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

One thing I remember about Ray’s mum. I don’t remember much but there’s this. When we were kids. We all called round to his house one day and when he opened the front door we heard his mum going Ray will you close the bloody door will you, and when we looked up there she was in the bathroom at the top of the stairs with the door wide open, sat on the throne with everything round her ankles. The bathroom door wide open, and now the front door. And Ray just stood there talking to us and ignoring her while she went Ray! Ray! Will you close the bloody door there Ray! The door! And all of us trying not to look but we must have looked at least once because later we’d all agreed that you could see her bone china and everything. And Ray just kept us there talking for as long as he could before he put his jacket on and came out and left the front door wide open so we could hear her calling after him as we walked away. Ray! Will you get back here and close this bloody door Ray! And the thing we all noticed but nobody said was that it was the exact same voice she used when she called him in for his tea, or just whenever we’d heard her speaking to him at all.

*

It was Ray’s car but he mostly let me do the driving. He said the angle of the pedals made his bad back flare up, but also it was because he had trouble concentrating. Plus the blackouts. It was a very particular type of car. It had taken some getting used to. It took a while even getting it started. Also the foot-brake didn’t really work properly so I mostly had to rely on the handbrake. Which was another reason I drove so slowly on the way over to the Stewart place that night. We drove right round the back of the marquee and parked up by the catering tent. The catering vans weren’t there.

They won’t be back until the morning, Ray says. Like he knew. Like he’d been casing the joint or anything. We sat there for a while with the engine running, figuring things out. We could see the portable toilets off to one side of the marquee, and people standing around talking. There was a big floodlight over the toilet, meaning we could see them and they couldn’t see us. There was a lot of cheering whenever a new song came on, which meant it was probably only the young ones left in there and the old or sober ones had gone home.

Someone knocked on the window. He had a look of the Stewarts about him. Big square chin and red face and floppy hair. Ray wound down the window. The younger Stewart asked us if we were okay. He was smoking a cigar, or at least he was holding a cigar and wondering what to do with it. Ray looked at him.

Was everything okay with your food? Ray says. The younger Stewart looked confused. He asked us if we were with the caterers. I told him we were just picking up a few things that couldn’t be left overnight. He nodded and told us that was a good idea. He turned away and turned back and told us the food had been bloody lovely. We waited until he’d gone back round the corner with his cigar. Ray got out of the car.

Keep the engine running, he says. I think this was meant to sound dramatic but it was obvious and he didn’t need to say it. If I’d turned the engine off we wouldn’t have got it started again until the next day.

Keep the engine running, he says again. I don’t know why he had to say it twice.

*

We must have got about fifty yards back from the can and we were nowhere near knocking it down any more and Ray was still on with his story about writing the porno story. He said he’d just been getting to the best bit when he noticed that the student or schoolgirl or whoever was standing next to his seat. He said he didn’t really know how long she’d been standing there. She asked him did she know him or like had she met him before, and he didn’t really know what she was getting at so he just said no, sorry, he didn’t think she’d met him anywhere.

Then Ray got up and more or less started acting it out, which I could have done without. I just sat there looking at the lake, holding my can, waiting for him to get on with it. He stood there next to me, closer than I could have done with bearing in mind the facilities available to us at the caravan. He had his hand on his hip, meaning I suppose that’s how he thought girls always stood when they were talking to you, and he put on this voice which must have been his idea of a girl’s voice but sounded more like a cat or something. He said, in this voice, with his hand on his hip, that I kept looking at him like I knew him or something and it was making him like uncomfortable and he would rather I didn’t. The way he said it, there was a question mark at the end of each sentence. Also, the way he said it, it sounded like he was about to slap me round the face. He sat down again, as Ray.

I could have done without him acting it out but I knew what he was on about. The way these girls are so self-assertive nowadays. They must teach it them at school. Ray wouldn’t have been looking at her like that, like the way she said. But there wouldn’t have been anything he could say about it. He would have had to just keep his mouth shut and look at the floor. That’s what they do. They get you like that. Wouldn’t mind being a bit self-assertive like that myself, sometimes. Certain situations it would have helped. I asked Ray what he did after that and he said what did I think he’d done he’d got off the train at the next stop.

These birds all went over then. Geese or something. We could hear their wings going. I still hadn’t hit the can from that distance, so I shuffled my chair forward a bit when Ray wasn’t looking. It didn’t seem like it was getting dark but the lights had gone on in Jackie’s house. I said maybe it was time to light a fire. I said it was Ray’s turn to get the wood. He said it was my turn. I got the last of the pallets and broke them up with a crowbar and heaped them up in the usual place. Some more of those birds went over and when I looked up I noticed the sky was going out at the edges. I hadn’t noticed the sun going down. I went and got some lighter fluid from the caravan and lit the fire. We could see Jackie standing at her bedroom window looking over at the Stewart place. We could hear the kids at one of the houses by the church going on their trampoline. Heard it most nights. Someone should take some light oil to the springs. I sat down again and told Ray that when my daughter was little she’d always called them jumpolines. He asked when the fuck I’d had a daughter. I told him I wasn’t going to go into it. He got up to go to the caravan, and I said if he kept polishing his crockery like that it was going to get chipped or something. He didn’t think that was funny. He came over and put me off the chair and drew blood from my nose and then he went in the caravan and turned the radio on in there. Thing with Ray is he’s one of those people who can drink as much as they want without causing any problems. It’s when the drink runs out is when you want to watch him.

Later he told me how the story had ended. Like I’d been hanging on waiting for the final instalment. He said he’d sat on that station platform waiting for the next train and he’d written it right to the end and put it in the post to her. He said it ended with the woman in the story pulling off her blindfold and realising the other people in the story had gone. I said you can leave it there if you like Ray. I was still holding my T-shirt up to my nose to stop the bleeding. He said so this woman could hear them dressing in the other room and going out through the front door, and she wanted to get up or call them back but she was too done in to move or talk or anything, and then she heard the door close and she was all cold and wrapping the sheets round herself and it was getting dark and everything. He said it was something like that anyway. He said it had all been a while ago. He said he’d put it in the post to his ex-wife but he never found out if she got it or not. I asked him what he expected me to say to all that.