Canning Harvest

The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-914595-67-7
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 186 Seiten

'Atmospheric, suspenseful and full of symbolism, it's encouraging to see the wealth of Wales-based talent showcased in the short story form; Harvest offers excitement at what the future holds.' - Rhianon Holley, Buzz Magazine Inquisitive children and solitary beings; conflicted couples and a sprinkling of spirits and monsters: these are just some of the characters which inhabit the twelve stories in this collection of new contemporary fiction by the winners of the 2023 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. A young girl discovers a body in the woods near her home; a man lords over his cockle-beds; and a holidaying couple set off on a nocturnal mission. A group of children enlist the help of a witch to assist a dying relative, while a local talent show casts a spotlight on hopes and dreams. From an All-American Diner deep in the Rhondda to rural Welsh landscapes, working-class communities and cultural and linguisitic journeys beyond Wales, these stories combine traditional storytelling, realism and magical realism as protagonists face their demons head on. They are stories about longing and belonging, departure and desire, sparking with originality. A collection of new contemporary short stories by Welsh writers, representing the winners of the 2023 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition recognises the very best unpublished short stories in English in any style by writers aged 18 or over who were born in Wales, have lived in Wales for two years or more, or are currently living in Wales. Originally established in 1991, Parthian is delighted to publish the 2023 winning stories on behalf of the Rhys Davies Trust and in association with Swansea University's Cultural Institute. Previous winners of the prize have included Leonora Brito, Lewis Davies, Tristan Hughes, Naomi Paulus, Laura Morris and Kate Hamer. Authors in this anthology: Ruairi Bolton, Ruby Burgin, Bethan L. Charles, JL George, Joshua Jones, Emma Moyle, Rachel Powell, Matthew G. Rees, Silvia Rose, Satterday Shaw, Emily Vanderploeg and Dan Williams.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Canning, Elaine

Leseproben

Harvest

Matthew G. Rees

Gull wing-grey sky, tide sucked lower than his good eye can see, Cock Davies rides his tractor down the slip. Hair wild as windswept saltmarsh, face an arrowhead of fierce-cut flint, his calloused hands clench the wheel of his old, phutting Fordson like crab claws. Silurian charioteer of the sort who fought the Romans. All that’s lacking is the warpaint, as he lands on the sands of the estuary.

And his mood – jounce and rattle of his tow-hooked trailer behind him, black soot clouds storming from his tractor’s steepling pipe – is war-like.

Steamrollering the shells of the strandline, he surveys the estuary for signs of life, especially other pickers. Memory of that morning’s collision with ‘officialdom’ swelling – red-raw – within him, like an unrazorbladed boil.

‘Back again, Mr Davies?’ the girl on the council’s counter had said.

In her sing-song voice, a ring of wonder-come-mockery – to the ears of Davies, at least – that he, Old Cock, had survived another winter and should be there at all.

‘All this ought really to be done online now, you know,’ she’d continued, as he’d pushed his terse note – ‘Hoffwn adnewyddu fy nhrwydded (‘I wish to renew my licence’), D. Davies’ – under her screen.

Visible on the sheet’s upper: the inscription in English as decreed by his great-great-grandfather, Solomon Emlyn, lauded cockler of the Davies line, possessor of the beard of an Old Testament prophet, and the most expert ‘in-the-field’ (rather than mere academic) authority, to those who knew shellfish, in the whole of the land of Wales.

Finest Welsh Cockles. Since 1750.

The words said only what was needed, as was the Davies way – and in a font and tar-darkness that offered no compromise.

Along with the note: Davies’s payment – a sum the signing away of which had caused him to wince.

‘Paying by cheque, is it?’ the girl had asked, as if – to his ears – this was some huge inconvenience… as if he’d proposed settlement in shillings and crowns, or with a sewin still dripping, rabbits (limp of neck) and widgeon, warm, bill-bloodied and lead-flecked.

The girl had continued: ‘Card facilities are available on our app, Mr —’

At which point, he’d intervened. ‘That’s the right money,’ he’d said of his cheque. ‘To the penny. Don’t you worry about that.’

On the screen – bilingually – between them was a notice that annoyed him: ‘WE WILL NOT TOLERATE ABUSE OF OUR STAFF’.

This was new, Davies thought. He had no recollection of it from previous years.

And it seemed to Davies as if it had been put there for him… as if they – the bloody bureaucrats – had known he’d be coming… renewing – cockling’s equivalent of the stitchwort of the coastal swards… the sharks that newspapers said basked off the bay come summer… the rheumatism that returned to his knees with the autumn rains… the chilblains that troubled his fingertips and toes in winter frosts.

Feeling the obligation, his onslaught had then begun. ‘Not that the thing is worth having. Licence?! Be damned!! This council has made a desert of that estuary! You can’t move on those sands for pickers. Every Jack and Jill… forking and raking. Like ants, they are… crawling all over. Destroyed, those beds have been. Over-harvested! All thanks to this place. The cockles have never had a chance!’

Davies had wanted to say how – up in England – there was a term for what was left of the beds now, after the pillage and the plunder: Cock All (not that he had ever been to England… this phrase being merely a scrap of the kind that, when encountered, he was prone to seize on – like some angry cat or scavenger gull).

He’d held back on his language though, sensing he’d said enough. Enough to get a letter of the kind he’d had before, written by some soft-handed, collar-and-tie, warm radiator-in-my-office, cup-of-coffee-on-my-desk, parasitical managerial type. Taking home sixty thousand – to be sure. Who knew nothing about cockles, of course.

‘You have my address,’ Davies had – instead – said (for the delivery of his permit… and – if need be – the idiot letter from the ‘executive’ too timid to speak man-to-man). ‘We’ve been there two hundred and seventy years, if not longer.’

And then he’d walked out to where he’d left his tractor – in some damn fool official’s space – in the car park.

There may be rain, Davies thinks, riding over the sand. The sky has ‘the look’. Although a drop has yet to fall, he can smell it in the air… taste it on his tongue. Here and there, seabirds catch his eye: an egret on the edge of a channel; a low-flying cormorant, feathers mere feet from the flats. Occasionally, there is a judder from the trailer behind him, on which his tools rest and sometimes bounce – his shovel, his rake, his sieve, his sacks. That disturbance (and the engine of the Fordson) apart, he relishes the silence – and stillness – of the sands. Their empty infinity calms him. Here he is both alone and at home… with his kin. On such days, he not infrequently sees their ghosts: women in aprons and shawls, whiskered men with horses – or donkeys – and carts; all toiling quietly, save perhaps some words in Welsh, an equine snort or whinny. And then gone: taken by sea fret… some shimmer of sun.

Suddenly, from his Fordson’s worn-smooth seat, Davies sees figures… rival pickers… assembled on a bank. And not any bank, but one of ‘his’. They also have seen him… and cease raking.

They eye him.

In Davies’s eyes: bandits; mercenaries; the ragtag irregulars of some marauding army.

He wonders why, on this particular expedition, he hasn’t noticed them till now… and worries for a moment about the sharpness of his senses.

He attributes the failure of his antennae to the nonsense with the council, the pain of the cheque – the tithe unfairly (as he sees it) exacted so that he might be here, on his ground.

Before now, he and they – the other pickers – have had words. ‘These are my beds,’ he has told them, with anger and spittle (in English as well as Welsh).

But they have stood their ground. Outnumbered, he has retreated.

And now, resting on their rakes and forks, they watch him… as if wondering what he will say, or do, next.

This stand-off is conducted at a distance: Davies having halted the Fordson, so that it idles, roughly, beneath him.

He sits there: high, lean, territorial, like some ancient, starved heron of the shore.

A breeze tugs at the loose flaps of his oilskins.

Although angered by their ‘piracy’ (as he feels it to be), he is aware that they are many and that he is one (even allowing for the reputation that he knows rides with him). Besides, he has heard – before now – of clubs, knives and even guns being drawn.

He lets out the clutch of the Fordson, gives them wide berth, rides on (consoling himself that he will find better beds, bigger cockles, and that to do so is his birthright; it is in his bones, his blood).

In truth, though, he has doubts. In his mind, the words Ionwen Pryce used of his last batch (in a phone call from her stall at the market): ‘On the small side this week, Mr Davies.’

After her, he hears the voice of his great-great-grandfather, Solomon Emlyn – who Davies never knew, but who speaks to him in dreams. ‘Ein cocos ni yw’r gorau, fachgen. Cofia hynny.’ (‘Our cockles are the best, boy. Remember that.’) These words uttered now not in a tone of reminding but of chiding, as if Davies has been failing his forebears, as if ‘S.E.’ – beneath his mossed and lichened chest tomb – has got wind of the grumbles of Ionwen Pryce.

All of which now causes Davies, albeit somewhat apprehensive over his reserves of diesel (and a possible change in the weather), to drive deeper into the estuary’s gaping emptiness than he has ever foraged before.

Rags of blue and white reveal themselves, like ill-strung laundry, in the otherwise slate-coloured sky. Conscious of his remoteness, Davies is encouraged by the seeming brightening of conditions, wary as...