Anna Burns - Milkman

I had gotten through to her though, for she began to be on her dignity. A certain ‘how dare they exploit my conscience’ was growing upon her which was encouraging but events were moving quickly for another by-product, I found out, of real milkman getting shot, probably the main by-product of his getting shot, was that getting shot did seem to have catalysed him out of his long-term ‘not getting over Peggy’ reclusion. His self-imposed exile from personal romantic and passionate love and settling instead for mere unconditional agape appeared now to have come to an end. Before he’d even left hospital, and setting aside that gunshot unpleasantness, and in spite too, of his stern and ascetic side trying its utmost to reassert sternness and asceticism, incongruously he found he was having a nice time. Ma told me that he told her that at first while lying in hospital, some aberrant insurrectionary sense had come upon him, wanting deeds of goodness to be done unto him instead of him always having to be the deeder of the goodnesses. This was in contrast to last time twelve years earlier, during the prime of his great self-sufficiency when, although he’d needed help, all the help he could get and subsequently received after that beating then that tar and feathering, his heart then, in contrast to his heart now, hadn’t opened a jot to personal love or romance. So he was undergoing his own revolution, coming out from behind all that common good and self-sacrifice. Instead he wanted to be the recipient of personal love, and of sex, and of affection this time around. All this he was fully open to, ma said, also saying that he said that, as if on cue, as if by a miracle, deeds of goodness – with possibilities for personal attachments – were poured forth upon him, in that women started to appear almost at once. They turned up in droves at the hospital, he said, and it was mostly those traditional, pious women of the area. Then came the issue women. Also some men – a few neighbours unafraid of being implicated with someone constantly raising his head above the parapet – they showed at the hospital too. And of course there was ma, his longest friend. So they came, he said, and that was nice. Here he took and held ma’s hand. She said that he said that the new deeds of goodness being done unto him sat comfortably within his newfound peaceful personality. When he was out of hospital, still people came to visit him and still the deeds sat comfortably. Ma though, experiencing a mixture of ecstasy at having her hand held and of being spoken to intimately by real milkman, was also feeling annoyance because she understood now, regarding those other women, what it was I’d been trying to draw her attention to all along.

Apart from her complaint then, as to her agedness, ma’s other complaint was about the ubiquity of these ex-pious women. She had stopped haranguing me about marriage – itself another welcome fringe of real milkman getting wounded – also desisted in her words about my taking up with dangerous married people. Simply she hadn’t the time. ‘They’re forever round there,’ she cried, ‘at his house with their sly moves, bringing him turnips. I saw them with their gifts of carrots and parsnips, their homemade soups, their cakes and aromatic waters of rose and their charmingly packaged, gift-wrapped potatoes sticking out of their pockets. Such deceit! It’s hardly imaginable.’ ‘I know, ma,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly not.’ ‘Dressing up too, daughter,’ she went on, ‘though goodness knows they’re no spring—’ This of course was when she remembered, courtesy of Yes-but , that she too was no spring—Again I hurried to intervene. I stressed that, owing to a reversal of the lifeforce inside her, she was blossoming, losing that ‘life’s over, I’m finished with life, past it, just eking out what’s left’ older person’s perspective that usually she went about in and that I hadn’t noticed she’d gone about in until of late when she’d stopped going about in it. Instead she’d sprung to life, bursting with green shoots and— ‘… competitiveness and rivalry,’ concluded Yes-but which was not how I would have concluded myself. ‘I’m too old to be jealous,’ said ma. ‘Not used to it. I thought I had all that over with. You know, daughter, I think it was easier back then for me to pray to God for Peggy to have him than to pray to God for me to have him – I mean, because of the jealousy, the backlash I’d get from them others. I think too, it would have been easier to have been jealous of one of them getting him than for me to have got him and to have had to deal with their jealousy.’ Just as with Great-Great-Granny Winifred’s chair then, I sensed we were now in for another microscopically observed advanced discussion, this time on jealousy – a subject which not only I had never heard ma speak of, but which I myself didn’t speak of, didn’t want to admit to, mainly lest it bring on my own version of Yes-but and Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days.

So Yes-but had resurfaced to counter all my attempts to uplift my mother. Every compliment I initiated by way of encouragement, Yes-but got in there with its negatives and shot it down. When Yes-but wasn’t yes-butting, ma was looking in the mirror and sighing. All the same, she seemed as an electric light. One minute she was switched on, then switched off, then on, then off, down to death she’d go, then up she’d rally. At this point some thought occurred and I saw her frown, go down, get annoyed.

‘It’s all right for some,’ she said, ‘to gallivant the world over, ballroom-dancing, looking fabulous, with no conscience to speak of. Did you know that woman who wins those ballroom competitions on the TV is nearly the same age, daughter, as me? Well, she is! But we could all look like that. Oh, it would be easy to look like that – top of the world, dolled-up, flashy smiles, sparkling clothes, with bodies that move like reigning champions even before they’ve stepped onto the dancefloor. We could all be that, daughter, if we did what she did, for do you know what she did? She abandoned her six newborn babies on the settee to manage best they could with only a few Farley’s Rusks sprinkled between them – all so she could funster off and have the most passionate, eventful career in the world. What behaviour’s that? What mother would do that? Even for the glory of becoming best, most best, or even to be one of those selfless souls who help foster peace and cohesion in a place with a long history of hatred and violence. Dancing and acclaim and renown and prestige and credit and fame and looking like that isn’t everything. You wouldn’t see me abandoning my duty, leaving my children,’ which brought her back to the common round and daily task once more.

And now she was sighing and falling down deeper with her electric light off. Then it was back to ‘Can’t believe I’m trying to do this, far too old to be doing this. Can’t wear your clothes. They’re wee girl clothes, not advanced lady clothes,’ and to slumping on the edge of the bed at not being able to do it, at being jealous of maybe-boyfriend’s ma for being able so magnificently to do it. This was when it came clear to me that I couldn’t carry this off. I couldn’t hold this up for her. Didn’t have the right facilitation within me. Couldn’t be the one to rally her for she took no heed of me, didn’t rate my opinion, paid more attention to Yes-but ’s opinion. Plus I had my own worries. Still I was being stalked by Milkman at this point. Not only was he not yet dead, he was well into having stepped up and closed in on foreplay predations. In the case of ma though, I needed reinforcements and that meant, could only mean, first sister had to be called. She’d know what to do, I thought, what to suggest, how to bolster ma out of her defeatism and negativity. Eldest sister wouldn’t brook either, any Yes-but interruption. Must fetch first sister, fetch first sister then became my prioritised thought.