Serious Sweet (28 page)

Jon was in his daughter's bathroom, ‘I absolutely am …' He was – again – letting his mouth start a sentence that he knew it couldn't end. He was also mumbling, because he knew that his daughter was standing outside, beyond the door he'd locked for privacy and safety and so that he could be insane without anyone watching.

‘Dad? You're on the phone in there?' Accusing.

‘It's nobody.' Holding his mobile phone like a warm sin.

‘Dad?' This was his daughter's voice – dear voice – another dear voice – while he listened elsewhere and couldn't say what he had to, because he felt too ill to try.

And because I have no balls.

I can't do this. Not any of it.

‘I love you.' This was his own voice – muffled blur of a voice –

and then he cut the call before there could be a reply.

I can't.

Then this noise, a hacking sort of sob, lurched up from his chest and out and then once more and then he was bleating, yowling.

Inexcusable.

‘Dad?'

‘'M OK. Honest.'

‘Dad?'

Jon stepped to the sink and turned both taps full on, let their sound slightly mask his own as his arms cramped and he leaned over and further over and wished he could be sick rather than simply hollow.

Christ.

He cupped the water, let it be harsh against his palms, lifted it to his face and doused himself. In the process, he drenched his shirt, while his foot kicked at his phone, which had fallen and was somewhere on the carpet and no use to him.

Christ.

He didn't use the mirror before he came out of the bathroom, but he guessed that he was not at his best as he blinked down at Becky and hugged her in, because that was the comforting thing
for a father to do and because it would prevent her from studying him like the wet, mad animal he understood himself to be.

Christ.

‘Daddy's here. Dad's here.' Her arms being wiry and tight around him in a way that was a great relief and also a burden. ‘Dad's—'

‘What's the matter?' Her voice was a reproach against his chest, hot. ‘What's wrong?' He'd made her worried, which was not his intention.

‘I, ah … Bad day. Bad week. It's a funny time. And … I can't.' She was patting at the small of his back and that was nice, a kind gesture. His breath heaved a few times at the idea of it, but he kept steady thereafter. ‘Becky, I'm—'

‘Has Mum done something?' He loved that she sounded protective.

‘What? No. No. She's on holiday, remember? No. That's completely …' He gently disentangled himself and offered her an expression he hoped would pass, while he stared off to one side at a reproduction of a poster for the movie
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
which was on Becky's wall – Helen Mirren in complicated underwear and some fruit.

That would have been Terry the wanker's choice – trying to be shocking. I pity the poor bloody actors in a piece of crap like that … Suffering all round. The indignities required of any trade. Who needs it? I don't need it. Dear God, I don't need it.

And I don't want it to have to be my fault.

‘I shouldn't be bringing this here, not to my girl.' Jon kissed the top of her head –
hair smells as it always did, of love and home and peacefulness –
and he felt like a swine for planning, while he kissed, how he would get back into the bathroom and retrieve his phone. ‘My girl is wonderful.' He'd forgotten it.

I'm really not in a position where I can afford to forget anything.

‘You don't look OK, Dad. You look thin.'

‘I am thin. I'm always thin. That's me – thin.' He felt something like a smile afflict him and then slink off before it failed close
inspection. ‘I know this is shit of me, but I have to go in a while. In a not very long while. I'm so sorry.'

He braced himself for her disapproval, but – rather more horribly – she provided none, led him back to the living room as if he were elderly and damaged. ‘You should eat.'

‘Well, no – you should. You look tired, sweetheart. And you really should eat.'

The tray was still there on her coffee table, with the untried and now congealed soup and probably slightly dried bread. Rebecca lifted it all before he could stop her and told Jon, ‘I'll make this hot again and get you some as well and then we will both eat and then you'll go.' She didn't attempt to load the end of the sentence: this was simply a list of things that were going to happen.

He was forgiven, then.

Which left him to sit on the floor again, because for some reason he liked it down here, leaning back against one armrest of the sofa, and listening while there were tiny kitchen sounds: his daughter turning on the hum of the microwave, bustling, taking care of her dad.

I shouldn't have seen Rowan last night – it's thrown me off. The thought of someone cooking for me and busyness elsewhere and … I feel I am setting myself up for a fall.

He folded one hand around the other, clasped his palm over his fist, as if it were some live, clever stone that could help him.

Kneeling in Rowan's bloody garden – a ridiculous thing to build, a whole garden made out of love – you can't risk that. And I told him – stupid – told him I wanted Filya to have seen it all when everything was better and cleaned and … It's insoluble. The waste of everything is beyond me.

I can't say.

Jon rocked while some horrible shadow swung through him and he just …

I used to be, used to be a man who was all about preparing for solutions, about showing other people where solutions might be found and how they might be implemented. One can't change one's nature, particularly not if some element of it is functional and – one believes – beneficial and worthwhile. I can't stop doing what I feel is necessary, not without changing myself and …

Jon heard Becky come back, her bare feet over the boards and the little slips of the spoon as it rocked against the bowl – he could picture it all, but not lift his head. He felt her shin rest against his side and press.

‘Dad?'

‘Yes. Yes. Yes.' This was meant to be the start of a longer statement, but instead he could only agree to being her father. ‘Yes.'

‘Dad, you're crying. Why are you crying?'

And now she has let him discover that he is – yes – crying, the force of it sparks in his lungs and almost chokes him and he can't tell her why.

Even when she sets the tray down on the floor – or somewhere, just somewhere, he doesn't see where, can't see where – even when she kneels and holds him round his breathing, pins his arms in to his sides in a way that makes him drown slightly, just a bit – even then he can't tell her why he is crying.

Because nothing is soluble any more.

Because it's all ruined.

Because I am ruined.

Because an extraordinary woman called Filya is dead.

Because I never loved your mother properly.

Because I never loved you properly.

Because I am going to lose my job.

Because I am going to be destroyed.

Because I have a girlfriend.

I can't.

Because I have never saved anyone.

Because I have tried and never managed to be as I should, act as I should.

Because I have Meg, but I can't have Meg.

I can't.

Here it is.

But, really, I can't.

He kept on holding his own hand.

WELL FUCK THAT,
though. I'm better than that. My name is Meg and I'm better than that – which is what people say, ‘I'm better than that,' and I'm not very sure what it means, or how they'd know, but why not think it anyway, it sounds friendly.

I can imagine, I can assume that I am better than being in a pub and feeling lousy and wanting to do what any normal human being should do in a pub.

So fuck that. Fuck normal.

I'm not normal.

I'm better than that.

Meg had left the bar and was heading down Charing Cross Road, which was undoubtedly better than some things and some places, but not exactly at its best.

Although you never know with Charing Cross Road what its best is meant to be.

Its shops always managed to seem not quite in working order, a bit rubbish and quiet. Or else sleazy. It had an aura of louche dysfunction. Chinatown was a block away and doing its restaurants and stacks-of-vegetables-in-boxes and busyness thing, but Charing Cross Road wasn't Chinatown. And just round the corner in Denmark Street were classy guitars and hard-fingered experts and hopes and prayers for the dispensation of blue, blue coolness – so Meg was told – but Charing Cross Road just wasn't Denmark
Street. And Soho was right over there and doing its clubs and raunch and posing and out-of-your-mind-on-whatever and up-all-night and no-knickers thing – but that wasn't Charing Cross Road, either. Charing Cross Road was all shoddy offers and empty bookshops and tourist tat and places where you wouldn't eat and shouldn't drink.

It's OK, the stuff doesn't jump out and grab you, it doesn't get forced down your throat – lots and lots of grown-ups have told me that.

And there were too many theatres around here. Maybe it was the theatres that gave the place its unreliable vibe. Theatres wanted nothing to do with you most of the day and then they lit themselves bright and liked to be all straggled round by dressed-up crowds and queues. Then every trace of that got tidied away, shut in behind doors. And the same crowds were leaving, out again, two or three hours later and you'd no idea what went on in between, except that it made them seem smug and overheated. And the people who worked for the theatres leaned about across interesting doorways and looked purposeful near trucks full of equipment and mysteries and they kept odd hours and encouraged odd hours in others: late eating, early eating. They kept to an alcoholic's schedule: late drinking, early drinking. That was maybe why Meg hadn't been this way in a while.

There was a greasy-spoon place just off Leicester Square where she used to get breakfast in the tiny hours of semi-regular, irregular mornings. If you'd had to make a night of it and wanted propping up – there it was.

Charing Cross Road was built for visitors in ideas of their Sunday Best, for pickpockets and lost sheep and bookworms and the people who acted as warnings against the risks of eating through your lifestyle. Asleep in doorways, ill in doorways, can't-tell-if-they're-dead-already in doorways – they were your examples to learn from, the sketches from your future. You see the other options – the ones on the way to soup kitchens and shelters, theatrical about their misery, wearing it out loud. Charing Cross Road was always there but for the grace of God.

Whoever that is.

This evening she was glad when she could get herself down in the Underground and away.

Where no one can call me. I don't really want another call.

I mean, I do. But I don't want be waiting for it, or waiting for another failure, or …

There are things that I can't manage in my thinking. Not today.

Maybe forever.

The subway hadn't been a friend to Meg when she was drinking: the inescapable white passageways, bowing out as if she had been Jonahed, taken deep inside the whale. It had made her sweat.

Jon wrote about being Jonahed – I never thought of it before as a word.

She hadn't enjoyed the branching muddle of directions, the sudden lock of crowds around you, the delays and the fuggy trapped air – or the unexplained sudden assaults of feral pressure, gusts from nowhere which might be normal, or a sign of accidents and collapses. The roar of the tunnels once she'd got aboard a carriage could be unbearable – so much velocity, so much unnatural submersion, so many people to peer at you and find you wanting and shaking and damp.

I don't mind it now, though. Not so much.

Meg could stand on the platform and wait for a Piccadilly Line westbound train without much considering how remarkably easy it would be to step off in front of the next one that pulled in and solve herself.

Everyone thinks that a bit, though. Everyone. It lets them feel extra-comfortable, once the idea has gone past and they don't need to and won't scare the driver, won't cause delays and tutting amongst strangers. That's all you get for killing yourself in London – tutting. There's been a lot of tutting lately. We live in peculiar times.

I'm all right, though. I am. My name is Meg and I'm an alcoholic and it's not like how you see it in the movies when you say that, not like on TV, the whole room doesn't gasp and weep and stare at you like you're a unicorn and you've just started speaking French. You're in an AA meeting – it's the one thing that everybody thinks you'll say.

And my name is Meg and I'm an alcoholic and I have a plan because I am better than not having one, than what might happen if I try to improvise.

I am going to have a nice dinner later, that's all that's going on.

My shoes are the wrong shoes for all of this walking about, but otherwise I'm in promising shape.

And I have a medallion with me and it has ‘To Thine Own Self Be True' on it, along with a great big fuck-off Roman numeral –

I

–
for one year, because sober years are so important, you get them in Latin, and I can take it out and look at it and it will prove that I'm all right and it has that bloody prayer embossed on the other side and I can't pray – not exactly – but I can have a loud think and the words I might use are written down in any case and I choose to believe – because it's a nice idea – that having written the words down will now mean they are permanently reciting. It's like an open channel, and the words are saying themselves in my pocket the whole time.

Like a letter to Nowhere.

She put her hand in her jacket pocket and ran her thumb over the metal disc, the raised letters, let her nail read what she knew by heart, having heard it spoken so many times, by so many people.

Myself being one of those people. I can have faith in words. I like words. I like them more and fucking more. The Universe I can have my doubts about, but words can be proper and sweet.

GOD GRANT ME THE

SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE

THINGS I CANNOT

CHANGE, COURAGE

TO CHANGE THE THINGS

I CAN AND WISDOM TO KNOW

THE DIFFERENCE.

It says that without me, right in my hand. I don't have to do a thing.

And I'm wearing a not nice jacket. But it's the best that I can do. I have to accept my jacket because it can't be changed. I don't think I need drag a God in to assist. My clothes don't fit well, but I'd have no respect for a deity who cared. Why should it?

With the booze, you gain weight and then you lose it and you stop being sure of which shape you are at any given time and you also stop caring – which makes you resemble the high and finer type of God.

I do care now, though – about the jacket. I accept that: not the jacket, just the caring.

I am wearing the jacket as if I do not accept it. I think that's what would show to an observer, but that's also the best that I can do.

And the caring makes me feel sick, so I would rather change that. And looking bad and ugly and pathetic makes me feel sick, too. One thorough glance at me and you'd see: there's a struck-off accountant forever in a jacket and skirt that nobody could trust – which also makes me feel sick.

I would rather change the fact that I feel sick.

And I would rather not feel sick about tonight and about the meeting, or the maybe not meeting, because it does seem unlikely to me that it will happen – it does seem already too far away.

Which I want to change.

Jon seems far away.

And I do not wish to accept that.

I mean – fuck it. I can't do it, the accepting and not accepting and changing and not changing and I would ask – I don't know who – but I would ask what is the fucking point of having a prayer and writing it down and putting it on medallions as if it's important and can help when all it does is make your head hurt?

Should I apply to the God I do not believe in for clarification? The razor-blade one, the faraway one, the beard-and-a-frock one, the one of some religion I've never tried, so I would never even have a chance …?

And then again, if God has a hurt child to help and a landslide and a cancer ward and a crashed bus full of pregnant women and jolly families to deal with and nice people who are dying – which would mean God was having a pretty quiet day – then I shouldn't be bothering God about anything.

I could leave God out of dealing with decisions about my lapels.

Jon cares about lapels. He probably cares about mine and doesn't like them. They probably make him sick.

And it's a problem, all this. And worse because he's seen this suit before – twice before. It's all she's got that's even bearable. How do you explain to someone with suits and shirts and enough comfortable things that you don't live in their world and that they're sensible and understanding but nevertheless, somewhere in their head they must be filling out this kind of temporary visa so they can come and visit you in your ugly country, examine you and then be glad they can get the hell out again.

God grant me …

Meg let the next Tube train arrive without making it kill her. The thing opened its doors kindly and let her in and then took her away while she sat on the blue, blue seat that ran the carriage's length and decided to remember lunch with Jon, because that made her happy.

I was in this bloody awful suit when I met him outside the PO box place. Then in this bloody awful suit when we managed to have lunch, a sort of lunch. I am now in this bloody awful suit and waiting. Again.

There's being busy and then there's being unwilling and then there's being evasive and then there's being Jon.

After Jon ran for the park it took months to fix another time with him, then change it and change it and change it – this bounce and apology and slip and apology and dodge and apology becoming part of what might be a process.

If somebody wants to meet you, then they meet you – that's how it works.

But you still hope, because you have been told that hoping is good for you.

I will meet you.

That's a kind of hope.

Rather than have to make any new decisions, they'd returned to Shepherd Market for a lunch which wavered and slid back to three o'clock and then four and then half past.

But in the end …

Shepherd Market had
become a sentimental place –
is what Jon had said.

Silly.

The train rocked her, while Meg pushed it to one remove and let Jon arrive in her mind – on a January Thursday, practically dark already and the day dead and the square quiet.

We were warm, though. We were … I think I was shaking a bit, actually, and you have no idea, at the time, that something will work out, so you worry beforehand …

He had been his formal self, talking past her. ‘A lot of people don't have satisfaction in their work, I can see that and I realise I don't deserve satisfaction any more than somebody else, but there are days when one sits back and considers and … For more than a century now, you see, I think, many sensible people think, Britain's been circling nearer and nearer the drain, all Parliament does is provide a running commentary and speed the revolutions.' And somewhere round about then, he'd properly noticed her, met her eyes, and then made this smile that was polite, or embarrassed, or upset and trying to hide it, and he'd told her, ‘Not actual revolutions, not … I do apologise, this must be very tedious for you.' Then he'd swallowed in a way that was quite loud.

Meg tried to get what she said next right and maybe didn't. ‘I look after stray dogs. Part-time. And I stand near my kitchen window and watch … Well, I watch the sky, trees, parakeets … I don't mean my life just is dogs and watching trees grow and so your tediousness doesn't seem so … You're not tedious.' She appeared to be waving her hands – as if somebody far away was running in the wrong direction and she was signalling they ought to turn back. ‘You're not tedious. Sorry. This isn't tedious.'

Jon made a strange upward nod, almost as if he were trying to catch a biscuit in his mouth, or summon something. ‘Yes, no, you said – wrote. About the dogs. And how's the goat, by the way? The original goat. Is he happy with the new goats?'

Which wasn't what she'd expected to be asked. ‘He's … I'm mainly in the office. But he's doing well, I hear. They have funny eyes. Rectangular pupils. They're these real, precise rectangles with
squared-off corners, but their eyes are the usual round shape of eyes – I can never imagine how that works. It doesn't look natural.'

‘Rectangles …?'