The boy’s dad moves across the unpredictably bustling café, carefully patting heads and waving at a woman as if he is in a train, or else a black-and-white movie about leaving. The boy watches him go. The child’s face flickers for a moment through an expression which belongs to adult life — he seems for an instant to have stopped indulging his father by pretending to be young and to be fooled. And then the boy returns to being a boy and making a mess of his sandwich and the sausage and the ketchup, because he is worn out after a day of lessons and is mostly only a primary-school pupil, a son, a child, someone for whom all meetings between grown-ups — married or unmarried — are much the same, someone for whom food is important. He’s growing, he needs to eat.
The daughter and the mother keep on rehearsing the introduction to a game they never play. The daughter is almost savagely focused, this gleam of enjoyable secrecy in her eyes, an inrushing surprise. She says, ‘Again.’ And her mother nods, perhaps slightly bored by this point and sipping from a mug. The daughter recites, louder than usual, ‘Rock, scissors, paper … VOLCANO!’ She makes a little pyramid with her fingers at the last word and then bursts it apart and sways her arms high.
‘Volcano?’
‘That’s when you can do anything.’ The girl explains this as if she is leading her mother gently out from arithmetic to calculus, or else explaining the operation of gravity. She speaks slowly and clearly and with an energetic type of seriousness, because she is passing on important information.
Your name is Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson and you are …
Your name is Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson and you are speaking and …
Your name is Jon Corwynn Sigurdsson and and and you are not you — you are Mr August, you are Dear Mr August, you are Very Dear Mr August and you are …
Your name is Dear Mr August and you have made a phone call and she has answered, actually answered, when you didn’t think she would, because you are no longer deserving and never were and always were caught in two minds, caught between your two minds and …
‘Yes, I know.’
And all you can hear is your darling’s voice — your baby’s, your sweetheart’s, your best girl’s voice. You can hear her voice.
And you can’t hear yourself — only her. Warm at your cheek as kisses would be and you know enough, remember enough, of her to know about her — Dear God, Dear Mr August — to know about her kisses.
‘Yes, I know it’s you.’
And she is very far away.
‘What do you want?’
And this is going badly.
‘What is it that you want, Jon?’
And what you want is horrible, horrible, wonderful, really obvious, dreadful, too much and it’s in you, inside you and working changes, breaking out in ripples, in waves that lash from cell to cell to cell.
‘You should have called me. If you wanted me to stop. If I’m supposed to stop. When you hadn’t said that you wanted to stop. You said you were happy. Why would I want to be something that doesn’t make you happy? Why would I want to bother with …’
And she does not say a waste of time like you, an ugly fuck-up like you, but she is audible all the same.
‘You don’t say goodbye in a text. If you want to go, I can’t stop you — you do what you want. You do what you fucking want, but you tell me, you bloody tell me. You call me and you tell me — at least that. You should tell me to my fucking face. Fuck.’
And you like this about her, love this, anger being a form of passion and therefore she had passion and this passion is still for you, about you — double-minded and pathetic and useless Dear Mr August, she still has this passion of hate that’s for you.
‘I though you were—’ And her voice fraying with this fury you have given her. ‘I thought you were a human being. You’re just a fucking man.’
And you want her to shout more vehemently. You are of the opinion that her doing so would help you both.
And you have this heartfelt … like a cup of hot metal rocking there under the ribs. You really are wishing that you could tell if you’re shouting back — you don’t think so. Not sure. You imagine that you would hear it or have the sensation of it in your chest … with the spill of metal.
You think that you are praying — sort of — and whispering — Sigurdsson, don’t mumble. You are not in bloody Fishertown now — and you are maybe smoothing — I hope — smoothing your voice towards her, smoothing it like sheets, like almonds and milk and the sheets of a fresh-made bed, like altar cloths and the silk skin at her wrists, like the sheets of a fresh-made bed when you have pulled back the coverlet and are getting ready.
All of these things which are so very clean and so very sweet and so …
‘Well, I do! I fucking do! I never said that I didn’t!’
And here it is — she’s shouting. You like the way this hurts you, are contented by it, warmed in your bones.
‘I’m tired!’
And it’s so good, all good.
‘I’m fucking tired!’
And once it is done — please, please — you can start again. You will be able to start again. You will, won’t you?
‘Jon, I’m tired!’
And this is true and you are too and this is only fair.
‘That’s not fair! You’re not fair and I … Look, OK. OK.’
And you understand — ridiculous at my age — you have come to this kind of fundamental understanding after all this time you’ve wasted in being alive, but not really alive, and in knowing so many other, useless things. All of a piece and sudden, you can see that love, that loving, that being in love is a fundamentalist’s occupation. Your beloved is your beloved and there can be no other, not like her, like this. And the world must love her also and always, for ever, and if it does not then the world is wrong.
‘You won’t be there, Jon. No, you won’t be. You’re going to make me go there and wait for you and then you’re not going to come. You won’t.’
And you don’t do ideology, never have.
‘OK.’
But now you have your articles of faith. Deep.
‘OK.’
But now you are not hollow. You are burning, you are filled with burning. Your metal heart has spilled and turned you molten and your creed is screamed and lashing in you, it is like rage and like wine.
‘Jon.’
But now you have the love you chose — the love that chose you back — the love which is a blessing in your body and upon your body and which excuses it.
‘Jon, goodbye … Goodbye. I know. Goodbye. I have to go. I will. I’ll be there.’
But …
But …
There is this possibility that opens up as soon as you can tell yourself, your world, your love, darling, sweetheart, treasure, your sweet, your serious sweet — when you can tell everything. ‘But …’
You want her not to go, not quite yet — dearsweetmybaby — and you do wish that you could have heard — allthatIcould — what you managed to tell her — allthatIam — you really do wonder the words you could have picked and offered, the ones which let her no longer hate you when you deserve to be hated. You are all unsure.
But you think most of what you said was just the one word — please.
And also the other word — but.
But and then please.
Please.
Please.