by Jon McGregor
Robert had seen Laura, it turned out. That was something else. Just turned up at the door one night. With a backpack and a tie-dye headscarf and some story about hating her mum and never wanting to go home. She hates me too, she’d said, I know she does, she don’t want me around no more, she can’t be bothered, she’s all bloody wrapped up with Paul and she aint got time for me no more, she’s always bloody moaning about what I do all the time, staying out late and going over my mate’s and smoking and all that bollocks, she’s such a bloody hypocrite I bloody well hate her.
Said all that to Heather. Standing in the darkened kitchen with her backpack at her feet, glancing through to the lounge where her dad and two other men lay slumped on the floor, and eventually she said Like are they all right or what?
Heather had been drunk when Laura had arrived. But not as drunk as the others, and not so drunk that she didn’t ask who was there before she answered the door. Says she knew it was Laura as soon as she saw her. Even though she didn’t look all that much like him, then. She’d done her best to look older and rougher but she hadn’t done enough. She’d ripped her jeans, and scuffed her boots, and pierced her nose. But so what. Her fingernails were still clean, her hair was tied back, her skin was pink and soft and unmarked by bruises or scars or tattoos. She’d brushed her teeth that morning, and every morning and evening before that. Didn’t have any missing from what Heather could see.
Reckon she thought she’d come to the wrong flat when she saw me stood there, Heather said, when she told Steve about it. State of me. Bless her though, she was all geared up for this grand reunion and her old man was crashed out cold on the floor. Must have been a bit disappointing.
Who you calling disappointing? Robert asked, and Heather looked at him, and the three of them tore into laughter.
Robert’s laugh the loudest of all, the wheeze and whistle of it filling the room.
Laura in the kitchen telling Heather how much her mum hated her, the only light coming from the orange streetlamps in the carpark outside, her face shadowed and urgent and her eyes beginning to shine, and when she’d finished Heather said How old are you now love?
She put her hands in her back pockets and said I’m fifteen, have you got any fags?
Laura rolling a cigarette with Heather’s tobacco, her long white fingers fumbling with the thin paper and once she’d licked it shut those same clean fingers picking the strands of tobacco from her tongue. Looking around for an ashtray. Heather pointing out all the fag-ends lying trodden into the floor, and saying I wouldn’t bother sweetheart it’s too late for that.
He waited years for them to come back, and when one of them did he was too drunk to see it.
Should have told her to go home right then. But she wouldn’t have listened. Fifteen and on the road for the first time, she wouldn’t have listened to no one.
The clock ticking round and the echo of it scraping through the floor. The light fittings cold and dark.
She woke early. The next morning this was. Laura woke early, and she waited. She’d waited long enough. She sat up in the corner of the room with her arms folded around her knees, and she looked at the old home she could barely remember. She could have changed her mind then. Could have stood and packed away her sleeping bag and walked back out the door while her dad and all those other people were sleeping. She near enough did. She should have done, should she. But she didn’t want to prove her mum right. She wanted to see what would happen. She wanted some breakfast, and she’d already run out of money.
He woke up, and saw her looking at him. It was confusing. Who was it. Thought it was Yvonne for a minute, looking as young as when they’d first met, come back to set things straight. And then he realised. It gave him something like a pain in the chest, a pain which near enough swelled and sucked in air as he looked at her and realised just what he’d missed and just how much he’d failed, at this precise fucking moment, to be what she wanted him to be. He had no idea what to say. She looked at him.
He got the rest of us up and told us to leave. That was something. Never told us to leave before so we knew something was up. All of us looking at her like, what, sullenly or something. Grumbling and muttering while we went off outside. Peered through the filthy dark glass of the front door but we couldn’t see nothing or hear nothing and we had better things to get off and do. See it all clearly now.
Hello Dad, she said, finally, and it seemed like such a lame thing to say that she laughed. He didn’t know what to do. He stood in the doorway to the hall. He smiled, awkwardly, and it looked like someone squinting against the early morning light.
He took his hat off and rolled it into his hands, squeezing it.
He said, Look at you.
What.
When did.
Does your mum know you’re here?
She shook her head. He turned and walked into the kitchen, hesitated, came back into the lounge, walked through to what had once been the main bedroom.
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.
But nipping out to the yard for a smoke, and Marie sitting there on a stack of milk-crates, it seemed like it was all right to tell her. And she didn’t think he was lying or at least she didn’t say so. And one thing leads to another and she starts on about this charity road-trip. The shop had packed up a truck full of kids’ stuff the year before and sent it off to some Romanian orphanage, and this year they were thinking of doing the same only sending it to Bosnia instead.
Bloody Bosnia.
Toys and books and clothes and medical supplies and a whole load of other stuff all packed into the back of a truck, and all they needed now was some crazy bastard to drive it into a war-zone.
Would you happen to know of any crazy bastards? she asked him. With that way she had of looking at him. Out of the corner of her eye. With a smile hiding round the corner of her mouth.
Well as a matter of fact Marie I believe I do, he said.
Weren’t exactly a war-zone anyway, where they were going. He looked into it a bit, read the news reports, studied the maps. The fighting had finished, if you could call it fighting, what had happened. That was why they were going, there was stuff the people needed there, now the fighting was finished. The kids especially. Loaded up a whole truck full of stuff and then him and some bloke called Patrick set off one morning with maps and phrase books and cigarettes and cash, and the address of a guide to contact when they got there. Couple of photographers watching them go, and Marie waving him off and going Come back safe. Long time since someone had said Come back safe. Weren’t sure if they ever had. Worth it all just to hear that. Was it.
All this waiting though. Still.
Waiting outside the night shelter for them to open the doors. Hanging around for hours to make sure you get your place. Waiting at the walk-in centre to get something sorted, and getting referred on to somewhere else so you can wait a little bit more. Waiting for the chemist to open to get the daily script. Waiting to score when it seems like no cunt can get hold of it, the way it was before Christmas, all of us loading up on jellies and benzos to keep the rattles off. Too much to handle if you score on top of all that and you’re not careful. But careful aint really the point.
Waiting in the corridors at the courthouse for your case to be called. Waiting in the cells. Ben waiting in the cells for three days over Christmas, rattling to fuck in that concrete cube and racing for his dig when they finally let him go.
Or like Sammy, waiting for whatever it is he’s waiting for when he sits in his usual spot by the benches on the corner of Barford Street. Waiting for his beard to grow. Waiting for someone to stop and talk and pass the time of day. Sammy’s been growing that beard since he came down from Glasgow, if anyone’s interested, which no cunt is. Had a few how you say problems and that up there. Connected with woman troubles and money troubles and anyway aren’t they always what’s it the same thing just about all the same. Had to come south and change the old appearance but that’s years back now. And that’s a fact. And now there’s this trouble with the eyes, if anyone’s interested. Which no cunt is. Can’t see a fucking thing and it hurts like nothing else and if you’re waiting for some cunt to take an interest you’ll be waiting a long time.
Waiting by the phonebox for some kid on a bike to turn up with the gear. Like Danny there by the phonebox still, the trains rattling past, counting his money and counting it again and striding round in long desperate circles through the ragged grass.
Waiting in the corridors. Like Heather did. And she told them, when they fin
ally called her in, that they should give her a chance, that they should be the ones to wait. I’ll get myself together, she said. I’ll get myself together and I’ll come back, I know I’m not ready now but I’ll get things sorted out. You wait. And the woman said Heather, it’s not a question of waiting. This is a permanent order, do you understand what that means? And Heather said No, you wait, I’ll get it together. I’ll get myself a solicitor. I’ll get it overturned. I’ll never give up hope. I’ll go to the what do you call it the ombudsman.
When was this. Long time ago now. Years. Don’t seem like it. Jesus it don’t seem like it.
She told them to pass that on for her. That she would never give up hope and neither should they. The woman said Heather, please. It’s not a question of waiting. It’s not a question of hope. This is permanent and irrevocable. Do you understand what that means, the woman said. Like anyone could understand that. Like anyone could sort of get their heads round that. The bloke shuffling all his papers together and going I really don’t think there’s anything else we can do here, I think that’s us done. People slipping out of the room and not looking at her, and the woman going Heather, is there anything else we can get you.