Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  There were days when you would hold on to almost any voice and there were days when you wanted a particular one, because you imagined that would be the best to help you keep a grip.

  ‘They seemed happy, though. Nobody had a look round in there and screamed and, I don’t know, said they had to cut everything out by this evening. I think visually that it seemed clear, but they’ll check the cells to be certain … They’re always evasive. That’s why you’d pay to go private – because then they’d tell you things. If only to get more of your money. My GP doesn’t speak any more except for Hello and What do you think is the matter? When if I knew that I wouldn’t be there, would I? And then all he does is write down what I think the matter is – so really I get to be the doctor and the doctor gets to be my secretary and where that gets both of us is beyond me … Sure, sure, I want them to be certain …’

  I want the National Health Service to be certain and to be my pal, like it was when I was a kid and Dr Miller would come to the house if I was really poorly and he’d take time and he was like an uncle, or a friend.

  And the point of talking to a friend is that you tell them what’s on your mind instead of the first rush, the pelt of irrelevant pieces you throw out to keep things at bay.

  ‘It’s waiting, which I don’t like. It’s that I know I have to wait again and I have been waiting a while with the whole process and the thing today … it was uncomfortable at the time and … you know, I got a bit upset. A bit.’ Hector, aware she was getting rattled, had stood and snuggled over to her and was letting her scratch at the crown of his head. He huffed softly, approving. ‘No, don’t send me a hug.’

  Carole was known to offer verbal hugs when no others were available and it was easily foreseen that she would pitch in with the usual if she was phoning after you’d been prodded at, invaded and also threatened – a bit threatened – with cancer, which was to say pre-cancer, which was to say pre-death, which was to say pretty much where we all had to operate every day, but that didn’t imply we’d be happy to be interfered with and then forced to remember different threats.

  And nobody did ask, nobody bloody asked, nobody this morning fucking asked at any point why I was so upset. Nobody.

  I can’t shake the fact of that.

  I wouldn’t have told them, but I’d like them to have tried.

  Carole is asking, of course.

  Fuck her.

  ‘It’s … Thanks … Thanks, Carole …’ She was merciless, Carole: she said precisely what would make you cry. Meg didn’t think she really needed more weeping today. ‘It’s … It was only that, you know …’ Carole didn’t know, because Meg hadn’t told her the details. Carole was guessing, but guessing well and Meg could have done without it – the guessing wandered about in her interior, once released, and she didn’t like that. Not today. ‘It’s fine, though. Thanks …’ Meg swallowed and made a bad job of it, just as Laura returned.

  Fuck.

  I need to swear less.

  Fuck.

  At some point.

  ‘I have to go, though, but thanks and I’ll see you tonight, I think. When the other stuff is, or when I’ve, that’s …’ Her sentences came out like broken biscuits, spoiled. ‘You know …’ Meg was tired. ‘Yes. We can talk then.’

  Meg hung up and was aware that she might appear dishevelled. She pre-emptively announced, ‘Laura, I’m fine. I’m fine. I was … telling somebody about that greyhound.’ Which sounded a complete lie.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Laura leaned in and – pat – shitting, bollocksing, bastarding – pat – did the patting thing. ‘That was so terrible. I was really upset for ages.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Mustn’t be sour about it. Laura’s never seen me cry before – I’m not completely weeping, I’m only wet-eyed – and I’m under control now, I am. This is the aftermath of my morning and won’t ever happen again. This isn’t unmanageable.

  She cares about the animals, which makes her a good person and I should cut her some slack. The caring is something of quality that we can have in common and that I can respect in both of us.

  Don’t ask me if I’m OK, please don’t.

  She will, though. She’s going to, here it comes.

  ‘Are you all right now? Is there something I can do? I have some tea with St John’s wort and passion flower.’

  Of course you do, naturally you do – you’re as big a nailed-together-badly and faking-it monster as I am. Which means you are a victim of some kind and therefore a member of my club, except that I don’t want to be a member any more and am getting by fairly well with moving on and cultivating therapeutic rage, cleansing rage, rinsing rage, the energy that’s in rage – I like it – and meanwhile you get on with Laura doing whatever the hell works for Laura and let’s go with that – you keep over there with that – let’s go with our survival strategies for this afternoon and being separate but equal.

  ‘You look tired, Meg. Valerian tea would cure that – you could take a couple of bags for tonight and get a real rest.’

  Which is more attention than anyone normal would pay to a woman who treats you curtly at best and can’t honestly be hiding how big a fool she thinks you are.

  So that’s sad. Laura isn’t well, or whole, and she is reaching out to me, keeps doing it over and over, and that’s the sort of detail I should take on-board and it’s an ice-breaker, it is.

  When breaking the ice is mentioned it’s given a positive meaning. But I find that when the ice breaks I am walking on it and then I drop and I am in bad waters and out of my depth.

  That isn’t positive.

  ‘What’s a wort?’ Shit, that sounded sarcastic. I didn’t even know I was going to ask and now I sound like a bitch.

  ‘Pardon?’ Laura was already adopting a wounded air because now she expected an outright refusal, or else a smart-arsed comment.

  I use humour to deflect something or other, or everything, or I don’t know what, in tense situations. That’s what they say – sounds complicated. I use jokes to get away from stuff when I can’t run – that’s also what I’m told. But who wouldn’t? Or maybe I’m running and handcuffed to the humour and it’s happy to gallop along, escaping alongside me – it’s seen me undressed and unhappy – we’re chums.

  But not this time.

  Meg cleared her throat and concentrated on sounding soft. She pretended, to be honest, that she was talking to one of the dogs. ‘No, I was wondering, that’s all … Only … I can find out later. I bet worts are good. Saints are good … were good, that would be the point of saints. So a saint’s wort … Laura …’

  Shut up and just say you’ll have the tea.

  ‘I’ll have some of that tea, thanks. Yes. Get the stress levels down. And tell me about the sinus thing, again. Could you? Is that for stress, too?’

  She’ll run with that for ages and I needn’t listen. I can just think of what will be my appropriate visualisation, my happiness: no bones, no rags, no dusty engagement rings that have outlived their engagements.

  I will meet you.

  Not lunch. Last week he said he couldn’t do lunch. And not this evening – earlier. At three. Not quite teatime. I’ll be hungry before then, maybe. I’ll have a biscuit. An unbroken biscuit.

  The nerves will mean I’m not hungry.

  I should even head off fairly soon, or I’ll be late. London – it takes forever to get anywhere …

  Having not quite tea far away from here will save the day.

  This will save my day.

  I will meet you.

  There’s no harm in enjoying the thought of that.

  14:38

  JON COULDN’T QUITE place himself. He seemed both unwilling and unable to even try. Had he been asked to express a preference, he would have been anxious to recall yesterday’s evening in an absolute sense, to wake it and wind it back and put it on again, snug. He would also have requested a dispensation from being inside today’s early afternoon. This exact present moment, he would have liked to keep s
trictly at bay.

  Although it was, in a way, his job to make plans, none of his current arrangements were absolutely working. Others’ intentions were clambering and sliding and butting in.

  Force majeure.

  Is what I never am, as it turns out.

  I am here and now and would very much rather not be, which is an impossible goal and is therefore causing me distress.

  And yet it could be argued – perhaps not by me, preferably not by me – that facilitating government decision-making should – in essence – involve one’s impossible goals only ever harming strangers. One should be safe.

  I wouldn’t say that.

  The call from Chalice – one never does want a call from Chalice – had come through at ten-past noon. There wasn’t an option to simply ignore him and pretend that one had lost one’s phone, or else the use of both arms, for a brief but vital period.

  He cultivates this unconvincing air of menace, but has enough genuine power to make it real in any case. It’s like being threatened by a pantomime actor and having to like it. I would rather be bullied by someone with a personality. Although I have no particular regard for my preferences, really, in the matter.

  Chalice had asked, in one of his consciously forceful murmurs – which don’t work well on the phone, I often want to laugh … a cross between a cut-price hood and the daughter’s dodgy boyfriend – he had asked if Jon wouldn’t mind just dropping round to see him and the Minister for Somewhere Outwith Jon’s Responsibility. In the Minister’s office. No rush. They’d be free for him at any time. Any time now. It wasn’t far for Jon to come. Just round the corner. They wanted to chat about Steven Milner. Jon knew Steven Milner, didn’t he?

  Just round the corner. And one has to go. One has to.

  ‘No, I don’t think I do.’

  ‘We thought you did.’

  Inside the office, Chalice had been poised by the Minister’s shoulder, somehow consciously arranged. It was possible to imagine that he’d intended to appear both physically and mentally agile, alert – this whispering demon balanced at the ear of power. The effect was more disconcerting than authoritative – as if a middle-aged man had appeared wearing leather trousers and was waiting for a positive comment on his choice, hips cocked.

  Chalice and the Minister for Something Else (lateish reshuffle appointment, never expected to do anything) had looked up as Jon peeled open the nicely heavy door, offering him the same just-interrupted-but-oh-hello expression once so popular with children’s television entertainers.

  That was back in the balmy days when no one would ever assume what had been interrupted was wholly loathsome.

  And here and now – unavoidable – their attention was nipping at him, weaselling in to throttle away the shreds and rags left of a kind idea, the thought of a garden, the possibility of dipping one’s hand into water nicely and breathing soft.

  They strap one’s breath, this pair. If one is already out of sorts, they can steal the air right out from you. The Minister’s handshake – it’s like being handed a warm shit in a sock. Only on a good day can one resist their extraordinary unpleasantness.

  Why Chalice with this minister? They make no sense as any kind of pair. I only like things that make sense.

  This is not a good a day.

  My mental condition …

  And while I am thinking of shifty double acts because I can’t help it … My mother had this pair of cats – sisters – one minute they’d be licking each other with this bizarre intensity and the next they’d be giving me the clear impression that lesbian incest was none of my bloody business … There is a certain flavour of feline intimacy between our Mr Chalice and this minister who is not my minister and whom I do not wish to see.

  I wish, I wish hard as a boy before Christmas, to be in yesterday and a garden and not in a room over which the ballot box looms hotly, this leading me to wonder why Milner would be an issue … Why bother with him now? He’ll be the next incumbent’s trouble, surely? The Minister for Shake-and-Bake Opinions won’t still be here, whoever wins.

  And what can I do about it? What should I be expected to do about Milner? Why would they think I would want to touch Milner? Nobody wants to touch Milner. I can’t brief, not anyone, not now and not Milner and not for a minister not my own. Not even for my own …

  This dragged along, fast and abrasive, like a cutting kite string through Jon’s mind while Chalice gestured towards two chairs, set emptily ready. He then promenaded round to sit side-saddle on his own and beckoned to Jon, playing the chummy colleague, the man so securely in charge he might break out into rolled sleeves and banter at any time. ‘We thought you got to know Milner slightly after that Heidelberg debacle.’ Chalice being gracefully puzzled by Jon’s non-compliance, waiting until he agreed, at the very least, to sit. ‘The Hun-in-the-sun faux pas.’ And he kept on for more agreement yet. Gentle, was Chalice. Gentle like the onset of some disease.

  ‘Leipzig.’

  ‘Really? We thought it was Heidelberg.’

  Good cloth in his jacket, but I hate the London cut. He’s paid too much for a name on his inside pocket and the pinch-waisted silhouette of a man with breasts. Those cavalry-officer preferences will out. None of it indicates good judgement. Next thing, he’ll be wearing the label on his sleeve.

  Chalice fixed his gaze somewhere on the wall behind Jon’s left ear and semi-whispered, ‘We need someone who slightly knows him. Uncontaminated by prior exposure and yet familiar.’

  Jon’s left ear tingled in response.

  The Minister continued to not speak, remaining authoritatively distant and – who could doubt it? – mulling thoughts which would be all the more impressive for going unexpressed.

  Jon rubbed at his uneasy ear, coaxing it not to be foolish.

  And if you don’t speak during a meeting then you can honestly confirm – if you absolutely have to later on, when asked by some passed-over backbencher, lop-eared audience member on Question Time, or so forth – that you didn’t in any meaningful sense attend the meeting, never said a word. Just offered your shit-in-a-sock.

  ‘I was preoccupied with family matters of a pressing nature and cannot recall the conversation, in which I took no part.’

  So whatever this is about, it’s toxic. And yet he’s here …

  Jon offered, neutrally, ‘Milner the journalist.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Chalice began to sound as if he were addressing an especially dim select committee. ‘Milner the journalist.’

  ‘I’m not a friend of his, to be precise, even slightly, no.’ Jon nodding and realising the Mancunian Candidate, or most probably Sansom, had reached out to hand him some Frodo or other. And I will be expected to carry my dreadful burden out across the wilderness and then Do Something Terminal About It.

  ‘Although I would like to help …’ The Minister’s desk – Jon was apparently staring at the desk now, so I must be downcast for some reason – the desk seemed to be of a very fine quality.

  Better than in my department.

  The surface has an almost mystical sheen.

  And is giving me a headache.

  There is an outside possibility that I am mistaken, simply experiencing a new symptom of extreme stress, but we’ll set that aside.

  When I say ‘we’ I mean ‘I’, but I am in need of company and so present myself as if I am a group. I have noticed that others, when under pressure, will often replace ‘I’ with ‘you’ – as if they would rather outsource their concerns to random third parties. I think it’s a good sign that I don’t try to do that. Team player, Sigurdsson. Even if I’m a team of one.

  My forearms are itching.

  Jon briefly immersed himself in an opaque pause of the sort a man becomes used to producing when his wife is often indiscreet and he must therefore often be diplomatic. He imagined he could feel the heat of his phone, right there in his jacket’s inside pocket – he tried to think of it as a lifeline instead of a burden. There was a letter in there, too. Its
presence made the phone and the office and Chalice and the bovine Minister seem a shade less oppressive. And even very minor improvements were always appreciated.

  While Jon concentrated on yesterday and being with flower beds and secure, he said, ‘Milner was in Heidelberg, yes, that’s right. We had a drink then. One drink. If I remember correctly.’

  ‘And I’m sure you do. It wouldn’t be like you not to remember correctly, Jon. Unless you’re tired. Are you very tired? Been over-doing it?’

  With my many women? No, I haven’t. No, I have not.

  ‘Come in straight from country pursuits?’ Chalice eyeing the corduroy trousers with a lack of benevolence.

  ‘No, not that. I was simply … And something happened to my …’ Jon breathing for a moment to find his place. ‘Milner is foreign stories, isn’t he? Not domestic. Trots off to hellholes and pretends he’s an aggressive, drunken Brit – asks immoderate questions of one and all, while they are incautiously embarrassed for him, or making fun. Manages terribly well in that regard. Then when he’s come round in the morning he notes down what he’s heard, or transcribes it, or whatever, and releases it as and when. One of the type who go about shouting from the moral high ground, or at least a good set of steps.’

  Chalice produced a smile that would not occur in nature. ‘That’s the very Milner. You do remember. And his alcoholic camouflage has indeed become, shall we say, ingrained. People don’t seem to trust him on overseas assignments any more. He says things the wrong way for ITN … and his BBC boats were burned long ago …’ He paused to be happy about himself. ‘The BBC – they burn more boats than the Byzantine navy … Another man might move into books, but Milner seems to be unlucky in that regard, too. There’s the discourtesy while in his cups, that’s a factor – even publishing won’t quite put up with it. He seems to call people a cunt rather often … Which one can’t, can one? One can’t use the word cunt. A cunt out of context …’ Chalice gave Jon what was presumably space to speak with some kind of expert insight about the sexual organs of women and why they shouldn’t be used as terms of abuse, or pronounced by a Jermyn Street sociopath as if they were inevitably infectious.