Multitudes

by Lucy Caldwell

  But it was him.

  I hadn’t seen him in years. I scrambled to work out the numbers in my head. Sixteen – seventeen – almost eighteen. All those years later, and there he was, entwined with a girl a fraction of his age. He must be nearly sixty now.

  I bent my head over the cocktail list as he walked towards me, letting my hair fall partly over my face, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His eyes slid over the women he passed, thin, fake-tanned bare backs and sequinned dresses, stripper shoes. He didn’t look once at me. I’d lived away too long, and I’d forgotten how dressed up people got for a Saturday night: I was in skinny jeans and a blazer, and not enough make-up. I watched him walk along the candy-striped carpet and out towards the toilets, and then I turned to look at his companion.

  She had her head bowed over her phone, and she was jiggling one leg and rapidly texting. She suddenly looked very young indeed. I’d put her in her mid-twenties, but it was less than that. I felt a strange tightness in my chest. She put her phone away and uncrossed her legs, recrossed them, tugged at the hem of her little black dress. She picked up her empty glass and tilted her head right back and drained the dregs, coughed a little, set the glass back down and slung her hair over the other shoulder. She had too much make-up on: huge swipes of blusher, exaggerated cat-eyes. She glanced around the bar, then she took out her phone again, flicked and tapped at it. She wasn’t used to being alone in a bar like this. It was an older crowd and she felt self-conscious, you could tell. The men in the chairs opposite her were in their forties at least, heavy-jowled, sweating in their suits, tipping back their whiskey sours. I watched the relief on her face when he appeared again, how she wriggled into him and kissed him on the cheek. As they studied the menu together, giggling, their heads bent confidentially together, I suddenly realised she wasn’t his lover.

  She was his daughter.

  She was Melissa. Seventeen years. She’d be eighteen now. Perhaps they were out tonight celebrating her eighteenth birthday. With a surge of nausea I realised, then, that what I’d been feeling wasn’t outrage that she was too young for him, or contempt, or disgust. It was simpler, and much more complicated than that.

  *

  I don’t remember whose idea it was to go to Mr Knox’s house. One minute we were giggling over him, nudging elbows and sugar-breath and damp heads bent together, and the next minute someone was saying they knew where he lived, something about a neighbour and church and his wife, and suddenly, almost without the decision being made, it was decided we were going there.

  Was it Tanya?

  There were four of us: Donna, Tanya, Lisa and me. We were fourteen, and bored. It was a Baker day, which meant no school, and we had nothing else to do. It was April, and chilly, rain coming in gusty, intermittent bursts. The Easter holidays had only just ended, and none of us had any pocket money left. We’d met in Cairnburn Park just after nine, but at that time on a wet Monday morning it was deserted. We’d wandered down to the kiddie playground, but the swings were soaking, and, after a half-hearted couple of turns on the roundabout, we’d given up. The four of us had trailed down Sydenham Avenue and past our school – it was strange to see the lights on in the main building and the teachers’ cars all lined up as usual.

  Then, more out of habit than anything else, we crossed the road to the Mini-Market. We pooled our spare change to buy packets of strawberry bon-bons and Midget Gems, and Donna nicked a handful of fizzy cola bottles. We ate them as we trudged on down towards Ballyhackamore. The rain was getting heavier, and none of us had umbrellas, so we ended up in KFC, huddled over the melamine table, slurping a shared Pepsi.

  We were the only ones in there. The sugar and the rain and the boredom made us restless, and snide. We’d started telling a story, in deliberately too-loud voices, about someone who’d ordered a plain chicken burger and complained when it came with mayo. There’s no mayo in it, the person behind the counter had said. Oh yes there is. Oh no there isn’t. And it turned out that the mayo was actually a burst sac of pus from a cyst growing on the chicken breast.

  The girl behind the counter was giving us increasingly dirty looks, and we realised that if she chucked us out we really had nowhere to go, so we changed tack then and started slagging each other, boys we’d fancied, boys we’d seen or wanted to see.

  And then the conversation, almost inevitably, turned to Mr Knox.

  *

  We all fancied Mr Knox. No one even bothered to deny it. The whole school fancied him. He was the French and Spanish teacher, and he was part French himself, or so the rumours went. He was part something, anyway: he had to be – he was so different from the other teachers. He had dark hair that he wore long and floppy over one eye and permanent morning-after stubble, and he smoked Camel cigarettes. Teachers couldn’t smoke anywhere in the school grounds, not even in the staffroom, but he smoked anyway, in the staff toilets in the Art Block or in the caretakers’ shed, girls said, and if you had him immediately after break or lunch you smelt it off him. He drove an Alfa Romeo, bright red, and where the other male teachers were rumpled in browns and greys, he wore coloured silk shirts and loafers. On Own Clothes Day at the end of term he’d worn tapered jeans and a polo neck and Chelsea boots and, even though it was winter, mirrored aviator sunglasses, like an off-duty film star. He had posters on his classroom walls of Emmanuelle Béart and a young Catherine Deneuve and Soledad Miranda, and he lent his sixth-formers videos of Pedro Almodóvar films.

  But that wasn’t all. A large part of his charge came from the fact that he’d had an affair with a former pupil, Davina Calvert. It had been eight years ago, and they were married now. He’d left his wife for her, and it was a real scandal. He’d almost lost his job over it, except in the end they couldn’t dismiss him because he’d done nothing strictly, legally wrong.

  It had happened before we joined the school, but we knew all the details: everyone did. It was almost a rite of passage to cluster as first-or second-years in a corner of the library poring over old school magazines in search of her, hunting down grainy black-and-white photographs of year groups, foreign exchange trips, prize days, tracking her as she grew up to become his lover.

  Davina Calvert, Davina Knox. She was as near and as far from our lives as it was possible to get.

  Davina, the story went, was her year’s star pupil. She got the top mark in Spanish A Level in the whole of Northern Ireland and came third in French. Davina Calvert, Davina Knox. Nothing happened between them while she was still at school – or nothing anyone could pin on him, at least – but when she left she went on a gap year, teaching English in Granada, and he went out to visit her. We knew this for sure because Lisa’s older sister had been two years below Davina Calvert and was in Mr Knox’s Spanish A-Level class at the time. After Hallowe’en half-term, he turned up with a load of current Spanish magazines, Hola! and Diez Minutos and Spanish Vogue. They asked him if he’d been away, and where he’d been, and he answered them in a teasing torrent of Spanish that none of them could quite follow. But it went around the school like wildfire that he’d been in Granada, visiting Davina Calvert, and, sure enough, when she was back for Christmas, at least two people saw them in his Alfa Romeo, parked up a side street, kissing, and by the end of the school year he and his wife were separated, getting divorced.

  The following year, he didn’t even pretend to hide it from his classes: when they talked about what they’d done at the weekend, he’d grin and say, in French or Spanish, that he’d been visiting a special friend in Edinburgh. Everyone knew it was Davina.

  We used to picture what it must have been like, when he first visited her in Granada. The winding streets and white medieval buildings. The blue and orange and purple sky. They would have walked together to Lorca’s house and the Alhambra, and, afterwards, clinked glasses of sherry in some cobbled square with fountains and Gypsy musicians. Perhaps he would have reached under the table to stroke her thigh, slipping a hand under her skirt and tracing the curve of it up, and, when he wit
hdrew it, she would have crossed and uncrossed her legs, squeezing and releasing her thighs, the tingling pressure unbearable.

  I imagined it countless times, but I could never quite settle on what would have happened next. What would you do, in Granada, with Mr Knox? Would you lead him back to your little rented room, in the sweltering eaves of a homestay or a shared apartment? No: you’d go with him instead to the hotel that he’d booked, a sumptuous four-poster bed in a grand and faded parador in the Albayzín – or more likely an anonymous room in the new district where the staff wouldn’t ask questions, a room where the bed had white sheets with clinical corners, a room with a bathroom you could hear every noise from. The shame of it – the excitement.

  *

  And in the KFC on the Upper Newtownards Road, on that rainy Monday Baker day in April, we knew where Mr Knox and Davina lived. It was out towards the Ice Bowl, near the golf club, in Dundonald. It was a forty-, forty-five-minute walk. We had nothing else to do. We linked arms and set off.

  It was an anticlimax when we got there. We’d walked down the King’s Road, passing such posh houses on the way; somehow, with the sports car and the sunglasses and the designer suits, we’d expected his house to be special too. But most of the houses on his street were just like ours: bungalows, or small red-brick semis, with hedges and lawns and rhododendron bushes. We walked up one side and down the other. There was nothing to tell us where he lived: no sign of him.

  We were starting to bicker by then. The rain was coming down relentless, and Tanya was getting worried that someone might see us and report us to the school. We slagged her – how would anyone know we were doing anything wrong, and how would they know which school we went to anyway, we weren’t in uniform – but all of us were slightly on edge. It was only mid-morning, but what if he left school for some reason, or came home for an early lunch? All four of us were in his French class, and me and Lisa had him for Spanish too: he’d recognise us.

  We should go: we knew we should go. The long walk back in the rain stretched ahead of us. We sat on a low wall to empty our pockets and purses and work out if we had enough to pay for a bus ticket each. When it turned out there was only enough for three, we started squabbling: Tanya had no money left, but she’d paid for the bon-bons, and almost half of the Pepsi, so it wasn’t fair if she had to walk. Well, it wasn’t fair for everyone to have to walk just because of her. Besides, she lived nearest: there was least distance for her to walk. But it wasn’t fair! Back and forth it went, and it might have turned nasty – Donna had just threatened to slap Tanya if she didn’t quit whingeing.

  Then we saw Davina.

  It was Lisa who recognised her, at the wheel of a metallic-blue Peugeot. The car swept past us and round the curve of the road, but Lisa swore it had been her at the wheel. We leapt up, galvanised, and looked at each other. ‘Well, come on,’ Donna said.

  ‘Donna!’ Tanya said.

  ‘What, are you scared?’ Donna said. Donna had thick glasses that made her eyes look small and mean, and she’d pushed her sister through a patio door in a fight. We were all a little scared of Donna.

  ‘Come on,’ Lisa said.

  Tanya looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘We’re just going to look,’ I said. ‘We’re just going to walk past and look at the house. There’s no law against that.’ Then I added, ‘For fuck’s sake, Tanya.’ I didn’t mind Tanya, if it was just the two of us, but it didn’t do to be too friendly with her in front of the others.

  ‘Yeah, Tanya, for fuck’s sake,’ Lisa said.

  Tanya sat back down on the wall. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘We’ll be in such big trouble.’

  ‘Fine,’ Donna said. ‘Fuck off home, what are you waiting for?’ She turned and linked Lisa’s arm, and they started walking down the street.

  ‘Come on, Tan,’ I said.

  ‘I have a bad feeling,’ she said. ‘I just don’t think we should.’ But when I turned to go after the others, she pushed herself from the wall and followed.

  We found the house where the Peugeot was parked, right at the bottom of the street. It was the left-hand side of a semi, and it had an unkempt hedge and a stunted palm tree in the middle of the little front lawn. You somehow didn’t picture Mr Knox with a miniature palm tree in his garden. We clustered on the opposite side of the road, half hidden behind a white van, giggling at it. And then we realised that Davina was still in the car. ‘What’s she at?’ Donna said. ‘Stupid bitch.’

  We stood and watched a while longer, but nothing happened. You could see the dark blur of her head and the back of her shoulders, just sitting there.

  ‘Well, fuck this for a game of soldiers,’ Donna said. ‘I’m not standing here all day like a big fucking lemon.’ She turned and walked a few steps down the road and waited for the rest of us to follow.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tanya said. ‘I’m going too. I said I’d be home for lunch.’

  Neither Lisa nor I moved.

  ‘What do you think she’s doing?’ Lisa said.

  ‘Listening to the radio?’ I said. ‘Mum does that, sometimes, if it’s The Archers. She doesn’t want to leave the car until it’s over.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Lisa said, looking disappointed.

  ‘Come on,’ Tanya said. ‘We’ve seen where he lives, now let’s just go.’

  Donna was standing with her hands on her hips, annoyed that we were ignoring her. ‘Seriously,’ she shouted. ‘I’m away on.’

  They were expecting me and Lisa to follow, but we didn’t. As soon as they were out of earshot, Lisa said, ‘God, Donna’s doing my fucking head in today.’ She glanced at me sideways as she said it.

  ‘Hah,’ I said, vaguely. It didn’t do to be too committal: Lisa and Donna were thick as thieves these days. Lisa’s mum and mine had gone to school together, and the two of us had been friends since we were babies. There were photographs of us in the bath together, covered in bubbles, bashing each other with bottles of Mr Matey. We’d been inseparable through primary school, and into secondary. Recently though Lisa had started hanging out more with Donna, smoking Silk Cuts nicked from Donna’s mum and drinking White Lightning in the park at weekends. Both of them had gone pretty far with boys. Not full-on sex, but close, or so they both claimed. I’d kissed a boy once. It was better than Tanya – but still; it made me weird and awkward around Lisa when it was just the two of us. I’d always imagined we’d do everything together, like we always had done.

  I could feel Lisa still looking at me. I scuffed the ground with the heel of one of my gutties.

  ‘I mean, seriously doing my head in,’ she said, and she pulled a face that was recognisably an impression of Donna, and I let myself start giggling. Lisa looked pleased. ‘Here,’ she said, and she slipped her arm through mine. ‘What do you think Davina’s like? I mean, d’you know what I mean?’

  I knew exactly what she meant. ‘Well, she’s got to be gorgeous,’ I said.

  ‘You big lesbo,’ Lisa said, digging me in the ribs.

  I dug her back. ‘No, being serious. She’s got to be: he left his wife for her. She’s got to be gorgeous.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t care what people think. I mean, think of all the gossip. Think of what you’d say to your parents and that.’

  ‘My dad would go nuts.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  We were silent for a moment then, watching the blurred figure in the Peugeot.

  ‘D’you think anything did happen while they were at school?’ Lisa suddenly said. ‘I mean, it must have, mustn’t it? Otherwise why would you bother going all that way to visit her? I mean, like, lying to your wife and flying all the way to Granada.’

  ‘I know. I don’t know.’

  I’d wondered about it before – we all had. But it was especially strange, standing right outside his house, his and Davina’s. Did she linger at his desk after class? Did he stop and give her a lift somewhere? Did she hang around where he lived and bump into him,
as if by chance, or pretend she was having problems with her Spanish grammar? Who started it? And how exactly did it start? And did either of them ever imagine it would end up here?

  ‘She might have been our age,’ Lisa said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Or only, like, two or three years older.’

  ‘I know.’

  We must have been standing there for ten minutes by now. A minute longer and we might have turned to go. But all of a sudden the door of the Peugeot swung open, and Davina got out. There she was: Davina Calvert, Davina Knox.

  Except that the Davina in our heads had been glamorous, like the movie sirens on Mr Knox’s classroom walls, but this Davina had messy hair in a ponytail and dark circles under her eyes, and she was wearing baggy jeans and a raincoat. And she was crying: her face was puffy, and she was crying, openly, tears just running down her face.

  I felt Lisa take my hand and squeeze it. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed.

  We watched Davina walk around to the other side of the car and unstrap a toddler from the back seat. She lifted him to his feet and then hauled a baby car seat out.

  We had forgotten – if we’d ever known – that Mr Knox had babies. He never mentioned them, or had photos on his desk like some of the other teachers. You somehow didn’t think of Mr Knox with babies.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Lisa said again.

  The toddler was wailing. We watched Davina wrestle him up the drive and into the porch, the car seat over the crook of her other arm. She had to put it down while she found her keys, and we watched as she scrabbled in her bag and then her coat pockets before locating them, unlocking the door and going inside. The door swung shut behind her.

  We stood there for a moment longer. Then, ‘Come on,’ I found myself saying. ‘Let’s knock on her door.’ I have no idea where the impulse came from, but as soon as I said it I knew I was going to do it.