A Kennedy - Serious Sweet

He’d undergone a sort of nerve death, obviously, over the years — the same pain repeating consistently and therefore disappearing in almost every way, if one were to discount all its more lateral symptoms.

And this isn’t any kind of pain I’m feeling.

Strange to have one’s grief lifted when one no longer minds if it’s gone or not. And to find that I simply feel as if I’m wearing slightly better shoes. I wouldn’t have wished so hard to be free if I’d known it was this unimpressive. Assuming that I am free. Not sure. Does being divorced equate with emancipation?

The phone chimed and shuddered against his chest, indicating a volley of texts and — no doubt — emails, very probably from Sansom. No one else should have any reason to be in touch. The department was no more or less besieged than usual, not in any real sense.

And Sansom’s reasons for trying to reach him would not be real. Sansom wasn’t real.

He’s like the hen-night version of his profession — not that I’m familiar with hen nights. Went to a stag night once — for twenty minutes. Sansom is as convincing as the lady who appeared and pretended she was a policewoman to no avail, before disrobing. He’s like a pre-striptease phoney fireman. I believe that hen nights have firemen. I’d imagine that fake male nurses would give out a number of mixed messages with regard to sexual orientation and the onset of diseases … And military uniforms might suggest PTSD. Who would want that? Would that be sexy? I can’t say.

I can say that Sansom is a Hen-Night Special Advisor. Or a Stag-Night Special Advisor. Both. He’ll swing in whatever direction is necessary. Loyal as a tick.

He closed the wardrobe doors. Then decided to leave just one open — so she’d be sure that he’d been there. She always closed her doors — afraid of moths.

No spare suit means I’ll have to trail back home and then change before work. Can’t be observed in disreputable trousers. We don’t stand on ceremony, but even so … I can’t proceed in unhappy trousers, not with hard-to-identify mishaps having left signs on the inner thigh, for God’s sake. And my shirt’s an irritation … but, even if the sleeves were long enough, I couldn’t wear the shirt of a debt-happy child, or a dick-happy failure or somebody lurking behind a moustache. That can’t happen, not today.

I cannot contentedly wear the shirt of some man who’s been making love to my wife. My ex-wife. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position.

And then the phone butted in again, ringing. Jon was old enough to remember when being away from the office actually involved being away from the office.

It was Sansom.

The concept of deferred gratification was unknown to Sansom.

Jon reached out the mobile and pondered it.

What? What is it? What could I possibly do for you? And why?

Which wasn’t a permissible attitude and Jon would have to do better, but the scent of Valerie’s perfumes, their weird mingling of discordant notes and the threat of past occasions — they were combining to throw him off.

I’m not sad. Not injured. It’s equally clear that I’m not delighted, not even content … I’m uncomfortable, I do know that … Is it nostalgia …? Neuralgia …? Indigestion …? Delayed shock after the struggle on the patio …?

And here was Sansom’s name in annoying, shiny letters on the caller display.

Apologies Mr Sansom — Andy — for my failure to maintain the high performance standards we always do seek to achieve. I will be with you shortly. I am currently experiencing an unwilling recollection: the temperature of the interior of my wife’s mouth — you know how it is. Quite possibly you know exactly how it is.

No. She would only have tried Sansom to make a gesture and she and Jon had moved beyond the stage where any gesture could be necessary almost a year before Sansom had even taken up his post.

Or, more precisely, I believe this to be the case, but could be mistaken.

Dear God, I feel weird. Am I just tired? I don’t sleep. I should be tired. End of the working week — early start to get in here and then leave again on time, because I’ll have no chance in the evening … I’ve a right to be tired.

Seeing him there in the corner of rooms — embedded and feeding. Why is a thing like a Sansom necessary?

He pressed the appropriate key, lifted the phone to his ear, let himself pour Sansom’s hectoring whine into his head.

Yes, here it was, the usual tepid rush. Like spittle. Like drool. Another’s mouth infecting yours.

Her mouth … all those movements … and the words … mine, too, as well as hers. She felt contagious and I volunteered to be infected.

Sansom continued. And you had to reply, because that was your duty in most situations, both professional and private. You were the replying type of man, you were of service — or if you weren’t and an informal resolution of your perceived failings was not possible and your customer was still dissatisfied then they might apply for an independent internal review by contacting — please God — someone other than you. ‘Sansom, what can I— Well, I—’ Sansom was forcing in a drumming pelt of injured something or other. There were shades of accusation.

I haven’t failed you, though. I don’t fail in that context. I do the job. I am relentlessly effective in that regard. That is what I am for. Sansom is not what I am for.

Jon fended him off, ‘But that’s not my, not strictly … not broadly my—’

Apparently, the Member for Wythenshawe, Frodsham and Lymm had, once more, gone astray. The man seemed to have been preprogrammed by forces of such exquisite and bizarre malignity that Jon could only ever think of him as the Mancunian Candidate.

When I imagine her mouth, when I imagine her at all … or my living here … it’s hard to say …

Sansom was whining at speed. Like a mosquito, perhaps sandfly, even. Definitely an arthropod kind of man is Sansom. And, according to Sansom — which was no guarantee of reliability — there had been a mishap late last night at the barrel-scraping end of some standard hotel jolly. Which was the reverse of being anything to do with Jon, particularly now.

The point is, my issue is … that I am — to a degree — feeling something. This sensation …

Jon tried to summarise and, by doing so, move on and away from bloody Sansom, ‘So he was verbally unwise, yes? That’s not really news … Your Honourable Member generally—’

The Honourable Member is generally a fuck-up. What was it the last time, the last incident? The man is a walking Fat Finger — a soft, thick accident waggling about and sure to thump itself against what it should not …

Ah, yes — I remember — ‘Beware the Hun in the sun.’ The last time had been in Leipzig. Fact-finding trip for comparison of this with that, or that with this — heaven forfend that MPs should achieve the same result by exchanging emails, phone calls, Skypeing, no one should ever be caused to miss an excursion. You could tell the Mancunian had prepared it — his bon mot — hooked it out as suitable for the occasion and therefore gone heartily off-piste in an address to several hundred sophisticated polyglot Europeans whose water glasses knew more about social grace and twentieth-century history than Mr Manchester ever would, even after some type of wholesale brain transplantation. The paper coasters under their water glasses could have beaten him at chess.

Chess … what am I thinking? Anything — animate, or inanimate — could beat him at chess. The coasters could have beaten him at rock, scissors, paper — at hangman — at snap.