Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

Jess, becoming more mild as Franny became more ferocious, said, ‘She’s quite religious, after all. They believe in that sort of thing.’

‘Oh yes, that’s another bloody thing. Now she’s suddenly converting. Roman Catholicism. So yes, I’m sure they won’t use contraception and then there’ll be a whole brood before long. That’s if he doesn’t get distracted and jilt her for some bloke.’

As she lit another cigarette, I noticed that her hands were shaking.

Later, after we’d finished the meal, Franny returned to the question again, this time pushing it from another direction. She was more drunk, more calm.

‘Perhaps it is a joke. Maybe they’re both in on it: she’s just about smitten enough to participate in any tease with him. He’s probably terribly amused to imagine us all having anxious conversations like this about him.’

There was a long pause while we contemplated how like Mark it would be: something to have us all talking about him.

Franny was lying on her back on the carpet now, staring at the ceiling, balancing her wine glass with one hand on her chest. There was an expression of dissatisfaction on her face, a twist of the mouth as if she had tasted something which disgusted her.

She said, ‘It’s not a joke. I know it’s not, not really.’

She spoke so quietly that it was difficult to hear her, as if she herself did not want to hear her own words.

‘It’s not a joke,’ she said again. ‘This is what he’s always wanted and he’s found a way to get it.’

She sat up and leaned against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. She dug the fingers of one hand deep into the pile of the carpet. Her hands were quite pale and her face set. She looked up at the ceiling.

She said, ‘This is what he’s been looking for, you know? You remember how much he loved being on the farm with Simon’s family, how much he wanted to be part of that kind of Englishness ? That wholesome, salt-of-the-earth, country lifestyle? Like the bloody Hay Wain . Well, he’s found a way to step into the painting. He’ll marry Nicola, they’ll be blissfully happy, he’ll supply the money, she’ll supply the homeliness, it’ll be perfect.’

She took another swig from her glass.

‘I’m only surprised he never thought of marrying you, Jess. Only I expect you wouldn’t have gone for it.’

Jess, speaking softly, said, ‘Surely … I mean, he’s never even slept with a girl, has he?’

Franny ran her finger round the wine glass. She swirled the dregs, staining the bowl of the glass.

‘I slept with him.’ She drained the glass. ‘More than once actually. It was quite good — very vigorous, if you know what I mean — so he can’t be completely, well not exclusively. I mean, he seemed to enjoy it, it wasn’t as if there was any coercion involved.’

She tipped back her head and gave a short barking laugh then, hiccuping, began to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in heaving gasps. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.’

Jess knelt down on the carpet next to Franny and put her arm around her shoulders.

‘Shhh,’ she said, ‘shhh. It’s OK, it’s OK.’

Jess stroked her hair and after a while Franny gulped and brought her tears to an ebb.

We helped her to the spare room, drunk and staggering as she was, and at the doorpost she wished us goodnight. Leaning against the jamb, she said, ‘It’s not that I thought it would be me, you know. I was never so stupid as that.’

Jess smiled. ‘We know.’

And Franny went to bed.

In the kitchen, washing up, we said little. I stood at the sink, washing and rinsing mechanically, handing the plates to Jess to be dried, thinking all the time of how little I had known of Franny in the past few years. We had shared a house, I had known the little intimate details of her daily life: that at times of stress she could eat a whole jar of Nutella with a spoon, that she and Simon used condoms not the Pill, that she suffered from a day a month of agonizing period pain. I had known all this, but not this thing we shared. Or might have shared. Or would have shared if he had wanted me as he’d evidently wanted her. As I washed and scraped and soaked, I imagined Franny and Mark together. I did not want to imagine this but, once I had thought of it, I found myself unable to turn my inner eyes away.

‘How long do you think this has been going on with her?’ said Jess.

I started, then shrugged.

‘Don’t know. I had no idea. Didn’t she mention anything to you?’

Jess shook her head.

‘Not a word. I suppose she was embarrassed.’

‘Mmm,’ I said.

‘Poor Fran,’ said Jess. ‘What a painful person Mark must be to love.’

I picked the receiver up. I put it down again. I sat down. I stood up. I breathed deeply. I rehearsed the different ways of saying, ‘Hi, it’s James.’ I picked the receiver up. I dialled the number. In the heartbeat before it began to ring, I put it down again. I drummed my fingers on the table. I looked at the clock: 6 p.m. An hour or so before Jess would be home. I poured a whisky. I took a gulp. I drank too quickly, choked and spluttered. I drank more slowly. After twenty minutes a slight mellowness began to prickle me. Now, I thought, now. I picked up the receiver. I dialled the number. I listened to it ring and to the click of the receiver on the other end being picked up and to Mark — oh God, Mark — saying, ‘Hello.’

‘Hi,’ I said, ‘it’s James.’

‘Hi, James!’ he said, and there was a smile in his voice. ‘How the fuck are you?’

I resisted the urge to slam the phone down.

‘Fine,’ I said, ‘I’m fine. Listen. Do you want to meet up? Have a beer? Something? Would be good to talk.’

‘Oh, sure,’ he said, ‘that’d be great. This evening?’

And my pulse pounded and throbbed in my throat, because that wasn’t in my plan.

‘Um,’ I said, ‘not tonight.’

‘You free tomorrow? I’m all time, you know. Ain’t got nothing but time, baby.’

Jesus.

‘Um. Yeah. OK. Tomorrow afternoon? I finish school at …’ I tried to calculate: how long, how short, how much time did I need to prepare for it? ‘I could be in Islington at 5 p.m. That’s where you are, right, Islington?’

‘Your spies are everywhere, Mr Stieff.’

I said nothing. My heart was crashing in my chest.

‘But yeah,’ he said, ‘that’d be fine. Wanna come to the flat?’

‘No,’ I said, a little too quickly. ‘That is, nah, let’s go for a beer.’

He named a pub off Upper Street. ‘At 5 tomorrow. Cool. Looking forward to it, mate.’

And it was done. The adrenalin coursing through my system left me shaking when I put the phone down.

He was waiting for me when I arrived. It had been raining and his hair was damp, his fringe plastered to his forehead. He didn’t see me at first and I had a few seconds to look him over before he noticed my presence. He looked older. Partly it was his clothing. A camel-coloured coat, an indigo suit with winkle-picker boots and a white shirt. Not a serious suit, but I’d never seen him wear a suit at all before. There was a new stillness to his body. I hadn’t realized until then that, in the past, he’d always been a little jittery. Playing with matchbooks and cigarettes, or jiggling one knee. Now he was still.

He looked up and a smile, uncalculated and uncomplicated, broke over his face.

‘James!’ he said. ‘Brilliant!’

He stood up and reached out to hug me, but I stepped awkwardly to the side, my hands up. He looked puzzled, but said again, ‘Brilliant!’ and we sat down. I was silent for too long. I had various things in my mind to say, had stored them up, but none of them were opening lines, and none of them seemed promising here, on a Wednesday afternoon in a half-empty gastropub. They were, I realized, things that were more suitable for shouting, in a kitchen in Oxford, two years earlier.