She began to enjoy the way her son handled food, his detachment and curiosity. He would lift raspberries into the air and repeatedly scrunch them between his fingers, only putting them towards his mouth as an afterthought. When she gave him strips of bread, he sometimes chewed on them but just as often raised them and let them drop ceremoniously. Crusts gathered on the kitchen floor. Then he would grin his toothless smile and grunt. There was joy in the letting go. He loved to throw squiggles of pasta, to flatten his hands in peanut butter. She took him to cafes in the city centre where he flung the mango and avocado she’d so carefully sliced and packed in a plastic tub on the ground to be squashed and trodden, oozing juice into the reclaimed boards. Nobody ever minded. Everybody smiled at his smeared face, the blobs of food on his nose and forehead.
On the last day of the eighth week, she bundled her baby into a sling and set off from Lady’s Bridge, checking the map as she went, not for directions but for place names. There was a spidery footbridge, metal and tall. The Cobweb Bridge. Her footsteps echoed on it. The walls were pink and green with graffiti. She could follow the Five Weirs Walk all the way past the industrial estates and then walk back along the canal to the basin. It was a grey, humid morning and she was sweating already. There were diversions and footpath closures and the route sent her past old foundries and sleepy sandwich shops with chalkboards outside. The could hear welding, men shouting over the din. Somehow, just when it seemed she would never rejoin the water it would appear, rushing constant on her left. Attercliffe, a proud bridge, the weir running silver. By the shopping precinct, she took her baby out of the carrier and leaned him forwards towards the sound. A heron appeared to their right, stepping thoughtfully from depth to shallows. Her son squealed and flapped his arm, bird-like and sudden. There were shopping trolleys and tyres, lengths of orange rope. Life was everywhere around them, endless and derelict and broken. It did not matter, she thought, what any of this was called. It was all pure river.
ROBERT STONE
PURITY
Edward and Marcia had got into the habit of walking along the cliff-top at dusk. What, here on Auskerry, Edward was tempted to call the gloaming. The sultry day was much cooler now and, indeed, would soon be cold. At this latitude the summer sky was still pale, but the first stars could already be made out. Marcia had something she wanted to tell Edward and Edward did not want to hear it.
They ambled hand in hand towards the remains of the chapel, not really intending to reach them. Marcia said she would show him the whirlpool she had been observing that afternoon, a new and especially large one. Her red hair looked almost purple in this light. She was lustrous, thought Edward. She was certainly pregnant, he could tell that, and she knew it, and she was very happy. Despite everything, Marcia had always wanted a child.
She couldn’t leave her telescope unattended on the cliff, but Edward had his binoculars and he stood and looked out at the whirlpool while Marcia sat on a rock, brushed the small stones out of her sandals and explained it to him. She had noted it a week before, but it must be much older, unless it had grown unusually quickly. It was as though the water were being slowly stirred by the invisible spoon of a giant cook. Marcia would film it if they could charge the battery for the camera. Edward nodded. If she liked. The seals were gone from the beach. Luckily, there were no pups at this time of the year.
Edward wondered who the father of his wife’s child might be. He could not be absolutely sure that it was not himself, but he was almost so. That was what Marcia did not know. The extent to which Edward was sterile. He had kept that from her. She thought that they had just been unlucky so far.
– There’s a chance we will see a meteor tonight. It is the Perseid season. It will be easier after midnight, when it gets really dark, he said.
He knew they wouldn’t be out so late.
So, who was the father? He couldn’t believe it was that old goat Jack, let alone Denny, and there was literally no one else on the island. It could have been one of the visitors. There had been none for months now and he couldn’t recall any of their faces. None of them had ever spent a night on Auskerry. That would have been quick work even by Marcia’s standards. Maybe Edward had got lucky, if that was the word for it. Of course, from the gene-spreading point of view, a random tourist could be a good idea, setting aside the barbarity of it.
Marcia started to talk about what fun it might have been to be on an island like this when you were a child and she might have told him then, but they were both stopped by Monboddo’s stentorian roar. A sound they had heard many times. The eeriest sound they had ever heard certainly and not alarming, nor unexpected, even, but every time they heard it it moved them. It could not be heard without emotion.
Monboddo was the leader, at the moment, of the orangutan clan that had taken control of the chapel ruins and the area around the lighthouse. The roar was not directed at the humans, or probably not. The ape might have been moved by the churning whirlpool, or he might have seen a comet.
Edward and Marcia saw a group of the apes now a few hundred yards ahead of them, sitting, relaxed, chins on chests, like so many boulders or standing stones. The husband and wife knew these particular animals and could have approached them, but they had no wish to disturb and so turned around and began to walk slowly back towards the compound.
– Apes of idleness is Shakespeare, you know, said Marcia. I read that today.
– Apes and monkeys are known for mischief, cheek and lust.
Edward pointed out the late blossom on the brambles. There were still buttercups in spring and blackberries in autumn. That made the island seem normal, although normal, he supposed, was just what you got used to.
Behind them, Monboddo raised his long arm and pointed far into the galaxy.
Edward wandered around the compound to see about the fences. It was nonsense of course to build fences to keep out orangutans, but he felt it provided some kind of discouragement, although it could prevent no determined animal. There was an ape on the roof now. He thought he recognised the young male, Conrad, who had learned to spin a teetotum and who had then exhausted his interest in that, or his understanding of it, and could not be persuaded to pick it up again. But Edward couldn’t be sure it was Conrad at all. The light was against him.
His interest in the fencing was motivated by the fact that someone or something was breaking it regularly. The staples were pulled out of the posts and wires prised apart. It would take some strength, but who was doing it? Jack and Denny Norton, the stockmen, did not bother fencing their own house and they viewed Edward’s arrangements with some disdain, but he did not think that they would take the trouble to break his fence.
Jack had said that the fence made it look as though Edward and Marcia were in a cage while the apes roamed free. Beasts, Jack called them.
When he went inside, Edward was careful to shut the door properly behind him. Conrad could stay on the roof if he wanted to. There was an ape skull on the shelf where Edward threw his hat. That had never met with any attention. There had been a stuffed orangutan, on which coats had been hung, in the hall, but he had had that burned as soon as they had moved in.
The distressing gurgling in the pipes meant Marcia was in the shower. He hoped she had bolted the door. The orangutans loved being squirted with the shower hose. Unless the bolt was thrown, they always, at least one of them, appeared in the doorway for a spray. Then they would run away grunting indignantly and happily, their faces puckered with delight, only to reappear within a minute for another go.
Udo was sitting in the armchair listening to music. Or at least he was wearing the headphones, which he liked to do. He was leafing through the photograph album, another favourite pastime, and he ignored Edward. Udo turned over the cardboard pages of the book with that meticulousness and apparent hauteur that animals have. This kind of behaviour was an indulgence that Edward was barely prepared to allow. Was he being ignored? Was it appropriate to say that of an ape? Well, when he and Udo sat in this roo
m together and Marcia came in, the ape did not ignore her, he could tell you that. Edward took the album from Udo and looked at the page. A much younger Marcia in a bathing costume. He wondered if Udo could recognise her. What did an animal, who lived so much in the present, make of a photograph? He closed the album and replaced it on the shelf. These were not scientific questions. Udo removed the headphones and folded his hands across his great belly.
– Very well, he seemed to be saying, I am listening. What is it you want?
Udo had picked up some kind of stress injury to his right arm. They had seen him favouring it. He allowed Edward to examine him now. Some swelling, but healing was in progress.
As soon as the door from the bedroom clicked open and Marcia walked in, Udo broke away from Edward and waddled over to the woman. The apes walked awkwardly on the ground like great damaged spiders, appearing to have longer and more limbs than they do. Marcia kissed and tickled the ape, while Udo feigned, or felt, hilarity. She gave Udo the jug of pens and he scuttled off to find paper as if eager to please her.
– If apes are capable of nostalgia, said Edward, does that mean it is a mistake to say that animals never feel that, or should we say that the apes are no longer animals?
Now Marcia ignored him. Edward was annoyed with her for meddling with his experiments, muddling their purity, and she could tell that. Udo should really be in a cage outside with the other subjects Jack and Denny brought in for weighing, measuring and blood-testing.
– You shouldn’t kiss the apes, you know. We had one go blind last month and we don’t know why.
Edward had finally agreed to let Jack shoot the blind orangutan, an elderly female, but the creature had gone missing before Jack could catch up with her.
– I think you’re jealous, Edward.
Marcia now tried to kiss Edward, but he shied away, not wanting to put his lips where Udo’s had been.
Jack Norton walked in, followed by his son, Denny, having no more notion of knocking on the door than an ape, perhaps hoping to surprise Edward and Marcia in just such a situation.
Old Jack’s stone face spoke a one-word vocabulary: scorn. His son was simple-minded and therefore friendlier looking. Nonetheless, they were clearly father and son.
– What’s he listening to? asked Denny.
Udo had the headphones on again.
– Benjamin Britten, said Edward.
– I’d rather listen to a blackbird, said Denny.
– Oh, Denny, said Marcia, smiling.
– Shut up, Denny, said his father.
Jack thought Edward and Marcia, equally, were too soft with the apes, too intimate with them and at the same time too squeamish. Jack would not give the apes names, though Denny would. Edward looked at Denny’s filthy T-shirt, which he wore almost all of the time that he wasn’t bare-chested. It had the words Spit Car printed on it, which he supposed was a band, or had been once.
Edward was not surprised, but he was dismayed, to see that the Nortons had a brace of rabbits almost certainly intended as a gift for them, but actually a torment. Neither Edward nor Marcia could skin and gut a rabbit. When they had first been given such a gift, they should have confessed this, but Edward, at least, had been too ashamed and now, many rabbits later, it was too late. They would have appreciated the fresh meat. Edward had buried the gifts behind the compound and had had to bury them deep in case an ape dug them up and humiliated him. There was a rabbit cemetery back there now. Sometimes they were given a haunch of seal meat, strictly speaking, contraband. That was vile. Either they didn’t know how to cook it, or it was always vile.
Edward looked at Jack and Denny with helpless disgust. They were very hairy men, with hairy wrists even, while Edward was fair and balding. Even Udo was going a little thin on top. The apes were slowly becoming Scottish people while the stockmen devolved. There were always males hanging around this house, hanging around Marcia really.
Marcia gave their guests a small glass of wine each and Edward took the rabbits without thanking. Jack would leave his wine untasted somewhere discreetly before he left while Denny tossed his back and made an extraordinary face at what he found to be the appalling sourness of the drink. Marcia stood close to Denny during this performance, partly because she found it so amusing and also because it prevented Denny from staring so candidly at her breasts, which he would otherwise do throughout the visit. Denny’s potential excitement at the chance of overlooking Marcia’s sunbathing antics was easily imagined by Edward.
Udo wanted a glass of wine, but Edward would not allow that. Jack snorted. Edward felt closer to Udo than he did to Jack or Denny.
A small female orangutan, Grace, now appeared from the bedroom, where she had been rummaging absolutely without permission, wearing Marcia’s bra on her head, in imitation of Udo’s headphones. Denny was overjoyed, pointed at Marcia’s chest and choked on the dregs of his wine. Edward blushed, somewhat to his own amazement.
After the stockmen had left, Edward asked Marcia if she was all right. She was surprised and guessed that he wanted to be asked the same question, but she wouldn’t ask it.
– Denny, he said.
– Well, naturally, I do feel very slightly eaten alive.
He put his arm around her shoulders and smoothed the palm of his hand proprietorially across her breasts. Udo stared and Marcia gave a soft chuckle which could have meant anything, Edward thought.
At the quay where the tourists used to disembark, there was a signboard giving the history of the Auskerry experiment in some detail. No one ever read it. It had been erected in the wrong place so that you had to shuffle past it too quickly, to get out of the way of the people behind you. Besides, everyone already knew what it said and most of the visitors were more interested in the birds, or even the plants.
The signboard reminded everyone of Lord Monboddo’s famous declaration, the orangutan is an animal of human form, inside as well as outside … the dispositions and affection of his mind, gentle and humane, are sufficient to demonstrate him a man. He had also said that the orangutan is like a man because he can feel shame, but that was not on the board. Strange man Monboddo, after whom, by tradition, an orangutan was always named; he was important in the history of nudism, being a champion of what he called the air bath, which he practised in the privacy of his bedroom.
None of the orangutans now on this island had ever been to Borneo or Sumatra. It had been some generations since those places had become no longer habitable by apes and some ten years now since the last human had left, so far as anyone knew. The Laird of Auskerry, coincidentally, Marcia’s great-great-grandfather, had paid for the capture and transport to Orkney of as many of Indonesia’s orangutans as was practicable. The cost had been extraordinary, but far from crippling for a man of such wealth.
The project had attracted some criticism. Some thought that these funds might have been more sensibly expended in aid of the many millions of humans displaced at that time. Others suggested that Orkney was a wholly unsuitable habitat for orangutans. These people simply failed to understand the nature of the experiment, thought Edward.
The apes had taken time to even begin to get used to the new environment. Some of them, dominant males, had become unduly aggressive, exhibiting signs of what it would not be wrong to call mental illness. A number had been destroyed. Jack would have loved that. A few young apes had been born with egregious deformities and these creatures had also been destroyed. The first births of healthy orangutans had been greeted with joyful excitement. Since then there had been more than one instance of twins, unheard of in south-east Asia.
The climate of Orkney had been a challenge to the apes, an inspiration to their renowned intelligence. Of course the island was now warmer and much more humid than it had once been. That suited the apes better. Air quality had deteriorated in some respects. Humans often suffered asthma-like symptoms, which had yet to be observed in the orangutan. Edward had once found an asthmatic ape, but further investigation had shown that the anim
al had been imitating the symptoms, perhaps mocking a sufferer, and was perfectly free from respiratory difficulties.
It could not be denied that the Auskerry experiment was compromised. It was not being conducted according to the purest principles. The two species of orangutan had been intermingled unavoidably, for a start. The world was stricken and this was the best that could be managed. No one was pretending that this was a really good idea; the world was out of really good ideas. Much of the southern hemisphere was inarguably in crisis and Scotland was fortunate to enjoy even this level of normality.
The apes were now prospering. Predictions were being confounded. Truth to tell, there were perhaps already too many orangutans on Auskerry. It was yet to become clear how such a dense population, in itself a success, would affect the apes, and what the man in charge of the experiment, effectively Edward, would do about it, if anything.
Edward considered that the apes represented something very old and something new, a starting again. How would human beings adapt to a world of ecological disaster? They might need to become less civilised in order to survive. Which was the most endangered species on Auskerry?
What Edward thought that he had observed among the island’s inhabitants was the development of a system of segregation, even Apartheid.
The arrival of a boat was always good news, but Jack complained about the unloading, although it was definitely one of his jobs.
– I’ll have arms like a fucking orangutan if I have to do this much longer.
Edward made a note to speak to Jack about his agricultural language in front of the tourists, and Marcia. He had never got round to that and he didn’t need to now, because there had been no tourists and very little contact with the mainland for some months.
Best British Short Stories 2020 Page 19