The Burn

Real Stories

So because she couldnt get doing her own work she occupied herself in other ways. What happened is she stayed in her room and started telling wee stories to herself. She did. That was what she did. Wee stories about her girlhood with outcomes that were different from real life. Usually it was her that was the heroine whereas in real life she had never been the heroine, and none of her pals had ever been the heroine either. But that didnt matter. Not to her. She never deluded herself. She always knew them for what they were so so what is what she said to herself as soon as the criticism started, they’re my own stories and nobody else’s so why should I worry about them being true or no, just to suit other people. She did enough worrying without having to worry about that as well. And with the spare room being hers she could shut the door tight and she could have put a bolt on if she had wanted to. But there was no need.

When her husband was there he tried to get into her mind. It was like he started needing solace or a comfort or something like that. It was funny. As if he thought he would maybe manage it through her stories, as if he thought that was how to do it, by getting inside her imagination. Because he didnt like his own imagination. That was what he said. But there had to be more than that even although he said there wasnt.

At first what he did was he started getting her to tell the stories out loud. But that never seemed to work properly. She couldnt do it right except once or twice, and even then, when she felt she had got close to succeeding he wouldnt believe her. He thought she was making it up, he thought she was just saying the stories succeeded because she was wanting to keep the real ones secret. He thought there were ‘real stories’ she was keeping secret from him and that was where the solace lay. But this was happening at the stage where there was a coldness in her towards him anyway so she was quite happy to let him believe she was cheating if that was what he wanted. She felt really that he could believe anything he liked. She was then stopping all her interest in him. But leaving that apart her stories just werent for him. She didnt like having to share them, especially no with him. It was not like he had been a good man to her. She had always preferred it when she could go away into her own room and shut fast the door, for he would at least respect that, he would never try to enter unless she invited him. And she stopped inviting him. By then it had got so she just couldnt abide the idea of him at all, it was excruciating and she couldnt cope with it. She couldnt, she just couldnt cope with it. It was awful. She felt clammy. It was a creepy feeling. Him sitting there the way he did.

And as well as that if she was not to be allowed to do her own work well she just wasnt going to put up with it, with him being there, not if she wasnt going to be allowed to do it. She needed to be alone, she needed to shut fast the door and even bolt and snib it if she wanted, if that was what she wanted. But there was no need since he respected it. If he had been a true bosom partner to her then none of it would have mattered she didnt think, none of it. Even the stories would have been to share. It was just him. Not everybody made her feel like this, just some.

And she didnt care about his job. She had never cared about it. It was just a dreadful thing and she couldnt hardly imagine it it was so dreadful. Yet in the early days it was funny how she seemed to spend most of her life dashing about trying to get things right for him. That was really so funny. But she was daft back then, she was young. She used to go all his messages. She did all the things for him. He always had things needing doing and she used to do them for him. She didnt mind doing them for the reason that she used to like just being outside the house plus as well what it included, the change of clothes, because she used to put on a new set of clothes when she went outside. She would wait till he was out the road, then she would sneak away with a hat or a scarf or a nice veil, she would have them tucked in at her elbow or else under her coat.

What was the meaning of these messages? That was something that used to make her wonder. Sometimes it was like he just dreamt them up to get her. She wondered what she was doing it for and if it was just him and nothing to do with his actual business at all. To her he was a rascal the way he was needing to have everything. He was like that from the start. He was never going to be content, he was always going to need everything. Some men rule your life and he was one of them.

It became it wasnt any good just shutting herself in the room because she knew he was hovering about outside the door, and it started preying on her mind if she allowed it. Every time she let her mind go she would see him, there he was; and with that look on his face like a smirk. It was creepy. Then she found a way of working it so she could get it all into her stories. That was how she coped. She got it all into her stories. Next thing she started making him feel funny. That was a scary thing for him. A point came when he discovered he was thinking morbid thoughts all the time. He wanted to tell people. He didnt though because he thought they would think he was daft. That was the kind of folk he knew, that was what like they were. It would have drove her crazy to know people like that. She would have wanted her own work. Always being stuck with these kinds of people and no space and no time for yourself. That was what he had to put up with; and she was glad. It was what he deserved. And him being filled with these new anxious feelings, morbid ones. She knew fine what was happening. But she didnt care. She was finished with it all. Him and his bad thoughts. She didnt care what happened to anybody. She once used to like her nephew. He was a nice boy. But she never saw him now and it didnt matter.

All of that. Nobody could have forced her. She would just have stopped up all her senses. Her eyes and her ears and her smell and her touch, everything. When I was a wee lassie about ten years old and this after the first war had took place, I went to play with my dolls with a wee boy who was my wee pal I told you about whose daddy was a docker down Charlie Connell’s yard. This was the night his grannie died. She had got took funny when they were listening to the early wireless and Billy and me didnt notice because we had out his toy soldiers made of cardboard boxes his daddy had cut up for him and I had my dollies and we were playing at wars, his was the British Army and mine was the Kaiser and all his uncles were there in the house it was just after my daddy had got killed I mind because my mother’s greeting still hadnt let up and she was down the stairs that was how I was up because I would do anything no to be there with her it was awful.

She could tell worse things if she wanted. She could. She could have started making it so’s he heard the very very worst things imaginable for him, because it was like he was just a wee schoolboy who had never been out in the world, as if he had come from a well-off family with a nice big house over in the southside and apple trees in the garden. He was just plain stupid. When I was a wee lassie and Billy McDevitt’s uncles were there in the house with me just after my own daddy had got killed and my mummy scarcely even wondered where I was was I out or in and that was me just by myself ten years old, and I just didnt have anywhere to turn and I was so scared with all the noises hiding there behind the coal-bunker with the wind outside howling round the chimney tops till you thought they were going to come crashing down onto your head through the window.

He listened to her and all the things she told him. He listened to it all, everything. It was like he had never heard anything like what she could tell and never ever thought anybody he knew could know such things, especially her never mind it was back when she was a wee lassie, as if it was her to blame as well, them being true in reality. You could imagine him there with his hand on his forehead close to staggering under the news, the burden of that just. It was enough to make her smile but she kept it to herself and just carried on telling him all what she felt like, she just didnt care. And then as well was the time she never left the room but just stayed there for as long as she liked, and he was outside and she could hear him listening there, wondering, if she was sitting maybe on the side of the bed staring into the wallpaper and the shapes from the design, a thick wallpaper which caused shadows on itself and you could see the world there or part of it, the bits that hide underneath where folk are dead and dying, getting killed and there they are all bleeding with their bits and pieces oozing out there on the grass, the dirt, and nobody to see.

She could have worked in an office and had a career. That was what she should have done, if she had got the chance, a career-woman. She would have been better than him and she wouldnt only have had terrible folk to know because she would have been different. And she wouldnt have been with him. She wouldnt have been with anybody maybe, maybe no anybody at all. She would just have kept her own door. She would have had it nice, she wouldnt have had him. Not him and not nobody. If she had wanted one she would have took one, it was easy, men looking at you, that was easy But she just wouldnt want one, she wouldnt. She would just have had her own friends. She would have made a man up if she wanted one. That’s how she would have done it. All clumsy and sweating. Her man would have been small, small-boned; he wouldnt have made a noise, he would just have been there when she wanted, and when she didnt he wouldnt, because he would have known. And he would have respected her. And he would have admired her and maybe liked her and loved her. He wouldnt have thought things. He would have been good to her. You think of men who respect a woman. They would be there. That was what she always thought, she believed it.