Best British Short Stories 2020 Nicholas Royle (best way to read ebooks txt) 📖

took it immediately into the house. He went in to have a look at it several times during the party. Marcia, of course, could not be flattered and had half an idea that she should regret the gift.

Denny wanted to dance with Marcia and they did dance in a manner of speaking. But the music was horrible, and Denny did not know how to dance and was already a little too drunk. He reached out his hands in the hope that Marcia would take them, but she did not. His fingers wove the air like a magician’s.

Jack and Edward looked on at them unhappily. Edward thought, for the first time, that he knew why Jack did not like him. It was because Edward was the purveyor of this useless and dangerous knowledge, this science. It was Edward’s fault what had happened to Denny and to the world, and yet for all his cleverness he could not catch a fish, gut a rabbit nor even make a fire with that miraculous ease that Denny could manage.

Denny had stopped dancing and was now showing Marcia how he was trying to teach the apes to make a fire, in which they did seem to be very interested, but at which they had evidently made no progress. The apes might have done better if they were not drunk. Jack found their drunkenness funny. Edward thought the Nortons both too intimate with the apes and too brutal towards them. Jack called them beasts, but he drank from the same cup as them.

He went over to look at Jack’s generator, powered by petrol. They had little enough of that left, but little enough use for it. Jack’s contraption was ingenious. He wondered where he had learned of such things. He didn’t really know anything about him. A young ape came over, sent by Denny, for some of the bundle of newspapers, to help light the fire. Then he became curious about the papers and began sorting through them, turning the pages and getting frustrated by how difficult it was for him to do that without tearing them. Various advertising inserts fell out promoting impossible goods and services. Among these Edward found the photograph of Marcia in the bathing costume. He gave it to the ape to put on the fire.

From his corner by the stinking machine, conscious that he was already a little tipsy himself, he had his vantage. Edward and Marcia thought the apes essentially beautiful. Jack and Denny took it for granted that they were very ugly. Looking like an ape meant being ugly. Edward told himself he must not hate people and must not say that he did to Marcia. He no longer knew what counted as normal behaviour, for apes or humans. The answer was changing.

Jack was teasing Conrad, offering him a cup and then snatching it away from him, splashing him with the hot stew and flicking at his youthful cheek flaps as though in mockery. Jack had had too much. Edward could have stepped over and distracted Conrad, or Jack, but he decided to watch. The ape must finally have lost its temper, but in a way that Edward had not seen before. He reached out for Jack’s hand and quietly crushed it, not brutally, not breaking anything, but from the new expression on Jack’s face, very painfully. Then he let him go and Jack got up and left Conrad to sip punch and stew straight from the cauldrons.

That had seemed a very human punishment to Edward. That was not how the apes were with one another. He wondered if he would ever get off this island, over the abysmal sea.

Edward woke the next morning and found himself thinking about Denny. He felt he had to go to see him, to talk to him about Marcia. He wanted to punish Denny but did not know that he would be able to do that. Jack had been down at the quay all that morning and Edward knew that he would find Denny alone at his house, if he could find him at all. He made his way across the heather with empty hands.

In the ape world, to have three men competing for one woman would be a disaster. Who would win that competition if it were allowed to run its course? Who would Marcia choose if she were allowed to choose? A huge beetle zoomed past his ear.

Would it be a good thing if Denny were cleverer? More like Jack and less like the apes. The difference between himself and Denny was not a matter of education. It was more to do with language, or education made clear through language. It was not what Edward knew, because Denny knew a lot. But both Denny and Jack had a predictable lack of mental agility. If Denny were the father of Marcia’s child, then it might be born an idiot.

He noted the tarn over to the left and became more aware of his surroundings. He was surprised he had not seen more orangutans. There were so many now it was unusual to see none on even a short walk and Edward had initially been on his guard against a large group. Jack had once joked, if it was a joke, that they might invite hunters to the island, as a way of raising revenue they did not need. He saw the smoke from the Nortons’ fire. You could smell it even from here in this clear air. He might get a plate of stew before he had to speak harshly to this hairy boy.

He could see things were not right before he could see clearly how wrong they were. He had never known Denny the worse for drink except at his party and only a very drunk man would lie like that, and he was too close to the fire. The fire smelled bad. There were no apes around at all.

Denny was dead and his shoulder and one side of his face were