Anna Burns - Milkman

No impact whatsoever. After that, they started in on me.

‘Aye-aye, lookie here,’ cried one, though all of them were looking already. ‘Snap!’ cried another, pointing back to third brother-in-law. ‘You two off then, to the Annual Black Eye Convention?’ which was when third brother-in-law turned and saw my black eye, also when I saw his.

Black eyes on brother-in-law were not frequent, but they were frequent in comparison with those on me not to be rare items. When I saw my own that morning in the mirror, the only way I could deal with it was by remembering that Somebody McSomebody hadn’t got off lightly himself. Must be counting at least twenty black eyes, I told myself – courtesy of those women, then their men, then the renouncers – all far blacker too, no doubt, than this here. ‘That’ll teach him,’ I reassured my reflection, then I wondered whether to go to work. In the end I did, after patching up the eye with tons of make-up; not though – as I discovered immediately upon going out my door and encountering people – as successfully as first I had thought.

‘So it’s true,’ said third brother-in-law. ‘I heard a rumour but it was issuing from your first brother-in-law so I wasn’t tended to mind it. But that Shitten McShite McSomebody did do that to you?’ I shrugged, which meant, yeah, but it’s old business and anyway, hardly he got away with it himself. ‘Ach,’ was what I did say which, depending on the context, can mean anything at all. In this context it meant, leave it, brother-in-law. It’s been taken care of. Besides, I thought, relative to everything that had been happening – especially relative to what would have happened to me on the evening before if Milkman hadn’t been killed and instead had had me meet him as he had foreplayed me to meet him – Somebody McSomebody and his whack with his gun hardly rated a consequence at all. ‘Not pointful,’ I said. ‘Pointful to me, sister-in-law,’ said brother-in-law. ‘And what of principles? You’re a woman. He’s a man. You’re a female. He’s a male. You’re my sister-in-law and I don’t care how many of his family got murdered, he’s a bastard and would’ve been a bastard even if they hadn’t got murdered.’ They hadn’t got murdered. Only four had got murdered. The other two had been a suicide and an accidental death.

Brother-in-law was now seriously cross and I was touched by his crossness. Somebody McSomebody was wrong then. People in this place did give a fuck. But there was something else about brother-in-law, something linked to that strange, communally diagnosed mental aberration that he had around women. For all his idolatry, all his belief in the sanctity of femaleness, of women being the higher beings, the mystery of life and so on, he couldn’t grasp any abuse towards them other than what he termed rape. Rape for brother-in-law wasn’t categorised. It wasn’t equivocations, rhetorical stunts, sly debater tricks or a quarter amount of something or a half amount of something or a three-quarter amount of something. It was not a presentation package. Rape was rape. It was also black eyes. It was guns in breasts. Hands, fists, weapons, feet, used by male people, deliberately or accidentally-on-purpose against female people. ‘NEVER LIFT A FINGER TO A WOMAN’ – if ever it had existed – third brother-in-law’s teeshirt, to everyone’s embarrassment, would have said. According to his rulebook – mine too, at least before the predations upon me by the community and by Milkman – the physical-contact aspect could be the only aspect. That meant that what was not of that trespass, not that kind of physical – stalking without touch, tracking without touch, hemming-in, taking over, controlling a person with no flesh on flesh, no bone on bone ensuing – could not then be happening. So it came about that of everybody who had heard of the wooing of me by Milkman, third brother-in-law was the only one who, unquestioningly, hadn’t considered it to have taken place.

Not seeing mental wreckage then, seemed one of his downsides. As for the black eye, he did see that. ‘Why don’t we just leave it, brother-in-law?’ I said. ‘He’s been done in – honestly – by hundreds of thousands of people.’ I added there’d been a synchronicity to it, a sense of providence, a deftness, some cosmic comeuppance easily to be described as pure alchemical process. ‘So no further action needed,’ I said, trying my best to drive this point home. It was that I was tired of the eye, tired of McSomebody, tired of rules and the district’s regulations. As for principles, sometimes you have to say ‘stuff principles’, such as now when the energy for me was over on all that. ‘So you don’t need to,’ I said, adding that his purposing to go back, and to take me back, would mean delay in getting on to the next thing – our run being the next thing. ‘But thanks, brother-in-law,’ I said. ‘Don’t be thinking I’m not grateful because I am grateful.’ After a pause brother-in-law said he was going to beat him up all the same. ‘Not necessary,’ I said. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach nothing,’ he said. ‘Ach sure,’ I said. ‘Ach sure what?’ he said. ‘Ach sure, if that’s how you feel.’ ‘Ach sure, of course that’s how I feel.’ ‘Ach, all right then.’ ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach,’ he said. ‘Ach,’ I said. ‘Ach.’

So that was that settled. We fell back to stretching which was when the others, amused by our little passage until they were bored by our little passage, pushed us out of this stretching. Sister came out with a final ‘Oh, but you do lead an exciting life, middle sister,’ which I didn’t take offence at and even found funny, then all of them turned away and pressed themselves into third sister and third brother-in-law’s ridiculously tiny house. Soon after, and through their living-room window, came the sound of bags crinkling, of exclamations on purchases, of the urgent business of drinks, glasses, ashtrays and Elvis. Meanwhile, we two resumed our stretching then brother-in-law said, ‘Right? Are ye right?’ and I said, ‘Aye, come on, we’ll do it.’ As we jumped the tiny hedge because we couldn’t be bothered with the tiny gate to set off on our running, I inhaled the early evening light and realised this was softening, what others might term a little softening. Then, landing on the pavement in the direction of the parks & reservoirs, I exhaled this light and for a moment, just a moment, I almost nearly laughed.

Thanks to:

Katy Nicholson; Clare Dimond; James Smith; Gerard Macdonald; Carlos Peña Martin; Julie Ruggins; Mia Topley-Ruggins; Belle Topley-Ruggins; Lisette Teasdale; Mike Teasdale; Katy Teasdale; Dan Teasdale; George Teasdale; Pat Thatcher; Sarah Evans; the Royal Literary Fund; Joe Burns; Catharine Birchwood; Maggie Butt; Jane Wilde; Judy Hindley; John Hindley; Brian Utton; Sally Utton; Liz Kay; Helen Colbeck; Virginia Crowe; Pat Vigneswaren; K. Vigneswaren; Ann Radley; Nigel Stephens; Tony Dawson; Russell Halil; Annie Drury; Mark Lambert; Archie; Selina Martin; Michaela Hurcombe; David Cox; Marianne Macdonald; Charles Walsh; Astrid Fuhrmeister; Vesna Main; Peter Main; Janine Gerhardt; my agent David Grossman; Louisa Joyner and the team at Faber; Ian Critchley, copyeditor of Milkman ; Hazel Orme, copyeditor of Little Constructions ; Maureen Ruprecht Fadem; James Gardner, Joan Wignall, Terry Howell, Christine Tutt and John Shaw (the Committee) at Lewes District Churches HOMELINK; Newhaven Food Bank; Nicky Gray (formerly of Sussex Community Development Association at Newhaven); Hampton Allotment Charity; the Society of Authors; the Housing and Council Tax Benefit system; the Department of Work and Pensions system; the First-Tier Tribunal Social Entitlement Chamber (of HM Courts and Tribunals Service), Brighton, consisting of Dr R.D.S. Watson and Judge A.J. Kelly, also the gentle, soothing usher whose name, sadly, I never knew; Elizabeth Finn Grants.