The City Changes Its Face

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Flat out and hot boiling, centre of the mat. Ring Ring. Somewhere here. But far near or far off? What’s even eligible to be making that noise? My brain did it slowly – unrolled slowly to up. Here’s here. And it’s now. The phone’s there. So, at last, I stirred to its plastical chime and made sense of distance in my dozed mind because, if it’s ringing, it must be him. Then I was up at that. Spry as any deep-sleeping eighteen-year-old might – nineteen in a few weeks all right but, by any measure, pretty spry. Wrench-wresting dead legs. Uncradling it and Hi Stephen? Is that you? And you then Eily? It’s not a great line    is that you? Of course it is!

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All torpor blown by missing too much. Right through my whole body and yours so far off. But wakeful enough not to make a phone scene, I sedately enquired How are you, Stephen? Then hung on your hoarse I just got in, had a quick shower, ordered some tea.

And I loved that tired voice. It was nowhere near me but I felt it just the same – its usual manoeuvre and beat under my skin. How was the flight? Pretty fucking long. So how are you, how are you feeling? Jetlagged mostly, I think, but    I don’t know    I suppose I’m here. And I could hear all around you the size of that room. Echoes off its shallows. A reverb from windows. The insulation of adjacent other rooms going endlessly on, offering other conclusions to other women and men. Us merely one cross-reference, on this line, living out what grain of world history came next. And, for us, it was the grain in which I asked Are you nervous? And the grain in which your answer was Yeah    but tomorrow I’ll probably be worse. Is that when you’re meeting her? That’s right. What time? Around eleven o’clock. Do you know whereabouts? Down in the foyer – her mother’s dropping her off. Do you think she’ll come in too, to say Hello? I don’t know    I. What? Can’t believe it, Eil, that I’m really here. That all those years have passed and now she’s seventeen. Last time I saw her she was only    well    you know this anyway. Then I thought of all the other men on your floor, probably contemplating young women in ways more annoying. Or obvious. Or insane. A daughter last seen twelve years ago won’t feature for many. Maybe not any others at all. Thankless to be so original though, especially over there on your own. Not that I’d be of much use, with my far flimsier flitch of experience. What distractions could I offer as a party piece? Lame jokes while opening your shirt with my teeth until you started to laugh? Well, I could at least have done that. Or willingly lain there with you, in the dark, as you re-dotted the dots of those twelve years without. I would’ve, if you would’ve and not preferred to pilgrim alone. Not that I don’t get the reasoning, but I wish I was with you now. The simplest so is simplest said – not always of course, but in this instance. Stephen, I wish I was there with you. Me too, Eily love, but    another time. And knowing you meant it, I soldiered on into What do you think she’ll be like? Silence. Wait silent. I don’t know, Eil, which seems such a weird thing to admit given we’ve exchanged letters for years, but    I wish I knew her more. And then I thought Oh no, I’ve caused you pain down this shitty phone line. Because every nerve of your waiting, over all that time, must sit exposed now the end’s finally nigh. So don’t fucking poke.    I can’t imagine her, Eily and I’ve spent so long doing just that that I    I    just    I don’t know what she’ll be like. I just want to see her as she is. Stephen, I KNOCK. Hang on, love, that’s my door. It’s probably the room service so    I’ll just    No, go on, get it, I’ll wait. The Bakelite clunk and. Footfalls away. Me imagining your bare feet on the carpet in there. The work of a latch. Just a minute, you said. Then opened. Then.

Silence.
Then.
Nothing.
At all.

And attentive as I am, I don’t hear Where do you want it? or Where should I sign? – not that I’ve ever stayed in a hotel, but I watched it back in 1980-something, I think. So, in my mind’s eye, that’s how it must work.

But.
Then.
A thing.
A catch?
A cough?
An
A

Oh    oh my God    Grace    isitreallyyou?

For an age, for an hour, for a minute or two I couldn’t hear beyond the muffle and was trying so hard to. Staring right into it. Sick with the wait. Wishing to be there and not witnessing like this. Overhearing though, whether I wanted to or not, some vast suspension of disbelief in your voice that I did not recognise. Had not heard before. And I’d heard all your voices – or so I’d thought – from the finest of times as well as the awful. But actually never quite this

Oh    oh my God    Grace    isitreallyyou?

I couldn’t hear the answer, although there must have been one because you didn’t ask again. Except    then I realised    you were crying. I knew it. As I knew one damp hand secured your towel while the other probably gripped her. And I went from here to there. To that room where she was, perhaps, crying as well. But, interloper that I was, I couldn’t be sure. Inventing. Guessing. Eavesdropper. Spy! I should’ve hung up and yet found it impossible. Even to move. Never mind press the thing. Could only participate, if surreptitiously, in this long-overdue cumulation. Surely it must’ve been for you both. Two sparks striking from a past of cannots and don’ts. With me, unelectric and surplus to requirement, just hanging nosily on. But if I imagined sight, I couldn’t the sound. Only the image of water dripping down your back. The image of her face against the palm of your hand. But I knew, in a moment, you’d have enough. Would step away from her body to straighten yourself, then reach far into your deep wells of detached. Its impassivity long being the greatest weapon you have and, even in the worst – as I’ve no need to learn – the one you favour first. All of which she couldn’t know. Yet. And then there it was, down that bad line.

A breath. 

The first of you becoming your private self, inside your private body, once more. 

A step

You withdrawing into the room, where I still was, and on the threshold of which she still stood. 

A word. 

Stay there, Grace. Let me get something on? I was only just out of the shower. 

And I heard her nod, if only in my head. Heard you cross back to me. One knee on the bed. Then fumbling up the receiver Hello? Eily? Yes? Sorry, it’s    I have to go    she    Grace has    just shown up so    she’s here and I should 

I know. Go. Call me later, all right? 

Okay, love    I’ll    talk to you soon. 

But pictures kept making inside me to match with your sound. The beige room and dark door. Tall girl in the hall. Your wet hair pushed back and Stephen, I    No. No. You’d already gone and couldn’t know how I’d hurt my ear on the phone in case you hadn’t really hung up. Hung on until the buzz disconnection droned me into your distance and the dead click assured it was true. 

Abroad then, in Canada, you were in that room. Somewhere in Camden I was in ours alone. But I chose it. I choose it and I’d choose it again. Chose to replace the receiver and look around. Streetlights right across the borough gone on, and so the night had come! And what if all action was yonder with you? If all I was was half sunburnt and Pot Noodle perfumed? Well    so be that too. Time remained on the go and the same went for life, whatever seras would be. In that spirit then, I tuned back to the street. Saturday night below and already active in its various states of hell. Tidals of. Roars of. But also its heavens and me alive there in its midst. Sometimes snatching at eddies. Other times in its flow. Always tugged by its current. And if the stillest time was now, really, before every tide turned, I could not know that yet.

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From The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride. Used with permission of the publisher, Faber & Faber. Copyright © 2025 by Eimear McBride.