A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

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.’