Serious Sweet (33 page)

‘I know pretty much fuck all … sod all … about primates. We've never had them at the farm.'

I didn't know why she self-corrected. As if I wouldn't want her to say ‘fuck'. As if I wouldn't have asked her to repeat it, if that might not have seemed peculiar.

‘I'm not really swotted up about primates, or monkeys, beyond the obvious. I do enjoy understanding things. The trouble is, I'd rather know them already. I want all the facts transplanted in advance, just there. Being told them irritates me.'

‘Oh.'

I know a number of other people with that issue. I work near a palace full of them – and more.

She nodded. ‘I want to be well informed, this well-informed person at a dinner party – I hate dinner parties – in the pub – don't go to pubs any more – but anyway … I mean, I want to know to things … Mr August, he knows lots of things …'

And the touch of that name, my name, it makes me tell her
, ‘Fuck dinner parties.'

And kissing her, I'm kissing her – cherrysweet – heart at four beats to the bar … St Cecilia, care for me, I am like music. And I tell Meg again.

‘Fuck dinner parties and people who go to dinner parties. And the ones in pubs and everyone who isn't us, frankly. Fuck the fucking lot of them.'

So that she'll hear me saying it – fuck – and the chimps watching. Showing off in front of my cousins. Because, St Cecilia, what would you know? You're a virgin.

We were in the observation area for the chimps: indoors in the animal funk and the big, broad windows, there to let us see and see and see.

In there it's always got this tang of nearly-human mayhem: it's what would happen if we shat and pissed neatly and casually on to the floor, if we were untidy and unashamed, if we never washed and always touched and held and patted and stroked and held and groomed and smoothed and fucking held each other, if we never let go and we always knew exactly where we are – even when we set off raging, flailing, screaming, we'd still know … I think we would.

‘They're serious animals, aren't they. Look at the muscles in that one's arms.'
Meg murmuring because anything else would seem rude, with the chimps so close through the sturdy glass – which is sturdy glass, which is their living-room window – and they're sitting about and not concerned that I understand in my spine, in my balls, in my kind of a soul, that this is her early-morning voice, up-out-of-sleeping voice, the one I would have all to myself – sheets and cherrysweet and coffee and nonsense.

‘They'd do you harm if they didn't know you, or took offence.'
Look at them directly and they're creatures, beasts. Keep them just at the edge of your awareness and they show the forms and shifts and habits of a person, of yourself, of a more naked beast.

‘They don't seem to be in the mood to take offence.'

And I can hear my own early-morning voice, saying – slow, pleased, low – saying to my treasure
, ‘That's Simon, the silvery chap who seems studious. And that's Hananya – the bustly, broad one with the startled fur. He's in charge, poor bastard. The two together over there are Jess and Arfur, they like each other, but not that way, because Hananya – he's the boss – would stop them from liking each other that way. He gets the executive position and the girls. Mostly.'

And Jess and Arfur touching and checking and touching – thick-nailed fingers and their fat-soled, clever-thumbed feet. Arfur kind of dusty, an oldness about him, although he's not so very old. White-bearded Simon with his bald forearms – showing his muscle, his crinkling skin. Thelma the jug-eared baby, tenderpinky Thelma who was born here, born safe, who is unscarred – incautious eyes and climbing around her mother.

‘One chimp – that's maybe her – was rescued and kept for a while by royalty in Dubai. She arrived at the park once she got
too old and too big, too adult to be cute – turned up with luggage, apparently, a selection of outfits … I can't imagine being around humans, growing up against yourself and then you arrive here and you take off your dress.'

Fuck.

Jon slowed on the quiet Knightsbridge street, looked up at the London sky, the dirty yellow roof it gave one instead of stars, and heard himself telling his love, ‘And you never put clothes on again. You're just yourself. And you're with family, like a family.'

Hananya had slipped along, quite mellow and afternoony, and hugged some female or other and – dab – just slightly fucked her
.
Chimp sex being unimpressive but just … it truly is … it's carefree, it seems carefree. It happens and is all of a piece with them.

Dressing and undressing …

Such a tenderness for them overtaking … it being prudent that it should overtake … such a tenderness …

I didn't look at her because I didn't have to, because she was leaning against me and feeling like a song – lullaby, aria, anthem, this song that has never existed – and I tell her, because I can tell her things, because we can tell each other things, because fuck everybody but us
: ‘They get taken – most of them – out of the wild when they're babies and saleable and cute and the poachers kill their families because otherwise the families won't let their children go – they won't ever let their children go – and then the infants are caged up and alone and it must be inexplicable, unimaginably miserable, and there's travelling, aircraft or ships, and if you survive the trip then you're sold and you maybe have your teeth pulled out to stop you biting, or you're taught to smoke, or given drugs to keep you placid, because that's easier than beating you, or they teach you to drink and you do your tricks, do what you're told, you meet strangers and wear your outfits, put a suit on so you look like a person – this joke person – but you're scared and—'

She told me
, ‘Shush.'
A child's kind of way to put it
. ‘Shush.'
Or a parent's
.

My fault for making her cry.

As if she was fighting, this soft fight, deep fight so that she could be …

She was here.

Arms inside my coat, this coat, arms all fierce and untranslatable and loving me because I am a fool and have hurt her.

I don't want to hurt her.

Body that scalds.

Beautiful.

You know where you are.

Crying with her.

You get single-minded after having a time like that.

I don't want to hurt her.

Jon tucked down his chin, absented himself from an expansive, well-manicured street and headed down the slope of a lane.

Her arms closed round the small of my back.

He turned left at a strange narrow house with ominous windows –
I never believe in that house, it seems taken wholesale from Dickens
 – and entered a cobbled mews. Ahead was the mild noise of a little pub – the sort that guidebooks like to pick out and pet. He didn't want to be with people yet.

I was in her arms and I could rest.

He wanted to sit, perhaps on the cobbles, and marshal his forces. He wanted to rap on the odd house's door and ask to be taken in and welcomed at a fireplace and given charity and a pathway to his favourable conclusion.

I should call her. I should say that I am single-minded.

I should promise to keep her safe.

I should tell her how.

His hand lifted to reach inside his coat – his coat that knew her and that she liked – but before he could finish the movement somebody punched him.

MEG WAS AT
South Kensington Station. For some reason, although she had left her train and climbed up a staircase or so from the platform level, she couldn't quite continue her ascent. Other passengers brushed past her as she stood, her back to the passageway, facing a vast metal grille, peering into the workings of the station.

She'd been catching and changing and catching trains beneath the city for a while this evening – for a long while, it seemed, now that she checked her watch.

The system had taken her into itself at Leicester Square, pushed her north to King's Cross and she'd let it. She had drifted up the Northern Line, then rolled back down, nudging all the while between the eddies and jolts of more purposeful commuters. Then she'd transferred to the Circle Line.

Gets you nowhere. Round and round.

It no longer was quite possible to ride the Circle Line and find yourself back where you started without ever leaving your seat. A break had been inserted annoyingly at Edgware Road and carriagefuls of humanity would wait about there to make connections which had once been unnecessary; the Edgware atmosphere was permanently thick with irritation and murdered plans.

The break prevents homeless people tucking themselves up in corners and falling asleep in their seats, simply circulating in the warm and dry for the price of a single fare. And I suppose it removes the possibility of depressives using the circuit to demonstrate their own uselessness – the way that they end at their beginning and do not progress. You can only do that now if you get on and off at Edgware Road. Which was gloomy enough as a station in any case.

Meg had only ridden along clockwise, dodged some more, caught the Piccadilly Line to here – South Kensington.

Jon may well have called. He said he would.

As soon as I come up for air I will know. I might have heard nothing because he is a man who tends to fade and he has faded. You can see it in him – the way he'll be. Maybe he's going to avoid me all day and by the time I go to sleep nothing good will have happened. Maybe I make him too scared. Broken animals scare people – although he liked the chimps … The one who rolls sticks in her fingers and acts as if she's smoking them when she's stressed. Messed-up monkeys. Apes. Fucked-up apes.

But maybe he only likes the way we are when we're stuck behind glass and fences, when he can walk away.

Or maybe I've just heard nothing because I've been underground and I'll hit the open air and it will be fine. You can see that he doesn't want to fade and is trying not to – that's there in him as well, the wanting to stay. I do know what wanting looks like and he does want.

And he's nice.

She remembered the way Jon had held her in the rescue centre.

Sometimes you just need a hug – there's no drama, or anything, not really, it's probably nothing special to anyone – you just want that.

And Jon knows what wanting looks like.

And so I got my hug.

He's a kind man – that's always true.

And I could do with another hug now.

After this morning … If we only think of that – then I'm entitled.

I'd have smoked a make-believe cigarette in that hospital, if I'd had one. I'd have smoked a real one.

I'd have shat on their floor, if it wouldn't have taken the last of my dignity.

They made me an exhibit, why not act as if I'm in a zoo?

Meg leaned against the grille and through it came the rush of cold tunnel air and undisturbed depths. It licked against her hugely. Beyond the mesh was this kind of broad, round shaft, lined with ocean-liner-looking iron plate – old and secretive.

It was put in for ventilation, I suppose, or to lower equipment.

The well had the authority of Victorian construction. It spoke of clambering labour, important and forgotten skills, fatalities.

Long way to fall.

The drum of space gaped above her head, clear up to street level, but showed no trace of sky. And it sank away beyond her feet – she supposed – to the depth of the lowest platform. It was usually out of sight, rendered unnoticeable by its darkness. But now there were raw white lights across the broad yawn of the drop and so she could see and see and see: the complications of metal and equipment, other grilles on the far side, structures of obscure purpose.

No one else is noticing. Only me.

Because I want something to keep me down here and away from his having left no message and this never properly working out and …

I am down here with my drunk's head – down in the shelter to keep off disappointments.

Because an alky doesn't drink St John's wort, or meditate, or phone a reliable friend, or leave things alone for a bit and relax – an alky worries. Why else would you always need to drink?

Forever.

The cold seeped and stroked around her and there was something too old about it, something beyond a human lifespan, which made it seem unreasonable. She was beginning to shiver. The sense of being shaken by her own body, the chill of shock, seemed to take her back beyond the morning's examination and uncoil memories she didn't want.

Why else would I always need to drink?

Already, she had this nervous pitch in her stomach, this straining of something intolerable nuzzling her spine, this repeating fact of emptiness. She was dealing with the symptoms of hope. Hope felt very much the same as emptiness, as panic.

Forever.

I should go. I really should go.

She turned into the flow of travellers and began the last little journey to the surface.

I have to go.

It is late on a Sunday afternoon at the end of a warm autumn. Across London, people are heading for home, for meals, for rest after perhaps the last outdoor weekend of their year.

A Northern Line Tube train is travelling down from King's Cross. Its carriages are not overfull but most of their seats have been taken.

One car holds a snug assembly of couples, families with children, individuals. They all seem to share this afterglow of tired pleasure. Some hug backpacks on their laps, a few carry sleeping bags. They stand in the wider spaces near the doors, they sit on the long, upholstered benches and face each other across the width of the carriage. And they are quiet.

A very large man is sitting tight up against the glass partition beside an exit. He is asleep.

He is both unusually tall and solidly built. His broad knees and long, substantial feet extend quite a way into the aisle. In every direction, he gives the impression of being only just able to fit. His heavy-looking hands are folded together across his stomach, rising and falling placidly as he sleeps. He is so tall that his head – which leans joltingly against the partition – also almost grazes the ceiling. Although the passengers are wearing coats, scarves, hats – responding to the little shock of winter's first real cold – the monumental man is in his shirtsleeves. It seems that he is a person of strength and above such things as temperature, weather.

As each station dashes in along the windows, as passengers arrive and leave, as each station creeps and then darts away again, the man keeps sleeping.

Behind him, propped against the window, is a huge square cushion. It is supporting his shoulders, neck and skull. It is new, still wrapped in clear plastic, and made of felt and other soft fabrics. The cushion has been marked out into sections and each one shows a simple picture of an animal, built up in embroidery and cloth. The creatures – beyond the zebra – are quite hard to identify because they have been created
mainly to smile and seem reassuring, rather than to reflect any zoological reality. They are illusions to please children.

Like a vast child, the man rests and is peaceful, this peace spreading into the carriage. Everyone inside has decided to follow the invisible rule that a child – of whatever size – should never be disturbed.

No one speaks. Those who leave do so on tiptoe. Those who arrive drop quickly into a nursery gentleness.

Faces calm and smooth, books are read with tiny glances to the sleeper. The wakeful are taking exaggerated care and when they meet each other's eyes they look happy, they look like people with a happy secret. They rock together with the motion of the carriage. The man rocks, too.