Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  Oh.

  It’s beautiful, though. Being with him is beautiful and this, this, this stuff that you’re doing is beautiful, too – the kissing. He feels just the same as he is on paper and also different but not in bad ways. He is careful. The way he licks and flickers is careful, it’s delicate. But here he is, more of him, truly, and now here he is being with you in your mouth. His tongue is speaking to you in your mouth and he feels kind and funny and as if he’s making it up as he goes along – there are these pauses while maybe he does some thinking about what’s next. And he also seems pleased. You would say he felt happy.

  You have to get used to him, but it’s OK.

  He tastes serious, if that makes sense. He tastes like a person who means what he’s doing. And then his mouth tastes like your mouth which tastes like his.

  You’re not scared. He doesn’t make you scared.

  Oh.

  And Jon is aware that he is breathing as if he is running, as if he is labouring along in mud and weather and making the long loop back to school with no cheering because he always was the straggling lad, left out at the end of the pack – this is, this is, she’s letting me and I’m allowed and – but no running is required. He is kissing her and hearing how it sounds, like eating peaches in sunshine, and this is so much the place to be.

  She’s silk, glad silk, playing silk, but I can feel her being cautious, too. Jesus fucking Christ what did that man make her expect? Jesus, gentle Jesus. We have to be – me and Jesus, we have to be – the two J.C.s, we have to be careful of her, for her. We won’t hurt her.

  And the heat of her is what will keep him warm for ever, this is a fact.

  If she feels shy, if she feels worried, if there’s this … the absolute aim is to not hurt her.

  And he slows and eases, almost shuts up shop and simply rests, puts small moments of his lips on the crown of her head, on her worry. But she tenses her spine, herself – sideways, the cab seat … it’s awkward, this is awkward, I’m awkward – and she finds his mouth and the opening shape of hers insists – but this isn’t what we should do, not for much longer, not yet, this is for in the house – and here is the flavour of her smile while she presses into him, laps and tickles – safe, so safe, so safe, be safe – and she breaks out a sweat on him, and she turns his head, turns him, lifts him.

  But lifting is for when we’re in her house, her flat, with her bedroom, with her bed, Christ not yet. The place with her bed. But not her bed tonight. Jesus Christ, not yet. Not that.

  She draws him in until the roots of his tongue are tensed and she’s lovely and she’s something else he can’t quite place, there’s this shivering sense of her, and – you taste of love.

  Margaret Williams, you taste of love.

  Oh.

  The cab’s dark had bumped and jogged and leaned them fast against each other and then eased them just fractions apart – it moved them as it seemed to wish and they let it. And Jon had looked out once and seen Peckham High Street – regal magnificent fucking bloody gorgeous Peckham High Street – and Meg had tested the warm crook of his neck – licked so she could understand it – and rocked with him and with the journey. And the Queens Road Fire Station was oblivious as they passed. And Meg had told Jon, ‘We’re nearly here.’

  Oh.

  And his body had flinched at the news while he answered, ‘Oh. Not as far as I’d thought.’ And he’d withdrawn from her and sat straight-backed as a good schoolboy, slim as a heron, and looking ahead, looking about, as if he were anxious to remember his surroundings and take in the details offered by New Cross Gate, as if he should be visibly admiring every detail, because this might please her. He reached back to her and patted her thigh, elongated the touch, before he broke away and sat like a formal stranger on a midnight sightseeing trip.

  Which I virtually am.

  Fuck.

  His hands hunched in his lap. ‘Thank you, Meg.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For, for …’ His voice blurred and small as a sleeper’s. ‘For being kind.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I’m not.’

  The last few minutes of their journey had seemed to be wrong and emptying out and beginning to echo.

  And when they’d reached the flat, it had resisted them. Meg’s key had been foxed by the lock and this didn’t seem amusing and Jon’s offer of help didn’t seem to be helpful. Meg snapped at him and when she’d finally made the lock’s levers work, she burst Jon and herself forward and into the hallway as if she was furious and she didn’t quite manage to prove to him that she wasn’t. ‘Sorry.’

  She ushered Jon along too quickly. ‘Sorry.’ And as they went along she left the lights off because she knew her way and because the hall hadn’t been repainted and it had been an alcoholic’s hall so it didn’t look great. Still, the living room was cleaned up and sober and was really her best bet to impress him and was, anyway, the place you would offer a guest.

  When she’d stood with him at her side, though, halted by the sofa and switched on the lamp – had his unease close up next to her and her sofa – then she understood that everything she had was past its best and a fresh coat of paint wouldn’t fix it, would only make it worse. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why? Don’t be sorry. What for?’

  ‘If I could afford a decorator … Someone who could paint, or … I kind of … It’s …’

  ‘No … Meg.’ Jon had examined the room, slow-footed about – like a visiting heron – and he’d sounded – maybe truthfully – as if his surroundings had somehow been less alarming than he’d thought and Meg couldn’t tell if that was to do with what he’d expected from a drunk and a drunk’s home.

  After his over-laborious tour, Jon had returned to her and nodded, rubbed his ear. He then bent in and held her to him perhaps in the way an explorer might seize a colleague before they set off on an arduous ascent, some risk to life and limb.

  And then kissing had flared again while they stood, not quite daring the chairs or the sofa.

  Oh.

  John’s back had rested itself against the door frame – how did we get over here? – and her weight – like the best responsibility you could discover, like the only duty you could long for – her weight had rested itself, in its turn, against him and he’d been fine, entirely fine, absolutely fine, swimming and smooth all over in fine.

  And then it was not fine.

  Then it was not.

  Fuckfuckfuck … I can’t be like this, not with the day she’s had and the way it’s been for her and she’ll think I’m just the same as all the fucking, fucking fucking …

  His unforgivable body had begun prickling and stiffening unpreventably and he’d had to recoil his hips and also – ungallant – fend her off mildly – fuck – and the feel of her taking this badly and being insulted and worried when he didn’t want to worry her, only wanted to please her – it was beyond what he could …

  I’m a shit. I’m a shit with a hard-on. I knew this would happen. He dumps this half-crouching mess that he is on the sofa and tries to think.

  Oh, fuck this.

  Absolutely, it wasn’t that the kissing didn’t work.

  01:16

  LOCKING HIMSELF IN the bathroom seems the intelligent thing to do.

  Of course it’s not intelligent, it’s imbecilic, appalling.

  ‘Is your …? Where is the …? If you’d excuse me, I’ll just …’ And Jon is lurching from the sofa and then thumping along a passageway and upstairs, hands scrabbling at the banisters. On the landing he peers into an airing cupboard – scent of clean sheets, of her sheets – and this is a box room – don’t look, could be a bedroom, could have a bed – and here is what he needs – bathroom – frosted-glass panel in the door and he opens it with pathetic, monkey fingers and in he goes, here he goes, and pulls the toggle to let him have light.

  I don’t want light.

  And he shuts out the rest of the building and slots the bolt in fast behind him and then sits, slides, lands on the floor wit
h his legs crumpled out before him and his back against the lower panel of the door – wood, substantial – and this is absolutely not good.

  I want to be, I want this to be – later, in the end this will be … We’ll remember – please, we might – we’ll say, ‘Oh, and that time when you ran like a spineless, time-wasting git and hid yourself in the toilet, because that’s where shits belong. Or some such. Less abusive phrasing, because we’d be laughing about it. Please. Later this would be funny. Please. This would be the funny thing that stupid Jon did. But there won’t be a later, we won’t have one, so this won’t be funny. There won’t be later, there won’t be us.

  ‘Jesus fucking idiot Christ you bastard.’ He tells himself this in a voice that he has never before produced. He sounds oily. ‘You fucking moron.’ The voice of a man who always had no value and who is no longer even plausible. He sounds like Sansom.

  The feel of her body and how it apparently wants to be with his … she’s on him like pokerwork, cauterised through to his bones and he’ll never shake that, never be repaired.

  It’s my … it’s just that my … I don’t know how, Meg … and when you’ve had the hospital … and your life and the way it was and mine and when we hardly really … I don’t see that it would be possible … I don’t want or intend … And if you think I do intend … My dick intends, but it’s a dick, please can’t we ignore it?

  Fucksake, how can a man be afraid of his, of his …

  I’m not afraid of my penis, of my cock, of my dick, of my fucking Neanderthal dick.

  I am not afraid of it.

  I hate it.

  I need it to stop. I need it to leave me be and …

  She isn’t going to want it, she isn’t going to want me – I don’t mean because of today, of what happened today – I wouldn’t want her to even think of it today, but I mean she shouldn’t have to want it ever.

  He thumped the back of his head softly and over and over against what he guessed was the small rise of the frame holding the glass panel. It was pleasantly uncomfortable.

  And even if I wasn’t a screw-up … I mean, she’s a screw-up, she’s an alcoholic, she’s … I don’t know what that would involve … You can be great in writing, it doesn’t follow that … Once they can move you, once they can thicken you and they own you that way, because they own you when they’ve got your dick, you don’t think straight, they have you … You end up …

  He hit his head harder and wanted it to bleed so that he could go downstairs in a bit and tell her, ‘I have to go because my head is bleeding and you need to forgive me and let me go.’ He would do this – he would consider doing this – because he was a lying bastard and a man of the type that he found most despicable.

  She doesn’t fucking own me.

  Say anything for an excuse to bolt, won’t you?

  Fucking Bolter.

  She loves me.

  That’s worse.

  That’s wonderful.

  Worse.

  Once they love you and they make you love them and you miss what they are and you look forward to … and you think when you wake up, when you first wake up … and there’s this part of your day, this line through your day which is coloured in a way that nobody ever provided and so when she goes …

  I don’t want her to go.

  That’s the thing.

  I don’t want her to go.

  So I’ll go.

  Jonathan Corwynn Sigurdsson, this absurd man who is ashamed of himself and should be and who wants to lie on this linoleum for a while, just curl up and maybe he could cover himself with a towel – her towel that knows her body, dear God – and maybe if he slept then he would feel better after and he could …

  ‘Jon?’ Her voice with his name in it comes walking through the door like an animal he can’t face, like some transgression of the laws of physics. ‘Jon? Are you all right?’

  And Meg has no idea why particularly she’s saying this, because it’s obvious that he isn’t all right and it’s stupid probably to try and speak to him and she isn’t stupid.

  ‘Are you not well?’

  Meg feels bad for hoping that he isn’t well and yet she does hope it in this hot, sudden rush of asserted will that’s almost scary. Illness would give him a reason for holding her and then running absolutely away – something apart from getting disgusted by who she is and can’t help being.

  Jon and his disgust, his hating her, his doing whatever thing it is that he’s doing – they would all mean, would have to mean, if she was sure of them – would all mean the end for what had been this sweet thing. And there’s no drink in the house but, fuckit, there’s always drink somewhere, you can always whistle and find that supplies will come rolling up and shining.

  But it wouldn’t help.

  There is not a bad situation that my drinking will not make worse.

  And why bother to have the thought. I can’t. I am stuck with this – this – this shit.

  ‘Jon.’ She knows that she shouldn’t sound angry, because that will also make a bad situation worse. ‘Jon.’ Why not be angry, though? Because he’s not allowed to do this, he’s not right when he does anything like this, whatever this is. ‘JON.’

  And she tries the bathroom doorknob and it turns but – of course – he’s thrown the bolt and there’s no getting in. Maybe he is ill, maybe he’s got some stomach thing, some … Maybe he’s embarrassed by some …

  The whole mess, the whole bloody mess makes her kick the door hard, twice, and then realise that she is furious at just about the exact same time she realises that she’s hurt her foot.

  Ridiculous.

  ‘No, I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m well.’ Jon sounds small.

  A tiny heron.

  Nerves and wildness and no way of getting used to people.

  You want to wrap him up and cure him of whatever this is.

  ‘I, ah … Meg, I just can’t. I can’t. I’m scared is the thing and that’s …’

  He also sounds as if he would like her to be sorry for him.

  You want to wrap him up with a cloth put over his eyes like you do with birds to make them calm and then strangle him.

  ‘JON!’ And she kicks the door another three times and doing this is only painful and frightening and pointless, but it seems unavoidable in her mind.

  Each time she hits the door, or kicks it – Jon is guessing that Meg is delivering kicks – the impact jars through his head and neck and hurts him. This makes him happy.

  Meg, darling, sweetheart, baby, all those words – I’d be angry, too.

  I’d give up and leave a hopeless case like me to rot – let me deal with whatever policemen, or troubles, or silences, or waits come my way. Let me be alone.

  If she’d just even get away down to the living room again, or anywhere else, then I’d have a chance. I can wait until she’s gone and I can dodge outside probably …

  I don’t want to, though.

  I could dodge out and head off to wherever, to New Cross Road, to some road, there are roads. I could walk for a long time and when the sun came up I could flag down a cab. I’d be tired enough to stop my thinking by then. I could ask the driver to take me home.

  Except there isn’t home.

  Not if there isn’t us.

  The bathroom smells of her perfume and her soap. It’s a nice bathroom, a good one. Neat.

  ‘Meg, I—’

  ‘No, shut up! Fucking shut up!’ The wood at his back shudders softly as she undoubtedly sits down and rests against it.

  When she speaks again, the words seem to slip and drift out from her, they emerge strangely.

  Jon feels them glide under the door and then pool round him, being sad. The way he has made her sad soaks into him …

  The cause of this fuck-up is me, because I am a fuck-up, because of my cock.

  And a brief yelp escapes him, rather than a laugh, and he tells Meg – he turns his cheek to the bolted door and he tells her, ‘Unparliamentary language. Not out loud. In m
y head.’ And he breathes and his lungs fill with more of how she would smell after a bath, in the morning, in the evening, before bed. ‘Oh, Meg …’

  ‘Open the door, you fuckwit.’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’ Jon has the sound of a person surprised by himself and beyond his own control and the certainty of this works along Meg’s skin and chills it.

  He’s lost. I’ve lost him.

  ‘Meg, I … I do want to … I really do. There are all kinds of things that I would … You made me very happy. You do make me very happy. It’s only that I … There’s no point to me and please hate me, it’s the only way. I can’t think that anything would be enough, or work, or be worth your while, or—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ Meg’s tongue feeling disabled by unknown influences and wanting more than words to touch and making her sound like a bully, like the thing she would never want to be. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry, too, Jon. Honestly, though. Do shut the fuck up. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not going to do anything terrible to you. Do you think that anyone who meets you, or just looks at you, anyone at all, can’t tell that you shouldn’t have anything horrible happen to you? You’re something that no one should hurt. Like with animals – you’re meant to look after them.’

  When he hears this, Jon is surprised to find that he’s not at all unhappy to be classed as an animal.

  ‘It’s like with kids, Jon. There are things you don’t hurt …’

  He also likes being a thing – it sounds simple, almost effortless.

  She stops and he can hear the fall of her breath and wants to fit himself around it, wants to feel it on his neck, feel it warming him through his shirt – soft shirt – wants to feel it on his penis, cock, dick – wants her to be kind to his inexplicable self there and to not hate it, not laugh at all the other places about him that are horrible when you see him, the mess of him. He wants to be with her.

  He tells her, ‘People hurt kids. They do it all the time, they—’