Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Ali is looming up above the camera, a man on top of the world, saying I wrestled with the alligators.

I look at the lines on my father’s face, my daddy’s face, each one carved out by the long passing of a year, and I think about how little I’ve known all this time.

I want to run my thumbs across his face and smooth those creases away.

Muhammad Ali dances on the tips of his toes, saying I’m so quick I make medicine sick, the two dozen cameras and microphones around him laughing and drinking him in, calling his name.

My father, the strongman, holding my mother up all those years.

I want to go to him and hold him like a baby.

I sit on the sofa and listen to my mother moving around in the kitchen.

I hear her going up the stairs, slowly.

He opens the front door, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache who lives downstairs at number twenty, he touches a hand to his bow-tie and he steps out into the middle of the day. He glances up and down the street, he sees a ladder propped up against the wall of number twenty-five, he sees a young girl with a ribbon balancing on the wall opposite, he sees the twins arguing about whose turn it is to bat. He looks higher, he sees a construction crane hanging over rooftops a few streets away, his heart bangs a little harder but he smiles and sets off in that direction.

He remembers what they’d said, at the club, when he’d first put his name down for this, are you sure they’d said, at your age they’d said. He’d smiled then, pointed at the heading on the sheet, what does that say he’d asked the young lady trying to dissuade him, and she’d read it out for him, as though his eyesight was poor, it says Veterans and Widows Benevolent Fund she said. Well then he said to her, I am not a veteran, I was too young to be a veteran, so do not be saying this a man of my age, I am too young for you to be saying this to me he told her. These people, he said, his finger jabbing at the word veterans, these people did everything for me, and for you, don’t forget this. She had been quiet by this stage, embarrassed, and he’d felt bad for her. This, he said, this is the least I can do, this I can do with my eyes closed. And he’d paused, looked around, picked up his drink, and said I bloody will have my eyes closed for certain, and everyone in the club laughed and the young lady had looked at him and smiled.

He chuckles now, remembering it, pleased with himself, and he walks down the street, past two girls drinking tea and reading magazines, past a boy scrubbing his shoes, past a house with all the curtains closed still, turning right at the end of the street and then he is gone and nobody notices him leaving.

Outside number seventeen, they are sitting on the wall and eating chocolate doughnuts, they are talking with their mouths full, the boy with the pierced eyebrow is saying and I don’t think anyone really believed in this thing, that was the problem, no one believed in it. He says I know I didn’t, or any of the other sellers, or the managers or the printers or even the pilots who go around taking the pictures.

A girl with a yellow ribbon trails past them and pushes open the door of number nineteen. She stops in her hallway for a moment to outline a pattern on the wallpaper with her fingers, and then she drifts into the front room. Her parents and grandparents are all sitting there, watching the television, John says there is a small band of low pressure sweeping northwards this afternoon and nobody in the room is speaking. The girl’s mother looks up, she speaks quietly so as not to disturb the others, she says love why don’t you go and play with your brothers? and the girl says they’re playing cricket they won’t let me play they say girls can’t play and as she talks she is backing out of the room. Her mother says tell them they are wrong, tell them I say you can play, and the girl drifts out of the room, her ribbon trailing behind her like the wake of a boat.

Outside, she looks at her brothers playing cricket, she looks away and she walks straight past them. The tall girl on the wall next door sees her and says hello but the young girl pretends not to hear.

The tall girl is looking at her eyes in a silver pocket mirror. They are watery, greasy-looking, and the skin around them, without the glitter now, is swollen and grey. She dabs cream onto the skin with her little finger and rubs it in, wincing. She puts the mirror down on the wall beside her. It’s engraved with the name of a women’s magazine. She picks up a pipette of eyedrops and leans her head back into the sun.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow says and the worst bit was each evening we had to boast about how many people we’d sold to that day, they did this thing where we all stood in a room and played a different musical instrument depending on our numbers. The other boy reappears in the doorway behind them, doing up the buttons on a freshly ironed shirt.

What’s he talking about he says to the girl, his job she says without turning around or sounding very interested.

Outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair is saying you’ve got to use something else, the charcoal’s not getting a chance to catch, try some lighter fluid or something, and he presses down on the lighter tab, he sprays a thin drizzle of fluid over the coals and the singed newspaper. The boy with the yellow sunglasses says that’ll do that’s enough try that, and he lights it and flinches back as a halo of soft blue flame wraps suddenly and briefly around the cold coals.

In the doorway of number seventeen, the boy with the white shirt unrolls a navy-blue tie and slings it around his neck. The tall girl says yeah well at least you got to work outside, I’ve been stuck inside all summer, and the eyebrow boy looks at her and says what were you doing anyway?

She tips her head back and drops another splash into her eye, and she says I’ve been ripping free gifts off magazines. He looks at her.

She blinks rapidly and lowers her head, I’ve been sat in a room without windows she says, ripping the free gifts off magazines so they can be recycled. The boy with the pierced eyebrow looks at her and doesn’t say anything.

The boy in the white shirt does up his tie and says have you seen my black shoes to the girl.

No she says, and she turns and she says your tie’s not straight.

The eyebrow boy turns round and says where are you going dressed up like that and the smart boy says new job, telephone helpline at a mortgage company.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow slaps the palm of one hand with the back of the other and makes a loud noise in the back of his throat. He says, for fucksake, didn’t our parents used to make stuff for a living?

On the front step of number twenty-two, the girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses is watching the boy from number twenty-four cleaning his trainers. He is sitting on his front step, his hands wrestling in a bowl of hot soapy water, thrashing around as though the shoe were trying to escape, she wonders why he’s so keen to get them clean, she watches the soap bubbles sparkling in the air like a flung handful of crushed glass.

Across the road, outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair and the grazes is watching the other boy put together another careful pyramid of paper and sticks and charcoal, shielding it with his hands as he lights it. He says what’s with the yellow glasses anyway, where’d you get them from? and the other boy takes them off and looks at them, help the aged or something he says, try them on. He puts them on, the boy with the big hair and the grazes, and the other boy says the woman in the shop said they used to give them to mental patients, like to cheer them up or something. The boy with the big hair looks around at the street, grinning, everything gone a strange saturated yellow. He takes them off and hands them back, he says well mad and he rubs his eyes as if to get rid of any leftover tint. They both turn back to the barbecue just as the pyramid of paper and sticks stops smouldering again, and the boy with the big hair and the grazes says fuck this I’m going down the shop to get some fire-lighters or something. The other boy says no hold on hold on, but when he turns round the big-haired boy has already picked up his skateboard and stepped it onto the pavement. He watches as he kicks up some speed, bending his knees as the wheels knock over the uneven slabs, holding his hands out slightly and, as he passes number seventeen, leaning the board towards the road, shifting his weight suddenly, pushing down with his back foot.