So I Am Glad

by A. L. Kennedy

  “Jennifer? Jennifer?”

  “Mm.”

  “You are . . . how are you?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  I pushed the side of my face against the door and we were still again, leaning against each other, with the house a big silence above and below.

  Gradually I braced myself harder, slipping my feet out slightly to the side. The effort it took me to maintain my position suggested what I thought would be only a small betrayal. A necessary deception.

  I increased the pressure.

  I moved away.

  He fell straight forward and down without a sound, one arm flying up as the door slammed past me and shut. I staggered when something clipped my ankle, but caught the sink and steadied myself. When I first saw him, I was looking in the mirror above the sink.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

  He lay quite still, his face turned from me.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Although he was wrapped round with towels, it was obvious he had lost a good deal of his weight. His arms and legs were pale, marked with old and new bruises, cuts, his feet were raw, swollen.

  I did not want him to be like this. I wanted him to be as I remembered, now comfortably back home. I wanted him largely contented, with nothing out of place that a meal or two wouldn’t fix.

  When I saw him lying, I felt pointlessly furious, sick. But I didn’t hurt. I only hurt when I saw his head. He had shaved all his head. His scalp and face were grey and bleeding. I leaned against the sink and watched the blur of my face reflected, misting the glass, partially obscuring the reflection of a fallen man. I wanted to go through the mirror and get him.

  He huddled in on himself when I approached and I kneeled beside him so that I could speak softly and because he looked too much like the kind of figure there would always be somebody standing above, an average newspaper snap of oppression. I had no intention of looking down on him.

  “Why did you do it? What’s wrong? You don’t look too good, you know. You always were lousy at shaving.” I tried a little laugh but the result felt unpredictable so I stopped. “Come on and we’ll get you to your room. I kept it for you. Come on, you can’t stay here.”

  “You tricked me.”

  “I know I did, I’m very sorry. Were you hurt when you fell?”

  “You tricked me!”

  “Ye—”

  Remarkably quickly, he had rolled and grabbed my feet away from under me. I landed stupidly, twisting my shoulder. As I tried to slither to a sitting position, I found one of Savinien’s knees pressing across my throat.

  “Huuah whu?”

  I scrabbled uselessly with my free hand until it was caught and held by the wrist. His grip was cold and slippy. It was becoming very difficult to breathe. When he shouted his mouth smelt of something low and sweet and dying. The same sick honey scent was drifting and building from the clothes piled on the floor.

  “You tricked me! I trusted you! You cunt! Cunt! Cunt. Oh, oh . . .”

  His mouth winced and he let go my hand, slid off into a crouch beside my head. I have to say I got to my feet as soon as possible and got in my own share of screaming. I was angry.

  “What the fuck are you doing! I’m trying to help you! What are you, crazy! You try that again, you’re out of the house, out of the house. I don’t care who you are. Fuck. Fuck! You idiot! Stupid, fucking idiot.”

  He shivered and stared.

  “Awfff . . . no, don’t. I should be doing that! Don’t start. Look, I am not coming near you, you are just going to have to sit there and be . . . I can’t help you. I can’t. Just stop it! Stop it!”

  It was fear really, I wasn’t angry at all, I was suffering from delayed fear. So I yelled and I yelled and his face pulled apart into sobs and then I stopped yelling because I was starting to just cough and it was doing no good, except that he was quietening a bit and in the end I sat down and I sort of nudged at him and he didn’t do anything and then I grabbed for his hand and he flapped me away and I tried it again and he flapped me away again and that happened a few times and then we did hold hands. We held hands for quite a while. We did that.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t usually shout.”

  “No. I must apologise.”

  “Too right.”

  “I should never . . . I have never done something like this to a woman. I am . . . I am terribly ashamed.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t do it again.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “That’s not a very good answer.”

  “I don’t feel very good. I’m . . . I’m . . . I would really like to be clean. I washed and washed. I used the little brush you have and so much water, as hot as I could bear, but it has not made any difference. I can feel I am not clean.”

  “I know, I know.” I didn’t, but it seemed the right thing to say. “We’ll sort it out, though. But you’re freezing. I’ll get you something to wear.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. You can’t stay here, you’re shivering and you’re—you can’t sit here for ever. Right? I’ll put some stuff on Peter’s bed and I’ll tidy up here. All right?”

  “Burn my clothes.”

  “Oh.”

  “Burn them.”

  “Yes, fine, I’ll see to it all, don’t worry. I’m just going to go through to Pete’s room now, okay? And then we’ll talk. Okay?”

  “Yes. But Jennifer?”

  “Mm hm?”

  “Don’t be long away.”

  “Fine. Fine, I won’t be.”

  “Eh!”

  “What! What’s the matter.”

  “Mmm. I am about to yawn.”

  I thought that he was being euphemistic and was going to throw up on my linoleum. Why not just put the cherry on the icing on the cake of unsociable behaviour, after all? He was always a very wholehearted man, why not be thoroughly committed about pissing me off. He had already been highly euphemistic about cleanliness when obviously he meant he was crawling with something or other that meant his clothes needed burning, so I would have to go to the chemist now and buy whatever it was you bought to prevent these things, while trying to smile at the shop assistant as if this was a problem I personally did not have.

  Nothing is ever easy, the way you think, especially not coming home.

  But when he said yawn, he meant it. He meant it very seriously. He closed his eyes while I watched the spasm of yawning climb from his feet, working through the muscle until it flowed up round his neck and kicked his mouth open in one huge gape. He began to dribble saliva. The two-and-a-half minute yawn—I’d never seen one of them before. At the end of it he gave a watery little smile and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. I leaned forwards to cast a shadow over him and caught a slight glimmer on his skin before the dampness faded. Some things hadn’t changed.

  “Hah. I have no idea why I have to do this now. It is very pleasant, but inconvenient when I am walking.”

  “Mm, right. I’ll go now. Don’t do anything I couldn’t while I’m away.”

  “Yes.”

  I went to bed that night with my head in an old knitted bobble hat and nothing to inhale but the wonderfully effective reek of delousing solution. This precaution was probably unnecessary, but after disinfecting the bathroom and kicking Savinien’s abandoned clothes into a bin liner, I had felt in need of chemical reassurance.

  Arthur and Liz got the benefit of a spotless bath and adjoining facilities without being burdened by any information that might have disturbed them. Well, that’s how I justified it, anyway. I told them “Martin” was home and was rewarded with one mild stare (Liz) and one interested smile (Art).

  As far as I know, we all got a fair night’s sleep.

  THE MORNING AFTER the night before and all Hell is about to break absolutely loose.

  “Hey, Arthur.”

  “Hey, Jennifer. Happy now?”

  “What?” Art let slip a particularly gormless smile which proved to be slightly infectious.
“Well, chhhruff, it is good to know where he is. I suppose.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “Which leads me to your starter for ten. First question.”

  “You want a favour.”

  “Yes, please, Art.”

  “I’m on my day off, far away from the flour and sweat and tears of the flat baked goods and you want me to do something.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Even though I may be maddened with exhaustion and liable to lash out at any moment.”

  “Yup.”

  “Go on, then.”

  “Um, you see it isn’t anything really, only to keep an ear out in case, ah, Martin isn’t all right.”

  “Couldn’t I know what his name is? If I’m going to keep an ear out. Not to mention sharing the same house. I mean, he isn’t called Martin, so what do we call him—it would only be polite to get it right.”

  “Savinien.” All good girls should tell the truth. Eventually.

  “That’s what I like, a good Scots name. Savinien?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sauvignon—that’s a kind of wine. French. Man called after a brand of booze—don’t tell me, his mother was frightened by a bottle-opener. He doesn’t have an accent.”

  “He has a fucking funny way of speaking.”

  “Well, who needs explanations, not me. And he does, indeed, have a fucking funny way of speaking. I’d buy it all for a dollar— satisfied as anything, me.”

  “I’m telling you as much as I know.”

  “No, I think you’re still fibbing a bit, actually, but don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on him. Where did he go?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “No, where did he go for all those weeks? If he’d been upstairs I would have noticed, because I go upstairs, too.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ah.”

  “No, I really don’t know. But from the look of him it wasn’t Butlin’s West World.”

  “Okay.”

  “He hasn’t told me yet—you’ll find out as soon as I do.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m, ah, glad, you’re around, you know. You’re appreciated.”

  “Mm hm.”

  And I went to work, leaving it at that.

  At work? Nothing special. Except that I ran into Steve in a corridor. That is to say, I didn’t run into him, I slowed down before I could be at all threatening. I smiled and he nodded and did not smile. I couldn’t blame him. He looked peaky. That’s all the feeling I got when I looked him over—that he looked a bit off colour. Funny how you won’t necessarily ever know what you really saw in someone and sometimes it will go and you will be none the wiser, only bewildered when you see them without whatever gloss your will and hopefulness used to add.

  I think more and more that this happened with my parents. They trapped each other into replacing their original relationship with another and another and another, all with each other, all part of a search for something they could not quite put their fingers on but would have liked to. One way or another, they certainly had each other very securely cuffed. I’d like to have asked them about it, but I’m too late to ask them now. I know how it would go anyway. I would say, “Why?” and then they would say, “Why what?” or “Why not?” or “We don’t know.”

  Steve finished off his nod with a sneer of good old-fashioned loathing and for the next few steps I did feel very slightly like a perversely violent worm, but the feeling didn’t last. I can never sustain guilt for all that long if it has any root at all in reality.

  I returned home via the Army & Navy stores with a selection of warm and suitable things for Savinien to be making do with.

  Arthur opened the door to me, very angry and I didn’t know why.

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Tell you?”

  “Oh, will you give it a fucking rest. You know perfectly well. Now what is he coming off?” I put down my carrier bag. “What has he been taking?”

  “He’s been... on...” I felt immensely stupid, slow.

  “He is in withdrawal, now what has he been taking?”

  “Well, but there weren’t any . . . I didn’t see anything. No, it’s just the way he can be.”

  “Look, I’m sure as I can be that he hasn’t been injecting anything, for which we can all be extremely grateful. Did you have any idea what you were bringing in here?”

  “He was my friend.”

  “Oh for fucksake. Really . . . You didn’t know?” He was squinting into my eyes, looking for something I didn’t have.

  “I didn’t know. He wasn’t using anything before he left. I would have known.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, yes I am. I don’t understand . . . Are you . . . This couldn’t be anything else?”

  “Listen.”

  There was nothing to hear.

  “What do you mean? I don’t hear anything.”

  “Exactly. It’s quiet now because he’s sleeping. He’s been sleeping for an hour. If past experience is anything to go by, he will sleep for another hour and then wake up. Then he will shout for a bit and sweat—I mean really sweat, he’s rolling with it, then he’ll be burning up, dry, then he’ll sweat—and then he will hide in a corner of his room before he starts to throw up. I have tried to get him to the bathroom before he gets too involved with throwing up and I have also been giving him water to drink so that he has something to throw. Now this sounds to me just a bit as if he’s coming down. Even if it didn’t, he isn’t pretending any more—he is begging me, and I mean begging me, for something to remove the way he feels. I don’t have the something.

  “He’s hurting. It isn’t fun watching someone hurt that much. You really don’t know where he went?”

  Arthur was trying to keep his voice low, evening his words out into a kind of hiss and holding my shoulders.

  “You have no idea?”

  “No.”

  “Well, now I have a favour to ask of you.”

  “We can’t put him out. I mean, maybe a hospital would take him, could—”

  Arthur’s face began to shout before he pressed it under control and pulled me in close enough to growl next to my ear. “Who! . . . who do you think you’re talking to? Of course we can’t chuck him out on the street. He’s having a bad time but it’s not something that needs to involve hospitals, for Christ’s sake, I don’t mind looking after him, he was . . . he is a nice guy. We’ll do all right, we’ll do all right. Probably. I mean, I don’t think it’ll get any worse.”

  I whispered back, “Okay,” and we stood apart again.

  “All right, all right. What I wanted to ask you was if you would search Pete’s room.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your man’s got something in there. Or he thinks he does. A couple of times when I’ve come in, he’s been looking for something and stopped himself. Then he started tearing the place up a bit. He knew I was there, but that made no difference, he didn’t care. I think he brought something with him and now he can’t find it. If we knew what it was . . .”

  “What? If we knew . . .”

  “Then we would know. I don’t know. What do you think I am—I’ve seen this happen once before in my entire life—right?— a guy coming off booze and pills. The last place I lived. I’m not a fucking expert.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told you, he was looking for something.”

  “With the guy before.”

  “Oh, well, he started seeing things and then he went into convulsions. They took him into hospital.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “A psychiatric hospital. I don’t know if he was okay, I left before there was any news. I don’t actually enjoy this kind of thing. He was crazy anyway, he was a mad bastard, he’d been drinking for years—it was different.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know. I just think so. If we keep doing what we’re doing and stop Martin, whoever, from getting too weak, or doing anything stupid
. He doesn’t seem to be getting worse. He seems to be evening out.”

  “Where was he looking?”

  “Hm?”

  “Savinien, where was he looking when you caught him?”

  “Oh, the fireplace—somewhere in the fireplace. Come on, look, I need a bit of normality, all right? We’ll get a cup of tea and a sandwich before it all starts up again. I promise, we’ll need it. What’s in the bag?”

  “Nothing special.”

  “Good, then we’ll talk about it, what’s in the bag?”

  And this was how we began to be Savinien’s jailers. It took a little time, but we learned to pre-empt his thinking and police his actions. He could be unpredictable, sly. Often it didn’t help anyone to know we were on his side because he had stopped living in a place where that was believable. We were as patient as we could be with his lies and tried to remember the man behind them, willing us to find him out. Sometimes he would tell the truth which was much worse.

  The first time Arthur burst onto the landing, half carrying Savinien, I looked away. Vomiting and then dry retching echoed in the bathroom. I could hear Arthur speaking and a thin, uneven noise answering.

  Sometimes Savinien would curse in a thick flow of language I couldn’t recognise. Or he might shout an obscenity in clear English, his eyes showing hurt, offended sensibility with nowhere to go.

  I began my duties with a search of the fireplace—push at the tiling surround, stretch an arm up and round the chimney.

  There.

  Something soft and smooth was lodged between the bricks and the metal of the damper. It was a clear plastic sachet containing exactly twenty-eight parti-coloured capsules.

  “Atties.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Ativan—rose-tinted spectacles guaranteed by the milligram. Now I know what he’s been asking for—his atties. I thought I was mishearing. Could’ve been worse. It could be a lot fucking worse. If this was all.”

  “All I could find. He’s addicted to happy pills?”

  “It’s hardly unusual.”