Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  Here it is.

  THE BUSINESS OF STORYTELLING.

  Which is now all the business there is, all the truth there is. No goods, no services, nurses, teachers, doctors, artisans, soldiers, warders, guardians, leaders, technicians, experts, knowledge, justice, privacy, safety, dignity, mercy and so forth.

  This is what we have instead.

  THE BUSINESS OF STORYTELLING.

  And I am in this business.

  I was in this business.

  I think I have decided to retire.

  Fuck the lot of ’em, I say.

  Yeah.

  Shining directly ahead is the tower that blades up into the soft sky above the station: overmastering height and bleak windows, illumination that gives an impression of festive threat. The thing is too big to be comfortably visible, even comprehensible, once you have drawn this close.

  Here it is.

  The open piazza beneath it is blighted by its influence and even on a sunny day those who pass under its glimmer and shadow tend to scuttle anxiously, rather than linger, rather than wait.

  But Jon is going to wait.

  She isn’t here.

  Beyond him is even more glass: the walls and doors to the station concourse – another wide and immanent space.

  She isn’t here.

  Peering through he can see – of course – no rush-hour crowds, no heads raised to watch the indicator boards, intent like worshippers, like animals standing ready to be startled.

  She isn’t here.

  Without its people, the place seems burdened, packed with a strange energy, on the verge of being reckless.

  She isn’t here.

  One of the late, of the final, trains must have straggled in, because now a small wave of passengers appears. They amble, or rush towards the Underground. They head out of the exit that leads past him and walk in the outside air, gravity serving them nicely. A man by himself and draped in, no doubt, significant colours trots by and lets loose the kind of cries that end a Friday and start a weekend. The man’s calling does not summon companions, does not stir up echoes of agreement, as he seems to expect. He shakes his head and sways on.

  Jon studies the angles of backs and shoulders, the differences of walks and hair, bags, coats and … I’ve no reason to bother – they’re not her. Jon doesn’t know these people: they are strangers, they are irrelevant to his purpose, they are in the fucking way.

  If this were a film, they would be the crowd. You don’t need to care about the crowd when it’s a film – the crowd is only there, all dressed up and shifting about, to make the world look real and populated. The people aren’t people, they’re scenery, the backdrop.

  She isn’t here.

  This entire experience is becoming very much like watching a film, or dreaming a film, or discovering a film has opened up and folded one inside its working.

  Jon can’t tell if this is good or not.

  She isn’t here.

  He wraps his arms around his chest. And it is past midnight and they haven’t wished each other sweet dreams and this fact seems terrible and sad.

  But I can fold my arms and I can feel and believe this is me. I am holding on.

  And all of this fucking glass and all of this fucking waiting and all of this fucking …

  Please. Please.

  The pervading emptiness of an almost closed railway station has started to invite a weird ascension, to demand that he drift up, unanchored, clawing at glass to slow himself until he breaks into the depth of the night and becomes all lost and gone.

  No, no, no. Feet on the ground.

  He clings tighter to his own ribs – caught in the arms of someone he does not love and who cannot love him.

  I am stressed. This is simply stress. I am not in danger, I only feel as if I am in danger. A feeling is not a fact.

  Men with unnamed professions might arrive soon to ask him questions he can’t answer – soon, or this Monday, or this week, tonight – without making a proper appointment, without warning – in four minutes’ time, or in no time at all – and disgrace and disgrace and disgrace will follow after.

  But I am not currently in danger.

  He moves, still hugging this invisible parcel of nothing, palms on his shoulder blades, and he eases into the actual station precincts. This is not an effort to put a solid roof over his head, not an attempt to prevent any type of yanking levitation, a wildly floating display of guilt.

  Like the test for witches.

  There he is – the informer, transgressor, traitor, coward, the too-little-and-too-late man.

  Another train deposits a scatter of travellers. He knows none of them. He loves none of them.

  It would take a while – if I can be logical – for Meg to get here and I’m not sure – night bus, night train, Tube – how she would be arriving, if she is arriving …

  The city’s provision of public transport, while not ideal, still offers a varied and flexible …

  It wouldn’t be that hard. She has choices …

  I should have offered to send a cab …

  I should have said I would come to meet her wherever she was …

  I should have arranged to be somebody else …

  He wasn’t even sure which direction he should face: outside for buses or inside for trains, for the subway … The tiny, repeated bewilderments of his situation, the turning, the shuffling, the knowledge that he was so extremely, pathetically obvious – a man expecting someone who never arrives – these factors combined to mean he was viewing the world – again – through a wet haze of splitting light.

  A man expecting someone who never arrives and therefore makes him weep.

  If she finds me like this …

  Infantile.

  If she finds me with my back turned …

  Discourteous.

  He has so many worries, like dogs scratching at a door.

  He has so many pleasures and they scratch too and he does want to let them in, in, in.

  I like the way she shouts.

  I am of the opinion that hearing her shout has made me a different shape.

  Jon blinks to regain his composure and then rolls his gaze back and forth and round and round, scanning.

  His briefcase should be set down neatly between his feet.

  But he can’t recall when he last had his sodding briefcase. It has gone absent without leave. He has maybe left the thing at Becky’s flat. If it is genuinely lost, gone astray, abandoned, this will be both a professional failing and a shame.

  Additional disgrace.

  Before he can avoid it, he recalls another time – lost, gone astray, abandoned – a previous wait on a railway platform. The memory falls on him like water, soaks in.

  He was in the big – it seemed big – main station at Inverness and holding his dad’s hand and they were both standing to meet a train, because Jon’s mum was coming back on it from somewhere, from her own mum’s perhaps, or else perhaps she’d been at Auntie Bartlett’s. And the whole occasion had been not as advertised.

  Dad had said the expected and inevitable things – We’ll be glad to see her, won’t we? He’d gone on about tiredness in women and the need for pleasant resting and a quiet house and Jon being a good boy for ever to keep the Sigurdsson household free of further tiredness. Jon had not exactly seen, but certainly perceived this threat of illness in his mother as a kind of smoke, black and thick around everyone’s ankles, eager to trip them up. We’ll all go to the pictures tomorrow, would you like that? Other treats were suggested as possibilities – Jon’s mother not being herself exactly a treat – and every offer was only a promise that showed what came next was going to be appalling.

  Inverness Station was where, for the first time, Jon had been able to watch while what someone said and what was the truth were peeled right apart from each other, like skin from muscle, like muscle from bone. This was proper lying, important and adult lying. This was the kind of lying that meant reality hung about them in sticky shreds and t
hat it was ugly and made no sense.

  Dad’s face smiling but not happy and his hand being almost violent around mine and I was thinking that we’d enjoyed ourselves while we were being alone together and that it had been different from how it was with Mum in a way that I’d liked – different from the stuff before which I couldn’t quite remember, but which was bad. Dad told me the badness would never happen again. He told me so unconvincingly that it was almost not a lie. Mum always brought the badness in with her – we knew that. We couldn’t please her. We did try. I did try.

  Dad told me how wonderful everything would be. His eyes were frightening while he spoke to me, because they looked scared and that made me scared. He dropped us both inside the whale, let us be Jonahed.

  I am the spineless son of a spineless man.

  Jon had done what his father plainly wanted and believed several unbelievable things, as hard as any heart could. There on Inverness Station, he had agreed that sadness would be happiness and badness would be right and that all would be well. Because Jon was a child then and children understand such matters absolutely, he had been certain that make-believe never works.

  Jon had caught sight of his mum – one little case with her, small and serious woman, wiry, and approaching him along the round-shouldered, metal perspective of the train. The big carriages, just arrived, seemed to be lending her stability. When she reached him, Jon was already crying. The tears had been open to multiple interpretations and had therefore suited the occasion.

  She will be here. Meg will be here. She almost, mostly said that she would. I asked her to.

  Please.

  A dog howl of wanting her lacerates along his spine. He paces for a while to create a distraction, his feet paddling at the unfriendly floor, seeming bizarre. The whole building offers him far too many opportunities to see himself, reflections of reflections.

  Here it is.

  Jon Sigurdsson: no fool like an old fool, tall fool, stooped fool.

  But please. Please.

  His watch shows that midnight has passed and this is tomorrow. And his image shows that he is empty, a hollowed man with gangling feet and heavy fingers.

  Taptaptaptap.

  Nice coat. Awful trousers. A shirt that would feel gentle if she touched it.

  Taptaptaptap.

  Please.

  I used to think nobody waits in the way that a child waits for something good, anything good, for something to be mended.

  And Jon’s weight is on his left heel as he turns, slowly. He is trying make sure that somebody catching sight of him would not see a clumsy figure, an unpalatable silhouette.

  Taptaptaptap.

  He is certain that his expression is unsuitable and that his mouth is ugly.

  Taptaptaptap.

  And there’s this noise which is not in his head – taptaptaptap –

  it’s a fact and it’s coming from somewhere to his left and it sparks towards him, quick across the great, big floor – taptaptaptap – and it’s the sound of footsteps.

  Oh.

  It is the sound of footsteps because somebody immeasurably lovely is walking and now walking closer and now she is here.

  Oh.

  Meg halts beyond Jon’s reach, but not so very far beyond it.

  Oh.

  ‘That’s …’ Jon’s voice tumbles out of him like stupid pebbles. ‘I’d … I thought …’ And his arms fall, ungainly, to his sides.

  I thought I would die.

  Which is melodramatic.

  But really I do think that without you I may die in every sense that matters to me.

  Which isn’t something I can tell you, of course it’s fucking not.

  ‘I thought you might take the bus.’

  Oh, fuck. Well, that made her trip worth the effort.

  ‘I don’t like buses.’ Meg folds her arms. ‘The Tube’s warmer – at night.’

  They call it small talk because it’s smaller than you should be and so it strangles in and snuffs you out.

  ‘Is it, I mean, is it safe, though? I mean, on the Tube at night are you safe …?’

  Meg is clearly dressed for the meal they haven’t shared – for making one straightforward journey and then sitting and giving him a good impression. That she’d do such a thing, try to do such a thing, is impossibly moving.

  And I’m getting a good impression, I am impressed – but I always would be, no matter what – but thank you for making the effort – thanks.

  By this point, though, the hours have passed and she isn’t dishevelled, not that, but her finish has faded, the effect she must have wanted is no longer crisp. She looks weary, too.

  Poor darling.

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I – sorry – keeping you up so late and no dinner and being on the Tube at night …’

  I want her to look the way she would when everything’s fine and all right and she can relax.

  Jon raises his hand to flatten his hair, or smooth it, discipline it in some manner, only then he doesn’t bother and this makes him probably appear to wave when there is no need to because she is here, absolutely here, terribly here.

  Oh.

  He makes fists and puts them into his overcoat pockets. He regrets this at once – it seems to put such a limit on his options, ‘Oh … But you … Because I was facing the bus stop and expecting … That’s why I didn’t see …’

  Oh.

  He wishes to be unconscious. He wishes to be on his knees, or curled on his side – plainly incapacitated instead of standing and being this apparently capable shape.

  Oh.

  And then she steps in a pace and reaches out to him and pauses, offering.

  Oh.

  And there is no way to signal how altered he is by this, with this – more all the time – with this baying and coursing happiness.

  Oh.

  And up and out of his pocket he lifts one fist and loosens it, loses it, as if this is simple and easy to do and …

  Oh.

  She takes his hand. ‘And when you’re on the Underground you get a better view. I think. Of the people. You can see the people more.’

  Oh.

  She is here, Meg is here and keeping his hand safe and this means he will not have to fly away.

  He finds himself telling her, ‘That’s … very sensible.’ And he squeezes her palm and her fingers answer, squeeze him back, and this is perhaps how they’ll have to speak for at least a while, because he sees no hope in talking when he cannot speak, only make these small noises. ‘Quite the right choice, I’m sure. Good evening, I mean, good morning, I mean hello. Hello, Meg.’

  He’s been waiting like a child until he can say the right thing to make her seem happy, even slightly glad, about being here and seeing him. ‘I’m cold, Meg. Sorry. I’m really cold. I—’

  Oh.

  And this is what makes her come to him completely, right in, until she is fitted to him, locked, makes his whole skin ask for more of her so that he nearly stumbles.

  Oh.

  She is alive, alight, astonishing, her head worrying at his breastbone, his shirt above his breastbone, shifting.

  Oh.

  And these are her shoulder blades and these are the quiet, small knuckles of her spine and this is the swoop to the small of her back and this is when she slips her arms – feels determined, feels entitled – pushes them inside his coat and inside his jacket – the way that I have to remember and couldn’t forget and she did once before, inside, inside – inside until she has caught his waist and he is so delighted that his shirt must be tender for her while her touch burns in.

  Please.

  They stay like this.

  Please.

  They stay.

  Here it is.

  They catch each other’s breath and mend it.

  A man and a woman sit in a living room. The walls have been recently repainted in a warm shade of cream, the skirting is also immaculate in a slightly darker shade of crea
m. Someone has taken up the carpet and sanded the floorboards in a way which makes them look slightly rough, but also clean, scrubbed. A large rug – obviously new – glimmers with oriental patterns in dark blues and reds at the foot of the sofa. These efforts at refurbishment make the furniture – a nondecript bureau, two armchairs, a low table, a bookcase, that leather sofa near the rug – they make the furniture look both slightly tired and slightly relieved. Each item has the air of an object which feels that everything may be all right from hereon in.

  It is late, past midnight.

  The tall, red curtains have been drawn and the room’s only light spills from a small lamp – perhaps a family favourite, perhaps a lucky find from some market – this dusky-pink glass shade suspended from a polished brass stand. Art deco.

  It is tomorrow.

  But neither the woman, nor the man has slept – not in almost twenty-four hours – and so they are both, in a way, insisting that it should still be yesterday.

  It is yesterday.

  The man is wearing a navy overcoat with a lighter blue jacket beneath and has his hands caught deep in his coat pockets. His knees, in navy corduroy, are crimped together, legs angled away from the woman who is beside him on the sofa. His shoes are long and dark and glossy and seem ashamed to be set on the rug. The woman is also still dressed to cope with being out of doors – she’s in a charcoal skirt suit, rather dated, and a black trench coat.

  The man gradually drops his head further and further forward, letting his torso follow after. He folds at the waist until he is resting along and over his own thighs. His forearms and hands reach up to wrap around his neck and the back of his skull. His posture suggests that he expects to be attacked soon, or that he is a passenger bracing himself to survive an emergency landing.

  The woman leans back and covers her face with her palms.

  They both stay like this for some time.

  01:12

  IT WASN’T THAT the kissing didn’t work. The problem was more that it did.

  Oh.

  The cab had swallowed them into its dim interior and the driver had been cheerfully silent while they …

  Oh.

  They were on their way.

  Oh.

  Meg opening her lips because of course, sure, this is the kind of stuff that happens and how you find out who he is when he does these things, these things which are what men, in the end, will always ask for.