All the Rage by A. L Kennedy Page B

I’ll use it.’ He leaned himself towards the edge of offending her, bruising her principles, so that he could really feel how wonderful it was that she had them and how wonderful it was that she hadn’t completely thrown away her degree. She’d told him that much.
    Five or six weeks after we’d started and she’d wanted to be more to me maybe, to have a little past.
    â€˜In sociology?’
    After a deep kind of night.
    â€˜Yeah.’
    Her eyes had been very open and very concerned with his own.
    â€˜Wow! Darling.’
    â€˜Like you’re surprised I got one.’
    â€˜Like I’m – no – not surprised . . .’ At which point he found himself losing any explanation that possibly her scuffle and drop between service jobs and periods of unemployment had struck him as unsatisfactory, in the sense of being not good enough for her. And it seemed even more a form of self-harm in the light of her having an, albeit laughable, degree. Her mum was a cleaner, her dad was shady and elsewhere, but she had a degree, the usual debt – more than the usual and something else to do with a grandparent’s savings – and a degree . . . and a much older boyfriend who didn’t want to sound at all paternal. Mark didn’t want to suggest that her being with him was another indication of a reckless and damaging life.
    â€˜You want me to be different.’
    â€˜No, darling. No. My best girl’s my best girl. Truly. You have to do what you want.’ And he’d kissed her to break the conversation, kept on until they were silence and motion and nothing.
    And I held her once we were done for so long that it appalled me.
    Her later fixation about the demo had allowed Mark to hear himself repeat, ‘You have to do what you want.’ Which was true for everyone. ‘And I have to do what you want and that’s what I want. If you ask – and I like when you ask and you never have asked before, really – then I have to do what you want.’
    She gave me a date and a time – an inconvenient date and time – when she would need me.
    A breakthrough.
    She was breaking through.
    It was mainly gorgeous.
    And she’d placed a minute kiss against his ear. ‘I would like it.’ Sober and giggly and energetic. ‘I would.’ This was Emily showing herself as a credible companion away from the bedrooms. She’d made a promise of ways they might be and he’d accepted it.
    I think we both knew that.
    â€˜But a demo, baby . . . Not a concert, or an opera, or the movies, or the zoo.’ It occurred to him that he could only guess at the majority of her pastimes. She remained largely closed to him. ‘Or a club with naked ladies dancing that I would enjoy, but not as much as I enjoy you . . .’ Kissing her in return across her stomach. ‘I haven’t been on a demo since I was a student and that, as we’re allowed to mention, is a long, long time ago.’
    Emily had shaken her head like a woman who loved him and only couldn’t say so because it was too much. ‘Not that long. And if you’ve done it once, then you’ll know how.’
    It made sense – drunks run their lives backwards: from unintimate intimacy to revealing commonplaces.
    He’d had no intention of denying her, but he knew she would like if he teased her. ‘Say “Go with me, darling Mark, and make love to me first for at least an hour.” Go on.’
    â€˜Then you’d have to stay the night.’ She offered this as if it were an ordinary sentence and didn’t scald his breath and then remove it. ‘Because we’d have to set out early. Please, darling Mark.’
    Staying the Friday night with her and waking and getting the Saturday morning, too.
    If I allowed it, then I’d want it again.
    She would start to show on me and I’d like that and let it happen.
    Sweet Emily.
    I belong to sweet Emily.