Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

Having become accustomed to Mark’s night-time conquests needing to be put at ease, Jess wished Dr McGowan a good morning. He peered at her, nodded without saying a word and returned to his reading. The experience was miserably reminiscent of attending a tutorial, at least in my case: the tutors had very little to say in response to whatever I happened to offer them.

After a few moments Dr McGowan said, ‘I see an UNPROFOR force has been ambushed in Bosnia. A clear example that rules of engagement are worthless. They can never anticipate battlefield conditions. Don’t you agree, Miss Roth?’

Franny blanched and paused halfway through taking a piece of toast.

‘Um,’ she said. ‘I, um …’

‘And can you tell me who drafted the rules of engagement in Bosnia?’

‘Um. General Cot?’

‘Hmmm.’ I had the distinct impression that Dr McGowan would rather Franny had got the answer wrong. ‘He’s been recalled by the UN, of course.’

Jess, noticing that Franny was attempting to back out of the room, grabbed her arm, squeezed it and drew her to the far side of the kitchen to make tea with us in abject silence.

Emmanuella came down next. She was in the house for only about half of each week and I’d been trying to stay out of her way. The drunken moment that first night hadn’t been repeated; in fact she’d been a little cold with me. I couldn’t tell if she was offended that I’d turned her down or annoyed that I’d gone as far as I had without stopping. In any case, she’d taken up with another Scandinavian athlete — this time Lars, a fencer from Oriel. I found unexpectedly that my jealousy was tinged with relief.

Lars was not with her this morning, however, and, expecting to see another of Mark’s charming young boys, she leaned across the table and rattled the paper playfully. Her expression when it was put down and she saw not an eighteen-year-old but a man of mature years was one of undisguised horror.

‘Oh!’ she said. Then, recovering herself slightly and evidently thinking she must have misunderstood the situation, she put out her hand and said, ‘I am Emmanuella. You are … a relative —’ she looked around the table with confusion — ‘a relative of Mark?’

‘Come now, darling,’ said Mark, looking up from his novel at last, ‘you know better than that.’ He looked at Emmanuella meaningfully, until she blushed, said, ‘Oh!’ and blushed still deeper.

Dr McGowan shook her hand, which she appeared to have forgotten she’d left in a position to be shaken, nodded and returned once more to the paper.

Simon, arriving in the kitchen at just the moment that this exchange took place, could do little more than stand at the doorway and gasp — he too had attended Dr McGowan’s lectures, though more sporadically than Franny. Eventually, seeming to take the view that what he didn’t acknowledge couldn’t see him, he marched into the kitchen and busied himself at once making bacon and eggs. This flushed Dr McGowan. He had apparently been quite willing to appear oblivious of us, as long as we did not appear oblivious of him .

Observing Simon’s back, he put down his paper with a great rustling and said in a low rumble, ‘Good morning. I am Dr Rufus McGowan. And you are?’

Simon appeared to lose about ten years instantly, becoming a frightened schoolboy confronted with an angry master.

He said, ‘Er, Simon …’

Dr McGowan looked at him. Simon went red.

‘Studying?’

‘Um … PPE.’

‘Ah.’ Dr McGowan leaned back in his chair, arms folded in front of him. Even in oversized pyjamas, the authority of an Oxford tutor was absolute. ‘And what did you make of the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and the aftermath?’

Simon’s eyes bulged.

‘Um. I … um. It’s disappointing?’

Dr McGowan stared at him for longer than was humane.

‘What college are you at?’ The word ‘boy’ seemed to hang inaudibly at the end of the sentence.

‘Um … Keble.’

Dr McGowan snorted and returned to his paper as if this explained the evident dimness of Simon.

*

‘What were you thinking ?’ asked Franny after Dr McGowan had left.

Mark shrugged his shoulders defensively.

‘He’s certainly different from your usual type,’ said Jess. ‘Where did you find him?’

Franny rolled her eyes.

‘Martyrs’ Memorial,’ he said.

There was a little silence while we stared at Mark, thinking it through. Emmanuella, however, did not understand.

‘You met him at the Memorial? But there is nothing there. Only the statues and a public bathroom.’

Mark nodded and grinned.

‘What did you talk about?’

Mark leaned forward, his voice a low rumble, and said, ‘There wasn’t much talking involved.’

‘But how …’

‘Darling Manny,’ he said. ‘The lavatories under the Martyrs’ Memorial are a place where gentlemen can find other gentlemen to give one another relief for the urges of the flesh. Dr McGowan and I have obliged one another there on several occasions. This time I suggested we repair somewhere more … congenial, and he agreed.’

‘Oh!’ said Emmanuella, her eyes widening. Then she frowned. ‘I do not think this is very respectful to the martyrs, Mark, even if they were not Catholics.’

He frowned at her, then beamed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘how right you are. I shall have to mention it at confession.’

‘An interview with a divine,’ said Dr Snippet. ‘Doesn’t it strike you that way, Mr Stieff?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Dr Snippet sighed and blew his nose.

‘It is the root of all we do here, Mr Stieff. If you’ll forgive me for going off on a tangent for a moment.’

It was by no means unusual for Dr Snippet to go off on a tangent. My one-on-one tutorials with him were a special benefit, conferred without warning by the college presumably in recognition of my lacklustre academic attainments. But the man never stuck to the subject at hand. When I’d asked whether his musings were relevant for the exams, he’d tutted and said, ‘Mr Stieff, if all you cared about was examination results, you could have gone to —’ he coughed, as if about to say a rude word — ‘Keele. You are here not for a degree but for an education.’

‘I mean to say, Mr Stieff,’ said Dr Snippet, ‘that is how we began. The tutorial. Five hundred years ago, when this college was founded, I would have been a priest and you a young nobleman. We would all have been Catholics then, and the private confession of one’s sins would have been familiar to us. Much as — aheh-aheh-aheh — you come now to confess your sins of incomprehension.

‘Psychotherapeutic practice, of course,’ he continued, ‘draws from quite the same wellspring. The monasteries may have been dissolved, Mr Stieff, but their ways are all around us! Of course, there would have been no women in the colleges then. Still, times change and we change with them.’ He blew his nose so loudly that I was unable to decide if I had really heard him say, ‘More’s the pity.’

When I returned to Annulet House that afternoon, the phone was ringing in the side passage by the kitchen. I ran in to answer it.

‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello?’ I was breathless and the line was crackly.

‘Marco!’ called a woman’s voice, followed by a babble of Italian.

‘Stop, stop,’ I said, catching my breath. ‘Do you speak English? Inglese? ’

There was a pause.

‘I wish to speak to Mark. Is he there, please?’ said the woman in accented tones.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘He’s not in.’

‘Who is this, please?’

‘It’s, um, it’s James. A friend of Mark’s. I live here too.’