by Tony Parsons
‘Why’s that?’
She looks at me for a second.
‘Because I will not see my boyfriend,’ she says. ‘He will be with his family.’
Later still I see pictures of the boyfriend in Vanessa’s flat.
It is a good flat in an affluent part of town, nothing like the tiny bedsit that Yumi lives in, or the room in a shared house that Hiroko occupies. Vanessa has her own small but beautiful one-bedroom flat in one of the swankier parts of north London. It must cost well over £1,000 a month and judging by the number of photographs of Vanessa and her boyfriend—this gym-fit forty-year-old, his arm casually circled around Vanessa’s waist, a platinum wedding ring glinting on the third finger of his left hand, a wide white smile on his face—I guess that he is the one paying the direct debits.
‘Difficult time of year for him,’ Vanessa says, picking up a photograph of the pair of them sitting outside some country pub. ‘He has to be with his family.’ She replaces the picture. ‘His children. And her. But he doesn’t sleep with her any more. He really doesn’t.’
I go to bed with Vanessa and that cheers her up. Not because of my dazzling sexual technique but because she seems to find it mildly amusing being in bed with me. She’s physically very different from Yumi or Hiroko. Just everything. Her hair, her breasts, her hips, her skin. I find the novelty exciting—I’m very exciting—and I’m about to say rash things, but luckily Vanessa’s small smile stops me from saying anything stupid. I know that she takes tonight very lightly because somebody already owns her heart.
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 realised 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.
seventeen
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 blonde 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 dropped in it?’
‘Why? Because I’ve never shagged 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, blonde 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 ar
e 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 levelled 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-axe 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.
I like you, you’re nice.
Where’s the harm in that?
When the pain in my back gets so bad that the painkillers no longer have any effect, I go to see my doctor. At first he looks at me as though it’s another psychosomatic thing, like my heart feeling as if it’s an undigested kebab, but when I tell him about the angel on top of my nan’s Christmas tree, he gets me to take my shirt off and gives me a full examination.
Then he tells me there’s nothing that he can do.
‘Tricky thing, the lower back,’ he says.
I bump into George Chang on my way home. He is coming out of General Lee’s with a takeaway, on his way back to the Shanghai Dragon to help with the lunch trade. He looks at my face and asks me what’s wrong.
‘Done my back in,’ I tell him. ‘Putting up my nan’s Christmas tree.’
He tells me to come to the restaurant with him. I say that I’ve got to get back to work, but he does this thing that I’ve noticed his wife does all the time. He just acts as though I haven’t spoken. When we are inside the Shanghai Dragon, he tells me to stand perfectly still. He places his hands at the base of my spine. He is not quite touching me, but—and this is strange—I can definitely feel the warmth of his palms. He is not touching me, but I can feel the heat of his hands. It’s like standing next to a quiet fire. How do you explain that?
Then he tells me to lean slightly forward and very gently pummel my lower back with the back of my hands. I do what he tells me. And then I look at him. Because something inexplicable has happened.
The pain in my back is going away.
‘What happened there?’
He just smiles.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Keep doing that exercise.’ He leans forward and lightly paddles his back. ‘Do it every day for a few minutes. Not too hard, okay?’
‘What—what was that? George?’
‘Very simple Chi Kung exercise.’
‘What’s Chi Kung? You mean chi as in Tai Chi? Is it the same thing?’
‘Any kind of exercise with the chi is Chi Kung. Okay? For keeping healthy. For curing sickness. For martial arts. For enlightenment.’
‘Enlightenment?’
‘That’s all Chi Kung. You remember chi. You told me you don’t got any chi. Remember?’
I feel foolish. ‘I remember.’
‘Does it feel bit better?’
‘It feels a lot better.’
‘You think maybe you got some chi after all?’
He is laughing at me.
‘I guess I have.’
‘Then maybe you should come to the park on Sunday morning.’
‘You’re going to teach me?’
He sort of grunts. ‘I’ll teach you.’
‘What made you change your mind?’
‘Sunday morning. Don’t be late.’
This year my family teaches me the true meaning of Christmas—surviving the thing.
But the longueurs between the Christmas pud and the blockbuster movies and my old man’s sheepish arrival with his last-minute booty from Body Shop give me a chance to do some thinking.
With the sex police patrolling the corridors of Churchill’s International Language School, I figure that it is going to be difficult to meet new faces at work.
So I decide to go private. I place an ad in the back of a listings magazine, in the Personal Services section, which comes just after Introduction Agencies and just before Lonely Hearts.
Need Good English?
Fully qualified English teacher seeks private students.
We can help each other.
Then I put on Sinatra singing ‘My Funny Valentine’ and I wait.
eighteen
It feels good to be starting something new on such a beautiful day.
There’s a light frost glinting on the park’s stubby grass, but above our heads the usual flat grey shroud has been replaced by an endless blue sky and sunlight that is more dazzling than high noon in August. Although our breath is coming out as chilled steam, George and I are squinting our eyes in the light. We face each other.
‘Tai Chi Chuan,’ he says. ‘Means—the supreme ultimate fist.’
‘Sounds violent,’ I say.
He ignores me.
‘Everything relaxed. All moves soft. All things relaxed. But all moves have martial application. Understand?’
‘Not really.’
‘Western people think—Tai Chi Chuan very beautiful. Very gentle. Yes?’
‘Right.’
‘But Tai Chi Chuan is self-defence system. Every move has a reason. Not just for show.’ His hands glide through the air. ‘Block. Punch. Strike. Hold. Kick. But flowing. Always flowing. And always very soft. Understand?’
I nod.
‘Tai Chi Chuan good for health. Stress. Circulation. Modern world. But Tai Chi Chuan not the weakest martial art in the world.’ His dark eyes gleam. ‘Strongest.’
‘Okay.’
‘This Chen style.’
‘What style?’
‘Chen style. Many style from different family. Yang style. Wu style. This Chen style.’
I am not quite following every word of this. How can something so soft also be hard? How can something so gentle be a kind of boxing?
George steps away from me. He is wearing his usual black Mandarin suit and soft, flat-bottomed shoes. I am in a tracksuit with the helpful reminder of Just Do It inscribed down one leg. He moves his feet about shoulder-width apart, standing with his weight evenly distributed and his arms hanging by his side. His breathing is deep and even. His weight seems to sink into the ground. He looks both completely relaxed and yet somehow immovable.
‘Stand like a mountain between heaven and earth,’ he says.
Stand like a mountain between heaven and earth? No problem, Yoda. This kind of talk should embarrass me. But I find that if I make a big effort, it doesn’t. I try to stand like George. I close my eyes, seriously thinking about my breathing for the first time in my life.
‘Open your joints,’ George tells me. ‘Let your body relax. Sink your weight to the centre of the earth. And keep breathing. Always keep breathing.’
Like diving, I think to myself. That’s the first thing they teach you when you learn to scuba dive. You must always keep breathing.
Then I hear the laughter behind us.
‘Look
at this pair of wankers. Fuck me. It’s Come Dancing for benders.’
There are three of them. Saturday-night stragglers, foaming brown bottles in their fists, their faces as pale as curdled milk. Although they can’t be older than about twenty, they already have the telltale swelling stomachs of committed boozers. Yet they are all wearing vaguely sporty clothes—trainers, hooded running tops, baseball caps. Sort of funny, when you think about it.
But I feel a sudden rage inside me. These morons—dressed for sports day, built for happy hour—remind me of all the morons just like them that I taught at the Princess Diana Comprehensive School for Boys. Maybe that’s why, when I open my mouth, I sound just like a teacher on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
‘Haven’t you lot got somewhere to go? Go on, piss off out of it. And take those gormless expressions off your faces.’
Those faces darken, tighten, harden. They glance at each other and then all at once they are coming towards me, the bottles in their hands, their teeth bared like nicotine-stained fangs.
George steps in front of them.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘No trouble.’
The biggest one, his podgy face scarred by the livid souvenirs of acne, stops and smiles at his mates.
‘No trouble at all.’
Then he goes to put his meaty hands on George’s chest, but as Spotty attempts to grab George, the older man sort of goes with him, transferring his weight to his back foot as he intercepts Spotty’s hands by simply lifting his arms. Those meaty paws do not touch George. And suddenly Spotty is pitching forward, grasping nothing, completely off balance. Lightly holding Spotty’s arms, George seems to twist his waist and casually tosses the youth to the ground. It is far too gentle to be called a throw. It is more as if Spotty is a big insect with rather bad skin and George is gently swatting him aside.
‘Jesus,’ I murmur.
George tries to help him up but Spotty angrily shakes him off, although he appears to be more humiliated than hurt. I can see that George has used only the minimum of force on Spotty, although I don’t quite understand how that can be. I mean, I don’t understand why George and I are not being given a good hiding right at this moment.