The Best British Fantasy 2013

by Steve Haynes

  Without turning back to look at me, she rushes towards the train, so I follow her, my feet a little warmer in her sister’s shoes, the wings surprisingly light, as if the weight has been balanced by all the mechanisms attached. The platform fills with steam, like the sea when warm tides mix with cold. Before I wonder how I’m going to fit on the train, Mrs. Harding unravels another door, until a gangway rolls down onto the platform, wide enough for me to step into the cabin.

  The cabin is lit from inside, and there are other people, some dressed in modern clothes, others, like me, have strange contraptions fitted. Mrs. Harding hops on, buzzing, despite me saying I won’t fly her strange device, she says. ‘We’ve only got one stop, I want to show you a most liberating sight!’

  I can’t imagine anywhere liberating in London, but I humour her. ‘These trains go to the moon or something?’ I look around at the people; some of them look like they belong in lands quite removed from London. Maybe the moon isn’t such a wild guess. Mrs. Harding doesn’t laugh with me; in fact she sits down and motions for me to hold onto the handrail above.

  ‘Better hold tight, this train goes fast!’ I prepare myself for a bumpy ride, close my eyes as the train fires up, can smell the steam, hear the whistle from the chimney as the doors close.

  ‘We’re here, Molly, it’s our stop!’

  I open my eyes, onto daylight. I swear it was night time in London. There’s a cliff outside, and the seaside, I can hear seagulls and smell seaweed. Mrs. Harding gets out of her seat and takes my hand, as the door opens and leads me out. No one follows, as we step onto the new platform. I can hear ice cream sellers and the sound of fairground rides. Mrs. Harding grins and points up at the sky, to where I can see others like me, human flying machines. She says, ‘This is New England. My father owned this beach and left it to me after he died. You can stay here on the ground and watch if you like?’ She motions towards a beach hut, and passes me a key. ‘You can store your wings in there?’

  I study the beaches; hear the drawl of foreign accents, similar to hers, ‘I’m in New England?’

  She nods. ‘I told you the train moved fast!’

  There’s always a price, but she hasn’t told me what it is, so I begin to unstrap my corset. ‘I’d better go home!’ She doesn’t stop me, as I protest. ‘This was a bad idea.’ A woman who uses Ladybirds for sex probably has ulterior motives. I accuse, ‘So what do you get out of this?’

  She looks confused again. ‘I told you. Possibility, a reason to live, a place to realise my passions. I want to share my inventions, Molly.’

  She looks sincere, but distracted as a young man wanders past, eating ice cream, identical wings strapped to his own corset. He grins at Mrs. Harding and says in an American drawl, ‘Hi, Emilia, you going to join us today, or go back to that stuffy laboratory of yours?’ He glances at me, ‘New recruit?’

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe not!’

  The man looks me up and down, attempting to remain neutral, but I can see he thinks I’m a coward. ‘Ah, the British are so conservative!’

  I retort, ‘Mrs. Harding find you in a brothel too?’

  He frowns at me, as if he thinks I’m crude. Mrs. Harding simply looks at the sky, admiring her work, as if she isn’t part of the conversation. A normal woman would have gone an embarrassing scarlet, by now, but not her.

  The young man offers his hand to me, despite seeming unhappy with my manner.

  ‘Zachary Turner.’

  I reply, ‘Molly Baker.’

  He continues. ‘I’m not a prostitute, although some think lawyers are lower on the social order than hookers, which is probably why I spend most of my free time on this beach!’ I return his gesture, growling at his undertone. I don’t like being accused of cowardice, and as he lets go of my hand, I realise why I took the train, why I didn’t return to the rain, the dark streets of London, crawl back to my filthy bug ridden bed, dressed like a Ladyboy.

  I turn to Mrs. Harding. ‘I’ll do it, Mrs. Harding!’

  She looks a little shocked but pleased as I strap my corset back on. She helps me tighten it, and says. ‘Call me Emilia.’ And adds, ‘We’re equal here!’

  I feel my arms tingling, the bones of a new woman, emerging from something restricting, a beautiful new creature, as the possibility of flight brightens up my dismal past life, and I leave the brothel far behind. ‘Thank you, Emilia.’

  STEPH SWAINSTON

  The Wheel of Fortune

  Tuesday morning in May, bright sunshine. I came out of the shop, carrying a pole to pull the awning down. I was whistling. The shop door banged behind me and the cat fled off the step. The whole street was vibrant with the spring sun. There, sitting on the pavement and huddled against the terrace wall, was Serin. She was a pitiful sight, gin-dimmed eyes and head to foot in gutter dirt. I had last seen her Saturday, on stage at the Campion Vaudeville, and she was wearing the same dress now, a voluminous costume made of gold foil. Her reddish wings stuck out the back and bunched up against the bricks. The feathers rustled when she moved.

  I knelt next to her. ‘Serin? . . .Are you all right?’

  She shook her head and looked away. She was on the spiral downwards, that much was obvious.

  ‘What did they do to you?’

  ‘It’s the things they make me do,’ she sobbed.

  I stroked her hair, the crackling material of her dress. ‘Did you come here to see me?’

  ‘Yes. To buy some scolopendium. Cat. Because people say you sell it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You do.’

  ‘Not to you, Serin. You don’t need it.’

  ‘I want to.’

  I pulled her arm gently. ‘Come inside. I’ll get you a cocoa; it’s better than cat.’

  She looked at me gratefully, drawing a little consolation from my touch. Her hair was so ginger it looked fake, and stiff as wire. Her green eyes would put a Rhydanne to shame, but her face was purple with dirt. It was a bizarre contrast. She began to wail. I hushed her and helped her inside the shop.

  It seemed dim after the daylight and it took a second for my eyes to adjust. I flipped up the counter, guided Serin through it and helped her onto a stool by the till. I pulled my worn black jacket off the peg and wrapped her in it like a child. ‘God, what did they do to you?’

  ‘They don’t pay me,’ she sniffed, and wiped her nose on her wrist. ‘For two weeks Crispy didn’t pay me at all and the landlord threw me out.’

  ‘Have you been living rough since – ?’

  ‘Saturday. Yeah . . . I got this dress.’ She scrunched two handfuls of the skirt.

  This city sickened me. I folded my arms and glanced at the shelves. She needed a bath and she needed a place to stay. ‘I’ll get you that cocoa,’ I said. At that moment the green linen strips hanging in the doorway whisked aside and Dotterel bustled through from the passage. He looked over his glasses at the girl. ‘Well, well. What in the name of pathos do we have here?’

  ‘This is Serin, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Your partner in grime. Ha ha.’

  Serin stared at him. I explained everything, omitting, of course, my drug dealing, while giving Serin a warning glance, and ended lamely by saying, ‘I’m just going to get her some cocoa.’

  ‘Cocoa. An excellent idea. And plenty of water, and a nip of brandy. And then we shall have breakfast. Do you have a hangover, Miss Serin?’ He added something kindly in Awian and she brightened up and replied. Her tears had cleared white patches around her eyes and she looked like a reject doll. ‘Light the fire and run the bath,’ he said to me.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then come back and man the shop. This doesn’t entail a day off, you know. Young lady, if you don’t mind wearing a shirt and trousers until you can buy some clothes.’

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that j
ust depends whether you can help run a shop.’

  Her eyes shone. ‘Do you mean . . .?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Well, we shall see.’ He turned and started taking down jars for me to make the day’s pastilles. ‘When one is caught in a tempest it is important to steer the ship, is it not? There’s no point bewailing life’s vicissitudes when they rise up, up, up as well as down. And you, young lady, are on the up. Do you know of the Wheel of Fortune? It is always spinning. You can climb it to the top, but those on top have to be careful, because it can carry them swiftly down again. And serve them right! If you languish at the bottom, bear in mind you can rise to the heights. In a city like this you need a firm place to set your foot.’

  ‘She has a voice like a nightingale,’ I said, and blushed. I don’t know where that came from.

  ‘Jant. Kitchen.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I slipped through the waxed green linen strips. As I coaxed the stove to life, and warmed the tiny pan full of milk until it frothed, I was kicking myself for saying such a weird thing. But it seemed to have effected the best introduction, for talking and snatches of laughter came through from the shop, and when I brought the cocoa in on a tray, I saw that both the stage grin and the blank stare had gone from Serin’s eyes. Dotterel had managed to make her smile through her tears.

  u

  After breakfast I showed her how to make pastilles. She was wearing one of my shirts, tied with a scarf round her little urchin waist. We had taken menthol, sugar syrup, essence of peppermint and a little liquorice, and stirred it around in a mason bowl. I folded the mixture over into itself and it went quite stiff.

  ‘This is the good bit.’ I tipped the ball of candy out onto the clean work surface and rolled it into a sausage. It was transparent, and marbled through with the black streaks of liquorice. I let Serin pick it up and place it on the pill press, which is a ridged brass plate. A similar plate went on top, squashing the mixture, then with a quick motion I whipped it across and rolled the mixture into little balls of satisfyingly equal size. ‘Cough drops.’ I said. ‘They set within the hour and then they go in one of these tins. But you have to keep the flies off them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Serin. ‘What about scolopendium?’

  ‘That’s proper chemistry, not cooking.’

  ‘Show me how to make it.’

  ‘No. It’s the hardest drug there is.’

  But she’d seen my glance to the distilling apparatus on its mahogany-topped table alongside the wall. ‘Do you use that?’

  ‘Don’t get involved.’

  ‘Everyone says you deal it. Vance said you’re in with the Wheel gang, and you give them scolopendium, and it’s the best in the city.’

  ‘I’m not in any gang.’

  ‘But you sell them cat.’

  ‘. . .Yes.’

  ‘Cool.’

  I shrugged and began to measure warm sugar syrup for the next batch. Selling drugs wasn’t cool. I’d only wanted a little money to see out my apprenticeship, but the Wheel was like a whirlpool and every night sucked me further in.

  ‘You want to dive straight into danger and drown,’ I said. ‘You can sing and you can dance. Stick to that.’

  ‘At the Campion? It’s not serious acting. It’s like a sideshow at a whorehouse. I could be Ata in The Mayor of Diw if they’d let me.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Six drops of liquorice.’

  I packed medicines with Serin all day while the city’s shadows lengthened. The cat stole in, and leapt on the counter, and was shooed out again. I sold two ounces of clove oil for toothache, camomile for stomach gripes and a dose of pennyroyal for carelessness, all decanted into stoppered flasks and carefully labelled.

  Outside, the blue sky gave way to mare’s tails, then thick cloud. A cold front battered in off the estuary and the temperature began to drop. It was colder still when we finished our meal and Dotterel retired to bed. Serin followed to sleep in the box room, but my day was just beginning.

  I left the shop and walked out of Galt district towards the docks. The Moren Canal strides in there to meet the slovenly river at a basin full of barges. By day it’s busy with the trade and shipment of all sorts of goods. Now at nearly ten o’clock it was deserted, except for a dull glow and rowdy conversation spilling from the dockers’ Kentledge Arms.

  All was silent as I followed the towpath below blind mill buildings and warehouses, deeper into the docks. Last on the wharf, by the mighty canal lock, the Fulling Mill’s barred windows were as lightless as the cold expanse of estuary. Its great hammers that beat woollen weave into fine cloth were stilled for the night, and the enormous waterwheel that drove it stood motionless. It hung above its reflection, seen now and then on the murky water, when a few spare lights from the road picked out the ripples in black and white.

  On the six spokes of the waterwheel the Wheel gang had nailed another of their victims. The body of a teenager hung there, arms and legs outstretched, head dangling. Six inch nails through his denim wrists and ankles held each limb to a different spoke. His blood had drained straight down, staining his jacket and the wheel’s enormous timbers. Then they had used him for crossbow practice.

  I passed with a shudder. The warehouse at the end of the quay looked terribly lonely. I slipped inside and found myself surrounded by tall shapes: neat piles of barrels that reached up to the corrugated iron roof. There were sacks of barley, crates of candles, bolts of cloth. I walked between them like a thief.

  In the middle of the warehouse various members of the Wheel gang were lounging around on woolsacks. They had piled hundreds of these sacks into the shape of a tall throne, and high up on it, looking down on us all, sat a young man in an exquisitely tailored grey silk suit.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Felicitia.

  He reposed with his chin on one hand, the other hand dangling. He was adorned with the most expensive makeup and fine gold jewellery, his long hair combed down straight.

  Debrah and Vance stopped playing poker and watched.

  ‘Have you got the drugs?’ he asked.

  ‘Have you got the money?’

  ‘Just give me the damn phial.’ He slipped lightly down and landed in front of me. I took the phial from my pocket and gave it to him. At once he flipped its cap, poured it into a glass of brandy ready on the table and drank it down straight. Then eyelids flickered over wide-pupilled eyes. He caught a breath and looked at me shrewdly. ‘Your payment is protection,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We caught two of the Bowyers gang hanging round your shop. Didn’t we, Vance?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘They won’t bother you again.’

  ‘Was that one outside on the wheel?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Felicitia.

  ‘What about the other one?’

  He beckoned to me and we went outside. At the edge of the lock he rested his arms on the railing and gazed down at the black water. Vance, the docker, spun an iron wheel and the water level began to fall. The water drained away and revealed a metal ladder bolted to the slimy wall. Tied to the ladder, and drooping away from it, was a pale and waterlogged corpse.

  ‘Oh god,’ I said. ‘Oh, god.’

  Felicitia leant his head on my shoulder. I could see the powder particles of his eye shadow and smelt his brandy breath.

  ‘Stay, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘Stay the night.’

  He steered me back into the warehouse. Vance pressed a glass of brandy into my hand. Debrah involved me in a game of cards, and I stayed.

  I was asleep, lying on the firmly filled woolsacks below the throne. The last candles in a stolen crystal chandelier that hung from the airy warehouse beams had failed, and all was dark.

  I was woken abruptly by an urgent hiss and a hand on my shoulder: Felicitia. ‘What?’ I asked, shrinking from his hand.

  ‘Sh!’ he said.
‘Get up.’

  What the fuck was going on? I thought that perhaps the Bowyers were about to attack, but lamplight leaking in from the docks illuminated an excited smile on Felicitia’s face – far from the usual sardonic expression he affected to match his expensive clothes. He walked towards me and I backed off, over the straw-strewn floor until I walked into the chair in which Vance had been sitting. Its cold metal pressed against the back of my legs. Felicitia giggled, shaking his hair that was dyed in stripes, for god’s sake. It reached to his shoulders and flowed into his black coat, so he seemed featureless, a strip of darkness sliced from the night. He moved with a woman’s delicacy, did it better than a woman, more like a cat.

  Vance stepped out from behind a pile of barrels and grabbed me with a hand on each bicep. I struggled to pull away but I had no chance. The greasy-haired bodybuilder tapped me on the shoulders and I sat down on the chair. He began to pull a length of cord from his pocket.

  Felicitia watched with his head on one side. ‘Why are you looking at the door, Jant? Even you can’t move that fast.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Tut, tut. If you’re going to sound so terrified you should shut up.’

  Vance looped the cord around my wrists, then pulled it appallingly tight across the back of the chair. I began to lose the feeling in my fingertips.

  ‘Aren’t you on our side?’ I appealed.

  ‘Yeh, well if I wasn’t, you didn’t put up much of a struggle.’ He tied my legs to the legs of the chair; wrought iron against my shins and impossible for me to lift.

  ‘Everybody in the Wheel has this done,’ said Felicitia slowly. ‘You want to belong to our gang, don’t you? You want to be one of us.’

  He brushed past me as he stood up and I felt his erection hard in the front of his trousers. Over the last year I had often glimpsed our symbol on Vance’s shoulder and I had watched him carve it on Debrah’s arm when she joined us, but I had always hoped the ritual would pass me by.