Higher Ed (25 page)

The landlord from Walthamstow needs to know by noon if she will take his tiny flat for seventy pounds more per week than she is paying now. Katrin’s phone is in the back room and Claire is not. The regular cappuccino-and-Danish man is in the front seat; a young mother and her daughter have ordered tea and hot chocolate from Alejandro. This is her chance. She goes to the back room.

Her handbag is not organized. This is the next thing that needs attention. Her phone is difficult to find at the bottom of it. She sees another text from Robin:
Please don’t treat me like this
. This stabs her heart. She doesn’t mean to hurt him. She will call him on her break. The landlord’s number is her last dialled so she will call him now.

“Katrin.” Claire’s voice is over Katrin’s shoulder and the blood is cold in Katrin’s arms. She turns around to see that Claire
has no snake in her throat. Claire does not look angry. Claire looks like she is happy, and this is the worst look so far that Katrin has seen.

“I thought you were in Soho,” she says.

“And so you could piss around.”

No, she wants to say, no, please.

“Please get back to work,” Claire says, and the quiet calm tone makes the flesh inside Katrin’s cheek feel like it has been bitten.

At least there’s no sun today, despite the warm weather. Pathetic fallacy. And if it rains, so much the better. A jet flies low above and the noise is comforting. Kurosawa would use the noise and the pending rain. He would begin this scene with a long, wide-angled exposition—water, concrete, a lid of clouds—and then move to the contracted theatrical space to focus on the unknown woman. Robin looks around him, and, of course, there she is. Bayo is sitting at her spot behind the library, writing furiously in a notebook. Her hair has come undone from its clips and some of her extensions hang loose from her head as though she’s been clawed at. He makes himself small, afraid that movement will alert her. Has he begun to fail his most needy students, now? Who else has Bayo complained to? Formaldehyde. Timber. Mannequin. Puncture. Words that are nowhere near a poem. He misses Katrin so much he can barely breathe.

Bayo is mad; he is not. God, surely not. He has had no word from Katrin in four days. One more hour like this, this clawing from inside and he and Bayo might as well make a life of it together.

He takes out his phone and checks it again. Maybe the texts haven’t gone through. They don’t; the network fucks up.

Are you okay? Please ring me
.

He sends it. He could ring her if he wanted. So, why doesn’t he? Nothing is fixed yet; he doesn’t want to mislead her.

Firefly. Butter. Pig’s breath.

He dials. “Hi, hi. How are you doing? Just checking in,” he says to Emma’s voice on the other end of the line. “I thought maybe we should have dinner.”

From behind, Emma is sexy, her hips, the curve of her shoulder: great proportions. The mother of his child. A surge of hope. He can do this. Maybe they can be a family. He watches Emma walk around his flat as though she’s never been before, and a tinge of resentment surfaces when she stands at his bedroom door, sizing it up, wondering where the cot will go, where her clothes will go—those heavy hiking boots she wears when she trudges across the Lizard Peninsula to Kynance Cove, where just above the rocks at the highest point the choughs fledge and fly.

“I’ve made dinner,” he says and when she turns around he goes cold. She’s cross, put off; he clearly doesn’t have enough space. “Something healthy,” he says.

The chicken stir-fry over rice is his best meal. Emma sits down. Afterimage: Katrin laughing until she can’t stand up, tears rolling, when he’d tried to do a Polish accent and it came out Indian.

“I’d forgotten that you’re a good cook,” Emma says.

“You’re much better,” he says. He can do this. They are good to one another, always polite, always friends.

“What will you do for Easter?” she asks. She wants him to go with her to Cornwall, maybe to his parents’, to start this little family thing off with a good holiday.

“Don’t know. Lots to think about. You?” There’s a silence as Emma touches her ear.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She has blue eyes that have always looked bigger than they really are, because her head is small, her black hair a frame. Audrey Tatou. Emma is a broad, stocky Amélie.

“I don’t know what you’re sorry for, but you don’t need to be,” he says. He can do this. His mother and father talk like this. His mother and father have been married for almost forty years.

“It’s a lot of pressure on you, I know.” See, she’s kind. “But it’s an adventure.” This is not helpful. He doesn’t want an adventure with her.

“My interview is day after tomorrow,” he says because he wants her to know that if he doesn’t get the job they’re done for—they won’t even be able to afford this place let alone a place for when she moves out. And what about her work? Will she go back to being a dental hygienist? Wasn’t that what she was going to do in Truro before all this happened? Pays well. Recession-proof. People’s teeth are always dirty.

“You’re not good at interviews, are you,” she says. And this is how the forty years will go?

He hugs her goodnight at his door and tells her that it was great to see her, that they are doing well, that this is all going to be
fine. And when he closes the door his stomach hurts so badly that he has to sit straight down on the floor. He remembers the chance-operation poetic strategy. He will rise from the floor only when his clock says 23:11.

When people say heads will roll, they don’t really mean that. What they mean is heads will drop. Eyes will dart to the floor as you pass your colleagues in the corridor. Doors will stay closed during lunchtime breaks as everyone decides to eat at their desks. There will be no water-cooler chatter. Francine is sure something is going down today.

She walks past Lawrence’s office but stops, turns and knocks on his door.

“Hi,” she says, as she opens it without waiting for an invitation.

“Hi.” Wary; cold, even.

“Just saying hi, really.”

“Great.”

“Is there something going on today?” She had vowed never to do this again, didn’t want him to have anything to hold over her.

His face suggests that he knows she’s breaking her own vow.

“No, not particularly, not today, but next week, before Easter break,” he says and seems nearly to smile, which makes her feel sick.

“Okay then, thanks—sorry to bother you,” she says, and closes the door.

The hallway smells of fear. She returns to her office and closes her door, clicks on Guardian Soulmates. She types in ReallyYouandMe, and her password: Isoam.

CharlesNW8 has sent her a message:

I like your cheeks. They look like they hold a lot of love. Have a look at mine and let’s meet up
.

You’re a fatface but so am I is what this message is really saying, but when she checks Charles’s profile she’s shocked. He’s young-looking, maybe in his thirties, but his profile says forty-five. Handsome, with a smile that reminds her of John Clarke’s, but a little less crooked.

This is a ruse. If this is really Charles then there’s something wrong with him, or he’s cheating and has put up an old photo. She wants to punch that face.

She picks up the phone and dials.

“It’s me,” is all she says, not even wondering if Patricia will recognize her voice. “Want to see a movie?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to be made redundant,” Francine says, within seconds of Patricia arriving.

“What? How do you know that?” She puts a hand on Francine’s arm. Francine doesn’t move from under it, but feels queasy.

She turns and starts to walk towards the Prince Charles Cinema. The sky is big and boozy, the moon like a fat, squat egg over the buildings in Soho. Patricia catches up to her and keeps looking over, examining Francine’s face.

As they sit in the cinema Francine regrets that she’s chosen the film this time, and that it’s a silent film, the one she missed
after it won an Oscar. She’s nervous about breathing too loudly. The opera was at least something to hide behind.

“You know, Francine,” Patricia says. Francine turns towards her and feels a warmth in Patricia’s croissant breath.

“There’s a veil …”

A veil? She looks up at the curtain over the screen that is parting. Yep, guess that could be a veil, bit thick …

“…  between us and death, most of the time.”

Oh. She feels like burping, but she holds it back because Patricia’s trying to say something and how is it that this woman is both far away and close up at the same time? Too far. Too close.

“But when we witness it, or when someone we love dies …”

It’s like Patricia is on the inside of her brain and not beside her in this cinema where the lights go down and the screen comes alive like daybreak.

“…  that veil drops away … and we see it, and it’s …” Music starts. Strings. Horns. “Frightening,” Patricia whispers the last word.

Francine tries not to breathe too loudly.

The film has had its light-hearted effect. She stays silent, but she is dancing inside like the actors in the last scene, and she’s making silent plans to lose weight and to dance on the outside too. This is good. And here is Patricia beside her on the tube, just letting her sit with the silence.

“What you said before the film,” Francine says, finally. Patricia turns towards her. “About the veil.”

Patricia nods.

“That’s for kids … that’s the kind of thing you say to a child.”

“Well—” Patricia starts.

“It is, and I get you, sure, but it’s not true. Not now. I know, I feel it. There’s no veil, and there never will be again.” There’s relief, and nothing else to say.

Patricia looks around the tube carriage, back at Francine and gives her a smile that Francine doesn’t get the meaning of.

“The film was good,” Francine says.

“Yes, it really was. Charming.”

“I never get it when English people say charming, if they mean it was kind of creepy or not. In the States charming isn’t always a good thing.”

“It’s a good thing,” Patricia says. “You’re charming too.”

Francine squirms. “Then I understand the word even less now,” she says.

COLD BLUE STEEL