, ‘that’ll do.’

  June goes into the bedroom to wake Billy. He’s lying with his eyes open and starts smiling when she bends down to him. He�
�s got blue eyes and dark hair, like Kenny, and also Kenny’s sunny disposition. He looks around as if he’s willing the world to delight him. When he was first born, June was scared of holding him. What if she tripped, what if she dropped him? He was as breakable, as miraculous, as an eggshell, while around her the world of things had taken on a frightening solidity – the world of uncovered sockets, matches, stairs, and cookers. If you were vigilant you could guard against the danger of things, although not against cot death, measles, whooping cough. She read handbooks, memorized symptoms; Kenny got annoyed and said she was morbid. She read a story in a magazine about a woman who’d mistakenly put her baby in the microwave when she was in a psychotic trance.

  ‘That’s enough, June,’ Kenny had said when she told him about it. ‘If you want to scare yourself, read a horror book.’

  Sometimes, watching Kenny sling Billy over his shoulder, she was envious of how easily everything came to him. He didn’t think about the precariousness of life, it didn’t terrify him the way it terrified her. His love for Billy, and for her too, is unsparing, without anxiety. This is the way, she thinks, that he will love whoever he chooses to love.

  She dresses Billy and feeds him porridge in the kitchen. He’s getting bigger and more substantial every day – Billy Bunting, Kenny calls him – his skin soft, and fine as icing sugar, tender rolls of fat under his chin, over his knees and wrists. She lifts up his legs and kisses his feet. One day, she realizes, she won’t be able to do this any more, and a terrible feeling of loss comes over her. It’s not an unwelcome feeling; she’s glad to feel anything. There’ve been days recently when she thinks that someone could drive a nail through her arm and she wouldn’t even blink. She lifts Billy from his highchair and carries him round the kitchen. There’s a mouldy cauliflower in the fridge, and hardly anything else. She finished the milk this morning, and there’s no washing powder left. She takes out the cauliflower and puts it down on the counter, staring at it, wondering what to do next. The more she stares at the cauliflower, the more unrecognizable it becomes, the more incomprehensible. When Billy starts to wriggle, she shakes herself and throws it in the bin.