If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Jon McGregor

it’s me, is mum there, and he said no, no she’s not, she’s gone out tonight.

      I’m not sure whether I was disappointed or relieved.

      I could hear him clutching the phone tightly, holding it away from his face as though he didn’t think it was entirely safe, the way he always does, and I knew that I wouldn’t say anything to him.

      I knew it was a secret I would be keeping to myself a little longer.

      He asked me about my job, he asked me about people I haven’t seen for a long time and I said they were fine.

      I said something about football, and then I let him get back to watching the television.

      I put the phone down and imagined what I might have said, mum there’s something I have to say, or mum I need to talk to you about something.

      Mum I’m not sure how to say this but.

      I think I was hoping she might realise something was wrong without me having to say so, that I could talk about my new shoes and she would say so what is it you’re really telling me?

      Like the mum in the old British Telecom adverts.

      I looked at another photograph, of Simon and Rob and Jamie dancing naked down the street in the first pale hours of that summer, celebrating the election.

      I remembered that momentous night, looping a cable through the window and setting the TV up in the front garden, gathering around it with pizza and weed and the excitement of history.

      I remembered coming back from the garage at midnight, armed with fresh snack supplies and seeing my friends’ faces lit up by the shrine of the television.

      Shining and blue and flickering in the darkness.

      Already looking like ghosts.

Chapter 6

      The woman at number nineteen, she has finished hanging out her washing, and now she steps into her kitchen and begins to think about breakfast. The children will be waking soon, and the whole household will begin then to fumble into the morning, her husband, her husband’s father, her husband’s mother. She reaches up to the cupboard over the sink and fetches down boxes of cereal, four packets of sugared grains and flakes which she clutches to her chest. As she turns to drop them on the table she sees her young daughter leaning against the doorframe, watching her with her big worried eyes. Before she can say anything, her daughter is hurrying to the cutlery drawer, counting out spoons, turning to the crockery cupboard, struggling with the bowls. She is still wearing her night-clothes. Hey, hey, says her mother, smiling, dress first, washing and clothing okay? And she takes her little arms and hustles her out of the kitchen. The child does not say a word, and the mother listens to her shuffling up the stairs, a shadow of concern skimming briefly across her face.

      She finishes preparing the breakfast table, and as she puts the kettle on to boil the twin boys come rattling down the stairs and launch into the food, clutching their spoons like fighting sticks. She tries to talk to them about the day, what are they going to do and would they like to go with Nana and Papa to see Auntie for tea, but their mouths are full of soggy cereal and it is all they can do to breathe between shovelfuls. She relents, and tells them they must not go further than the shop at the end of the street and that they must not go into people’s gardens without asking.

      She strokes them both on the head, as if to bless their day, and she tells them to be good, and as they leave the room she sees again her daughter standing in the doorway, her head leaning up against the frame and her big eyes looking blankly upwards. She is wearing the floral dress with the gold edge which was made for her by Auntie, she is looking pretty she thinks. She says what would you like, and the young girl says nothing but slides into the chair vacated by her brother and pours herself a bowl of wheatflakes. She eats slowly, gathering the flakes into small spoonfuls, looking out of the window, chewing each portion thoughtfully.

      And when she is finished she turns to her mother and says mummy can I watch cartoons now, just like that, no expression, as if she were a child extra in a cheap soap opera and not the centre of a loving family. Her mother nods her assent and watches her drift through to the front room, trailing her hand along the wallpaper.

      Perhaps she is nervous about starting school, she thinks to herself, or perhaps she is becoming poorly. She turns to the window and touches her face, she is feeling weary of the day already. The boys stamp down the stairs and out of the front door. It is not yet eight o’clock. She runs the tap to wash the children’s dishes. She clenches her fist under the rushing water until it becomes hot, she holds it there.

      The man in the attic flat of number twenty-one, he is watching the twin boys from next door running in the street, he is leaning from the window to smoke a cigarette, he is being watched by the woman lying on the bed behind him. They are both naked. They’re out already he says, them kids from next door, they’re out already, what time is it? You probably woke them up with your snoring the woman says, rolling onto her side and stretching across the floor to pick up her watch. They’re cheeky little shits them two the man says, I saw them throwing stones at those girls over the road last week, when they was sitting in their own garden. Probably just looking for attention the woman says, you know what boys are like. It’s not even eight she says, I’m going back to sleep she says, but she doesn’t and she lies awake looking at the nakedness of the man, at his feet tilted upwards and the tension rising up the muscles of his legs as he stretches to lean out of the window, and the rise and pause and fall of the curve of his shoulders as he savours his cigarette. At the small dragon tattoo on his shoulderblade. At the long pink lines and the small purple scuff marks scattered all over his skin, scratches and bruises she’s gifted him in heated moments of fury and passion.

      She props herself up on one elbow and catches sight of herself in the mirror, she looks at herself, her skin clean and unmarked except for a single thumb-sized bruise at the top of one arm. She looks at her hair, newly dyed a deep henna red, she turns a length of it in her fingers. She’s still pleased with it, even though he hasn’t yet said anything. She likes the way it complements her eyes.

      They’re looking in people’s windows now the man says, his irritation furrelling over his shoulder like smoke, what are they playing at? Forget it she says, come back to bed she says, and she rolls to one side to make room for him. Little fuckers he says, they’ve got water-pistols he says, and he turns away, back into the room, striding across the floor to squash his cigarette end into the ashtray. What did you say he says to the woman, I missed that. She says, I told you to come back to bed and she reaches out her arm towards him and when he kisses her the stubble on his face smells of smoke and sunshine.

      In the street outside, the twins from number nineteen are peering into the front window of number twenty, the slightly older one balanced on a pair of bricks to see better, looking through a small gap in the curtains. In the room in front of them, a man with thinning hair and a carefully trimmed moustache is doing stretching exercises, lifting his pale arms high in the air, lowering them towards the floor, placing his hands on his fleshy hips, arching his body from side to side. He is completely naked, and the boys suddenly giggle out loud and cover their mouths, the man with the tidy moustache turning and waving them away, dragging the curtains more fully closed.

      They vanish, and he stands by the now safely shielded window, clenching and unclenching his fists, breathing a little heavily. They are not good boys, he is thinking, they are not good boys at all. He has seen them, he knows about them, he has seen them dropping their crisp bags in the street, their sweet wrappings. He stretches his hands towards the floor, his knees almost straight, his bony fingers only half a dozen inches from the carpet. He straightens, slowly and carefully, he puts on a dressing gown and he steps into his small kitchen, reaching for the kettle, glancing into the backyard and his hands yank suddenly up into the air as if he were shaking out a tablecloth and he mutters shameful words, he says to nobody what is it now? where does it come from all of this? and he pulls down the kitchen blind so that he does not have to look at it.

      In the flat upstairs, an old man is looking for a box