by Anna Burns
And there went Jotty’s plans completely for the day. But then, what were her plans? Initially they had been to accompany her friend, Angelus Cusack, to the library to drop off some dictionary, then to talk with her of urgent worries about the kitchen cupboard contents at her brother’s house. But her plans spontaneously changed, the way plans do. Brand new plans moved in and these were to make the man she could have loved alive, yet not being able to make him alive – although he was alive, but she was too much in shock yet to be aware of that. And that’s the thing with shock. It operates at the surprise level. It’s like you’ve had a shock and half an hour later you’re telling your friends about having had this shock and then an hour after that you realise you’d still been in shock during the telling of your friends. Naturally, you’re astonished at how shock works. So now, thinking you’re out of it, you ring up another friend to tell them about this shock business, only to discover another four hours later that four hours earlier you’d still been in shock all the time. Are you out of it yet? you wonder. An alternative to that is, some people get to the point where they have fleeting moments in their lives when they’re out of shock rather than in it. But they don’t want to be out of it. Everybody else is still in it. So why them, God, why them?
It was a whole lifestyle. Besides that, though, Jotty Doe was not someone you’d ever want about in any type of emergency. She’d be the one crying and dropping and unravelling all the bandages and getting germs from cross-contamination all over the place. Then she’d faint – just your luck too – from the sight of the blood, or of the wound, or of her emotions, and she’d faint over the person you’re trying, in extremis, to give CPR to. After that, when she came to, she’d be completely in child mode. Five years old she’d be, wandering in the woods, crying, still unravelling the bandages, still contaminating, but now searching for the corpse of some little household pet the family had ordered to be taken into the wood to be shot for practice that day. Daddy had come home turtleless. He came home turtleless. ‘The turtle ran away,’ he said, yawning and setting his gun down.
So she was untying Tom, trying to untie Tom, who had slumped down to the bottom of the lamp-post. In the process of trying, she’d stop and drop the messy, fraying knots of impossible sticky twine. All around was rubbish, loads of rubbish, and the thought became impressed upon her that she should sort through this rubbish to see if some of Tom’s contents had got spilt out of him and were there amongst it. But then the thought was gone and she’d be thinking she had to check to see that he had a pulse and heart still beating first. That was wrong too, she’d then think. Oh, how she was wasting time! she now thought, for of course she should go back to untying all those knots again. So one moment she was untying. Next, she was trying to work out if he was living. She was terrible. ‘Oh God! No pulse! No heartbeat!’ But come on, Jotty. You should know that no pulse, no heartbeat meant absolutely nothing. Often the people of Tiptoe had neither – it was the best way of keeping the safest, lowest profile in town.
What a mess. Tom, tied to the lamp-post – half-unconscious, unconscious, even dead – probably could have managed his own rescue better himself. But she did take that first step, so in the realm of goodwill – and we can’t measure goodwill with a tape measure – and perhaps, regardless of her scatterment, she took exactly the right action. Why should someone know everything? A person could step in and shout, ‘Stop this! Stop this outrageous behaviour!’ even though if it doesn’t stop, they don’t know how to stop it but, by their stepping in, they might have temporarily shocked everybody and critically changed the molecules around. People who do know what to do, who might not have known how to shout, ‘Stop this outrageous behaviour!’ can then step in and manage things as the best of First Aiders, rescuers and saviours can. Luckily for Jotty, in her flustered state, she looked up and saw Angelus running up at this point.
As for Angelus. All those days of authenticity paid off. All that being in touch with herself and with her deepest intuition. I don’t mean the silly intuition. I mean the real intuition. You know, washing the dishes before going to the library, for example, and knowing that something momentous has just happened somewhere involving your man. She left the dishes, didn’t dry her hands, rushed out the door, shouted to her brothers-in-law, who had just come back from work and who were having a relaxing pre-dinner game of fast handball by the gable wall together, to leave what they were doing and to come and follow her. She headed to the corner of Bock Street off the High Street, knowing that whatever was happening would be happening to Tom there. Was it something to do with Spaders? she thought. Had Tommy Spaders, in his illness, harmed her husband? Meanwhile, it seemed those children I had newly made rich in return for bringing back the relatives hadn’t delivered their message. Three of them had run away, the dishonourables, immediately to spend their gold in the town’s second best sweetshop, the first best sweetshop being inaccessible because of the tarred and feathered person outside. The other two had headed to the Cusack house as commissioned but, en route, passed the wife and the brothers coming towards them from that direction. ‘Misters! Missus! Misters? Missus?’ they tried but, as the adults looked grim and in such a ferocious hurry, the children also headed to the second best sweetshop, assuming news of the tar and feathering had penetrated by now.
Yes. Angelus and the brothers had picked up speed and were running to get to Bock Street. Before they arrived, however, some of the Well-Meanings of the ‘You gave our books away!’ were also running to assist Jotty and Tom. Well done, I thought. How damned decent of them not to hold the borrowed Recovery book bad behaviour against her. Before they reached her, though, certain Ordinary Decent Folk, still on the sidelines, were beginning to whisper and move forward again. They were saying something about Jotty’s hair being too long, and uh oh! I thought, for I knew, then, another tar and feathering was coming. This was despite Jotty – ever since long ago when her hair had fallen out after a happening – having hardly any hair growing on her head now at all.
They sidled up. I glanced around. Where were those rich children? Where were the relatives? By the time the multitude reached her, Jotty still hadn’t managed, in all her fumbles, to untie even a little scrap of Tom. As for himself, to this day, I couldn’t get a gist as to whether he was aware of anything. Was he unconscious, or was he in that state where you can perfectly hear the bones cracking and perfectly feel the blows landing, and perfectly pick up every and all sensation and hear animals guffawing above you, but to anybody looking on, you’re stone cold dead and gone.
They grabbed her and I hovered. One-foot-to-the-otherfoot. Then back, one-foot-to-the-other-foot. I hopped and hopped and glanced and hesitated. Then I don’t know what came over me for it hadn’t come over me earlier but –
‘Deer With Twixt Legs! Watch out!’ I yelled.
That did it. They scattered. Me and Jotty and Tom Cusack and the hosiery girls were the only ones still present. Then the Well-Meanings arrived. Then the Cusacks arrived. Instead of guns, these men had fighting sticks. Oh, I beg your pardon. They had guns as well. They ran up and Angelus reached Tom and fell upon him and, between them, all the women managed to get him up and away from that lamp-post. The Well-Meanings then saw to Jotty, who was totally hysterical because of one Tom being dead and the second Tom maybe being dead, plus other people she was related to recently being dead, and all whilst the Cusack brothers crouched and scoured and pointed their guns and wouldn’t turn their backs on anything. Cusack didn’t die. I thought maybe you might want to know that. Turns out he wasn’t even unconscious but, not to get too deep into consequences, it was said that afterwards he would jump at his own shadow and also at other shadows, and wouldn’t let anybody, bar his wife and four brothers, near him for a long time.
I thought with all this distraction and with the Well-Meanings blocking her from me, and with her being in shock anyway, I’d be safe. I mean from Jotty. I mean from that thing she was wanting me to do. She stood up. She thanked the Well-Meaning
s, said she was grateful to the bitches for not holding the book disgrace against her. She seemed like she was growing sleepy. Then, seeing me, the wits snapped back and she dove over and took a hold once more.
Before I tell you about the coffin and her making of me to get involved in it, there’s something else I need to reveal as well. It’s about Jotty and another of those shadows. This one, so far, she hasn’t got to grips with. If she doesn’t get to grips with it soon it’s going to destroy her. If it doesn’t destroy her, she’ll end up half-destroyed, along with her poor relatives in that place on the Hill.
Chapter Fifteen
For all her worry and hysteria about her missing niece and ‘Where’s Jane? Where’s Jane?’, with her disturbed mind taking over and making coffins out of everything – fridge? kitchen cupboard? washing machine? stereo? vacuum cleaner? eggcups? thimbles? – I say hold on. How come Jotty hadn’t been able to take on board that this teenager had been in danger when clearly, even before it was said she disappeared five years earlier, she had? Knowing Jane had such a man as Jotty’s brother for a father, and knowing Jane had such a family of origin as descended from Jotty and John’s and even Janet’s family of origin, how come Jotty hadn’t been taking protective action way before the ‘missing’ stage at all? Also, she had this other niece and nephew, Julie and Judas. You may have met them. She acts as if she hasn’t. And she acts, too, as if she’s never met her other nieces and nephews – the virginally conceived, mysteriously birthed, physically provided for but emotionally neglected children of her poor sisters. What was going on? How come that less than an hour earlier, during all that arresting and carrying out of dead bodies, Jotty hadn’t noticed Jane’s sister, Julie, on the hearth, half-strangled by her father, even though the girl was only inches from herself?
Are we back to this ‘Not Knowing But Knowing’ business? For seven and a half years now Jotty had been in therapy and doing her best to pull herself to consciousness, whilst simultaneously trying her best to keep those mental curtains closed. This is normal. It takes as long as it takes. You might say, ‘Heck, it didn’t take me that long in therapy,’ but someone else might counter with ‘Yes, but patently you’re not cured yet.’ Anyway, how do you start something? And, anyway, how do you stop something? Residues of bits just keep clinging on. Your superproneness to distort, to distrust, to dissociate, maybe even to multiple personality disorder if you’re creative enough to do so, isn’t really, in the long run, going to help matters. You can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and, by the way, ‘baby with the bathwater’ is a virulent little clue to the past spilling into the present right here.
But am I being unkind to Jotty specifically? After all, she wasn’t the only one storing things in the space at the end of the space, stuffing unpleasant what-nots into mental kitchen cupboards. When it was first intimated Jane had disappeared, Jotty seemed to do what others did as well. She didn’t notice. When she did notice, because the not-noticing was reaching red-alert proportions, she continued to do what most did even then. This was now to believe that her niece had gone off to live with relatives in some place so far away she may as well not have existed. But then, when some in the town started the rumour that perhaps Jane Doe hadn’t left Tiptoe Floorboard, Jotty at first couldn’t grapple with that piece of consciousness as well.
Until now.
Now she had started to question. First Janet. But Janet was impossible. Her answers struck Jotty as sinister jigsaw-puzzle parts.
‘It was just blood,’ she said. And she seemed to parrot this expression as if rehearsed, even though Jotty hadn’t brought up the subject of blood with her. That was what she said when Jotty waylaid her with her Big Shopping coming out of the Almost Chemist of the Year. Waiting on the corner, Jotty got a hold and manoeuvred her sister-in-law-cum-cousin into one of the stationery-launderette-gunshops by way of imparting crucial newsreel information about a new virus that was circulating. Janet was startled but Jotty said John wouldn’t catch it just so long as Janet took the proper precautions, which Jotty would give her as soon as she came along this way. So, luring the woman with promises of precautions, she got her into the gunshop and, once inside, pinned her into a corner and put it to her straight.
The effect upon Janet was similar to the effect of ‘having it put to her straight’ not that long afterwards. This was in court, when she was charged with being an accomplice, with conspiracy, with aiding and abetting, with accessory before, during and after, and with murder as well. It had been a highprofile case and the court had been packed, and outside the court had been packed also. Tension was high although, as far as Janet was concerned, the only odd thing about it was her sensation of feeling accused.
She frowned at the man. And was it that he was accusing her of omitting to admit to something? Charged with not preventing? All proven by way of false authenticity meetings, camera footage, evidence painstakingly collected via covert chitchat operations, tea and buns in gunshops and complicated wiretaps?
‘Well, yes,’ she said, rather exasperatedly. ‘I already told you. Of course he came in with blood on his hands. But I thought he just had blood on his hands. I didn’t know. I thought it was just blood, y’know, just blood, y’know. Blood.’
‘Weren’t you concerned when you saw this blood?’
Janet Doe shrugged. Her sister, Jetty, who had been having an affair with John, was at that moment glimpsed by Janet. She was sitting in the jury. Good God! Janet’s mouth fell open. The cheek of the woman! To be sitting in judgement when look at the morals upon her! Janet was so overwhelmed by the unfairness of this discovery that she could only point in astonishment. There were moments of alarmed murmuring, bodyrustling, as counsel, press, guardsmen, guardswomen, gallery, everybody, even the jury tried to work out Janet’s indications and dumbstruckness. Jetty Doe, however, remained poised and motionless. She sat in her chair – which seemed to encompass half of the jurist Mrs McGonigle’s chair and half of the chair of the jurist Mr Strain beside it. She had been grinning at her sister and she continued to grin at her sister until, finally, the judge banged his gavel and warned everybody they’d better sit down at once. Janet was asked the question again. I mean about the blood. This time, both sisters shrugged.
But he was talking again. He was saying something now about the laundry, to which her sister, now up in the gallery, was making some very pronounced chuckling. How come the judge wasn’t banging his wee stickie now?
‘Wasn’t like that,’ Janet cried. ‘It was ordinary. The lamps were on. It was cosy. The TV and the fridge and washing machines and vacuum cleaners and hairdryers and tick-tocks were on. It was all nice, apart from that entire racket, but that’s the way he likes it, and when John’s calm, I’m calm, and he was calm, until the murmurs of the neighbours next door.’
‘You felt no inclination, no instinct? Female? Maternal? Human?’ The man paused. He looked incredulous. He spread his hands, glanced at his jury, at his gallery. Jetty, still in the gallery, leaned forward and, when her body rose into the air until it was spread prone just above the heads of the people in the gallery, Janet saw her give this whippersnapper the fingers. She noticed, also, the whippersnapper pretended not to see that.
‘The police, Janet Doe? The neighbours? For your own safety? For the safety of your children? You did not think to act as a mother, a citizen, a member of the ordinary decent human community? You informed nobody of your husband’s activities over a period of—’
Janet shook her head.
One reason she shook it was her befuddlement as to why he was changing the picture. Second thing, she realised Jetty had been giving her the fingers and not him all along.
‘Janet Doe,’ the man persisted, ‘your children—’
‘They were losing their integrity,’ she cried. ‘They were starting not to come home.’
At this, Jetty Doe’s body, which had sunk partially beneath the floorboards of the gallery, now rose, much more swiftly this time, again into the air. Janet,
perching on her own chair, squinted as she watched this rapid phenomenon. ‘What’s she’s doin’ …?’ she muttered. ‘Why’s she …?’
Jetty swooped down on her sister and Janet forgot the court, forgot the Martini fridge boy cross-examining her, forgot everybody who wasn’t her sister. She let out a screech as she tried to back through her chair.
After much gavel-banging and ‘Shut up! Shut up! Everybody shut up!’ and guardspeople running over and Janet being ordered to sit down for she’d jumped up and was pointing to Mrs Asmoday, then Mr Cleave, then Mrs Fearon, no, Mr Legion, no, no, hold on. Just a minute. Where? Oh! She’s gone! Janet did begin to sit down. But – Guess who! Guess what! Guess who! – that’s right. She sat on top of Jetty. She saw the arms then come up and around from each side to envelop her, and that was when she screamed and spectacularly passed out.
But all that was in front. For now, she was upset and annoyed. This was at Jotty, not Jetty, because her sister-in-law was hemming her into this gunshop corner, and on false pretences. Turned out there was no dangerous virus going around after all.
She bulldozed her way out, shouting, ‘Almost Chemist of the Year! Almost Chemist of the Year!’ as her credentials for further protections and also as her final parting shot to the air.
As to Jane’s sibling brother and sister, their Aunt Jotty couldn’t, or wouldn’t, go anywhere near them. One reason was because it was physically impossible. Julie and Judas didn’t get their reputations for slip-sliding even the most determined person for nothing. Second reason was that, unconsciously, it was easier to ignore them. After all, might one of them be next to disappear?