by Jon McGregor
He can see all of this, the boy in the middle of the road.
He can see the street, and the people, and the sky.
But he sees nothing. It is all there, all within his field of vision, the colours and the brightnesses all striking the rods and cones of his young retinae, but there is too little time and he sees nothing.
He looks up, the child looks up, he sees the car, and he doesn’t move.
And the young man in the car sees the child, and he slams on the brakes.
He is in the driving seat, he wants to stop the car, he wants to stop it quickly, so this is what he does, he slams on the brakes, with a movement as sudden as the noise of a slamming stable door.
He slams on the brakes.
And in the time it takes to speak those words, everything happens.
Electrical impulses fluster across the cells of his brain, back and forth like runners in a network news headquarters until they converge into a single impulse, a burst of intent which goes laundry-chuting headfirst down the spinal column, leaping and twitching through the shortest route like a cycle courier down a wrong-way street until it arrives at the ankle muscle and yanks the foot to the floor, ignoring the usual feedback control, jamming the foot down onto the pedal so hard that the skin will swell purple and yellow for days after this one day and then the job of the brain is done.
This is what the highway code calls thinking time, but if this was live on CNN the correspondent would be saying no the brakes are not active yet no not by a long way now back to you in the studio.
He slams on the brakes.
Which means that he reacts with panic and presses his foot down onto the pedal as hard and as fast as he possibly can.
And the pedal pulls against its spring mechanism, sinking a plunger into the small reservoir of brake oil, compressing it and sending that compression in a single wave of movement along a thick-walled flexible brake hose, the urgent energy sliding round the rubber curves like opiates through a bloodstream and arriving at the calipers which yield instantly to the pressure, squeezing the brake shoes onto the drilled steel disc, gripping tighter and tighter, gripping like a free climber’s last hold on a rockface. But no matter how desperately the brakes embrace the disc the car will not be stopping yet, there is no car in the world that can come to an instant halt under these conditions.
And so this is the beginning of what the highway code refers to as stopping time, and on CNN the correspondent is saying no Christina, the car has not come to a stop yet, I can confirm the vehicle is still moving and I will keep you posted now over to you.
He slams on the brakes is what he does. The child looking at him and everyone looking at him and everyone panic-frozen in the endlessness of Stopping Time.
He slams on the brakes; he stamps on the pedal, the fluid compresses, and the brake shoes clamp against the brake disc. The brake hose shows signs of kinking, the brake shoes are not brand new, the disc is not spotlessly clean or dry, and these things stretch the moment by vital fractions of a second and these things will not be remarked upon in weighty investigative reports.
So he slams on the brakes, the wheels lock, and the car keeps moving on, dragging across the greasy wet surface of the road, the tyres beginning to spill their dark and poisonous residue across the road, and that noise, that noise, now the people in the street hear that noise.
The noise which people sometimes refer to as a screech of brakes but the word doesn’t even come close.
It’s the noise which will open half the narratives people will tell of this day. I heard this noise they will say, the lucky ones who avoided seeing the whole thing, I heard this noise and turned to look out of the window, or looked up from my newspaper or stopped walking and turned around. This is what they will say, to friends, in letters, in diaries, to people in pubs if the conversation drifts that way. I heard this noise and it cut right through me, like a chainsaw through my head, screaming through from ear to ear, and it was so sudden, and it seemed to go on forever. That’s what they’ll say, when they run out of ways to express the sound, when they’ve tried talking about nails on blackboards and screaming fireworks and they’ve not even come close, they’ll say it was so sudden and it seemed to go on forever.
They will mean different things when they say forever. Some of them will mean that as the noise began time seemed to stretch out, that as they turned and saw the source of it an awful inevitability flooded into the street like a shadow across the sun and all they could do was wait for the noise to end. It was like that first descent on a rollercoaster they’ll say, and waiting for your stomach to catch up and it seems to last a lifetime, and then they’ll look away because that’s not really what it was like at all.
And others, when they say forever, they will mean that long after it was over the noise seemed to carry on, ringing in their ears, echoing through their heads, replaying through their dreams. I couldn’t get rid of it they’ll say. I kept hearing that sound, that awful juddering shriek, whenever the room was quiet it would come back, endlessly sliding down the road, I had to have music on the whole time to drown it out they will say.
That noise. The car, sliding down the road, the wheels locked and the tyres dragging darkly across the steaming surface. The child, looking up, unmoving. And all the people watching, their heads turning like magnets, like compass needles, their hearts jumping like seismographs, caught uselessly in the time it takes for the eye to see and the mind to understand. The sun shines down, music plays, flowers grow, traffic passes at the end of the street, and everything is tipped into the centre of this moment.
The child in the road, the figure in the sky, the car, the noise.
And the young man from number eighteen, moving into the centre, covering the distance without touching the ground, unthinking, an unwitting part in the way of things.
And sitting here now, waiting, trying to be calm, all these things are rattling around inside my head, like coins set loose in a tumble dryer.
Michael, rushing back out into the rain wearing my jumper.
Michael, that night I first met him, saying and you didn’t even know his name?
My mother and father, gathered in a red-faced bundle by the telephone, my mother saying I’m safe now and my father unable to speak.
My mother managing to say it’s got a hood with a pair of teddybear ears on it I thought you might like it.
Sarah, wide-eyed, saying tell me about it tell me about it, listening to my story about Michael, his brother, what happened after the funeral.
The boy in Aberdeen, naked and beautiful and asleep as I left his house, him now, working in a bar, unaware of what he has planted in me.
Michael’s brother, his notes and photographs and objects, his observations, his silences.
Michael’s brother, moving to the centre of that awful afternoon, his hands stretched out.
When he left, when I’d watched him hurry across the carpark and disappear around the corner without looking back, when I’d decided not to go after him, I picked his wet top off the floor and spread it across the radiator to dry.
I picked up the towel and held it to my face, I hid my face in its warm dampness and I wondered if what I could smell was him, I was expecting to cry but I didn’t.
I phoned him, I wanted to apologise without speaking to him, I listened to his answerphone message and I said hello it’s me.
I said I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I said I don’t know whether you’re angry or embarrassed but I don’t want you to be either, I’m sorry.
I said it was a mistake, I didn’t, I said do you think we could just forget about it?
I said I was enjoying becoming friends, I don’t want to lose that and, and then I trailed off and said goodbye and hung up.
He phoned back later, when I was almost in bed, the answerphone kicked in and when he spoke he said if you’re there don’t pick up please I just wanted to say something.
He said I don’t want you to be sorry, it was me, don’t b
e embarrassed, it was nice but I can’t, he stopped and he said, we can’t.
He said, I’ve got your jumper, I’ll bring it round, sometime.
I spoke to my mother again, the day after Michael had been and gone.
She was talking about money.
She said I’ve been looking in some shops, things are ever so expensive now you know, I was adding it all up and I don’t think we can afford it.
I told her my job paid well, I could save, I could buy secondhand, and she said yes in the slow way she does when she means no.
She said of course you know there is someone else who could help out and I said mum no.
She said I’ve made a few calls, I’ve got the number of the place where the wake was held, they told me they’ve got all the same staff they had then, I said mum, no, please.
She said that’s assuming you know his name? and I told her of course I knew his name and I told her I wasn’t going to tell her what it was.
She said it’s not right, imagine if I’d done that to your father and we both slammed the phone down at the same time, and I realised that healing would not come so easily, that I must concentrate now on not piling it up inside and not passing it on.
The woman behind the desk calls a name, I look up but it’s not mine.
And when Sarah came round at the weekend, finally, she wanted to know everything.
It was awkward at first, I thought it would be easier than talking on the phone but it took a while to get used to being in the room with her, she looked different, older, sharper.
But then she laughed, and her eyes screwed up and she looked the same as always, and we were talking the way we used to, finishing sentences for each other, waving our hands for emphasis, choking on funny stories.
I told her what I’d done to make Michael run away, and she pretended to be appalled but she kept asking for details.
She asked if I’d seen him since then and I told her no but I wanted to, I said he’s still got my jumper and she laughed.
I didn’t tell her about my mother, about how she reacted, what my dad had told me about her.
She asked how it happened, who it was, and I told her, and I told her a lot, who he was, what we did, the look and the shape of him, his voice.
She was shocked and she was delighted and she said oh but what are you going to do now and I told her I didn’t know.
He turns to me and he says are you okay are you worried, and I say no I’m fine I’m just thinking.
And also I didn’t tell Sarah about Michael’s brother, what Michael had told me about him, the things I’d found out and the things I wanted to find out.
I didn’t tell her about those photos, of people in the street, of me, of the twins jumping around in the rain that day.
I didn’t tell her about the broken clay figure I’ve still got, in my room, the two pieces of it on the bedside table, waiting to be put back together again.
I wasn’t sure that she’d understand.
The woman behind the desk calls a name, I look at her, she calls it again, it’s my name and I stand and I walk towards her.
She gives me a bundle of forms, she points which way to go, and when I turn round I see Michael is still sitting down, looking at me.
I say come on, please, I say I want you to be there with me, and he stands and he walks with me to the room.
The doctor looks at some notes, she asks how I’m feeling and smiles when I say I’ve been sick a lot, she takes my blood pressure, my pulse, she takes a stethoscope from a case and listens to my breathing.
Michael sits off to one side, looking away slightly, as if he’s embarrassed, as if he’s not sure he should be here.
She says okay then shall we see how the little one’s getting on?
I lie down on the bed, she undoes my shirt and all three of us look at the slight swell of my belly, the smooth tight stretch of the skin, the first hint of fullness.
I look at it, I look up at her, I look at Michael and I feel a sudden pride in what is happening to my body, the miracle of it, the strange neatness of it.
She rubs a thin layer of pale green gel onto my stomach, she says there’s nothing to be worried about, I just need you to relax and lie nice and still.
I look over at Michael, I say don’t you want to see, he looks back and I say please, come and sit next to me, I want you to.
He looks awkward, he picks up his chair and he puts it next to the bed, he sits down and he says sorry, I wasn’t being rude I just.
The doctor pulls a trolley closer to the bed, there’s a monitor on it, wires and gadgets, she turns the trolley so I can see the screen.
She says is that okay for you, and I nod.
She holds up the scanner, it’s small and white and fits into the cup of her hand, she says this might be cold and she presses it against my belly.
I look at the screen, I see black and white lines, patterns, movement.
It looks like a museum exhibit of the world’s first television pictures, I look and I’m scared and I don’t want to look.
I feel a warmth, and I realise that I am holding Michael’s hand, and that this makes me feel safer, more able to open my eyes and look at the blur on the screen.
I’m surprised, but I’m glad, I realise that this is what I wanted that night last week, to simply make a connection and keep hold of it.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t look at me, or the screen, he looks up towards the ceiling somewhere, blinking.
He blinks quickly, tightly, as if he’s nervous, like his brother.
I’m sorry he says, quietly, I can’t look.
I squeeze his hand, tightly.
The doctor points to a shadow of light, curled like a new moon across the bottom left of the picture.
There she says, can you see, these are the hands, there she says, this is the head.
I look, and I don’t speak, and I recognise what she is pointing to, I see the tiny foetal clutch of new life.
I look and I don’t speak, and all I can think of is names, names hurtling through my head like asteroids.
The doctor points to a shadow of light, curled like a second new moon across the bottom right of the picture.
There she says, can you see, this is the sibling’s head, these are the sibling’s hands.
I don’t hear her for a moment, I don’t understand what she is saying.
I feel Michael’s other hand reaching for mine, his two hands wrapping tightly around mine, I hear him whisper oh my God.
The doctor says now let’s make sure they’re both okay.
Outside, standing by the side of the road and wondering what to do now, I realise we are still holding hands.
I feel as though I’ve discovered I’m pregnant all over again.
I feel shocked and excited and confused and close to tears.
I blink, closing my eyes tightly and opening them again to the brightness and the colour of the world.
I remember the boy from Aberdeen, his soft warm voice saying it’s like being called to your place in the way of things, I remember my dad saying not anything other than a blessing and a gift.
I remember my mum saying have you thought of a name yet, I remember the names hurtling through my head while I lay there looking at the screen.
I smile and I hold up the printout, the two new-moon shapes like echoes of each other, I smile and I say maybe I’ll name them after you and your brother, what do you think?
There’s a sudden screeching sound, a skid, and we turn and see a car at the traffic lights with smoke drifting away from its tyres.
He says, there’s something I have to tell you.
Chapter 31
And before the young man from number eighteen gets there, the car hits the child.
There’s a thudding sound, like a car-boot being slammed down on somebody’s hand.
The boy’s legs flip up from under him and he is lifted into the air like the bails of a cricket stump, turning a
half-circle across the bonnet and slamming sideways into the car windscreen. There is barely any sound at all, a wineglass breaking on a carpeted floor, a snail snapped under a slippered foot.
The tennis ball pops out of the boy’s hand and arcs high over the car, bouncing on the pavement three times and rolling back onto the road.
The windscreen crackles, a spiral spiderweb splintering across its surface without breaking.
The car stops, and the boy rewinds across the bonnet and falls face first onto the road.
And in the moment his body presses against the tarmac, the young man from number eighteen is there, he is a footstep away and he feels the boy brush past his outstretched hands, he feels the damp stretch of his t-shirt and the smooth stroke of his cheek.
He was not quick enough. He almost caught him but he was not quick enough.
He looks down at the boy, he kneels down beside him and he looks, he is breathing hard and his hands are shaking over the boy’s body. He is afraid to touch him. He has no idea what to do. He says hello can you hear me.
