Anna Burns - Milkman

There was a queue, a big long one, winding round two of the salon walls and I joined the end of it. Immediately others came in and joined the queue behind. Most of these people I knew to see but not to speak to – middle-aged women, coming in for the suppers, some men, some children, some teenagers. Nobody I knew personally though, was in there at the time. While waiting, I settled in to enjoy the smell, also I did more ‘je suis, je ne suis pas’ in my head, as well as mentally counting how many people were in front of me. As I was doing this, however, the people I was counting began to drop out of line. A few left the shop immediately, with most stepping to the side or else to the far end of it. This meant I reached the counter nineteen people before I was supposed to reach the counter and as I did so I had a sensation that those behind had fallen away as well. Soon I was the only person in the queue, though this queue, unaccountably, was still present in the chip shop. Behind the counter, one of the two serving women in a big white apron came towards me and placed herself directly in front. Her arms were akimbo and she didn’t ask my order, didn’t look at me either as I gave it. Instead she seemed to direct her gaze somewhere to the side of my head. Not quite worried, but a little bit of something, I watched as she moved off to get the chips for me and wee sisters. It was then I became aware of the silence and, given I’d always lived in this district and had since childhood, without properly acknowledging it, been attuned to the currents, subtleties and rhythms of this district, I can only think slowness after my recent illness was the reason I was so behindhand at this point. It was at my back, the silence, making shivers at my back, and I couldn’t turn, though my mind began racing. Don’t let it be Milkman. Oh please, don’t let it be Milkman. Then I did turn and it wasn’t Milkman. It was everybody else. Every single person was staring at me in the shop.

Some instantly looked away, down at the ground, others into their hands or up at the big menu displayed on the wall by the counter in front of us. Others stared openly, I think even defiantly, and I thought, shitsies, what is it I’m supposed to have done now? The penny then dropped and I sensed this was something to do with tablets girl. Not the poisoning of me by her which I knew everyone by now would have heard about. I meant her death. But surely they can’t think, I thought, that I had anything to do with that. At this point the serving woman returned and put my chips down on the counter. I turned from the others, lifted the packets and fumbled to hand my money across. The woman had gone. She had turned her broad back and already was at the far end, standing also in silence beside the second serving woman. No one else was being attended. No one was asking to be attended. Everyone was waiting, it seemed, for what was to happen next.

The renouncers said they hadn’t killed her. Then they made enquiries to find out who had killed her. Then, claiming sudden urgent border engagements, conveniently, it was said, they dropped their sense of diligence and backed off. But these people never backed off. That was their reputation, their hallmark, their stock-in-trade unstoppability. Because of this, the community came to the conclusion that it must have been one of them who’d killed her after all. Not politically, of course, because with the renouncers’ sudden silence, with their quiet withdrawal, the abrupt end to their fierce, minute perquisition and especially without their usual admittance to deeds done when they had been done, tablets girl could not have been killed politically. So not from border motives. Not to save the country, defend the area, keep anti-social behaviour out of our area. It had been Milkman. He had killed her. Ordinarily, not politically, he had killed her, and all because – so it seemed to this community – he hadn’t liked that she’d attempted to kill me.

That might have been true or might not have been true, but the chip shop thought it was true and, in that moment, surrounded by all these people with their minds made up, I thought it true as well. A highranking hero of the community had committed a foul, an ordinary murder, all to avenge some malapert hussy. Now, I am not greatly naïve which means I’ve discovered that you live your life lots of days with things a bit out of joint, a bit moved-on, but not unmanageable, indeed only to be expected. But then a particular day comes when conditions across the board – with or without your knowledge, with or without your consent – completely have been changed around. Things have been moved on, yes, but not just by one have they been moved on but by considerably more than one. Before this, it had been my insides disoriented, pains in my stomach, quivers in my legs, my hand shaking as I put the key in the lock. Paranoia indoors too, it had been, in case he might be in my wardrobe when he wasn’t, in case he might be in my cupboards when he wasn’t, in case he might be under my bed. Each time he’d gotten close … closer … even closer, but I couldn’t tell, not till now, if his stamp was still coming on me or if all the time already it had been on me. Longest friend had warned, ‘You are not inferable. You cannot be deduced – and they don’t like that. You’re stubborn, friend, sometimes stupid, incredibly stupid, for you prepossess people with your lack of give not to like you. That is dangerous. What you don’t offer – especially in volatile times – people will make up for themselves.’ ‘Not all people,’ I argued. ‘And anyway, my life’s not theirs. Why should I explain and beg excuse from them when it’s they who have invented this history and who even now are as bad dogs, watching and waiting to take over?’ As for their view of me as loose, as wanton, as shameless, I said, ‘When it comes to it, longest friend, in reality I’m probably more Virgin Mary than any of—’ ‘You’re eighteen,’ she said. ‘You’re a girl. No back-up – not unless you want Milkman as back-up. So give them something – anything – even if they don’t believe it, especially because they’ll enjoy not believing it. At least then, they won’t hold your high position with him against you.’ But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t know how to. Didn’t believe there was still time to. Too much of rumour, of implication, also of ‘mind your own business’ had gone on for redress from them now.

So I was learning something, but in the rapidity, especially of emotions, I didn’t know what it was I was learning. Didn’t know what to do either, so I did a stupid thing. Amidst the silence and the staring, I took the chips, kept my money, then turned and walked out of the shop. I didn’t want these chips, didn’t want now my own money. Of course I should have left them, chips, money, both, on the counter and purged myself of that situation, but it’s hard to think of obvious things, of high-minded, honourable things, during the real-time of unexpected shocking things. How do you know after a time anyway, what is normal and high-minded and what is not? So I took them and I didn’t pay for them and this was partly out of an angry ‘Yes, Milkman. Go. Kill. Kill all of them. Go forth. Attend me. I command you’ and partly it was out of sensibility and anxiousness for their feelings. It was not wanting to get into trouble with my elders as an eighteen-year-old daring to disrespect and correct their behaviour. So I lost presence of mind and allowed myself to be pushed into obtaining chips with menaces. Most damning therefore, my own behaviour, this handling of the chip shop badly, no matter there’d been a compelling of me by everybody in it exactly to handle it badly. I knew now though, what they’d known for some time which was that no longer was I a teenager amidst a bunch of other teenagers, coming into and going out of and gallivanting about the area. Now I knew that that stamp – and not just by Milkman – had unreservedly, and against my will, been put on.