Original Bliss

by A. L. Kennedy

  Then he stepped forward and slapped her. “Cunt.” Slapped her in the face where it would show because he wasn’t being careful any more.

  Nothing followed, but in Mr. Brindle’s eyes, Helen saw the sharp start of intent, before he could pack it down again. Naturally, she was afraid, but she tried her hardest to accept that her fear had meaning; it was part of her Process. It would make her soft and open, the way she had to be.

  Because each night she would kneel and be raced towards the increasingly completed fact of God. Larger than understanding, deeper than death and time, He would hood down over the house like snow, patient and immeasurable.

  Father.

  Chapter 8

  So the time drops by you like blood then eddies with uncertainty and after days of waiting you still wait, discovering the way this feels cannot be unbearable because you bear it. You are not yet fully prepared, you have to remember that. This final interval is here to make you ready and complete.

  Praying becomes all you do, it ribbons around you while you move in the world and tells your life out and up to that Watching, that anatomising Stare. You step from daily fear to fear until the sun sets and the house begins to move in time with the nasty itch in your husband’s hands. Not long now.

  Friday night. Twenty-two hours gone out of the twenty-four and you’re kneeling, again kneeling, in the room he’s given you and you hear him on the staircase and in the corridor and this time, like every other time, something important tears up under your ribs when he passes your door without coming in.

  Your husband doesn’t come in, but you know that tonight isn’t over because you’ve changed; there’s nothing left of you to say; you’ve let God see it all. Not that you could have believed He didn’t fully know about every layer of tissue He’s asked you to peel away. The point is, you had to tell Him and He had to hear. This was your part of the Process and your Father who art in Heaven, but who is also much nearer and much more terrible than that; He will forgive you now.

  Forgiveness. Feel it pick you back down to the child, take you off your hinges and clean you to the bone. He’s here, your Father who is tender like a furnace and who will hold you for eternity, if you would only ask and He can make you ask. He can make you go through fear into somewhere else entirely.

  It is something like half-past ten when you go to Mr. Brindle’s room, the bedroom you at one time shared. You are aware of a lightness in your hands and limbs, the tiny noise of your feet and the press of black air against your flesh, your cleaned and uncovered self. Second-hand illumination seeps out around the door-frame. To be at this point already, so quickly, you hadn’t expected that.

  Turn the handle, open the door, absurdly prepared for it to be locked or for the bogey man ghost to leap out and take you at once. Walk in, gently, because you are standing at the edge of nothing and you don’t want to slip. Mr. Brindle is sitting up in bed, staring at a paperback which you have the time to recognise as one of the detective stories that he likes. Crime: nothing else caught his interest as intensely, and what does that say about why he married you?

  Magically slowly, he lifts his head.

  He does not make a sound.

  There is a slither of confusion in his eyes and he glances away but has to, in the end, come back to you. Your body is balanced, naked, and breathes fast from the top of its ribcage, as anxious as any discovered animal, and Mr. Brindle’s mouth thins to a stroke while he reaches your eyes and you offer look for look and beat him. Then you feel the precise ignition of his anger, just as he helps himself to the rest of you in a long, falling glance and sees what you need him to see.

  You are not as he remembers, not quite. He moves his head a scrap to the left and examines again. Not the same. He is finding out what Edward has done to you and what you wanted Edward to do to you and enjoyed, and you can think of Edward now, very clearly and with love. There is nothing to stop you thinking whatever you like.

  Now Mr. Brindle understands. You have been sheared in tight to yourself, to your nothing-but-sex, and each of the questions he chose not to ask you and the hardest assumptions he most liked to make are proving inadequate.

  You are turning and walking back out at an even pace when you hear Mr. Brindle rip himself up from the bed.

  The knowledge of him behind you and on his way scalds from the back of your neck to your heels, but you will not run or even rush. There is a bang of complaint as the door cracks round against the wall and shudders in again. Mr. Brindle beats it away. He’s in the corridor.

  You have nearly reached the boxroom. He is closing on you very fast and now makes a sound which swipes you off balance as if it were a blow. You have never heard a noise like this from a person before: a high, long howling that jars with every impact of his running feet.

  You make the room, halt and enjoy for an instant the impression of being safe, of an objective successfully reached. Then Mr. Brindle hits you, the whole of him hits you, drives the use out of your lungs, and you fall with one hand reaching down ahead of you to shield your face.

  Chapter 9

  “You didn’t die.”

  “Yes, I did. I felt it.”

  “No. You didn’t die.”

  Helen opened her eyes and saw the unfocused shine of a metal counter while somebody’s hand adjusted the bend of her knee. She knew that she was dead and they were laying her up on one of those special tables they had for autopsies. It was very unfair to be doing all this while her mind was still inside her body.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “We will in a while.”

  A different hand drove a spark of hurt so hard into the bone of her leg that it exploded her understanding along with the table and the room.

  So Helen was cut loose and floated for a time she did eventually calculate but never quite believed. Small pieces of reality would swim out to meet her and then sink from sight. She became accustomed to the notion that her body was being kept somewhere, lying in uncomfortable clothes inside a bed. The rest of her was mainly unwilling to be anywhere, having an idea that any kind of definition would involve it in the guaranteed discovery of pain.

  Her hair was stiff and sour-smelling when Helen moved her head and at night people took her blood pressure all the time when she was so tired that the grip of the cuff on her arm made her weep. She was unconvincingly thirsty and could not remember if she had ever been given a drink.

  Sometimes the gardener seemed to come and talk to her with his heart—the heart liked her now, it was warm and insistent against her fingertips.

  “Helen?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were you going to die for?”

  “You.”

  “I never asked you to.”

  “I guessed.”

  “Helen, did you think if you were meant to die, we would even consult you?” He smiled when she couldn’t answer him. “Have you touched my heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has it touched you back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go away and be satisfied.”

  A woman arrived to polish the floor under all of the beds and Helen woke for long enough to take the scream of machinery back down into her sleep. Beyond every dream or darkness, Helen watched and watched a sort of dance where Mr. Brindle twirled her body so that it banged and cracked and splashes of light appeared with colours in time to his beat. As their finale, she would spin against the wardrobe and tug it down to cover her and keep her safe, or to let its weight finish the death Mr. Brindle had started for her, she couldn’t be sure.

  “So you don’t remember.”

  Helen frowned, cautious. Without any warning, she was conscious and apparently taking part in a conversation.

  “You don’t remember anything after that?”

  She was staring up at a policewoman with a soft expression and no hat. The policewoman frowned so Helen said something which felt correct.

  “No. No, I can’t remember anything.”

  “He telep
honed.”

  “Who? Did somebody call me?” Hope suddenly thumped at her, but she explained to herself that Edward wouldn’t call—she had left him and not said why, not said anything because she had to come to Glasgow to make things right.

  The policewoman, rather than giving an answer, was shifting her weight and glancing across Helen’s bed to a policeman. He pursed his lips and dropped his head forward in a way that might have meant he was nodding consent, if you knew him very well. He was trying not to move or be distracting; supportive but invisible, that’s what he was aiming for, Helen could tell.

  The policewoman gave a nod of her own and began, “Mrs. Brindle.” She cleared her throat. “No, nobody called you. Your husband called us. That night, or at least, very early that morning, I think it was . . .”

  “Two fifteen.” If you want to know the time, even an invisible policeman can’t help but tell.

  “Two fifteen. He called us to, to turn himself in. He thought he’d killed you. You were under the wardrobe when we came.”

  “I didn’t die.”

  The policeman gave his sleepy nod again and very quickly patted her hand, as if he was scared he might catch himself doing it. “No. That’s right.”

  Another small cough and the policewoman continued, “When we arrived, Mr. Brindle was relatively lucid and rational.” This had the sound of something that was already firmly written down. “He let us in and told us where you were. An ambulance was called. He expressed, I’m afraid, no relief when he was told you were alive. At this point he informed officers present that he had taken a large number of paracetamol tablets some considerable time before.”

  “A very unpleasant way to die.” The policeman offered, almost consolingly.

  “Yes. That’s . . . Yes. Any treatment offered after internal damage has been done can only be a sort of management. They made him as comfortable as possible. This must all be very shocking. I am sorry. His brother has identified the body that—”

  “Won’t be necessary. You won’t have to.” Again the pat at her hand.

  They seemed very gentle, these people from the police, and anxious to only ask and say what was absolutely needful. She had the impression they might have sat by her bed before, or perhaps they had met when she was under the wardrobe and not thinking but still listening—perhaps the sound of them was familiar. She would have liked to tell them how she felt. Certainly, they seemed keen to know her feelings and ready to help if she was unhappy. But she wasn’t unhappy—she was awake and she was alive and those were two such remarkable things, she had no room for any more.

  The policeman gave her a quiet smile as he and his companion finally stood. “You’ll be numb, that’s what it is. You’ll be numb—these things, it’s how it happens.” He nodded a great deal while he said this, but watched her as if she were a problem that might not be solved conveniently. Both the police then left her alone to work out the finer details of herself, because they had everything they needed and, even though they were obviously pleasant, they had other duties which, most likely, called.

  Helen lay and watched the light fall impeccably from the neon strips above the ward and thought that moving her eyes and paying attention and saying sentences and all the time being careful to make no savage or even tiny movements of her head was far too much to be doing at the one time. A rest was required.

  Something very easily accomplished. In years to come, she could see herself emerging as a champion sleeper: started late in life, but now an eager narcoleptic, a woman who liked to be able to leave any situation simply by strongly favouring the interior of her own mind, safe behind darkened eyes. Night, night.

  When her new dream was steady and she could stand and look about her, she knew at once where she was: in the kitchen of Mr. Brindle’s house.

  “What are you doing here? You’re upstairs, dead.”

  Mr. Brindle was sitting on the floor in his dressing gown. He turned his head up to glare at her and she saw dark matter begin to purl from one of his ears. He scratched at the side of his face in irritation, but seemed otherwise quite normal, perhaps overly pale. His voice hadn’t changed, it still had enough edge to make her seem shorter and weaker than she was. “Go back upstairs.”

  “I’m not dead.”

  He smiled slyly, sensing a trick ahead. “You will be.” A sudden cough distracted him. His lips were turning blue. “You’ll die and be nothing, like everyone else in the end.” He wiped at the sides of his neck and examined the rusty stains across his fingers. A great deal of him was leaking away as Helen watched.

  “Today I am not dead. You didn’t kill me. You couldn’t. And I let you try.”

  “All right, then, I killed myself. I know I killed someone.” Another cough. “So it was me. I’m dead. What’ll you do about it?”

  “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “You aren’t going to pray for me? Like a good Christian should?” A laugh bubbled in his chest but couldn’t emerge.

  “Oh, I’ll pray for you. I can pray now—about anything. I’ll pray because I’m able and because it will help me. And because I know you’d hate me to.”

  He smiled, a sheen of blood dulling his teeth. “Cunt.”

  After that the dream clouded over and she sculled out into something smooth and aimless that allowed her to feel rested and content, even when they came to take her blood pressure again.

  Mr. Brindle was dead and she was not. Sometimes God was really very obviously good. You didn’t have to understand it, you just had to accept—God was good. He did well. He gave her things she was not expecting.

  Like the sight of an anxiously tall figure walking softly down the ward, his concentration on the floor. Not a dream and not a mirage: a man with an extremely severe haircut, wearing a long grey overcoat and a very red scarf and putting his hands in his pockets and taking them out again, as though they could not be comfortable except in motion. The scarf made her close her eyes for a moment, it was so bright.

  “Helen. Helen, are you awake?”

  “I’m awake. I’ve got a terrible headache, though.”

  “I should think you do—you have a fractured skull.”

  She blinked up to see Edward folding his arms and tilting himself away from the rest of the ward while he tried to pull in a smooth breath. The muscles in his jaw ticked with an effort at control, but still he started to cry.

  “Shit.”

  Helen tried to reach and touch him and her attempt sent the walls and ceiling spiralling. She lay back and let the vertigo subside. “I’ve got the headache—you don’t have to cry.”

  He fumbled for a chair and lifted it close to her bed, all the while repeating quietly, “Shit, shit, shit,” and rubbing the heel of his hand across his eyes. “Why the hell did you go back there?” He sat. “Was it me?”

  “No.”

  Taking her wrist, “Was it me?” and then letting her slowly move her hand to set its fingers round his thumb and grip. “Did I upset you?”

  “No. I had to get back here and sort things out.”

  “Sort things out? He could have killed you. You must have known that. Couldn’t you even have phoned?”

  “You would have come and got me. You would have done the right thing, but it would have been too soon.” Edward didn’t speak and pulled his hand away from her.

  Helen thought of God. It was important He was here for this. If God was God, of course, He would be in each of her bruises and her water jug and anything she could think to name—but she needed His help to say what she must.

  As soon as she opened her attention, Something monumental began to pour in. A sense of humour must obviously be amongst the everything that God had—for years she’d needed to hear from Him just a little and now He was determined to be deafening.

  “Edward? I can’t turn my head to look at you, I get so dizzy. You’ll have to speak to me. Please. I am sorry I hurt you, I didn’t want to.”

  “No, you only wanted to hurt yourself. What were you
thinking of?” His words choking out, breaking. “Jesus, I come up here and I find the house empty and then the neighbours say what happened, only they don’t really know what happened . . . I thought I’d go mad. Helen, I could have got you, I could have been here in time. He never would have hurt you if I’d been here.”

  “I know.”

  “I would have stopped him.”

  “I didn’t die.”

  “You could have.”

  “But I didn’t. I got through. I was taken through. I mean, I’m alive, Edward. I believe in Something—or Something believes in me. And I believe in me and I can do any and every living thing a living person does. I am alive.”

  He drew his chair in with a scrape that made her smart. The smell of his hair, his sadness, his skin, was an astonishment as he leaned in to set his voice neat beside her face.

  “Helen, I intended to come here and be . . . acceptable. I couldn’t be where I should have been to help you and I know that what I did made you go away.” She tried moving her head to disagree and he kissed the rise of her cheek. “I want to tell you all the things that a good man would, all the right things, but you know I’m not good.”

  “Tell me, anyway.”

  “I can’t. I can only say what I want and that’s frankly quite inappropriate.”

  “Tell me, anyway.”

  “Helen, I want you to be alive with me—the whole completed fact of you with me. I want to do that. God, I got so lonely down there. Because I can’t do what I used to any more—the films, the magazines—and I’m telling you, I gave up fighting it and tried and it didn’t even matter, because I couldn’t do it, couldn’t even begin. I just missed you. There’s nothing I can do about missing you. I haven’t got anything when you’re not there and I don’t know what to do with me on my own, with myself.”

  She felt him press his forehead into her pillow and lifted her hand to touch his neck and then the tight trim of his hair.