Milkman

by Anna Burns

  So the renouncers issued their warnings, saying that having poisoned too many people, tablets girl was now not allowed to poison a single other person, but she did and the last one, I then found out, hadn’t even been me. After me came somebody else, a man, and she poisoned him thinking he was – I don’t know, Hitler maybe – with the man up all night, and the man’s wife up all night, along with their neighbours, purging him. Afterwards, the wife had gone to the renouncers to tell them what tablets girl had done. Before the renouncers could take action, some mystery person took action. This was according to ma, sitting on my bedroom chair across from me, relaying in shock this buzz of the grapevine to me. They’d come to our door, she said, because their mission was now no longer to kill tablets girl, but to discover who had killed her. Every person recently having dealings with her was required to go to the renouncers and give clear account of him or herself. Exceptions had been made for me – who’d been seen talking with tablets girl in the drinking-club some nights earlier – also for the man mistaken for Hitler, with the renouncers coming to us as we were both still too ill to get out of our beds. The poisoned man had been able to prove he hadn’t killed her because his family and purgers bore witness to his incapacitation. My mother, on our threshold, then told the renouncers that our family and our purgers, on my behalf, could assert the same thing.

  The renouncers didn’t come back, satisfied that I too, had been laid up during the murder of tablets girl, and strange it was that still I hadn’t registered this person was no longer living. Instead my stubbornness at my mother, because of her stubbornness at me, prevailed. It was clear she had accepted that the man mistaken for Hitler could conceivably have been poisoned by tablets girl, yet her belief in the rumours of my involvement with Milkman was still so strong, and her faith in me so weak, that there was no way in her mentality I could be permitted to be poisoned by her as well. At the same time as feeling relief that my bad night had been down to tablets girl and so had had nothing to do with the effects upon me of Milkman, an irritation at my mother for not seeing what was in front of her was steadily building up. As she continued to talk about the death, having forgotten, it seemed, that eight times out of ten ‘poor tablets girl’ was responsible for the district’s intentional poisonings, I snapped and came out, not with the most pertinent remark, but best I could manage in the moment. ‘Look, ma, she’s not a wee girl. She’s older than me. She’s a woman!’ with ma responding, ‘Ach, you know what I mean. She was tiny and titchy and everybody knew there was something wrong with her. Even if she hadn’t been killed, that wee girl would never have grown up.’ It was at that moment the realisation of tablets girl’s death came through.

  And ma was worried. She said that if the renouncers hadn’t killed her – and they said they hadn’t, with there no reason why they would say they hadn’t if they had, given they’d been going around declaring they were going to kill her – this could only mean an ordinary murder had taken place. Ordinary murders were eerie, unfathomable, the exact murders that didn’t happen here. People had no idea how to gauge them, how to categorise them, how to begin a discussion on them, and that was because only political murders happened in this place. ‘Political’ of course, covered anything to do with the border, anything that could be construed – even in the slightest, even in the most contorted, even something the rest of the world, if interested, would view as most unlikely – as to do with the border. Any killing other than political and the community was in perplexity, also in anxiety, as to how to proceed.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re coming to,’ said ma, and yes, definitely she was worried. ‘We’re turning into that country “over the water”. Anything happens there. Ordinary murders happen there. Loose morals happen there. People marry there, have affairs, but their spouses don’t care about these affairs because they’re having their own affairs also – so why get married? They don’t say why they got married. Then they get divorced, or don’t bother getting divorced but instead just marry their own children. Then they have children by their children. Then they abduct other children. You can’t walk out your door over there but you’re falling over sex crimes.’ I had never seen ma like this, in shock, getting hysterical, which is what happens, I suppose, when you have ordinary murders in the vicinity of people not used to them. ‘Ma,’ I said. I tried to stop her, tried to intervene on her. ‘Ma! Ma!’ Ma looked up, confused, then she struggled to re-focus. ‘Tell me, ma,’ I said. ‘What else did you hear about tablets girl?’

  She knew nothing else, apart from the state police getting involved, with next to nobody in the community speaking to them. A few double-talked them, another few merry-danced them. Snipers, no doubt, were getting ready to shoot them. As soon as the heavily fortified patrol with their own countersniping unit and the corpse were gone though, the community as always wouldn’t shut up. There was more of that ‘Can’t be an ordinary murder. We don’t have ordinary murders. Must be a political murder only does anybody know in what way it could be political?’ And that was the state of things, or so I thought when almost two weeks later I decided to take myself to the chip shop.

  Since recovering from being poisoned I couldn’t stop eating. Neither could I stop having fantasies of eating when I wasn’t actually eating, my mind presenting sweet and savoury special-effect shows in my head. There was more Fray Bentos, but now also Farley’s Rusks, Sugar Puffs, pilchards in tomato sauce, custard cream biscuit sandwiches, Mars Bar sandwiches, potato crisp sandwiches, wilucs, pigs’ feet, dulse, fried liver, dolly mixture in the porridge – former baby treats, childhood treats, most of them usually now to me, disgusting. It was only when I felt the urge for chips, just chips, nothing but chips, that I thought, ah, proper food. Back to normal again now.

  I left the house with the usual worry I now carried as to sudden appearances of Milkman, reached the chip shop in the heart of the area without Milkman appearing, pushed open the poky saloon doors and immediately was in the middle of all that lovely chip smell. So much was I in it, savouring it, wallowing in it, that I didn’t realise at first the strange atmosphere surrounding me, which was similar, I realised later, to not noticing I had been poisoned until long after a sensible person would have noticed they’d been poisoned. This chip shop situation proved exactly like that.

  There was a queue, a big long one, winding round two of the salon walls and I joined the end of it. Immediately others came in and joined the queue behind. Most of these people I knew to see but not to speak to – middle-aged women, coming in for the suppers, some men, some children, some teenagers. Nobody I knew personally though, was in there at the time. While waiting, I settled in to enjoy the smell, also I did more ‘je suis, je ne suis pas’ in my head, as well as mentally counting how many people were in front of me. As I was doing this, however, the people I was counting began to drop out of line. A few left the shop immediately, with most stepping to the side or else to the far end of it. This meant I reached the counter nineteen people before I was supposed to reach the counter and as I did so I had a sensation that those behind had fallen away as well. Soon I was the only person in the queue, though this queue, unaccountably, was still present in the chip shop. Behind the counter, one of the two serving women in a big white apron came towards me and placed herself directly in front. Her arms were akimbo and she didn’t ask my order, didn’t look at me either as I gave it. Instead she seemed to direct her gaze somewhere to the side of my head. Not quite worried, but a little bit of something, I watched as she moved off to get the chips for me and wee sisters. It was then I became aware of the silence and, given I’d always lived in this district and had since childhood, without properly acknowledging it, been attuned to the currents, subtleties and rhythms of this district, I can only think slowness after my recent illness was the reason I was so behindhand at this point. It was at my back, the silence, making shivers at my back, and I couldn’t turn, though my mind began racing. Don’t let it be Milkman. Oh please, don’t let it be Milkman. Then I did
turn and it wasn’t Milkman. It was everybody else. Every single person was staring at me in the shop.

  Some instantly looked away, down at the ground, others into their hands or up at the big menu displayed on the wall by the counter in front of us. Others stared openly, I think even defiantly, and I thought, shitsies, what is it I’m supposed to have done now? The penny then dropped and I sensed this was something to do with tablets girl. Not the poisoning of me by her which I knew everyone by now would have heard about. I meant her death. But surely they can’t think, I thought, that I had anything to do with that. At this point the serving woman returned and put my chips down on the counter. I turned from the others, lifted the packets and fumbled to hand my money across. The woman had gone. She had turned her broad back and already was at the far end, standing also in silence beside the second serving woman. No one else was being attended. No one was asking to be attended. Everyone was waiting, it seemed, for what was to happen next.

  The renouncers said they hadn’t killed her. Then they made enquiries to find out who had killed her. Then, claiming sudden urgent border engagements, conveniently, it was said, they dropped their sense of diligence and backed off. But these people never backed off. That was their reputation, their hallmark, their stock-in-trade unstoppability. Because of this, the community came to the conclusion that it must have been one of them who’d killed her after all. Not politically, of course, because with the renouncers’ sudden silence, with their quiet withdrawal, the abrupt end to their fierce, minute perquisition and especially without their usual admittance to deeds done when they had been done, tablets girl could not have been killed politically. So not from border motives. Not to save the country, defend the area, keep anti-social behaviour out of our area. It had been Milkman. He had killed her. Ordinarily, not politically, he had killed her, and all because – so it seemed to this community – he hadn’t liked that she’d attempted to kill me.

  That might have been true or might not have been true, but the chip shop thought it was true and, in that moment, surrounded by all these people with their minds made up, I thought it true as well. A highranking hero of the community had committed a foul, an ordinary murder, all to avenge some malapert hussy. Now, I am not greatly naïve which means I’ve discovered that you live your life lots of days with things a bit out of joint, a bit moved-on, but not unmanageable, indeed only to be expected. But then a particular day comes when conditions across the board – with or without your knowledge, with or without your consent – completely have been changed around. Things have been moved on, yes, but not just by one have they been moved on but by considerably more than one. Before this, it had been my insides disoriented, pains in my stomach, quivers in my legs, my hand shaking as I put the key in the lock. Paranoia indoors too, it had been, in case he might be in my wardrobe when he wasn’t, in case he might be in my cupboards when he wasn’t, in case he might be under my bed. Each time he’d gotten close … closer … even closer, but I couldn’t tell, not till now, if his stamp was still coming on me or if all the time already it had been on me. Longest friend had warned, ‘You are not inferable. You cannot be deduced – and they don’t like that. You’re stubborn, friend, sometimes stupid, incredibly stupid, for you prepossess people with your lack of give not to like you. That is dangerous. What you don’t offer – especially in volatile times – people will make up for themselves.’ ‘Not all people,’ I argued. ‘And anyway, my life’s not theirs. Why should I explain and beg excuse from them when it’s they who have invented this history and who even now are as bad dogs, watching and waiting to take over?’ As for their view of me as loose, as wanton, as shameless, I said, ‘When it comes to it, longest friend, in reality I’m probably more Virgin Mary than any of—’ ‘You’re eighteen,’ she said. ‘You’re a girl. No back-up – not unless you want Milkman as back-up. So give them something – anything – even if they don’t believe it, especially because they’ll enjoy not believing it. At least then, they won’t hold your high position with him against you.’ But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Didn’t know how to. Didn’t believe there was still time to. Too much of rumour, of implication, also of ‘mind your own business’ had gone on for redress from them now.

  So I was learning something, but in the rapidity, especially of emotions, I didn’t know what it was I was learning. Didn’t know what to do either, so I did a stupid thing. Amidst the silence and the staring, I took the chips, kept my money, then turned and walked out of the shop. I didn’t want these chips, didn’t want now my own money. Of course I should have left them, chips, money, both, on the counter and purged myself of that situation, but it’s hard to think of obvious things, of high-minded, honourable things, during the real-time of unexpected shocking things. How do you know after a time anyway, what is normal and high-minded and what is not? So I took them and I didn’t pay for them and this was partly out of an angry ‘Yes, Milkman. Go. Kill. Kill all of them. Go forth. Attend me. I command you’ and partly it was out of sensibility and anxiousness for their feelings. It was not wanting to get into trouble with my elders as an eighteen-year-old daring to disrespect and correct their behaviour. So I lost presence of mind and allowed myself to be pushed into obtaining chips with menaces. Most damning therefore, my own behaviour, this handling of the chip shop badly, no matter there’d been a compelling of me by everybody in it exactly to handle it badly. I knew now though, what they’d known for some time which was that no longer was I a teenager amidst a bunch of other teenagers, coming into and going out of and gallivanting about the area. Now I knew that that stamp – and not just by Milkman – had unreservedly, and against my will, been put on.

  SIX

  After hearing of the murder of tablets girl but before that encounter in the chip shop, I was still in bed recuperating when three phone calls came through. Two were about me and first was from third brother-in-law. He had heard about the poisoning but wanted to know from my mother, who had answered, why I was not going running. He said I’d missed our run a day earlier, that I’d missed other runs, that I hadn’t called round to discuss this or to get into any altercation with him over it. Then he added there’d been such a falling-down in standards that he was bewildered by what was happening to women these days. Ma said, ‘Son-in-law, she’s not going running. She’s in bed, poisoned,’ with brother-in-law saying he understood about the poisoning, ‘But is she coming running?’ Ma said, ‘No. In bed. Poisoned.’ ‘Yeah, but is she coming running?’ ‘No—’ ‘Yeah, but—’ Wee sisters said ma’s eyes went into Heaven at this point. She tried again. ‘Son, we can’t be doing this all day. She’s in bed. Not going running. Poisoned. Not running. In bed, poisoned,’ with third brother-in-law – exercise fixation overriding thinking mechanism – about to ask if I was going running but this time ma pre-empted with, ‘God love you and everything, son-in-law, but is there something wrong with you? You know yourself she’s been poisoned, the whole district knows, yet here I am, spending twenty hours relaying to you that her stomach’s been expunged or whatever that word is, with me having to sit up two nights with her in case the expunging hadn’t taken, yet you’re not assimilating but instead are behaving as if I haven’t explained at all.’ With just the slightest falter, brother-in-law said, ‘Are you saying she’s not coming running?’ ‘That’s the ticket,’ said ma. ‘And tripping up? What’s tripping up got to do with any of this?’ ‘Falling-down,’ corrected brother-in-law, ‘of standards, of women.’ Here ma covered the mouthpiece and whispered to wee sisters, ‘The boy makes no sense. Funny wee being. Then again, that whole family’s funny. God knows why your sister married into it.’ Then she uncovered the mouthpiece for brother-in-law was concluding, ‘Well, first there’s her way of walking and reading books which is not understandable. Then that excuse about legs no longer working – also not understandable. And now she’s not running. If she’s persisting in this incomprehensibility, mother-in-law, tell her she knows where to find me when she comes to her senses. Meanwhile, I’m away on h
ere to run by myself.’ Ma said, ‘Okay, son, and I agree about the book-walking but as it is, she’s still nearly dead so I’m keeping her in bed yet,’ after which they said goodbye which took another five minutes because kind people here, not used to phones, not trustful of them either, didn’t want to be rude or abrasive by hanging up after just one goodbye in case the other’s leave-taking was still travelling its way, with a delay, over the airwaves towards them. Therefore, owing to phone etiquette, there was lots of ‘’Bye’, ‘’Bye’, ‘Goodbye, son-in-law’, ‘Goodbye, mother-in-law’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘’Bye’, ‘’Bye’ with each person’s ear still at the earpiece as they bent their body over, inching the receiver ever and ever closer on each goodbye to the rest of the phone. Eventually it would end up back on its hook with the human ear physically removed from it. There might be further insurance goodbyes even at this stage, out of compulsion to seal and make sure the matter, which didn’t mean the person who’d gone through the protractions wasn’t contorted in body and exhausted in mind by the effort of detaching from a phone conversation. What it did mean was that that conversation – without any anxious ‘Did I cut him off? Will he be hurt? Have I hung up too soon and damaged his feelings?’ – had finally reached its traditional end. When I was told of this I was glad – given I was not yet strong enough to bear, then browbeat the prescriptive mindset of brother-in-law – that ma had been the one to take that call.