Milkman

by Anna Burns

  Immediately the tenseness was back, the one which had been building between us owing to the respective rumours in our areas. And it now seemed these rumours were converging, with his viewpoint shifting from ‘my not wanting him to call because I was ashamed of him’ to ‘not wanting him to call because I was in relationship with Milkman’, and my viewpoint shifting from ‘not wanting him to call because of ma demanding marriage and babies’ to ‘not wanting him to call in case Milkman took his life’. As for telling out, it boded no good to tell, I had decided, for look, hadn’t I just started to open up and there he was, getting into a fight over it? Instead of answering – for why should I answer when, just as with the others, he was initiating by accusing? – I withdrew again, closed up, piqued and angry, and it was at this point that the revulsion again took hold. Oh no, I thought. Not that revulsion, not at maybe-boyfriend. But yes, within seconds maybe-boyfriend had once again started to change. Instantly he became less attractive, less himself. Then not attractive, not himself. Instead more and more Milkman. Then I got the shudders, which was the first time with maybe-boyfriend to have got them. Then I thought, hold on a minute. How’d he get my number? What sneaky, spying, stalking thing did he get up to in order to obtain my telephone number? ‘How’d you get my number?’ And the moment I attacked with this question, the revulsion subsided and I remembered again who he was. You’re silly, I said to myself. What does it matter how he got it? It wasn’t even that I didn’t want him to have it, for weighed in balance I did want him to have it. Not for getting rung by him. It was more that his having of the number, his wanting to have it, presaged in my mind a certain closeness, a growth of trust. But he took my question at face value as the attack which, in the moment of asking, unfortunately it had been. ‘From the phonebook, maybe-girlfriend,’ he snapped and snapping had not been in the old days usual for maybe-boyfriend. ‘What phonebook?’ I said. ‘Christ all Friday, maybe-girl! Are twentieth-century phonebooks off-limits also?’ which was, for the first time, from him, a slur on my reading tastes. So, him too, I thought. Him too. My own maybe-boyfriend treacherously also. Stabbed by him also. ‘So I rang a few numbers that had your surname listed in your area,’ he went on, ‘because you know, you’ve never given me your address, maybe-girlfriend’ – and here was bitterness, distinct bitterness. ‘Eventually, after a few wrong numbers,’ said the bitterness, ‘I rang another number and got a woman who was your ma.’

  The tone now was frosty, to be described as resentment-tinged, disgruntled, frosty. He said nothing else about his coming over, but did stay on the Milkman theme. ‘Maybe-girlfriend,’ he said, ‘what have you been saying about me and this renouncer to your mother?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘That’s what my ma does. She makes it up herself.’ ‘She said I had bombs,’ he said. ‘Called me married and a befouler, then she hung up and wouldn’t let me speak to you. So tell me, what did you say to her?’ ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘Nothing. It’s her. I’m not responsible for her. That’s what she does.’ ‘You must have said something,’ he said. ‘And why must I have?’ I said. Here again, was the admonition, with my having to refute, to explain, to be responsible for other people’s misconceptions. Then he carried on in his pronouncements, saying he’d heard this middle-aged guy was middle-aged. He also stressed that the middle-aged guy, the auld lad, might be middle-aged but certainly he was no light-weight in the movement. Did I know what this hardcore pensioner got up to in the— ‘Stop saying that,’ I said. ‘And I’m not seeing him. Not involved with him.’ ‘Does he know, maybe-girlfriend,’ persisted maybe-boyfriend, ‘about me?’ I couldn’t believe this. It seemed now he was processing things along at such a trot that he was overtaking the keenest gossips of both my district and his own district. ‘I know we’ve never talked about this before,’ he said, ‘about us being just maybe-boy and maybe-girl in an “almost one year so far maybe-relationship” which means probably, it’s okay for us to date other people – but a renouncer, maybe-girlfriend – I mean, that renouncer? Are you really sure you wanna go down that road?’ I was hurt at this, that he didn’t seem to care that each of us could date others whilst being almost one year into our own maybe-relationship. I myself, at the start of me and him, had tried out a few other boys with the view, I suppose, to one of them becoming maybe-boyfriend but then I stopped because maybe-boyfriend became maybe-boyfriend and we upped our days and nights together and besides, those others had fallen short. They’d asked too many questions, testing, proving questions, obviously a checklist – to evaluate, pass judgement, see if I was good enough – not questions coming from interest in wanting to know who I really was. So I evaluated these guys right back and came to the conclusion it was they who weren’t good enough for me, meaning I ended before we’d begun what might have been a possible maybe-relationship. As for maybe-boyfriend’s remark – that of double-dating, of treble-dating – did that mean he himself had been multiple-dating? Had he been seeing some girl or girls during all this time we’d been having our maybe-relationship? Was he sleeping with them as he was sleeping with me because that was just how unspecial I was? Was he involved with them still, all these numerous, numberless females, even too, after he’d asked me to move in with him up the road in the red-light street?

  ‘—then she accused me of bombs and hung up.’

  This was him, continuing on the subject of ma which brought me out of my own painful subject of him and other women. ‘But not before she let me know,’ he said, ‘that one of those marvellous blokes in her standing I was not.’ ‘She thinks you’re someone else,’ I said. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you.’ Here he sounded derisive and self-righteous, so I said, ‘You’d better not push it, maybe-boyfriend. It’s not my fault my ma has the whole six volumes going, that all of them have the six volumes going. There is no Milkman— well, there is Milkman but no me and—’ ‘Don’t bother explaining,’ he said. ‘I already know.’ And it was that languid, dismissive, oh-so-world-weary ‘don’t bother explaining’ that did it. How dare he say ‘don’t bother explaining’ as if I was bothering him constantly, wearing him to the bone with attempts at explanations, as if he hadn’t right there and then been doing all this pronouncing in order to drag explanations segment by segment out of my throat. So it was because of his remark that I launched into my own retaliation. ‘Don’t take your supercharger butcher’s apron,’ I said, ‘out on me.’ That was dirty, very dirty, below-the-belt, disgusting, disgracefully dirty, not something I’d ever say to anybody – not even to somebody I hated who might just happen to have a quintessential ‘over the water’ Blower Bentley supercharger tucked away in their house of informership that had not just one flag of contention from the country ‘over the water’ on it, but heaps of flags of contention from that country, which maybe-boyfriend, I knew, had not. Not one of my finer days then, but I’d been provoked by his manner, by his accusing me of going with the paramilitant. So I put the boot in, though sorry after that I had put it in; not immediately sorry, however, not to put it in again. I did this by following up my almost-immediately regretted remark with other retaliatory observations, also almost-immediately regretted. ‘You cook,’ I said. ‘You do coffeepots and sunsets when not even women do coffeepots and sunsets. You replace people with cars. You keep a cramped house with challenging rooms and you talk about Lithuanian films.’ Then he said, ‘You read while you walk.’ ‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘Haven’t finished,’ he said. ‘I like that you do that reading-while-walking. It’s the sort of quiet, out-of-sync thing you would do, thinking too, that nothing was odd or that anybody was noticing. But it is odd, maybe-girlfriend. Not normal. Not self-preservation. Instead it’s unyielding and confounding and in our type of environment it presents you as a stubborn, perverse character. I didn’t want to say this but you’re saying things so I’m going to say it. It’s that you don’t seem alive anymore. I look at your face and it’s as if your sense organs are disappearing or as if they’ve already disappeared so that no one
gets to connect with you. Always you’ve been hard to second-guess, but now you’re impossible. Perhaps we should stop now though, before this gets even worse.’

  So we decried each other’s insufficiencies, did hauling of reckonings – one of those fights – but I did agree with him that yes, we should stop. At the back of my mind all through this phone altercation, I felt unease that someone was listening, which might be nothing as I’d had that feeling of someone listening, someone watching, someone following, someone clocking everything, no matter where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, all through these past two months. I was on edge and more and more convinced that all some individuals did, that the whole mission in life for some people, was covertly to listen, but perhaps this was my overwrought imagination and nobody was listening, nobody interloping at all. We ended our call then in a stilted, formal manner, with my saying that soon as I could, I would go over to him, with him sounding as if he couldn’t be bothered, as if he didn’t believe me, as if he didn’t want to see me. This was followed from both sides by one single, solitary goodbye, then a hanging up. After I’d hung up, I continued to sit on the stairs and, even if belatedly, my new spontaneity again began to stir itself. It told me to stop all that self-pitying and to go over to maybe-boyfriend, reminding me that I liked maybe-boyfriend, that maybe-boyfriend had been my first sunset, that he’d been the only one I’d slept with, that I had stayed with him at least three nights a week until Milkman had threatened to kill him, after which I brought it down to two nights, and that I did this, this staying-over, when prior to maybe-boyfriend I’d never stayed over with anybody before. Regardless then, that we were in a maybe-relationship instead of a proper coupledom relationship; regardless too, that we kept getting amnesia every time either of us broached furthering on our maybe status, I was to go to him, to go now, said my spontaneity, to tell out to him face-to-face all this misunderstanding we’d been having and to communicate properly and get this mess cleared up. After I did that – and if maybe-boyfriend let me do it without again jumping on the defensive – he might then tell out – regarding that supercharger affair and the informer affair and now also this latest renouncer-girlfriend tittle-tattle – all that was happening over his way with him. Depending on how it went, he could then drive me home, for I had to get back for wee sisters. Regardless of ma, however, and regardless of Milkman, he could drive me, not to the usual demarcation point on the outskirts of the district, but this time right into the district and straight to my door. He could come in too, stay awhile, stay overnight – as long as he was okay afterwards with Milkman trying to kill him. He was an adult, a grown man. I could leave that decision to him. So, said my spontaneity, maybe-boyfriend was my maybe-boyfriend; Milkman was not my lover. At the time of affirming this conviction, the resurgence of truth felt lucid and uplifting. Somewhat unaware in my feverish excitement that instead of lucidity and upliftment, however, I might instead be swinging from one extreme of despondency and powerlessness over to the other extreme of sudden and incongruous jollity, I scribbled a note for wee sisters. It said, ‘Put on your nightclothes. I’ll be back later to read you Hardy as promised.’ With that, I threw on my jacket and rushed to the bus-stop up the road.

  *

  There were three reasons why I didn’t walk. One was, I was in that overwound, falsely buoyed-up state which I mistook for resolve and happy conviction. Therefore, I was eager to get over to maybe-boyfriend’s as quickly as I could. Two was, that even now, even with this springiness and excitement upon me, my legs, even just for walking – not for running, just for walking – still were not back to their best. Three was, at the back of my decision to make clearance with maybe-boyfriend, I was uneasy still of going out my door and encountering Milkman. It seemed then – though I did not question this – that I did not want my newfound regeneration tested, perhaps defeated, by him once again appearing on the scene.

  I got off the bus in maybe-boyfriend’s area, took the cut-through that led round to his street and his big front door was busted. It was leaned-to but it was busted. What did that mean? I pushed it gingerly and slipped round into the tiny hall. From there I went to the living room which was empty of people though car parts were strewn about, scattered, crashed here and there, suggesting the hoarding had taken on some haphazard, noisy, even violent quality rather than maybe-boyfriend’s usual stacking-upon-stacking, or else some disturbance of his normal day-to-day hoarding had taken place. I was about to call his name but then I heard chef’s voice issuing from the kitchen. He was murmuring his usual cooking instructions to his imaginary apprentice. ‘Here. Try it this way. No. Leave off that. This way, this way. There, that’s better. Put the dishcloth to them while I get this together, then I’ll rinse—’ I headed towards the kitchen to interrupt chef to ask what had happened to the front door and to enquire as to the whereabouts of maybe-boyfriend, but then I halted for chef’s imaginary companion at that moment was murmuring back. It was something something, couldn’t make it out, but I made out the voice and it was that of maybe-boyfriend. I made moves to rush in but something in his voice prickled my skin and halted me. Involuntarily, I found myself holding back, going no further than the living-room side of the kitchen door. Maybe-boyfriend then said something something ‘Dammit, fuckit. Fool! Big fool! Buck idjit! Didn’t see that comin’, didn’t know what I was thinking, chef, what I was doing … Stupid … Should have realised they …’ with chef murmuring something about maybe-boyfriend shutting up and turning his head to the right. Gently I pushed the part-open door another bit part-open and looked through the join where I spied maybe-boyfriend sitting at the kitchen table on one of his kitchen chairs. He had his back, not quite, but almost turned towards me and something was wrong for he was holding a dripping-wet dishcloth up to his eyes. He had covered both eyes with this cloth and chef was standing nearby with a bunch of lint or gauze, with other cloths under one arm while pouring some surgical liquid from a bottle into a baking bowl of water sitting on the table. Also on this table, or thrust point downwards into the table so that it stood completely upright from it, was one of chef’s long kitchen knives. It had blood on it. Again my instincts stayed me. I didn’t believe for one moment that this wasn’t human blood, that instead perhaps it was stains from some recently prepared ‘Roasted beetroot and Roma tomatoes’, or ‘Celebration red cabbage in port and red wine’, or ‘Platter of edible red with further red and splashes of more red with extra startling red splatters to follow’. No. This was blood. There was more blood too – a load of it – on chef’s shirt, red streaks on the floor and reddish-brown stains on the table. Little splotches, I then noticed, were dripping from maybe-boyfriend himself. Strangely, still I remained where I was, as if something ever so strong had placed an invisible hand on my arm and firmly was staying me, ordering me, commanding me, warning me. There was none of that expected behaviour of a maybe-girlfriend, supposedly moments before full of regeneration and instant cure, rushing to her maybe-boyfriend’s house, totally resolved to see him, to be upfront with him, explain her newfound freedom from restriction to him. There was no gasp, scream, no concerned dash to take hold of the maybe-beloved with a cry of, ‘What happened? My God! What has happened?’ Instead I remained where I was, with neither chef nor maybe-boyfriend aware I was half in and half out of the room.

  Maybe-boyfriend started up again, something about ‘… fucker. Sneaky wee bastard. What a bastard-bastard blasted bastard!’ And now I gathered – for maybe-boyfriend had used those terms before whilst having a go at his ‘no harm like but’ neighbour, the one who’d started off the supercharger-flag rumour which had then led to the informer rumour. ‘We’re going to hospital, longest mate,’ said chef with maybe-boyfriend saying, ‘No way. I’m in enough trouble with this flag-tout thing, supposedly now too, for being cocky enough to elbow in on yon renouncer’s love interest’ – meaning me as the ‘love interest’ – which was shocking for he hadn’t said it kindly – had said it unkindly – had said it derisively. Had
things soured that much between us then, that this was my actual maybe-boyfriend before me right now? But hold on, I thought, he’s just been stabbed or beaten up and something’s wrong with his eyes but then I thought, well, I myself have recently been poisoned, then hardly an hour earlier I’d been in the chip shop accused of being an accessory-to-murder, then there was himself on the telephone accusing me too of being mistress, as even now, behind my back, he was accusing me still of being mistress, yet you don’t see me sitting down in a corner with longest friend from primary school criticising and having a go at him. Still, I thought again, he has been injured. Still, I thought again, he hadn’t said it kindly. This, I suppose, was the perfect lesson instantly delivered as to why people shouldn’t listen at doors. ‘No, chef,’ reiterated maybe-boyfriend, for chef again was bringing up the hospital. ‘They’d definitely have me as an informer if they find out I’ve gone to the hospital.’ He said then that his eyes would be fine and for chef to stop fussing, that soon they’d clear and become as they were before. ‘We don’t know that,’ said chef. ‘We don’t know what they threw at you, what he threw at you, and you’re saying it doesn’t hurt but still, you can’t open them so we’re going to the hospital. Who knows,’ he then added, ‘maybe we’ll bump into “no harm like but” down there as well.’ ‘I suppose they weren’t expecting a fight,’ said maybe-boyfriend, not heeding chef’s last remark but instead following his own train of thought completely. As for me, listening to them, it seemed obvious there’d been another fight, and as usual over chef’s fruitiness. But I realised that wasn’t the case by maybe-boyfriend’s next comment. ‘I mean, seein’ as I was on my own like,’ he said, ‘outnumbered, then he chucked that stuff and I couldn’t see, and even after I heard you run up, chef, still we were outnumbered. So how’d you do it? How’d you – the poof, the dolly, never to be taken seriously – how’d you, all by yourself, scare the lot of them away?’ Chef shrugged, which maybe-boyfriend didn’t see, and he said, ‘Ach,’ and it was an evasive ‘ach’ or maybe a dismissive ‘ach,’ indicating this was wearying as a topic of conversation. His gaze though, which also maybe-boyfriend couldn’t see, had wandered to his knife. It was still bloodied, still standing upright, still stuck in the table, but then chef quietly removed it from the table and placed it, still quietly, into the sink. He made moves then to take the wet cloth away from maybe-boyfriend’s eyes but maybe-boyfriend resisted. He scraped his chair round, elbowing chef out of the way. ‘Clear off, chef,’ he said. ‘Leave it. It’s fine. They’re not hurting,’ but chef insisted he have a look for himself. I wanted to see too, because did he need the hospital or did he not need the hospital? Was he my maybe-boyfriend or wasn’t he my maybe-boyfriend? Some invisible presence though, even now, stayed me still.