Best British Short Stories 2017

by Nicholas Royle

  His room was frustratingly bland. She’d expected posters, old CDs, plastic figurines, some traces of him having grown up here. There were just the paintings, more crochet and a crooked twig and wool cross above the bed. She’d read about the crosses, crosh cuirns they were called, in the guidebook. They used to be put up as protection against fairies. His mum obviously had a thing for them because they were all over the house. On the living room mantelpiece there was a line-up of family photos including several of his brother and him as children, and also his wedding photo. His ex looked young and elegant. They looked happy. Next to it was one of a newborn baby in a blue hat. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’re an uncle?’ He’d clattered the plates on to the table and gestured for her to sit.

  The lemonade left an acidic coating on her tongue. Gareth dissected his ham into long, thin strips before eating them one by one. The meat was cold and left a film of grease on their plates. The potatoes were still hard beneath their roasted edges. ‘We’ll go for a long walk tomorrow,’ he said.

  * * *

  Perched in a wing-back chair by the window she leafed through an old tourist magazine. She was desperate to get out and start exploring, but not comfortable enough to interrupt them talking in the kitchen, or to wander round the house to find where his mum had put her boots. She fiddled with her phone, but there was nothing she could do on it. They were talking too quietly for her to be able to separate many words from the murmur of voices and cooking sounds. She heard him say something about an exchange. ‘Way it’s done,’ his mum said, ‘ . . . if you want . . . returned.’

  The knock at the door made her jump. She half-stood, but Gareth came through to answer it.

  ‘This one must be for you,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I’ve been keeping it for you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Gareth said, reaching out for it.

  ‘It came in unaddressed. Jack wanted to put it in the back with all the other dead letters. People forget a stamp, or get the wrong address, but I said to myself it’s a funny business someone forgetting the address all together. I had a feeling about it so I checked it. I think it must be for you.’

  Gareth took the parcel without speaking.

  ‘It took you long enough to come back.’

  Gareth pushed the door shut a little too hard. The paintings on the wall quivered. He put the parcel down on the dresser without looking at it and went upstairs. The bathroom door slammed.

  The bus was full of locals. The only tourists were a middle-aged couple. They kept passing between them the same guidebook that she had brought. They sat right at the front and almost jumped up at every stop. On a wooded stretch of road the man dropped the guidebook, spilling leaflets everywhere.

  ‘That’s what they get,’ muttered an elderly woman in front of them.

  She nudged Gareth and raised her eyebrows in question.

  ‘They didn’t say hello,’ he said.

  ‘We went over the fairy bridge? I read about that. You should have told me. I wanted to see it, to get a picture of the sign.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He went back to his phone.

  ‘What was that parcel this morning?’

  ‘I didn’t get chance to open it. Won’t be anything important.’

  ‘It was good of them to keep it for you.’ She cuddled into him and glanced at his phone screen.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The post office. All that stuff the postman said, it sounded like they waited for you to come back. You wouldn’t get service like that at home.’

  He turned to look out of the window. ‘Things are different here.’

  The route described so neatly in the guide book didn’t seem to relate to the landscape at all. Gareth took the lead on barely visible paths that skirted wild grass on one side and sheer drops into glistening bays on the other. Grey rocks erupted from the sea and she tried to attach them to names. ‘Is that one Sugar Loaf Rock?’ Her voice was snatched away by the wind. She stuffed the guidebook into her rucksack and tried to match his pace. She hadn’t anticipated the astonishing blue of the sea, or the violence of movement frozen in the rocks. Grey cliff faces tilted at savage angles and looked as if they might shift again. She wanted to take photo after photo but she wasn’t sure Gareth would wait. Besides, she thought, it was better to look with her eyes, not her phone, and try and hold the views in her head.

  When they reached the Chasms, he strode out among them.

  ‘The book said we have to keep to the wall here,’ she called. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I could walk the Chasms with my eyes closed.’ He shut his eyes and jumped to his left.

  The uneven ground was riddled with what looked like rabbit holes, but instead of a fall into the earth there was a vertical drop into the roiling sea. She edged out a little in his direction, but kept one hand on the wall.

  ‘You can’t see them properly from there. Come here.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ There was worry in his expression, and something else she couldn’t quite read. He could be quiet and moody, but she could tell he was carrying a weight of hurt. He hadn’t talked much about how his wife had left him, but she could feel the sadness in him. She took his outstretched hand and with her eyes on the ground she wound her way after him on the narrow path between the Chasms.

  They stopped to eat the packed lunch his mum had made them at a high point on what Gareth said translated as Raven’s Hill, looking down at the Calf of Man.

  ‘There’s another island off to the left in the painting in your mum’s living room,’ she said, ‘but it isn’t there.’

  He shrugged, his mouth full. She needed a dictionary for his shrugs.

  As they continued on the thin earth path she tried to keep hold of his hand. There was a deep quiet between the sounds of sea and the wind. She no longer tried to fill it with words, but collected images: bluebells unexpected on the high cliffs, blackened thorns with feathers caught in them, a sleek hare that crossed their path in an instant.

  His gaze kept falling not on the path, or out to sea, but inwards towards the fields and a row of small whitewashed houses.

  ‘What is it?’ she said.

  ‘I . . . someone I knew lived there.’

  ‘Do they still?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked lost. She reached up and smoothed his hair that was rucked up by the wind. ‘I love you,’ she said. The words felt heavier once they’d left her mouth. She wasn’t even sure if she did yet, or if she’d said it to test what was between them, to call it into being.

  He turned back to the path and led the way on.

  Light seeped through the loose brown weave of the curtains. He wasn’t beside her in bed. She pulled a cardigan over her pyjamas and crept downstairs. The package remained unopened on the dresser. She’d almost pointed it out to him before they went to bed, but suspected that would mean he wouldn’t open it. Perhaps he’d opened it when she’d been out of the room, replaced the contents and resealed it. She checked the kitchen, and peered out of the windows at the front and back of the house. There was no sign of him. The house was in a row tucked between narrow lanes. No one passed by. A lot of the houses were holiday lets. She hadn’t seen anyone else on the street since they’d arrived.

  The padded envelope looked like it had been reused many times. The paper was worn thin in places, battered and crumpled, but as the postman had said there was no address on it. How had the postman known it was for Gareth? There was no sound of movement upstairs. His mum must still be asleep. The weight and solidity of the parcel, the straight edges, told her she was holding a book with hard covers. As she turned it over music started playing, a tinny, lilting tune she didn’t recognise. She dropped the parcel on the dresser and stood holding her breath. There was no movement upstairs; the sound mustn’t have carried. She picked it up again. The
flap lifted easily – so he had checked the contents, or his mum had. She eased the book out. It was a baby’s board book of nursery rhymes. There was a panel with three shapes to press for different tunes – ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, ‘Three Blind Mice’ – but the tune she’d heard hadn’t belonged to one of those. She turned the stiff pages. There were letters that had been blacked out of words here and there. Footsteps on the landing forced her to slip the book carefully back into the envelope. She rushed across the room and picked up the magazine she’d read cover to cover the day before.

  His mum just nodded at her as she came down the stairs and then crossed into the kitchen. She could see where he got his communication skills.

  He didn’t return until mid-afternoon. She flicked through the magazine again and again and again, and drank the weak tea his mum kept placing on the coffee table for her. ‘Gareth had to nip out to sort something out. He’ll be back soon,’ was all she’d say about his whereabouts, and then she sat in silence working on her crochet.

  Feeling the day slipping away, she considered going out, but with her phone not working he wouldn’t be able to contact her. She kept thinking about the baby book. Why had someone sent it to Gareth? The postman must have been wrong. It was meant for someone else. It had to be, but why were the letters blacked out?

  She waited until his mum was making the lunch and then eased the book from the envelope again, taking care not to touch the buttons. She looked for a pattern in the letters that were missing, and tried to make them into words: w . . . e . . . w . . . a . . . n . . . t . . . t . . . o. The kettle had boiled. Plates clinked against a work surface. She put the book back and sat down just in time.

  ‘Did you do the paintings?’ she asked as they both ate their salmon spread sandwiches.

  ‘I was taken away after I had Gareth. It wasn’t unpleasant where they took me, but I wanted to come home.’ His mum clung to the tiny cross at her neck as she spoke.

  Unsure how to respond, she nodded and pushed more of the sandwich into her mouth. It must have been some kind of art therapy. Gareth hadn’t mentioned his mum had ever been unwell like that, but then there was more she didn’t know about him than she did.

  ‘Gareth’s father took so long about sorting it out I thought he was going to leave me there for good.’

  ‘They’re nice paintings,’ she said. ‘Very vivid.’

  ‘Have you ever held a changeling? They have a cry that could scour the heart from your chest.’

  Wishing she’d never mentioned the paintings, she looked down at the magazine as though concentrating on an article about the island’s kipper industry.

  His mum collected their plates and left the room, but her voice came through from the kitchen. ‘Just because a thing’s happened once, folk think you’ll be safe from it happening again, but life isn’t like that. There are old patterns to follow.’ She returned with more tea. ‘Kaye’s such a lovely woman. She knew what she had to do.’ Cold, milky water sloshed from the cup as she set it on the table, her hand shaking. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to speak to you. He’s a good boy, though, my Gareth, I won’t have you thinking otherwise.’

  ‘What if we booked into a hotel as a treat for our last night?’ His mum was in the kitchen, but she wasn’t trying to keep her voice down.

  ‘What about Mum? She would be devastated.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just . . . This is our first time away together. We’ve hardly done anything. I’ve spent most of it in your mum’s living room…’

  ‘I told you I’m sorry, the errands took longer than I expected. And you know what, Mum’s done everything she can to make you feel welcome.’

  ‘There are photographs of you with your ex all over the place.’

  He lowered his voice at the sound of pans clattering in the kitchen. ‘You know I was married. I’ve never hidden that from you.’

  ‘Kaye’s your ex. Your mum talks like she’s . . . and where is she anyway? Does she live on the island?

  ‘She’s away.’

  ‘Were you seeing her today? Is that what you were doing?’

  ‘No.’ He headed for the kitchen and his mum, forcing her into silence.

  He was asleep with his back to her, or feigning sleep. The light through the curtains woke her at dawn. She waited as it brightened a little in intensity and then slipped out of bed. She dressed in yesterday’s clothes without washing for fear she’d wake either him or his mum. Taking an apple from the bowl in the kitchen for breakfast she crept out into the empty lane. Giddy with the sudden sense of freedom she half-ran down the street into the next. He would wake and find her gone, just like she had with him the day before. He’d realise how out of order he’d been. He’d try and make it up to her. He’d explain what on earth was going on with his mum. She’d stay out just long enough to make him worry, but return in time for them to spend the afternoon together before the ferry home.

  In the window of a grimy-looking cottage a crosh cuirn leaned against the glass. There were leaves caught in the old wool that had been used to tie it. She passed an antique shop and a pretty little café, but both were closed. The thick dust on the vases in the antique shop window made her wonder when it had last been open. She wandered the long lanes until the early morning damp started to make her bones ache. Another café she passed was closed, but the door to a quaint-looking bookshop stood ajar.

  Inside, the shelves were dense with browning books. An elderly man was half-hidden behind piles of books on the counter. He didn’t seem to notice her come in. The titles on the spines of many of the books were too faded to read. She picked out a slim book that was the blue of the sea, Fairy Tales of Mann.

  ‘Have you a special interest in…’ the man looked up and nodded at her, ‘because if so I’ve a number of titles you might like.’

  ‘Do you mean fairy stories? No, thanks, I’m just looking.’ She flicked through the volume and stopped halfway. There was a story with blacked-out letters, he wh-stled a soft tune, and touched her shoulder, so that she would look round -t him, but she knew if she did that he would have powe- over her ever after.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen another book with letters blacked out like this. Is it some kind of traditional thing?’

  ‘No, I’ve only seen it twice before.’ He held out his hand to take the book. ‘It’s a story about a lhiannan shee too, apt choice...’ Her expression must have shown her ignorance because he went on as if telling a story to a child. ‘If you so much as glance at one of Themselves you’re under their spell for good. They’ll have you dancing off into their fine halls under the hill.’ He looked up at her as if considering whether to carry on or not. ‘From time to time some of their things turn up. I think they let them slip through for mischief. They look just like our books, our paintings, our records even, but there’s always an extra story, or a curve in the hill that you’d swear isn’t actually there, or a tune you’ve never heard before – something not quite as it should be.’ He shut the book and put it beside the till. ‘I’ve gone on too much. Forgive me, they’re old tales, and I’m an old man who spends far too much time shut up with only books for company. Are you with us on holiday?’

  ‘My partner’s from the island. It’s the first time I’ve visited.’

  ‘And have we treated you well?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ She pulled her coat around herself, readying to go.

  ‘Have you been to see the Laxey Wheel?’

  ‘No. I’ve not seen as much as I’d wanted to and we leave this evening.’

  ‘Well we’ll see you again, I’m sure.’ He picked up the book. ‘Would you like this wrapping?’

  There was no sign of Gareth back at the house. His mum was in the kitchen baking. The parcel remained in place on the dresser. She pulled the book out and worked her way through the pages: w . . . e . . . w . . . a . . .
n . . . t . . . t . . . o . . . c . . . o . . . m . . . e . . . h . . . o . . . m . . . e. She shoved the book back into the envelope and dropped it on the dresser, setting off the tune for ‘Three Blind Mice’. It had to be some weird trick his wife was playing. And that’s where he kept sneaking off to: he was seeing her. She headed upstairs to pack. She pulled open the top drawer. Her clothes had gone. Her bag wasn’t under the bed. Her washbag wasn’t on the windowsill. His stuff was all still there. His rucksack was in the wardrobe. Had he packed for her?

  She ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. ‘Where’s Gareth?’

  His mum didn’t look up from her mixing. ‘He’s just nipped out to finish sorting something.’ She stirred faster and faster. The bowl was full of broken eggshells.

  Out in the lane there was no sign of him. She didn’t know where to begin looking. At the end of the street, just as she was about to turn into the next, she heard whistling behind her. She’d never heard Gareth whistle. It was the same lilting tune she’d heard from the book the first time she’d opened the parcel. She turned, furious, ready to yell at him, but every­thing within her stopped. The stranger held her there with his gaze. She took his outstretched hand and let him lead her away.

  This Skin Doesn’t Fit Me Any More

  ELIOT NORTH

  The animal’s head emerges from a polished oak shield, red-brown pelt stretched over bony skull. The shield is tightly gripped between my Dad’s hands. It is heavy. The veins stand out on his neck as he braces the weight against his thigh.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

  Ed peers cautiously behind the shield and then walks in a circle around it.

  My reflection sits within two glass eyes.