But you can’t, you can’t say you’re going out and duly inform the management and tell bloody, fucking Laura that on Friday the 10th you’ll be off early and have her give you that ‘Oh, do you have a life, then?’ stare and then — when it comes to the day — you can’t, you cannot, you can fucking not say out loud, ‘No, I’ve had another change of plans. Last week it was going to be lunch today and then a few days passed and the time we’d arranged looked unlikely — although the day was still fine — and so we fixed on three o’clock — three o’clock today — and three o’clock is an odd kind of time for a meeting, but it might suit an odd kind of person, and we are both odd kinds of people … Only now it won’t be three, either …’
Six thirty. We’ll try again then.
Bastard.
I don’t like today.
I don’t like anything much about today. It started low and has gone downhill.
I would like another twenty-four hours now, please. I have put in repeated requests and I’d like someone to deal with my problem and make it right.
More caffeine won’t help.
Maybe I don’t want it to help — maybe I want to feel all manic inside, or spruced up, or …
I get to try again at six thirty.
I will meet you.
But it never works out.
She prodded her spoon about in the froth of her mug while choosing not to think that a tea would have been cheaper and less chemically abusive.
I would rather not suspect that I get cancelled because I’m a terrible person, rather than an odd one.
But I do suspect it.
I fucking know it.
I feel like a terrible person — and that must show, that must be something clear and to be avoided.
I’m currently a terrible person having community cappuccino with some strangers. And some dogs. I can’t bloody get away from dogs.
The café had been summoned up inside a remarkably hideous building by an act of concerted will. There had been calls for volunteers and mucking in had happened and now the community had a resource. It offered activities Meg never went to and get-togethers she steadfastly resisted and also sold crafts and produce and hippyish cooking. The place sat between the Hill’s two little parks and was, therefore, lousy with dogs during the daylight hours.
She was surrounded by muzzles and pads and sensible, fully inhabited animal bodies. Each sodding dog had those levels of impossibly relaxed aliveness that could be soothing or could be truly bloody irritating if you were an animal too, but couldn’t reach that state of ease — couldn’t manage what any mongrel, any overbred, pedigree freak could do without thinking.
Bastard.
No.
No one is a bastard.
And at six thirty I will be in a place which is happy and good.
I will trust that — it’s good exercise.
The assembled dogs were being loose and jolly round the outside tables, in amongst the lolling bicycles and parked prams. And there were also humans. The ones who wanted to be cosy sat indoors; outside with Meg were the smokers and the hardy types and those who maybe wanted to watch birds — why not? There were birds and, now and then, someone would look at them. Meg didn’t know and couldn’t care if they were doing so with an expert eye. Why she was outside and not in was a mystery to her — she didn’t smoke.
That and gambling — the vices I never quite got.
To her left, a russet-coloured mongrel with a bit of ridgeback about it was flopped down with its greying head on its folded forepaws. Behind her there was a sable and cream Tibetan terrier in need of trimming — she couldn’t see what it was doing but could hear its claws pittering and fussing and the occasional murmur as it rummaged under tables, snuffed unwary ankles.
That’s a dog being poorly cared for. That’s a bad thing on the verge of happening.
Meg briefly enjoyed being judgemental.
Everyone here has children and partners and lives and disposable incomes with which to buy cappuccinos and artisan-made items and jars of urban honey and local ice cream.
Fuck ’em.
This was both untrue and unfair, which was why it felt so pleasant.
Fuck ’em.
Although Meg would stop soon.
I am truly sorry and I truly will stop and get a grip — in a minute.
Meg had spent years being with Meg and knew her to be a foul-tempered bitch who could put a curse on anything she thought of.
Fuck me.
But she was trying to do better.
Fuck me.
She was trying to assume that meetings with her were not cancelled because she had done something wrong. Or else because she was something wrong.
They have leftie concerts in the café … I tend to the left. Which ought to be funny. Singing songs of revolution — as if that does anything, achieves anything. Songs I used to sing — still complaining about last century’s battles and hardly any space for those ongoing, picking the Spanish Civil War songs because they’ve got the halfway lively tunes … ‘En los frentes de Jarama, rumba la rumba la rumba la, no tenemos ni aviones, ni tanques ni cañones.’ They always sound dead happy that they’ve got no planes, or tanks, or artillery. And I’m meant to be dead happy that they could be dead happy in the XVth fucking Brigade more than a generous lifetime ago. They fucking lost, though, didn’t they? They hadn’t got any planes or tanks or artillery — what were they going to do? Sing the Civil Guard into submission?
Standing there with the raised clenched fist — well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? — while we all sing ‘The Internationale’. I’ve done that.
Why is liberty never in the English language, what does that indicate?
A breeze crossed the road from the lower park and lifted a little of the dust that prisoners of want were intended to spurn in order to win their prize.
What happens to the dust is that it gets in your coffee. I’m spurning it like fuck — it’s still here and doesn’t care.
She fussed at the cooling, dun-coloured liquid again as if she was worried the spoon would melt. Then she didn’t drink.
I don’t drink — that’s me. I am a person who doesn’t drink. My principal activity is an absence.
Meg turned and faced the park: the tenderly restless trees, branches becoming new, blossom in fat cascades and swags, the world showing itself generous, fluttering, sweet.
Which should be enough.
I am a person who is sober.
I am a positive quantity.
When my head gets this unbalanced I should call someone and tell them and then tip myself over entirely, pour the rubbish out, empty it out, pour myself out, make me empty.
But I’m not going to make a call, am I?
Because I like risk.
Because I am right to hate myself — I am a stupid, stupid cow and I do me wrong.
I also lie. A great deal. Mainly to myself. But I keep on listening.