Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

That morning, we lay on her bed together. She brought me a large glass of water and I sipped it slowly. She made me lean back on the bed.

‘I’d follow you anywhere,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said.

‘What are we going to do now?’ I said.

‘Now? You are going to sleep and I —’ she leaned forward and retrieved a book from her bedside table — ‘am going to read Hetherington’s Theory of Composition while you do.’

‘And then?’

‘We’ll talk about that when you wake up. I can take you home if you like. But sleep first.’

When I woke, it was late afternoon and the sun was already red-gold and low in the sky. My head hurt and my mouth was dry. I opened my eyes, then quickly closed them again. Someone was sitting in a chair next to the bed.

‘Oh,’ they said, ‘you’re awake. Do you want some water? I can make breakfast — we’ve got good sausages. Or I do an excellent bacon sandwich. You’d like my bacon sandwich.’

I opened my eyes again, more slowly.

It was Mark, standing by the bed, holding a glass of water close to my lips.

I jerked my head back. Pain shot like an icicle down my neck and into my spine.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I thought of that. Here’s a bottle.’

He passed me a glass bottle of Perrier. I looked at him, then examined the seal. Digging the metal cap into the palm of my hand, I cracked opened the bottle and drank deeply, directly from it.

Mark watched me gravely.

‘Where’s Jess?’ I said at last.

‘She went out for a walk. She’ll be back soon.’

My head felt heavy and old, layers of rust accreted round a thick iron sphere. My right leg was dead. I wiggled my toes to move the blood around and waited for the prickles in my thigh and calf, and the slower dull ache in my knee.

‘Do you …’ Mark stood awkwardly. ‘Do you remember much about last night?’

‘I remember what you did.’

‘Yeah. Look.’ I thought he was about to excuse himself, to tell me it had been a mistake or an accident.

‘It’s not that I want you to like me,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

He blinked at me, cocking his head to one side.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘what do you want?’

‘Want?’ My voice was flat.

‘You make it sound so …’ He frowned. ‘It’s not payment, not like that. Just, what do you want? That I can help with? I owe you one. That’s all. Because I’m sorry.’

My head crackled and bled with white static humming. I licked my lips. I tasted blood.

I took another sip of water, feeling the bubbles bursting on my tongue as a gentle agony.

‘I don’t want anything from you, Mark.’

He stood up and moved close to my bed. His thighs were pressed against the mattress. He bent down smiling, the way one might lean over to tuck a child into bed.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think you do. I think I know how to make it up to you.’

*

Jess returned as the sun was setting. Her hair was loose, windswept from her walk. She embraced me so naturally, and when we kissed she tasted of autumn berries, tart and sweet. She put my hesitant hand on her breast and I felt the nipple, small and hard beneath her sweater.

She said, ‘I’m sorry, really sorry about last night. I didn’t think he’d …’

But my heart was pounding and my skin was electric, and my thumb was on the point of her breast.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s fine. Let’s not talk about him now.’

And after a minute or two all thought faded away.

Kendall jostled me as we crowded into the library.

‘You’ve had a busy vac, eh?’

I supposed he had seen Jess and me kissing before we parted into subject groups, she downstairs to sit with the rest of the music students, I up in the gallery with the physicists.

‘Mmm,’ I said.

There was a bustling of rulers and special pencils and lucky protractors. A few words whispered as we found our places in the ancient library. I was accustomed to a more utilitarian exam setting: the school gym, underneath the basketball hoops, with rubberized floors that squeaked when we shuffled our chairs. But Oxford is defined by its superfluity of beauty, by its application of beauty to the mundane. The morning light filtered through the library windows, splashing crimson on the pale floor tiles. The gold-tooled volumes of the College Record gleamed. Each of us had our own wooden inkwell, lined with indigo glass, in case we should care to write our answers with a dip-pen.

‘Quickly, please!’ called the librarian.

‘Fast work,’ said Kendall, winking. ‘Nice one.’

I smiled. ‘Yeah.’

‘Why do you think they call them collections?’ He was speaking quite loudly, even though the library was becoming hushed. ‘Why collections? Why not exams? Or tests? What are they collecting?’

I made an indeterminate noise. It might have been a ‘hmph’, or perhaps an ‘ahm’.

‘At least we’re in it together, right, Stieff? None of us will do well, not except …’ He jerked his head towards the next table, where Guntersen was laying out pencils, eraser and calculator at right angles. I thought, Mark is right, he is boring. Terribly, terribly boring. The thought pleased me.

‘Did you notice that Spanish girl wasn’t with him today? No good-luck kisses?’

I had noticed.

‘She’s probably got exams now too,’ I said. I took out my clear pencil case.

‘What do you think they’d do if we failed though?’ Kendall whispered. ‘What do you think they’d …’

Kendall’s voice trailed off. I looked at him squarely. He had a soft face: squashy nose, thick lips, ears with long lobes, a round schoolboy haircut. He was sweating and he looked unwell, with a yellow tinge to his face. I suddenly felt pity for Kendall. I had Jess at least, now. We’d spoken daily since the party; at first I’d called her from the phone box at the end of my parents’ road, and then we’d come up early together to Oxford, excited to be near each other. What did Kendall have?

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘What’s the worst that can happen? They won’t send us down after one term.’

‘Quiet now!’ said the librarian.

The whispered conversations died away. The second hand of the great ornamental clock swooped around. The minute hand ticked: 9.30 a.m.

‘You may turn over your papers and begin now.’

Jess and I had come back to Oxford just after New Year, almost two weeks before the start of term. It had been her suggestion and I, longing to escape the suffocating environment of my parents’ house, eager to see her again, had agreed enthusiastically. We’d holed ourselves up in her bedroom and worked. It was only ten days of effort, but there was a calm, methodical manner to it that had given me hope.

‘I know nothing,’ I’d said. ‘There’s no way I’ll pass.’

‘First thing,’ she said, ‘what’s the mark scheme?’

We pored over past papers, as I remembered the less bright boys at my school had been forced to do. We worked out where answering a question would gain most marks, which marks could be got most easily.

‘Look at it this way,’ said Jess. ‘You could learn all four topics a bit, and you wouldn’t do as well as if you learned one very thoroughly and skipped the rest. Which is your favourite?’

I had never prepared to fail before.

‘Don’t think of it like that,’ said Jess. ‘You’re doing what needs to be done.’

There’s a sense of mastery that comes in examinations. It’s an experience that is rare in the outside world. The number of questions, the different ways they can be presented: these things are limited, and each can be explored, studied, perfected. No wonder we spend our adult lives feeling we’re simply pretending to know what we’re doing. After sixteen years spent doing exams, where the lessons we’ve received perfectly fit the challenges we’re faced with, our preparation for the unpredictable events of normal life will always seem shoddy and haphazard.