The Story

by Victoria Hislop

  They had been living behind the black-out anyway, but her mother went on living behind drawn curtains long after the war was over.

  She remembered someone inviting her to tea, to cheer her up. There had been indoor fireworks, saved from before the war. Chinese, set off in saucers. There had been a small conical Vesuvius, with a blue touch-paper and a pink and grey dragon painted on. It had done nothing but sputter until they had almost stopped looking, and then it spewed a coil of fantastically light ash, that rose and rose, becoming five or six times as large as the original, and then abruptly was still. Like a grey bun, or a very old turd. She began to cry. It was ungrateful of her. An effort had been made, to which she had not responded.

  The moon had released the wood, it seemed. Penny stood up and brushed leaf mould off her clothes. She had been ready for it and it had not come. She did not know if she had wanted to defy it, or to see that it was as she had darkly remembered it; she felt obscurely disappointed to be released from the wood. But she accepted her release and found her way back to the fields and her village along liquid trails of moonlight.

  The two women took the same train back to the city, but did not encounter each other until they got out. The passengers scurried and shuffled towards the exit, mostly heads down. Both women remembered how they had set out in the wartime dark, with their twig-legs and gas-masks. Both raised their heads as they neared the barrier, not in hope of being met, for they would not be, but automatically, to calculate where to go, and what to do. They saw each other’s face in the cavernous gloom, two pale, recognisable rounds, far enough apart for speech, and even greetings, to be awkward. In the dimness they were reduced to similarity – dark eyeholes, set mouth. For a moment or two, they stood and simply stared. On that first occasion the station vault had been full of curling steam, and the air gritty with ash. Now, the blunt-nosed sleek diesel they had left was blue and gold under a layer of grime. They saw each other through that black imagined veil which grief, or pain, or despair hang over the visible world. They saw each other’s face and thought of the unforgettable misery of the face they had seen in the forest. Each thought that the other was the witness, who made the Thing certainly real, who prevented her from slipping into the comfort of believing she had imagined it, or made it up. So they stared at each other, blankly and desperately, without acknowledgement, then picked up their baggage, and turned away into the crowd.

  Penny found that the black veil had somehow become part of her vision. She thought constantly about faces, her father’s, her mother’s – neither of which would hold their form in her mind’s eye. Primrose’s face, the hopeful little girl, the woman staring up at her from the glass case, staring at her conspiratorially over the clotted cream. The blonde infant Alys, an ingratiating sweet smile. The half-human face of the Thing. She tried, as though everything depended on it, to remember that face completely, and suffered over the detail of the dreadful droop of its mouth, the exact inanity of its blind squinneying. Present faces were blank discs, shadowed moons. Her patients came and went, children lost, or busy, or trapped behind their masks of vagueness or anxiety or over-excitement. She was increasingly unable to distinguish one from another. The face of the Thing hung in her brain, jealously soliciting her attention, distracting her from dailiness. She had gone back to its place, and had not seen it. She needed to see it. Why she needed it, was because it was more real than she was. It would have been better not even to have glimpsed it, but their paths had crossed. It had trampled on her life, had sucked out her marrow, without noticing who or what she was. She would go and face it. What else was there, she asked herself, and answered herself, nothing.

  So she made her way back, sitting alone in the train as the fields streaked past, drowsing through a century-long night under the cabbage-rose quilt in the B&B. This time she went in the old way, from the house, through the garden-gate; she found the old trail quickly, her sharp eye picked up the trace of its detritus, and soon enough she was back in the clearing, where her cairn of tiny bones by the tree-trunk was undisturbed. She gave a little sigh, dropped to her knees, and then sat with her back to the rotting wood and silently called the Thing. Almost immediately she sensed its perturbation, saw the trouble in the branches, heard the lumbering, smelt its ancient smell. It was a greyish, unremarkable day. She closed her eyes briefly as the noise and movement grew stronger. When it came, she would look it in the face, she would see what it was. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap. Her nerves relaxed. Her blood slowed. She was ready.

  Primrose was in the shopping mall, putting out her circle of rainbow-coloured plastic chairs. She creaked as she bent over them. It was pouring with rain outside, but the mall was enclosed like a crystal palace in a casing of glass. The floor under the rainbow chairs was gleaming dappled marble. They were in front of a dimpling fountain, with lights shining up through the greenish water, making golden rings round the polished pebbles and wishing-coins that lay there. The little children collected round her: their mothers kissed them goodbye, told them to be good and quiet and listen to the nice lady. They had little transparent plastic cups of shining orange juice, and each had a biscuit in silver foil. They were all colours – black skin, brown skin, pink skin, freckled skin, pink jacket, yellow jacket, purple hood, scarlet hood. Some grinned and some whimpered, some wriggled, some were still. Primrose sat on the edge of the fountain. She had decided what to do. She smiled her best, most comfortable smile, and adjusted her golden locks. Listen to me, she told them, and I’ll tell you something amazing, a story that’s never been told before.

  There were once two little girls who saw, believed they saw, a thing in a forest…

  Good People

  Maggie Gee

  Maggie Gee (b. 1948) is a British novelist who has written eleven novels and a collection of short stories. She was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, and is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the organisation. Her 2003 novel, The White Family, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She was awarded an OBE in 2012.

  Justine wondered, what is the good of these people?

  Ten minutes to take-off. They were running late. To Justine, the plane smelled slightly of burning. (She had asked the stewards several times for an aspirin, but they were busy fussing with the old and the young, pillows for two ancient tortoises with sticks, colouring books for two fractious children, one of whom didn’t seem quite normal. It wasn’t pleasant; she looked away.)

  The man came down the gangway at the edge of her vision, hauling his flight-bag, short jacket, lean hips. She sent a silent text message, sit by me. It was a nine-hour flight home. She had missed her husband badly while writing her piece on ‘Unseen Kampala’.

  As the stranger grew nearer, scanning the seat numbers, his image snapped into sharp focus. Hair very black for the colour of his skin. Dark as his sunglasses. Skin taut. Jaw clenched.

  He took the window seat beside her. The smile he gave her was formal, wary. ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ He took off his glasses. Sharp against the African sun in the window, the line of his cheek was a clear white cliff. His forehead was remarkably clear and unlined. Older than she thought, perhaps.

  ‘We are waiting for a final check on a successfully replaced component in one of the turbines,’ the captain crackled on the PA system. ‘I hope we can still make our scheduled arrival time in London. Some high winds today but they should be behind us.’

  The smell of burning seemed stronger, but she ignored it.

  ‘How long have you been in Uganda?’ she asked.

  ‘Long enough,’ the man answered. ‘What a country.’

  ‘I liked it,’ she said. ‘I loved the people.’ Now he had come, her headache was going, though the snot-covered child was still wailing in the arms of one of the blandly smiling stewards.

  ‘Oh there are good people,’ he agreed. ‘I was lucky enough to work with some very good people.’

  ‘This year was my first time in Africa,’ she offered. His teeth were
very white and even.

  Half an hour later they were still on the tarmac. The captain had announced the engineer’s arrival. The two stewards were bent over a Ugandan mother with big twin babies who were crying lustily. No one had remembered to bring her aspirin. Reassuring music on a faintly snagged tape puffed cloudlets of travel, escape, romance, into the warm air above their heads.

  The economy seats seemed very close together. She was inches away from the stranger’s lean thighs. She wondered, craning round for a second at the tens of human beings, belted in, pacified, but buzzing very faintly with desire and frustration, what would happen if suddenly they all released themselves, curled into pairs and made love to each other? She found herself remembering the fault in the turbine. No one could leave now. The great doors were fastened.

  The man had been talking; Justine only half listened. There was something slightly odd about the skin under his ears. Money had been stolen from his hotel room, one of the hundred-dollar bills in his jacket.

  ‘Of course, they’re poor,’ she interrupted. ‘It must be hard to see so many rich foreigners.’ She saw his mouth twitch with impatience.

  ‘Way I see it, there’s right and wrong. If we blur that line, we all get confused. And the Bible can help us with—’

  ‘What do you do?’ she interrupted again. The plane was quivering, gathering itself. The strange child pealed with eerie laughter. She heard a steward say ‘Good boy’ as he hurried past to his position for take-off.

  ‘Pardon me? I’m a freelance evangelist.’

  Suddenly the engine note screamed to a climax and they were roaring full-tilt down the runway. The nose rose steeply into blue heaven.

  ‘A freelance evangelist? Oh, I see.’

  Perhaps stung by her tone of voice, he began telling her what he had been doing. ‘I was working with Mrs Museveni’s people. You know, the president’s wife? They’re good people, around Janet.’ The project had been AIDS education.

  Justine rushed to show she could relate to this. ‘It’s so impressive, how Uganda is handling it. AIDS posters all over the place. Were you encouraging them to use protection?’

  ‘Well, first of all, let’s get the basics straight. See, I believe the Bible is the Word of God. And the Bible tells us to be pure until marriage—’

  ‘I respect what you’re saying,’ she said, untruthfully, and raised her voice slightly, putting him right. ‘But the reality is, young people have bodies, and their bodies push them in a certain direction.’

  ‘And their souls, ma’am? Shouldn’t we be saving their souls?’

  The molten lake. The dark flames of hell. She drew a deep breath and prepared to refute him, but the captain came on, sounding cheerful and English. A little light turbulence: fasten your seat-belts.

  They sat in silence, turned away from each other. The seat-belt sign went off again. Then the lunch trolley pulled them in the same direction. She wanted the wine, but she didn’t want him judging her. ‘Just water, please,’ the evangelist said. The stewardess had a kind, tired face. The plane juddered and she lurched sideways. ‘Are you okay ma’am?’ the evangelist asked. A steward came and helped his colleague straighten her trolley, where a dozen little bottles had toppled over, and patted her uniformed arm, consoling. The seat-belt indicator flicked back to life.

  Angrily, Justine snatched the red wine, giving the small bottle a rather silly flourish. I don’t have to be a good girl any more. Once she’d taken a deep drink, she was ready to confront him. ‘Did you say Janet Museveni? The president’s wife? They say the government is deeply corrupt. Wasn’t it a problem working with them?’

  His expression of annoyance came slowly, with effort, as if it was pulling against bands of tight tissue, as if his whole head was muscle-bound. ‘What I can tell you is that these are good people. All the people round Janet are saved.’

  Justine sat there watching him drink his water and read his book: The Fire this Time. The sun had moved, and fell directly on him. With a little shiver of triumph and horror, she began to understand his face again, the lean, craggy jaw, the smoothed pale skin. His hair and eyebrows were carefully dyed. His features had all been shifted slightly, spring-cleaned, tightened, purified. She remembered, with a jolt, watching Ugandan TV. A snowy-haired, arthritic, spruce evangelist, a tiny moon-man who must have been near eighty, had solicited gifts of $70, more than the average Ugandan annual income. He had no lines; his eyes were badly skewed.

  They’re all the same, she thought. Liars. Inhuman. They will not grow old, like the rest of us.

  At that moment, the plane fell out of the air.

  People were screaming, and a trolley crashed past them, and something hard hit her on the shoulder. Everything was changed, in violent motion. The world left them, they began again –

  their arms came together, and they clutched each other’s hands, clutched and held, and the plane fell further –

  flesh and bone, they gripped each other she was praying to everything and nothing to save her, to some God of love who cared if she fell, to anyone who loved her, to the universe, the great blue unsteadiness outside their thin shell, but it was her neighbour’s hand that held her, and she held him –

  then the plane stopped falling.

  In the relative silence, someone was moaning. A child, or a woman, began to cry. A stewardess lay half under a trolley. The lockers had spewed forth some of their bags. But the engines were still working. There was no fire. Remarkably few people seemed to be hurt. Her neck felt bad, but she could look around. The plane moved confidently through bumpy air.

  Now the captain came on to reassure them, sounding out of breath, but more English than ever. Sorry he had not seen that coming. Fortunately able to pull her up again. ‘I gather there’s some cleaning up to be done, but I hope you will enjoy the rest of the flight.’ There was scattered clapping; one man shouted ‘Well done.’ Then the volume of talk became deafening. Two stewards, glistening with perspiration, something wild about their pupils, came down the aisle, checking who was hurt, calming people down, handing out bandages and consolation.

  Justine and her neighbour remembered they were touching, and smiled at each other, washed clean by terror, and gingerly let each other go.

  ‘Thank the Lord,’ he said, but his voice was different, his pressed blue shirt black with sweat.

  Garrulous with relief she began to tell a story. All round the plane, people turned to each other, talked about what was important to them, the things they had felt in the dying moments which had suddenly, sweetly lifted back into living.

  ‘What you said about the thief who took your hundred-dollar bill. Nothing like that ever happened to me. But one day I got on the wrong matatu, and it dropped me off in a rough part of Kampala… I was being jostled in a crowd of people, and suddenly an old woman pressed up close to me and shouted, in English, “She’s with me! She’s with me!” and put her arm around me, and said “That youth want to take your bag” and pointed to a thin boy running away. Then she walked with me to some better streets. She did all that to help a stranger. I said “God bless you” from the bottom of my heart. When she left me she asked “Are you saved?” And you know, I’m not religious the way you are,’ (she smiled, tried to catch his eye) ‘but I told her “Yes,” because she had saved me.’

  The evangelist shifted, his face a reproof. ‘But ma’am, excuse me, you are not saved.’

  ‘It was a white lie,’ Justine cried, indignant.

  ‘It was false witness,’ he insisted.

  Her voice rose shrilly in self-defence. ‘But when the plane was falling, weren’t we both praying? What about love? That woman showed me love.’

  Then, angered by the haloes of ice in his eyes, neat in their tight new wallets of skin, she reached out and took his hand again, reached out and locked his fingers in hers, palping him to warmth as he resisted, and he pulled away restrainedly, because she was a woman, but she held him, mercilessly, making him love her, and after a bit she saw he was
weeping, but Justine held on, sure she was right, converting him, forcing him to see she was a good person.

  (And hidden by their uniforms, unquestioning, the faithful stewards worked on in the background, quietly doing whatever was needed.)

  The Child

  Ali Smith

  Ali Smith (b. 1962) is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, the Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement. In 2007 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has published five novels and four collections of short stories.

  I went to Waitrose as usual in my lunchbreak to get the weekly stuff. I left my trolley by the vegetables and went to find bouquet garni for the soup. But when I came back to the vegetables again I couldn’t find my trolley. It seemed to have been moved. In its place was someone else’s shopping trolley, with a child sitting in the little child seat, its fat little legs through the leg-places.