Jon McGregor - If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

He says, there’s something I have to tell you.

And before the young man from number eighteen gets there, the car hits the child.

There’s a thudding sound, like a car-boot being slammed down on somebody’s hand.

The boy’s legs flip up from under him and he is lifted into the air like the bails of a cricket stump, turning a half-circle across the bonnet and slamming sideways into the car windscreen. There is barely any sound at all, a wineglass breaking on a carpeted floor, a snail snapped under a slippered foot.

The tennis ball pops out of the boy’s hand and arcs high over the car, bouncing on the pavement three times and rolling back onto the road.

The windscreen crackles, a spiral spiderweb splintering across its surface without breaking.

The car stops, and the boy rewinds across the bonnet and falls face first onto the road.

And in the moment his body presses against the tarmac, the young man from number eighteen is there, he is a footstep away and he feels the boy brush past his outstretched hands, he feels the damp stretch of his t-shirt and the smooth stroke of his cheek.

He was not quick enough. He almost caught him but he was not quick enough.

He looks down at the boy, he kneels down beside him and he looks, he is breathing hard and his hands are shaking over the boy’s body. He is afraid to touch him. He has no idea what to do. He says hello can you hear me.

He says oh shit oh fuck oh my God.

There is a thunder of footsteps around him, somebody says is he alright and he says I don’t know I don’t know, people are crouching and kneeling around the boy, somebody says help me turn him over and two pairs of hands slide under his body and roll him over onto his back.

He almost looks undamaged, his eyes closed, his head turned gently against his shoulder. But there is blood, seeping from a long graze down the left side of his face, the skin torn from the top of his forehead down to the sallow of his cheek. And there is blood gathering cloudily between his eyebrow and his ear, swelling beneath the skin like a clenched fist. And there is a little too much stillness about him, lying in the road, watched over by people who don’t know what they can do.

Nearby, a few streets away and a few dozen feet in the air, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache from number twenty can see what has happened, he is falling to earth again and there is nothing he can do about what he can see. He rises and falls, rises and falls a little less, and the assistants take hold of him, undoing the ties and lowering his stiffened body to the ground, he looks at them and he opens his mouth but he cannot speak.

A young woman from number twenty-four runs to the middle of the street, she has coloured ink on her hands from drawing diagrams all afternoon, she says let me see, I’m a medical, I mean, let me see, and she kneels beside the boy and pulls her long hair aside to lay her ear against his chest.

They look at her, the people around the boy, they wait.

The young man from number eighteen looks at her, blinking, he was not quick enough and he did not know what to do.

She brings her head up and sinks two fingers into the boy’s mouth, she takes her fingers out and squeezes his nose and presses her mouth to his.

There are more footsteps and somebody says there’s an ambulance on the way.

The younger twin is standing behind the crowd of people, looking through the gaps, twining his fingers into one another. His mouth is moving, but he is absolutely silent. Tears are spilling from the rims of his eyes.

The young man in the car has not moved, he cannot move, his foot is still stiff against the brake pedal, his face is turned to one side as if from a sudden impact and his eyes are closed. He is barely breathing, small gasps are rushing in and out of his mouth, struggling to reach his lungs. His hands are still wrapped around the steering wheel, his arms locked out straight, pushing away. He cannot move, he cannot look at what has happened.

The young woman from number twenty-four kneels over the boy, her mouth pressed to his mouth.

And the young man from number eighteen, the first to arrive, he is the first to leave, he is backing away with his hand knotted into his hair, he is looking but he doesn’t want to look. He stands in his doorway and he feels a kind of breathless pain right across his body, a revulsion, a tight numbness spread across his chest and his arms and he turns away.

She lifts her head from the boy’s mouth, she clamps her hands together and pistons them into his chest. The people around them are quiet, awkward, shocked.

The man doing the painting is walking towards the closed front door of number nineteen, he still has a paintbrush in one hand, there is a trail of pale blue drips on the pavement behind him, he is looking at the crowd of people and he is looking at the closed front door.

She says, God, how long is that ambulance going to be, and people look down to the main road and don’t say anything.

The man with the paintbrush knocks on the only closed door in the street, he waits, he pulls at his long beard, he knocks again and when the door opens he very quietly says I think you should come and see.

And this is the point at which faces turn away, in embarrassment or pain, as a mother runs wailing across a street, as an ambulance is heard in the distance, as a father stands beating himself around the head, a mutely screaming son clinging to his knee.

The old woman in number twenty turns away, she has been standing by her window with her husband, watching, he is standing tall with one arm around her and the other gripping the windowsill. She is hunched over, turned into his chest, looking up at him, mouthing something like oh lord oh lord oh that poor poor boy oh lord over and over. He turns and guides her away from the window, he lays both hands on her shoulders, protectively.

The young man in number eighteen turns away, he can hardly breathe, he stumbles onto his sofa and tips his face to the ceiling. There is a feeling like a rope circled around his chest, I was not quick enough is all he is thinking, I was not quick enough and the thought clamps down upon him like a vice.

The man with the burnt hands turns away, he turns to the boy’s father and takes hold of his wrists, pulls them away from his head. It hurts him to do so, violently, the strain of gripping is pulling and cracking his scarred skin, but he does this, he pulls the man’s hands to his side and looks him in the eye and says, enough, now, this is no good, your boy. And the man straightens his distorted face, looks down to his son, picks him up and whispers hushush it is okay.

His daughter stands at her window, not watching. She has taken another ribbon and wound it around her face, across her eyes, there is smooth silk where her eyes might be, she is perfectly still.

And the ambulance arrives, and the paramedic crouches over the boy, his fluorescent jacket rustles and squeaks, he puts down a plastic case like a box of tools, he presses two fingers against the boy’s neck. What’s his name love he says to the boy’s mother. His name is Shahid she says, and the paramedic starts repeating it, shining a light into the dying boy’s eyes, hello Shahid, Shahid can you hear me, hello Shahid?

And behind him, watching, his mother is murmuring his name as well. Shahid, his name is Shahid. His name is Shahid Mohammed Nawaz. His name is Shahid.

There are faces at windows up and down the street, faces in frames like portraits in a gallery. The man with the tattoo, the boyfriend of the woman with the henna-red hair, stretching his head from the high window, a jarful of petals in one hand. The architect boy at number eleven, a pen behind his ear and another clamped between his teeth, his fists stacked on top of each other and holding up his chin like a greek column. The girl and the boy at number twenty-seven, naked, a duvet held up across their chests like a beach-towel, squashed together in the small square of the window, their skin creased from being so long in bed and their hands covering their mouths.