The Learning Curve

by Melissa Nathan

  Nicky’s eyes turned involuntarily to Mark, and then, as a pathetic subterfuge, she gave everyone else an identical look. They were all sitting, two per bed, on the top bunks in their room. Miss James had hoped – as they all had, in fact – that the lounge would be free every evening, and they could conduct their meetings in it just like last year. But the hostel was doing very well this year and apparently three families wanted to use it. Miss James was planning to demand a refund at the end of the holiday. Janet’s first job of the holiday was to keep notes of absolutely everything that went wrong, no matter how small. No one was in any doubt that Janet was the woman for the job. Clearly, Miss James’s friendship with the manager had been overstated.

  ‘I completely agree,’ Rob reassured Miss James. ‘You’re absolutely right.’

  ‘Good, good, good.’ Miss James grinned, hitching her legs under her bottom. Ned, who was sharing her bunk, moved away to give her more room.

  ‘However,’ said Rob, ‘it did take me months to get this itinerary exactly right. It may not look like it to the casual onlooker, but there is actually a complex, structured symbiosis at work here.’

  Nicky tried very hard not to look at Mark. She ended up looking at Amanda, who was staring at her, her expression a dare.

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’ asked Miss James. Nicky wasn’t sure if Miss James had misheard or misunderstood.

  ‘Well,’ began Rob, ‘there’s a theme to the itinerary.’

  ‘Ooh, lovely,’ replied Miss James.

  ‘And more than just a theme,’ continued Rob, ‘there’s a slow but steady build-up to the theme, so that by the end of the week, the kids will, hopefully, have learnt something as well as had a good time.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ started Janet, in a tone that told him she couldn’t care less if he did, ‘what did the kids learn from an afternoon in the rain?’

  Nicky gave a small laugh of agreement. Amanda stared at her. Martha studied her toes intently, classic loyal behaviour to the alpha female bitch. Nicky realised that she must have come up in their bonding bitch earlier.

  ‘Good question,’ laughed Rob. ‘Well, they enjoyed their hot chocolates afterwards and they all learnt that your body can do things it might not want to, if you put your mind to it.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ started Janet, in a tone that told him she’d get a great deal of pleasure if he did, ‘this is meant to be a holiday. The pupils’ parents have paid good money for them to come away on it. If they go home and tell them they hated it, we’ll be inundated with complaints. Last year we just had fun.’

  ‘And that,’ Miss James grinned, reaching her arms out towards Janet, ‘is why this fine plain-talking lady has been my PA for ten years.’ She turned to Rob. ‘I do not doubt, for one second, that the theme, structure, symbiosis and slow-building lesson of this holiday are splendid, my good man. But what we must never forget is that we are not in control. We are merely servants. Public servants for the country’s parents. And these parents have paid us their hard-earned money to send their children on a holiday, not a week-long lesson. We do not want any complaints.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Apart from mine, of course,’ she finished, looking at Janet. ‘Of which there shall be plenty.’ Janet nodded.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Rob. ‘So, what do you suggest, Miss James?’

  Miss James blinked at him. Then she turned, smiling, to Nicky.

  ‘What do you suggest, my dear? We haven’t heard much from you yet this evening.’

  ‘Um,’ Nicky sat up. She felt like she was climbing up on to a tightrope. ‘Well, I suppose we could keep to Rob’s suggested itinerary, and then if there happens to be a weather situation, we just move on to the next one on the list. And then as soon as the weather is good again, we go straight back to the one we missed off. That way the order isn’t too messed up.’

  Miss James turned to Rob.

  ‘Robert?’

  ‘I think that’s excellent,’ he said, almost happily.

  ‘Good, good, good.’

  ‘But,’ he said, suddenly struck by a thought, ‘who decides what a “weather situation” is?’

  ‘Ooh, good point,’ exclaimed Miss James. Amanda and Martha nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Well,’ said Amanda softly, ‘I don’t know if it’s relevant . . .’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ encouraged Miss James.

  ‘Well, just for the record, I love walking in the rain!’ Amanda smiled. ‘Very rejuvenating. And it’s excellent for the skin.’

  ‘Is it?’ asked Miss James. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ confided Amanda. ‘Keeps the skin young.’

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine nine- to eleven-year-olds care much about that,’ responded Janet drily, doodling in her minutes pad. Amanda stared across at Janet, her big blue, blinking eyes making a show of amazed anger, like a parent might look at a child just before giving them a telling-off, or a Mafia boss might look at a new member just before ordering cement. Janet finished her doodle.

  Nicky looked away. She didn’t want Amanda to know she’d witnessed her powers fail.

  It was increasingly obvious to Nicky that Janet was indestructible. And it wouldn’t take Amanda long to work that out too. There were some people in life who were simply too thick to notice when they were being bullied, and there were those, like Janet, who had some emotional bits of their brain missing and genuinely didn’t care. In exactly the same way that Amanda knew instinctively that Martha and Nicky noticed and cared, she’d work out that Janet didn’t. But Janet would never be a danger, because anyone strong enough not to care about the alpha female bitch, also didn’t bother taking sides. Janet was a loose cannon.

  Nicky thought of the homesick child.

  ‘Right,’ said Miss James clapping her hands, after the meeting was over. ‘Mark, dear, you’re the nearest to the door, could you just pop out and ask for a round of cognac for us?’ She turned to them. ‘I think we could all do with a little nightcap, don’t you?’

  It was quickly decided that the women would now carry out their ablutions, while the men swiftly agreed to have their nightcap in the bar. After much bartering over who would stay sober enough to keep an eye on the children’s dorms tonight and who would be able to get in the drinks, Ned, Rob and Mark shared the first round of the holiday and Miss James, Amanda, Janet and Martha enjoyed nightcaps in the dorm, lying on their beds reading, while Nicky bagsied the first wash. She didn’t know whether to be touched or horrified that they’d all been so understanding about how long her hair would need to dry. When she came back, her hair up in a towel, she found a wholly silent dorm.

  As she went to her bed, Miss James silently picked up her washbag and, with a quick smile her way, went into the corridor. Almost as soon as she was out of the room, Amanda sat up. ‘Bloody hell,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘It’s like going on holiday with your fucking grandparents.’

  Martha laughed uproariously, shushed furiously by Amanda. Nicky and Janet smiled.

  ‘I tell you what, though,’ continued Amanda, ‘that Mark Samuels, eh? What is he doing single?’

  Janet laughed. It was a surprising noise.

  ‘He can fiddle with my figures any day,’ whispered Amanda.

  Janet snorted and they all laughed.

  Nicky shut her eyes, which was the nearest she could get to shutting her ears, and turned to lie on her side, facing the wall.

  ‘Don’t you agree, Nicky?’ Amanda asked.

  Nicky opened her eyes and looked at the wall. She knew Amanda couldn’t see her from where she was. She was safe.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ she said, and yawned.

  God, she missed Ally. She wondered what she was doing now.

  Ally was getting in another couple of drinks at her local pub. She stood at the bar and wondered if it was just her imagination or were they both not talking about the elephant in
the room? She turned back to Pete suddenly. He gave her a small, nervy smile. She turned back fast. Bloody hell. She wasn’t imagining it. Her hands went clammy.

  Behind her, Pete’s small frame went cold. He stared at the back of Ally’s head. He knew that look of hers. That look was contempt. That look was ‘no’. That look was ‘just good friends’. What the hell had just happened? Everything had been going so well. What had he done wrong? He tried to smile at her as she walked back to him, but it took a massive effort. They started their drinks in silence. Then Ally said, ‘I wonder how they’re doing?’

  At the same time, in the hostel lounge in Bournemouth, Mark was getting in the second round and when he returned, Rob was talking and Ned smiling a simple smile. Rob looked up at Mark and beamed.

  ‘All right, Markie Mark? We were just saying that that Janet’s a bit of a surprise, isn’t she?’

  Mark smiled as he sat down. ‘Is she?’

  Rob gave a whistle. ‘Those jeans.’ He shook his head. ‘They do things to her arse that I wouldn’t mind doing myself.’

  Mark smiled into his pint.

  ‘I prefer her in a skirt myself,’ said Ned, with sudden force. ‘In the light you can see everything. And I mean everything.’

  Rob and Mark stared at him. He finished his pint and then went to the bar for the next round.

  ‘Well!’ murmured Rob.

  ‘Well, well,’ agreed Mark.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ concurred Rob.

  Mark nodded.

  ‘I think the pressure’s getting to him,’ shared Rob.

  Mark nodded. They both looked across the room at Ned. He was sitting at the bar, slowly munching peanuts from the bowl.

  ‘Thank God I don’t have to worry about the promotion business,’ sighed Rob.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Rob sat forward. ‘Don’t tell anyone this, but . . .’ He tapped his nose and then nodded.

  Mark frowned. Rob glanced at Ned still at the bar. Then he sat further forward.

  ‘Me and Nicky,’ he whispered. Then he winked.

  ‘What?’ asked Mark.

  ‘It’s win-win, mate.’ Another wink, another tap on the nose.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘It’s a secret,’ whispered Rob. ‘Her and me.’

  ‘What? You and Nicky? Hobbs? An item?’

  Rob forced a laugh. ‘More than an item, mate. If I get the job, we’re starting a family.’

  ‘I honestly think,’ Pete told Ally, ‘that he has grown up and finally wants to have babies with her.’

  ‘Oh bollocks!’ cried Ally. ‘If people made babies by filling out a form and sending it to the partner of their choice, do you think Rob would still want to do that with Nicky? Or anyone come to think of it. Why do you think procreation involves sex? It’s so that men actually do it. Rob does not want babies. He’s trying it on.’

  ‘Now –’ tried Pete.

  ‘I’m telling you, Rob does not want babies,’ interrupted Ally. ‘Never has. But for some reason he’s now using it as a line to get into her pants.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Pete, shaking his head. ‘You really hate men, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ally firmly, shaking her head. ‘It’s just that I’ve gone seriously off Rob. I will never forgive him for going out with Amanda. He’s a shit.’

  ‘No he isn’t,’ said Pete. ‘And he’s my mate. So please don’t talk about him like that.’

  ‘Calling Nicky a prick-tease just because she didn’t want to shag him? After all they’ve been through together –’

  ‘I told you that on strict condition you never brought it up again,’ shot Pete. His face went ashen. ‘You didn’t tell Nicky he said that, did you? He’d kill me.’

  Ally was hurt and angry. ‘Of course I didn’t! You made me swear not to. On my Corrie videos.’

  ‘Good.’ Pete drank some of his pint. ‘Look. He was just pissed off. Stupid macho pride.’

  ‘Macho pride, my arse!’ shouted Ally. ‘She was his close friend. And he goes around –’

  ‘He didn’t “go around”,’ reminded Pete. ‘He just told me. I’m his mate. I bet you know loads about Rob from Nicky that you don’t tell anyone. Let alone me.’

  Ally looked at him and gave a minute shake of the head. ‘She’d never call him anything as bad as a prick-tease, whatever he did to her.’

  ‘Well,’ sighed Pete. He spoke slowly. ‘I’m not saying Nicky isn’t nicer than him.’

  Ally nodded. ‘Exactly. He’s a shit.’

  ‘Why are you so hard on him?’ asked Pete suddenly.

  Ally gave him a pained look. ‘Because I actually thought he was different from all the others.’

  Pete stared for a moment, then knocked back his drink in one.

  ‘Different?’ he repeated, looking at his glass. He cleared his throat. ‘How?’

  She shrugged. ‘I thought he had a brain,’ she said simply. ‘And wouldn’t want a girlfriend he’d have to explain his jokes to.’

  Pete nodded.

  ‘You men are all the same,’ said Ally. ‘Predictable as fuck.’

  It was something she’d said many times before, but this was the first time she’d said it while Pete was drunk.

  ‘That’s a bit unfair,’ he said.

  She looked at him squarely. ‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘You don’t see someone like Rob going for someone like me, do you?’

  He looked back at her. ‘Do you want him to?’

  ‘No,’ said Ally. ‘But that’s not the point.’

  ‘You don’t see the likes of Nicky going for the likes of me,’ he retorted.

  Ally stared at him. ‘I . . . I didn’t . . .’ she mumbled, her face going red.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. In response she said contemptuously, ‘I think you’ve just proved my point.’

  ‘Eh? How?’

  ‘Because . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Because you fancy Nicky but . . .’ She came to an eloquently sudden stop.

  ‘But?’ he forced.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered.

  ‘But,’ he finished for her, ‘she’s out of my league. It works both ways, you know.’

  Ally shrugged at her pint.

  ‘Except,’ said Pete crossly, ‘that I don’t fancy Nicky and you do fancy Rob. And Mark. And anyone in a pair of trousers, it seems.’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘Then why do you go on about them all the bloody time?’

  She shot him a look. ‘Revenge.’

  ‘What against? All the men in the world?’

  ‘No, because you go on about Amanda all the bloody time.’ She came to an abrupt halt.

  She couldn’t look up again, so she finished her pint in silence.

  When Ned came back from the bar, Rob greeted him like a long-lost friend. Mark took his drink and drank up quickly, not listening to the conversation around him. He should have guessed, he told himself. ‘Complicated’, she’d said in the car when they first discussed her promotion. And then she’d continued to use that word at the faux meeting at his house, even just before they almost kissed. Well, complicated was definitely one word for it, he thought bitterly. The biggest mistake of her life. That was another. So. She was secretly engaged to Rob, her rival for the promotion. No wonder it had been such an enormous decision for her to go for it. And there he’d been, pushing her and supporting her, and all this time calling Rob names, like a right clueless idiot. That explained them snogging together outside at the Christmas party! Amanda must be a subterfuge. Everything fitted together now. Except, he pondered, all those things she’d told him about Rob that night when they’d nearly kissed. She admitted they’d had a snog, and had gone out in the past, and had even admitted it was still complicated, but nothing more. Had she, in fact, been trying to tell him, without actually telling him? Hoping he’d put two and two together to make five?

  God, he’d made a complete fool of himself. The first time he’d let go s
ince Helen, and he’d gone and fallen for a taken woman. A woman who’d lied to him, let him make a fool of himself and, to top it all, chosen a prize wanker instead of him. Galling. That was another word for it.

  An hour later, Ned, Rob and Mark were putting the world to rights. They agreed that teachers should earn more, women couldn’t drive and had a natural aptitude for ironing (and if you asked them, most of them admitted to actually enjoying it), and the torment of trying to fight women for their jobs at the same time as trying to bring home the bacon was lowering men’s sperm count. In a hundred years they’d all be extinct. Working women were literally destroying mankind. Mark almost felt sorry for Rob – you had to hand it to him, being in love with his rival put him in a really tough emotional position. He slapped him on the back and announced that the world was in a mess.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  ‘I hate fucking women,’ said Ned suddenly.

  They frowned hard at him, which had the bonus of getting him temporarily back into focus.

  ‘No, hold on . . .’ he said. ‘I don’t mean that . . .’

  ‘Yeah, we know what you mean, mate,’ said Rob.

  ‘I mean,’ insisted Ned, ‘I fucking hate women.’

  ‘But you’re a happily married man –’ said Rob.

  Ned let out an explosive laugh that was so venomous the others were stunned into silence. ‘I’m not allowed to buy my own fucking lunch,’ Ned told them, ‘in case I flirt with someone in the canteen.’

  Rob and Mark stared. White spittle was gathering in the corner of Ned’s mouth.

  ‘I have to phone halfway through every day,’ he said, his voice rising, ‘so she knows I haven’t left her.’

  Rob and Mark were motionless. Ned’s eyes were watery and red.

  ‘I don’t want to leave her,’ he told the table forcefully. ‘But,’ he pointed his finger somewhere towards the Gents, ‘I wouldn’t mind giving Janet a good seeing-to. He punctuated this with a belch. ‘Right. Who wants another one before bed?’ he asked.

  Mark and Rob landed their pint glasses in front of him.

  When the pub bell rang, Pete swore.

  ‘Why the swearing?’ asked Ally, dully. ‘It was inevitable, you know.’