by Jon McGregor
He says no, thanks, I should probably leave you to it, and he gives me the phone number of where he’s staying, he says call me when you want to go back.
He says, if that’s okay, I mean, if you don’t mind, and I smile and say of course I don’t mind.
He drives away, and I wave, and I stand outside my house and wait.
I look down at my stomach, and I wonder if it shows properly.
It feels different to me already, when I lay my hands across it I can feel the swelling, like a deep breath in a very tight dress, the stretch of it, and I wonder if anyone else can see.
I wonder if my dad will be able to see.
I ring the doorbell.
Chapter 22
There’s a thudding sound from a door across the street, from behind the door maybe, and he looks up to see what it is, the man with the burnt hands, he lifts the cracked shell of his face and tries to see what the noise is.
It’s coming from number seventeen, a banging noise of wood against wood, the doorhandle is twitching up and down and the door is pressing outwards with each thud, like the heartbeat of a Bugs Bunny in love, boomba boomba. He thinks to himself, the door must be stuck, it happens, in the heat, in these old houses where the landlords let things slip.
The noise stops. He looks at the door, at the shine of the doorhandle, the metal of the doorhandle warming up in the midday sun.
And then the window next to the door is hauled up suddenly, the sashes squeaking, and a gangly young man clambers out through the opening, the net curtain covering his face briefly like a bridal veil before he emerges into the street and strides away towards the shop. He holds his hand up over his eyes, screws his face up against the glare of the sun, pulls at the collar of his crumpled white shirt. One of the twins stops his bowling run-up and shouts splash sploosh, and the young man ignores him.
The man with the ruined hands sits in a chair in his front garden and looks at the net curtain wafting in and out of the open window.
The veil she wore on their wedding day was white, it was like the curtain. It was smooth, silk maybe, and when she breathed it drifted out from her face like a feather. This was many years gone now, their wedding day, but it is like no time at all.
The look in her face when she lifted the veil, the delight, the pride, the beautiful in her soul, could be yesterday.
Her face, was beautiful.
Her hands, was beautiful.
Her skin, was smooth and clear and unbroken, when she touched him lightly it felt like water trickling across his body. She would move her hand across his face to see if she wanted him to shave before the evening meal, and when she was done his skin would feel clean of the dust of the day.
She was tall, and strong, and she kept her hair coiled tightly around the back of her head and she had intricate paintings on the secret parts of her body. She was a wonderful woman, but this was not enough to help her. He loved her deeply, but this was not enough to help her. Please, darling, she called out to him, through the door, the closed door. Please darling can’t you help me she called. He could not reach to her, he was not enough.
The door was stuck, in the heat, it was swollen, the wood of the door in the frame, the frame it was too small, like a wedding ring on a very hot day.
It was so very hot.
She said darling I am very hot I cannot breathe please can’t you reach me.
The paint on the door was coming away, it was bubbles, blistering, each time he touched it he felt knives across his skin and into his bones. The metal of the doorhandle, when he touched it, it melted his hand like butter, it sunk into his skin like an axe into a tree and the hot air and the poisonous paint in his lungs, he thought he would die but he did not. He did not die.
She said my God my God what is happening.
He sits in his garden on a folding wooden chair, this man with the burnt hands, and the sun is shining and his daughter is playing with another girl in the street and he is okay but he is not okay.
He watches the young man with the white shirt and the tie loping back along the street with a bag of shopping. The bag is red and white, thin plastic, inside there is a pint of milk, a carton of orange juice, packets of crisps. He watches as the young man clambers back through the open window, he licks a peel of skin on his palm, flattening it, he watches the young man reappear and fiddle with his front-door handle. The young man pushes at the door with his shoulder, he rattles the handle, he kicks the bottom of the frame. He puts his hand through the letterbox and shakes the door.
The man in the chair brings his hand to his lips and thinks of his wife saying my God the door what is happening.
The young man stands back from the door, he looks around. His face is red and he is sweating. He sees the man in the chair, they see each other, the young man makes a face like well what a laugh and the man in the chair replies with a single slow nod.
She said it is too hot I cannot breathe I cannot please my God can’t you help me darling please.
The young man turns and lifts his foot high and kicks into the door, his arms raised and his fists clenched, his body all pointed down the line of his leg in a rush and a tangle and the door swings open and his momentum carries him through into the shade of his hallway and there is a sound like he is falling to the floor.
The man in the chair looks, he does not move. He remembers her, she said what is happening, the door, please, can’t you reach me, please, the door.
His daughter skips past, her shoes are tapping on the pavement, she is singing and she does not look up at him as she passes.
In the kitchen of number seventeen the young man with the creased and sweaty white shirt puts a kettle on to boil. He lines up a row of almost clean mugs and drops a teabag into each one.
The tall girl with the glitter around her eyes comes in and says what was that noise? and her skirt is twisted round almost sideways and there are creases on her cheek from the pillow. He says that was me kicking the door in, oh she says, what for, I couldn’t open it he says. The kettle boils and he fills up the mugs, sniffing the milk before he adds it to the tea, he says how are you feeling, she says like shit. He says are the others awake? She says I don’t know, she says heal my head and she sits down and takes his hands and pulls them onto her scalp. He rubs his fingers through her hair in circles, squeezing and pressing as if kneading warm dough into life and she says mm that’s nice. The short girl with the painted nails comes in and says is that tea for me what was that noise? The boy says the door was jammed, I had to kick it in he says, she says oh, she says where’s he gone? He says he must have gone out, he’s not in his room, she says oh I hope he’s okay he was being a bit weird last night. The tall girl watches the tissue-thin vapours twirling upwards from the mugs of tea, illuminated by the sunlight, she can see each drop of moisture, lighter than air, spiralling together like a flock of birds turning into the sun, like a tiny waterfall reversed, a playful movement, she feels as though if she put her hand in the way it would tickle she says mm oh I feel better now.
The boy says do you want some breakfast then, he sits down again and pushes his fingers through his hair. The tall girl says no I’m not hungry, my stomach feels a bit, and she hesitates and thinks and says beside the point and she smiles a pale smile. The short girl with the painted nails says I want a chocolate doughnut, let’s go and buy some chocolate doughnuts, we can sit on the wall outside and eat them, is that tea for me she says.
The door crashes open and the boy with the pierced eyebrow comes in and says those fucking kids I’m going to twat one of them soon. Everyone looks at him. Is this tea for me he says, and he sits down and pulls one of the mugs across the table towards him, and for a moment the tall girl’s head is pulled sideways as if by a string as she follows the sight of the spiralling steam. He puts a paper bag down in the middle of the table.
He says I just got hit in the back of the fucking head by their ball, I swear down it was deliberate, little shits, and as he says shits he slaps the
palm of one hand with the back of the other. He is talking loudly and quickly, he says they woke me up with water pistols through my window this morning, monkeys, I got them back though, I gave them a soaking, and then he stops and takes a breath and the others look at him and the quietness settles back into the room the way it does once a train has passed.
The boy with the white shirt remembers the bearded man throwing a glass of water in his face, he remembers the crisp and angry way he called him bastard, and he says what did you say what did you do?
The boy with the pierced eyebrow says I got them back, I emptied water over them from upstairs, and as he says it a moment of realisation passes gradually across the other boy’s face.
The boy with the pierced eyebrow says oh, I forgot, I bought some chocolate doughnuts.
Outside, balancing on the garden wall of number fifteen, the sister of the twins is talking to the daughter of the man with hurting hands, she says do you know what I can see angels, just like that, as if she was saying I had fishfingers for tea, and she takes the yellow ribbon from her hair and winds it around her finger like a yellow bandage. The younger girl looks up at her and says where? but it only comes out as a whisper.
The girl with the ribbon says well it depends, sometimes they come to my room and sit around my bed, they come in through my window if my mum leaves it open. They’re really small she says, and she begins to unwind the ribbon from her finger. What do they do asks the younger girl, and her voice is still faint and breathy, they shine says the older girl, like bright bright lights with faces she says, and sometimes they sing, like imams only with girls’ voices and the younger girl giggles, claps her small clean hand to her mouth and ducks her head and giggles.
And sometimes says the older girl, they fly around and around like this, and she whirls her ribbon through the air like a majorette, the tail of it spinning and twirling and drawing circle shapes around her head and the young girl giggles but the older girl is not smiling. Ssh she says, and she holds a finger to her lips, can you hear them now she says and the young girl looks up and around and her mouth falls open. Where? she says, where are they? and she looks all around her. They’re really hard to see says the older girl, they’re really small and anyway it’s probably too sunny they’re harder to see in the daytime.
She whisks her head round as if watching a passing car, she says there did you see, there was one, it was really fast, did you see, and the younger girl shakes her head.
The older girl keeps talking, she says I think it’s gone now, sometimes they stay still but they have to be careful because they can’t hardly touch the ground because if they do they die but they can only talk to you if they are touching the ground so what they do is they do this.
She holds out her arms, the ribbon trailing from one hand like a kite-tail, and she lifts up her left leg, leaning forward slightly and holding it out behind her, trying to rise up onto her toes, each wobble sending ripples down the yellow ribbon.
She says and then they’re safe because they’re not really touching the ground but they are enough to talk to you, and then she wobbles too far and falls back to earth. The younger girl is pulling a frowning face and she says what do they say?
Just things says the girl, winding her ribbon around her finger again, they tell me things about people, things they can see. They tell me what it’s like to be an angel she says, it sounds really nice she says I think I might be one one day.
She says and when they talk they only whisper in your ear to make sure no one can hear them and their mouths feel wet on your ears like warm icecream. She says they told me you mustn’t stand on the cracks or you’ll fall down and be stuck inside the ground forever.
She says do you know what if someone dies all the angels go to their house at night and shine over the roof, loads of them, and they get so bright that the birds start singing because they think it’s the daytime but they only stay for a little while, right in the middle of the night so that no one can see them they don’t like to be seen, they said I was lucky to see them.
The younger girl doesn’t say anything, she keeps looking around her, looking up and down the street, looking for lights hurtling up and down the concrete and touching the ground with only the tips of their toes.
She can see trees, and sky, and houses, and boys playing cricket.
Chapter 23
My mother is Scottish, my dad is not, and I’ve always assumed that this makes me half Scottish, but I don’t feel it.
I’ve got no trace of an accent, I’ve never eaten porridge, I’ve never trampled glumly through wet heather whilst my mother told me about her childhood.
My grandmother’s funeral was the only time I’ve ever been to Scotland, the only time I’ve caught sight of the wilder landscape and the broader sky.
I don’t remember my mother talking about these things, or suggesting that we go to these places, and I don’t remember her ever having an accent.
Occasionally, when she was very angry, I would hear echoes of it, a naughty that rhymed with dotty, a rolling of the R in girl, a growl over the K in put away your books, but mostly her voice was plain and carefully flavourless.
Her Scottishness, and the portion of it handed to me, was a secret, something to be concealed and denied, and I have never understood why this was.
I asked her once, and she pretended not to understand me.
She changed the subject, asked me if I had a boyfriend yet, and we had an argument and I forgot what I’d asked her.
She was clever, in that way.
And so I wonder if the mathematics of genealogy will make my child three-quarters Scottish, and I can’t see how that would make sense.
I put my hand to my belly, imagining the knitting together of cells going on inside me, picturing the swelling of flesh and the stretching of skin, the shaping of limbs and fingers.
I imagine my body suddenly hollow again, a crying baby crushed hushingly against my face.
I imagine my baby’s first words, and they’re not spoken with a Scottish accent.
I wonder if perhaps I’ll become guilty about this, if I’ll feel obliged to teach my child about its heritage, if we’ll go to Scotland on holidays.
Perhaps we could live there, up amongst the long nights and hard rain and beautiful land, and I could raise a child with clean air in its lungs, and a broad accent, and a strong sense of place.
Maybe one day we could go to Aberdeen, and track down the waiter-boy, and I could say here, darling, this is where half the cells in your body have come from.
I find myself thinking happy families again, and I’m flooded for a moment with the taste of him, the feel of him, the delicious perfection of our passing moment.
And I scrub the image from my mind, like lipstick from a shirt, like graffiti from a wall.
I’m thinking about all this, sitting in my old living room, watching my dad watch the television, listening to my mother crash things about in the kitchen.
She offered to make a cup of tea, but I think really she just wanted to leave the room because I haven’t heard the kettle boiling for half an hour now.
I told her about him, about the boy in Aberdeen, and her politeness turned inside out like an umbrella in a storm.
Her face flushed hot and red and shiny, and I’m sure I heard the words you dirty wee something come gasping out before she clamped her hand to her mouth, and the words had a sharp accent running through them and she turned her face away.
She said, not looking at me, and have you spoken to him at all since then, has he been in touch?
I told her that he didn’t have my phone number, that I didn’t have his.
She said so that’s all it was then, a fling in the dark, a onenight stand and no precautions? and she made the last word rhyme with oceans.
I said mum, please, I’m not ashamed and I don’t want to apologise to you.
I said, but mum, I do need your help.
She looked at me then, when I said that, and he
r face softened and I thought I’d got through to her.
Oh but I thought you were an independent woman now she said.
I looked at her, and I realised that my jacket was folded across my lap, like a disguise.
Or like a shield.
I thought you were quite happily making it on your own she said, and her face hardened again as suddenly as a slamming door.
I didn’t know what to say.
I looked at my dad, but he was staring fixedly at the soundless television, his fingers scratching the arm of his chair.
She said how much do you need?
I said mum I’m not talking about money.
Nobody said anything for a while.
I looked at the ceiling and I blinked a lot, I swallowed hard, my eyes felt wet and I didn’t want them to.
I didn’t want my voice to wobble the next time I spoke.
My dad started to turn the volume back up on the television, but he muted it again when my mother gave him a look.
She said and what was he like, this young man, would we like him if we met him?
She said I’m assuming he was a young man was he?
Yes mum I said, he was, he was a bit younger than me I should think.
And then I saw the tight purse of her lips and the puff of her chest and I felt a flush of spite so I said but no I don’t think you’d like him, he wasn’t so very interesting.
He wasn’t so bright I said, he just had a nice voice, and nice eyes, and a great body, and, you know, and I left the end of my sentence hanging in the air like a cloud of cigarette smoke wafting into her face.
She went to make the tea after that, her self-control unwavering, her poise as steady as a gymnast, and my dad waited until he could hear her banging cupboard doors in the kitchen before he turned the sound up on the television.
He’d been watching one of his boxing videos again, I didn’t remember seeing it before but then they all look the same to me, two men in a square of ropes, grainy black and white picture, fists slamming into faces.