by Jon McGregor
My dad, overweight and unexercised, is a great boxing fan, knowledgeable and opinionated and passionate.
He used to spend hours talking to me about it when I was a kid, the stories going straight over my head while I dreamed about being a fashion designer.
I look at him now, his eyes dancing across the screen like a fighter’s footwork, the light from the television making his face shine.
He says look at this, do you know this one, it’s Ali versus Terrell, Terrell’s been calling him Cassius Clay, he said I don’t know no Ali, but you see to Ali the Clay name is a slave name, like a white man’s name, he doesn’t want it he says.
When he talks about boxing his face comes alive, his voice comes from a different part of him.
He says look, here, Ali could have knocked him out ages ago, but he wants Terrell to say his name, look he keeps asking him, hitting him again, asking him, look.
I watch, and I hear Muhammad Ali’s voice ringing out of the television like a song, saying what’s my name? what’s my name?, the fury of the question channelled into petrol-bomb punches, holding his fists up like hammers over rocks, singing what’s my name? what’s my name?
I say dad, do you think I’m a bad person as well?
Your mum doesn’t think you’re a bad person he says, she just, she needs a while.
It’s not what she was expecting he says.
It’s not what I was expecting I say.
I look at him, I want to ask him this, I think he’ll be honest with me, I say but what do you think dad?
He breathes heavily, he squeezes his forehead with his thumb and fingers, he says I don’t know love.
He says I think you’ve been very unlucky.
He says I think you need to make some difficult decisions.
He says but I’ll get used to it.
And mum I say, do you think she’ll ever get used to it?
He picks up the remote control and presses the red button and the screen goes blank and I realise I’ve never seen him do that before.
You have to give your mother some leeway he says, she doesn’t always mean to be the way she is.
You’re a clever girl he says, but there are some things you don’t understand.
He’s looking straight at me now, leaning forward, talking quietly.
He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly.
She was crying with relief he says, it was like as if a door had been unlocked and she’d been let outside, she said to me I’m safe now.
He waits, and he says this kid, when it’s born, you mustn’t ever let it think it’s anything other than a gift and a blessing, do you hear me?
I nod, and he sits back in his chair looking tired and old.
He watches the video again, and I watch him, the way the light shines blue and white across his worn-out face.
Ali is looming up above the camera, a man on top of the world, saying I wrestled with the alligators.
I look at the lines on my father’s face, my daddy’s face, each one carved out by the long passing of a year, and I think about how little I’ve known all this time.
I want to run my thumbs across his face and smooth those creases away.
Muhammad Ali dances on the tips of his toes, saying I’m so quick I make medicine sick, the two dozen cameras and microphones around him laughing and drinking him in, calling his name.
My father, the strongman, holding my mother up all those years.
I want to go to him and hold him like a baby.
I sit on the sofa and listen to my mother moving around in the kitchen.
I hear her going up the stairs, slowly.
Chapter 24
He opens the front door, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache who lives downstairs at number twenty, he touches a hand to his bow-tie and he steps out into the middle of the day. He glances up and down the street, he sees a ladder propped up against the wall of number twenty-five, he sees a young girl with a ribbon balancing on the wall opposite, he sees the twins arguing about whose turn it is to bat. He looks higher, he sees a construction crane hanging over rooftops a few streets away, his heart bangs a little harder but he smiles and sets off in that direction.
He remembers what they’d said, at the club, when he’d first put his name down for this, are you sure they’d said, at your age they’d said. He’d smiled then, pointed at the heading on the sheet, what does that say he’d asked the young lady trying to dissuade him, and she’d read it out for him, as though his eyesight was poor, it says Veterans and Widows Benevolent Fund she said. Well then he said to her, I am not a veteran, I was too young to be a veteran, so do not be saying this a man of my age, I am too young for you to be saying this to me he told her. These people, he said, his finger jabbing at the word veterans, these people did everything for me, and for you, don’t forget this. She had been quiet by this stage, embarrassed, and he’d felt bad for her. This, he said, this is the least I can do, this I can do with my eyes closed. And he’d paused, looked around, picked up his drink, and said I bloody will have my eyes closed for certain, and everyone in the club laughed and the young lady had looked at him and smiled.
He chuckles now, remembering it, pleased with himself, and he walks down the street, past two girls drinking tea and reading magazines, past a boy scrubbing his shoes, past a house with all the curtains closed still, turning right at the end of the street and then he is gone and nobody notices him leaving.
Outside number seventeen, they are sitting on the wall and eating chocolate doughnuts, they are talking with their mouths full, the boy with the pierced eyebrow is saying and I don’t think anyone really believed in this thing, that was the problem, no one believed in it. He says I know I didn’t, or any of the other sellers, or the managers or the printers or even the pilots who go around taking the pictures.
A girl with a yellow ribbon trails past them and pushes open the door of number nineteen. She stops in her hallway for a moment to outline a pattern on the wallpaper with her fingers, and then she drifts into the front room. Her parents and grandparents are all sitting there, watching the television, John says there is a small band of low pressure sweeping northwards this afternoon and nobody in the room is speaking. The girl’s mother looks up, she speaks quietly so as not to disturb the others, she says love why don’t you go and play with your brothers? and the girl says they’re playing cricket they won’t let me play they say girls can’t play and as she talks she is backing out of the room. Her mother says tell them they are wrong, tell them I say you can play, and the girl drifts out of the room, her ribbon trailing behind her like the wake of a boat.
Outside, she looks at her brothers playing cricket, she looks away and she walks straight past them. The tall girl on the wall next door sees her and says hello but the young girl pretends not to hear.
The tall girl is looking at her eyes in a silver pocket mirror. They are watery, greasy-looking, and the skin around them, without the glitter now, is swollen and grey. She dabs cream onto the skin with her little finger and rubs it in, wincing. She puts the mirror down on the wall beside her. It’s engraved with the name of a women’s magazine. She picks up a pipette of eyedrops and leans her head back into the sun.
The boy with the pierced eyebrow says and the worst bit was each evening we had to boast about how many people we’d sold to that day, they did this thing where we all stood in a room and played a different musical instrument depending on our numbers. The other boy reappears in the doorway behind them, doing up the buttons on a freshly ironed shirt.
What’s he talking about he says to the girl, his job she says without turning around or sounding very interested.
Outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair is saying you’ve got to use something else, the charcoal’s not getting a chance to catch, try some lighter fluid or something, and he presses down on the lighter tab, he sprays a thin drizzle of fluid over the coals and the singed newspaper. The boy with th
e yellow sunglasses says that’ll do that’s enough try that, and he lights it and flinches back as a halo of soft blue flame wraps suddenly and briefly around the cold coals.
In the doorway of number seventeen, the boy with the white shirt unrolls a navy-blue tie and slings it around his neck. The tall girl says yeah well at least you got to work outside, I’ve been stuck inside all summer, and the eyebrow boy looks at her and says what were you doing anyway?
She tips her head back and drops another splash into her eye, and she says I’ve been ripping free gifts off magazines. He looks at her.
She blinks rapidly and lowers her head, I’ve been sat in a room without windows she says, ripping the free gifts off magazines so they can be recycled. The boy with the pierced eyebrow looks at her and doesn’t say anything.
The boy in the white shirt does up his tie and says have you seen my black shoes to the girl.
No she says, and she turns and she says your tie’s not straight.
The eyebrow boy turns round and says where are you going dressed up like that and the smart boy says new job, telephone helpline at a mortgage company.
The boy with the pierced eyebrow slaps the palm of one hand with the back of the other and makes a loud noise in the back of his throat. He says, for fucksake, didn’t our parents used to make stuff for a living?
On the front step of number twenty-two, the girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses is watching the boy from number twenty-four cleaning his trainers. He is sitting on his front step, his hands wrestling in a bowl of hot soapy water, thrashing around as though the shoe were trying to escape, she wonders why he’s so keen to get them clean, she watches the soap bubbles sparkling in the air like a flung handful of crushed glass.
Across the road, outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair and the grazes is watching the other boy put together another careful pyramid of paper and sticks and charcoal, shielding it with his hands as he lights it. He says what’s with the yellow glasses anyway, where’d you get them from? and the other boy takes them off and looks at them, help the aged or something he says, try them on. He puts them on, the boy with the big hair and the grazes, and the other boy says the woman in the shop said they used to give them to mental patients, like to cheer them up or something. The boy with the big hair looks around at the street, grinning, everything gone a strange saturated yellow. He takes them off and hands them back, he says well mad and he rubs his eyes as if to get rid of any leftover tint. They both turn back to the barbecue just as the pyramid of paper and sticks stops smouldering again, and the boy with the big hair and the grazes says fuck this I’m going down the shop to get some fire-lighters or something. The other boy says no hold on hold on, but when he turns round the big-haired boy has already picked up his skateboard and stepped it onto the pavement. He watches as he kicks up some speed, bending his knees as the wheels knock over the uneven slabs, holding his hands out slightly and, as he passes number seventeen, leaning the board towards the road, shifting his weight suddenly, pushing down with his back foot.
And they all watch, the people outside number seventeen, the two girls at number twenty-two, the man with the burnt hands, the twins in the road, the boy in the yellow sunglasses, they watch as he lifts off the pavement and the board swings up beneath him, his body crouching suddenly and his hand grabbing at the illustrated underside of the board before the wheels hit ground again and the momentum carries him forward towards the shop.
The boy on the tricycle stops pedalling, he drifts to a halt as he turns and watches the skateboard pass, his mouth is open and he doesn’t understand what he has just seen, when he tries to tell his mother later he won’t know what words to use, and she won’t understand what he is trying to say, so she will stroke his hair and fetch him a drink of juice.
The boy with the skateboard jumps off and disappears into the shop, and the boy outside number twenty-four goes back to cleaning his trainers and the girl next door looks at him again.
She says excuse me sorry and he looks up, his hands stop moving, she says sorry but what are you doing, it’s way too nice a day to bother with that isn’t it, and he holds up a dripping shoe with his hand inside, like a glove puppet coming out of a bath, he points to a dark brown stain curled like a foetus across the white toe. He says I’m trying to get rid of that, these trainers are new and I’m not having that staying on there.
The girl says what is it, curry sauce or something, and he smiles and says no, he says no I was out last night and the bloke I was with got into an argument with someone. He puts the wet shoe down and turns to face her, he leans towards her slightly so she can hear him better. He says I knew it was trouble but I couldn’t split because he’d given me his drink to hold and I couldn’t see anywhere to put it down.
He wipes sweat and soap from his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt, he says next thing I knew was he was biting a chunk out of this bloke’s nose, I couldn’t believe it, there was like blood and shit all over the place he says, and now I can’t get my trainers clean he says.
The girl with the glasses says what’s that noise? and they turn and they listen and they look at each other.
They listen, and there’s a rumbling from somewhere, becoming a rattle, a rattle like the window-frames of a drum and bass club, they can’t tell what it is but it sounds like it’s coming from further up the main road, they stand and they look, it sounds like a car without tyres rolling down the hill, the twins stop playing cricket and run to the end of the street, even the man with the burnt hands stands and looks and the noise is now so loud that none of them can speak, the rumble rattle hudderjudder, and they hear shrieks and whoops and yes alrights and
And a dozen chairs roll past the end of the street, office chairs with swivel bases and ergonomically adjusted backrests, racing down the steep main road, eleven riders clinging onto them, trying to steer by stabbing their feet onto the tarmac, hollering encouragement to each other, bracing themselves for the inevitable fall, an empty chair following behind them like a riderless horse at the Grand National, and then they are gone, the noise fading quickly, and the people in the street turn to look at one another, blinking, saying what the and then carrying on with what they were doing, talking, drinking tea, eating doughnuts, getting ready to go to work, playing cricket.
A bus stops at the end of the street, the doors open and the old couple from number twenty step awkwardly down. The old man says thankyou driver, turning to touch his hat as the doors flop closed. As the bus pulls away, a young boy squeezes his face through a window on the top deck, spitting out a spray of phlegm which falls towards them accompanied by the high-pitched wail of children’s laughter.
She looks at him, she feels his body stiffen like a stretched rope, she squeezes his arm and they turn and walk away.
She doesn’t say anything as they walk down the street, she doesn’t need to and she knows he doesn’t want her to.
He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiping at the thick string of spit on his sleeve, carefully folding the red silk and holding it out to one side.
The boy with the tricycle rattles towards them, head down, and they step neatly around him.
He walks calmly, his back as straight as ever, his breathing a little loud but his face still impassive.
They cross the street to their front door, he says which one of you two is Ian Botham then, but he says it quietly and the twins don’t know who he’s talking about.
And it’s only when they have closed the front door behind them that he says what did I do? I didn’t even look at them. I know love she says, I know, and she takes him by the arm and they walk up the stairs.
And as he stands by the coat-hooks and takes off his hat, he sees a spade and a fork through the open cupboard door, he thinks of the things he’s never talked to her about, he thinks of the medal propped on the windowsill, he thinks about her walking back from the allotments on her own.
He turns and watches her moving
through to the kitchen, he remembers those first few months and years after he’d come back, when she’d asked him, pleaded gently with him to tell her something, to not hide it all but to share it with her.
He takes the handkerchief through to the bathroom and rinses it under the hot tap, squeezing and soaking it until the steam rises.
He didn’t tell her anything, because there was nothing to tell. There was no answer to the question of what did you do in the war, because he had done nothing. After years of training and preparation, after days of tension and a terrified journey across the channel, after all that he had done nothing and he had nothing to tell. He had travelled halfway across Europe, and when it was over he had travelled back, but somehow the war had passed him by, as if he’d been asleep when the others had started and he’d spent the whole time trying to catch up.
At the beaches of Normandy he had leapt into the cold sea and waded onto the desecrated sand with no more need for caution than on a daytrip to Blackpool. Across northern France and Belgium he had marched in time along cratered tarmac roads, past flattened woodlands where single bare trees stuck uselessly out of the desolate soil like dead men’s stiffened arms jabbed accusingly at the sky. He had passed through towns captured for the fourth time, crossed rivers bridged by floating pontoons and planks, seen farmhouses broken open and smoking from battles which had only just moved on, eaten meals with bandaged men heading in the other direction.
He wrings the hot water from the handkerchief and hangs it from the line strung over the bath. He looks at his hands, wide flat hands with uncalloused skin and neat fingernails, and he scrubs them clean with a nailbrush.
He’d dug graves. Right the way across the new map of Allied Europe he’d dug graves, following in the costly trail of liberation, his shovel cutting into the bloody soil and carving holes just deep enough for the uniformed bodies of young men. They had a chaplain assigned to their unit, an older man who would run short of breath as he scurried from hole to hole to offer blessing and sanctification to each fresh mound of soil. Between them all, himself and the rest of the men in his unit, they could dig hundreds of graves in a day, spread out across a field like farmworkers, their shovels rising and falling in unison, the chaplain standing beside each one in turn, naming each body if he could, commending each blank face to the company of saints as the soil shushed and fell back into the ground.
