Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

Jess had to go then, to see to Franny, to help her wash her face, to find a place for her to rest, to get a cab to take her to the hotel. I tried to help too, but Franny was sobbing and swearing, and Jess shook her head at me and mouthed, ‘I’ll come and find you.’

I thought of her saying, ‘What a painful person Mark must be to love,’ and I nodded and walked away.

In the main marquee, several teenage couples were kissing each other hungrily on the dance floor, hands under clothes, inside dresses and dress shirts. On the tables, brandy-snap baskets of ice cream were melting into puddles of sticky, milky foam. I took my jacket from the back of my chair, pulled it on and walked out into the cool night air.

The night was cloudless, the moon paper-bright and high in the sky. The walkways all around were lit by flaming torches. Couples were talking, flirting, snogging. Friends were drinking or sharing a joint. I walked around the lake at the bottom of the hill, where the torches showed a path. After a few hundred yards I passed a clump of bushes where a couple were unmistakably fucking. The branches of the bushes were shaking rhythmically and I could hear the ‘hn, hn, hn’ grunting of the man, the woman’s half-excited, half-pained ‘ah, ah, ah’. I walked past as quietly as I could and if they heard me they gave no sign of it.

The lake was fed by a thunderously tumbling weir. An overhanging branch trailed across my face and I remembered that it was in a similar spot, far from people, by a river, that I had injured myself so severely that I had never quite risen again. As I walked, the loud crashing water soon blotted out the noise of the party.

On a wall covered in a soggy sponge of moss, I sat down, stretching my legs in front of me. I found I could not help thinking of Mark. I hadn’t seen a great deal of him in the past months. But when I had seen him I’d felt glad to be his friend. Yes, that was it. Glad to hear the little woes and triumphs of the business of the wedding. A wedding is bound to make the bride and groom seem glamorous. Mark and Nicola had been like movie stars today; one could not help wanting to be close to them. That was it, too.

But this thinking could not hold. I began, almost without willing it, to observe my own thoughts. And I laughed. I could not help it. I sat in the roaring silence of the weir and laughed like a madman. What a pathetic thing to realize. What a stupid thing to want. How typical of myself I always was. For it had become suddenly clear to me, horrifically and hilariously clear, that I was in love with Mark.

At first, I simply kept on saying no. No, I said, to the mirror in the mornings, no I won’t. No, I said, to my mind when its thoughts strayed, and they did stray, and they would not cease from straying. No, I said to Nicola when she called from the country and said would we come for a weekend, it’s so beautiful this time of year. And she was a child, just a child really, and could not keep the hurt from her voice when I kept on saying no and no and once again no. No, I said, to Jess when she said wouldn’t it be nice, Nic and Mark were in town, wouldn’t it be lovely to see them for dinner? No, I said, I don’t want to. And I felt like a child, sticking out my lower lip, offering no further explanation but no, and no, and no.

‘I don’t understand why you won’t, that’s all.’

Jess was packing. She spoke in her calm and sensible voice.

‘I just don’t want to.’

I knew it would seem I was being unreasonable.

‘If you don’t want to tell me I suppose you don’t have to, but I do think that you’re being unreasonable.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I don’t want to come. I’ve got marking to do and I’d rather have a quiet weekend at home. I wish you’d stay with me.’

She folded her cream cardigan over the top of her clothes and closed the case briskly. She took a deep breath, then let it out again. I wondered if she was going to shout at me, but she never did, it was not in her. She said, ‘You know I’m not going to do that. I promised them. You said you probably would.’

‘But I can’t,’ I said. And that at least was true.

No, and no, and no. It could not hold.

It wasn’t a good weekend for me. Jess telephoned to say she had arrived safely and in the background I heard Mark saying, ‘Tell him he’s a silly boy for not coming himself. We’ll expect him next time.’ And I felt as though I might vomit. My home, our quiet safe home, had been invaded by something I could not contain or control.

That weekend I had a recurrence of my old problem. It was mid-December, seven months after the wedding, and the days grew dark at 3 p.m. I found myself simultaneously terrified and numb, staring at the lowering sky from the window, unwilling to leave the flat. I could not control my moods, could not stop fear rising in my throat. The winter was cold and dark and never-ending. I imagined Jess sitting by the fire in Mark and Nicola’s home, warmed and encircled by golden light and laughing with her feet up on the sofa and the dogs leaping up to demand her attention. I did not eat much that weekend, I barely stirred from bed. It was clear to me that this was my natural condition; that without Jess I would return to the state in which she had found me — incapable, bleak, desperate. It was only late on Sunday night, when I heard her key in the door, when I saw her face, that the mood lifted, suddenly, all at once, as though it had never been.

I described this to Jess as best I could. I told her I had felt low while she had been gone. She, because she is good, did not say, ‘Well, you should have come with then.’

She kissed my forehead, ruffled my hair and said, ‘I’m home now. I missed you too. Come and help me unpack.’

Things with her were always as simple as this. She was good for me, in this way as in so many others. But why do we so often want the things that are not good for us at all?

There is no safety that does not also restrict us. And many needless restrictions feel safe and comfortable. It is so hard to know, at any moment, the distinction between being safe and being caged. It is hard to know when it is better to choose freedom and fear, and when it is simply foolhardy. I have often, I think, too often erred on the side of caution.

Jess said, ‘James, I really think you should see Mark.’

I felt a line of fear work through me, like a swallowed needle.

‘No,’ I said.

She looked at me. We were in bed, she warming her hands on a mug of tea.

‘What’s he done to you, James? What’s this about?’

What could I possibly say? I reached around in my mind for something that was not, ‘I am afraid, Jessica. I am afraid that if I see him I will well up with longing so that I cannot bear it.’

‘Look, I don’t know. He’s just not our sort of people, is he?’

She frowned. A thin layer of ice glistened on her surface. This had been the wrong thing to say.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

I pushed on. ‘Just … Look, he’s so … I mean, I think he wants to be friends with a different kind of person to us. I mean, Emmanuella’s more his sort of …’

Jess said, ‘I think you’re totally wrong. In fact, he spent all weekend telling me how much he wanted to see you, how disappointed he was you hadn’t come, how he misses your chats.’

At this there was a kind of stirring in me, a detestable hope unfurling.

‘If you’re just staying away because you think we’re not rich enough for him …’

I gulped unhappily and stared at her. Her frown melted away. She snuggled up to me.

‘It’s just the silly winter depression, love. Mark loves you, you know he does, and he’s never cared about other people having money.’