Free Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy Page A

seen what happens when the man does all the talking, when either partner does all the talking. I’ve seen what that suggests has happened already between two people … what it means when the woman can’t get a word in sideways and the guy …’ She was condemningly quiet and so he continued to dig his own grave – speaking while she did not and aware of the irony. ‘My generation of men, we had a hell of a job getting it right – the feminism thing – butwe tried, we absolutely, not all of us, but we backed up what women were doing and we had no maps and that was – I’m not saying we did well – but that generation, men and women, attempted to change how partnerships went, or some of us did, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t about beautiful and intelligent women with wonderful futures sitting next to blowhard young men and
just listening
as if they haven’t a thought in their head—’
    â€˜Blowhard.’
    â€˜I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s not an insult. I was a blowhard, too. It’s automatic. He’s twenty-four. If you’re under thirty and have a penis, you’re a blowhard. It’ll pass. It doesn’t make him a bad person.’
    â€˜So what does?’
    â€˜He isn’t … I don’t think that he’s a …’
    But I do think that he is a bad person. I kind of am completely certain that he is a bad person. I am aware that everything about him bespeaks a lack of consideration in many areas and with Rebecca in particular – the more intimate they are, the more he will harm her – and this makes me want to stab him in his balls and then his throat. I want to watch him bleed to death in agony and silence. Sorry. I do, though.
    That is the shape of my moral high ground. I would claim it in less time than it takes me to draw this breath as a place of irrevocable mountaintop sacrifice.
    â€˜Becky, I don’t want him to hurt you.’
    â€˜Because I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was without you explaining? Because I’m a moron. Because I’m like you.’
    Because you’re in love with him. You’re in love.
    Moron is uncalled for.
    You love him and he makes love to you and steals tenderness from you unsweetly I bet and by the time the shine’s gone off it, please Christ you haven’t married him. Or had a baby. It will end badly and I’m trying to spare you that.
    Moron is …
    His body sinking as it would if the engines had failed them and yet just as it was, where it was, only stirring gently in tranquil flight.
    A baby.
    OhGodababy.
    Go on – ask if she’s pregnant – if she’s being careful. That’s the only mistake you haven’t made.
    Moron was fair comment.
    And she’d spoken very softly, been at the edge of inaudibility as the plane grumbled evenly around them, but he had perfectly heard when she said, ‘Not everyone doesn’t notice when they’re being tortured.’
    He’d been nauseous for the remainder of the journey, got through customs and out of Berlin Tegel by the application of grim effort, almost as if his daughter were not there and he were managing alone. They’d checked into the haunted hotel – marble and cream foyer, chandelier, you couldn’t complain – in an ache of isolation – at least he had ached – and they’d not said
night night.
No kiss. He hadn’t even felt secure in mentioning when they might join each other for breakfast the following morning, as they ground up in the lift to their rooms. So he had to rise early the following day and sit and drink endless tea until she’d appeared and did sit facing him across his littered table, did smile, but only enough to indicate that he wasn’t out of trouble yet.
    There was mercy, though. Eventually. By the time they were there on the Spree.
    â€˜Dad,