Even the Dogs: A Novel

by Jon McGregor

  Nothing new about being kicked out though, as it happens. He’d been kicked out of school, and kicked out of the army, and kicked out of his parents’ house when he went to live with them after his discharge. They’d put up with him for a month, put up with him lying in bed and staring out the window and blubbing when they asked him what he was going to do with himself now, only he’d taken the drinking too far a few times and broken a few things and made a bit of a mess once or twice. So they’d changed the locks, and told him to leave, to go and get himself sorted out somewhere. Said it was for his own good. So he’d stood outside and waited for them to see sense. In the picturesque Dorset rain. Waited a day and night while he heard his mother saying maybe they should give him one more chance and his father saying No that boy has got to learn. Took four coppers to arrest him, when they turned up.

  Told Robert about all this when they started drinking together. Told Ant soon after they met.

  Could have been stood there for months if the police hadn’t turned up. Him and his father were both as stubborn as each other. About the only thing they had in common, more or less.

  Told just about everyone that story, over the years. Makes out like he don’t like being with people, but he’s always happy to talk once he’s had a drink. Like a one-man self-help group. The fucking, what is it, the talking cure. Don’t seem to have worked as yet.

  Who wants to open the discussion.

  Who’s got something they feel they can share.

  Like Ben, in one of those groups one time, on a court order, and without even thinking he asked the facilitator if she could facilitate his arse. Already standing up because he thought that would get him thrown out. Everyone laughing. The woman smiling and going You can sit down I don’t think we’re finished yet. Going Are you scared of saying anything serious, Ben? It’s all right to be scared if you are, but there’s no need to be. This should be a safe space. Nothing gets repeated beyond these walls.

  Ben sitting down and going No mate I aint scared.

  The woman sitting there smiling and going That’s great then, why don’t you get us started today? Why don’t you tell us about, I don’t know, one happy memory you can remember from your childhood?

  Jesus. Where do they get these people.

  Ben told them about the only foster home he ever got placed in, with some woman called Sandra who lived in a big old house by the river and who used to wait for him to get back from school with a plate of biscuits and cakes she’d been baking, and orange squash, and questions about what he’d been doing all day. That was all right, he said.

  And the woman said What else do you remember about, Sandra was it, about living there?

  Which was her way of trying to like facilitate some disclosure or something.

  So he told her that one night he’d wet the bed, and hidden the sheets in a cupboard because he’d been scared of what she might do, and when she found them she phoned up Social Services and got him taken back to the children’s home again.

  She liked that though, the facilitator. Giving it all Well done, Ben, thank you, I really appreciate your openness, I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you.

  Everyone else sat there looking at their feet or looking at the clock or still counting the tiles on the ceiling. And the joke was on her because that never happened anyway, it was some other foster-kid who hid the sheets and got removed, not Ben. He was there at least another month or something.

  Decent place to be as well. He wouldn’t have minded staying longer. He had a nice room in the attic, and if he stood up on a chair and looked out through the skylight he could see the river, and hear all Sandra’s friends laughing at each other’s stories. She let him stay up late with them sometimes, and they all talked to him like he weren’t even a kid at all. She drank this well strong coffee out of espresso cups, and when she let him try some once he was almost sick, and when he had a bath she used to knock on the door and come in and wash his hair, holding a flannel over his face so the shampoo didn’t go in his eyes. No one else ever done that.

  Didn’t tell the group all this though. Speaking up once was enough to get a tick on the court order. Sat there waiting for it to finish while the woman went on about remembering they always had choices and not getting trapped in the past. Ben remembered that he had the choice to keep his mouth shut and wait for the end of the hour or whatever. He was good at waiting.

  Things you think about. All the time in the world for waiting and these things keep coming to mind.

  Like all the stories you have to tell people when you’re asking after something. When you’re in need. In need of something just to hold you for a few hours. The stories you have to come up with.

  Like Mike one time when he went to the church to tap up the priest, and the priest said Sit there, son, I’ll speak to you after Mass. Leaving him sat there mumbling Hail Mary and Our Father and all that like he was a good Catholic boy fallen on hard times who only needed a quick helping hand to get himself sorted out. Priest up at the front telling two old ladies and Mike that In the same way, after supper, he took the bread and gave it to them saying take this and eat this in memory of me. Near enough looking Mike straight in the eyes when he said But we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. And then afterwards when Mike was giving him the story, telling him that he had to get back to Liverpool for a funeral, it was his da’s actually and even though he hadn’t seen the old man for years he still felt like he had to get back for one last goodbye like and he’d been supposed to be getting a lift but someone had let him down so he really badly needed the money for the train ticket and he was sure that once he’d explained to the family he’d be able to pay the money back and then some, the priest had interrupted him and said, like straight out without going around the houses or nothing, Do you believe in God, Michael? To which Mike had said without even pausing for breath I don’t know Father, do you think He believes in you? And can you lend us some money for the train or not la?

  This was before he met Danny. Before Danny showed up in town one day and had his teeth knocked out when he’d hardly had a chance to say hello. Because once he started going around with Danny they had things sorted out a bit better and he didn’t have to go storytelling so much.

  The number of funerals Mike’s parents had had though. It was enough to make him believe in the resurrection of the flesh and all that.

  Where was it. Under the flyover. Waiting for the soup van to turn up. The usual crowd, sitting and standing in the yard where there used to be cars for sale but now there was just boarded-up arches and trees coming up through the cracks in the concrete. And Danny must have stood out straight off, because he was carrying all his stuff with him, sleeping bag and blankets and binbag and everything, and also because he went straight up to Spider and Scots Malky and started talking to them and no one who knew them would have done that. Everyone moving away a bit and turning their backs while he got taxed, and he was off out the yard before the soup van had even arrived, Einstein whimpering and limping along behind him.

  Mike followed him out. No reason for him to get involved was there but he did. Caught up with him at the crossroads by the derelict pub and said Eh you all right there pal you need a hand.

  Weren’t even a question and Danny didn’t disagree. Looked at him with one hand cupped over his mouth and tried to say something, coughing and stumbling, spitting blood and bits of teeth into the gutter. Mike said Eh now you, come and sit down a minute, and when he put his arm round Danny’s waist to help him to the kerb Danny pulled away and said Fuck off I aint got nothing left to nick. The words gurgling and dribbling from his bloodied mouth.

  Three of them sat there a minute, the sun low through the evening and the pigeons chasing across the sky while the traffic stretched and hooted along the road overhead.

  The soup van drove past, and they watched it go.

  Danny wiping at his face with his hand, and Einstein licking the blood from his fingers.

&nbs
p; You got a smoke, Danny said, and Mike rolled one up, and Danny smoked it quick enough that no one could take it off him, coughing up bloody phlegm once he’d done.

  He’d left London to get away from this kind of thing, and it had followed him anyway. Weren’t nowhere safe when it came down to it.

  He’d walked out early in the morning, walked right up to Brent Cross and then waited all day for a lift up the Great North Road and this was as far as he’d got and he was desperate now. Desperate to get sorted.

  You know where I can score? he asked, and Mike made him a deal.

  Always waiting for that.

  Always working and watching and chasing around for a bag of that. Jesus but. The man-hours that go into living like this. Takes some dedication, takes some fucking, what, commitment.

  Getting a bag and then finding somewhere to go to cook it up in a spoon and dig it into your arm or your leg or that mighty old femoral vein down in between your thighs. The water and the brown and the citric, waiting for it all to dissolve, holding up the flame while those tiny bubbles pop and then drawing it up through the filter and the needle into the syringe. And waiting again for the gear to cool down. Sitting with someone you’ve only just met, in a rib-roofed room with a gaping hole where the window should be, the floor littered with broken tiles and bricks, in a building you can’t remember the way out of. Tightening off the strap and waiting for the vein to come up. This bloke you’ve only just met passing you the loaded syringe. Smacking at your mottled skin and waiting for the vein to come up. Pinching and pulling and poking around and waiting for the vein to come up and then easing the needle in, drawing back a tiny bloom of blood before gently pushing the gear back home.

  Wait all day for that.

  Do anything for that. Fucking, anything.

  Steve still waiting for Ant to sort him out like that. Don’t even know what he’s waiting for yet.

  Sinking back on to the floor and Mike sitting there saying You like that then pal while he cooks up his own. That good for you, Danny boy? Saying Just so long as you stick to the deal, because if you don’t I will switch on you like you wouldn’t believe, you remember that, I’ve done it before, you know what I’m saying.

  Smiling and pulling a blanket up over Danny, right over his head. Turning away, tugging down his trousers and sticking himself in the fem. Feeling better before the needle even went in. Believe that pal, only thing he’s ever found that makes him feel better like that. Nothing else can do the job, and it took him two stays in hospital to figure that one out and that was two too many. All the lies he had to tell to get out at all, all the pills they gave him to keep him well, and none of it did no good. First thing he learnt when he got in there was they didn’t want to hear about the details, they didn’t want to know about all the stuff he was overhearing and all his what they called it his unusual ideas. None of that. They asked him about it but the deal was really they wanted him to just shut up about it. Everyone on the outside and the inside wanted him to just shut up about all of it. That’s how come he was there in the first place, on account of not learning to shut up. One of the first things the other patients told him when he got in there was Stop making a fuss and learn the magic words: I feel much better now, thank you. Which he didn’t though like, not by a long stretch of the very elastic imagination he had, but he got the hang of saying it when they asked and they let him split. Totally terrified when they let him go though. Mental. So many people talking at him he couldn’t hardly hear a thing, couldn’t think straight, thought he was going to walk out in front of a bus as soon as he got out the hospital gates. Thought the like the snatch squads or something would come and get him within a day. But then he hooked up with some of the old crowd from before, and they’d got into the gear while he was inside and they told him it would help calm him down. Best prescription he’d ever had and he’d had a few. Was only when he felt that warm hollowing out inside him that he felt better, only when he felt the silence settling down inside his head that he could honestly say Now then pal I feel much better now, thank you. No one bothering him then. No one trying to tell him things and talking all at once.

  I feel much much better now, thank you.

  Do anything to hold on to that.

  Do anything to get back to that. Keep getting back up to get back to that feeling well again. Feeling well, feeling sorted, feeling like all the, the worries have been taken away. The fears. All the emotions taken care of. That feeling of, what is it, just, like, absence, from the world. Like taking your own life away, just for a while. Like what the French call it la, the little death. And then getting up and doing it again, every time. We get up, and we do it all over again.

  What else can we do.

  And how long must we wait. How long have we waited already. For something to happen. For someone to come. For some fucking thing to change.

  Like Laura’s keyworker giving it all Change is something you need to do for yourself, Laura. You can’t wait until someone else does it for you. All those sessions she had with him, going through assessment forms and working out goals and all that. I want to go to rehab, she said, first time she got an appointment with him, but he kept giving it all No but it’s not as simple as that, Laura. It’s not like you can get in a taxi to rehab and then come back in six months’ time all cleaned up. Going on about how it was a process. Going We should start by looking at harm minimisation, we should talk about your immediate needs, we should think about getting you on to a script.

  All that stuff on the assessment forms. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very comfortable or ten very uncomfortable with my level of drug use. On a scale of one to ten I feel one very optimistic or ten very pessimistic about my life in the future. All that. Talking about triggers and associations, talking about risk behaviours, talking about histories and plans for the future and trying to make sure she came along to the next appointment. Saying things like Laura, if I can get you to make yourself a cup of tea when you wake up in the morning then we’re halfway there, if we can find some space in your head for things apart from drugs then we’re making progress. Asking about what her interests had been before she’d had a habit.

  Waiting for the appointments sometimes she felt like she was just one of his pet projects, like he was only pleased she was getting anywhere because then he could mark her up on his monitoring forms and make a big song and dance about her to the project funders. But sometimes it seemed like he was actually bothered and that was something new. He kept going on about how he knew where she was coming from, he’d been there himself, and if he could get clean and get out then so could she. Giving it all There’s no such thing as a hopeless case now, Laura, I mean you should have seen me. Laughing but she didn’t get the joke. But anyway she mostly kept going to the appointments. He’d said it would be a long wait for a place in rehab and it was something to do in the meantime.

  Told Danny all this one time and here he is telling us now.

  Doing our time in these waiting rooms. These rooms all the same as each other. A clock on the wall, hard metal chairs, a stack of old magazines, a box of toys in one corner. And always someone losing it and banging their fists against the toughened glass and shouting at the staff who just sit a bit further back and wait for Security.

  Benefits office, housing office, doctor’s surgery, probation. Sit there waiting for your number to come up, and you get used to it after a while. It’s dry and it’s warm and that’s a start. That’s something. As good a place to sit as any other and we’ve got the time to spare. Haven’t we just. All the time in the world. Nothing much better to do. Is that right.

  Those signs saying Our staff are entitled to work without fear of violence or abuse.

  Those signs saying Anyone spitting at a member of staff will be prosecuted.

  The clock ticking round and the hard metal chairs.

  The clock ticking round and Robert cold on his steel bed behind that door.

  Some baby crying again, and some girl begging
it to just please be quiet.

  And there’s Mike and Danny in the benefits office, waiting to sort out Danny’s giro so they could split it. Mike sitting there telling him all what’s what. Going Them two you met yesterday, Spider and Scots Malky, you’re best off steering well clear, they’re both a bit mental and everyone’s scared of them. Even the busies like. They’re all right so long as you keep your distance although you’ve probably learned your lesson now anyway but all I’m saying is next time we’re there or we see them you want to stand clear la, you know what I’m saying?

  Saying all this with his hand over his mouth, learning over to mutter and spit in Danny’s ear, his eyes scanning the room the whole time.

  Because of the cameras, Danny boy. Can’t be too careful la. Cameras everywhere and you never know who they’re looking for. They can see what you’re saying if you’re not careful, that’s why you’re best off talking behind your hand, they’ve got lip-readers and special software and that, it’s like all automatic and everything and they’re keeping a record of it all. Trust me Danny boy, I know what I’m talking about, they’re keeping a record of it all. Danny nodding, and saying nothing, and wiping the spit from his ear.

  There’s a camera in here, even now, peering down at the sealed doors, while we sit and stand and lie on the cold stone floor and wait for the morning to come. For his comfort and security these images are being recorded.

  Mike still talking and spitting into Danny’s ear while they wait for the giro.