Anna Burns - Milkman

In our district the renouncers-of-the-state were assumed the good guys, the heroes, the men of honour, the dauntless, legendary warriors, outnumbered, risking their lives, standing up for our rights, guerrilla-fashion, against all the odds. They were viewed in this way by most if not all in the district, at least initially, before the idealistic type ended up dead, with growing reservations setting in over the new type, those tending towards the gangster style of renouncer instead. Along with this sea change in personnel came the moral dilemma for the ‘our side of the road’ non-renouncer and not very politicised person. This dilemma consisted of, once again, those inner contraries, the moral ambiguities, the difficulty of entering fully into the truth. Here were the Johns and Marys of this world, trying to live civilian lives as ordinarily as the political problems here would allow them, but becoming uneasy, no longer certain of the moral correctness of the means by which our custodians of honour were fighting for the cause. This was not just because of the deaths and the mounting deaths, but also the injuries, the forgotten damage, all that personal and private suffering stemming from successful renouncer operations. And as the renouncers’ power and assumption of power increased, so too, did the uneasiness of the Johns and Marys increase, regardless too, that the other side – ‘over there’ – ‘across the road’ – ‘across the water’ – would be hard at it, doing their own versions of destruction as well. There was also that day-to-day business of dirty laundry in public, and of the district renouncers laying down their law, their prescripts, their ordinances plus punishments for any perceived infringements of them. There were beatings, brandings, tar and featherings, disappearances, black-eyed, multi-bruised people walking about with missing digits who most certainly had those digits only the day before. There were too, the impromptu courts held in the district’s hutments, also in other disused buildings and houses specially friendly to the renouncers. There were the myriad methods our renouncers had for levying funds for their cause. Above all, there was the organisation’s paranoia, their examination, interrogation and almost always dispatch of informants and of suspected informants, but until this discomfort with the inner contraries took hold of the Johns and Marys, the renouncers had constituted iconic noble fighters in pretty much the whole of the community’s eyes. To the groupies of these paramilitaries however – and this would be certain girls and women unable to grasp with mind and emotion any concept of a moral conflict – men who were in the renouncers signalled not just wonderful specimens of unblemished toughness, sexiness and maleness, but through attaining to relationship with them, these females could push for their own social and careerist ends. This was why that female demographic always was to be found in the vicinity of renouncers: frequenting renouncer haunts, inhabiting renouncer circles, pushing into renouncer cavities and, if ever they were seen draped over any unknown male inside or outside of the area, you could bet both your grannies that this man receiving the lavish adoration could be none other than a renouncer-of-the-state himself. To the groupies too, it wasn’t so much these men should be fighters for the cause as that they should be the particular individuals wielding substantial power and influence in the areas. They didn’t have to be paramilitaries, didn’t even have to be illegal, could have been anyone. It so happened though, that in the set-up of the time, in each of those totalitarian-run enclaves, it was the male paramilitaries who, more than anyone, ruled over the areas with final say. Although not, of course, inter-communally accepted – such as were those crossover rock stars, the film stars, the sports stars and now those two ballroom-dancing champions – nevertheless the paramilitaries, in their respective areas, in relative terms of local celebrity, were on a par with the more famously accepted across the divide. As far as the groupies were concerned then, these were the James Bonds, though not Bond in that other country’s service. This was Bond in his irresistible, irrepressible, superhuman, bucking-the-trend demeanour, especially the higher up the renouncer-ladder of rank any individual prepared to die for his cause happened to be. As for this cause – all that ‘our side of the road’ and ‘our side of the water’ and ‘their flag isn’t our flag’ and so on – well, again, in terms of the personal, of the primal, of drives and motivation, that didn’t matter to these groupies. Wasn’t always either, about life’s lovely things. Not always nice clothes, nice jewellery, nice shopping, nice dinners, nice parties or lump sums in cash in secret strongboxes, all to spell brilliant times, good lives and happy lifestyles. Often, at least in the old days, the days of the dedicated, intractable, ruthless old-time renouncer, there wasn’t money to spare for personal aggrandisement because all monies garnered – illegally, very illegally and most spectacularly illegally – really had to be spent on the cause. In terms of personal materialistic gain therefore, there wasn’t any, and the old-style renouncer hadn’t seemed interested in any. As far as the groupie woman was concerned then, what represented true attainment for her was the prized position of becoming the woman of the man. He had to be leader, Number One, making her in turn Number One Attachment. If position of Number One Attachment happened to be taken – owing perhaps, to some charismatic groupie possibly getting in before her – then lady-in-waiting to Number One Attachment – itself promising attendant, if less puissant connections – wouldn’t be out of the running after all. Should he happen to be married, this Man of Men, this Warrior of Warriors, and providing that the wife wasn’t influential – not, for example, some female renouncer prepared to kill any woman moving in on her husband – then that would be all right as well. So the groupies were happy to be the other woman, to be mistress, because that guaranteed status and a wedge of the kudos and the glory. Those ‘fast, breathtaking, fantastically exhilarating rebel-men’ as my mother again put it when she came to accuse me of being a paramilitary groupie, were the very men then, through whom these ambitious women hoped to fulfil on their own cause.

Which was why she was still coming to see me. My mother. To upbraid me. To harangue me. To command me to cease being – even though I wasn’t – one of those women. Word had gotten round – and after only two encounters between me and the milkman – that I was edging myself towards, had placed myself next to the groupie territory, that I was knocking on the door to be admitted to the chamber of the power-house, drugged to the eyeballs too, it was said, with ambitions, aspirations and dreams. Ma continued to warn me, to reiterate that I was to wake up, to realise these men were not movie stars, that this was no make-believe, no template of a grand passion such as foolishly I pursued in those old-time storybooks I read and walked about with. Instead this was a case, she said, of a naïve ill-working of my creative raw material to fashion a lover out of untamed maleness. ‘But what the books don’t say, daughter,’ she said, ‘is that you’re not seeing him for who he is but for whom you want and imagine him to be.’ Although she added that she herself wasn’t old-fashioned, that she wasn’t ignorant, that she hadn’t entirely forgotten her youth so could nod her cap certainly at the allurement of vertiginous, heady and extraordinary excitement. In reality though, not only was I trying to seize love, she said, in a dreadful unladylike, pawing, stalking fashion, but also that I was in danger of slipping into that far from minor female world of accessory-to-murder itself. ‘When it comes to it,’ she said, ‘those dark adventurers – the pioneers, the saviours, the outlaws, the devils – whatever anyone chooses to append to them – are sociopaths, maybe even psychopaths. And even if they aren’t,’ she added, ‘the fact their warlike individualism and single-minded mentalities qualify them superbly for what they get up to in their movement, such mindsets and individualism hardly render them fit in this world for anything else.’ Not nine-to-five jobs, she said. Not personal relationships. Not fulfilling on family and on family obligations. Not even an average lifespan. ‘So not for mixing with, daughter. And anyway, a proper girl, a normal girl, a girl with morals intact and a sensibility attuned to what’s civilised and respectful, would get the hell out of there, wouldn’t even have got in there.’ Another thing she said was that I hadn’t even properly got myself in. This meant we were back to matrimony, to the marriage vows. It seemed that even here, while trying to ward me off those supernatural, dangerous revolutionaries, still she couldn’t stop herself from seeing the wedlock side of things. She meant I wasn’t decently in, that I wasn’t the wife, that if I really felt I had to cleave to a renouncer, could I not officially have gotten myself married to him? That way I’d be accepted. ‘Though goodness knows,’ she said, ‘being the wife can’t be easy in itself. All those prison visits. The tombstone visits. The being spied upon by the enemy police, by the soldiers, by fellow renouncer-wives and renouncer-comrades of the husband. Indeed the whole community would be at it,’ she said. ‘Making sure of her fidelity. Making sure no liberties were being taken, that she wasn’t insulting her husband with her conduct but instead properly behaving herself. So no,’ she said. ‘Not an easy life. Instead it must be an exhausting, damaging, very lonely life. But at least she’s in there, daughter. Married. Registered. With reputation intact and with herself and her children to be looked after when he ends up dead or in internment.’ In contrast, according to ma, by choosing the path of the tag-along woman I’d ruined her upbringing of me as a respectable female some man some day might want to have. I had degraded myself, she said, along with any remaining prospects to the point where I would become ‘soiled goods enough’ even to drop down the groupie pecking-order. ‘Then you’ve had it. Then you’ve ruined yourself, all your chances, all your opportunities – and for what?’ She shook her head. ‘They don’t legitimate those field-women, daughter,’ she warned.