The units did not find any bombs in or around the school. The only destruction anyone witnessed was a cracked headlight on a Nissan Micra caused by a police van reversing in the crowded car park. Munroe confessed she felt like she’d lost control and gone overboard with the whole thing. I told her that was nonsense. It was a perfectly natural response, especially given recent threats, the current climate. When I used that phrase it was like something passed over her eyes. She fell into thought.
A day later I saw two workmen on the pitches. They were each in grey overalls and had lanyards dangling by their sides. Over the course of an hour they put barrier tape around the bottom third of the field. Within this strip the workmen dug a ditch around the Bomb Assembly Point. I sat down to mark some coursework. When I walked back over to the window, about half an hour later, the workmen were still on the field. The sign was gone and they were slowly filling the hole again.
6
AT ABOUT 4PM I went to see Munroe, expecting she might have left already. She was in her office though, answering emails and trying to sort out a purchase order she was making over the telephone. I told Munroe there was a Cold War exhibition that had recently opened in London. It was a chance for the students to consolidate their learning. She pointed out that they had already completed their exams. With an intake of breath, glancing every so often at her screen, she said that she appreciated the care and attention I was devoting to their overall learning but the money could not be spared in this instance. That was fine. I said I would fund it myself, so long as she allowed me to take them during college hours. It could, possibly, count as a bridge to their further learning, she said. She looked busy so I left her without really hammering out the details.
I went back to my flat that evening with some phone numbers I found in the student files. There were still stacks of boxes in my hallway. I dragged them in front of the television. For an hour and a half I filtered through letters, bills and paraphernalia that I had accumulated during my time in Sheffield. What I was looking for wasn’t there. Halfway through a ream of letters that had been tucked back into their envelopes I decided to scan through some old emails. That was no good either. It occurred to me it had been written down, once, although I had never used it.
Discarded in the chest of drawers in the spare room I found a wallet I had stopped using a few months before. In it were lots of old train tickets and loyalty cards. Eventually, between splits in the fabric, I found a folded piece of paper. Corinne’s address was written in thick black fountain pen ink. With her London flat as a centre point, I began planning the route and pre-booking all the tickets.
When I called Julie’s house her dad answered. He said he would get her and then returned to the phone with an accusatory tone. ‘Who is this?’
I said I was phoning from her college. Stairs creaked in the background. She had been asleep and sounded muddled when she took the receiver. Within a few minutes I’d convinced her we were taking a class trip and asked her to meet us at the station on Friday. When I called Steven his dad enthusiastically stated the house phone number. I thought I had rung up an office by mistake. Steven must have been standing next to him as I heard his voice immediately. Once Steven was on board I called David’s house and it rang out for some time.
Eventually David himself answered. Without stopping to hear what I had to stay he started telling me about the exam. He was the most difficult to convince. His attitude was not dissimilar to Munroe’s. We were done – what was there to be said? I told David that he made up a not-insignificant-third of my class and that the others were on-board for the trip. He said he’d come if I took them for a drink. Eager to get things settled, I agreed.
We met at Moor Street Station later that week. The rain had cleared and it was pretty warm that morning. The radio said it would only be getting hotter during the day. The renovated station felt like an annex of a theme park. Youngsters chewed gum in the cafe, their faces flecked by palm trees in every corner. When we mounted the stairs to get to our platform it was like trying to find the end of a rollercoaster queue. That appealing but musty smell of industrial fabrication woke me up to the day’s possibilities. We could resurrect. We could make it up.
David had decided to go for a chalk blue T-shirt that day. Instead of a cardigan or a shirt, he had a long cord coat on. He began scanning the departure boards. A fresh tramline had been shaved into his hair. Julie was a little distant on the journey. She wrapped the sleeves of her hoody around her fists, making nervous eye contact. Both David and Julie listened to their mp3 players at the table. Over the course of the journey Steven would grab one of Julie’s earphones, shove it into his own ear and start some exaggerated headbanging. She looked embarrassed every time. Otherwise, Steven was happy to ask me questions for the two and a half hours, trying to get some ‘off the record’ answers.
‘Have you ever smoked marijuana, sir? . . . Have you ever heard of a strawberry surprise? . . . Do you know what a fleshlight is? . . . Do you believe in God? . . . How many arms do you think God would have? . . . On a scale of one to ten how hot was Madame Nhu?’
He seemed interested when I asked him questions in return. He was stumped on where the most militarised border in the world was. I left him thinking and throwing out answers for five minutes or so. Like a lot of my students, he thought of Israel’s borders. Eventually I told him.
‘The border between North and South Korea – the Americans still have a massive military presence there.’
He looked puzzled for a minute and then smiled inanely. ‘Why didn’t they insert their massive military presence into Madame Nhu?’
We wandered around Marylebone and found a fancy dress shop. David bought a Richard Nixon mask. He said it seemed appropriate. We got onto the Bakerloo Line and rode the tube until Lambeth North. This was about lunchtime so when we stopped to eat I revealed to the group that there might be a diversion.
‘There’s a flat not far from here’, I said, ‘where I think someone I know is living.’
I told them I needed help staking it out.
‘I’m not sure we’ll be welcome, but I’d appreciate it if you guys could stick around and keep everything on the straight and narrow.’
‘Do you want us to go in or just wait outside?’
‘Was this your girlfriend, sir?’
‘Could have been his wife.’
‘I know this sounds extreme,’ I volunteered, and it was, but I wanted Annabel to see what I was capable of. These students were starting to show their potential and I had high hopes for their exam results.
‘If you help me, afterwards we’ll go for dinner, on the card and you can have drinks.’
You mean beer?’ Steven asked.
‘Yes. Just help me with this one thing.’
David was more switched on than the others. He slurped from a Slush Puppie and stood up at the table. ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You want to see whether she’s with anyone else. I know what to look for.’
The apartment complex where Corinne lived was set back from a main road. Its car park was covered by shrubbery. In one of the visible windows over the treetops an exercise bike looked out over the neighbourhood. As I had thought, there was no public access. We had to buzz at the gate and then again at the door to the actual building. Corinne’s thick accent came over the intercom. Our response had been prepared – David was to play the delivery boy in an Eastern European accent. Instead, I pushed him aside at the last minute.
‘Corinne – it’s me, Matt.’
She eventually realised which Matt I was, no doubt running through a weave of friends and exes quickly, in a panic, thinking that some skeleton had emerged from the underground to find her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to speak to you. I should have called ahead, I guess.’
There was a long pause.
‘Who’s that with you?’
> ‘No-one . . .’
‘Matt, I can look from the balcony if I need to.’
The intercom crackled as David shrugged. I beckoned for them to move closer to the wall.
‘It’s some of my students. We’re on a trip in the area and I thought it was about time, you know, we spoke.’
There was some crying from the kid in the background. She went away from the buzzer and came back.
‘I’m not letting you in here till I’m sure they are your students.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
The door buzzed and three of us stood back whilst David pulled it open.
‘Is that your ex, sir? Where is she from?’ he asked.
I told him it was my ex’s best friend.
‘What are you up to? Trying to get some nookie from her best friend?’
We mounted a set of stairs covered in powder blue carpeting and went to the second floor. Corinne was leant over the third-floor railing, ready for us. Her hair was curled and dripping wet from a recent wash. Somewhere amongst those wet tangles her mouth produced a barrage of questions.
‘How many of you are there? Let them wait down there.’
I walked up a floor and came face to face with her. She had the door held open with the heel of a bare foot. The landing was just about level with the canopy of the trees outside. Moving to stand between me and her front door, she seemed much more diminutive than I remembered. This was the girl who had commanded so much attention all her young adult life, and here with her back to the door, she could barely maintain mine. I was eager to see into the flat beyond. The child’s crying rose in volume again.
‘Can you let me in?’
‘Just you . . . they can wait.’
Seeing as I had prepared meticulously to get this far and dragged the students along with me, I hadn’t put much thought into what I would say to Corinne. She reminded me of this fact when she came back with the baby in her arms and didn’t offer me a seat but sat down herself, looking up with exaggerated expectancy after a few seconds. The living room itself did not give much away. There were two sofas at right angles, a television, a stack of magazines and one of those ubiquitous sculptures of the human form. Cash in the Attic was on.
‘I sent you an email,’ she said.
‘I got it.’
‘I don’t remember inviting you down. Besides, Annabel isn’t in.’
‘So she does live here,’ I said.
Corinne sighed and folded her arms.
‘Is she happy?’
‘I think you should ask her yourself.’
‘Where’s Seb?’
There was a knock at the door. Corinne went to answer it and David’s well-styled head poked in.
‘The security man wanted to know why we were loitering on the stairs. He said we’ll have to leave.’
Corinne huffed and swung the door wide open.
‘Come on in, all of you.’ She watched them file into the room then closed the door. ‘This leg of your trip isn’t going to last much longer though.’
‘Corinne, this is David, Julie and Steven. These students are all in my A2 class. I’ve got high hopes for them. David could get into any university in the country if he wanted.’ She looked unimpressed so I turned to Steven. ‘Hey, Steven, what’s the most militarised border in the world?’
‘Matt, this is not on. I’m going to speak to her,’ Corinne said, setting the baby down.
She left us in the living room whilst she phoned Annabel. The baby played with the Nixon mask, cooing when David leaned towards him. On the other sofa Julie kept trying to catch my eye. I motioned for them all to come through into the hallway. We avoided the room Corinne was pacing around in and the abrasive sounds that were coming out of there. Her voice could be so unforgiving. We ducked in and out of the three or four rooms open to us.
Julie signalled that she had found the bedroom. She was right – it was undoubtedly Annabel’s bedroom, although it looked barely lived in. There were two or three Art Nouveau posters on the wall. They caught more light than they had in her apartment. I gazed at the red-haired girl advertising absinthe. The necklaces on the dresser were recognisable also. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in. David produced a photo from the mantelpiece. Annabel was stood with a guy on a pier somewhere. She was leant against the railing and laughing.
‘It’s the new boyfriend, sir. Looks like a dick.’
I shook my head. ‘No, that’s her brother. Keep looking. I don’t think she stays here much then.’
I found myself shifting focus to look for the dresses and presents I had bought for her, to see if she still used them. Suddenly everyone’s attention shifted to Jules in the corner. She was holding something up by a strap. The velcro crackled as it swung in front of us. She held it as if it asserted something more than itself. I thought at first she was being vulgar but saw that she was disgusted. She held it so far out from her body there was no danger the implement itself would swing back and touch her. It wasn’t just a dildo, it was a strap-on dildo.
‘She’s kinky then,’ David said.
She hadn’t been sleeping in that bed but she must have been sleeping somewhere in the flat.
‘Just put it back.’
We watched Jules dangle it over the drawer and slowly lower it till it made contact. The dildo’s own weight made it fall backwards on itself. It extended over the lip of the drawer in a position which was untenable. She tried to close the drawer without touching it but the member’s end became jammed. That was when Corinne threw the door open and imperiously held the phone above her head. She told us she had called the police and they were on the way. The students began to panic so I led them back to the living room. As we made an exit David offered Corinne the Nixon mask, adding that it was for the baby. She snatched it from his hand, crushing Nixon’s features, and dashed it to the floor behind her.
Before she closed the door I tried to confront her. ‘I know,’ I said. She pretended not to hear, narrowed her eyes and said ‘What’s that?’ then she threw the door closed and I heard her sliding the latch across.
As I descended the staircase I realised I was now alone. The others were huddled around a bench in the shade of an oak, still inside the gates of the complex. They were alert to the sound of the security door closing behind me. As I rubbed my temples I heard Jules tell David to pipe down.
‘That is why you phone ahead,’ I said, glancing back at the flats.
David was tying his lace. ‘Is that where Nixon went wrong with Watergate?’
I liked his joke but it didn’t seem to be for my benefit. We moped out onto the main road. Whilst I was debating which tube station to go to and where we could eat, David started to peel away. Within seconds he had limbered out into the road and was sprinting across a bridge, weaving in and out of groups of people, including some waiting tourists who may have got him in camera shot. He disappeared over the brow of the road.
Steven shrugged at Jules and began jogging after him. Even Jules, who had remained beside me, felt the pull of the flight. She looked back, her face screwed up in embarrassment.
‘Sorry, sir, this . . .’
She shook her head and walked away, the slowest of them all. Awkwardly striding between people. Despite everything she was still insecure and uncertain of her steps. I started to follow but she turned back.
‘We think it’s best if we make our own way from here.’
Steven was gone by then, out of sight, with Jules behind him. It probably looked like Jules and I were having a domestic, exaggerating the drama by airing it in public. The passers-by formed a kind of moving circle around me. They were too reserved or uninterested to stop and stare. Outside Lambeth North tube station I bought a Coke and felt the shaking of my own hand as I tried to grip the cold can. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. People were coming thick and fast around me aga
in. I caught snippets of their conversations.
‘I really want to go and see that,’ a guy said, pointing to a billboard mounted on the opposite side of the road.
I walked towards the advertisement till I thought I’d be able to see the lineaments of Brad Pitt or Eric Bana’s face. Those lines never appeared. A lorry let out a wrenching blast of horn as I narrowly skipped out of its way to the foot of the billboard. Without thinking I flung the Coke can up towards the board. It smacked against part of Eric Bana’s beard, leaving a white tuft, a shred in the canvas. The Coke can itself bounced back onto the pavement. Some voices sounded in surprise and disbelief.
People diverted, first around me, then around the can which was hissing and spurting its syrup onto the kerb. As the flow lessened they began to move closer to the can again. As the last of its contents dribbled onto the warm paving, it was obscured by passing legs and figures until it disappeared. Eyes passed over me slowly. Even as people walked on, new faces in the crowd inherited their suspicion. They continued to look at me, disgusted, but without understanding why.
7
MUNROE WAS IN constant contact with me at the start of that summer, in an email stream that began with a discussion of exam results and kept going. I think she was purposely showing me undue attention. She knew I was one of a handful of colleagues who had not been a witness to her rare breakdown over the bomb threat. The emails she wrote were so affable. They smoothly alluded to the things I’d told her about myself. At the same time she told me about her own life as if she wasn’t responsible for it. It was as if she wanted nothing to do with the conferences and meetings. I knew better than that.
Septembers Page 9
