Paradise

by A. L. Kennedy

  “. . . oh, he kens everything about the painters—he’s an education he is, Doheny, ken? How you’re a painter in the first place and no something else. He’ll be balancing along the cribby like he’s walking to the moon and talking away, an affy boy . . .” Bobby himself will talk away all evening unless someone hits him, swaying up on his toes and then subsiding in a random cycle, as if he has to keep peering over at a far-off cue card just to find his way through his own words.

  At one level, I would much rather listen to him than think, but I don’t have the choice—although I can watch his lips, his sounds are dispersing like a softly coloured mist and all I can hear is myself, pacing from wall to wall in my head, exhibiting every sign of cabin fever.

  I’m lecturing me about my school uniform. This is superfluous, because I can remember it perfectly well, but the subtext is clear: I used to wear a blazer with leather patches at the elbows and cared about the Nitrogen Cycle and the Russian and French revolutions and the difference between connaître and savoir. I used to know how to swim and proved it on a weekly basis in a regulation bathing costume of startling ugliness. I used to be pristine and without swear words or any kind of sexual disgrace. I used not to spend my time trying to sell cardboard, or in pubs full of barmy, old men and screaming suits.

  Ah, but I could add that, during my last years at school, I was spending my time, in increasingly large amounts, wandering the park after lunch hour in the company of charming and dumpy bottlettes of cider. Before every swimming lesson, I was undressing in a regular state of anxiety caused by crawling skin: not insect-related crawling, only the overall-hatred-of-one’s-essential-being type of crawl. That’s still a crawl, nonetheless, and liable to leave a girl feeling unusual, if not unclean. And I could make a big deal about the way I used to picture verb-declension tables, when now I can only picture the ring-pull tops on those bottles of cider (I don’t think they make them any more) but so what? Everyone is in a state of constant flux, even the dead: they decompose. You change, we change, I change. I can’t argue with that, I don’t want to. I am not as I was, but no one else is, either—it doesn’t mean I’m in decline, it just indicates that time has a habit of passing. Given that years of even average weight will wear down mountains, it’s hardly a shock if they’ve smoothed out parts of me. Take swimming—people say that once you’ve learned to, you can’t forget, but that’s a myth, another piece of nonsense: actually the mind is magnificent, given time it can misplace anything. I now have no idea how to conduct myself in water. This is perfectly common and not a reason to get upset.

  “Like, he shouldae been lifted, this big sergeant was right there and a panda car and all the lights and that. How he wisnae . . . that’s just the boy he is. Doheny, he’s . . .”

  Bobby’s started on the Doheny stories, then—everyone does that here. Whole evenings can disappear in anecdotes about a man I’ve never met, but already detest, because each of his tales pursues a constant theme: that Doheny gets away with it. He takes the sin without the penance and, no doubt, has never a worry in the world.

  Meanwhile, I’m still attempting to chivvy myself into cheerfulness and an improved self-esteem. At least, that’s what I’d like to be doing, but it seems that my topic has skipped a beat and—my ego, or id, or whatever and I—we are now making guesses about my heart. There’s nothing shaky there, though—my moral well-being is tip-top, I’m very sure. I have a heart of gold.

  Then the penny drops, almost tangibly.

  My heart.

  This is where I was heading, all along.

  I’ve been outmanoeuvred and now I have forced myself far too close to dangerous thoughts of what my heart delights in, of how it has always loved to amuse itself: the things it was made for and the things that it still wants.

  I put my hand out to grasp the bar top as the long roll of spotless pleasures I once enjoyed washes in and hits me, makes me sway. The way my mother rubbed the back of my neck when I was tired: her hands impossibly intelligent. I never imagined my own palms and fingers would grow to look like hers: the same shape, but none of the assurance. And, later, when I couldn’t please her, when I’d grown into someone incapable of that, I could still bring her close. Creeping through her night house like a stranger, a thief, I could breathe her in: identify the notes of her usual perfume, privately sensual and light, and, beneath it, a gentleness, a failure of her will, that belonged to me, that was only for me, that we couldn’t help.

  A person like my mother, they will always forgive you, even while they despise you for every sin which will be the last sin, you promise them faithfully. I didn’t intend to disappoint. And I did love to love her and I did love being loved.

  The same with my father, whose scent I knew just as perfectly, but as an absence. He occupied a blind spot in my sense of smell, which made it much more wonderful, when I was small, to run up against him and close my eyes and know who he was exactly by the deep, undetectable push of him into my lungs—he was there, but invisible, in the way I was to me, something so near it could never be separate.

  And he was good at removing worries, fears. Not that my mother couldn’t explain to me beautifully why this or that dire calamity wouldn’t give us a second glance. She would draw me off into the kitchen and we would make biscuits and I would forget. Or, if that failed us, she was armed with irresistible statistics and explanations—volcanoes, assassins, foreign troops and other more humdrum afflictions would never have dared approach me while I was under her roof. But I was scared of non-existent horrors, too.

  In spite of the highly predictable consequences, I begged and begged to read comics full of vampires which distressed me, or books that I had to leave face down, or trap tight in my shelves, in case their demons might escape and take up residence with me. Werewolves, in particular, were a problem: an evening of Lon Chaney Jr. films, with his sad eyes and hairy feet, could throw me off for weeks—and there are no statistics against werewolves, there is no defence against what can’t exist.

  Which is where my father came in. He hadn’t much to say about my Hammer Horror troubles (or Simon’s occasional urges to increase them) but he would listen tirelessly while I recited whatever confection of curses and teeth was obsessing me at the time. Father calmed me by being so clearly a man who was also afraid, an adult who was nervous and needed comfort. (I didn’t know then that most adults are like this, but hide it better.) There was, I realised, actually the possibility that my fears were able to frighten him more than me. This seemed so out of proportion that my terrors would shrink and lose credibility and, once I’d exhausted my catalogue of the undead, it would seem only fair to both of us that we should declare them harmless, a hobby, things that no person of my age should fuss about.

  Not that the wolf-men didn’t tend to stick around—the last to leave, the first to reappear. The lycanthrope’s later significance isn’t lost on me, of course. How could I not be drawn to such golden-hearted monsters: people who turn amnesiac after dark, whose mornings are groggy and naked and sour-mouthed, whose crimes are always unintended?

  Bobby is winking at me. “Eh, no? Eh?”

  I might as well head off home.

  “Eh?”

  Robert would be here by now, if he was coming. He’s not. Again, he’s not.

  “Eh, no?” Clearly, Bobby’s asked me a question and won’t let it lie. I could mutter a bland agreement to move things along, but his urgent wink leads me to guess that, despite having spent six or seven decades being truly ugly, Bobby may have drunk himself handsome and could be requesting some kind of erotic insanity on my part. The removal of my central nervous system still wouldn’t make this remotely possible and I suspect that my situation may become tricky at any moment, but,

  “Thon Doheny, eh? Ye met him, huvye? Meets all the ladies, eh?” He winks again, then begins the massively slow creation of a pantomime frown. “No offence.”

  “No none. Not . . . no. Well, there was offence . . . but not now. I mean, no. Not at al
l.” I do not wink myself. “Never met him.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not an eye have I ever laid on him.”

  “Ah, well . . .”

  “Couldn’t tell him from a greasy, grey-faced hole in the fucking ground.”

  “Aye, that . . . happens.”

  I’d like to stop doing this and go, “If he was here, I’d walk right past him.” But I don’t seem to be able. “There was this . . . somebody told me . . . Robert told me.” Bobby drops his head and looks respectful in a way that irritates—I don’t know if he’s trying to be consoling because I’ve been dumped, or if he thinks Robert is dead—but, either way, I could do without the sympathy. “Doesn’t matter who told me, point is I’ve heard about Doheny . . . not unaware . . . I have stories.”

  Well, one story: or, rather, a summary impression of the Ideal Alcoholic’s infinite resourcefulness. Given that my pronunciation and coherence were not of the best, the hour being late and the atmosphere chokingly smoky, I would summarise my Doheny story as follows:

  Although he’s supposed to be the Patron Saint of Drinkers, Doheny isn’t supernatural. He has his weaker points. It may be that he is so tediously well loved, precisely because he has apparently exposed himself to every inconvenience of the drinking life. Of course, in the stories, he triumphs over each of them with grinding consistency. For example, he has almost never wet a stranger’s bed unless this was intended. I find it very hard to believe, but have been told that, away from home, he sports some strange variety of latex underwear—the snug and erotic kind— which encloses both him and his member in a waterproof second skin, a sort of massively overanxious condom. And I’m sure that such items do exist, but I don’t wish to picture Doheny—a man who must be in his forties, at least, and who has never been described to me as dashing— slowly working himself down inside a pair. Worse still, the business end of this sheathing is fixed into a length of plastic hose—God knows how this would look—and the hose, in its turn, can be gaffer-taped to any container, window sill, grating, duct or who can imagine what. Doheny, we’re meant to accept, arrives equipped and sleeps immobile, like a rock: any unconscious emissions diverted away, just as neatly as he could wish, because Doheny, as everyone says, always thinks things through.

  But his thinking is at its most acute when he comes to that final, sad loss of control, the public shame of every underachieving drunk: vomit. With vomit, Doheny excels.

  His pockets contain many carrier bags in which he can catch whatever his body decides is superfluous, the whole operation concluded as he stands at a bar, or leads—why not?—a witty conversation, or pleasures some, no doubt rubber-besotted, female. An elegant twist of the bag, a knot, and the warm and supple parcel can be popped down anywhere convenient.

  Doheny can also projectile vomit at will and I can see the use of this: when someone is far too annoying, or they have the wrong hair, or when there is no solution and bad history and no love and no more to say and you just want them fucking gone—that would do it, vomit would clear them, they would go.

  But he is playful, too—Doheny—and sociable, the unlooked-for-but-sparkling guest at any party. I’ve been assured that he once treated a number of Finns to a nocturnal skating spree by adding vomit, in not inconsiderable amounts, to the tiled floor of the breakfast room in an unnamed Tallinn hotel. Having explained and then demonstrated the physical principles involved, Doheny then left them to slide about, in great high spirits, until the small hours and the authorities’ arrival.

  But, to me, the only tale that sounds remotely true is far more personal and has a brand of nasty elegance. When Doheny begins to pass out in any hostile environment, he scrambles for his wallet and throws it deep into whatever pool of half-digested fun he can produce. He then rests unconscious with a quiet mind and all his money safe. Whatever Doheny needs, Doheny keeps—he’s like a terrier, that way, like a deadfall trap.

  The smoke isn’t so bad when I’ve finished my Doheny recitation—I can’t think why—but I’m suddenly, crashingly tired. My head is drifting back, or to the side, and then nagging till I snap it back into line. The drift and snap are becoming tiring in themselves. I have to get home. People will think that I’m drunk when really I’m exhausted. Anyone would be, spending this much time listening to Bobby, while thinking about Robert, expecting Robert—which is the same name, pretty much, although not the same person, of course. And why is Robert Robert and not Bobby, Robbie, Rab . . . ? Why make this choice and not some other? There must be a meaning in that.

  I don’t know exactly when, but I sat down during my story and this is proving to be a problem, because I don’t seem quite fit to get up again. The chair’s arms are slithery leather, highly rounded and possibly waxed, so there’s no earthly chance that I’ll catch hold of either one. This must contravene health and safety regulations for a public house. I have an average hand, with average strength and I’m a totally normal weight—if I can’t struggle up out of this then what would a weak person do, a disabled person?

  Not that I have any wish to consider a disabled person.

  Which is a further disadvantage of this chair—it invites unpleasant recollections.

  An armchair in a bar, this kind of bar, this honest, plain and sensible bar. Who would arrange that? It simply isn’t practical.

  The other complication would be that the bar doesn’t have any armchairs, not anywhere.

  Not one.

  This is a problem.

  It never has possessed an armchair. Not as far as I’m aware.

  Yes. A problem.

  Looking down, here are my hands, my forearms, my thighs and knees in their summertime, tailored, khaki slacks—surprisingly stylish—and that’s the edge of my summertime peach short-sleeved blouse and that’s definitely a leather armchair underneath me—burgundy sort of thing, good quality, a bit old, and not entirely dissimilar to the armchair “Hannah?”

  there used to be an armchair

  “It’s three in the morning.”

  I can remember an armchair

  “Your father went to bed.”

  It is perfectly the same as an armchair that’s in the living room that’s in my parents’ house.

  “He won’t be asleep, but he went to bed. Have you stopped now? Is that what you came here to say?”

  The living room which has sneaked in and sprung up around me while I was distracted, talking.

  An armchair. Yes.

  “Well, I’m going now, too. Do you understand? Hannah?”

  This is my mother’s voice: no getting away from it.

  “You were the best thing in my life.”

  If I raise my head now I can look at her: I’m sure she’s very close, but I’d rather just listen for a while.

  “The best thing.”

  Not that listening is good—hearing her make that dry, half-laugh which comes when a person discovers they’ve been deluded, tricked into believing you’re human and they should care. And it’s not a surprise that her voice has a pain in it, too, and a weary burn of anger and it sounds small, contracted, which means—not that I didn’t know—that she is speaking both to me and about me. This is how I make her sound.

  “Your room is there for you. He got it ready. Do you understand? Your father got it ready for you.” She’s standing now, I can tell, and walking off to my left. “When I heard you were back, I knew you’d come here in the end. He didn’t think so, but I knew.” She breathes with a shallow, troubled, little labour. “I wish you hadn’t. You’re killing him.” And I would like it so much if she were only happy, if she had no trouble of any kind.

  She breathes some more and then leaves me, once she can see that I do quite understand I’m killing everyone.

  I wake at six, unrested, and look at the beautiful room my parents gave me a long time ago: the bookshelves still clinging to Tolkien and Nesbit and the sharply coloured paperbacks that appeared when I hit my teens, the True Crime and the pseudo-horny thrillers and the textbooks beside the
extra textbooks my mother bought to help explain them. She wanted me to do well. The poster of the Van Gogh night sky with the twisted pine—I left that behind me when I moved away—and, everywhere else, the drawing-pin holes and the tiny stains of Blu-Tack on the wallpaper with the fawny and grey and cream stripe that I chose with my mother because I thought it looked mature. Actually, it looks like being in prison, but perhaps that is mature.

  “I heard you.”

  My father leaning against the doorway, as if he is feeling casual, but really he’s keeping the wood at his back to steady him—I can see this in his face. And he looks down at me, lying on top of my bed, still fully dressed, and my skin, I would guess, pallid and my lips, I am sure, wine red, as if the drink has made internal injuries.

  “Do you want tea? I can make us tea.” As if his doing something shipshape and domestic will change us to straightforward people with a firm relationship. “Would that be . . . Do you want tea?”

  I mean to nod, to please him at least that much, but I can’t: my head is too heavy and cautious to be moved. I am fixed here like some terrible carving, my face turned towards him, an object that might remind him of his little girl.

  My father is wearing a dressing gown and pyjamas that must be years old. They could almost convince me I’m dreaming a memory, or that I’ve fallen back inside a year when things were still all right. He’s different, though, frailer, pale with time. I manage the best smile I can and I watch this produce a type of panic, tense him for a hurt that I will cause.

  I clear my throat and find I taste unclean. “Ah, that’s . . . I’d . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Do you want tea?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  One of his hands is tugging at the other and his eyes are wet, which must give him a view of the bedroom very like my own, a spreading blur. Odd how crying can make humdrum objects seem startling, webbed in light.

  “No need. No need to be sorry.”