Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Bustling around the house, cleaning, tidying, baking scones, rearranging the furniture.

She’s still talking, and I’m still saying yes and no and I’m sure, and I’m having trouble working out what she’s talking about and I want her to stop.

I hear a mobile going off, an electronic Für Elise, and I assume it’s on the television.

She says oh that’s my phone, do you mind if I, and without me saying anything she’s pressing buttons on her new phone and saying yes, hello, yes fine, hold on a moment.

She says it’s your Auntie Susan, was there anything else? I say yes, yes there is something else, can you call me back, and she says oh, oh okay, and I hear her talking to Auntie Sue before she’s even hung up on me.

I didn’t know my mother had a mobile phone.

I make a cup of tea, and I listen to my answerphone, to a message from Sarah. She says hi again how you doing, I’ve got something to tell you, I met somebody, I need to tell you about it, call me soon bye.

The phone rings, and I’m talking to my mother again.

She says and have you been eating properly.

I say mum I’m a grown-up now you shouldn’t be asking me that sort of thing.

She says well yes of course but.

There’s a moment’s pause, I can hear the television in the background.

I say and how’s dad, oh you know she says.

Same as always she says.

She asks me about friends I haven’t seen for months and I say I don’t know I haven’t seen them.

I live in a different city now I say, it’s difficult to see people so often.

She says he could do with a haircut though.

This needs to be an important conversation, and it’s not.

I say who needs a haircut, your dad she says, it’s sticking out round his ears.

You know the way it does she says.

I loop the telephone wire around my finger, the spirals hugging tight between my knuckles.

I say well have you told him, watching the skin beneath my fingernail turn red as the wire tightens.

Oh no she says, you know he doesn’t like me saying things like that.

I think about him there now, watching television, his feet up on the table, the dark patches on the soles of his white socks.

I uncoil the telephone wire from my finger.

There are red stripes, white stripes.

She’s talking about dad’s sister coming to visit.

Your Auntie Susan she says, and then she’s talking about spare rooms, and bedding, and extra pints of milk.

She says you know she’s got an insatiable appetite for tea, and she does like it with a lot of milk.

I need to stop her talking now.

I need to say mother I have something to say.

Mum, please, I need to tell you something.

It’s important mum, and I’m scared and I need your help.

I need to say these things.

My throat feels tight, squashed.

I open the window to get some air into the room, and a burst of noise rushes in.

Traffic, and shouting, and music.

And birdsong, from somewhere up on the roof, a thin twitter that creeps and tangles in with all the other sounds.

I breathe deeply, trying not to sigh.

I wrap the telephone cord around another finger.

Mum, I say.

I see the girl from the shop downstairs crossing the road.

She glances up and sees me, she waves and smiles.

I lift my hand to wave back, but it’s held down by the telephone cord and she disappears.

Mum, I say, again, can I just, but she doesn’t hear me, or she won’t let me speak.

And how about you she says, when are you next coming down, it’s been a good long while hasn’t it?

I don’t know I say.

She says your Auntie Susan’s slept in that spare room more times than you I should think.

I say mum that used to be my room, I slept in it all my life, she says yes well I mean since I decorated it.

Since it became the spare room she says.

I say mum, there was something I needed to say, can I just, and she says sorry love what was it?

I hesitate, I squeeze a coil of telephone wire into my fist.

I say mum, I’m pregnant.

She’s balancing on one foot again, the sister of the twins, and now she is leaning forwards, bringing her face towards the ground, her other leg cocked out behind her and her arms thrust out like glider wings. A young man with very short hair walks past, slowly, his feet are shuffling along the pavement and once or twice he stumbles. She doesn’t notice him, and he disappears into a passageway next to number sixteen.

In the back bedroom of number twenty, the wife of the old man with the weary lungs is drinking a cup of tea, standing by the window, looking out across the yards, along the backs of the houses in the next street, down the alleyway. She sees a white cat roll onto its back on the roof of an outhouse. She sees a woman hanging out washing, pegs lined up across the shoulders of her blouse like a queue of trapeze artists. She sees a young man with very short hair emerge from the passageway a couple of doors down and shuffle up the alleyway, towards their backyard. She watches him, she notices his face all screwed up against the sun, his hand held to the walls for support, and she tuttuts to herself, she sucks in her breath.

She says well will you look at this one.

What a state she says, he can hardly walk.

Been out all night I should think she says, and she watches him stumble into the backyard two doors down, coughing, pulling out a key on a long chain from a pocket halfway down his trousers.

We never stayed out all night in my day she says, watching the door close behind him, it wouldn’t have been on would it now?

No love, it wouldn’t, her husband mumbles from the bed, deadpan, not at all love he says.

She says and the state of that yard down there is getting a joke.

She turns away from the window and walks across to the wardrobe, looks like a nice day she says, and she rattles through the clothes on the hangers. Her husband looks at her from the bed, good lord he is thinking, but she is still a woman. All these years he thinks, smiling, and no less a woman than she ever was. He looks at her nakedness, savouring it, the sags and the wrinkles, the way her shoulderblades jostle against each other as she reaches up to the shoeboxes on top of the wardrobe, the thumbsized ridges of her spine, the fleshy weight of her backside, the curve of her belly as she turns into the light with a dress in each hand.

He remembers the first time he felt the weight of that backside, the shape of the weight pressed against his knees and his thighs, and not knowing where to put his hands as she sat talking to her friend, giggling and smoking his cigarettes. Knowing she was being improper, both of them, but knowing that somehow there were rules which didn’t apply. Of course, later, she’d always denied that that was how they’d met, later she’d told a different story, a more refined and sensible story; but he remembers it well enough, oh indeed, the way she’d wriggled to get comfortable, the way she was making his uniform scratch and pull against himself.

She stands there now, looking at him, weighing up the two dresses, one in either hand like a pair of scales, now then she’s saying, look here, which do you prefer?

Downstairs, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache is sitting at his kitchen table with an empty mug of tea, puffing out his cheeks and shaking his head. He stands suddenly, pulling up the blind and reaching for the telephone. It is not office hours, but he will leave them a message, it is easier to talk to them that way, they cannot interrupt or contradict, or pretend they do not understand his voice. Right he says, hello, and he says his name. I have spoken to you before he says, you remember perhaps, about this removal situation in my backyard. He says his address, slowly and precisely, and his lips are quivering with irritation. My backyard is full of rubbish he says, full, and none of this is mine. I feel I am losing control he says. I tell you about this before, five, six, many times, and always you say you coming soon but I don’t see you he says. So I will ask you again, and you will come and take them away, please, he says. He begins to list the items in his backyard, individually, the broken chairs and unstuffed mattresses, the milkcrates and binbags and magazines, the pizzaboxes and chipwrappings and small heaps of builders’ rubble. He doesn’t understand where it comes from. He doesn’t understand who goes to the trouble of heaving all this stuff over his wall. He comes to the end of his list, he pauses for breath and says you see there is so much of it now, I don’t know but I think when it is here it encourages people, like perhaps they think I am running a scrapyard or something like this? Because this morning he says, and he sighs and he looks outside, this morning this is it, this is the last thing, I look outside and I see three of these shopwindow dummy people there also. Please take this away he says. None of this is my mess he says, and he puts the phone down.