Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  And Jon had cleared his throat, but not spoken, only raised her hand and placed his lips against each of her knuckles – hello, hello, hello, hello – finding out the details with his mouth.

  So that’s how that would be, that’s how he does that, investigates.

  And it was all right after that to hold on fast to each other and to have the flex and tuck of his breath pressed against her own. And it was all right to listen while he said, ‘The shop’s shut – where I collect your letters.’ She could feel the thrum of his words happening inside him, while he spoke. This was the touch and the sound of his voice. ‘Meg, I appreciate your … what you’ve …’ His arms had drawn in with a tremor and then relaxed slightly. ‘I would write, but I can’t, so I have to say while you’re here, because writing would be nonsensical and I am nonsensical, but not that much … I’ll say that I want you to go home and have a lovely evening and when you go to, when you sleep … I want when you sleep, I would like you to dream the best and finest and sweetest and feel well and be well and be happy and wake up happy. I would like you to wake up happy.’ She felt him press his face to the crown of her head. ‘I’ll tell you later. At midnight – how much I would like that.’ And then he stepped back and peered at her, while there was a dim noise from the pub at the corner, a dither of feet.

  Meg had nothing to say and wished she did and wished so much that she did, but she could only stand on tiptoe to kiss his forehead as if this might be what they always did. She was hoping to calm what was inside. It seemed necessary.

  And he liked it. I saw how he looks when something happens that he likes.

  She had held on to his hand afterwards while the seconds shone and darted and this part of their life was right here and clean and lovely.

  She had wished the time could be longer and deeper and more.

  I’m greedy – a greedy drunk.

  And he’d sent her the midnight text and begun that habit – their wishes sculling out across those few miles between them, regular like clockwork, regular like safety and all safe things everywhere – from home to home and room to room and pillow to pillow. Every night.

  He might be greedy, too.

  It is the late afternoon on a spring day. An assortment of children are climbing a tall street that leads to a park. They have formed a chain, one following the next, their arms pistoning forwards, or their hands resting on each other’s hips. As they jog upwards and upwards they make the noises of steam engines – trains in a time from before they were born. People in their gardens pause to watch them and the children are aware of being important and delighted and an event.

  Alongside them rush three women, who are more out of breath than the children and who are probably the mothers of most if not all of them. The women seem tired, but although they flag now and then, they cannot stop, because their children are racing and unstoppable, they are an inarguable joy and should not be prevented.

  At intervals, the women let out steam-whistle hoots, in lieu of doing anything more taxing. And sometimes they are also swept up by this forward motion, this train which is not a train, which is better and safer and more fun than any conceivable train. This makes them run and their faces change into softness and lightness and they laugh.

  There is never a point, though, when all of the women laugh together. At least one of them stays watchful, remembers herself, and becomes slower and heavier as a result. But they still run. They can’t help it. Everyone runs.

  The children have plainly been allowed to dress according to their own secret logic: there is a towel worn as a cape, there is a mask, there are wellingtons and sandals and a shapeless hat. One boy wears a little suit of black with white bones painted on it and clearly this running about and this being his dead self are both his most favourite things. He runs and runs – the bones of a boy.

  Everyone runs.

  20:55

  JON WAS USHERED up the ugly stairs of Chalice’s club – East Berlin could truly not have furnished any building more unsightly – and was then permitted to propel himself into the biscuity, overwarmed air of the Carrington Room. There were stacks of high-end chairs and a few folded tables, presumably ready for functions of some kind, but otherwise the long, low space was simply dominated by a hideous carpet and lighting of an oppressively revealing type.

  Chalice was, of course, not already there. It was Jon’s job to be the man who waits and who is taught, once again, that his time is of minimal value.

  He decided that he might as well be comfortable and took down a chair to sit on. He set it within sight of a lumpy oil painting depicting some barricade of note in Northern Ireland: 1970s uniforms, Saracens and loose bricks, an image from what, in the light of more recent adventures, now seemed a morally irreproachable and painless campaign.

  And that’s how they’re sold now, aren’t they – the Troubles? All soft hats and assisting the civil power – hearts and minds and didn’t we do well? War as a game show.

  His eyes wandered over the little greenish figures designed to convey sturdy British anguish and resource. He also considered the figures designed to convey civilian treachery and threat: the classic elongated silhouette of the firebomb-thrower, those cheap estate-dwelling flared jeans, the energy of inadequately disciplined youth.

  There’s something about chucking a Molotov cocktail, a bottle of Rafah lemonade, that always looks low-class. The poor man’s napalm.

  We have to call it asymmetric warfare these days, don’t we? Rather than burning despair. Depictions of the military at work have never quite been what they were since the static nature of the Western Front bollocksed their cavalry charges. People like horses. People do not like pictures of dead horses lying splay-legged and swollen in mud, being used as temporary landmarks by men who reinforce their trench walls with corpses, having nothing else to hand but an overplus of death.

  For an instant he remembered watching a tourist couple posing for each other, turn and turn about, grinning for the camera in front of St Paul’s annual plantation of war-memorial crosses …

  As striking a backdrop as any. No meaning required.

  Once your wars have been rebranded, re-rebranded – in the end any possible meaning wears away, or simply withdraws and leaves you to it.

  Teeth and smiles.

  That’s all you want in a photo … Or in a war.

  The portraits of current campaigns will have to show descending drones, perhaps the faces of their operators. The instant of accurate annihilation immortalised on canvas in a blossoming of flames – not the instant when the child runs out and all is beyond recalling. The soldiers won’t be there, because we prefer to wage wars without them, such people being servants of the state in which we no longer believe and, likewise, a concept of nationhood we actually should abandon in favour of more exciting definitions involving areas of consumption, zones of commercial influence.

  Can I betray my nation, if my nation no longer exists? What if there is no social contract and only a series of punitive arrangements forced upon me by supranational entities? What if these entities have their own, ideologically acceptable armed forces and an admirable ability to float on in glory and in light, high above any taxation or legal restraint? In that case, what is treason? One might ask that. One might.

  The painting was giving him a headache, either that or his day was giving him a headache – his day in combination with his personality.

  Does anyone truly believe they can outrun history, break free from reality, become transcendent, never pay any kind of price …? Running in camouflage, running in pullovers … Both sets of figures displaying the danger inherent in long memories and immoderate belief. Long hair to keep you safe on the streets, short back and sides to mark you as a target … The occasional civil servant blundering off to Derry, fretting about car bombs and trying it on in a mumble with squaddies, having a go at quoting equivalent rank … Those were the days. So I’ve heard.

  I am the civil-service equivalent of a captain – in a
fog with the light behind me.

  As if …

  Jon sniffed, swallowed.

  Gets it all out of the system, before I need myself to seem composed.

  It’s best to feel I’m simply hiding a pissed-off rant and nothing more … Play the passed-over man. So many reasons that I’m passed over and I truly should be, but let’s agree that it’s currently down to Valerie, to women, to the mail drop, the courting and maybe one odd conversation I had with another man’s wife in 1987.

  In 1987 – that long ago – some woman, somebody’s wife, told me things and I paid attention and I tried to …

  I asked questions and was quietly told that I shouldn’t, not thereafter, and also the conversation I thought I’d had with somebody’s wife … Well it hadn’t happened. I was mistaken.

  And nothing was sexual.

  Nothing is ever sexual.

  Nothing is ever said or ever has been, or ever could.

  So I stopped asking questions and I’ve behaved as a good boy ought to ever since, as far as any department oversight can know.

  I am safe. Look at me, please, examine – I’m so safe.

  I am not a manifestation of civilian treachery, civilian threat.

  ‘Like it, do you?’ Chalice was hamming up the military precision of his walk as he cleared the doorway and crossed the muffling depth of black and fawn carpet.

  All soundless is his progress – see, but do not hear where he comes.

  It’s somehow terribly tasteless for the likes of Chalice to sound as if they’re walking when they walk – audible effort is something for the other ranks, the boot-wearing classes.

  Or it’s meant for the high-heeled accompaniments to one’s evening – gowns and bags and running the show when they can, grabbing their old boys by the cock and leading them round … Not quite admirable, but I can see their point …

  Alternative sources of enjoyment for the quiet-footed gentleman – well, they’re entirely silent. At all times. Ask no questions, hear no silence.

  Jon didn’t spring to his feet like a well-trained subordinate when Chalice manifested. For one thing, Jon was weary. ‘I’m sorry?’ He was inordinately weary. He didn’t want to shake hands. He didn’t want to interact. He just wanted to sit.

  ‘Got your eye on our painting there, Jon. Like it? Quite an engagement at the time. Although the regiment gets no credit.’

  Chalice playing up how much he was at home here, rising on the balls of his feet, stepping, swivelling.

  At least Val left my cock entirely out of it in every sense. I should send her a card and thank her.

  ‘One does hope to be better appreciated.’ Harry Chalice, former man of action – although what action exactly was hard to ascertain – continued with what he surely imagined was an air of amiable dominance. ‘Unpopular wars – they still have to be fought. In fact, they demand our attention rather more than the easy sells. I think the public understand that better now, don’t you? Efforts to put the military view at the heart of our national conversation – they’re really bearing fruit.’

  He only does it to annoy.

  ‘Hearts and minds,’ Jon told him, not rising to the bait.

  Chalice paused overly near Jon, perhaps in an attempt to make him stand.

  Or perhaps it was an expression of disrespect. Most likely that.

  You can present your crotch to me as often as you like – I’m never going to blow you.

  ‘Hearts and minds, Jon. That’s right. Although if you’ve got their hearts, you don’t really need their minds, do you?’

  Naturally. When you’re in love you’ll do anything you’re asked.

  ‘Harry, it’s been a long day and I have another appointment …’

  Chalice backed away enough to simply be a man standing over his inferior colleague.

  He’s going to, isn’t he? He’s going to …

  And he did unfasten his nastily tight jacket and spread it apart, set his hands on his hips. ‘One of your many, Jon?’ He was showing Jon the full horror of an old-school pair of close-cut trousers: they hinted at cavalry britches, hugged the just slightly too generous thighs, while maintaining the emphatic line of their creases and deftly holding the neat little parcel where Chalice kept his sex.

  An officer blithely at play in the city. The prefect at play in the biggest school on earth, the one he never needs to leave, coat pegs and name tags all the way, from prep school to the House of Lords. All the way in all suitable directions. And nobody gets expelled, not any more, not really.

  Although I did hear Sandhurst nearly spat him out. In fact. Not much loved. If we were dealing with facts.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Jon happy to ignore the reference to Sophia, to Lucy – especially to Lucy. Jon delighted to not play along.

  ‘One of your pen pals, Jon?’

  And then, because today was today and because he needed distracting and because he could, because he could, because he could … Jon dropped his head and tried, ‘Well, you know me, Harry.’ He composed the properly knowing expression, the smile that tasted of contempt – the one with which he was always eventually confronted at parties, functions, receptions – the boys’-club sign of membership, the evident assurance of the man who knows women and finds them wanting, renders them wanting. The effort was distasteful enough to make him queasy for a breath. Then he looked up and showed himself to Chalice, hoped his nausea would pass, or at least not show ‘Yes … you know me. A man has to have an interest. If it isn’t the money, well then it’s the honey.’

  Absurd bullshit – and the bigger lies are easier, are exhilarating – keep his eyes, let him think this is your true self, the only secret you’ve been hiding.

  Jon let his mouth shrug slightly and then added, ‘We play … And they play, too, the ladies. They do know how, always have … They just want the rules skewed in their favour. They want it to be noted they’re unhappy and put-upon. Duly noted. And then they pretend they don’t welcome our attention and haven’t got us on eggshells and taken our jobs.’

  Steady, steady, don’t be completely preposterous.

  ‘It’s all just the usual game, though.’ He nodded to the painting, as if it were a beach scene, a domestic interior evoking only casual nostalgia. ‘Back then – a young chap like yourself, you wouldn’t remember – we operated honestly. Men and women knew what was expected and they had a sense of humour. There was the pill, the girls got that. There was Alex Comfort – she could read the manual, see the pretty drawings, tasteful. Nothing “Readers’ Wives” about it.’

  Val thought Comfort was grotesque – no pun intended. Sketches of some hairy European couple being happy and exchanging artisan pleasures … not quite her thing.

  Jon continued, the words dizzyingly untrue and therefore thrilling, ‘No one, so to speak, tied anyone down.’

  Being Chalice must always feel like this – the exhilaration of deceit.

  ‘If objections were made, they were just signs of her paranoia – they were her hormones kicking in. What we currently have to put up with …’

  It seemed Chalice wasn’t sure about this. He didn’t react.

  Come on. You want to believe it. Come on.

  And Jon felt the pressing need for a short Scotch, while feeling also as if he had drunk one.

  Then a grin emerged. Chalice had decided to be glad.

  Flowering like nightshade, like hemlock, like flames.

  Chalice sniggered. ‘Well, Jon … I did wonder. We have wondered … What does he get out of it? If anything? Where does Jon’s heart lie? What occupies Jon’s mind? You were a bit of an enigma. Which is never wise.’

  ‘Now you know, then.’ Jon being as brisk as he could, although he realised that Chalice wouldn’t let things lie without kicking about a little.

  ‘A man who lets his wife screw around like that, who can’t stop her – that man has no balls. That man is wanking with an empty sack. Is what I thought.’

  Jon setting his fingernails into the palm of
the fist Chalice can’t quite see. ‘Open marriage. Not what you’d want to make public. Or I chose not to.’ He could feel himself sweating slightly and couldn’t work out how not to. ‘Valerie had other opinions …’

  ‘You chose the dignified option.’ Chalice nodding with only a trace of irony. ‘Good for you.’ And there was the reptile flicker of a darker smile. ‘Although not good for your career. If you’d talked to us …’ And then another expression, the one Jon had wanted to see.

  The one that says, ‘Thank fuck, you’re as dirty as me in your sad, old way. This means we can do business and that’s grand, because doing business is all there can be, or ever will be, world without end …’

  Jon modulating his tone to reflect a manly desire for cooperation and common sense: ‘I don’t like to be beholden, Harry. But – if you wouldn’t mind – I’d be very grateful if this went no further …’

  I’ll tell you I trust you – when you cannot conceivably be trusted – and so you’ll trust me.

  That’s the thing about your kind of man – you lack imagination, so you do great harm. But because you lack imagination, you can be – in the long run – easily and inexorably undone. As ruined as a Lloyd’s name, as a Madoff client – remember what happened to them? There are so many breeds of mug punter. There are so many innocents. They all get screwed.

  Jon leaned his legs out ahead of him and pretended to stretch, rejoiced in the fact that Chalice could not possibly know (and wouldn’t, in any case, like) the speech in Pimpernel Smith where the quiet and mild and clever and overlooked professor of archaeology politely lectures the Nazi holding a gun on him.

  Smith predicts that what is wrong must plod onwards, grind down its own wrong road until it has destroyed almost everything and can only continue destroying, can only destroy itself.