The Transition

by Luke Kennard

  ‘Alice, my old student, the one who made the art – she lived there too. I think you met her. She’s the one who sent you my way.’

  ‘Alice chose my placement?’

  ‘She volunteers for The Transition. Organises auxiliary placements and such.’

  ‘She sent me here.’

  ‘She’s a good judge of character. Gives me people she thinks I’ll get on with. I’ve known her a long time. We were in love. I say that. It wasn’t right. I lived my whole life hating men who do that – say that they’ve fallen in love with one of their students. It’s pathetic. Exploitative. And then I fell in love with one of my students. You’re right to look at me like that. We were close, is the point.’

  ‘I don’t judge,’ said Karl.

  ‘You should,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘That it ended so well is down to her grace and maturity. Since then we’ve been working together against some of the more … toxic elements we’ve identified on the scheme.’ Mr Roderick pointed to the list. ‘Alice lived in 14 The Plaza, alone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Karl. ‘She split up with her husband. She told me.’

  ‘You’ve noticed a lot of single occupancies on the list. What does that tell you?’

  Karl said nothing.

  ‘A lot of things mean the exact opposite of what they appear.’ Mr Roderick topped up Karl’s glass. ‘It’s always worth reversing them; check the fit. What does it mean when someone says, That’s a very good question?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It means: That’s a stupid question, you berk. Get into the habit of reversing things. So The Transition – what do you get if you reverse it? What’s it s’posed to stand for?’

  ‘It’s a helping hand for the younger generation.’

  ‘Mm, but who exactly? Why did you even hear about it?’

  ‘Tax evasion, fraud.’

  ‘Because you broke the law.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So it’s a rehab programme.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Turn it around …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Karl. ‘I’m feeling sort of blank.’

  ‘There’s a very obvious thing you’re missing here,’ said Mr Roderick. ‘The Transition is for couples. Always has been. Basic building block of society. Very couple-oriented.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But only one protégé in every couple was the screw-up who landed them both in The Transition, right?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Meaning that their partners are not only completely innocent of any wrongdoing, they’re also people with some pretty admirable qualities: loyalty, hope, patience. People who don’t walk out, however shitty the situation. This is basic psychology, Karl. They’re people who work hard, who don’t say no, who make sacrifices. Tends to extrapolate to the workplace. They’re a very valuable human resource. The good apples. You could start a stellar recruitment agency if you wanted to, but that’s not how The Transition works. It’s a winnowing fan, sifting the best candidates out and chucking the rest on the heap. People like your wife. Adaptable, diligent, honourable; exactly the sort of people The Transition wants working for it. And it’s a broadhead contract; you’re part of it for life, one way or another. The entrepreneurs pay their dues – The Transition automatically owns twenty-two per cent of former protégés’ businesses. More likely is you’ll be offered an entry-level job with decent prospects. The failures, and there are failures …’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Karl.

  ‘The failures can be used for plenty of things. The dead-end work. Depending on your personality you could become an enforcer – someone who rounds up the runaways. If you plotted a graph of how many protégés are B-streamed against how many of those B-streamed were the original offenders …’

  He took Karl’s tablet from the picnic table and started making some adjustments.

  ‘So what I did, when I noticed what was going on, I set up a little piece of code to boomerang all of the data back to me and dump it in a personal file and I’ve been collecting it ever since. It’s encrypted, which blocks me from moving it from that file en masse, but I’m working on that. Actually I’ve been working on it for two years, and I’m very nearly there.’

  ‘But what is it exactly, this data you’re talking about?’ said Karl.

  ‘You know you get to read the best diary entries from the last decade?’ Mr Roderick entered a number and pushed a few more sliders on Karl’s tablet. ‘Only the good ones, curated for a satisfying personal journey: mild peril and disenchantment ultimately overcome. The ones who make The Transition look as if it works. But once I’ve cracked this, you’ll have the losers, too. The lot. About 28,000 journals in total. Every failure’s sorry self-published life story. A libraryful.’

  ‘Sounds awful.’

  ‘I have a feeling it’ll be quite a page-turner. So what do you think, Karl?’ said Mr Roderick. ‘You happy to be the editor?’

  40

  THAT EVENING GENEVIEVE was fifteen minutes late, and when she arrived, she couldn’t sit still. She kept getting up and pacing around the basement, avoiding the cracked tile, clenching and unclenching her hands.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Karl.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re full of nervous energy.’

  ‘I know,’ said Genevieve, irritably. ‘Are you trying to make me more self-conscious? I’m just pacing. Do you want me to stop? Here,’ she sat down on the bed and started tapping her foot. ‘Happy now?’

  Karl sighed. ‘If you want to pace, please do.’

  ‘God, Karl, make up your mind,’ said Genevieve. She stood up and started walking from room to room again.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. I had to pull an all-nighter. Well, one and a half all-nighters. Important deadline. I’m doing hospitality – we’ve got a group from Toronto and a group from Chicago coming. I’ve got to present. Most of the information is provided for me, that’s the great part, but I need to put my spin on it. And I need to be able to rattle off the statistics when they ask me. This is happening, Karl. The thing is – Janna said this – the thing is, all the skills I’ve been using as a teacher, the public speaking, keeping the attention of thirty-five children, some of them very difficult, the clear communication, it’s all, it’s all, it all makes me better at this job than most people who’ve taken degrees in it. I’m a natural. God, it’s cold down here.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ said Karl. Genevieve walked out of the room and he waited until she returned. He wasn’t glad at all, but the only advice he had ever been given on how to cope with Genevieve, once by her aunt, once by a book, was that it was very dangerous to challenge her. ‘You’re under a lot of pressure.’ He spoke in a flat but cheerful voice as if reading the same book aloud to a child for the hundredth time. ‘It’s good that things are going well.’

  ‘I’m not the only one, of course,’ said Genevieve. ‘It’s almost like a job interview – a secondment for a handful of the protégés who show potential. But Janna says I’m the best one by far.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Karl, and tried to mean it.

  ‘You sound gloomy. You don’t sound happy for me.’

  ‘Genevieve.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could you try and lie down with me. For a minute.’

  Genevieve re-entered the bedroom. She was frowning and smiling at the same time, as if he had asked for something strange.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and lay down beside him on the single bed. The bed was so small that they rolled into each other. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘I miss you,’ said Karl. ‘I miss holding you.’ He kissed her neck. She laughed.

  ‘We’ve been living in each other’s pockets for so long,’ she said.

  ‘Living in each other’s pockets?’ said Karl. ‘We’re married.’

  ‘Exactly, Karl,’ said Genevieve. ‘We’re married, not kangaroos. I’ve been talking to the doctor – the one Janna put me in touch wi
th. The good one. I know you don’t approve.’

  ‘I don’t approve?’ said Karl. ‘When have I ever been the kind of man who … Genevieve, when have I ever …’

  ‘But you don’t approve,’ said Genevieve.

  ‘All I want is for you to be well.’

  ‘You want someone you can control. You’re frightened of me having my own life.’

  ‘Oh, I’m frightened of everything,’ said Karl.

  ‘Good,’ said Genevieve. ‘Good that you can admit it. I look back over the last four years and, honestly—’

  ‘Please stop talking.’

  ‘This is what I’m talking about. You’re closing me down.’

  ‘You look back and what? Everything is my fault?’

  ‘I think I’m going to go back upstairs.’

  ‘You’ve only just got here.’

  ‘You’re being really weird,’ said Genevieve. ‘And that’s quite insensitive when I’ve got an important job to prepare for.’

  ‘No. Look. I’m sorry. Just stay,’ said Karl.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ said Genevieve. She sat up and shuffled to the edge of the bed. ‘You want to talk? You want to get to know me?’

  ‘I’m worried,’ said Karl. ‘You’re talking too fast, you’re anxious. These are bad signs. You know that. We have an agreement.’

  ‘Okay, look,’ said Genevieve. ‘I am going to go. Stop looking at me like that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like you’re about to cry.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘This is so inappropriate.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re guilt-tripping me. This is emotionally manipulative.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Karl. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘Come on. Cheer up,’ said Genevieve. ‘I need to focus. This is such an opportunity and I need you to support me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the best way you can support me right now is to give me space.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Karl, sniffing. ‘Space, closure, name the fucking cliché and I’ll give it to you.’

  Genevieve was pacing again.

  ‘I’m so disappointed in you, Karl. I’m so disappointed in you for trying to sabotage this with your … your neediness.’

  ‘You don’t sound like yourself,’ he called, his voice thick. ‘You don’t look like yourself. Your eyes …’

  ‘I’m going now, Karl.’ He heard her flip-flops spank the metal steps.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  41

  AFTER A FRETFUL night Karl fell asleep just as the sun was rising and dreamed of being very thirsty on a boat.

  He owned three pairs of jeans but tended to wear them for month-long stretches, so that when he rotated it tended to be to a pair of jeans – the faded black pair, the dark indigo pair or the bleached pair – which he hadn’t seen in a year and which had cleaned themselves through a kind of osmosis at the bottom of a pile of other things. It wasn’t unusual to find something in the pocket – old train or bus tickets, scribbled variations on a new product review, occasionally a five- or ten-pound note, which was a joy, and which went straight on coffee and pastries. He felt something against his left thigh and pulled out a pink card with a phone number on it and the name Samphire. The girl with the long white hair. Samphire was seventeen and starting university – it was, he remembered, why her mother had given him the number – and she had a ridiculous name. He fell back onto the surprisingly solid bed and looked up at a crack in the plaster of the basement ceiling. He thought of Lorna reading his voice at the party. Some thoughts belong in the basement.

  He reached for his tablet and entered the number. He could spare a couple of his daily texts.

  – Hi, it’s Karl from Janna and Stu’s party. Don’t know if you remember. Your mum wanted me to talk to you about university. Free after work?

  Karl tried to clear his sinuses. He tried to find a tissue but only had a folded piece of toilet roll in his pocket which disintegrated when he blew his nose on it. He lay back and massaged his eye sockets. He wished that his nose could be replaced with a ceramic, flushable nose. He would happily walk around with a tiny urinal in the middle of his face instead of a nose if it meant an end to sinusitis. He stared at the ceiling. The cobwebs in the corners annoyed him suddenly and he stood up to find a duster, a mop, a stick even, though he knew every square inch of the basement and that there was no such thing. A bluebottle, bright as a piece of costume jewellery, was nutting the French windows. Karl sat on the yellow tiles and stared at its shiny carapace as it threw itself over and over again against the glass. He got very close to it, so close that he thought he could feel the vibrations of its wings against his nose.

  ‘“I throw myself down in my chamber,”’ he said. ‘“And I call in, and invite God, and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.” That’s Donne,’ he told the bluebottle.

  His tablet purred. Samphire’s reply.

  – Ha. You’re so weird. Sure, why not? I’ve finished my exams. I have literally nothing to do x

  When the self-drive stopped to pick him up after work Karl had swiped a jug of cider for Izzy.

  ‘Mate,’ said Izzy. ‘That’s lovely.’

  ‘Izzy, Mr Roderick needs me to stop here,’ he said, pretending to shuffle through some papers: ‘10 Boar Hill. On the way back. To drop off some, uh, casual labour forms. Is that okay?’

  Izzy snorted. ‘I’m running errands for a cider farmer now.’

  ‘It’s a favour. For me.’

  ‘Oh, well, in that case.’ Izzy punched some buttons on the display. ‘It’s ten miles away. Shit, Karl, you just say yes to anyone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No matter who has to do the actual job?’

  ‘I thought it might be nice to see the countryside – see how the self-drive handles it.’

  You have to promise not to judge, Samphire had texted him. It’s not very salubrious. Karl wasn’t sure if she really meant salubrious or whether she thought it was a synonym for luxurious, but when he arrived at 10 Boar Hill, which appeared to be the only thing on Boar Hill apart from rams, dry-stone walling and moss, he decided it could be either. The static caravan sat against a mossy stone wall, wild grass around its base. A permanent wooden stepladder led up to the front door, frosted glass like a bathroom window. The sweet tang of silage. It was a bright day and the last blushing yellow leaves cast shadows on each other and flickered when the breeze got up. Karl was dizzy from the swift self-drive’s precision lurching, mostly uphill through lanes corridored by trees embracing on either side.

  ‘Here?’ said Izzy.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Karl. ‘Some colleagues of Mr Roderick – he just needs me to go over a few forms.’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Izzy. ‘Don’t take all night.’

  Karl knocked on the glass and it made a flat, insubstantial sound. A form appeared behind the door which opened inwards.

  ‘You found us, then,’ said Samphire, with the breeziness of a well-worn phrase. Her long white hair was frizzier and bigger than he remembered. ‘You look bad,’ she added. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Not sleeping,’ said Karl.

  ‘Awesome.’

  ‘I’ve been stuck in the basement. My wife’s not talking to me.’

  Samphire raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Just born lucky,’ she said.

  Karl sat on a thin cushion against the static caravan’s fibreglass wall. He took in the room: a Formica table with built-in seating. A wooden clock with Roman numerals and a plastic gold pendulum, tocking but not ticking. An unframed print of a wolf jumping over a gate. A shelf up against the ceiling was full of old leather-bound books. A thin corridor also served as the galley kitchen with closed doors to the left. The place was clean, and smelled antiseptic, so actually quite salubrious.

  ‘You�
��re probably wondering,’ said Samphire, pouring boiling water from the kettle into two chipped Denby mugs, ‘who’s their interior designer?’

  ‘It’s like being on holiday,’ said Karl.

  ‘I like you, Karl,’ she said, kneeling to fetch a glass bottle of milk. She was wearing a kind of raffia-work poncho; headshop stuff. ‘You didn’t say what’s with the hair? at the party. You’re not saying, what’s with the shitty caravan? now. Lack of curiosity is a rare virtue.’

  ‘Well,’ said Karl. ‘Prepare to be disappointed.’

  ‘Ha. Most people,’ said Samphire, placing his cup of tea on the Formica table, ‘are like chewing gum.’

  ‘Disposable?’

  She sat down opposite him, her legs crossed.

  ‘No. Gradually less interesting. Go on then, disappoint me.’

  ‘Where’s your mum?’

  ‘Lorna? Teaching. Then playing.’ Samphire sneered. ‘Folk,’ she said. ‘Then drinking. She gets back late on Tuesdays. There is –’ she smoothed her skirt and looked Karl in the eye – ‘a marked lack of progression in her Wednesday students’ fiddle playing.’

  ‘You said she used to teach Janna.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ said Samphire. ‘Talk about university indeed. I figured you either wanted to sleep with me – I mean the way you were staring at me at the party—’

  ‘I was high.’

  ‘– or that you were digging for information. Which is in fact the case.’

  ‘They’ve basically kidnapped my wife and locked me in the basement,’ said Karl. ‘Janna and Stu. I’m sorry to turn up under false pretences.’

  ‘Oh God, no, I’m relieved,’ said Samphire.

  ‘I don’t get to see Genevieve. She has visiting hours to come and visit me. But she doesn’t show up. She’s not well. I’m going out of my mind.’

  ‘So you thought, I know, I’ll go and visit a seventeen-year-old girl I met when I was off my face at a party.’

  ‘I want to know what you know. I want to know what The Transition is. You seemed to be old friends with Janna.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be much help,’ said Samphire. ‘Lorna was surprised we got invited. I was a little girl when we last saw Janna.’