Best British Short Stories 2015

by Nicholas Royle

  ‘I wouldn’t call her ridiculous,’ he said, mulish. ‘Cruel, wicked, but not ridiculous. What’s there to laugh at?’

  ‘All things human laugh,’ I said.

  After some thought, he replied, ‘Jesus wept.’

  He smirked. I saw he had relaxed, knowing that because of the friggin’ delay he wouldn’t have to murder yet. ‘Mind you,’ I said, ‘she’d probably laugh if she were here. She’d laugh because she despises us. Look at your anorak. She despises your anorak. Look at my hair. She despises my hair.’

  He glanced up. He’d not looked at me before, not to see me; I was just the tea-maker. ‘The way it just hangs there,’ I explained. ‘Instead of being in corrugations. I ought to have it washed and set. It ought to go in graduated rollers, she knows where she is with that sort of hair. And I don’t like the way she walks. “Toddles”, you said. “She’ll toddle round.” You had it right, there.’

  ‘What do you think this is about?’ he said.

  ‘Ireland.’

  He nodded. ‘And I want you to understand that. I’m not shooting her because she doesn’t like the opera. Or because you don’t care for – what in sod’s name do you call it? – her accessories. It’s not about her handbag. It’s not about her hairdo. It’s about Ireland. Only Ireland, right?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’re a bit of a fake yourself, I think. You’re no nearer the old country than I am. Your great-uncles didn’t know the words either. So you might want supporting reasons. Adjuncts.’

  ‘I was brought up in a tradition,’ he said. ‘And look, it brings us here.’ He looked around, as if he didn’t believe it: the crucial act of a dedicated life, ten minutes from now, with your back to a chipboard wardrobe glossed with white veneer; a pleated paper blind, an unmade bed, a strange woman, and your last tea with no sugar in it. ‘I think of those boys on hunger strike,’ he said, ‘the first of them dead almost two years to the day that she was first elected: did you know that? It took sixty-six days for Bobby to die. And nine other boys not far behind him. After you’ve starved yourself for about forty-five days they say it gets better. You stop dry-heaving and you can take water again. But that’s your last chance, because after fifty days you can hardly see or hear. Your body digests itself. It eats itself in despair. You wonder she can’t laugh? I see nothing to laugh at.’

  ‘What can I say?’ I asked him. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said. You go and make the tea and I’ll sit here and mind the gun.’

  For a moment, he seemed to consider it. ‘You’d miss. You’re not trained at all.’

  ‘How are you trained?’

  ‘Targets.’

  ‘It’s not like a live person. You might shoot the nurses. The doctors.’

  ‘I might, at that.’

  I heard his long, smoker’s cough. ‘Oh, right, the tea,’ I said. ‘But you know another thing? They may have been blind at the end, but their eyes were open when they went into it. You can’t force pity from a government like hers. Why would she negotiate? Why would you expect it? What’s a dozen Irishmen to them? What’s a hundred? All those people, they’re capital punishers. They pretend to be modern, but leave them to themselves and they’d gouge eyes out in the public squares.’

  ‘It might not be a bad thing,’ he said. ‘Hanging. In some circumstances.’

  I stared at him. ‘For an Irish martyr? Okay. Quicker than starving yourself.’

  ‘It is that. I can’t fault you there.’

  ‘You know what men say, in the pub? They say, name an Irish martyr. They say, go on, go on, you can’t, can you?’

  ‘I could give you a string of names,’ he said. ‘They were in the paper. Two years, is that too long to remember?’

  ‘No. But keep up, will you? The people who say this, they’re Englishmen.’

  ‘You’re right. They’re Englishmen,’ he said sadly. ‘They can’t remember bugger-all.’

  Ten minutes, I thought. Ten minutes give or take. In defiance of him, I sidled up to the kitchen window. The street had fallen into its weekend torpor; the crowds were around the corner. They must be expecting her soon. There was a telephone on the kitchen worktop, right by my hand, but if I picked it up he would hear the bedroom extension give its little yip, and he would come out and kill me, not with a bullet but in some less obtrusive way that would not alert the neighbours and spoil his day.

  I stood by the kettle while it boiled. I wondered: has the eye surgery been a success? When she comes out, will she be able to see as normal? Will they have to lead her? Will her eyes be bandaged?

  I did not like the picture in my mind. I called out to him, to know the answer. No, he shouted back, the old eyes will be sharp as a tack.

  I thought, there’s not a tear in her. Not for the mother in the rain at the bus stop, or the sailor burning in the sea. She sleeps four hours a night. She lives on the fumes of whisky and the iron in the blood of her prey.

  When I took back the second mug of tea, with the demerara stirred in, he had taken off his baggy sweater, which was unravelling at the cuffs; he dresses for the tomb, I thought, layer on layer but it won’t keep out the cold. Under the wool he wore a faded flannel shirt. Its twisted collar curled up; I thought, he looks like a man who does his own laundry. ‘Hostages to fortune?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t get very far with the lasses.’ He passed a hand over his hair to flatten it, as if the adjustment might change his fortunes. ‘No kids, well, none I know of.’

  I gave him his tea. He took a gulp and winced. ‘After . . .’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Right after, they’ll know where the shot’s come from, it won’t take any time for them to work that out. Once I get down the stairs and out the front door, they’ll have me right there in the street. I’m going to take the gun, so as soon as they sight me they’ll shoot me dead.’ He paused and then said, as if I had demurred, ‘It’s the best way.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I thought you had a plan. I mean, other than getting killed.’

  ‘What better plan could I have?’ There was only a touch of sarcasm. ‘It’s a godsend, this. The hospital. Your attic. Your window. You. It’s cheap. It’s clean. It gets the job done, and it costs one man.’

  I had said to him earlier, violence solves nothing. But it was only a piety, like a grace before meat. I wasn’t attending to its meaning as I said it, and if I thought about it, I felt a hypocrite. It’s only what the strong preach to the weak: you never hear it the other way round; the strong don’t lay down their arms. ‘What if I could buy you a moment?’ I said. ‘If you were to wear your jacket to the killing, and be ready to go: to leave the widowmaker here, and pick up your empty bag, and walk out like a boiler man, the way you came in?’

  ‘As soon as I walk out of this house I’m done.’

  ‘But if you were to walk out of the house next door?’

  ‘And how would that be managed?’ he said.

  I said, ‘Come with me.’

  He was nervous to leave it, his sentry post, but on this promise he must. We still have five minutes, I said, and you know it, so come, leave your gun tidily under your chair. He crowded up behind me in the hall, and I had to tell him to step back so I could open the door. ‘Put it on the latch,’ he advised. ‘It would be a farce if we were shut out on the stairs.’

  The staircases of these houses have no daylight. You can push a time-switch on the wall and flood the landings with a yellow glare. After the allotted two minutes you will be back in the dark. But the darkness is not so deep as you first think.

  You stand, breathing gently, evenly, eyes adapting. Feet noiseless on the thick carpets, descend just one half-flight. Listen: the house is silent. The tenants who share this staircase are gone all day. Closed doors annul and muffle the world outside, the cackle of news bulletins from radios, the buzz of the trippers f
rom the top of the town, even the apocalyptic roar of the aeroplanes as they dip towards Heathrow. The air, uncirculated, has a camphor smell, as if the people who first lived here were creaking open wardrobes, lifting out their mourning clothes. Neither in nor out of the house, visible but not seen, you could lurk here for an hour undisturbed, you could loiter for a day. You could sleep here; you could dream. Neither innocent nor guilty, you could skulk here for decades, while the alderman’s daughter grows old: between step and step, grow old yourself, slip the noose of your name. One day Trinity Place will fall down, in a puff of plaster and powdered bone. Time will draw to a zero point, a dot: angels will pick through the ruins, kicking up the petals from the gutters, arms wrapped in tattered flags.

  On the stairs, a whispered word: ‘And will you kill me?’ It is a question you can only ask in the dark.

  ‘I’ll leave you gagged and taped,’ he says. ‘In the kitchen. You can tell them I did it the minute I burst in.’

  ‘But when will you really do it?’ Voice a murmur.

  ‘Just before. No time after.’

  ‘You will not. I want to see. I’m not missing this.’

  ‘Then I’ll tie you up in the bedroom, okay? I’ll tie you up with a view.’

  ‘You could let me slip downstairs just before. I’ll take a shopping bag. If nobody sees me go, I’ll say I was out the whole time. But make sure to force my door, won’t you? Like a break-in?’

  ‘I see you know my job.’

  ‘I’m learning.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to see it happen.’

  ‘I’d be able to hear it. It’ll be like the roar from the Roman circus.’

  ‘No. We’ll not do that.’ A touch: hand brushing arm. ‘Show me this thing. Whatever it is I’m here for, wasting time.’

  On the half-landing there is a door. It looks like the door to a broom cupboard. But it is heavy. Heavy to pull, hand slipping on the brass knob.

  ‘Fire door.’

  He leans past and yanks it open.

  Behind it, two inches away, another door.

  ‘Push.’

  He pushes. Slow glide, dark into matching dark.

  The same faint, trapped, accumulating scent, the scent of the margin where the private and public worlds meet: raindrops on contract carpet, wet umbrella, damp shoe-leather, metal tang of keys, the salt of metal in palm. But this is the house next door. Look down into the dim well. It is the same, but not. You can step out of that frame and into this. A killer, you enter No.21. A plumber, you exit No.20. Beyond the fire door there are other households with other lives. Different histories lie close; they are curled like winter animals, breathing shallow, pulse undetected.

  What we need, it is clear, is to buy time. A few moments’ grace to deliver us from a situation that seems unnegotiable. There is a quirk in the building’s structure. It is a slender chance but the only one. From the house next door he will emerge a few yards nearer the end of the street: nearer the right end, away from town and castle, away from the crime. We must assume that despite his bravado he does not intend to die if he can help it: that somewhere in the surrounding streets, illegally parked in a resident’s bay or blocking a resident’s drive, there is a vehicle waiting for him, to convey him beyond reach, and dissolve him as if he had never been.

  He hesitates, looking into the dark.

  ‘Try it. Do not put on the light. Do not speak. Step through.’

  Who has not seen the door in the wall? It is the invalid child’s consolation, the prisoner’s last hope. It is the easy exit for the dying man, who perishes not in the death-grip of a rattling gasp, but passes on a sigh, like a falling feather. It is a special door and obeys no laws that govern wood or iron. No locksmith can defeat it, no bailiff kick it in; patrolling policemen pass it, because it is visible only to the eye of faith. Once through it, you return as angles and air, as sparks and flame. That the assassin was a flicker in its frame, you know. Beyond the fire door he melts, and this is how you’ve never seen him on the news. This is how you don’t know his name, his face. This is how, to your certain knowledge, Mrs Thatcher went on living till she died. But note the door: note the wall: note the power of the door in the wall that you never saw was there. And note the cold wind that blows through it, when you open it a crack. History could always have been otherwise. For there is the time, the place, the black opportunity: the day, the hour, the slant of the light, the ice-cream van chiming from a distant road near the bypass.

  And stepping back, into No.21, the assassin grunts with laughter.

  ‘Shh!’ I say.

  ‘Is that your great suggestion? They shoot me a bit further along the street? Okay, we’ll give it a go. Exit along another line. A little surprise.’

  Time is short now. We return to the bedroom. He has not said if I shall live or should make other plans. He motions me to the window. ‘Open it now. Then get back.’

  He is afraid of a sudden noise that might startle someone below. But though the window is heavy, and sometimes shudders in its frame, the sash slides smoothly upwards. He need not fret. The gardens are empty. But over in the hospital, beyond the fences and shrubs, there is movement. They are beginning to come out: not the official party, but a gaggle of nurses in their aprons and caps.

  He takes up the widowmaker, lays her tenderly across his knees. He tips his chair forward, and because I see his hands are once more slippery with sweat I bring him a towel and he takes it without speaking, and wipes his palms. Once more I am reminded of something priestly: a sacrifice. A wasp dawdles over the sill. The scent of the gardens is watery, green. The tepid sunshine wobbles in, polishes his shabby brogues, moves shyly across the surface of the dressing table. I want to ask: when what is to happen, happens, will it be noisy? From where I sit? If I sit? Or stand? Stand where? At his shoulder? Perhaps I should kneel and pray.

  And now we are seconds from the target. The terrace, the lawns, are twittering with hospital personnel. A receiving line has formed. Doctors, nurses, clerks. The chef joins it, in his whites and a toque. It is a kind of hat I have only seen in children’s picture books. Despite myself, I giggle. I am conscious of every rise and fall of the assassin’s breath. A hush falls: on the gardens, and on us.

  High heels on the mossy path. Tippy-tap. Toddle on. She’s making efforts, but getting nowhere very fast. The bag on the arm, slung like a shield. The tailored suit just as I have foreseen, the pussy-cat bow, a long loop of pearls, and – a new touch – big goggle glasses. Shading her, no doubt, from the trials of the afternoon. Hand extended, she is moving along the line. Now that we are here at last, there is all the time in the world. The gunman kneels, easing into position. He sees what I see, the glittering helmet of hair. He sees it shine like a gold coin in a gutter, he sees it big as the full moon. On the sill the wasp hovers, suspends itself in still air. One easy wink of the world’s blind eye: ‘Rejoice,’ he says. ‘Fucking rejoice.’

  Lucky

  JULIANNE PACHICO

  HER PARENTS AND brother are going to spend the holiday weekend up in the mountains at the neighbour’s country house. When asked she says no, she’s not up to it – the long drive on those endlessly winding roads always makes her car-sick – and she shakes her head, sticks out her tongue and makes a face like she can already feel the nausea. She’s been up there several times anyway, knows what it’s like: she’s seen the automatic shampoo dispensers in the bathroom that fill her hands with grapefruit-scented foam, the shiny mountain bikes that have never been ridden propped up on the porch, the indoor fish pond and the seashell-patterned ashtrays. She always gets so bored, sitting in a white plastic chair and batting away flies while the adults drink beer out of green glass bottles and talk, talk, talk for hours about things she either doesn’t care about or doesn’t understand. When she hears the word guerrilla she’ll picture a group of men dressed up in gorilla suits, roaming through the jungle while
carrying rifles, wearing black rubber boots with yellow bottoms, and she’ll have to choke back laughter to prevent Coca-Cola from snorting out of her nose. The sinewy meat and burnt black corn from the grill always get stuck in her teeth and hang down from her upper molars like vines for Tarzan, and she’ll inevitably end up prodding them with her tongue for the rest of the weekend.

  So no, she tells her mother again, but thank you, and she brushes strands of blonde hair away from her eyes, smiling sweetly.

  ‘Well fine then,’ her mother says, a little sharply. ‘That means I’m going to have to tell Angelina that she can’t have the holiday weekend off like she planned and that she has to spend it here with you. Was that church thing of hers this weekend or next?’ She says this last part to her husband, who shrugs without looking up, still fiddling with the car radio knobs. One of the announcers is saying in a highly amused voice, Communist rebels? Those words don’t even mean anything any more. You might as well call them cheese sandwich rebels. Her brother makes a face at her through the car window and she makes a face right back.

  ‘Just do me a favour then, sweetie,’ her mother says. ‘As long as you’re going to be here all weekend.’ She glances across the street at the neighbour’s house, the grey automatic gates barred shut, shards of glass glistening on top of the stone walls. ‘If the phone rings,’ she says, ‘or the doorbell sounds, let Angelina deal with it. And do make sure she tells any men who ask that we’re not in the country any more. Could you do that for me?’

  ‘What kind of men?’ she asks.

  Her mother tucks a strand of hair behind her ears, blond like hers except for the grey at the roots. ‘You know what kind I mean,’ she says in her soft accent.

  So they want their revolution? the radio asks. Listen, I’ll tell you what I’d do to them! Her mother’s head flicks sharply towards her husband, and he quickly switches it off.

  After they drive away she finds her mother’s cigarettes almost immediately, hidden at the bottom of one of the woven baskets Angelina brings back from her village marketplace. She smokes one under the trees by the pool, taking quick little puffs, watching carefully for Angelina at the window. What she didn’t tell her mother is that she has plans to meet up with her friends at the mall on Monday. Katrina’s chauffeur will take them there, dropping them off at the entrance, where they’ll hover just long enough to make sure he’s gone. Then they’ll cross the highway together, ducking fast across the busy intersection, laughing and running past the wooden sticks of chicken sweating on grills and giant metal barrels of spinning brown peanuts, the clown-faced garbage cans and men in zebra costumes directing traffic. The plan is to head to the other mall across the street, the one with the upper floors still closed off with yellow electrical tape from when the last bomb went off. On the first floor is the food court that serves Cuban sandwiches and beer in lava lamp containers. That’s where the members of the football team will be, older boys with their hair slicked back and glistening. She and her friends are going to sit at the wooden picnic tables and yank their jeans down as far as they can go, tug their tank top straps aside to reveal the smallest hints of bra straps, peach and pink and black. She has this way of crossing her legs at the ankles, tilting her head to the side and smiling as though whatever is being said is the most interesting thing in the world and there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. She’ll accept their smiles, their eyes scanning her up and down, their low murmurs of approval, even the high-pitched whistles of Blondie, with the same icy sense of destiny that she accepts everything else in her life.