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

A stone skidded off the ground and hit the can but the can didn’t fall and I threw another one. Jackie’s car turned into the driveway by her house and stopped. Jackie got out and went into the house and didn’t look at us. She wasn’t wearing the hat. She must have left it in the car. Ray carried on talking about this story he said he’d written for his wife. It had been really something, apparently. Blindfolds, gasps of surprise, third parties involved, that type of thing. I held up my hand and told him Ray I don’t want the details mate. He said fair enough let’s just say it was properly filthy. He said he’d really thought she was going to enjoy it, she’d been known to enjoy that type of thing previously, she’d been quite imaginative. You wouldn’t have thought it to look at her though, was his next point. He wanted to emphasise that, it turned out. He spent quite a while emphasising that. She was gorgeous, in summary, a lovely woman. Looked like butter wouldn’t melt.

There was a whistling noise from the sound system at the Stewart place, and what sounded like microphones being plugged in and out, and then it went quiet again. I went and got another drink. Ray was still telling his story about the porno story. It looked like it was going to take a while. He told me it took him a long time to write it, this story, when he was sitting on this train. He said he kept getting distracted by what he called the old days. I suppose he meant the old days as in when he first met this wife I’d never heard about. He said he hadn’t had a clue where the train was going. It was one of those single-carriage jobs and all he could see out the window was fields like this. He said it had been a hot day and all the windows on the train were open and the pages of his notebook kept flapping about in the wind. I asked him when had he ever had a notebook and he said shut up this was a while ago.

They must have started doing the speeches at the Stewart place. We couldn’t hear most of what they were saying but the place kept going off in applause and what sounded like people banging their cutlery on the tables.

Ray was still going on about the train, and about how there’d been hardly anyone else on board, just this bloke who looked like a fitter, and a couple of old ladies, and then this girl who was either a young-looking university student or an old-looking schoolgirl, it was hard to tell, she kept staring out the window, she must have had something on her mind, and as it happened she was quite pretty but he was trying not to look because he properly couldn’t tell how old she was and you can’t be too careful and anyway he was just trying to concentrate on writing this story for his wife because he thought it was something he could do for her, it seemed important at the time, he thought she’d like it, he thought it would help.

I said, Jesus, Ray, don’t forget to breathe.

We threw some more stones at the can.

He told me some more about what had been in this story, stuff about firm smacks on the behind and tying hands and stuffing underwear into mouths, that type of thing. I told him I could probably definitely do without the details. They turned the volume up at the Stewart place and we heard someone doing a toast to the happy couple and then the whole crowd of them going to the happy couple again. Ray turned and looked in that direction. We were both thinking about the drink they’d be getting through over there. Ray knocked the can over and went and set it up again and we both moved our chairs a bit further back and threw some more stones. He still hadn’t finished. He started talking about how self-conscious it had made him to be writing all that stuff down on a train and how he’d had to keep stopping to sort of catch his breath but he wanted to persevere with it because he really thought his wife was going to like it. I said it was making me self-conscious just having to listen to him go on about it and he told me to shut up again. He said they’d got into that type of thing before, on the phone, when he’d been working away from home, and then he got into how all the working away from home might have been part of the problem, all those nights away and the unpredictability of it was how a lot of the arguments had started. I asked him like, what, you had an actual job and everything? He said sometimes it was like he couldn’t say the right thing to make it up to her. I asked him if he’d been a travelling salesman or what. He said some days it seemed like she didn’t even want him to try, like she wanted him to just turn round and go out on another job. I said I still didn’t know if we were talking about actual jobs here. He said it got to the point where he didn’t feel welcome in his own house and all he’d ever wanted was a home where he was welcome. I don’t think he was listening to me. It was turning out there was still plenty I didn’t know about Ray. He kept mentioning things as if I knew about them when really I had no idea. Like the wife thing. Or like a while before when he’d mentioned living in Scandinavia. Or even like was he or wasn’t he a Muslim any more or what.

Another thing I didn’t know was whether Ray’s mum still lived round in town or if she was still alive or what. I didn’t know if he knew. Maybe Ray hadn’t said anything about it because he was assuming I’d be as much of a cunt about it as he’d been when I told him about my mum. Who I happened to know had passed on, even though it had been a while before anyone had thought to tell me about it. I missed the funeral when I was inside. That was bad enough but it would have been good to know it was going on. This was what I don’t know why I bothered telling Ray one night, when we’d first got here and Jackie had told us all about what she wanted doing, and given us some binbags for cleaning out the caravan, and come down from the house with a couple of fresh pillows and said I don’t know about the rest of what’s in there but if you’re anything like me you’ll at least want decent pillows.

They wouldn’t have let me go to the funeral anyway but it would have been nice to have been told. It was up in Scotland. Scotland of all places. She never would have wanted to be buried there. She only went up there because her bloke said he’d had enough of it round here and he was going back to Scotland whether she wanted to go with him or not. She told me that, the last time she visited before she went up there. She was good at visiting, I’ll give her that. Given everything that had gone off. She said I could go up and join them when I got out, if I liked. While I got back on my feet. Right, I said. Scotland. She said would I write, and I said yes I would, I’d write. I’d definitely write. What was she thinking, Scotland. She must have hated it up there. She never would have wanted to be buried there. I knew she wouldn’t. That was what I told Ray about. Scotland had more or less come up in conversation somehow, so that was what I told him about. I said she should have been buried down here, where her family were buried, where the rest of her family still lived. People could go and visit her grave and that then, I said. My grandad had even paid for a plot for her in town. I’d known about that for years. She would have told her bloke about that, I was sure, but he went right ahead and buried her up there in Scotland. I was going to get in touch with my sister at some point. There was a legal thing involved, there were certain rights due to being next of kin. I was going to apply for her to be like transferred or something, once I’d spoken to my sister about it. She had a plot waiting for her in town here. She wasn’t supposed to be all the way up there where nobody knew her besides that bloke.

Ray thought it was funny. The idea of moving someone like that, once they were dead. The idea of anyone giving a shit where they were buried once they were dead, was what he said. What he said as well was he’d buy me a shovel himself. That was when I told him to shut up. He said I will I’ll buy you a shovel. I said Ray, leave it. He said don’t worry about fucking legal process, I’ll buy you a shovel and you can dig up your mam. I said Ray fucking leave it, and I put him on his back and he stopped laughing then.