A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

‘It’s all a journey and we’re not there yet.’ Nauseatingly meaningless phrase.

Which meant Rowland adored it. His little eyes flared at its sound and he saved it for later use, I’m sure. He chuckled away in squiddish relief, because imagine if I’d truly asked him to be exhaustive. No one wants contact with actual, undeniable information: it’s the equivalent of shit, you don’t want to touch it. If information exists then it should be known and it must be consulted. If it’s consulted in advance then those we serve will feel constrained by it, oppressed — like having their legs jammed under a pub table. And if information exists to lie in wait, to reproach them in retrospect, point out the wiser paths not taken, or the just plain inevitable failures … Then it can feel like a reproach, which is upsetting.

Opinions Not Facts — these are our watchwords. Run a Discovery. Stay Vague. If reality is malleable then anyone can do what they like: either join the mediocracy, be a mediocrat and pursue nothing much, or else be a zealot and design impermissible calamities you’re sure you can withstand while others of less worth will perish as they should.

Reassess some human being’s illness and then decide it’s inadmissable information. Remove their benefits as a result. Force them to beg from council contingency funds, relatives, friends — if they have such things. Force them to fail in payments to utility companies. Force them to seek advice from a Citizens’ Advice Bureau, already under pressure and employing additional staff because of unprecedented levels of distress. Force them to seek legal aid for their appeal — if they can get legal aid, if they haven’t given up fighting, if they haven’t agreed to beg and starve quietly. Force them to default on rent payments, mortgage payments, to risk or to experience homelessness. Advise them badly, advise them misleadingly and issue threats. In what way does this not release a cascade of additional expense and wasted time and wasted life in all directions? In what way …

Oh dear Christ and fuck and fuck and fuck and fuck.

Jon’s grasp on his phone now overly tight and not helping.

Ffffffffffffuck.

The tremor in his grip had transferred to his phone, apparently by pressure of will, or just pressure of pressure.

I think that I may be beginning to know how I feel and I’m absolutely certain that should be avoided.

The phone was, in fact, trembling on its own behalf, trying to let in a call — this part of reality twisting his stomach in nervous ways he could do without.

I just can’t be here any more.

And yet I am.

When he looked at the caller display, Becky’s name was showing and that was nice, was beautiful, there was nothing bad about that. She didn’t often ring him …

Six thirty p.m. and I’ll be somewhere else and just now I can speak to my daughter. I’ll manage. I am sustained.

Then again, Becky knew that he usually didn’t answer personal numbers when he was at work and so her trying to reach him might imply urgency …

Please not ‘We got married on a whim.’ Please not ‘Dad, I think I’m—’

‘Becky, how wonder—’ And this noise, simply this noise reaching him, of a young and intelligent woman having been, in some manner, destroyed by something. Just sobs. He told her, ‘Oh, darling … what’s the …? I’m here. Daddy’s here. Your dad’s here. I am.’ More sobs. Actually, increased distress. ‘I’m here.’ And then some attempt at words which immediately distorted and ended in heaves of breath. His baby, his child, was breathing in spasms and too far away for him to hold. ‘Darling, whatever it is, we’ll work it out. We will. I promise.’ A sort of howl now. ‘No, we will. We’ll cope …’ It was simply very tricky, though, to help if he didn’t know what he was helping with. ‘If you could … Is it your health? Darling, are you OK?’

Please be OK.

‘No.’ Her one syllable elongating and wavering.

Please.

‘Well, no, I know you’re not OK, but are you well?’

Another gulp of air and, ‘Yeah.’

Thank you.

‘And your mum’s fine?’

Jon was aware he was speaking a touch too loudly and that his upcoming content might be unsuitable for an office that was unavoidably open-plan.

This is our sole concession to transparency, I think — we now have transparent interior walls, due to their absence.

Jon broke out across the breakout area.

Again — whoever imagined such a term wants shooting.

‘Becky … Becky, please speak to me, though. Is everyone else OK?’

‘Mm-hm.’

Thank you.

‘Good.’ Jon scampered himself towards the stairwell exit. ‘That’s good.’

His daughter’s voice was snuggled beside his cheek, while his own aimed at comfort, at certainty. ‘Becky, whatever’s happened, things will be all right, I promise.’ And he tucked himself beyond the department’s hearing.

We’re primates, we have complex social hierarchies which take constant maintenance and that’s a bit of a burden, really — even if we don’t have to mount and groom each other all the day — and therefore we need breaks away from company. We need to hide.

‘Can you tell me what’s the matter, darling?’

‘—ess.’

‘That’s good … So … You’re OK and Mum’s OK …’

And Jon knew, absolutely understood by this point, that no one gets upset with this level of intensity unless it’s to do with sex, with love — more properly and horribly with love. And the knowledge of this fragmented and then fought inside his chest, its separated pieces seeming dreadful to him.

‘Keep talking to me, darling, I’m here. Take your time.’

If that fucker Terry has fucking done something to her I will genuinely … If he’s left her … If he’s hurt her … But if he’s left her … If she’s left him …

Christ, how bloody marvellous. He was such a twat.

‘It’s Terry.’

Don’t blow this, don’t fuck up.

‘Is it, darling …? Is he … ill?’

‘He’s gone.’

‘Oh, I’m so …’ Jon in the stairwell now. He didn’t see enough of the stairwell. It was nice: plain, unfrequented, a potential source of healthful exercise. ‘I am sorry.’

‘He’s gone.’

Gone. Then sweet Christing Jesus, there is always hope. Thank you.

Jon swallowed, reminded himself that smiles are audible. ‘But that’s …’

Exactly what I wanted.

He began again, while a silence rose from the phone — dismal and horrible — the silence of the girl he loved, the girl whose pain he always wished to banish. ‘People do fight, Becky … I know you know that … But they do and they say things they don’t mean and maybe—’

‘He’s gone!’

It’s good she’s yelling. It’s good. Good for her.

She kept on now, her volume approaching something painful and making it necessary to hold the phone slightly at bay. ‘He’s fucking gone because I fucking threw him out because he was fucking screwing someone else. He was fucking screwing Jenny. For two months.’

‘Oh, God … I mean … Oh, God.’ Jon remembering that first kneedintheballs realisation that what had been loved as only yours was not, that your privacy never was private, that in the shadows other eyes had looked, hands were fumbling, making you dirty at one remove and robbing you in your heart. ‘I mean …’

‘I had to. Didn’t I?’

‘Of course you had to. Sweetheart, you absolutely had to. I mean, if you think that was the right thing and it feels right—’