The Best British Short Stories 2013

by Nicholas Royle

  ‘Solid oak.’ The tattooed man brushed against her as he set an oil lamp on top. ‘So beautifully made you could float across a lake in that. Well, almost – we haven’t actually succeeded yet.’ He winked at her, perhaps to show he was joking, before turning away to help the others.

  Watching the shadows fling themselves against the cellar walls in an agitation of arms and legs and what seemed like horns, tails and multiple heads, the woman shivered. Why on earth had she wanted to write an article on a wine tasting? Without her mobile, she couldn’t even call her editor. At least she had her camera. Might as well document her visit; some snaps for the family album, if nothing else.

  She was about to zoom in on the mural when a hand blocked the lens. ‘What the hell – ?’

  ‘We don’t like publicity here. House rules, I’m afraid. Underground art needs to remain just that: underground. There isn’t much wine for sale anyway and we couldn’t cope with an onslaught of visitors. I’m very sorry if you weren’t apprised of this in advance.’

  No, she certainly hadn’t been apprised by the hotel receptionist. The woman stared back at the tattooed man as hard as she could, but her eyelids fluttered for an instant. Couldn’t they make an exception? The pictures wouldn’t be published, after all. She smiled persuasively and adjusted a bra string that had slipped down her shoulder.

  ‘No exceptions,’ he said. ‘This is private property.’ And he continued to look at her until she lowered her eyes. ‘Well, now that’s sorted, let’s get going.’ He sounded almost hearty.

  Why was it always him that spoke, never any of the others? Weren’t they allowed to talk? All at once the woman became aware that she could hear only guttural noises and the occasional laughter, no voices.

  She strode up to the girl, who was laying out paper napkins on one of the trestle tables. ‘Hello again,’ she said, the foreign words coming less haltingly now. ‘Thanks for getting me here, I appreciate it.’

  The girl blinked and seemed confused, saying something that sounded as if she, too, had had a touch of the sun. Through the gaps in her teeth the woman could see her tongue sliding about rather like a slug. A few of the girl’s words she thought she recognised, though they didn’t make any sense, and she gave up, addressing instead a young man with some bottles.

  ‘This is the wine cellar in Village E, isn’t it?’

  The man didn’t seem to understand either and shook his head, then bent over the table to place the bottles on the napkins. Afterwards he tried to say something, his hands twitching with the effort, but he only managed a fine spray of spittle, his lips thick and slack, his eyes squinting.

  The woman shrank back. A story all right, what a gift of a story she had strayed into! For a moment she pictured the headlines emblazoned across the front page of her newspaper: ‘Disabled People Used As Cheap Farm Labour – investigative journalist Esme K goes undercover in a secret facility among the orchards and vineyards near Lake Geneva.’

  There was a sudden commotion as everyone sat down around the tables. The woman who called herself Esme, if that was her real name, pulled her chair away from the rest for a better view of the proceedings.

  ‘Let the Bacchanalia begin,’ the tattooed man said in words and in what must have been sign language. He smiled over at her.

  ‘But . . . where are my friends?’ she asked.

  ‘They’ll be here soon. They got lost too, it appears. It’s a maze, this landscape, so many tracks traversing the vineyards and orchards that anyone might fall right off the map, even the initiated. We’re still waiting for the wine grower himself . . . Never mind, they’ll catch up with us eventually. They’ll just have to drink faster, ha, ha.’

  Everyone laughed. Everyone except Esme, who was plucking away at her skirt, which had rucked up again, exposing her thighs.

  ‘Celina here will do the honours . . . Thanks, Celina . . . Now this one, The Alliance, is a traditional white from the region, very subtle, unique in revealing the different terroirs. Let’s have a taste. Cheers!’ And he raised his glass in celebration before taking a sip. Then he picked up one of the loaves, broke off a chunk and passed it on.

  Esme glanced around. The young men were all wearing identical white shirts delicately patterned with red lines like thin trails of blood – an assembly of the national colours. As they ate and drank, they laughed and gesticulated among themselves, not paying her the slightest attention. She could tell they were deliberately ignoring her, as if they were playing some kind of game.

  She gulped down her wine, ripped into her bread. It was yeasty, almost salt free, and so moist the last of the crumbs stuck to her fingers. She was licking them off when she heard the tattooed man call to her, ‘Here are your friends now.’

  They were being led into the cellar one at a time, blindfolded and smiling. There were five in all: a teenage boy with curls like a pirate, two men, bearded and older, and two young women, a redhead and a brunette, whose hair reached all the way down to their waist.

  ‘These are your friends, aren’t they?’ he inquired.

  They weren’t, but Esme nodded anyway. She could play the game as well as anyone, making up the rules as she went along.

  When the blindfolds were removed, the new arrivals looked about them with obvious approval, excitement even. The brunette clapped her hands and exclaimed in an exotic accent how she’d been dying to see a cellar like this. ‘A real cellar. Like a dungeon.’ She laughed, then stepped over to Esme and touched her blonde hair. ‘Hey, Goldilocks,’ she said, ‘that’s what brought you here, too, yes? You want to experience the real thing, not just some game on a console. You could be the princess we’ve come to rescue!’ Laughing again, she turned to her companions, who had staring eyes with tiny pupils, like the pointed ends of knives. ‘Let’s play a hostage game, shall we?’

  For a moment Esme could have sworn she was back in the vineyards. Trapped. They were all around her. Lines of vines marched up and down the hills, straight as columns of soldiers with their arms out, the leaves on them hissing faintly in the heat, their grapes green and heavy and sour. Lizards resembling sticks vanished without a sound, betrayed only by their quick-slinking shadows. Above her the sky had melted into a white emptiness, devoid of blue and birds of prey, and she remembered suddenly one of her first-ever assignments, an article about people working in a crematorium.

  ‘But we’re having a wine tasting,’ she said, forcing a smile while trying to forget that years-ago visit to the crematorium, the velvet drapes bristly to the touch, flecked with dandruffy dust, the rubber-skin smoothness of the conveyor belt, the fingerprint smudges on the metal incinerator with its inspection opening at eye level . . . ‘That’s why we’re all here, right? For the wine tasting?’

  The brunette shrugged. ‘If you insist. I’m easy.’

  ‘Count me in,’ one of the men said, and his beard seemed to writhe like a soft little animal. ‘We’ll have plenty of time left afterwards. I paid for a four-hour adventure.’

  Skull gleaming – had he put oil on it? – the tattooed man nodded and, indicating the empty chairs among the young men, asked everyone to sit down. His language was more formal now, more measured, almost incantatory.

  Celina filled the newcomers’ glasses, offered them bread. Round and round the tables she went, never stopping once. She seemed to be everywhere.

  There was no chance of any conversation between the guests. They were separated by the young men, whose guttural laughs and noises were getting steadily louder, reminding Esme of their ululating earlier. Or had that merely been her imagination, overwrought and overheated like her body? Her head was beginning to spin, and she asked again for water.

  ‘Patience,’ said the man with the tattoos. ‘You’ll have to work up a proper thirst first.’ He smiled. ‘As I said, there’ll be plenty of water later. I promise.’

  ‘Where’s my dog?’ the teenage boy burst out sudd
enly. ‘I want my dog!’ He stumbled off towards the hulking wine barrels, perhaps to find the door. There was a crash as he fell over. He didn’t get up, just started weeping drunkenly.

  The tattooed man laughed. ‘Don’t worry about your dog. He is in good hands. No dogs allowed in here; too many legs, like yourself!’

  Faster and faster the bottles kept coming: The Lovers, Harmony, Pirate’s Pot, Song of the Cricket. Everyone was made to drink at least two glasses of Will-o’-the-Wisp, the house wine. When the young men’s noise had crescendoed into a cacophony of echoes that chased each other round the cellar walls, bouncing off the thick pillars and multiplying, the man with the tattoos rose. At his signal there was abrupt silence.

  ‘That’s it, ladies and gentlemen, Will-o’-the-Wisp concludes the first game of the evening. Next come the hairstyles, so you can look your part and –’

  ‘What part?’ Esme grabbed her bag, hugging it tight against her chest.

  ‘Any part you choose, really. That’s the fun of this game.’

  ‘Yes,’ the redhead hiccoughed. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ She seized the men on either side of her, pulling them close. ‘See, Beauty and the Beasts!’

  Esme’s head was swimming. She felt cold suddenly, cold cold cold. She got to her feet, overturning her chair. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go.’ Carefully she staggered away from all the drunken, squinting eyes, the loose, wine-red mouths swollen as if from too much kissing or biting. She expected them to stop her. But no one did.

  When she reached the upright wine barrel with the lamp on top, she tripped over something. Someone. In the half light she recognised the teenage boy tangled up in the blanket, asleep on the floor – or perhaps he had passed out. At the last moment she managed to steady herself, stubbing her toes. Wild laughter. Catcalls. Then a man’s arms went round her, iron strong, and a hard, stifling mouth pressed down on hers. She struggled, of course, tried to slither from his grasp. There was a tearing noise as her bag ripped, its fabric in shreds and the contents all over the floor. She thought again of the crippled cherry tree and how sweet its fruit had tasted – a forbidden kind of sweetness almost.

  ‘Now what have you done?’ whispered the voice of the tattooed man into her ear. ‘Here, let me help you to a little more wine. Hair of the dog, you know.’ And a bottle was slid between her lips.

  Applause from the others, clapping and stomping. As Esme tried tried tried to push the bottle away, tried tried tried to push the man away, she could hear the crashing of waves, wave upon wave upon wave breaking onto a deserted coast, and she saw there were birds circling above her now, circling and diving, keen eyed, sharp beaked, powerful, scavenging for washed-up debris, gasping fish, smashed-up crab.

  Later, once she had given up resisting, the crashing segued into a familiar stomp-stomp-clap, stomp-stomp-clap rhythm, and she sensed that some of the people were holding up cigarette lighters and candles.

  A game, this is just a game, she told herself. It was, wasn’t it? Simply a game for grown-ups. Maybe this was her initiation into the here and now, into a truly adult world. Maybe all she needed to do was allow it to happen. Enjoy it, if she dared. And why not? She pictured her article again, the letters were the size of fingers now, getting larger and larger because this story was so big, would get bigger yet as the night wore on. Still, in the most secret corner of her mind, Esme kept hoping for the wine grower, for anyone, to come and put an end to things.

  But there was no end, of course. Not for her nor for any of the others in the cellar of the old mill. Idyllic, its setting had been called by some, due perhaps to the vineyards that covered the surrounding hills and the flock of sheep grazing by the nearby pond, a deep, natural pond overhung by trees.

  Meanwhile the dog had been placed inside the first barrel. He was big enough for part of his head to be visible. They had muzzled him so he could no longer make any noise. But he would be exhausted anyway, after all that frantic barking earlier – barking his doggy heart out, it had sounded like. Only a faint growl could be heard now, which, as he floated further and further away, getting swallowed up by darkness, gradually subsided into a whimper, a whimper that might have been, almost, human.

  Eleanor – The End Notes

  David Rose

  I am, at last, only too ready to confess. It has been, over the years since her death, a bigger burden than I had hitherto realised. I am happy to relinquish it.

  Hard to know how or where to begin. Perhaps obviously, with the Delius, which is also where it ended.

  An unseasonal frost, thick as snow until the sun’s arrest. A municipal hall with quite atrocious acoustics, agonising decay. And very hard seats. But heaven.

  It’s a strange work, isn’t it, the Delius, one I had never cared for really? But with a wayward Nordic beauty that suited Eleanor perfectly. Right from the serenely passionate opening, she ‘had’ the work. Even that normally rather clumping accompanied cadenza was fleet and light.

  I knew even before the concert it was hers. I arrived early, as was my practice, slipped round the side of the hall to listen through the windows to the final run-through. Always the test of an artist’s mettle, as the adrenalin is just beginning to flow and the nerves are still abeyed, before sight of the audience. I couldn’t see her through the high windows, curtained against the dazing light. Nonetheless, I fell in love, impossible suitor though I would have made.

  And then, when she strode into the hall, pale faced, bare armed, brown hair tossed back, and stood, and I looked at her feet below the velvet skirt, I knew. You can tell so much, can’t you, from a musician’s stance, a violinist’s especially.

  Then the attack. Despite the orchestra, largely amateur, the insecure pulse from the semipro conductor, she just . . . floated through. The Scotch snap was perfection, the cadenza, as I said, and the ending, when the music dissolves into Northern light – I had to cover my ears from the crassness of the applause.

  But she was there, still half caught in reverie, half radiant against that applause, face lifted, violin at her side.

  I had to leave. There was Holst to follow. Mercifully not The Planets. I think it was the overture to The Perfect Fool, so, though a dedicated Holstian, I had to leave.

  I didn’t want to meet Eleanor that evening. I had instructed the friend who had tipped me off not to tell her I was to be present, to protect both parties from disappointment.

  I decided instead to write, suggest as drily as I could the recording contract, only later to tell her what it meant to me. I was afraid, above all of gushing. God knows, I’m gauche enough without that.

  I didn’t, when I wrote, specify the work to be recorded, and on meeting her, we were both agreed it wouldn’t be the Delius. We were both afraid the essential spontaneity would be lost in the studio. We decided instead on the Walton. But the decision at least enabled me to tell her how much the performance meant to me. I suggested we went back to it in a few years’ time.

  I also suggested, as a sort of emotional seal to the contract, taking her to meet May Harrison.

  May had known Delius, indeed he’d written the Double Concerto for her and her sister Beatrice, and completed, with Fenby’s help, the third violin sonata for May. She had by then been long retired and was being cared for by her younger sisters. There was a childlike Bohemianism about all of them – all sharing a bedroom and speaking only French to each other – that I thought would appeal to Eleanor.

  So the following Sunday, after a set-to with the starter, we motored down. I sat in the garden with the sisters and the dogs (they bred them) while May and Eleanor talked and laughed and dipped into scores.

  On the way home I determined that when funds permitted, in lieu of a proposal, I would commission a work for Eleanor herself.

  It seemed feasible at the time. My little label wasn’t doing badly. In those days, to the public at large, classical music meant Mantovani, while to the classi
cal lovers, ‘pop’ music also meant Mantovani, so one could find one’s niche, and recordings of light music subsidised the serious side, the ‘hobby’ side, as my friends liked to say.

  At the time, I had just signed a pianist to rival Russ Conway, and was anticipating a modest return.

  Alas, a few contretemps developed over the contract, an agent appeared out of the blue, and I barely broke even. So the commission – and the Walton – had to be filed under Action Later.

  Fortunately I hadn’t mentioned the commission to Eleanor, so it didn’t affect our friendship. I accompanied her when I could (not musically, that is), mostly the chamber music/church hall haul, but she loved it, every recital a hurdle.

  I helped too with her repertoire, made suggestions. I introduced her to the Finzi Introit – do you know it? A lovely work, well within the scope of amateur orchestras.

  She had also taken in the Delius sonatas; they were to be her first recording. They weren’t easy to squeeze onto one LP, so I had reason to be proud as well. They attracted perceptive reviews and sold moderately well through the Delius Society.

  But I was anxious, more than she, for a full-blooded concerto, a real hit. So I succumbed, brought out a record of old standbys – Parry, Elgar miniatures, Gardiner, and of course Eric Coates. OverCoates, as we called him in the trade, as his music helped more than one label to keep out the draughts. Thankfully it sold well on account of his wireless theme tunes, and at last the Walton could go ahead.

  There was an instant set-back – a mix-up over the orchestral parts, the publishers sending those of the viola concerto, later justifying themselves by blaming my writing (I was, not uncommonly, between secretaries at the time), but after that it went swimmingly. Eleanor, bless her, worked so hard. She was even more of a perfectionist than I realised. She had a fierce frailty that made me worry. She was never satisfied.