Higher Ed

by Tessa McWatt

  “She’s at the Soho branch. She’ll be in later.”

  The landlord from Walthamstow needs to know by noon if she will take his tiny flat for seventy pounds more per week than she is paying now. Katrin’s phone is in the back room and Claire is not. The regular cappuccino-and-Danish man is in the front seat; a young mother and her daughter have ordered tea and hot chocolate from Alejandro. This is her chance. She goes to the back room.

  Her handbag is not organized. This is the next thing that needs attention. Her phone is difficult to find at the bottom of it. She sees another text from Robin: Please don’t treat me like this. This stabs her heart. She doesn’t mean to hurt him. She will call him on her break. The landlord’s number is her last dialled so she will call him now.

  “Katrin.” Claire’s voice is over Katrin’s shoulder and the blood is cold in Katrin’s arms. She turns around to see that Claire has no snake in her throat. Claire does not look angry. Claire looks like she is happy, and this is the worst look so far that Katrin has seen.

  “I thought you were in Soho,” she says.

  “And so you could piss around.”

  No, she wants to say, no, please.

  “Please get back to work,” Claire says, and the quiet calm tone makes the flesh inside Katrin’s cheek feel like it has been bitten.

  ROBIN

  At least there’s no sun today, despite the warm weather. Pathetic fallacy. And if it rains, so much the better. A jet flies low above and the noise is comforting. Kurosawa would use the noise and the pending rain. He would begin this scene with a long, wide-angled exposition—water, concrete, a lid of clouds—and then move to the contracted theatrical space to focus on the unknown woman. Robin looks around him, and, of course, there she is. Bayo is sitting at her spot behind the library, writing furiously in a notebook. Her hair has come undone from its clips and some of her extensions hang loose from her head as though she’s been clawed at. He makes himself small, afraid that movement will alert her. Has he begun to fail his most needy students, now? Who else has Bayo complained to? Formaldehyde. Timber. Mannequin. Puncture. Words that are nowhere near a poem. He misses Katrin so much he can barely breathe.

  Bayo is mad; he is not. God, surely not. He has had no word from Katrin in four days. One more hour like this, this clawing from inside and he and Bayo might as well make a life of it together.

  He takes out his phone and checks it again. Maybe the texts haven’t gone through. They don’t; the network fucks up.

  Are you okay? Please ring me.

  He sends it. He could ring her if he wanted. So, why doesn’t he? Nothing is fixed yet; he doesn’t want to mislead her.

  Firefly. Butter. Pig’s breath.

  He dials. “Hi, hi. How are you doing? Just checking in,” he says to Emma’s voice on the other end of the line. “I thought maybe we should have dinner.”

  From behind, Emma is sexy, her hips, the curve of her shoulder: great proportions. The mother of his child. A surge of hope. He can do this. Maybe they can be a family. He watches Emma walk around his flat as though she’s never been before, and a tinge of resentment surfaces when she stands at his bedroom door, sizing it up, wondering where the cot will go, where her clothes will go—those heavy hiking boots she wears when she trudges across the Lizard Peninsula to Kynance Cove, where just above the rocks at the highest point the choughs fledge and fly.

  “I’ve made dinner,” he says and when she turns around he goes cold. She’s cross, put off; he clearly doesn’t have enough space. “Something healthy,” he says.

  The chicken stir-fry over rice is his best meal. Emma sits down. Afterimage: Katrin laughing until she can’t stand up, tears rolling, when he’d tried to do a Polish accent and it came out Indian.

  “I’d forgotten that you’re a good cook,” Emma says.

  “You’re much better,” he says. He can do this. They are good to one another, always polite, always friends.

  “What will you do for Easter?” she asks. She wants him to go with her to Cornwall, maybe to his parents’, to start this little family thing off with a good holiday.

  “Don’t know. Lots to think about. You?” There’s a silence as Emma touches her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. She has blue eyes that have always looked bigger than they really are, because her head is small, her black hair a frame. Audrey Tatou. Emma is a broad, stocky Amélie.

  “I don’t know what you’re sorry for, but you don’t need to be,” he says. He can do this. His mother and father talk like this. His mother and father have been married for almost forty years.

  “It’s a lot of pressure on you, I know.” See, she’s kind. “But it’s an adventure.” This is not helpful. He doesn’t want an adventure with her.

  “My interview is day after tomorrow,” he says because he wants her to know that if he doesn’t get the job they’re done for—they won’t even be able to afford this place let alone a place for when she moves out. And what about her work? Will she go back to being a dental hygienist? Wasn’t that what she was going to do in Truro before all this happened? Pays well. Recession-proof. People’s teeth are always dirty.

  “You’re not good at interviews, are you,” she says. And this is how the forty years will go?

  He hugs her goodnight at his door and tells her that it was great to see her, that they are doing well, that this is all going to be fine. And when he closes the door his stomach hurts so badly that he has to sit straight down on the floor. He remembers the chance-operation poetic strategy. He will rise from the floor only when his clock says 23:11.

  FRANCINE

  When people say heads will roll, they don’t really mean that. What they mean is heads will drop. Eyes will dart to the floor as you pass your colleagues in the corridor. Doors will stay closed during lunchtime breaks as everyone decides to eat at their desks. There will be no water-cooler chatter. Francine is sure something is going down today.

  She walks past Lawrence’s office but stops, turns and knocks on his door.

  “Hi,” she says, as she opens it without waiting for an invitation.

  “Hi.” Wary; cold, even.

  “Just saying hi, really.”

  “Great.”

  “Is there something going on today?” She had vowed never to do this again, didn’t want him to have anything to hold over her.

  His face suggests that he knows she’s breaking her own vow.

  “No, not particularly, not today, but next week, before Easter break,” he says and seems nearly to smile, which makes her feel sick.

  “Okay then, thanks—sorry to bother you,” she says, and closes the door.

  The hallway smells of fear. She returns to her office and closes her door, clicks on Guardian Soulmates. She types in ReallyYouandMe, and her password: Isoam.

  CharlesNW8 has sent her a message:

  I like your cheeks. They look like they hold a lot of love. Have a look at mine and let’s meet up.

  You’re a fatface but so am I is what this message is really saying, but when she checks Charles’s profile she’s shocked. He’s young-looking, maybe in his thirties, but his profile says forty-five. Handsome, with a smile that reminds her of John Clarke’s, but a little less crooked.

  This is a ruse. If this is really Charles then there’s something wrong with him, or he’s cheating and has put up an old photo. She wants to punch that face.

  She picks up the phone and dials.

  “It’s me,” is all she says, not even wondering if Patricia will recognize her voice. “Want to see a movie?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be made redundant,” Francine says, within seconds of Patricia arriving.

  “What? How do you know that?” She puts a hand on Francine’s arm. Francine doesn’t move from under it, but feels queasy.

  She turns and starts to walk towards the Prince Charles Cinema. The sky is big and boozy, the moon like a fat, squat egg over the buildings in Soho. Patricia catches up to her and keeps looking
over, examining Francine’s face.

  As they sit in the cinema Francine regrets that she’s chosen the film this time, and that it’s a silent film, the one she missed after it won an Oscar. She’s nervous about breathing too loudly. The opera was at least something to hide behind.

  “You know, Francine,” Patricia says. Francine turns towards her and feels a warmth in Patricia’s croissant breath.

  “There’s a veil …”

  A veil? She looks up at the curtain over the screen that is parting. Yep, guess that could be a veil, bit thick …

  “… between us and death, most of the time.”

  Oh. She feels like burping, but she holds it back because Patricia’s trying to say something and how is it that this woman is both far away and close up at the same time? Too far. Too close.

  “But when we witness it, or when someone we love dies …”

  It’s like Patricia is on the inside of her brain and not beside her in this cinema where the lights go down and the screen comes alive like daybreak.

  “… that veil drops away … and we see it, and it’s …” Music starts. Strings. Horns. “Frightening,” Patricia whispers the last word.

  Francine tries not to breathe too loudly.

  The film has had its light-hearted effect. She stays silent, but she is dancing inside like the actors in the last scene, and she’s making silent plans to lose weight and to dance on the outside too. This is good. And here is Patricia beside her on the tube, just letting her sit with the silence.

  “What you said before the film,” Francine says, finally. Patricia turns towards her. “About the veil.”

  Patricia nods.

  “That’s for kids … that’s the kind of thing you say to a child.”

  “Well—” Patricia starts.

  “It is, and I get you, sure, but it’s not true. Not now. I know, I feel it. There’s no veil, and there never will be again.” There’s relief, and nothing else to say.

  Patricia looks around the tube carriage, back at Francine and gives her a smile that Francine doesn’t get the meaning of.

  “The film was good,” Francine says.

  “Yes, it really was. Charming.”

  “I never get it when English people say charming, if they mean it was kind of creepy or not. In the States charming isn’t always a good thing.”

  “It’s a good thing,” Patricia says. “You’re charming too.”

  Francine squirms. “Then I understand the word even less now,” she says.

  COLD BLUE STEEL

  OLIVIA

  “Please,” slips from Olivia’s lips, but Catherine is still asleep. Olivia slides her legs alongside her mother’s and feels how hot Catherine’s skin is. Her mother is hot a lot these days—throws the duvet off violently in the morning, tugs off jumpers and scarves like they are strangling her. Catherine won’t admit that it’s the menopause, and Olivia sometimes feels embarrassed watching the sweat pour down her mother’s forehead, but there’s no doubt there’s something going on. “I don’t want the summer to come,” Catherine said to her last week, “The summer will kill me.” But Olivia doesn’t want the summer for completely different reasons: her dissertation project will have to be finished before that; she will still be a virgin; and, worse, she will have had the conversation she’s about to tackle with her sweating mum. “Mistakes,” she whispers, but it is intentional. “Mistakes, Mum … everybody makes ’em.” She presses her face into her mother’s back and rubs her cheek along the moist skin, smelling Catherine’s tanginess and stale Calvin Klein, Obsession. “Mum,” she says again, into the skin, “Mum,” and hears the catch in her own throat.

  Catherine turns over gently. “Baby, what is it?”

  “I’ve found my dad.” Right.

  Catherine’s jolting shoulder is almost like a punch to Olivia’s jaw. “Ow,” she says, and lifts her head. “Ow!”

  Catherine sits up and takes Olivia’s head in her hands. “Sorry, baby, sorry … What are you talking about?”

  Olivia rubs her chin, and bloody hell she could just haul off on one at Catherine right now, but she has to handle this carefully; she can’t blow it.

  “Wood. I’ve met him; we’ve met. Again.” She looks into Catherine’s face to see the effect.

  “Where?”

  “At the council office, where he works.”

  “And what were you doing there?”

  She should have rehearsed this, should have made him the knight coming to the rescue, should have known her mother would need it to be mighty-like.

  “My project. I was doing research; he was there.” Simple.

  “You remembered him?” Catherine is sitting up straight now, the duvet pulled up around her like she’s suddenly cold.

  “Not exactly,” Olivia says and takes hold of the duvet where Catherine is clutching it and slides closer, slipping down beneath the cover, her head resting on Catherine’s forearm. “I figured it out.”

  Olivia runs her tongue along the roof of her mouth and feels the canker where she burned herself on a microwaved pizza pocket. She uses her tongue to count the teeth along the upper row and to steady her breathing. There’s no talking about Wood. No seeing, no hearing from. She’s broken all the rules. She waits inside their breath, which is now in tandem. Catherine’s skin is not powdery now, but more like steel, hardened but hot, like the hot-water pipe. “Mummy,” she says to soften things, but nothing yields in Catherine’s adamant arm.

  “What have you done?” Catherine says.

  Olivia sits up. “I haven’t done anything. We talk, he’s helping me with my project—”

  “He’s doing what?”

  “My research … he’s giving me information.” But it’s hot as shite under this duvet and Olivia kicks it off now. “We talk. And he wants to meet up with you.”

  Catherine leaps out of bed and puts on the blue Scottie-dog dressing gown that the twelve-year-old Olivia gave her for Christmas, which she still wears, faithfully, every day.

  “You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into,” Catherine says.

  “I do so.”

  “No, you don’t … you really don’t. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  Olivia gets up and is standing beside Catherine, but Catherine doesn’t want to be standing at all; she wants to be getting out of here. She closes the bedroom door so that there’s no chance her mother will leave.

  “I knew you had your shite with it all, that’s why,” Olivia says. Catherine begins to pace.

  “You just have no right—”

  “Excuse me?” Now it’s so fucking hot in here. Olivia’s voice makes Catherine stand still. “You have no right to keep me from him.” Olivia is amazed by her own swagging. “For years you lied to me; you told me you didn’t know where he was—”

  “I didn’t!”

  “But you made it sound like he was in Afghanistan or some shite like that, not like he was just around the fucking corner, Catherine.”

  Her tongue goes back to her teeth, this time the bottom row: three, four, five. Catherine’s green Kat Slater eyes get smaller as her breath gets quicker, and she’s like a kettle on boil; she takes off her fleecy Scottie-dog dressing gown and it falls to the floor, leaving her all fleshy in her nightie.

  “Edward is not your dad,” Catherine says.

  Olivia laughs because this is what Catherine has been trying to get at for all these years, this fact that if a dad is a dad he would actually be there, raising you, and not off somewhere else with maybe a whole other family or maybe not even knowing that every morning you wake up and it hurts in your stomach because he’s gone. Catherine has been trying to drive this point home, gently, since Olivia was thirteen, but it’s not going to work now. There is biology. End of.

  “Catherine, all your shite about a man not being a father if he’s not around—what, like Granddad is such a shining example?”

  “You’re not his … you’re someone else’s.” Catherine’s eyes are wid
e now, gone all glassy-like.

  And it takes a few more taps of the teeth with her tongue before Olivia actually hears what it was that Catherine said. Like there is a lip-synch problem in this movie and the sound comes after the movement of the mouth. Catherine steps closer to Olivia and puts her arms around her. And everything is there in her skin. Not powdery. No longer hot. There’s only one sensation, like cold blue steel.

  ROBIN

  He arrives at the door of Epicure and sees her standing at the counter beside Alejandro as though in an afterglow—of sex, or jokes, or just spring air. He hesitates, then enters; Katrin sees him, is jolted out of her reverie, rushes towards him.

  “I can’t talk now,” she says, blocking his way, and a bolt of shame passes through him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Just not now.” Oh God, what a fool he is.

  “When?” Now she will pity him; he will see it on her face.

  “Come,” she says and takes his arm.

  Her hand. Her hair. The perfect rhythm of the way they walk beside one another. She tugs him harder, then moves slightly ahead.

  “I love you,” she says. But she’s crying. He pulls her sleeve.

  “And I love you,” he says, but she doesn’t stop. It hasn’t been enough to make her stop, and he scrambles to find what will be. “Where are we going?”

  She keeps walking quickly, but slows in front of a furniture shop. She stops to stare through the glass. Eames chairs, Cornell desks, Mondrian coffee tables. This is the kind of home he’d make for her. How did he get to this place where furniture tortures him?

  “What will you do?”

  He doesn’t understand. He follows her eyes to a white Eames chair. Then he realizes.

  “I can’t do anything. Not yet. I promise I will, though, after the baby is born.”