‘We had a good time with a story, Martha.’
She seemed to have got that right.
‘They looked really alive,’ said Martha. ‘I thought you must have given them a special drug.’ She put a hand on Hazel’s arm. ‘Make sure you come to the office tomorrow, meet the rest of the crew. Just watch out for Darren, though, he likes to thrust his groin at women. He’s a good teacher, but I do wish he’d give over with the cock.’
Hazel laughed. How did Martha know she wouldn’t be offended? Or wouldn’t she even care?
She and Beth had cheesy toast for dinner and exchanged their news of the day. Definitely the old married couple. The constancy. The certainty. It was like the end of the TV weather forecast: sunrise will be at 5:32 am and sunset will be at 6:49 pm. Maybe, Hazel thought, remembering those year elevens, she could try for a job as a weather person. Not a forecaster, though, because you’d need to have specialised knowledge, but one of those women with a sing-song voice and a long stick, pointing to gale warnings and sheep weather alerts and alarmingly hotter temperatures all over the madly spinning globe. Hazel knew she should go to bed early: another seven am start to catch the bus. She slathered on some cheap generic sorbolene cream, having read in The Guardian that a two-hundred dollar jar of night cream did absolutely nothing to hydrate, invigorate or rejuvenate your skin. Skin: the body’s largest organ. She shrugged off those treacherous feelings, put on her non-flimsy nightie and slipped into bed, gave a fleeting thought to some lessons for tomorrow. What the hell would she do with those year elevens: a double period first up, ninety long minutes, and she couldn’t bear to finish that movie. She’d need to make them do some work, some thinking at least, and they’d need a break as well. Tim Tams. Except that you weren’t allowed to hand out chocolate biscuits or giant snakes because it was meant to be pedagogically unsound and encouraged unhealthy eating. She’d hope for inspiration in the morning.
Why was she taking this so seriously? It was only relief teaching.
She picked up her phone: one last check for messages. Her mother:
I took your advice and now he’s more bolshie than ever.
WTF? she messaged back straight away. What advice?
About not giving your father any sex.
I was only joking, Mum. I’m sorry.
Don’t be. I think it might actually work.
Then she heard another message coming through. Adam. Adam!
How was your first day of teaching?
Which was kind of him to ask. She could almost have cried with his kindness.
It was OK. One lesson went really well, in fact, thanks so much for asking
One really good lesson. That’s a good start.
But the second one was a dud
Remember the good one, Hazel.
Was he admonishing her? Or trying to reassure?
I wasn’t chastising you, honestly. And I’m sorry if I sounded patronising.
Before she could respond, he sent another message:
Tell me to mind my own business, if you like.
She didn’t like.
You’re just trying to keep me hopeful. Which is really good of you, thank you
Another gap. Then another message coming through:
Jessie said to say hello.
And say hello from me
Will do.
And he was gone. Courteous, brief, non-committal.
But still she remembered kissing his cheek. The touch of his finger on her pulse.
‘What’s a word gunna do?’
She was up at five am, doing some research. Not that Wikipedia was proper research, but she wanted to check out the creepy story. She read that it was based on the nefarious activities of a real live serial killer. Four victims. That the story was dedicated to Bob Dylan, because of his song ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. Just the title gave Hazel the shivers. She listened to it on YouTube, keeping it low so she didn’t wake Beth, and wondered if the kids would like it. Would they understand the lyrics? Did anyone understand the lyrics? Maybe even Dylan didn’t know what he meant. The painter drawing crazy patterns on your bed sheets? And what was that allusion to reindeer armies? He must have been on some pretty strange stuff.
Beth wandered into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes.
‘What are you doing up so early?’ she said.
‘Preparing lessons.’
‘But it’s only relief, Hazel.’
‘The kids loved the creepy story I read them.’
Beth laughed. ‘You actually read them a story?’
‘Sure. Why not? You just have to find the right one.’
‘I need some inspiration, too,’ said Beth, turning on the kettle. ‘The boss wants me to come up with some snappy words for the brochures and posters. She’s heard me talking to the clients and reckons I’m articulate. And now I’m stuck. You know I’m not creative. Do you know any really good lines?’
‘Have you tried the net? All those sites on quotable quotes?’
‘They’ll all be horribly clichéd. Thousands of quotes about the journey being more important than the destination. Which isn’t really helpful when you’re planning a client’s itinerary.’
They googled some quotes. And yes, there were pages of clichés.
‘Here’s another useless one,’ said Beth. ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans. That’s no good for an anally retentive client.’ She peered more closely. ‘OOOH. I like this one! We lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. Jack Kerouac. On the Road.’
Another famous book that Hazel hadn’t read.
‘It has possibilities,’ said Beth.
They busied themselves for work: back to the bad old days, negotiating the tiny space of the bathroom, talking while they brushed their teeth.
Hazel looked in the mirror and poked out her tongue.
‘Why are you doing that?’ said Beth.
She shrugged. ‘Do I have to have a reason?’ she said.
Sitting on the bus, rushing past the fast-food joints and used-car yards, Hazel was beginning to feel panicked about those year elevens. She felt the bus slam to a halt at a red light, looked down to see an old man sitting in a car, his head bobbing in time to what must have been some boppy music. Boppy. Bobbing. They were jazzy kinds of words; jaunty. Bobbing was a ducking-your-head-in-a-bucket-of-water-to-find-an-apple kind of word, which all her friends had done at Ed’s twenty-first and thought it was more fun than smoking pot. Except for Ed. And then she had a light-bulb moment: she would ask the year elevens to think of a single word, any word, as the beginning to their story. To show them that a single word, like travel, could take you anywhere. To a place you didn’t know, or was completely unexpected. That writing was a product of the unconscious as well as the conscious mind. Only she wouldn’t use those words, not to begin with, anyway. Except she was only staying for a very short time, so she wouldn’t use those words at all. Then she saw a woman in a different car, peering into the rear-view mirror to apply her lipstick. Lipstick. A child on the footpath, being led by the hand, his baggy shorts flapping round his knees. Knees. The world was full of possibilities, and there were more words in English than in any other language. Her year ten English teacher had told them that, and how Shakespeare had used some thirty thousand of them, which was a whole lot more than most people. And how he’d invented the word bubble.
Mr Papadopolis. She hoped he was still teaching.
But it wasn’t quite so easy when she fronted up to the class. When her creative idea met the unimaginative reality, kids looking restless in their dull grey shirts, or yabbering loudly, calling out to watch the movie.
‘We’re going to write a story instead,’ she told them.
‘We’re always writing stories,’ said a boy with a very large head.
‘And they’re always the same,’ said a girl with a mass of steel in her ears.
‘What does that mean?’ said Hazel. ‘Always the same?’
A hand shot up.
‘Your name is?’
‘Amina.’
‘Amina’s from India,’ said a voice from the back. ‘She’s a wog.’
Hazel was just about to speak when Amina spoke calmly for herself.
‘Your parents come from Scotland,’ she said.
‘So what?’
‘We all come from somewhere.’
Again Hazel went to speak but Amina was unruffled.
‘Men from Scotland wear skirts,’ she said, ‘and they don’t wear underpants.’
The class erupted into laughter.
And so they returned to the writing of a story. Amina knew the formula: a story, she said, with admirable clarity and confidence, had an exposition, development, climax—sniggers then—and a resolution. Hazel thanked her, explained that this was one way to write a story, but you could do it differently, you could…she saw many eyes glazing over.
‘Everyone choose a word,’ she said. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
That’s stupid…what’s a word gunna do…why? A chorus of juvenile dissent.
‘You might find out when you do it,’ she said.
More dulled eyes, a few blatant yawns. Maybe some of them were tired, not bored. Maybe some of them hadn’t had breakfast. She’d forgotten this as well.
‘After you’ve chosen a word,’ she said, ‘I’m going to ask each of you to give me your name and then—’
‘Why d’ya wanna know our names?’ said a hunched-up boy. ‘You’re the relief.’
‘Please don’t interrupt when I’m…when someone’s talking.’ Hazel breathed in, breathed out. ‘I want to know your names because you know mine. That’s only fair, isn’t it?’
She’d stunned them into silence, without meaning to.
‘So give me your name,’ she said again, ‘and then tell the class your word.’
She could see the kids screwing up their faces, shaking their heads, but she made herself push on. Beginning with the back row: getting the worst over with first.
‘Jaxon. Boofhead.’
Laughter. And then a volley of names and words. Magenta, Tree. Tahla, House. Tahlia, Chocolate. Teniele, Netball. Beckham, Revhead. Next to him, a female Beckham, Fashion. All the bogan names, the working-class, aspirational names, and non-Anglo names like Wahleed, whose word was Cool, and Kassim, whose word was Home. The Anglo names for Indigenous kids: Percy, who gave them Wheels, and Maurice, who gave them Tree. Someone called out that Tree had already been taken but Hazel pointed out that it would be a different tree and please don’t shout, she said, no one here is deaf. Next up was the smart-arse, because there always had to be one. Nick, Sex. Followed by Rita, Tonight.
More fits of laughter.
‘Well, I like my word,’ said Rita. ‘And not because I’m having sex tonight. It’s just a cool way to start a story cos anything can happen.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Nick. ‘But you can come round to my place anyway.’
They’d made a start. They’d all made a start. Hazel asked them to write another sentence. Then another. And they did. Until they began to sigh and fidget and mumble this is dumb.
‘Here’s a very different way to start a story,’ she said. She couldn’t let them get restless. ‘Begin with a memory. Something that stays with you. Ask yourself why it’s stayed with you and then write a few sentences about what you remember.’
‘What for?’ said the male Beckham.
‘You’ll see.’
Lots of puzzled looks, but again they did as she’d asked.
Why did this seem a bit easier the second time around? Because she was only here for ten more working days. She wasn’t responsible for them, in the longer term at least. And maybe she’d grown up, just a little, although the thought seemed so unlikely that she nearly laughed out loud.
She collected their writing, keen to read their efforts, then dashed to her next lesson. Year twelves. She was ready to tell them about the real live serial killer, get them thinking about the difference between fact and fiction, the different kinds of truths they embodied. But as soon as she walked into the classroom, the kids were already talking up the story. A couple of the boys, to her delight, had googled it yesterday, but far less delightful was their ghoulish satisfaction in the details of those four grisly murders.
She cut the boys off. ‘Why would you do that?’ she asked the class. ‘Not kill someone. I mean why would you write a story about something as gruesome as that?’
A bunch of hands shot up…to give us nightmares…writing sicko stuff must be fun…but no one dies in the story…that’s cos it’s not about killing…you don’t get to know what the sicko’s thinking. Which got them talking about hearing the voice of the victim, and why Connie had agreed to get into that gold flashy car. Which made them argue, often boys against girls, sometimes loudly, all over the top of each other, about how much, if at all, the girl was to blame, and whether blame was even the right word.
They ended up learning from each other.
A platypus stamp for Hazel.
Even her colleagues looked bright when she walked into the English office. Martha did the introductions: Len, the head of department (flamboyant orange tie), Liz (vivid blue dress), Darren (pink shirt). There was a lavish bunch of yellow roses on the table, in honour of Martha’s birthday. And then, as Hazel stepped outside with Martha, she collided with a tall, lean guy with dark green eyes, who asked if she was OK. Looked abashed, asked her again if she was OK. Martha introduced him: Lucas. Who taught chemistry.
‘How’s the teaching going, Hazel?’ he said.
‘I’m only the relief.’
‘I know. So how’s the teaching going?’
She smiled, suddenly shy. Then listened as Martha asked Lucas about a student, a boy who’d told her he hated the noise of the siren because it made him think of the end of the world. Did Lucas think that was a problem?
‘I don’t think so,’ Lucas said. ‘Hadley’s a genius in chem. He often stays back after class to talk about matters like the end of the world as a matter of abstraction. He’s the most intelligent student I’ve taught in my seven years at Cranfield.’
Seven years. Hazel took this in. Had Lucas been boasting about his loyal service? Or was he implying he was in a vocational rut? And how old would that make him? Twenty-seven if he’d gone straight from school to uni, twenty-eight if he’d done honours. Older if he’d changed careers or been travelling or spent time in jail, the latter being most unlikely because he didn’t look like the criminal type. If you believed in phrenology, that is, which at some irrational level, she must have. And weren’t we all guilty of seeing virtue in a beautiful face, vice in an ugly one, to guide us through the tricky maze of working people out?
Whatever the case, she figured that Lucas wasn’t too much older than she was. However much was not too much.
He had a gap between his two front teeth. It made him look interesting. Appealing.
As she stood watching his tall, loping figure receding, she asked Martha what she thought of him.
‘Lucas? He’s one of the good guys. I’d go for him in a flash if I were straight.’
Friday afternoon faded into evening. Beth had gone for drinks at the Captain Stirling but sorry, too tired, Hazel told her on the phone. She was, in truth, knackered. Only two classes for two days in a row and she was ready to drop. One glass of wine would do her in, and quite possibly make her maudlin. She had a weekend ahead of her with nothing to do except look at those year eleven memories, and memories, after all, could be dangerous. They could make you think about a kiss on the cheek and wanting more kisses and knowing it was useless. She thought about making a Milo, decided it was time to kick the habit. Nuns wore habits, didn’t they, and managed to live without sex. They were required to keep their mind on higher things. The life of the soul, if you happened to believe in souls.
But why try to satisfy the soul when it was hard enough to please the mind and the body? Especially the body.
And yet she couldn’t
stop herself from picturing Adam’s pale blue eyes, black-rimmed. The freckles across the bridge of his nose. His sensual mouth with the upturned corners. His unbrushed, greying hair, strong thighs and round bum. She could take him apart and put him back together and still he wouldn’t be here, sitting beside her, taking her hand.
Who could account for the stirrings of desire?
He’d phoned her to ask about her teaching. She should return the courtesy, shouldn’t she? Have a civilised exchange. Ask him what he’d done with his day, or what he might be planning for the weekend. Whether he had replaced her.
She just needed to hear his voice.
But what if he thought she was desperate? She didn’t want him thinking she was desperate. Even though she was. Desperate.
She poured herself a drink, guzzled it in one go, poured herself another.
Hazel woke up groggily—was it really ten am?—and staggered to the kitchen, turned on the kettle. Saw a note from Beth, something about shopping for clothes. Clothes? That little black dress flashed into Hazel’s head but she settled for a strong coffee and a large bowl of Connoisseur ice-cream: Chocolate Brownie and Chocolate Custard. Then she ate an apple so she’d feel less guilty. Decided to read those year eleven memories so she would feel even less guilty. But as she scanned their words, she was utterly cast down by the poor spelling, rotten grammar and mangled syntax. Maybe she could do a PowerPoint: Meet Ms Verb. Say hi to Mr Apostrophe. But the kids would think that was lame. And was it really crucial to distinguish between their and there, or to write laughter instead of larfta? Because the main problem was the unwieldy length of their sentences.
Maybe she should do a different PowerPoint. She wrote down a beginning: Short sentences are important because if you write really long sentences you’ll forget what you started out trying to say and the longer your sentences become the more you’ll forget anything and everything you were trying to say and your head will be a mess and the person reading what you’ve written will start getting really annoyed. Because she couldn’t say pissed off in a PowerPoint, at any point at all. So, yes, she’d try getting them to write much shorter sentences. She wouldn’t expect polish but a jab at coherence would be welcome. Coherence might help them unscramble their thoughts and feelings, maybe front up to that interview and do a reasonable job.
The Art of Persuasion Page 15
