The Body Lies

by Jo Baker

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Meryl put her hand on his arm, gave it a squeeze.

  “Dude.” Tim got up, gestured for a hug; Nicholas didn’t get up. Tim just stood there, clasped Nicholas’s shoulder, rubbed it. He said, “Ah, man,” and went back to his seat.

  “You’ve signed up for the wrong course,” Steven said. “This is fiction.”

  “Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “Let’s think about process here.”

  I talked then, probably the longest I’d ever spoken uninterrupted in class. About the decisions we make when we are writing. About what we choose to include and what we choose to exclude, when summoning stories out of the ether or digging them up from the past. About subjectivity. About emphasis, lexis, point of view, voice, tone. About how our own experience influences all those decisions. That though our material might differ it was a difference like the difference between sandstone and limestone, say, and that we’re all still always using the same tools to shape it.

  “So, what you’re saying is that it’s still fiction, even though it isn’t actually fictional?” This was Steven.

  “I’d say it’s still a novel. Or it will be. Or it could be. And that this is exactly the right place to work on that.”

  I looked to Nicholas, but he was slouched in his chair, not making eye contact with anyone. That was the experiment, then; that was what hadn’t been done before. To write a novel using only what had happened. To write a novel that’s the truth.

  “Hadn’t you better rein it in a bit though, mate?” Richard asked, all faux bonhomie now. “Can’t be doing you much good.”

  “I said that it was true,” Nicholas said. “I didn’t say that it was good.”

  I turned my wrist conspicuously to look at my watch. “We’d better move on. Let’s take a look at Karen’s new story.”

  Karen’s story was about a woman who fell in love with owls. It started when her eye was caught, in a charity shop, by a ceramic ornament of a snowy owl sitting on a branch. The detail beguiled her: the grain of the feathers and the glint of the eye and the small blue flowers round the base. It was only a pound, so she bought it, brought it home and set it on the mantelpiece, and would stand looking at it, tilting it and turning it the better to admire it. Then she saw owl-shaped cushions in Primark, and she got these too, but couldn’t decide between the colours, so ended up buying all four. Then she found an owl scarf, and a sweater with owls on it, and gloves, knickers and socks. There were earrings and a necklace. Then there was owl-print bed linen, and an owl rug, and then curtains for her bedroom. And it still was not enough. Or not quite right. In fact it was all wrong. These things in the shape of owls, or decorated and patterned with owls: they were tawdry, cartoonish representations; they were an offence to the natural dignity of owls. She stripped off her jewellery and her scarf and socks and dressed with satisfaction in cream and beige and brown; she couldn’t settle in her owl-stuffed sitting room and couldn’t even consider going up to her bedroom, which was a travesty, festooned with owl-printed fabric. Instead she climbed into the shrubbery at the end of the garden, and started to fashion herself a nesting site. She lined it with dryer-fluff and cushion-stuffing and shreds of fabric, having ripped up her offensive soft furnishings. That was quite tiring, and she was sleepy at work all the next day, and so when she got home from the office she climbed into her comfy roost and dozed in the sunshine. That was enough for her while it was summer—brain fog at work and then snoozy afternoons in the shrubbery—but then in September she slept all through the afternoon and evening and when she woke, it was dark. She was chilly but she felt good. In fact, she felt awake, alert, more alive than she had in years: and she felt hungry. Then a mouse ran past and, well, that was that.

  “Does she start coughing up pellets next?”

  “No.”

  “Does she learn to fly?”

  “No.”

  “So what happens next?”

  “Nothing happens next,” Karen said. “That’s where the story ends.”

  “It’s a bit mad,” Steven said.

  “No madder than my werewolves,” Meryl pointed out.

  “No, no madder than that,” Steven agreed.

  It was five to the hour. “You know what, let’s draw things to a close there. Plenty to think about for next week.”

  They left in their little factional clots, and I packed up my stuff, then locked up. I felt like a kid riding a too-big bike, teetering on the edge of disaster the entire time. I’d forgotten to nag Tim about his work; we still hadn’t seen anything from him. But that seemed a small concern, next to what was going on with Nicholas. Everything he’d been through. I couldn’t fathom it. But then, maybe, that was the point of his writing. To sound out the depths, to map this darkness.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, I spotted Mina in a swirl of teal-blue military-style coat, striding in long black boots. I ran to catch up with her. Our breath plumed. The rain was mizzling, half-hearted, cold.

  “Can I buy you a coffee and pick your brains?”

  She shuddered. “Oh that expression. But coffee though.”

  The college bar was empty. We sat down on the creaky vinyl stools, and she selected a little paper tube of sugar and shook the contents down.

  “This is more of the same or something new?”

  “Well, I sent the protocol document round, and didn’t get a peep back from them; you’d think that was all good. But then Nicholas produces a piece and he gives a trigger warning, which is just right because the stuff is dark. But it’s about grief, really; self-destruction, the psychology of bereavement. But Steven, the old fellow, he has a proper go, about the fact of there being a dead girl in it, and I don’t know if he’s being deliberately obtuse and disingenuous, or really means it. And then Nicholas said that he only writes what happened. He only writes the truth.”

  We both watched the spill of sugar grains into her coffee and I realised that when I’d brought her coffee before I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Did you call bullshit on him?” she asked.

  “Eh?”

  “The more a writer says ‘It’s all true’ the more inclined I am to think I’m being messed with.”

  “He has a scar, through his eyebrow. This was about how he got it.”

  “Yeah, but what about ‘How the Leopard Got His Spots’? That’s not true. In fact it hardly bears looking at.”

  I nodded, uncertain, and sipped my coffee.

  “Look,” she added. “Obviously I don’t know this kid. But it seems to me that he’s probably playing some tricksy postmodern game. It must be that or he’s totally naïve. The truth!” She chuckled, shook her head.

  “I don’t think he’s totally naïve.”

  “Well, there you go then. It’s bullshit and he’s messing with you.”

  I loved Mina, I realised. “But, you know. The thing is, I really think he’s processing some trauma. That he’s got a real problem there.”

  “Not your job.”

  “Well, yes, but—it’s happening in my class. So I do need to manage it somehow.”

  “You get too tangled up in this one kid, you’re asking for trouble. You have to protect your time; you have to protect yourself.”

  “I get that. I do. I’m not suggesting anything more than, well, basic kindness, I suppose.”

  “Well, first up, go check if the kid is stickered.”

  “Stickered?”

  “They put a yellow sticker on the kid’s file if there’s a declared mental health issue. Ask Lisa; she can show you.”

  “Nobody told me there were stickers.”

  “It’s not exhaustive: kids don’t have to declare anything if they don’t want to, but they tend to, because then it can be taken into account with exams and whatnot.”

  �
��So if I check his file, and it says there was some tragic event…”

  “No. That information’s actually held confidentially, in Central Records. We just get a sticker.”

  I sat back. “So what you’re saying is, that I can check his file, and if there’s a yellow sticker, I’ll know there’s something I should know about, but I can’t actually know what it is?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Brilliant.”

  LISA DARBY

  DEPARTMENTAL ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER

  Statement

  We don’t let the academic staff into the records store. You’d think they didn’t even know the alphabet, the way they stuff things away any old how. So I fetched the file for her, and waited while she read it in my office. It’s the only way you can be sure you’ll get it back in the right place.

  She flipped through it, seemed kind of puzzled, so I asked her if there was a problem, and she said that she had thought there might be a yellow sticker. I took it back off her and had a look myself. Then I explained to her what the file meant.

  He was not a run-of-the-mill postgraduate student. His A-level results were all spaced out. That means he had to re-sit. Probably a crammer, because he didn’t just scrape by; he got As, eventually, and then had gone on to Oxford, but had only got a third. And that was five years after the A levels were all done. No mention of what he’d done in the intervening years.

  To me, that kind of pattern indicates a student who’s got problems and money, I told her. Poor kids mess up like that, they crash out and they don’t keep on getting hauled back in. Re-sits, Oxford, and now a postgraduate degree with us: that’s tens of thousands of pounds in fees alone.

  We don’t usually take applicants with a third; we do stipulate 2:1 or first. The student would need to be exceptional, or there’d have to be extenuating circumstances. The decision would have been made by Professor Michael Lynch, who was in charge of admissions at the time, on the basis of a portfolio of existing work. I took a quick look for her, but there was no portfolio on file: we don’t have the storage to keep everything.

  She was telling me, meanwhile, about how he was writing some pretty dark stuff, and how she’d had a request from him about trigger warnings in relation to other people’s work. Around forty per cent of our creative writing students have declared mental health issues, and those are just the ones that choose to let us know, so I wasn’t overly surprised. I suggested she tell him to get in touch with Student Services. We have trained counsellors on staff. It’s their job to help.

  And that was it. She went on her way, and I went to re-shelve the file. I looked at his photo. Striking-looking lad; clearly had everything going for him. But you never really know, do you, what’s going on with other people. You can’t tell by the shiny wrapping what’s really inside.

  After that, I emailed her the Safeguarding and Harassment Policy document. She should have had it in her welcome pack, but turned out nobody had remembered to give her a welcome pack. We’re understaffed. It’s not surprising that these things get overlooked.

  Safeguarding and Harassment

  The University has a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment. Harassment may be defined as discrimination, verbal or physical abuse, or inappropriate behaviour towards an individual, on any grounds, including but not limited to gender, gender-identity, race, sexuality and religion. Harassment must be reported, in the first instance, to the relevant Head of Department.

  The University has a proactive policy towards safeguarding. Members of staff have a duty of care towards each other and towards students and a duty to report any concerns regarding safeguarding, in the first instance, to the relevant Head of Department.

  To this end, the University actively discourages physical relationships between staff and students. Any such relationship must be reported at the earliest opportunity to the staff member’s Head of Department, and be noted in both the staff member’s and the student’s file. The individual student shall not then be taught or their work assessed by that member of faculty from that point until the end of their studies.

  In all instances where a safeguarding or harassment complaint is made, the relevant Head of Department will act as a first contact and liaison between the individuals concerned. Only if a resolution cannot be reached to all parties’ satisfaction will the complaint be referred onwards to the Faculty Disciplinary Committee.

  * * *

  —

  I rounded the corner to find myself on a collision course with Scaife. He stopped dead in front of me, one hand extended towards me, offering me a smile, asked how the teaching was working out, how the teacher training was working out, how my writing was going, how my son—it was a son, wasn’t it?—was settling in at nursery. I started to answer his first question, but he was already nodding and drawing breath for the second, and before I’d finished a sentence on that, he was on to the third. I realised he didn’t actually want to hear what I had to say; he just wanted a brief, positive remark from me, so he could move on to the next thing, and the next, and then have done. I supposed that this was him mentoring me. I provided the brief, positive remarks, and then, speaking over his next enquiry only because I had to, I mentioned the desperate hurry I was in and he said, “Of course, of course,” and turned three quarters so I could slide past him. I went to go by, but then he put his long fingers on my arm.

  “Oh, but just one other thing.”

  I managed not to look at the hand. I stared up instead at the open pores across his cheeks, his pale-lashed eyes.

  “Yes?”

  I felt the pressure of his hand. The nerves tingled all the way up my arm and into my neck and all the way down to my fingertips. I wanted to shake it off, get off me, get your hand off me, but what I did was stand there, and wait for him to speak.

  “I’ve just had an email from Mike.” Off my blank look: “Mike Lynch.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What it is, is, annoying this, but he was in charge of Admissions, you see. And of course he’s in Canada, and nobody gave it a second thought till now.”

  This was where the “conversation” had been headed all along. I changed my stance, as though settling in to listen, but really to make his hand slide off my arm.

  “It’s good we can all work remotely nowadays,” I said.

  “Ah no, not Mike, he can’t. Not his kind of thing at all.”

  “Don’t they have Wi-Fi in Canada?”

  “Ah well, you see, the thing is—we do have to protect his time.”

  I pushed my hands into my pockets. “His time?”

  “Mm-hmm, yes, so I’m afraid we’re just going to have to shoulder this between us. But it’s the simplest thing in the world. The new software should make it even easier. Just don’t ask me how to navigate around it! Lisa’s your man for that, she’ll show you the ropes. Oh, and you’d better come along to the meeting.”

  “The meeting?”

  “Two o’clock tomorrow, the Gaskell Room. If you could just read through the guidelines before that so you’re up to speed, they’re on the website, on Staff pages, and take a glance at the current batch of applications on the Admissions page. Mike said there were a dozen or so posted there already. I think he must have got an email alert. But you’ll want to get cracking on them; you won’t want to let them build up too much.”

  What I wanted, I thought, seemed to have very little to do with it at all.

  The term continued in that fashion, like a game of Buckeroo. First the lecture series, now Admissions, then an essay to write for my teacher-training course; more and more students’ work to read, another lecture to write and deliver, and then another, and with every new role, more meetings to attend. I managed occasional coffees and grabbed sandwiches with my new colleagues, and mad dashes to pick up Sammy from nursery before they sold him for organ harve
sting. Mark came for half-term but had to bring so much marking with him we still took Sam in to nursery anyway so that we could get our work done. We managed one day out, and a supermarket shop, while we had access to the car. I scattered crumbs for the birds, and we watched them swoop and hop and hustle, watched the blue-and-pink bird swing on its branch.

  From time to time Scaife would pull me into his office and look sincere and ask how I was getting on, and in my brief, positive answers—keen to get away from him before those long fingers landed on me—I tried to tread the delicate line between coping splendidly and inviting him to hoist another bag onto my saddle.

  And so the term went on. And then there was this. No trigger warning. Just this:

  Winter’s Blood

  By Steven Haygarth, LLB

  Midnight, and there was frost on the fields and patches of black ice on a road notorious for its accidents—there were bunches of dead flowers tied to fence posts and telegraph poles, and torn gaps in hedges, like some kind of failed crop. And yet the man drove down the narrow winding lanes at a steady speed, not slowing for the bends but dropping down a gear and heaving the car round them, careless of his safety, and that of other road users, and of his tyre wear. He loosened his silk tie, and unbuttoned his smooth cotton collar. His hand rubbed at his expensive haircut.

  The car—a black Audi RS6 Avant—hurtled round the bend. He was driving too fast for the road conditions, and he should have known that—formal suit, old-fashioned briefcase, the cut of his hair; everything about him indicated he was conservative, careful, considered. But not tonight. Safety did not seem to be of any concern to him right now. At this time of night the valley roads were usually deserted and he was counting on that being the case. He rounded a bend, and at that moment, a fox stepped out into the road, and the man did not hesitate or swerve, he just drove on. The Audi hit the fox on the shoulder and sent it spinning back towards the verge to die there, in the cold grass, its mouth trickling blood.