Serious Sweet (6 page)

And he could feel the blues. Deep blues.

Which is, naturally, not about safety. But he squared the circle and certainly circled the square.

Jon felt that he was an orderly man and a good boss – his assessments did not undermine this belief.

Perhaps it is the blues I am feeling.

Jon grimaced swiftly.
Like hell. I am all square and no circle, no matter what I try.

But I'm not a bad man. In my own way. I am not.

This is because I keep asking myself if I'm not. And I listen out for ribbon typewriters in the night. And I do, I do, I do what I can.

Typewriters, as we know, are these days the most secure option. They produce traceable, hard to access, discrete documents. The Russians ordered up thousands straight after Snowden. India followed. Germany. Wise beasts everywhere have shipped them in.

Taptaptap.

Peckpeckpeck.

Me, too. Back at home.

Tocktocktock.

The sound of modern caution.

The sound that I don't hear at work.

Only in my dreams.

Taptaptap.

I am sorry for the hotel, Becky. I am sorry that I have these blues – these uptight white overcomfortable blues … and that's the worst kind, baby.

But the hotel hadn't really been his problem – not his pressing problem – the fight he started with his daughter on the plane had troubled him more. That's what stole his sleep.

It was so plainly imbecilic as a course of action: get your only child alone and immediately criticise her boyfriend. No, not immediately. I mentioned that her shoes were great and that she looked well and wouldn't this be fun and that we didn't often get the chance. Then I started in with the ill-advised comments. Just after we were allowed to unfasten our seatbelts. Idiot.

‘You don't like him.'

‘I'm not … that's not what I'm saying.'

‘No, it's what I'm saying. You're barely civil to him. What about at my birthday party?'

‘At your …? I wasn't … Did I do something wrong at your birthday party?'

‘You didn't say one word to him.'

This seemed unlikely. Jon scrabbled back to an afternoon of blustery wind and having a headache on Becky's little balcony, feeling sick due to unforeseen events – lots of her friends inside and shouting. It was good that she had so many friends. Otherwise you'd worry. Loud friends. ‘I … Didn't I? It was an odd day. I think. Stuff was going on—'

‘At the office. That office eats you.'

‘I'm nearly done.'

‘Nobody stays as long as you have, not any more. You could have retired. You could be resting. You could be doing something you might like.' She'd begun to change the subject and for some reason he hadn't let her, even though stopping her was insane.

‘Well, you don't …' A gulp when he swallowed – this was his throat attempting to prevent him from screwing up, yet on he went. ‘You don't … It's that when you're with him and with me, when we're the three of us and having a meal, or something of that sort … I notice … It's that …'

‘It's that what?'

And he shouldn't ever mention this, except she is his daughter and he does, he does, he does – in his veins and in his breathing and in his blue and buried heart – he does love her and that makes her happiness matter. ‘It's that when you're with him you seem not to speak. You stop saying things.'

‘Go on.' Her tone a clear warning that he ought to jump out of the plane before doing any such thing.

But on he had stumbled. ‘Darling, it's just that I have been around, alive, for a while and seen relationships – I'm not talking about mine, this isn't anything to do with mine – seen what happens when the man does all the talking, when either partner does all the talking. I've seen what that suggests has happened already between two people … what it means when the woman can't get a word in sideways and the guy …' She was condemningly quiet and so he continued to dig his own grave – speaking while she did not and aware of the irony. ‘My generation of men, we had a hell of a job getting it right – the feminism thing – but
we tried, we absolutely, not all of us, but we backed up what women were doing and we had no maps and that was – I'm not saying we did well – but that generation, men and women, attempted to change how partnerships went, or some of us did, and it wasn't, it wasn't about beautiful and intelligent women with wonderful futures sitting next to blowhard young men and
just listening
as if they haven't a thought in their head—'

‘Blowhard.'

‘I don't mean it as an insult. It's not an insult. I was a blowhard, too. It's automatic. He's twenty-four. If you're under thirty and have a penis, you're a blowhard. It'll pass. It doesn't make him a bad person.'

‘So what does?'

‘He isn't … I don't think that he's a …'

But I do think that he is a bad person. I kind of am completely certain that he is a bad person. I am aware that everything about him bespeaks a lack of consideration in many areas and with Rebecca in particular – the more intimate they are, the more he will harm her – and this makes me want to stab him in his balls and then his throat. I want to watch him bleed to death in agony and silence. Sorry. I do, though.

That is the shape of my moral high ground. I would claim it in less time than it takes me to draw this breath as a place of irrevocable mountaintop sacrifice.

‘Becky, I don't want him to hurt you.'

‘Because I wouldn't be able to tell if he was without you explaining? Because I'm a moron. Because I'm like you.'

Because you're in love with him. You're in love.

Moron is uncalled for.

You love him and he makes love to you and steals tenderness from you unsweetly I bet and by the time the shine's gone off it, please Christ you haven't married him. Or had a baby. It will end badly and I'm trying to spare you that.

Moron is …

His body sinking as it would if the engines had failed them and yet just as it was, where it was, only stirring gently in tranquil flight.

A baby.

OhGodababy.

Go on – ask if she's pregnant – if she's being careful. That's the only mistake you haven't made.

Moron was fair comment.

And she'd spoken very softly, been at the edge of inaudibility as the plane grumbled evenly around them, but he had perfectly heard when she said, ‘Not everyone doesn't notice when they're being tortured.'

He'd been nauseous for the remainder of the journey, got through customs and out of Berlin Tegel by the application of grim effort, almost as if his daughter were not there and he were managing alone. They'd checked into the haunted hotel – marble and cream foyer, chandelier, you couldn't complain – in an ache of isolation – at least he had ached – and they'd not said
night night.
No kiss. He hadn't even felt secure in mentioning when they might join each other for breakfast the following morning, as they ground up in the lift to their rooms. So he had to rise early the following day and sit and drink endless tea until she'd appeared and did sit facing him across his littered table, did smile, but only enough to indicate that he wasn't out of trouble yet.

There was mercy, though. Eventually. By the time they were there on the Spree.

‘Dad, I have to, ahm, do this for myself, you know?' Her hand making small contrapuntal squeezes at his while she spoke. ‘Terry's better to me than you think. You have to believe me about that and try and be civil.' The boat kicking merrily under them for a playful moment, then pressing on.

He'd rushed into the promise, ‘I will.' One he couldn't keep. ‘I will. I'm sorry. I've been getting anxious.' Inside a pocket of his coat there was the flinch of his phone as it gathered a text, the small noise that warned him of incoming communications. Becky glowered at the interruption and he blurted, ‘I'm not answering. I won't. I'll turn it off, even … if you want.'

‘Do what you like.' She undoubtedly knew this would always drive Jon to do what she would like. ‘Dad, I don't need the lectures about women.'

‘No. I realise. It's presumptuous. I simply … The only country in the world where there's a majority of women in a parliament is Rwanda. Rwanda. That's when women get power, real power – if the men are either dead or in prison. Convicted genocidaires. A high percentage.'

‘Could we not talk about genocide.'

‘Sorry.'

‘It's not that I don't get it. And I care. And I made a donation to that place you said I should.'

‘Did you?' Turning to look at her and realising that his expression would be this dreadful, fond open smile, this doting that probably seemed absurd both to observers and Rebecca. ‘They're good people. The money goes where it should. If you can afford it.'

‘I gave them fifty quid – it's not going to render me homeless. Can we just sit and enjoy this and then have lunch. Not on the boat and not in the hotel – somewhere we can relax. I'll buy you lunch.'

‘No, I should.'

‘You paid for the holiday.'

‘And the depressing hotel.'

‘And the depressing hotel. Do you understand that I hate it when you're sad and that I would rather you weren't and when you volunteer for it – what am I meant to do?'

‘Nothing. You don't … I don't expect …' Having to stare down at this nesting of hands at his knee – hers and his – rather than face her and become … something else she would hate because it would look like sadness, when mostly he got wet-eyed over good fortune rather than injuries and his good fortune was her and that was the issue currently in play. ‘Please let's, yes, pick somewhere for lunch and have a nice meal before the plane and then … I really did, I really have, I really have enjoyed this time. I appreciate it.' Nodding and breathing raggedly.

And she'd kissed him underneath his left ear, softly clumsy like a girl and this had torn his last level of restraint and made him sniff. And he was nodding and grinning and uneven in his heart
while she'd released his hand – it was cold once she was as gone as gone – and she'd worked her arm in behind him, hugged his waist, and leaned her head snug to his shoulder. Berlin had progressed outside in blinks and smudges and he'd kept nodding and nodding while Rebecca fitted herself to him until they were comfortable.

He'd let his cheek drift over and away from her, find the glass and settle. And his daughter was wonderful and that was something very plain, along with how remarkable it was that two wrong parents had produced the beginnings of such a person, given her enough to build upon.

And his daughter rode a bicycle to work – cycled in London – which was reckless of her, crazy of her, and yet unpreventable.

And any slighting references to cyclists became, therefore, provocations that outstripped his ability to express outrage – an ability which had atrophied into, at most, a show of pursed lips and perhaps firm but appropriately crafted comments, delivered at apposite moments, or kept in reserve, kept in perpetual reserve.

Nonetheless, as he waited for the cab to progress from Chiswick to Westminster, Jon pictured the way he might grin as he stepped from the taxi and dragged the driver out by his lapels, ears, by something available, and punched him, threw him into the path of oncoming traffic without a helmet or relevant licence, because there was no relevant licence, you don't need a licence to be crushed.

As he racked up another three inches towards his workplace, Jonathan Sigurdsson cleared his throat, ‘What do you reckon? Much longer?'

‘No idea, mate. Not a clue.'

‘Ah, well.' Jon rubbed his thumb across the pads of callous he was growing on the fingertips of his left hand – small areas of invulnerability which were helping him learn to play the guitar. Rhythm and blues. He felt that was a style which might forgive his lack of skill. And his love. It was a place to indulge his love with an entity which would neither care nor take advantage.

It's an outlet.

D7 – that's a troubling chord to form. It makes me all thumbs and no fingers.

Done D9. I can manage that, get into it quite smoothly. Which was worth it. I think. It's useful. Sounds useful. But putting everything together … the transitions … and by myself … I have a book, but I am by myself …

I am aware that I'm no good.

But it is an outlet.

The traffic did not move.

His phone started ringing.

IT WASN'T LOST
on Meg – the humour of steering herself about from one hospital to another, her semi-regular trips. Although the Hill wasn't really a hospital and maybe only seemed like one because of her thinking and where she was with her life just at the moment.

Where she was this morning was a genuine hospital: mall-style food court with a range of options, frequent opportunities for hand sanitising, slick floors that seemed to anticipate the spillage of shaming fluids. There was none of the medical smell she still expected from medical buildings: the disinfectant reek that used to set the scene so unmistakably, used to make the whole of yourself clench, even if you were healthy. Nowadays you walked into any of these places and there was only an aroma of cheap coffee and beyond that perhaps the scent of a low-class office block or a cheap hotel. The overall banality of what you were inhaling made your surroundings seem less professional and therefore more frightening. And then maybe there were traces of something nastier that you didn't quite catch, not fully, something to do with used bedding and uncontrolled decay.

And she was frightened – more in her body than her mind, but both communicated, she couldn't prevent it. Back and forth, they whispered, they bled.

As she'd climbed the stairs – the lifts here always seemed unclean and were too obviously big enough to contain trolleys, biers, bodies – her muscles had seemed to soften and become unhelpful.

And then there was the form to sign and the multiple confirmations of her birth-date – as if she might have changed into somebody different from one end of each corridor to the other.

In the waiting room where she finally paused were the usual telly and posters pledging to do nice things very nicely and threatening that any violence would be met with prosecution. One woman was already there with – it was only a guess – her supporting male partner. A second outpatient sat between uniformed and, most likely, less supportive female warders. It took a moment to notice the second woman was handcuffed to the warder at her left.

The warders chatted desultorily. They wore cheap and shapeless black pullovers and trousers which were ill-fitting. They reminded Meg of a trip she made once to a number of foreign countries as a student – excursions involving unwise hopes for excitement. Those in authority – their uniforms, their slack pullovers – had seemed scary and shabby and odd in the same way as these guards. The more notorious the regimes, the more their uniforms gave the impression that power was power and was unmistakable, but rested, somehow, with amateurs who'd get things wrong and make a point of not caring about it when they did. The idea of possibly being oppressed by people who didn't bother to iron their trousers seemed somehow to make the threat of harm more harmful, or just more insulting. It suggested the way that important things worked might not be logical, or civilised.

Handcuffs in a hospital didn't seem civilised.

Fair enough, when it was time for the woman to head off and be examined, Meg watched as the unattached warder hooked out long-distance cuffs – a significant length of heavyish chain there between bracelets. It was tangled and the officer tutted while she sorted it out, shook it like a badly behaved length of washing line.

Meg made a point of meeting the prisoner's eye in some effort at empathy. There was a moment of interchange, but it would have been hard to define what passed.

Solidarity.

You never know how you'll end up. You never know, do you, whether you'll be in civilian clothes and not look like a prisoner, but nevertheless be chained to a stranger who doesn't talk to you and who will soon probably see you half naked and be watchful in case you try to run away. If you're honest, you'll admit how close bad stuff always is to you and even feel it brushing by your cheek.

Half naked and running away. Imagine.

The party was summoned – one prisoner and one prison officer – and twenty minutes dawdled by while those left behind – the other warder included – sat and let the telly explore current property values and opportunities for investment. The clock provided was louder than the TV.

Tick, tick.

Then there was the noise of doors opening and feet. The pair had been released – at least from the examination room – and sat on the chairs placed out in the hall, chatting now. It would, Meg supposed, be odd not to chat after having done what they had done together. She took the back and forth of it as a sign of civilisation. The prisoner spoke softly about unjust accusations and the officer's replies were warm with amusement.

The next woman was called out, leaving her partner (still supportive) to wait behind.

Nice that he came with her.

Or weird that he came with her.

Or suffocating that he came with her.

That patient took twenty minutes, too, and then reappeared, gathered her man, held his hand. What must have happened to her meanwhile had left no visible trace.

The TV now spoke about a charity giving support to deserving cases, cancer cases.

And there was no cause for alarm – neither on screen, nor off.

Nothing beyond the usual causes for alarm.

This was no big deal.

And yet also a big deal, a big unavoidable deal, because Meg's turn was next.

Breathe in faith.

Tick, tick.

Breathe out fear.

Tick, tick.

Doesn't work.

‘Hello, Meg. My name's Kate.' That was the nurse. She was cheery, outdoors-looking, Caribbean and clean-handed, neat nails.

What I would say or do if she looked infectious, I can't imagine. And she's not going to touch me, anyway – the gynaecologist will touch me. I am just taking the nurse as a symptom of the regime and being optimistic, that's the thing. I am not feeling powerless.

So. The nurse's name was Kate and Meg's name was Meg. And Kate's knowing your name and you knowing hers couldn't help but involve you in an admission that you were here and that you had to stay and had to go through it all again. You had to walk round and into the room, as if you were volunteering, as if you weren't a good friend to yourself and wouldn't dodge this all and run away.

But at least you knew Kate's name was Kate.

And thank God she didn't call me Margaret. Or Maggie. Being either of them for the whole of this would do me in, it would really.

‘You can hang your coat up on the hook there.' Kate smiling and indicating a hook on the back of the door, as if its availability was great news and it was, indeed, a bit of a departure – you're used to just piling everything on to the chair. That's the chair which comes later. Within the track for the drawable curtain, behind which you undress, there always is a waiting chair.

You don't remove your coat because you want it round you.

I don't want to be here, not today.

There was another chair in here, over by the desk – in the administrative area of the examination room. This chair came first and so Meg sat down on it and answered questions offered by someone who was probably a student doctor and whose name escaped her when he said it – all long and fluttery and spoken in a gentle accent of some kind – unfamiliar. She couldn't quite see the whole of his name badge. She guessed that he was perhaps
Greek, or else hoped he was Greek for unexplained and irrational reasons.

A childhood in sunshine, classical inheritance, the roots of European medicine. That could all be an asset for us both. Cheery thoughts. Wherever he's from I would like him to be cheery. Please.

And he has clean hands and neat nails. Two tidy-handed people looking after me, both of them possibly used to better weather.

Breathe in fear.

No.

Breathe in faith.

No.

No.

No.

He asked about her physical regularity and fitness.

This part left Meg feeling inconsistent and unwell. As usual.

Then it was time for the nurse, for Kate.

The nurses were trained to call you by name and bond with you, because what would happen next was degrading and they didn't want it to upset you. It would upset you, no matter what they said, but they made this effort to improve the theory of your situation. The nurses never asked the questions, not unless they were nurse practitioners.

Or, really, they just asked the questions that weren't important enough to be written down.

Nobody asks the important questions.

And now it was time to stand and walk to the next chair – the one in the corner, behind the curtain.

Kate offered, ‘How are you?'

‘I'm fine.' Meg's voice came out dry and half-swallowed, resentful. ‘Hello.' Which wasn't fair on Kate who was being actively kind.

And this was only Meg's early-morning-and-get-it-over-with kind of check-up which was no cause for alarm. It shouldn't be missed, but needn't make her stressed.

It's hardly any kind of a procedure and I don't have to mind it.

I do, though, I bloody do. I can't forgive it.

Kate ushered Meg over towards the curtain, the chair, still smiling, ‘If you undress below the waist and maybe pop your sweater off, too, because you might get hot. And then you wrap one of those sheets around you before you come out.'

Meg proceeded as she was told and did not deviate and this was a relief, this lack of choice. She wanted to smile, as if she was happy two women could get each other through something horrible. There was no mirror so she couldn't tell, but she felt as if her face was mainly looking savage.

The nurse left her and Meg drew the curtain – although why bother when everyone was going to see everything soon? Why was undressing allowed to be delicate when nakedness incurred an immediate audience?

Beyond the dull mauve and green of the drapes, Meg could hear that the specialist had arrived. He told his colleagues that he'd needed to take a call and check on something … the something was inaudible. It was of concern.

Meg bent to remove her shoes, blood distantly roaring in her ears at the unexpected upset. Her body had decided to be nervy and easily unbalanced. This wasn't her fault. Then her jeans went, then her pants – she folded them on to the chair in a small stack, innermost item closest to the top, as if she might get extra marks for being tidy. There was this sensation of childishness in her fingers which, because she was in an adult situation, made her stomach tick and become wary. She slipped off her sweater as instructed, even though she knew what happened next would make her cold for the rest of the day. Every time, it was the same.

Still, around her waist with the strange, unwieldy sheet – so white and yet also a bit second-hand-feeling – and then out from behind the curtain she stepped in stockinged feet. It took four five six steps to reach the final chair, the one with the dressing pad laid out ready across what there was of its seat. Then she set her body to the thing, shelved herself, found the foot rests, the knee rests, dealt with the awkwardness of one size not fitting all.

I would rather not. Today I would rather not. This is not a cause for any drama – but today I would rather not.

And when this is suggested, you loosen the sheet until it's opened and simply resting across your outspread lap as a rug might if you were reading at some fireside in some cosy evening on some other day.

It's good to imagine that.

It hides you from yourself, but no one else.

The gynaecologist appears wordlessly, glove-handed, positions the instrument tray, pats the sheet so it dips, less taut, between your legs and covers you more completely. This seems an automatic gesture. He is either preserving your modesty for another ninety seconds, or would rather not look before he has to, not at you, not there.

Yet surely he's used to it. Staring into women. Bored of it.

I would be glad if he was bored of me as a person, while being interested in me as a condition, my condition.

He will be exploring me as a doctor does and not as a man does. He will not be touching me as a man does.

As a man, he is calm and projects a straightforwardness you can find as pleasing as anything would be for the next few minutes, ten minutes, maybe fifteen or twenty at the most. Tick, tick. And it might as well be him as anyone who asks you those last important questions – all of which are repeats of the previous important questions, in case the student hadn't asked them right – and if you could please move a little further forward and that's excellent and now he is raising your chair and adjusting your legs so that he can see and see and see.

I would rather not.

Through the first insertion – which is undertaken by the student – the nurse stands beside, stands on guard, and sometimes says, ‘You all right?' And this is a pathetically necessary question, although your answer won't be written down. There is pain. It is a not manageable pain: it is a racing away and running and lunging pain.

You say, ‘I'm all right.'Your voice emerging in a state that proves itself untrue.

And the student comments on the way you are constructed, which is imperfect, and the insertion of the speculum doesn't quite
work and has to be done again. The gynaecologist takes over and you realise that you haven't been able to check his hands and so you don't know if they're clean, or nice, or anything. His face is ruddy, beefy, butcherish and so perhaps his hands are also coarse and to do with meat. And this worries you – as if you could stop him now, or say anything about it, even if you did see and see and see something you don't like.

And your eyes are closed, but there is a trickle of ridiculous crying that breaks across your cheek, tilting back into your ears and you remember being a kid and lying in bed and reading a worrying book – some silly book – and having this exact same sensation of prickling, progressing sadness.