Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

I expected her to be angry, or disappointed.

She says oh you know your dad’s always wanted a grandson. I wasn’t expecting this, the things she’s saying now, the politeness, the indifference.

I’d prepared myself to be defensive, argumentative even, to have to listen to criticism and not be crushed by it.

She says and of course you’ll be okay for money won’t you.

I say I don’t know mum.

She says and what about names, have you thought of a name?

I say no mum, not yet, it seemed a bit early for that, there was, there’s other things.

She says oh it’s never too early to think of a name, and then she gives me a list of names, none of which I would have thought of, and none of which I like.

Instead of the shock and dismay and disgust I was preparing myself for, I’m finding out what I might have been called, if things had been different.

I don’t ask her what she means by if things had been different.

I wonder if my dad can hear her end of the conversation, if he’s listening, if he can tell what’s going on.

I wonder what he’ll say when she tells him.

She runs out of names, and without pausing for breath she says and will you be using terries or disposables?

I feel like when I was fifteen, when I got a tattoo and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been grounded.

I thought she was going to ask the questions, the ones that start do you and have you and stumble into silence.

Do you know who the?

Have you thought about having a?

But she doesn’t, she says actually I really should call your Aunt Susan back, she was finding out about train times she says, and she’s waiting for me to say okay then but I don’t want to.

I say will you tell dad then?

Oh I will she says, he’ll be very pleased she says.

And I say mum, will you call me, tomorrow?

If I get the chance she says, and I can tell she’s looking at the clock.

I say well okay then I’d best be going give my love to dad, and I put the phone down and I lay a hand on my belly.

I imagine her putting the phone down and picking it up again to dial Sue’s number.

I wonder if she’s hesitating, if there’s a thickness in her throat she won’t be able to speak through, if she is blinking back a slight wetness in her eyes, having to slowly sit down and bite the knuckle of her thumb to stop herself from crying.

She does that, sometimes, biting and biting, leaving a pair of small pale bruises like ink on folded blotting paper.

She did it once when we were at the cinema, and when I asked her about it she said she’d trapped her thumb in the seat.

I wonder if she’s sitting there now, waiting for my dad to look up, to notice.

I imagine him turning off the television and moving towards her.

Saying, love, what is it, what’s wrong love, reaching out a hand.

And I sit here and I know that none of this is happening.

I know that he is still watching the television with his feet on the table, I know that she is already talking on the telephone, that she will not mention what I have just said.

I listen to the answerphone message from Sarah, and I think about calling her back.

I realise how pleased I am that she’s called me for a reason, not just because it’s been a long time and she thinks she should.

I wonder what she means by met somebody, who it is, why she wants to tell me.

Perhaps I can tell her my news in return, now that I’ve spoken the words aloud, now that it’s a reality outside myself, perhaps now it can just get easier and easier.

I could just drop it into the conversation, like exciting news, like by the way guess what I’m pregnant I’m having a baby.

We could talk about baby clothes and cute names, meet up and go browsing round Mothercare, pretend that there was nothing strange or frightening happening at all.

She could wind me up about childbirth, make jokes about gas and epidurals and yelling give me some fucking morphine.

Except that she couldn’t because she doesn’t know anything about it, not really, not anything more than she’s seen on television, not anything more than I do.

But I thought my mother would know what to say, and she didn’t, she didn’t say anything.

She’s never said anything to me, not really, not when it mattered.

Our conversations always seemed to be functional, brief discussions about how something was to be arranged, a passing enquiry about a state of health.

She never told me things about her life, what was happening at work, who she saw at the shops, stories about her growing up and meeting my dad and moving down south.

It surprises me now that I took it for granted, knowing so little about her, knowing so little about her family and where she came from.

And she didn’t ask me questions either, she never used to ask where I was going, or who I was going with, or what time I was coming back, and if I mentioned it to my friends they’d say I was lucky but I wasn’t so sure.

She never asked me how my schoolwork was going, not even when I was steamed up in the thick of exams, she seemed to take it for granted that I went out in the morning and came back in the afternoon and that was all there was to it.

I asked her once, sarcastic and spiteful, I said how about you mum, how did you get on at school, how did your exams go, did you do enough revision, did your mum help you?

And my dad said that’s enough now, leave it now, turning to look at me, reaching a hand out to meet my mother.

That was all he’d needed to say, he only spoke like that occasionally and when he did I knew that I had done something very wrong and it was time to leave the room.

And I think about the question my mother didn’t ask.

Do you know who the?

I imagine her asking it just like that, hesitating, unable to say the word, leaving the sentence unfinished.

I don’t know what I would have said if she had asked, I don’t know if I want her to know who it was.

Or perhaps it’s more that I don’t want to acknowledge his part in it, to give him a role by giving him a name.

I think about him, and I think about the word father, and it feels like the wrong word to use.

He was there, and what happened turned into what there is now, but there is nothing between us, there is nothing between him and what is inside me.

He was there, and that is all, and I don’t feel as though I should give him the place of father for that.

I wonder what he would think, if he knew.

Upstairs at number twenty, in the kitchen, the old man is looking for his hat, he’s talking over his shoulder to his wife, he’s saying I’m sure I left it on the side have you seen it, he can’t hear her reply so he raises his voice, calling through to wherever she is, the bedroom, the bathroom.

She says I’ve got it right here, and he turns and she’s holding his hat out to him.

She says there’s no need to shout, and they catch each other’s eyes, the day she first said those words to him flashing clear again in both their minds.

The day he’d come back to her, a husband to his wife, the rain had fallen from the sky like it was God’s own washday. His kitbag was sodden and heavy, his uniform chafing wetly against his skin. The water streamed off his hair, sending thick dribbles of grease down the back of his neck, and his cigarette hung smokelessly from his lips. All the way home he’d been thinking about comfort and warmth, a pot of tea by the fire, a hot bath, a night’s sleep in sheets and blankets, but when he’d turned the last corner into this street he could only stand and look.

He’d looked at the houses, their front-room curtains all drawn and their doors all closed. He’d looked at the gardens, their small hedges all neatly trimmed, their rows of vegetables and herbs all protected from the birds by pegged lines of string. He’d seen a furl of faded bunting tangled in the top branches of the tree opposite his house, a car parked outside number seven, the railings all cut down to stumps. But there’d been no people in the street. There’d not been a crowd of cheering children waiting to meet him, waving Union Jacks and jostling round him while he handed out sweets and stockings and gum. That was not the way it was. People had not been leaning out of windows to welcome him home. There was not even a brass band marching down the middle of the street with a fat man playing a rousing tuba.