Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

She said it was that nervous guy’s brother, you know the guy at number eighteen who always blinked a lot, didn’t say much to anyone, it was his brother.

I don’t know what he was doing there she said, I think Jamie knew him or something but he was dead nice.

She said he wanted to get your number off me, he’s heard a lot about you from his brother apparently.

He’s really nice she said, I think you should meet him, his name’s Michael.

So I said okay, without really thinking about it, and she said she’d phone him up and give him my number.

And he phoned me about half past four, very politely, and said he hoped I didn’t mind him doing this or think he was strange but he was interested to meet me.

I said no, not at all, no.

He suggested a pub, and a time, and he said you’ll know who I am I look like my brother.

I didn’t spend much time getting ready.

I ate something out of the microwave, I put on some clothes that didn’t smell of photocopy ink, I switched the answerphone on.

I kept wanting to change my mind, but I didn’t have his number and it seemed rude to just not turn up.

So I went, and I met him, and we bought drinks and started to talk.

And he was very easy to talk to, and we talked a lot.

We said so where do you live, and what do you do, and where did you live before, and how did you get here tonight.

We talked about people we knew and didn’t know, piecing together our connections like genealogists.

It was tenuous, there was Jamie who used to live with Rob with the skateboard, and as of a few days ago there was Sarah.

And there was his brother, although I didn’t really know him at all.

I started to feel relaxed, the way sometimes a new person in an unfamiliar pub can make you feel, with the loud music and the smell of beer and cigarette smoke.

I said I thought it was a strange thing to do, to come and meet him like this, but that I was glad I had.

He said he’d been worried about calling me, but more worried about not calling me, and did that make any sense?

I thought about all the people I haven’t called or written or spoken to and I said yes it makes a lot of sense.

I said but what made you want to get in touch in the first place, why now?

He said oh no it wasn’t deliberate I didn’t come looking, it was just a chance thing he said, meeting Sarah at the party and her saying she knew you.

He said my brother told me a lot about you it made me curious, and I said oh nothing bad I hope.

He told me his brother had gone away travelling somewhere, and I said by the way you really do look very much like him.

He said I should think so too we’re twins and I said oh I didn’t realise.

He said what so he didn’t ever tell you about me? and he seemed surprised.

I said well no I didn’t really talk to him that much, I didn’t know him that well really.

I mean he’s quite shy isn’t he I said.

He put his drink down when I said this, a little too hard and some of the beer sloshed to the top of the glass and out onto the table.

He said, well, he can be quiet, sometimes, it depends.

I wasn’t sure what he meant, I carried on talking, I said I saw him around quite a bit but it’s just he wasn’t on my course or anything.

It felt as though I was trying to justify myself and I wasn’t sure why.

He said, well, that’s a shame, I think you would have enjoyed talking to him, he’s interesting, he would have had a lot to say.

He said, he wanted to talk to you.

And then he looked at me and said I should tell you something, can I tell you something.

He said my brother, he was in love with you.

I said, oh, really?

I said how do you know?

He said he told me, he said I knew it anyway.

He lifted his glass to his face and said and I can see why just before the beer reached his mouth.

He moved his eyes around the room, as though he was looking for someone.

He wiped the froth from his top lip with the back of his hand.

I drew circles in spilt lemonade, I looked at him.

I said but I don’t know him, I said I didn’t even know his name.

He didn’t say anything, he looked straight at me and I wasn’t sure if he’d heard me.

The pub was quite noisy by then, a jukebox and a fruit machine and a hundred people gulping down pints and raising their voices to each other.

I started to repeat myself, louder, but he shook his head and said no hold on you lived in the same street.

He said you lived a few doors away, you saw him nearly every day, you knew lots of things about him.

He said you noticed if he got his hair cut, you had opinions about his clothes, you knew he couldn’t catch a cricket ball, you knew he lived on his own, if you saw him in the street you knew him enough to say hello.

He said these things loudly, scratching the back of his hand, and they were all true, and he drank more beer and held up his hands and raised his eyebrows.

He said and you didn’t know him?

You didn’t even know his name?

He went to the toilet after that, and when he came back it was as if he hadn’t said anything, the conversation moved on and he stopped scratching the back of his hand.

We talked about work, about unfulfilling jobs and not knowing what to do about it.

We talked comfortably, way past last orders and I found myself wishing I’d tidied the flat.

Even briefly trying to remember if I was wearing decent underwear.

I could see why Sarah had thought I should meet him, he was interesting and he was funny and he was really quite nice to look at.

He had nice hands, and pretty eyes, and he didn’t turn away when I looked at him.

I couldn’t understand why, since they were twins, I’d never really noticed his brother that way.

And I couldn’t understand how his brother could have claimed to have felt like that about me.

I asked him about it, I said what did your brother tell you about me, but the barstaff were hustling us out and he didn’t hear me.

And now, in the slow grey light of the morning, I am looking at him and thinking about it some more, about what he said.

He is so remarkably similar-looking, it feels as though I’m seeing a ghost.

He has the same thinness of hair around the temples, the same curved fold of skin beneath each eye.

I wonder if his brother ever imagined this moment, my pausing over his closed body and examining its lines and tones and folds.

I think about the few times I spoke to his brother, about how little I can remember of those occasions.

I wonder what his brother would say if he knew he was here now.

I remember the edge in his voice last night when he asked how I didn’t even know his brother’s name.

I put the mug of tea on the floor beside the sofa and turn back towards my room.

I put my hand to my belly and imagine feeling something, a faint shift, a nudge.

The upstairs flat at number twenty is empty for now, the husband and wife gone for their day of quiet celebration, the bed neatly made and the breakfast things stacked in the draining rack. It’s a small flat, ordered and tidy, wingbacked armchairs in the living room arranged to suit the television, a welsh dresser in the kitchen parading unused fine china, the bed in the bedroom wrapped in eiderdown. In the kitchen, on the formica-topped wooden table, there are two cards, propped up against the salt and pepper mills like telegraph boys leaning against postboxes. The cards are similar, both cream with gold lettering, both depicting a bouquet of flowers, roses on one, carnations on the other. Happy Anniversary they both say, with all my love. One of them says darling inside, the other says sweetheart. On both of them the handwriting is awkward and scratched, as though written on a moving surface, a table with uneven legs, the dashboard of a cornering car.