Now That You're Back

by A. L. Kennedy

  It was small and made smaller by ranks of shelves. In the window was a plain oak table beside a filing cabinet.

  ‘It’s a study.’

  ‘That’s right. My study has always been like this. I take it with me.’

  ‘From Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, everywhere. It makes me feel at home. Don’t worry, I don’t use it. It’s here to remind me of my mistakes; so I won’t make them again. You believe you can only really learn from your past?’

  ‘Of course. But, you honestly don’t ever go in here?’

  ‘Only to dust.’

  ‘You . . . I’m sorry, but you seem to like suffering. Why do you keep this here?’

  When she didn’t answer he thought she was offended, but she only gave a closed smile and offered him more tea.

  It was dark by the time he left her and he still had almost nothing to put in his story. If he didn’t get somewhere with her on Saturday, he would have to give up. A whole fortnight’s holiday pissed away in Dublin. His first and only foreign assignment buggered, to coin a phrase. They wouldn’t even offer him expenses.

  On Friday, David made it down to breakfast and then returned to his room, threw up and went to bed. He felt feverish. The morning and the afternoon shone through the curtains, modified by giant pink roses and their giant grey leaves and he slept. The radio played through his dreams, adding the day’s news here and there while Monagh sat in her square, bare living-room and told him there was nothing he could do.

  ‘Write yourself better, David. Alter the exchange rate, save Kuwait. You want to be a writer; you believe in all of this.’

  He tried to dream her on to her bed. Her hair would lie against the crimson coverlet. Why did she like crimson so much, when it always reminded him of blood? Her skin would be on the crimson, pale as the belly of a hare. And . . . and then they would be able to write. Together. They would fuck and write and make things, it was all the same process. She would be so nice on that coverlet, and then all wrapped up in it later when he brought tea.

  At three o’clock in the morning, David rang the night porter and asked him for coffee, sandwiches. He ate and drank quickly, very hungry, showered and made his bed. When he woke again it was time for breakfast and fully Saturday.

  Monagh had baked them both biscuits.

  ‘You can have another. There’s no one else to eat them but me.’

  ‘Thanks, they’re very nice.’

  She allowed herself a smile and crossed her legs with a nylon hiss.

  ‘No need to sound quite so surprised.’

  And Monagh grinned again, clattering the spoon as she put down her cup. She smoothed the grey woollen dress taut over her lap and glanced at the carpet, then the walls. When she flicked a hand through her hair, David caught a snatch of her perfume, clean skin and scented soap.

  ‘Well, David, it’s time to be very serious. I have something to show you, come on.’

  Her tension seemed to melt as she moved for the door, pulling David up from the sofa by his hand. She tugged him behind her, out along the passageway, and he felt a heavy pulse start in his throat, felt his breath race, felt her fingers on his palm.

  Monagh opened the furthest door and left him to drift in behind her. On the clean wood of her table, there was a narrow stack of foolscap sheets. She scooped it up and held it out towards him, eyes terribly blue, lips parting.

  ‘How much will you give me for it? You win, you get first refusal. What am I bid?’

  ‘I’m . . . Monagh. I . . . what do you mean?’

  She smiled and dipped her head a touch to the side.

  ‘David, it’s what you were looking for; it’s why you’re here. I thought somebody would come, eventually. Silly things you think of when there’s times on your hands. Please don’t misunderstand me, David, I’ve given this up, I have no interest in this. But I did think, if I was so popular, so highly regarded – you said it yourself – I did think that someone might have wondered where I’d gone, if I was still writing, or if I had anything left behind unpublished.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure people wondered. I have. I’ve heard folk saying, really.’

  ‘Well, it took a fucking while for you to ask me. You plural.’

  She sighed, almost too softly to be heard.

  ‘This is my last story. When I finished it, there wasn’t any more. It stopped. That’s the truth, I didn’t stop it, it stopped itself. There were leftovers, attempts and rewrites and then nothing. I suppose my confidence had gone.’

  ‘Your last story.’

  ‘Yes. You can have it. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I need the money. Any money.’

  ‘That’s very, very . . . thank you. I’ll have to be honest with you, too. I’m here to write an article about you, that is the only reason that I’m here. But as soon as I get home, I’ll talk to people. They’ll be very keen, I’m sure they will.’

  Monagh returned the papers to the table without speaking, then sat with her back to the light. She would have sat like this when she was typing.

  ‘So you’ll hawk it round then, will you? Out with the begging bowl.’

  ‘Look, it’s my fault, you misunderstood me. This is my fault. I’ll just leave you to think. Some more tea – I could make some. I’ll do that. Yes.’

  He turned and hoped to hear her crying as he walked along the hall. Crying would be good, a wee release. She’d prefer to do that privately and appreciate his tact.

  ‘You see, David,’

  She pulled his head round, made him stop before he knew what she had said.

  ‘It does become quite important, after a while, that people ask you for your work. When you’ve been doing it for years, I mean for years; since I was your age; and the people who know how told you what a wonderful writer you are, you do just now and then, really want to be fucking asked.’

  ‘Of course, I –’

  ‘Don’t say you understand. You do not understand. I’m not stupid, I worked very hard not to get my hopes up; just to write. But people say these things, you get reviews and you think you’ll get work, at least something . . . I never had one offer of work in all those years. Not one.’

  ‘Surely, there was something.’

  ‘Never anything to do with writing – my writing. You end up doing nonsense; journalism, readings, anything, and folk think you’re doing fine, they think you don’t need to be asked. That’s my problem, David, I never looked desperate enough.’

  ‘But Monagh, if you were still able to work, if people liked what you did. Wasn’t that enough?’

  ‘No! It’s not enough. I gave up too much for it ever to be enough. No one ever understood what I wrote, it never got any serious attention, it never changed anything. There just wasn’t any point in doing it.’

  ‘Monagh, please, come on and we’ll go out. We’ll have dinner.’

  ‘Mr Reid, this is very sweet and I know you mean well. You seem a very nice young man, but please, just go away. You’re too young to see this, you think you’ve got time to do better.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake! You’re so bloody self-obsessed. Do you know, you’ve talked about nobody else since I met you. Other writers are only there to be compared with you. Nobody else had it tough. You’ve got a house, you’ve got health, you’ve got your job, but you’ve got it tough. Why the hell should we all be waiting for every word you write? Who do you think you are? Why should your stories be able to change the world? If you want us all to jump whenever you have an idea, you should be a military dictator. Why write?

  ‘You had it all there for you. You could get inside people’s heads, change them by showing them things they’d never thought of, make them happy. You could plant the seed and maybe it wouldn’t grow now, but it would do later. Only you’ve gone in the huff. You just don’t want to play any more. You need to be asked, you say? Well who fucking doesn’t. You have an obligation to us and you’ve chickened out.’

  He found he was shouting, leaning over the table and starting to swe
at.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve . . . been offensive. I’ll go.’

  ‘Not at all. I apologise for letting you down, Mr Reid. I find one’s idols are never quite up to scratch.’

  ‘No, you haven’t let me down. It just seems such a waste, Monagh. I mean a waste of you.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s all that much of me left, David. Don’t fret.’

  They had tea in the living-room, very quietly, talking about Dublin and the places he should go to see. When she had fetched his hat and coat, Monagh sat beside him on the sofa.

  ‘Do you think you’ll write the article?’

  ‘If you don’t mind, I think I will. You know, it might make people ask you for work. It might not, though. I mean, I won’t beg for you.’

  ‘I know that. Look, take this, too.’

  She had the manuscript in her hand.

  ‘If anyone wants it, you can tell me. I refuse to be hopeful. But you might as well have it as not. That sounds very ungracious – I would like you to have it, David. There you are.’

  Even out on the pavement, he could feel the pressure of her hand, through the paper. There was also the little weight of a kiss on his cheek.

  ‘Bye, bye, David. No need to keep in touch. Unless something happens.’

  And a doorstep kiss, an indecipherable gesture.

  David caught a flight to Glasgow on Monday afternoon. Sunday had been too grey to make another week of Dublin seem bearable. He knew, if he stayed, he would end up calling her.

  He walked out of Glasgow airport with his holdall unsearched, nothing he felt willing to declare. Somewhere between his shirts, he knew there was a sheaf of paper, just over a dozen pages, and he felt them tug his arm as he stepped. They carried a story called ‘Warming My Hands and Telling Lies’ which dealt with night-time disfigurements and invisible creatures called Industrialists. David worried it might be difficult to sell, but was happy to have it, as if he had suddenly met an old friend. A school friend. Only one thing had changed, now there was an introduction. Monagh must have added it later, or decided not to read it out one Friday afternoon, a very long time ago.

  This story is as much as I can make it and must now speak for itself. Only you will know if it succeeds because I will stay here in the past and somewhere else.

  My chosen title is a different case and does require additional explanation.

  Once, out driving beside my second husband, I ran my fingers up his thigh. He asked me what I was doing.

  ‘Just warming my hands.’

  ‘Such lies.’

  ‘Yes, I’m warming my hands and telling lies.’

  You will recognise the relevant phrase.

  As a year or two nudged past us, our relationship changed. My husband began to dislike me and then to hate. He hated my voice and my body, but perhaps most of all, he hated me to write.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Up there fucking writing all day, you’d be better off having a wank. Who do you think ever actually reads all that shite?’

  ‘You don’t object when it earns us money.’

  ‘Remind me when that was, it’s so long ago. I earn enough for both of us. Why don’t you try retiring – you could take up being a wife.’

  One day when I was asked what I was doing I shouted back, ‘Warming my hands and telling lies.’

  I don’t know why these words occurred to me, only that they seemed entirely true. I sat and typed out fabrications, keeping my hands snug and supple on the little, black keys. That was all it came to, nothing more. Just warming my hands and telling lies.

  LIKE A CITY IN THE SEA

  ‘WELL, NEVER MIND about that – there was a pigeon on the underground.’

  ‘But what happened? There are always pigeons everywhere. What did he say to you?’

  ‘Almost nothing he hardly spoke. I mean this was a pigeon on the underground – going round on the Circle Line, just like a little drunk man in a grey vest. Staggering up and down the aisle.’

  ‘All right, tell me about the pigeon.’

  ‘It was on the Circle Line, walking up and down.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s all, really, I just thought it was worth mentioning. Everyone else was trying to ignore it, as if it was a little drunk man in a vest, you know?’

  ‘Mm hm. What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing you could put your finger on, but I knew what he meant.’

  ‘Which was.’

  ‘Whether you looked like my mother and whether we still fucked.’

  There was a little quiver of sadness round her mouth and then she gave him the look that meant he would have to say more. He didn’t want to rehearse all the slimy details to her face, her unbearably patient eyes, so he moved to sit beside her on the sofa.

  A room with three sofas, there was something excessive about that – about all of the furniture she had – but then all of the space she also had here just swallowed up whole sideboards as if they were biscuits. They could accommodate several pianos here, no trouble at all. As he sank down beside her, he thought of pianos and offered her the choice of looking out at the other two sofas, or sideways at him. He would be concentrating on the window.

  ‘Well; go on then.’

  She tapped the back of his hand and he leaned in a bit, catching a scent of her hair when he slipped his arm in under hers. She had the thinnest arms – each of them enough to break your heart.

  ‘He talked about all of the usual stuff then plodded around for a while about what I do and how we met and did I know about your family – all that.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘What I always tell them – that most things are none of my business, but if you have chosen to tell me about them, then they’re nobody else’s, so there.’

  He could hear her frowning.

  ‘But I said it all very politely and smiled a lot.’

  ‘Oh, dear, Sam.’

  ‘What do you mean, “Oh dear, Sam”?’

  ‘There’s a way you have of smiling that looks hungry, rather than happy.’

  ‘Well, that’s just me, isn’t it? Hungry rather than happy, that’s me. I wouldn’t be comfortable any other way. But the main thing he was interested in wasn’t even to do with all that, everything always comes round to how many years you are older than me and how different we are. The Odd Couple – isn’t it remarkable that we manage to stay together when there are fifteen or twenty years between us.’

  ‘More like thirty years.’

  ‘Yes, I told him that and he gave me one of those old-fashioned looks you’d remember from when you were young. Everyone knows it’s nearly thirty, but he wanted to give the impression that he wouldn’t believe it until he’d heard it straight from one of us. If you move across here more, you can see right into Number Thirty-Five – they’ve put their lights on. Mr Numberthirtyfive is having his first whisky and soda. Swallow, swallow, swallow – Good evening, world. He must have an awfully hard life. What does he do?’

  She came in neat against his hip.

  ‘Makes money.’

  ‘Well of course, or he wouldn’t live here, but what does he really do?’

  ‘No idea. But that’s his second whisky. Look at the way he’s walking.’

  ‘I bow to your superior knowledge of movement.’

  He smoothed a little tug of hair back behind her ear and kissed the naked cheek beneath.

  ‘How’s Mum, then?’

  ‘Mum’s fine. How’s Dad?’

  ‘No complaints, not really. I’m sorry I ran away this afternoon, but I had to get off by myself for a while. Sometimes I’m better out than in.’

  ‘Like wind.’

  ‘If you must be romantic about it, yes, I suppose so.’ He tried out the sound of it. ‘I remember that Helen once told me I was like wind. I naturally reminded her that she was the one who was lighter than air. Yes, that seems fine.’

  ‘Maybe you could sugge
st it as the title for the programme.’

  ‘I will – “Helen Carlisle – Like the Wind. Like Having the Wind – Helen Carlisle.” Or perhaps we could change it to “Like Indigestion”. We wouldn’t want to offend people, would we. What do you think?’

  ‘“The Dancing Old Fart” would be better.’

  ‘Perfect. Let’s not talk about it any more. It annoys me, they annoy me. Let’s have a nap.’

  ‘I’m not sleepy.’

  ‘Then I’m going to do this and this and have my own little doze, just here.’ He stretched himself out with the back of his head just rested between the curves of her thighs, very supported, and nuzzled the side of his face against her belly. ‘Mmm, smells like apple pie and roses, Mum.’

  ‘Not sardines on toast, Dad?’

  ‘Ooh, you are a one. Still, no point in not getting the full use of every settee. Wake me when it’s supper-time.’

  He didn’t think about the crew until they had already arrived again the following morning. When he looked down out of the kitchen window, a man in an anorak was pressing a pale grey tripod into the slippery grass. There would be complaints about that from the Garden Committee – ‘There shall be no use of tripods or other photographic supports to the detriment of lawns or other surfaces’. Not that the Court wouldn’t love it, all the same. The district hadn’t hosted a decent interview in months – nothing even faintly exotic to take for granted, not a parliamentary love-nest, not a film crew, not even a bomb.

  Down on the lawn, the tripod was misbehaving. The fixing of one leg seemed automatically to loosen the other two and Anorak finally left the struggle and began to shuffle a darker green track across the misted turf, a boxy camera snugged between his ear and shoulder. The sound man was smoking a cigarette into the dusting rain. Nothing too much happening yet.

  Sam tapped the window as he filled the kettle and smiled when Anorak waved up. The sound man never seemed to notice noises – not unless he wanted them for something.