Serious Sweet (24 page)

Like at school – in exams, tests.

This is not a test.

Oh, yes it is, though. Yes, it is.

Everything's a fucking test – forever.

Then she'd closed her eyes.

She'd thought that there must be some family tradition, some sweep and dip of every pen, some length of arm and pace of blood that meant she could write a fucking letter, one letter, be
another woman of her family who sent words out in envelopes to please those she cared for.

Those she loved.

This one she loves.

We've got a tradition of paper and love.

Which I do, I do – I do believe. I did then and I do more now. And that can be forever.

It was almost midnight when she'd let some part of herself wade, or swim, or run out into a real attempt to tell him something – full effort – and had felt this rising thin coldness move across her, this strangely penetrating contact which seemed to shock. But it felt clean – wide and high and clean. She was in this new and wide and high and clean space where she would speak to Mr August and be true.

Then she'd opened her eyes.

Then she'd written down what she believed he ought to know – only that.

The kitchen had swayed in and out of focus as she thought – whole slabs and staggers of time simply falling away between one sentence and the next. The night had turned to morning when she'd done – and all she'd managed to produce was two sides of a single page, filled up with cramped and worried ink.

I got this prickle on my neck, as if he had already started reading, reading me – silly. Embarrassing.

She'd fought to keep her lines level across and across and across that cream-coloured oblong of paper, smooth as a new bed sheet and the shape of a window looking out, the shape of an invitation to look in. She was turning on all the lights that she could – she was trying to be honest. That meant he would really be able to see.

Which you can't help feeling on your skin.

And in the end you say things to each other.

I will meet you.

You say that and he says that and then it's out loud and in the open and so it might happen.

Which is the sort of thing that can make you disappointed.

I think maybe that it always does. Always is the same as forever.

I will meet you.

Serious sweet.

A man sits at the foot of a staircase inside Bond Street Tube Station. He is slightly an obstacle for commuters who want to make the turn for access to trains heading roughly west for Ealing Broadway and West Ruislip, or else the turn for those that head roughly east towards Leytonstone and so forth. This is a busy station at a busy time and the weather up above is hot, violently sunny. This is a Central Line stop – that particular route noted for its sticky air in summer, baking carriages, its general discomfort. Passengers look at each other as if they are both being an imposition and being imposed upon.

The man is not exactly begging, but he is also not a traveller. He is sitting with his legs crossed tidily, a soft bag at his side and a baseball cap upturned beside one knee. He is not asking for money, he is simply being the series of startling absences which is himself. Each of his arms ends just below what might have been a functional elbow at some other time. Thinned stubs of limb can be glimpsed through the loose sleeves of an oversized T-shirt. There is scar tissue, reddened skin, the signs of aftermath. The man's head is bald and covered, like his face, with grafted skin – it looks flushed and painful, it sits in sections and planes which do not meet in quite the usual way for a face. His ears are of the customary sort, as is his nose, but his eyelids aren't quite practical.

People pass him with expressions which suggest that he has injured them, or that he is a type of intolerable puzzle – this man who must at some point emerge into bright light with wounded skin and no eyelids, who must function without hands, who must be as hot and thirsty and discomfited as they are and yet also beyond them, peering in at them from some raw and unthinkable space.

A woman in her forties pauses against the flow of the crowd, bends and speaks to the man whose age it is impossible to guess. Age is one of the things burned away from him at another time and in another place, both impossible to imagine. She talks to him, but also reaches out her purse and
folds what is probably money into her hand. Their chatting seems separate from his hooking one arm under his bag's handle and lifting it and her placing what is probably money inside.

It is possible to hear him say, ‘I'm just not doing very well at the moment.'

JON WAS CARRYING
soup out to his daughter. She didn't want the soup, but also hadn't eaten all day, apparently, and so he'd heated it anyway, in her dismaying kitchen.

Which is not a galley-style kitchen, it is more a 1970s caravan-style kitchen. Galley is altogether too kind and jolly a word for it. Becky always intended to rip it out and upgrade – maybe now she will.

But I mustn't suggest domestic renovations as something she could do to take her mind off her current … Even though I'd swap a new work surface and a halfway decent sink for Terry Harper any day.

Jon had taken a cab to his daughter's place, pausing at the first decent supermarket he saw to let himself buy groceries. That would be necessary, he knew – the bringing of food from outside. Jon felt of no use to Rebecca when she was happy, but was glad that – because he understood being sad – he could be helpful in showing her how to accommodate sadness gently.

The first time you're hit in your heart, you stop wanting … Because you can't have what you do still need, because it's been taken away, your mind and your body together assume that the rest of the world will be inadequate as a replacement for your one dear thing. You no longer want to dress yourself, or wash, because you no longer intend to be out in that vastly disappointing and punishing world. You forget to buy milk. Or, indeed, cartons of ready-made soup that will keep you going when you're stuck in the worst of the impact.

I do remember how the process runs – she's at the start of it and that's horrible.

But one gets through it. One does survive.

In a manner of speaking.

His mind was filled with the idea that even if he managed not to say something impolitic, he was going to drop the soup tray. He was anticipating a fast-approaching future in which he failed to control the spoon, the bowl, the scalding liquid (organic chicken and vegetable) and the thin slice of proper wholemeal bread and the plate for the thin slice of proper wholemeal bread. In the mid-air ahead of him, Jon could almost see his care of her spilling up and then horribly down in a violent mess that caused damage.

But he padded cautiously and safely onwards, in stockinged feet because of her ludicrous wood floors –
easier to bruise than peaches, more vulnerable than intelligent and attractive young women's hopes
 – and then he stood by the sofa where Becky was resting. He'd persuaded her to take a bath and now she was dressing-gowned and snuggled and warm-pink-skinned and resting on her side with a cushion bunched under her head. Her hands were curled close to her mouth and seemed wounded, although they were perfect. She was a twenty-eight-year-old who'd recently dropped the twenty.

My girl. My wee girl.

The sight of her sang in him and felt like honey.

To be a proper dad, you do have to be useful.

And, of course and naturally, seeing her pain felt like having his sternum opened.

Opened so I can display where I keep my selfishness.

‘Darling, are you awake? I do think, if you could – not to be annoying – that you might try some of this. It's just soup and not much, although you can have more.'

She reached and patted his calf, then simply rested her hand there against his trouser leg. He didn't quite know what this meant.

‘I know. It's horrible. I do … Your freezer, by the way – I filled the freezer. Do you want me to call someone at work?' The hand curled round his shin and held on, as if he might manage to be an anchor in the current disturbance. ‘If you could maybe … prop
yourself up a bit and I'll sit next to you and we can … I'll get another spoon and we can share the bloody soup, if you'd …'

And a wail rose from her that could have raised one from him, too, but this wasn't his day for wailing. ‘It's OK … No, Becky. I promise. It is. It will be.' He disengaged his shin, while delivering a stream of, ‘It'sOKit'sOKit'sOK.'

‘It's not.'

‘Well, no …' Jon stepped out to set the tray down on the table behind him and then returned to kneel by her and to let her roll and cling to him, sob tight against him. And this was dreadful, but also – well, as he'd said – OK. You did this bit and then you dealt with the next bit and you continued to be alive. ‘Baby girl, really. It's all right. I'm here.'

Her clutch round his waist strengthened and he cupped the back of her head in one of his hands. Under his palm there would be the dark swim of bad ideas, the trouble in her head, the inheritance of sensitivity with which he'd undoubtedly cursed her. Becky's mother was more, as one might term it, emotionally robust. ‘I'm here.'

Hidden in his inside pocket, Jon's phone pulsed against his chest – a superfluous heart. He ignored it while his daughter's arms stiffened slightly. Then the sodding machine began ringing. ‘I needn't answer. I needn't.'

Becky sighed in a way that scalded him and then she purposefully slipped away from her father, recoiled on to the sofa again and curled with her back to him. She didn't speak, because she didn't have to. He had failed her.

Jon lied while he fumbled the bloody phone out and took it in hand. ‘Becky, I said I needn't. I don't even want to. It won't be …' The caller display told him it was Chalice. ‘I don't … I really …' Nevertheless he stood up, paced to the window, the dark swim of others' unguessed ideas perhaps making his mobile heavier than it should be. Then he did what he had to and let that dark come cruising in.

‘Hello, Chalice, yes … The meeting was fine, in the sense of his being intractable – but nobody sane would give Milner
anything, he's clearly out of control…. What do I mean? I mean he was deeply drunk and nasty at four p.m. I don't think that's normal … No, he didn't say much beyond pretending to be Ed Murrow staring out at the gallant Spitfires and urging on the better cause, or—'

Jon looked across at Becky. Becky who was fine, who was excellent, but who didn't know it. Chalice, meanwhile, pretended to be both the Kray twins at once and ear-burrowed for more than Jon could tell him, because there was no more to tell. The rendezvous had been almost entirely uninformative.
They all adore gossip – unreliable information.

That's all he wants. I'm safe.

He's not throwing me up against a pressman to see if I bounce in some way that reveals my true nature, my leaking hands. He's not.

Jon wanted Becky to sit up and look over to him and then he would be able to mouth
love you
at her and blow a kiss and make her know that he was hers entirely, truly, and that his work wasn't coming between them.

Chalice then did what might have been expected, what a paranoiac might have thought was the result of a malevolent God's special interest, or else a phone tap in combination with an evil mind. Chalice told Jon they should meet.

I can't though. I can't.

And, of course, the meeting was to be at seven thirty.

Which isn't possible. Not at all.

‘There's really no … I mean, calling it a debrief would be overstating how much I could pass on … No, really.'

His implication being, when he insists, that I can't sort out inconsquential details from matters of weight. Bastard.

‘Seven thirty isn't exactly convenient, Harry … eight … eight o'clock?'

Eight is worse … Why am I saying eight?

‘I …' Jon's ribs beginning to feel – he could imagine this forcefully – beginning to feel they were made of some heavy and grubby metal. ‘Eight o'clock, then. Yes … No trouble at all. No trouble … At your club … No, no trouble.'

Jon having to listen while Chalice's voice passed on those three tinny little syllables –
at my club.
For Christ's sake, whoever would still say such a thing?

‘Fine. At your club.'

Chalice ended the call and Jon was left holding on to nothing much.

He spoke to no one: ‘Fine. Yes, fine.'

At my club – the three most irritating words on earth. Just when we'd all moved beyond that kind of nonsense. At least I would like that to be true – clubs being dated, unnecessary and inappropriate in a time of conditionality and sanctions. But none of that stuff ever really leaves us, does it – we always have to function in a world where special perks for unspecial people get clawed back in again.

Upper, Middle, Lower, Under – no matter our class, we must all do our best to incur unnecessary expense. We must be fooled with glamour, or hints of advantage, or passable subsitutes for love – whatever are the most useful and readily available lies – as long as they cost us. We all of us buy something in the end – scratch cards, bespoke jackets, fake portfolios, fake insurance, fake repairs, fake warranties, fake affection, fake chances … the membership of this or that club.

We're all in the Mug Punter Club. The Honourable Society of Sad Apes.

He soft-footed over to his daughter again and knelt.

Chalice's club looks like a Stalinist fire station and is full of the worst military art I have ever encountered – and military art is an area rich in utter, utter crap.

He kissed the top of Becky's head. He spoke to her and only her and only ever her and was not in any way apologising to a woman currently elsewhere while he said, ‘You're beautiful. And you're wonderful. And you're smart and sweet and there is absolutely no one on earth who shouldn't understand that and respect it and if they don't then it means they're no use, they're all wrong, they're just … They should never dare to come anywhere near you. If I didn't make this clear then I should have – because I know men, I meet them all the time, they speak to me in the way men speak to men, I know their horrible fucking secrets….
It's more important even than you think to get a good one. You deserve a good one.'

This did nothing but crank her breathing back up from a soft regularity of grieving and into another struggle, more sobs.

‘You will find someone extraordinary and they will be with you, really with you, and that will be extraordinary, too. I promise. I promise. I promise.'

He closed one arm over her, kept kissing her hair.

She was fighting, you could feel right through her how she was fighting and how she was brave.

I can stay here. No need to rush. Here and then Chalice. My duty being done.

He'd left his phone at his side and saw –
Yes, why not? Because this is how today is running, like a contact sport with no rules I understand –
Jon saw that, while Chalice's call had progressed, an incoming text had made enquiries about a meeting at eight thirty, a meeting quite different to that involving Chalice. Chalice's fucking fucking fucking meeting now superseding his prior commitment – a commitment about which he cared, one might say, deeply – and making it impossible.

This was slightly unfortunate in the way that contracting ebola would be slightly unfortunate – contracting ebola and then not noticing until one had already hugged everybody one loved.

Jon replaced the phone in his jacket pocket, having considered and then rejected the possibility of throwing it through a window.

I'm not built for this, not for anything that's happening today.

I'm not built for …

He found one of Becky's hands and kept a hold of it while settling himself to sit on the floor, cross-legged, his back leaning against the side of the sofa, his head pressing somewhere around Becky's spine. He kissed her hand. It tasted of crying.

‘Oh, God. We're a pair. We are … Oh, God.' He didn't wail, because – as previously established – this was not his day for wailing.

It would not be possible for Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson to wail.
An older woman rides the 453 bus – the one which will eventually stop and rest itself at Marylebone. She is heading up west and over the river, perhaps: having some kind of Saturday outing.

Beside her on the double seat is a boy child of around seven. He is well behaved in the manner of children with parents of an age to be their grandparents. He has a certain formality. His jersey and coat are neat and he wears newish leather shoes which may be meant for school. His trousers – which may also be meant for school – have anticipated someone more substantial and they make him kick his legs mildly, swing his feet, while studying the generosity of blue material in which he's hidden. He tugs up the orderly crease that rests over his right thigh and then watches it drift back down. He tugs up the other crease and watches again.

After a while the woman holds his hands to still them and, once she lets go, they also drift back down.

The pair are on the top deck of the bus, right at the front. This is where adults let children sit so they can see and see and see. The boy does indeed mainly wonder out at the spin, slip and glide of buildings. From his expression, both the commonplace and the remarkable are equally satisfactory. His day is pleasing him.

At his side the woman maintains an intensity of interest in the child, almost as if he had appeared only this morning and might be taken back at any time.

Then the woman turns and leans her chin on the top of the boy's head, leans and rests and closes her eyes. There is a moment when her face seems to suggest something like an unbearable joy.

The boy looks at the city passing.

Jon had – Jon loved having – this memory of a slight woman darting – not quite pouncing, but it felt like that – darting forward as he'd left the parcels office where he rented his PO box.

He'd known who it was. He knew before she said. He pretended not to, played badly for time while feeling faint and feeling trapped and feeling …

I felt I'd have to leave myself – be elsewhere and my body caught stupidly standing in its socks and brogues and meanwhile I'd never come back.