If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

The short girl with the painted toenails, next door, she says oh but did you see that guy on the balcony, he was nice, no he was special and she savours the word like a strawberry, you know she says, the one on the balcony, the one who was speeding and kept leaning right over, and they all know exactly who she means, he’s in the same place most weeks, pounding out the rhythm like a panelbeater, fists crashing down into the air, sweat splashing from his polished head.

She says once I was there and he got so carried away that he hung from the balcony by his legs, he had his feet hooked under the rail, and she remembers the way his face had stretched into a furious O, going come on let’s have some and she remembers his fists still flailing across the void like an astronaut lost in orbit.

A girl sleeps in the back bedroom of number eleven, her hair is pushed out of her eyes by a hairband, her mouth is wide open, the room is warm and beginning to lighten. Bird shadows pass quickly across her face but she does not wake.

A couple in their early thirties sleep in the attic flat of number twenty-one, wrapped loosely in a thin red blanket, he is snoring and she is turned away from him, there is a television on in the corner with the sound turned down, shadows pass through the room but the couple do not wake.

In the back bedroom of number seventeen, the boy with the white shirt and the tie says it was definitely a girl, she didn’t have an Adam’s apple, I swear, it was a girl definitely, and everyone laughs at him and he looks around the room and joins in the laughter and somebody passes him a long cigarette.

The boy with the wide trousers is quiet, he’s looking at the girl next to him, a beautifully unslim girl with dark curls of hair falling down over a red velvet dress, he’s looking at the laces and straps and buckles and zips of her complicated footwear and he looks up at her and says so how long does it take you to get those boots off then? She looks at him, this girl, with lips as red as the fire inside a chilli, she looks at the tight spread of him across the bed and she says

I don’t know I’ve never taken them off myself

and she smiles at the sharpness of his intake of breath, she watches his eyes trickle down from her face and roll down the rich geometry of her body.

And everyone else keeps talking, compulsively, talking across each other, talking about the tunes they heard and the people they saw and the next place they want to go. The boy with the white shirt and the tie keeps saying it was definitely a girl, and then he stuffs a pipe full of fresh green herb and the room quietens in anticipation, the conversation dropping, each of them suddenly feeling their minds too frantic, their bodies too tense, and they suck on the sweet smoke in turn, holding the pillow of it in their lungs, closing their eyes, stilling their voices.

And they think about daytime things for a moment, about rolling hills, or beaches, or playing football, or whatever it is they’ve learnt to think about at these times, and they breathe slowly and move for a moment into a kind of waking sleep. And if someone were to look through the window now, to walk into the backyard and press their face against the glass, cupping their hands around their eyes like a pair of binoculars, that person would see what looked like a roomful of people gathered together in silent prayer, and they would wonder who such a vigil might be for.

Outside, a taxi drives slowly down the street, the driver peering from the window, checking house numbers. He gets as far as number twenty-eight, and then there are no more numbers. He hesitates a moment before driving away, the sound of the car fading behind him like a trail of dust.

And now they are quiet, the girl with the army trousers trying to find a picture on the television, the boy with the pierced eyebrow holding a lighter beneath the plastic lid of a tube of crisps, a look of concentration in his eyes, waiting, watching the plastic soften.

The girl with the boots says I’m going home, I want to go home now.

Do you want to come with me she says to the boy with the wide trousers, walk me home she says, and her voice is thin and tired.

The boy with the shirt and tie is lying down on the floor, draping one arm across the tall girl who is still chewing gum and staring at the ceiling, dragging a duvet halfway across them both.

The short girl is curled up in a ball in the middle of the bed, waiting for the girl with the army trousers to come and keep her warm.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow lifts the lid to his mouth and blows, and a bubble of hot plastic shoots halfway across the room, flashing into place like a miracle, holding its long airship shape for a fraction of a second and then floating gently down towards the floor.

The girl with the boots offers her hand to the boy with the wide trousers, pulls him to his feet and kisses his forehead. Take me home she says and they drift slowly through the door.

The girl with the army trousers closes her eyes and collapses into the bed, adjusting herself gradually against the outline of the other girl’s body, wrapping around her like a nutshell.

In the first-floor flat of number eighteen, a young man sits up in bed, it’s early but he feels very awake, he looks around at the mess of his room and he thinks of all the things he wants to do today, needs to do. Sorting, packing, tidying, arranging. He rubs at his dry eyes with the tips of his fingers, he gets out of bed and walks across to the window. He sees two people in the middle of the road, he recognises the girl from number twenty-seven, he doesn’t recognise the boy and he wonders who he is. He picks up a camera and takes photographs of the morning, the two people in the street, the sunlight, the closed curtains of the windows opposite, he puts down the camera and makes notes in a small book, he writes the date, he details the things he has just photographed.

The young couple in the street, dancing, their arms curled gracefully around one another, the music from the restaurant carpark still in their heads, disappearing into her house, leaving the front door open, the street empty and quiet.

A cat, waiting on a doorstep.

Pigeons, dropping onto chimneytops.

Chapter 3

I’d been thinking about it when I called Sarah, the girl sitting next to me that day, I realised it had been a while since we’d spoken and it was probably my turn to call.

I said hi I just fancied a chat I wondered what you were up to and she said oh hi it’s been ages hasn’t it.

All our conversations seem to start like this now.

Once a month, maybe less, one of us will call the other and we’ll say oh hi it’s been ages we should try and meet up, and a plan will be made, and cancelled, or not quite made at all.

We’re not that far apart, maybe half an hour on the tube, but it’s been months since we’ve seen each other and every month it seems to matter less.

And so I sat in my room, that evening, and we talked about the usual things, about new jobs and plans for new jobs, about people we both knew and people we were meeting, about dates and possible dates.

I looked out of my open window, across the endless city, and I imagined her sitting by her window, looking in this direction, the telephone a shortcut through all those streets.

I wondered what her room looked like, what she could see from it.

She said so who have you spoken to lately, have you heard from Simon, and I said no not for a long time.

I thought about all the time we spent together, the three of us, the long days of that last summer in the house and I wondered how it had become so hard to keep in touch.

I remembered the promises we’d made to each other, me and Sarah and Simon, and I wondered if I’d been naive to think we could keep them.

I remembered how easily we used to talk, endlessly, making plans, deciding where we’d be in one and two and three years’ time, and I don’t remember mentioning this.

I had the appointment card on the table, the letter with the confirmation of results, and all I wanted to do was tell her about it, talk it over, like we would have done before.

I wanted to talk about why it was making me so scared, why there was a breathless panic fluttering up into my throat.

Sarah you’re not going to believe this, I wanted to say, or Sarah can I tell you something?

I wanted her to say oh calm down why don’t you, the way she did when I used to get worked up about deadlines and exams.

To say look no one’s dying here, we’re not talking about open-heart surgery, it’s normal, it’s a thing that happens.

I wanted her to give me some perspective, to say things out loud and make them seem a little more ordinary.

But I didn’t say anything, I just said oh I had a postcard from Peru, from someone called Rob, I said I couldn’t remember who he was.

She said you must do, he was that guy from over the road, he tried skating down that hill in the park, don’t you remember?

I smiled and said oh yes, and she said remember how no one went to help him because we were all laughing so much, and I laughed and held my hand to my mouth because it still seemed unfair to find it so funny, the way he went sprawling to the floor, arms flung out for balance, bellyflopping across the tarmac.

I said and remember how he had no skin on his arms for the rest of the summer, just those long grey scabs?

And she said I know I know, laughing, she said I can’t believe you’d forgotten, and I could picture the way she screwed her eyes up when she laughed.

We talked about other people, saying do you remember when, and how funny was that, and I wonder what happened to.

We talked about the medicine girl next door, the boy in Rob’s house who thought he could play the guitar, the good-looking boy down the road with the sketchpad.

We talked about the people at number seventeen, Alison who got her tongue pierced, and Chris, and the boy with the ring in his eyebrow but we couldn’t remember his name.

I tried to remember what it was like to be near so many people who knew me.

She said what’s Rob doing in Peru anyway, and I said I don’t know I think he’s saving the children or something.

Do you think he’s taken his skateboard she said, and I laughed and then remembered the way his hair got in his eyes when he was trying to pull off tricks.

The way his jeans always got scuffed under the heels of his trainers.

I thought about him being all those thousands of miles away, and I wondered how long the postcard had taken to reach me.

I read it again, looking at the long looping letters, trying to imagine the slow slur of his voice.

Things are going massively here it said, I’m having an ace time.

It said I’m not really homesick, but I’m missing decent cups of tea, it said you could write to me sometime.

I looked at the front of the card, at the pictures of Peru, smiling women in traditional dress, mountains, monkeys in fruit trees.

She said hello are you still there?

I said do you ever think about it, I mean, that last day.

She didn’t say anything for a moment, I heard a television in the background and I wondered where she was, if she was with anyone.

She said I try not to, it’s weird, you know, I’d rather forget about it.

It seems like a long time ago now she said.

I said I know but I can’t get it out of my head.

It keeps coming back I said, just recently, I don’t know why.

She was quiet, and I waited for her to say something.

I straightened the flowers in the vase on the table, pulled out the dead leaves.

I watched the traffic lights changing in the street outside.

She said what I always remember is the way everything carried on afterwards.

There were still buses going past on the main road she said, and some of the people on them turned to look for a moment but some of them didn’t even notice.

I wanted everything to stop she said, even if it was only for a little while.

There was nothing about it on the news she said, I knew there wouldn’t be but it didn’t seem right.

It just kind of happened and passed she said, and then we left and there was nothing to prove it had happened at all.

I said, you know, it’s the noise I can’t forget.

I still have dreams about it sometimes I said.

The way it echoed off the houses, and, oh, it just, I said.

And then we stopped talking and I could hear her breathing.

She said actually can we talk about something else now.

I said yes, sorry, it’s just I’ve been thinking, you know, lately, and she said well it’s a long time ago.

She said so anyway are you seeing anyone at the moment, and we talked about recent possibilities and failures, comparing notes.

And she said look my dinner’s nearly ready I’d better go.

I said oh sorry I didn’t realise, you’re eating late aren’t you and she said oh I do these days and we both said I’ll speak to you soon then bye.

I didn’t say who are you eating with are you eating on your own.

I sat there for a long time, after I put the phone down, the letter and the appointment card on the table, unmentioned.

I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to her about it, I don’t understand how I became fearful and closed off like this.

I sat there, watching the flowers quivering each time a lorry went past, feeling the tremble echo along the bones of my spine.

I saw the moon appearing, low and white over the park by the river.

I remembered the time Simon had called me through to his room, saying look out of the window, a dark night and the moon was bright and crisp away to the left, a thin crescent like a clipped fingernail.

And he’d said no no no but check this out, look over there, look over that way.

Pointing away to the right, to a second moon as bright and crisp as the first.

I’d looked at him, and he’d giggled and said how mad is that.

I’d looked at the two moons, each as clean and thin and new as each other, the same size, like twins of each other.

And I’d swung his window closed, and the reflection of the moon on the right swung away into the room with it and he said oh right yeah I thought it would be something like that.

I remembered this, and I wondered what he’d been doing the last few years, I wondered about all the people I haven’t seen or spoken to properly since then.

All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I’ve been so busy, and I don’t understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.

I read the letter again, and I sat very still, barely breathing, the streetlight striping the darkening room through the blinds.

I took off my shirt and bra and began touching my skin, very slowly, tracing the contours, pressing against the ridges and lines.

Running my fingers across all the marks and scars and spots, as though I could read my blemishes like braille.

I’m not sure what I was looking for.

I think I wanted to find something new, something visibly changed, something I could point to and say this is what it is, this is where it’s beginning.

But I couldn’t find anything.

I pressed the palm of my hand against my chest and tried to count my heartbeat.

It felt faster than it should be, and my skin felt hot, shining red, as though the blood was rushing to the surface and gasping for air.

I sat there for a long time, I fell asleep in the chair and when I woke up in the morning I was late for work.

Chapter 4

In the backyard of number nineteen, a woman is hanging out her washing, murmuring a song to herself and squinting against the light. She can see people sleeping in the back room of next door, she is glad they are quiet now, it means perhaps her children will sleep more.

She stoops for a handful of pegs and adjusts her headscarf. She hangs out a row of salwar kameez in different sizes, bright swathes of colour printed on thin fabric, she hangs out shirts, trousers, endless variations of underwear. And when she is done, and the whole yard is heavy with wavering lines of wet bunting, she straightens up and puts her hand to the hollow of her back, curves her face upwards. She interrupts her murmured song and listens to the muffled rumble of the morning. She breathes slowly and deeply, and for now the air smells clean, infused with the bright wetness of clean laundry.

The young man at number eighteen, with the dry eyes, he’s not dressed yet but he’s awake and he’s busy, he’s crouched on the floor, arranging a collection of objects and papers.

A page from a TV guide. An empty cigarette packet. A series of supermarket till receipts, stapled together in chronological sequence. Leaflets advertising bhangra alldayers and techno all-nighters. Train tickets. Death notices cut from local newspapers. An unopened packet of chewing gum.

He lays them all out on the floor, lays them out in size order, rearranges them in date order, blinking quickly. He stands back and looks, and writes out a list of the objects in front of him.

He turns on the television and picks up a polaroid camera. As soon as the screen warms up he takes a photograph of it, scribbling the time and the date on the back of the blank printout, seven a.m., thirty-one, oh eight, ninety-seven.

He lays the polaroid next to the cigarette packet, watching the shapes darken into colour and light. He turns back to the television, blinking, and watches Zoe talking about pop music in a London park, the soft morning light flitting through the trees and lighting up her hair, she says we’ll be having it large and he turns the television off.

Next door, in the bedroom of number twenty, an old man is lying awake beside his sleeping wife, he is holding his cupped palms close to his face and looking at the tiny flecks of blood he’s just coughed out of his lungs. He is fighting to control his breathing without waking his wife and he is looking at the pictures of their nephews and nieces, their great-nephews and greatnieces, propped up on the dressing table. He feels old, and he feels afraid. He listens to the steadiness of his wife’s breathing, and he thinks about the first night they spent together, a smuggled liaison in a seaside hotel nearly sixty years ago. He remembers the pattern on the wallpaper, the luxury of a three-bar electric fire, the view of the hills from the window. He remembers their shyness, standing awkwardly at the foot of the small bed and reaching out very slowly, kissing once, twice, moving uncertainly to hold each other and gradually allowing their curiosity to prevail. He remembers her insisting that the light be kept on until they slept, and that their clothes be folded neatly. And most of all he remembers how wonderfully startled they both were by their eventual intimacy.

He lies still, listening to his wife, waiting for the morning.

In the attic of number twelve, a young man is leaning out of the window, stripped to the waist. He is smoking a cigarette, holding it away to one side and making sure he blows all the smoke out into the air, and he is thinking about the day ahead.

He finishes the cigarette and drops it down into the street, watching it fall, the way it glows brightly as it accelerates towards the ground, the way it bursts into sparks on the pavement below. He turns back into his room, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum from his bedside drawer, taking a wallet from under his pillow and emptying out the cash. He sits crosslegged on the bed, running a flat hand across his forehead and through his thick black hair, looking at the folded notes with a bounce and a jig of excitement. He counts the money, again, smoothing the creases, sorting the fives from the tens, stacking them in ten neat piles of a hundred pounds each. He grins, biting his lip, nodding his head and tucking the notes back into his wallet, the wallet back under his pillow. Today he thinks, today today, and he lies on his back, one hand behind his head, the other hand a fist which he kisses and shakes in the air. He closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep.

At number eighteen, the boy with the sore dry eyes pulls a shoebox from a high shelf and sorts through the polaroids inside, he picks out a handful and fans them out on the floor like a poker spread. A picture of a lamp-post covered in marker-pen graffiti, Uz 4 Shaf 4 eva 9T7, Izzy is fit signed who, Lee an me wuz busy like bee, Sian equals slag, and so on and so, the soap opera of the street corner marked out in rain-faded initials and abbreviations.

A picture of a fly-posted garage door, poster layered upon poster, streaks torn through the layers of dates and venues and djs and bands, the top corner peeling off under the weight to reveal bare metal.

Empty drums of vegetable oil piled up outside a curryhouse like tins in a nineteen fifties supermarket.

A traffic jam at night, beaded white lights stringing down the road like christmas decorations, rain splashed on the camera lens.

Dark dribbles of blood in a pub carpark.

He picks up the camera again and carries it through to the bathroom, he takes a picture of himself in the mirror. He blinks, tightly and painfully, laying the camera down and holding the palms of his hands to his eyes, screwing his face up, rocking his head.

The colours in the polaroid wake into the light, his selfportrait taking shape while he searches for eyedrops, his blind hand like an addict in a medicine cabinet, knocking over shampoos and deodorants and razors.

In the back room of number seventeen, the girl with the glitter around her eyes is lying awake, chewing gum, looking at her sleeping friends. She knows she’ll be awake for some time yet, her brain is piled high with powders and pills and the muscles in her legs are still twitching from the dancefloor. She looks at the girls on the bed, the one curled around the other, protectively, she watches their shoulders and breasts rise and fall, shifting gently into position, she thinks about the piercing in the short girl’s tongue and wonders if it’s true what they say. The stereo is still playing, very quietly, she watches the small green lights bubbling up and down with the music, she listens to the singer going doowah doowah, I love you so, oohwoah. She feels the good strong weight of the white-shirted boy’s arm across her chest, she tilts her head forward to kiss it. The music goes doowah doowah I love you so, and she thinks about the two of them. They haven’t spoken about it, they haven’t said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let’s work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people’s lives, into other people’s arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn’t make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy’s arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it’s in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.

In the bathroom of number eighteen, a face looks out from the polaroid, wide-eyed, composed. A young man, early twenties, a smooth round face, straight nose, full lips, pale hair losing thickness around the temples, a buckle of skin folded below each eye. It’s a good picture, and in a moment he will date it and place it with the other objects he has collected together on his bedroom floor, a magazine article, a half-finished crossword, a twin-bladed razor.

But for now he has his head tipped up to the ceiling, a capful of solution bathing the dryness of his eyes, one hand gripping the sink until the ache subsides.

It’s light that makes his eyes hurt, mostly, bright or sudden light, and the dust in the air. It’s a rough prickling sensation, like sandpaper pressed up against the skin of his eye, a dryness he can mostly soothe by blinking rapidly, squeezing moisture across the surface.