So I Am Glad

by A. L. Kennedy

  “Hit me, then. Go on, hit me.”

  “No.”

  So the irony of my position as I purred about paracetamol and instantaneous relief did not escape me, but the job is the job is the job and it has to be done.

  “Thanks then, Jennifer. That last one was fine. Lucy will call you when they have some more.”

  We were nothing if not professional, no involuntary body language, no casual meeting of eyes. I only noticed how tired I was as I walked out to the bus stop. My spine felt compressed, tender, and I was reminded again what an effort it takes to sustain a convincing indifference.

  Now what I should have done then was to come home and go straight to bed. That would have been sensible. I had gone through a more than averagely disturbing day, but for someone like me, a calm person, that really needn’t have had any great effect. I should not have done anything out of the ordinary, out of character, but I did.

  I’m trying to say that I don’t understand what happened next. But then, why should I? My life had always been fairly incomprehensible, why should it change for the better that morning, why not for the worse? I didn’t understand my father or my mother. I didn’t understand my country, its past, its present, its future, its means of government or the sense of its national anthem and flag. When I was young I didn’t understand the other children and the adults were just as bad. Then I became an adult and nothing had changed. I didn’t understand Steven, or anyone else of my intimate acquaintance, up to and of course including me. I never did really understand me.

  Still, it’s nothing to get upset over, is it? This frightening lack of comprehension is balanced by a wonderful absence of fear and on I go, just as capably as many more apparently normal people do. So at the faint blue beginning of that particular day, I travelled perfectly predictably from the station to the bus stop, to the bottom of our street, to our house and up and in.

  I remembered I had to be quiet, with everyone home and sleeping, and snugged the door behind me against the few experimental chirps and bronchitic engines of our city’s dawn. The lock slapped back in place, I took off my shoes and creaked gently up the stairs. End of a tough day for little old me, not feeling well, feverish and light-headed and I should be going right to bed but I’m not. I go into Martin’s room instead.

  He’s there, not actually sleeping, but not entirely awake. He is sitting up and staring at the thin pewter light from his window curtain. I watch while he yawns like a puppy, damp-eyed, and pats at the side of his bed with one hand. This is a gesture I have not seen in years, but I know exactly what it means and am already walking towards him.

  “Is it the morning, Jennifer?”

  I am ready, leaning in to hear him because I know that he will whisper. Only whispering will suit us now, because we are exchanging secrets at the outset of our day.

  “Yes, it’s morning.”

  “Good. Good morning, Jennifer.”

  “Good morning. Whoever you are. It’s very early. You should be asleep.”

  “Certainly. But you have something to tell me, I think.”

  “Yes, I do. I would like.”

  “You would?”

  The words were sticking in my chest for some reason, they weren’t making it all the way up and through to my mouth. It was ridiculous to be nervous, so I felt ridiculous. Probably that’s what I felt.

  “Hum, I would like you not to worry.”

  He curled his forefinger against his lips for a moment. “Not to worry. I would also like me not to worry, but it does present a method of occupying time, when one is utterly powerless.”

  “I know it doesn’t sound very sympathetic, or constructive. I just would like you not to worry. And I will do things to help you not to. I will take care of, well, of some of the problems.”

  “You need not.”

  “I know.”

  “I haven’t asked you to do anything for me.”

  “I know.”

  “Which is an excellent way to encourage unsolicited assistance, but this is not why I have not asked.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t really mind, either way. I think I have to go to sleep now.”

  “I would agree. So we will both sleep and not cause ourselves any worry because we will both be asleep and what harm can we come to in our sleep?”

  I found it oddly hard to resent the tiny white spots of fatigue that were firing away in grand style at the backs of my eyes—the way they like to. I nodded and was moving to go when Martin took my hand, lifted it to his mouth. “Thank you for all your attentions.”

  Back out in the dark of the corridor, the print of his lips shone very slightly along my fingers, and disappeared gently as I sat in my bedroom, unbuttoning my blouse.

  AND NOW WE’LL leave me there for a while. Nothing too much will happen while we’re away. I will rest and become more ill and then much better. I will sleep and be afraid to swallow and then sleep again and be visited by a doctor as if he were also in my sleep. I will be told, I think by the doctor, but maybe by Arthur, that I will neither die nor go to work for a week because I have been given a certificate to that effect. More importantly I have an officially recognised abscess on my tonsil which means I must take several daily pills. I will do this and be cured. I will move from being sick to being not sick in the most clear and beautifully comprehensible way. For one whole day I will be happy just to be well. Then because I am not only well but also human, I will forget how good this is and life will become less fresh, but much more normal.

  This chapter will roll its way forward in other times and places and, when I feel ambulant, I will abandon my room and go roaming about downstairs. I will see that the kitchen has survived without me—it is perhaps cleaner than normal. Slightly disappointed that I am so domestically dispensable I will spend almost a week about the house with Liz in Cornwall for no good reason at all, Arthur working his strange shifts at the bakery and Martin who isn’t Martin. Martin who isn’t Martin doesn’t go out, he stays and speaks to me. He has barely said a word to anyone since I fell ill and now he is making up for lost time, for lost years, for a whole lost lifetime of conversations. He is talking his world into existence and I am listening because I have very little else to do. I risk a few expeditions to the garage for milk and crisps, and I listen to Martin who isn’t Martin and I am quiet with Martin who isn’t Martin and I find I am almost constantly in the company of a person who is not me. Not such a terrible thing, I know, but very unusual in my life.

  All of that talking and medication will swill about together in my head, but first I must have a fever. I have banked myself up on a wedge of pillows because I feel that if I lie flat I will choke and drown and that fever is rising close now, rocking and twirling at the brain. It waits until I’m drowsy to come right in. It gives me the clear idea that I am not in bed and sitting up for important reasons that I have misplaced. Or perhaps I am in my bed, but without the familiar room around it for important reasons I have misplaced. I should find all those reasons. Or at times I feel somebody looking at me, the feel of their looking is green and the same as a headache only longer.

  I do not, to be honest, hallucinate in a full-blown way, but my dreams go roaring and crawling all night and on into the day. They are unstoppable and include in their florid procession an atmosphere I knew a long time ago. It passes through me and I shiver from a hot sweat to a cold.

  Do you remember that little movement Martin made a while ago? He patted the side of his bed with one hand, just his palm landing lightly on the coverlet, two or three times. Well, something very like that happened quite often when I was much younger. Thirty years much younger, even a touch more than that. Remembering made me think and brought on that old atmosphere.

  Now this section, you needn’t read or really bother with. It won’t add to your understanding of the book, or of the story it’s trying to tell. Here is where I’ll put something down that’s for me, a corner of all this writing which is only mine and not a confidence I’m going to offer,
not part of my calculations. I really would like to say what I have here to say.

  I would like to take a part of my past in the past and set it down so it will stay. I will let it go from me and keep this record here because I wish to. Here I will see and understand this thing and then I will put it down. This is heavy and has come too far with me already and now I am tired and I am going to put it down.

  Here.

  I am behind the white door, my parents’ white door, which has the china handle, and that door is shut. We are all together in the one room, my father and my mother and me. I watch.

  Pat, pat, the hand at the side of the bed. Come closer, stand here, sit down and be so near to us you will breathe our smell.

  They had a mad kind of seaside and eggwhite smell that made me sick. I would taste it when it wasn’t there.

  I have forgotten how we began to be the way we were. It may be that I never knew, that plans were perfected before I could catch a trace of them and that I moved within them, never aware until the room was opened and I was taken in.

  She was my father’s second wife. Definitely my mother, the only one I’d known, but his second wife. I don’t know if that was important, a determining factor, or not. I think that he loved her. I think that I did, too.

  There was, of course, a time when I knew that something was wrong. A time to decide that no one should ever come home with me. I had started at a school by this time—the way that children are supposed to do—and it was accepted that school friends would visit each other at their homes—your invitation would follow theirs and vice versa. Before I had fully considered why, I knew that friends should be avoided, that no one should get in and see us, find us out. And friends are not so difficult to make, it took a good deal of work to escape having even one. Later I thanked myself for my efforts—they earned me a great deal of peace. I believe I have always liked peace.

  Christmas was the first time, I’m almost sure of it, because the whole proceedings were presented as if they were an extra present, something saved for Boxing Day.

  They called me, they made me laugh and run up the stairs. I was out of breath when I stopped running, the blood knocking in my ears and I had fear all over me. Not just the pitch in the stomach—that had happened before because children are always afraid, they don’t know enough not to be—this was prickled down the side of my face, crawling at the backs of my legs. It was a kind of horror, moving on me.

  I didn’t understand it, naturally, not for a couple of years. I was frightened by their shapes and their colour and most of all by their noise, my mother’s noise. I thought she was hurting.

  Sometimes he would be hurt, too. All I did was watch. I knew, when they looked at me, that they couldn’t tell how I was inside, unless I showed them. They were trying to see what I thought, but I didn’t let them and once they were really started they had no interest in me. I was left alone.

  Outside their room I was generally safe, unless they gave me those looks, or asked me questions. But they could be too keen on occasions, too anxious to be at each other, I would find them in other places. Which was how they made my house unsafe. Their gritted teeth, their damp faces, inquisitive eyes—there they would be, in ambush.

  I can only suppose they may have needed me to be there, wanted me, but I didn’t know that then. They did what they did for their own, closed reasons and I waited at the end of it every time, wishing they wouldn’t come round, wouldn’t move again. I wanted stillness and no voice to tell me, “Go on now, go away.” No voice.

  There is a little of myself I may have left there. If I could reach back and get it, let myself out, I would do it. I would tell me that it was all right now because they both were a long time gone. I’m safe. There is nothing that can tie me to any of those days and hours but my mind and my mind is my friend. I am the best friend I ever could have in the big, broad world. I look after me now and am careful to know what could and could not be my fault. Naturally, I am sorry for my past. I let myself down there, was not on the ball, but I don’t blame me too much for that. It most likely wasn’t my fault.

  Not anyone’s fault, in fact, just some of the stuff that families do—certainly not the worst I’ve heard about. Except that it happened to me and so is, evidently, the worst that I have known. But any after-effects have been minimal. I’ll get a twinge of recognition when I come across an over-familiar gesture or an unlucky order of words. And if we ever had to share a house, Lord knows I would respect your privacy as much as I humanly could, but never make love so loudly I can hear you. I don’t like that. That makes me play music and slam doors and do things inimical to a mood of undisturbed romance. Which is why Liz spends most of her love-life elsewhere, even leaving us when she is here through extensive nocturnal abuse of our telephone. Arthur, on the other hand, is easily quiet about sex, very physical and liniment-smelling in other ways, but quiet about truly entering into sex. I sometimes think he would rather eat or lift a weight than fuck and I personally can’t say that I find his decision in any way strange. But then I wouldn’t, would I?

  Talking of our household, I think we’ll go back to it. Intermission over and we have reached the point where I am all better and taking two baths a day to soak the smell of illness out of my skin. My voice is back, unscathed, or perhaps even improved by its little rest and if Martin was talking the clock round, I must admit, I wasn’t far behind him.

  We paced out circuits of the garden, exclaiming on its walls and earth, its fifteen over-balanced antirrhinums. There was more than enough time to count them. We noticed how tree leaves, generally speaking, were in colours complementary to the sky. Along the passages of our house and through the kitchen, at any step on the stairs, we could find ourselves overwhelmed by a fresh sentence and glad that we had someone handy to hear it out. We did not even need to be together—from anywhere to anywhere we could shout. We made the place ring.

  This expanded our small-talk, but left it essentially unchanged. Small. No souls were unburdened, no levels of communication were plumbed and breached. We didn’t touch. I would have noticed if we did. And we didn’t. Still, there was something going on.

  I think it took three days, or four, and then we hit Friday, the day before I would have to go back to work. Friday in the morning.

  “Jesus loves the Eskimos,

  English and Arapahos,

  Pigmentation is no bar,

  He loves us for what we are.”

  “Is that you off, then?”

  Arthur grinds his way through a round of black toast while tying his shoes. He goes to stand over the sink and brush the crumbs from his sweater, wash his hands.

  “No, this is me just in. Three hours off and then it’s back to the hot-plate. I think I’m going to jack it in soon. Before I become unable to talk to anything but scones. And front-of-the-shop Mary. The way she rings up that till can make you hallucinate.”

  “At the very least.”

  “She dresses all in that dark blue with the little apron and the name tag. Like a confectionery nurse. I’ve started having dreams where I cover her with floury handprints. And I don’t even like her. We don’t speak. Except for ‘Any more scones there, Arthur?’ She doesn’t even say that nicely.”

  “I’d never really seen you as the baker type.”

  “Well, I’m mad as a baker.”

  “Mad as a hatter.”

  “No, mad as a baker. I’d have to be. I am going to pack it in soon, though. A couple of people want murals for their kids’ bedrooms. I might have another go at doing that—see if I can keep the orders going this time. I thought two velociraptors disembowelling a ninja turtle might be the thing. Or Bambi kicking hell out of a psycho android.”

  “For infants, is it?”

  “Mm, you’re right. Bambi shagging Thumper and Barbie knocking hell out of Ken.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Maybe if I went back to driving the cabs.”

  I usually enjoy Arthur’s company—he is comfortab
le to have around, non-abrasive. But I want him to go away this morning. I want him to leave me alone, or to leave us alone—me and Martin de Bergerac.

  “Oh, and my mum said she got a spirit message for me from my Auntie Bet.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Yes. Said she’d had a definite presentiment that I was about to become superstitious.”

  “Mm. And I hear gullible’s being removed from the dictionary this week.”

  “Really? Gosh.”

  “That’s my boy. Go on to work now.”

  “Okay. And glad to see you looking better, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s Martin?”

  “Fine.”

  “I see he left the money for his rent.”

  “Yes.”

  “Quiet type.”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t we all, though. Today I shall construct a monster out of scone. The perfect man.”

  “Self-raising, you mean?”

  “Sssh. The sweetness of treacle, the brain of a raisin and the strength of a potato. They said I was mad, you know. Mad. See you later.”

  He goes and I realise what’s happened. For some reason, certainty has fallen into place. I could literally feel the idea drop and just run down the back of my neck, close to the spine which is always the sign of quality thinking for me. I understand. Whatever I choose to call him, I’m getting used to Martin. I am starting to see being with him as an activity in itself, one for which I need no other company. I wouldn’t put it any more strongly than that, there are no specific emotions involved, but I undoubtedly like him being in our house. I like that whole experience enough to be paying his rent. Cash.

  (Which I knew was a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but it seemed the best move I could make, all the same.)

  And it is still Friday and each of those end-of-the-week heavy minutes are chaining together and hauling in the rest of the morning, all under a dingy sky. It will probably rain later.