GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2021/22

DANIELLE VRUBLEVSKIS
‘Queen of Charm’

THERE’S AN ART TO CHARMING WORMS. The seagulls know it, and patter their feet on the ground so that the worms wind up from the soil like blooming flowers. They think it’s rain. The gulls trick the worms though they’re from the coast and somewhere they shouldn’t rightfully be.

I studied these gulls and learned their ways. Every year since I was twelve, they’d crowned me Queen of Charm. This year was going to be my last victory.

* 

“There’s stiff competition,” said Mum, the morning of the festival. She’d been busy helping set up Dad’s beer stall, and her movements were slow with yesterday’s labour. She kept her footfalls quiet. Softly, like a lady, the kind that doesn’t clatter mugs or accidently slam doors. Dad was sleeping, and didn’t like to be woken.

“That little Juliette bint. She goes fishing with Paul, helps him with the worms. Father-daughter bonding they call it, but Paul hasn’t had to buy any bait for the last five years, the way I hear it.”

“I’m not going fishing with Dad.”

“He hasn’t gone fishing in years, love. Does his back in.”   

“He hasn’t got the patience for it, neither,” I said. Mum put her hand to her mouth to catch her smile. I was glad she hid it. A single slipped finger, and she’d release it and Dad would come down and ask why she looked so happy.

I didn’t like fishing much, anyway. Sometimes the justices would get rowdy, go looking for fights along the riverside. They’d beat you, or worse.  

“You concentrate ready for the festival,” Mum said. “Your Dad gets a lot from the tourists when they come to the stall to see you in the crown.”

My prize from the previous year was on the kitchen table, a wreath of plastic blooms and leaves, sized to fit the head of a child.

“Even if the worms don’t come out for me, it’s fine,” I said, “I don’t really care. Maybe somebody else should win.” I dinged my fork against my plate, deliberately.

Mum pursed her lips, “Just try, love,” she said. What she didn’t say was: don’t get caught like last year, love, when your Dad found that secret phone and there was hell to pay, a pound of flesh, a totally-deserved-wrath that had kept me from school for two days.

* 

For the last thirty years, there’s been the May Day worm charming competition. They rope off a little section, two metres by two metres, and we all try and get the worms out from the ground, and whoever has the most in their bucket wins. Everybody can join, if they want, men and older people too, but the worms like the girls. That’s what people say, and sometimes the tourists laugh or frown or raise their eyebrows, but it’s true. Only girls have won, the last twenty years, and for the last five it’s been me. I get the crown, and my photo is in the newspaper and Dad sells more of his beers, which are called The Charmer and have a worm right there on the label. He won’t let me drink it, even though I’m now sixteen and even though I’ve already been drunk loads of times. He doesn’t want me paraded in the village square, with all the other trouble-makers my age.

I’m going to leave this place to dance. Mum and Dad don’t know, but there’s money I’ve been saving up. So I’ve been Queen of Charm, as preparation. And I’ve been copying routines online, though most of them are for groups so I just learn every part. All I need to do is to ride the bus through the checkpoint, and from then onto whatever city I can find. They’ll see my star power straight off, I reckon.

I don’t know what Dad’ll call his beers next, when I’m gone. I’m not going to come back to compete again. I’m going to leave on a high, you see, and in ten years’ time I’ll be talking about my humble beginnings and they’ll ask me about it. I’ll say, Oh that, I forgot I was ever Queen.

* 

“Put foundation on your arms, love, if you’re going to wear those short sleeves.”

We were already at the fair, and she still fussed over me. I did as she said, covering up last week’s mistake when I’d mended the mosquito net wrong over Dad’s bed, and he’d woken up with twelve angry little bites and he’d said, that could kill me, did you want to kill me and of course I didn’t, but luckily there was no fever or anything else so no harm done.

Dad was gone, over at his stall already. He’d given his nods to all the other men, and rolled his eyes at my classmates in their shorts. Mum watched them too, then said she could right nearly see the colour of their undies what with them shorts. I said that all the boys called them sluts, and she told me I shouldn’t use that word, but she smiled all the same.

I was dressed properly. The boys watched me, and the men as well, and sometimes when I thought I could get away with it, I met their gazes. Mo from school even winked, though I couldn’t tell whether he was messing, like he did at class when he snapped the girls’ bra straps. I couldn’t do much more, though. It would be found out.

We went and bought fresh mangos, grown down Mr Sherwood’s farm. The day was hot, the ground too dry for charming worms proper. But they were there, I could feel them below my toes. Above, too, the seagulls circled. Me in the middle in my floral sundress, wearing my crown and not feeling embarrassed. I could lie down in the earth, very still, and the bees and wasps would all come and land on me, like I was nectar and petals.

* 

An hour or so later, a bell rang and us competitors moved into place. Juliette was a few blocks away from me, her shoulders pushed back like she was already champion. Juliette’s father was by her side. Silly man, he’d ruin her luck for her.

I saw Dad, watching from the side, and my chest collapsed in, just like when he found my phone. The whole world was folding back, from country to town to field to my own little cordoned-off square and him, watching, and he knew I was leaving, he had to know, there’s no way I could have hidden any of myself from him.

Beside him, Mum gave a thumbs up and a smile warm and rare as a hot shower. I breathed.

Most competitors brought out pitchforks. They’d stick them in the ground and whack them, sending the noise ringing through the soil like a raid alarm. The other tools that people brought: tubas, water bottles filled with gravel, umbrellas and bongo drums. Some joker even brought a vibrator, and got disqualified, but he had all the women around him laughing.

I didn’t need any of those tools though, though. Just me and my body. I flexed my toes, imagining webbing between them, sharp claws at the end.

The countdown began. People shouted out the numbers and I shouted too, like we were all at a New Years’ Eve party except I wasn’t going to kiss anybody.

Zero came before I knew it, and I started drumming my feet, feeling the power of my thighs.

There was a moment there, when I thought they might not come. It was too dry for them, the journey upwards difficult, and they would stay in the damp heaviness of the deep soil, leaving trails of renewed earth in their wake. And I thought, please little ones, please, my last victory and then I’m gone, and I stamped my feet harder and closed my eyes and didn’t care about all the men watching, the boys, Mo, not even Dad because they didn’t know this moment, like I did, the slow, skilled betrayal.

I drummed harder. I could leap across rivers with my jump. I could climb trees and basketball hoops and multi-story carparks. I could slip through checkpoints, and under the noses of justices. My arms were strong, my legs were strong, and all I had to do was to use this strength. I could churn up the earth and make it mine and all the little worms would come to me. 

They answered, bursting up like pondweed and thrashing as I picked them and threw them into the bucket. Some tried to escape but I held them fast, whispering quick apologies if I tore them accidently.

There was no competition in the end, barely any need to count. I’d won again. Some of the other girls started crying and they looked so pathetic in their loss that I almost pitied them. Juliette kept her chin up. She was thinner this year than she ever had been. Her and her Dad hadn’t been going fishing as much recently, To keep her safe, I heard, and the rations they were on weren’t enough to grow a girl to a woman. She caught me looking and winked, like it was her that had won and not me, and I almost went over and slapped her right then.

I stood on the platform to be crowned. My armpits were chafed with sweat, but I wasn’t embarrassed. I ducked my head in thanks, and shook the hand of the organiser. We got a bag of dried fruits and Dad, in a show of generosity, made sure that he handed them out to all the other people at the fair.

Back home that evening, we ate pork knuckles that another of the brewers had given us. Given me, really, because he’d handed them over and watched me in my dress and said I was almost like proper royalty.

My victory made the local news that evening, after the story about the riot in Southampton. Dad said he’d never been so proud of me, and rubbed my shoulder hard enough that his thumb hit the bone underneath. Dickhead, I thought, and covered my mouth like I’d actually dared to say it out loud.