A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Nobody hires a bankrupt accountant — not in that capacity. I would not want them to. Them trying to would fry my brain. But there is always bookkeeping to look at and I can. If I don’t have to, I can enjoy it. If the weight of it is absent and I have no authority. I make suggestions. I am here and capable of suggesting.

And it’s not Laura’s fault that glancing at figures while she’s in the room makes me feel as if she’s disapproving and has rumbled me as fifteen kinds of fraud. This is purely a reflection of my own belief that I am not capable of anything beyond screwing up again.

And again.

And infecting all I touch with failure.

Which is why the mental discipline and gratitude are important.

I can be grateful that she hasn’t enquired into my past with any vehemence.

I can be grateful that she doesn’t insist on being friends with me. I can be grateful that she doesn’t pat me.

I am glad of these things.

So she makes me glad.

And I can assume that her mother is fond of her and so I could be — not that I’m old enough to be her mother. Not without some junior-school incident having occurred and it didn’t and that’s another cause for gratitude.

She’s plainly damaged and so am I — we have that in common. Huzzah.

And I can try to like her shoes.

Except that her shoes are vegan creations made out of vegetable leather and bloody tofu. I’m exaggerating. Vegetable leather for sure, though.

I can pray for her.

No, I can’t pray for her.

I truly can’t.

I can’t incorporate the God thing. I’d love to, but it’s not a good fit. Meg’s mobile rang in the midst of this demonstration of spiritual ill-health.

No. I’m healthy. That’s the point — I am attempting to be spiritual, in my own way, and Laura is attempting to be — I think — spiritual in her own way and I suspect that I loathe her, if I’m honest, because she reminds me of me. That’s been known as a pattern of behaviour. It’s practically standard practice where I live.

Meg picked up her mobile, took the call, which was from Carole who was asking how the hospital visit went, because Meg had forgotten to phone and tell her.

I wanted to blast away the morning, forget it and go on as if it never was, which is the kind of thing that leads to areas of forgetting — you get these islands of blankness. I used to be mainly made of islands … But still there’s the ocean, the sound of the ocean goes on.

And Laura is trying to manage her own things and, OK, using quite pitiful methods in my opinion, but me too, probably me too. I have to rely on semi-strangers calling me up and harrying me with sympathy, or whatever, and remedies of that type. Laura ought to have my sympathy, empathy, decency.

But then I never get too much decency from me, so why should she?

‘Hello.’

And Meg listened to Carole insisting on being given information about Meg’s well-being in the way that concerned people did. This was a demonstration of friendship and should be appreciated. ‘It was fine … I’m sorry that I didn’t call …’ Carole was functional and a woman and about Meg’s age and in an apparently happy relationship — she was therefore someone who felt like several types of threat when you were with her in person. Even though she was nice. She was extremely nice. She was bothering to phone and that was nice.

I apologise to her five or six times in every conversation. Unless it’s a long conversation, in which case it’ll be more: including the apology for taking too much of her time.

‘No … yes … well … but I am sorry, and anyway, and, yeah …’ It wasn’t quite possible to tell the truth yet. It wasn’t quite safe. ‘I didn’t like it but it was fine and they’ll tell me the results in a while — it was ten weeks last time, but it might end up more … and then I’ll know.’

There were days when you would hold on to almost any voice and there were days when you wanted a particular one, because you imagined that would be the best to help you keep a grip.

‘They seemed happy, though. Nobody had a look round in there and screamed and, I don’t know, said they had to cut everything out by this evening. I think visually that it seemed clear, but they’ll check the cells to be certain … They’re always evasive. That’s why you’d pay to go private — because then they’d tell you things. If only to get more of your money. My GP doesn’t speak any more except for Hello and What do you think is the matter? When if I knew that I wouldn’t be there, would I? And then all he does is write down what I think the matter is — so really I get to be the doctor and the doctor gets to be my secretary and where that gets both of us is beyond me … Sure, sure, I want them to be certain …’

I want the National Health Service to be certain and to be my pal, like it was when I was a kid and Dr Miller would come to the house if I was really poorly and he’d take time and he was like an uncle, or a friend.

And the point of talking to a friend is that you tell them what’s on your mind instead of the first rush, the pelt of irrelevant pieces you throw out to keep things at bay.

‘It’s waiting, which I don’t like. It’s that I know I have to wait again and I have been waiting a while with the whole process and the thing today … it was uncomfortable at the time and … you know, I got a bit upset. A bit.’ Hector, aware she was getting rattled, had stood and snuggled over to her and was letting her scratch at the crown of his head. He huffed softly, approving. ‘No, don’t send me a hug.’

Carole was known to offer verbal hugs when no others were available and it was easily foreseen that she would pitch in with the usual if she was phoning after you’d been prodded at, invaded and also threatened — a bit threatened — with cancer, which was to say pre-cancer, which was to say pre-death, which was to say pretty much where we all had to operate every day, but that didn’t imply we’d be happy to be interfered with and then forced to remember different threats.

And nobody did ask, nobody bloody asked, nobody this morning fucking asked at any point why I was so upset. Nobody.

I can’t shake the fact of that.

I wouldn’t have told them, but I’d like them to have tried.

Carole is asking, of course.

Fuck her.

‘It’s … Thanks … Thanks, Carole …’ She was merciless, Carole: she said precisely what would make you cry. Meg didn’t think she really needed more weeping today. ‘It’s … It was only that, you know …’ Carole didn’t know, because Meg hadn’t told her the details. Carole was guessing, but guessing well and Meg could have done without it — the guessing wandered about in her interior, once released, and she didn’t like that. Not today. ‘It’s fine, though. Thanks …’ Meg swallowed and made a bad job of it, just as Laura returned.

Fuck.

I need to swear less.

Fuck.

At some point.

‘I have to go, though, but thanks and I’ll see you tonight, I think. When the other stuff is, or when I’ve, that’s …’ Her sentences came out like broken biscuits, spoiled. ‘You know …’ Meg was tired. ‘Yes. We can talk then.’

Meg hung up and was aware that she might appear dishevelled. She pre-emptively announced, ‘Laura, I’m fine. I’m fine. I was … telling somebody about that greyhound.’ Which sounded a complete lie.

‘Oh, yes.’ Laura leaned in and — pat — shitting, bollocksing, bastarding — pat — did the patting thing. ‘That was so terrible. I was really upset for ages.’