Best British Short Stories 2017

by Nicholas Royle

  They’d been so kind, his mother was fond of telling people back in Sheffield. Such compassion. Such goodness.

  A few years earlier, the boy’s father had died suddenly and while they’d carried on coming back to Llygaid Finiog every October, reckoning on it being nothing more than a quiet pilgrimage of remembrance, these people from the village had become like a family. They were the proof that even the darkest moments in life were only junctures that led to somewhere better.

  So his mother said. Without his father here, the boy found it dull and miserable. The rooms smelled like the water that came off the mountain and boredom seeped into everything like damp. He wore the fun out of the toys and books he brought with him after the first day and the picture on the tiny television set was always tugged in the middle, as if someone had drawn their finger through a wet painting. When the Davidsons and their friends came over he both enjoyed and hated the intrusion. He wanted them to leave and yet he wanted to know what they laughed about downstairs.

  He’d never quite known what to make of the people from the village. Every year when he and his mother and father had come to stay in the cottage, they’d drift up in ones or twos bringing firewood or horse feed, or be sent by Mr and Mrs Davidson to fix this or that. Or come just to be nosy, his father had said. His mother had called him curmudgeonly but without much scorn in her voice. She knew what he meant. They were odd little people, the Davidsons included. Like him, she’d laughed at the way they’d lent them their tastes along with the cottage – the porcelain dogs, the huge cutlery. But now she seemed glad they were here, cradling her, soothing her. They’d all lost someone. They all understood.

  They ate in the kitchen and they filled the boy and his mother in on what had happened in the village since their last visit. There’d been floods in the spring; Tom Evans’ ram had got loose; Mrs Hurt had cancer. But the boy didn’t really listen and he wasn’t hungry. He was too excited to know what was going to happen. Excited and yet open to the possibility of disappointment. There was every chance that the rest of the evening would just be an extension of the conversation around the dinner table and that the hysterical laughter he’d heard downstairs all these years was due to nothing more than the effects of beer and wine. If that was the case he’d know for certain what he’d suspected for some time: that things were never as good as they promised to be.

  The dusk fell quickly and mist ghosted across the horse’s field. When it went dark everyone gathered in the small front room and his mother closed the curtains. They talked for so long that the boy felt himself drifting into sleep, wedged and warm as he was between the plump woman who liked to mother him more than his mother and the man with a paste-brush moustache who smelled charred with pipe smoke and spoke no English.

  The nightjar had been brought in from the kitchen and lay asleep in the bowl on the hearth.

  When the clock chimed the hour, Mrs Davidson took hold of her husband’s hand and the others joined theirs and a circle formed around the room. Perhaps they were going to pray, thought the boy. Perhaps these people were evangelists. He’d once seen a programme on television about a church in America where people laughed and laughed until they fell into spasms on the floor, dribbling with joy.

  ‘Close your eyes now,’ said Mrs Davidson and everyone did as she asked.

  The plump woman’s hand was damp. The man – the Sergeant, the boy called him – had a surprisingly soft grip.

  The room fell silent apart from the pop and split of the wood on the fire and the rain that had returned to the valley and caught the windows. He felt the plump woman breathing next to him; the Sergeant cleared his throat.

  ‘Look for them now,’ said Mrs Davidson. ‘Those that have left our sight.’

  Around the room, people shuffled themselves comfortable. They sat still for a long time (were they Quakers, then? the boy wondered), until the silence was broken by the plump woman next to him. Her body was shaking, her hand tightening on his as she began to laugh.

  It spread quickly through the others, increasing in volume, coming in waves like the rain; a burst and then a trickle before another barrage filled the room. Still holding the boy’s hand, still with his eyes closed, the Sergeant wiped away tears from his cheeks.

  Now Mrs Davidson fetched the enamel bowl and passed it around the circle. Everyone touched the nightjar, laughing harder as they stroked its feathers. When it came to the boy he could feel that it was still as warm as it had been when he’d lifted it from the grass. He pushed his fingers deeper into the down of its belly, feeling its heart softly trilling, the muscles of its wings beginning to stir. And then the bowl was taken from him by the Sergeant who put the bird to his cheek.

  While they were all still laughing, Mrs Davidson touched the boy’s mother on the hand and nodded. His mother began to cry and called the boy over and held his face.

  ‘It’s us,’ she said. ‘It’s our turn this year.’

  ‘Go on, now,’ said Mrs Davidson. ‘The nightjar will be awake soon. There isn’t much time.’

  They went out of the room into the cold hallway. The boy could hear the Sergeant and the plump woman laughing loudest of all.

  ‘Don’t be frightened. It’s what brings them here,’ said his mother. ‘Wouldn’t you come into the cottage if you heard people laughing?’

  It didn’t seem like a question he was supposed to answer and she led him past the ticking clock and the ugly gold mirror.

  ‘We have to go to the end room,’ his mother said. ‘That’s where they always wait.’

  The boy followed her reluctantly.

  ‘Don’t you want to see him?’ said his mother. ‘You heard what Mrs Davidson said, there isn’t much time.’

  Back along the corridor, the boy could hear someone howling with laughter. Someone else fighting for breath.

  His mother opened the door of the room where his father used to sit and read. The light from the hall found a desk, bookshelves, a chair. Someone was sitting with their back to them. A man who smelled like his father had once smelled. A cotton shirt made ripe by his body and too many cigarettes. His mother went in first and touched the man on the shoulder. He jerked as if he’d been asleep and she calmed him with the same voice she’d used when the boy was small. The man stood up and they embraced one another.

  The laughter from the other room rose suddenly as if someone had delivered the punchline to a joke.

  A hand moved around his mother’s waist and rested on her spine. His mother cried quietly into the man’s shoulder and, no longer conscious of the boy standing there, it seemed, confessed all the doubts of her heart and all the longings of her body. But they had fooled her, the laughing people from the village, Mr Davidson and his red dust.

  The boy knew that the hand on her back was too small to have been his father’s. And he would never have let his nails grow so long.

  The Sea in Me

  KRISHAN COUPLAND

  Sometimes in the bath I plunge my head under the water and will the scars on my neck to open wide like mouths. Nothing. Even if I stay under until my eyes sting and my lungs burn and everything inside me feels like it’s about to burst, they stay closed. Perhaps the water’s too hot, or too soapy, or maybe even too shallow. Perhaps my brain knows I’m not really swimming.

  At the pool it’s different. I can drift down to the bottom and sit until my fingers go wrinkly. Only when Mum’s not there, of course. When Mum’s there I have to train.

  What I like most is when I’m the last one at the pool. They switch off the lights and the boys all watch me as they close the pumps and heave in the lane floats. The one who fancies me – his name is Martin – leans on the rolled-up pool cover at the far end and calls to me as I emerge.

  ‘It’s almost closing time,’ he says.

  ‘One more length,’ I say.

  And he lets me. He always lets me. Mum would be furious if she knew
I wasn’t a virgin. She’s old fashioned like that. In secondary school she caught me kissing a boy on the field one time and she dragged me off home and yelled about how I was endangering my career. There’s no time for boys, what with training and my competition schedule. That’s what she says anyway.

  Every trophy I’ve ever won is in the cabinet downstairs. There’re other things in there too. Every time we go on holiday Mum buys a shot glass and puts it in the cabinet, and there’s a bunch of little ceramic washerwomen as well, all of them grinning and jolly. Mainly it’s trophies though, crowded together like a miniature city made of glass and polished wood and gold. She’s even kept the stupid paper certificates I got for completing my swimming lessons at school.

  When my hair went green I told Mum it was because of all the chlorine, and she wrote me a note for school. I like it. Nobody else has green hair, and it’s soft and never gets tangled. When I swim without a cap it floats around my head like a coral reef plant and turns with me, follows me slender and obedient like a tail. I like the way it makes me look: mysterious and strange. And sexy, I think.

  Walking me home after a day of school and swimming Martin runs his hands through it, makes a fist of it at the back of my head and pulls. My spine turns hot and liquid. He doesn’t say anything, but I know he likes it too.

  It’s hard to spend time with Martin without Mum knowing. Sometimes I don’t do my lengths after school and go to his house instead. When I do that I have to fill his bathroom sink with water and dip my swimsuit in it so that it’s not dry when I get home. Mum checks these things.

  ‘You’ll thank me later,’ she says. She’s been saying it for years. Every morning at six she drives me to the leisure centre with the big pool. That early we’re almost always the only ones, and I can have the whole pool to practise in. They’ll let me in for free sometimes, if they recognise me from the local paper. Every time this happens Mum goes all quiet and pink and smiley, and I hate it.

  In the empty water I train with a drag suit. It’s like my regular swimsuit but two sizes too big, so that it slows me down and makes me pull harder. Mum stands at the edge watching my turns, watching each perfect lunge through the blueness of the water.

  In the changing rooms afterwards Mum stretches me, shakes thick powder into a bottle of water for me. The energy drinks taste like too-thick gravy. I’m cold. I put twenty pence in the hair drier and shiver as the heat rushes over my neck and scalp and shoulders. ‘Drink up,’ Mum says, and rubs my shoulders till they feel like they’re about to fall off.

  After school that evening, just before they close the pool, Martin jumps in with me and pins me against the wall under the diving boards. The sheltered, deepest corner. With my back against the wall I can’t kick, so it’s only him that keeps me floating. Warm bodies in cool water pressed together. Skin feels different under the surface. Most people never find that out.

  ‘Are you going to come and watch me in the semi-finals?’ I ask.

  ‘When?’ he says.

  As well as being a lifeguard Martin wants to own a store some day. He runs a little one at the moment, just selling stuff on eBay. His room is full of it, boxes of clothes piled everywhere in sight. He’s always so busy.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘You’re such a good swimmer. You’re gorgeous.’

  Most of the time I wear a scarf to hide the scars, or smother them with foundation. For swimming though, it does no good. They only open underwater anyway, and nobody’s ever noticed. Mum buys me waterproof foundation. ‘Looks are important, love,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to win the crowd.’

  She doesn’t have a clue. I wonder what would happen if I could show the crowd everything. The translucent, froggy webs between my toes and the cascade of beautiful green hair underneath my swimming cap. They wouldn’t like it. Would think I was showing off, or that all the success had gone to my head. Nobody can really know what it’s like.

  Sometimes I have this dream. In the dream I’m in the water swimming, and it’s the ocean and I’m not alone. There’re all these dark shapes with me cutting through the water. There’s hundreds of them, but they all stay just behind my eyes, flitting into murk the second I turn my head.

  I’m so happy. I want to live there for ever and ever. Sometimes I wake and I swear I can taste salt, and it takes me a second to realise that what I taste is actually my tears. No way to know why I’m crying. I’m not sad. The dream just makes me feel happy and longing. That’s all. It must just be the strangeness of it.

  Before the semi-finals I shave my legs. I shave my pubic hair as well. In the bath, with one of Mum’s plastic razors, carving away the thick blonde hair. The pale molecules of stubble coat the soapy surface of the bathwater. I wonder if Martin likes that I’m all shaved? Boys like that kind of thing. I’ve heard them talking.

  The skin on the back of my legs is rough. One patch right underneath my backside and another below my knee, both of them silvery and splitting into scale. I get out of the bath and feel myself all over, twisting to see my pale body in the mirror. There’s another patch low down on my back as well, the same colour as the surface of an oil spill, rough and warm and slippery.

  Mum drives me to the pool an hour early, while everyone’s still setting up, and we sit in the cafe. I’m allowed an energy drink, but nothing else. She sips nervously at a watery cup of tea. Sometimes I like feeling this way. It feels like sitting in an aeroplane a moment before takeoff. Today what I mostly feel is tired.

  ‘Remember your turns,’ she says. ‘They’ll be watching you. I’ll be watching.’

  The stands are full of people. Absolutely full, not just scattered like they normally are. Mum’s more nervous than I am. The energy drink has made my stomach feel hot and tight. She lets me have my earphones in for a few minutes while I stretch and warm up, then whips them away. The chlorine smell hits me as I step out of the changing rooms. With echoes and ripples and the pool lights, everything is distorted. This, I think, must be what it’s like to live in a bubble on the bottom of the sea.

  ‘And smile,’ Mum hisses to me before she disappears.

  Minutes later I’m up on the board, a hundred pairs of eyes pressing into me. Can they see the silvery patch of skin on my leg? Is that what all the whispers are?

  Noise ripples in here too. The other swimmers like soldiers lining up . . . Some of them look at me when they think I won’t notice. I hate this part. I want the buzzer to go so I can dive into the water. Once I’m in the water everything’s easy. Once I’m in the water my body knows what to do. If you asked someone how they breathed, asked them the exact way in which they moved their lungs and throat they would be at a loss to tell you. It’s the same with me and swimming. It just happens. In the water it’d be harder not to.

  I win, of course. I always win. Swimming’s easy for me. Mum says I was born swimming, which is true because she had a water birth. That’s what she says during every single interview. ‘She was born swimming, this one was.’ Actually, as it happens, she does most of the talking anyhow. It’s best that way. I never know the right thing to say.

  The prize is a glass trophy with an etching inside. As we drive home I turn it over and over and, no matter which way I look at it, it’s still a dolphin. I like this trophy. It feels proper, like the ocean, like I’m holding a little bit of the sea in my hand. I want to keep it, but when we get home Mum puts it in the cabinet with all the others, and locks the little glass door.

  Sometimes I think about telling Mum I don’t want to compete any more. I lie on my bed and line up all my words ready like little soldiers in perfect regiments. Ready to run at her words and stick them through with bayonets. It’s too easy. It isn’t fair. Why can’t I ever just swim, without worrying about form or time or turns? I make lists of the reasons and then tear them up and flush them down the toilet so she won’t find them when she goes through my room.

  It does no good. I d
on’t know how many thousands she has spent on pool fees and swimming lessons and competition entries for me. I don’t know how many hundred hours she’s put into driving me to and from and training. With all that weight behind me there’s no way to stop now.

  After school I sit on the bottom of the pool and wait. I don’t get cold. I’m never cold in water. My green hair floats up around my head in a big seaweed-coloured cloud, and I watch it. When I’m in water I feel powerful sometimes. I am powerful. I could flick up from the bottom of the pool and swim so fast that nobody could catch me. That’s what all the trophies and the medals and certificates at home mean. Nobody can catch me, even if they tried.

  I shut my eyes. And then the dream comes up again, rising like silt: I’m swimming in among those dark slivery shapes, and there are thousands of them, so that the water is them and their shadows and the spaces between them and nothing else. In the ocean I can see for miles.

  An arm wraps around my stomach and hauls me upward. There’s that skin-on-skin underwater feeling and I’m plunged into air, up into air, the last water escaping my lungs in a splutter and cough.

  ‘You’re okay?’ says Martin. ‘You’re okay? God, I saw you down there and I didn’t know . . .’

  I shake myself loose of him. He’s still fully dressed, wet through. ‘You didn’t need to do that,’ I say.

  Once he’s dry we sit on the bench outside, and he offers me a cigarette. I pinch a little bit of the skin of his forearm between my nails. ‘Martin,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Can we go to the seaside?’

  After missing the semis he’s so anxious to make things up that of course he says yes. And later in his room when he puts his dick inside me it feels right. Doesn’t hurt at least, for the first time in ages. It feels like floating in hot water and I want it to go on forever.

  I tell Mum that it’s a school trip. She wants to know if there’s a form but I tell her no since we’re only going for half a day. She makes some noises but doesn’t ask bad questions. She makes me a packed lunch with sandwiches and Babybel. I leave the house in school uniform and get changed at Martin’s house. Martin has a moped. There’s only one helmet and he makes me wear it.