The Cupid Effect (11 page)

‘You
are
a lecturer, aren't you?'

‘Yes, but I'm also a new lecturer so I don't have a handle on everything yet.'

‘That's not my problem, is it.
Dear
.' Her superiority had clambered up to a new level now she knew I was in a weak position, I was a novice. ‘Fifteen days.'

‘But I don't know what I'll need that far in advance,' I replied. ‘Sometimes I only find books and articles that are necessary a couple of days in advance.'

‘That's not my problem either, is it,' the woman behind the counter replied, picking up a stack of forms and tapping them on the counter to straighten them while wiggling her head in an officious manner. ‘Maybe you should plan your lectures more carefully.'

Even in my state, even as hungover and unwell as I was I couldn't abide that kind of rudeness. (Particularly not from someone I could soooo take in a fight.) ‘Excuse me?' I replied.

‘I was under the impression that lecturers were meant to work to a set timetable. You know,
plan things
.' As she spoke she waggled her upper body in that selfsame officious manner. ‘Be prepared.'

I picked up my stack of books and articles. ‘Tell you what, you don't tell me how to lecture and I won't tell you how to press the little button on the photocopier machine.'

‘You cannot speak to me like that,' she said. ‘I will report you to your head of department.'

‘Right. Well, you do that. Don't forget to read the college's psychic newsletter to find out my name, and when you've reported me to the head of department, why don't you report me to God too because He's the only person I'm really scared of.'

Had I been able to, I would've slammed the swing door behind me. But I kicked it, leaving it fump, fump, fumping open and shut behind me.

WHORE!
I said in my head.
Whore-faced old bag. Who does she think she is? No one talks to me like that and gets away with it. Stupid old mare.

I'd stamped my way to the Senior Common Room before reason pierced my anger: I'd been insulted by some officious mare in a department. And she couldn't do that if I wasn't part of the grand scheme of things.

Hey, I'm a proper lecturer now.

I slid my key into the front door and almost collapsed with happiness as the door swung open. I never thought I'd be so happy to see the inside of a place in my life. I never thought I could sleep with my eyes open, either, but I could. I'd just done it.

The nonsense I'd heard about developmental psychology this morning had almost put me to sleep for real. But I'd propped my eyes open with sheer willpower and had nodded and asked questions when people read out their work.

The worst part was, to sit there, listening to students spewing what was essentially something they'd put together on the bus . . . it made me think of all the times I'd done that and thought I'd got away with it. It hadn't occurred to me that lecturers would see through it. That they'd be sat there thinking:
Are you kidding me? Do you really want me to believe that what you were talking there was a week's worth of extracurricular reading?

I went staggering into the living room, dropped my papers and books onto the sofa and flopped down beside them, dropped my head onto the cushion. I could stay like this for ever. And ever. And ever.

‘Hi Ceri,' a male voice said. I hadn't been here long enough to work out who it was. I turned my head a little to look at him. Ed.

‘Hi Ed,' I replied.

Ed threw himself down onto the other sofa, picked up the remote control and turned on the television. ‘Suffering?' he asked.

‘Yeah. I've had to deal with photocopying psychos. And this lecturing lark's a lot harder than it seems,' I mumbled.

‘So it's nothing to do with being laroped last night?'

‘Jake told you?' I said.

‘Jake told me. He said you wouldn't stop talking.'

‘Oh, Godddd. Did he sound scared when he told you?'

‘Well, he was quite pleased that you took the time to reassure him that you weren't a weirdo. And that you didn't think either of us would whack you over the head if you borrowed our milk. Not that you drink milk.'

‘Ohhhhhhhh.'

‘He thought it was quite funny, actually.'

‘Yeah, they all think it's funny until they ask you to move out,' I said into the cushion.

‘Hi Ceri,' Jake said.

I sat bolt upright. Dragged my hands through my hair to make it lie flat. ‘Jake, about last night . . .' I began.

‘Forget it,' Jake said, brushing away my apology before I'd even started it. He sat beside Ed, wrestled the remote control off him and flicked the TV over.

Ed wrestled it back, flicked it back to the other side.

Jake nudged Ed, held him back with his elbow, got back the control and turned over the TV. ‘We're having sausage casserole for tea,' Jake said, he'd got Ed in a head lock and was holding the remote out of reach.

‘Yeah, and I made Angel Delight for dessert,' Ed choked.

‘You do eat meat, don't you?' Jake said.

‘I do,' I said, watching the fight progress.

‘Cool. But don't have any Angel Delight, Ed's a really bad cook even when it's just whisking powder into milk.'

Ed managed to grab a pillow from the sofa and started to bash Jake with it. I lay face down on the sofa again. I had moved into the right place. I could feel it in my soul.

chapter nine

The Boss

Time moves quickly, time moves slowly.

The longer I stayed in Leeds, the more I understood Einstein's theory of relativity. Not the entire theorem, more the relative part. How things seemed.

Time sped by at weekends, time almost stopped when I was giving a lecture, from the looks on some of the students' faces and the way they stared forlornly at their watches, they felt the same. And, for some reason, every day seemed to be the day before Wednesday, or Wednesday. Wednesday was half-day at most universities and colleges so the students could pursue physical activities and play sports. Most uni competitions and matches were held on Wednesday afternoons. This meant I could pursue my favourite activities – cooking, eating, watching television without infringing upon official work or study time.

The relativity of Wednesday to every other day of the week should, then, have been joyous. It was not.

The usual drill for Wednesday pre-lunch, post-morning, was for Gwen, my boss and the head of the psychology department, to come in after giving a cognitive psychology lecture and flop down next to me, offer me a cigarette (I'd always refuse, emphasising how much tobacco smoke bothered me with a reply of ‘I don't smoke') and proceed to chain-smoke her way through the entire two-hour lecture. That is, recounting it between long drags of her high-tar fags.

‘I don't know why I bother, I really don't,' she said, searching her handbag for something. Cigarettes I presumed. This was my third Wednesday. She'd assumed the flop beside me position and was now searching for her props before the drama that was lecturing unfolded. I braced myself for a face and body full of the brown stuff people had to use paint stripper to get off pub walls. ‘Do you know what they've done now?'

I'd been in Gwen's office a few times since I started, and discovered it was like walking in to an Ashtray Temple. Ashtrays littered the desk, her bookshelves, there were a couple on the window sill. Each was different in size and colour but her office was clearly a holy place for the things. Drawn here to worship at the fingers of the great, white smoker. Each and every ashtray had some kind of cigarette debris in it, as though she stubbed out her cigarette in whichever ashtray she happened to be passing at the time. Most disturbingly, every cigarette was fully-smoked.

I'd sat opposite her at her desk and studied the cigarettes the first time I'd been in her office. First, I'd looked at the ones in the ashtray by her computer, then at the ones in the ashtrays I could see. Every cigarette was smoked, right to the edge of the filter. No fag escaped her ownership unsmoked or half-smoked. Or even three-quarters smoked. That showed a particular type of dedication. She didn't simply want a boost of nicotine, she wanted every last drop, every last microgram. Gwen was one step away from injecting nicotine.

‘Do you know what they've done now?' she repeated, her hand still digging around the bag.

Rather conversely to all laws of physics and biology, Gwen spoke with the girliest voice. The kind of voice I used to affect when I wanted to get around someone by pretending to be pathetic and unable to think due to a lack of brain cells. She spoke with an educated squeak that became posher and squeakier the more riled she got. Her voice suited her clothes though: Laura Ashley-style skirts or dresses, pink or powder blue blouses. And, most bizarrely, always,
always
thick black tights. We'd had a rash of hot, sunny days recently, but still Gwen's sixty deniers stuck to her legs, and stuck out of her black open-toe sandals. She wore those whether it was sunny or cold or rainy, too.

Gwen found her cigarettes and pulled them out of her big, flowery cloth bag. She flipped the top of the packet open. ‘I really don't know why I bother,' she repeated.

‘Why, what's happened?' I said, catching on that, unlike previous Wednesdays, I had to work for the information this time. She lit her cigarette with her solid gold lighter, a present from her husband – I'd seen the inscription – and inhaled almost all of the cigarette in one suck. It was bad. It was very bad. I didn't yet understand just how bad it was, though.

‘Not one of them had done the reading. Not one,' she squeaked, a notch or two higher than normal. She was very agitated. ‘And then one of them had the audacity to . . .' huge draw, ‘to say she didn't know what I was talking about. She didn't know what I was talking about. Can you believe it?'

My heart sank, my throat tightened and I swallowed hard. Unfortunately, yes, I could believe it. In fact, I could've prevented it.

My second lecture with the first group I'd taught as a proper lecturer, I'd relaxed into the role far more. I wasn't reading straight from the script in front of me. I could ad lib, drop in little quips. I was working up to big detours and anecdotes.

That second lecture, they'd relaxed with me, too. We'd only been in the room for a few minutes when the woman with the tight, blondish perm raised her hand slightly.

‘Er, yeah?' I asked. ‘Oh, do you mind saying your name before you speak? I still haven't learnt your names.'

‘Um, I'm Roberta. Can I ask you something?'

‘Yeah, course.'

‘Do you think Gwen's mad?'

‘Sorry?' I replied.

Mr Wham-era George Michael raised his hand. ‘I'm Joel, I think what Roberta's trying to say is, we don't understand what she's on about half the time. And none of us are learning anything.'

‘No, Joel,' Roberta said, ‘I was asking if Ceri thought Gwen was mad. There is a difference, even if you're too polite to notice.'

‘Right,' I said.
Oh bollocks
, I thought.

After that, the flood gates were bust open as a tidal wave of disgruntlement crashed down onto the room. Gwen was boring. Gwen was confusing. ‘She scares the b'jasus out of me with the way she teaches,' one of them said.

I'd listened to the first wave of discontentment, then said: ‘She speaks very highly of you, too.'

Another tidal wave of disgruntlement crashed down on us then: most of them skipped her lectures, they said. The ones who did go to her lectures were far too scared to point out how little they were learning. Or to even reply to her questions. They all lived in mortal fear of her asking them a question. They simply weren't learning anything, but were too worried about being given a failing grade to say owt to her.

I wasn't stupid. Stunned, but not stupid. The general gist of what they were saying was, ‘Could you say something to her for us?, i.e., could you get her to stop being Gwen and be a little human when it comes to her teaching style?

I tried to impress upon them that they were responsible for what they learnt, no one could put it in their heads. But they were having none of it. They merely dragged out more examples of how bad a lecturer Gwen was and how it was practically my duty, as the new, young, trendy lecturer who'd started off by being nice to them, to say something to her. That'll learn me to try to be cool.

With the burden on my head, I'd meant to say something to Gwen. Really I had. I simply never found the right moment, the right time, the righ— OK, OK, I was scared. She was the head of department. My Boss. She could revoke my position with the stroke of a pen. How was I supposed to tell her, she who had years of teaching experience, compared to my fifty hours' experience, to stop it. Besides, I'd be trapped in her smoke-filled office while I tried to explain their position to her. I had meant to at least broach the subject. I'd just kept putting it off and putting it off until, well, now. Woman thy name is coward.

I looked at Gwen as she finished off her cigarette. ‘I, er,' I began, not sure what I was going to say before I opened my mouth. But then, I was rarely sure what I was going to say before I opened my mouth, and it hadn't stopped me before.

Again, I was saved by Mel. He blew into the Senior Common Room, a mass of papers and folders. Papers slipping, eyes searching the room, he always moved as though someone was chasing him. ‘He could cause a riot in an empty house,' that was a phrase my mum used and it was so apt for Mel. He approached the low coffee table Gwen and I were sat in front of and I had my feet on, paused – giving me a silent one-second warning to move my feet, before they were avalanched by his lecturing materials and essays. I pulled my feet away just before he dropped his load. He then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a picture postcard.