And then kissing had flared again while they stood, not quite daring the chairs or the sofa.
Oh.
John’s back had rested itself against the door frame — how did we get over here? — and her weight — like the best responsibility you could discover, like the only duty you could long for — her weight had rested itself, in its turn, against him and he’d been fine, entirely fine, absolutely fine, swimming and smooth all over in fine.
And then it was not fine.
Then it was not.
Fuckfuckfuck … I can’t be like this, not with the day she’s had and the way it’s been for her and she’ll think I’m just the same as all the fucking, fucking fucking …
His unforgivable body had begun prickling and stiffening unpreventably and he’d had to recoil his hips and also — ungallant — fend her off mildly — fuck — and the feel of her taking this badly and being insulted and worried when he didn’t want to worry her, only wanted to please her — it was beyond what he could …
I’m a shit. I’m a shit with a hard-on. I knew this would happen. He dumps this half-crouching mess that he is on the sofa and tries to think.
Oh, fuck this.
Absolutely, it wasn’t that the kissing didn’t work.
01:16
LOCKING HIMSELF IN the bathroom seems the intelligent thing to do.
Of course it’s not intelligent, it’s imbecilic, appalling.
‘Is your …? Where is the …? If you’d excuse me, I’ll just …’ And Jon is lurching from the sofa and then thumping along a passageway and upstairs, hands scrabbling at the banisters. On the landing he peers into an airing cupboard — scent of clean sheets, of her sheets — and this is a box room — don’t look, could be a bedroom, could have a bed — and here is what he needs — bathroom — frosted-glass panel in the door and he opens it with pathetic, monkey fingers and in he goes, here he goes, and pulls the toggle to let him have light.
I don’t want light.
And he shuts out the rest of the building and slots the bolt in fast behind him and then sits, slides, lands on the floor with his legs crumpled out before him and his back against the lower panel of the door — wood, substantial — and this is absolutely not good.
I want to be, I want this to be — later, in the end this will be … We’ll remember — please, we might — we’ll say, ‘Oh, and that time when you ran like a spineless, time-wasting git and hid yourself in the toilet, because that’s where shits belong. Or some such. Less abusive phrasing, because we’d be laughing about it. Please. Later this would be funny. Please. This would be the funny thing that stupid Jon did. But there won’t be a later, we won’t have one, so this won’t be funny. There won’t be later, there won’t be us.
‘Jesus fucking idiot Christ you bastard.’ He tells himself this in a voice that he has never before produced. He sounds oily. ‘You fucking moron.’ The voice of a man who always had no value and who is no longer even plausible. He sounds like Sansom.
The feel of her body and how it apparently wants to be with his … she’s on him like pokerwork, cauterised through to his bones and he’ll never shake that, never be repaired.
It’s my … it’s just that my … I don’t know how, Meg … and when you’ve had the hospital … and your life and the way it was and mine and when we hardly really … I don’t see that it would be possible … I don’t want or intend … And if you think I do intend … My dick intends, but it’s a dick, please can’t we ignore it?
Fucksake, how can a man be afraid of his, of his …
I’m not afraid of my penis, of my cock, of my dick, of my fucking Neanderthal dick.
I am not afraid of it.
I hate it.
I need it to stop. I need it to leave me be and …
She isn’t going to want it, she isn’t going to want me — I don’t mean because of today, of what happened today — I wouldn’t want her to even think of it today, but I mean she shouldn’t have to want it ever.
He thumped the back of his head softly and over and over against what he guessed was the small rise of the frame holding the glass panel. It was pleasantly uncomfortable.
And even if I wasn’t a screw-up … I mean, she’s a screw-up, she’s an alcoholic, she’s … I don’t know what that would involve … You can be great in writing, it doesn’t follow that … Once they can move you, once they can thicken you and they own you that way, because they own you when they’ve got your dick, you don’t think straight, they have you … You end up …
He hit his head harder and wanted it to bleed so that he could go downstairs in a bit and tell her, ‘I have to go because my head is bleeding and you need to forgive me and let me go.’ He would do this — he would consider doing this — because he was a lying bastard and a man of the type that he found most despicable.
She doesn’t fucking own me.
Say anything for an excuse to bolt, won’t you?
Fucking Bolter.
She loves me.
That’s worse.
That’s wonderful.
Worse.
Once they love you and they make you love them and you miss what they are and you look forward to … and you think when you wake up, when you first wake up … and there’s this part of your day, this line through your day which is coloured in a way that nobody ever provided and so when she goes …
I don’t want her to go.
That’s the thing.
I don’t want her to go.
So I’ll go.
Jonathan Corwynn Sigurdsson, this absurd man who is ashamed of himself and should be and who wants to lie on this linoleum for a while, just curl up and maybe he could cover himself with a towel — her towel that knows her body, dear God — and maybe if he slept then he would feel better after and he could …
‘Jon?’ Her voice with his name in it comes walking through the door like an animal he can’t face, like some transgression of the laws of physics. ‘Jon? Are you all right?’
And Meg has no idea why particularly she’s saying this, because it’s obvious that he isn’t all right and it’s stupid probably to try and speak to him and she isn’t stupid.
‘Are you not well?’
Meg feels bad for hoping that he isn’t well and yet she does hope it in this hot, sudden rush of asserted will that’s almost scary. Illness would give him a reason for holding her and then running absolutely away — something apart from getting disgusted by who she is and can’t help being.
Jon and his disgust, his hating her, his doing whatever thing it is that he’s doing — they would all mean, would have to mean, if she was sure of them — would all mean the end for what had been this sweet thing. And there’s no drink in the house but, fuckit, there’s always drink somewhere, you can always whistle and find that supplies will come rolling up and shining.