Serious Sweet

by A. L. Kennedy

  She knows about that. I’m telling her things that she knows – as if she’s an idiot.

  His hand – before he asks it to – reaches and finds her hand and cuddles round it, makes a nest for it, makes sure that he is gentle as he should be.

  If we can’t be tender, if I can’t be tender, then it’s not possible to be anything. I believe that and my hand believes that also.

  ‘Meg, I’ve told things to the press. I’ve broken the rules about that. But the rules don’t work and I should have probably – definitely – broken them before. But I didn’t say the things I most wanted to tell – what I could find out wasn’t enough. There were things about children and … No one was interested. No one ever managed to keep the information, to keep what I passed on about the children from being lost. Everything always got lost …’ His hand moves, leads his arm, lets it curve around her shoulder and he says, ‘Meg, good morning. Hello. And what comes next might be quite complicated, but it will be better than what was before. In a way. Is how I would say it. I mean …’

  And Meg watches him make his sideways and frowning smile. ‘Quite complicated.’

  ‘I’ll keep you out of it – only out of that … Safety, you know …’ And he takes her hand again, holds it like a quite complicated and delicate present and he kisses it for a while in tiny ways and tiny ways and tiny ways.

  ‘Jon?’

  His mouth answers, still close to your fingers and so what he says brushes and gloves over the back of your hand, ‘That’s me, yes. I’m here, yes. Your boy is here, your mannish boy, like it says in the song.’

  ‘I would like a walk.’

  ‘That’s … Then we’ll have a walk. I’ll make myself – if you don’t mind – more presentable and then we’ll do that.’

  The temperature of this stays on your skin.

  04:38

  HER SHOWER – good God – still damp underfoot from where she has showered – have to let her go first, that’s obvious – damp from where she must have stood and you are naked, naked, naked in her house and the steam which is touching your body is here and the steam which has touched her body in traces here also and – ape hands scrabbling – and this is her soap which has been …

  Inevitable, really.

  Farcical man that you are, wet-headed and ignoring your erection while it ignores you and …

  But it insists. That’s what it’s for.

  It is not a demonstration of anything that’s …

  I’m not doing wrong.

  Oh, Jesus.

  I’m not being wrong.

  Oh, Jesus, Meg.

  Eyes shut and the water running and monkey fingers and don’t let her hear and don’t let her know and she mustn’t know, you think, about this, unless at some other time you might tell her, but you’re being …

  And later …

  Perhaps.

  With her.

  Later.

  With her.

  In some way.

  In some gossamer fucking way.

  Jesus …

  Please.

  Please.

  Like a dog howling, a monkey howling – it feels like a howl through your muscle, under your skin which is in the steam, which has …

  And the tilt back of the head.

  The small pummel of the dropping water, the small pummel.

  For you, for you …

  And in behind your eyelids there is black and there is red.

  Anarchy and revolution.

  For you, for you …

  And the world beyond, shaken.

  And this sweet that you can breathe and be and you’re not so dead as you’d thought, you’re still standing.

  Solid and standing.

  And …

  And …

  Here it is …

  Oh.

  And there’s this shiver all through you, but you’re happy and there will be a plan, some kind of plan, there will be sweetness.

  Oh.

  Subsiding.

  Not quite.

  Oh.

  We’ll kiss now. We’ll always kiss.

  And you’re stepping out for her towel, for the folded and ready and gentle thing she left you.

  And you’ll dress in clothes that are already warm with her scent. You’ll dress in whatever order you feel is right. No tie to wear this morning – you’re let out of school.

  Stepping out from the bath like a big chord just opened, like it’s kicking, like you could be the mannish boy who’ll do all right.

  It’s only love. There won’t be anarchy or revolution, there will be the other thing which is harder, which is love, which is the practice of love.

  I am not ideal and my position is not ideal, but it is also not impossible, surely.

  05:25

  THEY WALK OUT together, climbing a touch higher than her house is, strolling on the Hill.

  The air is still dozing, cool, it presses against their faces and has the taste of greenery in it and of the moving world. A few windows shine along her street – in early-woken houses, stayed-awake houses, ready-for-work houses, worried, or ill, or loving houses. They may be shining for any of the reasons that can put an end to sleep. There is a small trace of music from a basement, it drifts.

  They don’t speak.

  Jon hums something under his breath and the small sounds of their feet keep time and cross time and syncopate as they go.

  The Top Park is waiting for them, full of sky.

  When they have dipped through the gates, taken the dim path past the empty tennis courts, Jon begins, ‘There was this myth …’ He leans momentarily towards Meg so that their shoulders meet and this makes her decide to set her arm around his waist, to keep him closer, deal with the stride of his long, heron legs as best she can.

  He continues, ‘A medieval story about beavers – don’t laugh – and beavers were meant to be extremely intelligent, because they built things, I suppose, they were architects of a kind. Apart from their clever brains – which nobody wanted – and their pelts and meat, which were both popular at the time, people found that the beavers’ – excuse me – testicles were of immense value. They contain musk. And the poor creatures would get hunted sometimes mainly, you know, for their testes. And the story went that, being ingenious animals, the beavers would see any hunters approaching and – to save themselves – they’d look their pursuers in the eye, then bite their own balls off and run away, leave them behind. No balls, but alive.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Mm hm. Cautionary tale. “He has the sagacity to run to an elevated spot, and there lifting up his leg, shows the hunter that the object of his pursuit is gone.” Is how they put it, if I recall correctly … It’s nonsense, of course.’

  And they are clear of the shadows now, off the path and out on the hilltop, walking across the wide curve of grass towards the gleam and shimmer of the city, its night shape.

  ‘The story made me laugh when I was a student and then I would think of it later. Later it would be a story about me … But now mine have – I think – grown. Back. I think. Inconvenient.’ And he laughs in his way that isn’t quite laughing and slips his arm to her waist – this mild rearrangement of arms – and they stop, stand.

  And there is London, staring at them, broad in the dark: the coloured prickles and restlessness, the gape of emptinesses, blanks.

  Jon hasn’t quite seen it like this before, ‘Oh.’

  ‘It cheers me up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She can feel the clifftop breathlessness racing in his lungs, it moves against her arm, speeds her, too, ‘That’s where we met.’

  ‘Which makes me like it more than I did.’ He shifts away from her and removes his coat, puts it down on the grass, with the lining uppermost, that dull gleam of silk. ‘Let’s sit and watch it wake up.’

  ‘There are benches.’

  ‘I don’t want benches, I want to sit on watered silk with you.’

  ‘You’ll ruin your coat.’

 
‘Necessary sacrifice for the occasion.’ He duly sits, above him the lack of stars, the hiding of stars. She can make out his outline, can tell that he has crossed his long legs and that his knees are almost up about his ears and a little comical. ‘And dry-cleaning is a wonderful thing. Come on. Be with me.’

  She joins him and together they see and see and see the bright traces of the lives upon lives that are burning, floating unsupported in the thoughtless dark. She kisses his fingers and speaks to them: ‘Down there I saw a kid have someone play a saxophone, only for him. And a man who caught a balloon instead of ignoring it. And two women who helped another woman when she was upset – this disabled woman on a train. They’ll be there tonight, this morning. Or they’ll have passed through and gone home, gone to wherever was next. But they’ll still be who they are.’

  ‘These are, these are people from your collection?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll show you – if you want. I have them all written down. They would make you cheerful.’

  ‘I’d like that. I think I … Cheerful is appreciated.’ And his hand, the knuckles of one hand, smooth at her hair.

  She leans back slightly towards the touch. ‘The other day this older lady was riding a bus with this little boy and resting her chin, just over the top of his head, hugging him – her grandson, maybe. You could see in her face this was the best thing she could imagine doing in the whole of her life. There was nothing better. She was shining. And he was only sitting and a bit bored and didn’t notice, didn’t realise at all that he was making someone so beyond herself, just by living.’

  ‘Isn’t that sad?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jon. It’s only sad if love is always sad in the end.’

  ‘Oh.’

  And they pause and neither of them says what they believe love might be in the end, perhaps because they aren’t sure, or else because they’re superstitious about it. They may be afraid it can hear and will listen and then contradict. That could be the case.

  And somewhere a blackbird begins a tumble of song, too early but very lovely and alone.

  ‘I was walking on a Sunday afternoon, about a block away from here, and up in a window this boy had a toy pistol and was aiming it out and someone down on the pavement noticed and put her hands up – he started smiling then and she’s smiling and it’s terrible in a way, but the gun isn’t a gun and he isn’t firing, he can’t fire, and he’s laughing. They were both laughing …’

  And Jon moves very quickly – those levering arms and legs – and he kneels up behind Meg and his arms are locking around her and clinging and his face is pressing, his mouth is pressing, at the side of her neck. He searches in at her skin. ‘You collect all the people I can’t help.’

  And the dawn is coming, this greyness flattening out the night’s possibilities. The park begins to be only a park, the grass muddy. ‘You collect all the people I can’t help.’ His voice not loud, but hard. ‘You collect the ones who will be hurt. You collect the ones who are hurt. And … Operation Circus and Operation Ore and Operation Hedgerow and Operation Fernbridge and Fairbank and Orchid and Operation Midland, Operation Enamel … I tried at least to look after some of the children, to make people know what happened to them. Not because anything happened to me. No one harmed me in that way.’

  She can feel the tremor in his muscles as he holds her faster, closer. ‘If a human being will not help another human being, just because that’s meant to happen, if they don’t understand the truth of the necessity of that – every time, every time – then what is the point of us? We’re not worth the bother.’ The words beside her ear and in her hair and he’s talking to her and not talking to her at all. ‘In the end, you see, in the end, it’s all violation, it’s all the abuse of children. The actual child abuse, it simply fits with all the other abuses of people who were children, who had innocence, people who are powerless, or trusting, or weak, or just alive – alive will do. When you make food impossible, when you steal away shelter, when you make someone abject, what’s that? I mean, what is that? When you do that you put something filthy, unspeakable, you shove that inside someone’s days and their mind and their soul … or not soul, spirit … without even being there. Isn’t that a kind of rape?’

  After this he breathes and breathes and cradles Meg’s head with his hands, puts his palms over her ears, as if he is afraid of what else he will make her hear. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Because of you … because the … I don’t want to …’

  ‘Don’t.’ She whispers this, so the world cannot listen to her, only him. ‘Be whatever you need to, but not sorry. Fuck that.’

  ‘I’ve never been so fucking furious. And so fucking happy.’ He breathes again. ‘That’s how I feel.’

  And they sway their heads together, they nuzzle and smooth each touch and strong light comes intruding, comes screaming up from beneath the horizon and unfurls and it’s today and Meg and Jonathan rock against each other, they just rock and that is all there is for them at this moment – the knowledge that they are unsteady and together and unsteady and together – and new birdsong begins in skeins and bursts, while they taste salt and they believe they are saving each other, that two people are being saved, which is two more people saved than yesterday, and a handful of parakeets makes its first pass overhead – tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw – in those unasked-for colours that never were here before.

  Then Meg lifts Jon’s right hand.

  My hairy-knuckled, miswired animal hand.

  She kisses it as if it were spun sugar, or a model of his soul, and he nods and is single-minded.

  Here it is.

  Love.

  Here it is.

  06:42

  AN ILL-KEMPT COUPLE are sitting on a hill above a well-known metropolis.

  They are side by side and laughing.

  They are side by side and crying.

  They would rather be here and die of it than have to be anywhere else.

  Here it is.

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  Copyright © A. L. Kennedy 2016

  A. L. Kennedy has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published by Jonathan Cape in 2016

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library