Serious Sweet (41 page)

LOCKING HIMSELF IN
the bathroom seems the intelligent thing to do.

Of course it's not intelligent, it's imbecilic, appalling.

‘Is your …? Where is the …? If you'd excuse me, I'll just …' And Jon is lurching from the sofa and then thumping along a passageway and upstairs, hands scrabbling at the banisters. On the landing he peers into an airing cupboard –
scent of clean sheets, of her sheets
 – and this is a box room –
don't look, could be a bedroom, could have a bed –
and here is what he needs –
bathroom –
frosted-glass panel in the door and he opens it with pathetic, monkey fingers and in he goes, here he goes, and pulls the toggle to let him have light.

I don't want light.

And he shuts out the rest of the building and slots the bolt in fast behind him and then sits, slides, lands on the floor with his legs crumpled out before him and his back against the lower panel of the door –
wood, substantial
 – and this is absolutely not good.

I want to be, I want this to be
 –
later, in the end this will be … We'll remember
 –
please, we might – we'll say, ‘Oh, and that time when you ran like a spineless, time-wasting git and hid yourself in the toilet, because that's where shits belong. Or some such. Less abusive phrasing, because we'd be laughing about it. Please. Later this would be funny. Please. This would be the funny thing that stupid Jon did. But there won't be a later, we won't have one, so this won't be funny. There won't be later, there won't be us.

‘Jesus fucking idiot Christ you bastard.' He tells himself this in a voice that he has never before produced. He sounds oily. ‘You fucking moron.' The voice of a man who always had no value and who is no longer even plausible. He sounds like Sansom.

The feel of her body and how it apparently wants to be with his … she's on him like pokerwork, cauterised through to his bones and he'll never shake that, never be repaired.

It's my … it's just that my … I don't know how, Meg … and when you've had the hospital … and your life and the way it was and mine and when we hardly really … I don't see that it would be possible … I don't want or intend … And if you think I do intend … My dick intends, but it's a dick, please can't we ignore it?

Fucksake, how can a man be afraid of his, of his …

I'm not afraid of my penis, of my cock, of my dick, of my fucking Neanderthal dick.

I am not afraid of it.

I hate it.

I need it to stop. I need it to leave me be and …

She isn't going to want it, she isn't going to want me
 –
I don't mean because of today, of what happened today
 –
I wouldn't want her to even think of it today, but I mean she shouldn't have to want it ever.

He thumped the back of his head softly and over and over against what he guessed was the small rise of the frame holding the glass panel. It was pleasantly uncomfortable.

And even if I wasn't a screw-up … I mean, she's a screw-up, she's an alcoholic, she's … I don't know what that would involve … You can be great in writing, it doesn't follow that … Once they can move you, once they can thicken you and they own you that way, because they own you when they've got your dick, you don't think straight, they have you … You end up …

He hit his head harder and wanted it to bleed so that he could go downstairs in a bit and tell her, ‘I have to go because my head is bleeding and you need to forgive me and let me go.' He would do this – he would consider doing this – because he was a lying bastard and a man of the type that he found most despicable.

She doesn't fucking own me.

Say anything for an excuse to bolt, won't you?

Fucking Bolter.

She loves me.

That's worse.

That's wonderful.

Worse.

Once they love you and they make you love them and you miss what they are and you look forward to … and you think when you wake up, when you first wake up … and there's this part of your day, this line through your day which is coloured in a way that nobody ever provided and so when she goes …

I don't want her to go.

That's the thing.

I don't want her to go.

So I'll go.

Jonathan Corwynn Sigurdsson, this absurd man who is ashamed of himself and should be and who wants to lie on this linoleum for a while, just curl up and maybe he could cover himself with a towel –
her towel that knows her body, dear God
 – and maybe if he slept then he would feel better after and he could …

‘Jon?' Her voice with his name in it comes walking through the door like an animal he can't face, like some transgression of the laws of physics. ‘Jon? Are you all right?'

And Meg has no idea why particularly she's saying this, because it's obvious that he isn't all right and it's stupid probably to try and speak to him and she isn't stupid.

‘Are you not well?'

Meg feels bad for hoping that he isn't well and yet she does hope it in this hot, sudden rush of asserted will that's almost scary. Illness would give him a reason for holding her and then running absolutely away – something apart from getting disgusted by who she is and can't help being.

Jon and his disgust, his hating her, his doing whatever thing it is that he's doing – they would all mean, would have to mean, if she was sure of them – would all mean the end for what had been this sweet thing. And there's no drink in the house but,
fuckit, there's always drink somewhere, you can always whistle and find that supplies will come rolling up and shining.

But it wouldn't help.

There is not a bad situation that my drinking will not make worse.

And why bother to have the thought. I can't. I am stuck with this – this – this shit.

‘Jon.' She knows that she shouldn't sound angry, because that will also make a bad situation worse. ‘Jon.' Why not be angry, though? Because he's not allowed to do this, he's not right when he does anything like this, whatever this is. ‘JON.'

And she tries the bathroom doorknob and it turns but – of course – he's thrown the bolt and there's no getting in.
Maybe he is ill, maybe he's got some stomach thing, some … Maybe he's embarrassed by some …

The whole mess, the whole bloody mess makes her kick the door hard, twice, and then realise that she is furious at just about the exact same time she realises that she's hurt her foot.

Ridiculous.

‘No, I'm here. I'm sorry. I'm well.' Jon sounds small.

A tiny heron.

Nerves and wildness and no way of getting used to people.

You want to wrap him up and cure him of whatever this is.

‘I, ah … Meg, I just can't. I can't. I'm scared is the thing and that's …'

He also sounds as if he would like her to be sorry for him.

You want to wrap him up with a cloth put over his eyes like you do with birds to make them calm and then strangle him.

‘JON!' And she kicks the door another three times and doing this is only painful and frightening and pointless, but it seems unavoidable in her mind.

Each time she hits the door, or kicks it – Jon is guessing that Meg is delivering kicks – the impact jars through his head and neck and hurts him. This makes him happy.

Meg, darling, sweetheart, baby, all those words – I'd be angry, too.

I'd give up and leave a hopeless case like me to rot
 –
let me deal with whatever policemen, or troubles, or silences, or waits come my way. Let me be alone.

If she'd just even get away down to the living room again, or anywhere else, then I'd have a chance. I can wait until she's gone and I can dodge outside probably …

I don't want to, though.

I could dodge out and head off to wherever, to New Cross Road, to some road, there are roads. I could walk for a long time and when the sun came up I could flag down a cab. I'd be tired enough to stop my thinking by then. I could ask the driver to take me home.

Except there isn't home.

Not if there isn't us.

The bathroom smells of her perfume and her soap. It's a nice bathroom, a good one. Neat.

‘Meg, I—'

‘No, shut up! Fucking shut up!' The wood at his back shudders softly as she undoubtedly sits down and rests against it.

When she speaks again, the words seem to slip and drift out from her, they emerge strangely.

Jon feels them glide under the door and then pool round him, being sad. The way he has made her sad soaks into him …

The cause of this fuck-up is me, because I am a fuck-up, because of my cock.

And a brief yelp escapes him, rather than a laugh, and he tells Meg – he turns his cheek to the bolted door and he tells her, ‘Unparliamentary language. Not out loud. In my head.' And he breathes and his lungs fill with more of how she would smell after a bath, in the morning, in the evening, before bed. ‘Oh, Meg …'

‘Open the door, you fuckwit.'

‘I don't think I can.' Jon has the sound of a person surprised by himself and beyond his own control and the certainty of this works along Meg's skin and chills it.

He's lost. I've lost him.

‘Meg, I … I do want to … I really do. There are all kinds of things that I would … You made me very happy. You do make me very happy. It's only that I … There's no point to me and please hate me, it's the only way. I can't think that anything would be enough, or work, or be worth your while, or—'

‘Shut up!'

‘OK.'

‘Shut the fuck up!' Meg's tongue feeling disabled by unknown influences and wanting more than words to touch and making her sound like a bully, like the thing she would never want to be. ‘Sorry. I'm sorry, too, Jon. Honestly, though. Do shut the fuck up. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not going to do anything terrible to you. Do you think that anyone who meets you, or just looks at you, anyone at all, can't tell that you shouldn't have anything horrible happen to you? You're something that no one should hurt. Like with animals – you're meant to look after them.'

When he hears this, Jon is surprised to find that he's not at all unhappy to be classed as an animal.

‘It's like with kids, Jon. There are things you don't hurt …'

He also likes being a thing – it sounds simple, almost effortless.

She stops and he can hear the fall of her breath and wants to fit himself around it, wants to feel it on his neck, feel it warming him through his shirt –
soft shirt
 – wants to feel it on his penis, cock, dick – wants her to be kind to his inexplicable self there and to not hate it, not laugh at all the other places about him that are horrible when you see him, the mess of him. He wants to be with her.

He tells her, ‘People hurt kids. They do it all the time, they—'

‘I know!'

And there's the dunting of possibly her head, lower than his own, drumdrumdrumming on the wood until he worries about her for a new reason, wants her to stop, be safe, be careful.

‘I know, Jon!' It sounds as if her throat is getting sore. ‘I know!' This huge sound she's throwing out, this volume that you wouldn't expect from a small person – startling person. And he does love her very much. It would be unforgivable to say, but loving her is everything he knows or can remember at the moment. That's why he can't stand and can't open the door.

‘Meg, I am sorry.'

‘Jesus, I know that, too! I know you're sorry all the fucking time – you say it often enough. Almost as often as I do. And now you can stop. And I know people hurt each other and they hurt animals and they enjoying hurting whatever they can reach, but that's not everyone, not me and not you and that's who's here, that's the only fucking people here and we're us, we're just us, we're us …'

‘Meg, I—'

‘You think I don't know about being hurt? You think I don't get scared? You think it's a mystery to me what complete cunts people can be? You think I would ever, ever, fucking ever want to do anything to you that would hurt you, when I know you and I fucking love you and I'm me! You know me! You fucking know me! I can't hurt you!'

And she shifts her position against the door and Jon feels the change in his cheekbone and that's OK.

‘Jon. Listen. You sit and you listen, right?'

‘Meg, I—'

‘Shush. Shush, baby.' Meg is peaceful when she says this.

Nothing to lose, because everything's gone: that's a peaceful way to be.

And she leans the side of her head up close to the door, and believes the gloss-painted wood is warmer than it should be, because Jon is on the other side of it. She makes that true in her head and decides to be glad about it. She begins quite softly, speaking to his heat, ‘When the cab was driving us up here, you saw that couple – you noticed them, I could see. There was a man walking after a woman and yelling and she'd got two of those shitty, thin carrier bags they give you in corner shops and both bags were full up with cans – beer or lager or cider or something – and I could feel you thinking – because alcoholics can do that and we're usually wrong, but not always – I could feel you thinking this was a reminder of what drunks look like. And the woman was a mess and in heels she couldn't manage and you were thinking that's what a drunk woman does on a Friday night, that's how she is and how she dresses, and that's the way a couple would act if it involved her – the guy trying to hit
her and her trying to hit him back and the pair of them screaming, about … Well, you don't know what it's about and they probably don't, either.'