Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Did you sleep all right? he asked, coming back into the room.

Yeah, she said. Suppose.

He kept moving from room to room, picking things up, putting them down again, like he thought he should be busy or something. Like he thought there were things he’d forgotten to do. He stood in the kitchen for a long time, out of breath, his hands pressing against the sides of his head, wanting a drink but suddenly for the first time in years not wanting to want a drink. He had no idea what to do. Neither of them did.

First time in years.

She listened to him moving around in the kitchen, and thought again about just getting up and leaving. She could write. They could talk on the phone, if he could get hold of a phone. If he could have got to the phone. Perhaps it was too sudden like this. What had she been thinking.

He drifted back into the room and smiled again, and she noticed how wrecked his teeth were. Half of them were missing altogether, and the rest were cracked, chipped, ground down to stumps, stained black and brown and yellow. It made him look like some kind of street urchin or something. When he tried to smile. It made him look younger, oddly, his great round unblinking face watching her, helplessly. She watched him back.

If I’d known you were coming I’d have tidied up a bit, he said, gesturing around the room and realising before he had a chance to laugh that it wasn’t funny. He sat down again, and reached for a drink.

This is, what. When was this. Long time now.

Penny appeared, struggling out from under a pile of clothes in the corner, a scrap of patchy brown hair with torn ears and a tail the size of Robert’s thumb. She moved across the room like a rabbit, hesitant, almost hopping, stopping to sniff the floor and the air and anything that got in her way. Laura picked her up, holding her in one hand and scratching the top of her head, tickling her ears. Robert watched them both. She’s called Penny, he said. Laura’s smile disappeared, and she put Penny down again. She wiped her hands on her jeans, and folded her arms.

So, how have you been, Dad? she said, her voice brittle with disappointment. How are things? He rested the almost empty can on the floor and looked at her, steadily. Things are going okay thank you Laura, he said. Things are going fine. How about you? How about your mum?

She was gone again by the time Heather got back that afternoon, and Robert didn’t say much about what had happened or where he thought she’d gone. He didn’t say much at all. Give my regards to your mother. What did you expect. If I’d known you were coming.

All the waiting come to an end and his tears all wiped away or something more or less like that.

Things we don’t want to remember but we do.

Can’t block none of it out no more. Not now we’re here, like this.

Like what Ben did that time. When there was that bloke on the leisure-centre steps eating a bag of chips, and some woman going on at him. Who was he. Could have been anyone. Don’t matter now. And this woman giving it all You should have told me where you were, you should have fucking told me. Kept turning away like she’d finished and then turning back to have another go. The bloke just shaking his head and talking all quietly, like he was making an effort to be polite, making an effort to be like reconciliatory or something.

Mike and Danny and Ben all waiting for a delivery by the phoneboxes over the road. Ben going How come you don’t use your mobile Mike, how come we have to get to a phonebox, and Mike looking at him going Aint got no credit pal aint never got no credit.

The woman saying her piece and stamping off down the road, and the bloke calling after her, going Fucking get back here now, the woman telling him to fuck off and the bloke jumping up from the steps, throwing down his chips and chasing her down the road and then this big flock of pigeons swooping down out of nowhere and laying in to the chips, their heads bobbing in and out of the bag and the whole gang of them squabbling over every last greasy scrap.

And then Ben. Fuck. Steaming across the road and into them and they all clapped back up into the air except one slow old bird whose head was too deep in the bag and weren’t paying attention, and Ben booted it across the pavement and crack into the steps where the bloke had been sitting, grabbed it by the wings and swung it over his head and cracked it against the steps again.

Danny and Mike looking at each other. Thinking what was he on, what was this, what was going on. Ben crouching over the pigeon doing, what, something they couldn’t see, something slow and deliberate and they called over to him but he ignored them. And when he stood up he had half the pigeon in each hand. He’d torn it in two and was holding the bits up like a trophy and grinning all over like it was a joke, and Einstein was barking and snapping and running up and down the road. Danny and Mike didn’t say a thing, except when Ben came back over to them Danny told him to fuck off. All blood on his hands and shit. Mike still muttering about it when the kid on the bike turned up with the gear. Tell you what though pal that’s not normal, there’s no way that’s normal.

The cold dark tiles and the deep sinks along the wall. The clock ticking round. The labels on the drawers, names and dates and times. The gloves on the shelves. Hundreds of pairs of gloves, chalk-dry and flabby in their boxes.

Jesus. The whole lot of us here in a circle around him. We need like a facilitator or something. Is there anything you’d like to share with the group. How does that make you feel. What does that make you want to do. How do you think the other people felt in that situation.

Take your time. We can wait. We’ve got all the time we need.

Even Steve got himself mixed up with one of those groups. This was, what, ten years back, longer than that. Don’t matter now. Turned out he was taking it one day at a time before he hardly even knew what was happening. Ended up going dry for a year almost. This was a while back, now.

Didn’t seem to be any harm going dry just for a day, and that woman seemed impressed. What was her name. Marianne. Michelle. Marie, Marie. Worked in the charity shop attached to the project and kept encouraging him to go back to the group. I’m really impressed, Steve. Really. I’m proud of you. All that.

Didn’t seem any harm going dry for the day and sitting in that group while the rest of them shared whatever it was they wanted to share and he just sat there and kept his mouth shut.

No harm except it was a bloody nightmare, the sweats and the shakes and the screaming bloody headaches but even they dropped off after a while.

One day at a time, and to be honest it was nice when that Marie in the shop said I am impressed. And then saying Do you want to come and work in the shop sometimes, Steve, it’ll give you something to do. Weren’t really a proper job to be fair, he didn’t get paid and all he had to do was mooch around in the back room sorting donations and packing boxes and nipping out into the yard every five minutes for a smoke. Marie nipping out too when the shop was quiet. And one thing leads to another and he’s telling her all about his time in the army. The Falklands, and Northern Ireland, and the so-called easy posts in Germany and Cyprus and the rest. She asked him what happened to his hand, the way it was all curled up like that, and he said Ah now Marie that would be telling.

Is there something you’d like to share with the rest of the group. Well, no there isn’t as a matter of fact. If I told you half this stuff you’d have nightmares for a month, or you’d think I was lying and you’d kick me out. Was about all he ever said in that group. My country lied to me and I’d rather not go into it all. I’d rather not share all that with the group, if you don’t mind, he said.