Serious Sweet (10 page)

Until he realised.

Until he woke fully.

And could not proceed.

Which was a problem.

Which was – to a perhaps significant degree – the root of her actually leaving him in a permanent way.

Or rather requesting that I leave. The house was hers. Her mother married it.

That moment when he pulled his head back, flinched away and she saw his expression, what would have unfortunately been his honest horror at finding her there in his arms.

So absolutely a problem, yes.

Then – which I didn't think of, or more properly which I ignored as a possibility … Then, it was predictable … Then the letters went on and the feeling also, or feelings, of usefulness, light-heartedness, content.

And these were also months – and then over a year – of increasingly vehement separation from the flesh-and-blood human being to whom he was married and with whom he lived. Then the mess of the divorce and then going off to be in the Junction. There was no absolute need for him to pick the Junction, rather than elsewhere. It had simply seemed correct to pack oneself off to somewhere hard and mortifying …

And then …

He tried an advertisement in Australia, the results of which proved uneventful, stable.

And then …

Another ad was floated out in
The Village Voice
. The
Voice
women seemed too demanding, too degrading, too often demanding to be degraded and to degrade.

And then …

He'd tried the
TLS
. It was closer to home and therefore, Jon hoped, less tiring and more sympathetic. He'd looked – this might really have been quite unlikely – for sympathy from readers of the
Times Literary Supplement
.

And then …

The vetting people found me out.

They uncovered my hobby and my – which could have seemed alarming – dead letter box. I suppose a PO box could be described as a dead letter box, mail drop, something fishy.

But that was all right.

That part of the matter was all right.

I could explain. And they didn't even seem to be overly concerned. There were so many worse things I could have been doing. Having a mildly irregular personal life … well, Val had ensured my – by extension – irregularity for years, in her own way.

Silly that she'd been so girlishly keen I should get promoted and yet always managed to undermine my suitability. Not that I didn't produce my own failings – a certain light missing from my eye. Or else an illumination of the wrong sort.

I was only now – as far as vetting could see – being irregular in my own right. And in a mutually consenting and adult manner.

Although money did change hands … leaves a nasty taste at certain levels … but it also reminded those concerned that we were being impersonally personal. I'd charged £120 for a dozen letters. Or $120. In fact, I ended up giving most of them a baker's dozen for the money: that one extra lent the arrangement an atmosphere of generosity. And I donated the money to charity and retained my paperwork in that regard, although questions of paperwork didn't arise. The operation of appropriate oversight had uncovered letters from women, clearly replying to letters from me – letters of an affectionate nature. I simply agreed that I did, yes, receive letters and that I did, yes, write back to the women, because why not?

It seemed shameful to have solicited the interaction and so I didn't mention the ads. There were just three women in evidence, I think – they were all that was mentioned. I was dealing with five at that time, but I didn't say – or six, in fact. Or, no – I had escalated to seven. I was sending letters to seven women at that point. Some of them were writing back, three of them were writing back, because why not?

I suppose I approve of the letters having been intercepted. I should be subject to the standard checks and safeguards intended to ensure the suitability and probity of public servants. There should always be oversight and it should be rigorous. I couldn't help but wonder, though, how they did the deed, if they went to the shop after hours and picked the surely inadequate lock on the box – derring-do and balaclavas? Or did they compel its opening by official means – flashy badges and officially severe haircuts? Did they give that usual smug impression of actively defending the realm with every self-important breath? Or did someone insinuating have a gentle but determined word and rifle through my correspondence on an informal basis? It doesn't matter, of course. They could find out what I was doing, because why not?

I was receiving and sending letters to women, because why not?

Lucy, Sophia and so forth: no one involved could suggest why not. No one tried to.

They interviewed me.

Without enthusiasm.

I explained that I was corresponding with women as company. That was all. I said that I was courting. Smirks from over the desk when I used the word.

Courting.

I was not indulging in physical contact. There was no possibility of blurry photos in the Sunday papers, there would be no use of the word ‘romps' … More smirks from the desk confirming they'd never have expected romps from me – all I would be capable of was courting, harmless dicklessness.

There was no plan to use the PO box to betray – as they might have put it – my country. Nobody asked, but if they had I would have mentioned that I was in favour of saving my country.

That was pretty much it.

And so I kept on courting.

Because why not.

HR consulted thereafter.

And then Harry (the poisoned) Chalice ambled along and sat on the corner of my desk.

Was I happy? he felt moved to know. Had the divorce been a difficult time? No, really, he wanted to know – had I minimised its ill effects? Had anything conceivably to do with him created a sexual compulsive, a fantasist traitor, freak? (He didn't quite voice the thought, but one could see it passing.) Did I feel a period of leave might be of assistance?

Humiliating, naturally, that our chat should be semi-public. Unpleasant to be thumbed through in one's own – and only real, as it were – home.

I told him that, yes, I was happy, or at least not unhappy. I told him the divorce had been … had been a divorce. It was simple in the legal and practical sense: I got to leave Val and Val got everything else.

I had been the one to call and tell Becky I was separating from her mother and she said, during one of my pauses,
‘I'm glad.'
And I had to resist pointing out that my daughter doing this made me feel I had wasted two decades and more of my time.

Not that I'd told Chalice this.

I also didn't raise the fact that Becky being there at the far end of my phone and inadvertently insulting me had nonetheless reassured. Her existence meant not a breath of my marriage hadn't been worthwhile, hadn't led to something lovely. But the combination of elements – slight irritation and tenderness – was confusing and made my voice strained. She had thought for a moment that I was crying. She was mistaken.

Chalice hadn't much to raise about the letters per se.

The official position on courting was that if it didn't bring a department into disrepute, or endanger the defence of the realm and so forth, then my conduct was acceptable, if odd. It would be oppressive and unjust if one's sexual behaviour were constantly under scrutiny – there were guidelines about privacy and inclusion … Chalice flicked out the little suggestion that, nonetheless, my access to promotion would now cease. But everything about me already meant that I'd stalled. And being stalled makes me happy. Which is taken as a very bad sign, too.

(I'm still great in a crisis. That's agreed, that's axiomatic. I excel – as long as its somebody else's crisis.)

Should my multiple courtships transform into multiple liaisons, then my situation would be reassessed – Chalice said. I would be revisited and supported – as if I were a sickly aunt.

I assured him there would be no multiplicity. It was clearly very easy for him to believe me.

There he was on the corner of my desk, swinging one leg, one Church's loafer, cutting the air back and forth, as if this was fun, relaxing fun. There he was having both a word and fun. He wanted me to see how he was expertly grilling a professionally efficient and yet privately worthless man and enjoying the process immensely.

Or I may have been projecting my own low opinion of myself on to a superior. He did seem to share it, though. His mouth did seem both unavoidably amused and contemptuous. He was being deliberately, lightly, shaming.

Harry Chalice having a word.

Not having a word anywhere quite private enough to be respectful and you know the way with lack of privacy …

The word was good and the word was passed and the word was elaborated upon and the word then roamed about.

So I am known for women.

And I didn't go on leave when it was offered.

What would I do without work?

And I did keep courting.

What would I do without doing what I do? What would I do?

This was allowed.

But, yes, since then I have been known for women.

Always the women.

But it's not that.

A man runs out of White Horse Street and turns left into Piccadilly. The day is fine, although autumnal, and his overcoat is open, showing a suit with its jacket also unbuttoned and then a pale shirt, a disordered tie. His coat-tails lash about with his own motion, as does his scarf. He is in his late fifties, perhaps early sixties, and yet there is something much younger in the way he pelts, something of a boy he may never have been. He is dressed appropriately for Mayfair in tailored shades of quiet blue, but his recklessness attracts attention as he rushes and dodges in amongst pedestrians and then across the first two lanes of traffic between him and an entrance to Green Park. As he paces and frets on the central reservation, clearly anxious to proceed, it is possible to see how happy he is, visibly happy: the bunching of one hand in the other and the sweeps of fingers through his hair, the apparent welcoming of excess energy in his limbs. Something about him approaches dancing.

The man, then, wasn't running because he was in flight. It seems more likely that he ran because he had become somehow uncontainable. He may no longer know where to put himself and so he is hurrying into the nowhere which is motion.

His scarf, in a dark, quiet pattern, perhaps silk, lifts with a breeze and he allows this, apparently enjoys this when it touches his face. A couple, perhaps tourists, join him in his uneasy waiting and he stoops to tell them something emphatic. Whatever he says is perhaps not unpleasant, but does elicit a type of shock. The pair flinch very slightly.

At his first opportunity, the man darts into the road, barely clearing a cab, and is over, out of danger, back on the pavement and then sprinting into the park, faster and faster.

The tourists watch him as he goes.

Behind him, the street has settled again and resumed its customary state – the Ritz is still the Ritz, the traffic is still the traffic, the gaudy arcades are still gaudy arcades.

By this time the man is deep in the park, a wild form dashing over the tired October grass. The shape of him seems largely joyful.

SPANIELS MADE NO
sense. They were intended to withstand things: ponds and horrible weather and the noise of guns and battering out across moorland and into undergrowth; and they had to scare bodies into flight and then bring them back dead, gripped in their mouths, and you'd think this would make them insensitive and hardy. Not so. They were soppy. Generations of county types and aristocrats had bred legions of canine neurotics: slaves who were deliriously happy to be slaves, codependents who were delighted just to touch you, pieces of outdoor equipment that forgot every command in jovial frenzies of sensuality, who craved the scent of decomposition and also blankets and affection and – when it was arranged, or they could sneak it – sex and sex and sex.

Gun dogs told you a lot about the ruling classes.

As she walked, Meg was being followed – padpadpadpadpad – by Hector, an older springer spaniel to whom bad things had happened and who was therefore even more than naturally clingy with anyone who was halfway decent to him, averagely gentle. Meg was heading to the ladies' bathroom at her place of work – Gartcosh Farm Home.

Gartcosh Farm Home was nowhere near Gartcosh and it was not in any real way a farm. It was a home to the animals it defended, but did not wish to be. Its aim was to send all its residents back out into safe keeping in the wider world.

Meg was, this morning, choosing to ignore the wider world. She was additionally trying to ignore her body while it resented its earlier loss of dignity.

And I feel his weight on me – that's the thing. After all this time, I can still feel how it was when he was there and it was starting. He can still ruin my breath.

She was glad of Hector, although aware he was being especially attentive because she seemed, to him, injured. He kept reminding her of the chairs in the waiting room and the crying and all that.

I should look on the bright side – at least I wasn't handcuffed to anyone while they rummaged about …

Telling me that I went to the left … Why say such a thing? And how far to the left can a person's vagina go? I am not a mine working, I am not a mysterious warren of tunnels, I can't be that fucking tricky to navigate.

There were two ways to cure oncoming depression: to be glad of something worse that wasn't happening and to be amused.

Meg was trying both.

And there was also anger.

Bastard.

Although anger in the absence of its object was unwise, because it turned inward and led you straight back to despair.

Which I do not want. I want Hector. But not quite as constantly as he wants me.

Hector was not allowed into the ladies', because he was a dog and a boy dog at that and therefore it would be weird to have him loitering.

Joke. Sort of. Being amused. Not angry.

More seriously, people sometimes took showers in here – the cyclists took showers, very serious showers – and the work here could be messy and mean all manner of stuff had to be washed off, and nudity could seem inappropriate in the presence of a dog.

I need a shower.

But I have no excuse for taking one – no excuse I'll tell anyone.

I do need to, though, and so I will.

Basically, whatever anyone was doing in the bathroom, they'd want privacy, rather than a spaniel peering at them, or licking the
soap off their knees, or being ridiculous in other canine ways which didn't bear thinking about.

Nothing bears thinking about.

My running theme.

I should have it painted on the bathroom mirror, back at home.

I'll open a wrist and do it this evening in fresh blood.

Joke.

Not a very good joke.

Meanwhile, I am actually thinking – because I have to think about something, I can't just be empty-headed – I am considering how enchanted a spaniel's attention can make you feel, especially when he's been denied. Enchanted and guilty. They have the most beautiful-and-tragic-looking selfishness.

And he intended to keep her from harm, from further harm. He knew about harm, did Hector. And his eyes had never left her as she'd swung the door shut across his attention.

He'd also wanted to drink out of the toilets.

Meg had no idea why dogs always loved drinking from toilets – as if they aspired to something more grandiose than a bowl left on the lino.

Plus, they're obsessed by the shit of others.

And Hector particularly can't be in the ladies' because here's Laura, rinsing her sinuses, which would upset any animal with a past. Or anyone who'd like a future free from an image like that.

‘It's very healthy.' Water poured from Laura's left nostril in a thin and not entirely clear stream. ‘Washes your cilia.'

‘I don't have dirty cilia.' Meg stepped rapidly past the unfolding spectacle which she knew was intended as an advertisement as well as a purging of toxins. At least you could suppose Laura wasn't on cocaine.

Or else she likes to rinse the slate clean before she takes it.

Of course, she's not on cocaine. She doesn't ‘use' caffeine, even. She brings her own tea bags in a rat-piss-smelling container. She thinks aspirin is a sin.

Then again, she smokes. She lights up and inhales dirty, nasty, addictive, unethical tobacco – not even organic tobacco – and lets its vapours pimp up and down her lungs, calling out new business for tumours.

No use expecting addictions to be sane, naturally.

Meg advanced determinedly towards the emergency-towel cupboard and hooked one out without making any explanation. She then headed for one of the shower stalls as if she did this every day.

‘Of course you have dirty cilia.' Laura also belonged to the group of people who wouldn't think to pause a conversation while whoever else was talking pulled a curtain across –
I'm not that fond of curtains today
 – and closed themselves up in a shower stall.

‘Meg, if you live in London your cilia are besieged by toxins.'

Meg felt besieged, but not by toxins. She had wanted to undress quietly and at her own speed and then to make herself clean, very clean, very fucking clean.

‘The levels of some chemicals are illegal in the centre of town. Breathing, Meg. You just shouldn't breathe in some areas. I don't go in any more. I haven't for years.'

She calls people by name. I never do that. That's because I forget names, which is because I don't pay attention when I'm introduced. I intend to do better.

The stall was clean and felt recreational rather than medical. Meg had hung all her clothes up on a line of hooks which had been painted mauve at some time in an effort to make them cheery.

Hooks are useful. I take no offence to hooks. Mauve is not cheery – it is insane, but I take no offence at it.

The water rolled along her limbs and was, quite quickly, warm. It was good, clear, gentle. Even Laura outside with her nostrils couldn't break the moment – the long moment of washing and using the fruit-scented scrub and washing, washing, washing.

‘It's like showering, Meg. You cleanse outside the body and cleansing is important inside, too. Meg?'

People appreciate it when you know their name. Unless it creates paranoia and makes them feel they're at a disadvantage. By which I mean, unless they're like me. I'd rather be anonymous.

Meg gave up and answered through the wreaths of steam – steam scented with watermelon soap – that were an indulgence
and costing her employer money, but such things are sometimes necessary. ‘My cilia are not a big concern.'

There's no point disliking Laura – that will only harm me and leave her completely unscathed. I have to be careful about negativity. So I'm told. I have my instructions and they are detailed and numerous – I am to breathe in faith and breathe out fear and not overthink and … Fuck it – the list's too long. It's too long for today. I don't like today. This has been a rubbish twenty-four hours so far and I would like a new lot.

‘And I don't really go into town. I mean I will today, sort of. But I don't need to, not often.' The water tumbled and purled and was a blessing – this must, in fact, feel like successful blessing: comfort and sweetness and clean warmth.

I've been advised that I should be tolerant of others and respect their needs. I also have to be tolerant of myself and respect mine.

‘When you start to understand your own body, Meg …'

Meg knew she shouldn't snap at someone, just because she found them ridiculous and they seemed determined to press her, niggle, attract loathing. Meg suspected that Laura wanted to make a reason for some kind of fight, in order to then arrange – it wasn't clear – a workplace mediation, or meditation, or some bonding ceremony: something with levels of manufactured honesty, exposure, unease.

Meg let the shower kiss down, ease out the last of the shiver she'd had in her spine since the hospital. ‘My cilia – they don't worry me.' Feeling cold wasn't always about being cold – sometimes it was shock. Meg had never considered that before. Perhaps because she had always been slightly more cold than she ought, always mildly outraged.

I will use her name – she did it to me. There might as well be some type of benefit in being able to actually recall the names of faces I'd like to slap.

‘I worry about other things, Laura, but not my cilia.'

‘You worry?'This was free-range organic meat and antioxidant drink to Laura. ‘Worry's really bad for the skin. And for your immune system. Poor you.' Her tone – a blend of aggression and
superiority, concealed by a hippy drawl – suggested Meg shouldn't be out and about without a carer.

And I agree. But only I have the right to think that. She doesn't.

If I pray for her, this will allegedly remove the burden of picturing her being run over by a van. Or the effort of pushing her under the van. But if I do pray for her, I'd only be able to ask God, or the angels, or whoever's supposed to be listening, to grant that Laura ends up – who cares how – underneath a fucking van.

This is uncharitable. And counterproductive, surely.

But then Laura had been overwhelmed by a passionate fit of sneezing. And that had given Meg her chance to finish with the water, dry herself, dress as if her day was starting and had not offended and then emerge. Naturally, she was then subjected to the sight of a chubby, squeezable irrigation bottle being snuggled into Laura's left nostril and compressed until – there was a slight wait, possibly while the solution spurted up and around her brain – more suspicious water flowed forth, this time from Laura's right nostril.

‘It's simple as anything,' Laura told her, still irrigating into the sink.

That had to be excessive – it couldn't take ten minutes to sluice one nostril. She had to have waited until Meg had come out and could watch …

People have to wash their hands in that sink.

‘I'll think about it.' And Meg had returned – perhaps overswiftly – to Hector, who had been pacing, huffing and groaning in a small way, out in the corridor. He'd wanted her to hear him and to be sure he was still there.

Hector was currently a handsome creature: long-waisted, primarily white with dots and patches of black. He had a rather narrow white face with black markings – thumbprints and speckles – and black, bewildered ears. Grooming didn't calm Hector's ears. They always made him look as if he'd recently heard dreadful news and still hadn't adjusted.

Hector had perhaps especially taken to Meg – she liked to think so – but he had also made very sure he was generally loved.
He had established himself as a permanent feature in the administration building, where he greeted everyone familiar with a desperate wagging of his lower torso, his tail having been docked almost out of existence by some maniac and therefore giving limited scope for self-expression.

Everyone agreed that Hector's presence settled other dogs as they passed through to the vet, or stepped out for trial visits with prospective owners. And he was pleasant for the humans to have around, either slumped on his rug – he'd seemed to invite the offer of a rug – and breathing gently, or pottering, nudging, leaning, peering up with a confiding, consoling, beseeching expression.

He's a smooth operator is Hector. One of us will get him a credit card before the month is out. Probably me. If my credit rating was better, it would be me.

Although Hector did spend his nights in a pen amongst the other rescue dogs, his profile had been quietly removed from the gallery of candidates available for rehoming.

I wouldn't put it past him to have focused on me, because it's my job to do that kind of thing.

The other dogs continued to be, ‘Donny: a placid and patient boy, suitable for a family with young children,' and ‘Tosh: he keeps us all laughing with his antics,' or ‘Daisy: a loving dog who would need alone time to be introduced slowly at first.' And so on.

The
and so on
involved not only dogs, but cats, rabbits, gerbils, goats, even, six battery hens. These were difficult times and difficult times made pets untenable and so GFH – the Gartcosh that wasn't, the farm that wasn't, the home that wasn't; like a riddle or a fairy tale of some kind – was fuller than ever with small lives it had pledged not to destroy (unless they were unhealthy) but which it increasingly feared it could not accommodate.

There's nowhere to put them. Freddy the goat enjoys having more goats around, but they eat like a herd of goats might be expected to and there's one donkey and another on the way – there's not a lot of space for new pens, or new buildings. And even less money to meet more need.