He wasn’t preparing to bolt. He was staring at her disappointment in him and how she packed it away so he might not notice if he weren’t paying pathological attention. She nodded and evaporated all the heat that had been pacing and lurching about in his blood.
I wasn’t bolting, though.
And he did have to leave soon, because he was late for a meeting — going to be late, there were things he had to do before the meeting — that wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t limiting her exposure to him so that she wouldn’t find his faults.
Of course I was — the longer she was with me, the more she would see and I am too much and really not enough for anyone to have to see.
But then there had been a fairly amicable, genuinely quite a delicate and pleasing kind of rush they could share while, yes, they did exchange their numbers and, yes, also a promise they would meet up properly and, yes … In fact, he’d forgotten to leave a number … He’d only wanted to, but it had felt … inappropriate … He had wanted to … He wasn’t going off into hiding or anything like that.
Yes, I took her number.
Yes, I wanted to kiss her.
But, yes, I ran away.
I walked fast away from the café and then made it to Piccadilly and bolted like fuck. Over the road and into the park and ran and ran. Unseemly.
Full tilt.
It felt so wonderful to get away.
But I kissed her first.
Full tilt.
It felt completely …
It felt like I was an overly lucky man.
And you don’t want to get lucky, not too much.
And Jon clamped his eyes shut and attempted again to unrecall the darting woman, her sensibletender hands and the way they greeted him that first time.
He leaned his head back against the sofa, against his resting daughter and her pain, against his duty.
Being with Maggie felt like walking about inside music, inside maybe ‘The Healer’ — all those coolcool Bs and Ds. D7s are always worth it. I was walking about and then running and also being mellow and not me and — fuckit — being all right, being partially mended and all right. Something in me felt like how each thread gets fitted together on ‘Stripped Me Naked’: the pulse they set in to run under the riffs, the one they put out there to tell you that when you’re wholly done for, when everything you could care about, or cling to, is absolutely gone — even then here’s this, still this, your blood full and roaring with music.
That’s not to say I was being John Lee Hooker, I wasn’t. I was also not pretending that I could be Carlos Santana, I was just bloody well being me and fine, so fine, so fine. I was all right.
It was so …
But I don’t think I can any more. I don’t think I can manage.
It was so completely wonderful.
A crowd has gathered in St Pancras Station. They form an arc around one of the pianos placed ready for public use. The instrument isn’t absolutely in tune and it jangles slightly — loose wires — there is something sly and sideways and lounge bar about its tone.
Sitting at the keyboard is a slim young man. His entire body speaks of intent effort and also of being transported. He is both here and elsewhere in a way that makes him fascinating, illuminated. He bends forward, sways, reaches, pushing himself into a complex classical piece that leaps, tumbles, repeats, leaps and trills, tumbles again. It sounds slightly like silver and slightly like being happy in a serious manner, like a very considered response to joy. Somehow, the sidle and echo of the instrument exactly suit the character of the melody.
The people who listen share the same expression: this peaceful type of absence with faint smiles. Some have closed their eyes.
The young man pounds on. In the most polite possible way, he is ignoring all observers. This makes it easier for them to observe. They are here together for something which is not quite him, but is of him — for this surprise of music. They are inside an event which makes itself plain, announces that it will never quite happen again. Everyone enjoys being, in this manner, unique. Everyone enjoys being, in this manner, together.
The piece romps and flurries, runs.
And then the pianist is done — the violence of the conclusion, the hammering, the flourish — and there is silence. There is apparently silence clear along the shopping mall that is necessary to every major railway station. The stillness may even reach far out and touch the pausing, dozing, sliding trains.
Then, of course, there is a little applause. It almost surprises the man, seems to push him a touch off-centre as he stands and looks for the bag he set down when he started, when he chose to produce so much music. He glances at a young woman who is obviously his girlfriend and obviously pleased about him, while also being mildly protective.
Several members of his audience walk to shake his hand. An older woman wearing a large hat stops and asks him about himself. He is from Taiwan, as is his girlfriend. His English is good but very slightly laborious. He tells the woman, when she requires him to, that the piece was La Campanella by Franz Liszt and that it means ‘The Little Bell’. He isn’t a music student. He just loves to play.
17:01
MEG STARTED TO leave the AA meeting smartly, briskly, fast as fuck, as soon as it ended — no hanging around. She’d joined everybody in nodding her head down and closing her eyes and addressing the variable blur which was her Power Greater Than Herself — the weather, gravity, evolution, AA people … today it was The Universe. Meg put in a request — another request — for help to tell the difference between the problems she could alter and the ones she was stuck with for life, then she was on her feet and dodging.
That’s more than enough communal activity for the day.
Please Someone — Something — grant me the wisdom to know the difference between the soluble and the insoluble …
Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my life banging my head off walls that won’t fall down — rather than the more forgiving ones that might surrender before my skull cracks.
She was aware this line of thinking was probably making her frown, because people were giving her looks of concern and a meaningful hello here and there as she headed for the door without mucking in to stack chairs, or to reassure the lady who’d been crying that everything would eventually be OK.
She doesn’t need me — there’s a bloody queue of people all having a try at that. And I can’t say I’m honestly sure if everything will turn out well in the end. We die in the end — is that a good result? Or is that an assurance that any available god sits on high with a stack of razor blades, each of them ready for use on one of us? Is all of that singing and religion just about assisted suicide?
She gathered her drunk-from polystyrene cup and threw it in the bin.
Which shows I am willing to lend a hand.
I don’t have to. Like I don’t have to be perpetually in the mood to talk. That’s not a requirement. I have to maintain a desire to stop drinking and stay clean and sober — I haven’t signed up for some low-rent social club.