by Anna Burns
John said, ‘Who was yer man? What was that man you had living with ye? Who were ye shacking up with during all that time today I was gone?’
‘Wha’d’ye mean?’ asked Jetty, playing for time. And you know how people do that? They say, ‘Pardon me?’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Come again?’ ‘Sorry?’ – putting their hands exaggeratedly to their ears as if you hadn’t spoken loud enough. Dirty liars. You know they’ve heard you. Or they say, ‘What man?’ – even though he’s walking by you right this minute, shame-faced, head lowered, with coat and suitcase in his hand. Or they go on the defensive: ‘Oh, but you’re possessive!’ Well, I hate that. Lying like that might not be worse than thieving, although I don’t know. Maybe it is worse than thieving. I think the ‘worse-than’ scenario was the viewpoint John took here.
He killed her. And I don’t know why that would be surprising to her. After all, he did kill those men, and a certain contingent believe he did kill an older daughter for, let’s face it, is it likely a school-age teenager would be allowed to emigrate, all of a sudden, with no money, and was now writing, as they said she was, successful cookery books on the other side of the world? And also, look at what he did to those girlfriends he had dates with. Then there was the younger daughter he had made attempts on. Then there was that shot we all witnessed he’d taken that very afternoon at his son, Judas, himself. Jetty knew this. Oh yeah she knew. So how on earth could she be astonished at Doe proceeding now to strangle her? Stands to reason. The mistress, or the wife, who defiantly holds the conviction ‘He’s okay, my man’s okay. Not violent to me. He said to me, “I promise you, honey, you’ve nothing to worry about,” ’ will, at some point in the reckonings, most certainly have to be next.
Minutes after the strangulation of Jetty, and unaware of what had happened regarding the Doe arrests, and what would happen regarding the Ordinary Decent Folk’s knee-jerk lynch reaction – which you don’t know about, but don’t worry, I’ll tell you – Tom Spaders, like John Doe, was en route to where his angels and guides were meaning him to be. He believed himself out for a walk after all that débâcle with Jetty, Jennifer, Julie, Johnjoe and then Customer Tom at the gunshop and, as he walked along, he was experiencing that feeling of the dragging out of the anxiety – although come to think of it, maybe that’s what anxiety is, all that constant dragging out. As he turned a corner, wondering what had become of Cusack, and wondering what he was going to do about that bit inside him that kept urging him to kill everybody, he heard three screams coming from the Doe house. Immediately there was hesitation. As with everyone in Tiptoe Floorboard, when it came to reality rather than fantasy, and especially when it came to any reality involving the Doe family, it would be a case of ‘If it’s not happening to you, then don’t invite it happen to you’. He wished to God – the one he didn’t believe in – that on top of everything, he hadn’t just witnessed those three female screams. He should walk on, he told himself, not get involved, for who would thank him for it anyway? Doe would shoot him. The Doe Sisters would rip him apart down his middle and take half each to wipe the floor and windows with him. And the Ordinary Decent Folk would say, ‘Hell, slap it into him. He’s nobody to blame but himself.’
Another scream.
Now, there was something Spaders couldn’t get out of his head and it had happened years earlier. It seemed to be binding him to the Doe family whether he liked it or not. It wasn’t Jotty, whom he was insisting to himself he had not started rethinking about. Her lack of experience, given her age, and the feeling that she might accuse him of rape, even though he hadn’t raped, or else that she might go into one – he meant the Doe Family Headstaggers – or even worse, stick a knife in him just because he put his arm around her so he wouldn’t put his arm around her, was a bit too much for his well-honed, clued-in switch for mentalness to take. Here was him, struggling along, making an effort not to kill anybody, and here was them, that Doe family, not bothering their arses to struggle not to kill anybody. The thing, though, that he couldn’t let go of was a certain feeling he’d had around Doe regarding an older daughter who Jotty one day had told him had disappeared. At the time, he hadn’t been long back in town after being out of it for ages. When she told him about the daughter, he assumed that in reality this girl must have gone off on holiday – a euphemism, of course, for being transported to the town’s grim mental asylum on the hill. He assumed that based upon the fact that that’s what periodically seemed to happen to so many of the Doe family. There had been a funeral of one of them from the asylum around the time it was said the girl had disappeared. At this funeral – of John Doe’s aunt, though some rumoured it was really of his actual birth-mother – the Doe boy and girl, Judas and Julie, had stood by the graveside and cried their eyes out. It was phenomenal crying and Tom, passing on the cemetery periphery, noticed it and felt the amount of grief displayed couldn’t possibly be for a person they had never met. So was it a nervous thing? he wondered. Were they crying from the sheer emotion of contemplating death in the abstract? Or – and this was the dread – could the tears be for the loss of something or someone – such as a sister – much closer to themselves?
Tom stopped himself – both thoughts and actual walking – and held on to the railings surrounding the graveyard. He didn’t like his mind to be going this way. He was a comfortable guy, he told himself. He was an average guy. And he was happy to be average and comfortable. Certainly he didn’t want to find himself pondering whether John Doe had murdered his daughter or not. He cut his thinking short, however, because the children, still sobbing, stepped too close over on to the false grass and do you know that false grass, that pretend greengrocer grass, that gravediggers use at funerals? They cover the open grave with it once the coffin has been lowered, and then leave it, without filling it in until all the relatives have said last prayers and gone away. Well, those children, who hadn’t gone away, though all the other mourners had crossed the road and were on their second drinks already in the drinking club, went too close to the edge, not realising that soon there would be no earth to support them. Indeed, the fabric was already giving as Tom rushed up from the side.
They screamed and clutched at the crinkles, shocked out of crying. When Tom made a grab, they saw his hands and frantically grabbed back. He got a hold, lifted them, high above the earth, one arm for each, and then it was back to the earth, where he set them down, but still went on holding. They, too, held, clutching fistfuls of shirt, sobbing into it. He was down on the muck by this time beside them, and all those hearts beating. All those hearts beating. ‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. You didn’t fall in. You’re okay.’
The gravediggers came over. They’d been standing by the digger further down, oblivious to what was happening. They were having a fag and a gossip as to which of the asylum women had been John Doe’s real ma. It was then they realised that something was up and they looked towards the grave and saw the Doe batch being handled by yer man, Tom Spaders. ‘What’s he doin’ with those childs?’ they asked. ‘He doesn’t own those childs. Look how tight he’s holding the Doe childs. Will we tell John?’ And, although they didn’t tell John, they did tell others, and that was how the pervert rumour got started up.
They watched in silence, with Spaders unaware of their scrutiny. It was only when they came up and one flicked his cigarette butt into the now uncovered grave – keeping Tiptoe Cemetery tidy, as it were – that Tom noticed they were there and straightened up.
He got fully to his feet then, dirty and sticky from the nether-clay-earth, as also were the children. Nodding to the men, but giving no explanation, he held the girl’s hand and carried the suddenly sleepy, angular eight-year-old boy across the road to the club.
In the club, Janet was with her vodka and blackcurrant and seven other gangster girlfriend-wife companions. Tom had intentioned passing her children over, with – if he could muster it – a light-to-moderate telling-off. Had she forgotten them? he’d say. Just like maybe she’d forgotten the other one
? Was it that she was wanting rid of them? he’d say. Just like maybe she’d wanted rid of the other one? In that case, why not send them up on to Greystone Cliffs and tell them to have the play of their lives up there? Of course he’d never say that. And when he got to the bar, the place was so Doe-heavy that he lost his nerve to say anything and instead passed them rapidly to their mother. Bundled them, he did, and it seemed dismissively, and then he turned away. This was so he could pretend he hadn’t heard and therefore wouldn’t have to respond when one of them shouted, ‘Hey! What’s-your-name! Thingy! Gunman! Hey, you! Gunman!’ Also, he forgot to say goodbye. I mean to the children. But in the middle of this scenario, with all these adults, all drinking, all looking at him, it would be amazing if such a thing as saying goodbye to a batch were ever to occur to him at all.
As for the gang, also now watching, it was puzzling. It was outside their philosophy that Tom Spaders should come in here. This was one of their haunts and he was one of those people who would wear white and go barefoot and not carry a gun and wouldn’t even rate as important enough to speak English or to be a member of the other side’s gang if this were a spaghetti film. It didn’t matter that they got their weapons from him more than they got their weapons from anybody else. It was outside their philosophy too and, indeed, outside Tom’s own philosophy, that he should be carrying children. And not just any children. The Doe children. Didn’t the kids have all these uncles, with all these arms, who could carry them themselves? So yer man here had some explanations to give, and the gang members who were sitting down stood up, to get themselves ready to hear them. Tom saw this, and so walked, casually as possible, towards John Doe at the bar.
Tom knew that the only way he’d get out of the club in a fairly okay state would be if he acknowledged and got the blessing of the gang leader. It was the right decision. Doe was facing outwards and Tom positioned himself beside him and passed off some easygoing humour about the Doe children having got lost. He’d found them, he said. And that was why he’d come in, to hand them over to their mother. And could he buy John a drink, for he’d heard about John’s tragedy? He was awful sorry to hear of John’s momentous sad loss.
Doe’s loss was the person in the coffin and Spaders could have stopped there but, because of anxiety, he went further and spoke also about the children seeming sad over having lost their granny. It was then he realised that it mightn’t have been Granny. Perhaps he should have said Great-Aunty instead.
Doe was silent. Oh God, thought Tom. Was he gonna go ballistic? Was he gonna throw the headstaggers? Why had Tom been stupid to come out with illegitimate and incestuous connotations like that?
God would forgive him for being a coward, he decided, but quick as he could, he said, ‘Your aunt was a lovely and a great woman, Johnny. And so was your mother. I always thought they were brilliant – towers of the feminine, queens assumed into Heaven, blessed, revered, wise and merciful. Everybody said that most of all they were merciful. Your mothers were the most total virgins of all.’ Had he overdone that last bit? he wondered. In truth, too, he couldn’t have distinguished the Doe creatures he was referring to from almost any Doe female except Jotty. For all he knew, they could be the women sitting across the room from him right now.
Instead of the headstaggers, Doe sighed. His body relaxed. He put his hand heavily upon Spaders’s shoulder. ‘Here. Have a drink, Tom,’ and he passed him over his own. Doe was giving off an air of sadness, of grief, of heartbreak, and it was a demeanour that demanded you’d better be full of compassion for him. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Those two women were perfections of the universe.’
Ice broken. Not Tom’s head broken. Things were looking up. The ominous silence that had been thickening in the room turned and retreated to the sidelines. Somebody handed Tom another drink and so he had two drinks in his two hands. He stepped back in relief and as he did so it was on to the toe of a serial murderer – just one serial murderer, though, out of the many serial murderers he could have trodden upon currently in the room. It had an ingrowing toenail on it, however, this toe, which meant for the owner, excruciation. Tom didn’t know the ingrowing nail existed but, even without this knowledge, he knew that under normal circumstances a simple step-upon would be enough to get him killed. He turned to apologise anyway, but the toe-owner was already patting his other shoulder. The man said in a strangulated voice, ‘Don’t worry about it, mate. Just a toe. Totally expendable. Let me get you a drink. What’ll you have there?’
So Doe and Spaders were best friends for the minute. Doe was getting drunk and had moved into intimacies in his talk about the mother.
‘It was my ma, Tom,’ he confided. ‘She was my ma all the time and not my Aunty Jacky I buried today.’
At this point JanineJoshuatine burst in. I guess that meant she was back from one of her holidays. Jotty came in behind her. She saw Tom standing with her brother in an embrace of fraternity – Doe’s hand upon Tom’s shoulder, other hands upon other of Tom’s shoulders, and many, many drinks in all of Tom Spaders’s hands. That was how it looked to her anyway. Her mouth fell open. I don’t believe it, she thought. I don’t want it to be true. And yet it is true, for look, the proof’s here in front of me. He is a gang member! The bastard. I hate him. I wish I hadn’t slept with him. I wish I hadn’t let him go down on me. I wish I hadn’t enjoyed him going down on me – although I’m glad, especially now I’m seeing this, I didn’t let him get inside. Now, don’t get her wrong, Jotty wanted somebody inside. Although don’t get her further wrong, she didn’t want just anybody. This was not a case of ‘any man will do’. But let’s be thorough, for it wasn’t either that she had contracted that pernicious disease: the terminal, the disastrous, the ‘Mr One and Only’, where the poor thing has to be the Soulmate, the Right Man, the Proper Man, the one who will suffice in every and any circumstance, that it will have to be him and only him in the whole wide male-filled world. If it is, and if it isn’t, God help him, for he’ll have to carry everything – just like that poor hair on the groomed suicide’s head. He’ll be responsible for all her sexual and romantic baggage, for all her female relatives’ sexual and romantic baggage, not just for the current generation but for all the female generations past and in future to come. And that’s not all. There’ll also be his own sexual and romantic baggage, plus all those relatives of his squashed explosively inside him. So carry everything? What man could do that? Further, what man should do it? Nobody should have to do it. The hair on the head shouldn’t have had to do it. And it didn’t. Remember – at the last moment – it did fall out of place.
It was just that she didn’t want to be like her sisters – more of them in a minute – grabbing the knife from under their pillows, stabbing everybody – I mean their husbands – after they’d been inside. But oh, this womb business. How are we to deal with it? Are there any cosy adult evening education classes started up on it yet? But see what’s happened? She’s gone off the point and is dragging me, then you, with her. That’s what happens when you have multiple thoughts. To get back to the bar and to Jotty, looking over in horror at her ex-almost-lover, and having such thoughts as those running through her mind – all you need to know is that I speak her language, that I am fluent in honours and distinctions and ‘most esteemed’ in the fluency of this language. So trust me when I tell you that all that ‘men and baggage and womb’ business was the exact translation of the expression of devastation upon her face.
After the stare of devastation she refused to acknowledge Tom and went quickly towards her sister. JanineJoshuatine had already reached her brother. She was determined to stab her brother, believing in her mind, as usual, that he was somebody else.
But first to a sad story:
Beautiful women, with blood on their hands.
Chapter Ten
Your stunningly beautiful sister says to you,
‘You know how, Jotty, when you come to and you look down and you’ve got all this blood on your hands?’ She shows her hands a
cross your kitchen table and yep, there sure is a lot of blood on them.
‘No, Unity,’ you say. ‘That doesn’t happen to me.’ Resignedly, you get up to fill the basin and to get the soap and the towels and all the hygienic stuff with which to clean her up.
Unity doesn’t hear.
‘And you know how, after you’ve been sitting in a daze, Jotty, and you come to in the armchair and you just know you’ve been fighting with somebody?’ She frowns at the ghost-memory of recently fighting with somebody. And that’s right, that doesn’t happen to you either. You say this too. Again, Unity doesn’t hear.
‘And you’re just calming down,’ she continues. ‘You’re right on the tip of the sword of revelation’ – here, as she’s talking, you gently raise her hands and place them into the water. As you’re doing so, you notice gashes, initially hidden by her hair, down the side of her skull.
‘Just as it’s coming,’ Unity persists, ‘all that delicate and fragile memory, the last thing you’d want is for the bloody knocker to get knocked, the bloody bell to get rung and for five of those police people to be standing at your door.’