All These Perfect Strangers

by Aoife Clifford

  ‘I have the list here, Ms Parnell,’ a voice said. ‘I thought registration had closed for the day.’

  Standing behind us was a round-faced man in an ugly brown suit, with a petulant mouth. A chubby finger pushed his glasses up his nose as he looked at me. ‘And who do we have here?’

  ‘I’m Pen Sheppard.’

  With a shrewd look in my direction, he drew a line on the piece of paper and I noticed circles of wet under his armpits.

  ‘Ms Penelope Sheppard,’ he said aloud. ‘I am the Sub-Dean of Scullin, Bryan Keyes.’ He seemed to imply that I should have known this already. ‘You would be our bursary recipient, if I am not mistaken.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, quickly, trying to stop him from talking about it in front of Leiza and Toby. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as the ‘poor girl’ on my first afternoon but the Sub-Dean didn’t notice and went on. ‘Our new Master’s first initiative, but one I fully support. So important to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate.’ Though from his face, he still needed convincing that I fell into this category. ‘I believe that was the reason the Master wanted to personally welcome you, Ms Sheppard.’ He said this as though it was a great honour. ‘Tobias, as you are her residential assistant, you may wish to show her to the Master’s office.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Toby. ‘Leiza, are you sure you can manage without me?’

  Leiza rolled her eyes, muttered ‘unbelievable’ under her breath and went back to folding up the table.

  Toby grabbed my smallest bag. Walking through the entrance, we moved through a dingy reception area, past walls of marked mint green and along long halls of scuffed linoleum, the black marks recording the migrating patterns of generations of students. Toby led me past family groups of nervous parents and kids my age wishing they would leave. Noisy later-year students yelled and ran past like they owned the place.

  ‘I owe you one,’ he said. ‘Leiza was driving me crazy. She’s a slave driver.’ At the end of the second corridor, he knocked on a door with the words ‘Master Marcus Legard’ scribbled on tatty cardboard and stuck on the brick wall beside it, as if it were a temporary exhibit.

  Toby pushed on the door and stuck his head in. ‘No one’s here.’ Dropping my bags, I followed him inside. It was exactly what a place of learning looked like in my dreams, a complete contrast to what I had seen of the building so far: floor to ceiling bookshelves which gleamed in the subdued light, deep oxblood walls with lines of leather-bound books and an ornate Turkish rug on the carpet. If it hadn’t been for the strong smell of fresh paint I would have thought this room had been untouched for decades.

  ‘Check this out.’ Toby stepped forwards into the middle of the room, slowly spinning around with my two bags. ‘Completely different from last year. Carpet’s new, and so are those bookshelves. The Sub-Dean has been going on all day about budgetary concerns. No one allowed to have a second sausage at the barbecue and now I see where all the money has gone. This would have cost a bomb.’ He put his finger up to one of the walls, and the faintest red smear came off. ‘Not even dry,’ he said.

  I moved towards the bookcase, conscious of not touching anything for fear I might break something or smear dust across it. There were silver-framed photos of people in dinner suits and formal dresses, perfectly placed on a bookshelf so that all of them were easily visible. I recognised some politicians and an enormous opera singer who was always on television singing about dying while looking in the best of health. There was a man who was common to all of them. His hair, shaped dramatically like a cockatoo crest, changed from black to silver to white as he got older and fatter. Next to the photos, hanging on the wall, was a large blue and gold coat of arms of a book superimposed on the Southern Cross. It shone as if it had been recently polished, in contrast with a jumble of pine-framed pictures, carelessly propped underneath it.

  ‘These don’t look very expensive,’ I said. Reproductions of fruit bowls and flocks of sheep, gambolling in meadows, they were the stuff people from my town thought of as art, and hung on their walls for generations.

  ‘Belonged to the former occupant,’ Toby explained. ‘Guess they’re on the way out. Not good enough for our Marcus with his happy snaps of the rich and powerful. That emblem is his old fancy university. Bit rude to be rubbing our faces in it.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘This paint smell is unbearable.’

  Moving past the bookshelves, I found a recessed wall, hidden from the doorway. Hanging from it was a large rectangular photograph that fit the space so perfectly I wondered if it had been bought for it. Or had the space been created with the picture in mind? It was over a metre long and at least that wide, with bleached white mounts, and a frame as sharp as a scalpel. It seemed at odds with the expensive clubbishness of the rest of the room because of the subject matter. It was of a nude boy lying down surrounded by darkness. A cold light caught only the right side of his body, leaving his face, genitals and feet in shadows. A white hip bone jutted out and you could count ribs, see the outline of a bent knee, part of a hand, a portion of thigh. The rest of his body dissolved into the blackness. It was as though he had been carefully cut into pieces. I was transfixed and repelled by it all at once.

  Toby came to see what I was looking at.

  ‘Definitely new,’ he said. ‘Still, better than the fruit, I must say.’ He checked his watch. ‘Tell you what, I’ve got to go and pick up some keys from Carol, the Master’s PA. How about I get yours and meet you back here?’

  ‘How about I come with you?’ I asked, unable to take my eyes off the broken boy.

  ‘No, you should wait for Marcus. Don’t worry about him,’ he said, gesturing to the picture. ‘I think he’s quite cute.’ He gave me a half smile as he slouched out.

  I stayed watching the boy for a long time, wanting him to wake up or turn over. I was still waiting when a man, dressed in an artistically crumpled linen suit, meandered in through a side door that I hadn’t noticed, puffing on a cigar.

  ‘I do apologise,’ he said. ‘Been here long?’

  It was the face from the photos, sunburnt with even more chins. When he took off his hat, a jaunty straw Panama, I could see that the white sails of hair had become old-man wispy. His eyebrows were still impressively black, though, as if he spent every morning putting them on with pen. This must be the Master.

  ‘I’ve been sitting outside escaping the smell of paint.’ He spoke in a powerfully projected baritone as if a crowd of students was listening to every word. ‘They finished yesterday but it’s as if I’m drinking the stuff. Keep tasting it in my mouth.’ He gestured expansively with the cigar. ‘Don’t usually smoke these but thought it might help. Let’s adjourn outside to my garden.’

  Once outside, he headed towards two wrought-iron chairs under a lemon tree. One had a tumbler and a half-emptied whisky bottle underneath.

  Pouring himself a drink, he told me to call him Marcus. ‘Titles are for small people to feel important, and Master makes me sound as if I’m planning world domination.’

  Unable to bring myself to call him anything, I settled on, ‘It’s a lovely garden.’

  ‘Courtesy of the last inhabitant.’ He smiled and I caught a flash of small, uneven, grey teeth. ‘Much better than his interior choices, I will admit, but I am tempted to rough it up a little, plant a big cactus in the middle or perhaps install some confronting phallic water feature. Something to offset its loveliness. If I could give one piece of advice to students of this wonderful institution, it would be to avoid the lovely in life, so often synonymous with the dull.’ There was not the slightest expectation that I might disagree. I didn’t bother telling him that I had managed to avoid the lovely so far, though not by design.

  ‘And what do you think of the rest of Scullin?’ he asked, motioning at the building with his cigar, loose ash shimmering through the air.

  ‘I haven’t seen much of the inside yet.’

  ‘But the building itself, don’t you find it has a certain totalitarian charm? Tha
t it exudes Five Year Plan? I have a notion to get enormous banners of myself to display at the entrance. Something in a bright communist red would stand out so nicely.’ He inhaled deeply on his cigar. ‘Sadly, I suspect the Sub-Dean would not approve of the expense.’

  The emphasis suggested the Sub-Dean was one of the little people. Leaning so far back on his chair that it was in danger of toppling over, he continued. ‘I wanted to meet and congratulate you as our first bursary recipient. An idea of mine. The first of many. I must say your application interested me. I can see that you’re a survivor, a trait I value highly. So easy to play the victim. So much harder to make a comeback.’

  I sat up a bit straighter at this. I wasn’t used to people praising me for anything, let alone for the very events most were so critical about.

  He exhaled, a spiral of smoke snaking upward. ‘Some might see the bursary as misguided noblesse oblige. Certainly the Sub-Dean thinks so. He doesn’t come out and say that directly of course. Being forthright is not his style, but that’s what he thinks. I prefer to see this bursary as an endorsement from one survivor to another. I see potential in you. Don’t disappoint me.’

  I didn’t intend to. That bursary paid all the accommodation and food costs. It was the only reason I could stay at a residential college. Frank had been my referee for the application, detailing all the personal history that the bursary would help me escape from.

  ‘Consider this a fresh start, Ms Sheppard. For you, for many of your colleagues. University is an excellent place to reinvent oneself.’

  I opened my mouth to say thank you, but he was still talking.

  ‘Anyway, we need a photograph to record this happy occasion. Always publicise one’s successes because no one else will.’ He heaved himself out of his chair, ignoring my half-hearted protests that it really wasn’t necessary, and began striding back towards the office, bellowing, ‘Carol! Carol!’

  A woman, who looked like other people’s mothers, in sensible trousers and neatly cut dark short hair, eventually appeared. ‘Yes, Master?’

  ‘The camera. We must have a photograph.’

  Carol scurried back inside the office, with Marcus close behind. I was unsure whether to get up or stay put, so I waited, pretending to admire the roses before following. By the time I reached the room, there was still no camera but Toby had appeared with a handful of keys.

  ‘You finished with Pen?’ Toby asked Marcus. ‘She hasn’t been to her room yet. Still time to get unpacked before dinner.’

  ‘Aah, it seems the photograph will have to wait. Perhaps tomorrow,’ said Marcus. ‘It will be an excellent year, Ms Sheppard, certainly not dull. I’m sure as the first bursary recipient you will achieve great distinction for yourself and this college.’ Picking up his cigar from a large ashtray, he put his head close to mine and said, ‘University can be an expensive place. I’m sure we can find you some gainful employment if needed.’ Waving away my thanks, he headed back out to the garden.

  ‘You’re bloody lucky,’ Toby said in an accusatory tone, once we were far enough away from the office. ‘I didn’t even know there was a new bursary.’ But he didn’t seem to hold a grudge because he quickly defaulted to tour guide mode. ‘Dining room is that way,’ he said, pointing through double glass doors, ‘and public telephones are down there, if you need to call home saying you got here in one piece. Take a book. There’s always a queue.’

  I made a non-committal kind of sound, as I had no intention of calling home. We passed a set of stairs. ‘Page Tower’s up there. That’s where the non-smokers live their boring healthy little lives. You’re in Forde with me, where happiness is a lit cancer stick.’

  I had put down smoking on my application form, not because I actually smoked, but because I had some vague idea that smokers were a more tolerant group, on the whole.

  ‘We’re on the third floor,’ Toby said, hoisting one of my bags onto his shoulder, as he began to climb the second set of stairs. ‘This is the only exercise I do.’

  ‘Why Forde and Page?’ I asked, trying to squeeze past two girls who stopped on a landing to let us pass.

  ‘Don’t you know your history? Prime Ministers, same as Scullin,’ Toby said, nodding at the girls. ‘Most of the places on campus are named after Prime Ministers. Forde and Page are the Patron Saints of Failure. Didn’t even last a month between them.’

  We arrived at our floor and Toby ripped off a piece of paper stuck to the first door which said, ‘Back in 5’. He pulled out a key that had been hanging on a piece of string around his neck and unlocked it.

  ‘I’ll make you a cuppa first and then you can start unpacking.’

  The room was large, a double room in fact.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ Toby warned, as I looked around approvingly. ‘Your room’s a coffin.’

  Music posters covered every inch of the walls. Wild hair, extravagant eye shadow, velvet and black, lots of black. The faces glared down at me, as if they weren’t nearly as impressed by Toby’s room as I was. The double bed near the window was barely visible under a mound of clothes, paper, junk and a large billiard ball bean bag. In the middle of the room, shrine-like, was an enormous stereo, a mountain of CDs piled next to it. I had seen CDs before, but never so many together, outside of the music store in our town. As Toby disappeared through an internal door into a tiny bathroom to fill up the kettle, I started to count them.

  ‘Dave, my boyfriend, is an airline pilot,’ he said, catching me in the act, as he came back into the room with the kettle. ‘He buys pirated CDs in Bali for me. You can get them for a couple of bucks each.’

  Where I came from, old people still used ‘gay’ to describe being happy, and young people used ‘faggot’ and beat up boys they suspected of being one. Toby must have guessed something from my face. ‘Would you like me to hide in a closet to give you time to get used to the idea?’ Then he told me he had actually climbed into his neighbour’s closet in his first year and frightened some poor girl’s mother half to death when he burst out of it. I made him promise that if my mother ever came to visit, he would do that to her.

  We had tea and biscuits while Toby showed me the floor plan. ‘Bedrooms run down either side of the corridor with a basic kitchenette and bathrooms in the middle. Only residential assistants like me get their own ensuite.’ He looked pretty happy about this. ‘I decided to put all the floor’s first-years near each other because you tend to hang out together at the start anyway.’ He pointed to a little square on the plan. ‘That room’s Joad’s and next to him is a girl called Kesh. Her real name is Marrakesh, can you believe it? She said she grew up in a commune. Anyway, they have both picked up their keys.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  Toby moved his finger further down the corridor. It was just a box like the others but I still felt a thrill. My own room in college, where I was surrounded by other people roughly the same age as me. This was the beginning of something new and we were all at the starting line together.

  ‘You can have that one. It’s pretty good. Not next to the bathrooms, might have to give that one to Michael because he’s the last to check in. You can hear the toilets flushing and people vomiting. Breakout area is worse though. Drunken first-years talking rubbish all night and it’s also where the phone is. Incoming calls only but still. Can drive you mad having to answer it all the time. Gave that room to Joad.’

  ‘Why?’

  Toby flashed a wicked smile. ‘Seemed appropriate.’

  ‘Who’s next to me?’

  ‘Rachel. She’s a second-year. Probably make her grand entrance tomorrow.’

  Sounds of people moving echoed up from the stairs. ‘Must be dinner time.’ There was a knock on the door and a solemn-looking boy poked his head through. Square head, John Lennon round glasses, light brown hair that looked like he cut it himself, he was wearing woven leather sandals that would have spelt social death in my town.

  ‘I was told you had my key.’

  ‘Michael Doherty?’ Toby
guessed, after checking his list, and beckoned him in. ‘We were about to send out a search party. You are the lucky last!’

  ‘There was a note on the door.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Toby.

  ‘It said you’d be back in five minutes but you were gone for over an hour.’

  Turning to hand me my key, Toby arched an eyebrow. Michael was definitely getting the room nearest the bathroom. I decided to make my excuses and left.

  My room was the last one along the corridor. Even though it was still bright outside, the room was subdued. I switched on the overhead fluorescent light, but it buzzed so loudly I turned it back off.

  I shut the door and locked it, a good strong lock, and immediately the thought entered my head that Tracey would have approved of it. She put a lock on my bedroom door for me when Mum was dating Gary.

  Dumping my bags on the industrial bristle floor, I lay down on the bed and took it all in. Toby’s description of the room captured its ambiance, if not its shape. More square. The walls were mouse-coloured, a depressing grey-brown. Blobs of old Blu-tack from the last inhabitant were still stuck on them, and I could smell the ghosts of thousands of cigarettes in the air. It was sparsely furnished with a wooden bookcase, a plastic chair, metal bin and a large laminate desk. There was a mirror over a sink with a small cupboard underneath. Next to it was a much larger cupboard, which later I would be told was referred to as a ‘Tardis’, because of the incredible amounts of junk that could be squashed inside it, and that was it. Better than a prison cell but not by much.

  I lay down on my bed. The blanket itched my skin. I was going to stop thinking about Tracey. I was here and she wasn’t. That was the end of it. I would make new friends even if I wasn’t used to making polite conversation with strangers. There wasn’t much call for that at home. Even less, if you were the town pariah. I had talked to more people today than I had in months. It was exhausting. My mouth hurt from smiling. I decided to skip dinner and stayed where I was, staring up at the ceiling. It was nicotine-stained with funny yellow clouds, round like squashed thought bubbles.