Anna Burns - Milkman

That was why they couldn’t possibly take off my garments, wee sisters said, not till they’d played the international couple. They were all set to go and play too, just as soon as I gave them something to eat. Okay, I said, but after I came back from my run they’d better be home and had taken all my stuff off. As it was, they couldn’t be allowed my high heels. ‘Gimme them,’ I said. ‘You’ll spring them,’ and I took them from them, knowing full well they’d just go get them again as soon as I’d gone from the house. I said then, ‘And you’d better not have been at my underwear drawer.’ ‘That’s not us,’ protested wee sisters. ‘That’s mammy. Mammy goes there heaps now, just as soon as every day you go to work.’

And yeah. She did. I had been through this too, with her, warning that she was not to mess with my stuff, especially not my underwear, warning also that she was to stay completely out of my room. Ever since her turnaround, this falling in love with real milkman – or not pretending anymore not always to have been in love with real milkman – she kept looking in the mirror and not liking what she saw. She had taken to frowning, holding her breath, pulling her stomach in, then letting her stomach out when she had to because she’d needed to breathe again. Then it was sighing and scrutinising every physical detail and I thought, she’s fifty. Far too old to be behaving like that. And there were my clothes. She was rooting in them, though first, said wee sisters, she was rooting in her own belongings, turning every stitch she owned, they said, inside out. She was very sad, they said, because her garments, also every accessory she had, was dowdy, not of the moment, which was why she waited, they said, until after I’d gone to work. That was how the raids started. I caught her at it myself one day just after real milkman came out of hospital. I came home early from work and there she was in my room, sampling away. My wardrobe was open, my chest of drawers was open, my shoe boxes open, my jewellery box open, my make-up case empty with all its contents on her face or else dumped out on my bed. As well as that, she had moved half my stuff into her room and not just my stuff but some of second sister’s stuff because, in her banishment, on having to leave in a hurry, second sister hadn’t had time to pack and take her gear as well. It was not only me and second sister though. Ma had also gone to visit first and third sisters – tellingly at a time when she knew neither of them would be there. With first sister it was on the pretext of wanting to see her grandchildren, and with third sister it was on the pretext of chivvying as to why there weren’t yet grandchildren. In reality though, it was with the intention of raiding their stuff as well. The husbands let her in, and they thought nothing of it, still thinking nothing when she went upstairs ignoring them, coming down later and staggering out their doors with her arms piled high with their wives’ stuff. She came home laden, said wee sisters, so all us sisters were finding this real milkman affair revolutionary. As for her long-term pace-praying, her clock-praying, all that fierce virtuous competitive chapel-praying, according to wee sisters, ‘She puts Leo Sayer and “When I Need You”, and “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, and “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” on the record-player instead.’ So I came home from work and there she was, fretting over belts, handbags, scarves, mostly though, over how her own body had betrayed her. Without blushing either, or having the grace to look guilty at being caught red-handed, she said, ‘Would you never think, daughter mine, to buy high heels with a lesser heel?’ Right away I intended anger, to point out her violation in rummaging in what didn’t belong to her. How would she like it, I’d ask, if I were to reveal that on setting off for chapel to do her praying, or round to the neighbours to do her gossiping, wee sisters were straight off up to her room? They were in her bed, in her nightclothes, reading her books, doing play-praying, play-gossiping and pretending to make up herbal charmes and harmes and other concoctions, taking turns as often they did, at being her. Because of her panic though, and because she seemed now to have entered some vulnerable, regressed, strange transition period, I found myself handing her a pair of low slingbacks and saying, ‘Try these on, ma’ instead.

Matters had moved on too, it seemed, throughout the whole of the area regarding real milkman. Even I paid attention to the latest talk of the great gang of pious women – now demoted, ex-pious women – and to that old love rivalry between them being once more stirred up. After first entreating God to spare the life of real milkman and then, when this supplication had been granted, imploring God further for the full recovery of real milkman, some of these women discovered that while they were in chapel, eyes closed, hands clasped, wearing out the pew with piety, invocations and kneecaps, others had taken advantage of their fervent, protracted devotions temporarily to minimise their own devotions to rush to the hospital to see real milkman first. Upon this discovery, everyone became in a hurry. Prayers, when they happened, happened on the hop. The ex-pious women apologised beforehand to God, assuring Him that, of course, this was provisional, that it was only ever going to be provisional, that soon they’d get back to full-on, normal-formal praying but meantime, if it was all right with Him, they’d foreshorten and abridge all items on the prayerlisting – this time not to fit in more prayers but to lessen the prayer-duration by temporarily subtracting most of them from it for now. So it wasn’t that they’d completely forgotten the Presence. It was more that they too, like ma, were baking pies, decorating cakes, feeding soup, trying on daughters’ clothes, daughters’ make-up, daughters’ jewellery and springing daughters’ heels as they rushed to and from the hospital. Later, when real milkman was out of hospital, still they rushed and were busy, this time to visit him in his house to see how he was settling in back there.

Ma, however, had got the start on them after receiving the tip-off from Jason. Thanks to Jason, who was in love with Nigel, her own husband, so not at all interested in that way in real milkman, ma, on hearing of the shooting, was able to reach the hospital first. Immediately she was pounced upon by the police and taken to some little hospital cupboard-room for questioning. Why did she want to see this man, this terrorist, whom they’d just shot as enemy-of-the-state, they asked? Of course they were seen to be trying their hand, this police, wondering if it might be possible to turn this middle-aged girlfriend of a middle-aged wounded paramilitary into an agent for them. Might they get her to reveal covert renouncer identities for them? planned covert renouncer activities for them? help them displant that diabolical enemy for them? The thing was though, that fast on the heels of ma to the hospital came three further possible middle-aged girlfriends of the same wounded paramilitary. Then another four also turned up. The police ran out of little impromptu hospital cupboard-rooms into which to spirit this potential supergrass demographic. That meant they had to transfer them to the police barracks which, given the growing girlfriend numbers, would no longer keep the situation as stealthy as they, the police, would have liked. This state-security force, stalking the hospital corridors, then intercepted a further two middle-aged girlfriends who also had to be taken in for questioning. By this stage the law must have been scratching its head. ‘How many has he? What sort of philanderer is he? Exactly when, in between these love trysts, does Valentino here manage to fit his terrorist activity in?’ Before they could attempt an answer it happened again, and the number of middle-aged female informers from our small no-go area was rumoured to swell from ten to eighteen. Frankly, it was unworkable, but not just for the police was it unworkable. The renouncers-of-the-state in our district, faced with the prospect of eighteen ex-pious women whom they knew would have to be psycho-evaluated to uncover if any of them had been flipped as informers, also found the situation unworkable. Not just unworkable – ridiculous. Not just ridiculous – perturbing. And not only in terms of the political situation was it unworkable, ridiculous and perturbing, but also on the more private footing of these women being the district’s traditional wives and mothers as well.