Anna Burns - Milkman

With love and very much worryies and concerneds for your present and your ever future safety, from,

Yours, while still being really truly frightened,

Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days.

Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days hadn’t pulled any punches. There’d been no sustained correspondence either, said tablets girl’s sister, meaning one of opposing strength, of some brave foray by an inner oppositional party attempting to outdo and wrest back a situation of terror to one of hopeful resolution. Instead there was one loose sheet from Lightness and Niceness , and even then, with constant interruptions from Faithful Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days. Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie , this Lone Ranger sheet of paper began.

Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie,

You don’t need me to tell you—

IT’S FRIGHTENING! O SO FRIGHTENING!

—that everything you see is a reflection of—

ALL SO TERRIFYING!

—your inner landscape and that you don’t have to—

HELP! HELP! WE’RE GOING TO DIE! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

—believe in this inner—

MY STOMACH! MY HEAD! O MY INTESTINES!

—landscape. Instead we can—

REMEMBER OUR HELP KIT, SUSANNAH! OUR COMFORT KIT! OUR SURVIVAL SELF-DEFENCE KIT! OUR WAY TO FIGHT OUR CORNER KIT! OUR PHIALS AND OUR POTIONS AND OUR SHINY BLACK PILLS! OH QUICK! REVENGE! WE WANT THEM TO FEEL OUR PAIN AND …

So it was that Terror Of Other People overruled, disordered, then finally assassinated Lightness and Niceness . Lightness and Niceness had come in other guises: Oneness, Shininess, Syster . It had come in under Syster . So it was logical. Syster had got inside her. She needed Syster not inside her. Syster , therefore, had to go. That was how come tablets girl’s sister was poisoned for the fifth and almost the fatal time. Then I was poisoned. Then the man mistaken for Hitler was poisoned. After that, tablets girl herself violently died. Terror Of Other People probably thought that with her dead, it, itself, could carry on living. It would party it up, let its hair down, continue to be fearful. Never do they realise, these psychological usurpers and possessors, that in dispensing with the host – with the one being above all whom they need for their own survival – inevitably they are also dispensing with themselves. I stared at tablets girl’s sister then, and she was of an ill pallor, sweat on her brow, difficulty breathing, eyes wretched with impairment and with her tiny hands clutching still to railings. She was plucking at them as in a fever. Maybe she was in a fever. And she was tissue-paper thin, not only in her body but in every aspect of her. Wired she was, undercurrents becoming overcurrents, sensitivities and early warning systems, all her surveillance detections overwhelmed and overwhelming. I’d gone to help but I didn’t know how to help. If anything, I felt myself pulled in. She said my name then, my first name, and that felt warm, friendly, it felt a relief, far from my expectation of ‘You killed our sister!’ Then it was, ‘You see how frightened she was? I never knew how beleaguered because she was my big sister, no matter too, she had that whole enemy situation going on.’ I answered with a nod then realised she might not have seen it. So I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I was wondering what else to add because, just as with real milkman in his lorry, I felt I wanted to add something, to do something. Before anything occurred to me though, her ex-lover showed up.

I felt him behind me before I felt the hands upon me. It was third brother, my third brother, whom I hadn’t seen in a year. Hardly now, or for long, not since his marriage also a year earlier, did he appear in this area. He would come to visit ma, bring her money, but he’d arrive in a hurry and get out in a hurry, taking her and wee sisters with him, picking them up – quick! hurry! – dropping them off – quick! hurry! – driving them somewhere on a jaunt. He’d take them downtown, said wee sisters, or up to the hills, or to the seaside if it was sunny and always they’d stop for treats and bouts of indulgence – ‘ice-cream and chips and lemonade and sausages’. ‘When the merry-go-rounds are here,’ they added, ‘we go there too, and he puts us, even ma, on all the attractions.’ He also took them across town from time to time, they said, to have tea in his own house with him and his new wife. This new wife had been unexpected. She hadn’t been seen coming – not by ma, not by us, not by the community, not by third brother and certainly not by tablets girl’s sister, the long-time girlfriend whom for years he’d been in love with. As for me and him, we hadn’t met since his marriage because he’d come to the house every second or third Tuesday, exactly the day of the week I spent after work over at maybe-boyfriend’s. But here he was, having come up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders before I’d a chance to turn and realise it wasn’t Milkman, wasn’t the lynchers from the chip shop, wasn’t Terror Of Other People or the revenant of tablets girl herself. It was him, third brother, and I felt the vibrations of his approach and wasn’t alone either in picking up on them. Tablets girl’s sister had sensed something as well. She broke off from her talk about her sister’s great terror, which had been mistaken for her sister’s great anger, and she started, then cried out, ‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Who is that? ’, her voice urgent and demanding, yet also excited, hopeful, because she knew before I did who was standing behind me; knew even before brother said, ‘Step aside, twin sister, I’m coming through.’

He had to step me aside himself though, for I was too overwhelmed to do my own stepping. Even though he’d spoken to me, I could see already he’d forgotten my existence, was looking past me, making moves directly towards the only girl he’d ever loved. On hearing his voice, tablets girl’s sister uttered another cry, one hand flew to her mouth, the other reached out, possibly to ward him off, possibly to take hold of him. Then she dropped her hands, tried to step back but couldn’t because already she was at the railings. Instead she stepped sideways and I knew by this point I was all but forgotten by her as well. This was the second reason I thought she might have rebuffed the help I’d offered. Given I was the sister of the ex-lover who’d ditched her to go and marry some expedient unknown, might she not have wanted any reminder of this terrible event from her past? So it was back to the wrong spouse, in this case to that of third brother’s wife being the wrong spouse with tablets girl’s sister meant to have been the right spouse. That was how it looked to us – to my family, her family, everybody in the community. Yet they hadn’t married because third brother had gone and done the usual unquestioned, unconscious, self-protective thing. Being loved back by the person he loved to the point where he couldn’t cope anymore with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving, he ended the relationship to get it over with before he lost it, before it was snatched from him, either by fate or by somebody else. Nobody said anything sensible to him at the time because who would have been that somebody? So it was that brother attempted to evade his great fear of theoretically losing what he wanted more than anything and to make do with a substitute instead. Unsurprisingly, tablets girl’s sister had something to say about that.

‘Go away,’ she said. ‘You went away, ex-boy lover, so now you just go away.’ Her voice was trembling, her body shaking, definitely she was angry and it was with difficulty she was trying to focus; clear too, that she couldn’t properly make him out. As for me, I remained invisible to both but that didn’t stop my mind racing. Was it too late? Had he burnt his boats? Had he ruined everything? Or was she going to relent and let him make repair? With the intention of repair, it seemed, third brother didn’t go away as commanded. Instead he stepped closer and although he hadn’t yet touched her, he was now speaking to her, imploring her. Without editing, without refining, because he was too far gone emotionally for any self-conscious evaluation, he was saying something about ‘… mistake … fool! … Big fool! Buck idjit! Didn’t know what I was thinking, what I was doing … Stupid … Wrong person. Because I loved you … Afraid. Risky … Played for safety … Sold out the dream … Oh idjit! … Oh fool! … Dammit! … Wrong person … Fuckit … Immature!’ There was something else on ‘not cherishment’, then something about ‘cherishment’, something on ‘love, my love’ and ‘couldn’t cope’ and ‘idjit, madman, big idjit, the happiness, couldn’t … wouldn’t … big bastard idjit’. I think he was meaning himself. After that, it was ‘this love business’ and how he’d compromised, how he’d ‘settled’, telling her he was shaking, that here he was, standing before her right now, shaking. ‘Cannot you see me shaking?’ he said. Then he said, ‘Fuck! You can’t see me shaking! You can’t see! What did she do? What did your sister do to your eyes?’