Jon McGregor - This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

I mean, talk to me about appropriation, right? The city don’t even got its own name! And here are these two guys standing in the original New York! Y’know?

Right. Anyway. So. Meanwhile it’s pretty much dark, and our two guys are still standing there. They smoke a cigarette, they drink a bit of coffee from the flask, some kids drive past and shout some kinda nasty shit at them. All that. And while we’re getting the hang of all this the-joke’s-on-us kinda stuff, we don’t hardly notice that they’ve started talking about some friend of theirs, this other migrant guy who’s died in a like tragic fire at some other place of residence, and how are they going to get to the funeral, and what clothes can they wear, and does anyone even know how to get word to his family. Right? And by the time we do notice, they’ve quit talking about it anyway. So that’s another twist for the audience right there: how is it we were too busy thinking about the meaning of what’s going on with the dialogue to even notice that these two guys were having some individualistic shitty fucken narrative in their own lives? Which just goes to prove the point, right? Well, it do, don’t it?

So. Anyway, that’s about it right there. Yeah. Their ride never shows up. They pour out some more coffee and the one guy spits it out and goes, ‘Is cold.’ That being the first line of dialogue we heard, meaning they’re trapped in some kinda Beckettian loop or whatever. Yeah. We fade out and roll credits or whatever.

Of course it’s fucken conceptual. What do I look like to you?

Sutton-on-Sea

Back to contents page

I was wiping tables. It was quiet. We hadn’t done many lunches, and they were all gone. There was only that woman in, with a tea. She was talking on, the way she does. I could see the floor needed mopping but I didn’t think I could do it while she was there. There was a swell on the sea, and a rainstorm passing over to the south. You could see the windmills really going for it, catching the light from somewhere. The only people out on the beach were the ones walking their dogs. She was saying how that was a proper pot of tea I’d made her. Going on the way she does. The usual about how you don’t always get a proper pot of tea these days, and how some places they don’t even use a pot. ‘Just dump the bag straight in the mug and expect you to fish it out yourself,’ she says. ‘Not like this,’ she says. ‘This is a proper pot of tea.’ It’s never even that clear who she thinks she’s talking to. I give her a nod or a smile now and again but that only seems to confuse her, so mostly I let her get on with it. It’s not like she’s not said all this about the tea before. I could probably have said most of it word for word.

‘I went to London once,’ she says, ‘and this young man made me a tea using the water from a coffee machine, a coffee machine, I couldn’t believe it, he used the hot water from a coffee machine and filled up one of those bowl-shaped mugs, hot water mind you, it wasn’t even boiling, it was hot water, and he put the tea-bag on the saucer and just left it sitting there.’ I was doing the condiments by then. Most people take that as a hint but she doesn’t. I collected up all the salt and pepper pots and checked them over. ‘The water getting colder and colder and the tea-bag just sitting there on the saucer doing absolutely no good to anyone, and there’s me standing at the counter watching him,’ she says. I took all the lids off the tomatoes and topped up the ketchup. She was getting a bit heated. It was usually about now that other people would notice, if they were in, and start moving away. She says, ‘I told him, I said do you mind, could you please, please put the tea-bag into the water, please, what on earth are you doing, are you making me a cup of French tea there?’

She more or less said that all in one go. It got her quite out of breath. It usually does. She said about the young man asking her what French tea was, and how she’d told him that in England we make tea with boiling water and we make damn well sure the water stays hot and that whatever it was he was doing it looked like something they’d do on the Continent. ‘I went to France once,’ she says. She looked out the window when she said it, peering over the sea as if she could see land. She said she went on a day trip there, and that was how they made their tea, and she didn’t much care for it. There were some other things she didn’t much care for but she didn’t go into details. Or at least she did, but she mumbled them under her breath, as if they were too shameful to say out loud.

All the dishes were done by then, and the condiments. I was wiping over the menus. The wind must have changed direction. The rain came up the beach and against the windows. I could see the dog-walkers making a run for it. One of them came charging in the door and I had to tell him to leave the dog outside. He just stood there without ordering anything, dripping on the floor. I was glad I hadn’t done the mopping. The woman carried on talking, and I could tell he was trying to work out if she was talking to him or not. He figured it out soon enough. ‘I’ve never bothered going back, I’m not much of a one for travelling,’ she says. ‘What’s the point of going away? You only have to come back.’

The man didn’t really know where to look, I could tell. I told him the rain would blow over soon enough and he nodded.

‘All these people jetting off all over the place,’ the woman said, still rattling on. ‘I don’t know what they think they’re going to find. It’s all the same. People are the same. And you can’t get a decent cup of tea. Not for love nor money. This is a decent cup of tea. In a pot. Proper china. Fresh milk. It’s not rocket science. But that man just stood there looking at me, asking me what I meant, and all the while the tea-bag was just sitting on the saucer and the water was getting colder and colder. I ask you. Really.’

The rain stopped and the man went out. His dog came bounding over and shook all the water off while the door was still open, so that went all over the floor. I went and put the door on the catch, and turned the boilers off, and started cashing up.

‘Take my daughter,’ she says. ‘She’s off working in some country or other. Doesn’t seem to have broadened her mind. She’s been gone nearly a year now and she’s barely even written. Don’t even rightly know where she is. And you can bet your bottom dollar she’s not getting a decent cup of tea. This is a decent cup of tea. This is a proper cup of tea. This is what you want to expect when you ask for a tea. A pot and a jug and some good china. It’s important to know what to expect. You expect to get what you expect. You don’t get that when you go away. You don’t know what to expect. Leaving the bag on the saucer like that, with the water going cold. And you only have to come back.’

The sun was out for a minute, and the sea was shining, but there was another shower coming in. I started filling the mop bucket, and turned a couple of chairs over. She started getting all her bags together. She shook her head a few times, as if she was annoyed with something.

‘Listen to me going on,’ she said. The way she says it, it sounds like that’s really what she means. What she wants. But I had things to be getting on with.

Gainsborough

She wouldn’t tell Patricia. She’d decided that before even saying goodbye, before she’d stood there and listened to his footsteps crunch away through the gravel. What was there to tell anyway. It was only talking.