The Art of Persuasion

by Midalia, Susan;

  ‘Just for pleasure, then?’

  He was nothing if not persistent. But still, he’d asked her, was trying to engage her, and he didn’t seem sleazy, not at all. He was—well—attractive. For an older man.

  Hazel cleared her throat. ‘I can’t say I’m really enjoying it,’ she said. ‘It’s, well, autumnal in tone. You know. The sense of things dying, coming to an end.’

  ‘Autumnal? But didn’t Jane Austen write comedies?’

  Hazel gathered her thoughts. She wanted to sound intelligent, after all her fluffing about. So she explained that comedy as a literary term didn’t mean funny ha-ha, it meant that everything turned out well in the end: the good were rewarded, the bad were punished and the heroine found Mr Right. In romantic comedies, anyway, like Jane Austen’s. It was a structural definition, she blathered, and an optimistic way of looking at the world. Hoping she didn’t sound like a know-all, when she didn’t know much at all.

  ‘So that’s basically the appeal of comedy, then?’ he said. ‘The happy ending.’

  ‘Sure. But it’s also discovering how things happen, and why. And who does the telling is important, too. The technical name for that is point of view. Which always slants the way you see the world created in a book.’

  He nodded. She rattled on.

  ‘Mind you, a story is slanted even when it uses an omniscient point of view. Omniscient means all-knowing, you know. Because there’s no such thing as objectivity, is there? Philosophically speaking.’

  Was she being a gasbag now? Would he switch off, return politely to his book? But no, he was nodding again and smiling now, full-on.

  ‘That’s all very interesting,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the instruction.’

  She found herself feeling pleased. That he was pleased.

  Maybe she could ask him—this stranger who knew that Jane Austen wrote comedies—if he’d ever been to Serendipity in search of a worthy tome. Or whether he knew the meaning of the word serendipity. Knew about Horace Walpole. And now the train was pulling up at Daglish. Would he stand and leave? No, he was still there. Very present. She rummaged in her brain for something else to say.

  ‘So you’re not a fan of comic novels, then?’

  ‘I don’t read much fiction of any kind, really. This novel…well, a friend passed it on to me. She’s keen to educate me, I guess.’

  Hazel found herself leaning in, just a little closer.

  ‘You can tell that your title’s ironic,’ she said.

  ‘Really? How so?’

  ‘The Man Who Loved Children. I mean, love doesn’t have to proclaim itself, does it? Love just is.’

  He looked at her as though he’d just slid open a drawer and seen a curious object inside. Which was hardly surprising, since she didn’t know what to make of herself right now, sitting next to this man, who was big and craggy in a Ted Hughes kind of way. Ted Hughes. The first time he met Sylvia Plath, he’d bitten her mouth so hard that he’d drawn blood. Or was it her neck he’d plunged his teeth into? Or had Plath taken the first bite? Whatever the truth of the story, it was pretty damned tempestuous.

  Hazel felt the train coming to a stop, in between stations. Probably making way for another train, although they never told you the reason for delays, or when you might start moving again. Or maybe it was because of a leaf stuck on the railway track, which had actually happened to one of Beth’s old colleagues. He’d sent her a postcard from London with the heading Leaf causes major delay, then went on to denounce shabby British Rail, crappy British food and dough-faced British girls. Nothing like travel, Beth had quipped, to narrow the mind. Not like the man beside me, Hazel thought, who was settling back in his seat, relaxed, turning to look at her again. He really did have the most dazzling eyes.

  ‘I wonder how long we’ll be stuck,’ he said.

  She was beginning to feel un-stuck. Positively serendipitous.

  ‘So, what about your title, then?’ he said. ‘Persuasion.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ She could feel the heat of his face now and it was really quite unsettling. ‘Well, persuasion is at the heart of the novel. Well, of course it’s at the heart, that’s what titles are about. Like A Journal of the Plague Year. There’s no mucking about there.’

  Had she really just said that?

  ‘So, in Persuasion…’ she battled on. ‘There’s an older woman, a mentor, who thinks she knows what’s best for the young heroine, Anne. And so the mentor, Lady Russell—you can tell by the name, can’t you, that she has a bit of clout—well, Lady Russell persuades Anne to give up the man she loves.’

  ‘Because he’s a cad and a bounder?’

  ‘No, no, not at all. Captain Wentworth’s thoughtful, kind, sensitive. A good man, you know. But his prospects aren’t the brightest.’

  ‘No money, you mean?’

  ‘In a nutshell, yes. But Lady Russell isn’t mercenary. She’s acting in the young woman’s best interests, because back then—two hundred years ago—most women were completely dependent on men for an income, and if they didn’t marry they became a burden on their family. So a woman literally couldn’t afford to marry for love.’

  Had she used literally correctly?

  ‘I’m glad I wasn’t born back then,’ she said, stupidly. ‘Not that it’s a picnic for women today.’ Sounding even stupider. ‘I used to tell my female students to marry a very old man with a terminal illness who was also incredibly rich. Which was meant to be joke, of course.’

  She was approaching rock bottom.

  ‘Only they didn’t laugh,’ she said. ‘They probably weren’t even listening.’

  She’d just crashed.

  ‘So you were a teacher?’ he said.

  ‘For two long years. I was a bit of a disaster.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ he said, quietly. ‘It’s the nature of teaching, isn’t it? It can take years for students to see the value of what you’ve given them.’

  The train was starting up again, and she knew she had to speak, keep him engaged for however long they had.

  ‘You sound like a teacher yourself,’ she said.

  ‘History. I quit a few years ago.’ He laughed. ‘The world’s full of us, isn’t it? Someone should start a support group.’

  She liked his laugh. It wasn’t overdone, but not underdone either. They were rocking side by side now as the train gathered speed, began to hurtle in fact, as though the engine was conspiring against her. Rushing her brutally through time and back to her usual place. Next stop: Shenton Station; she could see Shenton College on top of the hill. An Independent Public School with cream-of-the-crop teachers. Not like the one she’d taught in, which was more like sour milk.

  She turned to face the unknown man again. ‘I could have used a support group before I quit,’ she said. ‘I left after a girl spat in my face. I know she must have been very unhappy to do that but it didn’t change the way I felt. Humiliated. Angry. I wish I could have, you know, risen above it.’

  ‘You’re being hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘It’s difficult to rise above feelings you know are unworthy. To be the person you wish to be.’ He stopped, cleared his throat. ‘Don’t listen to me,’ he said. ‘I can hear myself sounding like a—’

  ‘Tosser?’

  ‘I was about to say a pompous prat, but tosser will do very nicely.’

  They laughed.

  The train was moving again and they gave a little shuffle in their seats, both of them silent as the train rocketed along, slowed down, pulled into another station.

  ‘Is this your stop?’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m going to Claremont. Only I don’t live there.’

  ‘Are you doing something interesting in Claremont?’

  Hazel swallowed. ‘Not really. Nothing important. And you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Your stop.’

  ‘Oh. Swanbourne. Just after yours.’

  She felt the train pulling out of the station. Felt his thighs perilously close.

  ‘So,
how’s life after teaching, then?’ he said.

  Hazel held back a sigh. That question again: And what do you do for a living?

  ‘A bit up and down, really,’ she said. ‘I started a diploma in arts management but I couldn’t manage something arcane called the creative economy. Then I had a miserable job serving hors-d’oeuvres to people in suits, capped off by a few months learning to sell real estate. I still haven’t forgiven myself.’

  ‘Selling your soul, hey?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t have sold any properties. But now’—she didn’t want to sound too mopey—‘I’m looking to do something kind of useful.’

  She glanced down at his hands. No wedding ring. Which didn’t tell her anything, really. He had graceful hands, with long, fine fingers.

  He nodded. ‘It’s the important question, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘How should we live?’

  She found herself glancing at his hands again, wondering what it would feel like to trace those long, fine fingers. Thread them through hers.

  He leaned in a fraction closer. ‘I’m Adam, by the way,’ he said.

  She thought for one whole second. ‘I’m Hazel.’

  ‘That’s an old-fashioned name. It’s rather quaint.’

  Quaint? Was that meant to be a compliment?

  ‘You certainly fit the old-fashioned bill,’ he said. ‘Reading a good book. And you haven’t once checked your phone, or used the f word.’

  He’d been paying attention. Figuring her out. She felt her heart do that little flip thing.

  ‘Oh, I say the f word a lot,’ she said, casually. ‘But I try to keep it in my head.’

  And still he was looking and smiling and she felt a rush of desire: for his thoughtful words and his listening, and for those striking, pale blue eyes. For his full mouth as well, wondering how it might feel, how it might taste.

  ‘So why did you leave teaching?’ she said.

  ‘Oh. Well. Because it felt empty. History matters to me but I couldn’t make it matter to the students.’

  ‘Now who’s being hard on himself?’

  He shrugged. ‘Of course there are always a few who make it worthwhile,’ he said. ‘But to be honest, I didn’t have an ounce of classroom control, even after years in the job. I left after a boy punched me in the face.’ Then his own face suddenly tightened. ‘Not that I’m trying to outdo you,’ he said.

  ‘Of course not. You don’t seem like an outdoing kind of person.’

  He blushed. She’d never known a man who blushed, or even thought he needed to.

  ‘So what do you do now?’ she said. ‘For work, I mean.’

  ‘I’m retired, actually.’

  ‘Retired? Did you win Lotto or something?’

  ‘Nothing quite so lucky,’ he said. ‘But I’ve paid off the mortgage, and I manage because…well, I live very simply.’

  ‘You mean you don’t buy a lot of stuff?’

  ‘Exactly. I have everything I need, really.’

  He kept saying I. Not we.

  ‘But don’t you want to—I don’t know—go travelling?’ she said. ‘Buy a grand piano or something, and take lessons.’

  He laughed. ‘My mother put me off piano lessons for life. She and Miss Onions.’

  ‘Onions?’

  ‘Yes, my teacher, Clarissa Onions. On that basis alone I should have felt sorry for her, but she kept rapping me over the knuckles with a steel ruler every time I made a mistake. She belonged to what’s called the old-fashioned style of teaching.’

  ‘Sadism, you mean.’ She was looking at him closely but trying not to stare. Was she staring? Was she being too obvious? ‘So what do you do with your time, then?’ she said. ‘Now that you’ve retired.’

  ‘Well, that’s very simple too. I do a bit of volunteer work. And I like to go swimming in the ocean. Out in the deep, far away from the noise of things. But most importantly, I’m raising a son.’

  ‘Oh. So you’re a single parent, then? Divorced?’ Out before she knew it.

  ‘My wife is dead.’

  Hazel swallowed. Because he hadn’t said passed away.

  ‘It’s alright,’ he said, quietly. ‘Honestly. It was a while ago now.’

  ‘But still’—feeling the need to say something—‘I’ve never lost someone I love. I couldn’t begin to imagine it.’

  ‘It was actually a relief in the end,’ he said. ‘For her, for all of us. She had cancer, and it took a long time until she died.’

  ‘So she tried to battle on?’

  His mouth suddenly hardened. ‘Battle,’ he said, decisively. ‘That’s an injunction to put up a fight and so if you lose, it’s your own damned fault.’ He was looking her straight in the eye now, unflinching. ‘You see, cancer’s not about winning or losing, it’s just terrible, rotten bad luck. All those people cheering her on, urging her not to give up, making her feel like she’d failed. She already had so much to deal with.’

  Hazel sat blankly. Everything had changed in an instant, as if she’d blundered into a crime scene and didn’t know how to get out. She heard him mumble an apology for something she couldn’t quite catch but his tone was clear enough: flat, resigned, as though he’d given up on her, or just given up. She kept her eyes on the opposite window, feeling flustered, embarrassed, then saw that the next stop was hers. She’d passed two stations in between and hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t even felt the movement of the train. All she felt now was regret, for the sharpness of his voice and the shame in her heart; for this bungled, gloomy ending.

  She stood up quickly, almost took a tumble, turned to look at him at last. His face was impossible to read.

  ‘It was good to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Autumnal Hazel.’

  She hitched up her bag, thanked him for the conversation.

  She was a callow, useless girl stepping off a train. A girl sprouting a cliché about terminal illness in order to impress a man. A man who’d lost a woman he loved. What did she know about such suffering, after all? What did she know about loss, and what you might hope to save? She tried to think of what she could do, now that she’d ruined things again. Stuffing up an interview, offending a man she’d warmed to, a man she really liked. Maybe she’d buy a bottle of rotgut wine and ask some friends to come over. Or she could take a bubble bath in her very small bathtub, which was the best you could do in a very small bathroom. But most of all she was hoping to rub it from her mind: her showing off, the harshness in his voice. Just scrub it all away.

  Then she heard a shout: her name. Turned to see him running. Adam.

  ‘Your book,’ he said, puffing. ‘You left it on the train.’

  His hair was messy in the wind and there he was with his arresting blue eyes and strong nose and stubble on his face and all of this was beautiful to her. He handed her the book, ran his fingers through his hair as she gushed out her thanks…library book…so lucky you saw it…

  He pulled at the collar of his shirt.

  ‘I just wanted to say—properly this time—that I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I must have sounded insufferable. So damned self-righteous.’

  ‘But it was my fault. I shouldn’t have been so—’

  ‘No, no, of course it wasn’t your fault. How could you possibly have known?’

  ‘Well, I know now. I’ll know what not to say next time. I don’t mean…I don’t mean with you next time, I mean if the subject should ever arise. You know, in conversation.’

  She shuffled her feet, feeling nervous and gauche, not wanting him to walk away. Not for a moment.

  ‘Please don’t feel bad,’ he said. ‘I feel bad about making you feel bad, so you’ll make me feel better if…’

  They were tangled up in words in the nicest possible way. ‘May I buy you a coffee?’ he said. ‘By way of atonement.’ Hazel took a tiny leap. ‘I’d rather have a glass of wine,’ she said. ‘If you don’t think it’s too much. Too early, I mean.’

  His eyes were bright, searching. He had a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of
his nose.

  ‘Wine it is, then,’ he said. ‘Do you have a favourite place round here?’

  She wanted to say that she’d go anywhere with him, that he could take her to his bed and do anything he liked. But she knew she needed to be sensible: calm and temperate and rational. She didn’t want to be empty-headed Rebel, the star attraction of Torn by Desire. Because she was Hazel. Who told him calmly—she couldn’t believe how calmly—that she knew a wine bar just down the road.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said.

  And it was. It really was. It was all she could do not to reach out her hand and twine her fingers through his.

  ‘So. Lead the way, Hazel,’ he said.

  Happenstance

  What did they discuss as they walked to the wine bar? Well, more like Adam asking questions and Hazel rattling on about growing up in Perth but hating the summer heat and the hedonistic worship of the sun. So glad it was autumn, she chattered, nervous now, gabbling on about how she loved the yellow leaves and the cooler weather and did he know they’d just had one of the longest stretches without any rain? A whole heap of days, she couldn’t remember how many but it was very long. It was even more embarrassing when Adam opened the door to the wine bar: doof doof atavistic music, crowds of beautiful people shouting to be heard, heaps of stick-insect girls with pneumatic breasts who made Hazel want to hide in the shadows. How could she admit that she’d never been inside this look-at-me place? Then more agitation, with Adam offering to buy her a drink and she insisting not, even though he’d offered before. Finally: two reds it is, pointing to an empty table in the distance. Hazel made her way over and sat down, swatting back a potted palm that threatened to swipe her face. Already beginning to wonder if her feeble shot at courage had been a big mistake.

  But at least it was quieter in the corner, and she could watch him from a distance. He was wearing a pair of scruffy jeans, a long, baggy white shirt. He had a mop of greying hair in need of brushing. If he was the answer to fashion, he clearly hadn’t heard the question. And she liked it, this lack of vanity and fuss, and the way he waited at the counter, not taking up too much space despite his solid build, not trying to muscle others out of the way.