Naomi Alderman - The Lessons

It had occurred to me, but only dimly, that such things were possible. Mark took it for granted that I would not work now. He gave me signing power for one of his accounts. I looked at the sum of money sitting in the current account and was astonished.

‘There’s enough here to buy a house, Mark. A couple of houses. It should be somewhere it can earn interest.’

He shrugged.

‘I think that is interest. From something else. I’m not sure. There’s a man in the City who deals with it. You can talk to him if you like.’

I took the dog-eared card he gave me from a private bank in London but never called the number. It seemed impertinent. I took what was provided and was grateful. The anger of my headmaster at the late notice of my departure flowed over me and fell away. I thought of it for a day or two and then lost it forever. I began to appreciate what money can provide: a waterproof imperviousness to the demands of others.

We stayed in the Islington flat for a while, and left London in the early autumn, just as the days began to be touched with a moist coolness and the smell of rot. At first, we tried to go back to the house in Oxford, but it didn’t take. The rooms were empty without the six of us to fill them, and the memory of Daisy was everywhere she’d crawled and toddled and fallen on the day we graduated. Mark’s nightmares grew worse there, the dreams of Daisy sometimes infecting his waking hours to such an extent that he thought he saw her at every turn. And Oxford is so full of youth and joy. We could not be at home there.

We went on. The limits of Mark’s territory seemed infinite. We spent a few weeks in a manoir in Normandy which had been owned by his father’s brother but he thought had now passed to him, ‘or as good as, anyway’. My French is extremely imperfect, but the housekeeper seemed to be reminiscing about his mother as a young girl. I mentioned this to Mark but he had no explanation.

In January, the fogs fell over the orchards and Mark became restless. He talked of Brazil, of Bangalore and of Sydney. It was then that we hit upon San Ceterino, the villa here in the heel of Italy which he and Nicola had never visited. We had intended it to be just a way point, a stopping place on a journey which at the time we thought might bring us back to England one day. Perhaps two years of recuperation and then a return. But we have stayed, and stayed, and stayed. It is not that the house or the town has won us with its charms. I believe it is partly the squalor which appeals to Mark, the slight degradation of a town whose once-busy port has all but closed and whose major tourist attraction is a crumbling medieval monastery with a mildly picturesque campanile.

We came to it in the most unattractive part of winter, when the sky was mould-grey and the grounds were so sodden with water that our shoes were half sucked off our feet as we walked the grounds. The beds were all mildewed, speckled and stinking. On the first night, we slept wrapped in rugs on the summer-house sofas, lighting our way with the candles we’d found in crates in an outhouse. We made love that night. As we were falling asleep, he clutched at my shoulders convulsively and whispered, I thought, ‘I love you.’ It was the first time he had said such a thing.

I whispered, in the chill dark, ‘What did you say?’

‘Hmm?’ he said. ‘What?’

The next day, his credit card conjured new beds and furniture, television sets, stereos and extravagant quantities of groceries. Money smooths over all possibility of adventure.

It was the cathedral, I think, which sealed it. In our first week here we walked down to the town and explored its cascading hillside of shops and houses and its dead dock, gazed up at its famous bell tower, which neither of us had the heart to climb. The Cattedrale di San Ceterino is too large for the town, which has shrunk in recent years. It is old and dark, furnished and panelled in burnished brown wood. It holds a relic of San Ceterino, it is said; the bones of one finger, covered by glass, next to a statue of the saint. One portion of the case is open, just enough for the faithful to touch their finger, or their lips, to one knuckle bone. The brass there is smooth and shiny, the bone itself worn to a brown gloss by the centuries of humanity who have approached, asking for favour, for blessing, for release from the various miseries of human life.

Mark touched his lips to the stained bone. I stood back and looked at the figure of Jesus on the Cross that hovered above us. His back was twisted. His mouth gaped in a silent scream. And I thought, oh, I see. At last I see. It’s not about the visible suffering. Greater suffering than this can of course be imagined. It is about the celebration. Even the perfect life of God on earth culminates in suffering. We don’t have to clothe ourselves in imaginary woe. Each of us, if we live long enough, will have material for our own suit of sorrow. And when we do, it is this God who is waiting for us: who has known all along that life is nothing but pain.

There were a few months, I remember, perhaps as much as a year, when there was some promise here. When spring sent up fragrant air and soft green shoots Mark talked of inviting some friends from London out for a house party. He had the grounds prepared and the bedrooms aired. I believe he even made some telephone calls, but no one came. That summer was the first time Mark brought home some of the teenagers from the town. The whole place was prepared for visitors, it was gaping for them. So Mark found some visitors for the house.

One July morning he took a cab into town — he does not drive any more, not anywhere, not at any time — and in the late afternoon he returned with a rabble of teenage boys, about four or five of them. They seemed more to me then. It was only later, when I came to know them individually, that I understood how few there had really been. They were shouting, and as they walked they tossed a rugby ball from one to the other. The day was drenchingly hot, absolutely without mercy. I was in the garden, lying on a sun lounger, struggling through an Italian newspaper article with a dictionary. Mark barely acknowledged me as he and the young men walked past. His eyes caught on mine and slid off. One of the boys finished his Coke and tossed the empty bottle into the swimming pool, where it landed with a gentle plash. He laughed. The others, more apprehensive, looked at Mark. Mark looked down at the bottle slowly filling with water, circling and being dragged under. He raised his eyebrows and grinned. The other boys laughed. They went into the house. I watched them go. After a minute or two, I dived into the pool to retrieve the bottle from the tiled floor. I held it in one hand and floated, eyes closed, ears filled with water, weightless.

Later, when the boys were gone, Mark came out to talk to me. He sat on the lounger next to me, wearing only a pair of shorts, his hair tousled.

He said, ‘You don’t mind, do you? It’s only for fun. I need something to take my mind off.’

‘Can’t I do that?’ I said. ‘Aren’t I enough?’

There was a pause which seemed to last for hours. I could hear the sounds of children playing in the nearby fields, that high-pitched shouting which carries for miles.

He shook his head.

I don’t remember feeling anything in particular at that moment. Except, perhaps, a slight sense of recognition, the fulfilment of an old prophecy.

He bit his lip. ‘It doesn’t mean …’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s not that I don’t want you. And you could —’ he attempted a little smile — ‘well, there’s nothing to stop you, if you want to. I mean, there’s nothing to stop you joining in.’

It was a generous offer. He was more tongue-tied than usual as well. I focused on these things.