Serious Sweet (16 page)

Sentiment and support. Not sex. None of the vileness of sex. Hardly any mentions of sex, nothing overt: just these mentions of holding and kissing and skin and looking. If anyone asked for graphic scenarios, conjunctions, then I'd be gone. I wasn't angry, only gone. I was giving tenderness, adult tenderness.

I did get irritated once by this one woman – an intelligent woman, but she was always demanding smut, and so I tried … And it got such an immediate response, the dirt. I was encouraged to be abusive – slapping and urination, ugliness you'd pray your daughter would never want. I discontinued our correspondence, refunded the fee.

My aim was the generation and perpetuation of gentleness.

I wanted to write about holding hands.

While intending to never, ever do any such thing.

‘It obviously …'

And Jon slowly, it seemed inevitably, had slid from his seat in Rowan's garden, Filya's garden, and had kneeled on the terracotta paving, pressed his forehead against the tiles around the pool – their placid surface, the idea of the blue and white and crimson soaking through into his mind and improving its pitiable condition.

‘It's not that …' Jon had stretched his arm slightly behind him to keep a grip round Rowan's knuckles and hold on. He'd kept his face hidden and been subject to irregular breaths.

A person of any quality could stop himself from polluting an emptied garden with his own self-centred grief.

Over the wall was a construction site, stilled by the evening. For most of the previous year it had oppressed the little sanctuary with successive dins and dust storms that rendered everything distant and tainted, laid a filmy scum on the water.

The heart is a pool which must be cleansed.

The new building planted next door was tall and cast an unfortunate shadow. There was nothing to be done.

Filya died while the disturbance, the intrusion, was at its worst.

Jon kneeling and eventually sobbing next to Rowan, as if he were begging for something, but he couldn't say what, as if he were on his knees for a confession. He hadn't been able say anything.

I want her last time in the garden to have been nice, pretty, lovely, and it wasn't.

Jon had clung to Rowan's fist and, finally, had managed, ‘I have to keep on, but I can't, but I have to … I thought I had to, but I do no good. It does no good. I stayed in, because I think, I thought I have to … I can't …'

And Jon had felt the heave of his ribs, his muscles, beneath this dreadful burden, this minor tearing in his heart, and had understood he was walking out into wilderness.

It had been quite bad.

‘This girl, woman, person … I didn't mean her … and now she is and … There's all of this other … It's all happening at once, all together, and I'm too small for it … I'm …' Weeping – there had been a bit of weeping and a reversion to what he had left of his earliest accent. As his words fought to emerge – hot and breaking – he'd sounded to himself like the child who'd left Nairn: a boy filled up with a cleverness and finding no comfort in it.

It had been his cleverness that made him unsuitable for Society Street. It made him have to leave. It spoiled his character with fraudulent self-belief, long before he'd put on the posh blazer, learned the appropriate slang.

Being clever was supposed to help. It's still supposed to help.

An odd storm in a garden – that's what he'd been.

Being in and of the world is supposed to be unavoidable and that means you find out about it and you plant it with sweet things and hopes and … confessions …

An ugly fit of spinning shook his head and then subsided.

He coughed. He sniffed.

He did feel a bit better now, here in this big garden, everybody's garden – here in St James's Park. He was better – in some ways, recovered. Apart from the recurrent throwing up.

And he had explained his position – some of it – to Rowan and it hadn't seemed – some of it – insoluble. With Rowan there and listening it had appeared to be a story one could tell.

Although it would be interpreted as a cautionary tale. I am not walking into wilderness, I am running.

No.

It's not that.

The park reasserted itself: tourists, gusty sunshine, his own longer-than-useful limbs.

I can sit on the grass and there is blossom and a luminous green in the April leaves which is compelling, such a mercy, so kind and – even so – I am running into wilderness.

Here it is. It's always here, the wilderness. Maybe the people who like and want to make more of it, maybe they're right.

Here it is. The very place to make an old boy run.

Here it is.

He turned his phone back on.

A man is kneeling in a quiet afternoon shopping arcade. Sun shines. The man is a busker, has his sweatbanded and slightly exotic hat upturned before him to catch donations, has weather-proof clothes and a demeanour intended to be engaging. He is in his twenties, perhaps something older. He is playing a saxophone, holding it high to be sure that it clears the ground. His posture seems slightly strained, but his face is happy and intent.

He is offering a rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' with absolute clarity. He is at the feet of a small boy who is caught, it would seem perpetually, between wonder at the instrument's large sound and his urge to press his fingers against the glimmer of its bell, to peer into the breathy depth of that.

A couple, plump and comfortable together, stand just behind the child. He is most likely their son. They are enjoying his enjoyment. They are also a touch embarrassed by their situation. It is unclear whether they or the child have requested the tune. Probably the kneeling in supplication has been added as a flourish by the musician. The child appears imperious about his treat, taking these signs of obeisance as his natural right.

Pedestrians pass the scene without pausing. Heads do not turn as a child is attended to specially and pleased. This happens to children quite often. If he were an adult, the interactions taking place would be more difficult and complex. He is perhaps being ignored by others older than himself, because they are jealous of him, or else as an effort on their part to avoid nostalgia.

MEG WAS HAVING
a late lunch, or early tea. She wasn't meeting anyone.

I am by myself. Apart from some dogs. And apart from some people.

But not one of them is anything at all to do with me.

She had caught the bus that took her home and then ended up allowing herself to loiter and be a bit cold outside the community café round the corner from her house. She was sipping a coffee, because she didn't feel especially like eating. She also didn't feel like spending the fag end of the day haunting her flat.

Bastard.

What I feel like doing, obviously, is making a slightly unhappy situation worse. Why not threaten myself with chucking it all in, giving up?

I am already miserable, so why not be really despairing.

Fretting over what I even mean by ‘it all' will set me up wonderfully well for when we do meet.

Because it is still our plan to meet – only we're going to do it all later. Not now.

Whatever ‘it all' means.

Everything is going to happen later and not now – the usual.

I will meet you, but sorry not right now …

The usual.

But I can trust the idea of it.

I have to.

I have decided to.

You have to trust something, here and there, and I have decided to trust that our plan really is a plan.

Friday afternoons were unpleasant enough. And here she was, having a coffee she could have made in her own kitchen for no charge.

No – be fair – I couldn't have made a cappuccino. I lack that particular skill.

Among others.

You know, this would, this truly would be a lot easier if I weren't such a whiny cow.

I should just have stayed in at work – said there'd been a change of plans.

But you can't, you can't say you're going out and duly inform the management and tell bloody, fucking Laura that on Friday the 10th you'll be off early and have her give you that ‘Oh, do you have a life, then?' stare and then – when it comes to the day – you can't, you cannot, you can fucking not say out loud, ‘No, I've had another change of plans. Last week it was going to be lunch today and then a few days passed and the time we'd arranged looked unlikely – although the day was still fine – and so we fixed on three o'clock – three o'clock today – and three o'clock is an odd kind of time for a meeting, but it might suit an odd kind of person, and we are both odd kinds of people … Only now it won't be three, either …'

Six thirty. We'll try again then.

Bastard.

I don't like today.

I don't like anything much about today. It started low and has gone downhill.

I would like another twenty-four hours now, please. I have put in repeated requests and I'd like someone to deal with my problem and make it right.

More caffeine won't help.

Maybe I don't want it to help – maybe I want to feel all manic inside, or spruced up, or …

I get to try again at six thirty.

I will meet you.

But it never works out.

She prodded her spoon about in the froth of her mug while choosing not to think that a tea would have been cheaper and less chemically abusive.

I would rather not suspect that I get cancelled because I'm a terrible person, rather than an odd one.

But I do suspect it.

I fucking know it.

I feel like a terrible person – and that must show, that must be something clear and to be avoided.

I'm currently a terrible person having community cappuccino with some strangers. And some dogs. I can't bloody get away from dogs.

The café had been summoned up inside a remarkably hideous building by an act of concerted will. There had been calls for volunteers and mucking in had happened and now the community had a resource. It offered activities Meg never went to and get-togethers she steadfastly resisted and also sold crafts and produce and hippyish cooking. The place sat between the Hill's two little parks and was, therefore, lousy with dogs during the daylight hours.

She was surrounded by muzzles and pads and sensible, fully inhabited animal bodies. Each sodding dog had those levels of impossibly relaxed aliveness that could be soothing or could be truly bloody irritating if you were an animal too, but couldn't reach that state of ease – couldn't manage what any mongrel, any overbred, pedigree freak could do without thinking.

Bastard.

No.

No one is a bastard.

And at six thirty I will be in a place which is happy and good.

I will trust that – it's good exercise.

The assembled dogs were being loose and jolly round the outside tables, in amongst the lolling bicycles and parked prams. And there were also humans. The ones who wanted to be cosy sat indoors; outside with Meg were the smokers and the hardy types and those who maybe wanted to watch birds – why not? There were birds
and, now and then, someone would look at them. Meg didn't know and couldn't care if they were doing so with an expert eye. Why she was outside and not in was a mystery to her – she didn't smoke.

That and gambling – the vices I never quite got.

To her left, a russet-coloured mongrel with a bit of ridgeback about it was flopped down with its greying head on its folded forepaws. Behind her there was a sable and cream Tibetan terrier in need of trimming – she couldn't see what it was doing but could hear its claws pittering and fussing and the occasional murmur as it rummaged under tables, snuffed unwary ankles.

That's a dog being poorly cared for. That's a bad thing on the verge of happening.

Meg briefly enjoyed being judgemental.

Everyone here has children and partners and lives and disposable incomes with which to buy cappuccinos and artisan-made items and jars of urban honey and local ice cream.

Fuck 'em.

This was both untrue and unfair, which was why it felt so pleasant.

Fuck 'em.

Although Meg would stop soon.

I am truly sorry and I truly will stop and get a grip – in a minute.

Meg had spent years being with Meg and knew her to be a foul-tempered bitch who could put a curse on anything she thought of.

Fuck me.

But she was trying to do better.

Fuck me.

She was trying to assume that meetings with her were not cancelled because she had done something wrong. Or else because she was something wrong.

They have leftie concerts in the café … I tend to the left. Which ought to be funny. Singing songs of revolution – as if that does anything, achieves anything. Songs I used to sing – still complaining about last century's battles and hardly any space for those ongoing, picking the Spanish Civil War songs because they've got the halfway lively tunes …
‘En los frentes de Jarama,
rumba la rumba la rumba la, no tenemos ni aviones, ni tanques ni cañones.'
They always sound dead happy that they've got no planes, or tanks, or artillery. And I'm meant to be dead happy that they could be dead happy in the XVth fucking Brigade more than a generous lifetime ago. They fucking lost, though, didn't they? They hadn't got any planes or tanks or artillery – what were they going to do? Sing the Civil Guard into submission?

Standing there with the raised clenched fist – well, you've got to, haven't you? – while we all sing ‘The Internationale'. I've done that.

Why is liberty never in the English language, what does that indicate?

A breeze crossed the road from the lower park and lifted a little of the dust that prisoners of want were intended to spurn in order to win their prize.

What happens to the dust is that it gets in your coffee. I'm spurning it like fuck – it's still here and doesn't care.

She fussed at the cooling, dun-coloured liquid again as if she was worried the spoon would melt. Then she didn't drink.

I don't drink – that's me. I am a person who doesn't drink. My principal activity is an absence.

Meg turned and faced the park: the tenderly restless trees, branches becoming new, blossom in fat cascades and swags, the world showing itself generous, fluttering, sweet.

Which should be enough.

I am a person who is sober.

I am a positive quantity.

When my head gets this unbalanced I should call someone and tell them and then tip myself over entirely, pour the rubbish out, empty it out, pour myself out, make me empty.

But I'm not going to make a call, am I?

Because I like risk.

Because I am right to hate myself – I am a stupid, stupid cow and I do me wrong.

I also lie. A great deal. Mainly to myself. But I keep on listening.

Stupid cow.

A meeting gets cancelled – you don't get cancelled, it's the meeting – and you go into a tailspin when it isn't your fault and it's only a postponement, anyway, not a cancellation.

We can have an early dinner, maybe. I would enjoy an early dinner.

Because I've had no lunch. Running on empty again.

But I'm not empty.

I will meet you.

That's not empty.

But I've had too much coffee – I'm all wound up. Even if the breeze hadn't sprinkled it with gutter dust and toxins, I shouldn't have more of this coffee, or any other coffee, or anything like coffee. I should be drinking some kind of wort.

Christ, I'm ridiculous. Shouldn't be allowed out. Shouldn't be allowed in or out.

And for a moment she smiled, for a moment the blossoms looked perfect: the bounce of them, the contours of infant colour and generous scent.

Times like this – it's like falling down your own personal well, but you can also reach back in there and pull yourself out by the ears. It takes an effort, but you can. Better with help, but I am embarrassed about getting help for this. This is minor. I'm tired and I had a rough morning, that's all. I can deal with it.

And I really shouldn't think about politics and who should, frankly? Who should willingly waste their time on that? Politics is just an organised and expensive way of being furious.

Meg set her mug on the table and walked down from the decking at the front of the café.

Then she stalled, returned, picked up the mug and took it inside to leave it more handy for clearing up. She nodded to the guy at the till and generally behaved as if she loved the place and all its works and anticipated an imminent revolution which would involve the comfortably old-school middle classes being able to have more time for reading and a wider choice of theatre groups and box sets of continental TV dramas.

And then she left again. ‘Thank you.' Slipped herself away.