If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (21 page)

On the table, an uneaten slice of cake, a half-empty cup of cold tea, crumbs.

There was no one there when I got to work this morning. My keycard rejected, flicking back like a stuck-out tongue,

and there was no one around to let me in. I was hot and dizzy from the walk, I felt sick again, I needed to sit down.

A security guard came past and said it’s a bank holiday love, and I must have looked like I was going to cry because she stopped grinning and offered me a drink and almost touched my arm.

I went and sat in her little office with her, looking at the closed circuit pictures while she made us both a cup of tea and her kettle was so small she had to boil it twice.

She said if you don’t mind me saying love you don’t look well enough to be at work anyhow.

I smiled and said no I’m okay I’m just pregnant and she said oh congratulations and asked me questions and showed me pictures of her new granddaughter.

She gave me lots of advice, she said drink stout and take folic acid, and mind you take it easy now.

I finished the tea and said thankyou and went home again, and on the way back I was sick by the bins behind the Chinese.

There was a message from Sarah on the answerphone.

It was a long message, so I left it playing while I cleared away the breakfast things.

She said what are you doing are you still in bed where have you been?

She said I’ve been trying to call you what have you been up to all weekend?

She said and so what about that guy, what’s his name, that guy I gave your number to, did he call you, did you see him?

She gasped as though she was suddenly shocked and she giggled and said is that where you’ve been?

Have you been making babies she said, is he still there now?

There were voices in the background, she said look anyway got to go, she said but anyway I’m in your part of town today so call me and we can meet up.

She told me her mobile number, but she said it too fast and I had to listen to the whole message again before I could write it down.

I took my clothes off and got into the shower while I thought about calling her back.

It would be good to talk to her, maybe, but the idea made me nervous somehow.

I remembered the last time I tried to talk to her about it, and I thought that perhaps I just don’t know her well enough anymore.

I filled my hair with shampoo and watched the lather pouring down over me, I looked at my skin and I wondered if anything was different, my breasts heavier, my stomach rounder, my hips wider.

It was hard to tell.

I looked at my body and tried to picture myself as a heavily pregnant woman, I stood with my feet further apart, my hands against the back of my hips, my stomach pushed out.

I felt like a nine-year-old, playing dress-up.

I rinsed off the soap and got out of the shower, and I was just about to brush my teeth when I was sick in the basin.

There was another message on the answerphone, it was Michael, he said just seeing if you’re okay and I wondered
if you were doing anything this afternoon and he told me his number.

When I open the door I say oh hello, and I look at him and we’re both embarrassed.

He’s holding a bunch of flowers, thick-stemmed white lilies with bright yellow centres and shiny green leaves.

I look at them, he looks at them, and water drips from the bottom of the wrapping onto his shoe.

Oh, I don’t know what to say I tell him, and I don’t.

He says oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean, they’re not, I mean it’s not anything, I just thought, erm, shall I, and his sentence trails off into a row of faint full stops.

I say, oh, they are nice though.

He says, I just thought, you know, you seemed upset, yesterday, I thought maybe they’d cheer you up, I’m sorry.

I say no, sorry, they’re nice, you just surprised me, that’s all, I wasn’t expecting, I just, look come in anyway, I’ll put them in something.

He comes in and stands by the door, and I put the flowers in a vase by the window, the stems curving upwards like the arch of a dancer’s back, the petals thick and glossy like morning eyes, the smell of them already beginning to fill the flat.

I make a pot of tea, and I pour it into thin white cups without saucers.

He says are you okay though, yesterday, was it hard?

I can’t decide how to answer him, I start to say something deflective, something like well it was okay I think they’ll come round, something that will slip from the question like shrugged shoulders from a shawl, but the words stick in my mouth.

I want to tell him something of what happened, the new
understanding I was granted, but those words are locked in as well.

I say yes it was, it was hard but not like I expected.

He says what do you mean and I say I don’t know how to explain it I don’t think it would make any sense.

He says have a go, he smiles and says I’m not as stupid as I look you know and he lifts his palms up.

I say actually can we talk about something else now and he stops smiling and says sorry, sorry.

I say, the flowers, I do like them, thankyou.

He sits at the table, opposite me, and he looks at the flowers and he looks out of the window.

I say I was thinking about your brother this morning, and his head startles round to look at me, I say I was wondering what it’s like, being a twin.

He says what do you mean, I say well is it strange, do you feel different to anyone else?

He says I don’t know it’s hard to say, I’ve got nothing to compare it to, I don’t know what it’s like for other people.

It’s not like people think he says, we’re not telepathic or anything like that, but we’ve always been very close, we’ve always known most stuff about each other.

Connected he says, like we’re connected.

And then he pulls a face and wipes his forehead with his hand and he says well less disconnected than other people at least.

He says it’s hot in here do you mind if I open a window.

He tries to open the window, it sticks and he has to hit the frame with the heel of his hand.

He says you know that thing with his eyes, the blinking, and I nod.

I remember when his brother talked to me that day, blinking so hard that both his cheeks lifted up as if they were trying to meet his eyebrows.

He says that used to be the only way people could tell us apart, especially when we were at school and wearing the same clothes, it was the only difference between us.

He says I used to think he did it on purpose, just to be different, you know, I asked him about it once and he got really upset, he said it showed that even I didn’t know him properly, he asked me why he would put it on when it made him look so stupid he says.

It doesn’t make him look stupid I say, just a bit shy.

He looks at me, he picks up a pen from the table, a retractable biro, he starts clicking the point in and out, clickclick clickclick.

His hand clenches around the pen suddenly, his knuckles rising hard and white from his hand, he says he is not shy, my brother is not shy, and he weights each word as though he were underlining it with the pen in his hand.

He puts the pen down, he breathes out slowly, and I say I’m sorry I didn’t mean, I just, I mean I don’t know him really I was just saying.

He says look I’m sorry I think I should go I don’t know what I’m doing here.

He stands by the door, and he can’t get out because the key’s not in the lock.

He waits, and I look at the back of his head and I want him to turn around and I want him to tell me what’s wrong.

And suddenly more than anything I don’t want him to leave.

He says have you got the key the door’s locked, and he still doesn’t turn around, he’s talking to the door and his voice sounds strange.

I say don’t go.

He says my brother isn’t shy, but people never give him the chance, people don’t make the effort to get to know him, nobody knows him really.

He says I’m not sure that I even know him, and he’s still facing the door as he says this and I’m still looking at the back of his head.

I say don’t go.

He turns around and he says I don’t want to go I don’t know where to go.

He sits down and there is a quietness between us for a long time.

He says I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just, I feel like he needs protecting sometimes.

He says he was born a few minutes before me but I’ve always felt like his big brother I’m not really sure why.

I say you know every time you talk about him I feel worse for not knowing him properly when we lived there, I feel as though I missed out and it was sort of my fault, as though I should apologise.

I hold one hand in the other and say doesn’t he ever phone, do you think he could phone here and I could speak to him?

He says no he never phones, just like that, no explanation, and I think maybe I’ve upset him again, maybe this is too much hard work and I’m out of my depth here.

He says you know I told you he collected stuff, and took photos, I, he gave me them to look after and I think he wouldn’t mind if I showed you, I mean I think he’d like it, would you like to see them, and already he’s standing up.

I look at his sudden change of mood, I smile and say yes and
unlock the door for him and watch him walking out to his car.

I look at my room, at the table with the flowers and the pot of tea, the two cups, I think how nice two cups on a table can look.

A shadow passes across the street, a faint imprint rolling briefly across the pavement and the tarmac, noticed only by the young daughter of the man with the aching hands, she is looking for things like this and she sees it passing as fast as a shiver and she looks up and sees a pair of wings high above her, perfectly white in the huge sky, a thin ribbon of vapour trailing out behind it.

As she looks up, a layer of cloud comes sliding into view, heavy and grey like unwashed net curtains and she watches the wings disappear, she watches the sky darken. She turns around and sees her father standing up, he is picking up his chair, hooking his arm through the seat back and dangling it from his elbow like a bag of shopping. She sees him stepping through their front door and looking over his shoulder at the sky. A cold wind pushes suddenly down the street, her hair lifts away from her neck, the milk crates in the street topple over and the bowler shouts you’re out even though he’s still holding the ball, the batsman stacking them back up and yelling it doesn’t count it doesn’t count you never even bowled I’m still in.

She looks up and sees more clouds scuffing in from the south, she sees the clouds swelling and darkening, the whole sky looking like the basin of water after her father has washed his hands. She is excited and she looks around her and she jumps from the pavement into the street. She sees the older girl, the one who told her about angels, she sees her at the end of the street, she comes running round the corner and straight along the pavement, her arm lifted high and the yellow ribbon streaming out behind her like a
pennant from a car-radio aerial, she runs straight past and doesn’t say a word, her shoes slapping on the pavement like slow applause.

The boy with the paper and pencil, sitting outside his house at number eleven, making a drawing of the street, he hasn’t finished but he looks up at the sky and he gathers up his things and backs away into his house.

The man with the ladder, repositioning it against the side of his house at number twenty-five, he feels the drop in temperature and he glances above him and he hurries to put the lids back on his pots of paint, he picks them up and puts them in his hallway, he wraps the brushes in damp rags, he undoes his overalls and he steps back into his house.

The man cleaning his car, on the other side of the road, he curses to himself and he tries to rub the metalwork dry in time, he spreads a large cloth between his two hands and runs it over the roof and the bonnet and the side panels, he looks up and he empties his bucket of soapy water into the drain, he feels a splash of water on the back of his neck.

And there’s a smell in the air, swelling and rolling, a smell like metal scraped clean of rust, a hard cleanness, the air tight with it, sprung, an electric tingle winding from the ground to the sky, a smell that unfurls in the back of the mouth, dense, clammy, a smell without a name but easy to recognise and everyone in the street knows it, besides the children, everyone is smelling the air and looking upwards, saying or thinking it smells like rain.

The boy on the front step of number eighteen, running his fingers along the red rims of his eyes, he sees a fat drop of water land on the ground in front of him, it spreads flat, it sucks up dust and it stains the pale concrete. He sees people drifting away into their houses, he sees the quietness that has come across the street, even the twins stopping their argument and looking upwards, expectantly.

He looks at the sheer blackness of the air, and he holds his breath.

He wonders how so much water can resist the pull of so much gravity for the time it takes such pregnant clouds to form, he wonders about the moment the rain begins, the turn from forming to falling, that slight silent pause in the physics of the sky as the critical mass is reached, the hesitation before the first swollen drop hurtles fatly and effortlessly to the ground. He thinks about this, and the rain begins to fall.

One, two, three drops at a time, a slow streak down a bedroom window, a wet thud onto a newspaper page, a hiss onto barbecue coals.

And after these first kissed hints there is the full embrace, the wetness of the sky pouring suddenly down upon this street, these houses, this city, falling with a strange quietness at first, gently gathering momentum until suddenly there is a noise like gravel slung at windows and the rain is falling hard, heavy, bouncing off the tarmac with such force that at ground level it’s hard to tell if the rain is coming up or down, pounding the pavement and skidding across the hot dry surfaces of the street, gushing down rooftops into gutters and cracked drains, washing against windows and worn-out windowframes, hammering insistently against anything left open to the sky.