‘Coca Cola’ by Howard Fast

Humour is very personal thing. What one person finds funny, another may not. Some stories may just make you smile, others make you laugh out loud. This story for me falls into the second category.

A humorous story by Fast in his role as a World War Two war correspondent, who finds himself stranded at a scoring hot airbase in the middle of a desert. His one wish is fly out on the next available freight plane. Which just happens to be loaded with empty coca cola bottles. Fast is alarmed to find that once airborne the plane isn’t gaining height, the plane’s doors are missing, the aircrew are a crew of teenagers who are unwilling to jettison the empty bottles due to the paperwork it would cause. Plus,

“I looked at the open doors and then at the sand hills, and then I nodded and asked a foolish question about parachutes.
‘You don’t have one? Well, that’s strange, and it’s against regulations too, but it wouldn’t be much use at this altitude.’”

The situation goes rapidly downhill from there.

First published in he Last Supper and Other Stories, Blue Heron Press, 1955, and collected in The Howard Fast Reader, Crown Publishers, 1960

‘The Index’ by J. G. Ballard

A story told using a very unusual narrative style that is, in the form of an A to Z index.

Part of the story’s opening paragraph tells us:

“Editor’s note. From abundant internal evidence it seems clear that the text printed below is the index to the unpublished and perhaps suppressed autobiography of a man who may well have been one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. Yet of his existence nothing is publicly known, although his like and work appear to have exerted a profound influence on the events of the past fifty years. Physician and philosopher, man of action and patron of the arts, sometime claimant to the English throne and founder of a new religion, Henry Rhodes Hamilton [HRH] was evidently the intimate of the greatest men and women of our age.”

For this story the reader is expected to do some work and make decisions. Does the reader work their way through the index A to Z or jump in at any point? Does it make any difference if either choice is chosen? Is there any information deliberately or unintentionally hidden in the index waiting to be discovered? And why did the index compiler add himself to the index?

As indexes go this is a very simple one. For example, no cross references to other entries. Years are not mentioned, only page numbers. A sample entry –

“Gandhi, Mahatma, visited in prison by HRH, 251; discusses Bhagavadgita with HRH, 253; has dhoti washed by HRH, 254; denounces HRH, 256.”

One pattern that does emerge is HRH being warmly welcomed by famous people initially, but he always manages to put his foot in it and the relationship sours, as in the above entry.

If indexes are your thing, you can spend ages teasing out information about HRH and his life. For example, the highest page number I could find was 769. So this isn’t a short biography and suggests the size of the book reflects the size of HRH’s ego.

First published in The Paris Review #118, Spring 1991, and collected in The Complete Short Stories Vol 2, Flamingo, 2001

‘Big Tom Fallon’ by Kit de Waal

Told as a monologue. Bridegroom Tom Fallon speaking from the heart tells his story. Fallon travels to England to live and work, but after a couple of years finds himself back in rural Ireland, blind in both eyes after an altercation with some yobs’ boots. Through quiet determination, Tom’s friends help him to stop brooding and give him the confidence to continue living. All of which leads up to meeting his future wife and his wedding day. A warm, uplifting story, beautifully written and a pleasure to read and re-read.

“Paulie Nolan is another one I have to thank. I don’t know why and I don’t know how he could bear it but when I came out of the asylum, that good man and neighbour came to sit with me every week while my mother went to work.
‘All right, Tommy, boy,’ he used to say. ‘I cannot get a minute’s peace in my own house so you don’t mind if I perch on this chair and read myself the Evening Echo do you?’
I could hear the paper rustling and he’d talk to himself about the football and the hurling, call down fire on the head of Liam Cosgrave and Paddy Donegan and every other politician up in Dublin that knew nothing of the real world as far as he was concerned.
Talking to himself he was, week after week, a right windbag and blabbermouth. No wonder they didn’t want him at home. Yes, you can all laugh now but its’s what I thought. I didn’t realise his kindness to me, as good as any father, better than some.”

First published in Supporting Cast, Penguin, 2020

‘The Sunset’ by François Coppée

A story with no plot or characters, but rather a description of an autumn evening in late nineteenth century Paris. Written by an author who enjoyed writing about the past in his stories. An idler having bought a book from a bookstall by the River Seine, rests awhile at a café with a drink and observes the sunset, whilst noticing that the evening throng of commuters engaged in their own conversations passing by, are not.

“A level light, warm and blazing, raked the scene, making long-drawn shadows on the ground, dazzling the passers till they blinked their eyes, and sparkling on the polished leather of the carriages and the sleek haunches of the horses. Nature, the greatest of artists and the most prodigal of effects, was exhibiting art for art’s sake that evening; she had been careful over that sunset; and our idler,whom chance had brought to look upon the scene, was suddenly carried away with delirious rapture at the calm and radiant splendour that transfigured houses, trees and sky.”

Fortunately, there is a wide variety of short stories to choose from. So it is possible to read a story to match whatever mood a reader might be in. Sometimes I want to read an undemanding atmospheric story and just wallow in comforting prose.

First published in Short Stories v64 #3, December 1906, Doubleday, Page & Co. Collected in Stories by Daudet & Coppée, ed. Arthur Ransome, T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1910

‘Crossover’ by Michael Gilbert

An action-packed, no-nonsense counter-espionage story featuring Mr. Calder, Mr. Behrens and Rasselas, a Persian deerhound.

The Britain’s Counter security service are keen to uncover the M Route, which is used by Russia to spirit defectors and others from Britain, across Europe to Russia. Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens are assigned to track a colleague, a supposedly Russian agent being transported along the route to discover the various staging points. In the excerpt below Mr. Calder is investigating a building.

“As he started to move forward, Rasselas gave out a very soft, rumbling growl. Mr. Calder paused. When nothing happened, he moved again. Rasselas caught his ankle in his teeth. At that moment the ground under Mr. Calder’s hands gave way. At one moment he had his palms on solid earth. The next, his fingers were slithering over the lip of a cavity which had opened in front of him.”

A flash, bang, wallop story. Full of daring-do, lively characters and plot.

First published in Argosy, October 1963. Collected in Game Without Rules, Harper, 1967

‘An Actor’s Day’ by Hjalmar Bergman

I enjoy reading stories concerning portraits of people, places and objects. I suspect it is a challenge for a writer to tell a character’s, place or object’s life story in a few pages. This entry, written by a Swedish master of the form – and who deserves to be better known – is such a story.

We follow a senior business man on a typical working day, as he attends meetings, a funeral, worker’s dispute, a late afternoon function and so on. At each event our businessman adopts a different face, jovial, solemn, confident and so on, for the relevant occasion. It’s only once at home in the quiet of a bedroom, that the business man’s face relaxes and he can be himself.

“The solemn ceremony was over, the president covered his head, cast a rapid glance at the clock, and hurried toward the gate. A man kept pace with him, took him by the arm, grasped his hand and pressed it. It was his dead enemy’s best friend. He said: ‘Thank you. It was beautiful. It was both true and beautiful, and still I don’t understand how you could.’
The president got into a waiting automobile. He answered only with a smile, which could be interpreted however one might choose. For he used his precious gift of speech with discrimination.
Ten minutes later the president made his entrée upon another stage, grim and bare, coarse and grey, smelling of the smoke of toil, soot, sweat. It was filled with fierce, refractory blue-overall men. The president buttoned up his overcoat at the door, for the frock coat would not have harmonised with the stage decorations.”

Published in The American-Scandinavian Review April 1932

‘Seven Floors’ by Dino Buzzati, trans. Judith Landry and Cynthia Jolly

One man’s hopeless fight against bureaucracy, sums up this story for me. The more I read this story, the more I realise this is painfully true to life. Less a story of fiction and more of a documentary.

Giuseppe Corte, suffering from an unidentified illness, books into a seven-storey nursing clinic for treatment. There he is placed on the seventh floor reserved for those patients with only the mildest of symptoms. This cheers him up especially as he learns that the lower floors are for those patients with more serious symptoms. After a while he finds he is moving down through the floors, towards his destiny on the first floor, not because of his illness, but for bureaucratic reasons.

“‘There’s only one inconvenience.’
‘What?’ asked Corte with a vague presentiment.
‘Inconvenient, as a form of expression,’ the doctor corrected himself. ‘I meant that the treatment unit is on the fourth floor, and I wouldn’t advise you to make the trek three times a day.’
‘So, then, nothing?’
‘Well, it would be better if you would be so kind as to go down to the fourth floor until the eczema has passed.’
‘Enough!’ screamed Giuseppe Corte. ‘I’ve already gone down enough! I would die. I’m not going to the fourth!’
‘As you wish,’ remarked the doctor, conciliatory so as not to irritate him.

First published in I sette messaggeri (The Seven Messengers), Arnoldo Mondadori, 1942. First translated in Catastrophe and Other Stories, Calder, 1965

‘Sanatorium’ by W. Somerset Maugham

This is what our cousins across the pond would call a bottle story: that is, all the action takes place in one location, in this case a Scottish sanatorium. All the patients are under pressure due to the illness, which effects various characters in different ways. Major Templeton, is relaxed about it. He knows he’s going to die, but he’s had a grand life: ladies, gambling, shooting and so on. Mr. Chester on the other hand is resentful and angry and constantly asks, why me? And is also harsh with his wife, because she is going to live.

All of life is to be found in this story. Romance, laughter, death, confessions, rivalry, anger, mental cruelty and so on. I discover something new in this story every time I read it. The narrator Ashenden (a thinly disguised Maugham), is sent to the sanatorium to recover from Tuberculosis. During the months he is there he observes his fellow patients and records their lives. Mr. Chester, who feels it is unfair he should be ill as he has lived a clean life; the gentle courtship between Miss Bishop and the rakish Major Templeton and the ongoing feud between McLeod and Campbell.

“‘First time they’ve let you get up, is it?’ said McLeod.
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s your room?’
Ashenden told him.
‘Small. I know every room in the place. I’ve been here for seventeen years. I’ve got the best room here and so I damned well ought to have. Campbell’s been trying to get me out of it, he wants it himself, but I’m not going to budge; I’ve got a right to it, I came here six months before he did.’”

Collected in Collected Short Stories vol.3. Vintage, 2002

‘Tabula Rasa’ by Etgar Keret

Sometimes when reading a story a reader can detect the direction a story is going in and how it will finish. But not with this tale. The author is known for writing stories with bizarre plots and flights of fancy. Children born with an aging disease and abandoned by their parents at birth are taken in by an institution. There to be looked after until they are ready to go out into the world. But what are they been made ready for? A. is one such child. And it’s through his thoughts that we find out what else is going on. By far the nastiest but also, thought provoking story on my list.

“Why, of all people in the world, did A. hate more than anyone else the man who had helped him the most? Why did A. wish that bad things would happen to the person who had taken him under his wing after his parents had abandoned him and who had devoted his life to helping him and others who suffered the same fate? The answer was easy: If there’s one thing in the world more annoying than being dependent on someone, it’s when that someone constantly reminds you that you are dependent on him. And Goodman was exactly that sort of person: insulting, controlling, patronising. Every word he said, every gesture he made, carried the clear message – your fate is in my hands, and without me, you all would have died a long time ago.”

Published in Fly Already, Granta, 2019

‘Grand Stand-in’ by Kevin Wilson

Another author who likes to write flight-of-fancy stories.

“I am an employee of Grand Stand-In, a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider. It’s pretty simple. With so many new families popping up, upwardly mobile couples with new children, there is a segment of this demographic, more than you would think, who no longer have any living parents. So many of these new parents feel their children are missing out on a crucial part of their life experience, a grandparent. And that’s where I come in.”

As the story progresses, the narrator starts to question the work she is doing. This is a story I find hard to resist, an author working with an unusual idea and running with it.

Published in Tunnelling to the Centre of the Earth, Ecco/Harper Collins, 2009

‘Mr. Whittaker’s Retirement’ by Paul Rutherford (pen name of William Hale White)

Some stories refuse to be forgotten, and remain lodged in my mind for whatever reason. They aren’t always stories by famous writers or well-known tales or have anything important to say. The story is just there in my mind. ‘Mr. Whittaker’s Retirement’ is just such a tale.

Mr. Whittaker, a senior partner in a drug company is forced to take early retirement due to ill health. For the first few weeks he finds retirement agreeable, but after that time hangs heavy on his hands. Then a bad investment on the stock market makes his financial situation difficult. In short, he finds he needs to go back to work. He’s fortunate to find a very junior position, but finds he’s now on the bottom rung and having to put up with being snubbed by clerks who previously were junior to him.

“For the first two or three weeks I enjoyed my freedom, but when they had passed I had had enough of it. I had nothing to do! Every day at the hours when business was at its height, I thought of the hurry, of the inquiries, of the people waiting in the anteroom, of the ringing of bells, of the rapid instructions to clerks, of the consultations after the letters were opened, of our anxious deliberations, of the journeys to Scotland at an hour’s notice, and of the interviews with customers. I pictured to myself that all this still went on, but went on without me, while I had no better occupation than to unpack a parcel, pick the knots out of the string, and put it in a string-box.”

Published in More Pages from a Journal: With Other Papers, Henry Frowde, 1910. Available to read online via the Gutenberg Project

‘The Quiet’ by Carys Davies

You could argue that all fiction asks you to do one of two things: to believe or to suspend disbelief. You could also argue that, providing one or the other is possible, they yield the same outcome – a state of willing collusion with the author. In my own experience, the more immersive I’ve found a story at the time of reading the more I’m likely to have enjoyed it, and to remember it.

Carys Davies is immensely skilful in accumulating the tiny increments of detail that build a sense of immersion. So much so that when deeply improbable events take place, albeit at times within the most mundane circumstances, the reader is primed, cleverly and unobtrusively, to accept them. Her persuasiveness, and she is the most persuasive of writers, also derives from a consistency and intimacy of tone that imbues her stories with credibility. Her characters are built from their doubts, their disappointments, their failures, and yet her narratives, more often than not, are driven by hope. The desire to know how or whether that hope will be realised, or even to learn exactly what manner of hope will be unfurled, is the force that pulls the reader through the story.

‘The Quiet’, opening Davies’ second collection, epitomises aspects of the stories to follow. In one way or another – physically, psychologically, geographically – her characters find themselves alone. They are isolated within their circumstances. And they possess secrets by which they are burdened, which are cleverly hidden from the reader, and which lead them to yearn for some sort of release or fulfilment.

Like the other stories in the collection, ‘The Quiet’ has much to say about the intractability of lives lived in unforgiving conditions, about the exchange of hidden elements of personal history, about improbable moments of empathy, and about the urgency of the human heart needing to unburden itself.

Susan Boyce and Henry Fowler – she married, he formerly so, live as settlers six miles apart in an isolated, unspecified valley. On rare occasions Henry visits, and on one such occasion something extraordinary, but heartrendingly credible, occurs. And that is all I can say without ruining a story that presses deep into our need to share a common humanity. Please read it.

First published in The Stinging Fly, 2014, then in the collection The Redemption of Galen Pike, Salt 2014. Available to read online at LitHub

‘The Automaton’ by David Wheldon

The late David Wheldon was a medical doctor who specialised in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, successfully devising a protocol to treat his wife, the artist Sarah Longlands, so that she could live a full life and continue to paint. He also wrote novels and short stories, initially to acclaim, but latterly in something like obscurity until, by the good works of writers Aiden O’Reilly and David Rose, his more recent stories began to find homes, culminating in the publication by Confingo Publishing of the collection mentioned above.

The Automaton, like most of Wheldon’s fiction, is best described by a term I think first coined by O’Reilly – ‘ireal’, since it’s a story very much of this world, and very much not. To this end, Wheldon is a master of specifics and tone, able to convince his readers while leading them guilefully into the unforeseeable.

The story, set in 1905, is narrated by a grammar school boy, the son of the manager of an ailing theatre. A preface tells us the narrator fell in battle near the end of the First World War. Thus the narrative has the flavour of a memoir, presumably discovered after his death.

First published as a chapbook by Nightjar Press in 2017, and then in the collection The Guiltless Bystander, Confingo Publishing 2022

The automaton in question is a waxwork of a beautiful woman, dignified and unknowable, clothed in finery that has seen better days. She is also an unbeatable chess master, who sighs gently before manipulating her pieces in a manner designed to perplex her opponent. She is introduced – borne upon a sedan by an impresario of questionable character – to the theatre in the hope of saving its financial future.

There’s a gradualness to Wheldon’s storytelling which adds to its richness. His use of dialogue is mannered and leisurely but, in its own time, revealing. Because of this, I feel that all I should say further is that the boy forms a relationship with this beguiling, unworldly creature, and that the term sentience is introduced and repeated artfully as the story develops. This is an enigmatic, troubling, and deeply moving story that leaves a lasting mark on the reader.

‘Butterflies of the Balkans’ by Jo Lloyd

It was a happy day when I discovered Jo Lloyd’s stories. The most quotable of writers, I’ll resist the temptation, otherwise I’d go on for ever. Let me just say that she writes sculpted, verve-filled sentences which, at least in my experience, are not to be found elsewhere. I mean only good things when I say that reading this story was like having a Merchant Ivory film craftily inserted in my visual cortex. And so…

Prue and Lottie, ageing, infirm and intrepid, are travelling, by means not associated with the elderly, through rough Balkan terrain in search of rare species of butterflies. The reader is given to understand that, despite sharing a range of ailments that would flatten an army, they are by no means done with life. Garbed in the costume of their day, and hence mistaken for the late Queen Victoria, butterflies are their passion, and they are in pursuit.

Liberated by widowhood, though not without personal histories, we follow them, and the various dignitaries, outriders and bandits they accrue, over land and across borders, lepidoptera in their wake, as time presses against them. Lottie intends to publish their findings, to make the world aware. On their journey we learn about their loves, their regrets, their philosophies, their irritations (not least with each other). We sense they are unlikely to fail.

I won’t describe the ending, but it contains a moment of mingled tenderness and resolution which having read you’ll do well not to weep. Prue and Lottie are fully realised characters in a story that celebrates stoicism, endurance, and the power of curiosity to galvanise – virtues of a past age.

I understand that the collection that contains this story was published during lockdown, and so somewhat overlooked. I would encourage anyone seeking fiction of the highest calibre to go out of their way to read it. Prue and Lottie, and the other characters you encounter, will not disappoint.

Published in The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Ready Lies, Swift Press, 2021