Don’t take sweets from strangers.
A coffee?
And Meg was shaking her head and leaving unsteadily and being a spectacle, sniggered at, just exactly as she’d hoped she wouldn’t be.
23:29
‘EXCUSE ME.’ JON was — now that he considered himself — pushing and pushing his hands up away from his forehead and through his hair. ‘Excuse me.’ The cab driver paid no heed and Jon pushed and clawed at his hair again. He cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, but I think I would like it if you could take me to London Bridge.’
‘That’s not where you said.’
It seemed Jon had found a driver of the less helpful type. ‘Yes, I know that’s not where I said, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ve had a call and — that is — I will be making a call … ’ Jon could feel hair actually coming loose and adhering to his fingers, then dropping off softly like insect wings or tendrils or some such against his face. ‘Which is … I just need to be at London Bridge.’ He had — it would appear — sticky fingers and was hauling out his own hair by the roots.
‘It’ll cost you.’
‘I don’t mind. I have to be at London Bridge. Getting to Coldharbour Lane was going to cost me, anyway.’ Jon not intending to snap, or to sound like an arsehole in a pricey coat, but there it was — he managed anyway. ‘It’s all going to cost me.’
‘All right.’The cab driver sounded aggrieved in the way bullying men seemed bound to when confronted. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’ His head shook visibly in an expression of passive-aggressive exasperation. ‘I can get you there. What time’s your train?’
I swear to God, they get a phrase book they have to learn, along with the Knowledge: fastest route from Mayfair to Loughborough Junction and clichés to recite as we plough ahead.
Jon focused on being glad that the taxi’s radio was only playing pallid semi-pop, rather than some kind of pretend election phone-in, or a preacher.
I couldn’t stand it, not tonight. The amateur approach now indistinguishable from the professionaclass="underline" the magisterial generalisations, the scared mythologising, the shrill defence of whatever, whatever, whatever … ideology, faith, obsession … with fragments of last week’s headlines and fragments of next week’s hate …
Actually, just …
Fuck it.
‘I’m not catching a train. Is London Bridge a problem?’
‘No, no, not a problem.’
‘Then if we could do that, thanks.’
‘Yeah, we’re doing that — I can’t just turn here, though. I gotta wait until those lights, you know?’
‘Change of plans, you know? Change of plans.’ And Jon’s hands fell to his sides, resting ungracefully on the seat, this sensation about them which gave the impression they might be emptying, letting something drain away from them, something a little like sand in texture. He felt also that his shins and torso were being emptied — socks overflowing with sand, like a POW dumping excavated earth, like a corpse being mobile, shoes dirty with grave traces. He imagined that if he unbuttoned his coat and jacket there would be a tumble of grains — perhaps grey — which would seethe down and away from him and leave him only … He wasn’t sure of what this process might achieve, how it would leave him.
Even more empty.
Light.
I could be light.
I feel …
And, of course, this was the moment when he reached his absolute zero and there was nothing left to feel. His awareness bumped and jolted inside his vacated body, responding to the motion of the cab, and it found not a spark of any emotion.
I’m all done, absolutely — I’ve wasted myself away.
He’d expected some form of terror — galloping pulse — but he might as well have been sitting and planning to do nothing much, quiet night on his little futon sofa, back in his bedsit — the futon that he didn’t always bother making up into a bed, because a bedsit looks much bigger without a bed and because he could sleep anywhere and sheets and pillows didn’t matter, did they? No, they didn’t matter.
It’s quite likely that nothing matters.
So it is pressingly important to do what is necessary, anyway. One does — in the end — what one understands to be right. One does this whether it makes any difference and whether it alters anything and whether it’s possible, or not.
One does this because one has to.
One does it.
And Jon raised his hand — such a weightless extremity now, it drifted up almost without him — and reached it into his inside pocket and brought out his phone and dialled a number and listened to it ring and felt as still as water, as still as the soul of water somewhere deep, as still as one 3 a.m. moment when his infant daughter had stopped crying, had been awake but settled in his arms and been alive and with him and from him, but better than him.
Which was the first time I really knew her as a person, an identity, a human being who liked being with me and warm against my chest.
And now he was still again.
The miles-away number kept on ringing.
In a café filled with after-school children, there is snacking and mild rioting after the school day’s restraint. Adults drink coffee and address each other with the practised focus of parents who are used to ignoring the din of their young. Two boys sit on the floor in a far corner, eating toasted cheese. It is clear that being on the floor and together makes everything different and more glorious.
A mother and daughter sit opposite each other, intent. The daughter — about five — is dressed to combat the outside cold: thick tights, bright pullover, little boots. Her coat — red to chime with the pink pullover — is hung on the back of her chair. The girl’s hair is a wild, soft frizz of brown. Her mother’s might be the same were it not bound up in an adult and responsible manner.
The girl leans forward and extends her hand in a fist, then in a blessing, then a blade: ‘Rock, scissors, paper …’ And again, ‘Rock, scissors, paper.’ This repetition seems to press the child full of amusement, which escapes her in smiles, shivers, laughter. Her arm wavers with giggles as she repeats, ‘Rock, scissors, paper.’
Her mother is also leaning forward and also sketching the shapes of a rock and a pair of scissors and a sheet of paper. Neither of them makes any attempt to play the game through and so no one gets to discover what might happen beyond this cycling rehearsal where stone meets stone and metal meets metal and paper meets paper. There’s no competition, the two just dance their hands through the forms and grin at each other, their voices quietly reciting in unison, ‘Rock, scissors, paper.’ And then the child says, ‘Again.’ And they do it again.
Over by the door, a father is addressing his son: ‘That’s funny, isn’t it?’ While the boy picks the sausages out of a sausage sandwich with apparently absolute concentration, the man goes on, ‘Yes, it’s funny because Amanda was here when I had coffee after I took you to school and we’ve known each other for years and we’re friends and now she’s here again. Isn’t that funny?’ The sandwich is more interesting than this strange definition of funny. ‘She’s waving at us — do you see? And I …’ The father stands, ‘I think I’ll go and ask her if she’d like to sit with us, because that would be nice, wouldn’t it.’