So I Am Glad

by A. L. Kennedy

  Confession time again, then. Here we go.

  Steve called in sick, saying he’d been beaten up by a drunk while I winced in the background, knowing this had, indeed, been the case. I toed and froed between my various works and his flat, partly out of a sense of responsibility and partly out of a craven fear that he would call upon help other than mine and the whole, sad episode would lurch into the light of day. Thinking back, I suppose he might have found the good Captain’s activities almost as embarrassing as I did. Then again, I might just have beaten him into a corner. To coin a phrase.

  We never mentioned that night—I even washed every one of his ties that first morning after it happened and gave them a particularly vicious ironing, as if the removal of any knots and wrinkles would lighten the burden of emotional evidence, to say nothing of my appalling hangover. Steven at this point was, of course, still nothing other than an entire body of evidence.

  So I cleaned and fussed and kept myself as far away from Steven and how he looked as I possibly could. He took a rather peculiar pleasure in calling for help to move to the bathroom, to change his position, to stand up. Every little pained sip of breath, every grimace was very justifiably aimed in my direction and each one hit its mark. I was grateful he spent a good proportion of his time attempting to sleep.

  Then after what I recall as being the space of four days, he answered the door to me and said, “No, thank you. I’ll manage. I don’t think . . . I think you shouldn’t come back. Yes, don’t come back. Don’t ever.”

  This was delivered in a nervous rush, his eyes darting beyond me and away. I lifted my hand to brush back my hair and he flinched visibly. Which told me far better than he could that I ought to leave my paper bag of guilty groceries and go back down the stairs. I considered saying sorry again and decided against it.

  I was left back very much where I’d begun, with nothing but overworking and further proof of my status as an interior cripple to sustain me. Along with one more memory, a sharp black edge for my mind to rub over in the night.

  Want to see it? Close your eyes now if you don’t.

  I’m back in Steven’s living room, hard up inside that sweating dark with my brains alive as cordite and a belt secured round the fist of my right hand. His own belt. And now I’m not playing any more, I’m not being anyone but me. I pause and stand, more than warmed up now, really into my stride, and I look down at Steve where he is lying on the table. Possibly he is coming, undoubtedly he is close to the point on one side or the other. His breathing is hoarse, he moves as much as he is able in a private rhythm of his own and he gives out soft noises of a comfort I cannot understand. There he is, alone with his pleasure, and it seems I can do no more than push him even further beyond my reach. I feel all alone.

  I know I should tell him how angry this makes me because that would set my anger free where it could do no harm. I do seriously consider speaking to him as my mouth fills with saliva and I swallow and swallow and find I have begun to cry so that I have to use my free hand to rub at my eyes. I think how unusual it is that I should be weeping this way and that I should be so utterly furious. I find it rather pleasant to feel, all at once, so much.

  I unwind the belt from my hand, wipe the sweat from my palm against my stomach and then take a good hold on the leather again, this time with the buckle end free. I want to be nothing but angry and I am.

  Because dreams do come true, if you want them to.

  But that is no longer one of mine and I promise you I did regret it very much, almost as soon as it had come. I am aware that I cannot regret it as much as Steven must have, but I try my best.

  For those of you who weren’t watching, you can open your eyes again now.

  I disappeared into my work with nothing on my mind but sore things I dearly wanted to forget. I shuffled through December on a sea of coffee and roller-coastering blood sugar in my role as life-support system to a voice. Not that I was ungrateful, my voice did at least return the favour when we weren’t dawdling together in a variety of waiting-areas and subsisting on a diet of chocolate and scribbled-on tabloid remains.

  I hadn’t read the papers for a long, long time and they were coming as quite a shock. In the first place I tried to keep myself separated from images of the news I had to broadcast. It was all very well to talk about gassing whole villages, publicly anatomising children, cosmically and domestically designed disasters— what I didn’t want to consider were the faces of those involved. Now here were all the images I’d avoided and more. A plastic toy suitcase, a coloured fancy hat, the light of intelligence in a pair of eyes could make a photograph instantly unmanageable. I could neither look nor look away.

  Fortunately many of the pictures on offer would be of sturdily grieving relatives offering health and beauty tips, of kissing or tripping, vomiting or waving, smiling or fornicating celebrities by birth, celebrities by occupation or celebrities by act of will. They helped to see me through until even the most distressing snaps became, after a while, part of my expected insensitivity. I could pick up any headline with not even a shiver. I had been successfully numbed.

  SECRET JACUZZI SEX LIFE OF NECROPHILE VOYEUR—PICTURES

  Enabling me to enjoy the finer points of the editorial comment on offer. Apparently my country was in the grip of an extraordinary phenomenon. The public as a whole, and in particular the criminal classes, has lost all ability to discriminate between fact and fiction. No misdeed, however ghastly, could not be traced back to a horribly obtainable novel, film, popular song or comic book. This made for far more exciting reading than the usual tedious bulletins on mass unemployment and hopelessness, including as they did a spicy variety of Hollywood scenarios and pin-up pics of movie stars, now called on as stand-ins for a positive horde of unphotogenic perverts and murderers.

  The next stop was obvious. All our enlightened leaders needed to do to salve all our social ills at a single dab would be to institute a strict public diet of nothing but Beatrix Potter, Walt Disney and Richard Clayderman. Our national stiffening handful of tabloids were doing their little bit by offering tempting displays of body parts and libidinous fables to distract the otherwise discontented mind, but even tits and gossip can only do so much. The church and academic establishment might have been expected to take a lead in governing public thought. Sadly their minds must have been irrecoverably clouded by prolonged exposure to incestuous, cannibalistic and murderous so-called classics by such as Homer and Shakespeare, to say nothing of the incestuous, licentious and utterly bloody contents of the Bible (King James and Good News versions, I don’t know which is worse).

  I even found myself wondering one morning—as I waded through two nasty little murders and a Putney love nest— whether my own sexual irregularities had been caused by early exposure to Charles Laughton in seamy Sunday afternoon matinee black and white. And then I decided this was very likely to be a load of bollocks and that reading too many newspapers was clearly affecting my mind.

  Still, the papers did keep me fully informed on the looming Festive Season. Liz was going to spend Christmas away with her mysterious new man, which almost entirely scotched the idea I’d had that any partner so intensely clandestine must be married. Arthur was, as usual, going home to his mum. This meant I would be all alone in our cold, square house at the top of the road. Because my parents are dead there was no possibility of going home to them and I couldn’t muster any other relative or acquaintance I would dream of spending time with, particularly not at such an overfed and sentimental time of year. In fact, I was looking forward to spending a few quiet days with myself, courtesy of a minuscule Yuletide break from the station.

  So I said goodbye to Liz.

  “Goodbye.”

  “Must run.”

  “All right then, off you go.”

  “Oh, well, have a nice time.”

  “You too. Don’t do anything I would.” Not that Liz was the type to even consider it. A long weekend of bad television and romping about in a cosy hotel w
ould be more her style and good luck to her.

  And I said goodbye to Art.

  “Cheers, then.”

  “You won’t be lonely? Here on your own.”

  “No, no. I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure. Um, about the room, Pete’s room.”

  “I’ve paid the rent.”

  “I know, but—”

  “We can talk about what to do when you get back, when you’re both back. Hhhffur. See what happens then, eh?”

  “Yes, probably, well, who knows what might turn up.”

  “At this time of year, I hate to think. It will probably involve reindeer. Go on now, you’ll miss your coach.”

  He gave me one of his finest clumsy kisses on the ear—this time bumping down to my cheek—and shuffled off under a rucksack and two haemorrhaging bin liners filled with surprisingly inexpensive Tibetan cushions he thought his mother might find useful.

  And then I closed the front door, trying to resist the first wave of Xmassy memories. For some very odd reason, Arthur’s shambling retreat down the icy front path had summoned up a burning recollection of Christmas past. My first public announcement of world news. It was admittedly rather old news, but still had a fine ring to it. I’m sure that, without checking, I could write it straight out, here.

  “And there were at that time, shepherds abiding in the fields watching over their flocks by night.”

  Or something very like that. That was all I got before some other high and wobbly contender picked up the passage and hobbled on with their part of it and then the reading was over and I had to crocodile back to my seat and yell out a carol in the traditional manner. My fragment of glory was all done in far less than the full Warholian fifteen minutes.

  As my father drove me home, he glanced across at my short body, rattling between the safety belt and the leathered expanses of the passenger’s seat.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I was feeling slightly disappointed by the whole affair for no particular reason. Maybe I’d expected a better audience reaction, a few favourable reviews.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Well . . . now that I’ve finished I wish I could do it again.”

  He allowed himself a whoop of knowing laughter.

  “Oh, yes. I always thought that. Never a near enough perfect performance. I know how you feel. Oh, yes. I know exactly how you feel.”

  It was a perfectly humane and reasonable comment—now I listen back to it—I suppose we all do feel roughly the same on these occasions. First we are too nervous and then we’re in the thick of it, mouth working without us like a soft pink word compactor, and then it’s over, where did it go? But at the time, at that time, I felt my father’s knowing, his attention approaching my private self. I was completely determined that he shouldn’t be able to tell how I felt, ever again. I would rather disappear than have that. So I did.

  I suppose it was a kind of resolution—too early for the New Year, of course.

  NOW I’M going to cheat.

  We are high on the lip of the New Year, just looking down at January rising into sight, we are almost dizzy with time. But December is still here and dug in tight with its own peculiar glassworks slithering down pavements and stiffening the earth ferociously. This is our first bitter winter in some years and we have forgotten what to do with real cold. While I wait in a seasonally swollen post office queue, an elderly lady with purple hat and face grabs at me.

  “Is this not terrible? Och, it’s awful, so it is.”

  “It is December.”

  She takes a breath and then stops, begins a small, grim smile. “Well, I suppose we should not expect better. No indeed, dear, this is all we could hope for. December, yes.”

  “Be nice when it’s spring though, eh?”

  “Oh, aye. It’ll be lovely.”

  And so it would.

  She strode off, blackly reconciled to the gusting morning that tore her out through the door and worried at her hat.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the spring—I do that sometimes, they can’t touch you for it, harms no one.

  And here comes the cheat, because this is where I’m going to start the year. At least a fortnight early, walking over the hill and down towards home I will tell you that an old thing seemed to stop and a new one began and I stepped through a change of time. This happened later in the same day as the post office queue.

  Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, I can tell you now that Savinien was also out at the edge of my city, trying to lose himself in what began as a densely foggy dusk. We were out there together, sometimes a few blocks apart, sometimes taking the same street in different hours and half hours. Had we understood how close we were, we might have backtracked, paused, met. Instead we were feeling alone.

  After something like two months of habit, I hardly noticed that I never simply went out and walked any more. I went out and looked. I caught myself asking meaningless questions of the people who sold the homeless magazine, I searched at faces, I checked my bulletins, combed the local papers for news I didn’t want to see. I discovered there are numbers you can ring to register your confusion at a disappearance. You can offer information to the Salvation Army, or Missing Persons, if you have enough information to offer. I didn’t have a photograph, a history, a relationship. I was told my search might not be easy even if I did. I was told how many other persons were missing, that it seemed a popular choice, one of the few available fresh starts.

  The mist that evening was unpleasantly cold, almost choking, and made it almost impossible to look for anything. When I breathed I didn’t get quite as much air as I needed and my mouth began to taste of sour metal, but still the experience was oddly relaxing. I had wanted simply to walk and pass my time, pacify my mind, accepting the general assumption that even in this day and age pedestrian pursuits are intrinsically soothing, but I was coming close to losing my bearings and beginning to feel ill. House-lights simply thickened the overall cloud, sounds jumped and distorted and claustrophobia writhed greyly over anything that was still moving.

  I decided to pick the shortest possible way home, concentrating precisely on my route, leaving no room for panic. The temperature fell steeply. I continued to move forwards. I glanced up. I stopped. I found I was standing beneath a phenomenon.

  Perhaps you know all about this, but I did not. I had never seen mist frozen clean out of the air before. I was suddenly surrounded by a sparking, mineral dark that rained down ice powder in long, light drifts. Each street lamp supported a kind of fish shoal halo, shimmering past like mica or grey silk.

  Within less than a minute, I could breathe again and tarmac, concrete, car roofs, the whole horizontal world was covered in a fine grey fur of frozen moisture. The pavement leading home was as alien and wonderful as the first I had ever seen hidden under snow. I caught myself tiptoeing, as if I were walking the back of a whale.

  I can be very easily satisfied by weather.

  But only in the way I might be by an unexpected busker, any kind of free, open-air event. Climatic change does not normally lead me to expect further, more personal alterations. But this time it did. Perhaps I was tired, perhaps I was indulging in wishful thinking, I don’t know—either way I came in from a night that was quietly silting itself clean and found I was completely certain this could be my fresh start, too. The Year could be New from now on, it would take just a suitable little nudge on my part to get it in place. Somewhere out of reach the future was waiting and I only had to work the combination that would set it all configuring together, clickclickclick, in a beneficial lock.

  Something like that, anyway. Even the gently shifting house, now comfortably empty, had a lightly charged atmosphere. It was waiting for something and wouldn’t tell me what. I felt I was walking around inside an enormous Rorschach blot, trying to make sense of it.

  THE MEANING OF THIS SHAPE IS YOUR FUTURE, WHAT FUTURE WILL IT BE? PLEASE THINK IN THE
SPACE PROVIDED.

  I went to bed instead and had the kind of dream that might be expected at this point, because when you miss people you really do dream about them. I hadn’t gone through the “I see your face in every crowd” palaver yet, but my sleep had been very thoroughly invaded with little snaps and snatches of someone I wanted to recognise. This was the night when he made a full appearance.

  There wasn’t a nauseous search for him through dwindling Escher labyrinths, I didn’t watch myself trying to call him from melting telephones or semaphoring invisibly through one-way glass, none of that. Freudian melodrama was avoided altogether and I slid from adjusting my head against the pillow, settling and growing warm, into something very simple.

  Savinien was there. Back. With me. I was happy. We were happy.

  We were in a small, bare room together where we were perfectly able to step forwards and let our arms go around each other. Both of us wore long, black coats that slowed and muffled our movements, but we did take that step, we did cross and close that distance until it was pressed away.

  We embraced.

  No we didn’t.

  We hugged. Definitely hugged.

  I knew, in the manner of dreams, how both of us felt the little crackle of tension, the shiver of muscles pulling in tight. We constricted each other’s breathing, let a hungriness run along our arms and closed our eyes to fix our concentration at the act of holding on.

  Most of all, I realised we were relieved. We were more relieved than I had needed to know was possible.

  Pathetic, eh?

  A dreamer can do anything, can run several amoks simultaneously and whoop it up no end without the slightest nibble of conscience. What did I get? Hearty hugs and overcoats. Then again, perhaps this was the result of running a tad too amok in reality. The subconscious is nothing if not obsessed with balance. From what I know. Sometimes it tells me things, sometimes it won’t.

  Not that I didn’t feel better for all my Crombie-covered and platonic hallucinations when I first woke up. Then, of course, I developed a clear sensation of being all on my own. Which is the problem with squeaky clean and emotionally committed dreaming, it’ll always give you a terrible kind of hangover in the morning. I’m always much better off with faceless sex and violence, or trying to not dream at all.