A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

At the end of their embrace — which is heralded by more dabbing, smoothing, a hesitant stroke at the woman’s hair — the two part by a hand’s breadth and then pause once more. They seem puzzled.

The woman reaches up to cradle the man’s head between her palms, slips her fingers loosely over his ears and this causes a visible relaxation that seems to pour downward and into his spine. His face takes on the softness of a sleeper’s. She then stands on tiptoe to kiss his forehead and he bows mildly to receive her.

Then they let go, the one from the other. They withdraw.

For a moment the man looks above the woman’s head, stares far beyond the high and nicely maintained and drowsy Georgian brick which surrounds him. His expression is one of deep, deep surprise. He has the smile of a man who has stolen something wonderful and not been caught, found something wonderful and not been seen, been given something wonderful and got away, got away, run away with it.

The woman watches while her companion is happy and apparently finds his happiness surprising.

Something about the man’s condition means that she takes his hand.

Jon was taking the long way round as he headed back to Tothill Street and a meeting he didn’t want. Birdcage Walk, then Buckingham Gate, then Victoria Street — that still didn’t add too many minutes, but it was something. Milner was going to be tricky and Jon couldn’t handle tricky today, in part because, as he’d told Rowan last night … As he’d said … He couldn’t quite seem able to recall his words absolutely, but …

I didn’t tell him about the Natural History Museum and I should have.

A place to meet women, I suppose.

It’s not that.

I would imagine that individuals do stroll around there and possibly seek out this or that person who seems to share an interest in hawkmoths, or glass models of sea anemones. An opening conversational gambit could be offered — ‘Do you like that moth, or are you staring at your own reflection in the glass of the case and thinking you are not at all who you were and that many of the changes have been for the worse?’

I didn’t go there to meet women.

The first time, I was simply in South Kensington on a Saturday afternoon and I’d wandered in and been enveloped by the hell of kickingly bored children and of squeakingly overinterested children and the intensified hell of French teenagers. It was rather relaxing. Everything was louder than my head.

And I loved the small display on human evolution — our sad forebears posed dimly behind glass: life-sized and naked and unable to suggest any yearning to use tools, cooperate, learn above themselves, stand upright and prosper. They seemed endearingly devoid of any aspiration.

It became a quite innocent habit to go there for lunch breaks. I wasn’t establishing an alibi in advance.

Jon paused in sight of Buckingham Palace and thought once again how disappointing the building was. It always put him in mind of a novelty cake, or somewhere that would have bad room service.

He watched the wide and blue-white delicacy of a spring sky, drifting massively behind the solid pediments of the east façade. He felt the moment when the building came loose from its moorings and seemed to fly, while the high race of clouds locked in place and stood above him, watching him back.

Mustn’t be sick.

He tried smiling at a pair of older women tourists, but his expression must have failed him. They turned tail and walked briskly the way they’d come, rather than pass him.

Jon fumbled at his collar, intending to take off his tie, and then realised he wasn’t wearing one — that sensation of constriction was therefore entirely illusory and should be treated as such.

Like the palace. Like the sky. Like the progress of my evolution.

He started walking again.

Maybe once a month, if I could, I’d rush out at lunchtime, flag a cab and head for the museum, the warm stone façade. All those mad sculptures of animals, reptiles, the living and the extinct: the monstrous swarm of life carved all over the exterior — terracotta gargoyles defending evolution’s temple — I grew fond of it.

I liked walking within work built to last, effort drawn from hope and a need to progress, a joy about it, inspiration drawn from fact … It made me feel furious at certain levels, of course — furious and desperate. But also content.

I would eventually establish a pattern: stroll in past the bony architecture of the diplodocus skeleton, climb the stairs and then call upon the prehistoric humans and their skulls.

They made me wonder. My flat-browed, jut-chinned, hairy ancestors — how did they smell? We progressed to walk erect, but do we still bring with us an animal reek? When did that stop? Or did we already, grunting in huddles, smell like people — like unwashed people who were also beasts? That sweetsharp tang of sweat — yours or another’s — that taint, that seal, that gift which stays on your skin, when did we first travel with that? Or have we always? Do we carry the scent of the beasts we still are? Would that be our clue, when we look at those onward-marching illustrations of humanity straightening up from its stoop and being bettered by natural forces, swelling its brain, busying its fingers, perfecting its tongue — would that tell us how little has changed?

Jon’s balance, his vision billowed and twisted momentarily, slid like a loosened building. He chose to believe this was an effect of exposure to exhaust fumes and central London’s generally pertaining pollution. Probably if Parliament did exile the civil service to the wastes and moorlands of South-east London, it would add years to everyone’s lifespan.

His phone rang and — having checked that it was no one he wanted to hear — he slipped it back down into his coat. It protested as it went.

Too modern for my current frame of mind. While all of the other species keep evolving, we simply invent fresh ways to bill each other for being downcast or enraged — rage and despair being all for which we’re meant to hope …

The museum used to please me.

After comparing myself unfavourably with Australopithecus, I’d slope off to the modern bit, the wing where they keep their material archive: leaves, bodies, wings, drawings, samples. I like it there, because it contains no dinosaur remains and is therefore fairly child-free and peaceful — even, at times, apparently deserted. You ride a lift up to its top floor, as if you are boarding a spacecraft full of whatever’s left of our good, of the earth’s generosity — as if you’ll be able to leave and start again with seeds from climate-controlled vaults. It looks smart, futuristic — in the sense of suggesting that we have a future.

And there are interactive exhibits, film displays — quickly spurned by the scatter of more French teenagers as they pass along. And cabinets have been made with real drawers which can be pulled back to reveal displays. The drawers also provide ledges, edges, gaps. One can, as it were, fill the gaps.

Jon unbuttoned his jacket, although it wasn’t terribly warm, and let the poisoned air attempt to cool him, ease him. He was sweating. Sweating as he walked was not as bad as sweating while he was examined by a malicious superior.

I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction — not one of them.

And I also wouldn’t tell them about the Natural History Museum and my visits. I couldn’t appear to be a man who might make such visits and then sweat about them. Sweat would constitute evidence.

Because …

Because …