Everything You Need

by A. L. Kennedy

  Dear Christ, he’s like a bridegroom.

  She felt the stumbled fuss of the passage slew and shudder, almost halt around Bryn, before he took a breath and turned to face her. Life going on.

  No more sleeping in the parlour, no more sofa now, I know. I saw him setting out the sheets. He’ll go upstairs tonight and back into their room. His first time lying in the empty bed.

  “All right, then, girl?” He sounded frightened.

  “All right, yes.” So did she.

  Nathan had brought Mary gently back out to the island and had been glad this was the first day when summer had finally seemed to be taking hold and had been delighted when she rested her head back and let her face just catch the evening sun, had wanted her so much to be a part of things again, reachable—even if only by light. But he naturally hadn’t told her anything like that, had mainly kept silent and perhaps touched her hand or shoulder, now and then.

  He’d left her to settle her things, but had found himself unable to rest away from her and had strolled past the Nissen hut loudly with Eckless, just before the last of the sunset, in the hope that he and his dog might both find themselves invited in. He thought, sidling round the door, that this had been a good idea. And, sitting with the daylight fading round her, cradling an unread book, it seemed that she could have been expecting him.

  “Oh, Nathan. Right. And Eckless, my lovely boy.” She knuckled at the dog’s ears until he groaned. Something about her movements was muted, automatic, her will and attention elsewhere. “How are you, boy? Grand dog, yes, you are. Yes, yes.”

  Eckless, like the lovely boy he truly was, only nuzzled lightly at her hands and then quietly submitted to being stroked at as a distraction.

  “He’s glad to see you.”

  As am I. As am I.

  “He’s a good dog.”

  Nathan hared silently through conversations he might conceivably begin and discovered nothing satisfactory. But Mary was quite willing to talk without assistance.

  “It was odd, you know . . . I thought of you—at the, um, funeral. Because of that party you took me to.”

  She seems calm. Which isn’t good. I mean, that kind of loss, it should show more. Unless it’s so deep that it can’t.

  He tried to avoid the greasy whisper which promised she would never miss him as much as this.

  But at the funeral, she thought of me.

  “Of me?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled in a way that made him want to insist she slept now, or had a bath, or took a sleeping pill of the type that wouldn’t harm her—not that there probably was such a thing—or that she maybe should just lie down for a while and let him relearn across her shoulders the way that he’d once been able to massage her mother to sleep.

  “Yes, I kept thinking it all reminded me of something and then I realised—it was like that party in Soho. So many people, all dressed in black.”

  “Well, that’s . . .”

  Go on, tell her. At least keep her company in all this shit.

  Nathan wanted her to be looking at him while he said this, but she kept facing the window, eyes closed.

  “I used to wear black all the time. For business. I was in the habit of dressing in black for signings and readings and, naturally, parties. It seemed to make things better—because it’s the invisible colour, the one that lets you be less there. That’s my theory, anyway.

  “When my father died, I was already quite . . . established as a writer. He was the last of my family to go, so I must have been—well, older than you, anyway. And I attended his funeral, of course. But all the way through I was thinking, I’m dressed for work—the writer and the undertakers, we’re all just dressed for work. I was never so fond of the black after that. In fact, for a while, I couldn’t seem to wear it.”

  Do you want me to hug you? Do you want to cry? You can be safe with me. Let go, break down, touch me and call me whatever you like, whatever makes you happy: Nathan, Uncle, Dad.

  Except she doesn’t like her dad.

  Through the lining of his trouser pocket he pinched his own leg, attempting to shock his thoughts into decent order.

  Mary rubbed her neck, let out a quick breath. “And do you know what everyone talked about? While I was there?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “That fucking story. He’d told everyone about it, Morgan—Mary Lamb from our valley going to be published, his Mary Lamb.”

  “If it made him happy, that’s . . . nice.”

  “Some people had seen a copy of it—read it—they came up to tell me so. But why talk about that? Why act as if it’s made me any different? Why not . . . oh, I don’t know.”

  She stood up, startling Eckless out of a doze, and then—it seemed— could think of nothing better to do than fidget and sit down again. Nathan’s heart writhed tenderly with the hope that he might, for once, be able to tell her something useful now. An insight.

  “You remember my rules?”

  “Your?”

  “Rules for writing, or for being a writer, or for staying a human being while being a writer—those rules. I believe that we’d managed to reach Number Two.” He waited for her to agree, but then went on in any case. “Number Three, if this is really the right time to say it: and I think it is . . . Number Three would be Disregard. However much they single you out and give you attention: disregard. It doesn’t matter. The good and the bad opinions: disregard. What anyone else is doing, or has done, or will do: disregard. All the rosy fortune-telling about your wonderful, promising career: disregard. You are who you are already, that’s what lets you write, defend it, keep it simple and . . . clean.” He glanced at her, felt the wise and encouraging smile ooze from his face like the facile, greasepaint effort that it was.

  Shit.

  “Clean?”

  Shut the fuck up.

  He swallowed clumsily with a flustered little gulp. “Clean would be the word, I suppose.”

  “I see.” She was almost whispering, but still there was a dark edge in her tone. “So you think that I’m getting above myself, that I should know my place.”

  Something unwieldy started to twist from his stomach to his throat. “No, I—primarily I’m remembering all the mistakes that I’ve made.”

  Save it. Save it, you cunt, you witless, fucking cunt.

  “And it’s—you know, Mary—I only mentioned it to make sure you could take the pressure off yourself. You need to be able to relax and to be free . . . That’s all, I . . .”

  Please. No, please.

  The flat muscle over her jaw was flickering as she turned and started to stare him down. He babbled on, finding it almost impossible to inhale. “I wanted . . . you should know you’re free of all the crap. Because when you write, when people examine your thinking—read you—it can have an odd effect. Uh.” Lack of air choked him to a merciful stop.

  “Thank you for letting me know what you think of me. I hadn’t realised I went to Morgan’s funeral to have my ego enlarged.”

  “No.” An involuntary whine. The noise of a hapless man.

  “Do you think you could go now?”

  He frowned for a sliding moment, fumbling around her meaning, as if it would turn into something he could accept. Mary clapped Eckless a quick goodbye, filling the beast with brief, wagging hopes of a walk outside, and then went behind the partition that hid away her bed.

  Having nothing else to do—nothing he could think of—Nathan knelt rather clumsily in front of Mary’s kitchen table and then cracked his forehead as hard as he could against its edge. Pain spattered whitely across his closed eyes and he guessed he had bitten his cheek when his mouth began to thicken with the sweet, salt metal of himself—of the red inadequacy stuttering up his veins.

  He waited. Cracked his head again.

  And again.

  He waited.

  He swallowed blood again.

  When I bleed, I cry.

  She didn’t come back to him.

  He knew she wasn
’t going to.

  1993

  Atlantis

  I am absolutely certain.

  This is the finest water in the world. It is, most likely, full of tractor oil and sheep’s piss and is probably radioactive or so acid it’s corroded all the frogs, but I love it very deeply, all the same.

  It is running off the moor in a tawny sprawl over rocks and then dashing down the last few feet to the path in a gently pummelling fall. Under which I have placed my shoulders and my head. Doing this feels better than anything has since we left the hotel, since we left our room.

  Thinking of which—and I do in a brief, hot stammer of happy blood— several things felt very good this morning, back in our room.

  It’s the different sheets, at least partly: taut and ferociously clean and proper against your skin. Makes you feel dirty. Makes you feel pleased that you do. And I can touch her, smell her so clearly when she’s somewhere I don’t know: first the haze of her warmth in the dark and then the brush, the contact, the turning her over to kiss from the back of her knee to her arse, tenting up a starchy roof above us when I crouch. Cosy.

  I still reek of her, it’s wonderful. Even if I did make a show of scrubbing round my face, my hands, maintaining an air of decency at breakfast, Maura’s still in my hairline, she’s here at the flat of my wrists and live under my tongue.This morning I ate carefully to be sure I’d keep her there. Her taste. And mine. And her taste with my taste, worked together and spread into what we make together and at no other time, ingrained again in a night.

  Christ, I’d missed it. Missed her.That of her.

  The water is numbing my skull and, when I straighten, it fingers down my back and chest underneath my T-shirt, then dams and oozes at my belt. I rebalance my weight.

  Bastard. My feet, my bastard, bastard feet. My ankle bones have worked out through my heels—it’s the only explanation for that particular fucking pain. Jesus, shit.

  This almost isn’t worth it.There’s no view to speak of, the glen one sullen scoop of green below me, no more arresting from five thousand feet than it was from fucking four. Brief cloud shadows scull across the distance and the sun buckets down unseasonably and I find it all less inspiring this minute than I managed to the last. And the path, I do not wish to mention. It is an exercise in unremitting inclines and false summits—we have hated each other now for several hours.

  This is meant to be fun. I could be at home, trepanning myself, but, instead, I am having this fun.

  But then the stillness catches me. The high, deaf weight of silence kisses in, makes my ears rush and whisper, bewildered with nothingness.

  Which is why I come, remember? For the peace, for the lovely miles of emptiness, whorled out from the bones of the head and then—when I’m finally sore and knackered enough—the lovelier miles of emptiness, whorling in. Up here I can almost cease to think.

  A small breeze trembles at my face, licks my sweat cool, fades. My legs jar down through the opening steps of the next bastard stage, setting off again. I scuffle, rush, drag to find my proper rhythm and then tick-tock on, kidding myself forwards with illusions of being mechanical and therefore beyond afflictions of any kind.

  I am good at such tricks. Soon I will uncover completely—as if it was ever in more than a shallow grave—the tedious part of my nature which makes me entirely unable to give up. Although most of me will wish to sit down, lie down, curl in the grass with my boots off and go to sleep, I will not. My mind will tease and blackmail, bully and promise and possibly hypnotise, to keep my one foot following the other.

  This isn’t a bad thing about me, my determination. If I’m courting, for example, I will chase you like the Grail until I get you, then stay faithful as a stalker, come what may. Maura knows that, she understands. No matter how much I have to travel now: doing readings, lectures, all that crap: she can be absolutely confident that I am, as they used to say, true.

  True and, every now and then, blue.

  Maura. In our room tonight—that’s what to keep stamping on for—us. Us. Tonight. No interruptions. We really should do this more often. Now Mary’s older, we can get away for husband and wife stuff whenever we like, we need to remember that. It’s easy to let things deteriorate and have distances intrude, but we’re setting that right.

  Us.Tonight. I’ll slip up and be cribbed in her and we’ll play and play and play.

  Naturally, single-mindedness helps my work. A book demands my utter concentration, so I do concentrate utterly. I spend a good deal of time with imagined people, I’ll admit, but that makes me need my real ones even more. I love when Mary runs up and sees me in my study. I have no objections to that at all.

  If I’m too busy, she’ll sit right in under my desk and draw—she can last for an hour or so like that, quite contented. Then she’ll start to sneak pencils down into my socks and I have, perhaps foolishly, agreed that when she’s run out of pencils I have to tell her what I’ve written and see what she thinks. It’s a harmless bargain that helps us both. Of course, here and there, I censor, keep her safe, but this is still a good thing we do together: it makes her happy and it keeps me clear, lets me know what I mean. I would say nothing beats telling Mary, for helping me see what I mean. I find it quite hard when I have to work without her, although Maura prefers it if I do.

  Maura.Us.Tonight.A little bit further.

  Maura. Us.Tonight. A little bit further.

  I have no more spit. My breath is hacking, kicking, thick in my throat and my hips are beating with gravelly, penetrating aches.

  It’s my own fault, I shouldn’t have rushed my start. Maura says I’m too competitive, that I always have to race, but that isn’t true. Not entirely. Everyone, in the end, has a separate, comfortable pace and any party on a trek like this will straggle out and settle in a natural order. It so happens that I will most usually be at the front.

  Bollocks. I fucking cripple myself every time, just to get away. A little bit further. Not to win, just to be clear of people. No small talk to wheeze out, no exchanges of encouragement, no fury as some tottering couple jams up an ascent—a little bit further—only peace and a free path ahead.

  Maura’s not so far behind me, she’s always been fit. She just happens to like her walks sociable, which is her choice. The last time I saw her she was breaching above a rise with, I think, that German bloke beside her. I took a few mouthfuls of water and a square of chocolate, watching her, until a sly little prod of lust began to light. I thought of waving, but something about the motion of that never fails to leave me sad.

  A little bit further.

  The path is unmistakably falling now. It denied me a definite peak to celebrate and only eased and tilted surreptitiously into descent—but I am willing to forgive it because it is sloping towards home. Unused to the new angle, my calves have started to shake.

  I’m fucked.

  But I’m still moving. I’m still here.

  A little bit further.

  Maura’s in the bath—I said she could have first go for not completely generous reasons. I plan to slip in round the door soon and soap her and see what we’ll think of next, because although she enjoys being clean for such occasions, she sometimes appreciates it if I’m not. She’ll whisper against the salt crease of my thighs, then breathe and blink and smile and generally torment, tight where the hair is already moist, already heated, my skin shining, greased for her tongue.

  Time enough, time enough.

  I barefoot across the woolly lawn of carpet to the window, trying to stop my concentration from unfurling too rapidly.The chill near the glass is pleasant against my skin, as is—unusually—the minor exhibitionist thrill of being naked in front of clear glass. Not that there’s a soul around to see me, only a tussle of crows, flopping and ragging through a modestly bloody sunset. I do like this place: an ugly, pretend Scottish castle, squatting in genuine Scottish grounds with rhododendron thickets and a tiny, kidney-dish, outdoor swimming pool, completely empty.

  I’ve told
Mary all about it here—my daily phone fix, checking she isn’t having too much fun without me.

  “I’ll ... we’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “Don’t sound pleased, then.”

  “Is your book really finished?”

  “Yes, it’s done.”

  I could hear our neighbour’s children bouncing and whining in the background. Mary likes staying with them, but I can’t think why. I don’t like other people’s children, I find, at all. I only like what’s mine.

  I added, I hoped not too plaintively,“I missed you.”

  “I missed you. It’s my birthday soon.” She scrambled her hand across the receiver and I knew that she was laughing.

  “Really? I thought that was more than a month away, which is ages. You might have been turned into a coelacanth by then.”

  More giggles.“That’s silly.”

  “I wonder if anybody will buy you presents.”

  “Yes. Somebody will.”

  She really is the most definite child I know, unshakable. Unlike her father.

  “Oh, that’s good. I won’t bother then.”

  “No-oh. You’re the somebody.”

  “Ah.” She is a clever one, this Mary Staples, and may already have weaseled out my best gift from where I’ve hidden it. A walkie-talkie set—a hurtfully expensive one that actually works. I will admit this is something I pined for hopelessly until I hit twelve and began to find women a little more enticing. Nevertheless, I have bought the set because it will please her—no retrospective treats for Daddy here.