Serious Sweet (37 page)

A family sits in a café: mother, father, child – an infant child. They are happy.

This is a weekday afternoon and the place is quiet. Outside there is drizzle and greyness, viewed through a window which is stacked and lined and mounded with perfectly manicured cakes. The display is impressive, even when viewed from behind, and it seems to keep the weather, the grey day, at a bearable distance. And the premises are bright and warm, the staff independent and talkative. Being here feels unusually pleasant. It feels like a treat. The decor, the ambience, the glistening cakes: they are all designed to make any customer feel they are in some generous person's home – the front room of a jolly and energetic baker – and that now they are getting a treat.

At the end of their stay, they will pay for the treat, but they won't mind.

The mother is breastfeeding the child, which seems very tiny. The father watches while the small body rests against his wife, completely surrendered to peacefulness. The mother sometimes drinks her tea and sometimes chats to her husband in a low, sleepy voice. Both parents seem sleepy, not so much in the sense of being tired, but in the sense of dreaming. They appear to be alive inside a large and agreeable dream.

After forty minutes, perhaps a touch longer, the baby – still slightly lost in her new clothes – has finished feeding and the father lays her on the table and begins wrapping her up for the outside air, then fitting her into the harness he will wear to carry her.

Now that the mother is no longer preoccupied, the woman next to her discusses babies and the children she already has. This is the mother's first time – she tells the woman that she worries, that she finds everything so strange. She does not look worried – she looks illuminated. The woman tells her, ‘You'll do fine.'

The father is now standing and has the baby strapped in neatly, tight to his chest. He smiles. The other occupants of
the room turn to him, perhaps because he is so noticeably content. They smile, too.

And he walks to each of them and shows them the baby, his daughter, and some of them smile at her and some stroke her hair or her cheek and she watches them with clever eyes, hungry for everything. And the father says, ‘This is Nina.'

People tell her, ‘Hello, Nina.' And she listens to her name and, somehow, this inspiration of her father's has become a little ceremony.

His daughter is being introduced to the world.

And the world likes her. And she likes it back.

Even when she has left with her parents, the room continues to be filled with this.

‘
SWEETHEART, I'M REALLY
sorry.' Jon was apologising into his phone – or trying to – sitting in his second gridlocked cab of the day. Outside he could see the night's tally of supercars barging themselves along beside him, heading the other way. Their absurd engines were shouting, overperforming for any high street – even Kensington's. It all aimed to make one look. So Jon didn't look.

Why would you want to own a car with a predator's face, a silhouette that speaks of sharks and bullets and a lack of imagination? And they have to be too low-slung for comfort. Why would you want to be lying down when you drive?

‘Darling, I wanted to call and … This is so that you can know I'm sorry.'

Tinted glass, ungenerous windows – they're a kind of wilful blindness – the usual menu of sharp-muzzled toys: Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Porsche, Audi, Ferrari, I don't care, I wouldn't know …

I do know I'm in favour of comfort.

I truly am.

He was leaving a message, calling out to a phone which was possibly turned off and possibly broken and possibly lost and possibly owned by someone who would not currently make him welcome.

I am not a bad man.

‘I just … I know it's late and … I hope you're OK. I hope you're resting. I didn't mean to …'

I never mean anything – trained not to and now I can't help it. Or something like that.

‘Becky, look, I'm sorry I had to run and I did want very much to ring before you went to sleep, but I've missed you … obviously … I am glad if you are asleep. That's good. Do rest. And I am thinking of you and wishing you well and I will call you in the morning, not too early and maybe we'll … It's a Saturday, that's a day off.' He felt this swing of pressure, this lighting of pain in his face. ‘And you're right, I do need to … retire. That's the thing. Retiring. Leaving. But I …' His words coming out childish, foolish, selfish …

All the things that I am.

‘Night night, darling, or good morning, or hello. I love you. I do. I do.' This last was a dash at sounding functional, being useful. It left him clammy and the sound of it seemed to pull out through the height of him, as if he was being unthreaded, unstitched in some terrible way.

I am not a bad man, but I can do bad things. A good man may quite easily do bad things.

And a bewilderment slapped at him, as if he were eight again and back in Society Street and trying to understand why his Christmas wasn't being a Christmas and why his father was out in the garden, sitting on a lawn that was silver with frost in the light from the living-room window and why Dad was staring out at some kind of unseeable something and why his mother was in the kitchen and cooking pancakes and using up all of the flour and all of the milk and why this was happening in the absolute dark of the night. It turned the dark into a new place he had never heard of, a box you were dragged up into where time stopped and stared and hated you and made you little.

I love her.

And Jon was, of course, by now crying and people spoke of tears as a relief, but they were mistaken.

Being accurate – because I am accurate – I would state that if I tell someone I love that I can't do, or be, or want, or offer anything with regard to them … To their love … Not anything, not love, not anything … If I do that on a day when I particularly should be there for them … And I do that, not in person, or by speaking to her, but by throwing out this scrap, an underhanded bloody text, this piece of electrical cowardice … If I have told her something and been electrical and unkind and without warning … Then after that she will be permanently disappointed in me. She won't want to contest my decision, or get back in touch. And I would agree with her – she ought to have no more to do with me, because …

Around Jon, his current box of night was apparently being shaken. Whenever he glanced out through the cab window, the glitter of headlamps phantomed and jarred. It wasn't just that his eyes were wet – there was something not right about Kensington High Street, there was something fundamentally unnatural happening underneath the fabric of things.

She has sweet hands, hands that are … And the way she … When she's stood against me and her head has been rested at my chest and my arms go round her, right round with room to spare, round this little person, I can hold her all up tight and it makes her happy. It makes her happier.

And I wake in my bed the following morning and I don't exactly want her, but I am aware of … I do need, would prefer if she were there and also I can't breathe.

I want her, but I cannot breathe.

I want her.

I want her, but the thing is that I do also, I really do need peace.

And what if they find me, catch me, fire me, throw me to the journos, charge me and bang me up in some horrible suicide factory of a jail – out of those, which would be the best option?

There is no good option.

What if somebody finds me somewhere, no longer breathing and naked and folded up tight in an airline holdall and suddenly somebody else is making statements to the police and is some kind of expert about how I always did like to take these horrible, self-harming, sexual risks.

And what if she drinks? I believe that she hasn't drunk and isn't drinking, but I might be wrong and she might be dangerous and crazy and she might be dry now but she might start drinking at any time and I bloody well can't deal with that.

And what if she's the sweetest human being I've ever met and not anything that I deserve?

And what if the men in the authoritative suits might go out and get her – the blokes with the little earpieces who talk into their sleeves, the ones with those Special Branch faces that tell you they understand how the world's really worked and perhaps they are right and there's no shelter or sympathy anywhere and why would I let her be at risk of that?

And what if I hurt her, which I already have? What if I hurt her, which I wouldn't forgive in anyone and I don't forgive in me? What if I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near her?

His head ground itself into a sicker and sicker ache.

I am a good man, but I do bad things.

And I didn't tell her goodbye and that I'm sorry because I want her to be safe – it was just because I can't … I can't … I'm a man who can't … I never really could … Valerie – yes, she was dreadful, but I picked her precisely because she'd be dreadful. I chose someone who would manage to be with me, but also not – someone who would therefore not terribly mind the way I am.

And it was proper for him to cry now and to continue crying. He could weep all the way along Coldharbour Lane until he reached the Junction, paid off the cab and then unlocked his door on the sanction he had imposed – to be there and not there and this failed little man and to know it.

I am Jon Sigurdsson.

I love Rebecca Sigurdsson.

I love Margaret Williams of Telegraph Hill.

I love Meg Williams.

I love Meg.

These are the best things I do, but I can't do them.

Beyond him, London was gleaming and offering its ways to pass the time and Jon faced the city and felt it shudder – was sure that he felt it shudder – as if it might break.

THE WAITRESS SET
down a full glass, a tall glass, a cold glass, and where the air touched it there was misting at first and then beading and then the downward roll of fat, condensed water drops. Meg looked at it and decided that it was kind because it wept like a living thing.

She sat by herself which was the old habit, and here was this drink and here was Meg with it, here because she was thirsty.

Much further away than Meg's drink, other human beings were perhaps talking and food was being ordered and there was laughter which was not intended to prickle on Meg's skin and mark her out as ugly and angry and sad and ridiculous. Much further away than Meg's drink, there were possibly other waitresses and also waiters who carried dishes and glasses and baskets of bread and it was maybe they who were smiling too much and who were raising up that kind of Lebanese/Mediterranean atmosphere that was meant to feel like being family and being welcomed and which resulted in this – distant, very distant – sensation of being orphaned and a gatecrasher, a freak. And much further away than Meg's drink there was probably conversation of the kind that arises between people who are friends and people who are lovers and people who are going to be lovers – there were voices sounding these unmistakable notes of familiar and opening and rising affection. And much further away than Meg's drink it
seemed there was this continuation of life. That was very likely. Somewhere shallow and inexplicable and just beyond Meg's reach there was everything else which was not this drink.

Between her and the glass, though, there was nothing but a peaceful understanding and privacy. She imagined that she was so still by now that she must have become almost invisible. In the late bustle of meals and arrivals and calls for the bill and glowing goodbyes – the palaver of other people – she was practising transparency. She imagined that if she lifted her head and studied herself in the mirror – there were many mirrors available, these sheets of lights and echoes – if she was careful about how she looked then she'd find the real truth which would be that she had succeeded in disappearing.

I used to love anticipating. It almost made what would come next unnecessary.

You open your mouth to it and first it's nothing and then it burns and by the time you swallow it's ready to heat you and colour you all the way through and makes you the opposite of nothing and that hit – that big hello hit – just swings you back on your feet and you make sense and the world goes simple and easy and you can get through it because you feel the way – you feel exactly the right way to go and to do anything and you grin that special grin which is about having a secret that nobody else could ever understand and if they have to ask, then fuck 'em.

This glass. Here is this glass. It is upright and smooth and watchful and here with her.

And then you open your mouth to more and that idea you had which was very good and was going to solve every problem, that slips past you again and you can't catch it and you open your mouth and there is more of the burn and it makes your skin uneasy and the only way to soothe yourself is to move and stand and be in the room and be bigger and you open your mouth and – between swallows – there's so much you want to say and it's important and fascinating and you are important and fascinating and you have to rush because you also have to open your mouth and get more in – more of your friend – more of the friend who is making you more friends, because now other people are noticing you and they are paying you attention because you matter and you're funny and you're clever and you catch the eye and you open your mouth and the world is sliding – you notice this – the planet is sliding instead of revolving, but you can cope and the speed goes wrong on actions and motions, but you can cope with these things, too – you are so good at coping, it's something to admire – and you open your mouth and having sex would be good now and fitting and you won't be scared about it this time – except then the fear leaps up at you because you've mentioned it inside yourself and so that makes the nasty in you wake – and you open your mouth and you do want to hold somebody, though, even if it's frightening, and you open your mouth and you're the centre of where you are, other people can't help giving you maximum space and turning heads to you and watching and you do want to hold somebody and be safe and warm with them and cosy but you open your mouth because that makes you cosy, too, when there is no one who is there for you – which isn't sad, because you will cope with this as well and you need no one – and you open your mouth and the faces you are facing with your face are unfriendly because human beings are bastards and that always comes out in the end, except that you are a bastard and the faces are being sorry for you and being angry and being disgusted and being not right, being like animals, or bad ghosts, and you open your mouth and you haven't remembered until this why you don't drink in public any more – you have forgotten again that the reason is because this happens, these things happen, these breaking-glass and falling and shouting things happen and this being an animal, or a bad ghost, keeps happening and you can't stop.

Meg looked at the glass and the glass looked back.

I can't stop.

The everything slides and I can't stop.

It was a tall drink in front of her: cool, no ice, but still cool and still the dapper little drops of moisture were sleeking down with quiet purpose, just as they should.

I asked for it specially.

And fuck him.

Fuck him.

Although I won't.

And I never would have.

This glass, this drink, which was closer than any person to her.

I would have made love.

I would have tried to do what I never have.

This glass contained a liquid of a complicated colour which was made up of blended pineapple and melon, banana, mango, beetroot, and when she drank it down in one, down in one, this thick and sweet drink, it tasted like not dying and like being very so tired.

And everyone in here is lucky and they don't know it. They have no idea how I might have spoiled their evening, who I might have been.

Meg feeling that she could grin because of this good secret.
They haven't got a clue and I won't give one and I won't be anyone's accident tonight – not even my own.

And if I don't save me, then no one else can.

And I didn't expect Jon to try, but also – fuck him – I didn't expect him to make things worse.

Her mouth was sweet just now and she was still thirsty – only simply and innocently thirsty – but the drinks here were expensive and it was late and really she should go.

And I didn't expect him to hurt and be a coward and unimpressive and not himself.

Fuck him.

Fuck him so very much.

And I wouldn't drink for him if he paid me, I wouldn't drink for anyone, I wouldn't fucking drink if somebody came in here with a gun and set it right to my head – I don't fucking do that any more. I am sober. He can't fucking touch that. I am sober.

Meg allowed herself to glance across at the mirror and see what looked like herself – this smallish, dullish person in bad clothes that would disappoint a sensitive observer – and she had anticipated that she'd have this triumphant expression and some kind of a brave grin, so now she was disappointed, as a sensitive observer would be.

I look like a kid who's lost and out too late.

There was no grin, no smile.

She looked sad, in fact.

She was crying, in fact. She did have to admit that.

And her crying made one of the waitresses come over – friendly gesture – and offer another juice on the house, because perhaps there was nothing to be done, but someone of decency could give you a little something that might cheer you – you were a guest – or maybe a few sweets could help you, honeysweet kindness.

Don't take sweets from strangers.

A coffee?

And Meg was shaking her head and leaving unsteadily and being a spectacle, sniggered at, just exactly as she'd hoped she wouldn't be.