Serious Sweet

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Also by A. L. Kennedy

Dedication

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue

06:42

06:42

07:58

09:36

10:57

11:30

12:28

13:45

14:38

15:00

15:23

15:25

15:47

15:47

16:12

16:20

16:42

17:01

18:22

20:55

21:25

21:45

21:52

21:52

22:50

23:02

23:02

23:29

23:55

01:12

01:16

02:06

04:18

04:38

05:25

06:42

Copyright

ALSO BY A. L. KENNEDY

FICTION

Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains

Looking for the Possible Dance

Now That You're Back

So I Am Glad

Original Bliss

Everything You Need

Indelible Acts

Paradise

Day

What Becomes

The Blue Book

All the Rage

Dr Who and the Drosten's Curse

NON-FICTION

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

On Bullfighting

On Writing

for V. D. B.

as ever

‘The endeavour, in all branches of knowledge, is to see the object as in itself it truly is.'

Matthew Arnold

A family sits on a Tube train. They are all in a row and taking the Piccadilly Line. They have significant amounts of luggage. They seem tired and a little dishevelled, are clearly arriving from somewhere far away: a grandmother, a father, a mother and a daughter of about twelve months. The adults talk quietly in Arabic. The grandmother wears a headscarf, the wife does not.

Although her adult companions are quite dowdy, the girl is immaculately flamboyant. She has spangles on her perfectly white shoes and wears hairclips adorned with the shapes of butterflies. She shows colours upon colours. There is a complicated pattern of embroidery across her cardigan, like flowers and like stars. She sits on her father's lap, with her back to windows full of autumn and declining light and she faces out at the rest of the carriage, and is self-assured, interested, genuinely charismatic. She fixes passengers with a quietly adult gaze and grins.

The girl has extraordinarily lovely eyes.

On her hands, her plump knuckles, the side of her throat and on her cheek and forehead there are recent injuries. Some are just scabbed abrasions, while others are more significant. Nothing has finished healing. It seems clear that something dreadful, perhaps explosive, has caught her – not badly, but
badly enough. Some of the damage will make scars inevitable. The rest of her skin is as silk and downy and remarkable as any young child's would be, but she has this persistence of wounds.

She practises waves – sometimes shares them with her grandmother and mother, sometimes with strangers who cannot resist waving back. Her force of personality is considerable. And she plainly assumes she is special and a focus of attention for only good reasons. And it ought to be possible that she is right in her assumption, that she always will be right. It will take repeated outside interventions to remove her self-assurance and happiness.

But this morning she is authoritative and waving, delighted. Whenever a passenger smiles or waves back, her relatives seem both proud and on the verge of dense emotions which could overwhelm. The adults' obvious tensions and their sense of things unexpressed have rendered them mysterious to other occupants of the carriage – both mysterious and a source of quietly intimate concern.

The mother, the father, the grandmother – they keep themselves busy, offer their daughter healthy titbits and drinks from a variety of bags and packages. They have games also. They have tiny cloth books and a nice toy animal a little like a horse. They are as prepared as anybody can be.

THIS WAS –
OH
dear God
 – this was not what he'd –
nonononono
.

Shit
.

Jon could feel his shirt dampening with a panic sweat, his jacket heavy and encumbering. He wasn't dressed for this, for this problem, this level of problem.

‘I'm doing my best. Really. Come on now … Please …'

He was holding a bird.

Although he didn't want to.

He had a bird in his hand.

And it would be better in the bush. Ha ha ha.

Although it couldn't be allowed anywhere near the sole currently available bush – that bush was the problem.

The innuendo is a problem, too. But I'm ignoring it. If you ignore an innuendo it may go away. Unlike a problem.

‘Just … Just let me. I can fix this.' Actually, he wasn't remotely sure if he could fix this.

He was quite possibly lying. To a bird.

It was very young, the avian equivalent of a fattish toddler, or chip-fed adolescent maybe, and was fighting inside the curve of his left hand while Jon tried what he could with his right to make it happier. It wasn't happy now, of course. It was biting him, clenching his left forefinger with its beak in a display of determined impotence, small bravery.

He didn't want to upset it.

But he really couldn't leave it alone – not in its current condition.

But not leaving it – rescuing it – was already making him late. The creature was sapping his morning, draining his schedule to dregs before it had started. And he could have done without this, to be frank, when his day was already arranged to be challenging, punishing, fatally flawed, to be easily toppled by an incautious sodding breath. So to speak.

Today is the day when I get what I deserve.

I think. Possibly …

As if anybody human, any human body could stand that.

So to speak.

But, even so, one would have to do one's best with today, whatever happened. One always had to do the best one could – one being the only one available.

But then again one might be failing already to do any good at all – birds were sensitive, animals generally were sensitive and birds in particular could be overtaxed and flat-out murdered by simple shock. He might be killing it.

But he didn't want or intend that … Which was a point in his favour.

But probably his lack of expertise would guarantee he screwed this up …

Too many buts – which isn't like me. I'm the man who takes away the buts. I'm known for it – slightly. I can remove them from any public statement, press release, precis, report, discussion document, Green Paper, White Paper, any note on the back of an envelope, if you insist that you need me to help you and are having a delicate day, well, I'll do what I can … I can, in theory, make having cancer be, well … still having cancer, but also, somehow, a favourable outcome if I'm given enough time. I do have that skill. I don't want that skill, but it does seem to be required that Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson should hook out any sense of obstacles in the world and paint over any action's possible consequences. If you feel that you can't quite like some part of reality, I'll step in and rephrase it for you.

But I would rather not.

And my actual duties lie elsewhere. Very much so. In my opinion.

It makes me tired.

Jon shut his eyes to let his head settle – like covering a parrot's cage to shut it up: so much noise to so little purpose …

I can rewrite anything, but we are – in this situation – talking about death and that does tend – even in commonplace birds – to be viewed as a negative outcome.

The blackbird shivered – which might be a bad sign, Jon didn't know.

Nobody normal liked having a death on their hands. In their hands. In hands which, as it happened, seemed insufficiently evolved for this type of thing – too close to the ape: his had unsightly knuckle hairs and a deficit of manly dexterity.

One's construction disappoints oneself.

Plus, this would be an Unforgivable Death, which was worse.

Pregnant women, dogs, horses, some cats, all chimpanzees, most children, the sprightly elderly, men with good hearts, pretty women, brave blind people and promising youths from troubled backgrounds with Oxbridge scholarships – and endearingly courageous baby birds – these are beings whose Deaths may be regarded as Unforgivable. Heart-clenching photographs across multiple media platforms may emphasise their tragic stature by showing them in earlier moments of unwary hope. (If a horse – for the sake of argument – can experience hope.) Their troubling loss may inspire campaigners, legal reforms, the provision and naming-in-their-honour of community facilities, or new diseases. Or else the provision and naming-in-their-honour of replacement horses.

The chick produced another urgently shrill lament – these were emerging at unpredictable intervals – pleas that were larger than itself and accusing.

Then it bit him again.

‘Oh just … Look … Please …'

We preserve the names, create the laws and the memorials, so that Deaths which are Unforgivable can also appear to serve a purpose. Although obviously it is we who do the serving. The dead and their deaths cannot serve – they are only a removal, an extinguishing. Nobody – this is an unwieldy example, overdramatic – but nobody died in the Holocaust in order to provoke a compensatory outbreak of human-rights legislation. That wasn't their aim. Nobody threw themselves into the corpse mud of the Somme in hopes of inspiring commemorative artworks. And yet … These thoughts emerge, because we long for hopes and meanings and want them to spring forth from bitterness and permanently modify
Again
by adding
Never …

This is simplistic as an attitude and could be quite dangerous in its ultimate effects. It could lead us to encourage suffering in others because it might conceivably give rise to quite ill-defined and therefore inspiring good. It could lead us to embrace the fruit of various poisoned trees. It could lead us to plant poisoned trees …

But no Death is anything other than Unforgivable.

I would have to be morally bankrupt to suggest there was such a thing as Forgivable Death. And I am not morally bankrupt – not entirely. Although others may be. Maybe. It may be that I'm saying others could, on occasion, misplace their moral centres and subsequently rank fatalities according to a graded scale, descending from … let's say
A Death of Shattering Importance Occurring to a Person of Celebrity Status
to
Inconsequential Deaths, Tedious Deaths,
and then
Distasteful Deaths
and on towards
Necessary and Solemnly Welcomed Deaths.
All would be
Predictable Deaths.
Even the unforeseen can be predicted, its proportion of reality quantified – the emotional distancing and coarsening suggested by this type of quantification being perhaps undesirable. Conversely, taking the deaths of others lightly, or approaching them purely in terms of public relations, or a contest between cost and benefit, might not be something one ought to judge harshly and could indicate – rather than a spiritual lapse, or defect – a sensible effort to impose a form of triage on a busy compassion schedule.

I could retain a proper reticence and yet still make an observation along those lines.

An observation about others. Not myself.

‘I'm not a bad person.' The bird seemed unconvinced. ‘But I am … I'm late. And I can't be. Today is …' Another sweat broke over him. ‘Today is today and is full of …'

Shit.

This was Valerie's fault – because she'd changed things. Her patio was usually an area of grimly straightforward vegetation, potted clumps of foliage that didn't mind her smoking at them. Now it appeared she'd decided to harbour a blueberry bush. Or somebody had given her this blueberry bush –
much more likely
 – and she'd dumped it out here in response.

She'd dumped it where it would be dangerous.

She'd dumped it where it would act as the bait in an unnecessary trap.

Which meant the entire scenario was indicating the character of the bloody woman just clearly, massively – it absolutely showed the way she always was and would be.

The bird flexed within its confinement, its tiny efforts and huge distress managing to impregnate his fingers with yet more clumsy guilt, despite his efforts to be helpful.

He was aware this indicated his own character – a child's terror, animal fingers – just as clearly, massively …

‘It's OK. It's OK. I'm making it better, you better. Honestly.' He'd been speaking to the creature throughout – this fawnish, biting blackbird child – ever since he'd heard it calling. He'd run outside from the kitchen and into the dawn, found the bird struggling, punishing itself, in the especially dense jumble of netting left at the foot of the blueberry's far too ornate planter.

Must have been a gift. She wouldn't have bothered with something that needs any maintenance, not voluntarily. Unless – is it stylish this month to eat fruit fresh off the bough, or currently held to prevent appropriate ageing, or to offer defence against cancer?

Christ, she can be appalling. Although I shouldn't say it.

‘Sorry … Sorry …' Jon apologised, made efforts to sound soothing.

I do realise I ought to hate less.

In general, in my wider life, hate has grown to be almost a hobby. I walk between the rented fig trees of Portcullis House and hate. I practise quiet and detailed hate at weekends and in leisurely moments I wander the Natural History Museum and can no longer guarantee to really see anything, so thick is the fog of hatred that I peer through as I rush on and this is inappropriate. It helps no one. I acknowledge that.

‘Sorry.'

And in my current position, I mustn't, mustn't, mustn't, hate anything or anyone because proper animals register negativity. Complete animals, as opposed to people, understand even the earliest traces of loathing and they hide and run and fly away from it.

Besides, I can't be all covered in hatred – wet with hate, can one say that? I can't – not today. I mean, I can't hate anything today. Today is about – possibly – the opposite of hating.

So – even if I didn't have to anyway, I need to think gently, feel kindly, or else my bird will know.

Not my bird. I don't own it.

This bird.

My responsibility. Not owned, but owed.

Which would make a nice sound bite, polished up and delivered with humility – a stirring phrase to lift the tempora and mores, in as far as anyone still remembers what that means …

‘Oh, for Christ's sake!'

Above him, the mother blackbird bulleted past, keeping neat to the crown of his head, threatening, letting out hard chips of alarm in rattling bursts. She sounded like the din from escalating assaults on some type of thin crockery. She hadn't hit him. She was pretending that she would, though, because that was the most she could manage. She was displaying a violent kind of love.

‘I'm … will you … will you both … I'm doing what you want. I promise … I …'

Once he'd understood the situation, he'd run back to Val's mildly louche kitchen – greasy handles on all of the drawers – and found some scissors before scurrying out again to cut away the horrible green tangle from around the bird's fretting body. This initial rescue had left it free from the net as a whole, but still personally bound by these nasty plastic strands and he'd had to pick the poor creature up, hold it in his palm, coddle it securely and snip, gentle, snip –
Christ, if I'd cut a wing or something, crippled it, condemned us both to a subsequent mercy killing, an Unforgivable Murder … and that could still happen, it still could, awful, awful
 …

Jon's free hand had gone seeking about fairly blindly with the scissors' threatening ends and had hoped to catch and then cut the constrictions around the animal's breath, the palpable hysteria, as it wriggled with bleak strength, resisting his grip.

The thing gave another chirp of surprisingly loud dismay.

‘I won't eat you. I won't.'

He found it was odd, if not moving, to hear an identifiably childish note in the call. This seemed to be a rule in nature: that when we are properly, deeply troubled – birds, chimps, horses, humans, things with blood – we all become children, we all wish for our parents, scream for our mums, whether their aid is available to us, would be useful to us, or not.

‘I won't hurt you at all. I promise. Promise.'

The blackbird's mother swooped again pointlessly, but louder.

This whole horrible situation was entirely the result of Valerie's being Valerie and doing the wrong thing. She had an instinct for wrongness. The netting on the blueberry bush was the wrong netting. Jon wasn't, strictly speaking, a gardener but had seen the stuff you're meant to put over vegetables often enough. The bore of it, the diameters of the loops – he was unsure how you classified anti-bird protection – the denier, density … it was meant to keep out even sparrows, surely. Any reasonable person would deploy it with the aim of repelling assailants, not garrotting them. But Val had covered her sodding blueberries with what had to be the largest possible grade of the stuff – this gaping hazard to all and sundry. A drift net for anything feathered. Was she eating birds now, fresh off the bough? Was that guaranteed to put a bloom on post-menopausal skin? What had she been thinking – if at all? She was a woman who could be quite gloriously unburdened by consideration. Anything slimmer than a tomcat and in search of blueberries would simply plunge straight into the hazard and be caught and alone and yelling and bewildered.