by Dayo Forster
They will probably have turkey (roasted) or pie (crusted) on the menu. And the Prof likes the occasional tipple at the end of the week. It being Friday today, if I get the timing right and turn up just before I need to rush off to a lecture, he will feel obliged to offer his ear, and his opinions, and that should be lunch. Guaranteed.
Plan B: I find Rifat, whose mum lives a stone’s throw from college. She makes large, heartwarming casseroles with homemade bread and delivers them to his flat several times a week. I could offer to listen to his collection of David Bowie or to check out his latest game design, and the new graphics-rendering tricks he’s invented.
If neither of these work, I could always end up with the no-plan option, the default. I need do nothing and Akim will take me somewhere. A complete cop-out.
The tube smells of unwashed, flu-laden warmth. A woman sits across from me with skin that drips off her face in wrinkled folds, and eyes that bulge and seem to be looking everywhere at once. Very crone-like, very Hansel and Gretel bad-woman type, she clutches a tapestry bag with faded colours close to her chest as if it contains a great treasure. She rubs her hand over it occasionally as she munches on toothless gums.
A couple spill into the carriage with giggles and teenage cuddles and relentless touching and kissing. One of the pair is wearing large rectangular glasses and the other is pimply. I look at the two of them cavorting on the train seats, and although I feel a twinge at the loss of innocence, I don’t feel envy. I look at them with eyes that search for the hidden, the unknowable between them. One or both of them will soon find out – it’s worthless. It all ends in pain.
It has been so easy getting involved with Akim. I let him see the bits of me that need not be cordoned off into little secret holes of self. He has access to the bits that I can make carefree, the parts I can laugh away. I mother him a bit. I have a flat where he can hang out, even if he can’t spend an entire night in it. I cook food that he’s used to. He does not seem to mind me bossing him around sometimes. He has said, though, that most of the girls he’s met since he’s been here have only been interested in his car, his money, his ability to take them to expensive nightclubs. According to him, I have been the least resource-hungry girl he’s met for a long time. I wonder how different I really am from those girls. I like the fact that he’s got money. I like going to places beyond my means. The only hair split is that I refuse to let him buy me things. I’ve declined offers of watches, jeans, shoes. And he’s never seen that in a girl he’s dated. He sometimes seems Reuben-like to me, not in his clothes, but in his manner.
I get out at my stop and walk up the escalator, flashing my travelcard at the chubby-cheeked man leaning against his cubicle. I emerge from the station into the indifferent daylight I had studied from my kitchen window. Propelled by the cold and my tardiness, I run-walk down Tottenham Court Road.
I slip into the tiniest crack I can make in the door to get into Public Finance, but the door refuses to co-operate and shuts behind me with a thud. Dr Brian Brown – cords, brogues, check shirt, leather-elbowed jacket – reacts as he always does to latecomers. He pauses, closes his eyes tight, waves his right arm which is holding a stick of chalk in my direction, opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again as if compelled by his good nature to hold his tongue.
‘Ms Roberts, in your fine opinion, what is the major burden excessive public debt imposes on a country?’
All heads swivel round to me. I sit on the rind of the swing-down seat, stuck there by the large bag balancing on my knee.
‘Er, I guess it commits future generations to a lifetime of debt repayments.’
‘What if, at some point in the future, a country cannot repay its debts? What then?’
‘Um, well, technically, a country can never become bankrupt as there will always be someone to bail it out of trouble.’
‘Unlike us as individuals, Ms Roberts. Thank you, you may take your seat.’
He turns his back to me, and his attention to the chalkboard. He scribbles: Can a country become bankrupt?
‘One last thing, do file away, amongst your opinions about public debt, that I like all participants in this course to attend my lectures on time.’
He addresses the rest of the class: ‘Would anyone else like to volunteer an alternative opinion on this?’
I fumble in my bag to extract a notepad and pen. I stuff the bag down past my legs and let my weight push the seat down.
Dr Brown proceeds to discuss how to deal with unrelenting inflation, when a government is so incompetent at handling its economy that the cash you thought you had at the beginning of the year is piddle-worthy at the end of it.
Prof McIntyre’s door is wide open. He bellows into the phone, ‘Oh no, oh no no no!!’ And then slams it down, muttering, ‘The fools, the damn fools.’
When I introduce myself with an ‘Er . . .’, he beckons me in.
‘Come in, come in,’ he mangles my name, ‘Ayudel. How are you getting on?’ He points to his visitor’s chair, a leather armchair shoved up close to his corner bookshelf, and already occupied by a tottery pile of books. Sit down, sit down, push the books aside. Have some coffee, fresh. I need to make another call.’
I busy myself with pouring into the cleanest mug in his collection and listen in.
‘Bloody fools, absolutely unacceptable.’
A pause.
‘I depend on you to make them understand that some things simply must not be substituted. Bye.’
He turns to me. ‘Administrators. Trying to cut the budget for our Christmas bash. Need someone to tell them what’s what.’ He pats the pockets of his jacket and then some papers on his desk. With an ‘Ah, here it is,’ he sticks his cherrywood pipe in his mouth, then continues searching. I hand over my lighter and he engulfs the room with tobacco-lined puffs.
‘How are you?’ he says.
‘Sort of OK, but there are still things to sort out.’
‘Hmm, I see.’
I hastily continue, ‘But I’ve got to go for my French class in a minute, so I can’t really talk to you right now, but just wondered if. . .’
‘Free for lunch?’
‘Sure.’
‘OK, meet me there at one and we’ll catch up then.’
I gather my belongings and, saying my thank-yous, leave.
I do not know how I want to be, what I want to become. Will I ever be able to go back home and live in the chunks of expectation my mother, my relatives, the whole of Fajara, expect?
*
Our French lecturer, Madame LeBlanc, is wearing some sort of negligee in green that frills around her face, accompanied by stockings of an indeterminate shade of brown. She looks decidedly un-Parisian, a démodée elf. Today’s elvishly chosen topic is the nature of la joie.
‘Let’s start by trying to define what joy is,’ she says.
‘A tingle in your toes,’ starts Sarah.
Other definitions pop out around the room: A sense of wellbeing. Contentment in the world and the things around you. Inner equilibrium.
‘Is joy, ecstasy in living, a basic ambition for every human being?’ Madame LeBlanc asks.
Yasmin stretches her manicured fingers under her chin, ‘Yes, obviously, if we’re not happy we end up killing each other.’
‘Happiness is not necessarily joy, or ecstasy,’ protests Carlos.
‘We can play around with the definitions, being joyful always means being happy as well,’ counters Sarah.
‘Why do we pursue joy?’ At this point, Madame LeBlanc is leaning forward, jutting at the air with her sleek Parisian pen, enjoying the role of showing us what being a Left Bank intellectual is all about.
Me: ‘Scientists show that joyful people live longer, healthier lives.’
Yasmin: ‘But joy isn’t something that is always reflected on the surface. You cannot always see it. The Indian ascetics find their joy comes from within, and brings serenity.’
Carlos: ‘I disagree. Some people in the world don’t hav
e the choice to find joy, they find it hard enough to get enough food to eat on a day-to-day basis.’
Back to Madame LeBlanc: ‘Are you saying you can only look for joy if you are rich?’
‘Not quite, but it’s very hard to sit around debating the concept of joy if you are racked with worms,’ says Carlos.
French philosophers. Colonialism. Nationalism. Freedom. They all contribute to our discussion of how to perceive happiness, joy, serenity.
The class over, I let everyone shuffle out. I stand at the window for a moment, next to a boiling radiator, and look down on the row of cars parked in their rectangles of white paint, being drizzled on by an indifferent rain. How should I decide whether I am happy or not? It’s easier to determine when I’m not unhappy, but harder to prove any depth or texture to a happiness.
Would I have been just as happy staying home, not going to university, like my school friend Moira?
She seemed content enough when I last saw her while on holiday. She works as a secretary in the Ministry for Lands and is married to someone who trades in building materials. With a second child on the way, who’s to say she’s not happier than I am. Here I am, with wider, broader horizons, yet not knowing how to guarantee myself joy.
Kamal and I ate in the oak-panelled Senior Common Room sometimes, ostensibly to discuss the economics of trade. Once, we ended up playing footsie under the generous tablecloth, trying to smother snorts of mirth in the company of Engelbert Duthers, dandruffed member of the Economics Department. Memory stabs again, and I try to set it at a distance – me and this emotion. I walk around it in my mind, try to see the shape of it. Crumbly or smooth? Quiet ochre or intense ebony? I once wanted to claim love for myself, be intimate with it, aware of it in my eating and in my sleeping. Now, it’s a stranger. I want no part of this kind of wanting that gets you dumped. I don’t ever want to find myself beating a hasty retreat to the loo, to find a cubicle where I can hunch up on the seat, draw my knees up, fold them tight within my arms so I can rest my head and find some conduit for tears.
Today, although there isn’t much pomp and ceremony, the caterers have added decorative touches to the room. Poinsettia is much in evidence, to match seasonal festivities. By the time the Prof bustles across to our table, I’ve ironed my emotions flat and tidily folded them away.
We discuss my discomfort with Statistics (any luck with the chi-squareds and ANOVAs?), the size of the helping (rather hearty, don’t you think?), the lack of snow (miserable these parts, for the real thing you need to head for the lochs), the wine (not bad, not bad, well rounded), did I see the review of an anthropological guide to West Africa in the Economist (rather interesting take on your neck of the woods), thoughts on my future (have you considered journalism?), how are my personal difficulties (breezed through yet? got to keep an eye).
Sometimes you have to let the comfort of care sweep over you; he reminds me of why I would have quite liked a father.
In my last class of the day, Prof Block creates a different kind of magic in differential equations and multiple dimensions. His arms swoop, his hands swirl geometry in the empty air as he explains the shapes of forms we can only glimpse through fantastic formulae. Block sketches me into a world he’s spinning with his fingers, enclosing me into the dreamiest of shapes, beyond time, past space. He dissects the reality of:
+f(xn) = f(x1) + f(x2) + lots of squiggles + ∆xn-1
Waves and waves of knowledge whip through his excited arms. His body jerks with the energy of it all. Would it be that we could create our own worlds in our heads, world that are so full of wonder that they keep us alive in this other more unsatisfying, less predictable world that we do live in.
*
Akim does find me. And I have planned nothing. My evening is consumed in default.
On Saturday afternoon, Meena and I wander off to the Heath with our kites. The crisp, keen cold sharpens my skin.
‘Meena,’ I say, ‘maybe I should look for an older man. Someone divorced or widowed. Kind, no trouble, grateful for my companionship. Leaves me alone when I want to be left alone. What do you think?’
‘What’s brought this on?’ she wants to know.
‘Well, yesterday, having a chat with Prof McIntyre about life and what I want to do and stuff, I just thought about how much easier older men are.’
‘Uh, uh. Ayodele, I would have thought you’d had enough of professors.’
‘Not him in the particular. I meant, what I should be looking for.’
‘Sticking with older men won’t necessarily protect you from hurt.’
‘That way, any pain would be administered with feathers, not thorns.’
We fly our kites and then fly ourselves down the hill, our legs not quite managing to keep pace with the slope. It ends with us in untidy heaps by the footpath, kite strings miraculously untangled in our hands, giggling madly, completely winded, and laughing until we cry.
I default all through summer. Some Sundays, I visit my aunt and uncle. I let life carry me along, without wishing of it anything more. Meena starts to refer to Akim as my boyfriend. And I never have a rejoinder – as one would generally define a boyfriend, he appears to be mine.
It is summer, and I have nothing better to do. I let him be a pause, a comma in my life before I decide how to shift direction. He is fun to be with, and we go places in his open-topped BMW. He lavishes consideration on me. His mother comes to visit. He wants me to meet her. I make up an excuse about needing to visit Uncle Sola, and there being an important family gathering that I have to attend. Two entire weekends in a row. I start to see I’ll need to do something about Akim soon.
Rifat is in a blaze of black, Doc Marten boots sticking out scruffily on our front doormat. The sun makes a poor attempt to put a halo around his head as the last of the day’s light gives up quietly to a greedy dusk.
‘Hello, petal. I hope you are pleased, I’m only ten minutes late this time.’
‘Phah, go on up.’
As he comes in, he complains, ‘Why do you need me to arrive on time? It only leads to your getting disappointed.’
He goes up the stairs in front of me in that ridiculous gait of his, knees pointed outward, heels bouncing lightly on each step.
We’re off to watch a bunch of his friends play in a post-punk band. Rifat promises it will be loud. He plans to help sell tickets at the door. I assure him the music will be incomprehensible. He says he guarantees entertainment. I accept on condition that a proportion of his earnings purchases drinks.
I’ve made a Gambian salad – hand-shredded lettuce leaves, slices of tomatoes, cucumber, onions, thick quarters of hard-boiled egg, halves of deboned sardines from a tin – in a version of my mother’s dressing. I bought two baguette loaves and have sliced them into angled ovals. After we’ve joked and eaten with Meena, I make my way downstairs to pick out my boots and jacket. The doorbell rings, and I jump. When I open the door, it’s Akim.
He says, ‘I wanted to phone you to ask whether you’re up to anything, but I decided to come round to see you in case you were not.’
‘In five minutes, you wouldn’t have found me in. We are on our way out.’
I hear Rifat saying goodbye to Meena as he moves towards the stairs. When they are within spitting distance the two men nod to each other in a silent male-male exchange. I say, ‘Rifat, Akim.’ They shake hands. Akim puts both hands in his front pockets just as a gust of wind blows up a couple of empty crisp packets around my ankles.
‘We’re just off now,’ I say, ‘to see a band. I’ll catch up with you some other time.’
And Akim says, ‘Sure,’ in a voice that matches his face. It’s the first time I’ve seen him look at me like that.
Akim starts to phone me more often.
‘Where have you been?’ is often his greeting.
I start to find notes under my door:
Was hoping you might want to go out for a Chinese meal.
There’s a good film on – thought you might want
to see it.
Just popping by, I had nothing else that I wanted to do.
I ask him when he plans to go home. He says he might stay for the graduation ceremony and there is no particular hurry. I say I’ll have to leave by mid-November as I will have run out of money by then.
I come home one day, late – around two – from a new babysitting job I’ve found. Akim is sitting in his blue BMW with the cover up, listening to Marvin Gaye.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Needed to see you,’ he mumbles. ‘Can I come in?’
‘Look, this isn’t going to work. I’m dead tired. I need to go to bed.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Babysitting.’
‘It’s not safe, coming back this late. You should let me pick you up.’
‘I’ve been fine doing this for the last three weeks. They pay for my cab home.’
‘Can I come in?’ he asks again.
‘No. Go home. It’s late.’
Two months later, Akim tries to kill himself. He leaves a yellow sticky note on a table in his kitchen, with a little arrow:
He attaches a stamped and addressed letter to me. The police find it and a social worker brings it round to see me and have a little chat. Akim declares to the world that I was the one who drove him to it, that I was the cause. Isn’t that the way it is in tales of romance, in which the lover gives up life to protect the beloved? One is ready to die so that the one who is loved can live? Is that the ultimate proof of love, to say ‘I’d rather die than live without you’ and then to go ahead and tie a rope around your neck and kick a stool away.
