Septembers

by Christopher Prendergast

That was the summer that Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer to win Wimbledon. A lot of people said it was probably the greatest tennis match of all time. I didn’t see it myself although I know it went on so long it began getting dark and they could barely track the movement of the ball on the court. It happened to be that day Munroe asked if I wanted to meet her for a drink. She managed to suggest perhaps the only bar on Broad Street that wasn’t showing the match.

  We were on the topic of some favourable results coming my way. It looked like my students would bring through a few As and be solid elsewhere. Steven was on course to get a C. Munroe asked me how the trip to the Cold War exhibition in London had gone. We decided to order some food. I suggested we do more activities like that over the summer, to consolidate the students’ learning, making sure we give them more than just exam papers to practise on. She nodded absently.

  We kept ordering drinks whilst Munroe went through the college’s board, governor by governor, and systematically destroyed each one. They were all chauvinistic pigs trying to pin her down as a control freak, or else they were neurotic housewives who couldn’t escape the boredom of their own lives. I think she was trying to impress or at least appease me. As her eyes began to redden and fix on me with more and more drunken intent, she began letting things slip. Like the Minister for Education’s hand had slipped onto her leg during their welcome dinner at his hotel. Such a self-obsessed flirt, she said, especially with the comments he made whilst she was strapping on the hard hat. She even managed to attack her own husband, somehow, through all of this. I wasn’t sure how he had come into the conversation.

  It was like she was goading me. I was the one man left in the world she had any respect for. And she asked me to go back with her to the house. It was after ten. Remembering that the Wimbledon final was on she said we could watch the highlights at hers. I went to the toilet before we left. When I came back Munroe was leant over the bar. Her coat hung from her shoulders. She was whispering to the barman. I stepped out into the entrance for a cigarette.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling about Nadal,’ she said, before we left.

  In the taxi, she squeezed up right next to me and put my arm around the back of her shirt. I leant in to kiss her and her mouth was cold. Suddenly it was on my neck, her hand groping over my trouser leg. Whilst we were kissing, the taxi driver tutted. ‘Take it easy, you two.’

  In the house she didn’t turn any lights on but we fumbled straight into what I thought was the kitchen. When her handbag got tangled around her arm she threw it down and the keys clattered inside. She was adamant about getting up on the kitchen counter and clasped one hand around the handle of a cupboard door. I was too eager to get my end away to take much exception to the abuse she gave me, which was the most consistent thing about that sex. She changed position every minute. Only when the counter had become a confusing set of angles did we go upstairs.

  I saw briefly into what must have been the living room, a door slightly ajar and a TV that was left on. When I fell asleep it was to the distant voices of a chat show on repeat.

  I woke up to what I thought was Munroe getting up. In fact she was throwing my clothes onto the landing whilst brushing her hair. I remember looking at the silver clock on the wall and realising it was only 3 or 4am. She saw me awake and stood by the edge of the bed, buttoning a white shirt that barely covered the dark line of her pubic hair.

  ‘So I spoke to Julie about your little trip to the museum,’ she said, turning away. ‘You’ll be getting a letter in the post. You know we hadn’t even agreed a date for that. And don’t get me started on whatever went on down there.’

  She saw me put my head in my hands, disorientated, and continued. ‘And me sucking your cock doesn’t mean anything either. You don’t have a future with the college. We have the staff to see out the rest of your students. There was a time I thought you’d make a valuable asset to the new college. You should have accepted my offer when it was there . . . Get your clothes on. You’re not staying here. Your socks are on the landing and your shoes are downstairs.’

  I couldn’t believe her wild change of tack. ‘You’ve got some problems. I’ve never been called a bastard so many times in my life.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Go.’

  As I descended the stairs I heard her pacing overhead, throwing down different articles I had left behind. This stopped abruptly and I saw she was staring down.

  ‘Do you know who won the tennis?’ I shrugged, and she continued. ‘It was Rafael Nadal.’

  ‘Right, I guess it was.’

  She leaned against the banister. ‘They’re saying it was one of the greatest tennis matches ever played.’

  ‘It was his time.’

  She nodded in agreement. ‘It was. Close the door after you.’

  I gathered my things in a pile at the foot of the stairs, fumbling through my wallet for any notes and preparing to call a taxi. Still half-dressed and, seeing as Munroe had gone, I gathered my pile and took it into the front room. The television was still on. In its half-light I could see the friction burns on my knees. I pulled my trousers on and sat down for a minute. When I phoned the taxi firm the guy hung up on me. I had no idea where she lived. Kamal might have said It’s a sharp left after the boys’ club. Somehow he was right.

  8

  I’VE BEEN THINKING about those things we discussed. I can see they matter a lot to you so I thought I might put them into context, into this way of thinking we discussed. I know it’s fairly new and maybe a little obtrusive to you but honestly, I think it might help.

  When it comes to those you see as being let down by the system – that may well be true but you need to see the system as an open-ended system of hierarchies. Hierarchies within hierarchies. They all give the impression of dependence when seen from above but equally of self-sufficiency when seen from below. This you might call the Holon. It bears two different faces. It works differently on the outside to inside.

  The atom is not indivisible, although it was named on that assumption. The way you need to look at it is that neither are people, socially, I mean. We are not whole in any sense. The Hare Krishnas can undo that with one sentence. You might say that’s a manipulation of semantics and you’d know better than me. Still it is worth thinking about.

  Some of us are unable to function because the rules that govern us internally are different from the ones governing us socially, amongst friends, amongst peers, in crowds, in day-to-day interactions. That’s not the problem itself. No the problem is some people can’t switch, not without a lot of difficulty, between each set of rules. The rules are invariably different but the key is to recognise and live on account of the difference.

  Everyone must be predisposed to their own rules but certain people have an unhealthy reliance on them. It may not necessarily be a bad thing, they are uncivilised by definition, but if the social rules crumble, if they fail, well those who don’t rely are best placed to survive. There are those medical, biological examples . . . the cell that does its job perfectly as parts of the organ around it begin to fail.

  The machine whined at the message’s end. I took off my shirt and looked in the mirror at the small cuts to my back. They were little half-moons that had begun to scab almost immediately. The answer machine rolled on to the next message. It was left only three minutes later. Jaroslaw again. I angled my back in the light and saw some of the cuts were deeper, still bloody. His voice filled my flat again. He said he was going to Prague and Budapest over the next few weeks. He kept reassuring me not to worry about money and offered me his place.

  If you could do me a favour – my house key is at the back of the hanging basket on the porch wall. Moses will need walking whilst I’m gone. She doesn’t eat much anyhow but the food is in the basement. I’ll be back in a week or so, I’ll try and catch you in next time.

  My flat was a mess. It was a dumping ground, a place to pick up fresh clothes or diffe
rent ones at least. I could hear my neighbours below speaking in their low, cracked voices if I lay on the floor. The sound of cars came through the open window. Jaroslaw’s place was not far from my flat, on the other side of Edgbaston, beyond the cricket ground.

  I made late-night trips to walk Moses. I would cross through Cannon Hill Park looking up towards the only visible lights. The moon appeared in and out of sparse clouds. Leaves moved gently across the lake. When I got to his road I saw paving slabs resting against the garden wall. I cradled the flower basket and the hanging roots as I untangled the keys.

  My trainers were caked in clay. I left them behind in the porch and went inside to find the dog. Moses rose from a sofa cushion and shuffled into the hallway. The provision Jaroslaw had made for her food was brutish. He had filled an old ice cream tub with biscuits and left it on the kitchen floor. I decided to get some of the tins out of the basement and lay on something a little better. Moses ate slowly and with the kind of dignity I had never seen in a dog.

  I wandered around the house looking for her lead. I had to go upstairs. Jaroslaw had placed a Francis Bacon picture where you might have expected a mirror on the wall of his bedroom, next to the door. There was a semi-dismantled television on the bed, half wrapped in a towel. His trip did appear to have been spontaneous. I hoped he was making inroads.

  DISTANT SIRENS

  1

  JAROSLAW PHONED ME later about a particular meeting, adding that he couldn’t himself attend. He asked me to go in his place. There was a trace of paranoia in his voice as he told me to stay on alert. They were his friends and had been nothing but welcoming to me, so I didn’t have a clue what he was getting at. Still, I dressed up, in loose khakis and a shirt, heading out towards the south of the city on foot. I fell upon a retail park towards the end of my journey.

  Couples were dressed up in their Sunday best and wandering outside both of the Italian American-themed restaurants. Sinatra’s voice blew out the nearest door, along with the scent of calzone. A girl in a floral dress leaned on the menu-board whilst she adjusted the heel of her shoe. I was struck by an air of calm I hadn’t found in a while. There was a notice in the window to my right. It asked for applicants for a position on the service desk as well as other menial, cleaning jobs. I looked in and could see a row of empty bowling lanes.

  I went to take down the number but couldn’t find a pen in my pocket. A couple were embracing now, and laughing between kisses. I asked them if they had anything to write with. She plucked a small betting shop pen from her handbag and told me to keep it, smiling a slightly crooked smile before grabbing her partner by the wrist. They walked off in the direction of a cashpoint. I wrote the mobile number on a piece of paper which trembled in a gust of wind. I felt raindrops on the back of my neck. I had to hurry. Not only was I late but, with the billowing clouds moving in overhead, it looked like I could get caught in a shower.

  I found the house eventually. On the other side of the paper was an address for Juniper Grove. It was a neat suburban semi-detached house. There were children running around inside. Only cursory mentions were made of Jaroslaw and his movements through Europe. The children interrupted often and I saw no sign of Lillie Langtry from the party. I sat still, worried about spilling my coffee on any of the numerous cream throws that were laid over the arms of the sofas. Rain thumped against the bay windows as night set in. When the meeting was adjourned I was handed a rota sheet for school visits. As I was seen to the door I asked my host about the retail park I had walked through.

  ‘Oh god, you walked here,’ he said. ‘Give me a second. I’ll just grab my coat and get the car.’

  His name was Dougie. He lived in the house with his wife, the diminutive red-head who had talked non-stop for an hour, and their two daughters. As he drove me home and told me how long he deliberated over his cooking for the meetings, I couldn’t help but notice the car was a mess. It was full of bags and papers. When he saw me eyeing a satchel loaded with baby pink trainers he apologised with a slight stutter.

  ‘It’s f-ferrying these kids around,’ he said. ‘My wife keeps the house in check but they run riot in here.’

  He told me the retail park had gone up about ten years ago. They had built it in the grounds of a derelict institution. When it first opened, he said, he had been to the cinema a few times with his wife. Now they might go once a year for the bowling alley. It had turned into a hang-out for groups of teenagers now, the goths, the emos and the chavs floating around seven days a week, blowing a load of money at once then loitering outside and asking for fags. He seemed nervous when he spoke about this.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘being a teacher, you know all the lingo and whatnot.’ He lifted his spectacles and placed them higher up his nose. ‘Are you thinking of going bowling?

  ‘Actually I’m looking for a job.’

  I directed Dougie past the cricket ground, to the turn-in to my block of flats. He stopped me as I opened the car door.

  ‘You want another job? If you need more money we can get you more hours. We do the school stuff but we also do theatre work, open-air, museum days, re-enactments, anniversaries. Anything like that. It’s a good programme we’ve got going. You don’t want to get bogged down in something menial. Besides, Jaroslaw has got you covered, hasn’t he?’ He leaned back in his chair and stretched. ‘What I’m trying to say is – don’t worry about money. It’s a shame if that stuff holds you back.’

  I thanked Dougie for the lift home and said I’d see him at the next meeting.

  ‘Hey, maybe I’ll take the kids bowling and see you sooner,’ he laughed.

  I got the bowling alley job after an interview. They gave me three evening shifts a week and a discount card. I had to wear a purple polo shirt with black trousers and I was not allowed to smoke by the entrance. I dealt out the shoes.

  A lot of the youngsters needed half-sizes and half-sizes were scarce. I was always chasing down the half-sizes, making sure they got returned. My superior was a bald, tetchy-looking man who discarded his energy drink cans in the bin behind the desk, rather than his own. I asked him more than once to re-order half-sizes. He would take another energy drink from the mini-fridge, crack it open and say, ‘We’ll review it.’ Then he returned to his office where he sat and watched the UFC championships on one screen. The CCTV of the car park was on the other.

  At least once a day, and despite my best efforts, the kids left after a game with their bowling shoes still on. Most realised when they put their feet up in the cinema next door that they had abandoned their trainers to me. I would line up the returned shoes at one end of the counter. The leather was stretched and faded in parts. The uniform brown colour of the shoes was interrupted only by the different shades of shoe laces. We replaced about three shoe laces every day. I tried to keep to white but often I didn’t have the choice.

  I did have an array of Febreze cans beneath the desk. I took great care to spray into the dank hole of every shoe until white foam bubbled from the fabric inside. Row by row I sprayed and returned them to the pigeonholes.

  One Saturday evening I was re-lacing a size 12 that a six-foot ogre of a teenager had almost wrecked by tripping on the parquet floor. There was an obscure UFC title fight being beamed down on us from the screens surrounding the service desk. Christopher, the Polish cleaner, stood behind me and cheered for a Mexican in polyester shorts. The Mexican growled at the camera and tensed his abdomen.

  I was explaining to Christopher, as he rested his elbow in a pigeonhole, that ultimate fighting was not ‘wrestling for grown-ups’, a comparison he and the manager had crudely made. I thought I was getting somewhere when a pair of black brogues landed on the desk. Chris tutted. I gazed into the perforations, the tidy grooves and the polished toe, into the reflections of our faces and the flashing screens. We breathed out. It made such a change from the endless display of Nike and Adidas. I was proud at the prospect of parading brogues on m
y shoe wall.

  ‘Sir,’ a voice said. ‘You run an alley now?’

  David was standing in front of the desk. He had larger glasses now, with thicker rims. He had a flat top, apart from the left side of his head which was completely shaven. His frames were still empty. Behind him were two of his friends, who hadn’t taken their shoes off and debated doing it whilst we spoke. It took a few minutes for me to remember the last time I had seen him.

  ‘No, I just work the desk.’ I tapped his shoes. ‘What are you up to this summer? Getting ready for university?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m going to defer. I’m not going to travel or anything. I’m going to work and save some money.’

  He was dressed as if he had just left the office. He had a thin black tie on and a grey cardigan. His friends were far more casual, looking younger for it.

  ‘You don’t fancy finding yourself?’ I asked.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said, smiling. I was happy to see David so I turned to Christopher and introduced him.

  ‘This is one of my best students. David knows more about the Bay of Pigs than JFK did. He’s going places, believe me.’

  Christopher shook David’s hand then lifted his mop and bucket as if he was a standard bearer and headed for the gents’ toilets. I gave David and his friends double the amount of games for their money. They made a fair bit of noise between them for the next few hours but most of the lanes were empty. David asked me to adjust the scores after it went down the gully. He thought I could turn things in his favour. It was out of my remit though. I went around the corner for a cigarette, soaking up the smells of the restaurants in the car park, and saw the three of them come out of the building. I called David over.

  ‘You got your shoes back, didn’t you?’ I asked.

  We talked again about how his year might shape up. He told me that he was taking history and philosophy for his degree, if he could get the double honours anywhere, and that everything was geared towards that. I finished my cigarette, lit another one, and offered one to him. He waved his hand and asked what had happened with my job at the college. I told him I’d had professional differences with Munroe.