Bina Read online

  It’s how it is.

  And you never like how it is.

  It’s why you read in the first place.

  Isn’t it a pity about you, for how am I to warn you if I’m not to tell you how it is?

  Plain. I lay down.

  Simple. I was miserable.

  Fact. If I can’t get rid of them Crusties outside and I am forever inside worried about the return of Eddie.

  Surely

  My time is up.

  It’s time to be gone.

  They’ve boxed me in

  Both-eared in two time zones.

  This is what they do if you don’t heed the warnings.

  Warnings I’d plenty.

  Plenty gone unhed.

  Plenty gone that is.

  Me the unheeder

  Now instructing you, the unheeded.

  Oh pot kettle, pot kettle pot, kettle pot pot.

  I noticed it got very popular

  Blaming the church

  On the radio.

  You could blame the church all day long

  Then turn the dial

  And start blaming them all over again.

  I decided to do likewise and blame the church for Eddie.

  Since he’s gone,

  Eddie’s been ringing.

  He leaves strange messages.

  About needing help.

  Never asks how I am.

  Every message begins the same way

  He tells me who he is (as if I have forgotten)

  And he says

  So I need*8 you to…

  He closes every message with the words God Bless.

  I find that most annoying.

  More annoying than him not asking how I am.

  More annoying than him asking me for help (read: money).

  God Bless.

  Bless what?

  Good riddance to God.

  He blessed me with Eddie.

  Every message is more annoying than the last.

  If I wanted to be rude I’d say annoying like the gospels.

  But I am not rude.

  Eddie’s rude.

  That’s what Eddie would say.

  She’s more annoying than the gospels, he used to say about me and people would look at him strange and offer no reply. So he’d have to repeat it. Someone should have told him to shut up, but that’s the problem with men like Eddie, nobody is saying what needs saying. And wait now til you hear how suddenly he wasn’t such a bad lad. And wait now til you hear how it was only since he left that I lost the run of myself. And I must miss him. Rather than the truth. NOT A BIT. Not even a porridge-sized bit. Not a crumb. As a fella once said to me from the front of his car, if you tell people the truth they won’t believe you, but tell them lies and they’ll believe all of it.

  I am seeing this now. I am seeing this here today. I am seeing it in the court system, which has me captured while that lug is set free and gone to Canada.

  And that is one of the many reasons why I am here warning you.

  I have done things people asked me to do because they needed doing.

  I was not supposed to do those things.

  I have lost all my courage now.

  It is a shame that.

  That was a warning.

  Don’t do the things you’re not supposed to do.

  Even if people ask you to do them.

  Don’t.

  See now when Eddie phones and leaves the recurring message that he needs me to send him money.

  I press erase.

  It takes practice, but it’s possible.

  Eddie’s phoned-in requests are varied.

  From the basic:

  —Rent.

  —I need to buy a phone.

  —I can’t phone you if I’ve no phone (even as he’s phoning me)

  To the vague:

  —In a bit of bother

  —Just need it til next Thursday

  To the outright false:

  —Root canal

  —I have a girl pregnant

  —Need to go to a funeral.

  —Have broken my foot.

  The man is a lying hoar. He has lied far and wide and double-eared for 10 years.*9 He’ll lie til the pyramids are fully eroded and rebuilt in Lego.

  He’ll fib on into the 70th century that fella.

  Erase.

  Heed me.

  Erase him and all of them.

  Erase. Erase. Erase.

  Then into bed.

  Take to the bed.

  Only place they can’t wreck your head.

  Good woman.

  If I do nothing else in these warnings, I will train you to say no.

  You’ll be howling No! No! No! back at them, because I’ll drill this down here so often it’ll infect you.

  Practise.

  Form your lips and shoot a big nooooh out of them.

  Chomp them forward and let it blow.

  Then rapid-fire 33 short ones.

  No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

  This is what no rapid-fired 33 times looks like.

  I have not and am unlikely to ever figure out how to do the follow-up part, which ensures they know not to ask. Never to ask. Never to dare to ask. Also, there are many for whom ears shut on hearing the word no. No matter how much you practise. No matter if you bellow, hoard or howl it. No matter if you’re crying. No matter if you’re bleeding. No matter if you’re wounded.

  That’s unreasonable.

  For some of them though, if required, I recommend you add the words: I’ll have you shot.

  Say it simple, but say it like you are very capable of making that happen. Use your domestic breeding to deliver it. Say it like you’re telling the person you need to take something out of the oven. Go on, whisper it over to them now.

  I had to say it once and sometimes it’s only the once it needs to be said.

  You know what words are not unreasonable.

  I have had enough.

  I have had enough and I know this to be a fact.

  You’ll know when you’ve had enough

  You’ll know when you know this to be a fact.

  And when you do it’s a perfectly reasonable thing

  And in the cases I am thinking of, where I have had people confide it to me, I have chosen to believe them. I do not dissuade anybody of the facts they claim to know about themselves, unless they are useless facts up to no good or they concern aliens. I’m not for aliens. But I do not believe that the Gardai, the government or any other human necessarily knows better than the human herself when she has had enough.

  If you tell me you’ve had enough, I will believe you.

  Eddie came off the drink.

  He came off the drink on a Tuesday

  And everything got worse.

  She had no concept he’d be worse off it than on it.

  from the Group phoned and said I still had the Exit bags. I had all the bags and they needed to get them back.

  You’ll have to come and get them, I said. I can’t leave.

  The house is probably being watched, she said.

  We’ll have to think about it.

  Think about it.

  You haven’t misread.

  Eddie became worse off the drink than on it, she’s telling you.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  That’s harsh.

  But this hasn’t been a difficult book yet.

  Bina’s not for difficult books.

  Life is full of difficulty, so if she were ever to lie down and take up a book, it couldn’t be a difficult one.

  I’d never read that rubbish, she’d say of this book.

  It would give me bad dreams.

  At my age, I can’t be getting any darker as the lights are soon going out.

  Write a nice book, she’ll tell you, about nice people, because Bina will warn you raw—you won’t find those nice people in the world!
You’ll have to make them up!

  Isn’t she gas?

  I’m not a gas woman she’d say

  And she’d mean it.

  She might even repeat it to be sure you heard her.

  Bina was not a gas woman the first line of my obituary will read.

  Don’t forget.

  Don’t forget Eddie left the Tablet on the table when he went. Funnily, it was the Tall Man who noticed it. Don’t forget Eddie took off while I was inside prison that week*10 so I didn’t see him leave. Don’t forget that only for the Tall Man noticing the Tablet on my table, I’d never have known why I was receiving the plethora of abusive messages each time the phone rang. Don’t forget, only for these abusive messages down the years I would never have bought an answering machine. If I hadn’t bought the answering machine, things would have turned out very different. I’m not saying the answering machine is the reason I was sent down for a week. But the shouty messages on it had nothing got to do with what the papers said about me. No, as it turned out they were nothing got to do with me at all, they were everything to do with what Eddie was writing on the Tablet.

  Don’t forget whatever it was that led you to forgetting. Pay attention to the first gesture. See where it starts. For it all goes badly wrong from there. I knew the Tall Man was useful because he kept pointing out small details to me. Do you see that? Do you notice this? God is in the details. There are the useful people and the timewasters. He was also very useful because he was a maniac for Scrabble and I became much stronger at the game. Even though he said there were tiles missing from my box. We’ll play on, he said. I enjoy the challenge. He was a good man the Tall Man. At least I thought he was a good man. And where is he now? And what have they done with him, you’ll ask. You may very well ask that. Follow the trail. Follow the trail I am giving you here. And speculate.

  In the Group, we all agreed that God’s in the details and that’s why we were all to be very, very careful. We were all to be as careful as each other. We were united in this. God is in the details and Be Careful! We all agreed we had to be careful. Collectively careful. No step mis-stooped. What we hadn’t factoried in with all these Be Carefuls was there might be an indifferent carp amongst us, a toxic implant who was being careful to say be careful while only waiting to spy, witness and snitch what we were all being careful about.

  Keep a close eye on what is in people’s bags, the Tall Man told me. You’re looking for clues to their persuasion. What kind of clues are you looking for, he asked me. Floral tissues, I replied. No ordinary woman who wasn’t prying would buy such mad tissues, would she? He looked blank. I don’t know about that, he said, but keep your eyes peeled. When you do a home visit, look around the place carefully, note any disadvantages of the layout, be vocally non-committal but assess, he said. Assess, I repeated. I was keen the Tall Man think me capable and not notice that I sometimes forget things. So I made a habit of repeating things after he’d spoken them, like we were in an army arrangement and I was only taking orders from above.

  What about the men, he said. You think only women are the spies? He was always after me for the minutiae. Unfortunately, I was not the woman to provide it given my failures with this very slippery gender.

  Ask questions, he said. Find out about the family. Find out their views on other things and join the dots. In every question you are gathering evidence of who might be around you and you must take care not to give any information away.

  We are taught this.

  The Tall Man taught us.

  Careful

  Careful

  Careful

  Careful on the details.

  Let no detail be spoiled

  Extracted

  Or uttered

  Where it does not belong.

  from the Group phoned.

  Have you got the hairnets? he asked.

  Let there be no panic, I replied.

  We can’t find them.

  We think you have them.

  Let there be no panic about hairnets, I repeated.

  I wondered if Phil was onto me.

  I wondered about what Phil knew.

  I did.

  Let there be no wondering about that.

  from the Group phoned.

  Have you got the shoe-cover yokes? she asked.

  I let that one fade into the answering machine.

  I suspect the Group has been infiltrated

  No one ever phoned me this often

  Before I was arrested

  When I was some actual use to the people who needed me.

  Phil was wrong

  She didn’t need to go.

  She could have stuck around.

  I was on my way over to tell her that

  When she decided she’d had enough*11

  That’s what they don’t know

  The daughters don’t know that.

  Her angry daughters didn’t know their mam at all.

  I knew her.

  I knew she was wrong.

  Oh Phil could be wrong.

  Phil was very wrong.

  You know.

  She misunderstood what I was doing

  How I was helping people

  Who I was helping

  Phil took the wrong clues from it.

  Do not borrow a handkerchief.

  It’s a filthy habit.

  It has no relevance to anything discussed here, but I just wanted to pass it along as a warning in its own right when watching men. If you spill something and a man offers you his hanky to wipe it up…DON’T TOUCH IT AND DON’T GO NEAR IT AND DON’T COME AND TELL ME ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS. Pretend you didn’t see it or hear his offer and carry on with your fixing.

  Take no help from any man waving or offering a hanky. Maybe take no help from any man waving or offering anything, unless he’s an ambulance man or selling you a ham. Follow the parade of these warnings, even the random ones I’m hurling in, and they’ll be useful. Have no doubt.

  I’ve made all these mistakes for you.

  Except the handkerchief one.

  I saw a man do that

  And it turned my stomach.

  The man was Eddie.

  The circumstances of the borrow are gone.

  But they’ll come again.

  That’s what the doctor said when he interviewed me that time. And if they don’t come again I am not allowed to get upset about it. You remember even less when you’re upset, Bina, he said.*12

  Don’t forget, when you can’t remember, it’ll come back to you. It’ll come again. It can make you ever so panicky, but hold your panic in. Let the old head work its way through it. Let it work its way out through your head. Then you’ll remember.

  I panicked too much.

  It’s been a lifetime of panic.

  Eddie would make you panic

  It’s how he is.

  Sirenic.

  Claxonic.

  Awful.

  Awful.

  Awful.

  A funny thing is I never panicked at all in prison. I got there on a Tuesday and I was released the Tuesday week. I slept a great deal and I had a few chats.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  Honestly, the only place I’ve been afraid is inside my own home.

  There was even a day inside in the prison where I thought it wouldn’t be so bad if I’d to live in there for three or seven years. They keep you busy and they keep you fed.

  But it was only one day I thought that way.

  And that day was a Wednesday.

  And as I’ve already explained, Wednesday has often been a dangerous day for me.

  So the pattern was set and followed me there inside.

  A lovely young one came into me one day out of the seven I was in prison.

  Was I on drink or drugs or hearing voices?

  I wasn’t, I said.

  Was I sad or miserable?

  I wasn’t. Not a bit. I was only sorry about the woman who changed her mind—or the daughter who believed she
had, for I knew Phil was sure of what she was doing and on account of that I wasn’t sleeping.

  She took my blood pressure and said something was wrong with me. I asked was she a Muslim and she agreed she was, so I told her about Phil’s son Jimmy dying and how Phil and I went to Shannon to protest that time and that Phil liked all the Muslims. She was mad for the Muslims, I said. She made us all go protesting.

  That’s sad about Jimmy, the lovely one said. And how is your friend now?

  She’s dead now, I said. She’s very dead.

  Lift up your vest, I want to listen to your chest, she said.

  Deep breath. She put that thing on me and it felt like someone was tapping at me with the back of a big spoon. Deep breath, she kept saying, and all night long I heard her voice saying deep breath, but I paid no heed to it. And now that I think on it that might have been the very first time I had the David Bowie dreams. Ah no. Wait now. It has come back to me. I have it all wrong. I’d had the David Bowie dreams before. That night was not the first time. I’m cross now. This is what is awful annoying about age, the way you can think something is brand new and all strange, when it’s nothing of the sort. He was half orange in that first dream. Half his face was the shade of an electric-bar fire. I think I saw him injured in that dream. He wasn’t singing, that much I am certain. I knew there was a good reason why Eddie left the Tablet on the table when he fled. I am going to open up the videos and find the faces David Bowie was wearing in every single dream I’ve had of him.

  Since then though, when he speaks to me, Mr. Bowie has that soft, posh London voice. He is like one of those hypnotists talking me down. He’s never done telling me to be shut of Eddie. Get rid of him Bina, Bowie says. Kick him out. Reclaim your home! He’s not worth it. He’s up to no good, he’ll say before launching into Golden Ears or whatever song it is he is practising. I sometimes answer him back. Oh Mr. Bowie, if you only knew! I do try to keep it light between us though. He’s a pest, I’ll say of Eddie, since I wouldn’t want David Bowie to know how much I loathe Eddie or he’d stop appearing. It’d turn him off. When you tell men how you actually feel about one of them they don’t like it. They don’t like it at all. Even David Bowie wouldn’t be able for the truth and he’s a strong man now. We’ve always to be jollier than them or they’ll turn on you and call you bitter and a miser. Find me the woman in Dickens who is allowed to be utterly miserable. Find me her now while I put the kettle on.