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the rain falls, easing, the noise dropping away, light beginning to leak back into the street through thin places in the clouds and the architecture student from number eleven presses his face to the glass and looks at the way the light falls through the water, he thinks about a place where he worked in the spring, an office where they had a stack of empty watercooler bottles against the window, and how he would sit and watch the sun mazing its way through the layers of refraction, the beauty of it, he called it spontaneous maths and he wanted to build architecture like it, he looks at the row of houses opposite and he pictures them built entirely of plastic and glass, he imagines how people’s lives might change if their dwellings shook with endless reflections of light, he does not know if it’s possible but he thinks it’s a nice idea and
the rain falters and she still doesn’t move, the mother of the twins, she is deeply happy and she breathes a kiss onto her husband’s cheek, she feels a slow wave of it passing through her body like a memory, she closes her mouth and her eyes and holds the soft sound inside herself, letting it circle around the back of her mouth, drinking it quietly back down and
the rain slows further, and the man in the car finally opens his door and moves the milk crates, he flings them to the side and he glares at the twins hiding in their hallway, he drives away and the street is empty, washed and filled by this new and unexpected change and
the rain falls, gently now, past the small window of the attic flat of number twenty-one, the man with the tattoo is in bed again, smoking, and the woman with the henna-red hair is scooping up fallen petals from around a vase of roses, roses she has already kept for longer than they were intended to be kept, she takes the fallen petals and stuffs them into an empty jamjar and the man says what you doing that for? and she puts the jar on the windowsill, she turns to him, shadowed in the rain-darkened room, she says it catches the light that way, the light kind of comes through them and they look alive she says, glowing she says and
as the rain fades away there is stillness and quiet, light flooding rapidly into the street and through windows and open doors, the last few drops falling conspicuously onto an already steaming pavement, there are streams and dribbles and drips from gutters and pipes in various states of disrepair, there is a quietness like a slow exhalation of tension that lasts only a moment before the children move back into the road, leaping into puddles, their wet clothes and hair drying rapidly under the returning heat of the sun and the boys set their wicket back up and allow play to resume, the storm passing across the rest of the city and out into the hills beyond.
Chapter 27
When he comes back into the room his face seems lighter, there’s an excitement about him, the box looks awkward and heavy but he’s holding it as though it were weightless.
He puts it down on the table and immediately starts taking things out, you’ll like this he says, you’ll like this.
I say won’t he mind, isn’t it private or something, but already I’m standing close to him and looking down into the box.
No no he says, no, he’ll be pleased, he always likes to show people this stuff, and he picks up a wooden case with a glass front and says look I told you about this didn’t I?
I look at the row of syringes mounted in the case, the plungers at different heights, one of the needles snapped in half, all of the chambers smeared with a translucent brown coating, like tar from a pipecleaner wiped onto glass, and on the back he’s written a date and some numbers that look like a map reference.
I start to ask him about it, but he’s already passing me other things, a handwritten letter uncrumpled and pressed in a clipframe like a leaf, a washing-up glove, the bottom half of a broken wine bottle, a bunch of keys.
I look at these things, I say so what’s it all for and he says he calls it urban archiving, he told me it was part of his archaeology, he says hold on that broken-glass necklace is in here somewhere.
I go to make some more tea, I stand in the kitchen doorway while the kettle boils, looking at him rummaging through the box, listening to his voice, and I say you’re really proud of your brother aren’t you, I can tell.
He stops, and he turns and looks at me, and he quietly says of course I am.
I pour another pot of tea, and I take it through to him, I put it down on the table next to the case of syringes and the pressed letter, next to the wine bottle and the keys, next to
postcards covered in handwritten notes.
He’s sitting down now, he’s reading the notes, his excitement seems to have passed.
He picks more things out of the box, a cigarette packet, an unopened can of lager, a white plastic purse with a gold chain looped through its clasps, he holds each object and turns it over in the light, concentrating.
He says do you think there’s too much of it?
I say I don’t know, I mean some of it, some of it seems a bit, you know, less important.
He says he was talking about that a lot, before he went away, about there being too much, that’s what all these things are about, his projects, he was trying to absorb some of it.
I say too much of what, he says too much of everything, too much stuff, too many places, too much information, too many people, too much of things for there to be too much of, there is too much to know and I don’t know where to begin but I want to try.
I look up and see that he is reading these words from one of the cards, his voice is slightly different and I wonder if it’s his reading voice or if he’s trying to sound like his brother.
He picks up another postcard and reads, there are so many people in the world he says, and I want to know them all but I don’t even know my next-door neighbour’s name, and when he puts the postcard down I see it’s actually a photograph, a picture of the old couple next door, taken from an upstairs window, walking down the street.
I pick up the postcards, they’re all photographs, stuck onto card, and each one of them is of people living in that street.
There’s one of the man with the scarred hands from a few doors further down, he’s lifting his daughter up, she is sitting on the chair of his crossed forearms.
On the back of the card, he’s written I think his name is Avtar, I wonder how long ago the fire was, his daughter is quite nervous, I don’t know her name.
There’s another one, of the twins from the house opposite, a picture of them in someone’s backyard, pulling bin-bags out of bins, and on the back it says I don’t know their names, they’re always shouting, their sister is quiet and always seems to be hiding something behind her back.
There’s a picture of the boys from number twenty-three, walking down the middle of the road, and on the back they’re all named, it says Jamie, Michael knows him, Rob, skateboarder, Jim and Andy I don’t know much about them except one of them plays guitar.
