The Lessons

by Naomi Alderman

  ‘But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled.’ They made telephone calls, they filed important papers in ring binders, they invited Mark’s mother with all due graciousness. They held each other’s hands throughout. And they came to their reward. This very moment: ‘What God has joined together, let no man put asunder,’ and an eruption of applause.

  As we watched Nicola’s aunt apply powder to her bosom before the photographs were taken, Jess leaned in to me and whispered in my ear, ‘Promise me we’ll never have to do this.’

  I said, ‘I promise.’

  ‘What are you two up to?’ said Franny from behind us. ‘Planning your own announcement?’

  She was a little drunk already and of course it was a wedding, but I wondered when I had last seen her without a drink, or spent an evening with her which she had not ended tottering and staggering. I felt for her, though, remembering what had gone before.

  I said, ‘You needn’t worry about us. We’ll never do it. Jess wants to be free to have affairs and ditch me at a moment’s notice, don’t you?’

  And Jess smiled and said nothing.

  There were speeches later; Mark was less entertaining than he could be, but irreverent and self-mocking. He said, ‘Now that I’ve found Nicola, I’m delighted to announce that no one can accuse me any more of having more money than sense,’ and raucous laughter and scattered applause followed. I was astonished; he had never joked about money before. He made his new bride a little presentation: a gift from his childhood. I knew what it was before she had the box open: the music box, glittering glass and gold, finally finding a suitable home. Nicola and Simon’s father, David, gave a rambling, slightly choked speech, remembering Nicola when she was a little girl and saying how quickly this day had come. I was almost certain I heard someone whisper, ‘A damn sight too quickly, if you ask me.’ Mark gave gifts to the little flower-girls, hoisting them up towards the tiered canopy in his arms, pretending to drop them as they screamed and giggled. He hugged them and planted kisses on their foreheads and Franny, sitting next to me, muttered, ‘Yeah, yeah, Mark, we get it.’

  I had not realized how much of a wedding is show until I saw this one. No one ever wants to look beyond the trimmings on a wedding day, to see the doubts and the insecurities, the compromises and the fears that lie beneath. It is a parade, a theatrical performance in which all lines have been learned in advance. It is a necessary fiction; without our beguiling fictions how would we ever dream grandly or live boldly? We need the trappings as much as the substance.

  I watched Mark’s face during his first dance with Nicola, looking for signs of discomfort or pleasure. There was nothing, though, but a smooth confidence which was so new that I could not help but stare at his face. And I saw as he flicked his eyes from the surrounding tables back to his bride – his wife, how astonishing – and turned the full power of his smile on her. And she, excited, smiled back and moved her head a little towards him, and he moved in towards her. And they kissed. I could not help watching; this was what we had all come to see, after all.

  The dancing turned, soon enough, from sedate and ceremonial to fast and energetic. They played the Macarena and all Nicola’s friends charged forwards, with Mark at their head, to dance, clapping and shimmying and jumping and placing their hands on their hips and swaying. A few of the older relatives began to make their way home. This was not their time any more, after all. Jess knew better than to suggest I’d want to dance; my knee could not bear it. But I sat comfortably while she and Franny joined in with the jumping, staccato throng. Sweat gleamed on Mark’s forehead. Nicola rotated her hips and leapt.

  A short while later, at our table, Franny became definitively drunk. She had found a man, one of Simon’s schoolfriends, and was engaging him in vehement, incomprehensible conversation until she noticed me. She wheeled around in her seat and said, ‘James! At last. I need … you are the one I need to talk to.’

  She had a glass of whisky in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other, and fiddled with her hair so indiscriminately, not caring which hand she put up to it, that she was in constant danger of setting herself alight.

  ‘Oh yes?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and leaned towards me.

  Her dress, a loose wrap of black silk which clung to the curves of her body, had fallen a little too low, so that when she leaned forward her nipples popped over the top. I tried not to look, but my eyes were drawn inexorably back down as they disappeared, reappeared.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘honestly, honestly now, how long d’you think it’ll last?’

  She gestured towards Mark and Nicola with her whisky glass, slopping a few heavy drops over the side. I looked at Mark and Nicola. They were exchanging goodbyes with Nicola’s grandparents: tears and hugs.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It could last a lifetime. It does sometimes happen.’

  Franny gave her short bark of a laugh. Her breasts wobbled and one nipple poked over the top of her dress and stayed there.

  ‘A lifetime! Two years, tops. Maybe a bit more if Nicola pops a sprog.’ She leered at me. ‘But he’ll be back in the cottages within a year, I say.’

  I smiled and said that I could see Jess calling me from the other side of the room.

  On my way across the room, I was caught by Isabella. She was older now, her age was beginning to be unconcealable, her bosom in her sequinned dress was growing crêpey and she herself was strangely vacant. I wondered if she’d taken a tranquillizer to get through the day, as Mark said had often been her habit.

  ‘James!’ she said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Congratulations. You must be very happy.’

  She nodded complacently. ‘It is what I always wished for him.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Nicola’s a lovely girl.’

  ‘After his terrible trouble,’ she said, and looked at me intently, beetling her brows.

  ‘Mmmm.’ I was only half paying attention.

  ‘There was one time,’ she said, plucking at my sleeve, ‘I thought he would surely kill me! Or worse! We consulted an exorcist, you know, in case there was a demon in him. But it was long ago now.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, suddenly intrigued.

  ‘He is safe now,’ she said, ‘safe from all of that.’ And she would not be drawn further on the subject.

  I found Emmanuella sitting at a table, calm and smiling, an undrunk glass of champagne by her elbow and her hand resting on the knee of her dark-skinned, blond-haired boyfriend. She smiled when she saw me, tipping her head to one side and allowing a curtain of hair to fall like water.

  ‘Ola, James,’ she said. ‘Have you met Alfonso?’

  The boyfriend stood up smartly – almost, but not quite, clicking his heels together – and shook my hand. So this was His Excellency Alfonso Urdangarín y de Borbón – a name Jess and I had sniggered at when we spotted it on the table plan.

  ‘Charming,’ said Alfonso. ‘Tell me, is this the house where Mark and Nicola intend to live when they are married?’

  I laughed. This was a country house rented for the occasion by Mark because Nicola had wanted the wedding to be near her family and he had wanted it to be far away from his.

  ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘People often rent houses for the day for their wedding.’

  Alfonso frowned. ‘But I thought …’ He turned to Emmanuella and they exchanged a few short sentences in Spanish. He turned back to me and bowed gravely. ‘I apologize, you are entirely correct.’

  I wondered what would happen if I refused to accept his apology. Rapiers at dawn did not seem out of the question.

  ‘No problem,’ I said. And then, because I could not think of anything else, I said, ‘So … what do you do?’

  He frowned at me and said, ‘Do?’

  ‘Ah,’ I nodded. ‘Right, yes, OK.’

  I made my excuses and moved on.

  I found Jess again, talking to Simon. Or standi
ng next to Simon while he watched the dance floor balefully. I slipped beside her and took her hand. Simon said, ‘Hi,’ and went back to staring at his sister, who was now dancing a vigorous jive with Mark.

  Simon had not brought a girl to the wedding. Instead he was flanked by two tall broad-shouldered farming men, friends from schooldays with dark tans from outdoor work.

  ‘Hello,’ said one, ‘I’m Dick.’

  ‘I’m Richard,’ said the other.

  We shook hands.

  ‘I’ll get the beers in,’ said Richard. Or it might have been Dick.

  ‘Top man,’ said Simon, ‘I’m too bloody sober.’

  Mark and Nicola had taken swing lessons. They were dancing together, eyes wide, mouths open with excitement, feet kicking out to the sides. Mark pulled at Nicola’s hand and spun her energetically three, four, five times.

  Simon said, low and several times, ‘Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.’

  I nodded, unsure what to respond.

  Dick, or it might have been Richard, said, ‘Too true, mate, too true,’ and the other came back with the beers.

  They were all three leaning back in their chairs, tilting as far as they could without falling over. They began to talk while tilting, taking swigs of beer, like commentators at a cricket match.

  ‘I see Amanda is on the pull tonight,’ said one, nodding at a blonde woman in her thirties wearing a short purple dress and matching heels.

  ‘She’ll be after you if you don’t mind,’ said another, and they laughed – deep, humourless laughs.

  My final memory of Mark from that day is of the minutes before their going-away, when he came racing up to me, conspiratorial, pulling on my hand to bring me close to his lips as he whispered, ‘Did you hear? Franny’s thrown up all down the front steps!’

  I looked at him. He was very close to me – so close that I could smell the sharp scent of his cologne and the musky scent of his sweat. His face was that of an excited schoolboy, flushed and delighted. He raised his eyebrows, grinned, and raced off again.

  Jess had to go then, to see to Franny, to help her wash her face, to find a place for her to rest, to get a cab to take her to the hotel. I tried to help too, but Franny was sobbing and swearing, and Jess shook her head at me and mouthed, ‘I’ll come and find you.’

  I thought of her saying, ‘What a painful person Mark must be to love,’ and I nodded and walked away.

  In the main marquee, several teenage couples were kissing each other hungrily on the dance floor, hands under clothes, inside dresses and dress shirts. On the tables, brandy-snap baskets of ice cream were melting into puddles of sticky, milky foam. I took my jacket from the back of my chair, pulled it on and walked out into the cool night air.

  The night was cloudless, the moon paper-bright and high in the sky. The walkways all around were lit by flaming torches. Couples were talking, flirting, snogging. Friends were drinking or sharing a joint. I walked around the lake at the bottom of the hill, where the torches showed a path. After a few hundred yards I passed a clump of bushes where a couple were unmistakably fucking. The branches of the bushes were shaking rhythmically and I could hear the ‘hn, hn, hn’ grunting of the man, the woman’s half-excited, half-pained ‘ah, ah, ah’. I walked past as quietly as I could and if they heard me they gave no sign of it.

  The lake was fed by a thunderously tumbling weir. An overhanging branch trailed across my face and I remembered that it was in a similar spot, far from people, by a river, that I had injured myself so severely that I had never quite risen again. As I walked, the loud crashing water soon blotted out the noise of the party.

  On a wall covered in a soggy sponge of moss, I sat down, stretching my legs in front of me. I found I could not help thinking of Mark. I hadn’t seen a great deal of him in the past months. But when I had seen him I’d felt glad to be his friend. Yes, that was it. Glad to hear the little woes and triumphs of the business of the wedding. A wedding is bound to make the bride and groom seem glamorous. Mark and Nicola had been like movie stars today; one could not help wanting to be close to them. That was it, too.

  But this thinking could not hold. I began, almost without willing it, to observe my own thoughts. And I laughed. I could not help it. I sat in the roaring silence of the weir and laughed like a madman. What a pathetic thing to realize. What a stupid thing to want. How typical of myself I always was. For it had become suddenly clear to me, horrifically and hilariously clear, that I was in love with Mark.

  18

  At first, I simply kept on saying no. No, I said, to the mirror in the mornings, no I won’t. No, I said, to my mind when its thoughts strayed, and they did stray, and they would not cease from straying. No, I said to Nicola when she called from the country and said would we come for a weekend, it’s so beautiful this time of year. And she was a child, just a child really, and could not keep the hurt from her voice when I kept on saying no and no and once again no. No, I said, to Jess when she said wouldn’t it be nice, Nic and Mark were in town, wouldn’t it be lovely to see them for dinner? No, I said, I don’t want to. And I felt like a child, sticking out my lower lip, offering no further explanation but no, and no, and no.

  ‘I don’t understand why you won’t, that’s all.’

  Jess was packing. She spoke in her calm and sensible voice.

  ‘I just don’t want to.’

  I knew it would seem I was being unreasonable.

  ‘If you don’t want to tell me I suppose you don’t have to, but I do think that you’re being unreasonable.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. I don’t want to come. I’ve got marking to do and I’d rather have a quiet weekend at home. I wish you’d stay with me.’

  She folded her cream cardigan over the top of her clothes and closed the case briskly. She took a deep breath, then let it out again. I wondered if she was going to shout at me, but she never did, it was not in her. She said, ‘You know I’m not going to do that. I promised them. You said you probably would.’

  ‘But I can’t,’ I said. And that at least was true.

  No, and no, and no. It could not hold.

  It wasn’t a good weekend for me. Jess telephoned to say she had arrived safely and in the background I heard Mark saying, ‘Tell him he’s a silly boy for not coming himself. We’ll expect him next time.’ And I felt as though I might vomit. My home, our quiet safe home, had been invaded by something I could not contain or control.

  That weekend I had a recurrence of my old problem. It was mid-December, seven months after the wedding, and the days grew dark at 3 p.m. I found myself simultaneously terrified and numb, staring at the lowering sky from the window, unwilling to leave the flat. I could not control my moods, could not stop fear rising in my throat. The winter was cold and dark and never-ending. I imagined Jess sitting by the fire in Mark and Nicola’s home, warmed and encircled by golden light and laughing with her feet up on the sofa and the dogs leaping up to demand her attention. I did not eat much that weekend, I barely stirred from bed. It was clear to me that this was my natural condition; that without Jess I would return to the state in which she had found me – incapable, bleak, desperate. It was only late on Sunday night, when I heard her key in the door, when I saw her face, that the mood lifted, suddenly, all at once, as though it had never been.

  I described this to Jess as best I could. I told her I had felt low while she had been gone. She, because she is good, did not say, ‘Well, you should have come with then.’

  She kissed my forehead, ruffled my hair and said, ‘I’m home now. I missed you too. Come and help me unpack.’

  Things with her were always as simple as this. She was good for me, in this way as in so many others. But why do we so often want the things that are not good for us at all?

  There is no safety that does not also restrict us. And many needless restrictions feel safe and comfortable. It is so hard to know, at any moment, the distinction between being safe and being caged. It is hard to know when it is better to choose freedom a
nd fear, and when it is simply foolhardy. I have often, I think, too often erred on the side of caution.

  Jess said, ‘James, I really think you should see Mark.’

  I felt a line of fear work through me, like a swallowed needle.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  She looked at me. We were in bed, she warming her hands on a mug of tea.

  ‘What’s he done to you, James? What’s this about?’

  What could I possibly say? I reached around in my mind for something that was not, ‘I am afraid, Jessica. I am afraid that if I see him I will well up with longing so that I cannot bear it.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know. He’s just not our sort of people, is he?’

  She frowned. A thin layer of ice glistened on her surface. This had been the wrong thing to say.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

  I pushed on. ‘Just … Look, he’s so … I mean, I think he wants to be friends with a different kind of person to us. I mean, Emmanuella’s more his sort of …’

  Jess said, ‘I think you’re totally wrong. In fact, he spent all weekend telling me how much he wanted to see you, how disappointed he was you hadn’t come, how he misses your chats.’

  At this there was a kind of stirring in me, a detestable hope unfurling.

  ‘If you’re just staying away because you think we’re not rich enough for him …’

  I gulped unhappily and stared at her. Her frown melted away. She snuggled up to me.

  ‘It’s just the silly winter depression, love. Mark loves you, you know he does, and he’s never cared about other people having money.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m a bit worried about him. He’s restless down there in the country. Edgy. It’s not good for him, and it’s not good for Nicola. I said he should come to London when your holidays start, to get away for a few days.’