by Jon McGregor
And in a moment the door will be locked, and the stillness and quiet will be left on this side of the door. They will both drop their politeness and reserve to the floor with their clothes, he will close the curtains and she will unveil her body, she will stand against the wall with her arms raised high, waiting for him to drink in his fill of the sight of her, she will lick her fingers, each in turn, as though sharpening them, and then they will be together and the room will fill with movement and laughter and stifled noises.
The rustle and fall of bedclothes.
Murmuring.
A rip of cotton.
A hand clapped over a mouth.
Outside, their twin boys are already playing cricket again, the younger twin hits out and the ball loops high in the air and lands in the garden of number seventeen just as the boy with the white shirt is saying I just wanted to give it a go, I wanted to get in tune with nature and like the cycle of life and stuff, I was reading this thing about reclaiming the masculine hunter and the tall thin girl laughs suddenly and sharply, catching a piece of chocolate doughnut in her throat.
The girl from number twenty-two, short hair and square glasses, she’s walking past, she stops and she says do you want anything from the shop what’s funny? The boy in the white shirt throws the ball back to the older twin, and the boy with the pierced eyebrow says hucklefuckinberry finn. The girl with the glasses looks at him, confused, and she looks at the boy in the white shirt who says I was just telling them about when I went fishing a while ago, that’s all, they think it’s funny, I don’t know why he says, and the tall thin girl bites her lip. Did you catch anything says the girl with the glasses, and he says I did actually, after a couple of hours, a trout or something, and the short girl with the painted nails pulls a face and says did you kill it?
He says I tried to but I dropped it in the grass, it was flapping around and I couldn’t get hold of it, I didn’t know what to do, I thought it would just die anyway but it kept flapping for ages he says and the ball bounces off the wall behind him and lands in front of the boy with the pierced eyebrow.
So I picked up this big stick he says, and he rolls up a magazine to demonstrate, a copy of Hello!, and he says I stood there watching it drown, trying to hit it.
The older twin runs up and says give us the ball, and the boy with the pierced eyebrow slides it under his legs. Give us the fucking ball he says, and they look up at him with pretend shock and turn away. The ball’s over there mate says the boy with the pierced eyebrow, and as the child turns to look he throws the ball, over his head, towards the garden of number twelve. The young boy looks back. Your hair’s still wet he says, and he runs away.
So anyway says the boy in the white shirt, I hit it in the end, and he smacks the front step with the rolled-up face of the Duchess of York, twice, to demonstrate, and he says and then it stopped flapping so I took it back up to my mate’s house and dealt with it, like washed it and scaled it and took all the guts and shit out, which was fucking obviously grim he says. And then I cooked it he says, and he sits back and looks away down the street and looks proud of himself.
So was it nice? says the girl with the glasses, and he looks at her and says well it looked nice, I fried it up in little steaks with garlic and black pepper and lemon and stuff, it smelt really good and he looks away and she says but what did it taste like? He says I don’t know I couldn’t eat it.
The boy with the pierced eyebrow takes some money out of his pocket and offers it to the girl with the glasses, he says can you get me some orange juice and she turns and walks down to the shop. The boy in the white shirt adjusts his tie and bites the knuckle of his thumb, he looks at the ground, he stands and goes inside to look for his black shoes.
Upstairs at number twenty, the old couple are busying themselves with the rituals of returning home, the kettle on the stove, the jackets on pegs, unlocking windows and letting a breeze back into the tightness of the rooms.
She hears the toilet flush, she hears his steps in the hallway and his low voice murmuring out a song again, one of his old church songs.
She catches the words thou mine inheritance, and he breaks off as he comes into the room and goes to the window.
He says did I ever tell you I was there when my grandfather died? Says it not looking at her, looking from the window down the length of the street, watching the boys with their cricket, listening to her clinking and clanking with teacups and plates. She says nothing, she takes off her navy-blue shoes and sits in one of the kitchen chairs, picks up her hat and straightens the ribbon.
He says and it might sound strange but it was a beautiful thing. Just to be there with the rest of the family he says. Watching him breathing, and curling his fingers, and sinking into his sheets he says. And he stands there by the window with his hand up to his face, curling his fingers slowly, like the clutch of a newborn baby. Reminding himself of how it was.
It seemed like the right thing to be doing he says, to be there with him. He turns round to look at his wife, do you think so he says.
She pours a cup of tea and says what do you mean?
Come and sit down she says.
He pulls out a chair and says I mean does it seem like the right thing to you, having all the family there, well of course she says and she cuts him a slice of cake.
He says the room was full of people, crowded.
I was the last to get there he says, and when I walked in everyone was sat around, looking at him, not speaking. It was dreadful hot in there, and stuffy, and there was a sour-sweet smell in the room he says.
She looks at him, still standing behind the chair, and she says sit down love.
She brushes crumbs from her floral dress, sweeps them away with her flesh-knotted hand and they fall to the floor. She says why have you never told me this before, and she’s thinking all these years and there are still things I don’t know, she’s wondering if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
He sits down and says I don’t know I was just thinking about it, you know, and he pours himself a cup of tea.
They sit, and they sip small mouthfuls of steaming tea, and they look at each other. A breeze catches the curtain and it curls into the room.
He says we were there five, six hours before he died, and every breath sounded like his last. He says I thought he was going to go on forever.
The breeze sucks back out of the room, the curtain falls flat against the window, the bathroom door slams shut.
He says he had his head tipped right back, there was a wetness coming out of his mouth that my mother kept dabbing away with a white handkerchief, and when he breathed in it sounded like there was a bag of ball-bearings in his mouth. All rattling and clacking together he says, and the cup jingles against the saucer as he puts it down.
He says he looked so small, squashed flat into those enormous sheets and pillows.
He says he was wearing red and white striped pyjamas and they didn’t fit him properly.
She’s looking at him and wondering where all this has come from. She’s looking at an unfamiliar expression in his face, a hardness of the skin. It is not something she recognises.
He says his whole face shook with it each time he breathed.
He says he made this wheezing sound, all slow and desperate, like a whale on the beach it made me think of.
She looks at him and she doesn’t know what to say.
She says what did he die of, and when he replies oh it doesn’t matter his weary anger surprises them both. He says sorry love but and then he doesn’t finish the sentence and he looks away from her.
The curtain curls into the room again, and a stack of letters falls to the floor from the sideboard. She moves from the table to pick them up and he says he didn’t say a word you know, not a word, he didn’t even open his eyes, he just lay there dying.
He says his hair was so thin and light, like a baby’s, it looked as though it would blow away if anyone opened the window.
He says you couldn’t even
see his legs under the bedclothes he was so faded and gone. It seemed like all he had left was his head and his hands he says, and his chest staggering up and down.
And he says but it was funny you know, it didn’t feel like a vigil so much, because of the talking, because after a time we started talking. Little things he says, pleasantries and distractions to ease the tension but by the time he died we were all in full flow.
He says it was strange but it seemed a good thing, that we could do that, just be a family and talk, not spend the whole time staring at him he says, and he stands up and leaves the room.
She watches him go, she listens to the awkwardness of his steps and the squeak of the bathroom door. She looks at his untouched slice of cake and she thinks about his unmentioned visits to the doctor.
He stands by the door and says he looked like a wax sculpture setting into the bed, and when he died he looked beautiful and I was glad to kiss him.
She says come here, come here.
She says what’s all this about?
He looks down at her and settles into the hoop of her arms around his waist, he says oh I don’t know love I was just thinking. She looks at his chest and she doesn’t need to say that she wants him to try again, she looks up at him and she waits.
He says, look, love, it’s.
He says, the thing is.
And after a while he unhooks her arms and moves away from her again, back towards the door. He stands there a moment, biting his lip and squeezing his eyes into sparrowfeet, and then he starts to turn back towards her. She looks at him, and he says the thing is love, when he died it was like he was getting better, do you see, and he’s looking past her now, towards the window.
Each time his breath softened he sounded more comfortable he says, his face got more relaxed. And then he was almost closing his mouth between breaths at the end he says, and everyone stopped talking and stood up. He talks more quietly now, he says and then he just, went. So slow he says, like a bottle filling with water and sinking he says.
She says, love, and it’s a question but she’s not sure what she’s asking.
He says nothing, he looks at the sky through the window, the light darkening a little. He says it looks like rain but she doesn’t turn away from him to look. He says, love, I was just thinking about it, that’s all, really, and he turns again and this time he leaves the room and she watches him go and listens to the hacking wetness of his cough.
On the table, an uneaten slice of cake, a half-empty cup of cold tea, crumbs.
There was no one there when I got to work this morning. My keycard rejected, flicking back like a stuck-out tongue,
and there was no one around to let me in. I was hot and dizzy from the walk, I felt sick again, I needed to sit down.
A security guard came past and said it’s a bank holiday love, and I must have looked like I was going to cry because she stopped grinning and offered me a drink and almost touched my arm.
I went and sat in her little office with her, looking at the closed circuit pictures while she made us both a cup of tea and her kettle was so small she had to boil it twice.
She said if you don’t mind me saying love you don’t look well enough to be at work anyhow.
I smiled and said no I’m okay I’m just pregnant and she said oh congratulations and asked me questions and showed me pictures of her new granddaughter.
She gave me lots of advice, she said drink stout and take folic acid, and mind you take it easy now.
I finished the tea and said thankyou and went home again, and on the way back I was sick by the bins behind the Chinese.
There was a message from Sarah on the answerphone.
It was a long message, so I left it playing while I cleared away the breakfast things.
She said what are you doing are you still in bed where have you been?
She said I’ve been trying to call you what have you been up to all weekend?
She said and so what about that guy, what’s his name, that guy I gave your number to, did he call you, did you see him?
She gasped as though she was suddenly shocked and she giggled and said is that where you’ve been?
Have you been making babies she said, is he still there now?
There were voices in the background, she said look anyway got to go, she said but anyway I’m in your part of town today so call me and we can meet up.
She told me her mobile number, but she said it too fast and I had to listen to the whole message again before I could write it down.
I took my clothes off and got into the shower while I thought about calling her back.
It would be good to talk to her, maybe, but the idea made me nervous somehow.
I remembered the last time I tried to talk to her about it, and I thought that perhaps I just don’t know her well enough anymore.
I filled my hair with shampoo and watched the lather pouring down over me, I looked at my skin and I wondered if anything was different, my breasts heavier, my stomach rounder, my hips wider.
It was hard to tell.
I looked at my body and tried to picture myself as a heavily pregnant woman, I stood with my feet further apart, my hands against the back of my hips, my stomach pushed out.
I felt like a nine-year-old, playing dress-up.
I rinsed off the soap and got out of the shower, and I was just about to brush my teeth when I was sick in the basin.
There was another message on the answerphone, it was Michael, he said just seeing if you’re okay and I wondered if you were doing anything this afternoon and he told me his number.
When I open the door I say oh hello, and I look at him and we’re both embarrassed.
He’s holding a bunch of flowers, thick-stemmed white lilies with bright yellow centres and shiny green leaves.
I look at them, he looks at them, and water drips from the bottom of the wrapping onto his shoe.
Oh, I don’t know what to say I tell him, and I don’t.
He says oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, they’re not, I mean it’s not anything, I just thought, erm, shall I, and his sentence trails off into a row of faint full stops.
I say, oh, they are nice though.
He says, I just thought, you know, you seemed upset, yesterday, I thought maybe they’d cheer you up, I’m sorry.
I say no, sorry, they’re nice, you just surprised me, that’s all, I wasn’t expecting, I just, look come in anyway, I’ll put them in something.
He comes in and stands by the door, and I put the flowers in a vase by the window, the stems curving upwards like the arch of a dancer’s back, the petals thick and glossy like morning eyes, the smell of them already beginning to fill the flat.
I make a pot of tea, and I pour it into thin white cups without saucers.
He says are you okay though, yesterday, was it hard?
I can’t decide how to answer him, I start to say something deflective, something like well it was okay I think they’ll come round, something that will slip from the question like shrugged shoulders from a shawl, but the words stick in my mouth.
I want to tell him something of what happened, the new understanding I was granted, but those words are locked in as well.
I say yes it was, it was hard but not like I expected.
He says what do you mean and I say I don’t know how to explain it I don’t think it would make any sense.
He says have a go, he smiles and says I’m not as stupid as I look you know and he lifts his palms up.
I say actually can we talk about something else now and he stops smiling and says sorry, sorry.
I say, the flowers, I do like them, thankyou.
He sits at the table, opposite me, and he looks at the flowers and he looks out of the window.
I say I was thinking about your brother this morning, and his head startles round to look at me, I say I was wondering what it’s like, being a twin.
He says what do you mean, I say well is it strange, do you feel different to anyone e
lse?
He says I don’t know it’s hard to say, I’ve got nothing to compare it to, I don’t know what it’s like for other people.
It’s not like people think he says, we’re not telepathic or anything like that, but we’ve always been very close, we’ve always known most stuff about each other.
Connected he says, like we’re connected.
And then he pulls a face and wipes his forehead with his hand and he says well less disconnected than other people at least.
He says it’s hot in here do you mind if I open a window.
He tries to open the window, it sticks and he has to hit the frame with the heel of his hand.
He says you know that thing with his eyes, the blinking, and I nod.
I remember when his brother talked to me that day, blinking so hard that both his cheeks lifted up as if they were trying to meet his eyebrows.
He says that used to be the only way people could tell us apart, especially when we were at school and wearing the same clothes, it was the only difference between us.
He says I used to think he did it on purpose, just to be different, you know, I asked him about it once and he got really upset, he said it showed that even I didn’t know him properly, he asked me why he would put it on when it made him look so stupid he says.
It doesn’t make him look stupid I say, just a bit shy.
He looks at me, he picks up a pen from the table, a retractable biro, he starts clicking the point in and out, clickclick clickclick.
His hand clenches around the pen suddenly, his knuckles rising hard and white from his hand, he says he is not shy, my brother is not shy, and he weights each word as though he were underlining it with the pen in his hand.
