Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

And I understand completely. I’m not offended.

Later she has a little cry into the pillow and I can hold her without saying, “What’s wrong, darling, what’s wrong?” because I know for certain that it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

I lie awake in the darkness of a strange bed and I think about Yumi. About Hiroko. About Vanessa. About waiting in the arrivals hall at Heathrow. About how I have realized that I need never be lonely again.

And I know why I am attracted to the girls in the arrivals hall. It’s not because, as a nut doctor might suggest, a permanent attachment is unlikely.

It’s because they are all a long way from home.

Even if they have many friends here, even if they are happy in this city, they have their lonely hours. They don’t have someone who is always there. They don’t have to rush home to anyone.

They are all ultimately alone.

It’s funny. They sort of remind me of me.

I AM TRUE TO MY WIFE. Even in these other beds, with these women who sometimes talk in their sleep in a language I do not understand, I am always true to my wife.

Because nobody else touches me. Nobody even comes close.

And I come to see that as a kind of blessing. To love without loving-it’s not so bad once you get used to it. To be that far beyond harm, where nothing can hurt you and nothing can be taken away from you-is that really such a bad place to be? There’s a lot to be said for the meaningless relationship. The meaningless relationship is hugely underrated.

There are no little lies told in these trysts, these transactions. The rented rooms we meet in are not cold places. Far from it. There’s no contempt, no boredom, no constant searching for an exit sign. We are there because we want to be there. The death by a thousand cuts that you get in most marriages-there’s none of that.

And who is to say that these relationships are meaningless?

I like you-you’re nice.

Is that really so meaningless?

Or is that all the meaning you need?

Things start to go wrong when Vanessa gives me an apple.

There’s a knock on the staff room door and Hamish gets it. When he turns to look at me-his impressively plucked eyebrows lifting wryly above his handsome face-I see Vanessa’s smiling blond head over his shoulder. She has a shiny red apple in her fist. Bringing me an apple is a very Vanessa thing to do.

Both genuinely affectionate and mildly mocking.

“An apple for my teacher.”

“Sweet.”

Then she softly places a kiss on my lips-still acting as if it’s all a joke, which it is to her-and just at that moment Lisa Smith comes up the stairs and sees us. Vanessa turns away laughing, oblivious of the principal’s dirty looks. Or perhaps she just doesn’t care. But Lisa glares at me for a few long seconds as if she wishes I were dead by the side of the road. She goes into her office on the other side of the corridor.

Back in the staff room Hamish and Lenny are both looking at me. Hamish mumbles something to me but I am not quite sure if it’s, “You should watch that, mate”-meaning Vanessa-or “You should wash that, mate”-meaning the apple.

Lenny, once he gets over his initial shock, is more forthright.

“Vanessa? You haven’t got a multiple-entry visa there, have you, mate? You’re not going full speed up the newly opened Euro tunnel, are you?”

Before I can lie to him the phone rings and Lisa Smith tells Hamish that she wants to see me in her office. Now.

“Jesus,” says Lenny. “She’s going to have your bollocks for ethnic earrings, mate.”

Lenny lifts his eyebrows and smirks. There is a hideous admiration in his eyes.

I’m not like Lenny the Lech, I tell myself. I’m not.

“I don’t understand, Lenny. You get away with murder. And I get lifted. Why haven’t you ever been busted?”

“Why? Because I’ve never screwed any of the students, mate.”

“What?”

“It’s all talk with me, mate. Dirty talk, I’ll grant you. Filthy talk, even. But I wouldn’t actually put my barnacle-encrusted old todger anywhere near this lot. Are you kidding? In the current climate, it’s more than my knob’s worth.”

“Never?”

“Not once. Well, there was a cute little Croat who let me put my hand inside her Wonderbra at last year’s Christmas party. But that modest handful is the only penetration there has ever been.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true, mate. Besides, what would all these hot young things want with a fat old cunt like me? Go on, off you go.”

So it’s true. I’m nothing like Lenny the Lech. I’m much worse.

As I leave the staff room, I hear the clank of a bucket at the other end of the corridor. There she is, going about her work-a thin, blond figure in a blue nylon coat, her copy of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter stuffed in a torn pocket, mopping the floor in a pair of mules that were designed for dancing. No flat shoes this morning for Jackie Day.

And I can’t tell if she is staring into space or looking right through me.

“It’s sexual imperialism,” Lisa Smith says. “That’s what it is. That’s all it is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, my face burning, my back aching.

“Oh, I think you do,” she retorts. “Yumi. Hiroko. Now Vanessa. I saw her give you that golden delicious.”

I’m shocked. I was caught red-handed with Vanessa. But how does she know about Yumi? How does she know about Hiroko?

“Do you think our students don’t talk?” she says, answering my question, and I think: Vanessa. Vanessa and her big, mocking mouth. “And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve insulted this college. Please don’t insult my intelligence.”

“Okay,” I say. “But I honestly don’t feel that I’ve done anything wrong.”

Lisa Smith is dumbfounded.

“You don’t think you’ve done anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Can’t you see that we are in a position of trust?” she asks me, crossing her legs and impatiently tapping a combat boot against the side of her desk. “Can’t you see that you’re exploiting your position?”

I never saw it as exploitation. I felt that we were always sort of equal. I know I’m their teacher and they are my students, but it’s not as though they are children. They are grown women. Most of them are more mature than me. And yet they are young. They are gloriously young, with all their lives stretching out before them. True, I’m the guy with the piece of chalk, but they have time on their side, they have years to burn. I always felt that gave us parity, that their youth leveled it up. Youth has its own kind of power, its own special status. But I can’t say any of this to the principal.

“They’re all old enough to know what they’re doing,” is what I say. “I’m not cradle snatching.”

“You’re their teacher. You’re in a position of responsibility. And you have abused that position in the worst possible way.”

At first I think that she is going to sack me then and there. But her face softens.

“I know you think that I’m some kind of old battle-ax who can’t stand to see anyone having a good time,” she says.

“Not at all, not at all.”

That’s exactly what I think.

“I understand the temptations of the flesh. I was at the Isle of Wight for Dylan. I spent a weekend at Greenham Common. I know what happens when people get thrown together. But I can’t condone sexual relations between my staff and my students. Do it again and you’re out. Is that understood?”

“Absolutely.”

Even as I am nodding, I am thinking to myself: you can’t stop me. This city is full of young women looking for friendship, romance and a little help with the native tongue. Even as I am being given my final warning, I am telling myself that it is going to be all right, that I need never be lonely, that I am doing nothing wrong.