If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

The boy with the bloodshot eyes sits down again with his paper and pen. He is writing a letter to his brother, he writes last week I saw her loading up a car with stuff as if she was leaving, boxes and bags and even a standard lamp, and I was sick with disappointment but then it turned out it was her mate leaving. He thinks, and he writes I still want to talk to her properly, before I change house, I want to see if well you know, and he draws a row of dots and he writes but I guess if her mate’s left then she’s probably moving out and today’s the last day of the month and so I’ve missed my chance. He rubs his eyes, blinks painfully, writes I just don’t know what to say and I know it’s pathetic but I don’t, and he looks up and realises the twins are still laughing at him so he picks up the letter and retreats into his house.

A car appears from the other end of the street and hoots at the milk crates, a car with tinted windows and gleaming hubcaps, a car with loud music padooming from inside. The oldest boy raises his hand and throws the ball back to the twins, he walks to the car and clasps the hands of each of the occupants in turn. He calls goodbye to his father, but his father is walking towards him and so his friends climb out and each clasp his father’s hand, saying yes my father is well yes my mother is well, thankyou yes, allahu akbar, and then all four of them climb into the car and the father watches them drive towards the main road, he watches a brief flare of flame illuminating his son as a long cigarette is lit behind the darkened glass.

Upstairs at number twenty-four, a girl sits at her desk and watches the car drive past, she thinks she recognises the boy who just got into it, the boy who was playing cricket, she thinks she’s spoken to him but she can’t think when. She watches the car turn onto the main road, she watches the twins go back to their game, she looks at the old man opposite painting his windowframes, she looks higher and sees a crane lifted high over the rooftops, she wonders what they’re building over there now, she screws up her eyes and turns back to the work on her desk. She knows it was a mistake to put the desk under the window, it’s good for the light but there is so much to look at outside, there are so many distractions and she doesn’t have time for distractions. She opens another textbook, she takes the lids off a trio of felt-tip pens, and she draws another diagram, a delicate weave of veins and nerve endings and cell structures, she annotates and underlines and struggles to understand.

Outside, on the front step of number twenty-two, the two girls are watching a pigeon flying up the

street, a leaf in its beak. They’ve been watching it for a while, arguing about it. They’ve noticed that whenever it comes back it’s not carrying anything, but when it flies up towards the shop it has something crammed in its beak, a leaf, a twig, a piece of string.

The girl with the glasses is saying it must be building a nest, what else would it be doing, and the girl who’s still wearing her tartan pyjamas says but surely they’re supposed to lay their eggs in the springtime it’s about six months late to be building a nest.

Maybe it’s confused says the girl with the glasses and the short hair, maybe it’s overslept its hibernation, and the other girl says I don’t think pigeons hibernate do they? and goes into the house to make a cup of tea and a phonecall.

The girl with the glasses watches the pigeon, she tugs gently at her short hair, pulling it into place, she notices for the first time how graceful the pigeon looks, head stretched forward, feet tucked in under a curved belly, wings carefully angled to catch the breeze.

Across the road, at number twenty-three, a young man with a lot of hair and grazes down both arms is arguing with a young man wearing yellow sunglasses, he’s saying we need fire-lighters it’ll never get going without fire-lighters. The yellow-sunglasses boy is screwing up pieces of newspaper and dropping them into a rusted metal tray propped up on bricks, he is covering the newspaper with bits of grass and twig, he’s saying no it’ll be alright, wait up it’ll be fine, he nestles a few lumps of black charcoal into the pile of paper and sticks and he lights a corner of the newspaper. Watch this he says, and they peer at the small curl of flame, the paper blackening, smoke twisting off, steam wisping from the ends of the grass.

A twig smokes and crackles, pieces of burnt paper char and break away, the smoke thickens and spirals upwards, wafting up towards the first-floor window, buckling and turning, lifting higher, a catch of it dropping in through the attic window next door, the man with the tattoo smelling a glimpse of it and sitting up in bed to look around, the rest of it drifting further still, breaking and thinning and vanishing somewhere high above the quiet street.

Chapter 21

He changes gear.

He says don’t you ever wonder about him?

I say who, he says that guy, in Scotland, don’t you ever wonder?

I say well no, not really.

I think about it, about him and that night, and an image passes through my mind, all skin and teeth and hands, snagging my stomach like a dress caught in a door, closing my eyes.

I imagine knocking on his door, taking that long walk up the steep side of the city and waiting breathlessly outside his house.

I imagine bemusement on his face, delight, embarrassment.

I imagine him standing with one hand on the door and the other on the frame, his body wedged in between, his uncertainty like a pensioner’s doorchain.

I remember the smell of his neck.

I say well no, you know, it was just a thing.

It wasn’t anything else I say, it was just a thing that happened.

He pushes a little button, and soapy water squirts onto the windscreen, some of it catches in the wind and flails off to either side.

He says but did you never want to go back and do it again?

He turns the windscreen wipers on, and they squeak back and forth until the soapy water has cleared.

He says didn’t you wonder what he was thinking about you?

He says and when you found out did you wonder what he might do if you told him?

I look at him.

I say actually can we talk about something else now.

He says sorry, I just, you know, and he fiddles with the air vents in the middle of the dashboard.