Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

No obvious damage to ribcage, sternum or clavicle bones, the doctor says. No evidence of violence to the torso, nor of any attempted resuscitation.

Second time Laura came home she asked her dad if she could stay for a while. Remember that. He thought all his birthdays had come at once, thought he was going to keel over with it there and then. Thought things were going to be all right after that. He could see she’d got herself in a bit of trouble, bit of a mess, but it was something they had in common now, something they could get sorted out together, the two of them like a team, like father and daughter getting things right together, making up for lost time. Like fuck.

The pain in his head, sometimes. Blocking out everything Yvonne was saying to him, making him want her to go away, to be quiet, to just fucking shut up and go away that pain in his head like nothing else. But she didn’t believe him, or she thought it was his drinking, or she thought he was being a wimp. Drinking was just about the only thing that made it go away. Like someone hammering a nail into the side of his head. Jesus what was it. If he kept moving he couldn’t feel it. If he drank enough, and kept moving, and she shut up fucking shut up a minute it went away. But it always came back, and, sometimes. Made him act wrong sometimes.

The pain in his head when he first heard Yvonne warning him what she was going to do. The feel of the sound of it. Like a what, like a storm, like a storm behind glass. Shrieking into his face to make sure he could hear, beating on him. Her tight little fists shaking in the air. I’ll go back to my mum’s, I will. Are you listening to me. I don’t want to but I can’t stay here like this. And everything he’d heard her saying to her mum on the phone. No he hasn’t been looking for a job yet but he, I thought he just needed a bit of time to get over it, it was such a shock the way they all got locked out like that with no warning, they all took it hard and it’s not like they’ve had much help, I mean most of them just went straight on the sick. But he’s had long enough now, it’s been long enough, he could at least give me a hand about the place. Standing by the kitchen sink with another drink while she hid in the bedroom and said all this and she thought he couldn’t hear. He’s leaving everything down to me and I’ve had enough, there’s bills stacking up, Mum, I’ve been swinging a few extra shifts but I still don’t see how we’re going to cover it all. I don’t know, Mum. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And Laura waking up to hear her mum shouting again, shouting I’ll go back, Robert, I will, I’ll take her with me and all, you bloody watch me, I don’t want to but I will. Are you listening? Are you bloody well listening or what? And then the thumping, like before, coming through the wall, her mum’s little fists against her dad’s chest, pounding through him and the thin wall and knocking against Laura where she was sat up with her back against the headboard of her bed. Until it stopped, like it always did, and they were both crying, and she could hear the shuffling three-legged footsteps of the two of them helping each other to bed, and she fell asleep, and years later she was lying with her head in Heather’s lap telling the story all over again. Not feeling nothing about it this time.

These things all coming together now. Coming up to the surface.

And remember Robert told Steve about it too. Said it had been more or less the only clue that something was up, that something was going wrong. Said he’d known she didn’t like him drinking so much, and he’d known they’d been doing plenty of arguing, but he’d thought it was normal. But that’s just it Rob mate, Steve told him, the two of them sitting in their armchairs in the empty room and working their way through the day’s drinks, nothing’s normal for them is it, nothing’s good enough. They’re always after things being different, being better. You’re better off without mate, he said, and they knocked their cans together in agreement, looking out across the playing fields and the sun going down behind the trees by the river. That’s what Steve told him. Didn’t he. That’s where he went wrong, he broke the golden rule, let himself get in too far. You start leaning on someone, when they do the off you’ll fall over. Stands to reason. Never lean on no one. Never trust no bastard. Golden rule, that’s what he told him. Remember that. That’s where he went wrong with what’s her name, as it happens, the woman from the shop. Marianna, Marianne, Marie. Whatever her name was. Let down his guard, got to the point where he’d do all sorts of bollocks for her, like he was trying to impress her, like he thought she was bothered. Then when he came back from that roadtrip to bloody Bosnia she didn’t want to know. Said things had changed. Said Steve had changed, said he was too moody and it was too hard being around him any more. Too right he’d changed, what else did she expect. He’d seen a few things when he was over there. Things that had, even someone who’d been on all the postings he’d been on, they’d taken him aback a bit, more or less. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, he’d never asked for that. Just a little bit of patience. A bit of understanding. She made out like he’d got too quiet and moody but she only had to give him a chance to think. Just sometimes. Jesus. He was still up for a laugh and a joke but he needed to clear his head and she didn’t really get it. Giving it all Maybe you should talk to someone about it, like that would help. There was that time, the two of them stood on the bridge over the canal, it was right when he was getting his tenancy sorted out and he’d said something about she could stay over sometimes and as soon as he’d said it he knew he was stuffed. She wouldn’t even look at him. Hands deep in her pockets like she had a weapon hidden away in there. Giving it all Oh but the thing is really, Steve, things are a bit different now, things have got a bit weird. I wasn’t really up for anything serious. Looking down at the muddy brown water like she was hoping he’d jump in or something. And after that the staff wouldn’t let him work in the shop any more, or even go in there at all. They said it wasn’t appropriate, which was a joke because he wasn’t the one with the problem. He wasn’t the one who’d said things had got a bit weird. He wouldn’t have bloody minded only he never even got to bang her whatever her name was Maria or Marie or whatever. Would have liked to. She had nice hands and that.

The technician reaches across Robert, grasping the top of his ribcage and lifting it away from his body. It comes off in one piece, like the breastplate from a suit of armour, and she lays it down on another stainless-steel table. We move in close around his body again, our hands resting on the table, and peer in at the strange swollen gleam of his insides, the flabby organs crammed wetly in upon each other. The doctor scrapes away more layers of creamy yellow fat, slices through a series of arteries and veins, and then lifts the organs out as a single block, easing them on to a plastic tray which they carry over to a cutting board on the counter running along the wall. Behind them, in the scooped-out hollow of Robert’s body, we see the rib-bones fanning out across his back, the knuckles of his spine, the coiled mass of his intestines and bowels already slipping and spreading out to fill the space.

Should be something more like. We prop photos up amongst the candles, snapshots from younger days, better days, so that people can look and tell lies about how he hasn’t aged all that badly, considering. A photo from his army days, in full dress uniform, so that his former colleagues can pick it up and put it down and catch each other’s eyes and not need to say a word. A photo Laura once found in the bottom of her mum’s wardrobe, of a young-looking man with a soft round face and a broad flat chest, his shirt hanging open and a young girl grinning wildly on his shoulders. She used to go and look at it when her mum was out of the house. The young girl on the shoulders was her, she supposed.