Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Only the one time. Weren’t it.

There are things we didn’t know before, and we know them now. How but. These things coming to us slowly, surely, rising to the surface like bruises and scars.

Never seen him still like this before. Have you. Even when he was asleep he was all fidgeting and scratching and muttering on, rolling over, pulling at whatever jacket or blanket he’d hauled over himself when he crashed to the floor. And when he was awake he never sat still. Never left the flat but he couldn’t stop moving. Getting a drink, rolling a fag, going over to the window, going for a piss, scratching and talking and waving his arms around to make a point. Telling someone to clear their shit up, telling someone to get him some snap. Telling a story or just sitting there shaking and trembling like there was a current running through him, waiting for a drink. So maybe this is some kind of peace, this stillness he’s got himself now. Maybe you can call it that, at least.

Remember his fingernails though. Do you. Cracked, yellow, bitten-down. And now they’re clipped off and dropped into clear plastic pouches. Put them under a microscope and see what stories they tell. And Laura’s fingernails, that first time she came knocking on Robert’s door, remember Heather couldn’t stop looking at them, couldn’t believe them, long and clean and curved at the ends. Polished. The fingernails of a girl with a clean bathroom where there are handcreams and nail scissors and emery boards and a neat row of clear and coloured varnishes lined up on the shelves. Sort of made Heather think of when she was younger, like much younger, when she first went out on the road with the band, when she was still looking after herself. Laura had ripped her jeans and put on these big clumpy boots but her nails still gave her away. The look on Robert’s face when he woke up next morning and saw her there, and then the look on his face when she went straight off again. Sort of like he couldn’t tell if he’d dreamt it or what. Those perfect fingernails, those long white fingers, clean fingers, Heather had wanted to take the girl’s hand and hold it against her face. Had a feeling like that would be nice. Laura had that effect on people, then. It was unsettling. They weren’t used to it. Wanted to put one of those clean white fingers in her mouth. The taste of it.

The older man, the doctor or whoever he is, speaks to a younger man who writes his words down on a whiteboard on the wall, and a woman with clipped-back hair and black-rimmed glasses starts to cut into Robert’s clothes. Black fleece, the doctor says, greasy stains to cuffs and neck, cigarette burns or similar on chest area, large rip approximately, what, one hundred and seventy millimetres, running up from left waist. The photographer leans in to get pictures of all this, and someone else places a ruler next to the rip in Robert’s filthy clothes.

That’s all those times he fell asleep with a fag on the go, the drinks he spilt over himself. That’s the fight he had with Steve a couple of months back. When he pulled away from Steve and his fleece ripped up the side where Steve was holding it. Weren’t hardly a fight though, it was mostly just holding on, banging heads and swinging elbows and holding each other up. Didn’t come out of much and didn’t look like it was going that far until Steve took a bite on Robert’s ear. Remember that. Just leant round and took a bite, and once Robert had pulled away and made sure his ear was still there he kicked right off. Didn’t he. Remember. Weren’t much of a fight after that. A man the size of Robert, once he puts his mind to it he’s like a what is it a force to be reckoned with a force of nature. Pushing and punching Steve out through the front door and down the steps and shouting all this stuff like You fucking headcase you cunt you can fuck right off and all that. Kept putting his hand to his ear to make sure it was all there or something and spitting out blood where Steve had caught him in the mouth. Rolling up his hat and holding it against his ear. Someone found H and brought him out, and someone else got Steve’s coat and threw it over him where he lay, and Robert started looking up and down the street like he’d only just realised he was outside. Was the first time he’d been outside for a while, and it was the last time until those blokes with the stretcher and the black van carried him out.

Reckon that was the last time Steve was there anyway, unless. Unless what. Some things we don’t know yet. Steve and H stumbling off down the street without looking back, Steve pulling his coat on and rubbing at his knuckles where he’d caught Robert in the mouth. Robert backing away into the flat going What the fuck was all that about and looking for another drink. Pushing his hat back over his head. The two of them picking away at each other all day but it still seemed to come out of nowhere. Robert saying something about Steve never being a real soldier and Steve standing over him going Say that again, and Robert standing up and the two of them going at it. The closeness of them, in that moment, breathing into each other, the sharp smack of knuckle on bone and their faces pressing and scratching together, the smell of drink and cold sweat and the first taste of blood in the mouth, the unfocused stare in the eyes. The dense metallic ring of each punch as it fell. Steve’s teeth biting on his ear, and the crunch of pain that followed. Steve saying, even while Robert was knocking him out of the door, Don’t you ever say that about me again, that was nothing mate, you say that again and you see what happens, I was a soldier you bastard, I served my country you bastard. Lying curled up at the bottom of the steps going I served my country, and Ben hurling his coat down over him and laughing and telling him to shut up. Booting him one in the ribs just for fun. Robert touching his ear and turning away into the flat. Don’t mean nothing now. But if he knew. If Robert knew, if he’d taken the trouble to ask, if he’d given Steve the chance to tell him all the things he’d seen and done when he was away with the army, then he wouldn’t have said that, he wouldn’t have dared, it wouldn’t ever have occurred to him to say something like that. Steve’s done his time and that’s the God’s honest truth. In Belfast, peering out through the letterbox windows of the Land Rover, rocks and bottles raining down, his gun heavy in his lap and the taste of bile in his mouth, ready to rattle out through those back doors and take up positions, waving shields and sticks and shouting Get back, get back, you bastards, get back. Petrol bombs splashing and flaming around their feet, stones and lumps of iron falling from the sky. Gunfire. From nowhere, from bloody everywhere, gunfire. Scanning the rooftops, the windows, the alley-entrances. More gunfire, and a man down beside him, Craigie, his leg ripped open and blood gushing out on to the road. I mean just literally gushing. The shouts of Man down, and idiot whooping in the crowd, and our guns raised in their faces Now will you bloody get back or what, bloody get back. And down in Armagh, wading across sodden meadows and scrambling through ditches, rainwater gushing into drains and culverts like the blood from Craigie’s leg on that road and in the back of the Land Rover and some poor bastard had to swab that out when it was all done. Never told me I’d be doing that. My country lied to me. If Robert had known any of that, if he’d ever listened, if anyone ever listened, he wouldn’t have made something of it like that, he wouldn’t have said what he did. If he knew. Would he.

The woman with the black-rimmed glasses takes a large pair of blunt-nosed scissors and cuts the fleece open up the middle, turning and cutting along each sleeve and peeling the layers apart. She stands back for the photographer to get another shot, and the doctor asks the younger man at the whiteboard to make another note about staining to a long-sleeved undergarment, and again the scissors cut a line up the middle and along each sleeve, and again the layers are peeled back with a soft wet unsticking sound. They cut through a shirt, a couple of t-shirts, and a vest, and it takes us a moment to realise that the blackened surface beneath all these layers, shining wetly under the lights, is his broad and swollen chest. They cut away his trousers, and the material falls off him like sodden rags. They cut away his socks, and the soiled remains of his pants, and he lies before us, between us, naked, beaten. We move closer. We reach out our hands.