It wasn’t so bad after that, our not-really-lunch. It was lovely.
It was the two of them drinking four coffees each and pretending the stuff tasted nicer than it did as a justification.
And Jon’s mouth was flavoured with coffee and not wine and with his speaking, with his voice.
That’s what I found out.
They had kissed at the table once, Meg shivering for a moment when they stopped. Then Jon had handled the bill like a man who handles bills and had taken her hand, as if he was picking up an apple, an egg, lifting up something breakable, but not broken, leading her outside.
Standing in the freedom of Shepherd Market, Meg had felt herself shy without the observing unpleasantness of the waitress to act as chaperone. On a wintery late afternoon it was dark, of course — they weren’t so terribly exposed. And she’d needed a solution to the cold. Even a cautious person finally might decide that she had to be rid of the so much, too much cold it seemed she always had to deal with.
And Jon had cleared his throat, but not spoken, only raised her hand and placed his lips against each of her knuckles — hello, hello, hello, hello — finding out the details with his mouth.
So that’s how that would be, that’s how he does that, investigates.
And it was all right after that to hold on fast to each other and to have the flex and tuck of his breath pressed against her own. And it was all right to listen while he said, ‘The shop’s shut — where I collect your letters.’ She could feel the thrum of his words happening inside him, while he spoke. This was the touch and the sound of his voice. ‘Meg, I appreciate your … what you’ve …’ His arms had drawn in with a tremor and then relaxed slightly. ‘I would write, but I can’t, so I have to say while you’re here, because writing would be nonsensical and I am nonsensical, but not that much … I’ll say that I want you to go home and have a lovely evening and when you go to, when you sleep … I want when you sleep, I would like you to dream the best and finest and sweetest and feel well and be well and be happy and wake up happy. I would like you to wake up happy.’ She felt him press his face to the crown of her head. ‘I’ll tell you later. At midnight — how much I would like that.’ And then he stepped back and peered at her, while there was a dim noise from the pub at the corner, a dither of feet.
Meg had nothing to say and wished she did and wished so much that she did, but she could only stand on tiptoe to kiss his forehead as if this might be what they always did. She was hoping to calm what was inside. It seemed necessary.
And he liked it. I saw how he looks when something happens that he likes.
She had held on to his hand afterwards while the seconds shone and darted and this part of their life was right here and clean and lovely.
She had wished the time could be longer and deeper and more.
I’m greedy — a greedy drunk.
And he’d sent her the midnight text and begun that habit — their wishes sculling out across those few miles between them, regular like clockwork, regular like safety and all safe things everywhere — from home to home and room to room and pillow to pillow. Every night.
He might be greedy, too.
It is the late afternoon on a spring day. An assortment of children are climbing a tall street that leads to a park. They have formed a chain, one following the next, their arms pistoning forwards, or their hands resting on each other’s hips. As they jog upwards and upwards they make the noises of steam engines — trains in a time from before they were born. People in their gardens pause to watch them and the children are aware of being important and delighted and an event.
Alongside them rush three women, who are more out of breath than the children and who are probably the mothers of most if not all of them. The women seem tired, but although they flag now and then, they cannot stop, because their children are racing and unstoppable, they are an inarguable joy and should not be prevented.
At intervals, the women let out steam-whistle hoots, in lieu of doing anything more taxing. And sometimes they are also swept up by this forward motion, this train which is not a train, which is better and safer and more fun than any conceivable train. This makes them run and their faces change into softness and lightness and they laugh.
There is never a point, though, when all of the women laugh together. At least one of them stays watchful, remembers herself, and becomes slower and heavier as a result. But they still run. They can’t help it. Everyone runs.
The children have plainly been allowed to dress according to their own secret logic: there is a towel worn as a cape, there is a mask, there are wellingtons and sandals and a shapeless hat. One boy wears a little suit of black with white bones painted on it and clearly this running about and this being his dead self are both his most favourite things. He runs and runs — the bones of a boy.
Everyone runs.
20:55
JON WAS USHERED up the ugly stairs of Chalice’s club — East Berlin could truly not have furnished any building more unsightly — and was then permitted to propel himself into the biscuity, overwarmed air of the Carrington Room. There were stacks of high-end chairs and a few folded tables, presumably ready for functions of some kind, but otherwise the long, low space was simply dominated by a hideous carpet and lighting of an oppressively revealing type.
Chalice was, of course, not already there. It was Jon’s job to be the man who waits and who is taught, once again, that his time is of minimal value.
He decided that he might as well be comfortable and took down a chair to sit on. He set it within sight of a lumpy oil painting depicting some barricade of note in Northern Ireland: 1970s uniforms, Saracens and loose bricks, an image from what, in the light of more recent adventures, now seemed a morally irreproachable and painless campaign.
And that’s how they’re sold now, aren’t they — the Troubles? All soft hats and assisting the civil power — hearts and minds and didn’t we do well? War as a game show.
His eyes wandered over the little greenish figures designed to convey sturdy British anguish and resource. He also considered the figures designed to convey civilian treachery and threat: the classic elongated silhouette of the firebomb-thrower, those cheap estate-dwelling flared jeans, the energy of inadequately disciplined youth.
There’s something about chucking a Molotov cocktail, a bottle of Rafah lemonade, that always looks low-class. The poor man’s napalm.
We have to call it asymmetric warfare these days, don’t we? Rather than burning despair. Depictions of the military at work have never quite been what they were since the static nature of the Western Front bollocksed their cavalry charges. People like horses. People do not like pictures of dead horses lying splay-legged and swollen in mud, being used as temporary landmarks by men who reinforce their trench walls with corpses, having nothing else to hand but an overplus of death.