Even the Dogs: A Novel

by Jon McGregor

  Only the one time. Weren’t it.

  There are things we didn’t know before, and we know them now. How but. These things coming to us slowly, surely, rising to the surface like bruises and scars.

  Never seen him still like this before. Have you. Even when he was asleep he was all fidgeting and scratching and muttering on, rolling over, pulling at whatever jacket or blanket he’d hauled over himself when he crashed to the floor. And when he was awake he never sat still. Never left the flat but he couldn’t stop moving. Getting a drink, rolling a fag, going over to the window, going for a piss, scratching and talking and waving his arms around to make a point. Telling someone to clear their shit up, telling someone to get him some snap. Telling a story or just sitting there shaking and trembling like there was a current running through him, waiting for a drink. So maybe this is some kind of peace, this stillness he’s got himself now. Maybe you can call it that, at least.

  Remember his fingernails though. Do you. Cracked, yellow, bitten-down. And now they’re clipped off and dropped into clear plastic pouches. Put them under a microscope and see what stories they tell. And Laura’s fingernails, that first time she came knocking on Robert’s door, remember Heather couldn’t stop looking at them, couldn’t believe them, long and clean and curved at the ends. Polished. The fingernails of a girl with a clean bathroom where there are handcreams and nail scissors and emery boards and a neat row of clear and coloured varnishes lined up on the shelves. Sort of made Heather think of when she was younger, like much younger, when she first went out on the road with the band, when she was still looking after herself. Laura had ripped her jeans and put on these big clumpy boots but her nails still gave her away. The look on Robert’s face when he woke up next morning and saw her there, and then the look on his face when she went straight off again. Sort of like he couldn’t tell if he’d dreamt it or what. Those perfect fingernails, those long white fingers, clean fingers, Heather had wanted to take the girl’s hand and hold it against her face. Had a feeling like that would be nice. Laura had that effect on people, then. It was unsettling. They weren’t used to it. Wanted to put one of those clean white fingers in her mouth. The taste of it.

  The older man, the doctor or whoever he is, speaks to a younger man who writes his words down on a whiteboard on the wall, and a woman with clipped-back hair and black-rimmed glasses starts to cut into Robert’s clothes. Black fleece, the doctor says, greasy stains to cuffs and neck, cigarette burns or similar on chest area, large rip approximately, what, one hundred and seventy millimetres, running up from left waist. The photographer leans in to get pictures of all this, and someone else places a ruler next to the rip in Robert’s filthy clothes.

  That’s all those times he fell asleep with a fag on the go, the drinks he spilt over himself. That’s the fight he had with Steve a couple of months back. When he pulled away from Steve and his fleece ripped up the side where Steve was holding it. Weren’t hardly a fight though, it was mostly just holding on, banging heads and swinging elbows and holding each other up. Didn’t come out of much and didn’t look like it was going that far until Steve took a bite on Robert’s ear. Remember that. Just leant round and took a bite, and once Robert had pulled away and made sure his ear was still there he kicked right off. Didn’t he. Remember. Weren’t much of a fight after that. A man the size of Robert, once he puts his mind to it he’s like a what is it a force to be reckoned with a force of nature. Pushing and punching Steve out through the front door and down the steps and shouting all this stuff like You fucking headcase you cunt you can fuck right off and all that. Kept putting his hand to his ear to make sure it was all there or something and spitting out blood where Steve had caught him in the mouth. Rolling up his hat and holding it against his ear. Someone found H and brought him out, and someone else got Steve’s coat and threw it over him where he lay, and Robert started looking up and down the street like he’d only just realised he was outside. Was the first time he’d been outside for a while, and it was the last time until those blokes with the stretcher and the black van carried him out.

  Reckon that was the last time Steve was there anyway, unless. Unless what. Some things we don’t know yet. Steve and H stumbling off down the street without looking back, Steve pulling his coat on and rubbing at his knuckles where he’d caught Robert in the mouth. Robert backing away into the flat going What the fuck was all that about and looking for another drink. Pushing his hat back over his head. The two of them picking away at each other all day but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. Robert saying something about Steve never being a real soldier and Steve standing over him going Say that again, and Robert standing up and the two of them going at it. The closeness of them, in that moment, breathing into each other, the sharp smack of knuckle on bone and their faces pressing and scratching together, the smell of drink and cold sweat and the first taste of blood in the mouth, the unfocused stare in the eyes. The dense metallic ring of each punch as it fell. Steve’s teeth biting on his ear, and the crunch of pain that followed. Steve saying, even while Robert was knocking him out of the door, Don’t you ever say that about me again, that was nothing mate, you say that again and you see what happens, I was a soldier you bastard, I served my country you bastard. Lying curled up at the bottom of the steps going I served my country, and Ben hurling his coat down over him and laughing and telling him to shut up. Booting him one in the ribs just for fun. Robert touching his ear and turning away into the flat. Don’t mean nothing now. But if he knew. If Robert knew, if he’d taken the trouble to ask, if he’d given Steve the chance to tell him all the things he’d seen and done when he was away with the army, then he wouldn’t have said that, he wouldn’t have dared, it wouldn’t ever have occurred to him to say something like that. Steve’s done his time and that’s the God’s honest truth. In Belfast, peering out through the letterbox windows of the Land Rover, rocks and bottles raining down, his gun heavy in his lap and the taste of bile in his mouth, ready to rattle out through those back doors and take up positions, waving shields and sticks and shouting Get back, get back, you bastards, get back. Petrol bombs splashing and flaming around their feet, stones and lumps of iron falling from the sky. Gunfire. From nowhere, from bloody everywhere, gunfire. Scanning the rooftops, the windows, the alley-entrances. More gunfire, and a man down beside him, Craigie, his leg ripped open and blood gushing out on to the road. I mean just literally gushing. The shouts of Man down, and idiot whooping in the crowd, and our guns raised in their faces Now will you bloody get back or what, bloody get back. And down in Armagh, wading across sodden meadows and scrambling through ditches, rainwater gushing into drains and culverts like the blood from Craigie’s leg on that road and in the back of the Land Rover and some poor bastard had to swab that out when it was all done. Never told me I’d be doing that. My country lied to me. If Robert had known any of that, if he’d ever listened, if anyone ever listened, he wouldn’t have made something of it like that, he wouldn’t have said what he did. If he knew. Would he.

  The woman with the black-rimmed glasses takes a large pair of blunt-nosed scissors and cuts the fleece open up the middle, turning and cutting along each sleeve and peeling the layers apart. She stands back for the photographer to get another shot, and the doctor asks the younger man at the whiteboard to make another note about staining to a long-sleeved undergarment, and again the scissors cut a line up the middle and along each sleeve, and again the layers are peeled back with a soft wet unsticking sound. They cut through a shirt, a couple of t-shirts, and a vest, and it takes us a moment to realise that the blackened surface beneath all these layers, shining wetly under the lights, is his broad and swollen chest. They cut away his trousers, and the material falls off him like sodden rags. They cut away his socks, and the soiled remains of his pants, and he lies before us, between us, naked, beaten. We move closer. We reach out our hands.

  They lift him by the shoulders and slide a thick rubber block beneath his back, pushing his chest up and his head back a
nd stretching out his arms, and the woman with the black-rimmed glasses uncoils a length of hose from one end of the table and begins to wash him down, the water streaming gently across his bloated body, down into the gullies which run along either side of the table and into a sink and drain at the far end. The water runs slowly, softly. We wonder whether it’s warm. She rinses him all over, using soap pads to work away the dirt and blood which remains. She begins with his fingers, wiping down to the cleft between each one and across his palms and the backs of his hands, encircling his wrist and lifting each arm as she draws the pads along his forearm and elbow and up to his shoulder. She lowers each arm gently, softly, as if being careful not to wake him. With a clean pad she burrows, delicately, into the thick matted hair of his armpits.

  She cleans his chest and stomach, his hips, his thighs and shins and feet, running the pads across his body in broad sweeping gestures. She takes swabs from his mouth and nose and ears, his anus, the tip of his penis. She wipes his neck, his face, his lips, the lids of his eyes. She cleans around his groin, lifting the swollen weight of his penis and his balls while she works around each fold of skin, and then the others help to tilt him up on to his side so she can clean his back and buttocks and the underneath of his thighs.

  Nearest he’s come to a bath in years.

  Robert and Laura in the bath together. Years ago, before anything fell apart. Laura laughing at the strange black hair sprouting all over him and daring to touch it. I’ve only got hair on my head, she says, looking down at herself, and you’ve got it all over that’s funny. Her small smooth body so strange, her head brimming over with questions and talk, and after they’d gone he tried to remember when she’d stopped talking to him like that, when she’d looked away and not sat in his lap and acted as though he was someone to be afraid around. He’d done nothing to be afraid of. Had he. It was only the way Yvonne behaved, the things she told her. The sight of her shrinking away from him, the shocking way a child can do that, making herself small and out of reach and making his hands hang uselessly by his side.

  And remember that second time Laura came home to her dad’s. How she was shocked all over again by how much he’d changed. Remember that. Fatter, redder, more bruised and falling-down. She should see him now. She should but where is she. Would she look at him now, would she shrink away. His skin broken and rotting, his flesh a mottled mess of red and black and purple and cream. His nakedness stripped of meaning. His wounds and scars noted down by people who don’t even know his name.

  Feet: advanced state of decay, presumably predating death. Bruising to both shins, knees, upper thighs, hips. Faded scar on right thigh. The younger man writes all this down, and the photographer takes more pictures, and the others crowd around and look.

  Blackening of skin to the back of torso, buttocks, and backs of legs, consistent with the subject having remained in a prone position, face-upwards, for a period of days following death. Bruising around ribs. Bruising to left side of face. No scratches or bruises to hands or forearms.

  The crowd of them shuffling around his body, peering and pointing as they write these things down. We move closer. We want to touch, we want to touch him. Mike hangs back a little and tells us, by the way, like it don’t mean nothing, that he’s not sure but he maybe might have been the last one there before Robert died. Don’t matter no more anyhow la but it’s just worth mentioning. He tells us he didn’t do nothing or nothing he was just there. He tells us he’s only just thought of it like.

  Robert was still in the kitchen when he left so it can’t have been nothing to do with him but it don’t matter no more anyhow. Mike tells us now.

  The man with the notebook who looks like a policeman or a detective or something says, So what’s going on with these bruises, Frank? and the doctor says I think I’ll let my very capable junior here answer that. The younger man by the whiteboard looks up and says They’re probably all falls and bumps, aren’t they? The doctor smiles, and nods, and the detective puts his notebook away. From the pictures of the scene, we’re probably going to find that he was an alcoholic, the younger man continues, and alcoholics tend to fall over a lot and bruise very easily. And there’s nothing here which looks like a defensive injury. The doctor, Frank, nods again, gesturing to the younger man and saying This is my junior in whom I am most pleased. They all laugh, and the detective leaves the room. Give me a shout if you find a bullet hole, he says, as he goes.

  All of us sitting around with the candles and music and flowers and that, and when it all goes quiet someone says Eh but the undertakers have done a lovely job haven’t they but? He looks smashing and that. He looks better than he has done for years, someone else says, and we laugh, and we think about more of the times we spent with him.

  Think about how after the fight that time there was Steve and H stamping off down the street, going That stupid bastard who does he bloody well think he is. Went down to the corner shop by the rec and stocked up on Storm, spent the rest of the week’s giro in one go and lugged it all down to the corner of Barford Street, down to Sammy’s patch, sat on the benches with Sammy down there for the rest of the day. Told him what Robert had said, what had happened, about that bloody little sod Ben running out and joining in, the little sod, what does he even know about anything. Sammy weren’t even listening anyway. Never does. Just sat there drinking a bottle of vodka with no label he’d got from who knows where. Some Polish bollocks, he said, or Russian or one of them. Wouldn’t let Steve have none anyway. Was there most of the rest of the day and he didn’t say much, just Aye pal when Steve kept talking about what Robert had said, how he wouldn’t have said it if he knew where Steve had been and what he’d done, if he really knew what Steve had seen. Saying I’ll tell you what Sammy this is probably as good a time as any to get over to India and track down my brother. I told you about him being over there before didn’t I, I’ve just got to get my passport sorted and get a few things together, it’s been long enough. I’ll get down to Cambridge and get those postcards and things. He won’t be hard to find. I’ll just have to get the money together and get the passport sorted. Seems like a good opportunity. Most Sammy said all day was I’ll tell you what Steve son my eyes are fucking killing me I can hardly see a fucking thing.

  Other marks to body: no obvious signs of self-harm, no tattoos, no obvious evidence of injection sites. Visual appearance of body consistent with having remained in situ after death for a period of approximately seven days.

  And what if they’d paid this much attention to us all. What if that therapist or whoever had laid Mike out on the table and said Tell me about this bruise here, and this scar, and this blister, and this, what’s this, is this a cigarette burn? Are any of these the result of self-harm, Mike? It depends if you discount self-harm in the wider sense, like as in heroin addiction itself, as in like the associated reckless disregard for one’s own wellbeing. Because leaving that aside there is still cutting with blades and burning with cigarettes and there has been some of that yes. On account of the implants like. Having occasional reason to believe they’ve been misused as in recording certain facts and divulging them to certain agencies. You know what I mean. Burning can sometimes do the job but then sometimes he’s had to go in with a blade and like carve the offending item right out. Didn’t always get to it though pal. Sometimes it just goes deeper. The doctor or therapist going So these acts of self-harm aren’t necessarily on a suicidal continuum. Mike looking at him. The bloke going Have you ever thought about suicide, Mike? I have my friend. I have. Usually when the voices get too bad and there don’t seem like any other way of shutting them up. But also it would show people. That’s what he thinks sometimes. It would teach them a lesson, there would have to be like an inquiry or something and it would show them how bad it was when they didn’t believe him or didn’t listen or didn’t understand. It would show his family or like his friends from school if they even remembered. Or maybe it wouldn’t show no one nothing like maybe they wouldn’t even be riled.


  Thought about doing it by deliberately going over, like most of the users he knows have thought about that, thinking about it half the time they shoot up. Thought about jumping, hanging, drowning, burning, walking into the wrong pub and getting himself stabbed. One thing he always came back to though was walking out in front of a bus. Kid at school done that and it had always stuck with him. Seemed like if you got it right it would be easy and quick and no one would ever know you’d done it on purpose, like if any of that God stuff turned out to be true like his parents said then you could maybe get away with it not looking too much like a mortal sin and all that.

  He has thought about it. He has.

  But all Robert’s bruises don’t count for much. Everyone’s got them, after all. All of us. Bruises and the rest of it: cuts and grazes and sprains and breaks, abscesses and open infected sores. From digging, from falling, from walking into a fist or a bottle or a boot. Like Ben especially, short time we’ve known him he’s more or less always had a black eye or something like it, his smart little mouth always earning him trouble but he never seems to mind. Always a big grin on when he takes the punch, laughing like Is that all you’ve got. Which usually gets him one more. Like Laura, second time she came back to her dad’s we knew she was ready to stay around by the bruises she had. Up and down both arms and her fingernails weren’t long or clean or polished no more. Never talked much about where she’d been but it didn’t look like she’d gone back home to her mum’s.