by Anna Burns
Ah. I knew there was something.
Question is, if you’ve been abused, ‘What’s normal?’ And if you haven’t been abused, ‘What’s normal?’ And are both ‘normals’ meant to be the same thing? What’s supposed to turn a person on normally, before it gets to the point where others think, hell, that’s not normal. That’s replay of old trauma. That’s recreation of past painful circumstance. Come away from that person. There’s something funny going on here? Also, is there a difference between ‘What’s common?’ and ‘What’s normal?’ Jotty didn’t know. Sitting under a dryer at the hairdresser’s, she was perplexed about these issues. She was becoming more perplexed as she read a women’s magazine – Director of Indulgence, it was called.
Yes, Jotty now ventured into hairdressers. This was part of a practice of grooming she had embarked upon recently, similar to her other practices of venturing into beauty parlours, of going into clothes shops, even of buying the occasional garment that wasn’t just a fit, but a perfect fit. And now, here she was, in the hairdresser’s, flicking through a women’s magazine as if ‘flicking through’ had always been her forte. In reality, those magazines, with their ‘what to do’ and ‘what not to do’ in order to be a proper woman – ‘20 Per Cent More Adultery and 15 Per Cent More Marvellous Mums!’ for example – had always made her feel even more wrong. This one she had picked up to see if she could practise reading it without getting dizzy, but it threw her immediately in at the deep end. The magazine had carried out a sex census in the previous issue. This issue was carrying the results.
‘Do you have sex more than fifty times a day?’ What? Jotty reeled. That had been the first question. ‘Do you have sex more than twenty times a day?’ ‘Do you have sex at least ten times a day?’ ‘Do you have sex less than once a day?’ ‘Do you have sex less than three times a week?’ ‘Do you have sex less than once a week?’ ‘Do have sex less than once a month?’ And that was it. The categories of the first question stopped there.
The highest percentage of score – to both Jotty and perhaps Director of Indulgence’s astonishment – was in the latter category. Seventy-seven per cent of the women respondents hadn’t had sex in one month or more. That was a lot of days and, according to the number of respondents, an awful lot of women. Too high a percentage of its readers for the sheer sexual sophistication of the magazine to know what to do with. It mentioned it briefly as a way of demonstrating its accuracy in relaying unpleasant information, then immediately ignored the statistic, and shot on to the twenty-three per cent of women having sex, thank goodness, all the time.
Just a moment, Jotty thought. Hold on, hold on. Seventy-seven per cent! That seems important. Especially as fifty-four per cent of this seventy-seven per cent turned out to be married or in long-term relationships. Were her sisters, in their marriages, not that unusual then, after all? Also, even though the ‘tick-box’ question had asked ‘less than once a month’, did the ‘tick-box’ answers mean ‘less than once a month’? Or did they mean ‘less than half a year’? ‘Less than once a year’? ‘Less than once in five years’? ‘Less than once in ten years’? ‘Less than ever’ – unless you’re supposed to count rape, for example, in childhood? How long was it really since that seventy-seven per cent last pushed the envelope out and had proper ‘yes’ tick-box sex?
Well, what was wrong with her? Didn’t the magazine already make its position clear on that subject? To repeat – it had sliced off the seventy-seven per cent as if it had never existed. Then it had made the remaining twenty-three per cent into the new one hundred per cent instead. And now for the next question. It too, caused Jotty alarm.
‘Are you on the Advanced Sophisticated Sex Agenda because you’re into total experimentation and explicit sex entertainment, or do you and your partner stick to the old basic routines?’
Unsurprisingly, being one of the seventy-seven per cent who no longer existed, Jotty was not au fait with this Advanced Sex Agenda. Such advanced sex as ‘playing at torture’, or versions of ‘I’m your father and your uncle’s downstairs waiting’ is what you and your partner aim for if you’re contemporary, up-to-date, and sexually with-it. If you’re not with-it, as in you’re sexually boring, then I’m sorry, but you’ll have to form your attachments and your emotional connections in the old-fashioned, time-consuming, basic routine way.
And that’s the thing. I mean Jotty’s confusion. What’s the difference between sadomasochism, bondage, fetishes, pornography, hard porn, soft porn, porn everyone’s supposed to laugh about and be at ease with and talk about and engage in, and that can feature in sitcoms before the watershed without any sense of humiliation or disturbance of children who might just be watching, also without any bodily discomfort – meaning unpleasant arousal rather than welcome arousal – for anybody of any age in the room? Are things meant to be private or are they not meant to be private? Or are they meant to be private if you’re on the basic routine because the basic routine of looking in a man’s eyes and taking in his whole face, and enjoying his whole body as he’s making love to you is not worth making serious violent crime dramas over, whereas if you’re on the Advanced Sophisticated Sex Agenda, you’ll be on a par with Hollywood for sure? But then confusion again, for take a look at incest. You can’t get anything more private than incest. See? Total perplexity. And this was Jotty’s perplexity – though, to be honest, it was my perplexity too. And what is eroticism? That’s another thing. And what is consensual sex if what started out as consensual sex then turns into ‘No, this doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to any more’? And what about role play? Sex toys? Props? Paying lots of money out of your dole or out of your high-powered job to have yourself raped and abducted? Is all that cheating – as in not knowing really how to have sex at all?
The magazine laughed and said, ‘Have you any idea how childish you are? Of course it’s not cheating! Sex isn’t an exam. If it works, do it!’ But in that case, what about that man who was jailed and is now on Death Row but who was convinced of his rightness when he said, ‘If they say yes, then that’s great, we can go back to my place because that’s where I keep the equipment. But sometimes they say no after they’ve said yes or don’t say yes after I thought they were going to say yes and I’d spent all that time counting on them saying yes and so couldn’t hold back to find someone else to say yes at such short notice so I took them. But I always promised, and I kept my word – except for those two times when I didn’t before you arrested me – that whatever was done to them, they’d still be all right when I untied them at the end’?
So then, thought Jotty, what about killing someone during it, or after it? Does that come under ‘tick-box’ murder, or is that simply having sex under the category ‘If it works, do it!’ as well?
‘I’ll just adjust this,’ said the hairdresser, and Jotty jumped at the suddenness of this person. She dropped the magazine in a flood of shame. The hairdresser touched her hair, adjusted the dryer, then bent over and picked the magazine up for her. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed, and Jotty, right or wrong – probably wrong, but even if she was right, so what? – thought this woman was laughing at her.
And that’s the thing too. Apparently Jotty’s ashamed but doesn’t know if she’s supposed to be ashamed, or ashamed of being ashamed because she should be proud about not giving a damn where damns maybe don’t need to be given, or because if something’s a fantasy then that means it’s not real and doesn’t matter, so you can do what you want in it – and this, imagine, coming from Jotty Doe, who places more emphasis and significance and spiritual perambulations on the non-material aspect of the Fourth and Higher Dimensions than anybody ever but, to get back to her shame, should she be ashamed, she wondered, about feeling stimulated, as she had been programmed to feel stimulated, by unloving, uncaring images when, according to this recent poll in this magazine, such arousal appears to be the goal for everybody on the Advanced Sophisticated Sex Agenda as well?
Didn’t know. She
didn’t know. And this magazine wasn’t helping. It said, ‘More and more women are super-confident and proactive in their sexual habits today and taking the initiative more than ever in the bedroom,’ even though it also said, ‘Drunken sex and sex where you can’t remember having it because you had to get so drunk before you’d let anybody near you and if you hadn’t been drunk you wouldn’t have dreamt of going to bed with that particular person’ was, apparently, at an all-time high. Also, a huge proportion placed absolute conviction in being monogamous in their relationships, even though an even huger proportion of the same proportion weren’t monogamous – ‘Yes, but we’re only being unfaithful in case he’s being unfaithful as well.’
Jotty was shaken. The magazine appeared to be suggesting that this was a world of no sex no sex no sex no sex no sex no sex, or else it was one of instant highs and addiction. They didn’t want to write about middle-of-the-road basics. Extremes were better: one, appetite and grab; the other, deprivation and death.
Well, I feel better. Now that we’ve cleared that up about Jotty and her shame and shadow underneath all that concern and niceness, let’s get back to what was happening in the bar. Tom was picking Janine up and was being shouted at by Jotty, who was also picking Janine up. In the end, they both got her from the floor and into a chair. Meanwhile, knocked-over tables and other chairs were being picked up by various gangster wives and girlfriends and Doe, observing this, rolled his eyes and shook his head and sighed a big frustration. Jotty, hearing it, looked over and rashly shouted,
‘Who’s really in that coffin? You’re not going to get away with this. Who’s really in that coffin, John Doe?’
Chapter Twelve
John Doe’s ominous non-answer to that question was what finally propelled Tom, years later, to enter the Doe household. He was half-deterred and half-urged on by hearing those female screams. At the end of trying to pluck up his courage, he plucked it up by the sight of a suit of armour. It had appeared on the threshold, banging against one doorframe, banging against the other, then it came fully crashing out of the door. Visor down, the whole suit then missed its footing. It toppled and fell flat on its back on the path. With effort, it rolled over, tried to roll over, third attempt successfully it rolled over. Then it climbed to its cranky knees on the grass.
Who? What? thought Tom, as he ran towards it. Reaching it, he touched the arm but the suit of armour wasn’t having any of it. Immediately it rattled his touch off. Then up it clambered and, visor still down, off it went. Clank, it sort of went. Clank-clank, for we cannot describe this as elegance. This was not catwalk, or any of those astounding supermodel walk examples we make fun of, but could we do it? I don’t think we could do it. Anyway, this was not that. Tom watched as the racket went down the road, then he turned and found himself on the Doe porch with the front door wide open. So, without thought for the future – which was probably the only way to have done this – Spaders crossed over and went inside.
There was a dead man in the hall. He was lying over a suitcase. Later, the police, standing around it, confidently asserted, ‘Probably money or drugs in that.’ When they opened it, however, all they found was toothpaste, a toothbrush, a razor, some wee shaving cream, some underarm deodorant, a teeshirt, three sports books: one about a boxer, another about a footballer, the third, a ghosted autobiography by some opinionated racehorse, now dead.
So the poor man was in the hall, but all Tom could think of on first coming across him was – nothing. Absolutely nothing. He half-stepped over and half-walked around. Instinctively he followed the silence down the hall until he reached the back living room. Whatever was happening, it would be happening in there. He opened the door without a second to prepare and there, immediately before him, was John Doe strangling his daughter. Next thing Tom saw, in a cut-to-pieces visual flash-around, was one of those Doe women – the one who had come into his shop for the Kalashnikov that morning. She was dead, part-sitting, part-sprawling – one shoe off, the other shoe on – in and out of the armchair.
Dead. Quite dead. Really and truly dead. This was no fantasy. But Julie Doe was living. Half her father’s height, a quarter his size, none of his girth and her hands were pulling on his anyway. I was surprised. Could only mean even she was able to realise that, in certain situations, there really wasn’t a second to spare. Her leg was up too, the sole of one flexible foot positioned between herself and her father’s abdomen. She appeared to be pushing on his navel, practically sitting on the mantelpiece and pushing on his navel. All the same, she was losing. Those hands at her throat weren’t messing about.
Pity she’d walked in when she had.
’Cept my mistake. She hadn’t. She’d been there already, in that back room, even when Jetty had returned after being arrested. At first, Julie had been remonstrating with Judas, who’d got himself into the front room’s armour and was refusing to get out. She was telling him to get out for, given what had just happened to their parents, they really, really, really had to talk. Judas, rattling and tin-canning, delved totally into the tactic of deafness with his sister. He pulled down his visor, stood still as a statue and gave no acknowledgement that she – or even he – was there. So down the hall to the back room she went, to look for clues, to talk to God, to cast around for guidance. It was at that moment Jetty and her new boyfriend came in.
‘This is your Uncle JimmyJesus,’ said Jetty, and the man looked at her, embarrassed, shocked, then horrified. He hadn’t been told of a niece. There’d been no mention of any niece in this lover-transaction business. Or of any commitment to children. He looked around. How many children? Someone should have consulted him about this. Julie looked back at him, defeated, despondent, and he continued looking at her, knowing he didn’t want to be related. Then the mature adults turned away and headed up the stairs.
Father came in.
Just before that, though, poor Jetty had to come back down to throw out some art dealers. Some ‘gallerists’ – as now they termed themselves – had sneaked in and were upstairs rummaging about. They had heard rumours of precious works of art – most casually stolen from around the world if you could believe it – and supposedly secreted on these here premises. Naturally, as soon as the gang had been safely arrested, they had snuck round in droves, to unravel this rumour and find out. They set to immediately, foraging, pillaging, raping and looting. They ransacked the place and in their sheer excitable happiness – because the art was there – they weren’t even abashed when Jetty came in and caught them in the act. They thought she, too, would be thrilled by the extraordinaries they had come across but, for some reason, she was not.
‘Ouch!’ cried one. ‘Listen, Miss, I mean Ma’am, I mean Missus – ouch! We could do a deal. I could sell this for you. This could be worth – ow! Ow!’ She threw him and the framed original of Dead Girl with Dead Bird – still-life of a version – out. She turned to another gallerist. He, too, was intensely blabbering. Something about percentages as he clutched the world-famous Rifle Post. This was the original, mind you – forget the cheap copy you have hanging in your bedroom. I mean here was the hand-painted prophetic effort, made to look like a computerised diagram before computers had been invented: [TMH] front – locking pin, magazine, catch, cheekpiece. [TMH] rear – locking pin, trigger mechanism housing [TMH] sight base, dust cover, ejection opening, cocking handle, holding open catch, safety catch, handguard, flash eliminator – ‘The Rifle’. Wow. This was culture. You couldn’t deny this was culture. It even had the Van Gogh signature underneath.
Jetty grabbed it off him. He screamed for mercy – he meant for the picture. Too late, too irrelevant. She broke it over his head. He, too, was then kicked out, followed by the shreds of the picture. Shrewdly he took this as a sign he could have it. Gathering up the masterpiece, he skipped happily with it down the path. She continued to throw out all pests and rodents and works of art, not realising that a further brand of anoraks – ghost-hunters, fraud-busters, arch-sceptics, which is not to say they were n
ot deeply committed to the genuine supernatural article whenever they came across it – with their psychic-detecting cameras, paranormal sound equipment and talcum-powdered bags of flour to catch out pranksters, were ensconced and already carrying out experiments in the tunnels underground.
So she was downstairs, having swatted out into the universe the last of the dealers when Doe walked in and, boy, was she surprised. To cover her guilt she launched into that brief ‘What man? Oh, but you’re jealous!’ conversation, then Uncle JimmyJesus came down and he’d been the first to be killed. Julie didn’t see him being killed, for she was still standing in the back room, by the once-beautiful Versailles walnut and purplewood secretaire cabinet. Although stolen in pristine condition, with Marie Antoinette’s list of to-dos for the Petit Trianon still hanging out of it, the Doe family’s petrol cans, garden implements and First Aid from that inconclusive mentally ill kitchen cupboard had caused it to become rather on the lopsided front now. So Julie didn’t see the killing, but she heard the killing. Then she saw her father kill her aunt. They had come into the back room to have their final ‘till death do us part’ chat in there.
Doe lowered his lover into the armchair just when he was at the very end of strangling her. Then he took his hands away and looked up.
And so, to Julie, and her fate.
And so, to Tom, and his fate.
And John, too. Let’s not forget John Doe’s fate as well.