If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

There’s a hooting, outside, and the twins grab a milk crate each and drag their cricket pitch off the road to let a car drive past.

The car is burgundy red, wide and elegant, ten years old but still the boys are impressed and they run to touch it, pressing sticky handprints against the polished bodywork and trying to climb up onto the bonnet. The car stops outside number nineteen, and the driver gets out and says hey boys now, what you doing uh, you making a mess of my car, and they come and stand in front of him, side by side, hands behind their backs and together they say hello uncle how are you we are pleased to see you, and they giggle and hit each other on the backs of their heads.

The uncle takes a handkerchief from his pocket and says rightright, go and tell your mother I’m here okay, and then he turns and polishes the marks of their hands away and they race each other to the front door. The girl with the short blonde hair and the small square glasses, outside number twenty-two, she looks up from a pageful of job adverts and sees the man, he’s a young man and he’s very well dressed, he turns and sees her looking at him and calls out a greeting, how are you he says and he holds the sun out of his eyes with the back of his hand. She is surprised, she smiles, she says fine and rests her chin on her knuckles and looks at him. He looks back, he hesitates and he almost takes a step towards her.

He turns, and he polishes a hand mark on the bonnet, rubbing at the already gleaming metal as though it were an oil lamp.

The girl goes back to her job adverts, she picks up a red pen and scribbles out a circle she drew earlier, the moment has passed and she doesn’t notice the man glancing over his shoulder at her. Another girl comes out of the house and sits beside her, she puts two mugs of tea down on the stone path and she says was there someone round this morning, I thought I heard voices. She looks at the girl with the glasses and the short blonde hair and she says it wasn’t someone who stayed was it? The girl with the glasses laughs and says yeah right, as if, I was talking to the landlord, I was seeing if we could stay a bit longer. The other girl is still wearing her tartan pyjamas, she rubs her eyes and says what did he say? and the girl with the glasses says he said someone’s supposed to be moving in tomorrow night. I can’t pack she says, I’ve got too much stuff, I don’t know what to do with it all. The girl in the pyjamas picks up one of the mugs of tea, decides it’s still too hot, puts it down again. You’ve got to be ruthless she says, looking at the girl with the glasses, get yourself some binbags and throw it all away, landfill it she says, leave it for the archaeologists. You’ve got to travel light she says, start in a new place with empty hands. It’s good for your karmic energy she says, and the other girl looks at her and laughs. Where did that come from she says, and the girl in the pyjamas shrugs, she says I don’t know I read it in a magazine or something and she drinks her tea.

Over the road, the boy with the big hair is squirting more paraffin onto the flaming charcoals, he’s grinning and saying fuckin A, that’s more like it, and the boy in the yellow sunglasses is turning away and saying that’s not how you’re meant to do it, it won’t burn properly now. The boy with the hair says well at least it is burning Baden-Powell, and the other boy says nothing, he goes into the house and loudly closes the door.

In the hallway of number nineteen, the twins’ mother is telling them to please keep out of the way as they run up and down the stairs, into the kitchen, into the front room. Their grandparents are slowly preparing themselves to go out, he is straightening his jacket and placing his small round hat on his head, she is standing behind him and picking small pieces of pale blue fluff from his shoulders, she is pulling her cardigan a little tighter around her. Their daughter-in-law stands and watches, she says is it all okay have you got everything? and she says darling turn that off now your parents are going out. The boys come out of the kitchen with their cheeks squirrel full of pink coconut sweets, they squeeze between the adults and they burst back out of the house.

The young man cleaning his trainers looks up and sees them, sitting in his doorway at number twenty-four, he watches the six of them processing out of number nineteen, the two brothers leading the way, the grandmother and grandfather stepping slowly and carefully, each wincing as they reach the bottom step, and behind them the mother and father, the father still holding a remote control in his hand and he holds it behind his back.

The boy stops scrubbing his trainers, he wipes soap from his hands and he watches t

he young man by the burgundy car greeting the older couple, shaking the man’s hand, kissing the woman’s cheek, he sees the mother of the twins looking away down the street as though she is expecting someone to appear. He hears her calling a name and then saying something to her husband, he sees the elderly couple getting into the car and having the doors closed after them by the young man. He sees hands being shaken through open windows, the car driving away, the mother and father on their doorstep going back inside the house and closing the door.

He picks up the brush again, he scrubs at the dark stain curled across the toe of his left shoe, thinking about last night and swearing quietly.

Next door the girl with the short blonde hair and the glasses stands up and says I’m going to the shop do you want anything?

In the hallway of number nineteen, the mother and the father look at each other, not smiling or searching or waiting for the other to speak, they are just looking.

She says, put that back by the television.

She says, I am going upstairs.

And she walks up the stairs, and although she is much older than she has been, and although her body is quicker to become weary than it ever was, she still feels the movement of herself beneath her clothes as a good and special thing.

She feels the soft slide of cotton against her thighs as she walks, the push of her breasts as she breathes, the pinching of the cloth into the turn of her waist as she straightens her back and pauses on the stairs to glance down at her husband.

He looks up at her, and his face is calm and patient, almost solemn, but inside his head he is throwing buckets of water onto burning coals. He looks at her, and he also is aware of his body beneath his clothes, he is aware of the reassuring miracle of manhood, the flesh-and-blood conjuring trick which stirs the slow energies of his ageing body. He follows her up the stairs, he looks at the way her hair falls down her back, the shift and shine of it, they step into their bedroom and he turns to close the door.

And in a moment the door will be locked, and the stillness and quiet will be left on this side of the door. They will both drop their politeness and reserve to the floor with their clothes, he will close the curtains and she will unveil her body, she will stand against the wall with her arms raised high, waiting for him to drink in his fill of the sight of her, she will lick her fingers, each in turn, as though sharpening them, and then they will be together and the room will fill with movement and laughter and stifled noises.

The rustle and fall of bedclothes.

Murmuring.

A rip of cotton.

A hand clapped over a mouth.

Outside, their twin boys are already playing cricket again, the younger twin hits out and the ball loops high in the air and lands in the garden of number seventeen just as the boy with the white shirt is saying I just wanted to give it a go, I wanted to get in tune with nature and like the cycle of life and stuff, I was reading this thing about reclaiming the masculine hunter and the tall thin girl laughs suddenly and sharply, catching a piece of chocolate doughnut in her throat.

The girl from number twenty-two, short hair and square glasses, she’s walking past, she stops and she says do you want anything from the shop what’s funny? The boy in the white shirt throws the ball back to the older twin, and the boy with the pierced eyebrow says hucklefuckinberry finn. The girl with the glasses looks at him, confused, and she looks at the boy in the white shirt who says I was just telling them about when I went fishing a while ago, that’s all, they think it’s funny, I don’t know why he says, and the tall thin girl bites her lip. Did you catch anything says the girl with the glasses, and he says I did actually, after a couple of hours, a trout or something, and the short girl with the painted nails pulls a face and says did you kill it?

He says I tried to but I dropped it in the grass, it was flapping around and I couldn’t get hold of it, I didn’t know what to do, I thought it would just die anyway but it kept flapping for ages he says and the ball bounces off the wall behind him and lands in front of the boy with the pierced eyebrow.

So I picked up this big stick he says, and he rolls up a magazine to demonstrate, a copy of Hello!, and he says I stood there watching it drown, trying to hit it.

The older twin runs up and says give us the ball, and the boy with the pierced eyebrow slides it under his legs. Give us the fucking ball he says, and they look up at him with pretend shock and turn away. The ball’s over there mate says the boy with the pierced eyebrow, and as the child turns to look he throws the ball, over his head, towards the garden of number twelve. The young boy looks back. Your hair’s still wet he says, and he runs away.

So anyway says the boy in the white shirt, I hit it in the end, and he smacks the front step with the rolled-up face of the Duchess of York, twice, to demonstrate, and he says and then it stopped flapping so I took it back up to my mate’s house and dealt with it, like washed it and scaled it and took all the guts and shit out, which was fucking obviously grim he says. And then I cooked it he says, and he sits back and looks away down the street and looks proud of himself.

So was it nice? says the girl with the glasses, and he looks at her and says well it looked nice, I fried it up in little steaks with garlic and black pepper and lemon and stuff, it smelt really good and he looks away and she says but what did it taste like? He says I don’t know I couldn’t eat it.