Septembers

by Christopher Prendergast

  As a trumpet solo blared in my right ear, I saw Annabel watching silently. She was sitting behind the crowd on a set of steps rising up to an exit. Every now and again she was trying to see the performers through the crowd. For the most part she tapped her foot and fiddled with a crystal earring. I watched her give a little yawn as people crossed between us. Someone offered me a wine glass. I waved it away. Laughter sounded in the crowd. A strip of bunting had fallen on the double bass. The player draped it around his shoulders between notes. Annabel stood and walked up the stairs.

  I went to follow but a hand squeezed my arm, pulling me back without letting go. Clapping filled the hall. Greg Cope was standing with several others. I assumed they were teachers also. He released my arm and started cramming cherry tomatoes into his mouth. I told him it was great to see him. Then I asked where the nearest toilet was. He picked some pork from his teeth. I could see Wolfencrantz conversing with a member of the quartet in the background. Greg wouldn’t move.

  ‘They invited you!’ he said eventually. ‘Well I hope there are no hard feelings or anything.’

  ‘I’m not looking for trouble if that’s what you’re asking,’ I said.

  The other teachers were still smiling, looking between us and the empty corners of the room. They thought we were having friendly banter. Maybe we were. Greg began introducing me to them. My chances of catching Annabel before the speech seemed to be dissipating. I froze as Greg explained that I had quite the social conscience. He gave me a wink and continued in a low voice. He said I was ahead of my time in that department. Then he explained that this was a novel thing for a history teacher. One of the others leaned forward with interest.

  ‘Oh, you used to teach in the satellite room.’ She gestured to her friend. ‘He used to teach in our room.’

  I had been wondering who the wallflowers were.

  ‘Yes,’ Greg said, ‘Miss Harris and Miss Killian teach sociology to the sixth formers in that room now. Maybe you could impart some of your wisdom about professionalism and boundaries . . .’

  ‘Greg, I’m really sorry but I have to go.’ I apologised to the others who nodded understandingly. I grabbed Greg’s shoulder last, like we were pals. I told him to remember the ladies were here for a party. He went rigid and a tomato rolled from his plate to the floor. I moved off. The band had diffused into the crowd now. Wolfencrantz was tapping the microphone. Some of the guests gravitated in. A few families were amongst them. I pushed past and went up the stairs. The door was an emergency exit but it had been left ajar. I assumed that Annabel had gone out for a cigarette but I came to the foot of another set of stairs. There were three or four people loitering around. A kid ran down screaming like an air raid siren and headed back through the door, almost smashing into me.

  ‘You came!’

  Annabel was standing with a long-haired man who must have been in his early twenties. He was murmuring something in her ear as she descended the steps to kiss me on the cheek.

  ‘I thought you would throw the invitation away,’ she said, with a hint of sadness in her eyes, ‘but you came.’

  She hugged me again. Annabel explained that she had asked Mandy to send me out an invite. Mandy saw no reason to object. Apparently my dismissal was talked about in hushed tones between teachers in the corridors but it was of little interest to the reception staff. We hugged still. Her neck smelt of a familiar perfume. It was one I had bought her. Eventually I suggested we go up to the balcony for a cigarette. She said the stairs led up there and gave a modest wave to the long-haired man. He eyed us in disbelief.

  The balcony was in fact a small pebble garden. A stream quietly bubbled behind us as we walked. Annabel pulled me towards the edge of the garden, looking for space amongst the smokers. Thick plumes from the cigars rose up into the cooling night air. We were on a precipice that extended out from the side of the hotel. It was amongst the tallest buildings in the city centre. I was giddy. Annabel struggled on the pebbles so she leant over and took off her high heels. She rested against me and I took in some of the fresh air.

  ‘This is nice,’ she said, looking around the garden.

  I helped her to the far wall. Down below us a tram silently came to a stop. The streets were lively. Several queues lined the pavements, edging closer to the neon coves of each club entrance. Annabel squeezed my palm and asked for a lighter. I drew a quick breath and asked whether she had spoken to Corinne. I guessed that she had spoken to Corinne.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her eyes searched my face.

  ‘Well, she emailed me,’ I said.

  Annabel groaned. She wanted to know why. I began scrambling around in my head, trying to make something up. Then she dismissed the notion herself. ‘I don’t even know why I am asking,’ she said. ‘That’s just the sort of thing Corinne does.’

  I took a few seconds to consider what this meant. A bus heaved around the street corner, crossing the tramline. Annabel apologised and softened her voice. Her snap seemed to have been momentary. In fact she leant across and kissed me. Not quite on the lips but close. Then that sad look settled on her again. I said as little as possible.

  ‘I don’t know how much Corinne told you,’ she began, ‘but I moved out of her place two months ago. We had a lot of arguments. You can think the world of people at a certain distance and then . . .’

  I nodded thoughtfully. Annabel looked out to the horizon where dark hills were meeting even darker clouds overhead. She didn’t want to finish her sentence. All the bars and flats looked like they had slid in close to each other, down the sloping hills, to settle in the middle where we were standing, looking back out. She said people liked the view. She said it like she wasn’t one of them. When I asked why she wasn’t impressed herself she didn’t answer but looked down to the pebbles under her bare feet. ‘Did you ever have an idea of who you wanted to be . . . eventually?’ she said. It seemed like an open question so I pushed the cigarette away from her body and kissed her.

  Her arm relaxed and her tongue slid over mine. I felt the pangs of a teenager. There was that innate, soul-crushing loneliness that only Annabel could inspire in me. I clasped her hips and kept her close. When we pulled away I told her that I should have moved in with her when I had the chance. She was direction. She was as close to a map as anything was. I felt for the lines where I could fold her. I ran my hands back to the edges, where I might turn her around. She sighed and her free hand patted the lapels of my jacket.

  ‘You are eager,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

  She turned to look around the garden. It was likely we were missing Wolfencrantz’s speech. I had heard him talk enough though. I looked around and there were only a select few still outside. Standing with his back to the city the man in the pork pie hat showed some interest in our conversation. He pulled the cigar from his mouth and raised it to me.

  ‘Taking a break, are we?’ He winked at Annabel.

  Annabel shrugged at his comment and dismissed him as a weirdo. There was a pause for a few seconds. We strolled to another corner of the garden and I put my hands in my jacket pockets, feeling the cold. She said we had never talked about it. I thought she meant my departure. She meant us.

  I shrugged. I told her that I had got a sense of the way things were. She didn’t add anything to this herself so I asked what had been said at the school after I left. I wondered what stories had gone around. She said that, despite my ability to be an arsehole, the stories didn’t sound like me. Maybe some bits got exaggerated and pulled out of context. That’s only natural, I thought. As a counterpoint, she reassured me that I had always sounded worldly and it appealed to her. She wanted more of it.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s there,’ I said.

  ‘Why did you come tonight?’ she said.

  I didn’t miss my chance this time. I told her I wanted her back. She laughed, shook her head and ran her hand over a nearby fern. I stood waiting for an a
nswer. Not that there is an answer to that sort of statement. Still, why didn’t she say something? Maybe I was floundering again. But I thought I had brought more conviction to the table than ever. Then I remembered how drunk Annabel was.

  She threw her shoes to the floor and dug her feet into the pebbles. There was a clicking and scratching that sounded over her mumbled words. Looking up and down the black strips of the garden she knelt down. At first it looked as if she might be sick, but she didn’t drop entirely. She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. I heard her say, ‘This one will do.’ I didn’t see the size of it but she stood up eagerly, leant back, and hurled a pebble off the balcony.

  She looked back at me to make sure I had seen it.

  ‘How many do you think I can throw until I hit something?’ she said.

  I grabbed her arm. She struggled and walked away.

  ‘How many?’ she said.

  If I didn’t give her a number, there was no telling what she might do. I walked to the edge and looked down. ‘I don’t think you’ll hit anything that matters down there,’ I said.

  At this she pushed in front of me and looked down to the bustling street herself. I wrapped my arms around her waist. She didn’t struggle free but turned into my chest. She kissed my neck and asked if she could come back to the hotel. It was nice to be an escape for her again. I felt her breath against my neck and pulled her in for another kiss.

  The next morning I was sitting in the hotel restaurant. The expressway made a long drawn-out sigh in the background. The high windows looking out seemed optimistic. Car roofs continually rose up and out of sight. My coffee had gone cold. A slew of different tourists appeared in the doorway, at regular intervals, distracting me from the newspaper. When I started to get worried, to doubt it all, Annabel appeared in my T-shirt. It was so baggy on her she had wrapped her hands up in the folds. She sat down with a smile and picked at the mesh through tears in a pair of tracksuit bottoms. A waitress came and offered us another pot of coffee. The waitress leaned between us to take the old one.

  Annabel wasn’t looking for things to go back to the way they were.

  ‘I know,’ I said, smiling.

  2

  ANNABEL WAITED WITH me whilst I checked out. We paused after the automatic doors. I was looking down towards the expressway. She told me where I had to walk to get the train. Then we kissed, sore and sleepy. I walked off in the direction of tram stops and library steps. I was in no rush. It was the same in the train carriage, gliding past fields. I laid a broadsheet out on the carriage table but couldn’t take in any of the articles. The closer the train got to Birmingham, the more I thought about going to see Jaroslaw. I didn’t want to talk about Annabel. I wanted to keep it a secret.

  I phoned him and he steered the discussion straight to a living history workshop that we had been asked to give the following day. I didn’t know about it. My work rota had already fallen by the wayside. We were due to be presenting ourselves as Roman Centurions to a year 6 class at Rubery Hill Primary School.

  ‘You can sleep on my sofa,’ he said. ‘Then we can suit up and go together.’

  I arrived in the evening and he showed me our costumes. He had not long picked them up. He asked about Wolfencrantz, got us both a brandy and offered me some watches he had bought from a market in Budapest. They were all in brown paper bags. Moses licked at the brandy on my hands.

  ‘Thanks for looking after the bugger,’ Jaroslaw said.

  We woke up late the following day. There was an hour till we were due in school. The light through the window nets was stale. It had festered in the room long before I opened my eyes and glimpsed underneath the curtain. I was lying on the sofa with a pillow between my legs. As I mounted the stairs I could see Jaroslaw’s thin shoulders hulked over the bathroom sink. He threw water over his face and looked down at me, the soapy water straining through his beard. He asked the time.

  The shields were part-perspex and the body armour was crafted from tin. As I put on my legionnaire costume I began to feel weighed down. The helmet didn’t quite fit and with too much movement would slide down the back of my head. Despite this the leather straps around my ankles and calves looked exemplary. I went to find Jaroslaw. He was busy combing the horse hair crest on a helmet. His costume seemed to fit him perfectly, with the swell of chainmail pulling in the wide girth of his stomach.

  ‘Quite the officer,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, and . . .’ – he unsheathed my sword and tapped it on my right hip – ‘yours goes here. I have mine sheathed on the left. If we’re going to do this, we might as well do it properly.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ I said, adjusting my belt.

  As I looked at my commanding officer I noticed something not quite right. Amongst the medallions attached to his chainmail there was a small silver coin. I leaned in closer to look at the face engraved into it. I didn’t recognise the smile but there was some writing around it, a date and a name. It was something that belonged in a football annual. The proportions were all wrong.

  ‘Why have you got Les Ferdinand attached to your armour plate?’

  He pulled himself away. ‘I was short a medallion. I had to get a work experience boy to improvise.’ He hurried past me into the hallway. ‘Come on, we’ve only got a few hours. We’ll have to dive straight in. No time for food. The hunger will put you in mind of a march.’

  We paid our fare and mounted our shields in the pushchair space. Jaroslaw sat his helmet on his lap and checked it for nicks or dents. I held onto the bars. When we connected at Five Ways and got onto our train, the carriages were brimful for a few stops either side of the university. Our armour pressed against the students around us. I thought I felt someone grab at my sword and my hand rushed to the hilt. There were a few grins behind me.

  The wind whipped through the gaps in my armour on the wet platform. It was getting colder. The station was almost empty. We were on the edge of the city now. As we walked up onto the road the suburb unfolded on either side, in fits and starts, some streets proudly following the lines of the hills whilst others sank into the slump of estates. The prospect of rain was worrying. It could ruin our venture.

  Using his shield as a windbreaker, Jaroslaw set up camp on a roadside bench and began flicking through an A-Z.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘I think we got off a stop early.’

  I sighed and he closed the book.

  ‘It’s easily fixed. There’ll be another train in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘We’re definitely going to be late,’ I said.

  ‘They won’t care. They only care about the costumes.’

  In the din of the station bridge we crossed towards the opposite platform. We needed to head even further out. As we began a jog, dragging our shields across the concrete, we caught the attention of a group of five or six teenagers who came from the other direction. The eyes of the nearest widened. He smiled to his friends and put up his hood the way Cantona might have lifted his collar. The way Kurt Angle lifts off his stars and stripes T-shirt. I thought about turning back.

  ‘You got the time?’ he said.

  Looking back, that was an excellent set-up for a joke. The time? Well, it’s 43AD. And maybe he was going for it. I could see little through my helmet but the freckles on his nose and a small cut below his right eye. He waited a long time for an answer from me. One of his mates down the corridor spat into the lift doors.

  ‘I said have you got the time?’

  Jaroslaw jumped in before I could muster a breath.

  ‘Does it look like we have the time? We’re in a fucking rush.’

  Anticipating a reaction, Jaroslaw, the honourable and brave, then butted my aggressor out of the way, raised his shield and charged towards the rest of the group. I saw him struggling to unsheathe the sword. Everything unfolded then with a flurry of kicks and punches. I wasn’t in a position to do much to
save him. I was kicked in my side twice and then wrestled to the ground. The kicks were so hard I thought my ribs were cracked. I ended up in the lift doorway, further down the hall, holding my shield up against the kicks and stamping trainers. Our aggressors were joined by others, younger, who stood in the background and goaded me, curled up on the floor. Eventually I managed to fumble for my wallet and throw it out in front of them.

  They checked for notes and cards, spat at me and left the corridor. I crawled into the lift and pressed the button with the hilt of my sword. It was bent out of shape but did the job. Before the doors closed, a hand slipped through and set off the sensor. The doors opened and I was joined in the piss-stained lift by two of the kids who had been watching the fight from a distance. I got to my feet.

  ‘You got a phone on you?’ one of them said.

  The kid was kitted out fairly smartly. He was also indifferent to my struggle to hold myself up against the back wall of the lift.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I pressed the button again, trying to get to platform level. His aide quickly hit the doors open.

  ‘Just let me get to my friend,’I said.

  ‘He fell down the stairs,’ he answered.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  They looked me up and down. They watched me panting and stepped back out of the lift. I almost thanked them as I pressed the button for the platform. I almost nodded graciously.

  Jaroslaw had been held up by the sheer number of bodies around him for most of the fight. That was until his violent flailing had caught one of them on the jaw. They had backed off briefly, then came in again harder, hitting his head against the brickwork of the corridor. After that he was unable to hold his own. I think he had made a lunge for some railings.