by Anna Burns
It seemed, listening to him, that if a person was determined, they could make an argument out of anything, and here he was, making it out of it not being normal to bring that flag in. Well, that was true, it wasn’t normal. Then again, maybe-boyfriend hadn’t brought it in. During all this, maybe-boyfriend wasn’t saying anything. There was a cloud on his face though, a shadow, and maybe-boyfriend rarely had shadows. Instead he had agility, mobility, playfulness which was something else attractive about him, such as twenty minutes earlier, when there’d only been me and him in the room. Then, he’d been pleased with the supercharger, had shown he was pleased, and even later with these others, still he’d shown pleasure, if without the same display of pride and elation he’d felt safe to show me about it earlier. Instead, with them, he’d been cautious – not just to be polite and not boastful, but because of envy when people can suddenly turn on you and want revenge just because they do. It was trophy time, yes, but also humility with the trophy which was why maybe-boyfriend, with his neighbours, toned all his euphoria down. I could see though, that there was stubbornness, that again he was doing that thing which periodically he did when in the company of someone he didn’t respect and so wouldn’t offer explanations. I thought him foolish in this instance, given the seriousness of this flags-and-emblems issue which was why I was glad when his friends had spoken up. He himself was not naturally argumentative and nor did he link with the punch-up mentality. The only occasions really, when he’d get angry and involve himself in fighting would be when others picked on chef, his longest friend from primary school. But now he was looking at his neighbour who was shrugging and bad behaviour on the part of that neighbour – coming into maybe-boyfriend’s house, inviting himself into the house along with the others, then talking like that, breaking rules of hospitality, stirring up trouble, being jealous. No wonder then, at the start of another ‘far be it from me’, he got himself punched on the nose. One of maybe-boyfriend’s friends – the impetuous one, the one who objected to being called hotheaded though everybody knew he broke into fights even over things he was happy about – he punched him. Yer man himself though, didn’t retaliate. Instead he rushed out in one of those adrenalin runs, throwing behind him something of maybe-boyfriend having brought the slur of that flag onto himself as well as onto the community. Hardly could it be surprising, he shouted, that consequence would follow upon that. Then he disappeared, colliding on the doorstep with chef who, looking set-upon and harried, had just that moment arrived at maybe-boyfriend’s after work.
There was now a feeling in the room to which nobody was admitting: unpleasant, ominous, grey. Impossible to get the room back too, for the energy had shifted, killing off the car talk. Although a few tried, nobody was able to get it off the ground again. Maybe-boyfriend’s longest friend, as usual with him, then cleared the room in seconds. This was chef – truly a man of nerves. Here I mean pure nerves, total nerves, dramatic nerves, nerves up to high doh, a hundred per cent not average. He was driven, unsmiling, sunken-eyed, also perpetually exhausted and he’d been these things even before the idea to become a chef had ever entered his head. As it was, he didn’t become a chef, though often when drunk, he’d speak of going to cooking-school for to become one. In his working-life he was a brickie and had started getting called chef on the sites as part of a joke about his liking cooking when a man shouldn’t like cooking and the name after that stuck. So did other insults – his fine palate, his going to bed with cookbooks, being obsessed with the innermost nature of the carrot, being a woman of fastidious over-refinement. They could never tell though, these workmates, if they’d managed to wind him up because from the moment he’d arrive in the morning until going home in the evening, chef seemed wound up as a matter of course anyhow. Even before starting work, and going back to schooldays, and again for reasons of his seeming unmanliness, certain boys would want to fight with him. It seemed a rite of passage to fight with him. This tended to happen until one day maybe-boyfriend in the schoolyard took him under his wing. Chef didn’t know he’d been taken under a wing and gained no understanding, even after numerous beatings, that he’d needed to be. After maybe-boyfriend got involved though, and by extension maybe-boyfriend’s other friends, those looking to fight with chef mostly then backed off. From time to time, even now, there’d be the odd outbreak of ‘How’s your artichokes?’ followed by a violent encounter. I’d turn up at maybe-boyfriend’s to find chef in the kitchen – sometimes on his own but most oftener with maybe-boyfriend – tending to the latest of his queer-bashed wounds. As for the idea of chefness itself, there existed in maybe-boyfriend’s area, also in my area, a sense that male chefs – especially of little pastries and petit fours and fancies and dainties to which one could level the criticism ‘desserts’ and which chef here was a maker of – were not in demand and not socially acceptable. Contrary to other chef parts of the world, a man here could be a cook, though even then he’d better work on the boats, or in a man’s internment camp or in some other full-on male environment. Otherwise he was a chef which meant homosexual with a drive to recruit male heterosexuals into the homosexual fold. If they existed therefore, these chefs, they were a species hidden, few in number, with chef here – even though he wasn’t – being the only one I knew in a radius of a million miles. There was too, his borderline, compound emotional state which he’d exhibit without embarrassment or provocation – and over silly things such as measuring jugs and spoons. When he wasn’t on the touchiness brink over food and kitchen things generally, he could be found, usually late at night and more so at the weekend, murmuring ‘pomegranate molasses, orange flower water, crème caramel, crepe Suzette, bombe Alaska’ softly and with drink taken in some corner to himself. So he talked food, read food, lent food books (which freaked me out) to maybe-boyfriend who (also freaking me out) read them. And he experimented with food, thinking all the time he was an average guy, with no average guy, not even his mates, who did like him, thinking him this also. And now here he was, walking into the uncomfortable silence of maybe-boyfriend’s living room, adding to the edgy atmosphere just by the force of his personality being there.
On the other hand, maybe not. This time, for the first time, it started with the usual, ‘Oh no – not chef!’ with people about to dash off, but then realising it was a relief to see him. Definitely he was preferable to that former contentious flag affair. Before he’d come in maybe-boyfriend’s neighbours had shifted from the carefreeness of car talk to that old political ‘us and them’ trajectory. Increasingly too, they were distancing themselves from maybe-boyfriend because, although there were superchargers, there were also kangaroo courts and collusion and disloyalty and informership. Chef though, immediately helped snap everybody into place. As usual he didn’t notice the atmosphere, nor did he glance at the supercharger or at the specks of blood from maybe-boyfriend’s neighbour’s nose which were now about the supercharger. Instead he looked around, alarmed at what he did see. His eyebrows raised an octave. ‘Nobody told me there was this many. How many are you? Easily a hundred. I’m not counting. There’s no way,’ he shook his head, ‘no way, I’m plating up for all of you.’ But he was mistaken. If that neighbour hadn’t brought up the problems, probably it would have been prolonged car talk, followed by a drink session, then a music session, then a drunken carry-out from the chip shop or curry house session. Culinariness and little cakes from chef would not have been required. But chef was well into the amuse-bouches he was not going to make them, the detailed main course he was not going to make them, the dessert that definitely he was not going to make them and so the neighbours stood up and started in at once. ‘You’re all right there, chef,’ they said and this was as jovial as they could feign it. ‘No worries. No problem. We’re leaving. Gotta go anyway.’ At this they cast a last look, now more of an ambivalent look, towards the supercharger. Bit too quintessential after all, perhaps? Unsurprisingly, there came no more offers to buy. Instead they said goodbye to maybe-boyfriend, then goodbye to his mates
who were staying on a bit longer. Then some, as an afterthought, remembered and nodded goodbye into the corner, to me.
*
Toe-rag. Twerp. Pishpot. Spastic. Dickhead. Cunning-boy-ballocks. No offence or anything but. I’m only sayin’ but. No harm to you like but. These were some of the words said by maybe-boyfriend’s friends about his troublesome neighbour after that neighbour and the others had gone. Chef, maybe-boyfriend, three other of maybe-boyfriend’s friends and myself had remained in the room. Chef said, ‘Where’d they go but? Why’d they go? Who are they? Were they expecting me—’ ‘Forget it, chef,’ said maybe-boyfriend, but he spoke distractedly because he was annoyed at the others offering excuses and placations to that neighbour for him. Especially I knew he’d be annoyed at their trying to smooth away the flag comments. In doing so they had played, he would think, right into that neighbour’s hands. The others were saying ‘Forget it’ to chef as well by now, then the impetuous one warned maybe-boyfriend to watch himself. ‘He’s gonna meddle, that scuddy bastard, gonna brew some story.’ The others nodded and maybe-boyfriend at first nodded too. Then he said, ‘All the same, you shouldn’t have hit him, and you three shouldn’t have let him needle you or told him my business. My business isn’t his business. I don’t have to win him over or wheedle to get his approval. Don’t need you either, to convince him of me.’ The others didn’t like this and more likely from hurt, they started an argument, the gist being that maybe-boyfriend needed to catch himself on. Of course he should have explained himself, they said, not so much to yer man for, after all, he’d just been jealous. It was that he should have spoken up for the benefit of the others, to stop rumour being launched big time. Maybe-boyfriend said that as for rumour, words didn’t have to be disputed or undisputed, didn’t even have to be spoken. ‘It’s that you made me lose power,’ he said, and so the argument continued until one of them said, ‘This won’t be the end.’ He meant none of them should be surprised if the issue of the supercharger got dropped amidst the scandal of maybe-boyfriend bringing countless flags from ‘over there’ in. Here they laughed, which didn’t mean they thought such talk wouldn’t happen. He shouldn’t have been stubborn, they said, and I, not included in this, and without saying anything, agreed. Chef meantime, who’d been up in the clouds, checking the inventory of some imaginary pantry, came back with, ‘Who? What?’ and the others began to shove him about. ‘Auld mucker,’ they said. ‘Missed the boat as usual,’ but already no longer listening, chef went upstairs to wash before getting everybody something to eat. After a final few jokey disparagements of it’s all very well but, far be it from me but, no expert am I but, and with more things tribalist left unsaid than probably were said, least in my earshot, the others got busy too, moving bits of car upstairs.
This was business as usual because maybe-boyfriend stored car everywhere – at the garage at work, here at his home, indoors, outdoors, in front, out the back, in cupboards, tops of cupboards, on furniture, on each stair, at the top of the stairs and all along the landing; as doorstops too, in all the rooms too, except for the kitchen and his bedroom – least not on the nights when I stayed there. So his house was less a house and more a beloved work-from-work environment, and now he and his friends were re-arranging, which in translation meant ‘making room for more car’. ‘New car coming?’ I asked. ‘Cars plural, maybe-girl,’ said maybe-boy. ‘Just a few carburettors and cylinders, bumpers, radiators, piston rods, side panels, mudguards, that sort of thing.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ I said. ‘Back in a minute,’ he said, indicating some chunks of car in transit, ‘shifting these for now into one of the brothers’ rooms.’ Maybe-boyfriend had three brothers, none of whom were dead, none either, living in this house with him. They had used to live in it with him but had drifted through the years to living elsewhere. And now maybe-boyfriend and the others got busy, and chef downstairs, from the sound of things, also was busy in the kitchen. He was talking to himself which was not rare. Often he’d do this, I’d hear him do it, because chef stayed over at maybe-boyfriend’s perhaps even more nights than I did myself. As usual I could hear him describing to some imaginary person who appeared to be serving an apprenticeship under him, everything he was doing regarding the making of the meal. Often he’d say something like, ‘Just do it this way. There’s an easier way, you know. And remember, we can develop a unique style and technique without histrionics and drama’ and whenever he did this, he’d sound so soft and much more accommodating than when he was interacting with real people in real life. He liked this acolyte who, from the sound of chef’s praise and encouragement, was a good, attentive learner. ‘We’re just going to add this. No, this. Then we’ll do that, that. We want finesse, remember – clean, precise stacking, so leave off that leaf. Why that leaf? It adds nothing to the texture and dimension or the elements. Here now – taste. Do you want to try some?’ Once I peeked in when he was inviting his invisible apprentice to try some, and there he was, all alone, raising a spoon to his own lips. At that time, which was the first time I’d witnessed chef doing this, he put me in mind of me during the times I did my mental ticking-off of landmarks which I’d do peripherally whilst also doing my reading-while-walking. I’d pause after a page or so, to take stock of my surroundings, also occasionally to be specific and helpful to someone in my head who’d just enquired directions of me. I’d imagine myself pointing and saying, ‘Well, orientation is there,’ meaning the person needed to go round such-and-such a corner. ‘Go there,’ I’d say. ‘Just round that corner. See this corner? Go round it and when you get to the junction by the letterbox at the start of the ten-minute area you head up by the usual place.’ The usual place was our graveyard and this directing would be my way of helping some lost but appreciative person. And here was chef in his kitchen doing much the same thing. No hysterical fits, no tantrums, just meditation, absorption, relaxation. This was playfulness in the company of his very own appreciative person. So I left them to it, not wanting to shame chef out of his imagination, for there was an awful lot of shaming for playing, shaming for letting your guard down that went on in this place. That was why everybody read minds – had to, otherwise things got complicated. Just as most people here chose not to say what they meant in order to protect themselves, they could also, at certain moments when they knew their mind was being read, learn to present their topmost mental level to those who were reading it whilst in the undergrowth of their consciousness, inform themselves privately of what their true thinking was about. So, with maybe-boyfriend and the others upstairs, and with chef and his apprentice out in the kitchen, I stretched out on the settee to consider next steps. What I meant were my living options, for maybe-boyfriend had asked recently if I wanted to move in with him. At the time I had three objections as to why that might not be feasible. One was, I didn’t think ma could cope on her own with rearing wee sisters though I myself took no active role in the rearing of wee sisters. It just seemed I had to be there, on call, as some sort of background buffer to help prevent their precocity, their uncontained curiosity, their sense of readiness for anything spinning way out of control. My second objection was the possible destruction that moving in might pose to my and maybe-boyfriend’s already delicate, easily to be shattered maybe-relationship. And the third objection was, how could I move in, given the state of this place?
I saw a programme on TV years after I had been split from maybe-boyfriend, about people who hoard things but didn’t consider they hoarded things, and although nobody was hoarding car, I couldn’t help noticing a similarity between what these individuals were doing all these years forward during what is now the era of psychological enlightenment, and what maybe-boyfriend was doing, way back when enlightenment didn’t yet exist. One couple consisted of a hoarder (him), and then there was her (not a hoarder). Everything was divided in half and his half dominated and was a mountain from carpet to ceiling, covering the mass of half the space in each room. After a while, some of his stuff began to slide down the mountain and spill over into her s
tuff, which was inevitable as he couldn’t stop adding to it which meant he ran out of space and inclined himself necessarily into hers. As for maybe-boyfriend’s house, the hoarding was nowhere as compressed and restricting as certainly it was on those later TV entertainment programmes. There was no doubt, however, that he was adding to it. As for my reaction, I could bear the cluttered state of ‘Come in and welcome, but you’re going to have to squeeze a little’ during times I stayed over because of the normality of the kitchen and of his bedroom and the half normality of the bathroom. Mainly though, I could bear it because of the ‘maybe’ level of our relationship, meaning I didn’t officially live with him and wasn’t officially committed to him. If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.
So this was maybe-boyfriend’s house and it was a whole house, which at that time for a twenty-year-old man or woman – and especially an unmarried man or woman – was unusual. Not just in his area. It would have been unusual in my area too. It had come about because one day when he’d been twelve and his brothers had been fifteen, seventeen and nineteen, his parents had left home to dedicate themselves fully to professional ballroom-dancing careers. At first their sons hadn’t noticed they were gone because the parents were always taking themselves off unannounced, successfully to compete in ruthless, to-the-death, ballroom-dancing competitions. But one day, when the two elder came home from work and had rustled up dinner from the chip shop as usual for the four of them, second eldest, sitting on the settee, his plate on his lap, turned to eldest beside him and said, ‘Something’s wrong. Something’s maybe missing. Do you not think something’s missing, brother?’ ‘Yeah, something is missing,’ agreed the eldest. ‘Hey, you two’ – this was to the younger brothers – ‘Is something maybe missing?’ ‘It’s the parents,’ said second youngest. ‘They’ve gone away.’ Second youngest then resumed his dinner and watching of the TV, as did youngest, who seven years later was to become my ‘almost one year so far maybe-boyfriend’. Eldest brother then said, ‘When did they go but? Was it to another of them dancing things that always they’re entered into?’ But it wasn’t just one dancing thing. Eventually the brothers had it from the neighbours that the parents had left for good some weeks previously. They had written a note, said the neighbours, but had forgotten to leave it; indeed primarily they had forgotten to write it and so had written it then forwarded it back from their undisclosed destination when they reached it, not deliberately undisclosed but because they hadn’t time or memory or understanding to put a sender’s address at the top. According to the postmark it was not just a country over a water, but a country over many, many waters. Also, they forgot their former address, the house they’d lived in for twenty-four years ever since getting married until twenty-four hours earlier when they left. In the end they’d hazarded the address in the hope the street itself might sort things out for them and, thanks to the resourcefulness of street, it managed to do just that. It forwarded the letter to their offspring and this letter, after it had done the rounds of the neighbours before reaching the hands of the brothers, said: ‘Sorry kids. Seeing things in right relation we should never have had children. We’re just off dancing forever. Sorry again – but at least now you’re grown up.’ After this, there was an afterthought: ‘Well, those of you who aren’t grown up can be brought up and finished by those of you who are – and look, please have everything – including the house.’ The parents insisted their boys take the house, that they themselves didn’t want it; that all they wanted was what they had with them – each other, their choreomania and their numerous trunks of fabulous dancing clothes. The letter ended, ‘Goodbye eldest sone, goodbye second elder sone, goodbye younger sone, goodbye youngest sone – goodbye all dearr lovelyy sones’ but with no signature of ‘parents’ or ‘your fond but lukewarm mother and father’. Instead they signed it ‘dancers’, then there were four kisses, after which the sons never heard from their parents again. Except on TV. Increasingly this couple would be on TV, because they proved themselves, despite middle age, exceptional youthful ballroom-dancing champions. They were world-class, spectacular, blindingly focused and, owing perhaps to their charisma, their sparkles, and to the international kudos of stardom they were attaching to their country – though which country, ‘over the border’ or ‘over the water’, was tactfully never referred to – before long, and most successfully, they were reaching across that treacherous political divide. This meant they were one of those exceptions – as with the musicians here, the artists here, the stage and screen people and also the sportspeople, all those in the public eye who managed to rise above winning the complete approval of one community whilst bringing down upon themselves the disapprobation and death threats of the other community. This couple, as part of the chosen few, had everybody’s approval. They were unanimously acclaimed and allowed. Not just on political, religious and anti-bigotry fronts too, were they allowed, but in normal dance terms too, they were applauded for bringing joy and enchantment into the hearts of all dance-loving people. Greatly were they esteemed by those cognisant of all things ballroom even if none of their sons were cognisant, or wanted to be, of anything ballroom. Maybe-boyfriend though, did point them out on the TV to me once. He did this casually whilst switching channels one evening and there they were: the International Couple. At this point they’d been running joint-first in the feverish Rio de Janeiro World Championship Tournament, with the announcer, before the International Dancing Board of Ballroomers, crying, ‘Holy Christ! Historical moment! Oh, historical moment!’, declaring everybody hold tight their hats for what was to be an unprecedented dance waltz-off. I wanted to see this waltz-off because after exclaiming, ‘No shit! She’s your …! That’s your …! She’s your …! She’s …! That’s …She’s your ma! That’s your ma!’, also, ‘He’s your da!’ though clearly, with those eyes, that face, that body, the mobility, the confidence, the sensuality and, of course, those costumes, I meant her really, there was no way I couldn’t watch. Definitely I hadn’t seen this coming but maybe-boyfriend said he didn’t want to watch. So while I sat glued, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, picking my nails and exclaiming, ‘He looks like her. Does he look like her? Is it that he has the same back as her? Is his father like her – I mean him – no, is he like his father?’ maybe-boyfriend went out to tinker with some car.