Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

We can all wait. Here in this room. Sitting and standing and leaning against the wall. In this cold dark room. And it’s easier to think of him, now. His body in a bag.

We’re used to it already, what’s happened to him. What’s happened to us.

Get used to anything, after a while. The mind adapts, quicker than the body does. Even when the body can’t.

See here, where the skin has fallen away.

See, here, where the maggots have eaten his flesh.

Get used to insects though, living like this. Flies, bedbugs, maggots, lice. All sorts.

Like when that bloke at the day centre went to see the chiropodist, and warned her that he hadn’t taken his boots off for six months, and it turned out he had trench foot so bad there were things crawling around in his toes.

Jesus. Give that girl a medal.

Cut his socks off and all bits and pieces came with them, skin and rotten flesh and everything, and she never said a word.

What was his name. Didn’t see him around too much after that. Maybe he ended up behind one of the doors in here. And who would know if he did.

Steve went to see the same chiropodist once, as it happens. Sat and waited and when it was his turn he took off his boots and socks and stretched out his feet for her. One thing the army taught him was how to look after his feet, and he always made sure he had a pair of dry socks to be going on with, always aired his boots at night if he could. Some things, when you’ve been doing them every day for years, you get stuck doing them no matter how drunk you are.

Nothing wrong with these feet, the chiropodist told him, cupping one in each hand and running her thumbs along the tendons and joints. You must be doing something right, she said, smiling.

Didn’t forget that one. Things like that stick with you, even with all the gaps. Things like then she washed and dried his feet, and cut his toenails, and rubbed away the hardened lumps of skin with a pumice stone before giving him a new pair of socks and asking him to send the next one in. Most people going out of their way not to touch you all day, to not hardly brush up against you or even catch your eye or anything. And then that. Washing and drying and holding his feet, one in each hand. Things like that stick with you, on the whole. Could sit and wait all day for a thing like that.

Watching Ant stirring away at the mess in the spoon and remembering all this. Waiting.

Same with the hairdressers, when they go running their fingers through your hair. Same with the nurses, changing your dressings or taking your blood pressure or listening to the crackling in your lungs, they got to touch you with their clean soft hands and no one says nothing about it but it all helps oh Christ but it helps.

Same with having a dig. When someone else does it, and even the most cack-handed old smackhead does it slow and tender and gentle like. Like a gift. Like rubbing at your skin till the vein comes up, easing the needle in, slowly pushing home the gear. Like in a war film when someone lifts a drink to the lips of a wounded and dying soldier, cradling his head in one hand and letting the cold water trickle into the desperate mouth.

Wait all day for that.

Can’t wait another minute.

Like Ben in the cells that night, couldn’t wait but he had to. Doing his rattle. Doing his nut in. Ringing the alarm and going Please I’m sorry can you get me a doctor, can you get me a script? I just really need something to hold me until I get out, please, sergeant?

The way he talks, when he’s asking for things like that. All Excuse me, sorry, please. I’m sorry to trouble you. If I could just take a moment of your time. With this look on his face like, what, beseeching. Fucking beseeching. Wringing his hands and all that. Like he’s still a little boy, which he near enough is, which he looks like near enough. With his big brown eyes and his long eyelashes and his matted brown hair falling over his face, looking up at people and wringing his hands together like he was going for a part in a musical or something, like Pardon me sir and all that bollocks.

Usually works for him but. Looks even younger than he is and people go for that. Young enough to give him a chance, they must think. Like he can still better himself or something. Pardon me sir. If you could just.

Usually works for him but not that night. Custody sergeant weren’t interested. Told him to sweat it out. Which meant he didn’t know fuck all about withdrawing. Or it meant he knew exactly all about it, and he thought Ben rattling through the night like that was some kind of what some kind of joke.

Lying on his mattress in the cell. Curling up, straightening out, standing up, sitting down. Squatting right down and lying on the floor. Can’t keep still when it’s on you like that. Can’t get comfortable. Pretty fucking hard to bear. Pretty fucking, unbearable.

And Steve lying on his mattress in that room above the burnt-out shop. Waiting for Ant to finish whatever he had to do to get the stuff ready. Still thinking about that last bust-up he’d had with Robert, and what he was going to do about it, and wondering what Robert was doing now. Remembering the first time Robert had kicked him out of the flat, after he’d crashed out in Laura’s old bedroom and pissed himself in her bed. All the wrecking Robert had done in that flat but he’d kept Laura’s room more or less intact and now Steve had gone and done that. What had he been thinking. Weren’t nothing he could do to make up for that. Kicked him out and didn’t see him again for years. What was it, years.

Nothing new about being kicked out though, as it happens. He’d been kicked out of school, and kicked out of the army, and kicked out of his parents’ house when he went to live with them after his discharge. They’d put up with him for a month, put up with him lying in bed and staring out the window and blubbing when they asked him what he was going to do with himself now, only he’d taken the drinking too far a few times and broken a few things and made a bit of a mess once or twice. So they’d changed the locks, and told him to leave, to go and get himself sorted out somewhere. Said it was for his own good. So he’d stood outside and waited for them to see sense. In the picturesque Dorset rain. Waited a day and night while he heard his mother saying maybe they should give him one more chance and his father saying No that boy has got to learn. Took four coppers to arrest him, when they turned up.

Told Robert about all this when they started drinking together. Told Ant soon after they met.

Could have been stood there for months if the police hadn’t turned up. Him and his father were both as stubborn as each other. About the only thing they had in common, more or less.

Told just about everyone that story, over the years. Makes out like he don’t like being with people, but he’s always happy to talk once he’s had a drink. Like a one-man self-help group. The fucking, what is it, the talking cure. Don’t seem to have worked as yet.

Who wants to open the discussion.

Who’s got something they feel they can share.

Like Ben, in one of those groups one time, on a court order, and without even thinking he asked the facilitator if she could facilitate his arse. Already standing up because he thought that would get him thrown out. Everyone laughing. The woman smiling and going You can sit down I don’t think we’re finished yet. Going Are you scared of saying anything serious, Ben? It’s all right to be scared if you are, but there’s no need to be. This should be a safe space. Nothing gets repeated beyond these walls.

Ben sitting down and going No mate I aint scared.

The woman sitting there smiling and going That’s great then, why don’t you get us started today? Why don’t you tell us about, I don’t know, one happy memory you can remember from your childhood?