But it insists. That’s what it’s for.
It is not a demonstration of anything that’s …
I’m not doing wrong.
Oh, Jesus.
I’m not being wrong.
Oh, Jesus, Meg.
Eyes shut and the water running and monkey fingers and don’t let her hear and don’t let her know and she mustn’t know, you think, about this, unless at some other time you might tell her, but you’re being …
And later …
Perhaps.
With her.
Later.
With her.
In some way.
In some gossamer fucking way.
Jesus …
Please.
Please.
Like a dog howling, a monkey howling — it feels like a howl through your muscle, under your skin which is in the steam, which has …
And the tilt back of the head.
The small pummel of the dropping water, the small pummel.
For you, for you …
And in behind your eyelids there is black and there is red.
Anarchy and revolution.
For you, for you …
And the world beyond, shaken.
And this sweet that you can breathe and be and you’re not so dead as you’d thought, you’re still standing.
Solid and standing.
And …
And …
Here it is …
Oh.
And there’s this shiver all through you, but you’re happy and there will be a plan, some kind of plan, there will be sweetness.
Oh.
Subsiding.
Not quite.
Oh.
We’ll kiss now. We’ll always kiss.
And you’re stepping out for her towel, for the folded and ready and gentle thing she left you.
And you’ll dress in clothes that are already warm with her scent. You’ll dress in whatever order you feel is right. No tie to wear this morning — you’re let out of school.
Stepping out from the bath like a big chord just opened, like it’s kicking, like you could be the mannish boy who’ll do all right.
It’s only love. There won’t be anarchy or revolution, there will be the other thing which is harder, which is love, which is the practice of love.
I am not ideal and my position is not ideal, but it is also not impossible, surely.
05:25
THEY WALK OUT together, climbing a touch higher than her house is, strolling on the Hill.
The air is still dozing, cool, it presses against their faces and has the taste of greenery in it and of the moving world. A few windows shine along her street — in early-woken houses, stayed-awake houses, ready-for-work houses, worried, or ill, or loving houses. They may be shining for any of the reasons that can put an end to sleep. There is a small trace of music from a basement, it drifts.
They don’t speak.
Jon hums something under his breath and the small sounds of their feet keep time and cross time and syncopate as they go.
The Top Park is waiting for them, full of sky.
When they have dipped through the gates, taken the dim path past the empty tennis courts, Jon begins, ‘There was this myth …’ He leans momentarily towards Meg so that their shoulders meet and this makes her decide to set her arm around his waist, to keep him closer, deal with the stride of his long, heron legs as best she can.
He continues, ‘A medieval story about beavers — don’t laugh — and beavers were meant to be extremely intelligent, because they built things, I suppose, they were architects of a kind. Apart from their clever brains — which nobody wanted — and their pelts and meat, which were both popular at the time, people found that the beavers’ — excuse me — testicles were of immense value. They contain musk. And the poor creatures would get hunted sometimes mainly, you know, for their testes. And the story went that, being ingenious animals, the beavers would see any hunters approaching and — to save themselves — they’d look their pursuers in the eye, then bite their own balls off and run away, leave them behind. No balls, but alive.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Mm hm. Cautionary tale. “He has the sagacity to run to an elevated spot, and there lifting up his leg, shows the hunter that the object of his pursuit is gone.” Is how they put it, if I recall correctly … It’s nonsense, of course.’
And they are clear of the shadows now, off the path and out on the hilltop, walking across the wide curve of grass towards the gleam and shimmer of the city, its night shape.
‘The story made me laugh when I was a student and then I would think of it later. Later it would be a story about me … But now mine have — I think — grown. Back. I think. Inconvenient.’ And he laughs in his way that isn’t quite laughing and slips his arm to her waist — this mild rearrangement of arms — and they stop, stand.
And there is London, staring at them, broad in the dark: the coloured prickles and restlessness, the gape of emptinesses, blanks.
Jon hasn’t quite seen it like this before, ‘Oh.’
‘It cheers me up.’
‘Oh.’
She can feel the clifftop breathlessness racing in his lungs, it moves against her arm, speeds her, too, ‘That’s where we met.’
‘Which makes me like it more than I did.’ He shifts away from her and removes his coat, puts it down on the grass, with the lining uppermost, that dull gleam of silk. ‘Let’s sit and watch it wake up.’
‘There are benches.’
‘I don’t want benches, I want to sit on watered silk with you.’
‘You’ll ruin your coat.’
‘Necessary sacrifice for the occasion.’ He duly sits, above him the lack of stars, the hiding of stars. She can make out his outline, can tell that he has crossed his long legs and that his knees are almost up about his ears and a little comical. ‘And dry-cleaning is a wonderful thing. Come on. Be with me.’
She joins him and together they see and see and see the bright traces of the lives upon lives that are burning, floating unsupported in the thoughtless dark. She kisses his fingers and speaks to them: ‘Down there I saw a kid have someone play a saxophone, only for him. And a man who caught a balloon instead of ignoring it. And two women who helped another woman when she was upset — this disabled woman on a train. They’ll be there tonight, this morning. Or they’ll have passed through and gone home, gone to wherever was next. But they’ll still be who they are.’
‘These are, these are people from your collection?’
‘Yes, I’ll show you — if you want. I have them all written down. They would make you cheerful.’
‘I’d like that. I think I … Cheerful is appreciated.’ And his hand, the knuckles of one hand, smooth at her hair.
She leans back slightly towards the touch. ‘The other day this older lady was riding a bus with this little boy and resting her chin, just over the top of his head, hugging him — her grandson, maybe. You could see in her face this was the best thing she could imagine doing in the whole of her life. There was nothing better. She was shining. And he was only sitting and a bit bored and didn’t notice, didn’t realise at all that he was making someone so beyond herself, just by living.’