Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘And again – no goodbye.’ Jon sipped his, by this time, cold cup of tea. His hands performed well while he did so, seemed almost completely reliable.

  16:12

  OH, FOR FUCKSAKE.

  Jon was examining an on-screen document.

  Shitting bloody Moses on a bike.

  It suggested that anyone’s professional life, that anyone’s day-to-day activities, might actually involve ‘running a discovery’. And that was wrong. That was a wrong thing.

  Run a discovery? You want me to run a discovery? You want anyone to run a disfuckingcovery?

  This was the kind of thing that made sane parliamentary minds rejoice in the estate’s still-patchy Wi-Fi provision. Never mind if you couldn’t reach constituents, at least you could steer clear of this.

  Page seven also contained reference to Fast Streams and the fact that GOV.ORG as a brand was able to harbour the belief that The Strategy is Delivery.

  It’s zero content. We no longer deliver anything, we just have a strategy and the strategy isn’t a strategy – it’s delivery. We deliver an intention to deliver an intention to deliver. Why we don’t all suffer absurdity-related aneurysms is beyond me …

  Another page – all of this is in a primary-school font, bloody children’s literature I’m reading here – posed the merry question: What Does This Mean For You?

  I’ll tell you What This Means For Me, I’ll tell you – I won’t, but I could – I’ll tell you What This Means For Me. It means that you’re a moron who only knows how to use not-quite language to not-quite say anything, which is lucky for you, because you have fuck all to say. You’re a bloody Squid.

  And what is a Squid, children? A Squid is a creature of darkness and the lower depths which renders all around it inky-murky at the least sign of unease. Then it buggers off and leaves you to deal with its squiddy problems.

  My world is filled with Squids.

  Jon considered his mobile: neat, sleek and inquisitive in his semi-dependable hand. He willed it to be helpful, to provide consolation. None was forthcoming. It was, no doubt, currently telling a number of entities where he was and where he’d been, what searches he’d performed, what preferences he had in various directions.

  My preference is to be left bloody well alone.

  He was being distracted by a number of factors besides the Squid.

  I can’t comment on this shit: it’s from someone else’s people and I shouldn’t have to. I can’t say a thing. If I started I wouldn’t stop. If I could get every holder of an MBA into a burning warehouse … well, then that would be a wonderful thing.

  No, no, it wouldn’t. That goes against every principle I still have – that I think I still have.

  But one may dream, surely, indulge oneself – unwritten imaginings, no ink necessary.

  Jon also had a sensation that might indicate a call from Chalice – or some other Nibelung – was on the way, enquiring about the conduct of Jon’s Milner-based liaison.

  Then again, they’ll have had eyes in the pub. Chalice will enjoy asking for details and knowing that I know that he knows them already and that I also know that. Fuck.

  I’m swearing a lot. Even internal swearing can show – Val could spot it. I should stop.

  Beyond Jon’s desk, the office was fully functional and apparently placid. It was purring along, if not as it should in an ideal world, then certainly as it did on untroubled days. In as far as the departmental definition of Untroubled had been subject to mission creep, through time.

  But it all looked fine. Staff members came and went like nicely phrased imaginings. He had a good team. They were engaged, as they should be, in building the long, long memory that any hope for common sense required: adding to an intelligence that could consider and extrapolate, that could govern effectively, that could underpin a civilisation. Jon would seem, on sweet days, to feel the threads of various, reliable, verifiable narratives winding about him as they flowed on and this would make him happy.

  I believe in reality: in the trinity of here and now and me. Not in a messianic sense. I believe these three things are connected and should be connected. I believe in the rightness of doing right things and nothing more. Not much more. In this – where else? – I can exist.

  The compulsory Sunday services at Jon’s school had removed any other faiths, inner and outer. He’d had a not unpleasant speaking voice, even then, and was often asked to deliver Bible readings. That’s when he’d first noticed that he echoed – inside and out. And it was when he’d first felt the betrayal inherent in passion, too: the aftermath of nausea and uncleanness after a psalm flared up and lit him, while still being quite meaningless. It wasn’t just him, either – the homilies and sermons offered by his betters had also echoed, split open and revealed their emptiness.

  And the words of my betters echo still.

  He thought about turning off his mobile.

  Any text will be bad news. There’s no reason for anything lovely, not really. I do hope for better, or for opportunities to be of use. What I’ll get will very probably be Sansom having another go.

  My phone is not here to help me – it’s just trying to guess how I might like to spend my money. It is purring along in its way. Somewhere in its workings, in its extended pattern of thoughts, there are plans to show me other and better shirts than the one I bought this morning – that and new, breathtaking ranges of corduroy.

  The back of the device was hot in his hand – the temperature of an active voyeur, I suppose, or of a readied exhibitionist. It’s seen in through my windows – now it wants to flick open its raincoat, show me an offer I can’t refuse.

  He felt himself grin.

  But I can forgive that. It lets a proper-words and proper-ink-and-proper-paper man, an old-school man, hold on to a solid point, hold tight and when …

  Rowland passed, wearing trousers of a cut at present fashionable, which apparently aimed to highlight the wearer’s thighs and cock – his balls, even – in a manner which complimented neither Rowland nor any conceivable observer. Rowland was not unlikely to excel over time. He was a gifted Squid. He had all the necessary modern qualities.

  And, I suppose, a suitably unthreatening cock – since he’s forced me to be aware of it in detail.

  Jon was glad he wouldn’t be in post to witness Rowland’s triumphs.

  I asked him once – he was foisted on me for a while – to Kirkaldy the figures on those possible changes to bereavement benefits between social-security-agreement countries. What precise effect would it have, for instance, if a UK citizen living in Bermuda were to be paid only the Bermudan rate of widow’s benefit, rather than the higher UK rate, which could be seen as excessive and unnecessary, given her change of circumstances and lower living costs? Yes, that individual might have made a range of tax contributions while in the UK, but now she was resident elsewhere … An argument for withdrawal of privileges could be presented as reasonable and fair.

  Benefits are no longer rights, they are privileges. We are to forget prior contributions made in any capacity – we are only to regret and be shamed by our greed when we want to reclaim the promised portion of what we once allowed to be held in trust. We should, likewise, never dare to expect any payment from a private pension – that’s not what they’re for. Whatever we pay for it isn’t for us.

  For Rowland, this model – of endless wrongdoing and entitlement amongst the crafty weak – was impossible not to embrace. He clearly found it incorporated types of justice that Jon could not appreciate, or indeed administer, and there was hardly a trace of cynicism about his position. Rowland was a man of faith.

  We don’t have a short attention span in the modern age. It’s that we’re often bored – which is different. God knows, a great deal of what’s presented to us is second-rate, third-rate, inhuman and therefore uninvolving. Our governments, our employments and our entertainments – why wouldn’t they make us bored? They could make us incandescent, but bored is more likely.

  B
ut that isn’t the same as having a short attention span. Claiming that places the blame at the wrong end of the equation – more punishment of the victim – it’s like saying that the widow is somehow complicit in her bereavement – soiled by it – simply because it has produced the symptoms of distress and all distress is now deemed a cause for suspicion. Suffering no longer indicates hardship, it indicates bad character and celestial punishment. And if God has seen fit to punish – well, that invites further loss.

  Jon checked his texts again, although there had been no indication that anything new had arrived.

  What we have is a short memory. For everything. Tell the average mug punter to put a quid in the communal tin, wake him up the following morning and he’ll accept without hesitation that asking for ten pence back because he needs it would be a sin.

  We forget what – historically – has worked and what hasn’t. We forget that’s a danger to us and trot on.

  Jon couldn’t settle. He was relying on his forefinger to prod regularly away, control the cursor that was scrolling down the document on-screen – the one he couldn’t stand to read, and to which he would make no corrections …

  I’m not like this. I’m conscientious.

  Perhaps I’m ill.

  My mind doesn’t wander.

  Not to this degree.

  I still have no idea how I feel.

  Other than feeling that my mind shouldn’t wander, which is a kind of wandering.

  I told Rowland – I ordered him, ‘Kirkaldy it.’ He’d never even heard the term. ‘Kirkaldy it,’ I told him. ‘Which is to say, subject it to testing according to the motto of that great Victorian and great man David Kirkaldy – Facts Not Opinions. A neglected Victorian Value, the love of facts.

  ‘Kirkaldy tested materials. He was a man of the real and unforgiving world where bridges collapse and engines explode and matter fails when it is needed most and kills and harms if it hasn’t been properly handled in the first place, if it isn’t fully known. He wished to establish reliability and standards …’ I smiled, truly smiled at his ocean-floor face. ‘So Kirkaldy it. Comprehensive figures, all eventualities.’

  And I paused – because in the pause before the act lies all the peace and satisfaction and security of the world. Passion – yes – betrays. Pausing – yes – is wonderful. It’s the test of what’s true.

  In the pause before the act, I live.

  And he looked at me as if I had asked him to cut off his slimline dick and let me wear it tucked behind my ear.

  Before I said, ‘Only joking. For a start, if we no longer pay their people in full, they’ll no longer pay our people in full and they’re paying our people more, relatively … And our widows and orphans still have ransom value. At present … Respect, at least in theory, for the widow – and indeed the widower – and the orphan still exists. It’s all a journey and we’re not there yet.’

  ‘It’s all a journey and we’re not there yet.’ Nauseatingly meaningless phrase.

  Which meant Rowland adored it. His little eyes flared at its sound and he saved it for later use, I’m sure. He chuckled away in squiddish relief, because imagine if I’d truly asked him to be exhaustive. No one wants contact with actual, undeniable information: it’s the equivalent of shit, you don’t want to touch it. If information exists then it should be known and it must be consulted. If it’s consulted in advance then those we serve will feel constrained by it, oppressed – like having their legs jammed under a pub table. And if information exists to lie in wait, to reproach them in retrospect, point out the wiser paths not taken, or the just plain inevitable failures … Then it can feel like a reproach, which is upsetting.

  Opinions Not Facts – these are our watchwords. Run a Discovery. Stay Vague. If reality is malleable then anyone can do what they like: either join the mediocracy, be a mediocrat and pursue nothing much, or else be a zealot and design impermissible calamities you’re sure you can withstand while others of less worth will perish as they should.

  Reassess some human being’s illness and then decide it’s inadmissable information. Remove their benefits as a result. Force them to beg from council contingency funds, relatives, friends – if they have such things. Force them to fail in payments to utility companies. Force them to seek advice from a Citizens’ Advice Bureau, already under pressure and employing additional staff because of unprecedented levels of distress. Force them to seek legal aid for their appeal – if they can get legal aid, if they haven’t given up fighting, if they haven’t agreed to beg and starve quietly. Force them to default on rent payments, mortgage payments, to risk or to experience homelessness. Advise them badly, advise them misleadingly and issue threats. In what way does this not release a cascade of additional expense and wasted time and wasted life in all directions? In what way …

  Oh dear Christ and fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck.

  Jon’s grasp on his phone now overly tight and not helping.

  Ffffffffffffuck.

  The tremor in his grip had transferred to his phone, apparently by pressure of will, or just pressure of pressure.

  I think that I may be beginning to know how I feel and I’m absolutely certain that should be avoided.

  The phone was, in fact, trembling on its own behalf, trying to let in a call – this part of reality twisting his stomach in nervous ways he could do without.

  I just can’t be here any more.

  And yet I am.

  When he looked at the caller display, Becky’s name was showing and that was nice, was beautiful, there was nothing bad about that. She didn’t often ring him …

  Six thirty p.m. and I’ll be somewhere else and just now I can speak to my daughter. I’ll manage. I am sustained.

  Then again, Becky knew that he usually didn’t answer personal numbers when he was at work and so her trying to reach him might imply urgency …

  Please not ‘We got married on a whim.’ Please not ‘Dad, I think I’m—’

  ‘Becky, how wonder—’ And this noise, simply this noise reaching him, of a young and intelligent woman having been, in some manner, destroyed by something. Just sobs. He told her, ‘Oh, darling … what’s the …? I’m here. Daddy’s here. Your dad’s here. I am.’ More sobs. Actually, increased distress. ‘I’m here.’ And then some attempt at words which immediately distorted and ended in heaves of breath. His baby, his child, was breathing in spasms and too far away for him to hold. ‘Darling, whatever it is, we’ll work it out. We will. I promise.’ A sort of howl now. ‘No, we will. We’ll cope …’ It was simply very tricky, though, to help if he didn’t know what he was helping with. ‘If you could … Is it your health? Darling, are you OK?’

  Please be OK.

  ‘No.’ Her one syllable elongating and wavering.

  Please.

  ‘Well, no, I know you’re not OK, but are you well?’

  Another gulp of air and, ‘Yeah.’

  Thank you.

  ‘And your mum’s fine?’

  Jon was aware he was speaking a touch too loudly and that his upcoming content might be unsuitable for an office that was unavoidably open-plan.

  This is our sole concession to transparency, I think – we now have transparent interior walls, due to their absence.

  Jon broke out across the breakout area.

  Again – whoever imagined such a term wants shooting.

  ‘Becky … Becky, please speak to me, though. Is everyone else OK?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  Thank you.

  ‘Good.’ Jon scampered himself towards the stairwell exit. ‘That’s good.’

  His daughter’s voice was snuggled beside his cheek, while his own aimed at comfort, at certainty. ‘Becky, whatever’s happened, things will be all right, I promise.’ And he tucked himself beyond the department’s hearing.

  We’re primates, we have complex social hierarchies which take constant maintenance and that’s a bit of a burden, really – even if we don’t have to mount and groom each other all the day
– and therefore we need breaks away from company. We need to hide.

  ‘Can you tell me what’s the matter, darling?’

  ‘—ess.’

  ‘That’s good … So … You’re OK and Mum’s OK …’

  And Jon knew, absolutely understood by this point, that no one gets upset with this level of intensity unless it’s to do with sex, with love – more properly and horribly with love. And the knowledge of this fragmented and then fought inside his chest, its separated pieces seeming dreadful to him.

  ‘Keep talking to me, darling, I’m here. Take your time.’

  If that fucker Terry has fucking done something to her I will genuinely … If he’s left her … If he’s hurt her … But if he’s left her … If she’s left him …

  Christ, how bloody marvellous. He was such a twat.

  ‘It’s Terry.’

  Don’t blow this, don’t fuck up.

  ‘Is it, darling …? Is he … ill?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so …’ Jon in the stairwell now. He didn’t see enough of the stairwell. It was nice: plain, unfrequented, a potential source of healthful exercise. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  Gone. Then sweet Christing Jesus, there is always hope. Thank you.

  Jon swallowed, reminded himself that smiles are audible. ‘But that’s …’

  Exactly what I wanted.

  He began again, while a silence rose from the phone – dismal and horrible – the silence of the girl he loved, the girl whose pain he always wished to banish. ‘People do fight, Becky … I know you know that … But they do and they say things they don’t mean and maybe—’

  ‘He’s gone!’

  It’s good she’s yelling. It’s good. Good for her.

  She kept on now, her volume approaching something painful and making it necessary to hold the phone slightly at bay. ‘He’s fucking gone because I fucking threw him out because he was fucking screwing someone else. He was fucking screwing Jenny. For two months.’

  ‘Oh, God … I mean … Oh, God.’ Jon remembering that first kneedintheballs realisation that what had been loved as only yours was not, that your privacy never was private, that in the shadows other eyes had looked, hands were fumbling, making you dirty at one remove and robbing you in your heart. ‘I mean …’