Paradise

by A. L. Kennedy

  Farmer Campbell stares at me as if the blackberries are my fault, a distress I have engineered. Then his gaze clatters down to my ankles and twitches about. He frowns and begins to shuffle across the yard towards his house. “I’ll go in and think, like. I’ll go in and think.”

  He’s doing this because I was late, unavoidably delayed on a mission of mercy, but Farmer Campbell doesn’t know that: he simply wants to make a point. I delay him and then he delays me. Here I am, offering him uniquely environmental, recyclable, sturdy cardboard baskets—no nasty metal handles, our patented safe and biodegradable webbing instead— and he can’t even offer a coffee, never mind a glass of something pleasant, or a firm order. I bet his strawberries are shite, anyway. Every grower I know is producing these weird, new varieties: the fruit keeps well, packs well, freezes well, travels well, shows well—but then you try to eat it and it tastes like wet bicycle tyres, I mean what is the point?

  There’s a boy shuffling up between the rows of canes—his basket is too heavy for him and he’s lunging it forward, then resting it on the ground and picking again, serious, fingers bloody with juice and maybe slightly scratched. When my mother took us to the fields, Simon would be like that: never ate any himself, only solemnly gathered monster amounts of raspberries, because they were his favourite. Mine, too. We used to have a lot in common, even though he could be so stern to his appetites.

  Down at the weighing-out scales, I’d be gorged with fruit, almost nauseous, Mother smiling slyly about it—my greed and waste of growing things providing their own punishment. Simon would be grim behind me, struggling with his mounded load, but wanting nobody to help, because this was his business, something he had done. The weigher would wink, or look at him with a nice touch of awe as the scale’s needle bounced straight over to some miraculous total for a lad of such tender years and I would try to hate my brother for being someone who was better than me and then I would see the thin lines of blood on his forearms and his fingers, the beaded tracks where the thorns had caught him, and I would be defeated, I would be proud. My little brother being sore and hot and tired, but finishing what he’d started, anyway—if you couldn’t be proud of yourself, then you could be proud of Simon.

  Still no sign of Campbell.

  Five more minutes and I will leave, drive off: the Cardboard Products Group does not need this kind of dilettante custom. CPG’s lovely, moulded punnets, self-ventilating single-layer fruit trays and other wholesomely practical containers will no longer be made available to Castlerigg Farm. In fact, Castlerigg Farm can screw itself, along with its owner—he’s already using someone else’s punnets in any case—nasty plastic ones, I spotted a pile of them in a shed. Farmer Campbell clearly has no concern for the well-being of our planet.

  Strictly speaking, CPG may not either. I remain unconvinced by our figures for recycled pulp incorporation and some of our boxes come from Indonesia, for Christ’s sake: China. I feel they may not be ethically produced—more like pure, compressed rainforest cut into sheets and then probably put together by limbless tykes in cellars full of rats.

  Not that it’s any concern of mine, I only sell the stuff.

  Although I am basically altruistic and do my bit in other ways—hence my tardy arrival at Castlerigg this afternoon. I was sidetracked by being humanitarian, which takes time.

  I’d pulled up in one of those little Fife towns: sternly picturesque buildings full of cousins intent on impoverishing their gene pools. I’d found the usual post office–cum-newsagent-cum-bakery (the standard range of products plus peat briquettes, half a dozen dodgy videos for sale on a back shelf, some small and probably stolen electrical goods) and I had bought two flattened ham and salad baps for breakfast, a newspaper and a styrofoam cup of coffee that smelled uncannily like sweat.

  There was a small, abused park nearby and I went and sat in it for my meal, admiring the rustic sandstone bridge (spray-painted with charmless expletives, mainly in blue) and the tinkling brook (rich in both weedy nooks and bottles that once contained a cheap, fortified wine). I ignored each unpleasant detail and attempted to be at peace.

  Except that over the road an elderly woman was labouring to escape what I could guess was her own garden gate. She had obviously suffered a stroke at some time and had little or no strength on her right side. Her left hand was leaning heavily on a wheelchair, while she tried to push the gate open with her back. The hinges were proving intransigent. There was a deep weariness in the woman’s face that seemed to suggest she fought like this every day, took so long about so many things every day that she could no longer afford to acknowledge how intolerable this was.

  Which is the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen: the sort of thing that comes from lack of thought. Some moron in an office somewhere doles out a bloody wheelchair to a fellow human being who hasn’t the use of both arms—and how is that human being supposed to get into the chair, out of it, and how are they supposed to push themselves about? Office Moron can’t imagine, doesn’t want to; as far as Office Moron is concerned a person who can’t walk has been issued with a wheelchair, problem solved.

  This sort of stupidity makes me angry, how could it not?

  Needless to say, I abandoned my snack and nipped across to offer help, hold open the gate while the old dear tottered herself down and into the chair. I smiled what I could feel was a very good smile and, as if she had felt it, she glanced up and gave me a painstaking nod.

  By this stage, I could tell that she meant to scoot herself along the pavement backwards, using her good foot—this being, no doubt, her best bet for getting around—what else could she manage unaided? Still, it seemed to be incredibly dangerous and undignified and I wasn’t in any hurry to turn up chez Campbell and discuss baskets so why not behave as anyone decent would and offer, “I could push you, if you’d like? I’m just having a break—nothing much to do. Would that be okay?”

  I could see that she understood me, but no longer had words to hand. Her body relaxed, though, as soon as she heard my suggestion, slipped back, and I got this half-grin from her—a half being all she could muster.

  “Is it this way? The shops? You just point, can you?”

  I wasn’t going to get a chat, clearly, and I didn’t want to blather away as I might to a baby, or a dog—the usual things you meet that can’t answer back. Still, there was no call for me to be stand-offish. Having care of a whole other human body like that, noticing every incline and the tiny irregularities in the pavement as they jar up through the handles of the chair—with so much going on in that weird, mechanical-intimate sort of way, you can’t just ignore your companion and plod along behind them without trying to break the ice.

  “You know I don’t have a licence for one of these . . .”

  I couldn’t tell if that amused her or not. She made what seemed a happy noise inside her throat.

  I wouldn’t have thought it, but she was actually quite a weight, took a bit of shoving from time to time and I was starting to be rather heated, which wasn’t good news for the hair and the business suit—and I favour this suit: chalk-stripe on a grey wool mix, mildly tailored jacket and skirt, matched with a boring, white blouse and librarian’s shoes. My reliable ensemble. No need to be troubled about it, though: not when I also had that pleasant, proprietorial warmth growing out around me.

  I am a stranger helping a stranger—this can still happen. It’s nice. I’m nice.

  On the other hand, people were passing us by, here and there, and these were possibly people who knew her. She must be a bit of a character, a landmark, after all: kicking along arse-forwards, day after day: a bit of hazard to watch for, in fact. Most of the town must have recognised her, but me—I was an unknown quantity, perhaps an object of distrust. I was a visiting Samaritan, caring in a way that they would not, but I felt them study me, nonetheless: a tangible, quizzical frisk of interest as each one walked by, no sympathy in it, no fellow feeling.

  And I could appreciate their point of view. In a sense, I wa
s abducting this old lady, I was pushing her off without proper introductions. I had no special training, or experience. Good will, I was full of—but who still has any faith in that?

  I gentled her down the slope at a kerb and waited, over-cautiously, for every scrap of traffic to move far out of sight. “Still okay, then? Straight on when we get over?” Her good arm wags to the right. “Down there? Okey-dokey. Down there it is.”

  I never say okey-dokey. I don’t think anyone else does, either.

  We trundled on and the pressure of the town which was, no doubt, staring after, made the hairs lift on my neck. I was beginning to feel undermined. Members of caring professions, they were au fait with wheelchairs and stretchers, trolleys, propelling the vulnerable with efficiency and calm. I didn’t know about this, I was guessing, my role was not a comfortable fit.

  Onwards, though, onwards. “Are you visiting a pal, then? Going to a centre? A shop?” The street was narrow: nondescript terraces hemming us in from either side: dirty-white harling and bad windows, closed doors. “Just out for a wander, are you?” Which was possible, she had the right to go out and ramble, like any pedestrian. Of course, this meant that I could be condemned to pushing her round for the rest of the day.

  Or we could have been heading off in a quite incorrect direction. She might have been disorientated, lost. Somebody local might have noticed that I was taking this woman the wrong way. This might have caused them alarm.

  I looked behind, but no one was following, there were no visible observers. Still, a definite scrutiny tickled my shoulders, perhaps from someone discreetly in pursuit. I tried to hope I was mistaken and pressed on.

  A weak, little sound rose up to me then and I realised the woman in the chair was humming, singing away to herself and looking about and pleased with making no kind of effort as we progressed. So, whoever she was, she had warmed to me, to my smile, and I was letting her have a good start to her day. It didn’t matter who was on our trail—we had nothing to hide.

  A few paces on and she motioned we should cross the road. The pavement was of the old-fashioned type, elevated, the kerb only descending to the gutter by way of three shallow steps. This meant I would have to multiply the manoeuvre I’d used across previous kerbstones by three, which would be simple but strenuous.

  I turned her softly, pitched the chair towards me by a minor angle and then rolled the back wheels over and down the first step without trouble.

  I looked at the next steps.

  I stopped.

  I had to.

  Because then I clearly understood what a lovely, put-upon, old lady she was and what a jolly time she was having.

  And because then I also clearly understood how terrible it was going to be when I didn’t do this properly and dropped her.

  I was going to drop her.

  I could tell.

  I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. I had no advice. There was no way things were going to turn out well here.

  The lady, she was terribly helpless and fragile and wonderful and no human person like that could be left to rely on somebody like me. I was going to ruin this and harm her when I did. This would be my fault. I wouldn’t mean it, but that wouldn’t change how sad it was going to be.

  My grip was cooling, sliding, on the handles of the chair and the accident was coming, but I couldn’t wait for it. I couldn’t bear that it wasn’t here yet. I was getting upset.

  So I did what I had to and opened my hands and the chair kicked forward, bounced, jolted down the second step, while the woman’s good hand darted up, trying to ward off the coming sadness, and then there was the quicker roll and thudded landing from the lowest step, her unbalanced trajectory that curved fast across the road, the chair still upright— amazingly upright, and thank God for the lack of traffic—and then she reached the place where the one front wheel collided with the high kerb opposite and tipped the street into the noise of metal and overturning and her noise and the fall of her body and the way that her pale blue coat would be dirty now.

  I ran over to her: I’m not a monster. I ran over and hugged her up and I’m sure she’d only sprained her wrist, and there was otherwise nothing much wrong, apart from this cut on her head, bleeding the way that a head wound does and me with nothing to stop it, not a handkerchief.

  She looked at me and wasn’t angry, although I’d thought she would be. Instead, she had this bewildered hurt in her eyes and the start of tears and a horrible, horrible loneliness.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll go and get someone. No, I have to. I’m sorry. You need someone to help me.” She held my hand. “I’m sorry. I need help.”

  But I didn’t go. I stayed. I’m not a monster.

  A minute, or five, or twenty later and a crowd had surrounded me, edged me back, and some housewife, still in slippers, had come out with a blanket, the blood colouring it at once—not too much, not a harmful loss, but definite staining, obvious blood.

  I’d thought I would have to explain myself, but actually nobody bothered much with me and, as I knew, the woman I had injured couldn’t speak and was confused by the flow of events. She was unable to accuse, or even identify, me. So I allowed myself to be the passer-by who’d found her and then no one in particular, standing for a while and then a stranger who walked away as an ambulance siren echoed in.

  I didn’t want any of that to happen and I do hope she’s all right, I truly hope she is all right. There’s no way that I can explain how awful I feel, how guilty. But it was mostly a type of accident and act of God. I’m not a monster. If I’d really meant to harm her, I would be, but I didn’t. Sometimes things are unavoidable.

  I had to sit and ease in a brandy before I could drive here, to Castlerigg. I used a pub in another town, not that lady’s—I won’t go back there, couldn’t take a drink in it again.

  “Is there something the matter, hen?”

  Farmer Campbell has soundlessly crossed his courtyard and is holding out a grubby mug of tea. He still seems to be fascinated by my feet and, when I glance down, I can see that my sensible, grey shoes are caked with blood and my tights are spattered. Under my jacket, my blouse is marked with it, I saw that, but I thought I’d washed the rest of it off in the pub toilet.

  The stains are thick, glossy, like varnish.

  I am not a monster, I only look like one.

  “There was.” I take his tea. “There was this accident I saw. I mean, I was there . . . I touched someone bleeding.”

  “I kent there was something.”

  “She’ll be fine, though. She’ll be fine, I’m sure. Sorry.”

  Over by the farmhouse door, Mrs. Campbell loiters, curious.

  “Sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry, hen.”

  “Sorry.”

  I don’t know what will happen next.

  But, as it turns out, Campbell will offer me the chance of a seat inside and will suggest that I shouldn’t be driving. I will shake my head and stand where I am, aware of the burden of my shoes, their new heaviness, and I will swallow down his over-sweetened tea and then we will take his emergency order from my car and put it, clean and cellophane-wrapped, inside the straw-scented darkness of a barn. Campbell will ask me to fill out a form requesting another dozen packs of baskets, which I know is rather more than he really needs or wants to buy.

  I am not a monster, but I will profit from my crime.

  I will get into my car and follow its steering wheel as it leads me back through the shadowed, turning lanes and under the reddening sun and I will cross the long bridge home as the sky starts burning. My hand will be steady when I reach out to the booth and pay my toll and then I will pull away and take the bends and climbs that bring me to my street, my flat, my bathroom and the shower that I will run until the tank is empty, washing until I am cold, but not quite clean.

  “What are you thinking?” Robert is a little smashed, but not as smashed as me.

  “What are you thinking?—You always fucking sa
y that, what does it mean? You’re just pretending you already know something. Well, you don’t.”

  I am glad that we are together these days, together often, but there are times when he’s here too much: too large, too loud, too dense. This is one of the times.

  A fortnight ago, this bar was unfamiliar to us both, so we have started from scratch in here together, cultivated the ways it can welcome us, and now it is almost our place. So Robert is filling our place, my place, looming into it, blaring, drowning out the pleasant and peaceable atmosphere that comes from the Parson (who isn’t a parson) and Sniffer Bobby and Doheny (who I haven’t met yet) and Mr. Breed with the funny eyes. They are almost our people and, at the moment, they seem more comfortable than him.

  Robert stares at me: something behind his expression is in motion, but very slow.

  “I said you don’t—don’t know anything. You.”

  He leans on my shoulder, his mouth undecided, but his eyes fighting to focus and grow hard. “Know everything I need.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you.” And he slaps one foot down, beginning to barge past me and strike out for the bar.

  I realise it would be weak, clinging, if I tugged him back by the sleeve, but this is what I do in any case. “No, look, I didn’t . . .” My words exhaust themselves while he shrugs himself free.

  Then he halts, as if he had intended I should keep my grip. “What? Didn’t what?” The space around him starts to taste of something I don’t like—of an absence, a readiness to fight. “Tell me? Mm?” He frowns, blinks, as if he is unsure of who I am. “You ask about my day? Fucking eight-year-old, bites my thumb—bites me. Mother—his mother—does nothing about it. I told her—showed her— sleeve full of blood—she just laughed. I wasn’t even doing anything, whittling at some calculus, hardly anything—little shit bites me. You want to wait till the hygienist gets you—I told him— Think I hurt? She’s a fucking nightmare, grown men fucking scream, weep—choke on your own blood, that can happen. Whispered that before he left the chair. Actually he almost fell out of it, a bit. Skilled technician. I am. I care. Fixing all these rancid bastards, do they ever say thanks? I don’t have to put up with biting. I’m not paid for that.” He pauses and breathes in a mouthful of his Guinness and then forgets that he is angry. His face smoothes like a toddler’s, as if he has just woken, tranquil and curious. “So what about you?” He’s beginning to grin. “Who bit you?” At certain points in the evening, he can shift this way, like the racing of light on a breezy day. He is one man and then gone, as if you’ve only dreamed him.