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.’