Rhys Davies Short Story Competition Winners

Siân Preece

Siân Preece was born in Neath, and gained her BA (Hons) degree in English Literature from the University of Wales, Swansea. She has lived in Canada, France and Scotland, and returned to Wales in 2007. Now based in Cardiff, she recently completed Cardiff University’s MA in Creative Writing, with Distinction. She has been a newspaper columnist and reviewer, has appeared as a commentator on radio and television, and is a popular reader of her own work on the festival circuit. Her first story collection, From the Life, was published by Polygon, and she writes short stories and plays for Radio 4. She is currently working on a novel and a second story collection.

 

Getting Up

A dog’s skeleton. That was what he had touched in the dark. The bones of a dog. He made it out with his eyes and hands together, seeing it better for touching it; the delicate harp of the ribs, the stalagtite teeth in a recognisable Jack Russell grin. None of the bones were broken, unless you counted the old stump of a docked tail. It lay stretched out as if asleep. As if it had died of starvation rather than the fall.

He imagined it had got down here the way he did. The soft turf giving way — the scrabble and slide through the cleft in the earth — a dark, timeless drop — then the jolt, before he’d even got used to falling. He felt his limbs for damage, and it made him think of drawing, the way you saw an object, a body, as just a collection of shapes: shoulders, shins, feet. He licked the palms of his hands, and tasted rope bum in the frayed skin. His safety helmet wobbled queasily on his head like a loose skull, and he undid the strap, took it off, letting the cave sounds rush into his ears like the sea. Then his awareness spread to the snail weight of his rucksack, and he understood how he had got here.

From above, he heard Kong shouting his name, and looked up to the gap where he’d fallen in, his eyes greedy for the knife blade of light. Kong shouted again, panic in his voice, and he could tell that he was imagining a dead or damaged boy, the end of his teaching career, even prison. He took off his rucksack and laid it on the floor gently, touched it, as if warning it to be quiet. It was Kong’s fault he was here.

***

It had started when Kong hauled him out of morning assembly and marched him to the Janitor’s Hut. He’d always wanted to explore the hut, the orderly chemical grotto of it — anti-climb paint, tubes of speciality glue, stuff for getting chewing gum out of girls’ hair. But Kong just ordered him to pour solvent into a bucket, stood over him as he added a splintery, school-issue scrubbing brush, and made him carry it, sloshing, round to the back of the gym.

‘Sir, shouldn’t I have a mask or something?’

Kong just settled on the wall with a newspaper, turned the sports pages slowly, ignored him.

‘Sir? Mr King? Shouldn’t I have gloves? This stuffs dangerous!’

‘Get scrubbing, boy! I want it all cleaned off!’

A response. He could work with that.

‘Sir? Wouldn’t it just be easier to paint over it? All lovely and smooth then.’

Kong folded the paper.

‘And what would you learn then? No, boy, keep scrubbing! Maybe you’ll remember this next time! Not that there’ll be a next time,’ he added quickly. ‘Not on my watch!’

‘Aw, Sir!’

It hurt, though. He’d worked hard on this piece — chosen the colour scheme carefully, scaled it all out in his blackbook first. The smokers would be there before first bell, so he’d be famous all round the school by lunchtime. But before anyone had even seen it, the janitor had dobbed him in, taken it straight to Kong.

‘Mr King, it’s not fair! Megasport have got their name all over the gym — and the sports equipment. Even the pop machines…’

‘Aye, and when you sponsor the school running track, then you can write your name all over the gym too! That’s what I don’t understand...’ Kong frowned at his tag. ‘The whole bloody wall is a signed confession! Where’s your mentality?’

***

The cave made noises, drips and plocks. They’d been warned about that; it could sound like footsteps. They shouldn’t be afraid. He reached into his rucksack and found his kit, his paints; one of the aerosols was dented from where he’d fallen on it. There was a roll-up he’d made that morning, and his matches. He shook the box; not many left, precious now in the dark. He took one out. A sulphurous snap, and suddenly the cave had form, not large, but high, and sealed, contained. The only way out was the way he’d come in, through the roof.

The matchlight flickered in the puddled floor, and he could have panicked then, thinking of the tide rushing in; but the dog had been there for ages, neatly arranged just where it had died. The sea had never come in here. It was just the damp, oozing through the rock over ages, eons. Colours drizzled down the cold, ochre walls — green, tan and crimson, vegetable, mineral. Then the flame shone red, hot blood in his fingertips, and he threw the match down into a dark hiss, and for a moment he was blind again.

***

He’d done the janitor’s house the next night. It needed painting anyway, the pebble-dash dirty and pocked; he was a rubbish janny, when you got down to it. Shaking the paint can, he work quickly, exhilarated by the adrenaline of revenge. But there was more to it than that. A part of him believed that, if the piece was good enough, then they would see past their anger, see the quality, the art of it. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge him. He had to work without light, so when he saw it the next morning, it was a revelation; the colours off, the scale skewed, but all the wilder for it, inspired. Even the police, when they came, were impressed. The younger one took a photo of it with his mobile.

But the janny wanted to press charges, and the Head, wary of a court case, jumped at Kong’s suggestion straight away: an Outward Bound course! It was just what the boy needed. Challenge, self-discipline, teamwork, blah blah blah. Kong was taking the school rugby squad, who actually wanted to go, but there was room for one more. The other boys, said the Head, would be an example to him.

***

He hated the other boys. Too stupid for pain, too unimaginative for fear, they loved discipline like dogs. He suspected they had Kong’s blessing to ‘knock some sense into him’, so on the first night, he pulled a knife on the squad captain, figuring he’d go in at the top with a pre-emptive strike. They ran bleating to Kong then to confiscate it.

So the next night, he pulled a pen on them. Going for the captain again, he drew a quick caricature of him in his blackbook — a massive head on a tiny body, running with a ball under his arm. ‘Gimme that!’ said the captain, snatching it — and smiled into his own image like a monkey with a mirror. All the boys wanted one then: Do me! Do one of me! He feigned reluctance, rationed the pictures out, charming them with their own likenesses, and his power to capture them.

***

Kong would be splitting the boys into teams now, working on a rescue plan, maybe even calling the Coastguard. He knew he’d get respect from the boys for being at the centre of the drama, but he’d get trouble too. The longer he made them wait, the more relieved Kong would be to finally see him. He took the rollie from his rucksack and, using a second match, sparked it up.

Even the small light of the cigarette changed the cave. That sweet, familiar smell, and the cat’s-eye clarity of the first hit. The colours seemed to make shapes on the wall, but he knew it was his mind doing it, his artist’s eye, finding natural forms in the rock, animals and birds... until he went closer and saw it was the work of another human hand. Another artist. Here was a dog — no, a wolf, it was there in the heavier set of the shoulder. Jagged lines to show fur, just as he would do it. Cave paintings. But there were no cave paintings in Wales, they’d done it on a field trip to St Fagans... but here they were. And he was the first to see them. The horns of a stag, and something bovine, the wild ancestor of a cow. And a hand print. The artist’s signature. He fitted his own hand to it, and there was that sound again, the dripping noise, the sound that was like feet.

***

He hadn’t been able to see the point of abseiling; climbing something just to jump down to the bottom again. While the others lemminged eagerly off the cliff, he sat on a rock and stared at a strip of coast across the water that was supposed to be Devon. It disappeared behind the mist, then glinted out again in the sun. He wondered if Devon could see them. Ships could, surely. A passing ship wouldn’t see the ropes though; they would just look like a bunch of suicidal boys, throwing themselves off the clifftop in an orderly manner. The sailors would all shout out in Dutch and Portuguese and Spanish, los suicidos! And suddenly, he was on his feet. What if you could abseil down — and go wildstyle with your paint on the cliffs?! The scale would have to be massive, but with the ropes, you could do it. People from all over the world would see it then! Now that would be respect, that would be getting up! Never mind the school, never mind all-city — you’d be international! More famous than Basquiat, bigger than Banksy...

‘Sir! I wanna go! I wanna abseil!’

Kong was cold and tired now, annoyed.

‘You didn’t want to before!’

‘Sir, no, but Sir, you’ve inspired me!’

Kong jutted his lip in a suspicious, simian scowl. But he said:

‘Come on then, hurry up!’

He stepped into the canvas nappy of the harness, nodded through Kong’s instructions, half-listening, scared but excited, already thinking of his fame. They’d call him The Spider — no, The Spydr, with a y, and no e. He could design a new tag for it, like a hand but with eight fingers. The simple ones were best. He braced himself against the rock, leaned into the drop, took the weight on the ropes and ‘Hoy!’ shouted Kong, ‘You’ve still got your rucksack on! Off, boy! Take it off!’ And absently he fumbled for the clip, and was still fumbling as he fell.

***

His hand was bigger than the cave boy’s, and he was disappointed — it was just a kid. Then he remembered, people were smaller then, thousands and thousands of years ago. It was probably a teenager, like him.

‘Is this your tag?’ he said aloud. ‘Your name, like? Did you have names then? Mine’s, uh, The Spydr. With a y, no e.’

He looked around.

‘They should call you Warren, living down here! Like a rabbit! Ha. It’s a joke, mun.’ He made his fingers into bunny ears. ‘They were probably different then, though, right? Probably sabre-toothed rabbits! Like, see your wolf? Nice wolf, mind, respect. Well, that dog over there,’ he pointed to the skeleton, ‘That’s his great-great-great-hundreds-of greats grandson!’ He threw the roll-up onto the floor.

‘Look, I’ll show you.’

He chose the colour carefully. Red would be dramatic, like blood, but blue would be better, would show up more on the natural tans and browns of the cave.

‘Watch this!’

He shook the can, felt it turn cold in that familiar way, like shivery magic, infusing his hand with power. A hiss of spray, and the dog’s skeleton turned dark and glossy. He was after a stencil effect, but when he kicked the bones away, he was disappointed — it wasn’t the shape of a dog at all, the edges had blurred on the damp ground.

‘All right, well — look, here then, a dog.’

He sketched one out, quick and cartoonish, on the wall of the cave. He had planned to draw the Jack Russell — thought better of it — drew a pitbull. Warren seemed to have drawn stuff he was interested in. Deer and bisons. He supposed that was as good as it got for a caveboy; you’d see a bison, and go rushing home to tell your mates — but you could only grunt, you didn’t have words. So you’d do a picture. Or maybe you drew a bison because you wanted one, like you’d draw a car or something.

‘This is the car I want,’ he told Warren, and drew the outline, painted shine lines on it. Then he drew the sound system he wanted, then the clothes, the trainers. A whole
wardrobe of wants on the wall. He was careful not to paint over the caveboy’s work, fitting his own drawings into the spaces between.

‘I don’t want to cap you,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’ve got up over my school, my town. I even done the janny. But you — you’ve got up over history!’

The light hit him just before the noise — a thin, biblical shaft of it, then the rattle and roll of pebbles, the tumble and bounce of them, dropping from above.

‘Stand back!’ Kong shouted, his voice clearer now, the authority back. ‘We’re digging in to you! Stand back from the rocks!’

And then he saw what he’d done. For a moment, he loved the huge, beautiful mural of it, the dialogue from one end of time to the other, images entwined. Just two boys chatting, showing off, sharing. Then he saw how it would look to Kong — what he would think, what he would do. The trouble he would be in.

‘Oh Warren, mate!’ he said, ‘Oh little brother, I am so sorry for this...’

And the paint can turned cold in his hand again as he shook and shook it.
 

Getting Up will be published as part of an anthology of the Rhys Davies 2009 winning stories. For further details contact Academi on: 029 2047 2266 / post@academi.org