A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

‘Yeah.’

Mustn’t be sour about it. Laura’s never seen me cry before — I’m not completely weeping, I’m only wet-eyed — and I’m under control now, I am. This is the aftermath of my morning and won’t ever happen again. This isn’t unmanageable.

She cares about the animals, which makes her a good person and I should cut her some slack. The caring is something of quality that we can have in common and that I can respect in both of us.

Don’t ask me if I’m OK, please don’t.

She will, though. She’s going to, here it comes.

‘Are you all right now? Is there something I can do? I have some tea with St John’s wort and passion flower.’

Of course you do, naturally you do — you’re as big a nailed-together-badly and faking-it monster as I am. Which means you are a victim of some kind and therefore a member of my club, except that I don’t want to be a member any more and am getting by fairly well with moving on and cultivating therapeutic rage, cleansing rage, rinsing rage, the energy that’s in rage — I like it — and meanwhile you get on with Laura doing whatever the hell works for Laura and let’s go with that — you keep over there with that — let’s go with our survival strategies for this afternoon and being separate but equal.

‘You look tired, Meg. Valerian tea would cure that — you could take a couple of bags for tonight and get a real rest.’

Which is more attention than anyone normal would pay to a woman who treats you curtly at best and can’t honestly be hiding how big a fool she thinks you are.

So that’s sad. Laura isn’t well, or whole, and she is reaching out to me, keeps doing it over and over, and that’s the sort of detail I should take on-board and it’s an ice-breaker, it is.

When breaking the ice is mentioned it’s given a positive meaning. But I find that when the ice breaks I am walking on it and then I drop and I am in bad waters and out of my depth.

That isn’t positive.

‘What’s a wort?’ Shit, that sounded sarcastic. I didn’t even know I was going to ask and now I sound like a bitch.

‘Pardon?’ Laura was already adopting a wounded air because now she expected an outright refusal, or else a smart-arsed comment.

I use humour to deflect something or other, or everything, or I don’t know what, in tense situations. That’s what they say — sounds complicated. I use jokes to get away from stuff when I can’t run — that’s also what I’m told. But who wouldn’t? Or maybe I’m running and handcuffed to the humour and it’s happy to gallop along, escaping alongside me — it’s seen me undressed and unhappy — we’re chums.

But not this time.

Meg cleared her throat and concentrated on sounding soft. She pretended, to be honest, that she was talking to one of the dogs. ‘No, I was wondering, that’s all … Only … I can find out later. I bet worts are good. Saints are good … were good, that would be the point of saints. So a saint’s wort … Laura …’

Shut up and just say you’ll have the tea.

‘I’ll have some of that tea, thanks. Yes. Get the stress levels down. And tell me about the sinus thing, again. Could you? Is that for stress, too?’

She’ll run with that for ages and I needn’t listen. I can just think of what will be my appropriate visualisation, my happiness: no bones, no rags, no dusty engagement rings that have outlived their engagements.

I will meet you.

Not lunch. Last week he said he couldn’t do lunch. And not this evening — earlier. At three. Not quite teatime. I’ll be hungry before then, maybe. I’ll have a biscuit. An unbroken biscuit.

The nerves will mean I’m not hungry.

I should even head off fairly soon, or I’ll be late. London — it takes forever to get anywhere …

Having not quite tea far away from here will save the day.

This will save my day.

I will meet you.

There’s no harm in enjoying the thought of that.

JON COULDN’T QUITE place himself. He seemed both unwilling and unable to even try. Had he been asked to express a preference, he would have been anxious to recall yesterday’s evening in an absolute sense, to wake it and wind it back and put it on again, snug. He would also have requested a dispensation from being inside today’s early afternoon. This exact present moment, he would have liked to keep strictly at bay.

Although it was, in a way, his job to make plans, none of his current arrangements were absolutely working. Others’ intentions were clambering and sliding and butting in.

Force majeure.

Is what I never am, as it turns out.

I am here and now and would very much rather not be, which is an impossible goal and is therefore causing me distress.

And yet it could be argued — perhaps not by me, preferably not by me — that facilitating government decision-making should — in essence — involve one’s impossible goals only ever harming strangers. One should be safe.

I wouldn’t say that.

The call from Chalice — one never does want a call from Chalice — had come through at ten-past noon. There wasn’t an option to simply ignore him and pretend that one had lost one’s phone, or else the use of both arms, for a brief but vital period.

He cultivates this unconvincing air of menace, but has enough genuine power to make it real in any case. It’s like being threatened by a pantomime actor and having to like it. I would rather be bullied by someone with a personality. Although I have no particular regard for my preferences, really, in the matter.

Chalice had asked, in one of his consciously forceful murmurs — which don’t work well on the phone, I often want to laugh … a cross between a cut-price hood and the daughter’s dodgy boyfriend — he had asked if Jon wouldn’t mind just dropping round to see him and the Minister for Somewhere Outwith Jon’s Responsibility. In the Minister’s office. No rush. They’d be free for him at any time. Any time now. It wasn’t far for Jon to come. Just round the corner. They wanted to chat about Steven Milner. Jon knew Steven Milner, didn’t he?

Just round the corner. And one has to go. One has to.

‘No, I don’t think I do.’

‘We thought you did.’

Inside the office, Chalice had been poised by the Minister’s shoulder, somehow consciously arranged. It was possible to imagine that he’d intended to appear both physically and mentally agile, alert — this whispering demon balanced at the ear of power. The effect was more disconcerting than authoritative — as if a middle-aged man had appeared wearing leather trousers and was waiting for a positive comment on his choice, hips cocked.

Chalice and the Minister for Something Else (lateish reshuffle appointment, never expected to do anything) had looked up as Jon peeled open the nicely heavy door, offering him the same just-interrupted-but-oh-hello expression once so popular with children’s television entertainers.

That was back in the balmy days when no one would ever assume what had been interrupted was wholly loathsome.

And here and now — unavoidable — their attention was nipping at him, weaselling in to throttle away the shreds and rags left of a kind idea, the thought of a garden, the possibility of dipping one’s hand into water nicely and breathing soft.

They strap one’s breath, this pair. If one is already out of sorts, they can steal the air right out from you. The Minister’s handshake — it’s like being handed a warm shit in a sock. Only on a good day can one resist their extraordinary unpleasantness.