Best British Short Stories 2020 by Nicholas Royle (best novels to read for students txt) 📕

The walls were pink and green with graffiti. She could follow the Five Weirs Walk all the way past the industrial estates and then walk back along the canal to the basin. It was a grey, humid morning and she was sweating already. There were diversions and footpath closures and the route sent her past old foundries and sleepy sandwich shops with chalkboards outside. The could hear welding, men shouting over the din. Somehow, just when it seemed she would never rejoin the water it would appear, rushing constant on her left. Attercliffe, a proud bridge, the weir running silver. By the shopping precinct, she took her baby out of the carrier and leaned him forwards towards the sound. A heron appeared to their right, stepping thoughtfully from depth to shallows. Her son squealed and flapped his arm, bird-like and sudden. There were shopping trolleys and tyres, lengths of orange rope. Life was everywhere around them, endless and derelict and broken. It did not matter, she thought, what any of this was called. It was all pure river.

ROBERT STONEPURITY

Edward and Marcia had got into the habit of walking along the cliff-top at dusk. What, here on Auskerry, Edward was tempted to call the gloaming. The sultry day was much cooler now and, indeed, would soon be cold. At this latitude the summer sky was still pale, but the first stars could already be made out. Marcia had something she wanted to tell Edward and Edward did not want to hear it.

They ambled hand in hand towards the remains of the chapel, not really intending to reach them. Marcia said she would show him the whirlpool she had been observing that afternoon, a new and especially large one. Her red hair looked almost purple in this light. She was lustrous, thought Edward. She was certainly pregnant, he could tell that, and she knew it, and she was very happy. Despite everything, Marcia had always wanted a child.

She couldn’t leave her telescope unattended on the cliff, but Edward had his binoculars and he stood and looked out at the whirlpool while Marcia sat on a rock, brushed the small stones out of her sandals and explained it to him. She had noted it a week before, but it must be much older, unless it had grown unusually quickly. It was as though the water were being slowly stirred by the invisible spoon of a giant cook. Marcia would film it if they could charge the battery for the camera. Edward nodded. If she liked. The seals were gone from the beach. Luckily, there were no pups at this time of the year.

Edward wondered who the father of his wife’s child might be. He could not be absolutely sure that it was not himself, but he was almost so. That was what Marcia did not know. The extent to which Edward was sterile. He had kept that from her. She thought that they had just been unlucky so far.

– There’s a chance we will see a meteor tonight. It is the Perseid season. It will be easier after midnight, when it gets really dark, he said.

He knew they wouldn’t be out so late.

So, who was the father? He couldn’t believe it was that old goat Jack, let alone Denny, and there was literally no one else on the island. It could have been one of the visitors. There had been none for months now and he couldn’t recall any of their faces. None of them had ever spent a night on Auskerry. That would have been quick work even by Marcia’s standards. Maybe Edward had got lucky, if that was the word for it. Of course, from the gene-spreading point of view, a random tourist could be a good idea, setting aside the barbarity of it.

Marcia started to talk about what fun it might have been to be on an island like this when you were a child and she might have told him then, but they were both stopped by Monboddo’s stentorian roar. A sound they had heard many times. The eeriest sound they had ever heard certainly and not alarming, nor unexpected, even, but every time they heard it it moved them. It could not be heard without emotion.

Monboddo was the leader, at the moment, of the orangutan clan that had taken control of the chapel ruins and the area around the lighthouse. The roar was not directed at the humans, or probably not. The ape might have been moved by the churning whirlpool, or he might have seen a comet.

Edward and Marcia saw a group of the apes now a few hundred yards ahead of them, sitting, relaxed, chins on chests, like so many boulders or standing stones. The husband and wife knew these particular animals and could have approached them, but they had no wish to disturb and so turned around and began to walk slowly back towards the compound.

– Apes of idleness is Shakespeare, you know, said Marcia. I read that today.

– Apes and monkeys are known for mischief, cheek and lust.

Edward pointed out the late blossom on the brambles. There were still buttercups in spring and blackberries in autumn. That made the island seem normal, although normal, he supposed, was just what you got used to.

Behind them, Monboddo raised his long arm and pointed far into the galaxy.

Edward wandered around the compound to see about the fences. It was nonsense of course to build fences to keep out orangutans, but he felt it provided some kind of discouragement, although it could prevent no determined animal. There was an ape on the roof now. He thought he recognised the young male, Conrad, who had learned to spin a teetotum and who had then exhausted his interest in that, or his understanding of it, and could not be persuaded to pick it up again. But Edward couldn’t be sure it was Conrad at all. The light was against him.

His interest in the fencing was motivated by the fact