If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (3 page)

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.

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.

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.