Anna Burns - Milkman

I gave it to them and they ate up, then rushed out to play the international couple. Looking out the window on my way upstairs to change for running, I could see this international couple had really taken off. Little girls were falling over everywhere. It seemed the whole district of them was out, playing, flouncing, and at first glance they appeared mainly to resemble chandeliers with added lusciousness such as golden brocade and embossed wallpaper. By the time I did go out, all the streets were overrun with them: beribboned, besilked, bevelveted, behighheeled, bescratchy-petticoated and in pairs or else alone but pretending to be in pairs, waltzing and periodically crashing over. Meanwhile, the little boys, oblivious of the little girls, temporarily too, suspending operations against that army from ‘over there’ – owing, probably, to the current absence of that army from ‘over there’ – were taking turns at being good guy in their new play of the latest martyr killed recently in the political problems: Renouncer Hero Milkman, shadowed, set upon, then gunned down in their usual cowardly fashion by that murder squad spawned by a terrorist state.

‘Fuckin’. Fuckin’.’

I knew he knew I was there, that it was me, but he carried on with his back turned, in his garden, in his gear, doing his usual mutters while warming up. He didn’t look at me, no acknowledgement as I arrived and leaned over to open his little house’s little gate. Still sulking then, I guessed, and I meant over that telephone call, the one he’d had a while back with ma about my missing our run sessions. Because of this, also because he’d been sceptical of my earlier complaint of legs losing power, body losing coordination, balance tipping, starting to stumble, starting to tumble, I thought it best silently to fall into stretching beside him rather than attempt any further explanation. So that then, was what I did. After a bit he said, still without looking, ‘Thought you’d given up running.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘That was just poison.’ ‘Well, days and days went by,’ he said, ‘and it didn’t seem to me like you were coming running.’ ‘Attempted murder, brother-in-law.’ ‘That’s what they all say, sister-in-law. It’s one thing to say’ – and here brother-in-law’s voice was tense, edgy, wounded – ‘“No, not twelve miles, thirty miles,” for that would be contrariness. But to say – or to get your mother to say – “No, not running, never again going running,” that’s just bad play, that is.’

Still not looking at me, he moved on to his hip flexors. I knew I had to salvage the situation, acknowledge his grievance, pat down his hurt heart. Best way to do that was to have him goad me into browbeating him, which at least in the moment, for his part, he was attempting to do. It was down to me then to say, ‘Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough. We’re doing twenty miles today.’ But I was in too much doubt of my recovery, of my stamina, to manage twenty miles. I was unsure of ten miles, even five miles, didn’t know really, though my legs were returning, if I was ready at all yet for running. I supposed I could throw out some speculative number of miles we were not running but, ‘We’re doing twelve miles today,’ he announced, opening the bidding before I got a chance. ‘We are not doing twelve miles,’ I said. ‘Not eleven either,’ which did the trick for then he sounded – which was to him, a button – pacified and shocked at the same time. ‘Surely not not eleven,’ he cried. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Not eleven. Not nine either, or eight.’ ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘we’ll do nine.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘I said not nine. Not seven, or six, maybe five – we’ll do six miles.’ ‘Six miles isn’t much!’ he cried. ‘Six miles! Six miles and not any more than six miles? How about six twice, sister-in-law, or six miles with another three miles or …’ Of course I could have replied, ‘Look listen, brother-in-law. You do more if you like. In fact, why don’t we both just do what we feel like doing?’, for it didn’t matter that we should run together anymore, not now that Milkman was dead. I didn’t admit this openly, I mean to myself, in case it spelled out to me that I had become that traitorous, cold-hearted bad person. But the fact was, after Milkman and his ‘I’m male and you’re female’, and his ‘you don’t need that running’ , plus his subsoil ‘I’m going to curtail you and isolate you so that soon you’ll do nothing’ ; after going from two months too, of stumbling, of legs strangely no longer working to legs soon to be magnificently working, I did feel safe again to run on my own. For the present though, or at least until brother-in-law should again go bananas with his next bout of über -addiction, I decided to keep on running my runs with him. ‘Six miles only,’ I pronounced, which eventually had brother-in-law conceding. ‘All right,’ he said, also saying he was in protestation about the six miles. He supposed he could make up the shortfall with skipping or extra squats and lunges later at the boxing club. So, ‘I’m unhappy with this,’ he said, but he didn’t seem unhappy. He seemed happy, which I think meant we were friends once again. At this moment his wife, my third sister, appeared, along with her gang of mates, all of them with drink taken. They had extra bottles with them, plus shopping, lots of boutique and shopping-mall shopping, all from some retail-barcrawl onslaught they’d been on all day in town.

‘God, we’re plastered,’ they said, and then they, including sister, fell over the ornamental hedge. Sister exploded into advanced asterisks, into percentage marks, crossword symbol signs, ampersands, circumflexes, hash keys, dollar signs, all that ‘If You See Kay’ blue french language. Her friends, picking themselves up off the grass, plus their bottles and shopping, rejoined with, ‘Well, we told you, friend. We warned you. It’s rambunctious, out of control. That hedge is sinister. Get rid of it.’ ‘Can’t,’ said sister. ‘I’m curious to see how it’ll transpire and individualise.’ ‘You can see how it’s transpired and individualised. It’s transpired into day of the triffids. It’s individualising into trying to kill us.’ Then they left off hedge-disparagement and turned their attention to us.

Brother-in-law got it first.

‘Hear you’ve been battering women down at the parks &—’ This particular friend of sister couldn’t finish her observation because brother-in-law fell out of his stretch just on hearing the opening words. ‘What!’ he spluttered. ‘Who’s been puttin’ that about about me?’ ‘Stop,’ said third sister to her friends. ‘There, lamb.’ She turned to him. ‘Pay no heed. They’re dark, dank weeds to your illumined sensitivity.’ Although it would have been difficult to keep a straight face and refer to third brother-in-law as a high-strung ethereality – as seen by her friends bursting into laughter – in some under-the-skin way I did understand what sister meant. If any of us present were to be called forth as the most modest, the most easily shocked amongst us, I would say, and sister would say, even her friends in spite of their laughter would say, ‘Oh well, if it boils down to it, we suppose that would be him.’

‘Here!’ said third sister, and she sprang over to her husband, which had me noticing, as ma had said, how lithe and graceful on her feet – when not falling over hedges – third sister was. ‘You mean that’s not true?’ cried brother-in-law, slightly less shocked but still reeling from the accusation. ‘Of course it’s not true. The idea of you hitting a—’ ‘I don’t mean that ,’ said brother-in-law. ‘I mean it’s not true that somebody’s been puttin’ it about about me?’ ‘Nobody’s been puttin’ it about about you.’ And here third sister stretched up to give her husband a smacky, dramatic kiss on the mouth. ‘No, stand off,’ he said. He set her aside. ‘I’m not in the mood to kiss you.’ Then he turned to the others who had ruffled him, rocked him, and with an issue too, that shouldn’t be treated as a joke and which he himself shouldn’t have to put up with, especially not from the very sex from which he’d least expect mockery of such principles to come. ‘Stop that accusing and maligning,’ he said. ‘It isn’t funny. Puttin’ things about about people, ruinin’ good men’s good reputations. You’re not kids anymore, so act your age.’