Serious Sweet (20 page)

Having tried AA before and blown it she did expect to make that climb. She waited for the definitive shame of not even belonging with outcasts.

Only they didn't seem that outcast.

And I didn't fail.

I haven't yet.

One year and counting and it feels all right.

She'd got fairly used to recognising the faces of what were almost friends. And they knew and she knew slightly, perhaps, what she was like and found that not distasteful.

All new to me.

There was this day when I laughed and noticed I was laughing and I couldn't recall when I last did such a thing and someone who can't laugh is in trouble and therefore I must have been.

And there was the day when Meg had walked through her own park, the Top Park, and seemingly she could watch the push of chlorophyll, the spring fire rising in a green blaze along branches. She'd seen the drift and scatter of white petals, blushed petals, mauve and pink and cream petals, and been struck, been beautifully punched in the heart, by the presence of everything. She'd kept on walking under surely the most blue on record, a sky which should have been commemorated ever after, a phenomenon of nature. The truth of beauty had given up more truth and then more beauty and then this serious sweet truth, this singing and wordless thing, alight, alight, alight.

Some kid in a school uniform went strolling through it, oblivious. He was having a fag and hands in his pockets, not looking.

That made me laugh, too.

And she had discovered herself kneeling at a certain point, folded forward on the turf and breathing out and in and this being an apparently endless and miraculous sensation.

It was all right to breathe. It produced no regrets.

The feeling passed, of course.

The world withdrew to a more bearable distance and made itself practical.

But that day left a memory which was wholly clean.

There was now an area inside her which was wholly clean – not just without liquids, without chemicals, substances – it was filled with being clean.

You could get sentimental about that.

And, of course, every rescued fucking horrible gerbil makes me think of saving and being saved and is wonderful in a way, at a level. Although it gets boring to cry so much, even with happiness. After a while, it's no longer a treasure, or a sign of growth: you just want to skip it.

Her progress – if that was the name for it – had carried on: the work that let her be recovered – as if she was a knackered sofa – and by the end of April she didn't seem so bad as she had been and was no longer shaking at all, neither when addressed directly, nor if asked a question. She could go into an unfamiliar shop without too much alarm.

Around her, London went brown in her place: Saharan dust pouncing in and making the breeze taste of broken tiles, of strangeness and thickened views. The screwed-up weather gave her headaches, but nothing like the headaches she'd had before. She could survey the city from above and pity it for being that little bit more afflicted than the Hill, the gentle Hill, the quiet Hill. And when she was out and walking – she did a lot of walking because it aided sleep – the buildings to either side of her had stopped leaning over and slyly bullying. She could call on the doctor – having got a new doctor – and visit the dentist – having got a new dentist – and have herself looked at and make appointments
for what was overdue and begin to arrange what was left of her affairs. She noticed she was a financially screwed accountant – that wasn't good, but she wasn't homeless, was only being chased by civilised and shrinking threats. The worst threats were those that she built for herself in grey dawns, which was a trouble, but at least they were courteous and often left her alone once the sun was up.

Some things aren't threats – they're memories. It's just that they feel like threats.

It took the police a while to reach me when Dad died. I pretended they believed that I was in shock, apparently intoxicated because of shock.

They didn't believe that. When they saw me like I was, their faces showed the standard levels of contempt and maybe a bit more.

I didn't turn my back at my father's funeral: I was hardly there, instead.

Maybe that's why Maggie's threw me – another bad burial and the feelings creeping up from before, from where I'd left them, not buried deep enough.

I can have feelings now, right when I need them.

This morning I was frightened, right on cue.

Or nervous. More it was just that I was nervous … and I'd slept beforehand. I wasn't scared of my bed, or the dark, or my dreams …

Can't complain.

I can be a going concern.

I have time. I think I have time to do that. I can be happy.

May hadn't been so bad. Meg had gone to the pictures in May and seen a film. She had worried beforehand that the film would be popular and sold out and therefore disappointing when she didn't get in and therefore a cause for getting drunk again. The crowd of others queuing was also a cause for concern – perhaps she would not take to these dozens, maybe hundreds, thousands of happily and easily normal moviegoers. Perhaps they might notice she was built all wrong and decide to throw her out, call the management …

Cast me out of their midst …

My fears do sometimes like sounding biblical – it gives them extra weight when they're especially fucking foolish.

But the showing was not sold out and she bought a ticket and took her seat – which wasn't cheap plastic, or in a circle, or in a hospital … wasn't in a community centre, in a church hall, in a hospital … wasn't in any of the cheaply rented rooms that AA loves – and she'd had an averagely pleasant time, especially during those periods when she was not thinking
I am in the pictures I am here in the pictures I am doing something that people enjoy this is something that I could enjoy I am not sure if I'm enjoying this I am in the pictures I may not be normal I should go I am in the pictures I should leave.

There are days when I'd make myself deaf, going on. One of the many reasons why it's good that the din is all internal.

She liked when the voices around her in the cinema – those so many others watching the shine of the screen – she liked when they laughed and she also laughed at almost exactly the same time. That seemed companionable and healthy.

And she'd thought about hobbies and gone for walks. She'd looked off the Hill, down at the city where she kept on collecting sober days and collecting her moments, the good ones. It might – right now – be full of moments going uncollected, probably was. It could be purely golden in places, in moments, could shine as it did at night.

She'd begun teaching herself how to cook again, relearning how to slice and stir and eat with her full attention.

And in June she'd seen the advert for the letters.

Expressions of affection and respect delivered weekly.

They had seemed a necessity, not a luxury or a risk.

They had seemed like a genuine sign that reality grew out along a grain and that Meg was travelling with it, following a less obstructed path.

Accepting the offer of letters, chancing that her application wouldn't be refused – that had seemed right.

And I know how it feels to do right – it's entirely unfamiliar, that's how it feels.

She had applied to the PO box listed – her heartbeat making her fingers jump as she posted the envelope – and had then
received a polite and prompt request for more information. It had taken two weeks for her to reply. Creating an answer had seemed to need courage she didn't have. Although what it asked was not unreasonable.

While I can write to you without your assistance, offering the truth you deserve and perhaps do not know, my letters will suit you and perhaps please you better if you are willing to tell me about yourself.

I drink. I fall over. I lie down.

I drank. I fell over. I lay down.

I can't say that.

I am good at falling, but currently floating.

I'm Meg and I'm suspended. I think I might be empty now and that's why I can float.

But I can't say that.

Whatever you say will be held in confidence.

Yes, but that still doesn't mean I can tell you that I would like to be somebody else. I can't ask if you'd write to somebody else.

I mean, maybe – I'd guess – you do write to somebody else, lots of somebody elses.

And I want to say I'd like you to stop and just write to me. As somebody else.

I mean, I can't even fucking reply and do you need to know me, really? Can't I be an anonymous alcoholic?

You need not reply to the letters, although replies are welcome. This is, however, not a correspondence.

Meg had stared at the accusing notepaper she'd found in the spare room – probably her mother's paper.
I can't even start to do this, I can't say one word to you.
She'd been dumbfounded. That had been her feeling, right on cue.

Thinking about it makes me sick.

But I have been told to do things that I like, because having a life that's sweeter than before will help to keep me sober. Everything being kinder will make the effort of not drinking worthwhile. This means that I can and must have and do the things I like.

But I don't know any things I like.

And before she'd cranked out a word, her hands had been weighted down by this clear sense of someone being there at the other end of the process, this waiting mind, judging mind, stern mind.

I know what I used to like: drinking and the drugs which make drinking longer and browner and I liked being turned out the way that a final light would be. And inside my dark flat, I liked when the booze taxis came.

And what I'd like now … would be if a stranger might forgive me for all of these things he doesn't know about.

He was already strangely clear, judgementally clear, on the page – this man she quite literally couldn't afford.

What I liked was what terrified me – so I like what terrifies me. You terrify me. I think I like you. I might already like you.

But I can't tell if you're to do with the way I used to be and have to stop, or the way I might end up. What are you? What are you going to be? Will you be something I like that ought to scare me? Will you be someone I need to be frightened of ?

Will you hurt?

Would you tell me?

You may call me Corwynn, or Corey, or Mr August, whatever you would prefer, and I will address you as you would wish. I will aim to ensure that everything is as you wish.

In the end, the only reply she could offer to his request for information had seemed very small and lonely, toiling out across the whole of a page in her twisted handwriting. She had to use handwriting – her mother had always taught her: handwriting for personal letters, typing for things that you don't really care about.

Please write what you think I would enjoy. And thank you. And please call me Sophia.

Which was pathetic in general and especially the Sophia part. Particularly that. If you turned round and asked yourself about that, you would find it laughable – wanting to be called a word that suggested wisdom and tasted of class, sophistication, maturity.
All this, when she was a dim, big kid lost in this misleading body and couldn't even manage common sense.

She still was a kid who would leg it, scarper, before intimacy even got threatened.

Well, I do have my reasons.

But Mr August was too far away to touch her and too far away to be bad news. And he was polite.

He was unforgivable and lovely and being lovely is unforgivable and also it made her not run.

I will begin by saying that nothing bad will happen while we're in here together. And please do call me Corwynn, or Corey, or Mr August, whichever you would prefer. Please don't worry about the choices. If you would prefer, you can pick them all. We will be safe together. I can promise you that.

Meeting alcoholics, your tribe, you get used to strangers who still know you, understand. They sit in the echoes with you and talk you through the turns and tunnels, the mine workings in yourself. You get used to that.

This means that someone who guesses you need to be safe, only from reading a note you sent him – he doesn't seem impossible. That good kind of man does not seem entirely unlikely. You try and guess, you try and feel what he'd be like: a man who writes lots of letters? A man who makes his living out of letters? A man who's used to noticing, guessing? A man who reads closely? Lawyer? Therapist? Adulterer? Someone who lies in wait?

But he didn't feel like that, didn't seem like that. And, after we'd properly started, once he was writing by hand and not typing – who types any more? It was lovely that he typed, had a typewriter, was in some place where things were like that: slower, painstaking, private – when I saw the way he wrote by hand … I could find him better in his words, in the shapes of them, in the lines and dips and dots across his pages, the places where it seemed he might have paused, the paper he'd touched.

And I sent him paper to touch. My mother's paper. My best inheritance.

I knew it would be with him. It would feel his breath.

Please write what you think I would enjoy. And thank you. And please call me Sophia. And thank you again. You are very kind.

There was something about that he understood.