Anna Burns - Milkman

So he wasn’t popular with the renouncers for digging up their arsenal; not popular with them either, when he voiced dissent over their local rules and regulations; not popular again when he objected to their courts of nuisance and to the rough justice meted out by them whenever we inhabitants didn’t obey their rules and regulations; and whenever he made a fuss over the disappearance of suspected informers, once again, and by the renouncers, he was disliked. Another point about him was that he never got credit from the residents of the area whenever credit was due to him. This would be during times he helped people, which often he did, in spite of his unloving reputation suggesting he did not. This inability of the community to acknowledge his good deeds was because his reputation for general all-round unfriendliness had become so fixed in the district consciousness that it would have taken an enormous explosion of conscious effort to shift that particular bit of hearsay on to the truth. As there was little inclination for re-adjusting even the tiniest of misperceptions here, such conscious mental effort to reach awareness on the part of the community on behalf of real milkman was never going to happen anytime soon. But he did help people. He helped nuclear boy’s ma, who was also the mother of that renouncer-in-fantasy, Somebody McSomebody. On the evening of that day when nuclear boy had suicided, real milkman had gone looking for her, as others in the area had also gone looking for her. She’d gone missing on hearing the news of this latest family death. It was rumoured that just as with the son, she too, had gone off to suicide, but real milkman found her, roaming the streets of another district, distracted, dishevelled, not knowing anybody or even who she was. In spite of bringing her home, and in spite of seeking further help for her from the pious women who were also our medicos of the district, the designation still stood that real milkman was none other than the most horrid of people you could know. I myself didn’t consider him horrid or very cross, or even much beyond-the-pale, that is, considering the other beyond-the-pales in our area. There was tablets girl, then her disconcerting shiny sister, then poor nuclear boy when he’d been alive, then the heavy-handed, preachy issue women. They all seemed far more on the rim than ever had been this man. Probably I viewed things that way because real milkman and my mother had been friends ever since their schooldays, which meant he paid visits to our house on a regular basis in order to see and to catch up with her. He assisted her too, with free milk and extra-fortified dairy, bakery and tinned provision products. And he helped out also with our house’s DIY. He did the plumbing, the painting, the carpentry, even insisting on taking over the electrics from wee sisters. So, no matter his misanthropic ways, or his reputation for such ways, he did possess the characteristic of having a stern concern for people. And now, this man, real milkman, the man beyond-the-pale who was the man who didn’t love anybody, had turned up that evening by the graveyard to help me.

First thing that happened was I got those shudders, although they died instantly upon realising this was not the milkman but the other one instead. He was in his lorry and it was a proper milk lorry, also the only vehicle I had ever seen him in. I turned to face him as the handbrake went on. He opened his door and jumped out and came over towards me. Next thing he was beside me and this hadn’t been the first time he’d addressed me but it was the first time he’d said more than the polite, customary few words. Normally these words were ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, or ‘tell your mother I was asking’. Definitely, except for ma, real milkman and I didn’t move in the same circles and even then, apart from living in the same house as her, I didn’t exactly move in ma’s circles, but with them two being friends, it stood to reason I’d run across him at close quarters now and then. This would be on the street, or outside our door, or inside our parlour, where ma would have made special barley bread or one of her other sweetbreads to share with tea with him. Sometimes too, I’d see her in his lorry, being dropped off home from the chapel or bingo or from doing her messages, jumping out of his lorry and laughing as if she were sixteen. So these were the occasions when me and him would meet and we’d greet each other and exchange general nods or ‘hellos’ and now he was asking again if I was all right. He asked if something had happened, if there was anything he could do for me. I nodded, though I’d no idea which question I was nodding in answer to. In truth I had difficulty rationalising what it was I was feeling or even how socially to respond to any question. It seemed I’d just encountered four renouncers – because probably those concealed men had been renouncers – going off to do some deed most likely to make top billing on the news later on. Then there’d been the milkman – probably not Walter Mitty but instead, as everybody said, another renouncer. And now here was real milkman, friend of my mother and one of the designated, outlandish beyond-the-pales. We were standing on the kribbie next to his lorry which was next to the graveyard, and I noticed he looked at the bundle of balled-up handkerchiefs I was holding between us. Then he stopped looking and returned his attention to my face.

I said, because it came out, ‘I need to go somewhere and leave this or bury it, it’s a cat’s head.’ ‘Right,’ he said as if I’d said, ‘It’s an apple,’ and for that I liked him. I didn’t explain how I’d come to have this head, or its link with the second world war or with the ten-minute area. He said, ‘I’ll take it off you. Will I take it off you?’ And I handed it to him, quite easily, no hesitation, just like that. After I did I said, ‘Don’t throw it away but. Will you not just take it and throw it away but? Don’t wait till I’m gone then dash it in some bin or throw it to the ground somewhere. If you don’t want to do it, to take care of it properly, I mean, then I’ll do it, but please don’t pretend.’ These were many words to come out of me, also true words for there was no excusing of myself here, no asking for permission or for approval. Later I was surprised at my forthrightness in speaking out to a male, to one of my elders, to someone too, with the fiercest reputation for being cross. I knew though, that my emotions had reached critical point over what had happened between me and the milkman, also over holding this head for too long. There was something in this man’s manner that seemed to make talking easy. And in this manner too, he was carrying on. ‘I won’t pretend and I won’t throw it away,’ he said. ‘I want to give it some green,’ I said. ‘The right place is where I want to take it.’ ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Tell you what. I have green. Out my back there’s a patch of green, so how about I put it there, dig a spot and bury it? Does that sound all right with you?’ I nodded then I said, ‘Thanks.’ After that, he stepped to his lorry, reached in at floor level and drew out a green cloth bag and inside were billiards. He emptied these balls out into the deep hold between the lorry-seats, then slipped the head, which was yet in the hankies, into the bag and drew the string at the top. He came back round to me and said, ‘Don’t you worry. You leave it with me. Get in but, for it’s late and I’ll take you home now.’ It seemed, and again I liked this, that this exchange was taking place in that ‘How can we get this done?’ manner, that same manner of maybe-boyfriend, also of teacher, not the prevalent ‘What’s the point, nothing is of use, it’s not gonna make any difference is it?’ and this surprised me. Real milkman, solemn, austere, yet here he was, giving me his time, bringing me hope, listening to me, taking me seriously. He had grasped all, he knew what I meant so that there were none of those enervating and exhausting questions. Yes, a surprise, but he was a surprise and I surprised myself at being able to hand over this burden, then to get in his lorry without worry and to know he could be trusted to be honest and to get the job done. He put the head in the lorry and that was when the camera clicked – one of their cameras, the sound travelling from the first floor of a supposedly empty building just across the road from us and again, as with the milkman that time in the parks & reservoirs, I said nothing about it. Real milkman, however, said, ‘Bloody—’ then he checked himself. ‘Can’t go anywhere but they’re at it,’ he added. ‘Well, they can make of this what they will.’ This attitude again surprised me, and also unexpectedly uplifted me. If he could acknowledge one of the unmentionables, also acknowledge he was unable to do anything to alter this unmentionable, maybe that meant it might be possible for anybody – for me – even in powerlessness, to adopt such an attitude of acknowledgement, of acceptance and detachment too.