Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

The father doesn’t say anything for a moment, he looks at him and then he throws the water from his glass into the young man’s face.

Bastard! he says, loudly and crisply, and he turns and walks back to his own house. His son drags his tricycle into a U-turn and follows him, and the twins in the middle of the road yell and laugh and point.

The young man watches them, he wipes his face with his hand and he is unable to speak, he closes the window and walks through to the back bedroom, trying to remember something.

He lies down on the floor beside the tall thin girl and squeezes back in under the duvet. She looks at him and raises one of her sleepy eyebrows, still speckled with sparkles. She makes him feel better before she even speaks. She says who was that? A man with a beard he says. He called me a bastard and threw a glass of water in my face he says, and his eyes are weighting themselves closed and he’s falling asleep already. She says oh, and she tries to speak some more but she can’t remember what they were talking about.

What did you say? asks one of the girls on the bed, but no one answers and she closes her eyes again and she hears shouting from outside somewhere.

In his attic room, the young man with the thick black hair is counting his money again, fanning it out in his hand like a winning set of cards, lining the notes up so all the queens’ heads face the same way, holding it up to his face to smell the grubby paper odour of it. The sweet smell of a thousand pounds. He looks out at the street, at his father cleaning his car, he imagines his reaction later this afternoon, the way he’ll circle around it, unfolding a white handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing at his face, folding the handkerchief and saying what is this I don’t believe it.

He looks up the street, listening for the thump of a car stereo, he imagines his father saying I didn’t know, I could have helped you, saying you only had to ask.

He smiles to himself. His father doesn’t even know he’s passed his test. He tucks the cash back into his wallet, stuffs the wallet back into the pocket of his trousers and checks himself in the mirror. He hears more shouting outside, the shrieks of the twins, he smooths his hair and thinks daddy you going to be proud of me today, believe. He kisses his fist and runs downstairs.

In the street, the twins are still cheering and laughing, running up and down the street as if they’ve just hit a winning six against England, singing bastard bastard to each other, the older twin swinging the bat around his head like a club.

Hey careful with that one mate says a loud voice, you’ll take someone’s head out, innit, and the boy turns around and sees the young man from number twelve striding towards him, grinning, reaching out to snatch the bat away, his thick black hair gelled neatly into place. I’ll be Imran Khan he says, no I’m Imran Khan says the older twin, no I’m Imran Khan says the youngest. I’ll be Imran Khan says the young man again, and you can bowl and you can go wickie he says and he points at each of the twins.

The younger twin takes the balding tennis ball and trots away down the street. I’m Akram he shouts over his shoulder, and he stops and he turns and he throws the ball from hand to hand.

Head down, he begins his run-up.

His brother crouches behind the milk-crate wickets, ready to pounce onto the clipped ball and make a heroic catch.

Wasim Akram leaps and flings his arm over his shoulder, his whole body arching towards the wicket, a shout of exertion crashing out of him.

The ball loops gently through the air and bounces in front of Imran Khan, who steps forward and smashes it back, over the turning head of Akram and towards the main road. Howzaaay! he shouts, six! and the younger of the twins trots away after the ball, running out in front of a bus and sliding under a parked car to retrieve it.

You’re out if it goes on the road says the wicketkeeper, reaching for the bat, and you don’t get the six, give us the bat, and the young man lifts it out of his reach. No you’re not he says, you go and bowl now, and he lifts the bat higher as the boy jumps up for it.

The young man’s father is washing his car outside their house, he looks up, and as he dips a sponge into a bucket of warm soapy water he calls eh go easy on the fellow now. The young man looks up at his father and lowers the bat, laughing, saying I’m only joking, taking the ball from the younger twin and saying but I’m still Imran Khan.

His father watches and squeezes soap and water over the already shining roof of his car. He whistles a song from a movie, and as he stretches to reach the far side of the roof his shirt drapes into the suds and soaks up the warm water. He stands back, and the bubbles blister and fizz and pop like glittered skin in a nightclub.

The daughter of the man with the burnt hands, sitting on the doorstep of number sixteen, she watches as the man throws a bucket of clean water over the car. She watches the water skidding across the roof, chasing the dirty soap, swimming down the windows and tipping into the road. She watches the boy with the thick black hair bowling to one of the twins, the twin hitting at the ball and the ball lofting towards number eighteen.

Catchaaaay! shout all three cricketers, Imran and Akram and Younis, and the boy with the bloodshot eyes sitting on his front step looks up, clapping his hands around warm air as the ball lumps past his head. He turns to pick it up, and he knocks it out of reach. He stands to move after it, and he kicks it by mistake, he picks it up and throws it and it doesn’t quite reach any of the cricketers. Thanks mate says the oldest of them, and as he turns to the twins he pushes his tongue into his lower lip and crosses his eyes and they giggle and copy him.

The boy with the bloodshot eyes sits down again with his paper and pen. He is writing a letter to his brother, he writes last week I saw her loading up a car with stuff as if she was leaving, boxes and bags and even a standard lamp, and I was sick with disappointment but then it turned out it was her mate leaving. He thinks, and he writes I still want to talk to her properly, before I change house, I want to see if well you know, and he draws a row of dots and he writes but I guess if her mate’s left then she’s probably moving out and today’s the last day of the month and so I’ve missed my chance. He rubs his eyes, blinks painfully, writes I just don’t know what to say and I know it’s pathetic but I don’t, and he looks up and realises the twins are still laughing at him so he picks up the letter and retreats into his house.

A car appears from the other end of the street and hoots at the milk crates, a car with tinted windows and gleaming hubcaps, a car with loud music padooming from inside. The oldest boy raises his hand and throws the ball back to the twins, he walks to the car and clasps the hands of each of the occupants in turn. He calls goodbye to his father, but his father is walking towards him and so his friends climb out and each clasp his father’s hand, saying yes my father is well yes my mother is well, thankyou yes, allahu akbar, and then all four of them climb into the car and the father watches them drive towards the main road, he watches a brief flare of flame illuminating his son as a long cigarette is lit behind the darkened glass.

Upstairs at number twenty-four, a girl sits at her desk and watches the car drive past, she thinks she recognises the boy who just got into it, the boy who was playing cricket, she thinks she’s spoken to him but she can’t think when. She watches the car turn onto the main road, she watches the twins go back to their game, she looks at the old man opposite painting his windowframes, she looks higher and sees a crane lifted high over the rooftops, she wonders what they’re building over there now, she screws up her eyes and turns back to the work on her desk. She knows it was a mistake to put the desk under the window, it’s good for the light but there is so much to look at outside, there are so many distractions and she doesn’t have time for distractions. She opens another textbook, she takes the lids off a trio of felt-tip pens, and she draws another diagram, a delicate weave of veins and nerve endings and cell structures, she annotates and underlines and struggles to understand.