‘Isn’t that sad?’
‘I don’t know, Jon. It’s only sad if love is always sad in the end.’
‘Oh.’
And they pause and neither of them says what they believe love might be in the end, perhaps because they aren’t sure, or else because they’re superstitious about it. They may be afraid it can hear and will listen and then contradict. That could be the case.
And somewhere a blackbird begins a tumble of song, too early but very lovely and alone.
‘I was walking on a Sunday afternoon, about a block away from here, and up in a window this boy had a toy pistol and was aiming it out and someone down on the pavement noticed and put her hands up — he started smiling then and she’s smiling and it’s terrible in a way, but the gun isn’t a gun and he isn’t firing, he can’t fire, and he’s laughing. They were both laughing …’
And Jon moves very quickly — those levering arms and legs — and he kneels up behind Meg and his arms are locking around her and clinging and his face is pressing, his mouth is pressing, at the side of her neck. He searches in at her skin. ‘You collect all the people I can’t help.’
And the dawn is coming, this greyness flattening out the night’s possibilities. The park begins to be only a park, the grass muddy. ‘You collect all the people I can’t help.’ His voice not loud, but hard. ‘You collect the ones who will be hurt. You collect the ones who are hurt. And … Operation Circus and Operation Ore and Operation Hedgerow and Operation Fernbridge and Fairbank and Orchid and Operation Midland, Operation Enamel … I tried at least to look after some of the children, to make people know what happened to them. Not because anything happened to me. No one harmed me in that way.’
She can feel the tremor in his muscles as he holds her faster, closer. ‘If a human being will not help another human being, just because that’s meant to happen, if they don’t understand the truth of the necessity of that — every time, every time — then what is the point of us? We’re not worth the bother.’ The words beside her ear and in her hair and he’s talking to her and not talking to her at all. ‘In the end, you see, in the end, it’s all violation, it’s all the abuse of children. The actual child abuse, it simply fits with all the other abuses of people who were children, who had innocence, people who are powerless, or trusting, or weak, or just alive — alive will do. When you make food impossible, when you steal away shelter, when you make someone abject, what’s that? I mean, what is that? When you do that you put something filthy, unspeakable, you shove that inside someone’s days and their mind and their soul … or not soul, spirit … without even being there. Isn’t that a kind of rape?’
After this he breathes and breathes and cradles Meg’s head with his hands, puts his palms over her ears, as if he is afraid of what else he will make her hear. ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘I’m sorry. Because of you … because the … I don’t want to …’
‘Don’t.’ She whispers this, so the world cannot listen to her, only him. ‘Be whatever you need to, but not sorry. Fuck that.’
‘I’ve never been so fucking furious. And so fucking happy.’ He breathes again. ‘That’s how I feel.’
And they sway their heads together, they nuzzle and smooth each touch and strong light comes intruding, comes screaming up from beneath the horizon and unfurls and it’s today and Meg and Jonathan rock against each other, they just rock and that is all there is for them at this moment — the knowledge that they are unsteady and together and unsteady and together — and new birdsong begins in skeins and bursts, while they taste salt and they believe they are saving each other, that two people are being saved, which is two more people saved than yesterday, and a handful of parakeets makes its first pass overhead — tsseuw, tsseuw, tsseuw — in those unasked-for colours that never were here before.
Then Meg lifts Jon’s right hand.
My hairy-knuckled, miswired animal hand.
She kisses it as if it were spun sugar, or a model of his soul, and he nods and is single-minded.
Here it is.
Love.
Here it is.
06:42
AN ILL-KEMPT COUPLE are sitting on a hill above a well-known metropolis.
They are side by side and laughing.
They are side by side and crying.
They would rather be here and die of it than have to be anywhere else.
Here it is.