Claustrophobia

by Tracy Ryan

  It was satisfying at first, like counting off money, but when it was done, it left a vague boredom: so what? Kathleen Nancarrow was sure to have kept a record of those marks anyway, maybe even her comments. It wouldn’t affect her teaching. She wouldn’t even know why they were gone.

  Swiping and then destroying them was hardly an achievement – no heroic gesture. It was more like the woman Pen knew from work who had once spotted an ex-boyfriend’s car parked nearby and sneaked out to let the tyres down. Just petty spite, leading nowhere beyond the moment. Something that had made Pen keep a slight distance from that woman ever since.

  It would not do. It was small, mean, and what was more, impetuous, not thought-through.

  ‘I will have to be smarter than that,’ Pen realised, ‘if I am to survive this.’

  She turned on the Mac again and started to browse the university website, in earnest this time, leaving no electronic stone unturned. There must be something she could do. That much Pen had learned from the things life had thrown at her: you could always do something.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ she said to Derrick over dinner that night, the ashes of Kathleen’s papers mixed now, undetected, with the kindling and logs he had added to get the evening’s fire going, ‘of taking an extension course. At the university, I mean. Winter school.’

  Derrick nodded. ‘That’s great! At last.’ He watched her eating for a few moments, not wanting to prod too hard, and then finally said, ‘Why don’t you go the whole hog and pick up a degree? You know they’ve got mid-year entry in some courses.’

  Pen winced. It was an old, occasional topic between them – she could sit the mature-age test, it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t finished secondary school, and so on – but it was always the wrong time. For a long while, before the miscarriage, she’d put it aside because of wanting children. Then there had perpetually been some other reason.

  She worried about money, for instance. Derrick was confident he earned plenty, but Pen herself, being the usual shopper and bill-handler, had a fair idea how much they’d miss that second fortnightly pay, part-time and piddling or not. She wasn’t sure she could give that up for full-time study.

  But extension was different: they were intellectual hobby courses, a few hours a week – you didn’t have to pass tests or write essays. You just paid a fee, and you went to lectures and discussions. Improving your mind, Pen’s mother would call it. Like a wine, or a cheese, or an investment.

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready for real uni,’ Pen said, ‘and I’m a bit old, don’t you think, to sit alongside all those teenagers? But I could try something short, something not for assessment.’

  Derrick rubbed his beard: a sign of imminent disagreement, Pen knew.

  ‘You always sell yourself short, Pen,’ he began. ‘I don’t know why, after all these years, we can’t get over this hurdle. I’m telling you, you could do anything you wanted …’

  ‘I have done what I wanted,’ Pen said softly. ‘All these years. And this is what I want to do now.’

  ‘But you could actually get some return for it, get some credit, some acknowledgement.’

  Pen thought of the evil letter: You know who I am even if you will not acknowledge me … All words now took their shape in relation to that letter, as if it were etched verbatim into her brain.

  Now she thought, ‘Perhaps he is ashamed of my lack of education. Perhaps he despises me. Perhaps all this time when I thought he was just being encouraging … The way he was ashamed of my ignorance, when we met. There is another Derrick I didn’t know was there all along, one for whom I was once only the means of getting at another woman. Whatever I am now. Everything he says is open to reinterpretation.’

  ‘I just want to see what it’s like first,’ she said at last.

  Derrick shrugged. ‘Okay.’

  What he thought finally, she could not tell. But he went straight to the computer after dinner, wanting to look at the courses on offer. Even more eager than she was. Or seemed to be.

  Pen said, leaning over his shoulder, ‘I’ve already got all that stuff, love’ – and pressed the Cancel button. ‘Besides, we’re over our limit for this month.’

  It wouldn’t do for Derrick to see the lecturer’s name, in among all the subjects. If he asked, she’d have to invent a name.

  But at least one thing was established. Derrick had shown no sign of anxiety; he was all for it. Clearly he didn’t know that Kathleen Nancarrow was in Perth now, and at the university. It was unlikely they’d had any contact. Pen allowed herself to breathe a little, marvelled at how easily she could make things happen. That Derrick would jump up and try to do it for her.

  When she was a child, Pen had willed God to do things for her – base, financial things, because she never had any money, like letting her win ten dollars in a contest from the cartoon pages of the local paper, that sort of thing. The deal always was, she had to be good for a whole week – not even a bad thought – and it always paid off.

  She smiled, slightly embarrassed, at the memory, and Derrick smiled back now, oblivious.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re finally doing something for yourself,’ he said, and Pen couldn’t help thinking: ‘the model husband. No Educating Rita here. ‘And in any case, it’ll give us new things to talk about. Part of that whole opening-up thing, you know. We mustn’t stagnate.’

  ‘I know,’ Pen nodded. ‘I’m sure it’ll do us both good.’

  Warm to look at, but cold to the touch. That was how Pen had always thought of the university, with its imitation Tuscan prettiness that caught sunlight even in winter, yet this pervasive interior chill of stone and low ceilings.

  She parked up near the highway and walked slowly, a little too early for the afternoon class, having come straight from work without stopping to eat. She paused near a still, oblong pool, unruffled, almost unapproachable, and read the inscription: Verily by beauty it is that we come at wisdom. Pen didn’t know where it came from, but it had the sound of a quote. That ‘verily’ …

  Outside the lecture theatre, a group was already beginning to form. They chatted over the squawking peacocks that glided in the external corridors and occasionally fanned their tails.

  Pen stood at a distance and observed. The human group was mostly middle-aged, and mostly female, all thick hair, fine teeth and quality fabrics. She felt again that attraction and repulsion these sorts of women always provoked in her, with their shawls and ‘interesting’ beads, their well-fed figures, their complete carelessness of their own leisure and good fortune.

  She knew, too, that this was a prejudice, and that she couldn’t have it both ways. There was this, or there was where she had come from, and that hadn’t worked for her either.

  ‘I belong nowhere,’ she thought glumly, not for the first time, and watched as the sole albino peahen thrust its way through the crowd, tiny head lurching, indifferent to the flapping and fuss of the colourful ladies it was disturbing. Then the doors were unlocked, and the whole group moved in.

  Pen could hardly think for the pounding in her temples. It was the element of the unforeseen: she had taken certain steps, but who could know where they would lead?

  And there at last was Kathleen Nancarrow at the front of the hall, introducing herself, and Pen sat intently, eyes wide as if no amount of looking could saturate her vision. Verily by beauty it is that we come at wisdom, she remembered ironically.

  Of course the woman was beautiful. It couldn’t have been otherwise. Even from a distance you could see it – the kind of face and body that don’t age.

  From the half-shadows of the cold lecture hall, Pen watched her mount the rostrum and arrange her papers. Kathleen shook her glossy blonde hair, and appeared to gaze straight back at her. It was an illusion, given the crowd, but Pen knew for a moment how Derrick must once have felt, back when he was a young student in Sydney at this woman’s mercy: unnerved, stripped of his nerves.

  Time had passed, and yet stood still. Kathleen’s face was rounded
like a child’s, though porcelain-pale; her eyes were bright blue globes, lamplike. And then her mouth – small and discreet, the mouth of a Twenties film star, yet the room fell utterly silent when it opened to speak.

  Whether it spoke sense or nonsense, Pen could not yet determine. Around her, others took notes, but Pen only sat, observed and listened. Pen had not come to study The World of the French Symbolists, Extension Course FR100. She had come to study this woman. She had come because she could not help herself.

  Now Kathleen began to read, her French solemn, precise and impeccable, and then translated what she’d read:

  Soon we shall plunge into the coldest shadows

  Farewell, bright light of our short-lived summers!

  As it went on, and the lecture built around it, the poem almost stirred tears in Pen. She was torn between her irritation with the speaker, decided in advance, and this new feeling, caught off balance. Gripped, in spite of herself.

  ‘It’s because of Derrick,’ she told herself. ‘I am over-identifying with him, as if I were in his shoes. I must be more guarded. Women like her have a certain kind of charisma, of course they do. That’s how they hook people in.’

  Yet when she glanced about for evidence of this effect on her fellow students, she saw only the same placid self-containment they had shown outside in the icy corridor. They might as well have been at a macramé class or a cooking demonstration. They simply nodded now and then, or murmured politely, as if to signal they were keeping up. None appeared as stricken as Pen felt.

  ‘It’s because I haven’t eaten, and I’ve been rushing around,’ Pen thought. ‘It makes you light-headed.’

  After the lecture she loitered near the door, self-absorbed.

  ‘We’re going for coffee, would you like to join us?’

  It was one of the cluster of shawled women, beckoning to Pen.

  Pen looked at the floor. Why would they want her along?

  ‘Come on, it’ll be good to get to know each other.’

  The woman’s smile seemed genuine, and for a moment Pen felt guilty about her earlier thoughts. But she didn’t want this distraction; she couldn’t afford it.

  ‘Maybe another time,’ Pen said. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  Kathleen Nancarrow was still in the room, gathering papers, as Pen lingered. Walking out, she nodded and smiled at Pen, and then was gone.

  An empty hall, peacocks calling plaintive at the windows.

  Pen thought, ‘So now I have seen her, and so what? Nothing has come of it. Nothing is fixed, nothing put right. What did I think would happen?’

  Even now, in those few moments when Pen had had the chance to speak to her alone, what could she have said? She was disgusted with her own indolence, her failure to act. She had not even ruffled the surface, not skimmed a single stone on the still pool of that woman’s composure.

  Smugness, some might call it. That Kathleen Nancarrow could sail blithely on after ravaging a life like Derrick’s all those years ago … no consequences, not even a hiccup, apparently, in her professional life. That she could go on disrupting Pen’s happiness, without even knowing it, by her mere existence. It was not Derrick’s fault, after all.

  The woman could do with a good shake-up.

  4

  Jean Sargent was wearing those little felt Christmas earrings with gold trim that usually started to appear on shop counters around November. But it was only July. She must have saved them from last year. They bobbed absurdly as she waved. Pen’s heart sank as she saw name cards already placed on the restaurant table – they had separated her and Derrick.

  ‘Otherwise people tend to stay in their comfort zone,’ Jean smiled, ‘and never make an effort to talk to each other.’

  ‘I thought Christmas was about comfort,’ Pen said, but Derrick squeezed her hand, and she shrugged. He pulled the chair out for her, kissed her, and went over to his allocated seat. The table was long, running from one end of the restaurant to the other, where there was a drinks area with eggnog and gently steaming mulled wine you could help yourself to.

  Pen was wedged between Jean and a sports master, Kerry Pollard, whose breath was heavy with wine. The small talk on that side, she knew, would run out quickly.

  Mr Pollard is a sadist … Mr Pollard watches us under the showers … Pen had heard it from the boys, like Cliff, who didn’t like doing phys. ed. She’d been shocked that there were no doors or even proper cubicles in the gym showers.

  ‘Sadist in what way, Cliff?’

  Cliff had lowered his eyes. ‘He just pushes us harder than he should, you know. Till it hurts. He enjoys making us suffer.’

  ‘If it’s nothing more specific than that,’ Derrick had said later to a worried Pen, ‘there’s nowhere you can go with it. Really speaking.’

  ‘You don’t think I should follow it up?’

  ‘No,’ he’d barked. ‘I don’t.’

  Pen was surprised, but left it there. After all, she reasoned, Derrick had strong feelings from his own schooldays.

  Derrick was better placed than Pen at the dinner table, sitting between two English teachers he already knew well. Both were women, which might have annoyed some wives, and did slightly bother Pen. But Pen was practised at quelling those sorts of worries, and more preoccupied these days with the ones that weren’t right under her nose. The past, she thought – the past was the problem. In the here and now you had more control …

  Anyway, she’d checked out those particular two long ago, and knew that neither held any vivid interest for Derrick, though all the women teachers were certainly fond of him. Derrick was good at polite conversation even when bored. It was performance; it came naturally to teachers, who were on a kind of stage all day long.

  This evening was itself a kind of stage, a rejigging of the season, an excuse to eat a heavy traditional meal you couldn’t get away with in sweltering December, though some families still tried. Except for those who were migrants from Britain or mainland Europe, it wasn’t even nostalgia, since Christmas had never been like this. Log fires and hot stodge.

  Pen’s mother, before her father left, had done the turkey and ham thing, but always served cold with salads, and followed by ice-cream. A tense meal, both parents putting on an act for their daughter’s sake; then her father flaking out in an armchair from drink and heat, virtually unconscious for the rest of the day. Later, no longer there. Scaled-down Christmases, in keeping with a single-parent’s budget.

  ‘So how’s this renovation coming along?’ Jean said, once they had come to pudding and custard. After her initial surprise, Pen made a little mental readjustment: there must be many occasions when Derrick told these people personal things in her absence, things about their private life, at meetings and afternoon teas. That was quite reasonable.

  ‘Slowly,’ Pen said. ‘There’s been a lot of clearing up to do first, and I’ve been doing some study as well. Just recreational.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Jean said. She didn’t ask what the study was. ‘I envy you all that spare time – I know I could do with some. But then I’ve got kids …’

  Pen winced inwardly.

  ‘What sort of renovations are they?’ put in Kerry, to her right.

  Another man opposite chuckled. That was Leon Masters, cynical head of the science department. Pen liked him better than the others because he talked less, and more to the point. Weathered and bearded, he was near retirement, and the women generally found him sarcastic when he did speak.

  ‘Stick with the study,’ he said. ‘Renovations are for the birds. People moving rooms around because they’re bored.’

  There was a jab in this for Jean, who was fond of rearranging her office.

  ‘Oh, come on, Leon,’ Jean said, ‘everyone’s doing it these days.’

  ‘Or watching it vicariously on the telly.’ Leon peered over the top of his half-moon glasses at Pen. ‘Truth be had, I reckon it’s the last gasp before divorce. All that hammering and sanding, keeping your hands busy when you feel like throttli
ng each other.’

  Jean tried to laugh, but no one was sure what to say. Everyone knew Leon was divorced, and any repartee would point this out, which was unseemly. Then he himself said, half-aside, ‘And no, I didn’t throttle my wife. Ex-wife. She’s doing quite nicely, thank you.’

  Jean, quick to shift gears, said, ‘That reminds me – about our next event. I’m thinking maybe a murder-mystery train. My sister-in-law went on one with her workmates and she said it was great fun.’

  ‘You mean like role-play?’ Kerry said. ‘Dress-ups and all that Agatha Christie stuff? Not my cup of tea.’

  Leon laughed, and Pen looked at the floor.

  ‘What about you, Mrs Barber?’ He was being mock-formal. ‘Partial to a bit of noir?’ he said, rounding his vowels pompously, and Pen had to laugh too.

  She was grateful for anything that took Jean’s attention off her. At least her clothes passed muster these days. Pen cringed to remember Jean’s comments on what she’d worn to work in the early days.

  ‘White heels, white jacket, white handbag.’ Jean had grinned. ‘Classic! All you need now is the poodle perm. What’s your middle name – Debbie?’

  Pen had had to ask Derrick what she meant. But Derrick had shrugged and avoided her gaze, saying it must be some female fashion thing. But Pen knew it was nastiness in another guise. Oh, I was only joking …

  Eventually, watching and learning, Pen had toned herself down. There was the odd slip, over the years, mainly in words, though her vocabulary was as large as anyone’s. Once on a staff concert outing she’d made excited observations on a particular tenor’s timbre. Jean had tittered and looked around at the others.

  ‘This isn’t Timbertop, my girl. I’d have thought you of all people would know how to pronounce it.’