Paradise

by A. L. Kennedy

  For their own reasons, individuals bump into you very often, even though they are so few and there is so much space. Not that it matters, because now you are walking, your path is fixed through the things you can buy: ways to tell time and smell not like a monster and ways to smoke and calm the hands and hide the eyes and ways to spend money to make yourself happy and ways to feel filthy because of it, as if you were thumbing through porn, as if people were fucking you here with your own cash.

  No.

  Fuck them. Fuck that.

  That isn’t happy. That’s sad. And it isn’t important, because you don’t want anything: you’re only looking for a friend. Robert would be one if he was here and you will phone him soon, but you can see your other friends now, your darlings, your sweet dreams.

  Although there are so many you can’t choose, and the shelves begin to loom, which is a cause of nervous tension.

  Never mind, though, you find something, grab at something, and hold on to it like a lifebelt until you can pay.

  £11.75.

  Which is momentarily—you seem—it is mislaid—but about you, very close—you can assure.

  £11.75.

  They gave your clothes back, not your money. But you can assure. You look again. There must be something.

  Simon, you prick.

  The announcement announces your flight. Wallet. You have that. Card—no cash machine, no time—but you may have money on the card, in it, in the card, may have £11.75. You have to try, in any case. Time draining out as the girl at the cash desk, a child in fact, tinkers with your plastic, has to type its number out, and then the line is down, or broken, decomposing, and then another slow attempt and mechanical noises follow and, throughout this, she holds fast on to your bottle, as if it might not be completely yours, when she is absolutely much too young to drink and cannot understand a single part of anything about the depth of adult and liquid relationships.

  £11.75.

  You wait for the paper to curl up and out, the signable receipt that will confirm the possibility of purchase. You concentrate on making your signature seem like your own. You smile with your fullest integrity and charm.

  £11.75.

  YES.

  So God is with you—and, in that case, who is not?

  You suit each other, you and God, you’re both alone.

  In the concourse there’s murmuring, faces not in focus, time-delayed, and newspapers in their hands and they’re staring like cows, like standing flesh.

  The toilet is more civilised and smaller, no one here, and that cool, true friend is yours now and you can see much more, hear much more, even before it’s open and too soon and also, to be truthful, not fast enough, there’s the beauty of swallowing, the loveliness, the sharp breath from the bottle’s neck and the handsomeness of that first taste, it shouts out, shudders the walls.

  Then you can ring him—Robert. You can try the card again, persuade it to bear a phone call. You’re more than equal to doing that.

  “Canada, going to Canada—” telling it to his machine, not to Robert, Robert isn’t there—“Sorry. Canada—” his answering machine, which doesn’t answer, just repeats the words he left it months ago. “Canada, that’s . . . Four weeks. I mean, I don’t know. I can come back straight away.”

  But you’ll be better soon. If they’ve spent so much money to make themselves happy, to make you happy, then soon it must come true and you’ll be cured.

  You will give yourself up. You will be helped. You are a habit that you can’t afford.

  That makes sense, that’s quite believable.

  Although not as real as the press of that bet, the drag of expectations impeding you as you run towards the gate.

  But you’re weightless by take-off, no further burden to anyone—your limbs hollowed out with rushing and your heart thinned to pure motion, a soft knot of blood that evaporates, burns into joy. And more joy in the quiet, whisky rattle at your feet, the living, stirring 40 per cent proof of perfection. Add it to yourself and make 100, without fail.

  Man behind’s kicking your seat. Multiple twitching and flickers from every tiny movie screen and up to the toilet with your proof in its nice bag and back and food you don’t need and your eyelids closing harsh against your eyes and swallowing slow and this child in the gangway and she’s staring clear inside you and up to the toilet with your proof in its nice bag and back and over you climbs your neighbour who smells of moss and more proof from the attendant and man behind’s kicking your seat and a kind of sleep and safety in the blank grind of engines and the half-light and up to the toilet with your proof in its nice bag, but leave it now because it’s dead, it’s empty, and this makes you sorry and then sit in your seat and watch the attendant take your nice bag from the toilet and look at it and laugh and man behind’s kicking your seat and

  “What?”

  You want to know why he hates you, why he is doing this—sitting and reading the paper and doing this to you. But then the headline on his lap distracts you. You want to ask about it.

  “What?”

  There are military pictures, which you didn’t expect.

  “What . . .”

  He’s laughing, smirking, undistracted and wiping his hands on his sleeves—some sort of oozing there—and then there’s a jolt through the airframe and

  You see the headlines again.

  “Ah, because, when did this . . .”

  Asking your neighbour now—man behind hates you and is no use— so you call towards your neighbour.

  “We’re at war?”

  And you can’t think how something so large could have occurred so unawares, a whole war without your knowledge, and your neighbour hands over her paper, looks at you as if you are dead and empty and you can’t see the print or the pictures, because they move and make you colour-blind, stone-blind, and everything in the cabin has no proof now and smells of bombs and you are sliding into a restless dark where you float, where you are naked, stripped to your sin, and under you there is nothing but hot, wet earth, no sign of a human past remaining beyond this slaughterhouse stench that catches you, sinks you, drags you above it until you touch, until you are slithering over the thick, red cling of mud and, here and there, it jolts beneath you and this has a meaning you understand—that the dead are kicking up, that they remember you and hear you and can taste that you are there. They want you down. They want you buried down with them.

  It’s like being in love—inhale while you’re looking at no one: exhale and they’re someone, they’re more of yourself, an essential extension, your life support. The whole change happens in half a breath. With being tired, truly very tired, it’s the same thing.

  Blood moves in you, nails grow, your brain ticks by, and you plan and then you execute, hold your agenda, keep your grip, your steering, take account of contingencies and carry them ahead, you are—as far as you are capable—in charge. And then not. Your contingencies evaporate and have no meaning, events are no longer any of your business. You breathe quietly, think nothing, halt.

  This must be the way that angels are—how else could they stand it? During my first day in the clinic—they call it a clinic—I wasn’t at peace. I woke up on a carpet in a blurred room I didn’t know and I was twisted up in sheets, in white cotton, the hint of a bed far to my left. I had the usual no idea of how I’d got there and this disgusting pain when I tried to roll over and guess my bearings.

  I sat up anyway and the sense of bad injury peaked before I could properly work out that I’d just torn away congealed blood from a split in my lip and a number of grazes and a cut above my eye—which had been dressed, but I’d also dislodged the tapes during my period of disarray— and now I was leaning above a sketchy impression of my face, picked out in brown on a virgin bedsheet and—wounds being temperamental—I had already added the odd new touch in crimson. And my mouth had begun to bleed again in earnest.

  I flailed the bed back to a kind of order and dabbed where I hurt with my sleeve, a white sle
eve—they’d dressed me in some kind of pseudo-surgical gown, thin and shapeless and apparently very prone to creasing. It also showed up fresh blood extremely clearly and I pondered the smears and drops that seemed to be spreading without my doing anything and I breathed in and was troubled, distressed. Then I breathed out and my tiredness took me. I was senseless and silent and past recalling before I could reach the coverlet.

  Alcoholics are those excessive drinkers whose dependence on alcohol has attained such a degree that they show a noticeable mental disturbance or an interference with their mental and bodily health, their interpersonal relations and their smooth social and economic functioning; or who show the prodromal signs of such developments. They therefore require treatment.

  World Health Organization,

  Expert Committee on Mental Health

  Alcohol Subcommittee Second Report,

  1952

  Possibly I’m being oversensitive, but that does sound like a threat. “They therefore require treatment.”—There’s a lack of detachment and subtlety in that—it’s interfering. Plus, it appears to be plastered on the back of every door we’ve got here: no bathroom, bedroom, lounge or, very probably, fuse box is free from the Alcohol Subcommittee’s influence. What if I did have a mental disturbance of the noticeable kind? Repeated insinuations about my lack of smooth social functioning could nag me right over my edge.

  Not that I’m anything other than mellow at the minute. This is undoubtedly a calming place to stay. Sensible, if overly hearty eating, lots of bland liquids and sleep, few responsibilities beyond making my own bed: the Clear Spring Clinic’s regimen is exhaustingly healthy. The world may be going to Hell beyond us, but we’re fine and know nothing about it—are forbidden to guess.

  So my fettle is fine. I didn’t realise it was possible to eat this much fruit—all of that peeling and roughage, it seemed very time-consuming when I had other matters in hand. But here I’m gobbling down enough of the stuff to fuel an orangutan.

  This is a sign of my being cooperative, which I am. My compliance is absolute. I came here for treatment freely. I volunteered.

  The trouble is, treatment hasn’t been forthcoming.

  Take today—because I have to, it’s my only way through to tomorrow. This morning, we’re sitting in a circle again—this means we’re doing something to make us better, the kind of something that we get instead of treatment. Apparently it’s a known fact that no one has ever recuperated from any unfortunate state without being slapped down into a grisly ring of pink Naugahyde armchairs and made to discuss their personal lives with a dozen emotional vampires listening.

  There’s a plaintive bastard unburdening himself for us, even now: “What got me . . . the thing with my daughter . . . I knew where she kept her savings and I just took them. For myself.” This is Sam: he is wearing a badge to that effect and has no other distinguishing features beyond his adenoidal whine and his fifth-degree dandruff, filthy clots of it stuck on the inside of his glasses. “My own daughter. I took it all.”

  Which seems fair enough to me—where would a daughter get money from in the first place, if not her parents? And what could she possibly need it for that would actually be important?

  Sam pushes his hand back through his hair every thirty seconds: regular as the clock over the door, but infinitely less tidy. I must end up inhaling at least an ounce of dead, khaki skin from him each session. I’ve had five days of this already and neither of us seems to be any better—in fact, he seems worse.

  He’ll cry soon—a compulsive weeper, Sam—which is great. The circle is delighted when anyone cries and usually we get a break then, possibly with biscuits, because the nurses are also delighted by even a dewy eye, never mind a remorseful tear.

  Our group has two nurses. Nurse Ogilvie (we can call him Frank) is a broad slab of scrubbed and trimmed exterior with tiny dark eyes and a small, deep mouth marooned in his massive face, nothing to do there but seem overly mobile and too moist. Nurse Forbes (we can call him Nurse Forbes) is taller and stringy with a hint of wiry, nasty strength. Sometimes—today, for example—we get the pair of them at once.

  They’ll know what prodromal means. I don’t. Sounds like a sedative. “Let Prodromal wash your cares away. Larger doses produce euphoria, smooth social and economic functioning and the sensation of being caught in a state of permanent fucking grace.”

  That’s the kind of prescription to get your respect.

  “There was blood everywhere. I didn’t know whose it was . . . that is, while I was in the blackout, I could have—”

  Yes, yes, you could have done anything: we all could have done anything, we’ve all had blood everywhere—I’m not impressed. Life is unpredictable: blood’s bound to be involved eventually.

  It’s not that I’m unwilling to participate. I do try. I have a genuine desire to be a different, more comfortable, person when I leave. Matters came to a head and required a firm adjustment which will mean that I have to cut down on my misbehaviours. I can see that change is necessary and I’m aware that I will have to apply myself. In my initial assessment— which they ran through when I was still delicate, had a headache that hurt in the soles of my feet—even then I made sure to be very much aware and in favour of both change and application.

  Still, I’m just not satisfied with this. I spent my first three days penned in my room with the wet heaves and the dry heaves and the sweats and the cracked lips and the stiff hair that smells of vomit and disturbs you when you’re having a go at sleep. Although that’s to be expected— likewise, the dreams full of somebody drowning you and the rattling while you’re awake—the whole rigmarole. Been there before. But not in a clinic, not in a caring environment, not where I might have believed I would get trained support. Nurses, they can give you Valium, they can let you ease down gently, they can prove that they are bloody nurses, and not a collection of unskilled sadists in pastel uniforms, by doing a tiny bit more than coming in every couple of hours with clean basins and orange squash.

  Oh, and showers—the lady nurses help you shower. As if you’d want to, as if tons of leaping water and a resultant lack of air and echoes that would deafen a corpse are what you long for as you lie on your bed in the half-dark and tremble and watch the ceiling creep.

  The problem with doing it this way, coming off without chemical aid, is that your head goes all over the place. You can’t think. Or you think far too much. Or in far too many dimensions.

  Like why didn’t I have any grandparents? I’d have enjoyed them, called them Nan-Nan, or Pop-Pop, or some other daft name I thought up when I was two. They would have been stabilising for me.

  You wake before dawn and, eyes still shut, you’re already going full tilt at remembering a sandwich you ate in school with the best friend you haven’t seen for twenty years and you immediately miss her to the point of weeping and then progress to worrying that she’s dead.

  My mother’s parents are dead—house fire before I was born. Nobody ever mentioned my father’s, though—as if they’d never been. That’s not normal. In a well-balanced family, I would have been informed: the presences and absences would have been accounted for, saved up in a lovely, old shoebox my mother would keep in her dressing-table drawer. We could have looked through it on rainy Sundays—“That’s your birth certificate—2:15 in the morning, what an early bird. That’s your Nan-Nan Luckraft beside her scooter. Pop-Pop was taking the picture: look, you can see part of his thumb. And there’s Grandpa McGovern in his sapper’s uniform. He was at Dunkirk. A great fan of Jimmy Jewel: you would have liked him.”

  There are so many stories I don’t have. And who will tell me to anyone when I’ve gone—Simon? Simon’s child? I’ll be a diplomatic silence. Or maybe I won’t come to mind in the end—as if I’d never been.

  Sam is snuffling quietly in his chair, a box of tissues passed along to him with dreadful efficiency, the whole group attempting to seem moved by his grief. Yesterday we were told alcoholics are selfish, so we have worked ou
t that showing concern for our fellow patients—although we have nothing in common—will probably aid our final diagnosis. Alcoholic: who’d want to see that in their file? And anyway, there’s no point being normal, if you can’t get it to show.

  These chairs are the colour of testicles, exactly the right shade: that dusky-browny-rose. Is this intentional and, if so, is it meant to make us more or less relaxed?

  Oddly, we’re not allowed a break—perhaps because Sam cries too easily and represents no particular achievement. We always confess in strict order of clockwise rotation, so a tiny flutter of tension springs up round the room while we realise that Gregory is next. We all have our cinematic low points and our scars, but Gregory is special.

  “I can’d shink of anyshing dhuday. No’ yealy . . .” His face is perfect, clear as milk, almost painfully young—his trouble lies under his chin where the knife went in: the knife he was holding. We got our chance to decipher the whole story on my first session with the group: clumping my twitchy hands together to prevent embarrassment, and picking out one dulled consonant after another as Gregory was forced into stumbling out the tale of the Montreal evening, the bar, the minor squabble, the girl-friend who started flirting with the ugly businessman and then the yank forward through no one can tell how much time until Gregory is running across the Place Dupuis and falling unluckily and waking up in a hospital with a ragged hole through the floor of his mouth and a very much shorter tongue. It disturbed him that he must have swallowed the missing tip.

  Although Gregory is determined to have nothing more for us today. As his silence threatens to solidify, Nurse Forbes chisels in. No soul’s going to pass unbared while he’s around. “We can wait. Perhaps you want to talk about how you’re finding the clinic.” Gregory’s a new arrival, like me. “Where do you feel you fit into the group? Gregory?”