They argued one night after Stan had gone to bed. A standard brother sister argument about not taking each other seriously. About not having respect. She thought that he was actually angry at Stan, not at her. Or he was perhaps angry at her for loving someone like Stan.
She thought about love a lot. Then he left.
She heard later in the week that Mrs Grant had been arrested and that all the kids doing her assassination project were now being investigated by the police as part of the Prevent strategy. She also heard that Mrs Grant worked for MI5 and had successfully flushed out a Year 9 plot to bomb Selhurst Park or the Den or possibly both. She also heard that Mrs Grant was a lesbian, or was married to Hugh Grant, or was the mother of Tom Holland, or was a widow who lived with three other widows in a castle somewhere up Sydenham Hill with a view of the whole city and their husbands buried in the grounds.
Stories floated through the school like bubbles, and fell or rose, were burst or lingered, according to a physics that was beyond Maria. But she knew that the staff were at least as bad as the kids. There had been some sort of fuss though. Ferrier informed her that the project had been cancelled. And that Mrs Grant was no longer covering in the middle school.
— Did she get in trouble?
— Trouble?
— Over the project?
— Decisions about what roles academic staff do or don’t take on are none of my business Maria and if they’re none of mine they’re certainly none of yours.
She instructed her to take the Assassinations as Political Strategy: Bibliography and Additional Resources document off the shelf, and the Year 9 website, and archive it. What had begun as Maria’s list of books about people she could remember having been assassinated had been turned by Ferrier into quite an interesting document. The counterfactuals of assassinations was apparently quite a popular field amongst historians and political scientists. And the uses of assassination. The achievements. The successes. The pride. Maria had gotten briefly lost in it. Operations Nemesis, Condor, Wrath of God. Later, she wondered whether her anger at Ferrier wasn’t powered at least partially by envy. She took it accusingly up the hill and hated herself by the summit. Ferrier was good at her job.
She told Stan about it, and he sneered at the paranoia and stupidity of Prevent and at the reactionary attitude of the upper classes to any hint of non-state-sanctioned violence, and he laughed his assured, deprecating laugh.
— Some parent will have thrown a hissy. Precious Sebastian is being recruited to the Red Brigades.
And Maria thought that was probably exactly what had happened.
In the night when they could not sleep because it was too hot they would lie together side by side, naked in the dark, the duvet thrown off. She could hear Stan’s sighs, and he would sometimes look at his phone, reading things at the lowest brightness setting, turned away from her. She would pretend to sleep in the hope that pretending would make it so. She would think about her father. She would think about Stan. And she would make herself stop. Then she would make a list of things to think about, and she would try to remember it, and try to go through it. Future things. A librarianship course. Becoming a research librarian. Taking a job in a specialist library, full of adults. Doing an archivist course. Working eventually in the British Library. Stan becoming a councillor, maybe even eventually an MP. Travelling, in France. Spending time in Lyons or Bordeaux or Marseilles learning French. Writing. Finding the time to write. No kids. Reading. Writing. Learning. Looking at the sky in France. And sometimes, though she would never tell Stan about it, sometimes she would lie there listening to the tiny scratching coming from the wood in the broken window pane.
*
— Would you like to go for a coffee?
Maria opened her mouth. This was a surprise, and she didn’t know what to say.
She had seen Mrs Grant walking up the driveway as she was locking her bike. So she hadn’t been fired then, or arrested. She was strolling, slowly, while an occasional late kid raced past. Maria glanced, and recognised her tall figure and the head of grey hair, but her gaze was drawn back and became a stare because Mrs Grant was smoking a cigarette. Astonishing. It was strictly forbidden, anywhere on the grounds. And Mrs Grant saw her looking. She took another few steps and dropped the cigarette and as she drew closer Maria felt she should say something. You can’t stare at someone in silence — it’s a judgement.
— Hello Mrs Grant.
— Hello, she said, a little curiously, but continued by.
— I just wanted to say . . .
Mrs Grant stopped, turned.
— I just wanted to say that I thought your project, for Year 9, I thought it was great. A great idea. The kids were excited by it, you know. It was a really clever way of getting them to think about political contingency, or whatever. So.
Mrs Grant smiled, did a little nod of appreciation.
— Who are you?
— Maria. Library assistant.
— The students need a sense of what’s at stake. And anyway, these children are going to end up running things, aren’t they? I think they should know early on that power is deciding who dies.
Maria nodded.
— They were excited?
— Yes, they all came to the library looking for resources.
— Well, good. That’s good. Would you like to go for a coffee?
Maria opened her mouth. This was a surprise, and she didn’t know what to say.
— Not now obviously. After you finish some day.
— Yes, sure. That would be good.
They exchanged numbers and in the midst of doing that Maria to her shame found herself wondering whether the other bit of gossip — about Mrs Grant being a lesbian — might be the truth.
— Well, not tomorrow, I have something. But the day after I’ll message you. Perhaps we can go somewhere not too far.
— Perfect.
They walked together towards the same building.
— You smoke?
— No.
— Nor do I, said Mrs Grant. But I am annoyed at the school and I am sulking. I am sixty-four years old. And I am also fifteen.
— I won’t tell.
— But I wish you would.
Maria laughed. Later in the library she sent Stan a text telling him that she had spoken to Mrs Grant and that they were going for a coffee later in the week and she told him what Mrs Grant had said about power. He replied lol. fab. x.
She needed to tell him so that it was not a secret, because a secret was what she wanted, and she was not allowed them.
Mrs Grant’s first name was Anna. Anna Grant. Grant was her husband’s name. She had been Anna Rollebon before they married. She was French but had lived in the UK, in London, for nearly forty years. She had been a university lecturer. She had lectured in French history, and European history, at the LSE and then at King’s College. She had given up her job in 2005 when her husband, who was also a historian, had been seriously injured in an explosion. She told Maria all this within the first few minutes.
— What happened?
— An explosion.
— Yes, but I mean . . . what sort of explosion?
— A very bad one.
And she held Maria’s gaze with her eyebrows raised, as if to ask her what sort of questions are these? These are not interesting questions. Maria nodded. Took a sip of her coffee.
— In any case, Anna Grant continued, he was severely wounded. Most of it they fixed up, eventually, but there had been a head injury which was of course the most important one, and they tried for a long time to do something about that but it was very difficult. They thought his brain damage would be great. But. It wasn’t. He couldn’t walk very well, and his voice changed, slowed, became a little deeper, and he was not as smart. No more sex. But apart from that.
They were sitting in a small empty
café at the bottom of Denmark Hill. It smelled of detergent and Maria found the noises of plates and cups being clattered and rattled behind the counter annoying. She didn’t know what the woman who’d served them was doing. They had a table by the window and Anna Grant looked mostly at the street while she talked. Her grey hair was straight and perfectly cut, her face looked healthy, surprisingly unlined, her mouth quite big, her blue eyes expressive and quite beautiful. But she wasn’t a lesbian, or in any case she had been married. Maria shushed her thoughts about this and blushed, mildly she hoped.
She hadn’t noticed the French accent at the school. It was slight.
— There were fragments remaining in his brain that it was not safe for them to remove. It might have been all right. But they didn’t know. What they don’t know about the brain is . . . well they don’t even know what it is, do they? They have no idea how it works, really. They are like old people given a computer. Worse than that. They are like old people manning the International Space Station.
She laughed a quiet but sort of snorting laugh, covered immediately by her hand. The laugh was funny. Maria smiled. You could see age in her hands — crumpled, dry-looking. There were no rings. But she had a lovely silver bracelet on her left wrist that twisted and flattened and twisted again.
— So they decided, because he was basically recovered, enough to live a life, you know, they decided to leave things as they were. He was ok, why risk killing him or making things so very much worse. It seems sensible of course. But they told him, Robert you must not make any sudden movements.
She made a face at Maria. Astonishment. There was a shrug.
— Can you believe this? Please, no sudden movement. No excitement. No running or jumping or falling over. Just calm, calm, calm.
She shook her head, incredulous.
— Robert was not a man who was ever calm. You have to know that it was, this was like a language he could not understand. No sudden movement! It was like telling him to stop thinking. He used to box, you know? He used to train at boxing, right up until the explosion. Which happened when he was fifty. He was fit, healthy. He would cycle, box, go for these huge walks — I would collapse and he would laugh at me and off he would go. Striding away. Always moving. Always sudden. So this news was terrible news for him. He thought, I thought, that he would be dead in a month.
She took a sip of her coffee, and made a face. And then a sip of her water. She glanced at Maria and then looked out the window again.
— But it didn’t happen. He was very careful for a while. Anyway, he couldn’t box any more, no more long walks, no more sex — that was ok, we were together a long time — so his life was quieter, not so many things for him to do. And he would stand up slowly. Sit down slowly. Walk very slowly. But soon he started to go faster. He would forget. He would turn his head suddenly at a noise, and he would gasp, and I would gasp and we would stare at each other but no, it was ok, he did not drop dead. And he did not forget, no, he knew I think always that he could go at any second. But he stopped trying to avoid it. And then he was depressed anyway. He was not as smart as he had been. He was the same person. He was funny, and kind, and he was still Robert. But he couldn’t follow complicated things. He couldn’t read except for police novels, thrillers, some historical novels he liked. But he would read his own books sometimes, and he would be, he would be very sad, he would become very depressed, because he could no longer really understand his own books. That was very hard for him. But we had friends, you know. Lots of friends. He didn’t want to see them, but I invited people over anyway. And they would chat to him, and sometimes he liked that. You could see which ones were good for him, which ones weren’t. Some of them asking him all the time how he felt, how he was, he hated that. But others were good. They would tell him things. About their lives and he liked that. The creative ones understood that. The writers, our comedian friend, a film director, we know several actors, maybe one or two academic people. But the bankers and the business people are just stupid. The capitalists. Just stupid. Anyway. Are you creative?
— I write.
Mrs Grant looked at her with interest.
— What do you write?
Maria blushed.
— I try to write. Fiction. I haven’t really . . .
— What age are you?
— Twenty-four.
— Oh my god you are so young, it’s fine. It’s impossible to write anything until you are over thirty. I wrote a novel many years ago. It’s somewhere. It was a terrible thing but it was in me like trapped
She did the laugh again.
— like trapped wind. I mean. It was a terrible thing but I had to expel it. Get it out of me. About a girl who falls in love, and then, oh it was so stupid, I cannot write. Are you good yet?
— Not yet. Not really.
— Read. Just read. That’s all you can do. Just read everything. Not the English. But the French. Some Americans. South Americans, not North Americans, they are terrible, but the South Americans, Central American, up as far as Mexico, including Mexico, so just that far north, they are very good, read them. Do you read Spanish?
— No.
— French?
— A little.
She looked directly at Maria. Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled the cup and saucer a little closer.
— You speak French?
— Un peu.
— No! No! Don’t please. I have forgotten all of my French. It depresses me to hear it even. I cannot listen to the songs, I cannot talk to old friends. Speaking French now is like death. It is like death. I will speak French again when I die.
She both grimaced and smiled as she said this, one then the other then again. Maria smiled too.
— I won’t, I promise. My French is really terrible anyway.
— It is a terrible language, so
The rattling behind the counter rose suddenly to a crescendo, and there was a loud crash, and silence. Maria didn’t look over. Mrs Grant didn’t either. She closed her eyes, as if this was yet another burden she would have to bear, and sighed.
— Sorry, came a call.
Mrs Grant looked out of the window.
— I must tell you about the joke, she said. Would you like another coffee?
— No thanks, I’m fine.
— It is disgusting.
She said nothing for a long moment, and her hands stroked each other and her bracelet clinked on the table top.
— Our friend, the comedian, he was quite famous I think. Maybe not so much then exactly. But he was famous in the nineteen nineties certainly. He was a nice man. A good man. He was a friend of Robert’s for many years. A little younger than us. He drank too much. Anyway. He was at the house one day, visiting Robert, and it was warm like this, and they were in the garden, at the table on the grass, down at the end under the tree. I was in the kitchen, I don’t know, I think I was making some coffee for them. I was looking out at them anyway, watching them, because it was pleasant you know, to see them together, good friends, old friends, one of them not great, not well, not what he had been, and the other there to see him, to spend time with him, to talk, to laugh, to . . . it is kind of love. Company. Respect. Affection. That is love isn’t it?
Maria nodded, but Mrs Grant was looking out the window — though probably not at anything. Her eyes were unfocused, clouded, and there was a smile that was not quite there but was nevertheless implied. A missing smile, and you could see where it should be.
— I watched them, talking. Robert in his nice blue shirt. Looking good. Listening to his friend. And his friend, our friend, talking, gesticulating a little, talking, telling Robert some story, hunched forward in his seat, you know, his head low, his hands moving. As if he was reaching out to tap Robert’s arm, telling him some story, telling him something. And then there was this point, a point reached. The comedian straightened up, lifted his hea
d, and stretched his arms wide, and stopped talking. And Robert, Robert looked at him for a moment. Saying nothing. Just looking at him. And then Robert started to smile, and then to laugh, and his laugh grew, it became louder, and he laughed and raised his hand as if to touch his friend’s arm in return, and he laughed very loudly, and it was beautiful to hear, it had been so long, it was so rare. He threw back his head and he laughed. And of course his brain, whatever was in his brain, it moved then, it shifted. He fell silent, and he slumped forward very . . . definitively. He fell forward. Onto the table. His arms twitched for a moment and then he was still.
She looked at Maria. The missing smile was gone. Her face was entirely empty.
— He was dead of course. Instant death. He felt nothing. So. So it’s good isn’t it? He died laughing, happy. Suddenly like that. You laugh, you throw back your head, the universe ends. That is a good way to go.
— My god.
— Yes.
— For him, yes, I can see that. But for you. It must have been
— It was fine. He was dead. I would rather a shock than a terror, you know? A long decline. Already he could see that. I could see that. He would not have been a good patient, and I would not have been a good nurse. This was better. Maybe too soon, but everything is too soon. Today is too soon. Life is too soon.
She looked into her coffee cup, and then out of the window again. Maria needed to know. Just ask. She opened her mouth, closed it, sighed, looked where Mrs Grant was looking, and was aware that Mrs Grant turned to look at her.
— I don’t know.
— What?
— I don’t know what the joke was. That’s what you want to ask. Everyone wants to know. I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me.
— The comedian?
— Yes.
They were looking at each other now. For the first time Mrs Grant held Maria’s gaze with her own. There was a tiny piece of discoloured skin at the left of her left eye, a sort of wart, or perhaps a scar.
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