Best British Short Stories 2015 Read online

  The Best British Short Stories 2015

  ‘There is no more carefully chosen yet eclectic anthology series in existence in Britain today’ —SUSAN HAIGH, The Short Review

  “Hilary Mantel and Helen Simpson feature in the nation’s favourite annual guide to the short story, now in its fifth year …”

  Best British Short Stories invites you to judge a book by its cover – or more accurately, by its title. This new series aims to reprint the best short stories published in the previous calendar year by British writers, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. The editor’s brief is wide ranging, covering anthologies, collections, magazines, newspapers and web sites, looking for the best of the bunch to reprint all in one volume.

  Authors include Hilary Mantel, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth, Helen Simpson, Charles Wilkinson, Rebecca Swirsky, Matthew Sperling, Julianne Pachico, KJ Orr, Bee Lewis, Uschi Gatward, Emma Cleary and Neil Campbell

  Praise for Best British Short Stories

  ‘Another effective and well-rounded short story anthology from Salt – keep up the good work, we say!’ —SARAH-CLARE CONLON, Bookmunch

  ‘This annual feast satisfies again. Time and again, in Royle’s crafty editorial hands, closely observed normality yields (as Nikesh Shukla’s spear-fisher grasps) to the things we “cannot control”.’ —BOYD TONKIN, The Independent

  ‘Highly recommended’ — KATE SAUNDERS, The Times

  NICHOLAS ROYLE is the author of more than 100 short stories, two novellas and seven novels, most recently First Novel (Vintage). His short story collection, Mortality (Serpent’s Tail), was shortlisted for the inaugural Edge Hill Prize. He has edited seventeen anthologies of short stories, including The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories (Penguin), ’68: New Stories by Children of the Revolution (Salt) and Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds (Two Ravens Press). A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at MMU and head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks.

  Also by Nicholas Royle:

  NOVELS

  Counterparts

  Saxophone Dreams

  The Matter of the Heart

  The Director’s Cut

  Antwerp

  Regicide

  First Novel

  NOVELLAS

  The Appetite

  The Enigma of Departure

  SHORT STORIES

  Mortality

  ANTHOLOGIES (as editor)

  Darklands

  Darklands 2

  A Book of Two Halves

  The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers’ Dreams

  The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories

  The Ex Files: New Stories About Old Flames

  The Agony & the Ecstasy: New Writing for the World Cup

  Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing

  The Time Out Book of Paris Short Stories

  Neonlit: Time Out Book of New Writing Volume 2

  The Time Out Book of London Short Stories Volume 2

  Dreams Never End

  ’68: New Stories From Children of the Revolution

  The Best British Short Stories 2011

  Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds

  The Best British Short Stories 2012

  The Best British Short Stories 2013

  The Best British Short Stories 2014

  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Selection and introduction © Nicholas Royle, 2015

  Individual contributions © the contributors, 2015

  The right of Nicholas Royle to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2015

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-057-7 electronic

  In memory of Graham Joyce (1954–2014)

  Introduction

  I have a shelf at home – I won’t tell you what I call it – where I keep particular books, or books by particular authors, more to the point. There might be a novel there by an author who once declined to write a short story for an anthology I was editing on the grounds that he didn’t ‘get out of bed for less than a grand’. You might find a short story collection featuring an introduction by its author in which he quotes at length from his own fan mail. (Publishers, please stop encouraging pathological narcissists.) There could be books by people who have repeatedly given me – or writers I admire, or in fact anyone at all – unreasonably bad reviews, who clearly take an unsettling degree of pleasure in wielding the axe. Bad reviews are easier to write than good ones, and some writers and critics – as bloodthirsty as they are lazy – specialise in them. There might well also be a collection by a writer previously featured in this series who made a fuss about the fee offered for the use of her story – each writer is offered the same fee and anyone requesting a higher fee, for whatever reason, is given one more chance to accept the original fee before being advised, politely, of the offer’s withdrawal.

  In my head, at least, I have started a new shelf, for publishers who refuse permission to allow a story to be reprinted on the grounds that the fee offered is too low. This situation has the potential to arise where an author publishes a short story collection, with a major publisher, and control of the rights rests with the publisher rather than the author. Some publishers understand what we are trying to do here; there’s no point in publishing a series called The Best British Short Stories if we don’t include what are, in the editor’s opinion, the best British short stories. Among the stories first published in 2014 by British writers was one by a Booker Prize-winning novelist and short story writer – it was the title story from his latest collection – and it was, again in my opinion, one of the best of the year, but his publisher was not prepared to allow the story to be reprinted for the fee on offer. It’s hard to see the sense in this, since publication in this series does not preclude publication elsewhere. Who knows if the author was even given the choice?

  Fortunately, HarperCollins allowed the reprint of Hilary Mantel’s ‘The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher 6th August 1983’ (just as Mantel and her agent had been happy to allow the reprint of other stories earlier in this series); the story caused a furore when it was published, ahead of the collection of which it would be the title story, in the Guardian. Offended politicians and ex-politicians on the right lined up to denounce Mantel, unaware, perhaps, of the story’s place in a tradition of similar works by JG Ballard, Christopher Burns, Frederick Forsyth and others.

  Another highly acclaimed short story writer, Helen Simpson, is represented in this volume, and in the series for the first time, with ‘Strong Man’, a story first published in the New Statesman, which, it is pleasing to note, continues to commission one or two original short stories
a year. The BBC is one of the UK’s staunchest supporters of the short story, broadcasting dozens of stories on Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra and continuing to back the BBC National Short Story Award; Radio 3’s The Verb should not be missed either. Jenn Ashworth’s story, ‘Five Thousand Lads a Year’, was broadcast on Radio 4.

  Perhaps one of the most encouraging developments in short story publishing in recent years, the rise of the single short story publication – in the form of a chapbook or pamphlet – has been partly driven by Daunt Books, who have been putting out beautifully designed small-format perfect-bound booklets for a couple of years now. ‘The Tourists’ by Julianne Pachico was irresistible; the same author popped up in the now essential Lighthouse journal with ‘Lucky’. The same issue of Lighthouse yielded ‘Lightbox’ by Emma Cleary. Knives Forks and Spoons Press of Newton-le-Willows produce poetry pamphlets and last year they published Neil Campbell’s short but perfectly formed short story collection Ekphrasis, from which ‘LS Lowry/Man Lying on a Wall’ is taken.

  There’s an international flavour to this year’s volume, and not only because of the presence of two or three authors enjoying dual nationality. ‘Secondhand Magic’, by Helen Marshall, who was born and raised in Canada, is taken from her second collection, Gifts For the One Who Comes After (ChiZine Publications), while Tamar Hodes, born in Israel, published ‘The First Day’ in Wiltshire View. Irish journals Gorse and Dublin Review were where Jonathan Gibbs’s ‘Festschrift’ and K J Orr’s ‘The Lake Shore Limited’, respectively, appeared for the first time. Bee Lewis’s ‘The Iron Men’ was published by a Danish magazine for English teachers, Anglo Files.

  Short stories can turn up in academic journals. ‘May the Bell Be Rung For Harriet’, by Tracey S Rosenberg, was published on the Brontë Society website and reprinted in Brontë Studies after it won the society’s short story competition judged by Margaret Drabble. ‘Green Boots’ Cave’, by Jim Hinks, well known to readers and writers as an editor at Comma Press, was published in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice.

  Short story anthologies are still being published, but by smaller publishers, so they might need more seeking out. Alison Moore’s ‘Eastmouth’ was one of the highlights of superior horror volume The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (Spectral Press), which editor Mark Morris hopes will be the first in a series inspired by countless Pan and Fontana anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s. Unthank Books continue to publish some very good work in their Unthology series edited by Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones, including ‘Fresh Water’ by Charles Wilkinson. ‘Worlds from the Word’s End’ by Joanna Walsh was first published in Best European Fiction 2015 (Dalkey Archive Press) edited by West Camel.

  Magazines – whether online or print, or both – probably remain the first place to go to find new short stories. Matthew Sperling’s ‘Voice Over’ and Alan McCormick’s ‘Go Wild in the Country’ were both published online in The Literateur and 3:AM Magazine respectively. Former fiction editor of 3:AM Susan Tomaselli edits twice-yearly journal Gorse, mentioned above, one of the most exciting recent arrivals on the scene.

  Making an increasingly important contribution to the world of the short story is the Word Factory, run by poet and founder of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award Cathy Galvin and her team, with its packed programme of readings and masterclasses, short story club and mentorship schemes. Rebecca Swirsky and Uschi Gatward are both former Word Factory mentees; their stories, ‘The Common People’ and ‘The Clinic’, appeared online in Litro and in print in Structo respectively.

  There was, last year, good work published in Ambit, Black Static and Confingo, a new magazine from Manchester edited by Tim Shearer and featuring stories by John Saul, Adrian Slatcher and Vanessa Gebbie. In the pages of horror magazine Black Static, Stephen Hargadon loomed into view on two occasions, exploring the boozers, tower blocks and transport routes of Manchester as well as recording its voices; he has a good eye and a good ear. Ambit is transitioning after the retirement in 2013 of long-serving founder-editor Martin Bax. The new team, headed by Briony Bax with Kate Pemberton as fiction editor assisted by Gary Budden and Mike Smith, is finding some gems among a huge number of submissions, which are invited to coincide with twice yearly openings of their new ‘portal’. The Mechanics’ Institute Review continues to showcase interesting work by Birkbeck creative writing students alongside contributions last year from Hari Kunzru, Alex Preston and Julia Bell. Also worthy of note was Everything is Spherical: An Anthology of Dyslexic Writers (Rebelling Against Spelling Press) edited by Naomi Folb and Sarah Fearn.

  Going by feedback, short story writers themselves number not insignificantly among the readership of this series. It’s unlikely that any individual writing short stories in Britain today hasn’t heard of the Arvon Foundation, as anyone who has been there, whether as punter or tutor or guest reader, tends to proselytise on its behalf, and I am no exception, so, just in case there is a soul reading this who writes and wants to write better, and doesn’t know about Arvon, check them out. They have three centres – Lumb Bank (West Yorkshire), the Hurst (Shropshire) and Totleigh Barton (Devon) – where week-long themed residential courses are taught by practising writers. There is nothing quite like the atmosphere that develops during an Arvon week, or indeed a week at Moniack Mhor, which was Arvon’s centre in Scotland, until, in a canny reflection of the zeitgeist, they recently became independent.

  NICHOLAS ROYLE

  Moniack Mhor

  Inverness-shire

  April 2015

  The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher August 6th 1983

  HILARY MANTEL

  APRIL 25TH 1982, DOWNING STREET: Announcement of the recapture of South Georgia, in the Falkland Islands.

  Mrs Thatcher: Ladies and gentlemen, the Secretary of State for Defence has just come over to give me some very good news . . .

  Secretary of State: The message we have got is that British troops landed on South Georgia this afternoon, shortly after 4pm London time . . . The commander of the operation has sent the following message: ‘Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God save the Queen.’

  Mrs Thatcher: Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the marines. Goodnight, gentlemen.

  Mrs Thatcher turns towards the door of No.10 Downing Street.

  Reporter: Are we going to declare war on Argentina, Mrs Thatcher?

  Mrs Thatcher (pausing on her doorstep): Rejoice.

  Picture first the street where she breathed her last. It is a quiet street, sedate, shaded by old trees: a street of tall houses, their facades smooth as white icing, their brickwork the colour of honey. Some are Georgian, flat-fronted. Others are Victorian, with gleaming bays. They are too big for modern households, and most of them have been cut up into flats. But this does not destroy their elegance of proportion, nor detract from the deep lustre of panelled front doors, brass-furnished and painted in navy or forest green. It is the neighbourhood’s only drawback, that there are more cars than spaces to put them. The residents park nose-to-tail, flaunting their permits. Those who have driveways are often blocked into them. But they are patient householders, proud of their handsome street and willing to suffer to live there. Glancing up, you notice a fragile Georgian fanlight, or a warm scoop of terracotta tiling, or a glint of coloured glass. In spring, cherry trees toss extravagant flounces of blossom. When the wind strips the petals, they flurry in pink drifts and carpet the pavements, as if giants have held a wedding in the street. In summer, music floats from open windows: Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach.

  The street itself describes a gentle curve, joining the main road as it flows out of town. The Holy Trinity church, islanded, is hung with garrison flags. Looking from a high window over the town (as I did that day of the killing) you feel the close presence of fortress and castle. Glance to your left, and the Round Tower looms into view, pressing itself against the panes. But on days of
drizzle and drifting cloud the keep diminishes, like an amateur drawing half-erased. Its lines soften, its edges fade; it shrinks into the raw cold from the river, more like a shrouded mountain than a castle built for kings.

  The houses on the right-hand side of Trinity Place – I mean, on the right-hand side as you face out of town – have large gardens, each now shared between three or four tenants. In the early 1980s, England had not succumbed to the smell of burning. The carbonised reek of the weekend barbecue was unknown, except in the riverside gin palaces of Maidenhead and Bray. Our gardens, though immaculately kept, saw little footfall; there were no children in the street, just young couples who had yet to breed and older couples who might, at most, open a door to let an evening party spill out on to a terrace. Through warm afternoons the lawns baked unattended, and cats curled snoozing in the crumbling topsoil of stone urns. In autumn, leaf-heaps composted themselves on sunken patios, and were shovelled up by irritated owners of basement flats. The winter rains soaked the shrubberies, with no one there to see.

  But in the summer of 1983 this genteel corner, bypassed by shoppers and tourists, found itself a focus of national interest. Behind the gardens of No.20 and No.21 stood the grounds of a private hospital, a graceful pale building occupying a corner site. Three days before her assassination, the prime minister entered this hospital for minor eye surgery. Since then, the area had been dislocated. Strangers jostled residents. Newspapermen and TV crews blocked the street and parked without permission in driveways. You would see them trundle up and down Spinner’s Walk trailing wires and lights, their gaze rolling towards the hospital gates on Clarence Road, their necks noosed by camera straps. Every few minutes they would coagulate in a mass of heaving combat jackets, as if to reassure each other that nothing was happening: but that it would happen, by and by. They waited, and while they waited they slurped orange juice from cartons and lager from cans; they ate, crumbs spilling down their fronts, soiled paper bags chucked into flowerbeds. The baker at the top of St Leonard’s Road ran out of cheese rolls by 10am and everything else by noon. Windsorians clustered on Trinity Place, shopping bags wedged on to low walls. We speculated on why we had this honour, and when she might go away.