Serious Sweet (43 page)

‘The specialist said this was possible and that the pain wouldn't be too bad and you could get injections and this topical cream as well, which can be a bit of a joke when you say it to yourself – like the cream is keeping up with the news … You would like to trust the specialist. She visits you next and doesn't check who you are, or where you live, or how long you've been alive and this seems slapdash. But she does remember that you'll have no
anaesthetic. You can see she's thinking hospitals aren't arranged to deal with conscious people.

‘You wait for an hour and you take the tube of anaesthetic cream – topical, that's funny – they've given you and go with it to the bathroom – you worry about the cleanliness of the bathroom – and you fill the urine sample bottle you've been given and you wash your hands and then you put the warm little tub on the edge of the sink – which seems unhygienic of you – and you apply the cream where you're guessing it should go and you hope that it works.

‘You wait for another hour, which is an hour longer than you were told you would have to be here.

‘You shudder with the cold, you try and hide yourself in away from it and you stop reading your book. You go and apply more cream.

‘You wait for another hour and other people have left for their procedures and have returned, flat-out, and they've got dreaming faces. The anaesthetic has made them happy. You go and apply more cream and you can't feel anywhere down there now – it's all dead. This is what you wanted, but it crosses your mind that maybe it will always be numb and you think this is funny and you want to tell the man you're in love with about it so that he can think it's funny, but you can't tell him because you can't use your phone and because he doesn't know you're in hospital and because it's all ugly and you don't want him to think you're ugly and because being numb was what you wanted a lot before, it was what you needed, and it's a joke and the wrong kind of joke that you've got a whole tube of numbness now – when you don't really need it as much. Or maybe you do, though.

‘You hope it works.

‘It's three and a half hours before they come and get you and say you should lie on the bed. Even though you're not unconscious, they want you to act as if you are. The porter wheels you to a small room full of cupboards, like a kitchen, and a very young nurse takes away your dressing gown and puts it somewhere you don't see and you wait a while longer. You're just in the hospital gown. And this room is colder than the ward.

‘You can't stop shaking.

‘Then you're pushed from the kitchen room, through into the theatre – at least you get to see swing doors – and it's not right. It looks half-abandoned – all white space and not much equipment and it's freezing, the air's freezing.

‘You help them to strap you into the special chair – legs in thick Velcro, held tight, held up and tight and parted. This means that the porter sees you. He can see you while you're naked. He must probably do this all the time, but the naked women he sees are asleep and that makes it more OK for him, you can understand that. He is nervous and upset. You're nervous and upset. And you're cold.

‘From a door in the far corner, a man walks in – you're not sure who he is – and he glances at you. He seems surprised that you can look at him back. Mostly, though, he's strolling towards another door, a far door, and out. It seems you'll be having your operation somewhere which is used as a short cut.

‘Your specialist, gynaecologist, is fussing with an extension cable – there is a problem with the power supply in some way – or the room's hugeness means that the laser she will use isn't near enough to a fucking plug. You decide not to let this disturb you. You're thinking that can be a joke, too.

‘And she puts in the expander and winds it open and you're not doing that well, already – the cold has stolen away how you move and you can't keep control of yourself – these tremors happen. And the cream was good cream, working cream, not a failure, but you hurt and you remember other times that hurt and you can't fucking believe you could have thought this would be reasonable and something you could fucking deal with. You're a fucking moron, obviously. And the gynaecologist who said this would be a breeze is also a moron, because there's this huge pain, but maybe that's your own fault and you're weird and you're not going to tell her any of this, because she's closing in with a a needle in her hand and you're watching that syringe dip in – you don't want to – a needle between your legs. I'm thinking to hell with that. And it hurts and it hurts again and all this is
hurting – the biopsies, the looking around, messing you about, this crap that she's doing – and she hasn't even started with the laser.

‘The specialist talks to her student about you. She doesn't talk to you. Even when you talk to her, she gives her answer to this really young guy beside her and then he passes it on to you. She can't seem to deal with you being alive.

‘Then she starts the lasering.

‘It smells of burning. That's you burning. And you know that because it feels like you burning.

‘More injections don't especially help.

‘You shut your eyes and you go somewhere else for a while, way down where your breathing runs away to – you know how to do this, you go there to get warm – the only place that's warm.

‘Then there's this metal, rattly noise and you get yanked back into what's happening, because your specialist has kicked over some kind of bowl that was on the floor and you can't feel pleased that she's this clumsy, or that bowls in operating theatres get left on the fucking floor.

‘The laser takes forty minutes, probably because you're moving, you're shaking because you're so cold – the creak of the frame you're strapped to, the way it's rattling, is mostly what you can hear – even though you're trying to be still and numb, really numb. You're saying that over and over.

‘It's fucking horrible.

‘And afterwards you get yourself on to the trolley because you don't want the porter to touch you, even though he seems a nice person and wheels you very carefully back to your place by the wall and he looks at you with this still face, still brown eyes, he's such a still guy, and then he looks at your chair and he sees your book on it and he goes and picks it up and gives it to you and he says, “Now you can read your book.” He talks to you as if you're a person.

‘You tell him, “Thank you.”

‘And he goes away and you hurt like fuck, exactly like fuck.

‘But you did it, you got through, you made it. And you walked in with your little bag and you walk out the same way and nobody
can see that you had no dignity, because now you do, because you're sober and you can fight this shit and be OK, even though it was humiliating and it hurt and it brought down so many different kinds of crap on you that you'll have nightmares for a week. You walked in and you walk out and you deal with it. If you have to, you can probably deal with other crap that's worse.'

And Meg stops there. He'll either understand that she knows about being scared, or he won't. He'll either understand that she doesn't need any more trouble, or he won't. She really does understand being scared – it's not like he's so fucking special.

She flattens her spine to the door and rolls the curve of her skull against it, back and forth, back and forth. When he doesn't say anything, she stands up, slightly stiff, and she goes downstairs.

Leave him be.

Jon unfastens the bolt.

Huge clack and grind it makes
 –
enormous warning signal that here I am, hopeless man, on my way.

And he opens the door which isn't technically a hard thing to do.

Nothing else will ever be like that for her, not ever again. Promise. I'll see to it.

His arms and legs work passably well.

If she'll let me, I'll make sure of that.

He knows where the living room is – it's down the stairs.

She doesn't need me to, but I will.

My girl.

‘Meg?' His feet – big, ridiculous, guilty things – bring him downstairs.

The girl I didn't help to make.

The other girl.

The girl I choose.

There's no one in the living room.

You can hear crockery, soft motion. There's a spillage of light from under a further door.

Kitchen.

And you follow her to where she's gone, walk through the air that her body has already pushed aside, head along the corridor and down three little steps – they're all the same these Victorian houses, you needn't expect surprises, you just shouldn't.

She's there at the far end of the kitchen and her face is to the window, so you can't see it.

And you can hear when your voice says, ‘I'm hungry.'

She tells you, low and even, ‘Yes, well, so am I hungry because some fucker stopped me having lunch and stopped me having dinner and I haven't felt like …' Meg with her back to you in the dimness and leaning on the counter by the sink. ‘It's not good if I don't eat. I get a bit crazy.'

The kitchen smells nice, like being in a home with established habits. ‘Meg …'

‘What? Don't tell me you're scared.'

‘No. I won't. At least …' He presses on into the room and is aware that Meg can watch his reflection approaching her. ‘I made the rules, you see, the rules for the letters and I was, you see, surprised when you … The idea was that I would never meet anyone and that … I was surprised.'

She brushes her hands through her hair and sighs and he doesn't know if this is a sign of disgust, or tiredness, or something else, and he doesn't feel able to ask, but then she tells him, ‘There aren't any rules. We aren't playing a game. I'm not a bloody game, Jon. I don't have time to be a game.' Meg turns, looks at him and her face is so gentle, soft, secret-looking – as if she is dreaming him. Jon would like her to be dreaming him – she would do that very well and undertake many improvements, he is sure. She asks him, ‘You want a game? I'll tell you a game. We'll play
rock, scissors, paper, volcano
. That's what we'll fucking play. That's all anyone needs to play.'

And Jon's head wags, ‘I don't know what that is.'

‘You said you're hungry – I'm starving, I think. Yeah … I've got …'

Meg paces about from shelves to cupboards and back and this is all right, this is perfect – he watches her, each shape that her
body reaches and then passes through, abandons. He asks, ‘Do you have honey? I think I would like bread and honey.'

This makes her, for some reason, smile, ‘You'd … Well, I do have that. All the ingredients for that. Bread and butter and honey. The butter's on the table – butter dish, see? You slice the bread, I'll get the honey.' She pauses, as if testing whether he will take instructions, whether he likes them, whether he – in this context – is pleased, so pleased to do one thing after another and be uncomplicated and know where he is – in Telegraph Hill, in a kitchen, with Meg Williams.

‘While you're doing that, Mr August, I'll tell you about rock, paper, scissors, volcano. This little girl was talking about it and I made sure I remembered it. Every time I see something good, or kind, or silly, or worth collecting, I remember it. Every time the city gives me something sweet, I remember and I write it down.'

And Jon goes and collects the butter and lifts out the bread and his hands do not stammer. He might have been in this same kitchen for lifetimes and worked with Meg to make plates of bread and honey and to end their hunger. He might have done this over and over again and always loved doing it. It's beautiful.

A MAN AND
a woman are asleep in a living room. The art deco lamp shines on without them, makes shadows.

The couple are lying together on an old leather sofa, their bodies released into careless shapes, their faces unguarded. The man's coat lies on the rug beside them, as if it might have covered them at some time, as if they have turned in their dreams and it has fallen from them.

The man's shoes are together by the door, neatly parallel, the woman's are under an armchair, also tidily paired. Beyond having stockinged feet, they are fully dressed, wear jackets, their clothes disarranged now, creasing.

Because the sofa is quite narrow, the pair are snibbed together – the man lying on his back and the woman's weight resting partly across him. Her head is turned on his chest so that she seems to be listening to his heart, perpetually making sure that it continues.

This is something the woman would wish to remember, that she would collect along with all the other incidents, moments, presents that have seemed valuable and something to sustain her. But instead she sleeps.

‘
YOU SHOULD REST,
darling.' He says this as if they have made love.

‘I am rested, sort of.' She says this as if she doesn't find him ridiculous and as if she is speaking from somewhere still perfect and unpreventably possible, somewhere which is a dream.

Time falls on them quietly and gentle as dust. The house is full of silence, a well-disposed silence.

They are lying on the old leather sofa together – Jon loves the old leather sofa – and Meg is waking against his chest – she also now loves the old leather sofa. They are both discovering hurts of the sort they can find entertaining, of the sort that make them proud.

Meg's neck is cricked from being trapped at an unwise angle by Jon's arm and something about one of her ankles isn't right – it's been jammed in hard between a cushion and the sofa's back … that feels like what's happened … she can't move to get up and find out, or else won't move to get up and find out.

Jon is coddling Meg – as he intends it – like dozens and dozens of eggs, enjoying the pressure her weight puts on his breathing. His one arm, laid safely over her, is cold but not uncomfortable – the other is bent beneath him and filled with jarring and shooting types of tension. His knees have been folded over one end of the sofa and this has made his knees ache and cut off the blood supply to his feet.

I might get gangrene, because of falling asleep while holding my baby, my sweetheart, my girl.

‘Meg?'

‘Hello.'

‘You should rest, though. You should go up, go to bed.'

‘Can't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Rather be here. With you.'

Which he's not unhappy to hear, but it does mean that she doesn't expect him to follow her and keep her just as safe in her bed – she doesn't want that, or doesn't want that yet – doesn't want that today, or wouldn't take him and keep him there, ever.

She moves in tiny ways against him and this feels like lava, like delicately boiling oil that runs over him, breaks. She gives him the explanation he wouldn't have asked for, ‘I could tell that you weren't resting, because you were staying awake to check that I was asleep, so I can't go upstairs and go to sleep, because you won't sleep when we're there.'

Thank you.

We.

When we're there.

Thank you.

He retrieves his lost arm with some difficulty. ‘I slept.'

‘Liar.'

‘I don't lie to you. I won't. I did sleep in the end quite significantly and parts of me are sleeping still.'

And here's to them staying asleep.

I haven't woken up with an erection in years, I haven't.

There would be reasons for that.

I don't have those reasons any more.

‘Jon.'

‘Yes.'

‘We're a lot of bother, aren't we? One way and another, we're a right pain in the arse.'

He laughs – this tight punch of sound – and when his torso flexes beneath and beside her, Meg finds that she wants to kiss him and so she does –
dab
 – brush her lips to his cheek.

The warm disturbance of his voice is under her, is something she would seek out, this being wrapped but undefended, this feeling which was what she always looked for after the first sip and which was not provided, not when she'd passed her early, early drinking days. Jon swallows –
I am fond of his throat –
and, ‘We're not, as far as I'm aware, any kinds of pain in the arse. I believe that my arse is my only pain-free area.'

‘Do you want to sit up?'

‘Well, no. But I may have to, Meg.'

‘My suit's all crumpled. I don't know if it'll recover. It didn't fit, anyway. You'll have noticed.'

‘I didn't.'

‘Jon Sigurdsson, you are lying. And you said you wouldn't.'

‘I'll buy you a new one. Suit …' His hand pats at her –
dab dab dab –
in immediate apology, immediate reassurance, the touch of someone anxious to be understood. Or simply anxious, or else simply not and simply speaking with his fingers, ‘Sorry. But I could, if you wanted. I'd buy you something you might not buy for yourself.'

‘A rah-rah skirt and a wimple.' She kisses him again. It's good, this kissing, this way of intruding upon someone who likes your intrusion and who is contented and so you're no intrusion at all.
People do this. It's normal. It wasn't normal for me, but I can have it, I can.
‘You need a shave.'
I can be someone who isn't anxious.
‘Sorry. You do, though.'
I can try that.

He produces another small laugh, this relaxation clearly flowing up and down the body that she can read beneath her, being alive and with her and all right, very all right.

‘Of course I need a shave. I am a manly man and have grown bristles overnight.' And he rushes on into, ‘I do love you. Meg. I mean …' His voice irregular when he tells her this and as soon as he has, he begins to untangle himself from her, to pat
and hug at her, while slowly easing away. ‘I'll shave when I'm home.'

There's probably no reason to panic when he says this, but she does, while his hands ask her to move, steer her, delicate, until they are sitting side by side. The freed blood in her limbs sings and throbs and sets up bites and twinges of discomfort. And she's cold. The places where he rested close – touched – now they're cold. ‘I don't know how to do this, Jon. I was with someone … There were people I was with, but … This isn't the same … You'll have to … If you're going to.'

He kisses the top of her head, ‘We will both get this wrong together and we will both not mind getting this wrong and we will continue and improve our performance – not performance – well, why not performance? We'll rehearse and we'll …' He coughs, ‘No one will ever do anything to you again that you don't like. No one. I will fucking kill anyone … I will … I will …' And he thinks …

I can't actually say, ‘I'll be the man who keeps you safe.' Because that is laughable as a statement and especially laughable from me.

Fuck it, though.

‘I'll keep you safe, Meg. What we do will be safe.'

Special Branch thumbing my file while I say this, probably, but I do promise. You will be safe.

His fingers seem more biddable and useful now they've been with her, they're interested in her, they want to rest against her and take note. ‘I've spent all my life being someone who tried to help and that's not actually … trying to help is not the same as helping and in the end it can be the reverse and that's very obvious, but I ignored it for a long time. And I've made – professionally speaking, really, in a way – not helping, I've made that palatable. And I've read about really terrible things, I've read about Pol Pot and how governments were really so polite to his legitimate government – murdering, fucking annihilating but legitimate government – which forces one to redefine legitimate in ways that aren't possible, tenable … It's a way of not getting involved, all that shit – legitimate … And about massacres in
Ruhengeri and Bentiu and Rekohu, Dersim, Kuban, Volhynia … And all the other places and the other ways of killing people: starving them to death, marching them to death, working them to death … I read to learn, because I am in favour of learning, but I read to prove I care, I care very much, only I don't act as if I care very much, I don't fucking do anything … Sorry, my daughter says I go on about this too much … But … I'm naturally boring, yes I am … But … Once you're inside a system, an institution, then … it's like … When you're a kid, you have a face for visitors, you have a face for the world and it's not how you look at home, the way you look when you're at home is …'

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.