by Anna Burns
John comes up the stairs into the bedroom and he lies on the eiderdown beside you. He places his hand on the middle of your abdomen where you don’t like anyone, ever, putting their hand. He says,
‘We’ve been lying in this bed, Janey, together. You and me. All day without exception.’ Then he makes you repeat and you say, ‘We’ve been lying here together all day, John.’
Then he says,
‘Good, very good – and we never separated, not once, and it’s all right to be ashamed, honey, if anybody tries to fluster you by asking if you and me were having sex – don’t worry about hitting a reddener, but make sure you say yes and that they hear it loud and clear.’ And he makes you repeat that as well. You feel embarrassed but look – I’ve gone and done it again and given another inconclusive example. As with Julie, so with Janet. I heard a rumour the penny isn’t going to drop in this quarter as well. But you know, maybe penny-dropping anyway, isn’t easy of accomplishment. Perhaps it’s normal to live with the curtains pulled over, practising knowing and not-knowing simultaneously all your life.
Of course Jetty Doe in the taxi knew, and at the same time didn’t know, that her lover was a killer, but if pushed to define him in court, or indeed to God when she should go to Heaven, all she’d be able to say would be ‘He’s mine!’ Like incest, murder was an accusation taken out of context, taken out of a dictionary. It was a matter of opinion. ‘This is what murder means because we say it’s so.’ If Heathcliff were to dig Cathy up and keep her, she thought, I suppose they would jump to hysterics and think that was wrong also. And why didn’t he keep her? That was something Jetty, regarding her favourite love movie of all time, could never understand. So, if we’re talking Johnny Doe and perpetration against others, she would shrug and suppose that, yes, if you’re gonna put it like that, John could get a bit intense and into fierce discussion with other males sometimes. That was normal. That was attractive. But if you’re talking Jetty and him and any violence towards her, then forget it. Johnny would never lay a hand in that way upon her.
They were a normal couple, see – apart from the Janet thing – and Jetty was a normal woman and, like any normal woman, the things that got to Jetty were normal also. Him throwing his sweet wrappers on the floor, for instance, instead of throwing them out the window like other people. Or him watching her painstakingly sew sequins on to a dress that he knew she was going to wear on a date with him that evening, yet saying, ‘I don’t know how you could be bothered doing that.’ Or that he’d bring out his wife from behind the curtains any time he needed bolstering. Or bring up his daughter to cushion himself from her. Or haul out his biggest parental responsibility of all. She’d be saying, ‘I need to protect our relationship because we are relating,’ and he’d say any relating was out of the question because of the problem he was having with his maladjusted son. So then she’d say, ‘When are we meeting?’ And he’d say he couldn’t see her Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday because he was busy. So she’d say, well, wasn’t that a pity, for she wouldn’t be able to see him Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Monday.
Ragetime.
They’d have a fight then, and in that fight he’d manipulate her into declaring that that was that, that she’d had enough of him. But ha! – what he hadn’t counted on her also saying was that someone not grown up enough to answer decent wee notes she’d taken the trouble to write him didn’t deserve any more either to have those false murder alibis. He’d have to go back to Janet then, she said, to get her, the wife, to back him up in his whereabouts. And we all knew how Janet was under questioning. ‘Almost Chemist of the Year! Almost Chemist of the Year!’ Lord! The woman was a bafflement – total world of her own.
And yet.
Oh, and yet.
Yet, my darling. Yet …
She’d get so charged, so bursting, never so connected as when, after their every romantic row, he’d grab her wrist sharply and say, ‘My Jet, and this you’ll like,’ and she would soar with the danger and the charisma of him and it would be perfect, everlastingly perfect. And then. And then. Oh, well, and then …
It would be back to where he’d say he’d call but he wouldn’t, even though he lived in the same house as her. He’d ignore her and her reasonable notes that she’d write not quite insistently – just a decent letter every now and then to find out why. She knew he’d get them for under the breakfast table she’d be sneaking them and yet, whether or not he read them, he still, still, still – would not. A rumour would come by her about another woman – not Janet, forget Janet – and she would listen to it, and then write him another note enquiring about it. And all the time, behind her, without telling her, his secret fomenting was to stay with his wife. So you see, you didn’t, you couldn’t – how could you? – know the minds you’re dealing with in this dreadful abyss of brokenness, this dead valley of hopelessness, this nethermost pit of faithlessness. Oh dear. Jetty Doe was in love and not having a good day.
The taxi man, though, who was nearly all right, in fact, he was all right, I liked him – in spite of the police and court much later getting it wrong about him – wasn’t offended after speaking to his customer about turning Bob Marley up when he meant to say down and not getting any reply. Normally he didn’t get replies when he spoke to his customers and, besides, he could see she was busy, that she was having some sort of inner conflict with herself. She kept muttering and twisting the strap of her machine-gun and, of course, he would call it a machine-gun for, you see, here was the Great Exception, the unique man, the man who could have been famous for his ignorance if only he hadn’t been ignorant of his ignorance. Here was the only man in the world who didn’t know guns.
‘Rifle!’ is what he guessed later in court when the authorities bullied him for a proper definition. ‘Or maybe a shotgun,’ he added. ‘What’s the difference? Is there a difference?’ He admitted under oath also that he had a vague idea only that a rifle was a rifle because it had – ‘Oh my goodness yes, rifling!’ Normally he was happy, he said, to call guns guns. Also in his defence and in answer to a nasty question put to him by Prosecution, he said that although of course he’d seen this machine-gun in the possession of this woman, why did this man questioning him think he should be penetrated by any significance about that?’
‘So what did you do?’ Prosecution asked, and he said that he went on up the road to that wasteland. ‘Ach, you know,’ he said, ‘that space on the junction where men beat up their wives and girlfriends?’ He said that was where she instructed him to take her, and when the last track of his cassette ended, he took it out, flipped it over, adjusted the volume, stuck the knob back on and played Bob Marley again on the other side.
So the car wailed its way up the busy shopping road on this particular Friday, driven by the man who didn’t know guns. In the middle of the back seat sat Jetty Doe holding the Kalashnikov, running over in her head what I took to be a distinct revenge plan. Right then! I thought she was thinking. I’m psyched-up! I’m ready! I’m gonna show that rat! I’m gonna bust in bangin’! I’m gonna blast that lyin’ cheatin’ two-timin—’
Just a minute. What’s happening now?
If you’re a woman with a gun, and you’re getting into a conversation with a man you’re attracted to, for example, at a party, it’s always best to say, should he look quizzically at your weapon, ‘My father taught me. I’m rather a good shot.’ What you don’t say is, ‘My mother taught me’ or – even worse – ‘My ma taught me and I’m an expert crack shot.’ This last has an aura of defiance and impropriety about it. Not the thing to express if you’re intent on demureness. In fact, if ‘demure’ is your intention, I’d suggest leaving all weapons down the settee at home. If you must bring one, remember, don’t scowl, and don’t say, ‘My ma taught me,’ for if you say it, this fellow will think, goodness! What sort of household was it? She’s attractive, but are the genes abnormal? Will our progeny be tainted? Will she try to kill me some bright afternoon day? Thus, the high-standing ‘My father taugh
t me’, with the noble father now dead even if he isn’t, always sounds better – tomboyish yet playful, teasing yet submissive – no matter that it’s nothing but a huge disgraceful lie. Good sport, he’ll think. And yet look! Isn’t she bashful? I hadn’t noticed but, really, she’s decidedly rather bashful. Charming. Not one of those lesbians. Also, not one of those women who don’t like men but who aren’t lesbians either. She was obedient to Daddy. She took instructions from Daddy. That means she’ll be obedient and take instructions from me too.
So there you go. Advice on how to get a certain type of man without jeopardising any of your weapons. But remember, that’s only if you want that certain type of man. There are other men, but they will be way out of your category. That type won’t pursue you. That type might talk to you because they can’t help it, because you’re beautiful and because you’re standing beside them at the party, but they’ll leave, and they’ll not take you with them when they go. Before they go, they’ll drop your hand, perhaps even regretfully. They’ll say, ‘Sorry. Can’t do this. Life’s too short to date a person with a gun.’
But chin up, never mind him, don’t run after him, shouting, ‘Wait! Come back! I’ll get rid of the gun! I’ll get rid of all the guns!’ for he’d always be at you, hectoring, nit-picking, wanting you to give up all your chaos. Chances are, you’d have to get another gun anyway, to shoot him with in the end.
But back to Jetty. Back to Jetty, who defied all the odds that I might have placed upon her. Back to Jetty who shocked me by opting for ‘My father taught me’ when I never in the world thought she would. It wasn’t that she’d gotten soft on Doe, her lover, during the length of that taxi journey. Incredibly, astonishingly, she’d never had any intention of shooting him all along.
I am too trusting and untutored in matters of twisty-turny sexualness. I am not stupid but I do not understand this world. Someone says something’s going to go one way and I think, rightie-o! If you say so, and I believe them. What I don’t realise is that, with some people, the opposite is true. With them it’s the drama, it’s the crisis, it’s the delicious world of the fiction catastrophe. ‘Gonna kill him!’ ‘Watch me kill her!’ These are lead-ups to scenes that are never intended to be.
So, at the end of the tender ‘soft as shit’ milkbottle fantasy – oh, but I haven’t told you about that yet – Jetty picked up the Kalashnikov and was nursing it. She was fantasising it was John, lying bloodied in her arms. By not killing him, but instead lowering the punishment so that she didn’t have to deprive herself permanently of him, she could carry on enjoying him, whilst taking her revenge in never-ending pickings and scratchings later on.
So Jetty was imagining she’d arrive at the hut and he’d be alone, lying on that settee of his. He’d be sleeping, breathing deeply, in some private dreamland of his own. She’d tiptoe over to the Martini fridge and take out one of those chilling milkbottles, then tiptoe back, and break the bottle over his head. She’d take one long lingering look first – for soft as shit she was really. And, yeah, I know. The Martini fridge. How does one figure that?
You know how, in the olden days, if two men were in the bar and one said to the other, ‘So I hear your wife hasn’t produced any sons yet?’ and he smirks and the man who hasn’t any sons yet puts his glass down and legitimately punches the other man in the face? Then a fight breaks out and everybody in the bar wants yer man with the no sons to win because he’s the poor bloke who’s been hard done by already. He’s been married ten years and has ten girls and that’s all. So things are bad enough. So go on, God, let him win this battle. Let him take yer man and pull his head off. Do you remember how it used to be like that? And how, now, in these days, all these years on – in the days of therapy and of sitting in-group saying, ‘Thank you for relating to me your anger response, I am delighted you were able to tell me you were angry’ – you’d laugh at such behaviour? You’d think the smirker was an idjit and, if you were the man with the no sons, you wouldn’t bother getting all Henry the Eighth about it at all.
In the same way as in those days, John Doe was a bit touchy and could still smart easily at any perceived threat to his manhood. That was the reason he kept the Martini fridge on the premises. You might think, ah! Aversion Therapy – pretty lilac feminine fridge, very female, therefore make himself get used to it. But no. Not that. It was a pre-emptive taunt in the face of other men, in case they were thinking of taunting him in the face, to let them know that he was so a man of male eccentricity that he could include pretty fridges or indeed anything pretty in his repertoire anytime he liked. Some said this was far-reaching of Doe and others said no, he was just a madman. Who would taunt him anyway? Not his team, they said, even though palpably these men were of the type who experienced problems with even minor splashes of colour. And not his rivals or random victims, for they didn’t come into the shack unless they were being forced in to be murdered. Once inside, these men would then have concerns other than pastel fridges or whether John Doe was really a woman or not on their minds.
So it was seen as a bit of an unmale thing, the colour, the dainty size, and what it was I mean – a Martini fridge I mean. Nobody used it for Martinis, because none of these men drank Martinis, and not often were any Martini-drinking, or indeed any women, allowed in the Doe Community Centre Hut. Two females only. One was Jetty, the consort. The other was that fifteen-year-old mascot. Neither of them drank Martinis, but Doe was adamant. Teabreaks were essential, especially at the end of all-night sessions. So, for practical reasons, they needed somewhere to keep their milk cold.
So Jetty was in her ‘soft as shit’ fantasy as the taxi approached the junction where men beat up their wives and girlfriends. The car stopped and Jetty climbed out. Kalashnikov under arm, she scrabbled in her handbag, threw some lipstick samples, duck pellets, toe clippings – yes, toe clippings – a handful of old eighteenth-century pistol balls she’d had in her bag, which had been taken off Napoleon by the English that time he’d been arrested, and ‘Keep the change!’ she screamed before making her way towards the Action Centre Hut. The taxi man hesitated, wondering if he should go after, then he decided against it. He shrugged. He was easygoing, so easygoing all his friends chided him because all his fares diddled him. But you know something? He believed monies due to him in the universe would come to him from somewhere. And something else. One way or another, they always, always did.
But back, back to Jetty and John and Janet and the Kalashnikov. Back to the police, who weren’t supposed to be there arresting everybody. And back to what was contained in the garden and in the tunnels below the garden, and to the Community Centre Team itself.
The Community Centre, the team’s headquarters, was a tinshack lumber room, a romper room, a ructions room, a room of noisy disturbances taking up the Doe back garden. But this was only the iceberg tip. Originally the Centre had been the little garden tool shed down the back in the corner, but even in those days, if a cat had gone in exploring, it would have cried, ‘Feng shui miaow! Feng shui miaow!’ and turned and run out. Now, it was the tool shed multiplied by a hundred, with most of the multiplications taking place underground. Of course there were no windows, and the structure in reality wasn’t tin-fabricated. It was a building of the steel-reinforced-brick-iron-cage-concrete-fortified-with something-breezeblock type. You needed a password to get in and permission to get out, and once inside, you were expected to speak in a code language that was changed every week. Every so often a certain number of the uninitiated were brought in, and this would be at night-time. They never left in the same condition, and sometimes their bodies never left at all. First thing on entering was a makeshift bar, then, right beside it, a little stage or platform, then a stereo in one corner with records, cassette tapes and a few of those compact-disc things scattered around on top. A perennial smell of something hovered painfully over everything, the lighting was dim, a three-seater settee could be made out against the far wall. There was also an assortment of tables and other seating arra
ngements, with a further round table at the back, used for consulting the Ouija, and a pretty little fridge was just opposite across the dancefloor. If this place had originally been used for the Does to keep their innocent garden bits and pieces in, quite clearly it was no longer being used for that now. It still had bits and pieces – apparent junk – as well as some actual garden shed implements. At that moment these, and everything else, were being bagged and tagged by the police.
Huh.
Women and their fantasies.
You’ve got to laugh.
I mean – at women and their fantasies.
There was Jetty, entering the shack, and there wasn’t John Doe, by himself, lying on the settee, eyes closed, all ready to have glass broken over him. And there wasn’t the Martini fridge full of nicely chilling bottles of sharp milk. The milkman had arrived as usual, but he’d been unable to get up the path to deliver because he’d been prevented by millions of police people. Only reason Jetty’d been allowed up was because she was also going to be arrested and it seemed feasible for the police to blend themselves into walls and behind the nettles, tall weeds and grasses that made up the Doe front garden, and to let her come to them, rather than have them burst into sprints to try to catch her up. Turned out, therefore, that Doe wouldn’t have been able to have had his head split open even if he’d been begging and whining to. By the time she arrived, he’d already been arrested and was in the van along with the rest of the handcuffed gang.
You’ve got to chuckle. They’re so romantic, and again, I mean women. They think something’s going to go a certain way and their energy spins and spangles and they get out their ribbons of detailed thought and their painstakingly hand-made heart tinsel. By now, everything’s painted, borders festooned, all in sentimental, joyous anticipation. Well, all I can say is, disappointment is an extremely downplayed word. First thing that happened when Jetty walked into the shack was a mass of policemen immediately surrounded her. One tried to take the Kalashnikov while another said, ‘Please hand it over. It’s fruitless not to hand it over. And you too. There are instructions to take you also, I’m sorry to say, Miss.’