Anna Burns - Milkman

After hearing of the murder of tablets girl but before that encounter in the chip shop, I was still in bed recuperating when three phone calls came through. Two were about me and first was from third brother-in-law. He had heard about the poisoning but wanted to know from my mother, who had answered, why I was not going running. He said I’d missed our run a day earlier, that I’d missed other runs, that I hadn’t called round to discuss this or to get into any altercation with him over it. Then he added there’d been such a falling-down in standards that he was bewildered by what was happening to women these days. Ma said, ‘Son-in-law, she’s not going running. She’s in bed, poisoned,’ with brother-in-law saying he understood about the poisoning, ‘But is she coming running?’ Ma said, ‘No. In bed. Poisoned.’ ‘Yeah, but is she coming running?’ ‘No—’ ‘Yeah, but—’ Wee sisters said ma’s eyes went into Heaven at this point. She tried again. ‘Son, we can’t be doing this all day. She’s in bed. Not going running. Poisoned. Not running. In bed, poisoned,’ with third brother-in-law – exercise fixation overriding thinking mechanism – about to ask if I was going running but this time ma pre-empted with, ‘God love you and everything, son-in-law, but is there something wrong with you? You know yourself she’s been poisoned, the whole district knows, yet here I am, spending twenty hours relaying to you that her stomach’s been expunged or whatever that word is, with me having to sit up two nights with her in case the expunging hadn’t taken, yet you’re not assimilating but instead are behaving as if I haven’t explained at all.’ With just the slightest falter, brother-in-law said, ‘Are you saying she’s not coming running?’ ‘That’s the ticket,’ said ma. ‘And tripping up? What’s tripping up got to do with any of this?’ ‘Falling-down,’ corrected brother-in-law, ‘of standards, of women.’ Here ma covered the mouthpiece and whispered to wee sisters, ‘The boy makes no sense. Funny wee being. Then again, that whole family’s funny. God knows why your sister married into it.’ Then she uncovered the mouthpiece for brother-in-law was concluding, ‘Well, first there’s her way of walking and reading books which is not understandable. Then that excuse about legs no longer working – also not understandable. And now she’s not running. If she’s persisting in this incomprehensibility, mother-in-law, tell her she knows where to find me when she comes to her senses. Meanwhile, I’m away on here to run by myself.’ Ma said, ‘Okay, son, and I agree about the book-walking but as it is, she’s still nearly dead so I’m keeping her in bed yet,’ after which they said goodbye which took another five minutes because kind people here, not used to phones, not trustful of them either, didn’t want to be rude or abrasive by hanging up after just one goodbye in case the other’s leave-taking was still travelling its way, with a delay, over the airwaves towards them. Therefore, owing to phone etiquette, there was lots of ‘’Bye’, ‘’Bye’, ‘Goodbye, son-in-law’, ‘Goodbye, mother-in-law’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘’Bye’, ‘’Bye’ with each person’s ear still at the earpiece as they bent their body over, inching the receiver ever and ever closer on each goodbye to the rest of the phone. Eventually it would end up back on its hook with the human ear physically removed from it. There might be further insurance goodbyes even at this stage, out of compulsion to seal and make sure the matter, which didn’t mean the person who’d gone through the protractions wasn’t contorted in body and exhausted in mind by the effort of detaching from a phone conversation. What it did mean was that that conversation – without any anxious ‘Did I cut him off? Will he be hurt? Have I hung up too soon and damaged his feelings?’ – had finally reached its traditional end. When I was told of this I was glad – given I was not yet strong enough to bear, then browbeat the prescriptive mindset of brother-in-law – that ma had been the one to take that call.

Ma then took the second call which I was not glad about. It was from maybe-boyfriend and it didn’t go well. First, it was unprecedented for I didn’t know maybe-boyfriend had my number. He never called me at my home and I never called him at his home, nor did I have his number or even knew whether or not he had a number. Telephones didn’t feature much for me, nor had I thought they featured for maybe-boyfriend. One reason I had nineteenth-century literature as back-up was so I wouldn’t have to get into any modern-day, fraught, involved stuff like that. Our arrangements were such that we made them at the end of each last meeting and we stuck to them. This was the case, partly because of phones being generally distrusted – as technological objects, as abnormal communication objects. Mainly though, they were not trusted because of ‘dirty tricks’, unofficial-party-line, state-surveillance campaigns. This meant ordinary people didn’t use them for private things, meaning vulnerable romance things. Of course the paramilitary-renouncers didn’t use them either, but I’m not talking about them here. So phones weren’t trusted; indeed we only had one because it had been in the house when we moved in and ma was wary to have it removed in case the people who came to remove it weren’t really telephone wiremen but instead state spymaster-infiltrators in disguise. They’d take the phone away, warned neighbours, but in the process they’d plant other things, things evidential of us being tight-in with renouncers when we weren’t tight-in with renouncers. Despite two of my brothers having been renouncers, we were averagely in, the normal amount in, that too, more at the beginning than we were these latter days. Now, though still in principle approving their initial objective and in no way prepared to denounce them publicly to a state to which she did not ascribe validity, depending upon the latest of what they had done and her current level of ambivalence towards them, ma had no qualms denouncing them to their face – proof more or less, I suppose, that we weren’t tight-in. So our phone hung on the wall by the stairs and people used it sometimes. Thing was though, you had to open phones everywhere and every time you wanted to use one in order to see if there was a bug inside. On the rare occasion when I did use one I did this checking too, though I’d no idea what a bug looked like, or if it would be in the phone, or outside on the overhead cable, or at the telephone exchange if exchanges still happened. In truth, I was just going through the motions with the bug thing, which was what I suspected others, also regularly taking their phones apart, were simply doing as well.

So I didn’t have his number, if he had one, and I thought he didn’t have mine because of the convolutions to be got through by having them. Mainly though, the not having each other’s numbers was because of the ‘maybe’ category our relationship was in. This ‘maybeness’ was why I didn’t tell about tablets girl poisoning me, why I didn’t tell about Milkman pursuing me, why I didn’t tell about the district gossip overriding me. It didn’t occur to me to tell because why would maybe-boyfriend in our maybe-relationship want to know, or think either of us should presume permission to disclose, thoughts, feelings and neediness about that? Also, what if I attempted and he didn’t hear? What if he was unable to take in the weight of what I myself couldn’t take in the weight of? But he rang and ma answered and he asked for me and she said, ‘Oh no you don’t. I don’t care about your conjurations or how great a renouncer you are or how gallant in action or what your hero standing is in the community. You’re a befouler of young girls and a depraved, fraud milkman who gives bad names to people who are really milkmen. You’re not going to speak to her. You’re not going to vitiate her. You stay away from her. Take yourself and your bombs – you married man! – off.’ This she said without care, without couching, without the least concealment should third parties be listening. She hung up then, with no goodbyes either, no wearing herself out with adieux for his benefit. During this I was in bed but could hear perfectly all she was saying, mistakenly thinking, as she was, that it was Milkman himself on the line. With all his skill at surveillance of course he’d be far more likely to have my telephone number than even myself or my ‘almost one year so far maybe-boyfriend’ would be likely to have it. And now here he was, reaching with his unstoppable predations right inside my home. I thought of maybe-boyfriend then, and did so with longing, wishing for the first time since being poisoned that he was here, in this house, in this bedroom, right next me. If only he’d contact me. Those thoughts didn’t stay long though, because of the one that followed. This was of ma and of how impossible it would be if ever she were to meet him: ‘So, young man, and when is to be the wedding? And, young man, when are to be the babies? And it is true, young man, is it not, that you are the right religion and that you are not already married?’ Yes. Awful. I pushed him out of my mind, not because he didn’t matter but because he did matter. How lucky he was though, to have had parents who long ago had run away.