A. Kennedy - All the Rage

‘Night-night, sweetheart.’ When I’d kissed her forehead and each closed eye, she’d tasted only pure.

This couple had walked along the corridor at my back and I’d been so absorbed that I hadn’t noticed.

And then I did.

And the three of us stood and I knew we were each one of us studying Emily.

I kept the door open — not for terribly long, a breath, a large instant — but I did give that much of her away. And it made me glad. I wanted them to understand that I could touch this angel and she’d got me.

She never knew and it didn’t harm her, and then I locked her up safe and the couple moved on.

She was mine, proved mine.

Emily.

He would drive Pauline about — short trips — dance with her or face her at unamusing parties, nod while she talked in supermarket queues, lean near her at the kitchen sink while she washed the dishes and he dried — he did his best to be compliantly domestic when he could — and he would be tight in a fury of needing Emily.

Mine.

Unlike his previous lovers, Emily made him have increasingly emotional sex with his wife. He would weep against Pauline’s neatly measured breathing and then have to agree to let her comfort him. His wife as a relief from the truth of fidelity — it was absurd.

Like staying in a railway station with no trains that we can catch.

Am I displaying hope or idiocy?

Are we? Or are we pretending this is acceptable, because we’re in company?

In it together.

A problem shared is not a problem, it’s a community.

And so forth.

We can’t claim it wasn’t more than possible to foresee — our likely future.

The fate of our nation.

And so forth.

I saw it. I stared at it, sort of, not for terribly long, a breath, a large instant.

Although I suspect my real focus was elsewhere. That’s likely.

I wasn’t alone in ignoring multiple warnings.

Even about trains.

As a student, he had decided he should seem to take an interest in the wider life. It enriched his social circle.

More girls.

His drive to be committedly well informed meant he’d attended a lecture by some playwright.

Face like a punched scatter cushion and a scholarship boy’s accent.

A laughably earnest audience had squeezed into the studio theatre at the Barbican Centre and been subjected to the usual liberal/left stuff — here we are in 1984 and it’s ever so much worse than the novel. Smug. The playwright cared. No one could match his extravagant caring, that was plain, and no one else had noticed and resisted the loss of their country’s virtue with quite his intellectual elan.

His thesis was okay, though — quite elegant, if repetitive. Probably rehashed it for The Guardian. That’s the way to make money: get paid for saying the same thing, over and over again .

Sorrysorrysorrysorry.

But I’m the one who pays for that.

The playwright had made frequent and self-consciously lyrical returns to the break-up and sale of the nationalised railways. Passengers were no longer passengers , they were being redefined as customers. Customers were happy when they bought something, in this case a ticket. Passengers wanted to travel, have politically and economically significant mobility, but instead would have to settle for pieces of thin card and lots of waiting. Dissatisfaction was being rendered inarticulate by a maliciously transformed vocabulary.

Mark had appropriated the idea and used it in arguments whenever he could.

More girls meant I had to find more ways to impress them. Until I could attempt the obvious.

Probably why the playwright was pimping himself onstage.

Both of us aiming to sound insightful and socially engaged.

Which I also aspired to for real.

I was going to be that kind of journalist.

I can’t dismiss all my ambitions as just screwing and manoeuvres.

I do like to please people, though. And I’m good at screwing and manoeuvres and that pleases lots of people. Readers don’t like insight, engagement, cleverness or any other brands of superiority. They want to feel better and wiser than what they’re reading, but they’re thick and have low self-esteem, so the bottom of the barrel is where I have to scrape to meet their needs. I worked that out early.

I got a job and made the readers happy.

Making readers happy is not a bad thing.

Readers like screwing and manoeuvres.

Pauline’s friends in the ghastly Welsh pub, they were readers. They wanted Westminster gossip — no politics, only the hissy fits and sex. And they were delighted to hear that a minor TV star got guilty with a hooker, racked by the thought of his wife and kids, and please could he limit his one-night stand to a cuddle and then a kip? Innocent. Except the hooker wakes up in the small hours and the star is ejaculating across her back.

I can’t tell you his name.

Well, okay then. But don’t pass it on.

They adored that. It brought the house down. Pauline something close to proud of me.

She has zero interest in politics. Another reason to marry her. No use washing it out of your work when you get it in your face at home.

I have opinions, of course. I’m not a vacuum. And to find what the readers want, I do have to keep informed. I’m not unable to see that citizens have been recast as customers in every sense and must be content with the act of spending and the blessed receipt of nothing.

Pretty nothing.

Passing trains.

The wider life in which it was at one time sexy to take an interest is not going well.

But I can’t be expected to care. And I shouldn’t attempt to make other people care, it just screws them up. It’s too late for whining and discontent.

And noticing the ruin of others is the quickest way to ruin yourself.

‘Please could you?’

It surprised him that Emily didn’t also embrace neutrality.

It was weird that the matter could even arise.

‘Please. You could go with me.’

Because he didn’t talk politics with Emily, either.

I didn’t want to fake things with her, impersonate a guy who’s concerned about refugees, famines. She was smart, had a mind, and I never thought otherwise, but we didn’t bother with everyday conversations. We were special. We were busy and beautiful and it would have been an ugly waste of time to disturb each other with crap from the front pages.

We gave each other peace.

So that evening with her was a shock. ‘You want me to go on a demo?’ A small, nice shock.

‘You could. Mark. With me. You could.’

Demonstrations were fashionable amongst her contemporaries — they had been when he was her age, because they looked good and passed the time — but she had a passion here, too. She’d given matters thought.

Passions and thought in my absence.

Unreasonable to be jealous.

But I was.

But I was in glory as well, bathed in the joys of her having revealed herself in this regard, of her having asked for something, stated opinions.

‘It’s wrong — things are all wrong. Once somebody’s got more than they need, they don’t need more.’ Sincerity thrumming on her skin so noticeably that he wanted to lick her.

In fact, he did lick her. ‘That’s a slogan, though, Sweets. And things are complicated.’