Now That You're Back

by A. L. Kennedy

  A little crowd gusted in, on the way home from something, almost falling, hair wild, laughing. She smelled their mixture of perfumes, examined their clothes. One of the women looked at her and smiled, as the party sat down, then the man next to her whispered something short and she turned away.

  Along the wall and away from the window, there were boys in tracksuits, drinking coffee. You could tell they all knew each other, although they were sitting split up between different tables. Once they were outside, they would get louder and walk together, filling the street. She didn’t look at them and didn’t avoid them, she just accepted they were there. You couldn’t tell what people like that might do. You couldn’t tell what a group of them might wait outside to do. They weren’t bad; only nosey. You didn’t want to be something they had to find out about.

  Danny wouldn’t be pleased about this; her sitting around on her arse all night and not making him money. That was his fault for needing a lot. He said it was for medicine, but any cunt knew what kind of medicine that was.

  She had nothing to do with that. Up at home, you were always getting offered that, anything, their mammy’s tablets, anything, and she hadn’t touched it then and she wouldn’t now except for when her nerves were nipping. It was fucking stupid. He was just boring now. She could dress any way she wanted, he didn’t care any more – he didn’t even talk to her, or eat the food she got. She tried to look after him properly, but he didn’t want it, he only wanted the money and the shite he was using now. He’d made love to her before – not the other stuff – ana he’d been different and really lovely. He’d used to hold her and kiss and say the nice places in Scotland where they’d live when everything was fixed. Ha ha.

  They were going to go back home with their money. It would be great to go back with money, old enough for folk to hear you and with money. She would have a baby and she would take excellent care of it and call it James or maybe Mary, like her mother. Ha ha ha.

  Now Danny was shooting up, she wouldn’t have his fucking baby. Couldn’t be putting up with that shite altogether. She’d been so fucking careful, making people take precautions, trying really fucking hard to make all of them take precautions, and he didn’t even know what she was talking about and now he was sticking needles anywhere he’d seen a vein. Sometimes she hoped he would just die, better if they all did – if they all lay out with the folk who were skippering and then in the morning the polis would come and brush them all away.

  The last of her coffee tasted bogging. She might as well leave it. It was alright to do that here, there were unfinished doughnuts and napkins, paper cups across most of the tables. The floor wasn’t clean, either. Every now and then, a girl would come and clear things away. She looked crabbit and sick, very yellow – doing the kind of job you took when you couldn’t get anything else.

  Most of the staff here were black. She couldn’t get over that. Every time you went to places here, the people who served you and cleaned up after you were black. It must be like this in South Africa.

  The times when she thought of stopping it, of really doing something else, she always imagined having to work in here. If she was lucky, she would work in here. In two years’ time, she would be old enough to get a fucking dirty job in here and work all week to earn what she could in a day, just now. So what’s the point of that? All right, she didn’t get the money herself. You didn’t ever get the money, but you earned it, you were close to it, you knew it was yours.

  And all these folk that wanted her to change and to take her away from it – they talked about qualifications and training and then they just stopped. They couldn’t make sense of it either. They asked you what you wanted to do and then stopped – just lies or nothing – because nothing they could give you would be better than what you’d got.

  She knew what she was qualified for – hand relief or up the kilt. That’s what the Hotel Man called it – up the kilt – because she was Scottish and he wasn’t. Fancied himself as a comic. Fancied himself like they all did, saying they were being careful but cheating all the same, still treating you like a wean.

  Something hard clattered against the window and birled away. It seemed to wake her from something. Like she’d been staring at the street without seeing for ages. Everything outside that could be was in flight, floating by, and it reminded her of looking at the dentist’s fish tank and of feeling scared over what was coming next.

  It was past the time when she should be out there, earn Danny some more, but she felt a bit sick again, a bit hot. If she bought another coffee and sat it would pass away. She hadn’t felt right since she’d left the Hotel Man. Not since she’d had his present for going away.

  A man in a nice jacket turned back from the counter and smiled. It was that daft, private smile that went between two, always ugly really, even if it was for you. The woman already at the table returned it with a friendly, wee shake of her head. She was much younger than him. Probably he wouldn’t mind if she was younger still. A lot of them liked their girls little which was lucky for her. Or lucky for Danny, it depended how you looked at it.

  A man like that had told her she should stop it and get out. Not a man, a customer. He’d looked like a social worker when you saw him up close – the same kind of pathetic face. Trying to understand you, as if he was the only one that could.

  She’d got in his car as usual and then known he was weird. He was too relaxed. There wasn’t much you could do with the weird ones, except to wait and see. He’d seemed harmless.

  He’d told her he would pay her, but he didn’t want anything. She told him that nobody didn’t want anything. He just patted her knee and smiled.

  ‘I made that myself. It has two secret drawers in it and a secret panel.’

  He’d grinned like he was completely stupid and passed her a heavy, wooden box, with a sloping lid. The wood was pale with little pieces of darker wood, set in. She’d liked the smell of it, and the smoothness.

  You shouldn’t ever let them take you home. Not take you anywhere unknown, because that wasn’t safe. But she let him drive her to his home and take her in. He made her steak and beans and baked potato, because that’s what she felt like asking for. He gave her wine when she’d asked for voddy, but she drank it. Then he gave her the box.

  ‘See if you can find the drawers.’

  ‘I’m not a kid.’

  ‘OK. Don’t. I’ve got a video I want to watch. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Canny sleep?’

  ‘Not now, no. I want to see this film. Then you can tell me all about yourself.’

  He smiled, as if that was a funny thing to say.

  When she woke up, he was looking at her. He told her she must have been tired and she nodded. The TV wasn’t on, which meant he must have been watching her, instead of the video. So he was pervy, like she’d thought.

  ‘You’re not too well, are you? Do you know why?’

  She shook her head, thinking that of course she knew why. She didn’t eat like he did, or have a clean bed like he did, or live in a nice flat. She wasn’t well because of rats and damp and dirtiness in Danny’s squat, because there wasn’t a toilet there, not even water to wash or anything. London wasn’t like ‘My Fair Lady’ but you could tell, just by listening to him, that he thought it was and he was going to try and be Rex Harrison or some shite like that. Looked nothing like him.

  The man kept on looking at her. You could see he was concentrating on being kind and getting her to talk, people liked to hear about things sometimes, but she wasn’t going to tell him anything. It was none of his business, not even if he had paid for her time. Was this him trying to check if she was clean? Stupid if he was.

  ‘Don’t you think you deserve a bit better than this? Someone your age? You shouldn’t be stuck with this. You need a future.’

  No she did not. A future? All that time, all the same? She didn’t need that.

  ‘I’m nineteen, I can do what I like.’

  ‘I didn’t ask how old you were.
I could tell you how old I think you are. Maybe fifteen. I could tell you how much older you already look, but you know that.’

  She watched him think of something else to say.

  ‘You’re not from round here. Where are you from?’

  Maybe if she lifted her skirt that would shut him up. Then he wouldn’t feel sorry for her. Then he’d stop trying so hard to respect her.

  Not even the Hotel Man had done that – he’d only shown her the way things had to be done. When he’d found out she was leaving him, he’d locked her in her room. She’d been there for almost a day when he took her down to the where the boilers were. It was night and the hotel above her was quiet. The men sitting round the walls were quiet too, drinking and waiting for her. The Hotel Man did it first, and then he left.

  It was maybe the following afternoon when she knew he’d come back again. Except she was in a different place then, in her room on top of the bed. She was dirty into her bones, stiff with it. Bastards. Only some folk were bastards, but she’d met the whole fucking pack of them at once.

  He told her she had half an hour to leave. She was going because he’d decided she would – that was the way it worked – she did what other people decided, just accept it.

  She looked along the couch at the man. He was still staring at her.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you. You want me to go?’

  ‘No, that’s alright. Now you’re here, you might as well stay.’

  Which meant he’d decided what to do.

  When they’d finished he brought sheets and stuff to the sofa. He tucked her in. Well, she hadn’t expected he’d let her sleep in his bed, she wasn’t clean. But he kissed her a lot, on the mouth and on the stomach – like she’d thought, pervy.

  In the morning, he gave her cereal and toast for breakfast and coffee which she didn’t drink. She didn’t let him drive her back, because she felt sad again and that should be private. When she left, he squeezed her hand and watched until she’d turned the corner of the street. She wished he’d gone inside straight away.

  It had took her ages to walk back to town. Danny hadn’t been there when she got in and it was better without him. She knew that she wanted to stay where she was and have Danny go somewhere else. That would make her lonely, but it would be best.

  With the money that she’d kept from Danny and what she’d earned tonight, she could go back home. She could go up for a while and stay and then come back when she felt different. She wouldn’t do this in Glasgow, only here, so she could only stay for a short while and then come back, because you had to work, look after yourself. Sometimes she just got dead homesick – adverts on the underground for Scotland, they lied like fuck, but they still made you think.

  THE BOY’S FAT DOG

  I’VE BEEN LISTENING here all day and I can hear for miles. I told that to someone this morning and got no answer. Perhaps I muttered. People have told me I mutter from time to time and it has never been important because I have never had anything very much to say. It doesn’t matter today if no one heard me because I was mainly only speaking to myself. I know what I know and what I know is the idea that came in my head that there is a clearness up here for listening far away to dogs and motors and children which are all down there.

  I’m the one who found this place so it belongs to me. I wouldn’t say that one out loud, but I know that it’s true. The decision was mine to bring us here. I could have seen the houses and let them be or I could have been less careful in looking and maybe not come this far because the boot on my left foot is uncomfortable and I would rather not walk as much as I do. Only I did come and I did look and I did see and there it all was.

  These houses were waiting with the little roads and the people and those nice trees which will bear apples, I think. They have no blossom, but I think they will be apple trees and have fruit in the autumn. I couldn’t say how soon that will be. I have not needed to know for a while what time of year it is. I no longer seem to do the things that gave shape to my year, but the days are still days, just the same, whether I bother about them or not. I have no grip of time, but it holds me. The weather is often a clue, of course, but not always reliable, I personally find it very vague. Peasant people, country people, like the ones down there would be able to read the sky and the animals and know just when and where they are. They probably sniff the air and know what time of day it is precisely.

  There are country people up here too, but none of us seem to remember how to be that way. We are all so cleaned by being here that such considerations seem impossible.

  I have binoculars with me although I never use them much, they spoil my feel of the space. With my eyes I can watch a little coloured dab move and understand it is a boy in a coat so red it smears up into the air above him. And I can hear every word he whispers to his black barrel dog, but I can hold up one finger in front of my eyes and both of them are gone. That’s reality, that’s the way this is. Up here we see them and we know them and we know what to do with them and they are ignorant and little, hardly anything at all.

  I have no interest in peering and sneaking up to shutters, magnifying my way into cow-breathed widow parlours. A little glimpse of hair, a nipple, something to gulp about, some of them still want that, but not me. This isn’t the time to be close, this is the time to be outside and above and to feel things as they really are because there are some truths even I can recognise and one of them must be perspective. Up here I have perspective and it makes me peaceful and free. Someone yesterday was saying he’d lost his reason. I don’t understand that, it being such a contrast to my own condition here.

  I have reason, without it I wouldn’t have come. The news of this was everywhere – full of reasons. Written and spoken and we saw the photographs, heard the plans and these terrible rumours and it was clear that no one could be excluded from this on any side. I remember thinking ‘This is total. This is the most total thing we will ever see. I must be total with it.’ That felt fine.

  I know I have experience of the world and of being lied to. But no one would lie about this – that would be more than a sin, that could never be forgiven, it would be too big – and if they had tried to lie then I would know. I am nothing but honesty now and I would know. Doing this is as honest as I can be. I catch myself thinking some times and really appreciating how clear this all makes me feel inside.

  I had to leave my home and the girls and my job – selling shoes, although that seems unlikely now. I find it completely impossible to imagine a shoe shop today.

  Nobody said anything openly, not at first, they were being gentle or shy, but we knew what they intended all the same. We were being asked to go out and kill these people before they could kill any more of us. There can be none of them left, because they have crossed a kind of line and become animal, machine, something unhuman and only concerned with killing people like me who have homes and rows of winter greens, two little girls, a red-haired wife and jobs that don’t quite suit them.

  My brother would have lain down and died for a chance like this. He was much more involved in things than me, you would have said he was political or that he had that kind of pride in something you could put a flag to. But I’m not here on his behalf, that would be stupid. This is for my girls. We never were a religious family, but they should have the chance to have their own God. No one else’s. I have no pretensions of grace for myself, God won’t be any friend of mine.

  I am no friend of mine. I am sure of that. I can see my arm, see the cuff of the shirt I used to wear at home. It seems impossible that it can be with me here – just the same thing as it was, more dirty, frayed a little, but the same. My wife might recognise me in this shirt, but I would not, because I know that I am different. My shirt has outlived me, I am the one that wore away.

  And I can look down there at the house with pigs behind it and the brown door and I can watch myself, without closing my eyes, slitting the throats of pigs and pigs and pigs. The noise and the warm and the sputter, the giv
e. That was how I practised.

  If I dream now, I see the pigs more often than the people – the pigs were good animals and most of the meat went to waste which I am sorry for. Or I see a little boy. He wriggled and I cut his face which was not what I intended. I see him at night.

  Also at night I think that God must want this because nothing can happen without God. If there is God, It must want this kind of mess, even for people who have a real faith. Like when things will flip open sometimes in my head at those two brothers praying while we did what we did – the stuff with the women. There God allowed us to contradict the power of prayer with these old, old habits we all at once remember. We have terrible, necessary ways of saying – saying these people are nothing and even those ways mean nothing to us. One way or another, it always means nothing, what we do, and God lets it be like that. Meaningless.

  Which is what I’m used to. I’ve always been accustomed to live for others and not on my own behalf. I’ve taken care of my family, now in this way more than ever. Doing this means they will be able to go on living and be as they are. I know I loved them when I saw them last and that I do this out of love for them, but I think I will not love them any more. I get angry with them and with God and my boot. Equal anger for each and it’s all useful in the end because when I go down to the houses, the people there will get it. I’ll burn it away in them, put the plastic bags over their faces and set the fire and watch them melt. That’s what I do. It’s good for me to let go that way. I don’t know why, but it’s good.