Septembers

by Christopher Prendergast

  A birthday party was going on at the Italian-American place. A bunch of balloons had been tied to the sign by a worker.

  ‘What was going on with that woman?’ he asked eventually.

  Fortunately he knew when to leave it. He offered to give me advice on romance if I ever needed it.

  A line of children were being led from a path to the front of the restaurant. At their head was a little girl with a paper crown. Whatever happened to children’s parties at McDonald’s, I thought. Then I quickly called David back. I could see his friends were getting exasperated but I’d suddenly had an idea.

  ‘I’ve got a book I think you should read,’ I told him, asking him to write an address down on a piece of paper. ‘I’ll post it to you. If you’re going to go on to university then I can get it to you for freshers’ week. It won’t be on any reading lists.’

  I went back in and relieved the other worker, Emma. After she offered to get us some coffees I pulled the bag of returned shoes from the corner and started separating out each pair, covering my face with a cloth when I needed to mask the rotten-bark smell of sweat and cheap leather. I lined them up on the counter as my manager approached, rubbing his bald head.

  I sprayed the shoe, sending a cloud of white particles into the air around the desk. My manager had stopped to take in a pair of UFC fighters grappling on the screen. I watched the white particles form a cloud and then descend, falling onto his sleeve, briefly carpeting his hairy hand and dropping into his drinks can. Absentmindedly he brushed his arm. Then he stepped away.

  The letter I had been promised by Munroe took several weeks to arrive. I picked it up amongst three or four others, saw the college’s stamp and returned to the sofa with it in hand. The letter invited me, in fairly threatening tones, to attend a disciplinary hearing, with a view to dismissal if I didn’t co-operate. I put it under the memoirs on my lap, open on the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ chapter. One letter was from the bank, which I threw aside. There was another underneath, the front of which was bordered with ornate, golden strips.

  This letter was an invite to Wolfencrantz’s retirement party. The event had been referenced in my time at St Edwards. Apparently it had always been a year or two away. Yet the day most staff said would be placed eternally aside was in fact earmarked for the end of summer. I wouldn’t have remembered myself and I had ruled out any hope of being restored to his confidence. Yet it gave me a lift as I put on the purple polo shirt and black trousers, combed my hair to one side and began the hour-long walk to work.

  I approached my boss’s office but found the door closed. Two or three people were standing around the meeting table with their arms folded. I was spotted through the blinds. A middle-aged lady with sunglasses on ushered me away. At the service desk Emma was giggling to herself.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I said.

  ‘You,’ she answered, with a slightly hoarse voice. ‘Disrupting the big meeting.’

  I walked around the back of the desk and grabbed one of the crisp packets she had stashed under there. Smoky Bacon. They were already open.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, snatching them back.

  ‘Is it head office?’ I said. ‘He’ll be taking some hairdryer treatment. It’s only right.’

  I began to tell her about some of the things I had seen in my tenure at the college. She said I was never a teacher. She didn’t believe it for a second. Then she told me to take the reins from her, thirty minutes early. I agreed to, reluctantly at first.

  ‘Actually, Emma, if I do, will you swap the Saturday shift with me?’

  She mulled it over whilst putting her coat on and checking her phone for messages. She was half way out the door when she said yes.

  ‘What do you have to do at the weekends anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m going to a party . . .’ I said, starting to rack up some of the returned pairs. ‘It’s for an old friend, a teacher.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said, racing out of the door.

  Whether my invite to the retirement was an oversight or not, I knew I had to go. There was also a chance that Annabel would be attending.

  I checked into an anonymous hotel on the outskirts of Sheffield city centre. Passing through the junctions of corridors I couldn’t find my room number. I wasn’t even close. I went back down. The fair-haired girl on reception seemed amused at my reappearance. It had been four or five minutes since she had sent me up three flights of stairs. The small dimples at the corners of her mouth did not disappear when she gave me new directions, this time pointing me towards the lift. She had a sweet, Eastern European accent. Perhaps it had distracted me the first time around.

  ‘Can I settle the bill now?’ I asked.

  She thought about this for a few seconds, narrowing her eyes and drawing her shoulders in. Then she drummed her fingers on the desk.

  ‘Cash or card? I’ll have to go and get someone if you need to use the card machine.’

  She pointed to the computer.

  ‘That’s fine. I’d rather pay by cash.’

  She began searching the desk for a pen. The smell of coffee wafted through the reception area. I looked back through the open door of the restaurant. In there, several young people were sat separately but clustered in the nearer half of the hall. Some were flicking through newspapers whilst others were gazing past their plates and through the large windows at the rising overpass. A porter stooped and lifted the door wedge away. He entered one of the lifts. As I filled out my address, the restaurant door closed behind me.

  ‘Do you serve breakfast?’

  The clerk straightened her back. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘continental breakfast is served between 8.30am and 9.30am.’

  ‘If I don’t have it will you take it off the bill?’

  She gave a shrug. ‘I can take it off the bill, sure.’

  I signed my details off and handed over the twenty-five pounds in weathered notes. Another group of visitors filled the entranceway. They waited, armed with bags, for the automatic doors to open. I gave her back the pen.

  ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said. ‘Do you know if there are any parks or fields near here?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  She looked ready to receive the new arrivals so I picked up my bag, thanked her again and headed for the lift.

  I wandered out in a tracksuit that was beginning to reveal the mesh lining through tiny holes in the knees. It was a few hours before the party was due to start. I had a satchel with me. In it was the battered, ink-smeared, abusive and unevenly folded world map. I brought it to the centre of a park bordered by low-rise estates to one side, and a main road on the other. I had wanted to give the map to Wolfencrantz, thinking it would make a fitting retirement present. Lately I had come around to the idea that the fellow was more of a latter-day Hindenburg than anything else. He had clung onto a statesmanlike, dignified air that he no longer merited. If he stooped to receive me during the party, I would give him the map and try and remind him of what was still at stake.

  But on arriving back in Sheffield the thought had seemed a drain. Instead I sought out the park, wandered to a lonely bench in the centre and sat beside a large concrete bin. Sirens rang out in the distance. A black bag, loosely placed in the bin, fluttered in the wind. The open, flat expanse made me breathe a little more slowly. I tore open a cheap pack of lighters I had bought on exiting the train station. I put one under my foot and crushed the top, till I thought the fluid must be leaking out. Once three or four of the lighters had been crushed in this way I wrapped the map around them. Fuel was dripping through a tear at the bottom. I placed the map in the bin and started setting light to the outer edges.

  It was difficult at first. The edges would burn then blacken and go out. Eventually I got a few corners burning at once and settled the thing in the bin.

  I sat back down. A game of cricket was going on between some ch
ildren and their parents at the far end of the football pitches. Traffic had built up on the main road. Further down the path there was a figure walking a dog. The end of the bench felt hot. The lightest tip of a flame showed at the rim of the bin. The heat grew. Unable to sit there any longer, I got up and walked at pace down the path. As I came to the dogwalker I tried to share his surprise at the first sounds of cracking plastic. Then I began to run.

  The retirement party was on the fifth floor of Sheffield’s Ramada. Layers of convex glass parted as I stepped into the entrance. A bellboy didn’t check my papers but beckoned me towards a queue for the lifts. He told me to go to the fifth floor and glimpsed the cigarette in my breast pocket. There was a smoking garden on the ground floor but also a balcony on the seventh, he said, which would be quicker to reach from the fifth. I nodded along, joined the queue and looked for familiar faces in the crowd.

  There was a girl amongst the next group that stepped into the lift. She had her blonde hair tied in a bun. I thought it might be Annabel. When she turned to face us I could see she was a little younger, Wolfencrantz’s niece or family friend, and she was with her mother who was trying to adjust her dress. One or two stragglers jumped into the vacant spaces as the lift doors closed. We shuffled forwards again.

  I was wearing a suit with a pleated white shirt. Looking into the endless reflections of the lift it didn’t seem like me standing there. It had been a while since I had dressed to such effect. In truth I had picked out the best of my formal clothes. They hung in the most neglected part of my wardrobe. I poked the cigarette back down into my pocket and watched the lift numbers ascend on a digital panel over the doors. Nerves must have struck me then because I hit the button for floor seven just as we were clearing floor three. Looks were exchanged between my neighbours.

  The lift quickly emptied and I leaned against the back wall, placing the cigarette between my lips to satisfy some sense of ritual. The doors were just closing when Wolfencrantz himself stepped through. On either side of him were two equally tall men, one quite pug nosed with a hieroglyph tattooed on his knuckle. The other gazed endlessly at the top corner of the lift.

  I waited for the old man to recognise me. I wondered how he would present, as a weakened Hindenburg, receiving me for one last time, with one last hope before the light died behind his eyes. Or was it still Franz von Papen? Was he still ignoring any affinity we might have shared? He asked me for floor seven. His friend was closer to the panel. The number was already lit so I pressed it for effect. His companions must have been friends from his boxing days. They were discussing the technique of a fighter they knew. Their tone hovered between respect and lingering amusement.

  ‘He was a wind-up merchant,’ one remarked.

  ‘He could take more than he dealt out.’

  ‘So they said.’ Wolfencrantz sniffed. He hummed a little tune as he seemed to recollect something. ‘He told me he was always waiting for your arms to get tired.’

  The lift had filled with the musk of a wood-scented cologne. Then one of the men pulled out a tin of cigars and began counting them using his tattooed hand. I looked in the mirror, to the right of me, and met Wolfencrantz’s eyeline. He studied me intensely. When they exited, Wolfencrantz stood back from the lift doors and let his friends go ahead of him.

  With a respectful nod he turned back to me. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He held out a ten pound note. He wanted me to take it. I did. He strode down the corridor and continued humming. I let the doors close and ping. I held the note out in front of me trying to understand what had just happened. It had been little longer than a year since I had seen him and I was nothing more than a bellboy to him. I stayed in the lift, wishing I had brought the map to refresh his waning memory. I squashed the tenner into a ball and I put the cigarette behind my ear. I started humming too.

  When the doors opened at floor five again there were several guests waiting. I beckoned them in.

  ‘Matt! Is that you?’

  Mrs Yeoman joined me in the lift. After blurting this out in shock she couldn’t think of anything to say. I watched the initial hostility disappear. She moved close to the lift wall. She pressed the button for the ground floor. There was a lot of make-up on her small, bony face. I asked her how she was. She gave a half smile.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She looked amused and said, ‘Wolfencrantz must have extended an open invitation to former staff. He’s not one to bear a grudge.’ She looked me up and down indignantly. ‘You never dressed this smartly for work.’

  I thanked her for the compliment and pulled the cigarette from behind my ear. For some reason a few people got off at the third floor. It opened to an empty hallway with the steamy air of a swimming pool.

  ‘So how is life at St Edwards?’ I asked, anticipating her ascension to the throne. She would be preparing for her first year as headmistress. We were suddenly pressed closer to each other as several youngsters got in. Each was holding a towel and one threw his over his shoulder, narrowly missing my face. Mrs Yeoman told me about some of her innovations. One was an afterschool activity team that targeted kids from problematic backgrounds. I tried to loosen my tie. The heat in the lift had risen.

  ‘Of course there’s a balance to strike between reaching out and trying not to stigmatise them. That would be counterproductive,’ she said.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Luckily the doors opened to the ground floor. She asked if I was getting out, adding that she was going to meet her husband outside. I waved her away. Andre, with a knife at the fence, came to mind. Maybe it was me. It was me he walked into school for at half-term. The doors closed once more and I put my head in my hands. Andre was stroking a fence with the knife, somewhere else. Andre was cutting England out of the world map. He was taking all the important things with him.

  I looked up in the mirror. There was a small man in a pork pie hat drawing a handkerchief from his pocket. I had been saying the boy’s name over and over. He asked if someone had me riled and advised me to stand up to ‘this Andre fellow’. He coughed gently. ‘I used to box myself. Orthodox I was. I fancy I could still do some of these youngsters over.’

  ‘Are you one of Wolfencrantz’s friends?’ I asked.

  He ignored me. ‘Andre. That’s a French name, right?’

  The doors opened on the third floor again. Chlorine wafted in on the hot air. The man shook his head and asked if it was my stop. I told him it wasn’t and that I worked for the hotel. I thought it would stop him talking to me. It didn’t. Apparently all the soap dispensers in the toilets were empty.

  ‘And you’re no use to me now, are you?’ he said, tapping the panel. ‘Which floor do you want?’ He pushed the button in with his knuckle. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the doors.’

  He stepped out on the fifth floor. My mobile started to ring.

  ‘Matthew. Is that you? I can barely hear . . .’

  It was Jaroslaw. I told him I was in a lift. He sounded refreshed. He was surprised to hear I had made my way back to Sheffield. He said he hoped I wasn’t heading for any trouble. Then after a brief pause he began thinking aloud. It surprised him that the self-made man was retiring. He thought Wolfencrantz would have gone quietly, or else worked until he dropped. I looked around at some of the passengers now. There was another flurry of faces, many of them old enough to have retired also. I lowered my voice a little.

  ‘I think Wolfencrantz is ill,’ I said. ‘Everyone is being polite about it.’

  Jaroslaw showed a little contrition. ‘Well I hope you are t—’

  My signal was gone. I was relieved enough to know Jaroslaw was back on home turf. I quickly dived out of the doors on floor five at the last second, squeezing past some revellers in tuxedos. I was in a low-lit hallway that stretched out on either side. The general flow of traffic passed in and out of a set of double doors to my left. They were marked with two wall-mounted lamps. In my efforts to force
my way into the hall I found myself pushed by the stream of bodies behind a velvet curtain. Through a gap I could see a jazz quartet in white suits running through a fast number, surrounded by a small crowd who were torn between the music and the buffet tables that lined the wall. I looked around for Annabel.

  The music began to get louder. Before anyone noticed me I emerged from the curtains and scanned the room. Bunting looped down from the ceiling. Some strips were the colours of the German flag and diagonal to these were strips with the Union Jack. There were no windows but impressive chandeliers hung from the ceiling. The quartet were on stage on one side of the hall.

  A studious-looking man was asking his friend, over the rim of his glasses, what he saw for Europe. His friend replied, with his hand hovering over a plate of endives, that he thought the European Union might be a moral bulwark against US imperialism and unchecked Chinese growth. The questioner tittered at this. ‘Moral bulwark? Come on. The game’s up. We might be stronger together but that doesn’t make us strong enough. We need to move away from Cold War thinking.’

  They continued and he said that, on the whole, he thought England should be more like Canada. It didn’t really answer the question. I moved between them and picked up a pork skewer. One of them told me that the plates were on the next table down. When I walked over there, I realised I was standing behind Mandy, the school receptionist. I grabbed her arm.

  ‘Mandy, is Annabel here?’

  She turned, unperturbed by my brevity, and pointed across the room. ‘Why, yes. I believe she went to watch the band.’

  I crossed the hall. At some point the carpet surrendered to wooden flooring. Presumably this was the dancefloor. There was a little girl offering her plate up to her mother who was busy on the phone. I put the remains of my skewer on the girl’s plate and sidled through the crowd. No-one was dancing in the centre of the room but a little swaying and shaking had started amongst those watching the band. The boxers had just returned to the room and Wolfencrantz looked like he was preparing to make a speech. He stopped a passing waiter and pointed to the stage.