Serious Sweet (14 page)

‘Like a shared allotment.' Jon letting this be audible, because he couldn't prevent it. ‘We can talk about our onions together.'

Chalice pressed on regardless – he was the type. They were all that type. Whether they'd trotted about with the Chilly Rivers, or sold yoghurt before they got here, being relentless was seen as a virtue. How else can one shove a recalcitrant civil service up the relevant hill and off the cliff.

And somebody always has to tumble first, go over and soften the landing for everyone else.

I spend my life waving at samphire gatherers as I plummet. I will not mention this.

Chalice would get the
Lear
reference, but it would escape the Minister for Nothing to Do With Me. ‘The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.' I can't go and see it onstage any more – not theatre at all.

Those inaudible telly actors, they get me down. Which isn't the problem – the words are the problem – the art is the problem – the constant dig of reproaches in most of what I can remember on any subject are the problem …

Chalice had ground on while Jon was rather significantly absent but nodding and fortunately just aware enough to catch: ‘I told Milner you could join him for an informal chat. At that little pub – the place opposite you. Around three.'

‘Three today?'

‘Three today, yes. I know you skipped lunch. That's a dreadful habit.' Chalice made this sound sticky. ‘But you can make up for it now. While you're free.'

‘But it's not urgent.'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘I'll … ah …'
Yesterday evening I was sitting by a square pool, herbs planted at its edge and blue tiles holding the water, evening-blue tiles – sepulchral – shining beneath the reflections, the wet ghosts of light, and there was tea in glasses and I liked that. I barely had a headache, almost none. Not a trace of nausea.
‘Then I'll … of course…. Three o'clock.'

‘We said you were available then.'

Chalice spired his fingertips as Machiavelli surely never did. ‘Less bustling than at lunchtime. It does get busy in there over lunch. The boisterous young and freshly-down favour it, I believe. Our new blood. I hear the fish and chips are impressive – for a bar meal.' Chalice gave a tiny, incongruous sigh, business concluded, and stood. ‘That's set then.' He didn't extend a hand for shaking. ‘Splendid. And if you can tell us how things went.'

Jon focused on standing successfully. ‘You want me to tell you today.'

‘Preferably today. If you wouldn't mind terribly.'

‘Of course.'

‘I see him and I tell you about him.'

‘Of course.'

And Jon was vividly aware of his feet and socks and the clutter of his shoes and shoelaces, the weight and complications attending each step as he removed himself, nodding to the Minister –
Good to see you, happy to help –
closed the door over, took the corridor at more speed than was necessary just to be out and out and away.

It had seemed not unreasonable thereafter to go astray.

A woman is crying on platform three at Canada Water Station. The sound she makes is unusual: extremely loud, something between a howl and keening, an odd lowing. Although the area is busy with commuters because it is lunchtime, the strange quality of the woman's grief, perhaps grief, means that she is being ignored. Around her there is a bubble of cleared space.

She is middle-aged and plump, Caucasian, dressed in a sweater and thin waterproof jacket, along with loose trousers which would be suitable for jogging or sports in general, although she does not look especially athletic. The woman wears white trainers which are very clean and make her feet appear to be bigger than they actually are. She has a lanyard around her neck which supports a quite large, square tag – identification of some sort, again with a vaguely sporting flavour.

The woman continues to lament, or perhaps lament. Her uncomfortable presence announces itself repeatedly and produces shuffles amongst the crowds, turned heads and an ambient shame, embarrassment, unease.

Two younger figures advance on the woman, one from the head and one from the foot of the platform – they are also women. The shorter of them is white, has a practical air and may have a physically involving job. She wears functional slacks and an anorak, has gingerish hair tied back in a loose knot. The taller woman has an angular, lean face, something Ethiopian about it. She is the more stylish of the two, suited and turned out in a way that would fit a high-end office. She has gone to some trouble with her bag and shoes, they agree with each other nicely.

The pair hesitate when they reach the insulating area, the space cleared around the woman by dismay, the space created by this yowling person. They study her face, which is not so much wildly anguished as puzzled, locked, afraid. It does not correspond with her cries, has not flushed with effort, but only stayed greyish and indoors-looking. They both ask, ‘What's wrong?'

The woman continues to yowl and waves the tag at the end of her lanyard as if it is magical. Then she explains, in a voice made tired by its exertions, that she is autistic. Between words, there are sobs. She is aware that she is autistic. That is a truth. She understands that she will not die from having missed her train. That is a truth. She is standing beside a map of the different lines that pass through Canada Water and cannot keep her eyes from it for long, as if it may at any time indicate the removal of a necessary track, a dreadful blank. That will not happen and is an untrue truth. She knows that she can catch another train which will take her where she wants to go. That is a truth. She will not be trapped here for ever. That will not happen and is an untrue truth. Nevertheless, she is lost. That is a truth and an untrue truth. Inside her, truths and untruths are tearing something with nerve endings into pieces and producing terror. She has been howling in protest and for assistance and for the return of her proper train, the one she needs. She needs the passage of time to become different.

The pair talk to her in very low voices, consistently calming: as if they may have children, or like being friends to their friends, or are familiar with anxiety and weakness. It seems they actively enjoy being helpful. They tell the woman the next train that she can catch.

But that train will not be her train.

Still, it will be all right.

But it's not the correct train.

But it will take her home.

The pair are persistent as the woman's fear.

The woman stops sobbing and is stilled, only fretful and slightly irritated by reality as it fails her.

The pair move aside as they undertake to wait for the woman's train. They talk to each other softly. They say, ‘Leaving her like that … Everyone ignoring her like that …'

‘Disgusting …'

‘My mother didn't raise me like that.'

They stay with the woman until her unsatisfactory but necessary train arrives. They make sure that she is on-board it and that she can manage from hereon and will be OK. And then they change their minds and they climb on-board with her and are taken away.

Rather than return to Tothill Street, Jon struck out for Birdcage Walk. He dodged along, slightly stooped, as if live fire were passing overhead. He then cut across and into St James's Park, where it seemed he could straighten.

And he wanted to tread on grass, to be in the care of trees and green shades. And he needed to –
dear God –
really did need to –
sod it
 – just where no one would exactly see –
urgently –
he really did need to vomit.

I should be glad this is simply nausea, rather than nausea plus migraine. The migraines make everything seem to be viewed through a translucent screen of Clarice Cliff. And I hate Clarice Cliff – dreadful pottery. Additionally, she looked like a stubby man in half-hearted drag.

Not that it isn't sexist of me to criticise her on those grounds – I wouldn't comment on a male ceramicist in that manner.

I'm not aware, actually, that I know what a single male ceramicist has looked like.

Oh, dear Christing fuck …

This was more a process of heaving and spitting than actual vomiting: maudlin convulsions going on in his torso and producing a watery mouth and sourness and no real improvement.

He was clammy and shaky after.

I need a shower. Must find a moment to nip down and use the office showers. I need to be made more palatable. Or palatable at all.

But he supposed he'd feel cooler and steadier, might walk it off – whatever it might be – here beyond the breadth of plane trees and in amongst the blown daffodils and vacant deckchairs, here with the scent of spring turf being good and clean and animal and rising forcefully, having a strength about it that he could aim to borrow in some manner.

Here and heading for the gloomy pelicans – out of their proper place and ugly, sad-faced.

No, but the overall effect of the park is cheerful: the stridency of blossom, tumults of leaves – visibly, almost visibly, unfurling and so bright. They possess that fiery green.

And if the green is still green, still comes back after winter, after trampling … If it endures …

Jon considered hiring a deckchair, but guessed sitting on one might make him feel too folded over. He was trying to avoid that position.

Besides, I can't stay long – I'd be a mug to pay the hire fee for ten minutes.

Being a mug the required thing these days, of course. Britain is the land of mug punters, fat smokers, of underqualified assistance arriving too late in unmarked vans – full and undisclosed charges payable in advance.

He could have tried moving further up and finding a bench, but he decided – swiftly and borderline violently, an unwarranted savagery in his need – not to do that.

Instead, he sat down in his new corduroys –
well, they are supposed to be for country use –
then he scooped out his phone, turned it off. The thing throbbed once in farewell before surrendering, going dark. Jon returned it to his jacket and parcelled himself up cross-legged on the ground, peered into the grass. He picked out the tiny paths between stems, the miniature clearings and overhung passages. Ant Land geographies.

I would do this for hours when I was a kid. The scale of it cheered me – something smaller than I was – and I was small, small, small. And the overall ambience was restorative.

It comes to you, kisses you, the livingness of things – you have only to wait for it.

That was why he loved the garden so much, the inexplicable garden in Bishopsgate.

‘Nobody lives in Bishopsgate.'

‘I do.'

For the whole of yesterday's sweet evening Jon had been sitting with Rowan Carmichael in the garden. In Bishopsgate. Where no one was supposed to live.

‘I know you do, Rowan. That's what I said, I told them. I said
Rowan Carmichael lives in Bishopsgate, that's why I go there in order to visit him at his home – because that's where his home is located
 … It's address fascism all the time, these days. You can't utter an unwelcome postcode and not be forever cast out. And you're central. No one could say you're not central …'

Rowan had smiled at him, indicating tranquil disapproval, which was an established speciality with Rowan.

His disapproval is why I seek him out, of course, and would like him to be my friend, would hope that he is my friend. I am aware that Rowan is aware that I am lacking; I therefore find him to be wise and therefore need him.

Who wouldn't want to have the company of a wise and remarkable man?

Also a kind man.

And Bishopsgate really is central and has excellent transport links – it simply seems unlikely, that's all. Not blighted. Not like the Junction. Where I choose to be.

Nobody lives in the Junction.

Lots of people who are nobody as far as anybody who is anybody might be concerned … They live in the Junction. They live in the parts of Camberwell which are without beauty in the monochrome air that blew on along Coldharbour Lane and across John Major's childhood, that made him too Brixton and not quite right. Wise in spasms, but not quite right.

I fit in there.

To a degree.

Rowan had pottered to the kitchen to fetch biscuits: shop-bought and not great. He pottered now – had an old man's walk – and Jon could not remember when that had started to be the case.

I am aware – I think I am aware – that Rowan is fond of me despite my failings and that he is therefore remarkable. He has my affection and respect, both of which are useless. Poor Rowan – a man to whom time has happened.

Gets us all in the end – if we're lucky.

It did still surprise Jon when somebody close to him thought he was being foolish, but did not allow this to rouse their contempt: their shouting, threats, or – for that matter – the withdrawal of their sexual favours, should the somebody be his wife.

Ex-wife.

Somehow, she's always my wife, though – more now than before.

And they always were favours, the marital encounters involving sex: never gifts to exchange, agreements, negotiations to achieve a greater good – never the things I have guessed about in letters I have sent by agreement to strangers, never what I have tried to describe until it can become perfected.

In love, I could currently pass the theory paper with most colours flying.

‘It isn't the postcodes that matter per se, Jon – they are associated with reality.' Rowan had emerged with, yes, unpleasant biscuits. Ones neither of them would eat. ‘London doesn't like reality. We believe we can transcend its limitations.' He set the plate down at the pool's brink.

‘Reality is discourteous and should be avoided.'

Rowan nodded, deadpan. ‘The trouble with reality is, it never knows when to stop …' Then what was an old joke between them became too tender, injured. ‘It's intrusive.' Rowan's voice altering, softening, so they'd had to leave a little silence to settle each other and not become glum.

Rowan sipped his sage tea from its comfortable glass, as if he were in a more civilised age, and – being honest – Jon knew that Rowan consistently did still manage to create a more civilised age around himself. For six feet – give or take – in any direction from Rowan Carmichael, you were occupying space in something quite like the Renaissance.

But with Rowan it's all Dante and da Vinci. No Borgias, no wars, no assassinations and Niccolò's empty-souled prince only cited as a warning, not an inspiration. So not really the Renaissance in any comprehensive sense. You always had a downside with the Renaissance: Boccaccio wasn't Boccaccio with no plague. How else would he trap all of his characters outside Florence, force them to tell enough tales to fill a book? The
Decameron
wouldn't have worked if they'd simply learned their travel route was now impassable due to routine maintenance, withdrawal of maintenance, withdrawal of exorbitantly rented rolling stock, the intrusion of crack-addicted and incomprehensible youths, bent on destruction … It wouldn't have worked as a story if they'd just gone off and thrown yet another party to pass their time. Not enough threat there to press them for truths and details, nothing beyond the perils of a dodgy barbecue, fire pit, hand-crafted alfresco pizza oven.

Which are anachronistic elements to introduce – Rowan always very harsh about that kind of thing. Precision – he insists on it.

Which is unforgivably anachronistic of him.

And I feel sometimes – very often – we are besieged, myself and Rowan. We cosset ourselves, peer out at what's left of our golden hillside palazzo and watch the plague drift in, seed itself. Underneath the phoney scares and distractions there's plenty of threat – it's running with the big and clever London rats, all over the Junction. It just hasn't washed up quite as high as Bishopsgate. Not really – it's only on its way.

I've never been to Florence … never lifted my eye to the hills surrounding, the purply pink Tuscan hills … never picked out a villa, a palazzo, where the prosperous, the eloquent, the fragile might once have had themselves bolted away to exempt themselves from death.

Just another bloody conference venue, really.

Like Davos, but with intelligence and lyricism and no obligation to pretend one might wish to help others.

Jon had watched Rowan's smile as it began to seem troubled again and, this time, enquiring.

Bolter – they used to call me that. Easier to say than Sigurdsson.

Bolter in the sense of my being a boy who runs.

Like I run from the idea of human beings succumbing slowly under provocations to fail, the tick of waiting, of daily signing, of the fictitious letters that do not summon them for customer interviews and therefore produce their Failure to Attend. There are a thousand unnatural shocks one can use to produce Closure of Claim.

I also do not imagine Decision-Makers and Cluster Managers sitting in off-the-peg splendour and hitting their Individual Performance Targets.

This is all part of the righteous hudud we must not question, or contemplate, the claim of our particular godless god.

In the lower lands, beneath the hillside, being trapped is the rule and not the exception – you and your stories are held there.

And it doesn't matter.

This would all be terrible if it mattered. So it has to be what doesn't matter.

Rowan was a friend – could most likely and truly be named as a friend: first a jarringly young and clever tutor and then a friend – and friends noticed if you seemed off colour and were
indulging in fits of interior petulance and snapping instead of explanations.

My behaviour is unfair. I was always peaceful here. Rowan never shouted, never bullied.

So I should trust him, should have trusted him earlier and ought to at this point.

I should communicate.

But that isn't what one does, is it? If one intends to be correctly English, one must brood on one's list of catastrophes and be disgruntled. One must enjoy complaining, but only to those without power to assist, without the will. And, happily, no one does have the power, or the will to assist. Impotent rage: that's the state to aim for. One must practise self-harm through the forging and hoarding of fears and through the embrace of unfeasible injuries, hotly anticipated. Present wounds should fester and be ignored. This is expected of others as surely as one must expect it of oneself.

The thing was, Jon didn't want to communicate. He did just need to hide inside petty complaining – so he simply talked and talked, made noises about nothing: ‘I know – it's property values … Weren't we …? Were we? If we referred back to the postcode unreality … The virulent bubble of property values …' Jon had paused as his thinking swayed inside his skull. ‘That … on which our economy is poised … We need landowners to have power, because otherwise where would we be? We'd be in a land where landowners didn't have power, which would be disconcerting. So land must be worth something, everything, and the landowners must get richer and swell until they are Borgias … new Borgias … tiny and middle-ranking and towering Borgias … And we can rest sweetly in our beds, no matter what power we don't have, because our floors and kitchen cabinets and damp courses and gutters and so forth are appreciating in theoretical value, while depreciating in actual value through wear and tear, but nonetheless there is appreciation taking place at fantasy rates in a shinier fantasy world. Unless we bought a council house and it rotted around us, or our neighbourhood fell into hell. Then we're very screwed. And beyond that …'

Rowan sipped his tea and let Jon run, let him drag himself towards something like tears.

Jon had felt his body becoming breathless and starting a sweat. ‘And even if we're not screwed that way, our precious bricks and repointing are only all very well if we don't become homeless through some intervention from the catalogue of mischance, or don't intend ever to move again and won't then find ourselves forced to purchase somewhere else in London for a price which would buy us a small street in Liverpool. Because only London truly matters, it is where our Borgias live, where everyone's Borgias live. Other areas and cities misunderstand power and ownership and must be chastised accordingly until they do better. And …'And it no longer seemed important to finish the sentence.

I sound angry and ridiculous.

‘Have some more tea, Jon.' Rowan's voice amused, but not mocking. ‘We consider solutions, though, don't we? Isn't that the best …? We never allow our description of what might dismay or overwhelm us to dismay and overwhelm us in itself. We assess the available information and generate alternatives … And we are implacable.' A tired grin after this to acknowledge that he was quoting himself.