Best British Short Stories 2015

by Nicholas Royle

  The Rossi brothers are sitting in the white plastic chairs by the barbecue pit, smoking red-boxed Marlboros. When they make eye contact with him they both raise their hands at the same time like choreographed puppets, crooking their fingers in a come-here gesture. He shakes his head; he’s not in the mood to discuss business. Not at the party; not here.

  He turns away and merges with the group of children, huddled by the swimming pool. It only takes a quick scan of the crowd to see that his daughter’s not among them: no long black braid hanging down her back, no baggy blue T-shirt with holes in the collar from her anxious chewing. His fingers brush briefly against the slight bulge in his back pocket from the Jell-o baggie. The children are all busy, hunched with intense focus over the paper plates. They’re dripping crayon wax in the centre of the plates, creating a base that will harden and keep their candles propped up. The plates are then cast away into the swimming pool, transformed into tiny fragile boats, the orange flames casting faint reflections in the dark water below.

  ‘Oh!’ he shouts when one candle topples over and extinguishes with a mournful hiss. Some of the kids jump, startled by his cry; most simply turn slowly and stare. He tries to smile, even though he knows this never looks comforting: the scar splits his upper lip so that his tooth pokes out, a pink hairless line arches over his left eyebrow.

  ‘It’s fine,’ one of the older girls says to a little boy she’s been helping, whose eyes are getting bigger and more watery-looking by the second. ‘Just make another one. What colour crayon do you want?’ She shoves some into his fist.

  He turns away, shoes crunching on the gritty patio tiles. He does this all the time: he’ll bang his knee against the dining room table, or drop a tangerine onto the floor immediately after peeling it, or accidentally fumble a fork, and then let out an explosive bellow of OH! It makes the maids come running, the bodyguards look up sharply. Everyone keeps thinking you’re having a heart attack, his daughter once told him, but then it turns out you just spilled some milk.

  By now he’s wandered over to the mango tree, where Alonso is still breathlessly summarising his beloved TV series to a circle of people. Alonso has the unfortunate skin type that turns as pink as strawberry juice, no matter the humidity levels or how slow he’s been drinking.

  ‘So they bring in the red-beard guy, begging and screaming,’ Alonso is saying. ‘But when the blade comes down, he doesn’t cry out for his mother or wife or daughters. Instead he starts sobbing for his country, his army. I did you wrong, I did you wrong, he’s shouting, and the crowd starts cheering.’

  ‘Like the Romans,’ says Ravassa’s wife, lightly touching a small mark by her lower lip that she hopes nobody else has noticed – a pimple? A mole? ‘The Christians and the lions.’

  At the border of the group, Mrs Montoya has just finished her story about Baloo, how he chased her around the yard, tugging on her skirt and smacking his thick black lips. ‘Thank God they got rid of him,’ she says, gesturing towards her feet. ‘There’s no way I could run in these heels.’ Tom Harris and Robert Smith nod in unison, even though they’re in separate departments at the fruit company (agronomy and marketing respectively) and don’t really know each other that well. They’re both secretly glad that Mrs Montoya’s incessant chatter is filling in the silence between them. When she finally heads back to the patio to refill her drink, Tom shyly asks Robert if he has a lighter. Smoking together, looking at the pool and the squat orange flowerpots, the Christmas lights dangling like fireflies stuck in the grapefruit tree, Robert will tell Tom that Amanda Quintero’s husband has just joined a strange new American religion that doesn’t allow you to cut your hair.

  ‘What will he do once it’s summer?’ Tom asks, who’s only been here for six months and still sleeps with the fan as close to his bed as possible, blasting air in his face, even when it rains.

  ‘Be hot,’ says Robert, taking another drag.

  He blows the smoke right into our faces, but we don’t blink, we don’t move an inch. We’ve been listening carefully, behaving ourselves, lingering on the edges. Sometimes we lean in close, inhale the faint scents of cologne and perfume, study the sweat on men’s upper lips, the base of women’s collarbones. An enormous black cicada buzzes past and hits the drainpipe with a clatter.

  We’re still watching him, too – the way he’s rocking back and forth on his heels, rubbing his shirtsleeves as though chilled. ‘Excuse me,’ he says abruptly to one of the passing servers, a young woman holding a bowl scraped clean of lavender-flavoured goat’s cheese. She immediately freezes in her tracks. ‘My daughter – have you seen her?’ He pauses, trying to find the right words for a description – the tip of her black braid, permanently wet from her nervous sucking? The damp patches in her armpits, regardless of the temperature? The scowling, baby-fat cheeks, the sour curdling of her mouth when he hesitantly says something like You know, you could invite somebody over to spend the weekend – a friend of yours, if you’d like. The icy cold feeling oozing from her shoulder blades as she contemptuously retreats to her room?

  But the young woman is nodding her head, backing away, holding the bowl close to her chest like a shield. Right before she turns around, she says in a fast voice, ‘By the palm tree, sir – Ramón was bringing her shrimp.’ And just like that she flees across the patio, almost bumping into a flowerpot. As she disappears through the swinging door, he thinks, Ramón?

  He turns and starts walking into the depths of the garden. He swings his arms purposefully, wrinkles his forehead with the expression of a man on a mission, so that anyone contemplating stopping him with a Why so nice to see you, it’s been ages! will think twice. He pauses by the palm tree, resting his hand on the scars hacked into the trunk. They’re ancient relics from his daughter’s kindergarten birthday parties, epic affairs in which the garden filled with screaming children, waving plastic Thunder Cat swords, their lips stained with bright blue frosting, the swimming pool transformed into a froth from their kicking legs and cannonball dives. How about that friend of yours, he’d said. You used to invite him over here all the time. I don’t think I’ve seen him in years. You know, the blond one?

  Dad, she’d said. Why don’t you shut the fuck up?

  On the ground is a solitary flip-flop, the grey ghost of her foot imprinted on the thin rubber. Nearby is a wooden stick smeared black from the grill, gnawed with teeth marks from where she scraped off every last piece of shrimp possible. He looks around, but the only eyes he meets are those of the rabbits, their trembling noses pushed up against the chicken wire, expressions the same as the young waitress moments before.

  He walks ahead, leaving the flip-flop behind. He moves past the papaya trees, which have been afflicted by a mysterious disease for weeks now, the fruit stinking of rotten fish and the trunks covered in oozing sores. He passes the compost heap, filled with dry branches slashed from trees by the gardeners’ sharp machetes, and kitchen scraps that the maids routinely carry out in orange plastic buckets. He walks by the abandoned birdhouse, vines hanging down the rotting wood, the lion cage with its rusty bars and leaf-covered roof. César the lion has been gone for half a decade, the peacock a few years less than that. César died convulsing, mouth filled with a thick yellow foam that the keeper nonchalantly said had come from eating ‘something bad’, while the peacock – what happened to the peacock? Its throat ripped open by a possum? An unexplained disappearance into thin air, leaving only glimmering blue-green feathers behind? Even five years ago he felt too exhausted to replace them, and it feels even less worth it now – it’s just not the time and place for those sorts of things any more, for that kind of exhibitionism. Not the right atmosphere. He walks on, the house getting smaller in the distance, the sounds of the party getting fainter, ignoring the dampness seeping into the hems of his trousers, the midge-bites forming on his arms.

  We follow him as best we can. We tread carefully over the squashed mangoes and dark green chicken
turds curled up like undiscovered Easter candy among the grass. We follow him past the fenced field, the one with the steer who always looks so sad, and never bothers to flick the flies away from its thick eyelashes. We pass the outhouse with the backup electricity generator, the acacia tree where the buzzards roost. The ranch is over a thousand hectares long but he won’t be going much farther.

  We’re just about to begin, when it happens. At first there’s hardly any sound, the canopy barely rustling, trees shaking. We stand as still as possible as he turns around sharply, staring deep into the darkness around him. ‘Sweetie?’ he says. ‘Is that you?’

  The sound grows louder, leaves and twigs crashing down.

  ‘Who’s there?’ His hand moves to his hip, towards the hidden holster. Fingers tensed and ready.

  The monkey takes its last swing out of the tree, landing heavily on the ground. It straightens up, wet black eyes blinking. His fingers relax around the holster, but don’t move away.

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘Hello there, old friend.’

  Baloo doesn’t even give him a glance. Instead, he stares right at us.

  We stare back.

  ‘Sorry I don’t have anything for you,’ he says. ‘Any, ah, goodies.’ He’s touching his waist and back pockets, instinctively feeling for something, wishing he’d brought the flip-flop, or even the gnawed stick. His fingers suddenly detect the plastic baggie of Jell-o powder, which he immediately pulls out and throws in Baloo’s direction. It flutters weakly like a translucent moth, landing near the monkey’s foot. Baloo doesn’t even flinch, his eyes still fixed unblinkingly on us. We shift around uncomfortably, glancing at each other, nervously crossing and uncrossing our arms. Some of us tentatively touch our cheeks and foreheads, tracing the skin with our fingertips.

  It’s almost like he’s saying: What’s wrong with your faces?

  Or even: Wait – what did they do to you?

  ‘Good monkey,’ he says, backing away, one slow but steady footstep at a time. ‘Nice little Baloo.’ In response Baloo releases a long lazy yawn, flashing a row of solid yellow teeth. His breath is warm and stinks of overripe fruit.

  The cellphone rings, its high-pitched trill breaking the silence, and we can’t help but jump as Baloo swiftly turns and flees into the undergrowth, bushes rattling like chattering teeth. He fumbles with the cellphone as he pulls it out, fingers clumsy, answers just before it goes to voicemail. At first he thinks it’s Nicolás from the processing laboratory, speaking rapidly in muffled tones, but finally recognises prostate-cancer Andrés – he’s agitated, calling long-distance from Medellín, asking repeatedly if it’s safe to speak right now. He listens calmly to the update, strolling back towards the house. He interrupts with a stifled snort of laughter, after Andrés says, My advice would be for you to take a trip abroad for a while – with your daughter especially. Why risk it? Go to Europe; take her someplace nice. Just until things blow over with these guys. Until the situation is safe again.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he says, cutting Andrés off. ‘I don’t care what you have to do. Just take care of it.’

  The walk back to the house feels strangely short. Right as he passes the flip-flop he pauses, as if about to bend over and scoop it up, but at the last second he turns quickly away, leaving it behind in the grass. The party’s now reached the point where it’s either going to turn into anarchy or collapse into exhausted decay. Somebody’s thrown up on the grass, a sour orange puddle. The dancers and drinkers on the patio are still mingling, eyes glassy, cheeks stiff from smiling. Somebody’s turned the music up so loud that the bass hurts his eardrums.

  He’s heading towards the patio door when he’s spotted. Hey, there you are! Where have you been hiding? He’s reluctantly tugged away, pulled into the crowd. His shoulders are slapped, his arms are squeezed, he receives winks and smiles, shouts and whoops. A shot of aguardiente, miraculously still cold, is pushed into his hand, followed by delicate kisses on his cheek. Terrific party! Amazing! Best time I’ve had since Carnival!

  Everybody’s happy to see him; they’re thrilled that he’s here. He briefly scans the crowd one last time, but there are no children to be seen at this point – no small bowed heads, no hands stained with hardened candle wax, no wet chewed braid. The phone sits in his back pocket, still warm from the call.

  He checks his messages one more time from the quietest corner of the patio, under the grapefruit tree by the swimming pool. There are no new voicemails. Not even a text.

  He’s walking past the swimming pool when he sees it: the last paper plate, bobbing up and down, half-sunken. Its candle is long gone, most likely sunk to the bottom, now rolling slowly across the tiles. The pool is completely dark; there’s no longer any light to be seen. He stops and watches.

  There are more packages of paper plates deep inside the pantry somewhere. He could go ask a maid to bring more out. Or even better, he could get them himself. Take the key off the chain, unlock the door, head inside. If he wanted to, he could spend some time slumped on the floor, leaning against the wall, eyes closed, hands resting calmly in lap. It could be the kind of place where he could stay for ever. Stay secret. Stay safe. A place where he could lock himself away and never, ever be found.

  We’ll be watching, though. We don’t mind. We’re not in a hurry.

  We’re not going anywhere.

  Worlds From the Word’s End

  JOANNA WALSH

  WE NEED TO talk.

  I’m writing to you so you’ll understand why I can’t write to you any more.

  I could never talk to you. We didn’t exactly have a meaningful relationship. Perhaps that’s why I have all these words left when so many others have none at all. The postal system’s still going, so I expect you will get this letter. Bills continue to be sent by mail (figures accompany icons: an electric light bulb, a gas flame, a wave) as do postcards (wordless views). And letters do still arrive (addresses are roughly sketched maps, in case you wondered) so I’ll take this opportunity to get my words in edgeways while I still can, folded into a slim envelope. When they drop through your letterbox, I hope that they don’t fall flat.

  It’s the old story: it’s not you, it’s me. Or, rather, it’s where we’re at. We don’t talk any more, not now, not round here. You know how things have changed. But I have to tell you all over again because what happened between us seemed to be part of what happened everywhere.

  It was more than a language barrier. I thought we were reading from the same page, but it was really only you that ever had a way with words. Sometimes you put them into my mouth, then you took them right out again. You never minced them, made anything easier to swallow, and the words you put in for me were hardly ever good. They left a bitter taste. As for me, you twisted my words and broke my English until I was only as good as my word: good for nothing, or for saying nothing. I stopped answering and that was the way you liked it. You told me you preferred your women quiet. You wanted to increase your word power? Trouble is, you didn’t know your own strength.

  Communication went out of fashion about the same time as we stopped speaking. It started, as does almost everything, as a trend. Early adopters seeking something retro, as usual, looked to their grannies, their aunties: silent women in cardigans who never went out. Who knows if these women were really quiet? I doubt the hipsters knew, any more than they could tell how cheese-makers or hand-knitters really went about their business. Whether their adoption of these women’s silence was a misinterpretation of the past or a genuine unearthing, it happened. Initially, gatherings – I mean parties, that sort of thing – became quieter, then entirely noiseless. Losing their raison d’être, they grew smaller and eventually ceased to exist, as people came to favour staying in, waiting at telephone tables for calls that never came.

  We scarcely noticed how the silence went mainstream, but if I had to trace a pattern I’d say our nouns faded first. We tried abbr
eviations, acronyms, txtspk, but they made us blue, reminded us of the things we used to say, and, not being a literary nation, we’d never quite got our heads around metaphor. We’d taken ourselves at our word, literally: so that, in everyday speech the supermarket became ‘that big shiny thing where you buy other things’, your house, ‘the building one block from the corner, count two along’. A little later this morphed into ‘that place a little way from where you go round, then a bit further on’. We began to revel in indirectness. Hunters of urban cool would show off, limiting themselves to, ‘that over there,’ and finally would do no more than grunt and jerk a thumb. They looked like they had something better to do than engage in casual conversation. We provincials were dumbstruck.

  Grammar went second. I’m not inferring we were disinterested. If I was to speculate – between you and I – those most effected were people that thought too much of who they had words with. As for myself, I’d refute that our famous last words could of lingered. Irregardless of other uses, we couldn’t eat them. Crumbling by the day, months went by, ’til we found our frequent grammatical errors just one thing less to lose. In other words, we began to said, ‘kinda’ a lot, and ‘sort of’ but, y’know . . . We lost heart and failed to end sentences.

  We have no sayings, now, only doings, though never a ‘doing word’. Actions speak louder than words (a wise saw: if only I’d looked before I ever listened to you), especially as we can’t remember very far back. We have erased all tenses except the present, though for a while we hung on to the imperfect, which suggested that things were going on as they always had done, and would continue thus.