‘Meg—’
‘Shush.’ She has to press on and not let him slow what she needs to say, or steer it, or interfere — this is her fucking story and she’ll fucking tell it. ‘Shush. Please. The point about all that is — fuck you, actually, because I’m sober now. I am sober today. What you get, what you’ve got, is me sober. And we never, ever would chase each other along a pavement at night and scream and slap and … we wouldn’t, Mr August. We’re us. And I’m me and today was a long, long fucking day. Not the worst I’ve had. I’m not going to make you listen to the worst I’ve had — I don’t want that day, or the days like that day, to come anywhere near you. Or near me. But I’ve been stuck in nights, in times when a man’s shouted and the hands come in at you, Jon, and I’ve kept my head down and it’s made no difference and where you live, your home — it isn’t where you can live any more, after that — if that stuff happens even once, even only a little bit, then you’ve lost your home, because he could always do it again. The fucker could always do it again. Couldn’t he? The guy. The guy whose name I’m not going to remember. And I don’t want his name anywhere near your head, it would be like putting something dirty in you, if I make you hear it, you know? Jon?’
‘I think I know. I think. I’m … Please don’t be upset, Meg.’
‘Too late. Way too late for that. I am fucking upset.’ Although she only mentions this flatly, keeps it as a statement and isn’t loud — nowhere near screaming. ‘I am upset. I don’t understand what you want, Jon, and this is all … I’m upset. You can’t do things that are the kind of things that would make a person be upset and then ask that person to act as if you hadn’t and to not care about them … and just shush, please, shush.’ She can hear him shift behind the barrier he’s fixed to keep her out. ‘I don’t get why you’re bothering with the door — it’s not like you don’t have a great big fence around you, anyway — you don’t need an actual … Anyway …’
Meg pats at the glass panel above her head — taptaptaptap — touches it in the way she might touch his arm to reassure him and, after a while, a small while — taptaptaptap — back comes the reply.
Like prisoners in adjoining bloody cells …
‘What the guy — the one who doesn’t get a name — what he liked wasn’t violence. What he liked was the other thing. I said a little bit about it, I wrote to you and said a little bit about it. He would do the other thing. Afterwards, I would bleed.’
‘Christ.’
‘I don’t think about him. I haven’t, except on days when there’s medical stuff, gynaecology stuff, examinations … Which is me taking care of myself and doing what’s right, let them check that I’m well — but it pisses me off that it makes me remember him. And I do … I …’
She pauses while something empties her lungs, and her lips stop being clean and a seal that can rest on proper loving. Her mouth stops being something she’d want to give — like a present, like a present that can hold a present.
‘Meg?’
‘I’m fine.’
I’m Fucked-up Insecure Neurotic and Emotional.
F.I.N.E.
Smug, fucking rubbish.
‘You don’t sound …’
‘I’m as fine as I need to be, Jon.’ She clears her throat and swallows and would like some water. Meg would like to be drinking cool water. ‘Today was one of the days for an examination and you have to book up weeks in advance and if I could have met you on any other day, I would have, but it’s—’
‘That was my fault.’
‘All right, it was your fault.’
‘Oh.’
‘If you want it to be. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault.’
Oh.
‘I have … I get busy, Meg. I only understand about work, I do my work and the rest of … I don’t do the rest of my life. I’d rather not.’ Jon’s hands are clasping each other, slipping with worry when he grips too tight, unreassuring and ungentle. ‘I get busy — I prefer to be busy and once you’re geared up to be someone who is busy … Today was a day — that is, yesterday was a good day when there would have been a fair chance that we’d make it.’
Hearing himself use the past tense when describing their fair chance — oh — simply drops him into silence.
Meg calls to him, ‘Jon, I was the one who assumed that I could cope if all of this happened in one day. I could have told you no. I could have anticipated that I’d end up pretty much insane.’
‘You’re not insane.’
‘You’re not exactly best placed to judge.’ And this sounds cruel, which she doesn’t intend to be, but then she hears Jon make a half-laugh in response and that’s a fine sound, a lovely sound — one of the best. ‘I just … Jon, I’m going to tell you about something from last year. From about six months ago. It’s a story — my dad would do this, he’d come upstairs when I was a kid and if I couldn’t sleep because I was worried, he’d give me something else to think about. He was no use at fairy tales or those kinds of things, but he could talk about things that had happened to him. He could give me his life. In pieces. That’s what he did.’
‘He sounds like a good father.’
‘You’ll have been the same.’
‘I was away a lot. Too much.’
‘And you’re doing better now.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine — this is where I talk, though. About me. Self-obsessed alky. I talk and you, you don’t have to stop worrying, or doing whatever you are doing in there, but you listen and that’s all you have to do. No duties otherwise. OK?’
‘OK.’ Something young in his voice, something of being peeled back to his child self.
‘Six months ago, I went into hospital—’
‘You didn’t say, love.’
‘Shush, for fuck’s sake. No. I didn’t. I couldn’t work out how to tell you and it was just a small thing, day surgery, and I assumed that I’d be fine. Like I always assume that I’ll be fine. Or that I’ll be dead. No intermediate positions. Just those two. Even if somebody sawed my head off, I would probably assume I would be fine, that I’d get by … If there’s no threat at all, then I’ll fold flat and just wait for the Four Horsemen, order a coffin … I’m wired up wrong — backwards. If there’s something horrendous and dramatic and it’s only going to ruin me — nobody else — then it seems to sound reasonable. I probably could deserve it, I probably could survive it. Something like that. I tell myself I’ll bounce on through it and hardly notice. It makes planning a bitch.’
And this faulty wiring is perhaps why Meg is thinking that Jon will leave tonight and not come back, but that she won’t be destroyed by his loss.
She tells herself shush.
And then she says, ‘They tell you to be at the hospital with a little bag — as if you’re just taking an overnight trip, Paris and back, and you go with that as a nice idea. You can’t bring anything with you that might get stolen while you’re off in theatre, or unconscious. Which makes the journey sound like a pretty tough trip.