Serious Sweet (32 page)

I'm sure we could have made a dead-letter drop there, somehow: got keys for access and then hidden slips of paper, little weatherproofed canisters and so forth.

It didn't matter, not at this stage, not when everything was so near to its end.

Thurloe was Cromwell's spymaster – appropriate to have his name salted round about.

In Thurloe Place, the pavement at his feet seeming to give every now and then, sinking. The rush of traffic as the road widened was both absurd and horrifying to him.

Thurloe was a survivor. Under Cromwell and then Charles, John Thurloe kept his head, because he had a necessary mind. There's hope in that.

Jon felt like running, but did not.

One ends up with a friend, that's the trouble with letters. One posts out slivers of oneself and gets these warm, these hot, these delicate pieces of someone else back and one is in their mind – they write and say they keep you, hold you in mind.

And if you sleep, you dream their body.

Fuck …

Jon reached a junction and peered to his left. Apparently he had to peer this evening, had to strain for the shapes of things with his perfectly serviceable eyes. Across the road was the Brompton Oratory: that high neoclassical mound of ornaments and pillars, that pretty heap of dirtied Portland stone.

Inside, it's a bit Vegas: lots of marble, like an upscale hotel bathroom with confessionals for light relief. I never quite took to the place. And traitorous letters died there while they waited for the KGB – the communist faithful nipping up the broad front steps to slip indoors beside the holy-water stoups, carrying codes past the mother of God in her seasonally adjusted robes, tucking secrets into the chapel for St Cecilia.

St Cecilia watching.

Oh, but that's a fucking lie. Of the worst kind – reliable information polluted by credible bullshit. If I had the strength I'd punch myself.

I have no idea who passed over what or where and St Cecilia is a statue and even if statues could see, hers doesn't watch. She's lying on her side with her head draped in a cloth – a very lovely model of a corpse. A victim of state torture in white marble, the cut to her throat not obvious … Slim waist and noble suffering. After an original by Stefano Maderno.

I know this because I've been in, now and then. I don't visit often. The churches of my former religion always smell the same – of bad silence. It loves silent women especially. It adored my mother – in her mute phases. It was less fond when she was raucous. One would have to point out that speechless women seem popular with many belief systems.

Cecilia's only silent because she's working, listening. She's tending – allegedly – to all music everywhere: Howlin' Wolf and Dr John and E flat and D7 and every blue note and every other note. But surely a murdered virgin would have to prefer the blues.

St Cecilia, wise virgin, pray for us – that much, I remember.

The power of prayer hasn't helped me, nor my mother, nor Dad.

I mainly have faith in wearing a good suit.

Really.

Wear a sharp suit, a whistle-clean suit, and it can hold a life together.

And it's possible – a suit can grant this small salvation – to be wearing one's suit in the way that Charlie Watts would, or the Kinks. One can stand out in front of the world – all silent – and no one will see that one has secrets, is a secret. They haven't the wit to tell that one's drape and one's drop and one's practical cuffs are laughing at the whole sad, bloody pack of them.

And every other secret follows on from that, the original one with the nice silk lining.

He cuddled his palm for a few paces.

But Meg knows how I'm laughing, she did notice.

Always the women.

Watching Dad trying to prove that love is suffering and suffering is love. And then I had a go myself.

As if someone tears out a hole in my thinking.

Always the women.

No.

Better to worry simply, to fret about needing a suit tonight.

Jon was loping now, fast enough to hearing the knocking of his pulse. Ahead he could see the white pimples of electric light, line upon line, that marked out the uprights and horizontals of Harrods.

The place actually looks worse than me, like what it is – a rattle bag of brassy tat. Shining out like a permanent Christmas, but locked up for the night. No more shopping. It is still sometimes possible for there to be no more shopping.

I met a woman once who, long ago, used to play hide and seek in Harrods when it was shut: sardines after lights out with the larksome offspring of the owners while Knightsbridge drew as close as it ever does to sleeping. Wild cries and hunting in the dark. Men getting bruised by complications they can't see. Everyone, I suppose, bruising.

Everything changes and nothing changes.

The law of the civil service, one might say.

Jon tried not to think of hunting. He had quit the Tube system one station early, a habit he'd been cultivating lately. Now – also a newish habit – he was threading himself along thin night streets, into mews and sideways options. It was as if he was trying to shake off a pursuit.

Not that I'd notice if anyone really was following.

The extra walking gives me space to think.

Fuck.

I do not progress.

But I know that I don't, I truly don't want to hurt her.

There is shouting on an overground train. A man's voice rises until it is audible to every passenger in the long car.

‘Do you know where you are? Do you know where you are?' There is a pause during which no one answers, but it becomes clear that the yelling man is standing over someone, some other man, whose head is bowed, though perhaps not penitent. ‘Do you know where you are? You're in South fucking London, where cunts like you get served. You treat a woman like that …? You fucking treat a woman like that …?' There is something lyrical, musical, about the way the standing man bellows. He is slightly enjoying himself, slightly enjoying this opportunity to make the world as it should be, sing it out right. ‘Next stop when I get off, New Cross, if you want to talk about it, we can have a word, you can get off and we'll have a word … You want that? You want that?'

The sitting man seems not to want that.

‘You frightened her. That could be your sister. That could be your mother. Look at – her sitting there.'

A woman is, indeed, sitting amongst the other passengers, also with her head bowed – she's across the aisle from the allegedly wicked and discourteous and certainly voiceless man. She is very still, while so much protection furies up in the air around her. It is difficult to tell how she feels.

‘If you did that to my sister, if you did that to my mother, I'd fucking kill you. You understand? You don't do that. You don't threaten a woman, you don't make her scared. Big man … You think you're a fucking big man?' That coiling upward South London note kicks out at the end of every sentence, question or not. ‘We can talk about that, about how big a man you are.'

The yelling has an oddly gracious air. The man has the virtuous bearing of someone deciding not to be violent, beyond making this roaring noise. He's stocky, quite short, dressed as if he may be coming back after lunch to a job of work, something dusty. With him is a younger man who nods
while the lecture progresses and seems perhaps to be some kind of apprentice.

When the shouting man pauses to draw breath, the probable apprentice nudges in with, ‘I've got a mum.' He is inexpert, but emphatic. ‘I've got a sister.'

The other passengers cannot help but overhear what has turned into a kind of lesson in something beyond the skills of a trade, or rather something which seeks to ensure that a proper man, when he's learned a proper trade, will also know how to treat women and that such behaviour will belong to South London, and yet be extended in fellowship elsewhere.

The man turns and leans to the woman and offers quickly, ‘Sorry for swearing.' Before he begins again. ‘Doing that to her …'

When the next station appears outside the windows, there is a type of fluttering change in the air. The proper man and his apprentice step down on to the platform, their point made. Another disembarking passenger shakes the proper man's hand. He becomes shy with her while they speak and the train pulls away again, unheeding, going further south.

I held her – third time's a charm – I held her and it all got simple.

Me and Meg and clarity, all hugged together in Monkey World.

Monkey bloody World. Bloody Dorset. Who'd have thought?

‘Dorset? That's a bit far, isn't it?'

Her voice had been still an unaccustomed thing, raging in through his phone and making him fragment his sentences, hear his voice getting higher when – ideally – he would have preferred it to sound low and firmly masculine. ‘It's not far.' Breathing and swallowing had become mutually exclusive. ‘I would drive us. If you didn't mind that, Meg?'

I got married – I must have taken part in the usual preliminaries: sharing meals, talking on phones, going to Dorset.

Jon drove himself past estate agents selling impossible apartments – pointed expressions of needlessness, the otherness of wealth.

If I'm being honest, I think Val dealt with all that. The intimacy. Not going to Dorset. But the rest. I can't – it's maybe some kind of shock – I genuinely can't recall even the marriage, never mind what went before.

‘Where in Dorset?'

‘Monkey World.' It had been best not to varnish the news.

‘Pardon?'

‘Monkey World. It's my favourite place. Don't laugh.'

‘I'm not laughing.'

But she had laughed, she did keep on laughing. ‘Honestly, I'm not laughing.'

Biddable electromagnetic waves had left her mobile phone, undulated over rooftops and through windows and walls and unknowing skulls – or however these things travelled – and had soaked and bounced and wriggled into him, brought the sound of her laughing, because he had in some way pleased her.

One may laugh because one finds some other person ridiculous and pathetic, but that gives the voice a quite specific tone with which I am familiar.

Meg had just sounded happy. ‘Is it actually a world of monkeys?'

‘There are many varieties of monkey and also some apes, yes.' His voice had sounded, by this time, even more hideously adolescent.

‘If you'd enjoy that, Jon.' The warm sound of her mouth.

‘Well, I … It's a good place. It's a refuge … type of thing … It's sort of probably a bigger version of where you work, which would be dull for you … And the aim is for you to … the enjoying thing.'

We did the enjoying thing, though. Truly we did – I'm not wrong about that. This, this … It lets you rest. The fabric of … Everything lets you rest.

‘We don't get monkeys. We get hamsters. Are there gorillas?'

‘No gorillas.'

‘That's a shame.'

‘I know. But it's basically a primate refugee camp, so it's good there are no refugee gorillas … Or … They tend to be killed and have their hands made into ashtrays. Rather than staying alive to get evacuated. Maybe … I don't have much gorilla information.'

And there's the enjoying thing. These horrifying fucking jokes she makes.

‘You're not just going to drive me to the countryside with your boot full of bin bags and a hacksaw.'

‘What? No. What? No, of course not … I …'

Picking her up at London Bridge in one of Findlater's cars – SUV sort of thing named after a spice, for Christ's sake.

There had somehow been no time for finding and hiring a car, so Findlater had loaned him the Paprika, or Habanero, or whatever.

I do get tired of useful and everyday things being given names that render them shameful. And Findlater grinning at me as if I am going to use every seat for nudities and sexual congress. Probably he'd filled the glove compartment with condoms and … wipes … I avoided ever looking.

He'd set off with his own terrible joke: ‘I hope I don't kill us.'

But it was OK.

And she'd nudged in at once with, ‘They banned me from driving. That's all. Speeding. Quite often. And once going over the top of a roundabout – mandatory ban.'

‘Christ. Or, I mean. Joke?'

‘No. Serious. But no harm done. Except to some daffodils. You should know this stuff … About me. In case I ever get my licence back. I'm a rubbish driver.'

Collecting information about Meg – I could do that for the rest of my life.

‘We'll go to Monkey World and it'll be nice and nothing bad will happen. Promise … And you're better now.'

And positive change can be irreversible. Yes, it can.

Maybe if I'd driven today, things would have gone more smoothly.

No. It would still have been awful, but with the additional bother of having to park.

He passed a café that seemed to specialise in crêpes and hummus, which seemed an unwise combination, but it suddenly occurred to him that he should eat.

I haven't really. This doesn't seem to be a day for eating.

In Monkey World's café – not too far from his favourite chimpanzees – Meg had sat and been remarkable despite having dressed a little as if she was going for a hike: almost-combat trousers, reinforced trainers and a fleece top.

Not obviously alluring – or not intentionally so.

Not an ensemble that Val would have chosen, or even known how to source.

Not anything other than beautiful.

Truthfully, it created an increase in beauty, because she seemed relaxed in those clothes, as opposed to that weird suit she'd insisted on hitherto … alcoholics being obviously – perhaps – uninterested in their appearance. Or unhappy because they can't buy what they'd really like, having money issues.

And trying to drive with prudence along the glitter of a wet M27 I had been picturing touring Meg about and delighting her with fittings and offerings parcelled up in tissue paper and popped in those unwieldy, stiff card bags with silk rope handles which might entertain her – or else suit carriers bearing the name of a tailor that could be her tailor.

All of which I didn't mention. And couldn't afford.

But I'd tell her about the suit, the secret in the lining. I'd open my coat and my jacket and let her see where her letters sit. Oh, Lord, I would. St Cecilia, I would.

She'd sat beside him at a bus-party-proof table. ‘You need building up. Have another sausage roll.'

‘I … Do I?'

‘Not looking after yourself.' Meg had delivered this with a satisfaction that was vaguely baffling.

I want to buy her shirt dresses, pleated skirts, low heels that let her walk, walk, I love her walk, blouses with a rounded collar, I want to discuss her best colours and signs of brio, sprezzatura, and I want to encourage pullovers I can hug – or those oversize jumpers that are like a wool hug in themselves.

She wants me to eat sausage rolls and look after myself.

He was beyond the hummus now – apparently it was impossible to be hungry.

By then I was exhausted by assessing too many risks – my lack of recent driving experience causing a head-on collision – the air bag coming to her defence. My adoration – fuck it – really adoration possibly lending me skills despite my legs being overfolded and my jeans – bad choice, too thick – cutting off the circulation to my legs, but still I'd manage every hazard and did manage every hazard and climbed down from the Poblano only slightly resembling a veteran of the Boer War
.

I'm a born pedestrian – the faster I go, the more I'm terrified.

The houses round about him were becoming noticeably reclusive, smoothly watchful. He slipped his hands into his coat pockets.

I was wearing this coat – covert coat, slate blue. Put it across the back seat on the journey so it wouldn't get crumpled – unlike the wearer.

I want to dress Meg when I can't even dress myself.

I want to buy her clothes and then see her remove them.

To see and see and see.

Sweet Jesus …

Doing what I always do while we crept out of London, bloody murdering her with facts.

‘You'll like this when we get there. I think. They do very good work, though, and the chimps … I mean, the chimps don't work – quite the reverse. They have all retired. Most of the chimpanzees have just had these hellish lives beforehand – forced to work,
perform – and you'll see them being better now … Well, being themselves and … they seem to …'

Sounding not unlike a man upon whom no one should rely, a man unequal to the rigours of motorway navigation and with uncontrollable weeping in his inevitable future.

But she fiddled with the radio and I didn't fuck up – I let her – and somewhere, at some point, at some wonderful point between London and Wareham the fucking Piri-Piri's speakers kicked out ‘Lola'.

That horrible, horrible car threw me the Kinks.

Ringing big chords to open and then that rolling, tumbling, running lick.

And then she was singing. Really. Beside me, leaning and beating out four-to-the-bar on the possibly libidinous glove compartment and letting it out – I only sing that way alone – singing along with Ray Davies – that cleversexy, playing-it-dumb, man-baby voice.

I'd kill to have that voice …

Those six, kiss-mouthed syllables in the refrain….

Dave, the other brother, singing it raw and John Dalton there and John Gosling – that was Gosling's first record with the Kinks …

I think that's right.

Glancing over to see her lips as they would be in an opened kiss, a kiss that could taste cherrysweet and American exotic.

And wanting her to be happy.

And glad I'm a man.

I held back from telling her everything she'd never want to know about Dobro resonator guitars, as used in …

She knew the words. This girl in the silly car that is not one's own – she knows all the words and she likes them.

Bloody lovely.

And I took her to my favourite place. A little world full of outrage on behalf of the weak. To hell with the humans and rescue the innocent: there's a sense of that being the ethos when you visit and I see their point.

Wise old chimp sitting high on the level top of a telegraph pole, folded in round himself like a neat thought, like a netsuke, and I could feel him watching me, and hope he'd be wishing me well – ‘Never seen you here with a friend. Go careful. Not too much about the psychiatric problems of marmosets people have locked up in birdcages and maybe just mention with charity the ugliness of the macaques and how the lemurs would be sunning their long bellies if only it wasn't drizzling and apologies for that and for the – now and then – stench of excrement and best of luck with her, my cousin, my clumsy, weak, small-handed cousin.'