A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

Meg tried to get what she said next right and maybe didn’t. ‘I look after stray dogs. Part-time. And I stand near my kitchen window and watch … Well, I watch the sky, trees, parakeets … I don’t mean my life just is dogs and watching trees grow and so your tediousness doesn’t seem so … You’re not tedious.’ She appeared to be waving her hands — as if somebody far away was running in the wrong direction and she was signalling they ought to turn back. ‘You’re not tedious. Sorry. This isn’t tedious.’

Jon made a strange upward nod, almost as if he were trying to catch a biscuit in his mouth, or summon something. ‘Yes, no, you said — wrote. About the dogs. And how’s the goat, by the way? The original goat. Is he happy with the new goats?’

Which wasn’t what she’d expected to be asked. ‘He’s … I’m mainly in the office. But he’s doing well, I hear. They have funny eyes. Rectangular pupils. They’re these real, precise rectangles with squared-off corners, but their eyes are the usual round shape of eyes — I can never imagine how that works. It doesn’t look natural.’

‘Rectangles …?’

‘Yes.’

‘My … I never knew.’

And that was roughly when Meg had realised that she couldn’t cope with this any longer, or with the post-goat silence. She was going to have to break something, or laugh, or yell, or throw a chair.

Jon had wagged his head vehemently. ‘I don’t know a thing about goats.’ It apparently disturbed him that he lacked goat knowledge. ‘They’re all about … aren’t they …? The sex thing, I mean, eating and symbols of, the impulse of … Maybe that’s why — the eyes — why people associate them with …’ He glanced about in what seemed to be moderate despair, clearly trying to find someone to take their order in a close-to-closing restaurant. He was blushing and clearly aware of it, of its rising round his throat.

Then he’d frowned at her briefly and she’d seen his real face, who he was when he was angry, and he’d leaned a touch nearer and said, ‘I’m sorry, this is excruciating, but — in fact — in another way — being nervous people — we’re doing well, I think we’re doing well, I believe that, under the circumstances, we’re managing …’

And then he’d leaned back and cooled again, snapped shut. ‘I’m open-plan — when I’m in the office. Dreadful … The chosen ones who still have their own four personal walls get obsessed with floor space, size … You should see what the Home Secretary gets. Visitors have become tired and sat down to rest their horses, possibly herds of goats, during the trek across his mighty carpet. Allegedly. They fight for good furniture — the people, not the goats — they fight to be in Number 10, then they fight to be in Number 10 and close to the PM’s PPS and then they fight to be in Number 10 and close to the PM … And they jaunt across the country always seeing the railway end of strangers’ gardens, or regional airport cafeterias, which sours one, and they go visiting boys’ clubs, hospitals, prisons — being shown that apparently problems and ugliness are caused by everyday people, and are inevitable amongst the electorate. And, conversely, all buildings, all capital projects, are offered up in a pristine state they never quite preserve for passing trade, so why on earth the everyday people have cause to complain, or fail, or be unhappy, well who knows …’ He’d breathed, fluttered into a grin that seemed ashamed of him, of his noise, his complaining. ‘The world, you see, is full of people who have to stay human in intolerable circumstances because people in exquisite circumstances can’t manage to stay human at all. That’s the … the thing …’

This had caused another silence during which he’d glanced at the menu as if he was extremely used to restaurants — a restaurant expert; a not everyday person — and had quickly understood that he would have linguine con vongole. ‘I like the shells — it’s a craft activity for me, getting the meat out … I harbour vain dreams that somebody saves the emptied shells back in the kitchen and makes them into those table lamps one used to see in provincial B & Bs. Or in the kitchen at my parents’ house. They had two — lamps, not kitchens. Sentimental value. Holiday purchases, all the way from a place called Crail. We lived in one small Scottish seaside town and would only ever visit other small Scottish seaside towns if we went away. Provincial B & Bs. Sentimental … The only thing my mother ever was sentimental about were those lamps. I don’t even believe they worked.’ His eyes flickered into a resurrection of something unclear and then he sighted the waitress at a point beyond Meg’s left shoulder and signalled neatly for service. ‘I’m sorry that we’re so … That we’re late.’ He was used to receiving service, was politely authoritative. ‘It’s my doing, I’m afraid — the lateness. I would like the vongole and my friend will have—’ He’d halted and flushed. ‘That’s terrible. I didn’t ask if you were ready. Or you might want a starter. I don’t know what’s good here, I’ve never been … Would you like a starter as well as a middle? I thought we could have a pudding, but we might have both … all three, that is … we might …’

Jon had offered the waitress a face suffused with the correct degree of helplessness to make her suggest that the shared antipasti platter would be excellent as a starter and Meg had found the idea of this somehow improper — it had been like letting an interloper, newcomer, barge in and make louche assumptions about them.

And thinking that made me know that I wanted to kiss him again in the way I had kissed him goodbye before he fled the café. This time we hadn’t kissed hello. We hadn’t done anything to say hello — not even said hello. But, even so, I would have felt strange eating with him off the same plate. He was being formal by not touching me, not starting off the ways we might do that — and I couldn’t start, I can’t start … I was being formal by sitting like a mostly mute idiot and avoiding sliced meat and probably olives and stuff.

And she hadn’t needed bruschetta — it was a while since her life had included bruschetta, which was only messed-about-with tomato on toast, which she wouldn’t fancy at any time … She hadn’t fancied any kind of starter and she’d told him it was fine and she would have the pappardelle with lamb ragu, because that sounded uncomplicated — it would basically be spaghetti Bolognese, really, wouldn’t it? He had solemnly agreed.

Not that you’d try spaghetti on a date — if what they were on was a date. Whatever they were on — a cliff edge, a motorway verge, their best behaviour, a date — she would have enough trouble eating without ordering something unpredictable and possibly peculiar that she couldn’t manage and then seeming to be a fussy eater.

‘Do you want wine?’

‘I don’t want wine, no, thank you.’

Always there was this moment when you had to say why you didn’t drink real drinks. You think you have to give a reason, you can’t just offer this unnatural denial of what everyone else gets to have: those hot mouthfuls of signs and wonders.

Fuck that, though. I am — as agreed with myself — better than that. If I’d drunk and he’d been there to catch the show — it would have been the last I saw of him. The least of his problems would have involved me having phoney loud opinions, over and over, and then the sweating and trying to feel his dick probably, or telling him I wanted to, or any of that, all of that, shit like that, covering him in shit like that.

He was a clean man and he met me as I am when I am a clean woman. That matters. It is not possible to overemphasise how sweet it is to be with someone and clean. It is not possible to think it without crying.