Mr. Commitment

by Mike Gayle

  She examined the worn soles of her scuffed Nike trainers intently before answering. “Since dinnertime, sir,” she confessed quietly. “I asked him out while he was in the dinner queue buying pizza, beans and chips in the canteen.”

  Hearing this tale of devotion, which included remembering details of a beloved’s lunch, was genuinely moving. My eyes flitted down to my watch. It was quarter past six. School had finished nearly three hours ago.

  “I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of a practical joke,” I said, spelling it out in case the penny hadn’t dropped. “Somehow I don’t think Clive’s going to turn up.”

  She turned her head toward me briefly before examining her trainers once again. It was clear she was more heartbroken than embarrassed, her eyes squinting, desperately trying to hold back the tears, and her lips pressed tightly together, attempting to lock in the sobs trying to escape. Eventually, she allowed herself the luxury of a carefully controlled sigh, rose and picked up her bag.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I asked, even though it was obvious that she wasn’t.

  With tears already forming in her eyes, she said, “Yes, sir, I’ll be all right.”

  I watched her all the way to the changing room doors, by which time her grief was audible. Some teachers might have thought no more of her, but not I. Her image remained in my head for some time because in the few brief moments we’d shared, I had realized that Julie Whitcomb was closer in kind to myself than anyone I’d ever met. She was one of us—one who interpreted every failure, whether small or large, as the out-working of Fate’s personal vendetta. Clive O’Rourke’s name would never be forgotten, it would be permanently etched on her brain just as my ex-girlfriend’s was on mine. And at some point in her future, mostly likely after completing her journey through the education system right up to degree level, she’d realize that a life pining after the Clive O’Rourkes of this world had made her bitter and twisted enough to join the teaching profession.

  The sound of a small boy emitting a noise roughly approximating Whhhhhhhoooooooorrrrrraaaaaaahhhh!!! signaled that Kevin Rossiter had changed adrenaline sports and was now racing around the far changing room, naked but for his underpants on his head. I couldn’t begin to fathom his motivation for such a stunt, let alone find the required energy to tell him off this close to the weekend, and so, sighing heavily, I slipped unnoticed into the PE department’s tiny office, closing the door behind me.

  Rooting around in my bag, I discovered my fags, slightly crushed under the weight of my year eights’ exercise books—I had one left. I mentally totted up those that had fallen: five on the way to work, two in the staff room before registration, three during morning break, ten during lunch break. It was difficult to work out which was the more depressing thought: the fact that I—who had only in the last three years made the jump from social smoker to anti-social smoker—had managed to get through enough cigarettes to give an elephant lung cancer or that I hadn’t noticed until now.

  As the nicotine took effect, I relaxed and decided that I was going to stay in my small but perfectly formed refuge until the last of the Little People had disappeared. After half an hour, the shouting and screaming died down to a gentle hubbub and then blissful silence. Pulling the door ajar and using my body to block the smoke in, I peered through the crack to make sure the coast was clear. It wasn’t. Martin Acker was still there. He was dressed from the top down but was having difficulty putting on his trousers, mainly because he already had his shoes on.

  “Acker!”

  Bewildered, Martin scanned the entire room nervously before locating the source of the bellow.

  “Haven’t you got a home to go to?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” he said dejectedly.

  “Then go home, boy!”

  Within seconds he’d kicked off his footwear, pulled on his trousers, pushed his shoes back on, grabbed his things and shuffled out of the changing rooms, shouting “Have a good weekend, sir” as he went through the doors.

  The newsagent’s en route to the tube was manned by a lone fat Asian woman who was busily attempting to serve three customers at once while keeping an eye on two Wood Green Comprehensive boys, lingering with intent by a copy of Razzle, which someone far taller than they had thoughtfully left on the middle shelf. When my turn came to be served, without taking her eyes off the boys, she located my Marlboro Lights and placed them on the counter. It was at this point in the transaction that I got stuck; Twix wrappers, torn pieces of silver paper from a pack of Polos and fluff were the nearest items I had to coins of the realm. The shopkeeper, tutting loudly, put my fags back on the shelf and started serving the man behind me a quarter of bonbons before I even had a chance to apologize. As I brushed past the boys, their faces gleefully absorbing the now open pages of Razzle, I berated myself for not having used my lunch hour more wisely with a visit to the cash machine on High Street. Smoking myself senseless in the staff room had seemed so important then, but now, penniless and fagless, I wished with my whole heart that I believed in moderation more fervently.

  Stepping out into the cold, damp Wood Green evening, gloomily illuminated by a faulty lamppost flickering like a disco light, three women, approaching from my right, caught my attention, due to the dramatic way they froze—one of them even letting out a tiny yelp of surprise—when they saw me. It took a few seconds but I soon realized why these women were so taken aback: they weren’t women—they were girls. Girls to whom I taught English literature.

  “Sonya Pritchard, Emma Anderson, Pulavi Khan: come here now!” I commanded.

  In spite of everything their bodies were telling them, which was probably something along the lines of “Run for your lives!” or “Ignore him, he’s the teacher that always smells of Polos,” they did as they’d been told, although very much at their own pace. By the time they’d sulkily shuffled into my presence they’d prepared their most disconsolate faces as a sort of visual protest for the hard-of-hearing.

  Pulavi opened the case for the defense. “We weren’t doing nothin’, sir.”

  “No, sir, we weren’t doing nothin’,” added Sonya, backing up her friend.

  Emma remained silent, hoping that I wouldn’t notice the furtive manner in which she held her hands behind her back.

  “Turn around, please, Emma,” I asked sternly.

  She refused.

  “Sir, you can’t do anything to us, sir,” moaned Sonya miserably. “We’re not under your jurisdiction outside of school.”

  I noted Sonya’s use of the word “jurisdiction.” Normally I would’ve been impressed by any of my pupils using a word containing more than two syllables, but “jurisdiction” was the type of word only ever employed by characters on shows like Baywatch Nights—which was more than likely where she’d got it from. “Judicature,” however, was the sort of word shunned by TV private eyes, tabloid newspapers and teenagers alike, and definitely would’ve earned her my deepest admiration.

  “Okay,” I said, feigning acute boredom, “if that’s how you want it. But I wouldn’t want to be you on Monday, though.”

  It occurred to me that perhaps I was being a bit of a bastard, after all; they were right, this wasn’t school time and this wasn’t any of my business. The only answer I could think of to defend myself was that being fagless had turned me into a grumpy old sod who enjoyed annoying teenagers.

  “That’s not fair, sir,” moaned Pulavi rather aptly.

  “Welcome to the real world,” I chided, rocking back on my heels smugly. “Life isn’t fair—never has been and never will be.” I turned my attention to Emma. “Now, are you going to show me what you’re hiding or not?”

  Reluctantly she held out her hands in front of me, revealing three cigarettes sandwiched between her fingers, their amber tips glowing wantonly.

  I tutted loudly, employing a carbon-copy “tut” of the kind my mother had used on me for some twenty-five years. All week I’d found myself doing impressions of people in authority: my mother, teach
ers from Grange Hill, Margaret Thatcher—in a vain attempt to stop them from running riot.

  “You know that you shouldn’t be smoking, don’t you?” I scolded.

  “Yes, Mr. Kelly,” they replied in sullen unison.

  “You know these things will kill you, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kelly.”

  “Well, put them out right now, please.”

  Emma dropped the cigarettes—Benson & Hedges, if I wasn’t mistaken—on the pavement and extinguished them with a twisting motion of her heel.

  “I’m going to let you off this time,” I said, eyeing Emma’s shoes sadly. “Just don’t let me see you at it again.”

  “Yes, Mr. Kelly,” they replied.

  I picked up my bag and began to walk off, momentarily feeling like a Rooster Cogburn–John Wayne single-handedly sorting out the baddest gang of desperadoes this side of Turnpike Lane, but after two steps I stopped, turned around and surrendered.

  “Er, girls . . .” I called out. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare ciggy, have you?”

  My good work went up in smoke. I’d balanced my job’s requirement for discipline against my desire for a nicotine rush, and the Cigarette had won. As smokers, my pupils understood my dilemma; that is, once they stopped laughing. Pulavi delved into her moc-croc handbag and offered me one of her Benson & Hedges.

  “You smoke Benson & Hedges?” I asked needlessly, taking one from her outstretched hand.

  “Yeah, since I was twelve,” she replied, her face half hidden by her handbag as she searched for a lighter. “What do you smoke, sir?”

  “Sir probably smokes Woodbines,” joked Sonya.

  “Marlboro Lights, actually,” I replied tersely.

  Pulavi discovered her lighter and lit my cigarette.

  “I had a Marlboro Light once,” chipped in Emma. “It was like sucking on air. You wanna smoke proper fags, sir. Only poofs smoke Marlboro Lights.”

  Once again they all dissolved into fits of laughter. I thanked them and attempted to leave their company but they insisted they were going in my direction. Linking arms, they trailed by my side. I felt like a dog owner taking three poodles for a walk.

  “We’re going up the West End, sir,” said Emma, bustling with energy.

  “Yeah, we’re off on the pull,” added Pulavi, smiling the kind of filthy grin that would have put Sid James to shame.

  “Yeah, we’re going to the Hippodrome, sir,” said Sonya. “D’you fancy coming with us?”

  Their question made me think about going out, not with them of course—that would’ve been unthinkable—but going out in general. I didn’t know a single soul in London, and had nothing planned for the weekend, so it was still some wonder to me why, when a few of the younger teachers in the staff room had asked me if I was free for a drink after work, I’d told them I was busy.

  “You’ve got no chance of getting in there,” I said, shaking my head knowingly, partly for their benefit but mostly because I was still reflecting on the sorry excuse of a weekend I had in store for myself.

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?” squealed Sonya. “We go there every week.”

  “Don’t you think we look eighteen, sir?” asked Emma.

  For the first time during the conversation I recalled what had alarmed me so much in the first moments of our encounter. I knew them to be fourteen-year-olds, but the girls trailing after me were far more worldly than their biological years indicated. Emma had squeezed her frankly overdeveloped chest into a bra top, barely large enough to cover her modesty, matched with a short silver skirt. Sonya wore a lime-green velvet cropped top, combined with an incredibly short blue satin skirt that, whenever she moved her upper body, raised itself an inch higher, instantly revealing more thigh than was strictly necessary. Pulavi had opted for a pair of leopard-print hot pants and a sheer orange blouse, through which her black Wonderbra was clearly visible to the world at large. I was truly mortified.

  I thanked them again for the cigarette and rapidly conjured up a girlfriend I was in a rush to get home to. This was exactly the kind of moment which Fate liked to introduce into my life, to let me know there was still plenty of room for things to get worse before they got better. The girls began giggling and in a matter of seconds reduced my self-confidence to zero.

  As I entered Wood Green tube station I checked my back pocket for my travel card. It wasn’t there. Neither was it in any of my other pockets. Trying not to panic, I rapidly developed Plan B:

  1. Try not to dwell on how much it will cost to replace travel card.

  2. Buy one-way ticket to Archway.

  3. Do not even consider worrying until 7 A.M. Monday morning.

  It was some moments before it occurred to me that Plan B was flawed by the fact that I had only sweet wrappers and pocket fluff to my name.

  It began to rain as I put my card into the cash machine and punched in my PIN: 1411 (the date and month of my ex-girlfriend’s birthday). I checked my balance—£770 overdrawn. The machine asked me how much money I wanted. I requested five pounds and crossed my fingers. It made a number of rapid clicking noises and for a moment I was convinced it was going to call the police, make a citizen’s arrest and eat my card. Instead it gave me the money and asked me in quite a friendly manner—as if I was a valued customer—whether I required any other services.

  On the way back to the tube, I passed Burger King on Wood Green High Street. Emma, Sonya and Pulavi were inside, waving at me animatedly from their window seats. I put my head down and did my best to give the impression that I hadn’t seen them.

  At the station I bought a single to Archway and placed the ticket in the top pocket of my jacket for safekeeping. As I did so, my fingers brushed against something: I’d found my travel card.

  I reached the southbound platform of the Piccadilly Line just in time to see the back of a tube train flying out of the station. I looked up at the station clock to see how long it would be until the next one. Ten more sodding minutes. When it finally arrived, I sat down in the end carriage, put my travel card and ticket on the seat next to me, where I could keep an eye on them, and promptly fell asleep.

  The train lurched into a station with a jolt, awakening me from an incredibly gymnastic dream about my ex-girlfriend. While mentally cursing the train driver for cutting short my reverie, I looked up in time to realize I was at King’s Cross—my stop. I grabbed my bag and managed to squeeze through the gap in the closing doors.

  The second part of my journey on the Northern Line, as always, was uncomfortable. All the carriages were so littered with burger wrappers, newspapers and crisp packets that it was like riding home in a rubbish tip on wheels. The only pleasant event that occurred was the appearance of a group of exquisite-looking Spanish girls getting on at Euston. They chattered intensely in their mother tongue—probably about why the Northern Line was so dirty—all the way to Camden, where they alighted. This seemed to be the law as far as the north branch of the Northern Line was concerned—beautiful people got off at Camden; interesting people got off at Kentish Town; students and musicians got off at Tufnell Park; leaving only the dull, ugly or desperate to get off at Archway or thank their lucky stars they could afford to live in High Barnet.

  Halfway up the escalators at Archway, I searched around in my top pocket for my ticket and travel card. They weren’t there. My hugely expensive one-year travel card was now stopping at all stations to Uxbridge on the Piccadilly Line. I shut my eyes in defeat. When I opened them seconds later, I was at the top and thankfully no one was checking tickets at the barrier. I let out a sigh of relief and thought to myself: Sometimes, life can be unusually kind.

  As I opened the front door to the house, a depressing atmosphere of familiarity overwhelmed me. For five days this had been home. Five days, but it felt like a decade. I pressed the timer switch for the hallway light and checked the mail on top of the payphone. As I put the key in the door to my flat the lights went out.

  A hardcover edition of this book w
as originally published in 2000 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.

  MR. COMMITMENT. Copyright © 2000 by Mike Gayle. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Broadway Books titles may be purchased for business or promotional use or for special sales. For information, please write to: Special Markets Department, Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

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  Visit our website at www.broadwaybooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Gayle, Mike.

  Mr. Commitment / Mike Gayle.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Clapham (London, England)—Fiction. 2. Young men—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6057.A976 M7 2000

  823¢.914—dc21 00-031702

  eISBN: 978-0-7679-1088-0

  v3.0