If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

by Jon McGregor

  And they did this all the way to Berlin, the crack and thump of battle always off to the east, a fresh supply of bodies rolling back to them on flatbed trucks driven by men with faces as undisturbed as their own, handing over halfphrases of information with the bodies and the marker-sticks. Pushing through steady they’d say, or bit of a tight one, or got the bridge last night. And a few days later they’d be there, where it had been steady, or tight, or at the bridge. Sinking shovels into soil, beckoning over the redfaced chaplain, painting a name and rank onto a marker-stick ready for the stonemasons. Or, if there wasn’t a name, writing Unknown beneath the date.

  Sometimes, when he was sure nobody was looking, he would make up a name, look at a man’s young face and decide a name on the spot, like a fresh baptism, trying to disguise the brutal anonymity of what they were doing.

  Those were the memories he carried with him when he travelled back home to his wife, picking mud from his fingernails and thinking of all the things he would be unable to tell her.

  And they are the memories he’s been shuffling around with all these years, unspoken because there is nothing to say, burying them deep down and finding them risen up again, the faces of the men, the smell of soil and flesh, the stumbling words of the chaplain drowned out by the distant noises of war.

  And she doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want to put out his medal like a trophy.

  And he can’t tell her that he liberated Europe with a spade.

  Next door, at number eighteen, the young man with the blinking eyes leans out of his window and takes some final photographs of the street, his packing almost completed. He squints through the viewfinder and snatches the images in quick succession.

  The boy with the yellow sunglasses poking at the barbecue.

  The man with the burnt hands sitting on an old wooden chair.

  The twins playing cricket, arguing.

  A crane, looming brightly over the rooftops.

  And on the way home I hardly say a word to Michael.

  He concentrates on driving, making small adjustments to the heating, the stereo, the angle of his seat, the speed of the windscreen wipers.

  I look out of the window, or close my eyes, and I think about the way of things now.

  I think about my mother crying for a week, and I try to imagine her hard dry face changed in that way.

  I picture precious water falling on desert ground and rolling across the surface like beads.

  I picture a tap left on in a deserted house, reconnected at source and suddenly gushing forth with bright clean water.

  And I picture my mother, actually, her face bloated and streaked, her eyes bloodshot and waterlogged, a handkerchief squashed into her hand like a sponge.

  I wonder if she stayed in bed that week, buried in a mound of bedclothes, or if she stalked the house like an exorcist, or if she just fell to the floor beside the telephone and refused to move.

  I wonder how my father felt when he heard her say the words, I’m safe now, if his heart leapt up inside him, I wonder if he was holding her at the time.

  I remember that breakfast in the Little Chef again, a tiny brick building tucked into a valley of stone and pine and heather, I remember looking out of the window as though I was just waking up, saying where are we, looking up at the endless reach of the mountain into the sky.

  And the whole thing creeps back to me, and I wonder how such important memories become veiled from us, like front rooms hidden behind net curtains.

  My dad saying we’re in Scotland now, look at it love, this is Scotland, and me not understanding what he meant.

  My mother slamming down her knife and fork so hard I thought she’d broken the plate, saying we’re not going, I can’t do it, we’re not going.

  My dad talking quietly to her, trying to touch her hand and she kept moving it away.

  Like two magnets face to face.

  And he was talking so quietly that I couldn’t hear him, and I don’t think I would have understood if I could, and so I joined the dots on my placemat.

  My mother saying you don’t understand I’m not going.

  Leaving so quickly that I didn’t get a lolly even though I’d cleaned my plate, and not arriving back home until it was dark again.

  I think about what it was that stopped her going, that made her feel unsafe for all that time.

  I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.

  Locked doors, a belt, bruises in hidden places.

  Sharp words, absent touches, thin blankets, empty plates.

  I think about the times I thought of her as a hard woman, an unfair mother, and I realise what mercifully pale reflections those moments were.

  He says are you asleep, gently, and I open my eyes and he says are you okay?

  I say yes, fine, I’m just a bit tired.

  He says do you want to stop for something to eat? I could do with a rest he says, and he squeezes the back of his neck the same way my father used to.

  He was always a weary man, my dad.

  He seemed to be permanently in the lounge, watching television, slung low in the armchair with his feet up on the table, dark patches on his white socks like mould on soft fruit.

  He never seemed to be watching the programmes, unless they were boxing-related, but it was impossible to change the channel without him noticing.

  When he did move around the house he moved slowly, easing his workboots off by the door, shuffling through to speak to my mother, settling into his chair as if into a hot bath.

  Sometimes when I got back from school he’d already be there, not in his chair but scraping his way through the house, cleaning slowly.

  The curtains would always be closed on those days, my mother an absent presence upstairs.

  Your mother’s not feeling so good today my dad would say, but she never went to the doctor’s.

  He would cook me tea, burning fishfingers under the grill with tiredness clouding his eyes like bruises.

  Once we ate from paper plates, and I didn’t think to ask why.

  He says there’s some services here do you want to stop for a while, and he’s already indicating so I say yes and we drive in and park.

  We sit in the restaurant in the bridge, picking at overpriced and overheated food, watching the traffic slashing beneath us.

  There’s a group of women at the table next to us, and I hear one of them saying but I don’t understand why he was naked in the first place.

  He says so anyway how did you get on then, was it okay?

  I say well my mum at least admitted she wasn’t that impressed, I think, and my dad didn’t say much at all.

  I don’t tell him what my dad did say.

  A woman at the next table says I didn’t really think he was like that, and another woman says well he’s not usually is he.

  He says but do you think it was worth going, and I say yes, yes it was, I think maybe I’ve started something, I think maybe they just need a little more time.

  One of the women says no it was Phoebe’s idea, she said he needed to show some empathy, to get the apartment, you know, with the ugly naked guy.

  I stand by the entrance and wait for him to come out of the toilet.

  I watch a boy with David Beckham on his t-shirt playing a football game in the arcades.

  I watch a woman with a pushchair waiting for someone to hold the door open for her.

  I look at the pushchair, at the bag dangling from the back of it, spilling over with nappies and cloths and bottles and all the other paraphernalia of babydom that I know nothing about.

  I realise that I haven’t begun to think about any of these things, prams, pushchairs, cots, nappies.

  I realise that I will soon be a mother, and my stomach goes sick at the thought of it, greasy and fluid and unstable.

  My face feels red, my legs feel as thin as paper.

  He comes out of the toilet, he sees me and says
are you alright you don’t look alright, I say yes I just need to sit down.

  As we walk to the car I feel his hand hovering by my elbow, waiting to grab me.

  We drive back onto the motorway and I swallow weakly a few times, trying to keep the sickness down.

  I wipe my face with my fingers and he says is it too hot, do you want some air?

  I say no it’s fine, I just, I feel a bit, queasy. I wonder if this is the nausea I read about in those leaflets, or if it’s just tiredness and stress and travelling in a car.

  I want to talk to my mother about it, properly.

  I want to say mum I’m so scared I feel like puking, I have no idea how to deal with this.

  To say mum I don’t even know how to change a nappy, I don’t know what to feed a baby, I don’t know any lullabies.

  Mum, I want to say, I don’t even think my breasts are big enough to produce milk, I don’t know how to get it out, I don’t know any of the things you’re supposed to know, I want to say mum will it hurt?

  And then I want to ask her if this is how she felt when she was pregnant with me.

  I remember the few times I tried to talk to her about anything serious while I still lived at home, boys or schoolwork or friends who didn’t feel like friends.

  I remember the way her face used to shrink slightly, her eyes narrowing and looking quickly around the room, her hands fluttering like birds in a pet shop.

  I wouldn’t worry about it love she’d say, every time, things’ll be better soon she’d say, and she’d change the subject, or suddenly remember to do something, rush out to the shops before they closed.

  I remember the disappointment I used to feel, the comparisons I used to make with other girls’ mums.

  I knew girls whose mothers would help them with their homework, buy them new outfits for new boyfriends, kiss them on the cheek whenever they came through the front door.

  I knew girls, sometimes the same girls, whose mothers would shout at them when they got home late, or ground them if they didn’t approve of their boyfriends, or make them help with the housework.

  My mother did none of these things.

  My mother was polite, and responsible, and didn’t always seem to notice I was there.

  I think of what my father said, and I think of the grief and rage she must have had stuffed down inside her like a rag in a petrol-filled bottle, and I wonder how she never exploded.

  We get closer to home, we come off the motorway and there are lights shining in through the windows, street lights, traffic lights, lights from shop windows and houses and pub doorways, there is music coming from other cars and there are large groups of people talking and shouting and singing.

  We go round a mini roundabout, we stop at a green light to let an ambulance through.

  He says what’s going on, why’s it so busy?

  I don’t know I say, and we drive past the cafe where we had breakfast the other day and I realise we’re almost there.

  I say well thanks for driving me all that way, I really appreciate it, and he looks at me and says that’s okay don’t worry.

  We stop outside the shop below my flat and he says if there’s anything I can do, if you need anything.

  I look at him, and I think about all the things I need.

  He gets out of the car, takes my bag from the boot, opens my door, hands me my bag.

  We say goodbye, and I go up to my flat and sit by the window without turning the lights on, watching the traffic and thinking about how little I said to him on the way back.

  Chapter 25

  There’s a hooting, outside, and the twins grab a milk crate each and drag their cricket pitch off the road to let a car drive past.

  The car is burgundy red, wide and elegant, ten years old but still the boys are impressed and they run to touch it, pressing sticky handprints against the polished bodywork and trying to climb up onto the bonnet. The car stops outside number nineteen, and the driver gets out and says hey boys now, what you doing uh, you making a mess of my car, and they come and stand in front of him, side by side, hands behind their backs and together they say hello uncle how are you we are pleased to see you, and they giggle and hit each other on the backs of their heads.

  The uncle takes a handkerchief from his pocket and says rightright, go and tell your mother I’m here okay, and then he turns and polishes the marks of their hands away and they race each other to the front door. The girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses, outside number twenty-two, she looks up from a pageful of job adverts and sees the man, he’s a young man and he’s very well dressed, he turns and sees her looking at him and calls out a greeting, how are you he says and he holds the sun out of his eyes with the back of his hand. She is surprised, she smiles, she says fine and rests her chin on her knuckles and looks at him. He looks back, he hesitates and he almost takes a step towards her.

  He turns, and he polishes a hand mark on the bonnet, rubbing at the already gleaming metal as though it were an oil lamp.

  The girl goes back to her job adverts, she picks up a red pen and scribbles out a circle she drew earlier, the moment has passed and she doesn’t notice the man glancing over his shoulder at her. Another girl comes out of the house and sits beside her, she puts two mugs of tea down on the stone path and she says was there someone round this morning, I thought I heard voices. She looks at the girl with the glasses and the short blonde hair and she says it wasn’t someone who stayed was it? The girl with the glasses laughs and says yeah right, as if, I was talking to the landlord, I was seeing if we could stay a bit longer. The other girl is still wearing her tartan pyjamas, she rubs her eyes and says what did he say? and the girl with the glasses says he said someone’s supposed to be moving in tomorrow night. I can’t pack she says, I’ve got too much stuff, I don’t know what to do with it all. The girl in the pyjamas picks up one of the mugs of tea, decides it’s still too hot, puts it down again. You’ve got to be ruthless she says, looking at the girl with the glasses, get yourself some binbags and throw it all away, landfill it she says, leave it for the archaeologists. You’ve got to travel light she says, start in a new place with empty hands. It’s good for your karmic energy she says, and the other girl looks at her and laughs. Where did that come from she says, and the girl in the pyjamas shrugs, she says I don’t know I read it in a magazine or something and she drinks her tea.

  Over the road, the boy with the big hair is squirting more paraffin onto the flaming charcoals, he’s grinning and saying fuckin A, that’s more like it, and the boy in the yellow sunglasses is turning away and saying that’s not how you’re meant to do it, it won’t burn properly now. The boy with the hair says well at least it is burning Baden-Powell, and the other boy says nothing, he goes into the house and loudly closes the door.

  In the hallway of number nineteen, the twins’ mother is telling them to please keep out of the way as they run up and down the stairs, into the kitchen, into the front room. Their grandparents are slowly preparing themselves to go out, he is straightening his jacket and placing his small round hat on his head, she is standing behind him and picking small pieces of pale blue fluff from his shoulders, she is pulling her cardigan a little tighter around her. Their daughter-in-law stands and watches, she says is it all okay have you got everything? and she says darling turn that off now your parents are going out. The boys come out of the kitchen with their cheeks squirrel full of pink coconut sweets, they squeeze between the adults and they burst back out of the house.

  The young man cleaning his trainers looks up and sees them, sitting in his doorway at number twenty-four, he watches the six of them processing out of number nineteen, the two brothers leading the way, the grandmother and grandfather stepping slowly and carefully, each wincing as they reach the bottom step, and behind them the mother and father, the father still holding a remote control in his hand and he holds it behind his back.

  The boy stops scrubbing his trainers, he wipes soap from his hands and he watches t
he young man by the burgundy car greeting the older couple, shaking the man’s hand, kissing the woman’s cheek, he sees the mother of the twins looking away down the street as though she is expecting someone to appear. He hears her calling a name and then saying something to her husband, he sees the elderly couple getting into the car and having the doors closed after them by the young man. He sees hands being shaken through open windows, the car driving away, the mother and father on their doorstep going back inside the house and closing the door.

  He picks up the brush again, he scrubs at the dark stain curled across the toe of his left shoe, thinking about last night and swearing quietly.

  Next door the girl with the short blonde hair and the glasses stands up and says I’m going to the shop do you want anything?

  In the hallway of number nineteen, the mother and the father look at each other, not smiling or searching or waiting for the other to speak, they are just looking.

  She says, put that back by the television.

  She says, I am going upstairs.

  And she walks up the stairs, and although she is much older than she has been, and although her body is quicker to become weary than it ever was, she still feels the movement of herself beneath her clothes as a good and special thing.

  She feels the soft slide of cotton against her thighs as she walks, the push of her breasts as she breathes, the pinching of the cloth into the turn of her waist as she straightens her back and pauses on the stairs to glance down at her husband.

  He looks up at her, and his face is calm and patient, almost solemn, but inside his head he is throwing buckets of water onto burning coals. He looks at her, and he also is aware of his body beneath his clothes, he is aware of the reassuring miracle of manhood, the flesh-and-blood conjuring trick which stirs the slow energies of his ageing body. He follows her up the stairs, he looks at the way her hair falls down her back, the shift and shine of it, they step into their bedroom and he turns to close the door.