Serious Sweet (2 page)

That was the trouble with animals – their lack of understanding created dismay upon dismay: theirs and then one's own to follow.
One looked at them and saw oneself and then became foolish and overwrought.

‘For crying out loud! If I was going to eat you, I would have! Wouldn't I!'

It was an outlet, sometimes, the shouting. Not that Jon often shouted.

‘Shh, no. Sshhh. I didn't mean it. I'm not angry with you. I'm not angry at all. Don't worry. Please. Don't worry about me.'

Neither attempting to soothe the bird nor losing his temper with it seemed to alter their mutual positions. Both blackbirds, in fact, were beyond the scope of his communicative abilities.

Which Val would have pointed out. She had a good ear for a punchline, a knack for summarising failures.

‘Sorry. Sssshhhh. I'm going to … This will … it will …'

Experimentally, he tugged at what he thought he had successfully reduced to only an opened length of plastic, its structure defused – the end of the problem. Jon pulled a little harder and an unpleasant, spurred thread began to emerge from his fist, no doubt sliding around the blackbird's chest first, moving over and under its wings. He could feel the creature shudder. The transmissible burden of horror in this was remarkable.

As a response to the unfamiliar contact, the chick – quite naturally – shat hotly on to Jon's trousers, leaving a long purplish streak. The colour of stolen blueberries, the first fruits.

Then it called even more poignantly than before – Jon could have done without that – and the mother answered, dipping past his ear in a sweep of outrage. What was she saying? Was she trying to reassure, already in mourning, uttering menaces, vowing revenge, shouting advice? She had muted the usual calls of other birds in the vicinity, made them withdraw to a cautious distance.

Their silence had begun to sound judgemental as the drama continued – even though Jon had succeeded, apparently. There didn't seem to be anything further left to encumber his captive. ‘See? Ssshhh. That's … It's … I did tell you …' He tried to check all was well. He'd never get hold of the thing again if he'd ballsed this up and it was still afflicted when he let it go … You wouldn't
want to contemplate a fellow creature getting strangled slowly by its own motion, by its growth … or else getting crippled … stuff like that … deformity and gangrene.

The upside being that Death in something deformed and gangrenous would be a Desirable Death.

God, I'm a bastard.

No, I'm doing my best. I have done my best.

He angled the feathery shape this way and that, peering between his fingers and attempting to inhabit his sense of touch with sufficient concentration to locate errant strands.

Nothing appeared to be wrong any more.

I think.

‘OK. OK, then. That's fine.'

Somewhere the mother was watching, loathing him, loosing off further hard strands of complaint.

Jon murmured to her offspring, ‘It's all right. It really is. Silly. Weren't you …?' In a sort of croon he hardly recognised.

‘It's all right.'

He breathed. A slight shake hampered the progress of his inhalation and then eased. He'd stopped sweating. The muscles in his thighs relaxed. He pondered his slightly ruined trousers, the darkish, white-streaked stain on the incompatible blue of the cloth.

Then he gazed around himself, sighed outwards.

The block of yellow light that had been splaying from the kitchen doorway had become entirely invisible once the dawn strengthened into day. Nevertheless, a soft blueness, a gentleness, remained here and there in the shadows as he studied them. And there was an atmosphere of accessible beauty. If he'd wanted, Jon could have smiled. But he only looked, carefully looked, let himself see and see and see and inhaled again and held the breath, both air and peacefulness thick in his lungs.

And beyond him there was a dense inrush of stillness.

It locked.

Safety was happening, the imposition of comfort at something approaching seven in the morning. And the disappearance of every motion.

Jon could smell the river: the relative proximity of exposed mud and spring greenery, dirty life going on beyond Valerie's home. (A desirable Georgian property not entirely unfamiliar with dirty life.
She only does it to annoy, because she knows it teases.
) But there was no sound, not a bit. He could believe that the trees by the road outside, the neatly restless waterside gardens, the shifting and searching of silt feeders, the willows thickening out on the eyot, the push and lap of the current, were perfectly held at a stop. And the early brawl of cars on the Hogarth Roundabout, the unending overhead slither of jets, the climb of the sun, the virulent spinning of everything necessary to this particular April Friday – it was everywhere suspended.

Just now.

Just for now.

Even the mother blackbird was silent and unmoving.

It was as if simultaneous fears – the birds' and his own and the world's – had created a mutual understanding and therefore a pause to take stock.

And then Jon blinked.

Which broke the moment.

Reality tumbled on again.

‘Well. OK. Then …'

And he let go, came quite near to a sigh, opened his hand and watched for the whole wide instant during which the chick didn't leave him and its dark gaze rested on him and shone.

A schoolboy hope appeared in Jon that perhaps the animal was grateful to him and would stay, perch on his finger, groom its disarray.

Oh.

But it left him.

Oh.

Naturally.

Oh.

It lurched up in a flurry of speed, crying in a manner which implied it had been wounded most severely at the last. Yet it was patently fit enough to escape him and entirely free and saved. He had saved something.

Jon watched the bird dart hard up into the small box of sky fixed there above Valerie's patio walls.

Oh.

And then it was as gone as gone. The mother, too.

His palm turned cold.

His usual tensions reasserted.

A panic arrived, or something like that, something like being nervous but in the absence of one's nerves, something like being stripped of interior wiring and feeling one's gaps. There it was. Here it was.

I think I may have to be sick.

Half a dozen parakeets slipped by above him, high enough to show in silhouette. They had harsh wings and tails drawn to a long, narrow point – one could imagine – by sheer speed, the violently straight flight. And they produced this din –
tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw
. They made a noise like wives.

No, I withdraw the remark. They sound like the fear of wives, the fear of one wife, my fear of one wife, of my wife, my fear of my wife, of that wife.

Tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw.

I don't, I don't know. I don't know about wives, or parakeets. I ought to know what they sound like, but I don't. I could be mistaken. I have an ape's hands and no wiring. I am a tall child in a man's suit and unfit for purpose.

Tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw.

And now I am late, really. And I've got to have time today, I've got to make time, because then I'll be able to … There are things that I need to finish and they shouldn't be rushed.

But I think I'll manage. Truly. I swear. I'm going to punch a hole clear through my schedule and everything, so that I can breathe and operate as I should and I'll make it possible to see and see and see what I do next.

Tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw.

The sound of being laughed at.

Here it is.

Tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw.

Yes, here it is.

BECAUSE LYING IN
bed when awake was inadvisable, she'd come up here to see the dawn arriving. The council left the Top Park open, even at night. The qualities of the view it offered made constant access a must. People felt they might have to nip round any time and check on the metropolis where it lay uncharacteristically prostrate at their feet. And wasn't it flat – the city – when you saw it like this, so plainly founded on a tidal basin, rooted in mud? Strangers would remark to strangers about that. Inhabitants of the Hill didn't need to, they were used to it. They could stroll along, perhaps through music – the Hill is a musical place, people practise instruments – and they could hope for the startle of a good London sunset, the blood and the glitter of that splashing on banks of distant windows, making dreams in the sky. Or else they might get the brawling roll of storms, or firework displays, or the tall afternoons when the blues of summer boiled and glared like the flag of some extraordinary, flawless nation. Even on an average day, the city needed watching. You shouldn't turn your back on it, because it was a sly old thing.

She'd wanted a sunrise. Or rather, she'd wanted to be out and it had been very early and she'd had no choice about what she would get – at dawn the sunrise is reliably what will arrive, you can be calm about that, no fear of disappointments. You're all right.

She'd cut in and taken the broad path, safe between distantly dozing trees, no shadows to hide any bother. A woman by yourself – you didn't want to feel constantly threatened, but you'd no call to be daft about things, either. You don't like to put yourself at risk. Well, do you? No, you don't. You shouldn't. At risk is no way to be.

Then she'd gone round past the silent tennis court and headed – with fair confidence, even in the dimness, because she was here a lot – headed over the oily-feeling grass to the absolute highest point on the slope. Foxes had been singing, screaming, somewhere close.

It was traditional to hate foxes, but she wasn't sure why. She guessed it was a habit to do with guilt. They always sounded injured, if not tormented, and that could get you thinking about harms you'd done to others in your past. The foxes perhaps acted like a form of haunting by offering reminders of sin and that was never popular. Or perhaps there was no logic involved, only free-form loathing, picking a target and sticking with it.

She enjoyed the warm din of the foxes, the bloody-and-furry and white-toothed sound – it was intense and she appreciated intensity. This was her choice. In the same way, the Hill was her choice. The open dark had given her a clifftop feeling as soon as she came within sight of the big skyline. It provided the good illusion that she could step off from here and go kicking into space, swimming on and up. Below her, opened and spread, were instants and chains of light apparently hung in a vast nowhere, a beautiful confusion. It was easy to assume that London's walls and structures had proved superfluous, been let go, and that only lives, pure lives, were burning in mid-air, floating as stacks of heat, or colour, perhaps expressions of will. What might be supporting the lives, you couldn't tell.

Then, during the course of an hour, the sun had indeed pressed in at the east, risen, birds had woken and announced the fact, as had aeroplanes and buses, and the world had solidified and shut her back out. It was like a person. You meet someone at night and they won't be the same as they will if you see them in daytime. Under the
still-goldenish, powdery sky, buildings had become just buildings, recognisably Victorian in the foreground and repeating to form busy furrows, their pattern interrupted where bombs had fallen in the war. These explosive absences had then been filled with newer and usually uglier structures, or else parks. There were also areas simply left gapped. They had been damaged and then abandoned, allowed to become tiny wildernesses, gaps of forgotten cause. Rockets had hit in '44 – V-1s and V-2s. Somewhere under the current library – which wasn't council any more – there'd been a shattered building and people in pieces, dozens of human beings torn away from life in their lunch hour. It didn't show. There was a memorial plaque if you noticed, but other human beings, not obviously in pieces, would generally walk past it and give it no thought.

She was the type, though, to give it thought. She had an interest in damages, you might say: damages and gaps. They could both be educational.

Other places were more peaceable. She could pick out church spires and the cream-coloured Battersea chimneys of what had been the power station. Further off, thin trains pushed themselves to unseen destinations and details blurred. The far distance raised up shapes, or hints, or dreams of impossible coasts, lagoons and mountains. Mirages crept out from under the horizon. And somewhere, the crumpled shape of the Thames hunched along invisibly towards the coast.

It wasn't a bad morning. She wasn't a morning person, but she could still like it. The parakeets were lively already and sleeking about, flaring to a halt and alighting, an alien green that never was here before, bouncing and head cocking in dull trees. They were something from the mirage country beyond the rooftops. Initially, there'd only been a pair of them on the Hill, but two was all it ever took – think of Noah. One plus one equals more. They were teaching the magpies bad words.

By this point – almost seven o'clock on an April Friday – the standard architectural landmarks were on offer: the complicated metallic cylinder rising up near Vauxhall, the vast stab of glass at London Bridge, the turbines rearing uneasily over Elephant and
Castle, the shape of a well-turned banister marking Fitzrovia … each of the aids to navigation. And then there was the toy-box clutter of the City, a slapdash collection of unlikely forms, or the vaguely art deco confections at Canary Wharf and, dotted about, the distant filaments of cranes that would lift more empty peculiarities into the undefended sky.

These were the self-conscious monuments of confident organisations and prominent men – everyone of less significance was forced to look at them and reflect. Insignificant people gave them nicknames purposely comparing this or that noble edifice to a pocket-sized object, a domestic item: mobile phone, cheese grater, gherkin. If you couldn't make them go away, or prevent new ones appearing – these proofs of concentrated power, silliness, silly wealth – then you could declare them ridiculous. You could be pleased to hear of their design flaws, their structural defects, their expensively unoccupied floor space. It did no good, but it could make you smile.

You could try the same with other sections of reality. Sometimes.

Sometimes the art of naming could subdue hostile territory for a while. She'd once visited a friend – more a friend of friends – in hospital. The room he'd shared with two others had been high enough to peer across Chelsea. Some former inmate had left a meticulous drawing of the landscape, every roof in silhouette, marked across an elongated strip of card. The detail was obsessive. Each building was identified and given historical, or scurrilous, footnotes.

As she'd had very little she could talk about to her friend's friend, she'd drifted into remarks about the unknown artist. She'd said that someone must have spent week after week here being very ill, or very bored, or dying and trying to keep useful by leaving a present behind. Her friend's friend had, at that time, been in the process of dying, although he was taking it well.

It had been one of those days when her tact had failed her.

Now she wondered if the Hill could find somebody who would make them all a similar long, thin chart to explain their outlook and keep them right. It would be both useful and appropriate. In
summer, when residents loitered outside in the early hours to smoke, paced on front paths and in gardens, leaned against doorways, sat on steps, then the place did have a hospital atmosphere: slippers and nightgowns, quiet nods in passing, half-awake stares and faces still pillow-creased, soft. They all needed a therapeutic map they could walk up and learn from, alter, perfect, garnish with added footnotes as they wished. It would be a thing of power.

Or they could go on as they were – half knowing, recognising, deducing.

Or they could make things up. She could do that. She was good at invention, often unhelpfully so. She could quickly feel definitive and point to Over There and then announce,
That is the listening post that records our affections, there is the confectioner's workshop devoted to making models of our souls – they do it with spun sugar, souls never purchased, only taken as gifts, or eaten – and that's the Depository of Regret and there is the doorway to the Furnace, guarded by a clever dog
. She could reel off all sorts of nonsense like this – no worries over whether you wanted it or not.

In bleak moods, she just would prefer that all the signature constructions, the grand gestures, were rechristened factually: the Shinywank, the Spinywank, the Fatwank, the Flatwank, the Weirdwank, the Overlooked, the Understrength, the Pretty, the Petty, the Squint, and the Sadwank.

Why not be straightforward?

But she wasn't in a bleak mood today. In conversation, she might – it was true – have said, ‘I will meet you under the Spinywank – right beside the station.' But she'd only have meant it in fun. She might even have thought it, but kept quiet. She would have been able to remember that some people don't appreciate terms like
wank
and so she would have waited and had a thinkthinkthink, checked to discover if she ought to skip the cheap laugh and be more standard-issue instead. That way you wouldn't cause offence. Although you might discover later that non-habitual swearers were up for it on some occasions and pleased by bad words from others when the time was right. Hard to tell by looking. You had to test the waters without drowning, slip in
gently for a bit of a dip. To be cautious, then, she might have said, ‘I will meet you on Friday, right next to the tower – at London Bridge Station.' And added no flourishes.

She'd have been happy, though, however she phrased it. She'd have been happy in any case.

I will meet you.

It's a happy statement.

It's a good promise.

And it had joined her birthday as a pleasant thing to bear in mind.

It's my birthday.

This is her first birthday.

She is forty-five years old and having her first birthday.

This has been her first birthday for quite a while, in fact, longer than average, to be honest.

I'm spinning it out. Just try and stop me. You can't. Bet you can't. This birthday is all mine.

She's made it as far as her continuing first birthday and is trotting further on. This is an excellent thought.

She has a collection of premium-quality thoughts which she likes to count through. She has scenes and moments she remembers deliberately. This is her equivalent of maybe passing warm pebbles from hand to hand, smooth and reliable, or her version of the rosary, her misbaha, her mala, her komboloi, her worry beads – everyone worries and why not have beads? She counted out invisible fragments and wished they were more obvious, better at saying to other people,
Just leave me alone for a minute, because I am busy with wanting to feel all right
.

There's no fault in wanting that.

There's no harm in milking your birthday. Even if it did happen more than a week ago – so what?

My name is Meg. It's my fucking birthday.

She feels that she's justified.

How often, after all, do you have your first birthday? Usually not more than once.

Fine, OK – it wasn't a birthday, it was an anniversary.

My name is Margaret Williams, Meg Williams. My name is Meg and it is my anniversary. One year.

But birthday was a better word for it, because telling yourself
first birthday
could remind you of when you were a kind of celebrity at rock-star level, but too young to enjoy it. When you got born you were immediately good news. When anyone saw you they smiled. They gave you stuff. They wanted to hold you and protect you and be kind. You could dress like a mental patient and not utter a sensible word, but that was OK, that was cool, that pleased people and they purely wanted to know more about you and find out your needs. If you messed up then somebody else washed away your problem and you only had to
be
and that was enough to satisfy. You being you was a bloody treat for anyone who caught it.

One is the age of automatic celebrity.

Who wouldn't want a share of that?

One is spotless and has no baggage and can do no harm. It has only the ghosts of things to come – each one of them carrying a happy promise.

She didn't, in the usual way of things, enjoy thinking of the future – the future had an unmanageable shape.

But when you were one, you had this big, noticeable, smiling future – it was right there for you, straight ahead and held to be inviting. You had promise and it wasn't meant to disappear, not until you were older. You were a promise. To others as much as to yourself.

A nudge of emotion started to seethe up from her feet and she hoped that the early dog walkers didn't come too near and notice her slightly crying. The Hill was a chatty area, you might not get away with tears – you'd have to protect yourself against enquiries.

Really, she ought to head home and get warmed and out of her pyjamas. Outings undertaken with wellingtons and a coat over pyjamas were viewed as an acceptable morning practice in many households around here. The Hill didn't judge. Car jaunts of an evening could use the same dress code. If you had a car. She didn't
any more. And there was work soon and something else before and she had to get ready in a number of ways and the bus schedules had become mainly theoretical of late, which meant she had to be responsible and set aside more time for journeys. She should shower and make ready and chase straight off to be where she should and then onwards to do her job and serve a purpose.