Zadie Smith: NW

— Laurels.

— What?

— Laurels. And you rest on them, you don’t sit on them. You sit on your arse.

— You’re not even listening.

It’s true: she is thinking of apples.

Elsewhere in London, offices are open plan/floor-to-ceiling glass/sites of synergy/wireless/gleaming. There persists a belief in the importance of a ping-pong table. Here is not there. Here offices are boxy cramped Victorian damp. Five people share them, the carpet is threadbare, the hole-punch will never be found.

— of money coming in. Question: how did this get so far down the line without intervention? I’d really like to know. Checks and balances, people! Because when you do it like this you’re handing our heads metaphorically on a plate, to them, meaning my head also. And the next thing you hear: efficiency savings. Not meaning reusing the teabags. Meaning your job and mine. Which is exactly how

Here a nation’s bad bets morph into a semblance of the collective good: after-school play groups, translation services, garden clearance for the elderly, quilting for prisoners. Five women work here, their backs to each other. Further down the hall, the rumor of a man — Leah has never seen him. This work requires empathy and so attracts women, for women are the empathic sex. This is the opinion of Adina George, Team Leader, who speaks, who will not stop speaking. Adina’s mouth opens and closes.

Tooth gold tooth tooth gap tooth tooth tooth

TONGUE

Tooth tooth tooth tooth chipped tooth filling

Former prison guard, social worker, local councilor. How did she get anything done with those talons? Long and curved and painted with miniature renderings of the Jamaican flag. Clawed her way up through the system. Born and bred. Is wary of those, like Leah, whose degrees have thus installed them. To Adina a university degree is like a bungee cord, lowering in and pulling out with dangerous velocity. Of course, you won’t be here long. Look, I don’t want to give you projects you’re not going to be here to finish…

Six years have gone by: such things aren’t said anymore. It occurred to Leah today, when Adina referred to her as “the graduate,” that no-one — not the institution that conferred it, not her peers, not the job market itself — has a higher estimation of the value of her degree than Adina.

— which is essential for the smooth running here. The decision-making is obviously about relatability and yeah, empathy, and a personal connection but it’s also about follow-through and visibility in the sense of value for money, that we get to be conscious of via a process of paperwork. Paperworkpaperworkpaperwork. In the current climate every i has to be dotted and every t crossed so when I am put in a position, as Team Leader, by the people upstairs I can say: yup, fully accountable. Here’s x, y and z, fully accountable. Not splitting the atom, ladies, I should hope.

Question: what happened to her classmates, those keen young graduates, most of them men? Bankers, lawyers. Meanwhile Leah, a state-school wild card, with no Latin, no Greek, no Maths, no foreign language, did badly — by the standards of the day — and now sits on a replacement chair borrowed six years ago from the break-room, just flooded with empathy. Right foot asleep. Computer screen frozen. IT nowhere to be seen. No air-conditioning. Adina going on and on, doing that thing to language that she does.

— This was a question of communication? A blockage between parties. Who should have a tighter grasp on how their behaviors are impacting others?

This too will pass. Four forty-five. Zig, zag. Tick. Tock. Sometimes bitterness makes a grab for Leah. Pulls her down, holds her. What was the point of it all? Three years of useless study. Out of pocket, out of her depth. It was only philosophy in the first place because she was scared of dying and thought it might help and because she could not add or draw or remember lists of facts or speak a language other than her own. In the university prospectus, an italic script over a picture of the Firth of Forth: Philosophy is learning how to die. Philosophy is listening to warbling posh boys, it is being more bored than you have ever been in your life, more bored than you thought it possible to be. It is wishing yourself anywhere else, in a different spot somewhere in the multiverse which is a concept you will never truly understand. In the end, only one idea reliably retained: time as a relative experience, different for the jogger, the lover, the tortured, the leisured. Like right now, when a minute seems to stretch itself into an hour. Otherwise useless. An unpaid, growing debt. Along with a feeling of resentment: what was the purpose of preparing for a life never intended for her? Years too disconnected from everything else to feel real. Edinburgh’s dour hill-climb and unexpected-alley, castle-shadow and fifty pence whisky chaser, WalterScottStone and student loan shopping. Out of her mouth: a two-syllable packing company Socrates, a three-syllable cleaning fluid Antigone. Never, never forgotten: the bastard in that first class, sniggering. I AM SO FULL OF EMPATHY, Leah writes, and doodles passionately around it. Great fiery arcs, long pointed shadows.

— Questions? Problems?

A pen breaks noisily. Plastic shards, a blue tongue. Adina George looks over and glares but Leah is not responsible for the Albanians. She has a mouth full of pen but she is not responsible for the Albanians nor their misappropriation of funds meant for a Hackney women’s refuge. That was on Claire Morgan’s watch. Although Leah has a blue tongue and a fancy degree and a hot husband and no offense, but for the women in our community, in the Afro-Caribbean community, no offense, but when we see one of our lot with someone like you it’s a real issue. It’s just a real issue that you should be aware of. No offense. (Brighton weekend, team-building exercise, hotel bar, 2004.) What kind of issue exactly was never made clear. Sweet Love sang Anita Baker, and Adina fell over a chair trying to get to the dance floor. Blockage.

Leah spits plastic shards into her hands. No questions or problems. Adina sighs, leaves. The folder-shutting and bag-packing begin with an eagerness no different from when they were all six years old and the bell rang. Maybe that was the real life? Leah plants her feet on the ground and pushes back in her chair. Lifts and coasts to the filing cabinet and this is the most enjoyable thing that has happened today. Bump.

— Oi! Fuckssake, Leah. Careful!

The great swell of it. Leah is nose to Tori’s belly-button and observes how this innermost thing now thrusts out, marking a physical limit. Beyond this point we can’t continue and be human.

— Just be careful. You coming or what? Last day drinks. You got the e-mail?

Piled up in a corner of the Internet with the bank statements, student loan reminders, memos from management, maternal epics, in that place where not to be opened is not to exist. She knew perfectly well there was an e-mail and what it was about, but she is on the run from people in Tori’s condition. She is on the run from herself.

— Me, Claire, Kelly, Beverley, Shweta. You’re next!

Tori counts the names off on swollen fingers. She’s in the final stages. Her face has a leonine cast, the cheeks puffed up, newly prominent. A big cat’s smile. Predacious. Leah stares at the thumb meant to represent her.

— Trying. It’s not so easy.

— Trying’s half the fun.

A room full of women laughing. Some shared knowledge of their sex to which Leah is not party. She puts her hands either side of the bump, and smiles, hoping that this is the sort of thing that normal women do, women for whom trying is half the fun and “you’re next” does not sound like the cry of a guard in a dark place. Then they get going, a traditional round in which no voice is separated from the other and Leah lays her head on the desk and closes her eyes and lets them take the piss: