If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Chapter 24

He opens the front door, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache who lives downstairs at number twenty, he touches a hand to his bow-tie and he steps out into the middle of the day. He glances up and down the street, he sees a ladder propped up against the wall of number twenty-five, he sees a young girl with a ribbon balancing on the wall opposite, he sees the twins arguing about whose turn it is to bat. He looks higher, he sees a construction crane hanging over rooftops a few streets away, his heart bangs a little harder but he smiles and sets off in that direction.

He remembers what they’d said, at the club, when he’d first put his name down for this, are you sure they’d said, at your age they’d said. He’d smiled then, pointed at the heading on the sheet, what does that say he’d asked the young lady trying to dissuade him, and she’d read it out for him, as though his eyesight was poor, it says Veterans and Widows Benevolent Fund she said. Well then he said to her, I am not a veteran, I was too young to be a veteran, so do not be saying this a man of my age, I am too young for you to be saying this to me he told her. These people, he said, his finger jabbing at the word veterans, these people did everything for me, and for you, don’t forget this. She had been quiet by this stage, embarrassed, and he’d felt bad for her. This, he said, this is the least I can do, this I can do with my eyes closed. And he’d paused, looked around, picked up his drink, and said I bloody will have my eyes closed for certain, and everyone in the club laughed and the young lady had looked at him and smiled.

He chuckles now, remembering it, pleased with himself, and he walks down the street, past two girls drinking tea and reading magazines, past a boy scrubbing his shoes, past a house with all the curtains closed still, turning right at the end of the street and then he is gone and nobody notices him leaving.

Outside number seventeen, they are sitting on the wall and eating chocolate doughnuts, they are talking with their mouths full, the boy with the pierced eyebrow is saying and I don’t think anyone really believed in this thing, that was the problem, no one believed in it. He says I know I didn’t, or any of the other sellers, or the managers or the printers or even the pilots who go around taking the pictures.

A girl with a yellow ribbon trails past them and pushes open the door of number nineteen. She stops in her hallway for a moment to outline a pattern on the wallpaper with her fingers, and then she drifts into the front room. Her parents and grandparents are all sitting there, watching the television, John says there is a small band of low pressure sweeping northwards this afternoon and nobody in the room is speaking. The girl’s mother looks up, she speaks quietly so as not to disturb the others, she says love why don’t you go and play with your brothers? and the girl says they’re playing cricket they won’t let me play they say girls can’t play and as she talks she is backing out of the room. Her mother says tell them they are wrong, tell them I say you can play, and the girl drifts out of the room, her ribbon trailing behind her like the wake of a boat.

Outside, she looks at her brothers playing cricket, she looks away and she walks straight past them. The tall girl on the wall next door sees her and says hello but the young girl pretends not to hear.

The tall girl is looking at her eyes in a silver pocket mirror. They are watery, greasy-looking, and the skin around them, without the glitter now, is swollen and grey. She dabs cream onto the skin with her little finger and rubs it in, wincing. She puts the mirror down on the wall beside her. It’s engraved with the name of a women’s magazine. She picks up a pipette of eyedrops and leans her head back into the sun.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow says and the worst bit was each evening we had to boast about how many people we’d sold to that day, they did this thing where we all stood in a room and played a different musical instrument depending on our numbers. The other boy reappears in the doorway behind them, doing up the buttons on a freshly ironed shirt.

What’s he talking about he says to the girl, his job she says without turning around or sounding very interested.

Outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair is saying you’ve got to use something else, the charcoal’s not getting a chance to catch, try some lighter fluid or something, and he presses down on the lighter tab, he sprays a thin drizzle of fluid over the coals and the singed newspaper. The boy with the yellow sunglasses says that’ll do that’s enough try that, and he lights it and flinches back as a halo of soft blue flame wraps suddenly and briefly around the cold coals.

In the doorway of number seventeen, the boy with the white shirt unrolls a navy-blue tie and slings it around his neck. The tall girl says yeah well at least you got to work outside, I’ve been stuck inside all summer, and the eyebrow boy looks at her and says what were you doing anyway?

She tips her head back and drops another splash into her eye, and she says I’ve been ripping free gifts off magazines. He looks at her.

She blinks rapidly and lowers her head, I’ve been sat in a room without windows she says, ripping the free gifts off magazines so they can be recycled. The boy with the pierced eyebrow looks at her and doesn’t say anything.

The boy in the white shirt does up his tie and says have you seen my black shoes to the girl.

No she says, and she turns and she says your tie’s not straight.

The eyebrow boy turns round and says where are you going dressed up like that and the smart boy says new job, telephone helpline at a mortgage company.

The boy with the pierced eyebrow slaps the palm of one hand with the back of the other and makes a loud noise in the back of his throat. He says, for fucksake, didn’t our parents used to make stuff for a living?

On the front step of number twenty-two, the girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses is watching the boy from number twenty-four cleaning his trainers. He is sitting on his front step, his hands wrestling in a bowl of hot soapy water, thrashing around as though the shoe were trying to escape, she wonders why he’s so keen to get them clean, she watches the soap bubbles sparkling in the air like a flung handful of crushed glass.

Across the road, outside number twenty-three, the boy with the big hair and the grazes is watching the other boy put together another careful pyramid of paper and sticks and charcoal, shielding it with his hands as he lights it. He says what’s with the yellow glasses anyway, where’d you get them from? and the other boy takes them off and looks at them, help the aged or something he says, try them on. He puts them on, the boy with the big hair and the grazes, and the other boy says the woman in the shop said they used to give them to mental patients, like to cheer them up or something. The boy with the big hair looks around at the street, grinning, everything gone a strange saturated yellow. He takes them off and hands them back, he says well mad and he rubs his eyes as if to get rid of any leftover tint. They both turn back to the barbecue just as the pyramid of paper and sticks stops smouldering again, and the boy with the big hair and the grazes says fuck this I’m going down the shop to get some fire-lighters or something. The other boy says no hold on hold on, but when he turns round the big-haired boy has already picked up his skateboard and stepped it onto the pavement. He watches as he kicks up some speed, bending his knees as the wheels knock over the uneven slabs, holding his hands out slightly and, as he passes number seventeen, leaning the board towards the road, shifting his weight suddenly, pushing down with his back foot.

And they all watch, the people outside number seventeen, the two girls at number twenty-two, the man with the burnt hands, the twins in the road, the boy in the yellow sunglasses, they watch as he lifts off the pavement and the board swings up beneath him, his body crouching suddenly and his hand grabbing at the illustrated underside of the board before the wheels hit ground again and the momentum carries him forward towards the shop.

The boy on the tricycle stops pedalling, he drifts to a halt as he turns and watches the skateboard pass, his mouth is open and he doesn’t understand what he has just seen, when he tries to tell his mother later he won’t know what words to use, and she won’t understand what he is trying to say, so she will stroke his hair and fetch him a drink of juice.

The boy with the skateboard jumps off and disappears into the shop, and the boy outside number twenty-four goes back to cleaning his trainers and the girl next door looks at him again.

She says excuse me sorry and he looks up, his hands stop moving, she says sorry but what are you doing, it’s way too nice a day to bother with that isn’t it, and he holds up a dripping shoe with his hand inside, like a glove puppet coming out of a bath, he points to a dark brown stain curled like a foetus across the white toe. He says I’m trying to get rid of that, these trainers are new and I’m not having that staying on there.

The girl says what is it, curry sauce or something, and he smiles and says no, he says no I was out last night and the bloke I was with got into an argument with someone. He puts the wet shoe down and turns to face her, he leans towards her slightly so she can hear him better. He says I knew it was trouble but I couldn’t split because he’d given me his drink to hold and I couldn’t see anywhere to put it down.

He wipes sweat and soap from his forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt, he says next thing I knew was he was biting a chunk out of this bloke’s nose, I couldn’t believe it, there was like blood and shit all over the place he says, and now I can’t get my trainers clean he says.

The girl with the glasses says what’s that noise? and they turn and they listen and they look at each other.

They listen, and there’s a rumbling from somewhere, becoming a rattle, a rattle like the window-frames of a drum and bass club, they can’t tell what it is but it sounds like it’s coming from further up the main road, they stand and they look, it sounds like a car without tyres rolling down the hill, the twins stop playing cricket and run to the end of the street, even the man with the burnt hands stands and looks and the noise is now so loud that none of them can speak, the rumble rattle hudderjudder, and they hear shrieks and whoops and yes alrights and

And a dozen chairs roll past the end of the street, office chairs with swivel bases and ergonomically adjusted backrests, racing down the steep main road, eleven riders clinging onto them, trying to steer by stabbing their feet onto the tarmac, hollering encouragement to each other, bracing themselves for the inevitable fall, an empty chair following behind them like a riderless horse at the Grand National, and then they are gone, the noise fading quickly, and the people in the street turn to look at one another, blinking, saying what the and then carrying on with what they were doing, talking, drinking tea, eating doughnuts, getting ready to go to work, playing cricket.

A bus stops at the end of the street, the doors open and the old couple from number twenty step awkwardly down. The old man says thankyou driver, turning to touch his hat as the doors flop closed. As the bus pulls away, a young boy squeezes his face through a window on the top deck, spitting out a spray of phlegm which falls towards them accompanied by the high-pitched wail of children’s laughter.

She looks at him, she feels his body stiffen like a stretched rope, she squeezes his arm and they turn and walk away.

She doesn’t say anything as they walk down the street, she doesn’t need to and she knows he doesn’t want her to.

He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiping at the thick string of spit on his sleeve, carefully folding the red silk and holding it out to one side.

The boy with the tricycle rattles towards them, head down, and they step neatly around him.

He walks calmly, his back as straight as ever, his breathing a little loud but his face still impassive.

They cross the street to their front door, he says which one of you two is Ian Botham then, but he says it quietly and the twins don’t know who he’s talking about.

And it’s only when they have closed the front door behind them that he says what did I do? I didn’t even look at them. I know love she says, I know, and she takes him by the arm and they walk up the stairs.

And as he stands by the coat-hooks and takes off his hat, he sees a spade and a fork through the open cupboard door, he thinks of the things he’s never talked to her about, he thinks of the medal propped on the windowsill, he thinks about her walking back from the allotments on her own.

He turns and watches her moving through to the kitchen, he remembers those first few months and years after he’d come back, when she’d asked him, pleaded gently with him to tell her something, to not hide it all but to share it with her.

He takes the handkerchief through to the bathroom and rinses it under the hot tap, squeezing and soaking it until the steam rises.

He didn’t tell her anything, because there was nothing to tell. There was no answer to the question of what did you do in the war, because he had done nothing. After years of training and preparation, after days of tension and a terrified journey across the channel, after all that he had done nothing and he had nothing to tell. He had travelled halfway across Europe, and when it was over he had travelled back, but somehow the war had passed him by, as if he’d been asleep when the others had started and he’d spent the whole time trying to catch up.

At the beaches of Normandy he had leapt into the cold sea and waded onto the desecrated sand with no more need for caution than on a daytrip to Blackpool. Across northern France and Belgium he had marched in time along cratered tarmac roads, past flattened woodlands where single bare trees stuck uselessly out of the desolate soil like dead men’s stiffened arms jabbed accusingly at the sky. He had passed through towns captured for the fourth time, crossed rivers bridged by floating pontoons and planks, seen farmhouses broken open and smoking from battles which had only just moved on, eaten meals with bandaged men heading in the other direction.

He wrings the hot water from the handkerchief and hangs it from the line strung over the bath. He looks at his hands, wide flat hands with uncalloused skin and neat fingernails, and he scrubs them clean with a nailbrush.

He’d dug graves. Right the way across the new map of Allied Europe he’d dug graves, following in the costly trail of liberation, his shovel cutting into the bloody soil and carving holes just deep enough for the uniformed bodies of young men. They had a chaplain assigned to their unit, an older man who would run short of breath as he scurried from hole to hole to offer blessing and sanctification to each fresh mound of soil. Between them all, himself and the rest of the men in his unit, they could dig hundreds of graves in a day, spread out across a field like farmworkers, their shovels rising and falling in unison, the chaplain standing beside each one in turn, naming each body if he could, commending each blank face to the company of saints as the soil shushed and fell back into the ground.

And they did this all the way to Berlin, the crack and thump of battle always off to the east, a fresh supply of bodies rolling back to them on flatbed trucks driven by men with faces as undisturbed as their own, handing over halfphrases of information with the bodies and the marker-sticks. Pushing through steady they’d say, or bit of a tight one, or got the bridge last night. And a few days later they’d be there, where it had been steady, or tight, or at the bridge. Sinking shovels into soil, beckoning over the redfaced chaplain, painting a name and rank onto a marker-stick ready for the stonemasons. Or, if there wasn’t a name, writing Unknown beneath the date.

Sometimes, when he was sure nobody was looking, he would make up a name, look at a man’s young face and decide a name on the spot, like a fresh baptism, trying to disguise the brutal anonymity of what they were doing.

Those were the memories he carried with him when he travelled back home to his wife, picking mud from his fingernails and thinking of all the things he would be unable to tell her.

And they are the memories he’s been shuffling around with all these years, unspoken because there is nothing to say, burying them deep down and finding them risen up again, the faces of the men, the smell of soil and flesh, the stumbling words of the chaplain drowned out by the distant noises of war.

And she doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want to put out his medal like a trophy.

And he can’t tell her that he liberated Europe with a spade.

Next door, at number eighteen, the young man with the blinking eyes leans out of his window and takes some final photographs of the street, his packing almost completed. He squints through the viewfinder and snatches the images in quick succession.

The boy with the yellow sunglasses poking at the barbecue.

The man with the burnt hands sitting on an old wooden chair.

The twins playing cricket, arguing.

A crane, looming brightly over the rooftops.

And on the way home I hardly say a word to Michael.

He concentrates on driving, making small adjustments to the heating, the stereo, the angle of his seat, the speed of the windscreen wipers.

I look out of the window, or close my eyes, and I think about the way of things now.

I think about my mother crying for a week, and I try to imagine her hard dry face changed in that way.

I picture precious water falling on desert ground and rolling across the surface like beads.

I picture a tap left on in a deserted house, reconnected at source and suddenly gushing forth with bright clean water.

And I picture my mother, actually, her face bloated and streaked, her eyes bloodshot and waterlogged, a handkerchief squashed into her hand like a sponge.

I wonder if she stayed in bed that week, buried in a mound of bedclothes, or if she stalked the house like an exorcist, or if she just fell to the floor beside the telephone and refused to move.

I wonder how my father felt when he heard her say the words, I’m safe now, if his heart leapt up inside him, I wonder if he was holding her at the time.

I remember that breakfast in the Little Chef again, a tiny brick building tucked into a valley of stone and pine and heather, I remember looking out of the window as though I was just waking up, saying where are we, looking up at the endless reach of the mountain into the sky.

And the whole thing creeps back to me, and I wonder how such important memories become veiled from us, like front rooms hidden behind net curtains.

My dad saying we’re in Scotland now, look at it love, this is Scotland, and me not understanding what he meant.

My mother slamming down her knife and fork so hard I thought she’d broken the plate, saying we’re not going, I can’t do it, we’re not going.

My dad talking quietly to her, trying to touch her hand and she kept moving it away.

Like two magnets face to face.

And he was talking so quietly that I couldn’t hear him, and I don’t think I would have understood if I could, and so I joined the dots on my placemat.

My mother saying you don’t understand I’m not going.

Leaving so quickly that I didn’t get a lolly even though I’d cleaned my plate, and not arriving back home until it was dark again.

I think about what it was that stopped her going, that made her feel unsafe for all that time.

I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.

Locked doors, a belt, bruises in hidden places.

Sharp words, absent touches, thin blankets, empty plates.

I think about the times I thought of her as a hard woman, an unfair mother, and I realise what mercifully pale reflections those moments were.

He says are you asleep, gently, and I open my eyes and he says are you okay?

I say yes, fine, I’m just a bit tired.

He says do you want to stop for something to eat? I could do with a rest he says, and he squeezes the back of his neck the same way my father used to.

He was always a weary man, my dad.

He seemed to be permanently in the lounge, watching television, slung low in the armchair with his feet up on the table, dark patches on his white socks like mould on soft fruit.

He never seemed to be watching the programmes, unless they were boxing-related, but it was impossible to change the channel without him noticing.

When he did move around the house he moved slowly, easing his workboots off by the door, shuffling through to speak to my mother, settling into his chair as if into a hot bath.

Sometimes when I got back from school he’d already be there, not in his chair but scraping his way through the house, cleaning slowly.

The curtains would always be closed on those days, my mother an absent presence upstairs.

Your mother’s not feeling so good today my dad would say, but she never went to the doctor’s.

He would cook me tea, burning fishfingers under the grill with tiredness clouding his eyes like bruises.

Once we ate from paper plates, and I didn’t think to ask why.

He says there’s some services here do you want to stop for a while, and he’s already indicating so I say yes and we drive in and park.

We sit in the restaurant in the bridge, picking at overpriced and overheated food, watching the traffic slashing beneath us.

There’s a group of women at the table next to us, and I hear one of them saying but I don’t understand why he was naked in the first place.

He says so anyway how did you get on then, was it okay?

I say well my mum at least admitted she wasn’t that impressed, I think, and my dad didn’t say much at all.

I don’t tell him what my dad did say.

A woman at the next table says I didn’t really think he was like that, and another woman says well he’s not usually is he.

He says but do you think it was worth going, and I say yes, yes it was, I think maybe I’ve started something, I think maybe they just need a little more time.

One of the women says no it was Phoebe’s idea, she said he needed to show some empathy, to get the apartment, you know, with the ugly naked guy.

I stand by the entrance and wait for him to come out of the toilet.

I watch a boy with David Beckham on his t-shirt playing a football game in the arcades.

I watch a woman with a pushchair waiting for someone to hold the door open for her.

I look at the pushchair, at the bag dangling from the back of it, spilling over with nappies and cloths and bottles and all the other paraphernalia of babydom that I know nothing about.

I realise that I haven’t begun to think about any of these things, prams, pushchairs, cots, nappies.

I realise that I will soon be a mother, and my stomach goes sick at the thought of it, greasy and fluid and unstable.

My face feels red, my legs feel as thin as paper.

He comes out of the toilet, he sees me and says are you alright you don’t look alright, I say yes I just need to sit down.

As we walk to the car I feel his hand hovering by my elbow, waiting to grab me.

We drive back onto the motorway and I swallow weakly a few times, trying to keep the sickness down.

I wipe my face with my fingers and he says is it too hot, do you want some air?

I say no it’s fine, I just, I feel a bit, queasy. I wonder if this is the nausea I read about in those leaflets, or if it’s just tiredness and stress and travelling in a car.

I want to talk to my mother about it, properly.

I want to say mum I’m so scared I feel like puking, I have no idea how to deal with this.

To say mum I don’t even know how to change a nappy, I don’t know what to feed a baby, I don’t know any lullabies.

Mum, I want to say, I don’t even think my breasts are big enough to produce milk, I don’t know how to get it out, I don’t know any of the things you’re supposed to know, I want to say mum will it hurt?

And then I want to ask her if this is how she felt when she was pregnant with me.

I remember the few times I tried to talk to her about anything serious while I still lived at home, boys or schoolwork or friends who didn’t feel like friends.

I remember the way her face used to shrink slightly, her eyes narrowing and looking quickly around the room, her hands fluttering like birds in a pet shop.

I wouldn’t worry about it love she’d say, every time, things’ll be better soon she’d say, and she’d change the subject, or suddenly remember to do something, rush out to the shops before they closed.

I remember the disappointment I used to feel, the comparisons I used to make with other girls’ mums.

I knew girls whose mothers would help them with their homework, buy them new outfits for new boyfriends, kiss them on the cheek whenever they came through the front door.

I knew girls, sometimes the same girls, whose mothers would shout at them when they got home late, or ground them if they didn’t approve of their boyfriends, or make them help with the housework.

My mother did none of these things.

My mother was polite, and responsible, and didn’t always seem to notice I was there.

I think of what my father said, and I think of the grief and rage she must have had stuffed down inside her like a rag in a petrol-filled bottle, and I wonder how she never exploded.

We get closer to home, we come off the motorway and there are lights shining in through the windows, street lights, traffic lights, lights from shop windows and houses and pub doorways, there is music coming from other cars and there are large groups of people talking and shouting and singing.

We go round a mini roundabout, we stop at a green light to let an ambulance through.

He says what’s going on, why’s it so busy?

I don’t know I say, and we drive past the cafe where we had breakfast the other day and I realise we’re almost there.

I say well thanks for driving me all that way, I really appreciate it, and he looks at me and says that’s okay don’t worry.

We stop outside the shop below my flat and he says if there’s anything I can do, if you need anything.

I look at him, and I think about all the things I need.

He gets out of the car, takes my bag from the boot, opens my door, hands me my bag.

We say goodbye, and I go up to my flat and sit by the window without turning the lights on, watching the traffic and thinking about how little I said to him on the way back.