Anna Burns - Milkman

‘Well, go and have them then,’ I shouted, meaning their aliments because, as the telephone rang and I answered, wee sisters were about to set off for the kitchen. Then, when maybe-boyfriend said, ‘It’s yourself,’ I covered the mouthpiece to shout further, ‘And close the door behind you and don’t listen to this telephone call!’ As this was the first time to talk with maybe-boyfriend – with any maybe-boyfriend – via the telephone, I felt inhibited, so I didn’t want any overhearers to our conversation, meaning wee sisters in this instance, listening in. Of course there was also the security forces with their electronic surveillance but as for them, if they were listening – because maybe no one was listening – there wasn’t a lot in the moment, bar not speaking to maybe-boyfriend, that I could do. So I shouted to wee sisters to eat their nuncheons out the back, then to leave by the back, then I sat on the stairs, uncovered the mouthpiece, placed the receiver back at my ear and said, ‘Maybe-boyfriend.’ I was glad it was him, very glad, even though it was weird to talk on the telephone. Only eight times, seven, maybe six, ever had I done so. Maybe-boyfriend said, ‘You took a long time getting those chips, maybe-girlfriend,’ and his voice sounded like him which meant lovely, which meant male, which meant welcoming, and he was bantering about the chips, with my taking it at first to be banter. So the telephone call started fine, but by the end – by the time we got through the bit about my ma calling him a terrorist, the bit about his being under further siege, not solely now from that supercharger and flag rumour, but also because of some new rumour involving him way over in his district but for which he seemed to think I was responsible way over here in my district – I was reeling and reassessing his remark of ‘took a long time’ as not really some affectionate opening banter. Before long I became sure it was an attack upon me after all.

He asked what had happened. Why had I missed our Tuesdays and our Friday nights into Saturdays and our all day Saturdays into Sundays because, apart from my ending our sometimes-Thursday nights together, neither of us had missed a date during our almost year-long maybe-dating so far? I told him something had come up and that I’d had to stay and look after our house and wee sisters. I didn’t share about real milkman getting shot, or ma being transformed into her true self because of real milkman getting shot, or about my being poisoned, or about tablets girl being murdered, or about Milkman intensifying his predations upon me – indeed, about Milkman. Nor did I share about the community and its fabrications, or the particulars of that carbomb which still remained a live issue between us even though still he was persisting in shrugging it off. There was the chip shop experience too, that I didn’t share, with its attitude of ‘Here! Take these chips, but don’t be thinking you’ll get away with this, hussy!’ and it wasn’t because of stubbornness that I didn’t share. Even so, it started to seem to me that perhaps I could tell, that perhaps my business could be – if maybe-boyfriend wanted it to be – his business also. Still I held back though, thinking, well, what if I did tell? What if I do tell? What if I manage to get it out and, just as with the carbomb, he dismisses and shrugs it off? At this point in my life – and again, because I was confused and shut down by Milkman, and by the community, also because of this uncommitted status of me and maybe-boyfriend; because too, I’d been watching my back so long I’d no conception I was missing out on my own good opportunities; because of all that then, I construed that the hurtful impact upon me of his shrugging it off would be worse than not revealing at all. So I downplayed it, thinking even at this point that that was how I had to play it, but maybe-boyfriend said, ‘But what happened? What is this thing, maybe-girl, that’s come up?’ After a startled moment, my mouth fell open and despite all my long-held reasons for not telling, spontaneous words came out of my mouth. I heard myself speak of ma’s friend being shot, and of her being down at the hospital a lot now – which was when maybe-boyfriend interrupted to say he would come over, did I want him to come over? I only wished my spontaneity had carried itself further and I’d been able to say what I wanted to say which was yes. He could come over. He could be here. Come also, without ma haranguing, without questions of marriage or babies or of accusations of being Milkman. Even if she’d been here, ma was so distracted now with her own heart issues, it was unlikely she’d even register maybe-boyfriend was in the room. So it wasn’t thoughts of her that were stopping me now, causing me to hesitate, to deprive myself of maybe-boyfriend. It was – well, what if he does come over and he gets to hear? I found myself back, then, with eldest sister, sitting silent in ma’s front parlour on the day and hour of the funeral of her murdered ex-boyfriend. I knew it was unbelievable that I should let myself get pushed into becoming what the gossips were saying I’d already become but, according to the latest in the area, it was the case I’d been in relationship with Milkman for two months by now. That meant it was time to cheat on him, they said, so I was cheating on him, having a dalliance behind his back with some young car mechanic whippersnapper from across town. Because of this new rumour then, I hesitated to get my thoughts straight before answering. Having told out some – the easier bit, the bit that didn’t involve me but only ma and real milkman – it was now time, I decided, to tell out to maybe-boyfriend all the rest. Before I could do this, however, maybe-boyfriend misconstrued my hesitation and pounced, saying I didn’t want him to come over, that never had I wanted him to come over – to pick me up, to drive me home, to spend time with me in my district. At first he said he thought it was because of the rumour of him and the supercharger which had made me ashamed to be seen with him; that perhaps, just as with the gossips over his way, I had even started to believe him an informer too. That had been before the other rumour, he said, for even across town in his own district he had heard of that other rumour – the one about his daring to vie for the affections of a renouncer’s girlfriend. ‘And that renouncer,’ he said. ‘ The milkman renouncer. So, maybe-girlfriend, what have you got to say about that?’

Immediately the tenseness was back, the one which had been building between us owing to the respective rumours in our areas. And it now seemed these rumours were converging, with his viewpoint shifting from ‘my not wanting him to call because I was ashamed of him’ to ‘not wanting him to call because I was in relationship with Milkman’, and my viewpoint shifting from ‘not wanting him to call because of ma demanding marriage and babies’ to ‘not wanting him to call in case Milkman took his life’. As for telling out, it boded no good to tell, I had decided, for look, hadn’t I just started to open up and there he was, getting into a fight over it? Instead of answering – for why should I answer when, just as with the others, he was initiating by accusing? – I withdrew again, closed up, piqued and angry, and it was at this point that the revulsion again took hold. Oh no, I thought. Not that revulsion, not at maybe-boyfriend. But yes, within seconds maybe-boyfriend had once again started to change. Instantly he became less attractive, less himself. Then not attractive, not himself. Instead more and more Milkman. Then I got the shudders, which was the first time with maybe-boyfriend to have got them. Then I thought, hold on a minute. How’d he get my number? What sneaky, spying, stalking thing did he get up to in order to obtain my telephone number? ‘How’d you get my number?’ And the moment I attacked with this question, the revulsion subsided and I remembered again who he was. You’re silly , I said to myself. What does it matter how he got it? It wasn’t even that I didn’t want him to have it, for weighed in balance I did want him to have it. Not for getting rung by him. It was more that his having of the number, his wanting to have it, presaged in my mind a certain closeness, a growth of trust. But he took my question at face value as the attack which, in the moment of asking, unfortunately it had been. ‘From the phonebook, maybe-girlfriend,’ he snapped and snapping had not been in the old days usual for maybe-boyfriend. ‘What phonebook?’ I said. ‘Christ all Friday, maybe-girl! Are twentieth-century phonebooks off-limits also?’ which was, for the first time, from him, a slur on my reading tastes. So, him too, I thought. Him too. My own maybe-boyfriend treacherously also. Stabbed by him also. ‘So I rang a few numbers that had your surname listed in your area,’ he went on, ‘because you know, you’ve never given me your address, maybe-girlfriend’ – and here was bitterness, distinct bitterness. ‘Eventually, after a few wrong numbers,’ said the bitterness, ‘I rang another number and got a woman who was your ma.’