Now That You're Back Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by A.L. Kennedy

  Dedication

  Title Page

  A Perfect Possession

  Christine

  On Having More Sense

  Failing To Fall

  Armageddon Blue or Poised On The Brink Of Becoming A Magnificent Success

  Bracing Up

  The Mouseboks Family Dictionary

  Friday Payday

  The Boy’s Fat Dog

  Warming My Hands And Telling Lies

  Like A City In The Sea

  Mixing With The Folks Back Home

  Now That You’re Back

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Exposing and exploring the sinuous undercurrents of violence, anguish and love, A.L. Kennedy examines the nature of the individual, both in isolation and society, as characters define and deny their chosen identities. While showing us the unlikeliness of intimacy and the impossibility of communication, Kennedy also reveals the subversive liberation of impotence, the humour of discomfort as human beings chafe together, the crazed claustrophobia of the family and the wildly funny results of an eccentricity unleashed.

  About the Author

  A.L. Kennedy has published four novels, most recently Paradise, two books of non-fiction, and four collections of short stories. She has twice been selected as one of Granta’s twenty Best of Young British Novelists and has won a number of prizes including the Somerset Maugham Award, the Encore Award and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.

  ALSO BY A.L. KENNEDY

  Fiction

  Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

  Looking for the Possible Dance

  So I am Glad

  Original Bliss

  Everything You Need

  Indelible Acts

  Paradise

  Non-Fiction

  The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

  On Bullfighting

  For E. M. Kennedy, M. Price, J. H. Price,

  my family and friends who rarely fail,

  with thanks to Bob Kingdom.

  Now that You’re Back

  A.L. Kennedy

  A PERFECT POSSESSION

  IT HURTS WHEN we love somebody, because loving is a painful thing, that is its nature. Today, even though we are not sure that the pain will pass, it has to be said that our loving is hurting us.

  He is spending this evening in his room where we don’t see him. It is raining outside and he always likes to smell the rain. Often, we have listened while he opens his window and lets in the damp and the insects and the draught. Downstairs, we can hear the rasp of wood when he tugs at the frame. He can be strong sometimes, even though he is small, and the window is loose fitting and old, he can push it up quite easily. So he empties out the heat we pay for and he really doesn’t think. We don’t know where he gets that from, his terrible lack of thought, he simply isn’t one bit like us.

  Of course, no little boy likes to think and we expect to do that for him until he is grown and responsible. This is a burden to us, but a light and pleasant one. Loving someone means that you will do things for them, almost without consideration. We would catch him if he ran and fell, we would bandage him if he were bleeding and now we can measure his actions and think ahead on his behalf. On many occasions, we can stop him being hurt.

  We don’t think of these attentions as any kind of chore, after all, when he was so noisy and smelly and dirty, so very difficult to hold, we didn’t abandon him. We knew he was a baby, not just some troublesome pet, and we kept him with us. For months, he made our lives extremely different, in fact he was quite a tyrant, but we didn’t mind. We taught him to do better. Now we can really believe that he is quiet and clean as a matter of course. He sometimes makes mistakes, but then, mistakes are how we teach him. We learned by being corrected and that is the best way.

  The worry of keeping him safe is another matter, that can be draining now and then. For example, we didn’t know what to do about his window. He might have opened it up and then dropped out, so we had the bars put on, but still we had to fret because a fire could easily trap him in his room, what with his door being locked the way it must. Then there was the problem of his still opening the window inside the bars and doing whatever odd little boy things he feels himself moved to do. His carelessness could have left us with rot in the window frame and perhaps he would catch cold. It was much better to screw down the window and put our minds at rest, because he will give us promises and then break them, which hurts us all in the end. Better to use the woodscrews than tempt him to lie at us.

  He wasn’t grateful for what we did, but that is very normal in boys; we understand. His spite didn’t stop us saying that if he ever were in difficulties, or a fire did occur, he could bang on his door the way he does now and we would certainly let him out.

  We are puzzled he still prefers not to be granted full run of the house. We don’t know how many times we’ve asked him if he would like to be trusted not to break anything else, or to disturb us. Always he refuses the privilege, which we suppose shows that he knows his limitations: he is still dreadfully clumsy for his age. We make a point of sharing meals with him and having him sit at our table – it is so important he should have good eating manners when he goes to school. We suffer for the decision, but we persevere. It doesn’t matter how many glasses he drops and the stains he makes in the tablecloth don’t deter us; we will stop the silly shaking in his hands and eventually see him performing respectably.

  If we let the child know our rules and what happens when he breaks them, it’s only a matter of time until everything falls into place. More people should understand that and keep the incoming flood of modern and imported attitudes out of their homes. Today we all suffer at the hands of criminals created by sloppy care. A good child will be a good citizen and a bad child will not, as anyone can appreciate. Upbringing has to be just that – bringing up from the animal level to something higher, better, closer to God. Obviously, some races will always be nearer the animal than others, we must accept this as God’s will, but if everyone would simply do their best then how much more pleasant the world would soon become. As it is, we are almost afraid to go out.

  He never goes out without us, of course, we can’t trust him to strangers. This means we must be with him always which takes time and effort, but we would rather do a good job now than reap the sour rewards for idleness and slacking later. We tell him this and expect him to feel the same. Equally, we wouldn’t leave him to the tender mercies of the television. If we sat him in front of an endless stream of filthy music and filthy talk, filthy actions, what would we get? We would get a filthy boy. He may listen to some radio, look at his picture book or amuse himself in any way he likes and enjoy the haven we have made for him. Our home is a clean home, free from tabloid sewage and the cheap and foreign pollution most people seem content to have wash around them all the day. We are not like that, we even sing him hymns to keep the air sweet in our rooms. It’s such a pity we can’t take him out to church.

  We have the cares and troubles that come with the gift of a child. It would be very easy to give him material things and think that making him happy would make him good. There was even a time when we did offer him presents, wholesome gifts for a boy, and we were surprised when he broke them, or dirtied them, or pushed them aside. He could quickly forget we had given him anything.

  This ingratitude and forgetfulness was hurtful, but because we love him, it hurt us even more to take the things away. Still, we have the bitter satisfaction of finding our judgements proved right. His will is undeveloped and can be swiftly poisoned by exposure to the material si
de of this world. A time came when he wanted something he could hug on to in the night and we knew what that meant. That was a warning. We had to take his pillow away because he would sleep alongside of it, in spite of what we told him, and that was dirty, that was more of the filth we constantly fight to save him from. It grieved us when he cried about it, cried in the night, and didn’t understand the procedures to which he would have to conform. In the end he was persuaded to pray with us and became peaceful which was a little victory for us all.

  Other victories will come. We would love him to have birthdays and presents like other children. That would be such fun, but the way he is now, it would be quite impossible. We hope that he will change in time and become more upright and mannerly, a suitable example to others, and we are overjoyed to see that he is already much quieter than he ever has been. Sometimes we only know he’s there, because of a certain feeling in the house and the ties that loving binds.

  His extreme delicacy frightens us, naturally. Some mornings when we look at him, he seems so pale and thin, perhaps as an angel might be. His whole body is almost white which is clean, but not natural. No matter what we do, what methods we apply, he turns back to white again within days or hours, even minutes. He could have gone to school this term, had he been well, but we will have to wait until he’s stronger and perhaps reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that he may never go to a normal school. That would be a disappointment. That would make us sad.

  Sometimes we have to ask ourselves if he is a judgement on us for our part in his conception. Children come from sin, they are the immediate flower of sin and there is sin in him. It would be idle to consider why this should be so and we believe only that, through him, we may find an opportunity to conquer sin again and again. This is more a privilege than a punishment and we treasure it. Many times in the night, we examine him for signs of filthiness, wetness of every kind, and often we are given cause for concern, or rather, we are challenged by sin. He has bad seed in him and it comes out. Evil cannot help but flaunt itself and in the darkness it is most free to be manifest. How weary he makes us, forcing us to search and watch and search: a rubber sheet is not enough, an alarm is not enough, all our vigilance is not enough. Nobody knows what pains we have to take with the boy, purely to keep him up and away from his animal self.

  And the animal brings on the animal, the beast. We find him tempting us as the devil tried to tempt Our Lord and we are uncovered as wanting. He offers us what he has and should not have and takes advantage of our tiredness, our weakness and our humanity.

  We have to be strong for his sake, we have to pray and take action fearlessly for the sake of all our souls because we want him to grow up into a man we will be proud of. He will not be a fear and a stranger in our house because our strength and fortitude will not allow it.

  Even tonight, when we think of our love for him and feel tender, we are undefeated because we know that tenderness is not enough. We must call upon our action and our faith and, with God’s guidance, proceed.

  Our child has sinned today. He has summoned an evil under our roof. What sin, what evil, need not be mentioned, we will not dignify it with a name. We need only say that he is ugly with sin and now we must call upon our God-given love to claim him for beauty so that good may triumph in all our hearts. We will release him from himself and hear him thank us for it. We must.

  Time after time and time out of time, we will purify him for the coming world and watch him cultivate his gratitude, piece by piece. When we are finished, he will be a good boy entirely.

  CHRISTINE

  I CAN HARDLY describe the way she was at school. That’s where I first knew her – at school. She was in the year above me, but there was something that looked much younger inside her eyes which would make you feel either protective or embarrassed depending on where you met her and what she did.

  What she did best was falling over. If I try to picture her then, all I can see are badly adjusted ankles and lean, tapering feet, knees and elbows all slightly out of control. A few of us, because we were boys and therefore nasty, placed bets through the whole of one week against Christine once being able to walk clear across the playground without at least tripping up. Large spaces with no apparent obstacles seemed to confuse her. She would stand by the railings every morning like a freshly liberated convict and then painstake her way up the tarmac, redefining clumsy as she went.

  I bet on her for eight minor stumbles and one wholesale collapse. She didn’t let me down, but the money I won made me blush whenever I saw her. She tended to make me feel guilty. In fact, it seems now that knowing Christine has gradually introduced me to every kind of guilt. I can’t dislike her for it. She was just there while I did what I wanted, gently overlooking all the ungentle things I thought were safely hidden in my head.

  Whether she was attractive then would be difficult to say; she always appeared in a flurry of doomed objects and bleeding which made her very difficult to see. And she could also be emotionally distracting. This was a time when anyone could bleed in public without becoming a source of general alarm, but Christine was still unnerving. She would manifest herself in classrooms like a schoolgirl saint, coyly displaying her latest gashes with a quietly knowing smile. She had an air of gory intimacy that I’ve only ever met again in some religious paintings – those chummy anatomical snapshots certain artists are moved to conjure up from martyrdoms. I’ve often considered that martyrdom could become almost bearable if it wasn’t so terribly over-exposed – God makes a dreadful agent, all publicity and never mind the pain. But I have to admit, the images are striking in just the way that Christine was, she shared the same kind of culinary fascination.

  All of which made her exciting in a way that schools do not encourage. She seemed so greedy for disaster that there could be nothing left for us. As children went, we were all miraculously fortunate and dexterous. From around a corner or behind a door we would hear a light kind of whoop and perhaps an impact and that would be Christine, collecting another proof of physical disinterest. She saved us the trouble; any trouble. And any guilt on our part was largely dispersed by the knowledge that she was never punished for the so obviously innocent chaos she kept in tow. Still, it never seemed wise to cultivate her company – no one hugs a lightning conductor, you just leave it outside to do its job. In other words, she was hard not to notice, but never a friend and in no way a person I made the slightest effort to remember. When I left school, I had no intention of seeing, or thinking about her again. One way and another, I’m not much of a one for keeping in touch.

  I went to a university in England and came back home as little as possible, because I could no longer be at home there. Scots down south either turn into Rob Roy McStrathspeyandreel or simply become Glaswegian – no one will understand you, if you don’t. Rather than smile through a lifetime of simpleton assumptions and kind enquiries after Sauchiehall Street in the frail hope of one day explaining my existence, I chose to be English and to disappear.

  Like many of us, I already had a variety of accents for private and social use. I found it remarkably easy to sound like almost anyone I met. In fact ease had very little to do with it – I would echo whoever I spoke to quite automatically, moving from neutral to bland imitation and lack again. Today this makes all situations alike to me – I am consistently slightly out of place, but never uncomfortably so. And if we are ever stuck for conversation people can always ask me where I come from and I can always fail to answer them.

  I already had my first job, doing it doesn’t matter what, when Christine reappeared. At that time I had found myself sucked into a knot of more or less convincing Scots abroad and she was brought to me by another depressing feature of expatriate life – the fraternal gathering. Visiting them en masse was precisely like returning to almost any small home town. After a space of no matter how many years, you will meet at least one person you went to school with, one person on intimate terms with a distant and notorious relative and one person whom you n
ever wished to see or think about again. For a variety of reasons Christine qualified on all counts and one particular night she was inevitably there.

  We were both at a party where the proportions of food and drink most likely to produce a pleasant evening had been exactly reversed and I knew it was her, but then I didn’t.

  She was older, obviously, but still very much as I suddenly found I could remember, only she wasn’t Christine. There was something wrong. Slim, long boned with a satisfactory skin and fine hair: all was as it should have been, until I noticed her eyes. I could see into her eyes. Christine was looking directly at me, her head and body were still and she was at rest. I was seeing her for the first time fully in focus and a woman and finding that was quite a combination. She smiled, perhaps because I may have been smiling too, then turned back to the man beside her and whatever space we had occupied together ceased to exist. I felt a touch insulted which surprised me.

  Perhaps an hour or two later Christine came out of the sun to speak to me. I mean by this that she appeared from a kind of blind spot in the manner of enemy aircraft, or possibly angels descending – I simply didn’t see her until she was already there beside me. It suddenly seemed that we must have been right in the middle of talking and something had interrupted us, possibly decades ago, but now it didn’t matter because we were back together and things were fine again. I’m mentioning this because although I knew that hadn’t happened, her manner convinced me it was true.

  ‘You shouldn’t be upset. He’s a friend of my mother’s and a very nice man.’

  ‘I wasn’t upset.’

  Well there wouldn’t have been any point to pretending I didn’t know what she meant. There was also no point in lying, but I did it anyway.

  ‘No, I wasn’t upset at all.’