Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

He looks at the mannequins, naked, sprawled across the rubbish and across each other, their limbs tangled, and he looks away.

In the street, sitting on the low wall outside number eleven, the young man with the sketchpad is pencilling in an outline of the young girl, standing one-legged by the passageway beside number sixteen, peering into it. It is good to put figures in drawings like these, he has learnt this, his tutor said the presence of people lends a sense of perspective, so he sketches her in and later he will include also adults. And the dog he promised her.

In the back bedroom of number seventeen, the boy with the white shirt lies awake, looking at the girl beside him, her eyes, the thin arch of her eyebrows, the dusting of glitter around her eyes. He leans his face towards her to feel the warm push of her breath on his forehead, he leans back to look at her, props himself up on one elbow to look at the whole long length of her. He remembers the way people looked at her last night, in the club, the way people always looked at her when they were out, the way he’s looking at her now; appraisingly, admiringly, a breathless yearning which is not really or not entirely sexual but something else, something noble or aesthetic perhaps. He hears himself whispering Jesus I’m so lucky, and he looks up quickly to check no one’s awake. But it’s true he thinks, he is, and he lies back down, closing his eyes in sweet anticipation of the weeks and months and maybe years to come. They haven’t made their plans yet, they’re not sure what they’ll be doing or where they’ll be, but he knows they’ll be spending their nights enclosed together like this, he knows he can take that much for granted. The fact that they haven’t even needed to discuss it makes it all the sweeter, like it’s a given, like it’s as natural as a cup of tea in the morning, or a shared cigarette. He kisses the corner of her lips, with his eyes still closed, and he drifts back into sleep.

In the empty back bedroom of number twenty-two, the girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses is standing by the window, finishing a piece of toast. She’s resting the back of her head against the cool glass and looking into the room, thinking about the boy who moved out a week ago, looking at the bare sagging mattress, the empty noticeboard, the lightshade concertinaed on the floor. The squares of wallpaper where posters had been, the pattern bright and clear and sharp. She thinks about her own room, overcrowded with clothes and books and tapes and all the dozens of bits and pieces that don’t seem to belong anywhere but can’t quite be thrown away, she wonders where to start.

She goes into her room and takes the posters off the wall, she opens the wardrobe and piles the clothes on the bed. She takes everything off the windowsill and puts it into a shoebox, and then she stops and looks at it all.

She goes downstairs to make a cup of tea.

In the bathroom of number eighteen, the young man with the dry eyes packs his toiletries into a bag and wipes old soap and hairs from around the edge of the sink. He opens the mirrored cabinet, taking down the toppled tubs and cans and packets he knocked over earlier, shaving cream and shaving foam, deodorants, eye lotion, hairgel, shampoo, antiseptic cream, plasters, aspirins, peppermint foot scrub.

He looks at the foot scrub, he takes the lid off the almost full tub and smells it, it’s a good smell, a tingling smell, a nose-clearing steam of a smell and he turns his head away from it and puts the lid back on, puts the tub in the bag. He remembers buying it the day before that Wednesday night, the night he’d opened and closed the front door a dozen times, checking. He remembers thinking it would be a nice thing, a thing they could do later, weeks or months after this first night became a reference point, she could say she was tired after a long day at work or whatever and he could offer her this, as a gesture, as a symbol, like it’s nothing really it’s just a thing I would do for you.

He remembers thinking he was getting ahead of the situation by buying something like that so early, but he’d seen it by chance and he’d thought why not, he’d thought it would be good to have it around so he could make less of an issue of it, like here I’ve got some of this would you like some.

And he remembers that awestruck Tuesday night, trying on different clothes and making his room tidy but not too tidy, and he’d decided he should maybe try it out, see what it was like, make sure he knew how to use it, and he’d got a bowl of water and a towel and sat on the edge of his bed with his trousers rolled up. Paddling in hot tapwater, dabbling with the possible way of things.

The way he’d scooped out a handful of the cold grainy cream and rubbed it into the skin of his feet, circling across the arches and squeezing between the toes, enjoying the cold lick and tickle of it, pulling at the skin, working his thumbs along the lines of muscle between the bones, the way he’d varied the pressures, a fist twisted roughly into the hard skin of the heel, a finger running like a whisper along the tendons between ankle and toe. He remembers that evening, the excitement and fear and disbelief, sitting on the edge of his bed with his foot in his hands, thinking maybe soon it would be someone else’s foot, thinking maybe soon there would be someone else sitting on the edge of his bed, sitting beside him.

Lying beside him, sleeping beside him.

He remembers rinsing his feet in the hot water, padding damp footprints through to the bathroom, pouring the slow swirl of murky water down the sink.

He squeezes his eyes shut, he runs his knuckles along the open space between his lips.

He thinks about her, at this moment, in her house, a few thin walls away, packing her life into boxes and bags and he wonders what memories she is rediscovering, what thoughts are catching in her mouth like the dust blown from unused textbooks. He wonders if she has buried any traces of herself under her floorboards. He wonders what those traces would be if she had. And he wonders again why he thinks about her so much when he knows so little to think about.

She doesn’t say anything, I wait and there’s only her breathing.

I can hear the television in the background, laughter, applause.

I’m not sure if she’s heard me, so I try to say it again.

I’m.

The words falter in my throat, all of the last few weeks trapped in the bottleneck of this moment.

I remember all the times I’ve thought about saying this.

I remember all the reactions I’ve imagined.

I say, mum, I’m pregnant.

There’s a pause, and I can hear the colour draining from her face.

It wasn’t going to be like this.

It hardly seems worth saying, but I’d planned it differently, I really had.

I was going to be ready, financially stable, emotionally prepared.

I was going to be living in a house by the sea.

I was going to be in a secure and loving relationship with a man who was creatively self-employed, a potter or a woodworker, somebody good with his hands.

I used to imagine the hands, strong, large hands crisscrossed with the scars and scratches of hard work, hands that would smell of fresh air and earth and wood.

I used to imagine long walks along wind-harried beaches, hand in hand, wrapped up warm, feeling the cold suck of salty air in my lungs and the bloom of a baby inside me.

I was going to be older than this.

That was mostly what I’d planned, being older than this.

She says congratulations you must be very pleased, and she sounds as though she almost means it.

I expected her to be shocked.

She says so when’s it due then, do you know, have you had a scan, are you eating plenty of green vegetables.