This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots as a literary magazine in the 1920s, when our undergraduate contributors (including Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and W.H. Auden) showcased the best of Oxford’s creative talent. We received nearly 30 entries, and they were all of an exceptionally high standard. The judge Dr Clare Morgan, Course Director of the MSt Creative Writing at Oxford, offered her congratulations to the shortlisted entries, including this one.
The lock-keeper faced them with his hands outstretched. Short and skinny, he had a diminutive stature, but his life jacket puffed out his chest.
‘It’s been here two months,’ he said.
The younger of the two canal inspectors took a pen from his pocket and scribbled on his clipboard.
‘Two months,’ the lock-keeper reiterated. He pressed his boot demonstratively against the hull of the narrowboat. ‘It needs towing. That’s what I’ve been telling you all, but none of you will listen. I pay my fees to the Canal and River Trust and this is the service I get, it’s –’
‘With respect, sir,’ the older of the inspectors said, ‘we are here now.’
The inspectors looked from the lock-keeper to survey the narrowboat. Faded red paintwork and a cracked window on the stern, with a planter running along the top, in which the flowers were now brown and stick-thin. The front of the boat had begun to sink, causing it to develop an almost comical slant.
‘Take all the time you need,’ the lock-keeper said. ‘As long as it’s gone by the end of the week, I’ll be happy. I’m losing forty pound a night from the moorings it’s blocking.’
They watched him return to his cottage and then the older inspector said: ‘You fill in the safety checks and measure the boat’s dimensions. I’ll look at the engine, and after that I’ll catalogue what’s indoors. God, I hope she wasn’t a hoarder. And apparently somebody from the Bodleian library is coming down this afternoon to take her books and manuscripts for some exhibit.’ He paused. ‘What did you say her name was? The lady that died?’
From his clipboard, the inspector read: ‘Rhonda May.’
‘The famous poet, right?’ The older inspector pointed his finger at the side of the boat. Along the side, written in careful dark green letters, were the words ‘Rhonda May’.
‘I’ll be damned.’ The older inspector shook his head. ‘Who names a boat after themselves?’
###
Around midday the clouds cleared and the canal water began to shimmer in the sun. This was the young inspector’s favourite time of day, when the water gleamed in perfect stillness like a mirror. Not that his older colleague was around to experience it: he had left half an hour ago to get lunch at a café in Iffley, with vague promises of returning with a sandwich for the younger inspector. The younger inspector knew from experience that he wouldn’t be back for a further half an hour at least. He imagined the older man sat at a table by a window of some quaint little family café, with a napkin tucked into his shirt, leisurely eating his sandwich and sipping a steaming cup of tea. It was just like him to make him do all the work.
And so the younger inspector sat on a bench, inspecting his clipboard, noting down measurements and staring out at the Rhonda May, until he was interrupted by the sound of a passing narrowboat.
This one glistened white, with two jet-black solar panels on its roof, and it cut through the water slowly and methodically. It looked a world apart from the corpse-like thing now beginning its slow descent beneath the water.
An older woman in a pink cardigan leaned over the back of the craft, and as she passed, the boat slowed.
‘How is Rhonda?’ she called to the inspector.
‘I’m sorry to inform you, ma’am,’ the inspector said hesitantly, ‘but Rhonda died two weeks ago.’
‘Are you a policeman?’
‘No,’ the inspector replied, slightly embarrassed, ‘we’re from the Canal and River Trust. We’re trying to see about getting her boat removed.’
‘Regardless, poor dear. She was only in her fifties. Still working at the university, a professor or other I think.’
‘I wouldn’t know ma’am.’
‘Such a sad affair. You know, she moved into the boat after she split up with her husband. I suppose they’ll never reconcile now.’ She paused. ‘Do you know what she died of?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t ma’am, we’ve not been told. I can give you the number of her sister, if you want to know.’
‘I’ll bet it was emphysema, or something like that. We used to know it was her boat because there’d be two plumes of smoke. One from the engine, and one from her.’
The inspector tapped his clipboard impatiently.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I really must be getting on with work.’
###
With still no sign of the older inspector, and with the younger inspector having finished his jobs, he decided he would start cataloguing the items aboard the boat. He always hated doing this. It felt like rifling through someone’s personal possessions, like voyeurism.
Climbing aboard, he tried to prize open the faded oak door at the back of the craft, and after a few quick shoves there was the sound of snapping metal. With a gentle tap, the door yawned open.
Inside the cabin, thin beams of sunlight pierced through gaps in the curtains, dust motes hanging in the streams of warm gold. He went along the boat solemnly opening the curtains until once again light returned fully to the interior.
It was the book open on the table that caught his attention first. A biography of Larkin. Gently, he closed it.
He tried to imagine Rhonda living inside this two metre by fifteen metre space. Tried to imagine this enigmatic figure sat on the squeaking swivel chair in the corner of the room, hunched over the table trying to read, half her face illuminated by the warm glow of the industrial lamp fastened with a vice to the desk.
A thick smell of smoke lingered in the boat, and an extinguished cigarette remained in the ash tray. He was always surprised at how much could fit in a boat so small, how much of life could be preserved with so little space. Shimmying past a plush red sofa, on the far wall of the room he found a small white bookcase, packed tightly but neatly with books. Each shelf had two rows to it. Hardcover novels and poetry pamphlets. Flicking open several of the books revealed they were full of neon sticky notes, carefully annotated with pencil. There was a neatness to the whole boat that he hadn’t expected. The precisely regimented books, an attentively stacked manuscript on the sofa, a folded pile of laundry by the door.
He passed the bathroom and looked into the bedroom. A carefully made bed, with a table next to it. In the far corner, a stagnant pool of dark black water had begun to fill the room. It reminded the inspector of the Charles Forte books he’d devoured as a child, and he imagined the boat being pulled into some other plane where all missing boats go.
On the bedside table he found two photos: a woman that he assumed was Rhonda with two older adults that he assumed were her parents; and another of Rhonda and a second woman embracing. He placed the photos back down on the table and wondered absently if the people from the Bodleian would take these photos for their exhibit as well.
###
He didn’t have long to wait, soon a man in a long overcoat came cycling down the towpath. He rested his worn-out bike on a nearby hedgerow and introduced himself as a professor at the university.
‘I’m here to collect the books for the exhibit,’ he said. Pausing, he added: ‘I was told there would be two of you. What happened to your colleague?’
‘Lunch,’ the inspector replied morosely.
‘Rather late for lunch isn’t it? It’s almost two.’
‘I know.’
They set to work clearing out the boat.
‘I was very sorry to hear about Rhonda,’ the professor said, arms laden with books. ‘She was always so happy, such a warm member of the faculty.’ He paused. ‘What, you seem surprised?’
‘I heard she moved onto the boat after her divorce.’
The professor began to laugh. ‘Oh no! She left her husband quite happily, always found him quite boring. Never was interested in men, but she had to keep up appearances, such was the time. She may have lived alone, but she certainly wasn’t lonely. She was just different.’
It took them an hour to carry out most of the books and manuscripts and lie them on the towpath, and when they were done they stood in silence watching the boat drifting on the water.
‘Have you read her poems?’ the professor asked.
‘You should,’ the professor said, ‘like gold spun by some mad genius.’
He handed the young inspector a book, a first edition of one of Rhonda’s poetry collections. He could hold it in one hand, it had no more than twenty pages.
The professor said, ‘That, in there, is Rhonda.’
Winner: “The Ghosts She Felt Acutely” by Polina Kim
Runner-up: “Letter from the Orient” by Dara Mohd
Shortlisted entries:
- “A Short Sharp Shock to the Skull” by Jim Weinstein (pseudonym)
- “Rhonda May” by Matt Unwin
- “Any Blue Will Do” by Kyla Murray
- “SPLAT!” by Sophie Lyne
