The Lessons

by Unknown

  Seth gave me a thoughtful look, as if he were deciding precisely how quickly he could knock me cold should it prove necessary.

  ‘Right-o,’ he said, and leaned over to give her a swift kiss on the mouth. I felt emotions rising in me at this to which I had no right at all. With his water-bottle carrier slung over his shoulder, Seth loped off towards the harbour.

  ‘Don’t mind Seth,’ she said. ‘He’s only a bit jealous. He doesn’t mean any harm.’

  I nodded and made a noncommittal noise.

  ‘He knows we were together for a long time and he’s worried you might have gone stalker, that’s all.’

  Jess poured herself a glass of red wine and held it up to the sun.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘What were you doing climbing that tower today? With your knee? Were you following us?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said simply. Then, thinking that this needed some explanation: ‘I saw you from a distance. I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure, so I followed. OK?’

  She traced the edge of the ashtray with one fingertip.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘My turn?’ I said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Why are you here? Why are you in San Ceterino, really?’

  She looked up swiftly and then down again.

  ‘We’re here on holiday,’ she said.

  ‘Here? Of all places?’

  ‘We are,’ she said. ‘We had holiday, we wanted to do something with it. And Italy’s so lovely at this time of year.’

  ‘And that’s the only reason you’re here?’

  She frowned.

  ‘Well, there’s also –’ she spoke quickly – ‘Nicola’s getting married again. In the autumn, she’s marrying a Yorkshireman, a farmer. We’re all invited to the wedding – well, Franny and Emmanuella and me and Simon of course. And it made me think of you both, and how someone should tell you, and I suppose I could have written but you never answer letters, so Seth and I were planning a holiday and I thought if we came here for a couple of days maybe we’d, you know, bump into each other. Which we did. So …’

  She trailed off and went back to playing with the cocktail sticks on her side plate.

  I wondered if her answer contained the same measure of truth as mine.

  ‘And that’s all you wanted to tell me? That Nicola’s getting married?’

  ‘I thought maybe you’d write to her. I know that Mark wouldn’t. But I thought maybe you could just tell her … well, that’s what I thought, anyway.’

  The evening chimed around us. A flock of doves paced the piazza floor, pecking at stones and crumbs. Across the square an accordion player started up a melody with lambent brio. Three children chased over the paving stones.

  Jess raised her hand to my face and traced her finger around the outline of the blossoming bruise. The sensation reminded me so strikingly of the first times we had touched in Oxford that it made me hold my breath.

  ‘James, what’s this?’ she said.

  ‘Oh that,’ I said. ‘I walked into a door. Stupid of me.’

  She looked at me, her eyes very clear and light, and shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not what it is.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Is it the marks of love, James?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Is it?’

  She pursed her lips and paused, then spoke very softly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so. He’s poison for you, James.’

  I looked down at my hands and then out across the square.

  ‘That wasn’t what you said six years ago.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t. But I think I’ve changed my mind. I think that’s what I came here to tell you. Perhaps I didn’t know it until now.’

  I remained silent.

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘something else as well. I want to say you don’t owe me anything, there’s no debt between us. I knew, or thought I knew, about you and Mark for a long time. Maybe even before it started. It was that last day in Oxford, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded, dumbly.

  ‘I’ve always thought, well, it was a different sort of thing. It wasn’t that you didn’t love me, I knew that you did. But I couldn’t be that for you. And you were so happy, we were so happy when it was happening. You were happier than I’d ever known you.’

  ‘You didn’t mind?’ I was bewildered.

  ‘I think,’ she said, running her finger around the rim of the ashtray again, ‘I think that I didn’t. I wish it hadn’t been Mark, for your sake. And I wish we could have spoken plainly with each other. But that’s all.’

  Jess took a sip of wine. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Seth’s coming.’

  I looked up and there he was, the gorilla-man, hulking his way through the crowd. He was still a little way off. We had time for a few more sentences before he arrived.

  I thought, I could say now what I thought while I was following her. I could say, ‘I saw you from a distance and knew that you could be the love of my life.’ I could say, ‘Take me back. You are all I desire.’ I could say, ‘I love you. And I know you love me.’

  Instead, I said, ‘Jess, do you remember the first violin from your orchestra in Oxford? Rudolph something?’

  She frowned. ‘Randolph,’ she said, ‘Randolph Black. Yes, why?’

  ‘Did you sleep with him, in Michaelmas term of our third year?’

  Seth was approaching rapidly across the square, smiling.

  Jess remained silent.

  ‘Did you?’

  She looked at me and shook her head.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘James,’ she said, ‘after all this, why would I lie to you?’

  26

  Jess and Seth left me the details of their itinerary, where I could find them if I wanted to find them. She did not specify why I might want to find them again. She copied the names of hotels and phone numbers and dates on to a square of card and pressed it into my hand. As she did so she said, ‘Remember.’ Just that.

  In my room at the hotel, I stripped naked and stood in front of the mirror. I observed myself, turning one way and the other. That, I thought, is me. There, that man is me. I could not quite make the connection. That man, I thought more slowly, that man with the pale skin and the gammy knee and the decent arse and the dark arrow of hair pointing towards the genitals. That is me. I lifted my arm and let it flop down, watching how it was me. That face, long, with a sorrowful arrangement of nose and eyes, more like my father with every passing year. That face is me.

  I heard once that a puppy raised among kittens will grow up thinking it is a cat, will behave like a cat, will move like a cat, will not recognize dogs as its own kind. I thought of the society in which I’d spent the past fourteen years of my life: the rich and the glamorous, the successful, the driven, the talented. Mark and Emmanuella, Franny, Simon, Jess.

  But that man there in the mirror, that man is me. I have done less with these past years than Anne with her edible oils or Paul with his position as a Junior Minister. Even those accomplishments, which once struck me as so crass, now seemed solid to me. More solid than myself, a man made of smoke. They would be something to hold up against my body and say this too is who I am. I had never desired accomplishments, never longed to be a doer of great feats. But, it occurred to me, I should have tried to desire something. Or can one try to desire at all?

  What is it that one learns from life? I had always supposed that I would accumulate some wisdom as my life progressed. That, as in my progress through Oxford, some knowledge would inevitably adhere to me. I suppose I hoped that love would teach me.

  But the very question is redundant. It is ridiculous to think we can learn anything from so arbitrary an experience as life. It forms no kind of curriculum and its gifts and punishments are bestowed too arbitrarily to constitute a mark scheme. There is only one subject on which the lessons are in any way informative.

  That man in the mirror is me, I thought. For good or ill, that’s me
.

  After two nights and three days in the hotel, my bruises had faded from livid purple and red to yellows, greens and browns. I kept my sunglasses on even in the hotel lobby. In the privacy of my own room I examined the bruises in the mirror.

  And on the third day I returned to the villa above the city. Mark was waiting for me by the swimming pool. Ricardo, a boy who had been one of Mark’s favourites but, at twenty-four, had grown too old, was sitting on the stone wall by the patio, flipping through a magazine. Seeing it was me, Mark leapt to his feet, smiled almost shyly, turned to Ricardo and said, in Italian, ‘Get out of here.’

  Ricardo grunted, looked between me and Mark, then jumped off the wall and walked sullenly back towards the house.

  Mark walked to me slowly, smiling, holding his arms wide in a gesture of welcome, or surrender.

  ‘I’m so glad you came back,’ he said softly.

  He pulled me close to him, lifted off my sunglasses and examined the side of my face, my eye, my nose. He breathed out a heavy sorrowful sigh.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered into my neck. ‘I’m so so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it, you know I didn’t mean it. You know how I am.’

  I nodded and wrapped my arms around him. I thought about how-he-is. Was that an explanation for anything? I had once thought that I could come to some deeper understanding.

  He lifted his face contritely for a kiss and I bent to kiss him, tasting again the taste of Mark: cigarettes and mint chewing gum and black-currant wine gums.

  ‘Listen,’ he said after a while, ‘I’ve been thinking, we should get away from here. I hate this place. It’s horrible, being cooped up here day after day. What do you think about moving to Rome for a few months? Or out of Italy? How about autumn in New York?’

  He was eager and excited. I brushed the hair out of his eyes and he blinked at me.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  He tipped his head to one side.

  ‘OK,’ he said. Then, as if a little aggrieved, ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I want to go away,’ I said. ‘Maybe travel, or maybe go back to England. I’m not sure yet. Not be here, anyway.’

  He nodded. ‘We could go to England. Not … well, not … But I think we have a place in Kent? Or how about Cornwall?’

  I looked at him and then around at the villa. Our villa. My home. Almost everything I could see belonged to us, from the grove of cypress trees on the hills in the north to the shy little river murmuring its way through a deep cut towards the town. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

  ‘Not we,’ I said, ‘me.’

  He tipped his face up towards mine and observed me quietly, thoughtfully.

  ‘How long for?’ Then, before I had a chance to reply: ‘Not more than three months? Be back before the winter.’

  As if we were beginning negotiations.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘forever.’

  Can it be true that I felt nothing then? It is true. I was steel and ice. He started against my body and I looked out at the watercolour hills of misty blue and green and brown and the clouds, huge and sunlit in glory, and I felt nothing at all.

  He took several steps back from me.

  ‘What happened today?’ he said. ‘What happened while you were away? Did you meet someone? Who is it? What’s happened?’

  I was surprised he had understood so quickly. I sat on the stone wall by the swimming pool, my bad leg stretched out stiffly before me.

  ‘Jess,’ I said. ‘It’s not important, though. It’s not about her. But yes, I happened to meet her the other day in town. With her new boyfriend, from the orchestra. They’re on holiday. I met Jess and we chatted, that’s all.’

  I did not tell him about Nicola. He sat very still as I spoke and nodded, running his hand quickly through his hair.

  ‘So,’ he said when I had finished, ‘you’re going back to her.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you hear? She has a boyfriend.’

  He shook his head, as if to clear the air of buzzing, swarming things.

  ‘It doesn’t signify,’ he said. ‘She’d take you back if you really wanted her. Do you want her?’

  I thought about that. Did I want Jess? Did I want anything?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want her.’

  He leaned back in his chair, apparently satisfied.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me anything else?’

  He put his feet up on the lounger and looked at me.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know you’re not going to leave.’

  I felt suddenly angry.

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘I am leaving.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re not.’ He cocked his head to one side and smiled. ‘Or, well, you might leave for a while but you’ll come back.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving, Mark. Forever. It’s over.’

  He smiled, wolfish.

  ‘And what,’ he said, ‘do you think you’re going to do?’

  ‘I’m going back to England. Back to my parents. Start again. Teaching. Life.’

  He shook his head, slowly.

  ‘But James. Who are you going to follow? Who’s going to tell you what to do? If you’re not going back to Jess, and you’re not staying with me, whose dog are you going to be?’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m not.’ And, to my horror, I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and a pain rising in my throat.

  I turned and walked as quickly as I could back to the house. His laughter followed me all the way.

  *

  I packed my belongings that night. Mark went out, to one of his usual haunts in the town, I supposed. I did not enquire. There were few enough items to pack but I took my time. I wanted to be perfectly sure that I took nothing of his. The only money I would take would be the carefully harvested earnings from my tutoring. I identified, among my clothes, a few T-shirts and jeans I’d had since living with Jess in London. Everything else I left hanging in the wardrobe.

  As I packed, I thought of the conversations I’d wished we would have, the conversations I’d imagined in those nights at the hotel. He would tell me he loved me, he would beg me to stay. At least he would understand what he was losing. He would show by some sign that he understood what I had done for him, what I had sacrificed. He would flash from behind the curtain the man I knew must be within him. I would finally understand him and in that understanding all I had done would be justified. I think, even as I packed, I hadn’t fully accepted that none of these things would ever occur.

  There is a kind of love which is selfless. It is a love which waits through all things, which is patient and hopeful, which does not need to be returned. It is a love which is confident in itself and burns on and on though no fuel is added to the fire. It is the love of the man nailed to the cross saying, here, look, this wound, and that I took for you. It is a perfect love; more perfect than the love between equals. I do not know if it is a love towards which it is proper for human beings to aspire. Perhaps it is the love reserved for angels, and for the Almighty.

  For a long time, I thought I loved Mark with this love. But I was wrong.

  When I left the house, before dawn, I scribbled a note and taped it to the refrigerator. I told him to contact Franny at Harvard for news of Nicola. I am a coward, I thought, but at least I am free.

  That morning I boarded the train from San Ceterino to Rome. It pulled out of the station at 8 a.m. The journey would take most of the day but I was not dismayed by this prospect. I found an empty compartment and hoisted my suitcase on to the rack above the seats. I opened the window. The air was mild and fragrant. In the verge by the side of the track little blue flowers were growing among the grass. I sat facing the direction of travel as the train pulled out, and looked out of the window to see it curve ahead of me around the track. There was something comforting about the sight of the tidy line of carriages like a column of vertebrae bending this way and that. I leaned back an
d rested my head on the seat. I had purchased a novel and a newspaper but I did not examine them yet. The train was heading along the coast, so that for much of the way I would see the shining sea to my right hand. I looked out at the water curving off into the distance, the shoreline brightly white, flecks of light dancing on the waves. I heard the sound of Italian voices from the next carriage – boisterous, confident teenage voices arguing and laughing. This moment, like all moments, would be lost. I closed my eyes, inhaled. And when I breathed out I felt nothing at all.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With tremendous gratitude, as ever, to my agent, Veronique Baxter, and my editor, Kate Barker. Thanks also to Katherine Stroud and Mary Mount, and to Lesley Levene and Helen Campbell.

  Thanks to the London Jewish Cultural Centre for giving me a place to write the first draft of this novel, and to Detective Inspector Andy Rose, Commander Shabir Hussain, Steve and Toni Hazell, Chris Philp and Adi Bloom for help with research. Special thanks to Jey Biddulph, web wizard, and Guy Parsons, rock god.

  For support, pep talks and inspiration, thanks to my parents, Geoffrey and Marion Alderman, my brother, Eliot Alderman, Anna Balinsky, Deborah Cooper, Jeremy Cooper, Esther Donoff, Russell Donoff, Daniella, Benjy and Zara Donoff, Dr Benjamin Ellis, Diana Evans, Natalie Gold, Dena Grabinar, Bob Grahame, Yoz Grahame, Tilly Gregory, Peter Hobbs, O. M. G. Adrian Hon, Dan Hon, Victoria Hoyle, Rivka Isaacson, Rabbi Sammy Jackman, S. W. J., John Kemp, Ewan Kirkland, Rebecca Levene, Joel and Emma McIver, Margaret Maitland, Mariana Nolan, Helen Oyeyemi, Andrew Page, Andrea Phillips, Helena Pickup, Gabriela Pomeroy, Robin Ray, Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, Jennifer Seligman, Miki Shaw, Lord Smith of Clifton, A. C. Ben Todd, David Varela, Perry Wald, Adrienne West and Samuel West.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Dedication

  The Lessons

  Prologue

  SECTION 1: The Lies