So I Am Glad Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  Begin Reading...

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ALSO BY A. L. KENNEDY

  Copyright Page

  For E. M. Kennedy, M. Price, J. H. Price, my family and friends who rarely fail, and with—as ever—thanks to Bob Kingdom

  Acclaim for A. L. Kennedy’s

  So I Am Glad

  “The scenes, even [when] inhabited by a 300-year-old ghost, pulse with reality.”

  —The Washington Post

  “A. L. Kennedy is a fierce and enchanting writer with a voice as smoky as dry ice, and God save Scotland for exporting her fiction to America.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Kennedy gets fired up by the lacunae and margins of life, where she points out the unexpected beauty in the grotesque hiding there.”

  — Salon

  “Kennedy keeps the reader guessing where she will go next, and when she arrives at her destination, you are a little surprised at how far you’ve come.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “The joy comes from realizing that Kennedy is a marvelously gifted writer, whose understanding of people is profound and whose means of expression are altogether original.”

  —Newsday

  “Boldly imagined.”

  —The News & Observer

  “A gifted young Scottish writer. . . . Kennedy is obviously a writer to watch.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  I DON’T UNDERSTAND things sometimes. Quite easily, I can become confused by a word or a look or a tiny event and then I just can’t help but wonder why my life should happen in one particular way and not another. I always end up asking for answers I can’t have.

  A small part of this discontent started when I used to go to bed at night. Possibly not every night, but most nights, very many of my nights, would turn into something quite incomprehensible.

  You can imagine me, I’m sure, tucked up in the customary way with my eyes closed and my body comfortably slipped between two familiar, peaceful sheets in a quiet and sensible atmosphere of repose. Think of that undistracting time before morning when there are no dogs, no engines, no voices, only an infinite extension of the still and dark and gentle air now dozing above my face. And here I am, ready to drop snug asleep in exactly the perfect place to cash in my day. Only then I don’t sleep.

  Instead I find I take strange exercise. I am tired and unathletic and I am weary back in to my blood and bone, but I willingly waste the priceless hours next to daybreak in an activity which is neither rest nor sleep.

  Not surprised, just disappointed, I discover I am having sex again.

  I am a partner, I am one half of a larger, insane thing that flails and twists and flops itself together in ways far too ridiculous for daylight. But these are ways that I recognise, ways that I can’t help following once I start. So the bed I spent five minutes making this morning—with hospital corners because they appeal to me somehow, and are neat—that bed disassembles in moments, builds ridges up under my spine while my pillows fall off and the lights go on.

  My head is singing with lack of air and sickening exhaustion is setting up little explosions of white at the backs of both my eyes. And I am still having sex. Like an inadvertent Irish dancer tied up in a hot canvas sack, like a mad traffic policeman tangoing through ink, like a killer whale fighting to open an envelope, I persevere in having sex.

  And it really makes no sense to me.

  Sex.

  I would lie, flattened out at the end of all the necessary minutes, feeling slightly wild but also useless, and I would be sticky and anxious and far too awake and yet all I had ever intended was to be asleep and I would not know what it meant.

  Sex. I don’t know what it means. I haven’t approached it in quite a while, but I’m afraid my lack of understanding has to stay in the present tense. I can only remain bemused when I consider that on a depressingly regular basis I would render myself, and perhaps my companion, insensible with fatigue for no reason I could ever ascertain. Gathering my breath after the onslaught I would long for a bath and a Disprin, insulin, oxygen, a pint or two of evening primrose oil, a sandwich, a small cup of tea, just a nice lie down. I would then be utterly disheartened by the knowledge that all of this longing was happening almost precisely at the point where I would have to get up and start another day, filled with the promise of another night of probably more of the same again.

  Not that I object to the activity itself. I can think of countless situations where nothing in particular goes on and ideal opportunities are presented for a quick burst of sex. While waiting for dubiously available medical care, dubiously available public transport, or the results of dubious enquiries into miscarriages of public probity and justice—there are so many opportunities, each one panting with erotically vacant time and space. How actively we could thrash out our hours together, if we all of us only knew. We’d have no more need for chewing gum, waiting-room fishtanks, cigarettes, crosswords, public service charters, patience or even draughts. Not when we’ve all got sex.

  Which would in many cases constitute the removal of a great weight from my mind. I would much rather know that my local MP was rolling along the Pet Food and Condiments aisle in a fellow shopper’s moist embrace than imagine him or her juggling with breakable ceasefires, exorcising childhood crime and indulging in lighthearted TV panel games. And as sex with other people is now undeniably dangerous, I should welcome the thought that we might all prefer to spend entirely solitary nights in, not leaving ourselves alone.

  My mind is open. We all have it in us to be an opium for every conceivable mass.

  So in principle, I can honestly see that sex has many uses. In my own case, I’m sad to say that I have found it to be of one use only—when I’m having sex, I’m not also expected to speak. This is the one major social transaction I conduct where conversation would be a sign of positive discourtesy.

  Oh, a few words now and then are unavoidable, of course. I can remember.

  THERE

  NOW

  LATER

  and not (THERE, NOW, LATER)

  YES and NO

  DID and YOU

  and

  HAPPY?

  YET?

  But that isn’t speaking. And I should know because I really didn’t like to speak. It made me uneasy to lock up my door at night and know there was someone else home who was supposed to be special for me. They would wash in my bath and sit in my armchair, they would want me to ask things about them and try to find out about me, they would want to see in through my eyes and let me do the same. Although this was very usual, something I heard about all the time, I couldn’t bring myself to accept it, couldn’t face it repeating the in-house, involuntary third degree for the whole of the rest of my life. So I became an expert in diversion. I quickly discovered how easy it could be to stay intimately active instead of intimate. Sometimes for many months, I could make almost anyone sure I was like them simply by making myself sure I knew what they would like.

  Naturally, my position was not ideal. Months and then years burned away without changing what I came to see more and more clearly as an invincible lack of involvement on my part. Like manholes and poison bottles I was made to be self-locking and I could no longer be bothered pretending I might have a key. I sought out relationships less and less, rented a room and shared facilities in a square, grey house with three complete strangers for whom I had only the smallest responsibility. I stopped trying to be normal and began to enjoy a small, still life that fitted very snugly around nobody but me. I no longer felt inadequate. And when I went to bed I slept.

  I once believed I had an overly practical n
ature and that my lack of romantic enthusiasm stemmed from that, but now I know I have simply been unable to share in the emotional payoff, to feel the benefits of close company and sex. I am not good at emotional payoffs. I am not emotional.

  You should know that about me. You should be aware of my principal characteristic which I choose to call my calmness. Other people have called it coldness, lack of commitment, over-control, a fishy disposition. I say that I’m calm, a calm person, and usually leave it at that, but I feel you should be better informed.

  A few things have happened to alter my condition, but it would still be broadly true to say that I am calm. It is assumed that this stems from some kind of self-control or confidence, perhaps a type of faith. I am given credit for the massive exertions I must surely perform to sustain my tranquillity.

  But I am quite happy to tell you that what appears to be peace and calmness is, in fact, empty space—or, to be more exact, a pause. I am not calm, I am unspontaneous. When something happens to me, I don’t know how to feel.

  Naturally, I have now lived more than long enough to guess at an appropriate emotion for almost all occasions that arise. Those around me have spent years being furious and chipper, nostalgic, nauseous, glum and all the rest. I know what these things look like and can reproduce them adequately at will. But where someone else will romp immediately off into a chuckle or a gasp, I have to generate a thought, an effort, and any kind of very minor irregularity in my situation may elongate the preparatory pause I need to gather a feeling together until whatever I was going to do becomes irrelevant. I have missed my chance.

  This has been less of a problem than you might suppose— most people are too bound up with their own emotions to notice any failings in mine. I have, however, given the matter some thought.

  Seemingly, most people have whole hordes of feelings, all barrelling round inside them like tireless moles. As little tiny children they release these emotional moles at the slightest excuse. They will pack a room to the ceiling with riotous, tunnelling mammals for no special reason at all. They have moles and they will exercise them, simply because they are there. Children will be gratuitously expressive just because they can.

  Then, I have read, these innocent mole containers go out in the world and learn to conserve their moles. They are taught that other people’s livestock may be unpleasant and do their little charges harm. A room full of moles can be messy and troublesome, even painful. The world is full of sharp little edges and nasty corners and such factors must encourage a level of reasonable restraint to protect both the moles and their minders.

  This means that adults can behave quite calmly and safely with barely a trace of their animal insides showing from day to day. Equally, it only takes a first morning of perfect snow, a rapid descent into love or divorce, an especially manipulative film and the moles are out and rolling all over the carpet. So even if we can’t see them, we take it for granted that everyone has moles.

  Now, I’m a calm person, you’ll remember that. I am safer than safe. This might imply that my moles are perpetually oh so sleepy and far underground. Or perhaps they used to canter about in the usual way, but then they were scared into hiding by some kind of psychological Rentokil.

  Not so.

  Almost the first thing I noticed about me when I was very, very young—apart from how my hands worked and what tasted nice, those kinds of details—almost the first thing I noticed was that I had a certain moley something missing. I will tell you soon about my parents and the original ways they could have, but when I do, you’ll already know they played no part in making me how I am. I won’t say it wasn’t useful to have no particular feelings for them to get hold of. I won’t deny I made myself as slippery as I could, but you should know that for most of the years I spent near them, I was faking it. I was ringing up every reaction they might conceivably expect me to be attempting to suppress. In other words, I was pretending that I had anything to hide.

  As I write this, I can see extremely clearly that nothing terribly bad has ever happened to me. I can’t recall a single moment of damage that could have turned me out to be who I am today. I can dig down as deep as there is to dig inside me and there truly is nothing there, not a squeak. For no good reason, no reason at all, I am empty. I don’t have any moles.

  A LITTLE MORE about me. Just a bit.

  My name is M. Jennifer Wilson. The M. stands for Mercy, I’ve no idea why.

  Now I want to show you someone else. His hands, which are square and quick, have just slapped down on to a table top. I can see his tidy nails and solid fingers as they spring up to wrestle and fuss with each other for the length of another sentence. These are hands as an accompaniment to speech.

  The knuckles pat together in a temporary halt.

  “You truly have an interest in this? Think carefully before you reply.”

  It’s my voice that answers and I clear my throat before I do— that’s a habit I have, a way of buying time for a response.

  “Hhrrrhf. I think I’m interested, yes. But if you don’t want to say . . .”

  “No. So you will understand, this is something about which you must think ‘I want to know this.’ If you truly don’t wish to know then I would advise you to retire from the field. I have a so great regard for your friendship that in my position currently I would wish to keep it safe by discourteously ignoring your enquiry.

  “I, for myself, would much rather speak about these vegetables here—these are very remarkable things. And a person will always know where they are with a vegetable. They are an excellent comfort to me in times of distress. Do you see?”

  Needless to say, I don’t see. Not at all.

  “Martin, I only asked you how you got here. It was small talk. I didn’t mean it metaphysically—not anything like it.”

  He presses the heel of one hand between his eyes and smiles, rather tired, as it seems to me. The kitchen makes its small noises round us, the flutter of the ventilator, rain on the window, the pit-pat electrical ticks of the clock. Martin scuffs his feet under the table and raises his head.

  “Eh, well. Now I am going to sleep upstairs. Please don’t be afraid of making noise, I dream very deeply and will not be disturbed. Tonight, we might speak, hnn?”

  He gives a little formal nod and gets to his feet.

  Standing, he generally seems slightly shorter than expected, less imposing. I remember thinking that. His height is in his body, not his legs.

  If, at this point, I had taken Martin’s picture and then showed it to you we could have looked at it together and seen:

  the corner of a failed Welsh dresser.

  part of a doorframe painted in magnolia gloss because it surrounds a door in a shared house and, although all of us hate magnolia, it is the least offensive possible shade of compromise.

  a small man with the air of a prize fighter turned poetic, or a dancing butcher—all we can actually see of him are his hands which are fading olive and too large for their arms and his head which is supplied with longish, coarse-ish, thinningish, apathetically curly hair and very striking bones. His profile has a remarkable, even predatory, focus that weakens down into a neat, soft mouth and an oddly tiny chin. A ghost of bristle shadows his upper lip. Because he has a habit of frowning with his mouth and not his forehead, he can seem either prissily savage or savagely prissy—like Red Riding Hood’s granny, mixed in with her wolf.

  a pullover with a laddered hole in the sleeve, traces of a collarless shirt and a portion of Oxfam trousers which finally crumple over soft, long slippers—this assembly covers the rest of the small man.

  nothing of me, except maybe a smudged twirl of steam from my tea. I’ve never liked being seen—my job involves being completely invisible and suits me no end. If we took the picture today, I’d even have cut out the smoke, so I wouldn’t leave a trace. Of course, that wouldn’t be the only alteration now. This story will, among other things, form a record of various cuts.

  You’ll have realised by this ti
me that we have started. We’re up and running, albeit in a retrospective kind of way.

  We’ll take it for granted that Martin nips up for his sleep and the life of the house rolls gently along because on this particular day, only Martin and I are home. I cook and eat and throw away the scraps of dinner. I know without checking that what seemed quite a promising situation in many countries of the world beyond has slithered back into ignorance and spasms of random death.

  That afternoon I might, for the sake of argument, recall that quite recently a friend has told me about a besieged group of soldiers broadcasting a tape to their besieging opposite numbers, dug in and waiting around one town or another in one war or another. Their tape had recorded proceedings while a young child was minced alive into small-bore meat. My friend and I could not understand how such a tape could have been thought of, or how it could have been made, or how all the little technical necessities could have been seen to in the field. After a while, we found we were both laughing, in the absence of any more appropriate response.

  I fill the kettle while the sun dips lower in what I am told is an irredeemably poisoned sky and I think of the distant damage I do, by boiling my water with electricity.

  After the loudest of the birds have called on the evening— because even though I hardly see them, we do seem to have birds here always—I find myself very quiet, looking at a grainy room, dim, thinking of nothing at all, but slightly waiting. Then I hear movement above me, a gentle disturbance down the stairs, Martin on his way.

  “Well do come in.”

  “Ah. I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Come in. Do you want to put the light on?”

  “No, I don’t. May I sit down and did you think about what you want and is what you want that I should speak to you?”

  He moves to the table, surprisingly quickly, although perhaps that has to do with the lack of light and the drowsy way I’m watching him.

  “Or is that too many questions to ask? Which is naturally another question more. It would be nice if you could answer one. I am afraid my sleep was not entirely serene and I am out of humour. Perhaps I should regather my force and meet you tomorrow.”