Everything You Need

by A. L. Kennedy

  “Do stop rambling, Nate. I want you to consider that, now we are all together again . . .” He gave a murmur of a grin and Nathan couldn’t help but grin a wee bit back. “Now that you and Mary are—approximately—as you should be and with Ruth having . . . taken another step forward, as we might say . . . I think the time is right for Mary to attend our Meetings. She ought to get to know us properly.”

  Nathan played for time by putting down his plate and starting to wring the tea towel’s neck. “I . . . You wouldn’t tell her everything . . . ? You wouldn’t . . . not all the . . . death stuff, yet. Or, even—I don’t, don’t think she need ever know that.”

  “Nathan, she can’t be surrounded by people who, now and again, do ostensibly suicidal things without eventually knowing why. Or at least wanting to.” He set both hands on Nathan’s shoulders, allowing suds to ooze quietly through his shirt. “But it’s all right—I only intend she should know the important things. I only want her to be really one of us.”

  “And it’ll make the numbers up to seven.” Nathan partly teasing and partly hoping to imply you may well be the boss with all of this numerology, mystical pathway shite, but she is my daughter.

  “Well, you know, I am fond of sevens. There are meant to be seven heavens, if you believe a certain brand of mystical thought.” Joe’s look flared a moment, quietened again. “Nathan, come on, what do you think? I say we should tell her and I think we should do it today.”

  Mary wasn’t sure if she ought to be angry or not.

  Not a business meeting. That’s what they’ve been having—Not Business Meetings. Ever since I came here, they’ve been having Not Business Meetings. Or, um, well, Not Quite Business Meetings and you’ll see what we mean today.

  Which is to say that I’ll see what they’ve actually been doing all this time while telling me that they’ve been doing something else—now that they feel like telling me. Now that I can be trusted. Or they can be bothered.

  I mean, if it’s not my place to know, then all right . . . not all right, really, but better than being lied to. I mean, lied to, even by Nathan. I mean, he’s shifty, but he doesn’t lie . . . or, at least, very clearly he does, but I don’t notice.

  And now he’s being—especially now—he’s being . . . oh, I don’t know, he’s being . . .

  Nathan was being incomprehensible. He’d spent more than a year looking past her and seeming incredibly pissed off and he’d made it just impossible to talk to him, sort things out, but now he was—she still couldn’t exactly put her finger on it—but he was different. Extremely different.

  Watching me the way he always has, that almost creepy way, but he’s now making sure I’ll notice. And, all the time, seeming about to speak, but then saying hardly anything. And why did he lie, or not lie, exactly, but never mention this—the Not Business Meetings? Not a word—nothing but Oh, it’s just that we all tend to meet up after the Lunch, organise things to keep the Island running, administration—you know. You’re well out of it. Yes, and I was well out of it, wasn’t I? Nathan kept me out.

  He wants me in now, though. He wants me in.

  Which let her realise what his greatest alteration was since they’d started speaking—the one that had really thrown her off.

  He wants me there with him. He isn’t pretending, or making a joke of it, he doesn’t mean to say something else. He’s admitted that he wants something— something from me.

  This was probably the only reason why she decided she would do what he asked, go along to their Not Business Meeting and not make a fuss.

  He’s a daft, big bugger. But, fair play, there’s no harm in him. And if he wants me to be there, then I suppose I might as well.

  At which point, Nathan gave her a quizzical nod, eyes slightly preoccupied, mildly demanding, wanting to see her decision: for or against. She nodded back yes and he glanced away with an odd, shadowed snap of emotion, turning to her again with an almost fragile smile, something altogether tentative about him.

  Still, tentative or not, he’d got his way. Mary smiled herself now, firmly, thinking that this was how the private, careful people usually got their way. Because whenever they really did creep out and declare what they cared about, their vulnerability was difficult to resist.

  “You’ll, uh, join us today, then, hm?”

  When he was nervous, she could hear that he was Scottish: he didn’t have much of an accent at other times. He sounded very Caledonian this afternoon.

  “Yes, I’ll join you—whatever that means. No one seems willing to say.”

  “Aye, well, sorry about the reticence—we’ve never had a Fellowship . . . scholarship . . . you know—a person like you before, so we weren’t sure of what to do, initially. We are now, though.” His face calmed, began showing something like sadness, or tenderness. “Come here.” They paused. “Up the stairs. Then left. It looks like a cupboard door—but it’s not, it leads to a room.”

  A room which was surprising. Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this: a banal little space with a low, uneven ceiling, one dormer window, a fireplace modestly supplied with fire, seven bentwood chairs: five of them occupied, two waiting. A roughly cubic space, packed in between stripped floorboards and plastered walls that were painted a fawnish pink. There was nothing else.

  The fire creaked gently, Nathan sat and then, like the rest of the Fellowship, leaned around to face her. Louis, Ruth, Lynda, Richard, Nathan, Joe: everyone seemed anxious to see her claim the unoccupied seat. And there was something else: a pressure, a touch in the air that watched and waited, too. It was all more than enough to make anyone pause.

  “Mary. We’re so glad you felt like coming.” Joe winked at her like a large and possibly peckish cat, but his tone was apologetic. “I know, I know, we could have asked you before . . . Still, you’re here now—that’s the thing. And we—” He tilted his head, his voice unmistakably playful, but under the words a purr of determination, fixed intent. “Do sit down.”

  Mary thought she might like to, but not yet, not until she knew what it meant. She had the feeling that making any move here would be like signing a very blank cheque.

  Louis, perhaps to ease matters, suggested, “You have to remember, Joe, that Mary has received a proper education—she knows about these things. The one chair in the strange room, invitingly empty—it could be the Siege Perilous—sit in it when you’re, shall we say, unqualified and death is your reward.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Nathan scrubbed at the flesh between his eyebrows, his other hand a tense fist on his knee. “Less of the hocus pocus.” He flushed, mumbled. “She deserves better.” Mary caught herself wishing the empty place was next to him.

  Well, why not? At least I’m used to him. And he seems my safest bet. Or something like that.

  Joe elbowed Nathan softly. “Would you like to explain?”

  “No, you explain—it’s your thing. I only deal with the typing and related affairs. This stuff is none of my business. Just do get started.”

  Mary continued to stand.

  My safest bet, I’d guess.

  And I will have to guess, if nobody’s going to tell me what the fuck is going on.

  “Just to let you know . . .” Joe met her eyes, calmly daring her to wonder if he really did always know what she was thinking. “Just to let you know what’s going on. Several years ago, when some of us were starting the Fellowship, we decided that we should spend time making communal business decisions.” He stopped and grinned. “And at this point in my narrative, I can say, without having to look, that Nathan will have rolled his eyes, but really everyone in the group does agree with the choices we make, or we simply don’t make them. In Nathan’s case, he’ll disagree with disagreeing, which amounts to much the same, but is easier for him.”

  Mary was trying to keep her patience. “But you said this was not a Business Meeting.”

  “Mm hm. There is an additional element, yes.” He studied her. “This is where we practise . . . being open-minded
. So that, as writers, we can be ready to—” He paused and looked to his side. “Nathan, you do this. Please. I think, under the circumstances, that you should.”

  Nathan coloured and scratched his ear. “Oh.” Folding one arm behind his head, he began to palp at his shoulder and neck. He kept talking, but addressed himself primarily to the floor. “Well, this is different for everyone and I’m really not the best one to describe it, but we all come here, I suppose, to shut up. We stop the words. We do pretty much clear our minds, and some of us may even wish to wedge them open. And then we wait—as if there isn’t enough of that in my life.” He stopped, flustered, and then slowly lifted his head, something in his eyes unclasping, deepening. “We’re all here to do what writers do, that’s what this island is for, that’s what we are for. And this is where we get ready, properly ready, to work. If that means not moving, not speaking and trying to not think in words, even in syllables, even in sounds, then that’s what we do. Sometimes, I will admit, it can feel good, when we’re in here all together: not acting, not pretending, not having opinions, not being in our own fucking way—just getting ready to be as we are at heart, feeling the shape of that.

  “Although sometimes, I have to say, I just sit back and think about shagging. It’s non-verbal, very suitable—shagging and nothing but. Then again, maybe that’s the way I am at heart.” He glanced at Joe. “Anyway, I close my eyes and let the action slam and slap away—nothing I can do about it. Of course, there never was anything I could do about that.” He winced, impatient with himself, and went on.

  “Or sometimes I’ll imagine murders: lengthy, elaborate, nasty, messy, unrepentant executions. And, now that I come to mention it, in my fantasies I’m hardly ever the one having sex, but I am without exception the one who kills. Funny how the thinking runs. At heart.

  “And I could do as much at home if I wanted—in fact, I have done and will do again, but when I’m here . . . When I’m here, there are occasions . . .” He sighed out an unamused laugh. “There are occasions when I end up feeling better, happier, like a good man. I’ll sit, finally empty-headed, in this company and then I’ll suddenly, without my doing anything . . . It’s hard to explain—it’s a kind of energy that comes, an anticipation, a not unpleasant need. The only not unpleasant need I have.”

  Mary wished he would stop because she now felt she was intruding and also wished he would go on because she had never known him to be like this before. Quietly, she took her seat.

  “And Joe tells me that it all should make me peaceful, but in fact it does nothing of the sort. It makes me awkward, difficult. Because it makes me believe absolutely that what I do—that my state, my way of being and my power to describe them are all mine. This in my head, this is my own. This particular quiet is my own. This particular noise is my own. This choice of words, this meaning, is my own. Anyone can steal words, forget them, remould them, deny them, but their shadow and the way to make them is still here, a part of me.”

  Nathan wiped his mouth, considering. Mary thought that he might be calming himself, but when he began again he sounded, if anything, more overwrought.

  “Joe finds it extremely amusing that this makes me believe in truth, this memory I have for words. But I do. I do believe in a universal right to truth. And, when I’m out in the world, I know that I am a passenger, not a customer; a patient, not a client; a man, not a consumer. And I don’t want to be informed, I want to be educated, and I don’t want to be enabled, I want to be helped, and I don’t want something new, I want something better, and I don’t want to be offered choices, I want to be free. I have spent a great deal of my life learning to love what words mean. Especially the bad ones, the ones that need careful watching. Assassination, removal, termination, problem-solving, taking out, euthanasia, cleansing, special handling, natural wastage, merciful release, killing, murder—I do understand that these are all very much the same thing. Offer me a euphemism, a circumlocution, a truth economy, a fucking lie, and I will be moved to pulp your brain, to lop off your hands, to draw out your fucking tongue with pincers and roast it before your eyes—because you are not using what you’ve been given properly.” He glowered at his own hands. “So. That’s the way I am, at heart. Joe is a man who has spiritual aims, mine are a matter of principle, or just of anger. I like to recall, now and then, that language belongs to me, to the individual, to each and every individual—that anyone who wants to own it is trying to own me.”

  He pressed his fingertips against his forehead, blinked hard, and then quickly, gently looked at Mary. For a moment he seemed to search her face and then withdrew, stared down at the floorboards again. She realised, too late to smile at him, that he’d been checking for her approval.

  When he started to speak again he was almost whispering, “Sometimes, at the heart of me, there won’t fall a word, there will be nothing but the wait. But then it comes, it speaks, it’s there for me and I am there for it. We give ourselves to each other, we each possess the other, we agree. And after that, nothing can stop us. Not even me.”

  He sighed, sat back, at rest, and met Mary’s eyes again in a slow flinch of pre-emptive shame. And now she could smile for him and did and, at once, he smiled back, in some way younger, more tired and more alive. He muttered, perhaps swallowing down on unaccustomed pride, “The job can actually seem worth doing if I think of it this way. In writing I am part of something—I get it and give it away. I can speak myself to life, speak my future and what I want. I generally don’t get it, but if I couldn’t even say . . .” He grinned at her again. “I disagree with hope, I think it’s a cruel thing and predicting the fulfilment of my needs, even simply stating them, does give me hope. But hope is generally better than emptiness.”

  Nathan cleared his throat and shut his eyes, folded his arms very tightly around his chest. His breathing seemed louder than usual and, with his body so forgetful of itself, Mary noticed that he’d let his right shoulder drop. This puzzled her and then she thought it through: without a constant effort on his part, the lack of his lung would make his torso sag. She looked away, ashamed for having pried.

  Then, true to Nathan’s word, peace lapped in and took the room.

  Mary shifted in her seat and tried to let the quiet take her, too.

  This is . . .

  This is . . .

  Sssh. You’re meant to be quiet.

  But poor Nathan. To be the way he is. He ought to be able to be happy. That shouldn’t be too hard. Ssssh.

  A breeze sang in the chimney. Unwieldy seconds passed while her mind whirred out into unfamiliar territory, confronted by too much space.

  Shagging—he said he thought of that. Naturally, anyone would think of . . . But I won’t . . . not his name.

  Jonathan.

  Nothing apart from his name.

  God, this is hard.

  She tried to think of her breath, of its to and fro and nothing more, but it couldn’t hold her attention for long. She gave up, let her voice back in again.

  The letters.

  There are four now. Four. He doesn’t write to me for fifteen years and then I get four letters—one every six months—one about every six months. What does that mean? That he’s interested, but not too much?

  And I don’t know who they’re from. Even if they are from my father, I don’t know him. He’s a stranger.

  And if they’re not from him. Then my father’s dead. The way I thought he was. But when I thought it before, it didn’t hurt me.

  That thought did send her quiet for a space.

  Four letters with nothing definite to say, nothing of him. He only ever writes about me. He tells me he remembered it was my birthday and to have a good day. He tells me I liked reading, I liked beaches, I liked bread. He tells me that I was a person I can’t remember.

  And I can’t picture him—when I try he just gets mixed up with other people. People I want to be like him. People I want him to have been like.

  I wouldn’t know him now.

  I wou
ldn’t even know my own father—that’s what he’s done to me.

  He tells me he loves me.

  Considering this made it hard to swallow.

  But he never says he wants to see me.

  A knock of pain climbed in her, nothing to stop it ricocheting right around her skull. The benefits of clearing the mind.

  I’m not going to cry.

  A thin recollection billowed forward, curled behind her eyes: being small and held and lifted, swung up. She’d loved to be swooped up. And here was almost the touch of hands: an exact, concerned pressure, a tender force to keep her safely high and then move her into the ghost of a scent, a firm temperature, something maybe fatherly and so long ago she had thought that it couldn’t be wanted, missed.

  She’d never had a photograph of him and couldn’t imagine his face, but the shape of him being near to her and looking after her shape, that hadn’t ever gone from under her skin.

  I’m not going to cry. This is ridiculous. I have no reason to cry about him now.

  She eased a look at her watch. Only five minutes gone.

  I don’t think I want to keep doing this. I don’t think I can.

  Nathan’s chair complained as he recrossed his ankles and Mary found herself watching him. He seemed to feel her attention, met her eyes and offered an uncertain frown, followed by a still, clear look that she couldn’t hold, or entirely understand.

  All right, you want me to stay here. I know. You want me to sit it out.

  She folded her arms, liking the grip on her ribs, the security of that.

  I’m not going to cry.

  Morgan’s aftershave came to her in one electric breath, loss reaching out to loss all around her, but she steadied herself.

  I’ll stay. If that’s what Nathan wants, what they all want, then I’ll try.

  She tried to lean into the rhythms of her unease, the peaks of pressure and the gradients of release. Now and then an unexpected current took her, but she fought it, governed her breathing, closed her eyes. She pictured herself drifting out in a disinterested sea, nudged and tugged by mobile salt.