Everything You Need

by A. L. Kennedy

  “You’re the neighbourhood watch then, are you?” It was strange being out with him, exploring a town that looked shabbier, more rattled, every time she came back, with a man who only looked glossier, more assured. His confidence, his air of ownership, was almost embarrassing.

  “Well, you know the valley, though, don’t you, love? Very fond of watching itself.”

  But under his shine, this burning of some part of himself, she wasn’t sure how he was. At the end of a climb, his leisurely pace could seem enforced, not chosen. Sometimes she watched him making the simple movements he always had—slicing bread, filling the crossword, pulling down a book—and deep in the motion she thought she could see a fugitive tremor of tiredness, or doubt.

  Perhaps he’s like Nathan now, always a part of him working to keep himself in the right shape.

  Bryn and Nathan, they had the same feel when she hugged them: a tiny flinch of withholding, a physical secrecy. Without thinking, she squeezed Bryn’s arm, rested her head towards his shoulder for a moment.

  He smiled, slightly puzzled. “You all right, girl?”

  “Mm.”

  Maybe I feel the same way. The way people do when they want to touch more than they can, when they miss it, remember themselves being other ways.

  She didn’t want to consider how Bryn might be missing Morgan, how she was herself, how both of them still listened to the random noises of the house and almost caught the sound of Morgan, just about to pop downstairs. She heard herself speaking to fill up whatever unhappy space might be threatening to slip between them. “Bryn, I’ve had some letters.”

  “From Jonathan?”

  She hated that his name could still flip that chilly switch in near her breastbone. There seemed to be no defence. “No. No, they’re from—well, he says they’re from my father.” Another flip.

  Father. What does that even mean?

  “Who said they were from your father?” Bryn stopped, brushed his hand to her face, gave a small huff of worry. She hadn’t meant to disturb him, only to ask what he knew.

  “No one said . . . I mean, whoever writes them said.”

  “How long has he been writing?”

  “Ah, a while. I didn’t mention it before, because . . .”

  Because I didn’t want to upset you the way I’m managing to now. It’s not that I needed a father, it’s just that if I had one . . . I think I’d like to know.

  “Anyway, he’s kept on writing and . . . I wanted . . . do you know anything? That’s what I wondered. Does it make any sense to you?”

  “Oh, love. Oh, love.” He started them walking again, their sides pressing together and easing back, a soft, soothing motion. “I wish I knew anything at all. You know that Maura and I, we never saw each other much. As soon as she could, she left the valley—Mam and Dad and me. I couldn’t have been more surprised, more beautifully surprised, when she brought you to us.” He hesitated minutely as he heard his own voice saying us. “I never met your father. All Maura told me was that he’d gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “The way she said it, I thought she meant dead. I suppose she didn’t make it all that clear. Fair play to her, but no one ever really knew where they were with Maura. She wasn’t so much cold, but very, very determined. I was her big brother—by a long way—old enough to be a father when she was born. We always said she was a nice little accident to have happened, a late surprise, but I could still have known her like my sister . . . She didn’t want that, though. She was her own person, straight off. Still, to lose touch with you the way she did, I couldn’t understand her doing that . . . We tried our best, two old wives bringing you up, but even so—”

  “You were the best. I don’t even . . . I don’t remember her very much.”

  “Look, I don’t know . . . perhaps it is your father. You could ask her— Maura—she would tell you the truth if you asked her straight. She’s a very honest woman. You can’t fault her on that. Too honest altogether, I’d say. Go and ask her to her face.”

  “I don’t know if I could.”

  “You could.”

  Would Nathan come with me?

  No, I don’t need him.

  But it would be better with him there.

  “I’ll see how I feel.”

  “You can do anything you want to. You’re our Mary and we brought you up to be that way.”

  “Well, I’ll see. I’ll see if it’s anything I want.”

  “I am going to leave my body to domestic science. You will remember, won’t you? That is my wish.” J.D. was lying on Nathan’s sofa, arms funereally crossed. “You will see to me, look after my post mortem needs?”

  Nathan was half-curled in one of the armchairs, trying not to feel in any way alarmed.

  This is my flat, I own this, I can do what I like here.

  Nevertheless, a part of his brain was still on its best behaviour, still anxious for furniture and fittings that were too unfamiliar to be his own. This room, for instance, seemed far too clean and delicate to be anything to do with him. He kept catching himself, stamping about on the carpet, adoring the sensation of something so soft under his feet. In fact, he thought he’d just get up and have a wander round again.

  Jack sighed, “Jesus Christ, what is the matter with you, man? God knows how many years of celibate living and finally you’re reduced to getting off on shag pile—the name is enough.”

  “Leave it, Jack. I’m being happy tonight.”

  “Happy? What a dreadful thought. Start being that and who knows where it’ll end. Of course, I’ll never know, with bastards like you refusing to promote their books . . .”

  “I said I would give one interview. That’s already one too many.” He wriggled his toes and scanned around for the whisky bottle. It was, naturally, standing on the floor within reach of J.D.—its spiritual master. Nathan sighed, trying to avoid becoming discontented. “I’ve heard myself talking about myself for a fucking decade, almost two. And I don’t believe me any more. It’s like . . . it’s like.” He couldn’t remotely think what it was like. “Well, first I thought I was a tart because I was working for money instead of art and then I worked it out. I’m a tart because you sell me and other people get the fun and I’m in the fucking middle, not even feeling when I get screwed.”

  J.D. lightly adjusted the crotch of his Country Life tweeds. “Lovely. Mummy always said I’d grow up to be a pimp.”

  “Tell them I’ve become a hermit—that’ll be an angle they haven’t tried.”

  “Bastard. But never mind.” Jack hugged himself inaccurately. “My protégée still loves me. And this year she won the Crapbutpromising Prize and the Provincial Underdog’s Consolation Award. She didn’t get the Shitforbrainsgirlie, but, then, that’s always such a fix. And the Chairmaness of the judges doesn’t like me—because of an incident in her kitchen. With her au pair.”

  “Her au pair and you, that would be?” Nathan decided that the carpet would be even more pleasant if he lay down on it immediately. He set about doing precisely that.

  “It was a boring party, what else was I to do?”

  The fibres were curiously soothing against his face. “Ah, the wonderful world of literature. One day . . .” Nathan yawned and then closed his mouth on rather more of the lovely fibres than he’d have liked. They tasted of dog. He missed his dog. “I shall go back to it all. One day.” His blood, he was sure, was turning soupy, slippy, somnolent. Already, he was far too soluble and heavy to get up.

  Heavy water—that’s me.

  “I thought you were going back—doing me a proper novel instead of forcing me to rely on all these dreadful children that everyone’s touting about. My God, last week I was offered fifteen pages of a book that doesn’t exist, by an author of no visible previous work and then asked to bid for it.”

  “And you did biddeded—bidded—did you?” While Nathan’s tongue rattled fatly in his mouth, total anaesthesia was coming like a mallet, he could feel it dropping.

  “Mmm. Had
to. Semi-autobiographical, children’s home, sex abuse, rites of passage saga from some Mancunian slapper. Didn’t look as if she’d been regularly sodomised by fully qualified care staff, but who can tell? I bidded. But I didn’t get it. Fuck, publishing’s all so revolting now—it disgusts even me. Give me a good book, Nathan. Hm?”

  Jack’s hand paddled out for the whisky and knocked it over. Nathan was distantly aware of a liquid chugging at his ear as the bottle started coughing out its load.

  “Shit.” Jack snatched it up. “Nearly a disaster there, Nate.

  “Nate? Write me a book. A real one. Go on. I’d do it myself, if I had the time. I could. I won the Crapbutpromising myself, remember? A hunner, hunder, hundred years ago. But I did win. Only, only . . . you know I’ve never had the energy to do more writing since.

  “Nate? My novel. Did you like my novel, Nathan? Nate?”

  But Nathan couldn’t hear him, because he was already faster and faster asleep.

  Good God, that’s quite remarkable. I’m dead.

  Nathan’s imagination was flopping like a wet moth on elastic, some distance above what was undoubtedly his corpse.

  Nice suit. Fuck, that’s so bloody typical—the best suit I’ve ever had and I’m dead—can’t go out and show it off or anything.

  At this, his awareness sank into his body with a thoroughly nasty shudder and was able to peer out from one of his eyes as if it were a wide-angle spy hole in a door.

  His coffin was set on trestles, not in a chapel of rest, but at the front of a respectful audience, all seated on folding chairs. Some of them were reading his books.

  Well, if they’re expecting a performance, I’d say they’re a little too late.

  Although he suddenly realised, with a spasm of rigor-mortised outrage, that nobody’s attention was fixed on him. Sober and perhaps ten years younger, here was Jack Grace, immaculately tricked out as a Victorian undertaker, sweating discreetly beneath a crêpe-ribboned top hat.

  “Of course the cadaver has been dressed in the traditional McAbre tartan—black checks on a black ground—according to the wishes of the deceased.”

  I am not deceased, you pillock. Quite plainly, I am not.

  The tiny, phlegmy presence which was Nathan’s soul scrambled the length of his body for a point from which he might signal his continuing consciousness. No luck. He knew that his heart would be kicking and bucking by now if it could, and that he might also quite like to scream, if his mouth were able.

  “I shall now,” J.D. swept an authoritative arm towards Nathan, “reveal the very latest process of embalming. Allow me to demonstrate.”

  Will this hurt? Because I’m still here, you know. Fully aware and conscious and sensitive and quite emotional, actually, and I’M STILL HERE.

  This probably will hurt.

  Fuck, this is unreasonable.

  But then Nathan, suddenly freed from his stiffened flesh, looked down in bewilderment at an entirely different room: vaguely culinary machinery lounged against white tile walls. Somewhere an engine ground. This did not bode well.

  This does not bode well.

  Broiling with demonic energy and in no way resembling Margaret Rutherford or any other well-loved British character actress, Jack swung Nathan into the air by the heels and gave his body a single, unlikely snap which left his limbs and torso peeled while his skin shuddered to the ground like a clammy diving suit. Not content with this, Jack, now in bloodied shirt sleeves and panting with delight, began to twist and pull the meat from Nathan’s bones as if he were tearing the shells off giant prawns.

  That’s not the way, that is not the way, I mean that really is not the way you do embalming. Really not.

  Nathan’s dismay thumped impotently back against the tiles as his flesh was tossed in handfuls into a mincer, his miraculously spotless bones were clattered into a grinder and the whole of his fabric reduced to two colours of slurry in what seemed rather more than jig time. Jack then capered about a vat of curing solution in which he was stewing Nathan’s skin. This finally emerged, steaming gently.

  Oh, bollocks. This is patently disrespectful and inaccurate. He knows nothing about embalming. The man’s a fraud.

  Dripping and tanned to the colour of wallet leather, there was his skin. It creaked expensively. Nathan now guessed with nauseous certainty that he was going to be stuffed.

  But if he’s ground up all my bones, I’ll just be floppy. I don’t want that. How will I do things? He evidently hasn’t thought this through.

  Then again, who’ll notice—I won’t exactly have a giddy social calendar underground.

  At which juncture Jack emerged from a cupboard with an enormous sack of cotton wool. Feet slithering in Nathan’s gore, one fist suddenly covered in a latex glove, Jack advanced on Nathan’s defenceless epidermis.

  Jack Grace, I don’t think I will ever forgive you for this.

  But with no more time, even to flinch, Nathan’s mind leaped forward again to find itself jangling nervously over his casket and his body, restored within. As polite applause scuttled about the room, he saw that—reasonably enough—the tanning process had left his face and hands looking dashingly bronzed. And rather than seeming limp he was, if anything, far more rigid than before.

  Good man yourself, Jack. You must really have jammed that wadding in there tight. In there. In me, in fact. You really must have jammed it in me tight. Which is, I suppose, what friends are for.

  Jack was taking his final bows. A humble smile flickered at his lips and from time to time he managed a self-effacing shake of the head.

  Well you may efface yourself. You couldn’t have done it without me, could you, eh?

  Nathan’s soul wasped forward, contemplating an attack.

  If I could fly in through one nostril, then I’d kick him right between his frontal lobes.

  But then an odd detail drew Nathan’s eye, a terrible discrepancy. He gazed down at himself, at his wonderful suit, at the slight jut of his shirt cuffs, at his shaved wrists and then on.

  The fuck. The cheapskate little fuck. The bastard.

  There were no fingers on his hands. Presumably they’d been too troublesome to stuff.

  Cunt.

  All that was left were Nathan’s palms, like squarish paddles, poorly oversewn at the edges to keep their filling in.

  Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.

  How will I write?

  “What?”

  The floor of his own apartment swayed uneasily below Nathan and he lurched up, causing a matching sway at the backs of his eyes. “Oh.”

  “Who are you calling a bastard?”

  The sound of Jack’s voice brought on a rush of sour perspiration and Nathan checked him quickly to see if he was still in his embalming costume or not. Not.

  “Bastard? Ah . . . a publisher . . . I dreamed about a publisher. A bastard.”

  “Absolutely. They’re all bastards, every one. I myself, of course, am not a publisher. I am a taker of empty bottles—” he waved the, by now completely drained, whisky bottle by way of explanation, “and I fill them with wonderful messages and send them off. Think of it—in all the ocean, a fragment of mind held in glass. And perhaps not every bottle of mine will be shattered or lost or drowned. Perhaps . . .” He swung into a seated position and then breathed pensively. “You don’t mind if I have a minor vomit, do you? No need to fret—perfectly capable of reaching your lavatory.” He slithered down to his knees, punched Nathan reassuringly in the kidney, then shuffled up and off.

  “No, I won’t fret. I won’t fret at all, Jack. No.”

  Nathan settled himself back to the horizontal, one elbow resting in some kind of soggy patch. He licked his lips and found them remarkably salty.

  Jack called through hoarsely, “Don’t let your daughter on the page, Mr. Staples. Mmm?” A choked snigger followed. “But we’ll keep her from the worst of the bastards, won’t we, Sport? Ah, here we go.” There came the sound of what could only be a toilet seat clanking up.

&nb
sp; Nathan pondered Mary’s future, pondered his own, while listening to his editor throwing up comprehensively.

  Love. He’d quite forgotten that it was, beyond all the gloss and brimstone, a kind of very wonderful sleepiness. Being with your person, whoever that was, would bring an immediate inrush of easy peace: an insulation from torments, large and small. That person, your person, simply could not annoy you. Even if they endlessly repeated all their most potentially dementing habits, affectations, ticks, they would leave you not only unmoved, but even happier with their essence, their presence close to yours. And the dreadfulness of the world was no longer dreadful and your limbs had a pleasant, unlooked for, certainty and your lung (should you happen to have just the one) would feel light and efficient and healthy in all its transactions with the satisfying air. My God, love could make simply breathing a splendid thing.

  Nathan footled with the papers in his pocket and tried to avoid bursting rashly into song.

  Jesus wept, you’ve got it bad.

  I have a right. I’ve waited nearly twenty years to get it bad again.

  Mary was standing among the rocks with her back to the breeze and, therefore, her face to him. He was glad he’d brought her over to the Head again—this was absolutely the best place for what he’d been planning, not to mention the finest time. Then Mary sat on a little boulder, slipped her feet up and hugged her raised knees. Nathan observed.

  Dear God, I never thought . . . So I get that, too. After all of this time.

  Without even considering what effect this might have, he moved round a few degrees to his right and looked at her again.

  Oh, Mary.

  Recognition gently filleted his heart. She’d adopted exactly the pose he knew from his haunted photograph: different beach, different decade, same Mary Lamb. But no camera here to steal this from them, to make them share this with anyone else. No one to see her now but him. Overturned longing, then joy, then tenderness flayed him entirely alight.