Six Shorts - The finalists for the 2013 Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award

by Haddon, Mark

  It happens fast. The door opens before Sean can put his key into the lock. Dylan stands in dirty blue dungarees, phone pressed to one ear. He says, calmly, Cancel that, Mike. I’ll talk to you later, and puts the phone down. He grabs a fistful of Sean’s hair and swings him into the hallway so that he skids along the lino and knocks over the little phone table. He puts his foot on Sean’s chest and yanks at the bag, ripping it open and breaking the strap. He takes out the gun, checks the chamber, shunts it back into place with the heel of his hand and tosses it through the open door of his room onto his bed. Sean sits up and tries to back away but Dylan grabs the collar of his T-shirt and hoists him up so that he is pressed against the wall. Daniel doesn’t move, hoping that if he remains absolutely still he will remain invisible. Dylan punches Sean in the face then lets him drop to the floor. Sean rolls over and curls up and begins to weep. Daniel can see a bloody tooth by the skirting board. Dylan turns and walks towards the front door. He runs his hand slowly across the deer’s flank five or six times, long, gentle strokes as if the animal is a sick child. Bring it in.

  He wheels the pram across the living room and out onto the balcony. Dylan gives Daniel a set of keys and sends him downstairs to fetch two sheets from the back of his van. Daniel feels proud that he has been trusted to do this. He carries the sheets with their paint spatters and crackly lumps of dried plaster back upstairs. Dylan folds them and spreads them out on the concrete floor and lays the deer in the centre. He takes a Stanley knife from his pocket, flips the animal onto its back and scores a deep cut from its neck to its groin. Gristle rips under the blade. He makes a second cut at ninety degrees, a crucifix across the chest, then yanks hard at one of the corners so that the furred skin rips back a little. It looks like a wet doormat. Daniel is surprised by the lack of blood. Under the skin is a marbled membrane to which it is attached by a thick white pith. Dylan uses the knife to score the pith, pulling and scoring and pulling and scoring so that the skin comes gradually away.

  Sean steps onto the balcony pressing a bloody tea towel to the side of his face. Daniel cannot read his expression. Turning, Daniel sees the radio mast and the sandy slab of the car plant. A hawk hangs over the woods. His headache is coming back, or perhaps he has simply begun to notice it again. He wanders inside and makes his way to the kitchen. There is an upturned pint mug on the drying rack. He fills it with cold water from the tap and drinks it without taking the glass from his lips.

  He hears the front door open and close and Mrs Cobb shouting, What the bloody hell is going on? He goes into the living room and sits on the brown leather sofa and listens to the slippery click of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, waiting for the pain to recede. There are framed school photographs of Sean and Dylan. There is a wall-plate from Cornwall, a lighthouse wearing a bow tie of yellow light, three gulls, each made with a single black tick. The faintest smell of dog shit from the sole of his shoe. Sean walks down the corridor carrying a full bucket, the toilet flushes and he comes back the other way with the bucket empty.

  He dozes. Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. The sound of a saw brings him round. It takes a while to remember where he is, but his headache has gone. So strange to wake and find the day going on in your absence. He walks out onto the balcony. Dylan is cutting the deer up. The legs have been sawn off and halved, hoofs in one pile, thighs in another. Carl from next door has come round and is leaning against the balcony rail smoking a cigarette. I’ll have a word at the chippy. They’ve got a chest freezer out the back. Sean is no longer holding the tea towel against his face. His left eye is half closed by the swelling and his upper lip is torn.

  Get rid of that, will you? Dylan points to a yellow plastic bathtub. Lungs, intestines, glossy bulbs of purple Daniel can’t identify. He and Sean each take a handle. As they are leaving Dylan holds up the severed head and says to Carl, What do you reckon? Over the fireplace? But it’s the bathtub that unsettles Daniel. The way it jiggles and slops with the movement of the lift. MURDER in capital letters. The inside of a human being would look like this.

  He says, How are you?

  Sean says, Fine.

  Neither of them means it. Some kind of connection has been broken, but it feels good, it feels like an adult way of being with another person.

  They put the bathtub down and lift the lid of one of the big metal bins. Flies bubble out. That wretched leathery stink. They hoist the tub to chest height. Two teenage girls walk past. Holy shit. A little countdown and they heave the bathtub onto the rim. The contents slither out and hit the bottom with a slapping boom.

  Upstairs, the oven is on and Mrs Cobb has put a bloody haunch onto a baking tray. Carl is helping her peel potatoes with another cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Dylan drinks from a can of Guinness. Come here. Sean walks over and Dylan puts an arm around him. If you ever do anything like that again I’ll fucking kill you. Understand? Even Daniel can hear that he is really saying, I love you. Dylan gives Sean the half-finished can of Guinness and opens another one for himself.

  Your mum rang, says Mrs Cobb. Wondering where you were.

  Right. He doesn’t move.

  Because it has nothing to do with the gun, does it. The gun is one of those dark stars that bend light. This is the moment. If he asks to stay then everything will be different. But he says nothing. Mrs Cobb says, Go on. Hop it, or your mum will worry, and however many times he turns her words over in his mind he will never be able to work out whether she was being kind to his mother or cruel to him. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t want to risk hearing the lack of interest in their voices. He walks out of the front door, closes it quietly behind him and goes down via the stairs so that he doesn’t have to see the blood.

  Forty years later he goes to his mother’s funeral. Afterwards, not wanting to seem callous by heading off to a hotel, he sleeps in his old bedroom. It makes him profoundly uncomfortable, and when his father says that he wants things back to normal as soon as possible, he takes the hint with considerable relief and leaves his father to the comfort of his routine, the morning walk, the Daily Mail, pork chops on Wednesdays.

  There are roadworks on the way out of town and by chance he finds himself diverted along the stretch of ring road between the flats and the woods. It all comes back so vividly that he nearly brakes for the two boys running across the carriageway pushing the pram. He slows and pulls into the lay-by, grit crunching under the tyres. He gets out of the car and stands in that same thumping draught that comes off the lorries. Freakishly the gate is still held shut by a loop of green twine. It scares him a little. He steps through and shuts it behind him.

  The scrapyard is still there, as is the Roberts’ house. The curtains are closed. He wonders if they have been closed all these years, Robert Hales and Robert Hales and Robert Hales, the same person, growing old and dying and being reborn in the stink and the half-light.

  That cathedral silence before the first shot. Slabs of dusty sunlight.

  He stoops and picks up a jagged lump of broken tarmac. He imagines throwing it through the front window, the glass crazing and falling. The loose rattle of scattering birds. Light flooding in.

  A stick cracks directly behind him. He doesn’t turn. It’s the deer. He knows it’s the deer, come again.

  He can’t resist. He turns slowly and finds himself looking at an old man wearing Robert’s face. His father? Maybe Robert himself. What year is it?

  The man says, Who are you? and for three or four seconds Daniel has absolutely no idea.

  Mark Haddon is best known for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. It has also been adapted into a successful and critically acclaimed stage production. He has also written A Spot of Bother (2006), which was short-listed for the Costa Novel Award, and The Red House (2012). Besides being an accomplished author, Haddon is also an abstract painter
and has worked as an illustrator and cartoonist.

  Evie

  by Sarah Hall

  She arrived home after work, sat at the kitchen table and took a large chocolate bar out of her bag. She said nothing, not even hello. She split the foil, broke it apart, and proceeded to eat the entire thing, square after square; a look of almost sexual concentration on her face.

  Had a bad day? he asked.

  She smiled faintly.

  Not like you to go for the junk. Did you miss lunch?

  She shook her head. Her jaw moved, slow and bovine, working the substance against her palate. She was looking but not seeing him. There was something endogenous about the gaze, something private, as if his presence in the room was irrelevant. She ate the entire bar, methodically, piece after piece, while he put the kettle on and began dinner. He heated a pre-made lasagne in the oven, opened a bag of salad and dumped it into a bowl. She ate only a little of the meal.

  I guess the snack ruined your appetite.

  Her eyes flickered up from the plate.

  Yes. I don’t know why I had the whole thing. Only, I’d been thinking about eating some for days. Then I had to.

  She didn’t apologise for the wasted food. Usually she would; she was the type who apologized over any minor or innocuous discourtesy. He wondered if she was angry with him, whether a passive campaign was playing out, though he could think of nothing he’d done wrong.

  Over the next week she began to eat chocolate regularly. She would snap off portions while watching television or between chores. In her car there were smeary wrappers strewn on the floor. She’d never had a sweet tooth before, had never ordered desert in restaurants. She’d always kept her figure because of it. Now, she seemed addicted. And not just to chocolate, but anything sugary: pastries, puddings, fizzy drinks. She would leave her steak or pasta half finished, leave the table, and come back with something glazed that she’d evidently bought in a bakery between her office and the house.

  God, I just can’t seem to stop with this stuff, she said one night.

  It was true. She went with a predatory look to the cupboards. She wasn’t thinking, just acting on impulse. She was drinking more too. Wine with dinner every night, a few extra glasses at the weekend; becoming gently hedonistic. They’d been for a meal at Richard’s and she’d finished a bottle of Cabernet by herself, as well as the lemon torte he’d served.

  Hey, hey, Richard had said, taking her hand and helping her up from the couch, after she’d slumped on the first attempt to rise. Nice to see you letting your hair down, Evie.

  How gallant, she’d said, a mock-belle voice. Then, whispering, I know you want this.

  She’d leaned up and kissed him. A kiss not on the cheek, but on the mouth: a deliberately erotic move that implied nothing less than seduction, as if her husband, sitting next to her on the couch, did not exist. Richard of course had been too dazed to respond. This was a glimmer from a long-desired, alternate world, where his best friend’s wife was available to him instead for nightly plunder. After a moment Richard roused himself, took hold of her wrists, and looked over to the couch, as if to say, here, hadn’t you better intervene. Evie was staring at Richard’s mouth. Her lips were parted, her lashes lowered. Together they’d helped her into her coat and into the car. Once the seatbelt was buckled and the door shut, Richard had turned to him.

  That was a bit unusual. Is she all right?

  Evie’s head was drooping to one side; she was asleep, or passing out.

  I don’t bloody know. She’s all over the place lately. She’s fine, I think.

  What do you mean all over the place?

  Just acting up. For attention, maybe. I don’t know. She’s fine. Sorry, Rich.

  You’re sure?

  Yeah. Yeah, just had a few too many.

  On the drive home the incident preoccupied him. The look of desire, the unboundaried gesture. It wasn’t that she hadn’t looked at him that way, of course, in the past - nights when they were at their best, their least inhibited, when the act was intentional rather than habitual. But to see her looking at another man. It’d shocked him, and Richard too, clearly. It had been exciting. Something had flared inside him. Possession, naturally - she was his wife - but there was another sensation too. Pride. Or worth. He didn’t quite know. She suited the attitude; perhaps most women did.

  He glanced down at her legs as he drove; the skirt riding untidily on her thighs, the flesh pale in the glow of the streetlights. Her arms were cast out either side of the seat – he’d already moved one away from the gear stick – in a pose that looked supplicatory, almost religious. She roused minimally when they arrived home, walking into the house and upstairs like a somnambulist, lying on the bed fully clothed. He’d run a hand up her thigh, but by then she was unconscious.

  She had a hangover the next day and he caught her in the kitchen having a shot of whisky. Her makeup was smudged round her eyes. The silk robe was loosely belted, with one breast partially exposed.

  For God’s sake, Evie. Didn’t you have enough last night.

  Hair of the dog, she said.

  You’re acting like a student. That’s going to make you feel far worse.

  Lets see.

  She tossed the spirit back.

  Boom!

  She set about cooking pancakes for breakfast, which she coated with syrup, rolled up and ate with her fingers. He sat opposite at the table, refusing the plate of glistening batter, choosing instead a frugal bowl of muesli. He was annoyed with her; he didn’t know why. She was acting a little irresponsibly, a little outlandishly – but so what? He’d always wanted her to be more cattish, hadn’t he, like the girls at university he remembered who had tattoos before it was popular, who wore tiny shorts, took pills every weekend and danced on podiums in the union. And the thing with Richard; he knew there was nothing to it. Richard was too restrained, too safe, almost neuter; he was always ill with something and in need of sympathy; he’d never been a genuine threat. It occurred to him she might be pregnant, and hormonal. Though surely she would know, by now, and the drinking was very inappropriate. Evie wasn’t like that.

  She was washing up at the sink, her rings set aside in the small ceramic dish, her bottom shaking as she scrubbed, hips a fraction fuller under the gown, though not unattractively so. He asked her.

  No, she blurted, half turning. I don’t think there’s much risk of that, do you?

  Offended by the overt reference to their irregularity – usually they both avoided the topic with practised denier’s skill – he stood and made to leave the room.

  Wait, she said. Maybe, well, what do you think?

  About what?

  About getting pregnant.

  Are you serious?

  She dropped the scrubbing brush into the basin of soapy water and wiped her hands on the silk robe. The material darkened and stuck to her skin.

  Actually, no. But I would like a fuck.

  He was stunned. It was not the look of the previous night, but it wasn’t the usual furtive pass that one of other of them made, when it had been building a while, and before an argument occurred.

  Would you? she asked.

  She unbelted and moved the robe away from her midriff. The pubic hair was in a neat brown strip. She had waxed. He looked at her. He was angry now, at the guilelessness, the domestic crisis she seemed intent on creating. Why was she being so bald? It made no sense. The atmosphere around her was unsettling, like irregular weather. He was jealous, and impressed by the approach, by her making a stranger of him almost. All the times he had wondered, imagined getting his cock out, stroking himself in front of her and saying, come here and suck this, how she would have responded. He’d never done it. Neither had she, though he’d fantasised often enough about her masturbating in front of him, kneeling, her legs apart, or on all fours. The answer was yes. But he did not speak or move. She was looking at him, her face unreadable, not ashamed, not desperate. There was only so long such a precarious, risky moment could go o
n, before it spoiled. He was hard. He knew what he should do. Hostility got the better of him.

  What are you trying to prove, Evie? What?

  She shrugged, a one-shouldered shrug, the definition of nonchalance. She left the robe open and sat down. She lifted one foot up onto the chair seat. He could see more of her cunt, the folds and dark seam. He felt hot and uncomfortable. He should be kissing her, feeling her breasts, doing what she’d asked him to. But this exchange; there was too much and too little intimacy at once. He disliked her casualness, the request as banal as to go and buy milk. He was locked in. It was absurd.

  I mean, what are you doing? What are you doing?

  Asking you to go to bed with me.

  I mean, you’re being just bizarre. You haven’t even showered. You’re a mess. You’re ruining yourself with junk food. You’re having whisky at ten AM and saying mad things to me in the kitchen. And then last night. What was that?

  I just want a fuck, Alex That’s all. If you aren’t up for it, fine. Maybe later.

  She leaned across the table and wiped up a viscous smear from its surface, put her finger in her mouth. She was not upset. The transaction hadn’t worked, and that was that. Part of him felt ashamed for attacking her, for the impotence of his mood. But she’d walked carelessly across the tripwires of their relationship, as though through field of mines, as if immune. And her response to the rejection was ludicrous, like a child’s or an autistic’s. He turned and left the room.