New Welsh Short Stories

by Author: QuarkXPress

  He let out a little sigh of annoyance.

  I said, ‘Can we get going?’

  Kenny wanted to check the tide before they set off, so they trudged down to the shoreline. The sea wasn’t visible through the mist, but the sound of it, a soft regular grinding, seemed louder than it had the day before. After a mile or so of slow climbing, over wet rock and shale, whip-grass and rutted track, they paused at a hole carved into the side of the hill. It gave some shelter from the weather. She pulled her hood back and wiped the rain from her face. It was the kind of rain that falls unseen, filmy and soft and penetrating, and she hated it, the softness, the not-quite-rainness of it that still left her soaked and shivering.

  Have a glug of this, said Kenny, unscrewing the cap on the flask. Beryl took a hesitant sniff; it smelled of iron.

  What’s in it? she said, eyeing him.

  A wee concoction of my ane.

  I’m fine, really, she said. You have it.

  Kenny tipped the flask to his lips and drank; then, with a quick flick of his wrist, dashed the dregs onto the ground.

  Beryl studied him in the flat, even light. He had a look on his face she didn’t quite like. The words mean and cruel popped into her head again, lit up like neon store signs. They continued to walk, in single file, her behind him. When the wind blew at them, she could smell his breath; a bit eggy, faintly sulphurous.

  At the top of the crag, the view was of nothing. Kenny stopped and pointed to where, if she could only see it, the croft would be. A bird was hawking in the distance. Beryl’s stomach was rumbling. She’d packed some chocolate bars in her own rucksack, and rifled through it to find them. She was sure she packed them. She turned the sack upside down, pulling out the extra cagoule Kenny made her bring, the Maglite he’d bought her for the trip, the maps. The maps? She didn’t recall putting any maps in there.

  Kenny, she said, trying to keep her voice level, What have you done with my food?

  His face split in a wide grin.

  That crap’s nae food, he said. Anyways, ya won’t need it.

  Beryl flung the rucksack at him and strode off the side of the track.

  Don’t tell me what I won’t need, Jock McBloody Tavish!

  She tried to keep moving, appalled at herself, but her anorak got caught on a stem of gorse. She could feel Kenny’s eyes on her back as she yanked at the fabric. She felt tearful and ridiculous, but then his arms were round her.

  Down there, he said, in his ordinary voice, is a surprise. Come on.

  The Kisimul Inn was renowned for its marvellous food and select range of malts, said Kenny. It was remote enough, he added, to prevent the London types from descending and ruining it with their back-to-nature jollies. No Tamsins and Tarquins here, is what he’d said, although he himself worked for a restaurant consultancy in Islington. When she’d asked him, on their third date, what exactly he did, he told her he was a ‘consumer grounded channel relevant data analyst’.

  And what do you do, he’d said, My gorgeous Bee?

  She’d loved that, the way he’d made her feel. She didn’t mind then that he never called her by her real name. That time they were in an ordinary back-street pub, and shared a bowl of chips. He seemed normal enough then.

  As far as she could make out, there were no chips on the menu at the Kisimul Inn. Kenny rattled through the dishes on the chalkboard, savouring his accent. Finnan Haddie; Cullen Skink; Bawd Bree; Bridies; Stovies…

  I wouldn’t mind just having some soup, she said, not trusting him. They’d bring bread with the soup, surely.

  Beryl held her spoon aloft over the Bawd Bree. It looked more like a stew, which was no bad thing, but there were tiny specks floating on the top. She never did get to tell him what kind of work she did, because he went on a riff about Arzak, how it was one of the best discoveries he’d ever made – as if it had been buried in a tomb until he broke in and shone a light on it – although he’d told her before about how it was the most fabulous restaurant, one of the top ten in the world. Really cutting edge.

  And three months later he still didn’t know the details of her life. He didn’t know when her birthday would be, or how old she was, even, or whether she wanted kids, or if she was happy.

  There were definitely things swimming on the top. What kind of person was she, to go on holiday with a man who didn’t know the first thing about her? And her answer came at once: she was the kind of person who thought she didn’t mind. In fact, she preferred it. She was only twenty, but already there was too much to tell. Once, when Kenny stayed overnight at her flat, he’d opened a drawer and found the framed photograph of her, tanned and smiling, arm-in-arm with Simona. Who are these two lovelies? he’d asked, and she’d felt a roar of rage that he didn’t recognise her, and said, My sisters. We don’t keep in touch. And don’t go snooping.

  She could have said, That’s me and Simona, on our sixteenth birthday; or, That’s me and my sister Simona, who went off with Michael, even though he was mine first; or, That’s me and Simona, who turned out to be the unlucky twin.

  She could have told him at any time, about Simona and how gentle she was, about her boyfriend and what a shit he was, about how two months ago she walked off the sales floor and through the glass doors and through the shopping centre and along the precinct and past the station and just kept walking until it was dark and the heel came off her shoe and she didn’t know where she was.

  Just disappeared, Kenny said, and that made her jump. He’d been talking about his ancestors, telling her about a great-aunt who had got lost on the mountain.

  They say she’d been eaten by wild boars, or strangled, or worse.

  Is there worse than strangled? asked Beryl.

  Oh aye, he said, Plenty.

  Is she the ghost, then?

  What ghost? asked Kenny, slicing into his meat.

  Last night – you said there was a ghost, she said.

  I was joking, Bee. That was a joke.

  I can’t always tell with you, she said. She peered at the floating specks in her bowl, caught one on the back of her spoon and tilted it to the light. She held it over the table for Kenny to see.

  Look, I think it’s a hair.

  Waiter, there’s a hair in my soup, he said, and sniggered.

  And that’s not funny either.

  It’s hare soup, Bee, as in game. Didn’t you know?

  She hadn’t asked what went into Bawd Bree because she didn’t want a lecture. She pushed the bowl away. Kenny shared his venison with her, feeding the dark, tender pieces into her mouth with his fingers. She knew he did it because he felt embarrassed for her, for her ignorance, but she was hungry, and anyway she didn’t care.

  *

  After they’d made love, after she was sure he was asleep, Beryl propped herself up on her elbow and took a good long look at Kenny. The wick in the lamp was turned down low, but there was enough light in the little bedroom to study him by. She’d thought earlier, at the inn, that she’d detected a change in him, something in his face. She also knew that if she was asked to describe him to someone, she wouldn’t be able to; his features wouldn’t stick.

  When they’d first met, and for a while after they began to see each other regularly, he’d sported a neat goatee. Apparently it made him look half his age. He shaved it off the day after dinner at Zilli Fish, because two of the three waiters also had goatees, and, as Kenny put it: It’s not that I mind looking like a waiter, per se, but I don’t want to look like an Eyetie waiter. It was their first and only argument. Of course, he hadn’t known that Beryl’s mother was Sicilian, and anyway, he’d said, it wasn’t a derogatory word, per se.

  But it wasn’t the lack of a goatee, nor the small cleft in his chin that the beard had disguised. Beryl leaned in closer, so close, she could see grains of stubble, like tiny slivers of metal, breaking through his skin. No, it wasn’t his face that seemed different. She scanned his forehead, the sharp widow’s peak and the frown lines. She was about to lean over, to try to view h
im full-on, when she heard it: a soft, low knocking. It stopped almost immediately. She paused, turned her head, waited for the sound to begin again, stealthily sliding down under the bedclothes, lying flat on her back. There it was, a buried sound, almost, but insistent.

  Can you hear that, she said to Kenny, and when he didn’t reply, shook him. He turned over, pushed his face into the pillow.

  Can’t you hear it, she cried, Can’t you hear?

  Kenny sat up in bed and pressed his palms into his eyes.

  What? he said, What?

  Someone’s knocking, said Beryl, Don’t let them in!

  Darling, I have no intention of letting anyone in. Now go to sleep.

  He stretched across the bed and turned down the wick on the lamp, and the room went completely black. The knocking was louder in the darkness.

  Kenny, it’s still there, she said.

  He turned over again, got up from the bed and went to the window.

  Come here, he said, and when she didn’t move, commanded, Bee! Come and listen.

  The room was icy. Beryl stepped towards the window, where the sound was louder, until she was near enough to feel the heat coming off Kenny’s bare skin. She didn’t want to look. He pressed his hand flat on the window frame, and the knocking stopped.

  Just the wind, okay? he said, I’ve made it stop. Tomorrow I’ll jam something in that sash.

  Beryl lay very still after that, listening, unconvinced, until the sound of the knocking became the sound of her heart.

  She saw what was different about him in the morning. Their third day, and at last the sky was clear and blue, and the sun, spearing through the kitchen window, actually felt warm. Kenny was making porridge at the stove, singing some old song that sounded faintly familiar: perhaps she’d heard it at the inn the day before. She was famished. Not enough food yesterday, and hardly any chocolate. She couldn’t have chocolate for breakfast without comment from Kenny, but she could have honey on her porridge, and then some toast. With jam – or Nutella! She’d definitely packed some Nutella. She was crouching down under the counter, rummaging through the box of food, when she became aware of him craning over her.

  I said, did you pack any salt?

  She looked into his eyes and saw that they were green. It was a shock; his eyes were grey, grey-blue in fact, she was almost certain. Now they were green, and she wanted to see again, to look hard at his face; perhaps it was a trick of the sunlight. But he was busy, and when she made a pretext of trying to embrace him, to kiss him, he pulled back and laughed loudly.

  Yer saucy wee wench, he said, in his thickening accent, Yer wee slut.

  The last word made the blood beat in her head. As he turned from her, Beryl saw how his neck bulged over his collar, how fleshy his earlobes were.

  Don’t call me that, she said. Don’t you dare call me that.

  I said, ‘Where’s the salt?’ Are you feeling alright, Bee?

  And he carried on singing, humming when the words failed, stirring the porridge with a charred wooden spoon.

  *

  Beryl sat at the fireside, fighting her panic. Kenny had gone fishing; the tide had a good onshore blow, he’d said, just the thing for a spot of sea angling. After he’d left, she searched through the croft, feeling ridiculous and exposed, finding nothing. She didn’t even know what it was she was hoping to find. But as soon as she sat still again, the sensation rose up inside her. She ate a Mars bar, just to make sure that the feeling wasn’t hunger. Now and then she stabbed the fire with the poker, watching the flames jump and settle, and she thought about Simona, and she thought about Michael, her ex, who she didn’t really know either. His eyes were hazel. She tried to focus on things she knew, facts, certainties, but her mind kept dragging her back to Kenny’s bulging neck, and his earlobes, and the colour of his eyes, and how much he reminded her of Michael, and what a shit he was.

  Kenny came back with his catch; a couple of small cod. He carried a tang of ozone on him, of sea air and vigour. Beryl was ashamed at what she’d been thinking. She tried her best to concentrate, to appear interested, and paid attention as he laid the fish out on the draining board and showed her how to check for freshness, first by examining the eyes, then the gills.

  The eye should be bright and shiny, he said, jabbing it with his finger, And the gills red, or at least pink.

  But you’ve only just caught them, she said. They’re bound to be fresh, aren’t they?

  Less than an hour out of the water, he said.

  Something in the way the fish were staring at her – their look of surprise – brought to her mind an image of Simona, being lifted out of the sea, being laid on deck. She hadn’t died immediately; she lived on in hospital for eight more days. Their mother had flown out and rang Beryl with daily updates, daily entreaties to pray. She never mentioned Michael.

  Kenny had put the fish on the chopping block, and was rubbing his hands together with anticipation. First he would demonstrate how to scale and then gut them, talking her through each stage, and then she was to copy him precisely.

  Listen now, Bee, this is important. Pull the blade up from the vent, through the belly, that’s right. Now, dig deep!

  He scraped out the contents of the stomach with his thumb, flinging the intestines into a plastic bag, and watched her copy him. As she washed the cod under the cold tap, he slid his hands round her waist and clutched at the soft sides of her stomach.

  You’re really comin’ on, hen, he said, We’ll make a chef of you yet. You won’t be wanting to be fill up on rubbish when you get a taste for real food.

  They had the fish for lunch, oiled and grilled on a rack suspended over the fire. As he ate, Kenny described how stormy the sea had become, making waving motions, smashing his hands together to mimic the breakers. His fingers were slick from the dressing, and in the queasy light they shone like raw sausages. Beryl ran from the living area and was sick in the kitchen sink. Through the window, the sky looked bruised.

  There’s a storm coming, he said, holding her hair off her face while she retched again, Did you not get all the bones, eh? What did I tell you?

  She left him dozing in front of the fire. A short walk down to the water, some sea air, that was all she needed. She put the image of his thick, glistening fingers from her mind. Only the day before he had fed her with those fingers, and they were slender, graceful, and they were slender and graceful touching her body that same night. He had called her a wench. She stood on the breakwater and looked over the sand. The sea didn’t look right, not right at all. He had called her a slut. Beryl glanced behind her; perhaps the light was casting a glow. What had Kenny called it? Refraction, as if the sun was refracting. Or something. But it wasn’t that. The sea was the colour of brass, the waves bleeding red at the shoreline. She crept nearer, picking her way carefully between the rock pools, across the soft sand towards the water’s edge. Then she saw: the whole beach was covered in starfish. The sand had turned crimson with their colour, spangled with their texture; hundreds of starfish, thousands of them, their warty fingers fluttering at her.

  It was dusk by the time Beryl got back to the croft. The glow from inside the windows seemed to bounce out at her, like a flashlight in the dark: Kenny had lit every candle he could find. He’d put a vase of heather on the table, and was looking very pleased with himself.

  What’s going on? said Beryl.

  On’y candles, he said, Thought it might cheer you up.

  She followed him into the kitchen and told him about the starfish, how sad they looked, how pitiful, and he let out a yelp of glee.

  Tha’s brilliant, he said, pulling on his boots, What could be more romantic? A starfish supper.

  It’s not at all romantic, Kenny, she argued, They look like they’re drowning in air.

  Wait ’til yer taste ’em, he said, Nothin’ like it in the world.

  Beryl remained in the kitchen. She saw he had found her box of supplies and had emptied the contents onto the worktop. There were the bo
ttles of olive oil and vinegar and bags of pasta and rice on one side, and, as if in reproach, Kenny had piled all her packets of soup and biscuits and bars of chocolate on the other.

  After a while, the knocking started again. Beryl turned down the lamp in the kitchen and stood very still. Through the window, a pale moon was winking at her, casting its light on the food, which now resembled a silent cityscape. The chocolate bars formed a bleak high-rise on the outskirts of town. She leaned over and took the top storey, unwrapped it and ate it, shoving the pieces quickly into her mouth until she couldn’t fit any more in. She had a fleeting image of King Kong.

  The knocking continued. Beryl stood at the sink and chewed, and swallowed, until the sound grew more frantic.

  Don’t let it in, she said, and then, mimicking Kenny, Eh, an’ why not, eh? Let the poor wee creature come in.

  She laughed at herself as she strode to the door. There was nothing to fear: she was the lucky one. And she laughed again at the way the candlelight made a giant of her shadow, the way her footsteps sounded like claps of thunder. She felt full of potential.

  Kenny glared at her with his green eyes.

  What’s so bloody funny? he said.

  He had a smear of mud down his cheek, and what looked like blood on his chin. He opened his right hand to show her the damage – a long jagged wound across his palm. In his other hand, he held a string bag bulging with starfish.

  Oh, poor you, said Beryl, leading him into the kitchen. She turned up the wick on the lamp and pressed his palm flat on the chopping block to inspect the wound.

  Ah! Careful, you great – he said, wincing as she prodded it with a sticky fingernail.

  I’ve seen some plasters somewhere, she said, still staring at the gash, which glistened almost sexily in the lamplight.

  Medical kit in my rucksack, he said, a little out of breath, You’ll need to suture it.

  She was almost disappointed when she realised that Kenny hadn’t meant her to stitch the wound. As she laid the strips across his palm, daintily, precisely, Kenny turned his head away.

  Someone’s been busy, he said, and she jerked round to where he was looking, and saw the pile of chocolate wrappers abandoned on the counter.