The Way Out Read online

  The Way Out

  A collection of short stories

  The Way Out

  A collection of short stories

  Vicki Jarrett

  Vicki Jarrett lives and works in her native Edinburgh. Her first novel, Nothing is Heavy, was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year 2013. Her short fiction has been widely published and broadcast, shortlisted for the Scotland on Sunday/Macallan Short Story Competition, Manchester Fiction Prize and Bridport Prize. The Way Out is her first collection.

  First published 2015

  Freight Books

  49-53 Virginia Street

  Glasgow, G1 1TS

  www.freightbooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Vicki Jarrett 2015

  The moral right of Vicki Jarrett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-910449-02-8

  eISBN 978-1-910449-03-5

  Typeset by Freight in Plantin

  Printed and bound by Bell and Bain, Glasgow

  Contents

  Something Wrong

  Worst Case Scenario

  What Remains

  How to Not Get Eaten by Tigers

  Home Security 1

  Fitting

  Loving the Alien

  Her Feelings About Auckland

  Bingo Wings

  Home Security 2

  10 Types of Mustard

  White Pudding Supper

  Human Testing

  Ladies’ Day

  Like Arseholes

  Chicken

  Odd Sympathy

  Mezzanine

  Rubble

  Readymade

  The End of Everything

  Red Bus

  This book is dedicated to all those who dream of escape.

  Something Wrong

  Today the papergirl delivers the news to the big houses. She folds her body into the wind to make herself narrow, so she can slip through the gaps in the rain. The bag of papers slung across her shoulder bumps off the back of her legs as she walks, turning her progress into a battle against turbulence. Sometimes she regrets taking this job, but she’s not sorry to miss the morning routine at home.

  This isn’t her usual round but at least she can’t get lost on this one. One single road. Must be about a mile long but all she has to do is go all the way down one side and all the way back up the other. She doesn’t have to deal with the tangled geography of the estate.

  Her original route was a nightmare. She couldn’t seem to get the streets in the right order. She was always having to double back on herself, trailing around terraces, crescents and cul-de-sacs that made no sense to her. It took her so long to complete the deliveries that there were complaints and she was often late for school. Mister Patterson, the newsagent, was patient at first because he was short-staffed. He must’ve assumed she’d get quicker with experience, but this morning he’d said, ‘Last chance. If you can’t get this round done in under an hour, I’ll have to let you go.’ Fair enough. He didn’t shout or try to make her feel stupid.

  Whichever part of the brain is supposed to be in charge of a sense of direction does not exist in the brain of the papergirl. Or perhaps she has a wonky chromosome. They did that in biology last term. How everything like hair and eye colour and pointless stuff like whether you can roll your tongue is coded into your DNA. There is something wrong with her code.

  Left and right have always been a problem, as long as she can remember. Close up, they’re fine. She knows her own right and left hands, can put her shoes on her right and left feet. No problem there. But as soon as she starts trying to apply direction to the world around her, it all falls apart. She remembers, in primary school, she tried to explain her doubts and the teacher had another child stand facing her. They’d squared up to each other, hands dropped to their sides, fingers curled and twitching around their own loaded ideas of left and right. She was outgunned. If they were both right, both correct, as the teacher insisted, then that meant every direction was both left and right at the same time. What use was that in finding your way?

  She crosses the road and starts back on the return leg. The traffic is heavier now, heading into town. She’ll have to watch her time. Provided the road doesn’t start tying itself in knots ahead of her, she should make it. The houses are large and set back from the road by gardens with driveways, trees and dark bushes that throw handfuls of rainwater at her as she passes, feet crunching over gravel. Only a few of the houses are still family homes, most have been converted into offices or split up into flats.

  About half way along she comes to one with a nameplate that says Sunshine House. Despite the cartoon smiley sun above the name, the place doesn’t look very sunny. The stone front is dark with rain, its narrow windows reflect the morning’s grey skies. The letterbox is vertical and spring-loaded, unwilling. Soon the outer pages of the Independent she’s trying to force through start to crumple and tear. She gives up and rings the bell. They’ll probably complain less about being disturbed than finding a shredded newspaper on their doormat.

  She’s not prepared for the full-frontal assault that barrels into her when the door opens. The force of it nearly knocks her off her feet and she stammers over her words as she holds out the paper. She’s not sure if the owner of the friendliest smile she’s ever seen is male or female, or how old they might be. They’re shorter than her and softly plump. Before she can wonder at this, her spare hand is grasped and she is tugged over the threshold and into the house. She experiences a brief moment of alarm when the door closes behind her but no sense of threat as she is led by the hand into a large kitchen filled with half a dozen more smiling faces.

  A chorus of cheers goes up. Somebody hugs her. A strong hug, arms wrapped tightly around her waist, head buried in her chest. She holds her arms up and out to the side, completely bewildered. They must be mistaking her for someone else, someone who looks like her perhaps. She should explain about the paper. But the hug is so warm and tight, so generous, that eventually she lowers her arms. Everyone cheers again. Someone offers her a bowl of cereal. ‘Have some coco pops!’

  The kitchen is warm, the steamed-up windows striped with runs of condensation. A long table covered with a yellow, plastic tablecloth is cluttered with cereal boxes and mismatched cups and bowls. She feels dizzy and thinks she might faint but that it would be okay if she did. She starts to laugh and the more she laughs, the happier everyone gets until the kitchen is a hubbub of laughter and excitement. Some huge unfamiliar sensation is rising through her body, filling her up to the brim. Someone reaches up, pats at her face with a dishcloth and tells her, ‘You are raining, silly!’

  The laughter dies down and she looks up to see a middle-aged man with a patchy beard and a bottle-green cardigan standing in the doorway peering at her through wire-rimmed glasses. ‘What’s going on here?’

  She swallows and steadies herself, explains about the paper, holds up her bag.

  ‘Oh dear, not again,’ sighs the man. ‘Christine, didn’t I tell you?’ he says to the person who opened the door. ‘You mus
tn’t keep kidnapping people!’

  She doesn’t want to leave but knows there isn’t any reason they should let her stay. She peels herself away from the hugs and allows the man to escort her out. Everyone follows them to the door, waves and smiles, smiles and waves. And then she’s out, back into the wind and the rain. She tries to fold herself into them again but can’t seem to fit. She walks for five, ten, maybe fifteen minutes before she realises she’s going in the wrong direction.

  The next day the papergirl delivers the news to the breakfast table.

  ‘You got sacked? From a paper round?’ Her father makes a rare appearance from behind his newspaper.

  Her brother snorts and shakes his head in amazement. She has once again managed to surprise him with just how useless she can be.

  She tries to tell the story of Sunshine House, tries to describe the warmth of it.

  Her mother frowns and interrupts. ‘What were you thinking of, going in there?’ she says. ‘It could’ve been dangerous.’

  She shakes her head. ‘No…’

  ‘You actually went inside Sunshine House?’ Her brother grins in an ugly, lopsided way.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s a home.’ The way her mother says the word has an inflection to it, a lowering of tone and a pressing down on the o-sound that somehow completely changes the meaning. ‘For folk with something wrong with them.’

  ‘You’d fit right in there,’ says her brother, laughing. ‘Ya mong.’

  Her mother bangs her mug down and coffee splashes onto the table. ‘Richard!’

  Her father silently folds over a page of his newspaper and lifts it back in front of his face as her mother and brother settle back into yelling at each other.

  The papergirl focuses on the thin beam of sunlight stretched across the breakfast table, separating her from the rest of her family. ‘There wasn’t anything wrong with them.’ But no one is listening. She pushes back her chair and leaves the room, leaves the house and starts walking. It doesn’t matter which direction.

  Worst Case Scenario

  Hamid had one of the big knives and was holding it out towards me. ‘Come here,’ he said.

  His face, as usual, was unreadable. My boss had a sour set to his mouth and narrow eyes that glittered with suppressed emotion. That was his normal look. I did my best to avoid finding out exactly which emotions he was suppressing. Behind him there was something frying on the griddle, strips of something dark sent up twisted spouts of metallic-smelling smoke.

  ‘Try this.’ He made a gesture with the knife which I realised was supposed to be reassuring. There was a sliver of cooked meat balanced on the flat of the blade.

  I breathed out. ‘What is it?’

  Hamid often cooked up a little something private on the back grill. Ate it through the back with some watery yoghurt drink he kept in the fridge. He’d never touch a donner; said he didn’t like Scottish food.

  ‘Just try it.’ He held the knife out towards me, nodding.

  ‘No. Thanks. You’re alright.’ I didn’t move.

  He almost smiled, and tilted his head. ‘Come on. I’m not trying to poison you.’

  The meat behind him on the griddle shrank and hissed.

  The kebabs we served were lamb or chicken, sometimes beef. We didn’t sell anything with pork in it. Donner meat, a complete mystery to me before this job, turned out to be minced lamb, threaded in fat rounds over a metal rod and shaped into a tower of packed meat, cooked by rotating it in front of an upright grill.

  I looked at the knife.

  The shop was empty. I looked at the door and wished for a customer, or for Ali to come back from his break but the door stayed closed. I walked towards Hamid. I’m no longer vegetarian but that doesn’t make me keen to experiment with unidentified bits of animal. But on balance I reckoned it’d be more dangerous to refuse. I asked myself, how bad could it be?

  Col snorts with laughter when I get to this point in the story. So far he’s hardly been listening. It’s 2am and he’s stretched out flat on the sofa, watching something on cable that involves a lot of pink flesh and squealing. I try not to focus on it.

  ‘Worst case scenario?’ he says.

  I shrug. Typical Col to think it’s up to him to supply the ending.

  ‘It’s dog, or cat or something,’ he says. ‘No, hang on, that’s the Chinese, isn’t it? What are that pair you work with?’

  ‘They’re from Iran.’

  Ali and Hamid are brothers, although you’d never guess it to look at them. Ali came over when he was a kid, went to school here, calls me hen and pet and laughs easily. Apart from his silky black hair and dark eyes, he’s hardly exotic. Hamid was already middle-aged when he arrived a year or so ago. Since then a wiry white tuft has appeared at his hairline and the lines around his mouth have deepened. He describes himself as Persian, doesn’t talk much but when he does, his English, though accented, is faultless.

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘You’ve no idea what he might be cooking up for you.’

  ‘I do know.’

  Col acts like I haven’t spoken, distracted by a more interesting thought of his own. ‘Oh! No. Worst case is it’s human flesh.’ He grins and nods, leans forward and puts on a pantomime scary whisper. ‘He’s killed someone and has the body stashed in the cellar and is using you to dispose of the evidence. Piece. By. Piece.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Col watches too much telly. He thinks everything’s some kind of show.

  ‘It’s not just anyone, either.’ He stares at me and widens his eyes in a meaningful look. ‘It’s his brother.’

  I sigh. Why did I even bother trying to tell Col about this? Why do I bother trying to tell him anything? ‘Ali was on his break. He came back after.’

  ‘Oh right.’ Col is deflated but that lasts about a second till he comes up with another theory. ‘Okay then. Even better. It’s his wife.’

  ‘He’s not married.’

  Col grins at me like we’re playing some kind of a game and I’m giving him clues to solve. Listening is not one of his strong points.

  ‘His mother!’ He bounces on the sofa, sitting up now, pleased with himself. ‘Yeah. Like Omar Bates or something. Iranian Psycho.’ He sniggers and swills a mouthful of beer from the bottle in his hand.

  ‘You’re being childish.’ Col isn’t insulted, isn’t listening anyway. I realise that being childish is one of his strong points, then wonder if it could really be described as such. I used to see it as playful and imaginative, liked his sense of fun. Now that feeling is being pushed out and something else is rushing in to fill up the empty space. I look at him, still in the same place I left him when I went to work, one hand down the front of his stained tracky bottoms, scratching his balls. I’m tired. My feet ache and I smell like kebabs. Maybe I’m hungry too. There’s a half-eaten sausage roll on the table. I don’t fancy it, although I’ve been eating meat again for some months, having slipped out of vegetarianism like an inconvenient skin. One of many.

  ‘Oh god. No.’ He slams the bottle down on the cluttered coffee table, wipes some foam from his lips. ‘I’ve got it! It’s his own flesh. He’s cut it out of his thigh or his chest or something and he’s bleeding under his clothes the whole time he’s talking to you. Yeah.’ Col lies back down and sighs, pleased he’s solved my story to everyone’s satisfaction. It’s like I’m not even in the room any more. I’m starting to wish I wasn’t and am just getting up to leave when Col starts laughing and chokes on his beer, waving the bottle at the TV. Eventually he spits out, ‘It’s the only way he can get his meat into your mouth!’ before dissolving into helpless snorting giggles. I close my eyes, and the sound he’s making merges with the muffled grunts from the television.

  So weighing it all up, I took the piece of meat off the edge of the knife with my fingers.

  ‘Careful. Very sharp knife.’

  It was about the size and shape of a strip of gum and that’s what I focused
on as I popped it into my mouth and chewed. It was rich and dense but not fibrous, like super-concentrated paté. It wasn’t so bad. Just meat. I swallowed and tried a smile.

  ‘You going to tell me what it is now?’

  ‘Did you like it?’ Hamid was staring at me, his eyes greedy, looking me up and down like he expected something to happen, some kind of transformation.

  I shrug. ‘It was okay. What was it?’

  ‘Heart.’

  Generally I try not to guess at what’s going on behind Hamid’s eyes but right then I’d say it was a type of triumph, mixed with disgust.

  ‘Really?’ I ran my tongue over my teeth, picking up grains of ferric meaty residue.

  ‘Yes.’ He poked the remaining pieces on the grill, scooped another up with the knife and offered it to me.

  ‘From what? What animal?’

  He was looking at the meat, avoiding eye contact now. ‘Pig,’ he said, spitting out the single syllable like it might contaminate his mouth if he let it linger.

  ‘No, thanks.’ I try to keep my tone light, wondering all the same where Hamid got a pig’s heart from. And why. ‘I’m not really hungry. Why don’t you have it?’

  ‘I can’t eat that.’

  ‘Why not?’ I thought that as long as we concentrated on the reasons he wasn’t eating it then maybe we could avoid discussing why he wanted me to.

  ‘If I eat this meat,’ he hesitated, put the knife down. ‘If a man puts this meat into his body, the blood from it will mix with his own blood and when it travels to his heart it will transform his heart to the heart of a pig.’

  ‘What about a woman?’

  He looked at me, his eyes glassy.

  ‘You said if a man puts this meat into his body. What happens to a woman?’

  He shrugged, dismissive, like it hardly mattered in that case.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘Kevin. The butcher. When I buy the shop meat from him, sometimes he gives me things he has spare. Today it was this. I can’t eat it. But I thought, maybe you…,’ he trailed off as if unsure himself what he thought, as if the urge to take and cook this thing for me, to have me consume it, was something beyond his conscious control.