Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

I thought I recognized one of them: a tall, thin man wearing drain-pipe trousers and with a slicked-back hairstyle. When he looked up I realized with a shock that he was a television presenter; famous for an anarchic programme he hosted on the subject of, in roughly equal parts, pop music, high culture and his genitals. He stared at me for a moment, grunted, then said to Jee, ‘Fine, fine, but what if I just want to lose, like, three whole weeks?’

Jee nodded sagely, reached under his kaftan and produced a small bag of white tablets and a sheet of red paper squares.

‘Very mellow, my friend, extremely sybaritic.’

The television star grimaced.

‘Will it get me off the fucking planet?’

And Jee nodded slowly.

On the other side of the table, next to Mark, was another face I found vaguely familiar. A muscular man in an open-necked shirt and jeans. He, however, recognized me as well.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s Jack, isn’t it?’

‘James,’ I said.

I placed him; he was an acquaintance of Mark’s and had attended that first New Year’s Eve party at Annulet House.

‘Know anything about steel?’ he said.

I blinked.

He drew his attention away from the collection of coloured powders and tablets.

‘Only I’m thinking of going all in on steel. If they’re right and all the planes are going to fall out of the sky, what will we need?’

‘Ambulances?’ I ventured.

He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.

‘Too late by then. No one survives a plane crash, no one. Safety cards and “brace, brace” are just to stop people panicking. It’s true. I’ve looked into it.’ He pursed his lips. ‘No, if the planes fall out of the sky, what are we going to need? Steel. To rebuild them, see?’

‘ Are planes made out of steel?’

‘What else would they be made of?’

‘Ummm,’ I said, ‘maybe aluminium? Or some kind of composite? Something light like that?’

He thought about this for a long time, while fiddling with a 10-pence piece, turning it over and over, flipping it between his fingers, throwing and catching it.

‘Very good point,’ he said, ‘very good indeed. Yes. Very good. Aluminium. You might have saved me a bundle there, fella, an absolute bundle.’ He leaned towards Mark and said, ‘Clever chap, your friend. Positively insightful.’

Mark looked at me, smiled and said, ‘Yes. Yes, he is.’ And a crazy happiness spread warm and liquid in my chest.

Mark made a large and expansive purchase. So large, in fact, and so expansive that Jee thoughtfully provided him with a Marks & Spencer bag to carry it away in.

‘Where to now?’ I said.

‘Home,’ said Mark decisively. ‘Get some of these babies down me.’

I could not keep the disappointment from my face.

‘Oh,’ he said, looking at me, ‘what a face you have, James! Like a sad little puppy. Do not worry, my darling, there will be treats tomorrow.’

And he kissed me lightly on the cheek, jumped into his car and disappeared in it before I could think of how to persuade him to stay.

We’d arranged to meet the next day at his flat in Islington at 2.30 p.m., but when I arrived he was surprised to see me. He was dressed in only pyjama bottoms, his hair still sleep-muddled.

He said, ‘I thought you weren’t coming till the afternoon?’

I said, ‘This is the afternoon.’

He said, ‘Oh.’

And he shook his head sadly and went to get dressed.

We drove to my flat — his windscreen had acquired another two tickets, I noticed. Jess was out rehearsing and wouldn’t be back until the evening. Mark lay on his back on our sofa, holding his head in his hands. I made a late lunch and we ate in the kitchen. I realized that I hadn’t seen him eat since he arrived in London and this thought filled me with compassion for him. He seemed smaller now than he had been.

Mark poured himself a large whisky and we talked about Oxford people, about what had become of them since we left. Mark had heard that Dr McGowan had finally been arrested for his cottaging activities and that the college had asked him to resign. He had, however, been immediately offered an even more prestigious chair at the Sorbonne so, as Mark said, ‘no harm done’. We talked of Franny, who’d coincidentally spent a few weeks of the summer at the Sorbonne. We wondered whether she’d seen Dr McGowan, and whether she’d managed to keep a straight face if so. Mark became more and more animated during this conversation, wildly fantasizing that they had met, that they had become great friends, that they were together right now, that if we called her we would find that he was in her rooms.

‘I’ll call her now!’ Mark said. ‘She could come down from Cambridge tonight. And then —’ a wild gleam flared in his eye — ‘we could go and see Emmanuella at the weekend! In Madrid! Or she could come here! I could fly her over. Maybe Simon could come from Chile, or Peru, or wherever he is.’

He frowned, acknowledging that this was unlikely, but he had still not given up on the idea entirely. He picked up the phone and dialled Franny’s number in Cambridge.

‘Hello, my darling. Guess who it is.’

A pause. A grin on his face.

‘S’right! And guess who I’m with.’

Another pause, a wider grin.

‘No! Wrong! Guess again …’

A shorter pause.

‘It’s James! I’m with James in London, and Jess is going to be home in a few hours, and we thought …’

Another pause. A slight wrinkling of the brow.

‘No, she’s not. She’s still in Doorbl … Doorbi … She’s in Doorbell.’ A giggle from Mark.

A pause. Mark bit his upper lip.

‘Well, yes I am, as a matter of fact, but there’s nothing wrong with that , is there, darling?’

A short pause.

‘ No , listen! Jess will be home soon, and we thought you could come down to London tonight and it’ll be just like old times, do you remember? In the house?’

A longer pause. More lip chewing.

‘Oh, but darling Franny, it won’t take very long …’

Cut off. A short pause.

‘I’m sure you can stay here tonight. Can’t she, James?’

I nodded.

‘He’s nodding. Of course you can stay here tonight.’

A long pause.

‘Oh, but you’ll have a wonderful time. We’re all here and we can go out on the town, or stay in and order some food, and I’ve got some lovely stuff, haven’t I, James?’

He did not look at me this time to see whether I nodded or not.

‘Oh, but Fran …’

Pause.

‘But you know that you’ll …’

Pause.

‘But it’s our last chance in …’

Long pause. Frown deepening on Mark’s face. A twist of the mouth.

‘I really can’t persuade you …?’

Lines appearing at the sides of his mouth. A slight scrunch to his eyes.

‘OK, bye then.’

He put the phone down and looked at the receiver for a moment.

He said, ‘Uptight bitch.’

I said nothing.

He sat on the sofa for a while, staring out of the window at the blank grey sky. At last he said, ‘We had an argument.’

I did not have to ask who he meant. I didn’t know how to reply to him. Instead, I simply waited.

‘She said she thinks this all might have been a mistake.’

‘She probably didn’t mean it.’

He looked at me, a broken smile. He shrugged.

‘But it can’t be perfect any more, not like it was. Nothing ever stays.’

‘It’s not …’ I began, and then did not know how to proceed. I wanted to tell him something about how it was with Jess and me, how I had found that love was a constant cycle of coming together and breaking apart. But I did not want to talk or think about Jess just then. And perhaps I did not at that time have the ability to explain the truth about relationships: that they produce their fruit intermittently, unpredictably. That every relationship has moments when someone says, or thinks, or feels that it might not be worth doing. Every relationship has moments of exasperation and fear. And the work of the thing is to come through it, to learn how to bear it. And even if I could have explained this, Mark would never have understood it. He has always been rich enough that if something breaks he can simply throw it away and buy a new one. He had never used string or glue to bind something together again. He had never been forced to learn how to mend.