A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

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.

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.

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