Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Outside, on the front step of number twenty-two, the two girls are watching a pigeon flying up the street, a leaf in its beak. They’ve been watching it for a while, arguing about it. They’ve noticed that whenever it comes back it’s not carrying anything, but when it flies up towards the shop it has something crammed in its beak, a leaf, a twig, a piece of string.

The girl with the glasses is saying it must be building a nest, what else would it be doing, and the girl who’s still wearing her tartan pyjamas says but surely they’re supposed to lay their eggs in the springtime it’s about six months late to be building a nest.

Maybe it’s confused says the girl with the glasses and the short hair, maybe it’s overslept its hibernation, and the other girl says I don’t think pigeons hibernate do they? and goes into the house to make a cup of tea and a phonecall.

The girl with the glasses watches the pigeon, she tugs gently at her short hair, pulling it into place, she notices for the first time how graceful the pigeon looks, head stretched forward, feet tucked in under a curved belly, wings carefully angled to catch the breeze.

Across the road, at number twenty-three, a young man with a lot of hair and grazes down both arms is arguing with a young man wearing yellow sunglasses, he’s saying we need fire-lighters it’ll never get going without fire-lighters. The yellow-sunglasses boy is screwing up pieces of newspaper and dropping them into a rusted metal tray propped up on bricks, he is covering the newspaper with bits of grass and twig, he’s saying no it’ll be alright, wait up it’ll be fine, he nestles a few lumps of black charcoal into the pile of paper and sticks and he lights a corner of the newspaper. Watch this he says, and they peer at the small curl of flame, the paper blackening, smoke twisting off, steam wisping from the ends of the grass.

A twig smokes and crackles, pieces of burnt paper char and break away, the smoke thickens and spirals upwards, wafting up towards the first-floor window, buckling and turning, lifting higher, a catch of it dropping in through the attic window next door, the man with the tattoo smelling a glimpse of it and sitting up in bed to look around, the rest of it drifting further still, breaking and thinning and vanishing somewhere high above the quiet street.

He changes gear.

He says don’t you ever wonder about him?

I say who, he says that guy, in Scotland, don’t you ever wonder?

I say well no, not really.

I think about it, about him and that night, and an image passes through my mind, all skin and teeth and hands, snagging my stomach like a dress caught in a door, closing my eyes.

I imagine knocking on his door, taking that long walk up the steep side of the city and waiting breathlessly outside his house.

I imagine bemusement on his face, delight, embarrassment.

I imagine him standing with one hand on the door and the other on the frame, his body wedged in between, his uncertainty like a pensioner’s doorchain.

I remember the smell of his neck.

I say well no, you know, it was just a thing.

It wasn’t anything else I say, it was just a thing that happened.

He pushes a little button, and soapy water squirts onto the windscreen, some of it catches in the wind and flails off to either side.

He says but did you never want to go back and do it again?

He turns the windscreen wipers on, and they squeak back and forth until the soapy water has cleared.

He says didn’t you wonder what he was thinking about you?

He says and when you found out did you wonder what he might do if you told him?

I look at him.

I say actually can we talk about something else now.

He says sorry, I just, you know, and he fiddles with the air vents in the middle of the dashboard.

He says are you too warm?

I can change the ventilation he says, and he shuffles the sliding control from left to right, clicks another dial around, holds his palm over the vent to feel the air breathing through.

He says it’s just that I’ve never been in that situation, you know, I just wondered, I didn’t mean anything.

I look at him, and his eyes are squeezing and blinking just like his brother’s.

I say what did your brother tell you about me?

He says everything he knew, he says which wasn’t very much I suppose.

He told me what you looked like he says, and what course you were doing, and what clothes you wore.

He says he told me the way you smiled, what your voice sounded like, who you lived with, what flavour crisps you bought when he saw you in the shop, how different you looked when you took your glasses off, what it felt like when you touched his arm.

I say I don’t remember touching his arm.

He says no I didn’t think you would.

We overtake a lorry with its sides rolled back and I look at the fields and the sky through its ribbed frame, there are bales of hay rolled up like slices of carpet, there’s a sprawling V of birds hanging over the horizon.

I don’t know what he means.

He says, my brother, he could, he can be a bit strange sometimes, I say what do you mean.

He says, well, just strange things, like once he sent me a list of all the clothes you’d worn that week, really detailed, colours and fabrics and styles and how they made you look and how you looked as though they made you feel.

He looks at me and says and it wasn’t creepy or anything, he wasn’t being obsessive, it was just, you know, observations.

He was thinking he wanted to buy you a present he says, and he wanted to get it right.

He winds his window down very slightly, and a thin buffet of air blows in across us both.

He sort of collects things as well he says, things he finds in the street, like till receipts and study notes and pages torn from magazines, and one time he took a whole pile of shattered car-window pieces and made a necklace out of them he says.

He said they were urban diamonds he says.

He made a glass case he says, and he mounted a row of used needles he found in an alleyway.

And if he couldn’t take it home he’d take a photo of it he says, he had albums full of stuff.

He says he told me he hated the way everything was ignored and lost and thrown away.

He says he told me he was an archaeologist of the present, and he laughs at this and turns the radio on and I don’t know what to say.

There’s a boy band on, from years ago, singing when will I will I be famous, and I wonder what Craig and Matt and Luke are doing now.

I say, please, what’s your brother’s name?

He doesn’t say anything, he looks over his shoulder, overtakes someone, changes the radio station.

I say he sounds interesting, it’s a shame I didn’t get to talk to him more.

He says but you did, at that party, and he looks at me and a car behind us flares its horn as we drift across into the next lane.

He straightens out and keeps his eyes on the road and says sorry.

I say that’s okay, what do you mean, what party?

He says there was a party you both went to, he told me about it, you spent the evening talking to each other, he walked you home and then you were so drunk you forgot about it.

No I say, no I don’t remember that, and I think and I try and remember, no I say, I really don’t remember.

He doesn’t say anything, he turns the radio up a little and adjusts his seat, he says do you know the way, do you want to look at the map.

I look at the map, I look out of the window and I recognise the landscape, I recognise the way the fields are tipping up towards the first edges of the town, away to the far left, I look at the map again.

I say but I would like to meet him, when he comes back, do you think he’ll want to I say, and he says yes, very quietly, yes I think he would.