Septembers

by Christopher Prendergast

  ‘Yep, like paranoia.’ David raised his eyebrows and pushed up his glasses emphatically.

  ‘It’s best not to get sidetracked though. Iraq’s a big thing. Give it a mention but don’t start making unqualified statements.’ I tried to settle the matter and move on.

  ‘Why do you think we’re there, sir?’ Jules looked up at me. Her eyes were outlined with a thick line of eyeliner like dashes of newly laid tar. As she presented her question even Steven stopped doodling and paid attention to the topic.

  ‘I’m sure David’s got some strong opinions on this.’

  ‘I do, sir, but I want to hear what you think. You are the teacher here.’

  ‘I’m a history teacher,’ I said. They looked at me nonplussed, blank even. I looked at each of them. ‘I’m not going to enrich you with anything when it comes to politics.’

  ‘It’s history in the making,’ Julie tried to argue.

  Steven turned to her and offered his token input for the session. ‘It’s still pretty recent.’

  ‘I agree. It is recent. Give it ten or twenty years and the truth might be a little clearer, once the smoke has cleared.’

  David narrowed his eyes. ‘Poor choice of words, sir.’

  ‘I guess it is. You guys know what I mean though.’

  They were still looking expectantly. Out of the window I could see the distant cranes, their thin fingers clawing at the ashy clouds on the horizon. I did not need to duck this discussion. In fact, I owed it to them. I walked down the aisle and sat on one of the desks amongst them.

  ‘You know, if you’re looking for reasons why we started this war, you need to be prepared to take on board so many different facets. I see so many reasons. Western governments want regional influence. Middle Eastern governments want regional stability. Some people in these governments think long and hard about how to get that. Some wave around their list of grievances. Some convince other people why something is necessary. Others convince themselves. Intelligence services want to find the information that supports the government’s view, and always will find it, alongside a lot of other things they have to forget. It’s never simple. It’s always tragic. It always seems inevitable, although it never is.’

  At that point I had an idea. I pulled an atlas from off one of the shelves. They needed to see history in a bigger context. I got them to stand up and gather around my desk. With a blue biro I started drawing a shape over the Middle East. I drew the shape of the fertile crescent. The line went around modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq and extended towards Israel and Jordan. When I had finished I stepped back.

  Steven observed that it looked like a piece of shit. I explained to them some of the features of the nomadic lives of our ancestors. It was a lifestyle that changed when they stumbled on this fertile crescent of land. There was no benefit to constant wandering when they had a lush strip to cultivate, year after year. And so they became domesticated. Everything became domesticated with them, from their animals to the wheat and barley they ate. This was roughly 10,000 years BC. Cities emerged, the first civilisations developed along this strip, there was Jericho and Ur. The Sumerians blossomed. Languages, weaponry, defence systems, tools, calendars – they all developed along the fertile crescent. And the crowning achievement was Babylon, a name they all knew, of course, but none of them knew where Babylon sat, how it became the richest city in the world. I wanted them to think about how hard it was to equate that kind of success with the Iraq they see today.

  ‘Our civilisation will fall too,’ I said.

  I remembered the exam papers I was meant to hand out. I watched them fold each paper and leave. David waved me off with his paper and left last, muttering some lines of a song in patois, of which I could only make out Babylon.

  Only the giant map I had put up at St Edwards could have made that lesson any better. If I’d been able to sketch out the fertile crescent on something the size of a wall I think the point would have been better made. Whilst civilisation was established in the Middle East, our island was lost in the haze of Druidism. That was meant to be the further lesson – our own beginnings. The humble nature of them is best illustrated in just how small and insignificant an island we were for thousands of years. I could have pointed out that the size of the British Isles is always increased on our standard maps.

  The classroom was empty. I thought back on the revelations of the morning meeting. I was on borrowed time as usual. My left sleeve fell down over the lesson plan I was signing off. I wrenched it back up my forearm and struggled to find a button to attach and keep it in place. There was a soft knock on the inside of my door, which was wide open. I looked up to see Kamal. The IT teacher’s head shone with sweat. His tie was thrown over one shoulder. The other had a jacket resting on it. He looked around the room like he was staking it out and produced a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket.

  ‘You free, squire?’

  ‘No, I’m quitting.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ll be ready in a second. Just give me a second.’

  We made our way out the front entrance where bikes were locked into the stalls and cars slid gently up the drive. We perched on some double railings. Often, we’d be mistaken for fellow students. At least that’s what the kids who asked us for a light claimed after they passed Kamal his Zippo back. He would flick it shut with aplomb.

  That day a small Staffordshire terrier was tied to the college sign. When a pair of legs passed close-by, the dog would feign some effort to sniff in that direction, stretching out his lead. I told Kamal about the axeing of my subject. He was concerned for me and my job and kept saying Fucking boys’ club even though Munroe was hardly a squash-playing ball-breaker. She played tennis. I understood what he meant though. I expect he used the term to veil a sense of envy. It would have suited him to sit in the executive suite blowing cigar smoke into a wall full of mirrors.

  ‘How do you join the boy’s club?’ I asked. ‘It’s too late for us, isn’t it?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘Look at that dog. It’s not right to leave them tied up all day.’

  Kamal shielded his eyes from a burst of sunlight. We debated whether the dog might have been abandoned. If no-one claimed it we’d have to call the RSPCA. If they couldn’t come out tonight then we’d have to take the dog home or put it in the gym. A couple, hand in hand, broke stride to circle round the dog, lean down and pet it.

  ‘I’ll check out here in a bit,’ Kamal said.

  As we walked past the gym, we slowed down to watch the game of basketball in process. Frosted perspex meant we couldn’t make anything out through the door but the shapes of the players. Their shadows flitted in and out of sight. The squeaks of heels turning quickly on the gym floor punctuated our walk. Another quick turn echoed through the hall.

  A door slammed open at the end of the corridor and shook the wall. A figure was running at us. He got closer. We could see his white vest and his navy blue tracksuit bottoms. He got bigger and bigger, faster and faster. He was folding some money as he ran. He squashed it into his palm and looked up to see us. We filled the width of that thin corridor. He had a closely shaven head and ornate tattoos on his wrist.

  I tried to stand my ground as he got near but he pushed me straight to the floor.

  Kamal was shouting at him before he helped me back to my feet. My briefcase had fallen open and papers were spread around us.

  ‘Jesus. What was that all about? I’ll call security,’ Kamal said. He watched me pick the papers up. ‘Are you OK?’

  I straightened my sleeves and looked down the hall.

  ‘Man, I’d fuck that guy up if he comes back here,’ Kamal said. He balled his fists.

  ‘Yeah, I believe you,’ I said.

  He handed me a yellow slip of paper as I gathered up my case.

  ‘Don’t forget this.’

  I co
uld feel his eyes on me as I looked at the slip, a little confused by its reappearance.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s this conference thing Munroe wanted me to go on.’

  ‘That sounds cosy. Take the perks, friend, whilst you can.’

  I nodded.

  ‘What a dickhead,’ he asserted, staring down the corridor. He strained his eyes and looked worried. ‘That’s not him coming back, is it?’

  2

  I BUMPED INTO Munroe one quiet afternoon as she was grabbing her lunch in the canteen. It was exam period and the hall was almost empty. She told me about the latest remonstrations between the police and the college. A young man, who – Munroe was quick to stress – was repeating his first year, had gathered with his friends outside the toilet the week before. They were heckling the girls going in and out, first with wolf whistles, then with some lewd comments that were getting increasingly offensive. The guy in question deliberately threw his beanie hat on the floor as a girl wearing a short skirt came out of the toilet. Not only did he have a good look up her skirt as he picked up his hat but when her friend protested he groped her.

  The girls – Munroe could barely conceal her pride at this – decided to get back at him together. Just inside the college entrance was the hair salon. I passed it every day. The salon was laid out in an L-shape. Through the glass doors three leather chairs were visible to passers-by. Most of the time girls would loiter around the corner by the sinks and out of immediate sight. There were wall-sized mirrors all around. They flirted with the guy, lured him in and sat him down in one of the chairs.

  Just as he closed his eyes and started unzipping his jeans he noticed two more girls around the corner. It would have seemed like there were more and more with all those mirrors around him. Several ranks of beauticians, each holding a hairdryer aloft, moved in to surround him.

  The four girls, a gang, although Munroe would not have used that word, started hitting the guy. One of them broke his nose with the butt of a hairdryer. Another burnt his forehead by blasting him on the highest setting. The guy tried to overpower them and ran for it. It was pretty messy by all accounts. She didn’t know who notified the police but they appeared the day after. What pleased her was that the girls, following the assault, put in an application for new sets of hairdryers. She approved the application herself and fast-tracked it through the Finance Office. Police interest eventually tailed off and no-one had seen much of the guy since anyway. Munroe laughed it all off. ‘You should have seen me. I was trying not to be proud of those girls.’

  She was right. But I wondered what they would do if he came back.

  ‘If he comes in here again – we’ll get security to hand him over to the police for sexual assault anyway,’ she added.

  I passed those glass doors day after day. I saw legs swinging over the side of the seats. The girls were lazing around and chatting. They trimmed each other’s fringes daily and placed each hairdryer or pair of scissors back on the wall-hooks when they were finally satisfied with what they saw.

  3

  WHEN I ARRIVED at the ICC for the first day of the conference I found there had been an amendment. Stapled inside each of the leaflets was a small slip with another name and title on. It was an underwhelming presentation and the alignment of the text was off in pretty much every leaflet. Clearly the speaker had missed a deadline for the printers, or else he had been brought in to shore-up a middleweight contest. His paper on Arthur Koestler would be the one just after the break for lunch.

  I took the booklets back outside with me so I could smoke. I was early. Centenary Square was empty and seagulls perched on the support beams of the ferris wheel. I looked at my watch and walked around. By the registry office to the right there were statues and a homeless man was sitting at the foot of one of the plinths. I circled back around to some benches by a water fountain. I felt like the fountain was new.

  I was thinking about this when I noticed a man across from me. He was taking long swigs from a plastic bottle and eyeing the theatre ahead of us with suspicion. A trilby was placed beside him. He glanced over his shoulder towards the wheel and put the hat back on. As he got up and plucked his briefcase from the floor he noticed me. Behind us the flow of the water sculpture lapsed briefly, before resuming and filling out the city’s endless background noise.

  ‘It’s Coca Cola,’ he said. He showed me the bottle of Coca Cola. ‘I’ve got a taste for the stuff.’

  I shrugged. I think I must have been staring at him without realising.

  ‘I was away with the fairies,’ I said.

  He paused a second. ‘You know, I read somewhere that if you hold Coca Cola up to the light the liquid looks red.’ He agreed with himself, nodding a lot. ‘Look at it with light shining through it and it’s more red than anything else.’

  He held it up to the cloudy sky.

  ‘Not this stuff though.’

  ‘Not enough light,’ I said.

  ‘It’s not that. There’s too much whiskey in it.’

  He laughed. His creased cheeks and forehead smoothed out. He looked like a different person. He took another, longer swig from the bottle. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You know there used to be a sculpture here,’ he said. ‘It used to be where this fountain is now.’

  ‘I was just thinking about that,’ I said. I told him I could remember climbing all over the sculpture years ago with my friends. ‘What happened to it?’

  He said the sculpture was torched in broad daylight, on an April afternoon. The resin took light and the lurid, sandy shading of the figures turned black as a cigarette butt. All the figures, including Joseph Chamberlain, were mutilated beyond recognition. He said the artist had left Birmingham a long time ago.

  ‘Well, no-one seems to miss it,’ he said.

  This man, in his suit with visible sweat patches, then wished me well and walked in the direction of the ICC. I looked at the fountain for a while. After a minute or two I followed him across the square and through the entrance. I was absorbed in the crisscrossing walkways overhead and only brought back to the ground floor by the arm of an attendant. There was a fine art exhibition in the gallery space that I had almost stumbled upon, only to be told it was by invitation only. When the purple-coated attendant saw my leaflet he pointed to a set of stairs and I mounted these.

  At the top I saw the man from outside. He had hidden his Coca Cola bottle out of sight and was talking to a group of academics. They listened attentively. Their hands were clasped together behind their backs. When one of them was about to respond to his point, he turned to the side, saw someone or something and quickly excused himself. I sat at a table and waited for us to be let through to the auditorium.

  I can’t remember the other speakers; only Jaroslaw left an impression. That was the drinker’s name. I got a good look at him under the stage lighting. He had dark hollows around each eye, indenting each cheek. His black beard had a sliver of grey at its centre. He was presenting on the works of Arthur Koestler. He began by talking about Koestler’s suicide note. It had been amended over the course of two days, after his wife agreed to die with him. Jaroslaw delivered this fact with a grin.

  The way Jaroslaw spoke suggested he and Koestler knew each other. He had the manner of a priest giving a sermon to unrepentant schoolkids. A lot of people in the auditorium were put off. A few turned in their seats and raised eyebrows at each other. Jaroslaw had a lot to say. He had a spiel about the history of science, arguing that there was a certain arrogance in the way the subject presented itself.

  He said this arrogance was not becoming of a discipline that had produced the atomic bomb. He argued, and cited others who had held this same view, that science presented itself as almost complete every fifty years or so. This he put down to the perpetuation of scientific myth by those who were unwilling to chart science as history.

  ‘The m
yth,’ he said, ‘assures us that, barring one final piece of the jigsaw, there is almost a complete picture of the universe and its workings.’

  He compared the technological process of man to a TV soap opera, keeping our interest in an open-ended narrative that constantly deferred its own ending. All those philosophers who stubbornly put the earth in a pool or warmed it with heavenly fire, or who attributed the light of the stars to nails in the sky of the universe, as far off the mark as they were, Jaroslaw argued they had contributed. Valid ideas lay dormant for years and scientists schooled in mysticism made some stellar breakthroughs. At one point I became determined to speak to him afterwards. It was as he wrote off the generations of youngsters we were teaching, confining them to an intellectual cul-de-sac and rooting them in stale academic patterns.

  I bumped into him coming out of the toilet. He tried to offer me a copy of his friend’s book. As he held it up I could see the taught, freckled skin of his knuckles and the faded, pink outline of some bruising there. Eventually, I convinced him to sit down with me. It wasn’t easy. I walked with him to the fountain outside where we had first spoken. ‘Oh yes,’ he said after a pause. We talked as office workers crossed Centenary Square in front of us. A teenager asked if she could move his hat so she could sit down.

  ‘Yes. As long as you put it on,’ he said.

  I watched as he tried to flirt with her, softening his voice and speaking with an affected clarity. She pulled a Vogue-style pose in the hat. It was probably the wrong kind of Madonna for Jaroslaw. He didn’t complain. He put his hand on her bare shoulder. She lifted this off with a tut, turned back to her red-faced friend and put the hat down. He said, quite fondly, ‘Oh, you are mean.’ Before long the girls got up and left, heading towards the canal and leaving the bench empty. Jaroslaw turned back to me and asked again about my work, this time with a touch of venom, whilst one hand groped through his case to find the bottle.