by Anna Burns
By this time I was staring and speechless, then I was jumping up and down at ma’s obtuseness in this matter. Could she hear herself? Why couldn’t she see what those wily ex-pious women were intending? If this were the case – if they were correct in their so-called high principles and sound reasoning of ‘only one son dead and a husband, no daughters, therefore don’t qualify’ – if this really were how these things proceeded, how many of us would have to be killed and in our graves politically before she’d consider going out on a date? Even acceding too, to that evaluation – that of her hierarchy of suffering, of her absolutist criteria of who gets most points for the sorrow and the grieving – even then, here she was, misperceiving what she termed ‘the facts’. It was down to me to adopt the pedantic approach and to iron out these misperceptions for her. Firstly, I said, poor nuclear boy’s mother had lost only two of her sons through the political problems, not three sons, only two, even if others in the area were saying that nuclear boy should perhaps – regardless of America and Russia – be counted in there also. I couldn’t afford to count him in as ma by now was heading into critical self-sabotage stage. So I said about the one son, the favourite, the one who’d died politically while crossing the road owing to that bomb in the street going off. And I said about the eldest renouncer son and one renouncer daughter and of course, the husband also dying politically. Then there was that poor dog of theirs that had had its throat cut up the entry by the soldiers that time. Second, I said it could be argued, even if feebly, that ma herself had lost, through banishment – which meant also through the political problems – one of her daughters. And it could be argued, again if feebly, that she was suffering the loss of another son, namely, fourth son, the on-the-run son, even if, though she loved him dearly, he wasn’t her son really, not really – even if, too, he was still alive and living over that border somewhere. I pointed out also, that it was unlikely – given the doomed state of poor nuclear boy’s mother – that that woman would be on the look-out for any sexual romantic interest. ‘Come on, ma,’ I said. ‘You’ve seen her. At least you saw for yourself before she stopped coming out her door how daily that poor woman was deteriorating, how nobody now can do anything for her, how people have become frightened of her and are even considering slotting her, owing to this fear they have of her, into the death-row category of our district’s beyond-the-pales. When did you last see her?’ I asked. ‘When did anybody last see her? They’re saying she doesn’t wash, doesn’t eat, doesn’t get out of bed, has abandoned the rest of her family. Forget nuclear boy’s ma, ma,’ I said, ‘as someone in the running for trysts with men at “dot dot dot” places.’ Ma winced and made a motion of covering her ears with her hands. ‘You’re brutal, child,’ she said. ‘You’re harsh. You’re so cold. There’s always something so terribly cold about you, daughter.’ And you’re slow-off-blocks, ma, was what I thought to say but didn’t otherwise we’d be back to another of those gee-whizz moments, then another fight, with us again in our old angers at each other. Also I didn’t say, least not directly, ‘Are all your friends trustworthy?’, echoing back her reproving words to me during that night when she purged me of the poison. Instead I said the same thing indirectly, by bringing up the sly, devious handiwork of the other party involved.
‘Your pals, ma,’ I said, ‘your praying pals, the ex-pious women. Is it likely, do you think, that they themselves are saying, “Oh, we must, simply must, step back and let her have him,” meaning nuclear boy’s mother? You think they’ll be for giving up real milkman, for handing him over, for renouncing their possibilities with him, for her? Soon as you’re out the road, ma, got out the door, easily too, by their emotional blackmail, that poor woman will be trampled under their first horse and carriage careering by. They’ll regroup too, reconfigure and plot, this time to oust the next amongst them, after you, of real milkman’s affections. But first it’s you, ma,’ I said. ‘You’re the highest in the running for the heart of real milkman, which is why you’ve had this nuclear-boy-mother card played so deftly and almost successfully upon yourself.’ ‘Away you on!’ said ma. ‘It can’t be me that’s first highest—’ And here she broke off, this time making deprecating motions with her hand. ‘It is you, ma,’ I said. ‘It’s you he’s interested in, you he comes to visit for tea, always with extra pints of milk and special dairy products that I’m sure he doesn’t hand out to everybody.’ Again there were disbelieving motions, though less vehement, more half believing, more hopeful, with the hand. Definitely ma was out of practice and dearly needed bolstering. That meant I had to be charitable, no, had to be pragmatic, because in truth I hadn’t noticed whether real milkman was interested in ma or nuclear boy’s ma or in any of them others. They were too old to be paid notice. It was that I didn’t want her giving up right at the very start. Of course there was the possibility that real milkman might decide, in spite of his apparent desire now for personal coupledom, that he didn’t want this coupledom with any of them, or that he might revert back to broad, universal kinship just as soon as he was properly recovered. That was too dispiriting for ma, or for the ex-pious women, or even for me to script into this scenario at this time. So we didn’t. This meant I bolstered with lies which, when all the facts were in, might not have been lies really. I said, ‘You’re the strongest contender, ma. Always sayin’ to me, he is, that he likes you, to tell you he’s askin’ about you.’ ‘Is he? Am I?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, though he’d only ever done this on passing. Then again, in that one proper conversation in his lorry when he took me home and took care of the cat’s head for me, real milkman had been concerned about ma one hundred per cent. So I wasn’t lying really, and I told her this too, about the hundred per cent, to give a boost with high-sounding numbers to her confidence. ‘It’s okay, ma,’ I said. ‘Just keep the nerve, hold the faith, be on your mettle, attend bit by bit and obtain by quiet manoeuvres. Bear in mind too, what those women were like with Peggy. Their appetency and voraciousness that burst forth after Monk Peggy. You said yourself you were angry at them, yet here they are, doing the same again. Cunning women,’ I added, thinking of how they were tricking ma, washing her brain, taking advantage of her inner conflict. It had been a long time, I could see, since she’d involved herself in blindside or flank movements. ‘What canny, manipulative, crafty female men-of-all-seasons—’ ‘Middle daughter!’ cried ma. ‘These are your elders! Do not speak of the ex-sanctities in adjectives like that.’
I had gotten through to her though, for she began to be on her dignity. A certain ‘how dare they exploit my conscience’ was growing upon her which was encouraging but events were moving quickly for another by-product, I found out, of real milkman getting shot, probably the main by-product of his getting shot, was that getting shot did seem to have catalysed him out of his long-term ‘not getting over Peggy’ reclusion. His self-imposed exile from personal romantic and passionate love and settling instead for mere unconditional agape appeared now to have come to an end. Before he’d even left hospital, and setting aside that gunshot unpleasantness, and in spite too, of his stern and ascetic side trying its utmost to reassert sternness and asceticism, incongruously he found he was having a nice time. Ma told me that he told her that at first while lying in hospital, some aberrant insurrectionary sense had come upon him, wanting deeds of goodness to be done unto him instead of him always having to be the deeder of the goodnesses. This was in contrast to last time twelve years earlier, during the prime of his great self-sufficiency when, although he’d needed help, all the help he could get and subsequently received after that beating then that tar and feathering, his heart then, in contrast to his heart now, hadn’t opened a jot to personal love or romance. So he was undergoing his own revolution, coming out from behind all that common good and self-sacrifice. Instead he wanted to be the recipient of personal love, and of sex, and of affection this time around. All this he was fully open to, ma said, also saying that he said that, as if on cue, as if by a miracle, deeds of goodness – with possibilities
for personal attachments – were poured forth upon him, in that women started to appear almost at once. They turned up in droves at the hospital, he said, and it was mostly those traditional, pious women of the area. Then came the issue women. Also some men – a few neighbours unafraid of being implicated with someone constantly raising his head above the parapet – they showed at the hospital too. And of course there was ma, his longest friend. So they came, he said, and that was nice. Here he took and held ma’s hand. She said that he said that the new deeds of goodness being done unto him sat comfortably within his newfound peaceful personality. When he was out of hospital, still people came to visit him and still the deeds sat comfortably. Ma though, experiencing a mixture of ecstasy at having her hand held and of being spoken to intimately by real milkman, was also feeling annoyance because she understood now, regarding those other women, what it was I’d been trying to draw her attention to all along.
Apart from her complaint then, as to her agedness, ma’s other complaint was about the ubiquity of these ex-pious women. She had stopped haranguing me about marriage – itself another welcome fringe of real milkman getting wounded – also desisted in her words about my taking up with dangerous married people. Simply she hadn’t the time. ‘They’re forever round there,’ she cried, ‘at his house with their sly moves, bringing him turnips. I saw them with their gifts of carrots and parsnips, their homemade soups, their cakes and aromatic waters of rose and their charmingly packaged, gift-wrapped potatoes sticking out of their pockets. Such deceit! It’s hardly imaginable.’ ‘I know, ma,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly not.’ ‘Dressing up too, daughter,’ she went on, ‘though goodness knows they’re no spring—’ This of course was when she remembered, courtesy of Yes-but, that she too was no spring—Again I hurried to intervene. I stressed that, owing to a reversal of the lifeforce inside her, she was blossoming, losing that ‘life’s over, I’m finished with life, past it, just eking out what’s left’ older person’s perspective that usually she went about in and that I hadn’t noticed she’d gone about in until of late when she’d stopped going about in it. Instead she’d sprung to life, bursting with green shoots and— ‘… competitiveness and rivalry,’ concluded Yes-but which was not how I would have concluded myself. ‘I’m too old to be jealous,’ said ma. ‘Not used to it. I thought I had all that over with. You know, daughter, I think it was easier back then for me to pray to God for Peggy to have him than to pray to God for me to have him – I mean, because of the jealousy, the backlash I’d get from them others. I think too, it would have been easier to have been jealous of one of them getting him than for me to have got him and to have had to deal with their jealousy.’ Just as with Great-Great-Granny Winifred’s chair then, I sensed we were now in for another microscopically observed advanced discussion, this time on jealousy – a subject which not only I had never heard ma speak of, but which I myself didn’t speak of, didn’t want to admit to, mainly lest it bring on my own version of Yes-but and Terror Of Other People And Not Just On Difficult Days.
So Yes-but had resurfaced to counter all my attempts to uplift my mother. Every compliment I initiated by way of encouragement, Yes-but got in there with its negatives and shot it down. When Yes-but wasn’t yes-butting, ma was looking in the mirror and sighing. All the same, she seemed as an electric light. One minute she was switched on, then switched off, then on, then off, down to death she’d go, then up she’d rally. At this point some thought occurred and I saw her frown, go down, get annoyed.
‘It’s all right for some,’ she said, ‘to gallivant the world over, ballroom-dancing, looking fabulous, with no conscience to speak of. Did you know that woman who wins those ballroom competitions on the TV is nearly the same age, daughter, as me? Well, she is! But we could all look like that. Oh, it would be easy to look like that – top of the world, dolled-up, flashy smiles, sparkling clothes, with bodies that move like reigning champions even before they’ve stepped onto the dancefloor. We could all be that, daughter, if we did what she did, for do you know what she did? She abandoned her six newborn babies on the settee to manage best they could with only a few Farley’s Rusks sprinkled between them – all so she could funster off and have the most passionate, eventful career in the world. What behaviour’s that? What mother would do that? Even for the glory of becoming best, most best, or even to be one of those selfless souls who help foster peace and cohesion in a place with a long history of hatred and violence. Dancing and acclaim and renown and prestige and credit and fame and looking like that isn’t everything. You wouldn’t see me abandoning my duty, leaving my children,’ which brought her back to the common round and daily task once more.
And now she was sighing and falling down deeper with her electric light off. Then it was back to ‘Can’t believe I’m trying to do this, far too old to be doing this. Can’t wear your clothes. They’re wee girl clothes, not advanced lady clothes,’ and to slumping on the edge of the bed at not being able to do it, at being jealous of maybe-boyfriend’s ma for being able so magnificently to do it. This was when it came clear to me that I couldn’t carry this off. I couldn’t hold this up for her. Didn’t have the right facilitation within me. Couldn’t be the one to rally her for she took no heed of me, didn’t rate my opinion, paid more attention to Yes-but’s opinion. Plus I had my own worries. Still I was being stalked by Milkman at this point. Not only was he not yet dead, he was well into having stepped up and closed in on foreplay predations. In the case of ma though, I needed reinforcements and that meant, could only mean, first sister had to be called. She’d know what to do, I thought, what to suggest, how to bolster ma out of her defeatism and negativity. Eldest sister wouldn’t brook either, any Yes-but interruption. Must fetch first sister, fetch first sister then became my prioritised thought.
So while ma and Yes-but, with heads in hands on edges of beds, were, out of low morale, reverting back to being selfless and doing the right thing by yielding real milkman to nuclear boy’s mother, and with wee sisters trying valiantly to coax them out of it, I went downstairs and picked up the telephone. I was wary of ringing first sister because of all that tension that existed now between us. It had reached breaking point and both of us, without doubt, were well aware of that. Aware too, we were, that unless I renounced Milkman, gave up and stopped my immoral, red-light involvement with Milkman, and unless she stopped falsely accusing me of having an affair with Milkman, pretty soon this tension would erupt in either physical violence between us or, even worse, verbal violence in unforgivable nasty words. That meant I must preface the call. I must let her know immediately before she could launch her next offensive, that I was ringing, not for me, not for her, not for Milkman, and not for her horrible husband. Ma was in trouble. She needed help, first sister’s help. Needed it now, I’d say. If sister did launch into Milkman, for it seemed to be her number one compulsion-fixation with me, and if I responded in anger, which I would, given that was my number one compulsion-fixation with her, then one or other of us, most likely, would hang up. I wouldn’t like that. Knew I’d hate that. But it did feel a risk that in the moment I had to take. So I picked up the receiver and, as usual, checked for bugs, also as usual not knowing how to recognise what I was checking for. Then I rang her. As the ringing tone sounded I had the thought of her husband answering and so debated hanging up only he didn’t answer. First sister answered, which was when I remembered it wouldn’t have been him. First brother-in-law was in bed, recovering from a recent paramilitary beating-up.