by Jon McGregor
The father doesn’t say anything for a moment, he looks at him and then he throws the water from his glass into the young man’s face.
Bastard! he says, loudly and crisply, and he turns and walks back to his own house. His son drags his tricycle into a U-turn and follows him, and the twins in the middle of the road yell and laugh and point.
The young man watches them, he wipes his face with his hand and he is unable to speak, he closes the window and walks through to the back bedroom, trying to remember something.
He lies down on the floor beside the tall thin girl and squeezes back in under the duvet. She looks at him and raises one of her sleepy eyebrows, still speckled with sparkles. She makes him feel better before she even speaks. She says who was that? A man with a beard he says. He called me a bastard and threw a glass of water in my face he says, and his eyes are weighting themselves closed and he’s falling asleep already. She says oh, and she tries to speak some more but she can’t remember what they were talking about.
What did you say? asks one of the girls on the bed, but no one answers and she closes her eyes again and she hears shouting from outside somewhere.
In his attic room, the young man with the thick black hair is counting his money again, fanning it out in his hand like a winning set of cards, lining the notes up so all the queens’ heads face the same way, holding it up to his face to smell the grubby paper odour of it. The sweet smell of a thousand pounds. He looks out at the street, at his father cleaning his car, he imagines his reaction later this afternoon, the way he’ll circle around it, unfolding a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his face, folding the handkerchief and saying what is this I don’t believe it.
He looks up the street, listening for the thump of a car stereo, he imagines his father saying I didn’t know, I could have helped you, saying you only had to ask.
He smiles to himself. His father doesn’t even know he’s passed his test. He tucks the cash back into his wallet, stuffs the wallet back into the pocket of his trousers and checks himself in the mirror. He hears more shouting outside, the shrieks of the twins, he smooths his hair and thinks daddy you going to be proud of me today, believe. He kisses his fist and runs downstairs.
In the street, the twins are still cheering and laughing, running up and down the street as if they’ve just hit a winning six against England, singing bastard bastard to each other, the older twin swinging the bat around his head like a club.
Hey careful with that one mate says a loud voice, you’ll take someone’s head out, innit, and the boy turns around and sees the young man from number twelve striding towards him, grinning, reaching out to snatch the bat away, his thick black hair gelled neatly into place. I’ll be Imran Khan he says, no I’m Imran Khan says the older twin, no I’m Imran Khan says the youngest. I’ll be Imran Khan says the young man again, and you can bowl and you can go wickie he says and he points at each of the twins.
The younger twin takes the balding tennis ball and trots away down the street. I’m Akram he shouts over his shoulder, and he stops and he turns and he throws the ball from hand to hand.
Head down, he begins his run-up.
His brother crouches behind the milk-crate wickets, ready to pounce onto the clipped ball and make a heroic catch.
Wasim Akram leaps and flings his arm over his shoulder, his whole body arching towards the wicket, a shout of exertion crashing out of him.
The ball loops gently through the air and bounces in front of Imran Khan, who steps forward and smashes it back, over the turning head of Akram and towards the main road. Howzaaay! he shouts, six! and the younger of the twins trots away after the ball, running out in front of a bus and sliding under a parked car to retrieve it.
You’re out if it goes on the road says the wicketkeeper, reaching for the bat, and you don’t get the six, give us the bat, and the young man lifts it out of his reach. No you’re not he says, you go and bowl now, and he lifts the bat higher as the boy jumps up for it.
The young man’s father is washing his car outside their house, he looks up, and as he dips a sponge into a bucket of warm soapy water he calls eh go easy on the fellow now. The young man looks up at his father and lowers the bat, laughing, saying I’m only joking, taking the ball from the younger twin and saying but I’m still Imran Khan.
His father watches and squeezes soap and water over the already shining roof of his car. He whistles a song from a movie, and as he stretches to reach the far side of the roof his shirt drapes into the suds and soaks up the warm water. He stands back, and the bubbles blister and fizz and pop like glittered skin in a nightclub.
The daughter of the man with the burnt hands, sitting on the doorstep of number sixteen, she watches as the man throws a bucket of clean water over the car. She watches the water skidding across the roof, chasing the dirty soap, swimming down the windows and tipping into the road. She watches the boy with the thick black hair bowling to one of the twins, the twin hitting at the ball and the ball lofting towards number eighteen.
Catchaaaay! shout all three cricketers, Imran and Akram and Younis, and the boy with the bloodshot eyes sitting on his front step looks up, clapping his hands around warm air as the ball lumps past his head. He turns to pick it up, and he knocks it out of reach. He stands to move after it, and he kicks it by mistake, he picks it up and throws it and it doesn’t quite reach any of the cricketers. Thanks mate says the oldest of them, and as he turns to the twins he pushes his tongue into his lower lip and crosses his eyes and they giggle and copy him.
The boy with the bloodshot eyes sits down again with his paper and pen. He is writing a letter to his brother, he writes last week I saw her loading up a car with stuff as if she was leaving, boxes and bags and even a standard lamp, and I was sick with disappointment but then it turned out it was her mate leaving. He thinks, and he writes I still want to talk to her properly, before I change house, I want to see if well you know, and he draws a row of dots and he writes but I guess if her mate’s left then she’s probably moving out and today’s the last day of the month and so I’ve missed my chance. He rubs his eyes, blinks painfully, writes I just don’t know what to say and I know it’s pathetic but I don’t, and he looks up and realises the twins are still laughing at him so he picks up the letter and retreats into his house.
A car appears from the other end of the street and hoots at the milk crates, a car with tinted windows and gleaming hubcaps, a car with loud music padooming from inside. The oldest boy raises his hand and throws the ball back to the twins, he walks to the car and clasps the hands of each of the occupants in turn. He calls goodbye to his father, but his father is walking towards him and so his friends climb out and each clasp his father’s hand, saying yes my father is well yes my mother is well, thankyou yes, allahu akbar, and then all four of them climb into the car and the father watches them drive towards the main road, he watches a brief flare of flame illuminating his son as a long cigarette is lit behind the darkened glass.
Upstairs at number twenty-four, a girl sits at her desk and watches the car drive past, she thinks she recognises the boy who just got into it, the boy who was playing cricket, she thinks she’s spoken to him but she can’t think when. She watches the car turn onto the main road, she watches the twins go back to their game, she looks at the old man opposite painting his windowframes, she looks higher and sees a crane lifted high over the rooftops, she wonders what they’re building over there now, she screws up her eyes and turns back to the work on her desk. She knows it was a mistake to put the desk under the window, it’s good for the light but there is so much to look at outside, there are so many distractions and she doesn’t have time for distractions. She opens another textbook, she takes the lids off a trio of felt-tip pens, and she draws another diagram, a delicate weave of veins and nerve endings and cell structures, she annotates and underlines and struggles to understand.
Outside, on the front step of number twenty-two, the two girls are watching a pigeon flying up the
street, a leaf in its beak. They’ve been watching it for a while, arguing about it. They’ve noticed that whenever it comes back it’s not carrying anything, but when it flies up towards the shop it has something crammed in its beak, a leaf, a twig, a piece of string.
The girl with the glasses is saying it must be building a nest, what else would it be doing, and the girl who’s still wearing her tartan pyjamas says but surely they’re supposed to lay their eggs in the springtime it’s about six months late to be building a nest.
Maybe it’s confused says the girl with the glasses and the short hair, maybe it’s overslept its hibernation, and the other girl says I don’t think pigeons hibernate do they? and goes into the house to make a cup of tea and a phonecall.
The girl with the glasses watches the pigeon, she tugs gently at her short hair, pulling it into place, she notices for the first time how graceful the pigeon looks, head stretched forward, feet tucked in under a curved belly, wings carefully angled to catch the breeze.
Across the road, at number twenty-three, a young man with a lot of hair and grazes down both arms is arguing with a young man wearing yellow sunglasses, he’s saying we need fire-lighters it’ll never get going without fire-lighters. The yellow-sunglasses boy is screwing up pieces of newspaper and dropping them into a rusted metal tray propped up on bricks, he is covering the newspaper with bits of grass and twig, he’s saying no it’ll be alright, wait up it’ll be fine, he nestles a few lumps of black charcoal into the pile of paper and sticks and he lights a corner of the newspaper. Watch this he says, and they peer at the small curl of flame, the paper blackening, smoke twisting off, steam wisping from the ends of the grass.
A twig smokes and crackles, pieces of burnt paper char and break away, the smoke thickens and spirals upwards, wafting up towards the first-floor window, buckling and turning, lifting higher, a catch of it dropping in through the attic window next door, the man with the tattoo smelling a glimpse of it and sitting up in bed to look around, the rest of it drifting further still, breaking and thinning and vanishing somewhere high above the quiet street.
Chapter 21
He changes gear.
He says don’t you ever wonder about him?
I say who, he says that guy, in Scotland, don’t you ever wonder?
I say well no, not really.
I think about it, about him and that night, and an image passes through my mind, all skin and teeth and hands, snagging my stomach like a dress caught in a door, closing my eyes.
I imagine knocking on his door, taking that long walk up the steep side of the city and waiting breathlessly outside his house.
I imagine bemusement on his face, delight, embarrassment.
I imagine him standing with one hand on the door and the other on the frame, his body wedged in between, his uncertainty like a pensioner’s doorchain.
I remember the smell of his neck.
I say well no, you know, it was just a thing.
It wasn’t anything else I say, it was just a thing that happened.
He pushes a little button, and soapy water squirts onto the windscreen, some of it catches in the wind and flails off to either side.
He says but did you never want to go back and do it again?
He turns the windscreen wipers on, and they squeak back and forth until the soapy water has cleared.
He says didn’t you wonder what he was thinking about you?
He says and when you found out did you wonder what he might do if you told him?
I look at him.
I say actually can we talk about something else now.
He says sorry, I just, you know, and he fiddles with the air vents in the middle of the dashboard.
He says are you too warm?
I can change the ventilation he says, and he shuffles the sliding control from left to right, clicks another dial around, holds his palm over the vent to feel the air breathing through.
He says it’s just that I’ve never been in that situation, you know, I just wondered, I didn’t mean anything.
I look at him, and his eyes are squeezing and blinking just like his brother’s.
I say what did your brother tell you about me?
He says everything he knew, he says which wasn’t very much I suppose.
He told me what you looked like he says, and what course you were doing, and what clothes you wore.
He says he told me the way you smiled, what your voice sounded like, who you lived with, what flavour crisps you bought when he saw you in the shop, how different you looked when you took your glasses off, what it felt like when you touched his arm.
I say I don’t remember touching his arm.
He says no I didn’t think you would.
We overtake a lorry with its sides rolled back and I look at the fields and the sky through its ribbed frame, there are bales of hay rolled up like slices of carpet, there’s a sprawling V of birds hanging over the horizon.
I don’t know what he means.
He says, my brother, he could, he can be a bit strange sometimes, I say what do you mean.
He says, well, just strange things, like once he sent me a list of all the clothes you’d worn that week, really detailed, colours and fabrics and styles and how they made you look and how you looked as though they made you feel.
He looks at me and says and it wasn’t creepy or anything, he wasn’t being obsessive, it was just, you know, observations.
He was thinking he wanted to buy you a present he says, and he wanted to get it right.
He winds his window down very slightly, and a thin buffet of air blows in across us both.
He sort of collects things as well he says, things he finds in the street, like till receipts and study notes and pages torn from magazines, and one time he took a whole pile of shattered car-window pieces and made a necklace out of them he says.
He said they were urban diamonds he says.
He made a glass case he says, and he mounted a row of used needles he found in an alleyway.
And if he couldn’t take it home he’d take a photo of it he says, he had albums full of stuff.
He says he told me he hated the way everything was ignored and lost and thrown away.
He says he told me he was an archaeologist of the present, and he laughs at this and turns the radio on and I don’t know what to say.
There’s a boy band on, from years ago, singing when will I will I be famous, and I wonder what Craig and Matt and Luke are doing now.
I say, please, what’s your brother’s name?
He doesn’t say anything, he looks over his shoulder, overtakes someone, changes the radio station.
I say he sounds interesting, it’s a shame I didn’t get to talk to him more.
He says but you did, at that party, and he looks at me and a car behind us flares its horn as we drift across into the next lane.
He straightens out and keeps his eyes on the road and says sorry.
I say that’s okay, what do you mean, what party?
He says there was a party you both went to, he told me about it, you spent the evening talking to each other, he walked you home and then you were so drunk you forgot about it.
No I say, no I don’t remember that, and I think and I try and remember, no I say, I really don’t remember.
He doesn’t say anything, he turns the radio up a little and adjusts his seat, he says do you know the way, do you want to look at the map.
I look at the map, I look out of the window and I recognise the landscape, I recognise the way the fields are tipping up towards the first edges of the town, away to the far left, I look at the map again.
I say but I would like to meet him, when he comes back, do you think he’ll want to I say, and he says yes, very quietly, yes I think he would.
We come off the motorway at the next junction, and I start slipping directions into the conversation.
He says do you think it was weird, me saying that about my brother, you know, about him being in love?
I think for a moment, left at this next roundabout I say.
We drive past a retail estate, and I see a line of cars crossing an empty carpark like wagons across a prairie.
I say well yes, I did, it did throw me a bit, it wasn’t really what I was expecting.
Straight over at these lights I say.
It’s a big word I say, love, it seems a bit, you know, clumsy.
He says I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to spin you out, I wanted to tell you, I wanted to see what you thought, I say but I don’t really think anything I don’t even know him, I’m sorry.
No he says, I suppose not.
Left at this pub I say, and we swing into my old estate, lunging over battered speed-bumps, and I wind down my window and it all comes rushing in, this place, the smell of it, the feel of it, pieces of things that happened when I was younger.
Right at the mini roundabout I say, and I remember falling off my bike and breaking my glasses, my mum stopping my pocket money until the new pair was paid for, left past the shops I say.
Can I ask you something I say, he says yes, he turns the radio off, I say why are you doing this?
He says you said you couldn’t afford the train fare, no not that I say.
I say why are you here, now, telling me all these things about your brother, asking me how I feel, what are you trying to achieve?
He stops the car, suddenly, he looks at me and says shit I’m sorry I didn’t mean to upset you.
You haven’t upset me I say, I just, it’s a strange thing to do and I’m interested to know why you’re doing it.
I don’t know he says, he looks atme, I can’t answer that he says.
He says he told me you looked lonely and he couldn’t do anything about it.
We drive past my old junior school, left I say, left again, and then round a corner and we’re outside my parents’ house, my house.
I thank him for the lift, I offer him a cup of tea before he goes.
