Original Bliss

by A. L. Kennedy

  She would be all bad because of Edward—the battery-acid drip of Edward—the patient and poisonous shadow that showed her the way his forehead led his body when he turned, gave her the scent of his hand left in her skin and the impossible, racing feel of him that eased close with his breath on the telephone. And all of this was completely her own deliberate fault. She was harbouring the parts of him that stung, in under her eyelids and next to the prickle of appetite under her tongue. She couldn’t balance her books for this, or for a holiday that was a lie and that was so much to do with the Flesh of a man and so little to do with the Spirit and the other Love she’d lost.

  Alone after sunset, she was nothing but wrong ideas: wrong like they were again now, when a part of her wanted to say that if God didn’t mean her to think in the way that she did, then He shouldn’t have made her able to. God ought to be fair. If His divine intention had been to keep her inside His laws, He should never have left her to cope with things alone, or have teased her with a few days’ respite before slapping her down again. She had been by herself and very tired for too long and not even saints could always manage that.

  Mr. Brindle had a habit of telling her about saints.

  “Suicide is suicide. They murder themselves and then everybody paints their portrait, names their bloody kids after them.”

  “They’re examples.”

  “Crap.”

  “They are examples.”

  “Okay, fine, they’re examples. So you have thousands of examples of how you’re supposed to behave and how you’re supposed to think and all of the rules you’re supposed to follow. So why don’t you go to church any more? Hm?”

  “You know why.”

  “Aye, you’re right I know why. I know fine why. You came to your senses. Creeping round here like Mrs. Fucking Jesus . . . I didn’t marry that. Giving me that wee fucking Edinburgh smile every time I fucking swear.”

  “That’s not—”

  “What? True? You wanted me and you got me and now you’ve to fucking live with me when I know you. You’re fooling nobody. ‘I’ve lost my faith, I’ve lost my faith.’ You never bloody had any. You’re forgetting, I saw. I saw the way you were, home from your pisshole bloody church. I saw the colour in your face. I knew. You only ever went there for a come. Sweating with your eyes shut, kneeling—you were having a fucking come. I know. You only knelt because you couldn’t stand. Then God couldn’t get it up any more so you left him. Right? Right?”

  He didn’t always get so angry, there’d been something on his mind that time and then she’d been stupid and tried to explain herself to him, to talk about what was between them and growing thicker and filling the house until it was difficult to breathe when they were both inside. Everything she’d ever read about disagreements and about marriages had told her that she should explain and she had tried. Wrong night, that was all, she’d picked the wrong night.

  “Right? Right?”

  Mr. Brindle had been holding her by the wrist, really lifting her by the wrist until she was standing and walking, stumbling beside him from the living-room into the corridor, into the kitchen. She spent a lot of time in her kitchen; it was the part of her house which felt most like a home.

  Remembering when Mr. Brindle had opened the drawer was hard. Perhaps she hadn’t seen, or had only heard the scrape of the wood and the clatter of the contents inside, or she could have been too confused to notice anything except that Mr. Brindle was still shouting and that shouting always made her feel confused. Or as if she would cry. Sometimes it made her feel as if she would cry.

  When he put her hand in the drawer, she thought he was looking for something and turned to his face. Mr. Brindle was smiling in the odd, tight way that people do when they are nervous or embarrassed by someone’s pain.

  Of course later, she would find this caught in her memory, because Mr. Brindle had been embarrassed by her pain, which didn’t arrive at once, but was on the way.

  She listened to the shutting of the drawer and watched the effect of his effort shudder across his face, followed by a moment of stillness, almost puzzlement. There was a hot numbness in the fingers of her hand. Mr. Brindle dropped her wrist and stepped away, observing.

  Then Mrs. Brindle wanted to sit down, except that she didn’t because she also wanted to be sick and she had a quite bad headache which made her need to rub her temples. She tried to lift her hands and discovered that one wouldn’t lift. It was stuck. A burst of nausea and a white, high sound happened when she pulled on her arm and then she looked at her fingers, the four fingers of her right hand that were already a slightly unfamiliar shape and bleeding and a little hidden by four flaps of sheared-away skin. She could see the light of one of her bones.

  While she fainted, Mrs. Brindle was still figuring the whole thing through, so that when she turned back to consciousness, she knew what Mr. Brindle had done. He had taken her hand and closed it in a drawer. She had made his damage worse when she wrenched her fingers free without understanding where they were.

  Mr. Brindle was kneeling on the floor and holding her round the shoulders, trying not to look at her bleeding, but slipping his eyes down and sideways all the same. He told her that he was sorry and she nodded and fainted again.

  It would have been best to take her to the hospital, but instead Mr. Brindle called their doctor and then drove to the surgery. Her pain was an intimate thing between them which they didn’t need to share. Mrs. Brindle listened while her husband talked about a horrible domestic accident and she then sat extremely still while her doctor explained that two of her fingernails would have to be removed. He would first give her ring injections—appropriate for fingers—which he hadn’t practised since his student days, but he would do his very best.

  Mr. Brindle waited outside while the needle went in and the scalpel cut and the blueing nails were tugged amazingly, easily away. She thought for a moment how softly she was put together. Then her wounds were dressed, splinted, turned into plump, clean fabric. Afterwards, the doctor looked for a long time at her face, but she couldn’t tell him anything, even though both of them knew she wanted to.

  Funnily enough, the kitchen hardly ever reminded her of that day. Mr. Brindle had cleaned her blood off the drawer himself and she would have had to study it carefully to see the denting in the wood. Now it was only the place she kept her tea towels safe: soft, clean, fabric things.

  Edward had been able to hold her hand and find nothing strange about it, because it was fine now. More than two years of healing had made it useful and strong again. She didn’t brood on what had once hurt it, because there was no point. But she did sometimes remember what she had thought of while she listened to her nails come away. Mrs. Brindle had considered how deeply she believed that marriage was a sacrament and that no one should act against a sacrament. Mr. Brindle did not treat marriage sacramentally. This meant that, in many important ways, she was not married to him.

  This was a bad thing to think, or an odd thing to think, but not un-useful. In a way, it made her feel free enough to be able to stay and lie beside Mr. Brindle at the start of her nights, hearing the rustle of his hairs against her sheets. Inside she was free. She was staying and lying and knowing that she was free and not married to him.

  Then Edward sent a postcard.

  When he had almost become a person who was more in her mind than in recollections of reality, Edward got in touch. Five weeks after Stuttgart he wrote to her, on the whole of one side of a postcard that showed a view of night-time London and was sent inside an envelope.

  Dear Helen,

  For a while I thought it would be better not to write, but then I was sure you wouldn’t write either. That made me sad. I am so sorry for being irresponsible. I thought you deserved the truth about me when you’d told me the truth about you. Now I think I thought wrong.

  I hope you are well and happy Helen. Tell me if you are not. I repeat my address below in case you have lost it.

  Do tell me if you are not.
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  Edward.

  Helen put the card in her coat pocket and went out to walk. A fine summer was finally breaking and dusty rain fell out of an almost blue sky. It didn’t bother her. Inside her pocket, she ran her thumb across the gloss of the photograph and then the polite friction of the writing surface; a postcard in an envelope, because all of the writing was for her and she had a husband and Edward had perfectly understood, without being told, that Mr. Brindle did not know about him and that Edward should not help him to find out.

  She tried to think of what to do and couldn’t. An uneasy tiredness dropped close in around her and she took another turn away from the house and then another again and there was no way she could write back to Edward and no way she could not.

  Helen walked and discovered new details in herself. As far as she understood her God and His opinions, He would think it was bad for her to be tempted but worse for her to be disappointed that she hadn’t given in. Nevertheless, she was sad that she had no hope of escaping the straight and narrow way and now that she’d resisted temptation, what little of God had returned to her was receding. God no longer needed to keep her from urgent sin and, because He didn’t want her for Himself, He’d left her alone. He had abandoned her again and never explained Himself, never said why, that’s what hurt her most.

  She was beginning to think that relationships were possibly not her strong point. She couldn’t manage one with God, or with her husband; she didn’t like her sister and her parents were both dead. That only left Edward and all of her books—including the Good one—would advise her against him. He was not well. He’d admitted that. He had tastes with which she could not agree and which didn’t even seem to please him, only to have power in his life. His not wanting to like what he liked made him a less than hopeless case but, nevertheless, Helen knew that damaged people often sought each other out and fell in love with their mutual diseases, to the detriment or destruction of their hopes and personalities. There were whole books about each part of that progression and the misfortunes of those trapped in repeating behaviours and bad relationships. Helen was attracted to a sick man; she was therefore sick. Edward was attracted to Helen; he was therefore sick. Helen was even sicker for knowing he was sick and still wanting him and yet, oddly, she felt very well for somebody so sick.

  How was Edward attracted, that was what she didn’t know. It was none of her business, but she did want to know. He hadn’t said why he was writing, or hadn’t said clearly.

  Without noticing, she had made her way back to her gate. Mr. and Mrs. Brindle’s garden gate that defended Mr. and Mrs. Brindle’s garden, around Mr. and Mrs. Brindle’s domestic home. Soon she would stand in their garden, sheltered in the lee of the house and tear up the card with its envelope and burn them both, the powdery rain still falling about her silently.

  She buried the ash.

  Dear Mrs. Brindle,

  Dear Helen,

  I won’t do this again. Having received no reply from you and having waited this reasonable while, I became unable to provide a su ficiently definitive explanation for your silence. I write now because another silence on your part will allow me to know that any explanation is no longer relevant. Or rather, that I am no longer relevant to you and should develop a little silence of my own. The rest of this letter will be about that so perhaps you need not read beyond this point.

  Of course, I hope you do. I personally am curious. I can’t help reading anything once I’ve started. But then you know that. I can’t help most things once I’ve started. I can work the Process for anyone but myself.

  So I have resorted to the standard, really rather brutal methods that might be suggested for my reconditioning. The brutality appeals to me: seems suitable and good for the satisfaction of my self-disgust. In case you were interested, I look at my pictures having injected myself subcutaneously with 6mg of Apomorphine. The injection causes nausea unrelieved by vomiting, at least in theory. This means I should associate my sexual obsession with nausea, rather than orgasm. No carrot, all stick. I watch my videos while sniffing valeric acid—vile stu f—and once again hope for successful results. These rigmaroles seem to be taking e fect, they undoubtedly make me feel more lonely than I have in several years. All the old friends going.

  I do intend to become more normal.

  That sounds alarming, doesn’t it? Like some terrible pervert whining. Really, I simply want my free time back again, my time for hobbies and work and the people that I like.

  I want to be able to stand full in your eyes without what I might describe as shame. I wish I could put that more convincingly, but I can’t.

  All of which has little to do with your difficulties and a great deal to do with my self-obsession. I have been reading on your behalf, you know. Here is a quote for you: “Ne demande donc pas la foi pour pouvoir prier ensuite. Prie d’abord, et la foi inondera ton ame.” Someone called Grillot de Givry, with whom you might identify. He suggests, if I can presume a translation, that you don’t ask for faith to pray later, but pray first and faith will flood your soul. This sounds quite encouraging and is several hundred years old. I’m sure you’ve read him already; I’m sure I’m being no help here. As usual.

  Actually, what I am doing is talking too much because I am nervous. I thought I should tell you something, that’s all. On the fourth of next month I will be in Glasgow. There’s a little two-day thing going on up there which I might attend. Equally, I can stay away, if I’m told to.

  If you don’t write and give me a yes or a no, then I won’t know what to do.

  Unfair of me to say so, but true.

  Edward.

  Chapter 3

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  Edward appeared happy, but his mouth was tense. She thought it seemed tense. The over-illuminated air of the hospital canteen eddied round them as colour-coded human beings went to and from their curing and quieting tasks. Helen noticed she could taste, increasingly clearly, other people’s panic and exhaustion and her own confusion, welling in. When Gluck stood up to meet her, he’d shaken her hand, very formal and far away. But when he caught at her eyes, he didn’t seem formal, hardly even polite.

  “Um, didn’t think I would what?”

  She couldn’t read him, not clearly, not yet.

  “Write. Of course. That’s why I’m here.”

  “You wouldn’t have come anyway.”

  “No.” They caught themselves perusing each other and stopped at once.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.” His voice sounded thin and vaguely petulant. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be abrupt. I’m not making a good impression and I do want—” He clawed between his collar and his neck with one hand. “Sorry. Look, let’s walk. I’ve had more than enough of this place. I should never have suggested we meet here. I might as well have dragged you out to the local abattoir; dignity and privacy, meat-hooked. Oh, I don’t even want to think about it. Let me . . .”

  He elbowed forward across the table, trying to slide inside his own anecdote. “You know they had therapeutic rabbits here?”

  His face seemed very slightly thinner and very slightly afraid. She nudged at his knuckles, just to say hello. He chanced a smile. “Rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?”

  “Mm. Lots of them. Participating patients could have one of their very own to care for, be fond of, give a name to—as you do.”

  They were both smiling now, they’d remembered they could do that.

  “Nice.”

  “Yes. Then the last time they had a conference here, the caterers screwed up. No food for the Sunday evening.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Oh, yes.” He sneaked in a whisper at her ear, the heat of it bleaching the meaning away from his words. “The psychiatrists ate the therapeutic rabbits, every one.”

  Then he dodged back, apparently uneasy again.

  “Let’s go.” She tried to sound calming while remembering the bludgeon and tease of his breath. “I mean
, would you like to go?”

  “Yes, thank you. And if the shrinks want to burn me in effigy while I’m away, I am quite agreeable. They’re exactly the types to believe in that kind of thing. Voodoo specialists. Sorry. I’m not going to get annoyed again. I’m going to leave.”

  Edward stood up and dragged his chair aside loudly, frowning down at the furniture that hemmed him in. Helen moved over to join him and rubbed at the small of his back.

  “Oh.” He sounded on the verge of pain. “That’s . . . thank you. But—”

  She stopped before he could tell her to.

  “No, don’t stop.” Edward lightly took her hand and replaced it, stood while Helen rubbed again and tried to think how she had done this un-selfconsciously.

  “Edward?”

  “Yes.” He faced forward: scanning, challenging the room.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m . . .” He reached his arm to lock it round her back. She stopped moving, just held. “I’m all right, yes. I am simply too angry, having spent a whole morning surrounded by drug-company reps.” He kept staring out, but slightly increased the pressure of his arm about her. “You know what I put down as my hobbies in Who’s Who?”

  “No.”

  “Laughing at Classical Ballet and drug-company reps.”

  “I see.” That sounded a stupid response, but she’d never met anyone else who’d been put in Who’s Who and she’d never held Edward before, not for this long. Stupidity was all she could muster.

  “This room is full of them: reps. So we shouldn’t really stand like this . . .”

  “Why not?”

  “It will make them excited.”

  “They get easily excited?”

  “They lead extremely sheltered lives. I mean, look at them—not exactly the faces of men who get lucky.” He lifted his arm with a final, jingling brush at her spine. “Not that I’d know. How are you?”