A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

The woman sips from a mug of something and turns back to the sheets of white paper on her table — these three squarish sheets with black handwriting across them. She studies them and, from her expression, it’s impossible to tell if they are keeping her attention because they are wonderful, or dreadful.

Then she smiles.

Jon had vomited quietly, neatly, into Valerie’s downstairs toilet, flushed his evidence away and then ascended in search of clothes.

Throwing up had been calming, although weirdly impersonal.

On my back and the back of my shirt — right through my shirt — I’m clammy.

I need to change completely.

Something with which Val would happily, delightedly agree.

Jon had padded up to the second floor and barely begun combing through Val’s subsidiary wardrobe in the Rose Room — her term, not mine: bloody Rose Room, bloody ridiculous — when his phone rang. Predictably, he flinched in response.

Even though it’s not her.

Even though she would anticipate and relish my being curious — it would please and not disturb her — and she no longer has the right to shout at me.

How lovely. Now that I think of it. This lack of shouting.

At present, Valerie was allegedly at or near what she’d described as a villa in the Bahamas, enjoying the exotic wildlife of the Inagua National Park. That’s what he’d been told.

She hates wildlife. Presumably whoever she is with has a thing for sandflies and flamingos. Won’t last.

Although perhaps her current escort has — in fact — a thing for shouting. People do. People do flock towards all kinds of harm, shouting included.

Or else if the damage is something they haven’t chosen, they’ll choose to own it, as if that might help. That could have multiple implications for any relationship — a person might end up trusting cruelty, marrying cruelty, craving it. And, bearing this in mind, any sensible human being might actually have doubts should any other human being greet him with apparently consistent warmth. That initial human being — the first human being — who has grown into doubts might think to himself , Yes, but am I wonderful? Really? Or am I a new knife she’s chosen to run her wrists across? Is that what she intends for me? Am I a weapon? I really would rather not …

And — as someone who might myself be fond of predictable hurts — wouldn’t I be better off and happier with someone harsh?

And wouldn’t this produce a state of permanent emotional incarceration?

Which is what Valerie would highlight as an example of morbid thinking.

His phone stopped ringing but retained an air of business left undone.

Then again, why did Valerie choose me, if not as a mortification, a morbid pleasure? I was a pain she could love to find intolerable.

He rubbed his face, as though rearranging the outside of his head might tousle his brain and leave him refreshed. Then he wondered if he’d washed his hands enough after trying to deal with his trousers.

Shit.

In every sense.

His phone began again.

And shit.

And this is not the bloody Rose Room, it’s the Spare Room with Foolishly Expensive Hand-Blocked Wallpaper in a Relatively Vile Pink. But that would take too long to say. I do see her point. She isn’t a woman to waste words.

You don’t need a lot of words in a shout, they would spoil the effect.

Unless you’re tirading. She sometimes branched out beyond simple yells and screaming — embraced the tirade.

I do not often shout.

I do not tirade. Not ever.

I am lots of nots.

And, since Valerie, what do they see — women — when they look at me?

Exactly the correct amount of harm?

An opportunity for shouting.

Or is it me that has a thing for shouting?

In any case, shouting from Valerie wouldn’t be at me, not these days. Not now. Not at me, why at me?

The phone tickled and asked in his jacket pocket — knowing, smug. In the end, they both knew that he’d have to respond.

But it won’t be her.

Why still anticipate it? I won’t even be crossing her mind — not if she’s … She won’t be awake. Or if she is, one might say that her wakefulness would be for the usual reasons and therefore wouldn’t make her think of me.

Nevertheless, he did mainly expect to see her name on his caller display when he checked it.

Nope. Sansom.

He didn’t want to speak to Sansom. Although a call this early would indicate a level of urgency to which Jon should respond, he didn’t wish to. He wasn’t in the mood.

And never mind early phone calls — vis-a-vis the time it would take to get himself from here into the office, it wasn’t half early enough. It was past seven. He truly did have to get on and step lively.

It was only that liveliness seemed beyond him.

Nope, Sansom.

The phone continued to pester as he forced it down into his pocket again, despite its complaints. Then it stilled.

Like drowning a puppy.

He smiled and went back to fumbling Val’s coat hangers as if he were a burglar.

Less a burglar and more a pervert.

Since his trousers were spoiled with both bird shit and inexpert rubbing at bird shit and his shirt was unpalatable, Jon really did need something fresh he could wear.

He was sure that he’d left some clothes here. A few things. She might well have given them away, though. She might well have burned them in the Aga, shredded them, had them fired into outer space, who could predict … She could on occasion possess a magnificent spite. Really. He wasn’t being unpleasant about that — her imagination was genuinely impressive in many areas.

Mine has been trained to be no longer there. In many areas.

Up to a point.

So today I can make a disinterested search of Val’s house without distraction …

She’d be disappointed if I didn’t search.

The hangers were heavy with her winter coats, several of her pensioned-off evening dresses and winter outfits he recalled and — yes — a couple of men’s suits.

Neither of them was his.

A couple of men’s suits. The suits, in fact, of a couple of men. That blue should be illegal and that one looks like it was issued by a workhouse — faux Edwardian labourer. Spare me. His week’s spend on moustache wax and beard-care products would be more than a labourer earned in a year. And, yes — he will have a moustache and, yes, he will wax it. Twirled ends, I bet.

And there were shirts. Four … no, five shirts. Ghastly shirts and ghastly in two different ways. He surmised that numbers one to three belonged to the blue suit, which belonged to a moron who thought that deep cutaway collars could be worn in civilised society — youngish, probably works in finance, how fat does he anticipate having to make his tie knot …? What would that prove? Dear me … And then there were these two unaccountable efforts from yet another man: not-bad point collars, but silk and in colours and oppressive patterns which strongly suggested a last dash for sex before taking the friends of one’s twenty-something daughter out for tea becomes an acceptable way to express one’s desolation. Oh dear again. It’s always sad to see a past mistress finally losing her form.

Passed mistress.

Still, it truly doesn’t hurt any more. It does not hurt me. I think. As far as I’m aware, the pain isn’t waiting, or boxed, or numbed. It has departed. It has upped and left — in this, as in all things, my pain preceding me.