A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

I will meet you.

But it never works out.

She prodded her spoon about in the froth of her mug while choosing not to think that a tea would have been cheaper and less chemically abusive.

I would rather not suspect that I get cancelled because I’m a terrible person, rather than an odd one.

But I do suspect it.

I fucking know it.

I feel like a terrible person — and that must show, that must be something clear and to be avoided.

I’m currently a terrible person having community cappuccino with some strangers. And some dogs. I can’t bloody get away from dogs.

The café had been summoned up inside a remarkably hideous building by an act of concerted will. There had been calls for volunteers and mucking in had happened and now the community had a resource. It offered activities Meg never went to and get-togethers she steadfastly resisted and also sold crafts and produce and hippyish cooking. The place sat between the Hill’s two little parks and was, therefore, lousy with dogs during the daylight hours.

She was surrounded by muzzles and pads and sensible, fully inhabited animal bodies. Each sodding dog had those levels of impossibly relaxed aliveness that could be soothing or could be truly bloody irritating if you were an animal too, but couldn’t reach that state of ease — couldn’t manage what any mongrel, any overbred, pedigree freak could do without thinking.

Bastard.

No.

No one is a bastard.

And at six thirty I will be in a place which is happy and good.

I will trust that — it’s good exercise.

The assembled dogs were being loose and jolly round the outside tables, in amongst the lolling bicycles and parked prams. And there were also humans. The ones who wanted to be cosy sat indoors; outside with Meg were the smokers and the hardy types and those who maybe wanted to watch birds — why not? There were birds and, now and then, someone would look at them. Meg didn’t know and couldn’t care if they were doing so with an expert eye. Why she was outside and not in was a mystery to her — she didn’t smoke.

That and gambling — the vices I never quite got.

To her left, a russet-coloured mongrel with a bit of ridgeback about it was flopped down with its greying head on its folded forepaws. Behind her there was a sable and cream Tibetan terrier in need of trimming — she couldn’t see what it was doing but could hear its claws pittering and fussing and the occasional murmur as it rummaged under tables, snuffed unwary ankles.

That’s a dog being poorly cared for. That’s a bad thing on the verge of happening.

Meg briefly enjoyed being judgemental.

Everyone here has children and partners and lives and disposable incomes with which to buy cappuccinos and artisan-made items and jars of urban honey and local ice cream.

Fuck ’em.

This was both untrue and unfair, which was why it felt so pleasant.

Fuck ’em.

Although Meg would stop soon.

I am truly sorry and I truly will stop and get a grip — in a minute.

Meg had spent years being with Meg and knew her to be a foul-tempered bitch who could put a curse on anything she thought of.

Fuck me.

But she was trying to do better.

Fuck me.

She was trying to assume that meetings with her were not cancelled because she had done something wrong. Or else because she was something wrong.

They have leftie concerts in the café … I tend to the left. Which ought to be funny. Singing songs of revolution — as if that does anything, achieves anything. Songs I used to sing — still complaining about last century’s battles and hardly any space for those ongoing, picking the Spanish Civil War songs because they’ve got the halfway lively tunes … ‘En los frentes de Jarama, rumba la rumba la rumba la, no tenemos ni aviones, ni tanques ni cañones.’ They always sound dead happy that they’ve got no planes, or tanks, or artillery. And I’m meant to be dead happy that they could be dead happy in the XVth fucking Brigade more than a generous lifetime ago. They fucking lost, though, didn’t they? They hadn’t got any planes or tanks or artillery — what were they going to do? Sing the Civil Guard into submission?

Standing there with the raised clenched fist — well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? — while we all sing ‘The Internationale’. I’ve done that.

Why is liberty never in the English language, what does that indicate?

A breeze crossed the road from the lower park and lifted a little of the dust that prisoners of want were intended to spurn in order to win their prize.

What happens to the dust is that it gets in your coffee. I’m spurning it like fuck — it’s still here and doesn’t care.

She fussed at the cooling, dun-coloured liquid again as if she was worried the spoon would melt. Then she didn’t drink.

I don’t drink — that’s me. I am a person who doesn’t drink. My principal activity is an absence.

Meg turned and faced the park: the tenderly restless trees, branches becoming new, blossom in fat cascades and swags, the world showing itself generous, fluttering, sweet.

Which should be enough.

I am a person who is sober.

I am a positive quantity.

When my head gets this unbalanced I should call someone and tell them and then tip myself over entirely, pour the rubbish out, empty it out, pour myself out, make me empty.

But I’m not going to make a call, am I?

Because I like risk.

Because I am right to hate myself — I am a stupid, stupid cow and I do me wrong.

I also lie. A great deal. Mainly to myself. But I keep on listening.

Stupid cow.

A meeting gets cancelled — you don’t get cancelled, it’s the meeting — and you go into a tailspin when it isn’t your fault and it’s only a postponement, anyway, not a cancellation.

We can have an early dinner, maybe. I would enjoy an early dinner.

Because I’ve had no lunch. Running on empty again.

But I’m not empty.

I will meet you.

That’s not empty.

But I’ve had too much coffee — I’m all wound up. Even if the breeze hadn’t sprinkled it with gutter dust and toxins, I shouldn’t have more of this coffee, or any other coffee, or anything like coffee. I should be drinking some kind of wort.

Christ, I’m ridiculous. Shouldn’t be allowed out. Shouldn’t be allowed in or out.

And for a moment she smiled, for a moment the blossoms looked perfect: the bounce of them, the contours of infant colour and generous scent.

Times like this — it’s like falling down your own personal well, but you can also reach back in there and pull yourself out by the ears. It takes an effort, but you can. Better with help, but I am embarrassed about getting help for this. This is minor. I’m tired and I had a rough morning, that’s all. I can deal with it.

And I really shouldn’t think about politics and who should, frankly? Who should willingly waste their time on that? Politics is just an organised and expensive way of being furious.

Meg set her mug on the table and walked down from the decking at the front of the café.

Then she stalled, returned, picked up the mug and took it inside to leave it more handy for clearing up. She nodded to the guy at the till and generally behaved as if she loved the place and all its works and anticipated an imminent revolution which would involve the comfortably old-school middle classes being able to have more time for reading and a wider choice of theatre groups and box sets of continental TV dramas.