The Lessons

by Naomi Alderman

  At 9.30, a message, much delayed and much regretted, but Mark would not come. Stuck in Dorblish, he said, with Si’s family. And we sighed and said how like Mark, how typical. Except perhaps I saw a flicker of annoyance cross Simon’s face, but he ordered another bottle and more crisps and more nuts.

  The conversation lulled and grew stiff. There were awkward pauses. Franny smoked cigarette after cigarette and Emmanuella stole from her pack, and when she said, ‘These are not as good as Mark’s cigarettes,’ Franny said, ‘Then why don’t you …’ and then paused and said, ‘Bloody Mark. Getting us all here and not showing up.’ And we agreed and muttered that it was all Mark’s fault.

  We drifted away from the bar just after 10. The last few minutes had been better, brighter, after I’d said I needed an early night – school teaching, you know – and I knew that the others had been thankful to get away too. We promised to stay in touch, to see each other more often, but without Mark I could not imagine how it would work. He had been the centre, the one who bound us together, because beside him we seemed more similar to each other. Without him, Emmanuella was too rich, and Franny too opinionated, and Simon too shallow. Without him, we were just a scattering of people.

  Jess and I went home together, and I felt so relieved and so full of gratitude that of all these people she was the one I could go home with. I held her hand as we walked to the station, and I thought, if I had to choose again, right now, from the beginning, I would still choose her.

  I suppose that some men might have broken with Jess after what happened with Mark. Those men might have joyfully explored the possibilities now laid before them without shame or hesitation. But I had never been such a man – so open to myself, so tolerant of my own person, so optimistic that life was bound to bring me joy. There are other men, more like me I think, who would have confessed all to Jess, put themselves in her hands, begged for forgiveness and understanding. I have more difficulty in explaining why I did not do this. I think the meagre truth is that I was too frightened to tell her. I couldn’t imagine how she’d react. And, more than that, I was frightened by the idea of who I might be without her. She was the very centre and focus of my life, she was my rudder. I feared leaving her as I might have feared travelling without possessions or money to a distant land where I knew neither any living soul nor a single word of the native language, with no passage home.

  This is not wise. To hang one’s life so completely on another person is not sensible. But it’s a line written in my character, like a vein of metal scribbled through a stone. I cannot love in any other way than this, so it is for me to choose whom I love with care. Or can one choose at all? But Jess is a good person; she never hurt me intentionally, and this is quite a thing to say about another human being.

  In any case, I had not spent my time miserably. Jess and I both had new jobs. Teaching kept me busy most of the time. Jess’s work with the orchestra kept her out late, and occasionally travelling, so that we were constantly experiencing joyful reunion. We had our little flat to decorate and domestic life to arrange. And we had each other finally, alone at last. Any fear in me that my desire for Jess might have evaporated was utterly dissipated within a day of moving into our new flat. We made love in our own home, under our own sheets, with our belongings still half in bags and boxes around the bedroom and in the hall. My desire for her was still as strong as ever, my pleasure in her body as intense. And so it continued from then on.

  Only sometimes I would think about that night in the kitchen with Mark and a kind of longing would overcome me so that I thought I might fall to my knees. It was a longing filled with self-loathing, with desperation and embarrassment and fear. Like a whiff of solvents, it stunned for a moment and then evaporated. Or sometimes I would hide in the toilet and just think around those events, breathing, feeling them, until the thoughts overwhelmed me. I didn’t know what to do with these feelings, so I cut them off from the rest of my life. It’s an easy trick to master.

  So perhaps it was down to me as much as any of us that ‘the gang’ didn’t get together. I didn’t want to see Mark, didn’t want to be reminded.

  It was Jess who arranged such reunions as there were. Franny was our most frequent visitor; she often came down from Cambridge to sleep on our sofa, eat mushroom pie in front of the telly, drink red wine and tell tall tales of Cambridge dons. Emmanuella we saw nothing of. She sent us a videotape of the arts and culture programme she presented, but, as it was in Spanish, we could do no more than verify her identity.

  Simon was always sending apologies. We didn’t want to see him and Franny together, not any more, so Jess suggested dinners in town, evenings out, a play or two – although plays and dinners and evenings out were always contaminated by the memory of Mark’s money. With new friends, we didn’t feel ashamed to suggest supermarket pizza and a video. With Simon or with Franny or with Emmanuella, we all wondered why it could not be a Maison Blanc supper or the stalls at an opening night.

  Simon, in any case, rarely turned up. Dinners would be cancelled because he had to fly to Aarhus, weekend pub lunches postponed because he was needed in Berlin. There was one stilted and awkward evening of drinks with Simon and his latest girlfriend, Frieda. She had hair like Franny, corkscrew curls with a centre parting, and had similarly angular, dark-framed glasses. She wasn’t Franny, though. She didn’t understand our jokes, declared herself completely uninterested in politics, and was faintly amused by Simon’s protestations that ‘everything’s politics’. Their relationship didn’t last long. The next time we heard from him, he cheerfully told us she’d buggered off back to Switzerland and he wouldn’t mind except he knew he’d never get his skis back.

  As for Mark, for a long time there was silence. After Oxford, after graduation, nothing. We learned, via an obituary in the paper, that he had lost his father and thus come into more money than he could hope to spend in a dozen lifetimes. We tried to contact him, to express our sorrow, but our phone calls and letters went unanswered. Eventually, though, there were postcards. First, after the failed pub trip, a picture of a bull, horns down, from Seville. He was sorry, so sorry he’d let us down. He’d shut up Annulet House, was travelling, but he’d see us soon, he promised, soon. I hoped he was wrong and said nothing. A few months later, Franny reported a postcard from Argentina, telling how he had made special friends with a gaucho. Later, Emmanuella said she’d had a letter from him postmarked Stockholm, but describing some adventure at the races in Hong Kong. A few months after that, Jess and I had another postcard. It was from Venice, a picture of a line of the key-like structures on the prows of gondolas. On the back was written:

  Darlings –

  Can’t see a gondola without thinking of you both. Punting, strawberries, champagne etc. Young love. Writing this, I want to be with you now, snuggled between you in a punt, like three bugs in a bed. Missing you both. Especially Jess. And especially James.

  Best love,

  M.

  Jess laughed when she read this, and stuck the card into the frame of the mirror in our hallway. A few days later, when she was out, I took it down. I turned it over in my hands, reading the words again, tracing the curves of the letter M with my fingertip. I ripped it up and threw it in the outside bin. When Jess wondered what had happened to it, I shrugged and said nothing and thought, if I stay very still, perhaps life will ignore me.

  Jess and I found new friends in any case. I was by this time working as a maths teacher at a private school for boys in west London. Some of the other teachers were pleasant company. One, Ajit, reminded me of Simon with his constant talk of ‘going on the pull’. He used to say, ‘You and your missus, it’s like you’ve been married twenty years,’ and this pleased me. Jess’s friends from her orchestra often found their way back to our flat after rehearsals, and we settled into a habit of hosting boisterous Sunday night suppers. Because she was often out late, I learned to cook, and found that I enjoyed it. The role-reversal pleased me, the surprise of being the one to pull a
whole ham, fragrant and juicy, or a massive glistening lasagne from the oven to feed a tribe of musicians. I came to enjoy the girls’ sighs of, ‘James, if you weren’t taken, I’d marry you myself,’ as they dug their spoons through the glittering sugar crust of an apple pie or ladled out piping-hot servings of creamy rice pudding, aromatic with cinnamon and raisins.

  They spoke a secret language to which I did not have access, these musicians. They burst into impromptu song, discussed conductors and techniques I’d never heard of, demonstrated bowing techniques using a loaf of French bread and a butter knife. But it was fine. At night after they left and when Jess and I were lying in bed together, she would curl up under my arm and enquire, into my chest, whether I had minded their noise, how late they had stayed. And I would shake my head and tell her that, no, I had enjoyed myself, would be happy to cook for them again next week. And she would snuggle closer.

  And this was my life; it was perfectly satisfactory within the limits of what was possible.

  I don’t know whether I would ever have changed anything of my own volition. I suspect not. I was two years out of university but my pleasant life still felt so tenuous to me, and so fragile, that I could not imagine disturbing it by choice. Better to walk a narrow path, to enjoy what was offered, not to seek for more. I might have remained like that forever, I think, if allowed to do so. But even if we wish to remain stationary, the world around us turns and so we move too. And thus, one Sunday afternoon, as I was waiting for Jess and her friends to return from rehearsals I had a phone call. A leg of lamb was roasting in the oven, the smell of caramelized onions and tenderizing meat beginning to pervade the house with mellow savouriness. I picked up the receiver. I expected it was Jess, calling to say they’d be late.

  ‘James? Is that you?’

  It was Mark. My stomach dipped and swirled. I thought, how ridiculous, how utterly absurd, that I should still be afraid now at the sound of his voice.

  ‘James,’ he said. ‘James?’

  I made my voice cold and hard.

  ‘Yes, Mark, how are you?’

  ‘James,’ he said, ‘mate, congratulate me. I’m getting married.’

  I said, ‘Married?’

  He laughed, a little chuckle in the back of his throat, and all at once I could see him, as I had not seen him all these years.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘it’s wild. I’m getting married. Guess who to?’

  ‘Who?’

  He paused, and I knew that he was smirking, as he always did before saying something shocking.

  ‘Nicola,’ he said.

  ‘Nicola?’ I said. ‘Nicola who?’

  He made a mock-sigh.

  ‘Nicola,’ he said. ‘Simon’s sister Nicola.’

  15

  ‘Simon’s hopping mad. Absolutely bloody hopping mad.’ Franny nodded, agreeing with herself, poured another glass of wine and went on, ‘He’s every right to be. Mark’s done a real number on his parents.’

  ‘Mark can be very impressive if he tries,’ Jess said evenly.

  ‘Too bloody right,’ said Franny. ‘Too bloody right. All those houses and money, very impressive. I mean, what the hell is he playing at?’

  The anger in her was tight-coiled, as if Mark had done her some personal injustice.

  ‘You think he’s definitely serious?’ asked Jess.

  Franny picked at her casserole and took a swig of wine.

  ‘Simon thinks he is. Simon’s parents think he is. Bloody hell, more importantly Nicola thinks he is.’

  ‘It’s not some kind of joke, is it?’

  ‘What, playing a joke on Nicola? God, even Mark couldn’t be that cruel, surely?’

  She lit a cigarette without asking our permission. I surreptitiously pushed a window open as I carried the plates through into the kitchen.

  When I came back out, Franny was sitting on the sofa, one foot curled under her, saying, ‘He can’t get back from Chile for two weeks. He’s trying to talk some sense into his parents in the meantime, but they’re not listening.’

  Jess said, ‘Has Simon mentioned that Mark’s gay? Surely that’s the clincher.’

  Franny tutted and sighed.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. He says he’s changed. And they’re old enough to go, “Oh, yes, that’s how it works. Everyone’s a bit gay when they’re young and then they grow out of it.” ’

  She shrugged and stubbed her cigarette out in the earth of a pot plant.

  I breathed in and out, controlling the slight flutter in the pit of my stomach.

  I said, ‘Couldn’t he have? Changed?’

  ‘Changed? Can you really see Mark ever changing? You know what he’s like. It’ll be marriage this year and then next year, I don’t know, water polo. God, how can Simon’s family possibly buy it?’

  We sat for a minute or two in silence. I contemplated how differently Franny felt about Mark now, compared to our time at university, when she had been his staunchest ally. I wondered what he could have done to her. Perhaps it was simply what he had done to everyone – ignored us, fallen out of contact, moved on with his life of wealth and privilege.

  After a little while, Jess said, ‘Don’t forget about Leo. I’m sure they still remember.’

  We fell silent again. It was so easy to forget that about Mark, now that he no longer went about reminding us. He had once, actually, saved someone’s life.

  Franny poured another glass of wine.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, they’d believe anything he said, wouldn’t they?’

  I brought in dessert, a pavlova, and cut it into large wedges, the strawberries bleeding into the meringue and cream. We picked at it. None of us had much of an appetite.

  Jess said, ‘What does Emmanuella think? Do you know?’

  Franny nodded, swallowing.

  ‘Spoke to her yesterday. She doesn’t believe it, thinks it’s some kind of wheeze of Mark’s. She laughed when I told her. She thought it was that English humour she doesn’t understand.’

  ‘Is she coming back? For the wedding?’

  Franny raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, what wedding? There can’t really be a wedding. She’s seventeen, for fuck’s sake. She was supposed to go to college next year but now she’s saying that, no, she’ll go and keep house with him.’

  Jess, becoming more mild as Franny became more ferocious, said, ‘She’s quite religious, after all. They believe in that sort of thing.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s another bloody thing. Now she’s suddenly converting. Roman Catholicism. So yes, I’m sure they won’t use contraception and then there’ll be a whole brood before long. That’s if he doesn’t get distracted and jilt her for some bloke.’

  As she lit another cigarette, I noticed that her hands were shaking.

  Later, after we’d finished the meal, Franny returned to the question again, this time pushing it from another direction. She was more drunk, more calm.

  ‘Perhaps it is a joke. Maybe they’re both in on it: she’s just about smitten enough to participate in any tease with him. He’s probably terribly amused to imagine us all having anxious conversations like this about him.’

  There was a long pause while we contemplated how like Mark it would be: something to have us all talking about him.

  Franny was lying on her back on the carpet now, staring at the ceiling, balancing her wine glass with one hand on her chest. There was an expression of dissatisfaction on her face, a twist of the mouth as if she had tasted something which disgusted her.

  She said, ‘It’s not a joke. I know it’s not, not really.’

  She spoke so quietly that it was difficult to hear her, as if she herself did not want to hear her own words.

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ she said again. ‘This is what he’s always wanted and he’s found a way to get it.’

  She sat up and leaned against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. She dug the fingers of one hand deep into the pile of the carpet. Her hands were quite pale and her face set. She looked up at the cei
ling.

  She said, ‘This is what he’s been looking for, you know? You remember how much he loved being on the farm with Simon’s family, how much he wanted to be part of that kind of Englishness? That wholesome, salt-of-the-earth, country lifestyle? Like the bloody Hay Wain. Well, he’s found a way to step into the painting. He’ll marry Nicola, they’ll be blissfully happy, he’ll supply the money, she’ll supply the homeliness, it’ll be perfect.’

  She took another swig from her glass.

  ‘I’m only surprised he never thought of marrying you, Jess. Only I expect you wouldn’t have gone for it.’

  Jess, speaking softly, said, ‘Surely … I mean, he’s never even slept with a girl, has he?’

  Franny ran her finger round the wine glass. She swirled the dregs, staining the bowl of the glass.

  ‘I slept with him.’ She drained the glass. ‘More than once actually. It was quite good – very vigorous, if you know what I mean – so he can’t be completely, well not exclusively. I mean, he seemed to enjoy it, it wasn’t as if there was any coercion involved.’

  She tipped back her head and gave a short barking laugh then, hiccuping, began to cry.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, in heaving gasps. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean … I’m sorry.’

  Jess knelt down on the carpet next to Franny and put her arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Shhh,’ she said, ‘shhh. It’s OK, it’s OK.’

  Jess stroked her hair and after a while Franny gulped and brought her tears to an ebb.

  We helped her to the spare room, drunk and staggering as she was, and at the doorpost she wished us goodnight. Leaning against the jamb, she said, ‘It’s not that I thought it would be me, you know. I was never so stupid as that.’

  Jess smiled. ‘We know.’

  And Franny went to bed.

  In the kitchen, washing up, we said little. I stood at the sink, washing and rinsing mechanically, handing the plates to Jess to be dried, thinking all the time of how little I had known of Franny in the past few years. We had shared a house, I had known the little intimate details of her daily life: that at times of stress she could eat a whole jar of Nutella with a spoon, that she and Simon used condoms not the Pill, that she suffered from a day a month of agonizing period pain. I had known all this, but not this thing we shared. Or might have shared. Or would have shared if he had wanted me as he’d evidently wanted her. As I washed and scraped and soaked, I imagined Franny and Mark together. I did not want to imagine this but, once I had thought of it, I found myself unable to turn my inner eyes away.