A Distant Shore

by Caryl Phillips

  Again she laughs. “You sound like my father. He died a few years ago.”

  He stops eating. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. He lived his life, I suppose. It’s just that he began to worry about young people. He worried that they no longer had any fear, that it wasn’t just how they talked that bothered him, it was what they would do. I suppose he’d have said it was to do with discipline in the home, more than with discipline in the schools. And immigration.”

  “Immigration?”

  “Well, you know, to some people everything’s to do with immigration.”

  “But these kids were not black.” He gestures out of the window. “They were not out to mug anyone.”

  “I know.” She lowers her eyes and concentrates on the remains of her plate. “I know. I agree with you.” She picks up her still-full wine glass by the stem and rolls it in her fingers. “Your wife and child, they won’t be coming here then?”

  “Maybe at the end of the year. After the affair with the squash player burns itself out.” He laughs loudly now, throwing back his head. The waiter looks across, but quickly looks away. “Bit of a cliché really, isn’t it? But that’s the truth. I’m just giving them space.”

  “That’s good of you,” she says, taking a sip from her glass.

  “I go back to Nottingham at the weekends. To see my daughter, Claire. But I thought it best to get out of town for a while, and this local authority had jobs, so here I am.” He pours a fresh glass of red wine, and he drinks quickly. She watches as he swallows the mouthful that marks the line between coherence and mess. “I’m staying in lodgings with a landlady. Like I’m a sodding student again.” He laughs and with one hand he loosens his tie. “Who’d have thought it.”

  “Thought what?”

  “That I’d come to this.” She looks into his eyes and sees the vulnerability beneath the bluster. “Thank you, though.”

  “For what?”

  “For asking me for a drink. I’ve been dreading the evenings. Leaving my temporary job and going back to my temporary lodgings. Sitting in the living room watching stupid television programmes with Mrs. Johnson, and then having to endure the embarrassment of her offering me a cup of Horlicks and a plate of biscuits. It’s either put up with her, or go out to the local pub and find somebody to play darts with and bore to death with my life story. So thanks.”

  She takes a sip of wine and smiles broadly at him.

  “My pleasure.” And then she continues. “Perhaps we ought to be going now.” He looks at her as though shocked. Then he puts down his glass and reaches across the table and takes her hands in both of his.

  “I mean it. I’m really grateful. Thank you.” She lowers her eyes and then gently wriggles her hands out from under his grip. He clears his throat. “Are you still married to your husband?”

  “No, we’re divorced.”

  “Happily?”

  She does not say, no, he washed his hands of me. “Everything runs its course.”

  “Lonely?”

  She does not say, I used to be the fancy woman for the Asian man in the corner shop, but he dropped me. “I’m comfortable with my own company.” She laughs. “Most of the time.”

  As they wait by the bus stop he drapes a protective arm around her shoulders, but she senses that in all probability he is simply trying to maintain his balance. A homeless man, who pulls a filthy sleeping bag after him, crosses the street and looks as though he is walking towards them. She feels her protector grow tense and then, as the tramp ignores them and walks on his way, he releases an audible sigh.

  They both look down the street in the direction that they imagine the bus will arrive from. Across the road in the pub car park, some louts, who are all tattoos and bared teeth, are now pushing and shoving each other and making the loud braying noises that suggest they are having a good time. She notices that two among them are brazenly advertising the contents of their bladders in triumphal watery arches, and then to her horror she realises that their performances are competitive. She wonders if any of the young vagabonds are pupils of hers, and then she catches herself and realises that she is ignoring her escort.

  “You know, you really don’t have to wait for me. The bus won’t be long.” He dares to finger her cheek. She hopes that he won’t speak, for his words have long since begun to slide, one into the other. And then she hears the sound of the bus rumbling up the hill towards them. He quickly retrieves his hand.

  “Ah, your chariot approaches.”

  “It’s been a lovely evening.” The bus idles before her and then the doors swoosh open accordion-style.

  “You saved me from an evening of hell.” He laughs. “Or you saved somebody from an evening of hell.”

  She moves quickly before he can say anything further. Once on board she fishes in her purse for the exact change, and then she takes her ticket. It’s a short ride so she sits by the door. As the bus lurches away she turns and sees him still standing by the bus stop. He waves.

  The following morning she waits in the staffroom. Everybody arrives in one mad rush. Sally Lomax, the young head of English, flashes her a bright, but clearly manufactured, smile.

  “I’ll have to bring George and Samantha tonight. But they’ve got colouring books and crayons, so they should be fine.”

  She nods at Sally, who is too busy to register the fact that there has been a response to her statement. As Sally turns away, she can see again just how much the poor woman’s body has thickened and run to fat at the waist and hips, which no doubt accounts for her enthusiasm for exercise. Sally gulps down a final mouthful of coffee, then throws the rest in the sink. The cup goes in after the coffee. She is one of those who cannot be bothered to rinse their cup and then turn it up on the draining board. Memos have been posted, but hardly anybody takes the time to read them. She waits in the staffroom until everybody has left, but there is still no sign of Geoff Waverley. It is too late to go into assembly now. The head abhors lateness from pupils. A teacher being late for assembly is an open invitation to a hastily scribbled note of admonishment from Mr. Jowett. Instead, she goes straight to her classroom and sits at the piano. A single C establishes a tone. A beginning. But she is too anxious to develop the pattern. Through the window she sees stragglers bolting across the school playground in a pantomime of unpunctuality, their shirt-tails flying in the wind. They will clatter through the door and straight into the clutches of a prefect, but they have forgotten this. Again she hits a single C, and she listens closely to the rise and fall of this one note.

  When the bell goes she walks briskly to the computer room. She pulls up the school home page, taps in her password and under “new staff” she clicks on his name. The screen flickers for a moment, as though dying, and then it bursts to life and all the details are glowing before her eyes. His degree, his previous employment, his wife’s name, Claire’s full name, her age and their address in Nottingham. The phone number has been omitted, but this will not pose a problem. She pushes the print button and then quickly makes her way past the pupils playing computer games, and those sending lovesick emails. Hers is the first sheet printed at the central terminal and she quickly folds the warm piece of paper into four and tucks it into her bag. One of her fifth-formers, a talented cellist, is staring at her.

  “Morning, Miss.”

  “Morning, Amanda.” She knows that of all her pupils poor Amanda with the thick ankles will continue to pursue the cello, while others will soon abandon music for more worldly pleasures.

  George and Samantha sit at a table by the side of the court. They have been arguing for most of the set, pulling the single colouring book first one way and then the next. Now George throws his crayon at his older sister, who retaliates, marking George across his cheek with an orange gash. Sally comes to the net.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to see to them.”

  She watches as Sally talks firmly to her children. Tennis with Sally has proved to be something of a mixed blessing, for sh
e still has problems with her hips, but she does enjoy the competition. After Brian left she tried golf, but that served only to reinscribe the loneliness. And mistakes had to be viewed purely in the light of individual incompetence. At least with tennis she can win the occasional point off her opponent’s mistakes. Like life itself. A distraught-looking Sally wanders back to the net.

  “I’m sorry, but I think we should stop now. Maybe five-all is as good a place as any.” She decides to say nothing, but privately wonders what on earth made Sally imagine that a four-year-old and a six-year-old would sit patiently while their mother hit a ball back and forth across a net.

  The children seem happier in the cafeteria, pulling joyfully on their straws and slurping Coca-Cola all over their faces and clothes. She drinks an orange juice while Sally sits with a cup of tea and analyses the game.

  “You’re getting stronger all the time. I think you’re a bit of a natural.”

  She graciously accepts the younger woman’s compliments. However, if it was not for Sally she would not be here. There is nobody else that she knows in the leisure centre, and she has no desire to join up. The woman on the front desk has twice told her that she is losing money doing it this way, and that it would be much cheaper to become a member, but she prefers her temporary arrangement. Sally glances at the two children, who continue to enjoy their newly harmonious, if messy, friendship. Then she looks back at her older companion.

  “Tongues are wagging in the staffroom.”

  She stares blankly at her, but in a manner that forces Sally to continue.

  “It’s just that I know you’ve never been much of a mixer, but these days you seem to keep yourself to yourself. As if you’re too grand for everybody, but I know that’s not how you really feel. It’s just what some people are saying.”

  Through the glass, and down on the court below them, she can see two men furiously thrashing a ball back and forth with little concern for finesse. Theirs is a game of brute strength and endurance. She turns to look at Sally. The younger woman’s face is calm and etched with concern, but she resents her younger colleague’s words. Warning? Admonishment? It matters little. The words are inappropriate and she will not play tennis with this woman again.

  Geoff seems slightly less animated than he was at the restaurant. Wine, she thinks. More wine, and she pours him another glass and makes a point of leaving the bottle uncorked. This morning, she slipped a note in Sally’s pigeonhole cancelling next week’s tennis. She gave no reason. Then she found the hastily scribbled note from Geoff. “Dinner? Tonight?” She put the note up against the wall and under his double question she scrawled, “My place, 8 p.m.” Then she wrote down her address, folded the note twice and tucked it into his box. She had hoped for a note from him on the morning after their dinner, but better late than never, she thought. And now, as he sips at his new glass of wine, he finally explains his failure to write.

  “Claire hurt herself at school, but my wife made it sound as though the child was going to have a leg amputated. But when I got there we argued, of course. I missed the whole of yesterday, and I didn’t get back till one o’clock this morning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He empties his glass in one and pours himself another glass. Again he praises the food, but she knows that there is nothing to praise about tuna casserole. It is nice of him, but not necessary. They move into the living room and he reclines back into the sofa. She takes the armchair and sits opposite him, and then he points to the gilt-framed photograph on top of the piano.

  “Your parents?” She nods.

  “They were born in this town, and they lived and died here. They’re both buried in the local cemetery, side by side.” He sits forward now.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  About what? she wonders. About parents who had neither the means nor, in the case of her father, the desire to escape their working-class lives? Who never recovered from the shock of their eldest child going off to university in another town? Who resented their youngest child for having the temerity to abandon them and go and seek her fortune in London among the lights? How did she feel? She didn’t feel that she owed them anything, but she couldn’t deny that she had come running home when her own life had collapsed. She had, in essence, returned to their world, albeit with council houses sold off, Indians controlling the local economy, and new town houses that cost six figures for those who worked in the technology sector. Were her parents to step from their graves and re-enter this world, theirs would no longer be a town that they would recognise. She looks at her guest, and then she returns her gaze to the photograph of her parents. What she cannot tell this man is the degree to which she despises that which has been bequeathed to her. The genetic stain. Cowardice.

  It is late. A kiss hangs in the air, but he seems incapable of leaning over and taking it.

  “I think I’d better go now, before Mrs. Johnson slams and bolts the door on me.” He stands. They have talked about music. They have talked about travel, and about how he loved to ride the trains on Inter-rail both during and after college. Every summer he did this, skipping from Germany to France, from France to Holland and so on, moving around as the mood took him. Geoff Waverley had experienced many adventures on the road, though none, as far as she could tell, of the amorous variety. She hears the words before she has time to sort and arrange them.

  “You don’t have to go. You’re more than welcome to stay here.” Her eyes light upon the clock on the mantelpiece. Again she speaks. “It’s still reasonably early.” He is standing by himself, marooned. She feels uncomfortable leaving him in this position and so she too stands. She faces him, but it is he who reaches out and takes her hand.

  “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

  “Doing what?” she asks.

  They lie side by side. She stares at the ceiling, but his eyes are closed. She lied about her age when he complimented her.

  “Fifty,” she said. “Is that too old?”

  He laughed in a manner that let her know that her question was absurd. And then he fell silent and closed his eyes, while she stared at the ceiling. She can feel the surge of guilt begin to course through his stiffening body. She considers putting on some music, or opening another bottle of wine so that they can both have a drink. However, she knows that to leave the bed will break the spell. Sharing his body is one thing. Sharing his thoughts is clearly another thing altogether. And then he rolls over onto his shoulder and he faces her.

  “I’ve got to go.” Her eyes meet his and she nods. “My head,” he says. “It’s spinning and I’ll just keep you awake all night.”

  “I understand.” She strokes his face. “I had a good time. Thank you.” He smiles and then in one movement he rolls away from her and sits on the edge of the bed. She turns her back on him to give him some privacy, and she stares at the blank wall.

  The next day she leaves a note for him in his pigeonhole. A simple note, thanking him for coming over to dinner and wondering if he is free this weekend. She reads and rereads the note a dozen times before folding it and putting it into an envelope. The sealed envelope she places between memos and other mail, most of which looks to be of little import. In the staffroom she makes an extra effort to be polite to those she encounters. However, she informs a disappointed Sally that she will not only have to miss next week’s game, but tennis will have to be indefinitely postponed because of her private music lessons. Sally has already anticipated this, although she does her best to seem both surprised and disappointed. Clearly Sally wishes to keep things amicable.

  “You’ll let me know when things change, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” she says. And so the day begins. It is her heavy teaching day. No free periods, and three classes of beginners. Before the cutbacks there used to be a part-time music teacher to steer the younger classes through recorder lessons and basic music appreciation, but now she has to endure the discordant tones of “Green-sleeves,” and tolerate their blank faces
as she explains the difference between a concerto and a symphony. Boy groups, they understand. Girl groups, they understand. Rap. Hip-hop. But this generation has finally forced her to accept the possibility that the pleasures of the classical world are in danger of becoming extinct. After her last class she gathers up her books and then finds some extra chores to do in the classroom. In due course, having exhausted all possible tasks, she makes her way along the semi-deserted corridors to the staffroom. She looks first in her box, but there is no note. And then in his, where her note, together with his other mail, has disappeared. She is dumbfounded. She feels the sap of rejection rise in her throat, but not wishing to be discovered lingering by the mail boxes she turns quickly and walks away.

  The following afternoon she goes again to her box. He has had the whole of the previous evening to frame his rejection letter, but there is nothing. Only a letter from the union demanding dues, an invitation to apply for cheap travel insurance, and a note from a parent explaining why Jenny Sommerville will be away for the next three weeks. But nothing from Mr. Waverley. She is tempted to rifle through his box in an attempt to discover any clue as to his silence, but on reflection she decides to quickly pen him another note and leave it for him to discover. In the staffroom only the two new games teachers linger. She sits at a table and writes quickly, urging her friend to contact her. She feels uncomfortable, but she desires no awkwardness between them. Almost anything else she can tolerate, but not awkwardness. She considers making a plea based on the fact that they work together, but she decides against this. After all, he is a supply teacher and he will soon be leaving. She plays the awkwardness card and leaves it at that. As she gets to her feet Sally bursts into the staffroom. She apologises to the games teachers for keeping them waiting. Clearly she is going to help out, probably with hockey practice. Then Sally sees her former tennis partner.