Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

His interest in the fencing was motivated by the fact that someone or something was breaking it regularly. The staples were pulled out of the posts and wires prised apart. It would take some strength, but who was doing it? Jack and Denny Norton, the stockmen, did not bother fencing their own house and they viewed Edward’s arrangements with some disdain, but he did not think that they would take the trouble to break his fence.

Jack had said that the fence made it look as though Edward and Marcia were in a cage while the apes roamed free. Beasts , Jack called them.

When he went inside, Edward was careful to shut the door properly behind him. Conrad could stay on the roof if he wanted to. There was an ape skull on the shelf where Edward threw his hat. That had never met with any attention. There had been a stuffed orangutan, on which coats had been hung, in the hall, but he had had that burned as soon as they had moved in.

The distressing gurgling in the pipes meant Marcia was in the shower. He hoped she had bolted the door. The orangutans loved being squirted with the shower hose. Unless the bolt was thrown, they always, at least one of them, appeared in the doorway for a spray. Then they would run away grunting indignantly and happily, their faces puckered with delight, only to reappear within a minute for another go.

Udo was sitting in the armchair listening to music. Or at least he was wearing the headphones, which he liked to do. He was leafing through the photograph album, another favourite pastime, and he ignored Edward. Udo turned over the cardboard pages of the book with that meticulousness and apparent hauteur that animals have. This kind of behaviour was an indulgence that Edward was barely prepared to allow. Was he being ignored? Was it appropriate to say that of an ape? Well, when he and Udo sat in this room together and Marcia came in, the ape did not ignore her, he could tell you that. Edward took the album from Udo and looked at the page. A much younger Marcia in a bathing costume. He wondered if Udo could recognise her. What did an animal, who lived so much in the present, make of a photograph? He closed the album and replaced it on the shelf. These were not scientific questions. Udo removed the headphones and folded his hands across his great belly.

– Very well, he seemed to be saying, I am listening. What is it you want?

Udo had picked up some kind of stress injury to his right arm. They had seen him favouring it. He allowed Edward to examine him now. Some swelling, but healing was in progress.

As soon as the door from the bedroom clicked open and Marcia walked in, Udo broke away from Edward and waddled over to the woman. The apes walked awkwardly on the ground like great damaged spiders, appearing to have longer and more limbs than they do. Marcia kissed and tickled the ape, while Udo feigned, or felt, hilarity. She gave Udo the jug of pens and he scuttled off to find paper as if eager to please her.

– If apes are capable of nostalgia, said Edward, does that mean it is a mistake to say that animals never feel that, or should we say that the apes are no longer animals?

Now Marcia ignored him. Edward was annoyed with her for meddling with his experiments, muddling their purity, and she could tell that. Udo should really be in a cage outside with the other subjects Jack and Denny brought in for weighing, measuring and blood-testing.

– You shouldn’t kiss the apes, you know. We had one go blind last month and we don’t know why.

Edward had finally agreed to let Jack shoot the blind orangutan, an elderly female, but the creature had gone missing before Jack could catch up with her.

– I think you’re jealous, Edward.

Marcia now tried to kiss Edward, but he shied away, not wanting to put his lips where Udo’s had been.

Jack Norton walked in, followed by his son, Denny, having no more notion of knocking on the door than an ape, perhaps hoping to surprise Edward and Marcia in just such a situation.

Old Jack’s stone face spoke a one-word vocabulary: scorn. His son was simple-minded and therefore friendlier looking. Nonetheless, they were clearly father and son.

– What’s he listening to? asked Denny.

Udo had the headphones on again.

– Benjamin Britten, said Edward.

– I’d rather listen to a blackbird, said Denny.

– Oh, Denny, said Marcia, smiling.

– Shut up, Denny, said his father.

Jack thought Edward and Marcia, equally, were too soft with the apes, too intimate with them and at the same time too squeamish. Jack would not give the apes names, though Denny would. Edward looked at Denny’s filthy T-shirt, which he wore almost all of the time that he wasn’t bare-chested. It had the words Spit Car printed on it, which he supposed was a band, or had been once.

Edward was not surprised, but he was dismayed, to see that the Nortons had a brace of rabbits almost certainly intended as a gift for them, but actually a torment. Neither Edward nor Marcia could skin and gut a rabbit. When they had first been given such a gift, they should have confessed this, but Edward, at least, had been too ashamed and now, many rabbits later, it was too late. They would have appreciated the fresh meat. Edward had buried the gifts behind the compound and had had to bury them deep in case an ape dug them up and humiliated him. There was a rabbit cemetery back there now. Sometimes they were given a haunch of seal meat, strictly speaking, contraband. That was vile. Either they didn’t know how to cook it, or it was always vile.

Edward looked at Jack and Denny with helpless disgust. They were very hairy men, with hairy wrists even, while Edward was fair and balding. Even Udo was going a little thin on top. The apes were slowly becoming Scottish people while the stockmen devolved. There were always males hanging around this house, hanging around Marcia really.

Marcia gave their guests a small glass of wine each and Edward took the rabbits without thanking. Jack would leave his wine untasted somewhere discreetly before he left while Denny tossed his back and made an extraordinary face at what he found to be the appalling sourness of the drink. Marcia stood close to Denny during this performance, partly because she found it so amusing and also because it prevented Denny from staring so candidly at her breasts, which he would otherwise do throughout the visit. Denny’s potential excitement at the chance of overlooking Marcia’s sunbathing antics was easily imagined by Edward.

Udo wanted a glass of wine, but Edward would not allow that. Jack snorted. Edward felt closer to Udo than he did to Jack or Denny.

A small female orangutan, Grace, now appeared from the bedroom, where she had been rummaging absolutely without permission, wearing Marcia’s bra on her head, in imitation of Udo’s headphones. Denny was overjoyed, pointed at Marcia’s chest and choked on the dregs of his wine. Edward blushed, somewhat to his own amazement.

After the stockmen had left, Edward asked Marcia if she was all right. She was surprised and guessed that he wanted to be asked the same question, but she wouldn’t ask it.

– Denny, he said.

– Well, naturally, I do feel very slightly eaten alive.

He put his arm around her shoulders and smoothed the palm of his hand proprietorially across her breasts. Udo stared and Marcia gave a soft chuckle which could have meant anything, Edward thought.

At the quay where the tourists used to disembark, there was a signboard giving the history of the Auskerry experiment in some detail. No one ever read it. It had been erected in the wrong place so that you had to shuffle past it too quickly, to get out of the way of the people behind you. Besides, everyone already knew what it said and most of the visitors were more interested in the birds, or even the plants.