Higher Ed

by Tessa McWatt

  “I might need a job,” she says.

  Scott tries, in his way, but he is not comfortable with comforting, and when he says, “Things are tough there, I know, I’ve heard …” she understands that is the best he can do.

  “I’ll be fine … it’s not really any of that …” And she finds herself telling Scott about the accident and how lousy she has felt—minus the menopause, minus the sex with Larry—and he is more at ease now, back in familiar territory with his sister who was always a bit of a case, and so he reverts to his favourite mantra of all:

  “You need a good man,” he says.

  The silence between them feels the same as it did when their mother died: the size of the ocean that divides them.

  After some progress on her job specification, and completion of the overview of QA for the last six months, which Lawrence has specifically asked her for today, Francine is ready for tea. The snow has melted, but she doesn’t feel like trudging across the square, so she settles for the staff room. She struggles with the handle of the door.

  “Pull it up a bit, then out.”

  Almost whispered, the words make the skin goosepimple on Francine’s neck. Patricia is smiling when Francine turns around, at the same moment the staff room door becomes unstuck with a click. There’s heat not unlike a hot flash, but she feels caught out. She knows this door, for God’s sake; she isn’t breaking in.

  “Subsidence,” Patricia says. “The whole building is tilting. It’ll be in the river soon.”

  “What are you doing over this way?” Francine asks. That smell again. She knows now that Patricia brings the smell of France—croissants baked with lavender.

  “Meeting with your lot about our MA programme,” says Patricia. Her engine seems quiet, nothing Patty about her today.

  “Oh?”

  “Not enough students.”

  “Oh, I see,” Francine says, and tries to think of something clever that will make them both feel more comfortable, but she can’t, and ticking seconds of silence build and build.

  Patricia stares at her now. “I’m not desperate, Francine.”

  “What?” Francine’s face burns.

  “Enjoy your tea … no, it’s coffee, isn’t it?” Patricia says. She places three fingers on Francine’s shoulder (two, three, four seconds) then turns and walks towards the stairwell, disappearing downstairs.

  The sudden lump in her throat forces Francine to put her hand there; she scratches her neck.

  When she’s composed after her coffee, she quickly finishes the QA document that she will give to Lawrence before leaving. She prints it out and doesn’t bother to proof it again, satisfied that she’s accomplished one major thing this week. She takes the document to Lawrence’s office and leaves it on his desk. She hovers there, sniffing the air: it brings sandalwood, cheese, musk, and whisky. Larry is like a swamp. Larry is a bit of a jerk. If she tries, she can still feel him crashing against her, way up inside her, she on her hands and knees, smiling painfully at the wall. She leaves his office.

  She can try to sneak out early to go home or she can sit at her desk and try to look busy. The announcement is expected in three weeks. She sits at her desk and clicks on to her Soulmates account:

  Three people have viewed her profile since her last log-in.

  She has one fan.

  She has five favourites.

  She has one new message.

  Chris from Nottingham wants her to get in touch. Chris from Nottingham looks like mashed potatoes. Her throat catches again.

  When she reaches her neighbourhood later that evening, she drives in the opposite direction of her flat. She turns down Ryan’s road and parks outside his house. Lights are on in the living room, and there is movement behind the sheer curtains. She pushes the radio dial and catches the end of the news, not listening. And when a familiar tune of prancing violins begins, she recognizes The Archers. She can’t stand the voices, the accents, the melodrama. But she finds herself listening.

  When the show is over she starts the engine. This is idiotic. So she can barely believe it when the door to Ryan’s house opens and out he comes, earphones in, and up goes the hood, down goes the head. He crosses the road towards her and is about to pass the car and she can’t help herself. She opens the door and leaps out in front of him.

  “Fucking hell!” He’s scowling.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she says as she puts her hands out to touch his shoulders. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She didn’t mean to even be here, but now that she is she has to buck up, not fail him.

  “What are you doing here?” His face has softened and there’s room for her now to tell him that everything is going to be okay. Isn’t that what her own mother would have done?

  “I wanted to give you something—a book,” she’s not thinking fast enough, “a book that I thought you’d be interested in, but I realized I’d left it at home. Sorry, I was just turning around to fetch it, and then I saw you.” He’s not listening.

  “I could use a lift,” he says quickly.

  “Sure,” she says, and hops to it, unlocking the passenger door for him.

  He’s fast, edgy, cagey.

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere …”

  She pulls out and does as he requests, driving slowly, anywhere. He smells like beer. There’s a silence for a minute or two until he turns to her:

  “The driver has pleaded guilty to a lesser sentence of careless driving causing death. He must have done some sort of deal.” She wants to ask him how he knows, but he seems too agitated now. “I don’t believe him,” he says.

  She takes a right at the lights because it gives her a moment to wait for a passing car, and to think. “Don’t believe Rajit?” He nods and beer comes at her again. “What’s not to believe?”

  He turns towards her, his face pained. “That he forgot to renew his licence? Forgot? The car was borrowed. He could have just been taking a chance. But he said he forgot and was about to buy his own car.” Ryan sniffs. When she and Scott were teenagers, living with Aunt T, Scott would do a lot of yelling. What the hell does that guy think he’s doing? Where the hell is the butter? And when he was most afraid he would blame her and Aunt T for trying to get away with things, for putting one over on him. Ryan’s nose is like Scotty’s.

  “Of course, his family—they need a car—his wife’s mother—” She stops, knowing that she can’t reveal her visit, can’t mention the old woman in her wheelchair. “He would want a car …”

  “I don’t believe him,” Ryan repeats. He puts his hand on the dashboard and it shimmers, dissolves, passes through it, into the body of the car.

  They are somewhere deep in north London as the sky darkens, but she doesn’t know exactly where. Stocky terrace houses, with rubbish bags popping out of bins, everything squashed together in the dinge. “Do you want to go somewhere in particular?”

  He shakes his head and puts his hood up again; she keeps driving. (To boldly go …)

  By the time she has figured out where they are, it has started to rain. Shit. Fuck. Shit. The street signs are difficult to see. Her hand shakes as she flicks the signal to turn left. She pulls the car over at the side of the road and puts the hazards on.

  “You okay?” Ryan says.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He takes down his hood. “Let’s go back,” he says.

  “Yep,” she says, but she doesn’t move a muscle.

  “You’re a good driver,” he says.

  “My memory’s doing funny things,” she says.

  He watches her.

  She checks her mirrors and blind spots, signals and pulls out, slowly finding her way back towards his neighbourhood.

  KATRIN

  They say the rain is like spit but it is not. Today the rain is oily. Katrin is inside her hat, hunched like a cat against this rain that wants to bring her low. Claire is right about March, but Claire is wrong about her.

  At Epicure when she is dry and ready for the customers, she
tries not to catch eyes with Claire. She must make herself brave to ask what is needed, and then be invisible again. Already it has been left too long taking chances with Robin that would give him two babies this year not one. Alejandro has a doctor’s surgery that is taking new patients and she will get a prescription. But this appointment is tomorrow. This appointment will mean taking time from work to be doing something that really belongs in Ned Time. This is maybe a bad idea. The good choice would be to stop seeing Robin, to not believe him, to make him choose her or his baby, but she is weak and stupid, and she has never been touched like Robin touches her. Ania held a judgement in her face on Skype when Katrin told her about him. Alejandro says love is rare. Beata would like this English Robin.

  “Guy’s a fucking twat,” Claire hisses in a whisper so that the bald man at the front does not hear. “Wants this heated up,” she says and nearly throws the plate with the Danish onto the counter. “Why didn’t you heat it up?”

  Katrin’s heart hammers as she picks up the plate. “He didn’t ask me,” she says and turns to the oven. How is she doing wrong? If she asks for time off to see the doctor Claire will think she is sick and will fire her. When her father got sick with półpasiec and sores broke out on his one side and he could not work, his foreman punished him from then, and from then he started to drink and she started to lose him. She will tell Claire that she needs the day for her mother’s papers, to arrange for her to be moving to London in just over seven weeks. Claire at least has a mother. She must understand.

  “Claire,” she says when she approaches the back office during her break. If you use the name you address the heart, Beata always told her. “May I come in?” Her heart starts hammering again.

  “Ha! There we go. Have you seen this?” Claire points to the newspaper and Katrin does not know if this means yes to come in. “A new study using sophisticated brain scans shows that women have more intense responses to pain than men. Bloody hell. These people have obviously never seen man flu in action.”

  Katrin waits at the door. Claire looks up from her Daily Mail.

  “You know my mother is coming to live, I told you, yes?” Katrin says.

  Claire nods but it looks also like she is shaking her head, so Katrin is more nervous. “She comes in May.” Katrin pauses. Claire does not change her face, but of course she is waiting for more. Katrin is slow; she has not practised this. “I need to go to Islington council, to make some applications and some papers, and I need to do this tomorrow in the morning.” She waits. Claire makes a face. There is a big silence. This is a mistake; she should have told the truth about the doctor.

  “You know that you have to pay more if your mum is with you, don’t you?” Claire says.

  Katrin nods, but she didn’t know this.

  “More council tax.”

  “My room is very small,” she says.

  Claire’s face goes sour again. “That’s not how it works. Tell your landlord too; not all of them go for it.” Claire twists the chain on her wrist, like it is something to help her not explode. Katrin regrets every word she has said, and her lip trembles. She tastes pastry like it lives in her throat. “And why do you need the whole day?” Claire says.

  “I don’t. I will come as soon as I’m finished.”

  “But how long?”

  She waited for two hours the last time at an English doctor and was in his room for five minutes. “Two and a half hours,” she says in a firm way. Claire looks to be thinking.

  “It’s not easy dealing with the council,” she says, and Katrin has heard a softness in Claire’s voice for the first time since she remembers. “I’ll cover for you, but not any longer than that, or I’ll have to get Rose for the whole day.”

  Claire has forgotten to hate her, so Katrin nods and nods before Claire can remember again. “Thank you, very much,” she says in a formal tone.

  It is like wata cukrowa at the fair in Gdansk during harvest time: the pink spun sugar, like cotton on a stick that she ate as a child. This tree on the pavement outside of the doctor’s surgery is like a wata cukrowa tree, pink with blossoms that looks like she could eat them if she bent this branch to her mouth. A cherry tree also blossoms in her grandmother’s garden beside the river and a flour mill, where her father was raised. But these blossoms are different from Gdansk blossoms. Big, as though the tree has been fed too much. Swollen. Like she feels also. An extra hour to stand and look because the doctor was a fast Indian doctor and gave her a prescription without trouble. The sun is on her shoulder. Robin loves her and she will see him tonight. March is not brutal as Claire said. And soon it will be April. Her matka will love the promise in this month; she will find work cleaning or making clothes, because Beata has talent and is only fifty-eight and when she is not in the bed where her husband will never return she will not sleep so much.

  When Robin is with her everything is in the right place. Before in England she did not always know where to put herself. He is where to put herself. Today everything is in the right place, like this wata cukrowa tree.

  Ania says that Beata is in panic. That Gdansk is her home, but that Gdansk is impossible without her daughter. These two things are not lying well together inside Beata’s heart. Katrin will make sure that London is home for Beata and that they will not need impossible Gdansk. When they are together more things will be in their right place.

  He has her hand in both of his and rubs it in a gentle way. This rubbing makes her head feel light and maybe she is sick, or maybe she is pregnant already after taking chances before taking the pill, or maybe Beata forgot to tell her that love can feel like illness.

  “If I don’t get it, I’ll have to move out of London,” Robin says, and this stops the lightness and brings a heavy feeling. She rests her elbow on the small table that is her dining table, desk, and ironing board. Robin must reapply for his own job. At the university they are restructuring and deciding who they will keep and who they will remove, and Robin for the first time in his life is worried about money, because no matter what will happen with Katrin, Robin will be a father.

  “But why?” She returns the rubbing and plays with his fingers.

  “There are no academic jobs in London,” he says. He stares at her. “I feel calm with you.”

  She can only smile, because he is being so serious and looks like a sad cartoon of himself. “You are teasing me. I am the least calm person, but I fool people because my face doesn’t move much.” Now he is smiling and they laugh.

  “It’s true, except when you sleep: your face dances around when you sleep, as though you’re watching a circus,” he says.

  She breathes in. He watches her in her sleep, he sees her; he, more than anyone else, knows her.

  “There’s this student,” he says, and Katrin gets nervous again. She hates this about herself. She does not want everything to feel like a threat. “She wants me to help her father.” But Katrin can barely hear the rest because she wants him to help her, maybe too many people want Robin’s help, maybe Robin is like an angel and she must remember that angels do not belong to one person alone. She wants to ask him about the council tax and how things work in the council and whether her mother will be allowed to live with her without telling her landlord. She will not ask him because maybe he will think she is trying to take advantage of his country. But it is not that. It is not.

  She takes a sip from her vodka that he poured for her before he took her hand. His hands fall away and he leans back in his chair. Katrin wonders if it is this chair where her mother will sit when they eat dinner, or if her mother will prefer the one she is in, which faces the street and from where she can see the window boxes that now have tulips and cyklameny. The bedsit has room for only this table and a small dresser. She will need to buy a television for her mother to watch in the evenings. Where will she put that?

  “He buries the unknown dead,” Robin says. He is still talking about the student’s father.

  There is a feeling in her chest from his words
, but it is not pain. It is like pain, though. “They do this in the councils?”

  “All the people who have no families—the foreigners, or the people without friends who die in Dagenham, and who need funerals.”

  “And how will you help him?” She will try not to feel jealous. Try very hard. And she will not ask him about the council tax. She will not be in need like this student.

  “I don’t know,” Robin says, and he looks down at his feet—his leather shoes have scuffs on the toes and the laces are frayed. Maybe he is thinking he needs to shine them, maybe he is not thinking about his shoes at all, but when Robin concentrates he is very beautiful. “Let’s go to bed,” he says.

  And everything is in its right place.

  BUT NOW I’M FOUND

  ED

  Long hair; smart-Beatle glasses: is this in truth how a professor looks these days? Robin’s open face is not unlike Sammy’s. Ed sits in front of Olivia and Robin in the staff room of the Safe and Sorrow office and feels proud. The first time the man was here Ed was worried he’d said something wrong, but the professor is back. And Olivia too. And his Olivia is something else. She’s full of the things he was as a youth—Resistance! Revolution!—but she doesn’t need to holler in the streets like he and his friends did when the ballot boxes got stuffed and boys in Tiger Bay got shot. She is a tread-softly warrior.

  “Wood, maybe you could explain what you have to do, exactly,” Olivia says to him. And, man, she’s calling him Wood.

  “Well, I was explaining last time—”

  “But you didn’t talk about funerals, not exactly,” Olivia says, interrupting him like there is something urgent to organize. He looks at Robin to see if this is what the man really wants to hear. He stands up and clicks on the kettle, searches the rack for cups that aren’t too stained, rinses them out, takes two tea bags from the box of Clipper beside the kettle, and drops them into the yellow teapot. “Busy here today,” he says, and wipes his forehead, hot as rass with trying not to make a mess of this meeting. For her.