Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  He closed one arm over her, kept kissing her hair.

  She was fighting, you could feel right through her how she was fighting and how she was brave.

  I can stay here. No need to rush. Here and then Chalice. My duty being done.

  He’d left his phone at his side and saw – Yes, why not? Because this is how today is running, like a contact sport with no rules I understand – Jon saw that, while Chalice’s call had progressed, an incoming text had made enquiries about a meeting at eight thirty, a meeting quite different to that involving Chalice. Chalice’s fucking fucking fucking meeting now superseding his prior commitment – a commitment about which he cared, one might say, deeply – and making it impossible.

  This was slightly unfortunate in the way that contracting ebola would be slightly unfortunate – contracting ebola and then not noticing until one had already hugged everybody one loved.

  Jon replaced the phone in his jacket pocket, having considered and then rejected the possibility of throwing it through a window.

  I’m not built for this, not for anything that’s happening today.

  I’m not built for …

  He found one of Becky’s hands and kept a hold of it while settling himself to sit on the floor, cross-legged, his back leaning against the side of the sofa, his head pressing somewhere around Becky’s spine. He kissed her hand. It tasted of crying.

  ‘Oh, God. We’re a pair. We are … Oh, God.’ He didn’t wail, because – as previously established – this was not his day for wailing.

  It would not be possible for Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson to wail. An older woman rides the 453 bus – the one which will eventually stop and rest itself at Marylebone. She is heading up west and over the river, perhaps: having some kind of Saturday outing.

  Beside her on the double seat is a boy child of around seven. He is well behaved in the manner of children with parents of an age to be their grandparents. He has a certain formality. His jersey and coat are neat and he wears newish leather shoes which may be meant for school. His trousers – which may also be meant for school – have anticipated someone more substantial and they make him kick his legs mildly, swing his feet, while studying the generosity of blue material in which he’s hidden. He tugs up the orderly crease that rests over his right thigh and then watches it drift back down. He tugs up the other crease and watches again.

  After a while the woman holds his hands to still them and, once she lets go, they also drift back down.

  The pair are on the top deck of the bus, right at the front. This is where adults let children sit so they can see and see and see. The boy does indeed mainly wonder out at the spin, slip and glide of buildings. From his expression, both the commonplace and the remarkable are equally satisfactory. His day is pleasing him.

  At his side the woman maintains an intensity of interest in the child, almost as if he had appeared only this morning and might be taken back at any time.

  Then the woman turns and leans her chin on the top of the boy’s head, leans and rests and closes her eyes. There is a moment when her face seems to suggest something like an unbearable joy.

  The boy looks at the city passing.

  Jon had – Jon loved having – this memory of a slight woman darting – not quite pouncing, but it felt like that – darting forward as he’d left the parcels office where he rented his PO box.

  He’d known who it was. He knew before she said. He pretended not to, played badly for time while feeling faint and feeling trapped and feeling …

  I felt I’d have to leave myself – be elsewhere and my body caught stupidly standing in its socks and brogues and meanwhile I’d never come back.

  I’d just leave it – every part of it.

  I’m not built for women who dart.

  I’m not built for women.

  Not for my mother – there was nothing right about me, according to her – not for Valerie … Well, fine then – don’t have me. I’ll just be in writing. Let me do that, let me be that. Surely to fucking God I am permitted to be that …

  She’d called him – ridiculous – Mr August. And he’d reacted. Because in my heart, it’s my name. And then she’d turned shy – as soon as she knew she was right, she’d dropped her gaze. Extraordinary way of looking at me, she had – she has – as if I’m a sunset, or a … the last of my kind … alone in the glass case already. I truly don’t merit that much attention.

  She’d said, ‘Mr August?’This utterly frail smile that would swipe the feet from under you if you had a pulse, and he still did, or thereabouts. ‘I think you’re Mr August. I’m very sorry, but I had to meet you. After all the letters. I had to.’

  And he could feel her examining his hands and the small bundle of – absolutely, there they were – incriminating letters he was clutching. The week’s harvest amounted to three. And each of his fingers turned sticky with guilt and he couldn’t explain.

  I’m not built for this – not for you – not for this. I love your letters. I do, I …

  I love your love and I …

  I’m not built to trot back and forth and to gather up letters – letters from you – letters like napalm and velvet and like having to take off my shirt while you watch – they feel like having you watch – which I know I could never do, or anything else …

  I’m not built for letters from the other women, which I didn’t mean to keep running – it’s only that, on occasion, there have been letters which are not from a woman, letters that are from a journalist and that tell me where and when to leave his next dose of information. He suggests tea at the Natural History Museum and signs himself Lucy. You don’t need to know this. I, myself, would rather not have to know this.

  Jon had realised that he was nodding, quite hard, agreeing with her, using some part of himself which was more forthright than it should be.

  I suggested the name. After Lucy our early ancestor – Australopithecus afarensis – mostly portrayed as rather fragile-looking and dismayed.

  Courting.

  The urge to cry had scrambled up his throat from somewhere low and hot and his voice had managed, ‘You’re … You …’ His heart bailing hopelessly at what was apparently now a fluid both coarser and more taxing than blood. ‘Sophia.’

  You … She’s … She was … Nobody says I’m beautiful. And why would they? And she did that without seeing me – she does that – and I don’t know if this means that her opinion is therefore more real, or therefore an especially reckless lie.

  It has to be a lie. I’m not beautiful. I’m not wonderful. I’m not sweet. Who would think so? I’m not sweet.

  He’d told her she was beautiful and sweet and lovely, because … It seemed very much a kind of truth. It was inevitable, like the truth.

  And it was quite horrible that these forms of address, these descriptions had stayed with him – in fact, all that they’d given and received was quite impossible to dis-remember. This truth, these facts – probably truths and facts – they couldn’t help but be confusing, or a conflict of interest, or a cause for concern whether he was giving them or receiving because he’d known from experience they were the things one might say if one intended to reach in all the way and influence somebody. They were a kind of promise that things could get better.

  Things can only get better.

  Who would buy that?

  Something you sing when you think the worst is over and you don’t know how much you’ve still got that can be taken. It’s something you sing while you steal in and start to take.

  Beautiful, wonderful, lovely, sweet …

  And one can’t keep it clear in one’s head – can’t tell who is courting and who is being courted and if she gives me this strange new version of myself and I accept it as possible, then she has the power – quite naturally – to remove it.

  She won me. But somebody winning means somebody else gets beaten. ‘Mr August?’ Her warm hand had darted in and touched his wrist while the whole of Shepherd Market blinked.

  ‘Ah, th
at’s not my name.’

  And this desolation had passed over her face – this horror he’d kicked up in her without even trying.

  You can’t have that power over anyone – it’s just wrong. One couldn’t conceivably want it.

  Jon had swallowed down this wad of both hysteria and elation.

  She came for me, she sought me out and I’ve met her so often on paper, I’ve met her where it counts, where we are kind, where we can be beautiful, wonderful, lovely, sweet … Human beings are not generally kind or any of the rest. That’s why I wouldn’t study anthropology – too sad.

  He had stumbled through, ‘I … That is, it’s not my name, but – I mean, I am who you would suppose me to be.’ And that was his confession, admission and made him not safe … it let her know where to find him … here, in this skin. ‘I am who you think, it’s simply that I took another name in order to …’

  ‘Oh, oh, I did, too.’

  She was rushing her sentences, keen in a way that seems young and – yes – lovely and so forth. But what she said was a small disappointment.

  I’d wanted you to be Sophia – that name for you was in my head, was there when I spoke to you in my head. I thought that I might not be able to start again and redirect all of my daydreams, readdress them … not that we should consider my daydreams … I shouldn’t have them. I didn’t quite want you to be called Meg.

  ‘But I’m the man … I am who you intend, intended me to be …’ He was almost entirely sure this would condemn him to disappoint her, but still he went on with, ‘Yes.’

  And her face had become happy and it had been clear this was something he wanted to see regularly, always, forever. In just a moment, after maybe a pause for reflection, she had been suddenly and unreservedly happy. It had shown him that her happiness or lack of it would now be his fault.

  She’d said, ‘I’m Meg. Or Margaret. I don’t like Maggie. Peg … I had an Aunt Peg – she was a Margaret, she was a … If you don’t stop me I’ll keep on talking and you’ll get this just bad – you wouldn’t believe how wrong you’d be – this bad impression … If you thought that I talk all the time, you should have another think coming …’ And she’d already taken his hand – left hand – in hers and the grip had been dry and firm and warm and something he wished to continue. ‘My name is Meg.’

  ‘Hello, Meg.’ And Jon thinking that, Christ, she was sort of gorgeous. When you considered her calmly. ‘I’m Jon.’ Not a wonderful suit she’s wearing and grey’s a colour that can make one seem drained. Or not. Apparently not. Mainly she seems to be thinking that he isn’t well turned out – he recognises the signs, sees much the same look on his own face every morning. ‘I’m Jonathan, Jon.’

  And I’m not well turned out.

  Her skirt is a whisker too long.

  Only a whisker.

  But she’s wearing no make-up. Thank fuck for that. ‘I’m Jon.’ She is gorgeous.

  A gorgeous person cannot be with someone who is not gorgeous. It cannot last. Not unless the gorgeous person is unwell – and instability of that kind is also a reason why relations between people cannot last.

  She’d lightly brushed at his other hand – the one she wasn’t holding, the one freighted with other women’s letters which he couldn’t justify.

  In the course of being utterly pathetic, I’d set up a perfect cover – love letters from multiple sources.

  I only kept on with the others to give Lucy somewhere to hide. I didn’t need them. I had the one I wanted … I had the real …

  It’s me who’ll be caught with my dick out in the wilderness, isn’t it? Not bloody Lucy.

  And now I’m caught with … Oh, Jesus, not that.

  All of this had bolted through him in spasms while the woman – Meg, his Meg … it’s genuinely, really, a great name, Meg, once you think about it – Meg had frowned a bit, but was also observ-ably content that Jon should be Jon, more than content that he was there and just himself. He did seem to be all right with her.

  Perhaps fairly well turned out after all – passable.

  And a woman who lies in wait – gorgeous woman – should you find that her actions flatter you, or are appalling? Is it normal to discover they do both?

  Meg – she had good name, though, no matter what – Meg had continued, ‘I don’t mean to be weird. By turning up, finding you. I mean, it is weird – has been weird – the writing to someone you’ve not ever met is weird—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jon, it seemed, said this to women on instinct and was only occasionally wrong when he assumed that it was necessary. ‘But no, it isn’t the bad kind of weird. Possibly … It was … That is to say, Meg …’

  I wanted to say that she looked magnificent.

  Weird choice of word.

  Treasure. I never called her Treasure. Nobody uses that as a term any more, but I should have – it was appropriate.

  Meg had begun: ‘I just …’ And then she’d faltered and for a while – perhaps a long while – they had stood in the little square with nothing much going on around them, simply holding hands in the manner of people who did this on a regular basis and who were accustomed to the pressure of the contact, to the shape and safety and dearchristitssofuckinglovely of the touch: knuckles and fingers and palms and thumbs and skin.

  My naked skin against her naked skin.

  Ludicrous that it should feel so very … so very …

  But I’d spent months, by then, telling her that she was sort of keeping me alive and that I knew the way she was inside, the tender and warm and basically perfect way she was inside – not being seedy, talking about her soul – and I’d promised her that she was … that is to say … that she could be … that if I prayed, which I don’t, but that if I did I would pray for her to be safe always and I would hope for a God because then she would be all right. No God could exist who wouldn’t keep her bundled up and taken care of and …

  The thing is, I meant it.

  So he’d finally gathered his breath and suggested, ‘Well, there’s a coffee place right there, we could …’

  She’d laughed a bit – first time he’d heard her laugh. ‘They’re sick of me. I’ve just come from there. I used to sit and … when I was waiting for you and … not all the time, I have the job, sort of, like I wrote, I work with animals … but I waited quite often – when I could – and I bet myself that I’d know you when I saw you and I did. I did.’ This deep blue look she’d given him while he felt – the only word for this – proud that he resembled his written self – bizarrely pleased – because the self he had posted to her was far better than he’d hoped ever to be.

  And he’d told her another source of fresh and ridiculous pride, ‘I sometimes go there, too. I grab a coffee and read … Well … We might even have … Although we didn’t …’

  And they’d walked – Jon amazed that he could walk under these circumstances – back over to the café and sat in this atmosphere of close observation from the waiters and had been given cappuccinos, because that was what she liked and he didn’t mind, either way, had no opinion.

  There she was.

  Really.

  ‘I didn’t know that you would … I wouldn’t have … I …’

  There was Sophia who was, in fact, Meg. She was the one who’d written back and got him, got him entirely, caught him. And here he was being caught all over again.

  She wrote that she wouldn’t hurt me. Which is a cliché, I’m aware. But she wrote it. I never mentioned it was necessary. I never had to say. That apparently went without saying.

  There were other opinions and phrases and possibly facts. I appreciated them.

  But she caught me with the promise of no pain.

  The cliché every dodgy man will hand to every woman, every woman who piques his interest – ‘I’ll never hurt you.’

  Still, it’s easy to believe. What we want to be true is always easy to believe.

  I believed her. Even though I do know what women can be like.

 
She’s Meg, though – not women.

  I think that’s the case.

  And Jon had been gripping his too hot cup but not drinking while Meg smoothed at the back of his free hand, although, of course, it wasn’t free, was it? It was as caught as the rest of him, trapped all over.

  He’d been incoherent throughout. ‘Your eyes, they … You didn’t say they …’ Wanting to shake himself, but unable, he offered, ‘I usually like the photographs on the walls here. They’re for sale. Should I buy you one? They’re …’ And he’d seen that the thought of this hadn’t pleased her, so he’d resteered, reframed his narrative by – again – making a confession. This time it was, ‘I have to leave.’

  He wasn’t preparing to bolt. He was staring at her disappointment in him and how she packed it away so he might not notice if he weren’t paying pathological attention. She nodded and evaporated all the heat that had been pacing and lurching about in his blood.

  I wasn’t bolting, though.

  And he did have to leave soon, because he was late for a meeting – going to be late, there were things he had to do before the meeting – that wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t limiting her exposure to him so that she wouldn’t find his faults.

  Of course I was – the longer she was with me, the more she would see and I am too much and really not enough for anyone to have to see.

  But then there had been a fairly amicable, genuinely quite a delicate and pleasing kind of rush they could share while, yes, they did exchange their numbers and, yes, also a promise they would meet up properly and, yes … In fact, he’d forgotten to leave a number … He’d only wanted to, but it had felt … inappropriate … He had wanted to … He wasn’t going off into hiding or anything like that.

  Yes, I took her number.

  Yes, I wanted to kiss her.

  But, yes, I ran away.

  I walked fast away from the café and then made it to Piccadilly and bolted like fuck. Over the road and into the park and ran and ran. Unseemly.

  Full tilt.

  It felt so wonderful to get away.

  But I kissed her first.

  Full tilt.

  It felt completely …

  It felt like I was an overly lucky man.