If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Jon McGregor

Chapter 9

      It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

      The rain was still spattering against the window, and there was a loud fall of water from a broken gutter onto the concrete below.

      I blocked my ears with the bedcovers, I breathed slowly and deeply, I counted to a hundred, I counted to five hundred.

      I gave up eventually, and put the light on, and sat up in bed to read.

      But I couldn’t concentrate, I kept thinking about that day, that moment, the afternoon.

      About what happened and why there are so many names I can’t remember.

      About whether I knew the names in the first place.

      Whenever I tried to read my book the images kept returning, small moments from that day and I don’t understand why I can’t leave it alone.

      It’s a strange feeling, almost like a guilty feeling, almost like I feel responsible.

      I thought about going back up to my room that morning, after a shower and a mouthful of breakfast.

      Swinging the window open, and the flood of fresh summer air that had come sweeping in, the sweetness of a rolling wind that was still clean from the countryside.

      Seeing the guy from over the road poking his head through an attic skylight and tipping a bucket of water over some kids in their front garden.

      I tried to remember his name, and all I could remember was the ring through his eyebrow, the way he used to smack the palm of one hand with the back of the other.

      I remembered how hard it was to pack, how I spent the morning rearranging boxes and bags and rewriting lists.

      I hadn’t known what I was going to need, what I should throw away or leave behind, what I should give to someone for safekeeping.

      I still hadn’t known where I was going.

      I remembered phoning the landlord and asking for another week, and panicking when he said people were due to move in the next evening.

      I remembered looking at my overflowing room, and the empty boxes, and not knowing where to begin.

      I thought about how I’d gone and stood in Simon’s room for a while, looking at the sunlight brightening and fading on the ceiling.

      Thinking about him leaving the week before, and how bare his room was now.

      The unfaded squares on the wall where his posters had been.

      The naked mattress on the floor, a curve in the middle where the springs had begun to fail.

      And the things he’d left behind, unable to fit them into the boxes he’d squeezed into his dad’s car.

      Coathangers in the wardrobe that rattled like skeletons when I stood on the loose floorboards.

      A muted noticeboard on the desk, pimpled with drawing pins.

      A paper lightshade he’d taken down but left behind, folded on the floor like a deflated accordion.

      The room had a hardness in it without his things there, an emptiness that made me want to close the door, leave a do not disturb sign outside, let the dust settle.

      I remembered going to the shops to buy binbags, and saying hello to the boy at number eighteen.

      He was on his doorstep, reading, and I caught his eye and he smiled so I said hello.

      I think it was the only time I ever spoke to him.

      He said how are you doing, how’s the packing going, he said it with a little laugh, as though it was a joke.

      Oh I said, fine I said, and I wondered how he knew that’s what I was doing.

      There was a silence, and we looked at each other, and I noticed he was blinking a lot and I thought he looked nervous.

      He said, last day of summer, everyone’s packing aren’t they, and he did the little laugh again, and I said well you know, all good things come to an end and he said yes.

      I said well I’d better get to the shop, I’ll see you around, yes he said, yes, okay, well, see you then.

      And he held up his hand, a wave like half a surrender, and by the time I walked back he had gone.

      I remembered going back to my room and trying to imagine it being like Simon’s.

      I took a poster off the wall to see how much the sunlight had faded the paint in the time I’d been there.

      I took all my clothes out of the wardrobe and made the coathangers rattle.

      I couldn’t picture the room being as changed and empty as Simon’s already was.

      I wanted to leave a note for the next tenant, leave a trace of myself behind, I wanted to be able to go back years later and find a plaque with my name on it screwed to the wall.

      I thought about all this, lying in bed listening to the rain, looking at the room I sleep in now, another room in another city.

      I looked at the objects that make it my room, the calendar on the wall, the colour of the curtains, the photographs.

      I thought about all the other people who’ve slept in this room before me, about what traces they’ve left behind.

      It took me a long time to get to sleep.

      And when I woke up in the morning the room felt different, haunted, and I had to get out of bed quickly.

      It had stopped raining, finally, but the street outside was still wet, swathes of dirty water across the road, sodden pages of newsprint glued to the pavement like transfers.

      Perhaps the words will soak into the stone I thought, yesterday’s stories imprinted like cave paintings, like a tattoo.

      I left early for work, I didn’t want to stay in my flat after the previous day.

      I couldn’t face cleaning up the broken plates or reading those leaflets again.

      I got dressed and slipped out of the door without any breakfast, down the steps and past the back door of the shop downstairs.

      There was a cold wind, but it was a dry wind and it felt good on my skin and I sucked big mouthfuls of it into my lungs.

      There was a girl with a striped overall standing by the back door of the shop, smoking, I’ve seen her there before.

      She smiled and said hello and I was surprised so I think I only nodded.

      I walked along the main road, the wind blowing across my face, the traffic steaming slowly past me in fits and starts and stops.