A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

‘Blowhard.’

‘I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s not an insult. I was a blowhard, too. It’s automatic. He’s twenty-four. If you’re under thirty and have a penis, you’re a blowhard. It’ll pass. It doesn’t make him a bad person.’

‘So what does?’

‘He isn’t … I don’t think that he’s a …’

But I do think that he is a bad person. I kind of am completely certain that he is a bad person. I am aware that everything about him bespeaks a lack of consideration in many areas and with Rebecca in particular — the more intimate they are, the more he will harm her — and this makes me want to stab him in his balls and then his throat. I want to watch him bleed to death in agony and silence. Sorry. I do, though.

That is the shape of my moral high ground. I would claim it in less time than it takes me to draw this breath as a place of irrevocable mountaintop sacrifice.

‘Becky, I don’t want him to hurt you.’

‘Because I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was without you explaining? Because I’m a moron. Because I’m like you.’

Because you’re in love with him. You’re in love.

Moron is uncalled for.

You love him and he makes love to you and steals tenderness from you unsweetly I bet and by the time the shine’s gone off it, please Christ you haven’t married him. Or had a baby. It will end badly and I’m trying to spare you that.

Moron is …

His body sinking as it would if the engines had failed them and yet just as it was, where it was, only stirring gently in tranquil flight.

A baby.

OhGodababy.

Go on — ask if she’s pregnant — if she’s being careful. That’s the only mistake you haven’t made.

Moron was fair comment.

And she’d spoken very softly, been at the edge of inaudibility as the plane grumbled evenly around them, but he had perfectly heard when she said, ‘Not everyone doesn’t notice when they’re being tortured.’

He’d been nauseous for the remainder of the journey, got through customs and out of Berlin Tegel by the application of grim effort, almost as if his daughter were not there and he were managing alone. They’d checked into the haunted hotel — marble and cream foyer, chandelier, you couldn’t complain — in an ache of isolation — at least he had ached — and they’d not said night night. No kiss. He hadn’t even felt secure in mentioning when they might join each other for breakfast the following morning, as they ground up in the lift to their rooms. So he had to rise early the following day and sit and drink endless tea until she’d appeared and did sit facing him across his littered table, did smile, but only enough to indicate that he wasn’t out of trouble yet.

There was mercy, though. Eventually. By the time they were there on the Spree.

‘Dad, I have to, ahm, do this for myself, you know?’ Her hand making small contrapuntal squeezes at his while she spoke. ‘Terry’s better to me than you think. You have to believe me about that and try and be civil.’ The boat kicking merrily under them for a playful moment, then pressing on.

He’d rushed into the promise, ‘I will.’ One he couldn’t keep. ‘I will. I’m sorry. I’ve been getting anxious.’ Inside a pocket of his coat there was the flinch of his phone as it gathered a text, the small noise that warned him of incoming communications. Becky glowered at the interruption and he blurted, ‘I’m not answering. I won’t. I’ll turn it off, even … if you want.’

‘Do what you like.’ She undoubtedly knew this would always drive Jon to do what she would like. ‘Dad, I don’t need the lectures about women.’

‘No. I realise. It’s presumptuous. I simply … The only country in the world where there’s a majority of women in a parliament is Rwanda. Rwanda. That’s when women get power, real power — if the men are either dead or in prison. Convicted genocidaires. A high percentage.’

‘Could we not talk about genocide.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s not that I don’t get it. And I care. And I made a donation to that place you said I should.’

‘Did you?’ Turning to look at her and realising that his expression would be this dreadful, fond open smile, this doting that probably seemed absurd both to observers and Rebecca. ‘They’re good people. The money goes where it should. If you can afford it.’

‘I gave them fifty quid — it’s not going to render me homeless. Can we just sit and enjoy this and then have lunch. Not on the boat and not in the hotel — somewhere we can relax. I’ll buy you lunch.’

‘No, I should.’

‘You paid for the holiday.’

‘And the depressing hotel.’

‘And the depressing hotel. Do you understand that I hate it when you’re sad and that I would rather you weren’t and when you volunteer for it — what am I meant to do?’

‘Nothing. You don’t … I don’t expect …’ Having to stare down at this nesting of hands at his knee — hers and his — rather than face her and become … something else she would hate because it would look like sadness, when mostly he got wet-eyed over good fortune rather than injuries and his good fortune was her and that was the issue currently in play. ‘Please let’s, yes, pick somewhere for lunch and have a nice meal before the plane and then … I really did, I really have, I really have enjoyed this time. I appreciate it.’ Nodding and breathing raggedly.

And she’d kissed him underneath his left ear, softly clumsy like a girl and this had torn his last level of restraint and made him sniff. And he was nodding and grinning and uneven in his heart while she’d released his hand — it was cold once she was as gone as gone — and she’d worked her arm in behind him, hugged his waist, and leaned her head snug to his shoulder. Berlin had progressed outside in blinks and smudges and he’d kept nodding and nodding while Rebecca fitted herself to him until they were comfortable.

He’d let his cheek drift over and away from her, find the glass and settle. And his daughter was wonderful and that was something very plain, along with how remarkable it was that two wrong parents had produced the beginnings of such a person, given her enough to build upon.

And his daughter rode a bicycle to work — cycled in London — which was reckless of her, crazy of her, and yet unpreventable.

And any slighting references to cyclists became, therefore, provocations that outstripped his ability to express outrage — an ability which had atrophied into, at most, a show of pursed lips and perhaps firm but appropriately crafted comments, delivered at apposite moments, or kept in reserve, kept in perpetual reserve.

Nonetheless, as he waited for the cab to progress from Chiswick to Westminster, Jon pictured the way he might grin as he stepped from the taxi and dragged the driver out by his lapels, ears, by something available, and punched him, threw him into the path of oncoming traffic without a helmet or relevant licence, because there was no relevant licence, you don’t need a licence to be crushed.

As he racked up another three inches towards his workplace, Jonathan Sigurdsson cleared his throat, ‘What do you reckon? Much longer?’

‘No idea, mate. Not a clue.’

‘Ah, well.’ Jon rubbed his thumb across the pads of callous he was growing on the fingertips of his left hand — small areas of invulnerability which were helping him learn to play the guitar. Rhythm and blues. He felt that was a style which might forgive his lack of skill. And his love. It was a place to indulge his love with an entity which would neither care nor take advantage.

It’s an outlet.