A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

I will meet you.

If he says that, if he goes to the bother of saying that, then why would he not meet me and why would I not meet him? It’s only a matter of time until we’re in the same place today — that has been decided — and I have time. I have all the time that’s left in this twenty-four hours, just for me to do with as I’d like.

And Jon involved waiting — that seemed to be in his nature — and waiting was a pain in the arse, but also less scary than actually being with him. Being with what you care about is a little like sipping at something good, sipping half a glass of this or that in company and understanding that you can’t quite cut loose yet. It’s like being compressed in your enjoyment and unsure if you’ll disgrace yourself later, or else drown in remarkable feelings, in joys you can’t repeat and that are to do with some mystery process that meant some specific mouthful was exactly the right one to work the miracle and make you delighted — only you can’t tell which mouthful. You were already drunk when you took it and so it’s lost. Your miracle got lost.

It is unhealthy, I have been told, to think of the people I love — the person I love — in the way that I thought about substances and liquids. It’s better to see them as humans, not drinks-cupboard treats.

As if I kept an orderly drinks cupboard … a cocktail cabinet full of dainties, decorative and unopened possibilities …

As if I feel absolutely human when I’m next to a real, live human …

I try, though. I do try.

I am very trying.

And we’ve made that joke and we make other jokes and we’re something that works, me and Jon. I believe that.

Meg continued to be surprised by how much she believed that. She wasn’t a creature of faith and yet she had spent all those hours and inexplicable hours in the little café in Shepherd Market, simply waiting for Jon.

I went there, not to be crazy, not to be a stalker, not to jump out on his doorstep — just to see where he lived. The letters all went to a Mayfair address — I wanted to see how he lived, because Mayfair is something beyond me and I couldn’t match that, I couldn’t keep up. It had worried me, this idea that I’d be of no use to him. Just the difference in quality between his writing paper and mine — I mean, it was clear … Sometimes his paper depressed me as much as his letter cheered me up …

Only then I went there, to Shepherd Market, and the place was a PO box and that was sort of good. I took a couple of weeks and thought things through and decided that it was good. He wrote letters for strangers and needed to be safe, so he’d taken a PO box and … He’d never given me his private address. But that could be OK. He could be cautious. I’m cautious. I like cautious people. They are like me. Not that I like me …

The thing was, I could never have waited outside his house — that would have been unforgivable. But I could wait outside a place with PO boxes, outside a shop. And maybe I would see him coming to get the letters, to get my letters, and then I would know what he looked like. I thought I needn’t do anything more than have a look.

I’m a cautious person.

I knew that I’d recognise him.

I knew that when I did, it would make things all right.

I wouldn’t need to meet him — just seeing who he was would be enough.

I am a cautious person.

And I’m a liar, of course.

She’d sat by the window with rationed cappuccinos and the patient waiters and read a book, or stared at a book and waited. She had imagined the company of a man, being with a man and sober. Her drinking had ended as a solitary occupation. Earlier it had contained all sorts of people … Her sober life, though, that was … It had an emptiness … It was clean, because it was empty.

Empty space and counting days and being happy, looking for how to be happy, and letters. I had letters.

And nobody gets to know about the letters — they’re ours, they’re mine. We write them and we read them and they’re beautiful and make us that way, too, and in one of them he told me that every night at midnight he’ll think of me and go to sleep wishing me excellent dreams, the finest, the ones reserved for children and animals and innocence and rest.

Every night at midnight he wishes me sweet and I wish him back. We wish each other sweet and we know what that means.

We’re together. When I’m tired, or I’d rather be with him, or the midnight habit seems stupid, or it gets to be a duty — it still happens and it means that we’re together.

That’s not a lie.

And the certainty of this got her through how strange and tricky it was to meet and the endless guessing about which part of which day might release him and let him be with her. In the same way, their letters — one every week, sometimes two — could get her through those long waits in the café, before she’d caught sight of Mr August or heard him say his proper name.

I guessed that lunchtimes might be likely for a sighting, but that was going to depend on what his hours were and I knew he worked in Whitehall, but not where … Maybe he couldn’t get out to the PO box until the evenings. And that would be awkward because the café would be shut … weekends … Sundays would be terrible — no chance of seeing him unless … I didn’t know … I could maybe sit on the pavement. But not really. When you’ve been looked at by strangers when you’ve fallen in the street and been looked at by off-licence staff when you’ve been trying to buy what’s needful, or looked at by mothers who don’t want their children frightened, or looked at by neighbours who might be tired of you, or sad for you, or bored by you, but who always are disgusted by you … You’ve got no room left for being ashamed and exhausted. You can’t be doing with it any more.

So I can’t sit on pavements.

So she had sat in a civilised manner and sipped at coffee and waited as much as she could bear to and been almost relieved that her limited efforts might not work and she might never have to face him.

I wanted his company, but I thought he maybe ought to be spared mine. Women are lousy company — they usually don’t drink enough, or if they do, they get strange too quickly. They get nasty. Or they cry, which is too complicated to deal with. Men are simpler.

Men see you’re not right and they find where you’re soft and get in there and hurt you more. They pick who’s easiest to hurt. That’s simple.

But Jon isn’t like that. And I’m not drinking.

Even when he was Mr August, when he was Corwynn, and he was just his letters — he still made you different. What he wrote worked in under your clothes and kept you cosy. You could be in the world by yourself, but not look alone.

And when he turned up at the PO box, I did know him. He moved in exactly the way that he wrote. He was all of a piece — that’s what happens when you’re honest.

That funny little drag step he does sometimes, it’s got the same bounce that he slips in his voice, that he seals up in envelopes and sends me.

He wants to be an R & B man which is silly, because he already is — he has an R & B body.

Nobody told him.

But it’s really clear and so I knew him.

But if I’m honest and all of a piece myself I will eventually tell him — when I’m sure he won’t mind — that I dived out of that fucking coffee shop four times before I ran to him.

The first time was a sort of misunderstanding: in the letters Jon said he was ‘unfortunately tall’ so I caught sight of this bloke who was massive, just huge, and he didn’t look a proper fit in any other way, but I had a go and went and asked if he was Corwynn. Silly — thinking some wrestler-looking creature would be him. That was more for practice than a proper mistake, I think.