The image that stuck in his mind more than any – which persuaded him to believe it was authentic [bona fide, genuine] – involved the slow roll of Mo’s head in the blue/black water of the pond as her face returned to the surface. Her fine hair was arranged around her like glass noodles left too long to soak. Her mouth and eyes were open, and he always recoiled from that part of his recollection, the infant part of his mind upset that she was swallowing dirty water and would get a poorly tummy. Her arms were outstretched; even in death she was keen for a cuddle.
Salter exhaled in the silence and it was a ragged, unnerving sound. He gazed back in the direction of the campsite and saw the route he had carved through the deep grass, a dark green oblique bisecting the field. Beyond that he could just make out the small parallelogram tents peeking over the tops of the trees. He could see now that his quickening breath was as much to do with the gradual incline he was ascending, as any delayed childhood shock. The early morning sunlight persisted, but grey cloud, like the edifices of stone they towered over, was gathering. He would walk as far as the river and then return for breakfast and a reckoning with Davis. He shook his head clear of unpleasantness; enough thinking about Mo for now.
He stretched his legs and strode hard along a path under the rockface, enjoying the heat building at his back. Muscles in his legs sang; he knew they would ache later, but it would be a good ache, telling of honest exercise. His thoughts returned to the classroom. He’d brought a little marking with him that he would enjoy: stories by his pupils written without fear, something he found common to primary school children in the main. Something that sadly would be unlikely to last as self-consciousness kicked in and distractions mounted. There were some children who had natural skill [expertise, adroitness], a real feel for words, as he had done as a boy. He remembered being teased for taking a dictionary with him on a school trip. His peers nicknamed him The Saurus because he was constantly getting his pupils to come up with synonyms, a habit that he couldn’t shake himself; he was often consulted in the staff room regarding a crossword clue, or a letter that needed to be precisely worded.
He reached a stile almost fully concealed by bright green lichen. Over that, a field of what looked like stubbled barley dipped away to a barn in the far corner. By the time he reached the building – little more than a weather-thrashed lean-to built from asbestos cement and corrugated iron roofing – it had begun to rain. Now he could see a series of single-storey outbuildings hopscotched amid the green beyond. Salter pulled up his hood and watched the thick grey clouds spend themselves. Black nets of rain hung across the sky like dirty curtains in a terrace filled with secrets. The only sound was a stippling against his waxed jacket. It felt as if he was at a moment of poise, or pause. It felt as if something would develop imminently: he was tensed for the explosion of wings as a heron broke through the tree line or a rabbit shot out of clover. Nothing like that transpired, but the feeling remained and his heart rose to meet it.
The sound of running water turned his head. For a moment he thought the downspout from the gutter was blocked with hair, but it was only water, hurtling from the mouth in a shock of white. Thin veils of cloud sank from the top of the mountain and removed sense, softened edges. A cow despondently chewing its cud became a sepia stain on blotting paper. Cold found its way past the toggles of his jacket; he wished he’d taken the time to prepare a flask of coffee, but anger had ushered him from his tent. It was time to go back. The sun had threatened enough and retreated quite possibly for the rest of the day given the thickening shroud and the absence of any breeze to shift it along.
A single magpie ducked and fluttered, washing itself in a dip in the barn’s concrete apron. The ancient shadow of an oil puddle. Rust ghosts in the wall told of defunct, removed machinery. There was an old wheelbarrow inside the barn, and a tyre torn through to its steel belts. Dead nests of things long gone. Water lipped troughs and gutters. It spanged off the metal roofs.
Salter did not drink water; not in its purest state, not any more. It had to be blended with some other beverage: tea or coffee, an ice cube in his gin and tonic. His parents had to fool him into imbibing water by disguising it in a cordial of some kind, or topping up his cocoa from the kettle. They had always shielded him from the truth, perhaps believing that to protect him in this way gave them licence to take their anger, frustration and guilt out on him. Not that they would ever admit as much. How could they? How could any parent acknowledge such an egregious transfer? He trudged back, raking the burning embers of his resentment; every little spiteful episode. The pointed fingers. The heated asides.
His route took him alongside the river, now swollen and fast, groaning under the weight of itself. It was unlikely to remain clear for much longer as the muddy banks were encouraged to became part of the flow. For now, though, he could see into the heart of the river, and the reeds trapped there, like slender arms waving in the current.
She could not say his name. Trevor. He seemed to remember her trying, but she got the name twisted in her mouth. Rover, she used to say. That was it. Rover. ‘Mo,’ he said now, in response to that memory, and the simplicity of it, the stark snap of it in the relative quiet shocked him. He had not uttered her name in twenty years, at least. The trees murmured again, as if he’d spoken too loud. Already he suspected he might have done. His breathing would not settle; he could feel, see, even, the torment of his heart in the materials layered across his chest. That sense of imminence. Perhaps he was anticipating thunder in some lizard chamber of his back brain, as other animals were able. But there was no such rumour in the colour or shape of these clouds. Panic gnawed at him. Heart attacks were a shadow in his bloodline. He had stumbled upon a dead rabbit on one camping trip, its splintered [fragmented, spillikin] ribs splayed to allow access to the soft vitals within; it was too easy to imagine himself become much the same. Perhaps under the beak of that magpie, and whatever else hunkered in the undergrowth with a nose for carrion. Please don’t let me die out here, alone. The hiss of the trees. Had he spoken aloud again? Despite everything, he laughed.
He came back along the bank until he could avoid it no longer and strode into the stand of trees. Gloom and sullen silence under the canopy now. Odour of petrichor. He felt swaddled, but there was no comfort in it. When he reached the edge of the trees he saw his tracks in the field again, those deep green furrows, but now they had been supplemented by another set of narrower tracks, weaving in and around his determined pattern like those of a dog, or a small child. The rain intensified and he couldn’t understand if it was the hiss of that he was hearing or those incessant trees. A sharp intake of breath at the witnessing of atrocity. The cusp of something. It was like that game he had played as a child. When someone hid something and you went looking for it. Warm, warmer, colder, cold. Hot now. Very hot. Boiling.
Nothing had ever been cut and dried in his life. There was always doubt [uncertainty, confusion, hesitancy]. It might have had something to do with his never marrying. He didn’t feel comfortable taking that risk with someone, a person he could never know as well as himself. And the fact he didn’t know himself all too well meant that any chance of intimacy was stymied from the start. ‘Buggered every which way’, as his dad had been fond of saying.
He stumbled into a clearing. He knew this place. This arrangement of wood and water. The peculiar sweep of land. He saw the pond and cried out at the pale oval turning slowly within it. But it was only a soft glancing of light finding its way between the cradle of branches. He heard the cry of the child again, and knew there was no such thing. There was no child on the campsite.
‘Dad,’ he said, and steadied himself against the bole of a tree. It was as if, viewing it all again, fifty years on, a match had been made in his head, like a copy on tracing paper aligned with the original. ‘Mum.’
Dead a dozen years now. He was the last of the Salters. And their name would die with him.
He crouched and placed his hand in the cold water, wishing his infancy
back, a crucial few seconds in which he might have made a difference. Everything could have changed since that pivot in time. All of those holidays he remembered since Mo’s death. The sham of their routines. The jokes. The games. They were told and played behind masks. Nobody was who they had been before. He had hated these holidays. Yes, he had hated them. The last sweet for Mo? He had eaten them all.
He thought of the way his parents regarded him as he grew up. That barely concealed mixture of revulsion and guilt. Laced with something else, he thought now. Fear, was it? What if? What if?
He heard movement in the undergrowth. That moment opening up again. That bubble of imminence. He dredged his hand through the water, ruining the calm of the pond. He fancied he felt something winding itself around his fingers, but when he pulled them clear, there was nothing to see. He stood up. All his life he had been pushing people away. Always pushing people away. Always pushing. He didn’t have a word for what he had done.
The trees hissed as he closed his eyes and Mo coalesced there, reaching out for him as he had done for her half a century ago. The arms that tried to encircle his body were much too short for the task.
KELLY CREIGHTON
AND THREE THINGS BUMPED
I THINK OF Stephen Kent and I remember the first time he ever collected me in that taxi of his. His name and number on a laminated card swinging on the rear-view mirror. You know the type of thing I’m talking about. He told me a fill from the moment I got into his car at the airport pick-up zone: Stephen had been a transplant in Chelsea until he’d come back home where, all over the province, he bought houses as investments, apart from the one he was renovating for his family. Sitting good-naturedly in Friday dinner-time traffic, he’d boasted his wife was living with her parents until the new homestead was shipshape. Stephen used to work in stocks, making money from money. Back then I toyed with writing: making something from nothing or stories from stories. I suppose there are more than two ways of looking at the one thing.
Outside my home he said, That’s a nice wee house you have there.
Cheers, I said, about to leave.
Stephen said, This place is overrun with kids. How many have you got yourself?
One, I told him, and one on the way.
He turned the radio off completely. I’ve three, he said, two lads and a girl. He sat back so he was looking at me full on in the rear-view mirror. He was somewhere between a pair of eyes and a hard thick neck. You have to give stuff up when kids are involved, don’t you? Stephen said.
We only had our daughter then so I couldn’t tell if that would catch us up. Trudy and I didn’t stop each other doing the things we loved. I thought about her and her surfing, and me and my writing. Stephen and I got talking and lost track of time. Trudy looked out the living room window at us.
Someone wants you home, Stephen said though neither of us moved.
Trudy’s easygoing, I told him.
That’s good, he said. Then you’re a lucky man.
Stephen told me his neighbours were young guys. They invited him to the bar, coaxed him into going to Ravenhill to watch the rugby. Stephen normally ended up driving. He said sometimes he felt they used him for lifts. There was never any point in leaving the Merc at home, which was the car he drove when he wasn’t taxiing, and he didn’t charge them. They’re not a bad crowd, he told me. It’s good to have the company of young fellas.
Stephen had a decade on me. Just had his fortieth. He had a thing for numbers which I understood as being residual from his broker days. He talked about being born on the tenth of May, that his daughter had the same birthday. He was one of ten kids.
I think ten might be my lucky number, he said.
I listened quite easily. Always thirsty for a story back then. He elaborated on his living arrangements, admitting he and his wife were on a trial separation he believed they’d reconcile from, especially once she saw this house he was building for her and the children: whom I recall were seven and nine and ten, or thereabouts.
I said, Forgive my nosiness but is there anyone else in the picture?
No, none of that, Stephen told me. He was still wearing his wedding ring. I’ll tell you something, he said, and it goes no further. In my experience money is the killer. People can put up with all sorts. Cheating would never do the damage money does.
So let me get this straight, I said, it’s having too much money that ruins things?
He squinted in the mirror at me. Money is the killer, he repeated. It always has been with me and the missus. She wanted me to come back here so she could be near the grandparents for babysitting. She said she was lonely in Chelsea. All those millions of people and she couldn’t find one she liked! We used to holiday in Dubai. New York. You sacrifice things, don’t you? The house you want, the motors. I came back for her and what happened? If I’m being honest – and what’s the point in not being – she was a very selfish person. What she put me through – and I’ll not get into it all – but there aren’t many men who would put up with the things that I put up with. In the end I couldn’t any more.
Yes, you can’t be doing with that, I said.
He dried up, so I told him it had been good talking to him. Stephen turned side on and shook my hand. He liked the look of the cufflinks Trudy had bought me: two silver crowns with little jewels set into the spikes. They were flash for my taste. A gift for my thirtieth I didn’t have long. I lost one in the airport after a month or two. Trudy never really forgave me. One is, after all, sort of jobless on its own.
Stephen knew they were Westwood, who, as it turned out, was the only designer Stephen wore when he lived in Chelsea. Then out of nowhere he said, My wife did time. You asked so I’m going to tell you. She did time for fraud. Was stealing from me the whole time, and from her employer.
Jesus, I said and sat back, what else could I do?
Ruth, he said, that’s her name. When Ruth came to Chelsea she got a job for the Crown Prosecution Service, started writing dodgy receipts. I just couldn’t live with a woman like that, not in my profession. If you really want to know, I had to leave the market. I was warned it could have repercussions on me. They did me a severance deal and I took it. I’d be a tool not to. Ruth comes from a family . . . well, let’s just say they aren’t short of a bob or two, so between them and me the kids are kept right, you know? And Ruth too. And I don’t want you to think that I wish her ill, because I don’t.
No of course not, I said.
But if I wasn’t a gentleman I could tell you a few things, said Stephen.
How long did she do?
Where? Inside? Not long. He rubbed his eye. A good solicitor, if you ever need one, is all you need. Remember that, pal. If you ever find yourself on the wrong side of the law, a shit-hot solicitor will seal the deal. And keep your mouth shut. It does you no good if you can’t hold your water, do you know what I’m saying?
I presume you get what you pay for, I said. In terms of legal representation. Same as everything.
Absolutely, he nodded. It is the same as everything. Especially in money issues. A good solicitor will talk it all around and before you know it, you don’t know what end of you is up. Well, Joe Bloggs doesn’t know. People who aren’t used to money chat. It has its own language. I don’t need to be doing this, I live in a real nice place, nice but small, I like working with people. You couldn’t beat it really. He yawned. Look, it’s been good talking to you but I have to get back now, the kids will be calling me. I like to tell them I love them every day. Even days I don’t see them. Make sure you do that too. Especially when the next one comes along, Stephen added letting me know he had been listening. Don’t let the wee child feel left out. It’s not a nice thing. I’m saying this as the eldest of a large family. And you’re on the right tracks too, going away to do your own thing, maybe me and Ruth should have done more of that. You get out of the way of it. Don’t end up like us.
Okay, I said and we reenacted our handshake.
They are nice cufflinks, he s
aid, nearly longingly and he turned to put his hands back on the wheel.
They are quite nice, I said and I finally got out.
He was some talker, I said. Trudy shook her head and said she’d made something in the restaurant and there was plenty of it left in the fridge.
That night we lay in bed discussing Stephen. She was sceptical, like I had been, like anyone would be. Why would he be taxiing if he’s so loaded? she asked.
He turned the meter off all that time we were sat outside.
I should hope so too.
He did say something good, that we should never stop doing the things we love.
Well then, Trudy said, maybe he was worth listening to.
We put ourselves aside for a couple of years. It happens, even though you vow it won’t. Having a kid is a whirlwind. The house needed doing up. That fell by the wayside too. We slept together once, maybe twice a month, if we weren’t exhausted. Having a second child was twice the work. It makes sense but somehow I hadn’t bargained on it. At times it seemed we might crack.
We went to Paris for a weekend. Trudy’s dad minded the kids. He hadn’t a clue, poor man. Their clothes hadn’t even been unpacked when we returned. God knows what he was doing. Potty training the youngest had to start all over again, but at least we got away. We had a good time but it felt cultural, like a school trip. Our feet were wore to the bone with all the walking, then we fell asleep watching the show at the Moulin Rouge.
A week after we came home we spoke about it, how we should have been unable to keep our hands off each other, in Paris of all places. We wondered aloud if we were done. And what we would do with the house. How would we tell the kids? It happened in a blink.
I looked at Trudy and she looked at me and started crying, saying we were like passing ships. I’m so busy I’m meeting myself at the front door, she said. I’m going to miss you so much.
Best British Short Stories 2018 Page 11