A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

She’d said, ‘I’m Meg. Or Margaret. I don’t like Maggie. Peg … I had an Aunt Peg — she was a Margaret, she was a … If you don’t stop me I’ll keep on talking and you’ll get this just bad — you wouldn’t believe how wrong you’d be — this bad impression … If you thought that I talk all the time, you should have another think coming …’ And she’d already taken his hand — left hand — in hers and the grip had been dry and firm and warm and something he wished to continue. ‘My name is Meg.’

‘Hello, Meg.’ And Jon thinking that, Christ, she was sort of gorgeous. When you considered her calmly. ‘I’m Jon.’ Not a wonderful suit she’s wearing and grey’s a colour that can make one seem drained. Or not. Apparently not. Mainly she seems to be thinking that he isn’t well turned out — he recognises the signs, sees much the same look on his own face every morning. ‘I’m Jonathan, Jon.’

And I’m not well turned out.

Her skirt is a whisker too long.

Only a whisker.

But she’s wearing no make-up. Thank fuck for that. ‘I’m Jon.’ She is gorgeous.

A gorgeous person cannot be with someone who is not gorgeous. It cannot last. Not unless the gorgeous person is unwell — and instability of that kind is also a reason why relations between people cannot last.

She’d lightly brushed at his other hand — the one she wasn’t holding, the one freighted with other women’s letters which he couldn’t justify.

In the course of being utterly pathetic, I’d set up a perfect cover — love letters from multiple sources.

I only kept on with the others to give Lucy somewhere to hide. I didn’t need them. I had the one I wanted … I had the real …

It’s me who’ll be caught with my dick out in the wilderness, isn’t it? Not bloody Lucy.

And now I’m caught with … Oh, Jesus, not that.

All of this had bolted through him in spasms while the woman — Meg, his Meg … it’s genuinely, really, a great name, Meg, once you think about it — Meg had frowned a bit, but was also observ-ably content that Jon should be Jon, more than content that he was there and just himself. He did seem to be all right with her.

Perhaps fairly well turned out after all — passable.

And a woman who lies in wait — gorgeous woman — should you find that her actions flatter you, or are appalling? Is it normal to discover they do both?

Meg — she had good name, though, no matter what — Meg had continued, ‘I don’t mean to be weird. By turning up, finding you. I mean, it is weird — has been weird — the writing to someone you’ve not ever met is weird—’

‘I’m sorry.’ Jon, it seemed, said this to women on instinct and was only occasionally wrong when he assumed that it was necessary. ‘But no, it isn’t the bad kind of weird. Possibly … It was … That is to say, Meg …’

I wanted to say that she looked magnificent.

Weird choice of word.

Treasure. I never called her Treasure. Nobody uses that as a term any more, but I should have — it was appropriate.

Meg had begun: ‘I just …’ And then she’d faltered and for a while — perhaps a long while — they had stood in the little square with nothing much going on around them, simply holding hands in the manner of people who did this on a regular basis and who were accustomed to the pressure of the contact, to the shape and safety and dearchristitssofuckinglovely of the touch: knuckles and fingers and palms and thumbs and skin.

My naked skin against her naked skin.

Ludicrous that it should feel so very … so very …

But I’d spent months, by then, telling her that she was sort of keeping me alive and that I knew the way she was inside, the tender and warm and basically perfect way she was inside — not being seedy, talking about her soul — and I’d promised her that she was … that is to say … that she could be … that if I prayed, which I don’t, but that if I did I would pray for her to be safe always and I would hope for a God because then she would be all right. No God could exist who wouldn’t keep her bundled up and taken care of and …

The thing is, I meant it.

So he’d finally gathered his breath and suggested, ‘Well, there’s a coffee place right there, we could …’

She’d laughed a bit — first time he’d heard her laugh. ‘They’re sick of me. I’ve just come from there. I used to sit and … when I was waiting for you and … not all the time, I have the job, sort of, like I wrote, I work with animals … but I waited quite often — when I could — and I bet myself that I’d know you when I saw you and I did. I did.’ This deep blue look she’d given him while he felt — the only word for this — proud that he resembled his written self — bizarrely pleased — because the self he had posted to her was far better than he’d hoped ever to be.

And he’d told her another source of fresh and ridiculous pride, ‘I sometimes go there, too. I grab a coffee and read … Well … We might even have … Although we didn’t …’

And they’d walked — Jon amazed that he could walk under these circumstances — back over to the café and sat in this atmosphere of close observation from the waiters and had been given cappuccinos, because that was what she liked and he didn’t mind, either way, had no opinion.

There she was.

Really.

‘I didn’t know that you would … I wouldn’t have … I …’

There was Sophia who was, in fact, Meg. She was the one who’d written back and got him, got him entirely, caught him. And here he was being caught all over again.

She wrote that she wouldn’t hurt me. Which is a cliché, I’m aware. But she wrote it. I never mentioned it was necessary. I never had to say. That apparently went without saying.

There were other opinions and phrases and possibly facts. I appreciated them.

But she caught me with the promise of no pain.

The cliché every dodgy man will hand to every woman, every woman who piques his interest — ‘I’ll never hurt you.’

Still, it’s easy to believe. What we want to be true is always easy to believe.

I believed her. Even though I do know what women can be like.

She’s Meg, though — not women.

I think that’s the case.

And Jon had been gripping his too hot cup but not drinking while Meg smoothed at the back of his free hand, although, of course, it wasn’t free, was it? It was as caught as the rest of him, trapped all over.

He’d been incoherent throughout. ‘Your eyes, they … You didn’t say they …’ Wanting to shake himself, but unable, he offered, ‘I usually like the photographs on the walls here. They’re for sale. Should I buy you one? They’re …’ And he’d seen that the thought of this hadn’t pleased her, so he’d resteered, reframed his narrative by — again — making a confession. This time it was, ‘I have to leave.’

He wasn’t preparing to bolt. He was staring at her disappointment in him and how she packed it away so he might not notice if he weren’t paying pathological attention. She nodded and evaporated all the heat that had been pacing and lurching about in his blood.

I wasn’t bolting, though.

And he did have to leave soon, because he was late for a meeting — going to be late, there were things he had to do before the meeting — that wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t limiting her exposure to him so that she wouldn’t find his faults.

Of course I was — the longer she was with me, the more she would see and I am too much and really not enough for anyone to have to see.